Duck and cover if they cough

“After several years of trying to educate myself in order to answer questions from my anxious patients about nerve gas, anthrax, swine flu, mad cow disease, West Nile virus, SARS, and now bird flu, I find myself thinking wistfully back to 1963 when, as a 10-year-old, all I had to worry about was total nuclear annihilation.”

-Dr. Jon LaPook, Swine Flu: Trying to Think Correctly

Sweep!

Ruth and I were at Fenway last night for the final game of the first Yankee series of the year.  We originally got standing room tickets for the June 9th game through the online lottery.  Then I bought tickets for the Boston Decemberists show without checking the date first.  D’oh.  But a swap request posted on Craigslist came through, and we ended up with tickets for a late night game in April.  Luckily, summer decided to make an early appearance.  It hit over 80 during the day, and was still in the 60’s at gametime.

We ended up in the center-field bleachers in section 37, row 22. The view was pretty good, considering the distance.

The atmosphere was oddly optimistic. There wasn’t the usual feeling of impending doom. Maybe two World Series championships in the last 4 years and two comeback wins in the previous two days has had an effect.

With the score 2-1 Red Sox in the 5th, Jacoby Ellsbury did something I’d never seen before.

There were peanuts

and Cracker Jack

and we rode in on our bikes so we could get back.  A typical Sox-Yanks game would have lasted until after the T closed for the night.  But Justin Masterson and the Red Sox bullpen shut the Yankees down and the game was over a little after 11, so we could have taken the T home after all.

Why the Internet is killing print journalism

I’ve got an article up at Helium.com. It covers why newspapers and other forms of mass media are losing ground to the new mass multimedia, and takes at how old media corporations might fight back.  Ironically, the article is also a lengthy explanation of why it’s unlikely that I could get paid for writing it.  

Take a look at the article.   As I write this, it’s currently rated #1 of 24 articles on the topic on Helium.  I don’t know if that really means anything, but it’s  probably good.

I thought they went up

It’s not _that_ hard

“Big Tobacco is in reprehensible, borderline Satanic collusion with Big Pharma and the health insurance biz in general to convince victim-happy Americans that quitting smoking is just insanely difficult and incredibly stressful and you’re probably not strong enough to handle it and will probably fail a hundred times and maybe you shouldn’t even try.

Here is the great, blasphemous secret: Quitting smoking is relatively easy. It is relatively painless. For most, quitting does not require inhuman amounts of willpower, drugs, patches, gum, therapy, straightjackets, begging, or a swell hospital video of surgeons ripping out one of your black and desiccated lungs.”

-Mark Morford, “Give It Up, Smoker“

Opening Day

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;

But there is no joy in Boston, the Red Sox are rained out.