According to a recent Gallup poll, nurses were ranked as the most being the most ethical and trustworthy professionals.
Attorneys were ranked #19.
You have no idea how much shit I’m going to get from my nurses once they get wind of this. And in the interest of ensuring my own continued health and well-being, I will emphatically declare my concurrence with the poll results. Nurses are, in fact, a most estimable lot and I have no doubt that many of my nurses would qualify for sainthood if given the opportunity.
Okay, I’m gonna quit it before I completely lose my dignity.
I’m trying to think of an audiobook to download onto my iPod for the plane to Baltimore. I’ve been meaning to read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and I saw it on Audible. Any other suggestions?

I had another Humphrey Fellows session today. I was joking with a friend that we need to have a session on a topic that doesn’t leave us completely depressed afterwards. Because right now I’m convinced that we’ll all be scrounging landfills for food in a few years because a loaf of bread will cost a hundred dollars. And that’s the good scenario. The worst-case scenario is that we get hit with a terrorist attack that makes 9/11 look amateurish. I better make that trip to Vegas soon, before everything goes to hell.
Almost at page 300 in the book. I’m thinking another 150-200 pages, but conciseness has never been my strong suit.

I was committing the rare act of channel surfing last night when I stumbled across an HBO documentary on the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley, with a particular focus on the various fetish subgenres. Oh. My. God. I usually consider myself a sophisticate in matters of human sexuality, but I am a really a wide-eyed innocent when actually confronted with some of this stuff. Sex with lactating women. Sex with women of extremely short stature. Sex with extremely large women. Sex with guys dressed up like Sasquatch. Sex between old guys and young women. I actually had to look away a couple times. Given the seemingly infinite range of stimuli that will arouse sexual desire, I’m convinced there’s a market for porn featuring actors with disabilities. Some enterprising soul could probably turn a nice profit if they pursued the idea aggressively enough.
And before you get the wrong idea, no, I’m not interested in being on screen. I’d rather write and direct. Although I could probably be persuaded to substitute in a pinch, if I’m matched with the appropriate co-star (warning: NSFW).

I don’t get all the noise we’re hearing about Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather and who’s going to sit in what chair on what nightly newscast. I haven’t watched a network news broadcast in at least ten years. All of my news comes from the Net, NPR, and a few weekly magazines. Sitting through a 30-minutes newscast (20 minutes if you exclude the commercials) seems like a monstrous waste of time to me. If I really need a dose of television news, I’ll flip on CNN for a few minutes. In general, though, I’m not compelled to listen to the dronings of a bland white male on a daily basis.
I heard an interesting analogy yesterday. It was in the course of a discussion about the difficulties people with disabilities experience when trying to access the services they need, whether it’s health care, job training, housing, etc. Here’s the analogy: imagine yourself in the Mall of America. Scattered throughout the mall are directories that list vendors specializing in categories like clothing, electronics, books, overpriced food served in a creepy atmosphere, whatever. The directory shows you where the vendors are located in the mall, making it a relatively easy task to find them. Now imagine trying to navigate the mall without the directory. This is the struggle that many people with disabilities confront. There is an abundance of services and programs available to them, but most people have no idea that those services exist or how to access them. It’s this information gap that is one of the biggest sources of frustration for those of us in the world of disability policy. The success of a particular individual in accessing appropriate services is entirely dependent on the quality of information they receive from teachers, social workers, peers, and any number of other sources. And if that information is inaccurate or simply isn’t conveyed, the individual is denied services or opportunities that could make all the difference.

Minor correction to yesterday’s entry. It was a woman with a spinal cord injury. As Paul noted, treating someone with a spinal cord is not exactly newsworthy.
I’ve often wondered what I’d want done with my body after I’m gone. Right now, my living will states that I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the Seine. But then I stumbled across LifeGem, a place that takes some of the carbon from your remains and turns it into a small diamond. A bit sentimental, but still, an interesting concept. There’s something poetic about having a little piece of yourself turned into a jewel. Chances are that little gemstone would be around long after everyone who knew you had perished. However, I can’t decide on a radiant cut or a princess cut.
This idea came from a list of science-related things to try before (or after) you die. Can someone hook me up with the chance to pet a tiger? I totally want to try that.