Yesterday's New York Times

Yesterday's Times had a front page story on Sarah Palin's slow collapse from popular governor to retiring, less popular governor. Ooh, I said to myself, this should be interesting, and after reading about the manner in which George Bush, Jr's presidency may have damaged the current administration's ability to turn things around for the US, and how civil unrest continues in Iran, I began the Palin article with real eagerness.

I should have known better, because what happened was not at all new. The Sarah Palin story, it quickly became evident, is the same story as everyone else has - a human being trying to do the right thing (based on her understanding of 'right'), and not always succeeding. And running into the real life that happened while she was off making other plans. the press, always eager to leap at the shallowest of controversies, didn't help; though it isn't their job to help. Her daughter's personal relations didn't help, though again, catering to her mother's political career shouldn't be the at the top of Bristol Palin's list of priorities - Bristol Palin should live her life for Bristol, not Sarah, Palin. Many people seem to have forgotten that.

But the point of all of this is that, much as I am relieved that Sarah Palin is not our Vice President, and as much as I suspect that she had more to do with John McCain's losing the election than Joe Biden did with Barack Obama's wining the election, she is a human being, and as long as I'm able to keep that perspective, it's hard to wish her ill. Nor do I want to wish her ill. Though I do wish her out of the spotlight.

And out of politics.

History in the making

Sometimes you know that you're in a historic moment. If you had asked me a year ago if it was possible for the United States to elect an African American President, I would have said "no, too many people aren't there yet." Racism isn't over. But if President Obama does a decent job, it will become weaker.

Of course, there's the rub. Obama does not have an easy task. He's made a lot of promises, and there are large expectations. How he'll be able to meet those expectations is beyond me; the country is broke. Even if it wasn't, the expectations are so high that I don't know that it's possible for anyone to meet them. And no doubt there are any number of people waiting and hoping he will fail, because he's black, or Muslim (he isn't), or because he eats baby seals for breakfast (he doesn't). Some people seem to have forgotten what it means to be an American. Or perhaps they never knew.

I give President-elect Obama real credit for saying, last night, that everyone is going to have to work together, and make sacrifices for the United States to succeed. He's absolutely right, and President Bush, Jr's biggest mistake may have been to pretend otherwise. Working together, the nation, and the world, can pull through.

Americans are fascinated with World War II. Then, the enemies were clear, and everyone worked together to defeat them. If the US can recapture that spirit - if only it can recapture that spirit. In the next several months we'll know.

Today's front page

Obama wins the Presidency, as seen around the world: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default_archive.asp?fpArchive=110508

Give me a saddle, I’ll trade you a car

Earlier this evening I repaired a cassette tape. The repair was simple enough – the leader had broken, but enough of it was left over so that when I opened up the cassette and attached the remaining piece to the reel I’m not already into the brown magnetic portion of the tape every time I press ‘play’, but it led me to thinking about cassette tapes, CDs, mp3s, etc. The benefits of technology, etc. Because although I’ve repaired several tapes, I’ve never yet had to repair a CD. Not that I’d know how, aside from the polishers that I’ve seen for sale. And to repair an mp3? Forget it.

There is a connection here to the difficulty that the medical community presently has with death, though for the moment I forget what it is (I placed the newspaper article down on the computer before I left earlier, since I saw the connection, but now that I’ve returned to the keyboard the thought has flown). And by problem with death, I don’t mean delaying death; I mean deciding when to declare it.

100 years ago, when you were dead, you were dead. No pulse? That’s it; send for the grave-diggers. But then we began to parse death. What do we do with someone who continues to have a pulse, but is irresponsive to all stimuli? Is this person alive? Technology advanced, and things only got messier. Heart-lung machines enable the body, and sometimes the mind to survive periods of death. Heart transplants involved patients living without hearts in their bodies at all, albeit only for the period between when their own heart was removed and the donor heart installed. CPR confused matters as well, as did defibrillation, with their abilities to return a nonbeating heart to proper order.

At the same time, we plunged further into the brain, developing EEGs and debating over the meaning of “brain death”. Some of you will remember the Terri Schiavo case of 2005, which revolved on this issue, among others, but another focus of this discussion is organ donation. Organ viability rapidly declines after perfusion ceases, or even decreases below normal levels. Thus, it is in the best interest of the patient receiving the organs to declare the death of the donor earlier, rather than later. Of course, it is arguably in the best interest of the donor to declare death later, rather than earlier. The same declaration of death must be used for both contexts.

I am here reminded of sub-subatomic particles. The presence of electrons, neutrons, and protons seems obvious to anyone looking at atomic structure, but what about quarks, mesons, etc? Did these only come into being once we shattered our protons and neutrons, much as the shards of a mirror only come into being once the mirror is shattered?

Well, it's late, and I'm tired. I don't know how coherent this is, but I'm off to bed.

Source: Nano, Stephanie. “Doctors Examine When to Declare Organ Donors Dead”. p8B, The Journal News, 14 August 2008

EDIT: in an earlier version of this article it was incorrectly stated that for organ recipients, best practice was to declare the death of the donor later rather than earlier. This is incorrect: organ viability decreases as blood flow decreases, thus donated organs are healthier if harvested earlier. Some spelling errors were also made.

WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last weekend (the weekend before the 4th, that is). This movie has had a long period of advance advertising, with cardboard WALL-E models in theater lobbies and such, and when I first saw those models, I thought that this was a sort of cartoony Short Circuit, and I wasn't really interested. Even when I learned that it was from Pixar, I wasn't intrigued, which indicates a shortcoming on my part, since Pixar generally puts out a good, thought-provoking product. But I caught a review in the paper (The New York Times, I think) and leared that the movie, though animated, digs into some very real issues: what is the likely outcome if we human beings continue in our present path of consumerism and laziness. The outcome is potentially bleak, and all the more so as we don't really seem to notice what it is that we're losing. Just now, for instance, in one of my rare free moments, I'm sitting here at the computer blogging instead of playing with my ca

The zero tolerance approach to punctuation

From the New York Times online, in an article discussing the varying fortunes of the semicolon:

Correction: February 19, 2008
An article in some editions on Monday about a New York City Transit employee’s deft use of the semicolon in a public service placard was less deft in its punctuation of the title of a book by Lynne Truss, who called the placard a “lovely example” of proper punctuation. The title of the book is “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” — not “Eats Shoots & Leaves.” (The subtitle of Ms. Truss’s book is “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”)

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Impeach the President?

Say it ain't so: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/11/kucinich.impeach/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I was led to that link by Mighty Cthulu, from whom I will now be getting my political news.

13 Year Old Steals Dad's Credit Card to Buy Hookers

The hookers apparently got suspicious when they were asked to play HALO instead of engaging in their usual activities, but they agreed to it. Work is work.

As for the kid, the last sentence of the article explains the rest.

As reported on money.co.uk.