I can't blame this one on Xoom. It seems I wrote an update at the end of last week and then forget to ftp it to the server. Sorry, dear readers, I'll try to pay better attention to my work than that in future.

Attention all friends of Bryan! It's time to email him again, this time with a get-well card. He's managed to break his ankle rather seriously. He'll kill me for telling you all this, but I owe him a little embarrassment, so I'll reveal that he is in a fair amount of pain, and he is worried about how he's going to survive the semester whilst immobile. Those who know Bryan will know he's going to get through the ordeal, but I think it would be nice if all of his 'net friends support him. He'll prolly have more access to web friends than IRL friends for a little while.

The Grand Prix of the United States went very well over the weekend. I joined several of my racing friends at Stuart's house for the race. We made breakfast burritos (is that a CA thing?) and drank mimosas while watching the race coverage on Sunday morning. The great German driver Michael Schumacher won the race in a Ferrari. As I mentioned earlier in the year, I'm hoping he'll go on to win the World Championship. By winning the USGP he regained the lead by a narrow margin over his championship rival, Mikka Hakkinen of Finland. There are two races left in the season, the Grands Prix of Japan and Maylasia.

Did I mention I love my new job? Not only do I get to write and edit the alumni magazine and maintain the alumni database, I also get to plan an organize alumni events. I've got several such events coming up soon. The first is Fleet Week in San Francisco. I'll visit with many of our alumni aboard Navy ships in San Francisco, and host them at a beautiful bay front private club on Saturday afternoon. The entertainment will be a performance by the Blue Angles, as viewed from the rooftop garden of the club. There is also a chance we could arrive in SF in style by flying from Monterey to an aircraft carrier as it passes by my hometown on it's way north to SF from San Diego. We'd ride the ship overnight to SF, then steam under the Golden Gate as part of the Fleet Week parade of ships. Details on that later as they develop.

But wait, with this job you get more! At the end of October, I'm scheduled to fly to Houston for a science writing conference. To leverage the trip, I'm arranging to visit the Johnson Space Center to meet with several of our astronaut alumni - there are 19 of them at the moment. I'd really like to meet with Scott Altman who just came back from a mission on Atlantis to the Space Station last week. He carried a little NPS (Naval Postgraduate School) sign I made for him into space. My goal is get our astronaut and NASA engineer alumni at JSC to form a little alumni club. Believe it or not, this school I work at has never really had much of an alumni program - we only have three active chapters.

I've also got two trips to San Diego scheduled for this Fall. There is a conference for education advancement professionals there that I'll be attending in early December. Before that, in mid-October, I'll be officiating a car race there. My friends Stuart and Carrie (and little baby Stirling), and Mark will be traveling with me on that trip to work the race too.

Speaking of Mark, I was giving him a hard time at the ski tour guide's meeting last night. He's got a nasty case of laryngitis and can't speak at all. He's been going around communicating by means of clicks, whistles, and gestures for the last two days. It's very cute and adorable and I've been reminding him of that as much as possible in front of other people! Poor guy can't defend himself. Like I said at the end of my last entry, I'm soooooo cruel! I've always identified with the Tigger, but maybe there's a little Mickey in me too, eh Michael?

Thursday, September 28th 2000

                                                -Al Gore, Sept. 2000

I'm really having trouble with this political season. Look at what Vice President Gore said this week. The first part is an honest opinion that could be based on many things. Although I disagree with the opinion, I would give the VP the benefit of the doubt that it was well-considered as he formed it. The second sentence I also disagree with, but the thought process it implies is far more troubling than the conclusion.

Al Gore is a professional politician, not a scientist or a medical professional. Yet, if he becomes President, his 'belief' about a matter of fact will set national policy. A man who will govern based on what he chooses to believe in the face of available fact is simply unfit to be President. Yes, the facts on this particular issue are available. Earlier in the Clinton Administration the White House Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey commissioned the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences to report on the subject of medicinal marijuana. The Institute's scientists studied the question thoroughly and reported in 1999, "Cannabinoids are an interesting group of compounds with potentially far-reaching therapeutic applications." You may read the entire report if you like, but it's long and dry.

