Pride and Predator

Oooh, I want to see this:

Will Clark is set to direct "Pride and Predator," which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.

As John August points out, this is high concept. And it's being filmed by Elton John's Rocket Pictures, so we don't need to worry about them getting too tasteful :)

Suddenly, the world of film is fun again.

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ammonite fanfic

Every few weeks I list some of the search terms people use to find me on the web. Sometimes I understand how searchers got from their terms to my blog. Sometimes, eh, not so much.

This time, I'm going for an eerie few rather than a welter of weirdness. I'll start, as always, with the ammonites. Actually I've chosen just one ammonite today:

- ammonite fanfic
This made me laugh. I was talking to Kelley about it over lunch. Har har har, I said, can you imagine a bunch o' ammonites with propeller beanies sitting around and writing fanfic? What do you suppose they'd write about? Har har har... K gave me a strange look, and said, Babe, I guess they were looking for fanfic set in the world of Ammonite. I blinked. Oh, I said, I didn't think of that. And felt like a moron.

- drunk and freaky song
Oh, no, now I can't stop singing that fucking song *again*. Searcher, Kelley does not thank you. I do not thank you. My chair, which is creaky and old and not built for a grownup bouncing around and bellowing, "Let's get drunk and freaky!" does not thank you.

- 2 quotes from the left handed envelope
For what ever reason, I'm quite taken with this one. What would a quote from the left-handed envelope look like? And why only two? Five points for your suggestions.

- books own nebula and literary award
I love the 'and'. Because everyone knows the Nebula, awarded for f/sf fiction, isn't a 'literary' award; it's genre. (Tuh.) And, as the winner of the prestigous Neboola award and five Lambadas, I should know.

- do heroin users eat mandarin oranges
I do not understand how the searcher got from there to here. But to answer the question, from what I know of heroin users most of the time they don't eat much of anything. When they do eat, they're as likely to go for the crate the oranges came in, the label on the canned oranges, or the receipt they found at the bottom of the grocery bag. They get confused.

- how to avoid the cops run away hide and throw them a donut
I'm seeing a Buster Keaton film here, cue thrumming melodramatic piano...

- oatley fix-it stick
I am Officially Puzzled about this one. Five points to anyone who comes up with a good guess.

- retcon battlestar galactica
Well, they do that all the time. And often with really, really boring episodes full of talking heads: Oh, my, Ellen is a cylon. Why yes she is--her husband killed her, you know. Why yes, I did know that, and he's a cylon, too. By the way, do you believe in god? The one true god? Etc.

- what are some general things lesbians like
We like it when BSG isn't full of talking heads but explosions. We like sunny days (except in mid-summer, and then we like rain). And, of course, we like girls.

- naked women in women's self defense course
We like these, too, though have never encountered any. (I suddenly feel as though I've led a very sheltered life.)

- shameless english girls
Oh, hey, this also works.

- say it again slowly that thing about the river
Oddly, I had a zillion variations on this one this month.

- sir nicola
I'm still hoping

- ways to make nicola happy
Here are my dozen daily delights, plus a list of things I like. Shameless naked girls, a knighthood, and explosions, as already noted, also work.

- well on that note
Yes, making me happy is a good place to stop.

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why angsty teens keep diaries and write bad poetry

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Brain scientists are starting to understand something poets, songwriters and diarists have long known: putting feelings into words helps ease the mind.

"It is a pretty well-established finding that this occurs, but we don't know why," Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, said on Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

"When you put feelings into words, you are turning on the same regions in the brain that are involved in emotional self-control," Lieberman said.

"It regulates distress," said Lieberman, who studies the brain using technology known as functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, which highlights brain regions as they become active.

Lieberman's findings are based on studies in which healthy subjects lie in an MRI machine and view emotionally evocative pictures, such as scared or angry faces. Study participants touch a button corresponding to a word that expresses that emotion.

When study subjects put feelings into words in this way, the researchers noted increased brain activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region known for dampening negative emotions.

At the same time, they saw decreases in activity in the amygdala, the brain machinery responsible for processing feelings about relationships and emotions like fear, rage and aggression.

Lieberman said this may explain why many teenagers and others take up pen and paper when they are filled with angst.

"I think it certainly could play a role in why people of any age write diaries or bad lyrics to songs," he said.

"That is certainly a possibility."

