The best possible source of information: the lay press.

Today there are fears about naproxen "causing" cardiac death. Today, there are 800+ news articles refernced by Google news. Interestingly, there is no information on this from the NIH page, MDConsult, AAFP site or MedScape. Basically, the lay press will try to "scoop" the people who might actually be able to synthesize and present the data in a reasonable manner (that might not cause widespread panic). What good does it do to call your doctor, when the media releases information before his journal could even be delivered, assuming same-day delivery?

One day ago, the last data available on naproxen was that it was cardioprotective. Why the reversal? Oh, that's right, none of the studies involved were actually designed to observe cardiac outcomes. Could you use a microscope to read your newspaper? Maybe, but you might not see the whole thing correctly.

We'll see how I feel about this in a few days, after my articles come in the mail. Until then I shall continue to dine off of the 99 cent menu at the drive though, anticipating the day I can sue Roche, the maker of naprosyn, for my untimely cardiac event.

Walmart
is cutting prices again! You'll never need to shop anywhere else. Next
on the clearance rack: small business owners.

74 years old at your kid's highschool graduation? No chance of living
long enough to behold your grandchildren, at least not without the rheumy
film of cataracts intervening? Ooh! Sign me up!

Anybody doing this this year? Just write a novel, any novel, 175pp or 50,000 words. Do it during the month of November. Start writing November 1st, and be done by midnight of the end of the month. This is the best idea I've ever seen. You can sign up as late as 11/25. That's the requirement that really spoke to me, having never completed a written assignment ahead of schedule, nor started one greater than 24hrs in advance of the due date. Last year 3,500 of 25,000 entrants finished. If he hadn't just started a new job, I'd nominate Mattycakes. If I had a single idea in my head but how to get out of work anywhere near on time, I'd do it, if only for the practice of thinking about something other than medicine for a change. If...

Blogging Via EMail?

Does it work? If it does, we'll just be one step closer to having
our thoughts stream into the internet as we think them.

Link to News.com.com

Any idea why Sony chose an acronym that sounds suspiciously like a defunct analog tape system for its new MP3 player? (Eight-Track) Or am I the only one old enough around here to remember?

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's an animated GIF of the 3-D gravitational field of Earth. The spike of field you see near the pacific NW is likely the mass of the Cascade and Olympic ranges, not my ass.

It's about goddamned time.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization says yes to safe nuclear energy and no to nuclear weapons. Pardon me if I'm less than trusting of this statement from a nation literally dripping with natural fuel.
Hear it here

Be very afraid.
The bugs are winning.

What the hell...? Now I have to sit through commercials for a brand of hip replacement prosthetic?

Apparently the orthopedic surgeons are no longer qualified to choose what is right for you- the TV is! Jack Nicklaus can tell you exactly what to have permanently implanted in your body. I'm sure he's read all the peer-reviewed literature on the subject. He's like, a famous golfer, so that's got to mean he's way more qualified than some schmoe who's dedicated his or her life to the study of the field.

Maybe the crazy-ass hippie with the white-person dreadlocks and the mosiac and barbie head encrusted car is right. I should kill my television.

I didn't realize blogger is set up for rss feeds.... This is mostly a test post.

Freaking IE and blogger. I had a post all loaded and ready to go. For some reason IE interpreted a [backspace] off the text box and navigated me away from the "create post" page without saving any of it.

Anyway..... I was saying how I am keeping a list of topics and words that have come up in conversation, media, whatever I'm exposed to. Topics that you wouldn't expect to come up frequently.

For instance, I had two independent sources inform me on the same day about a story Paul Lindman(local news guy) did on a beached whale that was detonated on an Oregon beach many years ago. Just this weekend I was in a bookstore, wondering to myself who came up with the phrase, "Author, Author!" Not 4 hours later I saw an ad on a satellite TV channel for the movie of the same name.

One that really caught my attention was a thought I had about single front seat cars, as opposed to left-hand drive position as we have here in the States. A week later, the next Car and Driver I picked up had a nifty little article in it about center-drive cars. (My personal favorite is the Maclaren F1.)

It only goes on the list if I cannot see a correlation between the two occurences of the words or phrase. The classic example of this is wondering about someone from your past, just before getting a call or email from that person.

Anyone else notice anything similar? Don't use anything from the news- those losers don't even write their own copy anymore. They'll just read it off the Rumsfel---I mean Reuters feed, without adding even a punctuation mark.

Just pull the trigger if you need this, and save yourself the cost of a cell phone.

