CONTACT WEARERS BEWARE OF EYEBALL-EATING AMOEBA

Published September 9, 2012 | By Iowadawg

An acanthamoeba may not be a term you’re likely to hear at the optometrist while being outfitted for a new prescription for contacts, but it’s a good reason to heed their warnings about proper contact lens care.

The acanthamoeba is a microorganism found to essentially crawl through the eye’s cornea causing not only pain but also potentially permanent blindness. The United Kindgom’s Press Association recently reported though incidence if the infection is rare — only about 75 people of the 3.7 million contact lens wears in the U.K. are treated each year — it’s still worth being aware of how to best avoid contracting it.

The UKPA states that the parasite, which burrows into the eye, can be picked up from a dirty case or from rinsing lenses in tap, river, pond or lake water. It also notes the condition, Acanthamoeba keratitis, is often misdiagnosed. Once contracted, treatment includes a hospital stay with “round-the-clock administration of disinfecting eye drops,” UKPA states. If the infection is bad enough, the cornea could need to be replaced or blindness could also result.

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From HERE.

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New site you should check out and read daily: What Bubba Knows

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Where are the homeless and the poor in today’s liberal media?

It’s like a corrupt media ritual. The moment a Republican enters the Oval Office, America’s homeless are suddenly discovered, dragged before news cameras, and used as props to prove how heartless the current administration is. But as soon as a Democrat assumes office, the homeless suddenly disappear; presumably to a place with chocolate rivers and peppermint trees that only Democrat presidents are able to magically manifest as soon as the oath of office is complete.

The media’s been even worse with Barack Obama. Not only have the homeless vanished from news coverage, but so have America’s poor. But as NBC’s David Gregory made clear, if you even try to bring up the record number of food stamp recipients Barack Obama’s failed policies have created, you’ll be labeled a racist. [...]

What is a cold, hard fact, though, is that in the last accounting available to us (May), America’s food stamp rolls increased by 173,000. In the last jobs numbers available to us (August), only 96,000 new jobs were created.

Keep reading…

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Wow….this has got to be a weird product to buy and use:

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National Geographic “National Geographic provides free maps, photos, videos and daily news stories, as well as articles and features about animals, the environment, cultures, history, world music, and travel.”

In the United States, there is little difference between the terms ‘college’ and ‘university.’ However, the term ‘college’ in other countries, such as Canada, refers to a junior college or trade college, where as a ‘university’ is larger, more research focused, and usually contains multiple colleges. – Provided by RandomHistory.com

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Our doctors don’t yet use laptops and tablets. Same with the hospital. Still desktop computers in every room. And so far, no diagnosis via the computer! But I can see this coming to all medical facilities soon….

The era of laptop medicine is now upon us. Rather, make that laptop-computer medicine.

Visit your physician, and odds are that he will enter the examining room with his shiny new laptop in hand. The push for electronic records in the name of medical record portability and efficient record-keeping is documented in the press, and the potential advantages appear convincing.

As a physician, a medically necessary visit to another physician is always a bit of a worrisome event. Decades of practice have validated the notion that physicians can and do make errors. However, on this recent visit, my attention became focused on the central role that the laptop computer had assumed in the physician-patient interaction.

My answers to my own physician’s questions were inputted to the laptop via a stylus touchpad. No typing skills necessary for the keyboard-challenged. One can only hope that the pre-programmed list of choices accurately reflected my potential responses. Chest discomfort? Would that be on exertion? How much exertion? Was that discomfort actually ribcage discomfort, as in a pesky costochondral rib joint, and not heart-related?

My physician hands-off -interview ended with his recommendation for a specific invasive, expensive medical-diagnostic procedure. Was this what the laptop computer decided upon? Was it his decision? As for me, my decision was to just say no, thank you.

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Just to break up the monotony of your day and to start some discussion with your significant other.

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Note to all: our son the computer genius worked for a company and helped write the software that will probably be used.

FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America

Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .

“The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services,” its administrator explained to the Department of Justice at the time, adding that the project, “will accommodate increased information processing and sharing demands in support of anti-terrorism.”

“The NGI Program Office mission is to reduce terrorist and criminal activities by improving and expanding biometric identification and criminal history information services through research, evaluation and implementation of advanced technology within the IAFIS environment.”

The agency insists, “As a result of the NGI initiatives, the FBI will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal, and international partners.” In doing as such, though, the government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information of anyone in their records with departments around the world thanks to technology that makes fingerprint tracking seem like kids’ stuff.

