Squidsniffer

Acting themselves in Harajuku circa 2002 at the height of their under-recognized creative talents.

Max guitar vocals humor
Christian bass croaking jackassery
Kenji drums weed zensation

Two winter pictures

Just a couple of random winter pictures. Me on a very nice winter day at Mt. Hood. Naomi on a trip to Bagby hotsprings (Mt. Jeffereson wilderness)

I took Naomi to a classical Indian music concert at the Unitarian church on Friday night. The vocalist was from south India. I had forgot how long these concerts go - in Seattle when I used to go to the Ragamala shows I don't think I ever recall staying until the end. Did they ever end? We left sometime after 11pm, 3 hours into the performance, and I had the feeling she was just getting warmed up. I only with there was some kind of supratitles at the vocal performances like in opera.

Tuesday was taco night at Brian and Briar's place. All the climbers were there - they had just returned from LA where they were down for the Ellen Degeneres Show. Needless to say the media attention must be overwhelming. You have to wonder, however, how much of this is because of Velvet, Matty's dog, who sprang from back stage to make a brief cameo on the show.

The last two weekends have been kind of blah blah. The weather has been very balmy. The cherries are starting to blossom this week in fact. The snow is quickly melting and I have had really not big desire to go ski in the rain.

I am into the hematology and oncology course, which is pretty fun actually. Ah, the faculty and syllabus make such a big difference; this is far and away the best taught course. Plus, well, blood is kinda cool, actually really flippin' cool, and cancer, the evil beast it is, is pretty fascinating too. In fact, before I did my premed biology class I never realized that cancer was a model of evolution via natural selection on a cellular level.

Friday and Saturday were conference days - the regional Society for Academic Medicine and a Global Health Alliance Symposium on immigrant health. The symposium, I thought, turned out rather well, although Alex, Jonah, and Erin the main organizers were less enthusiastic. The panel discussion, however, got a little side-tracked from the topic of health by comments from the audience regarding being "bi-cultural." I put this is quotes not because I don't believe in it - I do - but because terms like this are used liberally and with little agreed-upon understanding of what they mean. The result: debates going in circles about nothing substantial between people who have nothing to disagree about.

Saturday night I met Aaron and Dan and Slabtown for some beers and really crappy, loud indie music. I'm pretty cool when it comes to pop-rock, indie or not, and it takes a lot to win my interest. A recent favorite, however: Andrew Bird.

Walter Reed scandal - who's to blame?

Today the Army's surgeon general retired...er...was fired, in the wake of the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal regarding squalid patient conditions. There is something about this story that is just not right. Walter Reed is the biggest Army hospital. Many patients, many visitors, and right inside the beltway. How could it be that nobody noticed until now?

And how could the executive MD running the place, General Kiley, have let things get so bad? Either he is not worth his salt as a professional or is an incompetent manager. Considering his rank, both seem unlikely.

For me at least, this raises some question of where the motivation to hide the rats came from. As I said, no doctor with an iota of the Hippocratic oath could have let this happen under his watch. Certainly the military's medical services are stressed at this point. Has the White House ignored requests for more support? And too ashamed to let that be known?

Anyway, something smells of another fall guy scenario...

Congress considers laws to prohibit junk food at schools

I don't want no damn government telling me what my kids can and can eat! That's MY responsibility, and when they get older, they can make that choice on their own.

Except your fat kids who will become obese are going to (a) probably really resent you when they are realize how miserable it is to be obese and how difficult it is to lose weight once you've grown up with it, and (b) are going to end up costing all of us in terms of reduced economic productivity and poor health resulting from the morbidity that is associated with being over-weight.

Case 1 for said draconian law
Today's parents are stupid or irresponsible or lazy or all three and it's time the government step in get a control of these kids' bad habits (and show 'em a little discipline too! yeah!).

Case 2 for said draconian law
Poor health is not merely a personal matter. It affects others as well in direct and indirect ways, and when poor health reaches epidemic proportions, the mass effect can be crippling to society. Visit the Center for Disease Control website if you're not convinced.

Case 1 against said draconian law
Why bother? Kids are still going to get their empty sugar and fat fix at the 7-Eleven down the street from campus anyway.

Case 2 against said draconian law
If the goal is to get kids to quit so much crap, then we need encourage incentives to be healthy. We could

• messages about how totally un-hip it is to be unhealthy (might as well include smoking and drug abuse too)
• lots and lots of education about how miserable you're gonna be when your 30 years old and can't walk up two flights of stairs
• provide healthy alternatives to Cokes and Snickers
• encourage parents and community to set better examples
  

The uninsured middle class

Here is a series of stories on the effects of being uninsured for the middle class (NY Times, 5/5).
What bothers me is that there is just so much unwillingness to embrace a single-payer system run by the government in this country. I respect choice, but I feel that Americans opposed to national healthcare are either ignorant of the public health superiority of these systems in many other developed countries or so stubbornly wedded to the principle of individual freedom that it trumps any good judgment.

And even if you do want to let people choose, I don't hear many free-market libertarians or conservatives trumpeting proposals that would ensure everyone could get affordable coverage. The woman in the story had a history of cancer; her premiums amounted to 27K a year, with a 5K deductible. You gotta be bringing in a lot more than a typical middle-class income (47K) to pay for that. So we have choice in our system. In principle. In reality, asking someone to pay 30-50% of their pretax earnings is not giving them a choice at all.

The stupid thing is this: if she gets really sick or injured and ends up in the ER, her care will come out of the public trough anyway, and the chances of that happening are increased by the fact that she can't afford to take the full dose of her chemotherapy meds, which cost several hundred dollars a month.

Although to be honest, a national healthcare system would probably only address a few of the reasons why costs have sky-rocketed, namely by reducing administrative overhead and the massive expenses incurred when an uninsured person arrives in the ER for an illness that could have been treated or even prevented much more cheaply by a primary care doctor.

Saturday we met mom and a couple of her friends for breakfast at a old sports bar dive north of the Pearl. They had come up for a country music concert and had a good time staying up late on Friday. Mom's hand tremor looked really bad at times, which made me start thinking about mine. It's probably a benign essential tremor, but neurological disorders are puzzling for the lack of tests available for diagnosis.

Saturday night we went to the ballet, which premiered three modern pieces, whose choreographers were present. The dancers all looked very strong, and of course, the choreography seemed challenging. Afterwards we went over to Hilary-Rachel-Casey's house with Sango for a kegger. The place was packed by 11 o'clock, but as usually we were the first to leave. Sango was getting exhausted anyway. It's fun to socialize with everyone outside of school, but understanding the drunk slang through the din of 25 people squished in a kitchen is tough for Naomi.

I nearly wrote mom an email about her smoking and drinking. We've talked about it seriously during the holidays at the end of 2005. But since then nothing's changed, and I am not sure if she's really made any real effort to quit either. That's what upsets me. A big part of me wants to tell her she's selfish; I told her what the most likely consequences of smoking and drinking hard at her age were - a stroke, heart attack, and dementia - and that she could place the responsibility of her care in my hands prematurely. And then there is the matter of being functional for her grandchildren. I don't think she cares about living to a ripe old age, but I can't give her a morphine OD if she is gorked from a stroke or dementia, like she thinks. On the other hand maybe calling her selfish is being selfish on my part.