Given my paucity of posting, you'd think I put an eye out

Well, my gentle reader, the answer is not that far removed from reality. I have had a Central Retinal Vein Occlusion in my right eye for in excess of six years. I'll abbreviate that to "CRVO." My retinal specialist is keeping my eye pressures in the normal range, but--and this is huge and really sucks--I am now having symptoms of a Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion in my left eye, formerly "the good one."

It is still the less troubled eye, as my central vision is almost unaffected. However, the prognosis is not great.

My retinal specialist is going over my flourescein angiographs this weekend and we are going to explore treatment options on 06.30.2014..yep, Monday.

I had the new eye issue come to the fore exactly one week ago.

I was totally asymptomatic prior to both eyes becoming afflicted. I urge everyone over 50 Y/O to get their IOP(Intraocular Pressure) checked at least annually. If there is glaucoma in your family at least twice per year is recommended.

Lest you think that my condition is due to elevated blood pressure, it is not. My typical readings are 116/68. My retinal specialist confirmed this for me years ago. I can almost throw quotation marks around his remarks. He said that IOP hypertension, and arterial hypertension are some rimes linked, but not in all cases. I have great BP, but pretty lousy IOP--unless treated with prescription eyedrops that either reduce aqueous humor, or facilitate outflow through the retinal system.

There are specific groups that are genetically and/or hormonally predispoed to elevated IOP, and subsequent development of glaucoma. Then there are people that do not present elevated IOP, but develop common open-angle glaucoma. This is what I have, with comorbidity of Retinal Vein Occlusions. I'm not a medical professional, just a patient that is simply not satisfied until he has all the known facts about his condition. Thank nature I have zero other physiological issues.

That's all I have today. This post was very cathartic for me. I really need to find a way to get all Zen around these issues. More data is usually the key that unlocks the path to reasoned contentedness for me. Way down on my list of things to be concerned about is the fact that July is my birth month, and I'm due for a motor vehicle license renewal this year. There are times when the blind, pitiless universe really shows itself to be rife with just those attributes.

This post was generated with much help from Nuance's "Dragon Naturally Speaking" Premium Edition v12.

It has been a pretty lousy week.

While this isn't strictly science, it is important.

Noam Chomsky on our extinction..and other musings.

While I think that Dr. Chomsky misses the larger point that it is the greater "we" that allowed "corporate elites" to flourish, there is not much on the science side that one can easily refute. Capitalism is the exterminator of worlds. Sorry, to twist the phase that J. Robert Oppenheimer pulled from the Bhagavad Gita, but while the many ills that the Manhattan Project brought to humanity, none can compare with Capitalism. Imagine if you will a system that only thrives by extracting more and more forever from a finite world. That's Capitalism. Okay, I know what you're thinking, as I'm thinking it as well. "What the hell is Todd going on about here?"

I'm glad that you asked. Well, truth be known, I'd rather not have to answer this, but I shall :)

Capitalism, as it is now practiced, is the greatest threat to our planet. Unfettered Capitalism since the Industrial Revolution has done more to toxify the planet than perhaps all other things combined.

I have already deconstructed the notion of the "noble savage" in this post. Human beings pretty much suck for all life forms--including human life.

Unfettered Capitalism has only accelerated species extinction, and all the ills that entails by many orders of magnitude.

Since I am on a no bullshit tirade, I have to blame medicine here as well. Modern medicine has taken the principle of Malthusean catastrophism and turned it into a once quaint notion. This is most certainly NOT a food production issue, although increased food production has played a secondary role.

Take a look at this, and tell me that we are not--by any reasonable means--entirely fucked.

Oh, and while I'm pointing fingers, economists are not scientists by any reasonable yardstick. If you think I jest, while you can be continually wrong and still be practicing science, you have to make predictions that pan out. The Economist magazine is held up as some kind of Holy book, but see Massimo Pigliucci's deconstruction of "the dismal science" as practiced by The Economist in: Nonsense on Stilts I really don't know where that came from, but it holds water.

It has been said that paleontology isn't a "science" because it lacks predictive value. While paleontology cannot yet make predictions about future fossilizations, the predictive power of paleontology has yielded spectacular results. Why do you think Neil Schubin knew exactly where to look to find Tiktaalik roseae? Because evolutionary biology combined with the known dates of lobed finned fossil fish, and early amphibians were known to a high degree of accuracy. Der.

I am really getting off-base here. Shorter post: Chomsky and science 1, planet wrecking Capitalists, 0.