Areas of Unrest

QOTD: A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom." - Albert Camus

Reading: Robert Reid, Year One

Listening to: the soundtrack to Genghis Blues

Decluttering accomplishments: Cleaned out the refrigerator, cleared off an entire shelf in the dining room, leaving only another 14 or so to go

13 April 2003 - Mostly About Bandages

Before I forget, I finally got around to writing something about my ice hotel trip way back in January. There's not really much of a story, but there are some photos, including one of the bed of ice I slept on.

In the "what were they thinking?" category, a recent travel ad reads "Hong Kong will take your breath away." Hong Kong is one of the foci of the SARS epidemic, of which shortness of breath is one of the major symptoms. That's got to be the classic bad luck when it comes to timing. It's right up there with the knife thrower who managed to nick his assistant in the head while going for a record on British television.

As for me, I had somewhat better luck this week, despite my failure to get upgrades on my flights to and from Denver. The weather in Boulder was perfectly springlike, for one thing, and my meetings were decently productive. As for the obligatory food pornography, the surprising thing is that I didn't eat any ahi there. Tuesday night, I met up with Mary Joan and we went to Chatauqua, which mysteriously failed to have the fabled fish on their menu. I did have a very nice pear and arugula salad. I should note that I continue to shock Colorado waiters by my ability to pronounce Italian words like :"arugula" and (on another occasion) "caprese." The trout that followed was okay, but they rather overdid the capers that topped it. A warm apple crisp for dessert was fragrant with cinnamon and made a nice ending to a pleasant meal. On Wednesday night, I took advantage of a signing at High Crimes to shop for mysteries, so planned dinner for proximity to the bookstore. That meant dragging Milo to Rhumba, where I am pleased to report that the chowder is as spicily good as ever. A cup of chowder and an appetizer makes a decent meal, so I accompanied the soup with a generous tamale. I also succumbed to the temptation of an excellent grapefruit sorbet for dessert.

But what I mostly wanted to mention this week is that I haven't seen nearly enough attention to the coolest technological innovation of the Iraq war. I speak of high tech bandages. There are at least two types, and I admit I haven't grasped all the details. But the major point is that they help blood clot faster and are capable of saving lives of people who would have bled to death quite recently. One type is made from shrimp shells, of all things.

And then I read in Technology Review about smart bandages that can change color to tell a doctor that the underlying wound is infected. These are supposedly going to start showing up in hospitals within a couple of years.

Here I thought that the "second skin" stuff you can get to put on blisters was pretty clever. I remember seeing band-aids sold individually at stores in Tanzania because nobody could afford an entire box, so I realize that a several hundred dollar high tech shrimp shell bandage isn't going to revolutionize the world. But it's still an interesting advance.