UnSpace

My nephew, John, was evaced by helicopter last night to Kiddie's here in the 'Burgh.

Odds are that John will be fine, but there are sound reasons the docs at the first hospital went all out. We all hope he doesn't need it, but should he require the best care available, John's in the right place.

Nancy and I got the phone call last night from my mother-in-law. They'd gotten the call from their son about their grandson, and they called to tell us what was up. I was out the door before Nancy finished the conversation with her mom. This morning, when his parents finally got here (after car trouble on the way down, of course!), John's dad turned and said to John's mom, "See, I told you Rob would be here." There are times when being predictable is a good thing.

I'm not posting details about John; there's nothing much to post other than "nominal" and and speculative "what-ifs." He's not my son, and even if he were, I'm not sure I'd post any more than I already have.

But I hope you can see that we're all concerned and maybe you'll take a moment to think of this young man as he recovers, and of the extended family that loves him and prays that all will continue to go well.

There's a spider web on the outside of the kitchen window. When I first noticed the spider, her abdomen was severely distended. A few days later, she appeared much smaller and was guarding a sac of eggs. Checking in on her has been a pleasure, until today.

I can't imagine a bug with a less-adapted survival trait than the one caught in the web: the beetle looked like a sunflower seed. The hind foot was caught on a strand of webbing, and the insect struggled to free itself. In the past, I've rooted for the spider, but this insect's thrashings were so frantic, I found myself transfixed, wondering if it would succeed in getting free. Just when it would be almost free, it would reach up and touch the knot of webbing above it, catching more of it's body to the sticky threads.

I debated whether to try to rescue the bug. I kept hearing "It's nature's way!" in my mind in Steve Irwin's voice. So I just stood there and watched the fight. Occasionally, the mother spider would move toward the beetle to attack, but then would retreat, apparently thinking the better of it.

Finally, the beetle dropped free — only to drop down onto another strand of webbing This time, the process was less prolonged, and once again the beetle dropped — to yet another strand of webbing. Finally, the beetle fell all the way to the window ledge and began crawling away.

Somehow, I identify with that beetle.

New Scientist has an article "Rhythm method criticised as a killer of embryos":

For the record, I came up with my analysis independently. I quoted some research that actually shows this happens. I pointed out that this related directly to the argument about "Plan B." Funky Dung, of Ales Rarus, correctly suggested that this will require a modification to NFP.

You saw it here first! I wonder if anyone will footnote this blog.

As we left the theater tonight at the preview screening for X-Men: The Last Stand, Nancy and I made an astonishing discovery:

That, more than anything else I could tell you, explains why this is a must-see movie.

First, for the comic-book fans: There are plenty of nods in our direction. One of the introductory sequence comes from one of my favorite X-Men story arcs of all time. We have Stan Lee, making his customary cameo. When you see the man with the floating lawnmower, that's Chris Claremont, who wrote the X-Men from 1975-1991, creating some of the most famous characters, including that of the Phoenix. Realize that, while you will recognize snippets here and there, whole scenes lifted from the pages of the Uncanny X-Men, you will not be able to predict everything in this movie. There are surprises and shocks. The movie, while true to the spirit of the comic book, is not a retelling of the comic book. Think of it as an alternate universe, take a deep breath, stop kvetching about continuity and go see the frackin' movie, all right? Just do it.

The reviewer from Fox News thought the film should have been called "X-Women." Halle Berry as Storm, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and Framke Jannsen as Jean Grey¹ turned in impressive performances. Kitty Pride is my favorite X-Men, one of the few women in comics without the power of super-strong back muscles and antigravity. Ellen Paige did a great job as this character, even though her character does not get nearly enough screen time.

The women are very important to the movie. But Hugh Jackman had some of the most difficult scenes emotionally. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were once again incredible as Professer Xavier and Eric Lensherr (Magneto). When asked where his mutant tattoos were, Lensherr slides up the sleeve of his arm, explaining that no needle will ever again touch his skin. The moment is chilling and echos many of the series' themes.

Most surprising was Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy. When I heard he was playing the Beast, I was revolted. I should have learned from Toby McGuirre's Peter Parker that sometimes, unusual casting works. Grammer turned out to be almost exactly the Hank McCoy I'd always pictured reading the book. Perhaps a bit more of an ape-ish affect was needed, but this is an older McCoy, one who has worked in the government and thus had to give up the manerisms we're used to in the comic book.

The basic plot of the movie is that a "cure" has been found for the mutant condition.² The ethical questions that cascade from that basic premise naturally reverberate into our own world: The two most obvious and often-quoted parallels to the "Mutant Problem" are race and sexual orientation. What if we could "cure" someone's race? What if we could "cure" someone's sexual orientation with a shot — whether they wanted the cure or not?

The real-world parallel that strikes me most, though, is the deaf community.

Most in the deaf community do not see themselves as handicapped. They see themselves as differently abled people who did not need hearing. They had their own language (American Sign Language in the United States) and their own culture. In many families, deafness was heredity.

