Saturday, December 17, 2005
Recursive cursive
Can anyone give me a valid reason for why American kids still have to learn cursive, or why nearly everyone's signature is in cursive even though most of us don't use it for anything else? Why does cursive even still EXIST? What purpose does it serve? Can you write anything other than your signature in cursive without thinking about it? I can't. Even if I really try, I can't remember how to do capital Q's... and G's and Z's... and probably a few others. All I've used it for since whichever grade it was that they stopped requiring all writing to be in cursive is to sign "love" or "love always" and my name on cards, and of course to sign things; interestingly, while most people develop their own style of cursive writing, at the very least for their signatures, MY signature looks exactly the way it did in grade school (with the obvious exception of my having a different last name now, of course)... mine is the only adult signature I've ever seen that still looks like a kid's signature, so that probably means something, but I don't suppose I want to know what.
Cursive DOES seem to be fading away, but it's fighting to survive; just when I think I've seen the last of it, it reappears on a greeting card, or in a hard-to-read font (usually yellow on red or something equally eye-searing) on some teenager's blog, and my hopes of getting rid of it are crushed... maybe it's gotten so outdated that some people think it's cool? I hope not.
If you're from a culture that doesn't use cursive, or that doesn't use the Roman/Latin alphabet at all, I found a site that has a pic of one version of it
http://www.hwtears.com/cursivedeskstrips.htm
and a site that shows the fancier, older-school version of the capitals, complete with animated guides as to how to make them
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/cursive/animation/uppercase.htm
so you can see how ridiculous it is... can you see any reason for the capital Q to look like a 2? No wonder I can't remember what it looks like!! It's silly to make kids who are still struggling with printing legibly learn a whole different way to write; I can see making older kids learn how to READ it, because they WILL see it periodically, but isn't there a better use of class time than this pitiful duplication of effort? Heck, today's kids will TYPE far, far more than they'll handwrite, so they should be having typing lessons instead of learning cursive... not that I'm holding my breath for American schools to ever show that much logic in the design of their curriculums.
The computer revolution may have an unintended benefit that I hadn't realized until now; it may speed up the elimination of cursive. I don't know if this thought makes anyone else happy... but *I* say good riddance.
Cursive DOES seem to be fading away, but it's fighting to survive; just when I think I've seen the last of it, it reappears on a greeting card, or in a hard-to-read font (usually yellow on red or something equally eye-searing) on some teenager's blog, and my hopes of getting rid of it are crushed... maybe it's gotten so outdated that some people think it's cool? I hope not.
If you're from a culture that doesn't use cursive, or that doesn't use the Roman/Latin alphabet at all, I found a site that has a pic of one version of it
http://www.hwtears.com/cursivedeskstrips.htm
and a site that shows the fancier, older-school version of the capitals, complete with animated guides as to how to make them
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/cursive/animation/uppercase.htm
so you can see how ridiculous it is... can you see any reason for the capital Q to look like a 2? No wonder I can't remember what it looks like!! It's silly to make kids who are still struggling with printing legibly learn a whole different way to write; I can see making older kids learn how to READ it, because they WILL see it periodically, but isn't there a better use of class time than this pitiful duplication of effort? Heck, today's kids will TYPE far, far more than they'll handwrite, so they should be having typing lessons instead of learning cursive... not that I'm holding my breath for American schools to ever show that much logic in the design of their curriculums.
The computer revolution may have an unintended benefit that I hadn't realized until now; it may speed up the elimination of cursive. I don't know if this thought makes anyone else happy... but *I* say good riddance.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Race, religion, red hair, and medicine
From the January 2006 issue of Discover comes the following:
FDA Approves First Race-Based Drug
"The Food and Drug Administration's formal approval in June of BiDil, a medicine designed to treat heart failure in blacks, ignited a furious debate over the role of race in medicine. The Association of Black Cardiologists, a paid sponsor of the clinical trial, cheered the FDA's action. But the idea that a drug can be race based was roundly criticized by prominent medical researchers who argued that race is a crude and invalid scientific concept.
BiDil is derived from two generic compounds: hydralazine, an antihypertension drug, and isosorbide dinitrate, a blood vessel relaxant. The combination therapy was rejected by the FDA in 1997 because trials showed inconclusive benefits for patients overall. But Jay Cohn, the University of Minnesota cardiologist who developed the drug, had observed that BiDil appeared to be more effective for black patients. So he designed a study of 1,050 self-identified black patients and found in 2004 that the medication decreased their death rates by 43 percent. Cohn and his colleagues were taken aback by the negative reaction among sociologists, geneticists, and ethicists when the drug was approved. 'We thought they'd realize we've found an effective drug for treating an underserved group with a high mortality rate from heart disease,' Cohn says. 'We thought that would overwhelm the racial concerns.'"
I don't know which is more astonishing; that there's a clear racial difference in the effect of a drug, that someone was willing to fund that sort of research, of that anyone would DARE protest the discovery of a med that could save the lives of so many black men.... how is it racist to save lives, or to accept the incontrovertible fact that the med DOES discriminate by race?
"Critics contend that approving a drug for use only by blacks could be interpreted as validating a genetic basis to race that does not exist."
Could it be interpreted that way by people who are already racists? Sure. Does that in any way counteract the many lives that will be saved? Hell no.
"In recent years, researchers have identified subtle genetic differences between populations-such as Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans-but these differences aren't as clearly defined as 'black' and 'white.' Even so, scientists hope to use these variations to understand why drugs have different effects in different people. It may be genetics. It may be environment (diet, exposure to pollutants) or sociological factors (access to good health care). Most likely it's a combination of all three. But one thing is clear: Race is defined by society, not by science."
Is it just me, or does that sound a little TOO PC? After all, with any other species of creature, if it has populations with even pretty darned minor differences in coloring or features, they're designated as different sub-species, with their own special scientific names... so why is it that the substantial differences in appearance between humans originating in disparate parts of the world are supposed to be ignored? Most people are PROUD of their racial heritage, and rightfully so as every race has many things to be proud OF, so why would anyone want to take that away by pretending that all those genetic differences are meaningless in humans and only humans?
