Laugh? I nearly got my breasts out!

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Laughter improves breast milk's health effect
Famed for its restorative powers, it now seems that laughter also helps breast milk to fight skin allergies. Breastfed babies with eczema experienced milder symptoms if their mothers laughed hours before feeding them, according to a study by Hajime Kimata at the Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital in Osaka, Japan.

He showed breastfeeding mothers either a feature length Charlie Chaplin movie or bland footage of weather information, and took samples of breast milk at regular intervals afterwards. Two milk feeds later, he also measured their babies' allergic reactions to dust mites and latex. Those infants whose mothers had laughed had markedly reduced reactions (Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol 62, p 699).

All participating babies and some of the mothers suffered from mild atopic eczema - the most common type. Kimata also found significantly higher levels of melatonin in the laughing mothers' milk. The hormone is associated with relaxation, and levels are reduced in people with eczema.



Touched

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Extreme empathy
A group of highly empathetic individuals with the condition mirror-touch synaesthesia is helping researchers understand how humans are able to put themselves in another's shoes.

Michael Banissy at University College London, UK, and colleagues investigated this extreme form of empathy - people with the condition have the sensation of being physically touched when they see someone else being touched.

A brain study of 10 volunteers with mirror-touch synaesthesia revealed they are also especially sensitive to other people's emotions. "They all scored higher in standard questionnaires to measure emotional empathy, which means they had better gut instincts for what others feel," says Banissy.




Got it taped

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I know I'm going on about it but I'm having a blast transferring my old audio tapes to Mp3. Most of the compilation tapes are between ten and fifteen years old. Listening to them again after so long and re-recording them in a way that actually makes them sound better is an absolute joy!. To say nothing of being able to ditch most of that ageing, fading and vulnerable media.

It's going better than I expected as well, with about five or six tapes being completed, deonised and edited every day. The actual work involved only takes a few minutes per tape, the rest is just playing time. It's a set it and leave it process. Painless.

Viva Amadeus Pro!


Sheath that pork sword!

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Pigs With Cellphones, but No Condoms


In a commercial for Trojan condoms that has its premiere tonight, women in a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine, he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar, a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly...

Fox and CBS both rejected the commercial. Both had accepted Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly... 

In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
In its rejection, CBS wrote, “while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.”

“It’s so hypocritical for any network in this culture to go all puritanical on the subject of condom use when their programming is so salacious,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic who teaches at New York University. “I mean, let’s get real here. Fox and CBS and all of them are in the business of nonstop soft porn, but God forbid we should use a condom in the pursuit of sexual pleasure.”



O Roneo, Roneo! wherfore art thou Roneo?

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I'm sure there will be plenty of piffle from the right about the forthcoming report on 'BBC bias'.

Balance. balance and more poxy balance is the cry. Oooh, they didn't have a 'rounded debate' on the Make Poverty History campaign. Oooh, they showed a clip of the Make Poverty History video in The Vicar of Dibley, Oooooh.... oh bollocks! If this lot had had their way there would have been no Cathy Come Home, indeed there would probably have been no Wednesday Play slot at all.

And let's remember which organisation was vilified by that cunt Campbell for pointing out that the WMD story was a pack of lies. Indeed, the only heads that rolled over the whole WMD affair were BBC employees (and poor David Kelly, if you count suicide as head-rolling).

So who produced this report? Let me tell you. The sort of people who, in 2007, can come out with this:

“There is a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone,” says the report.  It goes on to highlight a “Roneo mentality” where
staff  ape each other’s common liberal values.

A Roneo mentality? Roneo!? Rone-ee-fucking-o! Jeeez, what decade are these people living in? How many people even remember what a Roneo was?

I don't have to read any more. These people are twats. Full stop. End of story. Thank you very much and goodnight.


Gravel for President

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Bits & Pieces: This guy could be the next President of the United States

A weird video from ex-Senator Mike Gravel.

Genius or what?

I knew nothing about this man but I like his performance HERE and I like what he had to say to Queerty about Gays in the army:

I often think about Vic when I talk about the injustice of Don’t Ask. Here’s a guy who was much more dedicated to the army than I was, but because he liked men, his life long military career has been in constant jeopardy.

This is an outrage that the government has perpetrated for far too long on highly trained, committed gay and lesbian service people. We should be proud of their service and thankful for their sacrifice. When I am president I promise that I will immediately end the Don’t Ask policy and I will issue an apology on behalf of the federal government to each of the 100,000 service people who have been discharged because of their sexual orientation over the past several decades. I challenge all of my fellow candidates to pledge themselves that if elected, they will also issue a formal apology.

I hope that we can all join together in sending an important message to the American public that the days of second-class citizenship for Vic and all other lesbian and gay Americans must come to an end. When that day comes, I hope my old friend will be proud.




