Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Fumento on AIDS
In ’93, my mother died from a cancerous brain tumor. I was a subscriber to the American Spectator, and I couldn’t help but notice the irony, given my personal situation, in the writings of one Michael Fumento.
Bill Clinton was a brand-new President back then, and he was bound and determined to make sure that what our Government spent on the AIDS epidemic, as vast a sum as that may have been under the administration of George H. W. Bush, be nevertheless multiplied. Which, in due course, it was.
It’s 2006. We still have AIDS.
What took my mother’s life thirteen years ago, was something we had been reading about clear back in the seventies: Cancer. Cancer of this, Cancer of that. And the irony is not lost on me: In order to catch AIDS, you have to do…certain things which we will leave unmentioned in this forum. To catch cancer, you have to do…who knows what? Sunbathe, eat lots of salty food. Well, my mother did neither one of those, but in 1991 she figured out her brain was working, you know, not quite properly. So she went in for a CAT Scan, and lo and behold, there was a cloud. Eighteen months later she was worm food.
Now I ask you. What’s scarier? I mean, really.
So while I freely confess to a personal bias, nevertheless, regardless of the reason, I am solidly on the Fumento bandwagon.
Fumento likens a rational analysis of the AIDS crisis, which is sadly lacking, nowadays…to John Snow’s analysis of the cholera epidemic in mid-nineteenth-century London.
The entire science of epidemiology � which began when London physician John Snow determined that cholera cases in his city clustered around a single water pump � depends on identifying risk factors to ameliorate them. In Snow�s case, he simply removed the pump handle and the epidemic ended.
He was lucky he didn�t have to deal with activists carrying signs reading: “Water doesn�t cause cholera; ignorance and prejudice cause cholera!”
Indeed. Isn’t it funny? What we call “science” plays this game of leapfrog with what we call “truth”…sometimes in front of it, sometimes over it, sometimes under it, sometimes in back of it. But never are the two concepts more distant, than when mind-boggling numbers of human lives are at stake.
Found more info on the John Snow Pump Handle thingy over here.
Happy reading.
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When I was studying the history of science, Snow’s work was one of the three seminal events we studied. It is an example of how to solve a very hard problem, and well worth knowing for anyone who has an interest in advancing human welfare.
What is most interesting to me is that it didn’t start with the pump handle; that’s just a part of it. What he noticed was that there were two patterns in two different neighborhoods that had been confusing people trying to solve the mystery. In one, people in some houses were sick, but not in others. In the other, people who were examined by saw doctors often died, while those who did not see doctors sometimes died, but the pattern wasn’t consistent for those who were examined by doctors.
He traced those to, respectively, the water company they subscribed to (one drew its water upriver of London, the other within London itself), and that not all doctors washed their hands between examining patients (those who washed their hands were much less likely to have patients die).
These discoveries led directly to the germ theory of disease, modern sanitation, and numerous improvements in medical practice. John Snow has probably saved more lives than any other person in human existence.
- Jeff Medcalf | 09/02/2006 @ 19:39