Your Sunday moment of zen.
Maureen McHugh, enhatted, Santa Fe, NM. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 7:27 am Sun July 31 2011 | Comments(0) |
Water Wheel at Columbia Springs turns back years — Replica installed at environmental education center is a legacy to lumbering.
New Aircraft Flies Without Wings or Helicopter Blades
The Giant Drill Underneath Park Avenue
Unraveling the Mystery of Murderous Minds — Prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple asks why we feel compelled to understand monsters like Anders Breivik, but no need to explain others’ righteous behavior.
McCain erupts: Conservatives are lying to America — And already he’s walking it back.
Evangelicals Without Blowhards — Yeah, well. A lot of those mild-mannered, big-hearted Evangelicals have gone along with the Christianist political agenda for years, enabling the madness in name of one or two single issues. Being an enabler of political poison isn’t much better than being a perpetrator.
Tempest in a Tea Party — Consider what the towel-snapping Tea Party crazies have already accomplished. They’ve changed the entire discussion. They’ve neutralized the White House. They’ve whipped their leadership into submission. They’ve taken taxes and revenues off the table. They’ve withered the stock and bond markets. They’ve made journalists speak to them as though they’re John Calhoun and Alexander Hamilton.
?otD: Whilom?
Posted: 7:24 am Sun July 31 2011 | Comments(1) |
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danjitekhaybeemikigarrison
Yesterday T— took me to see the new Harry Potter. Aside from some audience issues (see [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] for details) it was enjoyable. I don’t have a sensible review because my brain isn’t up to it, but I have to say I thought the first couple were the best. Today my parents are taking me to a matinee of Cowboys and Aliens, from which I expect absolutely nothing except cowboys, aliens and a couple of hours of entertainment,
I’ve been reading, too, which is another advantage of laying off the opiates post-operatively. In the past week or so, I’ve enjoyed George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas and am now working on Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House. I’ve been a fan of Martin’s series since the beginning — it reads like history, not fiction, which is a great deal of its charm — and I’ll be dragging the rest of the Culture novels out of the downstairs shelving, or acquiring them at need. Enjoying the Banks, but haven’t yet got to the ‘aha’ moment in the book.
Healthwise, I still feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse, but as my Dad says, the horse is getting smaller. The most persistent but least debilitating pain is the rib pain. They had to lift my 9th and 10th ribs out of the way to get at the liver during the resecting, and those puppies are not pleased. Given that it took close to a year for the rib pain from my lung surgery to fade to its current muted state, I don’t expect relief there for a long time. The incision pain is pretty much gone, though the deeper tissue healing, specifically the severed muscle tissue reknitting, is pretty strong. That’s more of a dull ache these days than an overwhelming pain.
I should be back at work early next week, both for Day Jobbery and writing. I need to roll around in Sunspin for the next few weeks, so I can get it out to la agente, and be ready for the Kalimpura revision letter I expect around the end of August. Plus, well, chemo restarts in late August, and I’d like this project to be at its next milestone before the drugs claim too much of my cognition.
That’s the update from cancerland.
Posted: 9:12 am Sat July 30 2011 | Comments(0) |
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Reverend Meiko in the Oregon woods. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 8:56 am Sat July 30 2011 | Comments(0) |
Pregnancy Porn: Alien Impregnation In Science Fiction
Wittertainment’s code of conduct — For cinemas, where apparently the New Rude is asking other people to stop being rude. goulolil_shepherd
Useless Studies, Real Harm — On marketing-driven drug trials.
Weird Moon Crater May Be Crash Site of Old NASA Spacecraft
Russian Nuclear Icebreakers: to the North Pole! — Dark Roasted Blend with a photo essay on Russian nuclear ice breakers. Cool stuff.
Killer Cars: An Extra 1,000 Pounds Increases Crash Fatalities by 47% — SUVs are an excellent example of risk transfer. Anyone who drives one in order to feel safer is explicitly choosing to make me more unsafe in exchange.
No, new data does not “blow a gaping hole in global warming alarmism” — There goes that reality with its liberal bias again. Which, as I’ve pointed out before, is only a liberal bias because of conservative dedication to counterfactuals in the face of overwhelming evidence. Their cynical empowerment of evolution denialism in pursuit of low-information voters has opened the door to legitimizing much wider intellectual dysfunction by privileging opinion over evidence.
European Extremism Scares Arabs
Apple has more cash than the U.S. Treasury — Thank you, GOP. So where’s all that prosperity those Bush tax cuts were supposed to bring? Seems to me we did a lot better under Clinton.
