Friday, October 31, 2014

Haloween customs

From the Smithsonian

Kale as matchmaker
Meet the Cromartie Fool, the goofy man holding a kale stock. According to Celtic tradition, it was believed that this jester presided over Halloween festivities—many of which involved single men and women uprooting kale stalks to determine their future. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-halloween-tradition-best-left-dead-kale-as-matchmaker-100207686/#EXuYqlcPp2WfiMZz.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter



Via TeaAtTrianon:

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BBC on the UK's Haloween and Winter customs


There are men who carry flaming barrels of tar through a Devon village, folk who pour cider over apple tree roots and cross-dressing troupes who perform something called Soul Caking to ward off evil spirits.
There is also a village in Somerset called Hinton St George which has a tradition of pumpkin carving and night-time walks that sounds remarkably similar to the Halloween rituals we all know.

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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Family News

Sunday is All Saints day, when we remember the dead.

Here in the Philippines, it means that everyone takes off for a long weekend to go to their home villages and check the graves of their ancestors, cleaning them up from debris and decorating them with candles and flowers.

Usually the family stays for a picnic lunch, and there are plenty of vendors around with cold drinks, snacks, and toys for bored children to play with.

Since it is also hot, I suggested to Lolo that we go today. Tomorrow and Sunday will see so many people in the cemetary that we won't get near the gravesites of his mother and relatives, and indeed, usually the roads are blocked for cars. Last year, we got a tricycle to get Lolo inside, since he can't walk well, but since it's been either hot or thunderstorms, I suggested we go a day early so his son can drive the car right to the grave.

The main problem of going early is that the local kids will steal the flowers to sell to other visitors.

But I figure the dear departed won't mind, since it's the thought that counts,  especially since the cousins will bring more flowers etc. in the next two day.

Because of the heat, instead of eating at the grave, on the way home, we stopped at Luz for lunch, despite the fact we were a bit sweaty and grungy from the trip. Oh well...they know us.



Craft item of the day

How to make a medieval costume in five minutes




Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Download of the day

Download of the day is Michael Drouts's Encyclopedia on JRR Tolkien.

and if you use the search, the archives also has some of the series on Middle Earth.


they also have a torrent for the desolation of Smaug.

Quick before the copyright cops find it's there.

Stuff round the net

Nice Story of the day:

He takes a picture of her everywhere he goes.

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Nice story of the past:

Usually the love stories in the Tudors seem a bit nasty, but Henry's sister did marry for love

Headsup TeaAtTrianon

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ten things that are killing the family....

it's not all "morality"...some sociological and economic things are destroying the family.

the stress on the extended family being destroyed by moving into the suburbs is obvious, but rarely noted as a problem.
An extension of this:
Mens' wages went down, so we live in an economy that made it necessary for women to work full time jobs, and these jobs are often far from home.

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The angry nurse who claimed that she was placed in quarantine after her forehead tested as having a fever has been released.

She is returning to Maine, but her neighbors there don't want her to break quarantine, as she is saying she plans to do.

Most of the studies have been done comparing forehead strips with oral or TM (placed in the ear) measurment of temperature in kids, for obvious reasons: Kids bite thermometers, mouth breathe, and refuse to cooperate.

but in this nurse's,case, they just aimed a temperature measuring gun at her head (which is how we were screened for SARS and influenza at Manila airport).

and although that screening will usually pick up fevers, with few false negatives it also greatly overestimates temperatures. Which means you have to rescreen (just as you have to be checked if the metal detecter goes off, or if your luggage tests positive for explosives because you had fertilized your garden the day you packed your suitcase).

from a scienceblogs article:



The bottom line is that this kind of remote fever sensing had poor positive predictive value, meaning that the proportion of people correctly identified as having fever was low, ranging from 10% to 16%. Thus there were a lot of false positives. Negative predictive value, the proportion of people classified by the IR device as not having fever who in fact did not have fever was high (97% to 99%), so not many people with fevers will be missed with the IR device. Predictive values depend not only on the accuracy of the device but also how prevalent fever is in the screened population. In the early days of a pandemic, fever prevalence will be very low, leading to low positive predictive value. The false positives produced at airport security would make the days of only taking off your shoes look good.
but of course, instead of using her predicament to educate the public on the proper way to screen passengers (i.e. anyone testing positive should be pulled aside an the temperature rechecked), she is suing.

Kaching alert....

The problem is that the feds are so mixed up no one knows anything...or rather we know it but they seem to be reneging on the problem.

From SciTechDaily:

Targeted Isolation May Be the Most Effective Way to Reduce Transmission of Ebola
 New research led by the Yale School of Public Health shows that isolating 75% of infected individuals in critical condition within four days of symptom onset has a high chance of eliminating the spread of Ebola.Isolating the most severely ill Ebola patients before the fifth day of their illness may be the most effective way to reduce transmission of the virus, new research led by the Yale School of Public Health suggests.
. The research is published October 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. ,,,
 --------------------------------

the WAGD from ebola article of the day at Wired..

summary: You are probably safe in East McKeesport, but if it hits Manila we are toast...

