moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
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(and my Wish List)

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Scientific American: Flu child death rate increase; Might have pre-emptive vaccine  
In Australia there's been what seems to be a similar situation, except as our population is < 10 % of the USA, so is our death toll.
Flu killed 68 children in USA this season: CDC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Influenza killed at least 68 children in America during the latest flu season and a third of them had a worrying new complication, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.
The 2006-2007 annual flu season never reached epidemic stage, but doctors should keep a lookout for such dangerous cases in children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The CDC issued an alert in May for deaths of children who were infected with both flu and a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus, or staph. It said 21 of the children who died also had such infections, some of them resistant to antibiotics.
"Only one pediatric death with influenza and S. aureus coinfection had been reported during 2004-05, and three had been reported during the 2005-06 season," the CDC report said.

I'm trying to not spend as much time on working this blog, but sometimes I throw in something like this. Maybe this one's less cheerful than others — here's something more hopeful:
New vaccine may beat bird flu before it starts

Labels: epidemiology, health, history, medicine

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 11:32 am

 
Bloggers Consider Forming Labour Union  
Bloggers Consider Forming Labour Union
(Excite Money & Investing: Sunday August 5, 3:03 PM EDT): In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

Sitting at a panel titled "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize" at this week's YearlyKos Convention for bloggers in Chicago, Kirsten Burgard said she'd welcome a chance to join a unionized blogging community.

Committee to Protect Bloggers: http://committeetoprotectbloggers.civiblog.org
National Writers Union: http://www.nwu.org
Pew Internet & American Life Project: http://www.pewinternet.org

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:11 am

 
BBC: Saturn's ring mystery is solved  
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Saturn's ring mystery is solved: "Scientists have made a significant step forward in understanding the dynamics of Saturn's magnificent and mysterious system of rings.

The behaviour of one ring in particular - the G ring - has baffled experts.

Its dust particles should ebb away because there are no nearby moons to hold them in place or replenish them.

But the Cassini probe has shed new light on the faint, narrow ring; showing that it interacts with a much more distant Saturnian satellite.

The work, published in Science, also unveiled the ring's odd structure."

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:55 pm