Back in the 1980s, crude electronic cochlear implants were created that would "cure" deafness. Since that time, the implants have improved dramatically. What should be the response?

Many in the deaf community refused the implants. Others (including my ASL instructor, a Miss Deaf Pennsylvania) adopted the new technology. Where the real trauma came to pass was when a deaf child was born to deaf parents and the parents did not agree on the proper medical care for their children. Some referred to the implants as "genocidal."

This is a tremendous amount of baggage for a summer blockbuster to carry. Nancy fears that it may harm the movie's audience appeal. Yet, despite the philosophical scaffolding, this is an action picture. Wolverine cuts loose — and how! Knowing that Kelsey Grammer is the actor bouncing around under the blue fur makes you realize just how heavy special effects are in this movie.

The movie is intense and jam-packed. If there is a problem, it's that comic book fans such as myself might fill in a few blanks that are otherwise not explained. I don't know, although Nancy has not complained about it.

This is another movie I'm going to see again. When I do, I will go deeper into a discussion about the ethical situations presented in the movie — there's more than just "the cure," but that's all I'll say.

This is a great movie. No, it's not Shakespeare. I might even like Spider-Man 2 a smidge better. Science wise, there are some problems — duh! It's a movie based on a comic book. I have no idea how Kitty Pride can pass through walls but not fall to the center of the Earth.

But you'll want to see this third installment of the X-Men, maybe even if you don't like "comic-book movies."

After all, what other movie this summer will finally answer the question "Is Mystique walking around naked all the time?"³

I'd once again like to thank the folks at Eides Entertainment where I got the preview pass. The entire gang there rocks!

1. No, that's not a spoiler. If you didn't figure out she was coming back, you weren't paying attention to X-Men 2 and somehow you missed every trailer, never read a comic book, and are probably asked by your friends to plan your own surprise birthday party. [back]
2. Again, I would contend this is not a spoiler. Is it a spoiler to tell you the X-Men are in the movie? [back]
3. The movie has some sexuality to it that might be a bit too much for children who should never have been permitted to go near this movie because of the violence. If your child can distinguish between cartoon violence and real violence and won't try to immitate Warren Worthington III and knows how humans reproduce, the child can see the movie — but only if you talk extensively about the movie afterward with said child. [back]

I enjoy messing with people's heads. If you read this blog, then you're someone willing to risk having your beliefs challenged. But lately, I've been obstreperous, even by my standards, and it's made blogging hard. When you start feeling your own blog is annoying, there's something wrong.

The answer's incredibly obvious, yet not one I wanted to admit to: babies. The events in the lives of our birds are being interpreted in light of the events in our own lives. Mash-ups are fun for fake movie trailers. In real life, they suck.

According to F.D. of Ales Rarus, what I considered obscure mentions in this blog is, to everyone else out there, painfully obvious: Nancy and I have been trying to have children for the past two years. And soon, as J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) would say, will be our "last, best hope."

The soap opera that is the lives of our parrots has been driving home some harsh points.

On a Saturday night, when the vet's office is closed, one of the female lovebirds appeared to be egg-bound. She'd been dumpy-butted the day before and should have laid the egg already. She was obviously in trouble. The recommended treatment, inserting a mineral-oiled Q-tip up the rectal opening and then placing the bird in an extremely humid environment for 12 hours, would buy us some time to find an open avian vet on a Sunday — assuming we'd caught the bird early enough. The bird had a calcium block available, but we added extra calcium to the food and water. Eggbinding usually occurs because there is insufficient calcium to form the eggshell. The next morning, there was the largest lovebird egg I'd ever seen, and the mother was looking all proud about her egg, unaware that a male was needed to fertilize it.

About a month ago, Lute, an ancient parakeet at 9 years of age, attempted to have some babies with Artemis. Everything appeared to be going well. Artemis was sitting the eggs. Lute was the attentive father-to-be. Everything was going well until one day, when I found Lute dying of what appeared to be congestive heart failure. Lute died within hours. In an emergency decision that would be horrifying for humans, Lute's son, Presto, was pressed into service to care for Artemis. At least Artemis and Presto are otherwise unrelated.

A few days later, a cockatiel baby hatched and was immediately abandoned by the mother. Baby cockatiels are very small and need the "crop milk" their mother provides to survive. We've been able to raise baby cockatiels from day one, but only half survive. This baby wound up being one of the ones that didn't make it.

Our two male Bourkes parakeet (think of a bird slightly larger than a regular parakeet but smaller than an English budgie, with a brain developed for Planet Bourke and not Earth) set up a nest and started incubating some eggs. Clearly, the one bird was at least female enough to produce eggs. Most parrots are not sexually dimorphous. With no external primary or secondary sexual characteristics, sexing is either a matter for obscure indications, DNA analysis or finding an egg. Would the egg be fertile? If the one bird was not a male, the educated guess on the sex of the second might be equally off. The sex of the second was confirmed when an egg hatched. Alas, the mother wanted nothing to do with the baby. The exceedingly downy baby squirmed off to the far end of the nesting area and slowed in its movements as it chilled.

