Miscellaneous headlines

Hirsi Ali one, Dutch government zero
An African Human rights report on Somali women...LINK 2
BookerRisingBlog has her poltical positions here...

Teletubbies are popular in Iran...guess the Mullahs don't know about TinkieWinkie...

Zimbabwe still is suffering...now soldiers are confiscating the harvest...

CNNI is crowing in triumph that Bush "lost" in the Supreme Court...LINK....LINK2 both say: not quite, if you read the details...

Don't ask me, I'm a doctor.
Now ask me about the Drudgereport on a doc missing a 28 lb ovarian tumor and I have an opinion...but since I've posted the story last year on this blog, I moved my comments to my new medical musing blog...

Chesterton rediscovered

Bad news: The Surgeon General wants to stop all indoor smoking in public places, never mind about what people want...
Good News: Copenhagen stock goes thru the roof.

ReasononlineBlog points out a little noted Chesterton Satire where the Fabians rule and Islam takes over...see LINK2 also...

The Fabians are the socialist/progressives of their day: read no wine, no religion, and no meat. And in the past, puritans made such things sins, now they are health hazards to be forbidden for your own good...

Chesterton has many poems praising beer and good cheer: NOT because he supports drunkenness, but because God gave us the little pleasures of life to enjoy (not misuse).

But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,
Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,
And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,
For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,
And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine,
But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.

Oklahoma Limosine

Attention Arnold....nyah nyah nyah...a HUMMER Limo...

Texas RACING Limos

they actually race the dang things...

Texas Limo

Singapore recipes

Singapore is having their yearly food festival, and the link has recipes.

Headlines and stuff

Most of the headlines are via Lucianne...

St. Peggy is really snotty today...Media people keep saying, as Hillary gears up for her presidential bid, that her big challenge in 2008 will be to prove that she is as tough as a man. That she could order troops to war. That she's not girly and soft.
This is the exact opposite of the truth. Hillary doesn't have to prove her guy chops. She doesn't have to prove she's a man, she has to prove she's a woman. No one in America thinks she's a woman. They think she's a tough little termagant in a pantsuit...
Read the whole thing...she also takes on the flagburning amendment and Barbara Walters.

200 000 evacuated from Pennsylvania...it's Bush's fault...except that the same thing happened in 1972. At that time, the governor had to flee the mansion in Harrisburg, and Wilkes Barre had an old, powerful but corrupt congressman named (of all things) Flood. He flew in on an Army helicopter, ordered the army to get supplies there or he would oppose their funding in Congress....and within two months had mobile homes all over the mountainside.
Now, can you imagine if Mayor Nagin or the tear soaked guv had done that in NOLA?

Hmmm...terrorists kidnapped and killed some Russian diplomats, and Putin is going to get them...no wonder he is a friend of Bush...even though they disagreed over Iraq...
Attention AlQuada: It's the European Union members who pay ransom. The Russians play hardball and make BUSH and Olmert like wimps...

And Israel figures that if Hamas sends paramilitaries to attack and kidnap their soldiers, and Hamas also runs the government, that this is an act of war. And instead of apologizing, Hamas threatens to hit with chemical weapons, so Israel captures their leaders who just happen to run the government.
Wonderful...and where is Kofi Annan in this? Hyperventillating.
Armageddon, anyone?

Gloria got lots of good press in Europe for outlawing the death penalty here.
Bad News: Torture of suspects continue...maybe because of increased atrocities and killing by the NPA
Bad news: Another mayor killed...they are having disaster drills in case someone bombs a mall...the US Marines accused of raping a bar lass are still in the headlines and things don't look good for them...fools...and the big controversy is if the schools will allow sex education.

Finally, UK docs now decide they oppose Euthanasia...so although you might have to wait three months to get your cancer surgery or a year for your heart surgery, at least they won't be pressured to get rid of you to save money...or to open beds for other people...or because your insurance company decides your medical care is futile...if you scroll down, futility is considered if you have Alzheimers and are in a nursing home...and no, it's not from a pro life nutso website, but a philosophical website, and the criteria is from the Hastings center...

Ah but the good news: Women in Kuwait voted...but my relatives always preferred to work in Kuwait than SaudiArabia...because women were treated politely, and they were allowed to go to church...

Redneck Limosine

War of the sexes take three

This one if from GrouchyOldCrippleBlog.
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War between the sexes take two

War between the sexes, take one

Knitted Nautie

You knit them....and then try to find someone to give them to as a gift...

But at least they are harmless....THIS knit project is guaranteed to make people run away screaming...

(Via BoingBoing)

Guilliani for president?

If you think you hate Bush, wait til Rudy runs.
Of course, if there are more terrorist attacks, he would win. If it stays peaceful, Hillary will win.
Me, I live in the Philippines, and am stuck with Gloria for the next couple years.

I should have seen it coming

There is now a site: Blogs for House...

Medicine will never be the same.

Attention Pablo Escobar

Monitoring Bank transfers: old news? Dinocrat says it started in 1973...

Big Brother is watching you

While the NYTime is worried about the government snooping in on wire transfers (Hmmm...that includes us, AlQuada, and a lot of Colombian drug dealers), the forces of political correctness are pushing rules down on peons to keep us safe and warm at night...

Bad News: The NRA has it's knickers in Knots about the UN confiscating personal guns...well, here in the Philippines, Marcos confiscated all personal guns...so everyone hid their guns.

Good News: Marshmallow fluff will stay legal.

Bad news: Spain may decide apes have human rights, but preborn infants don't. This may allow them to interfere with African countries to protect apes...hmmm...save the apes, ignore the democide in Darfur...figures. It's Bush's fault because he asked for NATO to take over the policing, and didn't say pretty please with sugar on it...

Good News: Bureaucrats in the European Union will not outlaw Pipe organs in churches...it seems that some of the pipes contain lead...

Bad news: UK will make a database of all children, making sure that they are fed their veggies...and Belgium tries to shut down a homeschool...because they won't sign a paper saying that they will teach according to the UN Convention on Children's Rights...

And finally, we are being told that the climate is the warmest it has been in 2000 years....
LINK discusses that it was actually warm 2000 years ago...
The discovery, (of an ancient seal) scientists say, is the first hard evidence for a warming period in the region between 2,300 and 1,100 years ago.
An earlier warming period, between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, has been recognized by other researchers and is believed to have been widespread, at least throughout the Southern Hemisphere.

Yup...it's Bush's fault.

And the rains came

Well I have been doing a lot of blogging because it was so hot, and I spent most of my time in an airconditioned room.

One thing about hot season is that brownouts are common, because of low water levels for hydroelectricity.

But now the monsoons have come, and there is just enough cloud cover to keep the temperature below 95 degrees...

So we go outside a lot more.

The bad news is that we have lousy sewers here. The streets downtown flood with the rain, (not here: We have a ditch to drain it to the river). And we have gone to the "Waltermart" mall, and the street infront of the mall is also flooded. Since the High school is across the street, it is a traffic nightmare even without the flooded street.

In the meanwhile, the transformer down the street exploded again, so our electricity comes from the generator.

All of this on and off messes up the computer connection, so until things settle down blogging will be on and off.

My brain is male but the rest of me is a lady

Your Brain is 27% Female, 73% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Scottish Robot

McBlare, as it is fondly known, is the pride and joy of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. And if anyone doubts its prowess they need only listen to McBlare playing "Highland Laddie" and "Scotland the Brave". It may not match the standard of the lone piper atop the battlements at Edinburgh Castle but it is very convincing – certainly enough to assume that it is human.

Can the brain heal itself? and other science news

Article discusses stimulating the brain's own stem cells to regenerate areas harmed by strokes...
Bad news: Early research, only in mice...so 10 years down the line.

And this is overhyped: A computer that "reads minds"...actually what it reads is body language and facial expressions...which can vary according to culture.

And the latest "we're all gonna die" is a report that prion disease (aka mad cow disease) might not show symptoms for many years....they base this idea on the study of Kuru, a disease where cannibals who ate brains of victims with Kuru developed the disease many years later...

Actually, this has a bigger threat: bad garbage disposal of infected animals...

The battle of the Somme

"....The modern fascination with the Battle of the Somme has its roots in the casualties of both the first day and following months. These were unprecedented in British military history. The British lost more than 19,000 men in the first day of battle; more than 420,000 British and commonwealth soldiers were dead by the end of the campaign in November..."

When I was young, the only book I read about World War I was "Over the Top"...(His description of gas warfare is HERE) quite horrifying even though it was a best seller. Later I read many: about women serving as nurses, and cooks, about ambulance drivers, and most recently about Tolkien at war.

Yes, I read "histories" but I am more interested in how people react and live.

One thing is the heroism, another thing was the horror...especially about the casualties of mustard gas. Another thing struck me was in the book on Tolkien, that he, like many of his fellow veterans, felt that the revisionist history about the "lost generation" led to not only seeing war not as a horrible necessity but as stupid and unneeded, and that ridiculed the heroism of those who fought.
The result, of course, was pacifism toward Hitler.

History repeats itself: The anti war trumpets sound the same story as they did in 1938 and 1925.

But if we have to learn something from that terrible battle whose scars still echo in those searching for peace, it might be this:

"...I once asked my grandfather, himself a World War One veteran, whether he thought it was just too simple to assume the Great War amounted to nothing but a "futile" waste of life.

He replied: "The generals did their job, we did ours. We won."

The same man wept on 3 September 1939 when the Great War became the First World War and another generation went to fight a "war to end all wars". The Great War did not end war any more than did the Second World War.

That failure is not something to blame on the men and women who did "their bit" in either conflict...."

Eugenics and deathmaking

The docs who were behind the Tuskeegee study were influenced by the Eugenics movement...

why am I not surprised?

The physician who started the study and the two who presided over it during its first decade all graduated from the University of Virginia, which, according to the authors, "provided fertile ground for developing what was apparently among the earliest medical course work incorporating eugenic theory." Eugenic theory, they note, posits that "people of different races inherited not only differences in appearance, moral character, and sexual behavior, but also differential susceptibility to disease."

The authors say that at Virginia, the three physicians were taught a brand of racial medicine that had found scientific validation in eugenics. Moreover, they say that during each of their tenures at the Public Health Service, all three men actively associated themselves with the American eugenics movement .

In the Tuskeegee experiment, half of the men who presented for Syphillis treatment were allowed to receive placebo.
This may have been ok at first, (the treatment for syphillis before penicillin was very toxic) but the study continued even after it was recongized that a simple penicillin shot cured syphillis.

This is one of the reasons that black Americans mistrust the medical system in the USA.

Now, I wonder what is the background of Dr. Wannamaker of Univ of Minnesota's notorious Red Lake Streptococcus study where children with impetigo were not treated, resulting in several cases of kidney disease...thirty years later, two of them were still alive, on dialysis...

On line exercize program

Via Ursi,




whose Taichi program is HERE.
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Poko Pippity Pop

Your educational game of the day

Laughing causes pregnancy

Laughing after IVF (implanting a test tube baby embryo) increases the rate of success.

No man is an island

One difference with working in small towns than in big hospitals is that people tend to stick together...the terrible dehumanization and isolation is much less intense.
Alas, most small town hospitals can't afford to have expensive technology and have been shut down. But medium sized town (i.e.50 000) still tend to be more people oriented and people friendly...
This is especially true with immigrants and Native Americans who still live traditional lives.
Indeed, one thing that impressed me when I worked in the Indian Health Service is that no one died alone. Mentally ill, alcoholic, 90 years old, they would have family: If not a sibling, then a cousin or an aunt or a nephew who would come to visit.

But the elite US idea of freedom means social isolation...LINK. And the stress on work means that the lynchpin of women who kept the links going were being destroyed.

Yet those writing the article seem clueless to what allows the ties of human affection.
One "scientist" laments that we don't watch tv together anymore...another insists that "internet ties" will replace human contact.

Headsup from Dappledthings blog.

Scleroderma medicine

NYTimes reports cytoxan has modest effect on scleroderma.

Now, most family docs have no patients with scleroderman, partly because it is rare, and partly because usually they are cared for by specialists.

However , collagen disease are very common among Native Americans. So most Indian clinics and hospitals have Rheumatology clinics.

I once did a geneology on one of my patients and found half of her family had one disease or another...and when her uncle came in with strange symptoms, I sent him to the universary, and warned them about the family history...turns out he had Lupus.

In scleroderma, the skin becomes thick and hard, like scar tissue. Their esophagus gets stiff, so they need medicine for acid reflux. Often they have joint pain. But what kills them is either kidney disease or pulmonary fibrosis.

The main treatment was prednisone. But I had a patient who had severe pulmonary disease, so bad that she was on a transplant list. But they started cytoxan, and gradually weaned her off the Prednisone, and she lost weight...and improved.

