50/50

The placebo effect. A patient is given a sugar pill or other spurious treatment and gets better. Works 20% to 40% of the time. It seems to be very effective for pain relief, no so good for the treatment of urinary tract infections or gunshot wounds to the chest.

Homeopathy. The theory behind homeopathy is that a small amount of something that can cause a symptom will relieve that symptom. For example a dilute solution of Belladonna, which causes headaches, is used in homeopathy to treat headaches. Being as belladonna, aka deadly nightshade, can be fatal if ingested one is led to wonder how dilute of a solution are we talking about? Typically homeopathic "remedies" are mixed one part of the original substance to one hundred parts distilled water. The mixture is shaken and 1 part of it is then mixed with one hundred parts distilled water. The process is repeated for a total of six dilutions, final dilution 1 part to 1,000,000,000,000. You would think that at that dilution the solution would be rather weak, but homeopaths claim that the more dilute it is the better it works. Studies have shown that homeopathy is effective 20% to 40% of the time. Coincidentally about the same as placebos. And it is not generally recommended for the treatment of gunshot wounds to the chest.

Other alternative therapies have about the same cure rate. Reflexology, where the foot is massaged to treat everything from gastric ulcers to heart disease, aroma therapy, faith healing, acupuncture and drum beating all have about a 30% chance of making you feel better.

So here is the key to perfect health. Eat some candy, get a foot rub, light some incense, say a prayer and beat your head against the wall. Since each of these treatments has about a 30% chance of curing you, you will feel 150% better!

OWL

Dec. 31, 2011

Blitzen’s Funeral

The elves were there,

And Mrs. Claus

Santa recited “T'was The Night Before Christmas”

And Rudolf read the eulogy.

They bore him away on Santa’s sleigh,

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer, and Vixen…

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Donder, and ____ .”

Christian saints may live forever,

and elves may never die.

But not so caribou,

except in our hearts.

And in the minds of children,

ever eager to believe.

Bernard Geitz Rides the Bus

Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, and Squeaky Fromm.

Dorthea Peunte, Jaun Corona

and John Wayne Gasy,

men and boys.


How do I know?



Timothy McViegh, Derrick Kelbold

and Eric Harris, sawed off shotgun.



Zodiac killer, made the cut,

the Hillside Strangler and Manson.

Cary Stayner and Scott Patterson.

Thank you TV.



OWL

Dec. 20, 2011



PS Leslie Van Houton.

I don't get it

I saw this on facebook and it is true.

Warning: Flu Shots Are Coming to Your Church

Really to your church, flu shots, those shots the doctor gives you to keep you from getting sick. Right through the front door, up the aisle and onto the dais. Or maybe, even more frighteningly, they'll sneak 'em the back door and down to the basement to hide among the stacks of hymnals, and old creches, ready to jump out at you on your way to the little girls room, or to the little boys room if you are a man of god. It seems that, according to the linked article, the federal government is conspiring with faith based organizations to immunize living breathing human beings, United States citizens, against a disease!

There must be something terribly wrong here. Religious groups usually recommend prayer for protection from illness, and the government just mandates that you buy insurance. Same thing really. Prayer is cheaper, only ten percent of your income. So what is wrong, why do we need be alarmed about this new, "Lets work together to bring affordable preventive medicine to the populace", policy? The article doesn't really make that clear. Other than citing another internet article that does interesting things with statistics trying to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the vaccine and the pushing of its own brand of health care, it gives no reason to worry about what goes on in your local prayer circle.

All I can say is: Thank you. Everyone needs to know this. Influenza is a serious disease! Projectile vomit, diarrhea and the attendant danger of dehydration and opportunistic infection, especially pneumonia, make it a major killer of the old, the very young, the infirm and those with weakened immune systems. The last time I had the flu I could not keep water down and I was a healthy forty year old. One of the factors which limit your chances of getting the flu is the fact that many others get immunized. The article referenced does exactly what it accuses the CDC of, it lies with statistics. It implies, quite falsely that out of 100 people who take the vaccine 98.5 get the flu. Then it states, with a strange way of using numbers that a flu shot prevents 1.5 in 100 people from getting the flu. Lets assume for a moment, because they make a lot of assumptions, that this is correct. Most of the others don't get sick for other reasons, like the fact that their neighbors were vaccinated thus they were not exposed. Even so it means 1 million shots prevent 15,000 cases of flu. 15,000 less people in schools and hospitals spreading a deadly disease. And if each of these people gave it to two other people, etc. we would soon have an epidemic. The 10th level is 15,000,000 cases. If they each gave it to three, quite easy with such a communicable disease among an non-immunized population, the 10th level is three quarters of a billion!

