Due to some unresolved issues with “blog.com” (which seems to be a WordPress entity) I have decided to move to WordPress proper at:
http://snakewinebar.wordpress.com/
A slightly longer address but no big ad and a profile page is available. Also, it uses my display name in comments like I want it to.
See you there. (I think one comment might get lost because I already imported everything.)
OMGod!!!!! They totally need to get one of these for President Obama!
The Obama Bird
Like a Greek deity astride his Pegasus, he could buzz down low to amaze and terrify his supporters, flipping the Obama Bird for the enjoyment of all. And he could use it to drop bags of urine on Tea Party protesters (pee bags for teabags) and swoop off into the sunset to pick up a real Chicago pizza before returning to DC. (I assume that Chicago is where the sun sets, right?)
I bumped into Vice President, Joe Biden a few hours ago and asked him what he thought about getting one of these for the President. He replied:
“Aghalagala! (slurp) Aghalagala! (slurp)”
"Aghalagala!" (slurp)
Which I guess means he’s enthused about the idea.
Intelligent extraterrestrial life has been discovered by astronomers who had claimed to be searching for it but were really just smoking hash while listening to static on a ginormous contraption.
President Barack Obama has arranged to apologize to this newly discovered species/civilization on behalf of America. While accepting no personal responsibility for the nation, most of whose history occurred before he was born, the President intends to express deep regret for the general existence of America.
Dear Canadian Pork Producers.
Regarding your desire to call the recent H1N1 influenza virus “North American” flu instead of swine flu. The fact that some freak shows are using public ignorance about the virus to slap international bans on pork is not our fault. Try countering stupidity with truth instead of marketing. In other words:
SHUT THE HELL UP!
Yours sincerely,
Pork eating North Americans.
P.S. If you cross us we will let CAIR turn us all halal. We can switch to lamb a lot easier than you can wiseguys.
P.P.S. I love it when the cook takes a knife and makes puncture marks in the lamb and inserts a piece of garlic into the holes. As it cooks the garlic roasts and infuses the meat with garlic flavor. Oh, God. I have to log off now.
What the Hell is wrong with women? Why would anyone not want to be objectified sexually?
Boa, the Barmaid tried to explain it to me but it made no sense.
I think she wants me.
As a responsible member of the Community we at The Snake Wine Bar feel it is our duty to provide a service to that same community. And what cheaper an less annoying way can there be but to use the blog we set up anyway to amuse ourselves to provide occasional public service announcements.
For this, our first public service announcement, it is only fitting that we turn it over to our first actual regular, the creepy university professor who has been coming here since day one, Dr. Nazdee Coprolite. Professor Coprolite is a biology professor at Poonmonger University in Oromocto, New Brunswick. In addition to his many years of service to the University, he has been a member of the Committee to Intervene in Personal Issues (C.I.P.I.) and sits as the chairperson of the Society of Erudite Thinkers to Counter Anti-Intellectualism. He likes puppies and long walks on the beach. And so I turn the rest of this post over to his submission regarding an issue that is near to his heart.
I indeed wish to thank Fang for giving me the opportunity to post this. I would like to begin by showing you this image:
These are Micropipettes. Many companies make them (I have included a link to this company via the image in hopes that the company will not sue me or the owners of The Snake Wine Bar for using an image of their product). They allow the transfer of tiny volumes of liquid, in the microlitre range (sometimes a bit lower) from a container where it is to a container where you want it to be with great precision and accuracy.
If you are a student and your lab is using these, DON’T STICK THEM IN YOUR EAR! It really screws up the accuracy and even the precision. Then professors like me have to force a lab assistant to clean and recalibrate them. So just stop it!
On Friday, May the 1st, at 3:30 pm, our university will be having a fun run to raise awareness of this issue. Please see the student newspaper for details. It’s called the Microlitre Scramble and we are hoping to make it an annual event. Attendance by all of my students is mandatory and I will be taking a role call at the Student Union building before the race at 3:15 pm.
Thank you Dr. Coprolite. That concludes our first PSA.
(Note to self: Ask Copro about that whole “hope they won’t sue us” comment.)
Bad news: Mexico’s suspected death toll of swine flu is up to 149. Oil prices dropped (then rallied a bit); the Dow dropped then rallied then dropped. Airline companies and tourism industries are not pleased. Governments, who know that the virus hasn’t even been detected in pigs let alone been seen to survive cooking (which would be the biological equivalent to magic) have seized the opportunity to put up protectionist pork bans. Not a nice addition to our economic outlook. Oh, and Mexico city experienced an earthquake (5.6) today.
Less bad news: People who have been identified with the disease seem to have developed symptoms quickly. If this is true for most people who are infected it would limit the time that people are able to walk around with the disease and this might limit the transmission.
Good news: None of the reported cases outside Mexico have resulted in death yet and many cases are described as mild. Why would it be so more lethal in Mexico? Air pollution compounding the problem? Lack of adequate hydration therapy (unlike most flu strains, this one can cause diarrhea and vomiting)? Maybe. Or, it could be something more hopeful.
As far as I can tell, everyone outside of Mexico who has it was either in Mexico or had contact with someone who did and the contact cases I have heard of total two: a spouse to spouse transmission and a classmate to classmate case. If there are large numbers of cases in Mexico that are mild and unreported then the apparently high fatality rate could be exaggerated. And the people who caught it in Mexico may have come in contact with far more people who were infected, meaning that it might not even be as contagious as they think. Mexico city has better hospital and (probably) better labs than more rural areas so people who get noticeably sick would likely go there or be sent there where as milder cases could easily go unnoticed.
All this is speculation and even if it is true, viruses can change. I am told that the 1918 flu had two waves: a spring and a fall. The fall wave was the much more fatal one. The virus does have qualities that make it a potential concern. It’s novel to humans and already passing from person to person. There will be a selective pressure on it that may make it more transmissible and if it does so while having a higher death rate than ordinary flu strains it could still be a nasty situation. But a massive pandemic is not anywhere near certain yet.
(I don’t think that anything I said below can be construed as medical advice. If it can, don’t construe it that way, I am not a doctor.
An outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and beyond has put everyone into pandemic concern mode. Mexican officials may have gone into reputation control before infection control mode if some critics are accurate and America’s Center for Disease Control seems to have curled up in the fetal position as far as containment goes. Doesn’t that make them more of a Center for Disease Fretting? C’est la vie.
There are 68 dead from a flu with 20 of them confirmed to be the culprit virus. Over a thousand people in Mexico have a flue like illness and while they may not all be this virus, I have heard that the flu season is thought to be extending longer than normal which might be suspicious. Unlike current forms of Avian flu (H5N1), this swine flu (H1N1) seems to be quite pleased to pass from human to human. The letter/number designation to the strains refer to receptors on the virus which let it gain entry to cells in the respiratory tract. If the virus can affect the cells higher in the airway they can be more easily transmitted but if they can enter cells further down they can be more dangerous. Avian flu is currently good at infecting the deeper respiratory cells but not so good at spreading person to person. That’s just some useless info. As I said I am not a doctor so if I got anything wrong there, let me know and I’ll change it.
The 1918 flu was also a variant of the H1N1 strain. That doesn’t mean that we can draw any conclusions about this flu yet but doesn’t it make you feel somewhat opposite of warm and cozy? Another similarity is that, like the 1918 virus, this is hitting young and healthy adults harder than kids and elderly; a reverse of the normal pattern It has been suggested that what makes certain flu viruses and viruses like SARS is that the patients’ own immune system overreacts, leading to dehydration, and other complications. Hydration therapy was not as advanced in 1918 so we have that going for us. This theory could explain why these viruses hit healthy adults worse; kids and elderly don’t have the same strength in their immune system so an over reaction is less likely.
Now it is never too early for a little speculation:
“The new Mexican Swine Flu has elements of DNA from the following: avian flu, human flu Type A, human flu Type B, Asian swine flu, and European swine flu. A strange combination never seen before and having less than 1/10% chance of being a natural event. Human and animal viruses, from four or more continents, suddenly recombine in a new flu during a non-flu season that spreads from human-to-human with a 10% fatality rating? The improbability gives one pause.”
While I am not discounting the bio-terror possibility completely, I don’t know over what time frame that 1/10% is because rare events can happen often over a long time period. And with transportation links being what they are these days there could be a lot more opportunity for viral contact. Not all of these genes had to be included in this strain at once. It could have quietly frittered away between chickens, wild birds and domestic pigs for some time, picking up genes here and there before picking up the final one that gave it a high infection rate between humans. And there are some conditions in Mexico, like a dense population of people and livestock with suboptimal health care that lend themselves to this event. Still, I would like to hear what virologists and epidemiologists have to say about the possibility.
With a little luck, this will not turn out to be the next big pandemic. Interestingly, if it is, we in the West have a lot more tools to protect ourselves like hydration therapy, immunosuppressors (if that theory turns out to be true) and even if we don’t have enough of the two flu drugs we know work against it, Tamiflu and Relenza, we likely do have enough to keep our health care institutions running which was a major problem in the 1918 pandemic. The nations where the terrorists are funded from and work out of are probably less prepared for a pandemic. If jihadis are behind this they may have provided their own people with far more misery and death than the provide us with. But then they do tend to do that.
Just in case you might have thought all the Jew hate was the only abomination to be witnessed at the UN’s Durban II conference on why humanity needs to be replaced by robots, witness Libya’s honoured hag of proceedings work the gavel.
Small Dead Animals (I can’t seem to embed the video at this time).
Pakistan has between 60 and 120 nuclear weapons. What the exact number is and how many are on missiles, ready to go, are questions which people seem to be unable or unwilling to tell me. One of these days, humanity is going to be my bitch. Did I type that out loud?
And it seems that Pakistan has about three deep water ports, from where a nuke laden cargo ship can reach just about anywhere else on the planet with a deep water port. Remember that, as you read this article, and enlarge the map.
