Religion post of the day

Lessons for life
found in church bulletins:

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals...

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The sermon this morning: Jesus Walks on the Water.

The sermon tonight: Searching for Jesus.

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Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house.

Bring your husbands.

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Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell'

to someone who doesn't care much about you...

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Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.

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Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

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For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

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Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.

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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in

their school days.

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A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow...

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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.

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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of

some older ones.

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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.

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Potluck supper Sunday at 5pm - prayer and medication to follow.

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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

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This evening at 7pm there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come

prepared to sin.

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Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10am. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall

after the B. S. Is done.

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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7pm. Please use the back door.

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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7pm. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

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Weight Watchers will meet at 7pm at the First Presbyterian Church.

Please use large double door at the side entrance.

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The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday:

"I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours".

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from an email from Tiamaria

New TV

well, I set up the tv but it wouldn't recognize the cable (although it would play our dvd player).

After an hour of various frustrating things, I hit something and it said search for channels, and voila, it now reads our cable Tv.

Don't know what I did, but Lolo's happy (he can watch Fashion TV in HD!)

Pencil Carvings

more at toxel

Cat item of the day

Family news

Ruby's graduation ceremony is today, so the family went again to Manila, but Lolo and I stayed home.

Emie is here from the US to retire, and gave Lolo a big Samsung LCD TV. Now he can sit in his new recliner and watch the new TV.

Stuff below the fold

Good news: Zimbabwe approves of a new constitution.


bad news: Mugabe's thugs arrest the PM's aides.

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From BoingBoing: EEF one, FBI zero.

for later reading.

Related item: US wants warantless snooping of your car's GPS system.

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Malala returns to school

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the "WAGD" article of the day: Pandemic drug resistant swine flu.

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Read it and weep.

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

Hillary's been hacked, and even if the US MSM ignores it, the Russians won't.

According to the Blumenthal memos, though, even the US secretary of state was being fed disinformation directly after the attack. In the email dated Sept. 12, Sec. Clinton is told that the anti-Islamic film was likely the catalyst for the assault.

Obama was giving fake information to Hillary? Why would he do that?

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I hate to tell my relatives, but the mayor has decided the "I stand with Bailey" types are not protected by the first amendment.

presumably all those Asians complaining of reoccuring assaults have now been reeducated...

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Playing the religion card.

As Mark Twain once wrote: The more they spoke of God, the more I checked my wallet.

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Medical news you can use:

Hairy legs can keep bedbugs away.

"how to" link of the day

Attention Gandalf:

ReadySetUnsheathe has a series of instructions on how to sword fight medieval style.

complete with medieval illustrations.

Galdalf's sword is a traditional longsword.
however, Thorin Oakenshield's sword is actually a dao,

a one side sharp weapon related to the much beloved Philippine Bolo....

photo From wikipedia commons.
if it resembles a "long sword" rather than the shorter dao, it might be because it is being used by a dwarf, and not a taller elven lord. And Arwen carries one in the FOTR

Heirs of Durin discuss the weapon here.
Instructions on how to chop can be found HERE

I can't find much on Sting, on the LOTR pages, but since it had "blessings" on it that enabled it to cut spider webs, it might have been used for this during the wars of the first age: a shorter dagger would be easier to use than a longer sword. But that doesn't explain why it is a two edged sword.

SwordDigest however has a nice long discussion of  the STING survival knife similar "commando" knives HERE. These knives are shorter than Bilbo's blade (even when one considers Bilbo is only 3 foot tall and dwarves tend to be over 6 feet), but the comments on why they are double edged and useful in close combat may give you an idea why it might have been used in the first age.


and Wikipedia adds this piece of trivia:

In real Europe, a bilbo blade (sometimes spelled "bilbow") was an exceptionally fine blade, after the city of Bilboa where such blades were made. It is possible that Bilbo's name and his acquisition of this sharp blade was connected in the author's mind.^[2]

Recipe of the day

Easter is coming: Time for the Cadbury Eggs:







and BoingBoing links to food52, with instructions on how to make them yourself.

Oil and war and economic growth.

Maybe the EU doesn't have to steal money from the savings of private citizens in Cyprus:
 Russia's Gazprom will pay their debts if they let them take over and explore/exploit their natural gas reserves.

 Belmont club discusses.

 Fracking is saving the US economy: NYTimes article on Fracking in Albany.

American steel industry recently received the economic equivalent of a gift from the heavens: natural gas extracted by means of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking involves a whole lot of long steel pipes being sunk into rock formations thousands of feet beneath the ground in search of hydrocarbons. U.S. Steel, which is based in Pittsburgh, also happens to be right on top of the Marcellus Shale, the oil-rich formation that stretches from New York to Ohio. 

Similar deposits in the Mediterranean could also make Israel a source of clean energy in the near future.

and is the Sabah invasion (and the same nincompoop trying to say Sulu is independent) about who controls the  oodles of money from natural gas in that area?
This website mentions wikileaks cables and hates America, but does note:

Let’s not forget, the strategically located state of Sabah is abundant in natural gas reserves, and its oil reserves are the third highest in the Asia-Pacific region after China and India. Sabah’s fifteen oil wells produce as many as 192,000 barrels a day, while the country has holds over 4 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

the reason I say the site "hates America" is that they correctly notice the US's possible involvement, they don't even hint that China might have a stake in the area, even though it is an open secret that Chinese businessmen run SEAsia and often are a point man for China's influence in the region. China is now busy grabbing the seas off of Palawan and Luzon, and how better to distract the Philippines than to have the Moros start a little trouble?

LINK does note China's interest in the area:

Oil majors such as ConocoPhillips and Shell have poured in billions of dollars to develop oil and gas fields in Sabah. Chinese companies have been investing in hydro-power and coal mining.

The Philippine foreign secretary flew to Malaysia on Monday to urge "maximum tolerance" against the group. Aquino urged Malaysia not to harm the interests of an estimated 800,000 Filipinos in Sabah, where many work in palm oil PLANTATION []s.

eighty percent of Sabah's land is now Palm oil plantations...
PBS article on Palm oil plantations/

STEVE SAPIENZA: In Malaysia's Sabah province, migrant workers hustle to keep up with the rising global demand for palm oil. Made from the fruit of oil palm tree, it is now found in more than half of all the products sold in U.S. supermarkets, from cookies to cosmetics.
This labor-intensive work has changed little since the 1960s, when the government first pushed the expansion of palm oil production. Today, palm oil is Malaysia's top crop, netting $25 billion dollars a year, and driving the spread of palm oil plantations into the wilderness.

but the future of palm oil is for biodiesel...
apparantly the demand and price of the oil has fallen, so they figure the only way to make money is to make biodiesel.

No, I am not an expert at all of this, but it does show the interconnected world.

Science news you can use

Blackfive reports:

Uncle Ben from the Filipino side of the family, an engineer and beer scientist, sends this Reuter's article on scientific analysis:

LONDON - People celebrating St. Patrick’s Day Wednesday can cross one topic of conversation off their lists.
Guinness bubbles really do sink.
Scientists said Monday they had finally proved that the dark stout’s creamy bubbles defy expectations and flow down instead of upwards.

It depends on the shape of the glass...more at PsyOrg

(Phys.org) -- Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid? That’s been a puzzling question until now, as a team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glass, which narrows downwards and causes a circulation pattern that drives both fluid and bubbles downwards at the wall of the glass. So it’s not just the bubbles themselves that are sinking (in fact, they're still trying to rise), but the entire fluid is sinking and pulling the bubbles down with it.

Video:

Headlines that make you paranoid (and family news)

Cyprus is "fining" or "taxing" all bank accounts: a "mistake" says one bigshot.
Yes, because nothing encourages people to save/invest money as much as
1)taxing their interest income,
2) making the interest rate lower than inflation and
3) allowing the government to grab part of it at the orders of someone you never elected.

Which is why most of Lolo's "savings" were invested in land. The bad news? Most of the fields we have bought were originally owned by the family but taken away and given to the farmers under land reform...


but now, of course, thanks to land reform letting them earn a higher income, their kids have some education and can make better money in Manila or Saudi so their aging parents are selling it back to us.
Something to remember the next time that the greens laud the simple life, and point to traditional village life as being wonderful. They ignore those who "voted with their feet" and that often people are polite, and tell these visitors what they think they want to hear, not the truth...


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A week ago, I suggested an outsider was funding the "conflict" in Sabah.
Today PNoy finally  got around to noticing the problem:

no names, of course. Those in the know already know, and the libel laws prevent anyone from pointing fingers so the rest of us remain clueless on what's behind this sudden "war".

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Now that the government in the US is paying for mammograms, they first decided younger women didn't need them, and now they say it's okay to do them only every two years.

but the WTF part is here:

The controversial recommendations to reduce the frequency and delay the start of mammogram screening were based on studies suggesting the benefits of detecting cancers earlier did not outweigh the risk of false positive results, which needlessly expose women to the anguish of a breast cancer diagnosis and the ordeal of treatment.

Yes, must not make women worry, even if it saves lives.

and they mention "one third of breast cancers detected early" by mammograms may not kill the women: uh, what about the other 66 percent?

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Strategy Page's sarcastic headline about drinking alcohol in the military:

No Booze In The Barracks For You Drunken Bastards

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Having trouble remembering your passwords? Have them engraved on the inside of your wedding ring.

My trouble is that my passwords keep getting stolen from larger sites, and then I can't remember the new ones that I'm forced to remember. My "common" password is my African nickname, but the really important passwords I have to write down because they keep changing, and then I forget that I've changed it and it ends up locked.

