Before any doc gives you a pill he should have tested that pill to make sure A) That it’s not harmful and B) That it actually has benefit.
Right?
Randomised control trials (RCT’s) are done using the poison they want to sell vs a placebo pill to see if the shit they want to sell you actually works and doesn’t kill you. *
SO:
What about surgery?
If a surgeon says “Let me cut you, it will help you. Trust me, I’m a surgeon,” how do you know he’s right? In fact, how does HE know he’s right?
Answer: He doesn’t. At first. Established procedures may have accepted success rates, but new procedures don’t. So traditionally most surgery is done by trial and error. Cut, Oops, Bury. (Note the toe tag on the poor victim in the picture! And you noticed the see no, speak no, hear no masks, right?)
So why don’t surgeons use placebos when testing new procedures?
Cos they can’t? No, they can. Especially nowadays with minimal invasive surgery (aka “keyhole surgery”).
Feasibility of surgical randomised controlled trials with a placebo arm
Conclusions:
This review demonstrated that placebo-
controlled surgical trials are feasible, at least for procedures with a lower level of invasiveness, but also that recruitment is difficult. Many of the presumed challenges to undertaking such trials, for example, funding, anaesthesia or blinding of patients and
assessors, were not reported as obstacles to completion in any of the reviewed trials. ~~oo0oo~~
* Just know that they cheat on these trials. If the pill DOES work the trial gets published 100% of the time. But only 14% of all trials get published. Where the pill DOESN’T work hardly ANY trials get published.
Early Sunday morning I roust the lil bastids. C’mon, Up! Let’s go. Off to Inanda Dam where they’re going to slay the bass. Tom, Jose & Ryan. 45yrs of trouble on six legs and, according to them, fishermen of note.
We hire two canoes from Msinsi and off they go. “See you in about two hours, Dad!” shouts Tom as they wobble off.
I chill and watch the terrific birdlife. Wrynecks, woodpeckers, waxbills, prinias, canaries, sunbirds, geese, a fish eagle, herons, neddicky, bush shrikes, etc.
Six hours later a weary and sunburnt crew return. They had flattened the eats and drinks I packed and it’s lucky I did: No fish were harmed in the filming of this movie (none were even disturbed).
Lugging the boats back to the boathouse (with much help from Dad) they unanimously decide they would not be doing the Dusi anytime soon.
Dusi – The Dusi Canoe Marathon, 120km 3-day river race from Maritzburg to Durban passes by this point on the Umgeni river.
I lost a bet to Tom with the Springboks’ loss to the All Blacks this weekend.
Paying up was painless compared to sitting with him watching the match!
Then Sunday I went to Pietermaritzburg where I got a blow-by-blow “Hoor Weer” of the match from the Ole Man.
Both my deskundiges cannot BELIEVE how the Boks just don’t LISTEN to their simple, foolproof advice! One says they should just play like he played for Westville Boys last year and the other says they should just play like he played for Maritzburg College in 1937.
Fuckit I’m going to heaven I swear. Or at the very least I’ll get a diplomatic posting.
=======ooo000ooo=======
Hoor Weer – Kyk Weer, but aural – a verbal re-run and re-hash
It looked like a standoff. At a small pool of water in the dry sandy riverbed of the Black Mfolosi river a male Bateleur and a Tawny Eagle contested the scarce resource. Both stood on the sand at the water’s edge and hunched their shoulders at each other.
I watched a while then scanned all around. Suddenly I heard a cry above me. Two birds circled each other in the air just above our vantage point on a bluff overlooking the river. I looked back at the waterhole. They were gone, this must be them. It was. The eagle was dive-bombing the Bateleur shouting a hoarse kraak kraak. The Bateleur screamed defiantly, dodging the move.
The eagle circled to gain height and folded its wings and took aim again, the agile Bateleur dodging with a sideways roll.
The Bateleur then landed in a tall dead tree while the eagle was climbing again. Soon the Tawny was on his way down again, zooming straight at him and knocking him off his perch. They banked and circled and strained to gain height again, the Bateleur’s wingflaps surprisingly noisy. Once again the Tawny won the climb and launched a dive.
The Bateleur folded his wings and flew away low over the tree tops away from the river.
The Tawny landed back at the pool where it all started, victorious.
High above a white-backed vulture and a Yellow-billed Kite, witnesses to the dogfight, still circled in the thermals.
Wow! Who needs a lion kill?
Oh, Jessica. Yes, dear. I didn’t realise how long we’d been here. We’ll drive now and look for lions, honey.
The ole man is thinking burial sites. He has found out it costs around R11 000 to be cremated and he thinks that’s an awful waste of money. Someone also told him you can bury yourself anywhere. Especially in your own backyard, “There’s nothing to stop you”. As a mad-keen DIY guy, he thinks that’s a helluva good idea.
I said “Maybe, but the hard bit will be reaching up and shovelling the soil on top of yourself”.
“YOU can do that” he says.
I said “I don’t think I’d be allowed to. Maybe your friends meant literally YOU can bury yourself in your backyard, but maybe it would be illegal for ME to do it?”
“Oh” – That’s got his active 94yr-old brain thinking. He’s plotting something, you can be sure.
A special place is Montclair. I’ve been here seventeen years now. Longer than I was downtown, or at Musgrave or Pavilion!
My car guard is 80yrs old, a proud member of the McGregor clan. Knows exactly what the weather is going to do each day and tells me with unerring accuracy. “Sunny tomorrow”. The next day if it’s raining: “I knew it would rain today”. Never wrong. Knowledgeable on birds, too. Two drongos attack a kite, dive-bombing it. “Look, that mother bird is teaching the two young ones to fly”. Had me searching the skies hopefully recently for an albatross that hangs around here. “It just flew over. Yes, an albatross. It’s here all the time,” she says. It would be a lifer for me and it would have all the birders in Durban flocking to the centre if there really was an albatross in Montclair! Of course it could be a wagtail.
The bane of her life is school holidays when the youngsters of Montclair use HER roof to kiss, cuddle, grope and “who knows what else!” She chases them off like they’re alien vagrants. When pressed she will confess she was a handful herself in the old days in Joburg. She worked at the Norwood Pick n Pay and frequented the Braamfontein & Downtown pubs, Wolmarans Street was one I remember her telling me about. Speaks fondly of the Victoria Hotel and the Station Hotel.
If I leave my lights on she marches into the shop: “Where’s your boss?” she’ll bellow. Stentorian, you could call her voice. Demure, not so much. And off she’ll go with my keys to switch them off for me. If I’m around when she returns she’ll deliver a short lecture about the battery. I know it off by heart, of course, but she’ll repeat it. She also gleefully tells us when the lift is working (which is often) to save me the extra twenty metres I would walk to the immobile lift.
Knows all the skinder does Bridget. Which shop got robbed, who did it, what the cops said, her opinion. What the punters at the tote on the roof do and say, whether they have won or lost. How much they drink. Who drinks inside at the bar and who saves money by drinking standing around an open boot with a strong cane and coke mixture in polystyrene cups.
What a centre. Whose car guard comes to fetch them in the shop, pops up a golf umbrella and walks them to their car every time it rains? Mine does.
Stayed at Oxbow Lodge one cold winter night. Can’t remember if we were childful yet or child-free. The whole lodge is tightly squeezed in a narrow space between the road and the river. Our little rondawel was icy: Concrete walls, thin iron windows with flimsy curtains, a slate floor. The bed looked and felt like an ice cream tub. We fired up the gas heater and went off to find supper.
The bar / dining room / lounge area was big and bleak but warmer than our room. Supper was delicious: a big hot filling stew. Maybe oxbone? With sherry.
Plus we had one more great reason to settle down and stay: Lovely jazz music was playing over the speakers perched on the cornices. After a while I went to enquire at the pub. The lovely lady at reception showed me the CD cover below. We have listened to it ever since. *Click Play* and hear it y’self:
Back in the rondawel it was still cold but Oxbow back then was an oasis in the frigid winter Lesotho highlands. There was nowhere else to go for miles. Anyway, we were young and soon heated up the bed knowhatimean.
The rocky, waterfall-strewn river right outside was frozen solid the next morning, miles of ice and beauty in bright sunshine. Still freezing though.
I hardly ever carried a camera back when I was beautiful and had just the one chin. “I’m video’ing it in my head” I would say.
Of course now I’m really grateful other people carried cameras and I could get pics from them. Even in the days when you loaded a roll of film in the dark and wound it on by hand frame-by-frame some people carried cameras. I salute them!
And I admit I would grumble when they said “Stand closer together” “Smile” “Hang on! Just one more!”. Of course some people would think they had put in the roll of film when they hadn’t and all our posing (“poeseer!” remember SanMarie the game ranger’s joke?) was in vain. Yes, I’m thinking of you Taylor. He posed us in various ways on a buffalo carcase and when we eagerly asked for the photies weeks later (they’d had to go off “for development” of course) he had to sheepishly admit he hadn’t had a roll of film in his steam-driven camera. Luckily Trish had been there and took this:
Anyway, my memory of that moment was much better than his pic would have been: I remember a bloody carcase with glistening red meat still on the bone and lion prints around the sandy scene. We were posing looking over our shoulder, worried the lions might chase us off their prey at any minute. When later we did get a pic from someone better organised than Taylor – Trish – the truth was far more mundane. The photo spoilt a good story! Here we were, not one of us looking over a shoulder:
Intrepid non-photographer on the left with impressive camera bag, no fillum
So although I do have some slight regrets I still think I was generally more “in the moment” than many camera-occupied companions over the years – and I saw more birds. Anyway, my memories of what happened are usually far better than boring reality. Usually I play the starring role in them.
Once I met Aitch things changed of course and we had a fulltime photographer in the house. The years from 1986 are well documented. Then the kids arrived and the number of pics went through the roof. Thank goodness for digital! Even now when we drive through a game reserve Jess will say “Mom would have said ‘Stop! Go back!’ and you would have to reverse and she’d take a picture of a flower, remember?”
With cameras as ubiquitous as they now are all this smacks of days gone by. I was prompted to write this post when I read this yesterday: ‘If a millennial goes to a beautiful place but doesn’t get a photo, did they ever really go?’…
To end, some advice for Taylor:
Here’s a graph showing camera sales in 1000’s since 1933:
An optometrist friend of mine is a bit scatter-brained at times. He wouldn’t argue with that. He got a phone call once while seeing his last patient of the day. He had fitted him in late and told the staff “You go home, I’ll lock up.”
Halfway through the test the phone rang and he went to the reception desk to answer it. He listened carefully, said “Yes, Yes” and agreed to get home soon.
He then left the office, locked up and went home – a twenty minute drive.
After he’d been home awhile he suddenly remembered!! Omigawd! He leapt into his car and roared back to the practice, unlocked and walked in to where the man was still sitting in the chair.
The poor man was the first to speak: “Doctor, I hope you don’t mind, I moved the machine away from my face a little”.
Ahem, “Not at all” said my man and carried on examining the poor humble guy’s eyes.
Man, was he lucky with WHO it was. He coulda got ROASTED! His staff told the story for years afterwards!
Our first dog TC was the product of a romantic liaison – a match made in heaven. Staffordshire Terrier Stan Hill jumped Jack Russel Terrier Mouse Hill and she produced a litter. Dave and Goldie’s Sir Stanley Staffordshire of Melrose Farm in Mid-Illovo was a semi-handsome, tuxedo-clad, white-gloved, almost-pedigree Staffie who’d lost his papers, but we were assured he was in the country legitimately. And they knew who his Mom was. Who were we to argue, anyway: The pup was coming as a gift!
The Hills once took Stan on holiday to hoity-toity Plettenberg Bay where they met people with a very stressful holiday job: To look after a fine pedigree Afghan bitch on heat. Big responsibility to keep it away from all lesser dogs and avoid an unwanted pregnancy.
Well, good luck with that with Stan the Man around. When they looked again, there was Stan on the beach, publicly locked in holy matrimony with the long-haired beauty. Something like this (Staffies are known more for their enthusiasm than their class):
A legend in his own lunchtime was Stan.
~o0o~
My memory, like the curate’s egg, is excellent in parts. So I may have modified a few minor details very slightly. Here’s the story from someone who was there, on that licentious beach: Stan’s owner, Dave Hill:
Nice. It was actually at Mbotyi on the Wild Coast and the femme fatale was a nubile young Spaniel sent there with the owners’ mother because she was on heat! Bad idea!
Stan would leave our cottage after supper every evening, only coming home late late late. One morning we couldn’t find him………..so we went a-searching. Lo and behold! right on the main beach, in front of quite a crowd was young Stan the Man in flagrante delicto with this young virgin Spaniel.