Jon Stewart on the conservative obsession with victimization — In case you missed it. “…some of the most free-range, organically grown, disingenous, ideologically marinated, un-self-awareness I’ve ever seen in the wild.”
?otD: What question would you put here?
Posted: 8:54 am Sat July 30 2011 | Comments(2) |
Dear dad who brought a three-year-old child to the new Harry Potter movie —
When your child is so bored by the movie that they are singing, talking loudly, and protesting in a squeal when you try to hush them, that would be an excellent time to take them out of the theatre for a while. Instead, you were unfair both to your child and the rest of us in the theatre. Also you made my cranky, achey-assed, post-surgical self have to go find a manager to escort you out of the movie, which I don’t appreciate having to get up and go do.
No love,
Me
Posted: 5:35 pm Fri July 29 2011 | Comments(3) |
Several folks have pointed me towards the most current xkcd, which talks about cancer and survival rates in that inimitable xkcd fashion.
I know exactly what he’s on about.
In April of 2008 I was diagnosed with primary colon cancer. In May of 2008 my colon was resected, and I was told we’d gotten it. They were so confident that I wasn’t even prescribed chemotherapy to follow up.
In April of 2009, my lung metastasis was first detected. After months of testing, argument and second opinions, my left lung was resected in November of 2009. I was told we’d gotten it, and prescribed a course of chemotherapy that ran from January to June of 2010.
In the post-chemo scans of July 2010 a liver metastasis was detected. My liver was resected in September of 2010, and we discovered that the metastasis was diagnosed in error. I was told we’d gotten it.
In the routine scans of April, 2011, another liver metastasis was detected. I was prescribed a second course of chemotherapy, which was interrupted after four infusions so that my liver could be resected again in July of 2011. In my post-operative consultation with the surgeon this past week, I was told we’d gotten it.
I pointed out to him that I had repeatedly heard that before, yet like a B-movie zombie, the cancer keeps returning. His face fell, and he commented that of course we hadn’t surgically addressed the systemic disease, but we’d met our surgical goals.
It. Just. Keeps. Coming. Back.
I’m a fairly optimistic person by nature, but these past few days I’ve been struggling emotionally. I recognize this for what it is — post-operative depression compounded by the enforced idleness of my surgical recovery — but the roots are real. I only have a 30% chance of surviving the next five years. That’s a real statistic that really applies to me, and to this damned disease that will not quit.
This most distresses me in two ways.
One, the_child
Two, if I just keep getting sick over and over, I despair of ever building a strong life partnership. Since calendula_witch
I don’t mean that I feel lonely and socially isolated. Far from it. But I have neither the confidence nor the energy to work toward finding another core relationship. And if the cancer keeps coming back as it has so relentlessly year after year, I may never have those things again.
Is it any wonder I’m depressed?
I know once I get back to writing and Day Jobbery, probably early next week, this mood will lift. When I am engaged in my busy-ness, I don’t have time to be maudlin. But right now I’m looking at the years of my life and realizing there’s a very good chance I’ll never really get back what I am, who I am, and what I want most.
That’s just hard to accept with peace, grace and dignity.
Posted: 10:31 am Fri July 29 2011 | Comments(18) |
Your Friday moment of zen.
Live bait vending machine, eastern Washington state. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 6:42 am Fri July 29 2011 | Comments(0) |
The only bike-chute aeronaut — And boy does that sound like a short story title.
See what’s inside cute cartoon characters — Snerk.
On the Origin of Birds — On the Origin of Birds
The discovery of a new bird-like fossil challenges longstanding theories about which species of dinosaur gave rise to the avian lineage.
Top Fusion Experiments — Mmm. Big Science.
The Centrist Cop-Out — The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.
A prayer for infrastructure investment — Slacktvist Fred Clark is sarcastic about conservative denialism.
A Story More Important than Debt Limit Kabuki — The reason that the Republicans deliberately destroyed the balanced budget and created unprecedented government debt was precisely in hopes that at some point they could use the debt as an excuse to destroy social security, medicare, and myriads of educational and health programs. Remember, Tea Party, Clinton gave Bush a balanced budget when he left office. What did Bush give Obama, after the Permanent Majority had done its work?
?otD: Who’s your favorite joke?
Posted: 6:41 am Fri July 29 2011 | Comments(0) |
What I did yesterday.
Photo © 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 8:29 am Thu July 28 2011 | Comments(2) |