Archive for the ‘PANIC!’ Category
April 14th, 2010 | 
Author: Tomorrow, April 15th. Assuming it’s clear, that is.
The sun burped up a bunch of stuff today:
It’s called a solar prominence. Basically, the sun blasting a bunch of “stuff” away. It’s heading towards us and has a decent chance of “affecting the polar magnetic field”! Eeeek!
Sounds scary, but the arrival of these things can bring a big increase in Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). This is bigger that the one that hit last Saturday and aurora activity was visible from Michigan to Vermont.
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Sweet Fanny Adams. That’s what. My theory’s always been that the Mayan calendar “ends” on that date because that’s as far as they took it. Heck, there’s even question as to whether 2012 is actually the end. It may actually be 2220!
Mark Dery does a much better job of debunking this nonsense over at h+ Magazine than I ever could. My personal favourite is the choice words BoingBoing editor Xeni Jardin has about Daniel Pinchbeck, high priest of 2012 hokum and profiteering:
While Jardin is no expert on, or spokesperson for, the Mayan people, she is well-positioned to reveal the 2012 phenomenon for the carnival of bunkum it is. Her adoptive father is “of indigenous descent,” she told me in an e-mail interview, and working with his nonprofit in Guatemala, “doing cultural and philanthropic work” for the country’s indigenous peoples, has brought Jardin into close contact with the Maya.
I was thinking about the debate about publicly funding health care in the US last night and an intriguing question came to mind. If socialized health-care is so inherently evil, do you suppose that all those politicians, tea baggers and insurance-industry execs and lobbyists decided to pay for their vaccination? Or do you think they just quietly accepted the government-supplied one without giving it a second thought?
That would be a good opening question for every media interview about Obama’s healthcare plan from this point on: Who paid for your H1N1 vaccination? You or the taxpayer?
This notice went up on the boys’ school website yesterday:
Staff and parents are doing an excellent job fighting the spread of the flu virus. There is a small increase in the number of students absent each day, but this is partly due to the consideration parents are showing in keeping children home who are exposed to the virus or experiencing flu symptoms (see yesterday’s chart of symptoms or note/label sent home in ALL student agendas on Tuesday). The absentee rate was 15% on Monday, 17% on Tuesday, 20% on Wednesday and 22% today. We will continue to wash and spray disinfectant frequently. Thank you for the support you are showing every day.
I can’t seem to locate any kind of school closing plan, so I have no idea if we’ll wind up having to stay home with them at some point. I’m very lucky, though: I can do about 90% of my job from home. As long as I have internet, all is good.
Macleans magazine’s entertainment columnist has somehow managed to trade one horrific earworm for another:
Some of you will recall – possibly with full-body shudders and theatrical flashbacks – the grim details of my darkest hour, when I confessed to an enraptured blogosphere that I was utterly incapable of getting Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart out of my head.
For days the song lingered there – hounding me, torturing me, reminding me time and again that forever’s gonna start tonight. [Brief pause.] Forevvvvver’s gonna start tonight.
It’s terrible, isn’t it? Reading this I felt terrible. What terrible crime could one man possibly commit to justify such heinous torture? I honestly can’t think of anything that would merit such a thing. Not even going through the 12-item or less lane at the supermarket with 15 items. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve taken the flu vaccine every year since the province started paying for it and haven’t actually caught the bug in that time. I’ve had colds, but that’s it.
I’ve heard some disturbing developments here in town that’s stiffened my resolve to get both the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines when they’ve available:
- My high-school alma-mater has more than 300 kids out with the flu right now. That’s more than 10% of the student population.
- The senior elementary school that shares the building with them has more than 100 kids and 18 teachers out.
- The elementary school where we hold our Cub meetings is running around 10% sick as well
- The local hospitals have had more than 400 cases show up on their doorsteps in three days this week.
- The hospital staff have all been told to expect a 200% increase in people traffic from this point on.
- A man that we have a hive placed with was in hospital for surgery this week and was effectively rushed out the door to make his bed available for flu patients.
- The US Centres for Disease control is reporting and almost 30% fatality rate for pregnant women.
So. Don’t be dumb. Get the shot. Wash your hands well and often. Cover your coughs and sneezes (tissue or elbow, not your hands). Don’t scrimp on sleep. Not get enough sleep is a sure way to wear yourself down and make it more difficult to resist infection.
Even if you don’t catch the flu, there’s a nasty cold virus making the rounds here in Kingston. It hit me like a ton of bricks Monday evening and I stayed home from work until Thursday. I’m still congested as hell and bloody exhausted. There’s a huge number of staff and faculty out with something similar at work, too.