Author: Gil

There’s something else I wanted to write about in the past few weeks, but I was afraid I’d come off as a whiny bitch. Now that I’ve experienced two major sports in HD, it’s time for me to ramble about my TV.

This all started about a month or so ago, when my slightly-less-than-three-year-old 36″ Panasonic TV started shutting off spontaneously. The warranty is still active, so I called in a repair. The two repairmen who showed up realized that they were getting stuck with a not-so-nice job, since the TV needed to be taken into the shop.

The thing to know about my TV is that it’s made of dwarf star matter. It’s so dense, I’m amazed that light actually escapes the screen. When I moved into this house in 2003, I had three burly friends carry it upstairs. They groused at first, but then realized that I’d moved everything else singlehandedly a week earlier, including a queen-sized bed.

So the repairmen were stuck having to haul the world’s heaviest TV down the stairs to their van on a Friday afternoon. On the way out, they warned me that it’d be gone for 5-15 working days. I thought, “I’m not a TV maniac. But I do like watching the Yankees. And football season IS starting up this weekend . . .”

So, that night, the official VM fiancee & I went out to PC Richard and bought a 50″ Samsung DLP HD TV.

Don’t get me wrong; this wasn’t a super-impulse purchase. I mean, sure, we’re saving for the wedding and, sure, she’s going to need a car after she moves out here and, sure, we probably could’ve spent the money on relief donations for people on the Gulf Coast.

But, MAN, does it have a good picture.

So we bought it on the spot (after the requisite haggling and warranty issues), then drove out to the warehouse the next morning, where we amazed everyone by being able to fit the package into the back of my Honda Element.

The satellite dish and receiver at my home only picked up standard-definition TV, so we decided to try out a DVD from the component video feed. We figured Hero (the Jet Li one, not the Andy Garcia one) was the most visually amazing flick either of us had seen in a while, so we popped that in.

And we were agog. The color and clarity were just incredible. Standard-definition programming was kinda dull, but I figured I’d order an HD dish and receiver.

There my sorrows began.

The installer failed to show up or call on its Saturday installation. I called DirecTV the next morning, pissed off. I was going to be away the next Saturday, and my weekdays were off-limits, what with the heavy work schedule. So, this past Saturday, the installer was scheduled to show up from 1-5pm. Near 8pm, he got to my place. At least this time, I was able to get his number from the installation contractor, so I knew he was going to make it here eventually.

In the dark.

Up on my roof.

Where he dropped one of his tools, which slid off the roof and clanged against my aforementioned Element, denting and scratching the hood. “This has to be one of the worst days I’ve ever had on the job,” he told me.

By 9:30pm on Saturday, he was done. At which point DirecTV’s various phone numbers were down, so we couldn’t activate the HD service. Sigh.

Sunday morning, I tried again, got through to the service desk, and that’s when I entered a new world.

Like I said, I’m not a big TV guy. But I have NEVER seen a picture like this in my life. The color is impossibly vivid, the resolution is like looking through a window, and the depth-of-field seems to deft the laws of optics.

When I clicked from an HD channel over to a standard-def one, I shuddered at how terrible “regular” TV looks. I’d seen a couple of HD programs before (occasional Yankee games at my Dad’s, the last Superbowl at a friend’s place), but it sure was great to have it in my living room.

I called DirecTV back and added the NFL HD package. Hours later, I was clicking among 7 or 8 1pm games, marveling at the picture. I don’t take hockey seriously as a sport, but I can’t wait to see what it looks like in HD.

All of which is to say, I’m decompressing a little, after a stressful month.

[Here’s my From the Editor page for the October issue of Contract Pharma]

I was all set to write about disaster response and the ways we should prepare for cataclysms both natural and manmade, but another subject came up, so I have to cut that sermon-ette down to a single piece of advice: the more time you spend blaming other people for not helping you, the less time you have to help yourself.

What subject could possibly have been more important to me than the opportunity to pontificate about the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast and the good and the bad of our responses to them? Longtime readers of this space know about my unhealthy preoccupation with sports, thanks to my repeated attempts at bridging the gap between that world and the Pharma business. Now my favorite pro sport has run headlong into my pro life as we finally achieve the intersection of biomarkers and basketball!

Last March, late in the season, Chicago Bulls center Eddy Curry experienced heart arrhythmia before a game. Doctors began testing him, and he was benched for the rest of the season and the playoffs. The tests were inconclusive, and Curry planned to come back this season, angling for a long-term contract before training camp opened. However, the NBA’s insurance company considered him too much of a risk and refused to cover any contract for Curry.

Eventually, at the behest of a top cardiologist, the Bulls asked Curry to take a DNA test to see if he was predisposed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition. This way, the team would know if there was a significant risk both to their investment in Curry (which would’ve added up to around $70 million, given the market for young centers) and to Curry’s investment in the first 22 years of his life. Curry refused to take the test, citing medical privacy issues and advice from his own cardiologist. The NBA commissioner backed up the Bulls’ request for the DNA test, but the players’ association supported Curry, evidently under the logic that the right to die on the basketball court is protected by the union. Or at least that it should be negotiated.

The two parties were stuck at an impasse right up until the deadline for offering Curry a one-year deal was about the expire. At that point, the Bulls gave up and traded Curry to New York, where he’s been offered a long-term deal and will undergo standard medical tests, but not the DNA exam for the biomarker that Dr. Maron was concerned with. At the press conference to announce the trade, Bulls general manager John Paxson revealed that if Curry “failed” the DNA test, the Bulls had agreed to pay him $400,000 annually for the next 50 years. It wasn�t real-world, lump-sum dollars, but it was $20 million to carry him into his 70s.

So now he can go to New York, play center for the Knicks, and pray that his cardiologist was right. After all, Curry’s people argued, there’s no assurance, even if he does possess that biomarker, that he’ll have a fatal heart attack during the years of his contract. Alan Milstein, a lawyer representing Curry, remarked, “If employers could give employees DNA tests, then they could find out if there’s a propensity for illnesses like cancer, heart disease or alcoholism. They will make personnel decisions based on DNA testing.”

Now, I�m all for privacy rights–tattered though they may be–and I don’t want to see an age where biomarkers for long-term diseases are used by employers to discriminate. That said, I also watched the 1993 playoff game in which 27-year-old Celtics forward Reggie Lewis keeled over from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (he survived that episode, but died a few months later when trying to come back to the Celtics). Eddy Curry wasn�t asking for a $7.50/hour job greeting people at Wal-Mart. He was trying to get guarantees of $70 million or so for demanding physical activity, but was unwilling to assure his employer that he’d be medically fit to, um, survive the contract, much less perform at a high level during its span.

Trying to make this kid�who jumped straight to the pros from high school�into a poster boy for genetic discrimination is a near-criminal act.

–Gil Roth
Editor

Looks like the Chinese army’s never seen a Longwang like this one before.

Thanks for sticking around, dear reader! I just wrapped up the October ish, just in time for the Jewy New Year! Shana tova!

Sorry I haven’t written much lately. There were plenty of things I could’ve written about, like these two items:

Al Qaeda or Al Capone?

What is up with all these car-bombings in Lebanon? Did the Federation leave a copy of “Chicago Mobs of the Twenties” behind after their last trip?

In Drugs We Trust, or, The Crank-Driven Life

After Brian Nichols went bananas and killed a bunch of people in an Atlanta courthouse, he took Ashley Smith hostage. The “nice” narrative was that she pulled out a copy of “The Purpose-Driven Life” and helped talk Nichols into surrendering after they read a chapter called “Using What God Gave Me.”

As it turns out, she was using a little more than that. When Nichols asked her for some weed, Smith said she didn’t have any. Fortunately, she had some crystal meth stashed away, so Nichols was able to party down some, and Smith was able to rededicate her life to God, since Nichols bogarted her stash.

Conference is wrapped up! We received much praise! And I got to go back to Cafe Matisse for a celebratory dinner last night! Details (and menu) to follow!

I still have to write and lay out a ton of pages this weekend, but at least the stress of the conference is over. Now I can get out there and find the real killer!

Your Virtual Memoirist, dear reader, is nuts.

I still have 3 articles to write in the next 3 days, before spending 2 days helping to run our annual conference. I may or may not have to put together a panel discussion the morning it begins. I have to write my brilliantly witty and engaging From the Editor column. Most mornings, I’m up before 5am, racked with anxiety. Laundry is piling up in my bedroom. My fridge is almost completely empty. I haven’t gotten on the treadmill in almost 2 weeks.

But I have been keeping up with my schedule of reading at least 30 pages of Don Quixote every day.

And now I’m done, so I guess I can get back to biomarkers, PAT, pharma facility design & construction, administrative chores, household care, and planning a wedding in a deserted city.

Work’s still pretty stressful, but it’ll all be over at noon next Friday. We’re heading down to the eastern shore in Maryland for a friend’s wedding soon.

I leave you with the Worthless Baseball Card Collection.

Just clicked over from the Yankees to the news and am watching JetBlue 292 try to emergency-land in LAX with faulty landing equipment. If you’re the praying kind, then pray for the passengers and crew.

Update: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Klinger really IS from Toledo.

I thought about going to the Giants-Saints game tonight, since there were tons of tickets available and it would’ve been a way to support the Red Cross efforts down in the gulf.

But then I thought about how, within 5 minutes, I would’ve been rooting for the Giants to crush the Saints, and THAT didn’t feel right. So I’m watching at home, and the Saints fumbled the kickoff, leading to a near-instant TD for the Jints. Sorry, guys.