unbibium

ok, i got internet in my hotel room and I don't know for how long

I'm in DC and having an OK time. People remember me.

I participated in some research, and might sign up for some clinical trials.

They keep having late night get togethers at loud bars. I think I'll put my foot down and not go to any on Saturday night.

Apparently in DC, hotel rooms have all kinds of obscure news channels, like NHK World, and RT. But they have the normal ones. I'm starting to think that HLN is almost worse than Fox News. Apparently Lindsay Lohan's outrage over going to prison counts as "Breaking News" after midnight.

Sunday morning, after breakfast, there was one table full of people who stayed a little longer than everyone else. And they were discussing the problems people with albinism are having in Tanzania, a country of 39 million people.

Not only are they having the usual trouble African countries have with availability of sunscreen, and the usual developing-countries problem of not enough hospitals for treating skin cancer, but every albino living in the country is living under the unique threat that some witch doctor may attempt to harvest their body for medicinal purposes.

I listened for as long as I could, but as the description of the problem became clearer to me, I became more aware that the problem is cultural, and therefore difficult to solve effectively. We can attempt to build a support network, like we have in the United States, which they certainly need, and I'd like to help with that. But as long as the people of that country are susceptible to both the belief in that kind of medicine, and the willingness to take lives to obtain it... well, that's a grim situation.

And I got Standard Skeptic's Frustration, much like every skeptic gets when they see how long faith healers and psychic surgeons can operate prosperously here in the United States. Except it's not just the patients that are dying.

The other science-minded person at the table, a doctor that studies genetics, is familiar with the problem, and his proposed solution is a memetic one: write a folk song that turns a martyred albino into a sympathetic character, or at least a human one, and hope it spreads. I don't know if an American can write the Tanzanian equivalent of Chocolate Rain, but I wish that cause luck.

This probably contributed to my post-conference bum-out.

When normally sighted people play a card game like Munchkin or Chez Geek, how often do you find yourself scanning other players' face-up cards during the game?

What such games require the least amount of this sort of thing?