Know Your Anatomy

Well, I've done my editorial good deed for the day, and I'm proud.

I'm proofreading today rather than editing, an unusual situation for me, but hey, I'm getting paid as much as if I were editing. It's fun—a vampire novel. Nothing better to read on a cool, gray autumn day.

In one scene, two characters looking for a specific physician peek into a hospital lecture hall, where they encounter a plastic surgeon speaking about how his colleagues can increase their revenues by performing aesthetic enhancement surgery on women's labia. A sexy blonde climbs onto the gynecological exam table set up for the lecture and lies on her back, legs akimbo, to serve as a live model for the description of the procedure that the lecturer will give. The author wrote:

Every eye in the room was pulled to her vagina.

What's wrong with that sentence (other than that you'd normally never encounter it at all)? Well, can the vagina be seen by just looking between a woman's legs and not using fingers or a speculum to get the labia out of the way? No.

So this is the query that I wrote:

Not vulva? The vagina is the interior canal not immediately visible to the eye. The vulva is the external genitalia.

I mean, if you're gonna talk anatomy, do it right, vampires or not.



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If I Had a Hammer ...

Well, now, this will be interesting!

The new siding for my house has arrived, and the contractor had a break in his schedule on another project. So suddenly this afternoon, there are three guys ripping the old cedar shake shingles and asbestos shingles (yes, you read that right!) off my house. I will now get to find out just how well I can concentrate on work while men hammer on the walls. I've turned off the classical music; the hammering kinda interferes with it.

My house will go from barn red to a light, soft moss green. I wonder what color my face will become as I try to focus.



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"Beginning of the End of America"

Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Coundown with Keith Olbermann, continues to be one of the few voices in the mainstream media who say that Emperor George Bush has no clothes. Last night, he said that we now face a "government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from." That is because

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

See the video here; read the transcript here.

Mr. Olbermann, if Bushco doesn't abduct you and send you to Europe for rendition, please run for president. American needs people like you who speak the truth.



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They Like Me! They Really Like Me!

Woohoo! I've just found out that I've been acknowledged in several medical journal articles because I did substantive editing!

"Preventing Antibiotic Resistance: The Next Step"

"Emergency Cardiology: A Review of Recent Literature"

"The Effect of a Predialysis Calcitriol Administration Protocol on Postdialysis Parathyroid Hormone Levels"

You'll have to scroll down to the acknowledgments to see the line about me.

Authors have acknowledged my contributions in books before, but this is the first time anyone's mentioned me in a medical journal. Happy day!



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TV Plus Toddlers Equals Autism or AD/HD?

Cornell University researchers have reported a study which they say indicates that there is a "statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3" (layperson's explanation here). I think their findings are wrong.

I'm a parent of an almost-12-year-old boy with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ([AD/HD] diagnosed when he was 5), the wife of a man with AD/HD (diagnosed when he was 39), and the daughter-in-law of a man with AD/HD (diagnosed when he was 66); obviously, my husband's family carries a gene implicated in AD/HD. I tell you this because some researchers think that AD/HD is another point on the autism spectrum (here, here, here).

In 2004, a report on a study came out saying that it was possible that watching too much TV causes AD/HD; a report on another study came out this year refuting that hypothesis. Though I think that watching too much TV and watching it at an extremely young age are bad things, I have a very hard time believing that TV can cause either neurobehavioral disorder. The researchers in both studies have likely been tripped up by a factor that just happens to coexist with the rise in reported rates of AD/HD and autism, rather than a causative factor.

AD/HD and autism seem to be much more prevalent now than in the past in large part because parents are more aware of them now and more of them are getting their children's problems diagnosed and treated.

Research (for example, here, here, here) has already shown that specific genes can cause a child to be predisposed to developing AD/HD, and here's a story about other genes found to double a child's chance of developing autism. Yes, there are likely environmental causes, but genes seem to play the largest roles in these disorders.

Just wait; eventually a study will show that TV doesn't cause autism.




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"I'm 5 now!"

Last month, my son Jared's kindergarten class celebrated his fifth birthday. I love my cutie.

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The Darwin Awards

The things I learn on the job ...

Just found out about the Darwin Awards in the course of verifying their existence while copyediting a book on paleontology:

Where Evolution Hits the Pavement

We salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it. Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously.

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Helpful Tools for the Self-Employed

A discussion on one of the editing-related e-mail lists I subscribe to began with talk about how much and what kind of lighting freelance editors need while editing onscreen, then turned to other tools. I share this information here for those of you who are self-employed.

