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Jeb Bush's PAC's new staffer is an adept Tweeter. So send Ethan Czahor a Tweet - below are examples of some he sent a few years ago. Let's give Ethan a warm civil welcome! He Tweets @czahor.
Wonder if Czahor is a Catholic high school grad? Just sayin'.
"I don't think a party can aspire to be the majority party if it's the old white guy party." - Jeb Bush
Hard to imagine that this is the eighth anniversary of Campanastan's birth (the blog, that is). I originally named it 'Aquablog' but soon changed it to its present moniker: Reason: people might have confused it with my professional persona - that of a dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate WaterWonk. That persona is represented by my WaterWired blog, started just a few weeks later.
My first post:
Okay, here we go. So as to avoid inflicting my ramblings on others without their acquiescence, I've entered the blogosphere and become a blogger along with a few million others. I can now post all my infamous semi-fictional "travel reports" and whatever drivel (funny or bizarre news items, aphorisms, stream-of-consciousness missives) I wish to write, and if folks want to read them, they can do so at their leisure (risk?) without my cluttering up their inboxes. Some might say this is, like Seinfeld, a blog about "nothing".
Welcome to Aquadoc's blog, aka
AQUABLOG!
So come back for more, and remember to....
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
I think I've lived up to Seinfeld; this is, in fact, a blog about "nothing". As a matter of fact....
"The whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I've got my life." - Jerry Seinfeld
I like Adam Baldwin as an actor. No, not that Adam Baldwin of the Brothers Baldwin - this Adam Baldwin. I enjoyed him in Firefly and its film continuation, Serenity. He played a tough guy living on the fringes of society, outside the law, sort of a loose cannon, but a real good-bad guy to have on your side.
He currently plays a similar role, but one constrained by the uniform of the U.S. Navy in the TV series, The Last Ship. It's a good show that just got renewed. The premise of that show is that an engineered virus has destroyed 80% of humanity. One ship, the USS Nathan James (Baldwin plays XO Mike Slattery), holds the key to a cure as it sails around seeking supplies and refuge from a Russian ship out to destroy it, but not before obtaining its vaccine.
But after reading an article by Tabatha Southey in today's Globe and Mail about the 'Gamergate controversy' (Baldwin apparently first used the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate) I'm wondering if Baldwin is taking the script of The Last Ship too seriously. Southey had this to say about Baldwin:
An actor best known for playing a lovable jackass on Firefly who now plays a significantly less loveable jackass on Twitter. Baldwin coined the term Gamergate, which replaced the much-less-likely-to-be-taken-seriously-even-on-the-Internet term Quinnspiracy, and keeps it, and several foundling libertarian conspiracy theories, alive.
Only a man bold enough to tweet questions like, “What hard evidence is there that Obama doesn’t want Ebola in America?” [emboldening mine] can frame the debate around game-journalism ethics without drawing distracting parallels between the arrangements and sympathies occurring within that industry (free games for preview, camaraderie) and the relationship that exists between film critics and movie studios, or between the travel industry and travel writers, about which there’s little hysteria and no threats. (See “Rape.”) How it is that Adam Baldwin is as huge a jackass as he seems to be without being one of the infamous Baldwin brothers remains one of the great mysteries of this whole affair.
As some gamers might say, 'Consider the gender of the writer.'
Why the title of this post? Baldwin was born in Winnetka, IL, namesake of a famous jazz tune.
He should be moving out of his parents' basement any day now.
I need to rest now. Way too much information for my first day in Vancouver.
"Rape: A hilarious word (like wombat!) to be used whenever you find yourself in an argument with a woman. You don’t even have to wait for an argument. Is there a woman attracting attention of any kind on the Internet? Consider threatening to rape her. Later, suggest she needs to lighten up." - Tabatha Southey, in her Globe and Mail article
Jerry Coyne, a fellow College of William & Mary alum (Class of 1971) and current professor at the University of Chicago, is a renowned evolutionary biologist who blogs and Tweets on that and related topics.
Coyne recently posted an open letter to Deepak Chopra. Seems that Chopra recently initiated a brief Twitter tirade against Coyne. That's interesting, because
although Coyne has over 16,000 followers, he follows no one on Twitter; he learned of Chopra's effort from someone else.
What I enjoyed most about Coyne's post was this poem, set to the music of I Am Woman:
I am Deepak; hear me roar
As you patronize my store,
And buy up all the nostrums that I sell.
You may say that I’m a crank,
But just tell that to my bank,
For I’m Deepak, and you can go to hell.Oh yes, I am rich,
Though it’s richness born of woo;
And for those whose life’s a bitch,
I will bilk them through and though.
If I had to, I could sell anything;
I’m a crank,
But I’m a scientist—
I am DEEPAK!
