October 27, 2014

The Chicken Little Ebola Club Med

Here's an entrepreneurial opportunity..

Say some super rich guy has tropical island he's not using..

He sets it up as a reward-for-service..free 21 day R & R resort after treating ebola patients.

the staffers do not ever interact with the guests (on a person-to-person basis)..

Free food..free sun & fun & relaxation..

Gourmet food ..served on disposable plates

Since all guests are medical people, they monitor their own care

Club Med & Sandals could consult

October 27, 2014

(Possible spoiler)Anyone else underwhelmed by Boardwalk Empire's finale?

Although I had guessed early on that they would end it this way, I was still disappointed by the way they did it.

They should have just ended it at the end of last season, and called it a day.. They wasted a lot of time "tying up loose ends" that most of us avid watchers had already figured out.

Margaret ended up the "winner", since she was still married to Nucky and probably was smart enough to cash in her winnings... Eli came in 2nd, since he has a new stake to start over.. everyone else lost..

October 24, 2014

Dr. Braverman's "bold" plan for returnees (from West Africa)

Today on Morning Schmo, they had Dr Braverman on...spouting more panicky nonsense about ebola, and once again ramping up suspicion about how contagious the disease is..

In case others saw it, and wondered who this kook is...here's the google scoop on him.. Apparently Hannity likes him..

Shame on MSNBC (actually Joe) for giving this nut even a second of airtime..



Frequent Fox guest Doctor

October 24, 2014

What if?

Mr Duncan had called the CDC, and said:

"I just traveled from Liberia to visit family and I have probably been exposed to ebola. I am feeling ill with a fever & abdominal pain. I have no health insurance."

Do you think the CDC would have told him to go to the nearest ER and vaguely present his symptoms?

or do you think they would have told him to stay where he was, so they could dispatch someone to get him into treatment ASAP?

I am firmly convinced that the ER attendant who checked him in , saw a foreign black man with no insurance who had an upset stomach & a fever .. The bottom line thinking at more and more hospitals is to do as little as possible and to do it as quickly as possible.. move 'em out with a prescription , and on to the next one.

Anything done to and for an uninsured patient costs the hospital money.. In most cases it just means that an uninsured patient has to tough it out, and most do recover from their flu or cold at home..and the hospital saves a few bucks.

I think Mr Duncan underestimated the almighty USA health "system". He probably thought that someone one would think zebra when they heard hoof beats.. unfortunately for him, they thought plow horse, and sent him on his way. It's too bad that someone with him did not say.."HE PROBABLY HAS EBOLA...CALL THE CDC...WE ARE NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU DO"..

That hospital could have immediately transported him out of their hospital, and neither of those nurses would have gotten it, and Mr Duncan could have been saved.. and the hospital would have been seen as heroic..instead of bumbling.

October 24, 2014

Have you recently touched another person's shit/vomit/mucus/semen?

or saliva, blood, sweat, tears, breast milk, urine? (particularly those items from a stranger)


If the answer is NO , you do NOT have ebola. Usually mothers/wives/caretakers/nurses ever come into contact with those items, and they are usually "courtesy of" people they know, or are paid to tend to..

If you recently butchered a West African bat/monkey/other "bush meat", you might run a risk of getting ebola..

If you shook hands with/sat next to/had lunch with someone with a low-grade fever, who may have sneezed or coughed, you MIGHT get the flu or a cold they have, but you will not "catch" ebola...because they probably do not have it, and it's not an airborne disease.

It's too bad that our illustrious media cannot find their way through the weeds to just lay it out in blunt terms so that even the most ignorant in our midst could understand..

October 15, 2014

Ebola, outside the box.. (my friend's near-death experience in 1968)

My friend had just gotten notice that her fiance's plane had been shot down in Viet Nam, and she did not yet know that he and his crew were rescued).

She was beside herself with worry, and decided to have a hot bath after hours of crying.

She ran a hot bath and put in bath oil beads.

Hours later, she awoke short of breath and covered with red welts.

Her mom rushed her to the ER, and they admitted her.

The diagnosis was a systemic poisoning...

The hot water opened her pores, and had let in the ingredients of the bath oil beads... She recovered, but was told that she could have just as easily died from the overload .

Which brings me to ebola:

Could it be that the intense body heat that builds up inside those sealed protective suits, also opens all the pores, so that IF a spec of fluids lands on the worker in the un-gowning, it has a more direct path into their own bodies, though those pores?

What if there were a refrigeration/freezer unit that they went into before disrobing, to cool them down and shrink down the pores before they took off the gear?

Or if they were washed down (fully suited) with super cold water?

The family who lived with Duncan have all tested ok, but then their apartment was probably air conditioned.. The ones who have gotten the disease from him were supposedly protected by the hot-suits..

October 14, 2014

Large eathquake near El Salvador

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/7-3-magnitude-earthquake-strikes-el-salvador-coast-n225056



A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of El Salvador late Monday, according to the USGS. The quake was centered about 40 miles to the south of the small coastal town of Intipuca at a depth of about 14 miles. The National Weather Service Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially said that dangerous tsunami waves were possible within about 185 miles of the epicenter along the coasts of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, but said the threat had mostly passed about an hour after the quake was first detected.

snip

October 13, 2014

The USA is actually pretty bad at the war stuff..and we have been for a long time

If you want to be really fair about it, the only real "victory" we had was WWII, and we joined in that one pretty late, and had lots of help.

Ever since "the big one", we have pretty much sucked.

Korea was a "tie", at best

The Bay of Pigs invasion was a flop

Our overthrow/coup in Iran has yielded nothing more than disaster for decades, and turned a country that was pretty modern into a religious nightmare

Viet Nam was a horror

Our meddling in Afghanistan (the 1980s) is still biting us in the ass

The Central American fiasco all during the 80's was no success, and made lots of enemies for us

Grenada was nothing more than a pretend war for Ronnie's benefit

Kuwait "rescue" was quite possibly more hype than anything else, done to prove that GHWB was not as wimpy as the media portrayed him

Afghanistan Pt 2 & Iraq have been flops as well

Our wars succeed in making lots of money for contractors/munitions makers & lobbyists, and in killing & maiming people (ours and theirs)

The outcomes after the wars are always rife with instability, civil wars (that our actions only postponed), destroyed cities/infrastructure/schools/hospitals/etc.

We spare no expense in "training" our allies' soldiers so they can continue the fight when we leave, but what we find out now, is that when they are asked to actually fight, they often do not want to risk their own lives. They like the income they are paid when they are training, and they march and they ride in the vehicles we give them, but they do not want to fight.

We should start considering just buying them off .. Send in corps of engineers guys and money & tools, and shower them with those things. Help them build up their country better than the ones there we don't like all that much. Let them run their own country, and if they turn out to not be to our liking, just cut them off and let them duke it out.

We are meddlers with money, and no one likes a meddler.

October 10, 2014

Google's Shamu.. ( I WANT one)

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/09/google-hopes-whale-of-a-phone-will-make-splash-in-phablet-market/

Oct 9, 2014
Apple
Google Hopes Whale of a Phone Will Make Splash in Phablet Market



By
Alistair Barr and Rolfe Winkler



Google this month expects to release its largest smartphone, intensifying competition in the fast-growing market for super-sized mobile devices known as phablets, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The new phone — code-named Shamu after a killer whale — will have a 5.9-inch screen, a high-resolution display and be sold under the Nexus brand, two of the people said. Motorola Mobility, the phone maker that Google is selling to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd.0992.HK -5.05%, is manufacturing the phone, the people added. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The new phone will be larger than Apple AAPL iPhone 6 Plus, which is 5.5 inches, and the Samsung Galaxy Note, the first truly successful phablet, which is 5.7 inches. Google plans to release a new version of its Android mobile-operating system at the same time. Tech blog The Information reported in July that Motorola was working on a Nexus phablet with Google.

Phablets, defined as smartphones with displays five inches or larger, were once ridiculed as unwieldy bricks for short-sighted, older consumers. But as phones have evolved from calling devices into computers for work tasks and watching videos, larger devices have caught on.

In 2011, phablets accounted for 1% of global smartphone shipments. This year, these big phones will make up 24% of the market, according to consultants Strategy Analytics. Stats like that forced Apple to drop its aversion to larger iPhones this year and now Google is responding.

“The phablet wars are in full effect and vendors need any possible edge they can get,” said Neil Mawston, a mobile-industry analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Having a large phone will help Google.”

snip

October 6, 2014

Ashoka Mukpo once hailed as reincarnated lama

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/us-ebola-patient-ashoka-mukpo-liberia

What an interesting background this young man has..


Associated Press in Providence, Rhode Island
theguardian.com, Friday 3 October 2014 22.49 EDT



A passion for Liberia and the plight of its people drove Ashoka Mukpo to work there, first to aid relief efforts and then as a photojournalist to tell its story. But Mukpo has an unusual story of his own: As an infant, he was identified as a reincarnated Tibetan lama, a role he chose not to pursue.

Mukpo, 33, was diagnosed Thursday with Ebola and was being cared for at a treatment centre in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. His family said he was expected to leave there on Sunday and arrive at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha on Monday.

His mother, Diana Mukpo, comes from an upper-class aristocratic family in Britain. At age 16, she left boarding school in Scotland and married Tibetan Buddhist leader Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who founded the Shambhala community that spread Buddhism in the west. She was one of several wives.

They moved to Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s and set up a Buddhist centre, where notables such as Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell and William Burroughs studied and Trungpa advocated tantric sex.

snip