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CHOCOLATE!

 Dietary cocoa flavanols—naturally occurring bioactives found in cocoa—reversed age-related memory decline in healthy older adults, according to a study led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) scientists. 

Family news

Yesterday, we moved the puppies downstairs to the laundry/garage area.
And I bought 20 pounds of puppy food (which we will soak and feed them, but also feed it to the adult dogs mixed with rice).

We have nine surviving puppies: Angel lost two of her five puppies, probably because she is older, but this is good because Sophie had six, and is happy to let Angel share in feeding the kids.

They have just started eating: Here, usually the minute they start solid food, they get given away, but I usually try to keep them for at least another month, because they often die if given away too soon.

The problem? Well, the staff often takes them home behind our back, meaning that the people who were promised puppies often don't get any.

oh well. I'd like to keep one, but we still have too many dogs, so until PapaDog dies (he is about ten years old) we'll have to give them all away. Since we spend time cuddling them, usually the dogs are good natured...and we have no trouble finding them homes.

None of them appear to be "short" like Angel, so they all should be medium sized dogs.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Stuff around the net

The latest school shooting was again in Indian country, like the one at Red Lake a couple of years ago.

Which brings to mind this: DWarren quotes Chaput's speech.

That word, “heartless,” is underused today. It raises the stakes on our idea of “feelings.” We have too many feelings, most of them fake. The genuine ones tend to be quite selfish. We “hurt” easily, we indulge, easily. Empathy and compassion are reduced to “feelings,” and our “concern” is to make the rich pay. The actual poor are subject to our feelings of irritation. When cornered, rhetorically, we may write a cheque, but it becomes a kind of blood money. Living as I do in Parkdale, I am conscious of the ignorance of one street for another, one house for another, one apartment to the apartment next door. I can understand it. I don’t want to know these people, either.
So that my heart breaks — I am “genuinely impressed” — when I see examples of personal outreach to the neighbours. Most often I see this in the form of one rather desperately poor person, spontaneously helping another. Such as offering him a cigarette. (The smuglies in government have made cigarettes expensive.) Such as “being there” when a man is fallen, and not just calling nine-one-one. Such as taking care of the crazies, hands on. Such as — and this is the most impressive thing I’ve seen — teaching a hopeless wretch the use of a rosary. Because that can change everything.
which reminds me of how many of our Native American neighbors took in relatives who needed a place to stay, or raised the children of relatives and friends who had drug problem.

Chaput's full speech about the family synod is here.

And someone took a quote out of context to demand he apologize.

so what else is new?

well, the pope explained that families were important but his statements didn't get much coverage.

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Trig was not the first beloved child who had Down's syndrome.

Angel Unaware

mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/pdf/.../53-Angel_Unaware.pdf

Minnesota.gov
AngelUnaware. DALE EVAN S ROGERS

I don't know if the link will work, but this is indeed the wife of cowboy Roy Rogers.

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Family news

Ruby had a lot of friends over in the evening for a movie marathon to celebrate her birthday.

Lolo is wheezing again...but no fever. Might be the allergies/hayfever type syndrome since a couple of kids I saw had allergic rhinitis and cough.

Joy's sister has her week off from her immunotherapy...repeat testing will be Friday.

This is a big weekend: All Saint's day when everyone goes to the cemetaries to clean up the graves of their loved ones, eat a meal, say some prayers. etc.


Monday, October 27, 2014

WTF article of the day take two

LINK
The powerful, feeling-filled bond between a mother and her child is a big part of what leads working mothers to take their child-rearing responsibilities more seriously than working fathers.
If this essential difference is the problem, if it is the root of gender equality in the workplace, and if our highest priority is to eliminate gender inequality, then ectogenesis offers a way forward.

why not? The elites are already outsourcing pregnancy to surrogates in India.

Headsup WSmith 

WTF articles of the day

Nurse who cared for ebola patients and who had high fever but negative test at airport is lamenting her civil right were violated, and that her quarantine is "hell" (according to Drudge).

Well, the blood test may not be positive early in the disease. And after that hippie doc managed to go all around NYCity while feeling sick but didn't worry because his fever hadn't gone up, I don't think she will get much sympathy.

ALL patients arriving from West Africa who were in contact with ebola need to go into quarantine, fever or not.  This could be done at home if they are mature and can monitor their fever at home (or better yet, a nurse can visit them daily to check the temperature). Will that lower the number of "health care workers" who volunteer? Maybe, but I doubt it.

The last time that "civil rights" by narcissists trumped public health was when Mayor Feinstein faced a recall election for closing the San Francisco bath houses where HIV, hepatitis, and other STD's spread like wildfire. How many died because of that bit of nonsense. Indeed, if anyone had closed the bathhouses when the Hepatitis B epidemic was going on in the late 1970's, then a lot fewer men would have caught HIV when it flew in with "patient zero", the attractive Canadian flight attendant who probably caught it in Haiti.

--------------------------

heh. NJ guv says:

“I have great respect for Dr. Fauci, but what he’s counting on is a voluntary system with folks that may or may not comply,” said Christie, citing the example of an NBC News crew who returned from West Africa and violated their self-quarantine.
“This is government’s job,” Christie said. “If anything else, the government’s job is to protect the safety and health of our citizens.”
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two more comments: The bitching nurse complains that her oral temperature was only 98.6 but only her forehead temperature showed 101 degrees.

Well forehead temperature scanning is not a very good test, but you know it is easy to fake an oral temperature, which can be changed if you drink something cold or hot or even breathe through your mouth. If she really wanted to argue with the high temperature test done, she should have insisted on the most accurate way to check a temperature: A rectal thermometer reading.

As for those who say you can't catch Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus: True. But what if he coughs in your face, or (worse ) vomits all over you? If that had happened in the doctor who felt ill but didn't have a temperature,so he went all aorund instead of staying quietly at home,  it could have exposed 50 people to the disease.


Family news

Yesterday, they held a birthday party for Ruby and her friends from her church's youth group.

In the evening, we went to Luz restaurant with Lolo to celebrate.

So a busy day.

She lost her old computer in last year's typhoon, so kept borrowing my new computer, so I gave her the  computer for her birthday. (and bought another one for myself).

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Science stuff around the net

The latest Ubuntu: Utopic Unicorn.

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the WAGD post of the day: EBOLA!


The model developed by Galvani and colleagues projects as many as 170,996 total reported and unreported cases of the disease, representing 12% of the overall population of some 1.38 million people, and 90,122 deaths in Montserrado alone by December 15.... The study predicts that, at best, just over half as many cases (53,957) can be averted if the interventions are delayed to November 15. Had all of these measures been in place by October 15, the model calculates that 137,432 cases in Montserrado could have been avoided.
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a good article on Ebola from the NewYorker



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Remember all the hype that only embryonic stem cells would work

or maybe not:

stem cells from his nose helped paralyzed man walk.

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From AnnAlthouse; blog:

"European Scientists Conclude That Distant Comet Smells Terrible.""The European Space Agency has posted a full rundown of the comet's BO on its website. The mix includes ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulphide (H2S), formaldehyde (CH2O) and methanol (CH3OH)."
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if you like Ebola (which is only spread via close contact with patients or their secretions) you'll love MERS, which has now spread to Turkey.



 The Saudi authorities have been faulted for having allowed MERS to proliferate, particularly in Jidda, Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and the holy city of Mecca, where pilgrims from the entire world converge for the annual hajj. Pilgrims are known to have spread the disease to Iran, Jordan and Algeria. The W.H.O. said that as of Friday, it had tallied 883 MERS cases worldwide, including at least 319 deaths. Most cases are in Saudi Arabia.
 Maybe they should quarantine anyone who is high risk, such as travelers from Saudi or those who had contact with camels. 

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mapping the "murmurations" of starlings.




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Gladiators were mostly vegetarians....

maybe because most of them were recruited from poor people, POW's or slaves...

Why live wayyy up there?

From the LATimes:

Archaeologists say they’ve found the highest-known remains of Ice Age human settlements in the southern Peruvian Andes, dated to more than 12,000 years old. The two sites, described in the journal Science, sit higher than 4,000 meters (more than 13,100 feet) above sea level and indicate that humans may have adapted to the extremely harsh climate far sooner than many researchers had expected.
...Above 13,100 feet, the thin air and treeless terrain offers little protection from the high solar radiation. There’s not much fuel to make fires, there’s much less oxygen available to breathe and it takes about twice the number of calories just to "maintain normal metabolic function," the study authors wrote.

For many archaeologists, these factors explain why human settlements higher than about 13,100 feet and older than 11,500 years of age have eluded them. It probably took a good amount of time for the genetic variations to arise in the population that would favor, among other traits, higher metabolic rates and more lung capacity – traits found in certain high-altitude populations today.  And yet these high-altitude settlements were set up within about 2,000 years of humans’ first arrival in South America. Whether they had developed the ideal traits or not, clearly humans didn't take that long to settle in (or, in this case, settle up).

one reason for fleeing up into the mountains is to flee from more war like tribes.

Maybe they need to check about fortifications...

Stuff below the headlines

Easter Island wasn't as isolated as some "experts" claim...


"We found evidence of gene flow between this population and Native American populations, suggesting an ancient ocean migration route between Polynesia and the Americas," says the study's lead author, geneticist Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen.
The genetic evidence indicates either that Rapa Nui people travelled the 3700 kilometres to South America or that Native Americans journeyed to Easter Island. The researchers believe it probably was the Rapa Nui people making the arduous ocean round trips.
"It seems most likely that they voyaged from Rapa Nui to South America and brought South Americans back to Rapa Nui and admixed with them," says Mark Stoneking, a geneticist with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who collaborated on a related study of Brazil's indigenous Botocudo people.

the suprise in this is not that the Easter Island folks traveled to South America, but that their DNA matched that of Amazon tribal folks.

But then, the Amazon was highly populated back then, and in contact with the mountain empires.

Video lecture here.

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photo of the day:

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in infrared light, shows where the action is taking place in galaxy NGC 1291 (NASA/JPL/Spitzer)


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Angels according to the dead sea scrolls.

One of a series bookmarked for later reading.

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Podcasts of the week:

OU continues it's series on the law.

from the Free Library site:

Walter Isaacson | The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson | The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Recorded 10/20/2014
Listen to MP3 audio






Friday, October 24, 2014

Sex and the single peacekeeper.

yes, like the WWII soldier, often they saw this as a quid pro quo: sex for them and the ability to feed the family for the girl.
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One is reminded of WKRP:

English Historical Fiction blog discusses nobility eating peacocks for the holidays, and adds:

And yes, they can fly. They seem very large but they weigh only about eight to ten pounds, the size of a large roasting chicken such as the Jersey Giant. They have a broad wing spread that gives them the “lift” they need. The tail, folded as it usually is, flops along through the air behind them, looking rather silly.

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for later reading:

Professor (and poet) Holly Ordway discusses her conversion based on historical evidence and Sense of Event blog has comments about it.

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faith healing in Monrovia meets ebola.

link2

the article is about those living in the slums of New Kru town (an area with many Kru people, near the hospital where I worked 30 years ago).



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Thursday, October 23, 2014

Well, that's nice to know

link

Microsoft says this is the most improved and complete version of Windows.. see at http://www.cealcity.com

sent to my by my geek grandson Takato

Musical interlude of the day

Computers 2, Bears 0

somehow I don't think a tablet would do this:

Man Fights Off Bear With Old Computer in Siberia


The unidentified man was looking for non-ferrous metals at a dump in the Tomsk region on Saturday when he was spotted by the bear, which immediately rushed toward him, the Interfax news agency reported Monday, citing local ranger Sergei Yelnikov.
When the man saw the bear coming, he picked up a computer that was lying nearby and threw it at the animal, before both ran away in opposite directions, the report said....
on the other hand frightening off bears? There's an app for that.
This is not the first instance of technology coming to the rescue in the case of a bear attack.
In July, a man in the eastern Sakha republic had an extremely lucky escape after his phone turned on as he was being mauled by a bear.
The phone's startup noise was enough to frighten away the beast, and the man, who had sustained a bite wound to his head, escaped with his life.

headsup DaveBarry

stuff around the net

It's a papist plot!

remembering the British hesitation to use the Gregorian calander. 
Back then, the Puritans and Cromwell were as bad as any Islamic country, at least to Catholics and the Irish, but since winners write history, few modern commentators discuss it.

headsup TeaAtTrianon, who just published a new historical romance...and whose older book is on Scribd, so I will be able to read it.

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MaryBeard discusses learning Latin and gerunds.


essentially she says read the book, and then she'll help you on what you don't get...but don't expect her to spoon feed you in basics of grammar.

actually, I had to look up gerunds myself:
  1. The gerund (/ˈdÊ’É›rÉ™nd/ or /ˈdÊ’É›rÊŒnd/) is a non-finite verb form that can function as a noun in Latin and English grammar. The English gerundends in -ing (as in I enjoy playing basketball).
  2. Gerund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerund
    Wikipedia




In Tagalog it would be "pag play"... for more examples:  link

actually Latin was a bit easier to learn than non Indo European languages like ChiShona or Tagalog. You have to learn grammar, but to speak, you have to learn to translate phrases/ meaning, not words.
My main problem for learning Tagalog is that my brain is no longer nimble, and I am too lazy to keep up the drills that are necessary to learn vocabulary.

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it's a bomb!? Is it terrorism?
SP notices Canadian loggers find a Japanese Balloon bomb from WWII..

This bomb was part of a bizarre and desperate scheme to give the Americans and Canadians a taste of the bombings they were inflicting on Japan and Germany. In November 1944 the Japanese Army's "Special Balloon Regiment" began releasing the first of over 9,000 hydrogen filled balloons. These were expected to float with the prevailing westerly winds all the way from Japan to the west coast of North America. Each carried an 18 kg (40 pound) bomb that would explode on landing, injuring anyone in the vicinity or starting a fire. It was believed that these bombs would cause forest fires in the heavily wooded northeast coast of the United States and across the border in British Colombia. At least 300 (and perhaps as many as a thousand) of the balloons actually did reach North America, but only three are known to have caused any damage. This amounted to six dead civilians and two brush fires. The Japanese apparently missed the fact that most of this area was thinly populated and also a rare “temperate rain forest.” The region is very damp most of the time and not conducive to wild fires.

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Culture wars in Catholicism.

The Africans and the Potawanami answer the PC.

link2

link3
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vodcast of the week from Boingboing.


The second half of the show was hot with talk of western droughts, oil rigs outpacing coral reefs for fish productivity, giant carnivorous kangaroos, a new idea about asymmetry involving the Higgs particle, Ebola updates, and why we dance when we hold our pee.



