Finding Inspiration

Times are tough and this has been a particularly rough week.  Bad news personally and state budget cuts have the whole place just a bit freaked out.  At times like these I often find myself enjoying The Sartorialist just a bit more.  Here’s my favorite one from the last week:

Here’s the caption:

I was chit-chatting with Susan after I took this picture and mentioned that I thought her hair was sooo beautiful – her best feature.

She said thanks and added that she had lost her hair once because of cancer. She now purposely keeps it long because she feels it is such a gift to have it back and, for her, a sign of life.

Makes me think of you Mom. Thanks for taking care of our friends this week.

Polls, Polls and more Polls (+/- cellphones) UPDATED

If you’re like me, you’ve been glued to the poll numbers lately. Obama has a lead in every national poll I’ve seen and he is more or less ahead in all the battleground states considered crucial to get past 270. However, as some of the pollsters are noting, the poll numbers haven’t been reflecting relatively large leads in early voter polling. There could be several reasons for this and one possible explanation is that many of the polls are based on a false premise: that calling landlines can get you a representative sample.

Pure Classic

ENOUGH!!

Comrade PhysioProf, Mike the Mad Biologist and PZ have already hit the highlights on Palin’s remarks on the workhorse of the biomedical enterprise, the fruitfly, so not much more comment from me is needed; however, I cannot help myself.

Barack O’lanterns

Too cool! The variety of creative outlets for enthusiasm this election cycle never cease to amaze.

UPDATE:
While you’re at it, check your Obama tax cut.

McCain is scared of Jim Lehrer

DailyKos has a post up (by Scout Finch) wondering exactly which portion of McCain’s campaign has actually been suspended. I think Scout Finch has hit the nail on the head, he’s looking for an out for the debate. Here’s why: Jim Lehrer. Lehrer is no bully when it comes to moderating debates; however, Lehrer is not beholden to any ratings demons and the McCain campaign cannot control his lines of questioning with threats of withholding interviews or any of the other nonsense they are pulling on the major networks (Jim Lehrer is on Public Television for those that don’t know). They know what’s coming… even though the topic is supposed to be Foreign Policy, Lehrer is going to venture into economic policy, especially how it impacts foreign relations. They are completely unprepared to talk about this sort of thing (cause the only foreign policy they know is war) and they are scared to death of what Lehrer will throw at them (and they cannot control him). The illusion of a suspended campaign is a desperate attempt to get out of it. Chickens.

A clear answer

We knew it already, but here’s Obama on creationism and intelligent design (from the Nature feature):

Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.

McCain, some crap about the hand of god in the Grand Canyon.

Realizations

Yesterday was not a good day. Scientifically it was great. We’re working on 4 grants with Oct deadlines and the data continues to pour in. Its exciting all around and the grants are looking very good. Couldn’t be more pleased with the progress. We had a meeting about a big collaborative grant for a Jan deadline and the group has come up with what I think is an incredibly creative outline for the work we want to do. Again, very exciting stuff… and then came the phone call.

You see, Juniorprof is hobbling yet again. This time its my knee. The first diagnosis was a bone bruise but that was 2 months ago and I still can’t run, jump or ride the bike faster than about 5 mph. I went back to the doctor about 2 weeks ago and they diagnosed torn meniscus this time. They think its of a nasty variety, that will need surgery, but the MRI has to come first. So when I called to see why the MRI appointment is taking so long to get ordered they tell me that my insurance company turned it down. Unnecessary. Did I mention it hurts to walk?

The problems of this country writ large, in my house, last night…

About a month ago Mrs. Juniorprof and I decided to go just a bit greener by replacing our outdated house cooling unit with a top-of-the-line, super energy efficient, brand spanking new, air conditioning and duct system. Our house isn’t so big, so it didn’t require a ton of work, but several ceiling areas had to come down to put in those beautiful highly insulated ducts. The majority of the work has been done for about two weeks, but some leaks in the roof were discovered in the process so the ceilings have stayed down just to make sure that all the leaks were completely patched (its monsoon season here so its easy to discover if a leaky area has been corrected).

The dry-wall guy who is putting the ceilings back up came to do some work last night (around 7PM). This was actually supposed to happen about a week ago but the contractor (who is related to the dry-wall guy) informed me that Mr. Dry-Wall had fallen from a faulty scaffold at another (unrelated) job and that he had broken a few ribs. The injury had slowed him down but he was still working, I was told. This surprised me very much. I have also broken ribs before (playing football) and I can quite vividly remember not even wanting to breathe after that injury.

This is crazy…

So, I got this email from Obama for America this afternoon with a nice little video asking me to donate. Today is my donation day anyway, so I clicked the link to go on over and give some money… After trying for hours now, I cannot get through. I’m gonna guess the site is too busy.

Looks like they’ve already got 8 million in donations since the Palin speech last night. I can’t imagine what that total will be by the time McCain gets up there to speak. I hope I get through (and PP, don’t come around here raining on my parade, I need to feel good after last night).