Right now, I can't see my bank balance, I've had to report my CME to my medical academy, and I've had to pay my CME fee by snail mail because the robots won't accept the request because the IP address doesn't agree with the credit card address.

Foxton at the UKTelgraph says the same thing:

if I want to pay a bill online, it's impossible without going through the kind of thing you'd once have needed to get into an East Berlin safehouse. Except safehouses were probably a bit more forgiving than the call centre drones and the robots that give them their marching orders.

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Is Barak Obama the devil?

no, the similarities are not that great (the "resemblence" would be similar to seeing Jesus' face in French toast, sort of a Rorshack test).
and it could have been worse: He could have had his head shown on a spike...

On the other hand, Obama does look a bit like the Heretic Pharoah:

This may be because Akehnatan's mom was from a "military family" who lived in the delta region. This was not a "Nubian" area, (Nubia is what is now South Sudan) but since many of the military were Nubians, some have claimed she had black African ancestry...

Similarly, Obama's father was a Luo, not a Bantu, and the Luos are also originally from that area of South Sudan.

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not only does lack of sleep make you fat, but if you get up a lot during the night, you are less productive at work.

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Entertainment news:

happy headline below the fold: Olympus visits the troops.

how Willow changed the movies.by changing model SX to computer graphics.

and Dan Brown's next book takes on Dante.

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 Family news: Ruby is attending the bacculauriate ceremony of her home school base in Manila.

Like most home schoolers, her education is monitored by a local school, which also provides social activities, school trips, and opportunities to make friends. Ruby uses the internet and facebook more than I do, and texts her friends there and her cousins in Manila all the time.

A picture is worth a thousand words

 


headsup LesFemmes

 

Headsup Belmont club

Hello Kitty Counterstrike

LINK

Stuff around the net

I've been busy posting elsewhere: On sicklecell anemia and Thalassemia on my Xanga blog, and a medical discussion of Doctor Watson's limp on BNN.

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StrategyPage discuses the minor war by the Moros agaist Malaysia. 

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 Professor Podles worries that a third world bishop as Pope will result in an emphasis on helping the poor, allowing the sociopaths in the Vatican and in the bishop's bureaucracies to continue to cover up abuse while eyes are looking elsewhere.

An infamous example of this was Los Angeles' Cardinal Mahoney, whose cover ups were widely known in the Catholic laity but ignored by the press who loved him for his support of immigrants and other liberal causes.

On the other hand, the main reason for sexual abuse of children in the third world is poverty, which pushes women and children into the sex trade (see this 1996 CNN article on sex tourism in the Philippines).


In other words, why worry if Father has a girlfriend when the present administration, which touts itself as being anti corruption, touts a new casino complex as progress?

Presumably those gamblers won't need nighttime companions from the local girls or street kids, or recreational medications during their stay: it's about gambling with nickle slot machines while making jobs for locals, right? And the casino was built without any gifts or kickbacks to the local politicians, so why worry about it?

and a 2012 article on corruption in the gambling casino businesses here.
This PhilStar article on the new casino complex.


And, unlike Las Vegas, where the mob tended to spread around the wealth, here all the money is kept by the elite families, who also run the government: From StrategyPage:

The government anti-corruption campaign has made the concentration of wealth in the Philippines an issue. Forty families control 76 percent of the economy (by GDP) and tend to discourage newcomers. This involves a lot of corruption and promises by members of the 40 families (who dominate politics and usually the presidency) to end the corruption (and put cousins in jail to do so). This concentration of wealth is common in the region but is most extreme in the Philippines. For example, the top 40 families control 33.7 percent of wealth in Thailand, 5.6 percent in Malaysia, and 2.8 percent in Japan. The 40 families of the Philippines don’t like all this attention because they have been responsible for perpetuating the culture of corruption as well and are used to being in charge and largely immune from punishment.

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Instapundit asks:

WHERE IS ADMIRAL GAOUETTE? Here’s a Navy Times story from November 4.
Also: Navy Denies Admiral Removed Over Libya. I don’t know what happened here, but it seems to be another of those things in which the press isn’t interested in doing any digging.

this may have been the first terrorist attack where the Gamers knew a terrorist attack was coming three hours before it happened, but the president didn't realize it was terrorism for several weeks.

Musical Interlude of the day

Link

St Patrick's day feast

Yum.
Kale and Oatmeal.




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more medieval food:




----------------------- more on Irish History HERE and HERE and HERE:

Stories around the net

Before there was a Swiss Army knife, there was this British army knife:

The knife's marlin spike, for instance, was a mainstay of 1800s mariners and their signature knots.—but seafaring wasn't all fun and knot-tying. Though the blade's rounded tip may seem impractical, a stab wound at sea almost always meant certain death, so you generally wanted to avoid stabbing-conducive situations at all costs. Some of the components have kept their original purpose, though, and as the workman's knife evolved into a military tool, one of these—the can opener—was added so soldiers in the field could dig into their canned food rations.

