Dear Little Miss Attila has been ALL OVER the story of Judith Griggs, managing editor of Cooks Source, which publishes online, on Facebook, and on paper, using an article on how apple pies were prepared in medieval England without the permission of the author, Monica Gaudio. When a friend tipped Ms. Gaudio off to the theft, Ms. Griggs refused to pay and added insult to injury by claiming that she had improved the piece by editing it and correcting spelling errors — that is, she changed the Middle English/Early Modern English spellings to Modern English, even though Ms. Gaudio had included the translations. This is all bad enough. But I suspect what has brought the wrath of the blogosphere down on Ms. Griggs’ head is that she ripped off Ms. Gaudio’s copyrighted BLOG post and claimed that everything published on the Web is public domain. Which it’s not. Which is why Ms. Griggs is now immortalized in a “Downfall” parody.

Dear Moe Lane also covers the story, with additional observations (go to his place for the links on “ensue”):

Alas for Cooks Source, the author is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Which means that she is fully plugged into the geek community. Which means that this story got picked up all over the Internet (because geeks and members of the SCA can be found EVERYWHERE*).

Hi-jinks ensue. And ensue. Oh, how do they ever ensue.

*EVERYWHERE.

I wish my father, Hubert P. Yockey, one of the pioneers of the application of information theory to molecular biology, had been able to get the scientific community nearly as worked up about the theft of the work of German scientist, Walther Loeb, by American scientist, Stanley Miller. Miller is credited with being the first to use a spark discharge in a solution of chemicals to create amino acids, which is supposed to be a scenario for the origin of life (although my father shows why it isn’t). However, Miller lifted the experiment from Walther Loeb, which my father learned by reading all the works Miller cited in his graduate thesis, published in 1953, in which Miller claims priority for the discovery. In fact, because my father obtained it through an inter-library loan, I saw the copy of the book Miller read that explained Loeb’s experiment — the library card had Miller’s name on it, dated the time he was researching his thesis.

My father shows in his book, Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life, which is advertised on this page, that Miller essentially duplicated the set-up Loeb showed in an illustration in a paper published in 1906. My father writes on p. 125 of his book, “Loeb’s priority in the electro-chemistry of the silent electrical discharge and exploration of any function it may have had in ‘prebiotic chemistry’ must be recognized (Mojzsis et al., 1999; Yockey, 1997, 2002b).

Oh, and another thing — if you read the Wikipedia (shut up!) article I link about Stanley Miller, it credits Oparin and Haldane with being the first to come up with the scenario for the origin of life that chemicals under the right conditions would form into amino acids and proteins and spring to life. Hah! This speculation appeared in 1853 in William Whewell’s book, Of the Plurality of Worlds, now available in facsimile. My father knew these ideas pre-dated Oparin and Haldane because of the line in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” in my postscript below.

I told Dad about Whewell in the mid-1990′s after reading the following from Anthony Trollope’s novel, Barchester Towers published in 1857:

“Are you a Whewellite or a Brewsterite, or a t’othermanite, Mrs. Bold?” said Charlotte, who knew a little about everything, and had read about a third of each of the books to which she alluded.

“Oh!” said Eleanor; “I have not read any of the books, but I feel sure that there is one man in the moon at least, if not more.”

“You don’t believe in the pulpy gelatinous matter?” said Bertie.

“I heard about that,” said Eleanor, “and I really think it’s almost wicked to talk in such a manner. How can we argue about God’s power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one?”

“How indeed!” said Bertie. “Why shouldn’t there he a race of salamanders in Venus? And even if there be nothing but fish in Jupiter, why shouldn’t the fish there he as wide awake as the men and women here?”

“That would be saying very little for them,” said Charlotte. “I am for Dr. Whewell myself, for I do not think that men and women are worth being repeated in such countless worlds. There may be souls in other stars, but I doubt their having any bodies attached to them.

But come, Mrs. Bold, let us put our bonnets on and walk round the close. If we are to discuss sidereal questions, we shall do so much better under the towers of the cathedral than stuck in this narrow window.”

P.S.