Mommy! I hurt my foot

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Advice Goddess Blog - 'If Uncle Sam Were Your Doctor'
See how well socialized medicine works in the U.K.! I got permission to post this incredible true story of an American going through the horror that is the British National Health Service. He's Don Miller, a 31-year-old American studying for a Ph.D. in ancient history at the University of Newcastle in the northeast of England. He'd sent the e-mail about his experience to friends. One of them forwarded it to me. 
In a nutshell the 'incredible' story that Amy Aklon reproduces goes like this. A foreign student goes dirt-biking in a field near Newcastle and, surprise, surprise, ends up hurting himself. His (British) girlfriend, Verity, phones the NHS (sic) and is told that ambulances are only dispatched in life threatening situations (good news for all UK ambulance personnel/paramedics who can put their feet up for most of the time from now on).

It took Verity 45 minutes to work out how to get a car to him as he was in the middle of a field. You might think (as he is a PhD student) that the possibility of an accident (maybe even a serious life-threatening one) might have occurred to him before he decided to play around in a field on a fucking motorbike but no, apparently, it's all the fault of the terrible NHS.

 'We drove to the nearest hospital (the shittiest one in the Newcastle area of course).'Why drive to 'the shittiest hospital' and then complain about the service? One of the points this student makes is that there were no private hospitals which he could have attended but, presumably, had there been one somewhere in Newcastle he would have got his girlfriend to drive him there, rather than the nearest one? But he couldn't apply the same logic to his choice of an NHS hospital. What's this guy's PhD in, for fuck's sake?

At the hospital he sees someone taking a piss against a wall outside and then gets upset at some bloodstained Kleenex left on the floor - AIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!  In fact he get's so upset, he end's up asking Verity to 'push me outside so that I could call my mom for advice on what to do.  'He's doing a fucking PhD and he phones his 'mom' to find out what to do?!. Sheeesh!

At this point I pretty well give up. You can read the whole silly email at Advice Goddess where, thankfully, plenty of Americans with more sense than Alkon comment on the equally shitty service/conditions they have experienced in US hospitals. Naturally there are still a few who comment supporting Alkon's main thesis which is that it's all because of that nasty BRITISH SOCIALISM.  Yeah, I fucking wish!

I commented:

"Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide...etc"  (source) A nasty British NHS hospital? No. It's the famous Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the patients hadn't just fallen off their dirt bikes either had they?
I could have added:
Lakewood, Colo. (July 27, 2004) – An average of 195,000 people in the U.S. died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of patient records that was released today.
Or this:
Uninsured and low-income Americans traditionally have had much more difficulty getting medical care than people with insurance and higher incomes. For example, uninsured people were more than three times as likely to report going without care as insured people—13.2 percent vs. 3.9 percent.
Or about a thousand others. The NHS is far from perfect but I'm not taking stick from a spoilt little student that whines like a baby when he hurts his leg and has to phone home to mommy for advice.


A little issue of bullying

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There's nothing like a good old-fashioned argument with security guards to get your heart pumping on a Sunday morning. Now, I admit, I like a row now and again but I'm not a trouble-maker. I hate bullies and petty officialdom and jobsworths and I have a terrible habit of refusing to let things go unremarked. It's the Irish rebel blood I'm afraid.

So I'm walking along Union Street, the main drag, when I overhear a store security guard harassing a Big Issue seller outside the entrance. I stop and back up, give the seller a couple of quid for a copy and casually ask 'what's going on mate?'. The guy says the security guard is telling him to move away from the store and has been rude and intimidating. Mmmmm. 'Why are you asking him to move?', I ask. 'Because he's outside the shop', says the guard. 'But this is Union Street, Aberdeen's main shopping drag, you can't stand anywhere and NOT be outside a bloody shop', I point out.

'Where does your curtilage extend to', I ask the bemused guard. 'Let me put it another way, are we standing on Primark property or are we, as I suspect, actually standing on a public thoroughfare, i.e. the fucking pavement?' 

'What's it got to do with you. It's none of your business', says the security man.  'Oh, but it IS my business', I say, 'because I've just made it my business, sunshine'.  'More to the point, what bloody business is it of yours what this, licenced, steet-seller does in a public place?', I respond. 'He is not committing an offence of any kind whereas YOU, on the other hand, seem to be coming rather close to doing just that by using threatening behaviour towards him.'  'If you would prefer him to move a few yards further down the street you could always ask him nicely like this...'  I then ask the seller if he would object to offering his wares a few yards away from the main entrance. It's not a problem, he says he would be happy to oblige.

Meanwhile the security 'supervisor' appears and I give him a quick earful before he decides to clear off inside taking the guard with him. 'Come on', he says, 'you're wasting your time with him.' 'Wasting your time?', I shout, 'wasting your time?' , you're a fucking security guard for PRIMARK, for fuck's sake, wasting your time is what you do all day!

The seller, shakes my hand. 'Thank you', he says in a heavy (Spanish?) accent. 'Don't let the bastards harass you', I say.

Have a  nice day!