Arguing on the Internet

The problem with arguing on the Internet is somewhat analogous to if a skilled swordsman wandered the streets offering a foil to random strangers to fence with them. The average person on the Internet is about as skilled at logical argumentation and rhetoric as he is at swordplay, having never touched a sword, but having watched a few Hollywood pirate movies.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Imagine instead if the master swordsman handed a foil to a random stranger on the street and started fencing, but every time he got a hit, his foe said "no you didn't, that's not how the game works!" and insisted he was actually winning. Every time he did some kind of ridiculous Hollywood cinematic thing, he'd consider that he scored a point, but since the master swordsman wasn't doing those things, neither his foe nor the bystanders would accord him any points.

In the end, of course, the master swordsman would have had dozens of chances to maim, kill, or subdue his foe, and blocked every blow that came anywhere near being able to injure him. But no one else would realize that he won. They just thought he was dry, and kind of boring.

You can only win so many arguments against people who don't even realize what an argument is before it's not even amusing for its own sake.

(Months after I made this post, the following strip showed up on Cectic:)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Remember a few years ago when it was all the rage to type in "leet"? I mean stuff like this:

lolz 1 4/\/\ §0 \/\/1++¥

That used to be so cool, so amusing. How antiquated that seems now! Today everyone realizes that was just dull, unfunny, affected, contrived, and worthy of ridicule.

We've come so far. Today, if you want to be funny, you should talk like this:

im in ur shed hasing ur buckitz, lol wut

That's endlessly amusing, and eternally cool. Surely, there's no need for any further progress in the evolution of culture. I think we've finally nailed it this time.

Getting better

My hemoglobin A1c is down 0.5 to a new level of 7.7, a distinct improvement. And the trends in my blood glucose continue to drop. My cholesterol levels are also back into the fantastic range (except my HDL (good cholesterol) which stubbornly refuses to budge, or even obey the laws of physics).

Of course it's hard to tell how much of that is because of the extensive changes in diet, and my steadily more consistent and complete levels of exercise, and how much because of the simvastatin and increased dosage of metformin.

The doctor's office is working on the letter to Cigna to get that process started. Probably we'll see that within a few weeks.

I'm eating an apple a day, and boy is it not working. I am seeing some doctor or other like every week!

I don't know about you but I'm getting bored reading about health stuff on this blog all the time. Why doesn't the dumb blogger write about something else already?

A glimmer of hope

A Cigna representative raised the heretofore unconsidered possibility that our 3½ years in control of diabetes using only diet and exercise might, combined with a letter from our doctor, count as proof that we can make the changes necessary, thus obviating the need for the six month wait while we prove it again.

Of course, we're already two months into that, and doing very well. I've 24 pounds, well ahead of the goal timeline Cigna required (in fact, I've already lost as much in two months as they want in six) and even still ahead of my own personal (and more ambitious) goal. And we're not about to stop on it. But we are going to talk to the doctor about getting that letter. If so, maybe we'll be able to get going sooner than we'd thought.

One caveat on that is the fact that I myself might still have to lose a bunch more before I fit into the requirements for the laparoscopic surgery. However, at my current rate, that shouldn't be a problem. Even if we get to skip three of the six months, I should still be at that goal quicker than all this could be arranged.

Besides, it's unlikely we'd get ours at the same time, in spite of how much more convenient that'd be for travel costs and the like, just because someone has to take care of us. And I don't mean stopping by to ask how we're doing every few days. It's more like what you can only ask of family, and for a week or two at that. We'll really have to do it for one another, which means we take turns. And that means I go second since my stomach size is an issue.

So for now, status quo. I continue the tedious and annoying process of recording everything I eat in my Palm (ten times as tedious and annoying for Siobhan since she has to calculate all the things she cooks too). I continue to do my exercises, using Kinesio knee tape, icing, and soon a cane for long walks, to avoid the pain that so far isn't stopping me this time. And I continue to lose weight, aiming for that compatability-with-surgery size.

The good kind of busy

Been feeling kind of harried lately with so many things I want to be doing and not enough time to do them all, but they're not bad things, they're just too many good things. There's some programming I want to be working on, game prep for GMing I need to be doing, a story I have in mind to write, and an assortment of around-the-house work to do: replace a bent lawnmower blade, take a load of trash to the dump, fix the tires on my lawn trailer, clean the utility room and garage, and unpack books onto the bookshelves I set up a few months back. Plus if there's ever nice weather on a not-too-busy weekend day, I'd like to go fly the RC plane I got for Christmas, finally!

Since some of these are more "creative" endeavors, it's hard not to get swept up by whichever one happens to have inspired me at the moment. Some of those other things might never get done, or at least not when they need to be done, if I allow the inspiration to lead me. But it's always hard to let it go. Feeling inspired and full of creative ideas always feels like an opportunity I shouldn't let slip by because it might not come again.

Health update

The good news: in the first month of my "new start", I lost 19 pounds. Of those, 12 were in the three weeks after my first doctor's appointment, and thus, count against Cigna's 5% requirement. Since that only comes to 25 pounds or so, I'm clearly going to have no trouble getting there in six months. It seems I might even be able to get to the target weight that the MGB surgeons would prefer for doing my surgery laparoscopically (the only way MGBs are done).

The bad news: my HbA1c (a measure of long-term blood glucose levels) went up from 8.0 to 8.2. Now, that's not much; it's actually within the plus-or-minus of the test. But it's an increase when it should be a decrease. I'm not too worried, though. My tests have shown a slow but steady decrease, about what I expected. After all, I'm not aiming primarily for fast BG reduction this time around. My exercise regimen is limited by my pain, and my reluctance to push myself too hard and make myself stop. And my diet regimen is limited by the dietitian's insistence on adding fruits and vegetables despite the fact that their carbs will bring up my BG. I expect slow progress, but progress, and that's what I've been seeing. I suspect the HbA1c just isn't showing it yet, but will by my next test.

It's kind of hard to really feel invested in it now. I have a dose of short-timer's syndrome. After the surgery, odds are good my blood sugars will be a simple non-issue. It's easy to get thinking of this process as not being about my blood sugar, but simply about checking boxes on Cigna's checklist. The doctors would be horrified at that attitude; they want all my efforts to be based on the idea that the surgery will never happen. I'm trying to strike a balance. I care about my blood glucose, but if the long-term goal of eliminating diabetes and achieving significant weight loss requires me to have slower improvement in my BG and HbA1c right now, that's fine, too.

Anyway, the exercise part, which I've always said is the linchpin of everything else, is still in a preliminary state. Still not seen the physical therapist, and still using the same equipment, so the fact that I'm keeping it up at all, even at this reduced level, is an impressive achievement. (Not that the doctors even realize that, let alone give me credit. All they see is that it's not as much as they'd like. But I'd much rather be able to sustain doing some-but-not-enough than to push too hard and end up stopping.)

Next week's physical therapist appointment is a hopeful step. The arrival of the recumbent stationary bike I ordered, expected in the next two days, is an even more hopeful one. The hope they point to is being able to keep my exercise regimen more thorough and complete without a lot of pain. That'll lead to better improvement in blood glucose, and sustaining the weight loss.

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On the other side is the process of arranging the surgery itself and its insurance coverage. The doctors keep talking about this like it's routine, and asking us when our surgery date is, but it's likely to be quite a struggle. We're not sure if it's better to start working with Cigna now, in hopes of getting the lengthy process of them losing our paperwork and issuing spurious random rejections to happen in parallel with our six-month weight-loss regimen; or if it'd be better to wait until we have that regimen, and all our other ducks, in a row, before we even draw ourselves to Cigna's attention, to make it harder for them to come up with ways to reject us. I wish we had a tactics guide for that kind of thing.

The other problem is getting local support. A surgery like this requires a lot of follow-up in case of problems and to make sure we're doing what we need to do. Yet it is, like many other kinds of surgeries, specialized enough that you can't get it locally, you have to travel for it. Since we can't fly out to High Point, North Carolina every few months (or even every few years) for routine follow-up, we need a way to get local follow-up, which means we need a local practitioner to agree to do it.

What exactly "follow-up" comprises seems to be hazy. Other long-distance patients of High Point seem to get by on "get my bloodwork done locally and have results copied to High Point", combined with the usual possibility of emergency care in case of catastrophe. Yet our doctor's office blanches at the idea of agreeing to provide this kind of care, perhaps because they imagine that they'd be called on to do more than they actually would, or perhaps it's me who is underestimating how much they'd have to know or do.

Why won't someone just write me a check for $34,000 so I can avoid all this insurance stuff and just get it done? It'd just be done.

Underappreciated movies redux

Today's nominee is Sneakers.

I wonder why this movie made so small a splash. It has a fantastic cast full of big names, and lots of them. It was pretty well promoted back in its day. It's got plenty of action and a cutting-edge feel, even though the pacing is not frantic, it's measured and well-crafted, rather than just piled on and ratcheted up. Seems like a sure winner. But while it didn't bomb or anything, a lot of people are not even aware of it, or only faintly.

Looking at it solely as a heist movie, it's one of the best out there. It's also one of the best computer "hacker" movies, both in terms of an interesting plot, and in terms of realism (not to say it's perfect in that regard, but most of its inaccuracies are easily dismissed as simply time-condensing things that would be boring to watch more slowly, plus there's the MacGuffin, which isn't real, but is at least plausible). It's also a very good action movie. Plus it includes a fair amount of serious thoughts about the value of information, the balance between privacy and identity, and the impact an information society can have on politics, society, economics, and justice, for better and for worse. (Admittedly, some of that takes the form of slightly heavy-handed, though still story-appropriate, exposition.)

It's one of those movies that bears up very well to repeated watching. You don't start finding flaws; the closer you look, the more the plot fits together. You don't find it becoming hollow; you start appreciating more details, more foreshadowing, more subtlety in the acting and writing. It's a movie that sticks with you, not one that boils off the memory a minute after the credits roll.

It also has good laughs, and they're very natural laughs: they don't feel like people being artificially witty, but the kind of funny that you have with normal folks who happen to be funny. Okay, on second thought, "normal" isn't the right word. Some of these guys, especially Mother, are pretty weird. But when they're funny it's because of who they are, not because of who the writer was.

Local produce on the honor system

Here in rural Vermont it's not uncommon to see stands at the side of the road selling local corn, flowers, or produce on the "honor system". There's a pile of fresh corn, probably pulled from the immediately adjacent field the previous day, and an old coffee can to put your money, and there's no one around.

Many people who come to Vermont and see these are astonished at the idea that anyone could still, in this day and age, count on people to pay for what they take in a situation like this. And yet almost everyone does.

What I find amusing, though, is that everyone's first reaction is to think, "why don't people just take the corn and not pay for it?" but hardly anyone thinks, "why don't people take the money that's sitting right there in a tin can?"

It's odd how somehow the idea of not paying for your corn is a different level of dishonesty from the idea of taking the money. On an absolutist level, it's exactly the same; corn and money must be interchangeable since the very existence of the booth proves one can be exchanged for the other at a fixed rate. Yet virtually every single person approaches the situation and concludes that stealing corn is "not as bad" as stealing the money from the can.

Including me; in some way I can't work out, that's my reaction, too. Though they're not as far apart for me, as evidenced by the fact that when I first saw one of these, I thought of the money theft almost immediately after thinking of the corn theft, while many people never get to the money theft possibility at all.

Most underappreciated movie

I could do a week of posts on this subject... actually I could do a whole blog on it, I bet. Nominate a movie that was really good, but that hardly anyone knows.

Today's nominee: Strange Days.

The whole movie springs from one single premise: the existence of a machine that can record and replay memories and experiences. It's easy to miss it in the flurry of story and breathtaking visuals and plot twists and interesting characters and suspenseful action, but squeezed into the same two hours with all that, there are explorations of not just one or two implications such a technology might have on society, but dozens of them, good and bad, individual and sociological.

It also has the virtue of having a main hero character who is not only not that heroic (let's face it, he's a coward), but who has no ability to fight or defend himself, even though he is always getting into dangerous situations. No, his one and only skill, ramped up to limit, is being ingratiatingly oily and slick -- not just when it's helpful, but all the time, because that's who he is, even when it is ruining his life.

It's just too much movie for most people.

Snobbishness

The kind way to put it would be to say that I am picky about a lot of things. I don't find amusing a lot of things that other people do find amusing, things like movies, or humor. A less kind way would be to call me "high-brow" or "elitist". The least kind would be to call me snobbish.

At times I wonder if I'm missing out on some of this stuff. But most of the time, I can be pretty condescending in my assurance that there's really nothing to be missing out on. A great example is the large number of formulaic jokes in widespread circulation on the Internet that are, as far as I can tell, "funny" by virtue of only two things: intentionally bad spelling, and excessive repetition. Sometimes, there's a picture of an intentionally irrelevant animal, too.

Most of the time I conclude "this is not really funny, people are just worn down by repetition to have progressively lower standards". A tiny part of the time I wonder if there's something to low-brow humor and I'm missing out. Is there really something funny about fart jokes? How about cruelty humor? What do people who enjoy the badness of bad movies see that I don't see? Where's the true amusement in 2.3 million videos of cats falling off tables?

I want to apologize to the people who I must seem very snobbish to, because I don't mean to come off with a superiority complex. But would such an apology mean anything? Part of it is just apologizing for my general social ineptitude that prevents me being more tactful. Part of it comes from that tiny bit of wondering whether it's not really me that's missing something. But the fact is, a lot of me still concludes that I am, in fact, more discerning, and the problem is just that I don't think that makes me "superior", but it's inevitable it will come off that way. And if it comes off that way, how can I apologize for seeming snobby? Maybe I really am snobby.

Proxy bidding

Here's another one of those "there are two kinds of people" things: those who understand proxy bidding, and those who cannot. I think it's genetic, like the ability to curl your tongue. Either proxy bidding is a simple thing that makes perfect sense, or you simply are unable to think it through, no matter how many times it's explained.

Unfortunately, the people who don't understand proxy bidding make things more difficult for everyone else, not just for themselves. If everyone was able to take advantage of proxy bidding, then when I put my bid in on something, there's a good chance I'll find out immediately whether I'm already out of the bidding and should move on to bid on some other item. Instead, I'll probably waste days riding out one bid so it can be outbid at the last minute -- literally -- by some idiot sniper who can't understand the auction would have come out precisely the same if they'd just put in their proxy bid earlier. It would just have saved them, plus everyone who lost, a lot of time.

The urge to try to explain it is strong, because it's just so simple, but I will resist. There's no point, it's either obvious or inscrutable. Maybe someday scientists will develop some kind of psychochemical therapy for this malady.

A rhetorical red herring

Opponents of gay rights sometimes raise a specious but effective red herring argument whose danger is how it gets gay right advocates to surrender rights to set the terms of the argument. It goes like this.

"According to this highly dubious and probably unscientific source I have here, the supposition that homosexuality is inborn is not true! Homosexuality is merely a choice, and one which can be chosen against. Therefore, we should not be talking about gay rights."

The question of whether homosexuality is nature or nurture is an important one, and there are times to argue about it. But on the topic of gay rights, it is immaterial. More than that, it's a red herring whose sole purpose is to get you to let the neocons set the terms of the debate to ones where your case isn't quite as strong. Once you give in to the bait and try to refute their argument by focusing on the question of whether homosexuality is innate, you have implicitly accepted their assumption, their begging the question: that gay rights should only be granted if it is inborn, not a choice.

And that's simply not so. Amongst the most cherished, and arguably the first established, of all our rights that protect us against prejudice, is the protection of freedom of religion. And religion is unquestionably not inborn, but is entirely a choice, and definitely something which can be chosen against.

Don't let the conservatives choose the battlefield. Don't let them get away with such a key assumption.

Charity coin drops

Maybe this is a local thing -- I certainly had enough trouble finding pictures of it online -- but every summer, I find myself infuriated by charity coin drops. This is where some charity, maybe a good one (like funding a fire department) and maybe less good (like funding a school trip) decides that the best way to raise money is to stop traffic on some major artery and practice extortion, all but demanding coins from every passing car.

Well, I appreciate that you really want to earn some cash, but here's the thing. I include at least a thousand dollars a year in my charity donations. I choose very carefully where this money goes, to support causes I want to support and where I think my dollars will go the farthest. I don't give my money to the loudest or most obnoxious people merely because they're in my face -- in fact, I tend to lean away from them, and in favor of those who are quietly using my money primarily to help people, not to pester me for more money while wasting paper and my time.

The fact that you got a permit to inconvenience me and thousands of other people today is not sufficient reason to override all of that. Nor are your puppy-dog eyes or your ineffectual grimace as I pass you by. You think I'm a cold and uncaring person because I choose not to participate in your extortion, but I'm really just choosing more carefully than you are how to allocate my charity.

So give up this intrusive and insulting approach to charity and try something else, please. Because I am not about to start encouraging you.

The road to MGBville

Now that we're decided about a gastric bypass surgery, it's good to be working on it. Last Thursday we went to the nutritionist, and today to the doctor, for the first of six pairs of meetings (which must be in consecutive months). Cigna's arbitrary and largely meaningless goal for us is the loss of 5% of weight. My real goal is to get my blood glucose back in control by hook or by crook; if I have to go through this for Cigna I might as well also do something with a very evident need right now.

So, the changes we're making now are as follows. Counting carbs again, and limiting them. Exercising again; for now, just working through it, and soon, getting a physical therapy referral to work on ways to make it less painful and more sustainable. Adding more fruits and vegetables to the diet, which requires us to bite the bullet and go to the supermarket twice a week for just produce. Doubling my metformin dose, starting today.

The exercise part is the linchpin. Exercise keeps my appetite in control, it makes the biggest difference in my during-the-day readings, and it does more to bring my fasting BG down than any single other factor. Finding a way to make it sustainable despite the pain is key.

Getting my BG in order will be a hard struggle, but one that is maybe easier to endure knowing it's very likely that it's for a limited time. (The surgery will not only be very likely to cure my diabetes outright, it'll also make the pain reduce or disappear which also makes everything else fall into place.) Losing 5% of my weight while doing it will be a piece of cake.

Mmm, cake.

Dang, now I have to go exercise.

Back from vacation

I wasn't off at the seashore this whole time, that was just three days. But I've been on vacation at home since, some of it hanging around and some of it getting chores done.

Salisbury, Massachusetts was a good getaway... because we really didn't need much other than the ocean. Clearly, this is a town in need of some urban revitalization. The first impression is that most of it is run-down and mostly abandoned buildings. This is a very unfair impression; large stretches of town are actually shiny new and it's clear revitalization is going on with lots of new building. But you don't notice the nice buildings, you take those for granted. What stands out is the run-down old things with signs right out of the 50s. The seaside boardwalk area looked like Atlantic City after Biff stole the Delorean... though I bet it looks less that way during the high season when everything's open.

One thing's for sure, this was not a "touristy" destination, despite the seashore and all the relics of a touristy era. The shops and restaurants were inhabited by locals, and there was a conspicuous absence of the kind of retail presence that touristy areas have. I don't think I saw a single "gift" shop selling tacky crap. Nor did I see many license plates other than MA and NH (Salisbury is so on the border that most of our dining and shopping was over the border in NH).

What really matters, though, is that right outside the hotel room was a small porch which opened onto sand, and the roar of the surf was plainly audible and visible from my bed. There's no sleep so relaxing as sleep lulled by the smell of ocean breezes.

The only interesting dining found in the area was a little Mexican place of no particular significance, clearly catering to locals, but it was good stuff -- well-seasoned, authentic, and tasty. Their baja omelet, full of tender marinated carne asada, was remarkable. Otherwise, the food was serviceable and unexceptional.

Relaxing time at home was also productive. First time I ever did a tuneup on a lawn tractor, using only crappy and incomplete directions in the manual, and everything still went well; the tractor started right up and purred like a kitten. (Well, a very aggressive kitten with 42" cutting blades.)

Back to the daily grind today, but it's not so bad, the rest was nice. Lots more to write about, but that's for another day.

Random idea for a roleplaying game element

I can't claim credit for this one, I picked it up on mailing list for Everway years ago, might even be Jonathan Tweet who came up with it. But I've been saving it in my bag of tricks for years and years, waiting for a chance to use it.

Amongst the people of this particular culture has arisen a long-standing tradition that seems very strange to outsiders. People have odd and disturbing names: Poison, Treachery, Despair, Infection, or Bankruptcy, for instance. It turns out that the people here believe these things to be brought by spirits of the same name: if you get poisoned, it is because you were visited by the Poison Spirit. And surely, the Poison Spirit is less likely to harm someone who has been named for him! Children are always named for some malignant spirit which the parents fear might otherwise afflict the child, as a protection against them.

(It might be even more cool if this turns out to be true -- that anyone named Poison is, in fact, immune to poison. Just need to ensure no one can get named Death, or Badness, or something else too vague or potent.)

Reticence and reversibility

We were trying to decide between RNY and MGB alternatives for our bariatric surgery, and while we'd heard the arguments for MGB, we hadn't really gotten a fair shake at hearing RNY's side. In all our extensive research, the few RNY doctors we'd heard had only been vague or spoken in anecdotes and speculation; they didn't talk like scientists at all. So we scheduled an appointment with the RNY surgeon, Dr. Spaulding, at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, in hopes she'd give us her side. After all, we have to choose a surgery before we can seriously begin the process of qualifying for it and getting it.

Between the time we scheduled it and the appointment, they instituted a new program where new arrivals in the bariatric program had a "pre-first-visit visit" in which they sat in front of a dull slideshow that covered the basics, and then got insulted by nurses for a little bit. This is very helpful for most people who, apparently, go to hospitals and doctors without even looking up what their condition means or what the surgery they're considering actually is. Not so helpful for us, as it turns out, since they cancelled our doctor visit in favor of this. We didn't learn anything we didn't know, and weren't able to get any of our questions answered. We wasted half a day of sick leave and several dollars in gas and parking for nothing.

When we complained, they set us up an appointment with Dr. Spaulding for this morning. We went in and got told right off that we'd be seeing a nutritionist and a psychologist to prescreen us for the procedure before we could talk to Dr. Spaulding. It was futile to point out that we weren't on the track for any procedure, we were just trying to get some answers. We were on the conveyor belt and there was no way to get anywhere other than down the assembly line.

So we sat through these post-pre-meeting pre-meetings, which we had to do separately because "that's how we do it", before we could finally talk to Dr. Spaulding. She was friendly and personable, but she also insisted on starting at the beginning, explaining everything in detail except for the bit we said we wanted to talk about: why RNY over MGB? But finally, going into our third hour there (not counting the hour drive each way) we were finally getting to the actual point of the meeting.

Her reasons for RNY over MGB: "Oh, I wouldn't recommend MGB." She added, "I know someone who did those for a while, but he stopped right away." When pressed, she suggested that there wasn't enough data on MGB to determine what its risks were (though she also claimed that they were greater) -- which is not true, they've been doing MGBs for 10+ years and have done thousands of them. Pretty much the same non-answer I have always gotten from RNY doctors which sounds suspiciously like what, in the non-scientific lay world, really means "I am against anything I haven't bothered to learn about yet." You expect that from used car salesmen, but you expect doctors to have a scientist's mindset, to base things on evidence and proof.

I didn't let it rest. We had spent two whole mornings on this and I didn't want to come away without the answer again. I pressed the issue. Her response was that I would have to schedule another appointment, as she had to be moving on.

I can understand that she only has so much time set aside for us and that her next patients don't deserve to be kept waiting. But we explicitly said our whole purpose in coming to see her (both times) was to ask this question. We said it when setting up the appointments, and then first thing when we got there, and first thing when she came in. Now she wants it to be yet another appointment.

And when we talked to the person who schedules appointments, she had no way to do so that wasn't the next step on the assembly line. Merely to come to another appointment would require us to again visit the nutritionist, who would in turn demand detailed day-by-day food logs with calorie counts. It would also be a meeting not with the doctor, but with the nurse who had berated us while providing no answers at our first pre-meeting-meeting. In other words, it would be yet another opportunity to not get answers, while being treated like an interchangeable part.

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But in talking more about this, we've come to the conclusion that her answer was all the answer we really need. I don't just mean that the way we were treated is a clear answer that "we will not get a surgery here" -- that goes without saying. I mean that her lack of a good answer, compounded upon all the other lacks of a good answer, and stacked up next to the scientific research we've seen (though I have to read more of that more closely), is an answer.

More to the point, the clincher of the deal is reversibility. RNY is not really reversible -- it's been done, sure, but it's not usually possible and you shouldn't count on it. That means if you get cancer and need chemotherapy, you're screwed. Chemotherapy will make you need more nutrients than your RNY-altered stomach can supply, and you'll starve to death if you go on it, period.

There are other reasons you might need a reversal, but that's the big one. MGB is reversible and also revisable -- if you're losing weight too slow or too fast it can be adjusted, though naturally you don't want an extra surgery if you can help it. But if you need it, the option is there, and that's something the RNY people can't touch.

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Settling on MGB also settles the open vs. laparoscopic question since MGBs are only done laparoscopically. It also settles the question of where to have it: the only place that offers them to people my size is High Point Regional Health System in North Carolina. Now we have to work out the logistics of how to get there to do this, for both of us (done at separate times), including followup appointments. We have to start the annoyingly repetitive and unnecessary six-consecutive-month medically supervised weight loss plan Cigna requires.

And, biggest of all, we have to work out how this will get paid for. Getting Cigna to cover a completely medically necessary surgery with an in-plan doctor locally is a challenge. Getting them to cover a surgery they classify (for no reason we can determine) as "experimental", with a doctor in NC who may or may not be considered "in-plan" on our plan, is going to be a bitch. High Point won't bill them, either; we have to get pre-approval and then pay for it ourselves (to the tune of $17,000 each) and hope Cigna comes through after. If it ends up being considered in-plan, and they pay, it'll cover almost all of it (except our travel costs, of course), but if it doesn't, we may have to shoulder 20%, which is more than $10,000 between us. Where I'm going to make that money appear from is a good question.

But at least we have settled finally what direction we're going, so now it's just a matter of overcoming all those obstacles.

Supermarket music

It's been a long time since they played muzak in supermarkets. Or indeed any retail operation, so far as I've seen. Maybe they still do in elevators in office buildings. But apparently someone discovered that actual music is better for sales. And specifically, the music that the primary shopping target market grew up with.

For the last ten years, the music in all the supermarkets I have visited has been mostly light, inoffensive pop music from the 1970s, and gradually it's been working its way forward. Little by little, I'm more comfortable and familiar with the music. And thus, it becomes clear that I am not only an adult now, I am solidly the center of the target market at whom the supermarkets are focusing their marketing machines.

Don't get me wrong. Most of the music I listen to in an average day is not the music I'm hearing in the supermarket (though as time has passed the amount of overlap, though small, has grown). Actually, music composed around and before my birth makes up a larger part of my music collection than the music I actually grew up with, not out of any kind of reluctance to my own generation, but just because it's better music.

