I just read in the September 22 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine that the recently deceased Johnny Ramone was a staunch conservative. Johnny Ramone! Man, I knew there was a reason I never really liked that band.
Scary.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Things I learned from TV, part I
I've always been fascinated with the bubonic plague, or as it's more romantically known, The Black Death. Somehow my Tivo figured this out and recorded an episode of a new PBS series called "Secrets of the Dead." This particular episode focused on a small village in central England called Eyam that's well known because several townspeople mysteriously survived the plague when it arrived in 1665. By order of the town's pastor, no one was aloud to enter or leave Eyam while the plague went about decimating the majority of its citizens, and the only food came from neighboring villagers who kindly left provisions at a well on the outskirts of town.
Oddly, I've been to Eyam. My family and I were in central England last summer and we drove to the small, gray little village one day at my mother's insistance. I remember mom and I tromping resolutely through a graveyard and several soggy pastures in search of the aforementioned well, but the signage was more than a little confusing and eventually we gave up and returned to our rental car, where my stepdad and sister were waiting grumpily (it was well past lunchtime).
While we were searching in vain for Eyam's well, mom related to me the story of the town's legacy as she knew it: the arrival of the plague via an infected bolt of cloth sent to the village's tailor and the fact that the town had quarantined itself in order to stop the spread of the deadly disease. I had no idea until I watched this show, however, that there had been survivors, and that for centuries scientists have been struggling to discover how this could have happened. Even more interesting is the fact that some survivors contracted the deadly bacteria and then recovered, while others never fell ill at all.
I'll leave the details to the experts, but apparently geneticists have only recently discovered that the survivors contained a genetic mutuation called d32 that saved them from the ravages of the plague. They discovered this by testing the DNA of the survivors' direct descendants, many of whom still live in Eyam. They all had one or two copies of the gene. The assumption is that survivors with one copy of d32 contracted the plague and recovered, while those with two copies never fell ill at all.
Now here's the amazing part. Scientists have recently discovered that some American men who are at high risk for AIDS, but never contracted the disease while their friends were dying in droves, also carry one or two copies of d32. It makes sense. Many Americans are the descendants of European plague survivors, and AIDS, our modern plague, is very similar to the Black Death in terms of the way that it attacks the immune system (although the plague is bacterial and AIDS is a virus, both infections enter white blood cells and render them ineffective). Apparently a man named Steve Crohn, whose lover was the 5th victim of AIDS in the U.S., has never contracted the disease. Researchers tested his blood and discovered he has two copies of d32.
Scientists are now trying to create pharmaceuticals that mimic d32 in order to stop the spread of the AIDS virus. And hey, if that doesn't work, there's always crocodile blood.
Oddly, I've been to Eyam. My family and I were in central England last summer and we drove to the small, gray little village one day at my mother's insistance. I remember mom and I tromping resolutely through a graveyard and several soggy pastures in search of the aforementioned well, but the signage was more than a little confusing and eventually we gave up and returned to our rental car, where my stepdad and sister were waiting grumpily (it was well past lunchtime).
While we were searching in vain for Eyam's well, mom related to me the story of the town's legacy as she knew it: the arrival of the plague via an infected bolt of cloth sent to the village's tailor and the fact that the town had quarantined itself in order to stop the spread of the deadly disease. I had no idea until I watched this show, however, that there had been survivors, and that for centuries scientists have been struggling to discover how this could have happened. Even more interesting is the fact that some survivors contracted the deadly bacteria and then recovered, while others never fell ill at all.
I'll leave the details to the experts, but apparently geneticists have only recently discovered that the survivors contained a genetic mutuation called d32 that saved them from the ravages of the plague. They discovered this by testing the DNA of the survivors' direct descendants, many of whom still live in Eyam. They all had one or two copies of the gene. The assumption is that survivors with one copy of d32 contracted the plague and recovered, while those with two copies never fell ill at all.
Now here's the amazing part. Scientists have recently discovered that some American men who are at high risk for AIDS, but never contracted the disease while their friends were dying in droves, also carry one or two copies of d32. It makes sense. Many Americans are the descendants of European plague survivors, and AIDS, our modern plague, is very similar to the Black Death in terms of the way that it attacks the immune system (although the plague is bacterial and AIDS is a virus, both infections enter white blood cells and render them ineffective). Apparently a man named Steve Crohn, whose lover was the 5th victim of AIDS in the U.S., has never contracted the disease. Researchers tested his blood and discovered he has two copies of d32.
Scientists are now trying to create pharmaceuticals that mimic d32 in order to stop the spread of the AIDS virus. And hey, if that doesn't work, there's always crocodile blood.
Error message redux
I tried to load a website a few days ago and encountered this message:
“The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process”
Okay then. Glad we cleared that up.
This bewildering little piece of internet prose immediately brought to mind those halcyon days in the late 90s when the Web was rife with files unfound, jenny middle america’s personal homepage was eternally under construction (not that we actually wanted to read about her award-winning collection of tea cozies) and some people really believed that Bill Gates would send them $1000 just for forwarding an email (yes, they really did).
It also reminded me of this article, which still gives me a chuckle.
“The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process”
Okay then. Glad we cleared that up.
This bewildering little piece of internet prose immediately brought to mind those halcyon days in the late 90s when the Web was rife with files unfound, jenny middle america’s personal homepage was eternally under construction (not that we actually wanted to read about her award-winning collection of tea cozies) and some people really believed that Bill Gates would send them $1000 just for forwarding an email (yes, they really did).
It also reminded me of this article, which still gives me a chuckle.
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