Readin' Comics

Interesting xkcd comic today, reflecting on what happens after we're disassembled into our component parts and tossed into the bin.

From xkcd, under Creative Commons license


I don't at all remember which of his books it was, but I recall Isaac Asimov made an argument similar to this, using the idea of building an intricate castle out of wooden blocks and knocking it down, and explicitly discussing how this compares to human consciousness and death.

All the bits are still there (blocks, neurons), but the castle (or the person's consciousness) no longer exists. It existed as a combination of specific materials organized in a specific form. The castle was real, unique, magnificent perhaps depending on much effort you put into it, but once it's in pieces, it's gone.

It can linger as a memory, in pictures maybe, in legends of block construction to be passed down to future generations of builders, but there's no afterlife of wooden block castles where it still exists.

And if that's true of human consciousness, then indeed, we've got no real reason* not to check that 'organ donor' box. Someone else may as well get some use out of those component parts I no longer need. (This is not to say that I think believing in consciousness that persists after death means someone wouldn't check that box--this is certainly not true.)


*Well, some of us may have poisonous organs and wish to spare others from their terrible curse. That's a pretty good reason.

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Random Updates

Eyeballs sore and itchy. Hate these seasonal allergies. New glasses pretty fabulous, however.

Spouse was sick today, but apparently it's not the plague since he's still capable of walking and eating some soup and toast. The flu may have bypassed us for now.

Gotta get up unpleasantly early tomorrow to go to a baby shower. That's just not right on a weekend, you know. Baby showers should be scheduled for 8pm, so I can sleep in and still get to Connecticut in time. Just keep that in mind when you invite me to one, oh legions.

Speaking of baby showers, you may recall my extensive rant on the doggerel associated with the invitation to one. Just because I happened to think of it the other day, I would like to share a bit of dreadful verse I myself wrote in my youth.

My sister and I had decided that our deity would be a silk flower that had been pinned to one of the bedroom curtains, and I composed this moving hymn:

Oh flower on the curtain,
Hear my prayer to thee.
Oh flower on the curtain,
Listen please to me.

Oh hear my faithful prayer,
That I am praying now--
Oh flower if you care,
Oh hear my earnest prayer,
And how! And how!

Oh yeah, that's magic. I mean doggerel. Many 17-year-olds write florid love poetry, you know.

I think in some way that excuses this.

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More Voting

Not only did I get to vote on Tuesday with my fellow citizens of the U.S., but now I got to vote today (or anytime between yesterday and December 8, but I got to it today) with my fellow members of the Medical Library Association.

I'm just bristling with exercised franchise.

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Yay, Sports! Movie Review: The Blind Side

I got an email that mentioned "tryptophan and other myths about turkey," and wondered idly "why are they talking about Thanksgiving already?"

Oh, right. It's November. Remind me again how that happened?

Oh, right. The inexorable passing of time.

Anyway, I saw The Blind Side tonight. It was surprisingly enjoyable.

Surprising to me, anyway, since I thought it looked a bit saccharine from the previews, and I don't care about football (the Crimson Tide excepted, of course).

If you're more into sports and heartwarming true stories, you may have thought it looked grand, and you will probably not be disappointed considering that even flinty old me enjoyed it.

Sandra Bullock does a nice job as the classic lovely Southern lady with a spine of steel, and Quinton Aaron is sweet as heck playing Michael Oher. There was a lot of humor, some fairly well-handled pathos (you have to do that right in heartwarming true stories, or else true or not it comes across as just soupy), likable characters that you basically root for. Plenty of fairly standard sports/bio movie moments (challenges, pep talks, triumphant scenes), but well done.

I've got nothing against standard material if you do a good job with it.

Also some lively sports action about which I will say nothing since I am in no way qualified to say whether it was well done or not. OK, I can say this: I'm sure it would have meant a lot more if I knew anything about football, but it was filmed and presented clearly enough that I could at least tell when something bad/good was happening for our hero.

They mentioned a library, since you have to keep your grades up to keep a football scholarship. Woooooo!!! Library!

Drug abuse featured in passing, but I didn't note other health connections, although watching people bash into each other did remind of the current research into whether repeated concussions contribute to dementia. That's well beyond the scope of this movie, however.

In closing, see this film for maximum heartwarminess.

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Here's Money: Clean My Clothes!

We have new washing machines and dryers in our apartment building, and they are super cool and high tech.

In the old days of last week, we had coin-operated laundry equipment, with the old familiar slot that you drop quarters into one at a time, listening to them clink and jingle down to join a pile of other quarters (and filling us with the desire to crack open that box and steal them ahahahahahaha!!!!--oops, my criminal inclinations are showing).

The new machines are not only Energy Star rated, they have card readers in them, so you don't have to add quarters (and can't be tempted to steal the quarters back). You just add money to this card, which can even be done online, and then you swipe the card and the machine reads it and deducts the cost of a wash or dry, and there you go.

OK, it turns out the bar for super cool high tech in laundry machines is pretty low in my mind.

Nevertheless, I am moderately pleased since at least we no longer have to hoard quarters like precious jewels. We used to always be thinking of how to pay for things with strange amounts of change that would result in getting a quarter back.

I am less pleased that the company that provides the machines has taken this opportunity to raise the price of its services, but it remains more convenient than going out to a laundromat, so while I'm still going to complain about it, I won't actually resort to vandalism. (Laundry really brings out the petty thug in me.)

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Here's Money: Give Me an Article!

I like this post from Sarah at Librarian in Black about DeepDyve, a new service that provides limited time access to online articles at the low low price of 99 cents.

She notes:

While I like the idea of being able to purchase articles one at a time instead of having to buy a yearly subscription if you don’t want one, it saddens me that services like this exist…and get subscribers. If only their customers would get library cards (for free) and access the articles they need for free from the library’s website. The success of a service like this speaks to the horrible job we’ve done as a profession of getting the word out about what we do.

Good point, that. I too appreciate the fact that a service exists to provide affordable access to a single article if that's all you want (it hearkens back to my deep-seated longing to buy a single cable channel), but it's certainly true that we'd like a person's first thought to be "does my library have access to this journal?"

I am definitely going to be looking closely at DeepDyve as an option for those occasions when it turns out we don't have access to the journal a patron needs, though. Because sadly those occasions do arise, and I hate to disappoint the wonderful, library-literate people whose first thought actually is "does my library have access to this journal?"

It seems likely that DeepDyve would cover a lot of the big, popular journals that we're likely to subscribe to, so I'll have to try to think of something we don't get that people ask for before I can test its value as a backup for our collection. And of course right now my mind is a blank. But something will come to me in time.

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Not Just One Saint

Well, here it is November. All Saints Day! That's got to be way cooler than Some Saint's Day. Time to party!

I party in celebration of the return of Drugs and Poisons, a nifty little blog about, well, drugs and poisons, which is presently discussing mouthwash. I don't generally use mouthwash myself, but I like those bits Wired does on "What's Inside" various things, and I'm likewise pleased to know that mouthwash is not poison.

If anyone in the world reads blogs but does not have an RSS reader, I would highlight this as a fine example of something they do that's good: a blog can lie quiet for months, but as soon as something new is posted, I've got it!

Now if I had been just going to look at the site every so often like an RSS-less mariner drifting on the internet seas, I would have been disappointed many times by now, and perhaps even given up.

This particular blog, which is rendered in white text on black, also makes me grateful for the ability of feed readers to make everything come out in a uniformly readable way. White on black looks cool and all, but I swear it makes me a little cross-eyed after I read it for a while.

Speaking of eyes, I also party in celebration of the fact that I finally got around to buying some new glasses. It's only been since July that I had my eyes checked to get a new prescription. And since April before then that I barely passed the vision test at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and narrowly avoided having to come back and wait in line for three hours again to get my license renewed.

I think no one would imply that I don't get stuff done. Sometimes. Eventually.

I also party in celebration of the end of Daylight Saving Time, which promises a little more light in the morning. Getting up in the dark is just no fun.

On the other hand, this also promises that soon it will be deep night by the time I get out of work, but these are the trade-offs we must make.

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