Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

On one hand I don't really mind that I'm not on many painkillers (they're just a small step up from OTC — I turned down heavier ones — and because I don't take as many as I am allowed), because I prefer to be aware of what's going on in my body than not. On the other hand, I wish I'd been doped up to the point of not knowing quite what's real and what's not for this video… ah, Klingon Karaoke night.

So I kind of waffle between “something has gone terribly wrong and I need to go to the hospital now” (when things hurt a lot) and “in about fifteen minutes I will be completely healed” (when I feel alright). Ha. No happy middle ground for me in anything I suppose. The joint (so where they removed the core of the tumor) doesn't feel that bad — at this point it's no more painful than it was before the biopsy — but the half of my calf that was cut through aches like crazy and still doesn't have feeling. That said, to the best of my understanding, that's perfectly normal.

“There is no one who, after having endured pain or sickness, does not experience the slightest, vaguest twinge of regret. Although longing to recover, those who suffer intensely for a long time sense an irreparable loss in their improvement. If pain is part of your being, overcoming it is like a loss and causes a pang of regret. I owe to suffering the best parts of myself as well as all that I have lost in my life. Therefore I cannot curse or love suffering.”
     - E.M.Cioran, The Ambiguity of Suffering (1934)

They told me that after the tumor is removed (so far they've just removed a piece of it, and it's still inconclusive whether I'll be losing any of my tibia or not), that it'll take my brain a while to train itself not to have pain there, which is sort of neat.

Anyway, I am sooooo looking forward to the “pundit exchange program” today between O'Reilly and Colbert… I hope O'Reilly freaks out and punches him on television or something crazy, but who knows. Maybe they can talk about China's new satellite killing technology or Iran's 300+ kph rocket torpedos that they've been buying from Russia voraciously over the last year (an unusual weapon in terms of its pros and cons, based on the Shkval torpedo, but with better guidance systems like the German Barracudas have). I actually only found out about that weapon because I was wondering if a supercavitating submarine could smash the Atlantic crossing record and was doing some reading on it.

Hey, sometimes tech is worthwhile as well as just cool.

Other than that, here's something to think about. In the 1940s (and before) an amateur aviator named Adalbert Schmid flew a series of DIY orinthopters (airplanes with “flapping” wings instead of propellers). His vehicles had three to ten horsepower engines, and could fly as fast as 120 kph. Oh, and so you can compare the efficiency of flying to your 16MPG SUV, his airplanes got almost 160MPG.

That said, they couldn't tow a boat.