Nancy and I stepped in to rescue the baby. Unfortunately, a Bourke baby is smaller than a cockatiel baby. We tried our best to keep the baby bird warm and feed it formula. Imagine picking up something so small and delicate without crushing it. For a bit over 48 hours, we kept this up, but we suspected we were losing the battle.

Back in Artemis's nest box, a baby started to hatch…and then died. We mourned this small loss of life. But even in mourning, my Machiavellian side schemed. What if we convinced Artemis that her baby had survived and hatched? The Bourke baby was still small; smaller than it ought to be for it's age. Would Artemis notice the substitution and attack the baby?

I always talk about "risk/benefit" analysis with regard to medical decisions, as if it's a cold calculus. In reality, there aren't percentages to go by, just hunches. We decided to replace the dead baby, still partially in the eggshell, with the Bourke baby. If it didn't work, we hoped to get the baby out of the nestbox before it was killed. But even so, that would leave the baby in our hands, and that outcome appeared to be grim.

We put the baby in and waited 5 minutes. A peak in the nestbox showed the baby snuggled under Artemis. 15 minutes later, a glimpse of the baby showed its crop full — if anything, over-filled. Artemis was caring for the baby, but possibly too well. We continued to watch.

The last I checked, the baby Bourke is growing. The crop, though fuller than we would have dared, appears to be dealing with the food provided.

So, in the past months, we've dealt with the risk of losing a mother during labor, an elderly dad dying, leaving the mother alone, the death of a baby, and the apparent saving of a baby by a strange form of adoption.

Thankfully, I'm not one of those people who thinks about consequences. By not paying attention, I have no reason to be afraid. What happened with the birds has no potential parallel to coming events in our own lives. My brain, so finely attuned to analogies, would not find the least similarity. I'd safely remain "Mr. Oblivious."

Yeah, right.¹

1. Have I ever mentioned that they spend 30 seconds in EMT and paramedic training preparing you for normal childbirth and then days driving home all the possible failure modes and how little a paramedic or EMT can do to deal with the situation? This really doesn't fit in well with this post, but I just wanted to mention that all my training is that pregnancy is some terrible, uniformly fatal disease. Our childbirth training film was "Alien." [back]

Since I'm an amateur radio operator, this was easy. If you want to find out what Jason is saying in CW (Morse Code), click the tag below:

Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas Kovach lost to Chad Kluko in the race for the Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania 18th district. Tidying up after the election, someone deleted the "Kovach For Congress" blog from blogspot.

Trailing slime, a spammer grabbed up the Kovach blogspot blog site and turned it into a spamblog.

You'll notice I'm not linking to the spamblog. It's pushing some insurance web sites. Perhaps I should link to it: where in one place can you find a list of such disreputable insurance providers? Why else would they sink so low as to be placed on a spamblog?

The old "UnSpace" at blogspot still exists. I've not killed it for just this reason.

Should you decide to shut down your blog, realize what may happen in your absence.

Little kids have been getting suspended from school. I just noticed something about the story. You're all going to rip me to shreds in the comments for this one — and rightly so.

The kids are playing in ways that violate the school policy. You'll notice I'm not saying what violation or what school or anything else. There's a reason this post is titled "Name Dropping." I don't want to get sued. I wish I didn't have to mention that they're children, but adults don't often get suspended from school. Now, me, being a typical liberal, "soft on crime," I'm sitting there wondering why the kids got off so easy. I'm thinking more in terms of a sleepover at the Schuman Detention Center might be warranted to scare the crap out of the kids.¹ As always, you get some parent whining that their little "Bleen" ("bleen" being a metasyntactic variable that fills in for the actual name) got punished. Please understand there's a selection effect here. There are other parents who avoid the media, more concerned with turning their child around so they don't wind up dead or getting the death penalty at age 15. No one ever interviews them.

If you're old enough to be reading this blog, you're thinking "My parents would have punished me again when I got home." But there's the parents, complaining that their little darling was disciplined for something clearly against the rules. I'm sitting there thinking "You should be thanking the school official that's trying to keep your child from becoming a sociopath!"

Nancy keeps telling me it's probably too late. I don't want to believe her.

And then, it hit me. I noticed a name.

When you work in Public Safety, you learn some names. Some people, like Madonna, don't need last names…or addresses. The dispatcher would simply say "Bleen (metasyntactic variable again) called" and the paramedics, police, and/or firefighters would know where to go. Sometimes, the public safety people would not have to steer their vehicles to the call. Through repetition, the vehicles had learned how to go there.

Those were the first names. Believe it or not, middle names can cause problems. You don't believe me, look at all the serial killers and homicidal maniacs with the middle name of "Wayne." What's with that?

In other cases, there were last names. These last names were warning flags. If you heard the last name, you immediately thought "So that's what happened." There's about five family names that I still remember. Often, I'm reminded during the 11 o'clock news, as they mention the last name of the person doing the perp walk or wanted for robbing a convenience store or who was murdered — or who did the murdering.

