Uncategorizable
j7uy5 | November 2, 2009A reader sent me a link about a scam that targets MD offices. It
is a retread of
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/01/me-and-tom-delay-in-my-last-article-i.html">a
scam that I wrote about in 2004, wherein I mention that I was
targeted for this scam. The new version of the scam was noted
first in Slate: The GOP's
Fake Doctor Council. Then Political Animal picked it up:
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019905.php">Old
DeLay Scam Makes A Comeback. Later, Free Range Talk wrote
about it, summarizing the two earlier posts as well. So if…
sciencewoman | September 22, 2009This afternoon, as I was busy working with graduate students and my daughter was napping at daycare, an email from AGU reminded me to renew my membership for next year. AGU is one of my two main societies and early renewal gives you a discount on electronic access to their articles, so I dutifully headed over to their site to pay up. Like all good organizations, before they'd let me pay their dues, AGU wanted to know if I would give a gift to one fund or another. Maybe I was feeling in a generous mood because I'd just come off good meetings with my grads, but I decided to browse the list of…
j7uy5 | June 27, 2009OK, folks, explain this to me.
It is a bicycle. Bicycles are cool. But from the
looks of this thing, it seems as though it would be like riding an
anvil around town. Sure, it'd be great if you got hit by a
Hummer. The bike would be fine.
style="display: inline;">
There are
href="http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6712/michael-ubbesen-jakobsen-baubike.html">more
photos at designbloom, and
href="http://www.yatzer.com/1741_baubike_by_michael_ubbesen_jakobsen">Yatzer.
One person
href="http://www.thisnext.com/item/023FBE0D/09F57E93/The-Bau-Bike-A-Stunning-Two">…
sciencewoman | June 18, 2009Have you ever bought an album and discovered a song so dark, so sad that it makes you physically uncomfortable to listen to it? What do you do then? Can you stand to hear it or do you skip the track in favor of something a little lighter?
For me, the songs that twist my stomach in knots are the ones with stories of domestic violence, child abuse, or rape. And when I find one of those songs, I force myself not to delete it from my playlists and I pay attention when my iTunes shuffle pops it up. The singers recorded those songs for a reason - to tell us that terrible things are happening…
sciencewoman | June 5, 2009Sheril, Isis, Alice,Zuska and many others have introduced you to the Silence Is the Enemy project, aimed at condemning and reducing sexual violence in places like Liberia, Congo, Darfur and other conflict ridden places in the world. In Liberia, for example, as many as 3/4 of the women have been raped, often repeatedly. And 28% of new rape victims are under the age of 4. Those are girls the age of my daughter and the girls who play on the playground with her. Raped and left to suffer a lifetime of physical and psychological consequences. (At the bottom of this post, please watch an important…
skookumchick | June 1, 2009For the past few years, I have been horrified by Nicholas Kristof's posts about violence against children in various crisis zones around the globe - and I have been captivated by his stories of choosing to engage as a human being with such distress and pain rather than a so-called "impartial" or "objective" journalist. In particular, I think of his reporting in 2004 from Cambodia about children forced into sex slavery and his decision to try to buy two girls to free them from traffickers, and his decision with his family to open a school east of Phnom Penh to educate girls to help prevent…
j7uy5 | February 25, 2009Folks, please help me understand
href="http://www.michnews.com/J_Grant_Swank_Jr/430598.shtml">this:
Why did God create Israel in 1948?
He did so, not for the Jews' sake primarily, but to vindicate His holy
name.
I guess you have to read the whole thing to get the full effect.
Well, maybe not. None of it is any more rational than the passage
above. Even if you believe in God, why would you think that God
needs to vindicate his name in the eyes of us pitiful mortals? It
just doesn't make any sense.
skookumchick | December 3, 2008I know this is an "old" story (last Friday) but I cannot express how appalled I was when I found out that stampeding Walmart shoppers on Long Island actually killed the Walmart employee who was opening the doors for Black Friday. Black Friday indeed. A person was killed so all those shoppers could get slightly cheaper Walmart crap slightly faster. Horrifying. Despicable.
Only slightly worse than all the sweatshop and child labour that went in to making the crap in the first place.
NPR had a really good commentary on the stampede by Poet on Call Andrei Codrescu. You can read it here.
j7uy5 | October 30, 2008Well, last week I finally did it. I put up an Obama sign in
the yard. Not that anyone sees my yard.
But now that the Editors of Seed magazine have come out with an
endorsement, I may as well join the crowd and openly announce my
anonymous support, here on the Internet.
I don't like his plan for health care finance. I am
unenthusiastic about his plan to prolong the war. His
environmental policies are too little, too late. Not that he
could have done anything about the too late part.
Since those are my three top issues, it leaves me lukewarm at best.
Still, the prospect of a McCain-…
skookumchick | October 8, 2008Remember my friend Moreena, and her kids Anni and Frankie?
It's Moreena's birthday.
And Anni is getting a new liver today.
As she put it,
Please please please keep her safe.
Please please please send peace to this donor family.
Please please do. I'm not a prayer, but I'm praying.
We're waiting to hear.
Update at 8:34 am 10/9/08: Anni is doing okay. Update from Moreena below the fold. And it's Frankie's birthday today.
Moreena writes:
Dr. Superina just came to talk to us. The new liver is all hooked up, and is making bile already. Surprisingly, they ended up using the entire liver. Her…
skookumchick | September 6, 2008My small friend Annika is in the PICU in Chicago, on a ventilator and delirious. Anni is 7, and has already had two liver transplants. The current visit is particularly scary 'cause they can't work out what is wrong with her. More info from her mom's blog is here. If you are the praying sort, please pray. If you are the non-praying sort, please hope. If you are the giving sort, consider donating some money to help cover her medical costs here. And sign up to be an organ donor, too.
j7uy5 | September 1, 2008First, I learn that sheriffs in Minneapolis are engaging in
href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html">preemptive
detention of persons suspected of planning protests.
Then I learn that the Federal government
href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html">is
involved. Then I learn that the FBI was recruiting
informants (plants) to, among other things,
href="http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/05/21/in-minneapolis-vegan-terrorist/">attend
vegan potlucks.
Imagine that, the FBI sending a plant to a vegan
potluck…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008Just in case you thought you were having a good day, here is a
href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOGNONBR?cid=123">graph
from the Fed that shows how much money the banks have:
Don't panic. The final number is from 1 July 2008.
I'm sure they've fixed the problem by now.
HT:
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/financemarkets-monitor/252626/looting_the_vaults_at_the_central_banks">London
Banker, on Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/index.php">RGE Monitor).
j7uy5 | August 2, 2008Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over
the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times
and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning
of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as
promised by the sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught
but a follower.
from The Book of Mozilla,
11:9
(10th Edition)
[
href="http://hehe2.net/linuxhumor/10-cool-open-source-easter-eggs/">source,
background]
j7uy5 | June 14, 2008The Wiki
Bible Project is a Wikipedia-like project from
href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource,
that aims "to create an original, open content translation of the
source text of the Bible that will be in the Public Domain."
But some see problems. According to a recent Newsweek
article:
Biblical scholars see the potential for an
inaccurate, bias-filled mess.
Of course, they could settle this easily. All they have to
do , is develop an objective test that detects inaccuracies and biases.
skookumchick | May 21, 2008
My small friend Anni, on the left wearing the crown in this Christmas photo (with her sister Frankie) is 7. She is waiting for her third liver transplant. Last week, she was taken from our town to Chicago in an ambulance because of a particularly heavy bleed, and although the bleeding has now slowed, her hepatic artery is narrowed, and her doctors think she might have Graft Versus Host Disease.
I don't know what all this means except it's bad. Her mom Moreena blogs about Anni and Frankie here and sounds petrified.
Moreena's previous post was about the neighbor girl down the block who…
skookumchick | February 14, 2008I just got back home after driving from West Lafayette. I heard on the radio about YET ANOTHER HORRENDOUS SHOOTING on a university campus.
My breath caught in my throat as I heard the NPR news staff interview the faculty advisor for the student newspaper at Northern Illinois University. I couldn't stop myself from actually crying in the car as visions of Virginia Tech ran in front of my eyes. I interviewed at Virginia Tech the week before the massacre there, was so terribly shocked by how close my visit had been, felt so terribly awful for the colleagues I met there during my visit.
A…