Month: July 2009

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Obama wants to kill old people!

Rachel Maddow has this 7 min segment discussing how the crazies are now coming out to say that health care reform is simply a backdoor to assisted suicide of the elderly. Seriously. That’s what’s being debated on the floor of the House. And on right-wing talk radio. The idea that Obama wants to kill old people.

The whole debate is getting rather annoying, honestly. There are all kinds of proposals being put forward from the Left, yet the Right is stopping at “tax cuts and stopping companies from denying you because of pre-existing conditions.” Sure, they’ll keep you and give you insurance, but jack up your premiums to high heaven to account for it. And if that’s all that they’re really proposing, then they have no comprehensive plan. Tax cuts and that simple regulation aren’t enough to fix the problem(s).

Reform needs to happen and we need to work together to get something useful passed. In my opinion, a Public Option should be included, but at the very least a LOT of regulations need to be imposed upon the private insurance industry if I plan on being able to afford health care in 10 years. Even if a Public Option isn’t included in the final bill, profits need to be reigned in at these health care companies, and I seriously doubt that any Republican-backed plan would suggest that.

Spreading fear and doubt about the existing ideas (i.e. “this plan will kill you!!”) is simply not helpful, and if anything, prevents anything from getting done. Much like back in 1993 when we tried getting something done, and it was stopped by similar tactics. And by “we,” I mean the Left. Because the Right is apparently just fine with where things stand.

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That’s kinda neat!

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So, I’m officially a published author now. I heard a few weeks ago that the manuscript I’d been working on (for, like, a year…) was accepted to Neurotoxicology, a bi-monthly journal published by Elsevier, but I didn’t want to post anything here until it was up on Pubmed. I should be receiving proofs sometime this week so I can look at the final version of the document (i.e. what it’ll look like when it’s actually in the journal), so maybe I’ll put up a picture of that, too!

Either way, I decided to search for “Linsenbardt” in Pubmed today and see if I was there. And I am.

That’s kinda neat! 🙂

Unless you have access through your university, you can’t actually read the paper yet. Elsevier is pretty annoying about such things, making you pay for access otherwise, but because NIH funds were used to pay for the work done in the paper, it’ll have to be made available, free, to the public sometime eventually.

I’m starting my second paper now (as in, as we speak…), and my PLAN is to get that submitted by October somewhere. But, as some of you know, that last paper took me FOREVER to actually get out and submitted. October is when the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting is, however, and it’d be nice to tell prospective employers that I have one paper published and another one on the way. Also, for the purposes of graduating, getting two first-author papers is a good thing (as in, typically, if your name is first on the list, then you either did most of the work, or wrote the whole paper yourself…not always the case, but usually it goes something like that…so “first-author” is pretty important).

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The State of Network News

You know, it’s very telling about the state of news and news anchors as a whole when Jon Stewart is considered the most trusted, taking the mantle from Walter Cronkite (and that’s the way the question was phrased: “Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America’s most trusted newscaster?”). In a recent Time Magazine poll, Jon Stewart was ranked most trusted among the primary network news anchors.

Jon Stewart – 44%
Brian Williams – 29%
Charles Gibson – 19%
Katie Couric – 7%

Honestly, if I’ve got the news on at 5:30 (and I do many nights of the week), I’ve got it on CBS, for the most part because that’s the network my parents and grandparents always watched. Personally, I don’t think Couric is doing all that bad of a job, but that said, I get more news from Jon Stewart than many other sources. At the very least, especially compared with the cable news networks (read: MSNBC, Faux News, etc.), Stewart wears his bias on his sleeve. You know where he stands. And he’s probably the best interviewer on television, both with Republicans and Democrats. He isn’t out to get the big story. He just wants to ask you well-considered questions that you probably won’t be asked by the other networks.

Anyway, I found it pretty amusing…

Edit: Please note that there were a little over 9000 votes, when I posted this, total in that poll. If you click the “next” button, you are taken to the next poll on Time Magazine online…which tells us Bing is better than Google…mostly according to Iowa… Apparently, this (these?) poll(s) should be taken with a metric ton of salt…

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

So, for some odd reason, I decided to see if I could find my first website, which was the Hickman High School Drumline site (ca 1998). How, pray tell? I tried first looking through the Internet Wayback Machine, which is actually a pretty nifty archive of as many websites as they can get their hands on. If you’ve never tried it, you should do something like search for “http://www.yahoo.com” and see what it looked like back in 1996 (hint: far less pretty).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember what the address was for the website, so then I resorted to Google. I knew I’d hosted the site on Tripod.com (remember that?), so I searched for “Tripod HHS Drum”…that came up with some pictures off the site, but from there, I was able to trace the address to: http://www.members.tripod.com/drummer6/. It looks lovely. Please note the “Best Viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0” there…

Anyway, if you look around it, you’ll find some old pictures from the late-90s and some sound files of our drum solos from a few shows. I don’t even know how I got those, but likely, it was me sitting with a tape recorder next to the TV while playing the video tape from the VCR.

So yeah, just thought I’d share that bit of history. I’ve learned a thing or two since those dark days of Frontpage 97…

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Of Music and Middle-Age…

So, I talked with a visitor at church last Sunday and she tipped me off to a coffee house (of sorts) at Kingshighway United Methodist Church. They apparently do it every third Saturday and bill it as a family evening, something to get some folks together for fellowship while also enjoying each other’s talents. There were a good 30-40 people down in this old fellowship hall about 10 min. south of us on I-55, in a neat area of south St. Louis City.

