meehawl

I’m ill about the position that America is in, and that has to be considered also and we are a free-thinking society. We don’t have to second-guess there has got to be action is the undo influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made. As Senator McCain has said, about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions good old boy network that has been the Washington elite. That strategy that has worked in Iraq that who were predator lenders — that’s paramount. The way that I have understood the world is these central fronts on the war on terror, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today.

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out … But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade — we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today — we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity.

Your very own Virtual Palin in only 5300 bytes.

Tags: Sarah Palin, semantic generator, simulation by mike
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This is Katanga, the mineral-rich slice of land fought over furiously in the early Sixties in post-colonial Africa’s first civil war. Brooding over its capital, Lubumbashi, is a 400ft black hill: the accumulated slag and waste of 80 years of copper mining and smelting. Now, thanks to a crazy rise in the price of copper and cobalt, the looming, sinister mound is being quarried - by Western business, by the Chinese and by bands of Congolese who grub and scramble around it searching for scraps of copper or traces of cobalt, smashing lumps of slag with great hammers as they hunt for any way of paying for that night’s supper. As dusk falls and the shadows lengthen, the scene looks like the blasted land of Mordor in Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings: a pre-medieval prospect of hopeless, condemned toil in pits surrounded by stony desolation.

Tags: Africa, China, Congo, Katanga, Lubumbashi, Mordor, Peter Hitchens, colonialism, imperialism, postcolonialism by mike
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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

Tags: Charles Delucena Meigs, MRSA, childbirth fever, germ theory, hospitals, medicine, puerperal fever, scrubs, sepsis, ties by mike
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Worldwide smartphone sales totalled 32.2 million units in the second quarter of 2008, a 15.7 per cent increase from the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, Inc. In addition, of all mobile device sales, smartphones’ share remained stable at 11 per cent … Although Nokia held the No. 1 position with a 47.5 per cent market share in the second quarter of 2008, its year-over-year growth was about half of the market average … HTC gained the No. 3 position during the second quarter of 2008, moving up from the No. 7 ranking in the first quarter … In the second quarter of 2008, Apple’s share of global smartphone sales to end users decreased to 2.8 per cent from 5.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 … Symbian commanded 57 per cent of the global sales to end users in the second quarter of 2008 compared with 66 per cent in the same period last year … Sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices increased 20.6 per cent year over year, with Microsoft’s share remaining flat at 12 per cent in the second quarter of 2008.

Tags: Apple, Gartner, HTC, Iphone, Microsoft, Nokia, Symbian, Windows Mobile, mobiles, smartphone by mike
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Use of paracetamol for fever in the first year of life was associated with an increased risk of asthma symptoms when aged 6–7 years (OR 1·46 [95% CI 1·36–1·56]). Current use of paracetamol was associated with a dose-dependent increased risk of asthma symptoms (1·61 [1·46–1·77] and 3·23 [2·91–3·60] for medium and high use vs no use, respectively). Use of paracetamol was similarly associated with the risk of severe asthma symptoms, with population-attributable risks between 22% and 38%. Paracetamol use, both in the first year of life and in children aged 6–7 years, was also associated with an increased risk of symptoms of rhinoconjunctivitis and 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.

Tags: 5-lipoxygenase, Aspirin, COX, NSAIDs, The Lancet, acetominophen, asthma, cyclooxygenase, eczema, epidemiology, health, immunology, leukotriene, medicine, paracetemol, rheumatology, rhinoconjunctivitis by mike
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