Every time I get irritable about terrible health quackery peddled on the internet, something happens to remind me that newspapers were really on the bleeding edge of this stuff. Behold:
I felt like sending away for some, just so I can see how those pads manage to pull all that gunk out of the soles of your feet. Toxins!
Another mixed grill of bloggage today, because my life is just that boring.
You know a city has arrived jumped the shark when the people who left a hundred years ago come back and everybody makes a big stupid fuss over it. In this case: Alice Cooper and John Varvatos. The former called the latter “pure Detroit,” and delivered this stunningly dumb line, although he gets a pass because he was the paid entertainment and it’s not like we expect pith or intelligence:
“This is great,” Cooper said before his performance, “because Varvatos is pure Detroit, and this is the beginning of building this downtown area the right way. The restaurants are all here. People are coming into these old buildings and they’re opening these really cool restaurants, which is going to draw people and they’re gonna start drawing in the boutiques and everything, and pretty soon it’s going to be a very hip city.”
Back to Arizona on the first flight, I expect.
Evildoers II: Change one letter, go back to war! Coming soon to a campaign near you!
Alan, today at breakfast: “In any other city, this would be on Page One.” In Detroit? Page three: It takes cops five tries to find a body in a house. The house was being looted the whole time. Now there’s a contrast with that gala boutique opening, ain’a?
Bridge had some good stuff this week, about a class-action lawsuit filed by juvenile prisoners incarcerated in the adult system. You can find the links on the right rail.
OK, I gotta get on the horn with some people. A great weekend to all, and to all some nice weather for a change.
brian stouder said on April 17, 2015 at 12:07 pm
“…something happens to remind me that newspapers were really on the bleeding edge of this stuff.”
I just finished the Holzer book on Lincoln and the press – back when the press actually needed presses to do what they do – and it is a very fine book*, indeed.
It re-assured me (a little) that the right-wing lip-flappers and flat-earthers so completely old-hat! Not a single thing that the TV and radio and internet pundits/blowhards/demagogues of this century do, is at all new- including feuding directly with one another.
Of course, then “bleeding edge” was a great deal more literally true, at least in Virginia and Tennessee and Pennsylvania and Maryland and Georgia
*I noticed that Holzer was often noting people’s ages, as the book unfolds, and at the end he tied things together with when the key people died (many made it into the 20th century) – which I think is what older people begin to really notice…
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beb said on April 17, 2015 at 12:51 pm
So apparently airline baggage handlers aren’t the only people sleeping on the job. Detroit cops, it would appear, like to do so, too. Maybe it’s just too hard for them to get out of their car. I saw a cop issuing a traffic citation this week and the cop looked like an apple stuck on a toothpick. I assume he was some desk jockey that sent out into the field. I think an elderly man in a walker could out run that officer.
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LAMary said on April 17, 2015 at 1:16 pm
I think my sons both have socks that do that toxin absorbing thing. Their sox are always really filthy when I throw them in the wash. Now I know they’re just shedding toxins. Not walking around outside in their socks.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 17, 2015 at 1:18 pm
And Jenny McCarthy, who threw herself onto the railroad tracks over vaccines and autism, is doing ads for e-cigs. Which sums up something everyone here did the math on years ago, I’m sure, but wow.
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MarkH said on April 17, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Um, you all did see the ‘Advertisement’ line in the upper right corner of Nancy’s newspaper pic, no? Of course you did. As Nancy said, newspapers have been selling space and printing this stuff forever. As soon as I see the disclaimer, I move on.
Speaking “nothing to see here”, “Ignore that man behind the curtain!”, mainstream medicine is finally taking a stand against this poseur:
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/doctors-dr-oz-removed-columbia-faculty-article-1.2187815
I did NOT know “Dr.” Oz actually had a faculty position ANYWHERE.
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LAMary said on April 17, 2015 at 3:35 pm
And what do Jenny McCarthy and Dr.Oz have in common? They both got their medical opinion credibility on Oprah.
