Via Paul Constant, here’s Quartz on “What you need to know about the mounting bird flu toll in China“:
Chinese official media said today that four more people have been infected with a rare, possibly mutated, form of bird flu, bringing the total number of cases in China to seven. The cases raise alarm over whether an outbreak could be brewing in the country, which is especially vulnerable to infectious diseases moving from animals to humans, and has a troubling history of authorities trying to conceal public health crises.
The newest patients, three women aged 32-45 and one 83-year-old man from Jiangsu province along China’s eastern coast, are critically ill with H7N9, a strain of avian flu that has never infected humans before and for which there is no vaccine, according to a notice on the province’s health bureau website. On March 31, authorities said that two men (aged 87 and 27) had died from the virus in Shanghai and one woman in Anhui province is in critical condition.
The most worrying part is that authorities don’t know how these people were infected. There’s no evidence so far that any of the patients interacted with each other, a sign that the bird flu hasn’t mutated into a virus that can jump between humans rather than just from animal to human–the basis for a global pandemic. Yet, most of the patients were not in close contact with birds (one woman was a poultry butcher and the woman in Anhui had some contact with live chickens.) Moreover, the mysterious illnesses are being disclosed within six weeks of over 16,000 carcasses of mysteriously killed pigs and 1,000 ducks floating in waterways near Shanghai and Sichuan province…
Yeah, it’s nowhere near a panic situation yet, and by the grace of Murphy the Trickster God, H7N9 will be just another expensive nuisance like SARS or the hoof & mouth outbreak in England…
Mnemosyne
Yikes — three people from our office were planning to travel to Shanghai in May. Sounds like I should have them hold off on buying their airline tickets.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Here’s a control panel, at the access TV station I volunteer at. I don’t know what it’s called.
Pooh
Since this is an open thread, municipal election here in Anchorage, the mayor’s handpicked assembly hatchet guy who introduced a resolution hoping to turn the city into Wisconsin (union rights? Pfaw…), and did so AFTER the filing deadline for the election is losing to a right wing candidate. Apparently, fucking with the unions right before a low turnout muni election is still a bad idea.
Spaghetti Lee
Forgive me for not panicking. It seems there’s a new ‘global pandemic’ every summer. Remember swine flu?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee: DON’T PANIC. It’s on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in Large, Friendly Letters.
MikeJ
@The prophet Nostradumbass: It’s a cleverly named “camera control unit.” Allows you to set white balance, color, etc from in the control room. Back in ye olden days of video you had to do it on the camera (and depend on the monitor on the camera too.) Makes more sense to control what the signal looks like where it gets used.
Mnemosyne
@Spaghetti Lee:
Technically, humans probably are due for a strong population-cleansing pandemic the way those of us in Southern California are due for a 6.0 or higher earthquake at some point in the near future. But once it gets here, I’m not sure there’s much we can do other than brace ourselves and hope for the best.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: Nah, just remind them to keep an eye on the world news updates.
I first started paying attention to H5N1 news back in the mid-1990s because I was working in a department where people regularly travelled to branch offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia & Thailand (and a few years later, Shanghai!). In those days we relied on paper copies of Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review — both of which have since gone out of business, because the internet took away their customer base.
jenn
@The prophet Nostradumbass: And don’t forget your towel.
Anne Laurie
@jenn:
If one is coughing up blood, Miss Manners would approve doing so into one’s towel.
Comrade Mary
Well, SARS was a bit more than “an expensive nuisance.” Not a world killer, not the pandemic of our nightmares, but it killed a lot of people and is still affecting survivors.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: They worried back in the 80s that this would be HIV, but it only ended up devastating the gay community and Africa a bit later.
jenn
@Anne Laurie: They’re useful in so many different ways!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@MikeJ: I knew some of that, but thanks for the rest!
