AdamSmith

LOL You are perfectly describing the scene at after-hours establishments in NYC (and doubtless worldwide) after 4am nominal closing time on Sat night, i.e. Sunday morning. Almost always something out of Star Wars. To which situation both of your observations apply.

A Disease Without a Cure Spreads Quietly in the West Monica Almeida/The New York Times Joe Klorman, a retired police officer, before treatment for a severe case of valley fever that affects his brain. By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN The New York Times Published: July 4, 2013 BAKERSFIELD, Calif. In 36 years with the Los Angeles police, Sgt. Irwin Klorman faced many dangerous situations, including one routine call that ended with Uzi fire and a bullet-riddled body sprawled on the living room floor. But his most life-threatening encounter has been with coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever, for which he is being treated here. Coccidioidomycosis, known as cocci, is an insidious airborne fungal disease in which microscopic spores in the soil take flight on the wind or even a mild breeze to lodge in the moist habitat of the lungs and, in the most extreme instances, spread to the bones, the skin, the eyes or, in Mr. Klormans case, the brain. The infection, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has labeled a silent epidemic, is striking more people each year, with more than 20,000 reported cases annually throughout the Southwest, especially in California and Arizona. Although most people exposed to the fungus do not fall ill, about 160 die from it each year, with thousands more facing years of disability and surgery. About 9 percent of those infected will contract pneumonia and 1 percent will experience serious complications beyond the lungs. The disease is named for the San Joaquin Valley, a cocci hot spot, where the same soil that produces the states agricultural bounty can turn traitorous. The silent epidemic became less silent last week when a federal judge ordered the state to transfer about 2,600 vulnerable inmates including some with H.I.V. out of two of the valleys eight state prisons, about 90 miles north of here. In 2011, those prisons, Avenal and Pleasant Valley, produced 535 of the 640 reported inmate cocci cases, and throughout the system, yearly costs for hospitalization for cocci exceed $23 million. The transfer, affecting about a third of the two prisons combined population, is to be completed in 90 days, a challenge to a prison system already contending with a federal mandate to reduce overcrowding. Jose Antonio Diaz, 44, who has diabetes and was recently relocated to Avenal, is feeling very scared of catching it, said his wife, Suzanne Moreno. Advocates for prisoners have criticized state agencies for not moving the inmates sooner. If this were a factory, a public university or a hotel anything except a prison they would shut these two places down, said Donald Specter, the executive director of the Prison Law Office, which provides free legal assistance to inmates. The pending transfer has underscored the complexities and mysteries of a disease that continues to baffle physicians and scientists. In Arizona, a study from the Department of Health Services showed a 25 percent risk of African-Americans with newly diagnosed valley fever developing complications, compared with 6 percent of whites. The working hypothesis has to do with genetic susceptibility, probably the interrelationships of genes involved in the immune system, said Dr. John N. Galgiani, a professor at the University of Arizona and the director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence, founded in 1996. But which ones? Were clueless. Kandis Watson, whose son Kaden, 8, almost died, had a gut feeling that something was not right, she said, when Kaden began feeling sick two years ago. The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics, but Kadens health deteriorated, with a golf ball-size mass developing at the base of his neck. The infection enveloped Kadens chest, narrowing his trachea. Kaden was essentially breathing through an opening the size of a straw, said Dr. James M. McCarty, the medical director of pediatric infectious diseases at Childrens Hospital Central California in Madera, where Kaden spent six months. Today the boy is back to his mischievous self, surreptitiously placing a green plastic lizard in his mothers hair. But how he contracted valley fever is still guesswork. I think he got it being a boy, digging in the dirt, Mrs. Watson said. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, had more than 1,800 reported cases last year. At Kern Medical Center, Dr. Royce H. Johnson and his colleagues have a roster of nearly 2,000 patients. Many, like Mr. Klorman, have life-threatening cocci meningitis. I got a bad break, said Mr. Klorman, who is known as Joe. Until illness forced his retirement, he preferred a squad car to a desk job. Now he travels four hours round trip three times a week so Dr. Johnson can inject a powerful antifungal drug into his spinal fluid. In other patients, the disease has been known to eat away ribs and vertebrae. It destroys lives, said Dr. Johnson, whose daughter contracted a mild form. Divorces, lost jobs and bankruptcy are incredibly common, not to mention psychological dislocation. Once athletic, Deandre Zillendor, 38, dropped to 145 pounds from 220 in two weeks, and lesions erupted on his face and body. You keep it forever, like luggage, he said of the disease. Todd Schaefer, 48, who produces award-winning pinot noirs in Paso Robles, was told by his doctors that he had 10 years to live. That was 10 years ago. But valley fever has disseminated into his spinal column and brain, and his conversation is interrupted by grimaces of pain. Ruggedly handsome, he still outwardly resembles the archetype of the California good life. But Mr. Schaefer has had a stroke, a hole in his lung, two serious heart episodes and relapses that put me on the edge of life, he said. He believes he got infected with valley fever atop a tractor during the construction of Pacific Coast Vineyards, which he runs with his wife, Tammy. One doctor initially suggested bed rest, chicken soup and cranberry juice. Today Mr. Schaefer can no longer can drink wine, and he begins every morning retching. I told her to leave me, he said at one low point, of his wife, who is 37. Shes too young, too beautiful. Dr. Benjamin Park, a medical officer with the C.D.C., said that the numbers of cases are under-estimates because some states do not require public reporting. They include Texas, where valley fever is endemic along the Rio Grande. In New Mexico, a 2010 survey of doctors and clinics by the states public health department revealed that 69 percent of clinicians did not consider it in patients with respiratory problems. Numbers spike when rainfall is followed by dry spells. Many scientists believe that the uptick in infections is related to changing climate patterns. Kenneth K. Komatsu, the state epidemiologist for Arizona, where 13,000 cases were reported last year, said that another factor may be urban sprawl: digging up rural areas where valley fever is growing in the soil, he said. In Avenal, citizens have become activists, looking into possible environmental factors, including a regional landfill that accepts construction waste. Three of the four children of James McGee, a teacher, have contracted the disease, including Marivi, 17, who was found convulsing in the ladies room at school. Dr. McCarty of Childrens Hospital is seeing an increasing number of children from Avenal. Valley fever was a familiar presence during the Dust Bowl, and in Japanese internment camps throughout the arid West. Yet there is still no cure, and research on a fungicide and a potential vaccine have been stalled by financing issues. One company, Nielsen Biosciences Inc., has developed a skin test to identify cocci but has not yet been able to make it financially viable. Part of the difficulty is that cocci is a hundred different diseases, Dr. Johnson said, depending on where in the body it nests. His patients include farm workers, oil field workers and construction workers. One of his patients, Barbara Ludy, 61, had a job that involved taking care of a man who is quadriplegic. She was strong enough to lift his 175-pound frame, plus his wheelchair, into a van. Cocci meningitis affected her ability to think, to remember, to walk, to live independently. When her weight dropped to 71 pounds, her distraught daughters went to Goodwill to buy their mother size zero clothes. One daughter, Jennifer Gillet, now takes care of her mother full time. Ms. Ludy is recuperating, slowly. And things are looking up: She is now a size 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/health/a-disease-without-a-cure-spreads-quietly-in-the-west.html?WT.mc_id=TOP-D-E-OB-AD-BNR-OFF-0513&WT.mc_ev=click&_r=0

