A New Installment in the Libya Tragedy
The Libya tragedy that Barack Obama ’s administration unleashed with a U.S.-led NATO military intervention in 2011 has entered yet another violent phase. Forces loyal to Field MarshalKhalifa Haftar, aone-time CIA asset that Washington now opposes, arewaging an offensive against the so-called Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli. Both theUnited Nations Security Council and the European Union support the GNA and have passed resolutionsdemanding that Haftar ’s troops cease their advance and adhere to thecease fire and plan for nation-wide elections that French President Emmanuel Macron negotiated last yea...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 16, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Things go south for the Hebrews
At long last, we start Exodus. As I have mentioned before, scholars belief this was written during the Babylonian exile, in the 6th Century BCE, with revisions in the 5th Century. There is no historical evidence for the Egyptian captivity. The work is fiction, but it may be in some ways a response to the Babylonian exile. It is the foundational myth of the Jews, central to identity. Here we go. These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family:2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.5 The descenda...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 14, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The 4.2 kiloyear event
The title of this post is the weird name scientists have given toa prolonged drought that devastated the tropics, probably worldwide, beginning about 2,200 BC. Wikipedia says it may have lasted for the entire century, but some estimates have it considerably shorter, maybe 30 years. Anyway, that was enough. Important civilizations collapsed, including the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia.You may be struck by the omission in the Wikipedia article of any discussion of the cause. That is because the cause is unknown. One hypothesis is that it resulted from a meteorite strike, although the mechanism w...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 8, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: We have read a book
Herewith Genesis comes to an end.Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him.2 Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him,3 taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days. There ' s evidently some mystical significance to " 40 days " in the Bible. In one version of the Noah story, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. (In another version, it was 150 days, but who ' s counting?) In a while we ' ll see Moses spending 40 days on the mountain in a clou...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 7, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Visualization of stent during coronary angioplasty
Blue arrows: edges of stent; red arrows: balloon edge markers (there will be an overhang of the balloon beyond the markers on either side); yellow arrow: guide catheter; violet arrow: angioplasty guide wire. Guide catheter is in left main coronary artery, guidewire and stent in left anterior descending coronary artery.
Accurate visualization of the stent position and morphology is essential for good implantation technique. Stent has to be well expanded and apposed to the vessel wall to prevent stent thrombosis. But good visualization in a moving vessel is often challenging. Selecting a good view with less of movement is ...
Source: Cardiophile MD - April 7, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Prof. Dr. Johnson Francis Tags: Coronary Interventions Stent boost subtract imaging Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The X tribes of Israel
It ' s something of a puzzle why the Torah puts so much emphasis on the purported 12 tribes of Israel, since most of them never any explicit part to play in the later chronicles. Ten of them are said to have disappeared after the conquest of the region (I can ' t say Israel because it was not a unified kingdom) by the Assyrian kingTiglath-Pileser III in 753 BC, shortly before Exodus was written. Also, the lists vary somewhat from place to place in the Bible. This is the first one.Then Jacob called for his sons and said: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.2 “Assemble and listen...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 31, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Scientists One, Superbug Zero: Personal Quest Resurrects Phage Therapy in Infection Fight
At one life-or-death moment, Dr. Tom Patterson was a snake. In November 2015, he and wife Dr. Steffanie Strathdee were merely two scientists on holiday. The couple had been vacationing on a cruise in Egypt. After a day of pyramid probing and an evening meal aboard ship, Patterson fell ill. Food poisoning, he surmised. A… (Source: NLM In Focus)
Source: NLM In Focus - March 26, 2019 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Posted by NLM in Focus Tags: Events Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Matters of great portent that don't matter
A central concern of Genesis, as we have seen, is tracing the line of descent of the people who become the Jews. Who ' s in and who ' s out, as determined in large part by actions of the family patriarchs. When Isaac is deceived into blessing Jacob rather than Esau, Jacob becomes the ancestor of the Jews.So now Genesis 48 has a parallel story about Ephraim and Manasseh. It ' s not quite as portentous -- they ' re both still Jews, but one gets a bigger share of the inheritance. Okay, but why is this story important? It turns out that by the time it is written, in the 6th century BCE, both of their tribes have long since dis...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 24, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Ripoff of the millennium
I ' m guessing you ' ve never heard a real sermon preached about Genesis 47. In fact I suspect that very few people are even aware of it. It gets real ugly. Here goes.Joseph went and told Pharaoh, “My father and brothers, with their flocks and herds and everything they own, have come from the land of Canaan and are now in Goshen.”2 He chose five of his brothers and presented them before Pharaoh.3 Pharaoh asked the brothers, “What is your occupation?”“Your servants are shepherds,” they replied to Pharaoh, “just as our fathers were.”4 They also said to him, “We have come to live here for a wh...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 17, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Useless factoids
Genesis 46 is kind of a strange object. Why do we need this enumeration of male descendants, most of whose names we will never see again and who have no individually identifiable role in the plot? Remember that this entire story is fiction, made up nearly 2,000 years after it supposedly happened. I ' ll get to that. So Israel set out with all that was his, and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.2 And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!”“Here I am,” he replied.Sometimes the man is named Israel and sometimes he ' s named Jacob, seemi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 10, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The big reveal!
Genesis 45 is the big reveal in more ways than one. It ' s where we finally get around to what this is really all about. Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers.2 And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh ’s household heard about it.3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence. Well okay then but why...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 3, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Going round and round in circles
As I have said a few times during this long and tedious story, Joseph ' s motives for manipulating his brothers as he does are really mysterious. Yeah, okay, he wants to torture them for revenge, but of course Benjamin is innocent of the crime, as is Jacob, and they seem to be getting the worst of it. Furthermore, as we will discover in the next chapter, he isn ' t actually mad at them at all. So the point of all this eludes me. Anyway, here ' s chapter 44. Now Joseph gave these instructions to the steward of his house: “Fill the men’s sacks with as much food as they can carry, and put each man’s silver in the m...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 24, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: It's a man's world
As we enjoy this touching drama of family reconciliation, it ' s time to remind ourselves of something so glaringly obvious that we haven ' t even noticed it. Presumably the sons of Israel all have wives and daughters, but they might as well not exist. Only men are worth noticing and naming, only men act in this world. It is a patriarchal society.Keep in mind this is fiction. It was written in the fifth century BC, long after it supposedly happened. It has an essential function in the plot of the Torah, the founding myth of the Jewish people. We ' ll get to that in due course. The story becomes rather tedious at this point...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 17, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Love and the Platinum Rule
The Golden Rule is a good first pass at an attempt at empathy. You probably know how it goes: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Although it is generally believed to have come from the Bible, the maxim is found in many religions and cultures. In fact, in 1993, it was endorsed in the Declaration Toward a Global Ethics by 143 religious leaders from most of the worlds’ major faiths. It has even been found in manuscripts from ancient Egypt and China. It appears that people have been told to use themselves as a way to understand others’ feelings since the beginning of time.
But the Golden Rule really i...
Source: World of Psychology - February 14, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D. Tags: Communication Ethics & Morality Relationships Self-Help Couples Empathy Love Loving Relationship Respect valentine's day Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Mind games
The conclusion of Genesis 42 is a bit confusing in places. Modern story tellers make their characters more available to us -- we tend to get more information about what ' s going on in their minds. Genesis is very sparing in this regard -- we are shown the surfaces and maybe an emotion is named, but we don ' t see people ' s inner lives.27 At the place where they stopped for the night one of them opened his sack to get feed for his donkey, and he saw his silver in the mouth of his sack.28 “My silver has been returned,” he said to his brothers. “Here it is in my sack.”Their hearts sank and they turned to e...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 10, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
