Pictures, in a rough form, are up here. Some of them came out really well, some of them came out not so well. About half the under water pictures were taken on a day where the water was relatively cloudy, but some of the earlier ones are really nice. Unfortunately the photos are nearly unsorted.

We arrived home safely from vacation late Saturday night. It was truly awesome, and a good time was had by all despite the bugs.

Somewhat surprisingly, a mix of catnip oil, corn mint oil, rosemary, and glycerin worked very well as a bug spray^[1], no worse than the commercial stuff we also had.^[2] It has the additional advantages of smelling much better, and not feeling so icky as the more normal bug spray. How Mom thought to try it out, I am not really sure, though there are a number of mint and catnip based results in my google search. The idea, naturally, was to have a variety of bug sprays based on different things, since the bugs seemed to grow progressively immune in the few days we spent in Cayo Costa^[3], in hopes that as one stopped working, a different one would give us a few more days of relief.

Neither spray worked perfectly, and both had to be sprayed extensively, but those two were the only two we ended up using. The first few days we were not particularly careful, so all of us got a few bites, and Lauren unfortunately got more than a few, but after that we were more careful, spraying up pant legs, down sleeves and shirt necks, and anywhere else skin might be exposed as clothing shifts around.

Returning to my original thread, it is a huge bummer to return to work from vacation. It was very hard to get up this morning, not because of lack of sleep, I was actually well rested, but simply from lack of desire. Mom was in a similar state, plus a huge dose of nervousness as she is just starting at Paul VI today. Still, I feel so very much better for having been away for a week.

Yay for going on a week’s vacation! I am leaving work here in about 15 minutes, and will be leaving for a week on Eluthera tomorrow morning!

This one was, surprisingly, not really a nightmare. I get there, the short power-tripping security guard is no longer there. There is a much larger male security guard. He has me go through the medal detector and leaves me alone, he assumes I can figure out where to go from there. This is good, because I do know where to go. There is an obvious line outside the “Will Call” desks. I stand in that line for a relatively short line considering the number of people. After all, this morning it took about half an hour to get from 009 to 016, with far more people working than these two ladies at the two “Will Call” desks. Anyway, I get up to the front of the line, sign the little slip saying that I have received my passport (and birth certificate, since the lady this morning kept that bit of identifying information), and I was good to go.

I am not quite sure how exactly generating piano music from sonar advances volcano erruption prediction, but it does generate some interesting audio files.^[1] Perhaps the lack of clarity is intentional in the press release, or perhaps its because I did not devote the time to reading it that I should have. Either way, the audio alone makes the site worth checking out.

I went to the regional passport office downtown this morning as scheduled. First I deal with this crazy little security guard lady, who is quite adamant that, as the check-in windows were not open yet, everyone must sit in the seats between her station and those windows, and must do so in the order they came in. Standing is not allowed. Sitting in a different order is not allowed. Starting the line at the wrong end of the first row of chairs is not allowed.

All of this might be understandable, except for what comes next. A man comes out, organizes us into a line, resorting us by the time of our appointment. So that chair order went out the window as the first row (which I was in) contained a mix of 0800, 0815 and 0830 appointments. Not only that, he does not want us sitting in chairs, he wants us standing in a line.

So we queue up, process through the check-in window, where our paper work is checked out, organized, and stapled and/or paper-clipped as appropriate. Apparently you do not need proof of travel, unless, like me, you want a same-day passport. Or at least, that is the impression I received.

My impression should not be generally trusted however, because I had also received the impression on the phone that I would walk out with my new passport, having paid my fees (which total up to $157). This is nearly true I suppose, but not really. I can pick my passport up between 1400 and 1500 today. So I need to head back into D.C. in approximately an hour to make that time period, where I will have to go back through security with the power-tripping little security guard lady.

The other day, Lauren mentioned to me that her anatomy professor was teaching the class that the appendix is a functionless organ.  This view, that it is a vestigal organ, a remnant of evolution, is certainly a common one.  There is, however, no real reason to believe it.  What follows is a collection of articles I have found, either directly via google search, or indirectly via the references in other articles (some of which are here).

1. Loren G. Martin.  Answering “What is the function of the human appendix? Did it once have a purpose that has since been lost?” in the “Ask the Experts” section of Scientific American.  Answer posted 1999-10-21.  http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000CAE56-7201-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7
2. Ms. Julie Pomerantz.  Answering “Does the appendix serve a purpose in any animal?” in the “Ask the Experts” section of Scientific American.  Answer posted 2002-12-02.
3. Fisher, RE. 2000. “The primate appendix: a reassessment.” The Anatomical Record (New Anatomist) 261:228-236.
4. Dasso JF. Obiakor H. Bach H. Anderson AO. Mage RG. 2000. “A morphological and immunohistological study of the human and rabbit appendix for comparison with the avian bursa.” Developmental & Comparative Immunology. 24(8):797-814.
5. NIAID.  “The Immune System”  NIAID NetNews.  2003-09-25.  http://www.niaid.nih.gov/final/immun/immun.htm
6. Professor Gordon C. Mills, Professor Malcolm Lancaster, Professor Walter L. Bradley.  “Origin of Life & Evolution in Biology Textbooks - A Critique.”  Reposted at Access Research Network.  2001-10-03.  http://www.arn.org/docs/mills/gm_originoflifeandevolution.htm
7. Mr. Christopher Wanjek.  “The Appendix: Slimy But Not Worthless.”  Health SciTech 2006-05-30.  http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060530_bad_appendix.html

Apparently my use of “<ol><font size=”-2″><li>…” results in my page being invalid xhtml transitional. I am not sure why I care; the browsers render what I want. I do care however, so I am left in a bind. I do not know much about CSS, certainly not enough to have done more than trivially edit the WordPress theme I am using. From what I see in my search results, I am supposed to be using CSS to handle this sort of font sizing thing, and while I see something to that effect in the style.css for the theme, it appears to be wrapped up in how comments are treated. I really do not know what I am doing, and advice and/or assistance would be welcome, including a pointer to a Fine Manual for me to Read (reference to RTFM).

On the off chance that anyone is willing to look at it, the style.css is up at ~luke/style.txt.

UPDATE 2006-08-08 22:34 EDT: Vincas rocks. He pointed me at http://alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/ and then continued to help me with examples and letting me think out loud until I figured out enough to add my own div id stuff. So now I can make my references display small without violating xhmtl transitional. ☺

This has been very scary to watch. Last year about this time, I wrote about doctors winning the right to overrule parents of a 22-month old baby, and refuse resuscitation.^[1] I suppose it is only logical, however scary, that this rulling would be extended to other classes of human beings.^[2] This time, a man with cerebellar ataxia, some sort of brain condition that apparently does not affect mental ability, but does affect the ability to express those thoughts, has lost the right to insist that he not die of starvation and/or dehydration.

The final blow appears to be, as the BBC article states, a classic catch 22.  The European Court of Human Rights, to which he appealed after losing his appeals in the British courts, decided that it is “premature” to consider the appeal, because there is no “imminent” risk.  Naturally, however, such a risk could only become “imminent” after Mr. Burke, the patient, has lost the ability to express his own wishes, and with it the ability to appeal to the court.

So I was an idiot, and after my polygraph back in June, I left my passport in my pants pocket. Yes, I was not really thinking very well (to the extent of nearly getting lost on the way home), but still. Naturally, Murphy trying his hardest, I did not realize this until last night: giving me less than a week before I need it.

While the passport is still legible, its incredibly crinkled and bent, the cloth cover is no longer attached, and appears to have shrunk slightly (having gone through the dryer as well). So I would say it is very much in the “damaged passport” category. What do you do when you have 5 days to get a new passport?

Apparently, similar things happen to other people as well. For nearly double the normal amount in fees, I will come out of an appointment at the regional passport office with a same-day passport. Score: Divine Providence 1, Murphy 0 (so far, I am keeping my fingers crossed and still very much praying that nothing further goes wrong).