Ed’s corner of the web

Some people go crazy with Christmas decorations, a rare few do both Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it’s only the very elite hard core decorator who goes for the end-of-year trifecta of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  Our across-the-street neighbor is one of these people.  Behold:

The picture can’t really do it justice.  The skeleton inside the glowing coffin on the first floor moves around.  The dude on the organ at the far right plays scary music.  And there are speakers that play all manner of screams, cat yowls, and other scary sounds.

My favorite costume of the night: a family of three little girls, the middle one dressed up as Dorothy, ruby slippers and all.  The little one was the cowardly lion, which was very practical since it looked very fleecy and warm.  The eldest (maybe about 4 years old) was dressed as the wicked witch, and she had ruby slippers, too.  Clearly she was the Wicked Witch of the East, pre-house-crushing.

Carisa’s favorite costume of the night: three little girls, maybe about 6 years old, dressed up in ripped up cheerleader costumes covered in blood.  Yeah.

Ah – a topic near and dear to my heart.  Like many of you who have traveled around with world with electronic equipment, I’ve been flabbergasted by the panoply of power plugs I have to navigate to get some juice back into my gadgets.  110V?  240V?  Two prong?  Three poles?  It’s enough to drive a man batty, I tell ya.  And it forces me to lug around a heavy voltage convertor, which stinks doubly for someone who prefers to travel light.  If, like me, you’ve always scratched your head and wondered how the world ended up this way, now you can finally learn why here.

Before this theme gets too old, I want to reserve a special shout-out for Wired Magazine.  Thank you, Wired, for having the bravery and integrity to do what the rest of mainstream media was unwilling to do: put “Vaccines don’t cause autism” on your cover, highlighted in fluorescent green, for the whole world to see.  And not only that, you backed that statement with a well-crafted, reasoned, non-hysterical article inside.  It makes me want to go out, buy extra copies, and put them in my hospital waiting rooms.  Bravo.  The rationality is very, very refreshing.

We’re going to continue today’s theme of thanks by sending some gratitude towards Minnesota.  Just like every other state in the nation, Minnesota is faced with a shortage of primary care physicians.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out one of the big reasons: a graduating medical student has little reason to become a family physician if he or she can make two, three, or even more times as much money by choosing a more lucrative specialty, like dermatology or radiology.  This financial disincentive comes even more into play when considering the staggering six-figure debt that most medical school graduates are faced with today.  Part of the solution, Senator Franken realizes, is to provide loan forgiveness to those graduates who choose to enter primary care or work in underserved areas.  It’s a no-brainer that unfortunately hasn’t caught on very well in the power circles.  Here’s some hope that it gains some traction.

So there I was, drowning in comment spam, my poor little blog neglected out of an ill-informed, futile attempt to reduce the tide of spam coming from all the pharmacies of ill-repute out on the interwebs.  Desperate, I turned to my colleague Eliot Gelwan for help.  A prolific blogger himself, I knew I could turn to him for advice.  I was not disappointed, for Dr. Gelwan pointed me in the direction of Wordpress’s own anti-spam plugin, a feature I had not noticed in my helplessness and n00bishness.  Now girded in the armor of Akismet, I feel rejuvenated.  I no longer have to login to my blog in fear.