My Quiet Life

Apologies to my uterused friends for the use of the word "hysteria".

So, another person died from a naegleria fowleri infection transmitted via a neti pot. And, predictably, it's making the rounds with everyone freaking out, swearing off the neti pot, and generally panicking.

First, a bit of evangelism: the neti pot changed my life. I know, you've heard it all before, but hear it again. For certain types of people (like me), with truly effed up sinus geography (like mine), regular sinus infections are a part of life. Sinus surgery, rigorous application of steroids (oral and corticosteroid nasal spray), and decongestants helped me combat them to some extent, but not entirely. For much of my life, even post-sinus-surgery, I dealt with at least one sinus infection a month. At the behest of some friends, I finally bought a tried a neti pot. After overcoming the initial squickiness of it all, I learned to love it. And, in fact, I haven't had a serious sinus infection since I started. Only once did I relapse at all, and that was because I was travelling and didn't bring the neti pot. Lesson learned. It's nothing magical or mystical -- having used it long enough now, I know that there's one spot in the back of my sinuses (probably some remnant of my mostly-removed ethmoid sinus walls that remained post-surgery) where "stuff" accumulates. If I don't flush it out, it turns into an infection. Regularly.

Anyways, enough TMI. You get the drift: it changed my life, and I rely on it heavily. I flush my sinuses at least once a day, sometimes more.

Now, everyone is freaking out and sending me this article and encouraging me to only use microwaved distilled water. Yeah, no. I'll take my chances with the brain-eating amoeba. Seriously guys. A quick reality check, here:

• There were two cases of this. Two. This alone is a statistical non-entity.
• Both cases were confined to Louisiana, an area that fits the bill for where the CDC says the amoeba lurks: "southern-tier states" near large bodies of fresh water.
• The amoeba is killed in water hotter than 47 degrees celsius (116.6F). Most hot water heaters are set to 120F to begin with.

These cases tell us far more about the quality of Louisiana's water supply and the temperature (or state) of the water heaters in question. So, speaking for myself, I'm faced with a choice: turn a 2 minute chore into a 15 minute one involving cases of distilled water and a microwave, or take my chances using tap water. Seeing as how I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery then of getting infected by this amoeba, I think the choice is clear. I'm not sweating it.

It's hard, also, not to review these hysterical articles and not get a bit suspicious of the intentions: here we have a natural, cheap and effective remedy for sinus ailments, which are currently treated by modern allopathic medicine with drastic, expensive less-effective options (surgery, drugs, etc.) Two statistically negligible cases emerge, attributable more to the water supply and quality, and suddenly they're being demonized in the media. I'm not saying it's some huge conspiratorial campaign (never attribute to malice that which you can attribute to stupidity), but still, it's fishy. I'll never forget the sign I saw at Vanderbilt's ASAP (allergy and sinus) clinic with a picture of a neti pot that said (paraphrased), "don't rely on old wives' tales. come see the experts", or something similar. They also specifically advised me not to use one. Now that I've experienced how amazing the neti pot has actually been for me, I actually get a little angry, when I think about all the money and time I've spent on drugs, surgery, CT scan after CT scan, that they had the nerve to be so dismissive of something as simple as squirting water up your nose.

Every holiday season, multitudes of charities come out of the woodwork soliciting for donations. The Salvation Army is no exception, armed with their ubiquitous red shield, ringing bell and red bucket of shame, turning every visit to the grocery store into an epic dilemma: do I toss in a few coins or just try to avoid eye contact as long as possible? I'm here to offer you a third way: ignore them with impunity. They don't deserve your money.

I know what you're thinking: great, another anti-religious self-righteous rant about the perils of religious-sponsored charity. Another time, maybe. While I cannot deny that I find an organization of evangelicals organized around a military structure to be extremely creepy, that isn't the biggest problem here. The problem is something that any honest charitable donor should be troubled by:

In may of 2004, the Salvation Army objected to New York City's proposed anti-discrimination ordinance, which would mandate fair-hiring practices and offering of benefits to spouses in same-sex marriages. To combat this, they threatened to forego the ~$70 million/year in city funding, close their soup kitchens and pull out of NYC entirely.

