Zygoteville

From Tiananmen to Tehran

Both photos from The Boston Globe's "The Big Picture" series. [More photos of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, more photos of last week's protests in Iran.]

The Infamous Bai Jiu Incident VII

I am shocked, shocked, that it has been seven years since The Infamous Bai Jiu Incident of June 15, 2009. I am perhaps even more shocked that it has been three years since I have solicited similar stories from Zygoteville readers. The time has come again for friends and frenemies (you know who you are) alike to share your stories of inebriation. Please don't be shy.

As you can see, on my end pretty much nothing has changed:

"Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Day

Tomorrow, March 20, 2009, would have been the 81st birthday of Fred Rogers, known the world over as Mister Rogers. In honor of his birthday, the city of Pittsburgh last year held the first ever "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Day, in which they asked people to celebrate Mister Rogers' birthday by wearing their favorite sweaters and participating in activities that promote kindness and caring for your neighbors, broadly defined.

My second most favorite story about Mister Rogers is how one day the second-hand Impala that he had been driving for years, was stolen from its parking spot near the WQED studio. Rogers filed a police report, and the story was picked up by the local news outlet. Within 48 hours, the car had been returned to the spot from where it had been stolen, along with a note stating: "If we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it!"

My first most favorite story is this one.

I'm wearing my favorite sweater tomorrow, because I miss Mister Rogers.

revisiting the torture question

Mark Danner had a horrific article in today's NY Times detailing the torture experienced by detainees in the C.I.A.'s secret prisons abroad. How will the Obama administration respond? As information increasingly comes to light of torture committed with the explicit approval of senior Bush administration, will it force the hand of Attorney General Eric Holder, who already stated during his confirmation hearings in the Senate that waterboarding is torture, and later added that "no one is above the law"?

Perhaps. But at least for now, ranking members of the Bush administration -- including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- who demonstrated a profound lack of a moral imperative by authorizing treatment that any civilian would identify as torture, are simply sauntering back to their pre-2001 lives with their confidence and self-assuredness intact. Thus, in a recent interview in the Stanford Report, Rice acknowledges that "It's perfectly legitimate to be critical of what's been a complicated and sometimes controversial and always consequential last eight years," but goes on to say: "The only thing I ask is that people be respectful of listening to the views and what we faced and how we went about it."

Respectful? How can you respect a National Security Adviser who knowingly authorized torture and in doing so profoundly jeopardized the security of American soldiers abroad and damaged the international credibility and reputation of the country as a whole? Why does she deserve our respect when she betrayed (helpfully, another article in today's NY Times reminded us where in Hell Dante placed betrayers) our most sacred trust and helped to leave our country the weakest and most insecure that it has been in decades? She and Cheney and the others do not deserve our respect. Nor do they deserve our inaction. The question is, will we act to bring them to justice? When? How?

I would argue that if we do not confront head-on the Bush administration's flagrant disregard of the law and of common human decency, our inaction will in the end wreak far graver consequences than our current economic crisis. At the same time, I fear the likely reality is that we as a country are too busy bailing out our banks, auto industries, and 401ks to do anything about it. By the time the Bush torturers are back in our sights, it may already be too late to bring them to justice. But maybe by then it won't matter anyway, because by that point there won't be anything left of the America that once was, or might have been, to be worth trying to save at all.

Letters from Sammy: October 21, 1992

In following with tradition (2007, 2008), here are two letters and one school essay from my cousin Sammy. All came in the same envelope.

Sammy would be 25 years old today.

Letter #1: The earthquake Sammy references was the magnitude 7.3 Landers Earthquake, which took place on June 28, 1992.

Letter #2: Based on the date of the envelope, Sammy would have been eight years old. However, in this letter he says he's nine. I may have consolidated multiple letters from different dates into this envelope at some point. Also, FYI, the Raphael that Sammy is talking about were these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle dolls that transformed from a pet turtle looking creature to the ninja-fighting street warrior. I found some pictures of a similar TMNT mutations toy here.

School Essay: I am assuming the house that Sammy talks about in this letter is our cousin Gene and Angels' house, since they were the only ones growing up who lived near the ocean.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Once again, here is my single unendingly corny concession to the holiday for which I otherwise have the utmost contempt. Happy Valentine's Day! (Here are previous years' comics: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.)

hospital emergency codes

I was at Kaiser the other day and took a cell phone photo of this flyer displaying various hospital emergency codes. Presumably, Kaiser and other hospitals use these emergency codes to disseminate important information to staff through their general paging system without alarming patients. I've been curious about hospital emergency codes ever since an episode of Grey's Anatomy used "Code Black" as "there is a bomb in the hospital" (or in this case, more specifically, "there is a live bomb in the internal cavity of a patient in the hospital"). My sister, who is a pediatrician, tells me that different hospitals use different coding systems. For example, at her hospital "Code Pink" is for a child abduction. And she confirmed that no, she had never heard of any hospital, including her own, which had a specific code for a bomb.