Tag Archives: nevada

Top o' the heap: Burning Man worshippers to help us evolve

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Mankinds future. Photo: CC/Ben Piven

Mankind's future. Photo: CC/Ben Piven

The theme at this year’s Burning Man Festival, for artists, is Evolution.

Organizers of this quasi-religious rave party for repressed hipsters claim to be creating culture for a human race that no longer weeds-out its less than ideal candidates for natural selection.

Read the muddleheaded copy, below, from the event’s official website (bonus: includes a kindergarten lesson in natural selection):

The process of trial and error that has made this possible is called Natural Selection. Genetically encoded traits that aid survival tend to spread throughout entire populations. Living entities that bear these genes endure and reproduce, but maladaptive traits are not passed on. This causes species to evolve to better fit the world in which they live. However, this rigorous weeding out of ‘unfit’ individuals has gradually ceased to occur within our species. Medicine and mutual aid assure that nearly anyone is able to survive and reproduce.

Now adrift in our own gene pool, we have encountered a new phase of evolution. We’ve become a conscious breed of culture-bearing animals. Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish, and Burning Man is an experiment in generating culture. We’ve learned that culture’s a spontaneous phenomenon. It thrives as a result of numberless and unplanned interactions. All that’s really needed is a fitting social vessel to sustain it. This happens best within communities that harbor many different modes of self-expression. We’ve also learned that cultures effloresce when human beings feel free to offer up their gifts.

via 2009 Art Theme: Evolution.

CDC: Widespread needle reuse at clinics

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(RediClinic is one of the “retail” healthcare clinics turning up in malls and pharmacies. Image: RediClinic website)

CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding tells the AP (excerpt, below) that a recent finding of unsafe practices at a Nevada healthcare clinic “could represent the tip of an iceberg.”

40,000 patients might have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis, due to needle reuse and other unsafe practices at the clinic.

The quickie clinic model, meanwhile, is catching on, for folks who want to get a look-see while waiting for a prescription, or one of the hundreds of vaccine jabs they will get in their lifetimes.

MinuteClinics, for example, are appearing at CVS pharmacy locations throughout the United States.

MinuteClinics is headed by the former CEO of Arby’s. — mb

The Associated Press: CDC Warns of Safety Problems at Clinics
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., met Monday with CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding, and on a media conference call after their meeting both strongly condemned practices at the clinic.

Health care accreditors “would consider this a patient safety error that falls into the category of a ‘never event,’ meaning this should never happen in contemporary health care organizations,” said Gerberding.

“This is the largest number of patients that have ever been contacted for a blood exposure in a health-care setting. But unfortunately we have seen other large-scale situations where similar practices have led to patient exposures,” Gerberding said.