This Might Be the Drugs Fighting Back in the War on Drugs

A powerful heroin-like drug that rots flesh and bone has made its first reported appearance in the United States, an Arizona health official says.

 

Known on the street as "krokodil," the caustic homemade opiate is made from over-the-counter codeine-based headache pills mixed with iodine, gasoline, paint thinner or alcohol. When it's injected, the concoction destroys a user's tissue, turning the skin scaly and green like a crocodile. Festering sores, abscesses and blood poisoning are common.

 

Arizona health officials have seen two cases during the past week. These are the first cases in the United States that have been reported, and officials are extremely frightened.

 

The drug — chemically called desmorphine — emerged around 2002 in Siberia and the Russian Far East but has swept across the country in just the past three years, according to a Time magazine.

 

Krokodil became popular in Russia because heroin can be difficult to obtain and is expensive. Krokodil costs three times less, (isn't that one-third?)  and the high is similar to heroin though much shorter, usually 90 minutes.

 

The average life expectancy among krokodil addicts in Russia is two to three years, according to Time, which called the narcotic "the most horrible drug in the world." Gangrene and amputations are common, and the toxic mix dissolves jawbones and teeth, much like the methamphetamine that Walter White cooks in Breaking Bad.

 

As with all intravenous drug addicts, krokodil users are susceptible to HIV, hepatitis C and other blood-borne diseases, and have compromised immune systems.

 

One recovering Russian krokodil addict told Time in 2011 that she injected the drug almost daily for six years. She has a speech impediment and impaired motor skills because of the resulting brain damage.

 

Her brother was among the dozen or so addicts she shot up with. "Practically all of them are dead now," she said. "For some, it led to pneumonia, some got blood poisoning, some had an artery burst in their heart, some got meningitis, others simply rot."

 

A Russian woman using krokodil in June 2011 told The Independent that a fellow junkie refused to go to the hospital. "Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore." 

 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
         http://alumcave.blogspot.com/

"Religious belief can guide one in life or strengthen one at the approach of death, but unless it is true it can do neither of these things and so would amount to no more than an illusionary exercise in comforting fantasy."  

---John Polkinghorne

Golf and Prayer --Same Problem

Prayer and golf are similar in that to be successful there a thousand things you must do at the same time. 

Will God Protect Our Military?

USS Indianapolis was a Portland-class cruiser of the United States Navy. She holds a place in history due to the circumstances of her sinking, which led to the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy. On 30 July 1945, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, sinking in 12 minutes. Of 1,196 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.

 

The remaining 900 men faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning and shark attacks as they waited for assistance while floating with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy learned of the sinking when survivors were spotted four days later by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 317 sailors survived.

 

When we hear prayers to keep our military safe is it rational to believe God will protect them today when he did not help these sailors?

 

Maybe the way to protect our military is to stop initiating wars. 

Ideological Amplification

When researchers studied various political blogs looking at patterns of linking they discovered a sharp and unmistakable division between the conservative and liberal camps.  91% of the links originating within either the conservative or liberal community stay within that community. The two groups have different lists of favorite news sources, people and topics to discuss with only occasional overlaps.

 

The blogs researchers found that the vast majority of readers tend to stay within the bounds of either the liberal or the conservative sphere. Liberals listen almost exclusively to other liberals, and conservatives tend almost exclusively to other conservatives.

 

In 2005 a group of researchers assembled sixty-three Coloradans to discuss three controversial issues: same sex marriage, affirmative action, and global warming. About half the participants were conservatives from Colorado Springs and the other half liberals living in Boulder.  After the participants completed, in private, questionnaires about their personal views on the three topics they were split into ten groups---five conservative and five liberal. Each group spent time discussing the issues with the goal of reaching a consensus on each one. After the discussion, the participant again filled out questionnaires.

 

The results showed the deliberations among like-minded people produced what researchers call "ideological amplification." People's views became more extreme and more entrenched.

