Freedom Ride for Dystonia

FYI–I’ve set up a blog for the fundraising poker run I’m organizing (with help from the Dystonia Support Group of Greater Washington, the Baltimore/Johns Hopkins, MD Support Group, my contacts at the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, Old Glory Harley-Davidson of Laurel, members of my NRG networking group and many other individuals–most especially including my husband, who’s provided so much support for all my endeavors).

Anyway, please check out the Freedom Ride for Dysonia blog and feel free to pass it along or link to it on your blogs or Web sites. If you’d like to register for the ride, keep your eye on the site. I will be updating it with information about the event and, when it becomes available, include a link to Web page where you can register online. If you’d like to sponsor or make a monetary or in-kind donation, please feel free to contact me and include “Dystonia Ride” in the subject line, so your message doesn’t get shuttled off to spam limbo.

You can also find this event listed on Facebook.

Save Trees, Stop the Catalogs

Are you getting loads of unwanted holiday catalogs? Here’s something you can do to help save a few trees and energy, too.

Catalog Choice lets you decide which mailings you’d like to get and eliminate the rest. Sponsored by the Ecology Center and endorsed by several prominent environmental groups and foundations, the “mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unwanted catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. They aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate their mail preference for catalogs, and businesses can receive the list in a secure manner so that they can efficiently honor the requests.”

(Quoting from Project ecoBrand.)

Rap Battle as Legal Argument

This is just too funny (especially the music at the end).

Thanks to the (new) legal writer and Feddie of Southern Appeal for posting this.

A History Lesson on Thanksgiving

I was surprised to find out that Thanksgiving became a federal holiday due less to the Pilgrims and more to the Civil War. How many of you knew that President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national holiday, not only to give thanks for the harvest, but to support “the advancing armies and navies of the Union” and encourage prayers for “all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged”?

If you read the entire column, you’ll see that the Thanksgiving of 1676 didn’t go nearly as smoothly as the first one in 1621. Not very smoothly at all.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Now, Where Was I?

We’ve become very sensitive these days to the subject of memory loss. An elderly person pauses to retrieve a word from the tip of his tongue and calls it a “senior moment” (as if younger people were incapable of forgetting anything). We worry when we’ve made a trip to the kitchen, only to have forgotten what we wanted there.

Memory loss happens. Apparently, our memory starts to worsen when we’re as young as 25 (ouch!). But occasionally forgetting things doesn’t mean we’re getting Alzheimer’s. And this article provides a link to where you can read more about it.

Nice to Know We’re Wanted

So, remind me–why are we still in Iraq?

Watch Your Electrons

Now here’s a statistic on video games that will give you pause. The LA Times says: “Video game consoles in the U.S. consume more than $1 billion of electricity a year just when sitting idle, according to a report issued today by the Natural Resources Defense Council.” That’s a lot of energy–even more, when you play the darn things. Here’s a thought. Save some electricity. Read books instead. Or if you’re with a group, play cards. Or sit around, listen to music and talk. (What a concept.)

Meanwhile, the cellphone industry is trying to make it easier for consumers to compare the energy efficiency of phone chargers by assigning them a rating of zero (least efficient) to five (most efficient) stars.

“If the more than three billion people owning mobile devices today switched to a four- or five-star charger, this could save the same amount of energy each year as produced by two medium sized power plants,” Nokia said in a statement.

And remember–if you keep your charger plugged in when not in use, it wastes electricity. According to Nokia, about two-thirds of the electricity used by cellphones is wasted this way.

World Toilet Day?

Yes, according to the LA Times, today is World Toilet Day. Who gives a crap? Well, I do. The flush toilet doesn’t get nearly as much appreciation as it deserves. So it’s right to set aside a day to celebrate the convenience and sanitary benefits of the humble commode. Indoor plumbing is, indeed, a wonderful thing. (After a week or so of camping or using a latrine, you can truly understand just how wonderful.) And the article talks about how nasty life could be before the flush toilet hit the scene (think sewage in drinking water and massive disease outbreaks).

And, in keeping with the day, it should be noted that it is an urban legend that the flush toilet was invented by Sir Thomas Crapper. Crapper was neither the inventor of this modern convenience nor was he even a “Sir.” He was an inventor, who held several patents for improvements on the toilet–otherwise, he was simply a plumber. The honors for inventing the flush toilet go to 16th-century author Sir John Harrington. However, Crapper may have been the one who gave the toilet its nickname.

Carlin Posthumously Awarded Twain Prize

The late George Carlin was recently given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, reportedly “the only award he saw as a legitimate comedy prize.” At a Kennedy Center ceremony in his honor, Carlin was praised by many of his peers, including Jon Stewart, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers and Dennis Leary. And, in an odd twist, the ceremony drew a small group of protesters who gathered nearby on Pennsylvania Avenue, some holding signs saying “Carlin’s Going to Hell.”

It never ceases to amaze me how worked up some people can get about something as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things as humor.

Spenser on Your Computer

I am literally minutes away from leaving to catch a flight to Boston for the New England Crime Bake, so I’ll make this quick. If you have some time to kill this weekend and would like to catch an episode of Spenser for Hire, the TV show, you can find it right here.

I’m a huge Spenser fan (not to mention Avery Brooks), so I look forward to seeing this someday (when I actually have time to kill!).

(Thanks to Lee Goldberg for the link.)