Conference is still going on.
dogs are getting restless from being cooped up...
Lolo is better: still coughing but has some energy now....He even gave PapaDog (AKA BadBrad) a bath this morning...
I am better too, but Ruby now has the same flu symptoms...Chano is flat in bed with a backache again.
Joy has arranged for the family company to get a grant from the government for our organic products. It should benefit not only us but the farmers who grow for us. I didn't get the full details. (I'm a doctor, not a farmer).
We missed Dr. Angie's birthday party because Lolo and I were sick. We probably will not have a party for Ruby this year due to the conference hall being used. Probably we'll just celebrate at a restaurant this weekend.
FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Eat like a hobbit
Denny's to launch Middle Earth menu.
but watch out if you drinking with hobbits:
Menu items include 11 breakfast, lunch and dinner items such as "Hobbit Hole Breakfast," "Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet," "Gandalf's Gobble Melt" and the "Build Your Own Hobbit Slam," which includes limited-time items such as "Shire Sausage."
Fans of the Hobbit knows that hobbits eat two breakfasts, and eat about seven times per day. "We just felt with the two breakfasts that whole notion of comfort eating and comfort food" were a fit for Denny's, said Frances Allen, CMO at the restaurant chain. She added that "The Hobbit" has a huge following "across a broad spectrum of people," including families and millennials, which are Denny's top targets.
Headline of the day
Short-changed robber returns to Syracuse bank to demand more money
Syracuse, NY – A bank robber was quickly captured this morning when he returned to Alliance Bank after discovering the teller had not given him the full $20,000 he had demanded, Syracuse police said.
from DaveBarry
Syracuse, NY – A bank robber was quickly captured this morning when he returned to Alliance Bank after discovering the teller had not given him the full $20,000 he had demanded, Syracuse police said.
from DaveBarry
Stories below the fold
Read this Reuter's report on the Sunni Shiia divide in Pakistan.
More than 300 Shi'ites have been killed in Pakistan so far this year in sectarian conflict, according to human rights groups....--------------------------------------------
The risks are heightened by Pakistan's long-standing role as a battlefield in a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran, which have been competing for influence in Asia and the Middle East since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Aussie Brendan O'Neill writes in the UK Telegraph about the disdain of the US press for the hoi polloi:
Behind this is the old idea of the "philosopher king": only the wise should judge, and that the proletariot only votes for personality.
But if that is true, why is the roboRomney is ahead in the polls?
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Making political hay on rape again.
The anchoress says it was dumb to talk theology during an election, but points out that the press will use this to to distract the public from very real questions about Benghazi, and adds:
They (the press) were going for strident bumper-sticker speech, which is much less threatening, and challenging, than contemplating the age-old question (Book of Job, anyone? Crucifix, anyone?) of whether God sometimes allows evil to happen so that something great may later come of it.It’s actually a very broad-minded question, and an invitation to talk and think about things larger than ourselves and our prideful ideas.If there is no God, no problem. The person in question is an A$$$$$$$$. Abort the kid and let mom get along with her life.
But if there is a God, you have to confront two deep questions:
One: The problem of evil. Why is there evil? Why does God allow evil to occur?
Two: can you do an action that it evil because you see it will have good result?
Religious folks know that although God may permit evil to occur, that ultimately he will arrange things so that good will ultimately result from evil.
And a child himself is not "evil" or the enemy: A child is a promise for the future. Most Christians would allow abortion in these hard circumstances, but Catholics point out that the proper response of Christians is to surround the mother with support and love, and maybe adopt the child if she cannot or will not care for it, but not to kill the innocent child who is not responsible for the crime behind it's conception.
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An upcoming movie Argo is about the Iranian hostage crisis of Iran, but they did rewrite some parts for dramatic purposes.
The true story can be found HERE.
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There is a lot of talking points are being spun about Benghazi, but Instapundit links to Blackfive who said sending in a few jets from Italy to fly over the "demonstration" at treetop level might have scared the pants off of the "demonstrators", allowing the outnumbered and poorly trained local friendlies to get in and help, if not at the embassy then in the second attack on the safehouse.
