Archives for December 2007
Why Is She Afraid of a Snow Man?
Tuesday night my daughter and I spent time reading books together. After a while she grew tired of the stories and asked if I would look at some pictures with her.
I shook my head yes and she took my hand and led me to the mantel to review the holiday cards. She inspected each picture and added a little comment “that is cute,” or “I like the doggie” etc.
Eventually we came to a picture in which a little girl was trying to hide from Santa Claus. My daughter took one look at it and asked me “why is she afraid of the snowman?”
I guess that Santa is still afraid to show his face around here.
Catch A Tiger By Its Toe Eeny Meeny Miny Doh!
Authorities still haven’t determined if these guys were taunting the tiger. Regardless it is a tragic event.
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — The last minutes of a 17-year-old boy’s life were spent trying to save his friend from a brutal tiger mauling at the San Francisco Zoo, only to have the animal turn on him, police and family members said.
Carlos Sousa Jr. and his friend’s brother desperately tried to distract the 350-pound Siberian tiger, but the big cat instead came after Sousa.
“He didn’t run. He tried to help his friend, and it was him who ended up getting it the worst,” the teen’s father, Carlos Sousa Sr., said Thursday after meeting with police.
The heroic portrait of Sousa and a timeline of the dramatic Christmas Day attack emerged as officials revealed that the tiger’s escape from its enclosure may have been aided by walls that were well below the height recommended by the accrediting agency for the nation’s zoos.
San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo acknowledged that the wall around the animal’s pen was just 12½ feet high, after previously saying it was 18 feet. According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high.
Mollinedo said it was becoming increasingly clear the tiger leaped or climbed out, perhaps by grabbing onto a ledge. Investigators have ruled out the theory the tiger escaped through a door behind the exhibit.
“She had to have jumped,” he said. “How she was able to jump that high is amazing to me.”
Mollinedo said safety inspectors had examined the wall, built in 1940, and never raised any red flags about its size.
New studies confirm chest compressions alone
“Two large-scale studies published in the Dec. 18 issue of the American Heart Association’s medical journal, Circulation, report that the chances of surviving cardiac arrest are no better – and may be worse – when bystanders perform mouth-to-mouth breathing than if they press on the chest without interruption. n part because of the hesitance of bystanders to initiate CPR, survival rates following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest have remained dismal and virtually unchanged despite several changes of the CPR guidelines over the past four decades. In the two latest studies, research groups from Sweden and Japan compared survival rates of cardiac arrest victims after bystanders used either traditional CPR with mouth-to-mouth breathing or Chest-Compression-Only CPR.
Both studies found no statistically significant difference in survival rates. The Swedish study, led by Katarina Bohm, RN, of the South General Hospital in Stockholm, analyzed outcomes of nearly 10,000 cases, while a team led by Taku Iwami, MD, at Japan’s National Cardiovascular Center in Suita, Japan, looked at the outcomes of 4,900 cases of witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Robert Berg, MD, professor of pediatrics at the UA College of Medicine and a member of the Sarver Heart Center Resuscitation Research Group, co-authored the latter study.”
For the full story please click here.
Iranian Jews slam ’emigrant stunt’
Those wacky mullahs are behind this story. I don’t believe for a moment that the Iranian Jews are serious.
(CNN) — — The well-publicized landing of 40 Iranian Jews in Israel on Tuesday spurred glee among some Israelis and the immigrants themselves and drew public scorn from a surprising quarter in Iran — two officials from its centuries-old Jewish community.
One of them described the emigration as a “misinformation” campaign and defended their lives under the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The arrival in Israel was publicized as the largest single group to arrive in Israel from Iran since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and the immigrants traveled via an undisclosed third country. Other Iranian Jews have immigrated to Israel over the years.
Blogger Karmel Melamed responded here.
“You may wonder why the Jewish community leaders in Iran are so willing to praise the regime that is holding them hostage. The answer is simple…duress! They say whatever their captors tell them to say or else all Jews in Iran will suffer unknown persecution. For this reason, comments made by Motamed and other Jews in Iran lack all credibility.
If we are to believe the Jewish leaders in Iran and accept their words that Iran is a paradise for Jews to live in, then why has the once 100,000 strong Jewish community dwindled down to 20,000? Why have thousands of Jews fled Iran since 1979 and been forced to leave billions of dollars in assets behind if the regime is so fair and gives rights to Jews? If Iran is such a just and fair country to the Jews, then why do Iranian Islamic laws, have separate punishments for the same crimes depending on whether the victim is Muslim or not, or whether the offender is Muslim or non-Muslim? For example, in the case of rape…if the man is a Muslim and the woman a Jew (or any non-Muslim) the man will face no penalty, except pay the woman compensation if it was a very violent rape. But if a non-Muslim rapes a Muslim woman, the only punishment he will face is execution!
Ten Years Kashmir Mvt II
I am looking forward to being able to buy this.