No scientist would be insane enough to try to use medical data to "prove" that any race is superior or inferior to any other, and since we have eyes we already know that there are differences between the races that are obviously genetic and thus NOT created by society or environment, so what is there to worry about if we discover more ways that the races are different? Those who are trying to make an issue about this need to bring all such thoughts to a screeching halt and focus on the idea that we might be able to save more lives by seeing if other drugs have different effects in different sorts of people; it won't mean that some folks are better or worse than others, just that they'll vary in which drugs they'd benefit the most from... and doesn't everyone deserve the best possible treatment regardless of WHY it's best?
If you're thinking that this is a moot point because there's no reason to believe that there's any other connection between external physical features and anything else medical, check this out; in the November 2005 issue of Discover in the R&D section is "Secrets of Redheads," which makes these astonishing revelations:
"What do redheads have that the rest of us don't? Plenty, say scientists. Two recent studies:
Skin Cancer. Red hair often means light eyes, pale skin, and freckles-plus sunburns and a high incidence of skin cancer. Chemistry professor John Simon and his colleagues at Duke University believe that melanin, the pigment responsible for darkening skin in the baking sun, is more likely to kick-start DNA damage--and therefore cancer--in redheads than it is in black-haired people. The researchers compared the reaction of melanin in red hair and black hair to various wavelengths of ultraviolet light. They found that pigment isolated from red hair requires less energy to undergo the chemical reaction that produces the unstable, DNA-damaging free radicals linked to cancer. The melanin in black hair needs more energy to produce free radicals, reducing their damaging effects under normal atmospheric conditions.
Pain. Natural redheads have a higher pain threshold than others, says geneticist Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University's pain laboratory. Men and women with naturally red hair can withstand 25 percent more electric shock than non-redheads. And painkillers used in childbirth work three times better on red-haired women than on others. Mogil and his team found that the mutant gene that causes red hair, melanocortin-1 (MC1R), also affects how redheads (including mice) react to pain. Now geneticist Ian Jackson of the United Kingdom Medical Research Council plans to study redheads in the hope of developing new painkillers. Connecting the gene to pain was surprising and exciting, Jackson says. 'We thought that MC1R was involved only in hair color.'"
It's not so hard to imagine the existence of painkillers with fewer side effects (or other benefits over currently available kinds) that don't work well on the general population but that could get FDA approval just for use on redheads, is it?
And there's more; even things that aren't necessarily reflected in outward appearance, like religion or country of origin, can indicate that someone may have medically important genetic differences from the general population:
"Tay-Sachs disease (abbreviated TSD, also known as 'GM2 gangliosidosis') is a fatal genetic disorder... Historically, Eastern European people of Jewish descent have a high incidence of Tay-Sachs and other lipid storage diseases. In the United States, 1 in 27 Ashkenazi Jews is a recessive carrier, compared to 1 in 200 in the general population. French Canadians and the Cajun community of Louisiana have the same carrier rate as Ashkenazi Jews, one in 27, and among Irish Americans the carrier rate is about one in 50."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease
There's no proof yet that this sort of genetic difference would lead to differing reactions to drugs... but don't be surprised if it does.
In the bad old days, differences between people of different races, religions or countries of origin were seen as reasons to view others as inferior, and treat them in often appalling ways; I'm sure we're all in agreement that THAT must never happen again. BUT, we don't do anyone any favors by trying to ignore or deny that we look different because we come from different gene pools, or that those differing gene pools affect aspects of our health and the medical care that's best for us. There's no need to have philosophical arguments on what race is or isn't, or to debate the rightness of doing research that'll help those in one subset or another of the world's population get medical treatment that'll save their lives; all that should matter to the medical community is that they'll be better able to treat their patients... and that's all that should matter to the rest of us, too.
FDA Approves First Race-Based Drug
"The Food and Drug Administration's formal approval in June of BiDil, a medicine designed to treat heart failure in blacks, ignited a furious debate over the role of race in medicine. The Association of Black Cardiologists, a paid sponsor of the clinical trial, cheered the FDA's action. But the idea that a drug can be race based was roundly criticized by prominent medical researchers who argued that race is a crude and invalid scientific concept.
BiDil is derived from two generic compounds: hydralazine, an antihypertension drug, and isosorbide dinitrate, a blood vessel relaxant. The combination therapy was rejected by the FDA in 1997 because trials showed inconclusive benefits for patients overall. But Jay Cohn, the University of Minnesota cardiologist who developed the drug, had observed that BiDil appeared to be more effective for black patients. So he designed a study of 1,050 self-identified black patients and found in 2004 that the medication decreased their death rates by 43 percent. Cohn and his colleagues were taken aback by the negative reaction among sociologists, geneticists, and ethicists when the drug was approved. 'We thought they'd realize we've found an effective drug for treating an underserved group with a high mortality rate from heart disease,' Cohn says. 'We thought that would overwhelm the racial concerns.'"
I don't know which is more astonishing; that there's a clear racial difference in the effect of a drug, that someone was willing to fund that sort of research, of that anyone would DARE protest the discovery of a med that could save the lives of so many black men.... how is it racist to save lives, or to accept the incontrovertible fact that the med DOES discriminate by race?
"Critics contend that approving a drug for use only by blacks could be interpreted as validating a genetic basis to race that does not exist."
Could it be interpreted that way by people who are already racists? Sure. Does that in any way counteract the many lives that will be saved? Hell no.
"In recent years, researchers have identified subtle genetic differences between populations-such as Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans-but these differences aren't as clearly defined as 'black' and 'white.' Even so, scientists hope to use these variations to understand why drugs have different effects in different people. It may be genetics. It may be environment (diet, exposure to pollutants) or sociological factors (access to good health care). Most likely it's a combination of all three. But one thing is clear: Race is defined by society, not by science."
Is it just me, or does that sound a little TOO PC? After all, with any other species of creature, if it has populations with even pretty darned minor differences in coloring or features, they're designated as different sub-species, with their own special scientific names... so why is it that the substantial differences in appearance between humans originating in disparate parts of the world are supposed to be ignored? Most people are PROUD of their racial heritage, and rightfully so as every race has many things to be proud OF, so why would anyone want to take that away by pretending that all those genetic differences are meaningless in humans and only humans?
No scientist would be insane enough to try to use medical data to "prove" that any race is superior or inferior to any other, and since we have eyes we already know that there are differences between the races that are obviously genetic and thus NOT created by society or environment, so what is there to worry about if we discover more ways that the races are different? Those who are trying to make an issue about this need to bring all such thoughts to a screeching halt and focus on the idea that we might be able to save more lives by seeing if other drugs have different effects in different sorts of people; it won't mean that some folks are better or worse than others, just that they'll vary in which drugs they'd benefit the most from... and doesn't everyone deserve the best possible treatment regardless of WHY it's best?
If you're thinking that this is a moot point because there's no reason to believe that there's any other connection between external physical features and anything else medical, check this out; in the November 2005 issue of Discover in the R&D section is "Secrets of Redheads," which makes these astonishing revelations:
"What do redheads have that the rest of us don't? Plenty, say scientists. Two recent studies:
Skin Cancer. Red hair often means light eyes, pale skin, and freckles-plus sunburns and a high incidence of skin cancer. Chemistry professor John Simon and his colleagues at Duke University believe that melanin, the pigment responsible for darkening skin in the baking sun, is more likely to kick-start DNA damage--and therefore cancer--in redheads than it is in black-haired people. The researchers compared the reaction of melanin in red hair and black hair to various wavelengths of ultraviolet light. They found that pigment isolated from red hair requires less energy to undergo the chemical reaction that produces the unstable, DNA-damaging free radicals linked to cancer. The melanin in black hair needs more energy to produce free radicals, reducing their damaging effects under normal atmospheric conditions.
Pain. Natural redheads have a higher pain threshold than others, says geneticist Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University's pain laboratory. Men and women with naturally red hair can withstand 25 percent more electric shock than non-redheads. And painkillers used in childbirth work three times better on red-haired women than on others. Mogil and his team found that the mutant gene that causes red hair, melanocortin-1 (MC1R), also affects how redheads (including mice) react to pain. Now geneticist Ian Jackson of the United Kingdom Medical Research Council plans to study redheads in the hope of developing new painkillers. Connecting the gene to pain was surprising and exciting, Jackson says. 'We thought that MC1R was involved only in hair color.'"
It's not so hard to imagine the existence of painkillers with fewer side effects (or other benefits over currently available kinds) that don't work well on the general population but that could get FDA approval just for use on redheads, is it?
And there's more; even things that aren't necessarily reflected in outward appearance, like religion or country of origin, can indicate that someone may have medically important genetic differences from the general population:
"Tay-Sachs disease (abbreviated TSD, also known as 'GM2 gangliosidosis') is a fatal genetic disorder... Historically, Eastern European people of Jewish descent have a high incidence of Tay-Sachs and other lipid storage diseases. In the United States, 1 in 27 Ashkenazi Jews is a recessive carrier, compared to 1 in 200 in the general population. French Canadians and the Cajun community of Louisiana have the same carrier rate as Ashkenazi Jews, one in 27, and among Irish Americans the carrier rate is about one in 50."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease
There's no proof yet that this sort of genetic difference would lead to differing reactions to drugs... but don't be surprised if it does.
In the bad old days, differences between people of different races, religions or countries of origin were seen as reasons to view others as inferior, and treat them in often appalling ways; I'm sure we're all in agreement that THAT must never happen again. BUT, we don't do anyone any favors by trying to ignore or deny that we look different because we come from different gene pools, or that those differing gene pools affect aspects of our health and the medical care that's best for us. There's no need to have philosophical arguments on what race is or isn't, or to debate the rightness of doing research that'll help those in one subset or another of the world's population get medical treatment that'll save their lives; all that should matter to the medical community is that they'll be better able to treat their patients... and that's all that should matter to the rest of us, too.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
A couple of things about my husband
Time and time again, when I'm having problems with some electronic thing, my husband will show up and press the same button, click the same control, that I've already done 500 times, and it'll suddenly WORK; more astoundingly, he can often just come into the room and approach the recalcitrant machine, and it'll start working. He always jokes "machines fear me, because they've heard from the others about how I take them apart and don't always get them put back together right," or something similar; there's a limited # of times that something that freaky can be funny, though... it's long since switched to being eerie, especially because it's happened over and over and OVER, far beyond what could be seen as coincidence-how many times could something "coincidentally" start working the instant he shows up, right?
Yesterday, I was having problems with the mp3 player on my laptop; I tried every song in the player, and none of them would play, and I tried all the files, which should have opened in the player, and none of THEM worked either... and I tried them repeatedly for about an hour without success. When my husband got up from his nap and stumbled in, and I told him that the player seemed dead, he clicked a song... and it played. Every song, every file, that he clicked on played... and I don't mean that he changed settings or fixed something and they played, I mean he reached over my shoulder and clicked exactly where I'd been clicking.
Today, I was half-watching a comedy thing while doing eBay searches when I noticed that the image had frozen on the TV screen; I figured I'd give it a few minutes to sort itself out and went back to my search. Eventually, I realized that 15 minutes had passed, so I yelled for my husband; while he was taking his sweet time prying himself away from his computer and walking down the hall, I was switching through a bunch of stations, and they all showed a BLANK screen, including the original one when I got back to it. When he emerged from the hall, he turned to the TV... and the picture INSTANTLY came back on. I was screaming, he was laughing... and then he chalked it up to coincidence. {sigh}
A few days ago, I saw the movie "Head Over Heels" (aka "Chilly Scenes of Winter")
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079278/
which shows a couple getting involved, and then the man becomes significantly more in love, and the woman withdraws, eventually going back to her estranged husband; when he asks her why she'd want to be with the man who loves her less rather than the one who loves her more, she says something like "Because with him I feel like less of a fraud." WOW!! I've read alot of explanations as to why people tend to fall out of love with those who love them "too much," but this was a new one, and it had the ring of truth; my own reaction when men have had too exalted of a view of me has been to think disgustedly "You must be confusing me with someone else, because when you talk about me it doesn't sound like you're describing me," and I've certainly heard other people talk with dismay about the unrealistic view a partner has of them, making them think they're not being understood, or that they can't live up to it, etc, and people who have major success at work sometimes talk about how they feel like frauds, so it's not much of a jump to see that someone who's having too much success in getting their loved one to admire them might feel like a fraud... and once they start feeling uncomfortable, the passion would usually fade away fast.
I hasten to add that, unlike most folks, when I'M on the receiving end of partner worship, although I take a dim view of their unrealistic perceptions (people showing illogic and ignoring facts always aggravate me), I do NOT lose interest; instead, I think "This is a great deal!!" and become MORE interested, because the whole POINT of a relationship is to be deeply loved... and there are plenty of benefits to being with someone who thinks you should have everything. There's no trick to making this work; I just never get the discomfort that a "normal" person feels under those circumstances... for which my husband is profoundly grateful. :-)
Yesterday, I was having problems with the mp3 player on my laptop; I tried every song in the player, and none of them would play, and I tried all the files, which should have opened in the player, and none of THEM worked either... and I tried them repeatedly for about an hour without success. When my husband got up from his nap and stumbled in, and I told him that the player seemed dead, he clicked a song... and it played. Every song, every file, that he clicked on played... and I don't mean that he changed settings or fixed something and they played, I mean he reached over my shoulder and clicked exactly where I'd been clicking.
Today, I was half-watching a comedy thing while doing eBay searches when I noticed that the image had frozen on the TV screen; I figured I'd give it a few minutes to sort itself out and went back to my search. Eventually, I realized that 15 minutes had passed, so I yelled for my husband; while he was taking his sweet time prying himself away from his computer and walking down the hall, I was switching through a bunch of stations, and they all showed a BLANK screen, including the original one when I got back to it. When he emerged from the hall, he turned to the TV... and the picture INSTANTLY came back on. I was screaming, he was laughing... and then he chalked it up to coincidence. {sigh}
A few days ago, I saw the movie "Head Over Heels" (aka "Chilly Scenes of Winter")
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079278/
which shows a couple getting involved, and then the man becomes significantly more in love, and the woman withdraws, eventually going back to her estranged husband; when he asks her why she'd want to be with the man who loves her less rather than the one who loves her more, she says something like "Because with him I feel like less of a fraud." WOW!! I've read alot of explanations as to why people tend to fall out of love with those who love them "too much," but this was a new one, and it had the ring of truth; my own reaction when men have had too exalted of a view of me has been to think disgustedly "You must be confusing me with someone else, because when you talk about me it doesn't sound like you're describing me," and I've certainly heard other people talk with dismay about the unrealistic view a partner has of them, making them think they're not being understood, or that they can't live up to it, etc, and people who have major success at work sometimes talk about how they feel like frauds, so it's not much of a jump to see that someone who's having too much success in getting their loved one to admire them might feel like a fraud... and once they start feeling uncomfortable, the passion would usually fade away fast.
I hasten to add that, unlike most folks, when I'M on the receiving end of partner worship, although I take a dim view of their unrealistic perceptions (people showing illogic and ignoring facts always aggravate me), I do NOT lose interest; instead, I think "This is a great deal!!" and become MORE interested, because the whole POINT of a relationship is to be deeply loved... and there are plenty of benefits to being with someone who thinks you should have everything. There's no trick to making this work; I just never get the discomfort that a "normal" person feels under those circumstances... for which my husband is profoundly grateful. :-)
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
When is meat really meat?
In the January 2006 issue of Discover is a blurb entitled "Tissue Engineers Cook Up Plan for Lab-Grown Meat"... isn't that a contradiction in terms? The dictionary says that meat is "the edible flesh of animals," so could something grown in a lab as opposed to in a creature's muscles qualify? Read on and see what you think:
"Last June, in a paper published in the journal Tissue Engineering, an international team of researchers proposed a new kind of food handmade for sensitive carnivores (and maybe even vegetarians): meat that comes from a laboratory instead of a farm."
They make the point so briefly that it almost gets lost, but I think it's a big one; WOULD those vegetarians who've made that choice on moral grounds, because animals must die in order to be eaten, be willing to eat something that animals did NOT die to provide?
"Clinical research scientists routinely grow muscle cells in the lab. And NASA-funded experiments have succeeded in culturing turkey muscle cells and goldfish cells as a potential way to feed astronauts on long space missions."
They want to feed astronauts GOLDFISH?!! I know that NASA has a tight budget, but...?!!
"Jason Matheny, a graduate student in agricultural economics and public health at the University of Maryland, and his colleagues turned this scheme earthward, proposing two methods for growing meat in bulk. One would culture thin sheets of meat, seeded by cells from a living animal, on a reusable polymer scaffold; the other would grow meat on small edible beads that stretch with changes in temperature."
I'm sure this would be a sterile process, certainly far more so than what occurs in a slaughterhouse, but... doesn't that sound sorta icky?
"Currently the process is far too expensive to bring lab-grown meat to the supermarket. A tasty fake steak is an even more distant dream: To have the structure of filet mignon, muscle tissue needs blood vessels, a major challenge to tissue engineers."
BLOOD VESSELS?!! I love meat, and it's part of our natural diet, and hard to get proper nutrition without, but... ugh. I hope they hurry up with those lab-produced steaks, or pseudo-steaks, or whatever they end up calling them; I'm definitely a "sensitive carnivore."
"Still, Matheny says that within several years, lab meat could be used in Spam, sausage, and even chicken nuggets."
Given how little those things resemble meat in the usual sense, it shouldn't be too hard to fake them with the "meat sheets"; heck, considering all the icky stuff that goes into those particular food items to save $, if they could use cheap lab-made "meat" instead, we'd have alot less fat, skin and beaks in our diets.
"Europe has taken an interest. The Dutch government has invested $2.4 million in a project that would cultivate pork from stem cells."
Hasn't there been alot of protest in Europe about so-called frankenfoods? There's no talk about genetically altering the meat cells, at least not YET, but couldn't a case be made that making the cells grow in such an unnatural way might cause... problems? I'd drop dead of shock if SOMEONE didn't end up protesting this; time will tell.
"But will people eat it? Matheny thinks so. 'There's nothing natural about a chicken that's given growth promoters and raised in a shed with 10,000 others,' he says. 'As consumers become educated, a product like this would gain appeal.'"
What planet does this guy come from, where consumers can be EDUCATED, and would act on education if they could be given it? If they tell consumers that the lab-meat is lower in calories, or lower in fat (would there even BE fat in it... they didn't say anything about culturing fat cells to mix in), or carb-free, or has 1 chance in a billion of reducing the risk of cancer, people will stampede to buy it... other than that, their best bet is to just stick it in, quietly reveal it in the ingredients list and leave it at that, so people can't be put off by it.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like there's going to be a big battle about what to call this stuff; meat isn't just a blob of meat cells, it has structure because the cells are part of muscles, which exist in fibers and have blood vessels (cringe), and usually have fat distributed through them... if you created potato starch from scratch in a lab, you couldn't call it a potato, so why should this be different? Heck, if you created something identical to a potato from scratch in a lab, don't you think you'd have to call it by something different so that consumers could tell it from a naturally-grown potato?
