Something for San Franciscans to be proud of 2008

Really nice news in my email this morning: Healthy San Francisco is now providing health care to over half of the 60,000 uninsured residents the program is expected to reach. This is after just 15 months and it's wonderful to think about the impact this has not only on the city economy, but also on individuals' lives.

I'm proud to live in a city where the practicality of universal heath care is being demonstrated.

You can hear more about the program, and about hopes that other cites & counties around the country will take similar efforts in this short video from Mayor Gavin Newsom:

Unexpected Time Off 2008

Tuesday night after dinner Joe and I were going to go over to Momi Toby's cafe and do an hour or so of work to make our Wednesdays go better. Since it's just round the corner I was carrying my laptop in my hands rather than in my backpack. On the bottom step I wasn't paying close attention to my feet and slipped, twisting my ankle to the side sharply. Fortunately, I had my precious lovely 12" PowerBook in my hands and so without thinking, instead of putting my hand out to catch myself and probably breaking my wrist or something, I landed hard on the sidewalk on my ass. Let's just say it's good that baby's got back; big bruise, but no lasting harm.

What was clearly not okay was my ankle. I lay still and had Joe bring me a big ice pack immediately so my foot could chill down while I assessed my condition without trying to stand. Clearly gonna be a bruise on my butt, yep. Scraped the right ankle a little falling, but doesn't feel like any internal problem, okay. But that left ankle, not good. Big twist and I think there was a kind of a noise. On the bright side, a very cautious exploratory wiggle of the big toe hurts like hell on the top of the foot but doesn't make me scream.

So into a cab, off to the ER and back home a couple hours later with a splint & crutches. Lay in bed or sat on the couch with my foot raised up on an ottoman all day yesterday. In the evening crutched my way verrrry carefully down the stairs for door to door delivery to & from Absinthe for a simply lovely anniversary celebration: their first cocktail pairing dinner.

This morning a follow-up appointment with the doctor to learn, yes, a break, but it's more of a chip really and at this point I'm not going to damage it further provided I keep it elevated & let it heal for week. No going to work. My company doesn't generally allow telecommuting (*sigh*) and if I can't go to work I'm certainly not making the planned weekend trip to Vegas, so I'm suddenly and surprisingly faced with the next 5 days completely free except for the physical constraints.

We'll see how I do at actually catching up on my reading and online projects, but prepare yourselves for more than the usual amount of blogging.

Interesting details about Hillary Clinton's health care plan 2007

Looks like good analysis here by Maggie Mahar. More details in her comments further in the thread too. (Thanks to Uncle Larry for the linky goodness).

old snippets 2007

Probably written between 2000-2002:

I am actually partially deaf. I have a condition called otosclerosis wherein the small bones of the ear fuse together. This has so far only affected my right ear. I had a surgery about 6 or 7 years ago and they put a little steel and teflon piston in my ear. Now I'm bionic. :) It did help a lot. I think my hearing is probably only down about 30% in that ear now. There is a possibility that the condition will affect the other ear at some point, but so far so good.

Remember Chernobyl 2006

Twenty years ago today a terrible accident befell the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The effects of that disaster are with us still and will be with us for generations to come.

The Chernobyl disaster arose from an accident that occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. It is regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Because there was no containment building, a plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the eastern United States. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus according to official post-Sovietic data ^[1]. According to the 2006 TORCH report, half of the radioactive fallout landed outside those three Soviet countries ^{[2] [3]}. The disaster released over four hundred times more radiation than the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.
[read the full Wikipedia article here]

The problem is that radiation doesn't just go out like a fire and that its effects are profound, very long-lasting, and can be fundamentally damaging to living creatures.

Photographer Paul Fusco has documented the Chernobyl Legacy and its impact on humans. This photo essay with audio commentary is incredibly powerful and disturbing.

You need to face this.

Anyone who thinks that the risks of the use of atomic energy - for power or weapons - are exaggerated needs to see this. Maybe it's manageable. Maybe. But I think about new babies being born almost two decades after this incident who are deformed to the point of being unable to sit or stand, who are unable to recognize their parents, whose bodies are altered by mutation such that their vital organs extend in growths outside the bounds of the normal human silhouette. Do we really think that our clever species can't come up with a better way to generate power? Or is it that those other methods aren't as profitable and therefore less appealing to the powerful who are not measuring quality of human life as the most important bottom line?

