(Lost my first girlfriend-turned-friend to leukemia in ’05)

I’m reminded of Phil Klass’s story “Winthrop Was Stubborn”, in which he postulated a future in which — among many other bits of future shock for his time travelers –  many women had adopted shaving their heads as a style, noting that it emphasized facial expressions. I think the quote summing it up was “a woman’s Frowning Glory”.

I’m also reminded of the public surprise at how attractive Persis Khambatta was when had her head shaved to play Ilia in Star Trek The Motion(less) Picture. Shouldn’t have surprised anyone, in retrospect, but it broke some assumptions.

So:  Yeah, as others have said,  don’t let anyone make you self-conscous about it — you do look good even to someone like myself who is biased in favor of long hair. Impish, perhaps, might be the right word…

(And I hope my face ages half as gracefully as your mom’s has.)

The challenge with “cancer” is that it isn’t a single ailment — it’s a class of symptoms that can have many causes. We’ve gotten a lot better at treating those symptoms, but we won’t have anything resembling a complete “cure” until we can address the basic switches that cause the symptom to arise. And I suspect that’s going to come piecemeal, one cause at a time, until and unless we have the entire process mapped out. So I don’t expect to see The Cure For Cancer in my lifetime, and I’m not sure it’s a well-defined goal … but I would be delighted to be proven wrong, and in the meantime I’ll be pleased if we continue to find better ways to prevent and control it.

I’m reminded of Phil Klass’s story “Winthrop Was Stubborn”, in which he postulated a future in which — among many other bits of future shock for his time travelers –  many women had adopted shaving their heads as a style, noting that it emphasized facial expressions. I think the quote summing it up was “a woman’s Frowning Glory”.

I’m also reminded of the public surprise at how attractive Persis Khambatta was when had her head shaved to play Ilia in Star Trek The Motion(less) Picture. Shouldn’t have surprised anyone, in retrospect, but it broke some assumptions.

So:  Yeah, as others have said,  don’t let anyone make you self-conscous about it — you do look good even to someone like myself who is biased in favor of long hair. Impish, perhaps, might be the right word…

(And I hope my face ages half as gracefully as your mom’s has.)

The challenge with “cancer” is that it isn’t a single ailment — it’s a class of symptoms that can have many causes. We’ve gotten a lot better at treating those symptoms, but we won’t have anything resembling a complete “cure” until we can address the basic switches that cause the symptom to arise. And I suspect that’s going to come piecemeal, one cause at a time, until and unless we have the entire process mapped out. So I don’t expect to see The Cure For Cancer in my lifetime, and I’m not sure it’s a well-defined goal … but I would be delighted to be proven wrong, and in the meantime I’ll be pleased if we continue to find better ways to prevent and control it.