Yutsano
@jenn: We are all hoopy froods now.
scav
@Yutsano: well, so long as we don’t confuse the corner with the spilled coffee to suck on and the bit with the hacked up blood we’re froopy. hard to see the difference what with my glasses going all dark suddenly.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Apparently I don’t have permission to edit my own comment, so…
I do a lot of volunteering at my local cable access station, and it’s a lot of fun. I have gotten to operate a TV camera, operate the switcher, produce on-screen graphics (using DEKO, which needs to DIAF), and some of the audio. You also get to add stuff to your resume which may, in the future, help you get a job.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Despite early paranoia, HIV actually is not very easy to transmit when you compare it to something airborne like influenza. Fortunately, we had the technology to prevent it from becoming as widespread as syphilis was in its heyday.
dance around in your bones
@The prophet Nostradumbass: The answer is 42.
jenn
@Yutsano: My favorites of his books, though, were the Dirk Gently ones, particularly The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Wonderful, goofy man (Adams, not Gently, though sort of Gently, too, I guess!). That damn refrigerator cleaning saga….
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: The big fear (and this was before they even found the virus) was that it could turn airborne. Then later it was discovered the little bug hates oxygen with a passion. And no matter how sophisticated they get going for anaerobic to aerobic just doesn’t happen. That could be what keeps bird flu from getting too far out of control.
@jenn: He died too damn soon. He had way more stories to tell yet.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Mary: Ouch. Thanks for the update, and for reminding me how much stuff
“we” miss even when I try to stay current!
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
I’m guessing they were afraid it was related to ebola, which IIRC can be transmitted through the air. I will freely admit I am not at all trained in epidemiology, though, just read some popular science articles about it.
MikeJ
@jenn: Didja ever catch the BBC Dirk Gently? They never did a second series, did they?
jenn
@Yutsano: Yeah he did. Plus I was really enjoying his foray into conservation writing, and looking forward to seeing where he was going to go with it.
Comrade Mary
@Anne Laurie: S’OK. I lived through SARS, as did most of the people in this city, and I don’t remember being terribly worried about catching it at the time. But I didn’t know how badly some of the survivors were doing until that show was broadcast the other week.
scav
as fundamental as 42 is, I think personally it’s God’s Final Message to His Creation for me. That and the falling petunias.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano:
On this, I think we can all agree.
Also, thanks to your comment, I am pleased to discover that The Meaning of Liff is online!
jenn
@MikeJ: NO! Seriously? Was it any good? One part of me wants to immediately locate it, the other part is awfully fond of my mental movie (that sounds bad, but you know what I mean) and doesn’t want to ruin it!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@dance around in your bones: and the question is, What is 6 times 9?
dance around in your bones
@scav: Oh no, not again.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I watched the movie of HHGTTG before/after Game of Thrones on Sunday, and it was pretty damn good. It was definitely better than I expected it to be.
dance around in your bones
@The prophet Nostradumbass: base 13.
Amir Khalid
News from Malaysia. Parliament is dissolved effective today, meaning the general election will be held at the end of this month. The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition will remain in a caretaker role for these few weeks.
We lack reliable political polling here, so nobody really knows how the elections will go. Who will win the federal level? My guess is, Barisan. How well will the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition do? Again, my guess is they’ll keep gaining on Barisan, maybe gain another state.
MikeJ
@jenn: I liked it, but it seems Auntie Beeb didn’t. When there was a freeze on the license fee they axed the second series.
Try this. Lowish quality, broken into pieces, but you can get the feel.
It didn’t map exactly to my mental movie, but I came to like it after getting used to it.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: Is it too late to get some of that sweet, sweet, propaganda money? I think those guys currently running the government are top notch, at least if they’re still handing out checks to idiot Americans. If not, I’ve no use for them.
Dead Ernest
@jenn: wholehearted agreement about the delight I found in his Dirk Gently books. I suspect he/they primed me to find the limitless pleasure of Terry Pratchett’s books when I later stumbled upon those.
And sadly, Sir Pratchett is leaving us far too soon as well, albeit more slowly due to the degenerative disease he has.