Photosource Core77....
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Hair archeology? We haz that.

several videos on how to do it: LINK  LINK  LINK

I suspect a lot of these fancy hairstyles might be wigs: as Dolly Parton answered when asked how long it took to get her hair done, she answered: I don't know because I'm not there.

More HERE.

Faustina the Elder (A.D. 100-141) was said to have worn at least three hundred wigs, while Caligula (A.D. 12-41) was fond of a large capillameus, a full wig. Though, sometimes bald Romans, both men and women, would paint hair on their heads rather than wear a wig. The popularity of wigs and artificial hair was fodder for Martial’s and Juvenal’s acerbic wit as they made fun of women who used wigs to look younger and old men who hoped to hide their age (Corson 1965).

and of course, it's easier to get rid of head lice in a wig than on a head of long hair.

At the time, head lice were everywhere, and nitpicking was painful and time-consuming. Wigs, however, curbed the problem. Lice stopped infesting people’s hair—which had to be shaved for the peruke to fit—and camped out on wigs instead. Delousing a wig was much easier than delousing a head of hair: you’d send the dirty headpiece to a wigmaker, who would boil the wig and remove the nits.

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31056/why-did-people-wear-powdered-wigs#ixzz2NeWLhdjD
--brought to you by mental_floss! 

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 WSJ telling you what all of us (outside of the elite echobox) already knew: most women chose the "mommy track" of less demanding jobs, part time jobs, or working from home, despite lower wages and less chance to get promoted.

Been there, done that.
Remember this the next time you read about women "making less than men".

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The Titanic Violin may not be a fake...

Several newspaper reports from the time said he had been found "fully dressed with his violin strapped to his body".
There have been various theories about what happened to the instrument which range from it floating away to being stolen by someone involved in handling the bodies of the deceased.
A violin was returned to Wallace Hartley's fiancee Maria Robinson, in Bridlington in East Yorkshire, and a transcript of a telegram dated 19 July 1912 to Canada's Provincial of Nova Scotia was found in her diary.
'Miracles happen' It said: "I would be most grateful if you could convey my heartfelt thanks to all who have made possible the return of my late fiance's violin."

a bit late, of course, for the families, who were not even eligible for workmen's compensation (they were independent contractors).

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another person dies of rabies from an infected transplant.
 
One wonders how many deaths from rabies are not diagnosed properly in the US, and if there needs to be a test for the problem.
 Four transplant deaths from Rabies in Texas occurred in 2004...

 
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Scotland to regulate the press (and blogs/facebook)?

The regulator could have the power to censure newspapers, magazines and websites, including "gossip" sites, while the expert group said further regulation of social media may also be required.

a similar law was passed  here in the Philippines,(not yet the law thanks to the Supreme court link),  that would stop bloggers and even those who comment on the internet, from posting "lies"...

the slander law here is one reason you can't point fingers at those stealing money etc. Often the witnesses fear for their lives, but if the press publishes the "rumor" they can be sued for libel. Which is why we knew the mayor was thinking about a "hit job" on his rival, and when it happened (killing the rival's sons and our nephew but not his rival, who wasn't there ) we knew the story behind the murders, but we couldn't name names.

And those reporters who look too deeply into corruption also end up dead, which is why we are number two in the world for reporters murdered.

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nor are blogs the only thing being censored in the UK:

Apostrophe ban on Devon council's new street names

(headsup Improbable research)

 so the BBC has this to educate you

• To indicate missing letters or shortened words - it's [it is]; can't [cannot], should've [should have]
• To show possession - Mark's house; this season's chinos
• To show possession when a plural noun ends with the letter s, an apostrophe is added after it - Pete goes to a boys' club; Kate teaches at a girls' school
• But when a plural noun does not end in an s, the apostrophe comes before it - Eileen went to the children's library; James sang in a men's choir

• Think you know your apostrophes? Test yourself here

the 2001 IgnoblePrize was given to the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society...

For examples of apostrophe abuse, go to ApostropheAbuse blog...
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Scientists:  answering the really important question of the day: How Dead is a Doornail?

“How Dead Is a Doornail?“ Mike Dubik and Brian Wood, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 1, no. 6, Nov/Dec 1995.

how old is the expression? It probably predates PiersPlowman...

and may or may not have had it's origin in "deadnailing" or clenching/bending the sharp end of a nail to keep it from being removed to reuse.

Sherlock take four?

That's what this UK tabloid says.

Musical interlude of the day

LINK 


Headsup Dustbury.

Pope stuff around the net

the UKDailyMail (a tabloid) covers the Pope with lots of photos.
A lot of news stories mentioned he went to a church dedicated to Mary to pray and lay flowers on the altar:

That "church" is St Mary Major, one of the oldest churches of Christendom. (built in 432).

Laying a wreath on Mary's altar, like lighting candles, is a common way of asking the saint to pray to God for us. Usually it is before leaving on a dangerous trip, and when getting married, women often leave their bridal bouquet on Mary's altar (a small altar on the side of the main church).

No, I didn't do it: I married in a "modern" church, with 1970's type art work and that resembled an auditorium with uncomfortable seats.

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Politics in the conclave: The "progressives" tried to nix Benedict by pushing Bergoglio to split the Catholic vote in the last papal election, so they could substitute their own candidate as the best one.

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 Al Jazeerah's take HERE. there will be a new stress on holiness.

Addressing the cardinals who elected him as Latin America's first pope, the 76-year-old Argentinian said on Thursday the Church could "end up a compassionate NGO", using an Italian word that can also mean "pitiful".

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This take is from the Anglican bishop of Argentina.

he didn't press for an Anglican ordinate there, but then the Anglicans in Argentina still follow the bible, so there is less of a need for it. And note this little factoid:

Political analysts in Argentina note the battle over gay marriage has little to do with the intrinsic issues, but is part of a wider political battle between President Fernández and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, against the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has been sharply critical of the government’s failures to address corruption and poverty....
“Kirchner doesn’t care about the gay community,” said opposition leader Elisa Carrio of the Coalicion Civica party. “Kirchner is using the gay-marriage issue to take on Bergoglio,” she said.

Remember this when President Obama sharpens his low grade persecution of Catholic and Christians who won't go along with abortion/contraception/euthanasia/denying-men-and-women-are-different agenda.

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Secrets of the Hobbit podcast hasn't been posted for a few weeks: and another podcast explained why: Father Roderick has changed hats (or maybe removed his hobbit feet) to go to Rome, tweeting and podcasting. 

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my take? Sounds like the Priests I worked with in Africa.

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and the deity sends his approval (but seems to have missed the target and hit Palm Beach instead).
and here is a photo from Florida:

 photoYouReporter Brandon Stockwell

Like a Rorschach inkblot test, the angel cloud means different things to different people. But one thing is clear – it captured the imagination.
More than 34,000 people have viewed the photo on our Facebook page and hundreds have shared their feelings about what it means.

Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_c_palm_beach_county/west_palm_beach/a-message-from-above?llll#ixzz2NZ4BoTwI

well, it could be worse. The Angel could have appeared on french toast...

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update: via the Freepers: a survivalist living in Argentina writes about Padre Jorge
I add it because it gives you an idea of what bishops do in corrupt countries:

he visited the victims of the Republica Cromagnon fire that claimed the lives of 194 people and those of the Once train station crash where 51 people died. Pope Francis, then just known as Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio (he didn’t like being called Cardenal) criticized the government. In the first incident, fire exits had been bricked shut or chained closed, clearly someone had bribed the fire inspector. Regarding the train accident its well known that the train failed to stop at the station due to breaks malfunction after decades of neglect by the train company that is subsidized (and supposedly supervised) by the government. The relationship between Cristina Kirchner, her late husband Nestor Kirchner and Pope Francis was “tense” to say the least.

Science stuff around the net

Is it ethical to conceive a child in space?

the crux of the question is this part of the article:

.
Although we've been studying the health of astronauts in orbit for fifty plus years, we’ve never really looked into how the human reproductive system responds to the microgravity of Earth orbit, the low gravity of the Moon or Mars, or the hyper-gravity of a giant planet. It's an understandably sensitive topic, especially for a public agency such as NASA or the ESA.
The news that University of Montreal researchers found that reproductive processes in plants were affected by changes in gravity is very important because it gives us a clue as to how the human reproductive system might react to micro- or hyper-gravity. That study only increases my concern that there could be trouble ahead for babies conceived in space, as well as for the mothers.

hmm...maybe they should try it with mice first...

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The comets are coming The Comets are coming.

If one comet is supposed to predict disaster, what do we make about two of them, one of which might hit Mars?

The first of the comets, often referred to as dirty snowballs, is PANSTARRS, at its brightest for skywatchers between Mar 8 and 24. Comet  ISON is November’s attraction. At its closest to the Sun, PANSTARRS could outshine the brightest stars and even Planet Venus. 

 Astrophotographer Josh Knutson captured this amazing photo of Comet Pan-STARRS (left) and the crescent moon on March 12, 2013 just after a desert sunset near Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
CREDIT: Josh Knutson

Photo of comet PanStarrs from Space.com.

time lapse photo taken in the Philippines LINK.
No, I didn't see it: bad thunderstorm last evening: we even lost the cable for awhile.

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Medical news you can use if you are a doc:

two percent pay cut on April 2. actually it's not the only problem: the real problem is inflation:

The flawed Medicare pay system has increased doctors' rates by only 4% since 2001, even though the cost of operating a practice has risen by more than 20%, said AMA President Jeremy A. Lazarus, MD. The 2% cut only will widen that gap and cause problems that go beyond the pocketbook.

and another problem: all those nice "practice improvements" demanded by Obamacare:

“At the same time that Medicare physician payment rates have been frozen, physicians need to make investments in their practices to help design, lead and adopt new models of care delivery that can increase quality and reduce costs now and in the future,” Dr. Lazarus said. “Further cuts are counterproductive and stifle important progress while placing an unsustainable burden on physician practices.”

Here's an example of the complex codes docs are supposed to learn and "implement" if they want to get paid:

  For coding multiple injections provided to patients with pain, for example, ICD-9 has two codes — one for knee pain (719.46) and one for limb pain (729.5). The ICD-10 library would offer significantly more options, including:
M25.561: pain in right knee.
M25.562: pain in left knee.
M79.601: pain in right arm.
M79.602: pain in left arm.
M79.604: pain in right leg.
M79.605: pain in left leg.

all of this means more expense (passed onto you)

Practice administrators also have shared the AMA’s concerns. MGMA-ACMPE, the medical practice management association, projects that adopting ICD-10 would cost a 10-physician practice $285,000. The implementation price for smaller practices is about $83,000.

Overlapping federal regulations, such as those governing electronic health records and quality reporting under Medicare, also make the ICD-10 mandate especially burdensome, organized medicine groups have said.

And, of course, not only do docs have to spend time to figure out the right code and fill in all the blanks, along with pressure on docs (by the HMO's that hire them) to see more patients faster means missing stuff (and lower patient satisfaction).

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Professor Mary Beard reviews a new book on ancient Crete and points out a lot of what we "know" about the Minoan civilization is suppositions and imagination.

Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Greece/Bridgeman Art Library

Fresco of the 'Prince of the Lilies' at Knossos, circa 1500 BC, assembled from three separate plaster fragments and restored by Émile Gilliéron in 1905

ah, but the good Professor points out:

The prehistoric world they evoke seems in some ways distant and strange—yet, at the same time, reassuringly recognizable and almost modern.
The truth is that these famous icons are largely modern. As any sharp-eyed visitor to the Heraklion museum can spot, what survives of the original paintings amounts in most cases to no more than a few square inches. The rest is more or less imaginative reconstruction, commissioned in the first half of the twentieth century by Sir Arthur Evans.... As a general rule of thumb, the more famous the image now is, the less of it is actually ancient.

Read the whole thing.
The fantasy projected onto Knossis included the fiction that it was a peaceful utopia ruled by women under a mother goddess; alas, no one except radical feminists think that is true today:

Soon after the 1960s, when the Minoans had been conscripted into the popular imagination as a prehistoric version of hippie culture (lilies pointing to the ancient equivalent of flower power), the archaeological mood changed. Some controversial discoveries close to Knossos of children’s bones (carrying suspicious marks of butchery) raised the nasty possibility that the peace-loving Minoans had actually been human sacrificers. New research projects in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the networks of roads and fortifications with which the prehistoric elite of the palace of Knossos had strictly controlled their home territory—while scholarly attention also turned to the high- quality state-of-the-art weaponry that had generally been ignored (by Evans and his followers)...

headsup Paleoglot

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Slideshow of bug-eyed bugs

Ireneusz Irass Waledzik, 29, from Poland, uses macro photography to reveal the fascinating colours and shapes of tiny insects. He said: "I love macro photography, I spend a lot of time at it. The different shapes of insects' eyes fascinates me.
Picture: IRENEUSZ IRASS WALEDZIK / CATERS NEWS

Cat item of the day

Stuff written elsewhere

On my medical blog, I have two posts about mummies.link
and LINK

also one on hormones and one on headlines that include this geek factoid:

LINK

Using the nicotine patches is safer than smoking cigarettes, and has the same "awakening" or "improved concentration" that smoking gives to many patients. There are other medications for concentration that affect the blood vessels less than nicotine, and would be safer for these with arterial blockages, or damage, or patients who are older.

And Duke Univ is using nicotene patches for the elderly and those with certain thinking problems.LINK

Previous research conducted by the Duke team and others has found evidence that nicotine might benefit people with a variety of disorders -- including schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and Alzheimer's disease. However, the latest study is the first to examine the drug's effects on people with age-associated memory impairment (AAMI), a common condition among older people characterized by so-called "senior moments."

In a small sample of seniors, the researchers found that four weeks of nicotine treatment halved decision times on a standardized test of memory and increased participants' ability to focus their attention – a skill critical for learning and memory. While receiving nicotine, seniors' assessments of their own memories also showed small but significant improvement.

which explains why Sherlock sometimes has a "three patch a day" problem...

comments on Stuff around the net

FYI: SpiritDaily has two articles on the new pope: One, an "ain't it awful" type prophecy that ends by saying God's hand will be relavant in south America, and another from a "visionary" from Argentina.