We had our first ridiculously rainy Oregon experience in quite a while last night.

Shawn Colvin opened for the Cowboy Junkies last night at the zoo, an outside venue with no shelter. A little before Shawn took the stage, it started to sprinkle. Then it rained. Then the wind picked up and it rained horizontally. We were out there in shorts and t-shirts, having poo-poohed my mailman's assertion that it would rain "later tonight." Apparently nearly everyone took the same weather report to heart, because instantly, there was a sea of umbrellas in front of us and water dripping down the in side of my shirt. After about a song's worth of feeling like a drowned rat, and watching several pissy interchanges between grumpy concert-goers, I had a flash of brilliance. I would drive home and get fresh, waterproof clothes!

I don't need to tell you that, after missing 30min of the concert and most of Shawn, it had stopped raining. But having dry clothes and a little bit of gore-tex really made it possible to enjoy the rest of the show. It still didn't entice me to go stand in line to talk to Margo afterwards, with 30lbs of sopping clothing and picnic supplies to hold.

The Junkies are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, and it shows. Hearing them live is little differrent from hearing a studio cut (in a good way), except when Margo forgets the words, which she did twice. I still love to see them. The last time I saw them live was probably 8 years ago at the Electric Factory in Philly. T was in Portland still, and I had Margo sign my ticket to her. A week after, T did the same for me. So sweet, isn't it?

I was just amazed at the number of people who did stay despite the truly nasty rain conditions, even by Oregon standards. An added bonus was that the two 50+ couples sitting next to us did not get into a physical fight over whose feet belonged where. That would've been ugly.

A Prost:
To the barista at Starbuck's Best downtown.

Let's preface by saying that I'm just a little bit of a smartass. So when I wasn't quite sure what form I wanted my caffiene to take yesterday, I stalled for time by ordering something from the holiday season, no longer on the menu. The cashier gave me the blank stare I was going for, but the perky little barista chirped up that she remembered how to make the special flavor from the syrups they had available. She came through with the cup of holiday cheer I was looking for.

Maybe if Starbucks buys every single coffee store in the nation, we'll all get the same service?

For those of you who still think people are inherently good....

This ought to clear things up.

Everyone, come on and sing along!

I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm  free!

It's a good thing we live here- anywhere else, Clear Channel would have a government contract beheading people who dissent.  Here, we're just subjected to censorship.

So, Ronny's gone. He was the first president I truly paid any attention to. It's a good thing none of the republicans these days are charismatic.

I'm wondering, now that Reagan's dead, if ketchup ceases to be a vegetable and reverts to condiment status. Probably not- all those chronically psychotic/ mentally ill people are still homeless.

"Watery brown bile overlies a velvety red-tan mucosa."
Poetry from the pathologist.

Some of my blogging energy has been subverted into *gasp* personal email. Where's all his personal email, you ask? Well, you gotta send 'em to get 'em, as my lovely wife is fond of quoting. Those of you who have received the personal email, just keep quiet and try not to rabble-rouse.

Well, Travis sent me an email the other day that was decidedly, shall we say, stream of conscious. Not only did I reply, I replied in force, with full sentences, puctuation, correct capitalization and none of the typical monosyllabic terseness typical of my new communication style. Contrasted with my old communication style, before email was common. I'd write letters, by hand, and these suckers would span pages. Witty, witty pages of me, waxing philosophical about,... well, I can't remember any of it, but I'm pretty sure it was good. Somehow, I anticipated that email would increase my verbosity, by sheer access, but it really hasn't. It used to be that if I had a blank piece of paper and a pen in hand, I'd be writing a letter. Now that's not the case, not by a long shot.

I think one of the things that keeps me from this is my job. I've never put it this way, but my job is mostly thinking. And talking. It had never hit me how hard I think about things thoughout the day until I realized that when I'm off work, it just feels so much better to be a mental vegetable. Matt reads 2+ books a week, not counting graphic novels. What do I do? Something that usually involves a horizontal position and as little energy expenditure as possible. I know it sounds crazy, but I think my job is eating my brain. Or maybe it's the patients. I've never thought of them as B-Movie zombies, but I can almost see them lumbering down the hall, muttering "Brains.... Brains... BRAINS!!!!!"

Eep. I think I need a vacation.

So, after umpteen weeks on the fiction bestseller list, The Da Vinci Code has got some Christians up in arms. Our "liberal media" is snapping this up. The author of 'Breaking The Da Vinci Code,' said on national TV that he was concered that readers were going to read Dan Brown's work and think it's historical truth, even though it's a work of fiction. Fiction. Yes, and the world was created in 7 days. Watching these people on TV is a little like watching grown people have an argument about the true color of the Easter Bunny.

