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I chanted torah Friday night and Saturday morning. Friday night went well, and I got lots of compliments. Saturday morning I made several mistakes, starting when I tripped over something I'd never tripped over in practice. Sigh. But it made me laugh, because earlier that morning my rabbi had told this story: He just came back from the national convention of North-American (Reform) rabbis. They had 1900 rabbis there, and for morning services on a torah-reading day, instead of having one of those rabbis do the torah chanting they had some students from a local high school. (Nice touch: you save figuring out the precedence while giving the locals a unique opportunity.) For one of the aliyot, they called everyone who had been a rabbi for at least 50 years. There were nine of them, so there was this poor high-school kid chanting under the direct scrutiny of 450 years' worth of experience. The kid was clearly shaken (I hope he was warned in advance). I found myself thinking that I don't think I would be especially shaken; once you've passed the threshold of 1900 rabbis in the room, who cares if the senior-most ones are looking over my shoulder? And then, fifteen minutes later, I went and stumbled over the torah reading. Oops. :-)

Sometime before the end of Daylight Spending Time, I want to replace my car. My current favorite is the Honda Fit, but that's based on specs and reviews; I've never driven one. (So I want to go to a dealer, but I know that once I do that I set things in motion, so I should do this when I've set aside time for car shopping.) I just checked edmunds.com and was surprised to find that people are currently paying sticker price. Either the recent kudos from Consumer Reports had a real effect, or there's a shortage, or something else is going on that I haven't thought of. Maybe I should wait a few months and see if that changes.

Aside: in PA do you pay sales tax on the purchase price of the new car, or on the purchase price minus your trade-in? Last time my trade-in was 15 years old so I didn't notice nor overly care. This time, according to Edmunds, my trade-in is worth close to $10k, so this matters. (I try to always have a bottom-line figure in mind before walking into a dealership.)

I got a bizarre phone call recently. The caller was an attorney (he didn't say with whom), and he was calling because he had found my name on a list of people who had worked on DCE, the Distributed Computing Environment (which I did from 1990 to around 1995). He said only that he was researching "prior art". He asked what my role on the project was and I told him (peon for one of several companies working on this joint project). He asked how familiar I was with the code base, and I said "well, it's been 12 years, umm". I apologized for not being able to help him more, and he said it's ok; he's got a couple hundred names. (Belatedly I wondered where he got his lists and how many interns or whatnot he used to get current phone numbers for all of them.)

Last night at lorimelton and ralphmelton's excellent Saint-Patrick's party, I ran into someone else who worked on that project. I asked if she'd gotten a similar call or if he'd lost steam before getting to the "S"s in his list of names, and this was news to her. It occurs to me now that hers is a more common name than mine, so he might be filtering his list based on probability of getting the right person.

Someone recently commented to me that with the growth of the internet, Google is becoming less useful as a way of finding answers because of all the junk you get in the results (such as fora where someone else asked the same question but no one has answered). I said that for more targetted queries, I'm trying to train myself to go first to Wikipedia -- which might not have the answer, but is likely to have outbound links, so someone else has culled the search results for me, maybe. For broader queries and when I just plain forget, I still use Google.

As an example, I said (while feeding drugs to my cat), I wonder how antibiotics work. That is, they always tell you to take the full course even if the symptoms go away earlier; why is that? So, off to Wikipedia I went, and came up empty. And thence to Google, where I found a page on howstuffworks.com called "how do antibiotics work?" (bingo!) -- with no answer to my question. So I still don't know. It's not important enough for me to invest real effort (maybe I'll ask my vet next time I see her), but I was disappointed to fail so soon after describing what I thought was a good approach.

That aside, though, Google and Wikipedia have made it much easier to go from "I wonder..." to "oh, that's the answer", which means I'm much more likely to actually chase down answers to random questions a little bit. If I had the internet in my pocket that would be even better, as I wouldn't lose the things that come up in conversation while out.

Short takes:

I accept responsibility for the rain earlier this week; the karmic consequences of the carwash were worth it for the desalination. However, the drop in temperature that turned the rain to noisy rain and thence to snow is not my fault. (I think the noisy rain was freezing rain rather than sleet. I learned the difference Friday when I got curious.)

Earlier this week Erik was not very interested in food, but after a day or so of that (and getting fluids) he was back to having an appetite. Then yesterday he ate two cans of food, approximately 10% of his body weight. What's up with that? Today is back to normal. I'm not complaining (I want him to eat), but I'm puzzled.