(Actually, I’d unknowingly already been more than delighted by Pratchett, but not recalling his name, when he collaborated with Neil Gaiman for Good Omens. One of the few books I make a point of rereading every few years)
karen marie
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I was really disappointed in the movie. In fact, I thought it was pretty terrible. I love the books, the first two original BBC radio series (I’ve never heard three through five) and subsequent BBC TV series (I’ve listened to/seen/read them countless times). Simon Jones is Arthur Dent, and Mark Wing-Davey is Zaphod Beeblebrox. And the Vogon ship was without question the wrong color. I would hope that had Douglas Adams lived, he would have disowned it.
I never travel without my towel.
@Amir Khalid: What do the different outcomes portend?
jenn
@Dead Ernest: Thanks for the book ref – I haven’t read that one! Have you read Scalzi’s Redshirts? I LOVED that book!
Amir Khalid
@karen marie:
Essentially, a continuation of trends from the 2008 general election, when Pakatan appeared upon the scene. They’ve been seen as no less able than Barisan at governance, despite the Barisan-friendly MSM here. And while they’re not exactly a host of angels themselves, at least they’re noticeably less corrupt.
But as I say, we don’t have a Malaysian Nate Silver, so nobody really knows how the election will go. Barisan has spent the past year or so announcing various new public benefits, which one could interpret as extending the safety net or as naked vote-buying. We’ll soon see how well that’s worked, against the big oopsies of the botched-as-usual response to the Bersih rallies and the embarrassing Sabah invasion.
max
H7N9 will be just another expensive nuisance like SARS or the hoof & mouth outbreak in England…
Comrade Mary is correct. SARS is nasty – this would be another nuisance like…swine flu. IF it’s a nuisance.
The Norks have blocked to the factory. So they have, in sorta order: declared the truce terminated, declared a state of war exists, declared attack plans on the US, cut off all coms with SK, claim to be restarting all their reactors, and now have no connections at all with the South.
The Chinese are officially (and seriously, is my take) ‘concerned’. The Russians are very concerned, the US is slowly moving more assets in (but holding them back offshore), the Japanese aren’t sure if they’re going to be fighting anybody, but they’re going to be prepared, and SK is very much, ‘Don’t fuck with us, buddy, we will stomp your head.’
My previous conclusion looks solid: those two previous nuke tests were failures. The last one was finally a success. So they have got a nuke, and they believe it’s a deterrent, so they say they reverting to the 1953 status at which the truce came into effect. (It is important to note that Ike made China an offer it could not refuse: a truce or a wider and likely nuclear war against China. China then prevailed on their Nork pals. This did the trick. At the time.)
My guess is that with an actual working bomb of some sort, they think they can break the ring of sanctions, since those have failed to prevent the acquisition of a weapon.
Of course, that suggests that the Norks are feeling the pinch, so they may (probably) think they have nothing to lose by going all in on the bluff.
max
[‘Been quite some time since we had some quality Cold War drama.’]
Pinkamena Panic
– Douglas Adams answering a question about “42” on alt.fan.douglas-adams
Valdivia
I guess this is one reason to be happy not to be moving to China and having broken up with the boyfriend–likelihood of dying from this are now so much less!
raven
My buddy is supposed to go to China to be a trainer for a Chinese basketball team.
OmerosPeanut
Max Brooks predicted this. We should have the first reports of reanimation within the week.
Ramalama
@Spaghetti Lee: Unfortunately I remember all too well. Despite vigilant hand-washing and doing all kinds of things to bolster my immune system and getting that G-D flu shot (I was driving all kinds of people with me on my weekly commute Cambridge to Montreal), I came down with H1N1. Felt like I wanted to die for about 4 days. Felt and sounded like crap for another 2 weeks.
Fortunately I worked at a scientific university then so when, in the span of 5 hours I went from feeling normal to wanting to die, I lacked a fever so the medical center would not officially test me, treat me, or hospitalize me, despite my begging them to. I found a place to camp for a week and self-medicated my symptoms with over the counter goodies, my newly acquired fever included. I go back the next weekend to Montreal, my second home, to learn that 4 other people with whom I’d previously partied had also come down with the same symptoms. They go to the CLSC and guess what? Diagnosis: H1N1.
In short: pay attention, and maybe skip the flu shot if they come up with one. And if you present yourself to nerds, O beloved nerds, then try to find someone who won’t worry about skewing any statistics.
