cameron’s ramblings

hilary gave a pretty authentic sounding endorsement of barack last night, and that gives me minor warm ‘n fuzzies.

i’m reasonably confident that obama is going to win the popular vote, but his electoral victory is going to be damn close. hilary’s a fairly decent ally; she’s a much more formidable foe. already, she started to show signs of aggressive posturing against mccain. it’s good that she has a new target. the dems should bolster her offense. that way obama can continue to play nice guy, and he’ll have a new general. maybe?

a very funny article in today’s nytimes (here) implicates britons, and their holiday benders, as a seriously destructive force. i’m always amused when various european factions squabble about innane topics (a few years back, the italians attempted to ban german tourists because they didn’t accord with the italian aesthetic). at issue here is some fairly scary stuff. apparently, the britons are responsible for all kinds of badness on beautiful greek isles. they fly in; get inebriated; and cause a general ruckus. some even get badly injured or killed. take a gander at the piece; there are some brilliant quotes.

i stumbled upon an amusing poem today. it highlights the plentiful exceptions to english pronunciation. give it a try, out loud:

I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.

there’s a russian language search engine called yandex; it has an impressive market share that’s three times larger than that of google.

this fact inclined me to ponder…is there really a chance that google’s english language supremacy could be challenged?

the famed super tunner super collider is primed and operational. and the world hasn’t ended…yet. (or maybe it did and we were transported back in time from a blighted future.) this is an image of the first proton beam. it looks a wee bit off-center to me, but then i’m not a research physicist:

i’m beginning to realize that medicine may actually be getting more, rather than less, interesting. i don’t attribute this change to evolving technology or newfangled interentions. rather, as our healthcare system becomes progressively more broken, the game becomes more fun. medicine is pretty damn dilapidated already, and its descent towards mayhem promises to continue for quite some time.

laura and i had a very pleasant evening with our mentor/friend dr. lowe from children’s hospital. medicine truly is populated by a pretty impressive collection of people. if only we could unite for the common good…. that’s our job, after all, right?

i genuinely hope, for your own sake, that you caught last night’s olympic broadcast. the poor patriotic middle-american competitor, alicia sacramone, was straight-up hosed by the judges…. okay. we’ve all come to expect a degree of host nation nepotism. big deal.

the best part was bela karolyi’s nbc tyrade. the man wept russian tears. it was touching.

the burj dubai skyscraper is absolutely staggering:

while watching the glorious olympics last night, laura made a stunning realization. several of the female gymnasts on china’s team still have their baby teeth. others have telltale gaps from very recent losses. now i’m not a dentist, and i do realize that these specimens defy normal human growth/development/physiology. nonetheless, these girls simply cannot be 16 years old. i don’t have much of an issue with the age thing; it’s the brazen deceit that’s a bit bothersome.

i guess some tooth fairies bring gold medals…