999 Hours - One other thing

Once you define an employee they are eligible to participate in any 401k program provided. To ensure management does not establish such a plan primarily for their own personal benefit participation corporate wide must be balanced. Balancing includes high-compensated employees and lower paid employees, gender and ethic groups etc. My guess is Dollywood might have a problem with balancing non-Caucasian participation. Non balancing results in the entire plan being negated, fines and tax problems. 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
         http://alumcave.blogspot.com/

"It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray." 

---Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

999 Hours

 

Around the mid 1980s a contractor who drove a trash removal truck for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati decided to retire after 30 years. He found he had no pension, sued P&G and won. The court ruled he was an employee and had a right to the same pension they offered other employees. To protect  employees from being called contractors and denied benefits the IRS came up with a number of questions, I believe nineteen, to which the answer "yes" to any one of them defined an employee versus an independent contractor.  On of the questions involved the individual working more than 999 hours in any year.

 

There is a lot more I could say but to suffice it to say: an individual who works less than 20 hours a week / less than 999 hours in a year may be excluded from various benefits offered by the company to those folks who work a thousand hours or more in a year.

 

Now we have what we affectionately refer to as Obama-care.

Section 1513 of the Affordable Care Act covers "shared responsibility for employers regarding health coverage." The law requires that every employer with 50 or more "full-time employees" offer "minimum essential coverage" in an "affordable" manner. Employees that don't comply, if that non-compliance results in at least one worker accepting Obama-care exchange subsidies, face steep fines.

 

A "full-time employee" is someone who works at least 120 hours per month, or about 30 hours a week.  Importantly, employers will also have to add up the total hours worked by part-timers, and divide by 120, to count toward that total. So, for example, three employees who each work 80 hours a week would count as two full-time employees (240 total hours divided by two). For this reason, employers who restrict their workers to 29 hours a week may not successfully evade the employer mandate.

 

In the Procter and Gamble example I mentioned above steps government took to protect individuals from being denied benefits annoyed and hurt a lot of contractors as well as employers. Government must be big to enforce moral views so folks who want government to enforce theirs must accept that that same big government will do things they do not like such as Obama-care.

 

I figure cost saving measures to permit payment of large bonuses to senior executives will require that Dollywood as well as other employers restrict the number of hours worked by their "part-time /  seasonal" "employees."

Lets all say, "Thank you, Dolly and let us be sure to buy her newest CD which will take about 2 hours of work to pay for. 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
         http://alumcave.blogspot.com/

"It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray." 

---Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

The Last Supper

In a book The Little Ice Age researchers studied the clouds in various pieces of famous artwork to see how artists perceived changes in the weather over centuries. Changes can be reconciled with known periods of increases and decreases of rain.  Recently two researchers analyzed the food and plate sizes in 52 of the most famous paintings of The Last Supper and found that the portion sizes in the paintings increased dramatically from years 1000 to 2000.

Using a computer program, they compared the size of loaves of bread, main dishes and plates to the size of the heads of the disciples and Jesus in the artwork.

They found that over that 1,000-year period, the main course size increased by 69%, plate size 66% and loaves of bread 23%. The biggest increases in size came after 1500.

The researchers used paintings of The Last Supper because it is the most famous supper in history which artists have been painting for centuries. The paintings provide information about plate and entree sizes over time. Food may have become more available and less expensive.

The three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), which include descriptions of The Last Supper, mention only bread and wine, but many of the paintings have other foods, such as fish, lamb, pork and even eel.

If they visited assemblies of the Church of Christ they would take note the portions continue to shrink. Folks of the Church in Corinth could not become drunk or be accused of gluttony. It must be a God thing.

John Jenkins

865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
         http://alumcave.blogspot.com/

"I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one has a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration. 

- George Washington, from Letter to James Monroe, August 25,1796.

