July 2007
→ Gloom
(28th July 2007)
So I am reading through hundreds of pages of NGO and UN do-gooding development reports, that uniformly decry the lack of sanitation in the world, and the toll that this takes on millions of lives. 4500 deaths from diarrhoea daily, cholera, dysentery. And I am struck by how much of these reports are about preserving human life, without questioning whether the preservation of human life ...
(22nd July 2007)
After a day reading documents on my computer and feeling eye-fatigued to the power of three million, I went and sat outside on my bench and drank a beer. First, neighbour Mimi came past and we conversed. She said she was going to shut up her chickens. OK. Then the professor of Occitan with his little black dog came past. He ...
(19th July 2007)
I used to collect book jacket outrageousness. Partly dedications, whose total mendacity was revealed to me when an author, having just divorced his wife - and being in the midst of several other relationships - still dedicated his book to his wife, with undying love. But I prefer to collect examples of the formula "X divides his time between..." All decent authors divide their time ...
(17th July 2007)
From The Health Hazards of Excreta: Theory and Control:Many species of parasitic worms, or helminths, have human hosts. Helminths do not multiply within the human host and this is of great importance in understanding their transmission. Helminthic disease is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. In infections due to viruses, bacteria and protozoa, where massive asexual reproduction occurs within the host, once infection ...