15/12/09

madrobins: It's a meatloaf.  Dressed up like a bunny.  (Default)
Today's Science Times has two really fascinating pieces.

First, the story of the first child ever to be rescued from parental abuse by law. Mary Ellen McCormack, orphaned, was adopted by a couple in Manhattan. When the father died and the mother remarried, the mother (apparently overwhelmed and unhappy) took to beating her daughter. "Mamma has been in the habit of whipping and beating me every day. She used to whip me with a twisted whip--a rawhide."

Neighbors brought her to the attention of the Department of Public Charities and Correction, which administered orphanages, jails and asylums. Since there was no law against child abuse, the social worker, Etta Angell Wheeler, brought the girl's story to the founder of the ASPCA. He hired a lawyer, the mother was charged and tried, and in the end, Mary Ellen was adopted by Wheeler, grew up, and married and had a family of her own. And was a good mother. And out of all this came legal reform and the establishment of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

You know, for some people, anyway, the Good Old Days weren't.

The second story: a man underwent 43 hours of surgery to remove a tumor the size of a football which had threaded itself around his liver, pancreas, intestines and stomach. They had to cut away parts of the pancreas, intestines and stomach, then remove the entire liver and spend hours detaching the tumor from it. Then they reinstalled the liver, repaired all the damage done in excising things, and closed him up. About 35 hours in, the man was in bad enough shape that they temporarily halted surgery, covered him up, and let him recuperate in the ICU, but when he'd stabilized they took him back in to surgery and finished the job.

5000 stitches, a surgical team of dozens, and a pretty good prognosis, going forward. Just: wow. I don't know this is a cost-effective way to manage such an illness (the man has money to spend, apparently, and a fierce desire to live) but as a technical feat it's stunning.
madrobins: It's a meatloaf.  Dressed up like a bunny.  (Default)
What is Joe Lieberman playing at? I mean, really. Is it all "see how far I can get the party to fall over themselves in appeasing me" because he just likes the attention? I can't see how his flip-flopping and grandstanding on the health care bill is serving any principled purpose. So, just...what the hell?
madrobins: It's a meatloaf.  Dressed up like a bunny.  (Default)
Argh.

Avocado asked for one of those earflap caps that all the young people are wearing these days (this sentence should be imagined in tones of wheezing, cane-waving old age). I went out, got some nice plain yarn, pulled out the double-pointed needles I'd gotten for another project I never quite managed to get around to, and...

pfft. Damn. I cannot get the damned thing started. Cast on six stitches, distribute two stitches to each of three DPs, join and knit one round, then start the pattern. I suspect that after that first or second round is done, I'll be flyin' by. But I have now started the cap twenty times and each time either it's gotten totally snarled and unworkable, or some of the stitches have slid off the non-working DP. If anyone out there in cyberland has any tips for me as to how to get this wretched cap (listed as "easy" on the directions) started, I would be profoundly grateful. I'll send you some lemon jelly. Or make you fudge. Honest.