I can be happy again. I finally found a site that tells me what the deal is with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

From the Blue Cross of Minnesota site --

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, also known as SSRIs or serotonin boosters, are thought to work by correcting chemical imbalances in the brain. Normally, chemicals called neurotransmitters carry signals from one nerve cell to another. These chemicals are constantly being released and taken back up at the ends of nerve cells. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors act on one particular neurotransmitter, serotonin, reducing its re-entry into nerve cells and thus allowing serotonin to build up. Although scientists are not exactly sure how it works, serotonin is involved in the control of moods, as well as other functions such as sleep, body temperature, and appetite for sweets and other carbohydrates. Somehow, drugs that prevent the uptake of serotonin improve the moods of people with serious depression, OCD, and some types of anxiety disorders

Ohhh.......

Time once again for that fun game, Whining About Email.

Yes, it's true, once again a lengthy amount of time has gone by without hearing from my perenially busy friend slash acquaintance in the Land of Sun and Granola, leading me to once again whimper to myself about how I never hear from her any more, she must not be a real friend, and all of that. It's pretty pitiful, really, and if it were anyone else, I'd advise them to just Knock It Off, already, no friendship that causes you -- well, not pain, exactly, but certainly discomfort -- is worth it unless there are other overriding considerations. Which, I have to admit, there occasionally are, but not that overwhelming, and none at the moment. Times like this, I feel like I'm definitely a C list correspondent. You know -- A list gets responses quickly, B list gets them within a week or so, and C list, just about when everything else is done, and you're feeling charitable. I like my F/A, but -- once again, come on, you know the chorus to this song -- sometimes, I wonder why.

Of course (goes the refrain), I know why. I like knowing smart, capable people, and my F/A is certainly one of them. Makes me feel good to know people like that. Course, it makes me feel stupid at times like this -- like, hey, what am I, chopped liver, that I shouldn't expect responses to emails? And if so, who's doing the chopping? Its a familiar face, can't quite place it.... oh. Yeah. Its me.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Thanks, Eleanor.

Well, the first try at make a pie shell didn’t work. Despite the warning that ‘even though the dough will look like it needs water, it doesn’t’, it did. Took it out of the refrigerator, let it warm up for about two minutes, and it immediately cracked upon application of the rolling pin. Back to the drawing board. But heck, even Mary Poppins said that piecrusts are easily made, so its no great donation of time to have at it again.

An interesting question reported on NPR this morning. The Kansas Attorney General is requiring abortion providers (and, eventually, by extension, gynecologists and obstetricians) to report if they have a client under sixteen. The logic is that anyone needing an abortion must have had sex, and if they had sex under sixteen, it’s likely child abuse. The retort is that if under-sixteens know that they’ll be reported, then they are less likely to have a legal abortion, which the pro-abortionists say would lead to problems of a different sort. Can’t argue with that, but the anti-abortionists say that’s okay, these kids shouldn’t be having sex. They use trigger words such as ‘pedophile’, which I don’t think helps rational discussion, but if its an older-than-16 guy involved, I suppose its true.

What’s disingenuous about the KAGs comments is that he says this will ‘protect young girls’. Hard to see how constraining abortion will do that, unless it’s the legal theory that used to hold you hang a horse thief to deter the other potential horse thieves. Would a rapist be stopped because he thought he might get exposed to scrutiny as a result of an abortion? I doubt it.

This delightful piece of information is lifted whole and entire -- well, pretty much -- from http://www.relevanthistory.com/archive/000698.html


Amazon.com's customer help number
I spent a good part of the late afternoon searching for a customer service number for Amazon.com. It turns out that they do exist, but they're just not on the Amazon site-- which I scoured thoroughly. It turns out that someone else has had the same problem, and posted The Amazon.Com Customer Service Page.

It's amazing that they have a number, but don't put it up on the site. I can only guess that there's a law saying that they have to have customer service, but no rule about making the number known. Regardless of the reason, it's a pretty unbecoming move on their part.

The number, by the way, is (800) 201-7575.

I would imagine that architecture is something that everyone thinks they can do. They'd be wrong. Architecture is an art based on a combination of science and philosphy. When it comes together correctly, you get something that will withstand the elements and may even lift your spirits. When it doesn't -- well, it'll probably still withstand the elements, but it won't lift the spirit. You might get something like the new middle school that came up in our area -- a massive, heavy structure, looks like it could be converted into a prison without too much effort, and inside, very dark walls, lots of stone textures, a main lobby with an Italian Fascist aura. Add a site placement that hides the main entrance (around the corner, not visible from the road), no signage, and an uninspired parking lot (two places where the main traffic flow feeds directly into a DO NOT ENTER) and what you get is a site that squandered the opportunity. It'll last through an earthquake, though....unfortunately.

