Four hours: not a long time, but not short either

There’s no compendium today: I’m in Daylesford – with Sweetheart Vivienne and darlings Kate and Meg and their families.

Four hours. Not a long time. But not short either. I couldn’t stand on one leg for four hours. Maybe not even on two legs. Four hours. That’s the time my 9:45 a.m. flight from Launceston to Melbourne last Thursday was delayed. At 8 a.m. before I left home I checked the airline’s website. It showed an on-time departure. But when entering the terminal I saw it’d been delayed. By 75 minutes. The check-in man said the plane was still in Melbourne, With a technical problem. Drat. I hunkered down in the Qantas Club. To wait. I phoned Sweetheart Vivienne. I attended to emails. I reduced my podcast backlog. I wrote blog posts. Time passed. Then another announcement: a further delay. Due to a Melbourne airport security breach [1]. The airline offered lunch vouchers. Thanks for that. My iPod battery drained. I finished the New Yorker issue I’d brought. Time slowed. As if the plane would never arrive. Or leave. But it did. Both. Four hours late. What’s four hours? Not a long time. Better to be delayed by a fixed technical problem than on time with an unfixed one. And better to be delayed by a detected security breach than on time with an undetected one. Oh the delight of commercial air travel. The sheer joy of it. Ho hum.

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

farmdoc's blog post number 650

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

Wednesday – being the anniversary of the day in 1945 when Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated – was 'International Holocaust Remembrance Day' (in the UK, 'Holocaust Memorial Day') [1]. Never forgotten. Never again.

in its response to the Goldstone report, Hamas said it didn’t target civilians while firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns; it’s just that its rockets are unguided and they hit civilians by mistake [2]. I’m not surprised or disappointed by this. It’s what I expected from that lot.

Steve Jobs launched the iPad [3]. Some of the iJournalists and iTechies thought it’s the greatest thing since sliced iBread. Others looked down their iNoses at it and labelled it an iDud.

I came across this Queensland Health pdf file titled ‘Tooth friendly foods and tooth enemies’ [4]. It’s worth a quick read.

yesterday the Age published this article titled ‘How to deal with flight delays and travel hassles’ [5]. As it says, in the world of air travel, this is an age of lowered-expectations.

treehugger.com published this superb slideshow of the Passivhaus – which it calls ‘The Real Standard for a Real Green House’ [6]. I think they mean ‘a Really Green House’. But the pics are mouthwatering.

the Lancet published research concluding that in Type 2 diabetes, the most intensive glucose control is associated with increased risk for death [7]. I love research results that are counter-intuitive.

on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Sweetheart Vivienne and I had our annual State of the Union discussions. In diplomatic speak, they were cordial and fruitful. On Wednesday a certain Mr Obama borrowed our idea and gave his State of the Union Address [8a, 8b].

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.