Category Archives: Science

May 30, 2012 · 0:00

FiftyFourAndAHalf.Com’s Secret to Increasing Your Stats

I hope by now you have all come down from your virtual sugar high after celebrating my Blirthday yesterday, because serious work is at hand.

In a comment on that post, Frank of A Frank Angle asked me to divulge my secret for having reached 24k hits during my first year of blogging. Naturally, I ignored him. I planned to take my secret to the grave. Or to the crematorium. Or into space with Scotty from Star Trek. There are some things you just don’t want made public.

And then I got an email here at my office that made me shout “Curses, foiled again!” That is a phrase not heard happily by medical researchers, as even those working in offices expect to hear a loud noise next.

No colleagues were injured in the copying of this Google Image

Yes, my nephew, Clinton, had sent me this article: Avoid these words to prevent Homeland Security from spying on your social networks.

Now, I should tell you that I have known about this for years. I figured it out, in fact, before I even started my blog, that all I had to get attention was to include some special terms. And I do! That way, hundreds of thousands of government workers click on my blog every day leading to, umm, 24K hits in a year.

Wait. Does the math work here? Shouldn’t I have millions of hits by now? Billions? Centrillions? Pishaw! Word Press is probably lying to me about my stats. Just like when it tells me that today I have ZERO links to my blog using search terms.

You would have thought that at least my post on Butt Burn would have alerted the authorities and resulted in multiple fear-ridden G-3s trying to figure out the terror angle in car seat warmers.

But apparently not everyone in the government clicks on my blog. So I guess I’m going to have to expand my list. Up the ante. You can too — I believe in sharing. Well, this time, anyway. I want company when I get sent up the river because my blog “breached” “homeland security,” “threatened” a “standoff” with a “SWAT” team, causing the “lockdown” of my office and its “evacuation” because of folks who cannot distinguish between someone who is “a riot” and a real riot. You know, one with “shots fired.”

Plenty of room for all of us! (Thanks, Google!)

67 Comments

Filed under Gun control, Health and Medicine, Humor, Hypocrisy, Law, Science, Stupidity, Word Press

Tagged as Boomerism, Gun control, Health, Humor, Stupidity

May 18, 2012 · 0:00

Another “Day”

My life is shitty.

No, no, no. I can’t say that, they’ll think I’m suicidal.

My life is in the toilet.

Ditto.

Saturday, May 19^th is World IBD Day. World Irritable Bowel Disease Day.

That’s it!

Recently I learned about this, umm, holiday. It is a very personal one for me. Way more personal than I want to admit. But of course it’s not my fault. I blame my sister, Judy.

You see, some time in the late sixties Judy pasted a picture on the front of the medicine cabinet above the toilet in our one bathroom.

Little did I know at whatever tender age I was that that picture would illustrate my life. Because in 1972, not long after it went up, I found out that I had ulcerative colitis. An inflammatory bowel disease. The bloody flux. I was in and out of the bathroom and the hospital for much of my teens and early 20s. What a blast!

Long story short, it ended up that I didn’t have colitis! But we only found that out when a bunch of men (led by Dr. Herbert Hoover) came at me with knives, removed my large intestine and reorganized my plumbing. That was when they found out that I really had Crohn’s Disease.

Crohn’s Disease, is, well, worse. Partly because I can’t for the life of me spell it. But also because it means I still spend way too much time in the bathroom (although I am very well read). Oh, and it can affect the entire rest of your body. Trust me when I say it’s nasty, and that there is no cure. I would be delighted if that were to change in my lifetime.

That’s why I’m divugling my secret to tell you that Saturday is World Inflammatory Bowl Disease Day.

As far as I can tell there are no festivities planned here in the U.S., although there are some in other countries (the ones that have universal health care, no doubt).

So, I thought up some IBD-related activities myself:

A toilet paper squeezing contest!

What a perv

A wet tee-shirt contest:

Contestants try to stay dry in a stall inhabited by a toilet with an automatic flushing mechanism!

No umbrellas allowed!

Lastly, a relay race around a circle comprised of 50 porta-poties set up on a public green!

(The winner of this last one gets to use a non-self-flushing toilet inside a nearby building when they feel the need, which, of course, they will. Repeatedly.)

I’m quite sure the organizers will contact me to help think up activities for next year’s festivities.

This year, folks are asked to be aware of World IBD Day and to wear purple. I understand the awareness part of it – and I would really like to celebrate World IBD Day.

So let’s

Do more research to find a cure!
Stop running to the bathroom!
Take the “ooh” out of “POOH”!

So yeah, I get the raising awareness part. But purple? Wouldn’t brown be a better color?

