Mad Science Update

I get these News Alerts on my Sidekick from CNN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal. Usually they're redundant and not too interesting: PRESIDENT MAKES SPEECH, or CELEBRITY RAPIST ACQUITTED AGAIN, 3 at once.

This morning I was beeped into consciousness by: NEWS ALERT: Researchers Recreate 1918 Flu Virus.

I sat up in bed and thought: what the fuck. Who did that? WHY? What the fuck are we fighting, fucking LEX LUTHOR?, as Get Your War On might say.

Sadly, the truth is a bit scarier than that, even. Apparently they did this in an effort to trace the mutations that brought us that superflu. And the results they got suggest that it began as a bird flu and spread to humans "without undergoing complicated changes".

I should of stood in bed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4308872.stm

Oh hey, and speaking of doom

During the big antiwar demonstration and also during the First Lady's appearance at the National Book Fair, sensors on the Mall picked up traces of tularemia, a deadly bacterial disease that has been weaponized. Choose your paranoia: was Big Brother trying to kill the antiwar demonstrators? Was Osama trying to whack Mrs. Bush? Who knows. But what happened then? They didn't tell anyone.

Whether or not the sensors picked up a false positive (apparently this is likely), I can't believe that it takes 72 hours to pick up the phone and ask the CDC to check it out.

mute inglorious honkers

1. Band name: Everclean. Music DVD name: "Sons of Provo". Actual DVD in case: "Adored: Diary of a Porn Star". Result: COMEDY GOLD. That's what they get for being a Mormon boy band.
   
   
2. In the tradition of Regrettable Foods, a photogallery of very special company potluck food, most of which is orange cheese.
   
   
3. The government wants to make sure that even information about the weather is censored.
   
   
4. Meanwhile, the annual flooding of the Amazon makes the earth sink three inches.
   
   
5. If you've heard about the "We Found Ithaca!" story, you might be interested in this rebuttal from the Times Literary Supplement.

There's your problem. Someone set this thing to "dorkwad"!

Tomorrow I get an EEG. The object is to find out whether my disastrous brain freakouts have a measurable neurological element that might benefit from neurofeedback or other approaches. It does sound like I fit the profile for this kind of evaluation.

Neurofeedback might be recommended if this is the case; I'm not sure what else they might recommend if I have brain waves that are out of baseline.

This won't be anything like Laura K's ordeal; apparently it only takes an hour or so.

Even if it's a wash, I get a map of my brain. That's kinda cool.

Guitarsk

My friend John is playing a concert at UCI this Saturday night that might be of interest to guitarists out there. It's all on Russian seven-string guitars, which are unique and not heard much here. He and his partner Oleg are doing this together.

UCI Chamber Series presents
The Czar's Guitars

Sat, Oct 8, 8 pm

Winifred Smith Hall, $12/10/8

Oleg Timofeyev & John Schneiderman performing on Russian seven-string guitars.

Potpourris and arias from Glinka operas Life for the Tsar and Ruslan und Lyudmila, 19th-century transcriptions of Glinka's orchestral, vocal and piano compositions.

Box office info here.

tinfoil hat update

When I was making my appointment for the EEG tomorrow, the woman who's doing it asked me if I wore any hair products. I said "No, in fact I don't have a lot of hair, so this will be an easy one." She laughed and said that a fair number of clients have arrived wearing hair mousse. Apparently the plastics in mousse get on the scalp and cause the signal for the EEG to be degraded by about 50%.

So! Tinfoil hat wearers who fear government death rays, mind control, and the church steeples forcing you to have sexual thoughts about manhole covers! Just use lots of mousse!

LOTS AND LOTS of mousse.

Another health tip from Substitute Industries.

Sexy list

Sexy:

1. Dirty blonde hair
   
2. Swimsuit under sundress
   
3. Opinionated
   
4. Beat up Converses
   
5. Sarcasm
   
6. Expressive hands
   
7. Intensely focused reading
   
8. That walk you got.
   
9. The space between the hairline and the collar on the back of the neck
   
10. Girls who don't take shit from anyone
    
11. Louise Brooks haircut
    
12. Men's shirts on women
    
13. Singing