I haven’t been writing about my battles with caffeine (and empty calories) lately because there hasn’t been anything to report. I’m sure a better writer could have made almost two weeks of nothing into something interesting. Maybe made a point about how mundane struggles and small, uninspiring moments eventually add up to a life story. If only I was one of those “talented” people you hear so much about.

Like I said, it was a whole lot of nothing. There weren’t any inspiring victories. I didn’t manage to climb a mountain, cure Cancer, or completely kick the soda habit. I cut down a good deal, but it wasn’t anybody’s idea of cold turkey. My poultry products were lukewarm at best.

Unfortunately (for narrative purposes, anyway), there also weren’t any dramatic reversals. I didn’t wake up in the doorway of an abandoned theater with an empty three-liter bottle of store brand cola jammed up my ass and a two day hole in my memory. I didn’t knock over a delivery truck, drive it out onto the desert and snort soda syrup until I induced diabetes. I had a couple of cans here and there, but I didn’t fall back into my old (two weeks ago) soda-drinkin’ ways.

Until yesterday.

A few days of hot, swampy Philadelphia weather, a noisy window air conditioner and some stress-related aches and pains conspired to keep me from sleeping very well. I survived all weekend on grape juice and water, but coming back to work on Monday was the (really badass) straw that took out a 10 pound sledgehammer and pulverized the camel’s spine. I fell off the wagon. Into a ravine. Where I promptly drowned in a river of high fructose corn syrup.

As we speak, I am draining the last drops of a fountain soda that I got with my routine sandwich. The neglected sweet sensors in my tongue are buzzing with excitement, as I’ve kept them at speed for about 24 hours now. I have to convince myself that this is a temporary setback, rather than proof that I’m too weak to change even this small facet of my (shallow as a pond in a drought) character.

Crap. I just realized that this actually is the most interesting thing happening in my brainpuddings right now. How sad.

Could a well built door
at a sandwich shop be a
super deli gate?

Colleen Leduc, of Barrie, Ontario is a single mother, raising an 11 year-old autistic daughter. She sends her daughter to public school, because that’s all she can afford.

On May 30th, she received a call from her daughter’s school, asking her to come in right away. When she got there, she was informed that there were suspicions that her daughter was being sexually abused.

“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’”

Based on this ridiculous cold reading trick, school officials called the Children’s Aid Society, which launched an investigation into the allegations.

Luckily, Leduc was able to satisfy CAS that the abuse was entirely imaginary.

[A] case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn’t a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a “diligent” mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report “ridiculous.”

This, right here, is why belief in spooky mind powers isn’t harmless fun. These baseless allegations wasted the time and resources of the school, the CAS and most significantly of Colleen Leduc. She’s only lucky that the “psychic” didn’t blame her for the non-existent abuse. I hope that Ms. Leduc sues the crap out of the “psychic,” and every school official who was involved in perpetrating this farce.

A routine resolution to formally recognize a convention taking place in Harrisburg stalled because the group in question practices the wrong religion.

The 60th annual convention of the U.S. chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is scheduled to take place in the state capital this weekend. Speaker Dennis O’Brien (R., Phila.) proposed the resolution for formal recognition by the House, noting the convention’s mission to “increase faith and harmony and introduce various humanitarian, social and religious services.”

Unfortunately, there was a slight problem with the whole “Muslim” thing. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R., The Crusades) objected. “The Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God,” Mr. Metcalfe helpfully pointed out, “and I will be voting negative.”

After this impromptu lesson in comparative theology, Rep. Gordon Denlinger (R., Bigotry) tried to classy-up the debate by invoking September 11th.

“Certainly this nation went through an attack some years ago that is well-burned into the subconscious of our society,” he said. “What I sense on our floor today is that, for some people, this evokes very strong passion and emotion.”

You know what else evokes strong passion and emotion? Legislators who fail to grasp the basic principles of the Constitution. I’ll admit that I think the resolution itself is a bit of a time-waster; shouldn’t the approval of their god be enough to sustain them? But to squash the resolution because the subjects don’t worship the same god as you and your colleagues? You’ve in effect created a religious test for resolutions by a legislative body. And did you not notice that you’ve now said on the record that some portion of our state legislators hear the word “Muslim” and immediately think “terrorist?”

Thank you, Reps. Metcalfe and Denlinger for showing the world just how intolerant and prejudiced Pennsylvania politics can get, over something as silly as a pat on the back for a locally scheduled convention. It’s a proud day for all of us.

Clumps of a white substance, uncovered by excavations of the Martian surface by the Phoenix lander, have disappeared over the last few days. Observers are confident that these were chunks of water ice, which evaporated after being exposed by the digging.

Best reaction to date comes from a co-worker, who observed that they should probably open a Rita’s up there. Mm, Martian Gelati.

CNN.com/crime is reporting that a 16 year old Oregon boy, whose parents raised him in a faith-healing only church called the Followers of Christ, has died of a urinary tract blockage. The blockage caused a buildup of urea in his bloodstream, which poisoned his organs and caused heart failure.

He probably had a congenital condition that constricted his urinary tract where the bladder empties into the urethra, and the condition of his organs indicates that he had multiple blockages during his life, said Dr. Clifford Nelson, deputy state medical examiner for Clackamas County.

“You just build up so much urea in your bloodstream that it begins to poison your organs, and the heart is particularly susceptible,” Nelson said.

Nelson said a catheter would have saved the boy’s life. If the condition had been dealt with earlier, a urologist could easily have removed the blockage and avoided the kidney damage that came with the repeated illnesses, Nelson said.

