1874 Blogflu Virus

Yes, there is a pandemic of bloggers falling into the culverts of the information highway. Today I clicked on Northern Lutheran, Off Shore Fisherman, and Infinite Library and all are dead. At least, if you said you were taking a break in August and didn't come back, that's a pretty strong message by mid-December, don't you think? Kind of suspicious too, because I think they were all Christians based on my subject arrangement. It's really tricky to lose a blogger. When Lutheran in a Tipi folded her tent, someone scooped up her URL, so when I didn't get her removed in a timely fashion, I was misleading some of my faithful readers. PJ had a great cooking blog and must have choked on something--she reappears once in awhile in my comment box. Of course, she actually earns a living writing. Six figures. Shoe of Librarians Happen truly has been ill (no joke here) and is no longer posting there, but I see her occasionally at LISNews. Babs was on the critical list, missing for a month, but now has her 2 year old posting for her. Ambra is as good as gone. Rosabelle hasn't posted a word since mid-November. And Murray hasn't posted a thing since January in "Brain Drain." I guess it was.

1873 Extreme knitters

I have no knit projects to show you. I'm still waiting to learn "purl." The closest I've come is raving about Cathy. However, last night I was talking to Ken Becker, a local photographer who exhibits at Winterfair, and he told me about this:



Now this is what I'd call extreme knitting. A cozy for a VW Beetle. Nowadays, there is "extreme" everything. Our church has extreme worship. Sort of resembles this.

1872 Bless Your Feet

I’ve been looking for a reason to post a photo of my baby’s feet. Of course, he’s 37 and his little feet aren’t quite as cute as they used to be, but I liked this picture he took of dangling his feet over Lake Erie. If I'd been there, I would have said, "Now, honey, be careful." Some things just don't change.


But Sprittibee, a home schooling mom, has a really nice series on feet. Did you know there are 320 references to feet in the Bible? I sure didn’t. Click on over and I think you’ll find a good topic.

1871 Can't take my eyes off

a featured painting by Larry Lombardo in the Winter 2006 issue of Watercolor (American Artist) pp. 92-93. I'm not one to read a lot into a painting--I either like it or I don't. Often, I couldn't even tell you why. Sometimes it is the technique, sometimes the color, but Oh, I do love a good story.

Larry Lombardo lives in Pennsylvania, and according to his website, he began painting to keep his sanity while he was a stay at home dad. I read his explanation in the article of the painting titled, "The child has grown, the dream has gone," which is a teen girl in black goth and a older woman in a pastel dress sharing a park bench. He says, "I wanted the painting to show the extreme differences between the generations and the point at which the younger generation becomes the older generation."

That's just way too abstract for me.

Scenario 1: I see a woman about 80, who has lived through the Depression and WWII, perhaps a widow, with some health problems apparent from the painting (maybe some arthritis and vascular problems with her legs), sitting quietly enjoying the sunshine thinking about her life, remembering the good and the bad. Her skin and face are flawless, her hair perfect. At the other end of the bench is a sullen, slouching teen listening to her music, with zippers all over her clothes--a goth or heavy metal look, screaming in her slilent scowl, "I know nothing and I'm mad as hell."

Scenario 2: I see a grandmother and granddaughter, the younger one has turned off her music and is listening attentively to the older woman's advice, which she probably won't take. But it's a step, at least they are talking again. They used to be so close. When the younger woman was about 7 or 8, grandma could do no wrong, and she loved to spend the week-ends with her. But now, grandma is just an old fuddy-duddy like her parents who doesn't like her clothes or her metal-stud-faced boyfriend (he's not in the painting). Grandma's much more at peace than granddaughter--there's nothing she hasn't seen or done. Teen-baby stares at her with that "I can't believe it!" And she won't for oh, maybe another 10 or 15 years.

Lombardo has been a youth pastor, residential counselor, and a psychiatric assistant. He's particularly good, in my opionion, in capturing the expressions of older people. Like the middle-age, pudgy guy eating a do-nut looking at a row of motorcycles. Another good story.

1870 Unintended consequences

Polio has been a topic on this blog and my memory blog with my sister's illness and my cousin's death seared into my childhood memories. So this morning I read through reviews of two new titles on polio, Polio: an American story, and Living with polio: the epidemic and its survivors, both published in 2005. A few entries back I was commenting that people my age don't recall all the food allergies we see today, some of them fatal. So I was surprised to read that probably my grandparents weren't familiar with polio in the late 19th century either. As part of the introduction to the reviews the author writes:

Epidemic poliomyelitis first appeared in the United States a century ago, at a time when America was rapidly evolving from its post-colonial agrarian roots toward industrialization, urbanization, and the ascension of the middle class. Polio, a new "emerging infection," was an unanticipated consequence of the invention of the flush toilet and the adoption of the use of toilet paper. These hygienic advances brought about the control of most diseases transmitted by enteric bacteria, but they paradoxically increased the risk of paralytic disease by delaying poliovirus infection beyond the age at which infants are protected by maternal antibodies acquired by way of the placenta. (John E. Modlin, NEJM, 353;21, 2308-2310)

Technorati tags: polio epidemics, public health,

1869 Booking Through Thursday on Friday again

Booking Through Thursday

What's on your book/reading wish list?

What books are you giving this year?

Before I'd ask for this, I'd suggest checking some of the used sites. I got a book I'd asked for last year, and haven't read it yet. It sounded soooo good in the reviews. Also got Memoirs of a Geisha one year, and haven't read that either (although I did take it to an airport once). But yesterday's review in the WSJ was very positive for Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 by Stanley Sadie. The author has since died, so it will be a short series.

All the relatives are receiving a copy of Cottage; America's favorite home inside and out by M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman, published by Taunton, 2005, because one of my husband's cottage designs at Lakeside, OH is featured in the book. The other featured cottages are good too, of course. The Wassermans have done several books and they are all outstanding.

Technorati tags: Lakeside, Ohio, cottages

1868 Signed on for Holidailies

At Blonde Librarian I noticed she was signed up for the sixth annual Holidailies project. "Holidailies is a free community writing project. All Holidailies 2005 participants promise to update their personal Web sites every day from December 7 to January 6. Portal participants post summaries of their entries, which are aggregated on the front page of Holidailies 2005, newest entries listed first." Well, it was December 8 by the time I heard (read) about it, so I won't get on the first page, but my site is listed with those who don't write a summary. Writing every day must be a problem for some bloggers, so they need an aggregator to push them along.




Technorati tags: Holidailies, blogging

1867 Winter Wonderland--sort of

We were supposed to get 4-6 inches last night but it looks like two. The town panics at the hint of snow. I was at my dentist's yesterday and he said he was planning to close Friday (today) because of the coming storm. It looks like more ice and blowing than actual snow. There was talk of school closings, but so far I don't know if that has happened. My husband leads a ladies exercise class and if the local schools close, the class is cancelled.
We were in Cleveland last week-end and northern Ohio had had about 4 or 5 inches overnight and everything was clean and clear for driving by about 7 a.m. I'm sure they get amused at our wimpy efforts here in mid-state.

However, we were out driving in it last night, and the Christmas lights and lawn decorations looked fabulous in the snow.

Technorati tags: Columbus, snow removal

1866 Checking out what Technorati says about me

Recently I added the Technorati search window over at the left. I wasn’t really sure what it would do, but I’ve found it more useful than the blogger search. Wondering what I’d written about economic issues, I tried several topics, poverty (4), income (13), quintile (3), social security (13), economy OR economic (20), finance OR financial (20). Some of these are false hits because if the word appears in the title, it turns up in the “recent posts” feature and fogs up the search a bit. I was pleased to find out I could use a Boolean operator if I capitalized it--I didn’t see any instructions but I know it is recognized that way in some databases. I’m not sure how many operators you can string together. I tried two.

It was interesting to go back and reread some of the entries. For instance, our high tariffs and quotas were in the news shortly after the tsunami--then seemed to disappear.

The USA and Europe, in order to protect their own workers, have punishingly high tariffs and quotas for some of these countries affected by the tsunami. After we clean up the ravages of the earthquake driven storm, we'll need to look at what our own policies are doing. I'm sure the message won't be lost on Muslim terrorists. Jan. 11, 2005

And this item about why Democrats were fighting private investment accounts to save Social Security:

It is possible that if George W. Bush is successful in creating a larger investor class, a group that goes across all the demographics of female, Hispanic, Black, middle-class, etc., the Democrats will lose their base. The investor class is self-identified as 46% of the total vote in 2004, and their world view tends to be conservative, middle-class, modest, and saving for the kids' college. And if they are Democrats, many of them voted for Bush. March 15, 2005

And remember last week when that op-ed appeared in the WSJ about how the media just couldn’t print any good news? I commented on that last January:

At the bottom of the page were tiny charts--eating out, up; federal debt, up; employment, up; satisfaction, up; foreclosures, down; delinquent loans, down.It sure is hard to report on bad news these days. Need to call in John Kerry and Ted Kennedy who managed to put a negative spin on the first free Iraqi election in history for help in composing those make-believe economy stories. John ("let's not over-hype this") Kerry's stock could have soared if he'd just complimented the Iraqis. But he was his usual pompous, my-way-or-the-highway, doomsayer self. January 31, 2005

Technorati reports my rank is 1,828 with 4612 links from 467 sites. It records 22.6 million blogs.

1865 The Mega-Church

Here's a description of a mega church in Minnesota from one of my husband's architectural publications. I suppose it is intended for architects who need to be prepared that it's not your father's church.

A typical megachurch features:

- No pews. Instead, there are comfortable movie-theater-style cushioned seats. Stadium seating ensures good views of the stage.

- No Bibles or hymnals. Parishioners sing hymns by following the words on a large screen.

- Non-churchy architecture, without steeples. They look like high schools, malls, or convention centers.

- Few symbols of religion. Stained-glass windows and even crosses are far less prominent.

- A dizzying array of specialized services, with specialists in geriatrics, teens, addiction, and early childhood.

- No asking for money during a service - a turnoff for newcomers. There never is "passing the plate."

- High-energy music, with an in-house rock-style band on a stage ablaze with theatrical lighting.

- No pulpits. The pastor speaks informally from a simple stand on the stage.

- A fundamentalist and charismatic worship style, with a politically conservative viewpoint. Archi-tech

I suppose our church doesn't qualify because we have 3 campuses and 10 services, and our buildings have stained glass and traditional religious symbols. Although one sort of looks like a theater (unfinished) until you see the altar and window. And we pass the plate and the peace, and have no political viewpoint at all. No issue sermons, ever. Lots of rock-the-house music, though. It drives me out of the building because it hurts my ears and sets my atrial fibrillation in motion. That music does appeal to the young people though, who are mostly deaf or on their way. More at my other, other blog.

Technorati tags: megachurch, church architecture

1864 The politically correct diet

The other night a group from church got together for dessert after a funeral. I brought my sugar free apple pie and warned everyone it had a peanut oil crust, just in case someone was allergic. Of course, no one our age is, so we talked about that. No one remembered food allergies among our peers when we were children. And most of us knew very few overweight children. None of our children or their friends had allergies to peanuts, and everyone seemed to live on peanut butter sandwiches, although some had had allergies to eggs or milk.

Are we being too careful about our food? I grew up drinking whole milk, but very few whole grains, solid margarine and occasionally butter, pie crusts made with lard, bacon and eggs, beef, chicken and pork, but almost no fish, home canned fruits and vegetables from the garden plus factory canned, but not a lot of off season fresh items and no frozen foods, lots of potatoes and pasta, real sugar, real peanut butter and real cheese (well, except for Velvetta). We might have had ice cream once a month, and soda pop twice a year, but lots of Kool-aid. I can’t think of anything I ate other than bananas that was imported, unless it was the occasional shredded coconut on a cake.

We didn’t have vitamin supplements but when we were little we did get cod liver oil drops. I suppose most of my peers were consuming about the same diet, some with less meat and less milk (I would notice when I ate dinner at a friend‘s house that some had much less variety). Our mothers were the first generation to benefit from time saving “convenience” foods like Spam, Jell-o and store bought white bread--which weren‘t exactly powerhouses of nutrition.

By the time I was in high school I think 2% milk was in the dairy case, Crisco had replaced lard, and “oleo” was colored to look like butter. The only beverage machine in our high school had USDA surplus milk. Going out with friends brought me in contact with more soda, but really I never developed a taste for it or for alcohol. Hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries were available at drive-ins, but were only as “fast” as slow food is today.

I recently came across a web page about Canola oil and its history. I haven’t researched it, but its track record probably follows what has happened to our diet which now contains more olive oil, soy bean oil, corn oil, peanut oil and canola oil and far less animal fat, but we sure aren’t any healthier for it, are we? In fact, low fat diets are dangerous for growing children. And we’re certainly not thinner!

There is no Canola plant. Canola oil is rape seed oil. Well, that’s a toughy to market, and it was produced primarily in Canada by Cargill as Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed, or LEAR oil. Canada Oil was renamed Canola which sounded a bit like "can do" and "payola," both positive phrases in marketing lingo. However, the new name did not come into widespread use until the early 1990s. Read The Great Con-ola which points out there are many ridiculous stories circulating about the dangers of canola. But it does show how cleverly new foods are marketed to the health conscious consumer--who will just about swallow anything in the name of “healthy.”

Technorati tags: food allergies, canola oil

1863 Sleepless nights

Librarians Against Bush (that's most of them) have many sleepness nights worrying about the Patriot Act. The average ordinary American doesn't walk into a library, but I guess someone thinks the terrorists will and then the Bush folks will come snooping and looking at their records. Well, those librarians ought to go pull the Journal of Biomedical Information (2004;37:179-92) off the shelf and read the article by Malin and Sweeny. There is no anonymity or confidentiality or secure records. It's too late to close the barn door.

The article concerns your own health information--something most of us guard a little more carefully than our library record. In this study on database security, the authors took publicly available and de-identified hospital-discharge data from Illinois (from 1990-1997) and combined them with Census data and voter-registration data to identify patients with rare genetic diseases. They showed that 33% of patients with cystic fibrosis could be re-identified, as could 50% of patients with Huntington's disease, 70% of patients with Fanconi's anemia, and 100% of patients with Refsum's disease (very rare).

Although they focused on rare diseases, the avilability of increasing amounts of health information makes everyone rare in some ways, says the New England Journal of Medicine. Earlier they had obtained the health records of a former governor with the use of the most common of data--hospital information about state employees, who were identified only by ZIP Code, sex, and date of birth published by the state's insurance commission. Using a voter-registration list ($20), the author identified 3 persons with the same date of birth and sex as the governor, only one who had the same ZIP.

Think of the mischief that could be created by identifying people with mental illnesses, drug problems, and sexually transmitted diseases. Now throw into the mix DNA genetic sequence data which you might be asked to agree to share for a research study, and you've just added in your entire family, extended family and others who might not be happy that you've shared.

NEJM offers some suggestions for policy makers and legislators. I wish them luck.

Technorati tags: medical records, confidentiality, biomedical information

1862 Blogs are still a mystery to many

In the last 5 days I've explained to 5 or 6 people what a blog is, and given them my URL, but I can see the "Huh?" look in their eyes. My sister says that Diane Reams on NPR interviewed a blogger yesterday; today's Wall Street Journal has an article about tech bloggers, who are much less political than the red/blue, pro/anti-life, young/old splits you see on my links. Here's a link to the article.

"The reality is that while there are now as many tech blogs as stars in the sky, only a tiny fraction of them matter."

"The easiest way to follow this world is via a useful blog-tracking service called tech.memeorandum.com. The site runs off software written by Gabe Rivera, a former Intel compiler programmer. It sifts through hundreds of technology-oriented blogs to find the hour's hot topics and who is saying what about them. The results are presented concisely in a single place, updated every few minutes. Another site, blogniscient.com, offers a similar service."

"The major difference between politics blogs and tech blogs is that many of the former still depend on the mainstream media to provide the grist for their mills. The tech blogs, though, have become a world onto themselves, and require no such crutch."

1861 FASTER ways to kill babies

Lots of bloggers noted the study last month in the New England Journal of Medicine about first trimester tests for Down's Syndrome (Vol. 353, no. 19, November 10, 2005, pp. 2001-2011). I didn't get a chance to read the article until today, after I'd checked out the issue to read an article on the dangers of sleep apnea. Anyway, the early test is so parents (are they called parents if the blob of tissue isn't a baby?) can look at strategies to "help guide the choice." The word choice appears in the very last sentence of the article--up to that point, nothing is said about what will be done with the information from the tests.

This article has the most bone-chilling, sanitized medicaleze I've ever read, beginning with the name of the Consortium that performed the study: FASTER stands for First- and Second-Trimester Evaluation of Risk. In short, you can find out earlier (faster) if your baby has Down's. However, there is a greater margin of error--more "false positives" if you rely just on the first trimester test instead of doing it again in the second trimester and comparing results. It is less stressful, I suppose, to kill off a baby before you feel those little ticklish butterfly kisses in your abdomen, but how do you turn off the brain that knows what you are really doing?

Figure 1 in the study charts the women who participated in this study. A total of "42,367 patients were approached for enrollment." Not pregnant women who might be willing to have an abortion given test results faster, but "patients." Not solicited, but "approached." Not scammed, but "enrolled." Well, 4,178 jumped ship right away--they were either ineligible or they refused. Then another 156 had some other, non-Down's problems, so they were dropped. So, 38,033 got this first trimester screening, with 92 revealing Down's Syndrome, which drops to 87 with the second trimester screening. There's other playing with numbers in the table, and I'm not sure what all went on, but having the two tests "is superior for detecting Down's Syndrome." We're not told if the women chose abortion or life for a less than perfect baby, only that this screening is a powerful tool.

[You could all just save yourselves a lot of grief, sorrow and death of babies (remember all those false positives) if you'd have your babies before age 35. In the study, 29,834 of the women were younger than 35, and they had 28 fetuses (i.e. babies) with Down's Syndrome; 8,199 of the women were 35 or older and they had 64. Put the career track on hold instead of the mommy-track.]

And in the small print: Jacob A. Canick, PhD, and Nicholas J. Wald, FRCP, who participated in the study hold U.S. patents for unconjugated estriol as a marker in prenatal screening for Down's syndrome. Mr. Wald holds patents for the screening test using the first and second trimester markers as a single test, and is a director of a company that makes software used to calculate Down's syndrome risk, and is a director of the company which licenses the screening test. Some of the doctors in the study receive lecture fees from various equipment companies used in the study.

1860 Adoption Hollywood style

Gone are the good old days of Hollywood adoptions, when the movie stars married, adopted a cute little baby, then divorced and discarded the kid to boarding school and occasional visits and he grew up to write about his life (Michael Reagan son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman); or the movie star had a baby out of wedlock then adopted her (Judy Lewis, daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable). Then there was Joan Crawford, who kept adopting children AFTER each divorce. I don't know if the subsequent husbands adopted her adopted-while-single children.

Now Brad Pitt wants to adopt Angelina Jolie's two adopted-internationally children, but he doesn't love them enough to marry their adoptive Mom, and I suppose we could assume he doesn't love her enough to get married. So he has to go through the expense and hassle of a non-relative, single parent adoption, instead of a step-parent adoption.

I don't think it's a good idea for a single woman, or men for that matter, to adopt--all studies show children do best with both a mother and a father--and having her boyfriend then adopt the adoptees is really a bad idea. Wasn't it Woody Allen who started that trend, he raised girlfriend Mia Farrow's adopted children and then married one of his non-adopted, Korean step-daughters adopted by Andre Previn? Of course, he didn't actually adopt them all, so I suppose he's in the clear.

Technorati tags: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, adoption,

1859 Women and heart attacks

Since it is now well known that heart attacks, not breast cancer, is the big killer of women (deaths from cardiovascular diseases in women exceed the total number of deaths caused by the next 16 causes), I was very surprised to come across Dr. Helen's story of her misdiagnosed heart attack. I learned about the risk of young women and heart attacks way back in my car pooling days, when one of the mothers of my kindergarten group who was then in her mid-30s, had a heart attack and needed to rely on the rest of us to fulfill her driving duties. Since my son is now 37, that has been awhile.