She still required lots of pain medicine (we had her on a narcotic contract to cover both us and her because she used large amounts of percocet) and still had to carry oxygen with her, but she was at least able to go shopping and care for her family.

Watch what you wish for, for you may get it

I predict the next blogstorm and populist sentiment that will be ignored is articulated HERE...and HERE...and HERE....and here...

and the tipping point was that two American soldiers were tortured to death...

But there will be no outrage, no expressions of sorrow more than perfunctory messages of official regret. From London to Paris to Berlin to Madrid, knowing sneers will return to all-knowing faces: we are getting what is coming to us. For liberating 50 million from a nightmare regime, for building schools that teach female children, for pouring billions in reconstruction money that dwarfs the Marshall Plan, for believing that even a Muslim people brutalized for decades by the degradations of a totalitarian state deserve a chance to breath free. We are getting what we deserve. Only when we learn to roll over and play dead like a good Spaniard will we ever know wisdom.Another day, another dead American. We are expected to die. The world has long since past expected that Americans be treated with honor and respect or according to the basic rules of war.

the MSM in the US, Europe, and the state run press in the Arab world spews anti Americanism daily--and guess what? The Polls mirror this...(well, DUH!) (interesting aside: but not in India...hmmm).

You see, to the politically correct, the soldiers tortured to death was merely a tragedy, not an atrocity, and especially not a deliberate act of murder by those who need to be opposed.
Yes, CCN INT let Gen McInherney discuss how terrorism is a routine tactic of those who w oppose...but that story will be told once...while the same airways will repeat the same lurid details about one or another of the rare crimes by fogue US soldiers who are already being punished....while daily carbomb statistics will be given in a way that implies it is Bush's fault, not the fault of those who did the deed...the implication that things were safer in Iraq when mass graves were quietly being filled out of sight of CNN's cameras.
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John Winger: We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital "A", huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts.---Stripes
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I suspect much of this anti American resentment is because the crass (read lower class) Americans of their imagination are uppity......we won't bow to their supposed superiority.

As Bill Quick warns:I believe that, at core, America is a Jacksonian nation. And when America finally realizes with what loathing we are regarded by the rest of the world, the result will not be what the rest of the world thinks will occur. There will be no sudden American need to apologize and submit ourselves to the world's judgment. We are a nation founded on telling the rest of the world to go to hell....

Yet the despised Redstate Americans-- all those "Christianists" whose beliefs so disliked by Andrew Sullivan and the LA Times--who have more in common with the values of peaceful Muslims and devout Hindus who love God and want economic improvement without the degradation of western culture.

What is more important is that we send the message to the poor in these countries that there is a country where those not born to privlege can be prosperous...a threatening message to the traditional oligarchies of Europe and the Middle East--and in the Philippines.

Quotation of the day

"... The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: 'everyone is entitled to know everything.' But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Speech to Harvard, 1978

Weirder Al

headsup from Pajamamedia.

Weird Al

Did you know Weird Al has a website?
(headsup from Dustbury)

(Manila Bulletin) Headline of the day

GMA recovers from diarrhea

Well, that's one headline I doubt you'd see in the NYTimes...

Frankenkitty

Miscellaneous stuff I'm reading/listening to

Former Spook discusses old WMD...and Shannonloveblog explains the real problem is that people don't understand the technology of WMD's...as does Strategypage...

my take is that WMD and the technology to use them effectively is two different things. The ability to use them efficiently to cause mass death is very hard....But since low tech can lead to low level death and high level terror, and the terror itself is a powerful weapon...

THIS discusses trying to separate mainstream "insurgency" from the radical nut cases...this is being done in the Philippines all the time...you settle with those who have real grievences, and the hard core you just kill, imprison or marginalize. Alas, too many prowar blogs ignore this...and actually the anti war blogs have no clue at all.

Lileks discusses the latest "we're all gonna die" hysteria.."...As long as I can remember I have been fed end-times scenarios – death by ice, death by fire, death by famine, death by smothering from heaps of clambering humans scrabbling for purchase on an overpopulated world, death by full-scale nuclear exchange, death by unstoppable global AIDS, death by a two-degree rise in temperatures, death by radon, death by alar, death by inadvertent Audi acceleration, death by juju...."
On the other hand, the Weather channel's new series will scare the heck out of you...one of the scenerios is an F5 tornado to hit Dallas...hmmm...Oklahoma city already went thru that when I lived near there...Gee, I'm glad I don't live in Tornado alley anymore...I'm safe here in the Philippines, where I only have to worry about terrorism, earthquakes, monsoons, floods, landslides, dengue fever and volcanoes...

VDH discusses negativism in the MSM

Opinion Journal discusses the need for beauty in the language of worship.

Peter Kreeft's essay on the importance of words and the beauty of language in LOTR DownloadAudio HEre
His lecture on surfing and spirituality is HERE

Hello Kitty! Psychological test

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Origami water baloon

Headsup from Makestuffmagazine

The Emperor's new clothes

We docs have had "experts" insist on the quick fix of computers and robots to care for patients "more efficiently", never mind that this not only dehumanizes people, but ignores "GIGO" factor, i.e. garbage in garbage out.

Now someone notes that computers (reg required) aren't a quick fix.
All sorts of problems have surfaced: incorrect medications chosen from computerized pick lists,^[5] nurses and doctors huddled over computer screens instead of critically ill patients,^[6] a mix-up in bar-coded wristbands that nearly led to a fatal insulin overdose.^[7] Even a 3-fold increase in pediatric mortality after the implementation of a commercial computerized system.^[6]

Yet even this author thinks computers are more scientific than things like hiring enough nurses to do things correctly instead of overworking them, or letting docs leisure to see patients instead of insisting they see 30 people a day in their office ---overwork is the dirty little secret behind a lot of "medical errors"....

Of course it remains inconceivable that we can aggressively attack medication, transition, and communication errors without computers. Moreover, computers will ultimately allow us to bring evidence-based medicine to the patient's bedside and the physician's office -- a major advance.

No, actually it's conceivable but not "efficient"...

Tim Hildebrandt has died

Comic book artist/illustrator Tim Hildebrandt, of the Hildebrandt brothers, has died.

Their illustrations included Marvel comics, spiderman, and Tolkien art...
and here is a list of his personal work.

