I woke early this morning and the local NPR station was not on the air so I fired up the Kindle and selected Podcast and perused my many choices.
I decided to listen to An American Life hosted by Ira Glass. This one was a sort of a conversation about the difficulty of describing something you see that really isn't there. He interviewed a young man, well young compared to me, who had recently had laser surgery to correct some defect in his retina. As a result of the laser treatment he began to notice a sort of defect. He would see a spot that looked kind of black, sort of iridescent green and between he and Ira they could not come up with a good description of this visual anomaly. Maybe an ophthalmologist could have helped.
Then the conversation branched out to some one who had posted something about multiple sclerosis. He received an email from a woman in Ohio who said that she had multiple sclerosis but she had some physical characteristics similar to a Canadian Olympic athlete. The MS patient told of her story of how she was not diagnosed properly and her research into various genetic typed of MS. She had hit a dead end in her research, doctors kept telling her she could not have a certain type of rare MS because only males got it and she could not have a rare genetic lipo protein disorder either. The Canadian athlete had always had musculature where in her skin outlined faithfully every vein and cut of muscle on her body. She did not seem to have a fat layer and because she was so well muscled she was always being tested for drugs when she did not use the drugs in any way, shape or form. Eventually the two women began exchanging email etc. The basic thing they had in common was the feeling that they had genetic anomalies where one woman was debilitated and the athlete was overly developed. Eventually a French geneticist was found who agreed to do some testing. Results were that the Ohio woman had both the genetic MS and the Lipo protein genetic defect, her 23 pairs of DNS had one letter off all the G's were C's which caused the two defects. The Canadian athlete had the genetic defect, one gene location removed that made her over developed. Also the Canadian woman was called by the doctor who warned her that she could only eat salad. She was one hamburger away from a fat embolus stroke due to her cholesterol level.
Then the last part of the pod cast was submitted by a comedian who was describing her girlfriends mother trying to explain a joke and laughing so hard that it was impossible to tell the joke. Basically the joke was about Paris Hilton. Her interior joke that she could not articulate was this.
"Why would anyone name their child after a hotel chain?"
"Oh, I know, the same people who would name their child after a famous city in France."
You had to be there, is was pretty funny.
So the entire theme was how difficult it is to explain something that you don't quite have a grasp on.
Welcome to my life, the grasp is slippery at best sometimes. Have a nice Sunday.
Oh yes, about yesterday. I haven't listened to much red hot feminist rhetoric, boy those ladies were fired up yesterday and to be horribly honest, the chants of the black rapper ladies, I really needed some subtitles, cuz I'm an aging white baby boomer who had only ever liked Salt N Pepper and En Vogue...if I actually spelled the names correctly.
I decided to listen to An American Life hosted by Ira Glass. This one was a sort of a conversation about the difficulty of describing something you see that really isn't there. He interviewed a young man, well young compared to me, who had recently had laser surgery to correct some defect in his retina. As a result of the laser treatment he began to notice a sort of defect. He would see a spot that looked kind of black, sort of iridescent green and between he and Ira they could not come up with a good description of this visual anomaly. Maybe an ophthalmologist could have helped.
Then the conversation branched out to some one who had posted something about multiple sclerosis. He received an email from a woman in Ohio who said that she had multiple sclerosis but she had some physical characteristics similar to a Canadian Olympic athlete. The MS patient told of her story of how she was not diagnosed properly and her research into various genetic typed of MS. She had hit a dead end in her research, doctors kept telling her she could not have a certain type of rare MS because only males got it and she could not have a rare genetic lipo protein disorder either. The Canadian athlete had always had musculature where in her skin outlined faithfully every vein and cut of muscle on her body. She did not seem to have a fat layer and because she was so well muscled she was always being tested for drugs when she did not use the drugs in any way, shape or form. Eventually the two women began exchanging email etc. The basic thing they had in common was the feeling that they had genetic anomalies where one woman was debilitated and the athlete was overly developed. Eventually a French geneticist was found who agreed to do some testing. Results were that the Ohio woman had both the genetic MS and the Lipo protein genetic defect, her 23 pairs of DNS had one letter off all the G's were C's which caused the two defects. The Canadian athlete had the genetic defect, one gene location removed that made her over developed. Also the Canadian woman was called by the doctor who warned her that she could only eat salad. She was one hamburger away from a fat embolus stroke due to her cholesterol level.
Then the last part of the pod cast was submitted by a comedian who was describing her girlfriends mother trying to explain a joke and laughing so hard that it was impossible to tell the joke. Basically the joke was about Paris Hilton. Her interior joke that she could not articulate was this.
"Why would anyone name their child after a hotel chain?"
"Oh, I know, the same people who would name their child after a famous city in France."
You had to be there, is was pretty funny.
So the entire theme was how difficult it is to explain something that you don't quite have a grasp on.
Welcome to my life, the grasp is slippery at best sometimes. Have a nice Sunday.
Oh yes, about yesterday. I haven't listened to much red hot feminist rhetoric, boy those ladies were fired up yesterday and to be horribly honest, the chants of the black rapper ladies, I really needed some subtitles, cuz I'm an aging white baby boomer who had only ever liked Salt N Pepper and En Vogue...if I actually spelled the names correctly.
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