My baby left me..

...flew to Morocco.
I'll see her in December
where I don't yet know.

Katie is in Casablanca with her family. She'll be there for a month and then be somewhere else. I made a flow chart to help keep it straight. Brooklyn is out but other than that it's still in the air.

Anyhow, she'll be blogging about her trip at neapnspring.blogspot.com and her parents will be blogging about their trip (Morocco, Syria and Mali from now until the start of 2008) at sshields.wordpress.com.

Wyoming does it right

I somehow missed it when Sen. Thomas (R-WY) passed away earlier this month. My mom lived in Worland, WY for a few years, so I took some interest. I read this in the NYT story:

Under the state’s laws, the state’s Republican party is to submit three names as a successor to the Democratic governor of Wyoming, Dave Freudenthal, so the replacement process does not affect the Democratic-Republican split in the Senate.

A while back when Jan and I were discussing a situation (I forget which state) where the governor was able to change the party of a seat in Congress by appointing the replacement when someone died and I said that seemed really cheap and a governor should pick someone of the same party. Jan (being European) said it should obviously be the party that gets to decide the replacement and that would solve the problem. Well, it looks like Wyoming takes a semi-European approach to the problem, seems much better than what most states do. Far better than AK where the Governor could just decide to appoint his daughter...

Goodreads profile

I've created a profile at Goodreads.com, a site where I can list what I'm reading, review books I've read, and look at my friends' profiles for what they're reading and their book reviews. I'm pretty much just starting with the present and a few for-fun books I read earlier this year, and letting the collection build.

Some Like it Hot (but not I)

Came home from my week in NYC to find my place 89 degrees (yes, Jan, I'll convert for you: 32 on your far more rational scale) with over 50% humidity. My digital thermometer put the heat index at 92, and the temp had dropped a bit from the AC by the time I remembered that nifty feature. So I have the AC and box fan going (the latter to push the air from my living room where the wall unit is to my bedroom where I will soon be attempting to sleep). It's coming down to a comfortable level and I saved a lot of energy not having the AC on for over 5 days.

Just thought I'd share. Not that you needed to know any of that, but this is what personal blogs are for, right?

A summary of our trip may follow in the next few days.

NPR : Lack of Short-Term Memory Doesn't Stop New Grad

I don't listen to much NPR, but I happened to hear this story. Just amazing and makes me feel like I should be working a lot harder and doing more with my decent memory.

All Things Considered, May 25, 2007 · Andrew Engel just graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a bachelor's degree in health administration — despite having no short-term memory. Engel learned he had a brain tumor in 1995, when he was starting his freshman year in college.

Engel recovered from the tumor, but he was left with no short-term memory. Told to forget about going to college, Engel instead pressed a team of doctors at Johns Hopkins to devise ways for him to learn.

Engel tells NPR's Robert Siegel that with the team, he found a way to study that allows new information to be stored in a healthy part of his brain that is associated with long-term memory.