David Ancell / Sunday, November 23, 2003 / Comments(0)
I guess I’ve long since blogged that I bought a digital camcorder last September. I finally have enough video that I decided to burn a DVD. I started the process of creating the DVD in Ulead Video Studio 7 almost two hours ago, and the machine still says it is “converting video.” It could have something to do with the fact that the software split my video into over 130 AVI clips that it is now converting to MPEG. It hasn’t burned anything to the DVD; it just says it is converting files. I hope it is done before I wake up tomorrow. I’m having to blog from my old desktop since my laptop is unusable while it is doing this. I hope it doesn’t overheat.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Sunday, November 23, 2003 / Comments(0)
Christina Martin does not appear to think so, at least in the media. I guess the media doesn’t hate Michael Jackson the way it hates the Catholic Church.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Sunday, November 23, 2003 / Comments(0)
Pete Vere gives this interesting article on the canonical basis for the Church denying communion to or otherwise excommunicating pro-abort politicians. Currently, an automatic excommunication is applied to doctors and their staff who perform abortions and the women who have them. Vere has reservations about the excommunication of the women who have abortions, and it is understandable. Neither he nor I condone abortion.
There is one thing that I think we can count on: the longer our leaders wait to take action against these politicians, the harder it will be to do, and the greater the backlash will be when someone finally does something. We wouldn’t have to endure this malarkey about “the end of Vatican II” or “loss of tolerance” if the bishops of this country had taken a strong stand to begin with.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Wednesday, November 19, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is an ad for a chocolate Rosary. Before anyone gets too excited, it doesn’t appear that the Rosary itself is made of chocolate. Can you imagine eating a bead as you pray each Hail Mary?
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Wednesday, November 19, 2003 / Comments(0)
Mark Shea has written an excellent article on the theories that people make up so that they can avoid believing in Jesus as the the Son of God who died for our sins and rose from the dead. It seems that people would rather believe anything other than the fact that the apostles wrote that Jesus rose from the dead because he really did rise from the dead. They would be humorous if they weren’t so sad.
If you should ever find out that a seminar is being held by one of these dudes in your town, you could always go and ask the “scholar” what the positive evidence is for his or her claim. I’ll bet you will get a fancy answer that bascially says that there is none. My guess is that it will be along the lines of “that was what normally happened.” You can then respond “Ok, so you made this stuff up.” Just keep calm so that the “scholar” can’t make you look like a buffoon.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Wednesday, November 19, 2003 / Comments(0)
I’m not sure rather to praise the insight of Lifesitenews.com or to suggest that they have rushed to judgment. The FDA has approved a new chewable contraceptive called Ovcon 35. Here is the article in question. When I read it, I wondered why in the world someone would want this.
Lifesitenews.com suggests that it is aimed at young girls. This makes sense in the fact that most medications made chewable are made so to accomodate the very young. However, most girls who have reached puberty can swallow tablets.
No matter what the motivation of the manufacturer is, this pill is just one more way to commit a serious sin.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Tuesday, November 18, 2003 / Comments(0)
I thought of one other reason why pharmacists don’t get caught up quite so much in industry bias:
Believe it or not, pharmacists make more money on generics.
Yes, it’s true. You may pay $100 for a brand-name product, but it may have cost the pharmacist $80. This results in a profit of $20. You may pay $50 for the same generic, but the pharmacist may have only paid $10 for it. Therefore, you save $50, and the pharmacist makes twice as much money.
Of course, profit isn’t as easy to come by as it used to be. If you pay cash for drugs, you will pay much more than you used to. Insurance companies try to squeeze pharmacists for all they can. Therefore, they have only two places to make up their money: the non-prescription items in the pharmacy, and the cash-paying customers.
As strange as it seems, insurance companies dictate to pharmacies what they will pay for drugs. The problem that has arisen is that there are some places out there that aren’t trying to make money on their pharmacy. They have that pharmacy as a means to get people to other parts of their store. It is possible that they will understaff the pharmacy so that it takes them forever to fill the prescription (To be fair, this may not be by choice as there is a nationwide shortage of pharmacists.). Meanwhile, the customer is shopping and buying things that make money. These businesses will then accept insurance plans that others won’t and undersell everyone they can.
All of this amounts to stress and headaches for pharmacists. It is an enormous headache for pharmacists to deal with prescription insurance. On top of that, you have some nutty pharmacy managers who compare the cost of having a pharmacist make a mistake in filling a prescription against the cost of either hiring more staff or otherwise allowing the pharmacist more time to check prescriptions for accuracy. In other words, your safety becomes a matter of cost accounting.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Tuesday, November 18, 2003 / Comments(0)
Here is an interesting article on a reason why drug costs are still high. The author mentions that drug companies are funding the continuing education that the doctors go to. He even says that the schools allow this. Then again, the schools may well be in a funding crunch, and therefore, they turn to the industry.
Pharmacists, too, get CE from drug companies. Some of it is obviously biased. Much of the time, we get the advertisement right before the presentation. Pharmacists are a much more cynical lot when it comes to industry. Perhaps part of the reason for this is that we pay for these drugs up front. I remember times when the pharmacy would insist on a less expensive item, and the doctors would say that it was just pharmacy playing the economics game with their patients. In some cases, it may be true, but I will bet that in many cases, the doctors have absorbed the industry lines.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Monday, November 17, 2003 / Comments(0)
It seems that more and more of St. Blog’s is moving to a Moveable Type based system. The most recent one that I’ve discovered (and updated my link to) is Fr. Bryce Sibley.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
David Ancell / Monday, November 17, 2003 / Comments(0)
Other than the fact that Jesus has risen from the dead and is alive today, this lady has a point. It seems that we’ve had more than our share of historical revisions in the last 15 years.
Take, for example, the Oliver Stone movie JFK. I didn’t see it and don’t plan to. A poll was taken in my high school, and it revealed that many people believed that garbage. My American History teacher politely said that he didn’t. I’ve also seen some recent attempts to trash Abraham Lincoln.
It may be true that most of our historical figures are not total saints with 100% pure intentions (with the exception of Jesus Christ). However, trashing them to sell books and movies is just wrong. If their allegations are true, it’s detraction; if not, calumny. Both of these are grave matter.
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized