Month: August 2007

Being a little hopeful

In news out the other day the Chinese government announced that Tibetan people would not be allowed to reincarnate without permission from Beijing.

I think they kind of miss the point, on several levels, and once again come out looking pretty damn stupid.

Jack the mighty hunter

The other night Jack managed to drag in a bird.

Given that he was wearing what I swear is the loudest bell on his collar that you can get without earplugs and a permit (it really is very intrusive, and makes jack jingle like santa’s sleigh whenever he walks) I can only assume that either Jack was very very cautious, slow and clever about his hunting, or that his prey was the dumbest (and possibly deafest) bird in existence.

Well that was a bit of a fizzer

It has been overcast and raining all night and so I didn’t get to see any of the lunar eclipse.

And to make things worse my friends in Brisbane rang me to tell me how cool it looked and how great their view of it all was. 🙁 really.

Good old China

BBC is reporting that China’s gender imbalance resulting from the one child policy is starting to get really quite pronounced. In one city , in children under 4 years old there are 163.5 boys for every 100 girls. Ninety nine other cities there are running ratios of at least 125:100. The government are trying to legislate to stop people aborting girls, but I don’t fancy their chances. In 15 years those girls are going to have their pick of boys, and the boys are going to all have well paying jobs as pimps (because prostitution will be HUGE business to cater for all those lonely single men) or police (as the government tries to crack down on the organised crime that runs all the prostitution rackets, a situation that the government will have ironically created).

Oh yea of little faith

A book of the diaries and letters of Mother Theresa of Calcutta has just been published, and people seem surprised that she had what sound like pretty major crises of faith at various points in her life. It’s funny how people like to see things as absolutes. She was a famous woman of faith, so she must have had a constant internal belief that was guiding and self sustaining in spite of all the terrible things she saw each day while working with the urban poor of calcutta. All this really does is make her seem more remarkable, because in spite of her periods of doubt and uncertainty she continued on her path, and did what was right, and needed doing.

The whole thing should serve as an inspiration to others, although I also think this should serve as a little guidance for anyone of significance in the catholic church. She asked that all her letters and documents be destroyed after her death, but just as they later did for John Paul’s letters, they church ignored her wishes and forbade their destruction on the grounds that they may provide insight to assist in the process of her becoming a saint.

I think that you simply have to take a leaf from Hermes’ book on managing your affairs after death. (“Like my granny used to say back in her tar paper shack on Montego Bay “If you want a box hurled into the sun, you got to do it yourself”, (God rest her zombie bones).”).

And red cells for all!

Well I’ve just finished my week relieving on the Haemotology and Oncology team, and have become quite blase about dealing with patients with no blood.

Hb 90? sure, I’ll organise a transfusion (although only 90… that’s not trying very hard). Hb 50? Better make that 4 units. Platelets of 13? That’s better than yesterday, but I suppose we’d better give you some irradiated platelets anyway. White cell count of 2? Well you’re fine to go home! Nausea post chemo? Lets start with 8 of ondansatron and go from there.

Before you do it you think that these patients are REALLY sick and delicate. Afterwards it just seems like another group of people who require amusing while nature (and chemo) cure/hold off the disease.

Things that make you go hmmmm

Right. Time for another set of science type stories.
Sony has apparently made a power source that breaks down sugar to make electricity (for portable devices) in much the same way as biological cells. Pretty nifty.

A Japanese company had to recall a series of arm wrestling robots (for amusement in pubs etc) because several people had broken their arms playing it.

Astronomers have recently discovered a hole in space a billion light years across that they can’t explain. Someone better fetch the darning wool and some big needles.

Finally, researchers have managed to replicate the “out of body experience” using clever virtual reality goggles, with some interesting results…

You can say it

The case of Dr Hanif continues to show how nasty and stubborn and pig headed the current government is, and continues it’s so far predictable course. I love it.

First one court says there were no charges to answer despite the government’s assurances of “just trust us” (yeah, as if)…

Now another court said that (as I initially asserted would be the case) immigration minister Kevin Andrews made a mistake and should not have cancelled Dr Hanif’s visa.

And yet Kevin Andrews continues to stubbornly insist that he was right and everyone else was wrong, and his mates John howard and Phil Downer (foreign minister) keep on doggedly insisting that Kevin is right, and that we should just trust them because they have “classified” information that we don’t need to know about but which support their side of things.

It seems that they can’t admit that they were wrong, and that the historical treatment of aboriginals is not the only thing they are not man enough to say they’re sorry about.