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odditiesoflife:

Death from Spontaneous Human Combustion

Mary Reeser, born in 1881, was found almost completely consumed by fire in her Florida home in 1951. The odd thing about the discovery of her body was that part of her left foot was left completely unscathed, and the extremely high temperature required to cremate a human body did not cause damage to the room or objects around the pile of ash which remained. The FBI investigators called in Professor Krogman from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, in the hopes that he might explain the mystery. He said: “I find it hard to believe that a human body, once ignited, will literally consume itself — burn itself out, as does a candle wick, guttering in the last residual pool of melted wax […] Just what did happen on the night of July 1, 1951, in St. Petersburg, Florida? We may never know, though this case still haunts me. […] I cannot conceive of such complete cremation without more burning of the apartment itself. In fact the apartment and everything in it should have been consumed. […] I regard it as the most amazing thing I have ever seen. As I review it, the short hairs on my neck bristle with vague fear. Were I living in the Middle Ages, I’d mutter something about black magic.”

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Pope Gets Electric Car

Pope Benedict XVI, who has focused on several environmental issues throughout his papacy, is now even greener thanks to an electric car presented by automaker Renault. During Benedict’s tenure, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on some buildings and has attempted to offset some of its carbon emissions. The pope will now be able to further reduce his carbon footprint by using the car within the grounds of the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. The vehicle is not considered a Popemobile, however, and is not customized with bulletproof windows or other security features.

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Geesh, interpol and countries now helping islamics hunt down people so they can be returned and then killed?

Continental News:

Since late July Saudi media have been buzzing with reports that a 28-year-old Saudi woman has embraced Christianity and fled the country, staying initially in a church in Lebanon before moving on to Sweden. According to the Saudi Gazette, the woman, Maryam, appeared on an Arabic TV channel saying she was tired of performing prayers and fasting during Ramadan — rituals that never brought her any benefit. She also criticised Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She claimed to have been converted through a dream and said that though she was raised to hate Judaism and Christianity she has come to love those religions since finding peace in Christianity.

The woman’s father said his daughter was working in an insurance company in Al-Khobar (in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province) when her boss, a Lebanese Christian man, influenced her and ultimately encouraged her to leave Islam. According to Saudi investigators, a second man, a Saudi national, helped the woman obtain false documents and leave the country. The woman’s family have pressed charges against the two men because apostasy (leaving Islam) is an Islamic capital offence and a Saudi woman is not allowed to get a passport without the permission of her male guardian. The men will face court on Saturday 15 September.

Prosecuting lawyer, Humood Al-Khaldi, said that whilst the penalty in Islam of death for apostasy is clear, ‘the roles played by the two men, the Saudi and Lebanese, in making the girl become Christian should be taken into consideration’. He said ‘the court should make sure first that the girl was coerced into converting to Christianity and fleeing the country’. According to Gulf News, ‘Most Saudis reacting to the Khobar woman saga . . . have been calling for stringent action against the Lebanese and Saudi nationals for their alleged roles in the case, claiming that they were “well aware of the consequences of their act”.’ [...]

On 2 September the Saudi Gazette reported that ‘Interpol is co-ordinating with the Saudi Embassy in Stockholm and Swedish authorities to return the girl to her homeland before her “kidnappers” move her to another country.’ The embassy reportedly has started a search for the woman, with the aid of Swedish authorities.

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Escher’s Relativity in Lego by Andrew Lipson by idigit_teddy on Flickr.

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Obama At DNC: “I Will Never Turn Medicare Into A Voucher” – Next Day: HHS Pilot Program To Send 2 Million Poor Seniors From Medicare Into Voucher Programs…

And I will — I will never turn Medicare into a voucher.

That promise didn’t last long because the next day his administration approved a program that did just that.

Via National Journal:

In his convention speech in Charlotte, President Obama vowed to block the Republican Medicare reform plan because “no American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies.”

But back in Washington, his Health and Human Services Department is launching a pilot program that would shift up to 2 million of the poorest and most-vulnerable seniors out of the federal Medicare program and into private health insurance plans overseen by the states.

The administration has accepted applications from 18 states to participate in the program, which would give states money to purchase managed-care plans for people who are either disabled or poor enough to qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. HHS approved the first state plan, one for Massachusetts, last month.

Via Hot Air

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