Schlemizel
@karen marie:
I’m with you on the movie – it stunk! I have heard the last installments on BBC and they suffer from the same problem as the last two books. He makes some attempt to reconcile some of the plot holes, inconsistencies and impossibilities of the first 3 books. That makes them (to me) seem labored and artificial. Not the fun free for all of the first 3 books. I think he had run out of steam for the characters & would have been better if he had just moved on. Maybe a couple more Dirk Gently books
Schlemizel
So, not unlike here in the US
R-Jud
Seeing as how we’re discussing sci-fi authors from the UK, here is more sad news:
Author Iain Banks has terminal cancer.
My husband will be crushed. He’s a huge fan of Banks. I quite liked The Bridge and The Crow Road, but could take or leave the Culture.
Baud
Where is everybody? Did you all get H7N9 and die?
raven
@Baud: After than nasty fucking pet bleg thread people are probably gun shy.
raven
that
Baud
@raven:
Missed that completely.
Schlemizel
I know I read it one time but have forgotten – what do the ‘H’ and ‘N’ stand for in H1N1 or H7N9? It was significant but not enough so that I stored it away for later retrieval.
arguingwithsignposts
@Schlemizel: Wiki:
mai naem
We really are due for a pandemic. Anyhow, I am so glad you ran a piece from Quartz. It has some really really quality long journalism.
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
Mucho grasso to you! Don’t know why but it was bugging me and I didn’t find the right search on google so just thought I’d ask.
@raven:
OMFG! I missed that until you commented on it. Went back and looked (my mistake!) that is some epic trollin’, and on a pet bleg post of all things!
Love,
Schlemizel*
raven
@Schlemizel: Yea I wasn’t around for the fireworks either. I hate to see this place become another FDL with moderators chiming in and, in my case, banning people but as long as people keep engaging idiots like you know who it won’t get better.
arguingwithsignposts
@raven: Was this a spin-off of the Bean Raping thread below it?
raven
@arguingwithsignposts: No, there is a cat bleg and some asshole started accusing Anne of pocketing money from similar efforts.
arguingwithsignposts
@raven: Ugh. Some days.
raven
Shaq was made a member of the Laker Hall of Fame last night and he said “I want to thank Coach Jackson for all those weird books he made me read and my friend Cliff Notes for helping me understand them”!
Ash Can
@raven: I think TriassicSands had the right idea — suspend the normal hands-off approach just for the special-situation threads such as pet blegs. Even if everyone ignores the trolls, the damage is done with their initial comment, as Mrs. D said herself. It would have been worse if people hadn’t come to her aid. That kInd of thing shouldn’t happen.
imonlylurking
I would feel a lot better about this if World War Z had started someplace other than China.
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
That troll was something special though – not like the garden variety douche that trolls political or social threads. I think AL needed to respond once. After that I would have put him on a moderated list & not let anything he said get through.
That was on a level with my beloved friend Mokato wishing my son had died in Afghanistan. Below contempt
raven
@Ash Can: I wonder if it all did the reverse, instead of damage maybe more folks responded positively? It really wasn’t a plea for dough anyway.
arguingwithsignposts
@Schlemizel: Ouch. I had forgotten all about that particular strain of tokoloko’s special form of trollery.
And, agreed, given the history of pet rescuing around here, that’s a particularly nasty strain of troll. Glad I missed it.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Lived in FLA near Orland when he was drafted. Two things struck me about him in his first year. 1 – he seemed to either be really slow (mentally) or enjoy pretending he was not bright enough to pour sand out of a boot. Watching interviews with his was painful. 2 – the 5% body fat story that came with him was so obviously a lie. Watching him jiggle up and down the court was all the evidence anyone needed that his agent was a con man & if the team believed it they were idiots.
raven
@Schlemizel: I like him.
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
What pissed me off the most was that I was trying to be nice to her and engage as I thought she had made a valid point but was not getting treated fairly by everyone (even though I knew the history I think blind sows should be praised when they find an acorn – positive reinforcement might help!). My mistake, I had it coming for trying to treat a troll as human.
