Bill Roper's Journal

I had not heard a tremendous amount about the mass shooting recently in Tulsa. There are probably reasons for that, not all of which are my fault.

What I *hadn't* heard was the discussion in the article linked below. Apparently, the shooter was in extreme pain following back surgery and couldn't get sufficient pain killers because our government's policy of late is to massively reduce access to effective pain reduction medicine for people who are in chronic pain. When the shooter couldn't take it any more, a murder / suicide was the result.

Or maybe that's too simple a take. I don't know.

What I *do* know is that I have friends who are in chronic pain and I am sick and tired of this sort of idiotic policy.

Reason article on the Tulsa shooting

Some researchers have found indications that being vaccinated against smallpox makes you less likely to contract HIV. Which isn't a license for doing something stupid, but it's nice to know...

Apparently, when a bunch of people (at least, guitarists) start jamming together, their brain waves start to look alike.

Imagine that. :)

I worked from home today so I could mind the kids while daisy_knotwise had a follow-up exam with her oncologist. Everything looks good so far. They did a bit of lab work just to check things out, but there's no reason to think that they'll see anything troublesome.

And that's a wonderful thing to hear.

I was digging through and cleaning out old e-mail, when I found this little bit from around the time of my last colonoscopy. Apparently, I came up with the first two lines when the tech told me that many people try to schedule their colonoscopy around a holiday so that they don't have to take time off from work. This somewhat boggled me, at which point I came up with the first two lines of the little ditty below.

Sadly, I came up with a few more lines over dinner.

So to the tune of "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas":

I want a colonoscopy for Christmas.
A colonoscopy is all I want.
Don't want a truck or a pole for catching bass.
All I want's a doctor who will --

And Gretchen said, "Thank you, dear!"

Via Instapundit, this interesting article about a researcher who may have figured out that, at the core of every cancer, there's a cancerous stem-cell that's the source.