I am 78. My neighbor behind me had a mild heart attack, so since it had been 5 yrs since I had a stress test, I had one. To my very great surprise, my Doc reviewed the info and told me that I had very mild heart damage from a heart attack. It was so mild that I didn’t even know I had one.
So, everyone out there, go get a stress test, find out how healthy your heart is.
Someone should have told the maker that Libya is NOT in the Middle East. It’s North Africa.
@Eeeyore:Libya is NOT in the Middle East.
It’s interesting that the definition of “Middle East” has shifted with time. “Middle East” used to be from about Iraq to Burma; China and eastward being the “Far East” and the Mediterranean to Iraq being the “Near East”. In the 1930s the British “Middle East Command” was headquartered in Cairo.
But nowadays the “Middle East” seems to be Mediterranean eastward to India, or a euphemism for “Muslim”. In 1957 John Foster Dulles defined the “Middle East” as “the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east, Syria and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia,” and Congress passed a resolution incorporating this definition.
I haven’t heard anyone write or say “Near East” for some time.
The stuntman accident in Ben-Hur is a great tidbit. Wonderful film. My brother, who has studied film and film history at some length has mentioned how great the cinematography is in the chariot race. There is a good mixture of pull-back establishing shots, middle distance shots, and close-ups. The result is that the viewer actually has an understanding of most everything that is going on.
My brother contrasted that with the Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott film Gladiator. In the colosseum scenes, there are too many tight shots and of course, they shake the camera around. What the hell is actually happening in those scenes?
_______
I had no idea that Kirk Douglas was the motivation for Spartacus, which is also great. I recall taping half of that film when it was broadcast in two parts (before streaming video) and watching the second half on vacation.
Spartacus is a long Stanley Kubrick film, but the story was originally written in novel form by a guy named Howard Fast. A member of the communist party, he was jailed by the HUAC committee (I think) and he started writing Spartacus in jail. The screenplay was written or co-written by Dalton Trumbo, another Hollywood blacklister.
I only came across the information on Howard Fast, after watching the film Sylvia. Again, originally a Fast novel. A more minor film, but quite interesting. It’s sort of amusing watching the filmmakers skirt around issues of incest and prostitution in 1965.
I haven’t heard anyone write or say “Near East” for some time.
==
That’s because you’re not paying attention.
SHIREHOME:
Glad it was mild and that you’re recovered.
I’ve heard of other people having that experience – a very mild heart attack of which they weren’t even aware.
Oracle & a consortium is about to take over TikTok? Interesting linked article with some details that are new to me. A friend of mine is a mid-level Oracle manager. We haven’t spoken of it, & it’s probably outside her perview.
Though Oracle appears to be on a roll. They’ve scored a much bigger role in AI than investors had appreciated.
In one of his books, Groucho Marx told the story of a theatrical producer who met with “Ben-Hur” author Lew Wallace — a former Civil War general and devout Christian — to license the rights for a stage version. Wallace asked the Jewish producer about his own beliefs, and he replied “”General, you ask me if I believe in Jesus Christ. Well, frankly, I don’t. My partner, Klaw, does — but he’s back in Boston!”
Shireholm, I discovered this year that I’d had a heart attack also. My ex tells me she suspected it when I was having a short-of-breath episode, but I don’t remember it.
I asked the cardiologist if I should get an AED machine and keep it in my bedroom. She told me, “If you need it, you won’t be able to get to it.” Also, “You’re not that bad yet. You need to be worse off before we talk about devices.”
Armed Gaza clans turn on Hamas as IDF advances deeper into Gaza City
Some of the clans, including the Abu Shabab group, are said to have reached an informal arrangement with the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). Under the reported understanding, clan members have remained in place in Gaza City without evacuating south, while benefiting from a safe zone established in coordination with Israeli forces and utilizing a protected corridor for humanitarian assistance.
Shirehome–Several years ago I was referred to a specialist, a Pulmonologist—and, actually doing his job–before he came into the examining room to meet, question, and to examine me, he read through my accumulated medical records, which were probably an inch or two thick.
He walked in, sat down, riffled thorough my medical records, and asked me about my “Heart attack”–because, he said, each one of the three electrocadiograms done over the last several years, and in my file, indicated that I had had a heart attack, which left me with some residual damage to my heart.
