It took almost three weeks with several days of Colchicine and Advil to make the gout go away. I will try to adhere to a better diet to minimize flare ups.
...
I saw a Joan Baez special on PBS yesterday evening and was quite impressed.
She has been a courageous woman with a very strong sense of social
justice. She also was a very attractive lady with beautiful voice and a talented guitar player. Her romantic songs of a bygone past brought me joyful sadness. Old pictures of the Vietnam war, marches in the South with Martin Luther King, Sarajevo, ... and Joan Baez's songs brought me the melancholy nostalgia of a time, place I thought has long forgotten.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Gout
Gout has flared up the last several days. It started on the left toe joint and later around ankle. I've been taking Advil to reduce the pain and swelling. I have a low fever, headache and feel a sense of helplessness walking with severe pain around the house on crutches. It has not been fun.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Happiness
Yesterday evening we saw “Happiness”, an excellent PBS special.
Dr. Tal Ben Shabar is a Harvard professor teaching class about happiness. His thesis of ingredients for a happy life includes:
1. Simplification of life. The many choices that we have bring confusion and chaos. He proposes that we ought to simplify our life with simple pleasures; perform less multi-tasking activities; take time out to recover from stress.
2. Positive acceptance. This is not passivity. Positive acceptance means to make choice based upon available information; learning from mistakes and move on.
3. Exercise. Referenced many medical studies, Tal Ben Shabar posits that regular physical exercise reduces stress, disease risks, … which will lead to a happier, healthier life.
4. Happiness can be learned.
5. Mindful meditation. The simplest daily exercise is the deep breathing method. More advanced mindful meditation will further relaxation, stress-reduction and many other benefits.
6. Focus on the positives. An attitude of gratitude concentrating upon all the good things in our life is an important element for a happy life.
Tal Ben Shabar has written several best-sellers including “Happier” and “Pursuit of Perfect”.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Pan's Labyrinth - the Movie
We saw it yesterday eve. I was absolutely mesmerized and amazed
by the many layers of interpretation of reality and un-reality, fantasy and religiosity,
dream vs. life, good vs evil... Especially, when all these layers are seamlessly interwoven into great story-telling with many subplots.
The last scene when Ofelia was killed is the most astounding: it brings up the historical context of the Spanish Civil War, the alliance of General F. Franco's dictatorship and the Catholic Church against the International Brigades. Her death and the afterlife sequence is the memorial of the deaths of many innocents during the War and the implication of martyrdom which ironically is on the side of the Church opponents; at the same time the evil of the Captain is explainable: he had a job to do and he could not see the faun Ofelia conversing with and I am sure that he believes that she was possessed and worse.
It was an incredible movie.
by the many layers of interpretation of reality and un-reality, fantasy and religiosity,
dream vs. life, good vs evil... Especially, when all these layers are seamlessly interwoven into great story-telling with many subplots.
The last scene when Ofelia was killed is the most astounding: it brings up the historical context of the Spanish Civil War, the alliance of General F. Franco's dictatorship and the Catholic Church against the International Brigades. Her death and the afterlife sequence is the memorial of the deaths of many innocents during the War and the implication of martyrdom which ironically is on the side of the Church opponents; at the same time the evil of the Captain is explainable: he had a job to do and he could not see the faun Ofelia conversing with and I am sure that he believes that she was possessed and worse.
It was an incredible movie.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
It's always something...
The hired help has done their job and are gone. We spent quite a bit of time and labor to work along side with them. I had to be watchful so that the work got done correctly. It was physically hard. I discovered today that the underground electrical wiring to the low-voltage outdoors lighting system was cut accidentally. I wish that the worker had noticed it and made the cut location known. Now I have to dig up the finished yard to locate the damage section of the wiring to fix it. The workers were good but still not as careful as I would like. I am glad that I did some measurement to prevent the installation of flagstone slabs outside the basement windows; if it was done we may not be able to open the windows [especially when it snows] since the slabs would have blocked them. Some sprinkler heads were caked with cement which was used by the workers to fix the front steps. I will have to drill a couple of holes on the bottom of the drain since its shallow bottom does not empty all rain water which can be a mosquito breeding ground. Oh, well. We still have to spend quite a bit of time this and next several weeks to clean up the yard and add shrubs.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Quotable quotes
Donald Trump seems to be the kind of person who goes to the Super Bowl and thinks the people in the huddle are talking about him.
This "art" is so like the "Wal-mart" of arts.
Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes the reason is that you're stupid and you make bad decisions.
Anonymous
What you look for in a woman shifts over the years.
When you're young, the pretty mouth is everything.
Then, when you're older, character is everything. Depth.
Can you see me when I'm hurting, and can you be there?
Art Garfunkel
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
"It's easier to do whatever it is you want to do if Warrent Buffett is your dad."
[The outside world sees China as a rising world power... But for all its gaudy economic statistics, on the inside the country is an economic pressure cooker. Children with aspirations for college put in 14 to 18 hours a day studying, desperate get accepted to a good university. Fortune, Oct 17, 2011]
"Never ignore a person that loves you, cares for you, and misses you. Because one day, you might wake up from your sleep and realize that you lost the moon while counting stars."
"For battles of wit, I refuse to fight unarmed opponents."
"Let us leave pretty women to men without much imagination."
Marcel Proust
"When you get to be our age, you all of a sudden realize that you are being ruled by people you went to highschool with... You all of a sudden catch on that life is nothing but high school."
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at 47 years old to a high school graduate
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Stephen Hawking
"Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room."
- William Hazlitt
"The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul's memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things." Plutarch c. 46 - 120 CE (The Consolation, Moralia)
"Telling people you cannot beat the market is like telling a six-year old that Santa Claus doesn't exist. The six-year old doesn't want to believe. Neither do people on Wall Street."
Burton Malkiel, Princeton Univ. Professor of economics.
"PhD student is someone who forgoes current income in order to forgo future income."
"Be very careful if you make a woman cry because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib, not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior, but from his side to be equal! Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved."
"It's like playing chess with a monkey. You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king [piece]."
An unnamed diplomat, on the difficulty of nuclear talks with Iran.
"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"
James Thurber.
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Charles Wadsworth
"What has always confused me is the fact that some folks are more than willing to legislate the most intimate and private part of a woman's life [re. abortion rights] but are indignant over any limits on the Second Amendment right to bear [deadly, killing] arms." A. Loberg.
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." Stephen King
"Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time."
Note scribbled by the elderly Michelangelo to an apprentice.
Found in Michelango's studio after his death.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- Rene Descartes
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Carl Sagan
This "art" is so like the "Wal-mart" of arts.
Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes the reason is that you're stupid and you make bad decisions.
Anonymous
What you look for in a woman shifts over the years.
When you're young, the pretty mouth is everything.
Then, when you're older, character is everything. Depth.
Can you see me when I'm hurting, and can you be there?
Art Garfunkel
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
"It's easier to do whatever it is you want to do if Warrent Buffett is your dad."
[The outside world sees China as a rising world power... But for all its gaudy economic statistics, on the inside the country is an economic pressure cooker. Children with aspirations for college put in 14 to 18 hours a day studying, desperate get accepted to a good university. Fortune, Oct 17, 2011]
"Never ignore a person that loves you, cares for you, and misses you. Because one day, you might wake up from your sleep and realize that you lost the moon while counting stars."
"For battles of wit, I refuse to fight unarmed opponents."
"Let us leave pretty women to men without much imagination."
Marcel Proust
"When you get to be our age, you all of a sudden realize that you are being ruled by people you went to highschool with... You all of a sudden catch on that life is nothing but high school."
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at 47 years old to a high school graduate
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Stephen Hawking
"Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room."
- William Hazlitt
"The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul's memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things." Plutarch c. 46 - 120 CE (The Consolation, Moralia)
"Telling people you cannot beat the market is like telling a six-year old that Santa Claus doesn't exist. The six-year old doesn't want to believe. Neither do people on Wall Street."
Burton Malkiel, Princeton Univ. Professor of economics.
"PhD student is someone who forgoes current income in order to forgo future income."
"Be very careful if you make a woman cry because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib, not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior, but from his side to be equal! Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved."
"It's like playing chess with a monkey. You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king [piece]."
An unnamed diplomat, on the difficulty of nuclear talks with Iran.
"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"
James Thurber.
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Charles Wadsworth
"What has always confused me is the fact that some folks are more than willing to legislate the most intimate and private part of a woman's life [re. abortion rights] but are indignant over any limits on the Second Amendment right to bear [deadly, killing] arms." A. Loberg.
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." Stephen King
"Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time."
Note scribbled by the elderly Michelangelo to an apprentice.
Found in Michelango's studio after his death.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- Rene Descartes
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Carl Sagan
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Car accident
This afternoon I've visited a car accident victim, a young woman
engineer working with me for several years. She was driving normally on highway in late afternoon and a car illegally turned and hit her on the driver's side. Her spine was crushed. The other driver, an illegal immigrant does not have insurance and State of Colorado refused to prosecute him and just deported him.
It is shocking and heart-breaking to see such a vital, smart young lady in pain,
in hospital bed, cannot move and possibly will be paralyzed for life. I was quite emotional visiting with her and some of her siblings. Her life has changed for ever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)