I see the “Occupy Wall Street” folks are still there.
But what is puzzling me: usually a movement starts with a few activists and then slowly grows, as more who believe the same things join.
So exactly how many are in these rallies?
We know who is in the rallies: From Fastcompany.com via the Democratic underground.
Among the […]

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By John Donovan of RoyalDutchShellPlc.com
Today we provide a unique insight into the shadowy world of Shell Corporate Security, formerly known as “CAS” - Shell Corporate Affairs Security. Shell has had advance sight of everything you are about to read and therefore the opportunity to challenge authenticity of the featured […]

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When my kids were in high school, I lived in a small Pennsylvania coal town, we had an excellent library. Why? Because a lot of kids of the coalminers wanted to go to college, and so the beloved “Library Lady” would try to keep up on textbooks, classics, encyclopedias, and other literature needed by the […]

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The ecosystem in the Philippine island of Palawan is unique, and to make it worse, the island has only recently been cleared of terrorists and reopened for tourism, so there is worry that the terrible scars from mining will destroy tourism too.
A couple months back, a reporter and civic leader was assassinated because he had […]

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In a previous post, I joked that if the Governor of Wisconsin wanted to fire all his teachers, he could hire a lot of qualified Filipino teachers to replace them.
Yet this is not quite a joke: The cut backs in US medical training have resulted in the active importation of foreign medical graduates to fill […]

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I love how Tom Friedman in the NYTimes lectures his US readers on “how the Chinese see us” by relating a skit on China’s government owned TV station where children were taught to ridicule the US:
China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children… getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the […]

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The naive guys at the NYTimes Freakonomics blog have a short article on the cost of health care, especially medicines, in third world countries:
A new study analyzed the effects of buying four basic prescription drugs in “low- and middle-income countries,” and the results aren’t pretty. “Buying brand name amoxicillin, for example, […]

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Unlike the US, where our priests would rarely preach about anything more serious than “Jesus loves you”, here in the Philippines, our clergy is politically active. And one of the latest campaigns in our district is to oppose a local casino.
So the sermon in our church this week was “No to Casinos, No to resorts, […]

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Up popped a comment on my Facebook page:
American Medical News Do you think your practice is, or will be, ready for meaningful use?
Uh, silly me. True, I’m now retired, but I though that seeing 20 plus patients a day, diagnosing their ills, ordering their treatment, and (often) listening to their woes and advising them on […]

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A bit of an uproar in Massachusetts, where the local papers have discovered that Senator Kerry bought a yacht, but has parked it in nearby Rhode Island to get out of paying the local sales tax.
The good news is that, now that he has been caught and shamed, he will pay the half million dollar […]

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The large American Federal Bureaucracy was founded to replace the “spoils system” that allowed those elected to place all their friends/relatives/cronies/campaign contributors into offices where they could then go on to help their friends/neighbors/relatives/cronies.
The idea was to make bureaucrats non political, and represent the people and follow the regulations rather than to promote a political […]

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A couple weeks ago, I ran across a strange story about Zimbabwe: a couple of known terrorists were caught crossing the border from Zimbabwe into South Africa at Beitbridge.
33 year-old Imran Muhammad…was arrested last Sunday while trying to get through Beitbridge border post to South Africa on what officials believe was a fake Kenyan […]

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The British media and commentariat is working itself into a frenzy over President Obama’s attack on BP. The Mayor of London, the patrician Boris Johnson, has said “I do think there’s something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America … when you consider the huge exposure of British pension […]

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I was bemused when a minor lambast against “pacifists” trying to start a war against Israel led to this comment:
“…the Israelis steadfastly refuse to publish a list of allowed goods and appear to change their minds daily on what is allowed. Eg. Hair conditioner is banned at the moment…”
Oh my, no wonder the people in […]

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The CFPA Bill, known as “financial reform”, is very likely to pass. Lenders of all varieties will have business models scrutinized once the CFPA gets up and running. You can bet that under the Obama Administration, subprime lenders from auto financiers to pawn shops to payday lenders will be shot on sight. […]

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Just when I think I’m through dishing the United States of Real Estate, it pulls me back in. The show is old, but still too hot to ignore. In mid-April the Klown Execs From Washington Mutual (WaMu) reunited on a DC stage, wowing the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with a blazin’ rendition of their […]

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If you want a controversial ex politician to give a talk to your group, do you expect that person to will fly unaccompanied in coach, find a taxi to your site, and stay at Motel 6?
Or do you think that the politician will ask for a decent airline flight (first class, for security reasons, or […]

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My fellow Family docs: Did you know that you are now officially part of the Obama organizing machine?
In the AAFP news:
Physicians need to be closely involved as the recently enacted health care reform legislation begins to take effect, according to AAFP President Lori Heim, M.D., of Vass, N.C. “It is the implementation of […]

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I have many ethical problems with the Obama Health Care bill.
But the real story that is being ignored about Obama’s health care bill is that it kowtows to big insurance and big drug companies, who stand to make a killing from the bill.
Reuter’s review of “winners and loser” should give you pause: hospitals and drug […]

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The political hot air and exaggerations that goes around the Internet makes one wonder if everyone is going to have not their “ten minutes of fame” but their “Ten minutes of being demonized by the “Liberal/Mainstream-Media/DailyKos” partisans or the “Rush/Beck/Tea-party” zealots.
However, the good news (and something that is rarely mentioned in the blast of the […]

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If you follow the British news, you might have noticed an ongoing scandal about Scotland releasing the mastermind of the Lockerbie bombing (the bomb at Christmas time of 1988  that destroyed Pan Am 103 and took the lives of 270 people).
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released last August at Libya’s request because he was terminally ill […]

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We are still waiting for the details of the Obama care bill that is going to save American health care, whether we want it or not.
One is reminded of the saying: The devil is in the details; and indeed, in these days when money is going to rule all of us, one has to wax […]

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The pseudo religious nonsense by popular clergy is enough to make an agnostic out of me. Doesn’t matter if it is the “we’re all gonna die if gays get rights” on the right or the “we’re all gonna die if we don’t live green” by the left.
Such tirades always remind me of Mark Twain’s quip: […]

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The story carries the headline: France: Catholic Church Rejects Ban on Full-Face Veils
Except the “Catholic Church” did no such thing. The Bishop in charge of “interreligious dialogue” in France made a statement, but his opinion is not the opinion of the Catholic church.
“If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy […]

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When I came to the Philippines, I ripped my CD collection into MP3’s and brought most of my collection here on mp3 CD’s or on my hard drive. I had a fairly nice collection of “elevator music” (to use my son’s description), mainly because I worked in rural areas where it was easier to listen […]

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Shame the sponsors. That sums up the remedy advised by Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee member and Vancouver City Manager Penny Ballem on Wednesday Jan. 13, after she was briefed at City Hall on evidence of persecution of bloggers and other computer/internet users by the City of Vancouver.  Ballem (in photo above outside City Hall) encouraged […]

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The right wing blogosphere is in ecstasy about a Republican upset for the Senate seat in Massachusetts.
But the real news is HOW Scott Brown won the Senate seat in “Blue state” Massachusetts. How? Apparantly, he won most of the Independent vote along with the Republican vote. One suspects he also might have garnered some of […]

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Those Medieval painters were a bit less puritanical than we moderns: A common motif in paintings was the Madonna Les Latte: the Virgin Mother breastfeeding the baby Jesus.
Back in those days, if a woman didn’t breast feed her baby, it died. Yes, upper class women often would find a “wet nurse” to provide nutrition,  and […]

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We all know about the problem.
You buy a nice item, usually an electronic gizmo but sometimes a toy, and you can’t open it.
Knives won’t cut it, and you need sharp heavy duty scissors to cut it open. Yet even then, the cut areas won’t bend easily, and the edges of the plastic packaging are sharp, […]

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Time magazine has an article about overprotective parents. The Title is appropriate:
The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
Fair enough.
My problem is how the article is framed:
…we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old’s “pencil-holding deficiency,” … We hovered over every school, playground […]

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