MY WRITING JOURNAL

Thursday, August 12

We Need Trump

HEALTH CARE
HHS secretary: ‘A lot of folks would listen’ if Trump made vaccine PSA
Xavier Becerra’s remarks come as the U.S. vaccine supply is beginning to outpace demand.

Despite the fact that I awoke early and cannot go back to sleep, I am usually up early on these days anyway... so, it is only an hour early which is not that much of a lost sleep night... and, for the last 4 days, I have had to get up early each and every one of those to go to some kind of doctor visit, treatment, or procedure.

This morning my routine is (arrivig driving the 45 minutes to the cancer center) to check in and have lab work done... this is place where they access my port, so I make sure that I have put plenty of numbing cream on the skin covering the port... it must stay on an hour or more.

The next step is to wait the see the Oncologist who is trypically seeing loads of patients each day and always seems to fall behind as the day progresses so I try to see him as early as possible.

Then I return to the lab waiting room to be called for my treatment after checking in again. Within 15-20 minutes, I am taken to a chemo suite of 6 chairs.

UT Medical Cancer Center has 10 suites on the 4th floor of the center.

For some reason, I always wait another 30 minutes or so for the OPDIVO to arrive and then my infusion lasts only 30 minutes and I am outta there.

I arrive at 7:00 am and typically leave at 10:30/11:00 and much of that time is due to waiting.

Today, I will be informed of the results of my CT scan that I had on Monday... so, I am really interested to see if there has been any metabolic activity inside me.

Senile Old Man

Plenty of Fish

The Best Guitarist

Aside from some blues purists and perhaps a handful of onlookers who prefer to keep their names out of any popular idea, the world is pretty much in agreement that Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitarist the world has ever seen. Everyone except Hendrix himself, of course.

The counterculture poster boy, a bastion of free expression and otherworldly talent, Hendrix never found too much solace in bravado. He was always far more interested in the artistry of playing the guitar over the competition.

When appearing on the Dick Cavett show, the host praised the young man, claiming him to be the finest guitar player of all time. Naturally, a smile broke out across Hendrix’s face as the praise rained down.

However, he soon put Cavett right when he replied, “the greatest sitting in this chair, maybe.” It would appear that Hendrix had his own vision of who the best guitar player of all time was.

Before we go any further, there are a few contenders for the title of “best guitarist” in the world, as well as Hendrix’s favourite. Of course, the legendary set of Muddy Waters, Albert King and his namesake, B.B., are all up for serious consideration.

Naturally, there is also a good argument for Eric Clapton being one of the greats. But there are only two men whom Hendrix has specifically landed praise upon.

The first came during The Mike Douglas Show when Hendrix had become the toast of the town. Douglas asked Hendrix: “What’s it was like to be the best rock guitarist in the world?” Jimi then beautifully responded, “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher”.

For that reason alone, he could easily be considered Jimi’s all-time favourite. However, most believe that the title is reserved for another searing axeman, Billy Gibbons. READ MORE

She's Got The Walk

Colliding Photons

Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove.

A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

But like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue the photons don’t qualify as real, raising questions about the observation’s implications.

Predicted more than 80 years ago, the Breit-Wheeler process had never been directly observed, although scientists have seen related processes, such as light scattering off of light (SN: 8/14/17).

New measurements from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider match predictions for the elusive transformation, Brookhaven physicist Daniel Brandenburg and colleagues report in the July 30 Physical Review Letters.

“The idea that you can create matter from light smashing together is an interesting concept,” says Brandenburg.

It’s a striking demonstration of the physics immortalized in Einstein’s equation E=mc2, which revealed that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin. READ MORE

Designing

Remove Your Bird Feeders

Several state wildlife agencies are urging residents to take down their bird feeders as a mysterious illness continues to spread among songbirds.

The illness was initially reported in late May in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. More recently, reports have come in from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

Birds like common grackles, blue jays, European starlings, American robins, house sparrows, Carolina wrens, and other songbirds have been affected.

Sick birds may present neurological symptoms like dizziness, tremors, or falling over. Their eyes may be swollen and have discharge or crust on them.

Though researchers have been studying the birds to find out what exactly the illness is, they don't have an answer yet.

They have ruled out a few common pathogens, like Salmonella and the avian influenza virus, both of which have not been detected in the sick birds.

There is an investigation to see whether Brood X cicadas are somehow involved with the illness, but it seems unlikely that there is a connection, ornithologist Allysin Gillet told Indiana Public Media.

"There are so many things out there that could possibly be causing this," Gillet said. "I think mystery is a good term to use for this because we really need to look at all the different angles of this disease." READ MORE