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Talk to the Dog

From an old (1105) post on DefenseTech:

Dog translator technology.
Dog Translator (Price: $10,000 and up)
Worn on a collar or mounted on a wall, the Dog Bio Security System translates barking into alarms for police or military. Bio-Sense Technologies spent two years capturing the sound waves of woofs and arfs, encoding them to be read by a digital signal processor. All dogs emit the same type of bark when they sense trouble.

And then there are GERBILS...

Security Serivce MI5 once planned to recruit a team of specially-trained gerbils as a secret weapon to sniff out spies, it has been revealed.

The animals were to help interrogate suspects because they could use their acute sense of smell to detect a rise in adrenalin - the chemical released in sweat when people feel under stress....

But MI5 dropped the plans (to detect hijackers) after it was discovered the gerbils could not tell the difference between terrorists and passengers who were scared of flying.

DARTH TATER

".....As you would expect, Darth Tater is equipped with a lightsaber, but SpudTrooper comes armed with a potato masher; clumsy and random, perhaps, but it can't be as useless as a blaster. After all, genuine stormtroopers were the crummiest shots in the galaxy. Artoo-Potatoo is 'armed' with a robotic arm, and also features a Princess Tater "hologram" so he can deliver the Death Spud plans to her friends in the Rebellion!..."

And if you scroll down to the end, you will find films from the Spudwar Film Festival

LINK TO winner HERE.

Headlines of the day

Bad News: Another day, another bomb...in the south. Five dead.
And landslides killed five here, but 200 people in Indonesia...probably related to illegal logging.
Will remember them and their families in our prayers.
Good News: Gloria hospitalized, but it was not serious, just stomach flu.
It is the hot season (monsoon rains just starting) and so is the season for both viral gastroenteritis and food poisoning. Her political enemies are planning to try to impeach her again, but no one thinks it will work.

Bad News: Terrorists arrested in Miami
Good News: Sears Tower still standing.

Bad News: Israeli bomb misses terrorist, kills kid. Olmert apologizes.
Good News: .Austin Bay ' discusses the old buried WMD's found in Iraq. Senate supports troops staying in Iraq until the job is done, and Iraqi official points out that their government already has plans to replace US Troops...

To put things into perspective:
OneHandClapping discusses the four possible outcomes in Iraq, and then asks the MSM: Which one do you want?And Michael Yon's powerful essay on how terrorists in Iraq use children as human shields HERE...warning, quite graphic.

Good News: Japanese stay healthy and live longer by using computer games to stimulate their minds.
Bad News: No sex, please. We're Japanese...

Bird Flu, the game

Alert! The chickens have been infected with bird flu. Defend the Cornu Mansion.

The thin line between murder and war

the CSMonitor gives it's usual thoughtful discussion on the problem... such as what do you do when your prisoner goes for the gun of your partner, and in hindsight it turns out he was merely stumbling?

My comments moved to Screedblog...

Good Dog

Good News: Dog dials 911, saves owner's life...

Next step: Teaching the dog to use the computer.

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Headline of the day

Earth surrounded by giant fizzy bubbles

Summary: it is the space equivalent to the bowwake from a ship.

And after reading the CNN article, go to the Bubblesphere...where you can not only find the history of bubbles (did you know that no one played with soap bubbles until Pear Soap was invented?)
but has bubble games for you to play...including the notorious BUBBLEWRAP game
and links to a SoapbubblePrimer, Bubblemania and Antibubbles.

Headlines of the day

Good News: Lewis the Cat's life will be spared.
Bad News: they are sending him into Iraq to fight terrorism.

Good news: Harry likes the new Superman movie...
Bad News: They're drafting him too LINK

Good news: Dan Rather is retired.
Bad News: His replacement can't tell the difference between China and Japan...

Good News: Girl wakes out of coma after hearing her favorite song played over the radio...LYRICS HERE ...

Bad news: Update: No sex, we're British...robots....

The Wackiest Ship in the Army!

I was perusing the local news.
Landslides, volcano, two more journalists killed....yup same old same old.

Then I checked for humanitarian news, and found the hospital ship Mercy has left after spending a month treating people in the South (with a short break to treat Indo earthquake victims).
However, the HSV Joint Vessel has arrived and was unloading humanitarian supplies to Zamboanga....

The HSV Joint Venture is not only a weird looking ship, but has another weird fact about it: Although it is a US Navy ship, it is a joint venture, and on this rotation it is manned by the US Army.. LINK

It's a high speed catamaran, AKA Superferry.
But it's a little bit more spiffy than the USS KIWI...
And for trivia fans: the Kiwi was loosely based on the USS Echo LINK
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Update: re: USS ECHO
Wikipedia says the Echo is fictional, but a google shows that it is listed on Military History website..
From the History of Amercan Navy Fighting Ships:

Echo (IX-95), a scow of New Zealand registry, was built in 1892; transferred to the Navy under reverse lend lease from New Zealand; and commissioned 4 November 1942, Ensign M. C. Riddle in command.
Sailing from Auckland, New Zealand, 11 November 1942, Echo delivered cargo at Noumea en route to Efate in the New Hebrides. Based on this island at Port Vila, she "served as a supply ship for the Army in the New Hebrides and adjoining island groups. On 14 February 1944, just prior to her departure for New Zealand, the Army awarded her crew a commendation. She arrived at Wellington 12 March 1944, was decommissioned 3 days later and returned to the New Zealand Government.

Stop Global warming

Buy Burpless cows

Happy Morning

Don't blame me...blame DAVEBARRYBLOG

Busy Body....

Worried about Homeland security snooping into your private life?

Well, check the link....if you write "FEEEL" with two EE's they will snoop and pick out what you wrote, and paste it for everyone to see....

At the core of We Feeel Fine is a data collection engine that automatically scours the Internet every ten minutes, harvesting human feelings from a large number of blogs. ...
Once a sentence containing "I feeel" or "I am feeeling" is found, the system looks backward to the beginning of the sentence, and forward to the end of the sentence, and then saves the full sentence in a database.

What they need is a blog swarm...hmmmm....maybe I'll email Dave Barry about it...

(Heads up from that non feeeling neocon Jonah at the corner)

The Dark Side

Cruising the blogs/MSM I see that soldiers tortured to death is due to Bush's sins at Gitmo (Guess the Daily kos never heard of Danny Pearl),

Dr. Sanity has a good summary.
Prayers for them and their families
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PBS Frontline had an episode on Cheyney vs Tenent...who do you believe, the one who underestimated the threat and 3000 died, or the one who overestimated the threat and caused a war?
As a doc who was sued for missing a very, very rare cancer, there is an argument to practice "defensive medicine", and since the UN has always done a lousy job in stopping dictators (albeit a good job in other areas) then I guess George is left to make the decision...