This is a transgression that goes far beyond the superficial issue of whether or not you're terrified of Teh Gays. Even if you're comfortable with the agenda they pushed in this case, are you comfortable with the recipient of your charity dollars using them to promote a political agenda? Further, are you comfortable with a charitable organization withholding those services -- literally using them as leverage -- in pursuit of that agenda?

Think long and hard before you answer. Charity is not a game, and it's not a tool for political exploitation. We have a social safety net comprised of many organizations from many sources: secular, governmental, and religious. For many, they are the thin line between survival and destitution. When a charity threatens to withhold those services, it demonstrates a blatant and irresponsible disregard for its core mission.

There are tons of charities that offer similar services on a local and national level with integrity and transparency (and not all of them are secular!), which I urge you to donate to instead.

Photos that I liked:

• Andri Alexandrou's "West Nashville" -- I always have mixed feelings about shots like these. I feel like I take a lot that are similar: i.e. a very well-composed shot of nothing. That is, a photo without a subject. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and what constitutes a "subject" is up for debate, but I take a lot of photos where I look at it and go "welp, this is a perfectly composed picture of nothing". Not that this is entirely the case here. I suppose the downtown area in the distance is a subject, in a way. Regardless, I like it. Great lines and nice atmospherics. and stuff.
• Doug Lehmann's photo of Crema.

Not related to the contest at all, but Blake Wylie has been taking a lot of cool wet plate photos lately. They look great, but I think someone should tell him about digital cameras. So much easier!

So, Google rolled out a lot of changes to its Reader product in the last couple of months. A lot of this has been said already, but I feel the need to say it myself.

Google has gutted and abandoned the one source I relied upon heavily to get information. Poof, gone. It hurts. First, a review of what they gutted, and why the Google+ equivalents as implemented thus far are no substitute:

(more...)

Years ago I was at Lipstick Lounge and ended up pretty blitzed after a night of karaoke, so I tried to get a cab. After no answer from two of the three major cab companies I tried, I ended up at Yellow cab. A woman answered brusquely and the following conversation ensued:

me: "I need a cab at the corner of 14th and woodland"

dispatcher: "we don't do corners." *click*

Yes, that's it. I was bemused, thinking I had a wrong number or got disconnected somehow, so I called back and repeated my request: "WE DON'T DO CORNERS" *click*. The third time I called, I was going to just request "1401 Woodland" or whatever, but she recognized my voice before I even got half-way through the call and she hung up again.

I gave up and walked home -- a luxury I was afforded because I lived downtown at the time.

Consider for a moment what I might have done if I were less responsible and further from home? Nashville's transportation woes are more than an inconvenience -- they're tied to our problems with safety and drunk driving.

Nashville needs more taxis.

OMG. Did you hear about this? There's little point in speculation on what actually happened in this "story" until all the facts are in, but the speculation, lies, and rhetoric in the post and comments are already ridiculously hilarious.

My take/guesses:

• The child is in 5th grade, so around, what, 9 years old? Have you ever seen a 9 year old biking on a road? They are like fearless psychotic demons with an inner-ear infection. It's a frightening thing.
• The cop probably took the kid home because he was genuinely afraid that the kid was gonna become a stain on the road (and he was probably right).
• No one was arrested.
• The police representative claiming that DCS should get involved is an idiot (if they did, as the mother claims).
• Anyone letting their 5th grader bike on roads in Tennessee is probably an idiot, too, but sadly, idiocy is not a dealbreaker for parenthood. (usually it's a prerequisite.)
• Bill Hobbs' phone interview (in the comments) reads like a spectacularly executed attempt to cherrypick the statements to reinforce the aforementioned idiotic DCS comment, even though they probably didn't, at all.
• Now that this has hit instapundit, we can expect the comment thread to reach epic levels of stupidity.

