Eve and HIV

Eve, the mother of Humanity, was victimized early on: The serpent tells the woman that she will not die if she eats the fruit of the tree.

As I wrote earlier, the ratio of women contracting HIV from men is about 1:15. I will list my source at another time since this figure is from memory. The point here is that more than a rib comes by way of men.

Men, many serpent-like beings, have manipulated and abused women since the beginning of time. Now women have become incubators for blood-borne pathogens like HIV.

More on these thoughts later. I'm incubating this thread.

Eddie Evans

Lawmakers worry U.S. giving water law short shrift

(To read my blog comment on Los Angeles and drought, tap here.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration has failed to adequately fund or uphold a 2005 initiative to give poor countries access to fresh water, U.S. lawmakers and nonprofit groups said on Wednesday.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (news, bio, voting record), an Oregon Democrat, told a hearing that the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development misrepresented how they spent $200 million for the plan last year and have given short shrift to sub-Saharan Africa.

The State Department used most of the funds for reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States is waging wars, he said. In an earlier letter, Blumenauer wrote that it only spent $10 million for water in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations says 42 percent of the population lacks clean water.

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Los Angeles, Shorter Showers, and Mindless Growth

LOS ANGELES residents have been asked to "shorten showers" and to otherwise save precious water. It takes a drought, the driest on record, to get some attention for nature's needs. Stop "throwing trash in toilets" we are told.

It is a little late for this message. Los Angeles has spread from San Diego to Santa Barbara and above; From Long Beach to Mount Baldy, Los Angeles has spread. In the 80's environmentalist called this megalopolis a "cancer." Drive from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, from Los Angeles to Ventura and the residential concrete sprawl will follow you. In the words of an environmentalist friend, "It doesn't matter where you go, Los Angeles will come and get you." He was right then (25 years ago), and he is right now.

What really hurts my environmentalist sentiments is that the growth reflects giant homes big enough to house a rifle platoon, each with its own dark, green, lush lawn. Beautifully manicured lawns cut by illegal immigrants on a weekly basis, and each lawn with its own set of automatic sprinklers, some working better than others, all wasting precious water, litter Southern California.

This "drought" is not new. It is part of living in Southern California. It happens that we have another additive, Global Warming, which may or may not have some affect here. What is new is the human environmental load on a finite area of semi-arid landscape.

< LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Los Angeles residents were urged on Wednesday to take shorter showers, reduce lawn sprinklers and stop throwing trash in toilets in a bid to cut water usage by 10 percent in the driest year on record. With downtown Los Angeles seeing a record low of 4 inches of rain since July 2006 -- less than a quarter of normal -- and with a hot, dry summer ahead, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the city needed "to change course and conserve water to steer clear of this perfect storm." It is the driest year since rainfall records began 130 years ago.>>

Cain and Able

This is Cain leading Able to Death.
Tap for a larger picture.

What we might suspect about this homicide is that there may not have been a cleanup: "the voice of [Abel's] blood is screaming to [God] from the ground."

Head lice tomorrow!

Wonderful!
Tomorrow I clean a "black and white" police vehicle that is "full of head lice."
This is truly a new one for me.

From police cars I have removed blood, both police blood and arrestee blood, and broken glass.

I have removed tons of fleas and hound dog hair from a search and rescue vehicle that spent a little too much time in the brush. Then there was the time I got to remove poison ivy from a police car. I'll write the remedy that I used another time -- too tired now. I can say this, there was only one way to test my cleaning, and that was to do the last half of cleaning in cut-off pants and a tee-shirt. I don't expect to test for the head lice!

At this writing, I have no idea about how I will clean tomorrow.
So it goes.
Eddie Evans

Hanta Virus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanta_virus

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehsphl/factsheet/hanta.htm - Bleach

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hanta/hps/noframes/phys/technicalinfoindex.htm