One Freeper posted the photo at the left, and I couldn't resist...
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Bad News: The Food Police have another target...

FLUFFERNUTTER SANDWICHES


And HERE is the recipe for Mashmallow Fluff...

Ah, but despite their zeal in stopping unhealthy food from entering the alimentary tracts of Boston children, the ENEMY has managed to invade their pristine halls of health:

Everyday heroes: Lockerbie Laundry project

A mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Lockerbie Scotland, looking for her son’s remains which were lost in the crash of Pan Am 103. She meets the Women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the US Government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane’s wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim’s families. The Women of Lockerbie is loosely inspired by a true story, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate.

No sex, please, we're British

BBC Headline proclaims: IVF could 'ease population woes'

(IVF means testtube babies)...

Another headline proclaims: "Counseling restores fertility"
Stressed out women don't have periods, and can't get pregnant...
Counsel them to slow down and smell the flowers and voila, they get pregnant....somehow....the article doesn't go into that.

Bird Flu

Photo on left is a monument in the Philadelphia National Cemetary that was erected over a mass grave of Confederate soldiers who died of typhoid in a local Pennsylvania POW camp.

Don'tgointothelightBlog is upset about an AP story about National Cemetaries. The article states that in case of a bird flu epidemic with mass deaths there would not be enough people to bury the dead soldiers and veterans in National Cemetaries....

"...Those burials could stop or be put on hold during a pandemic, presumably even as the tally of dead surges, according to a VA plan that lays out how it will cope with an influenza outbreak. The government is preparing for a worst-case scenario of nearly 2 million deaths in the United States in a pandemic..."

Well, I'm happy someone is making plans.
One thing that impressed me about the military is that like the Catholic church it has a long memory.
So when we National Guard docs were briefed about HIV, the lecture started with the tale of some German mercenaries in Italy who were decimated thanks to syphillis...in 1494...

Similarly, due to close quarters, the death rate of soldiers was high from the 1918 flu epidemic.

The military has to remember that illness is a greater threat than bullets.
And part of this includes remembering how to dispose of bodies in mass epidemics.

Best quote: "If there's truly a catastrophic kind of thing — whether it be a bird flu pandemic or a massive, terrorist-instigated attack that would claim tens or hundreds of thousands of lives — a lot of that frankly involves bulldozers," said ...the American Legion's deputy director for national security and a Vietnam veteran.

Which Pirate of the Caribbean are you?

Which Pirates of the Caribbean character are you?

Yup. that's me...when I was 40 years younger and 50 pounds lighter!

Barbecue

"The Rules of BBQ"

After many long months of cold and winter, we are finally coming up to summer and BBQ season.

Therefore, it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this outdoor cooking ritual, as it's the only type of cooking a real man will do, probably because there is an element of danger involved.

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ, the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine:
1. The woman buys the food.

2. The woman makes a salad, prepares vegetables, and makes dessert.

3. The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill, drink in hand.

4. THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.

5. The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.

6. The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation.

Important again:

7. THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

More routine:

8. The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces and brings them to the table.

9. After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

And most important of all:

10. Everyone PRAISES THE MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.

11. The man asks the woman how she enjoyed "her night off" and, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women!

Happy BBQ Season Everyone!

(from an e-card from Col Updraft)

*A Thingos Presentation © Whimsical & Wacky Wits - Adapted for your personal enjoyment by Pat - Com

No anti war rhetoric by valedictorians

Read the story...

Now change the words and fill in the blanks with ANTI WAR and imagine the outrage.

Next go back to link to find the actual words.
Yup.... God is the new F-word...

Did you ever see a blog swarm?

Check out link and voila, a visual blogswarm.

Via Ursi

One more reason to hate Cats

(via DavebarryBlog)

BattlestargallacticaSimpsons

(via blueteablog)

Origami globes

This is one exmaple:

A Rhombicuboctahedral map fold-out, "central" meridian 0°; more faces mean lesser distortion, but also less continuity. Printable version available

HERE

Good news: Al Jezeerah is pro Iraq democracy
Bad news: NYTimes is not...

Good news: Hundreds of thousands of those fleeing Katrina were helped by their families, friends, or private charities..
Bad news: Jacoby, like many Republicans ignores the lessons of the Mississippi flood that showed private charities are not enough...

Good news: Robert Kagan reminds people that Anti Americanism has long roots. If you have a convenient scapegoat, why worry about your own responsibility?
Bad News: Watch what you wish for, it may come true.

Bad News: John Fund's article on the upcoming election notes no one is investigating clues about WMD and other information in Sadam's personal papers......
Good News:, as Drudge pointed out in his radio show,Dateline NBC used their crack investigative team ...to interview Brittney Spears

Way to go, Matt Lauer!

Fun with stickers

Check link for more.


(heads up from Blueteablog)

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Bird flu update

Bird flu now reported in Canadian birds

But this link has a table of human deaths...including Azerbaijan and Iraq...
They only list 12 deaths in China, but there are rumors in the Asian press about over 300 dead...
None so far here in the Philippines, which is nice since we run a chicken farm.

Hawaiian Islands to be declared Nature sanctuary

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New UN Human Rights body

The Beeb quotes Kofi as saying this is a "clean break"...
Some former commission members like Sudan and Zimbabwe decided not to risk the hurdle of winning election at the General Assembly, and are not on the new council.
Iran tried for election and failed, but China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia succeeded despite their poor human rights records.

Oh good...maybe that means the one million Christians in Saudi Arabia (many who are Pinoys) won't be arrested for holding Bible studies....

Cartoon of the day

Cartoon of the day

when mouseketeers go bad...


From Col. Thermal Updraft.
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Art Bell broadcasting from Manila

I was listening to Drudge over the internet via KFI AM (he was discussing THIS and despite THIS praise, Drudge ran quite a long clip...and Murtha talked fast without stopping or taking a breath and quickly skipped from one point to another unrelated point.....MEGO i.e. my eyes glazed over...reminded me of some manic patients I have treated in the past...)

Since I wanted to hear Drudge's latest Hollywood gossip, I didn't turn off the link on when I went to lunch...

And when I came back I heard Art Bell discussing the Bulusan volcano in Southern Luzon.
MAP HERE

Isn't the internet wonderful? I didn't know you could hear Bell over the internet.
Like most docs, at times I got called in the middle of the night...and sometimes the only thing on at that time was Art Bell or the new guy at Coast to Coast...