You want to know how bad it is? A couple years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did an article on some of those names. I'm not saying the reputation of those names is bad, but much of the article was about people who had changed their names to avoid any association with the "name." Everyone in the article was saying "This is a name with a reputation that was earned the hard way."

So, moving back to the present, there it was in the news about the suspended kids. One of the "names."

I'm sure it's just a coincidence. I'm sure they're all fine, upstanding people and that my reaction is just an unfounded prejudice for which I should be ashamed. It's not like they hired Jim Ecker. I never should have posted this, and they're gonna make me turn in my "liberal" card.

I'm sure.

I'm also sure someone involved has a tattoo.

1. Ok, as I remember, some dad arranged for something like that for his kid and it didn't quite work out right. Emergency rooms, firings, and jail sentences were involved. Sigh. Do they still have those "Scared Straight" programs? They ought to. [back]

Lately, the President of the United States has been claiming extraordinary powers. President George W. Bush claims that he can order warrantless wiretapping, warrantless collection of phone records, holding of prisoners without trial or benefit of counsel, etc. He claims that, because we are in a state of war, this is necessary.

President Hillary Clinton.

If you're a conservative, you trust President Bush. You believe that he is a good man and will not abuse the power he has taken. I can understand that.

You trust Bush. But do you trust the next President? You know the War on Terror isn't going away any time soon. Even worse, to the wrong people, it's too useful to be allowed to go away. With Bush's approval rating so low he'd get cancelled even if he were on NBC, you have to wonder who the next President will be. It might not be a Republican. It might be a Democrat.

It might be the Wicked Ice Queen.

This leaves you with one of three options:

1. Accept Hillary Clinton will gain these powers if she is elected President and then turn them to evil ends.
2. Decide giving a President this power is too dangerous a precident.
3. Advocate suspending the Constitution of the United States so that the Democrats cannot take back power.

If you ask me, the second alternative is the only reasonable option. We cannot permit the President to ignore the Constitution. The threat may not be now, but rather down the line, but the threat to freedom is too real to risk.

I was concerned that I had found a small, statistically insignificant way in which Natural Family Planning (NFP) might cause a spontaneous abortion¹ I wasn't going to say anything. Who wants to add to the misery in the world? And yet, in searching to see if anyone else had made the argument, I discovered something far more disturbing about NFP.

A while back, I started a discussion about whether "Plan B" acts as an abortificient. The only modes of action demonstrated are suppressed ovulation and increased cervical mucous thickness. Another possible mode of action, that of preventing the egg from implanting, has been hypothesized but never demonstrated. Opponents of "Plan B" who wish to continue arguing that it is an abortificent claim that the experimental data are not accurate enough, and that there is still a small but unacceptable abortion component to how "Plan B" acts.

I tend to argue by analogy, and so the obvious tack was to question whether NFP causes eggs to fertilize that can either no longer implant or implant but do not have sufficient time to trigger changes that prevent sloughing of the uterine lining.² Thus, the behavioral changes induced by NFP result in spontaneous abortions, making it just as much a form of abortion as "Plan B" is claimed to be.

I was curious: has anyone else ever considered this? So I looked it up. It turns out I'm arguing about insignificant, mostly theoretical effects when something much larger is actually out there.

The article "Timing of conception and the risk of spontaneous abortion among pregnancies occurring during the use of natural family planning" in Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1995 May;172(5):1567-72. caught my eye. I haven't gotten the full article, but the abstract is online at the link. The conclusion is startling:

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, there is no excess risk of spontaneous abortion among the pregnancies conceived during natural family planning use. However, among women with a history of pregnancy loss, there is an increased risk of spontaneous abortion associated with preovulatory or postovulatory delayed conceptions. (Italics added by the author of this post.)

They're not talking about the effect I was hypothesizing. Pregnancy was only counted in their study if it was detectable — meaning the egg successfully implanted and created sufficient hormone changes to be noticed. The quoted spontaneous abortion rate in the article (10.1%) for the 868 pregnancies demonstrates this — it's far too low to include every egg that was fertilized.

What they found was, that for a subset of the population that has had previous spontaneous abortions, NFP about doubles the risk of a spontaneous abortion for non-optimally-timed conceptions.

The study did not rule out an increase in spontaneous abortions in the case of women without a previous history of same. The difference between 9.1% (optimally timed conceptions) and 10.9% (non-optimally timeed conceptions) is not statistically significant. "Statistically insignificant" is not the same as "no difference." This is the same argument used against "Plan B."

Is there some reason that proven occasional spontaneous abortions caused by NFP is acceptable but as-yet unproven abortions with "Plan B" are not? Or is something else going on?

BTW: Physicians for Life references the paper "Timing of conception and the risk of spontaneous abortion among pregnancies occurring during the use of natural family planning" as proof that NFP does not cause spontaneous abortions. Even avoiding the "statistically inconclusive" argument, the paper clearly doesn't say that. Physicians for Life wasn't the only web site promoting NFP to do that, either. Did they not read the abstract, or did they just figure no one else would?

