I wonder what the return to college will bring for H1N1 flu. A story in the NYT says college students are prime candidates:
As public health officials brace for the start of the academic year and an expected resurgence of swine flu, college locker rooms are turning out to be an early proving ground. Just as the football season is getting under way, Duke, Texas Christian and Alabama have reported cases of swine flu or of players experiencing flulike symptoms.
Tulane had to cancel football Fan Day and the opening volleyball game. My son-in-law who lives in the Tulane area had his bout recently. I told my daughter that he would be famous if he had the flu up hear. It’s always front page news when someone gets H1N1. That’s not the case down there, she said. The doctor was very nonchalant about it. After all, a sorority house had just come down with it. I wonder if Taylor had been visiting.
Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the “True Constitution,” exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government’s powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama’s health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.
This falls under my continuing question: Have We Gone Nuts? If they prevail, at least we’ll see the end of the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind. And no more airport checks when the Department of Homeland Security is demolished. That was the largest expansion of government in many, many years.
The report by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said the average download speed in South Korea is 20.4 megabits per second (mbps) — four times faster than the US average of 5.1 mbps.
A new study by Angus Deaton uses an expansive dataset to analyze the determinants and benefits of religiosity around the world. Deaton confirms that women and the elderly are almost universally more religious. He also finds evidence that higher religiosity among the elderly may be due to aging effects as opposed to simply secularization of younger generations.
Religious people view themselves as more fit, reporting better health, more energy, and less pain. (Perhaps prayer is a substitute for complaining?) They’re also less likely to smoke and more likely to be married, have supportive friends, and be treated with respect. Other economists have linked religiosity with voting and counteracting the effects of childhood poverty.
[comments are transferred from the old blog]
contrarian responded:
“Prayer is a substitute for complaining?” Yikes! When things get slow do you just try and inflame a comment? There are religions that would take deep offence at the sacriledge of that comment. I should probably be one of them.
And to besmirch “No Child Left Behind?” Senator Kennedy was just laid to rest yesterday.
Steve responded-
Contratian – This seems not too much different than when I went home and quoted topics from a comparative religion class I took. It’s about the same time I learned about being chosen as the lightning rod in my group.
contrarian responded:
I must have been in the same class in a different year.
Steve responded:
Mine was 1970 in southeastern Ohio. I remember the contrasts mostly. It was the first I learned of snake handlers (from classmates family members in Appalachia) and picking up hitch hikers on the way home for Christmas break that where Hare Krishna converts. The class focused on the larger world religions, time lines, how religions forked into new belief systems. All this was quite different from what I’d been taught at Sunday school, Catechism and a public school with a heavy Mennonite influence.