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My Non-Myoablative Autologous Hematopoetic Stem Cell Transplant (aka My Bone Marrow Transplant)

Let's start with the disease. We have three types of blood cells which are created in our bones. The red blood cells to carry oxygen, platelets to fix holes, and white blood cells, the police force of the body.

My police force has been going around killing perfectly healthy cells for the last couple years. That's what auto-immune diseases are.

Every new recruit that hits the streets is tainted, and becomes tainted right away, so this is what the doctors did.

First, they took a sample of my blood university, the bone marrow, millions of blood cells in training. Then, mostly over the last week, they gave me chemicals (the chemo) that killed off every single bad cop in the system. This has the affect of negatively impacting the red blood, platelets and university system, too.

For the next 8-10 days, I don't have any cops on the beat. It's blood anarchy, and the the medical condition is called neutropenic. They'll keep me filled with anti-virals, anti-fungals, and anti-bacterials, you can think of these as contract cops doing a temporary job. They don't have any skin in the game, so I probably will get at least a fever at some point, like a baby.

They already gave me back the bone marrow they collected, and I still have some left because they don't need to give the autologous (self-transplant) patients as much chemo as the allogeneic (used for blood cancers and other auto-immune therapies) but it is going to take about 10 days for my own bones to start making enough fresh new blood for them to safely let me go.

Let the boredom begin!

Debunking the Broken Window Fallacy

It says that, according to Keynes, it is logical for the government, facing a recession, break windows, to create demand for glass and window installers, to spur the economy.

Yes, it says that, but Keynesianism does not say that is the only source of truth. Keynesians might also say that the government has a job to try to control unemployment. This does not mean Keynesians are suggesting murdering the unemployed.

There is no broken window fallacy, just as there is no murdering the jobless fallacy, because people have some common sense and don't usually throw it all away in the name of ideology.

We need to impeach George Walker Bush

If impeached, he will never again be allowed to hold office in the government of the United States of America. Any executive agent, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bremer III, can also be impeached, with identical consequences. They thought they could fix something by starting a fight. They thought they could fix Iraq by starting a war. Do not ask about the 100s of thousands of dead people. Do not ask about the 2 trillion dollars gone. We won't ever do it. But we need to.

What do you think he meant by witchcraft?

I mean, we all know witchcraft doesn't exist, right?

So, what do you think Mohammed meant when he said we need thank God for protecting us from something that doesn't exist?

113: The Daybreak

113:1 Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak
113:2 From the evil of that which He created;
113:3 From the evil of the darkness when it is intense,
113:4 And from the evil of malignant witchcraft,
113:5 And from the evil of the envier when he envieth.

They found us in Year 103

of the new Calendar.

It was totally unfair.

They were hovering over Earth, telling us, free people, that we had to exterminate lots of people.

They had determined, using their computers, unless we wiped out some of the people of the nations with the most aggressive recent histories, we'd never get along in the inter-galactic community.

So many people were killed. The English, the French, the Spanish, the Italian, the German, the Russians.

Then, with half the world's population gone, they told us they didn't need to do that. They only made us do it to show that they could.

I figure this is how it will happen

We'll send people into space, a colony ship.

Hopefully it will be the libertarians.

And as they are heading away, very fast

It might be 1000 years for us, and 50 for them

And so both mother and child

will have a claim

to being called

Original.

Why was "Victory" so very hard to define for the Bush administration to define in Iraq and Afghanistan

In his final State of the Union, Stephen Grover Cleveland spoke only about Cuba and this is one of the things he had to say about the insurgents fighting against Spain.

In a country where all that is indispensable to life in the way of food, clothing, and shelter is so easily obtainable, especially by those born and bred on the soil, it is obvious that there is hardly a limit to the time during which hostilities of this sort may be prolonged.


Here's a similar question. How could the Bush or Obama administrations have prevented the continuation of insurgent attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan, given any length of time?

I don't think there is any way to guarantee the end of the attacks. I don't think there is any way to stop the flow of funds to the insurgents.

So, how do you make sure it stops?

It took only one.

     It took only one. The man who sold us out.

     It was 41 in the new calendar and things were still bad, yet no one could remember when they were better.

     Just like in your time, science's laboratories were producing ever greater wonders, fixes and problems. And all that data that they produced; all those drugs that affect us, and how; and all the little fiddly bits of DNA and how it's basically the blueprint for life on Earth; they published it all, except for things like when the Tobacco companies hid that their products cause cancer.

     They were headed towards us, when we detected the aliens, about as far away as the sun. They set up their base in the center of the face of the moon.

     And they took all that scientific data, and one person to translate it, and they made something, something like a disease, which makes us docile, and their slaves.

Why I Think the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Will Work

I worked at a boutique health care firm, that is, I did until we were taken over by a very large insurer a month ago.

We were bought because we seem to have a successful formula for keeping the most expensive patients out of the hospital. So far I am given to understand that we have been successful for the large insurer's members, too. The trial has been going on for over a year.

This huge company isn't providing free services to their members for fun, they are doing it because they know they have to cut costs, and all the insurers will have to do likewise or find themselves with relatively lower profits.

Costs will go down.

The Answer For Citizen's United

     There was a whole bunch of ignorant idiocy going on in the 1950s with regards to Church that was meant to distinguish ourselves from the Godless Communists.  "In God We Trust" went on the coinage, "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and, in exchange for keeping out of political life, Churches were given tax exempt status.

     I disagree with all of that, but I think there is a nearly 0% chance that I can convince Americans to start taxing Churches, even by saying that I think Church leaders, as community leaders, should have more say in government, so, I work within the status quo

Corporations exist because of series of decisions made in the 1840s through 1860s, mostly in the UK, which gave the owners "limited liability." Unlike economic history up until those days, owners were no longer legally responsible for the debts or crimes of their agents.

At the time, no tradeoff was demanded of corporations.  Until that time, all corporations were created only via act of Congress.  This went on until 1884 in Pennsylvania, for example.  Now we should demand something in return for limited liability.

"In exchange for continued limited liability, like the Churches, you stay out of politics."

How Was This Not Completely Obvious?

Religious school fires teacher over health claim.  Teacher was teaching some religious subjects.  Takes it to Supreme Court who gets it all wrong. Here.

I think it is completely fair that no Catholic Bishop who converts to Pastafarianism should be able to fire a religious discrimination lawsuit when they are fired.  But, here, in the Perich case, she wasn't fired because she deviated from Lutheranism, but for a totally cut and dried ADA-violating reason.

The exception is written for ministers, but it shouldn't be, it should be written for religion-related issues. If someone deviates from the faith then it would be absurd to force a religious community to keep them.  If they fire someone for any other protected reason, though, it's clearly discrimination.

A special "Fuck You" shout out to Antonin Scalia.

I wonder if the defense, led by the US Solicitor General, really cared, or secretly wanted to lose, or was just incompetent.

I should file some amicus briefs.

What is wrong with Wealth Inequality?

This was a question posed to me recently, this was my response.

It's a theme which runs on for some time in the Spirit of Laws, by Montesquieu.

It's totally inappropriate for a direct democracy, he says, and needs to be kept in check in an electoral democracy.

In what Manner the Laws should relate to the Principle of Government in an [Electoral Republic]. When Montesquieu mentions a "popular government" he is referring to a direct democracy.

The above link is Montesquieu is arguing that wealth inequality undermines virtue.

The next link is modern science proving it: the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

Language and Peace in the News: The Tuareg Rebellion

Four nice maps here.

Language and History: Discussion of Bugbears in the News

A discussion of secession and devolution.

The author does somewhat of a decent job, and even I learned something from the article.

He doesn't get into how the phrase "territorial integrity" was so important, even if most of you didn't notice it, during American pronouncements concerning Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saudi pronouncements, and the pronouncements of others.

Still, in the end, he gets it wrong, claiming that it was a religious divide that separates the North and the South of Sudan. He doesn't mention US evangelical involvement in the separation, but, in any event, it is a linguistic divide, and has been for centuries.

Links to my site on Sudan, also mentioned in the article, Somalia, Rwanda, and this graphic about how the scramble for Africa happened.

It's sh*t like this, Israel, America

Tzipi Livni, Israeli Prime Minister: "Israel takes more land [so] that the Palestinian state will be impossible"; that "the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we'll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state". She conceded that it had been "the policy of the government for a really long time".


At the end of 2007, though, "it is still the policy of some of the parties but not the government".

Erekat: "Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?"


Livni: "No, in order to create your state you have to agree in advance with Israel – you choose not to have the right of choice afterwards."

But the documents show US officials unmoved by such claims. Why were the Palestinians "always in a chapter of a Greek tragedy", secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, asked at a meeting with Erekat in Washington in the autumn of 2009.

Her predecessor, Rice, had been even more dismissive.

Very little on Earth makes me as miserable as the evil perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians.  For decades Israel has been pretending to negotiate a two-state solution, but here we find out that they've been trying to prevent the two-state solution the whole time.  We learn that nothing short of Israeli jets in Palestinian airspace and the Israeli Army inside Palestinian land will be enough.  American contributors sounds like a couple ignorant fools.

Source

Wow, Google Labs NGrams

Republic vs Democracy, 1660-2010


Corruption, Corrupt, 1660-2010


Old Fashioned Words like Thereof

My Jon Stewart Rally Wrap-up

     My hair looked awful.

     I didn't run into anyone I knew, or maybe they saw my hair from a distance and turned in the other direction.

     If you look at this image of the crowd I was about 1 inch below and 1.5 inches to the right of the center of the giant grass cross.  I could see small people on the stage if they went most of the way stage left.

     I did not think much of the Roots/John Legend set.  The first song was mediocre.  John Legend was either having a bad day or can't sing well.  One of the songs contained a lot of ignorance with lines like "Everything is made in China now, are we all Chinese?"  America is still the #1 manufacturing nation in the world, and how would we become Chinese from buying their goods?  One of the other songs was about giving hope to ghetto boys, which obviously directly resonated with the urban and suburban, middle class, white audience.

     A pretty neat moment was during the MythBusters wave experiment.  It started at the front and people around me were happy and confused, like me, when 15 seconds later we still didn't see it coming over the horizon.

     I liked a sign that said "Death To Nobody."

     Father Guido Sarducci's benediction was nice.

     I really didn't know about the one, bad call by the umpire which prevented a Yankee ballplayer from pitching a perfect game and while I was impressed by his handling of the situation, I still don't think he should have asked for a bigger strike zone, next time. John Stewart gave him a deserved award.

     Apparently ABC, NBC, the New York Times, NPR and other organizations didn't allow their employees to attend the event because it was political.  Seems odd, to me.  Anyway, Stephen Colbert gave them an award, but since they weren't in attendance, gave it to someone with more courage... a seven year old girl.

     I liked, and will someday listen to again, Stewart's final monologue.

     I liked Tony Bennett's unaccompanied rendition of God Bless, America. It might even have been an extraordinary rendition.

     I talked to a half dozen or more people after who had attended about their experience and of the 6 none could see anything and only 2 (a forensic psychologist and Columbia student who had won the tickets from Oprah) could hear anything (about half or 70%).  It makes me wonder how many people left because they couldn't see or hear anything. It's only important for the crowd estimates.

Things Run Better on Merit

     Napoleon's Army, the Civil Service exams in China, and, previously, America; it seems things thrive when they are rewarded for effort.  What might it look like if we rewarded people for political effort?  I don't really know, but I'll throw out some ideas.

     Learning the language of your current country is pretty much required, as a first step?  To enter the infantry of your country's democracy you would need to be able to find out what is going on.  To read is, perhaps, the next step, because the serious ideas are all written down.  I could never be convinced that someone who received their news only from the American radio or television news services knew very much. Of course, some people could be told about the government, the different jobs of the different elected offices, without reading about it, and someone else could learn to read and only ever read movie star gossip.

     Fuller participation involves writing and public speaking, knowing more details about what the government does, about the different departments, and about the laws and elected officials currently in place.

     All these things seem like they could add up to form a "merit score" for a citizen in a democracy.  Perhaps certain offices would only be voted on by people with a suitably high score.  Similarly, particularly low merit might be a bar to seeking certain offices.

Gut Flora Bleg

     Almost sounds German.  Do any of you know much about gut flora?  I know it refers to the trillions of bacteria, along with fungi and protozoa, that live inside every person's gastro-intestinal tract.  I understand most of it is just 30-40 types in each person, but how many, of the hundreds or even thousand of different types might be one of the 30-40 types that are most numerous?  Is there a list of their secretions somewhere?  Do we know what types of things (things that might normally happen inside a gi-tract) can kill each type?  Do we know the effects if, say, your ABC bacteria group is actually sub-type 3a of ABC which often succumbs when the person has a high fever, and it all dies?