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Kirk said on April 17, 2015 at 3:54 pm
Let’s not forget another Oprah-generated “expert”: Dr. Phil
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Sherri said on April 17, 2015 at 4:18 pm
The animal kingdom has apparently started attacking Seattle area freeways. A couple of weeks ago, it was a truckload of salmon. Today, it’s a rolled semi of bees. No word on whether locusts are transported on Seattle roads.
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brian stouder said on April 17, 2015 at 4:19 pm
The article on Jeb was interesting, especially in that Jeb aims all his barbs at President Obama.
I think if Jeb is the nominee, and he runs against the Obama administration as much as whoever his opponent is, he will lose badly.
Obama ran as a “change” candidate, and it worked. But if 2016 is to be a “change” election, Jeb Bush (Bush!!??!!) is the single worst person the GOP could pick, to run against “status quo” Hillary Clinton…even assuming they can peg HRC as “status quo”
And if the country is NOT in a “change” mode (as I believe we are not – considering the “changes” the R’s have wrought in Indiana and Kansas and Pennsylvania) – then it is a loser at the get-go
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Suzanne said on April 17, 2015 at 4:46 pm
Oh, yes. The toxin pulling foot bath. Amazingly, I’ve known quite a few otherwise intelligent people who have tried it. “But it turns black!” they say, “so it must be doing something!” If only health and wellness were that simple.
I read an interview with Dr Oz somewhere years ago before he became the famous TV doctor. He seemed very intelligent and conscious of the need to integrate body and soul and mind for healing. I think all the fame must have gotten to his head and he went off the rails.
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Deborah said on April 17, 2015 at 7:54 pm
I’m leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning, enjoying a fire in Santa Fe, it got cold and it’s supposed to actually snow in the wee hours of the morning here.
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Basset said on April 17, 2015 at 8:27 pm
bob not Greene, from yesterday , what happened at MacNeil’s? New floor mats arrived today, I guess they just missed it.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 17, 2015 at 8:31 pm
The cops got called to do a well being check at an apartment in a rented by one of the doctors at MacNeal Hospital and they found a dead man with what looked like two propane tanks next to him. They thought it might have been a booby trap but it turned out the doc killed himself by inhaling helium. CW had that story as well as the Muddy Waters one yesterday.
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Basset said on April 17, 2015 at 10:45 pm
Ahh, MacNeal hospital… I thought you meant the MacNeil car floor mat factory, WeatherTech, laser measured, made in USA, and so forth. Just bought another set of em. Never mind.
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Dexter said on April 18, 2015 at 12:53 am
Since Jeb Bush and I view the world through different lenses, I would not be surprised if he owns palm oil stock. What am I referring to? Watch Vice on HBO this week. Malaysian palm oil plantations are the reason six or eight huge fires daily are consuming rain forests there. First the trees of the forest are cut and the the land’s vegetation in tramped down flat, and then the whole area is burned and later palm tress are planted in straight rows. An expert was asked, as the carbon dioxide from these fires was poisoning the people who live there, how much time was left before the eco-system was totally gone beyond return…he said “…it’s 11:53 and midnight’s the end.” Maybe a year.
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Sherri said on April 18, 2015 at 1:30 am
Biking while black in Tampa: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/how-riding-your-bike-can-land-you-in-trouble-with-the-cops—if-youre-black/2225966
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Deborah said on April 18, 2015 at 10:59 pm
I’m back in Chicago, Dorothy, on my plane ride back here I read the book Bee Time, lessons from the hive by Mark L. Winston, Which I found fascinating. Have you or your husband heard of it?
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Dexter said on April 18, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Deborah, do you know anything about Warren Barr South Loop Rehab Hospital? It is probably close to your Chicago residence. My brother has been admitted there and the whole episode is hard to figure out for us. He became weak, confused, began “time travelling” so to speak, thinking he was back in Indiana in the farm country where we grew up. He was in a hospital in Arlington Heights and then transferred downtown. The thing is, we called Warren Barr and they said they only deal with physical rehabbing, not memory recovery, so now we are trying to figure out why his son and his wife put him in Warren Barr.
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Wendy (not the dog) said on April 18, 2015 at 11:38 pm
Dexter: I don’t mean to intrude, but Warren Barr South is a nursing home, not a hospital. You can find some basic information about it at the Medicare Nursing Home Compare website. It is not uncommon for older people who are hospitalized for a serious physical illness, to also experience noticeable mental confusion. Whether that clears up as the person’s physical health improves, is kind of a crap shoot. There is no obvious medical/health care reason for somebody who is hospitalized in Arlington Heights to wind up in a South Loop nursing home, unless maybe his doctor sees patients there, or his family live or work nearby,
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Dorothy said on April 19, 2015 at 6:13 am
No we don’t have that book, Deborah, but Mike has a birthday coming up (falls on Mother’s Day this year) so thanks for the idea! That story about the bees on the highway in Washington makes my heart sink. I know they aren’t the ones we have on order, but Mike will be on alert later this week for the phone call from the beekeeping supply place in Knox County. He ordered three new hives and has to go fetch them once the delivery truck arrives in Knox. He’s taking my car – a fact I’m not too crazy about, but he can’t fit three hives into the passenger seat of his pick up. And he doesn’t want them buffeted in the bed of the truck. So my Equinox will be his chariot. He promised me they will be inside the boxes the whole time, but still …..
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Deborah said on April 19, 2015 at 8:07 am
Dexter, Warren Barr sounded really familiar, so I googled it, turns out I’m really close to Warren Barr Gold Coast, it’s just a few blocks away on Oak Street. Warren Barr South is pretty far away from me in the South Loop area. I’ve walked past the Gold Coast one a lot and have wondered what it was. I thought it was a place for people who had head injuries or strokes, who needed help to recover but not spend a lot of time in an expensive hospital.
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brian stouder said on April 19, 2015 at 10:38 am
Dorothy – here’s hoping you do NOT get a bee in your bonnet!
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Dexter said on April 19, 2015 at 2:27 pm
Thanks both Wendy and Deborah for your input as we attempt to figure out what is going on with my brother, an active cyclist and cross-country skier and dog walker one day, and a totally different person, unable to think or even walk unassisted the next, and every medical test and scan available shows no signs of injury or stroke or cardiac or any sort of brain damaging event. I can’t go there to investigate as I am in almost daily physical re-hab visits for my hip or I am driving to Toledo VA (and this week an all-day assessment from the VA at Battle Creek), and his immediate family members have this all-too-common phobia about answering the damn 500 pound telephone.
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Deborah said on April 19, 2015 at 2:49 pm
Spring has barely sprung in Chicago. I just took a long walk, my favorite thing to do here. Daffodils are out, some tulips a few flowering trees. I get to watch the whole thing unfold here now after experiencing it in full force in Santa Fe. How nice.
I pulled a muscle or something in my left calf while walking, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, just all of a sudden it felt like I got a really bad charley horse and it hurt like hell for a bit. Now it just feels like a sore muscle. It actually feels better while walking than sitting still. Strange.
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Dexter said on April 19, 2015 at 3:07 pm
And one part of the mystery is solved, as it turns out my brother is now a neighbor to Deborah , residing at WB Gold Coast.
He was actually out to lunch with his son, and the nurse on the phone said my brother was “doing great”. And the wheel continues to turn.
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Dexter said on April 19, 2015 at 3:28 pm
And I must say, after I ponied up the dough to send to Charles Atlas, no mean motherfucking bully ever kicked sand in my face ever again!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h64_ixvEGSA/UD6ecaCnx_I/AAAAAAAABLc/GAvrTNwEpWg/s1600/charlesatlas.jpg
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Deborah said on April 19, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Dexter, if you come out to see your brother at the WB Gold Coast you must let me know, would love to get together with you.
My calf has gotten worse, the more I sit around the worse it feels when I get up to do something. I’m hobbling around. My husband thinks I popped a tendon. Who knows, but I’m going to lay off of it for a couple of days to see what happens. No 5 or 6 mile walks for me for a while, darn it.
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Deborah said on April 19, 2015 at 6:24 pm
I just googled it and I think I just have a calf strain not a popped tendon.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 19, 2015 at 6:29 pm
Dexter, hope all goes well with your brother. I’ve been spending much of this weekend at UIC Hospital spending time with my dad, who is 88 and has prostate cancer that’s now starting to spread. He’ll be going home in a couple of days and they’ll start whatever treatment they come up with, but this is the beginning of the final lap. Coincidentally, my dad worked for Warren Barr’s at his plumbing supply company in the West Loop on Jefferson Street (I think near Randolph) for some 20 years in the 1950s and 60s.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 19, 2015 at 6:30 pm
Barr
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brian stouder said on April 19, 2015 at 7:04 pm
Springtime seems to be upon us. We hit 80 this weekend, which was very nice; and Grant and I went to Baer Field Raceway and caught a good show Saturday. When we were in line to buy tix, the woman ahead of us turned out to be a person who grew up around the corner and 6 houses down from us; the daughter of one of my mom’s best friends. If it’s not a “small world”, maybe it’s that Fort Wayne is still kind of a small town.
The grass is greening up and almost getting shaggy, and it’s been raining all day today.
And, speaking at least for myself, we’ll take all the rain that wants to come this way. As our Proprietress says, I think fresh water is the Mid West’s major natural resource that others will line up to buy, at some point.
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Joe K said on April 19, 2015 at 7:11 pm
Brian,
Landed at Fwa around 7 last night, saw what looked like a good crowd, came in on runway 5, touchdown right behind you.
Pilot Joe
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beb said on April 19, 2015 at 8:56 pm
I was surprised to learn that today is the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Has it been that long? Hard to believe. And domestic terrorism still remains the invisible threat to our nation.
Deborah, you are working on a car themed playground or something like that, right? My daughter and I took a walk around Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village on an absolutely wonderful day. One of the things we paused to watch as the new playground that opened last year. It’s build around an industrial theme. I wondered if you’ve ever looked at it see how they handled their theme. My daughter wished she was ten years younger so she could play there. They have things to climb, hand water pumps as part of a “gold mining” area, a small tower of values that if turned the right way opens up sprinklers, a short water tower with a slide (circa 8-10 feet to the ground). Technically a playground like this is not a part of their idealized 1900 era village but it’s such a useful thing for parents with small children and they implemented it so perfectly.
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brian stouder said on April 19, 2015 at 9:09 pm
Joe, we almost certainly saw you.
Noted three big Allegiant flights (two inbound and one out-bound) and several regular (as in, not big commercial airliners) flights coming and going.
It was a great, entertaining evening, featuring 50-cent hotdogs (gotta love ’em!!) and a full card of racing amongst several different classes.
But BOY – was there a huge wind all evening. I believe it was a west wind (into our faces), and had to be around 30 mph.
Must have made your job a little bit more complex
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brian stouder said on April 19, 2015 at 9:20 pm
Beb – I caught a documentary on the OKC attack on msnbc, and was taken aback by the 20-year part of this, too.
Pam and I were home for lunch, watching the live tv coverage of it, and I was thinking it was an L-shaped building from the shots of the smoking damage. Pam pointed out to me that I was seeing a building that had been square, but which now had a huge, collapsed “bite” taken out of it.
Of course, I argued….and only later ‘saw’ what had happened. Similarly, on 9/11, Pam would call me at work with the latest, as the internet had gone down by mid-morning. When she said one of the Twin Towers had collapsed, I asked her if she meant that the top broke off (or some such), and she insistently said NO – one of the towers was GONE.
When she called to say there were reports of the Pentagon having been hit by a jet-liner, I seized on the somewhat vague reference to “reports” to say that SURELY this was simply wild rumors, amidst the carnage in New York City…but she called back to say that there was video from the Pentagon, and it was aflame.
The news of the day really did overwhelm me, and surpass my ability to process it.
When she called to say the second tower was also collapsed, it was beyond my comprehension – but I knew not to argue.
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Dexter said on April 20, 2015 at 1:09 am
Does your love-life need a jump start? Take your lover to a rock show.
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/slideshow/Getty-Album-Love-in-the-time-of-music-festivals-107830/photo-7845018.php
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Dexter said on April 20, 2015 at 1:36 am
Now I want to get serious for a minute. Bates executed Harris.
No way does a trained cop mistake a taser for a service pistol.
His defense is pathetic. His lawyer is an idiot. I hope this goes to a jury trial and Bates gets the fucking chair. Well…Oklahoma uses the needle, not the sparking chair. Good enough for Bates.
Last night a man in a car rolled a stop sign and the local police stopped him right in front of my house, which has happened many times before, actually…I had Noelle the dog out and I noticed the cop who was driving approach the vehicle,and the woman cop sort of sneaked-up alongside the passenger side with her hand on her holstered weapon. I urged Noelle to pee so I could get her butt inside. With all the cop shootings and incidents lately I just wanted to get inside and shut the door and turn off the porch light. The motorist did well walking back and forth heel-to-toe, but he must have flunked the breathalyzer because they hauled him off in the prowler (love Fargo lingo!) and a wrecker came and hauled the Chevy away. In other earlier times, I never would have weighed the possibilities of danger in that situation. Now I skedaddle the hell outta there, buddies.
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Jolene said on April 20, 2015 at 2:11 am
Bates has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, Dexter. I don’t think he’s going to be executed.
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Dexter said on April 20, 2015 at 3:56 am
yeah I know…my point of view dictates he should be charged with murder, same as the North Charleston murdering cop was charged. Hell, Bates’s lawyer said he was outraged that Bates was charged with anything at all. And one might think a lawyer could consider the age factor, as in maybe saying the 73 year old Bates was old and confused and couldn’t tell the difference between a taser and a lethal service revolver or other pistol.
Nope, the lawyer said Bates was not “playing cop”, he said Bates was a fully accredited highly trained officer of the law.
I remember back in the early 80s this area had a state trooper who loved to pull young male drivers over and harass them. I was in my early 30s and I had a not-fancy Chevelle but even that was a magnet for this cop and he stopped me multiple times for going 5 over the limit or having something like an obstructed license plate or a tinted window…other chickenshit things too. I remember the joy at the bar when he turned 55 and was forced to retire because of the age limit.
That’s quite a discrepancy, is it not? 55 too old and 73 just right? This entire cop chapter is getting sickening. Bill Maher made great fun out of the cop who ran down and smashed into the man who was running on a sidewalk, firing a gun at will. That funny, Maher? I wasn’t a-laffin’.
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MarkH said on April 20, 2015 at 4:37 am
“Bates executed Harris.”? Dexter, please. How much have you read about this incident. Bates was hardly a “trained cop”. He was an ‘auxiliary volunteer’, whatever the hell that means in Tulsa. He is 73 years old, and evidence has emerged that his ‘training’ records were faked.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-bates-tulsa-volunteer-deputy-disputes-unbelievably-unfair-criticisms-of-his-qualifications/
Without the training or the temperament, he may not have known what he was pulling, rather than wanting to ‘execute’ Harris. In any case he had no business being on street in an enforcement capacity. And as Jolene said, he is not getting away with it.
BTW, what you witnessed that night was standard police procedure. Especially after dark, when approaching a stopped vehicle, one officer goes to the driver, the second, if there is one, goes to the passenger side and waits toward the rear, both with their hands on the holstered weapon until they have assessed any threats inside the vehicle.
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Dorothy said on April 20, 2015 at 6:14 am
Deborah I had that same thing happen to me maybe 20 years ago when I was out in our back yard, just walking around with our dog. It hurt so much that it brought me to my knees, and I practically crawled back into the house. I worked at the quilt store at the time and had to call off, it hurt so much. I think I iced it and then later used warm compresses. I didn’t make a special appointment to see my doctor but did tell him about it next time. I can’t for the life of me remember what he called it. It’s never happened again, thank goodness.
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