LOL. And how could the thread have gotten this far with no sniggering about their fascination with... Anal Probing Greetings, Earth Human, we have traveled millions of light years to explore new planets... and now, we seek to explore Uranus! Alien 1: Couldn't we, at least, abduct their political and religious leaders, instead of just any idiot in a pickup truck? Alien 2: I'm sure the Great Leader has his reasons. Alien 1: Well, I'm sure the Great Leader is just some sort of twisted ASS FREAK!— The Kids in the Hall One of the most pervasive (and perverted) story-telling tropes of Alien Abduction lore amounting to being nothing more than a very vulgar form of Orifice Invasion. In other words, it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. All humans taken on board a spaceship against their will are subjected to grueling tests and experiments by their Strange Captors for intended purposes ranging from studying foreign biology, researching the prospects of interbreeding, and monitoring for long periods of time via tracking chip implants. Fortunately for the abductors, all three of those things can be achieved through a single method which involves inserting vaguely described alien technological instruments into the rectal cavity of the victim. If the audience learns anything about the probing tech itself, it's usually never much more than just what it looks like, which is typically either an insanely large torture device with pincers and needles and spinning blades mounted on a rotating head or a dildo. Naturally, the trope can be used to great effect to either showcase the sheer horror of or, more frequently, use Vulgar Humor to explore the total absurdity of the nature of Alien Abductions; it can also be a novel way of fitting jokes about gay sex (abductees depicted as being subjected to this are much more frequently male) and rape into a story or work. Anal Probing is a Dead Unicorn Trope. This trope is rarely, if ever, taken seriously in fiction, and even when it's supposed to be seen as something truly horrible and undesirable, there's usually enough room to interpret the trope's use as Comedic Sociopathy. Real Life UFO abduction communities, which would seem like the most likely place to hear straight-forward examples, don't even discuss probing as something that exclusively involves the rectal cavity (if they do at all). The Science Fiction equivalent to a cavity search. Be on the lookout as well for puns about space programs launching probes to Uranus. See Also: Ass Shove, Vulgar Humor; Half-Human Hybrid and Mars Needs Women which are both popular motivations for one kind of alien probing or another. This trope is practically synonymous with The Greys and is often evident whenever Aliens Are Bastards, especially if the probing doesn't appear to have any real significance apart from torturing the abductee. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnalProbing

Happy to oblige.

