Professionalism

A friend recently pointed me to this article about the professional responsibility and ethics that come into play when a healthcare professional is faced with treating a patient in a way that goes against their own beliefs. Since I'm a member of one of those professions, I thought I'd share my perspective.

When you commit yourself to a healthcare career, you don't have much control over what kinds of patients you will see. Yes, a doctor can choose to specialize in obstetrics or urology, and a nurse can choose to work at a retirement home because she doesn't like dealing with children. But you don't get to decide what kind of care your patients will get based on their politics, their religion, or their life choices. You can encourage a patient to quit smoking, but you can't give someone subpar care for their emphysema even if you feel, deep inside, that they brought it upon themselves.

Doctors take an oath to do no harm, and while I don't know if others in the healthcare professions do the same, I can say that the overwhelming majority of those I've known in those positions take immense pride in their work and treat all patients with great care and respect. Those who triage their patients by anything other than medical urgency quickly lose the respect of their peers. Or they lose their jobs.

That's why it bothers me when I read things like this, from Twitter right after the Boston Marathon suspect was taken to the hospital:

Now that the 2nd suspect is caught and in the hospital, what's preventing a Doctor/Nurse from injecting "go fuck yourself" serum?

Frankly, the very concept is offensive to me, and I think I speak for the vast majority of medical and allied health professionals. Of course the medical team isn't going to enjoy some vigilante justice and "accidentally" give him the wrong care to watch him die. And that's not just because so many people are watching, or because the police have instructed them to keep him alive. It's their job to keep him alive. Every single person who comes through those doors will be given 100% of their effort, because that's how a trauma emergency room works. It doesn't matter if you're a four-year-old who was hit by a car, or the drunk driver who hit him. You're a broken body, and they will do everything they can to put you back together.

I had a colleague who once told me that the lab he worked in years ago used to receive and test specimens from smaller medical facilities every day, because the smaller places didn't have labs of their own. When he found out that one of them was an abortion clinic, he refused to have anything to do with those specimens, saying that running the tests would go against his religious beliefs. He'd have had nothing at all to do with the actual abortion process, mind you. The specimens he would have been testing would have been for the women's blood counts and chemistries: tests no different from what you'd have done at your annual physical. Astonishingly, his coworkers and employer had no problem with his decision, and accommodated him. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen at our current employer if he was faced with a similar situation. We didn't deal with abortion clinics, but we did have several operating rooms and sometimes there were D&C's on the operating schedule - with no way to know whether they were being done after miscarriages or planned abortions, would he refuse to crossmatch blood for those patients if they hemorrhaged on the table? To be fair, I never saw him refuse any specimen while I worked with him, so maybe his attitudes had changed by then. I didn't probe further, because an ideological debate has a right time and a right place, and an evening shift in a busy laboratory is neither of those things.

The fact remains, though, that he did refuse care to patients based on a conflict between their decisions and his religious beliefs. It wasn't direct care, it wasn't emergency life-saving care, but it was still a massive breach of professionalism. And he got away with it. No disciplinary action, no reminder that a patient is a patient and a test is a test and you don't get to choose like that. 

I'm equally appalled by pharmacists who refuse to dispense the legal, FDA-approved Plan B contraceptive pill despite the patient's valid prescription. Like my former coworker, they get away with it. As long as someone else can fill the prescription, they can keep their conscience clean. And I think that's bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. Your obligation as a pharmacist is to dispense medications to patients. You don't get to decide not to give out Plan B because you're opposed to the idea, just like you can't refuse someone their diabetes pills because you think they should be exercising more and eating better, and you don't want to be an enabler. If you want to be a pharmacist and you want to avoid ever having to give out contraceptives, go work in hospice care or geriatrics.

It's simple. You have an obligation, when you work in health care, to do your absolute best for each and every patient you interact with. If you're not able and willing to do that, because your personal beliefs get in the way, then you need to find a new job.

Waffle Wars

One can rely on certain topics for inducing a charged debate on the internet. Politics. Religion. Which Star Trek captain was the best*. One does not, however, generally see waffles inspiring people to volley arguments through the wee hours of the morning.

One of my favorites from xkcd.com

It all began on Twitter. A friend asked for advice about buying a new kitchen appliance: she only had the money and space for one, and couldn't decide between a waffle iron and a sandwich maker. Replies were heavily weighted towards the waffle side - understandable, in my opinion, because who needs a machine to make a sandwich? It started to get weird when someone in the waffle camp shot down the grilled cheesist argument about melty cheese being better than waffles by saying you could melt cheese on waffles.

Whoa there.

Usually, I wouldn't get too worked up about waffles. They're pretty far down my list of preferred breakfast carbohydrates, behind pancakes, crepes, and french toast. But in what crazy world are people gumming up a waffle's tiny perfect squares with a melting slice of cheddar? "Waffles are for syrup!" I protested. Maybe whipped cream and strawberries if they're for dessert, but cheese is right out.

Then someone suggested Bearnaise sauce, and all hell broke loose. I just viscerally disliked the very idea of non-syrup toppings on waffles. 

Shortly after the Waffle Wars broke out, my friend Angelique asked me about chicken and waffles:

Allow me to expand on my response.

I don't understand the idea of "chicken and waffles" because:

1. It's a breakfast food paired with a not-breakfast food. "Steak and eggs" on a breakfast menu seems a little weird to me too. I feel like pork is an acceptable breakfast meat, but other meats don't belong with pancakes or waffles. I concede this may be my own cultural conditioning talking.
2. Wait, is chicken and waffles even FOR breakfast? Is it dinner? Where does it belong? I need labels. I like categories.
3. It's bone-in fried chicken, which is normally eaten with one's hands. But waffles are a fork food. I can't picture how one successfully eats this meal, especially since Google image searches lead me to believe that one is often piled on the other. Do I pick up the chicken and eat it, taking waffle bites from time to time? Do I fight the fried chicken pieces with a knife and fork, crushing the waffle beneath? I'm also told that syrup is usually involved in this dish too, which confuses me even more, because it would make the chicken harder to pick up and eat.

