Serenity… an expedition

busy brain

I figure since I seem to wind up writing at this time of the night anyway (something to do, I’m sure, with procrastinations and deadlines) I might as well make it a sort of series – closing thoughts of the day.

Maybe. We’ll see what it turns out to be – the promise to write something (for publishing on the blog) everyday is structure enough for me right now. Baby steps. I am doing other writing during the day as well – slowly, with many distractions and rewrites, adding to my seemingly endless pile of  “drafts”. Eh… soon I’ll finish them, or throw them out and start over.

Anyway…

I came across this story the other day, about the color blindness of skin cancer. Yet another failure of poc by the medical and drug establishment. It’s been common knowledge for as long as I can remember (after skin cancer became a well-known issue) that darker skinned people were less susceptible to it, because of melanin or whatever in the skin. Which is why you always see white or fair skinned people on all the commercials and PSAs about it, no?

Only, it turns out that that’s not true at all:

Dermatologists say they are concerned because skin cancer rates are increasing among minority groups in the United States. Like Wilson, many people of color often mistakenly believe skin cancer is not something they should be worried about.

The reasoning is not completely far-fetched: Darker-skinned people do benefit from the protective effects of skin pigmentation. In fact, some studies suggest that for the darkest skin tones, pigmentation cells provide a natural sun protection factor, or SPF, of about 13. The problem is many dark-skinned people believe that means they are born with a natural immunity to skin cancer.

“Pigmentation doesn’t give you a free pass,” said Dr. Charles E. Crutchfield III, a dermatologist specializing in ethnic skin and the doctor who treated Tiffany Wilson. “It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, everyone can get skin cancer.”

[...]

All types of skin cancer are increasing among blacks and Hispanics, and their melanomas are more often fatal because they are usually caught later, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.

Wear sunscreen, no matter how dark you are. Pass it on.

I didn’t make it to the little library this weekend – truthfully, I forgot all about it.  By the weekends my mind and body is just fried – I didn’t even get out of my pajamas all day Saturday. Not that I laid about all day or anything (although if I coulda I woulda) but it was just more comfortable to stay as I was, and I simply didn’t care.

“One head can be nearly as good as two.” From a really interesting article linked by P6 – on “How to tap the wisdom of the crowd in your head”.

I already live too much in my head, am not sure I want to tap into any crowds that might be dwelling there. Still, a good read.

Another promise – okay, well a promise to work on – commenting at people’s sites. I read all sorts of stuff that I should be at least acknowledging reading, primarily on woc sites, but, well.. I am a champion lurker. I’m going to try to do better.

I wonder if we Californians can persuade Ahnold to visit China? And cough.

A very good analysis of just what was wrong with that NRO Judge Sotomayor cover and the history behind some of the images – and NRO’s past relationship to some of them, by Jeff Yang at Racialicious.

The US’s period of (even then incomplete and unequal) prosperity didn’t last very long,  did it? A tent city in every fair sized town seems to be the new normal.

Okay, well gotta get this posted before midnight, so…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under before midnight, bellybutton bedazzlement, stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.