$ jlc (10,317)

An excellent book. Not my favorite of Heinlein's but definitely on of the good ones. (Wm's favorite, I think.)

Jan

OW!

I do like the way they couched teaching creationism into a bill called Academic Freedom. It is an excellent example of 'freedom' being spun until it is dizzy. Makes you want to teach the flying spaghetti monster, doesn't it?

Jan

A quick scan via a search engine leads me to believe that SD is all over the board on the issue of evolution - they defeated a creationist bill (called Bill for Academic Freedom or some such) but there seems to be a lot of pushback on that.

Jan

Complacency.

Irregardless of who has been in power, our lives just keep chuffing along: We hit the switch and the lights turn on. We adjust the thermostat, and magic heat or cool come out of the wall. We drive our cars, watch our TV, play games on our computers, read.

There is nothing that touches our everyday lives that gives us something to fight about. Sometimes we even 'make up things' so that we can have a cause worth fighting for (feminism; black lives matter), but the truth of the matter is that we live in a lotus land of affluence; even the people we label as poor have a better life than Alfred the Great or Ramses.

We are happy lobsters in a pot of slowly warming water, and we do not notice the increase of heat.

Jan

Huh. What a great idea.

Jan, stealing it

I have voluntarily gone in that direction, though my genetics are OK for gluten (NB. Jan, remember to doublecheck this). There is just a lot of anecdotal data on the increase in Crohn's disease and general gastric problems in our current culture.

I have a great recipe for Paleo-breakfast-bars, if you are interested.

Jan

Yes. Me an acetaminophen do not get along, for example. And while I have the SNP that is supposed to quickly metabolize caffeine, I do not do so.

Have you had genomic analysis done? It is quite interesting.

Jan

Perhaps you should write an article for a SD newspaper, congratulating them on their apartheid stance...

Jan

So, you think it was sorted by 'controversial' vs 'non-controversial'? Interesting - could be the case. One must wonder what they will do when it comes to teaching evolution,

Jan

...and you can curl your mustache and laugh HORRIBLY.

Oh dear. No Sports? No Big Gov?

Whatever shall I do? (turns pale and fans herself)

Jan

I prefer to believe that you are an Evil Overlord with the characteristic Evil Overlord laugh.

Jan (though I think you should add a "w", as in BWAHAHAHAHAhahahahah!)

I fear that you and I will have to disagree. I read part of the book, and did not regard it as science.

Jan

Uh. Nice scientific analysis...for an Evil Overlord.

Jan

This is a puzzling article because its agenda is not clear to me. Generally the dichotomy is [teach Slavery and Native Am but NOT the Constitution] or [teach the Constitution but NOT Slavery or the Native Am]. The former represents the current liberal PC stance; the latter represents the old-style whitewashing of American history; neither is accurate, of course.

But a program that espouses the removal of the first 100 years of American history does not play into either of these agendas. It does make me wonder if the program also omits world history prior to 1900.

I do not understand what is going on here.

Jan

We are of similar ages, and I too am quite focused on maintaining my level of physical activity.

There is no good news about the detection of Lyme disease: the spirochetes are sparse and, even using the most sensitive technologies available, they are difficult to find (eg 30% - 50% correct detection rate). There is a new test that uses antigen-capture on a urine specimen, since bits of the membrane of Borrelia are shed into the urine. I think this is a reasonably priced test (in comparison to the other high tech Lyme tests) and it has come up with some positives that the other methodologies have missed. You might ask about it. If you have not had an aggressive antibiotic therapy targeted at Borrelia during the last 2 years, you might discuss this with your GP too. Maybe the best path is to assume that you have it and then try to get rid of the damn spirochete.

Good luck.

Jan

Olduglycarl -

I am a medical technologist, and for 17 years my job included crossmatching units of blood for transfusions. As a result of this, and of an interest in genetics, I have studied the immunology of blood types in fair depth. There are some statistically significant differences in response to disease and in predilection to certain disorders (eg gastric) per blood type. But I have yet to see a valid study of eating or lifesyle correlated positively with blood type (most of what I have read on this topic I would feel generous labeling as BS).

If you know of such a study, please send it to me.

Medications, prescription or otherwise, are tools, the same way a hammer or a screwdriver is. You have to know how to use them, but once you do your ability to make changes to your environment is vastly enhanced. So do not disregard prescription meds...and herbal meds are just less pure and regulated OTC versions thereof.

Jan

GaryL -

Please see my comment above. If the negative side effects of statins are limiting your life, you really need to take charge of whether or not you continue your prescription.

Jan

Chlorthalidone is a diuretic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorta...

The purpose of statins is to lower the amount of cholesterol in the blood. But, as of this year, the medical community is (at last) revising its image of the role of cholesterol, which was based on a flawed survey done in the 1950's by Ancel Keys. So, if you are taking statins, you are taking something to lower a substance (cholesterol) in your blood that may have no correlation with heart disease. There may be some ancillary benefits to statins, but you need to think about this and discuss it with your doctor. Warning: Most doctors were raised and trained during the era of Cholesterol is Satan, so you probably need to do some groundwork if this conversation is to go well.

I always look stuff up before I take it (or give it to my dogs).

Jan

Interesting sequence of remarks. When I read them, I can 'hear' which ones are yelled (albeit not explicitly in CAPs) and which ones are spoken.

It is pointless to say that there is no such thing as "Open Objectivism" because if there were not, then !bingo! I can create it by waving my hand. There is nothing to prevent it from coming into being. More importantly, I think that Objectivism - whether or not it is termed open - be general principles, not dogma. If your answer to a question that is posed is "Ayn Rand said such-and-so." it should be because what she said on that particular topic is illuminating, not because The Prophet said it.

Some of the discussions in this Gulch have been among the most interesting I have engaged in (or merely perused, if there was nothing I could contribute), but dogmatic and highly emotional bludgeoning has also been disturbingly present.

I try to avoid those threads.

Jan

You. Aren't. Actually. Believing. This.

Are you?

Jan

Ha! List of rogue's gallery indeed.

Jan

Oh. What a nice phrase!

Jan

Possibly a correct statement, but since all of those concepts have very low value to me, the equation does not make much sense.

Jan

I recall the same being said of JFK and Catholicism - the claim was that the US would be run by the pope were JFK elected. That did not happen.

Right now, I would indeed look askance at a Muslim being elected President, because his/her term would be about nothing but that, but I don't think that it is theoretically possible for this to occur and the Pres to be a good leader of the US. I am willing to wait a few decades until the Muslim religion is no longer such a spectacular example of dissonance, however.

Jan