Kind of a weird experience today. This morning I read about the Aussies who won the Nobel Prize for their work in determining that ulcers are caused by bacteria and not by stress or lifestlye. Later in the day, while looking for something else, I came across the Eye of Science web site, that had picture of the very virus in question, magnified 9,000 times.

Bakteria: Helicobacter pylori

Colored scanning electron micrograph (SEM). This pathogen of chronically active gastritis and intestinal ulcers was discovered in 1983. The bacteria are wound in a spiral shape and possess up to 7 flagella. H. pylori populates the mucosa of the human stomach exclusively. It is diagnosed by a stomach biopsy or a Urea Breath Test. Treatment of the infection involves the administration of anti-microbial substances combined with bismuth salt over the course of 14 days. Transmission of the infection seems to take place by mouth to mouth contact. Magnification 9.000 X

Beauty, eh? This is a super-cool site, subtitled “life in a microcosmic world”, that features images of tiny to microscopic bacteria, flora and fauna. Browse their galleries or visit their online store for posters and books of these images which include butterfly wings, a tick, a fruit fly, E coli bacteria and several others – 10,000 times larger than life and in brilliant color. As I said, cool!



(HT: Z + Partners Blog,.)

No alchohol. No strippers. And no mercy. What a party!

Imminent newlywed Cedric over at Cedric’s Blog-0-Rama just had a day-long bachelor party that covered multiple locations and events and involved several costume changes and much public humiliation. (With friends like these, who needs nightmares?)

From his account, however, Cedric appears to have enjoyed every minute and I’d have to say his friends probably did him a great service in preparing him for marriage. After all he’s already endured, marriage will be easy.

Intrusive in-laws? No problem! 2 a.m. baby feedings? Piece of cake! Cold feet on your backside? Refreshing! Trip to the store for feminine hygiene products? Smiling all the way!

You know, these guys might be on to something.

You can keep up with the more typical daily adventures of this mild-mannered illustrator here.

For those of us who think we have a biblical worldview, it can be both shocking and stimulating to learn there are areas in our lives where our thinking and what we assume to be true is really based on humanism. A “Worldview Weekend”, sponsored by a group by the same name, can be challenging and entertaining way to examine our own thinking and learn how to be more effective in understanding, living and communicating Christian values.

These weekends are held all around the country throughout the year, and one is coming to North Heights Lutheran Church in Arden Hills, Minnesota, in just a couple of weeks: Friday night, October 14 and Saturday, October 15.

A flyer for the event has the following description:

This is a power-packed weekend featuring some of themost gifted biblical teachers and communicators of our time. Starting on Friday night and ending Saturday afternoon, this weekend is fast paced, energetic and non-stop training on how to see the world through the lens of the Bible. There are nine sessions in a Worldview Weekend of which six are general sessions for both adults and students and three are breakout sessions for students and three are sessions in the main auditorium for adults….

…This weekend is for any student or adult that has the desire to think and live like a Christian in an increasingly anti-Christian culture. This weekend is for any skeptic or critic that wants to investigate the truth claims of Jesus Christ and the validity of Christianity.

(Emphasis mine.)

The event is headlined by Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron. I’ve read a few of Comfort’s books, listened to one of his tape series and seen him in person, and he is very dynamic and will have you laughing and thinking in no time. It appears as if the various sessions will focus not just on the spiritual life but on politics, the media and academia as well. I’ve not been to one of these weekends before, but I’ve read materials from them and they are excellent. You can get more information about the Twin Cities event here (scroll down to the Minneapolis/St. Paul info). There is a cost of $45 for adults and $35 for students, but there is a family plan where if you buy three tickets you get a fourth one free.

I’m pretty much on an every-other week schedule for Keegan’s Thursday night trivia (when my family hasn’t otherwise abandoned me), which would have me in the thick of the fray tonight – except that it is my lovely wife’s birthday. Even though I’ve offered her a birthday present of the two free drink tickets I’ve accumulated from my most recent visits, she would rather celebrate the occasion in another manner.

She’s already made it so easy for me that I can’t possibly resist. She’s already selected the restaurant where she wants to eat, and then it’s off to the store to pick up the birthday present she’s already selected. How good is that? This doesn’t indicate a lack of faith on her part for my gift-buying acumen, as I think I’m pretty good at that. This just allows me to focus my skills and attention on our upcoming anniversary.

By the way, this is one of those birthdays for her that ends in a “9”. If enough of you think the first number is “2” then I’m sure she’ll be back at Keegan’s in no time to thank you personally. Below is a photo of a previous visit, when we were joined by the mysterious Tiger Lilly (the Mall Diva was probably shopping).

(photo by Douglas Bass)

I don’t watch a lot of protests on television, especially during football season (I find it more interesting to watch events where you don’t know what’s going to happen next). I do remember seeing several protests on television when I was younger, though: the ’68 Democratic National Convention, Kent State, the Selma marches. You know the images – tear-gas, guns, fire hoses, baton-wielding police in facemasks, police-dogs tearing at clothes.



In later years I also watched the the TV show Cops with all of its jerky camera foot-chases through dark alleys after wild-eyed, half-naked suspects desperate to get away and knee-in-the-back arrests with bleeped out language and pixilated faces.



When I heard about the anti-war protests over the weekend and that Cindy Sheehan and others had been arrested – and since George Bush is the new Bull Connor – you might understand why I imagined a desperate melee of hair-pulling blood and brutality, or at least a little bruising.



Ah, no.

(Photo via Reuters/Yahoo. Click to enlarge.)







Back in the day, you would have heard angry voices:



“@#%#% Pigs!”

“Hippie scum!”



Now it’s more like, “Good morning, I believe you had an appointment to be arrested?”



“Why yes, yes I did. I’m ready if you are, but be careful – my bursitis is acting up in this shoulder.”



I mean, there’s even a guy talking on his cell phone in the picture: “Hi, Muffy, it’s me. Everything’s right on schedule here, so I should be home by four. Hey, could you check and see whether or not I remembered to Tivo The West Wing before I left?”



I believe the group was chanting “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” Assuming this were true (except for all the people in China, Iran and Darfur and other places who are dead or in jail for protesting against their government) then the whole world has got to be thinking, “What a country!”



Times have changed, I guess, as has the song the protestors sing:



“All we are saying, is put us on TV!”

Swing open the pearly gates of TV Heaven, again. Bob “Gilligan” Denver passed away a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s Don Adams from Get Smart.

Besides playing Maxwell Smart, I remember Adams as the voices of Tennessee Tuxedo from my own cartoon-watching youth, and as Inspector Gadget from my kids’ era.

Dang, I’m feeling old. Would someone mind driving by the home and checking on the Smothers Brothers?

I was up early this morning, leaving my brother’s house to drive the 25 miles to my mom and dad’s where I left the girls. It was strange weather last night – weirdly lit upside-down dinner roll clouds scattered around clear patches, followed by tremendous and sudden thunder and lightning, but very little rain. At 6:30 this morning there was fog as I set out on the highway.

The gray mists made it easy to imagine I was out at sea. Occasionally the hulking shapes of semis would appear out of the gray like freighters bound for distant ports. I had Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast CD turned on, and as the song “The Oh of Pleasure” played it seemed as if the lights of approaching cars came out of the fog in the same way the ethereal notes of Lynch’s melody emerged from the rhythm.

Fog is unpredictable. At one point ahead and well above me it cleared for few moments and I could see the top of a telecommunications booster tower, it’s transmitters standing out like oversized ears, but I couldn’t see the base of the tower. It was the type of sky where I could easily imagine God opening a trap-door, like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with beams of light radiating, to pronounce a mission for me (but first, “stop grovelling.”)

Perhaps a mission is what I need. The fog and the familiar road I was driving were a little too apt a metaphor. I knew pretty much where I was and where I was going and what was immediately ahead, but everything else seemed so mysterious. This was the road I chose, but maybe I ought to check out my GPS – God Positioning System – to make sure I’m on the right track. As I’m thinking this, I recall what Cheeseburger Brown said earlier this year in his excellent “The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster” illumination:

“Just because you cannot see the path, doesn’t mean it isn’t under your feet.”

Amen.

I’m on the road Monday and Tuesday due to another trip to the ancestral stomping grounds. I have a new post in my head that I’ll be mulling as I drive Tuesday; more details Tuesday night.

One of the great things about subscribing to Netflix is being able to queue up a season’s worth of a television show and watch every episode without commercials. This was a great way for me to watch Band of Brothers, and now my family and I are hooked on the first season of Lost.

We’re not big television watchers for the most part. I mainly watch sports or ESPN with some news channels thrown in, while my girls are into Spongebob Squarepants and Kim Possible. My wife never turns the set on. We haven’t made it a point to watch a particular show every week since Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mystery Science Theater 3000 went into syndication. It’s not that we’re anti-tv (well, maybe my wife is), but we usually have so many things going on that making it a priority to be in front of the set at a particular time each week isn’t practical. I know, some of you are saying “Tivo”, but I learned a long, long time ago that if I don’t have time to watch something in the first place I’m probably not going to have time to watch it later either. How long ago did I learn this? Well, I paid six hundred dollars for a VCR to tape all those shows I was missing, so that should tell you something. (I thought that maybe with all the time I saved by microwaving my food I could watch all the tapes that were piling up. Didn’t happen. I think I may still have some Miami Vice episodes in the back of the entertainment center that I haven’t seen.)

Anyway, the commercials for Lost looked interesting so I put the DVDs of the first seven episodes in my Netflix queue a couple of months ago. They arrived last week and since then the family has been completely absorbed – even my wife! The ever-sophisticated Mall Diva really likes the show and Tiger Lilly is engrossed, except when she’s hiding her face behind me during the really intense scenes.

What I like about it is the strong ensemble cast without any superstars, which makes it easier to identify with the characters. The plotting and pace are brisk, and while the writing uses a few tried and true conventions there is enough mystery and novelty to keep you off balance and trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. Probably the most brilliant decision the producer and writers made was to tell stories within the story about the different characters through flashbacks. This serves the purpose of adding depth and backstory to the characters while keeping the story from being “trapped” on the island with the same scenery over and over. It also allows for special guests to appear in the show, which adds further variety and even some nice surprises (Hey – it’s Veronica Hamel! I haven’t seen her in ages! I think there might even be some Hill Street Blues tapes in the entertainment center as well!)

Of course, being able to watch each episode without commercials is extra sweet. We got through the first two DVDs in the series in just a couple of days, sent them back and we’ve started on the third. We should be done with the first season in a couple of weeks. This is definitely the best way for us to watch the rare show that’s worth following. We won’t be able to watch season two as it unfolds on Wednesday nights this year, but I’ll be sure to have it in my Netflix queue well in advance of its release date next summer!

A four-blog conglomeration clawed its way into a five-way tie for first place at Keegan’s Thursday night. Calling ourselves Ineffectual Takeout, Marty Andrade, Ben from Hammerswing 75, Dan from Northern Alliance Wannabe and yours truly made it into the crowded winner’s circle with a whopping 16 points. (Tough quiz, including three questions asking how old Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Richard Simmons are – and “real old” didn’t count).

Tiger Lilly couldn’t make it to trivia this week, so Marty had to take up the slack by contributing the crucial answer to one of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory questions – without satisfactorily answering how he happened to know that answer. Maybe a caller to his radio program this week can ask him again.