Ramblin' with Roger

This was an aggrevating weekend, in part because I spent four phone calls and well over an hour trying to get an AOL charge off my credit card that doesn’t even show up on the AOL customer service reps’ computers. Finally, I had to cancel a credit card and get a new one.

Also, it rained in Albany every day for about a week and a half. Sales of “Ark Builders’ Digest” have really spiked this week in this part of the country. Yesterday, 50 mph winds came howling through.

On the other hand, we sang really well in choir yesterday, and then most of us went out to lunch at a nice restaurant (in the Gideon Putnam, for you locals).

Lydia has been a bit under the weather, and she stayed home today from day care. Her maternal grandparents are visiting, so they’ll watch her, as they did yesterday when Carol and I went out to eat. Otherwise, I would have had to stay home from work on a day that a number folks will be out at a meeting.

Our building is going to have a fire drill this week. I am the floor marshal for the 7th floor.

I’ve been hoping for a Chicago White Sox win, and I’m glad they’ve gotten into the World Series for the first time since 1959, but I’ve been picking against them because of their history. So, I’ll still pick the NL team (the Astros, barring a real collapse, a team that has never won the WS), which should assure the men with the pale hose the team’s first World Series win since 1917. But with that pitching on both sides, will anyone actually SCORE?

I love getting free stuff. I got comics and tunes today from football prognosticator Logan, and a CD and DVD from…well, I’ll explain that in due course.

CANCER News From John Hopkins Medical Center

Instead, he recommends using glass, Corning Ware or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, without the dioxins.

And it goes on from there.

Great, I thought. Carol had heard something about this, and wondered how this would affect Lydia. But something about this piece didn’t sit right. Notably, the article didn’t cite where Castle Hospital was located, so I found this piece, which indicated that the article was “Unproven! & Fiction!” for reasons you can read yourselves.

HOWEVER, deep in the rebuttal piece, there is this paragraph:

The Food and Safety Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has published guidelines for safe cooking in microwave ovens and warns against using materials that are not regarded as microwave safe.
CLICK HERE for those guidelines.
You’ll note that one of the guidelines is to avoid letting plastic wraps touch food!
That is another issue, however, and not related to dioxins or high heat in microwaves.

So, as a librarian, I appreciated this more nuanced response to the issue than the one that yet another colleague found at the mythbreaker Snopes.

Yet another response:

I don’t believe there is full agreement on whether plastics are safe connected with food prep. There are other chemicals besides dioxins released that offer a good enough reason to avoid plastic in the microwave. See note below from Columbia University.
Even the snopes.com site confirms that plastics release other harmful chemicals when heated and cooled, that appears further along in the article ‘dispelling’ the rumor.

Many products are given the safe go-ahead until they are recalled when people become ill.
I think it’s really a personal choice.

Totally coincidentally, I get THIS link in an e-mail.

All of this contradictory advice should leave you TOTALLY confused.

I watched the TV show “The Office” this week (as usual, in the recorded mode, not in real time). I enjoy it quite a bit. They played Island this and that, so I figured, What the heck?

1. What are your five island movies? And why?

Mine are:
a) Annie Hall. Fair amount of this movie has happened in my life, so if you don’t like the choice, la dee dah, la dee dah.
b) Groundhog Day. Not only is it an intelligent comedy with a JEOPARDY segment, its premise that every day is like the next is eventually broken will give me hope on the island.
c) West Side Story. Another island story: “I like the isle of Manhattan.”
Those three were in my profile. Hmm.
d) Being There: If Peter Sellers’ Chance the gardener can become an advisor to the President and please Shirley McLaine’s character just by watching television, there’s hope for us on this wretched island.
e) Toy Story 2: That conflict between past and present is wonderful.

2. What are your three island books? And why?

Mine are:
a) The Bible, probably the Revised Standard Version, and not only because it’s long.
b) The World Almanac, because I can read about the facts and figures of the rest of the world, trying to keep my mind sharp on this desolate isle.
c) Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Albums 1955-2001, because I find it endlessly fascinating. If I don’t have music on the island, perhaps I can recreate it in my head.

3. What is your favorite waste of time at work?

Taking those “urgent” e-mails that people send me and try to find out if they are true. In fact, I think I’ll write about one tomorrow.

So go read why Evanier pities W. (It explains a LOT about this White House.)

After this:

This is one of those bizarre stories I’d have given to Burgas if he weren’t away this weekend. Go sign his blog, and make the future dictator happy.

My strange friend Dan initially sent out this article, with this commentary:

In these days of corporate propaganda disguised as information, it’s nice to see some good old fashioned yellow journalism made up from thin air. I don’t think that there’s a single sentence in this article that’s true, except, perhaps, the last one. From some rag called The South London Press (England).

Which engendered this rebuttal:

Dan, I’m surprised that you, of all people, aren’t aware of the growing squirrel crack addiction problem right here in Albany’s First Ward. It’s so common that people are now referring to the poor little beasts as scrackers.

and this:

I believe it. How do you know it’s not true?

Forcing Dan to recant:

OK, you’ve got me there. I didn’t bother to check the story because it is so obviously absurd. So I put the keywords “squirrels” and “cocaine” into Google and found that the story appears to have originated with several English tabloids that ran almost identical stories on the same day. However, the story has subsequently taken on a life of its own. The story has caused enough uproar to induce The Guardian to look into it.