WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Rush Limbaugh could see a deal with prosecutors
in a long-running prescription fraud case collapse after authorities
found a bottle of Viagra in his bag at Palm Beach International
Airport. The prescription was not in his name.

Hee Hee!  Actually laughing my ass off!  Could it get any better than that?  He's such a big dick that I bet it was a lot of pills.

I wonder if he'll shrink when he goes through detox?

Robin Herd:

I’m a rancher.  I have
a herd of robins that live here. I think of them as my herd. They live here
year round.  When winter comes and the
life of my trees retreats and hides beneath  the ground, the robins stay with me.  They live here and they don’t even know they’re
my herd.  (For some damn reason they
think they own this place too.)  When I
sit on the front porch I can usually count 8 or 10 of my herd with a single
glance.  I don’t mark them, I don’t track
them, and I only wonder why other robins don’t live here and voluntarily join
the herd.

Sometimes an Oriole with a brilliant flash of orange, or a Yellow
Finch or Hummingbird will burst onto the scene and provide a splash of color otherwise
not delivered by my herd of robins.  But
I’m comfortable with that.

Life is lived generally in grayscale persistence, and when we're lucky, in a brief flash of technicolor.

Two US soldiers are missing, likely taken prisoner/hostage.  I wonder if all of those assholes that said that the images of Abu Ghraib were nothing worse than college hazing will say the same thing if we see images of our soldiers being treated in the same fashion?  If they do then we'll see who really supports our troops.  If they do I'd love to shove an empty sandbag over their head and attach electrodes to their balls, and that especially includes that insane Ann Coulter.
So Bill O'Reilly, is treating prisoners in such a fashion really O.K.?

We're back from Greece.  It was a wonderful vacation.  I'm just recovering from the 24 hour trip home (it's not that far, we just had bad connections).
I've put several of the pictures from the trip on a family web site.  They can be seen here.
I made headway into the book "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" as well as a few chapters in bioethics and 6 hours of lectures on the Iliad.  I didn't make it to any beaches.  That turned out to be a low priority given that we have sun and a pool here in Indiana and there was just so much else to experience in Greece.  Deb got to see the house she lived her first three years in.  That was cool, and emotional.
More thoughts later as my brain gets used to the time change.

Greece, and especially Sanorini is a photographers paradise . . . and I haven't even been to any clothing optional beaches yet.

Greek beer is pretty good.  Greek wine can be good.  Greek food is awesome.  I'd be putting on weight if we weren't walking so much.  I love just wondering the small pathways (though I think they're called roads here) in Santorini.  Severely fatigued last night . . . but should be good to wonder Santorini and take photographs of the night life tonight.  Life is different at night.

While checking email I notice the headline that the senate is "Tackling" the issue of gay marriage.

We are in a war with no end in sight which has caused the death and maiming of thousands, billions of dollars and the credibility of the United States.  We have record budget deficits and national debt. We have millions without health insurance.  We have porous borders.  We are a nation falling farther and farther behind in science education.  But we are tackling the issue of gay marriage.  I guess the senate can do that since they've "tackled" the issue of steroid use in baseball.

And Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Currently reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

Ahh . . . had to vent.  Back to Greek food and drink and a Santorini sunset.

I'm going to Greece.  I'm going to devour and photograph the remnants of an ancient great civilization.  I'm going to drink Greek beer and wine and eat their food. I'm going to visit the ruins in Athens and I'm going to bake in the Santorini sun.  I'm going to lie naked on Santorini beaches and renew  my soul and punish my liver. I'm going to read. For the next two weeks I'm simply going to live.  I'll wake when I'm ready, I'll read when I can, I'll sleep when I'm tired, I'll drink through it all.
I'll let you know how it goes.  I'll post photographs.

I remember being on the cusp of my life, my cousin driving
across some bay in Miami
while I rode shotgun.  These were the
years of Miami Vice and being there with an entire lifetime ahead of me felt
overwhelming and exhilarating.  The humid
Miami air blew
in my hair as I stared at the reflected lights and my rapidly moving image in
the water while I sorted through the visions of my future.

Years have come and gone since then.

Tonight Deb drove the Thunderbird through the Indiana countryside as
we made our way home from a pre Indy 500 party. 
I stared out the window as the wind blew through my hair.  I looked at cornfields and silos and empty
space and my thoughts drifted back to those days in Miami and I wondered if I’d made it . . . if
this is the life I was shooting for.

I think it was.  I
think I hit the mark.