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Tinicum Quarentine hospital (Philadelphia)

From Atlas Obscura:

The current Lazaretto complex was originally constructed in 1799 to deal with the devastating Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 which killed thousands in Philadelphia alone, and forced the government from the city which had been the seat of power up to that point. The disease center held a large main building with a number of smaller support structures, and as with many disease hospitals, its own burial ground. Once completed, the center became the gate through with anyone (and anything, as goods were inspected for contagion just as thoroughly) coming to the city in the early 1800's had to pass before entering the city. According to some estimates, a full third of Americans have ancestors whose first steps on American soil were walking into Lazaretto. 
The facility operated until 1895 when the use as a disease hospital ceased and it became an airbase for a number of years until it was finally abandoned

it's just south of the airport, although putting yellow fever victims in that area, which is swampy and presumably full of mosquitoes, was probably not a good idea...yellow fever is spread via mosquitoes...

more at wikipedia


Nowadays, they'll probably put ebola into specialized rooms in the hospital (we had one such room in our IHS hospital, where the air pressure kept air from escaping into the hallway, but instead kept the air through filters to outside the hospital. We used it for our TB cases, usually until the cultures came back negative or they had 2 weeks treatment meaning that they were probably not producing enough germs to be contageous.

Ebola is a matter of strict procedure with body fluids of very sick people with vomit and fluid coming from all orifices that can kill you.

However, smallpox, SARS and other air borne disease (e.g. birdflu) can infect passersby...

In such attacks, there simply would not be enough rooms so separate hospitals would have to be designated for these diseases.

when I was in medical school, there was still a TB hospital and older docs told us about the children's infectious disease hospital that closed in the 1950's...it had a bell, to call for the nearest doctor to do an emergency tracheostomy when children's throats became blocked by Diphtheria membranes...


=======================

related item: CDC has a report on how Firestone kept Ebola from spreading among their 80 thousand employees.


Firestone implemented administrative and environmental modifications to convert an outpatient health clinic separated from the main hospital to meet the infection control standards of an Ebola treatment unit (ETU) following guidance developed by Médecins Sans Frontières (Figure 3) (1). The facility can house 23 patients, including those separated as having confirmed, probable, or suspected Ebola (Figure 3). By April 9, Firestone had completed the construction and certification of its ETU.

lower risk patients were kept separate from other patients (the problem being that malaria and other diseases look like early Ebola infection).

 Patients with suspected Ebola were sent to the ETU. From August 1 to September 23, three patients were sent to the ETU with suspected Ebola following this screening protocol; one of the three had confirmed Ebola.
Additional triage was conducted to prioritize patients who required hospitalization but were not suspected of having Ebola based on their signs and symptoms. Patients who had some signs or symptoms of Ebola but not those meeting the national Ebola case definition were isolated in a single, dedicated room. HCWs used standard precautions (combined features of universal precautions and body substance isolation depending on levels of care required during hospital admission) (2) and periodically screened for additional signs and symptoms of Ebola throughout the hospital admission. Patients with illnesses subsequently meeting criteria for suspected Ebola were transferred to the ETU. During August 1–September 23, 10 patients initially admitted for care at the hospital with non-Ebola diagnoses were housed in individual rooms. Among the 10 patients, four had suspected Ebola and were transferred to the ETU; three of the four were eventually confirmed as having Ebola. After establishing this secondary triage of patients admitted for standard non-Ebola care, no additional high-risk exposures were identified among HCWs.
the article also goes on how teams monitored contacts as outpatients...if you want the details go read the whole thing.

this article gives details of the CDC's work in Liberia starting in July..

and this one is about the health care workers infected. The problem is that patients presented to the ER and were not immediately diagnosed and so infected others.


podcast of the week



quick before the copyright cops find it there

The Invisible women

LINK


Acclaimed photographer Steve McCurry is documenting the abuse of migrant domestic workers from Asia as part of his latest project. McCurry, who is known for iconic photos such as Afghan Girl (1985) has captured images of women who have returned from stints as domestic workers in the Far East and Middle East with disturbing stories of physical, mental and sexual abuse.
The images make for unsettling viewing – you can see a selection of them here. (NYTimes link).

Science headline of the day


Stuff around the net

An Ebola Czar whose expertise is political spinning and no experience in medical matters.

Oh yes: And he thinks there are too many people in the world.

What could go wrong?

one side effect of all this is a distrust of institutions that bodes ill for the US
-------------------------------------------

and we were told that sending home a sick person who had contact with ebola proved that Texas was a backward area of the country. Then what does that make of Virginia?

First hospital kept her in the ambulance for 20 minutes then sent her to a second hospital who used a checklist, not a blood test, to decide she was okay.


Later that day, it was determined that the patient who had been turned away from the Virginia Hospital Center not only did not have Ebola, but that she did not even need to be tested for Ebola.
not in the link, but apparently she hadn't visited an ebola area.

Headsup FR

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Saudi Cleric claims Twitter is the source of all evil.

