She's not ashamed

 

She proudly wears her colostomy pouch, which she needs following a traumatic childbirth - something Gill calls an "unspoken topic of conversation". To raise awareness of stomas and birth trauma, Gill has spent the winter months swimming in the sea off the coast of north-east England.

Why Stoma Bags

A stoma is an opening in your abdomen that allows waste to exit your body, rather than going through your digestive system. They’re used when part of your bowels or bladder either need to heal or be removed.


They're very helpful with colostomy and ileostomy cases.

Going to the Supreme Court

A comment on Snapchat by Brandi Levy, a high school cheerleader, is being considered by the U. S. Supreme Court. After failing to make the varsity cheerleading squad, she was very disappointed. So, while at a local convenience store, she snapped a picture of herself shooting the bird with the caption: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” She sent the photo to her 250 friends on Snapchat. When the daughter of the cheerleading coach saw it, she showed it to her mother. The coach, grievously offended, told Levy that she would be suspended from the team for the rest of the year. This teed her off so much that she filed a federal lawsuit alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights.

Her case went through the system and eventually made the Court, which will decide whether public schools can actually abridge their students’ free expression beyond the schoolhouse gate. It appears as though they are leaning towards the view that Ms. Levy should win.

Food for the Gourmet

 

To be a police officer in Boston

You can make more than $300,000 a year as more than 30 Boston police officers did last year. 509 other officers made more than $200,000, while the mayor was paid $199,000.

One example, Sean P. Smith, a lieutenant, was the top earner in the department, pulling in $124,000 in overtime on top of his $145,000 in base pay. He also collected roughly $45,000 in detail pay, which is accrued separately from overtime; $36,000 in educational benefits; and $13,000 in “other” pay, according to city records.

What do you do?

Are you going to try it?

When will they come home?

Are they worth it?

Paying for Medical Care

 

Whiskey from the Revolutionary War

You can buy a good bottle of bourbon in June if you win the auction at Skinner Auction in Boston. You only need to spend between $20,000 and $40,000, they say. The Old Ingledew Whiskey is believed to be the oldest known whiskey in existence.

Analysis by the University of Georgia concluded that the bourbon was likely produced between 1762-1802. It's not clear where it was produced. Rumor has it that JP Morgan bought this bottle and FDR and Harry Truman were given bottles of the same brand.

While this may be the oldest known bottle of whiskey, it's nowhere near the most expensive. In 2019, the Macallan Fine and Rare 60-Year-Old 1926 became the most expensive bottle of wine or spirit ever auctioned when it sold for $1.9 million. 

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Another anti-vaccine variant

This one from a private school in Miami. In the school's view we are so ignorant about the vaccines that if one of their instructors gets vaccinated they will be fired. The school is new, it opened in 2019. It is a grammar school with students from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It advertises itself as a “happiness school” focused on children’s mindfulness and emotional intelligence.

Some of their points:

“reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated.”

“Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person,”

“We are not 100 percent sure the Covid injections are safe and there are too many unknown variables for us to feel comfortable at this current time,”

An interesting but unimportant point - the school's name, Centner Academy, is that of the founders, David and Leila.

Visiting Chernobyl

Trash in space

Destroying an island

Where do you fit in?

Courtesy of a cchildhood friend

Comparing vaccines

The traveling life

Better police training needed

That's what's being said by some experts in the field and was one conclusion of a 2016 study by the Department of Justice. And this from a police-science professor at John Jay College, “We have one of the worst police-training academies in comparison to other democratic countries.” This is probably due to the fact that police in the United States receive less initial training than their counterparts in other rich countries—about five months in a classroom and another three or so months in the field, on average. 

Many European nations, meanwhile, have something more akin to police universities, which can take three or four years to complete. Plus, European countries also have national standards for various elements of a police officer’s job—such as how to search a car and when to use a baton. The U.S. does not; the 18,000 police departments in the U.S. each have their own rules and requirements.

Questions are also raised about what functions are given importance. The median police recruit receives eight hours of de-escalation training, compared with 58 hours of training in firearms, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank for police executives. American police academies are also light on training in “soft skills,” such as how to communicate or use emotional intelligence to see a situation clearly. And they are poorly prepared for trauma on the job, too: They get just six hours of training in stress management, compared with 25 hours in report-writing, 

Then, there is how cops with charges of aggressive behavior are treated. Many become trainers. One study found that officers whose trainers had a history of citizen complaints were more likely to draw complaints themselves in their first two years on the job. 

Are 2 vaccinations enough?

Dr. Özlem Türeci, BioNTech's chief medical officer who was involved with creating the vaccine, says no. He thinks that immunity to the virus will wane over time. He agrees with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla who has said that people would require a booster shot of the vaccine within a year, which would mean this December for those who were first in line originally. 

Covid is worse than the Flu

Seaweed for cows

Your carbon footprint

One view of Earth Day