1. Note: throughout this article, I will use the term "spontaneous abortion" as opposed to "miscarriage." "Spontaneous abortion" is the preferred medical term, what I'm used to, and what the journal article uses. [back]
2. If you want the basic argument, x/28 < x/(28-y), where x is the "window of missed opportunity" where an ill-timed egg can be fertilized but cannot successfully implant in decimal days and y is the days during which intercourse is avoided for NFP. For any positive, non-zero number for y, the first term must be smaller than the second. If this effect is on the order of a hundredth of a percent, I'd be surprised. But it's a non-zero positive number, and that's the point. [back]

I wish I had live-blogged CSI: Miami tonight. The combination of bad science and bad writing was nauseating.

The first thing I noticed was the bit about the vomit from the courtroom. First, the janitor kept the vomit? Who keeps vomit? Do you know how that's going to make the janitor's closet smell? Second, the "active ingredient in ipecac is charcoal." No, the active ingredient of ipecac is a chemical from the root of the ipecac plant. Activated charcoal will inactivate ipecac. If you want to vomit, you take ipecac. If you want to stop vomiting, you take the activated charcoal.

Then Marisol gets shot. Immediately, we all know she's going to die. We all sort of suspected it, because Horatio Caine can't get a break. But the paramedic didn't bother dressing the wound. Now, the bullet went through her front but remained in her, so how did it go through the kidney first and then the spleen and then stay in her?

The paramedic did a subclavian with a 22 ga butterfly — or worse. Now, maybe Miami paramedics are permitted subclavians. I don't know, although I'd be a bit surprised. But you have to use this gosh-awful harpoon. A 22 butterfly needle ain't gonna make it. Why'd he even do a subclavian? He couldn't get an IV? I got bilateral 14 ga. antecubitals on a guy stabbed 13 times in the back, once in the front with a knife so long it left dimple marks in the other side. There was blood halfway up the walls and the carpet squished — and I got bilateral 14 ga. antes.

Nasal canula? Nasal Frickin' Canula? She's shot, she's bleeding out all over the place, and you've got her on 2 L/min O2 — maybe 3? 15 liters/minute with a partial rebreather I'd believe. Nasal canula? Why even bother?

I'll skip the fact that her clothes weren't completely cut off at the scene. She should have been naked, but this isn't HBO or Showtime.

They dug the bullet that hit Delko out of the post. Oh yeah? How? The bullet was in deep — how do you get it out without destroying the hole? The laser would not be visible in daylight. Just how humid is it in Miami, that you can see the laser beam? They didn't account for gravity either. The further the bullet travels, the further it falls from gravity — it's accelerating toward the center of the Earth at 9.8 meters/sec. squared.

Delko and his sister were shot by a gang member, but Delko's ex-girlfriend was nearby getting ready to shoot them at the same time? That wouldn't happen even with me, and I'm a weirdness magnet. I'm also apparenly on much better terms with my ex-girlfriends.

In the hospital, Marisol asks for Caine. She knows she's dying. She's wide awake, and she's dying from a hole they should have patched up. Still on the nasal cannula, of course, and looking better than any trauma patient I've ever seen. Marisol dies — and the monitor lets out that long, continuous beep. Monitors only beep like that on TV when someone goes into asystole.

There might have been more idiocy, but I quit keeping track.

Tonight's episode makes me miss "Run, Buddy, Run" or "My Mother, the Car." "Spock's Brain" was better than this. MacGyver taking the giant jar of nitroglycerine pills and using it to make an explosive was better than this, although not by much. Nitroglycerine evaporates — no one makes large bottles of nitroglycerine pills.

They promise one more shocking, unbelievable surprise next week. I think I can guess:

CBS renewed CSI: Miami and didn't fire the writers or the science consultants.

I gripe a lot about my sister and brother Christians, especially those on the right. So when I saw the article about how the Christian Medical and Dental Associations is supporting the new Human Papilloma Virus¹ (HPV) vaccine, I knew I had to post about it.

I'm not implying that I agree with everything the CMDA proposes; both they and I would like me to make that abundantly clear, I'm sure. But in at least one case, they've purchased a clue:

Dr David Hager, OB-GYN, Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky and an expert in gynecological infectious diseases states, “I would recommend HPV vaccine for my girls and for my grandchildren. Why? Because there are so many instances of innocent exposure, such as rape, incest, statutory rape, and forced-unwanted sex. There is even the common situation where we have a young man or woman who has abstained until marriage and then marries a person who has had sex and exposes their partner to the disease.”

As entertaining as it might be for those of us on the right, middle, left, and extreme left² to watch the Bush administration force the FDA to prohibit the HPV vaccine, that's not good public health policy. One should not play politics with human lives.³ From all indications, the FDA will approve this vaccine — and there are more vaccines against STDs on the way.

To portray all Christians as supporting "honor killings" of their daughters for having sex outside (or even inside) of marriage is a false image. Sure, there are loonies out there, on all sides. But not everyone is deranged.

