I only had the stomach to watch the first minute and a half or so of this video, but in that time Charles Adler, spurred on by Quebecor’s and the Harper government’s right wing ideology, uses every logical fallacy in the book to bash the gun registry. First he refers to the Left’s “hysterics” and then he makes it seem like the Harper government is cancelling the entire gun registry when in reality they’re focusing on the long gun registry at this time. Then he says that the gun registry cost one billion dollars, which essentially makes it seem like the long gun registry alone cost that much money.

The icing on the cake is when he splashes Marc Lepine’s face on the screen – that vile murderer, responsible for killing 14 innocent women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal – and then blames the gun registry’s formation on the Chretien Liberal government pandering to “hardcore feminists” in its ranks. He also says that the gun registry has never solved any crimes.

He puts up a picture showing some hunters that says “Hunters & Farmers aren’t crooks”.

I’m glad that Charles Adler knows every single hunter and farmer in Canada and that he has ascertained that NONE of them are crooks. What a load of baloney. Hunters and farmers don’t need their right to have guns defended – how much of an inconvenience can it actually be to register your firearm? If you’re in possession of a deadly weapon, it only makes sense that you do your civic duty. If the RCMP and police officers across Canada say over and over again that they’ve accessed the gun registry thousands of times and that it helps to prevent and to deal with crime by giving information about which guns are at a house, then why don’t the so-called “hard on crime” Conservatives listen to them? Sure, people with illegal firearms won’t register their guns – but it’s not only people with illegal firearms who commit crimes. Violence is also committed with guns in  homes and within families and has nothing to do with illegal activity or gangsters.

This is clearly a very transparent attempt to pander the hardcore right wing in the Conservative party, who want to see the US style “right to bear arms” enshrined in our laws. But if you listen to reason, and to fact (which the Right has been completely against in the past few years), you’d see that the police want the registry because it helps them fight crime, and the RCMP wants the registry because it helps them fight crime. Why don’t we listen to the people who keep us safe for once? This lack of respect that the Conservatives, Sun News and Charles Adler has for our police forces is astounding.

The group lead by Joan Tranmer studied 227 women between the ages of 22 and 66 who worked as nurses, technicians or administrative employees. 17 per cent of those women had at least three of the risk factors for metabolic syndrome. In their paper in Circulation in 2004, Grundy et al provide the American Heart Association criteria for metabolic syndrome (these are the risk factors and the level above which the test result is a problem):

“Abdominal obesity, given as waist circumference*†
Men102 cm (40 in), Women88 cm (35 in)
Triglycerides
150 mg/dL
HDL cholesterol
Men 40 mg/dL
Women50 mg/dL
Blood pressure
130/
85 mm Hg
Fasting glucose
110 mg/dL”

Apart from the 17% that had three risk factors, 38% of the study participants had high blood pressure and 60 percent had abdominal obesity.

This study doesn’t directly look at the possible mechanisms by which shift work causes these problems – but as someone that does shift work with some on-call shifts lasting more than 24 hours, I can tell you that I believe this conclusion. There is a large body of research on shift work and it’s clear that it causes disturbances in sleep patterns which is harmful in of itself, as well as impacts family life, relationships, ability to exercise routinely, diet and a number of other issues. Overnight shifts can exacerbate migraines in those who have them. Overall, overnight shift work is very challenging physically and appears to be detrimental to the health of shift workers.

If you want to read more about shift work and measures that you can take to minimize its impact (such as techniques for improving sleep and dietary patterns), I found a good publication from the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers, Inc. (OHCOW – no, I didn’t make that acronym up!) called “Shiftwork: Health effects & solutions”. It’s located at http://www.ohcow.on.ca/resources/handbooks/shiftwork/shiftwork.pdf. Check it out! They have other resources about occupational safety and ergonomics here: http://www.ohcow.on.ca/resources/index.html

According to their website at http://www.verisante.com/products/aura/ the detector scans for “’21 different cancer biomarkers in less than one second”. Furthermore, “Jointly developed by the BC Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, this patent protected technology has already been used in a human clinical study spanning six years on approximately 1,000 lesions. Preliminary results published in 2008 showed the technology had found every case of melanoma in 274 lesions flagged for biopsy. This diagnostic tool will greatly aid healthcare professionals, lowering healthcare costs through reduced wait times and early detection.”

