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Sunday, December 18, 2016
The Real Problem of Fake News
Thursday, December 15, 2016
You Must Know This Before Your Next Operation
A new study out Baylor College of Medicine in Houston shows that use of effective anti-bleeding drugs during surgery is up, but not up enough. Dr. Henry Huang says,
“There is a growing body of literature to support the use of antifibrinolytics to decrease perioperative blood loss, so the hope was that utilization rate would come up, and it did so in our study. But nearly 30% of centers have still decided not to use antifibrinolytics despite the increasing evidence.”Antifibrinolytics are drugs, such as TXA (tranexamic acid) that promote clotting.
As Dr. Huang reported at the 2016 World Congress of Anaesthesiologists, significant blood loss remains a perioperative concern for patients undergoing many types of surgery. So an important question before the Group was utilization rates of antifibrinolytics.
“Because there are a limited number of [a particular type of facial surgery] cases per year for each institute, it’s hard to use just one center’s data to study the surgical complications or anesthetic management outcomes,” Dr. Huang explained, “and one of the bigger fears of the procedure is bleeding.”
A broad study of TXA in 2012 called CRASH-2 looked at 20,000 patients (half given TXA, half a placebo). It proved beyond all doubt that doctors most common fears about TXA - that it would cause patients to "throw" a clot that would harm them - were absolutely groundless.
Hence, the 30% of operating teams that are not using TXA or something similar is a concern. What has prevented the adoption of what is essentially a miracle drug?
Of the centers that did not use antifibrinolytics, two factors
were predominantly cited: surgeon preference and concerns about side
effects.
Since CRASH-2 proved that the side effects were minimal, what's the remaining hold up? "Surgeon preference."
Really????
Take a card, write "TXA" on it in large letters, and keep it in your wallet. If you need surgery, pull it out. If your surgeon has a "preference" for blood transfusion instead of preventing blood loss, perhaps you should "prefer" another surgeon.
Please feel free to leave a comment. I've written quite a bit about blood medicine. To link to my other columns on this subject, click here.
Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction
self-help book, all available
at Amazon.com.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
How did Moses feed 3 million people?
“A string of interconnected tank cars with flexible hoses, the TankTrain System can quickly load and unload large volumes of liquid. At a rate of 3,000 gallons per minute, that's 1 1/2 hours to load a 5-car string. A 90-car train can load in less than five hours.”
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‘The channel may have been a kilometer or more in width. Though in fairly close marching formation, such a group, along with what wagons they had, their baggage, and their cattle, even when rather closely ranked, would occupy an area of perhaps 3 square miles or more. It appears, therefore, that the sea-opening allowed the Israelites to cross on a fairly wide front. If there was about a 1 mile front, then the depth of the Israelite column would probably be about 3 miles or more. If it was about a 1.5 mile front, the depth might be about 2 miles or more. It would take such a column several hours to get into the seabed and travel across it. While they did not go in panic, but maintained their battle formation, they would no doubt move with considerable haste.’
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Tuesday, December 6, 2016
The problem with Christmas, Easter, and the Cross
Thursday, October 27, 2016
2,800-year-old papyrus confirms organized kingdom at Jerusalem
- Josiah 659-629 B.C.E.
- Jehoahaz 628
- Jehoiakim 628-618
- Jehoiachin 617
- Zedekiah 616-607 B.C.E.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
UNESCO Tries to Revise Jerusalem's History
If UNESCO has their way, they might very well take down the sign shown here. Instead, they seem intent on putting up a plaque that looks something like the following:
"On this site in 638 C.E. Islamic armies took control of Jerusalem."
"On this site in 691 C.E. Muslim Caliph Abd el-Malik built a shrine called the Dome of the Rock."
" On this site in 820 C.E., Caliph al-Mamun removed the name of Caliph Abd el-Malik from the dedication plate and inserted his own name instead."
"On this site in 1187, Muslims
"On this site in 2016, UNESCO decided the Temple Mount has always been a Muslim holy site and has no importance to Jewish history."
Monday, October 24, 2016
TXA drug found to dramatically reduce surgical complications
A DRUG that prevents patients from losing excessive amounts of blood during and after surgery dramatically reduces complications, a global trial led by The Alfred hospital reveals.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Did Jesus die on a cross?
