Here at The Cemestos Gardens we’ve had quite a few prescriptions filled lately for a variety of ailments . Everything from earlobes to teeth and lungs to rashy skin have garnered a medicine. I hope we’re through with the meds for a while. I figure the less pharmaceutical, the better.
I was briefly surprised to learn from this NPR story that pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies are in cohoots by making money off the information created by my Doc and I. The arraingment goes something like this. After I walk away with my little white bag of meds, the pharmacy puts together what med my doc just prescribed minus my idenity. The pharmacy then sells this little bundle to the pharmaceutical company. The big company learns from this info what drugs a doctor prescribes, thus allowing their sales folk to better pitch product.
I don’t know what to make of this, except that you can make a buck off anything you can gather info from. I’m not making the bucks though and I don’t think this makes for a better health-care system. You?
Big Mike Silence lays it down for you, direct from the Knoxville News-Sentinel publisher:
I am pleased to announce that the Scripps BC Development Company (the same division of Scripps that bought the Shopper-News and started Skirt! magazine) is now acquiring Metro Pulse and Knoxville Magazine. This is effective July 1, 2007.
Metro Pulse will keep their editorial and advertising independence. At some point in the future, we will be printing our new weekly product.
Man, after seeing the possibilities that Knoxville has during the Saturday Night at the Square business, where it’s finally getting a downtown that can be something I’d be proud to almost call a town near me, its highly disappointing to see this. Metro Pulse has been an institution I’ve respected the 12 or so years I’ve been living in the area, and the fact that it wasn’t beholden to corporations like freakin Scripps has been a big reason for that respect.
Welcome to a one paper town, Knoxville, hope you enjoy it.
I watched, last night, a show on the Science channel about the efforts of scientists working on longevity drugs, with the optimistic viewpoint being that medicines and treatments and whatnot would be available to retard the aging process, and eventually to prolong life indefinitely. Without zombies. Well, no more than there are now, at least.
Now, I’ve called myself a transhumanist once or twice, after a few drinks. I think the logical next step in human evolution would be a self imposed step, wherein the mind oversteps the matter, and jumps over nature. I’m not the most versed on the subject, and I understand the pessimistic viewpoint that
only the rich would have it, creating an uber upper class that would forever keep my sorry ass down,
or that life would become meaningless without death around to make you hurry up and take that trip to Greece (Mel, you promised to put me up, remember),
or that the overwhelming population would rapidly make the planet uninhabitable
or that OMG nobody wants to live forever
but I think the reality of things would be similar to the effect that antibiotics, or polio vaccines, or even birth control, have had on the human consciousness over the past decades. Some problems, but for the most part smooth sailing.
And I used to totally be behind the idea of living for a few hundred years, and even more into the idea of choosing when and how you die. I think (call me crazy) that death is as beautiful and necessary to the human condition as birth is, and that it should be celebrated, to an extent, more than it is in our society. As a survivor of death, however, I see it as a brutish, impolite and impatient relative, somebody who busts into your house, stays for way too long, eats all your food, stops up the toilet, and leaves you feeling horrible about the world around you.
I used to want to believe in longevity treatments and possibilities to avoid death, and now I think its an interesting prospect because we, as a society, need to get to know death better. It doesn’t need to be swept under the carpet, killing the dinner conversation and making the neighbors look at you oddly, and I don’t think it should ever be particularly light conversation, but it needs to be more respected, and it makes sense to me that by making it part of your life, making the choice “I’m going to keep taking the longevity pill until the next time Halley’s Comet comes”, or “until I’ve been to every country that has a y in it” or “Until I think I understand it” would liberate so much of the human condition.
And what of God? Many folks I’ve talked to have the idea that something like this would be taking from God’s domain, but I find that a narrow viewpoint. I don’t see why humanity would be given the gift of a mind that could stave off death, without that being a ‘gift of God’. Now, I’m still not in God’s country club, and haven’t yet bought into a particular theological point of view (other than the sights I’ve seen), but my thinking seems to hold water.
I don’t know, however, if I’d be drinking the elixir myself, or at least not for very long. However, I’d love having the choice.
Last week, as I was leaving work, our camera wiggled out of its case and hit the cold, hard concrete sidewalk. I scooped it up, took a quick photo to test its function, and all seemed well. However, when I got it home, I noticed that it had a small battle wound and that the shutter button was now in a constant state of semi-depressed - meaning that it was going nutty trying to auto-focus on everything. (Geez, that sounds like me sometimes). When I tried to take some additional test photos, I found that none of the setting or function buttons worked. I couldn’t control the flash, the macro feature, anything. The camera was gimpy, and was taking gimpy photos.
We’ve had our camera for a little over three years, and it has been one of my favorite purchases ever. It’s been with us during family vacations, birthdays, and took the first photos of both Lugnut and Wingnut shortly after their births. Needless to say, I was pretty sad about what happened. But, you know, behind every broken item is the opportunity to consume, consume, consume.
So, even though the last thing we need right now is the expense of a new camera, Bos and I found ourselves perusing the ‘net last night to see what shiny new things we could find. Now Bos had heard about one in particular a few weeks back - the Nikon D40. Evidently, the good (marketing) folks at Nikon gave out 200 of these to residents of Georgetown, South Carolina and instructed them to take pictures, which Nikon is now using in the D40 marketing campaign. Pretty smart.
Marketing campaign aside, I like this camera. It gets solid reviews at CNET, Consumer Reports and several other places. It’s a digital SLR, which, despite my attachment to the current camera, I’ve been wanting for quite a while. And as far as digital SLRs go, it comes at a good price. A good enough price for me to become very tempted at hooking myself up with one.
I mean, come on, how am I going to take decent pictures if I have no control over something as simple as the flash?
I woke up this morning with a serious case of I-wanna-new-camera. I price-shopped a little bit, found some stores in Knoxville that carry the D40 so we could go see it in person. Touch it. Caress it. Oh yeah, I’ve got it bad.
I decided that my Camera Shy photo today should be of the current camera, so I got it out, put it next to the mirror and was going to attempt to take a picture without any of those handy setting and function features.
And you know what? I think I must have scared it into behaving, because this morning, all the buttons worked.
I’m glad it’s working again. Really, I am. But I’m left with the consumeristic momentum that builds when you shop around for something new and shiny. Where do I go with that?