Tom Faranda's Folly

Author: Tom Faranda

  • Visitors for the New Year

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    Tom Faranda
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    My friendship with John Brown goes all the way back to my first year living in Jamaica – we met in September of 1977. He taught biology at Clarendon College, a school way off in the bush, compared to the town of Mandeville, where I lived. I met him because he was also a rugby…

  • Where is “The One Ring to Rule Them All”?

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    Tom Faranda
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    Because I want to be fair and balanced – I don’t want any perception that I only post mediocre jokes at the expense of Clinton and Kerry – here’s an amusing bumper sticker I spotted a couple of days ago: FRODO FAILED    Bush Has the Ring 

  • Latest read: The Language of God

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    Tom Faranda
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    My friend Paul Novotny read this book and passed it on to me. The Language of God is a pretty quick read; less then 300 pages long. It is excellent. The author is Francis S. Collins, a physician and geneticist who is the head of the Human Genome Project, which finished a draft of the…

  • Obama-mania Update

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    Tom Faranda
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    It turns out that not every leftist is thrilled with Obama. Here’s an opinion piece written by liberal columnist Froma Harrop (a Maureen Dowd clone, judging by her humor). She’s not too impressed. RealClearPolitics – Articles – Obama Scores as Exotic Who Says Nothing Obama’s appeal comes not from the things he says, but from…

  • Christmas Day, 2006

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    Tom Faranda
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    As all Christmas’s should be, it was a great day. It started later then we expected, at 7:18AM when Tim came in (he announced the time) and told us “there were a lot of presents”. We’d been up until almost 3AM. Brigid went with Tim to the back room and there was a very large…

  • John Paul II’s biographer on five books for understanding Christianity

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    Tom Faranda
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    Here is an interesting list from George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and biographer of John Paul. Only two of the books are by Catholics. Worth Saving OpinionJournal – Five Best The only thing I’ve read of the five is a few brief sections from Dante’s "Divine Comedy." Probably back in high school. However Jaroslav Pelikan…

  • Health update: bone marrow biopsy and blood cell count

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    Tom Faranda
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    Yesterday I got the results of both my biopsy of two weeks ago and last Friday’s blood count. First the counts – my white blood cell count (CBC) is a little low at 3.1 (normal is 4-11). Red cells (RBC’s) a little low at 3.98 (normal 4.2-5.6) Hemaglobin is 12 (normal 13-17) My platelets are…

  • Some information on Rituxan

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    Tom Faranda
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    Here’s an article from Forbes online, about an unfortunate possible side effect which may have come from Rituxan use. Update — Analysts Downplay Rituxan Worries – Forbes.com The Food and Drug Administration warned health care professionals on Monday that two patients treated with the drug Rituxan for an off-label condition died after developing a fatal…

  • Wall Street Journal op ed on “blogging”

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    Tom Faranda
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    The Journal had an unkind op ed this AM, excoriating bloggers for being, among other things, "awful" and "appalling". The author, a Journal assistant editor is referring to the writing. As far as political blogs – they are "excruciatingly boring." The title is The Blog Mob – "Written by fools to be read by Imbeciles"…

  • Quick health update

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    Tom Faranda
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    I haven’t seen the results of my CBC from the past Friday – MSK will fax me the results tomorrow, In the meantime I am back on the antibiotic Levaquin for my sinus issue, and as a bonus I got what I’m sure was a viral infection that manifested itself last night – achy, intermittently…