Pox perspective . . .

OUR WELTANSCHAUUNG: how much of it has been shaped because somebody creative had a dose? You know, the gift-that-keeps-on-giving, aka syphilis, aka "The French Disease"?  Creative types, like Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce and their crotch critters?

Sarah Dunant, at The Guardian, has a fascinating look at the historical effects of 'The Pox', with an article, "Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world" that is worthy of your attention. You sure did not want to live before the discovery of antibiotics, syph is a nasty way to die.  As pay-back for Smallpox, this New World invader cut a hell of a swath through Europe, you just took years to die and enjoy the process.

Historians mining the archives of prisons, hospitals and asylums now estimate that a fifth of the population might have been infected at any one time. London hospitals during the 18th century treated barely a fraction of the poor, and on discharge sufferers were publicly whipped to ram home the moral lesson.

The Critter: Treponema pallidum
on cultures of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells

Again, until the discovery of antibiotics, there was no cure. What's old, is new again:

Much of the extraordinary detail we now have about syphilis is a result of the Aids crisis. Just when we thought antibiotics, the pill and more liberal attitudes had taken the danger and shame out of sexual behaviour, the arrival out of nowhere of an incurable, fatal, highly contagious sexual disease challenged medical science, triggered a public-health crisis and re-awoke a moral panic.

Not surprisingly, it also made the history of syphilis extremely relevant again. The timing was powerful in another way too, as by the 1980s history itself was refocusing; from the long march of the political and the powerful, to the more intimate cultural stories of everyman/woman.

Corporate psychopaths . . .

MONSANTO CAN BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. So contends GMO, a site devoted to "Raising awareness about the risks of genetically modified food (GMOs)", with an article, "Monsanto’s Dirty Dozen". Monsanto has been dangerous for a long, long time, since 1901. The company moved into the food area with the production of Saccharin for Coca-Cola, but Monsanto produced all sorts of toxic stuff, like Polystyrene, PCB's, Dioxin, DDT, Agent Orange and the scourge of today's farmers, RoundUp, as well as Bovine Growth Hormone, Aspertame and other toxics.

— Beneficiaries of Agent Orange —

And Monsanto has company. According to GMO:

Monsanto’s not alone. Other companies in the “Big Six” include Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont), Syngenta AG, Dow Agrosciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, BASF (which is primarily a chemical company that is rapidly expanding their biotechnology division, and Bayer Cropscience (a subsidiary of Bayer).

A veritable smörgåsbord of corporate psychopaths, the folks who brought us Thalidomide are probably in there somewhere.

In the pile of poison is Aspertame. It can be really dangerous. That's the opinion of DORWAY, a site with the dedicated mission to "Get the Truth About Aspartame. The Whole Truth." The page "About Aspartame" has many links to many scary things — you really ought to stop guzzling. Pilots are very concerned; the FAA doesn't like the danger, but cannot ban it, because the FDA says it's OK, according to the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network's article, "Aspartame & Flying".

Aspartame was discovered as a drug in the 60s (first approved in 1974 then rescinded because of the brain tumor issue — then approved again, over the objections of many scientists, in 1981) and is composed of two synthetic amino acids, Phenylalanine, Aspartic Acid and Methanol (10% wood alcohol). At temperatures exceeding 85 degrees F (body temperature is 98.6) the substance breaks down further into Formaldehyde, Formic Acid, and Diketopiperazine (a brain tumor agent). Aspartame complaints make up 80% of all complaints volunteered to the FDA. Aspartame is often the unidentified environmental trigger for: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimers, Lyme Disease, Post Polio Syndrome, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Epilepsy, Anxiety/Phobia Disorders, Manic Depression, Graves’ Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome and others. Many Doctors have reported drastic improvement or disappearance of symptoms after removing Aspartame from the patients’ diet. On rechallenge, the symptoms tend to return. Symptoms reported to the FDA include: headache, nausea, vertigo, insomnia, numbness, blurred vision, blindness, memory loss, suicidal depression, personality and behavior changes, hyperactivity, gastrointestinal disorders, seizures, skin lesions, muscle cramping and joint pain, fatigue, heart attack symptoms, hearing loss and tinnitus, pulmonary and cerebral edemas, shock and death.

Does everything but cause ingrown toe-nails and halitosis. I avoid the stuff, not necessary for de-blubberization. Taken two years, but I've gone from a 44+" to a 32" waist, like I had when I was twenty. No Aspartame required, just no wheat, wheat-starch, corn and corn-starch.

You can join in the fight. Visit March Against Monsanto, for details. It's world-wide.

That $90,000 cheque . . .

WE SHOULD BE

This could cause more damage than all of the Stevie gaffes to date, because it won't play in the beer parlors aka "sports bars", where the politically unaware and ignorant hang out. These people are unsophisticated, and things like Global Warming and the Tar Sands pipelines confuse. BC should be a reminder; all of the "Progressive" Canuck poliblogs were pronouncing Christie Clark toast. So, what happened? Simple, the ignorant voted for what they could understand. People can understand greed when they look at Duffy.

