Fiji Water Goes Under

Fiji water will be shutting down, the owners in mega-flounce mode.

Goodbye to that overpriced, giant-carbon-footprint water. Don't be shocked if the half of Fijians who don't have clean, safe drinking water put their collective foot on the company's head to hold it under.

Privatize the Bad Old TSA?

The ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. John Mica of Florida, is a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration

An AP story Airports Consider Congressman's Call To Ditch TSA, carried by NPR, notes "Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead" and says the Florida congressman is behind a push to have airports ditch TSA screeners altogether. Sounds great, eh?

Watch out, though, Congressman Mica counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA's place. Could be just another GOP 'privatization' move. Like prisons and Iraqi contractors, the outcome could be bad for everyone except the executives and stockholders in those companies.

The backlash against the TSA's backscatter "porno scanners" and groping patdowns is real, and the very authoritarian-sounding responses by TSA head John Pistole reveal a genuine gap between the measures being imposed on the flying public and implementing real air travel safety measures, along with contempt for what the public expects from their elected government and the institutions created to serve them.

Really, after the things we hear about Blackwater and how Arizona prisons supported the law to criminalize being brown, do you think the private screeners will be any less abusive and oppressive than TSA employees?

progress

It's been two weeks since I had the Melody implanted, the flu is abating enough I feel I can start to test my new limits. So far I've found that I can walk back up the hill to my house from the coffee shop easier.

In other news, I finished Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel yesterday. Written in 1980 by Nobel Prize winning author J. M. Coetzee, its themes of empire, scapegoating, torture, brutality, and militarization are immediately relevant. Worth a read.

Table Fellowship

The economy is in the dumps. The teabag wing of the GOP just schemed their way into a majority in the House. The deficit hawks and their commission of fools will find ways just to continue the depression for another 2 years at least (just like when Hoover was president and kept the Great Depression going). Pretty bleak. I can hardly stand to read the news any more, even the sources I find sensible must report the facts that show just how indifferent and greedy the folks in charge are. It's too depressing. I can't even read news about the environment and outdoors how, because the climate change deniers have taken over the discourse.

The only news I can read now is food news, and even then I have to skip over the stories detailing how messed up things get with factory farms, patented plant genes, and profit-focused agribusiness.

So what, then, must we do? For the time being, without forgetting that we need to stay engaged, let's focus on each other. You, me, your friends, family, and close associates. I'm going to touch on something from Christian teachings, but please stay with me a bit, I promise I won't preach at you.

One of the central themes of Jesus' ministry in the gospels was something we call "table fellowship" -- eating and drinking together around the same table with the lowly, despised, and outcast of society. In your own experience, maybe you haven't sat down to dinner with lepers, but surely you can remember the times when you've shared an enjoyable meal and companionship around the table.

So starting today, let's focus on something we can do between you, my reader, your friends, and me. Let's have dinner together. Ideally, at home, but eating out will do in a pinch. My ideal is that each of you will take a day to put together a gathering where you will serve food. It doesn't have to be fancy -- remember that Jesus was known for fish, bread, and wine. Just put together something you can share, invite a couple of friends or a multitude, whatever you wish, and focus just on being with each other and what Martin Buber called the "I and Thou": existence in a relationship without bounds.

Just do this, and continue to reciprocate as long as you can, and I believe that we can avoid being buried in the hole that the principalities and powers are digging beneath us.

A Stinking Whale of a Problem

It's Exploding Whale Day!

On this date in 1970


No, it's not an urban myth. It really happened in Lane County, near Florence, Oregon, forty years ago today.

Dominionists Shoot Selves in Foot?

That Oklahoma law that seeks to ban the consideration of shariah in deciding cases in that state (a situation that has never occurred -- even Sen. Rex Duncan, the co-author of the measure, says it was preemptive) comes with possibly unintended consequences.

I may be leaping to conclusions to associate the backers of this law with the Christian dominionists who seek to pass laws declaring the US a Christian nation and basing laws directly on the Christian bible, but it's not a big leap.  Given that there is some commonality of goals between Sen. Sykes and the dominionists it's amusing to me to see an Oklahoma law professor comment that the law could arguably make state courts unable to consider the ten commandments in deciding cases.

And then...

Blah. Flu shot reaction. Got my 2010 flu shot on Thursday on the way out of the hospital and of course combined with the rest of the post-op stuff I got a reaction to it this year.

In other news, guitar lesson yesterday was good.

Post-Op

This is the part of surgical procedures I hate most: immediate post-op out of the hospital. The enforced fasting pre-op fucks with the body. The anesthesia fucks with the body. Of course the trauma of the surgery fucks with the body.  Objectively I feel worse than I did the morning before I went in to the cath lab. Recovery involves the body both returning to its pre-op normality as well as adjusting to the new post-op conditions -- in this case, the new valve where there wasn't one before.

I know I'm getting slowly better, and soon will feel the real benefits. For now, though, at night when I wake up with strange pains, or chills, or when I look at the bruising on my body, I fret some. After a lifetime with my body, I know its quirks, and new and different stuff puts me off my oats.

Justice for Some

I'll just leave this here.

A financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday.

HuffPo has the story now, too: Martin Erzinger, Morgan Stanley Wealth Manager, Won't Face Felony Charges For Hit-And-Run

Too bad the Facebook page for Colorado AG John Suthers is gone and replaced by a bland locked-down page. I guess it was too troublesome for him with all folks commenting on his wall suggesting he investigate the DA for corruption.

Melody Valve In Place - Nov 3 2010

On Wednesday, Nov 3rd, I had my heart worked on. Instead of open heart surgery, though, we have new technology -- minimally invasive. The conduit from my right ventricle to my pulmonary artery was narrowed and had a lot of back-pressure into the heart. In the past the repair would have involved opening the chest and going on the heart-lung machine, the whole complicated deal. Not any more.

Today they can go in with a catheter and insert a stent with a valve built into it, without major surgery, and under only a light general anesthetic. I was out of the hospital the next day. The device is called the Melody Transcathether Pulmonary Valve and is newly approved for implantation in the US as of January 2010.

This video was taken during the procedure after the Melody was in place and working. I hope to post some additional videos later. In the mean time, I'm doing good and thankful for my family's support.

roboheart

I'm off to Seattle to have my Melody implanted. When I'm back I'll be robo-heart!

Best. Protein. Name. EVAR.

It's the protein responsible for punching through the walls of infected and cancerous cells and injecting them with destructive enzymes: perforin, "our body’s weapon of cleansing and death,” said project leader Professor James Whisstock from Monash University. And thanks to x-ray crystallography, we have a picture of what it might look like at the molecular level, too.