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| As a libertarian atheist who has worked hard to attain and retain an extensive vocabulary, I’m very well-acquainted with what it’s like to be loathed and ridiculed by the masses. Libertarians are accused of being cold-blooded by fiscal liberals, while conservatives decry the immorality of civil liberties. The godless, meanwhile, are universally despised by the godful: in the U.S., only Tea Partiers are less popular. I get it: skeptics of centralized entities of vast powers are to be shunned. My stilted vocabulary and stand-offishness likely mask the insecurity that results from the knowledge of what has happened throughout history to those whom societies—howsoever otherwise enlightened—have branded Outcast. Maybe that’s why libertarians and atheists who make the news are so god-awfully (so to speak) annoying. Go ahead—try to name a single advocate for atheism who isn’t an arrogant jerk. Penn Jillette—that’s about it. And libertarians—until Ron Paul did well in Iowa, libertarians were rarely given a mic, and the speakers were never eloquent. And then there’s chiropractic. I love manual therapy. I love getting it; I love receiving it. But wouldn’t you know it—it turns out that, in many ways, the chiropractic field is full of poo also. The claims that many DCs have made as to the ability of spinal manipulation to heal, say, cancer are as silly as tales of talking serpents and as dangerous as a government that suspends habeas corpus. I therefore joined an online organization called ChiroTalk, which has the declared purpose of “the critical investigation of chiropractic topics.” Great—how could I not support self-policing? Well, it turns out that they’re a bunch of jerks too. Their sworn mission is not just to challenge some of the more foolhardy claims made by chiropractors but to ban chiropractic medicine entirely. When I discovered their site’s ulterior motive, I occasionally challenged them in discussions, usually to point out that not all chiropractors are frauds. And then this email exchange took place this morning. I have never before encountered, even on the Internet, someone who is so obviously both evil and insane. And this guy is a physician. Read from the bottom up:
----------------------------------------- From: Allen Botnick [mailto:aljbotnick@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 10:40 AM To: J. McCrackan Subject: Re: Chirotalk: The Skeptical Chiropractic Discussion Forum - Do you know Sid Williams? He has no value, he's perpetuated fraud and injury on thousands of people. ________________________________________ From: J. McCrackan To: aljbotnick@yahoo.com Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 11:26 AM Subject: FW: Chirotalk: The Skeptical Chiropractic Discussion Forum - Do you know Sid Williams?
Jesus Christ, dude! Show a little tact, eh? One might get the
impression that you despise the man's values so much that you've lost sight of his value as a human being. That would reflect very poorly on you as a physician. -----Original Message----- From: noreply.proboards.com@localhost.localdomain [mailto:noreply.proboards.com@localhost.localdomain] On Behalf Of Chirotalk: The Skeptical Chiropractic Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 8:46 AM To: J. McCrackan Subject: Chirotalk: The Skeptical Chiropractic Discussion Forum - Do you know Sid Williams? Sid E. Williams DC, Founder of Life University recently had a stroke and we are looking for individuals who might have information regarding him. If you are aware of anything online or in print which suggests that Williams advised against using medical care or that chiropractic care for stroke (etc) would be superior to medical care and if he had high blood pressure that was untreated please email Dr. Botnick at aljbotnick@yahoo.com. Thank you | |
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| Letter to my dad:
You exposed me to a lot of news when I was a kid. At home, it was on the telly; in the car, it was on the radio. When you gave me the AMC Spirit (still miss it), it had only AM radio, and none of the music of my generation was on AM, so I listened to either news radio or silence. And because E lived in another state, I could handle only so much silence.
By the time we replaced the Spirit, FM radio was standard, but I was addicted at that point. I had grown tired of my own music and didn’t like the new stuff. And because even TV news had grown vapid by the ‘90s, I kept news radio on all the time. Even when the news cycle was repeating, I just enjoyed the feeling of being plugged in, of being as aware of the world as humanly possible.
E soon grew sick of the obnoxious ads, though, especially first thing in the morning. I experimented with NPR, and its deeper analysis and Canadian-like civility soon displaced news radio from our airwaves. But I never let go of the top-of-the-hour headlines, the broad coverage being the perfect counterpoint to the vertical-but-narrow coverage of NPR.
Three days ago, the news radio station added an FM frequency. I had expected to be impressed by its crispness and cleanness, but I wasn’t. It was weird, flipping back and forth between AM and FM while listening to the same exact broadcast. Yes, the FM frequency did sound crisper and cleaner—and yet, it just wasn’t doing it for me. I think that, after forty-five years of associating the unique sounds of AM radio with news, I’m just too old to switch. - Mood:old
- Music:"True" by Spandau Ballet
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| PROFESSOR: The mechanism of neuralgia is demyelination of type 1A afferent (i.e. normal sensory) neurons. Because these neurons run parallel to nociceptive (pain) neurons, action potentials (bursts of incoming data) can leap from the demyelinated sensory neuron onto an adjacent nociceptive (never myelinated) neuron, making any stimulation to the area painful.
J: Does that work both ways? Can nociceptive information likewise be interpreted as basic touch via the same mechanism: painful input leaping over onto the demyelinated sensory neuron?