I rarely have much sympathy for doctors. I know a couple, and I like them -- they're accomplished and smart - but as a rule, the profession can't count me in it's corner. When they complain about malpractice costs, I grudgingly agree that they’ve got a point, and it isn't fair, and ought to be fixed, but they're certainly in a much better position to handle that problem than the vast majority of patients are to handle their own medical costs; if we can only fix one problem, I know which one I'd choose. And when I hear them talking about practices where you have to pay a fee just so they will turn their golden gaze upon you -- well, then I start even lower in the sympathy scale. I've no use for doctors who 'just want to practice medicine their way, darn it'... and oh yes. earn more for doing so. Practice their own way, free of insurance and HMO bozos, certainly; make more money at it, too, sounds like a shakedown. Of course, the answer is 'if you don't like it, don't go to them', and presented with the problem, that's likely what I'd do.

Finding out that doctors and their offices don't talk to each other, but expect that the person being treated will take care of any interoffice communication, is a great example of what drives me nuts about the profession. This week, I found that my mother, who had a chest xray done at facility A, at the behest of a doctor at facility B, and with the (thank you, HMOs) approval of her primary doc at facility C, has to get the physical film of the xray from facility D, where it was sent by facility A to be read and stored, so that another doctor, at facility E, can decide if she needs an outpatient procedure, which would be done at facility F, and which would require that the film be physically transported there in order for it to be done.

No problem in getting a 79 year old woman to handle this, right?

And medicine is the caring profession. Imagine if it weren't.

Gah.

Lately, I've been wondering how to build a stoop. Or a stoep, if you're Dutch.

Our house has a small to middling sized stoop in front of the main door, and a short flight of stairs comes down from it to meet a flagstone walkway. The stoop and stairs are bounded by a rusty iron railing, and on the house side of the steps are two plantable areas -- plantable only for things that don't require any water, as the overhang of the house's second story does an excellent job of keeping that area bone dry in all but the most furious of storms. Even the most recent set of storms in our area have left those spots dry, so that we've given up with the thought of planting something.

As a number of the bricks in the steps are showing the signs of wear, to the point where I recently got to play handyman with much more QuikCrete than a professional would have used to lay a whole row of brick, and this just to set one back in place, we're starting to think about having the whole thing replaced. Replaced by what, is the question. We'd like to junk the steps and put in either pressed concrete that has been imprinted (and colored?) to look like brick, or with slabs of stone that will match the flagstone walk. The iron railing would be replaced by some kind of plastic equivilent; it would have to be very high quality, even as I think high quality plastic? Surely that isn't an oxymoron?

That leaves the plantable areas. We're tending to think of making them (there are two, one above and two feet to the side of the other) into some kind of rock garden, with lighting put into the sides to illuminate the steps when the door's overhead light is switched on. For a while, I wanted to make them into a small waterfall, but gave up on that idea when I realized that it would of necessity involve plumbing, electricity, and masonry. Can you spell cost overrun?

Underlying all of this, though, is the stoop. How do you make one? I'm guessing that the square U (the fourth wall being the house foundation) is just concrete in a form until it hardens, possibly with some reinforcing iron rods. But how is the top, the part that forms the platform, put into place? My guess is, pretty simply, given that thousands of homes have one.

But I don't know how. Yet, anyway.

Well, it appears that maybe I don't know what invagination is, but then again, maybe I do.

Don't recall where I came across the word, but wherever it was, it was so deeply mired in anatomical gobbledegook that I was clueless not only about what it was, but even if it was a verb, noun, or act of congress. Then I noticed what word was in the middle, and thought 'Could it mean some kind of pouching or something like that?', and promptly started looking down a series of references in Google, none of which helped me even get an image. Then I came across a reference to intussusception at www.vulgaris-medical.com, and -- even though I can't say it without a running jump -- I know what that word means, kind of a pouch fold in the intestines -- so, maybe I do.

I enjoy anatomical words and medical articles. I just don't always understand them.

So the Weapons of Mass Destruction aren't turning up? But not to worry, of course they're there....somewhere. And, and, even if they weren't -- but of course they are -- but even if they weren't, why, we needed to go into war with Iran, I mean, I mean Iraq, never can keep them straight -- anyway because those guys were Up To No Good, and part of the Quadrangle of Evil. But the WMDs are really there -- why, even Tony Blair says so! And the biological weapons, oh yes, they must exist, too -- somewhere. We found vans that could have been used to do that, and maybe had no other reasonable use except that, so of course, that is proof of intent -- and in the big bad world, intent is enough to convict. At least, if you're George, it is. Heck, Texas is known for its fine legal distinctions.

Geez. Why does the US President lie? Or maybe its an Alice in Wonderland thing -- he believes whatever he needs to believe to support what he wants to do. Yeah, probably that. And I thought that Steve Jobs had a Reality Distortion Field. This guy has a nuclear powered one.

