January 2002

(24 Jan 2002)

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• Seattle Times Special Feature on Martin Luther King
• King gets credit for big changes
• The King Center, Atlanta GA
  Advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Canada's Apartheid
  "Natives and non-natives ... a scene straight out of the Deep South, with aboriginal Canadians taking the place of blacks."

(21 Jan 2002)

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William Petersen (CSI's Gil Grissom) plays Will Graham, an ex-FBI profiler who is called out of retirement by his former boss (Dennis Farina) to study the evidence from two grisly mass murders and construct the profile of a serial killer at large. Graham gets help from a team of evidence experts much like those on CSI, including comedian Chris Elliott in a small (straight!) role, and from a serial killer he caught -- Dr. Hannibal ("The Cannibal") Lector, played here by Brian Cox (Hermann Goering in Nuremburg). The scenes of Graham's profile-building process aren't very satisfying -- he stares at videos and articles of clothing, and pulls insights seemingly out of thin air. The look of the film is dated, the production values are laughable and the synthesizer soundtrack is cheesy by today's standards.

This story receives a more modern treatment in the soon-to-be-released Red Dragon, starring Edward Norton as Graham, Ralph Fiennes as the killer, and Anthony Hopkins reprising his Oscar-winning portrayal of Hannibal Lector.

Watching closely: Along with the FBI evidence team, one of the last lines in Manhunter, spoken to Graham by a rescued captive, foreshadows CSI: "Who are you?" (the hit series' theme song)

• Manhunter: "One of the most overlooked films of the 1980s"
• Ex-FBI profiler: No such thing as a 'typical' serial killer
• A real reality show: CSI seeks ultimate truths in unseemly places
  Viewers are tired of "watching dumb people think for an hour. Our audience gets to watch smart people think."

(15 Jan 2002)

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Earlier this week, we noticed a collection of water around the base of our toilet. The source was a leak from a part of the toilet I later learned from the Toiletology 101 website is called the refill valve. Thus we were able to sound reasonably knowledgeable when the plumber showed up to effect repairs.

The story didn't end there, however. After the plumber left, the toilet started to periodically -- and noisily -- refill, even though it hadn't been flushed. Close inspection revealed there was a slow leak around the inside of the toilet bowl, which led to gradual reduction in the tank volume, until refilling was necessary. Having read "How a gravity-flush toilet works", I knew this was a sign that the flapper was not making a good seal with the flush valve seat. But why had this only started to happen after the plumber's visit?

It took a couple of days of annoyance and one night of experimentation, but eventually I determined that what had probably happened was the plumber, in order make his repairs, had closed the shut-off valve of the water supply connector. Once he was finished, he reopened the valve, but wider than it had been. Consequently, the tank filled up faster than before, and the water turbulence prevented a good seal from forming between the flapper and the flush valve seat, resulting in the leaking and the noisy refilling. Solution: Close the shut-off valve slightly -- simple!

• Medical information services help workers make health decisions
  As employers begin to offer insurance coverage that requires workers to take on more financial responsibility for their health care choices, a few are also trying to provide information to help them make those decisions.

(12 Jan 2002)

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(12 Jan 2002)

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(10 Jan 2002)

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Distance learning has become possible in the past few years as the Internet has become available to more people. Students access teaching material posted on webpages by instructors, and interact through online discussion boards. It is like an e-correspondence course, but is a richer experience because of the multimedia capabilities of the Internet and the chance to get to know your fellow students. But the biggest selling point of distance learning is that it can be asynchronous -- rather than having to be physically present in a classroom at a certain time, students can "attend" the virtual class at their convenience from wherever they happen to be (provided they have a computer with Internet access). This particularly suits those who want to learn about medical informatics, since they tend to have day jobs. The people in my class are doctors and librarians from places as far away as San Diego, Chicago, Georgia, Pennsylavania, Maine, Iran, China ... and Toronto.

The OHSU medical informatics distance learning program started after I came to Portland to do the on-campus program, but its growth has been phenomenal. Now there are many times more distance learners than on-site students. Had my interest in informatics developed later, I might have become a distance learner and never have left my job as a pathologist in Toronto, Canada. The move was for the better, though -- I think the career opportunities in health informatics are far greater down here in the U.S. than in the Great White North.

• United States Distance Learning Association
• International Centre for Distance Learning
• Distance Education Clearinghouse

(09 Jan 2002)

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Not having been much of a television watcher before I got married, I don't fight for control the rimokon (remote control) in our house. Besides, I like most of what Dorami-chan enjoys watching: one-hour (or, minus commercial time, 44-minute) whodunits like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and all of the Law & Order brand offerings (Law & Order: Original Flavour, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent). Detectives on these programs are shown routinely using computers to consult databases in the course of tracking down the bad guys. In one recent L&O:CI episode, a detective even loaded an e-mail monitoring program onto a suspect's desktop unit!