This, as I told him, was news to me, since I had never been informed of these results.
So, over the course of I don’t know how many doctor visits over the last several years, no one had obviously actually read my chart, or picked up on this result, and inquired about it, or informed me about it.
That same day, I called my then GP’s office, and informed them about this, and within an hour or so his office was calling with a referral to a Cardiologist—my guess was that he was afraid of being accused of malpractice, or of being sued.
Luckily, the Cardiologist informed me that he had actually done a paper on precisely such false readings in med school, which occur when your heart is in a slightly different anatomical position than is normal, which is assumed by these tests. (I guess it could legitimately be said of me that, “my heart was not in the right place.”)
And this was in Northern Virginia, where the health care is generally considered to be very good.
P.S. I now live in the South, and, from my personal experience, the number of competent doctors, and specialists (especially those nearby), and the level of hospital care, is nowhere as good as it was in Northern Virginia.
Now, two different interstellar objects are headed toward our Sun, what a coinkydink.–
A new “comet,” C2025/R2 Swan–currently estimated as being 100 times larger than 3I/Atlas–is now rushing into our Solar System, each one of these “comets” traveling into our Solar System from an entirely different portion of the sky.
Moreover, both of these very unusual interstellar objects will arrive at their closest approach to our Sun–their perihelion–within the same 10 day period, at which time both of these “comets” will be blocked by the Sun from being observed from the Earth.
What do you think the odds of this particular set of circumstances happening would be?
I’d say “astronomical,” wouldn’t you?
Me, I don’t think that this is just a coincidence.*
Well, we recently moved to a secondary metro area in western NC. Three months after the move, my husband required a total knee replacement. Surgery, hospital care, and post-op therapy have all been superior to his experience five years ago in the RDU area. It depends on where in the South you’re hanging out.
@Niketas Choniates — Kinda like how “The Midwest” of the USA was just Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin when I was growing up (It’s a historical name, not a geographic one, after all…), but now seems to include every “plains state” out to the Rockies. Heck, I saw someone call *Idaho* a “Midwestern state” a day or 2 ago.
/rolleyes
Idaho in the Midwest…. pffft. I think Iowa as a Midwestern state is fair, but that may be my personal bias.
As for the ‘Near East,’ I’m accustomed to or more open to that terminology due to my German experience, given that Germans use that term in approximately the way we do the ‘Middle East’. Of course, for Europeans, the ‘Near East’ is pretty precisely that, although the term is not applied to, say, European Russia, which tends to be more part of simply ‘the East,’ full stop. cf. Drang nach Osten usw.
The video says audiences wanted modern stories in the late 50’s. Don’t think so: Ben-Hur, The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Que Vadus. There are probably others.
@ jvermeer51 – Some audiences want only modern stories, and some audiences then, as now, are hungry for stories that have strong Christian foundations, and very seldom get them.
So when they do, especially coupled with big-screen spectacular action, the producers have box-office gold.
And there are always some audiences who like all kinds of stories, so long as they are well made.
I had heard of the stuntman’s near-disaster, but the others were new to me. Always interesting to learn some of the back-stage lore!
I loved the movie as a child, but honestly, I can’t watch Ben-Hur clips now without thinking of the scene in ‘Hail, Caesar’ with the religious representatives in the producer’s office. And laughing.
A hilarious ‘Who’s On First’ of Judaism – Catholicism – Protestantism.
That did to Ben-Hur what Blazing Saddles did to the western.
BTW, Hail, Caesar may be the best comedy so far of the millennium. That, and ‘Rat Race’.
Somewhere recently on the Internet I ran across a commenter—I think he was an archeologist–who was trying to excuse and romanticize the Aztec “culture,” their building, and art, and say that they actually weren’t so bad, and not as bloodthirsty as they have been portrayed as being.
Nothing says “cultcha” like ripping the beating hearts out of thousands of people.
I am 78. My neighbor behind me had a mild heart attack, so since it had been 5 yrs since I had a stress test, I had one. To my very great surprise, my Doc reviewed the info and told me that I had very mild heart damage from a heart attack. It was so mild that I didn’t even know I had one.
So, everyone out there, go get a stress test, find out how healthy your heart is.
Happy US Constitution Day: https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/september-17
James Madison’s note from the Convention this day: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_917.asp
All of Madison’s Notes from the Convention: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/debcont.asp
Someone should have told the maker that Libya is NOT in the Middle East. It’s North Africa.
