literary reference.

"How are you feeling?", the sleep doctor asks.

"You know that story Flowers For Algernon, where the developmentally disabled guy gets really smart, then watches himself losing his intelligence?"

"Yeah," he says. "Are you feeling more intelligent?"

"No," I say. "No, I'm not."

toe-grinding

Something has been Obviously Wrong with my left big toe for a month or so, and it turns out to be a bone spur. A few years ago I had a month where I severely jammed both my big toes several times (aikido, of course), and apparently the reason it hurt so much was that one or more bones fractured. On the left, at least: I expect to eventually have the same problem on the right, which makes me wonder if I should just have them both ground down at once, because...

...while I can go running or whatever 2 weeks after the 10-minute outpatient surgery, I can't do barefoot athletics for 3-6 months.

Months and months without aikido. Hurf.

And yet, the toe is already discouraging me from training, so I might as well go ahead with it. Pfeh.

Stupid impermanence. =)

snail cream

The little stalls that sell various herbal concoctions and natural beauty care stuff also sell crema de caracol. This means, literally, "snail cream," and it's got a picture of a snail on it. Everyone says it works wonders on scars and stuff. But why "snail cream"? Is it made out of snails? Strange, gross, but hey, who knows. There's a snail motif in Chilean culture that crops up occasionally: Hostal Caracol, where we've stayed a few times, and a couple of galerias with "caracol" in the name, since they're winding, spiraling ramps up the inside of a building (filled exclusively with hair salons and video game parlors).

I finally asked a vendor, who was very friendly and happy to help. It's not the snails themselves: it's snail slime.

I guess that's better.

durrr, you're sick

I went to a doctor this morning, of all the crazy things, and for being randomly sick, not for something obvious like a broken bone, or a chunk missing out of my lip, or an obvious case of conjunctivitis. Usually, if I can't figure out what's wrong, a doctor can't either. But sweating and chills, plus tactile hyperesthesia, will get my attention, so after a day or two I decided to go pay someone to tell me it wasn't anything serious. Whatever, it's covered by the program insurance.

The people at Clinica Valparaiso are very nice and helpful. The doctor said I have a virus, which is sort of obvious since this started with having a cold. The sweating and chills are "toxins from the virus"; I don't even have a fever. The dizziness/balance issues are because both my ears are seriously obstructed by earwax. (I'm not sure of the mechanism on that, but it seems intuitively possible and the Internet agrees.) She prescribed a particular over-the-counter anti-cold thinger, and next week I go see an ENT doctor about the ears.

In the meantime, I seem to be needing a 1-hour nap for every 3-5 hours of activity, which is lame, although I do feel less awful than yesterday. Hopefully I can go in on Monday to run tests with the kids.

linkfarming

The Internet has been busy!

• Thailand takes moral panic to a new level.
• Different maps of Europe.
• Incentives in baseball: batters about to finish the season with a .299 or .300 average hit .463 in their last at-bat.
• Video of 24 different English accents. He's really good. Contains profanity, but it's funny.
• An excellent New Yorker essay on the origins of the modern conservative nuttiness.
• For people like NPR-guy-turned-Fox-stooge Juan Williams: Muslims Wearing Things.

Finally, an awesome Atlantic piece about a meta-researcher who's busy proving the failures of modern medical research. It's of a piece with Michael Pollan's more specific discussion of nutritionism, since scientific food recommendations are driven by all this shockingly flawed research:

"Studies have gone back and forth on the cancer-preventing powers of vitamins A, D, and E; on the heart-health benefits of eating fat and carbs; and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life. How should we choose among these dueling, high-profile nutritional findings? Ioannidis suggests a simple approach: ignore them all."

Or, put another way: "one large randomized controlled trial even proved that secret prayer by unknown parties can save the lives of heart-surgery patients, while another proved that secret prayer can harm them."

And people think the way I choose what to eat is weird. (It is--the only thing weirder than the system itself is that it works.)