Hi folks. How's it going with you? Me, I've been caught up in the hum drum routine of getting up and going to work and going to bed and getting up and going to work etc and I am amazed at how quickly the year is passing by.
I have recently watched an Asian horror film called "The Eye" which features a young woman who having been blind since the age of two, has a cornea transplant. As her eyesight returns and she begins to see the world, she also begins to see spirits and feels compelled to track down the identity of the cornea donor. The film has some nice eerie effects and is well worth watching.
I have been trying to make an effort to read more this year as its too easy to come home from work and just veg out until bedtime. Since my last update I have read Stephen King's "The Dead Zone". I'd been meaning to read this book for years and I really enjoyed it. I have also read "The Witching Hour" by Anne Rice which was bags of fun. Particularly interesting was Anne Rice's suggestion that a ghost might be a physical entity with cellular material albeit with its substance very thinly dissipated over a wide area, becoming visible only when the ghost contracts itself pulling its substance together so to speak and the idea that such an entity could interact with and even fuse with human cells. I have also recently been reading "The Rise & Fall of The Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. This book is really good although quick heavy going. It charts European History from 1500 to 2000 attempting to explain why by late 1800s Europe had risen to international world dominance. As the author points out, in 1500 it was not at all obvious to anyone that Europe was destined to dominate the world. At the time Europe was little more than a collection of feuding principalities and city states. The real power centres in the world were the fabulous Ottoman Empire and the Ming Empire in China. For comparison, in 1420 the Ming Navy consisted of 1350 combat vessels, in around 1500 the annual iron output of North China was 125000 tons - greater than the output of Britain 700 years later in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and the Chinese were also the first to use gunpowder - using it as early as the late 14th Century. It is incredible to think that an empire so vast, so technologically advanced and so wealthy could fall from power and yet fall it did as all empires eventually do. The book makes for fascinating reading and aims to explain why nations become great powers and why they subsequently fall from power to be succeeded by other nations.
We had a bit of a scare recently with my step-dad. While he was at work he practically collapsed and had to be sent home. He felt like he was going to faint, felt sick, intense headache, palpitation etc. His doctor told him that there was a slight chance he might have phaeochromocytoma which is a rare tumour of the adrenal gland. People with this condition get occasional sudden massive releases of adrenaline and this causes all of the nasty symptoms mentioned. It turns out that people suspected of this disorder have to collect a week's worth of urine for analysis. Because of this my step-Dad had to carry around a bottle for a week to collect his urine. Needless to say his work colleagues subjected him to numerous jokes along the lines of "now that's just taking the piss!". The good news is that once the tests had been completed my step-dad's doctor was able to confirm that he didn't have phaeochromocytoma. The bad news is that he is in the early stages of maturity onset diabetes. Brief explanation: Diabetes mellitus is caused by a person's inability to control the level of glucose in their blood. When the level of glucose in someone's blood gets too high it can be damaging (for instance it encourages excess growth of blood capillaries in the eye which can cause blindness and glucose binds irreversibly to haemoglobin which reduces the bloods ability to carry oxygen around the body). The difference between Juvenile Onset Diabetes (JOD) and Maturity Onset Diabetes (MOD) is that JOD can be treated with insulin and MOD cannot. JOD is caused by a persons inability to manufacture their own insulin (because the insulin producing cells in the pancreas have been destroyed by an auto-immune response which is normally triggered by viral infection at an early age). MOD is caused by a person's inability to respond to insulin (insulin stimulates liver and fat cells to take up glucose from the blood but because our modern diets are rich in sugars it is not unusual for a person's liver and fat cell insulin receptors to become insensitive to insulin). Hence, JOD can be treated with insulin injections whereas people with MOD are advised to take more exercise and reduce the sugar content of their diet.
Anyway, that's all for now, folks.
I have recently watched an Asian horror film called "The Eye" which features a young woman who having been blind since the age of two, has a cornea transplant. As her eyesight returns and she begins to see the world, she also begins to see spirits and feels compelled to track down the identity of the cornea donor. The film has some nice eerie effects and is well worth watching.
I have been trying to make an effort to read more this year as its too easy to come home from work and just veg out until bedtime. Since my last update I have read Stephen King's "The Dead Zone". I'd been meaning to read this book for years and I really enjoyed it. I have also read "The Witching Hour" by Anne Rice which was bags of fun. Particularly interesting was Anne Rice's suggestion that a ghost might be a physical entity with cellular material albeit with its substance very thinly dissipated over a wide area, becoming visible only when the ghost contracts itself pulling its substance together so to speak and the idea that such an entity could interact with and even fuse with human cells. I have also recently been reading "The Rise & Fall of The Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. This book is really good although quick heavy going. It charts European History from 1500 to 2000 attempting to explain why by late 1800s Europe had risen to international world dominance. As the author points out, in 1500 it was not at all obvious to anyone that Europe was destined to dominate the world. At the time Europe was little more than a collection of feuding principalities and city states. The real power centres in the world were the fabulous Ottoman Empire and the Ming Empire in China. For comparison, in 1420 the Ming Navy consisted of 1350 combat vessels, in around 1500 the annual iron output of North China was 125000 tons - greater than the output of Britain 700 years later in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and the Chinese were also the first to use gunpowder - using it as early as the late 14th Century. It is incredible to think that an empire so vast, so technologically advanced and so wealthy could fall from power and yet fall it did as all empires eventually do. The book makes for fascinating reading and aims to explain why nations become great powers and why they subsequently fall from power to be succeeded by other nations.
We had a bit of a scare recently with my step-dad. While he was at work he practically collapsed and had to be sent home. He felt like he was going to faint, felt sick, intense headache, palpitation etc. His doctor told him that there was a slight chance he might have phaeochromocytoma which is a rare tumour of the adrenal gland. People with this condition get occasional sudden massive releases of adrenaline and this causes all of the nasty symptoms mentioned. It turns out that people suspected of this disorder have to collect a week's worth of urine for analysis. Because of this my step-Dad had to carry around a bottle for a week to collect his urine. Needless to say his work colleagues subjected him to numerous jokes along the lines of "now that's just taking the piss!". The good news is that once the tests had been completed my step-dad's doctor was able to confirm that he didn't have phaeochromocytoma. The bad news is that he is in the early stages of maturity onset diabetes. Brief explanation: Diabetes mellitus is caused by a person's inability to control the level of glucose in their blood. When the level of glucose in someone's blood gets too high it can be damaging (for instance it encourages excess growth of blood capillaries in the eye which can cause blindness and glucose binds irreversibly to haemoglobin which reduces the bloods ability to carry oxygen around the body). The difference between Juvenile Onset Diabetes (JOD) and Maturity Onset Diabetes (MOD) is that JOD can be treated with insulin and MOD cannot. JOD is caused by a persons inability to manufacture their own insulin (because the insulin producing cells in the pancreas have been destroyed by an auto-immune response which is normally triggered by viral infection at an early age). MOD is caused by a person's inability to respond to insulin (insulin stimulates liver and fat cells to take up glucose from the blood but because our modern diets are rich in sugars it is not unusual for a person's liver and fat cell insulin receptors to become insensitive to insulin). Hence, JOD can be treated with insulin injections whereas people with MOD are advised to take more exercise and reduce the sugar content of their diet.
Anyway, that's all for now, folks.
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It all makes you wonder.