The Day Before

Wednesday I was bedridden. Yesterday I was able to move about, and this morning I'm almost back to normal. By tomorrow I should be ready to go to the morning service, which probably won't be crowded.

Most of the kids will participate in today's 4 p.m. Christmas Eve pageant, while the majority of the adults will attend the late-night service. (By fulfilling their religious obligation on Christmas Eve people will leave Christmas Day open for family, food, and fun.) Whether due to luck or prescience, I'm glad I signed up to usher tomorrow and not tonight.

So I probably just had a cold virus and not an infection. It's amazing how commonplace medical knowledge dwarfs what a trained physician knew 150 years ago. In 1860 bacteria had been discovered but were not thought to be a cause of disease, and viruses were completely unknown.

Speaking of the knowledge explosion, Google's new Ngram viewer permits us to chart word usage over time. Here are "bacteria" and "virus" from 1860 to 2000.

Ngram, like most things on the Internet, is both tool and time-waster. 2000 years ago Christians believe that man triumphed over death. At the beginning of the 21st century he has triumphed over boredom. © 2010 Stephen Yuen