Lives in a Shoe

Etta James Has Died

RIP, Miss James.

"Tell Mama" below

Urban Legends

As a girl entering my teens I shivered at hearing such urban legends as The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs, The Hook on the Car Door, The Tarantula in the Ratted Hairdo. These stories, passed from kid to kid, often had something to do with transmitting social values through icy fear.

 

Scariest of all was the Spanish Fly Story. Seems a couple went to a drive-in where the boy spiked the girl's drink with Spanish Fly which drove the girl to uncontrollable lust. The boy ran off, or variously was found prostrate from exhaustion -- but the girl was found bloody and dead from having pleasured herself on the gear shift.

 

Apparently the Saudi  Religious Council has heard the story too.

 

Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in "no more virgins", the country’s highest religous council, working with Kamal Subhi, formerly a professor at the King Fahd University has warned.  No. More. Virgins A-tall.

The report warns that allowing women to drive would ‘provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce’.

Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report’s authors claim, there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom.

And it pointed out ‘moral decline’ could already be seen in other Muslim countries where women are allowed to drive.

Here's the best part:

In the report Professor Subhi described sitting in a coffee shop in an unnamed Arab state.

‘All the women were looking at me,’ he wrote. ‘One made a gesture that made it clear she was available... this is what happens when women are allowed to drive.’

Really, Proffessor Subhi?  All the women were looking at you?  Really?

Imagine all these Arab men in their keffiyahs whispering the story to one another in deep dismay, believing that in this universe there is something that will cause women to become sexually insatiable.  And it's a drivers license. 

 

Creepy.

http://net-security.org/secworld.php?id=11683

Technology Facebook Caught ‘Inadvertently’ Tracking You Once You Log Off

• Posted on September 28, 2011 at 11:00am by Liz Klimas

• Facebook cookies were accidentally tracking other sites users went to, even after they logged off. The cookies sent this information to Facebook.
• Facebook has fixed what it says was a malfunction in its software.
• Advice: Log off Facebook when done. Remove Facebook cookies. Use a different browser when you get on Facebook.
• Social media sites are figuring out what their role is in protecting user information and freedom of speech.

Love it, hate it, view it as a necessary evil. However you feel about social media sites, they are tracking you one way or another, cataloging your movements on their site — and sometimes off it. Take Facebook.

Facebook was recently exposed as “inadvertently” tracking your web movements, even after you logged off its site. Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic, like many alarmed by the upcoming Timeline changes to Facebook that will automatically populate your profile with items from your past or sites you’re viewing, looked into how to disable this feature, which could “accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.” Cubrilovic writes another blogger’s advice to combat this problem is to log off Facebook. But that isn’t enough:

[...] logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to Facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Circle

In 2005 I walked the Susan Komen Three-Day.  What an experience that was.  Darn near killed me but I bet George that I would walk every inch of the 60 miles.  It was in memory of my mom Mary Voda Daniels who died of breast cancer; it was in honor of my co-mother-in-law Linda Siegle who was diagnosed the same year I was and who also had a double mastectomy -- and who also has survived.  (She and I were born the same day, same year.  My son married her daughter.)  And it was in gratitude to my oncologist Ben Chue, MD. The Seattle PI interviewed me the following autumn -- entire article is here: 

 http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/health/article/Living-Well-Doctor-s-bold-step-paid-off-for-his-1186197.php#ixzz1YzvG3qyx

During the summer there was advance word about the promising clinical trials for a breast cancer drug called Herceptin.... And rightfully so. Herceptin appears to be a direct and effective match for many women with tumors that churn out too much of a protein called HER2. About 20 percent of breast cancer patients are HER2-related cases....The drug doesn't help every single HER2 patient -- common among medications -- but that didn't stop early buzz about the Herceptin trials in July when Catherine Daniels participated in a three-day, 60-mile walk for breast cancer.

"Everyone was talking about it," said Daniels, 58, a breast cancer survivor. "Every day."

Daniels got a chance to tell her story to fellow walkers. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2000...While browsing the Internet, she found out about Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, known for its integrative medicine approachD

 

Dr. Chue talked to George and me about Herceptin and asked us to consider trying it.  Before I'd met with him I had read the book Her-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer and sort of understood in a foggy way.  Wasn't sure it was the best thing to do and asked him how this Her-2 thing is measured and he said "A scale of one to three."