If they eventually make lab-meat look, smell, feel and taste like real meat, would it be a valid substitute for meat? Sure, at least for MY purposes... but would any significant % of other people be willing to make the switch? And, would its being identical to meat mean that vegetarians still wouldn't eat it, or will they embrace it because nothing died to make it other than in the way that ALL foods are made from cells that were once living? Hopefully, some vegetarian and vegan bloggers will eventually weigh in on this issue; I don't fully understand their mindset, so I can't guess what they'll do.
Even if they can't make a perfect match to meat, we have to accept that we're over-fishing in too many places, we're keeping chickens and veal calves in conditions too horrible to describe, and in general that it's a nice idea to stop killing animals for food if it can be reasonably avoided, so we should probably incorporate as much pseudo-meat into our diets as possible once it's available; it'd have to be good karma, too, and that couldn't hurt.
My final thought on this topic is of the horror-movie variety, brought on perhaps by having been deeply affected by "Soylent Green"; what happens when HUMAN cells get onto those meat-growing scaffolds, either accidentally or on purpose?
"Last June, in a paper published in the journal Tissue Engineering, an international team of researchers proposed a new kind of food handmade for sensitive carnivores (and maybe even vegetarians): meat that comes from a laboratory instead of a farm."
They make the point so briefly that it almost gets lost, but I think it's a big one; WOULD those vegetarians who've made that choice on moral grounds, because animals must die in order to be eaten, be willing to eat something that animals did NOT die to provide?
"Clinical research scientists routinely grow muscle cells in the lab. And NASA-funded experiments have succeeded in culturing turkey muscle cells and goldfish cells as a potential way to feed astronauts on long space missions."
They want to feed astronauts GOLDFISH?!! I know that NASA has a tight budget, but...?!!
"Jason Matheny, a graduate student in agricultural economics and public health at the University of Maryland, and his colleagues turned this scheme earthward, proposing two methods for growing meat in bulk. One would culture thin sheets of meat, seeded by cells from a living animal, on a reusable polymer scaffold; the other would grow meat on small edible beads that stretch with changes in temperature."
I'm sure this would be a sterile process, certainly far more so than what occurs in a slaughterhouse, but... doesn't that sound sorta icky?
"Currently the process is far too expensive to bring lab-grown meat to the supermarket. A tasty fake steak is an even more distant dream: To have the structure of filet mignon, muscle tissue needs blood vessels, a major challenge to tissue engineers."
BLOOD VESSELS?!! I love meat, and it's part of our natural diet, and hard to get proper nutrition without, but... ugh. I hope they hurry up with those lab-produced steaks, or pseudo-steaks, or whatever they end up calling them; I'm definitely a "sensitive carnivore."
"Still, Matheny says that within several years, lab meat could be used in Spam, sausage, and even chicken nuggets."
Given how little those things resemble meat in the usual sense, it shouldn't be too hard to fake them with the "meat sheets"; heck, considering all the icky stuff that goes into those particular food items to save $, if they could use cheap lab-made "meat" instead, we'd have alot less fat, skin and beaks in our diets.
"Europe has taken an interest. The Dutch government has invested $2.4 million in a project that would cultivate pork from stem cells."
Hasn't there been alot of protest in Europe about so-called frankenfoods? There's no talk about genetically altering the meat cells, at least not YET, but couldn't a case be made that making the cells grow in such an unnatural way might cause... problems? I'd drop dead of shock if SOMEONE didn't end up protesting this; time will tell.
"But will people eat it? Matheny thinks so. 'There's nothing natural about a chicken that's given growth promoters and raised in a shed with 10,000 others,' he says. 'As consumers become educated, a product like this would gain appeal.'"
What planet does this guy come from, where consumers can be EDUCATED, and would act on education if they could be given it? If they tell consumers that the lab-meat is lower in calories, or lower in fat (would there even BE fat in it... they didn't say anything about culturing fat cells to mix in), or carb-free, or has 1 chance in a billion of reducing the risk of cancer, people will stampede to buy it... other than that, their best bet is to just stick it in, quietly reveal it in the ingredients list and leave it at that, so people can't be put off by it.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like there's going to be a big battle about what to call this stuff; meat isn't just a blob of meat cells, it has structure because the cells are part of muscles, which exist in fibers and have blood vessels (cringe), and usually have fat distributed through them... if you created potato starch from scratch in a lab, you couldn't call it a potato, so why should this be different? Heck, if you created something identical to a potato from scratch in a lab, don't you think you'd have to call it by something different so that consumers could tell it from a naturally-grown potato?
If they eventually make lab-meat look, smell, feel and taste like real meat, would it be a valid substitute for meat? Sure, at least for MY purposes... but would any significant % of other people be willing to make the switch? And, would its being identical to meat mean that vegetarians still wouldn't eat it, or will they embrace it because nothing died to make it other than in the way that ALL foods are made from cells that were once living? Hopefully, some vegetarian and vegan bloggers will eventually weigh in on this issue; I don't fully understand their mindset, so I can't guess what they'll do.
Even if they can't make a perfect match to meat, we have to accept that we're over-fishing in too many places, we're keeping chickens and veal calves in conditions too horrible to describe, and in general that it's a nice idea to stop killing animals for food if it can be reasonably avoided, so we should probably incorporate as much pseudo-meat into our diets as possible once it's available; it'd have to be good karma, too, and that couldn't hurt.
My final thought on this topic is of the horror-movie variety, brought on perhaps by having been deeply affected by "Soylent Green"; what happens when HUMAN cells get onto those meat-growing scaffolds, either accidentally or on purpose?
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
You've never heard of it...
... but you've gotta see it.
I saw the most astonishing documentary tonight; it's called "Paper Clips"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=152748&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which is described as
"Directed by Joe Fab, this documentary chronicles a rural Tennessee middle school's unique class project: finding a meaningful way to honor Holocaust victims. Brought up in a heavily fundamentalist Christian environment, most of the students had never seen, let alone spoken with, a member of the Jewish faith; nonetheless, the children of Whitwell found a poignant method of honoring the slain. Using individual paper clips to represent each life lost in the Holocaust, the students were inundated with contributions from around the world. Eventually, they managed to procure an authentic German rail car, which would become container to the millions of paper clips collected."