One last thing: all the emphasis in the debate is on daughters. Boys as well as girls will need to be vaccinated, and there are several other cancers that occur in both sexes that are thought to be linked to HPV — watch the news for updates. Will this knowledge that HPV can kill both sexes make a difference in the debate?

The double standard is out there. A lot more effort seems to be placed on inspiring abstinence in girls than in boys. I don't know if the protective effect the HPV vaccine will have on boys will make a difference, but just in case, I thought I'd mention it.

1. Note: A quick search indicates that both papillomavirus and papilloma virus are in use. Since I speak German, I have to make a conscious effort to not run entire sentences together into one word. If you follow the links in this article, you may notice a variation of usage. [back]
2. In other words, anyone not on the extreme right. [back]
3. Hey! Quit laughing! I mean it! I'm trying to be nice here. [back]

The comments to Chicago? Florida? Rhode-Island? Washington D.C.? made me realize something.

The post reads like a perfect description of a panic attack. But if you'd have been standing there Friday on the Eliza Trail, watching me, you wouldn't have seen a panic attack. At most, you'd have noticed a slight twinge in my face during one of the waves of nausea. But a panic attack? Trust me, if someone's having a panic attack, it's pretty obvious, even to the untrained observer.

If you'd been there, you'd have seen someone enjoying a spring walk.

Now what I experienced happend very rapidly. That massive amount of verbage covers what went through my brain in a couple seconds and were caused by the reduced blood flow to the brain or the messed-up stomach. But if this continues, I might well develop some real panic attacks. Now's the time to do something to prevent that.

There's a clue in how no one else would have noticed anything. Imagine the following emoticons were photos. Here's my facial expression when I experience various emotions:

Happy:
Sad:
Annoyed:
Angry:
Fearful:
Enraged:
Joyous:
Confused:

Anyone notice a pattern?

I'm the peacemaker. I'll tolerate anything to get the job done. How I react to something is based on strategy, not emotions. Even when I'm in an E.R. with what feels like my final heart attack, I'm joking with the docs and nurses so they'll like me and will work to save my life — even though the joviality is confusing the heck out of them because people just aren't jovial when their PaO2 is 85%.

I want everyone to like me. I want to be fun to be around.

How many classes have I taught that humans aren't Vulcans? I think I'm containing all the negative emotions, but they're leaking into my stomach, aren't they?

They're also leaking into this blog. As far as blog-writing goes, it's great strategy. Pull out some powerful emotion and wave it around a while for the audience, and people tell you it's some of the best writing they've ever read. That comment scared the crap out of me.¹

I don't know how to deal with negative emotions. Look at Deb 5: We All Fall Down. I make excuses for the unacceptable behavior of a friend. If you read that post, I take most of the blame. "If I'd been there, this wouldn't have happened. If I were smarter, I could have fixed everything. It's my fault this horribly damaging incident happened." I don't say it, but it's implied in every word. I'm the reason the whole mess happened.

It's my fault? Baloney.²

I can't process how I feel about my homophobic friend, so I turn the emotional flamethrower back on myself. If I punish myself sufficiently for something I never did, never wanted, and worked as best I knew how at the time to prevent from happening, maybe it won't happen again? Oh, yeah, that works great. If you don't believe me, go ask Matthew Sheppard. Here's the perfect chance to set the record straight, but you'll notice I don't.

Learning to be angry with someone and work it out calmly is far more difficult that pretending that everything's all right and avoiding the issue at hand. Well, it's easier until the mental toxic waste dump does an immitation of the Mayak nuclear waste container.

I guess I've got some work to do.

1. Shelley, I appreciate you saying that. Coming from you, it means a lot. I keep hoping that, when I grow up, my blog will become something like yours. I'll take the compliment and work at learning to deal with it. [back]
2. Fascinating — I should use a particular scatalogical profanity there, but I refuse to. [back]

I've been back to doing some exercise.

The four mile workouts at South Park have been pretty good. I walk for two miles and then run for about a mile and a half and then walk the last half mile or so. My heart rate pops up pretty fast to about 80% maximal, and I can keep it there for the run. For some reason, I can't seem to run any slower. Exercising at 80% repeatedly will result in over-training.

Since I'm doing 4 miles with no trouble, I thought the 3.5 mile walk on the Eliza Trail to see Floyd and go to Eides' Comic Book store on Friday would be fine. I'd have to take it easier, of course.

Walking at an easier pace is actually harder for me than walking at a brisk pace or running. Those PVCs are caused by something in my ventricle that gets impatient waiting for a heartbeat. If my heart rate is too slow, there's more of a chance that that something getting annoyed and firing off a beat early. Since it's not designed to fire off beats on it's own, the beat's not nearly as good as one that comes from the normal place.

So there I go on that walk, and I get hit by a "light grey out." My brain feels like it's not working at 100%, and there's this feeling of impending doom. I get a wash of anxiety all over me.

"I know what that is!" I think. "It's nothing to worry about: I can relax."

"My heart just isn't beating right."

Now, the phrase "It's nothing to worry about: I can relax" doesn't go too well in my brain with "My heart just isn't beating right."

There's an old paramedic joke about how to deal with emergencies. In an emergency, check to see if you have a pulse. If you do, then there's nothing for you to worry about. It sucks to be the person stretched out on the floor doing an "O" or "Q" (think of an open mouth, with or without tongue protruding), but you've got nothing to worry about.

Checking my pulse yields:

Beat…beat…beat…nothing…beat…beat…beat…nothing…beat…nothing…beat…beat…beat.

This is, quite literally, a new definition of "nothing to worry about." The doctors know what they're talking about. I've checked up on it, and the odds of me dropping over dead from this aren't much different than if I had a perfectly normal heartbeat. This is new information that has to compete with years of "We need to get lidocaine onboard before the patient makes us do the old "Pump and Blow." Make sure the defibrillator is handy, just in case."

I work hard to not think of Jim Fixx, the running guru who died of heart disease while running. I avoid remembering my friend who, just after seeing the cardiologist, went into cardiac arrest for 20 minutes and is still fighting to recover from the resulting brain damage. The stories of others who went to an E.R. for "rule out heart problem" and died after being released are not the best things to ponder right now.

The biological subroutines are beyond my control. When I go into the irregular heartbeat, the malfunction produces error messages designed to elicit fear. I don't think I can unlearn that reaction, and I'm not even sure I want to. The sudden surge of adrenaline from those glands over my kidneys picks my heart rate up a bit — making those irregular heartbeats go away.

So I started off on my walk, trying not to think about what my EKG must look like.

One mile into the walk, I feel like I've been punched in the solar plexus. Something's upset my stomach again. The cell phone's in my hand, just in case. Walk. Breathe. Walk. Breathe.

I notice I'm getting more of those irregular heartbeats. The absolute best I can hope for is that my stomach is irritating the heart and causing those PVCs. How I'm feeling right now would seem to confirm that.

Walking will help the stomach, help me lose weight, and help the heart.

So I do what the doctors tell me. I exercise as much as I can. I'm watching my diet and taking all those funky acid blockers. I can do this.

All I have to do is ignore the emotions that go along with it. All those hours of training for the marathons, where I did not want to put in my exercise time but made myself do it anyhow, where I felt like blowing off a day but didn't…now I'm seeing the real reason I did it.

Have I ever mentioned how much training for a marathon sucks? We're talking big time suckitude.

Y'know, it just hit me. I should sign up for a marathon. I mean, come on, if I have to put myself though this crap, at least I can get a T-shirt out of it. So, what should I aim for? Chicago? Florida? Rhode Island?¹ Washington D.C.?

1. Supposedly, they do laps just inside the border. [back]

According to an article over at Powerblog!, the Catholic church is targeting the attorneys that are helping those sexually abused by priests.

An anonymous commenter replied:

I feel that these accusations are way out of hand, I can't imagine why someone would wait 20 years or more to accuse someone of molestation.

Why would someone wait 20+ years to report molestation? There are a number of reasons known for a failure to report among rape and molestation victims. Most rape and molestation victims never report. It's easy to understand how these reasons would apply in the situation of molestation of a child by a priest:

• Age:

  Children do not make good decisions. Adults have to protect children from the dangers of the world because their minds are not fully formed and do not have the experience to deal properly with problems. Expecting a child to report immediately is absurd. The longer the secret is kept, the harder it becomes to reveal.

• Authority:

  The priest is, in the Catholic church, the representative of Christ on Earth. To a child (and even the child's parents), this alone can be a strong disincentive to report the abuse. Priests are honored in the Catholic church. The victim may feel that the accusation will not be believed or that the repercussions of making the accusation will be too severe to be tolerable.

• Victimology:

  Pedophiles tend to be good profilers. They can pick out the child that is weak and unlikely to report. They go after the attention-starved that will tolerate the unthinkable for what appears to them to be love. The abusers will select the ones that will not be believed or who have no one to turn to for support.

• Threats:

  Pedophile priests have a unique situation. Because of their authority, their threats can carry an extraordinary weight in the child's mind. "If you report me, God will punish you." It doesn't take much imagination to come up with any number of threats a priest could make that would control a child. Standard threats, such as "I will kill you and your family" are also used by pedophiles.

• Response:

  Sexual victims often respond sexually to their assault. Adult rape victims have trouble coping with their apparent betrayal by their own body. Imagine how a child must feel. Parents, not understanding human sexuality, might seek to hide the molestation because they fear this proves their child is gay.

• Enticement:

  One of the standard defenses against sexual assault is that the victim was "asking for it." In no way can a child understand be considered to have caused their own abuse. Adults are supposed to be responsible and seek help for any child that exhibits inappropriate behavior. But blaming the victim is a time-tested trick that works amazingly well on adults. Children have little defense against this strategy, especially when their parents buy into it.