Memorial Day Weekend. Like lots of Americans, I don't pay too much attention to it. I think remembering is a good idea, but I don't get tied up in knots about it. Though I did make a point of flipping to another channel when I realized that the president was speaking. I can't imagine any circumstance where he could be giving a speech on Memorial Day and say anything that I would want to hear. Its wierd, in a way: I think he's an idiot, and I didn't vote for him, and I wouldn't vote for him -- yet I admiire what he's done in the way of military response to 9/11. Well, most of it. Still not sure about this Iraq thing. But the idea that I can admire someone whom I wouldn't vote for -- thats an unusual thought, for me.

I just had the pleasure of talking for a while about complex adaptive systems, and why small companies wither when big companies absort them. Don't misunderstand; I don't know much about CAS's, and I have no insights about the busines idea -- just some thoughts I've gathered from various places. You know, 'why would one company acquire another? What do they hope to get out of it?' And there are a fair number of buzzwords you can throw into the concept, but the basic idea is, to make the big company's earnings go up, either by just taking the earnings of the smaller company and tacking them onto the bigger company's (though not their debts, oh, no), or because the small company has a skill/ability/resource that the big one thinks would help its profit picture because now they'd have to pay less for the skill/ability/resource. Thats about it, nothing much more to say (unless you're, say, the Harvard Business Review.) But it was nice, for a while, to talk about them anyway. I don't often get that chance. I suppose that sounds arrogant. It's not meant to be.

I'm still doing a lot of reading on the concept of pervasive computing, aka ubiquitous computing, for the semi-project that I'm on. I say 'semi' because we've had two meetings and nothings happened yet along the lines of saying what our deliverable is. Anyway, the idea of PC or UC is cool. Leaving aside the people who want to tie it to everything, or treat it like the Holy Grail (the people at MIT's Media Lab come to mind), the idea of PC as a way to augment your natural abilities to communicate and retrieve information is intriguing. The idea incorporates things like tools that start when you want them to -- a given time, or a triggering event -- without you explicitly saying for them to do so, tools that are aware of where you are and where the resources you want are, so that you can tell them to act on a resource without actually knowing much about the resource or where it is, and tools that are connected to each other, which are not now, so that they can share information -- your personal organizer talks to the car computer, cell phone talks to the address book in the car, point and click sends document to address in email address book. I'm trying hard to 'see' this functionality in the environment that I work in and that our customers work in. Its challenging because, of course, we tend to accept things as they are; the limits seem natural.

Mother’s Day -- which I like to say is the day when mother’s should make an extra-special effort to do things for their family.

In honor of the day, but mostly because I’ve wanted to, I am baking a cake. Not being a great, or even average, cake baker, I’m not at all sure what it will taste like. Though a part of it has already gotten rave reviews: my daughter is now happily lapping through the remnants of the frosting in the mixing bowl. My family is so hard to please in these things.

Much harder to please is the US Senate, as Bill Frist is finding out, according to the New York Times magazine. It's hard to gainsay his goals, though the sneaky feeling is that while he means what he says, he's also a crafty politician who tries to cloak himself in an aura of disinterested purity by introducing himself to others as Doctor Frist, not Senator, and pointing out that he keeps a stocked medical bag in a cabinet near his desk. It's nice that he has these skills, but they have no bearing on his ability as a Senator, let alone a majority leader. Apparently, he's not as sneaky as his predecessors, so his deals don't work as well as theirs. Trent Lott was quoted as saying that he (Lott) at least made the trains run on time, which is the whole reason for being there. Then again, Frist's probably morally better than those predecessors, so is it a wash? Dunno. I'm glad Frist is the Majority Leader instead of Lott, though.

Hey, if Frist screws up, can I sue him for malpractice?

I was reading a couple of interesting articles in the latest issue of The Economist. That's why I subscribe to it -- every issue is just about guaranteed to have something in it that will tell me something that I didn't know, usually about someplace or something or some one that I didn't even know existed.

One item, an article titled "cold killer applications", talks about how businesses are beginning to rate the probability of financial return from the Information technology projects that they undertake. Its been no secret for years that IT projects tend to be started and run based almost entirely on the desires of the people who work in that area. It was a big deal when people started pointing out, years ago, that it didn't make sense to let these people (of whom I am one) to decide what to do, without any business oversight; it would be like letting the people who maintain the automotive fleet decide what kind of cars and trucks to buy without ever finding out what they were going to be used for. Well, apparently, that basic concept is now serving as the launching point for a better analysis of IT projects, with projects subject to not only evaluation based on when they will earn back the money spent on them, but also being subject to competition for funding, and periodic reevaluation. This is a good thing, though like any other good thing, it can be overdone -- make a political football out of funding, and unsexy but necessary infrastructure work might never happen; do a periodic review and you might find that many projects start, eat some money, and are canceled. Its not a black and white good thing, but it is still a good thing -- and I'm amazed that its still not common. But it did get me to thinking - briefly - about my own job, and how I would justify the money spent on me. I've heard it say that if you don't earn back your salary every year, then you're a net loss to the company. I know that’s not true, because there are positions -- mine's one of them - that earn no money at all, yet they're needed. But at some point it must be true.

