Infectious disease update

The Good news: There is a new Dengue vaccine

local news says we will start a different less efficient version here soon. One problem with Dengue (and maybe the vaccine) is that second cases can be worse than the first bout.


Bad News: Zika is coming, and spread not just via mosquitos but sex...and now, the CDC has a "headsup" on how to protect personnel in the delivery room, just in case.

 Most persons infected with Zika virus have a mild illness or are asymptomatic. However, increasing evidence supports a link between Zika virus infection during pregnancy and adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes (1), and a possible association between recent Zika virus infection and Guillain-Barré syndrome has been reported (2). Although Zika virus is primarily transmitted through the bite of Aedes species of mosquitoes, sexual transmission also has been documented (3). Zika virus RNA has been detected in a number of body fluids, including blood, urine, saliva, and amniotic fluid (3–5), and whereas transmission associated with occupational exposure to these body fluids is theoretically possible, it has not been documented

Insomnia download of the week

Yes, I mean that literally.

Librivox has the Insomnia book of the week: Boring stuff to put you into the land of slumber with such interesting articles like:

 Corticelli Yarn Book Number 6

Classes, Divisions, and Sections of the Decimal Classification System, Part 1

and don't forget that exciting best seller:

Home Telephone Directory for New Albany, Indiana

they also have a book on the history of swearing if you prefer something racier:

A Cursory History of Swearing Julian SHARMAN ( - )

Meet the Official state fossil of Illinois

From the Atlantic  Via TYWIWDBI

A pipe-fitter by trade, Tully was just an amateur collector, but a skilled one. He knew that the coal miners of Mazon Creek had discarded vast piles of shale that contained fossils galore. And as he sifted through the fragments, he found two rocks that had cracked open and that held something incredible between them...

a team of scientists led by Victoria McCoy at Yale University have solved the mystery of the strange beast, and assigned it a spot on the tree of life. It turns out to be a close relative of modern lampreys.

and Illinois is not the only state with their own official state Fossil: Wikipedia has a list.

and the National Park service has a lot more here.
check their kid's page:

Q: Why did the T.rex need a bandage?A: He had a dino-sore

Did you know there is a national fossil day? October 15th...

Privacy? Who cares about privacy?

Forget the IPhone kerfuffle. they could get the information without finding the code to peek into everyone's phone, but hey, that would stop big brother f

The dirty little secret is that anyone under the age of 30 probably could hack your private information from facebook and figure out your email password, and then get your SSN and other personal stuff.

I shudder about what is on my tablet, for example.

Once you were fingerprinted for the military and for other reasons, like when you want to adopt a child. But now, fingerprints are taken for a lot of jobs that don't require a "Security clearance": in the name of finding if you are a sex offender, you get fingerprinted for all sorts of jobs.

Ah, but DNA is private, right?

Now I have a question for  you: do you really want a private organization to get hold of your dna for their database?

NYTimes article:

Researchers led by a University of North Carolina team will use a new iPhone app to recruit women who have had postpartum depression. The goal is to collect about 100,000 DNA samples and compare them to DNA from women who have never experienced depression in hopes of discovering genetic factors that could lead to better prediction, diagnosis and treatment for maternal mental illness.

of course, this leads one to say: Uh, population bias in your sample.

But they will "invite" poor women to donate too:

“To make sure this is not just a study of iPhone-using people,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody said, iPad versions of the app will be available in some urban and rural clinics, and patients who want to provide their DNA will “right then and there be offered a spit kit.”

Again, a bias: A lot of people don't see doctors, and a lot will not go to these clinics. And many will be paranoid about giving up a DNA sample...

ah but don't worry: Your data is safe with them:

Names and email addresses will be required, Dr. Meltzer-Brody said, but the project will encrypt personal data.

ah, that makes me feel better.

By the way: Are you aware that my federal personnel file was hacked?

the historic churches of the Philippines

During Holy week, Catholics visit churches here in the Philippines, and the Manila paper discusses the various shrines in our area...our church even has a photo

HIS CHURCH in Gapan City, the oldest in Nueva Ecija province at 143 years, is the national shrine of La Virgen Divina Pastora. It draws thousands of pilgrims, as well as the city’s devotees, as many miracles and answered petitions are attributed to the image. ANSELMO ROQUE/INQUIRER CENTRAL LUZON

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/775514/churches-places-to-visit-in-ecija#ixzz43aKhHqCs 

History of the parish here.

All this drives the local American bible belt founded churches nuts: they quote the bible against us all the time.

But in the good old days, people learned the story of how God loved them and how we should act toward each other in stories, art, music, fiestas and plays.

When you lose Clinton

 Not Hillary, Bill, according to this article via Drudge:

 if you don’t believe that we can all grow together again, if you don’t believe that we’re ever going to grow again, if you believe it’s more important to relitigate the past, there may be many reasons that you don’t want to support her.
“But if you believe we can all rise together, if you believe we’ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the 7 years before that when we were practicing trickle-down economics and no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her,” Clinton said.

Family News

Yesterday morning, Joy helped me start a bank account to get my Phil Veteran's pension (Lolo was a WWII vet ).

The corruption here is huge, so the paper work to stop corruption is even larger. The pension is tiny by US standards, but is important, especially if I stay here as I plan to do.

Joy and Ruby left after lunch for some kind of revival or church meeting. I was invited, but it's Evangelical, and probably in Tagalog and I am not big on being preached to.

so I spent the evening trying to do my simple income tax statement.

Yes, five hours for a simple form: And that was using Turbo Tax. Turbotax kept insisting I file as "married" so finally I erased it and started over making "single" and it worked. True, taxes are higher, but two years ago, when Lolo started getting sick, his son took over all his pension and bank accounts, and I couldn't get hold of the needed information, so I have been filing separately, which is okay since we always kept our money separate from each other to keep his kids and my kids from feuding.

Tax advise of the day

Don't ask your "personal assistant"

headsup Dustbury

Election year

There is an election coming up here.

Spotted soldiers this morning.

the murders have begun.

Our cook announced the going rate to vote for the mayor is 2000 pesos...ditto for president.

Either I misunderstood her, or there has been inflation, since the going rate is traditionally 500 pesos (10 dollars)
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the big story is the 180 million dollars stolen from Bengladesh and laundered via a bank here.

Atty. Ramon Esguerra, counsel of businessman William Go, holds a press conference in Makati City. RAFFY LERMA/PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER

The lawyer of businessman William Go on Friday said they are looking into filing charges against the branch manager of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) on Jupiter Street, Makati City after his client was dragged into a suspected money-laundering scheme.

READ: RCBC branch head: Rogue or scapegoat

Atty. Ramon Esguerra said this during an interview over the ABS-CBN News Channel.

READ: 6 probed for money laundering

Go, owner of Centurytex, is one of the six people who are being investigated for a cross-border electronic fraud and money-laundering scheme.

He reportedly owns an RCBC account that was used by an international syndicate to move money stolen by hackers from the US account of the Bank of Bangladesh.

READ: PH blocks $870M stolen from Bangladesh

Read more: http://business.inquirer.net/208354/dragged-in-money-laundering-probe-wiliam-go-mulls-suing-rcbc-branch-head#ixzz43PMmKNd5
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

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Changing behavior

when a society collapses and there is a lot of crime in an area, how do you reprgram those who never learned the basic stuff about right and wrong.

Freakonomics discusses preventing crime via cognitive therapy. (includes podcast; another podcast mentioning this HERE)

On this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio: conventional crime-prevention programs tend to be expensive, onerous, and ineffective. Could something as simple (and cheap) as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) do the trick? First we go to Chicago, where at-risk teenagers who learn to be less impulsive have lower dropout and arrest rates.
Then, we take a look at Liberia, where a former child soldier and a team of researchers pair CBT with a cash incentive to help other former soldiers become productive citizens in peacetime.

cognitive means thinking. Behavior means how you act. Therapy here is a form of teaching.

My friend, a Catholic nun, in Zimbabwe worked with ex teenaged insurgents after they won their independence, so they could learn how to integrate back into society. That was 30 plus years ago so this is not new.

in the USA there are no child soldiers to be rehabilitated: But there are gangs. And the failure to teach self control is part of the problem.

when I lived in Boston, the churches had an active outreach program to cut gang related crimes that was successful. Churches traditionally teach basic right and wrong and encourage self control and looking at situations from a different point of view  and to help others. Youth groups often do this implicitly, and the feedback to newcomers to act maturely is important. Indeed, as the CDC points out, often gang wanna be's are boys in a chaotic family/neighborhood looking for a pattern to follow to affirm they are adults, and the gangs (and the TV/movies/rap) merely give positive feedback for negative behavior that leads to them being arrested or worse.

• Joining a gang is part of a life course; therefore, it is important to understand the risk factors for children starting at birth.
• Strong families are a major protective factor in preventing kids from joining gangs.
• Very early prevention efforts — including programs focusing on low-income pregnant mothers and families with young children — show promising results.
• Communities — not just classrooms — should be regarded as a valuable resource for reaching kids at risk of joining gangs.
• Girls join gangs in large numbers; therefore, some prevention efforts should address gender-specific concerns.

CDC webpage on gang violence.

includes this:

• Community partnerships can help reinforce and enhance the existing strengths of families and communities to reduce gang-joining, especially when supporting activities such as tutoring, mentoring, life-skills training, case management, parental involvement, and supervised recreation.

more here


 But there are hundreds of thousands of gang members, and it's easier for "activists" to shout "black lives matter" and ridicule cops and law abiding citizens than admit there is a problem.

Transcript

DUBNER: Indeed, while it’s famously hard to get good data on gang numbers, law enforcement groups estimate that Chicago has more than 100,000 gang members while New York, a much larger city, has only around 20,000. So it’s easy to believe that, that has something to do with Chicago’s higher crime rate – although we should say that Chicago isn’t even in the Top 10 when it comes to the most violent big American cities. There’s Detroit, Oakland, Memphis, St. Louis. In any case, Chicago is plenty dangerous – so much so that the Chicago Public Schools, the CPS, asked Levitt and some colleagues for help.

LEVITT: They were extremely concerned about the pattern of violence against Chicago Public School students. So actual students were being shot, not necessarily in school, almost never in school. But when they weren’t at school. And it’s actually remarkable how many of these students were being shot. It was something like 250 Chicago Public School students were being shot each year – of which about 20 or 30 were dying....

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DUBNER: Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a form of psychotherapy that’s pretty common in mental health treatment – although not in the kind of social work that DiVittorio does. It’s meant to be a short-term, pragmatic approach to helping people solve problems. As the name implies, it’s meant to change behaviors without necessarily dwelling on the underlying psychological sources of those behaviors, as talk therapy does. CBT tries to get people to think differently about behaviors that have become practically automatic; to respond more thoughtfully to stress – and not just in a purely therapeutic realm. 

translation: teaching them to think instead of acting out spontaneously, and not just using sermons or lectures, but by using plays and acting out situtions in the classroom.

and they use plays to teach how to act in a situation... (something I learned in medical school and come to think of it, something I learned in Catholic school, where they used short plays to teach us how to resist intimidation by others trying to get us to take drugs/ have sex/steal etc.)

Family news

Family is back from Manila at 3 am...I'm waiting to talk to them to see how the play went.

I went to 530 am mass...they have the large palm Sunday procession after mass with the float of Jesus on a donkey and everyone following it carrying their palms singing hymns.

however, by the time I reached church at 525 there were no seats, it was hot and crowded, and I gave up around the time they read the gospel (they read the entire passion on Palm Sunday mass).

never mind: it's the thought that counts, and fainting/vomiting in church is not a good idea.

Encouraging order in chaos

Improbable research notes that classical music is used in some stores to keep down chaos.

“Classical music was first used as a deterrent by 7-Eleven convenience stores in British Colombia, Canada. In 1985, branch managers began piping classical music into the stores’ parking lots in order to prevent teenagers from congregating there.”

so does it work?

is Muzak/elevator music better than the high pitched buzz heard only by teenagers and dogs and that annoys them enough to keep them out?

my sons used to tease me that I liked "elevator music", aka Muzak.

But you know, a lot of people panic in elevators. Does it work? Wikipedia article here.

this article on music affecting moods says yes...sounds logical until you read the nonsense that music affects the length of the telomere or read that the research was done in a yoga journal.

Yes, music affect moods. Aristotle knew that.

Podcast of the week

Mythgard academy has a series of podcasts discussing fantasy in books.

Their latest podcast is Dracula. Earlier lectures are on the book, but later podcasts will discuss various movies on this character.

--

the book can be found at Librivox 

ebook link

Family news

Chona and family are in Palawan on vacation and should be visiting here one of these days.

Lolo's gravesite is 98percent finished.

Ruby will go to Japan (?next month) because her group won a contest in promoting tourism. Congratulations...now all she needs is a passport renewal. Paper work galore.

She is also a US citizen, but since no one has done the paperwork to get a US passport yet, this will have to wait.

She is in a play about Moses put on in Manila by several Christian schools there. She plays a slave girl, because she couldn't attend enough practices to get a full role.

her father plans to drive down to watch the play, even though we are in the midst of a rice harvest. I'll stay home: Too hot, too much traffic.

I am in a bad mood this morning: Answering the doorbell since staff is on the other side of the business compound, arguing with beggars that 50 cents is plenty and I don't have more money to spare, and then I found George the killer Lab killed one of the half grown kittens that was wandering out in our garden. Sigh. It was one I saved and fed by bottle. I was hoping he would kill one of the five feral cats that wander around here, but no luck...they are too smart.

So we buried the cat under the papaya tree, but no I am not going to light a candle for him or put flowers on his grave, as we do with our dogs.

The new puppies over the weekend suddenly developed an infestation of ticks. Hundreds. Yuck. So we bathed them, removed all we could, and then our help sprayed them with malathion like the farmer spray their animals. So far none have died, but we lost two of the white dogs who were older and when the tick count exploded, we gave them a bath and they were both dead within two days.. Anemia from the ticks? Heat stroke? Old age? Stress from insecticide shampoo? Some sort of infection? They were well until they died, eating okay, so maybe it was heat stroke.

There have been quite a few deaths lately in our neighborhood, mainly the elderly, or younger people who had a "stroke" or "heart attack"...probably from high blood pressure, which fluctuates in the heat.

Up the street, the neighbors put up a chapel to sing the Passion next week. Pabasa is the local name for it.

Pabása ng Pasyón (Tagalog for "Reading of thePassion"), known simply as Pabása is a Catholicdevotion in the Philippines popular during Holy Week involving the uninterrupted chanting of thePasyón, an early 16th-century epic poem narrating the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.^[1]

oh well: it isn't any noisier than the parties in the Plaza down the street, and probably not as noisy as the parties with a karaoke machine to sing with in the firehouse across the street, or in the Restobar across the street in the other direction.

I usually donate the the Pabasa at our local chapel about four blocks away. We give money to buy food for the singers and others who visit and pray during the week.

With the heat, I'm not sure if I'll manage to get to church (I tend to faint in church, even in the USA when it is hot and crowded. No, I'm not sick: My mom did too.)

In the meanwhile I find myself yelling at everyone...part of this is because my husband was deaf and only could hear me if I shouted in his ear, but a lot of it is just being in a bad mood. Sigh.

Lolo's first anniversary is next week, and may have something to do with it.

And then they wonder why they feel so sad

Instapundit  links to this article:

HEY, KIDS, WHAT TIME IS IT? It’s time to stop calling Kim Kardashian a “slut.”

yes, nakedness by hollywood type narcissists is "in" and how dare you criticize them (even though their selfie nudies are about getting free publicity, not about feeling good about themselves).

When we pick and choose which women we want to support in their right to their own bodies and which women we don't, we are keeping all women stuck in a self-destructive conversation of cultural shame around sexuality.

honey, it is not about men. It is about jealous women who are too busy to have 8 hours a day to exercize with their personal trainer, and too poor to have all that plastic surgery.

And some of it from those of us who actually have a life is ridicule for you being so childish and silly.

Sexuality is not about you you you. It is a gift of God, so that you can bind in love with your lover and care for each other and your children.

Without the knowledge that sexuality is about family and that making love is actually...making love, i.e. making people feel loving about the one you are with.

Ah, you imply that sex is fun but no with no more moral depth than eating a hamburger (indeed less: hamburgers are high in calories and cause heart attacks, hamburger restaurants underpay their help, and the rain forest is being destroyed to raise cattle in the Amazon).

When you flaunt your sexuality in front of a man, you are being worse than a slut (sluts enjoy men and sex). You are being a tease. You are turning men on and then ridiculing them for their God given sexuality when they are aroused. Then you go around insisting you are a "free woman", while what you are is a sadistic ball breaker.

Modesty has little to do with your clothing: In Africa, one Bantu tribe I worked with traditionally worse a short apron. Modernity brought clothing, but women still thought nothing of openly breast feeding in church.
But they were modest.
In contrast some Saudi girls manage to wear their  state mandated full body costumes in a provocative way to send the message that they are "available".
Costume has to do with local customs. Want to be nude? Go to a nude beach in Europe.

But if I read the article correctly, you are using nakedness to disdain normal men and indeed anyone who might object to your disdain for others who have to see you.

Stop judging women who love their bodies enough to show them off — in public or in private. And stop judging women who don't love their bodies all that much and would prefer to stay covered up. 

ah so that's it. You want to show off.
Others do not count: It's all about Me ME ME

which is why the article below this one discuss sex and success, but not love or family or self sacrifice for the ones you love, or about getting old.

and your shallow life leads to this problem:

15 Things You MUST Know About People Who Have Concealed Depression

Many of you reading this will know how easy it is to feel lost and alone. The truth is, no one has to hide the darkest and most unpleasant parts of themselves. The world we live in encourages this, but it's those darkest parts that also have the most light in them. All that pain produces understandings that create a new level of living.

so you mean maybe even the narcissitic types that read this webpage might have to slide out of their self centeredness to be happy?

No matter how complicated someone is, it's important for them to understand that they're searching for love acceptance. We all are. Open your heart to someone, even if it scares you to death. 

who wudda thot?

those Hallmark Card saying might be true.

Maybe they might even take the next step: not just to "accept" love but to form a mature relationship.

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of course, when one is in the geriatric set, nudity is not really very sexy.

and for a doctor, nudity is not a big deal. Few of our patients are quite so attractive...

the trouble with pain relief

First, the CDC wants to cut narcotic use for "chronic pain".

Now, we are told officially what we docs have known for years. Tylenol (aka paracetamol) doesn't help osteoarthritis pain.

Referring to concerns over acetaminophen's potential for liver toxicity, Moore added: "Its safety is also questioned, not just in overdose.”
With the addictive properties of opioid painkillers, the heart concerns surrounding NSAIDs and the apparent ineffectiveness of acetaminophen, the dearth of safe and effective painkillers is a particular problem for the roughly 27 million Americans over age 60 who suffer from osteoarthritis. Nearly twice as many women as men have the condition, which can impair mobility and discourage the kind of exercise that is probably one of the condition's most effective remedies. 

The problem we docs see is bleeding ulcers (although these are fewer with Ibuprofen/advil etc than with plain ordinary aspirin). This problem came up when the cox2 drugs were released, and essentially stopped people from taking them ...but the dirty little secret is that the older medicines did the same thing, but not so much.
(they are still around but only for "short term use).

And these drugs also might make you retain fluid if you have congestive heart failure and might counteract the blood thinning properties if you take aspirin daily to keep your blood from clotting.

And then there is "analgesic nephropathy".(kidney failure from people taking a lot of OTC pain medicines) 

but hey, Aspirin and NSAIDs might lower your chance of intestinal cancers. 

I went to a conference many years ago about the kidney problems but when pushed, the doc admitted that he told patients to take tylenol but it didn't work well so he took an NSAID instead.

I myself take Naproxen which works for me better than the others. But if I take it a lot, I have to add  a PPO: Prilosec, or in the days before the price dropped, the purple pill that bankruped the insurace companies.

I kept telling my patients it didn't work and they kept insisting it did. Even one of my mentally disabled patients cried until he saw the pill and then grabbed it (he had severe reflux and was too physically fragile to risk surgery for it).

Oh yes: for reflux surgery may be making a comeback, since there is now a keyhole operation that doesn't require a huge hole in your side.

nothing here, folks, just move along

GetReligion notes that Pennsylvania grand juries just discovered that not only was the Bishop of Altoona corrupt, but the local Franciscans were corrupt, and even placed a known pedophile in the diocesan high school back then.

we lay folks knew the problem was there in the 1990's, but never mind.

And local corruption had a lot to do with it too.

full report on Scribd.

I'll place it on my boinkie blog where I post conspiracy stuff, musings, angry opinions that I might not believe when I calm down, and gossip that are not quite ready for prime time.

HughBradleyConradBlog has it right: this was not just a rogue bishop or even a just rogue church. It was a moral blindness by bishops who refused to punish the sinner because "who am I to judge", and it was enabled by corrupt politicians and judges.

There are many good people and good priests in the area who will be ashamed about all of this...they need our prayers and support.

but as a doctor, I know it is better to lance corruption than to let it spread to kill the body.

Important stories behind the headlines or non headlines

GetReligion reviews several news reports on American Muslims.

Trump and Muslims (and many voted for Bernie, even though he is Jewish)
except some are not Arab and some are not Muslim.and they don't seem to notice some are Shia and some are Sunni....

and this article discusses this survey of Muslim attitudes. Bookmarked for later reading.

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NotDeadYet points out the propaganda of those pushing death on demand...
no, not for intractable pain: more are because of "loss of dignity".

Moreover, as a person who has been disabled all of my life, I’ve learned that some of the health care that I’ve needed will not be covered by the available forms of insurance, because it won’t cure me and it “costs too much”, things that would have helped me maintain more physical function longer or reduced the help I needed from family. This is a common experience in the disability community.

coercion anyone? LINK



let's be cynical: follow the money.

And don't say it couldn't happen here: It is going on in Canada with nary a word said in warning.
MrsGayCaswell is very upset, but hey, she's a metis and knows how bad health care is for the "indigenous" in her area, and how eugenic sterilization was pushed on her community in the past...

Ironically, now that the IHS in the USA is staffed mainly with volunteers, and since much of the staff are Indian preference, that minority group probably will be safe, albeit given the fact that medical rationing and short staffing and lack of money for referrals are still major obstacles to good medical care in the IHS.

In referral hospitals, however, I worry. Lots of prejudice there. And one wonders if anyone worries about abuse in other minority communities: Do "black lives matter"? (which is why I tend to support Bernie: some medical care is better than none).

and of course, when the CDC wants docs to stop giving opiods to patients with chronic pain (so their druggie relatives don't steal it and die of an overdose), well, expect more requests from people whose pain could be relieved but isn't.

again, from the NYState report:

The presence of unrelieved pain also increases susceptibility to
suicide. The experience of pain is closely linked to physical disability,
depression, and feelings of hopelessness. Depression and anxiety in turn
often augment the patient's experience of pain

But the real danger is a pro death culture, a philosophy that sees the elderly or sick as using valuable health care money, with the idea that they (and the community) would be better if they would simply go away. This is why the British end of life pathway (a good idea), to ensure the dying were out of pain, quickly degenerated into stealth killing of those who were not terminally ill, and who can't or won't ask for it.

 or as Pope Francis said:

Speaking to the crowd in South America's poorest country, Francis decried the prevailing mentality of the world economy where so many people are "discarded" today — the poor, the elderly, those who are unproductive."It is a mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable," he said. "This way of thinking has room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are unproductive."

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Headlines below the fold

StrategyPage update on the Philippines. China is acting aggressive against one of our islands in the Spratlys. But never mind. Obama will just posture about it.

In January China very publicly opposed Filipino plans to a new Filipino air traffic control facility on Pagasa. In late February Chinese coast guard ships began showing up at nearby Jackson Atoll, which has long been used by Filipino fishermen from nearby Palawan (inhabited by 770,000 Filipinos and not claimed by China, at least not yet). Now China appears to be making preparations to build an artificial island at Jackson Atoll, install a small military garrison and declare the area part of China. Nearby Pagasa is the second-largest (37.2 hectares/93 acres) of the Spratly Islands and is inhabited by 200 Filipinos civilians and a few military personnel. China has been increasingly belligerent in its claims to Pagasa and threatens to “take it back” by force. 

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related item:China points to Trump to instruct their people on the dangers of democracy...
and they are aghast he plans to build a wall (duh).

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related item: Mom Jones is happy that China's greenhouse emissions might have peaked.
but what is behind the drop? In the past, changing the way to grow rice from the "natural" methane releasing flooding method to "dry" farming helped lower the greenhouse gases produced by China.

But this time it is the economic downturn that is cutting factory jobs.

Yeah, nothing like a recession to stop the factories from spewing greenhouse gasses.

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According to Drudge, "students" who are professional agitators and don't need to work at a regular job and get their hands dirty, and organizations funded by millionaires closely associated with President Obama, who are making expensive plans to make huge demonstrations against cheeky millionaires running for president.

President Obama: "We can have political debates without turning on one another. We can disagree without assuming that it's motivated by malice." Watch complete video here: http://cs.pn/22hDwgv

I don't know: the demonstrators' rhetoric is pretty hateful on twitter.

Trump's minions are repeatedly blamed for violence, but is it violence or push back against aggression? The poster child for Trumpette violence is a 78 year old ex Korean war veteran who was upset at obscentities sprouted at him and those with him and spontaneously hit back for being disrepectful.

of course, it's 1968 redux...which gave us a lot of violence and resulted in Nixon being elected.

And yes these groups will use the internet to arrange things, but the bad news is that, unlike 1968, the internet will let the rest of us know the story that is not covered on the MSM...

the way I see it, the most dangerous man in America is not Trump but Drudge...
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Youtube lecture of the day: You know what happened to the Titanic, but do you know the story of the Brittanic?



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for 250 years, StPatrick's day was a celebration that Irish Catholics in the US were allowed to follow their religion (at a time when Catholics in Ireland couldn't hear mass or vote etc).

 Why is it such a big celebration in American communities? One reason is that the freedom of democratic life is such a great experience that people simply cannot be kept from celebrating it. The Irish have had to struggle so long and hard for their freedom that they take a special delight in celebrating the religious liberty and free association that they have enjoyed in America.

Well, no longer. The parades are "inclusive" and must includ groups who openly disdain Catholic beliefs. Essentially, if you hold Catholic beliefs you are now considered a bigot.

so much for "religious liberty and free association".

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the Arabs arrest spying Israeli vultures.

But in London, the pigeons actually do spy on you:

For later reading

how to encrypt your cellphone/tablet

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diabetes in Native American populations.

Yeah. A major problem. we did a lot of dietary and preventive medicine outreach for our people.

One problem for our elders was being chased by beears if they jogged so several tribes opened gyms for the elders...