A Major Health Alert

I'm diabetic (Type 2), but I found that most of the things I have to worry about are things that everybody should worry about.  In the long run, high blood sugar (essentially the definition of Diabetes) affects almost all the body's systems: kidneys, heart, liver, nerves, circulation.  I was surprised when my primary care physician wanted to lower my blood pressure. 

"What does diabetes have to do with blood pressure?" I asked.  He didn't answer the question; he proceeded to check out all my systems, leaving me to figure it out.  (He knew my colleagues called me Dr. de Silva, and made a common mistake, assuming that I was a specialist in some obscure health field.)

Well, there's an article in the New York Times about high blood pressure; why it's important, why it's often undiagnosed, and why (even when diagnosed) it goes untreated.

In 1999, I had visited my hometown, to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary.  The enormous pile of medication I was carrying with me was mostly intact, except for my blood pressure medication.  It had sort of exploded!  (It's a phenomenon called efflorescence, where some substances abandon their crystalline nature and revert to a powder, when exposed to high humidity.)

When I told my brother, I got dragged around to my brother's PCP*, who agreed to see me as a matter of courtesy for my brother.  I explained about the misbehaving pills, and he got very serious.  "Can't play around with blood pressure," he said, and immediately prescribed an equivalent drug, stabilized for the tropics, and dug out a single dose for me to take immediately.  The point of that anecdote was to illustrate how seriously doctors take blood pressure; it could lead to stroke or death without warning.  [*Primary care physician.]

I'm still not one of those doctors, but I'm picking up bits and pieces here and there.  Blood pressure control is a big deal.  Once you are put on it (usually because you really, really need it), you don't want to unilaterally decide to go off it.  Fortunately, some of the most effective maintenance drugs now cost hardly anything. 

Why does high blood pressure matter so much?

1. If you have a potential aneurism in your brain, it could pop.  A good friend of mine was resisting going on BP medication.  He went to a conference in New Orleans, and died of an aneurism.  Any shock could kill you. 

2. The higher your BP, the harder your heart has to work.  All the time.  It just ages your heart more than it's supposed to age; you might be 50 years old, with an effectively 60 year old heart. 

3. The higher your blood pressure, the harder your kidneys work.  This is particularly bad for diabetics, because either diabetes, or diabetes medication, puts a load on your kidneys.  (There is some belief that heavy use of Tylenol will also be a burden on your kidneys.)

I'm sure I knew of other reasons to have your blood pressure screened regularly, but I have forgotten.  Until a better plan emerges, once you get on BP medication, just stay on it.  It's not expensive, and giving it up is dangerous.

 Archimedes.

Classic Putdowns

In the culture I come from, a lot of humor is of the putdown variety.  This morning, I realized that a lot of this comes to us from witty people who have been admired for a century!

This was posted in Facebook, a compilation ɓy Erika Hackett.

These sayings/insults are incredible gems from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words! I hope you delight in them as much as I have. 😅♥️

1. "He had delusions of  adequacy.” Walter Kerr
 2. "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
3. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. - Clarence Darrow
4. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
5. "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
6. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.” - Moses Hadas
7. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” - Mark Twain
8. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” - Oscar Wilde
 9. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”   -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
10. "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one.” - Winston Churchill, in response
11. "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here” - Stephen Bishop
12. "He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” - John Bright
13. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.” - Irvin S. Cobb
 14. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” - Samuel Johnson
 15. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. -  Paul Keating
16. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” - Forrest Tucker
17.  "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” - Mark Twain
18. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” - Mae West
19. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
20. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.” - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
21. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music.” - Billy Wilder
22. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it.” - Groucho Marx
23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
24. "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln
25. "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -- Jack E.  Leonard
26. "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." --  Thomas Brackett Reed
27. "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -- James Reston (about Richard Nixon) —Robert L Truesdel

Conservatism in Celebrity Women

In the absence of other information, we have to assume that the political inclination of any person is a considered choice, based on objective and reasonable choices.  But my prejudices urge me away from this belief.  I've expected that women tend to be more progressive in their thinking, I thought, because they have greater frustration with poverty in others, regardless of the race or the social class of the person.  Men, for decades, earned the money for the family (and whipped on their employees to greater efforts) and paid the taxes, and—it would seem, at least to fellow affluent men—were reasonably frustrated with low-earning, or even unemployed men.  And furious at having to pay taxes. 

Many of the celebrity women I have admired seem to be conservatives.  Why is this?  Ginger Rogers was the first one I noticed; and I believe, so was Debbie Reynolds.  Jane Fonda has been a progressive for decades, so has Lily Tomlin, and Susan Sarandon, bless her!  But, keeping informal statistics, the celebrity women—obviously, not those themselves running for election, or we'll get confused with all these Bobert's, Taylor-Confused-Greens, and other witless admirers left over from Trump's of glamorous days running about—seem to outnumber the progressives.

What is it about the lives celebrity women lead that seems to encourage conservatism?

Arch

Good Friday / Maundy Thursday

Though I'm a firm atheist, and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, my belief in the historicity of Jesus is a little difficult to shake off, and perhaps it is not necessary to do so.  Over the decades, the events in the so-called New Testament, and the personalities of Jesus's disciples seem too fully painted to be mere fictions. 

Though I continue to believe that Jesus was never alive again after he was executed, the horror and the fear of the group in the hours leading up to the crucifixion seem very real.  And if I do believe in the devastation of Jesus's friends and supporters in those pre-crucifiction hours, that should not detract from my qualifications as an atheist.  And atheists need not feel obliged to ridicule 'believers' as the latter ponder the horrors of those two days.  If it were the case that Jesus had not a speck of divinity, the horror of that group would have been all the more real. 

There is no doubt that Jesus was a great leader and teacher, which alone makes his execution a tragedy.  So were the executions of Stephen, Paul, Peter, in fact the deaths of all those first century christian martyrs were tragedies.  Atheists tend to laugh at those who mourn those tragedies; it's somewhat inexplicable.  But not sacrilegious, as we atheists can agree.  I mean, when a friend dies, we comfort his widow and his children; we hardly ever ridicule them saying, well, he wasn't the Messiah; curb your excitement!

I blogged on Bach's Matthew Passion recently.

With The Hands: 3rd World Wisdom

Today I want to head in a new direction.  My readers may not know that, until I was 26, I grew up in a Third World country.  In contrast to the prejudiced views of certain people, these countries were not—and are not—the trash heaps that they're accused of being.  It is rather alarming how large a proportion of journalists in the media are from India, for instance; these countries seem to grow very highly motivated individuals.  But, having grown up in Sri Lanka—just think; being as old as I was, I was very much a Sri Lankan when I arrived here, and still am, to some degree—there are a few patterns of thought that are stuck into my brain, like they're glued on. 

Having a dishwasher at home, for instance, gradually creates patterns of behavior quite different from those in someone who washed their dishes by hand.  Dishwasher people tend to collect dishes inside the dishwasher, until there's enough of a load, and then run the machine, which chugs along without any interference. 

People who have been the designated dish washer (in their dishwasher-less homes) in the past, seem to want to pile up dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, until having to wash them is inevitable, at which point they wash the whole lot, and put them in an enormous draining-rack.

The problem I have with this plan is that they sometimes toss things like bread knives in there, too.  If you've only got one bread knife in the house, (and most homes are this way,) you've put the bread knife out of use until the stuff in the sink has been washed.  This is true of any really large knife. 

To anyone who grew up in the wilds of Colombo (I'm being flippant; Colombo was a bustling city by 1700), this is a crazy way of doing things.  I would—carefully—wipe the knife clean, and put it back near the bread board.  If someone has used it to dig out the last bit of strawberry jam—as you do—well, hold it under the tap (a.k.a. faucet) and then clean it off with a paper towel.  No need to hit it with the enzymes (or hormones, or whatever they put in detergent these days).

Many of the things we own—and love—could serve us well for years, and even decades.  Ten years from now, we could be looking at something we own with fondness, thinking that the successor to that tool (or whatever it is) is nowhere near as well made as the one we have!  Lots of old things are more robust, and made of sturdier materials than their more modern counterparts.  It's common sense, therefore, to be ultra careful with the things we own, and which we enjoy the most.  Clothes.  Shoes.  Furniture.  Pens!  Some of our favorite things are really given a lot of rough use. 

A screwdriver, for instance.  This humble device can give good service for decades if you never let it slip while tightening (or loosening) a screw.   This is especially true of Philips-type screwdrivers. 

Now, it could be argued that, this sort of tool is intended to take rough usage, and once the bit is worn smooth, so that it doesn't work anymore, you just buy a new one.  Ah, but will the tool you buy in ten years be as good as the one you have now?

Shoes are an excellent example.  Sometimes the only problem with a fantastic pair of shoes is that the sole is unevenly worn; perhaps the sole of the left foot is worn down on the outside.  If your town has a shoe repairman (a cobbler), he can easily re-sole that shoe (or the pair of shoes) so that they're as good as, or better than, they were when new.  Sadly, shoe repair is a dying art, so it behooves one to patronize a shoe repairman before they give up the occupation.

I ought to explain the use of the phrase "with the hands"!  When you eat with your fingers—as we did when eating certain foods—you normally wash your hands once you're done.  The phrase  "With the hands" means: while you're washing your hands at the sink, you may as well wash your plate, too!

Arch

 

Trump's Party

The Trump family has decided to infuse new blood into the GOP political machine.  What will happen?  Will they get to paint their headquarters in gold, or go into bankruptcy?  Well, the GOP people must come to its aid.  Jump in with your checkbooks, or go down the drain with the Trumps.

Gene

Well, Kate and I just got back from the funeral service for a recently deceased close friend.  The funeral service was held in a small Evangelical church.  A little into the service, we found ourselves singing a hymn, whose refrain was

Trust and obey,

For there's no other way,

To be happy in Jesus

But to trust and obey.

This remarkable hymn managed to encapsulate all that I find disappointing in Christianity as it is practiced in the US: if you want to be happy with Jesus, you have to switch off the critical parts of your brain.

Much of the congregation consisted of our colleagues, who were college professors.  Some of them, doubtless, are comfortable with Trusting and Obeying, but higher education for many years has been engaged in a battle to fight against all sorts of dogma, which is why the conservatives and the GOP is so determined to get rid of "wokeness", one aspect of which is not Trusting and Obeying.  But is there truly no other way?

Arch