Irreverently Relevant

The variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) crisis, also known as the "human mad cow disease" crisis, was a significant event that followed the "mad cow disease" (BSE) crisis that occurred primarily in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1980s and 1990s. vCJD is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that is believed to be caused by exposure to the abnormal prion proteins that are associated with BSE. The first cases of vCJD were identified in the UK in 1996, and it quickly became apparent that the disease was linked to the consumption of beef from infected cattle. Prion protein (stained in red) revealed in photomicrograph of scrapie-infected mouse neural tissue. Produced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) As the number of vCJD cases continued to rise, concerns grew about the potential scale of the outbreak and the potential risks to public health. The UK government initially downplayed the risks of vCJD and resisted ca...

Africans were minding their own business, well, mostly minding their own business when the European powers of the day met in Berlin to dice and slice the continent into spheres of influence. To them, Africa, then and even today is the "dark continent:" incomprehensible, mysterious, and about as disposable as an anal wart. Still, the European industrial age needed to be sustained by the mindless exploitation of the African continents' resources, and, infamously in the case of Leopold II of Belgium, the people.  An image depicting the mutilation of the natives of the Congo Free State by Leopold II Indeed, Leopold's regime is documented to have so brutal that it is estimated that about half (8 million out of 16 million inhabitants) of the the native population died between 1885 and 1908. This was a level of carnage which unfortunately cannot be accurately documented because much of the Congo was still quite impenetrable, but the level of carnage wrought by th...

Thus was the malodorous ghost of communism ressurected in the most stupid way last night (Jan 8, 2023), and by the most stupid people with the most stupid of ideological beliefs. The ghouls of Jan 6, 2021 were also awoken last night in Brasilia, albeit in an equally pathetic manner.  Rule one: don't be stupid in public; rule two: don't spread your stupidity like marmite on toast.  Seriously though, life is not as complex as either a pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD), or a Roux-en-Y lateral pancreaticojejunostomy. Get up, do something productive, stuff your gob, take a good shit, go to bed, et al. yelling your lungs off will not materialize your beliefs Bullshit is, unfortunately, like a religion - there are fools in Brazil who believe that there is a communist threat in the country. This is a phalanx of the far-right that lives and thrives in an alternate reality. They swallow fables faster than bukakke actresses from right wing news outlets, sans fact-checking. Perhaps...

Israel has long implemented a policy of demolishing homes belonging to Palestinians accused of killing Israelis. This extends to the extended family of those accused. Basically, it is a cycle of revenge and deprivation. Anyone with a locum of thought can easily see what the Israeli regime is doing: it is a scorched earth policy on steroids. And still the fighting goes on unabated, albeit mostly away from the larger global stage. Apartheid is a policy or system of discrimination on grounds of race. It can loosely apply to systematic segregation on gender and religious basis. Quite obviously, what the Israeli regime is carrying on with and in the Palestinian Territories is a form of apartheid.  Zones of French and British influence and control proposed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement¹ Now, as with everything inane in 20th century history, colonialism played a massive role in the état de choses today. As with India and Pakistani, the British royally bent over and historically...