I inflicted this topic on you and me. Further thinking is unavoidable; posting is optional. You lose. I consider situation of an AB pos who needed exo-blood and got it from...whomever. Time passes and an additional transfusion is required. With half-life of 60 (ish) days, those previously introduced blood cells may still be in the loop. If the next arrivals are of a conflicting type, there's gonna be trouble. Maybe aspic-level trouble. I have no doubt that medical community is on to this, but they don't lay it out nicely. So, finally I get to where I should have started. Blood and blood products are non-substitutable medical resources. Only available from voluntary supply, and rarely abundant. Market penetration is driven by 'you're doing a wonderful thing' and here's your small reward.' Low success can be judged from small fraction of OK donors in the loop now. Could this be done better? By my way of thinking I would decorate this with more knowledge for donors. But who cares, right? Another way is to increase donor rewards. A whole-blood unit, about 0.5 liters, retails at $300 to 3000. Donor got cookies and juice for that, or t-shirt, or some other coupon in sub $20 range. The may be more room for front-end incentives. Here's a thought: potential donors are much like general populaiton; just a bit soft in the head. So, lottery tickets!
Ahha. Well, here's some additional uselessness. For all those useful facts about blood types, your mention of Taiwan omitted a key issue. In Taiwan and Japan, blood types are like star signs. You're ascribed a personality type according to your blood type, and you get horoscopes according to your blood type. Of course, we Librans are rational, and don't believe in such nonsense.
This is a serious issue when you're a young Australian who crashes his moped in Taipei (Not a rare occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. I imagine there are fewer young Australians in Taiwan who haven't crashed a moped than there are who have.) But it's something that's been discussed widely in medical circles in Australia and New Zealand: our immigration patterns are causing major changes to supply and demand for different blood types.
I'm taking the liberty of straying off topic here to say, Wow! You guys not only educate me, but keep me amused and entertained at the same time. Permit me to say, bravo.
Cash definitely seems to work in China. And you're right: lottery tickets would doubtless be popular. But is screening good enough to deal with people who are donating blood for cash? Isn't the blood likely to be full of heroin or something? It's a problem @bisco (I think) brought up earlier.
This hadn't actually occurred to me, I must admit. But yes, I can imagine it would be an issue. I might have to pop next door later this week to ask.
Best teachers make learning things great fun. If I could only do half as well... But another factor here, when I get into these 'far afield' topics, there are things I never thought about before to consider. That 8 semi-distinct blood types could directly map to 8 personality types, and that there are no others... Can only say it has been brought to my attention that some people believe this.
Oh, but it is. But another factor here, when I get into these 'far afield' topics, there are things I never thought about before to consider. It doesn't seem any more far-fetched than the idea of 12 personality types in the European or Chinese zodiacs.
I'd agree that 12 is just as silly as 8 but in a different way. Eight are semi-inherited (how that woks is entirely known) and the 12 are calendar-based. How either links to personality remains fantastical. We well ought to leave room for flights of imagination, but...seriously. Imagine if we invested 1/10 this time and effort into understanding the neurochemistry of how a few personalities go entirely off the rails. Then consider non-judgmentally as treatable diseases.
speaking of off the rails, but since you brought it up as the o/p, i'm all for research and treatment. but i still have concerns about so called cures when it comes to violence to other individual's. lobotomies didn't work, but it was worth a shot, right?
Lobotomy inventor got a Nobel Prize which I did not know until just now. So y'all who may think that those prizes 'gang aft agley' have a point*. It is both shocking and depressing to read about lobotomies. More than 60,000 were performed before (similarly primitive) neurochemicals supplanted the procedure. You may find that number high or low. My opinion is that, after about 60, the icepick-guys should have concluded that bumbling about thus was not appropriate. With more modern neurochemistry and especially, functional brain imaging, it seems reasonable to suppose that some aspects of brain dysfuction can be treated. But lobotomies seem pretty darn icky. *not under the eyelid I hope
An acquaintance of a friend got the Peace Prize once after killing hundreds of thousands of people, so it definitely gang agley that time. Thank you for the excellent use of language there, by the way. Yes, I'm sure there is a lot that can be done. But the old axe-to-the-brain trick really does seem barbaric. There's a court case in Victoria (which has different rules to New South Wales) at the moment concerning electro-convulsive therapy being done without consent. It sounds pretty horrible too.
In an effort not to re-mangle the (originally mangled) 'To a Mouse' excerpt I read the whole thing in side-by-side translation. Oddly enough it was not part of my education. Effort worthwhile for learning that a coulter is a plow. Say no more. This is not a politics thread and I'm hoping that other interesting facts will pop of if we can just maintain decorum.
It's probably worth putting the whole thing here. It has possibly my favourite opening line of any poem. Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry man's dominion, Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal! I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request; I'll get a blessin wi' the lave, An' never miss't! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin, Baith snell an' keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell- Till crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell. Thy wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld! But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy! Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e. On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!
Mice in medical research might be a fit topic here. Certainly have saved some human lives. OTOH mice as vermin have ended lives. I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to compare the tallies. But here, all those (not entirely unlike) words about a simple natural observation. Robert Burns must have had an awful lot of time on his hands...
Robert Burns died young at 37. Dental work a few months earlier is suspected as proximate cause. Dental technology ca. 1795 was somewhat barbaric as well. Cannot imagine his last few months were pleasant.
That's a hard one to work out. I believe this long-lost Burns poem answers the question of why he had so much time on his hands. Wee corner o' a muckle room There's nothin' tae watch o'er there. I'm bored, so ah'm gaunnae write a tome Aboot a moose, that's wee, wi' white hair. Ah huvnae anything else tae do But sit here, an' write poems, ah tell ye. 'Cause John Logie Baird's no' born yet the noo So he hasnae invented the telly.
I've been lucky with my teeth. Dental technology ca. 2017 sounds pretty barbaric from what friends tell me. But yes, his last few months must have been awful. Burns Night remains a highlight of my social calendar. One year in Shanghai, there was a big Burns Night in a hotel, which I of course attended, kilt and all. A few weeks earlier, I'd been in a taxi and the driver was playing bagpipe music on his car CD player. I asked him about it, and he said that, while he couldn't speak English, he'd always been fascinated by Scottish culture. He read translations of Burns, and had a huge collection of bagpipe music. I told him that that year's big Burns Night celebration was at the Equatorial Hotel, and gave him the details. He said he'd be sure to work it. I fell out of that hotel at about 2am, and staggered in my kilt into a taxi. It turned out to be that driver. He said he'd spent the whole night ferrying drunk Scottish people home from the hotel. They'd all been so pleased that he was playing bagpipe music that they'd all given him enormous tips, and it had been his best night's work ever. He insisted on driving me home for free.
