mjh's blog

Feed a Fever

I read an interesting article today — interesting in its own right, but more so because I first read about the subject, Coley’s Toxins, nearly 25 years ago and I last thought about that almost 23 years ago when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.

I’ve long had a broad interest in science. I contemplated majors in oceanography, chemistry and linguistics; I enjoyed math (except for geometry) in school. After school, I subscribed to various science and health magazines. (This was long before Tim Berners-Lee birthed the Web. Ask your grandparents what it was like.) So, there’s nothing odd about me reading about obscure cancer treatments long before it had any relevance in my life. I’ll let you inform yourself about Dr. Coley and his cancer discoveries by reading the same article I just did (link at end of this entry).

It was a year or two later, 23 years ago this very month, that information about cancer took on new urgency. My Mom was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or non-non, whichever is considered less likely fatal — ironically). After I recovered from utter despair, I recalled the article I had read about this little-known treatment. I thought it might be called Coxey’s Toxins (one of the endlessly amusing effects of my dyslexia). I scoured the library’s periodicals. Imagine going to an old building and leafing through huge books with article titles to find a reference, then taking that to a librarian who would find the actual magazine somewhere in the dark stacks. No, that isn’t a metaphor: that’s what happened, once I found Coley instead of Coxey.

I reread that article and confirmed the hope it offered: cancer cells are weak and succumb to fever. Induce fever in a cancer patient and the cancer may die. (The new article offers other possible explanations for the effect.) Armed with a photocopy, I approached my Mother’s doctor and asked, “what about this?” Well, our cancer specialist was a busy man, to be sure, and educated beyond the likes of a distraught son with an article from a popular digest. No doubt my Mom had more faith in me, but she took her conventional chemo like a good patient. Was the mainstream cure really worse than the disease? Given how sick and weak it made her and that it was no cure at all, probably. mjh

Damn Interesting » Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=871

m jay h

Scrub jays show up in our yard frequently, sometimes one, sometimes three or four at once. When I see them, I put a handful or two of peanuts in the shell on a patio table. It is wonderful to watch them swoop in, perching on a wire or the back of a chair before landing on the table noisily, shaking its glass top, bouncing oddly to the pile, which is soon spread out by the fussy way a jay shakes each peanut — “no, not this one” — drops it, shakes the next, drops it, returns to the first, and so forth. If another jay is around, each becomes much less discriminating and just grabs and dashes. I rarely see them eat, though I have seen them hide nuts in the yard.

This morning, an especially tattered jay moved in more stealthily than most. He eyed the empty table before flying to a dead tree in the middle of our yard. (Merri is right: this dead tree is a great perch for many birds.) I thought he might bathe, but, instead, he dropped to the ground to forage among some plants. He returned to the same spot in the tree and flew in a different direction to poke among other plants. Eureka — he found one of his stashed nuts and flew to the top of the crabapple tree to peck at it before flying off.

A few minutes later, a much more assertive jay, familiar with the routine, demanded I put new nuts out. Minutes later, the remnants are scattered across the table. It’s the dog’s lucky day when one rolls off — he eats them, shell and all. mjh

PS: See mjh’s blog — Avis Habilis for an account of birds learning from birds of another species.

Number Theory

You know how you anticipate the odometer rolling over to a bunch of zeros? You watch, perhaps for months. You get down to just a few dozen more miles and then you look and you missed it — damn!

So it is with a couple of numbers on Flickr, my photoblog. For all I know, both numbers rolled over at the same moment — I missed them both. One is the number of photos I’ve uploaded, now beyond the 666 I was watching for. Fittingly, though unintentionally, this was #666. The other flickr count is the number of views, now over 10,000 (which is certainly not the number of people who have seen my photos). I have two pictures that have been viewed more than 400 times, but most garner 3-5 views by themselves (as opposed to viewing on a page with others). Posting to the The Duke City Fix Pool usually pulls in 30 to 50 views.

Meanwhile, the other number I watch far too closely — my book’s rank on Amazon — lurched above 100,000 yesterday (not a good thing). I need more reviews, perhaps.

Don’t ask me about my cholesterol or blood pressure. I’ve got other numbers on my mind.

