meehawl

An exodus of foreign capital is forcing Russian banks to slash lending as the international reaction to the country’s military stand-off with Georgia starts to affect the real economy. Bankers say Russia is facing its worst crisis since the August 1998 default. The Russian stock market has plummeted more than 40 per cent since May. A flight of capital estimated by analysts at up to $20bn (€14bn, £11bn) since the start of the conflict is drying up liquidity. The Russian trading system index fell another 7.5 per cent yesterday to its lowest level since June 2006 … Cash held by banks on deposits at the central bank has been falling day by day, reaching a low of 638.4bn roubles ($25bn, €18bn, £14bn) yesterday from 675.6bn the day before.

Tags: banking, finance, Georgia, money, Russia, Vladimir Putin, war by mike
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Tags: Matt Damon, politics, Sarah Palin, US President by mike
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A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA “rendition” flights … The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24 … the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA “rendition” flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.

Tags: black ops, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Cocaine, extraordinary rendition, Joaquin Chapo Guzman, Mexico, Sinaloa Cartel, smuggling, spycraft by mike
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One great thing about studying in a medical library is that, while wandering through the stacks, you occasionally come across the most fantastic books. I was hiding away in some stacks to chat on the phone when this gem caught my eye: Sexual Neurasthenia, Its Hygiene, Causes and Symptoms and Treatment With a Chapter on Diet for the Nervous. The main author, George Beard, was apparently a mid-19th century neurologist who conflated a bunch of “maladies” into a single diagnosis called sexual neurasthenia, and then advocated electrocution as a cure-all. Even back then most doctors thought this sounded like quackery. Anyway, the book is full of unintentional hilarity, but thanks to the Google Books version I can include just this one:

The true way to treat seminal emissions when they are, or are supposed to be, more frequent than is consistent with health, is by a combination of sedative and tonic measures, designed to act both upon the genital organs and on the nervous system. The remedies that physicians now chiefly use for this purpose are ergot in its different forms, electricity locally and generally applied, iron, the zinc combination, bromide of camphor, lupulin, belladonna, digitalis, conium, gelsemium, and nux vomica, with the addition of passing the urethral sound, urethral electrode, rectal electrode, and the use of the cooling catheter.

Ergot? Rectal electrodes? Strychnine? Digitalis? That’s what I call serious fucking business.

Tags: dyspepsia, electrotherapy, George Beard, masturbation, medicine, neurology, phimosis, prostatic urethra, sex, sexual intercourse, sexual neurasthenia, spermatorrhoea, syphilis, Victorian by mike
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Started hematology today in school at 8am. By 8:15 I was already wondering, hoping really, that it was all just a very vivid dream. I like vampire movies and hungry sky gods that demand blood sacrifices as much as the next person, the blood is the life and all that, but endless pictures of indistinguishable little blood cells is a poor way to start a Monday morning after several blissful months of not really having to deal with any of this stuff at all. Eosinophils, basophils and neutrophils, oh my. On the plus side, I can now feel a small, deep satisfaction at being slightly less clueless than 134 first year medical students that started today.

Tags: blood, Christianity, hematology, Islam, Judaism, medical school, religion, sacrifice by mike
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