INTERESTING: Near Bottom In Life Expectancy

Friday, January 18, 2013

US Near Bottom In Life Expectancy In Developed World
via Slashdot by Soulskill on 1/11/13

Hugh Pickens writes “Louise Radnofsky reports that a study by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has found U.S. life expectancy ranks near the bottom of 17 affluent countries. The U.S. is at or near the bottom in nine key areas of health: infant mortality and low birth weight; injuries and homicides; teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections; prevalence of HIV and AIDS; drug-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability. Americans fare worse than people in other countries even when the analysis is limited to non-Hispanic whites and people with relatively high incomes and health insurance, nonsmokers, or people who are not obese. The report notes that average life expectancy for American men, at 75.6 years, was the lowest among the 17 countries and almost four years shorter than for Switzerland, the best-performing nation. American women’s average life expectancy is 80.8 years, the second-lowest among the countries and five years shorter than Japan’s, which had the highest expectancy. ‘The [U.S.] health disadvantage is pervasive — it affects all age groups up to age 75 and is observed for multiple diseases, biological and behavioral risk factors, and injuries,’ say the report’s authors.

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While we argue about trivialities, “we” are killing ourselves.

Maybe the King of Bhutan has the right idea — establishing “happiness” as a national priority?

“We” certainly don’t have any priorities.

Abortions killing innocents for convenience. Mental patients dumped on the city streets. And, politicians turning future generations into slaves of an unpayable national debt.

Argh! 

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INTERESTING: Discovery About Galaxy Distribution

Sunday, January 13, 2013

http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/01/06/2138243/teenager-makes-discovery-about-galaxy-distribution?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Teenager Makes Discovery About Galaxy Distribution
by samzenpus

*** begin quote ***

Janek Kozicki writes “It has been long thought that dwarf galaxies orbiting Andromeda galaxy (M31), or any other galaxy for that matter, are distributed more or less randomly around the host galaxy. It seemed so obvious in fact that nobody took time to check this assumption. Until a 15 year old student, Neil Ibata, working with his father at the astronomic observatory wanted to check it out. It turned out that dwarf galaxies tend to be placed on a plane around M31. The finding has been published in nature. Local press (especially in France) is ecstatic that a finding by a 15-year-old got published in Nature. However, there’s another more important point: what other obvious things didn’t we really bother to check?”

*** end quote ***

So we don’t know what we don’t know and we don’t bother to check either?

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INTERESTING: Luddite comes up with a good find

Saturday, January 12, 2013

*** begin quote ***

For all you tool freaks…..and then some!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=E3mzhvMgrLE&NR=1

*** end quote ***

I expect that we’ll see this in a lot of tools over the next century!

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INTERESTING: A legal filing as a comic

Sunday, December 30, 2012

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/53819-a-work-of-art-bob-kohn-submits-doj-amicus-brief-as-comic-strip.html

A Work of Art: Bob Kohn Submits DoJ Amicus Brief as Comic Strip

By Andrew Albanese | Sep 04, 2012

*** begin quote ***

For those in publishing who have followed the DoJ price-fixing case, it has from the start seemed at times like a cartoonish affair. Now, thanks to former music executive and RoyaltyShare founder Bob Kohn, it is a cartoon. Handcuffed by the court’s decision to re-file his argument against the DoJ’s settlement with three publishers in just five pages, Kohn filed the brief in the form of a comic strip.

***end quote ***

Not sure how this will work out for him, but I loved it.

Easy to understand and quite rational.

And, why do we allow music to be price fixed?

Or milk?

— 30 —

 

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INTERESTING: Is this the “gay gene” that everyone was seeking?uote

Monday, December 17, 2012

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/12/11/scientists-may-have-finally-unlocked-puzzle-of-why-people-are-gay

Scientists May Have Finally Unlocked Puzzle of Why People Are Gay

Lesbians get it from fathers, gay men from mothers?

By JASON KOEBLER

December 11, 2012

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Long thought to have some sort of hereditary link, a group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuality is linked to epi-marks — extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed. These epi-marks are usually, but not always, “erased” between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren’t erased — they’re passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.

“There is compelling evidence that epi-marks contribute to both the similarity and dissimilarity of family members, and can therefore feasibly contribute to the observed familial inheritance of homosexuality and its low concordance between [identical] twins,” Rice notes.

Rice and his team created a mathematical model that explains why homosexuality is passed through epi-marks, not genetics. Evolutionarily speaking, if homosexuality was solely a genetic trait, scientists would expect the trait to eventually disappear because homosexuals wouldn’t be expected to reproduce. But because these epi-marks provide an evolutionary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals from underexposure to testosterone and mothers of homosexuals from overexposure to testosterone while they are in gestation.

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Is this the big breakthrough that allows the human race to move forward?

–30–

 

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INTERESTING: What’s the “jedi religion”?

Sunday, December 16, 2012

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9737886/Jedi-religion-most-popular-alternative-faith.html

‘Jedi’ religion most popular alternative faith

Today’s Census figures show that 176,632 people in England and Wales identify themselves as Jedi Knights, making it the most popular faith in the “Other Religions” category on the Census and the seventh most popular faith overall.

***

You have to be kidding me!

I could understand a lot of the possible answers, but … this one stuns me!

–30–

 

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INTERESTING: Bitterly disappointed

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9686219/I-am-bitterly-bitterly-disappointed-retired-naval-officers-email-to-children-in-full.html

‘I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed’: retired naval officer’s email to children in full

This is the full email that retired Royal Navy officer Nick Crews sent to his son and two daughters in February expressing his and his wife’s disappointment in them.

***

When I read this, I saw a boomerang.

Were you such a bad parent that you weren’t able to steer the children correctly?

My parents made a lot mistakes. But, I would never fault them for the choices they made. I’ve made a lot of my own bad choices.

This 0 for 3 tends to make me blame the “builder”.

imho.

–30–

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interesting: Obamacare is NOT about h, hc, or hci; it’s about control

Friday, November 23, 2012

http://personalliberty.com/2012/11/19/obamacares-real-costs/

Obamacare’s Real Costs

November 19, 2012 by Bob Livingston

*** begin quote ***

“The Obama Care Health Care Reform Plan or Health Care For America Plan will cost the average American around $70.”–obamacarefacts.com

First of all, allow me to disabuse you of the notion that Obamacare has anything to do with “health” care. Obamacare is not about health. It’s not about lowering the cost of health insurance. And it’s not about ensuring that everyone is insured.

It is about locking more Americans into the clutches of the Big Pharma/Medical Industrial complex, providing more customers for Big Insurance and confiscating more wealth from individuals and businesses.

The American healthcare system should properly be called “sickcare.” It’s a subtle and esoteric system of population control with prescription drugs issued at the public expense by the drug cartel — the conglomerate of pharmaceutical houses.

They commit population control under the pretense of “healthcare” and make people pay for it. And this medical cartel has no legal liability. It is forced — or at least deceptive — medication. And most doctors don’t have a clue. They write prescriptions based on falsified data and kickbacks — from speaker fees and ghostwriting glowing medical reviews — without regard to whether their patients will benefit.

*** end quote ***

I too am very disillusioned with this whole discussion.

It’s NOT about “Health”, “Healthcare”, or “Healthcare Insurance”. It’s all about “control”.

“Death Panels” was a good two word summary of the Gooferment’s objective.

When we think of the drag that seniors represent in socsec, medicare, and the taxes that they don’t pay, no wonder cigarettes are legal!

The exemplar for this is the (American) Indian Healthcare, wwhere the rule is ‘don’t need anything expensive after June’. Or maybe the VA, “die”!  (Some old vets firmly believe that VA wants to kill them. And, not with kindness.)

If it was about health insurance, then it wouldn’t be tied to your employment.

Argh!

–30–

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INTERESTING: Hillary Rodham Clinton has been and is running

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/collins-hillarys-next-move.html

Op-Ed Columnist
Hillary’s Next Move
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 10, 2012

Times Topic: Hillary Rodham Clinton

*** begin quote ***

“Maybe I’ll get a decorating show,” said Hillary Clinton.

It was a few weeks before the election. Clinton was flying back from an overnight trip to Peru, talking — without any great enthusiasm — about the topic that would begin to obsess the American political world as soon as the presidential ballots had been counted: Will Hillary run in 2016?

*** end quote ***

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She’s the obvious candidate. 

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INTERESTING: What are the odds?

Sunday, November 11, 2012

NewImage

What are the odds?

 

 

 

 

Every house on the block, shared with my shore house has damage, but mine.

Note the water line on the outside shower and hot water heater. That’s about ¾ of the way up the black cinder block foundation.

If it reached the top of the black, storm water would have gotten in to the porch, dining room, three bedrooms, bathroom, and one BRAND NEW kitchen.

Very lucky! Very Providential.

I wish everyone hit by Sandy was this lucky. Sadly it’s not so. Some lost everything. Nothing down the shore will ever be the same. Now I have had a little taste of what the folks in Katrina have felt.

Scuttlebutt was that FEMA was going to stiff those with flood insurance if they were part-time resident. Not a lot of happy people with that assertion.

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