Dear Santa,

I've been very good this year. Please bring me an optical vortex coronagraph.

Thanks, bye!

p.s. How do you actually know when I've been bad or good?

[link]

A new optical device might allow astronomers to view extrasolar planets directly without the annoying glare of the parent star. It would do this by "nulling" out the light of the parent star by exploiting its wave nature, leaving the reflected light from the nearby planet to be observed in space-based detectors. The device, called an optical vortex coronagraph, is described in the December 15, 2005 issue of Optics Letters.

The problem was that the student was doing the thing that I'll not TMI on everyone, and she hurt me.

And they were 40 minutes late. And instead of giving me the health survey they give me every year to complete while they kept me waiting, asked me the long list of increasingly retarded questions (draw a diagram of your family tree? I told her to write, "patient thinks this is dumb" on it) while I was naked and cold.

Ouch.

Also? Very strange question. All the stuff I ever fill out seems to revolve around "what are your vices that are going to kill you dead" and "what killed your relatives dead" and "are you knocked up? Are you sure? ARE YOU REALLY SURE!!?! No kidding!??!" and "how many time you been cut open?"

Allyson,

somewhere on one of these boards - I think it was back on Salon - there was a discussion of bad gynecological visits. I swear that was the craziest thread I'd ever read. There are some really doozy of stories out there - shockingly bad.

My worst experience was when I was in graduate school and decided to go to the women's clinic (university affliated) near a mall. The doctor was ready to do the (TMI) and I had my legs in stirrups. She got called out of the room and I was stranded in the stirrups (ass facing the door) until she came back in. Then she left AGAIN mid-procedure. I couldn't believe that shit. Never went back.

That ID article is very weird. Actually, it's weirdly like a lot of ID spokespeople itself in the way it seems to be setting up a situation as though it was a big controversy when in fact there's no there there.

Why hasn't ID done as well as expected in academia? Well, who would honestly have expected it to in the first place? Scientists haven't glommed on in mass numbers? Actual experimentation according to scientific principles doesn't appear to be forthcoming? Hello. Kind of the point, yo.

How do you actually know when I've been bad or good?

"He sees you when you're sleeping, He knows when you're a awake"

The really annoying part about the repeated "are you knocked up" questions is that you can check off things like types of birth control, but there's not a check box for "Is there a star in the East?"

(draw a diagram of your family tree? I told her to write, "patient thinks this is dumb" on it) while

What, like your own personal family death chart?

That ID article is very weird. Actually, it's weirdly like a lot of ID spokespeople itself in the way it seems to be setting up a situation as though it was a big controversy when in fact there's no there there.

Well, the NYT had an article a few months back where they actually treated ID seriously. (I can't remember exactly what they said.) So this is consistent of them.

What, like your own personal family death chart?

I dunno. They wanted a Venn diagram.

That NYT is too clever for me by half.