Okay, so something nasty happened with the comment code for the last post. I think I've got it nailed now.

Ahh, several days and I'm just basking in the glory of my new, comment-enabled blog. I'm redolent with commenty goodness.

Seriously people, it's not that I'm a lazy blogger (I am, but that's not at at issue today) it's mostly that I'm so freaking busy I am literally drowning in patients this month. Good for business, bad for free time.

Thanks to a particularly slow week at the legal mill (that's you, Matt), and , We now have comments! If I did this right.

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It seems all the morning news shows have been putting some breaved family member of some 9-11 victim every single day. Nearly every sentence coming out of their mouths begins with "if." The last one I just saw actually blamed the Clinton administration. This is such typical "lazy american" behavior. Dissecting the past, looking for fingers to point. The outrage can't possibly be helped by the abrupt death of our smugness. Let's face it, we all thought we were unassailable prior to the attacks.

We're going to spend a huge amount of energy fruitlessly trying to undo the past while we prod the beast even more by blowing up Iraqis. I mean, we might as well change our flag to a logo that depicts the Koran with a steaming pile of dogshit on it. Well, I shouldn't complain- any bad press for Bush is good press.

Coming up: How to bitch about having the lowest gas prices in the world.

Oh, there's the outrage.

It's been years, but finally we have people on TV disagreeing with W and his administration. It was heartening to hear some of the commission members sounding incredulous that the administration couldn't predict the attacks in NYC and DC. Although, to be honest, I'd prefer there be some action on an issue that could conceivably make a difference now. Complaining about the tragic deaths of people that are dead and gone may make their families feel better, but we're still in a hostile nation under false pretenses. Maybe in a few years, after we've been chased out of Vietn- er- Iraq, someone will have the balls to get on TV and say we shouldn't have gone in.

Nader can kiss my ass. This has been the shittiest four years I've seen since Ronny Raygun. Don't get me wrong; I think self-love is healthy and natural, but we need Ralph stroking himself with another potential candidacy like we need Halliburton running the EPA. That's all I'm going to say. Mattycakes can still vote his conscience if he wants. He'll just be personally responsible for another term of shite.

And another thing... We don't get snowflakes here like back east. We get these little clumps of snow-fluff, without any discrete crystals. What a rip-off.

Ah, the crisp winter air. The snow. The cold. We've just had two snowfalls in a row, which I suppose is not typical of every Oregon winter. It reminds me that I haven't been truly snowed on since I lived in Philadelphia. The other night before it snowed, when it was just 28 degrees and dry, I took the dog for a walk, thinking that the local dog park/mud bowl would have frozen over. It had, and thankfully there was very little on the way of dog-cleaning that I needed to take care of.

As we were walking to the frozen mud bowl I heard a sound that distinctly reminded me of my winters back east. Below a certain temperature, the nylon shell of my coat freezes enough to lose some of its suppleness and begins to crinkle instead of rustle. The change in the quality of sound coupled with the near-silence of the street at midnight brought back memories of being thousands of miles from home. I remember the kind of winter that's so cold you know it'll take at least two years to get used to it. I remember thinking that I had a good warm winter jacket, freezing my ass off in it, and I remember making my friends take me out to the store to buy a new one that would fit the bill for a Philadelphia winter, not a Willamette valley winter.

There was a storm the winter of 1996 that laid feet of snow over the Philadelphia area, closing the airport and delaying my return from Christmas break for five glorious days. The city was wonderfully quiet during this time; even the manically active city dwellers knew when to stay in. Coming back to my apartment on Green Street, I had to climb a bank of snow just to get to my stoop. I took a picture a few days later, with the snow still piled high around the cars. I literally had to trudge through that snow to get to school. I think I actually enjoyed it, Philly covered in clean white snow, burying the rubble and the hundreds of years of dirt and grime. City Hall at the center of the city looks like a Gotham masterpiece when it's like this.

The first snow of the season is always so beautiful and pristine that it makes you just stop and gaze at it. Now that it's been around for a day or two, now that I have to get my ass to work in the morning, now that I've shovelled hundreds of pounds of snow off my driveway, I remember the truth about a snowy cold winter: that it's just another season, that it's a hazard and an inconvenience, and like my four years in Philadelphia, it's best enjoyed in retrospect.