The Liberation Treatment

News of the Liberation Treatment for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has been getting more and more press in the media I’ve been exposed to.

Dr. Paolo Zamboni found that 100% of the MS sufferers he tested had abnormal veins. These veins, between the head and heart, restricted or blocked the flow of blood.

The treatment is a surgery that inserts a balloon into each blocked vein and expands it, stretching the vein.

A number of MS sufferers from this country have gone overseas to have the treatment done. A large number have had improvements in their MS symptoms, some say the changes are major.

There has been resistance in the established MS community here to this treatment.

Firstly Zamboni says the vein blockages are the entire reason for MS. This is theory and hasn’t been proven as the established MS community has gleefully said. I’ll have to give them that, sometimes competing theories take a long time to show a winner.

My problem is another “defense” they take. They’ve said something that meant this: An anecdote is not science.

The Liberation treatment is not just an anecdote, it is a number of anecdotes all in the same vein*. And that, very often, can be solid science.

Now to be fair, I have no experience with the placebo effect which is known to muddy medicinal studies. But everything else is the science I know. So I suspect that the Liberation Treatment is not just a trick to get journalistic interest. It appears to be something that can help an MS patient.

Over here in Canada, it has been announced that Newfoundland(studies on people who get the treatment elsewhere) and Saskatchewan(actual trials) are going to start research for this new treatment. So at least someone in this country is saying let’s at least try the new.

MS is a terrible illness. Something that can alleviate some of the symptoms is both powerful and, I think, our duty to offer.

*Choosing this word is the only humour in this article.

Posted in Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

I Believe in Astrology

It’s certainly not the newspaper horoscopes that have me believing. I used to read the newspaper from start to finish and that included the horoscope. I spent years waiting for what was supposed to happen to my fortune and not once did I notice it worked.

So wait, you say, perhaps he believes in the more expensive, done by your actual birth date, with an astrologer you might actually meet, astrology. But here too I am soured even though I’ve never had this done. I would just expect the “accurate” astrologer to be even vaguer and more noncommital than the newspaper.

If not the horoscopes I believe in, maybe it is the zodiac and the symbols up there that represent things. It’s no to this, too. Firstly, the present zodiac includes the constellation Ophiuchus. In fact the sun spends more time in Ophiuchus than in Scorpius. Still it’s not part of the astrological Zodiac. How come? Well astrologers like to say that the zodiac was perfect some thousands of years ago. And it is this zodiac that they use.

As for the symbols, well are all Geminis twins? Are all Libras fair? Are all Sagittarii bow hunting centaurs? I know you’re thinking I’m taking everything too literally. But symbolically do all Geminis have multiple personality disorder? That’s a correct way to take the symbolism, too.

Alright then, you say. Perhaps it’s the effect of the stars, moon and planets on us that I agree with. Sadly this is not the case. I can see where the idea of astrology began. It was important in prehistory and early history to watch the stars to find when the year has started again. This can be done by watching the stars. It was also important to watch the moon to know the tides. From this I think the foundation of astrology was begun. But for the vast majority of things, I don’t believe the stars, moon and planets have any effect on our daily lives.

Then what do I believe in about astrology? Well I have had some luck matching the astrological sign’s traits with a handful of people I know the birth signs of. I know what you’re thinking, a handful of anecdotes do not a discipline make.

But I have some support in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. In it he notices the best hockey players have coincidentally early in the year birth dates. They are divided this way when they start hockey at the age of 4 or 5. Of course the early in the year birth date kids are significantly more skilled and able because half a year is huge when you’re this age. So these kids get sent to hockey camps and get grouped in more competitive teams, because they are “skilled”. These “extra” activities make them more skilled than they were and the gap widens.

We get put in school early on and that goes by the calendar year as well. It only makes sense that differences will appear depending on birth dates. And that, people, is why I believe in astrology. Well one part of it anyway.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said I believe in astrology, because of all the qualifying I had to do. Perhaps I should just say I believe in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

Posted in Humour, Pseudo Science, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Blast From the Past II

In the 1993/1994 school year, I contributed political cartoons to my York University student newspaper. So all of the following cartoons featuring Jacques O’ Christmas Tree were published in the Lexicon back then. I’ll try to make the jokes clearer with what I write below each cartoon.

