Sleepless in Midland

On the Teevee - "The Shield" and the thimerosal/autism connection

I started watching "The Shield" when the current season started a few weeks ago.  It's a gritty L.A. cop story with lots of crack, tar, drive by shootings, crooked cops, gang bangers, and the thimerosal/autism connection.  Say what?

That's right.  Here's the scene.  The series' star, Vic, and his ex-wife are interviewed by a plaintiff's attorney who tells them that there's evidence showing that the mercury in thimerosal, which was used in children's' vaccines since 1949, can cause autism.  Apparently, Vic's two kids are both autistic.  Vic asks "they're just now figuring this out?!"  "Someone gotta pay," the ex-wife says emphatically.   It has to be someone's fault, it couldn't possibly have come from the parent's gene pool.

That was last week.  In this week's show, which aired Tuesday night, the lovely couple once again get a visit from the attorney who wants them to have the kids tested by a doctor of his choosing.  But, the ex-wife is a nurse, so they try to persuade a friendly doctor to do the test for free.  But, the friendly doc declines explaining that doctors really do care about people, at which point Vic chastises the doc for sticking up for other docs the way Vic sticks up for other cops.

My first reaction to this was to think that it was a clever product placement by some aggressive law firm.  But, on second thought, it's unlikely that such an advertisement could ever get by the rules of all 50 state bar associations.  So, it's the show writers trying to interject this issue, but for what reason?  Is it possible that there's some personal gain to be had?  Maybe some script writer is trying to taint the jury pool big time.

Or maybe it's yet another attempt to once again raise the conscienceness of the viewers to some issue personal to someone with influence.  In either case, we don't need it.  Here we are settled in for an evening of tv watching, and "The Shield" goes all "60 Minutes" on us giving us a dose of junk science.

I'm skeptical by nature, and there really needs some solid scientific evidence connecting the thimerosal with autism before I'm ready to get on that band wagon.  If we need more studies, then let's do the studies and not confuse coincidence with causation.  But, please, leave it out of the evening lineup.

Hill Country Bluebonnets

I phoned the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce on Monday and was told that the bluebonnets were beginning to bloom and should be in full bloom in a week or two.  That puts it in the next week or the one following that.  Anyway, you don't have to be a daisy sniffer to appreciate the spectacle of acres and acres of blooming bluebonnets.

A few years ago - when the photo was taken - they were saying it was the best year ever.  But, the Texas Hill Country has received a lot of rain this Spring, and this season looks to be a good one, too.

The Oldest Profession

Last week 18 people were arrested for sex crimes in a prostitution sting in Odessa, Texas.  Another four were charged with "pedestrian in the roadway."  Source:  OA Online.

Prostitution, by itself, is a victimless crime, so we really have to question why the world's oldest profession would be illegal in the first place.  Sherry F. Colb at FindLaws Legal Commentary offers up a plausible explanation (via CrimLaw):

The simple explanation for why prostitution is a crime is that it is a morals offense -- a sin. Though neither party to the transaction is necessarily harmed, the law here prohibits sexual activity that falls outside of the prescribed relations.

But doesn't this explanation prove too much? Wouldn't an opposition to "sinful" sexual relations extend to homosexual contacts, nonprocreative forms of heterosexual sex, and fornication as well? Yes, it would.

Then we get to the four who were charged with "pedestrian in the roadway."  Sounds like a case of "wanted to arrest them but had no evidence of a real crime."

Well, my main problem with prostitution is with the vernacular.  Those who solicit it are called "johns."  First, outhouses, and now this.  Sigh.

Around Town Last Weekend (2)

Also this past Saturday there was a fund raiser for 10 year old little Bryan Holcomb at Jane Long Elementary School where, for a mere $6 you could get a scrumptious Frito Pie with a side order of mouth watering potato chips. It probably sounds as if I'm trying to make light of it, but it's a very sad situation.

Little Bryan had some serious health problems, and he passed away on Monday.  It's always such a sad thing when a kid dies.  Here's his obituary.

Around Town Last Weekend (1)

Last Saturday was supposed to be the big day for worldwide anti-war protests, but they must have decided to skip over Midland.  There was a light rain, so maybe that put a damper on things - the brutal West Texas Spring, you know.

Word Play

What's a blogger?  San Antonio attorney Bruce Goldston offers this definition:

Blogger:  A person who wants to see his name up in bytes.

Heh heh, pretty good play on words.  [You call that a lawyer joke?  - ed ]  It's a lawyer's joke not a lawyer joke.   [Where are the sharks, the snakes? - ed ]  It's not a LAWYER JOKE!  Oh, what the heck, just go here if you want lawyer jokes.

Sorry for the absence

Sorry for the recent absence from the blog scene.  It's this chronic case of Persistent Vegetative Statism that just won't seem to let go.

"28 Days Later" - the movie

There's a pretty good British horror movie scheduled for broadcast on HBO tonight titled 28 Days Later.  It's a sci-fi story which starts out with the hero in London getting knocked into a coma by a car.  He wakes up in a hospital 28 days later to find a world drastically different from the one he remembered.

It seems that around the same time he got knocked out some animal rights whackos broke into a bio-lab to liberate the lab animals, but the chimps they set free have been inflicted with a brand new disease called "rage."  It's catching, of course.

People can get it from the blood, sweat, tears or saliva of a carrier.  And, there's no annoying wait for symptoms - the disease becomes full force within half a minute of exposure.

The main symptom seems to be that a person with it is in a state of murderous rage.  After our hapless hero wakes up in an abandoned hospital and starts looking for some sign of life he's soon trying to make sense of this situation in which the only living humans seem to want to chase him down and kill him.  But, he manages to team up with a small band of quick thinking survivors who with their wits and a fair share of their own brutality have managed to keep from being killed or infected.

So, that's basically the premise of the movie.  And the questions that you probably have are whether the disease gets off the British island and whether or how many of the band of survivors survive to the end of the movie.  For the answers, you'll want to see the movie.  Don't get HBO?  No problem, it's available on DVD, and it's sure to keep you on the edge of your chair.

Surviving life

You can read a blog for a period of time and begin to feel as though you know the person at that keyboard.  And, though I've never met the author of Yellow Bug News, I can tell that  she must be a very kind and likeable person.

So, last week she began writing about an upcoming medical procedure.  It turned out to be a colonoscopy.  And, according to her telling of the event, it went well.  That's great news, and I for one, am grateful that she'll be around for a while longer.

Sooner or later we all end up admitted as a customer into the medical industry for a determination of whether we've got cancer.  Big business, those biopsies.  Men are especially susceptible due to the inaccuracy of those darn PSA tests they keep telling us we need.   And, when the bills come it we tend to wonder, did I just get snookered?  Remove your wallet and bend over.

And, there's the emotional cost.  There was a Woody Allen movie - one of the older, funny ones - in which he becomes convinced that he has cancer.  He goes in for a test, and he turns out to be cancer free.  But, then a strange thing happens.  He gets very depressed about it.  It was funny at the time, but I believe it's a real and common phenomenon.

A person who is told he/she needs a biopsy can convince him/herself that nothing's wrong, almost.  There's that tiny little voice way back there in the brain saying "Don't get too comfortable.  If you're wrong, it can kill ya."

So, when the news comes back good, the desire to celebrate is mysteriously absent.  I suspect that the whole affair causes a person to feel very vulnerable.  We had worked up a great deal of  anticipation and dread.   And when we get the good news we realize that there will be no battles to fight, no enemies to conquer.  But, the joy is fleeting. Athough our life won't change that day, we are still so very small and helpless.  Perhaps the battle has just been postponed until another day.

What am I saying?  How depressing!  If you've read this far and haven't yet done a Hunter S. Thompson number, then don't.  There are too many good things to look forward to.  And, while I know I won't live forever, I want to relish the time I've got.  And, Julie at Yellow Bug, congratulations on the successful completion of the procedure.  May you have many years of happiness left in you.

Head em up, Move em out - the Rattlesnake Roundup

The curious traveler can experience the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, the weekend of 3/12/05 [corrected].   It's an annual event, and this one will mark the 46th year in which they have put it on, according to their website.

There will be no pictures of rattlesnakes in this post, but the brave hearted can go here and here for photos.

Those of us who get the heebie geebies around snakes can probably attribute that to our wise caveman ancestry who hard wired this into our brains.

"Snakes have provided a recurrent threat throughout mammalian evolution," [Arne Öhman, a psychologist at the Karolinska Institute and Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden] said, adding that "individuals who have been good at identifying and recruiting defense responses to snakes have left more offspring than individuals with less efficient defense systems."  Source.

In other words, we wouldn't be here if our ancestors were braver.  Fight or flight?  I like flight.

There are opponents to rattlesnake roundups who say that they have a negative impact on the rattlesnake species.  But, it would be hard to prove one side or the other as no one really knows what the snake population is now or was before the roundups began.  But, you can get both sides of the argument at the National Geographic News.  And the Humane Society can expound on the inhumane treatment of snakes at these type roundups.

But, it will be a pleasant diversion on what looks to be a pleasant weekend.  We can save the species next year.

Followup:  The roundup took place last weekend, and the local paper said there were 30,000 people in attendance.  When I attended on Saturday around noon the entire 30,000 weren't present, but it sure seemed like it.  It was so crowded that it took much of the enjoyment out of the event.  But, it was surely a success for the Sweetwater Jaycees.

P.S.  Thanks to Butch for pointing out the mistake in the date in the initial post - it was a month off.  That has been corrected.  Sorry if anyone was misled by that error.

The Movie Business in Midland (Part 1)

There is a movie making industry thriving right here in the Permian Basin.   Chad at Bull Durham's Hot Corner is very knowledgeable of the subject, and he's involved with the Basin Film Society whose purpose is to promote that industry.  [Update - link to Basin Film Society has been corrected.]

They, along with ArtWalk Midland, Inc., are putting on the Desert Reel Film Festival on April 21-24, 2005, in Midland and Odessa, and it looks to be a very entertaining event.  They've lined up 20 films for screening which will include feature films, short films, documentaries, and music videos.  You can see the whole list by clicking on this PDF file.

But, the remarkable thing about it is that one of the documentaries, An Evening with Larry Breeze, and two of the feature films,  Unnoticed, and The Mind's Eye, were produced locally.

According to the DRFF news release, "the Desert Reel Film Festival is the ONLY indie film festival in West Texas, and the 2004 inaugural event drew more than 300 attendees to the area."  So, community leaders, looking for industry diversity?  This is about as diverse as it gets.  Move over Hollywood.  You too, Austin.

See you at the movies.  And, thanks to Chad at Bull Durham's Hot Corner and Melanie at DRFF for the heads-up.

Gentlemen, start your engines

Presented as a public service, here is a paragraph copied directly from page D5 of the print edition of today's Wall Street Journal:

"A study published in 1997 that followed 918 Welsh men over a decade showed those who had the highest frequency of orgasms had half the risk of death during a 10-year period than those with the lowest frequency."

May you all live a long and, uh, fulfilling life.

Local Bloggers Featured in Local Paper

In an article titled Web journals make mark for media watchdogs or anyone with an opinion to share, Midland Reporter-Telegram managing editor Stewart Doreen wrote a pretty good piece about local blogs.

Jessica's Well is featured prominently in the article, and rightly so.  JW is such a powerhouse that it takes six people to steer it.   And, who can forget that phenomenal posting in '03 about the Life magazine article of 1946?  It got nationwide attention, and bandwidth fees got so high that Site Admin was prompted to post an Amazon link for refundable contributions.  (Hmmm, I wonder if any contributor ever asked for a refund.)

And, about Sleepless in Midland he said "...one of the more versatile writers on Midland's blog scene."  Wow, what a compliment!  Thanks!  Flattery will get you everywhere!  I take back all of the negative things I said, wrote or thought about the Midland Reporter-Telegram.  What a great newspaper!

That article is the first of a series although it will probably be the only one focusing on the local blogs.  The next one, titled "Blog-related firings prompt calls for better company policies" is due out in the Monday edition and should be a good one, too.   And, many thanks to Mr. Doreen for shining a little light on us.

Bonnie Duncan vanished, feared dead, found safe

What a story this turned out to be.  Bonnie Duncan, age 53, went missing Tuesday night, and the community of Andrews, Texas, went into action.  Utilizing planes, horses and automobiles, the citizens, law enforcement, and at least one nonprofit group went into overdrive in a search for her. The nonprofit group, Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team arrived Friday to help out - see their flyer for Ms. Duncan here.

And, here's the BringBonnieBack.com set up just for Ms. Duncan.

So, if you thought like I did, then you began to speculate where her body would be found.  My guess was at an abandoned well site somewhere within Andrews County.

Well, she was found safe, and I cetainly am glad to have been wrong.  Here's the Midland Reporter-Telegram reporting that she was found in Daly City, California, a few miles from San Francisco.  The mystery of how she got there has yet to be told, but she's alive, and this is certainly a good news story.

Check out this comment from some of the dispatchers of the Daly City Police Department left at the Guestbook over at the BringBonnieBack.com website:

"HI, WE WOULD LIKE TO SAY HOW HAPPY WE ARE THAT BONNIE WAS FOUND SAFE AND WILL BE HOME WITH HER FRIENDS AND FAMILY VERY SOON. WE ARE DISPATCHERS FOR THE DALY CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, IN CALIFORNIA WHERE BONNIE WAS FOUND. WE NEVER WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT THE SWEET LADY WITH THE SOUTHERN ACCENT ON THE OTHER END OF THE PHONE WAS SUCH A WELL LOVED AND MISSED LADY. WE WISH BONNIE, HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS THE BEST OF LUCK. WE ARE SO HAPPY THAT SHE WILL BE REUNITED WITH EVERYONE WHO LOVES HER."

FROM JOANNE, NATASCHA AND BONNY
DALY CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
DALY CITY, CALIFORNIA  [all caps theirs]

Welcome home Bonnie!  I'll be over for lunch at Buddy's in Andrews real soon.

MI-5, skills game online

For fans of the BBC show "MI-5," shown here on A&E, there's an online game titled Spooks which is basically a skills level test to see if you could qualify to be an MI-5 agent.