I assume since she have not been back she must have gotten her meds adjusted and is doing better.
Cassidy
@Schlemizel: She’s still here. She lurks. Some days she could be really sweet and interesting. Others she was so casually racist and bat shit crazy.
raven
@Schlemizel: CNN had an asberger guy on this morning. His son also has asbergers and he was explaining how smart the kid was. He developed this keen interest in explosives and then some over-zealous DA that was trying to make a name for herself got involved and wrecked everything!
raven
Anybody like Steely? Two hour live concert from 93!
(No vid, static images but it converts in a nice audio).
Schlemizel
@raven:
He can play the game I hear, despite what appears to my completely unknowledgeable eye to be some big flaws, and certainly is a winner. But my first impressions of him were so negative that I have a hard time respecting those skills.
My fav of all time was this quote from Larry Bird during a very difficult rookie season. A reporter asked him why he was having so much trouble adjusting to the pro game:
“I don’t know, I done good in college”
Yes, Larry, you done real good in college. Just not in English class. I know its my little prejudice but I expect someone who attended an institution of higher learning for four years to be able to form simple sentences in decent English, particularly when it is their milk tongue. Its probably elitist of me but I think less of people who can’t
Schlemizel
@Cassidy:
Thank pasta I have missed that. So it is a meds thing then? SOme days she misses a dose
geg6
I just have to get this off my chest. TNC’s most recent blog posts have just sent me round the bend. I can’t believe anyone is interested in his trip to Paris and the most recent one about the kerfluffle over when it is best to marry might be the stupidest stuff I’ve ever read at his blog (FTR, I’m with Amanda Marcotte on this subject, if I have to take sides). He’s being taken down from my blog roll on the ‘puter and bookmarks on my phone. I simply cannot read such self-indulgent stuff about his amazement at learning French or being somewhere he’s never been or how awesome it is to be married and have a kid. It pretty much ends without taking into account anyone who has no desire to marry anyone or to have children. What I got from it is that you only fall in love if you have children and marry eventually, like him. Apparently, if you have no desire to do either, you simply don’t exist.
I have become less and less of a fan of his as his star rises. He’s become much too pretentious (a Leviathan book club? Really?) and self-absorbed for me to find him interesting, let alone enjoyable.
I hate when people I loved become successful and turn into everything I hate.
Ash Can
@raven: I’d love it if that were the case. But just the fact that it distressed Mrs. D made it a net negative to me. I’d be happy to be wrong, of course.
raven
@Schlemizel: Well, I’d blame the institution not the kid.
Cassidy
Has anyone noticed that special timmeh uses “breathtaking” a lot? It’s like everything just takes its breath away. Does that mean it’s constantly hyperventilating as it walks down the street?
Cassidy
@geg6:
Said every hipster ever!
Kidding. Maybe the guy is just taking a mental break. I don’t read the guy, but from what Iv’e gathered here he’s done some really in depth work. Some people need a reboot.
@Schlemizel: I don’t know the story. Some of the people here say she got the hammer, but I missed it.
Schlemizel
@raven:
My wife works with asberger kids and constantly comments on how they are all well above average intelligence. Given how they can fixate on a topic and become really really knowledgeable about it I could imagine people getting scared if explosives were the topic. Particularly since they can exhibit behavior that looks fairly antisocial it would be easy to imagine one taking their fascination n a bad direction.
What did the DA do? do you have link?
Hill Dweller
@geg6: I haven’t been to TNC’s blog in a year or so, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. I just stopped visiting one day, and never went back.
Hell, the list of blogs I visit daily has dwindled significantly. It’s better for my health.
Ash Can
@Cassidy: Judging by some of the stuff he’s said here, I’d say not only hyperventilating but shouting gibberish and walking on all fours as well.
