Well, I had already paid for an annual membership at 24hr fitness prior to heading down to Texas to visit my favorite sister and her kids. So, game on sis. I had actually discussed some of my baseline measurements with my Mom on the plane. I should just say observations I s’pose. If my Mom reads this, she’ll be happy to know I made it the length of the pool under water. However, I found that the reason for this was that I tried it prior to working out. I can’t do it once my heart rate is elevated. I can cover 25 yds doing the breast stroke in 28 seconds and 50 yds in 64 seconds.
I’ll check my weight on my Wii within the next few days.

I also wanted to put some history down so when I express my consternation with Sara’s comments, it’s clear why. I was in a motorcycle accident in September of 1998 in which I broke my left radius and on its way out of my body it took my ulna with it. I had multiple rib fractures on my left side and broke the metacarpal on my right thumb. So, I’m intimately familiar with osteoclasts and osteoblasts (the little cells in animals that break down bone and build it back up). From the time I could use my right hand after the accident until late 2003 I worked in the biomedical field doing research in both organ transplantation and immunology. I took premed courses prior to my accident that included physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, etc. I believe 6 hrs of biochemistry….this includes lots of different little pathways and ‘stuff’ that occur in the human body. I love my sister and in many ways she is markedly more intelligent than me, but I find it absolutely remarkable that she felt the need to explain to me that our bodies ‘continuously change out their cells and stuff.’ She did however go on to make my point for me which is that without stem cell research, lung tissue once damaged, stays damaged. It’s only going to be when we learn how to turn on and off different bits of machinery in lung cells that we will figure out how to cure instead of treat something that has been incurable since lungs first appeared in animals millions of years ago. This is why I conclude that Dubya has turned back the clock in medicine and probably contributed indirectly to the deaths of many people that suffer from horrible diseases.

Once again they didn't feel comfortable enough to put Palin up there to grease the republican spin machine. She's very much a liability to that campaign now.

Wow, I'm watching the presidential debate. McCain keeps attacking Obama, Obama then defends himself well, and then Barack goes on to explain his plan for whatever McCain attacked or something that is of concern to most listeners. The commentator brought up negative ads and attacks and both candidates say they're bad and then McCain actually attacks Obama more. Right now Obama is stating that one of the reason's we need to fund education is that a nation cannot and never has kept the best military in the world without educating its people. Certainly even more pertinent now I would think. Warfare is now so much more dependant on technology, information, and even PR.
More later on my Sis's comments.

Why won’t science catch nature in my case? Well, maybe it’s the stock market these days that has me down, but I doubt that’s the reason. Actually let’s examine first that the progression of science has abated and particularly medical science. Yeah, I don’t really have any evidence that it has slowed, but it’s a pretty logical deduction (or is it induction?) Thanks to George Dubbya, the U.S. has the EPA acting like a going concern instead of relying on science to make decisions, the bioethics committee is made up of religious conservatives posing as doctors, and his other ‘appointments’ to various panels and committees has the science community in preservation mode instead of growth and the future. The field that has been hit the hardest in his move to make the U.S. and the world a more ‘moral’ place has been the medical field, particularly research regarding stem cells. Stem cell research is where the answers will be revealed as far as both treating and curing disease - far more easily than what you would think of as traditional medical research. In this area alone, my guess is it’ll take 5 to 10 years to catch up to where we once belonged. (The very last part of that phrase is from a Beatles song I believe, and the meanings may even be similar) I'm going to check on that and get back to you.

Well, I’m just gonna start writing since I continually put this off thinking I’ll come up with something profound and it doesn’t happen or I just don’t get around to writing it down. Or, this stupid laptop will do this thing where all of a sudden I can’t do anything but write in caps and it selects odd areas of what I’ve written and I can’t get it to stop. So, I’m now saving every other line so I can shut down my computer and restart without losing what I’ve written. Pretty boring so far, huh? Gets better I certainly hope.
Yesterday I came upon a realization that comes to most people by the time their in high school -- I’m mortal. Now, it wasn’t really until later in life (maybe I was 30 or so) that I came to understand that science will at some point enable us to live indefinitely, i.e. become immortal. I still believe that someone born within my lifetime will be able to do exactly that. Up until yesterday, I really thought that it would be during my lifetime and that I, myself, might be able to live for quite some time -- you know, like over a couple hundred years (I’m talking Old Testament lifetime). You haven’t missed anything. There wasn’t any breaking scientific news recently regarding medicine and the inability to repair damaged DNA or any other related event. And, as you’re probably thinking, it wasn’t the sudden onset of sanity that brought me to my senses. It was simply the fact that I am out of breath when I do many simple things and when I do those simple things my pulse is over 100 even if it’s just going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Ah, so my sister (who’ll probably be the first to read this) is either thinking, ‘there he goes again’….‘he really is a hypochondriac,’ and/or ‘I really shouldn’t have gotten that book for him.’ Well, the book WAS funny in both content and intent. Anyway, I have some respiratory problem that is going to cut some years off of my life. Nothing startling, nothing that’ll kill me in the next couple or probably even 10 years, but something that is very hard to fix and science isn’t gonna catch nature in this case.
I’m very angry with myself that I’ve complicated my own issue through doing things that I knew were not good for me or my lungs. Well, more on that later. I’ve got to get my laundry and fix a burger.