I got my flu shots this week. They were 15 dollars, given out by the campus health clinic. They hurt. Last year, I couldn't even feel it as the needle went in. This year I got one in both arms, and they hurt, very much. Was it amateurish nurses, or were the needles thicker than usual?
My kids got mist up the nose, and giggled, because they had been crying for an hour before the event in anticipation of arm pain.
My wife says that some people online claim that the flu shots have mercury. At work a biologist told me that there's more mercury in a tuna sandwich.
At church this morning an elderly woman who sits in the pew behind me whispered that she was considered "expendable" by the CDC, because they wouldn't let her have a swine flu shot. She's about 85.
She blamed the CDC. I don't know who paid for all the free swine flu shots. Was it the CDC? This is something else I have to track down. Are they spending too much money on something else, so that they have to have death panels, and decide anyone over 65 is expendable (along with Lyme Disease children)?
At work, someone said that her father got Barre Guillaume disease which simulates a stroke. I can't remember the name of the disease. It came from a flu shot!
I felt a pain shoot down my leg, but my fingers still work.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has an article that says that the new guidelines that suggest that women over 40 but under 50 talk with their doctors before getting screened. If however the guidelines suggest there's no need, chances are that this will no longer be a free service.
What other services will be trimmed under ObamaCare?
"The American Cancer Society, which came out against the new guidelines on breast cancer screening," (WSJ, p. A3, Sunday November 22,2009), has someone named Debbie Saslow, director of breast cancer at the American Cancer Society, say, "Breast cancer grows fast, and screening for it is about detection" (A3). It apparently grows much faster in younger women, but the cost-benefit analysis may have yielded the determination that it will be worth the higher mortality rate in terms of overall savings.
Also at church a guy said that up in the 23rd district they have at least 500 votes that came out of nowhere. He's the Republican electoral commissioner for Delaware County. He said that when it happened he and the Democratic commissioner rolled their eyes. It wouldn't have happened in this county, he said. In Minnesota, hundreds and hundreds of votes for Al Franken came out of nowhere after the election closed.
The sermon was about how Jesus spoke to Pilate as truth to power, and lost. I thought of how power often drowns out truth. Stalin managed it (but then came Aino Kuusinen and Vasily Grossman and A. Solzhenitsyn). Ceausescu managed it (but then came Andei Codrescu and Richard Wurmbrand). The current leaders of Burma have done it (almost, if it weren't for Suu Kyi and Amy Tan). The Duke Group of 88 tried to lynch the lacrosse players, but it didn't work out. Obamatons now try desperately to knock out Fox News and Sarah Palin. They want to speak power to truth, too.
Is not truth a light that illuminates the dark face of power?
John 18:36-37: "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
Sunday, November 22, 2009
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The task force that came up with the bizarre new proposed breast cancer guidelines ("we don't find as many cancers in women under 50, so let's not look very often, and let's tell women not to look themselves") was appointed by the BUSH administration. "You know or should know" this, as the lawyers say. I've lost my patience for this sort of nonsense, and that's why I haven't come around here and commented in a long time, even though I might like to speak, for instance, about Marianne Moore. But anyway, opposing these disgusting guidelines, and any attempt by any government agency or private insurance company to put them into effect, is, I imagine, something that everone from Emmy to Brett and myself can unite around. It's like the abuse of the concept of "eminent domain" by city governments--rightwingers often claim this as their own cause, whereas all sorts of thinking people hate it too.
Yeah, but Jesus won.
Stephen, most of the things in the world I don't know, and those I do, are doubtful.
Apparently the early the breast cancer happens the more aggressive it is, so that if a woman under 50 gets it she's more likely to die of it.
Apparently, too, the swine flu in those over 65 is less frequent, but when it does hit, it is more likely to kill the person.
Statistic likelihood and likelihood of severity are at least in these two occasions at a variance with one another. There's probably a term for this, but like so many things, I don't know it!
GM, I do think you're right that Jesus won, even if it took about a century for the walls of Rome to begin to collapse.
I like Churchill's statement, "A lie can get half-way around the world before truth can get its pants on," but I would argue that women, too, can tell the truth. In Churchill's day I think the image of truth was male, since women still wore dresses then.
Nowadays, women are as likely to wear pants. But truth can also come in skirts. And Stalinism can also come in skirts, or in pantsuits (Hillary).
Either gender can bear witness to the truth, or else they can bear witness to raw power. You takes your choices.
Suu Kyi wears pantsuits, but is on the side of the truth.
The Dalai Lama wears a dress, but is also on the side of the truth.
I'm interning at a church and am the guy who shakes everybody's hand as they leave the sanctuary. One lady wouldn't shake my hand today. It made me chuckle. For my part, I won't get the shot.
Picklesworth -- why won't you get the shot?
One of the things that drives me crazy is that many people still insist on taking communion from the cup. I think this is insane.
At the Presbyterian church in Brooklyn (Marianne Moore's former church) they set out tiny glasses for each person to drink from individually. While this presents a problem in terms of clean-up as compared to one cup, it doesn't spread diseases as readily.
I try to be first in the line to the communion cup and I tinct.
I think everyone should tinct.
The pastor is often sick all winter long, but he drinks from the cup after everyone else has done so.
It's alarming to say the least.
I think that Christians should be allowed to be sensible. We say that God will provide.
Does that mean we shouldn't fill up our gas tank, but expect HIM to do so?
Does it mean that if our car breaks down, we should just pray for it to go again, and it will, like some kind of miracle healing?
I take a dim view of that kind of Christianity.
This world is better understood through science -- and Luther argued that science was its own separate area, like art, and that it should be totally free of theology.
Sometimes I worry that many Christians -- even Lutherans -- won't allow either art or science to do its part. Art has to be at least entertaining. Science has to be at least functional.
Just because we are competing with Marxists doesn't mean we have to act like them. They let science and art be determined by their politics.
Bollocks.
Everyone should tinct.
As far as communion goes, I tinct, but we offer the common cup. Maybe 10% use it. It's not as bad as you think because of the alcohol content, (or so I was told in class.) Apparently it's better than individual cups that get re-used, but not as good as disposables.
Shots and I, we've never much cared for each other. And I don't like the herd mentality either. This H1N1 thing has got herd written all over it.
As for Luther and science, I think there is a tension that must be maintained between living by faith and living by reason.
i last got a nation wide shot in 1977 i got very sick from it
swore it off from there on in
i won't get a shot either
why must we be afraid of things we cannot see
i think most communicable diseases track a path of presumption with those who claim individual righteousness
why fear death when the very cup is that symbol nay the reality
of he who conquers death
more people are sick with fear
a sort of enforced cultural hypocondria than any one is sick with the flu
ghosts
jh
Many people are having strokes from the swine flu shot, according to one colleague, but no one is willing to report on it, because it would make the administration look bad.
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