My Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild Notes.

I have been saving these notes on my laptop, but it occured to me if I save them "to the cloud," (here on my blog) others will be able to Google up some answers.

I hope you find them helpful.

Hearty Fried Wild Greens Full recovery +15
Hearty Steamed Mushrooms Full recovery +9
Hearty Mushroom Skewer FR +5
Energizing Honey Apple 4 hearts and half wheel of stamina
New Sledgehammer at Your New House in Hateno
New Sledgehammer respawns behind tree down alley under shrine in Kakariko
Woodcutter’s ax at neat end of great Zora bridge
Old man’s Cabin for Stamella Shrooms chilis, Hy shrooms bird Ax
Silver broadsword respawn behind shine in Zora domain
Iron Sledgehammer behind southern right pillar under Zora domain
Bed on top of Zora dam to the east.

Knight’s Claymore in Keo Rung Shrine Korok Village
You will need to do the puzzle again:
Column 1, row 5
Column 2, row 3
Column 3, row 1
Column 4, row 2
and
Column 1, row 4
Column 2, row 2
Column 3, row 2
Column 4, row 1

“Souped up”? Traveller’s sword left in Shai Utoh, Ubata point, in the far south, west of Lake Floria

NW of gerudo tower is a smaller cliff face with a cave you can force open with stasis or move the smaller stones by pushing and get the largest boulder with a Octo Balloon. Inside there are 3 chests. But just lying on the ground next to them: radiant shield 35 Gerudo spear 16 Golden bow 14 Edge of duality 50 And a moonlight scimitar 25. Everything respawns each Blood moon except the chests.

Chests had an opal x5 bomb arrows and 300 rupees

One Knight's Broadsword spawns stuck in the ground in front of the fountain in the Central Square of Hyrule Castle Town Ruins next to a Knight's Shield, however Link must be careful as several Guardian Stalkers patrol the area.

Torches: One Hateno lab, two at Akkala lab, one at Dueling peaks Stables, One at inn in Zora domain, one at cooking pots just to left of chieftain's palace in Gerudo.

Zora Spear under throne room in the water to the left side of the pool.

Silver shield and single handed silver sword on northern bridge out of Zora's Domain heading up to Veiled Falls.

Edge of Duality and shock arrows in chests under water under Bridge of Hylia… Video is pinned -not collected yet-

Great flame blade spawns in ancient tree stump directly west of central tower. Warp to Kaam Ya’Tak "Trial of Power" Shrine. Climb up cliffs to the west of it, follow them north, paraglide down to platform. Kill a Moblin and a Bokoblin, or just grab the sword and warp away-not collected yet.

Check out glow on Satori mountain and take photo of Lord of the Mountain. Blupee central. You can mount the Lord of the Mountain if you have beau coup stamina, or you can shoot up all the blupees. (Will be useful with the Spring of Wisdom quest on the top of Mount Lanayru? Didn’t see that.)

Travelers Sword and Shield on westernmost shore of Lanayru bay.


Great Thunderblade respawn, just northwest of Tabantha Tower (double check) Fight some Lizalfos sword is stuck in the ground in a small valley on the mountain top.

Creep around Lynel for shock arrows for Zora's Vah Ruta quest? You can't beat him at that point, he's too tough. Sneak only. OR... Buy shock arrows in Lurelin, Korok Forest Village, Gerudo town.

To get into Gerudo, talk to the guy lingering near shrine. He will start a quest. The guy who has the ladies clothes you need is at the Kara Kara Bazaar.

“On the north side of Kolami Bridge in Tabantha Frontier there are two Lizalfos waiting to ambush you wielding Rito weapons, the Feathered Edge and Feathered Spear, on the south end of the same bridge there's a treehouse enemy camp where two of the Lizalfos have those same weapons. I can't find the Kite Shield that goes with them, though.”

Lizafols near tiny island near Chaas Qeta Shrine where Korok hovers has knight’s halberd.

To keep track of Great Fairy upgrade items, take screen caps to the system album of each armor item. Toggle between game and album for quick reference.

Smotherwing: Beedle at East Akkala stable, Wetland stable… Next to Kaya Wan shrine which you don’t seem to have yet. It’s North of Riverside Stable, just west of Lanayru wetlands.

Tabantha Bridge Stable and Lakeside Stable for Thunderwing butterflies from Beedle.

Hold off completing the shrine quest on the Thundera Plateau in order to collect as many Thunderwings and Electric Darners as you can while the perma storm rages.

Soldier’s Spear and shield at Snowfield Stable.

Ze Kasho: Silverscale Spear is in chest, hard to get to, need lots of arrows.

Left Stone Smasher two handed weapon in Shae Mo’sah Shrine.

A respawning drill shaft can be found on the mountain between Goron Hot Springs and Daqa Koh Shrine, behind some breakable rocks. (Haven't found it yet.)

Knights Claymore in Qua Raym Shrine.

The enemy mook encampment (skull cave) by the Dako Tah Shrine in the Gerudo desert (between the Gerudo Canyon Stable and the Bazaar) has monsters with Royal Broadswords.

One Big Hearty Radish grows at the southwest foot of Nero Hill in Tabantha Frontier where it is being admired by a nearby Bokoblin. Hard to find!!

Left a Falcon bow quick shot in Bareeda Naag Shrine. Standing facing the cannon’s ladder in the first room, to your left, bomb the wall.

Flame blade left in Voo Lota Shrine: Instead of using the next air current to get back where you started, pass it. You'll be able to see a chest on the platform, but an air current will prevent you from landing on it. Look below you and use Stasis to stop the fan, allowing you to open the chest with a Flameblade inside.

Rota Ooh Shrine left behind a Feathered Edge 19 single handed (?)

Left a Gerudo spear in Joloo Nah Apparatus Shrine.

 There's  respawning Forest Dweller's Bow in a cave on Kincean Island, which is quite decent. (Bombable Cave in Lanayru Wetlands?) There is a FDB with a bonus (5 shot?) in Mogg Latan Shrine?

At Flight range fall through the updraft to the water below, there is a chest in the water with a knight’s broadsword inside.

Left an Edge of Duality in Kaam Ya’Tak Shrine of power behind two small guardians. Left Knight’s broadsword in following room.