The earliest quote my father was aware of showing that others had thought of chemicals combining to create life before Oparin and Haldane is from “The Mikado.” When I Googled for the quote, I happened upon the following from “Mind the Gap!,” a scientific article by Antonio Lazcano, who apparently believes in the life-from-chemicals origin-of-life scenario:

In 1835, the French naturalist Felix Dujardin started crushing ciliates under the microscope and observed that the tiny cells exuded a jellylike, water-insoluble substance, which he described as a “gelée vivante” and which was eventually christened “protoplasm” by the physician Johann E. Purkinje and the botanist Hugo von Mohl. Fifty years after Dujardin’s observations, the possibility that living organisms were the evolutionary outcome of the gradual transformation of lifeless gel-like matter into protoplasm was so widespread that it found its way into musical comedies. In 1885, the self-important Pooh-Bah, Lord Chief Justice and Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado that “I am in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.”

What my father, Hubert P. Yockey, demonstrated in his publications is that the origin of life is unknowable, as Darwin predicted, and must be accepted as an axiom of biology, just as the existence of matter is accepted as an axiom of physics and chemistry.

Dad had severe back pain in June and part of the treatment has been physical therapy for him in a swimming pool. The practice treating him has a deal with the health club where we belong to use one of their pools, so I go work out on one of the elliptical machines while Dad is exercising.

Today (Friday) Dad had PT at the pool and it was the kind of sparkling clear weather in the high 80′s that is typical of Maryland in late July and August. Since neither one of us gets out very much, and Dad goes out less than I do, after Dad’s therapy session we sat by the pool at a table in the shade of an umbrella and just enjoyed being out among people in the fresh air for a couple of hours.

Instead of driving straight home, since it was cool enough — the air conditioning in my car isn’t working so rides with Dad in the car have to be short to keep him from overheating — I decided to see if the farm in Forest Hill where we used to buy Raritan Rose peaches still has a produce stand. Harford county is heaven in the summer because the mimosas are in bloom (their pink flowers have an ethereally sweet scent and look other-worldly), crabs are in season and fresh fruits and vegetables are ripe. This is when we feast on peaches, tomatoes, corn, cantaloupe, watermelon and patty pans squashes.

The peaches I love the most are a white-fleshed variety with an intense rose blush, scent and flavor called Raritan Rose. My problem is that I can’t find farm produce stands that label the varieties of peaches they sell. I learned to treasure knowing the names of varieties of fruits and vegetables in college when I went to the farmer’s market in Ann Arbor every week. Michigan has lots of apple orchards and the farmers would show the names of their apples and give wedges as samples. My favorites then were Paula Red and Ida Red. Nowadays I don’t hold with eating an heirloom tomato unless we have been properly introduced and I know its name, pretty much because I would be very frustrated if I liked it and didn’t know its name and therefore couldn’t grow it myself.

I got a bit lost but it was such a lovely day in the rolling fields that we were in no hurry and I stopped at the produce stands we came across. One knew their yellow peaches were Red Havens, but did not know the name of the white peaches — I bought them on spec anyway.

Our final destination was the produce stand on Rt. 22 for Lohr’s Orchard, because they sell peach seconds by the peck and half bushel. The seconds were all yellow peaches — probably Red Haven — and I bought a half bushel along with some unknown white peaches, blueberries, plums and corn. I meant to buy green tomatoes, but forgot.

We had an hour at home for Dad to change so we could go to see our local minor league baseball team, the Ironbirds. We had sandwiches for dinner and arrived at Ripken Stadium after the game had started. (Due to Dad’s low-sodium diet, there’s hardly anything at the stadium that he can eat so we had to eat at home — although tonight I discovered a new treat there and bought him a pint of french vanilla Turkey Hill ice cream.)

The Ironbirds played the Brooklyn Cyclones and got trounced, 11-3. Sigh. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful and intimate stadium, and again, we were out and about, in glorious weather, so it was fun just to be there. Plus, we began to chat with a woman in our row and, glory hallelujah!, she knew the name of the farm in Delta, Pennsylvania, that is probably the supplier for some of the produce stands I visited — Susquehanna Orchards, WHICH TELLS YOU THE NAMES OF THE VARIETIES OF PEACHES THEY SELL. So we are DEFINITELY going to pay them a call next week.

On the way home, I asked Dad how his day was, and he answered, “I’m very happy in my old age.”

Yes. Heaven.