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Joseph Pearce reveals that Shumacher was Catholic. 

FR link and discussion.

Actually, I knew that: Small is beautiful has links to Chesterton and the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, i.e.living simply and keeping things as close to home as possible instead of letting the Leviathan nanny state do everything.

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For later reading: Blessed Karl, who inherited an Austrian empire in the midst of WWI...

more HERE

Professor MacMillian's on the Versailles treaty includes a discussion on the devastation caused by the empire's collapse, although the nationalists view the episode as liberation.link2

what is past is prologue?
---------------------------------------------

CT scans suggest that some ancient Pharaohs didn't have osteoarthritis, but ankylosing spondylitis.

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Cat in a box

more at link copyright LondonMedia

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Family news

Joy and Ruby went to Manila for deliveries and Ruby has to give a speech for her homeschool sponsoring school to get credit.

She has to memorize the speech and then give it.

I couldn't help her: When I took a public speaking class in college, we learned to use "talking points" and give the details spontaneously, not read a speech or give it by memory (similar to how actors give speeches).

That is why I was bemused when the press went viral criticizing Sarah Palin for having notes written on her palm. They implied she was stupid, but didn't notice she wasn't reading from a teleprompter like other politicians, but was using the technique I learned in college, i.e. use notes or an outline only.

---------------------------
Black kitty lost a kitten when PapaDog managed to get the box containing her kittens off the high shelf. Luckily the other kitties were deep inside the box and I saved them on time.

So now Black kitty, aka Pandera, has moved her family to the back of Lolo's closet shelf, behind his underware.

------------------------------

Stuff around the net

Billy Boyd, aka Pippin, whose poigent song is the background for the Hobbit trailer (and was sung in the ROTK) is writing the end son for the third Hobbit movie.


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Cardinal Kasper is so mad at being outed as a racist that he is threatening to sic reporters on the reporter who quoted him accurately and had the tape to prove it.

Father Z has details and links.

Heh. There is a "jounolist" for the church dissadents? that might explain much of the bad reporting on what went on.

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a lot of this is about the PC elites trying to change the church's laws on sex and being non judgemental in the name of "compassion. But things are more complicated than that, because often this allows the elite sociopaths to ignore the harm they do to others.

A good example of putting things into perspective is this essay by old lefty Archbishop Cruz (ret) on the murder of one of our boy-girl prostitute by a US Marine...

full rant moved to my other blog.

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GetReligion complains that the SciAm essay on religion and ET gets it wrong.

And no one seems to notice that angels are "ET's"

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Cuba helping in the war on Ebola.

An interesting story, but the inclusion of deliberate bias in this "news report" shows why AlJezeerah is despised by most Americans.

and MomJones has the five most stupid response to Ebola in the USA.

It is not spread through the air, or by mosquitos. It is spread via body fluids, so unless someone spits, pukes, has diarrhea, or has sex with you, you won't catch it.

The main danger is to caretakers and those who clean up the place.

If it was airborne, half of those in the apartment complex and hospital would be dying. That is why SARS was a lot scarier than Ebola...



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the world's smallest dog.?


more here.
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Slideshow of Hubble's greatest hits.

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Wired article on the bed bug wars.

no, it smells good but doesn't kill the bugs.

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Monday, October 20, 2014

Good news of the day

Viagra prevents heart attacks

Stuff around the net

Car as Power Plant

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the X rated version of ancient Greek myths that you didn't learn about in High School.

and for the geek set, the latest Percy Jackson book, last of the series, is now available. Ruby has the series.

Spoiler: In this one, the ADHD geek Leo (not the son of Zeus or Percy) wins the day
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NPR blames the fact that guys like wargames for the lack of women in tech, but in this discussion I agree it's this reason: The guys learned to type themselves so didn't need secretaries.

even medicine swelled up with women when it changed from hard science to touchy feely stuff and following flowcharts instead of encouraging independent thinking.

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and strategyPage analyzes why women can do well in "combat" but that the muddy infantry carrying 100 pounds of supplies might put them at a disadvantage.

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if you love Lego and the Hobbit, here is a two hour vodcast for you




Bad reporting or incompetence?

I'm not sure what the Army is doing in Liberia, but now I read they are the 101 airborne, and they had 4 hours training and no protective suits.

 Yes, I know: They are supposed to be buildling tent hospitals, but as I have written before: There are buildings, some even with running water, that could be used for hospitals.

So why use tents (well tents are airconditioned, so maybe that's why).

 But Liberia has shut down all reports on Ebola, so the folks are dying quietly in the slums. a lot of slum dwellers were Kru or other tribes, while the gov't is run by the AmericoLiberians, even tho the presidentess is not of that lineage she is essentially schooled in the US and part of the establishment (Think World Bank appointment). Think Apartheid, by blacks.

The civil war there that killed a quarter million people was essentially a tribal uprising that resulted in tribes killing each other, both in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea. The "second civil war" was merely a continuation of the first civil war, and the result was "women for peace" put in the present president with the help of outsiders. And one wonders about Firestone here...payoffs to armed groups to be left alone is illegal but normal (including here in the Philippines).

