Dakota's anti-choice law

So. South Dakota's govenor signed the new anti-abortion bill into law. I recommend the Lysistrata solution. If the men of South Dakota are worried that women will want to end unplanned pregnancies, then the women should remove the problem. No sex, no unplanned pregnancies. Case closed. See how long they last.

Life reassessment

The main reason I haven't been fencing recently is that my wife and I have been re-examining out lives, in an effort to simplify. If you have been following this blog, you will have seen that my son is autistic. My wife and I recently attended a 4-day parent training for an autism therapy program called Relationship Development Intervention (RDI), developed by a man called Dr. Steve Gutstein.
RDI is the first therapy system that actually seems to treat autism. The most common therapy system for autism is called ABA, or Applied Behavioral Analysis. ABA tends to use behaviorist theories to get kids to behave well (no rocking or head banging, or whatever) by rewarding them for positive behaviors (sit in the chair for 5 minutes and I'll give you a cookie...) It turns out this does not teach the kids to think for themselves, so they still freak out if faced with a new situation. Dr. Gutstein actually thinks that ABA only teaches the kids to be more autistic.
RDI, on the other hand, attempts to recreate the parent-child, master-apprentice relationship, so that the kid can learn how to deal with new situations, by seeing their parents do it. You can read all about it (including a paper that should be published soon, that demonstrates autistic kids getting better - that is no longer testing as autistic) here.

Anyway, part of the process is to see what can go from your lives to make way for time with your child. We got rid of basically everything for a while (hence the no fencing) to see what we could really do without, and what we needed. Time for ourselves (as adults), especially exercise, was definitely a needful thing. I have also learned that there is an fencing group starting up at the gym for the university that the hospital I work at is a part of. They also meet at a time shortly after I get out of work. I'm really hoping this works out.

I passed!

WooHoo! I passed my national certification exam! I was a little nervous there. I know I usually do well on multiple choice exams, but the questions were tricky, and the testing environment less than perfect. Anyway, I'm now Keith Anderson, APRN,BC, NP. That's: Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, Board Certified. What a mouthful. Thats nothing... If I include all the degrees as well, its: Keith Anderson, APRN,BC, NP, BA, BSN, MSN.

Ain't I a little full of myself this evening?

Bibilical interpretation?

Earlier this week, I heard a story on NPR about a Baptist preacher from Kansas called Fred Phelps, (the link is to a Wikipedia article on the man) who preaches that homosexuality is an abomination, that everyone in the US is going to hell, and that sodomy should be a capital offence. Thats right, if two men or two women have sex, or even (in some states) if a married couple engage in oral sex, they are "guilty" of sodomy, and Fred wants them put to death. In the spirit of equality, I'll provide a link to his website, but be warned - Fred and friends refuse to use anything but the derogatory term "fag" to describe homosexuals, and the language on the website can get pretty extreme. If you want more information, check out his website here. There are links to plenty of anti-Fred websites at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.

My usual response to anyone that rabid is to quote the "open Letter to Dr. Laura:"

Dear Dr. Laura, Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

I've always wondered how people who are so rabid about the bible being the absolute word of God can on the one hand have no problem with the idea of stoning someone to death for sodomy, yet have no problem eating pork or shellfish, and would never consider selling their willful daughters into slavery...

All things in moderation...

Certification test done

Well, that was brutal. The questions were about as hard as I expected, but glare from the fluorescent lights combined with the black text on a white screen for 2 1/2 hours gave me a pounder of a headache. That and the Fort Knox-like security (sign in, sign out, empty your pockets into this locker, give me 2 forms of ID....) makes a body feel a little paranoid.

Its over now. Just a 2 week or so wait for the results.

National Certification test today

Well, if you've actually read this blog (don't worry, I probably wouldn't either...), you will know that I'm a nurse practitioner working in orthopedics. Today I have to take a test through the ANCC to be nationally certified. This is useful to me for several reasons:

1. It will allow me to apply for a Universal Provider Identification Number (UPIN) that will allow me to bill Medicare if I ever work in the outpatient setting.
2. If I ever move to another state, it may be required to work as a nurse practitioner.
3. My boss says I need to have it.

It is also a major pain. I haven't been in school for over 5 years, an this test is entirely on "what the book says to do" rather than on "what actually works in real life." I've been in practice long enough that the later is what I actually use. I've also worked in ortho for 5 years - I've had to really study to be able to remember what serology test turns positive first in hepatitis B infection (Hep B surface antigen), or that acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is the most common leukemia in adults. I deal with bones and joints. Not primary care. Wish me luck.

Some Reasons Gay Marriage is Wrong :-)

Just passing this on. I got it in my church's monthly newsletter. It makes so much sense, I had to share it...

Some things are so illogical that we must laugh at them or we will cry over them. The homophobia of some parts of America falls into this category. Here, for you to laugh (or cry) about are Some Reasons Gay Marriage is Wrong:

1. Being gay is not natural. And, as you know, Americans have always rejected unnatural things, such as eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning;
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall;
3. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all. Hmmm, so women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal?
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Brittany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed;
5. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
6. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents raise only straight children.
7. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That is why we, as a society, expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
8. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just as we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

I hate Redlands Unified School District!

Well, we finally heard back from RUSD. They denied our request to have the School psychologist's report removed from my son's file, but we have the right to appeal. They did put our letters into the file, so anyone who looks can see why we think the psychologist is wrong (18 pages worth of why she's wrong...) At this point, I'm not sure where to go. We could hire a lawyer and go the "my lawyer can beat up you lawyer..." route, but that costs time and money. We could also just drop it, and work on maximizing the services we can get.

The Inland Regional Center (a California thing) has determined my son to be eligible for services through their system. This is interesting, because Regional centers are obliged to cover autism, but not asperger's syndrome. So they think he's autisic too...

I know that the school psychologist is not licensed as a clinical psychologist, educational psychologist, or marriage and family therapist in the state of California. To me that means she can't diagnose. Ah well, the battle continues.

Roast your own coffee for cheap!

Wow! I just discovered that its really easy to roast your own coffee at home! There are several websites selling coffee roasters for about $100-$200 (www.morebeer.com is one of them). I thought about that, but then I did a little poking on the internet, and I found that you can do it with a hot-air popcorn popper! I found the right kind at my local Goodwill, and paid 4 whole bucks. I then bought a pound of green Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans from MoreBeer (I was going there anyway for brewing supplies). Roasting took 15 minutes (including all the setup, the cleanup and stringing the extension cord outside and rolling it back up again when I was done). I had to do the roasting outside because the one downside to a popcorn popper is that it smokes like a chimney. Small price to pay - NOTHING compares to the coffee you roast yourself! For more information, also check out SweetMaria's.

my2way

While I'm on the subject of music, what is up with The Cure? I'm pretty sure they're not together anymore, but how could they have had hits? Their music is great in the technical sense, but who else could write a tender love song ("I will always love you") that leaves wanting to slit your wrists?

Keith Anderson, NP

TSO

Oh yeah. Check out Trans-Siberian.com Their show Rocks!

Keith Anderson, NP

whoa!

Man. A 7 month hiatus. Got to stop doing that. Still brewing, not fencing so much. Just surviving right now. My son has been diagnosed as autistic by the folks at UCLA's autism center (and they should know...). We are currently beating our heads against the school district (their psychologist seems to think that her one Ph.D in school psych trumps the 3 Ph.Ds and a Masters of the UCLA team.) If we don't fight it, she gets to say that he is high functioning, and deny services. It may also screw us up when we go to the local regional center, because they too can pick and choose who to believe, and then they can deny services too. My wife (the pitbull) has determined that we have the right to have documents removed from our son's file if they are "inaccurate." Think just plain wrong is pretty inaccurate don't you? We've written to the school district twice now, with no answer. We may have to actually retain a lawyer, a thought that gives me the heebies.

Meanwhile, I brewed my first all-grain batch of beer in November, an oatmeal stout. For you brewers out there, its now in secondary with 3 vanilla beans. I plan to bottle around Christmas, to be ready by new years (the forced-carbonated stuff - the regular bottled stuff won't be ready until a few weeks after that.)

I think the next batch will be an all-grain version of the Scottish ale that was my first brew. My brew buddy and I both really liked that one.

Thats all for now, more later, hopefully less than 7 months next time.

HomeBrew!

Wow! My buddy and I brewed out second batch of homebrew on Saturday. (An American Amber, using a kit from Beer, Beer, and More Beer, using Chico yeast scrounged from the local microbrew). Primary ferment was pretty sluggish, but I put a blow-off tube on just for principles sake. Good thing I did. The carboy has all its head-space full of krausen, and the tube is full of chunks. If I had just used an airlock, I would have been cleaning krausen off the kitchen ceiling, and trying to persuade my wife to let me brew again. The Beer Gods have smiled upon me once again.

Sorry for the Pause

Man! What a month!
Sorry to have been away for so long, but I've been busy. My 3 year old son was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, (more about that later) and I took up homebrewing. My car was damaged in a hit and run (We're all fine, thanks for asking), and my family room carpet was waterlogged by a leak after the torrential rains we've been having here in SoCal. All this while trying to maintain my fencing and work full time. *sigh* I'm tired.
Now that things are calming down, I'll try to post more regularly.

More info on fencing

I hope I have piqued your interest in fencing. For more information, I strongly recommend that you check out a few websites:
United States Fencing Association (USFA)

Fencing101

Lastly, for those of you in Southern California, here is the Salle (French for "room") at which I fence:

Salle MacBean

Electronic scoring

All three weapons are now scored electronically at pretty much any event above the club level (and a fair number of club events are as well). That is not to say there is no room for interpretation. Remember that two of the three weapons have right-of-way, so even when one person's scoring light comes on (indicating a touch to valid target), that person still may not be awarded a touch, if they did not have right of way.

Scoring for foil is done with the use of a lame (there should be an accent over the 'e' and it is pronounced lamay), which is a vest made of a metal mesh that is worn over the regular uniform, just covering the torso. The fencer also feeds a cord with two wires up his or her sleeve that plug into a socket inside the bell guard of the foil. Those 2 wires, plus a third clipped to the lame, connect to a socket on the end of a cable wound on a spring loaded reel at the end of the strip. As the fencer moves down the strip, cable feeds out, and it rewinds as the fencer retreats. The reels are connected to a scoring box. So, when fencer A touches fencer B, a button on the tip of his foil is pressed, opening a circuit. If the button is depressed against B's lame, a new circuit closes, and the box registers a valid touch. If the button presses against another part (not lame), the box registers a "white light" or off-target touch. The fencer's bell guards and (at higher levels) the floor of the fencing strip are grounded, so a touch to either place registers nothing. The director has to keep an eye on both fencers and the box, in order to determine who touched who, and who had right of way.

Epee is a little simpler - no lames, as the whole body is target. This time depressing the button on the tip of the epee closes a circuit that is open normally. No white lights, as nothing is off-target. I believe that epee was the first weapon to be scored electronically, possibly even back in the late 1800's.

Saberist have to wear lames (they cover the torso and arms, and there is a glove piece that covers the forearm of the weapon hand that is called a manchette). As the mask is also target, they have a little wire that attaches the back of the mask to the lame making it part of the same circuit. The system has to be a little different from here on. Saber stikes with the edge of the blade as well as the tip, so a simple button won't work. Originally, there was a device built into the guard of electric sabers called a capteur, that had a spring loaded ball bearing in it. It was designed to only complete the circuit if the touch was strong enough to move the ball bearing, and was in the correct orientation (in other words you had to hit hard enough and with the edge or tip, but not the flat, of the blade.) This was great in theory, but in reality, the capteurs would jam up, or be too sensitive, or one of a thousand other problems. Because of that, the fencing organization did away with capteurs, leaving just the blade. What this means is that the sabereur now holds what amounts to an electrified stick that he had to touch his opponent with above the waist. Touches made with the flat of the blade count just as well as tip or edge touches. Not being a sabereur, I can't comment on what this has done to the sport.

