Noah Stone, the Blog.

Someone told me today that the corneal flap made during LASIK surgery never heals. I've been having nightmares that I dislodge a flap doing something stupid, i.e. blowing compressed air from a can directly into my eye (this is a dream, remember). I searched online and according to every source, including the FDA, but not including the TLC Laser Center's website, this is the case. The flap never really heals. In fact, should one need followup LASIK surgery, a new flap will not be created. The doctor simply pulls the old one back.

I did some searching of the public medical journals and read two cases of post-LASIK corneal dislocation due to eye trauma, including a guy who caught a football with his eye - way to keep your eye on the ball, buddy. Both cases required surgery to re-"attach" the corneal flap, but 20/20 vision was restored. That's good news. Here's the better news: The Air Force conducted a study titled, "Laser in situ keratomileusis flap stablility during simulated aircraft ejection in a rabbit model."

In the study, 25 New Zealand white rabbits underwent LASIK corneal flap surgery - they didn't get the laser bit, though - then were subjected to the Air Force cockpit ejection simulator (I bet that's going to show up on some google searches) with 9 G's of force.

Then the little bunnies were euthanized and their eyes were observed for changes. No, that's not the good news, silly, this is: "CONCLUSIONS: Healed LASIK flaps as created in this rabbit model without laser ablation are stable when subjected to a rapid vertical ejection at nine times the force of gravity."

I for one feel much better. Thank you, bunnies.

It's hard to believe that little El is 60. She certainly doesn't look it. That's her on the left, my grandma in the middle and my aunt, Denise on the right.

Here are the photos.

Ripley sent Buddy a get well card.

It's an amazing likeness, isn't it?

For some reason, I felt compelled to respond to some guy's post on onegoodmove. Corp. Punishment believes science is flawed because it can't measure ghosts or explain phenomena like this: "a 'medicine woman' (Souix [sic]) walks into a store I work in.. looks into the eyes of my cousin and moves her hand up his body.. stopping at his lower ribcage and says "you were kicked by a horse here when you were 10." (dead on accurate [sic])"

Here's my response:

It is also well understood that the human mind looks for patterns and often sees them even when no clear pattern exists. Essentially, we ignore contrary evidence and place increased significance on supporting evidence. It's like having a dream that your mother goes on a trip and waking up to find out she has died. Most people focus only on that dream and see a pattern. I dreamed she was leaving and she did, therefore my dream foretold her death. But how many dreams of family members leaving on trips, dying or saying cryptic things have not resulted in an actual death? When a dream supports a connection, we tend to forget all the previous dreams that did not.

Same thing perhaps with Corp. Punishment's medicine woman. How many people have encountered your cousin's midsection without "knowing" about the horse kick? Perhaps there was some conversation that tipped her off that you are now forgetting. Magicians use the same trick. David Blaine, for example, can tell you which card you are simply thinking of in your head. When he does this trick, you believe he knows your mind. But, he has manipulated you; he has taken advantage of the way the human mind works. You have willfully forgotten the seemingly insignificant incidents leading up to the trick in which he has "planted" the card in your mind. He waves it in front of you a few times and your subconscious takes note. The "magic" happens and you don't recall the card being shown to you first. The Medicine Woman probably did the same thing. You probably have forgotten the preceding conversation because it seemed at the time totally insignificant, but in reality, she extracted relevant information used to dazzle you.

With the exception of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Will Ferrell was the funniest thing on Earth to America, TBS's global warming comedy show:



click on movie to play.

Why someone would own a Hummer is beyond my understanding. No other vehicle so embodies a total disregard for other humans. Why someone would own a Hummer in Berkeley and park it on the street can not be understood by anyone until we finally get a unifying theory of physics. I am told the spray paint corroded the glass and the windows have to be replaced. What the fuck did you think would happen, you narcissistic moron?!

To be clear, it's not the Hummer's thirst that gets me; I don't do much better in my car. A major global gas crisis is pending regardless of what we drive. What pisses me off is the absolute disregard for the safety of others. Part of wanting to be in the biggest vehicle on the road is putting your personal safety over the safety of others. With most SUVs, that's not even true, but I'm not getting into that now. The idea is, "if I get into an accident, I don't care if the other guy dies so long as I live." The Hummer is not built to share the road with passenger cars. Its bumper is several feet higher than a sedan's (and knuckle-dragging morons raise them even higher) and its curb weight is 6400 lbs. The curb weight of a Prius is 2890. Is doesn't take much more than a Piagetian grasp of physics to understand what happens when those objects collide at 50 MPH.

I believe there needs to be a test case - someone needs to try a Hummer driver who has been in an accident resulting in the death of the driver or passenger of another vehicle, and, perhaps GM for negligent homicide. They knew when they were buying this car that it would be a threat to others and they didn't care. Their own vanity was more important. And GM knows this car is not fit for the streets of America yet they make it and direct the advertising to American families. Who's with me?

By the mother of all bloggers, Dooce. (Great. I've started my blog off with an incomplete sentence. Bravo.) I hadn't known of Dooce, aka Heather Armstrong before; apparently she is a very popular constipated, jack Mormon who was the first blogger to be fired for blogging. Thus "dooce" was added to the cyberlexicon defined as loosing one's job for blogging.

Titled Enjoying, her post included three of my flickr photos:







Within 24 hours, these photos received over 25,000 views each. It was a very exciting moment of mild web celebrity replete with marriage proposals from Manitoba* and Poland*. So I thought that the appropriate thing to do was to start my own blog - to pay it forward, if you will. I mean, the whole concept of a private identity is so, like, 90's.

And thus begins the ravings of yet another Internet lunatic...

*location names may be changed to protect the legally insane.