In my office, which is my very small kitchen (I suppose some would call it a breakfast nook), I sit under a light fixture that uses three 100-watt lightbulbs. There is also natural light from two windows on the wall behind the computer and from a long, narrow window on the wall perpendicular to the computer on the left side of the room. With all of that light, I rarely experience eye fatigue.

It also helps to have highly technical tools called children to protect your vision. These handy items, of which I have three (but one of them has metamorphosed into an adult and now tools around on her own), cause me to look away from my computer screen quite frequently—and often to blink in amazement at how they operate—which decreases wear and tear on my eyes. They are expensive to maintain, however, and require an investment of approximately 21 years of heavy-duty maintenance. But they do provide reassuring background noise, which can be a comfort to those who don't like the isolation that comes with self-employment. They can be persuaded to act as temporary lap-warmers in cold weather and are good at keeping their owners mentally alert.

Then there are feline tools. I have two of them. Quite useful. They help prevent repetitive-stress injuries, requiring that their owners remove their hands from the keyboard to perform lengthwise stroking of the furry outer covering and scratching under the roughly triangular front-end protuberance. These varied hand motions give overworked wrists a rest.

One colleague recommends also having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), which "forces the editor to get up and move around a whole lot, especially when working on booooorrrrrrring manuscripts."

Indeed. I cannot claim to have that particular tool myself, but I take advantage of it peripherally. My spousal unit, middle-child unit, and father-in-law unit, all of whom are stored in my abode, have AD/HD. Their verbal flights of fancy and tendency to forget my requirement for quiet while I work keep me mentally alert and keep my vocal cords warmed up as I strenuously and repeatedly request a return to quiet. It is because of that tool that I have taken multitasking to supreme levels, allowing me to work while also keeping them on task.




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U.S. GIs Act Like "Trigger-Happy Cowboys"

Yet another atrocity in Iraq:

Oxford, England – A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war.

Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death of Terry Lloyd, 50, a veteran reporter for the British television network ITN.

Witnesses testified during the weeklong inquest that Lloyd—who was driving with fellow ITN reporters from Kuwait toward Basra, Iraq—was shot in the back by Iraqi troops who overtook his car, then died after U.S. fire hit a civilian minivan being used as an ambulance and struck him in the head.

"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said. "There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire." ...

You can read the rest of the Associated Press story here.

Damn.



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Getting Answers from Bush

This ad cheers me up tremendously. Demand answers! Vote for change!



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Caution! Congestion Ahead

You'd think, because our kids are so spread out in age (5, almost 12, 23), that my husband and I would by now be immune to the catch-every-germ-in-the-universe ritual that is part of having a kindergartner.

You'd be wrong.

It's currently snot, snot, snot everywhere. Jared brought home a tenacious cold last week and has been hacking away ever since. His older brother, Neil, is now hacking. He reported that when he arrived at school on Tuesday, his coughing a staccato accompaniment to the classroom noise, several of his classmates let him know they were displeased because they knew they would soon catch what he has. But public schools have this thing about students missing too many class days; they'd never allow us to keep our kids home until they were fully recuperated from each illness. (And that's just one of the reasons that I wish I could juggle both full-time self-employment and homeschooling.)

I spent Monday and Tuesday hacking, blowing my nose, and dozing on the living-room couch or bed, too oxygen-deprived because of severely stuffed sinuses to be able to think and thus to work. I'm still blowing my nose every few minutes, but now it's my husband's turn to be miserable, though his head's far less packed than mine was. His sinuses actually drain, unlike mine.

It's just snot pretty around here.



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More Secret Instant Messages

In the wake of the Foley sex scandal, Mark Morford reveals his chat with a "special" GOP friend: "My Secret IMs With 'The Cowboy.' "




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Next Spring, You Can Call Me ...

... Grandma! I'm so excited!

My daughter, Becky, who got married on my birthday in August, just called from her doctor's office to say that she is 8 weeks pregnant. Her due date is May 18, her husband Li's birthday. This baby will show up a couple of years earlier than planned, but hey—the relatives and I will get to take turns passing him or her around while Becky is receiving her master's degree diploma this June.

And yes, the baby will have a 5-year-old uncle and an 11-year-old uncle—my sons Jared and Neil. :-)



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Cronies (Not Reading) First

This bothers the hell out of me, especially because I've done projects for McGraw-Hill, though for a different division of the company:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration pushed local school districts across the country to use a reading curriculum that had been developed by a company with close political and financial ties to the administration despite concerns about the quality of the curriculum and despite the fact that, in some cases, states sought to use other curricula, according to the results of an independent government investigation released today. As a result, the investigation concluded that the Bush administration violated the No Child Left Behind federal education law.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said that the report shows that it's time for the Department of Education—which last year admitted that it had paid media commentators hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce covert propaganda—to clean house.

