In conjunction with the release of his book Conscience of a Liberal, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is now keeping a blog with the same title. The book is on my to-read list, but the blog has plenty of interesting morsels for the progressive mind. Recommended.
I was telling a friend the other day that I want to live long enough to see a post-Singularity age when I can upload my consciousness into the digital universe. I’m fairly certain that, in cyberspace, there aren’t annoying little microbes. And no phlegm and no nausea (unless you’re into that sort of thing). Free of such distractions, I could concentrate all my energies on establishing myself as the planet’s first silicon-based benevolent dictator. Except that I would eventually become overly enamored with the trappings of power and the humans decide to rise up in rebellion. But that’s a story to save for the sequel.
I’m feeling a little better. I had no idea that so many people out there were inclined to give me lapdances. To all of you I had to turn away because of exhaustion, my sincere apologies. However, I do maintain a list of emergency lapdance volunteers, should the need arise again.
I thought I should post something before I feel too crappy to be even mildly amusing. I woke up this morning with a sore throat and things haven’t gotten better over the course of the day. Maybe I should consider moving to a warm, dry climate. But I think sunshine every day would seriously depress me. There’s something about the occasional streak of gloomy days that is familiar and comforting, like a well-worn blanket.
Send lapdancers and echinacea.
Shirley MacLaine writes in her new book that a UFO paid a visit to Dennis Kucinich. And while there was no probing of body cavities, MacLaine claims that the UFO left Kucinich with marching orders:
It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed
he couldn’t comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and
heard directions in his mind.
I asked my Altairian overlords about this news and they insisted they had nothing to do with it. “That guy majorly creeps us out,” they said as they finished mutilating yet another cow. They think it might’ve been the N’zzt (if it doesn’t tickle the back of your nose, you’re not pronouncing it correctly). Apparently, the N’zzt try to conquer worlds by brainwashing a prominent member of the native species and using him/her as a puppet to control the locals and pave the way for invasion. Fortunately for us, the N’zzt don’t have the greatest political instincts in the universe.
The 60 Minutes piece about the alarming increase in megafires that I watched last night was, in light of today’s news about the mass evacuations in California caused by massive blazes, uncannily timely. The head of the federal firefighting forces featured in last night’s piece stated that he and his teams have no doubt that climate change is playing a major role in the longer and harsher fire seasons now confronting them.
On a completely unrelated note, I have a short posting at the BBC regarding the ADA Restoration Act.
Max McGee, former Packer and later the team’s color announcer, died yesterday. Max was the voice of the Packers for most of my years growing up in Wisconsin. I remember listening to him and Jim Irvin on the car radio as we drove home from weekends in Door County. Even when we watched the games at home, we often turned down the sound on the television and turned on the radio; McGee’s avuncular and plainspoken style was so much more agreeable than the blaring prattle of the network sportscasters. I’m saddened to know that he’s no longer with us.
In an announcement that is sure to spawn terabytes of slash fiction, J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore, the uber-wizard and Hogwarts headmaster from the Harry Potter books, is gay. Christian conservatives will happily pounce on this news as it doesn’t involve elected officials or megachurch pastors. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rowling intended this revelation to be a final “fuck you” to all the zealots who tried to ban her books from libraries and schools. I expect to see lots of dudes with long, flowing beards dressed in wizard robes at the next pride parade.
Voice recognition software can be clunky, especially when trying to navigate a graphical interface. Researchers are experimenting with a vocal joystick that uses consonant and vowel sounds to move and click the mouse. It’s portrayed as a more efficient alternative to speech recognition. The concept is interesting, although I’m not sure I’d want to use such an interface on a regular basis. An hour’s worth of gaming would leave me with a sore throat.
It’s been almost five years since I was last hospitalized (and that was a brief overnight stay due to a raging case of chicken pox). And unless I’m deathly ill or have some sort of foreign object protruding from my body, I’m going to do my best to avoid hospitals like, well, the plague. Health experts are projecting that antibiotic-resistant infections like MRSA could be killing more people than HIV. Equally disturbing is the fact that hospitals aren’t the only breeding grounds for these superbugs; a teenager recently died from MRSA that he probably picked up at school.
I’ll admit that I probably bear some responsibility for these germs run amok. Whenever I get a respiratory infection, I’m usually put on antibiotics as a precautionary measure. From a public health perspective, that’s probably not the smartest strategy. A MRSA infection would be pretty bad news for me on several levels. Besides the obvious health effects, my nurses probably wouldn’t come near me without full isolation suits. And if I became a carrier, I can forget about ever recruiting new caregivers.
Perhaps I need to give my immune system a workout to ensure I can defend myself from any microbial invasion. Parents, send your runny-nosed kids over here to breathe on me for an afternoon. We can watch Pixar movies together and eat from the same bowl of pudding. For good measure, I’ll even let them stick their fingers in my trachea. Kids always get a kick out of that.
My visitor logs continue to be a source of amusement for me. Someone entered this search phrase a few hours ago:
“disability lawyer porn star”
Followed shortly thereafter by:
“disability lawyer stud”
Followed immediately by:
“disability lawyer tiny penis”
This person seems to have a decidedly mixed opinion of “disability lawyers” in general or of me in particular.