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Placebos
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2126
A rather interesting article on how your body trains itself to respond to medicine:
http://mosaicscience.com/story/medicine-without-the-medicine-how-to-train-your-immune-system-placebo
Noteworthy in the study is how the mice died even when no poison was administered, the thought/association of dying was enough...
And there's this - the placebo effect is rising: http://www.nature.com/news/strong-placebo-response-thwarts-painkiller-trials-1.18511
Which raises some interesting questions about medicine in general. But I'll let you ask those on your own...
Diseases of Affluence
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2148
And when people tell you that their sick, unwell, and you think to yourself of how much of our sickness, unwellness, disease is simply a result of our wealth...
We are spoiled, for sure, think of Obesity, an epidemic here, admittedly with smoking it prevalently affects the lower classes, but think, our poorest citizens can still afford to eat too much, eat out, eat fast food, and smoke, and compare this to those people starving and you'll acknowledge that we have perhaps a little too much money. And there are the things like cancer, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes (type 2), dentistry, most of which things trace back to lifestyle choices - diet, exercise, and otherwise. And where they don't they come back to things like life expectancy - old age, dementia, Alzheimers', more privileges of affluence, these things in some countries they are struggling to attain...
Addictions, nicotine, alcohol, whatever else, these have to be afforded, a sure sign of too much money...
And there are the awful psychological afflictions, things like narcissism, neurosis, boredom...all of which are privileges we take for granted, despise and treat even...how fortunate we are...
Our wealth is killing us...
Where to Invade Next
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2380
The newest film by Michael Moore. Looks good.
{embed:youtube:1KeAZho8TKo}
For more on the movie, and how it fits in with his life's work, read this article: https://theintercept.com/2016/02/10/where-to-invade-next-is-the-most-subversive-movie-michael-moore-has-ever-made/
To summarize, clearly we're doing it wrong.
Skating
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2449
Now I've put in a couple of weeks trying to teach her how to skate. She's Sicilian, defends herself with the facts that Sicily doesn't have Ice or Snow, I just generally find it inexcusable. We find, after a number of thrift shops, a pair of skates for her (surprisingly big feet, those Sicilians), and for the first couple of lessons I merely lead her about the rink on my hand...the second lesson she holds my scarf...
She's catching on. I'm still in my boots, and my pretended expertise is called into question...why don't I have skates?
Yesterday, I find and buy myself a pair of vintage men's hockey skates. Today I'm prepared...
The weather, it's good for this, perfect, almost Ten Degrees Celsius, warm enough for us, but the ice, it's showing the wear, leaf-stained melt-water, lumps and bubbles, if the weather holds we'll have to continue these lessons elsewhere...
At first, lace on the skates, stagger, barely, to the rink, legs and arms flailing, I wave her away, it's been 35 years since I've been on skates, I remember, high school, hockey, a hematoma on my elbow, getting it drained with a syringe at the clinic, it swelled up again, another visit to the doctor...
...by swelled up I mean a one-foot-long protrusion beneath my elbow, completely fucked up, I could have joined a freakshow and my fortune would have been made, my classmates cringed, I was absolved of all further hockey duties...
Until now, and now I'm expected to be the Canadian resident Skating expert, and after a couple of minutes drunkenly teetering and almost falling, always falling, never landing...
Just like I remembered, easy enough...
And from here on in I find my legs, remember, poorly, and practice skating backwards, forwards, stopping, turning around...
I was always bad at stopping...
When she sees that possibly I might know what I'm doing her faith is restored, she gives me her hand and we set off skating together.
It's fun, in that timid, domestic, first date sort of way, but she has a boyfriend and I'm really not that timid...But I can see it through her eyes, and for her it's the time of her life, she almost falls a million times, almost throws me over, laughs maniacally, bent double, she can't help it, and then we set off again, me towing her, pushing her, pulling her, her pushing me, or sometimes wanting the break to skate in small short strokes on her own, this is good, I can skate on my own, remember, catch up, it's been a long time, ...
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