Contrast this with medical shows: I briefly looked at an episode of E.R., and the only people working with computers were the ward clerks. In this case, art is an accurate portrayal of life at most hospitals. Doctors are detectives on the hunt for diseases and their treatments, but they tend to rely on their own memory. Much of today's huge body of medical knowledge has been discovered after most practicing physicians graduated from medical school, yet the first (or even second) instinct of doctors and -- more depressingly -- many current medical trainees is not to make use of computers and online resources to retrieve up-to-date information that could assist diagnostic and therapeutic efforts.

(08 Jan 2002)

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It would be a bit much to expect similar all-day television coverage in Portland, but Dorami-chan and I were pleasantly surprised to find an NHL game featuring her favourite team, the Colorado Avalanche and the league-leading Detroit Red Wings on ABC-TV Sports. [Game Report] Now that the college football season is over, this is how the network will be filling its Saturday afternoon schedule.

In Portland, the broadcast was partially pre-empted by local coverage of George W. Bush's visit to the Rose City. Oregon's unemployment rate, at 7.4% the highest in the country, has the president's attention. He gave a very political speech, highlighting achievements, making sure nobody felt left out, and steering clear of specifics. The carefully selected, invitation-only audience was most receptive.

• Bush addresses economic concerns in Portland speech
• Bush touts economy fix
• Portland OR protests Bush visit

In the evening, we went to the public skating session before my recreational hockey league game at Sherwood Ice Arena to again attempt to get Dorami-chan skating backwards. We will need a few more sessions!

• How to Do a Backward Wiggle
• Robby Glantz International Power Skating: Backward Skating
• Laura Stamm Power Skating: The C Cut
• Backward Skating Stride

(05 Jan 2002)

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• Japanese superstition may increase risk of death
  Japanese Americans with heart disease appear to be at greater risk of dying of a heart attack on the 4th day of the month, a number that is deemed "unlucky" in Japan, UCSD researchers report.
• Scared to death isn't just an expression
  When Charles Baskerville met the legendary Hound of the Baskervilles one dark night on the moors, the demonic beast's glowing fangs literally scared him to death. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was on to something. Fear, it seems, can kill you.

The investigators attribute their findings to the psychological stress of the Chinese and Japanese cultural-linguistic association of the number 4 with death. They postulate that the effect is not mirrored in Western culture's fear of the number 13 because 13 is not explicitly associated with death. The study was done on certificates of death from January 1973 to the end of December 1998. I suspect that if they do a similar study on records from 1999 onwards, they won't see such an effect, at least among Japanese Americans. Given the present state of heritage language skills in the Nikkei community, few will have the ability to make the cultural-linguistic association anymore, and the "shi" superstition won't be of concern.

(04 Jan 2002)

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For New Year's Eve, Dorami-chan and I went for a bowl of toshikoshi soba (year-crossing buckwheat noodles) at Koji Osakaya Japanese Restaurant in downtown Portland. Someone at the table behind us was drumming on his plates and glasses with his ohashi (chopsticks) -- bad manners, not to mention annoying! We countered with some loud noodle slurping.

Afterward, we went to Pioneer Courthouse Square, where last year disappointed youths ran amuck when they found out there was no organized New Year event. This year the city and downtown merchants decided to fork out for a countdown celebration, but with precautions. "No backpacks, large bags, skateboards, weapons or white powder." We underwent a frisking by the security guards at the fenced perimeter, then headed in. It was a cold, clear, full moon night and the show wasn't very entertaining (blues isn't the best music for creating an energetic, upbeat mood).

• Downtown Portland Goes into Party Mode for New Year's Eve

We moved on to Higgins Restaurant and Bar to warm up and have one of their great desserts, chocolate mousse with noisettes. The place was very busy, so we felt bad about lingering over coffee refills and came home in time for the American tradition of watching the (tape-delayed for us) broadcast of Dick Clark ringing (er, rockin') in the New Year from Times Square in New York City.

• A New Year's Toast to an Ageless Wonder
  A 1999 Bankrate.com interview with then-69-year-old Dick Clark
• Jump The Shark: Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
  "This show jumped when it became known that the show is taped about a month before New Year's."
• New Year's tradition died with Guy Lombardo's passing
  2002 marks the 25th anniversary of New Year's without the Royal Canadians' Auld Lang Syne

Today we enjoyed the osechi ryouri (traditional Japanese New Year's food) that Dorami-chan has been busy preparing. Despite her success last year, she also got a store-made osechi tray from the deli department at the local Uwajimaya as a backup. I don't know why she worried. Next year she will be cooking without a safety net.

New Year's in the United States means college football bowl games. In the afternoon, I checked in periodically on the progress of the University of Oregon Ducks in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe AZ, but tuned out after the first half when it became apparent a blowout was in the works. (In the end, the Ducks routed the Colorado Buffaloes 38-16.)

In the 'Chuck at this time of year it is usually cold enough to play some outdoor hockey. Not so in Portland, but the Sherwood Ice Area had some open late night ice time, so I got to scrimmage with most of my recreational team NSA Gang Green and players from other teams in what felt like an all-star game for the Adult Hockey B league -- that is, until our legs started to feel like they were going to fall off from the non-stop action.

It was a multicultural New Year's!

(01 Jan 2002)

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