What was the scariest moment of your life?
October 2006 Archives
Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. made the sort of history last night that one never wishes to make: The University gave in to small minds and ignorance and bullying bad behavior and lost both stature and grace in the process.
Continue reading A Shameful History for Gallaudet.
If someone said to you in conversation -- "the other day" -- how would you, by default, and with no other frame of time offered by the speaker, interpret that phrase in the context of time?
Does "the other day" mean "yesterday" or "two days ago" or "last week" or "less than a week" or something else -- and would you ever ask for a more specific time and date stamping -- or am I the only one who cares about precision in storytelling?
A good friend of mine, born in the Midwest and living a successful life working for an investment company in New York City, recently returned to her hometown to marry her local sweetheart who gave up a shot at a Pro football career in Canada to work alongside her in New York.
Continue reading How to Ruin a Woman's Wedding Day.
The rude and crude radio fool is back and he's poking fun at a Parkinson sufferer and accusing him of faking illness in order to help Democrats win office. Meet Viagra-smuggler and Oxycontin-addicted and mudslinger-against-the-disabled, Rush Limbaugh. Here's his mugshot when he was arrested on fraud charges:
Continue reading Rush of the Oxycontin Moron.
Based 
on our conversation yesterday in the comments thread for my Red in Tooth and Claw: The Language of Killing article, I am curious to know your thoughts on the following matter.
Do you believe violence -- as framed in the context of yesterday's article -- creates or serves as commerce in the urban core?
Is the infliction of physical suffering a necessary city commodity from which secular humanism rises?
Or does violence only eat itself by gnawing and clawing away at its inborn behavior until red is all that's left?
on our conversation yesterday in the comments thread for my Red in Tooth and Claw: The Language of Killing article, I am curious to know your thoughts on the following matter.
Do you believe violence -- as framed in the context of yesterday's article -- creates or serves as commerce in the urban core?
Is the infliction of physical suffering a necessary city commodity from which secular humanism rises?
Or does violence only eat itself by gnawing and clawing away at its inborn behavior until red is all that's left?
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law - Tho' nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed -"In Memoriam" (1842) is one of Alfred Lord Tennyson's greatest poems.
Through poetry he found the truth and spake it.
Tennyson was Britain's finest Poet Laureate and she shone in the Victorian Age as one of the brightest lighted minds in history.
Tennyson's observation is a warning to us all: Nature is brutal.
Continue reading Red in Tooth and Claw: The Language of Killing.
Is there a difference between being a "writer" and a "co-writer" on a book or other project?
Aren't both "co-authors" actually "authors" -- and if they are -- why add the "co-" before the action?
Does "co-" share the wealth or spread the blame?
Continue reading The Difference Between a Writer and a Co-Writer.
American news media used to be intellectual and responsib
le.
Today news is entertainment where a former cheerleader and chirpy morning show host now reads the news from a teleprompter on the CBS Evening News.
The most pernicious decline in the American news media newsroom, however, is that of MSNBC -- the misbegotten stepchild news effort between Microsoft's MSN web portal (MSN) and NBC ("N"BC) -- and the first mistake on the long tumble downward into the chum was to charge Dan Abrams with saving the network:
le. Today news is entertainment where a former cheerleader and chirpy morning show host now reads the news from a teleprompter on the CBS Evening News.
The most pernicious decline in the American news media newsroom, however, is that of MSNBC -- the misbegotten stepchild news effort between Microsoft's MSN web portal (MSN) and NBC ("N"BC) -- and the first mistake on the long tumble downward into the chum was to charge Dan Abrams with saving the network:
Continue reading MSNBC: The Pernicious Decline of Network News.
Continue reading A Despot President: The Military Commissions Act 2006.
Yesterday our intrepid Gordon Davidescu sent me an email with a long link to a website that appeared to have "stolen" 100% of GO INSIDE Magazine content.
Furious, I followed his link -- it took forever to load -- and saw all of our content loading into a completely new URL. It didn't look like the content was copied or pulled into a Frame.
Strange.
The main domain index page was written entirely in Chinese.
Continue reading How to Force Freedom of the Press Back into China.
What is the funniest thing you overheard but were not supposed to hear and how and why did you come to hear it?
If the funniest thing you overheard was about you -- then you get extra points for sharing!
Yesterday, we discussed the importance of doctors loving their patients and today I want to turn our eye to the responsibility of the patient in the medical dyad, especially those patients that demand to label their illness -- even if one does not exist -- for their imagined sickness.
It isn't enough today to just be sick.
Continue reading Labeling Disease: Fibromyalgia as Hypochondria.
When I teach my Public Health students and when I hold Grand Rounds sessions with medical students, the issue of patient interaction is always a hot topic.
Many scientific minds see the world in clinical terms because it helps remove the heat of emotion from the diagnosis and the healing.
Continue reading Love Your Patients: A Necessary Bedside Manner.
In celebration of the impending Halloween holiday, I was given a set of funky cat ears.
Continue reading Wearing Cat Ears but Never Becoming Feline.
This post was written from docs.google.com and posted directly to my WordPress.com account!
Nifty!
I love coffee, but I am also besotted by tea. I know tea has great health benefits: A doctor friend of mine only drinks tea and never coffee and when you ask him why he refuses to drink coffee he looks you surgically dead in the eye with great precision and says, "I drink tea."
The great folks at Lipton -- and I admire that company because, for the last 100 years, they brought tea time to the American masses -- have revolutionized the tea business with their new synthetic "pyramid" tea pouches where "only the top two leaves and a bud are blended to delivery an exceptionally pure tea taste and aroma":
Continue reading Burned Tea Thumbs: Lipton Pyramid Tea Bags.
Don't let anyone tell you a blog post titled "Man Titties" won't bring you great Google search return results! Behold below the latest Google Analytics click through report for this blog:
Continue reading Titties in the Top Spot, Titties All the Time!.
Is Becky Fischer leading an American Madrassa in Devil's Lake, North Dakota where she believes she is creating "God's Boot Camp" by using evangelical hatred to fight foreign religious beliefs as expressed in the new documentary Jesus Camp?
Continue reading American Madrassa: Hate on Hate in Devils Lake.
If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this: Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.
Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere, we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, nice and clear. And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first.... If we haven't, then we are as empty and cold as the intersection of Madison and State.
Continue reading Condemned by the Past and Dead in the Future.
There's nothing quite like watching your American tax dollars go draining down the pork trough. You can smell the mess that is the 700 Mile fence -- hoped to be built in the name of Homeland Security to keep out all those nasty foreigners traveling by land and never by sea -- straight up to here in New Jersey.
Continue reading Building a 700 Mile White Picket Fence.
There is no such thing as a coincidence. If it's raining outside and you have water dripping from the ceiling in your upstairs bathroom, your first thought shouldn't be a leaky pipe.
It's funny, though, how many people will say in that situation:
"Gosh, isn't a coincidence it's raining and our pipes are leaking?"
Another example: "Gosh, isn't it a coincidence the sun is burning my skin today more than ever on the same day North Korea launched a nuclear missile?"
A final example: "Gosh, isn't it a coincidence my best friend is three months pregnant three months after my husband started taking Viagra?"
Why is it human nature to need to invent the most complicated rationale for the simplest cause and effect?
"Gosh, isn't a coincidence it's raining and our pipes are leaking?"
Another example: "Gosh, isn't it a coincidence the sun is burning my skin today more than ever on the same day North Korea launched a nuclear missile?"
A final example: "Gosh, isn't it a coincidence my best friend is three months pregnant three months after my husband started taking Viagra?"
Why is it human nature to need to invent the most complicated rationale for the simplest cause and effect?
When you write a blog entry every day, you live in the now. Your blog day revolves around tending the day's comments and helping to press forward the conversation.
I admit I get thrown a bit when comments on older articles -- even from yesterday! -- pop up because those articles feel so foreign and distant.
I'm not sure if it's good or bad to live in a 24-hour cycle of immediate freshness -- especially with an international readership where 24-hour cycles a begin and end at different times!
Type, monkey, type! 
If you have been following my plight with Gmail as set down in my Getting Email out of Gmail article, you know I've been having a frustrating time trying to figure out how to get my Gmail out of one Gmail account and re-directed into another one in a simple, one-step, seamless merge.
I am disappointed to write there was no single-step solution.
I had to do it the old fashioned way with my monkey fingers on my monkey keyboard!
Here's how I did it using Gmail and Apple Mail.
The solution was a mix of all the excellent advice I curried in my original article.
If you have been following my plight with Gmail as set down in my Getting Email out of Gmail article, you know I've been having a frustrating time trying to figure out how to get my Gmail out of one Gmail account and re-directed into another one in a simple, one-step, seamless merge.
I am disappointed to write there was no single-step solution.
I had to do it the old fashioned way with my monkey fingers on my monkey keyboard!
Here's how I did it using Gmail and Apple Mail.
The solution was a mix of all the excellent advice I curried in my original article.
Continue reading I am My Own Trained Monkey: Getting the Gmail Out!.
A friend of mine is a criminal defense attorney. His job is tough and dirty. He deals with Racism on both sides of the justice scales. Lives hang in the balance on his shoulders.
Some of his clients are guilty. His job is to defend them anyway. Some of his clients are set up by police, or enemies, or mistaken identity. His job is to defend them anyway.
Continue reading Judging a Book by its Cover: Dress White and Play Nice.
Is it an amoral quagmire or a moral quagmire to assassinate charismatic madmen who happen to lead a nation threatening the security and well-being of other nations?
Few would argue now that assassinating Hitler and Mussolini before they brought a second World War upon the earth would have been a bad thing.
Continue reading Amoral Quagmire: Assassinating Charismatic Madmen.
If you could know the exact time, date and cause of your death -- would you want to know or not?
Okay, I need some help. I want to pull 10,000 Gmail messages from one Gmail account into another Gmail account.
Any idea how I can do that without a lot of mess?
I don't want to download all the messages via POP3 to a mail client and then forward or redirect every message to the new Gmail account.
I can't seem to find a "mass forward" in Gmail. Does that feature exist? It looks like you have to open each of the 10,000 messages to find the forward feature.
Is there a way to get my new Gmail account to tell my old Gmail account to “send me everything you have and I’ll keep it over here instead of over there?”
Is there a separate program that will do this for me?
Help!
There is no greater crushing experience -- or necessary duty -- than when a father must tell a son he is not good enough; he does not measure up; he is not the man he was born to be:
FATHER: I know you tried, but you did not make the football team. SON: But Dad! I went to every practice! I did my best! I did everything you and the coach asked. FATHER: Yes, you did everything you could but it wasn't enough, son. There are other boys who play ball better than you. You just don't have the talent. I'm sorry. SON: You lied to me! You told me I could do anything I wanted if I only tried! FATHER: You just aren't good enough to play football but that doesn't mean we can't try something else.
Continue reading The Decider: When a Father Fails a Son.
Continue reading The Week in High Fashion.
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