I was browsing Twitter this morning and spotted a tweet by Jimmy Bise linking a post by Stacy McCain, who was connecting a New York Times piece about anosognosia to choice of political parties. “Anosognosia” describes the dilemma where you don’t know what you don’t know, which is why stupid people are not smart enough to know that they are stupid. Stacy sees this as an explanation for why some people are Democrats.

However, the piece at the New York Times that really got my attention was a headline in the sidebar: “What Broke My Father’s Heart.” It describes one woman’s unsuccessful quest to help her mother navigate the healthcare system to allow her father to have his pacemaker turned off so that he could die comfortably in hospice care.

This gave me quite the shot of adrenalin because my father’s life was saved in December 2008 by a pacemaker/defibrillator. I knew before it was installed that it is possible to turn them off to allow someone to die peacefully. Dad has made it very clear to his geriatrician that he wants hospice care when his time comes but the sentences I boldfaced below have sent me on a mission to review this possibility with him, in case we need to re-write Dad’s durable medical power-of-attorney :

From page 5 of the essay:

Over the next five months, my mother and I learned many things. We were told, by the Hemlock Society’s successor, Compassion and Choices, that as my father’s medical proxy, my mother had the legal right to ask for the withdrawal of any treatment and that the pacemaker was, in theory at least, a form of medical treatment. We learned that although my father’s living will requested no life support if he were comatose or dying, it said nothing about dementia and did not define a pacemaker as life support. We learned that if we called 911, emergency medical technicians would not honor my father’s do-not-resuscitate order unless he wore a state-issued orange hospital bracelet. We also learned that no cardiology association had given its members clear guidance on when, or whether, deactivating pacemakers was ethical.

From page 6 of the essay: (Last month that changed. The Heart Rhythm Society and the American Heart Association issued guidelines declaring that patients or their legal surrogates have the moral and legal right to request the withdrawal of any medical treatment, including an implanted cardiac device. It said that deactivating a pacemaker was neither euthanasia nor assisted suicide, and that a doctor could not be compelled to do so in violation of his moral values. In such cases, it continued, doctors “cannot abandon the patient but should involve a colleague who is willing to carry out the procedure.” This came, of course, too late for us.)

FYI, if you want someone to be able to make medical decisions for you when you can’t make them for yourself, the instrument to create is a durable medical power-of-attorney, NOT a living will. A living will is just evidence of heroic measures you don’t want to have, but it doesn’t allow someone to direct your care according to your values.

The author of the piece, Katy Butler, strikes me as an unresourceful person who was passive about her father’s end-of-life care, no matter how much she says she Googled. She unwittingly describes blunder after blunder that she made, or did not stir herself sufficiently to prevent her mother from making. For one thing, her father had the right to refuse medical care, so she could have fired the cardiologist who refused to turn off the pacemaker and replaced him with the hospice doctor, who really should have been in charge of her father’s care totally once he was admitted to hospice. She also does not say why her father was transported from home hospice care to the hospital when he developed pneumonia and she does not say whether he remained in hospice care in the hospital. If the end is coming and you panic and call 911, then you are back in the acute care system and deserve your wretched fate from completely inappropriate care.

On the other hand, if Butler’s father was receiving hospice care in the hospital — that is, comfort care such as medication for pain and anxiety and oxygen to treat air hunger — then I have no patience with Butler’s self-pity and rage with the system that her father took five days to die. Death is not pretty and it does not care about your busy schedule. Pain is one of the measures Death applies to get you to let go of life and to make your loved ones willing to release you. From the dying loved ones whom I have attended, it looks to me like our souls look back on their current life, and forward to the next life, back and forth, back and forth, as if they are gathering their wits and summoning their courage to make the leap. Pain medications, titrated to the extreme, mind-boggling amounts of pain associated with dying, seem to help this process rather than hastening it. The duty of caregivers at this time is to attend to their dying loved one by providing every comfort in their power, by creating an environment of peace and courage and by letting the dying process take as long as it takes.

I am going to have to be doing this again, soon.

P.S.

If you have a pacemaker, or provide care for a loved one who does, here’s info from the American Medical Association (the article has many useful links):

It is legal and ethical to honor patient requests to deactivate implanted cardiac devices, and physicians should take the initiative in talking with terminally ill patients and their families about turning off the devices, according to a new expert panel consensus statement released in May.

