Monday, June 27, 2016

Summer


12 comments:

  1. What gorgeous peonies!! Let them be first!

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  2. Lurv this:

    Cheeto Jesus selling wolf tickets

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  3. Funny, though. Where I grew up, peonies were just in bloom for Memorial Day, so I think of them as May flowers.

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  4. From politicalwire.com:

    NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: “The most disliked of all is Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who is viewed unfavorably by a full 60 percent of the electorate, while only 29 percent offer a positive rating of the GOP standard-bearer (-31 rating). Hillary Clinton is not far behind, with 33 percent of voters giving her a favorable rating compared to 55 percent who give her a negative rating (-22).”
    “For the Republican Party, it’s 28 percent positive/ 48 percent negative (-20). The Democratic Party is slightly less unpopular at 37 percent positive and 43 percent negative (-6).”
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    And on what I at first thought to be another note altogether, but upon reflection seems similar:


    Seagulls spreading colistin-resistant E. coli [Click]

    —Alan

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    1. LOL Alan. It's not funny, really, terribly serious and worrisome, in fact; but your comment certainly gave me a smile.

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    2. Thanks, Cat--I think it qualifies as dark humor. There have been several recent advances in antibiotic research, and some of the old pre-antibiotic treatments are getting another look. I think most of us will be OK. But overuse of antibiotics is simply insane. When I started working in medical labs we would still occasionally get a request to send out a sample of a particular patient's pathogenic bacterium for creation of a custom antibody, which would then be injected into the patient. I haven't seen such a request in several decades; it is slow and less convenient than antibiotics, but it did work to a degree. There has also been progress in discovering new antibiotics produced by soil organisms that cannot be cultured (more DNA-related stuff). Well, we shall see.

      Thinking back to my first medical lab job, we received specimens from several distinct groups of people, and they had different selections of pathogenic bacteria. We served an Indian reservation on the west side of the county, where health care was given by the Public Health Service. The doctors there were very sparing in their use of antibiotics; if they did a culture (say a throat culture) and found small amounts of a pathogenic organism (staph or strep, most often) that was not causing significant symptoms, they would not treat it. In consequence the antibiotic susceptibility profiles of the bacteria from there resembled those of animals--penicillin still worked very well for infections by bacteria that would use it for sauce outside the reservation.

      --Alan

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  5. I'm so relieved that you're safe, Puddle♥

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  6. Replies
    1. The mind boggles--would Gibraltar become Ayrshire [Very] South? I must read the article.--Alan

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  7. Reality Check: Have Leave campaigners changed their minds? - Click

    They out and out lied and it seems likely to me that they didn't expect or even intend their campaign to succeed. Unfortunately, the Remain campaign was not well run and, apparently, Jeremy Corbin himself is now strongly suspected of sabotaging it. Frustratingly, I can't now find he link to the analysis I read last night. But he's in very serious trouble within his own party over his leadership or lack thereof.

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    1. Cat--might this have been the article you were referring to?

      The young put Jeremy Corbyn in, but he betrayed them over Brexit [Click]

      --Alan

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    2. No. It was analysis on the BBC web site, but I'll definitely read this too. Thanks, Alan.

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