Hobb's Leviathan suggests that the mess needed a strong gov't, but it took the NWO about 20 years to bother to do so.

One thing few Americans realize is that third world countries have only so many people who are competent, so often the only answer to the chaos caused by "popular uprisings" is chaos, and then folks prefer peace.... a dictator is take over by the same group of people who supported the same dictator. Egypt is another example of this.

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Oh China is taking over their "Traditional" areas, never mind that other countries have custody of them for 50 to 500 years. Obama talks of a pivot to Asia, but the only result is that no one trusts him. The Philippines is too weak to fight, so expect more takeovers of our traditional fishing grounds.

The USMarine who killed one of our boy girl prostitutes is not going to help matters here.

And the real danger is that Japan might not stand for it.

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The fake report released by the left wing "reformers" at the bishop's conference was voted down, and the press is having a field day condemning the bishops who insist that right and wrong might apply to matters of sex.

I say it was a fake report for two reasons: One, it was long and complicated, and no one had time to write such a report during the meeting, meaning it was written beforehand to tell the bishops what they should think.as David Warren noted: 

 a week that began in one of the dark moments for the Catholic Church — in the release of a synod Relatio profoundly evil and destructive — has ended fairly well. The response to it from the bishops assembled in the working groups of the synod has been stellar. They have made clear to the world, or at least, that part of the world paying attention, that it was a false and lying document, intentionally misrepresenting what they had been discussing inside.
since the "deliberations" were secret, they thought they could get away with pretending that bishops agree with them, until a few stubborn "men with chests" decided to " stand athwart history, yelling Stop,"
again, David Warren:

The Australian, Cardinal Pell — whose “dayjob” is currently cleaning up corruption and incompetence in the Curia — made the initial stand, leading the overwhelming majority of bishops to demand the publication of internal proceedings which the pope’s own agents were trying to suppress. I was immensely cheered, once again, by the courage and clarity of such men as Cardinals Mueller and Burke. Cardinal Napier of South Africa showed in both his clarity and his instinctive statesmanship a wonderful example of what a Prince of the Church should be. And in the “hard lines” drawn by bishops from across Africa and Asia, we could see the future of our Church: that she can indeed recover from the filth and squalour into which she has been led by compromised and compromising Western bishops
all of which brings to mind this quote:
  • 'How shall a man judge what to do in such times?' 
    'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn.
     'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves, and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.'

Damn Aussies and Africans and rural hicks....

Well, anyway, the final report is actually much better.

But the press is disappointed but has replaced the old meme ("compassionate church") with the new meme ("divided church").

Oh well.

nothing new here, as St. Athanasius could tell you.

Don't expect any report with Wuerl's name on it to actually recognize some things are sinful. We saw how he nicely overlooked sin when he was in Pittsburgh...and Dolan and the new Chicago guy will go along with the "niceness" agenda because they want to be seen as nice guys.

Who could spoil their fun? Hint.

Damn Potawanamis....

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update FatherL blasts bad reporting and the usually pessimistic MarkMallet is upbeat. and posts the entire post meeting speech of the Pope...bookmarked for later reading.

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Saturday, October 18, 2014

Gladiator for a day

A good article on the Roman ruins in Trier, which includes this factoid:

Resident gladiator Jan Krueger steps into antiquity each week from May to October at Trier’s Roman Amphitheater. Wearing loincloth and sandals, he leads testosterone-fueled classes for men wanting to learn firsthand about the physical stamina needed by Roman gladiators — those showmen who participated in life-and-death dramas in front of emperors and an audience of thousands....His classes range from Gladiator for a Day sessions costing $200 to a $4,000 personalized “Extreme Gladiator” program (with hotels and dinners) lasting three grueling days, starting with blunted replicas before the real weapons come out.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Stuff around the web

TeaAtTrianon links to the Metropolitan museum's Monet collection

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/438823


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the problem of fat fingers in computer programming.


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Urban legends of the Philippines.

No, Siopao does not contain cat meat...and there is no Ronblom triangle

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The good news:

Fast-track dieting can be successful long-term

the bad news?

But a new Australian study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, found that over the long term, fast-track and slow-track dieters were equally likely to regain most of the weight they lost.

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Heh. Bigoted German tries denying he denigrated Africans, but they got him on tape.

heh: we did not agree to this document

In Asia and Africa, it's called remembering ones history

link

and here is an actual photo



Ebola

Lots of nonsense about Ebola.

It is NOT airborne. SARS was airborne, and people in the apartment building upwind from the patient got SARS. Smallpox is airborne, and in a German case, a patient whose room was upwind from the patient got infected.

But when people barf, pee, and get explosive diarrhea, caretakers and those who clean up are at risk.

Which is why the nurses are so upset: Not enough protective clothing, and they are often the ones in contact with the sheets etc.... Maybe they need plastic Burkhas...