Lieberman said he is now doing studies to see how putting words into feelings might help people who fear spiders or have anxiety disorders.

What I want to know is: how much difference would it make if you thought another person was hearing you/reading you? In other words, is it simply the action of forming the words (I think that's what they're trying to say) or would the effect be amplified by communicating the emotion, feeling heard? After all, this is, to some degree, what much talk therapy is based upon. But, ooh, wouldn't it be interesting if the therapist simply didn't matter?

I wrote bad poetry as a teen--but I gave it to my girlfriend. I don't know if I would have bothered if I thought no one would see it. When I write these days, it's for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's to answer a question (Slow River, Always, The Blue Place), sometimes it's to have a blast with story and explore a world (Ammonite, Hild), sometimes it's to play with a nifty notion ("Yaguara"). And I expect, intend and believe that all my fiction will one day be read--and enjoyed. It's for me, first, but then, dear readers, for you. A gift.

But nonfiction is more complicated. There's this blog, for example. It's a gift, too: a thank you for being my readers. It's also an experiment in community building. And, hmmn, okay, yes, very occasionally it's a way to vent (all those rants--see sidebar for some of my favourites).

But the essays, what are they for? They're not rants. I don't get paid for them. (Or not usually.) They don't soothe my emotions. They don't answer questions. They do, however, help me organise my thoughts. And at some point soon I want to find time to write an essay about reading--the biochemistry and neurophysiology of it, the difference between reading non-fiction on the screen and reading novels, the fate of civilisation... But not today. Today I have to go play with Hild, then work some more on my chemical lurve movie outline.

Meanwhile, the sun is shining. Birds are singing. Life is good. May you all have a perfectly fabulous day.

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I don't even have a hangover

So for Valentine's Day Kelley and I ate more delicious Indian food than you can shake a stick at, then went to the pub where we drank a few pints of Fullers ESB (yum yum yum yum yum) and then I couldn't resist the beef and vegetable pot pie. (K had something disgusting stuffed with goat cheese, shudder--though it did seem to please her.) We talked about life, the universe and everything and played guessing games about the people around us (lot of groups of men, for some reason, one or two pairs of straight girls looking eccentric with hats like flower pots--hats, inside, no wonder they don't have sweeties) then went home and ate chocolate souffle, drank tea, and watched Dollhouse.

Dollhouse was extraordinarily disappointing. It had none of the wit and verve of Whedon's other shows--not a single joke. Blimey. Quite depressing. So then we watched BSG, and it was full of talking heads. Nothing happened. Just yak yak yak philosophy, yak yak yak god, yak yak yak oh the ship has a crack in it. No fucking jokes there, either. Tuh. What a load of cobblers.

And then we ate some more. Hey, if three square meals a day are good for a person, four must be better.

Later, in bed, I couldn't stop thinking about the notion of a love potions. I literally couldn't stop. So now I have the plot for a movie all laid out in my head, and I think I'm going to write it. And yes, shit will blow up! Blam! There will be fabulously hot sex! Sizzle! Moments of comedy. Brief (very, very brief) moments of angst. Drama! A ticking clock... Oooh, it'll be fun.

And after all the beer and sugar and movie-building, I don't even have a hangover. I think 2009 is going to be a very good year.

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let's get chemical, chemical (in honour of valentine's day)

Oxytocin makes the world go round. Well, it makes women fall in love, makes us pair bond. It's a hormone released when we have an orgasm. (I'm simplifying radically here.) Go read this nifty Nature article.

For men, apparently it's vasopressin that does the trick. Oxytocin and vasopressin are very similar molecules (nonapeptides with a sulphur bridge, if you're interested); they differ only in the position of two amino acids. So it might not be too far fetched to think of someone coming up with a synthetic hormone that could work on both women and men. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Take a pill, fall in love. But, like all those fairy tales about love potions, unexpected consequences would be inevitable. What if you pop the pill and then open the door to the UPS guy? Plus, I think oxytocin is destroyed in the GI tract, so would have to be injected. Or sprayed up the nose. Or put in an eye-dropper.

The spray thing is interesting. Imagine a plane at 40,000 feet, a love terrorist running down the aisle spraying... I don't think anyone's done any experiments on polyamory and oxytocin. I don't think they've experimented with cross-sexuality. Would a straight girl fall in love with her best friend? Would those married to other people not on the plane fall in love with the person they don't know sitting next to them? Would any of these instant lovers choose to take the antidote when they landed? (Could a pilot who has just fallen insanely in love land a plane safely?) Would Government Scientists, in their Race Against the Clock, come up with the antidote In Time?? (In time for what?) What if the plane was Air Force One?

You tell me.

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lesbian Batwoman debuts in June

From the Guardian, news of the new lesbian Batwoman:

Fans at Comic Con in New York this week were treated to a sneak preview of DC Comics's highest profile gay superhero, Batwoman, described by her creator as "the kind of sexy that makes you think of a succubus with a very bad attitude".

With fiery red hair, a skin-tight leather cat suit and knee-high red stiletto boots - complete with a blood red bat symbol on her ample chest - Batwoman, the alter ego of Kathy Kane, is set to make her debut on bookshelves this June in Detective Comics 854. Her appearance follows the shock – apparent – demise of Bruce Wayne, the multi-millionaire philanthropist who has protected the streets of Gotham City as Batman since 1939.

Writer Greg Rucka said that Batwoman - who first appeared in 1957 but was killed off in 1979 - was "exceptionally cool".

"Yes, she's a lesbian. She's also a redhead. It is an element of her character. It is not her character. If people are going to have problems with it, that's their issue," he told Comic Book Resources. "Frankly, she should be judged on her merits."

The article has a link to Greg Rucka's blog with some sample art dialogue. It looks pretty cool. I've never really done comics or graphic novels but given the love Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 has been getting, and this, I should probably just get over it. (But, oh, they're not available for Kindle. How dim are these publishers?)

Though, ooof, having said that I've looked over Maus and Funhome and Strangers in Paradise; I've read a zillion Dykes to Watch Out For and Hothead Paisan and Asterix and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers--oh, I loved those as a teenager--so it's not the pictures-with-words that don't work for me, it's the masked superhero thing. I wonder why...

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Aud's great aunt does jujitsu!

Though she sounds remarkably English for a Norwegian:



(Thanks, Doug. For another one, go visit BoingBoing.)

I love the fact that she's so cheery about the whole thing. Plus, it's very gratifying to see Aud's dictum, where's there's a joint there's a weakness, in action. If you want to know more about women and self-defense, including lots of tips and tricks that don't require much practise, go read Always.

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just read: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

One day last week, when I was very tired, I downloaded onto my Kindle what I thought would be a quick read: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. Hours later I was still reading. I finished it the next day. As I say, I was tired and so I thought it was just that I was reading slowly. (The Kindle 'location numbers' make it hard to tell how long a book is.) So I checked amazon.com on my desktop and found the paperback is nearly 900 pages. That's...long. But it really didn't feel that big. It's not boring (or not often). In fact, it's an excellent read--

--if you can stand boy/girl sex every fifteen pages, the kind where both parties are limp and exhausted afterwards, in which they open like flowers and pound like blunt instruments, and occasionally hurl crockery at each other afterwards.

I'm not going to bother with a plot precis--go read online reviews--but if it were a film the logline would read something along the lines of: Sensual, no-nonsense ex-nurse Claire travels back in time from 1948 to the Jacobite-infested Highlands of 1743 (or perhaps 1744) and fights with a perverted English army captain for the body and soul of her clansman husband. Much sex, fighting, and nursing ensue.

This book gallops along. The prose is mostly competent, occasionally awful, and once or twice quite stunning. But this book isn't about limpid prose. It is a storyteller's showcase.

Gabaldon (mostly) knows her stuff. She certainly has done her research when it comes to herbal medicine. (I'll have to reread and take notes for the Hild book.) She also manages to convey Scottishness well. Her dialogue is distinctive without being irritating. Every now and again there's a weird non-British off-note but the rest is so strong it carried me right past the false notes. (No, I can't give you an example. The Kindle is, frankly, crap for skimming through text looking for examples, and I was enjoying the book too much while reading it to stop and take notes or to bookmark stuff.)

Americans (sweeping statement alert) are not very good at Englishness, whether in fiction or doing accents on TV. Of course, English people aren't much better at doing American/s. (Oh, stop it, you know what I'm talking about: portraying, not *doing*. As far as I'm aware, there's no difference between the countrywomen of our fine nations.) I am never fooled by an actor's accent. Except once: Jamie Bamber on Battlestar Galactica. I was truly surprised to hear him talk in his native English for a Making Of special.

Anyway.

The stunning parts come late in the book where (a) Claire literally, physically wrestles for the soul of Jamie, her clansman husband and (b) she asks for god's help. The former is a bravura piece of writing, taken on the volley, and the latter is a carefully honed set piece. At least that, from a fellow writer's perspective, is how they feel to me.

So I was expecting a low-grade piece of time travel romance, perhaps with a few fun moments of whacking-their-heads-off-with-swords, and got something much, much better. Something with women and men who inhabit their gender roles in ways that make them very human (while brilliantly not contravening the cliches and strictures of romantic fiction). I've already started the second book in the series, Dragonfly in Amber. I'm having a blast.

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read this blog on your Kindle!

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I just signed up. It took less than a minute. Easy easy easy. Now I'm going to go hover over my Kindle and see how long it takes for the blog to arrive.

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Australian bush fires

In the Guardian, an update on the truly terrible bushfires sweeping Victoria:

The death toll from the deadliest bushfires in Australia's history could reach into the hundreds as the devastation is uncovered in the burning and blackened ruins of towns, the authorities warned last night.

Described as "hell on earth", the fires left at least 108 dead, but police in Victoria said the final death toll would be much greater.

"I think it [the body count] will be up into the 100s ... 200," acting Sergeant Scott Melville, who has the job of dragging bodies out of charred vehicles and homes, told the Melbourne Age. "It's like a friggin' war zone up here, it's like a movie scene."

The army has been called in to help the thousands of exhausted firefighters who, for the third consecutive day, will try to put out 26 fires threatening suburbs near Melbourne.

Fifty fires were also raging across New South Wales, where temperatures reached 46C (115F) yesterday.

I don't think anyone could say categorically, "This is the result of climate change." But I'm not sure many would disagree with the notion that this kind of thing will happen more and more as temperatures rise.

In Leeds, where my family lives, it's been snowing for a week--incredibly unusual. I suspect soon, though, it will be quite usual. I'm more glad, every day, for that night in Atlanta almost exactly fourteen years ago when I woke Kelley at two o'clock in the morning and said, "We're moving!" and waved an atlas at her. Bless her, she rubbed her eyes and said, "What, now?" and I said, "No. But as soon as we've sold this house." She yawned, said womanfully, "Where?" and I said "The Pacific Northwest. Portland, or Seattle, or Bellingham. I don't care."

The next morning I laid it all out for her sensibly--geophysical and sociopolitical climate, natural resources, chocolate, beer, coffee--and she said, Well, what the fuck, let's do it! So we did. I sorts of forgot to consider the earthquakes, though...

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don't stop to breathe

From Medical News Today, news of why it's a very, very bad idea to stop CPR chest compressions, even to breathe for the injured person:

Interrupting chest compressions during resuscitation reduces the chances of heartbeat return after defibrillation. New research published in the open access journal BMC Medicine shows that for every second of a pause in compressions there is a 1% reduction in the likelihood of success.

Kenneth Gundersen from the University of Stavanger, Norway, worked with a team of researchers to quantify the effect of compression interruptions on the probability of a return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). He said, "We analysed data from 911 interruptions and found that every second without the blood perfusion generated by chest compressions has a negative impact on the estimated probability of ROSC".

The American Heart Association's first aid guidelines were updated last year, suggesting that the 'mouth-to-mouth' component of CPR was unnecessary. This new research supports that position, in that the pause in compressions required to perform artificial respiration may reduce the patient's chances of recovering their heartbeat.

Gundersen said, "The first priority when witnessing a cardiac arrest is to make an emergency call. Beyond this our results show that performing powerful chest compressions with minimal interruptions is of utmost importance. The quality of CPR matters and everyone should practice their CPR skills at regular intervals."

(Emphasis mine. Thanks, Cindy)

So don't ever pause. Keep pumping. Keep pumping to the rhythm of "Staying Alive." Imagine John Travolta strutting down the street and push with every thump of his heel on pavement. Or imagine the twitch of that woman's hips, the one in the apricot dress, if that works better for you :)

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writing proces: intuitive or analytical?

From: Janine

I took the plunge and began writing my first novel. It's definitely character-driven, as I have no idea what will happen before I put the words on paper. I've never been trained as a writer, and the scientist in me is questioning the process tooth-and-nail. I've just decided to write whatever comes to mind, and save the editing for later. It really hurts my head, but I can't seem to put the words down fast enough. My inner critic keeps saying that I need a better way of knowing whether I'm on the right track.

As I've progressed, my mind has often drifted to your current project on Hild. I'm assuming that you're doing a lot of research since it involves historical events/people.

Did you do a lot of research for your books on Aud or even Ammonite or Slow River? Would you consider yourself to be an intuitive writer? Analytical? Whatever your process is, I love it.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope you're feeling better!

First of all, woo hoo! for starting your novel. With writing as with just about everything else, it's better to be doing than to procrastinate. A friend once told of an Armenian proverb that goes something like: get the load off your mind and onto your back. That is, don't fret, do. I think it's a useful approach. Failing that, follow the Nike ad: Just Do It.

As for training as a writer, if you read all the time, you're training. You will have absorbed unconsciously how to lay out a story, how to structure an opening so that the reader wants to keep going, what character details to include or leave out. The books to learn from are all around you. Pick up your five favourite novels and, one by one, read them, read them again immediately, read a third time, boom boom boom. I guarantee you'll start to see the bones. Pay attention. That's it. That's all the training you need. Once you've written your first draft, then it might profit you to learn how to see your work consciously, and how to edit it, but for now, just write.

Do I research? Yes. Half the time I don't know that that's what I'm doing. I'll find myself being interested in something close to hand--when Kelley worked at an environmental engineering company, she brought home magazines such as Garbage and Pollution Engineering and a catalogue (they called it a pigalog) of industrial things like emergency eye baths, drench showers, and neoprene protective gear. I inhaled them all. It got me thinking. I saw a faint outline of Slow River appearing from the mist. Then I began research in earnest.

This happened with Hild, too. I was interested for years in history, then in a particular era, then in a particular woman and her contemporaries. Then I glimpsed the novel waiting. Then I cranked up the research. Then I started writing. When I begin a novel, though, I stop researching in orderly fashion. It's too confusing to keep learning new things while working on a story. Every now and again I encounter a question that has to be answered before I can proceed (what's the 7th C attitude to dogs?) but mainly I sail majestically into the unknown.

You ask if I'm an intuitive writer, or analytical. I'm both and neither. I've been writing for twenty-five years; I'm an expert. I've talked about this before. Expert decision-making, expert creation, expert surgery--any kind of expertise--is a black box. Conundrum in one end, solution out the other. In between is the flashing decision-making resulting from decades of practise, thousands of hours of painstaking craftsmanship. It happens faster than conscious thought.

Once the first draft is complete, I rewrite. I start to consciously highlight and polish certain themes or motifs, and submerge others. It's at this stage that I sometimes do a complete architectural rearrangement. (For more on this, see the blog conversation I had with Timmi Duchamp for Ambling Along the Aqueduct, essentially an essay I call Process Porn Part 1.)

The last two Aud books were a bit of an anomaly for me. Normally my first draft is very, very close to the final draft. This was true for Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, and all my essays and short stories. For some reason Stay and Always were different. Those books were a huge struggle. Years and years of angst. Lots of joy too, of course, but the process was uncomfortably conscious. I worried all the time about whether it would be good enough.

Why was I suddenly thinking this way? I'm not sure. Possibly because for the first time I was the family breadwinner; I was getting paid six figures and writing was suddenly Serious Business. Or maybe the fact that I was writing for Nan A. Talese turned my head. I don't know. But it wasn't the pure joy I was accustomed to. I censored myself, controlled myself, behaved until I thought I was going to go mad. It was a bit like having sex with all my clothes on and without making a sound.

If you're asking for my advice, it's this: screw your inner critic. Shut it in a cupboard and throw away the key. Ride the wave. Time enough to worry when you start getting sucked into the rip. (Trust me, you'll know. For me, my stomach literally clenches. Whatever signal your subconscious sends, believe me, you'll won't be able to miss it.) For many writers, the hardest lesson is gagging the nagging parrot that sits on your shoulder and cackles, "What a load of crap! What a load of crap!" At least so people tell me. Until Stay I didn't know what all those other writers were talking about. Now I do.

So for Hild I thought, fuck it. I'm just letting it purl out. It's a joy. Even better, I suspect that what's coming out now is it, bar a little tidying, what's going to end up on the shelves. And I tell you, it feels great. So enjoy this part. Treasure it. Keep going. Good luck.

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9th US circuit court of appeals rules against DOMA

From yesterday's LA Observer:

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies benefits to gay federal employees' spouses. That ruling on behalf of an L.A. federal public defender, and another by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski involving claims by a 9th Circuit staff attorney, raises questions about the act.

"The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or a desire to deprive same-sex spouses benefits available to other spouses in order to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state," Reinhardt wrote in his Feb. 2 order....

Both orders are internal employee grievance decisions. Both found in favor of the gay employees, directing court administrators to give health insurance benefits to their spouses. The orders also represent direct challenges to DOMA, the 1996 act that forbids the federal government from treating same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose.

A lawyer for the staff attorney said this is believed to be the first time federal employees will get benefits covering a same-sex spouse.

(Thanks, Sarah.)

Stand back and watch wingnut fireworks. It's going to get interesting.

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in praise of neighbours

I don't know what universal good luck card we pulled in 2004 when we bought this house, and I'm not sure how come we played it so well, but I think we might have the best neighbours on the planet. We live at the very end of a cul-de-sac. Neighbours are important. All of ours (with the exception of one set on the street behind us, inaccessible because of the ravine) are marvellous.

We've shared many meals and bottles of wine (and the occasional night out watching a certain go-go dancer at a lesbian nightclub--I had fun explaining the approved method of tipping), met children and parents and in-laws, shared ice-slick drives to the supermarket in dire times, trundled each other's garbage bins up the driveway, watched cats, and checked during power outtages. And yesterday, one neighbour decided Kelley and I were looking a bit peaky, that we'd been working too hard, and she brought round a huge platter of Cornish game hens and couscous (with dates, cranberries, currants, squash, possibly cherries...) plus two chunks of delicious chocolate cake.

Kelley finished an act of her screenplay; I finally wrote the assassination attempt (of Edwin of Northumbria) scene I've been aiming at for a week. We beamed at each other. Drank beer. Scoffed a vast amount of food. Beamed some more. Then Kelley half dozed, half mused on screenplay stuff in front of the fire while I watched over her and read most of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander--a straight romance time travel novel which I'm enjoying immensely.

That's it. I just wanted to share.

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The Lezzys 2008

Who knew? Thelesbianlifestyle.com gives awards in several categories for Best Lesbian Blog. Go nominate something fabulous!

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watermelon art

This is just mind boggling. (Via Moonrat.) People and their willingness to find beauty--to make beauty--everywhere astound me.

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wow, panorama

This picture of the inauguration was taken with a robotic camera and weighs in at 1,474 megapixels (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera). Click and zoom (and zoom, and zoom, and zoom). It's awesome. Bonus points if you find Yo-Yo Ma...taking a picture with his iPhone. (I couldn't, but I'm told he's there so if you can, five points.)

*** Edit: The photo is by David Bergman ***

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Australian end times (more apocalypse stuff)

If you're easily alarmed, inclined to panic, and don't have access to Tetris or psychoactive substances, you might not want to read this.

A few days ago The Independent tells us of the chaos in Melbourne. Australia is melting:

Leaves are falling off trees in the height of summer, railway tracks are buckling, and people are retiring to their beds with deep-frozen hot-water bottles, as much of Australia swelters in its worst-ever heatwave.

On Friday, Melbourne thermometers topped 43C (109.4F) on a third successive day for the first time on record, while even normally mild Tasmania suffered its second-hottest day in a row, as temperatures reached 42.2C. Two days before, Adelaide hit a staggering 45.6C. After a weekend respite, more records are expected to be broken this week.

Ministers are blaming the heat – which follows a record drought – on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.

At times last week it seemed as if that was happening already. Chaos ruled in Melbourne on Friday after an electricity substation exploded, shutting down the city's entire train service, trapping people in lifts, and blocking roads as traffic lights failed. Half a million homes and businesses were blacked out, and patients were turned away from hospitals.

For those who live in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, you're next. (Bear in mind 45.6C is about 115F. Death Valley temperatures. And your water is running out.) No, I'm not kidding. You should move. Now. It's going to get worse. I'm pretty tired of people hiding their heads in the sand. And sand is all that will be left in a couple of years.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

MS research

For all those who have contacted me in the last week about the stem cell treatments for MS in Chicago: thank you.

