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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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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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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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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I do not pretend to be an expert on the laws concerning phone intercepts, but I do not think it is legal to just go slap a tap on someones phone. Were this not so, there would not be a string of cases wending their way through the court system concerning the Bush Administrations use […]

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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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TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — Bill Clinton might have asked what the “enhanced” definition of “to enhance” IS? The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw is busy blaming a Polish translator for mistranslating U.S. Ambassador Lee Feinstein’s TV interview answer about Polish troops in Afghanistan, which caused a diplomatic uproar in Poland. In an interview broadcast last […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. media has not yet picked up on the latest diplomatic controversy between Poland and the U.S. But the public disagreement between President Obama’s new ambassador in Warsaw Lee A. Feinstein and the Polish defense minister over plans to send additional Polish troops to Afghanistan is drawing media attention in Poland.

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Ah, a British paper just pooh poohed the British victory at the Battle of Agincourt, saying that Prince Hal was not outnumbered 4 to 1, merely outnumbered 2 to 1.
Actually, the author misses the point, which is that the elite knights of France got slowed down by the mud and were massacred by ordinary British […]

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In “Evolution’s Fatal Flaw”, a carefully researched and well written book, author Lawrence Wood sets out to validate two controversial and often debated claims:  that evolution is the proper explanation for our origins; and that evolution is all about the survival of the species, not as one might suppose, about the survival of the individual.  […]

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The latest kerfuffle on the Health Care bill is that the Obama church has leashed the Am Cath types against the Catholic bishops.
For those of you who are not Catholic, much of the church bureaucracy is full of those who claim Vatican II to justify changing the Catholic church into a Episcopalian wanna be church.
Luckily, […]

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The headline reads: Save the Planet: Eat a Dog.
No, it’s not an anti Filipino satire about poor rural people in the provinces who eat dogs. It’s actually a post in a New Zealand paper that reports on the “carbon footprint” of Fido, Kitty and other meat eating pets.
Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects […]

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President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — Tony Blinken, national security adviser to the vice president, said in a briefing with reporters before Biden left for Europe October 20, that leaders in Warsaw, Bucharest and Prague should think less of what the U.S. can do for them and more about what they can do with the United States.

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Wow! Another week and another Google Alert. This time, its about having cameras in the classrooms in the United Kingdom. Wonder if this trend will hit up the United States?
A group in the UK called Class watch sets up cameras in classrooms and uses this as a basis for professional development. So far, they have […]

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We’ve had a few sunny days here in the Philippines to finish harvesting the rice. Our fields are on high ground, so the main problems we face are finding a dry day to cut and thresh the rice, and a rice mill to dry it.
Usually in our area, rice is dried in the hot sun. […]

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She was the first to arrive, suitably attired in a fetching little number created by a famous designer in 1925; and was the last to leave. And why not? It was her 100th birthday celebration and she was enjoying the moment. Music, a play, champagne, and cake. It was all there, and all in her […]

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One of the more bizarre headlines in the news is a report that two people died in a “sweat lodge” and quite a few more people who were there required hospital treatment.
Any physician hearing of this will suspect the deaths were from one of two causes: One carbon monoxide (which reportedly has been ruled out) […]

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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner would not receive at the White House the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is on a visit this week to Washington. President Obama apparently wanted to avoid upsetting Chinese communist leaders before his official trip to China.
Unwelcome at the White House […]

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First came Typhoon Ondoy, which flooded Manila and the Laguna area.
Manila had at least one million people displaced from their homes due to flooding, and many whose houses were built in low lying areas were drowned from flash flooding that they did not expect. When even movie stars have to flee to the rooftops of […]

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Vancouver Police Board members Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s mayor, and Terry La Liberte, a criminal lawyer, have been asked to put a stop to the Vancouver Police Department’s in-house fundraising for United Way.  
Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry made the request in writing on Sept. 22, based on documented evidence supporting allegations that United Way benefited from […]

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Well another week in the land of social networking. I tell you what, this is quite an adventure as I meet new people daily and read all sorts of news out there. I am always a hound for anything on Peer Abuse and the “B” word. So, it was no shock when I stumbled upon […]

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Using a slight of hand and having his propaganda mill obscure what has been done, the Democrats and the Obama administration are planning to fund abortion in their health care bill.
The original “compromise” on abortion was a slight of hand that would force people to pay for abortion coverage themselves, similar to the way you […]

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Hollywood is shocked, shocked that a 40 year old man who drugged and raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl despite her pleas to stop might actually face punishment.
I was a doctor when few women were in medicine (the year I graduated, only 6% of physicians were female). So I’ve seen more than my […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — Displaying unprecedented boldness for a US diplomatic mission, the US Embassy in Warsaw conceded on its official public website that Poles believe that the “insensitive timing” — as the Embassy put it — of the Obama administration announcement on canceling the US missile shield system in Central Europe “shows that Obama […]

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 Millions of refugees live in temporary camps all over the world today, and few westerners know or care about their problems.
Although most of these refugees will eventually return to the country of their origin, one question is what does one do with those who for political reasons cannot or are not allowed to go home? […]

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The flood waters in Manila are slowly subsiding. Family members who traveled to Manila yesterday for business reported that most of the roads were clear, but that the garbage and mud from the floods were all over the place. Some of the roads remained blocked, including major highway “underpasses” that were now lakes of water.
Several […]

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On my family blog, I often write the headline: Another Day, Another Typhoon.
The Philippines gets hit by about ten typhoons a year, but we live inland so are usually safe.
On Saturday, however, the winds were brisk and the rains very very heavy. Our house has good drainage, but the main street where the vendors have […]

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