Security audit of Hogwarts, from securitymentor2.

I am interested in finding movies (or TV shows) in Hebrew with English subtitles. (I need to improve my comprehension of the spoken language.) Bonus points for science fiction, fantasy, and non-police drama. Ultra-bonus points for anything I've already seen in English (B5 or West Wing dubs, anyone?). Anti-points for romances, fast-moving action flicks, and children's shows unless they also have something of interest to adults (e.g. yes for Rocky and Bullwinkle, no for Barney). I don't care about DVD regions. Anyone have any thoughts on where to look for such things?

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If you don't finish your course of antibiotics, and there are a few germs still alive-- they are the ones that were most resistant to the antibiotic, and may breed a resistant strain.

My sister always asks Christian fundies who preach at her whether they finish their antibiotics once they feel better. After all, if there's no evolution..... :)

That's a good point.

I was wondering if they kill the germs outright but only a few at a time, or if they slowly kill them (disabling them in the process) and you need the full dose of poison to finish 'em off, or if they inhibit reproduction, or... something else I haven't thought of yet.

It can be any of those mechanisms, plus a few more-- weakening the cell walls, blocking production of some enzyme. But in every case, some individual germs are stronger/more resistant than the others and don't die as fast. And yes, they may weaken the germs but if you stop too soon the strongest may be able to recover. In any case, you risk performing selection for the germs most able to resist the particular mechanism, and that leads to Bad Things, any way you look at it.

Yeah, I don't want to help create Supergerm.

My vet currently has me "pulsing" Erik with antibiotics (N days on, M days off) for his hepatitis. If you get N wrong, though, it seems like that could make things worse. I wonder if there are medical (as opposed to economic) arguments against just giving them to him all the time. Mind, I'd rather not spend the money, but I'd also rather not make my cat worse.

I'm sure you have pondered all the theories that come to my mind-- so I'll be watching for my nurse/educator friend, to ask her!

I make a similar argument with my wife that we're selectively breeding for noisy mice. :D When the cats bring in prey, if they don't squeek, they die. If they squeek, my wife makes me rescue them and throw them outside. Hence, quiet mice get eliminated from the gene pool, noisy mice live to populate the gene pool. Same with germs, weak ones die, strong ones survive to reproduce.
-- Dagonell

I love it!

they always tell you to take the full course even if the symptoms go away earlier; why is that?

IANA doctor, pharmacologist, or biologist of any sort, but this is what i remember being told when i asked a similar question:

like many other pharmaceuticals, antibiotic pills work by gradually raising the concentration in your bloodstream of the active ingredient; as your blood moves around your body, the active ingredient is brought into contact with foreign microorganisms in your body, and it kills them. the amount of time it takes for sufficiently many of the microorganisms to be killed that your body’s immune system can safely deal with the rest of them depends upon the following factors:

how big your body is (or conversely, how large of a dose you are taking)

how tough the microorganisms are (or conversely, how good the active ingredient is at killing them)

the first factor affects how long it takes for the desired concentration of active ingredient to be reached; the second affects how long that desired concentration must be maintained (since your kidneys identify the active ingredient as a pollutant and attempt to remove it from the bloodstream, you need to keep taking doses even after you’re at the desired concentration).

stopping your dose early is dangerous first because if not enough foreign microorganisms are killed for your body’s immune system to be able to finish off the rest, then the illness can relapse, and your body will have expended energy uselessly and will be weaker. what’s worse, though, is that an unsuccessful course of antibiotics selects for antibiotic resistance in the targeted microorganism; the individuals who are least resistant to the active ingredient die out, and the individuals who are most resistant survive and breed. with enough iterations of this cycle, you find yourself infected with a strain of the microorganism that is resistant to the antibiotic you’ve been using, so now you need to switch to a different antibiotic and try not to infect anyone else with your new bug.

does that make sense?

-steve

For whatever it's worth, Netflix has a modest (15-20?) selection of Israeli movies with English subtitles.

My favorites were "Walk on Water", "Sima Vaknin Machshefa" (stupid but cute IMHO), "Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi", and "Yana's Friends".

Oh! And if you haven't seen "James's Journey to Jerusalem", that's one of my favorite Israeli movies. It's fun and deep.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

I'm making the same transition from Google to Wikipedia for appropriate searches. If I want information on a topic, it's usually Wikipedia. If I'm looking for something very specific, I'll use Google, but any Wikipedia result gets looked at first.

My Google searches now tend to the multi-step. Try to choose a term with the right specificity. If I get too many irrelevant results, add additional terms and/or remove any term that is coming up frequently in results that aren't what I'm looking for. I also use a lot of phrases, where appropriate.

And my favourite Google search of late (when I've been doing some Wikipedia editing) is to Google for that fact that doesn't look quite right (like the hockey player who supposedly claimed a February 30th birthday) and add "-wikipedia" to eliminate most of the Wikipedia-sourced pages.

Many of my Googles are for specific information. (In fact, the last one in my browser's search box is: "international musicland" hours, trying to find the hours for a music store in the city to see if it would be open tomorrow night when my father gets off work. No luck: the store has a web site that doesn't give their hours!)

Even though the professors in library school badmouthed Google, we use it a lot in reference. It's a good point about the increase in useless hits though. Your approach of Wikipedia first sounds good. We often used Wikipedia to get ideas and then verify the information using another source.

For medical questions I use http://medlineplus.gov. It's sponsored by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. There is information from a variety of sources all in one place.

I found the following via MedlinePlus. It's on the Merck website: http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec17/ch192/ch192a.html

Taking Antibiotics

For severe bacterial infections, antibiotics are usually first given by injection. When the infection is under control, antibiotics can then be taken by mouth. Less severe infections can be treated from the start with oral antibiotics. Antibiotics need to be taken until the infecting organism is eliminated from the body, which may be days after the symptoms disappear. Antibiotics are rarely given for fewer than 5 days (an exception is certain uncomplicated urinary tract infections). Discontinuing treatment too soon can result in a relapse of infection or the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Thanks for the pointer to Medlineplus!

Wikipedia's search isn't very good, so it's not the place to go with a broad multi-term query. But, increasingly, if there's a specific fact I'm trying to chase down, that'll get it for me more quickly than Google. As with everything on the net, though, just because someone says it doesn't make it so. :-)

...so I'll skip the "I'm a biochemist" schtick.

Tonight, I went to a lecture on bird flu and didn't sit there designing a more lethal virus. That, in my book, is a good lecturer!

My current favorite is the Honda Fit, but that's based on specs and reviews; I've never driven one. (So I want to go to a dealer, but I know that once I do that I set things in motion, so I should do this when I've set aside time for car shopping.) I just checked edmunds.com and was surprised to find that people are currently paying sticker price. Either the recent kudos from Consumer Reports had a real effect, or there's a shortage, or something else is going on that I haven't thought of.

It's been the Hot New Car for a while now -- the reviews when it came out were stellar, and it's still the leading member of the new breed of really small cars. I remember when it first came out, and the folks on NPR raved about it: the description that stuck with me was that it felt like being in an Accord, despite being a far smaller vehicle. And given that the Yaris has gotten crappy reviews (and the new Smart car worse than that), it looks even better by comparison.

So yes: I suspect there's a shortage. There are always a couple of cars that are hot enough that you have to pay sticker for them...

Someone recently commented to me that with the growth of the internet, Google is becoming less useful as a way of finding answers because of all the junk you get in the results (such as fora where someone else asked the same question but no one has answered).

I'm honestly not sure that that's true -- I think expectations have simply risen. I mean, yes: there are many cases of the question-only-asked that I find in such a query. But often, if I trawl through a few of those, I'll find one where the question *is* answered.

Overall, I'd say my success rate on Google hasn't changed much in the past few years. The *nature* of the failures has changed, but it's mainly that, whereas in the past I would have found nothing even relevant, now I might find those unanswered questions you refer to. But everyone's getting so used to the "I wanna know now!" information age, that they've forgotten about the fact that, just six or seven years ago, it would have been inconceivable to find answers to anything so fast.

That said, Wikipedia is proving to be a remarkably useful resource, and my usage of it has been ramping up. (Enough that I've started to donate to them, on the Shareware principle.) For all that people lash out at it for its inaccuracies, it's still that case that something that comprehensive that's only 90% accurate is still damned useful, especially if one has the critical thinking skills to weed out the crap. It's not the place for nitpicky details, but when I want a general overview of a subject (even a fairly minor subject), it's usually the best place to look...

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Antibiotics

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You got some good answers...

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