And did you know he now PODCASTS?
Great for those who want to stay up to date on UFO's and conspiracy theories but don't want to stay up after midnight...

Everyday heroes: Ordinary priest

(Headsup from GetReligionBlog link2)

An "regular guy" type priest who combined humor, love of people, and a deep love of Christ...
Even though he was killed by a homeless man six years ago, those he inspired still remember him.

Slow blogging today:family news

I've been sick for two days with a virus, so have been not doing much blogging.

Otherwise, everyone is fine here.

Happy Father's Day

An old Erma Bombeck classic From Womanhonorthyselfblog

When God Created Fathers

When the good Lord was creating fathers, He started with a tall frame. And a female angel nearby said, “What kind of father is that? If you’re going to make children so close to the ground, why have you put fathers up so high? He won’t be able to shoot marbles without kneeling, tuck a child in bed without bending, or even kiss a child without a lot of stooping.”

And God smiled and said, “Yes, but if I make him child size, who would children have to look up to?”

And when God made a father’s hands, they were large and sinewy.

And the angel shook her head sadly and said, “Do You know what You’re doing? Large hands are clumsy. They can’t manage diaper pins, small buttons, rubber bands on pony tails or even remove splinters caused by baseball bats.”

God smiled and said, “I know, but they’re large enough to hold everything a small boy empties from his pockets at the end of a day…yet small enough to cup a child’s face.”

Then God molded long, slim legs and broad shoulders.

The angel nearly had a heart attack. “Boy, this is the end of the week, all right,” she clucked. “Do You realize You just made a father without a lap? How is he going to pull a child close to him without the kid falling between his legs?”

God smiled and said, “A mother needs a lap. A father needs strong shoulders to pull a sled, balance a boy on a bicycle or hold a sleepy head on the way home from the circus.”

God was in the middle of creating two of the largest feet anyone had ever seen when the angel could contain herself no longer. “That’s not fair. Do You honestly think those large boats are going to dig out of bed early in the morning when the baby cries? Or walk through a small birthday party without crushing at least three of the guests?”

And God smiled and said, “They’ll work. You’ll see. They’ll support a small child who wants to “ride a horse to Banbury Cross” or scare off mice at the summer cabin, or display shoes that will be a challenge to fill.”

God worked throughout the night, giving the father few words, but a firm authoritative voice; eyes that see everything, but remain calm and tolerant.

Finally, almost as an afterthought, He added tears. Then He turned to the angel and said, “Now are you satisfied that he can love as much as a mother?”

And the angel shutteth up!

By Erma Bombeck

Air National Guard gets no respect

Formerspook reports that the guys who got the Z man were the Air National Guard from Alabama and Wisconsin.

I googled for the news, and didn't see it. Wonder why?

So let me offer them thanks, from a lowly Army NG Captain(ret)You know this film was coming:

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There is a US state department advisory about traveling to the Philippines.

This is not just due to Moro/Muslim threats, but the increase in the war agains the local communists, who have been in this area for about 60 years. (Check a couple posts back I mentioned the Philippine Army is in our local villages.)
Well, the reason is that GMA decided to reverse her previous cooperation with the local NPA (communists) and go after them.

LINK2

Combined with this increased security is an increase in funding for local agribusiness...(That's us). The Philippines still imports rice, yet has the potential to be a rice exporter.

Relatives might ask if I'm afraid, and the answer is: Been there, done that.
But that's another story...

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Medical news

BBC just discovered that Diabetic pregnancies have risk of defects and still births....something docs have know for at least 40 years.

Bad news: Plague in the Congo...pneumatic bubonic plague is one of the diseases that can kill in 24 hours...

And some earthquake victims from Indonesia have died of Tetanus...

Adult stem cells continue to be used successfully. The latest is treating lupus with stem cells from one's own bone marrow...

But the EUnion parliement approved funding for embryonic stem cell research,: "The European Parliament rejected an attack by fundamentalists and extremists," Cappato said.
Of course the dirty little secret is that if it looked like they could make money, the govenment wouldn't have to fund such research.

Finally, a new study shows antidepressants lower suicide risk....

Dr. Julio Licino, chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller school of Medicine says, "As the number of [SSRI] prescriptions go up, the number of suicides go down."....

The authors of the study are troubled that prescriptions of antidepressants are declining, seemingly due to the recent controversy.

"Sorry gotta go..."

when you absolutely, postively have to get off the phone....

Use one of these MP3 files for background noise to end a phone call.

headlines and comments

peggy noonan likes Guilliani
hen--this is the part with the sound of the future in it--he laid out the reasons both parties have failed to push the ball forward. The Democrats fear the teachers unions and the educational establishment. The Republicans are heavily represented in and by suburban and country areas, which tend to have good schools, tend to be happy with them, and are wary of a movement they fear might take something from them. And so the students who need the most help, city kids who would benefit the most from creativity, are held captive to a failed public-education monopoly.

His candor was refreshing. Mr. Giuliani's approach was nonpartisan in the best sense--i.e., not fuzzy but frank. It wasn't Public schools want to be free; it was This is what will help, this is why it isn't happening, this is why we have to make it happen. That didn't sound like the same old same old. It didn't sound like the past.

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There's a lot of news about Bill Gates giving up microsoft to get into the charity business...

Wouldn't he be better staying in the area of his expertise instead of going into something he knows nothing about?
I mean, call centers in the Phlippines will give more wealth than giving money to a corrupt government, and giving loans to entrepeneurs to set up internet cafes will teach computer literacy via game playing much more than boring computers in schools that no one bothers to use...

As for malaria, I'm glad someone is funding research...but you could probably save just as many people by allowing DDT to be sprayed...

Father's day gift suggestion: take ten

A picture of Bill Clinton carved on a human hair...

Quote of the day take two

"...The news media template is: if it bleeds, it leads. They have to work really hard at finding stories besides the explosion outside of Baghdad in the daily car-bombing. It's a time-consuming process that the media is not willing to invest in. Nobody wants to cover a bunch of Marines who go out on a week long operation and the highlight of the operation is that they're invited to the wedding of the sheik's son..."
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And (via the anchoress) is THIS...
Caution: NOT work friendly.
Sounds like he is watching the same BBC/CNNInt reporting that I always complain about...

Quote of the day

Lileks commenting on Daily Kos criticizing a reporter who reported about them:

The gall: a man who did not enlist in the Army has the bald rude temerity to write about a Las Vegas blogger convention. The next thing you know, people with no experience in oceanography will be writing classical music reviews.

