A Squadron of Pelicans

We were all chatting about our children. Many of us have kids who are coming-of-age, and it seems that this brings about differences in them. Newly adolescent girls, for example, we noted to have become moody and verbally aggressive at times. Terms like "total bitch on wheels" and "such a nasty little fucker" were heard among us parents.

Why would this be the case? Why would girls who are reaching reproductive age develop personality traits that might drive others away from them? This seems like a rather poor evolutionary strategy, unless it is meant to keep others away from these girls until they are older.

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I was told that dogs are colorblind. Then why do dogs come in such a variety of colors? As it turns out, they are not completely colorblind at all.

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Violinist Janine Jansen. Her recent recording of the Beethoven concerto is the one I consider to be the best in my collection. She also has out a recording of the Bach two-part-inventions and sinfonias played chamber-music style with other string players, and that's a lot of fun.

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The Black Sea used to be a freshwater lake. It was much smaller and its surface then was probably over four hundred feet lower than it is now. Sometime over 7,000 years ago the Bosporus was breached and the Black Sea was quickly inundated with Mediterranean seawater. This is the origin of the flood myths familiar to us from Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic.

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If you have a friend or relative in the hospital and you wish to call to inquire about their condition, their nurse will not be able to provide you with any information unless the patient has authorized this. Even then, since identification is practically impossible just over the phone, such authorization doesn't really extend to phone calls. The nurse cannot legally admit that the patient is even there. This is federal law.

It's also a big waste of my precious time. Time which I would rather spend on patient care, not explaining to callers that I cannot tell them anything.

I might be patiently trying to thread a small-bore intravenous catheter into a wiggly little rubbery vein in a sweet little old lady's arm when the phone rings and a caller, without identifying themselves of course, demands information on another of my patients. I hate that.

Phone rings, I answer. "Why yes Mr. MethMouth, your Aunt Zelda is here. She just got out of surgery and though doing well she's probably going to be in the hospital for several days, so feel free to burglerize her home and jack her car. She won't be home to notice."