The article goes on the show a video about a woman who had a severe reaction to a flu vaccination. It does not show video of the millions in the past century and hundreds each year who have had a severe reaction to the virus itself. They wound up in hospitals with all the symptoms of having died!

The under-advantaged now have a chance to get the vaccine if they desire it. No one is forcing anyone to take it. Making it unavailable to some, as the article seems to encourage, forces them NOT to take it.

Warning: Flu Shots Are Coming to Your Church

OWL

December 15, 2011

in His name

The following letter was written in 2002 during the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Some people disagreed then and still do. I stand by what I wrote.

The current debate over weather or not to invade Iraq seems silly to me. The facts are clear, what we have to do is obvious. First of all this man commands a large and well equipped army. The largest stockpile of chemical warfare agents in the world is under his control. The CIA believes he has access to nuclear weapons. He has weapons of "mass destruction". He has invaded a foreign country in the past. He has been heard to threaten the eminent invasion of yet another country. Agents under his control are actively studying biological warfare, in fact one of these agents is a prime suspect in the anthrax attacks/murders of last year. Few people realize his father was the head of a large and highly secretive organization whose avowed purpose was to spy on other countries.

Every word of this is TRUE. He is a mad man and must be stopped. His name is Bush.

Tykes behind bars

Reading news on the web I was shocked once again by the harsh treatment of women in Muslim countries. This time a woman in Afghanistan who claimed to have been raped by her cousin's husband was sentenced to two years in prison for adultery. When she appealed the appellate court refused to believe she had been raped. They told her a woman cannot get pregnant as a result of her first sexual encounter, therefore she must have had a consensual relationship with the man. (She has a daughter, the result of the encounter.) Even if she was willing, being sentenced to two years in an Afghani prison for consensual sex is rather harsh.

Then came a startling statistic, in Afghanistan there are approximately 600 adult women in prison. Many of them for "moral crimes". The number seemed "odd". I began to do some research. The population of Afghanistan is approximately 34 million, assuming half are female leaves 17,000,000. Doing a quick calculation I learned that 0.00003 percent of the women in Afghanistan are in prison. That is 1 out of 28000.

By contrast California, one of our more progressive states, has about 37 million inhabitants. Of the 18,500,000 women in my home state 11,000 of them are incarcerated in state prison, 0.005 percent. One out of 1600. So if you are a woman in California you are almost twenty times more likely to be in prison than a woman in Afghanistan!

One fifth of these women, and half of the new arrivals have been sentenced for drug crimes. Only one third are there for violent offenses, of those the majority have used illicit drugs. Nearly half, 48%, report being the victims having been the victims of rape and/or sexual molestation. If you think some of these women may be lying in order to get better treatment then you have no understanding of how female victims of sexual abuse and assault are treated in this country. You might be more comfortable reading the Inquirer.

Add to that the great number of women in jail, on probation or out on parole have you have a sizable portion of the female population in the criminal justice system. Many of the women locked up for property crimes committed fraud or stole in order to obtain drugs. 80% of then are mothers, of those more than half are single mothers who get little or no support from the child's father. Statics from other states are similar.

What it all adds up to is a vast number of women in the United States who are under lock and key because of personal problems which lead to drug use and crime. Very often those problems stem from childhood sexual/physical abuse or neglect. Instead of offering a support system for these women, and help when needed, they are given a cell. The United States has a higher percentage of it population, including women, in prison than any other country in the world.

I do believe that women in this country are given more opportunities and have more freedom than those in many parts of the world. But that does not mean we can smugly point our fingers and say "They mistreat their women."

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9252482-afghan-woman-ill-marry-rapist-even-though-i-cant-look-at-him

http://www.boalt.org/PAC/stats/women-prison-fact-sheet.html

Bonus rant:

Several years ago the Chief Medical Officer at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla Ca. was removed from his position because every woman who came into the infirmary, for any reason, was given a cervical exam or PAP smear. To be clear this was often in spite of the fact she might have been in recently for another problem and had the exam then. When questioned about this policy by correspondents from ABC's Nightline, Dr. Anthony Domenico, said "This is a group of women that are isolated. And I've heard women tell me that they would deliberately like to get examined - it's the only male contact they get." This is just one example of the sexual abuse these women continue to experience at one prison. Many more instances can be found. Oh, guess what happened to the Dr., did he lose his license or was he "reassigned"?

http://revcom.us/a/v22/1090-99/1090/california_prisons.htm

OWL

Dec. 13, 2011

coffee

I do not usually write about commercial products. They can hire there own hacks. But this is special. The Tassimo brand coffee maker. It reads bar codes!! It looks like an ordinary counter top appliance, a little small, but still it has all the features of a regular brewer. Place to put water, warming plate, and buttons. It does what a normal coffee creating device does, it brews coffee. But in an extraordinary way. You see it READS BAR CODES. Yes it has a bar code reader and a little tiny brain. You put these little prepackaged "T-disc" of coffee, they look like a little flat plastic bowl, in it and it reads the bar code marked clearly on the outside and brews the prefect cup of coffee. Every time. How cool is that? It saves you all the trouble of measuring out coffee and pressing a couple extra buttons! And when it is done just toss out the little plastic cup with the grounds.

It just brews one cup at a time so everyone gets to line up and brew their own special premixed blend.

Tassimo, I don't mind the idea of needing a coffee maker with its own logic chip and holographic optical device. What is bizarre is the price of the little plastic disposable dish for every individual cup of coffee.

OWL

Dec. 18, 2011

Sensuality

When I was twelve we lived in a big 'ol two story, five bedroom house. The only heat was a floor furnace. Money for gas was scarce. There were eight kids in the family, money for everything was scarce. One nice sunny day I was out in the front yard playing and having a good time. My step-mother came out on the steps and told me to come in to the house. "It is to cold out there." She was very insistent, I came in. It was freezing in the house!

I wonder how she came to the conclusion it was to cold for me to play outside. Maybe she assumed that since there was a furnace in the house it must be warmer inside. Or maybe she was just being a bitch and didn't like seeing me have fun. Either way I learned a very valuable lesson. You don't know what someone else's perception is. You are not in there body. There is no way to tell if someone is hot or cold, hungry or full, unless you ask them.

Likewise, you are not inside their head. you don't know what their experience is. I try not dismiss out of hand those who tell me they saw, or felt, or heard or feel things that I have not. "I saw a ghost", "God told me", "It was in another life". Who am I to say no that is not possible. Just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it can't happen. And more importantly I have no idea what their experience has been. I may have been there with them, but I was not in their head.

My ex-wife told me once, at least once, when I had asked what she had said, "You heard me, I said it loud enough."

Yeah, well she was mumbling.

OWL

Nov. 19, 2011

Lead posioning

Matt Dillon wore a cowboy hat and killed people. It seemed like every week the protagonist of the popular television series Gunsmoke shot somebody. Dead. Some weeks he had more than one victim, if victim is the right word. The killing was always justifiable. Usually it was in a gunfight and the other guy always drew first.

Miss Kitty had red hair and ran the saloon. She never showed her titties. Nor did her saloon girls. That is the way it was in those days. Not the 1870's, I mean the nineteen sixties and seventies. You could show violence on TV but not the human body. Matt beat people up, got into fights on a regular basis, and he had real good reasons to get angry. His clothes and his mouth were always clean. Nothing anyone did would make him swear. Oddly enough the bad guys who killed in cold blood didn't cuss either.

Seeing someone naked or hearing them use the Lord's name in vain was considered to be harmful, especially to children. It still is considered harmful by many people. So much so that such things are still restricted on public airways. But graphic depictions or murder, rape, assault, and mental cruelty were and are completely acceptable. The CBS network got fined $500,000 for allowing Janet Jackson's nipple to show for a few seconds during a Superbowl broadcast. Rather stiff considering the offending part could barely be seen.

Although the rules are not as strict as they once were the broadcast airwaves are still for the most part free of bad language and sex organs, but full of violence and mayhem. Carnage is pervasive, carnality is prohibited.

I have never understood this but I have learned that people are often unwilling to talk about subjects that bring up feelings of guilt and shame. It troubles me to think that those institutions who claim to be this country's moral compass are more offended by the occasional image of an areola than by nightly depictions of the death of one person at the hands of another.

OWL

Nov. 25, 2011