Drive By Phish Post

(Big Red strutting his stuff onstage)

I actually got a heads-up on the Phish is Back fever a couple of days ago but after so many rumors (both ridiculous and sublime), I pish-toshed this latest one and waited for it to be proven impossible (Trey's on probabtion in Guam or Mike's got a macrame final that day at the local senior center).

Well well, turns out this one is a true rumor and my feelings are almost identical to my friend Mel's. I have a real job now, people. They impose vacation restrictions. It's not like I can just take off and come back later with the cool new Phish shirt.

Oy.

Okay, favorite Phish moment - the 30 seconds between lights down and the first note. That moment of anything can happen, they can play my absolute favorite song right now or they can introduce me to my new favorite song. Whatever happens though, it's bound to be the best night of my life.

How many things in life make you feel like that? I think that's livin' ... L-I-V-I-N

Dare to Blog

This will be a mobile blog, otherwise known as a MoBlog. I am posting from my new LG Dare phone. Google it, it’s the next best thing to peanut butter (which is far better than sliced white bread IMO). The only caveat to this MoBlog is that it will be sans paragraphs or any other formatting for that matter; the Dare doesn’t Do formatting, so far as I can tell. But I’m not mad; with a QWERTY keyboard on a large touchscreen and Internet access that is not restricted by my work’s Websense Enterprise software, this phone is my new best friend. Thank you Jason for my awesome birthday present! This is the best time of the year ever … today is Constitution Day, tomorrow is my birthday and Friday is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I love mid-September! So shiver me timbers with a bottle of rum drizzled over birthday cake and read up on why the Second Amendment does Not explicitly guarantee us the right to own an AK47 … It’s September!

Note: this blog was originally written on my Dare but the Publish Post and Save Now buttons did not function for the phone so while this was written on a phone, the post is being published on my laptop. God I love the 2000s!

The Meaning of Life

In yet another "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" moment, I begin to feel that I may have missed my professional calling.

Today, in a unique and awe-filled coming together of physics and philosophy with a little bit of science fiction thrown into the mix, physicists in the foothills of the Alps switched on the Large Hadron Collider housed in a tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border, sending the first beam of protons zooming at almost the speed of light. The LHC, a $9 billion particle accelerator, was designed to simulate the Big Bang that created the Universe in the hopes of advancing various physical theories. Scientists and physicists and those simply interested in the technical side of the meaning of life hope this experiment will answer many questions regarding the possibility of extra dimensions as well as finding a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, aka the God Particle.

To be honest, this form of exploratory science just makes me giddy. A God Particle? Really? How can that not be fascinating? The Higgs boson, considered to be the Holy Grails of physics, is an elusive particle believed to bestow mass to matter, much in the same way a cluster of autograph hounds surround a celebrity on the move until they have their autographs at which point they peel off as more autograph hounds step in to take their place. In this case, the celebrity would be the matter while those seeking his autograph are the mass. As he moves down the street, the mass surrounding him makes it difficult for him to stop and once stopped, they make it difficult for him to start again.

Peter Higgs’ theory states that the particle named after him gave the Universe its form but it has eluded observation and remains a theory only. Proof of its existence would fill a missing puzzle piece in the dominant physics theory dubbed the Standard Model (particle physics version of the Periodic Table) which has been used to systematically organize all the known entities while helping to highlight and fill in knowledge gaps.

The LHC will send proton beams racing clockwise and counter-clockwise through the 27 kilometer circular tunnel creating millions of proton impacts. At full power, the LHC will be crashing protons together 600 million times per second, after which detectors will scour the subatomic wreckage looking for many of the answers they are seeking.

Many physicists feel that their entire careers have built up to this point, and that the results of this experiment will be the genesis for a “new physics”. Many detractors worry that the LHC will create a black hole large enough to envelop the Earth and that this experiment is an incautious effort to answer questions that are not dire to our survival and progression.

In fact, it is entirely possible that in the course of its run, the LHC will unleash a small black hole or two but scientists aren’t worried about any of them being big enough to cause any harm.

It is expected that the LHC will create anti-matter and it is hoped that it will explain why matter trumped anti-matter though both were created in equal amounts at the beginning of the Universe. It is also hoped that the LHC experiment may answer questions regarding the possibility of other dimensions, dark matter which makes up 25% of the Universe and supersymmetry, a theory that predicts that every particle has a partner, thus doubling up the spectrum.

I can’t find a definitive timeline for how long the experiment will run; it appears that it is open-ended with the possibility of planned equipment upgrades to combat a degradation in machinery. I expect so long as answers are forthcoming, the physicists in charge will continue seeking newer and further answers so long as they can keep the LHC running well.

Fingers crossed the Earth survives.

Palin Conspiracy Theory

Wow, is Debbi really going to delve into Internet conspiracy theories? Can she possibly be that bored for drama?

The answer, my friends, is actually no. I'm not starved for drama, it's election season - drama Is. But some dramas are so compelling, that I will stop what I am doing to watch the train wreck unfold.

This week, Hurricane Gustav is drama number one. And if not for drama number two, my attention would be solely on drama number one and any blog posting would most probably be on that same subject.

But.

There is, in fact, drama number two.

Now, let me preface this to say that I am not sayin', I'm just sayin' - or rather The Daily Kos and many other sources are just sayin' and I'm just passin' on. The story is intriguing, especially when you get to the last and most damning part of it. Of course there are compelling reasons that dispute the story just as there are compelling reasons that give credence to it.

Let's start with the picture posted above. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska (on the right), mother of 4 children and 7 months pregnant with the 5th child. In that picture. That's what 7 months pregnant looks like. On her.

When Sarah Palin revealed to the public that she was pregnant at 7 months, she was greeted with reactions of amazement. No one suspected, even at 7 months.


