A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
No US paper has yet to report the story. Why am I not surprised?
Illicit drug use among baby boomers is on the rise, as are long-term health concerns
“…physiology slows down as you age, so the stuff processed out of your body faster when you were younger won’t be processed out so quickly when you are older.’’That means that marijuana and abused prescription drugs may be lingering longer in people who are now also likely to be regularly ingesting prescribed medications, such as cholesterol-lowering medicine or pills to tackle high blood pressure. That could result in harmful interactions and side effects. It also means that unsuspecting physicians may, for instance, misdiagnose symptoms of memory loss caused by chronic marijuana use as memory impairments caused by the onset of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease….
Philadelphia fleabane
Al Jazeera English – Europe – France denies citizenship over veil
On Tuesday, Eric Besson, the immigration minister, said that during checks into the man’s application, he had explicitly stated that he would never allow his wife to leave the house without wearing a full veil and that he believed a woman is “an inferior being”.
This ought to be good for some extremist threats!
Winter Olympics on slippery slope after Vancouver crackdown on homeless | World news | guardian.co.uk
The anxiety stems from a recent provincial government law empowering the police to force rough sleepers into shelters in extreme weather, a move which homeless groups appear to view as an Orwellian effort at civic image control. Police officers have been told to use only “non-forceful touching” in implementing the Assistance to Shelter Act, but that has not stopped critics calling it the Olympic Kidnapping Act.
Hey, it worked for China.
The Tax Court has finally issued a long-awaited opinion in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner. The majority concluded that O’Donnabhain’s hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery constituted deductible medical expenses… Sex Reassignment
Surgery Is Tax Deductible « Feminist Law Professors
Lancet Renounces Study Linking Autism And Vaccines – Shots – Health News Blog : NPR
It took 12 years, but the medical journal the Lancet has retracted once and for all a controversial paper that drew a link between vaccines and autism and helped fuel a backlash against immunization of children.
But now there are so many angry people involved, with so little scientific education and so much face to lose, that it will be a miracle if the evil genii can be put back in the bottle.
Adam’s Family Jewels < Killing the Buddha
We already know that the authors of the Bible are hardly trustworthy in matters of biology. Leviticus, after all, attributes only four, not six, legs to insects and appears to classify bats as birds. But … scripture isn’t nearly as chaste as we’re normally led to believe.
More women dying from pregnancy complications; state holds on to report | California Watch
The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade, prompting doctors to worry about the dangers of obesity in expectant mothers and about medical complications of cesarean sections.
When they say it’s not about the money (C-sections bring in about twice as much as vaginal births), you can bet it’s about the money.
One of the worst things about living in South Florida is working in South Florida in the Winter. We won’t get into the traffic, or the snowbirds, or the vicissitudes and woes of any particular job — though, bog knows, I certainly could. What I mean is the weather.
I’ve lived in Florida all my life, for practical purposes. I love the state. No doubt I will die here, with a bunch of other old farts, and the worms won’t care that I’m a native and they’re transplants. (Well, they might, since I plan on a natural burial, but let’s not go there right now, please.) I’m perfectly willing to admit my state’s faults — many of them imported — including the weather, which tends toward hot, humid, infested with biting bugs, lightning, high winds and torrential downpours.
The “bad” weather is actually a good thing, since Florida sits at a latitude that includes practically all of the Northern Hemisphere’s major deserts, and would doubtless be one itself were it not for having the warm water on both sides that enables our wet season. But I digress…
The bad part about being employed in the Winter is that — on perhaps two to three dozen Winter days — this part of Florida has, without question, the most wonderful weather in the world.
It’s that kind of day today. The temperature is about 64 degrees, there isn’t a cloud in the sky, we have a 3-4 m.p.h. breeze to keep things comfortable if you are in direct sun, and no sign of a change all day, except for the possibility of a sizzling 75 later in the afternoon. That sucks. Because your humble servant is surrounded by windows and has to look out at it, but is stuck indoors with no prospect of freedom until too late in the day to make it to the woods.
With luck, we’ll have another frontal passage on Friday, and another beautiful, crisp day on Saturday. I want to take my granddaughter on her first birding expedition. In the meantime, I’ll just suffer.
If you’re outdoors today, have a little joy on my tab.
You’re welcome.
Ann, at Forest Street Kitchen, is one of the most literate and thoughtful bloggers that I read. Today she tackles a tough question for a liberal: is therapy to re-orient gays into the straight life justified, if that person is religious and truly believes that his or her homosexuality is a sin?
I had a knee-jerk reaction to it, but after reading Annie’s essay…
“I swear 100% of the following facts with my 6 year-old daughter are the
unembellished truth.”
Happy Groundhog Day,
kids – Suburban Diva
Over the weekend, a momentous game of chicken took place in the book industry. As the dust clears, it looks like the world will be a much less friendly place for Amazon.com’s e-reader device, the Kindle.
“One of their lawyers said they were being treated poorly: “There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing.” More…
Awwwww…
For the information of anyone using Google Apps, Gmail and Calendar in an outdated browser:
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
Tell The NFL “Who Dat” Belongs To The People, Not The Saints!
http://ow.ly/12kHk
TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.
China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.
Reminds me of the story about the fellow leaning on his shovel in the shade, saying, “One of these days I’m gonna run this company!” How long before we’re holding our place in the world by force instead of by offering it something worthwhile? Oh, wait…
“I don’t know how many times I’ve said I wished I had my father’s brains. I’m just glad I never mentioned that out loud at the funeral home. …”