A Very Brief and Funny Medical Story

Today I had to do a barium enema on an old fellow that had a
colostomy.  The surgeon wanted to know if the site where he had
sewed the bowel together below the place where he had made the colon
exit the skin (the ostomy) had healed before he took down the ostomy
and re-hooked the guy up in a normal fasion.
Before I started the procedure I had forgotten which side the surgeon
told me the old fellow's ostomy was on so asked him "is your bag on the
left?"
He reached down and felt his scrotum and testicles and nodded and said "Yes".
I smiled and patted his shoulder.
Even as I write this I'm thinking that this sounds like an urban
legend, but it's not. It happened today and it's still making me smile.

School's Out . . . School's In.
Last night was the final exam.  I've spent most of the day mowing
and the rest grading the tests.  I've still got some calculating
to do regarding final grades.  So in that respect: School's Out!
But school is in.  I received the acceptance letter to the
master's program in bioethics at Loyola University in Chicago
today.  So school is about to start in a big way for me this
fall.  I'm looking forward to it.  Maintaining120 commented
that I must be ambitious.  No, there's just too much living to be
done in the days we're given and I want to cram as much as possible in those days.  But I wish you would come down and
take my anatomy class just for shits and giggles.  Those things
tend to happen in my class and Columbus isn't that far from Indy.
Below is the paper I had to submit for the Loyola program.  It's
about two and a half pages.  If you have no interest in when human
life begins . . . where we actually believe it begins, then this will
be boring and you should probably pass it up.  But if a critical
look at where we as human beings actually believe that human life
starts interests you, then you might find a new perspective in my
thoughts.  I wrote this just because these ideas were in my head
and needed to be set free.  It just so happened that Loyola needed
a sample of my writing so I sent them this:

What Can Early Pregnancy Tests Tell Us About Our Attitudes
Concerning The Actual Beginning of the Life of a Human Being?

A common belief among those opposed to abortion is that
human life begins at conception and that abortion therefore ends a human life and
is murder.  If one believes that the
fertilized egg, or zygote, is a fully vested human being and deserving of all
of the rights and protections accorded any other human being then this is a
reasonable position.  But does our
behavior demonstrate that this is actually our belief?

I will accept up front that biological human life begins
with the zygote.  Before oocyte
fertilization by sperm, the genetic combination that may become a particular
living human being does not exist, and every human that does exist starts as a
zygote.  What I am exploring here is the
question; when do we as a society, as demonstrated by our behavior, really
believe that a human life deserving the rights and protections of all human
beings begin?  I will use the terms human
being and human life to refer to a human that is fully vested and deserving of
all rights generally accorded to humans.

The path from zygote to a human being separate from the
mother is fraught with hurdles.  While
estimates and results of studies vary, it is likely that only about 30% of
zygotes survive to delivery.  The
majority of these non-viable early pregnancies are simply passed in a normal or
somewhat late menstrual period, and often there is no knowledge that a
pregnancy has occurred.  Once a zygote divides
a few times and becomes a blastocyst and implants itself in the uterus the odds
of making it to delivery increase significantly, but about 25% of those will be
lost before 6 weeks.  Subsequent to
implantation the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), the hormone used
to identify the pregnant state, begins to be produced.  Before the days of highly sensitive home
pregnancy tests most prospective parents had no idea that an egg had been
fertilized and implanted in the uterus until a menstrual period had been missed.  Currently however, many prospective parents
know that a developing pregnancy has commenced up to six days before the
menstrual period is due to begin.   When
these pregnancies that we have knowledge of, fail to progress and the menstrual
period begins either on time or somewhat late, we know that  a blastocyst at least, has failed to
survive.  But do we believe that a human
being has died?

It is these failed pregnancies that we have knowledge of
that offer insight into what we really believe concerning the beginning of
human life. 

A human being has certain rights, as does the family of that
human being.  The family and society also
has responsibilities regarding a dead human being.  If one believes that a human life begins with
fertilization of the oocyte, the rights of that zygote, including the
protection of that life, and the responsibilities we incur as a society for
that life and subsequent death, should be no different than for any other human
being.  We of course don't know about the
majority of zygotes that never implant and begin producing HCG.  But one day we likely will find a measure for
that stage and this moral and societal question will become greatly expanded.

A few of the implications of a true belief that a human life
begins at conception will now be considered.

If we truly believe that full humanity begins at conception
it would follow that some sort of certificate of life should be issued as soon
as a pregnancy test turns positive.  A
birth certificate is not appropriate since birth has not occurred but some sort
of declaration of the beginning of life should be generated by an appropriate
government body.  This declaration of life
would give the blastocyst and parents important rights.  It would also give the parents and the
government certain responsibilities.

Perhaps the most important right would be protection of the
blastocyst from abortion (murder).  This
is an ongoing issue of debate and contention in the United States.

