health

Goodnight, Friday

I spent the better part of the day doing the tedious job of reformatting fourteen chapters’ worth of PowerPoint slides for some online supplemental materials we’re developing. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather spend the day doing. But I think I managed to fix everything, so hopefully we can just upload them sometime next week. And then I can move on…to that other book’s PowerPoint slides I still have to edit. Ah, joy.

At least it’s a three-day weekend. Which is actually really nice, coming so soon after this past week’s unexpected snow day. I know I’m ready for the weekend.

Meanwhile…not much. My father is having a little problem with his eye, some blurred vision he went to see his eye doctor and then a specialist about today. It’s apparently nothing too serious, and also isn’t necessarily indicative of anything else that is serious, but I think he’s a little worried — and therefore so am I — that his vision might not improve, or might get worse. (“Even if you end up losing the eye, you can still drive,” the specialist told him, not very reassuringly.) My father has a follow-up appointment for treatment in a little over a week, so hopefully he’ll be fine.

On the plus side, did I mention it’s the weekend?

Tuesday various

  • Scientists develop ‘golden fleece’ lozenge to fight off all cold and flu bugs [via]:

    The pill, which would cost 20 pence a day and would be taken once before breakfast, could be sold over the counter in as little as two years.

  • “Most expensive” foods like this often seem like a cheat to me — of course it’s expensive if it’s served in a solid gold dish! — but this one seems like it might actually earn its hefty price tag, if only because the most expensive ingredients are also edible. That said, there’s not a chance I’m paying $750 for a single cupcake. [via]
  • Arachne Jericho on embracing the inconsistencies in the Sherlock Holmes universe and why a gay Holmes/Watson relationship really isn’t such a stretch.
  • I once tried getting a book endorsement from Desmond Tutu. When his assistant turned me down, I didn’t turn around and fake one. This is one of several reasons why I am not an African dictator. (Nelson Mandela Foundation accuses Congo president over fake foreword) [via]
  • And finally, a fascinating story about a Wired writer who tried to disappear. I was particularly amused by the idea that his trackers created real Twitter accounts to look like automated spambots to draw away suspicion. Seems like the inverse of how these things usually work. [via]

Tuesday various

Tuesday various

  • Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play. Well, maybe. Unless we can dig up Zombie Shakespeare, I think it’s still just conjecture. [via]
  • Speaking of zombies, however, I’m not so sure I agree with The Guardian‘s contention that:

    No zombie is ever going to be a pinup on some young girl’s wall. Just as Pattinson and all the Darcy-alikes will never find space on any teenage boy’s bedroom walls – every inch will be plastered with revolting posters of zombies. There are no levels of Freudian undertone to zombies. Like boys, they’re not subtle. There’s nothing sexual about them, and nothing sexy either. It’s all about splatter and gore and entrails and our own fear and fascination with just how messy and vile and extraordinary our bodies are.

    Which seems to be making all sorts of gender-based assumptions on some pretty shaky and limited evidence. I’d also suggest that the so-called subtlety of broody vampires like Edward Cullen is actually a pretty thin veneer over a shallow pond. [via]

  • Dr. Scott’s Case Studies of Comic Book Medicine. More here. [via]

  • Two new ways of looking at things: the US highway system as a subway map [via] and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” as a flowchart.

  • And finally, speaking of the Beatles, what if the band never broke up? [via]

Monday various

  • Regender.com is an interesting experiment, although obviously imperfect. In its regendering of this site, for instance, it changed Billy Joel’s “Don’t Ask Me Why” into “‘Donna’t Ask Me Why’ by Billie Joyce.” [via]

  • This raises the troubling possibility that some of our authors are in fact cats: Cat registered as hypnotherapist [via]

    I posted this earlier today to Twitter, and Nyssa23 replied, “Perhaps that explains the number of manuscripts you’ve been receiving concerning mice and cheeseburgers.” Still, as I told her, say what you will, Cheeseburger-Focused Brief Therapy works!

  • “A car crash victim who was believed to have been in a coma for the past 23 years has been conscious the whole time.”
  • Matt Taibbi on Sarah Palin [via]:

    And Sarah Palin sells copies. She is the country’s first WWE politician — a cartoon combatant who inspires stadiums full of frustrated middle American followers who will cheer for her against whichever villain they trot out, be it Newsweek, Barack Obama, Katie Couric, Steve Schmidt, the Mad Russian, Randy Orton or whoever. Her followers will not know that she is the perfect patsy for our system, designed as it is to channel popular anger in any direction but a useful one, and to keep the public tied up endlessly in pointless media melees over meaningless nonsense (melees of the sort that develop organically around Palin everywhere she goes). Like George W. Bush, even Palin herself doesn’t know this, another reason she’s such a perfect political tool.

  • And finally, speaking of, god bless parody. [via]