Pretty amazing stuff. These kinds of techniques will hopefully be used for the early identification of other cancers, especially if cancers have different “molecular signatures” that could theoretically be differentiated using other techniques like MRI spectroscopy, for example.

**Addendum: Looks like they actually ARE creating the above kind of technique – the “Verisante Core” (http://www.verisante.com/products/core/) is attached to an endoscope and is going to be used to look inside the body and use the same spectroscopic technique to look for lung, colon and cervical cancers. This is super exciting because especially for internal cancers that aren’t as easy to biopsy, it could lead to much quicker diagnosis! A really interesting Canadian innovation in cancer diagnosis.

Skin cancer detector approved – Health – CBC News.

When will the population of Canada wake up to the fact that Stephen Harper and his fellow conservatives are hell bent on spending money on policies that make no sense, and wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars?

From the article:

“As recently as 2004, Texas had the highest incarceration rate in the world, with fully one in 20 of its adult residents behind bars or on parole or probation. The Lone Star state still has the death penalty, with more than 300 prisoners on death row today. But for three decades, as crime rates fell all over the U.S., the rate in Texas fell at only half the national average.

That didn’t change the policy — but its cost did.

Faced with a budget crisis in 2005, the Texas statehouse was handed an estimate of $2 billion to build new prisons for a predicted influx of new prisoners.

They told Rep. Madden to find a way out. He and his committee dug into the facts. Did all those new prisoners really need to go to jail? And did all of those already behind bars really need to be there?

‘We can’t ignore the fact that our “tough on crime” stance that puts a person in prison and assumes that their drug problem will somehow magically disappear while they’re incarcerated and they’ll never get out again and offend, is ridiculous!’—Dr. Teresa May-Williams, forensic psychologist

Madden’s answer was, no. He found that Texas had diverted money from treatment and probation services to building prisons. But sending people to prison was costing 10 times as much as putting them on probation, on parole, or in treatment.”

]]> http://mikael.ca/2011/10/even-texas-conservatives-know-that-stephen-harper-is-wrong-on-crime/feed/ 0 http://mikael.ca/2011/10/best-brownie-recipe-ever/ http://mikael.ca/2011/10/best-brownie-recipe-ever/#comments Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:11:39 +0000 mikael http://mikael.ca/?p=42 Continue reading →]]>

This recipe for dense, fudgy brownies is the best I’ve ever had. The recipe comes from the book “The KidsFood Cookbook: 48 Metric Fast Food Favourites” by Shannon Ferrier and Tamara Shuttleworth. I first made these brownies as a teen and loved them. Don’t forget to check with a fork around 18-20 minutes of cooking (or earlier if your oven tends to run hot) – the last time I made these, I took them out after about 20 minutes of baking, although the recipe calls for 25 minutes.

*** Note: If you want to use cocoa instead of unsweetened chocolate squares, you need to use
3 tablespoons of cocoa and 1 tablespoon of butter for each unsweetened chocolate square.

“CHOCOLATE FUDGE BROWNIES

Cortez, the Spanish explorer, found the Aztecs drinking chocolate from golden goblets. In Europe, the Spaniards kept the precious substance to themselves until the 1600s, when chocolate drinking became an instant sensation in Holland and England. The Swiss finally developed a method of solidifying it in the 1800s, and many delicious recipes using chocolate were eventually created. These fudgy brownies are the type sold in fast food vending machines because they hold together better than the lighter, cake-type variety. Top them with Chocolate Glaze (p. 51) for a double chocolaty treat.

INGREDIENTS

10 mL butter
125 mL butter
2 squares unsweetened chocolate (28 g each)
250 mL sugar
5 mL vanilla
2 eggs
175 mL all-purpose flour
125 mL chopped walnut
Chocolate Glaze (p. 51)

UTENSILS

measures
2 L cake pan
medium pot
wooden spoon
hot mat or pot holder
HERE’S HOW
1. Use the 10 mL butter to grease the cake pan.
2. Set the oven at 180 C.
3. Melt the 125 mL butter and the chocolate together over low heat, stirring often.
4. Remove the pot from the heat and place it on the hot mat to protect the counter. Stir in the sugar and vanilla.
5. Beat the eggs into the mixture, one at a time.
6. Add the flour and nuts. Mix well.
7. Spread the mixture in the cake pan and bake for 25 minutes.
8. Cook the brownies, then frost with Chocolate Glaze. Cut into 16 squares.

CHOCOLATE GLAZE

INGREDIENTS
1 square unsweetened chocolate (28g)
25 mL butter
15 mL water
375 mL icing sugar

UTENSILS
small pot
measures
wooden spoon

HERE’S HOW

1. Melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat, stirring oftern.

2. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the water. Add the icing sugar and mix until smooth. If the glaze is too thick for dipping, add more water, 5 mL at a time, until the glaze is thin enough to use.”

A study at Texas A&M showed commercials for fries to a group of children and commercials promoting a healthy snack to another group of children. When asked to choose between a healthy snack and fries, 71% of the group shown the commercial for fries chose the fries. Of a subset of this group who were told by their parents to choose a healthy snack, 55% chose the healthy food. It was statistically significant and showed that there was, in fact, an impact of parental advice on the choice of their child. (Having said that, 55% of the group whose parents suggested that they choose the healthy snack still chose fries, showing that ads — and taste buds — still play an important role!)

A Justice Minister who quotes the cost of a bill but has no idea how that figure was obtained. A government that ignores statistics from Statistics Canada that show that crime is at its lowest level in years. A minimum $2.7 billion dollar package to build megaprisons for criminals that don’t exist. It sounds like the plot of a bad political thriller, whereas in reality it’s what’s really happening this week in Ottawa.

This is just one of the embarassingly obvious efforts to hide information on the part of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, only this time his lackeys are taking the fall.

Case in point, the following quote: “Toews said officials from different departments came up with the numbers and he couldn’t specify the methodology. “I don’t figure out the math, I give that to the officials who have all of the available data,” said Toews.” (from above article)

So the Justice Minister of Canada has absolutely no concept of how these figures were obtained, but trusts that the information is the best possible because it came from his officials. Did they pull it out of a hat? If Justice Minister Nicholson was working for a major corporation and proposed a major programme and gave a one page document to list costs and had no idea how the costs were obtained or what methodology was used, he’d be laughed out of the boardroom. This move is so utterly and entirely bush league, but at the same time symbolizes the iron grip that the Conservatives had had on any information that opponents could use to fight back against their wrong-headed bill.

Nicholson aside, this omnibus crime bill (mirroring the decision to scrap the long-form census) is yet another step in which the Conservatives take all of the failed policies that have been tried in the US and try to implement them in Canada. The US trialed scrapping the long-form registry and then reinstated it when they realized they no longer had reliable census data. And now the Conservatives want to build mega-prisons, and we all now how well the mega-prison system has served the Americans (in case you didn’t know, terribly.) But ignoring the abundance of evidence against your policies is a hallmark of Stephen Harper’s conservative government. $2.7 billion is not an amount we can afford to waste on the folly of the Conservatives.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/06/tea-party-express-chair-accuses-president-of-class-warfare/

It’s incredibly ironic that she’s accusing the President of class warfare for wanting to tax people who make more than a million dollars a year in salary. In times when so many people can barely make ends meet, let alone afford proper healthcare, it’s hypocrisy to no end to suggest that millionaires are being discriminated against.

No, millionaires and billionaires need to carry their weight. Too long they’ve been allowed to use tax loopholes and lax tax laws to essentially pay minimal or no taxes. It’s embarassing for anyone to propose that increasing their contribution to American society isn’t at least part of the solution to the economic woes. After all, studies have shown that the rich tend to stockpile their riches rather than invest them in a way that spurs job creation.

Amy Kremer also further destroys her legitimacy by suggesting that Herman Cain is a candidate to watch – Herman Cain, who thinks that being gay is a choice, and has no experience in government whatsoever. Real good choice there.

As for lowering taxes – it always blows my mind that Republicans are so rabidly for lowering taxes, but then when they get into government they spend billions upon billions of dollars of money the government doesn’t have, leaving a huge mess to clean up. Republican Presidents have contributed by far the most to the US national debt. They just love making people feel good by lowering taxes and spending tons of money and not caring about the trail of economic destruction they leave.