The day I had to have this cartoon in by, to meet the deadline, was the same day that people voted in the 1993 federal election. So I gambled and followed the pollsters and figured Jean Chretien would win the election. The Bloc came in second, but all they needed to do was win a couple seats for this cartoon to be valid. Counselor Troy sensed dissatisfaction because the Progressive Conservative Party went from a majority (about 150 seats) to 2 seats. Again, Troy sees the obvious. Ryker thinks he has an in with Lesbians because he went to a planet of all women who were also having sex and of course one of those women fell for Ryker. The retro ’70s comment was about the fashions of the early ’90s and also Chretien had been a Liberal MP under the Trudeau government in the ’70s.

This cartoon was also published in some Brandon university paper. The student papers back then were linked by computers.

This was inspired by an obscure article buried in the Toronto Star. Apparently harp seal populations had increased dramatically since the moratorium on cod fishing in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. One of the foods of harp seals is cod. The cod stocks never recovered in Newfoundland – apparently they started the moratorium too late.

The poke at our military helicopters was because Chretien canceled a new helicopter purchase. Most of Canada was recovering from a recession which is why Chretien was trying to deliver jobs. My harp seal obsession in that year was because harp seals are cute and thus get attention. Lots of animal species go extinct every year and we never hear anything about them.

This is about Garth Brooks crusade at the time to get used CD sellers to give musicians a royalty off of every album they sell. It digressed into a tirade about how easy it is to get guns in the States (Garth is of course American). I regret saying the song should be sung with a southern accent. I would put southern ‘twang’ if I were doing this today. And yes, a lot of modern country still sounds like adult contemporary.

Posted in Art, Cartoon, Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Weird, Weird West

We’ve all heard about the wild, wild west of the 1800’s of the US. Canada’s west wasn’t quite as wild back then with more order than our southern neighbours. But up here, what leads to the weird, weird west are federal elections by time zones.

West of Ontario, is the smaller population in Canada. Ontario dominates the country with over 1/3 of the population and neighbour Quebec has roughly ¼. Combined with the Maritimes that means that about 60% of the country lives in the east, in the first two time zones.

Since elections are held at the same time of day in each zone, this means that the western voters know the results of the election before a lot of them have even voted.

This leads, I think, to a weirded out west that wants some measure of vengeance on eastern Canada.

The first thing this leads to is a dislike of the federal Liberal Party who are wildly popular in the east. West of Ontario, they are lucky to get a handful of seats in every election.

And then there is Alberta which likes to vote for the same band of guys. You might think this is incredibly boring but Albertans have made it interesting. Despite being a band of the same guys, the party they represent changes rather frequently. From Reform Party, to the Canadian Alliance, to the Conservative Party, Albertans have a unique way of keeping the same old band fresh.

Then there is BC. They are so weirded out, way out there that they will elect anything. Even sometimes a Liberal. Even (in my memory anyways), a Socred (that’s Social Credit to the uninformed). I expect the Green Party to make its breakthrough there next election and win at least a seat. The problem with the last election was that the Greens forgot to say ‘Pot is Green’. Whoops! Did I capitalize a word accidentally? Guess I want a Green Party breakthrough in BC.

What? You thought I could mention BC and not make a pot joke? You have far too much respect for this blog.

Posted in Humour, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

James Moore gets Cartoond

Heritage minister, James Moore, is depicted above. You may ask, “Why did he get Cartoond?” Well mainly because he chooses not to listen to Canadians.

On Twitter, he blocked my sister, Laurie, since he decided any critique by her would no longer be valued. Her article can be found here.

Laurie joins a cast of over 60 Canadians that are blocked by James Moore on twitter. The rest of the lineup can be found here.

The first case of being blocked (that we know about), Russell McOrmond, explains himself here.

Another member of James Moore’s party, Harold Albrecht, has taken to lying about the opposition’s plans for copyright reform. Here is my article. Albrecht is trying to shield Moore’s Bill C-32 which sells out Canada’s current copyright. More sensible alternatives exist than Moore’s bill.

So, for many reasons, James Moore got Cartoond.

Posted in Art, Cartoon, Humour, Music, Politics, Stage and Screen, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Plant a Tree for that SUV

Have you heard about carbon offsets? Companies and countries are playing this new game, trying to lower carbon emissions first, but if they can’t, buying into another company’s or country’s scheme to offset the emissions they can’t cut.

Lucky for us, dear consumer, that option is also available to the individual. If you’re like most of us you’ve heard of your carbon footprint. Perhaps you’ve cut back on your electric bill at home and done other reductions. But you just can’t part with your SUV. For you, the consumer, you can buy offsets that plant trees and can even bring your carbon footprint down to zero, if you buy enough offsets. So if you buy 10 trees a year to counter the SUV you can say you are responsible (if garish).

But wait. Let’s say you live in North America. Wasn’t the entire eastern part of North America once trees? Didn’t the pioneers have to clear the land? They got rid of all the trees 200 years and more ago and still haven’t regrown those carbon offsets.

So to me, SUV driver, who probably hails from North America, you are billions and billions of trees in the hole. Why don’t we start there.

Indeed, I bet all the biggest civilizations were probably once prime tree growing territory. China, India, and Europe were probably temperate forests, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are trillions of trees in the hole. And I’m looking at you, Brazil, who is trying to catch up. Even in this golden age of offsets, are we losing to the axe of your country?

Still, I don’t want the offsets to stop. Even if we’re only treading water, it’s better than sinking.

And there is one line that may be helping. We fight forest fires, now. Forest fires are basically the release of all that stored carbon in trees entering the atmosphere again, mostly as carbon dioxide. Maybe we fight the fires to avoid property damage. Maybe we fight them for preservation of mature forest. Maybe we fight them so the heavy smoke doesn’t blanket built up areas. Regardless, we fight them and in the global warming game this might be valuable.

So plant some trees. Even better, make sure they don’t burn down.

Posted in History, Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Experimenting on the Trendy

My post, Experimenting on the Rich, brought up a couple of trends in which the whole population is now experimenting on the rich, and I could have also have said we’re experimenting on the trendy for the points brought up.

Yes, collecting data on possible brain cancers brought about by cell phone use could be called experimenting on the trendy. Also, collecting data on laser eye surgery could also be called experimenting on the trendy.

Aren’t the headache and pain remedies we use also subject to trends? For a long time, Tylenol was the king of headache remedies, before that , Aspirin was.

We’ve been experimenting on those trends and it seems like we have some data on Tylenol that is going to change behaviours again.

A pair of studies suggests that early use of Tylenol increases the risk of a childhood asthma and asthma like events. The studies showed this might go all the way up to the teen years. It’s been known in medicine for many years that the incidence of childhood asthma has increased quite a bit over the years. Which environmental factor or factors are responsible had been a total mystery until now.

So what do we do, all throw away the Tylenol? Maybe not quite so fast. Firstly these are preliminary studies. But more importantly Tylenol still has its use.

Tylenol is still considered the safest pain reliever for a pregnant mother. In fact this might be why Tylenol got so popular. Maybe the thinking was ‘it’s best for me and my growing fetus – perhaps it’s the best pain reliever for the life of me and the child.’

For nursing mothers, the best over the counter pain reliever is Ibuprofen because it is not excreted into breast milk. Therefore there is little risk to the baby.

For kids and infants, now that Tylenol might be out it should also be known that aspirin is out, too, because of the possibility of getting Reyes syndrome when under 16. I remember they used to have children’s aspirin that was chewable and would take it when young. This was another trend that died after the data was collected. The other NSAIDs, like ibuprofen can be used in childhood.

As for other adults, I guess you’re on your own when choosing over the counter pain relief. It might come down to side effects or drug interactions so you should do the research and you should decide.

So it seems that not one of today’s over the counter pain relievers is good in all cases. Instead, it seems that each has its specialty. And maybe that’s good. Perhaps following a trend when it has to do with your health is not the best thing to do. But then again the trendiness of patients does lead to hard data about side effects.

Posted in Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hounding the Hounder

Alright this is two weeks old but I just didn’t want back to back posts against Harold Albrecht. That’s right, that Harold Albrecht. He sent me the latest propaganda days after the mega propaganda piece. I waited but needed to post about this one because it contains a lie.

He says that the Conservative government is “Standing up to proposed taxes by the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, and NDP on electronic devices such as iPods, cell phones and laptops”.

Let me be clear right at the beginning. He lies. The proposal is a levy, not a tax, on iPods, cell phones and laptops. All the money will be transferred to Harold Albrecht’s big business friends in the album, TV and movies businesses.

The other parties proposed the levy in order not to criminalize the majority of Canadians who have downloaded a song or a movie. The levy presumes Canadians will continue to download these things, and offers a fair way to pay that makes the majority non criminal.

The conservatives propose a scheme of money making for their big business friends that makes DRM automatically trump everything else. DRM is a program that will take over your own computer and decide what you owe to the big businesses that made it. In the Conservative world, DRM trumps everything else. So you are the second in command of the computer you bought – DRM is first in command. DRM has crippled law abiding computers in the past (the Sony Rootkit) and there is no reason to believe that it will continue to be more docile.

The big recording companies want DRM to be king as well as the Conservative party. When the other parties will collect for them. That can only mean one thing. The Conservative strategy will result in more money for the recording companies. Which means that the Conservatives are not “Standing Up for Canadian Consumers.” But Harold Albrecht’s propaganda lies and says that they are.

2 lies in one mailing, Harold Albrecht? Shame. Shame.

Posted in Politics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Out of Date

I was curious if the Bare Naked Ladies’ (BNL) theme for the Big Bang Theory was a shortened version of a full song. I found the long version on YouTube and the earliest reference to it implies that it was made in 2007.

I like the theme for the Big Bang Theory, and for that shortened version I don’t know of any mistakes. It’s just that in two ways the rest of the song is out of date, scientifically.

“The dinosaurs all met their fate, they tried to leap but they were late, and they all died, they froze their asses off” is how some of the song goes. It used to be assumed that a big enough asteroid strike would cause a winter, possibly for the whole planet, that might last months.

Maybe the “winter” might still happen. But it is now believed that a big asteroid strike would heat the atmosphere incredibly for the first few hours. Anything unable to dive in water or burrow into the ground would be cooked. Thus it may have caused the first and largest BBQ.

This global superheating can be found easily on the Internet like here. Note the date, 2004, and it mentions that this was known for the last decade.

And the song goes on, “It’s expanding ever outward [the Universe] but one day, It will cause the stars to go the other way, Collapsing ever inward, We won’t be here, It won’t hurt, Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!”

Are they really promoting the “Big Crunch” (the collapsing) as modern science? Another look at the Internet shows that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. With an accelerating rate there will never be a Big Crunch. This has been shown to be true since 1998.

“What’s the crime?” you ask, “So what if they need to brush up on modern science?”

When something is out of style, do we not mock it?

What if in today’s world:

BNL all decided to have a high as possible hairdo, using two bottles of hairspray per member.

BNL preached that we should all have kept our VHS tapes and never spent a dime on HD movies.

BNL wore acid washed jeans while sporting a mullet.

BNL refused to get played on FM stations, only on AM with it’s lesser sound quality.

You get the idea. BNL shouldn’t be so woefully out of date on this one. This at a time when they seem to be modernizing by no longer having Steven Page in the band. You see kids, Steven Page did drugs. And as everyone has known since Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell II’, it’s Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll not the older and less cool Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.

Now you have this to do, BNL, a bit more to update.

And you, dear reader, the next time you want to say “that was so last week” you can now say “that was so Big Crunch”.

Posted in Humour, Music, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Others Assume, I Presume

I just had a gander of the words assume and presume in my dictionary. There are a number of meanings for both words. The definition I knew for both was identical. The dictionary says they both mean: to take for granted; suppose.

Let me presume for a moment. I presume that the word presume existed first. Then sometime much later it was decided that homespun, humble, folk wisdom needed a new saying. Cleverly the folk wisdom folks let assume mean the exact same thing as presume for a few years before springing the new folk wisdom cliche on everyone.

Suddenly every guru and every self help book said don’t assume. You make an ASS out of U and ME. Such humble folk wisdom was then established and repeated everywhere to the point where I’m sick of it. It was viral before the term viral was viral.

I say “I presume” to get away from this horrid saying. Because supposing and taking for granted are what extrapolating and interpolating are. These are powerful math and science concepts. You’re entirely right if you say they are not always true. But to use these concepts is quick and a lot of times leads to good results.

So some people may say assume makes an ass out of u and me. But I’m a blogger and I am the PRES of U and ME. I’m sorry PRESS isn’t spelled right but we bloggers don’t always have editors.

Posted in Humour, Language, Mathematics, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments