From the Telegraph….

A new disease that is passed from rats to humans via fleas, much like the Black Death, has been discovered by scientists.

The bacteria can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans.

Research published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats, the biggest and most common rats in Europe, may now be carrying the bacteria.

It is Nagaland…..

Nagaland is known as “The most populated Baptist state in the world”. The state’s population is 1.988 million, out of which 90.02% are Christians[2]. 75% of the state’s population profess the Baptist faith, thus making it more Baptist than Mississippi (in the southern United States), where 52% of its population is Baptist

Can you guess where Nagaland is with out following the link?

Here is an explanation of how Nagaland came to be “The most populated Baptist state in the world” from a missionary’s perspective.

Here is a overview of Nagaland from Global Security.

Here is a YouTube clip from Nagaland.

From TheTyee…..

The other day I took my seven-year-old son Louis to buy some running shoes. “Pick something with Velcro,” I said, as he trotted off to roam the racks.

A clerk, hovering nearby, gave me a jaundiced look, “You know we get high school kids in here who have to buy Velcro because they never learned to tie their shoes. Every year their parents would just buy them Velcro because it was easier than making them learn how to tie laces.”

I stared at him and he went on.

“The other day we had to special order a pair of shoes for this kid’s high school graduation because he couldn’t tie his laces, and he needed a pair of Velcro formal shoes.”

I put the shoes Louis had chosen back on the shelf, and picked out a pair of lace-up running shoes. It wasn’t just that I’d been shamed into compliance by the salesman, but something Jane Jacobs had written about in her last book about the coming dark ages hit home. The loss of knowledge, she said, once vanished, is so difficult to regain — even if it’s something as mundane as tying your shoes.

In case you think this episode is an isolated example, the other day I heard a youth worker, whose job it is to help teens at risk, say that almost none of them know how to tie their shoes. I’m sure this isn’t a causal relationship — wear Velcro, go to jail — but it made me think. What else have we lost, or failed to pass along, to the generation of kids about to inherit an increasingly compromised planet?

I have long argued that my generation is by and large worthless. But I have a hard time believing that kids are growing up without even learning how to tie their shoes.

From Spiegel…..

McGaugh and his staff realized they were looking at an exotic case, perhaps even a scientific sensation. For that reason they took a thorough approach, and for five years they subjected Price to batteries of neuropsychological tests, combed the professional literature for similar cases and developed special questionnaires to allow them to test her memory.

Once she was asked to write down the dates of all Easter holidays from 1980 to 2003. “It took her 10 minutes, and she only got one of the 24 dates wrong, where she was off by two days,” says McGaugh. He had Price repeat the test two years later, and the second time she got all the dates right. “I thought that was especially impressive,” says McGaugh, “because she is Jewish. Easter means nothing to her.”

The scientists were able to verify her autobiographical data because she has meticulously kept a diary since the age of 10. She has filled more than 50,000 pages with tiny writing, documenting every occurrence, no matter how insignificant. Writing things down helps Price organize the thoughts and images shimmering in her head.

In fact, she feels a strong need to document her life. This includes hoarding every possible memento from childhood, including dolls, stuffed animals, cassette tapes, books, a drawer from dresser she had when she was five. “I have to be able to touch my memories,” Price explains.

McGaugh and his colleagues concluded that Price’s episodic memory, her recollection of personal experiences and the emotions associated with them, is virtually perfect. A case like this has never been described in the history of memory research, according to McGaugh. He explains that Price differs substantially from other people with special powers of recall, such as autistic savants, because she uses no strategies to help her remember and even does a surprisingly poor job on some memory tests.

This week’s rant of the week is Patenting Life by Michael Crichton.

From Spiegel….

The Netherlands’ emergency preparedness personnel spent all of last week conducting an exercise dubbed “Ergst Denkbare Overstroming (EDO),” or worst possible flooding, a scenario in which they virtually placed one-third of the country underwater. In the computer models, the entire west and north coasts, as well as low-lying areas in the large Rhine River delta where two-thirds of the country’s 17 million people live were submerged.

The scenario spells pure horror for the Dutch. Just in time for the spring tide, under a full moon, a giant low-pressure zone with force 11 to 12 winds (wind speeds of 64 to more than 73 miles per hour) rolls in from the North Sea. The storm surge pushes five-and-a-half-meter (18-foot) waves against storm barriers along the coast. But the elements have even more in store for the unfortunate Dutch. There is a thaw in the Alps, and it has been raining heavily in Germany for days. The Rhine River is carrying 16,000 cubic meters (4.2 million gallons) of water across the German-Dutch border — every second.

The experts have calculated that this scenario is likely to occur once every 4,000 years. “But what good is this number to us? It could happen in a week,” says Berghuis, “and that’s why we would rather be prepared.”

I am surprised that the Netherlands has lasted as long as it has. I would not want to be dependent on a man made systems of dikes to keep dry.