Got to make a point here, because the Vanity Fair idiot just interviewed on "Hardball" is obviously clueless. While I take his side in this issue, I find that he and many others on the same side are often being factually incorrect in defining their terms. This doesn't help anybody.

So let's be clear. Whatever else Shiavo is, she is not "brain dead" by any standard medical definition. Those people on the "right to life" side of this discussion are correct in that she is -- medically -- "brain damaged," but not dead.

To be declared brain dead, a person's entire brain function must cease. This includes brain stem functions such as breathing, reflexive actions and heartbeat. A brain dead person will die immediately without artifical respiration and/or circulation. This definition is important only in very limited circumstances, particularly where there is a desire to harvest organs for donation.

For Terri Shiavo, as was the case for my father some time back, the issue is not brain death. Rather it is dealing with an individual whose conscious brain is gone, even as the body's automatic functions continue.

It is a difficult situation precisely because the brain is not dead, but instead remains in a grey area -- functioning automatically, but having lost the essence of the person we knew.

Stitting here in Los Angeles it is difficult not to notice everything car-related that comes along. While we admit we don't much care about cars ourselves, we nonetheless find the antics surrounding cars to be somewhat amusing.

But the demonstrtions to try to "save" the few GM EV1 vehicles remaining strike us as just plain stupid, sponsored by people who claim to be environmentalists and who should know better.

The crux of the arguments these people make in favor of electric vehicles in general, and their beloved EV1s in particular, fall into two basic categories:

• They reduce dependence on the terror-sponsoring petrocracies of the middle east
• They are less damaging to the environment

Obviously, these arguments overlap somewhat, but let's take them one at a time:

• Good neighbors are a great thing. Yesterday afternoon the earth shook briefly in my neighborhood. Within seconds, four of my neighbors were leaning out the window coming up with a consensus number. We were off by a bit. 3.5 vs. 3.4 actual as reported by the USGS.
• Those of you in wetter colder climates should probably skip this rant: I am SOOOOO sick of the rain. If I wanted to live in a lush green rainy place, I would have kept my grandparents' place near a stream in Connecticut. I moved to California for a reason, and it's not because I wanted the lot behind my place to turn into a duck pond! (Ducklings sure are cute though.) And yes, this was taken in a parking lot...
• Not only did I move close to the best pizza in LA, but now I need to find out about this bit of news?
• Am I the only one who not only isn't participating in something called "brackets," but who doesn't even know who's playing?

• Moving to a place that is walking distance from the best pizza in LA could turn out to have been a mistake.
• Cats apparently take longer to adjust to new surroundings than people. The presence of cat hair on the keyboard suggests that the adjustment process has completed.
• My new cable system offers Bloomberg. Not having to listen to the cheerleaders ranting on that other network has done wonders for my blood pressure.
• I am hearing some upbeat comments from friends at smaller software companies both here in the Southland and up in Silicon Valley. While I am somewhat pessimistic about the hardware business I am watching the applications side for opportunities.

This isn't the primary reason for this blog, but I find it difficult not to comment on the Schiavo case and the ongoing antics surrounding it. My dad passed away last September, after suffering cardiac arrest during recovery from bypass surger. His heart was restarted, but like Terry Schiavo, his brain went without oxygen for long enough to cause significant damage.

There the parallels end to a large degree. My father was clearly in bad shape from the start, with virtually no animation and no reactions that could have been mistaken for consciousness. Even repeated touching of the eyes and ears (sensitive areas) did not generate responses. The neurologist believed that his situation, if anything, was worsening. Our decision about withdrawing his medical care was relatively easy.

There's a picture hanging in my office. Actually, a series of pictures published in Life Magazine back in 1940. The understated headline describes the sequence simply as "Tacoma Narrows Bridge Crashes in Puget Sound ." The three photos show the bridge twisting, then breaking, and finally standing with its mid-section entirely gone. These pictures and other related information are widely available and continue to be studied and noted by civil engineers along with many others.

My primary interests are the worlds of technology and finance, and particularly the intersection of the two. In the photos of the bridge, I find a reminder of our human fallibility, and a catastrophic illustration of what can happen in any field of endeavor when we push the limits of our knowledge or seek to apply it in new untested ways.