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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That’s the title of a new campaign by the Family Research Council, trying to get the word out on how so many diseases and conditions (>70) are already being treated successfully with adult stem cells.
Currently the most common and effective treatments using stem cells are various forms of cancers and anemias, he said, though adult […]

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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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“Physician, heal thyself!”
      –Luke 4:23
Now that healthcare employers take disruptive workplace behavior seriously, and a major survey has indicated that physicians cause the majority of it, what are they doing to change the situation?
According to Dr. Barry Silbaugh, CEO of the American College of Physician Executives (ACPE), one effective method is based on the engineering concept […]

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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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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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These medical “professionals” relegate notorious TV physician Gregory House to strictly amateur standing.
A recently published survey of more than 2,100 U.S. physicians and nurses reveals that almost 98 percent of them have witnessed serious incidences of unprofessional conduct that crosses into criminal behavior while on the job in hospitals and other healthcare workplaces.
The kinds of […]

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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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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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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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