Last night (well, early this morning) Pam started having chest pains; this was, of course, after midnight. Nothing like a nice little “is this a heart attack?” scare at that hour of the morning. Yes, all is well.

We played it safe and, after waiting to see if Rolaids would do the job (it didn’t), we called the ambulance. Nice guys, very professional. I woke up the boys and off we went to the E.R. to see Mom.

End result: Pam is on some antibiotics. When these are combined with rich food the end result is acid reflux. Time to eat better for a while, methinks.

Now I get to wait for the E.R. and ambulance bills. Annoying, but if we had truly needed their services it would have been a bargain at any price.

Interesting, short post on Crooks & Liars regarding the dustup (conflict? war?) that is brewing in this country regarding science and health.

First, go read this and make sure you click on and view the video included:

Crooks and Liars » The Evangelical War on Science

There is grave danger in allowing a religious doctrine to choose what is – by definition – a matter of science. Dogma does not teach; it simply commands you to believe a particular way, regardless of the facts.

Some people in this debate make the mistake of classifying all Christians as people bent on imposing a fascist theocracy on the rest of the USA; I’m not in that camp. From my experiences most Christians in the US are quite willing to seperate their faith and politics; however, there are some that have no problem trying to enforce their beliefs on your (and your children), even when those beliefs are – from a scientific viewpoint – completely unsupportable. Some have referred to them as “The American Taliban”... and, in some ways, they are. But please keep in mind that their numbers, when balanced against the rest of the Christian population, is very small.

The C&L post also has a link to a Glenn Greenwald post regarding the religious pressure to not approve (or, if that isn’t attainable, allow parents to prevent the use of) a vaccine that may very well save the lives of their female children. The hitch? It has to be given before they are sexually active, as it turns out a common type of cervical cancer is caused by a virus. The objectors say that by giving this vaccine you are saying “we expect you to be sexually active.”

It would be funny if there were not lives on the line; I view these people in the same light as the nuts that refuse to get their children vaccinated for other diseases (polio, etc.) thereby endangering all the children around them – and their parents, whose polio (and other) vaccines may have worn off. That is child endangerment of the first order and should be dealt with quite harshly.

P.S. It’s rather amusing and ironic that the religious right has started to morph into Orwell’s Junior Anti-sex League. More info supporting that claim in a later post.

A) I haven’t had much to say lately, so not many posts.
B) What I would say probably isn’t prudent at this time.
C) I found this very, very funny.
D) Also, I am totally addicted to this game

I wouldn’t want to live in San Francisco, but living near it can be quite amusing.

Thousands – possibly millions – of dollars spent on research? Check.

Thousands – millions? – of dollars spent on strong-arming vendors into only supporting your HD format, and no combo systems allowed? Check!

A super-duper-secret encryption method that has never been peer-reviewed (“someone might steal it!”) and, therefore, only passes the test of “well, WE can’t crack it!” ? CHECK.

The content you were supposed to be protecting cracked in a few weeks and now available on BitTorrent? CHECK

I’m not overly fond of Wal-Mart – I’ll come right out and say it.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t shopped there, but I try to avoid it when I can. Part of it is the ambiance, part of it is a general dislike of the company. Mind you, that’s a dislike, not a slobbering hatred like some exhibit. Wal-Mart is one of many stores of that kind (Meijjer / Target / etc.), each of which either has a territorial stake or caters to a particular type of shopper. Target is a good example of this; the goal of Target isn’t the lowest prices on everything. The mood and layout of the store shows this; it certainly feels different than a Wal-Mart.

This should not be confused with “Target good / Wal-Mart bad”. Different, not better.

Today the San Francisco Chronicle (a copy of which I found on the mens room floor at my place of employment) had an article on the newest plan from Wal-Mart to squeeze out some more profit.

In a nutshell, the idea is that employees that used to have fixed shifts no longer will; instead, they will be called in, piecemeal, as needed throughout the day, evening or weekend. Wal-Mart says this will produce more staff when needed because a computer system will be monitoring staffing needs and calling people in as needed.

Welcome to the “fast food” style of employment. You will be called in as needed, and let go as needed. You can no longer rely upon a fixed shift, or a fixed number of hours. I can only imagine the effect that this would have on someone who has daycare arrangements or other issues of this kind.

Wal-Mart says that you will be able to tell them the hours you are unavailable. Employees claim this is a move to try to move full-time employees to part-time, thus saving Wal-Mart untold amounts of money as they will not have to pay benefits to part-time workers.

And, I suspect if you refuse to come in too many times you just might find your hours cut down so much that it would probably be better if you just, well, quit. Just like fast food. And just as intended.

I could not find the SFChronicle article online at sfgate.com; instead I have this link [cnn] that pretty much summarizes the same information and arguments.

That being said, I’ll get to the point of this post. Reading this today reminded me of a story I found on the web, Manna.

Manna is a piece of speculative fiction about a dystopia created by workforce management software that is similar to what Wal-Mart is planning to use, only a lot more complicated, capable and scifi. Once the dystopia is established the story veers off into another direction that I think the author would like to see the real world achieve. So would I, actually.

Anyway, I found the story interesting. Hopefully you will, too.