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, or ICDs, can impose a particularly heavy burden on terminally ill patients, continuing to send electrical shocks as the patient dies. [Note from CY: These shocks feel like a mule kick to the chest.]

(snip)

Nearly three-fifths of hospices reported patients getting shocked by their ICDs within the past year, said a March 2 Annals of Internal Medicine study. Only 10% of the 414 hospices surveyed had policies on deactivating ICDs, and 58% of the terminally ill patients who received shocks did not have their devices turned off.

The Heart Rhythm Society panel, which included representatives from the American College of Cardiology, the American Geriatrics Society, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the American Heart Assn., set out to address the problem by clarifying the legal and ethical status of deactivating cardiac devices. The consensus statement also advises physicians on how to communicate with patients and families about whether to turn off a device.

There are no court cases dealing directly with deactivating heart devices, but the legal and ethical principle that patients and their surrogates have the right to refuse care is solidly grounded, said panel member George J. Annas.

“The closest and most controversial cases are the feeding tube cases. When you take out the feeding tube, you know the patient is going to die,” said Annas, chair of the Dept. of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health. “Every court has looked at these cases and said, ‘It’s medical technology.’ You can refuse a ventilator, you can refuse a feeding tube, you can refuse anything.”

Patients have the right to refuse care, said Richard A. Zellner, a retired lawyer who served as the panel’s patient representative. He had five implanted heart devices over 14 years before getting a heart transplant in 2006.

“The patient has a right to say, ‘I don’t want any more treatment,’ ” said Zellner, an adjunct lecturer in the Case Western Reserve University Dept. of Bioethics in Ohio. “When the patient says, ‘I’ve had enough,’ that’s enough.”

I promise a post is coming soon with photos of my heirloom tomato plants.

Hubert P. Yockey with an heirloom tomato from my garden in the summer of 2008.

Hubert P. Yockey sitting on the porch with his favorite cat, Remington, and listening to music on his MP3 player while I worked on my heirloom tomato plants. Yes, that DOES mean they were in the front yard.

Hubert P. Yockey, wearing his University of California at Berkeley rugby letter jacket, at the March 2010 concert by the Bel Air Community Band at the new Bel Air High School, in, you guessed it, Bel Air, Maryland.

My father is Hubert P. Yockey and today, April 15, 2010, is his 94th birthday. His cardiologist today cleared him to make it to at least 100. I’ve got to run to take photos at Bel Air’s Tea Party protest — on the same Main Street walked by John Wilkes Booth, in front of the county courthouse where he and his brother Edwin performed Shakespeare — but I wanted to get some photos posted and wish him a happy 94th birthday. (Remington is Dad’s favorite cat and sees him to bed every night.)

As my regular gentle readers know, my father is Hubert P. Yockey, the nuclear physicist whose scientific papers and books have been seminal in the field of applying information theory and coding theory to molecular biology, the origin of life and evolution. The driving intention of my father’s work in this field has been to rid the field of any proposals that have their foundation in faith, whether religious or secular, so that the only theories that prevail in science are the ones founded on the application of the tools of science: “counting and measuring,” as he quotes Socrates.

(BTW, it is stilted to refer to him as “Hubert P. Yockey,” but his name is a Google key phrase in this subject so I am going to go with sounding stilted so that people searching for his work online can find this post.)

Hubert P. Yockey’s work on the origin of life and evolution sends science and religion to their respective corners: scientists must discard speculations and theories that are proved to be based on faith AND they are wrong to use science to make pronouncements about religious beliefs that are beyond the tools of science. For example, Copernicus and Galileo were right, while the Catholic Church was wrong. Likewise, people of faith are wrong to try to mask their religions as science, that is, factual so that their dogmas must be accepted by all. Hubert P. Yockey includes the secular faith of dialectical materialism, which is the foundation for scientific theories of the origin of life, as one of the faiths that scientists must reject.

Hubert P. Yockey points out that Darwin himself in his book, The Origin of Species, noted that he was not addressing the origin of life because the origin of life is an axiom of biology just as the origin of matter is an axiom of physics and chemistry. Hubert P. Yockey’s most important scientific contribution has been to apply information theory and coding theory to show WHY the origin of life is an axiom of biology and that THAT is what should be taught about the origin of life.