Cassidy
@Schlemizel: My nephew is Asbergers. He pulled a knife on my daughter in my sister’s prescence and she did nothing. He tried to choke the same daughter, but she put the boxing I’ve taught her to good use and rung his bell. He bullied my son. I don’t blame the kid as I feel he’s been raised without having limits placed on his behavior. My sister and I don’t talk anymore and that’s one of the reasons. They [his parents] bought him pornography and he kept it in the bathroom he shared with his twin sister. I don’t have an issue with porno mags, but that doesn’t seem appropriate for a 10 year old. He has a lot of violent outbursts. He is smart, though.
raven
@Schlemizel: I’m looking
Schlemizel
@raven:
I have had the “pleasure” to have know several college athletes. (some times it really is a pleasure – others not so much) and this much I can tell you, the institution makes it possible for some of them to wonder around for 4 years without accidentally gaining any useful knowledge but it is the ‘student-athlete’ who chooses to do so.
The institution is despicable, exploitative and disgusting but it is the kid and their families who are ultimately to blame as they don’t have to accept that attitude. It certainly didn’t hurt Mr. Bird or Mr O’Neil’s personal income but it damages far too many lives.
raven
Raising Cubby: A Father and Son’s Adventures with Asperger’s,
“ne thing was clear, though: By the time he turned seventeen, Cubby had become a brilliant chemist—smart enough to make military-grade explosives and bring state and federal agents calling. Afterward, with Cubby facing up to sixty years in prison, both father and son were forced to take stock of their lives, finally coming to terms with being “on the spectrum” as both a challenge and a unique gift. “
raven
@Schlemizel: I’ve know plenty myself. Some take advantage of their opportunity and some don’t.
Schlemizel
@Cassidy:
YIKES! That sounds like a recipe for a total disaster. Even for a child without the issues. That boy is going to be getting professional treatment in the future, if not from mental health workers from state correctional workers. I sincerely hope he does not really hurt anyone before that happens. YIKES!
Amir Khalid
@Cassidy:
It might mean only that Timmeh isn’t very creative with words. Having seen some of the fruits of his artistic endeavours, I know he isn’t very creative with images either.
raven
@Schlemizel: I had a friend that died a couple of years ago. Nam Vet, inventor, mechanic and gunsmith. His son has apsberger’s and is now in the care of the widow. I know the place was an armory and we all hope that she has it secure but it is a worry. I actually just sent her the link to the book that I posted.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Agreed, and having paid for every bit of my own education I lose some respect for anyone who turns away a gift of free education. I felt that way at 18, doubly so because I could not afford to pay for college at the time and ended up working full time and going to school at night to get by.
Perhaps you can forgive the kid but his parents should have demanded better
Schlemizel
@Amir Khalid:
I am so lucky I guess – I missed the visual portion of his presentation!
Schlemizel
@raven:
We have a friend now who is on the spectrum and he is one of the nicest, sweetest people I have ever known. My wife is constantly telling stories of how kind her kids can be. I think that may be a common trait, but I don’t know. However we have cases like Newtown (apparently) so its not wrong to worry. People who don’t exhibit signs are also likely to do bad things, I don’t know if the odds are any higher or if it is just humans looking back and trying to see a pattern after the fact.
raven
@Schlemizel: I’d use caution in judging people too much. I went in the Army on my 17th, got my GED in Korea and finished my doctorate when I was 50. I KNEW I’d go to college even when I was up to my ears in shit. My parents had both gone, although my mom didn’t finish and it cost her dearly when she ended up on her own. The expectation and the evidence of the benefit just isn’t there for plenty of people. I did my diss on the lives of GED grads and wanted to know why they quit and why they went back. It is amazing how many people,in the face of contrary evidence in their own lives, somehow believe that education matters. Plenty don’t.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemizel:
You’re definitely better off if you haven’t been to Timmeh’s website.
MomSense
@Ramalama:
Yes, this was my experience has well. I felt like death for 4-5 days and then just horrible for two weeks. And I have three kids–so it was brutal. They bounced back faster than I did but I was also trying to take care of them while sick.
Just awful.
Steeplejack
@R-Jud:
That’s too bad. For some reason the news reminds me how shocked I was when I read that W.G. Sebald had died in a car crash. (I highly recommend The Rings of Saturn–not science fiction, but a strange, beautiful novel.)
I liked the Culture novels, although the last one, The Hydrogen Sonata, was a going-through-the-motions letdown for me.