Dr. Helen tells of being an athletic 37 year old in excellent health, and then developing terrifying shortness of breath episodes. In the ER she was given a shot for an allergic reaction while a man with the same symptoms was whisked off for heart tests. After several trips to the ER and being put off as an anxious woman with panic attacks, she finally begged her own internist for tests, and then it was determined that she had suffered from a heart attack and also had a ventricular aneurysm as a result of not resting her heart after the heart attack. Because she'd been told that she had panic disorder, she thought that exercise would be good.

Hers is a scary story, and you should read it yourself.

1858 Eggcorn--another fun language site

Earlier today I mentioned Language Log and the discussion of snowclones. That led me to the site called the Eggcorn Database, which “collects unusual spellings of a particular kind, which have come to be called eggcorns. Typical examples include free reign (instead of free rein) or hone in on (instead of home in on), and many more or less common reshapings of words and expressions.” It takes its name from a misuse of the word acorn--calling it an egg corn.

I’m not sure this would qualify for the Eggcorn Database, but yesterday here in central Ohio there was a hunter’s death (apparently self-inflicted) and several times the reporter in the field said the authorities were going to get to the bottom-line of this.

And then there is "butt-crack of dawn" which is apparently seen and discussed in Iowa and other places with a straight face. Isn't English just the most amazing language?

1857 Is this the artist or the object?

When I see art like this I think I need to get back to my other interest, art. A sack of flour with cat hair? An aging addict who's become his drug of choice? An artist's who's been dismembered and can't produce? I just don't know. But I think the art world needs me.

1856 Tasty Snowclones

Language Log has the most fascinating list of “snowclones” and a history of the word’s evolution. A snowclone is an expression which uses a certain formula (sort of like a cliché, but not exactly) for a shortcut to familiarity. An example of a snowclone, and from which it gets its name, is “If Eskimos have 20 words for snow, then the Illini must have at least that many for losing.” Actually, there is no such thing as an Eskimo language, and in the languages of that part of the world, there are no more words for snow than in English. But it is a phrase that is used anyway, particularly by journalists. Calling it a “snowclone” is relatively recent--maybe 2 or 3 years. Other examples of snowclones are:

The right X for the right Y: (The right tool for the right job)

Have X, will travel:

Every schoolboy knows ----------

Once an X, always an X.

Language Log not only provides the list, but develops the story of the earliest known use, such as Thoreau or Dickens or even the Bible. It makes very interesting reading.

Snowclones are easy to track using Google hits, or "ghits." For instance, enter "every schoolboy knows * " and you get 17,300 ghits. (The asterisk is a truncation symbol and substitutes for the word or phrase you’re looking for.)

“Nowadays every schoolboy knows that the essential and permanent conflict in life is a conflict between the past and the future, between the accomplished past and the forward effort.” H. G. Wells

“I knew that the virus was incredibly infectious, and, as every schoolboy knows, epidemics are unpredictable.” Emma Tennant

". . . as every schoolboy knows, the Arabs have at various times inhabited parts of Europe, lived along the Mediterranean, been contiguous to European nations and been assimilated culturally and otherwise by them." Arab World Project

Try this “snowclone” in Google and you will be amazed by what “every schoolboy knows.” It will restore your faith in the public school system.

Update: I tried "Once a * librarian, always " and found some rather dull examples showing not much fexibility within the career field:

“Once a * librarian, always a *”

Once a music librarian, always a music librarian.
Once a serials librarian, always a serials librarian.
Once a teacher-librarian, always a teacher-librarian. . .
Once a children’s librarian, always a children’s librarian. . .
Once a Public Librarian, Always a Public Librarian . . .
Sorry, once a reference librarian, always a reference librarian. It is a curse. ... [Air America]
Once a retired librarian, always a retired librarian I always say.

1855 He doesn't like my crow's feet?

Today I've received a reminder in the mail from my ophthalmologist. (Just a reminder: this is one of the few words in English that have a phth combination of consonants and is frequently misspelled). He says I'm due for an annual appointment. I don't think I've ever gone to him annually, only by referral for bigger problems. And he included in the letter a little surprise. To go along with my entries on aging beauties Donna Mills and Bo Derek, I now add that my ophthalmologist is offering Botox cosmetic injections so I can dramatically reduce the frown lines between my brows. Just a few small injections can relax (paralyze) my facial muscles for up to 4 months. What? There's not enough money in correcting vision?