In flagrante delicto in dogs, as you know, means dog-knotted. When Stan saw us, he belted up the beach with the damsel stuck fast around his underbelly! My solution of course was to pick ’em up hurl them both into the water which caused great mirth and unknotted them.
We often wonder about that liaison and the end result . . . . .
New Year in Ponta Milibangalala. We joined the Hills at their traditional campsite. It’s a magnificent beach in the Maputo Elephant Reserve. Back in 1990 it was uncrowded and perfect. They’ve been going there for a couple of decades and are very well known and liked by the Ele Reserve staff.
– The Padre d’água surveys his domain –
One day we need supplies. Dave says come along to ‘Ponta’, which means Ponta de Ouro – there are a lot of Pontas but Saffers call de Ouro just ‘Ponta’. We head south along the beach you’re not allowed to drive on. It’s much quicker than taking the road inland. At one rocky point you have to leave the beach, up over the dune and then back onto the beach around the point.
We roar up the dune, crest the rise and . . . there’s a boom across the track. A security guard in uniform stands up to stop us, raising his hand in the universal language of ‘halt!’.
I start rehearsing an acquiescent speech: Yes, its true we were on the beach and no, we aren’t actually allowed on the beach, but it was an emergency (fetching beer) and . . . . . . Dave’s foot doesn’t budge a millimetre on the accelerator. He waves his arm imperiously in an upward motion, signalling in that same universal language ‘open up!’ He leans out the window and shouts “Oy! Vul’isango! Padre d’água!” as he roars straight at the boom with undiminished speed.
Now, never mind that Oy! is Irish or Yiddish, Vulisango! is isiZulu and only Padre d’água! would have been understood (I understand it’s Portuguese for “His Excellency David Hurle Hill, Acting Minister of Water Affairs for all Mocambique”), Dave gets his message across via international sign language, and the suitably impressed security guard flings the boom up with alacrity, barely managing to stop himself from saluting as we roar through without a backward glance.
Gotta admire the pirate in Hill. His swash isn’t easily buckled.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I often put myself in another man’s moccasins, so I’m imagining being a guard at a boom gate on a remote Mocambican beach, sitting in the hot African sun, dozing off, wishing I had something cold to drink and that I could find a better job, when a roar awakes me and I jump up to stop a 4X4 roaring up the dune.
Ha! I think, South African numberplate! I’ll nail this fella. It’s illegal to drive on the beach here, I’ll stop him, give him a piece of my mind and tell him about the fine. Maybe he has a cold drink on board. What? Something, Something, Padre d’água! Oh, shit, he looks important and he has a very authoritarian way about him. And he’s not stopping! I’ll just open the boom and then when he stops I’ll ask him what the . .
Oh. He’s gone . . . the first vehicle in over a month and he didn’t even stop.
I sit back down in the hot African sun wishing I had something cold to drink and could find a better job.
~~~oo0oo~~~
This reminds me of a tale Dave tells of his time working in California. Bachelor days. Once again he is driving a pickup with a mate sitting next to him; This time he did stop, however. At a red light.
He’s telling a story, an animated story like Hill can tell a story and the mate is listening, but he can also see that the light has turned green and Dave is so deep into the telling he hasn’t noticed.
He interrupts the flow of words, nods at the lights and pronounces: “Ain’t gonna get any greener.”
Our Environment Minister Valli Moosa had at last grasped the nettle and was closing the beaches to hooligans! We approved, and time and research has shown it was the right decision. It has had a positive impact on the ecology of the coastal zone, with a recovery of resident reef fish species and breeding birds.
Regulations for the control of use of vehicles in the coastal zone (Government Notice 1399 of 21 December 2001) published in terms of section 44 of the National Environmental Management Act (No. 107 of 1998).
But! We admit: We do love driving on the beach! So Bruce Soutar was quick to spot the opportunity for a Last Drive before the regulations came in to force, so he gathered a bunch of people to both celebrate and mourn the closure.
We had the Soutar VW Kombi, Kemp Jeep, Gail Pajero, Duncan __ and Swanie Ford and one other –?
![SS_Storm_Cleanup[1].jpg](https://i0.wp.com/bewilderbeast.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ss_storm_cleanup1.jpg?resize=620%2C465&ssl=1)
