November 16, 2005

It's only castles burning

My old friend Carl passed away this morning. His wife said at around 7:30am he breathed out and then just never breathed in.

I went this morning to get my haircut, chatted about life and death with my barber Vittorio as he cut my hair short. "It's so sad, but that's the way life is," he said. "It sure is," I replied.

Last night it was just his wife, Bill, Al and I in the room with Carl. We listened to music on Bill's portable DVD player. The rule about having only 2 visitors in the room was long ago ignored. I put on "Blonde on Blonde" which --except for Rainy Day Women which was by unanimous consent skipped-- we played straight through. He had relaxed when we played it, his breathing deeper and less laboured. The lights were low and it was almost like the days when we were younger and hung out in taverns listening to bands together. It was a good night.

Today was a tough day but it was good to be there with everyone. His mother wept; almost 5 decades after she gave birth to a boy that wasn't expected to live a week. She thought that Sunday would be a terrible day because Carl always phoned her on that day. Al has said he'd phone her then, he lost his mother to complications from Alzheimer's only six months ago and Carl's mother reminds him of her.

I slept for a little while today, but I'm pretty exhausted. Tomorrow I'll probably take Al back home.

November 13, 2005

Going to be a long night

A buddy of mine from college is in hospital dying right now, we're not sure if congestive heart failure or kidney failure will be the ultimate cause. He's not well. I don't think he'll make it through tonight. I don't really know why I'm writing it in the blog ... except maybe that I sort of feel like screaming and I really shouldn't.

Update: His kidneys failed today and his blood pressure is too low to do dialysis. Still going strong, but there's only so much a poor body can take.

Further Update: He's still puttering along. My brain keeps playing tricks on me because he is so lucid. We'll talk for a little while and he's so good that my mind says "Hey, Carl's alright he's going to pull through this fine." But then I really need to talk myself down, because I know, he knows, his wife knows and his doctors and nurses all know that things aren't fine. They literally have done everything they can and all he wants is to spend some time with his friends and wife. I've been keeping myself busy and caffeinated so I don't spend too much time thinking about him dying. That's particularly hard when doing tasks like telling old friends and acquaintances that they need to get up to the hospital if they want to see him. Particularly hard when filling out the forms for him to donate his body to science.

Here was a fellow who when he got a bit blotto one night, I dragged him up two sets of stairs to his couch bed and as soon as I put the blanket on him, he threw up. I thought at the time (I was 19) that the hardest thing I'd ever have to do in my life was wash the barf off of him. It wasn't. I had to get my buddy Bill to phone the medical donation office because I couldn't get the words out of my mouth.

I must get busy and caffeinated again. And drive to the hospital to see how he is.

November 11, 2005

Remembrance Day 2005

These are photos I took for my great aunt when I was in Le Mans this summer. The grave pictured in the 3rd photo was my great uncle, a 19 year old who died in France during WW2.

Le Mans Cemetary Plaque

Memorial to Commonwealth Soldiers soldiers

Uncle Joe's Grave

Lest we forget.

November 09, 2005

Treason enough for God's Sake

Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.

- William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of MacBeth

White Phosphorus is not legally considered a Chemical Weapon. Apparently it is not specifically banned by any treaty aside from prohibitions against the use of incendiaries against civilian populations in Protocol III. Yet, reading about it on Globalsecurity.org, I'm hard pressed to understand what makes anything else a chemical weapon, if WP isn't:

White phosphorus fume is an irritant of the respiratory tract and eyes; the solid in contact with the skin produces deep thermal burns. Exposure to moisture produces phosphoric acid. Prolonged absorption of phosphorus causes necrosis of bones. It is a hepatotoxin.

Systemic toxicity may occur if therapy is not administered. Therapy consists of topical use of a bicarbonate solution to neutralize phosphoric acids and mechanical removal and debridement of particles. A Wood’s lamp in a darkened room may help to identify remaining luminescent particles. The early signs of systemic intoxication by phosphorus are abdominal pain, jaundice, and a garlic odor of the breath; prolonged intake may cause anemia, as well as cachexia and necrosis of bone, involving typically the maxilla and mandible (phossy jaw).

The presenting complaints of overexposed workers may be toothache and excessive salivation. There may be a dull red appearance of the oral mucosa. One or more teeth may loosen, with subsequent pain and swelling of the jaw; healing may be delayed following dental procedures such as extractions; with necrosis of bone, a sequestrum may develop with sinus tract formation. In a series of 10 cases, the shortest period of exposure to phosphorus fume (concentrations not measured) that led to bone necrosis was 10 months (two cases), and the longest period of exposure was 18 years.

White phosphorus fume causes severe eye irritation with blepharospasm, photophobia, and lacrimation; the solid in the eye produces severe injury. Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.

Signs and symptoms include irritation of the eyes and the respiratory tract; abdominal pain, nausea, and jaundice; anemia, cachexia, pain, and loosening of teeth, excessive salivation, and pain and swelling of the jaw; skin and eye burns. Phossy jaw must be differentiated from other forms of osteomyelitis. With phossy jaw, a sequestrum forms in the bone and is released from weeks to months later; the sequestra are light in weight, yellow to brown, osteoporotic, and decalcified, whereas sequestra from acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis are sharp, white spicules of bone, dense and well calcified. In acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis, the radiographic picture changes rapidly and closely follows the clinical course, but with phossy jaw the diagnosis sometimes is clinically obvious before radiological changes are discernible. It is good dental practice to take routine X-ray films of jaws, but experience indicates that necrosis can occur in the absence of any pathology that is visible on the roentgenogram.

There's not much that is nice about any weapon of war, but I wonder what else we'll be able to justify once the defence of White Phosphorus is finished?

I'd say I wish I'd written it, but lately I wish I'd written at all ...

Go read Juan Cole's The Trouble with Frenchness, it's the most sensible thing I've seen written about the riots in France.

October 09, 2005

Together again for the first time

Not what I would have considered a natural combo ...

Calvin and Hobbes in Sin City

September 29, 2005

A Bunch of Winners with no Winnings

I was trying to think of what this Peggy Noonan column (via Alicublog) reminded me of ... and I realized it was a messed-up war-hawk version of a classic Kids in the Hall skit (Money Momentum -- Kids in the Hall, Season 2)

Peggy Noonan

In the rough future our country faces, bad things will happen ... let's imagine the next [terrorist attack on American soil] has many targets, is brilliantly planned and coordinated. Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. The members of each cell have been coming over, many but not all crossing our borders, for five years. They're working jobs, living lives, quietly planning.

Kids in the Hall

Mark: ... Now, let's get down to work. I'm gonna take off my $900 suit jacket.

Bruce: I'm gonna take off $1100 suit jacket.

Mark: And I'm gonna hike up the sleeves of my $210 shirt and direct your attention to this blackboard where I've written down "$100."

Peggy Noonan

Imagine they're planning that on the same day in the not-so-distant future, they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die; millions will be endangered. Lines will go down, and to make it worse the terrorists will at the same time execute the cyberattack of all cyberattacks, causing massive communications failure and confusion.

Kids in the Hall

Mark: Now everyone's had $100 in their life, but I'm gonna show what a comma and three zeros can do. [adds them] Folks, we've got $100,000 happening.

Bruce: *That's* Money Momentum.

Mark: And it's *that* easy. Yeah.

Continue reading "A Bunch of Winners with no Winnings" »

Fighting Fire with Oil

Via Juan Cole, I found a press release from Heritage Oil Corporation announcing their contract with the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan:

Heritage Oil Corporation (TSX: HOC) today announced that the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Establishment (OGE) of the Government of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, Iraq has entered into an exclusive Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with K Petroleum Company (KPC) to undertake field studies over an area in Kurdistan, Iraq adjacent to the Taq Taq oil field in a region considered to be prospective for hydrocarbons.

KPC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Heritage Erbil Oil Limited, which is a joint venture company co-owned with Eagle Group, a major economic and industrial entity within the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, Iraq. Heritage and Eagle Group each own 50% of Heritage Erbil.

During the interim between the Anglo-American wars with Iraq, the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan became a de facto autonomous region, but the legal ground was a bit shaky, but not so shaky that a little air support from the USA and the UK couldn't keep Kurdistan Kurdish. Now that a separate Kurdistan doesn't quite match American interests, that de facto autonomy has been up for negotiation.

So what are the Kurds up to? They previously signed a production-sharing agreement with Genel Enerji, a Turkish company. Into this situation comes a Canadian oil company with a most fascinating disclaimer at the top of their press release:

/THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES./

Curiouser and curiouser ...