Archive for 2018

WELL:

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Marxism didn’t die. It’s alive and well and living among us. New Labour was a triumph of the reborn left, made to seem like a takeover by the right:

I know of at least six members of the Blair cabinet who to this day would prefer not to talk much, if at all, about their days in the ranks of hardline Marxist organisations. People who now go into frenzies about the leftist past of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have always ignored this aspect of New Labour and refuse to see any importance in it.

They should know better. It is not just me saying it, but the Blairites themselves. One New Labour apparatchik, Andrew Neather, has blurted out that his party had ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural… to rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’. And another, Peter Hyman, quite recently averred that the Blairite project was ‘infinitely more revolutionary than anything proposed by Jeremy Corbyn’.

But that’s nothing. Tony Blair himself recently revealed on BBC Radio 4 that he had been a Trotskyist at Oxford. What would once have been a six-cylinder front-page revelation passed almost unremarked. Like the dim MI6 operatives in Tinker Tailor, we’ve been elaborately fooled into believing the opposite of the truth, that Marxism has disappeared and offers no threat to our happiness and liberty, even as we moan about the strange and humourless restrictions on free speech and thought that grow in our midst like knotweed. How did that happen?   Think of me as George Smiley, trying to tell you what’s really going on.

In America, our celebrity community organizers like to call it “fundamental transformation.”

HOW SOCIALISM CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE.

OH, TEH GRAUNIAD NEVER CHANGE: The Guardian fan-girls over yet another Clinton – by Amanda S. Green.

AND BY THE WAY, AMANDA HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: Fire from Ashes.

At war with an old enemy, betrayed by a supposed ally, Fuercon is a system on the brink of disaster. All that stands between it and defeat are its Space Navy and Marines – and the fact the betrayer does not yet know its secret plans have been discovered. But will that be enough to turn the tide of war?

Honor and duty.

Honor and duty have guided Colonel Ashlyn Shaw’s life for as long as she can remember. Honor kept her sane when she was betrayed by those she had fought beside. Duty gave her reason to trust again once the betrayal came to light and her name, as well as the names of her fellow Devil Dogs, was cleared. Now she and the Marines under her command are once again asked to risk their lives to protect Fuercon from its enemies.

Family and the Corps.

They are why she fights. She knows what will happen to them should Fuercon fall to the Callusians. Their lives are worth any sacrifice she must make to help keep their homeworld safe.

Betrayal.

The not-so-secret driving force of Ashlyn’s life. Four years ago, someone betrayed her and her command. That person now works to betray Fuercon. Ashlyn is determined to discover who – and why – and bring them to justice.

The storm clouds of war gather and time is running out. Will Ashlyn and the Devil Dogs be able to turn back the enemy and unmask the betrayer before all is lost?

OPEN THREAD: Don’t be shy.

SHAVING YOUR HEAD HAS FEWER SIDE EFFECTS: Hair Loss Drugs Linked To Depression And Erectile Dysfunction. A friend of mine who’s kind of buff and recently gave up and shaved his head says he’s never gotten so much attention from women, and to be honest my first thought on seeing him was that he looked more than a little like Jason Statham. “I wish I’d done this years ago,” he said.

CALLS FOR MORE RESEARCH: Could HPV Vaccine Treat Skin Cancer? Case report shows complete disease regression following injections.

A novel treatment for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) using HPV vaccine could some day prove useful in patients who are poor surgical candidates, have multiple lesions, or who defer surgery, researchers reported.

A single case report of an elderly woman with multiple, inoperable cutaneous basaloid SCC, showed that systemic and direct intratumoral injection of 9-valent HPV vaccine resulted in complete regression of all cutaneous malignant tumors, according to Anna J. Nichols, MD, PhD, of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, and colleagues.

All tumors resolved 11 months after the first injection of vaccine, they reported in JAMA Dermatology.

No systemic adverse effects were reported, they added, and at the patient’s last follow-up visit 24 months after the first intratumoral dose of the HPV vaccine, there was no clinical evidence of SCC recurrence.

I hope it turns out to be as good as this sounds.