It only took me nine months, but I've finally figured out how to use the catagory function on the blog.  ...   more »

Since I began this blog nine months ago, I've had a small but erudite readership (I think).  And while I certainly wish for more (including those folks who may have come here from the link on Slate, or some other sites) I am content writing for whoever finds this place informative or entertaining, whether 10 or 10,000.

Unfortunately, that readership, as of yesterday was reduced by one, with the tragic death of Carmen White.  Carmen was a bright and beautiful young woman.  Until very recently she was a nurse practitioner at Washington Adventist Hospital, from where she had just resigned to take a new job.  On Friday night she was killed in while a passenger in a car, after celebrating her new course in life.  My sister Laura, who worked with Carmen, was badly injured in the same accident, but will be alright. 

I did not know Carmen very well, but she was the kind of person who made people happy to be around.  She liked reading this blog, and got my often screwy and ironic sense of humor.  Having said that, I think that Carmen was a person of faith, which I am not.  If so, I hope that she was correct in her beliefs and is in a better place. 

I know that after the crash that killed her, paramedics, helicopter pilots, policemen, doctors and nurses, did their best to help her.  I know that these folks saved my sister (also a nurse practitioner).  The paramedics by using practiced emergency techniques to stabilize her at the scene; brave and skilled helicopter pilots, who through mastery of a complex machine that takes advantage of the laws of aerodynamics, manage to speed injured people through the air at night, landing on narrow roadways, and atop tall buildings.  Doctors and nurses, who with sutures, pins, packing and plastic, and knowledge of anatomy, chemistry and physiology, put broken people back together. 

If a God exists, He presumably has welcomed Carmen.  But having created this world, through His infinite power and design, He has dumbfoundingly left us, who still inhabit this place, bereft and poorer this day.

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Today, not only will I review four movies that I have not seen, and in all likelihood will never see, ...   more »