The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Cat:

I had a surprising number of diseases for growing up in the 1980s. Whooping cough (despite being vaccinated), scarlet fever (is there a vaccination for that?), measles, mumps, probably-rubella (I had encephalitis as a baby so I didn't have my MMR; I had it at 14, after I'd already had the illnesses anyway) and chicken pox (in the middle of my GSCEs, hurrah for antivirals).

I asked my GP about tetanus boosters, as my last was at 13, but he said that if your childhood boosters are up-to-date, you don't need any more unless you have a wound. Apparently this is now NHS recommendation. I'm not overly worried, as the chances of a software engineer contracting tetanus are pretty low, but it seems a bit dodgy.

The NHS has also switched from administering BCG to everyone at 14, to a targeted program, which seems a bit strange when TB is on the rise again.

Ken @ 190

So, seriously, the test to see if any political platform is Christian should be:

Is this good news for the poor?
Does this free captives?
Will the blind recover their sight?
Are the oppressed to be set free?

Which is why I, as a Christian, am a social democrat (by European standards. I suspect that by US standards I'm a liberal pinko Commie.)

Environmentalism is important because "God gave us stewardship over the earth;"

Finally, there are some sane Christians in America.

The Republicans are descended from the Whigs? *compares with British cousin, Lib Dems*
*boggles*

The thought of orrery necklaces is reminding me of the planet jewellery in Komarr.

</obsf>

So....Real Men (TM) don't need health care or education? Good to know.

I didn't think it was possible to ruin American chocolate... :-P

I suppose Sir Lucas is her Watcher.

Sir William Lucas or Sir William. Forename is essential.

Oh, yes.

That would be 'no resident'.

The NHS is looking really good about now....I know its waiting lists are miles long and there are patients stacked in the corridors because there aren't enough beds, but resident in this country has to walk around on a possibly broken ankle. (What happens in the USA if you're in labour with no health insurance? 'Sorry, the baby's just going to have to go back again?'

A small poster advertising the book to potential readers. Authors who have failed to take into account the fact that it has been bound to the outside of the book, rather than printed on an interior page, will often come to the mistaken conclusion that it is meant to illustrate the story, and be distressed by its inaccuracy.

But surely it should be advertising the book it's attached to, not some other book in the same genre? (Baen books, I'm looking at you....)

Xopher @ #6

that Paisleyites are a violent Protestant group and the IRA is a violent Catholic group

If by 'Paisleyite' you mean the Democratic Unionist Party, then they are not (most of them) equivalent to the IRA. The Loyalist analogues to the IRA are the UVF, LVF, UFF, and a few other factions I can't remeber. Paisley is the Right-wing Religious Raver.

And neither the members of the IRA or the Loyalist terror groups would know transubstantiation if it hit thewm around the ear. The divide for the majority of inhabitants is tribal and cultural.

They know the innermost secret of science: that the word 'theory' means 'unprovable surmise'.

Actually, scientific theories cannot be proved in the way a mathematical theorem can be; they can only be supported or disproved. You do the same thing again and again, getting the same results each time, and that supports your theory; but there can always be a counter-example. People thought for centuries that Newton's laws applied in all situations, but now we know that they're a special case when velocity approaches zero.

Paleontology is more like history; you're digging up the bits and trying to work out what happened, rather than what happens (which is where the repeatable experiments come in).

Comment statistics for Cat on the Making Light blog

Total: 14 comments. View all these comments on a single page.