Not much hard news about the new pope, but some background stuff: AFP Article...his family was from Italy, and a working class background, and he is a Jesuit, but opposed the politicization of the order by those touting "liberation theology".

 another note on South America: As people move into the cities, the indigenous Catholicism, that "baptized" pagan celebrations in the villages doesn't fit the lifestyle in the modern "mega cities"...one result is that these city migrants have been in danger of deteriorating into pagan/vodoo type religions, while too many in the church lapsed into "liberation theology" that replaced god with the idea of a Marxist paradise.

One result is the upsurge in Chrismatic/pentecostal churches there: Mainly protestant but also in Catholic parishes. These churches stress a personal relationship to God and finding joy in his worship: but they also stress looking to the Bible to live an ethical life. We see the same thing here in the Philippines.

The original Francis was a "charismatic" type Catholic in his way, so things might get interesting. Franciscans are fervent, but not "pious" in a church lady way. Francis wasn't big on theology.
and, of course, the traditional Jesuit spirituality is to build a person's faith on a personal relationship to God on an intellectual level.  So the Pope's approach might be similar to that preached by Benedict XVI's encyclicals, stressing the personal relationship to Jesus (with the church as secondary importance, as a tool to help you do this, and to link you to the community) rather than pushing the institutional church as the most important thing.

Another factoid about the original St Francis: At a time when most Christian monarchs were busy with warlike crusades, Francis went to the preach and try to convert the Muslims (expecting to be martyred). However, the Calif of Cairo recognized him as a Holy man and left him live.

And St. Francis was a pacifist: An ex soldier who probably suffered from what we now call Post traumatic stress syndrome after spending a year as a POW...

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One problem with Erythromycin, and later Clarithromycin, is that they affect an enzyme that metabolizes (gets rid of) other drugs in the liver.

(I published a paper on Clarithromycin/tegretol interaction years ago...we cut the dosage of the seizure medicine in half, and the levels stayed high. If we hadn't cut the dosage the patients would have been very toxic from too much seizure medicine).

It was thought Zithromax would be safer, but alas, not so: some reports of torsade de pointes, a nasty type of irregular heart beat, but they don't mention if this is from interacting with other medicines or if it was spontaneous. The article also mentions that it can happen with the quinilone type medicines used for pneumonia.
FDA note:

Patients at particular risk for developing this condition include those with known risk factors such as existing QT interval prolongation, low blood levels of potassium or magnesium, a slower than normal heart rate, or use of certain drugs used to treat abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias.  

medscape:

Other drugs that prolong the QT interval and have been implicated in cases of torsade include phenothiazines, tricyclic antidepressants, lithium carbonate, ziprasidone,^[7] cisapride, highly active antiretroviral drugs, high-dose methadone, anthracycline chemotherapeutic agents (eg, doxorubicin, daunomycin), some fluoroquinolones, and any other medication using the CYP3A metabolic pathway. Ranolazine,^[8] an antiangina agent, also prolongs the QTc, but torsade is a rare complication of this therapy.

Zithromax is easy to use: only a few doses needed because of the long half life. Since the heart problem is rare, and can occur with other antibiotics, the "headsup" isn't likely to make a lot of us change our medical choices, especially if we work with patients who don't like taking pills. The "Quinolone: type meds cost a lot and have their own side effects (watch the caffiene when taking them)...The alternatives include the "cillin" and the "celphalokillitall" type medicines, which have to be taken for 7 to ten days...

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TPMBarnett points out a Reuters article on Lockheed Martin developing a way to desalinize water cheaply, using nano technology:

The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

this would help in places like India, which is facing a water shortage.

It also might help in places like Bangladesh, who cleaned up their water supply and lowered the death rate from dystentary by digging deep wells that didn't have germs in the water, only to find out years later that the deep well water had high arsenic levels...

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The City Podcast argues about the Hobbit vs the Hobbit film.

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The New America Pope

I don't know a thing about the new Pope, but his choice of a name is interesting.

Pope Benedict chose that name to point to the need to purify and preserve the church. St. Benedict, living in the age when Rome was collapsing, founded monasteries which copied books to preserve them, and these soon spread into the new lands of the barbarians bringing knowledge (not just of religion but schools and literacy and new methods of farming and the ability to organize order out of chaos).

Francis, however, was a child of the age when Italy was undergoing an upsurge of comercialism and growth of the middle class. The monasteries were still needed, but their isolation from society, needed in the days of anarchy, now meant they no longer were relavant to the world.

