Journal Entries
13.11.11 Challenge Z to write an entry for the Guide
Posted Nov 13, 2011
This is a short journal, but it will be one that will hopefully create a lot of work..
So... what entries would you like to see in the Guide on health-related topics. If you post which health related topic you are interested in I will do my best to research and write an entry on that topic.
My specialist subject is stroke and medicine for the elderly, but I can research any health topic that you suggest.
So what do you want me to write about?
Discuss this Journal entry [27]
Latest reply: Nov 13, 2011
'Do you love me forever' Z's Journal 12.11.11
Posted Nov 12, 2011
'If I make the hot chocolate, will you love me forever?' said Mrs Zen about five minutes ago, with more than a touch of sarcasm.
'What song is that from?' I asked, and when we couldn't remember I looked it up on Google.
(Meat loaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light, since you ask http://www.qgm.com/meatloaf/lyrics/paradise.html)..
We live surrounded by information at our finger tips, any thought, any enquiry can give us an answer in minutes. It wasn't always like this, our internal lives used to be populated with half remembered snatches of culture.
For twenty years my father struggled to remember a poem every time we drove to Chester. He remembered it was about a girl who drowned in the sands of Dee, and a fisherman thought her hair belonged to a mermaid. Every time we drove around the river Dee he told us about this poem, and how he couldn't remember who wrote it, or its title, so he would never find it again.
The image of a drowned girl being mistaken for a mermaid haunted him for years, part of his internal landscape. Haunted him enough that he couldn't see the River Dee without thinking of that image.
Years later, when I got a computer, it took me about 10 seconds to find him the poem http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sands-of-dee/, and it wasn't nearly as good as he remembered it to be.
I don't know how having access to all the information we need affects our inner monologues, our internal words, and cultural landscapes.
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: Nov 12, 2011
The first world war Z's Journal 11/11/11
Posted Nov 11, 2011
I have a strange fascination with the first world war. It seems to me that WW1 changed the way that we think, it changed our values. It changed Britain, and probably the world into a country with modern values.
Many history books tell you want happened, but what's much harder to work out is how it changed how people thought and felt. You need to turn to literature for that, to poetry and to first person accounts. Through literature you can get the way people thought, their value systems and the way that the felt. I've been fascinated with WWI ever since I read a book at school when I was about 10 about the life of a village boy who joined the army at the age of 14 after lying about this age. It was a really chap fictionalised account, designed to educate children, it wasn't accurate. But it was interesting, because there was no way that the 14 year olds I knew would ever join the army when their was a risk of being killed.
War poetry taught me more about how people thought, about the jingoistic belief that war would be a good thing, something that seems so alien now. Then within a few years we had Dulce et Decorum Pro Patra Morte and the rest of the works of Wilfred Own.
The class system died in the trenches of WW1, as did respect for authority, and a value system where you were taught to put your institution, and your country before yourself. Cynicism, and thinking for yourself seemed to have been first become widespread in the trenches.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Nov 11, 2011
10/11/11 Edinburgh to London and back
Posted Nov 10, 2011
h2g2 has turned me into the sort of person who goes from Edinburgh to London and back in a day. This is not a journey one does for pleasure, there is only one reason to do this journey, and that's having to be in London for a meeting. I am now an experienced business traveller. Well semi-experienced.
Edinburgh to London is a 7 hour drive, a 5 hour train journey or a 1 hour flight. If you are going there and back in a day, and you need to arrive for 9am, your options are:
1. Train.
The pleasenter and more expensive option. There's the 4am train that only stops at Newcastle, and will get you to London for 9, but that's not cheap. Alternatively you can get the sleeper train. The procedure for the sleeper is straight forward.
- Go out for a drink in Edinburgh. Get drunk.
- Collapse on a train at waverley and fall asleep. Hopefully you'll have collapsed on the sleeper.
- Wake up in London at 6am, arrive refreshed for your meetings and your colleagues will think you're hardworking.
Repeat and end up in Edinburgh the next morning. Hopefully. You have to be careful as the train will also stop at Glasgow and Fort William.
The problem with the train is that it's expensive, you can easily spend £200 on a sleeper berth, and that's sharing a cubical with someone else.
2. Plane.
To get to London for a 9am meeting you need to get the the 5.40am flight.
This is initially confusing. Your ticket will tell you to arrive 2 hours before the plane departs but you will find that the airport is closed until 4am. Once you get to the airport you can find that everyone else is travelling on business as well, and you are whisked through the queue in super-quick time, meaning that you can get a valuable hours snooze in the departure lounge.
The main problem with the plane is that we you arrive you will find yourself at either Gatwick, Heathrow or Standsted, not that there's anything wrong with these places, but they are nowhere near London, well they are nearer London than Edinburgh is, but not by much. You then need to spend an hour or two getting from the airport to wherever you are going.
Discuss this Journal entry [12]
Latest reply: Nov 10, 2011
9/11/11 Z's November Challenge: Glow in the Dark Cat
Posted Nov 9, 2011
I finally managed to get Timmy 
to the vet for a blood test today. Timmy's been loosing weight for a while and the vet thought it was his thryoid. When the last cat Anabella was loosing weight it turned out to be a lymphoma and there wasn't anything we could do apart from palliate her. Well vets don't do palliative care really, but I took her home and fed her chicken, which she seemed to appreciate.
I was nervous about these blood results, but it turns out that he's got an overactive thyroid and there are three treatment options. 
Pills every day. He tries to kill people who give him pills. The vet surgery was wondering if they have to keep him until 7pm or if I could come and get him sooner. 
<--Vet: Surgery. I'm a bit nervous about this because his blood tests showed that he had some liver congestion which would mean that his heart was under strain. I would be reluctant for a human to have an anaesthetic in this condition, and cats seem to be smaller and fiddlier to operate on. 
Radioactive iodine. You give them some radioactive iodine and it destroys part of their thyroid. We do this to humans and it seems to work quite well. Humans are allowed to work, but not go near children, animals have to stay at the vet hospital in isolation to have it. Timmy currently hates people so I don't think he'd be that bothered by isolation to be honest.
Both surgery and iodine might needs pills anyway, but they might not.
Fortunately he's well insured so I shouldn't need to pay for any of it. Top of the range pet insurance for people who live near a top vet hospital and secretly want an MRI of their guinea pig.
Discuss this Journal entry [15]
Latest reply: Nov 9, 2011
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