I asked, "Where do I fall?"  "Three-plus," he said, "If you were my mother I would strongly encourage you to do this."  So I did.  And I'm alive now.  Don't think it would have this happy an ending without Herceptin because these tumors tend to be "aggressive and resistant to treatment".  As it was I had three tumors and the disease had spread to my lymph nodes.

Fast forward to the present.  My beautiful niece Leigh has done.the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and mentioned Mom and me on her webpage: http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR/Walk/LosAngeles?px=6205640&pg=personal&fr_id=2060 

I got my credit card ready and was just about to go there and click my donation -- I was closing a news site when I read this about a "Holy Grail" treatment for breast cancer:

The new drug combines an existing drug, Herceptin, which revolutionised breast cancer treatment 10 years ago, and a new anti- cancer treatment. It is the first time two drugs have been used in this way.

My bolding.  Entire article is here: ://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/273486

I've learned that many cancer treatments are introduced with a great fanfare (think Interferon) and then quietly fade away.  So we'll see if this one really is the grail or another tin cup.

Meanwhile, Leigh and thousands of other walkers are helping to cure this awful disease, one step at a time.  Thank you so much, Leigh and all of you.  Thank you.

Note for my family below: 

 

Broke R Us

Sometimes it's hard to wrap your mind around the national financial situation.  This makes it easier.  (I'd like to attribute this but can't remember where I found it.)

Why S&P Downgraded the US:
U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
April budget cut: $38,500,000,000  

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt (this year) on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Budget cuts: $385

 

9/11

I remember who did it -- and after ten years of studying and trying to understand, I know why.  If you really want to honor the brave and the innocent dead, educate yourself.  Read the Koran.  Then look up "Abrogation".  There is a lot more to know but that will give you a start.

All this self-indulgent wallowing around in "tribute" --  maybe it would be better to quietly put a plaque somewhere at the Pentagon, at the WTC site, and in Shanksville.  All this other hoopla is a bit too show-biz for my taste.  We are not that weak, that teary, that old-womanish. If this were a movie, somebody would slap us silly and order us to get a grip.   

We are Americans, strong and brave. That is what we should never forget.

***************************************

Having said all that, and in a nod to inconsistency:  Here's the Budweiser 9/11 tribute -- shown once.  I remember I saw it and tried to describe it to George and could not stop crying.  Still affects me like that.

 

Current Events

Man with dead weasel accused of assault

Associated Press, by Staff    Original Article

Hoquiam, Wash. – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state. The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled. ...

Peak Oil, Peak Energy -- Probably Not

Strange to find this article in Salon.

Two arguments for switching to renewable energy -- the depletion of fossil fuels and national security -- are no longer plausible.

Also addresses the global warming issue:

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it. But even if the worst outcomes were likely, the rational response would not be a conversion to wind and solar power but a massive build-out of nuclear power. Nuclear energy already provides around 13-14 percent of the world’s electricity and nearly 3 percent of global final energy consumption, while wind, solar and geothermal power combined account for less than one percent of global final energy consumption.

Worth reading the whole thing.

Minding Our Own Beeswax

I don't live in California and would not have voted for Arnold.  But I've had it up to HERE with the sanctimonious comparisons of Maria Shriver to Hillary Clinton, how they must have known (yes) and yet carried on pushing their husbands for office, and ain't it awful?

 

It's not relevant, is it?  History is replete with flawed indidivuals who led well.  Churchill drank too much; so did General Sherman.  Martin Luther King was a womanizer.  Gandhi had a thing for little girls.  Lincoln probably had a history of mental illness.  If called upon to do so I could expand this list without much trouble.

 

A question of character, you say?  Yes, but to a limited extent. Private virtue and private vice do not pertain to ability to lead.  Financial dishonesty.  Unlawful business practices.  Unpaid parking tickets.  These are public-arena items, legitimately our business.  Strictly private failings?  Not our business. 

 

It's easier and kind of fun to read about the sexual escapades of politicians.  It's hard to comprehend political issues as dire as deficits and unfunded liabilities.  In California especially, it can be hair-raising.  But we are grownups, and that's what grownups are expected to do.

Be Sure to Wear Clean Underwear

End of world next Saturday -- begins with earthquake in Pacific Northwest.