You may have heard the story about baby Joseph, who was born in Canada with a degenerative disease. His breathing was supported with a ventilator and he required a feeding tube into his abdomen in order to receive nutrition. When it came time to decide on the next steps, knowing that this baby would never have any quality of life or any sort of reasonable life span because of his degenerative condition, the London Health Sciences Centre refused to perform a tracheostomy. A tracheostomy is a hole in the throat that connects to the trachea, or windpipe, and allows for air to go right into the trachea and bypass the mouth and oropharynx. In some children with degenerative diseases, their tone is low, meaning that their muscles are floppier than kids without that disease, and so their airways are not always as open as necessary to breathe without a tracheostomy.

In Baby Joseph’s case, it was clear that a tracheostomy would just prolong the baby’s life. Often with a degenerative disease, this just means more suffering, because the baby is at risk for infections since they can’t clear their secretions, they often have autonomic instability meaning intermittent fevers and issues with their vital signs like heart rate and blood pressure, and they need very frequent care like suctioning. This doesn’t amount to any sort of good quality of life at all.

In the article posted on the CBC’s website, the family of baby Joseph, the Maraachli family, take one last pot-shot at the doctors who cared for their child. The “Terry Schiavo Life & Hope Network” also takes a shot at the doctors. Together they make statements such as “No doctor should impose death” and “Shame on your doctors”. The father also wishes that doctors had told him that there was a likelilhood of his second child having this degenerative disorder after their first child, a girl, had died from the same condition.

Here’s the bottom line: it’s extremely unlikely that they were not advised about the likelihood of this disease recurring in their next child. Any time the Genetics service is involved and helps care for a child with a degenerative disease, the parents are often tested if the genetic abnormality is found; if no abnormality is found, then one can’t always properly advise parents as to the risk that their next child will have this disease. But this is the classic situation where doctors are bound to confidentiality and will never be able to respond to these spurious accusations.

More importantly, they will never be able to respond to these ridiculous accusations that the doctors in Canada were trying to hasten death. That’s so far from the truth it’s unbelievable. Just like in the case of Terry Schiavo, if there is absolutely no chance of a child or adult ever recovering from a severe brain injury, or if they have a disease that will definitely end their lives, it’s the pinnacle of selfishness for a family to ignore the suffering of the patient and insist on every single possible life-saving measure. I respect that these decisions are always made in conjunction with the family, and that a happy medium has to be found that will allow the family some closure; but as a physician, I’m bound to stand up for the comfort of the dying patient. To accuse a physician of willing death upon their child is incredibly crass and mean. I think this comment on the news story sums it up well:

“But it was the american doctors who did interfere in natural dying process.

The Canadian doctors wanted to stop interfering with a dying baby that ccould not be saved. The trachtomy just dragged out his death. I do hope the poor child did not suffer.”

You can’t make this stuff up. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the party whose government stifles access to information, sacrifices the environment to corporate interests and promotes the fortunes of the rich over the poor has come up with a new way to increase their seat count in the next election.

“Tories refining patronage, opposition says”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/05/pol-patronage-placeholders.html

It’s not enough to end federal subsidies to political parties — which will clearly disadvantage parties that don’t have close connections to rich corporations (ie everyone other than the Conservatives) — but now they’ve given jobs to at least two defeated candidates (one, Cecil Clarke, in Nova Scotia’s Victoria-Sydney riding, and the other, Saulie Zajdel, in a Montreal riding). Clarke will be making 135,000$ a year travelling the riding and acting as a government liaison to inform the community of what services are available to them.

This is yet another Conservative waste of taxpayer dollars, appointing a liaison who is loyal to their own political party in order to improve their fortunes in the next election, especially in a riding like Mr Clarke’s where the incumbent, Liberal MP Mark Eyking, only won by approximately 1000 votes.

The Conservatives try to paint themselves as the party of law and order, but really they’re just as bad as any other party – they’ll use any Machiavellian tactics to further their own cause, even using our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to do so. It’s a disgusting practice, and should be stopped immediately – there’s no way they can justify this type of behaviour.

(Of course, we all realize that patronage appointments are not uniquely a Conservative endeavour, even though Harper has gone into overdrive appointing people to the Senate despite the fact that he swore never to do so – but nonetheless, Harper and his buddies should quit pretending to be high-and-mighty if they resort to these down and dirty tactics).