Climategate

Don't have too much to say about this. While many elements of the mainstream media have been minimizing and downplaying this scandal, the Drudge Report (and also Fox News) have been keeping the story alive in the US.

Here is one of the latest links on the Drudge Report on Climategate.

The Wall Street Journal had a good article about the scandal yesterday:

The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced.

Much of this resembles the late Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear

Our Disgraceful President

First he bowed to the Saudi king. Now he has bowed to the Japanese emperor. The Los Angeles Times has pictures and video of Obama bowing to the emperor:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/11/obama-emperor-akihito-japan.html

As the representative of the U.S.A., Obama degrades all American citizens when he bows to foreign leaders. No American citizen should ever bow to a foreign leader (even though Obama is not a natural born citizen, he is an American citizen).

Peak Gold

If you haven't gotten into the gold rally yet, now is the time to get in:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/6546579/Barrick-shuts-hedge-book-as-world-gold-supply-runs-out.html

Blogging Nursing Student Expelled

Kevin MD posted about a nursing student who was expelled for blogging about a child birth she witnessed. I encourage you to read his post, as I am too lazy to summarize it:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/10/nursing-student-expelled-blogging.html

After going through several links, I finally found the original blog post:
http://www.pageonekentucky.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/yoder1.pdf

There are certainly some things in Yoder's (the nursing student's) post that can be considered mildly objectionable. However, I don't see why everyone is getting so excited about her description of the newborn child. All the blogs discussing Yoder quote these lines:

“a wrinkly, bluish creature, all Picasso-like and weird, ugly as hell, covered in god knows what, screeching and waving its tentacles in the air,”

However, no one quotes the line immediately following:

"15 minutes later it turned into a cute pink itty bitty little baby girl"

I'm glad Nina Yoder won her lawsuit against the University of Louisville.

I am not a Borderline

Even though I detest Obama and feel that he is destroying this great nation, that does not mean that I have a psychiatric illness (see my comment on this Kevin MD post:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/10/political-discourse-borderline-personality-disorder.html)

Chocolate and Salt

Lindt has come out with a new chocolate bar... the "A Touch of Sea Salt Bar". It combines two of the things I love- dark chocolate and salt. It tastes great!
Much more appetizing than chocolate salty balls (which apparently is a real recipe)...

Health Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional

Constitutional experts think that Obama's planned individual health insurance mandate is unconstitutional:

The requirement that everyone buy health insurance -- a central element to President Obama's health care plan -- is flatly unconstitutional, legal experts argue.
"The government has never required people to buy any good or service, as condition of lawful residence in the United States"

via Fox News, article by Jim Angie

Health Care Reform and Retardation

Some are getting upset because the House of Representatives health care reform bill uses the term "retarded".
The New York Post (via Drudge) reports:

The bill refers to: "A hospital or a nursing facility or intermediate-care facility for the mentally retarded . . ."

I don't see what the problem is. "Mental Retardation" is a valid medical/psychiatric term. Other more PC terms such as "developmentally disabled" have a slightly different meaning. The term "developmental disability" includes not only mental retardation but also autism and several other coniditions. There are various legal and medical definitions of developmental disability.

As someone who treats adults with mental retardation as well as autism I use the terms "mental retardation/mentally retarded" and "developmental disability/developmentally disabled", as well as "pervasive developmental disability" when appropriate. These terms all have different meanings and it is important that physicians as well as lawmakers use the correct term in order to promote clarity and precision.

There is no place for politically correct terminology when writing one of the most significant (in a bad way) pieces of legislation in the last 50 years.