Catch Me if you can…

So here I am, just watching the olympics, and realized that I can blog on my iPod now. It’s cool, but it takes way too long to type. Oh well.

My first original kitchen creation.  A bachelor’s dream dinner all in one.  Okay, maybe just one I think about even later when I’m hungry.

Gentlemen, let’s do this thing.

• Start with a nice 10-12 inch nonstick pan.  Put just a little olive oil in it and put it on medium heat (that’s about 4-5 on most electric ranges).
• Take 3 or 4 eggs and whip them in a bowl.  Be sure to crack them open and get them out of the shell first.  If you can’t do that, I can’t help you anymore.
• Add a little bit of half and half and whip it with the eggs, maybe a tablespoon or so.  I don’t measure it, so it may be more than that.
• Pour the eggs into the pan (see this is easy!).
• Take a small piece of smoked salmon, about the size of three to four fingers (depending upon how big your fingers are of course) and cut it into small pieces, then place them on one side of the omelette.
• Now take 1/3 to 1/2 of a small avocado and dice it (remember to take it out of the hard skin and don’t try to dice that big stone-like seed!).  Place this into the same side of the omelette as the salmon.
• Add a little grated cheese (I prefer parmesan, and since it’s my recipe, I’ll use it!).
• This is when I usually add a little salt and pepper.
• Hopefully you haven’t dilly-dallied and burned up the eggs already.  If you have, it’s time to stop and go out to eat.  If not, press on!
• Fold over the empty half onto the full side.  If you have too much stuff it won’t close, but then again, so what?  You’re still eating it by yourself, so who’s gonna care?
• Lastly, after a couple of minutes you can either flip it over onto the other side or just serve it onto a plate.
• Once on a plate, cover with a little green chile salsa.  I like 505 Southwestern Organic Green Chile Sauce.  You can buy whichever one you like.  If you can make your own, why are you reading my recipes?
• Enjoy with enough water or other palate cleansing liquid to keep the green chiles from burning your taste buds so that you don’t notice the avocado goodness.

And there you have it!  My Olympic Denver Omelette.  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

So I’ll admit that I was around to see Jimmy Carter beat Gerry Ford in the 1976 election.  I don’t remember any of the pertinant details of course, but I do remember the excitement and then the following term by what history proved to be a mediocre president.  Here we seem to have an impending election in which two candidates with equally ambiguous claims to the office seem to be hurtling headlong towards filling the void that will be left when the current administration vacates the premises (I hope that at least this first family will leave the silverware that needed replacing after the previous tenants skipped town for their new posh digs in New York).  Honestly I wish that in every election there would be on the ballot an option to vote for “none of the above,” so that we could force another election with more qualified candidates if we so choose.  At least that would send the message that says: “hey, we’re watching you guys, and we don’t like what we see, so you’d better tow the line, mister!”

As much as these two guys try to show that they are different, they seem so much alike in some ways and yet even in their differences they aren’t all that different.  I guess what I’m saying is that it would be nice to have term limits so that nobody could be a “career politician,” and so that even those who are really qualified would work hard to do what the electorate sent them to Washington to do, knowing that they would be tossed out soon enough anyway, never to run again for that office.  I mean, sure, a president should be someone who has had some years of experience in running an office of that scope, whether a governor or a senator (or even the occasional representative of distinction), but should someone serve 30 years on the hill before running?  No.  Should we have someone who has spent 3 years serving and done little more than vote, “present,” for most of the votes of import?  Again, no.  That’s one reason that I voted for our current president.  He served his state as governor, did a great job for two terms, and then moved on to something else.  All after being successful at running a business.  He has proven executive skills.  Of the two guys running this time around, I’d sooner vote for Mrs. McCain.  At least she knows how to run something.  These other two guys are consummate politicians.  And I’ve got only a little respect for that sort.

Let’s get someone to run who will make US policy to help the helpless when we can, provide for the underprivileged within reason, and reward the successful based on merit and nothing more.  We can have this as both domestic and foreign policies.  I’m not saying get everyone on the dole who doesn’t want to work, because I see that enough as a doctor.  I mean more to make sure that the hungry kids in this rich nation have food to eat so that they can go to school and pay attention to the teaching rather than empty bellies.  At the same time I think that we can distribute the burden of taxation more equally so that we can both maximize government revenue while minimizing individual obligations.  How in the world can we do that?  By taxing goods and services rather than income so that the more one spends, then more one is taxed rather than by income.  That rewards the worker who wants to provide for the future, which in turn stimulates the economy with increased investment, all the while giving the government what it needs to do its job, which should decrease over time anyway as society improves economically.

I’ve blathered on long enough.  Maybe another time I’ll solve the “health care crisis.”  Oh, but look out, “Global Warming.”  You’re next.

…..Good question.  It is 1 in the morning on July 4th and I’m not yet sleepy, so why not post on the blog?  Ok, maybe I’m kinda sleepy, but at least I feel like writing, and that hasn’t been the case lately.  Mostly I’ve been reading.  Reading the news, reading a novel or two, reading work manuals, or just stuff on other people’s blogs.  But it is high time that I wrote something for my minions (and of course for those who also read my blog by choice: “we realize that you have a choice when reading blogs and we thank you for choosing denniswales.com; whether this is your final destination or you are continuing on your internet journey we wish you a safe and pleasant stay while you are here”).

….. Well the world continues to spin on its axis just like always, no matter what the latest carbon dioxide count may be (actually it was 386 ppm last month in the Mauna Loa observatory: that’s 386/1,000,000 or 3.86/10,000 or 0.0386 % partial pressure of CO2, which in turn is something like taking one breath out of a paper bag after exhaling into it almost one time per year.  That’s a lot, right?).  You know, when you think about it, plants are amazing- they survive off of photosynthesis, a process which liberates oxygen but requires CO2, yet the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are far less than  a tenth of 1%, and the oxygen in the air is an astounding 21% of the total air that we breathe!  That is over 500 times the amount of CO2 in the air!  And those fear-mongering, nonscientific, environ-mentalists want to cut down the amount of CO2 produced.  I wonder what the plants would say if they had a voice.

…..We are in the world for a purpose.  As a Christian I of course believe that I am here to glorify God and to make Him known.  But also I believe that we have been given responsibilities by God to be good stewards of those things that have been entrusted to us.  The world is one of those things.  God spoke to Adam and gave him dominion over the earth.  He also gave him the responsibility to care for it and to look after it.  I don’t think that we are doing a good job.  However, I don’t think that going completely nuts about global warming helps either.  I think that it is at once irresponsible science and at its worst, yellow dog journalism.  There is a certain agenda behind many of those who cry that we are headed for climate catastrophe, and though some cry without knowledge of the agenda (they are the pawns for which I feel most pity), what bothers me the most is that many are they who know of the agenda and yet keep it quiet.  They are those who are quick to say that anyone who disagrees is a shill for Big Oil and Corporate greed, for look who benefits from that sort of thinking.  And yet the hypocrisy is that the studies and evidence that comes closest to supporting their position was funded by those who are sympathetic to their cause.  Where are the denouncers of that funding bias?  Anyone?  They are not there because they believe that they win there arguments because of the volume of their shouting instead of the volume of evidence.  What irks me most is that so many of my colleagues in medicine have themselves swallowed these hypotheses as fact without examining the evidence at all.  Truly it is a case of being convinced by repetition rather than by logic and reason, and that is above all, the most bothersome part.  Sure it feels good to fight for the planet, for Mother Earth, and who but the most Philistine among us would dare stand against protecting our home?  How convenient.  Shape the argument in terms such as these and you can’t lose, eh?  Well, I don’t buy it.  I feel responsible to take care of the earth, but it should be done the way I care for my patients- based on the best evidence, not hearsay, conjecture, and speculation.  It should be based on reason, not irrational hatred of corporations or even the feelings of love for our planet.  I love our planet too.  I live here.  But just as I routinely have to educate parents on why we recommend immunizations for all children when they are worried that their child will become autistic because of them, I feel that we need to educate ourselves on what is true and accurate about our climate and the world in which we live.  Sure autism is bad, but an epidemic of measles and your child dying from a lack of immunization would be far worse.   Let’s stop this epidemic of irrationality.  Let’s get some education.  Let’s look at the evidence, not at the speculation.  Let’s be reminded that the warmest year on record was in the 1930s, not in the past decade; that 2007 was cooler than the previous 7 years; and that those who are at the forefront of the climate catasrophe movement have wanted to cripple corporations for many years prior to finding a cause that they could get others to blindly follow.

…..Open your eyes and read the evidence.  Stop saying you are open-minded and be open-minded for once.

I have no really worthy excuses for not writing.  I certainly have had more time on my hands since completing the TropMed course in Liverpool.  I have yet to do anything remotely suggestive of real work since then.  If you are keeping score, that would be since May 9th, and as it is currently June 27, that is right about 6 weeks of holiday.  I’m feeling rather German with all this time off.  A few more weeks and I’ll be French!

I will be starting a new job next week, however, so playtime is coming to an end in one sense.  In another sense playtime is just going through a mild period of restructuring.  I am downsizing playtime in an effort to maximize effective use of the time.  Ok, playtime is being given a very nice severence package and will be coming back on a purely per diem basis.  “I think it will be much more effective, don’t you agree?  Great.  I’ll be sure that you get a new copy of the memo.   Yeah.  And I’ll be needing you to come in on Saturdays starting next week, mm-K?  Great.  I’m glad we had this little chat.”

Hopefully I’ll keep updating as I get more organized and settled into a routine at the new job.  If you get to wondering what’s new and I don’t update this, feel free to send me an email and prod a little.  I like to write but don’t always have much reason to write publically unless I have something that I have to share, and even then I wonder who really reads this.  You don’t have to fess-up or anything, but comments are always encouraging.  Except for the negative ones.  They are only encouraging me to get one of my friends to hack that person’s computer and give it a virus that will search for email addresses and send love notes from the user to all of their friends one by one.  How awkward would that be?

Anyway, more to come!

Lots of people talk about prejudices, racism, hate crimes, and profiling, and most of those who talk or write on this subject do so with the underlying assumption that they are exempt from these ideas, as though they themselves are uniquely qualified to rant and rave about how one group or another is oppressed or otherwise negatively affected. The speaker is of course either a member of the affected group or sympathetic to them for whatever reason, but rarely is the speaker one of the prejudiced party. This makes sense, but there is a parallel that I am thinking about these days that is often missed: those of us who think we are not prejudiced are often deceiving ourselves.

I like to think that I was raised in a home where all people were supposed to be equal no matter color or creed. We even sang a song about it: “Jesus loves the little children… red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…” I went to school with children from many backgrounds and ethnicities. There were Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, African, Indian, Jewish, African-American, Hispanic, and I don’t know how many others. I was best friends with a guy named Gregg Matte, now the pastor at my church, and then after he moved away my best friend was Chris, the new black guy from around the corner. His family taught me a lot by never treating me any different from Chris- I was just his friend and they were nice like the family they were, but they certainly didn’t seem to care a bit about the difference in skin color. I really respected that.

However as I have grown up, I have come to realize that we all have prejudices about something. Or some group. Or someone. It is inevitable. Unavoidable even. No matter how much we try to avoid it, the truth is that the only way to really get rid of a particular prejudice is to get to know that thing or person better. For example when I went to Spain four years ago I got to know a few people from the Netherlands. They were continually surprised at how I didn’t fit their paradigm of a guy from Texas! Really? Who could possibly think something odd about Texans? Well, besides a few who have met Texans like Ross Perot or Howard Hughes, perhaps it could be mostly people who don’t know even one of us personally. And that got me thinking about prejudices and how we often have many that we don’t think about. It is easy to go on thinking that a generalization is accurate, especially when it seems somewhat harmless, but when presented with the truth we then are left either to believe that the facts are an exception to the generalization or maybe, just maybe, the generalization is incorrect.

So there it is. We are all prejudiced people to some degree, and for those of us who know and love God already there is only one cure: exposure to the very thing we would almost rather avoid. I am certainly not there yet, but it has been my pleasure through many travels to crack a few paradigms that just did not fit. In just the same way I have had some of my own ideas cracked by those I have let in to my own life. Thanks to God and to all of you out there for helping me continue to grow up.

Check out this story about a girl in Greece and her twin. I have to speculate that this occurred just a bit after she began developing.