"Corrupt cronies at the Department of Education wasted taxpayer dollars on an inferior reading curriculum for kids that was developed by a company headed by a Bush friend and campaign contributor," said Miller. "Instead of putting children first, they chose to put their cronies first. Enough is enough. President Bush and Secretary Spellings must take responsibility and do a wholesale housecleaning at the Education Department."

The investigation, conducted by the Department of Education’s Inspector General, found that the Department of Education made states’ funding under the federal Reading First program contingent on their using a reading curriculum developed by McGraw-Hill, Inc. or one from a short list of commercial reading programs. The report concluded that the Department of Education had stacked peer review panels, ignored federal statutes, and manipulated state and local reading curriculum selection procedures to steer grants to its favored venders. More than $5 billion has been spent on Reading First since 2002.

McGraw-Hill’s Chairman and CEO, Harold McGraw III, and its Chairman Emeritus, Harold McGraw Jr., contributed a total of over $23,000 to the Republican National Committee and to President Bush’s campaigns between 1999 and 2006. The Bush and McGraw families have been personally and professionally close since the 1930s, according to published reports. ...

Read the rest here. (More stories are available from the New York Times [requires registration] and MSNBC.com.) Hat-tip to Think Progress.

Updated September 23, 2006: Read the inspector general's report here.



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The World's Gone Mad

I've gotten out of the habit of blogging regularly. Life's been hectic but good and without major crises, so I've had little time to write and nothing in my personal life to gripe about even if I did have time.

But what's held me back from posting even more is that everywhere I look around the world, there's something to be disturbed about, and that just gets overwhelming after a while.

• Bush is still lying and obfuscating, and Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers are dying.



• Bush is still trying to make torture by the U.S. military legal, so we can't try him for war crimes.



• Former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell, who sold his soul to Bush to help make the administration's bogus case for war in Iraq, has finally grown a spine enough to take a stand against his former boss's desire to legalize torture, saying that the world has begun to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." Ya think?



• Under the White House–Republican compromise on the torture bill, Bushco still gets to torture but without reprisal from the U.S.The U.S. has been conducting military operations in Iran for several months already because Bush will go ahead with his plan for a war with Iran.



• The pope has insulted Muslims, who've responded with violence.



• Katrina survivors are still being screwed.



• Oncologists are making money off of the cancer drugs they prescribe for their patients.



• There's been a coup in Thailand.



• The genocide in Darfur continues.

Sometimes it's all too depressing to contemplate.




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Nounsensical

I just couldn't resist reading an e-mail in my in-box this morning that had the subject line Hi, noun equivalent.

I was hoping to find that the sender was selling editorial aids—you know, energy boosters for use when editing boring manuscripts—because I am indeed a noun equivalent. But Cialis was the only thing on offer. Geez! Don't tease me that way, spammers!




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U.S. Imperialism

Five years ago, on September 16, my youngest son was born. He lives in a land of privilege, a land whose citizens can't fathom why people of other nations hate them.

Somewhere in Iraq, there is a child who was born five years ago, in a land whose citizens can't fathom why the Americans invaded their country. Both children are precious and should be protected. But it's hard for the Iraqi child's mother to protect him; his father was killed in a raid by American troops, and all that's left of his family's home is rubble. He goes to bed whimpering in fear each night; my son falls asleep quickly, trusting that nothing bad will happen to him.

Things might not be this way if the Bush administration hadn't incited enough hatred worldwide to create more terrorists. And if earlier U.S. administrations hadn't thought it necessary, over the years, to help place specific leaders into power in some nations. And if U.S. businesses hadn't thought it necessary to expand into other nations; expansions bring along with them features of American culture that sometimes are in wild contrast to the cultures of those nations and so bring unsettling changes and sometimes fear and hatred.

I cannot understand the attitude that other nations should become more like the U.S. That attitude has caused generations worldwide to suffer. When will the suffering end?




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Rock Star

My son Neil, the soon-to-be rock star and
newly minted seventh-grader



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Life Extremes

Talk about your life extremes! I have pictures for you from my youngest's first day of kindergarten, which was today, and my oldest's wedding, which was on August 6:

Jared climbs aboard the bus.
















Li and Becky before their wedding (more photos here)

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Impeach