In defense of Pharmacy and Catholic Pharmacists was written during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. This was not written for publication but for my own piece of mind, to justify my own career. At that time pharmacy, was under attack, recently the attack has been renewed.
I have been a Catholic all my life and a pharmacists for over forty years. The use of birth control medications has, until recently, been a private and professional medical decision. Holy-mother-church may not have approved of contraception but she did respect the doctor patient relationship.
Education: University of Cincinnati - B.S. 1972 (Before most of you were born) Xavier University, Cincinnati - M.B.A. 1978 Teaching Experience: University of Cincinnati, College of Pharmacy, Adjunct Instructor, Clinical Instructor/Preceptor 1983 - Pr…
Humor-Comics are supposed to be fun, light reading. Something I read on MSNBC’s Comics & Games website has been on my mind for a few months. The column titled "News of the Weird" by Chuck Shepherd (March 30, 2008) had one paragraph that caught my attention."A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing," is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains. ScienceNOW Daily News, 2-29-08"
Everything interacts with its environment - from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the largest galaxy. We are no different.Interaction insinuates dynamic inter-relationship. Knowledge can be defined as "post-active" comprehension. The dynamic inter-relationship involved in the comprehension necessary to achieve knowledge is the tension between opposites, or what may be called reciprocal reciprocation (RR).A RR consists of two diametrically opposing concepts which cannot exist without each other. They are mutually exclusive in concept and definition, yet mutually inclusive in the operation of comprehension.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about a Chicago charter school. I was naive enough to believe that if a group of ninth graders could not read it was unique to this Chicago school. Today I read a report by Christopher B. Swanson, Ph.D. titled "Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytical Report on High School Graduation." Dr. Swanson’s report clearly shows that we are in an academic crisis in the U.S.
If you read the medical news lately you may have seen a headline title Skeleton May Show Ancient Brain Surgery. This article was about an 1800 year old skeleton found in Veria, Greece. The skeleton was of a woman of about 25 years of age that suffered severe head trauma and underwent cranial surgery, unfortunately evidence shows that she did not survive.There is an interesting history of skull surgery, known as trepanation, which comes from the Greek word trypanon, meaning auger or borer. Cranial trepanation has caught the interest of surgeons and archeologist since the 1860's, when it was first realized that ancient humans had scraped or cut holes in the skulls of living persons in France and Peru.Trepanation is serious enough surgical procedure in this day and age, could this procedure have taken place as a routine operation as long ago as 2000 BC? We do have a historical record of thousands of skulls with evidence of this surgery. Sometimes historical records suggest a reality that we find hard to accept.
I feel like I am going to be preaching-to-the-choir with this blog. The fact that you are reading it puts you in the "choir." I would encourage all of you to read the first two columns of the article "A New Bottom Line For School Science" by Jeffrey Mervis in Science Vol. 319, p. 1030-33, Feb. 22, 08.
The quote from this article that has me upset is "I don’t use a textbook or assign written homework because so many of them (the students) wouldn’t be able to read it." If this were a quote from a third grade teacher in a rural school for the children of migrant workers, I would still be upset but I could understand the teacher’s dilemma.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy The Science and Technology Facilities Council has provided information that Science Daily has posted as an abstract of an article by Dr. Hong Sheng Zhao titled "Dark Fluid: Dark Matter And Dark Energy May Be Two Faces Of Same Coin." You can read this abstract at the web site below:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080131094056.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109173722.htmThe above address is a post on Science Daily about an antimatter cloud. This should be of interest to the hard core science types and SiFi fans like myself. The post describes an antimatter cloud that surrounds the galactic center. This cloud is about 10,000 light-years across. The European Space Agency’s "Integral" satellite has provided clues to the possible origin of this antimatter cloud. This post is well worth reading.
I first saw these numbers in the book “Fun with Mathematics” by Jerome S. Meyer, published in 1961. I have had them on my computer terminal at work for years. The first two numbers are my favorites, I have been waiting for inspiration or insight, I want these numbers to talk to me - but nothing. They both have four sets of two numbers that should be telling me something 58, 13/31, 27/72, 64, some simple idea of shape, form or pattern. Mathematics, after all, has been described as the study of all possible patterns, therefor I should be able to ask and logically expect an answer to why these patterns occur and what they signify. This isn’t just my flight-of-fancy, W. W.
