More is Less Sometimes

I have three blogs now. Journals, whatever. I'm kind of old school. I guess they are blogs because I use the software instead of making HTML and uploading it myself. I like the dating, labels, tools. Although sometimes I wish I'd chosen WordPress because they seem to have a little calendar widget that is cool. But I digress. And sometimes digressions make things lose their punch. More is less.

Anyway. Besides this rather specialized journal (wherein we examine what happens when we are thinking about something else) I have my classic blah, blah, blah this is my life in too many sentences: The Visible Woman. And my spousal unit really wanted to join the Photo-a-Day family. So we started Austin, Texas Daily Photo. Now we have sleepy conversations of a morning, as we did today.

"Do you want me to put up a picture or do you want to do it?"

He returned an uncaffeinated, puzzled look.

"Austin Daily Photo."

"Oh. I wanted to put up a picture of the Avenue B," says he. (The link is to his original discussion of that place on our old WEB page.

"OK," says I. And I wonder if I will post anything on another space.

So that's where the car comes in. I posted some art cars on the daily photo: here and here. Well one was a truck. Still. I was flipping through photos on the computer and came up with the one shown here. I could 'save' it and exhibit in on the Photo-a-Day site. I specifically set ground rules there that the photos didn't need to be particularly current. (Although I'd try to identify the when and where. This one is from December 2005. Downtown on Second Street.) But I decided to show it here. Because it so clearly illustrates my 'more is less' theme of the day. Notice they had to (or accidentally) painted over a bumper sticker. Change of Heart? Too exuberant with the paint? Notice that the license plate got a bit of paint. That might be a problem, too. See here.

Gee I seem to have come up with a bunch of links for this puppy. So if you aren't convinced that this post just has too many words in service of its thought (more or less) then you are now reeling from following all those links. Do you do that? Do you have ADD? Me, too.

On Average Women Get Five More Years

In The Wall Street Journal on April 24th there was an article about how men's health just wasn't getting enough attention. Women noticed a few years ago that all the medical research and drug research was focused on men and got some money diverted to breast cancer and, whine, whine, men die earlier and now that women's health is getting attention, men's is getting less and besides men don't like to go to the doctor.

There was more whining about how women have special doctors (OB/GYN) and they bother to go see them. And, quel dommage, boys and men take more risks and it gets them killed.

Well, my in-laws are both sort of nihilists about going to the doctor, but he's got nine years on her to start with. Here they are at 87 and 96 after we took them for a Mother's Day brunch.

The capper of this article (apart from its use of Unintended Consequences as a sub-head--HA!) was that pundits are suggesting that doctors should check out blood pressure and cholesterol and glucose and stuff when the gents coming begging for Viagra. After all, a OB/GYN will take blood pressure and do blood tests when a lady comes in for a Pap smear. It's only fair! Besides with better control of their hearts and such, they might not need the Viagra.

So women get five more years on average. It seems fair somehow although after being paid less, on average, their whole lives they better hope some dead man left them some money.

My 90-year-old Dad was five years older than my mother. And he's been a widower for five years. Statistics and real life are two different things.