I’m not so sure about a second article, on the large and growing problem in underfunded pensions. The concluding point of the article is that companies should not have to worry about people after they leave the employ of the company. It’s the responsibility of someone else -- possibly the government, possibly the people themselves -- to make those long term decisions, or to hire people to do it for them. I tend to agree, but I see three problems with the ‘let the people do it’ philosophy. First, many people, certainly most in the bottom part of the net-worth and earning scale, don’t have much of a clue how to value pension schemes -- and given the recent and ongoing accounting problems, scheme is frequently exactly the right word. Second, these same people can’t afford to hire someone, unless that someone is very, very cheap -- and you get what you pay for, or, at least, if you don’t pay, you don’t get much. And third, if people do make these decisions, and fail, who will have to step in as fixer of last resort? The government. So it would seem to make sense that they have some degree of involvement up front.

I was just cleaning off the kitchen table, when an analogy occured to me. In fighter aircraft, one of the great advances in detection technology came with the advent of look-down radar, which let the aircraft scan the sky below it as well as what was in front. To evade this, a hostile aircraft might fly low, hoping that it became lost in the ground return, so that the seeking aircraft could not distinguish it. In my case, I almost left the milk out because it was right next to, and about the same color as, a box of cereal. The milk temporarily evaded my look-down, but since I'm sensitive to finding it (heck, the cereal won't spoil if its left out, but the milk will), I found it. It made me think of how the stuff that you want to do sometimes gets lost in the ground clutter of the stuff you have to do -- and how it helps to keep that first group in mind when you're looking over the radar return of your daily life.

The French have a phrase for it, but since I don't know what the phrase is, I'll put it in English: Things change. The biggest one is that my mother's condition has markedly improved, to the point where 'feeble' can't really be used to describe her condition. Shaky, confused, and needing help, yes, but not feeble. I'm working at home two or three days each week, trading time with my partner, so that each of us works three days in the office, two at home. And tomorrow (maybe) we get a new visitor: a 'companion' that we're hiring one day a week from a local service, who will do what we do so that we can both go into the office at the same time. Who would have thought that we'd want to go into the office?

Well, this has been an interesting week. I worked from home for most of the week, so that I could provide assistance to my mother. She lives with us, and at the moment, needs help with pretty much everything, from the moment she gets up until she goes to sleep. And sometimes in that midnight interval, too. She's not completely helpless, since she can move with a walker, but she's tied down to an oxygen tank, so wherever she goes, she trails a thin plastic line. She tires very easy, and can be freaked out by the most modest of problems. My partner and I have come to the realization that this is, in many ways, exactly what it was like when we took care of my daughter, after she was born. She got over it, and can handle herself just fine now. We're hoping that my mother makes the same transition.

Last night, I turned to my partner at one point and said "If I ever get like that, just shoot me."

The occasion was the arrival home of my mother from her extended hospital stay after bypass surgery. She had done well in the hospital, and was then transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. At the time, we were perplexed, because she had seemed fine -- tiring quickly, and occasionally short of breath, but nothing that seemed unduly unsettling, given the circumstances. But now, at home, after two weeks in the rehab hospital, she seems frail, easily disoriented, and prone to panic.

Just shoot me.

I came across this paragraph while reading an article about cognitive psychology on the Hershey Medical Center's www.hmc.psu.edu/informatics page. Although it is specifically oriented to medical failures, citing comments by Richard Cook, an anesthesiologist, on the subject, I thought it was worth repeating as a general observation.

"Cook maintains that complex systems fail when a series of latent failures, each insufficient to cause an accident by itself, come together. He likens this to a pile of Swiss cheese slices: the latent failures are the holes, and when they line up, they form a tunnel through which safety falls. The result: an accident. No one person is to blame, yet all too often organisations respond to disaster by finding a culprit to blame, re-training the staff, issuing new regulations, and investing in "safer" technology. This sort of reaction is all the more likely because of what Cook calls "hindsight bias": the tendency to allow one's knowledge of the outcome to bias one's view of the events leading up to that outcome. But this reaction tends to obscure the complexities that actually led to the disaster, makes the system even more complex, and consequently introduces new opportunities for failure."

Cool words.

subterfuge factotum talon obfuscate growl puddle yurt gazebo solstice chartreuse spiral angst embrace cello cumulonimbus tawny penultimate penumbra petite viscous crone pensive lambent seraph complicity complicit delectable aether irascible kinetic crypt lithe tintinnabulation