I am a Left-Winging raised in a family full of mostly Republicans. Granted, they're not all the way to the Right but my hometown certainly is. I loves me some Republicans. Even when I bash right-wing conservatism.

When I rant, I try to not paint everyone with the same wide brush, but I'm afraid people I care about will sometimes get some Jackson Pollacky drops and dribbles on them.

This board definitely has a liberal slant. It is also not always an easy place for Evangelical Christians.

I stand by my complete and utter hatred for Cheney. There will be no changing that. But I want to understand where some conservative philosophy comes from. I want to respect a conservative's right to be conservative. I just bristle when they expect me to live conservatively. And will always do this.

I also like salad shooters.

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I want to respect a conservative's right to be conservative. I just bristle when they expect me to live conservatively.

Oh, WORD. Well said.

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Alton has also gone the way of the freak.

Sadly, this is true. Nevertheless, salad shooters are a unitasker I simply cannot approve of.

ION, I just got 8 inches taken off my hair and I desperately need to dye it (visible roots GALORE), but I'd really rather take a nap. Can someone please come over and dye my hair while I sleep?

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::secretly plots to dye Jess's hair BLUE!!!!::

oh, wait.

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Wow.

Y'all salad shooter lovers are FUH-REAKS!!!

I will keep quite about politics for right now, because no good would come of me posting about it.

ION, I have a treadmill stress test scheduled for tomorrow. I'll be glad to get it over with. (Part of me is wondering if I should pack an overnight bag like my Dad does, since he always just assumes that any ER visit/stress test will result in a hospital admission.)

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For those situations, I employ the use of Sod's Law: if you don't pack one, you'll need it. If you do pack one, you won't.

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The Christmas bomber was treated exactly the way every "terrorist" arrested on American soil has been, through Republican and Democratic administrations. He was arrested and processed by the judicial system. Attempting to blow up an aircraft is a crime whether you do it because you wish to undermine the U.S. government, you were dumped by a flight attendant or you want to impress Jodie Foster. An artificial "war on terror" doesn't change that. Terror is a tactic, not a country or a particular ideology. As far as I'm concerned, the Oklahoma City bombing, attacks on abortion clinics and the guy flying his plane into the building the other day were all terrorism. They were violence in pursuit of political ends. I don't know how we legitimately sort out who goes into what system. I'll note that the terrorists who went through the court system, including Richard Reid, were all convicted and are all in jail.

That being said, I'd love to hear more from you, Shari. I was once a Republican myself, until the Republicans sold out to the religious right and political expediency. If the Republicans were still the party of fiscal conservatism and small government, I'd be with them on that, but over the last 15 years, they've been the party of cutting taxes and then spending like drunken sailors.

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I never bring more than a change of underwear to the hospital because I figure I'm going to be changing into a gown as soon as I'm admitted, in which case I can wear the same clothes I came in with.

Definitely bring your phone & iPod chargers, though.

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I have been exceptionally lucky to have a Kat when I've been admitted unexpectedly (which has been every admission so far) and she brings me slipper socks and pjs and ablution materials and trashy magazines. And a baby, but I don't get to keep him.

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Shari, I'm glad you spoke up. Takes a lot of courage to be the red duck in a blue bath. As I am a fence-sitter, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and the only left leaning person in my family, I know it can be frustrating. So, understand, when I bring up this issue, I do so out of respect.

(Torture is pulling out fingernails, not sleep dep, but let's not digress. If sleep dep is torture, I have a bone to pick with my children.)

I think you fail to understand the levels that folks in power over someone incarcerated will go to. That your level of sleep deprivation is mild compared to that employed by interrogators. When I think of sleep dep, I recall a lesson from college. As a Communications-Radio major, we were taught to be careful of promotional stunts, as they can have serious long term health consequences. The prime example was Peter Tripp, a DJ in the 50's, who thought it would be a great idea to stay awake for 201 hours as a promotional thing for the March of Dimes and the radio station. Here is a snid bit of what happened:

Back in the 1950's Peter Tripp, a popular radio DJ, thought it would be a good idea to try to stay on radio for 200 hours, with no sleep at all. Ultimately he wanted to break the world's record for staying awake. He was on the air for about 3 hours per day, and was kept awake by doctors who were also studying him, doing everything they could to keep his attention. They even went to the bathroom with him to make sure he didn't get some sneaky shut eye in there.

The first major change to Tripp was after three days or so. He started to show signs of mild psychosis, he would get irritable with everyone, he was so rude to his barber (who had been his barber for more than twenty years) that he went away crying and never cut his hair again. The second major change was his body temperature dropped. And it continued to drop throughout the whole course of the experiment, as time went on he would ask for more and more layers of clothes, until he looked like an Eskimo compared to everyone else around just wearing T-shirts. The lower it went, the crazier he became. Then, after about the fourth day he began to hallucinate. He saw cobwebs on his shoes. He saw mice and kittens that weren't there. He rummaged through drawers looking for money that never existed. He thought a technician had come to bury him. He was truly trippin' (probably where the term comes from )

The scientists were puzzled by the hallucinations, as this sort of thing had not been recorded back then, but then they made a surprising finding. They discovered that when he was going through particularly bad periods of hallucinations, although being awake, the hallucinations were shadowing the 90 minute REM cycle of dream sleep. It was as if he was having dreams, even though he was awake. Strangely though, whenever Tripp had to go on air to do his show the hallucinations would completely disappear, and listeners to the show said they couldn't really hear any difference.

By the last day he was completely out of it. He thought although everyone thought he was Peter Tripp, he wasn't, he was actually an impostor pretending to be Peter Tripp. He didn't recognize his wife, and the hallucinations were getting worse. Finally, on the last day after 200 hours his brain waves were monitored, and the doctors found that although he was awake, his brain waves were fully that of a person asleep. This was despite him being fully awake, and he knew that he was awake. He was asleep, but walking around functionally with his eyes open and talking to people, even though the EEG was showing something quite different.

After this he went to bed and slept for 24 hours. He claimed after this that he felt fine and there were no long term effects, but his wife didn't think so, and they divorced a while later. He also lost his job, and his friends said he was never the same again.

It's all fine and good to monday-morning-quarterback and say "it's ok to use sleep deprivation" if you aren't the one being tortured.

And because Windsparrow (continued...)

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