* * *

For a less snarky take on Crohn’s and World IBD Day, see LifeFromTheSmallestRoom‘s piece on living with the disease.

86 Comments

Filed under Childhood Traumas, Family, Health and Medicine, Humor, Real Estate, Science

Tagged as Crap, Family, Health, Humor

April 17, 2012 · 0:00

To Infinity and Beyond

Monday, Dr. Jim Yong Kim was formally elected to be the next president of the World Bank. He will take office in June.

Now in recent years, the World Bank has become a wee bit politicized. And that was even before Paul Wolfowitz became president 10 years ago. But the mission, the real mission of the World Bank is to reduce poverty and help the people in the less developed world develop. Dr. Kim is the first president of the World Bank who has worked towards ending illness and its impact on world poverty. And as our own debates here in the US have shown us, an enormous factor in perpetuating poverty is “mortality and morbidity” — sickness and the toll it takes on society.

Jim Kim is a doctor and anthropologist who has spent his life helping fight poverty and disease. He co-founded Harvard’s Partners in Health to help get healthcare to folks in developing countries. He was the head of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Program, President of Dartmouth University and now President of the World Bank.

Not to mention, a seriously cool rapper:

27 Comments

Filed under Health and Medicine, Humor, Science, Technology

Tagged as Healthcare, Humor

March 19, 2012 · 0:00

Does This Make Sense To You?

All this talk by the GOP about banning contraception, particularly for poor women, has me a little bit confused. And for good reasons.

The first one is because I’m pretty sure that the poor and downtrodden aren’t really the GOP’s base. So why do they want more poor people?

Then there’s the money part of this question. Because, last I heard, Republicans are really big investors. Don’t Republicans invest in drug companies that sell contraceptives? You know, birth control? Products that keep people from having babies when they, umm, you know. Don’t Republicans want to make money from their investments?

But the third and most baffling reason I don’t understand their desire to prevent women, and particularly single women, from getting contraceptives — making it more likely they’ll have babies — is because of what single women can and have done:

From Dailykos.com

Politics is so gosh darn confusing.

93 Comments

Filed under Elections, Family, Humor, Hypocrisy, Politics, Science, Stupidity, Susan G. Komen

Tagged as Assholes, Birth Control, Family, GOP, Humor, Politics, Single Mothers

March 10, 2012 · 0:00

Just Another Word

I just don’t get it. And I’m hoping someone can help me out here. You see, my parents left the Catholic Church when I was only 10. So there is a whole lot about religion that I just don’t get. (Yeah, it’s their fault.)

I got the basics. I don’t kill people or steal or do other bad things. I love my neighbor, but not too much. I’m involved with and engaged in my community, but just not in an organized religion sort of way. Lack of church membership doesn’t make me a bad person, although I realize that some people would argue with that. I can handle being on my own should “The Rapture” come to pass.

The thing is, a vocal minority of those folks are really getting all up in my face these days. They are bouncing up and down and crying “religious freedom” all day and night. And I don’t know about you, but I think the word “freedom” has been hijacked. Whenever someone tries to tell me that they are “protecting freedom,” well, it’s more likely that he or she is trying to take away some of my freedoms. And yours.

Yup. I’m getting the feeling that “Freedom” is becoming less and less free, right here at home. That noise is Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers rolling in their graves. You remember, those cool old guys who set up a government with a clear separation of Church and State? I’m pretty sure they’re ticked.

So here is my issue. My problem. My query. When God created man (and women), however that happened, He did it in His image right? Isn’t that what the bible says? I’m pretty sure that I got that part right.

These guys do look alike, don't they? But is beauty only skin deep? (Google Image)

Then here’s my question: Was that image complete? Whole hog? I mean, did that “image” include the brain? And if so, doesn’t that make using one’s brain “Godly” or “Godlike” or, at a minimum, “Good”? Doesn’t that mean that to NOT use one’s brain is ungodly? And shouldn’t we use our God-given brains to make things better for God’s creatures, including our fellow man?

You see why I’m confused. Maybe you are too.

I just can’t figure out why some folks apparently think that we were created in God’s image, but only on the outside. On the inside, well, I guess we’re just created in someone else’s image. I guess the only interior options would be the fish in the seas or the animals on the land. That just doesn’t seem Kosher, now, does it?

Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan doesn't look at all like Rick Santorum -- Google Image

If we were created in God’s image, inside and out, shouldn’t that mean that the wonders created by mankind are God’s work, too? Isn’t that, well, logical?

So I just don’t understand the folks who hate science, who disdain learning, and who seem to want to go back to times when the folks organizing religion weren’t exactly like Father Flanagan.

Because it seems to me that Rick Santorum, the Virginia Legislature and the GOP in general look and act a lot like these guys: