The Trash Man

A California man, Ari Derfel, has saved a full year of trash in his apartment. He composted about 120 quarts of organic matter and has about a queen-size-bed volume of trash organized by type in a closet in his kitchen. He even saves trash from places he travels, like the 15 pounds he brought back from Hawaii. He hopes to donate his trash to an artist and see if he can reduce the amount of trash he generates next year. My question is how does he manage to generate so little trash? I've got a pile bigger than his out by the trash cans right now that needs a special pick up.

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Facebook

I finally joined Facebook this week. I like it much better than MySpace. It's easy to find my friends and family in Facebook and I can control which category of people sees what in my profile. MySpace feels like a bar, while Facebook feels like a intimate get together with friends or a teambuilder at work. On MySpace, I just add celebrities to my friends. On Facebook, people I actually know are my friends. If you're on Facebook, send me a friend request.

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Tila's Obvious Choice

Now, I will once again demonstrate that I watch far too much reality TV. I topped off my birthday yesterday by watching the final episode of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

I was only slightly surprised on the previous episode when Tila let Amanda go. Tila and Amanda would have made a beautiful pair of lipstick lesbians together. They had fun together, but Amanda was too invested in putting down Dani to get ahead, which always backfires in the end. Sabotaging others can get you to the end game in dating shows, but you won't win because you're ultimately not as trustworthy. If you're willing to tattletale on your cohort in the show, you may be willing tattletale on the celebrity in the future, which is career suicide. This is generally true in business and life as well. If you want to get ahead in business and friendship in the long run, you have to take the high road and do it with a smile.

The final episode came down to a choice between a man and a woman, not surprising when the whole show was premised on Tila working out her bisexuality and whether she wanted to be with a man or woman in the long run. Tila is artificially limiting her choices, but other alternative lifestyle choices are still too racy for television, even MTV, and Tila's career, and it couldn't be marketed as a game show if there wasn't one winner, despite ongoing professions of her love for both final candidates. Dani is a butch lesbian, a stable, strong woman with a career as a firefighter. Bobby is a cute, quirky, innocent young man. Although Dani seemed to be a better personal fit, even having been voted the most compatible by her competitors in an earlier episode, I was expecting Tila to pick Bobby in the end. Throughout the show Tila demonstrated her ambivalence to her bisexuality. It was a big deal for her to reveal her affairs with women on the show and it was highlighted that she hasn't been attracted to butch women in the past. If Tila chose Dani, she would be outing herself a lesbian and would have to integrate into Dani's strong biological and firefighting families, which will be nearly impossible given her career choice. Despite his person quirkiness, Bobby was the safe choice for Tila's career and personal life. He is a man and he is willing to fit himself into her life. Tila literally looks good with Bobby and figuratively is redeeming herself with the average American by choosing a heterosexual lifestyle after "experimenting". Although Dani may have been a better choice as a personal fit, there was no real choice in the end from a game show perspective and Tila did not appear ready to define herself as a lesbian. I'm sorry for Tila's choice because Tila does seem to be invested in developing a longterm relationship, but I doubt even more than the average dating show that this relationship will work out.

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Sinus Infections and Antibiotics

In a recent British study, doctors found that amoxicillin was no more effective than steroids nor placebo in treating people with facial pain and a runny nose with greenish or yellowish discharge. They generally improved in two weeks whichever treatment they were given. Based on their results, the authors recommended that physicians not prescribe antibiotics for acute sinusitis.

As someone who has suffered frequent sinusitis in the past, the results of the study don't surprise me at all. All of the treatments that were prescribed were weak. When I was very young v-cillin k, a penicillin, helped me, but since I was a teenager penicillin and steroid sprays have not helped me get over a sinus infection. A couple of times I was very unlucky to rely on doctors who would not prescribe antibiotics or would only prescribe penicillin and wound up with difficulty breathing due to bronchitis when the infections spread despite standard symptom treatment like saline spray and over-the-counter decongestants. In recent years, if an acute sinus infection lasts longer than a week, I generally need Levaquin, a quinalone antibiotic, to get rid of it. For mild sinus infections, it's fine to try basic symptomatic treatment to rule out allergies, viral infections and give milder treatments a chance to work, but persistent and severe infections need more aggressive treatment.

The British study is flawed. Only a weak antibiotic was used to treat sinusitis, so it is not surprising that no effect of antibiotics was found. Also, as Dr. Marvin Freid, otolaryngology chairman at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, pointed out, the patients in the study may not have had sinus infections. They were recruited by family doctors based on self-reported symptoms, not medical exams. Hopefully, other doctors will recognize the limits of this study and not use it to further justify refusing to prescribe antibiotics when needed.

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