Random Thinking

If you are going to go out drinking its always a good idea to have a designated driver. But you should really plan ahead to insure that the person you choose is the right person.

A woman in Ontario, Canada decided she shouldn’t be driving after a night of drinking so she handed her keys over to her daughter who hadn’t had a thing to drink all night. The problem was that her daughter was only nine years old.

“The woman was concerned that she was unable to drive having consumed some alcohol at a social function,” a police officer said. The child was apparently doing an OK job of driving but police got suspicious when they noticed that she was driving very slow and that she seemed very small. The woman was charged with a traffic violation but this was much less than she would have received had she been driving drunk so maybe it wasn’t a completely bad decision.

We got Beth’s school pictures today. As you can see she is beautiful and loves Nightmare on Elm Street. She is smart and a good friend. Michel and I did a pretty darned good job.

Mikey loves going for rides in the car. Saturday, after his recreation program at ACDS ended, he asked me to take him for a ride. Michel, Beth, and Nana all wanted something from McDonald’s so Mikey and I decided to drive to McDonald’s via the beach. It’s only a half hour out of the way. We didn’t stop at the beach, just went around the traffic circle and came back and I didn’t get any good shots of the water but I did get a few shots showing where we are, fall foliage-wise. As you can see in the pictures below, most of the trees have not turned yet. We listened to the theme song from Kappa Mikey over and over again (according to iTunes, we have listed to it over 600 times) and Mikey sat in the back enjoying the view and the beautiful, clear day.

John McCain has shown that he has no morals. He doesn’t care what he says if it will get him elected. He doesn’t care what lies he tells. At the debate last week he accused the community organizing group ACORN of committing, potentially, “one of the greatest frauds of voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy in this country.”

Really, Senator? Then why is it that just two years ago you were a supporter of ACORN? As ACORN responded:

“…unfortunately the Senator McCain we saw tonight is very different than the Senator McCain who stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN at a February 20, 2006 immigration reform event. What is really going here is that Senator McCain and his allies are part of a coordinated effort to engage in what appears to be an unprecedented effort to suppress voter turnout.”

What is going on here? What is ACORN? ACORN is an organization that tries to help poor people. One of the things it does is promote voter registration. ACORN hires people to go into communities and ask people if they are registered and if they aren’t, they help people fill out the forms to register and submit the forms to the state. ACORN is not related to any political party but obviously most people in poor neighborhoods tend to be Democratic voters.

ACORN does not pay their employees per registration but they do expect people they pay to return some completed registrations. Unfortunately some people find ways to get forms filled out without doing the work. Some just pull names from phone books while others with less imagination use names like “Mickey Mouse” and “G. I. Joe”. ACORN is experienced so they can spot a lot of the fakes and they mark them as suspected before they turn them in. But they do have to turn the forms in no matter what. That is the law in most states. ACORN is not permitted to decide which applications should be submitted and which can be thrown away.

But this is really no big deal. It is very unlikely that “Mickey Mouse” is going to show up to vote even if the state approved the registration. What this is about is voter registration fraud, not voting fraud. Senator McCain’s statement is pure hyperbole and has as little relationship to the truth as if McCain had said the tooth fairy was going to make him the next president. But McCain’s lies are dangerous and have led to death threats, vandalism, and racist attacks. McCain telling his followers that ACORN is “destroying the fabric of democracy” can only create hatred, fear, and lead to violence.

But there is voter fraud going on out there. But it is being done by the Republican Party. The Supreme Court just stopped the GOP in Ohio from trying to invalidate thousands of new voter registrations. The GOP wanted to use driver’s license databases to cancel registrations so that if a name is misspelled, the registration would be tossed. Since voter registrations are handwritten forms that are typed into a computer, errors can creep in innocently. An example, Joe the Plumber, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher, would have had his registration tossed because his last name is spelled Worzelbacher on his voter registration.

Another example… Republican Secretaries of State of Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls without informing any of the people purged. That is ten times the number they normally purge. This is happening in several of the swing states.

We saw what happens with fraud in the last two presidential elections. That is much more of a threat to our democracy than letting Mickey Mouse register to vote.

Update:
* Number of Democrats arrested on voter registration fraud: 0
* Number of Republicans arrested on voter registration fraud: 1

In her speech at the Republican Convention, Sarah Palin told us that she would be an advocate for the disabled. But where does the McCain-Palin ticket stand?

The research the DSRTF is paying for that may help children with Down syndrome is not being paid for by the US government. The cost of that research? $150,000. Approximately 10 minutes of what we are spending in Iraq.

It’s Friday again… time for the song of the week from my iPod.

Simple Plan is a French Canadian pop punk group from Montreal, Quebec. The band is made up of Pierre Bouvier (lead singer), Jeff Stinco (lead guitarist), Sébastien Lefebvre (guitarist), Chuck Comeau (drums), David Desrosiers (bass). The group of friends originally formed in 1993 as Reset, but eventually changed into Simple Plan around 2000. The group released their first album in 2002. They have been very successful with two of their albums going platinum in the US and all three of their albums going platinum in Canada.

“Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)” was the third single from the group’s second album. The song is about the effect of drunk driving and the video shows graphically as the loved ones of the girl killed by the drunk driver are thrown about their home at the moment of impact. Simple Plan is very serious about their anti-drunk driving campaign as they are outspoken supporters of MADD and RADD. As the members of the group said:

Over the last few years, a lot of people we know have been involved in tragic accidents caused by drinking and driving. One of the students at our high-school crashed his car driving back from a weekend trip and killed his best friend. It was a very sad time that none of us will ever forget.

When an accident happens, there are more victims than people think, and many lives are changed forever…Parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, grandparents… everybody feels the impact.

We wanted to tell a story with this video: the story about all of the innocent victims affected by drinking and driving.

Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)
I open my eyes
I try to see but I’m blinded by the white light
I can’t remember how
I can’t remember why
I’m lying here tonight

And I can’t stand the pain
And I can’t make it go away
No I can’t stand the pain

How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

Everybody’s screaming
I try to make a sound but no one hears me
I’m slipping off the edge
I’m hanging by a thread
I wanna start this over again

So I try to hold onto a time when nothing mattered
And I can’t explain what happened
And I can’t erase the things that I’ve done
No I can’t

How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

A lawsuit against God was thrown out of court because the plaintiff was unable to serve legal papers upon the deity. Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers tried to sue God to prevent the “death, destruction and terrorization” caused by God. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that since “…there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice.” Basically, the court ruled that since God is really good at hiding that there is no way to serve legal papers on Him.

Chambers can not refile but he can appeal. He hasn’t decided if he will appeal or not. Chambers had tried to sue God because God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants”.

Chambers tried to avoid having to serve legal papers on God on the principle that since God is omniscient He already knows that He is being sued.

Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that “anyone can sue anyone else, even God”.

I had the tilt table test and although I didn’t pass out, the results were enough to convince the electrophysiologist, Dr. Beldner, that it was vasovagal related.

The test itself was pure torture. There really is nothing to the test other than standing for 45 minutes. My blood pressure and pulse were normal so after 30 minutes without a reaction they gave me a drug to increase my heart rate and that is when I really started feeling horrible. I got shaky and sweaty and started to feel nauseous. After 10 minutes they ended the test.

I started to get dizzy after the test was over and after all the monitors were removed. Figures. I should add that the two nurses, Lisa and Matt, were great. The test was delayed because the previous test went long and then they couldn’t find a resident to sit in the room and observe so we had a nice chat. During the test they were very professional and very caring.

After the test was done, Dr. Beldner went over the results with me. He wants me to try to control my symptoms with diet. He didn’t think it was worth taking a medication if I was only going to pass out once every 18 months. But he also wants me to see the neurologist because he didn’t like the episode where I blanked out for a few moments at work.

So the end result is that it doesn’t look like anything life threatening, I don’t need a pacemaker, and I should make sure that I rest when I feel off. I have to maintain a high salt diet so that I can stay well hydrated because that helps prevent syncopal episodes. And finally, another visit with the neurolgist.

Remind me not to shake hands with anyone outside of London next time I’m in Britian. A study done by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found that men in the north of Britian are disgusting pigs and make we want to vomit! Really!

A study done among commuters in Britian found 53% of men in Newcastle had hands contaminated with fecal bacteria. 53%!!! But down in London, the figure was only 6%. Among women there was little variation with all areas of the country around 27% but among men the variation was huge depending on the part of Britain your are in. Other cities in Britain included Cardiff at 15%, Birmingham at 21%, and Liverpool at 36%. So men in London are 4 times cleaner than women and 8 times cleaner than men from Newcastle! I have no idea what is going on in Newcastle but they obviously aren’t spending a lot on soap.

I wonder if anyone has done a similar study in the US.

Yesterday I had an appointment to see the electrophysiologist. I thought it was with the cardiologist and were they surprised when I showed up especially since my cardiologist was away on vacation. Anyway, I called Michel and she corrected me so I raced over to the right office and got to see the electrophysiologist.

This is not the doctor who did the ablation on me. That doctor left to run the department at another hospital. This is the doctor who removed the heart monitor but that was the only time I had seen him. The theory was that the ablation was going to remove any further need for seeing an electrophysiologist. This doctor however was less than thrilled about the ablation. First he said that the purpose of an ablation is to fix an arrhythmia but the type of arrhythmia that the ablation would cure is very unlikely to cause passing out. Second since they weren’t able to induce the arrhythmia, the ablation was sort of a shot in the dark because there was no way to know if they got the right spot or if they got everything.

Finally, he said, based on the symptoms it was unlikely that I actually had an arrhythmia although it is possible but it is much more likely that I have vasovagal syncope which is what I had been treated for in the past. Arghhhh… anyway, he wants to see if he can induce a hypotensive episode by putting me on a tilt table. We will be trying that tomorrow. The last doctor did a tilt table test but I was on medication to prevent passing out so it is no surprise that the test came back negative. Anyway, if they can get a positive result then I am back to the potato chip and Taco Bell diet. High salt content is one of the best ways to prevent episodes.