Left Blizzard Rod in chest on SE ledge on Ankel Island. (Check ZD interactive map)

Left a Great Flame Blade in Shai Yota Shrine

Three big hearty Radishes at top of Davdi Island.

Left a Knight’s Bow in Zalta Wa Shrine. From mummy platform paraglide to the top of the room on your right that houses the 2nd orb receptacle.

Royal Claymore in To Quomo Shrine.

Endura Shroom on stumps at Serenne Stable (in SE of shrub enclosure.) Soldier’s shield and bow just north of path far east of enclosure.

Left a Frost Blade in Kuh Takkar Shrine. Big metal block is to the left side of shrine take long way around.

Left a Frost Blade in Mijah Rokee Shrine. You have to defeat a Guardian Scout with a 30 sword and 30 shield to get at it, I think.

Left a Flame Spear in Korsh O’hu (Seven Heroines) shrine.

Left a Moonlight Scimitar in Kema Zoos Shrine. Seven Swords women quest.

Left Moonlight Scimitar and a Radiant Shield in Dako Tah Shrine.

Feed a dog 3 or four times. Mere apples will do. The treasure doesn't spawn until you feed the dog enough.

What you get: There are two dogs in the paddock in Hateno on the hill next to Lake Sumac. ONLY the collie to the north will bring you to a chest with a Silver Rupee.

Grey dog in Lurelin will give you a star fragment.
Collie behind Dueling Peaks Stable: Silver Rupee.
South Akkala Stable Dog: Knight's Claymore.

Didn't take note of East Akkala, Wetland, Outskirt, or Gerudo dogs treasures, but they were things like elemental arrows and an opal(?) Maybe Wetland was bomb arrows? One was ice arrows. (Comment below if you know which dog gives what!)

Could not find a dog at Foothill Stable. Is there one? Comment below!

If you use it, they will come.

It's time to give Twitter a run for its money.

Facebook isn’t going anywhere, because most everyone you know is on it. What makes all the hipsters want to flee it, is exactly why you need to stay on it: Visibility. For now, at least. But because many people are sick of all the ads and object to being told stage names are not allowed on Facebook, nor any other type of pseudonym (drag queens simply make easy targets), many artists, performers, and activists are staking their claim in a new territory, a new social network that welcomes “secret identities” and promises not to advertise or sell your information: Ello.

It’s clean. It’s hip. It’s interface is simple. It takes the best of Facebook, the best of Twitter, and combines them with the Tumblr-ish-ness of gif support, even for your banner picture, which can be scrolled elegantly up or down like a roller window shade. Also hipper: Round profile pics. As an homage to the new look of social media I have been posting only round pictures to my ello page and crafting only round memes to share. (Follow me @bluelustreak)

So is Ello the savior of our privacy? Probably not. But does it give people a chance to break the monopolistic triumvirate of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr? Yes. Competition is excellent for innovation, and Pirates despise monopoly.

Part of its current appeal may also be that it is invite only for now, and if you’ve requested an invite directly from Ello, you are probably still waiting. You have to *know* someone who is already in and willing to part with one of their 5 precious invitations for you. How precious? There’s a report of Ello invitations selling on Ebay.

So we have struck our claim in this new territory, and if you have too, or do so in the future, we invite you to follow us there.

Shake things up, make Zuckerberg and the rest *work* for it (always) and join us on this new, hip, and for now fairly quiet frontier known as Ello.

Cheers, mate!

Resist GMOs

(This is a repost from a blog I'm no longer affiliated with. It was written before the DARK Act passed, making the state level legislation it was referencing irrelevant. The points of "Why label?" remain as relevant as ever, though.)

We here at MPP would like to invite you all to join us at a public hearing this coming September 22 before the House Agriculture Committee about Massachusetts’ GMO labeling bill, H. 3242. Support GMO labelling? Great! Come on out!

But if you are one of the people who is on the fence about GMO regulation, or if you are outright pro-GMO, this article is directed toward you.

There is a lot of talk in the media of folks who are anti-GMO being anti-science. The commercial media, which remember, gets millions from Monsanto, DuPont, and Bayer, focuses on the issue of safety concerns as being “backward.” No debate. The scientists who question the safety of GMOs get little airtime, if any. The Pirate argument doesn’t even touch on the matter of food safety. So let’s set that matter aside for now. There are many reasons to label GMOs aside from a safety concern, if any.

Before we get into any points of why label, please remember the stink food producers made when the law required them to merely list ingredients. Remember the stink the meat packing industry made against laws regulating safety of meat production, demands that intensified greatly after the publishing of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. Power cedes nothing without a demand. With this in mind:

We oppose the privatization of the commons

For the Pirates the issue of GMOs is about privatization. We oppose the privatization of the commons: The water that has been on this planet since before humans existed that falls from the sky, the seeds that invented themselves and therefore should not be able to be patented by any person, human or corporation. The usefulness of information that humans collect depends upon all that has been learned before for context and therefore needs to be free to be used by all humanity.

Fairness

What makes a seed useful? What is the essence of any seed? Food? Material? Poison? Weed? What makes a seed of use to humanity, THAT has already been produced, by nature. What percentage of an original genome is changed in a GMO? .0099%? Not bits that changes the seed’s essential usefulness, either, the reason we cultivate that seed to begin with, but a bit that ostensibly makes the seed “more useful.” For that infinitesimal change to what nature invented, a patent is granted. Patents are significant because they confer control. They allow companies to sue. People whose crops are contaminated by GMO pollen have two choices: Pay the licensing rights to the contaminator or go to court. Court costs money. Small farmers can’t afford to fight.

Tradition

The seed companies demand that seeds not be reused. This is a waste. Farmers abhor this practice and will avoid the GMOs for this reason alone. But instead of leaving farmers to choose to use what seeds they want the biotech companies to send “emissaries” out to the farmland to strong arm and threaten the people there with financial ruin, even physical violence.

Known toxins

There is little debate about whether glyphosate is dangerous for human consumption. And it is used in conjunction with GMOs 100% of the time.

Effects on the Environment

Monoculture, a practice employed by many GMO farmers, depletes the soil. Weeds will evolve resistance to Glyphosate when it is used often, necessitating the use of even stronger, more toxic herbicides. The herbicides also wind up in our watersheds, which plenty of people object to, and do not want to support by buying GMO products.

Democracy

For people who are nodding their heads and looking to avoid GMOs just on these few principles of fair business dealing and environmental protection: The people haven’t the power to ban GMOs outright. Congress is too corrupt, gets too much money from big biotech. We are often told, though, that we always have the right to vote with our pocketbook. We have a right to know if a product we are looking to buy was produced with what we consider unfair business practices. But without consumer labelling we don’t even have this.

This is the Pirate argument: Safe or not to eat is beside our point. It’s a Massachusetts tradition to resist empire, to resist unfair taxes, mark ups, labor practices. The Tea Party tea was perfectly safe to drink yet into the harbor it went. ON PRINCIPLE. On principle we have a right to make a choice to buy locally made pop or Coca Cola, to shop at Market Basket or Walmart, to support politically resistant farmers or corporate compliant farmers. This is reason enough for us to need labels: To make informed choices.

But are GMOs safe to consume?

If they aren’t safe to consume, good luck getting any commercial media to report such findings. The media’s stated goal is profits and not the public interest. We used to have laws enforced about airwave use and public interest, but most of our news comes to us through cables now. And even regarding the airwaves, in the 90’s a Florida Fox affiliate shut down a story on Monsanto, a TRUE story about cancer risk and rBGH, and fired the reporters for refusing to drop the matter. The appeals court sided with the Fox affiliate, and this is where that famous edict “Fox won the right to lie to you, in court!”came from: From Monsanto silencing a news studio. How many news editors and reporters do you think want to risk their livelihoods investigating a company who has already succeeded in shutting down a negative story, costing a Fox affiliate hefty legal fees and two reporters their jobs? Consider that.

Once you do consider the role of the media in these matters, you may consider employing the Precautionary Principle when you shop, which is your right to do. But how difficult is this to do if foods are not labeled? This point touches on the strongly held Pirate belief of a right to transparency for the people from large operators, like governments and corporations.

These are the Pirate Party’s points for being pro-labelling: We oppose GMOs because we oppose patents and the privatization of the commons. We support transparency for governments AND corporations. There is good reason to suspect the press is biased in favor of business over the public interest, and therefore safety has NOT been conclusively established.

But safe or not to eat, you have the right as a concerned consumer to know in what manner your food was produced. And this is why your Massachusetts legislators should vote for labelling. And you need to let them know you want this, because armies of lobbyists have already descended upon the bay state to quash this bill dead. This is why we want to see YOU at this hearing

For more information visit MA Right to Know GMOs.

Lucia Fiero is the former Secretary of the Massachusetts Pirate Party and the former Secretary of the United States Pirate Party. She was forced to resign the party over her feminist views. Tweet her at @Bananaluloop

I dare you to try!

Try to post this link to Facebook, in a status or in a comment:

https://www.amazon.com/Hillary-Vince-story-death-cover-up/dp/0692744878

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, pointed out that on Facebook, he could not post directly to this book on Amazon. I Googled the titled and found I had the same problem.

Maybe the problem in the whole Amazon site? I checked. I had no trouble posting a link to this "uncontroversial" book:

https://www.amazon.com/Cake-Pops-Tricks-Recipes-Irresistible/dp/0811876373/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

or this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PURYL5S?psc=1

Go ahead and try it yourself, I'll wait.

Important message from Act-Ma for New England activists

"Act-MA is up to almost 950 subscribers, an increase of 200 since the election.

We have had some complaints that not enough people are listing their events on Act-MA. You can reach these people with your event announcement by simply sending an email to:

act-ma@act-ma.org

As an added bonus several local radio shows monitor Act-MA and broadcast a number of event announcements.

We would especially like to thank Linda Pinkow for regularly promoting Act-MA on her show on "What's Left Radio" Fridays from 6 to 7 PM on WMBR 88.1 FM

For information on her show and others check out.

http://www.act-ma.org/raadio.htm

We would also like to thank Dan "Bagelman" Kontoff for his extraordinary efforts to distribute Act-MA flyers at many recent demonstrations."

-Charlie Welch

Thank You For Your Thoughtful Comment

Thank you for taking some of your immensely valuable time to post a comment on my social media. Rest assured that I read at least some of it, and I’m certain the remainder was logical, factual, well written, free of grammatical or spelling errors, and did not at all resemble a word salad.

The reason you received this link is because there appears to be some disagreement between what I posted and what you believe to be true. And so, you bravely took it upon yourself to chastise the bad person on the internet for having an opinion different from yours. I expect your mother is most proud of such a laudable accomplishment. Tell her I said "Hi!"

If it gives you solace, you may consider me properly castigated by your impeccable logic, your intelligent use of facts and your cutting wit.

I do understand your desire is to have me reply directly to your comment, but I’m afraid I’m not the master of time management you are. As a result, I find I’m often behind in my work and cannot afford the specific care and attention such thoughtful prose deserves so that we may spend hours going back and forth in an ultimate quest to prove who is the greater master of the caps lock key.

If you believe you have been directed to this link in error, please send me $100 US for every 100 words you would like me to type in reply.

Have an amazing day.

Picky, picky Lulu finally picks a smart watch

I have been wanting a rechargeable watch ever since I reached my 40s and the time that an average watch battery lasts started to fly past me. Well, no, what I really liked was the idea of changing the watch faces easily. Um... no I think I craved a way to know whether fishing my phone out of my purse was worth it to talk to the caller I was getting. I was also feeling the peer pressure to get a fitness tracker. (Peers like my mother. And my doctor.)

I have been *thinking* about getting a smart watch for a long time. And reading reviews. And being stingy.

I also wanted to see what Apple would finally offer.

Apple is so annoying. They steal your music. Their products are too pricey. And they are the last to offer an option. Still I waited because clearly there is something wrong with me.

I settled on a Pebble, which as you know was one of the earliest smart watch offerings. I use a 4s because my Samsung Galaxy failed me, and my son had moved on to a 5s, leaving his old phone up for grabs. Yeah, it only has 8 GB. I use very few apps, and I sync all my photos to Flickr, and all my contacts to Google. This works fine for me.

The Pebble Time (Round) is compatible with up to the 6 (s?) and as far back as the 4s. This gives me space to upgrade to a newer phone at some point. And Target had one on clearance this week for $99.99. I had found my smart watch at last!

It holds a charge. It doesn't have a touch screen but this is good for my fumbly, middle aged fingers. It's fairly intuitive and easy to navigate. It has lots of free faces. (Shiny!) It syncs with Apple Health on my iPhone. It's lightweight, and very sexy.

I like to change my faces often, and show off my faces to friends. There's a quick launch for that! I like to review my notifications! There's a quick launch for that, too! It doesn't make a noise, it only vibrates. This is all I want and need.

But my 50 year old eyes need a thing it doesn't do. In the daytime, in order to read it without getting out the reading glasses, I need the backlight intensity set to "blinding" (yes, this is what they call it!). At night, in the dark, I need it set to "medium". There is no quick way to do this. "Display" is low on the scrolling menu, that doesn't loop, and "Intensity" is low on *that* menu... that doesn't loop. Quick lunch cannot be set for Intensity.

I looked on Pebble Reddit and saw that, so far at least, there is no app that can compensate for this.

So, though I know 50-somethings are probably not your target demographic, know that this 50-something appreciates the simplicity of the Pebble Time Round, but could really use an app for intensity toggling to set a quick launch to.

FYI, the Pebble Time Round is currently available at Best Buy for $150. The $100. one I got at Target? I think I snagged the last one. :-D

Elves and Gnomes for the holidays

If you love wine and hate waste as I do, you have a cork collection, as I do. I also happened to have some 1 inch wooden beads and a hot glue gun. Putting the two together make a perfectly serviceable doll peg. "Gmones" for Waldorf education, like "Math Gnomes" can be found all over the web. They are doll pegs dressed in felt costumes. Similarly are embroidered gnomes, also dressed in felt. I have plenty of wool and acrylic felt, and I may just use it for peg dolls at some point, but what I find most soothing is crochet, both simple and complicated. This project required you to know how to single crochet, something many crafters can easily do.

Ain't she a cutie?



I could have chosen to use felt for the non-crochet bits of this project, too, but I don't like the "hand" of felt as much in such a small doll as I like t-shirt fabric. In a small project, the t-shirt fabric has a more realistic/nicer drape. As I recycled my son's t-shirts into a quilt this year, I have many colors of t-shirt scraps left over. But you can use felt, if you prefer. Felt is very Christmassy, too.



Start by cutting a circle of your chosen fabric. For an elf, I wanted to use red as a contrast, but you can match your crochet thread, if you like. I also cut a strip for the hat headband and scarf. Use the photo for scale, I just eyeballed it.



Next with a fine needle and regular matching thread, blanket stitch around the circle. The stitches should be small, about the size of a single crochet stitch.



(Wonders if Margaret Atwood crochets?)

I chose size 3 crochet thread for this. This is as large as you should go, IMO. Anything larger will give you something too bulky and out of scale. It will look less like her mama crocheted her a sweater and more like some fumbling hooman accosted her with a crochet hook.



Pull a loop of your crochet thread through any single blanket stitch, then single crochet all around the circle. Be careful not to pull your stitches too tight!



For the second round, single crochet into back loops only. Then check to make sure the proto-sweater fits snugly but not tightly around the bottom of your cork doll.



For all the remaining rounds, just single crochet. I crocheted with the sweater in place, but you don't have to. Just check the fit every few rounds to make sure your stitches aren't too tight.



You can either stitch the "neckline" with the sweater on the doll, which I chose to do, or you can use a yarn needle use a running stitch to snug things up at her neck.



Next is the hatband. You will want this to be able to fold up, so make it twice as wide as the space you want covered. Measure around the head with a little overlap, and cut. Here also, you blanket stitch, but unlike in this photo, I found it works better to sew closed the loop with a seam up the back first, then sew around the loop.



Again, pull a loop of crochet thread through and single crochet all around. I prefer to crochet the second row back loops only, but this isn't critical. Every row above that, drop one stitch, over the seam in the hatband. This will be the back of the hat. It gets a little tricky as you reach the top. at the very top, chain two to finish. Leave a good few inches of crochet thread for the beads.



Fold the rest of the fabric strip in half lengthwise and artfully tie it around the doll's neck. Using the matching sewing thread stitch in place a "knot"



Fold hatband in half, or "up" over the bottom row of crochet. Glue hat into place. I used hot glue, but had bad results on another peg doll with hot glue. So, I recommend NOT using hot glue. You want to use a glue that stays wet long enough for you to move the hat to exactly where on her head you want the hat to sit. Hot glue locks the hat in the first place you set it, like it or not, "cute" or not. Of course, if you use slow set/slow dry glue for better results, you will need to let the glue dry completely before moving on to the next step.



Next you will need a tiny buckle. Or, you will need some wire and some tools. I *think* this is 16 gauge. Not sure. I like silver for elves and Santas and such.



Using flatnose pliers, bend an end of wire 90 degrees, then wrap the wire all the way around.



You will wind up with something like this. Use dykes to snip it off the wire. There is your buckle. Cut a strip of fabric the width of your buckle and the distance around your cork. I used grey. Threat the "belt" through the "buckle". Hot glue is prefered for gluing this into place, or you can stitch it.



Thread a piece of that same wire through the chain at the top of the hat, then use round nose pliers to work it into a swirly "s" hook. On that left over crochet thread at the top of the hat, thread some glass and silver beads, then a crimp bead. Use flatnose pliers the crimp the bead flat.



Leave the face blank if you like. That is the Waldorf style. If you like a face like the one on mine, I made two dots with a Sharpie, and make her cheeks rosy with a some blush and an eyeshadow brush.

Make many in different colors, and give as gifts. Or tie to gift wrapping. Or just keep for your own tree. For our Jewish friends and family, I also made a "Hanukkah gnome". See how her hat is crooked/rumpled? This illustrates the problem with using hot glue for the hat. Don't!



Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and all that!

I'm in the button biznez, bitchez!

                                                                 Are you thinking about buying a button maker for your organization? Different badge or button makers specialize in different sizes. Some companies don't make anything smaller than 1 5/8 inches. I opted for a 3 in one system from Badge-A-Minit. Big. Mistake. I planned on making MOSTLY the 1.25 inch size, the 2.25 and 3 inch mostly for novelty. Seriously the 3 inch size is like a frying pan. 

But the B.A.M. system cannot make 1.25 inch buttons properly. It's far to easy to over press and underpress. I had success about 1 time in 10 making a presentable 1.25 inch button. I wrote to them. I chatted with them. They sent more explicit instructions that raised my fail rate from 9 in 10 to 8 in 10. But nothing else. No replacement parts, no new machine parts, no refund. Their lifetime warranty is worth nothing.

SO... I cut my losses and bought a 1.25 inch only machine. It cost as much as the whole 3 in one B.A.M. system, but it is worth it! Foolproof is an understatement. I bought the model 250 from TheMadShop.com onEtsy. Seriously, if you need small buttons, Badge A Minit is not for you.

No Treatment or Vaccine for Ebola, but a $1000 Pill for Hepatitis C

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Lambert Strether on Naked Capitalism 

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/treatment-vaccine-ebola-1000-pill-hepatitis-c.html

By Roy M. Poses, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University, and President of FIRM, the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine, a not-for-profit organization (NGO) designed to raise awareness of external threats to the core values in health care as the first step toward addressing them. Originally published at Health Care Renewal.

The Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa continues to grow, and now appears to be the worst known epidemic of that disease to date.  In the US and Western Europe, press reports are now raising concerns that the disease could spread there.  For example, CNN, in an article entitled “Ebola Fears Hits Close to Home,” was a section headed “Could Ebola spread to the US?” An ABC article was entitled, “How the US Government Could Evacuate Americans with Ebola.”

Reasons for fear of spread are the increased mobility of people made possible by air travel, and the lack of specificity of early symptoms of Ebola, so infectious people may not realize the dangers their travel might pose.  A US citizen with Ebola was on his way back to the US via several connections, and made it as far as Lagos, Nigeria before becoming too ill to travel further (per CNN).  Making the fears worse are the high fatality rate of Ebola, the current epidemic included.  According to Vox, the current outbreak is the Zaire subtype of the virus, with an expected mortality rate of 68%.  Finally, there is no known effective treatment or vaccine for the Ebola virus.

Economics, not Science the Reason for Lack of Medical Options for Ebola

The reason there are no vaccines or treatments available for Ebola does not appear to be the scientific difficulty involved in developing them.  Vox also published a discussion for the economic genesis of the problem:

 Researchers have devoted lots of time to building a vaccine that could stop the disease altogether — and according to Daniel Bausch, a Tulane professor who researches Ebola and other infectious diseases, they’re making really significant progress.

Bausch says that the obstacle to developing an Ebola vaccine isn’t the science; researchers have actually made really great strides in figuring out how to fight back against Ebola and the Marburg virus, a similar disease.

‘We now have a couple of different vaccine platforms that have shown to be protective with non-human primates,’ says Bausch, who has received awards for his work containing disease outbreaks in Uganda. He is currently stationed in Lima, Peru, as the director of the emerging infections department of Naval Medical Research Unit 6.

The problem, instead, is the economics of drug development. Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to pour research and development dollars into curing a disease that surfaces sporadically in low-income, African countries. They aren’t likely to see a large pay-off at the end — and could stand to lose money.

Prof Bausch elaborated,

These outbreaks affect the poorest communities on the planet. Although they do create incredible upheaval, they are relatively rare events. So if you look at the interest of pharmaceutical companies, there is not huge enthusiasm to take an Ebola drug through phase one, two, and three of a trial and make an Ebola vaccine that maybe a few tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people will use.

Of course, that assumes that this outbreak, like previous ones, will remain relatively confined, at least to Africa.

The 10/90 Gap

So the implication is that had things been otherwise, those in developed countries now worried that Ebola could spread their way could have been reassured by the availability of a vaccine, or other treatment. 

The irony, if that is the right word, is that we do not have an effective treatment or vaccine for a viral disease that is relatively easily spread, and could likely rapidly kill nearly 70% of those infected.  Yet in the last months, we have been arguing about how the use of an extremely expensive treatment for another viral disease that is difficult to spread, and may kill a few percent of its victims over up to 20 or 30 years after infection. 

I am referring, of course, to Sovaldi, the recently announced $1000 pill for hepatitis C.  Hepatitis C does affect a lot of people, including relatively affluent people in developed countries.  As we noted previously, though, the majority of people infected with hepatitis C will never have serious medical repercussion from it.  Small proportions of patients will eventually develop severe liver disease, including cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer, and may die from the disease.  (See the report by the Center for Evidence Based Policy). Yet the treatment is being promoted for all patients with hepatitis C, most of whom could not benefit from treatment.  Furthermore, the evidence that treatment will actually prevent bad clinical outcomes, cirrhosis, liver failure, liver cancer, and premature death, is weak (lookhere).   Yet considerable money was devoted to developing multiple hepatitis C treatments, with the expectation that huge amounts of money could be made from selling them. 

This is an example of the 10/90 gap.

A long time ago, in 1998, I was invited to Forum 2 of an organization called the Global Forum for Health Research  The GFHR was an organization dedicated to overcoming the “10/90 gap”:

Less than 10% of the worldwide expenditure on health research and development is devoted to the major health problems of 90% of the population

Yet the 10/90 gap is probably getting worse.  In the US, our health care has now been heavily influenced by advocates of neoliberalism, or economism.  Health care is now largely run by generic managers trained in business schools, with no specific training or expertise in health care, and doubtful loyalty to its values.  Current business school dogma emphasizes the primacy of economic efficiency over all other goals (look here), to maximize “shareholder value,” which usually practically means maximizing short term revenue, to the immediate advantage of shareholders sometimes, but nearly always to the great and immediate financial advantage of paid managers and executives.  The emphasis on short term revenue uber alles helps explain how we have multiple expensive hepatitis C drugs, and no Ebola drugs or vaccines. 

The real irony is now that some very well paid managers may be worrying about the possibility of contracting Ebola whose transmission was facilitated by our increasingly global economy, globalized in part due to the advocacy of those advocating neoliberalism and economism. 

Summary

Unfortunately, the fortunes of the Global Forum for Health Research seem to have faded.  It went into sudden decline in 2010, and was subsumed into COHRED, the Council on Health Research for Development.  The last Global Forum meeting was in 2012, although there seem to be plans for another next year.    Meanwhile, multiple international organizations. including Medicins Sans Frontieres, established a Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, although its progress seems to be slow (see Pedrique B, Strub-Wourgaft N, Some C et al.  The drug and vaccine landscape for neglected diseases (2000-11): a systematic assessment.  Lancet Glob Health 2013; 1: e371.  Link here.).

In my humble opinion, as long as much of the health care system is run so as to put short-term revenue ahead of all else, a manifestation of financialization encouraged by the generic managers who run so much of health, partly in their own self-interest, and by business schools promoting the shareholder value theory, we will not make much progress on the 10/90 gap.  Ironically, the realization that even rich generic managers may no longer be protected from some of the deadliest diseases that used to only afflict the poorest people in the world may have an effect on this problem.   

As I have said before,  true health care reform would put in place leadership that understands the health care context, upholds health care professionals’ values, and puts patients’ and the public’s health ahead of extraneous, particularly short-term financial concerns. We need health care governance that holds health care leaders accountable, and ensures their transparency, integrity and honesty.

But this sort of reform would challenge the interests of managers who are getting very rich off the current system.  So I am afraid the US may end up going far down this final common pathway before enough people manifest enough strength to make real changes.

Adventures in Networking, Parental Edition

My Mothers' Day treat was last night at Rendezvous in Central Square. *Today* we went to my parents' to give Mom her present: Make Netflix work on her Wii again, for the first time since they moved to a new apartment, months ago. The first 30 minutes we spent trying to make the Wii "find" the WiFi network. Eventually we realized that we had to MOVE the router into the middle of the bed room. After 20 tries the network finally appeared in the list.

The next 1/2 hour Jason (and I at his insistence) entered the PIN instead of the network key. Tried this security setting, tried that one, but always with the PIN. Three times he told me not to bother calling Nintendo for help because they won't be available on a Sunday. And if you want to get along with your man, you don't argue about this. You let him try until you can say, see? YOU NEED HELP!

The next 30 minutes we spent working with the Nintendo guy, who picked right up when we called and was wikkid helpful. Once we entered the *network key* like we should have attempted originally, it STILL didn't work. We would have had to call anyway for the guy at Nintendo to tell that us the key had probably been changed from the factory default, and that we could find this password on my parent's desktop. Only my Dad had accidentally kicked the power cord out of the router. 90 minutes in and the desktop stopped accessing the internet. I thought Dad was going to freak out.

About 10 minutes of stress, Jason finds the cord is out and powers the router back up. Dad hovers now at the computer because we have to WAIT for the internet to come back up and he is now sure we have completely FUBARed his desktop so bad only my brother Dan can fix it. Once it is working again he says, "DON'T DO ANYTHING MORE!" Because he thinks the loss of his desktop connection was OUR fault. So I talk him down and get back to the computer. The network key HAD been changed to something very short and easy, probably at Dad's request, but there was no way we could make him understand what we needed in his increasingly senile state. (Believe me, we tried) Within 5 minutes we the Wii internet settings working and have Netflix running.

But Mom had disconnected her account, since she hadn't been using it. And she needed to put in a new credit card, the one in the system was no longer any good. Only we don't use American Express, so we keep putting the wrong security code in and keep getting rejected. My Dad is so high strung about people touching his stuff and our annoyed tones of voice, he is ready to insist we give up after nearly two hours. He leaves, not quite storms out, to take a walk. He is back nearly instantly.

So now we have to call Netflix to figure out what we are doing wrong, and the girl there tells us not to use the Wii to reinstate, but use the website. Back to the desk top. Only Dad sits by and hovers and we wait in the living room. We can hear Dad asking Mom to give up and send us home, so I send Jason in (because Dad won't yell at him) to see if he can help Mom. On the Netflix site, there is a little question mark one can click on that explains what we are doing wrong with the security code (What? We haven't used American Express in over 20 years!) And finally, Netflix is working on the Wii on my parents' big-ass flatscreen. Yay.

This is when Dad announces that Netflix sucks and that their selection is crappy. I tell him with a smile of course, "Well, it's Mothers' Day and we are here to please Mom, not you!"

For the last 15 minutes I show Mom how to use the Skype app on her iPad to get ahold of AJ, who is ALWAYS on Skype. She video calls him, coos over his curls and is happy. Two and a half hours of WTF and we finally have Mom hooked up and happy. We kissed them, listened to Dad grumble and Mom thank us profusely, then left.

We stopped at the package store on the way home for some MUCH needed wine. The end

Epilogue: *sips wine*

If not us, then who? Some corrupt attention whore!

I have been roving around the circles of the spiritual community for 30-ish years, in the Happy Valley, around JP, recently out in metro west, and I keep bumping up this very frustrating fact: Of the people within these circles that I encounter the *vast* majority consider themselves "above" politics.

"I'm not political"

"I don't vote"

I understand their belief that they way to make the world a better place is to focus on positive energy, personal responsibly, taking their own inventory, but the reality is, what that mostly does is make the space closest to them a better place. You can make a great space for people to come and heal from the cruel world yes. Yes, it has some effect on the rest of reality outside your vicinity. But while folks are using (don't get me wrong, very valuable) healing arts, doing their drumming, yoga, or what ever, very un-spiritual, very sick, negative energy people are making policy that is crushing the souls of billions, making people physically sicker, or outright blowing poor souls to bits in wars that the sick, *willing* political participants are inflicting on the rest of the planet.

Why not get involved in making the *policy* that will heal the world, make it less cruel, make folks in it less in *need* of spiritual healing?

Sure, voting isn't working the way the system works now. But we didn't give up on medicine when "physicians" were bleeding people to death. We knew that doctoring had to happen, and it took brave souls to stand up to the established order and say "Healing: You're doing it wrong!" And brave souls to go to those doctors the established order disdained.

I just met a young man last week in yoga class who lived in a town from which I needed a signature to get my candidate onto the ballot for state rep in November. I asked him if he was registered to vote and he said no. I asked him if he would please register and I would ask him again to sign the next week. He seemed affable and amused, but when I returned to yoga this week, he was harsh. He asked me, "Why don't you just ask God?' I didn't understand. "Instead of asking people to help you get him on the ballot, you might as ask God because he will never win." (Mind you, this is someone who considers himself FULL of positivity and light!)

So I dropped back to my old stand by question: Do you consider yourself intelligent? Most people say yes, and then I say, "So if the smart people are too smart for politics, we will always be run by idiots!" Or some such quip. But this young man asked, "Smart in what sense?" I said in any sense. And he said blithely with a little grin "I don't know." Well, I knew what to say to that!

"Isn't that who should be making policy? People who *aren't* completely satisfied that they have already learned everything they need to know? If the compassionate, positive, spiritual people won't run for office, vote against the duopoly, get involved in *policy* making, then it will be left to the corrupt, the heartless, the attention whores!"

Well, he clearly thinks himself smarter than at least me, because he said one last time before leaving, "You can't win." But he said it with a smile. 

Way to stay positive.

Funny Story

Yes, I am in the middle of a series on Facebook Withdrawal, but something amusing happened today.

I went to Norwood Hospital to see my Dad. He is in the psych ward because after his prostate surgery he stopped eating. I am happy to report that, after some strong psychoactive drugs, he looks MUCH better. And he is eating much better.

My mother was there, which I didn't expect, but didn't mind. My father wanted to watch the end of Godfather III, so we did. But then I wanted to let Dad know that I had blown off a friend today because Dad asked me to visit. I told (my Mom, mostly) that I was "helping a friend" run for office and she asked, "Oh, is he in the Pirate Party, too?"

Fuck. I had not told my mother I was in the Pirate Party. I had not told her when I was in the GREEN party. There is one acceptable way to be involved in politics in my family: BE A REPUBLICAN. My brother, Dan, won the Republican nomination for state rep out here in the sticks back in the late 90's. He only lost the general election by a small margin. But he ran as a REPUBLICAN. They (my blood) all voted for Bush and McCain. The only thing worse than being a Democrat, in their eyes, is being in a THIRD PARTY! "They will be rounding you up with all the other radicals," my father told me last week when I said I thought not only should there be single payer health care, there should be single payer HIGH SPEED INTERNET ACCESS!

Little did I know when we had this conversation, and I marveled at how he jumped to this conclusion from my tiny tilt toward socialism, that my mother had Googled me this month. They knew. They knew that not only was I in a 3rd party, I was 2nd in command of the troops. GROAN!

What did I do? I told her: I am NOT stopping to soothe your nerves. I CAN'T keep my head down while the world falls into chaos. If I don't actively attempt to keep things from going to shit, I will not be able to live with myself. Before I was active, I was miserable. Today, I have never been happier. IN MY LIFE. Never happier in my life than I am right now. Put that in your pipe, Mom. And, I explained to her, my husband is happy, too.

She totally believes in astrology, so I told her, Jason has a northern node in Aires. He was BORN to be a community activist. To resist this is to kill his very nature. This made her think, indeed. "I don't know much about the northern node aspect," she said. "Look into it," I told her.

So the cat is out of the bag. I can expect ridicule and derision every time I see a family member now.

Fuck it. They better step off. I am not changing my stripes.

Facebook Withdrawal, Continued

(This is me, 18 hours in to my self-imposed Facebook exile, wondering what to do with myself while waiting for my son at the library.)

I'm back. And I am back on Facebook, too. I was having a very bad week indeed to consider deleting my Facebook account, but a year ago September I was having a bad enough time of it that I was considering giving my cat up for adoption. And I adore my cat. Luckily, my family insisted we keep him, and now when I look at him now, and pet him and love him I realize just how unwell I must have been at the time.

Mental illness. No point in hiding the fact from any and all folks that I am an obsessive/compulsive. Manifested itself in diet and exercise issues when I was a teen because that is what my fretful mother kept me focused on, (I was miserable, thought I was fat, but in fact looked AWESOME!) ...but it was not an eating disorder, which was the diagnosis du jour in those days (early 1980s). Critics of the way women are portrayed in media will tell you that unrealistically thin women led to the explosion of eating disorders.

I'm certain it was my love of watching TV and reading magazines that led to my badly exacerbated OCD. I used to believe, get this, that they couldn't put anything on the news or in print that wasn't true, or critically important. WHY would they tell us about the threat of biological and nuclear terrorism if it wasn't something I needed to be concerned about? Or germs on my counter leading to disease and death? Skin heads wanted to slay my children because their father is a Jew, gang bangers wanted to car jack me because I was white, Saddam wanted to thwart democracy because we had freedom. They wouldn't lie to me or misdirect me! The news was populated with my friends. They kept me informed so that I could stay safe.

But I was always terrified. Utter panic, fear, and misery all the time. It never occurred to me that powerful people benefit from a terrified population. Like the royals depended on the church and fear of hell to make the people seek salvation, the oligarchs of recent decades have depended on the mass media to spread fear of chaos to make people seek government for salvation and safety. And I did. I voted Democrat (because Republicans are scary!) and defended whatever atrocities the Clintons enacted because, well, I had to support my party, right? And a Republican would have been so much worse, right?

But I wasn't just afraid of the abstract, I was afraid of my neighbors, afraid of what they would think of me if they knew my husband *consumed cannabis*! If they knew I didn't make my kids go to bed at the same time every night, that I had OCD, that I had insomnia. I was afraid that anyone of them could be that mild mannered person who turned out to be a serial killer/child molester/rapist, because life is just like the movie of the week, right? You remember all those lame, made for TV "reality based" films that later wound up on Lifetime TV. TV for women. Watch it and be afraid. And depend on the patriarchy to protect you!

I retreated to suburbia and became isolated. I was lonely too. It was awful.

One day, I took my tiny children to the Ann and Hope outlet. My 4 year old daughter was thirsty, and there was a water cooler full of water from the nearby spring in their garden center. I gave her a cup as another customers said, "It's not good." I wondered what he meant, so I tasted the water. It was awful. I made the manger taste it and he said, "Oh, that's not right!" He called over an African guy called Mohammed and asked him if he just changed the water. He had. I panicked. Mohammed? The news had been full of reports of threats of terrorist activity! He POISONED OUR WATER! I freaked out, went home and begged my parents to stay at our house with us so I could get through a night of terror, waiting for the poison to kill me and my daughter. This is how an obsessive compulsive thinks.