In a bold, unexpected, psychological attack, maple-syrup-hater Tasha sent me a link to a bunch of non-traditional waffle recipes, many of which cross firmly into "dinner" territory. Like chili topping a cornbread waffle, for example. At first I was appalled by the concept, but as I scrolled through the list, a couple of recipes actually appealed to me. What does that mean?

After more thought than I probably should have devoted to this topic, I've come to the conclusion that my issue isn't with savory waffles, per se. It's with dinner waffles. Waffles are a breakfast thing. Like French toast or croissants. This ham and cheese waffle makes sense to me, because it can still be served at breakfast (or maybe brunch), and I'd still be within reason to dump maple syrup on it.

Those people who are monkeying around with waffles for dinner... well, I contend that once you're making them out of cornbread and putting chili on them or using them as the bread layer of a BLT sandwich, they're really "waffles" in name only. It's like if someone made curry French toast. Ok, so maybe it's technically French toast, but it's so far from what we know and love as French toast that they probably should have given it another name entirely. But what do I know? I prefer pancakes anyway.



*Picard. By a mile.

Here in America

"Here in America, we don't use a maiden name as a middle name."

Her emphasis was on "America". Reminding me where I was and who was in charge. As though the huge flag behind her and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services badge on her arm wasn't enough. With her declaration, she scratched out the name I'd printed on the document. The name I wanted.

"You can add it to the last name and hyphenate it," she told me, "but you can't replace your middle name."

"But...." I protested, "Everyone I know did it that way after they got married. I don't want my old middle name."

"You can go through the court for a name change. Did you go to the court?"

Of course I hadn't. I thought my marriage certificate was enough, as it had been for everyone else I knew. I dug through my folder to find it for her.

"That's not good enough. You need to do it in the court. What's your middle name?"

She moved her hand to the top of the form and wrote my middle name where she wanted it to be. A few more quick scratches of her pen, and she added the name I wanted to the "aliases" section. I have aliases now. Like a spy. A criminal.

She sighed. Shook her head. "You'd be surprised how many people come in here and think they can just change their names like that. It doesn't work like that. You need to go to the court."

I couldn't argue with her. You can't argue with immigration officials when they have your future in their hands. You can't risk upsetting someone on the wrong day and having your petition denied. You go along with what they say. You do as they ask. You apologize for being so ignorant, for being in the way, for doing everything so obviously backwards, even though you followed every instruction to the letter. They are right and you are wrong.

I want to be angry. I want to be offended that I was told not just that I'd made a mistake or misread instructions, but that here in America, things are done differently. Because I know that's ridiculous. Besides the fact that America isn't a homogeneous mass, I can point to dozens of personal friends and professional acquaintances who have done exactly what this woman tells me is not allowed. Maybe it's the truth; maybe there's some fine print somewhere that says I can't change my name with USCIS on the basis of a marriage certificate alone. But this woman dismissed me outright when I protested. She held fast to an approved script, instead of listening to me and seeing me as a person who needed help understanding the process. I am Canadian. I am white. I speak flawless English. I can only imagine how much more degrading it must be to face these people if you're wearing a veil or struggling to find your words in your second or third language.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Civil servants aren't known to be the most caring and understanding of individuals, and working with the public can harden and desensitize you until you see everyone as a problem instead of a person. But it is wrong for the words "here in America" to be used by a member of the agency that every single immigrant to this country will need to work with. I am already in America, contributing to America's economy, helping save American lives with my work. Yes, I am an alien here, but I am here.

When I told this story to friends, I was reassured by some that things will improve once I become naturalized and acquire American citizenship. That thought is why I'm hurt and saddened by this experience, and not furious as perhaps I should be. To think that once I cross that line and pledge allegiance and get a tiny American flag to wave, my slate will be clean and it will be like none of this ever happened. I'll be the exact same person before and after that ceremony, but everything will change. I don't know if that's what I want. Do I want to be one of them? But I'm also tired of fighting. What does my name matter, anyway? If they say my middle name has to stay, maybe I'll just keep it.

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” -- George Orwell, 1984

Linking up once again with other writers who blog and bloggers who write, over at Yeah Write. Please head over there and support some fantastic writers by reading and enjoying their work.

 

Learning with my hands

I cook like my mother.

I rarely measure anything out, even though I have lovely sets of measuring cups and spoons and am always tempted to buy more when I pass by Pier 1 Imports or Williams Sonoma. I come from a "pinch of this" and "dash of that" heritage. When it was time to learn the secrets of spaghetti sauce, I stood beside the stove and watched my mother pour spices into her cupped palm until the piles of crushed leaves looked big enough to add to the simmering pot. She instructed me on proper measurements: "Cup your palm tighter for the thyme, you only want a small handful." I'm very lucky: our hands are the same.

Her recipes are frustrating, because they include measurements like a "a squirt" and directions like "until it's the right consistency." Unless you've watched the process all the way through a few times, it's difficult to do her dishes justice on your own. But I watched. I watched for years. I pinched pie crusts between my fingers and I dripped sauces off the back of a spoon. I learned.

My spaghetti sauce is nothing like hers, now. But it's incredible.

A consequence of this learning method is that no recipe is safe with me. I intend to follow recipes - really, I do - but sometimes I only have boneless chicken breasts instead of the bone-in-thighs that the recipe calls for, and the substitutions start. I'll use cheddar if I don't have Monterey Jack. I'll toss in skim milk because it's probably a better substitute for cream than my Bailey's Toffee Almond coffee creamer. I'll automatically double the garlic content of any recipe I'm following. 

Of course, the biggest drawback to the substitution game is that I never make exactly the same recipe twice. When someone loves what I've made for dinner and asks me for the recipe, I can lend them the book or forward them a website link, but the version they'll make will never be quite right. I try to explain what I did differently, but sometimes I don't even know. I added more honey to sweeten the glaze, but I couldn't tell you exactly how much, because I flipped the honey bear over and squeezed him until it tasted right. I kept adding chicken stock to thin the soup, but I didn't keep track of how much more I needed.

I've considered being more scientific about the process and trying to write down what I'm doing as I go. I should probably add the honey by teaspoons, not blobs, and I should pour the broth from a measuring cup instead of the box, so I can see how much I have left and do the math. But although I consider myself a scientist, I just can't seem to bring a calculating mentality into my kitchen. My meals are art. Not always good art, mind you, but it's a creative process more than a formula, and I don't know that I can change it. I don't think I want to.

I'd love to cook for you. I have so much fun experimenting in the kitchen, and it's wonderful to share the results with friends. I promise to do my best to give you an accurate recipe if you ask for it, but unless you've been hanging out with me in my kitchen and watching me work, you need to take those recipes with a grain of salt. Maybe two grains. I'm not sure, exactly. Stop when it tastes right.

 Linking up with bloggers who write and writers who blog over at Yeah Write. Pop on over there and read some other great stuff.

 

The pits

I scored a clementine hat trick today by consuming three clementines in a row without encountering a single seed. Don't laugh at me. This is a big deal. I remember a golden age, not so long ago, where all the little crates of clementines Mom bought came from "Maroc" and seeds were a rare annoyance. Then I moved here to Maryland and had to adjust to new purveyors of produce. Clementines here are "Cuties" or "Darlings" - still sold in crates made of splinters - and look exactly the same as the old ones did. But they're not the same. They are evil inside. You would think that a small citrus treat marketed as the perfect snack for children's school lunches wouldn't have hard nuggets of doom lodged within them, ready to chip teeth and block lungs, but there you have it. I had to develop a new clementine-eating strategy that involved eating them in a room with a good light source, so I could hold individual peeled segments up and X-ray them with visible light.

I can't handle putting the whole clementine segment in my mouth when there is a real and present danger of seed content. Somehow, I'm supposed to magically get the sweet juicy fruit away from the hard seeds, and then spit the seeds back out. I am to do this without choking on them or cracking a tooth. I can't figure out how everyone else is managing to perform this trick, so I have to put my clementines through the full-body-sunlight-scanner to detect seeds and pick them out.

That's why, when I got three sweet seedless Darlings in a row today, I pulled one of these:

A Wish is a Dream Your Heart Has

I have a university education. I have a reasonable grasp of statistics, probability, causality, and reality. I'm a little ashamed to admit that despite all this, I am a remarkably superstitious person.

Don't be thinking I'm one of those strange creepy folks who doesn't change undies and refuses to shave during the playoff season. I always smell lovely and my legs are only furry when it's winter and I need the warmth. I just like to participate in silly little rituals that are supposed to being me good luck, despite knowing better.

I don't buy into bad luck omens. Black cats are adorable and as good for petting as any other kitty, and spilled salt is just a mess on the counter and a sad waste of seasoning power. But I don't dare laugh in the face of possible good luck and miss out on anything fun by ignoring lucky charms or mocking good-luck rites.

I pick up pennies. I poke at the lawn and count leaves on clovers. I have a beckoning cat figurine in the kitchen to bring us prosperity. More importantly than all these, I make wishes. So many wishes. I eagerly use birthday candles, coins in fountains, and wishbones as vehicles to get my wishes out in the world where they have a chance at coming true. There's also the game of touching something blue when all the numbers on the clock are the same (with bonus extra wish strength when it's 11:11), and wishing under a train bridge while a train is whizzing by overhead. A folded chip, a stray eyelash, a white fluffy dandelion - wish, wish, wish!

Lucky Cat looking for a high-five

Somewhere along the way, I became very particular about my wishes, wording them very carefully to avoid a Monkey's Paw situation where the wish comes true with a horrible twist. Sure, I'll be a millionaire after the accident settlement, but I'll be a vegetable and never get a chance to swim in my new money bin. To avoid any sneaky loopholes like that, my wishes end up sounding like the fine print in contest rules, so I need to have them thought out and ready ahead of time, or I may panic and flub my chance when a wish opportunity arrives.

Of course, there's not really any such thing as luck, good or bad. I know that the world rolls on thanks to chemistry and physics and biology, and tossing a penny down a well isn't going to affect the course of my life in a tangible way. It's worth doing, though, because it gives me hope. As long as I'm wishing, it means I have something to wish for. If I ever reach a point when I can't even think up a wish for the morning star, it will mean I'm too depressed to even hope for better, and that will be a dark day. Playing the little wishing games, looking for four-leaf clovers; good-luck rites give me the feeling that maybe if I hope enough and collect enough good in my life, then I'll have a little bit of control over the uncontrollable. Because in the end, all I can control is myself and my attitude. Looking for the lucky things is like looking for the good in the world, and that has to be a good philosophy.

Linking up with the writers who blog and bloggers who write at Yeah Write.

Discombobulated

Last week, a post on a message board made me angry.

That's not unusual. But this post didn't involve my usual trigger subjects of homeopathy, Ryan Seacrest, or teen paranormal romance. The post was about words. I love me some words.

This guy, this... troll, claimed that some words are "unnecessary". The words he chose to accuse of superfluity: copacetic and discombobulated. His argument: they're hard to pronounce, "sound stupid", and other words can easily be used in their place.

Okay. Come on. First of all, they sound fantastic. Saying "discombobulated" out loud just now is the most fun I've had all day. Give it a shot, you'll enjoy it. Secondly, if you think "copacetic" is hard to pronounce, try some of the easy beginner words on for size, like "lamb" and "knife".

As for those other words that could be used in their place: forgive me, but isn't that the entire point of synonyms? Having slightly different ways to say the same thing? If you kill off synonyms and antonyms, you end up in a world of emotionless Orwellian Newspeak, devoid of nuance and tone. That's a boring damn world and I don't want to live there. We're talking doubleplus ungood here, folks.

Yes, I could use "bewildered", "taken aback", or "rattled" in the place of "discombolulated" and the meaning wouldn't change. The words all have a very similar denotation in that they all mean "confused and upset". But they've each got their own connotation, which is the connections your mind makes to other words and feelings when you read them. When I'm writing a silly story and a character is approached by a wizard who hands him a magic hat and tells him he's destined to save the world, I may say he's discombobulated by the encounter. If I'm writing a serious story and someone's being told that the man she's been married to for a decade has a secret life and a second family overseas, I may say she's rattled by the news. I know I would be!

I will grant that sometimes fancy-pants words get used unnecessarily in the place of simpler ones. Not everyone in every novel needs to have creamy alabaster skin, and sometimes the sky is just blue. Not cerulean or aquamarine or azure. Sometimes blue will do. Simplicity is generally the best rule. That's not to say that fancy words don't have their place. I use many a highfalutin word when the mood strikes and I feel like it conveys what I want it to. Sometimes you need to break out some discombobulation, and that's just copacetic with me.

But people who utilize "utilize" when they could totally be using "use"? Beatings. Beatings for all.

Yes, Virginia, this is a honeymoon

We were married in April of 2010, and we filed paperwork petitioning for my permanent resident status right away. Dave had to ask the government to let his new bride stay in the country with him. A necessary process, I suppose, but it was (and continues to be) complicated and expensive. Unfortunately, because I wasn't allowed to leave the country (except for emergencies in Canada, and I would have needed special permission for that) while my green card application was pending, we couldn't have an all-inclusive tropical honeymoon, or a romantic stay in Italy. Instead, we had a domestic honeymoon. Not domestic in that I wore an apron and baked bread while Dave watched football with a beer. Domestic as in mail or flights; that is, confined to the United States. Which isn't so bad. It's a big place.

We'd often talked about visiting Shenandoah, and never got around to it. When it came time to plan the honeymoon, Virginia wine country came up on our list of locations. We decided that it would probably be pretty in the Blue Ridge mountains in early May, so we booked a room in a quiet little bed and breakfast. With beautiful vineyards scattered all over the area, it seemed like a lovely, romantic place to enjoy our first married days.

And it was. It was beautiful. We tasted wines at half a dozen small vineyards, and learned a lot about what kinds of wines we like and why. We enjoyed vineyard picnics for lunch and sat on our balcony with tea or wine in the evenings. Our room was cozy, the breakfasts were unbelievable, and the scenery was all I'd hoped for.

It truly was a wonderful week. But... it wasn't a week in Italy. It wasn't an all-inclusive beach resort with snorkeling and sunburns and a butler. It wasn't what either of us had imagined when we first contemplated the wedding and discussed honeymoon getaways. He did his best to create a wonderful experience for his wife: I asked for somewhere beautiful and quiet, and he delivered. I did my best to love it. In the end, though, we were both trying to make the best of an unfair situation. 

We've been to other places since then, notably a fantastic cruise (and another planned), so I know I shouldn't complain. And honestly, it's not that I didn't enjoy my time in Virginia - I truly did. I want to go back, maybe for our anniversary next spring. But I hate that our hands were tied and our choices limited by immigration rules. I hate that I'm made to feel like a criminal every time I need to deal with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. I hate being photographed, fingerprinted, and interrogated. I hate paying them thousands of dollars to look over the same documentation again and again. I hate asking friends to write letters testifying that my marriage is legitimate.

I want to look at this ornament and remember the lovely time we had on our honeymoon. Because we did have a lovely time. I could tell you about the fun we had, and I considered putting away the bad feelings to share only the good ones here today. But this project is about getting inspiration from an ornament, and this is what came out today, as I looked at those little butterflies. Maybe someday I'll be able to put the bitterness away completely and only remember the joy and love I felt on that trip. But this week, I'm sending in a stack of documents (some quite personal) so that the United States government can decide once again whether I'm allowed to stay here with my husband in our home.  And this won't be the last time they demand we prove the legitimacy our relationship. With that pressure hanging over my head, all I can think of is how we were denied a beautiful Italian honeymoon because the government chooses to operate on the assumption that all marriages to foreigners may be fake.

Marian Call's European Adventure Quest

I adore Marian Call.

I first became acquainted with her talent on JoCoCruiseCrazyII in February of 2012. She was one of the performers, but because her room was across the hall from mine, I met her before the ship even left Fort Lauderdale. A pretty redhead with a suitcase stopped in a doorway, said "Hi, I'm Marian," and held out her hand for a good cordial shake. After our short, polite, how-do-you-do exchange, we retreated to our separate rooms. That's when my husband told me I'd been speaking to a famous person! I'd heard that stars were generally bitchier and antisocial, so I guess that's why I didn't recognize her. Too nice for show biz.

Her show knocked my socks off. You know that episode of the Simpsons, where Bart and his buddies end up in Branson Missouri at an Andy Williams show, and Nelson is completely entranced? 

 

I was Nelson for her whole show. (Note: nobody was asleep or drooling during Marian's show, so the analogy isn't perfect. But I was still totally Nelsony the whole time.) Here's what I said about her in my cruise recap post:

Did I enjoy the concert? Well, I came home with Marian's double album, and would have come back with even more of her stuff if the gift shop hadn't been sold out of it. But Marian is so, so incredibly wonderful, that she handed out free download cards to the Sea Monkeys so we could all go to her site and get some of her music, even if we were too poor to buy albums on the high seas. Her concert absolutely blew me away. I was chatting with Dave about how I hoped the show would be good, and then the lights went down and she started her first song, Love and Harmony, and I was hooked. Some of her songs are silly, and some of them will reach inside you and push buttons you didn't know were there. I cried at Anchorage, and I didn't even cry when Bambi's mother died. While I enjoy Marian's albums very much, I think she's the sort of performer whose voice really comes alive in a live show. She tours a lot and does very small shows - look her up, ask her to come to your town. You won't regret it.

She's got a new album coming out - Something Fierce - and it's wonderful. Sometimes light and catchy, sometimes a little deep, and immensely re-listen-to-able. I find myself coming to my car after work and fishing out her CD to listen to whichever one of her songs has spent the whole day rattling around in my head. I wish I was a better music reviewer so I could describe the album and her music in fancy terms, but I'm not. All I can say is I like it a lot, I think she's incredibly talented, and I hope my friends check her stuff out and give her a listen. You can download two of her songs for free here - it can't hurt to try, right?

The album is being released with fanfare, of course, as all albums should, but Marian is a geek and she knows her fans well. Her recent European tour was funded by a Kickstarter campaign and was given a video game theme. She took the theme even further for the ramp-up to the album release, giving her loyal fans "Quests" to complete. She gets press, we have fun and interact with other fans. It's absolutely win-win, and it's been a blast so far.

I'll be participating in her Quests for the next two weeks, and I'll be reporting back on the game once I'm done. Stay tuned!

The pet of your dreams

Full disclosure: the topic of today's post was shamelessly stolen from a Paul and Storm podcast I had the pleasure of listening to on the Montreal road trip. Many, many times while we listened to their chats, Dave and I hit the pause button and discussed our own views on the topics they brought up, which was really the best part of the drive. I took some notes on topics I wanted to explore on my own blog, and today's post will be the first of (hopefully) several Paul-and-Storm-inspired musings.

Assuming that science was able to make it happen, what pet would you be willing to pay 

20 thousand dollars for?

My first thought, my first immediate thought: House Hippo!!

Hippopotamuses are among my favorite animals at zoos. They look like they've been overinflated with a bicycle pump, and they're smooth and shiny and have those disproportionally tiny tails that make them so comical. Of course, in real life, hippos are vicious. They're incredibly large, aggressive creatures who are known to attack humans any chance they get, capsizing river boats and just being mean old sons of bitches.

SO CUTE IT BURNS

But if science could create a teeny little hamster-sized hippo, and maybe breed out some of that aggression, I would be seriously tempted to save up my money and get one. Of course, the cats would hate it, but if I built it a little hippo habitat in a fish tank, it might work.

Unfortunately, I doubt that very much research money is going towards the shrinking of giant wild animals for house pets, so my house hippo dreams are never likely to be fulfilled. So, just in case I ever end up rich enough to spend obscene amounts of money on ridiculous pets, I have a backup plan.

Glow-in-the-dark cats. 

No, really. These are a real thing. When scientists are trying to splice a gene into an animal's genome, they need a convenient way to know whether it worked. One of the simplest ways for them to do this is to pair a glow gene, usually from jellyfish, with the important gene. If your test animal glows, then the insertion was successful. And adorable.

Glowing kitties of the future!

How great would it be to have a cat nightlight? Considering how often my boys like to dart around my feet when I'm walking downstairs in the darkness of early morning, a little glow could go a long way to keeping my neck intact.

What super-creature would you fork over 20 grand to have in your house?

Montreal Bagels

Since it's a trip home and not really a vacation, you wouldn't think I'd bring home many souvenirs for myself when I visit Montreal. Usually, this is true, but this time I had a moment of bready weakness and brought back dozens of fresh bagels. 

Explain to me how anyone can walk into a place like this and not leave with as many bagels as they could carry. I'm grateful they didn't have shopping carts, or I may have bought more. The staff was very understanding of my need to take pictures of their bagel oven. Apparently they get that all the time. See those long flat boards? They use those to get the bagels into and out of the oven, and they slide the hot golden bagels off the boards  into the big bin you see on the right, where they get scooped out and put by the dozen into paper bags for the customers waiting in line.

Brossard Bagel, in Greenfield Park, QC

One dozen of the delicious bagels I imported were to share with my coworkers, because I thought it would be a welcome change from the boxes of saltwater taffy that always appear in the break room whenever someone gets back from vacation. Also, we're a pretty seriously carbohydrate-loving group.

I sent out an excited "OMG you guys!! Montreal bagels for everyone!!" e-mail and then spent the rest of the morning trying to answer "what's a Montreal bagel?" And that's a difficult question. All I know is that they're dense, they're delicious, and I can't find anything like them around here.

So, in the interest of educating the world, I acquired different types of bagels so that I could proceed with: 

A Comparative Anatomy of Bagels

 

I started with one sesame bagel from Brossard Bagel, and one poppyseed bagel from Wegmans. I was going to get one from Panera, but I was grocery shopping anyway, and the Wegmans ones looked exactly like the Panera ones I'm used to, so I think it's a good example of a generic "bagel" available in this area. I specifically did not buy the packaged Thomas Bagels in the bread aisle, because I wanted to compare a fresh-baked Montreal bagel with a fresh-baked generic bagel from this area. The guy at the counter at Wegmans assured me that they bake them fresh, so we're on more or less even ground there.

First, let's have a look at them.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel.

The first thing that you notice is that the Wegman's bagel looks a lot bigger than the one from Montreal. It's taller, and while it's about the same diameter, it has a much smaller center hole, making it look a lot less dense. But is it less dense?

Here's a look at the insides.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

They both show evidence of bubbles inside, but the ones in the Wegmans bagel are bigger. This doesn't necessarily mean it's less dense, but I noticed a big difference in texture just by poking them. The Wegmans bagel is much, much more squashable.

I crushed the bagels with my girly pink dumbbells to demonstrate the squash factor. Using a 5-pound weight on each bagel eliminates the possibility of me pushing harder on one or the other.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

As you can see, the one on the left barely deforms at all, and the one on the right looks like a Tempur-Pedic commercial. I'm going to let this stand as my test of bagel density, because calculating bagel volume is a little too intense a task for me, and I'm not in the mood for math.

I told my coworker that I was doing a bagel experiment, and she generously offered to get me a couple of bagels from a Jewish bakery in her neighborhood, to give me a third data point. Fantastic!

I didn't squash the bagel from the Jewish bakery, because I was too excited about jamming it into the toaster so I could eat it, but I did take a photo of its insides for you.

Bagel from Jewish bakery

It looked very much like the Wegmans bagel, both inside and out. It was fat and fluffy-looking, and it had many large bubbles inside. The biggest difference was the smell - much more yeasty than the Wegmans bagel. I also noticed that the texture was denser, but not as dense as the Montreal bagel. Many of the little holes had doughy threads across them, making me think there's a lot of gluten in this bread.

The Taste Test

I toasted the bagels in my cheap two-slice toaster, and then tasted them both with butter and plain cream cheese. I also tried the bagel from the Jewish bakery with some veggie cream cheese, which is a specialty of that deli. It seemed like the right thing to do. The bagels were tested at least a half hour apart. I am so very very full of carbohydrates.

Wegmans bagel

It got crunchy on the outside, and remained very soft and bready on the inside. It felt like it took a long time to gain any brown color. Where I cut the toasted bagel in half, the knife flattened the bagel completely. It tasted bland, vaguely yeasty, like a big soft chunk of white bread. No dominating taste or smell. Not entirely different from a dinner roll.

Montreal bagel

Much more difficult to cut in half because of its density, so my halves were uneven. If ever there was an appropriate time for those safety bagel cutter things, it's with Montreal bagels. It turned brown much more quickly than the first bagel. The Montreal bagel had a much sweeter taste, and I posit that the higher sugar content led to faster browning. Incredibly chewy, with a crunchy crust. Coworkers commented on the sweetness of the bagels I brought in, and how chewy they were.

Jewish bagel

Its browning speed fell somewhere between the other two. The smell and the taste were very yeasty, and it was chewier than the Wegmans bagel by far, which surprised me given how similar they look. It was nowhere near as dense and chewy as the Montreal bagel, though, so although it was good it didn't win my taste test. Yes, I'm biased. I admit it.

So why are Montreal bagels so dense? I'm not sure. Wikipedia has the following to say about how Montreal bagels differ from the "generic bagel":

• The bagel dough includes egg and honey.
• Honey is also added to the water used for poaching the bagels before baking.
• The bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven. 

All these things make them so much more delicious than any other type of bagel I've ever tried. I don't know why they haven't spread out and become more popular across Canada and the United States - you'd think the sweetness would be a great selling point. There are some recipes I've found online for "Montreal-style bagels", and one of these days I may give that a shot, but for now, I have dozens of frozen bagels to tide me over.

Oh, before I close this out, I have one more reason why Montreal bagels are better. Check this out, from the same Wikipedia article:

Montreal-style bagels are currently the only style of bagel to have ventured into in space. Gregory Chamitoff, who grew up in Montreal, took three bags of sesame bagels with him on his assignments to STS-124 as passenger and ISS Expedition 17 as crewmember.

That's right. I thought I was a hardcore fan because I dragged dozens across the border in my Honda Fit, and here I learn this guy brought them to space. We loves our bagels, what can I say.

Booksnobbery

I can be a bit of a book snob.

I'm not proud of it, but I judge non-readers pretty harshly. There are people out there who say things like "I don't read", and they don't seem to think that it's a serious hole in their lives, which is very difficult for me to understand.

Books are, for me, a necessity. Since the day I was able to read Grover At The Farm all by myself, I have been reading. I have a quick link to my library's website on my Firefox toolbar, and I choose new purses based primarily on their size, because they must have enough space for an average hardcover. I have read hundreds of books, from classics to to sci-fi to non-fiction on almost any topic, and I've got a "to-read" shelf (currently growing online at Goodreads.com) that never seems to get any shorter. I deeply regret that I only have one lifetime during which to read, because I'll never be able to read everything I want to.

I think more people should be regular readers. The digital world is slowly chipping away at our attention spans and encouraging us to absorb written words in small, manageable paragraphs, instead of pages and chapters, so I smile when I see people at bus stops or in coffee shops, holding an open book. So why, then, do I feel such hostility towards adult readers of tween-and-teen-targeted "literature"? See, right there, I used sarcastiquotes without even thinking about it. I get all sorts of annoyed when I see a grown person paging through Twilight. They're reading something, so I should be happy about it - they made a decision to acquire and read a book, which is what I want more people to do.

But why would anyone other than a 12-year-old girl voluntarily read about angsty sparkling vampires (unless they're parents of teens and tweens who want to be familiar with what their kids are reading)? My parents weren't standing in line at the store, waiting excitedly for the next Babysitters Club book to be released so they could discuss it with their friends at work, so what changed over the past 20 years? Did young adult (YA) literature get more complex and adult along the way, blurring the lines?

It sounds sort of rhetorical, but it's a question I'm honestly asking of my readers: has there been a shift in the complexity of YA books over the years, making them closer to adult books?

I've done a lot of thinking about my hostility towards the YA stuff, and I posted my thoughts to one of my message boards to start a discussion there, learning more about myself in the process. A big part of my problem is that I assume that someone reading "kids' books" isn't going to want to read Asimov, or John Irving, or a history of the life of Henrietta Lacks. But how do I know what else is on their shelves? Just like someone at Taco Bell might cook fancy gourmet dinners 95% of the time, some people who read lots of good stuff sometimes like to read "fluffy" books because they're easy.

I think I tend to lump all YA into the "bullshit fluff" literature category, because of what I remember from the books of my childhood. The problem with that, if I think about it, is that I enjoyed the Harry Potter series, and if I'm being honest, I have to say they were better written than Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic" stuff, which was aimed at adult readers. So where's the line? What's a YA novel and what's a crappy grownup novel? I count Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Anne of Green Gables among my favorite books and I've read them dozens of times, despite the fact that they're intended for younger readers. But they're good. Conclusion: maybe I'm putting more overlap in my Venn diagram of "YA" and "crappy writing" than is warranted.

Why should it even matter that people are reading badly-written junk? It's not my business what people read, and on a conscious level I know that, but I see someone in a waiting room reading Fifty Shades of Grey and I die a little inside. I'm sure there are folks who will look down on my collection of science fiction and medical memoirs and declare that I'm not a real reader if I don't know Tolstoy and Dumas by heart, and I'm sitting here in my glass house, tossing stones around. 

Full disclosure: I haven't read Twilight or 50 Shades, mostly because I've heard enough about them and read enough reviews and quotes from them to know that they won't be to my taste. Hunger Games, on the other hand, is being recommended to me from all sides, by people I know and whose opinions I usually trust, and that's a big reason why I started this thread. I really don't want to read the books, and I'm not entirely sure what my resistance is about. I don't think I'm the hipster type who avoids things when they get popular, so what is it? I thought maybe it was the YA label that was doing it, but I'm not sure, given that I do count some children's classics among my favorite books.

Maybe I'm guilty of lumping the Hunger Games books into the same category as the Twilight series, when it belongs elsewhere? Is it more Little Women than Sweet Valley High?

I'd like this to open up into a discussion, if anyone's game. I need help pinning down what it is that bugs me so much about the popularity of fluff, because otherwise I'm not sure how I will ever change that prejudice.

Mars and the Wright Brothers

During my week in the Outer Banks, I braved rain and high water to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills. Even on a do-nothing-and-relax vacation, as this one was supposed to be, I couldn't resist visiting something historical and museum-y.

 

This boulder and metal track in the ground mark the takeoff point of the Wright Brothers' Flyer, and the four smaller plaques in the distance mark where the first four successful flights landed on December 17th, 1903.

First successful flight of the Wright Brothers

One hundred and twenty feet. That's how far Orville Wright got on his first successful powered flight, which the brothers were smart enough to capture on film. It is amazing to me that there is a photograph of this huge step forward in technology, this incredible achievement. And this all happened in 1903, which isn't really all that far away if you think about it. Not much more than a hundred years from their success in flight, we used a rocket-propelled sky-crane to gently lower an automobile-sized rover onto the surface of Mars.

I bring up the Mars Curiosity rover not only because it's awesome and on Mars, my favorite planet that I don't currently live on, but because we stayed up late on Sunday night, in the big rented house on the beach in Avon, and hooked up the TV to the internet to watch the live feed from NASA as they monitored Curiosity's descent to the surface.

Four of us, and a couple of sleepy weenie-dogs, settled in on the cushy sofas for the whole thing, from the interviews with NASA engineers to the triumphant cheers and tears of joy on the big screen when a safe landing was confirmed. More than once that night, as we watched the camera pan over the control room and the excited and nervous NASA folks speaking into their headsets, I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe and insignificance. Not only are we at a place in our evolution as a species that we can safely place sophisticated technology onto other planets, but it's become routine enough that it's not much more than a blip on the news. Sure, the nerds and space geeks of the world were huddled in front of their TVs and computers to watch it all unfold, but there's a bit of a "been there and done that" feeling from the news coverage, and that makes me both happy and sad.

I'm happy, because it means that awesome feats like this have become common enough not to make a big splash. Not only can we send stuff to Mars, or Jupiter, or to explore giant asteroids, but we do it all the time. We are an amazing damn species. But I'm sad, because when events are common, they stop being news, and people stop caring. When people stop caring, people forget why we're doing all of this in the first place and see it as a waste of money and resources.

But it's not a waste. No, it's not directly ending world hunger or fixing the economy, but space exploration has brought us so many advances in technology, and is worth every penny put into it. And, frankly, it's only pennies that are put into it. NASA's budget is a joke, and the joke keeps getting smaller. This comparison puts it into perspective:

I'm not trying to get all political here - I still don't have a vote in this country - but when you see how little NASA gets from the US budget, it's hard to understand the folks who are complaining that we're spending so much money to visit other planets for nothing. Especially when you see this:

Not that I'm bashing the Olympics (just NBC's dismal coverage and overuse of Ryan Goddamn Seacrest), but in the grand scheme of things, we get so much out of space exploration, and it's silly to argue against funding it. It's not just about rockets, minerals, and spectral analyses. It's about engineering, programming, and robotics, and dozens of other applications to medicine and nutrition and memory foam mattresses.

Three days after I watched Curiosity touch down gently on Mars to begin its mission of exploring the planet, I stood in the spot where we first took to the air in powered vehicles, and I whispered a thanks to the Wright brothers and all those who built on their work, for what they've made possible so far.

Round or Folded?

"Round or folded?"

The guy at the drive-through window repeated his question, since we were still staring blankly at him.

"Your egg. Do you want it round, or folded?"

Dave and I looked at each other. Both of us had eyebrows raised and shoulders lifted slightly to indicate that we had no idea what in hell the guy was talking about, so Dave bravely took initiative, turned back to the impatient McDonald's employee, and declared:

"Round."

We got home and spread out our breakfast goodies on the counter so we could see what consequences we'd now have to endure, and luckily our orders had resulted in one egg in each style, so we could compare them. The sausage and egg McMuffin, on the right, was the bearer of the round egg in question. The bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddle, on the left, features the mysterious folded egg.

Round eggs are regular old eggs, cooked in round kajiggers like these:

Blue silicone egg kajiggers

Folded eggs, meanwhile, are made from the egg-like goo that all fast food restaurants now use in place of scrambled eggs. Pre-scrambled for efficiency, I guess, but even though they're made from actual eggs, I never feel like the texture is right, and I wish they'd never been invented.

Powdered eggs, AKA the Cheez-Whiz of eggs

This stuff is why I have to pointedly ask for "shell eggs" when I order scrambled eggs at diners. Otherwise what I get is nasty, uniformly bright yellow, and spongy.

But the McDonald's experience opened my eyes to another way of making DIY breakfast sandwiches. I've always tried making a round-ish fried egg to put into an english muffin, with varying success. The egg often turns out too wide, and requires minor surgery to keep from poking out of the muffin. I had hoped that using the egg kajiggers would help, and I was very excited when I first opened the box they came in, but they got squashed in shipping and the now best I can manage with them are elliptical fried eggs. While I am entertained by the thought of eating conical sections for breakfast, the problem of fitting egg to muffin remains.

Enter the folded egg. I don't have a flat griddle or a square mold to contain liquid egg, but I took a shot and scrambled an egg and poured it into a frying pan, spreading it out like I do with crepe batter. As thin as it was, it cooked quickly, and I had it done and folded up on the english muffin within two minutes. And it fit on the muffin, with only little bits of its corners sticking out!

Sorry, round egg. Your day is over in my house. I've moved on.

Montreal Student Protests

It's been over five years since I've been able to call Montreal my place of residence, but on some level it will always be home to me.

For the last 100 days, there have been protests in Montreal as students speak out against proposed university tuition hikes. The proposed increases are substantial - 75% over five years, for a total increase of $1625. Students who believe that education should be a right and not a privilege decided to leave classes in April and have not been back since. The Student Society of McGill University has put up a website outlining the proposed changes and why they are opposed to them, and I recommend you read it to understand the background of the situation.

While I understand the resistance to a tuition increase, I am embarrassed by the behavior of the protesters who say they speak for all students in the province. There has been a dangerous violent element to these protests, with a couple of student groups sanctioning violent acts as a means of getting the point across to the government. Rocks are being thrown at storefronts and bank windows are being broken. My friends here in the United States have been warned by the US embassy in Ottawa that travel to Montreal may be dangerous. What does that tell the world about my city? For all the protesters are pounding their chests and demanding justice and freedom, Canada is not a repressed Middle-Eastern country fighting to free itself from the tyranny of a violent and all-controlling government. 

 

Montrealers love to strike, and Montreal's students love to protest. I am not opposed to organized strikes or peaceful protests against government decisions - history has proven the tactics to be effective. The Quebec government's recent passing of Bill 78, requiring that the authorities be notified 8 hours before the start of a protest, pissed a lot of people off, but what choice does the province have? Time and time again, a Montreal protest becomes a riot, where police cars are set on fire and tear gas canisters are thrown into crowds. Why? The legitimacy of the cause these students are fighting for is lost in the sensationalism of their violent acts.

Here's a short video from CBC News - you can see that things are clearly out of hand.

No side is entirely right or wrong here. The educational institutions need to be more transparent, as does the government, and student loans need to be made available to a larger number of people. Right now, relatively few people qualify for government-backed student loans, because the income bar is set quite low and takes into account how much money the student's parents make, regardless of whether the parents intend to help their children pay for school.

That said, the protesters also need to be more reasonable. Everything is getting more expensive, everywhere. From the perspective of students in the rest of Canada, Quebec students have no right to complain about how much university costs them. And, looking at the numbers on the Quebec government's website, I tend to agree. We've had it good for a very long time, enjoying the lowest tuition rates in the country. Even with the increase, by 2015 Quebec's students will be paying under $4000 a year for their education, still far lower than what students in most provinces pay now. Is $4000 a year really so much of a hardship? At the risk of coming across as callous, I got through school by working in retail and in telemarketing, and commuting by bus from my mother's house in the suburbs instead of renting a downtown apartment. Not everyone has those options - I was lucky to find jobs that paid better than minimum wage, and I had a family willing to put up with me at home while I finished school - but I feel like some of the protesters feel like they shouldn't have to work for their education. That's just not realistic.

Two-thirds of Quebec's students are still attending school, trying to finish the semester of classes they've paid for. The angry minority, in my humble opinion, needs to decide exactly what their battle is, who it is with, and how to fight it effectively. Protest and demonstrations are valid tools for communicating displeasure with government policy - throwing rocks and deliberately baiting cops are not.