My boss and several of his colleagues hosted an education day for lung disease patients today. I went to talk to the attendees about some of the research studies that we have going on that they might want to participate in. It was a pretty easy day, and I got to sit in on some interesting talks. It's great to work for a physician that so many patients, research participants, and members of the advocacy community really love. He's a great doctor, and a great boss.

It's Brian's birthday today, so a whole bunch of us are headed to Comics Come Home tonight... should be a great show.

---

Not a whole lot going on this week... although the past few weeks have been crazy busy. Funny how the more things I have going on, the more I want to record them here, but the less time I have to do so, so the less likely they are to be recorded. (uh... that was dizzying)

Anyway, I was in NJ the weekend of Aug 25-27 for Jeff & Blair's wedding. The whole weekend started off on Thursday night when I finally got to see Fiona... I had owed her dinner for somethin like a year! Hopefully I'll get a chance to see her in London sometime this fall... that is, if I ever get this work trip to Dublin scheduled, and if I can take a few extra days to isle hop. Anyway, after dinner, I finally got to meet JuJu's beau (after hearing about him for months), although it was unfortunate that JuJu wasn't around to hang out too. Finally, we met up with Dinah and I got a chance to wish her a happy birthday. Woo hoo!

Anyway, so Friday was the "quality time with the parents" day - which went pretty smoothly. I think 5 hours is about the right amount of time to spend with my parents before things devolve into violent chaos. Speaking of chaos, they took me to this new Mexican restaurant they like... the food was great, but there were about 14,500 young children in the place, all screaming. Also, my mom got a new car - I'm jealous:

(Stock photo from Lincoln - not actually my mother's car.)

Okay, so Friday night I drove over to the hotel where they were having the wedding, and checked in. Instead of the regular room I had booked, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all members of the wedding party had been upgraded to rooms in the hospitality suite. My room actually had its own conference room:

Not to mention the spacious bedroom or swanky bathroom:

Speaking of swanky, check out this tux that Jeff picked out for us groomsmen to wear:


So the wedding was a lot of fun... and a great experience to be a part of. Jeff and I realized that we've known each other for some 18 years... crazy, huh?

So anyway, I got back to Boston after the weekend in NJ... spent Monday at work, then left for Denver first thing Tuesday morning (Aug 29). The first 3 days of the trip were all business - I spent them at National Jewish Medical & Research Center getting them up and running on two of our research studies. I also got a chance to go down to Colorado Springs and see some old friends from when I spent a few months living there. Oh, Tejon Street and your silly bar scene, how I've missed you. But seriously, one of my favorite places, 32 Bleu, was gone, and Tequila's is now Vue... at least Phantom Canyon and Twin Peak are still there. I didn't have too much time to reminisce before the drama started. At the last minute, someone's boyfriend decided to join us on our bar-hopping... but totally disappeared several hours later in Rum Bay (Springs' own "8 bars in one" joint). We spent almost 2 hours looking for him... but eventually dropped his tipsy and crying girlfriend off at home without him. The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful...

I got home just in time to spend Sunday and Monday of Labor Day Weekend unpacking, catching up on laundry, and re-packing for my next trip.

Tuesday (Sep 5) I left for Florida... where I spent 2 days at the University of Florida in Gainesville getting them up and running on one of our studies... then driving to Melbourne and Ft. Lauderdale for study visits before coming home on Thursday afternoon (480 miles on the rental car in less than 3 days on the ground!).

I got back late Thursday night, with just enough time to get to bed so that I could wake up on Friday morning (Sep 8) for the CERFP exercise we had last weekend. The exercise went well, but when it's 88°F, and the sun is shining, it gets pretty damn hot in these suits:
(Stock photo from National Guard Bureau- not actually us.)

So that was last weekend... and then there was this week. Not really a lot going on this week... I'm hoping to finish reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest this weekend so that I can watch the movie (sitting in my apartment waiting for me a-la-Netflix). Once classes start next week, I won't have much time for leisure reading...

Hrm... it's 2:15 pm on Friday. I feel like calling it a week. Tonight I head down to the Cape for drill weekend (with a stop in Brockton on the way to see Lindsay)... tomorrow will be crazy, but Sunday is family day so I'll probably get out early (and apparently the uniform of the day will be civvies!)

I'm watching Outfoxed with Jeff and Brian. If you're not familiar with it, Outfoxed is a documentary that sets out to expose Fox News Channel as a conservative propaganda machine. I admit is a very biased piece, but they just showed a clip that I just HAVE to blog about.

In the clip (from August 26, 2003), anchor Brit Hume says the following on air:

277 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate that California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, our U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means that they are incurring about 1.7 deaths, including illness and accidents, each day.

At first, that almost makes sense... and I'm sure a LOT of FNC's viewers took it at face value. But if you look closer, you'll see what Britt forgot to mention:

At the time, there were approximately 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and the population of California is roughly 33.8 million. When Brian, Jeff, and I took the two figures above (6.6 and 1.7) and adjusted them for the difference in population, we got the following:

	Population	Deaths per Day	Deaths/day per mil. pop
CA Residents	33,800,000	6.6	0.20
US Troops in Iraq	150,000	1.7	11.33

So, at the time, the chance of a US troop dying in Iraq was actually 58 times higher than the chance of a California resident being murdered. Can we all agree that Mr. Hume (Managing Editor for the Fox News Channel's DC Bureau) was at best irresponsible, and at worst intentionally misleading?

As a side note, Brian has been to Iraq and to California, and asked me to let anyone reading this know that he would much prefer to return to California.