Category Archives: CounterCurrent

A Big Bronx Cheer for the 2014 Jeep Cherokee!!

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The makers of Jeep have resurrected the standard Jeep Cherokee in, well, how else can I say it … a very stupid way. They have abandoned the classic boxy utility vehicle lines of the old Cherokee in favor of the now popular fat and squat ellipsoidal lines of contemporary design. In other words, it looks like a jelly bean or rugby ball.  The classic 4.0 Liter Cherokee had power to spare and it had the fantastic visibility of an inverted fish tank. It had troubles too, namely bad electric connectors and perhaps an under-designed cooling system. But at least it had the classic squared-off Jeep lines and lots of traction.

But the greatest sin of all was abandoning the 4.0 L straight-6 engine for the 3.2 L engines. Jeep?? WTF!! What were you thinkin’? I would love to meet the committee of marketing pencil necks and constipated MBA’s responsible for this one. It’s a travesty.

So Long Year 2013. Hello 2014!

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Update:  I sit and write at a desk piled with pdf printouts of patents, journal articles, a Phi-Tec 1 handbook, and a great heap of process safety data and reports. I help coworkers find and study patents for their R&D due diligence. The bigger task is running a thermo lab for determining the thermokinetic safety of bulk chemical processing. These two topics, patents and thermodynamics, would induce instant unconsciousness for most folks. An acute boredom-stroke followed by involuntary somnolence and collapse to the floor. Oddly enough, I rather dig these topics- especially the thermodynamics. A single fellow covering these two widely differing topics is entirely a(n) historical artifact, unlikely ever to be repeated.

Several months following throat cancer treatment, my energy and curiosity are back although I still cannot eat solid food due to impaired salivary glands and taste buds.  The head-and-neck-onco-doc says it’ll take 1.5 to 2 years for the spitter to come back online. It is like serving a sentence in the Nestle warehouse living on Boost. I enjoy food vicariously watching the Food Network. This is what the term “food porn” means- watching others enjoy a sensory and emotional experience with food.

The year 2014 will see me spending more time with the urology oncologist. At the last appointment he promised to help keep me on the top side of the grass as long as possible. I have to hold him to it.

An American Parliamentary Republic? Why not?

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Here is an idea for debate. Why not pitch our flawed constitution overboard? Replace it with one that supports a parliamentary form of government rather than the fractious, unworkable presidential system we have now. Who else in the world uses this system of government? Why is it that most other forms of government in the world are parliamentary in structure?

Make the US government more responsive to the citizenry by rendering the election cycle time dependent on confidence in the leadership.

The US constitution needs a rewrite. Among the distortions in the constitution-

  1. The metaphysical equation of money with speech.
  2. The foggy language of the 2nd amendment that engenders armed fanaticism
  3. The indistinct barrier between the secular and theocratic civic influences. Keep religion and other magical thinking out of governance. Preserve freedom from religion.
  4. The near impossibility of getting a bad president or governor out of office.
  5. Clearer language is needed on what is actually meant by the right to petition congress. Currently this has lead to an intractable cancer of corruption between government and the movers of wealth. (Consider the F-35 strike fighter or the lack of tight control over Wall Street investment banks)
  6. Apparently the rules for the waging of foreign wars are indistinct because current constitution or presidential structure seems to allow the US much flexibility and low accountability with invasions and sending ordinance across borders.

There are more problems with the constitution. Maybe the reader has thoughts on this? The problems of presidential systems have been studied and this Slate article summarizing the issues is worth reading.

Attacking Syria for nerve gas use in Ghouta

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In the news there are reports of pending action by the US in Syria. Maybe I have a blind spot. Maybe there is some fundamental principle I am missing here. But how is it that a mass killing by gas elicits a response from the US when a larger mass killing by bullets and high explosives does not? Where are sympathetic Arabs in the region? How are they exempt from delivering bombardment as justice for the dead?

Obviously, gas attacks lie across a firebreak of some kind. What is the Syrian death toll now- 90,000 + by bullets and bombs? And that does not trigger international action? Apparently, grisliness is not a deciding factor.

This isn’t about justice at all. It is a smack down on setting a precedent with NBC warfare- nuclear, biological, and chemical. It is a genie we cannot allow out of the bottle … in the land of the genie.

So, here is the scenario-  the US will begin a strike at 3 am with cruise missiles to soften up the target area and air defenses. Stealth fighters will fly in to attack everything that flies. Penetrator missiles will demolish air, missile, and command and control bases. But what to do about the nerve gas armaments? Are they bombed or isolated? Who recovers them right after the attack? Al Qaeda? Let’s hope not.

This whole thing is a troubling moral discontinuity. By policy we watch many tens of thousands murdered by bullets and high explosives, but act on policy that triggers when gas is used. There may not be an answer, but there certainly is a smell. The smell of death.

The Squamous Chronicles. Finish one and start another.

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8/27/13.  As of today, I have 3 more x-ray treatments culminating in a dose of 63 Gray to the throat. The pain has required narcotics pretty much continuously and the attendant constipative delights that go with that. Pills are difficult to swallow and the gag reflex is heightened. The final chemo was yesterday so I am done eating platinum.

I began hormone ablation treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer two weeks ago. While the throat cancer is substantially beatable, the prostate is a different story. Here is the deal fellas. While you can gauge with PSA numbers, it is the Gleason grading system that tells the tale. And to get that you must do a biopsy. In order of increasing severity, the Gleason score goes from 2 to 10. I pulled a 9.

Hormone ablation is delicate way of saying chemical castration. The spread of prostate cancer can be controlled somewhat for up to 2 years by shutting down testosterone production. This they do by injecting a synthetic peptide, Degarelix, into belly fat to control the dosing to the pituitary gland. Had my first hot flash a week ago. It was a eunuch sensation.

Interesting anecdote.  My medical oncologist described an MD patient who had been using sunscreen on the radiated area of his throat. He soon experienced an increase in surface burning of the throat on continued x-radiation. Turns out he was using a sunscreen that had titanium dioxide that was scattering/absorbing radiation on the affected surface. He stopped and the accelerated damage ceased.

Schneier on Security

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Schneier on Security is one of my favorite non-chemistry blogs. The particular link here is to a post on the NSA and It’s apparent commandeering  of the internet for its own, opaque purposes. Bruce Schneier developed the Blowfish encryption algorithm.

While I have previously criticized Libertarianism and its peculiar conflation of civilization with Austrian economic thinking, I am enough of a civil libertarian to be deeply alarmed by post-911 security paranoia with its narrow readings on the 4th amendment and attending case-law.

Ask yourself, how much of your life do you want to be subject to structural snitch features that trigger silent alarms when your face is recognized in a building, when you called the front desk of a business or agency, or when you download particular information from the internet or just do keyword searches on Google?

You can bet that hordes of NSA folk as well as contractors are working feverishly on what else they can do with this metadata and location data accumulating in datacenters.

Many friends have said half joking that they feel sorry for spooks who have to sift through their chatter and insignificant browser searches. But what if an NSA spook were standing over their shoulder while they did it? How would they feel then? Maybe fellow citizens who approve of this kind of activity should be flagged for participation and the rest of us left alone. Would they feel the same about it?

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The Squamous Chronicles: A flea market of side effects.

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So, here I am wide awake trying to recall what the Ambien molecule looks like. I’ll probably have to look it up.

Later this morning is my 3rd chemo treatment of 6. Something is knocking me down. The x- radiation plainly has been doing what it does best- giving a 3-D sunburn. The throat is developing mucositis and Is crazy sore. Blistering should start soon.

I’m using magic mouthwash, comprised of lidocaine, benedryl, and Maalox. This pharmacy concoction has the snotty rheology of melted ice cream.  The throat issue is definitely interfering with getting enough calories for body weight maintenance. Have lost ca 10 lbs to date. I’m gonna get a talkin’ to from the dietitian today.

Other than sore throat, the next unpleasant drug side effects are those from the anti-nausea meds. The anti-emetic meds prevent one from hurling through a sore throat. They are also very effective at constipation. So, one gets to know the offerings at Walgreens.

The Squamous Chronicles, part deux: Into the beam we go.

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My adventure with Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma, HNSCC, soon enters a third phase.  A week from this writing I’ll don my custom prepared plastic mesh mask and they’ll strap me onto an x-ray machine. Oh yes, one other thing. There’ll be a weekly dose of cis-platin coincident with irradiation. Turns out that there is a synergistic effect with radiation and platinum poisoning cis-platin chemotherapy. No doubt it is related to the fact that platinum is a heavy atom with a lot of electron density ripe for scattering. Platinum ligated to DNA during irradiation is a bonus as well I suppose. Your own DNA as a ligand for platinum. A funny thought for someone in the catalyst business.

The first phase was the identification of a swollen lymph node and its subsequent removal from its cozy perch on my right carotid artery. Here I learned first hand why cancer is destructive. Mutant squamous cells from some molecular-genetic train wreck are washed away from their birthplace to lodge in distant locations. In my case, the aloof cells got hung up in a lymph node. There, they invaded the node and proliferated to the point where much of the lymphatic tissue became necrotic, likely from blood starvation. The node was not especially painful. Well, until the biopsy needle went in. Then it became very, very angry. But I digress.

The second phase, post surgery, was the adventure of finding suitable oncologists. This is a little bewildering. It is easy to get overwhelmed by information. I went for a second opinion and soon thereafter chose the Anschutz Cancer Center at the University of Colorado in Aurora. I’ve already had medical students and residents sitting in on consultations and exams.  The medical oncologist is a research professor specializing in head and neck cancer. He sees patients on Fridays too. The radiation oncologist sees a lot of HNSCC and seems knowledgeable and confident.

More to follow.

Comments on Edward Snowdon

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I have to say that I am tickled to death over what young Edward Snowdon has done in regard to his leaking of the NSA PRISM project. Funding and compelling otherwise well intentioned civil servants to sift through the transmissions of US citizens and allies under the false idol of “national security” represents a sort of cancer of civil society. The future is not for the faint hearted. Unfortunately, the faint hearted are in charge.

The assertion that X number of terrorist attacks were prevented by internal espionage activity is patronizing rhetoric uttered by functionaries who are powerless to actually prove it. Obviously we have enemies. We’ve earned it. The US is not a target simply because “we love freedom”, a slogan so infantile that it is a wonder that Bush II was able to utter it with a straight face. We are a target because of decades of foreign policy overreach.

The US federal government and allied corporations are so brain addled over Middle Eastern politics and security that congress is deadlocked over what amounts to a new form of the guns v. butter problem.  Congressional members, I’ll say Republicans in particular, live in another world distorted by wealthy patrons.  In their view, civilization is something that markets do rather than the other way around. This is a natural viewpoint if you control a lot of wealth- or hope to.

Simplistically, we input defense dollars into the military machine and privately owned petroleum comes out the other side. So, the stockholders of Exxon, Chevron, etc., are protected from risk on foreign territories by the US armed forces. US taxpayers pay for this but petroleum companies seem to carry little of the burden.

What we have gotten in return for our foreign petroleum adventures is pushback in the form of guerrilla warfare, commonly called terrorism. The term “terrorist” has been transmogrified into some form of supernatural evil. Really, a terrorist is a criminal. Killing people and destroying property is a crime and it is immoral. It is not evil incarnate. We are not in a supernatural battle between good and evil or God and Satan.

If Snowdon’s action was to shine a little light on how the government commits espionage on its citizens, then I say good for him. In doing so he broke the law. He violated contractual agreements on disclosure and should pay a price for that. But in regard to accusations of treason based on what facts are available, I cannot agree with that charge.

The thin blue line

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I had the opportunity to take a ride in a CT scanner yesterday. It was my first such experience. It’s a great opportunity to pick up a few milliSieverts if you find yourself short in the ionizing radiation department. The particular device I refer to spins a helical beam of x-rays through you as the platform moves you through the big donut with its rotating source and detector.  Through the magic of the integrated circuit and millions of lines of software code the computer reconstructs images based on extinction of the x-ray beam as it careens through your tissues.

During this wierd little Roentgen ride I had a peculiar experience. After the iodinated tracer injection the radiologista trots around the shielded wall, clicks “go” and the sequence takes off. As the beam was scanning from head to chest I had the distinct sensation of a horizontal thin blue line in my visual field for just a beat. Because my eyelids were closed I was not seeing a focused image through the lenses of my eyes. Against the backdrop of latent images slowly fading from consciousness there appeared the line. I was not thinking about this at the time- I was focused on obeying the breathing instructions.

My theory is that the visual stimulus was the result of the x-ray beam inducing a bit of fluorescence acreoss the width of my retina.  There are plenty of pigment molecules in the retina as well as the tracer compound coursing through the retinal vasculature.

Question- Has anyone else had or heard of such a phenomenon?