Father's day gift number nine

send him a statue of a pig playing an accordian...

actually, the link is to a website of photos of North Korea taken by a Russian tourist...

very sad...lots of bad art...

Of course, westerners shouldn't criticize, when a museum accidentally accepts the pedestal and piece of wood supposed to hold up an exhibit, and doesn't know they forgot to add the actual art work, then you know that something is wrong with the art world...

Father's day gift suggestion take eight

Make him a wallet out of duct tape.

The funniest man of the last 1000 years?

Spike Mulligan...

the funniest joke in the world is:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"

LINK here to funniest joke in various countries ...
Funniest American joke

A man and a friend are playing golf one day at their local golf course. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course. He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer. His friend says: “Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You truly are a kind man.” The man then replies: “Yeah, well we were married 35 years.”

And Col. Updraft sends us this Military Joke:

Marine Math

The Korean War, in which the Marine Corps fought and won some of its most brutal battles, was not without its gallows humor. During one such conflict a ROK (Republic of Korea) commander, whose unit was fighting along with the Marines, called legendary Marine General Chesty Puller to report a major Chinese attack in his sector.
"How many Chinese are attacking you?" asked Puller.
"Many, many Chinese!" replied the excited Korean officer.
Puller asked for another count and got the same answer, "Many, many Chinese!"
"Dammit!" swore Puller, "Put my Marine liaison officer on the radio."
In a minute, an American voice came over the air: "Yes sir?" "Lieutenant," growled Chesty, "exactly how many Chinese you got up there?"
"General, we got a whole shitload of Chinese up here!"
"Thank God!" exclaimed Puller, "At least there's someone up there who knows how to count!"

Family updates

Actually, we spent the day at the farm having a dinner with the local leaders and neighbors.

The driver is busy hauling chicken manure but came later to spend the night (for our safety, we usually have him stay overnight with us. There have been local kidnappings of business people, and we do take precautions. There are workers on the farm, but they are not local and they come and go, and the family in charge only has one adult man with kids and a wife.

Our house has locks, bars on the windows, and we always take a feisty watch dog. However, we cannot legally own a gun, so if anyone broke in, I guess I'd have to hit him with my 6 lb purse.


On the way to the farm we passed six Army guys in Santa Cruz, and there is still an Army check point two villages past there. Looks like they are after the NPA. The problem is that we see reports like this one....those suspected of NPA sympathy get killed, by unknown people.
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Update LINK mentions she wants helicopters...
When we were at the farm, there was a helicopter overhead, but not a Huey, just a small one like you see news men using to check traffic.
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One side effect of this is the need for private security guards. There are usually police on the streets and the palenke, but the fancy westernized shops have one in every aisle. This increases the overhead and therefore the price of everything.

The middle class is building houses in guarded/walled communities for safety. We have bought a lot in one of them, but not started to build yet.
We still live in the town center.
Here everyone has a couple dogs to discourage thieves.

If we ever finish building the "training center" we'll probably have to hire a full time security guard at night.

Father's day gift take seven

Knit him a pair of gloves...


very tiny gloves...
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How to draw animation

their main page is HERE

via BOingboing

Family news:

Rainy season has arrived.

The rice is being planted. In our "dry" (upper fields without irrigation) we have delivered fertilizer and will flood/mix and plant them in the near future.

We bought seedlings last week for the lower fields to be planted.
It hasn't rained much yet but the clouds are starting to appear, so we're hoping an end to the terrible heat.

We are building a covered building on the rice farm so we can more easily make fertilizer.
The farm is rented out for chicken raising, and the manure is sold. But if we mix it with rice hay and compost, it will be more valuable than just selling manure.

Chano is much better and working now.
We have rice orders and have started staff packing and filling them.
Fred and I are going to the farm to have a dinner with the local barangay leader. We had originally scheduled this when Dr. Ito was killed so it was postponed.

Interestingly, when we went to the farm yesterday, we passed an army checkpoint.
The NPA is active, and I guess the crackdown on "militants" has come here.

Four volcanos at once? No problem

Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) Director Dr. Renato Solidum yesterday said that the successive activation of four Philippine volcanoes at this time of the year is just "coincidental" since its activities are "dependent" on its heat or magmatic sources.
In a mobile phone interview with the Manila Bulletin, Solidum said, "The activities of the volcanoes are dependent on its heat or magma sources. It just so happened that the (four) volcanoes are active all at the same time."
According to Solidum, the period of unrest shown by the four volcanoes currently on heightened alert — Mayon in Albay, Bulusan in Sorsogon, Kanlaon in Negros Oriental, and Taal in Batangas — is just coincidental.

There are 22 active volcanoes in the Phlippines...luckily, the one nearest to us is inactive.
A list of 62 known volcanoes HERE gives information

And for kids: Save the village game is on line..
or you can make your own paper mache volcano

Headlines of the day

Bad news: Most of the press praies Bush for traveling to Baghdad to show support of the new Iraqi government but last night CNNI had his news conference, and one bimbo asked Bush wasn't it an insult that he didn't notify the Iraqi president before he landed.
So I guess this is the new spin:
Bush drops in unannounced on prime minister (note: Story originally from The Washington Post)...
sigh.

Good news: French jail 25 "islamic militants" for plotting to bomb the Eifel tower and possibly use chemical weapons.
But what is interesting is that they were convicted of "..."criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise", a broad charge which covers numerous crimes.."
Hmmm....maybe we need to send the Gitmo prisoners to a French court..
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Update: NYTimes lets one Gitmo suspect lament about how he innocently was caught while on a simple vacation...Roger Simon points out:Later he writes: I was eventually released and I will go on trial next month in Paris to face charges that I've never denied, that I spent two months in the Qaeda camp. Oh, really? Those were the charges? Did the Times' vaunted fact-checkers bother to check or were they too mired in their reactionary world view to investigate. Unfortunately for them, by a strange quirk of fate, Mr. Benchellali and his beloved family - the ones who invited him on his "dream vcation" - were sentenced yesterday in France..

In related news, the Canadian terror suspects are claiming "torture"...hmmm...sound familiar?

Bad News: Ed Koch points out how the press constantly criticizes the US (and Israel) when the try only to target murderers, yet gives a pass when those murderers deliberatly target civilians.....On the other hand, when Israelis mistreat their Bedouins, they are not helping matters.