@Eeeyore:Libya is NOT in the Middle East.
It’s interesting that the definition of “Middle East” has shifted with time. “Middle East” used to be from about Iraq to Burma; China and eastward being the “Far East” and the Mediterranean to Iraq being the “Near East”. In the 1930s the British “Middle East Command” was headquartered in Cairo.
But nowadays the “Middle East” seems to be Mediterranean eastward to India, or a euphemism for “Muslim”. In 1957 John Foster Dulles defined the “Middle East” as “the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east, Syria and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia,” and Congress passed a resolution incorporating this definition.
I haven’t heard anyone write or say “Near East” for some time.
The stuntman accident in Ben-Hur is a great tidbit. Wonderful film. My brother, who has studied film and film history at some length has mentioned how great the cinematography is in the chariot race. There is a good mixture of pull-back establishing shots, middle distance shots, and close-ups. The result is that the viewer actually has an understanding of most everything that is going on.
My brother contrasted that with the Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott film Gladiator. In the colosseum scenes, there are too many tight shots and of course, they shake the camera around. What the hell is actually happening in those scenes?
_______
I had no idea that Kirk Douglas was the motivation for Spartacus, which is also great. I recall taping half of that film when it was broadcast in two parts (before streaming video) and watching the second half on vacation.
Spartacus is a long Stanley Kubrick film, but the story was originally written in novel form by a guy named Howard Fast. A member of the communist party, he was jailed by the HUAC committee (I think) and he started writing Spartacus in jail. The screenplay was written or co-written by Dalton Trumbo, another Hollywood blacklister.
I only came across the information on Howard Fast, after watching the film Sylvia. Again, originally a Fast novel. A more minor film, but quite interesting. It’s sort of amusing watching the filmmakers skirt around issues of incest and prostitution in 1965.
I haven’t heard anyone write or say “Near East” for some time.
==
That’s because you’re not paying attention.
SHIREHOME:
Glad it was mild and that you’re recovered.
I’ve heard of other people having that experience – a very mild heart attack of which they weren’t even aware.
Oracle & a consortium is about to take over TikTok? Interesting linked article with some details that are new to me. A friend of mine is a mid-level Oracle manager. We haven’t spoken of it, & it’s probably outside her perview.
Though Oracle appears to be on a roll. They’ve scored a much bigger role in AI than investors had appreciated.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/09/17/report-oracle-closes-in-on-tiktok-deal-trump-pushes-back-ban-to-december/
In one of his books, Groucho Marx told the story of a theatrical producer who met with “Ben-Hur” author Lew Wallace — a former Civil War general and devout Christian — to license the rights for a stage version. Wallace asked the Jewish producer about his own beliefs, and he replied “”General, you ask me if I believe in Jesus Christ. Well, frankly, I don’t. My partner, Klaw, does — but he’s back in Boston!”
“…paying attention…”
(…in a nutshell…)
“The Fuse Of History Is Lit”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fuse-history-lit
Opening graf:
+ “Bonus”…
“Review of domestic terrorism after Kirk’s murder shows Biden politicized issue, intel, fudged data”—
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/domestic-terror-threatscape-wake-charlie-kirk-killing-muddled-biden-era
Shireholm, I discovered this year that I’d had a heart attack also. My ex tells me she suspected it when I was having a short-of-breath episode, but I don’t remember it.
I asked the cardiologist if I should get an AED machine and keep it in my bedroom. She told me, “If you need it, you won’t be able to get to it.” Also, “You’re not that bad yet. You need to be worse off before we talk about devices.”
Armed Gaza clans turn on Hamas as IDF advances deeper into Gaza City
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-867817
Related, “(…paying attention…)”
“Questions Trump Should Ask the [Australian] PM”—
https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/america/questions-trump-should-ask-albanese/
H/T Powerline blog.
Shirehome–Several years ago I was referred to a specialist, a Pulmonologist—and, actually doing his job–before he came into the examining room to meet, question, and to examine me, he read through my accumulated medical records, which were probably an inch or two thick.
He walked in, sat down, riffled thorough my medical records, and asked me about my “Heart attack”–because, he said, each one of the three electrocadiograms done over the last several years, and in my file, indicated that I had had a heart attack, which left me with some residual damage to my heart.