And, of course we knew it was a professional attack, not a demonstration: VileRat told his gaming friends that he saw signs that an attack was coming 90 minutes before it started...
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Col Updraft sent a link about using a supercomputer to figure out which treatment works best for cancer.
Ideally, a treatment regimen that Watson concludes has a 95% confidence rating, for example, would help oncologists choose from the 28 different chemotherapy cocktails they have at their disposal.alas, here in the Philippines, a lot of chemo is still too expensive, so you might end up with the older, cheaper surgical treatments, although one can get sophisticated radiation treatment in Manila...
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LATimes: Medical studies with striking results often turn out to be false.
Studies that reported striking results were more likely to be small, with fewer than 100 subjects who experienced fewer than 20 medical events. With such small sample sizes, Ioannidis said, large effects are more likely to be the result of chance.
Ya think?
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Now that the local government is winning, peace activists insist the local gov't "negotiate" with Kony,
and StrategyPage points out the real problem of the Kony video: free publicity.
side note: the Ugandan army is poaching elephants on the side, and selling ivory to China.
spectacular violence attracts media attention and it frightens defenseless Central African villagers....A fellow villager with a disfigured face or a missing hand serves as a bitter reminder to others that it is better to keep quiet than inform on the LRA. (Austin Bay)
Ivory sells for $1,000 a kilogram on the international black market, though reportedly Chinese buyers will pay as much as $2,500 a kilogram. China has money and its people have a huge appetite for carved ivory objects.then why did NatGeo make a big thing about a minor side operation selling possibly illegal ivory in the Philippines? Because unlike China we won't retaliate.
--------------------------------------------
NPR article on the supervolcano that almost wiped out man.
It's actually an old story, but I worry when major news outlets say things like this:
...7 billion human beings on earth, and clumped together we weigh roughly 750 billion pounds. That, says Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, is more than 100 times the biomass of any large animal that's ever walked the Earth. And we're still multiplying. Most demographers say we will hit 9 billion before we peak, and what happens then? Well, we've waxed. So we can wane. Let's just hope we wane gently.Much of the essay is propaganda for population decrease masquerading as science, and how we'd be better off if we didn't live in places that used to be forests (you mean like New York City, where the author lives ?)
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Austen Bay on the US Navy issue. Part of the problem is the need to supply the fancy new high powered ships for wartime...but the other problem is: who protects the freedom of commercial ships at various chokepoints in commerce?
The candidates could have explored who should provide these ships. Gentlemen, whom do you trust to defend the U.S. economy? NATO ally Turkey controls the Turkish Straits; Denmark, Norway and Sweden handle the Baltic's Skagerrak, so they're cool. But, president, governor, do either of you trust the Chinese Navy to keep the South China Sea open to free commerce? Our allies Japan and the Philippines don't.
China casts wary eyes at the Indian Navy as it extends its reach to the Straits of Malacca. All right, India and China rely on free trade -- right now. Will they in a decade? It takes 10 years to build a new fleet. We agree no one trusts Iran at Hormuz. So, candidates, is it in America's interest to have a Navy that can patrol these distant chokepoints? To project power to defend these chokepoints? To project offensive power to open these chokepoints if a hostile force applies a chokehold?one point he brings up I hadn't thought of: The vulnerability of the internet which uses underseas cables.
Blackham and Prins note that the two superhighways confront maritime bottlenecks. "Ninety percent of global email traffic is conveyed via undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables bunch in several critical sea areas (off New York ... the English Channel, the South China Sea ... and off the west coast of Japan)."Actually, I know about this vulnerability, since a 2006 earthquake south of Taiwan knocked us off the internet for three months.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Chicken item of the day
Picture: Kobi Levi/ Solent News Photo Agency
Altogether now:
Chicken Shoes: They're EVERYWHERE they're EVERYWHERE...
Cause of illness; suggestion. Treatment? Green poultice
NewScientist has a nice article about diseases caused by windfarms.
the problem?
reminds me of an anecdote about putting tiny amounts of fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. That too was a big conspiracy theory (Even getting the main paranoid in Dr Strangeglove to spout about fluorides).
So one town, after a loud (but tiny) group objecting to fluoridation found indeed that shortly after the start day, large numbers of people started complaining and sueing the town for their "illnesses"...after about six weeks of this, the town announced that unfortunately, due to technical problems, the date of adding flouride to the water had been postponed...meaning the complaints were either fake, or from the power of suggestion.
Indeed, the NS article notices that the "green poultice" (i.e.cash settlement) seems to cure the problem.
Now, I know about the bird problem, but the number of birds killed is a lot fewer than those killed by kitty cat.
And although wind per se can cause illnesses (by blowing dust and fungus present in soil into the air), there is no proof that these high windmills do that, because they are too high to move the wind at ground level. In other words, the effect of high winds might be illness but not the passive windmills.
the problem?
"Firstly, there are the temporal problems. Wind farms appeared some 20 years ago in the US. There are now just shy of 200,000 turbines globally. But the first recorded claims that they caused disease came a decade later. Two rural doctors, one in the UK and the other in Australia, made claims repeated widely in newspapers but never published in any journal. Turbines have come to be blamed for chronic conditions like (amazingly) lung and skin cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and stroke. But importantly also acute symptoms, that according to Australia's high priestess of wind turbine syndrome, Sarah Laurie, an unregistered doctor, can commence within 20 minutes of exposure. If true, what happened in the early complaint-free years?"
reminds me of an anecdote about putting tiny amounts of fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. That too was a big conspiracy theory (Even getting the main paranoid in Dr Strangeglove to spout about fluorides).
So one town, after a loud (but tiny) group objecting to fluoridation found indeed that shortly after the start day, large numbers of people started complaining and sueing the town for their "illnesses"...after about six weeks of this, the town announced that unfortunately, due to technical problems, the date of adding flouride to the water had been postponed...meaning the complaints were either fake, or from the power of suggestion.
Indeed, the NS article notices that the "green poultice" (i.e.cash settlement) seems to cure the problem.
Now, I know about the bird problem, but the number of birds killed is a lot fewer than those killed by kitty cat.
And although wind per se can cause illnesses (by blowing dust and fungus present in soil into the air), there is no proof that these high windmills do that, because they are too high to move the wind at ground level. In other words, the effect of high winds might be illness but not the passive windmills.
video of the day
Col Updraft sends this link:
hmmm...he seems to have missed the money factory and the Popcorn wagon on Popcorn square.
as for Alice's Restaurant, she was a victim of over regulation: she could not afford to put in the "handicapped restrooms" , which would have required extensive renovations of the older building, so she had to shut down, reopening elsewhere but later reselling that one too.
When I worked in the area many many years ago, it was still open, Arlo and his family were still there, as was Chief Obie, who became a minor celebrity when he got a cameo as himself in the movie.
the song behind the restaurant HERE.
hmmm...he seems to have missed the money factory and the Popcorn wagon on Popcorn square.
as for Alice's Restaurant, she was a victim of over regulation: she could not afford to put in the "handicapped restrooms" , which would have required extensive renovations of the older building, so she had to shut down, reopening elsewhere but later reselling that one too.
When I worked in the area many many years ago, it was still open, Arlo and his family were still there, as was Chief Obie, who became a minor celebrity when he got a cameo as himself in the movie.
the song behind the restaurant HERE.
Family news
Lolo and I have the flu.
I am just feeling yuckky but last night Lolo had a high fever so we asked Dr Angie to check him. Once his fever went down he is much better and slept okay.
But Blogging will be light.
I am just feeling yuckky but last night Lolo had a high fever so we asked Dr Angie to check him. Once his fever went down he is much better and slept okay.
But Blogging will be light.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Mister President, Google is your friend
No, thank the Lord, I didn't watch the debate in the US.
But the blogs point out this gaffe by Romney; on why we need more fancy new ships, corrected by the President/ The Navy is downsizing, and it's not the number of ships per se, but different types of ships for different wars that are needed.
However, the President also got a few facts wrong:
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and a simple google will get you this article: Marines, Mules and the Middle East
wikipedia article here.
I posted about this while back.
And no, I didn't use mules or donkeys as a missionary (although one priest used a horse to say Mass in an area where the main roads were landmined). However, I did have to ride a horse in a vaccination project in the mountains of Nicaragua when I was doing a summer stint during medical school.
But the blogs point out this gaffe by Romney; on why we need more fancy new ships, corrected by the President/ The Navy is downsizing, and it's not the number of ships per se, but different types of ships for different wars that are needed.
However, the President also got a few facts wrong:
Leading to a Special forces type emailing Instapundit:
OBAMA: “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships. ”
n Special Forces (Green Berets) for a few years and when POTUS mentioned the horses/bayonets I immediately thought of this. We also used bayonets. I think the picture of the SF guys on horses would be perfect to highlight the POTUS’s complete ignorance on everything military.
Well, here you go:
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and a simple google will get you this article: Marines, Mules and the Middle East
At a California military training facility, U.S. Marines are learning how to use donkeys and mules as partners in upcoming combat missions in Afghanistan.
wikipedia article here.
I posted about this while back.
And no, I didn't use mules or donkeys as a missionary (although one priest used a horse to say Mass in an area where the main roads were landmined). However, I did have to ride a horse in a vaccination project in the mountains of Nicaragua when I was doing a summer stint during medical school.
Malala
Source: Facebook\Nosheerwan's Fan Page
from Globalvoices: the voices supporting Malala...For the first time religious extremists, such as Taliban, are being vehemently criticised in the public. During an address to a public rally in Karachi, MQM's head, Mr. Altaf Hussain, described Taliban as ‘inhumane, stone age people'.
and they discuss the "disinformation" campaign spreading conspiracy theories to confuse people.
Stories below the fold
Boys will be boys and men will be men story of the day:
Archeoblog: New light on Old Neanderthals
but earlier stories suggesting European red heads got their red hair from Neanderthal genes is not true: one of my podcasts about this said it's a different gene.
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A breakthrough in deciphering Proto Elemite writing?
interesting story, but they still can't read it.
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Denver zoologists save a baby tapir with "mouth to snout respiration".
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Your tax dollars at work boondoggle of the week:
Wiring hiking trails to play canned music.
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will a new additive result in the antibiotics being able to kill MRSA?
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Andy Serkis, the CGActor behind Gollum, is planning to direct a new film Animal Farm.
altogether now: All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others....
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Latest fake job; new book by British woman claims she was brought up my monkeys.
yet despite not having contact with humans in the time one develops language, apparantly she managed to learn not only Spanish but English...
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Freakonomics points out the law of unintended consequences and recycling laws:
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Archeoblog: New light on Old Neanderthals
The abstract for the article, entitled The Date of Interbreeding between Neandertals and Modern Humans, which is free to access, is as followsMore at Nat Geo.
Comparisons of DNA sequences between Neandertals and present-day humans have shown that Neandertals share more genetic variants with non-Africans than with Africans.... We measure the extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the genomes of present-day Europeans and find that the last gene flow from Neandertals (or their relatives) into Europeans likely occurred 37,000–86,000 years before the present (BP), and most likely 47,000–65,000 years ago...
but earlier stories suggesting European red heads got their red hair from Neanderthal genes is not true: one of my podcasts about this said it's a different gene.
-------------------------------------------
A breakthrough in deciphering Proto Elemite writing?
interesting story, but they still can't read it.
--------------------------------------
Denver zoologists save a baby tapir with "mouth to snout respiration".
------------------------------------
Your tax dollars at work boondoggle of the week:
Wiring hiking trails to play canned music.
No, there is no mention about how much it costs, or why those setting it up never figured out that if we wanted to listen to " Tibetans chanting mantras in Katmandu, Nepal. Robin Sukhadia, now a graduate of the CalArts program, collected street sounds from Kolkata, India; and KristÃn Pora Haraldsdottir documented poems from her native Iceland' we could just put the noise on our ipods...
Users of a peaceful and popular Santa Clarita trail will soon be exposed to a "sonic intervention" as a new project designed to encourage passersby to linger and listen gets underway.
The endeavor, called Stroll, is a collaboration between the city of Santa Clarita and the California Institute of the Arts and uses audio devices erected along the city's South Fork Trail to emit an eclectic mix of field recordings, electronic sounds, the spoken word and performed music.
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will a new additive result in the antibiotics being able to kill MRSA?
----------------------------
Andy Serkis, the CGActor behind Gollum, is planning to direct a new film Animal Farm.
altogether now: All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others....
---------------------------------------
Latest fake job; new book by British woman claims she was brought up my monkeys.
yet despite not having contact with humans in the time one develops language, apparantly she managed to learn not only Spanish but English...
----------------------------------------------
Freakonomics points out the law of unintended consequences and recycling laws:
an L.A. Times article suggests the system is being gamed. Last year, it appears that nearly 100 percent of recyclable cans sold in California were returned, and 104 percent (!) of plastic containers:and then there is this lesson on how to pay lower electric bills.
Crafty entrepreneurs are driving semi-trailers full of cans from Nevada or Arizona, which don’t have deposit laws, across the border and transforming their cargo into truckfuls of nickels. In addition, recyclers inside the state are claiming redemptions for the same containers several times over, or for containers that never existed.
-------------------------------------------------------------
the WTF Headline of the day
Italy earthquake scientists convicted
the problem?
An Italian court has sentenced six scientists and a government official to six years each in prison over the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake.
Prosecutors said they gave a falsely reassuring statement regarding the risk of an earthquake, just days before the 6.3 magnitude quake which destroyed the city and killed 309 people.
The scientists argued there was no accurate way to predict major earthquakes.
Risking One's Life to Save Another
Those who risk their lives evacuating patients to hospitals are one of the unsung heroes in the world.
I'm old enough to have done this with a fixed wing aircraft with only my medical bag for emergencies, but now they use helicopters with equipment which allows the medics to treat the patient at the scene and during the flight.
Blackfive has a link about the most dangerous medevac unit in the world: In Afghanistan, where not only might you get shot down , but the weather and terrain make the flight itself dangerous.
I'm old enough to have done this with a fixed wing aircraft with only my medical bag for emergencies, but now they use helicopters with equipment which allows the medics to treat the patient at the scene and during the flight.
Blackfive has a link about the most dangerous medevac unit in the world: In Afghanistan, where not only might you get shot down , but the weather and terrain make the flight itself dangerous.
The flight crews of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment,
25th Combat Aviation Brigade, pose in front of a UH-60 Black Hawk
located in Pasab, Afghanistan, in late September.
(Photo by Sgt. Randy Ojeda/25th Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs)
The 25th Combat Aviation Brigade
“The harder days are when we have to go pick up kids,” said James, as he stared down at his feet. “It hits close to home. I picked up a girl once who looked just like my daughter.”
The crews started to discuss other challenges at Pasab, ranging from extreme, dusty environments to the threat of land mines on landing zones and common instances of random gun fire.
The discussion turned to treating Afghan National Army soldiers.
“Treating local nationals can be a challenge,” said James explaining they sometimes resist treatment. “Some have never seen a helicopter and they get scared, and on top of that we have the language barrier. But we push through it, we do our job and we are successful.”
The Pasab medevac crews have a 98-percent success rate of retrieving, treating and transporting their patients to a medical facility within the golden hour.
Medical Fascism alert
Fascism is alive and well, and telling you how to live.
Thinking twice about Health Checkups.
yes, those "remember your yearly health checkup" propaganda we have listened to for years is now being questioned. Why? Maybe to save the government money.
the problem? The study is a Cochrane "garbage in/garbage out" study.
Here is another garbage study in the NYTimes: If Intelligence is the norm, stupidity gets more interesting.
this is talking about finding the genome for intelligence, but says instead we should be looking for the genome for stupidity.
Actually, the world's IQ is getting better, because we are now better nourished and no longer have low IQ's due to protein malnutrition starving children's growing brains.
But the study implies scientists are trying to find what genes to screen for, presumably so they can stop those with the wrong genes from being born.
Then we have article says that we need the government to "help us chose" a good diet, or we'll all be fat.
In the Fight against obesity, drink size matters.
ah, but what if obesity is due to plastics in our diet? Why not regulate big business instead? Or Gaia's way to get us fat so we don't starve to death in a future famine?
full rant on my XangaBlog.
but if you really want to worry, try this one:
Two modern "ethicists" who believe in infanticide etc. are now penning books saying they want to teach us ethics.
Thinking twice about Health Checkups.
yes, those "remember your yearly health checkup" propaganda we have listened to for years is now being questioned. Why? Maybe to save the government money.
the problem? The study is a Cochrane "garbage in/garbage out" study.
Here is another garbage study in the NYTimes: If Intelligence is the norm, stupidity gets more interesting.
this is talking about finding the genome for intelligence, but says instead we should be looking for the genome for stupidity.
Actually, the world's IQ is getting better, because we are now better nourished and no longer have low IQ's due to protein malnutrition starving children's growing brains.
But the study implies scientists are trying to find what genes to screen for, presumably so they can stop those with the wrong genes from being born.
Then we have article says that we need the government to "help us chose" a good diet, or we'll all be fat.
In the Fight against obesity, drink size matters.
ah, but what if obesity is due to plastics in our diet? Why not regulate big business instead? Or Gaia's way to get us fat so we don't starve to death in a future famine?
full rant on my XangaBlog.
but if you really want to worry, try this one:
Two modern "ethicists" who believe in infanticide etc. are now penning books saying they want to teach us ethics.
Our knowledge of human biology – in particular of genetics and neurobiology – is beginning to enable us to directly affect the biological or physiological bases of human motivation, either through drugs, or through genetic selection or engineering, or by using external devices that affect the brain or the learning process. We could use these techniques to overcome the moral and psychological shortcomings that imperil the human species. We are at the early stages of such research, but there are few cogent philosophical or moral objections to the use of specifically biomedical moral enhancement – or moral bioenhancement. In fact, the risks we face are so serious that it is imperative we explore every possibility of developing moral bioenhancement technologies – not to replace traditional moral education, but to complement it.Ah, brave new world that has such people in it!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Ten Things every dog should do
LINK
50 things every dog should do
1. Flop down and relax with your master.
2. Go for a swim in the sea
3. Go mad in the snow
4. Ride in an open top car, or better yet, learn to skydive:
5. Do the 'Beethoven' shake and soak everyone around you
6. Have your own spot on the bed
7. Accompany your owner on a run/cycle ride
8.Wake your owner so he isn't later for work
9.Go to work with your owner
10. Cheer your owner up when they are down
Stories (and rants) below the fold
JONATHAN FREEDLAND AT THE GUARDIAN: “When Israelis kill Arabs there is outrage. But Assad’s brutal campaign has cost 30,000 lives and there’ve been no protests.”
(via Instapundit:)
Of course, he only reports the Assad atrocities, (this is the Guardian after all). And just ignore the AlQaeda among your ranks. True, Assad has WMD (some of which may have been Saddams) but he is trying to keep them out of the hands of the bad guys who will use them outside the country.
and Fides has this report:
"bombs continue to fall on the area of Almidan, of Armenian majority, launched by armed opposition groups which is located in Bustan el-Bacha: they have killed several people, injured so many and destroyed many houses ". Some groups in the rugged opposition, where there are also jiahadisti groups, "fire on Christian houses and buildings, to force occupants to escape and then take possession " the text concludes.
Some blogger (sorry I can't remember the link) remarked that Syria was similar to the Spanish Civil War before World War II, where the fascists fought the Communists, and that the best position of the west was to stay out of it..
For 50 years, the elites in the West lamented that the Communists lost in Spain and hyped (correctly) on Franco's atrocities there, yet in the view of history, we now can find out about those unreported communist atrocities (e.g. Barcelona, kidnapping children to send for "education" to the USSR) and of course, history suggests that if they won, it would have just been worse (albeith unreported), while the "good points of the Fascists (e.g. the 30 thousand Sephardic Jews and others saved by Franco) has usually been ignored.
Nowadays, with the internet, we can find both sides of the sad story. In this case, the minorities will be ethnically cleansed or killed, and no one will notice, because it has nothing to do with Israel.
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And if you think Assad is "evil", look at what the lack of a strong leader has led to in central Africa:
Those wars have led to a couple million killed or died from disease.
AFRICA/DR CONGO - More than 30 armed groups in the east of the Country: "the weakness of the State favours their proliferation"...
Hobbe's Leviathan suggests that sometimes an elightened dictatorship is not the worst option.
So why not Democracy? Because tribal customs stress cooperation and against violence, so many are passive in the face of violence: That's how they survived. And, as someone pointed out to me, in tribal areas, it's easy to kill anonymously, via poison, by opening the door and throwing a poisonous snake inside, or by simply blocking the door to the traditional house and setting the thatch on fire.
Another argument for good (but hot) concrete block houses with tin roofs.
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this headline from a right wing blog:
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights has warned Americans not to elect Republican Mitt Romney in next month’s presidential election, saying that doing so would be “a democratic mandate for torture.” The UN’s Ben Emmerson was referring to Romney’s refusal to rule out the use of waterboarding in interrogating terror detainees, a practice that President Barack Obama has ended.I've written against torture in the past, but the dirty little secret is that President Obama no longer tries to capture terrorist leaders alive to torture them for information: Instead he just lets them be targeted and killed by drones. And I'm not sure this is an improvement.
On the other hand, having lived through a war where "insurgents" killed 32 of my friends (because they could, i.e. the victims were unarmed doctors/nuns or priests and working in rural hospitals and schools), I am not exactly a pacifist.
Belmont Club essay points out the same thing, quoting Pundita's blog, which calls non violence an American Fairy tale.
But short of teaching 12 year old schoolgirls to shoot those who threaten them, I'm not sure what you can do to protect innocent civilians against those who don't follow the rules of humanity.
On the other hand: compare and contrast: The Russian 1905 demonstrations and People power.
One didn't work, and the result was a very violent revolution 12 years later. The other succeeded, and the result is a very messy democracy.
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Also from Instapundit:
MAMMOGRAM, PLEASE!: In response to President Obama’s false claim that a reduction in government funding for Planned Parenthood would result in millions of women foregoing mammograms, a pro-life group, Live Action, decided to have 2,000 members call local Planned Parenthood offices to schedule the test. Small problem: Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms (never has– it refers them out).and although that was why Koman stopped funding them, the uproar by activists made them "change their mind". The result? the walk for breast cancer is now a dud. link2
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The dangers of urban farming.
The scientists found that larger slums and a growing demand for food are pushing humans and animals into closer contact, which could fuel the spread of epidemics.--------------------------------
Attention Michelle:
forget the veggies that kids throw away. Just add powder to the junk food.
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the "October surprise" is Gloria Allred's story saying Romney, acting in his role as a bishop, urged a mom not to abort her child after a heparin overdose.
The UK Mail has a story where, unlike the above case, the mom who had a blood disease that required daily injections of heparin, did carry the child to term.
and as a doc, yes,too much heparin might be a medical indication for abortion, but of course, the main benefit would be to the docs, who won't be sued for a live baby damaged because they didn't monitor the blood tests closely enough.
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