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Climate Change and Ice Core Data
I originally posted this back in 2014. I have looked at climate change and the ice core data several times over the past years. I don’t think that enough people are talking about this data and climate change. Most Americans have this abstract idea of climate change, that it was dreamed up by some crazy scientist at Oxford or Harvard. (You know that everyone is picturing someone with that Einstein hairdo or like Doc Brown in Back to the Future.) Climate change is a complex science studied by scientists at hundreds of universities across the country and around the world. Some are even from Harvard and Oxford. Let’s look at the data
Can We Talk? Anthony Fauci and the Great American Scapegoat
Can we talk? Can we make an honest assessment of the United States and our response to COVID-19? One of the truly great comedians of the last 50 years was Joan Rivers. She had a routine that would start with “Can we talk?” Whenever she said that, you knew that she was going to reveal some embarrassing truth that was somewhat cringe-worthy—but also really funny. So can we talk honestly about Anthony Fauci? Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was called before the US Senate to be a punching bag. Long before he was a household name, Dr. Fauci graduated first
PulseNet and Cyclospora
I’m a surgeon. I follow infectious disease and public health. This cyclosporiasis made me look up the parasite. I wasn’t familiar with it. I also wanted to dive into how we detect outbreaks. FoodNet and PulseNet are how we detect and track outbreaks. While FoodNet acts as the “report card” tracking long-term baseline numbers, PulseNet is the active “detective”. It is a national laboratory network, coordinated by the CDC and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), designed to detect and stop fast-moving foodborne outbreaks in real time. If FoodNet tells us how many people are getting sick, PulseNet tells us exactly which people are getting sick from the exact
Lindsey Graham was a spineless war hawk
My mother used to tell me, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, then you shouldn’t say anything at all.” Sorry Mom. Lindsey Graham has died at the age of 71. The exact cause of death is unclear at this time. Two decades ago, Lindsey Graham was a serious politician who aligned himself with John McCain, an Arizona Republican. Lindsey Graham and John McCain were huge advocates of US military power. There is not a foreign problem that Lindsey Graham thought we could not solve with U.S. military intervention. I’m sorry. Once he attacked Donald Trump and then decided that Donald Trump was his ally, I lost all the
How the Reflecting Pool Reveals Trump’s True Nature
The reflecting pool is a perfect microcosm of how Trump thinks and operates. He sees a project that was tackled by Barack Obama, and he knows, “that he can do a better job.” He brags to the press that he can fix the problem in no time. He then throws out a ridiculously low price for the project. ($1.7 million) Then he finds one of his cronies, an officer, a no-bid contract. There is no proper oversight. There’s no bidding process. There is no expert analysis. There’s only Trump making decisions by the seat of his pants. Trump brags about how quickly and efficiently he fixed the problem, only to
We Need More Brain Power
I have been re-reading Senator Bob Graham’s book, Intelligence Matters. It was about the intelligence failures of 9/11. Re-reading this book reminded me of how unprepared we were for a terrorist attack here in the United States, as well as how we diverted our attention away from the war on terror to attack Iraq. For those of you who have a little gray hair, you’ll remember that the Bush Administration told us that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons. We were told they had these mobile devices that could be deployed almost anywhere and release devastating biological or chemical weapons. We were also told that Iraq was building a nuclear
Incompetence and Failure
After 9/11, the George W. Bush administration tried to convince Americans that they were on the job. They tried to convince Americans that they were in charge and that they knew what they were doing. There was a familiar refrain: nobody could have known that they would use airplanes as weapons. Of course, this old song assumed that Americans were naive. In reality, back in 1995, American intelligence discovered a laptop that was owned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (mastermind of 9/11). The laptop contained information that Al Qaeda wanted to hijack twelve commercial airliners and blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. As an alternative, they would hijack a plane
Obama is simply better at everything
Comparing Barack Obama to Donald Trump simply isn’t fair. It is almost laughable.Yet because Donald Trump lashes out so often, it’s hard not to compare the two men. Barack Obama is a family man. He loves his wife. His wife loves him. That was more than evident in her speech at the new presidential library. Her speech was so good and so touching that it made me cry. I don’t need to say anything about Trump and his wives. I have no idea if any of them loved him. I would like to simply focus on being President. Let’s just zero in on Iran. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of
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ABOUT AUTHOR
Errington C. Thompson, MD
Dr. Thompson is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats.
Books
A Letter to America
The Thirteeneth Juror
Where is The Outrage Topics
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