But airborne? No. Instapundit notes:


THIS IS EITHER JUST GOOD LUCK, OR IT’S MORE SUBSTANTIVE GOOD NEWS: Dallas Ebola Conundrum: Duncan Family Members and Emergency Room Staff Not Ill. 

of course, the experts insist that maybe the incubation period is longer than stated...however, if the nurse caring for the dead Liberian is already symptomatic, and his family, who lived with him before he went to the hospital, is not, then one wonders if anyone knows anything.

one to 21 day incubation period officially, but some cases came down with the disease later...or were they merely infected from someone else? The real question is if asymptomatic patients can spread the disease.
And how many in Africa have antibodies against it, maybe from asymptomatic cases or infection by other ebola like viruses?

Again I will have to google, but I have a life so may not get around to it

Thursday, October 16, 2014

kitties

So I woke up at 2 am with a wet cat on my lap.?

So she ended up having kittens on the mattress between me and Lolo...3 so far.

I went out and put her in a laundry basket for safety. Guess no sleep for me tonite.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

ebola reston?

If you read the hot zone, you know ebola reston kills monkeys8  but not humans.
about 2 yrs ago, e.reston infected some nearby pigs and a few butchers tested positive for antibodies, but none got sick kr rather none got very sick.

so could reston be used for a vaccine?

I googled and voila found this
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1036760/pg1

http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/how_monkeys_and_pigs_are


bookmarked for later reading, since I am on my tablet....

Reality check

my tInstapundit:

HEALTH COSTS: Ebola Preparation ‘Will bankrupt my hospital!’ Director Reacts to CDC Prep Call. “Treating one Ebola patient requires, full time, 20 medical staff. Mostly ICU (intensive care unit) people. So that would wipe out an ICU in an average-sized hospital.”
my comment which won't post (internet going on an off).

in the past, they had infectious disease hospitals for diseases a lot easier to catch than Ebola. Smallpox anyone?
When we had a cholera epidemic in our African country, we were told to take over a local school and use the schoolrooms for isolation wards. Schools, unlike village homes, usually had running water and toilets, and were one story buildings similar to American motels, with seperate entrance for every room and windows for the air to circulate. And a pit outside to throw garbage and burn it. Chlorox bleach to cllean surfaces works too.
So why are these people put in an ICU?
Ditto for stopping flights. Impossible, but mandating a 36 hour quarrantine for all incoming passangers at the local Marriott while monitoring symptoms and waiting for tests to come back would help.
Just wait till all those folks return from the Haj and watch the epidemic grow.

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Father Z on the PC document released by "the vatican" on the synod:

my take? It's the Vatican bureaurocracy/NWO Bishops vs Catholics. It's a takeover attempt, similar to the take over of the mainline churches in the US.

The problem? Their agenda has little or nothing to do with traditional Catholicism nor with the problems we face in the third world.

In the 60's, the west decided divorce was the answer for rocky marriages, and the PC theologians in the church delinked sex from childbearing, defying the Pope. We are reaping the whirlwind from these things in the first world, but in the third world, childless children and women deserted by boyfriends or husbands are economic disasters.

Luckily the first thing done by Protestants is to insist on following the ten commandments, which is why the growing middle class in Asia and Latin America are Protestant.

The catholics here are left with the elites (who are often left wing green types, who condemn capitalism but ignore the bribbery by their relatives that stops countries from investing here for jobs that will help the poor). And the poor. Join a protestant church, and you learn morality, hard work and honesty and probably get a job that lets you enter the middle class.

As for gay marriage: well, one doubts it will stop the seduction of the streetkids by rich sex tourists. We already have a major problem with our girls, but this will give a 'greenlight' to our rich gay businessmen to seduce their male employees and insist they are not doing anything wrong.

essentially the agenda is to deny that any sexual expression could be considered wrong.

and yes, I've seen this expressed to me by (mostly) young people, who don't see why infidelity, living together, playing the field, or ignoring their kids to get high with their newest live in boyfriend is "wrong"...

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update:

From the other McCain:

Jesse Bering (@JesseBering) proclaimed that legalizing incest between adult siblings is “moral progress” Thursday at Huffington Post and the remarkable thing is that almost nobody noticed. Just another “expert” endorsing our society’s rapid descent into perverse decadence:
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Cranky post of the day: A friend on facebook posted a nice comment by Malala essentially saying all we need is love, and I commented that no, all she needed was a bodyguard with an M16.

The backstory of this was that she had been threatened, but did not get a body guard to protect her, and as a result she was shot and several of her friends were hurt when the terrorists hit the schoolbus. A good government would have provided her protection, but then this is Pakistan who couldn't even protect Benezir Bhutto, and where the big shots of their army makes India a big enemy, so they get more money to steal, but they can't find that Osama is living down the street.

Of course a body guard might not have stopped the bad guys: When our nephew was killed, two body guard were shot and killed too, along with the politician's two sons (the politician wasn't there, so survived, and his wife survived when the gun jammed).

but that murder was about who would steal the money from the city's budget, not about religion.