I can draw a direct line between this interest and the fact that both times my parents took me to Walt Disney World as a kid (at age 5 and again at 10), we stayed at the Polynesian Resort. Something about the combination of indoor fountains and air conditioning still gets to me. (I can draw a similar line to my love of monorails.)

That’s why I loved this quick review of the “Boutiki” shop at the resort. I won’t steal any of Shawn Slater’s images, so you’ll have to click the link yourself.

WikiAnswers: What are the advantages of a saltwater swimming pool? I had my first saltwater pool swim this weekend. My god, it is a thing of beauty.

Kayak.com’s Explore feature: One good reason to have tactical pants is traveling. I mean, really, why look like a chump when traveling? This is a nice feature for midafternoon daydreaming.

They want to lick your face more than anything in the world. Your face is like candy to them.

Still, Maggie managed to hold still for a good 30 seconds, which I believe broke they all-time yellow lab “sit” record once held by Prince Bob of Des Moines, Iowa who, upon later examination may have been part basset or was, quite possibly, dead.

Nice shot Julia.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time now, ever since I first heard that Donald Rumsfeld used one, not that I plan to model myself off of Rumsfeld. The truth is, my job involves a lot of staring at the computer, which is a lot like most jobs nowadays. Unless I’m off to meetings, where I then sit, I’m not moving around much at all during the workday. Add the fact that I’m no longer biking into the office, and this means more expandable-waist khakis in the near future.

Of course, the danger here is that, as the new guy, everyone will think I’m nuts, no matter how many times I send around links to stories about the benefits of standing desks. But people have questioned my sanity in the past. I’m not terribly worried.

I explain it to folks this way, not only is standing healthier for you, people tend to think better on their feet. I have always stood while making phone calls, it is just easier for me to think that way…and yes, I tend to wave my arms a bit. After a few hours in a chair, I begin to feel tired, dull and stupid. That’s just how it is. For me at least.

Already I have found that typing is just as comfortable while standing. I’ve also taken off my shoes so that I can bounce on the balls of my feet when I feel the need to stretch a bit. Of course, this means I’ll have to be more attentive to the holes in my socks…and I probably should buy an air freshener…

The desk in question is by Safco (here), and it was entirely up to the facilities people. There was discussion of building a shelf or an adjustable arm, but a new desk was likely the best solution.

Truth be told, it wobbles a bit when I start typing, which is due, in part, to the inherent bounciness of keyboard trays. They facilities folks will be screwing it to a cleat in the wall for more stability, but I have a feeling I’ll need to take the keyboard off the tray and a put it in front of the iMac for comfort as well.

Here’s a picture of the setup from earlier this morning:

I think I’m going to need to put together a little arm or shelf to hold my phone.

Next, of course, is installing a treadmill.

This is the sort of thing that replenishes my faith in humanity.

From right to left: Bella (sans head), Greta and Karch (judging your soul).

“You know, Karch, like the volleyball player,” the owner said. Um, sure. Let’s go with that.

Puppies, like this one:

…after the fold…

Duck is a neat little resort town built on or abouts an old naval bombing range. The Army Corps of Engineers maintains a coastal research facility. We tried to finagle a tour, but apparently September is the start of their busy season. I can see why, the water was too rough to swim in the entire time, and few dared to do more than poke their toes in — except for one poor old fool who decided to go in for an evening swim and got himself et (another reason I don’t go in the water).

That’s why (and here’s the segue, kids, we’re getting to the puppies) Aly and I took the kids to Jockey’s Ridge State Park further down the coast in Nag’s Head. The park has these enormous sand dunes where people can sled down or use as a base for hang gliding, It has a lovely visitor center full of stuffed critters, very friendly staff who let us watch a movie about lizards while it rained buckets outside, and some odd bits of history.

(It is a bit of bummer to learn that the place was named Nag’s Head because pirates would hang lanterns around the necks of donkeys and walk them on the ridge to fool passing ships. Thinking the swinging lanterns were ships bobbing on the waves, the passing ships would assume that land was further away, thus making it more likely they’d crash on shore. The pirates would then kill the passengers and take their stuff. Charming. The Kill Devil Hills story is only slightly better.)

They also had a beach at Jockey’s Ridge, but it was on the Roanoke Sound side and, therefore, calm, clear and as warm as bathwater. Lovely for the kiddies. Ben and Julia had a great time in the sand. I dug up a ghost crab at one point, which amused the bathers. Oh, tra la!

We went back a few times and, on one occasion, at least, Julia remembered to bring her camera.

We didn’t get a lot of puppies, just a family of three and a crazy old guy in a kayak.

The family of three included Apollo

Berkley

and Chloe

They passed without incident.

What happened next we saw coming from a few miles off. A kayaker with a dog on his bow. The dog was Miss B, but I’m afraid I don’t remember what sort of dog she was. Miss B’s owner came close to shore so that we could wade out and say hello.

Miss B was a sweet little thing that shook a bit as we got near.

Her owner was a colorful fellow from Virginia who liked to paddle up and down the Sound at any opportunity. He had a full Virginian drawl and loved to tell stories about his paddling adventures and his dogs.

He had a funny story about Miss B’s predecessor…we’ll call him “Mr. A,” since we never exactly caught his name.

The story wasn’t funny in a “ha ha” sort of way.

Not even funny in that weird sort of way that suggests the universe is guided by inscrutable rules of irony and coincidence.

No, I’m talking funny in that “for God’s sake, man, why the @&$*! hell would you tell us this story in front of children, are you mad?” sort of way.

It seems that Mr. A was a delightful little pooch who loved to run and jump and play. He had a precious little bark and, oh, how the children loved him. Anyway…one day, Mr A. was playing on the steps outside the back of the house and fell off the steps, strangling himself on his own leash and collar.

Oh…it would be one thing if that story took but a paragraph to tell. But Miss B’s owner had a fuller version of the story that lasted ten excruciatingly awkward minutes. Of course the first minute or so, you had no idea which direction he was going with the tale. It was fine, and we Lesters are natural, polite listeners. Genny paddled about in his pop-pop’s arms as I held Julia so that she could take pictures.

No, It wasn’t until about halfway through — well past any point would could nicely extricate ourselves — that it sunk in that this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending and that you were going to have to answer questions about Mr. A’s demise on the car ride back to the rental house.

No wonder Miss B looked so nervous, if that was her owner’s favorite pup-related anecdote.

Good times.

His owner seemed a little taken aback by the sudden onslaught of a four year-old paparazzo, but that’s price you pay for an extended idle conversation in front of my home.

And, lest you think Julia only takes pictures of puppies, here is one of her frequent still life experiments:

From left to right, that’s her beloved pull toy Chris, the rabbit-skinned fake cat (thanks Ruth!) and her brother Benjamin’s pull toy, which Julia helpfully named Old Chris. (You see, he’s a dog and her Chris is just a puppy…)

But let’s get on with it…

While I was getting on my shoes in preparation for last night’s Nice Walk, Julia, Ben and Aly ran out to meet these two pups, pictured below. Aly isn’t quite experienced in the ways of puppy-hunting, so she didn’t remember to jot down the dogs’ names. Aly being Aly, however, she soon learned the names of the owners, their baby and where the husband went to school (our alma mater, UDel). Lost in all the Blue Hen talk and mental groping for possible mutual friends, she forgot the names of the pooches. We’ll call them both Molly and be done with it.

After the two Mollies stopped by, we had another visitor, our old friend Tank (first entry) along with his friend Batman (on the right) just in from Oklahoma.

We couldn’t spend the whole night on the front lawn getting bitten, so we walked up to Jenkintown’s gazebo, trying to avoid going into Jenkintown Java for coffee and/or ice cream.

On the way up Greenwood we caught a rather large cricket and met Milo (doberman mix) and Lola (beagle mix). Here are their asses:

After the gazebo, we decided to head back down the hill along West toward the playground for a little pre-bedtime sliding and swinging. On the way we ran into this motley crew of canines:

From left to right, Pip the Papillon, Babydog*, Greydog* and Gator.

The nice lady walking them stopped to let Julia and Ben poke at them before pictures. The dogs aren’t all from the same home, but a collection of pets from some the walker’s older neighbors and relatives. How nice. They all seemed to get along.

After peeling the now-cranky children off the playground equipment, we met Aggie. I swear we met her before, but I can’t to find an old post with her in it. I may be mistaking her for Bailey, the Dog Who Lost Weight (last entry). This is the view of Aggie from atop my shoulders:

Aggie’s owner was reasonably impressed with Julia’s project and recommended we check out Wetstinkydog.com, home of Cyrus the Phodographer.

While she’s no dog, we are all impressed with Julia.

Flickr photostream for all of these images.

*actual names

UPDATE:

Bonus Sid! We encountered Sid last Saturday while the kids and I were on the march to a garage sale. Julia used my camera, so I didn’t get a chance to retrieve the image until now. He’s some sort of Australian pooch, but clearly not a ravenous dingo, as the baby seemed safe and content.

On 29th July a number of magazines and websites are going to be publishing Simon Singh’s Guardian article on chiropractic from April 2008, with the part the BCA sued him for removed.

They are reprinting it, following the lead of Wilson da Silva at COSMOS magazine, because they think the public should have access to the evidence and the arguments in it that were lost when the Guardian withdrew the article after the British Chiropractic Association sued for libel.

We want as many people as possible around the world to print it or put it live on the internet at the same time to make an interesting story and prove that threatening libel or bringing a libel case against a science writer won’t necessarily shut down the debate.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

The beauty of my Dell netbook (bought it refurbished, a steal at $ 179) is that I don’t mind blowing it up on occasion, at least after I made a USB boot disk for my new Linux OS of choice (9.04 netbook remix), which is much better than Dell-ed up version of Linux that came pre-installed.

I’ve had to do this three times so far, since I can’t resist screwing around with things. I have but a wee solid state harddrive, so I keep all my documents on an SD disk that stays in the slot. That way, when my kernel panics or some other weirdness happens, I only have to download a new image from the NASA pic of the day site for my background, get rid of the games that came with the OS, and find a new blogging application, if I care to do so. This time around, I’m using Gnome Blog, which is fairly feature free and simple to use, thus far.

I just have to remember to keep the USB boot drive in the office.

Anyway, Gnome blog seems to be a keeper when I just want to add a quick note.