Cohabitation first is new norm for unmarrieds with kids

If you didn't think too much of that transgender how about a more acceptable sin, cohabitation. USA Today is reporting cohabitation is growing in popularity. The question is why marriage? While it is considered a moral issue the Old Testament supports such behavior. Solomon is praised while he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Abraham had concubines with his wife's approval. Christians talk about Solomon and his immoral behavior as a right since he was king.   

Would You Help If You Could?

In my ongoing saga to avoid following in the foot steps of the Greeks and their worship of Zeus, which has as much of a story as the bible has about Jesus etc and whose believers were as convinced as we are, I continue my attempt to reconcile what Christians say the bible says and what I see.

One day a couple in their 30s rode Rampage via the ADA line. The woman used a walker. I thought, how sad so young. 

Would you heal that woman if you could? Why do you suppose God doesn't? 

God's creation is regulated by laws he established. This suggests a certain amount of suffering is inevitable. We benefit from the laws of nature and we suffer the consequences when they are violated.

 

Could it be that God cannot heal and abide by the laws of the nature of his creation? Is it healthy for Christians to continue to ask for and to thank God for acts he has never indicated he can or will do?

Gutenberg Squared

When the relatively new information technology of books hit ancient Greece, Plato was concerned. If reading and writing catch on, he warned, they will have a detrimental effect. Human beings will lose their capacity for memory. Instead of internalizing the information they need, people will just write it down, to consult as needed. Education will degenerate. Instead of learning The Iliad and The Odessy by heart children will just put it on the shelf. The intellect will shrink as knowledge becomes stored outside the human mind.

Plato was the first media critic. Although it might seem easy to assume that Plato was overacting --- the fact remains that Plato was right. People in literate societies do seem to lack memory capacity of those in oral cultures. African tribesmen can still exhibit prodigious feats or memory, reciting seemingly endless genealogies and thousands of lines of tribal epics, while those of us who can read and write rely on Post-its to remind us what to pickup at the grocery store. New information media do affect the way people think, the possibilities of a culture, and its worldview.

Plato was correct to see that the worldview of his beloved Greece, with its tribal virtues, would be undermined by the rise of books. But this new information technology would fit well with the worldview of the ancient Hebrews, who believed that God communicates to human beings primarily through a Book. The Hebrew Bible goes back to the origins or writing itself.  The alphabet, which breaks down sounds of speech into discrete visible symbols makes reading and writing possible and easily learned, was the invention of an ancient Middle Eastern people, the Phoenicians, whose Semitic language is related to Hebrew.

Prayer of a Righteous Man?

Does it say anything about a people's convictions when they claim prayer works and have absolute confidence God will heal their sick but are not that confident about him protecting the congregation's property?
 
How about the confidence shown by others who withhold medical treatment because their faith in God's healing is so great. Why do you suppose we think they are loony for having such a ridiculous faith? While we deny it we really do believe God helps those who help themselves.
 

I for one have never met a righteous man or at least I have not been in their presence when they were saying one of those effective prayers. I have never experienced or observed effective prayer. And from what I observed and experienced no one I know has either. We talk a lot but our prayers are hollow. My experience and observation have been the only way one gets off the prayer list is to die.

Government?

Read Romans 13:1-6. Paul told Christians in Rome their government was not to be feared because God has given it the right to do what they were doing to the people and if they resisted the authorities they were resisting God and will incur judgment.

 

Paul was talking about Caesar and history shows how Caesar treated Christians and apparently under the guidance of God. So let's change a name here and there and see how it reads today.

 

Paul told the people in Libya, the United Nations as well as the countries around the world  Muammar Gaddafi was not a terror to good conduct but to bad and if they would not incur his rath then they should do what is good and receive his approval since Muammar Gaddafi is God's servant. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists Muammar Gaddafi resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For Muammar Gaddafi is not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for Muammar Gaddafi does not bear the sword in vain for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

 

Our forefathers did not believe it either otherwise they would never have rebelled. If what Paul said is correct the people of the United States will eventually incur God's wrath.