Enjoy!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and ends up a racket." - Eric Hoffer
So if you have some time on yours hands, my good friend Loring Grren suggests reading this excellent piece in Toronto's The Globe and Mail.
But don't stop there. Here's what Loring adds:
The Globe and Mail seems to have a higher cut of participants in their comments group. As a group, Globe and Mail responders are not obscene and most seem to have spent more than a couple of seconds contemplating their ideas.... and that's quite unusual. There are, at this moment 171 comments on this story and many more second tier replies. They pretty well cover the full circle of thought on this interesting and developing story.
Some of are no doubt wondering if this post's title is a ploy to get a Jackson Browne song into Campanastan.
Yes, it is.
Seriously, about a month ago I posted about my difficulty in reading (and writing blog posts) caused by a condition known as retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and consequent macular edema (swelling of the macula, the central part of the retina that is responsible for detail vision), in my right eye. As befits a hydrogeologist, I have fluid leakage that is causing the swelling.
Many of you have wished me well (thanks!) so I just wanted to give you an update.
My ophthalmologist,Dr. Gary Servais, has been injecting my retina with Avastin, a cancer drug that is also effective at relieving retinal swelling. After the first injection the corrected (I wear prescription lenses) vision in my right eye went from 20-60 to 20-40. That improvement was quite significant, and the swelling had subsided dramatically. That has not really translated into greatly-improved detail vision, for reasons that I don't need to explain, but my detail vision is somewhat better. As Dr. Servais said, if the swelling keeps subsiding, my detail vision will return quite dramatically, just as it departed (literally overnight).
Upshot: I received a second Avastin injection and am scheduled for a another one in a few weeks. This condition apparently cannot be cured, just managed, so should the treatment work I will need to get injections at some as-yet undetermined frequency for the rest of my life. I'll gladly take that. The odd thing is that RVO is usually associated with hypertension and diabetes, neither of which I have.
Regarding the fluid flow aspects: as part of my testing I underwent fluorescein angiography, where I was injected with fluorescein dye, whose circulation in the retina was observed to assess blockages. Pretty neat stuff; the images looked like a fracture-flow network. I explained to the medical staff that I had used the same dye for water tracing. They were quite amazed when I explained why I did it and what it told me.
Okay, enough of the medical report. The usual stuff will return shortly.
Thanks for your indulgence.
"Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long."
-- Doctor, My Eyes written by Jackson Browne
One of my favorite bloggers is David Zetland, a thoughtful economist who blogs at Aguanomics, just posted Why I Quit Facebook.
Zetland has posted on Facebook before, including a discussion on its 'broken business model and shallow ethics.'
It's worth your time. Give it a read.
"FB does not serve my social needs, so I go back to what works. Drinks anyone?" -- David Zetland
You may have noticed a greater number of spelling, grammatical, and related mistakes in these posts. Your President-For-Life offers his apologies - my interest in correct English has not diminished, but my nearsightedness has. In recent weeks I have suffered a deterioration in my reading vision. Even with my omnipresent magnifying glass I make a lot of mistakes and can't discern them very well. Suffice it so say that reading and writing have become real chores. I am being treated for this affliction and I hope it is rectified soon. Thanks for your kind thoughts.
Some of you have mentioned that comments you have tried to post have not been accepted for posting. All comments are moderated and the only ones I reject are the annoying spam-bots or ones that use obscene, abusive, or libelous language. But sometimes the software that Typepad uses won't even let you post a comment. In that case, please email the comment to me ([email protected]) and ask me to post it as a comment to a specific post (please indicate the post on which you wish to comment). Your comments, critical, informational, and praiseworthy, are valuable to me.
Bust, as usual, I'm defiant.
Thanks very much.
"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." -- Garrison Keillor
Our flyboys are keepin' us safe in the blogosphere! KISS, guys!
You might find this useful.
Thanks to cbwater and kevinmccann.
"We're going to blog them back into the Stone Age." - apologies to Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, USAF
Campanastan's Minister of Information has decided to join the 21st century and is now Twittering. You won't be bombarded with minute-by-minute tweets on what I am doing. I'll use it to direct you to posts, interesting links, etc., much like I do with my WaterWired Twitter.
The ten most recent updates will be posted on the site's left sidebar.
Enjoy!
To celebrate its new design, The Atlantic, one of my favorite magazines, published an excellent article by Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, titled 'Why I Blog.'
Sullivan refers to the 'narcotic appeal' (I can vouch for that) of blogging.
And did he mention 'intoxicating' and 'gratifying'? Ohhh, yeahhh!
Read his blog The Daily Dish.
"Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake, it heralds a golden era for journalism." -- Andrew Sullivan on blogging, from the article.
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