I'd like to emphasize here the reason that I'm very disturbed by what Al Gore said. It has nothing to do with my opinion on the use of marijuana. I'm not a marijuana user, and I don't think I would become one if it were made legal for recreational use. I'm concerned about Gore's complete disregard of rational thought.

Before I started writing today, I wasn't sure about the validity of medicinal marijuana, although I have seen it used (by a college friend's mother with terminal bone cancer) to the great benefit of the patient. I did a quick web-search to find out if my notion was even remotely correct and came up with the facts reported by the IOM in less than five minutes.

Not only was the truth out there, it was easy to find! The Whitehouse itself commissioned the conclusive study showing the medicinal potential of marijuana. What kind of man is Al Gore to choose to ignore the hard facts - facts the administration he works for paid money to learn - and instead choose to base his proposed national policy on an incorrect belief? Al Gore is not the kind of man I would call Presidential material.

Friday, September 29th 2000

R.I.P Oreo 1997-2000

Whenever a debating society is looking for a good ethical issue to debate they turn first to abortion. With this week's USFDA decision to approve the use of the abortion pill in the United States, you might think I'd pick that as a subject to share my thoughts on, but I'm going to move down the list of debater's topics one or two places and discuss euthanasia instead. It has immediate relevance. I had my pet rat Oreo euthanized this morning.

Most of this entry is plagiarized from a letter I wrote to a friend about it, shortly after it happened. I needed to get my story off my chest so I wrote to him. Re-reading the letter this afternoon, it seemed like something that should be in my journal for my own personal record. I loved Oreo and I'm certainly not pleased with his death, but I am proud of the decisions I made leading up to it. I'm convinced I did everything right for my little furry companion.

The most common cause of death in rats is pneumonia. Whiskers died of pneumonia last year. Oreo had it this spring, but responded well to oral antibiotics and lived happily on. Yesterday morning, it had returned with a vengeance. I woke up to find Oreo lying helplessly by his food dish, unconscious.

I took him to see the vet who then prescribed the normal oral antibiotic that Oreo really likes the taste of. Unfortunately, just as in the case of mountaineers at high altitude, the lack of oxygen in Oreo's blood ruined his appetite. Forcing him to take the medicine was an awful trauma for him. Likewise, he responded very stressfully to an attempted sub-coetaneous fluid injection. I took him home and hoped that what little antibiotic he took would help his breathing enough to return his appetite, so he would take his morning dose more readily.

Oreo had a terrible night. Every time he'd start to drift off to sleep, he'd snap back to awakeness with a nasty start because he was suffocating. By this morning he hadn't slept, ate, or drank in 24 hours and was lying in his cage gasping like a beached fish.

I took him back to the vet's and suggested putting him in an Oxygen tent for a half an hour or so, like you might do with an O2 starved mountaineer, to see if that would restore his appetite enough to take some medicine. It didn't. Since Oreo's recovered from pneumonia once before, he's probably got badly scarred lungs. He's also 3.5 years old and most rats only go 2-3 years. The vet said that injected antibiotics might give him a chance, but it was a small one. I already knew how much Oreo didn't like injections.

I decided that I didn't want Oreo's most likely last days and hours to be spent tortured by needles and suffering without even the respite of sleep. I asked that he be comfortably put to sleep. They were going to give him a lethal injection, but then I reminded them of how sensitive he was to injections, and I didn't want that to be his last experience. They put some cat surgical anesthesia in his oxygen tent so that he'd go to sleep, then painlessly gave him the final injection.

I was very sad and cried a little, but I didn't feel bad or guilty. I knew I did the best thing for Oreo. My ethics were put to painful test today, and I'm proud of how I measured up. I'll bury Oreo next to his departed brother Whiskers.

After work tonight, my friends will join me at the campus pub. Julie, who moved north, will be there visiting too. We'll wake Oreo properly, you can be sure of that!