For some, math is a religion. There is no better tool for measuring reality while looking for the truth, the grail of science. But if humans didn’t exist, math wouldn’t either. (Leaving aside speculation about how other intelligent lifeforms measure the Universe.) And while I hesitate to suggest 47 is as important as pi, the appreciation of any number is subjective and arbitrary. In that weird way, all numbers are equal. mjh

afterlife

As with your kind, our time alive is limited. When the end comes, the dying fall to the ground engulfed in flames of spontaneous generation. By our custom, those nearby sit and wait and contemplate their own inevitable end. Some say the fire that consumes us reflects some quality of character — sometimes, raging red, others cooler blue. When the flames die down, very little ash remains, but in the center of that ash is what we call the afterlife, a stone the size of your heart, ranging from clear to jet black. By custom, the afterlife belongs to the family. Some families keep generations of afterlife, building temples to house them. Some leave the afterlife in a place special to the departed and so you may come across one of these stones in an unexpected place. Your kind owes ours no reverence, though moving these stones is inconsiderate, at best. You might better take a moment to contemplate your own afterlife. mjh

Icarus

I first knew something had changed
when I thought
my wing has fallen asleep
my wing? I sat up heavily
the dog ran from the room
as I spread my wings
six feet either side of my body
(no exaggeration)
I ran from the house
and all the birds for miles
were silent
my cat eyed me coolly
I leapt and fell
leapt and fell
I ran around the yard
trying to glide
I climbed on the picnic table
jumped
and fell on my face
my wings folded elegantly behind me
my neighbor came out at the commotion
and I wrapped my wings
around my nakedness
why are you wearing a leather cape, she asked
it’s sort of a gift, I answered

Since that day, I’ve gotten used to the stares
and whispers
I’ve learned to wax my wings
against the creaking
and the mites
I sleep standing up
rarely upside down
I’ve jumped from building, bridges and planes
each time falling like a stone
some gifts are hard to take
some gifts aren’t all that great mjh

9/7/2004

[for another take on this imagery, see going home]

A Tale of Two Tales

A few months ago, I sat down with Andrew Webb, a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, to talk about my book and the writing thereof. We met at Flying Star on Menaul and I had a great time. Who wouldn’t enjoy being the center of attention? At that time, I hoped I’d get a third of Webb’s weekly column. Instead, it became a cover story with BIG, colorful photos.

A couple of months later, I met in the same spot — at the same table — with Johanna King, of the Journal, to talk about my major passtime (which, to me, should be the correct spelling): blogging. This was also a lively and entertaining discussion. (I imagine the Journal takes the talents of people like Webb and King for granted, as countless Journalism majors wait in the wings. Writing is hard work — engaging writing is better than gold.)

Now, I’m not complaining. I know, that’s how complainers begin, but I’m NOT. What I’m getting to is the perverse power of expectations. No doubt, the first article raised my expectations about the second (The daily blog). Not about the writing, which was great in both cases, but about the impact of the writing. And the impact of the photos. (Believe me, I understand if you’re thinking, “this guy was in two articles in the paper and has any gripes.” But, I’m not griping.)

Just yesterday, I met someone for the first time with whom I had corresponded by email a bit. He said, “you’re much better-looking than your picture.” To which, today, I say, “please, god, I hope so.”

In the same article, another blogger comes out to the world. Coco’s is one of the few blogs I ready with regularity and I do like her style and view. But here, she pulls off her mask to reveal the real person behind it. Ta-da! Ironically, I end up being the guy with too much time on his hands. (Well, that’s true, though time is all we have and until it runs out we all have the same amount.) Any press is good press, right?

While much of the blogosphere is ready to bury the MSM (mainstream media), I do appreciate that any new readers today come to me thanks to that very same MSM. Far more people read Webb and King than Hinton — I’m cool with that (sniff — stifled sob). On the other hand, it is likely that still more people saw Benson Hendrix’s piece on the UNM homepage. Yes, three articles in three months. (Is this the Universe’s nice way of saying goodbye?) If it looks like I’m great with PR, I’m not. Just lucky (some might say, blessed). I’m a terrible marketer. But, I’m worse at billing, so it’s good I never found more work. mjh

PS: If you want to blog, do it. Go to www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com (or www.flickr.com for photos) and create a free account. You’ll be blogging in minutes. Don’t forget to link to me.

PPS: In thinking about time, I had an epiphany: each of us has just one possession, albeit temporary: our presence. It is at once our gift to and from the world. Connect with others, including everything around you. Blogging is just a part of that.

photo by mrudd

See also mjh’s blog — Other Blogs and New readers.

“Barbaric! Hear me!”

In Speech, Byrd Denounces Enthusiasts of Dogfighting Associated Press

“Let that word resound from hill to hill and from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley across this broad land,” he thundered, raising his right hand. “May God help those poor souls who would be so cruel. Barbaric! Hear me!”

Federal agents have charged Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and three others with procuring and training pit bulls for fighting in Virginia and elsewhere. Investigators say some losing dogs died in the pit or were later electrocuted, drowned, hanged or shot.

Byrd, 89, said he would not prejudge the men’s guilt or innocence, but he left no doubts about his sentiments.

“I am confident that the hottest places in hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God’s creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt,” he said.

“One is left wondering,” he said. “Who are the real animals: the creatures inside or outside the ring?”
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ABQjournal NM: N.M. Addresses Dogfighting, By Trip Jennings
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Capitol Bureau

SANTA FE— The indictment of NFL quarterback Michael Vick this week for allegedly sponsoring a grisly dogfighting ring has placed a spotlight on people who wager money— sometimes big money— on the brutal blood sport.

New Mexico has a law against dogfighting. But although Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White and other officials said Thursday that illegal dogfighting goes on in New Mexico, they don’t know how much money is involved or how often fights are held. …

“They train pit bulls by using a small cat or a small dog,” Greenhood said. “They set them up as a bait to kill, to foster aggression.”

“It’s hard to get people to testify because there are threats and intimidation,” Greenhood said. “There’s a lot of money at stake.”

http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/579976nm07-20-07.htm

My Photos on Flickr

Flickr: Archive of your photos posted to Flickr in June 2007
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/06/

Details link shows larger thumbnails spread over several pages (all are clickable, small or large).

And May http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/05/
April http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/04/
March http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/03/
Feb http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/02/
Jan http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/01/
Or all of 2007 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/archives/date-posted/2007/

Your Ad Here

I appreciate the Albuquerque Journal’s eulogy for Lady Bird Johnson. She tried very hard to get America to clean up its act and to recognize that beauty should be commonplace and vistas should not be ruined by billboards.

I understand a eulogy is not the best place for the truth, but an editorial is, and so I’m disappointed that the Journal’s ignores the truth: Lady Bird lost, as did we all. Start at the Big I and drive in any direction. You’ll see countless hideous billboards within yards of starting, each blocking the magnificent vista of the Rio Grande valley. You’ll see hundreds before you leave the city or reach the stateline. The winners are corporations like Clear Channel, which invoke sacred personal property rights as a shield for personal profit. Everywhere you look, someone sticks a thumb in your eye and deposits another dollar in his pocket.

Beauty is blocked by blight. Greed won. Lady Bird is already spinning in her grave. mjh

ABQjournal Opinion: Lady Bird’s Legacy
Friday, July 13, 2007
Remember Lady Bird Johnson as a reason more wildflowers bloom along highways lined by fewer junkyards and billboards.
Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, the widow of President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday at 94.
Known as the Environmental First Lady of America, she did more than plant bluebonnets. She translated concerns about pollution, urban decay, recreation, mental health, public transportation and the crime rate into national policy.
The Beautification Act of 1965 called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs along the nation’s interstate highways. It also required junkyards along primary highways to be relocated or screened.
Her vision is distilled to perfection at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, with its woodlands, sweeping meadows and public gardens filled with native flowers and plants.
But the seeds of her advocacy for beautification scattered far beyond Texas. Her legacy can be seen perennially flowering on roadsides across America.

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/578102opinion07-13-07.htm

I’ve written about this before and will again (talk about Sisyphus). See http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/loco/albahquerque/ (scroll down for more stories and photos).

Update: Thanks to Coco on Dukecityfix for the link and taking the discussion to more of Albuquerque.

Mission? Bungled by Idiots!

Like a giant stung by a tiny bee, the US went into a rage after 9/11 and declared a war without end against a small, faceless group armed with box cutters and donkey carts. After spending a fortune and setting fire to two countries, we find our enemies are more numerous and stronger than ever. Oops! DUHbya! [spit on the ground]

When you take off your shoes at the airport or stand in line behind someone buying the common ingredients for explosives, ask yourself if we’re on the right path. Do we simply have to run out the clock on the Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight (but shoots every-which-way)? Is there no holding Duhbya and BushCo accountable for MASSIVE INCOMPETENCE that exceeds all belief? Time for early retirement — there’s brush to be cleared in Crawford, while someone with intelligence attempts to fix this horrible mess. You can’t spell Wrong without Duhbya (he always is). mjh

U.S. Warns Of Stronger Al-Qaeda – washingtonpost.com
Administration Report Cites Havens in Pakistan
By Spencer S. Hsu and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers

Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks, according to a new Bush administration intelligence report to be discussed today at a White House meeting.