And, this morning, when I was talking over my recent post about him, Hubert P. Yockey said it really IS time to change the scientific nomenclature from “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” to “Darwin’s Laws of Evolution.” He compared it to quantum theory — which is now also referred to as the laws of quantum mechanics. He also pointed out to me that lay people think that “speculation” and “theory” mean the same thing. They do not. In science, the word “theory” indicates the steps of how a phenomenon occurs. THEN scientists go to work to understand the mechanics of the theory. So, physicists went to work to discover WHY quantum theory was such an apt explanation of phenomena and discovered the LAWS of quantum mechanics.

So, Hubert P. Yockey points out, the discovery of DNA, the genetic code, the genome, the sequence hypothesis, information theory and coding theory, and the tools of gene sequencing have allowed scientists to elucidate WHY Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Origin of Species is such an apt explanation for the phenomena of biology and therefore now deserves to be called Darwin’s LAWS of Evolution and the Origin of Species.

Religious people have wrongly appropriated Hubert P. Yockey’s work to re-brand Creationism as Intelligent Design — see Yockey’s amicus brief for the 2005 Dover “Panda” trial. (I have over 20 years of private correspondence to back this assertion, plus my own conversations with my father, at least one of which I have on video, but I am barred by copyright law from publishing anything except my father’s letters.) The intention of these religious people is to appropriate the apparatus of the state — in this case, the educational system — to brand their religious dogma as science in order to force people to accept it. This is wrong in every possible way.

One of the most cunning arguments that religious people make to deceive people into believing that their religious dogma should be accepted in the scientific marketplace of ideas is that Darwin’s theory of evolution is “only a theory” — in order to capitalize on lay people’s incorrect belief that “theory” and “speculation” are synonyms in science — and that therefore their “theory” of Creationism/Intelligent Design is equivalent and should be taught in schools along with Darwin’s theory of evolution because it’s “Darwin’s theory,” not “Darwin’s LAW.”

No. No. No. No. NO!

“Science has sufficiently elucidated the mechanics of Darwin’s theory of evolution that now the scientific nomenclature should be changed to Darwin’s LAWS of evolution and the origin of species,” says Hubert P. Yockey.

Cite this post when you quote him on that.

I just clicked a link in a Google Alert with my father’s named misspelled and it turns out someone has written a book claiming it is a terrible injustice that people who deny evolution are not being admitted to Ph.D. programs in biology because this cheats them of the credential they need to teach the various forms of re-branded religion that deny evolution as factual so they can use science to force people to believe their religion.

It is the mirror image of Climategate, where suddenly Right wingers believe in the science showing that global warming/climate change is a big, fat hoax being perpetrated to destroy capitalism globally and enrich Al Gore, et al., via green enterprises and investments, while it is Left wingers clinging to their religious faith that weather is not supposed to change and is not primarily controlled by sunspots and ocean tides. Even though it is.

Here’s the passage that inspired this post:

“Is this only a “Christian fundamentalist” issue? Hardly! To begin with, the ranks of Darwin doubters include not only non-Christians, but also non-theists such as David Berlinski, Michael Denton, Periannan Senapathy, Chandra Wickramasighe, Murray Eden, Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, Herbert [sic] Yockey, Stanly Salthe, Christian Schwabe, Gerald Kerkut, Professor Lime-De-Faria, Pierre Grasse, Soren Lovtrop, David Stove, Fred Hoyle, John Davison, and others who are closeted for obvious reasons.”

I have edited my father’s work since the late 1980′s. My father, Hubert P. Yockey, considers Darwin’s theory of evolution to be one of the most well-established in science. The epitome of his life’s work is that he has demonstrated why the origin of life is an axiom of biology, just as the origin of matter is an axiom of physics and chemistry. The belief that scientists will be able to re-create the origin of life is based purely on faith, even if it is a secular one.

Similarly, Intelligent Design is re-branded Creationism and originated in a misunderstanding of my father’s work that has since morphed into a deliberate distortion. Hubert P. Yockey points out in his book Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life why Intelligent Design is wrong: the genome does the job that ID’ers claim require a Designer AND since there are no gaps in the genome from the origin of life to the present day, and we now have the ability to look back at the development of species using the genome, the objection to evolution that there are gaps in the fossil record is obsolete.

