![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistSoon after I got here, I first met Andrew's uncle, about whom (see, Andrew, dative! I know things!) I had already heard much. So now before I get on with what I was going to say, I'll tell you about him a little.
Andrew had told me a lot about his uncle, because he's very cool (his uncle, I mean, though Andrew's very cool too). Though he's interested in almost everything, it seems, he has a PhD in biochemistry. He and his wife wrote a book about vitamin C (which you can get online, here). Since its publication, the book has been causing a huge stir. The Vitamin C Foundation has called the book "The most important development in the history of vitamin C", and the publication of "The Hickey letters" has led to Mark Levine, the advisor to the National Institute Of Health in the US, essentially admitting his research has huge flaws, which may well lead to the US RDA changing, and the consequent saving of many thousands of lives at a conservative estimate. (I nicked most of this paragraph from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stealthmunchkin's entry where I got all the links, because he said all that stuff better than I could, and this way I didn't have to think up any of those words by myself.)
I've read most of this book and it's great. Plus, he's right. Along with the antibiotic ear drops, Andrew's been taking tons of vitamin C since he got his ear infection--antibiotics will just stop bacteria from breeding, which gives your immune system a chance to go to work on them, but vitamin C in large doses, will actually kill them. (I think I got that right. Asgreenflower could tell you, I'm no good with biology and chemistry.) Besides ear infections, though, large doses of vitamin C can also do lots of good for people with AIDS and cancer and crazy things like that.
Steven's nice and fun to be around, but all people who are so obviously smarter than me make me nervous that I'll do something stupid, and being nervous makes me talk a lot, and talking often ends up being a stupid thing for me to do. Yet for some reason he likes me anyway--I know he likes Andrew, and thus probably has some measure of confidence in the people Andrew would choose to associate with, so that probably helped. He asked Andrew and I to proofread something he'd written, and he was impressed enough with my jiggling of a few commas that he decided that I'm a good writer who should, you know, write things. It's what Steven always brings up now when he talks to me.
Andrew knows that I, like him, think highly of his uncle, so he considered this great vindication. Ever since he has been saying "See? I told you you're great and smart and you should write!" I was raised to be bad at accepting compliments and so the best I can do is smile and hide behind my hand as I brush hair out of my eyes.
Though I may have good intentions I don't have anything to show for them yet, really. Steven and Andrew have some plans for things to write, some of which might involve me somewhat. I did in fact proofread a book they wrote about SQL--just moving commas around again, but it's the sort of thing I'm good at; being a grammatical perfectionist (though dooming me to disappointment, as there's no such thing as grammatical perfection) does come in handy there.
The reason I haven't written anything isn't that I'm scared of rejection or anything like that, it's simply that I haven't come up with a single thing to write about. I don't have the discipline for writing, either (Yet! I've had that before and know it can be attained again; I just have to find where it ran off to, shoot it, and drag it back here with me) but my real problem is that writing for fun instead of assignments has been drilled out of my system by four years of writing assignments in college. This journal is the only thing I've written that I haven't been compelled to do ... since I was in high school, probably. (And the things I wrote then, about marching band, Evil Salad Dressing, a concert I went to, etc., I know recognize as being exactly the sort of thing I would've put in my LiveJournal if I'd had it then.)
Thus, I'm at a bit of a loss.
Meanwhile, Andrew's putting me to shame by not only resolving to have content in his journal and backing up that promise but, more recently, writing things (1, 2)--not epic novels (he told me he wasn't being Neal Stephenson here and I said "yeah, your stories have endings!") but decent little things that he's actually showing to people and seeking comment upon. And that's when he was sick and couldn't do anything like walk or wear his glasses! I've just been lying around in my pajamas with no real excuse. And he's talking about doing some comics-related stuff now, which also sounds cool. His enthusiasm and productivity, scant as he may think they are, beat mine ... but have made me want to do that too.
I still don't have anything to say, though. I know I've written a lot of words, here, but not said anything.
Except the vitamin C stuff; that's cool. Really, check it out.