A Dictionary of the Bible, Dealing With Its Language, Literature And Contents, Including the Biblical Theology, in New Testament usage:
"In the Greek N.T. two words are used for 'the cross' on which the Lord was put to death: 1. The word stauros; which denotes an upright pale or stake, to which the criminals were nailed for execution. 2. The word xylon, which generally denotes a piece of a dead log of wood, or timber, for fuel or for any other purpose. It is not like dendron, which is used of a living, or green tree, as in Matt.21: 8; Rev.7: 1, 3; 8:7; 9: 4, &c. As this latter word xylon is used interchangeably with stauros it shows us the meaning of each is exactly the same. The verb stauroo means to drive stakes. Our English word 'cross' is the translation of the Latin crux; but the Greek stauros no more means a crux than the word 'stick' means a 'crutch'. Homer uses the word stauros of an ordinary pole or stake, or a simple piece of timber.[footnote, Iliad xxiv.453. Odyssey xiv.11] And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but of always one piece alone. Hence the use of the word xylon (No.2 above) in connection with the manner of our Lord's death and rendered 'tree' in Acts 5:30."
Other scriptural evidence:
Does it matter what you believe on this subject, or is it simply an interesting word puzzle?
Ultimately, whether Jesus was nailed to a stake, a cross, an X, or was hit by a bus, what matters is this:
- His death paid the ransom to buy back life for those exercising faith.
- Wearing the instrument of his death around your neck is idolatry, and it's insulting.
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
After-school Satanic club coming to a grade school near you
Lilith Starr is a devil’s advocate in every sense.
As founder of the Satanic Temple of Seattle, she’s under pressure from national satanic headquarters — located in the Colonial witch trials city of Salem, Mass. — to launch a counterstrike against grade school Christianity by opening an after-school Satan Club.
“I think many people have the misunderstanding that we are some kind of tongue-in-cheek troll group,” said Starr, 44, a Harvard grad who sometimes dresses in church robes and, when circumstances demand, paints her lips and part of her face black. “But in reality we are a very serious religion, with our own shared narrative, culture and symbols, a code of ethics — our Seven Tenets — and worship in the form of activism.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District appears to be the only school district to outright reject the club. In response to a Los Angeles Times inquiry Monday, the district issued a statement stating the club proposed for Chase Elementary School in Panorama City “does not meet the minimum requirement of having the school’s approval and, therefore, will not be offered at the school.”
That rejection could lead to a legal challenge. The Christians may have the force of Heaven behind them, but the Satanists have the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2001 high court ruling in a civil case brought by the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Missouri held that when a government operates a “limited public forum” such as after-school clubs, it can’t discriminate against the kind of speech that takes place.
The victory permitted the clubs to proselytize in public classrooms after hours. It also opened the school door for students of any faith, or no faith, to be taught the ways of Satanism.
Fifteen years later, with the Christian-based Good News Club having expanded to hundreds of schools across the U.S., the Satanists are responding.
Starr’s temple originally planned to open its first club at a grade school in Mount Vernon, north of Seattle. The school board’s attorney said the district had no choice but to approve the request due to court rulings.
But with space unavailable there until April, Starr said, the temple is now targeting Point Defiance Elementary in Tacoma, where the Satanists will compete with a Good News Club there. A school district spokesperson confirms the application has been made, but the school board has made no decision yet.
Starr has an English degree from Harvard and a master’s in journalism from Stanford. She says she battled depression, she confesses in a web bio, to “eventually losing her marriage, her house, her job and her friends due to an out-of-control addiction to nitrous oxide,” or laughing gas.
She remarried and found Satanism reading her husband’s Satanic Bible, eventually forming the Seattle temple in 2014. She said the group, which now has 78 members, meets every other week in libraries, an occult bookshop and other locations, always closing sessions with a “Hail Satan” invocation.
Among their advocacy efforts was an appearance at a high school football game across Puget Sound in Bremerton. Dressed in black robes, the Satanists milled about in counterpoint to Bremerton High’s assistant football coach, Joe Kennedy, who liked to lead his players kneeling in prayer on the 50-yard-line after the game. Though much of the Navy town’s community supported him — so did Donald Trump at one of his campaign appearances — the school board ended up firing Kennedy for his refusal to stop, and he has taken the dispute to federal court. [Read more here…]
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Landmark ruling from South Korean appeals court
“Religious and personal conscience is guaranteed by the constitution and cannot be restrained by criminal punishment,” Yonhap news agency quoted the court as saying.
“The international community is recognising conscientious objectors,” it said, while noting that “a consensus is shaping in our society on the need for an alternative service”.
The main rationale behind the continuation of mandatory military service is the threat posed by North Korea, given that the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty and left the two Koreas technically at war.
Amnesty International welcomed Tuesday’s ruling and said providing an alternative form of service was “long overdue... The government needs to act on the ruling and stop punishing young men who refuse military service on grounds of conscience,” said its East Asia researcher Hiroka Shoji.
Every year, hundreds of conscientious objectors in South Korea — mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses — are put on trial for defying the draft.