Well, my mother did a good job of soothing my nerves. It turns out that Mohammed, being newly arrived from Africa, didn't understand that a particular KIND of water had to be put in the cooler when he refilled it. He didn't understand that he was supposed to go to the spring water tap. He refilled the cooler with the garden hose. Nasty tasting yes, but not poisoned.

She convinced me the next morning NOT to watch the news, that my nerves couldn't take any more scare tactics from the media. So when I arrived at my daughter's nursery school the next morning, I had no idea that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. "We are under attack, we are at war" the radio playing in the secretary's office said. "It's World War III!" I thought. I had been so well prepared by the media to expect an attack that I suspected the poor dude working at Ann and Hope, but it never occurred to me at that time that I (and the rest of us) had been worked up for weeks before hand for maximum fear impact on the day of the event.

This was my life before high speed internet. If they had handed me a gun that day, I probably would have started shooting anyone they pointed me at. I just had one tiny inkling of sanity remaining... I remembered that the news the previous week was full of Gore challenges to the Bush campaign (still) and stories were emerging of strange goings on in Florida before the election...

Nope. Old news now. Story dropped like hot rock.

Fear and dread and loneliness, deep emotional dependence on my husband and parents, no social life to speak of, I shopped for consolation. Imagine that. What made me feel better was spending money I didn't have on things I didn't really need. The skinheads could come for my kids any day, if the Muslims didn't get to them first. The world was spinning out of control. I am going to buy them lots of toys and clothes to make their lives as happy as possible now before it all goes to shit, which I was certain would happen any minute.

Yes this is coming back to Facebook, but not in this chapter. Right now I am going to watch Democracy Now while I do the dishes. Stay tuned.

Facebook Withdrawl

I didn't have a problem. I just wanted a break. So I suspended my Facebook account. NOW I have a problem. I realize now I must have checked it 12 times a day. And my cell phone was always chiming out PMs from people I didn't necessarily want to chat with, sometimes at 3 in the fucking morning.

It's been less than 24 hours and I don't know what to do with myself. I actually had to log on briefly to retrieve my back up copy of my FB files, but then I suspended the account again. I suspended Twitter, too. Didn't want to swap one drain for another. Google+? Naw. Not even tempted to check that.

I don't know if I would have been able to last even this long if I hadn't finally buckled down and taught myself how to put together an RSS feed last week (I've been using the Digg Reader). The reader feeds me stories I'm interested in, but here's the thing: I really want the conversation to be two-way. What is the point of *knowing* what is going on if I am not going to then turn around and *share* what I have learned? Sure for plenty of people, knowing is enough, keeping news to themselves is preferred as knowledge is power, so if you share your knowledge you share your power, right?

But I like to share. I picked a mate in life who likes to share. Facebook lets me share.

So I shared and I shared and I shared... but I don't get nearly as much in return as I give.

First of all, very few people I know in real life even CARE TO KNOW the things I share, and of course my list of "friends" started out as a list of friends, people I've known for many years. Then I would see someone comment whose name I'd heard in conversation or at a party and whose input I appreciated, so I would add them, and my list grew.

Of those people, few want to re-share my news, and fewer still want to DO anything about the bad news I repeat.  I've been called a downer, a socialist, a commie, been accused of being deluded, of being a psychic drain, and a cancer. I also get positive feed back, but not NEARLY as much. Let's face it: Most people won't speak up about how much they LIKE you, but they will speak up about how much you ANNOY them.

And I decided years back in my Facebook life to just accept this fact of human nature and ignore it. And this was a good thing. You can't let criticism stop you from being who you are. That's slow suicide.

But when I think about it, I had, other than my husband, VERY FEW (you could count them on one hand) people I knew in real life that had gotten involved with any kind of activism, other than the corporate same-old same-old, Avon Walk, Jimmy Fund, Support the Troops kind of crap that props up and supports the current broken and corrupted system. At least two were involved in "Buy Nothing Day", which I became very excited to hear, but when I reached out to one of them with information about the sanctions (at the time) in Iraq, depleted uranium deformities, etc, she asked that I stop. Such tragic stories that she felt powerless to change made her very depressed, and my circle of pals is not known for their emotional resiliency.

(OMFG, if the CAT would just stop MEOWING! I'm sorry there is snow everywhere cat. THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT!)

This interaction occurred *before* Facebook, before YouTube, even, in 2002 before we invaded Iraq. (Let that sink in: We trashed Iraq back before YOUTUBE was launched. That's, that's ancient HISTORY!) With no Facebook and no YouTube, people counted on long email lists for info and interaction. But everyday as the "news" complained to people about "spam" more and more filters went up, more and more people asked to be dropped off lists. So when I could join Facebook at last, I was thrilled: Only people who wanted to have things shared would sign up for this; they would be HAPPY to be informed, right? I under estimated how many people wanted to get on only to play Farmville and share cat pictures. Not that there is anything *wrong* with doing these things, but boy they did NOT want to be reminded that the world outside their door was a nasty place, nor that they had the power to do something to make life better for other people.

So off my list many real life friends dropped. "You post too much politics!" some of them would say, if we had been close. Those who I was merely acquainted with dropped off without a word. So I went LOOKING for people who liked knowing things. I hung out on political pages or pages of politically active people and reached out to people who had things to say that I liked, and some folks whose things I didn't like so much, but I sensed they were open to new ideas, and of course, I wanted to remain open to new ideas. I still want to.

*tires of writing* (Arm injury from last week is not happy about all the typing.)

Something I like about blogging: You don't have to be done with your thought before you publish. I am going to take a break from this, but I have more to say on the matter. And if I keep Facebook suspended I am very likely to write even more.

But before I sign off for now... fuck it. I have to reinstate my Twitter. If you leave it suspended for more than 30 days they delete it all, which makes sense, since the whole thing about Twitter is to be current. 24 hours ago on Twitter is old news. And I am not addicted to Twitter at this point. Not yet.