revere
Posts by this author
December 27, 2009
Nina Serbedzija is the actress daughter of Croatian Serb actor-musician Rade Serbedzija. She wrote and sings this poignant song. If any part of the world knows about cruel and pointless wars, it's the Balkans:
December 27, 2009
The natural home for influenza viruses is aquatic waterfowl, including ducks and geese (anseriformes). So I've read a fair amount about swabbing the claocae (rectums) of these animals as part of avian influenza surveillance. Recently it has been suggested that avian influenza is actually a sexually…
December 27, 2009
In our Freethinker Sermonette two weeks ago about all the other stuff in Leviticus that seems to get forgotten when the passage about homosexuality being an abomination is highlighted, some readers thought it was unfair to take this stuff out of its historical context. Atheism has no severer critic…
December 26, 2009
Poppies grow in France, too. In fields that are now green but were once red with blood. And no one seems to know why. Two million died in vain. The Fureys and another moving Eric Bogle song:
December 26, 2009
This week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a paper about a new antiviral drug that fully protected mice against virulent bird flu virus (H5N1). I don't usually pay a lot of attention to papers announcing new flu antivirals that work in animals. It's a long way…
December 25, 2009
Here's another wonderful song about the Christmas truce of 1914, this one by Mike Harding. What happened 95 years ago today shines down through the years. Let's transform Afghanistan from No Man's Land to Everyone's Land. Because but for some accident of birth any of us could be an Afghan or a…
December 25, 2009
So far the pandemic of 2009 has been bad enough but not anywhere near as bad as one could imagine. Let's hope it stays that way. While winning new knowledge from actual disease and sickness is not anyone's favorite strategy, it is likely we will learn a great deal about influenza in the years to…
December 24, 2009
A Christmas tradition in the Revere household is that I make Mrs. R. cry by playing this beautiful song by John McCutcheon about the Christmas truce of 1914. It's 2009 and bitter cold in the trenches of Afghanistan.
The Reveres, Christmas Eve, 2009
December 24, 2009
Yesterday CDC had its last press conference of this calendar year on the flu pandemic (.mp3 here). CDC's Anne Schuchat did her usual competent job and was generally upbeat while trying to maintain the need for urgency in the vaccination campaign. She cited numbers of over 100 million swine flu and…
December 23, 2009
Afghanistan is out of the headlines but we have continued to signal the existence of this unnecessary war every day since Obama announced his attention to escalate and thus make the Afghan War Obama's War. Given the projections of how long it will take to satisfy whatever vague and ill-defined…
December 23, 2009
One of the most dismaying "features" (or is it a bug?) of the US government is the too cozy relationship of key agencies with industries they are either regulating, investigating or affecting in some ways. The revolving door syndrome perhaps reached its peak in the Bush II administration, but it's…
December 22, 2009
As of yesterday it's winter, astronomically speaking. At the moment, it doesn't look like it's ushering in a Season of Peace. But it's not too late. A young Judy Collins on Pete Seeger's 1960s TV show with Pete's musical setting of Ecclesiastes with his added verse:
December 22, 2009
I went to medical school in the days when controls on human experimentation were not very robust (I understate). I think about that around Christmas time because one of the ways this penurious medical student used to make a few bucks was by volunteering for medical experiments (and eating Spaghetti…
December 21, 2009
The public doesn't want this war. We who don't outnumber the ones that are going along with a bad decision. Whose land is it, anyway? Arlo Guthrie's dad, Woody, had the answer and penned a song you all know. But what's great about this performance is that when Arlo looked around him he realized his…
December 21, 2009
I was well aware that food smells can make us hungry, but thought that the reverse -- smells taking our appetite away -- was limited to the ones that were nauseous or disgusting. Apparently that's not so. There are good tasting foods that simultaneously promote a feeling of fullness by stimulating…
December 20, 2009
It's Christmas week and we are struggling not to let our despair and anger overcome us. For a while, anyway, the mood will be up beat. Not to make you forget but to make you remember that there's work to be done, the work of making this a better world for our families, friends and neighbors, for…
December 20, 2009
We're only just learning some of the crap that's in this health care deform compromise/giveaway to the insurance industry, but some of it has come out (via the Manager's Amendment .pdf [and I admit I don't exactly know what this is except it contains legislative language allegedly in the bill]).…
December 20, 2009
At least one correct answer to the question "What's the difference between God and Santa Claus?" is "There is no God." Some of you may object. What's the evidence for Santa Claus, Mr. Big Shot Atheist!?
Just ask my daughter. OK, I admit she is now faithless. The scales have fallen from her eyes.…
December 19, 2009
This is not the first time we've done this poem by ee cummings. Alas. I guess it has to be done periodically. Because the steaming pile we are being asked to eat keeps mounting:
i sing of Olaf glad and big
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or…
December 19, 2009
We are on record as favoring single-payer health care and taking certain things like vaccines out of the market system, but beyond that we don't do much health care politics here. But we have opinions, like everyone does, opinions formed by working for more than four decades within the health care…
December 18, 2009
Tomas Young is a veteran in a wheel chair. He was shot in the spine by a sniper in Iraq. His story was featured in Phil Donahue's film, "Body of War," the story of Young's conversion from soldier to anti-Iraq war activist. You can see Young and others in the slides taken back stage at the…
December 18, 2009
I'm an epidemiologist and I train epidemiologists so you expect me to think epidemiology is important to public health. Epidemiology describes the pattern of diseases in the community and tries to figure out why some patterns exist and not others. It is used for both applied health research (causes…
December 17, 2009
While the Obama administration makes its choices, ordinary people in the rest of the world don't want more trouble:
December 17, 2009
Irony isn't dead. But it's on a ventilator. No wait. There aren't enough ventilators. So maybe it's just having labored breathing. From February 9:
The target grew out of discussions among a group of moderate Republicans, led by Sen. [Susan] Collins [of Maine], aimed at reining in costs and better…
December 16, 2009
The truth of this is disheartening. But truth often is:
Hat tip reader Erin.
December 16, 2009
A spot-on column in CIDRAP Business Source [subscription] by Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy's (CIDRAP) Director, Mike Osterholm, reminded me to say something I've wanted to say for a long time. We should banish the word "mild" from the influenza lexicon. There's no such thing as…
December 15, 2009
A reminder that many nations fight stupid wars. Remember the Falklands?
Mark Knopfler's version of the Dire Straits song, Brothers in Arms.
December 15, 2009
There's a lot to like about Canada (their health care system, for starters) but there are some things that are less than praiseworthy (I understate), and towards the top of that list would have to be a hundred years of peddling, with government support, protection and outright lying, a product that…
December 14, 2009
Bob Dylan recorded this in 1962 but it wasn't released until decades later. By then there were many more John Browns. And we are producing them in quantity in Afghanistan.
December 14, 2009
I am not a Christian (not now, not ever) but I have always liked Christmas. It's my favorite (secular) holiday and when the time comes (Christmas Eve or Christmas Day) we Reveres will likely write our traditional Christmas post explaining just why we aren't the obligatory curmudgeons on the issue.…