So Francis went out into the world and preached in the streets, caring for the lepers, talking to the businessmen using their own language (his father was a businessman) and making religion meaningful for the poor. The first "Nativity scene" was by Francis, for example, to show the poor the reality of Christ coming into the normal world of their families, not into the wealthy churches and monasteries of the day.

There is a need for Francis, both among the Catholics who cling to the idea we need to worship Christ, not the new socialist state, and to remind those who back the progressive agenda that loving god does not mean you vote Democratic so the government will do everything for you, but that it means actually cleaning up the wounds of the lepers yourself.

And, of course, Francis' love of nature has a strong "ecological" stance.

Muscial Interlude of the day

Put down coffee, turn up speakers, and enjoy!

Stories below the fold

You think the horsemeat in hamburger stories was a big thing? How about ostrich meat in Biltong (aka jerky)?

 From the NYTimes:

Using DNA analysis on biltong, researchers found horse meat labeled as springbok, the native gazelle; giraffe meat labeled as the African antelope, kudu; and in an inexplicable case, kangaroo labeled as ostrich. 

Actually, Ostrich meat is "the other red meat"...one of Kuya's friends here in the Philippines raises them for their eggs (used for handicrafts) and meat.

They also make good "watchdogs": Their kick packs quite a wallop.

Photo from the Ostrich fact vs fiction page here.


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Mayor Bloomber's Gulper law overturned:

“It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city, it excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule, including but not limited to no limitations on refills, defeat and/or serve to gut the purpose of the rule,” Tingling wrote.

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Weird animal of the day: The Gulper eel,
from UWiscLaCrosse website:

Physical Characteristics:

*  Very Bizarre Appearance

*  Huge mouth with Unhinged Jaw

*  2-6 feet Long

*  Long thin tail making up 3/4 of  its body

*  Flabby body

*  Patchy brown to black in color

*  Some have thin white lines that run the length of their bodies

*Learn More about The Gulper eel's Habitat

Wikipedia notes they aren't really eels but fish: and some of them glow in the dark:

The Saccopharyngiformes are an order of unusual ray-finned fish, superficially similar to eels, but with many internal differences. Most of the fish in this order are deep-sea types known from only a handful of specimens, such as the pelican eel. Saccopharyngiformes are also bioluminescent in several species. Some, such as the "swallowers", can live as deep as 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in the ocean, well into the aphotic zone.

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How to fold an origami gulper eel:



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The Voting begins

Video download of the day

link

memoirs of a geisha, written by an American man and made into a film by Hollywood, starring a Chinese actress. In parts, alas, and I haven't checked out if it's completely available. But heck, the girls here liked the story, and I bought the DVD for them.

Librivox has a book about Japanese women HERE.

 the classic study is Ruth Benedict's book the Chrysanthemum and the sword, but it is about pre WWII Japan. I used to have the book, but didn't bring it with me, although I have her other book, patterns of culture, around here somewhere.

Asia in the news

One reason to know the history of the Silk Road and China's aggression against the Turkish people in their west is that China, unlike the west, remembers...

So when China offers to build a new railway into the "ickystan" region of central Asia, the Russians brush up on their own history and worry.

Something Russia does not like to discuss openly is the fact that Chinese railroads extending into Central Asia would make it easier for China to carry out major military operations in the area. With rail lines extending deep into Central Asia China could more easily threaten a long feared invasion of Russia to take back the eastern territories that many Chinese believe are theirs. Such an invasion is unlikely as long as Russian nuclear weapons can hit China (via missile or bomber). But if that threat were diminished, a rail network in Central Asia that is connected to China would be a much more fearsome prospect for Russia. In the meantime, such a railroad is going to hurt the Russian economy because Chinese firms will have cheaper access to Central Asia and will likely drive out more expensive Russian products.

 not mentioned: That Vladivostok and eastern Siberia have more ties with China than Moscow.

And I still wonder who is funding the Sultan of swing Sulu's claim to Borneo...someone trying to split the united front against China's grab of the West Philippine sea? But is it Islamic "charity" money or Chinese money sweetening the pot?

800 thousand Filipinos have migrated there, but China is the main importer of their palm oil exports, and has many economic interests there.

(yes, in today's world, the Sulu dispute is connected with the Mindanao rebellions, but it was China who helped the Sultan stay in power in the Middle Ages and there remain a lot of Chinese in the cities running the place, just like the descendants of the Chinese merchants run the Philippine economy).


As a Yank, I have little patience with royalty who try to grab back "their land". The land belongs to those who work it, not some nincompoop whose sperm donor allowed him (or another of the many others claiming to be Sultan) to grab back their fiefdom.

As one sardonic Jewish carpenter once said: Let the dead bury the dead.

The American saying on this type of thing is "Who died and left you king", implying that no one should be able to push people around because of ancestral privilege.

Small factoid: Lolo, before he came to the US, was a public health doc in Sulu.