This, as I told him, was news to me, since I had never been informed of these results.
So, over the course of I don’t know how many doctor visits over the last several years, no one had obviously actually read my chart, or picked up on this result, and inquired about it, or informed me about it.
That same day, I called my then GP’s office, and informed them about this, and within an hour or so his office was calling with a referral to a Cardiologist—my guess was that he was afraid of being accused of malpractice, or of being sued.
Luckily, the Cardiologist informed me that he had actually done a paper on precisely such false readings in med school, which occur when your heart is in a slightly different anatomical position than is normal, which is assumed by these tests. (I guess it could legitimately be said of me that, “my heart was not in the right place.”)
And this was in Northern Virginia, where the health care is generally considered to be very good.
P.S. I now live in the South, and, from my personal experience, the number of competent doctors, and specialists (especially those nearby), and the level of hospital care, is nowhere as good as it was in Northern Virginia.
Now, two different interstellar objects are headed toward our Sun, what a coinkydink.–
A new “comet,” C2025/R2 Swan–currently estimated as being 100 times larger than 3I/Atlas–is now rushing into our Solar System, each one of these “comets” traveling into our Solar System from an entirely different portion of the sky.
Moreover, both of these very unusual interstellar objects will arrive at their closest approach to our Sun–their perihelion–within the same 10 day period, at which time both of these “comets” will be blocked by the Sun from being observed from the Earth.
What do you think the odds of this particular set of circumstances happening would be?
I’d say “astronomical,” wouldn’t you?
Me, I don’t think that this is just a coincidence.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsVWrCkALic
Well, we recently moved to a secondary metro area in western NC. Three months after the move, my husband required a total knee replacement. Surgery, hospital care, and post-op therapy have all been superior to his experience five years ago in the RDU area. It depends on where in the South you’re hanging out.
@Niketas Choniates — Kinda like how “The Midwest” of the USA was just Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin when I was growing up (It’s a historical name, not a geographic one, after all…), but now seems to include every “plains state” out to the Rockies. Heck, I saw someone call *Idaho* a “Midwestern state” a day or 2 ago.
/rolleyes
Idaho in the Midwest…. pffft. I think Iowa as a Midwestern state is fair, but that may be my personal bias.
As for the ‘Near East,’ I’m accustomed to or more open to that terminology due to my German experience, given that Germans use that term in approximately the way we do the ‘Middle East’. Of course, for Europeans, the ‘Near East’ is pretty precisely that, although the term is not applied to, say, European Russia, which tends to be more part of simply ‘the East,’ full stop. cf. Drang nach Osten usw.
The video says audiences wanted modern stories in the late 50’s. Don’t think so: Ben-Hur, The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Que Vadus. There are probably others.
@ jvermeer51 – Some audiences want only modern stories, and some audiences then, as now, are hungry for stories that have strong Christian foundations, and very seldom get them.
So when they do, especially coupled with big-screen spectacular action, the producers have box-office gold.
And there are always some audiences who like all kinds of stories, so long as they are well made.
I had heard of the stuntman’s near-disaster, but the others were new to me. Always interesting to learn some of the back-stage lore!
I loved the movie as a child, but honestly, I can’t watch Ben-Hur clips now without thinking of the scene in ‘Hail, Caesar’ with the religious representatives in the producer’s office. And laughing.
A hilarious ‘Who’s On First’ of Judaism – Catholicism – Protestantism.
That did to Ben-Hur what Blazing Saddles did to the western.
BTW, Hail, Caesar may be the best comedy so far of the millennium. That, and ‘Rat Race’.
Somewhere recently on the Internet I ran across a commenter—I think he was an archeologist–who was trying to excuse and romanticize the Aztec “culture,” their building, and art, and say that they actually weren’t so bad, and not as bloodthirsty as they have been portrayed as being.
Nothing says “cultcha” like ripping the beating hearts out of thousands of people.
Well, here ya go, Aztec skull towers.*
Show https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aztec-skull-tower-contains-remains-women-and-children-180963905/
P.S. One of my college Art history teachers had nothing but praise for Mussolini, because of how well he kept up the monuments in Rome and elsewhere.
That was his apparent narrow focus criteria, take care of the monuments in your country, and your were OK with him.