The Blaisdell Blog

  Ebola, Mutation and a Lack of Preparation Under a microscope an Ebola virus reminds me of a sailor’s double half hitch.   It is a virus of African origin, a hemorrhagic fever, meaning it causes intense bleeding, frequently from every orifice of the body, in the later stages of the disease.   Ebola virus disease (EVD) typically emerges periodically in small villages of Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.    Ebola’s natural host is probably the fruit bats of the tropics.   When the disease moves to larger animals, principally primates (humans are primates) it becomes fatal.   When the people of these remote villages find the ill or dead primates and use them for food, Ebola enters the human population where is kills and spreads—always through contact with infected bodily fluids.   The disease first appeared in 1976 simultaneously in two countries, the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   At that time, it had a...

The person standing in front of the mirror was certain that added size would also add confidence, enhanced self-respect, even allure.   They would suddenly be stronger, more assertive, less likely to be overlooked in the workplace and the mating market.   Never mind that the body is simply not made for what was being contemplated. To add that kind of size required the injection of foreign substances into sensitive areas that contain delicate structures, blood vessels and nerves, none of which were designed for rapid and extreme distention.     Doctors spoke of the risk of infections, abscesses, sepsis and cellulitis.   It is not a woman, but a man, standing in front of the mirror.   The current slaves to plastic fashion are men.   And they are considering a procedure called “ballmaxxing.”   Before I go any further let me say, as clearly as I can, that you must not do this.   It is dangerous, painful and laughably insecure.   Having...

  On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.   Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.   Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.   In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external. In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.   It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.   When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.   Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.    Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain h...

  My husband’s sister, Kimberly Sue Wynn, died on May 1, 2024.   Kim was born with every card in the deck stacked against her.   Born of unknown parents, on an unknown date in an unknown place in South Korea any reasonable person would say that she had no chance for a good life.   It was not unheard of for unwanted Korean babies (especially girls) to be left on the roadside to die from exposure.   Indeed, a Korean child who did not have a Korean man declare himself as father did not even have citizenship.   But either Kim’s mother, or her family, made a critical choice, and placed Kim in the receiving bin of an orphanage.   The orphanage offered her life, though it would be a half-life at best.   She would be given marginal care, marginal food, marginal education.   She would be trained for a life of servitude, with virtually no opportunity for marriage or a family of her own.   But once again, fate took a hand. Half a world away, ...