In his book "Magnum Libre D'Escrime" ("The Big Book of Fencing"), Dr. Rudy Volkman makes a comment that "Someday some one will hold a meet at which there are absolutely no problems with any of the electrical equipment. I suspect that the news of this event will be buried back on page eleven of the newspapers, however, with the first ten pages taken by the news that Hell has frozen over."

Electrical scoring is both a boon and the bane of many a fencer's existance. It has helped end squabbles along the lines of "You didn't touch me! Yes I did!" However, the failure rate is such that fencers can be penalized for showing up at the strip without at least 2 complete
sets of weapons and body cords in working order.

That being said, there is nothing sweeter than stepping in and attacking an opponent who way outclasses you, hearing the telltale "BZZZZT!" and looking over to see your light is the only one lit.
-Keith

Fencing Primer #3

Saber
The third and final weapon of the three is saber. Saber is the lightest and fastest of the three weapons. It is a right of way weapon and the target area is the entire body from the waist up, including the mask. It's blade has a triangular cross-section, and the guard extends from the bell around to the pommel, thus protecting the knuckles. Unlike foil and epee, saber may attack with the edge of the blade as well as the point. Cuts are also allowed with the back of the blade, but only the third or so closest to the point. Saber is derived from the Hungarian cavalry saber (hence the target area - thats the only area of a mounted cavalryman you can hit without hitting his horse, which was considered bad form...), and the Hungarians did dominate the sport for many years. Saber is the only weapon of the three that the US has medaled in at the Olympics in many years (Peter Westbrook took bronze in '84, and then Mariel Zagunis took gold and Sada Jacobsen took bronze in '04, the first time women's saber was offered as an olympic sport). Saber was also one of the last weapons to be scored electronically. That will be my next topic - electronic scoring.

Google AdSense

Google pulled the plug on my AdSense account. They said that I clicked on ads from within my blog, which is a no-no. I may have - I can't remember. I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. Anyway, no more adbar. I don't think I'd made more than a few bucks anyway, and its not like it cost me anything. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Maybe I'll see if anyone else is offering a similar service.

I think I'll try a new blog template as well, just for ha-has

my2way

BWAHAHAHA! Bow down ye puny mortals! I now possess a Gmail account! A full gigabyte of storage. Nothing can stop me!

Keith Anderson, NP

Fencing Primer #2

Epee: The Weapon of the Gods!
OK, so maybe I'm a little biased. Epee is generally the second weapon a fencer learns, but the rule is no longer hard and fast. Some people go straight to epee or even saber, but the generally recognised course is foil -> epee -> saber. Epee is the heaviest of the three weapons, with a blade that is triangular in cross-section and a larger, deeper bell guard that covers the whole hand. It is, like foil, a thrusting only weapon, with points only being scored with the tip. However, the whole body is target area, from the top of the mask, to the soles of the feet (yes, it's been done, I've seen video - the guy on the right kicked up his front foot to lunge, and the guy on the left dropped his tip and nailed him on the sole of the foot). There is also no right of way in epee! If both people land touches within 1/25th of a second of each other, they both get a point (1/25th of a second after one person touches, the scoring box locks out any further touches). In epee, you parry less and counter-attack more, bearing in mind that if you are down a few points, scoring double touches will win the bout for your opponent.

Epee is supposed to be a tru(er) representation of rapier dueling - I want that guy dead, and I'm willing to die (or at least take a hit) to see that happen. Foil, on the other hand, represents dueling with small swords in a more enlightened time when a mere nick (first blood) was enough to satisfy honor. This explains the right of way - I'm not going to risk taking a wound when all I have to do is nick the guy - I'm going to block before I attack. What is weird about this is that in epee, the most common target is the weapon hand and arm, which is much less likely to yield a lethal wound, while foil only attacks the torso, where all the vital organs are. Go figure.
Next time:
Saber