According to an Associated Press article by Natasha Lisova, Ukrainians Mark 20 Years Since Chernobyl,

About 350,000 people were evacuated from their homes following the explosion, never to return. A whole city, Pripyat, and dozens of villages were left to decay, and experts say some may not be habitable for centuries or longer.

The protective "sarcophagus" that was hastily erected over Reactor No. 4 is now crumbling, and a $1.2 billion project to replace it remains on the drawing board. Yushchenko has said he expects work to begin this year, and be completed around 2010.

The new shelter is designed to last for 100 years, although officials say the plant contains particles whose radioactivity could last tens of thousands of years.

Tens of thousands of years. Humankind isn't ready to plan for that scale of time. We must demand our leaders step back from these dangers. We must not goad additional countries into the use of atomic power and atomic weaponry.

We live in one shared atmosphere. One week after Chernobyl there were measurable radiation differences planetwide. Even if you don't care about the rest of the world, your nation depends on the safety and biological health of other nations.

The best path to a strong, prosperous America is a strong, prosperous world. Our leaders must acknowledge that or we must change our leaders before they damage us irrevocably.

Initial thoughts on strep throat 2006

This freakin' sucks. I do not like strep throat at all.

A Few Tips for People With Vaginas 2006

- Keep your mini-pads/panty liners in your underwear drawer instead of the bathroom. Duh. Why didn't I think of this a decade ago?

- (this one works for people without vaginas too) Maybe you like the messy sex but not the mess afterwards, maybe you or your playmate have rough callused fingers (or tender parts). Enjoy life more with a silky sexy sheet to lay on the bed under you to catch stray spills and a supply of medical examination gloves. (Before you buy gloves, figure out if you're sensitive to them. There are quite a few varieties. You will probably not want the kind with powder inside.)

- One of the best cures for cramps is an orgasm. Also may cure hiccups and relieve depression.

- Another great cure for cramps is a heating pad. These patches from Thermacare are great. I wear them all day and don't have to miss any work or spend 2 hours in misery during the really bad spell. Also: nice warm tummy.

More tips anyone would care to share? If you want to post anonymously, just make up some clever name and put "example@example.org" for the mail.

(If you've been shocked or offended by this post, I think you are being a dork. Women bleed. Sex is fun. Get over it or go read some other site.)

Recovering from a bad night's sleep 2005

I slept very poorly on Monday night. Probably a combination of factors - excitement about my upcoming trip, my natural inclination to stay up past midnight, garbage day noise outside, an odd dream, a thai ice tea at lunch (d'oh!) - but it left me groggy and not functioning at my usual pace yesterday.

Knowing that I need to get a lot done at work this week and that I was not going to be productive for the last hour and a half of my work day given my sleepy condition, I left early. On the way home I stopped off at the store to at least accomplish one "to-do" on my list. While there I also bought a few "Insomnia rebound" supplies.

According to Wikipedia,

Tryptophan is an amino acid and essential in human nutrition... Tryptophan is also a precursor for serotonin (a neurotransmitter) and melatonin (a neurohormone)... Tryptophan is particularly plentiful in chocolate, oats, bananas, dried dates, milk, cottage cheese, meat, fish, turkey, and peanuts.

Melatonin, or 5-methoxy-N-acetyltryptamine, is a hormone produced by pinealocytes in the pineal gland, located in the brain, but also in the retina and GI tract. It is a derivative of the amino acid tryptophan... Melatonin helps regulate sleep-wake or circadian rhythms.

So, when I got back to my place around 5:30pm, I had the following dinner while I checked up on some email and other low-key tasks:

• a small glass of milk
• a big spoonful of peanut butter (about 2 or 3 Tablespoons worth)
• two slices of turkey (with Trader Joe's Raspberry Chipotle Sauce to spice things up)

I'd had a big serving of eggplant & bean cake at lunch, so didn't feel too bad about my lack of vegetables. Plus all that was very filling since I don't normally take in such a big dose of protein at one sitting.

One other thing I think may have helped was that I did not play any music - I will normally put iTunes on shuffle play - and the silence may have helped with lulling me towards sleep.

By 7:15pm I was yawning and began doing my pre-sleep tooth care, etc. I must have gone to bed between 7:45pm and 8, but I was very drowsy and didn't note the exact time. I figured I'd probably nap for a couple hours and then get up and have a glass of warm milk to knock myself out again.

Instead I slept solidly through the night, surfacing at around 3:30am briefly and then falling right back asleep. When my alarm went off at 6:40am, I awoke refreshed and alert. Hooray for tryptophan!