Well, it’s comforting to know that amid a growing swine flu outbreak in the United States, Arlen Specter can trump a virus. Maybe this isn’t going to be a pandemic. After all, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer covered Specter’s shift to the left before the swine flu tonight.
Since the weekend, the swine flu has spread to more states in the US, and given the incubation period and the laboratory identification lag phase, we can expect that just in time for the this weekend’s run for the roses in Louisville, Kentucky, some folks will find themselves wondering if they should make that trip to Churchill Downs or not. Three weeks from now there will likely be a spike in cases in Kentucky. Who can stay home sick from the Derby?
You can. It bears repeating that the CDC urges all of those who are ill to stay home one day beyond the day all symptoms subside. Yes, that is one day beyond, and not one day into symptoms, as is the usual practice in our capitalistic, thou must not call in sick society. The CDC is asking business owners to proactively consider the flu.
If you are well enough to go to the Derby though, put some money down on Advice for me.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Beware the Barking Pig, Be He Human or Swine
The Center for Disease Control has confirmed cases of swine flu in San Diego, California, and San Antonio, Texas. They will update their case list at 3:00 p.m. today.
Here are some important facts about swine flu:
This influenza virus is spread from person to person by respiratory droplet, the same way other respiratory viruses spread. People can also spread the infection to pigs and vice versa. You cannot get the virus from eating pork.
The symptoms of swine flu in people include fever, fatigue, cough, runny nose and sometimes vomiting and diarhhea. The CDC reports that pigs with swine flu appear depressed (don’t ask me) and cough (sounds like barking).
There is no human vaccine for swine flu.
If you have swine flu symptoms, it is important to avoid contact with other people and see your doctor. The current strain is responding to two antiviral drugs, so if you see your doctor within the first five days, you can get tested and potentially treated. That window is ten days for children. At this point the virus is striking mainly adults.
Bottom line for North Carolinians this weekend: Make a trip to the store for some hand sanitizer and be wary of close contact with people who say they have “a cold,” especially if they are just back from Texas or California. It’s safe to go to Allen and Sons Barbecue for pork this weekend. As for the Piedmont Farm Tour, it’s probably more likely that a visitor would infect a pig than a pig would infect a visitor. Nonetheless, steer clear of sad, barking pigs.
Here are some important facts about swine flu:
This influenza virus is spread from person to person by respiratory droplet, the same way other respiratory viruses spread. People can also spread the infection to pigs and vice versa. You cannot get the virus from eating pork.
The symptoms of swine flu in people include fever, fatigue, cough, runny nose and sometimes vomiting and diarhhea. The CDC reports that pigs with swine flu appear depressed (don’t ask me) and cough (sounds like barking).
There is no human vaccine for swine flu.
If you have swine flu symptoms, it is important to avoid contact with other people and see your doctor. The current strain is responding to two antiviral drugs, so if you see your doctor within the first five days, you can get tested and potentially treated. That window is ten days for children. At this point the virus is striking mainly adults.
Bottom line for North Carolinians this weekend: Make a trip to the store for some hand sanitizer and be wary of close contact with people who say they have “a cold,” especially if they are just back from Texas or California. It’s safe to go to Allen and Sons Barbecue for pork this weekend. As for the Piedmont Farm Tour, it’s probably more likely that a visitor would infect a pig than a pig would infect a visitor. Nonetheless, steer clear of sad, barking pigs.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
With Liberty and Genetic Fairness for All
My DNA still scares me. No, I’m not talking about the untimely deaths of my parents.
Last Sunday the New York Times reported that some states and the FBI are now routinely collecting DNA samples (a cheek swab) from people being detained for crimes. The premise is that they need a database to solve future crimes. The rationale is that it is no different than fingerprints.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I understand that the FBI and even local police departments would like to have DNA databases. Two things: Law enforcement officials could solve all crimes more quickly if we all had a government-placed microchip implanted in our shoulders like prized sporting dogs. Let’s not do that. Secondly, if the people that are detained but then released for crimes are the victims of racial profiling, then the people who are having their cheeks swabbed are also the subjects of racial profiling.
If we need a DNA database to solve crimes, then shouldn't all citizens be on file? And illegal immigrants? Good question: I don’t have all the answers today.
