The Bookworm Beat 9/6/16 — the “still coughing” edition and open thread

Woman-writing-300x265Curious about coughs. I went to Dr. Bing and checked out what illnesses are associated with chronic coughing. (Yesterday, I oh-so-delicately suggested tuberculosis, although I think the likelihood that Hillary has TB is close to zero.) Ruling out the obvious things (a cold, a simple allergy, asthma), here are some of the more esoteric problems that come up when you search “chronic cough”:

Chronic bronchitis
Bronchiectasis (damaged airways)
Cystic fibrosis
Laryngopharyngeal reflux (stomach acid flows up into the throat)
Lung cancer
Nonasthmatic eosinophilic bronchitis (airway inflammation not caused by asthma)
Sarcoidosis (collections of inflammatory cells in different parts of your body, most commonly the lungs)
Medicine associated with diabetes or hypertension

Regarding that last one (medicine for people with diabetes):

In my experience, prescribers often place their diabetic patients on lisinopril just as a precaution. While that approach may have some merit with younger patients, the reduced renal function of older patients tends to negate all the possible benefits of ACE-inhibitor therapy.

One of the telltale adverse effects of ACE inhibitors, including lisinopril, is a chronic, hacking cough — a potential side effect that patients often don’t hear about. Studies suggest that up to a third of all patients taking an ACE inhibitor will develop this type of chronic dry cough, and the cough often doesn’t go away when they stop taking the drug. This happens more with women than with men, and more with African Americans and Asians than others.

A reminder that, with Islam, it can always get worse. This link takes you to an article about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, during which Muslims slaughtered 2.4 million Hindus and raped 200,000 Hindu women. Open the article with caution, because the pictures are devastating. Somehow the American media, busy trying to support the anti-War effort in Vietnam, forgot to report this story (as I can attest because we watched the news every evening), or at least reported it in only the most anodyne, forgettable form.

Bad as that is, remember that over the centuries, it’s been much worse for those Hindus caught in the Muslim jihad across the Indian subcontinent:

There is nothing surprising about any of this because Islam was introduced into the Asian subcontinent with the objective of occupying and exterminating the Hindus. According to the historian William Durant, and other historians, an estimated 80 million Hindus were killed, were slaughtered, and thousands and thousands of Hindu temples were smashed, and mosques were built on top of them. The Muslims of India tried very hard over the period of their 700 years [of occupation] to wipe out the Hindus. But there was resistance from some of the Hindu kingdoms. They never had full control over India so they were unable to achieve that goal. But that’s the eternal goal. According to Islam, Hinduism is the lowest form of life on the planet. Because Hindus, according to them, they’re polytheistic, they believe in multiple gods. They believe we worship idols, and idol worship is a sin in Islam.

What we’re seeing now is the Muslim version of being civilized, not barbaric — although ISIS is trying hard to reinstate the true glory days.

The birkini ban helps keep women safe. Daniel Greenfield argues that there’s a grim, strong logic behind the abortive French effort to ban birkinis on Riviera beaches:

Does it matter what Muslim women wear to the beach? Arguably the government should not be getting involved in swimwear. But the clothing of Muslim women is not a personal fashion choice.

Muslim women don’t wear hijabs, burkas or any other similar garb as a fashion statement or even an expression of religious piety. Their own religion tells us exactly why they wear them.

“O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies that they may thus be distinguished and not molested.” (Koran 33:59)

It’s not about modesty. It’s not about religion. It’s about putting a “Do Not Rape” sign on Muslim women. And putting a “Free to Molest” sign on non-Muslim women.

This isn’t some paranoid misreading of Islamic scripture. Islamic commentaries use synonyms for “molested” such as “harmed”, “assaulted” and “attacked” because women who aren’t wearing their burkas aren’t “decent” women and can expect to be assaulted by Muslim men. These clothes designate Muslim women as “believing” women or “women of the believers”. That is to say Muslims.

If non-Muslim women are to be free from rape, either all women wear burqas and related garb, or no women wear burqas and related garb. I vote for option Number Two.

Acting today means just being yourself.  I can’t stand Mark Ruffalo, whether as a man or an actor, so I don’t give a rodent’s derriere about the fact that he’s coming under fire for having dared cast a gay man to play a transgendered man.  I just find interesting that, while actors were once celebrated for their ability realistically to be something other than their real-life self, acting nowadays must perfectly reflect ones real-life self — which kind of isn’t anymore, is it?

Black Lives Matter kills people.  Bill Whittle says it does and then he proves it does: