pharmacokinetics or better living through chemistry

Before repairing to bashing the industrial standards of Asian maunfacturers for toothpaste with high lead-content, and eliding over our own thiftiness for going with the lowest bidder in the first place, the Western world makes and has made for decades quite enough poisonous products all on its own.  One piece that rather made my skin crawl and left me shuddering for the checkout girl where H and I went shopping just a little bit earlier concerned studies showing that Bisphenol A leeches from thermal-receipt paper through the skin and into the body just from casual handling.  It's nearly as devastating as the formaldehyde that leaks out of new furniture and carpeting.

Though Bisphenol A (BPA) has been synthesized since the 1930s, more familar as the acetone in finger-nail polish remover and paint-thinner--what a compliment to one's home chemistry set--it has never been proven safe, and the substance, ubiquitous and seemingly innocent, sparks the occasional uproar, like not practicing microwave cookery in microwave-safe plastic containers, PVC piping, and because it mimicks estrogen and acts as a replacement for the hormone, it has been attributed to a wide range of disorders that could  seem to have no other explanation, like frequency of breast cancer, premature birth, liver disfunction and even obseity and attention deficiency.  Even places, like the European Union and Canada, that have enacted restrictions against environmental BPA probably are not looking to their cash registers yet.  In Germany, one's receipts are forced on one or left to gather as trash at the end of the shopping conveyor belt, but there was a trend that's gone away not to handle money, at least not to put change in the customer's hand but offer it up on such a tray.  Surely the thermal printer and point-of-sale cartels could be convinced to employ safer means.  Next time, everyone should refuse a printed receipt, when it's not needed, and tell the cashier exactly why.

symbols of state or no we canntibus

All these instant discussion of gridlock that will be visited on the American people from the power-shift away from the Democratic Party, aside from seeming like this was a baited, rehearsed response, made me wonder a bit at the metaphor and all the taut analogies and wonderful anachronisms in common parlance.

There are no gatekeepers or linemen, even by abstraction, in politics and unhealthy, dispirited debate could result in an impasse that could at least mitigate reprisals and minimize the statecraft of compromise that undoes better intentions. Figuratively, we deal in icons and language that no longer resembles the product or the process they represent, not recognizable except as their pictograms and few would have the experience or dexterity to use them: no one uses a telephone with a rotary dial, emails appear as envelops, padlocks, there are no dollar signs on the dollar, piggy-banks, search with a magnifying glass, megaphone, few have paint palettes or could translate musical notation, played on a victrola.

Maybe venom and vitriol are good offense but maybe like the icons, they hark back to some exercise that has fallen away. In addition to the altered topography of capitol-players, which may or may not be attributable to apathy over choice, Californians have folded on their efforts to regulate, milk and otherwise to decriminalize marijuana, spooked by the legal liability being a forerunner could present.

aqua teen hunger force

Comparisons of genetically modified organisms to Dr. Frankenstein is a bit of an insult, since he did not go to mad scientist school for all those years to be called Mr. Frankenstein, and he reanimated a human cadaver, not a vegetable or a fish, and he brought his monster to life without gene manipulation nonsense. There is a debate over the American Food and Drug Administration's being poised to endorse the sale of genetically altered salmon as fit for aquaculture and fit for human consumption. This move seems very ill advised--to dabble with Mother Nature--especially at the behest of business people and fisher-folk. Animal husbandry has taken thousands of years of selective breeding to produce contemporary livestock and stabbing straight to an animal's DNA is a big presumption.  Europe is right to proceed with extreme caution and skepticism on this front.  There is a significant portion of any creature's genetic code that researchers have dismissed as redundant or hitchhiking, and tinkering with the chemicals that give this salmon the ability to mature faster may mean that its shelf-life is severely reduced, prone to food poisoning, or that its immune system is not so hardy. The gene responsible for fast growth could compromise safety by making venomous fish or hyper-intelligent fish who are more vocal about being eaten. And what if these GM salmon interbreed with natural populations? Salmon may lose their ability to navigate fresh- and salt-waters, the wild populations could get sick, or things could turn out like the Secret of NIMH.

