Russians and Rock Music

My conductor has Russian fever. We were tormenting the spirit of Mussorgsky all night, haha. Partner left early, so had the dubious pleasure of sight-soloing for Night On Bare Mountain. Got embarrassingly lost the first time around because I was counting 2/2 as the score specified, and did not realise until too late that the conductor had slowed the music and was counting 4/4. The rest of practice went decently enough, considering.

[My resolution: to stick to my Denis Wick 4BL mouthpiece! Because I'm still a wuss, and occasionally swap back to my Yamaha 48L when I'm called upon to play high B flats. Don't even know why I do it; the Wick sounds so much more mellow. Not that it can't be brassy when called upon to be.]

Listened to Jon Schmidt's piano arrangement of Can't Help Falling in Love. Loved it, purchased score from his shop. Best $0.99 I ever spent!

On another note, I sometimes wish people would pay me for doing their tech support.

Bugs and Technology

BUGS

After possibly scaring three of my students off pork and sushi forever the other day when I explained the life cycle of tapeworms, I've been mulling anew over mankind's tendency to overreact to microorganisms.

It amuses me when people get into a panic over microbes. Seriously. [The worst was when the world learnt about H1N1, and my community went right into a, "Don't talk to anybody; for heaven's sake, don't even leave your house!" frenzy. (I am not kidding, though I wish I were).] Oh sure, I agree, precautions have to be taken when a highly communicable disease is on the rise, or if there's a chance you might catch something from the lifestyle you lead or the food you eat. But there's a great deal of difference between precaution and paranoia, between making sure you boil your water and cook your pork chops well and put off your travel plans, and oh, say, swearing off meat all together, distilling your water and going about in a gas mask, y'know? [Oh sure, Ty and I were idiots in our second year of college when we swore off beef, but that didn't last long, because we eventually worked out for ourselves that life had to go on. LOL.]

Yet, if it only tickles me that people respond to any information about pathogens with panic, it annoys me when someone claims, "Microbes are bad!" And it enrages me when I see products like antibacterial soap and antibacterial mattresses and antibacterial underwear in the market. Seriously, WTF. You're surrounded by microorganisms, like it or lump it. They're the first to welcome you into the world, and they sure as hell are going to be the last to usher you out of it when you die. So what's all this about trying to get them off your walls and off your hands and your bed and your clothes? you can't fight them off forever. Nor should you¹.

People, most microorganisms are good. You use them in industry, to make cheese and bread and alcoholic beverages. You use them in medicine, synthesizing insulin for people who've stopped being able to make them, and antibiotics, which are the golden bullets in the arsenal of medicine (even if antibiotics abuse has threatened to crumble its pedestal). In the lab, where you clone genes into them, or use their enzymes in DNA technology. Hell, they even perform community service, synthesizing vitamins in our gut, digesting oil spills and breaking down our wastes, so that we don't have to drown in seas of The Dead. And even those that don't do good don't generally bother us either. And yet, for all the good they do, people remain fixated with the minority that WANT TO KILL US SO WE HAVE TO DECLARE WAR FIRST OMG².

[facepalm]

I'd wax lyrical about how their so-called "war" against us isn't even personal (unlike most workplace spats), that they're just eking out a living, and that they don't even realise what they're doing, and how humans encroach on their turf and encourage their spread (and resistance), but really, that isn't the point, and besides, even *I*'m not naive enough expect that level of empathy from the common folk. The point is this: respect. There isn't enough of it on the human side of the human-microorganism relationship. I'm not talking about reverence of microorganisms. Reverence of anything is wrong, because it goes beyond the realm of logical thinking. Respect for anything or anyone, even your enemy, is all about recognising them for who they are and what they can do, and how you stand with them. In this case it's simply a case of not carelessly disregarding their potential (be it good or bad; the ones that do bad *can* get really nasty), but not going too far in overestimating their capacity for harm either. Unfortunately, it's pretty much a losing battle there. Medical professionals are trained to deal with them as nothing but adversaries; the general public know next to nothing about them (hell, even science students don't encounter them until the sixth form), until the latest epidemic hits - and then of course, all the bad stuff comes out. And we know the majority of the public never stop to think, or do their own research anyway...

Gotta get them young.

And maybe I should ease off a little on the enthusiasm in sharing the beauty of parasite life cycles. LOL.

Enough blathering!

¹The only exception is if you really have reduced immunity, or you're caring for somebody who has.
²Abusing antibiotics and vaccines isn't the answer either.

TECHNOLOGY

Mother recently got herself a Nokia 6303. No frills, but it's sufficient for someone whose usage of phones doesn't extend beyond the realm of messaging and voice calls. Only annoying thing: she's not too keen on exploring the phone because she's afraid to break it. That about sums up her relationship with her PC, and why I'm called upon to do tech support several times a night. [No problem, except when I'm up to my neck in a major horde attack (haha), and I can't go on answering the same questions over and over...]

That's the key to mastering any new technology, isn't it? You can't be afraid of it, to begin with. Exploring your device on your own and experimenting will get you much farther than getting someone else to do something for you, or watching over their shoulder as they do it, because you'll not only be finding out what you should do, but what you *shouldn't* do. (A negative answer doesn't mean no answer!). And, as an added bonus, you might also find something you'd never have discovered if you played safe. And if you're afraid of damaging it... Hell, shit happens. Things break. You can deal with it when it happens. That's my motto anyway. ;-)

Oh, and a little thinking will get you places. If you know 6 x 9  = 54, you should also know that 9 x 6 = 54³. I'm just sayin'.

³Unless you're operating in Douglas Adams' universe, in which case 9 x 6 = 42. Which is perfectly correct, btw. Just not in base 10 arithmetic.

IN OTHER NEWS

I've been playing Godfather II, which a mate at the gym was nice enough to give me his copy of. Haven't played enough of it to be able to write a decent review of any sort yet, and it's hard to evaluate the experience objectively rather than succumb to the temptation of comparing it to Godfather I (you can't compare apples and oranges) and other mob-type shooters in general. We shall see.

In the meantime, meet Don Dominic, who probably looks more at home stacking books in the library than slamming people into cash registers, and commanding whole armies of made men:



Yeah, my player characters all tend to wind up slightly geeky. Gosh, I wonder why.

RANDOM RANT OF THE DAY

1. Why is it impossible to find Simpson's Forensic Medicine textbook in even the biggest bookshops?
2. For gizkas' sake, I helped my cousin get his copy for USD26 a few years ago. Now I check on Amazon and it's something like USD55 - WTF?
3. Where can I get a copy of the 12th edition for something even resembling a reasonable price? Granted, I've wanted my own copy for years, but I'm not paying through the nose for it either.