That Sinking Feeling

Sinking into lightness When I'm bored, I like to sit in my kitchen sink and groove on its cool porcelain presence. "I sink, therefore I am," it seems to say, and who could disagree? It makes so much sense.

When I'm feeling down, I can count on my sink to be there for me. "Sink or swim," it says, and I have to laugh. Where does it get this stuff, anyway? I don't know, but it always make me feel better. That's the main thing.

When I'm sleepy, my sink sings me a lullaby. Its gurgling baritone pulls me down . . . down . . . down into the land of nod. "Sweet dreams," I hear it say, and then I'm gone. Hook, line, and sinker.

When the cupboard is bare and I'm forced to eat dirt, my sink reminds me that everyone else is poor, except me. "Let them have their diamonds, and their fancy cars," says the sink. I know that's true, but sometimes I forget. They have everything but the kitchen sink. How sad is that?

 

Metaphysical Voice Recognition

Do you read me? Over. In the spirit of last Friday's monologue, I decided to plunge into the chill, uncharted waters of backward speech headfirst, and without diving gear. Listening to reversed human speech becomes tedious after a while, which is why I handed the task over to my trusty speech-recognition system. Now, I'm free to go off in search of donuts and other tasty snacks while my computer does the grunt work.

Here's an actual example of its handiwork, using my All About Dreaming post as input. I simply recorded my own voice as I read the post, reversed the recording, then fed it to the speech-recognition system. Punctuation was disabled.

In all the right out of that very else is at her home or will the Niners massager was not a deal since how we lose if the Raza Rozier else is it moved near to sell groped and so I feel it will be a lot mere unit here it was researched it may seem brutal Xbox or denying the buyouts as it notes that in your very hurt by alarms or speech to the sea in which the nearest is missing in the ocean the Arizona went and arts else are nine and thereafter overseers must year cicada mutant gives it its a very asked but it we will use its admiring the first of our software analysis's after you get in on it for what it sees respect that and 90 after a severe knee in Rome in the pocket we knew my Windows 95 will need laws and appeared gastronomic present opulent is mere drugmaker feel in and I thought you means of the year to remember thank you that must Sanaa Novotna mucked Vacaville.net yet and I see it even so often the average the latter often are not really wouldn't it be his visit this I don't know much he looks at one of the sea when it hit the nearest out there are a hazard sat in the LA NAFTA rushed up and there Nor is now present it in the past year the alley to let sit on and off nerve implied mere dozer/let it a suitably hurt you listen here we stroked the mere yellow the are no wonder Bush will have its title the retrofit Satanists out to second posterity hex and the niacin is near Paris is that demands excitement clinched the ultimate sin many years now loop

As you can see, the system did a fine job of picking up the subtle nuances that characterize backward speech. More important, the direct link to my subconscious was preserved, offering a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of my psyche. All this, and I didn't even have to listen!

 

Finding Reverse

Forward is backward. Moving forward is bright and optimistic, while the idea of going backward is leaden by comparison. Backward is heavy with defeatism, and its predictably pessimistic outlook has no place in the sun. Forward is light and happy; backward is simply not.

This way of thinking disgusts me. Running in reverse is sensible and necessary; the fact our brains run backward when we're asleep proves it. For those who require proof on top of proof, I would simply ask what life would be worth if we suddenly found ourselves without the ability to speak in reverse. Even the hardened skeptic has to admit that talking backward is the crucial element when it comes to communicating with the subconscious mind. It's also handy for getting in touch with malevolent, soul-eating entities, but that isn't always the same thing.

I decided to find out what other secret messages might be floating around, so I spent the week reversing every recording I own. Many gigabytes later, I'm pleased to report that I'm now in the somewhat enviable position of having a comprehensive library of reversed speech, music, and video. Naturally, I destroyed the original versions to avoid the temptations of reason and logic that so often sabotage the maverick.

In the best traditions of innovation and discovery, I expect there will be setbacks and frustrations, and even ridicule from the unenlightened savages who've never even tried speaking backward. Finding reverse may not be easy, but then, I'm sure Henry Ford heard that, too.

 

Et Ceterating the Rainbow

[Today's monologue, which was inspired by Craig's graphic, is making a guest appearance on the One Letter Words weblog. It is being simulcast here for the convenience of our viewers.]

All that glitters is not gold. Ampersands never glitter. Therefore, all ampersands are made of painted plastic. Aunt Blim was confused about many things, and shouldn't have been allowed near the children. Her habit of mixing metaphorsespecially in combination with her disregard for syntaxwas bad enough, but when I told my classmates that Goldilocks had murdered the leprechauns because they threw cold porridge in her face, I was chased around the schoolyard until I fell down.

Worse, aunt Blim had been schooled during a particularly difficult periodcirca 1880, according to her parrotand so had learned to place an ampersand at the very end of the alphabet, after the letters ran out. It was a peculiar way of suggesting that more letters might follow, if only one were willing to wait a while. In effect, it was an et cetera at the end of the alphabet. While her classmates had moved forward and simply ignored such eccentric teachings, aunt Blim internalized them, passing the madness on to succeeding generations. Unfortunately, this included mine, which is how I came to believe her twisted version of the Goldilocks tale in the first place.

Passing on warped fables to classmates is one thing, and arguing for archaic principles with your grammar-school teacher is another, but combining the two is likely to get you a fat lip, followed by expulsion. At least that's the way I remember it. As I was being conducted to the principal's office by one ear, my teacher was bellowing in the other.

"There is no ampersand at the end of the rainbow!"

"There is no ampersand at the end of the rainbow!"

I think she was wrong.

 

Big Money

Fat dollar It seems most people agree that inflation ought to take a large portion of the blame for overpriced goods and services. A day's wages for a loaf of bread hasn't yet become reality, although the possibility becomes a bit easier to swallow with each trip to the supermarket. For those old enough to rememberbut not old enough to forgethow much they paid for their houses and cars in 1970, today's price tags are likely to induce laughter, followed by vomiting, and then death.

Fortunately, I was able to solve this problem over the weekend. Unlike the weekend solutions of others, mine won't increase our taxes or our debt. In fact, it's as easy as 123, or more accurately, ABC.

The trouble is in the way we think about money. We cling to the archaic belief that we own dollars and cents, even when reason and logic clearly point to the improbability of keeping bills and coins in a space the size of a credit card. Online banking only strengthens the case, because the idea of squeezing currency through the cables that connect your computer to the one at your bank is laughable, to put it politely. I won't even dignify the delusional thinking associated with sending money through a wireless connection.

By now, I'm sure you're asking yourself the very same questions that spawned my weekend epiphany.

1) What can I do to increase the value of something as intangible as money?

2) What's really in my cookie jar, then?

The answer to both questions, of course, is nothing at all. This is because the solution has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with numbersor more to the point, the lack thereof.

Since we have only nine digits from which to choose in our archaic base-10 numbering system, it's tempting to inflate those numbersthe number nine especiallybeyond their maximum recommended pressure. Eventually, they explode. This is why your cookie jar is empty, and it's also the reason for those vomit-inducing prices you see at the gas pump, and on the stickers of the vehicles at your local dealership.

What's needed, then, is a new way of expressing the expandability of money, without blowing any pressure seals in the process. Although the idea seems attractive at first, I don't think we should simply express our inflation values in pounds per square inch, because that would only create confusion with the British monetary system. Instead, I believe we ought to put our alphabet to better use.

Simply adding those 26 letters to our current, old-school currency numbering system would dramatically ease inflationary pressures. That frightening $7.00 price tag on a gallon of milk would become G14RW. A new car would cost YR2D2. Even that 14-bedroom villa you've had your eye on would only set you back a measly S4P12.

Anyway, you get the picture. When it comes to inflation, your money can never be big enough.

 

My Conservative Investment Strategy

No risky investments here. No sir. No sirreee Bob. Recent developments in our troubled financial system have not forced me to reconsider my investment strategy. Fortunately, my highly diversified portfolio means I'm not suffering from the high-risk lending practices that caused this fiasco in the first place. Long ago, I decided to follow the advice of a trusted friend, and invested in parsley, sage, rosemary and time instead.

This conservative strategy has made all the difference. Contrary to what your financial advisor told you, the proof of it isn't so much in the pudding. Rather, it's in the salads and the tea, and in all the ticks and tocks that accumulate during the course of a typical midmorning siesta.

It may seem obvious in retrospect, but since the value of bottled time and hot tea increases during periods of fiscal volatility, these commodities are always an effective hedge against the various anxieties that come from wearing a wooden barrel without underwear.

 

Exiled from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (A true story)

[Today's guest post is brought to you by the august Craig Conley of One Letter Words fame. Any praise or contempt should be sent directly to him, while any cash should, of course, be sent directly to me.]

You can never go home again. Unless you want to. I'll never forget the day I found myself locked out of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Since then, the whole world has looked a little more decrepit.

Improbably, my exile occurred mere hours after my grand arrival. I'd hardly had time to take in the idyllic wonders of the Neighborhood before I was cruelly banished. Who was it who posited that paradise is timeless? (Full disclosure: I was the one positing.) Accordingly, a brief moment of bliss is indistinguishable from an eternity, so the shortness of my experience in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in no way mitigates the pain of my expulsion.

The instrument of my expulsion? The cold shards of a shattered illusion. Here's how it went down: I was on a scenic boat tour in the "Venice of America," Winter Park, Florida. They have pontoon boats that travel twelve miles through the peaceful lakes of the city (the lakes being connected by canals, originally dug by logging companies to float timber to a nearby train station). It's a gorgeous tour, not only for the natural beauty of the vegetation and wildlife along the way but also for the stillness of the lake water. It sounds silly to say that "you feel like you're floating" while in a boat on a lake, but I actually felt like I was floating inches above the water. It was transcendent, and I was somehow primed for a revelation! Many people go on this tour to gawk at the mansion homes along the lake shores, as several dozen movie stars, pop singers, and sports figures own winter homes there. (That includes Carrot Top, though I'm not exactly sure how to categorize him.) The location is indeed a slice of heaven, and it's no wonder that celebrities can't resist buying their own little morsel (of that carrot cake, as it were).

Naturally, the boat captain recites a spiel along the way, sharing bits of local history and pointing out famous owners of the various mansions. As an aside (but one which is a piece of the puzzle), I was sitting in the front row, right next to the guide, and he seemed to bond with me in a surprising way. He made eye contact with me whenever he talked, and if I was ever looking the other way at the scenery, he would confirm I had heard what he'd said as soon as I looked his way again. It was as if he were giving the spiel just for my benefit, and this feeling was reinforced by the fact that he made personal asides to me throughout. In other words, he would let go of the speaker button and mutter an additional sentence or two just to me, out of hearing of the other passengers. The fact that this man both looked and sounded like my grandfather was somewhat eerie, and I readily admit to wondering whether the spirit of my grandfather wasn't somehow connecting with me through this boat captain. One of the houses the guide pointed out was the boyhood home of Mister Rogers. "When Mister Rogers talked about his 'neighborhood,'" the guide said, "this was it."

At those words, fireworks went off in my head. This gorgeous lake district that I had fallen in love with was nothing less than Mister Rogers' Neighborhood! That idyllic neighborhood he sang about wasn't just the stuff of dreams: it was a real place, and I had discovered it! And it was even more beautiful than I could ever have imagined!

It was like an epiphanysuddenly the world didn't seem like such a scary place. I was practically giddy with joy, and I decided to take the tour again a few hours later, to continue basking in my revelation. Though there are four different boat captains, I got the same man again, and of course he remembered me. Little did I know that I was in for a second bombshell, but one I wouldn't like!

This time, when we floated past Mister Rogers' house, somebody piped up with a follow-up question (something trivial and pointless, like "what street is the house on"). In answering that question, the guide explained that it wasn't really Mister Rogers' neighborhood. "He just rented a room in that house while he was a student at Rollins College, but we like to tell tourists that this is Mister Rogers' neighborhood."

Well, I was devastated! My newfound illusion had been shattered by an asinine tourist's question. I figuratively could have strangled that tourist. (I actually wasn't mad at the guidein fact, I was charmed by the little fib he had told and would have been quite delighted to go on believing it! It was the question-asker that enraged me!) For the rest of that tour, I kept thinking about a motto in the 60's television series "The Prisoner": "Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself." I was indeed feeling imprisoned by that answer about Mister Rogers' house, for it was locking me out of the idyllic Neighborhood! I was suddenly an outsider againshunned, expelled from this paradise. I wanted my illusion back, as ridiculous as those words sounded in my own head.

While delusions are always negative, illusions aren't necessarily so. In one of his songs, the flamboyant entertainer Boy George actually defends holding onto one's illusions, defiantly singing: "You can try but you can't shatter my illusions." That's food for thought (and not a dig at Boy George's weight gain, as everyone knows that your metabolism goes to pot once you reach age 40). Could consciously sustaining one's illusions be a positive thing? A false impression seems negative by the very fact of its falsity, yet couldn't it also be pleasing, harmless, and even useful?

But those are questions best left to philosophers, not Swedes. Er, in the sense that someone once compared exile to the nation of Sweden. (Full disclosure: I'm not the one who made that comparison; it was in a book about European perspectives on social work with minority groups.) Let the philosophers speculate while we minorities spend the remainder of our sleepless nights dreaming of a gated community . . . a Neighborhood that's imaginary and untrue.

 

Remote Control

Blog posts travel faster than messages in bottles, and are generally warmer and drier.

Especially when they're located in remote areas, small towns have their secrets, kept from the world at large but common knowledge to everyone who lives there. Before the advent of citizen journalismperpetrated, mostly, by irritating upstart bloggers and their cohortsspreading the word beyond geographic boundaries required more than just a computer with an Internet connection.

One particularly intriguing example of the new mass-communication comes from a tiny spot on the map, appropriately named Hope, Alaska. From there, it seems, one blogger effectively spread a simple letter from a fellow Alaskan to the world, and in record time. Of course, the blog post generated a great deal of interest due to its timely political content, but what's more interesting to me is the manner in which that content was broadcast to the planet, and the speed at which it flew.

Knowledge is power, but controllingor preventing control ofits flow has a lot to do with who's in power, and for how long.

 

Why I Don't Understand What You're Saying

[Today's monologue, which was inspired by Craig's graphic, is making a guest appearance on the One Letter Words weblog. It is being simulcast here for the convenience of our viewers.]

From http://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=4365When I was a child, the pediatrician I was forced to visit enjoyed tormenting me with his voice, which he used for making loud, sarcastic remarks concerning the reasons for those visits. When I had athlete's foot, Dr. Blut called it "jungle rot," and reflected, loudly, on the likelihood of it spreading to other areas of my body. Everything he said was delivered at an abnormally high volume because the nurse had ruptured his eardrums.

Nurse Krill always came in immediately after the doctor had finished distressing me with his words, and went straight to the task of measuring my body temperature with one of the infernal appliances she kept in the cabinet of the examination room. After she had selected the appropriate one, she would approach with an air of nonchalance, hiding the mystery behind her back. Then, with a shriek, she would plunge the thing into one of my ear canals while she counted, loudly, to sixty.

At this point, you're probably asking yourself what she might have done to improve her technique. After all, taking a child's temperature with a modern digital thermometer is hardly rocket science, and besides, it isn't so easy to jam one of those little plastic tips so far into an ear canal that the eardrum is ruptured. Right?

No. You're wrong, as usual. You've conveniently forgotten what year it is in my narrative, and that there's no digital anything, and the rectal thermometer I'm referring to is half a foot long, made of glass, and is filled with tapioca or similarly lethal substance. It obviously wasn't shaped like an ampersand, because that would be silly.

Continuing on, the main points of my story are simply that (2) you can't assume doctors and nurses aren't demonic entities from Hell, (1) just because Derek Walcott managed to scrawl out a few lines about an ampersand-shaped rectal thermometer doesn't mean he could hear what the doctor was saying about my feet, and (3) it's unwise to trust the accuracy of any temperature measurement when you're surrounded by a bunch of flames.

 

Common Ground

A traditional Venn diagram. The venerable Venn diagram is useful for showing overlapping areas between sets of things. A traditional representation of this type of diagramtranslucent colored circles are an old favoriteis on the left, but tradition doesn't amount to a hill of beans when the elements of a set, or the sets themselves, don't lend themselves to any sane comparison.

A new-school Venn diagram. For example, say you want to find out what would happen if you were to combine a sun, a blue moon, and a red lightning bolt. As you can see from a cursory examination of the intersecting areas in the Venn diagram on the right, the statistical likelihood of the Large Hadron Collider recreating the Big Bang is approximately that of two full moons within the same month.

Most farm animals aren't very good swimmers. In a similar way, combining a horse, a cow, and an octopus in a Venn diagram illustrates the difficulty of achieving meaningful results in today's DNA research facilities. Clearly, had humankind been intended for the task of creating new life forms, we would have more than two legs to stand on.

A really smart idea. If necessity is the mother of invention, the Venn diagram is its father. Grafting common household appliances to plumbing fixtures can be a mind-numbing task, but diagramming the job beforehand keeps the numbness from ruining an otherwise sunny day. In the example on the right, the diagram tells me everything I need to know about the feasibility of combining a hair dryer, a coffeemaker, and a toilet.

A really stupid idea. In rare instances, even a Venn diagram isn't enough to keep chaos from raining on one's so-called picnic. If the sheer madness of certain combinationsthe diagram on the left is only an exampleproves one thing, it's that.

 

I Think I Might Be Shining

Clowns in my coffee, and also in my typewriter. All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

All blog and no play makes Jeff a dull boy.

 

Facing Facts

When is a face not a face?

One of the benefits of living in the House of Googleeven if it's only in a derivative, I'm-using-their-software kind of wayis the assortment of nifty tools and applications they make available, all for the price of a six-pack of nothing. Although I haven't yet investigated their new browser or the Picasa 3 photo organizing and editing software, I spent some time over the weekend exploring the world of Picasa Web Albums. In particular, its image-recognition capabilities suggest new and intriguing possibilities when you consider how many digitized faces are stored on the servers that make the Web go 'round.

Zillions of faces, I think. But who are they? Where are the labelsthe proper namesthat allow us to make the distinction between Robert and Larry, or Katherine and Isabella? The answer, of course, is I don't know. Who has the time or inclination to catalog every single face in every digital snapshot that, these days, invariably winds up on the Internet?

I may know the answer to that one, actually. Google has the time, and the resources, to make this sort of thing feasible. Using Picasa Web Albums as the human/machine interface, and assuming we can free up enough timeevery so oftento type in the names of our photographic subjects before we send their images to the Web, Google's software will keep track of those faces and their associated names, thereby freeing us up for more photography.

At least in theory. The four images you see at the top of this monologue are actual examples of graphicsfrom the Omegaword blog in this caseselected by the Picasa Web Albums system as possible faces for me to identify and name. As you can see, the first two are essentially line drawings, from which Picasa's image-recognition system was evidently able to extract sufficient humanity to make the call. The third image, on the other hand, is possessed of only rudimentary facelike characteristics, making the system's judgment all the more impressive. As for the rightmost image, well . . . the system isn't perfect. I can see it's a button, and you can see it's a button, but then, we aren't machines. At least you're not.

One especially disturbing moment occurred when the image-recognition system suggested I might be the subject of a particular portrait I had just uploaded, when in fact it was a picture of my mother. But on the whole, using actual humans in actual photographs worked surprisingly well. Once I had correctly identified a given subject in a photograph, the Picasa system did a good job of guessing his or her name in subsequent photos.

At some pointand on a much grander scaleselecting return images that contain faces in Google's advanced image search, after typing in a particular name, may become the method of choice for keeping track of anyone who's ever been photographed. Where exactly that point might lie on our timeline is uncertain, but considering the sheer number of wired and wireless cameras on our planet, it could be nearer than it seems today.

I also can't resist mentioning, in passing, that the procedure in the previous paragraph didn't work out well for me. Using Omegaword as the search phrase, Google's face-search returned mug shots of other people, while ignoring my mug entirely. I'll leave the reenactment to you if you're so inclined, and so bored.

 

Why I Love Red

http://oneletterwords.com/weblog/

Sometimes I think there's a fine line between love and hate, but I don't believe everything I think. Other times, I think I hate believing that I love what I once hated. Today I think I love red, now that it's been infused with the color it so desperately needed.

It is glorious.

 


If you ask me, there's something just plain wrong about a red sky, and it doesn't really matter what time it is, either. Sailors may delight in a red sky at night, but I don't even have a boat. Red is the color of blood, and I hate seeing it outside my body, or yours. Roses are red, especially after I bleed all over them because the thorns stabbed me when I wasn't looking.

My eyes are red every day after my shower because I always get soap in them. It hurts. Fire trucks are red, and so is communism. When I hear sirens I think about air raids, or someone's house burning down. When I have a cold, my nose gets red from all the blowing and wiping. I don't feel good when I eat red meat, and red wine gives me a headache. Diaper rash is red.

I hate red.

—Jeff, "Why I Hate Red," Omegaword, 2008

Why I Hate Red

Bad moon rising. Or setting. But it's still red either way.

If you ask me, there's something just plain wrong about a red sky, and it doesn't really matter what time it is, either. Sailors may delight in a red sky at night, but I don't even have a boat. Red is the color of blood, and I hate seeing it outside my body, or yours. Roses are red, especially after I bleed all over them because the thorns stabbed me when I wasn't looking.

My eyes are red every day after my shower because I always get soap in them. It hurts. Fire trucks are red, and so is communism. When I hear sirens I think about air raids, or someone's house burning down. When I have a cold, my nose gets red from all the blowing and wiping. I don't feel good when I eat red meat, and red wine gives me a headache. Diaper rash is red.

I hate red.

 

Bird Droppings

Something on the heels of nothing

Hard on the heels of nothing, up from the ashes on the axis of X, Phoenix dances on a hot tin roof, wings akimbo.

Skyward and windward, hohoho, scholarly eccentricity and Barwinisms help it fly.

Limbo lower now, bird. Not all will fall down.

 

The MD's ID

Not your grandfather's cell phone, but it should have been. Today nostalgia has befallen me, so I'm thinking thoughts of days long gone, when doctors had cell phones but no one else did, except me. I know it seems improbable now; they're so ubiquitous, and so cheap. I mean cell phones, not doctors.

Anyway, in those days people with phones were always mistaken for physicians. Once, while visiting a traveling King Tut museum exhibition with my bricklike cell phone in tow, I was told that high-frequency devicescell phones were in that category thenweren't allowed, and I would need to leave the thing at the security desk. This rule, added the security officer, did not apply to doctors. But she peered at me in a manner that suggested I was not, so I left the phone with her.

Before cell phones, physicians were forced to rely on pagers for identification. These weren't the tiny numeric pagers we've come to associate with middle-school students. Doctors carried voice pagers, which emitted the sound of actual human voiceshospital switchboard operators, generallyinforming everyone within earshot of Dr. Blue's whereabouts.

These days, the magic of technology offers more effective ways of telling us who's a doctor, and who isn't. Digital prescription pads may be passé, but laser-guided golf balls leave little doubt that one is in the presence of a modern physician.