I have heard that they are going to be making a ninth season of this show, but that it will be about Zach Braff as Dr. John Dorian.  Now, I don’t know if that is true or not, but I can only hope that it will in fact not be true.  The entire cast is […]

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And it ain’t a happy day for the CRU.  True, this is a cybercrime, and the perpetrator(s) should be brought to justice.  But equally as big is the contents of the >1000 e-mails and >3800 documents. 
The Hadley Climate Research Unit has confirmed the hack, so this is not a hoax, and global-warming-skeptic sites like […]

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When I was working as a physician in the US, our Federal clinic’s policy was to order mammograms on all women starting at age 4o.
Why was this important? Because there is some indications that mammogram and early diagnosis increases the cure rate for breast cancer in young women.
This statement is not as obvious as you […]

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FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, November 18, 2009, San Francisco — One of the worst managed U.S. federal agencies will have a new leadership. President Obama has announced his intention to nominate former CNN chairman and CEO Walter Isaacson, a Democrat, to chair the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, an independent federal agency […]

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Quick. Name the most dangerous terrorist organization in the US, organizations that are responsible for  47 of the53 most destructive terrorist attacks in the US.
Muslims? No.
Right wing Militias? No.
The Christian fundamentalist types? No.
It’s the Animal rights extremists.
Via SecondhandsmokeBlog, quoting from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decision U.S. v Christianson:
… between 2000 and 2005, 43 […]

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The CDC announced an increase in STD’s and an administration spokesman insisted that it’s all Bush’s fault, because some schools preach abstinence:
“Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated,” said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease […]

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One of the frustrating things when working in child maternal health in poor countries is trying to integrate medical aims into the cultural background of the people, without destroying it.
This NYTimes story, about trying to get the Mullahs in Afghanistan to approve of their people using birth control, is a good example of how to […]

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Blogging from Phoenix — Seems the dethroned Miss California and self promoting role model for conservative family values was evidently the Queen of cell phone porn, with as many as eight sex tapes and some 30 naked photos to her credit according to the online site Radar.com.
Carrie reportedly performs solo on each recording and contrary […]

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A study among Chinese factory workers shows exposure to high doses of Bisphenol A at their jobs resulted in an increase of erectile dysfuntion.
Compared to the other workers, men with high BPA exposure were about four times as likely to report trouble achieving erections, about seven times as likely to say they had difficulty ejaculating, […]

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The NYTimes has an article on “violence” at Fort Hood. At Army Base Some Violence is All To Familiar” the headlines cry.
Yes, one more “Ain’t it awful” report on how violent veterans are, without mentioning that the “violent crime” rate is still lower than that of Chicago.
The problems of violence on military bases is not […]

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One of the big blocks against the Health bill in Congress was the possibility of taxpayer money paying for abortion.
The Catholic Bishops, who have been on record supporting universal health care for thirty years, declined to support the bill because the clintonsque language in the bill allowed what the bishops to call “money laundering” to […]

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The real question to ask about Shell’s unbelievably crass decision not to allow the sale of poppies at their petrol stations this year is at what level the call as made. Ignore the statement from Shirley Cinco, at Shell’s “Customer Service Centre” in Manchester, that: “Rather than simply giving to worthy causes, Shell prefers to […]

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One of the major causes of death in the world is malaria, but the World Health Organization estimates that 20 percent of the one million deaths from malaria are dying because the medicines that they are taking are substandard or outright counterfeits. If you include fake antibiotics and fake drugs used to treat tuberculosis, the […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — A member of the Russian parliament has criticized Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski for his comments during a visit this week to Washington, but the Polish foreign ministry has disputed the accuracy of Russian news reports quoting Sikorski’s statement. The point of dispute is whether Sikorski has publicly asked for U.S. troops […]

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A lot of discussion is being made about the attack on Fort Hood, where a psychiatrist went amok and decided to kill his fellow soldiers.
Here in the Philippines, we sometimes see a quiet guy suddenly go “amok” and machete his relatives or superiors. Usually people can’t understand it, but actually everyone figures he had finally […]

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I greatly enjoy stand-up comedy.  I usually go see a live comedy show from a nationally known comic artist every couple of months or so.  I don’t go to many open mikes, although some of my friends have been pressuring me to start performing at them.  Suffice it to say that comedy is a pretty […]

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In science, there are all sorts of gossip that tweak the infallibility of scientists.
For example, the discovery of the “big bang” was postponed until they cleaned the antennae of Pigeon poop, and found it was the sky, not the poop, causing the hum of  the big bang.
And Penicillin may have been discovered because of carelessness […]

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Period dramas are the types of movie that you do if you are Keira Knightly or if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate for a movie award.  Some of them are genuinely good, but the vast majority of them are just an excuse for people to dress up in poncey outfits and […]

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I’m not much into magic or magical anything.  That eliminates most fantasy writing, a lot of video games and a host of other things.  The one exception I do make is the novels and novellas of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the father of Magical Realism.  Also, I like the Force and the mystical power that guides […]

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I was not surprised when Fox first said that they would be making several sequels to the original movie in this series.  It was a truly delightful movie and they have done a great job of keeping each new movie exciting.  They do this through making each individual story compelling and by introducing new characters […]

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If a scary movie is all about making you jump, that’s just stupid.  Anything can make you jump, so that doesn’t take intelligence or anything else other than an understanding of timing.  I went to a haunted house last week for Halloween, a huge one that took up an entire warehouse building along with numerous […]

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How does one respond to an unpopular tyranny who is threatening to start a war? Do you try to encourage them to reform, with soft words and promises to help if they turn to cooperation? Or do you be blunt and articulate the idea that unjust government must reform, because freedom lives in the hearts […]

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Two governorships have fallen to Republicans, if the headlines have it right.
Yet most of the pundits are saying this is not a sign of disenchantment with the Congress and the President, but only local politics.
I’m not sure I agree. I think it is a sign that the “ordinary” folks are worried, and that they trust […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — Due to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to prolong her stay in the Middle East, her scheduled meeting in Washington with visiting Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has been cancelled. The announcement of the cancellation was made Tuesday by the State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.

Tomorrow, of course, she has a meeting […]

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“The culture in this country has become so overwhelmingly conformist that any alternative to capitalism is considered outlandish.”
Tariq Ali October 2009
 
Winston Churchill once famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” He might have said the same about the primacy […]

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Would Jesus pack heat?
An easy question you say, since Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek”, and this quote is often quoted by those opposing all war or violence of any sort…mainly by those living in safe suburbs and working in tenured academic jobs.
Yet this article states that some pastors in the Detroit […]

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I was startled to find this important editorial in the NYTimes:

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

After a couple of paragraphs explaining the writer’s expertise in saluting, and another couple of paragraphs on the history of presidential salutes, we come to the conclusion:
(President Obama’s) salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.
Huh?
It’s true that […]

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It is as if the entire Washington press corps has forgotten everything any of them knew in 2001 and early 2002 and have no perspective on what is going on in Afghanistan now.
In late September of 2002 newspapers were flooded with glorious tales about the Northern Alliance – and the NA deserved every bit of […]

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Ah, Halloween is here, and the TV channels are full of stories of witches and ghosts and goblins of all sorts.
Most of it is harmless fun: art and literature helps mankind be able to confront the evils around them in a way that strengthens their ability to hope that confronting the more real evils around […]

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You may or may not know that the largest film industry in the world is not Hollywood, but Bollywood: the film industry of India. But do you know which country has the second largest film industry in the world?
Nollywood.
The Nigerian film industry.
According to Wikipedia the industry is a $250 million dollar industry which produces […]

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