No plot outline can capture what made this such a powerful thing to watch, though; what moved me to tears over and over again were the faces of the people involved... children, adults, female, male, Christian and Jewish, every person involved was obviously deeply moved by the connection that was being made, to the past and to each other.
When the Holocaust survivors arrived at a gathering of the townspeople, they looked understandably uncertain of what they'd gotten themselves into, since many such towns are full of anti-Semites, and their hosts weren't sure what to expect either... but then the magic that often occurs when people who think of each other in terms of "us" and "them" get to interact started happening-they began to empathize, and to see each other as human, as being part of "us."
Each survivor stood up and told their story, and their Christian audience listened with rapt attention, and with every sign of grief and dismay, as they tried to take in the enormity of the suffering, and as that suffering went from being abstract to being about people right in front of them; when it was over, these folks who'd never even met a Jew before hugged them and wept. Interviews with some of the teens revealed that they saw those sweet, elderly people as being like their own grandparents, and that they were trying to imagine what it felt like to endure what they did, how they would feel if it were they, and their families, who were the ones who were taken from their homes, shipped in cattle cars, beaten, starved, tortured and murdered, if it was them who lost all their loved ones... they no longer saw Jews as some sort of unimaginable others, but as people just like them.
One of the stories keeps playing in my head, so I'll include it as an example: One of the men who spoke, who was a boy at the time of the Holocaust, was brought to Auschwitz along with his mother and brother, where they encountered the unspeakably evil Dr. Mengele, who sent the boy off in one direction and his mother and brother in the other; the next day, when he still hadn't been reunited with his family, the boy asked a guard what had become of them... and in reply, the guard pointed to the smoke coming from the chimneys. The boy didn't know what that meant, but he soon found out; Mengele decided who would be allowed to live, to work and serve as the subjects of his sadistic experiments, and who would go to the gas chambers, and the boy's family hadn't made the cut.
The entire documentary is deeply moving, not just that one part, and it's fascinating to see how what started out as a way for the children to be taught that "not everyone is white, Protestant, and living in a community where they're protected" turned into a global thing, such that they didn't get the 6 million paper clips they'd hoped for but nearly 5 times that many, plus a library's worth of letters telling the tales of thousands of people's experiences and those of their families, plus, miraculously, the rail car that would become a shrine of sorts... and the way both Jews and Christians were overwhelmed at the sight of it, and by touching it and standing in it, was the other intensely emotional segment of the movie for me.
I don't have anything clever to say about what I saw, and won't cheapen it by analyzing it; like all shining examples of how wonderful human beings can sometimes be, it speaks for itself. I strongly encourage you to watch it; it's currently showing on HBO, and can be rented from Blockbuster and probably other places as well... and as painful as some of it is, it'll leave you with a renewed sense of hope that people of differing religions CAN come to see each other with understanding and love rather than what human history is full of.
I saw the most astonishing documentary tonight; it's called "Paper Clips"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=152748&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
which is described as
"Directed by Joe Fab, this documentary chronicles a rural Tennessee middle school's unique class project: finding a meaningful way to honor Holocaust victims. Brought up in a heavily fundamentalist Christian environment, most of the students had never seen, let alone spoken with, a member of the Jewish faith; nonetheless, the children of Whitwell found a poignant method of honoring the slain. Using individual paper clips to represent each life lost in the Holocaust, the students were inundated with contributions from around the world. Eventually, they managed to procure an authentic German rail car, which would become container to the millions of paper clips collected."
No plot outline can capture what made this such a powerful thing to watch, though; what moved me to tears over and over again were the faces of the people involved... children, adults, female, male, Christian and Jewish, every person involved was obviously deeply moved by the connection that was being made, to the past and to each other.
When the Holocaust survivors arrived at a gathering of the townspeople, they looked understandably uncertain of what they'd gotten themselves into, since many such towns are full of anti-Semites, and their hosts weren't sure what to expect either... but then the magic that often occurs when people who think of each other in terms of "us" and "them" get to interact started happening-they began to empathize, and to see each other as human, as being part of "us."
Each survivor stood up and told their story, and their Christian audience listened with rapt attention, and with every sign of grief and dismay, as they tried to take in the enormity of the suffering, and as that suffering went from being abstract to being about people right in front of them; when it was over, these folks who'd never even met a Jew before hugged them and wept. Interviews with some of the teens revealed that they saw those sweet, elderly people as being like their own grandparents, and that they were trying to imagine what it felt like to endure what they did, how they would feel if it were they, and their families, who were the ones who were taken from their homes, shipped in cattle cars, beaten, starved, tortured and murdered, if it was them who lost all their loved ones... they no longer saw Jews as some sort of unimaginable others, but as people just like them.
One of the stories keeps playing in my head, so I'll include it as an example: One of the men who spoke, who was a boy at the time of the Holocaust, was brought to Auschwitz along with his mother and brother, where they encountered the unspeakably evil Dr. Mengele, who sent the boy off in one direction and his mother and brother in the other; the next day, when he still hadn't been reunited with his family, the boy asked a guard what had become of them... and in reply, the guard pointed to the smoke coming from the chimneys. The boy didn't know what that meant, but he soon found out; Mengele decided who would be allowed to live, to work and serve as the subjects of his sadistic experiments, and who would go to the gas chambers, and the boy's family hadn't made the cut.
The entire documentary is deeply moving, not just that one part, and it's fascinating to see how what started out as a way for the children to be taught that "not everyone is white, Protestant, and living in a community where they're protected" turned into a global thing, such that they didn't get the 6 million paper clips they'd hoped for but nearly 5 times that many, plus a library's worth of letters telling the tales of thousands of people's experiences and those of their families, plus, miraculously, the rail car that would become a shrine of sorts... and the way both Jews and Christians were overwhelmed at the sight of it, and by touching it and standing in it, was the other intensely emotional segment of the movie for me.
I don't have anything clever to say about what I saw, and won't cheapen it by analyzing it; like all shining examples of how wonderful human beings can sometimes be, it speaks for itself. I strongly encourage you to watch it; it's currently showing on HBO, and can be rented from Blockbuster and probably other places as well... and as painful as some of it is, it'll leave you with a renewed sense of hope that people of differing religions CAN come to see each other with understanding and love rather than what human history is full of.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Sunday stuff
Joel Osteen's sermon tonight contained an interesting idea; that God wants you to walk away from all the negative influences in your life before He'll give you the good things He has waiting for you... and He really means ALL the negative influences. Osteen told the Biblical story about how Abram took his nephew Lot, who he knew to be a potential source of trouble, along when he moved when he wasn't supposed to, and thus had troubles, and didn't get the goodies, until Lot was out of the picture, to illustrate that if you fail in the task of rejecting ALL negatives, even to the seemingly forgivable extent of keeping a loved one around who's a bad influence, you'll be out of luck; that's pretty intense, if true. The question this brings up is; granted that the presence of negative energy blocks positive energy from getting to you, does that mean that ANY negative energy, even the tiniest source, is sufficient to block positive energy? If so, what does that say about the power of - vs + ? OR, would it just mean that you can only fully be open to one state or the other, and if you embrace eve the slightest -, your mind isn't receptive to +? Joel may be wrong about this one (conceptually-I wouldn't presume to debate him about the intentions of a God I don't believe in)... but he's usually so dead-on about spiritual matters that it bears thinking about rather than dismissing out of hand.
In case you're wondering; NO, the tree did NOT go up, despite all promises to the contrary. My husband, like all little kids regardless of age, needed a nap, and he never got back up from it; although I could have tried to drag him out of bed, he'd be stumbling around groggy and complaining and not accomplish anything, and then complain he couldn't get back to sleep and so would supposedly be too tired to do anything TOMORROW, either. He managed to procrastinate away another day, but he's getting LOTS of sleep, so Monday night he'd better knuckle down and get to work OR ELSE.
I took a potty break after writing that last paragraph, and when I passed the closed door of my husband's study, where he'd retreated to nap, I heard... TYPING. I flung open the door, and there he was in the dark, in his boxers, typing madly away; when I shrieked in accusation, he claimed that he'd "only" been awake for 15 minutes (translation-over an hour), and that it was somehow ok, because he was going to have to leave the room to pee soon... in other words, he ADMITTED that he was trying to feign still being asleep as long as possible to avoid getting any work done. As you might imagine, I had a few words to say to him on the subject, many of which had 4 letters; he's going to find that his life isn't worth living tomorrow until that tree is UP.
Men, especially those who are squeamish about female bodily functions, will want to skip the rest of this post.
One of the greatest strides in making women's lives easier in modern times was the mass production of various products to deal with menstruation, as a replacement for the handmade wads of absorbent material that had served that purpose since the earliest days of civilization; instead of handling a bunch of bloody rags (or whatever) each month, a woman could use disposable products just like we have for our other excretory functions. The pendulum is swinging back, however, as it always does, and now there's a company that's marketing CLOTH alternatives to sanitary napkins, and sea sponges, I kid you not, as an alternative to tampons:
http://www.lunapads.com/home.php
They've done some commendable things on this site; they show photos of real women, including an older one and a couple of women of color, they show a woman's body that has a poochy tummy modeling a pair of their panties, which are available in black or organic cotton, and in various styles including THONG, their pads and liners come in a variety of cheerful colors and patterns... but... but... IT'S JUST SO DISGUSTING!! They warn that having to change protection in public bathrooms might be problematic, because "some" women might object to seeing and/or to having young girls seeing these blood-soaked nightmares being washed out in the sink; I personally wouldn't object, because I'd be too busy PUKING in the neighboring sink.
Yeah, I understand that feminine care products end up in sewers and landfills, but so do tissues and toilet paper, and I don't want to see cloth versions of THOSE things being washed out in front of me either, nor would I touch them with a 10 foot pole myself; still, if you're a very green and crunchy-granola kinda gal, by all means check them out... just PLEASE don't blog about your experiences if you get them.
In case you're wondering; NO, the tree did NOT go up, despite all promises to the contrary. My husband, like all little kids regardless of age, needed a nap, and he never got back up from it; although I could have tried to drag him out of bed, he'd be stumbling around groggy and complaining and not accomplish anything, and then complain he couldn't get back to sleep and so would supposedly be too tired to do anything TOMORROW, either. He managed to procrastinate away another day, but he's getting LOTS of sleep, so Monday night he'd better knuckle down and get to work OR ELSE.
I took a potty break after writing that last paragraph, and when I passed the closed door of my husband's study, where he'd retreated to nap, I heard... TYPING. I flung open the door, and there he was in the dark, in his boxers, typing madly away; when I shrieked in accusation, he claimed that he'd "only" been awake for 15 minutes (translation-over an hour), and that it was somehow ok, because he was going to have to leave the room to pee soon... in other words, he ADMITTED that he was trying to feign still being asleep as long as possible to avoid getting any work done. As you might imagine, I had a few words to say to him on the subject, many of which had 4 letters; he's going to find that his life isn't worth living tomorrow until that tree is UP.
Men, especially those who are squeamish about female bodily functions, will want to skip the rest of this post.
One of the greatest strides in making women's lives easier in modern times was the mass production of various products to deal with menstruation, as a replacement for the handmade wads of absorbent material that had served that purpose since the earliest days of civilization; instead of handling a bunch of bloody rags (or whatever) each month, a woman could use disposable products just like we have for our other excretory functions. The pendulum is swinging back, however, as it always does, and now there's a company that's marketing CLOTH alternatives to sanitary napkins, and sea sponges, I kid you not, as an alternative to tampons:
http://www.lunapads.com/home.php
They've done some commendable things on this site; they show photos of real women, including an older one and a couple of women of color, they show a woman's body that has a poochy tummy modeling a pair of their panties, which are available in black or organic cotton, and in various styles including THONG, their pads and liners come in a variety of cheerful colors and patterns... but... but... IT'S JUST SO DISGUSTING!! They warn that having to change protection in public bathrooms might be problematic, because "some" women might object to seeing and/or to having young girls seeing these blood-soaked nightmares being washed out in the sink; I personally wouldn't object, because I'd be too busy PUKING in the neighboring sink.