Pondering how the passengers on Flight 253 saved the day after Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab’s bomb failed to ignite properly, law professor Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, links a column he wrote after the D.C. snipers were caught in 2002 by a citizen who spotted their car and blocked it from escaping with his own vehicle (boldfacing mine):

Regardless of whether or not the D.C. snipers count as “terrorists” under your particular definition (they do under mine, but the authorities seem to be shooting for a much narrower standard) there seems little question that in coming weeks, months, and years we’re going to be dealing with a lot of fast-moving, dispersed threats of the sort that bureaucracies don’t handle very well. (Every domestic-terrorism victory so far, from Flight 93 to bringing down the LAX shooter to spotting the D.C. killers was accomplished by non-law-enforcement individuals, after all). Rather than creating new bureaucracies, we need to be looking at ways of promoting fast-moving, dispersed responses, responses that will involve members of the public as a pack, not a herd. Even if doing so reduces the career satisfaction of shepherds.

Read the whole thing — my headline comes from another writer that Reynolds quotes in his piece.

The initial news reports were rather bland, but Hot Air has a video (which is on auto-play) of how the bomb was made and only required an amount of explosive material the size of a matchhead to bring the airplane down. And Mark Steyn has the best analysis on why the solutions Fareed Zakaria touted in his HBO whitewash of the 2008 attack on Mumbai, in which my friend, Alan Scherr, and his daughter were murdered, just will not work — and, in my opinion, are being offered as a tactic to delay and delude.

But the reason I’m writing this particular post is that it reminds me of a story my father likes to tell about why America beat Germany in World War II. First, he points out that America’s armed forces included an awful lot of farm boys who were accustomed to fixing things themselves on their own initiative. So, my father says, when a Jeep or tank broke down, the soldiers immediately got busy repairing it and improvising when they didn’t have the needed tools or parts. Their officers did not resent this — they demanded it. In contrast, my father continues, the German soldiers had to wait for orders when equipment broke down, regardless of any doom bearing down on them.

Then Dad drives home the point of the disastrous effects of such top-down, command-driven social orders by explaining that Hitler was asleep when the Allies launched their D-Day attack and HIS GENERALS HAD TO WAIT FOR ORDERS BUT EVERYONE WAS AFRAID TO WAKE HIM. (I hear tell Obama wasn’t notified of the Flight 253 terrorist attack until three hours after it happened, but certainly there’s no connection and no one will ever expect to derive future strategic advantage from attacking while their victims sleep. That would be mean.) By the time Hitler woke up and started giving orders, the advantage had tipped to the Allies.

The walker is a nice one — it folds so I can easily put it in the car, and it has wheels on the front. Dad’s physical therapist said that the walkers with wheels help people with mobility impairments both with their walking and their breathing because it keeps the chest muscles in a better position. Dad hurt his back at the beginning of the month — he doesn’t remember how — and has been walking hunched over and leaning on his quad cane with both hands ever since.

By the way, I was wrong in my recent post that I should have fought the prednisone taper program — and I have apologized to the nurse practitioner, although I was just firm and not rude with her not just because it is wrong to be rude but because it is especially wrong and counter-productive to be rude to anyone who is trying to help you. The problem has nothing to do with arthritis and prednisone — it is lower back pain. I suspect he hurt his back doing something simple that he used to do with ease, like getting out of a chair, or bed, or that he thought it was simpler to get into his stair lift chair by climbing up a couple of steps and twisting onto the seat, instead of running it down to the first floor all the way.

Problems with walking can be deadly because they increase the likelihood of falling and breaking a bone. My mother died in April 2006 a few months after falling and breaking her left arm near the shoulder. After the shoulder replacement surgery, she stopped eating and drinking almost completely — her body was shutting down and she fought being given food and fluids, and vomited them up when she was pressed to take more than she wanted.

The treatment for Dad’s back pain is pain medication, which also has a couple of side effects that could lead to his death — I know he’s 93, so you are probably thinking that he has “93″ and that would do the job: shut up! Pain medication can depress your breathing, which is an issue with people with obstructive sleep apnea. It also makes you constipated, which is an issue with someone with congestive heart failure, since straining to go increases your heart rate.

If you are wondering why I’m bringing this up, it’s after 4 pm and Dad isn’t up yet. OK, wait, thank God, he’s up — I hear him coming out of his bedroom. I’ve got to go make him … well, breakfast, since it’s his first meal today.

Somehow I didn’t hear about Obama’s being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday until almost 11 am, right before we had to leave for my father’s check-up at the cardiologist. I didn’t believe it at first and we were 15 minutes late to the doctor because I had to go online to check my newsfeed (at your right). One of most satifying posts I’ve read so far is from Reclusive Leftist, who I gather is a Hillary PUMA who couldn’t make the leap I did to McCain/Palin (and from there to conservatism and the Republican party), but who also cannot gag down enough of the Kool-Aid to embrace Obama uncritically. So the left-on-left snark there is smart and funny, but with something of the quality of a battered wives shelter that only accepts college professors — they are smart enough to know they are being abused, but frightened of making the leap to the world of the Right their abusers have demonized in order to keep them in the fold:

Violet [the Reclusive Leftist] says:

Mark it now: I’m predicting that Obama will win every award there is. MVP. Cy Young. The Heisman Trophy.

alwaysfiredup says:

Meanwhile, Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs thinks Sharia law is liberating for Muslim women

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…..stood.html

Awesome. Aren’t there any more awards we can bestow on this prince of men?

# monchichipox says:

I’m getting some cold comfort in the fact that all the blogs and newsites I read have comment sections pretty much filled with humorous jabs at the award. Especially politico.

# monchichipox says:

OK OK I think I’ve finally got something. Though it’s not up to my usual:

Is Kanye West pissed that Beyonce didn’t get the award?

# cgeye says:

You mean… the Nobel Committee thought he couldn’t handle the phone call at 3 AM?

I’m sorry, but even for good news? That’s just sad.

At least waking him up would have allowed his team to fum-fuh some new initiative that would at least make him look Presidential, in response.

When the N.C. also have to handle him delicately, at the expense of making him look awkward, we know something’s wrong with the Presidency as we accept it.

http://www.openleft.com/diary/…..presidents

My favorite post for explaining, “Why?,” is by Claudia Rosett at Pajamas Media (H/T Phyllis Chesler at Pajamas Media):

But the Nobel Norwegians express not only their hope that he will play out their fantasies, but their confidence that he is “now the world’s leading spokesman” for their preferred “international policy and attitudes.”

Who are these folks issuing Obama a prize on credit to steer America along their preferred course? The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five Norwegians, whose members are appointed by the parliament of Norway. Ever heard of Thorbjorn Jagland? Active for decades in the Socialist International, a collectivist who navigated a long series of embarrassing moments in Norwegian politics to become current Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Jagland now heads the Norwegian Nobel Committee. His fellow members who have just issued this Nobel IOU to a sitting American president are — are we ready for global policy guided by this crowd? – Kaci Kullman Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Agot Valle.

What, more specifically, might they be expecting of Obama? For starters, Norway, along with neighboring Sweden and Denmark, has been banging the drum for America to hand over to the United Nations enormous control over and constraints upon the U.S. economy, in the name of (warming/cooling/take-your-pick) climate change. Thus did Norway’s Nobel committee bestow its favors in 2007 on Al Gore and the UN’s Self-Interested Panel of Politically Corrupted Science — excuse me, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And this December the UN is convening a big climate conference in Copenhagen, with which the U.N. hopes to “seal” its growth-stunting UN-enriching climate “deal.”

Anyway, there I was, neck-deep in comedy gold, but a day full of errands to do. The cardiologist forgave us for being late. My father’s longevity has amazed him, based on the condition Dad was in when he first sat in Dr. R’s office in December 1997. Dad was not 30 seconds into his speech about his wilderness paddling adventures and how he was just there to shut me up when Dr. R abruptly left the office and Dad heard the admin arranging for him to be admitted to the hospital immediately. Dr. R let him go home, have lunch and get his things before reporting to the hospital. Dad sent me an e-mail to let me know. I wanted to be with Dad that day but had to take Margaret to the neurologist instead.

The diagnosis was idiopathic congestive heart failure. “Idiopathic” means “we know what illness you have, but we don’t know why you have it.” The cause of Dad’s particular form of congestive heart failure actually was discovered in 1996, when obstructive sleep apnea was first connected as a cause of idiopathic congestive heart failure. But the cardiology profession has been rather slow to incorporate the implications of sleep research into the fundamental causes and treatment of some forms of heart disease — intractable high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and idiopathic congestive heart failure — so I was the one who figured out in 2003 that Dad needed to get the sleep study that confirmed he had very severe obstructive sleep apnea.

Why, yes, now that you mention it, the angel of death DOES have to work very hard to get past me and take someone I love.

After seeing the doctor, we had to go to my favorite pet store for kitty and wild bird provisions, PetValu. They aren’t everywhere, but I hardly spend a penny anywhere else on pet supplies in order to keep them in business and supplying me with cat litter that is, well, dirt cheap. If it weren’t for PetValu, I would never have been able to afford the number of pusses I’ve had over the last 18 years. (The ones who have died passed from respectable causes and all but one were well past middle age, thanks for asking.)

The route I took to PetValu is a winding country road for a good deal of the journey and passes my favorite farm stand, which is across the street from my favorite nursery. First we pulled into the farm stand, where we bought apples, Concord grapes (for their divine fragrance as well as their flavor), patty pans squashes and carrots of such majestic length and girth that it is probably illegal to grow them in Alabama, Georgia and Texas. The apples were four Ida Reds in perfect condition, and a half bushel of seconds that were a mix of Ida Reds, Stayman and some others I don’t know as well. Then we went to the nursery to check for flats of pansies and see how the heirloom tomato plants I gave to one of the workers fared. C’s Galina’s Yellow Cherry did well, Berkeley Tie-Dye, not so much, although it was productive for me last year and is one of my “must grow” plants both for the unusual red-green appearance of the tomatoes and their delicious, rich flavor.

After getting our kitty and wild bird supplies, we headed home through a route that passes several farms. It was a clear October day — blue sky with just a few clouds, temperature around 70, only a few trees with leaves turned to gold and everything with a thriving look to it — a beautiful day with my father.

My father got me hooked on the work of Eric Hoffer when I was in high school in the late 1960′s, starting with his most famous book, The True Believer. And I came upon the work of Jamie Glazov thanks to the kind invitation of David Swindle, associate editor of FrontPage magazine and assistant managing editor of NewsReal Blog. David asked me if I wanted to comment on his post in support of Phyllis Chesler and Jamie Glazov, which he wrote after Naomi Wolf threw a blogospheric fit over the punksmacking that Dr. Chesler administered unto her on Aug. 31, “The Burqa: the Ultimate Feminist Choice?,” which did not take and had to be repeated on Sept. 2, “Wolf Demands an Apology, Chesler Won’t Back Down,” AND on Sept. 3, “Chesler-Wolf-Glazov: Round Three.” I was one of the first bloggers to jump into the fray in support of Dr. Chesler with my post, “Phyllis Chesler punksmacks Naomi Wolf — couldn’t happen to a nicer girl,” and Jamie Glazov was not far behind with his post, “Why Naomi Wolf loves the burqa.” (In addition, my dear friend Little Miss Attila had pointed remarks for Wolf here and here.)

Since “Jamie” can be either a male or female name, I wanted to find a photo and the Wikipedia biography of Jamie Glazov before responding to David’s generous invitation. What a wonderful revelation to find him! If you truly want to understand the psychological foundation of totalitarian movements, read Eric Hoffer’s books, starting with The True Believer. (In contrast, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is more like a taxonomy of totalitarianism: he tracks who, what and where, but not much why, and the work of Eric Hoffer, which ought to have been his North Star, is not a cloud on his horizon let alone a star in his sky — the magnitude of the omission is stupefying.) After listening to the videos below, I have the sense that Dr. Glazov is a true intellectual heir of Eric Hoffer in his understanding of the Left, especially with his explanation of how the fall of Communism created a vacuum for the Left that they are now filling with their embrace of Islam. I have been mystified about that — I think he explains it perfectly.

As I listened to him I realized that I bring to conservatism tools that have a proven ability to support the individual’s ability to realize his or her full potential and simultaneously reduce indicators of negativity throughout a population without imposing any precepts or behaviors on everyone in it. And I felt really, truly called to start writing more about it. Well, it was nice being thought of as rational and sane while it lasted. Sigh. But I’ll tell you this for sure — it’s definitely not crazier than the belief that you can kill hate by shooting it or appease your way to peace.

I highly recommend listening to Dr. Glazov in the following two videos from May 2009: