A true Democrat to the bitter end

Amy Chozick is a WSJ reporter who was assigned to the Clinton campaign--from the time when the press traveled in luxury accomodations and ate from beautifully prepared party trays, down to the end when they took over the men's restroom as the media room and ate plastic wrapped sandwiches. But I thought her final paragraph on the fate of Hillary's staffers was quite telling.

"Shortly before the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, one (Clinton staffer) told me he hoped he would get fired so he could collect unemployment."

This is a no brainer

"Chris Korleski, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will kick off the summer Stone Laboratory Guest Lecture Series on Thursday (6/12) with “Global Warming: Science or Religion." All lectures are from 7:45-9 p.m. at Stone Lab, located at Gibraltar Island in Lake Erie. Members of the public are welcome and can take the Put-in-Bay water taxi from the Boardwalk Restaurant dock at 7:15 p.m. before each lecture. A short tour of Gibraltar Island will be provided."

It's a religion. Pantheism. The modern feminist movement oozed out of the mists of the past along with Earth Day almost 40 years ago. It was a happy marriage of every crazy and off beat pagan religion from Europe's past, including the ones that contributed their rituals to the church observances. Western Europe was already bored with Christianity, and Americans followed suite. Feminists have so infected Christian seminaries, the few males left are so weak and brainwashed, you can hardly find a male pronoun in the liturgy, and God forbid anyone should say God the Father and God the Son.

However, there is so much money invested in this new-but-old religion, with Al Gore at the top of the inconvenient truth heap, and the folks in Europe who control the carbon exchanges, for even those who know it's a scam to ever back down. Every weather blip up or down, dry or wet, windy or calm, is being blamed on global warming. Christians who've entertained themselves with The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter, who think nothing of relaxing hour after hour with mindless or violent TV (it isn't called American idol for nothing), who were taught in school that the Bible is full of contradictions, that all religions are pretty much alike and "it's just your interpretation," well, they're in no condition to even recognize a religion when one marches into the living room, changes the light bulbs and demands obedience and obeisance.

New Notebook Time

When we were having coffee yesterday, AZ asked me about my new pink notebook. I wasn't finished with the brown Cafe Latte one--it had maybe 4-5 blank pages and usually I go right to the end and around the corner and onto the back cover, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded to start a new month with a new notebook. I got this cheerful, happy notebook at Barnes and Noble for $4.95--the paper is pink and narrow lined, very unusual for a notebook this size. Here's what I didn't blog about in May.

1. Girls' disadvantage in career choices because they skip physics in high school.
2. How to improve the Columbus schools (based on a Columbus school teacher's opinion).
3. Virginia's response to 6 tornadoes.
4. Five hot business books authored by big idea people. None by women.
5. Boston Legal on Save our Shows list. Only conservative character on the show has dementia. Maybe they should write to a larger audience?
6. Where the 2001 rebates went: 64.1% went to the movies!
7. It costs $9 a pack to smoke legally in NYC.
8. Experienced crew manager at McDonald's list of benefits includes a car and paid education. Can add $100,000 to annual sales if good.
9. Only 10% of America's multi-millionaires inherited their wealth.
10. The model in the Aetna full page ad looks like she could die next week of an eating disorder.
11. Turkey chickpea chili--on the menu at Panera's. Yuk.
12. The problems of biking to work.
13. Gov't subsidized housing in Columbus.
14. Everything I learned I got in Vacation Bible School.
15. L. Gordon Cravitz on web 2.0
16. Those who identifiy themselves as conservative are more likely to be happy, to attend worship, to marry and have children.
17. "Kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic distracting on line world at the expense of more enriching activities--like opening a book or writing a complete sentence." David Robinson.
18. Prescription drug use (not misuse) grows and the media sees this as a cause to worry.
19. Car pooling and bus ridership up in Columbus.
20. Bad advice from Dear Abby on who should learn to cook.
21. "Keep the immigrants; deport the multiculturalists."
22. Al-John McGore. It's really tough to support McCain.
23. Testosterone in the news (list of all the brief newsstories, usually in the Metro section) about men stabbing, shooting, looting, drinking, snorting and driving into or over each other. Includes occasional pedophile teacher.
24. Why conservatives don't like McCain. He's not conservative.
25. Picture a little boy in a row boat going out to sea to charge a naval fleet with a Soro's logo on his briefs.
26. Brian McLaren and the emergent church.
27. Signs of human life on Mars; they can't find it in the womb so they go into space.
28. Seen at the coffee shop. Men in expensive suits; women in anything they pull on in the morning. Could there be a glass ceiling in the closet? It's pathetic that a retired librarian is dressed better than 50% of the women going off to work.
29. WSJ, which has always had mostly liberal news stories, is now cluttering the opinion page with liberal columnists.
30. 45% of women 25-34 have college degrees compared to 36% of the men.

The oil shortage

I filled up this morning for $3.89 a gallon, and locally, that's about the best you can do (Speedway Mill Run). Then I opened my e-mail, and Murray, a friend from high school, explained it to me. There are actually three people from my high school (the town no longer has a high school) who have huge e-mail routes--they probably have more readers than I do!

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there's a very simple answer.

Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical.
~~~
Our OIL is located in

ALASKA
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal Florida
~~~
Coastal Louisiana
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
~~~
and Texas
~~~
Our DIPSTICKS are located in Washington, DC!

It's not brain surgery

why Ted Kennedy didn't go to Canada or Cuba to have his tumor removed--or even to a Boston hospital or a European hospital. No, he went to Dr. Allan Friedman at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. In 2000 and 2004 NC was solidly behind Bush; the Democrats are working hard to get her into the caretaker mindset right now. I don't know why Dr. Friedman is at Duke and not at some famous northeastern hospital in a Democratic state, or even Chicago where he was born and went to medical school, but let me guess; lower real estate taxes, lower state income taxes, lower luxury housing costs, lower crime rates, stronger ethical and moral values among the populace and the ability to lure the best talent there to assist him, despite the liberal administration and faculty at Duke. And who knows, there might even be some evil capitalist money (tobacco?) funding that tumor center. The 3.5 hour surgery has been declared a success and it will be followed up by chemo and radiation, which will probably be done closer to home.

The irony is that under socialized medicine only a wealthy government official, son and grandson of inherited, ill-gotten wealth would be able to afford such care. Even at the height of the power of Stalin and Mao, the party officials always had the best.* But more importantly, with socialized medicine, a doctor of Friedman's skill and talent, wouldn't even have been trained in the United States.

Democrats want their families to benefit from our health system (and "system" is not a good word for it), but they don't want you and me to have those benefits. They want us to wait in line for our turn, to have our health needs decided by a committee, and then be assigned to whatever hospital needs the work whether they've done 10 surgeries or 1000. It would make no difference if you elect Binky Obama or Hillary Rottie Clinton, all competition and excellence must be eradicated; everything must be dumbed down to be fair to the newest, non-citizen who doesn't speak English and the homeless guy who couldn't give up the bottle, and the exotic dancer who cried rape. Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger have already explained to you that if you're white you're a piece of trash. And let's hope that the equipment that will save your life doesn't have a petroleum base because then. . . well, sorry, that's been capped along with your life span by Lieberman-Warner.

*One of the ways I put food on the table as a grad student was translating a Russian medical newspaper, Medisinskii Rabotnik. The ordinary folks got a fel'dsher, usually female and poorly trained, not a doctor.

4916 The Hope and Change theme

Barack Obama certainly isn't the first politician to take a biblical theme and run on/with it, and he won't be the last. The Bible is full of great truths, ideas, stories, parables, miracles and romances which have been used by capitalists and kings, socialists and school teachers, writers, artists, poets, and musicians, slaves and slavers, and even Marxists and fascists over the centuries. But there is one basic truth from Genesis to the Revelation, and it's all about the HOPE.

Christianity is an Easter religion. Easter celebrates HOPE, and in order to participate in this HOPE, the individual needs to change. In the New Testament, the word HOPE refers to the future, not only the HOPE of everlasting life, but the HOPE of resurrection from the dead, the HOPE of a new body like the body of Jesus, the HOPE of being in heaven forever with the Lord. Lots of religions have references to an afterlife, but in the Christian faith, the human body is so important to God because of his intentions at the Creation, He continues to use it even after death on this planet and realm. After all political boundaries and even the earth itself have passed away, we still have this HOPE. This HOPE written about in the New Testament doesn't depend on a nebulous, vague speech of a Chicago pol scrolling across a teleprompter, but a real solid foundation of fact. Our HOPE of a heaven where we dwell with God in a physical body rests upon what happened here on earth in the person of the Lord Jesus. His resurrection is the assurance of our resurrection. Obama can't take that away from us and refashion it into a social justice, namby-pamby temporary band-aid, the hope of a different job, or a housing project that will be torn down in 25 years. It's not the change in a McCain or Gore carbon cap or exchange running after green votes which is going to diminish your life style. No, this is real change--the change that the Holy Spirit will make in the believer, grounded in the HOPE.

Comparing Hospitals

Here's a handy website you might want to browse.

"The Hospital Compare website was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), along with the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). The HQA is a public-private collaboration established to promote reporting on hospital quality of care. The HQA consists of organizations that represent consumers, hospitals, doctors and nurses, employers, accrediting organizations, and Federal agencies. The information on this website can be used by any adult needing hospital care."

You can search by your city or zip code--I used zip and then indicated the number of miles. Seven hospitals are within 10 miles, so I compared Riverside and Ohio State. In almost every category Riverside was rated higher than OSU, and also had more patients. Where it wasn't higher they were the same. I haven't figured out all the features yet. OSU had no information for patient ratings of care, so those couldn't be compared, but they weren't particularly ecstatic for Riverside. Maybe patients are just grumpy when they don't feel good? Also, I seemed to lose my place when I'd click on an explanation and had to start all over which was frustrating.

Since we spend so much time at Lake Erie, maybe I'd better take a look at Port Clinton and Sandusky.

Hand Hygiene

A gift basket? I know that these days you need to award employees for using a tissue to sneeze, but this award sounds a bit over the top to me.

"Congratulations to Taleatha Poole of Medical Information Management who won a gift basket in the May 22 Nutrition Services Hand Hygiene event prize drawing." OSU Medical Center This Week

Why isn't hand hygiene expected and enforced in Nutrition Services as a requirement of keeping the job? When I started my first professional position I needed some on the job supervision and training from my department head. Why is less expected in a medical center?

When religion throws the dice

DICE, is an acronym for Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy, and the fundy environmentalists are tossing them. Your required tithe will be in the trillions; your lifestyle will be your sacrifice; and you'll need to give up what other social causes you believe in.

"Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground [in their eyes], and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the be-lief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard." The Question of Global Warming

For a returning soldier

Chip, a father of 4, is finally home. I've never met him, but his parents are members of our church (he was raised in the Lutheran homeland--Minnesota). We've been praying for his safety and his family since we met his parents, and read his Christmas letter. He's a man of great faith trusting God in extremely difficult circumstances.

This week our congregation has been reading the book of Acts, and I noticed a number of references to soldiers and centurions. I'm not much of a Bible scholar, but I did wonder about what studies have been done on their influence in spreading the Gospel during the first century of the church. Then yesterday, while looking for a different book (and knocking some items on the floor because I sometimes stack books behind books if they don't have attractive covers), I found an International Sunday School Lesson book from 1944 which I think I bought at a yard sale for a quarter about 10 years ago. If you can find them, these books are packed with study outlines, bibliographies, lesson plans, illustrations and color maps. No wimp-out, touchy-feely, "let's get acquainted" questions in this book!

In 1943, when the editors were preparing this volume, the United States was in the middle of a terrible war, thousands of our soldiers were dying daily, millions of Europeans were already dead. I was living in a tiny Illinois town of about 2800, and its "War Record of Mount Morris" has about 500 biographies of the men and women who served. Every family in 1943 was affected. These days we like to laud the WWII veterans who are dying of old age (and I think there's only one WWI vet still living), and keep quiet about what our men and women are accomplishing in Iraq. I personally believe the unpopular war president George Bush will be vindicated--it may take 50 years--and will be seen as the great liberator of this century. We ignored the signs of fascism in the 1930s--both our liberals and conservatives were reluctant to dabble in someone else's problems. Then we compounded the error by cuddling with the Communists after victory in Europe, sending many more millions to camps and death. We thought Europe and Asia could go up in flames or go to prison camps and we'd just sit it out. Our 20th century legacy of our leaders' myopia and deceit is being continued in today's political campaign.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 1944 book. In the introduction the editor writes:

"Inasmuch as we are in the midst of the world's most gigantic military conflict, and the minds of people are so much upon war, some of our readers might be interested in taking up a series of studies in young people's meetings, or in prayer meetings, or in private classes in homes, apart from the International Sunday School Lessons, in Biblical themes that have more or less relation to the subject of war. We here suggest two such series, one a study of the centurions and soldiers of the New Testament [the other was OT battles]. They will be found in eighteen different groups, nine in the Gospels, and nine in the Book of Acts. A fascinating book could be written just about the soldiers of the New Testament.
1. The centurion whose servant Jesus healed of the palsy (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10)
2. The soldiers of the governor who mocked and smote Jesus--between his trial and crucifixion (Mat. 27:27-32; Mark 15:16-23; John 19:2)
3. The soldiers who mocked Jesus at the cross (Luke 23:36,37)
4. The soldiers who parted Christ's raiment at the foot of the cross (John 19:23,24)
5. The soldiers who broke the legs of the 2 criminals crucified on either side of Christ (John 19:32)
6. The soldier who thrust a spear into the side of Christ (John 19:34)
7. The centurion at the cross who confessed that Jesus was the Son of God (Matt.27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47)
8. The centurion who reported to Pilate that Jesus was dead (Mark 15:44,45)
9. The soldiers who were set to guard the tomb wherein the body of Jesus lay (Matt. 27:65, 66; 28:11-15)
10. Cornelius, centurion of the Italian band, to whom Peter preached (Acts 10)
11. The "devout soldier" who was sent by Cornelius to bring Peter (Acts 10:7,8)
12. The 4 quarternions of soldiers to whom Peter was delivered for safekeeping, and between two of whom Peter was sleeping (Acts 12:4-18)
13. The soldiers and centurions whom the chief captain used to deliver Paul from the mob in Jerusalem (Acts 21:32-35)
14. The centurion to whom Paul declared he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25,26)
15. The centurion to whom Paul asked permission to see his sister's son (Acts 23:17)
16. The soldiers who accompanied Paul to Caesarea (Acts 23:23-35)
17. Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band, to whom Paul was committed when he was sent to Rome (Acts 27:1,6,11,31,43; 28:16)
18. The soldiers who were on the ship on which Paul was carried to Rome (Acts 27:31, 32, 42)"

Only the introduction mentions the war that was on everyone's mind, an introduction which included five annotated bibliographies containing about 80 titles, many multi-volume, for the teacher to consult! Many people never read an introduction, preface or footnote (librarians love the secondary and tertiary stuff), so I suspect this was a concession to some heated arguments in the back room when deciding what was to go into this book.

The editors appeared to have no doubts about who would be the victor, although I don't think my mother, aunts and grandmothers, with ear to the radio and eye on the headlines, waiting for the mailman (my own father plus numerous uncles and cousins were in the service) were quite so confident.

"When the war is over, evangelical Christianity will enter upon the greatest struggle it has known since the days of Constantine in the defense of its great cardinal truths. All of this great and important and sober work will not be done by ministers or theological professors, but much of it by the thousands and thousands of faithful Sunday school teachers throughout our land. Let us prayerfully, carefully, with all the mind and heart we have, prepare ourselves now for this great struggle in the expectation of glorious victory in the ultimate triumph of the truth of God."

Certainly a word for the 21st century. And even they couldn't have imagined it would be our home-grown, gold plated idols (celebrities), our wealth (mind numbing consumerism), our gendered temples (desecration of God's plan for man and woman), our university faculties and our own elected leaders we'd need to fear. Or did they?

Children 100 years ago

sound very similar to 60 years ago, or 30 years ago, for that matter, the last time I had experience with the 9-12 age range. This is taken from "Hurlbut's Teacher-Training Lessons for the Sunday School" (1908) by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, and is a revision of his 1885 leaflets, and was authorized by the International Sunday School Association. The training of Sunday School teachers, he writes in the Preface, was an outgrowth of the Chautauqua Movement, which began in 1874, although there were teachers' guides before that. Sunday schools, not the government, provided the first form of public education in the United States.

These notes are taken from Chapter 42, "The Junior Pupils."

At the age of 8 or 9 a change comes gradually over the child's nature; and a new stage in its history begins. [In Sunday Schools this was called the Junior period.] It lasts about 4 years, from 9 to 12 or 13, and both entering and leaving it, the girls are about a year ahead of the boys in maturity.

Physical Traits--slower growth in the size of body and brain
strong development in strength and firmness of texture
great increase in physical activity--need games and sports
tendency to take risks--especially boys

Mental traits--Curiosity, interest in facts, little interest in abstract
good time for history, biography, adventure
Memory--strong, more accurate, more retentive than at any other period, if they don't memorize now, it will become much more difficult later
Arrangement of Knowledge--learning sequence of events, locality, facts
Love of reading--world of books is opening, reading more rapidly
Acquisitiveness--gathering and hoarding all sorts of things

Social traits--boys and girls no longer want to play together; boys with boys, girls with girls
Friendships--need for a special, constant companion--they never tire of each other
Club-spirit--girls form societies; boys form clubs or gangs; loyalty must be maintained at the sacrifice of truth and morality

Moral traits--sees more strongly the difference between right and wrong, even if they don't follow it in conduct
Sense of Justice--demand "fair play," perceive wrongs and resent them;

Religious traits--admiration for the heroic and noble, usually not doctrinal or emotional
willingness to work for Christ and the church--they have the time and energy, so put them to work--they love accomplishment.

The author suggests same-sex classes of about six, not more than eight, and that the teachers should be different than the ones they had in the primary grades. The author suggests emphasis on history and facts, not theology, but the list to be included was certainly impressive for 30 minutes a week! He suggests avoiding pathetic or suffering pictures, even pictures of Christ. Don't look for emotion or radical transformation, but one might expect a "decision for Christ," between 10 and 12.

This book belonged to my grandparents, who both taught Sunday School many years, and attended special, residential training classes at Bethany Seminary in Chicago. The cover is missing and it has been hand stitched to hold it together, with the back cover from a different source. My children were grown before I inherited this book--I could have saved myself a lot of time and expense if I'd used this instead of some of the trendy, psycho-babble stuff available in the 1970s and 1980s.

4909 Cashing in on Green

The new Global Warming-Environmentalist religion has many altars where you can stop to open your wallet and pick out some cash.

Workshops

Surveys

Awards

Even "awareness" and "effort" will get you some points. It works for any profession, but here's one I noticed suitable for city managers in Indiana.

"The program has been designed to be general and applicable to communities of ALL sizes. Since IACT may oppose the basis of current (or future) regulatory compliance programs, such as certain elements related to CSO requirements, the survey and awards program DO NOT address environmental compliance issues; rather, they address those programs that go above and beyond regulatory compliance and permits from a municipal program and project perspective. Since legal and policy challenges may be rooted in what IACT feels to be legitimate opposition or disagreement, this program IS NOT CONCERNED with whether or not a community's NPDES permit, air quality compliance, or other regulatory program is up-to-date, in court, under negotiation, etc.

"Quality of Life" is often considered as a criterion for green programs. Quality of life, by itself, is not specifically surveyed here. For the purposes of this survey, it is assumed that a "better" quality of life would result from the green programs discussed.

Ideas, success stories, and cost savings that this program identifies will be redistributed as the program continues in future years."

My new pink jeans

Actually, I sort of look like a large Easter egg. I bought them at the Discovery Shop (Cancer resale), Talbot's, and they looked like they'd never been worn or washed. Maybe some other old lady had second thoughts after she got home. But $4. For that I could garden in them. If I didn't have a brown thumb. So I googled "pink jeans" to see what would go with them, and found this really neat site. Now I know what goes with what, if I were 30.

About 10 years ago I decided I was too old for jeans--I think I got my first pair around 1949, maybe for camp. In those days, jeans zipped on the side and you folded up the cufff. And you never, never wore jeans to school. But lately I've been picking them up again. Now I have dark brown, black, mint green, olive green, moss green, khaki, red, pink and several shades of blue--2 are from the 80s so they have that nice faded look and soft feel. I've chunked out a bit since Ireland in September, so 3 pair are too tight to wear comfortably.

But pink. I thought I'd take them to Lakeside. I'd slip out of the house at dawn, walk along the lakefront about 5:30 a.m., then go to the coffee shop around 6, hurry back to the cottage by 7, and maybe no one would notice the 2-legged Easter egg frightening the squirrels and cats, walking down the street.

Lakeside at dawn, Kelly's Island in the distance

4907 Otis Moss, Obama's new pastor

I blogged about him last summer because he was pastor of the week at Lakeside. I attended one of his Bible studies, and although he slipped in a little social justice where it didn't fit the story, he was an excellent speaker and all the old folks at home liked him. Quite young. I believe he was from Cleveland. I remember one friend commenting that if that was what Obama was hearing on Sunday, he couldn't go too far wrong.

Don't be confused by the photo--that's Mike Albert, the Big-E.

Listening to Obama, variation on a theme

Oil prices continue to rise
it should be no great surprise
next they'll raise our taxes
If we elect Presidents Obam-es.

Don't you dare question them
you're only being dense and dim
he's been made messianic
by his handlers in a panic.

Move On's the group who's in control
George Soros too is on a roll
with flubs, flips and gaps
gaffes, waffles and flaps.

No wisdom makes it past his lips
he's made more than his share of slips
how'd he ever get through college
with such a lack of basic knowledge.

Preachers who scream and shout
from his pulpit in a pout,
Roman Catholic or UCC
is this what passes as loyalty?

They took to task poor Dan Quayle
over potatoe they did wail
but mix-ups over world war two
we're not supposed to notice and rue.

Prevarication or just lies
no matter which the flag he flies
no matter what today's faux pas
We've got his Highness Obama.

Magpies and Blackbirds

One of the more interesting (and gross) reference questions I answered when I was the librarian in the Veterinary Medicine Library, was about whether the diseases of blackbirds would be made harmless if they were baked in a pie.* I kid you not. The phone call was from a chef in New York who had entered a contest, and he wanted to bake 12 and 20 blackbirds. (Can't imagine trying to pluck the feathers, but maybe his assistants did that.) When I asked where he was going to get them, he told me he planned to shoot them. So when I saw the Magpie Trial report, I thought just maybe it was about birds. It wasn't. The Magpie Trial was a large international trial to evaluate the effects of magnesium sulphate compared to placebo when given to women with pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for women and children and accounts for 10% of maternal deaths, and is also associated with increased perinatal mortality. This is important research for poor countries. So I suppose the name of the trial comes from MAG and Pre eclampsia. Clever names these trial folks use. My theory is there is a committee somewhere who comes up with these names.

Anyway. In this trial and the follow-up it was proven that magnesium sulphate for women with pre-eclampsia halves the risk of progression to eclampsia with positive results for longer-term outcome for both the mother and child. However, it is quite expensive, depending on the country where the mother is treated. During a conference, some interesting tales came out on the follow-up of these patients when collaborators from 19 countries met. I thought this one was good--it took place in Karachi, Pakistan:

My assistant tried to contact one family. We wrote several letters but did not get any reply. One fine day a lady telephoned my office asking which baby and mother I wanted to examine. According to her, in her house there were only grown up people. Nobody had had a baby recently. The youngest child was fourteen years old. She said her mother was really upset. We went into the details, and traced the husband. He was at work and we found out that this husband had two wives. The second wife had delivered in our hospital and was recruited into the Magpie Trial. The first wife had no idea of this second marriage. The husband had given the address where he lived with his first wife. The husband asked us not to mention this to the first wife, otherwise there would be a big upheaval. So this lady was followed up by phone only, and through her husband. Interesting revelations took place during the follow up study of the Magpie Trial! By the way a man is allowed to have two wives at the same time by Muslim tradition, but according to Muslim law he has to have permission from the first wife to marry the second time.

*As I recall, I had to check with our poultry disease expert who concluded any bacteria would have been killed by the heat. Not sure about the gun-shot residue.

Asia's new threat

Is it an increase in cancer, or is it the social justice crowd looking for a cause. This looks a bit odd to me.

"Asia is on the cusp of a cancer epidemic of unprecedented proportions. Projections suggest that the number of new cases of cancer in Asia will increase from 4·5 million in 2002 to 7·1 million by 2020 if existing prevention and management strategies remain unchanged." Lancet Asia Medical Forum 2007 [may require registration]

Is there really more cancer, or is there just better screening, diagnosis, and treatment, like the breast cancer scare tactics (the increase is really better screening which finds lumps earlier)? OK, here it is. We knew this was coming, despite the unproven connection between industrialization and cancers (unless you count factory-made cigarettes, commercially prepared, high calorie foods, and plants which produce alcoholic beverages).

"The rapid rate of economic development in some Asian countries, along with the accompanying industrialisation and urbanisation, are contributing to an ever-increasing risk of common cancers."

Does this sound like a reason for rich western environmentalists to discourage development in Third World countries? God forbid that any country would ever aspire to the standard of living of a Norway or Germany.

Kill the children, save the trade of Silent Spring

That's what environmentalists in rich western nations do. Here's an article from a 2007 Lancet.

In September, 2006, WHO recommended wider use of indoor spraying with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)—once banned because of its toxic effects on the environment—and other insecticides to control malaria. Since then, a number of African countries have made their old foe DDT their new friend. Malawi is the latest, announcing last week that it would be introducing indoor residual spraying with DDT in its fight against malaria.

So what's the problem? While we wait for science and technology to find a cheap, effective vaccine or drug, why can't the lives of African children be saved? Agricultural products will be banned. That's how powerful the environmentalists are. Maybe one of the children saved might have grown up to find the answers. Very short sighted, these liberals.

Agricultural exporters in some African countries have already raised concerns. They claim that their produce will be banned from the EU if DDT is used for indoor residual spraying. It would be devastating if the health and economic gains of controlling malaria were offset by a deleterious effect on countries' economies. But fears of a ban appear to be unjustified. Last year, the EU said it would not automatically ban imports from countries if DDT is found to exceed tolerated levels. They will, however, stop consignments containing residues above their maximum limits, which are around five to ten times lower than for countries such as the USA and Japan. EU policy may need a rethink if food imports from countries using DDT for indoor residual spraying are turned away for levels of the insecticide that are not considered harmful by other countries. The global community should ensure that DDT poisons only malarial mosquitoes and not Africa's economy.Lancet, 2007; 369:248

I suppose this is one way to keep Africa from competing for energy resources--just kill them off or make them so weak they can't do anything but fight each other. Rachel Carson's legacy.

The empty suit

Who knew someday those boring Soviet history classes I had in college would come in handy.

Obama’s an empty suit
that needs some filling
so with the workers
he can just be chilling.

Obama rama dama
Obimbi bama doe
Orama dimbi bobalu
Odimme, dama do

Could be the Daily Kos
who’s the shots a calling,
Wright or King Daley's
Chicago speechifying.

Obama rama dama
Obimbi bama doe
Orama dimbi bobalu
Odimme, dama do

Soros and Move-On
with CEOs are smoozing
Wapo and the Times
his many gaffes explaining.

Obama rama dama
Obimbi bama doe
Orama dimbi bobalu
Odimme, dama do

Be on your Red guard
the circle is now squaring.
Hope and Change an empty suit
with hot air now expanding.

Obama rama dama
Obimbi bama doe
Orama dimbi bobalu
Odimme, dama do.

A slow awakening

When he was a resident in the early 60s, Watson Bowie, Jr. performed occasional abortions to save the life of the mother. Then came the Ruebella Epidemic of 1964, and the belief that the babies were better off dead than deformed or retarded, so he aborted many, which he regrets now.

"By 1969, when I finished my two-year tour of duty in the Army Medical Corps, I had arrived at a firm pro-life, anti-abortion position. It was not a sudden epiphany or bolt-out-of-the-blue experience. It was a slow, creeping, incessantly rational awakening to the awareness that should have been crystal clear to me from the first: there is something inherently wrong with killing a human being to solve the problem of another human being.

It is a great sorrow to me that the sub-specialty of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, in which I am board certified, testing (blood and amniotic fluid tests and ultrasound examinations) in pursuit of finding fetuses with congenital abnormalities so that they can be killed before they are born. As physicians who allegedly care simultaneously for two patients, a woman and her unborn child, it is a tragedy that we often accomplish the task by deliberately killing one patient to serve the other.

How has my Christian faith related to my pro-life position? It is enough to say that I believe that the unborn, in the state of complete innocence, defenselessness, and vulnerability, are among "the least of these," who should be subjects of our care and concern, according to the admonishment of our Lord (Matthew 25:40). This should have always been clear to me, though I was blind to it when I first performed abortions."

From the June issue of Lifewatch, published by pro-life United Methodists (the denomination’s official view is still pro-choice).