Tag: Good News

WOW

Good Stuff, Health

I only hope that this is true.

While it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, a cancer treatment in which a patient’s own cells are engineered to hunt down and wipe out their disease — and then linger in the body to stop the cancer returning — is helping to save patients’ lives.
The results of the treatment, known as CAR T-cell therapy, have been astonishing.
Patients who had exhausted all other options and been told they had just months to live have gone into remission. Others have even been cured by the one-off dose.

As someone who has been touched — twice* — by cancer, you have no idea how big this is to me.

Keep it going, guys.

*Imaginary Wife (Connie) died of ovarian cancer, and New Wife is a survivor of endometrial cancer.

A Good Start

Elections

Here’s some good news, for a change:

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Wednesday that 97,795 voters were removed from the rolls after Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections identified the abandoned registrations as part of the maintenance process required by Ohio and federal law.
“Getting rid of bad voter data from the voter rolls helps prevent fraud, makes it easier for county boards of elections to do their jobs, and strengthens the confidence Ohioans place in our elections,” LaRose said. He then said: “And by the way, if anyone attempts to use one of these defunct registrations to vote in the next election, we’re going to execute them right there on the spot.”

Okay, I added that last sentence.  But you know…

 

A Fastball For Fauci

Health, Sports

As Longtime Readers know, I have little time for professional sports right now, as their controlling organizations have succumbed to Wokeness.  Nevertheless, recent events here in Cuidad Tejas have come to my attention, and I need to highlight just one;  but first, a little background is necessary.

The Texas Rangers baseball team sucks.  It’s not quite as bad as the 1920-2002 Chicago Cubs in its depth of suckitude, but it’s never been that far off either.  Opening Day of each season, therefore, has seldom been a gala affair, sometimes approaching a half-full stadium but more often than not, not even close.

Last Monday’s opening game, therefore, did not bode well, especially as it was against the Toronto Blue Jays, in which team Texas interest ranks somewhere around zero.  And not many Canuckis are going to fly all the way down to Dallas for their team, even if it means an escape from their frigid city.  (It may be spring here, but in Toronto spring still has a couple months to go before putting in a timid appearance.)

So:  an empty stadium at The Ballpark In Arlington*?  Ummm, nope:

That’s more spectators than I’ve ever seen on Opening Day here.  And yes, there were people wearing masks, just like Dr. Fauci ordered — but a hell of a lot of others weren’t:

…because wearing a mask in the open air is senseless, even in a stadium packed almost to capacity.

Clearly, the good people of Texas are fed up with all this mask bullshit, and as I noticed a couple weeks back, it’s starting to show itself all over the place.  And yes, despite having 20 million more residents than Gauleiter  Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan, Texas has far fewer Chinkvirus cases not just on a per capita  basis, but in absolute numbers.

So fuck off, Fauci.

Oh, and by the way, the Rangers lost, 6-4.  Sic semper ludi.

*I know, it’s now Globe Life Field or some bullshit, who cares.

Breezing Through

Entertainment

Tech Support II (a.k.a. Friend and Reader BobbyK) spent the weekend with us, and on Friday night we went out to dinner at one of Plano’s most crowded and noisy eating places, Legacy Hall, in the area known as Legacy West just off the Dallas North Tollway.  It’s basically the equivalent of a mall food court which caters not to the kiddie- and preteen set, but to grownups.  There is no chain restaurant presence (other than Velvet Tacos, barely a chain),  and from the three dozen-odd kiosks comes a huge variety of foods ranging from sushi, BBQ, lobster rolls, tacos, pizza and lamb gyros to an endless supply of locally-brewed beers and of course hard liquor.  Weekend nights feature an outdoor (also, usually local) band on stage, and pre-Chinkvirus, the place absolutely throbbed.  During the lockdowns, of course, the place was like a tomb.

Last Friday night it was throbbing again, jam-packed, and at a rough guess, only about half the people walking around were wearing face condoms.  (While seated for eating and drinking, of course, nobody was wearing them.)  Even in the elevators, only a few people were wearing masks.  (One girl’s mask consisted of fine muslin and sequins… actually, quite pretty:  a “Dream of Jeannie” look.)

All good fun, in other words:  my only problem with the whole thing was that the loud music and concomitant noise from people shouting at each other set my tinnitus to “scream” mode, so we left after dinner.  But what a fine experience, to see people out and about and getting on with the serious adult fun of eating, drinking and mating.  (One guy was giving his female companion a very thorough foot massage at the table next to ours.)

Fuck you, Fauci:  you, and your entire cohort of control freaks.

Helping Hand

Education, Homeschooling

One of the benefits of homeschooling is that parents can tailor the curriculum and teaching methods towards the individual child’s needs.  In our case, we improved Son&Heir’s reading level, for instance, by imposing a strict three-hours-per-day reading regimen — topic or authors of his own choice, of course — and inside two years he went from a three-grades-below-average level to twelfth grade level, at age 15. (His favorite authors were Daphne du Maurier and E.L. Salvatore, and by age 17 he’d read their entire works respectively — an enormous feat in the case of Salvatore, whose works are prodigious).

For #2 Son, who was high-functioning autistic, we improved his reading ability by letting him watch any TV show he wanted, as long as sub-titles were turned on.  This was prompted by the fact that being autistic, he dreaded loud noises — he’d clap his hands over his ears and become near-catatonic — which meant that he would have to turn the TV sound way down to avoid being startled by dramatic increases in the soundtrack volume, but which resulted in him not being able to follow the dialogue and plot.  The sub-titles enabled him to follow the story, and it improved his reading level by a similar degree to Son&Heir’s.  (At age 17, he was yelling at the TV adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo  for being a travesty of the original plot;  I wasn’t even aware that he’d read the thing, but he had.)

So when I saw this, I nodded with approval:

…simply because I’d proven it to be true in my own experience as a homeschooler.

If you decide to do this, though, be aware that while comprehension and reading skills will improve, you have to work really hard on correct pronunciation, if like in #2 Son’s case you also turn down the TV volume (the spoken word teaches that, of course, so you have to be patient, thorough and non-judgmental in your constant correction).   I and the other family members still have to work on this when we talk to him, even though he’s now in his 30s.  (For those who’ve known him, you may suddenly feel very old;  sorry.)

But to improve reading skills at pretty much any age, closed captions can be your friend.