I can’t even think of all the questions, and that’s my point. There should be a multidisciplinary presidential task force taking stock of all applications coming out of the burgeoning field of genetics and considering the ethical and legal ramifications of the technologies to protect us.
In December, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Reviews reported that Obama wanted to create “an inter-agency task force on genomics research,” but the article went on to describe research initiatives that would be improved by the Obama presence in the White House. I would like to see some air of caution in the rhetoric of progress.
While Obama says that he introduced the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed into law in 2008, it would appear that this legislation only protects our rights with employers and insurers, not with law enforcement.
Is there any indication that the Coalition for Genetic Fairness might broaden its purpose to investigate this discriminatory collection of DNA by law enforcement? I'm going to see if they will.
As we translate biomedical research into practical application, there should be some public comfort that we are not headed toward a flawed futuristic society.
Last Sunday the New York Times reported that some states and the FBI are now routinely collecting DNA samples (a cheek swab) from people being detained for crimes. The premise is that they need a database to solve future crimes. The rationale is that it is no different than fingerprints.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I understand that the FBI and even local police departments would like to have DNA databases. Two things: Law enforcement officials could solve all crimes more quickly if we all had a government-placed microchip implanted in our shoulders like prized sporting dogs. Let’s not do that. Secondly, if the people that are detained but then released for crimes are the victims of racial profiling, then the people who are having their cheeks swabbed are also the subjects of racial profiling.
If we need a DNA database to solve crimes, then shouldn't all citizens be on file? And illegal immigrants? Good question: I don’t have all the answers today.
I can’t even think of all the questions, and that’s my point. There should be a multidisciplinary presidential task force taking stock of all applications coming out of the burgeoning field of genetics and considering the ethical and legal ramifications of the technologies to protect us.
In December, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Reviews reported that Obama wanted to create “an inter-agency task force on genomics research,” but the article went on to describe research initiatives that would be improved by the Obama presence in the White House. I would like to see some air of caution in the rhetoric of progress.
While Obama says that he introduced the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed into law in 2008, it would appear that this legislation only protects our rights with employers and insurers, not with law enforcement.
Is there any indication that the Coalition for Genetic Fairness might broaden its purpose to investigate this discriminatory collection of DNA by law enforcement? I'm going to see if they will.
As we translate biomedical research into practical application, there should be some public comfort that we are not headed toward a flawed futuristic society.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Professor Chism and the Sacred Heart Weekend
A crescent moon
A lilting tune
A prayer that soars above
Your daughters sing
While vistas ring
To honor the school we love...
Becky and I go way back to Saturday eighth grade Algebra class at that other high school across town. We were the French version of the foreign language/science geeks at Sacred Heart Academy, class of 1982. Together we attended French theater of the absurd plays in downtown Louisville, said the Angelus in French every Friday at noon in Madame Danzig's classroom with the view of the campus dogwoods, and endured the biting sarcasm of Father Wagner's A.P. English class.
In driving rain I picked up Becky in my white Toyota Corolla to go to Showcase Cinemas to see a movie the first night I got my license. Becky drove me to KFC for senior lunch the first Friday she had her Honda Civic.
I gave up French; she gave up science. Somewhere along the way we lost touch.
Her flight arrives this afternoon. Rain is in the forecast. We're seeing Louisvillian Jon Jory's production of Pride and Prejudice on the UNC campus. We're taking in a comedy show at Dirty South Improv. And we're catching up. Where to begin? Maybe hello. Or better still, bonjour!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Keen Stars Were Twinkling
I’m still reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.
It is very difficult to know all that he was attempting to accomplish in this work. Certainly there is meditation on houses as structures, and houses as homes. That I was expecting. There is a chapter on daydreams. There is writing about the process of creating. Bachelard quotes French writers I didn’t read in college.
“An artist does not create the way he lives, he lives the way he creates.” Jean Lescure
Interestingly Proust, whom I have read, is also quoted. The reason this is significant to me is that in describing this book briefly to a friend in the gym, he said, “sounds a little like Proust.”
Poetry is the thread that unites the chapters. Though not on every page, Bachelard has sprinkled verse throughout the text, and when he does, he gives the poem in French followed by a translation in English.