The report, a five-page threat assessment compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center, is titled “Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West,” intelligence officials said. It concludes that the group has significantly rebuilt itself despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/
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Resolute Amid the Wreckage, By Eugene Robinson

Allowing himself to be forced to retreat from Iraq would ruin George W. Bush’s fantasy of someday being seen as a latter-day Churchill. Bush keeps a bust of the British leader in his office, and he has praised Churchill as being “resolute.”

I know he’s read a book or two about his hero, so I can’t help wondering: Hasn’t Bush gotten to the part about how Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell created Iraq at the fateful Cairo Conference of 1921? And how the object was to get British forces out of Mesopotamia, leave the fractious locals to their own devices and wish them the best?

“Our object and our policy is to set up an Arab government,” Churchill told Parliament later that year, describing the new country he had helped design, “and to make it take the responsibility, with our aid and our guidance and with an effective measure of our support, until they are strong enough to stand alone, and so to foster the development of their independence as to permit the steady and speedy diminution of our burden.”

Bush’s contribution is essentially to have destroyed the Iraq that Churchill cobbled together. …

I don’t see how anyone can realistically expect Bush to change course at this late date. It wouldn’t be “resolute,” in his understanding of the word, to acknowledge that he made a terrible mistake. What he can do instead is play for time and hope for some sort of deus ex machina that miraculously saves the day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070901398.html

Nobody Named Scooter Lasts Long in Prison

The Commuter in Chief, By Eugene Robinson

Let’s put this in perspective. Martha Stewart is convicted of conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of justice, and soon she’s decorating a prison cell. Lil’ Kim is convicted of perjury before a grand jury and conspiracy, and off to the big house she goes. Paris Hilton commits a crime that could be described as “driving while blond, vapid and obnoxious,” and next thing you know she’s freaking out in solitary confinement.

But when Scooter Libby is found guilty of perjury before a grand jury, lying to FBI investigators and obstruction of justice — basically the same crimes that got Stewart and Lil’ Kim locked up, and miles beyond anything Hilton ever did — George W. Bush intervenes to save him from the indignity of spending a single night behind bars. No home confinement, no ankle bracelet, nothing. Now that he’s paid his $250,000 fine, Scooter is free to scoot on with his life. [mjh: Of course, Republican stalwarts paid the money, not Scooty. How much did Fred Thompson donate?]…

The reason Bush gives — that he accepts the verdict against Libby but thinks the sentence was excessive — makes no sense either. The remedy in that case would be to wait until Libby served a non-excessive amount of time in prison and then commute the sentence. …

What does make sense is that the president would feel responsible for Libby’s plight. Libby’s criminal lies were about his part in discrediting claims that the administration’s rationale for invading Iraq was bogus. Bush might have decided that since this is his war, he, not Libby, should be the one held to account.

Then again, Bush might have worried that sitting in prison, with time on his hands, novelist Libby might turn his pen to a nonfiction memoir of his White House years. “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” would have been a good working title.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501823.html
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Shankar Vedantam – Bush: Naturally, Never Wrong – washingtonpost.com

The different perceptions of victims and perpetrators in [social psychologist Roy] Baumeister’s experiment are a result of a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance, [Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson] argue in a new book titled “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me).”

Aronson said the bias toward self-justification explains the administration’s shifting rationale for the Iraq war and why Bush could not have allowed Libby to go to prison: “If Scooter Libby, working with the blessing of the vice president, lied about what he did in order to protect higher-ups, he is a good guy, he is loyal. It is an exquisite example of self-justification because the good guys are defined as those who are loyal to the cause even if the cause is wrong.”

For Bush to have allowed Libby to go to jail, he would have had to live with the idea that someone who he thought was a good and loyal soldier was being punished for being a good and loyal soldier — a fairly extreme form of cognitive dissonance. The only way to keep such cognitive dissonance at bay, the psychologists said, was for Bush to see Libby’s prison sentence as overly harsh and do away with it altogether, even though Bush, both as president and governor of Texas, has long prided himself on refusing clemency to felons.

“He sees no inconsistency, just as we cannot see our own inconsistencies even though they are strikingly clear to everyone else,” Tavris said. “He is protecting one of his own, but his reasoning is consistent with the way the mind works to preserve consistency.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/
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Death in Texas, By Sister Helen Prejean – The New York Review of Books

Bush wrote in his autobiography that it was not his job to “replace the verdict of a jury unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair”….

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670
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The Daily Dish

“I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own,” – George W. Bush on why he signed death warrants for 152 inmates as governor of Texas.

The quote is from his own book, “A Charge To Keep.” I think that’s a debate-ender, isn’t it?”

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/quote-for-the-5.html
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ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor

This ‘Family’ Is Above the Law

THERE’S BAD news, good news and great news about President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail time.

The bad news is that in taking care of Scooter, who took the fall for Bush and Dick Cheney, the White House is finally OK with being indistinguishable from a criminal mob.

The good news is for all those “Sopranos” fans who mourned the recent loss of their favorite show; now you can just watch the nightly news on the Bush administration for your crime-family fix.

The great news is that now our children know that any criminal in the land can be above the law, as long as he knows the right people. …

JIM MULLANY
Sandia Park

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/letters/576832opinion07-08-07.htm

In the News

Almost 20 years ago, I was accused by the then-Dean of UNM’s Division of Continuing Education of “biting the hand that feeds me.” It wasn’t the first or last time I was thus accused — I take it as a compliment. At the time, an article had appeared in the paper in which a UNMCE instructor — vital to the program and long since gone — raved about the value of classroom training for computer users. I wrote a letter to the editor (this was years before blogs) saying classroom training isn’t for everyone. Heresy, albeit true. (I’ve found no perfect means for learning or teaching.)

I dredge this up as I think about UNM as a community. UNMCE has really made me a professional computer trainer. Foremost, my students deserve the credit for enduring and improving me, but UNMCE gave me many opportunities. I certainly could not have enjoyed self-employment (or, in truth, long-term semi-retirement) without the continued support of my friends, colleagues and students at UNMCE.

Even though Wiley Publishing has given me new opportunities, UNM continues to make what I do possible. Already, UNM has been much more generous about spreading the word about the book than Wiley has. (Does Wiley feel a nibble on its fingers?) UNMCE’s blog was the first “press” (beyond advertising) the book received. Now Benson Hendrix on main campus has written a very generous story for UNM Today: UNM Continuing Education Instructor Pens First Book [emphasis added]. (I am half-amused and half-embarrassed to be compared to Sisyphus, who is still toiling, if you believe such stuff.) mjh

PS: It occurred to me today that people will soon be asking, “what have you done lately?” Then my 15MB of fame will be full. (I’m tech-editing someone else’s book.)

The Web That Joins Us

So much about Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the Web was brilliant, but perhaps especially so the use of the word “web.” This Web connects us through tools Tim couldn’t have imagined — like blogs.

I am happy to write and, if you are happy to read, everything is great. But unlike so much media, a blog provides easy means for feedback. You are welcome to write me directly (mark@mjhinton.com). You are welcome to comment publicly (see the link near the end of each entry). I understand the hesitation in commenting, but it is part of the process — it’s good for us all.

Now, you are also welcome to rate any entry. Ratings are averaged and highest and most rated (high or low) entries are highlighted to the left near the top of the sidebar. (WordPress users may want to know this involves a plugin: WP-PostRatings.)

I assume many entries won’t warrant any rating at all. I also assume few will merit 5 stars and I hope none will merit 1 star. But the system is in place for you to use, to help me and to show other readers those entries they shouldn’t miss. mjh

Cal Thomas Defends Liberals — Tomorrow: Hell Freezes Over

Patriotism, By Cal Thomas

As with religion, some people on the right have used patriotism, which should be a unifying theme, to divide Americans. My liberal friends love America as much as I do. They might disagree on some, or all, of my political and religious beliefs, but that does not make them less in love with America, much less un-American. …

Leaders of many nations, including America, have used patriotism to persuade citizens of policies that are not always in their country’s best interests. Hitler’s deputy, Herman Goering, cynically observed: “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

And still we love America for opportunities that do not exist in such proportion in any other nation. A person who criticizes a particular policy does not necessarily love his country less than one who supports that policy. G.K. Chesterton said, “‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

After 231 years, we still try to make wrong into right and cheer the right and the nation that makes change possible when we succeed. That’s patriotism.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas070307.php3

Calcified Cal is never your typical conservative. I do appreciate him coming to the conclusion that even liberals can be patriots. I only wish he had trotted out the Goering and Chesterton quotes during the build-up to the Invasion of Iraq (Operation Enduring Fuck-up). Clearly, Rove has studied Goering. Where was Cal when the Talk Radio Brownshirts were burning Dixie Chicks records? mjh