Let’s talk miracle drugs on a Saturday morning, friends.
You like fatty red meats and fried starches. You love being sedentary. But that pesky heart disease is always coming around to ruin everybody’s good time! Maybe not for long?! The Swiss have a hotshot new drug that drastically reduces the chance of heart failure. People are EXCITED about this stuff. Its effects are “not just positive, they are remarkably positive and positive in every dimension,” says one doc. Just in time for football season.
Then of course there’s that experimental drug that brought two Ebola-infected American citizens back from the brink. It was argued, in using the medication ZMapp on just the two Yankee aid workers, that that was prudent, since we had no idea what might happen. But it turns out this stuff does pretty great work fighting Ebola. Now the company that makes it just has to figure out how to produce enough to grow insanely, unfathomably, depressingly rich.
A week of terrible local shoreline tragedy grows more terrible, as a nine-year-old girl who’d been digging in the sand at a Lincoln City beach is suddenly buried by the stuff. She died.
It’s been a solid week, though, for federal jurists. On Wednesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed—again and for good—the National Organization for Marriage’s attempts to meddle in Oregon marriage equality. And on Friday, a judge in Texas blocked the state’s attempts to shutter more than half of its existing abortion clinics, finding new regulations unconstitutional.
Vladimir Putin’s sick of the act. He’s now straight-up cheering on the rebels warring with Ukraine’s military.
Always remember re-election trumps sensible, humane public policy, everyone. There are elections in a couple months, so President Obama seems to be thinking it’s probably not prudent to push through progressive immigration reforms that could upset people.
You guys seen this new local news/sports/gossip/click-bait slideshow site? Interesting! Welcome aboard, GoLocalPdx.com.
One way to deal with the horrifying specter that is ISIS, I guess: Making fun of them. Even though you live near them. Don’t know if it’s the route I’d go.
The US, meanwhile, has been content to bomb and missile the hyperviolent zealots. But now Secretary of State John Kerry is saying that’s not enough, and looking for folks to sign on to a “coalition.” Uh oh.
Rain! Football! Not mad!
I’ve maybe posted this before. Doesn’t matter. Watch it again. Watch it forever.
Went to lovely Trillium Lake recently and was shocked at the bizarre, unexpected drop off about 5 feet from shore.
Unless you know the body of water like the back of your hand- assume it has serious hidden dangers. Remember that a lake can go from tropical to arctic as the depth changes. Lots of drownings happen when the swimmer finds himself in bone chilling water.
At the beach- let the kids play in the little shallow tributaries that cut through the sand. A little road runoff won’t kill them. A sneaker wave is a different story.
Growing up on the East Coast, I remember more placid lakes. Our NW rivers, lakes and surf
are wilder and more dangerous. This isn’t Kansas.