Weekly Wrap: April 29, 2006

Here's the high points from this week:

• The immigrants are coming! Say goodbye to that $3/day fruit picking job you've been trying to land... Seriously, relax people. We're protecting our jobs from immigrants by shipping them overseas.
• How low can you go? Bush's approval rating is hovering around 33% right now, which is pretty bad. That means 1 out of 3 people still think Bush is doing a good job!
• Irony in the news: Keith Richards gets a concussion falling out of a palm tree during their "A Bigger Bang" tour.
• This week in Cubs. Go, Cubs! Go, Cubs! Go, Cubs! C'mon, Cubs... Go, Cubs! What the f@$%, Cubs?

That's a wrap for this week. Have a good night.

The Great Donor

If your blood type is O Negative, you get the call to donate again 8 weeks to the day from your last donation. So here I am at LifeSource waiting for them to stick me with various sharp objects and fill a plastic bag with my vital fluids. It's always a bit of a trip to look down and see a bag of your blood. I often find myself thinking, "Wow... That's a bag of my blood."

On the plus side, Laura just got her wisdom teeth out on Wednesday and I decided to just go home after giving blood to give her a break from watching Ellie before I go to practice tonight. At least, I hope I can go to practice tonight. That all depends on how Laura's feeling later.

Well, it's go time. I'm looking forward to the cheese and peanut butter crackers afterwards.

Ugh...

Man, I hate the city at 5:00 on a weekday. Too many people flooding the public transit system. I had to let two buses pass because they were packed with everyone else trying to get home or, as I like to call them, "turds."

I guess I'm not a fan of any time too many people are trying to do the same thing I am - traffic, the mall at Christmas, bathrooms at sporting events... Too many turds.

--- Sent via BlackBerry ---

A little bit of Ellie to lighten the mood...

Okay. That last post was a bit of a downer. Here's a picture of our super-humanly cute baby to make brighten up the joint.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

I just had lunch with a former colleague who just had his third kid. I was asking if the level of confusion during pregnancy was any lower during subsequent pregnancies since it seemed to me that nobody had any real answers to our questions - just opinions. The conversation turned to how much contradictory information is out there (on many topics but, especially, pre/neonatal care). He brought up the fact that the single unifying factor for the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates was that home birth with a midwife was the norm, not hospital/doctor births.

It's hard to deny an especially compelling statistic like that, but I looked at the list and it is mostly asian and euro countries at the top of the list (USA is 36th, by the way). That got me wondering if home births aren't really an indicator of a deeper cultural division.

Isn't it possible that neonatal care and childbirth are viewed in a more relaxed, natural manner in these other countries? It's really only been since around WWII that childbirth in this country became a more clinical, almost surgical, affair. I'd be interested to see how the mortality rate was effected by that.

It also occurred to me that the clinical nature of child birth in this country is made necessary by the litigious climate here? If I were in danger of being sued for every action I took, I would make damn sure that, for each action, I had a series of steps which were approved ahead of time, never vary from them, and do my best to distance myself from any liability.

It also seems to me that the number of lawsuits in this country results from the fact that we're a bunch of self-centered jerks with a sense of entitlement. For some reason, we got it in our heads that if something bad happens to us, it must be somebody else's fault, and that person should pay handsomely. I'm not saying we should give a free pass to the incompetant (or elect them President, for that matter), but sometimes bad shit just happens.

If we, as a country, can get our pea-sized brains around that then we can free our medical professionals to do their jobs instead of avoid lawsuits. That opens up more choices for us and allows us to make decisions we're more comfortable with and, ultimately, do what's best for ourselves and our children.

Metaphors fail me when:

- I'm trying to describe how well my hotcakes are selling
- I want to tell you how little I need that new hole in my head
- You ask me the manner in which that bat flew out of hell
- I need you to understand how that hurricane is going to rock you

Remember life without metaphors is like...

And I should not be left without anything to do for this long, otherwise I start composing blogs like this.

--- Sent via Blackberry ---

What's more geeky than a segway?

A segway with a plasma screen strapped to the front of it. There was a fleet of them segway-ing around the plaza where the water tower is hawking the Chelsea Handler show on E! (exlamation point is a branding thing, not actual enthusiasm on my part).

What's geekier than that? The guy drinking a red bull standing around watching them. That would be me.

I may need a camera phone.

--- Sent via BlackBerry ---

worst bus route in the city

I'm on my way home from work on the bus. It's the 66 bus which goes straight down Chicago Ave. From Navy Pier to Oak Park. It was recently voted "worst route in Chicago" in a poll conducted by RedEye, which is a very short newspaper published for commuters.

It doesn't take long to see why since the buses frequently clump and 4 will pass in quick succession and then none will show for 45 minutes. I have become frustrated, started walking to work, and made it all the way downtown from Ashland before a bus finally caught up with me. Then, once you're on the bus, there's a good possibility you'll be in the company of some grade A crazies. I've had to listen to many a rant, religious or otherwise all just to get to work where I have to listen to other rants.

I need a jet pack. Fortunately, this is my stop...

Upgrading My Web to 2.0

Hello, anyone who's looking.

I've decided to move my blog over to blogger so I can post entries and interact with my friends' blogs more easily. It took quite a while to get the bigSoda template set up on blogger, but it seems to be working well. The trick was to switch all references from relative links to absolute links (for those who care).

Another driver is that I'm trying out Flock. If you don't know what Flock is, it's the quintessential Web 2.0 browser. It incorporates blog viewing/editing, RSS reader, del.icio.us links, and flickr photo viewing/saving into the interface. For all the hype, I think the Web 2.0 sensibility is making the internet exciting again - the web as conversation. My friends already maintain a Yahoo group where we carry on conversation(s) from all points of the compass. This next step just intensifies the conversation.

In addition to the Yahoo group, many of my friends also maintain blogs. I'll list them under the "Other Blogs" tab above. They're all intelligent, interesting people who have compelling things to say. Check them out and check back here.

The old posts will remain here for a while.

Take care and talk to you soon...