In March, the boy’s 15 month old cousin died of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection, after her parents refused to do anything but pray for her recovery. The two children are the latest in a series of deaths among younger church members, which in 1999 prompted the state of Oregon to remove protections based on religion for parents who treat - or rather, FAIL to treat - their children with prayer rather than actual useful medicine.

Unlike the parents of the little girl, who were charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment, the parents of the latest victim have another out. Oregon law allows minors over the age of 14 to refuse medical treatment. If it turns out that the boy was offered treatment and refused it, his parents are off the hook.

Two things spring to mind. First, these people are serial child abusers. Points to Oregon for having the stomach to prosecute them. We can only hope that their planned religious freedom defense doesn’t stand up in court. A competent adult should have the right to refuse medical treatment for any reason, but withholding medical help from a sick toddler is crazy and criminal, and no amount of faith should shield willfully neglectful parents from prosecution.

Freedom of religion, like every freedom, has to have practical limits. Freedom of speech doesn’t protect the proverbial guy shouting “fire” during the premiere of the latest summer blockbuster. Freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference shouldn’t protect parents who routinely let helpless children die from easily treatable diseases. We as a society need to come to some kind of consensus that exempting churches from property taxes is acceptable, but subjecting children to potentially fatal neglect isn’t.

Second, and more personal, are some variations on the question I asked above. How many times does the power of prayer have to fail before these parents will wake up and stop letting their children die? I don’t expect them to stop believing in their god, but is a healthy dose of “those who help themselves” to much to ask? How deeply indoctrinated do you have to be to believe that your all-powerful, benevolent deity has a plan that includes your son or daughter dying for want of a bottle of penicillin? Is there any way to shake these people awake before another child dies? If anybody has answers to any of these, I’d love to hear them.

I went to the Popped! Festival Saturday lineup at Drexel University. Thanks are due to Y-Rock On XPN, and the woman who emailed their contest before me, and then couldn’t attend.

I give the performers a score of 64 out of 73. Crystal Castles wasn’t my cup of tea, but the acts were uniformly energetic and engaged with the crowd. They were mostly well-mixed too, with a minimum of vocals drowned out by instruments.

I have to give the festival itself a less-impressive 18 out of 25. Although the stage set-up (taking over 33rd Street north of Market) was interesting and well thought-out, there were other details that were wanting.

My biggest complaint was the policy barring re-entry. I understand that concession sales are necessary, but forcing us to stay in a two-square block radius for the planned eight-hour show, with three dollar water and eight dollar wraps as sustenance, was a tad frustrating. It was compounded by the fact that there was no notice of the policy. I didn’t find out until after I’d gone in, and I was a little cheesed. After a few other people were similarly caught, they finally broke out the markers and scrap paper to make some handwritten signs, which would have been handier if they’d not been put up two hours after the gates opened.

There also seemed to be some disconnect between the yellow-shirted event staff and the grey-clad volunteers. Questions asked sometimes got different answers depending on the color of shirt worn by the answer-giver. That kind of lack of uniformity always grates on me.

Since I was there for free, I maintained a civil tongue. Through some clever wrangling, I managed to stay in the shade all day, whilst still being able to see the stage. All in all, it was a pretty good day, and I learned something valuable about myself.

I should never go to concerts.

I’m too self-conscious to dance, too spindly to mosh, and too concerned about hearing loss to get close enough to the stage to really connect with the performers. I wind up isolated in a crowd of people, feeling like I’m wearing the world’s biggest pair of headphones. Instead of getting engaged by the music, I become hyper-aware of bumping into people, or sweating too much, or unexpectedly running into someone I know, and having to exchange awkward greetings over the din.

So the takeaway message is this. The Popped! Festival was fun. I am not so fun. From now on, I think I’ll stick to my public radio podcasts. Somehow, I doubt the scene kids will notice I’m gone.

The most recent picture in NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of The Day clearly shows the face of the Mantis God. His compound eyes gaze benevolently down upon us, his holy mandibles touch lightly as he showers his insecty love upon us.

Of course, “Big Astronomy” has some half-assed nattering about a possible explanation.

Now known popularly as Hanny’s Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny’s Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.

Fear not, brothers and sisters. The Mantis God loves us all. When he returns to us, he will eat all the flies from every backyard, even of those soulless astronomers who gaze upon his holy carapace and see only a “mysterious green blob.”

I have seen the bright green face of the Mantis God. All hail pareidolia.

You. Yes, you. I don’t care how little (or how much) you know or care about politics. I don’t care how much you know or care about the Supreme Court, or the law in general. If you’re a citizen of the United States, or you know someone who is, you need to read The Supreme Court: A User’s Guide, by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Why? Ms. Lithwick sums it up:

While the justices cannot bring down gas prices or bring home the troops, their decisions in the coming years will affect just about everything else: your rights regarding privacy, reproduction, speech and religion; how to count your vote and where your kids go to school; as well as your occupational and environmental protections. You name it, they’ll decide it. Or they’ll decide not to decide it (which may be even worse).

You need to know what’s happening in the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary in general. You need to know that the Supreme Court is the only thing standing between you and the total abolition of your civil rights. If the Court abdicates its role of reviewing laws for constitutionality, Congress and the President will have free reign. (Free “reign.” Get it?) If they agree that it’s okay to start disenfranchising old people who don’t have a favorite bible verse and college students who’ve ever discussed having an abortion, shipping them abroad to be waterboarded with crude oil drilled in your local park, and paying female torturers half as much as male torturers, while tapping the phones of their relatives, nobody will be able to stop them.

I know this sounds alarmist, but sometimes a little bit of alarm is really goddam necessary. This is one of those times.

WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?