Andrew had told me a lot about his uncle, because he's very cool (his uncle, I mean, though Andrew's very cool too). Though he's interested in almost everything, it seems, he has a PhD in biochemistry. He and his wife wrote a book about vitamin C (which you can get online, here). Since its publication, the book has been causing a huge stir. The Vitamin C Foundation has called the book "The most important development in the history of vitamin C", and the publication of "The Hickey letters" has led to Mark Levine, the advisor to the National Institute Of Health in the US, essentially admitting his research has huge flaws, which may well lead to the US RDA changing, and the consequent saving of many thousands of lives at a conservative estimate. (I nicked most of this paragraph from
stealthmunchkin's entry where I got all the links, because he said all that stuff better than I could, and this way I didn't have to think up any of those words by myself.)I've read most of this book and it's great. Plus, he's right. Along with the antibiotic ear drops, Andrew's been taking tons of vitamin C since he got his ear infection--antibiotics will just stop bacteria from breeding, which gives your immune system a chance to go to work on them, but vitamin C in large doses, will actually kill them. (I think I got that right. As
greenflower could tell you, I'm no good with biology and chemistry.) Besides ear infections, though, large doses of vitamin C can also do lots of good for people with AIDS and cancer and crazy things like that.Steven's nice and fun to be around, but all people who are so obviously smarter than me make me nervous that I'll do something stupid, and being nervous makes me talk a lot, and talking often ends up being a stupid thing for me to do. Yet for some reason he likes me anyway--I know he likes Andrew, and thus probably has some measure of confidence in the people Andrew would choose to associate with, so that probably helped. He asked Andrew and I to proofread something he'd written, and he was impressed enough with my jiggling of a few commas that he decided that I'm a good writer who should, you know, write things. It's what Steven always brings up now when he talks to me.
Andrew knows that I, like him, think highly of his uncle, so he considered this great vindication. Ever since he has been saying "See? I told you you're great and smart and you should write!" I was raised to be bad at accepting compliments and so the best I can do is smile and hide behind my hand as I brush hair out of my eyes.
Though I may have good intentions I don't have anything to show for them yet, really. Steven and Andrew have some plans for things to write, some of which might involve me somewhat. I did in fact proofread a book they wrote about SQL--just moving commas around again, but it's the sort of thing I'm good at; being a grammatical perfectionist (though dooming me to disappointment, as there's no such thing as grammatical perfection) does come in handy there.
The reason I haven't written anything isn't that I'm scared of rejection or anything like that, it's simply that I haven't come up with a single thing to write about. I don't have the discipline for writing, either (Yet! I've had that before and know it can be attained again; I just have to find where it ran off to, shoot it, and drag it back here with me) but my real problem is that writing for fun instead of assignments has been drilled out of my system by four years of writing assignments in college. This journal is the only thing I've written that I haven't been compelled to do ... since I was in high school, probably. (And the things I wrote then, about marching band, Evil Salad Dressing, a concert I went to, etc., I know recognize as being exactly the sort of thing I would've put in my LiveJournal if I'd had it then.)
Thus, I'm at a bit of a loss.
Meanwhile, Andrew's putting me to shame by not only resolving to have content in his journal and backing up that promise but, more recently, writing things (1, 2)--not epic novels (he told me he wasn't being Neal Stephenson here and I said "yeah, your stories have endings!") but decent little things that he's actually showing to people and seeking comment upon. And that's when he was sick and couldn't do anything like walk or wear his glasses! I've just been lying around in my pajamas with no real excuse. And he's talking about doing some comics-related stuff now, which also sounds cool. His enthusiasm and productivity, scant as he may think they are, beat mine ... but have made me want to do that too.
I still don't have anything to say, though. I know I've written a lot of words, here, but not said anything.
Except the vitamin C stuff; that's cool. Really, check it out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:15 pm (UTC)I hear ya, sister.
We shall overcome! and all that
Date: 2004-08-18 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:36 pm (UTC)You can do it!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 02:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:50 pm (UTC)(Good advice too, though.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 03:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 01:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 11:12 pm (UTC)"Seems to cover the essential points." - NY Times Book Review
"Hickey waxes eloquent on something we've known for ages...that Vitamin C is good for you." - Christian Science Monitor
"An impressive work, but not nearly as impressive as Throw the Night." - Spin Magazine
"Would be a lot more convincing if Hickey himself wasn't afflicted with scurvy." - Vitamin C Quarterly
"Hickey's assertion that Vitamin C is in fact Vitamin B in disguise is, frankly, bollocks." - Financial Times
"I'll never look at an orange the same way again." - Larry King
"Dr. Steven Hickey struggles mightily to emerge from the massive shadow of his nephew, and he *almost* succeeds." - Phil Davis (bassist, The Psychotic Reaction)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-19 12:32 am (UTC)heheh... :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-19 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-19 04:58 pm (UTC)Yeah, I never could type, really...
Date: 2004-08-19 05:09 pm (UTC)