It’s not just Obama v Romney –  it’s Hope v Nope.

As Andrew Frank, of Baltimore, MD, put it, here,

With thanks to Kate Clifford Lawson, author of Bound For The Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, and the related website, HarrietTubmanBiography.com, we note that this year, the Jewish new year coincides with the anniversary of Tubman’s first escape from slavery. We’d like to point out some of her accomplishments which we suspect are not common knowledge:

• Not content with securing her own freedom, she made thirteen trips into the South to rescue imprisoned family members, each time placing herself in harm’s way;
• Made other trips, unnumbered, helping others enslaved escape;
• Gathered intelligence for the Union Army;
• Was the first woman to lead Union forces in an attack on Confederate forces.
• And all this with a childhood head injury inflicted by a slave overseer leaving her suffering chronic head pain, seizures, and difficulty sleeping.

Disenfranchised as a woman, an African-American, a slave, burdened by disability, Harriet Tubman nonetheless redefined herself, repeatedly risking her life to save others, and perhaps helping to redeem our country from the moral taint of slavery. Our words here can do nothing to add to those accomplishments; but it is within our reach to honor her memory.

In that spirit, regardless of calendar or faith, please accept our wishes for a just, peaceful and prosperous year to come.

Adenocarcinoma found via Pap test. Pap “stain” is what provides the color (and thereby the coloration and visibility) in this slide.

There’s a proposal pending in Texas which would effectively decertify Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider. Andrea Grimes, an investigative reporter who writes about reproductive and women’s health issues at RHRealityCheck, made inquiries as to the actual availability of health care to women on Medicaid in the Austin area.

Grimes used as her criterion the Pap smear, which should be a routine test for adult women (at intervals of three years for those at least risk, more frequently if other risk indicators are present). Among other things, a Pap smear can be the first indication of cancer. In other words, it’s a basic service. A provider of women’s health services who isn’t providing Pap smears isn’t providing basic, necessary services. So the criterion is a reasonable proxy.

While widely available provider lists suggest wide availability a total of 181 medical providers within a thirty-mile radius from one ZIP code in Austin. One potentially barred Planned Parenthood clinic which Grimes reports as “busy” is located within the ZIP boundaries.  Grimes confirmed that, in fact, only thirteen of the 181 providers accepted Medicaid and performed Pap smears. That’s 7.2%.

Grimes has done  a very elegant piece of investigative reporting, but we wish to stress that she’s demonstrated two problems:

1. the controversy about Planned Parenthood, in the first place, suggests a level of political discourse in which life-or-death decisions are made with reckless disregard for the ground truth;
2. the prospect of a radical reduction of basic health services to women – also a life-or-death issue. It seems akin to making transportation arrangements – for a group without a lot of political voice – without as much counting the life boats or verifying that they are seaworthy.

Here’s an excerpt from Ms. Grimes’ piece, Without Planned Parenthood, What’s Left for Texas Women? Not Much.

Of the 13 providers that could actually see a Medicaid Women’s Health Program patient, the thirteenth is a forty minute drive from East Austin. And that’s with no traffic. And if you live in Austin, you know there’s no such thing as no traffic. By public transportation it would take over two hours to get to that clinic. And that’s with a half mile walk at the end. Excluding Planned Parenthood from the Women’s Health Program absolutely reduces access to quality care. Full stop. Already, the state has demonstrated that the systems it says it has in place to support women without Planned Parenthood don’t work. Trying to get low-income, quality reproductive health care in Texas, in a major metropolitan area like Austin, without Planned Parenthood is like trying to get a pap smear at a colonoscopy clinic. And I know because I actually tried.

New Face Paint Protects Soldiers Against Bomb Blasts

Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 27, @02:26PM

from the not-in-the-face dept.

Zothecula writes "For millennia, face paint has helped soldiers avoid being seen by enemy forces. Recently, however, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi announced that a new type of face paint may soon also be able to protect against the heat of bomb blasts and other explosions. Additionally, a clear version of the paint could be used by civilian firefighters."

via Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been offered asylum indefinitely in the Ecuadorian embassy in London:

CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of Ecuador is prepared to allow Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to remain in its embassy in London indefinitely under a type of humanitarian protection, a government official said in Quito on Wednesday night. Mr. Assange has been holed up in the embassy for two months seeking asylum.

Amid an escalating confrontation with Britain over Mr. Assange, Ecuadorean officials said they would announce the decision of the country’s president, Rafael Correa, on Thursday. The official said that the British government had made it clear it would not allow Mr. Assange to leave the country to travel to Ecuador, so even with a grant of asylum or similar protection, he would probably remain stuck in the embassy.

From Ecuador to Let Julian Assange Stay in Its London Embassy, by  William Neuman and Maggie Ayala at NYTimes.com

We’re not sure – not having reviewed the Wikileaks document set – that we’ve reached an opinion of the damage done by Mr. Assange; on the one hand, we believe the adage that, in political matters, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” But governments do have legitimate needs,  particularly in the short term, to keep confidences, and especially to protect sources and methods. But we have a sense that the rules are being bent in Mr. Assange’s case: the sudden appearance of accusations of sex crimes committed in Sweden, and now reports that Britain threatened Ecuador with essentially using force to invade its embassy, effectively discarding several centuries of diplomatic law and custom. Those diplomatic practices are part of what allows us to keep lines of communication, direct and indirect, between nations, and have the potential of keeping open the possibility of non-violent resolution even when at the edge of the abyss.

Earlier Wednesday, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, said that the British authorities had threatened to barge into the country’s embassy in London if officials did not hand over Mr. Assange. “Today we have received from the United Kingdom an explicit threat in writing that they could assault our embassy in London if Ecuador does not hand over Julian Assange,” Mr. Patiño said at a news conference in Quito, adding defiantly, “We are not a British colony.”

Also from Ecuador to Let Julian Assange Stay in Its London Embassy, by  William Neuman and Maggie Ayala at NYTimes.com

The United States  has suffered two horrific spree shootings in recent days; in addition, this week we were reminded of the Arizona shooting spree of Jared Loughner, who has been reported to be willing to enter a guilty plea and accept a life sentence if prosecutors agree not to seek his execution.