tarnhelm or with my sword and magic helmet

Because I do not have a regular Hausartz, after I was discharged from the hospital, they released to me the photographs and a CD of the magnetic resonance images of my head.  The software on the CD would animate the whole sequence, and it was fascinating to watch, although it was a bit gruesome to see my head slowly materialize with the squiggle of an ear, then build up layer by layer to the wrinkles of my brain and naked eyeballs.  It made me think of that ghastly vintage pulp science-fiction paperback cover art, where just the suggestion of a shadow is frightening enough for the whole book.  My next resolution is to get a regular physician, not only to keep my records straight, but also so I don't hesitate and procrastinate until I have to hopping mad enough to go to the emergency room.

when I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery

Though I do not presume to know more about the effects of invisible volcanic ash on jet engines than assembled experts, pilots and government by committee, there seems to be more and more of these events of extreme caution that cry wolf or rather swine flu that's left us with an embarassment of spoiled vaccine doses or nacked body-scanners or firewalls.  Twinkle-twinkle, little bat--how I wonder where you're at... I hate to sound angry and second-guess good intentions--I feel like a tea party-goer.  It is not as if the internet, however, was invented for seediness or miscreants, nor the miracle of flight for underpants bombers, nor Mortimer J. Marker or spray-paint for huffing.  More protections are afforded for the abusers and we are kept too safe for misguided reasons.

there's a lake of stew and soda-pop too and you can paddle all around in a big canoe

On Sunday, Obama pushed through the much simonized the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, and I have hope that this is a good thing for America.  A lot of compromise and negotiation went into this and are still to come, surely there are more to come with Senate input.  I just hope that this does not go the way of other recent, historic overhauls like the Department of Homeland Security or Rumsfeld's mad-bomber approach to reforming the civil service system with NSPS (National Security Personnel System), which is now being rescinded or the half a dozen changes of nomenclature promulgated by the Ministry of Revisions.  One can read the full text from the Library of Congress here.
There has been a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides.  Here is a bit of point/counterpoint.  First Reuter's News Services issued this fact box with a timeline.

...WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR

-Insurance companies will be barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.  Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be restricted.
-Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
-A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between 55 and 64.
-Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughbut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate...
WHAT HAPPENS IN 2011
-Employers are required to disclose the value of health benefits of employees' tax returns...
There is a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides, and here is a little bit of point/counterpoint.

Investors' Digest Daily has issued the counter-argument:
-You are young and don't want health insurance?  You are starting up a small business and need to minize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego personal insurance?  Tough.  You have to pay $750 per annum for that "privilege."
-Health insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status.
-Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them cost sharing, despite customer wishes.
-As a hospital administrator, you can only expand your facility if and only if it is located in a county whose population has grown 150% in the last five years proportionally to the population of the surrounding state.
-Employers can no longer offer flexible spending plans, even if that's what the worker wants.

H and I talked about these developments a little bit, and suspects that German who abandon its social healthcare system, if they could get away with it, no matter how equitable it is.  I just hope there is some convergent evolution on the part of America.

spring funk

For this past week, I've not felt motivated to take much advantage of the nicer weather, and H told me about a phenomenon called Frühjahrsmüdigkeit, Spring time tiredness--like a seasonal affective disorder.  I've just been sleepy, and although warmer and squandrons of migrating water fowl are overhead, the sun is still conspicuously absent and threatens prolonged periods of rain.

grippa porcina

As if there wasn't enough already to stroke one's worry-stone over, now comes the latest cause for mass-hysteria, neatly packaged and easily digested--swine flu. Apparently the nebulous ecomonic situation has become no longer captivating, and now a scenario, ham-fisted, that only the machinery of big governments comes along, begging intervention and a fresh, contained medical bail-out. Too clumsy to intervene in a supposedly self-regulating system, like world finance, it is as if the masses wanted something bureaucratic to believe in--or else, the government gets the chance to assert its relevance again. Avian influenza seemed much more scary, death rained from the skies, than whatever pig flu is made out to be, killer packs of zombie hogs--disfigurement from symptoms, including a piggy snout? The timing is superb, as is the chorus of panic.