[Review] The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

Infectious diseases are inherently fascinating. I have several friends who really enjoy talking about them - one who worked for the CDC, another who designed a public health board game for PBS ("You are exposed to diptheria. If you have an immunization card, move forward one space. Otherwise, you contract diptheria and expose all other players. All players not immunized move back one space). And they are all over the news. The two gift subscriptions I've been given this year both had articles on H5N1 (Foreign Affairs - not surprising. But when Men's Health has an article, you know it has become a national topic of conversation!). Even my barber wanted to talk to me about the bird flu, which she really hoped she hadn't gotten because she was feeling a little sniffly (I assured her it was highly unlikely).

So, I picked up this free book in my laundry room on smallpox. Overall recommendation: 2.5 stars out of 5. That's 1 stars for inherently interesting material, 1 star for good flow, 0.5 stars for occasional good informational tidbits. Sadly, not enough good meaty science, and way too much hype. The part that hurt the most were the pages and pages about the putative Iraq bioweapons program (this was written in 2002 before the invasion), and the "almost guaranteed fact" that Iraqis were working on weaponizing smallpox (I mean, we haven't proven they weren't, but if we haven't found evidence of it yet, it makes one wonder about the people who were guaranteeing its existence before the invasion). Highlights: occasional lines like "One day, a caterpillar comes along and eats the viral equivalent of a land mine, and melts down, and so it goes for hundreds of millions of years in the happy life of an insect pox". Some of the in depth descriptions of WHO mobilizations during the Eradication were very good (if occasionally overly graphic). I hadn't realized that the USSR had actually pushed for eradication well before the US, and provided much of the vaccine that the WHO used. Of course, Preston then goes on to excoriate the USSR for their work on weaponizing smallpox (naturally, weaponization was a theme in the book, as Preston wanted to hype the clear and present danger of smallpox, probably in the hope of selling more copies). Reading this did make me appreciate again the historic nature of the eradication of smallpox (and perhaps an unduplicatable one, since most other virii have animal reservoirs), and certainly as humans continue to crowd into denser and denser populations we have to expect the evolution (or intelligent design) of more infectious diseases in the future...

In any case, I want to go find a better book on infectious diseases and read more. I hear rumors that Richard Rhodes has written one, and I really enjoyed his Making of the Atom Bomb, so perhaps I'll have to track it down...

Luciernaga!

Luciernaga means Firefly in Spanish, apparently.

Weirdly, the spanish subtitles on Firefly are only loosely correlated with the spanish dubbing. My theory (developed by attempting to not only hold both the spoken and written forms in my head simultaneously, but attempting to make a best guess at the original English by lipreading, which I have no actual skill at) is that the subtitles were closer to direct translations of the English, while the dubbing was an attempt to translate in such a way as to be more natural dialogue, but also to be closer to matching the lip movements (so where a translation of a short english sentence yields a long spanish sentence, they would try to find a short spanish equivalent).

An example of a more direct translation versus a natural one:
Presumed English: "Captain Mal - bad - that's from the latin"
Subtitle: "Mal - malo - eso es del latin"
Dubbed "Mal - malo - no confio en ese hombre" (I don't trust that man)

Because in Spanish the connection from Mal to "malo" is rather obvious and River wouldn't need to make an allusion to the latin.

Also, 15 year old in-jokes are even less comprehensible to outsiders after they are awkwardly translated into Spanish than they were in the original English. Yay for 15 year old in-jokes!

Anyway, that is the Spanish Firefly report of the night. Any errors in transcription, translation, and theorizing are solely my responsibility, and not that of any of the people I was watching with. Any insights can be credited to them of course.

Handkerchief Report

arcanology, chenoameg, and I all use handkerchiefs. justom does not. Therefore not all graduates of our high school use handkerchiefs. But do _only_ graduates of our high school use handkerchiefs? This I ask of the livejournal community...

(Hmm. I realize now that justom did not attend our middle school. Perhaps this is the key!)

ps. More random Spanish notes: Handkerchief in Spanish is "pañuelo". Diapers are "pañales". Bedroom slippers, on the other hand, are "pantuflos".

pps. If one doesn't remember the word "pañales", but one desperately needs some, store owners on random streets in Mexico City will, in fact, understand the poor gringo who says "calzoncillos para bebes". And this ends, hopefully, not only random Spanish reports of the night, but livejournal posting from me in general, as I am going to bed!