Good news: Lileks has a take on AlQaida documents found HERE:
there are issues that need to be addressed.
1. The Crusaders have made several dozen raids since al-Zarqawi's release from mortal concerns, and each raid leads to more. I must repeat: Stop printing out Google Maps and leaving them around. At least clear your browser history, brothers.
2.You may have read reports that al-Zarqawi had in his possession a tiger-skin negligee. This is infidel propaganda. He was a man of the highest moral standards. The suggestion that he made his bride, whom he nobly made full with child when she was 14, wear such a sinful garment is meant to weaken your spirit, and make you think of slim, dark-eyed, ripe women draped in the clothing of wild beasts, lips parted, exhaling the softest perfume of --
3. All warriors must take four cold showers a day, not two.

Bad News: Celebrities move on...HIV not trendy anymore..
Guess there are just too many ribbons to clash with your dress.

A more obvious indicator of the flagging interest in AIDS in the entertainment industry is the absence of the once-omnipresent red ribbon, which not too long ago was a de rigueur Oscar accessory.It's been at least five years since AIDS Project Los Angeles was asked to hand them out at the award shows, Thompson said. "I'm not sure people over the last few years were even noticing them anymore."Now there's a ribbon for everything and every color and every cause," he said. There's pink for breast cancer, yellow for testicular cancer, light blue for tsunami relief."If they wear a red ribbon, they have to turn down the ribbons of four other organizations," he said of the dilemma faced by celebrities. "It just became too politically difficult to wear one at the expense of another. We've acknowledged that people have moved on."
Poor Celebrities. SUCH a dilemma...

Good news: US has new poet lauriate...Donald Hall....link2....LINK3
Bad news: his poems seem like bad prose to me...for example...poem Wolf Knife:
In the mid August, in the second yearof my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winteralmost upon us, Kantiuk and I attempted to dash the sledgealong Crispin Bay, searching again for relicsof the Frankline Expedition...
Right.
PDF of poems HERE...you judge.

The problem of modern poetry is best summarized in poet Dana Goia's essay HERE...Summary:
Poets should be teaching us new and delightful ways of expressing ourselves, but instead have become marginalized even in the literati subculture.

As one poet put it: LINK
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.
Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.

Father's day gift take six

If you're looking for something a little out of the ordinary, try Flamingos By The Yard®. In the middle of the night our sneaky staff will fill the victim's yard with up to fifty plastic pink flamingos and a six foot banner stating the occasion. Imagine their surprise as they pull their car out to go to work at 6:00 AM and see their yard swarming with these exotic birds! The flock will disappear the following evening leaving a fond memory of their visit (and no bird droppings!!!).

Father's day gift idea number 5

PANTYHOSE.

Actually, as the article notes, athletes often wear a support stocking to wrap an injury (Pantyhose stays in place, ace bandages tend to move with playing, and old fashioned taping is....painful to take off).

I first ran into this when I treated some rodeo riders in the ER. One was wearing a long line support girdle...it seems he had a pelvic strain, and it helped stablize the ligaments.

And, of course, Australian lifeguards often used to wear two sets of panty hose--one normally, one to protect their arms and trunk...as a precaution where jellyfish are common.

Treatment for jellyfish is weak vinegar solution, meat tenderizer, and baking soda, among other things.
If you don't have any vinegar handy, there is an easily available alternative, but since this is a PG blog, I will merely point to the LINK

Your headline of the day

Giant colon set to capture rural attention

Father's day gift idea take 4

Spiky the light bulb.

or maybe he would prefer THIS...
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down, fred, Down.

Interviews on the web

Leon Kass is interviewed about technology (Headsup from SecondhandsmokeBlog )
A lot of the criticism of Kass is because he doesn't do well with soundbites. And in the interview he notes teaching ethics via great literature. Indeed, he has a book that does just that...

Hawkings argues we need to go into the stars so humans can go on forever.
I have no problem with it, but given Humankind's tendency to destroy the competition, I would hestitate to agree... it is interesting that in CSLewis' Out of the Silent Planet, it was the ruthless scientist who gave that argument...

And Mr. Khan is a professor of Political science and associated with the Brookings Institute... HERE is a PDF file about integrating Islam into the modern culture without losing their essence...another Article is HERE..

Finding Nemo

Sushi anyone?


Sorry....
Couldn't resist...

Prank of the day

How did a bright pink car end up on the roof of Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School?

We report.

You decide.
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Headlines and comments

Bad News: when Bush 41 didn't proceded to Baghdad, Hussein not only went after the Kurds, but killed 100,00 Shiites in the south. The mass graves are now being excavated, and bodies identified. Yet there has been few stories demonizing the monster who ordered this.
Similarly, today, Iraq the model in the WSJ notes that some mourn the death of a monster...
"...It is totally unimaginable why someone would describe the head chopping, children murdering terrorist as a hero. It's disgusting and infuriating beyond words.
This wrongful description of evil is a major reason for misery in this region and it only contributes to justifying more unjustifiable death and violence...."

Good news: Bush in Baghdad..Pajama Media has blog links. FREEPERS are ecstatic, and later posts have photos... like this one posted by LaEnchiladita--->

Bad News: BBC pushing new "atrocity": they have a story about a video suspected to be made "by US Marines" where a man in fatigues and a "green" teeshirt sings about killing Iraqis iand posted it on line.
LGF has the video and points out the killing is done by insurgents who are using children as human shields... Hint to BBC:...it was a joke...

Good news: The big terrorism news here in the Philippines is that security was tight for independence day celebrations, so no more deaths (Only one more bomb explosion)....even Bryanboy was stopped by security checks in Manila. He has photos. (BB is among the most popular Pinoy blogs, but NOT work friendly).
Kudos to our hardworking Pinoy cops.

Bad News: Indonesia plans to release the imman who inspired the Bali Bombers...LINK2
NOT good news for the Philippines.

Good News: Now that Fitzmas is past, maybe the real story will be investigated:
Roger Simon asks: "...just why did Joseph C. Wilson go to Niger? It doesn't take a rocket scientist - or even a crime writer - to see something fishy in sending the hubby of a hemi-semi-demi-out CIA agent for a week to drink tea in Africa to find out whether someone had been selling yellowcake to Saddam..."
Ummm....I think it's called Nepotism, Roger...

Finally, the BBC is remembering Mao's cultural revolution...LINK2
I remember that at the time on college campuses this was spun as a good example of student activism, that sending people back to the land was great, and that barefoot doctors were wonderful...
The people who were there think differently...