Some 12,000 South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses have been jailed as conscientious objectors over the past six decades, and the movement’s South Korean branch applauded the court ruling. [Read more here…]
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Monday, October 17, 2016
Should Christians celebrate Halloween?
On January 8, 2005, Prince Harry attended a costume party. The then-20-year-old decided to go as a Nazi. While that may seem like a really stupid choice, to him it was simply a humorous costume, perhaps like something from a movie.
An eighty-five-year-old Englander would never have done such a thing. Growing up with real live nazi atrocities - air-raid sirens, buzz bombs, buildings collapsing, food rationing - he would never have considered anything about the Nazis to be amusing.
The chairman of Britain's Holocaust Educational Trust, Greville Janner, commented on Prince Harry’s gaff:
"There are too many people in Britain and elsewhere whose lives have been wrecked by the Nazis, whose families have been murdered by the Nazis, whose sons were killed by the Nazis. It is too close to the war, too close to the Holocaust, and really a senseless way to behave."Does that mean that after another generation or two have died off that it will be okay for a person to wear a swastika for fun? The fact that there is such a thing as a Holocaust Educational Trust indicates that forgetting is a bad thing.
What does any of this have to do with Halloween?
The term Jack o’lantern first appeared in print in Ireland in 1750. It refers to a story of an undead person who, having outwitted the devil, was condemned to wander the earth eternally, using for light an ember of Hell, protected inside a carved turnip. It’s been so long we’ve all forgotten, but think about it before you send your kiddies out as the Devil’s representatives this Halloween.
Halloween itself stretches back at least 2,000 years. The Celts, who lived in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France celebrated their new year on November 1. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, even to their own homes, and treats were put out to appease them. Since it was believed these spirits could cause trouble and damage crops, people built huge bonfires as offerings to their god of light, Lug. People gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.
During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. Apples or hazelnuts, both viewed as products of sacred trees, were used to divine information concerning marriage, sickness, and death. For example, apples with identifying marks were placed in a tub of water. By seizing an apple using only the mouth, a young man or woman was supposed to be able to identify his or her future spouse. Thus bobbing for apples was born.
Samhain was also characterized by drunken revelry and a casting aside of inhibitions. Interestingly, The Encyclopedia of Religion describes modern-day Halloween as “a time when adults can also cross cultural boundaries and shed their identities by indulging in an uninhibited evening of frivolity. Thus, the basic Celtic quality of the festival as an evening of annual escape from normal realities and expectations has remained."
In the bible God condemns fortune-telling (Deuteronomy 18:10), uninhibited revelries (Romans 13:13), and worshipping other gods (Exodus 20:2). He also assures us that the dead cannot harm us (Ecclesiastes 9:5; Psalms 146:4). The druid priests who used these superstitions to control the Celtic people would have been as disgusting to God as Prince Harry was to those who remembered Nazis. But it was so long ago, surely God has forgotten what these symbols mean by now...
In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saints' Day. It is believed that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows Day so the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. The church later would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor all the dead (rather than just dead saints). It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils.
The macabre roots of Halloween may extend back even further. In his book The Worship of the Dead, writer J. Garnier notes that cultures the world over have some sort of festival for the dead at this same time of year, and he makes a connection to the flood of Noah’s day. The bible gives us the date of the flood: “the seventeenth day of the second month.” (Genesis 7:11) The calendar in use back then seems to have started with the first new moon after the fall equinox, so the 17th day of the second month could easily have been around October 31.
Why should we care? The bible tells us that, prior to the Flood, other angels had joined Satan in his rebellion against God (Genesis 6:2-4; Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4). These came to the earth and married women and had offspring. At the flood, the wives and children all died. The materialized angels undoubtedly dropped their human forms and went back to being spirits to avoid drowning. And, according to J. Garnier, human society has been helping those wicked spirits mourn their loss every Halloween since.
If pleasing God is important to you and you’re planning to celebrate Halloween, you'd better hope God has as short a memory as Prince Harry.
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Sunday, October 16, 2016
South Korea, security and conscience
This year, South Korea’s Constitutional Court is supposed to rule - again - on the constitutionality of the Military Service Act, which requires the prosecution of conscientious objectors.
“I still have a vivid memory of what happened,” Baek said, recalling his memories. When a Hankyoreh reporter met him in July, he was sitting on the other side of the glass partition in the visiting room.
Baek continued in a steady voice. “I deeply respect the hard work and sacrifices of young people who serve in the military. I want to serve my country as they do, just in a different manner. I fought this for six years in the courts, calling for the introduction of an alternative form of civil service, but I eventually lost, and here I am,” he said.
Lim was the student body president at a university in Seoul. Hearing about the innocent people dying in the US invasion of Iraq – including a South Korean, Kim Seon-il – further confirmed his decision to refuse to serve in the military.