Random Thoughts- Do They Have Meaning?

It Sounds Like Crap to Me

"SONOMA, California - The long, strange trip continues for Jerry Garcia's toilet. Police say the Grateful Dead leader's commode was stolen recently from a driveway along with three other toilets and a bidet, The Press Democrat newspaper reported Saturday.
Garcia's salmon-colored toilet was the subject of a legal battle before it was finally moved to Sonoma, to await shipment to a Canadian casino.

It's unclear if the toilet was swiped by a wayward Deadhead or a thief remodeling a bathroom. Police have no suspects or leads.

Henry Koltys bought Garcia's Marin County home for $1.39 million in 1997 and removed the toilet and other items he planned to sell to raise money for a charity."

I don't get it, but that is just me. It gets worse, in my opinion.

"Last month, Koltys sold the Grateful Dead singer's toilet for $2,550 to online casino Goldenpalace.com, which planned to use it as part of a traveling marketing exhibit. The casino is offering a $250 reward for its return.

Henry Koltys said Friday that the toilet once stood in the master bathroom of Garcia, who died in 1995 at age 53. "It would have been his personal head," he said.

The casino has made other unusual purchases in the last year — it paid $25,000 for actor William Shatner's kidney stones and $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich that reportedly had the image of the Virgin Mary on it, Koltys said."

Obesity epidemic hits child safety seats

CHICAGO - Many young children are too heavy for standard car-safety seats, and manufacturers are starting to make heftier models to accommodate them, according to research on the obesity epidemic’s widening impact.
More than a quarter of a million U.S. children ages 1 to 6 are heavier than the weight limits for standard car seats, and most are 3-year-olds who weigh more than 40 pounds, the study found.
Unless exceptionally tall, a 3-year-old weighing more than 40 pounds would generally be considered overweight.Lead author Lara Trifiletti said researchers at a safety center at Johns Hopkins Hospital became interested in the topic because they saw children “who were very obese and our car-seat technicians were having a hard time finding car seats to fit them.”
She did the research at Johns Hopkins but now works at Ohio State University’s Children’s Research Institute.
Using inadequate car seats for heavy children could put them at increased risk for injury in a car accident, the researchers said.
“We don’t recommend that a parent use a restraint system for a child that has outgrown that system,” said Eric Bolton, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “It is risky.”
Based on national growth charts and the 2000 Census, at least 283,305 children ages 1 to 6 are too heavy for standard safety seats. That includes nearly 190,000, or almost 5 percent, of U.S. 3-year-olds, the researchers said.
Their study appears in the April edition of Pediatrics, being released Monday.
Trifiletti said the phenomenon mostly affects youngsters whose weight exceeds the limits of standard seats with built-in safety harnesses, which are designed for 1-to-3-year-olds weighing up to 40 pounds. These heavier young children are not mature enough or tall enough for “booster” safety seats, which are recommended for ages 4 and up and typically use the car’s safety belts for restraints, she said.
More than 23 percent of U.S. children aged 2 to 5 were overweight and more than 10 percent were obese in 2001-02, government data show. New data out later this week are expected to show that the upward trend has continued.

It is one thing for parents to be overweight, but children. This just irks me. It is just wrong. Why are so many children overweight.

Shopping Carts & Special Talents

There are a lot of ways to mark the passing of time. Once you finish school it becomes even more challenging to mark defining moments in time. One moment that stands out for me took place in the Carter administration, or should I say during the time in which good ole Jimmy was president. Anyone remember "Billy Beer."

This particular memory is tied into a T-Ball game. It was my second season playing the game. I loved it and I especially loved that my team was in the championship. What I didn't love is that I made the final out of the game. It wasn't totally my fault. I was forced out at third base, but that didn't prevent this little boy from crying because he wasn't fast enough to outrun the ball.

I tried so hard. I remember running as fast as I could, but it just wasn't fast enough. I still remember the frustration I felt. I was upset. I was embarrassed and I was a little angry. So to make me feel better my father took me out for an ice cream cone. He listened to what I had to say and then explained that we all have special talents and that as I grew up I would learn all about that.

Well, I could make this a long post and give you a heartwarming tale about how this talk helped me grow and mature as a person, but I'll spare you. Instead I want to share a couple of my special talents with you.

Talent Number 1

I am outstanding at locating a broken shopping cart. If there is a shopping cart that has a bad wheel I can guarantee that I will find it.

Talent Number 2

When it comes time to checkout I can promise that I will find the slowest line. It doesn't matter if there is one person in a line or 100, my line will be the slowest.

Talent Number 2

In a public bathroom I can promise you that the first stall I choose will be devoid of toilet paper.

I do have other special talents, but I think that I have shared enough for now. What are some fo yours?

Prejudice Versus Perception Versus Reality

Read this post and think about it.

David Lee Roth Feels Hagared

"NEW YORK - David Lee Roth says he won't jump from his gig as a morning radio host. Roth, who replaced shock jock Howard Stern on seven stations in January, has struggled in making the move from rock star to radio host. But during his Friday show, the former Van Halen frontman vowed to stick with it — although he acknowledged that problems continue.

"I'm going to give it a try," Roth told his audience. "I've invested too much in this show not to."

Roth's show underwent drastic changes last week, with the removal of his three on-air sidekicks and the ditching of background music. According to Roth, he received four letters in five days from CBS Radio officials demanding "extensive changes" in his four-hour show."

Might as well Jump.

Blather

This is a post that should have been aborted. I should have nuked this sucker and started over, but it just didn't happen. Feh.

Gladiator is one of my favorite movies. I can watch it over and over, there are so many elements that attract me. If I wasn't so damn tired I could do a proper job of describing what grabs me about the movie, but the reality is that I am too tired to do it the way that I want to.
But I am not willing to just give up so I'll plod along and share a few thoughts.
Commodus: How dare you show your back to me! Slave, you will remove your helmet and tell me your name.
Maximus: [removes helmet and turns around to face Commodus] My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
What a powerful moment. It is one of my favorite scenes. It stands alongside the opening battle, I love that line "At my signal unleash hell." I have to imagine that to many of the barbarian hordes battle with the Roman Legions must have resembled Hell.

'Closed-Heart Surgery' Is Newest Frontier

"Dr. Samuel Lichtenstein cut a 2-inch hole between an elderly man's ribs. Peering inside, he poked a pencil-sized wire up into the chest, piercing the bottom of the man's heart. Within minutes, Bud Boyer would have a new heart valve — without having his chest cracked open. Call it closed-heart surgery.
"I consider it some kind of magic," said Boyer, who left the Vancouver, British Columbia, hospital a day later and was almost fully recovered in just two weeks.

In Michigan, Dr. William O'Neill slipped an artificial valve through an even tinier opening. He pushed the valve up a patient's leg artery until it lodged in just the right spot in the still-beating heart.

The dramatic experiments, in a few hospitals in the U.S., Canada and Europe, are designed to find easier ways to replace diseased heart valves that threaten the lives of tens of thousands of people every year. The experiments are starting with the aortic valve that is the heart's key doorway to the body."

I thought that this was just fascinating.

"The heart has four valves, one-way swinging doors that open and close with each heartbeat to ensure blood flows in the right direction. More than 5 million Americans have moderate to severe valve disease, where at least one valve does not work properly, usually the aortic or mitral valves. Worldwide, roughly 225,000 valves are surgically replaced every year.

Topping that list is the aortic valve. It can become so narrowed and stiff that patients' hearts wear out trying harder and harder to push oxygen-rich blood out to the rest of the body.
Calcium deposits accumulate on its tender leaflets. Touch one chipped out of a patient and it feels almost like a rock.
With minimally invasive valve replacement, doctors do not remove that diseased valve. Instead, they prop it open and wedge an artificial one into that rigid doorway.
"It's ironic. You use the disease process to actually help hold your valve in place," said Lichtenstein, of St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, who helped create the between-the-ribs method.
Irvine, Calif.-based Edwards LifeSciences, the biggest maker of artificial heart valves, and Paris-based CoreValve are testing versions of a collapsible valve made of animal tissue that is folded inside a stent, a mesh-like scaffolding similar to those used to help unclog heart arteries.
The difference is how doctors get the new valve to the right spot, pop open its metal casing and make it stick."

Read the whole article, it is worth it.