• Homosexuality:

  Pedophilia is not homosexuality. Pedophiles may or may not have a preference for male or female victims. The attraction is not one of sex but of power and control. Pedophiles choose professions or volunteer positions that give them access to victims, such as coaching, teaching, or religious vocations¹ Often these situations provide same-sex victims of opportunity. But in the public's mind, homosexuality and pedophilia are confused — and the Catholic church has taken steps to enhance this connection. Thus, for the victim to admit that abuse occurs, the question of the victim's sexuality is brought up. Given that the pedophile may be able to target gay children, the problem is amplified. In a religion that condemns homosexuality, this can create a strong disincentive to report.

• Coverup:

  When abuse was reported, in what I believe was often an honest attempt to save the career and soul of the involved priest, the priest would simply be moved to another parish. We now understand that pedophilia is not something that responds to religious or medical intervention. Still, where abuse was reported, the family may have been content with the actions taken at the time. Finding out later that the priest moved from parish to parish damaging children removes any consolation from whatever success was achieved in the initial report.

• Money:

  Money is indeed a factor. Do some people simply seek to make money from reporting abuse? Of course. Some reports of abuse have been found to be false. Might victims seek to make money off of their tragedy? Some might. I'm in no position to condemn them for that.

  For most victims, though, the damage is life-long. Depression, inability to function sexually, and other problems may require extensive treatment — treatment that costs money. The longer a secret is hidden, the harder it can be to treat.

  When victims are slimed by attorneys for the church in the standard legal maneuverings, the victim can suddenly find that ratcheting up the damages asked for is a good idea.

• Foot-dragging:

  Many victims first attempt to work things out with the church. By dragging the negotiation process out, a lawsuit may be finally filed a decade after the first attempt to deal with what occurred. Then the lawyers for the church ask the TV cameras why the victim waited so long to do something about the abuse.

According to the article quoted by Powerblog!,

Dioceses received 783 new credible allegations last year, according to the bishops' conference, after paying out $1.5 billion in abuse-related costs since 1950.

Notice the use of the word "credible." These are allegations that appear to have substance. In response to this, "some U.S. Roman Catholic leaders are taking an aggressive, public stand against attorneys who represent victims." In other words, if there aren't any attorneys to represent the victims, the problem will go away.

Blaming the victim for not reporting sooner and attempting to prevent access to legal assistance is not what this problem needs. Does anyone believe that such behavior glorifies Christ? I would think the church would seek to make peace quickly with the victims and do everything possible to restore their faith.

1. It's worth noting that, while I'm discussing the problems the Catholic church is facing, all religions are at risk. A wise church has a detailed plan to prevent sexual abuse, no matter the denomination. [back]

Pink is complaining about "Stupid Girls." Paige Ferrari thinks it's a good start, but wants to complain about the himbos as well. Is there a female celebrity who acts so vacuous, if it weren't an act she'd have to hire someone to remind her to breathe?

Drop a comment to this post, giving your nomination for the UnSpace Bimbo List, and then make sure you give equal treatment by commenting on the UnSpace Himbo List as well!

Note: I'm looking for people who are of normal or greater intelligence but have chosen to act stupid. I've never met a mentally handicapped person who didn't strive to do their best. For them, I have nothing but respect and admiration.

I'm talking about the people who decided that thinking was a bad career move and seek to inspire everyone else to live "the unexamined life." That's why I've limited this to celebrities.

Who is your least favorite male celebrity airhead? Which male makes you embarrassed to admit you're a human being?

Paige Ferrari has an interesting MSNBC article Stupid girls? Don't forget the stupid boys
that inspired this "contest." Drop a comment here and tell us about your nomination for the UnSpace Himbo List!

(Then go drop a comment about your least favorite celebrity Bimbo at the UnSpace Bimbo List!)

Note: I'm looking for people who are of normal or greater intelligence but have chosen to act stupid. I've never met a mentally handicapped person who didn't strive to do their best. For them, I have nothing but respect and admiration.

I'm talking about the people who decided that thinking was a bad career move and seek to inspire everyone else to live "the unexamined life." That's why I've limited this to celebrities.

According to Fox News,

I believe most Americans will agree with the President.

Our brains are strange creations, often incapable of saying the most important things in plain terms. Significant questions can be couched in unreasonable and illogical fears. When you understand what the true question is, the result can be liberating.

"Could I ever go nuts and try to kill millions of people?"

That's actually something I've worried about. To type it is embarassing. This is the sort of question someone who reads too many comic books, spy novels, and science fiction might ask. Even more embarassing, on some level I know I'm simply not that good. There's no chance a scratch-built nuclear weapon would work; I'd have serious trouble building the kit version. As far as genetically engineering some bacteria to take out cities — come on. There's nursing homes with nastier bugs than anything I'd ever manage to create in a lab. My best microbiology skills are growing molds in the refrigerator.

Asking "COuld I ever go nuts and try to kill millions of people?" is even more difficult when you wonder if it's one of those questions that require psychologists to call either the FBI or the local psychiatric catchment center. But ask my shrink I did. I'm sure you can all see the answer coming miles away:

"What do you think?"

Don't you just love psychologists? Sometimes, I wonder why they haven't all been replaced by advanced Eliza programs.

Yesterday, I reali