This week’s poem of the week is “Death and His Brother Sleep” by Edwin J Milliken. This poem’s main claim to fame came by way of Churchill. He says in his memoirs that the last 6 verses came to his mind as he was filled with despair over the British failure to prepare for the coming war with Hitler.
Due to the fact that we could not find a suitable location to link to, we are reproducing the poem below the fold.
This week’s rant of the week is “The World’s Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure” by Jeffrey Goldberg.
This week’s essay is “On lying in bed” by G. K. Chesterton.
From the Wall Street Journal…..
You see them everywhere — nurses, doctors and medical technicians in scrubs or lab coats. They shop in them, take buses and trains in them, go to restaurants in them, and wear them home. What you can’t see on these garments are the bacteria that could kill you.
Dirty scrubs spread bacteria to patients in the hospital and allow hospital superbugs to escape into public places such as restaurants. Some hospitals now prohibit wearing scrubs outside the building, partly in response to the rapid increase in an infection called “C. diff.” A national hospital survey released last November warns that Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections are sickening nearly half a million people a year in the U.S., more than six times previous estimates.
I never stopped to think about this issue before. But it does seem like doctors and nurses are awful lax about how they treat their scrubs.
“It is a continuing saga,” he says of the situation. “When this has happened in the past, Russia and Ukraine have figured it out and gas has started to flow again. That’s been the pattern, so we don’t really know if will differ from that or if they’ll get together tomorrow and gas will start flowing again.”
While the event is still unfolding, concern has already been raised on how this will affect U.S. fertilizer availability this spring. Chrislip says it is likely U.S. fertilizer supplies could be affected.
A waste pond at a coal-burning power plant in northeast Alabama ruptured early Friday, but the spill was quickly contained, utility officials said.
TVA official Gil Francis said the leak at its Widows Creek coal-burning power plant in northeastern Alabama was caused by a break in a pipe that removes water from the 147-acre gypsum pond.
This is the second waste pond run by the Tennessee Valley Authority to rupture this year. The immediate cause is all the rain they have been getting lately. But still, it does not speak very well of the way they are run.
Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.
The prediction is based in part on a major solar storm in 1859 that caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires.
It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk.
“A contemporary repetition of the [1859] event would cause significantly more extensive (and possibly catastrophic) social and economic disruptions,” the researchers conclude.
Murphy’s law says that what can go wrong will go wrong. In other words, since the grid can go down, it is a mathematical certainty that it will go down given enough time.
Granted, it is theoretically possible that we could make the grid immune to the solar flare effect before next big storm comes along (whenever that will be). But I think it would be more realistic to count on pigs flying.
China’s horrific pollution has been firmly linked to a staggering increase in birth defects according to a major scientific survey.
The number of Chinese children with birth defects rose by 40 per cent between 2001 and 2006, according to the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
If this is true, that is indeed a staggering increase. But I have to wonder if the increase might also stem from an increased accuracy in statistics. Hard as it is to believe, China has made some improvement in the accuracy of its statistics.
According to Bloomberg, these rates “are for borrowers with excellent credit who put 20 percent down” — but even so, 4.375% is I think unprecedented in living memory.
This is a great deal. I think it is below our likely inflation rate going forward. The only down side is that it is only a great deal if you keep your job. And if you a pretty sure you can keep your job and you have the money to put 20% down, you are not one of the ones who are hurting right now.