Another important right would be access to health care.  Many health insurance plans, including
Medicaid place significant restrictions on care for the unborn.  In utero surgical procedures, such as
treatment for spina bifida and certain heart defects, the equivalent of which
would be provided for those that have already gone through the birth process, are
often not covered. Providing the earliest identifiable life the same status as
others on the health plan would allow them equal access to interventional
procedures that any child or adult has access. 
This of course would significantly increase health care costs to society.  To my knowledge, no health insurance plan
recognizes the zygote as a member of that plan though most allow for prenatal
care for the mother.  From an insurance
standpoint we do not consider the first several cells, embryo and even early
fetus as a human being.  But if we as a
society believe this to be true, then a certificate of life should be issued
upon learning of a positive pregnancy test.

Parents incur considerable expense while raising a child and
this is recognized by the government in the form of a tax deduction.  If we believe a zygote is a fully moral human
being then tax consideration should begin as soon as implantation occurs and
HCG is detected.  If a pregnancy test
turns positive on say, January 6^th, it could safely be assumed that
the new human being was actually formed in the previous year and the tax
consideration would need to be adjusted as such.  While the expenses incurred during the
prenatal period (Lamaze classes, prenatal vitamins, etc.) are not as
significant as those incurred in the postnatal period, they are nonetheless
real.

While there is recognition of the embryo as a fully vested
human being by the federal government and in many states in criminal matters
that result in the death of the mother, in the regard of tax consideration we
do not recognize the zygote, blastocyst, or any stage of the unborn as a human
being in the United States.  There is, to my knowledge, no serious
movement to do so.  Only when it comes to
funding abortions and stem cell research does the federal government consider
the zygote a fully vested U.S.
citizen.

At the other end of life, the death of a human being also
brings about certain responsibilities, legal requirements and customs.

When a human being dies a death certificate is issued.  A death certificate documents the legal end
of that life.  Death certificates are not
issued in the United States
when a blastocyst that has generated positive HCG levels fails to survive.  Judging someone to be a fully vested, living
human being and not issuing a death certificate when that life ends, including
those which we know have lived only a few days seems at best to be bad
government record keeping.

The end of a human life usually results in such customs as a
funeral, wake, memorial service, etc. 
While the onset of a menstrual period in one that knows they have been
pregnant might be greeted with sadness and even depression, just as some are
surely greeted with relief and happiness, it is rare that any of the above
customs are initiated, especially in the case of a pregnancy of a few
days.  In this regard we overwhelmingly
do not regard the several day pregnancy as a human being.

There are also legal issues regarding the disposition of a
human corpse.  In the United States a
corpse must be cremated, buried or similarly interned.  In some cases a burial at sea may be
appropriate.  For want of a less
descriptive phrase; flushing a corpse down a toilet is neither appropriate nor
legal.  This is however, the disposition
of approximately 70% of zygotes including the smaller percentage whose life has
been documented by a positive pregnancy test. 
In the United States
we do not prosecute those that have however inadvertently, disposed of an early
gestation (corpse) in such a manner.

Our ability to detect pregnancies before a missed menstrual
period, during a time of considerable risk to the nascent human, appears to
have shed considerable light on our true beliefs concerning the beginning of
human life.

A couple have asked how teaching has gone this semester.  I think
all in all its gone pretty well. Well enough that I'm signed up to
teach again this fall.  But like all of the students I'm sure, I'm
looking forward to the end of the semester.  In fact, question
number 50 of 50 questions for the final exam is this:

I am
glad human anatomy is over because

1. my
   brain is fried
2. I
   accidentally signed up for this course; I thought I was joining the
   Marines
3. the
   temperature in the classroom is entirely unpredictable
4. I’m
   not glad, I’ve still got to take the lab test
5. All
   of the above

I gave the students my memory mnemonic for remembering the distribution
of cell types of lung cancer: "ASOL", where Adeno and Large cell types
tend to form in the periphery of the lung and Squamous and Oat (small
cell) carcinomas tend to develop more centrally.  I warned them
that they should remember when they render their course evaluation on
Monday that ASOL is not the correct spelling of asshole.
 But it's been good and I've learned a lot.  I really enjoyed
re-visiting the basic science of human anatomy, not just how I see it
in radiology, but in its purest form.
And I like interacting and fucking with young inquisitive minds. 
The hardest working of the students have eaten it up and they are
thriving. They really know human anatomy.  Even the others seem to
be enjoying the class.  One student that is failing the class told
me it's her favorite class.
So next week teaching comes to an end for a few weeks and life will
become easier for me an I will even be able to visit other xangan's
sites once again.
And I wait to see if I will become a student once agian.  I've
applied to the masters program at Loyola University in bioethics. 
All paperwork is in . . . I just wait for the letter in the mail. 
I think atypically, but ethically, I think.  We'll see.  I
had to submit a sample of my writing and I gave them one on my thoughts
about the actual beginning of human life.  We'll see how a Jesuit
University views it.  I think I'll post that next.
And life rolls on . . . just too damn short to accomplish everything one wants to do.