Mainly Bachelard attempts to deconstruct poetry.
Bachelard considers the imagery of doors and forests: “On May nights, when so many doors are closed, there is one that is just barely ajar. We have only to give it a very slight push! The hinges have been well oiled. And our fate becomes visible.”
The forest represents a “limitless world.”
I made use of a forest setting in two chapters of “Acoustic Memory”—one where the lovers are together and one where Raven longs for Gray. The glass walls of the Chapel Hill Public Library allow a view of a forest and facilitate work on pastoral scenes.
But back to Bachelard, in deconstructing poetry, he considers imagery and also sound, but not rhythm (at least not that I have seen yet—I confess I am not reading this book sequentially). He writes pages about Baudelaire’s use of the word vast and the phonation of the word vast. In the middle of this long rant, there is a gem of a metaphor for the human voice. The voice is a “delicate little Aeolian harp that nature has set at the entrance to our breathing” and it “is really a sixth sense, which followed and surpassed the others.”
More about Bachelard another day.
I look out the window of my airplane and see darkness penetrated by a strobe-like, red light that momentarily illuminates the wing—flicker, flicker, flicker. I’ve just flown over Chicago.
And here I will leave you with one of my favorite excerpts from a Shelley poem with a much more romantic take on the voice of a beloved:
"Though the sound overpowers, sing again, with your dear voice revealing a tone of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one."
It is very difficult to know all that he was attempting to accomplish in this work. Certainly there is meditation on houses as structures, and houses as homes. That I was expecting. There is a chapter on daydreams. There is writing about the process of creating. Bachelard quotes French writers I didn’t read in college.
“An artist does not create the way he lives, he lives the way he creates.” Jean Lescure
Interestingly Proust, whom I have read, is also quoted. The reason this is significant to me is that in describing this book briefly to a friend in the gym, he said, “sounds a little like Proust.”
Poetry is the thread that unites the chapters. Though not on every page, Bachelard has sprinkled verse throughout the text, and when he does, he gives the poem in French followed by a translation in English.
Mainly Bachelard attempts to deconstruct poetry.
Bachelard considers the imagery of doors and forests: “On May nights, when so many doors are closed, there is one that is just barely ajar. We have only to give it a very slight push! The hinges have been well oiled. And our fate becomes visible.”
The forest represents a “limitless world.”
I made use of a forest setting in two chapters of “Acoustic Memory”—one where the lovers are together and one where Raven longs for Gray. The glass walls of the Chapel Hill Public Library allow a view of a forest and facilitate work on pastoral scenes.
But back to Bachelard, in deconstructing poetry, he considers imagery and also sound, but not rhythm (at least not that I have seen yet—I confess I am not reading this book sequentially). He writes pages about Baudelaire’s use of the word vast and the phonation of the word vast. In the middle of this long rant, there is a gem of a metaphor for the human voice. The voice is a “delicate little Aeolian harp that nature has set at the entrance to our breathing” and it “is really a sixth sense, which followed and surpassed the others.”
More about Bachelard another day.
I look out the window of my airplane and see darkness penetrated by a strobe-like, red light that momentarily illuminates the wing—flicker, flicker, flicker. I’ve just flown over Chicago.
And here I will leave you with one of my favorite excerpts from a Shelley poem with a much more romantic take on the voice of a beloved:
"Though the sound overpowers, sing again, with your dear voice revealing a tone of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one."
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Silence and Space
Somewhere above Montana and surrounded by the snow.
Somewhere above Montana there's places you oughta go.
Somewhere above Montana the snow mutes all the sound.
Somewhere above Montana with only memories around.
I'm back in a mountain fortress, the place in my manuscript where Raven came to a turning point in the early drafts. The weakness in your plot, said a trusted friend, is that Raven never decides. True. She was weak. No more. I'm at this fortress strong and Raven is going to emerge, like the knight down the hall, with armor, ready to fight for her honor.
The stark terrain of the Rockies is the truth, as it was established over a hundred million years ago. The truth, like the mountains, is all that can emerge with time.
In the mountains, by herself, Raven looks inward and knows her truth. Then, fearlessly, she acts. The other ending was too cliche. This one is going to be true.
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