Thanks for the teeth

I have finally found the man I owe my teeth to.
He was Dr. Irwin Mandel, who just died in New York at age 89.
I was one of those kids who always had cavities. We didn't know anything about flossing when I grew up, and the first time I ever heard of teeth cleaning I was in my 20s. In spite of having had braces, so at least my teeth were straight, I continued getting cavities all the time and I was certain that I was just going to lose my teeth when I was 55, like my Dad did, and have to wear dentures ever after.
But a dentist convinced me that if I really tried to take care of my teeth -- flossing, regular cleaning, etc -- then I could keep them forever. He turned out to be right. I have a few crowns now, as my filling-filled molars wear out, but no plates and no dentures.
I have always wondered where this good advice came from and now I have found out the source -- it was Dr. Mandel whose research into preventive dentistry was the beginning of it all.
Thanks, Dr. Mandel, for saving my mouth.

About protest

Johann Hari writes about the proof that protest works: :

The first ever attempt to hold a Gay Pride rally in Trafalgar Square was in 1965. Two dozen people turned up – and they were mostly beaten by the police and arrested. Gay people were imprisoned for having sex, and even the most compassionate defense of gay people offered in public life was that they should be pitied for being mentally ill.
Imagine if you had stood in Trafalgar Square that day and told those two dozen brave men and women: “Forty-five years from now, they will stop the traffic in Central London for a Gay Pride parade on this very spot, and it will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people. There will be married gay couples, and representatives of every political party, and openly gay soldiers and government ministers and huge numbers of straight supporters – and it will be the homophobes who are regarded as freaks.” It would have seemed like a preposterous statement of science fiction. But it happened. It happened in one lifetime. Why? Not because the people in power spontaneously realized that millennia of persecuting gay people had been wrong, but because determined ordinary citizens banded together and demanded justice.
If that cause can be achieved, through persistent democratic pressure, anything can.

(Via)

D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The general opinion of the throne speech was ho-hum, enlivened by Brigette DePape's politely disrespectful protest:

In response to the pearl-clutching about how awfully disrespectful Brigette was of the dignity of Parliament, somewhere Michael Ignatieff is laughing.
Impolitical reminds us who started this pissing contest:

Not caring that one of your ministers inserts a "not" after a document had been signed by others, for example. Not respecting members of parliament who ask the government for the most basic of financial information supporting billions in purchases the government seeks to make. Making light of an historic contempt verdict . . .Breed disrespect, reap protest.

Next year, Harper will have all the pages strip-searched before they enter the Chamber.

Some days, all you've got is your dog

Like Mickey Rourke said.
So check out the dog which is now wandering here and there on my sidebar -- its a gadget from aBowman and he'll chase the ball, scoop up the treats, chew on the bone, follow the cursor, sit and lie down. And sleep.

What else are they lying about?

Reading the story about how the Harper government deliberately excluded critical oilsands data from an environmental report done for the United Nations forces me to ask:

So what else is the Harper government lying to Canadians and to the world about?

One thing is for sure, the United Nations will never believe anything we say ever again.
And I wonder what the G8 now thinks about listening to Harper?

After the tornado

ER Stories describes what it was like to be in the Joplin hospital during and after the tornado::

I remember a patient in his early 20’s gasping for breath, telling me that he was going to die. After a quick exam, I removed the large shard of glass from his back, made the clinical diagnosis of a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) and gathered supplies from wherever I could locate them to insert a thoracostomy tube in him. He was a trooper; I’ll never forget his courage. He allowed me to do this without any local anesthetic since none could be found. With his life threatening injuries I knew he was running out of time, and it had to be done. Quickly. Imagine my relief when I heard a big rush of air, and breath sounds again; fortunately, I was able to get him transported out. I immediately moved on to the next patient, an asthmatic in status asthmaticus. We didn’t even have the option of trying a nebulizer treatment or steroids, but I was able to get him intubated using a flashlight that I held in my mouth. A small child of approximately 3-4 years of age was crying; he had a large avulsion of skin to his neck and spine. The gaping wound revealed his cervical spine and upper thoracic spine bones. I could actually count his vertebrae with my fingers.
...As I finished up what I could do at St John’s, I walked with two RN’s to a makeshift MASH center that was being set up miles away at Memorial Hall. We walked where flourishing neighborhoods once stood, astonished to see only the disastrous remains of flattened homes, body parts, and dead people everywhere. I saw a small dog just wimpering in circles over his master who was dead, unaware that his master would not ever play with him again. At one point we tended to a young woman who just stood crying over her dead mother who was crushed by her own home. The young woman covered her mother up with a blanket and then asked all of us, “What should I do?” We had no answer for her, but silence and tears.

Great line of the day

From Kevin Drum via Steve Benen:

“Every once in a while I feel like I’ve succumbed to partisan madness and need to back off and assume a bit more good faith and sincerity from thinkers and activists on the other side. I need to treat conservative arguments with a little more respect and a little more generosity. But then….”

Is that a celphone in your pocket

Or are you just glad to see me?
(NSFW)

Shorter

Hudak’s plan:

The question

Since The Night of the Liberal Dead on May 2, the question that the Liberal party has been struggling to answer is this:

Why does Canada need you anymore?

Cutting through the wailing and gnashing of teeth, new Liberal leader Bob Rae is getting back on the horse. He sounds determined to stop navel-gazing and instead work on giving Canadians an answer to the question of why Canada needs the Liberals.
He wants to focus on three issues that are crucial to the future of the nation:

the future of health care; the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians; and national unity.

He's right. If Liberals can focus on these issues -- where historically they have had great strength and credibility -- they will be helping the country again.
Colour me encouraged.

Detroit 187

If TV fans could save one cancelled show, which would you want it to be?
For us, it would be Detroit 187. We love Michael Imperioli, for one thing. And the whole ensemble case was great.
But we also loved how they made the city of Detroit into part of the show. Episodes like the one about the couple killed during the Detroit riots in the 60s, and like the one about how some people are trying to rescue neighbourhoods one house at a time. Using great Motown music in their episodes. Great show. We will miss it next fall.

and this also, too

Turning on a dime

If there is one thing the 21st century had learned already, its that things will change on a dime.
George Bush wasn't going to be a memorable president -- until 911.
The Irish economy was the Celtic Tiger -- except when it collapsed. And the American economy was never going to quit -- except when it did.
The NDP was never going to get elected in Quebec -- then they won 50 seats.
And in spite of the thousands of American lives lost in 911 and in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the United States will always support Israel....except that Americans are starting to get pissed off at being lectured to and taken for granted.
Josh Marshall writes:

Netanyahu believes that US power is forever and that the US political consensus to support Israel in almost any policy choice it makes will never change. So he can simply ignore the currents of history and international affairs and thumb his nose at every other country in the world. But neither is true.

Just watch him

Not even three weeks into his unfettered prime ministership, and Stephen Harper is already showing us what kind of prime minister he will be -- arrogant, unaccountable, partisan, and shortsighted.
And the media is already showing us what kind of press coverage we're going to get: arrogant, obedient, and obsessed with trivialities.
Warren Kinsella sums it up:

You get what you pay for, folks. You get the government you vote for. Suck it up.
On May 2, Canadians may have felt they were trooping to polling stations to bring to an end the seemingly interminable cycle of elections and minority governments, and return some stability for four years. They may have thought they were rewarding Stephen Harper for doing not badly through a global recession, and for not behaving like a Reform Party troglodyte following his first win in 2006. They may have thought they were doing their democratic duty.
In reality — and from Stephen Harper’s perspective — they were giving the Conservative Party a licence to do whatever the hell it wants to.
This is, I am now convinced, Stephen Harper’s last term as prime minister. By the time it’s over, he will have been in power for a decade.
And he plans to drop a few more bombs along the way.
Just watch him.

Just for laughs

Great line of the day

John Cole's brother:

I was talking to my brother (another atheist) a few moments ago, and I told him “You know tonight is the rapture?”
He looked at me and said “Really? Boy, I hope they take those people.”