Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins


27 November 2006, a Monday

Soupy Stew would have been 62 today, incredible as that seems.  I think I forgot to remember that staunch friend and supporter Peter was an aged 43 a bit more than a week ago, but then I think I might also have missed Liam on the 7th and the Marine Corps on the 10th, things are a blur. 

Since the Democrats have been in control, everything has got to pot.

What’s that?  They aren’t in control yet?

Do you mean this is still Bush’s fault?  Oh.

Like the guy told me once: cheer up, things could be worse.  So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse…

Even my local on-line newspaper wants to join in on the action, any action…

Previously classified documents reveal that President George Bush's nominee to be the next Defense secretary had advocated military action against the leftist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Go back further and you’ll find out at what age he was toilet-trained.  Besides, I live with some Nicaraguans who fled their country while wishing stronger military action had been taken against their leftist government in the 1980s.  My local paper should feel cheered to find themselves in good company, the New York Times weighs in (sorry) with

Panel to Weigh Overture by U.S. to Iran and Syria

You have no idea how sorry, either.  Anyhow, the problem the panel is having is finding a negative weight in order to balance the scales with this offer.

Zoning Laws That Bar Pedophiles Raise Concerns

A New Jersey lawsuit could curb rapidly proliferating local ordinances that push pedophiles into rural areas.

Why not push them into that bourne from which no traveler has yet returned?  Another NYT front-page-worthy item:

Some wonder if this month will break the record for rainfall in a single month, 15.33 inches, set in 1933.

Amazing, isn’t it, with global warming rushing ahead like it is, that the record was set over 72 years ago…before I was born and started spewing hot air, even?

Not that global warming isn’t a problem for some:

On Saturday, race organizers in St. Moritz, Switzerland, canceled World Cup races scheduled for Dec. 9-10, saying temperatures were too high for them to make artificial snow.  There is a chance that some of the canceled events will be relocated to Colorado, where forecasters predict a heavy snowstorm over the early part of the week. That snowfall is actually a problem for World Cup organizers, who like to prepare a smooth track of icy, man-made snow weeks before a race begins.

Not that we wanted to ski on God’s snow, anyhow, you understand, but we’d like it if He would keep things cold enough for us to make ours.

My new word for the day, courtesy of the NYT:

The Archimedes Palimpsest, sold at auction at Christie’s for $2 million in 1998, is best known for containing some of the oldest copies of work by the great Greek mathematician who gives the manuscript its name. But there is more to the palimpsest than Archimedes’ work, including 10 pages of Hyperides, offering tantalizing and fresh insights into the critical battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., in which the Greeks defeated the Persians, and the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., which spelled the beginning of the end of Greek democracy.

The palimpsest is believed to have been created by Byzantine monks in the 13th century, probably in Constantinople. As was the practice then, the durable and valuable vellum pages of several older texts were washed and scraped, to remove their writing, and then used for a medieval prayer book. The pages of the older books became the sheaths of a newer one, thus a palimpsest (which is pronounced PAL-imp-sest and is Greek for “rubbed again”).

Now if only I knew why the Cotto Salami was fighting with the Beef Salami at the critical battle of Salamis…

From a Washington Post article on a ‘new’ herbal discovery:

Okunji's research has shown that one species of Aframomum has significant antimicrobial activity in laboratory tests. In a published study involving cell cultures, Okunji showed that the plant works against the microbe responsible for a hard-to-treat infection, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. MRSA, which has reached epidemic levels in some hospitals and other confined places, is impervious to every penicillin-like antibiotic now available.

Fortunately for me, I guess, I acquired mine domestically…from my own skin, apparently.  As I understand it, a tiny cut on my knee may have been the source, since Staph is as common as, well, dirt.  How it got in and infected my knee is surprising but I find not that exceptional.  My local doctor’s brother plays a lot of soccer and sprained his knee, or got bursitis, or whatever, and his doctor (he lives far from here) gave him a shot of cortisone.  Apparently this ‘doctor’ did not swab the skin surface with alcohol first, though.  So the brother got a septic knee, like mine, just from the needle punch.  His got REALLY bad before they figured it out, though, he had to be hospitalized.

I was really fairly lucky because I had already scheduled a doctor’s visit in SJ for other reasons, we caught mine early.  The mistake we made was not continuing the antibiotics long enough, letting it make a comeback, but apparently this time the 5 weeks did it..

I’m much more attentive now to putting ‘triple-antibiotic’ on small wounds than I was before.  I did not realize how common Staph was.  However, the problem apparently comes in from the hospital-acquired variety, which has been around long enough to adapt to antibiotics whereas the wild strain has not.  I guess.

Probably why my SJ doctor did not really want to hospitalize me, although technically that is the official protocol for the problem I had.  I could tell—I know him fairly well, now—that he agonized over the decision.  The odd part is that he prescribed 10 days of treatment, but another doctor said it should have been at least a month for a knee because the circulation there isn’t the greatest and it takes longer to treat.

A blonde joke I got today was really good, I thought, so I’ll share it:

The capital of California is "C".....isn't it??

This from Media Notes tickled my fancy:

In the New Republic, Conor Clarke raises the decidedly non-PC question of whether the Congressional Black Caucus may not be good for blacks:

"If you found $90,000 in someone's freezer and had video evidence showing him accepting it as a bribe, you might think you'd stumbled upon an airtight case for punishment. That's what Nancy Pelosi thought of Louisiana Representative William Jefferson: When he was investigated for taking bribes, with pretty damning evidence (and a fast-approaching election), Pelosi pushed for a vote that pulled the radioactive representative from the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

"The move had the support of the vast majority of congressmen in the party -- except, notably, the members of CBC. 'The Caucus stood firmly behind Representative Jefferson,' says [CBC spokeswoman Myra] Dandridge. Indeed, the caucus considered it kind of a no-brainer. 'The first order of business for any CBC chair,' she continues, 'would be to protect his or her members, just like a lioness protects her baby cubs.' "

Well, I sure agree with the no-brainer part!

Funny how when a Republican like Hastert does this (or perhaps did this) in protecting a gay like Foley, that was worthy of outrage.  Not, apparently, if you are a Democrat and straight…well, sexually straight if not criminally so…

As one friend of mine always said when excusing Clinton, “it’s only about sex”.  Now we can change that, at least in the cases of Jefferson and Hastings…”it’s only about money”.

 

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