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War

Check out this very cool and very heart-wrenching "sand animation" by a Ukrainian woman on the cost of war.

The Current Republican Party

Courtesy of the Boston Globe

Identity Crisis

Back in June, my friend, Jeromy, sent me an email inquiry.

On to my question: In part these diseases (M.S., Diabetes, and Chronic Trekkyism) become part of your identity. Their consuming nature dictates as much. Do you find it difficult not to have these diseases become your identity? Do you have to intentionally combat the trend of these diseases identifying who you are?

I know with my asthma there is a tendency among some people to identify me according to my disease. Asthma places me in convenient "can and can't do" compartments as well. Because it is also a constant (though perhaps not like diabetes or MS) it easily enters into my psyche, my conversation, and of course plays a part in my decision making processes. I could see that if it was more of an issue it could be consuming.

I told him that it sounded like a blog post, so here I am finally getting around to answering his question.

The question of identity is not an easy one. We humans are an incredible mass of pieces, emotions, experiences, thoughts, and dreams. Can any one part of us overwhelm the rest to become the core of our identity? I don't think so. We are an amalgamation of many seemingly disparate elements that are forged together to make up who we are. To whit, I am:

Shane the male.
Shane the father.
Shane the person born in Billings, Montana.
Shane the geek who was picked on in school.
Shane the white guy.
Shane the procrastinator.
Shane the lover of books.
Shane the diabetic.
Shane the admirer of Star Trek.
Shane the boy whose parents divorced when he was 12.
Shane the person who dreams of saving the world like his heroes.
Shane the guy who can't dance, but would like to.
Shane the person with multiple sclerosis.
Shane the sarcastic.
Shane the guy who likes memorizing digits of pi.
Shane the dude who has never tried alcohol.

And this is only a small fraction of who I am. I don't think my two diseases become my identity any more than any one of these things listed becomes my identity. Most of the time. I have had to make lifestyle adjustments since contracting them, but these are actions I take, not who I am. I admit that when I am feeling depressed, I can feel like these diseases are overwhelming me, that they are who I am. But those moments are not common. Most of the time these diseases are just another brick in the wall of me. I am more than the sum of my parts.

Now, as to other people's perception, I'm not really sure. I doubt there is anyone who has put me in a box labeled 'diabetic' or one labeled 'M.S.' but that is probably just because neither show much outwardly. The MS will eventually, of course, but the diabetes has few outward indicators other than me pricking my finger to check my blood sugar or playing with my insulin pump. Still, I'm sure that there are some people who have put me into some little box based on some aspect of me they have seen. It's only natural. That's how our brains function. We have to fight against it all the time, struggle to see someone for the multi-faceted person they are rather than the surface bits we see. If anyone sees me as just one part of who I am, it is there loss, not mine.

As Whitman said

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

168,178,719

That's the number of books in the world according to the Google Books team. I want to know how many of them are good, though.

Speaking of lots of books, check out this peek at Neil Gaiman's library. Very impressive.

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Me, too.

Kitty Survivor

Oh, who doesn't love a good cat story.

"Smoka" was last seen on Aug. 9, the night that Fitzgerald's Flowers and the apartments above it burned, which included the cat's home.

For 26 days, there was no sign of Smoka in any of her old familiar haunts.

"Whenever my neighbor kicked the door in to get me out, she hid under the bed and that was the last I've seen of her," said Sandy LaPierre, Smoka's owner.

Then, as a crew from Starks Wrecking was tearing down and clearing away the collapsed shell of the building, one of the workers suddenly saw what looked like a head poke up from under a pile of rubble.

Geek-Nerd-Dork: A Helpful Guide

Here is a helpful Venn diagram for determining whether or not a person is a geek, a nerd, or a dork. The X where I would peg myself.

Politics is Not or Rather Should Not Be a Zero-Sum Game

The problem with the current state of politics is that politicians treat it as a zero-sum game. We are at a point where if one party says they support daytime, the other denounces daytime as the first step to socialism/fascism/armageddon/whatever. Honest debate is no longer accepted. Now I don't think that politicians of yesteryear were pinnacles of upstanding morals always looking out for the best interests of the country. However, I do think that there was less of an inclination to automatically oppose the views of the other party no matter what they were. There were more instances of pols working together or at least not saying, "Your idea is bad because you are in the opposing party" in a knee-jerk fashion.

How else can one explain much of the furor over Obama's speech to school children? We have people like Jim Greer, GOP chairman in Florida, throwing a fit over it, accusing the President of playing politics with kids. Guess what Greer has done in the past, though? Well, he's gone to schools to talk to kids and made jokes about Hillary Clinton. He also tell people that he has a simple explanation for kids on the differences between the two major parties.

"Republicans get up and go to work," he would tell his son. "Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks."

That he has done this and can now turn around and claim the President of trying to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda" is a clear example of "if I do it then it's good, but if they do it it's evil."

Politics should not be like this. It only hurts our nation.

Liberal Capitulation

What he said.

No good comes from appeasing a lunatic bully like Glenn Beck.

Things That Don't Make Sense (In Science)

Okay, science junkies, check out this cool list of thirteen things that don't make sense. The idea of the universe as a "holographic projection" is the most fascinating to me. More about that here.

Would a Loving God Make a Creature Like This?

Tom Smith wonders about parasitic wasps and God.

Just found one of these guys in the pool.  I've blogged about them before;  everybody needs their little obsessions.  These creatures sting spiders, paralyze them, carry off the still living bodies, lay an egg on them, which hatches into a larvae, which then eats the paralyzed spider alive, avoiding key body systems so as to make sure it stays alive until the last possible moment.  You really have to hope spiders have no awareness, or else that they are reincarnated Nazis or something.  As I have said before, Darwin apparently found the existence of God and parasitoid wasps incompatible.  An alternative that worries me sometimes is that God did create parasitoid wasps and thinks they're really cool.

It is an interesting question. When a human does something bad, we can chalk it up to free will. These insects, though, have to do this. It is their essential nature. If one believes in God, what does it mean that God created a creature whose existence is based on torturing other creatures? As fascinating a thought experiment as it is, however, I don't see how any conclusion other than "ineffable mystery" can be reached. It's just one of those things that is beyond human ken.

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I wonder how many people are in similar situations.

Napping on the Job

Without a doubt the worst and the most frustrating side effect of my multiple sclerosis has been fatigue. I take Provigil to help with this because without it I would be a zombie. Most of the time it does it's job, however there are days (or weeks) when the MS comes out on top.

This past week has been rough. In fact, on Thursday I was so tired shortly after lunch that I had to punch out, close my office door, turn out the light, and take a 30-minute nap. Now, it's nice that I have a job where I can get away with this, but I would much rather not have days where I have to take a nap or be unable to function. Even with the Provigil and on a better day, I often still feel at least a little tired. Trying to work up the motivation to get anything done is hard when you always feel exhausted.

Mice Have a Cure for MS

Could one for humans be far behind?

A new experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) completely reverses the devastating autoimmune disorder in mice, and might work exactly the same way in humans, say researchers at the Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal.

MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body's own immune response attacks the central nervous system, almost as if the body had become allergic to itself, leading to progressive physical and cognitive disability.

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-supppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharamaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way.

Max Baucus Is...Captain Ineffective

Max Baucus is taking a lot of flak (and rightly so) for his bizarre tactic of working primarily with Republicans on health care reform and shutting out his fellow Dems. Check out this cartoon dubbing Baucus 'Captain Ineffective.'

Of course, this post would not be complete without a link to Baucus's essay on his own shitty record.

How Do People Spend Their Day?

Check out this very cool chart at the NYT that breaks down how various groups of people spend their day.

Ah, the News Media

Watch and be amazed at how stunningly stupid our news programs can make us.

This is an example of why I rarely get my news from the TV anymore. It's easier to find more reliable voices on the internet. Really.

Taser Overuse

Digby subbing for Greenwald writes about the abuse of Tasers by law enforcement officers.

But that isn't the real problem, although it may eventually be the path by which tasers are banned for use in civilized countries. As awful as the possibility of death is, tasers would be a blight on any free people even if they weren't so often deadly. Tasers were sold to the public as a tool for law enforcement to be used in lieu of deadly force. Presumably, this means situations in which officers would have previously had to use their firearms. It's hard to argue with that, and I can't think of a single civil libertarian who would say that this would be a truly civilized advance in policing. Nobody wants to see more death and if police have a weapon they can employ instead of a gun, in self defense or to stop someone from hurting others, I think we all can agree that's a good thing.

But that's not what's happening. Tasers are routinely used by police to torture innocent people who have not broken any law and whose only crime is being disrespectful toward their authority or failing to understand their "orders." There is ample evidence that police often take no more than 30 seconds to talk to citizens before employing the taser, they use them while people are already handcuffed and thus present no danger, and are used often against the mentally ill and handicapped. It is becoming a barbaric tool of authoritarian, social control.

The issue of Tasers is one that I think about a lot since I am certified to carry one at work. Part of this involved taking a hit from the Taser, a full five-second ride. As I wrote then:

Yes it is the most painful thing I have ever done. I will certainly be very cognizant of what will happen if I make the decision to draw and employ it.

It was stressed to us in our training and frequently since that the Taser is not to be used as a behavior modification tool. It is used to prevent serious injury to the officer or anyone else on the scene. And for this, it is a fantastic tool. The electricity locks up the muscle's in a person's body. The cycle (with the darts) lasts five seconds which in a heated situation is an eternity and gives the officer time to get control of the subject whether that is pinning them to the ground, handcuffing them, or whatever is needed to deescalate the situation. I have yet to even draw it, but I like knowing that it's there if the situation calls for it.

Unfortunately, there are a number of officers out there who use them when a person gets a little mouthy or doesn't comply right away or just simply makes the officer mad. This is, of course, completely unacceptable; but the fact is that our society has really failed to crack down on this and put a stop to it. We tut-tut when we see videos of abuses, but no one does anything. I think that many of us deep down feel the person deserved it, that they should have just shut up and done what the officer told them. Sometimes this is the case, however it also a fact that many people are Tased who should not be. It's easy for an officer who deals with a lot of scumbags to let their temper get the best of them, to give someone a 50,000 volt shot, because they want a release and since the Taser is billed as less-than-lethal, why not? I'm not saying it's right, far from it. However law enforcement officials and security officers who carry Tasers are human beings with all of the foibles that comes with.

Anyone with the authority carried by a law enforcement official should be held to a higher standard, though, and Taser abuse should be dealt with swiftly and harshly. We as a society do need to come together and ask ourselves, "What should cops be allowed to do?" It's easy to see something happen to someone else and not worry about it, but if we become complacent it could be us or a loved one riding the lightning for no good reason.

Weekly Secret

Isn't it funny how religion and politics can so easily get in the way of friendships? I think it's the way that these things are so personal to us. Someone with a differing view isn't just rejecting our view, they are rejecting us personally. Or at least that's how it often feels. Somehow we need to learn to respect each other's beliefs and to not take a difference of opinion as a rejection of ourselves. This is, of course, easier written than done, but still a goal worthy of striving for.