Moon over Kuwait Towers
Celebrating 100,000 hits:
(Truly, just a lucky shot, with AdventureMan’s help)
Thank you, friends and visitors, for your visitsm your comments and your insights. Thank you for being a part of my virtual family.
Kuwait Infant Mortality Rate
This very sad little item is from last week’s Kuwait Times:
Officials at the Ministry of Health disclosed that deaths among newborn infants were increasing at an alarming rate in Kuwait due to premature births and delayed deliveries over the past couple of years. The rate they said, touched 17.9 per thousand during the year 2006, in addition to the drastic decline in the quality of healthcare accorded to newborn infants. They called for urgent decisions to be taken to improve the healthcare for newborn infants.
Deaths among infants increased from 8.4 per thousand in the year 2005 to 9.1 per thousand during 2006.
The Jahra Governorate reported the highest rate of deaths among infants. Statistics indicated that 28.9 percent of the infants’ deaths were caused due to the short pregnancy period and inadequate weight of the infants when born and 17.2 percent were caused by various congenital deficiencies.
Breast Cancer Risk Increases with Age
From BBC Health:
60% ‘unaware of cancer age link’
Most British women are unaware that breast cancer risk increases with age, a poll suggests. A survey of 1,000 people by charity Breast Cancer Care found nearly six out of 10 women did not know getting older was a strong risk factor.
More than 44,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK and 80% of all cases occur in over-50s.
Experts said many young women can worry unnecessarily while older women do not realise they are at risk.
The poll found that 58% did not know that the older they get, the higher their risk of breast cancer.
It’s extremely alarming that most women over 70 do not take up breast screening, as this increases the likelihood that any breast cancer they may develop is found at a later stage
Women aged 18-24 were better informed. But 65% of women aged 45-54 knew there was a strong link between getting older and risk of the disease.
You can read the rest of the article on BBC Health.
I have to admit, I am one of those who thought that if you didn’t get it like in your 40’s or 50’s, you weren’t likely to get it. I don’t know why I thought that – maybe because there is so much horror in women getting breast cancer young, and we are more aware of the loss. I was shocked to learn that the older we get, the higher the risk. Aaarrgh.
Mobile Phones and Cancer
You know, you get those forwards that have to do with cancer and mobile phones and then everyone tells you “NNAAAAAAHHHH” and especially the mobile phone companies tell you “NAAAHH!!” and act like you are some conspiracy-theory crazy who sees dark designs behind the most commonplace everyday event.
This is on BBC Health News. Objective studies aren’t so sure. And few studies have looked at long term use of mobile phones.
Here is a summary of the story:
Cancer Doubt Remains Over Mobiles
The long-term cancer risk of mobile phone use cannot be ruled out, experts have concluded.
A major six-year research programme found a “hint” of a higher cancer risk.
But the UK Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHRP) did rule out short-term adverse effects to brain and cell function.
Researchers are now expanding the programme to look at phone use over 10 years, and the specific impact on children, which has not been studied.
And here is where you can read the whole article: BBC Health.
I Will Never Understand You
When I came online this morning, I got a big shock. Yesterday, I had the highest reader count ever in the history of the blog. I can usually count on Saturdays being a very low day for readership, and Sundays are usually a little better, so I am totally at a loss as to why yesterday would have attracted so many readers.
I posted book reviews. You never read my book reviews! I do it for the few readers out there like me, addicted to really good books, really good authors, and then we talk about books BEHIND YOUR BACK! You never even see the really good book discussions, or us getting together and furtively exchanging our books!
The last time I had so many readers was back in December, when I posted Mom’s Fruit Cake and the Divinity Candy recipes. Overall, that Divinity Candy keeps going and going. Go figure! I had only been blogging 3 months at the time, and oh, what a thrill it was to see that spike for December, but it left me desolate as your attentions shifted elsewhere and I couldn’t figure out how to get you back.
But Go Figure is my constant refrain. You are a fickle audience. I can’t help but be intrigued. I will never know what you are thinking; maybe 1% of my daily visitors comment. The rest of you drop in and snorkel around a little, and then leave, a swirl trailing behind you but no tangible evidence of your visit, other than the little tick in the stats that show you were here.
All I can deduce is that the best bet for blogging is to be content to start small and build slowly. Don’t worry about statistics. (And don’t worry if you ARE worried about statistics, as you can tell from the content of this post, we all are aware of our statistics, that was a purely hypocritical word of advice on my part.)
Honestly, I have come to the conclusion that my very safest bet is to blog for myself, and that is what I do. I blog about what catches my eye, what strikes my funny bone, what grabs my intellect, what inflames my heart, and I blog about the trivialities of my daily life. I love your visits, and I love hearing your point of view, even if it doesn’t agree with my own. I ask only that you watch your language, as my Mother reads this blog, and that while you are passionate, you steer clear of hate language toward any race, gender or nationality. Bureaucracy is fair game.
I am happy you came by, sorry if I was sleeping!
Get an Early Lead and Hold It
The title line is from an old joke: a high school football coach tells his team the secret of winning – Get an early lead and hold it.
Many of you have asked about why it even matters to me what the Yemeni Star is all about. So I am going to tell you a secret from my childhood, a secret that got me through school with good grades.
It’s in two parts. The first is about getting an early lead – it’s called The Halo Effect and it is like getting an early lead and holding it. You work really hard and get good grades when you are young, and those early grades influence the later graders to give you the benefit of the doubt as you move up the grades. It doesn’t always work, but often enough that it has been given it’s own name.
The second secret is to develop an area of interest to YOU. For me, it was the stars. I loved (and still love!) stars, constellations, comets, heavenly rhythms, music of the planets, etc. For me it is God’s hand on this vast, cosmic scale. So I first started writing early reports on stars, constellations, etc. You know, how you have to write science projects?
From the constellations, I branched out into mythology – what a great study. So many references in daily life and literature refer to mythical beings and happenings, and if you don’t have a clue, you miss a whole level of richness. Like if someone refers to a Sisyphusian endeavor, you don’t have to run go look it up, you know they are referring to an almost impossible task. Between astronomy and mythology, there was enough material that I could take previous reports every year and ramp ’em up for the next year. I usually learned something, but the most important thing I learned was that I could succeed without having to re-invent the wheel every year.
If you can develop a particular field that interests you, your school life can be a lot more interesting. And believe me, we all know how deadening the school experience can be, unless you have really good teachers who can make it come alive for you. You have the most amazing tools available to you – a world of information, via the ‘net, and GoogleEarth – GoogleSky,, Wikipedia, and all kinds of illustrations available to add depth to your papers and reports. You are truly a generation who can have a lot of fun learning, if you take responsibility for your own education.
(Big hurrahs and shouts out here for Elijah, Swair, Magical Droplets,, MacoholicQ8, and all my other teaching friends, my classroom-warriors friends, heading back to do battle with and enlighten reluctant minds; you are my heroes!)
Days Weeks and Months Stats
WordPress knows what it is doing, and knows what WordPress users want. They know what I want even before I know I want it.
Like sometimes I might idly wonder “I wonder if every month my readership builds?” but I don’t even wonder enough to write to WordPress and ask them to do it. But they read my mind, and they do it anyway!
So today WordPress has introduced a new feature Days, Weeks and Months. (They called their article Good Charts Come in Threes). When you are looking at your day-by-day statistics, you can also click on Weeks or Months and see the broader trends.
Has my readership been growing? Yes, but it’s not a steady upward curve. I had a huge peak in December, with all the Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes.
And those old favorites are still racking up the numbers!
Christmas Divinity Candy gets a respectable number of hits every month, along with Mom’s Fruit Cake Recipe and Mayonnaise, Aioli and Rouille.
When I blog on social or political issues, I get a huge number of hits for a day or two, and then maybe one or two a month, as people look for specific articles later.
A big all time stat builder, however, and a big surprise to me, was Tudo’s Vietnamese Restaurant in Pensacola.
The Robin Pope Safari series:
Hiking with Robin Pope in Zambia, Part 1
Hiking with Robin Pope in Zambia, part 2
Hiking with Robin Pope in Zambia, Part 3
Hiking with Robin Pope in Zambia, Part 4
I wrote that series back in October, when I had been blogging barely over a month, and no-one noticed. Then, all of a sudden, in June, someone spotted it and published it in their newsletter. How did I know? All of a sudden this obscure series had hits that climbed as I watched. How funny.
What totally strikes me as funny is that the immediate response is no indicator of the long term response, and so I am also very thankful to WordPress that you can click on a specific post and track it’s popularity over it’s life-history. That’s where you find the above surprises.
And I still really like the ability to take a look back over the previous seven days, and the previous 30 days. The posts YOU think are the best are not always the posts with “legs”, i.e. the posts that will continue to get hits long after they are published.
WordPress, Woooooo Hooooooo. You totally ROCK.
Urge for Sex in Mornings?
I am always fascinated by what brings people to my blog. I take a look from time to time at the Search Engine Terms – I love it that WordPress gives us so much information. But today I was baffled – most of these, I can understand, I have blogged on many of these subjects.
I have never blogged on the urge for sex in mornings.
It gives me a big giggle to think so many strange phrases and questions lead to my blog, but I laugh because I can’t think of any serious reason why it works that way. Sometimes life is just weird.
Search Views
find arab times Kuwaiti newspaper Aug 8t 4
St Nicklaus and santa? 2
snopes cardiologist sludge pain in jaw 1
burner phone 1
mayonnaise +olive +oil + vinegar + musta 1
KLM Troubles 1
st. niclaus day celebration (germany) 1
gossip and back biting in islam 1
“vinegar” cures chocolate taste 1
Urge for sex in mornings 1
Chocolate ‘lowers’ blood pressure
A mouthful of dark chocolate each day could reduce blood pressure, cutting the risk of stroke, research suggests.
Forty-four people with raised blood pressure were put into two groups. One ate six grams of dark chocolate daily, the other the same amount of white.
The first group saw blood pressure fall slightly, but the others saw no change, researchers wrote in the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA).
The British Heart Foundation warned chocolate was a “treat not treatment”.
You can read the rest of the article at the BBC Health News here. Heh heh heh – sounds like a ‘treatment’ to me!
7 Million Muslims
In today’s Kuwait Times is an Independance Day message from the American Ambassador, Richard LeBaron, in which he states:
Numbering some seven million, there are more Muslims in America than in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE combined. In our more than 1,200 mosques that stand peacefully alongside churches and synagogues, you will find congregations as diverse as America itself. . .
I had no idea. I know in the Seattle area there are many mosques, many Moslems; Seattle is a city built on the energy and hope of new immigrants. But I had no idea we had seven million Moslems in the USA.
If you want to read the full text of the message you will have to buy the paper – it’s not on the website.
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