Yeah, I understand that feminine care products end up in sewers and landfills, but so do tissues and toilet paper, and I don't want to see cloth versions of THOSE things being washed out in front of me either, nor would I touch them with a 10 foot pole myself; still, if you're a very green and crunchy-granola kinda gal, by all means check them out... just PLEASE don't blog about your experiences if you get them.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Christmas cards and Criss Angel
One of the least pleasant aspects of the holiday season for me is doing the Christmas cards. I take a dim view of cards in general, since in the 21st century most of us have access to email and free or low-cost long distance minutes, which are quick, easy and cheap ways to contact people; it was nice to send cards back in the days when mail was the only way, or only affordable way, to keep in touch with distant loved and liked ones, but why do we STILL have to dig through gigantic racks of folded pieces of paper and spend $3 apiece so we can send people sentiments written by a stranger? If we're seeing them in person or talking to them on the phone, we can give our true sentiments to them directly, and if it's not possible to see or call them, we should write out our OWN thoughts and feelings rather than buying other people's... wouldn't YOU rather get a heartfelt seasonal note, paper or electronic, than a factory-made card with a factory-made message?
This bit of sending cards when it's been DECADES since phone calls have been too expensive to do except on extra-special occasions is ridiculous... and don't get me started on the insanity of the concept of sending cards to people you don't care enough about to contact at any other time of the year (see my post of 12-12-04 for my rant about that one). Still, if you don't send them you can hurt people's feelings, so I do it, but I take a minimalist approach; I only send cards to those who've sent ME one, I don't write a note, and I absolutely under no circumstances enclose a LETTER... who's the psycho who thought of that one, and why did anyone else start doing it? If you're in regular contact with a person, they already know everything that'd be in the "Christmas letter," so it's silly to send them one, and if you're NOT in regular contact with them, I guarantee you they have no shred of interest in seeing a summation of the "accomplishments" (most of which are woefully trivial to outsiders) of every member of your household for the year, and why would you WANT to tell them so much about your life in any case?
My final comment on the subject; unless you're desperately poor, don't send flimsy little dime-store cards, and DO get Christmas stamps, nice return address labels, and maybe even seals... if the idea is to spread a little joy, make a valid effort at it. As Scrooge-ish as I may sound on this subject, *I* do all that, and even use a red pen to write out the envelopes and sign our names... but, I also have a stash of freebie cards provided by the many charities we support to send to those who send ME tacky cards-hey, if they send 'em out, they must think they're great, right? If you don't have the time to do it properly yourself, Hallmark lets you pick out cards online, and will add your personal message to each one and mail them out for you... all you have to do is give them the necessary info, and be willing to pay $1 per card for the privilege
http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&tabOn=products&categoryId=89054&CatIDsList=-2;-105367;89054
If they ever invent a way to make Christmas cards more impersonal than THAT, I don't want to know about it.
And now to a more pleasant subject; world-class illusionist, Renaissance man, and uber-hottie Criss Angel
http://www.crissangel.com/photos.php
This was a banner day, because I finally got my DVD set of the 1st season of "Mindfreak"; my husband's comment about it was, "Is your entire blog entry for today going to consist of 'Criss Angel... oooooooooooooh... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah'?". No, but I WILL point out how nice it is to be able to pause and zoom in whenever he's got his shirt off; now, if he'd only stop shaving his chest!! I watched the 1st DVD while I was doing the Christmas cards, and it made an onerous task much more agreeable; if, as I fervently hope, we get the tree up tomorrow (not the decorations, mind you, just the tree and maybe the lights and tinsel garlands), that'll be when I watch the 2nd disc.
The Christmas tree... it was supposed to have gone up over the Thanksgiving weekend, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. My husband dragged his heels so badly LAST year with hauling out the boxes that the tree wasn't finished until Christmas morning, and our many other decorative items never got brought out at all, which made for a VERY unhappy holiday; cross your fingers for me that THIS year I can maintain the momentum I started with the cards and get the tree process begun so it can all be finished well before Christmas... and who knows, I may even find time for mistletoe.
This bit of sending cards when it's been DECADES since phone calls have been too expensive to do except on extra-special occasions is ridiculous... and don't get me started on the insanity of the concept of sending cards to people you don't care enough about to contact at any other time of the year (see my post of 12-12-04 for my rant about that one). Still, if you don't send them you can hurt people's feelings, so I do it, but I take a minimalist approach; I only send cards to those who've sent ME one, I don't write a note, and I absolutely under no circumstances enclose a LETTER... who's the psycho who thought of that one, and why did anyone else start doing it? If you're in regular contact with a person, they already know everything that'd be in the "Christmas letter," so it's silly to send them one, and if you're NOT in regular contact with them, I guarantee you they have no shred of interest in seeing a summation of the "accomplishments" (most of which are woefully trivial to outsiders) of every member of your household for the year, and why would you WANT to tell them so much about your life in any case?
My final comment on the subject; unless you're desperately poor, don't send flimsy little dime-store cards, and DO get Christmas stamps, nice return address labels, and maybe even seals... if the idea is to spread a little joy, make a valid effort at it. As Scrooge-ish as I may sound on this subject, *I* do all that, and even use a red pen to write out the envelopes and sign our names... but, I also have a stash of freebie cards provided by the many charities we support to send to those who send ME tacky cards-hey, if they send 'em out, they must think they're great, right? If you don't have the time to do it properly yourself, Hallmark lets you pick out cards online, and will add your personal message to each one and mail them out for you... all you have to do is give them the necessary info, and be willing to pay $1 per card for the privilege
http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&tabOn=products&categoryId=89054&CatIDsList=-2;-105367;89054
If they ever invent a way to make Christmas cards more impersonal than THAT, I don't want to know about it.
And now to a more pleasant subject; world-class illusionist, Renaissance man, and uber-hottie Criss Angel
http://www.crissangel.com/photos.php
This was a banner day, because I finally got my DVD set of the 1st season of "Mindfreak"; my husband's comment about it was, "Is your entire blog entry for today going to consist of 'Criss Angel... oooooooooooooh... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah'?". No, but I WILL point out how nice it is to be able to pause and zoom in whenever he's got his shirt off; now, if he'd only stop shaving his chest!! I watched the 1st DVD while I was doing the Christmas cards, and it made an onerous task much more agreeable; if, as I fervently hope, we get the tree up tomorrow (not the decorations, mind you, just the tree and maybe the lights and tinsel garlands), that'll be when I watch the 2nd disc.
The Christmas tree... it was supposed to have gone up over the Thanksgiving weekend, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. My husband dragged his heels so badly LAST year with hauling out the boxes that the tree wasn't finished until Christmas morning, and our many other decorative items never got brought out at all, which made for a VERY unhappy holiday; cross your fingers for me that THIS year I can maintain the momentum I started with the cards and get the tree process begun so it can all be finished well before Christmas... and who knows, I may even find time for mistletoe.
