Standing up for freedom.
h/t Matt Ortega
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Graduation
Over the top happiness watching my youngest graduate magna cum laude from Princeton. Good going, kid.
*****
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
In Memory of Trevor
Thinking today of all the veterans in our family - Dad, both Grandfathers, Uncle Don, Uncle Jim.
Thinking we ought to have Mother's cousin Trevor Endsley still here, telling jokes and enjoying life. But his plane went down in WWII. I hope we will always count the cost before sending young people off to war.
*****
photo by mountainbread
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Hopscotch - Lessons Learned
Taught the neighborhood kids how to play hopscotch - of course they caught on right away!
We didnt get as far as how to throw your small stone onto a particular number. They just followed me on the 1, 2-3, 4, 5-6, 7, 8-9 10 with great glee. I left them streaming across the colored chalk grid.
They were so enchanted I didnt have the heart to explain to them they were "supposed" to turn around and go backwards also and they "should" use small stones.
We all won this game.
*****
photo by lincolnblues
Beautiful Guitar Work
Tommy Emmanuel / J.Shimabukuro: While My Guitar Gently Weeps
So beautiful - and you can see in their faces, they know they've got something good here.
h/t Tom F.
*****
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Game of Monopoly, Revised
BillShrinkGuy has a hilarious interpretation of Monopoly, upgraded for modern times [click link to see it large]:
h/t kamd
crossposted at firedoglake oxdown 8 may 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Swine Flu Emergency - Or Not
The new swine flu: sounds scary. But what is the reality?
A few dozen people have died in Mexico, and there are some documented cases in other countries. What are we NOT seeing: rapid contagion; an exponentially growing number of fatalities; contagion affecting medical care professionals. SARS was frightening in its lethal spread. So far we are not seeing this with the new swine flu outbreak.
We need to keep on top of the fear mongering potential of this issue. There are real public health threats, which we can discuss as professionals/people interested in public policy; however they overlap with those who would take medium size threats and turn them into opportunities to make money and consolidate power.
Cui bono in each case. I followed the avian flu thing closely and was inside enough to see how that became a money making opportunity.
Whatever this new thing is, is real. It will kill some people. It deserves appropriate attention and resources.
But something like 36,000 people in the U.S. die from regular flu every year; I don't hear a lot of screaming about that, except the one year Rumsfeld's Tamiflu folks tried to manufacture a shortage of vaccine. And don't get me started about other preventable deaths, here and abroad....
So yeah, I am afraid, just not of what you might think: I'm afraid of people who cry wolf so often that a REAL threat in the future would be ignored. I'm afraid of demagogues who advance their own narrow causes by making the rest of us scared, by magnifying a medium size problem into something terrifying. I'm afraid of resources at the CDC and state health boards - decimated during the Bush reign - now being forced into one issue at the expense of others that could save vastly more lives.
The author has an M.Sc. from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
*****
crossposted at firedoglake oxdown 26 april 2009
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