But the supermarkets aren't trying to mirror anyone's music collection. They're trying to create a feeling of comfort and nostalgia which, it turns out, inspires more shopping. Maybe it's the feeling of home. For most people it's the stuff you heard while you were in high school. In my case, the stuff that, right now, this year, is the core of the supermarket mix for the first time.

It's almost depressing because, when you get right down to it, the music of my generation was not that great. If you think back to the early 80s and think of music, most of what comes first to mind is superficial fluff that didn't age that well. I do enjoy it, but it's a guilty pleasure, and it sure doesn't make me want to stand up and shout out for my generation.

There was plenty of good music being made at that time. Great music, even. But it was mostly by bands that came before and were still going, and thus are not associated with that period of time nearly as much as bands that arose (and most of the time, vanished) during it. For example, some of Rush's best work was in the early 80s, but no one thinks of them first when you think of "bands of the early 80s".

But that doesn't help when they're playing some A Flock Of Seagulls in the freezer aisle and I find myself singing along, does it?

Smokers outside my window

One of the few perks of my job is that I have a window, which I guard jealously. I also retain the ability to open it when, at this time of year, it's beautiful out, but not so hot that I will feel guilty about the air conditioner running more.

The downside is that my window is over one of the two doors out of my building.

Last few years, our office was down to a single remaining smoker, all the others having either quit or... well, quit. And he had an office at the far end of the building, ensuring the other door was far, far more convenient for him to go smoke out of. Thus, I always wondered why he would, time after time, come smoke under my window instead. He had to go out of his way to do it. I complained, and he'd go to the other end for a little while, and then start again, over and over.

This year, we have two new employees, and both of them are smokers. We were so close to nirvana! It's so frustrating. And they're all coming down to my window to smoke. Plus our new cleaning service is one girl who is only here for an hour or two each day, but manages to smoke at least 3 cigarettes outside my window during that time.

All day long I'm opening and closing the window over and over. It's maddening. Maybe I should be more tolerant, but it just gets under my skin that we even have smokers still. Some irrational part of my brain insists on thinking of smoking the way I would about polio or feudalism, as something we used to have but thank goodness we don't anymore. And then they have to bring it to my window.

So here's my question. Get a list of the arguments that smokers use to justify their "right" to smoke in my presence, and for each one, substitute "urinate". The arguments all work just as well, and most of them better, since urination is a natural function necessary to life, and the sterility of urine means it poses no real health danger. So as far as I'm concerned, if you want the right to smoke in front of me, the cost is having to endure people peeing on you, with as gracious a smile as you can put on. Fair deal.

Look, an extraterrestrial!

Like other mammals and, to varying extents, most living things on Earth, humans have a circadian rhythm: a natural, hardwired internal clock that regulates metabolism and other operations of body and mind. When exposed to the cycle of sunlight and dark, this rhythm keeps approximately in time with a day. When humans live in places isolated from these natural cues (for instance, on extended tours of duty on a submarine), they usually, for convenience, create articial rhythms of light and dark on the same 24-hour cycle.

However, when a human is left free of any external cues of light and dark, an interesting thing happens. If he has nothing to calibrate his internal cycle with, it will naturally, and fairly quickly, settle into a rhythm of not 24 hours but 25.

On an apparently unrelated subject, there are a few oddities about how the human musculoskeletal system works, which are often pointed to as evidence that the evolution from quadruped to biped hasn't quite finished. However, some people point out another odd observation: on a planet whose gravity was half of Earth's, our musculoskeletal system would actually work pretty darned good.

Hmmm... we seem to have an innate biological prejudice for low-gravity worlds with 25-hour rotational periods. It's almost as if we come from somewhere else nearby...

Okay, while this is intriguing, I'm by no means serious. This is great fodder for a surrealistic roleplaying game, but certainly not anything real. Though, hmmm...