MomSense
@Schlemizel:
H stands for Hell!
N for Nasty!
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Its a temptation to think that these small outbreaks are no big deal. They are in fact, small feints by viruses or bacteria to jigger their DNA or RNA — to adapt better each time. Its just a matter of time and the right combo of genetic material in one of these to perhaps have the “mass cleansing” of the human population that has been so overdue.
I know we like to ignore it, but we are just one part of the biosystem on this earth. We are subject to the same rules as everything else and we will get what we get — and probably deserve.
Metatron
There’s that number again…
Some 73% of people were able to say outright that they did not think Obama was “the antichrist”.
bemused
Matt Taibbi reviews David Brooks latest prissy musings about same sex marriage. Hilarious. My favorite Taibbi line interpreting Brooks, marriage is “no bowl of freedom-cherries”.
Schlemizel
@raven:
I understand & I only partially blame the kids. The bigger fault belongs first to the parents who should be looking out for their childrens long-term best interests and more so to the society that has in far too many cases convinced these kids that because the can throw, catch, run and/or jump well above average when they are 12 that they are somehow immune to the realities of the world and that they have no consequences as long as they can play in the big game and that nothing else is important or makes them valuable.
But I will always resent that they could so freely piss away something I would have killed to have. Is that jealousy?
Elie
@Schlemizel:
I also think that we tend to want to make things simpler than they actually are. Autism spectrum is only one type of brain functionality. It could be paired in any individual with other types of psychological dysfunction such as shizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Thus, many if not most autistic spectrum persons are just like any of us — some will have other severe mental illness (rarely) and others will not…
Dead Ernest
@Elie: a gently* stated, slam dunk an insight there Elie. Pertinent as well to most mental health conditions. A seemingly casual aside that is crucial to dealing with, well, not only patients but really just about everyone.
*gently put as I suspect you KNOW we practically insist on making things simpler when we assess other people ;-)
Schlemizel
@Elie:
agreed & well said
Cassidy
@Schlemizel: Yeah, it’s jealousy, but that isn’t wrong. As a child of the 90’s, I don’t do the fond rememberances of Kurt Cobain or Bradley Nowell like a lot of my friends and acquatainces do. As far as I’m concerned, those two had talent and oppurtunity that would never be a part of my life and they pissed it away. People like that have something that, for whatever reason, gives them the ability to excel in some sport or art or craft and coincides with the right time to make unimaginable amounts of money off it. The rest of us have to work and scrape most of our lives. Nothing wrong with a little jealousy.
Tone in DC
@max:
I need to read about this. Jong Un is vastly unintelligent. Dumb enough to start something he cannot finish.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Interesting re Robison. Second time I’ve heard of him in two days, after never knowing about him.
Article about him in yesterday’s (?) NY Times, since some of his books were found in the Newtown shooter’s home.
Here’s an earlier article about Robison. Whose brother is “Running with Scissors” Augusten Burroughs.
Fucked up families. Pain for life, but literary gold.
Maude
The troll on the AZ pet thread is a regular troll here. Sometimes somewhat nice and others, nasty.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
I guess that’s why he thought letting his son experiment with high explosives wasn’t a problem (!). I realize that Running with Scissors was not a factual memoir (to say the least) but that still sounds like a pretty wacky family.
Hypatia's Momma
I much prefer an infectious disease be “an expensive nuisance” because it was successfully fought down (SARS) than it becoming a world-crippling pandemic.
Or did you think all those public health organisations just spend their time playing WoW and getting payoffs from drug companies?
Elie
I would not consider SARS just an “expensive nuisance”. It was damned scary at its peak and gave us a glimpse of what it would be like if medical personnel taking care of sick people start getting sick. At the time, as I recall, the mode of transmission wasn’t clear and these folks got really really sick and a few also died. It was a tricky little virus that had a lot of weird and unsettling qualities…people could get sick again after appearing to be well. As I said way up string. I don’t make light of any of these viral or bacterial outbreaks that seem to come and go or that do not reach high virulence. One must always follow up with the phrase, “at least this time it didnt”.