 — Sen. Maximus Avaritius —

Sociopaths are people, too, and as long as you're not one of their targets, hail, fellow well met, just don't get in their way, by doing stupid things like asking for accountability. It costs to live well, socially. As we see from Nigel's largesse, these sociopaths can afford to be gracious when it suits them — or when they are sufficiently shamed by publicity, or are on the wrong end of a 12-gauge.

Yon Duffy has a porky aspect, to bash the Bard, that plays so obscenely well. To Duffy, the Senate was an All-You-Can-Eat buffet of expensed perks: the Porkarama of Patronage. T-t-that's all, folks.

More you, as needed . . .

'

HEAP BIG BREAKTHROUGH: According to George Dvorsky at io9, scientists have made human stem cells by Dolly-type cloning. Check out his article, "Scientists Use Cloning to Create Embryonic Stem Cells".

The Godsquad's gonna freak . . . but the 'Genie' is out of the bottle, er, test-tube. Essentially your unique DNA can be used to grow more you to fix things that need fixing with you. Now, we got medicine. It's early days, now, but the path to control of our genetic expression just got a lot more defined. Also, long-term, this is probably not good if you make or sell pills and such for a living.

Lumberjack Commandos . . .

THESE FINE MEN AND WOMEN deserve better civilian management than what they've suffered in recent years. Getting rid of Stevie should go a long way towards achieving that.

Penny-wise . . .

Got an appeal for money from the Oakville Ontario PC's this week, on behalf of the latest chooch to give it a try.

What was interesting about it was the stamps on the envelope, two "A" postage and a surprise, a 1937 3¢ Coronation stamp. I guess two "A"s and 3¢ are what Canada Post charges these days. I mailed a #10 five or six months ago, for around 60 cents or so, as I recall. Don't do postes postage much anymore.

As to the 1937 stamp, the stamp catalogs list its value as around $1.50 or so, mint. I am told that used but not cancelled, it is essentially worthless. That's an instructive look at how successful the Ontario PC's might be with our money.

Also, seems like Canada Post is saving money on ink for the cancelling machines these days.

Ya gotta love it . . .

Cartoons for the Week of April 21-27, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Universal Press Syndicate

The Harper Broadcasting Corporation . . .

STEVIE IS MOVING IN ON THE CBC. According to Lauren Strapagiel at Canada.com with an article, "If Harper ran CBC programming", there is "newly tabled legislation that would give Prime Minister Stephen Harper a tighter grip on Canada’s national broadcaster".

Go read the article, and keep Stevie from turning the CBC into the HBC.

ADDENDUM:

This might happen sooner rather than later. e-activist asks, "What does abuse of power look like?". According to e-activist, a majority of the CBC's Board of Directors have contributed financially to the Conservative Party. Check it out, there's a petition you can sign, as well.

Like the Mask says . . .

TIME FOR AN OVERHAUL! Just check out Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone, "Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever". Worth your time and attention. It's all about the big banks:

The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

What's it going to take? Maybe we can't do much, but little things like doing business with credit unions can really help.

Conservative consequences . . .

ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, but so do inactions. Conservatives are hard-wired to deny this, these days, it seems. Unlike, say, America's last great Republican, Eisenhower, who built things that people could use, like roads and highways. Compared to Ike, today's conservatives are mean, twisted, sociopathic weasels — they are actually mentally-ill, with a pernicious affliction, a dementia of sorts, a dangerous dementia.

Anyway, Huff-Po has an article, "West Fertilizer Co. Failed To Disclose It Had Unsafe Stores Of Explosive Substance" that will get you motoring.

And Stevie wants fewer inspectors?

Food fascists . . .

THE CEO OF NESTLE is a nasty fascist. According to American Live Wire, "Nestlé CEO Says Water Is Food That Should Be Privatized – Not A Human Right". Check out the video. Myself, I will never buy anything from Nestlé or its subsidiaries.

ADDENDUM:

This just keeps getting better and better. Sum Of Us proclaims itself "Fighting for people over profits", and it has a very disturbing report, "Nestlé: Stop trying to patent the fennel flower." Apparently Fennel Flower, or Nigella Sativa is being claimed as a patentable "discovery". Grrrrrrrrr.

Canadian creativity . . .

CONSIDERING OUR CURRENT Stevie situation, this seems rather inspirational. According to a report from the CBC, we have "Canadian glow-in-the-dark toilet seats to light the way".

Thank-you . . .

RIP, RITA. Thank-you for this incredible song, and a host of others. 

Thank-you . . .

THANK-YOU, ANONYMOUS, for slapping one upside the head of the Keystone Kops. Really, the sound of a multitude of pickles being withdrawn from a multitude of orifices must have been quite deafening.

Now, if I could ask you to take a look at something?

Could you please have your comrades take a look at where all the money went?

All the Wall Street crooks, the hedge fund weasels, use your imagination — we've been ripped-off, and we need help. Maybe one of you could even figure out how to get it back, or fix it so "they" don't have it anymore?

Fifty years ago . . .

— KIM & LEE —

1963, LEE HARVEY Oswald is murdered and Kim Philby defects — two individuals who effected great changes. Or not; nobody seems to know for sure, in both cases.  

Ron Rosenbaum has a great article in SLATE, "Philby and Oswald The truth is still out there." Maybe there are things are still to be discovered.

Beware . . .

BEAVERS BITE. According to Lapham's Quarterly, with fatal results.

buh-bye Mugsy

Posturing . . .

STEVIE LOVES UNIFORMS. Maybe he should visit and stay there, and take Airshow with him, too, come to think of it.

Priorities . . .

STEVIE THINKS PANDAS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE, even those who have walked 1,600  kilometers.

Boris out...

I started blogging here in April 2006 after Dave kindly offered me a space for my voice. Thank you Dave! That's pretty much SEVEN years ago. I'm not sure how that's happened, but there it is.

I've had much less energy for blogging over the past while, my posts have gotten shorter and from my view, aren't the same class as some of my earlier stuff. I've shifted quite a bit in my thinking over the years. I look around Canadian politics and society, and see the mainstream in a different light than maybe I did a back in 2006 or 2008. Then, I had some naive hope that our institutions and public were strong enough. But thrice times Harper, and well folks, the rot is set. Our political institutions are a gangrenous limb and won't recover even if we manage to send the current group of hagfish back to the depths from whence they came.

If you ask me, I'll say bluntly that on the whole we are a country that has grown too self-satisfied, too rich, and too idle. Too many generations of ease have passed, and the liberal and social ideals that drove the Grits and Dippers  have hollowed out into mere platitudes. All are caught up in that same mindless Ottawa Shore TV series, its own fantastical deviation from realities of the world we're in. I suppose I should stop being surprised at the complete lack of balls eminating from the elected government as well as the civil service. There's barely a peep despite the loss of the long form, muzzling of scientists, and other vandalisations. Docile and complacent, thinking it all end someday, few act - like when they're out of jobs. As I've said before on this blog, they way to beat the Harper crowd is come down hard and fast. They win because they play on our docility and our niceness. Hell, they even rigged the last election and didn't even need to use the army and secret policy to do it or repress the aftermath.

Efforts focussed on the politicians and their silly little games are wasted, and probably do much to perpetuate the problem. The national high-level big-picture asylum that is our politics now feels increasingly irrelevant. The Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, Greens, etc are all part of the same problem. They all feed into a system of governance that has changed little since the days before the telephone and universal suffrage, when states were often part of Empires, and wealthy elites by birth or audacity ran the show until this point. We're beyond that now, here at the forward edge of social evolution. In this universally connected world, there's little need for states and the nationalisms and othering they inspire. For the first time in human evolutionary history we are not strangers to the world we live in and each other. We have a pretty good idea of our origins, both as a species and as life. We're written into the DNA of stars. The means now exist to have us standing almost anywhere on the planet in about 24 hours. The chance to be the first person to set foot on Mars actually exists for many of us. We now, beyond any doubt, have shattered the legs of arguments promoting bigotry of all kinds.

There is no reason to fear each other anymore. There is no "other," and hence no reason to continue to rely on institutions and people that embrace the "othering" of anyone, including adversarial politics. Our best interests, means of universal survival in the face of climate change, depleting oceans, nuclear weapons, economic disparity, etc, is to focus on the intersections, the commonground and our shared identity as human beings. We cannot afford anymore the sophisticaed tribal warfare that defines state relations, community relationships, and our blinkered political systems and cultures.

Yet we are still stuck with these laggards, these old gods of conflict and anger. Best to bypass them and their institutions as much as possible. And resist them where they actively try to impede this new world we're building. Progressive change here won't come from them. If you listen carefully you can even hear them desperately try to justify themselves to us, or in the case of the Cons especially, force themselves upon us and then demand tribute for their trouble.

As is happening now, it'll come from the margins, the outliers, the Idle No More and Occupy types of movement, the students in Quebec arrested in the hundreds for daring to act for their future, and the people who will put their lives down to stop a pipeline and tanker jamboree from savaging the West Coast. It'll come from scientists who speak out. It'll come from the small groups of dedicated people promoting progressive change in their own communities through such simple things community gardens, Transition Towns, and a social justice that does not seek restribution but inclusiveness, compasssion, and understanding. It'll come from the growing number of people who simply live and act as the change they want to see.

So I'm going to take some time to take advantage of a few life changes in this vein. I may periodically return to the Beaver, and will likely comment on others' blogs, but blogging from me will be rare and quiet for the foreseeable future. If you'd like to carry on the conversation, I may still be reached at boris.gallopingbeaver at gmail.com.


Thank you all for reading all these years.