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Showing posts from March, 2012

Mad Mad World

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First came the recognition. "Hey, that's my Aunt Dorothy's dining room furniture." We identified all the old brand names, the furniture styles, the sport coats, the commercials...of course the commercials. That was the initial appeal of Mad Men. The story line never really surprised, after all it's not like we didn't live through those years ourselves. But now, as Mad Men, the popular AMC produced TV series begins its fifth season, I'm finding that it has a particular, if not singular appeal to my generation. Oh sure we could always go back and look at the re-runs of old 50s and 60s sit-coms. But Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet don't feature the smoking and drinking that were so much a part of a Boomer's childhood. Mad Men offers the diet, the sexism, the racism, the duplicity in all it's arrogant glory. I've heard the show is painful to watch for some. That could be, but I dwell on the humor. There is one scene t

Good Sport

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We called it tackle football. It was played on grass, not in the street. For the pavement it was called touch. Two hands clearly placed below the waist of a member of the opposing team. Sometimes we made rule changes. Sometimes you could touch a runner's shoulders. Then there was flag football. Two strips of an old sheet, one on each hip would do the trick. Pull out one of those flags and the play ended on that spot. We called penalties too. Couldn't always agree on what was holding, unnecessary roughness, or off sides, but we tried. Football was clearly a game of rules. When I read about New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton being suspended for a year and the team receiving half a million dollars in fines for their "bounty program," I'm reminded of playing tackle football on someone's front lawn or in my local neighborhood park. By way of definition, the bounty program involved certain players being paid cash bonuses to take out their opponent

This Is Your Brain On...

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Working my way through the Sunday Review section of the New York Times yesterday morning I came upon a fascinating pair of articles separated by only one page. Both are actually opinion pieces. On page 5 is a piece tersely called War Is Brain Damaging . Given recent events, it's not too difficult to discern that this is a piece about traumatic brain injuries incurred by soldiers who have experienced, "repeated exposure to the concussive force of improvised explosive devices-I.E.D.s- a regular event for troops traveling the roads in Iraq and Afghanistan." The article goes on to detail the case of a woman veteran who can no longer recognize her daughter, and quickly finds its way to Robert Bales, the Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians. The author, Kate Wenner, concludes by asking us all if we too don't have a bit of a problem with our memories. "Aren't we all a little guilty of wanting to turn away from the shameful and painful

Knock Knock

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It was right at the end of the 60 Minutes piece on the Khan Academy, the online sensation that is having admirable success at teaching kids math and science. Sanjay Gupta, the CNN reporter/doctor was on special assignment for the CBS magazine. The piece was quite interesting, extolling the virtues of this apparently very successful method of online teaching that seems to be the future. After interviewing the founder, Salman Khan, and then detailing how Bill Gates endorsed and then publicized the method of one on one computer screen teaching, the feature ended with Gupta talking to a young Latino boy. "Has anyone in your family ever gone to college," he asks. "No," came the reply. "So then you would be the first from your family." "Yes." "What do you think about that?" "If I can get help from Khan Academy like this now, I think I can make it." Gupta pauses, but we all know his ultimate response. "I think you

Feeble Attempts

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After my father-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, we marveled at how he was able show so much grace under so much fire. His symptoms and behavior were atypical from the git go. Aphasia took his story telling skill and ultimately his voice. He was left with only familiar short words and phrases. Uh huh...that's right, yes, No! uh huh. In the last few months he was able to drive, he carried the x-rays of his brain in the trunk of his car. Logical explanation: he was part of an ongoing study and had decided to donate his brain to further research when the time came. But the x-rays inhabited the trunk for a good while, rarely seeing the light of day. As a doctor and then a professor of public health, he understood the need for research. His participation was complete. But he joked with the smile he never lost. Sometimes, when we'd sit with him alone, he'd attempt a small conversation. "I need a new brain" he told us with a shrug of his shoulders

On The Surface

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A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday night, I turned to put something back into the refrigerator. Pivoting around to the counter to retrieve my dish, I noticed what appeared to be a stray hair over my eyelash. Not so. Maybe a bug or a stray gnat. Nope. I decided to wash my face. That didn't help either. Then it hit me. It's a "floater." Yup, I've developed a floater on one of my eyes. In case you don't know what that is, I'll tell you. A floater is a microscopic bit of protein that breaks away inside the eye. They normally occur as one ages. Floaters can take a number of forms; some see shapes or circles, some see spots or cobweb like shadows. Mine is dark gray to black. It's buggy in every sense of the word. Not too bad when I look straight ahead, like drive or watch TV. When I read it really bothers me. It's like a bug moving with your eyes. I went to my eye doc a few days ago and got good news. My eyes are healthy. That helps.