Yes, I know about it. No, I won't be doing it.

What they're doing in Chicago is a less elegant variation of work done in the 1990s at Johns Hopkins by Robert Brodsky. Here's a excerpt about Brodsky from the Johns Hopkins website:

Dr. Brodsky’s major clinical research involves the study of aplastic anemia, PNH and other bone marrow failure disorders. His research shows that immunoablative doses of cyclophosphamide, without bone marrow transplantation, can lead to durable complete remissions in severe aplastic anemia. The reason high-dose cyclophosphamide is able to ablate the effector cells without destroying hematopoietic stem cells is that the earliest stem cells (but not lymphocytes) contain high levels of aldehyde dehydrogenase conferring resistance to the cytotoxic properties of cyclophosphamide. Dr. Brodsky and his colleagues in neurology and rheumatology are applying this approach in other severe autoimmune disorders including, scleroderma, myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis and autoimmune hematologic disorders.

In other words, if you give someone a high enough dose of the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide, it kills your grown-crooked immune system (the immune system that's responsible, in MS, for attacking the axons and/or myelin--there are competing theories--of the central nervous system, which is what eats holes in the spinal cord). But the cool thing is, the cyclophosphamide doesn't kill stem cells, that is, the pure uncrooked precursor cells. So once you've killed the crooked system, you sit back (in a bubble, or you'd die) and wait for the stem cells to regenerate a brand new, uncrooked immune system, one that doesn't indulge in myelin banditry. And, presto, you're cured (if you, y'know, survive the no-immune-system-for-2-weeks thing; some people don't).

I first heard of Brodsky's work in 1999. Theoretically, it should work: knock out the crooked immune system, leaving the pure, untrammelled stuff to regenerate a pristine system. I pestered my neurologist until he picked up the phone and had a long chat with Brodksy. I got excited. And it was at that point that I learnt no one would do this procedure for me. I was 'too highly functioning' and it was 'too dangerous'. In other words, in medical opinion, the risk outweighed the reward. I was furious: I would have to wait for years until I was too sick to walk, until the scarring on my spinal cord had happened over and over and could never be repaired, then and only then would they consider giving me a treatment that could kill me but could not longer fix me. I tried everything I could think of. No one would listen. For my sanity, I let it go.

Then--around 2004, I think--my neurologist said he'd been looking at the latest data, and the Brodsky stuff didn't work. Oh, it worked for a few years, but then the immune system grew crooked again and went back to its old banditry, attacking unwary myelin.

And then, in 2007, I heard Brodsky and Johns Hopkins had set up a business, Revimmune, to sell people this treatment. They'd managed to fiddle with the protocols just enough to make the risk/reward ratio worth it.

But by this time I was an old hand at thinking about the immune system. I had tried just about every immunomodulatory and immunosuppressive drug out there. They always made me feel great for the first 2 or 3 months, and then feel terrible for 2 or 3 years. Cyclophosphamide, in my opinion, would multiply this effect. I'd feel awesome for a year or two, then god knows what would happen.

These chirpy press releases say things like 'and then a drug is administered...' and make it sound like popping a pill. They never tell you about the pain, the destroyed veins, the vomiting and hair loss, the osteoporosis, the joint necrosis, the amenorrhea, the loss of taste (it comes back after a year or two, but it's never the same), the weight loss, the heart damage, the possibility down the line of myeloma, the swollen joints, the terrifying crash of blood counts and the rescue shots that make your bone marrow swell so that sitting, standing, walking, lying down--everything--is agony. Plus there's the constant blood work, the constant fearful waiting for results.

So, thanks everyone, but no. This is not for me. I'm sticking with the low-dose naltrexone.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

a lovely evening with friends

No biology today, no current affairs or diatribes, just a something and nothing post about a perfectly lovely evening. Last night we had two friends--whom we don't see nearly often enough--round for pizza and wine and beer, and delicious salad with our patented tofu dressing, and homemade crême brulée (Kelley got to play with the blowtorch; she was very happy). We talked about this and that (our lives, politics, literature, film, work, the economy, food) for a few hours, then parted ways. No drama, no stress, no angst.

I'm smiling. I wish more of life were like that.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/