Well, a little more dirty-minded here. If an "Oreo" is someone accused of being "black outside, white inside," then what kind of person is a Crookie: several Oreos stuffed inside a BIG FAT white thing -- topped by another Oreo!?

Maybe take a life mask of your favorite escort? Doesn't necessarily have to be his face!

The gentleman finds his four-fingered hands a boon to diverting attention on those bad-toupee days.

(1) Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? There has to be. See the Drake Equation. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation And of course the old crack "They must be intelligent -- you don't see them looking for intelligent life down here." (2) Have we had a visit yet? No way. As Arthur Clarke said, "If I came 2 billion light-years to see you, believe I wouldn't spend another 200 years lurking around in the shadows trying to find a parking spot." I know Erich Von Daniken proved it had to have been extraterrestrials who set up the Easter Island statues. But as Thor Heyerdahl went and saw, if no aliens are handy that day, then a couple dozen men with ropes and log rollers will have to do.

Pimp him out!

Seems obvious once you hear it explained. (Obviously. ) It occurs especially that, seated facing rear, the headrest would help guard against neck injuries from the head otherwise being thrown forward on deceleration.

Fascinating! Would plane accidents in general be likely to cause less harm if seats faced rear? Never heard that discussed before. I once sat in a rear-facing seat, with my back to the bulkhead, on a commuter flight somewhere or other. Takeoff felt a little disconcerting, leaning forward and "down," but I don't recall any other part of the flight feeling unusual at all.

Enjoy! If you make one, post a picture of it here.

Oh my! We know what an "Oreo" means in racial speak. What on earth could the "Crookie" come to represent?

Oh God. I want one. Lord save us all!

Aw! Blancmange is really easy to make, if you avoid the complications shown above. Here is a nice recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/blanc-mange-english-style/ Although forget that the Brits with their usual culinary flair used to call it "a cold shape." Or just "shape." "Oh, yum, we're having shape tonight!" Also by all means let pass from memory the impressively ghastly "congealed salads" that appeared just about every time you went to table growing up here in the South, so it seemed.

LOL Sort of like farm-raised Asian carp.

Oh dear! Well, find a 'safe house' for your shoes, lie low and carry on.

Notice hitoall pretending that he didn't see my question about what country he is in now.

Macedoine and Other Eccentric Jellies A Jelly made using a macedoine mould in my collection By Ivan Day http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com I am an independent social historian of food culture and also a professional chef and confectioner. I run practical courses on all aspects of British and Italian food history at my home in the English Lake District. I am also the author of a number of books and many papers on the history of food and have curated many major exhibitions on food history in the UK, US and Europe. The main aim of this blog is to attempt to expose and correct many of the fairy stories that are written about the history of our food. I am assisted in this task by the Food History Jottings researcher Plumcake. Perhaps the most singular culinary expression of the advance of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian Britain was the extraordinary popularity of mass-produced copper jelly moulds. By the middle of the nineteenth century the fashion for this kind of kitchen kit had accelerated into a gastronomic craze. This was the result of the convergence of two emerging phenomena - the availability of cheap factory made gelatine and the increasing use of powerful pneumatic presses to stamp out copper into ever more intricate shapes. After a hundred years of being an unloved, even despised children's party food, a jelly revival has once again recently hit the fashionable food sector. This was started about twenty years ago by my dear genius friend Peter Brears and to a lesser extent by myself, when both of us started running country house events where we recreated jellies and other moulded foods for the public using original period moulds. I also started running courses on the subject in the early 1990s. More recently, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, both attendees of my courses who have always kindly acknowledged the debt they owe to Peter and myself, have made a career for themselves out of the genre. However, despite modern computer 3D printing technology, the moulds available to the contemporary aspiring jelly maker just cannot compete with those of the Victorian kitchen. Just look at these! A few nineteenth manufacturers designed and produced highly specialised multi-part moulds for creating very unusual jellies with mysterious internal components, such as spiral columns and pyramids of fruit. Some of these striking British designs were even admired from afar by important chefs on the other side of the English Channel. In Cosmopolitan Cookery (London: 1870), the great Second Empire French chef Felix Urbain Dubois illustrated two of these extraordinary English inventions together with recipes he designed for them. He probably encountered them in London when he was exiled there during the Franco-Prussian War. One he illustrated was the macedoine mould, a fancy copper mould with a dome shaped internal liner, both clipped together with three metal pins. Here is Dubois's illustration - This mould was utilised by pouring a transparent jelly into the gap between the mould and the liner. Once the jelly had set, warm water was poured into the liner, which enabled it to be removed. Small pieces of fruit (the 'macedoine') and more jelly could then be used to fill up the resulting cavity. The finished dish was a striking hollow jelly containing a mosaic of coloured fruit, which distorted into an abstract pattern because of the effects of refraction caused by the flutings on the mould. I am fortunate enough to own a complete macedoine mould and used it to make the jelly at the top of this posting. However, my example is a different design from that which Dubois illustrates, though in principle it functions in exactly the same way. Although macedoine moulds are extremely rare - I have only ever seen two others, which lacked their liners. My example is the only one I have ever encountered which is complete. Here are some photographs. Macedoine Jelly from above Another Macedoine Jelly made with this mould The chained pins ensure that the inner liner is kept stable and at an equal distance from the outer mould. Macedoine jellies were also be made in plain moulds. The striking example above is from Jules Gouffé, The Royal Book of Pastry and Confectionery (London: 1874). A large plain charlotte mould would have been used to make this. It has been garnished with jelly croutons to create the crest around the top and is surmounted by a gum paste or nougat tazza filled with real or ice cream strawberries. Although a very weak jelly with a light 'mouth feel' was used to make a macedoine, the fruit inside acted as a very strong armature which could support a decorative structure like the tazza above. Even rarer than the macedoine mould illustrated by Dubois is this remarkable and lovely version, which reminds me of a Maya pyramid or ziggurat. It has a liner very similar to the other one and makes the most wonderful jelly filled with a pyramid of fruit. I have never ever seen another in this design. A Jelly containing a pyranid of apricots made in the stepped macedoine mould above The second English mould illustrated by Dubois in Cosmopolitan Cookery (1870) is a version of a very popular novelty mould first marketed by Temple and Reynolds of Belgravia in 1850. The location of their shop gave the name to this particular dish, the most extraordinary of all Victorian novelty jellies, the Belgrave. The outer copper moulds are quite common, but a complete set with a full compliment of pewter spiral liners is a rare find. Two versions were made, the round and the oval, the latter being very scarce now, especially with liners. The liners were placed into a jelly mould which was filled with clear jelly. When the jelly had set, the liners were literally 'screwed' out of the jelly by pouring hot water into them. This resulted in a number of spiral cavities which could then be filled with a coloured jelly or blancmange. Urbain Dubois's 1870 illustrations of the Belgrave Mould An illustration and instructions for making a Belgrave Jelly from a very late edition of Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery (London: 1905) My very rare oval Belgrave mould with pewter liners Oval Belgrave Jelly made with the mould above The more orthodox round Belgrave Jelly The two most common jelly moulds which included liners to create striking internal features were the Alexandra Cross and Brunswick Star. These were designed to celebrate the wedding of Queen Victoria's eldest son Edward Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Alexandra Cross jelly had the Danish Flag running all the way through it, while the Brunswick Star had a white Garter Star running through it, both rather like a stick of rock. Here is an advertisement from the 1890s published by the cookery teacher and mould retailer Mrs Agnes Marshall. Surviving liners are almost unknown. To make both, coloured jellies were poured into the mould in a particular order and then the liners were inserted. The rest of the jelly was poured in around the liner, which was removed by pouring hot water into it. The cavity was then filled with white blancmange. A finished Alexandra Cross jelly A finished Brunswick Star jelly Slices of Brunswick Star jelly Jelly extravaganza in Harewood House. There is an oval Belgrave jelly in the centre of the table About three years ago I manned the wonderful period kitchen at Harewood House and demonstrated period jelly making to the general public. As the jellies came from the moulds, I dressed the dining room with a typical Victorian entremet course using Princess Mary's priceless Venetian glass dessert service. Last week I was at Harewood again, this time dressing the kitchen and gallery (the most wonderful room in England) with Regency period food for a major forthcoming BBC drama production, which I will tell you more about after it has been transmitted at Christmas. I made a large number of jellies and blancmanges for this production using Staffordshire ceramic moulds made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. To whet your appetite, here are a few photos. As you can see, the Victorians were not the only ones to have beautiful moulded foods - the late Georgians could give them (and Bompas and Parr) a real run for their money... Still more at http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2013/06/macedoine-and-other-eccentric-victorian.html

Q: Where are the most anal warts? A: When was the War of 1812? Could you tell us what country you're in, O Man of Mystery?

I think I am with hoover here. I would risk Bolivian health care sooner than Marine Base Quantico's.