Yes, folks: because this poor cop tried to keep a kid from getting killed, he's "drunk with power" and needs to be fired. This is the next great battle against the police state. Not, you know, the countless daily deadly drug raids, creepy collusion between the state and media, and an ever-expanding military industrial complex. My suggestion: ignore that blog post, and this one, and move on.

Every once in a while, a political story truly bewilders me. Take this one, for example:

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different "temporary" tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

...

"It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

...

"We don't need short-term gestures. We need long-term fundamental changes in our tax structure and our regulatory structure that people who create jobs can rely on," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., when asked about the payroll tax matter.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., "has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy," said spokesman Brad Dayspring.

First, let me just point out that while the Democrats may be a bunch of hypocritical, blowhard, incompetent fools, every once in a while the Republicans remind me of why I vote for them anyway. They're not fucking evil.

But here's what's confusing me. Obama's payroll tax cut seems like a fine idea and something we should support, because it's a very progressive tax cut: it's money directly in the pockets of people that actually need and will spend it. The problem is that a payroll tax cut means a direct decrease to the funding of social security. Bleeding one to feed the other. So, this proposed payroll tax cut basically guts social security -- something Republicans have been trying to do for decades. Why aren't they going along with it? Is it really as simple as opposing anything that Obama proposes? Is this really the sad state of affairs our political situation has reached, or am I missing something? And if Obama knows it's a proposal any Republican will shoot down, why not at least make it an attractive one instead of this nonsense? If Obama was serious about a progressive change to our tax structure, he'd propose lifting the salary cap on payroll taxes along with this, or something.

So, at CentreSource, we have been playing around with turntable.fm quite a bit lately. A few observations:

• It's a lot of fun
• Nonetheless, it's still a lot like this.
• It's too resource-intensive. I like to listen to music at work -- with my friends, even -- but I don't have time to be a fulltime DJ all day long. I think a nice complement to the interactive communal DJing would be some sort of "radio/party" mode you could put it in so that if no one has anything queued up, it'd just play random stuff in a particular genre or artist-related area. Basically turntablefm + lastfm/pandora.
• The avatars are a little too creepy/furry. The competitive angle to the avatar acquisition is fun, but who wants to wear a teddybear fursuit? not this guy.

We listened to the audiobook of this on the way home from Florida. My review in a nutshell:

Ender's Game meets the Most Dangerous Game meets Lord of the Flies meets 5th grade vocabulary. Zzzzzz.

It was passably entertaining until part 3, where it suddenly turned into an agonizingly boring domestic relationship drama. I was glad to realize that the book was intended as "young adult" fiction, so that at least the incredibly bland writing could be written off as intentional. But really, why do we need this category? I have to admit, I don't understand the whole YA thing. You kids with your Twilight and your Harry Potter. In my day, we read Lord of the Rings! And when we didn't understand a word, we looked it up!

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to now hunt down the people that recommended it to me and kick them in the nuts (or ovaries).

On an unrelated note, on the way to Florida, we listened to Dan Carlin's final 4 hour podcast on the Roman Republic, and it was awesome.

Okay, here's the thing. Food from a truck is awesome. It's great when you can grab some awesome tamales from some grandmother and her kids in a truck when you're in a hurry and running across town, or grabbing an awesome hot dog when you're late for a meeting downtown. It's good food and it's convenient and it's cheap.

The trendiness of it kills it for me. This is not a "i am too school for school" anti-trend thing. It's a convenience thing. Standing in a massive line in the hot sun in 93F heat is not convenient -- it's masochistic. While my coworkers baked in the sun to get cheesesteaks, I drove to Kroger and got stuff to make awesome turkey subs and was on my way back before the line had moved.

I'm not hatin'.. just sayin. Call me when the food trucks have reached market saturation and you can get food from them quickly. I'll be at Kroger.

Negative Nelly here, over and out.