Equipment

This, to me, is indicative of how TV and the American film industry sees the two professions of teaching and medicine.
Last night on House, and I have realised on many episodes before, Greg and his little posse of trainee docs were brainstorming the symptoms of the impossible and unusual case of the week on a whiteboard. In contrast, every advert, TV prog and film that takes place in a classroom, features a blackboard, even though in my entire teaching career I have never had to use one. So doctors get up-to-date equipment to use, teachers get old-fashioned shite. There you go.

The UN paper tiger is once again advocating the genital mutilation of men in Africa. The most amusing thing about today's assault on the manhood of a continent is that the director of the AIDS department of the WHO is called Dr.de Cock. Second most amusing thing was the statistic that a quarter of the world's males are circumcised, 'mostly Muslims and Americans.' I know, you can't help wondering can you....?

It seems there is something new that is keeping the gene pool healthy. Sleepy sent me an article about a piece of research that shows a lower sperm count in men whose mothers ate beef more than seven times a week. Who does, or rather did that I wonder? Let me see...people who eat burgers all the time, or the inhabitants of beef rich States and Provinces like Texas and Alberta. So.....people who eat hamburgers every day and bigots. Oh dear.

Another rather shocking story that Sleepy sent me was about a new service in Germany where mothers could deposit their babies instead of killing them. It seems that there have been 23 infanticides so far this year. I find this beyond belief in some ways, in Heaven's name I can't see how anyone could kill their baby having carried her or him for nine months and then given excruciating birth to them, on the other hand, hormones affect the brain, there is no doubt about it and post-natal depression is an appalling thing.

Today at the Nature Park saw the return of the twitcher with the enormous equipment.
'I remember him from last year,' whispered Lori as the guy set up his camera that looked more like a telescope capable of seeing rainfall in Alpha Centauri.
'I remember his equipment,' I whispered back. His equipment and his enthusiasm with it was so overwhelming that Kris had to go out and ask him to back off since he was intimidating the poor little hummingbirds he was trying to photograph.
Big cars and cameras with gigantic lenses, just two ways that some men try to regain what once they lost.