While I’m not sure I’d classify it as a “coffee house,” necessarily, it was still a good time. I mean, there was coffee there, and cookies and cheese puffs, but that was about it. And truthfully, it was more of a variety show than anything else. That’s not to say that it wasn’t entertaining, but again, I’m not sure “coffee house” was the correct moniker.

Either way, we had a surprisingly good time. There were a few kids that told jokes, one did some magic tricks, one guy sang “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” with a karaoke machine, a group of guys played some CCR and Elton John music…overall, it was a very entertaining evening!

The truly neat part about it is that many of these individuals that were getting up there performing were middle-aged, and this was probably their only outlet to share their musical talents. It’s difficult for me to imagine being in a similar situation, as I’ve been able to keep playing drums/guitar/etc. ever since leaving high school, but many of these folks graduated from high school and didn’t play with a group ever again. An opportunity like this allows them to get to practice their instrument and play it occasionally in front of a group, which is more than I can say for others out there with their instrument hidden in a closet.

Anyway, it was pretty neat. I can only hope I’m playing something in another 30 years!

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The Man

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I had a few requests for an explanation of “The Man,” so here you go:

I’m not really sure where he came from, but a couple of years ago, The Man appeared at my parents’ house. I’m thinking that he was atop a birthday cake and then was stuck in a drawer somewhere since my mom rarely throws things away that she thinks she or someone she know will have a future use for. Anyway, when he came out of hiding, one of my sisters decided it would be a great idea to attach him to a 4th of July rocket and send him flying. So, we did. Over. And over. And over. It was hilarious and an adventure to track him and the rocket down after each launch. This year when I was there for the driveway fireworks show, The Man got caught up in a pine tree by the road so my dad had to go rescue him the next day. You can read my mom’s comment from a couple of days ago to see what happened after I came back to St. Louis, but there’s the story!

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The 11th Street Hill

11th-st-hilll-90This hill was to the side of Ma and Papa’s house in Louisiana, Missouri.  Well, actually, I’m quite sure it’s still there, but it doesn’t seem as big as it did to us back in 1990 when the picture above was taken, but anyway….  We spent hours on this hill riding (while sitting) skateboards down and avoiding cars.  There was also a hill next to Papa’s service station that served the same purpose, but had a nice grassy area at the bottom to stop us.  One of my favorite memories of Papa is of him riding down the hill next to the station on his wheely thing for working under cars, then falling off and Ma getting out the Bandaids to patch his skinned knees.

Here are two more from Christmas ’94 when the Baumann girls got skates:

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I was doing so well…

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…until I fell off the wagon and stopped blogging. More is on the way, I promise. I just have to get around to sorting through some pictures and I’ll have a plethora of funny stuff for you. Luckily, this week is way less busy than the last few, so while I’m looking for the pineapple in every episode of Psych, I’ll sort through some stuff I scanned!

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Some People Are Really, Really Dumb…

Apparently, a 15-year-old girl fell down an open manhole on Staten Island recently, so her parents are suing the city for damages. The catch is: the girl was texting at the time and wasn’t paying attention when she fell. Apparently, “sewer line workers are supposed to cut off pedestrian access to work sites or at least mark them with warning signs,” and that’s the basis of the lawsuit…but still…

Personally, I do my best not to walk and text if I can avoid it, and I certainly don’t text while driving (but I will occasionally while I’m at a stop light…if Brooke’s in the car, I just have her do it for me…). Talking on your phone is bad enough while you’re driving – just hit the interstates here in St. Louis and you’ll see plenty of crazies talking on their phones, not using turn signals, and just doing a terrible job staying in their lanes. Texting is pretty ridiculous, though, and even worse when you blame someone else because you’re an idiot.

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CSPAN’s Entertainment Network

It’s funny to watch Gratzer squirm. 🙂

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kucinich during the Primaries last year…he’s a little too left, even for me…but I like his stance in this CSPAN video (only 2.5 min long…). He’s calling out Dr. David Gratzer, the author of a book titled “The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Healthcare.” Apparently, Gratzer rails against the Canadian health care system, pointing out the typical, tired conservative arguments of “6 month wait times” to be seen by a physician. Kucinich isn’t having any of that, pointing out Canadian studies showing that the median wait time is 3-4 weeks for certain procedures (ones that aren’t life-threatening, otherwise they’d be done sooner), which is apparently similar to that of the United States. And, nearly all of Canadians have health care. And it’s affordable. I’m sure Gratzer has some good points in the book (which I haven’t read…because I don’t read…), and some of his statistics are probably sound, but there are a wealth of other statistics carried out by the Canadian government and other organizations that say otherwise. “Lies, damned lies, and Statistics…”

Although this particular video doesn’t bring it up, I’m sure you’ve heard various Republican congresspeople (specifically, John Boehner…) asking the question: “do you want a bureaucrat in Washington coming between you and your doctor?” Well no, I don’t. But neither do I want some profit-hungry businessperson doing it either, and that’s what we’ve got right now. Brooke and I are lucky to have some pretty good health care, as I’m attending a medical school-based graduate program and have it available to us. I can’t begin to imagine what other folks are going through, that have to pay and arm and a leg (sometimes literally) for coverage that is worse than ours with a substantially higher deductable. It just annoys me that they keep spouting off this “bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor” rhetoric like it’s any different than what I’ve got now.

At least, if I’ve got a bureaucrat between me and my doctor, I have the opportunity to vote them out of office. I can’t do that to a CEO.