Notice that Sarah Palin doesn't look pregnant or post-partum in either picture. But someone else does.

Thus the scandal.

According to The Daily Kos and before that, several Alaskan press sources, the rumor is that Sarah Palin's youngest child, Trig Palin, is actually Sarah Palin's grandson and the son of her eldest daughter Bristol Palin, seen above in both photos to the right of the family. A look at the photos indicates *something* unusual in the torso area of Bristol's images.

Around the time, Bristol was removed from school for 4 months with an apparently raging case of mononucleosis to have lasted 4 months rather than the usual one or two. (Note: mononucleosis cases swelled in the 1950s when parents would use the diagnosis to remove their pregnant daughters from school long enough to give birth and stop showing.)

Of course, the caveat to this, in many people's eyes, is that we all know children of Down's Syndrome are more likely to appear with older mothers. Sarah Palin was 44 when Trig was born therefore wouldn't it be more likely the child is her's? It certainly would seem so but, according to the March of Dimes website:

Does the risk of Down syndrome increase with the mother’s age? Yes. The risk of Down syndrome increases from about 1 in 1,250 at age 25, to 1 in 1,000 at age 30, 1 in 400 at age 35, 1 in 100 at age 40 and 1 in 30 at age 45 (6). Women over age 35 have been traditionally considered most likely to have a baby with Down syndrome. However, about 80 percent of babies with Down syndrome are born to women who are under age 35, as younger women have far more babies.

The final blow, in my opinion, is the circumstances of the birth itself. I will just quote The Daily Kos rather that re-write what has already been so well-written:

On Friday, April 18th, 2008, Sarah and her husband Todd were in Dallas, Texas for a Republican Governor's Convention. They had been in town for three days already, but Sarah had yet to give her keynote speaker address on energy policy. Then early Friday morning at 4:00am, Sarah began leaking amniotic fluid. Instead of checking into a hospital, she instead made a call to her doctor, and delivered the keynote speech.

"I was not going to miss that speech," she says.

She rushed so quickly from the podium afterwards that Texas Gov. Rick Perry nervously asked if she was about to deliver the baby then.

The oddities only grow from here on, as instead of rushing to a Dallas medical facility that could treat a mother who's amniotic fluid has been draining for hours on end (made even more crucial due to the fact that this is occurring a full month prematurely), Sarah & Todd instead opted to... Fly all the way back from Texas to Alaska. A dangerous choice, as with each pregnancy (once again, in this case after four previous), a mother's window of labor to delivery grows shorter and shorter.

Aboard Alaska Airlines, the flight lasted for eight hours, with an additional landing in Seattle. The majority of commercial airlines require mothers seven months pregnant to provide a doctor's letter to fly, but Sarah did not inform the airline of her condition. Alaska Airlines is one of the few airlines that do not require such a notice, despite the possibility of an emergency landings being required in such scenarios. That said, no one on board noticed that Sarah was going into labor:

"We leave the decision to fly up to our customers and their medical advisers," according to Alaska Airlines representative Caroline Boren.

...

"Governor Palin was extremely pleasant to flight attendants and her stage of pregnancy was not apparent by observation as she didn’t show any signs of distress," Boren said.

Eight months pregnant. A 6.2 pound fetus. No one notices a visible trace. By the third trimester, a perfectly fit woman not wearing anything less than a space suit should be easily spotted as pregnant. Not in Sarah's case.

The plane then made a landing in Anchorage, Alaska. Does Sarah then visit a medical facility that can accommodate a premature birth in Alaska's most equipped city? No. She drives 45 minutes away, to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, right outside the small village she used to govern as Mayor, Wasilla. Trig Palin is then delivered one month premature, Friday night. Sarah returned to work after three days.

The inherent need to absolutely have Trig delivered in a remote and possibly ill-equipped facility for premature deliveries, where Sarah would likely have numerous contacts and pull, does not sit well. The doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, approving of all of these actions borders on malpractice. Not treating leaking amniotic fluid causes infections, and time is of the essence after water breaks. Husband Todd Palin simply delivers this winner of a line:

"You can't have a fish picker from Texas," said Todd.

A poor motivation, to be sure. Another motivation began making its rounds in the Alaskan legislature, where everyone was initially shocked to hear the news.

To wrap it up, I feel a bit dirty putting this out there, as I will probably be judged for not only besmirching the reputation of a 16-17 year old girl, but as well, for insinuating that if this is untrue, she is fat.

I honestly am doing neither - my intent is to continue being political until political is no longer cool and this is one of those political stories that is squeaking too loudly to ignore.

If it is true, it says something amazingly bad about Sarah Palin as both a trustworthy politician and a mother; if it is false, well then it falls where all the false scandals and conspiracy theories fall: The Star or Weekly World News. I have read that the National Enquirer, breaker of the John Edwards affair scandal, is up in Alaska trying to break this and in the wake of the John Edwards affair scandal, you know mass media will pay more attention to the Enquirer for a little while now, which means through election season, at the very least.

I'll probably wrap up the RNC afterwards, should it even go on - there is talk of a postponement in order to concentrate on Gustav and if they truly feel that way (as opposed to this being "for camera's sake" only), then I applaud them and thank them because sometimes Mother Nature is more important that any form of government.

Edited to Add: This blog post is not intended to judge a 16 year old girl in a day when pregnant teenagers no longer are newsworthy, so abundant are they, nor is the intent to judge a mother but rather to judge the politician. The other side of the coin to fame and power is people rooting through your trash and telling other people. I am sure the same can be said of most other sources on this story. If this does turn out to be true, John McCain will have to ponder precedence and procedure in replacing Palin with another, better suited running mate and that is the real story behind this.