Quick Roundup 133

Two Good Videos on Socialized Medicine

I thought I would commemorate the swearing-in of the Dhimmicrats by pointing out the following two excellent videos about socialized medicine.

This I learned about from the Harry Binswanger List. Soon after that mailing, another subscriber pointed out a twenty-five minute video by the same people.

The filmmakers are currently in production on a feature-length film addressing health care in the U.S. and Canada slated for release in late 2006. As an interim offering, they have produced this short film which debuted at the Liberty Film Festival in West Hollywood, CA on Oct 21, 2005. We hope you enjoy it!

This is very good news. We will need to defend our right to decent medical care yet again very soon. Ammunition like this can only help.

Islam Minus Alcohol Equals Zero

Zero, as in "protection against MRSA" in Great Britain.

Some Muslims are undermining the battle to rid Britain's hospitals of killer infections by refusing to wash their hands when visiting sick relatives.

Dispensers containing anti-bacterial gel have been placed outside wards at hospitals all over Britain in a bid to get rid of superbugs like MRSA and PVL. It prevents people bringing in more infections. But some Muslims refuse to use the hand cleansers on religious grounds because they contain alcohol.

Health watchdogs are so concerned they intend to meet with NHS bosses in the New Year to try and hammer out a solution.

Funny how the same system that refuses to treat the obese and bans advertisements of junk food from television seems so slow to prevent the superstitious from exacerbating real health problems! Chalk another one up to anarcho-tyranny, I guess. "Hammer out a solution"? Why not just ban visitors who refuse to wash with the soap upon entering the hospital?

One day, I hope, we in the West will realize that our choice is to tolerate the irrationality of religious fundamentalism or remain alive. (via Little Green Footballs, HT Isaac Schrodinger)

Of Sanction and Victims

John Lewis has written an excellent piece on how a cover-up of and the outright evasion -- by our federal government -- of Yassir Arafat's direct involvement in the 1973 "Palestinian" terrorist attack upon the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum allowed Arafat to wage war for decades against Israel and the United States.

Without America's help, Arafat had nothing. America is strong precisely because Americans are in general rational, productive, and free; the Palestinians are weak precisely because they do not value rationality, productivity, or freedom. The only weapon that the Palestinian leadership can hold over America is its claim to an altruistic moral high ground because of the self-created, debased condition of the Palestinian people. This weapon cannot work without our sanction.

Ayn Rand called such sanction "the sanction of the victim"; it entails placing one's virtues in the service of one's own destroyers by granting an undeserved moral status to one's enemies.

In addition to providing this timely analysis, Lewis links to a report on the attack and the recently-released State Department memo by Caroline Glick, who quotes from it:

The cable released by the State Department's historian states, "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, (PLO), and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy."

Lewis also has a very lengthy chronology of Islamic attacks against Americans over at his web site. (Users of Firefox will may it easier to read if they use it to reduce the font size.)

2006 Junk Science Retrospective

Issac Schrodinger points to Steve Milloy's top ten list. Item 7 looks good to this Southerner: "The widely-held 30-year old notion that low-fat diets are good for your health went 'poof' this year." (Of course, given the media's overwhelming scientific illiteracy, I tend to ignore most reporting on matters of diet anyway.)

Google Patent Search

Yesterday, I discovered by accident that Google now allows searches through the texts of all U.S. patents. Slate has a somewhat amusing article about it here.

Opinions on New Blogger?

I have recently begun paying closer attention to how long certain phases of my blogging take and found that proofing and minor editorial changes soon after publication take far more time than they should. This is due mainly to the fact that the native Blogger editor -- at least for the "old" version -- is inordinately slow.

I had some time Tuesday to address any problems that could arise from transitioning to the new version of Blogger, so I tried it, only to be told that my user account (which permits me to post to three different blogs) could not be switched over. So, while I am waiting for this problem to be addressed, I can't judge for myself whether the "New Blogger" really is better.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has made the switch about two issues in particular. (1) If you have a complicated template, did this get goofed up when you switched? (2) Is the new "instant publishing" all that it's cracked up to be?

-- CAV