Just because it reminded me of something…
Here’s some good Sunday morning staring out the window while sipping hot coffee and scratching Magic (the cat) music:
I’ll bet it reminds you of something too.
October 2007 archive
Oct 14 2007
Misplaced Priorities: Cancer of the Attitude?
Updated: Originally posted at Talkleft & Edgeing February 2007
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Since the story of a cheap safe cancer cure first broke on Jan 23 in NewScientistdotCom, virtually NO US mainstream media has picked up on and reported the story.
Google news searchs on “dichloroacetate” now produce only 9 hits this morning (compared to 59 hits in February). Contrast that to 15,433 news search hits this morning on “al-qaeda”, for a bit of perspective. Cancer is a killer disease affecting millions of people every year, so the ignoring of this story cannot be due to any “lack of interest”.
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells.
Oct 14 2007
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was featured on his album Storm Front, which was released in 1989. Since then, the fire he wrote about has spread, many new fires have been ignited, and not very many have been put out. So I’ve written updated lyrics and am posting this video of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” for those who may not be familiar with the song.
Oct 14 2007
Sunday Morning News
It’s an Open Thread: Play Nice
Brothers and sisters of the soul unite
We are one, indivisible and strong
They may try to break us
But they dare not underestimate us
They know our memories are long
USA
For many black women, it’s Clinton or Obama?
Loyalties tested in S.C. as voters contemplate Democratic primary
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Updated: 5:30 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2007LORIS, S.C. – In the beauty parlors that are among the social hubs for black women in the Carolinas, loyalties are being tested as voters here contemplate the first Democratic primary in the South.
Clara Vereen, who has been working here in rural eastern South Carolina as a hairstylist for more than 40 of her 61 years, reflects the ambivalence of many black women as she considers both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
$4.5 million for a boat that nobody wanted
By David Heath and Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporters
Tucked away on Seattle’s Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years – save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine.The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either.
Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted?
It may not be a bridge yet it still didn’t go anywhere.
Oct 14 2007
Neo-Cons Terrified of Bush-PKK
Joseph Ralston: the former Nato Supreme Commander and Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was supposed to prevent a Turkish invasion of Iraq. As I noted in my preceding diaries on Ralston, here and here, Bush appointed Ralston one year to prevent the building crisis threating to engulf the region.
Neo-cons are freaking because they know that Bush support for PKK terror is actually making it harder for the US to attack Syria and Iran…
The MSM is clueless. How clueless? Fox and the Wapo ran identical stories, neither noting that Ralston ran away from his responsibilities months ago…
Oct 14 2007
Frank Rich Just Farted in Church
He did it. He absolutely went there. On the op-ed page.
Frank Rich just ran through the unspoken barrier that got Dick Durbin in
such hot water two years ago. He’s made the historical comparison that no one has been allowed to make, for fear of diminishing the scope and scale of an evil that reigned a half-century ago. A comparison that someone in the MSM has needed to make, because we are surely walking down that same road.
Oct 14 2007
New Beginnings; Sane Endings. Fleeing to Mexico
Quoting most of this article probably breaks all the rules, but I just don’t feel like embellishing it. It’s an interesting dilemma.
Lured by cheaper costs, more Americans head south of the border
to live out their leisure years
AJIJIC, MEXICO – Drawn by the eternal spring weather and laid-back lifestyle, American retirees have been migrating to this lakeside village deep inside Mexico for decades.
Now, facing the sobering prospect that their money will run out before their last breath does, some are considering Ajijic and other expatriate communities across Mexico as a cheaper place to get needed care through the end of their lives.
Though few come with dying on their minds, tens of thousands of retirees long have been heading to this community on the shore of Mexico’s largest lake – and dozens of other towns and cities nationwide – looking to spend their leisure years in paradise.
The Margaritaville moments might last decades. But the life cycle spins on no matter where they may live, and the aging Americans face much the same tough choices on health care here that they would at home.
Increasingly, they have decided that Mexico is as good or better a place as any to face the inevitable.
“I would never go back home,” said Harold “Skip” Waggoner, 67, a former deputy sheriff from Central Florida who retired 12 years ago to Ajijic. “My mother spent five years in a nursing home. That’s scary.
Oct 14 2007
How old Are you?
When I first started with the blogs (about 6 weeks ago) I thought I’d be around a bunch of kids.
You know…like…sort of, kind of…like…you know…kids.
But since I came over to the good side (about a month ago) I’ve found that you are all my people whatever your age. I’ve also seen that there are a lot of my generation out here (I’m 51).
So, I’m curious, just exactly, “How old Are you?”
That’s a quote from my niece a long time ago when she was about 7. I told her, “I’m older’n dirt.”
She scrunched up her cute little face and thought real hard for a couple of minutes before saying,
“You can’t be older than Dirt, Uncle Jim.”
Oct 14 2007
The Three-fer
It’s only been three years since the New York Times publicly apologized for promoting Bush Administration fairy tales about Iraqi WMD, and still the Grey Lady continues to carry heavy water for the Bush Administration, this time regurgitating Neocon lies claims that the target of the Israeli bombing strike in Syria was a nuclear facility.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 – Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
…
Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity. In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack.
See how easy it is to make a news story seem credible? Just quote some unnamed Administration officials with access to reports they can’t otherwise talk about, and Voila!
Instant nukes, ready for framing!
Of course, you might expect professional (or at least competent) journalists to make some attempt to corroborate these bombastic reports, especially considering the Times’ embarrassing track record when it comes to the topic of WMD in Middle Eastern countries. Right?
Heh.
Oct 14 2007
Iglesia
Waiting is almost always cold. Or at least it seems that way. She can, of course remember times when she has waited in the sunlight or on hot steamy days. But when she thinks of waiting….she shivers. Just some trick of her mind. There is something about waiting to her that always seems cold …..or is it just lonely? Sitting somewhere by yourself. A small girl, waiting with her arms wrapped around her, cold, alone and unhappy. The abject existential aloneness that we all try to avoid at all costs, that feeling of abandonment and separation and resentment we all feel when we are at our lowest points in life. A spiralized descent into a place frost and ice….After a break up or the death of someone close to us, that cold, that chill, that sense of being totally alone in an isolated black bleakness of despair and solitude…a chill of and to the very soul, cold cold cold, and afraid, in the frozen void of the ultimate and final unfightable and undeniable aloneness, deep inside of ourselves. A deep black cold.