PROFESSOR: [three-second pause] No.
J: Why not?
PROFESSOR: [five-second pause] I don’t know. Jesus…I suppose that it doesn’t happen because there’s so much more data coming down the 1A turnpike that the addition of any nociceptive information would be imperceptible.
J: [nods in acceptance]
***
You see, it’s not that my questions express my profound understanding of the topic of discussion. Sarah Palin could have asked the same question without having had any idea of what the hell the prof was talking about. (Or at least the does-that-work-both-ways part.) There’s something about my mind that, when presented with something new to look at, takes a cursory glance, yawns, then scurries around it to get a look from behind in case it’s more interesting back there.
Same thing in cardio this morning. The prof said that an over-exerted heart will hypertrophy to compensate, but that will reduce the volume of the heart’s chambers. I then asked whether adapting a completely sedentary lifestyle would resolve the problem, allowing the heart to atrophy. He liked the question but explained that concurrent issues to heart disease, such as atherosclerosis, would prevent my solution from working.
I'm not clever. I just turn what I'm given upside-down or backwards. There's nothing insightful about that. It's a great attitude to have for alpha-testing software, but beyond that (and my software days are waaaaaay behind me), I have the intellect of a six-month-old puppy.
I'm glad that others seem to appreciate my mind, though. I just hope that I can get it to become useful again. My mind is like Gollum: it’s my greatest nemesis, but I can’t help but believe that it will someday benefit me. - Mood:pensive
 - Music:"Always Something There to Remind Me" by Naked Eyes
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| Thor asked for my opinion on Dr. Winterstein's lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao1u48w8 T38). My thoughts on the matter are too verbose for Facebook, so I'll post them here. First, the video was edited so poorly that I nearly went epileptic. Sorry to put you people thru that. I think that most DOs have become "allopathized," i.e. their manip skills atrophy from lack of use. And that's because, except for PCPs, few docs need manual skills to do their jobs well. Some of the best manipulators that I've experienced have been DOs, but they're in the "vast minority." Do I think that DCs should have scrip rights? I don't really care. You all know my mantra: I just want to crack backs. But I'll tell you this: if you're willing to be a DC PCP for half the pay of a DO/MD, then you need some therapy for your self-esteem. But regardless of all that, Winterstein is naive to think that he can persuade most politicians to listen to his POV when chiropractic presents itself as a two-headed monster: one screaming for scrip rights, the other screaming for the status quo. We have to get our act together and bridge the schism between Straights and Mixers before we can progress significantly as a profession. What do you think? | |
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| Just watched West Side Story (WSS) for the first time in thirty-five years or so. Stupid idea, given that we always eat too much popcorn when we rent a movie, and we have to get up at 5 AM to drive across the country to visit my dad. But it’s the eve of Easter, E’s favorite holiday, and she’s wanted to see it with me since we met. I finally caved in because I had already known that we were also going to rent the third ep of Sherlock (next to House, the most entertaining interpretation of Doyle’s characters—Steven Moffat + Martin Freeman = good times), which was yanked from its web site right after the first two eps had addicted us. No matter how torturous the experience of watching WSS would be, bliss awaited thereafter.
Guess what? WSS didn’t suck. It did thirty-five years ago, but not anymore. I wish I'd known that it featured one of my favorite actors, Simon Oakland, and two—two—actors from Twin Peaks. In fact, I can’t sleep because my mind is racing not with Sherlock’s cliffhanger—in which Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty face each other in a sort-of Mexican stand-off—but with thoughts of WSS:
- Why did Krupke tolerate abuse from the Jets? The law sure knew how to keep the Sharks in line.
- Why did Schrank allow the thugs to carry away a murder victim?
- How is it that a 1961 film had sets, cinematography, and costumes from the Batman TV series—which didn’t premier until five years later?
- How could Maria shrug off not just her brother's murder but the (cleverly bowdlerized) rape of Anita?
- What was Tony’s last name? We know he was Polish…like Krupke….
There are just too many unanswered questions. Krupke knows something. If I were independently wealthy, I’d drop everything and write the script for West Side 2: No, Krup YOU. | |
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| The Great Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011 was quite the experience here in Evanston. Being stuck with charming but completely impractical valance windows, we spent a good part of the evening duct-taping the gaps in the bedroom window frame to keep out the snow. (They crank the heat so much in this place that we never notice the drafts.) We then just hunkered down to listen to the howling wind.
We’d planned on excavating our car from the snow with the shovels that have always been in the custodian’s closet of our apartment complex. Of course, they’re now missing, but we were lucky enough to find that our local Ace Hardware (oldest store in Evanston—a hundred years at the same location) was sort-of open: they were allowing customers in two at a time. I have no idea why security was so tight, but we soon had a shovel. It then took us about three hours to dig out our Civic from the huge drifts. I haven’t shoveled that much snow since I lived in CT. Because of the winds, I even had to dig out from underneath the car. But I’ve been needing the exercise, and it was fun to be outside when it looks like there's been a zombie apocalypse, with everyone walking around in a daze down the middle of the abandoned thoroughfares. Pix here.
Random thoughts from that afternoon: - Someone told us that one of the snowplows got stuck in the snow and needed to be towed.
- As I yelled “car!” to E to alert her of an approaching vehicle, I realized that I hadn’t done that since sledding in the streets of CT. Easily the most fun I ever had as a kid was playing in the streets of my hometown, and sledding down streets, frozen rivers, and underground sewers was the BEST!
- I love how twilight turns the snow blue.
- Mood:relaxed
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| The best moments: - Honking and waving at cars with Rally stickers & signs as we drove past them in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
- The signs. I think those were my favorite part of the trip. But my favorite was a sign carried by a guy dressed as a zombie: the sign was just covered in blood stains.
- Or maybe my favorite part was feeling the energy of the crowd, especially during the Blue Man-like Mythbusters parts, e.g. the epic Waves and the Enormous Silences. I’ve never experienced a crowd with such a vibe, one of both mellow bonhomie and raucous joy.
- The unholy fusion of Ozzy & Cat Stevens. I’ve always wanted to see Ozzy live since foolishly skipping his “Madman” tour in ’82. Quest fulfilled.
- R2’s still got it.
- Guido! In any other context, Father Sarducci would be the most memorable element. Actually, he was just okay—his schtick hasn’t aged well.
- The diversity of the crowd. Sure, it was mostly comprised of twentysomethings, probably the demographic most likely to be unemployed yet have disposable income. But E and I were definitely not feeling left out.
- Curiously, most of my favorite moments weren’t on stage.
- Not shown: Abe Lincoln joining the Tree Party.
- More pix:
- Mood:energetic
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| After a two-hour long discussion with E, I suddenly had an epiphany about the arch-nemeses of my life (i.e. anyone who comes across to me as an officious Frank Burns). The revelation is that I should endeavor to treasure such people because the anger they arouse in me is a unique passion in my life. They're like a slice of my absolute favorite chocolate cake: I can choose either to wolf down the cake (i.e. confront the Franks as a wiseacre Hawkeye), which is immediately satisfying but soon leaves me both bloated and empty; or to get meta, breathe in the cake's rich aroma, and appreciate that life includes such joys (i.e. sit back and laugh at the comedy that the Franks bring to The Show).
Wow, that is one nasty mixed metaphor. | |
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| To celebrate my forty-fifth birthday, E asked me to select a dessert recipe from our vast collection. I gave the decision much thought—should I choose a new and exotic recipe or one that had already proven itself? Should I pick brownies, cake, cookies, pie, or something offbeat and eccentric? We just happened to have made chocolate pudding from scratch last month, and because the result was underwhelming, I opted to return to the beginning, to where it all began, to the very first recipe I ever called my own: my original fudgin’-A brownies.
For those unfamiliar with the story, here’s a quick recap. My college roommate and supposedly best buddy, Moondog, had the unfortunate habit of hording his CARE packages, especially baked goods. I returned to our dorm room alone one afternoon and was soon tantalized by a rich, chocolate aroma. It took me a few minutes, but I tracked it down to the top shelf in his closet, where I found a half-eaten pan of homemade caramel brownies. One bite, and the course of my destiny was fixed. I had never tasted anything so delicious in my life. It was all I could do to save Moonie a couple of bites. I wanted more, so I went to Jewel and bought a caramel-brownie mix. The results were predictably dismal, but I noticed that they were nonetheless popular among guys and girls alike. Especially the latter. I thus began to explore the world of baking from scratch in a quest to replicate the splendor of those caramel brownies. I somehow became sidetracked, however, when I had at last created a remarkably tasty batch of fudgy brownies. They weren’t caramel, but they were very popular just the same, and friends often asked for them for their birthdays. We quickly became bored with brownies, so we explored other avenues of baking and then of cooking in general. Years later, I entered the fudgin’-A brownies and a batch of cinnamon cream cheese brownies in a bake-off; the latter won first prize, and fudgin'-A’s were ignored entirely. Only rarely would I ever again return to that classic recipe.Until today. About to turn forty-five, I’m feeling nostalgic, so we blew the dust off the fudgin’-A recipe and once more worked our magic.
But not really. The magic of the fudgin'-A's is gone.
Somehow, our tastes have evolved over the years. The brownies taste the same, but the tongues tasting them are different. Yeah, they’re fudgy and nutty and gooey, but still, there’s nothing really interesting there. Not anymore. Not for us.
So adieu, fudgin’-A brownies. We had a lot of good times, and you made a lot of people happy in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I’m still trying to lose the pounds you added. I’ll try to remember you not as you were today but as you were then: moan-inducing. - Tags:brownies
- Mood:nostalgic
- Music:"Dead Girls Waltz" by The Dead Hours
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| In stab lab, we're studying the thorax, and our prof was having trouble completely opening the chest cavity of our specimen, even with a bone saw. The clock ran out, and we students needed to head to our next class soon, so the prof broke out "the machete," which is basically a surgical carving knife. The razor-sharp blade glinted in a blur as he hacked and slashed his way into the chest cavity.
I wanted to allude to Upton Sinclair, but I've learned to avoid making such references in chiro school. It never ends well. | |
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