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But A Gentleman’s Ties Are Clean!
In the UK, new NHS mandates prohibit doctors in hospitals from wearing ties, or long sleeves, out of concerns that such “professional” attire could carry germs.
I did not carry any poison, or other cause of disease, to any patient of mine ; and if not I, then how should he become capable of doing so ? He is a gentleman who is scrupulously careful of his personal appearance, of great experience as a practitioner, and well informed as to modern opinions on the contagion of childbed fever. Still, those of you who are contagionists will say that he carried the poison from house to house ; and if so, then you ought to give some rationale of the fact. Did he carry it on his hands ? But a gentleman’s hands are clean. – Charles Delucena Meigs
Infant Paracetemol Use Linked With Later Asthma, Eczema
It’s been known for a long time that the interaction of NSAID COX inhibitors such as aspirin or paracetemol/acetominophen with the leukotriene pathway in humans can initiate asthma by shunting more of the 5-Lipo output down the LT pathway resulting in rapid adverse bronchial symptoms. However, this is the first time I’ve seen such strong evidence that skewing the pathway so early in post-natal development can produce measurable immunological effects several years down the development path.
Dictatorship of the Corporatariat
What does a socialised corporatocracy look like when the veils of “democracy” are briefly lifted? Only a week after the United States’ Federal Government effectively socialised its mortgage industry by taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (making 50% of existing mortgages and 70% of new mortgages government owned) to add to the existing socialised slice accounted for by the Federal Housing Administration, elements within that same Government are wheeling and dealing trying to come up with some “palatable” way to sell off the high-risk loving, failed investment shell Lehman’s in a way that avoids overtly committing too much public, immediate cash to the bailout. Not because it is averse to using public funds to shore up failed private investment schemes, of course, but mainly because the public kitty is unfortunately a little skint right now and needs another year or two of taxpayer take to fill it up again (about the most it can afford right now is to take an “eBay Approach” of accepting basically any junky crap as collateral for Treasury Notes). And by “palatable”, this means a purchase that would leave the Lehman’s principals with some acceptable bank from the whole mess and not prone to whining too much about it (much as the bid price for Bear Stearns was raised from $2 to $10 after the fact to assuage its major shareholders). Given the juicier targets in play, this seems unlikely.
Of course, the irony that this frantic dealing comes in the same week that the aristocratic division of the US Government (its “Senate”) issued a report concluding that the largest US banks had illegally colluded to enable foreign investment funds and hedge funds to improperly evade billions of dollars of US taxes, thereby profitting from the US market while avoiding any of the (mild) social responsibility to the commonwealth levied as a price for participation within that market and the right to extract wealth from that market. This revelation probably accounts for at least some of the apparent inability or reluctance of the US Government to commit public funds to a Lehman bailout, a factor that is preventing the other, circling vulture-mode banks from quickly “stepping in” to “save” Lehman Brothers. These titans of private enterprise will really only act in cases like this when their risk is diminished by large tranches of public funds, or loan guarantees.
This is what a dictatorship of the corporatariat looks like in the early 21st century, what Orwell might have called oligarchical corporatism. While the political theatre of the US public elections continues with alarmist mutterings about the “cost” of paying for a socialised healthcare system or a class-based downward trend for the redistribution of wealth emerging within the cacophony of the “culture war” cries of sexism, racism, ageism, competing religiosity and cronyism, behind the veil vast dynamic and interlocking financial and political directorates set the agenda and operate the mechanisms for the real, upward redistribution and allocation of productive wealth to the ownership class, many of whom owe no allegiance to any particular national government.
Sexual Singularity
So now, thanks to noted Republican game designer Will Wright, humankind is one step closer to the Singularity. From the simple early beginnings of the likes of Core War, Life and Creatures, we now have the unfortunately DRM-laden Spore. Providing people are willing to consent to the monitoring and potential control of their computing device according to the whims of the Electronic Arts Software Gulag and Sony’s SecuROM, they can now act as creators, creating entire virtual worlds and creatures therein, and sharing them with the global hive mind. The game eschews real-world random mutation and natural selection and instead deploys a tour de force symbiosis of computing and multimedia to enable people to practice intelligent design in a manner aceptable to the anti-science inquisitors at the Discovery Institute. And what manner of wonderful creatures do we as nascent godlings bring forth?
Yes… Penis Monsters -- truly the Singularity Is Near, oh yes.
Brian Aldiss was right all along when, in his Helliconia epic (one of the greatest science fictions of the 20th century), he predicted how the advanced inhabitants of Earth would devour news from the Universe only as a giant reality show and then, finally, how the remaining advanced civilisation would collapse into savagery and sexual perversity. Its last relics? The hunting gangs of genetically engineered, aggressive, semi-intelligent and rapacious dildo organisms. Humankind’s final legacy to the Universe.
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