doubting thom

elfintech posted a photo:

elfintech posted a photo:

Part of the art wall at the “Magic Garden” community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

elfintech posted a photo:

Part of the art wall at the “Magic Garden” community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

elfintech posted a photo:

Part of the art wall at the “Magic Garden” community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

elfintech posted a photo:

Part of the art wall at the “Magic Garden” community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

elfintech posted a photo:

Part of the art wall at the “Magic Garden” community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A good blog entry on how Baen Books has leveraged free downloads of their books into increased sales of both e-books and paper titles.

[original link courtesy Writing On Your Palm]

Via Activist Moose

Cool poster shows a graphical representation of the proportional amount of the U.S. budget apportioned by various agencies. More than half is spent on defense agencies and projects, and the discrepancies are easily seen in this graphical format. Note: The graphics linked from this page are quite large.

While writing the previous entry about my broken tooth, I did a quick Google search on “mitral valve prolapse” in order to include a link to information about it. Ever since my murmur was first discovered when I was 16 (though the doctor insisted it was likely congenital but just had been missed by other doctors before then), I’d been told that it was a fairly common defect, and that it wouldn’t have any effect on my life other than the need to take prophylactic courses of antibiotics before dental work, because of the slim possibility otherwise for developing endocarditis. So I rarely gave it another thought, except when filling out medical histories or seeing the dentist.

In the meantime, though, throughout my life I’ve experienced, to varying degrees, a range of other symptoms and syndromes for which my doctors could never find any specific underlying etiology, including cold sweats, chest pain, racing heart, a sense of impending doom, insomnia, shortness of breath, very cold extremities, sometimes with tingling and numbness, dizzyness, lightheadedness, fatigue, orthostatic hypotension and severe headaches, among others. Fortunately, none of these have ever been particularly debilitating in my case, but they’ve certainly ranged from merely annoying, to more distracting, to sometimes quite frightening. This article suggests that such symptoms may in fact be part of an underlying autonomic nervous system disorder of which MVP is merely a physical marker, something no doctor I’ve seen ever has suggested to me. I have no idea if this article is merely a single doctor’s opinion, or if there is a more general consensus (though a casual search already is turning up more concurrences), but it’s so incredibly relieving already just to learn that these other symptoms might not be psychosomatic, as I’d come to fear, but may actually have a physical basis. That possibility alone already makes me feel a great deal better.

Ouch. Today my boss brought in a bag of Sweet Tarts, my favorite (non-chocolate) candy, to share with us. As I was sitting at my computer eating one, I had a strange sensation and then my tongue felt an odd difference within my mouth: my lower left backmost molar was partially missing, with what felt like a huge hole on its inner side. Back when I was a kid, my first visit to the dentist after I’d lost all my baby teeth uncovered about six cavities, all of which were filled at the time; I hadn’t had a cavity since, but the fillings in those teeth–now at least 30 years old–remained. I’m not sure now if part of the tooth actually broke off, or just a chunk of filling; whichever it was, I swallowed it along with the candy before realizing what had happened.

So tomorrow I’ll need to try to make an appointment with a dentist, hopefully for Friday since we’re supposed to go up to Philadelphia for the weekend. I don’t currently have a dentist, so I’ll have to try to find a new one who both accepts my insurance and is willing to fit me in pretty quickly. It’s somewhat complicated because I also need to take a regiment of antibiotics before any dental work (because of my MVP), but I don’t have any on hand, so I’ll also have to find a dentist who’s willing to write me a prescription for amoxicillin tomorrow, sight unseen, before fixing me up on Friday.

Fortunately, the broken tooth/filling isn’t particularly painful, just uncomfortable and annoying. I’m able to eat on the other side with no real trouble, and the very cold ice tea I had with dinner was the first and only thing so far today that actually caused any twinges of pain; rather, it’s more irritating because the missing piece feels so big to my tongue, which keeps brushing against the unfamiliar and slightly sharp edges, ending up a little sore.