How many calories in a pint of blood?

I see Instapundit is encouraging people to give blood. He mentions that "the blood folks are always calling me saying they’re desperately short of blood, I wonder if the standards are too strict." The blood folks. Not everyone is purely altruistic! How many calories in a pint of blood? "Can I donate blood to lose weight?"

"Perhaps blood donation could be promoted as one way to lose a bit of unwanted weight. Taking into account the composition and energy in each component . . . I estimated that one unit of blood reflects about 600 cal of food intake. Hence, a single donation can off-set either 2 hamburgers, 3 donuts, or 5 granola bars. Awareness of these statistics might increase the appeal of blood donation, particularly among healthy adults who are concerned about obesity."

Blood donor dogs and cats.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital:

To do that, the hospital has its own Animal Blood Bank with a dedicated core [sic] of 12 dogs and 11 cats who serve as regular donors, many of them the animal companions of students or staff members at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “We actually have a waiting list of pets to become new donors,” notes Bach.

The typical canine blood donor is a healthy, larger dog — more than 50 pounds — that has been screened for blood borne parasites and diseases that affect the qualities of blood. Importantly, the dog donor possesses a good nature.

“We don’t sedate the dogs,” explains Bach, who says a typical blood draw from a dog takes about 7 to 10 minutes. “Cats are certainly different than dogs. Cats are a little more reclusive and sometimes have a little higher stress level in the hospital. They are sedated.”

Cats also need a more compatible blood-type cross match when they are getting transfusion.

They also do horse and cow transfusions.

Their most recent resident donor horse, Drive Thru, retired this fall after seven years of donating blood and serving as a calming presence and companion for any skittish equine patients at the hospital. In the hospital’s large animal practice, Drive Thru was a star, getting presents and mail from the children of clients and visitors and occasionally popping his head into the waiting room for peppermint candy, his favorite.

The resident cow donors are Maxine and Natalie, "beautiful and pampered Holsteins." How much blood goes into a cow getting a transfusion? 6 to 12 liters.

"I'm amused that right after 'potato, my penis droops' up pops Quayle."

I say, in the laughing-in-bed first-post-of-the-morning. 

Quayle is a regular commenter here, but — who knows, on the internet? — it might be Dan Quayle.



Quayle responds: "I carry the blood of polygamists in my veins. So one should expect that sort of thing, I guess." He adds: "I took the name from my great grandfather, pictured here surrounded by some new friends."



That's a photograph of taken at the Utah Penitentiary in 1889, showing men arrested under the Edmunds-Tucker Act, explained here. Included in the photo is John C. Bennett, who "taught a doctrine of 'spiritual wifery'":

He and associates sought to have illicit sexual relationships with women by telling them that they were married "spiritually," even if they had never been married formally, and that the Prophet approved the arrangement.

That wasn't the correct doctrine, and Bennett got excommunicated, and then he "toured the country speaking against the Latter-day Saints and published a bitter anti-Mormon exposé charging the Saints with licentiousness."

Here's John C. Bennett in happier days...



... posing like Napoleon:

"How are your passions...?"/"I am bloody elated."

Chris Matthews/Andrew Sullivan.

"Supersonic Skydive's 5 Biggest Risks: Boiling Blood, Deadly Spins & Worse."

Could this guy please not do this?

The highest risk during descent is a flat spin, where Baumgartner would lose control of his free fall and begin to spin laterally, his head and feet rotating around his center.

A flat spin draws blood into the jumper's head and feet. At a speed exceeding 600 miles (970 kilometers) an hour, a flat spin could spin a jumper at 180 to 250 rotations a minute, creating a situation of extreme negative G's....

Then pressure builds up, "blood and spinal fluid are forced outward, and their main escape routes are through the ocular cavities."

The flat-spin risk can be mediated with... a stabilization parachute to prevent further increase in rotation, deployed on command, or automatically if -3.5 G's are achieved.

In 1960 Kittinger's stabilization parachute was designed to deploy automatically shortly after he jumped, to prevent a flat spin. But Baumgartner has his eyes on a new speed record....

His eyes... which might burst.

"Amazed nobody at Obama HQ noticed this, especially with all the hand-stuff."

Yes, but... pointing it out...

Too far?

ADDED: I got a few emails this morning pushing me to do a Drudgtaposition post based on the bloody handmark photograph and the Obama flag graphic. But Drudge didn't put up the handprint photograph next to the flag graphic. Not that I saw. He put up that flag graphic with the text "OBAMA SELLS 'OUR STRIPES' FLAG...", linking to the campaign's merchandise page.

ALSO: It seems to be widely believed that the red stripes on the American flag are red to represent blood (the "blood of patriots"). 

UPDATE: I'm sorry. It was too subtle for me even with multiple emails pointing me to it. Drudge did have the handprint next to the flag. Here's the screen grab:

"There's this vampire story — that Bain comes in and shows its teeth and sucks the blood out of the operation."

The Romney campaign, fighting back on the GST Steel story.

"Police arrested eight protesters in the [Wisconsin] Capitol... for holding up signs without getting permits."

We've got a new Capitol Police Chief, and a new approach to keeping order in the building that was the site of tumultuous, chaotic, crowded, cluttered protesting last year.

On Wednesday, police throughout the day told 14 protesters they could not hold up signs on the Capitol's first floor because they did not have a permit.

The protests occurred near where the Red Cross, which did have a permit, was conducting a blood drive.

Six of the protesters agreed to go outside to continue their protests, but eight refused. Those eight were arrested and ticketed for unlawfully displaying signs, according to the Capitol Police.

Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) said she saw one protester being arrested for holding a sign that said, "It's about freedom."

"If they're not being disruptive, if they're not causing trouble, they should be allowed here," Sinicki said. "These people aren't hurting anybody."

The permitting is, we're told, designed to help the police keep track of how many people are in the building and how it ought to be staffed. If it's a neutral rule, applied neutrally, the question is basically whether it is reasonable. But note that the Capitol is a distinctive location that has historically been the site of protests against the government, and there is particular case law here in Wisconsin, applying the state constitution to protests at the Capitol.

That said, why would protesters choose to stand their ground in the vicinity of a Red Cross blood drive? You have the right to be politically stupid, but it's still stupid.

"The boy should know where his dinner is coming from. What do you think, Barry?"

More meat-oriented education from Lolo, Barack Obama's stepfather, as told by Obama in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." This scene occurs when Obama, age 6, first arrives from Hawaii in his new home in Jakarta:

[T]he man who had carried our luggage was standing in the backyard with a rust-colored hen tucked under his arm and a long knife in his right hand. He said something to Lolo, who nodded and called over to my mother and me. My mother told me to wait where I was and sent Lolo a questioning glance.

“Don’t you think he’s a little young?”

Lolo shrugged and looked down at me. “The boy should know where his dinner is coming from. What do you think, Barry?” I looked at my mother, then turned back to face the man holding the chicken. Lolo nodded again, and I watched the man set the bird down, pinning it gently under one knee and pulling its neck out across a narrow gutter.
For a moment the bird struggled, beating its wings hard against the ground, a few feathers dancing up with the wind. Then it grew completely still. The man pulled the blade across the bird’s neck in a single smooth motion. Blood shot out in a long, crimson ribbon. The man stood up, holding the bird far away from his body, and suddenly tossed it high into the air. It landed with a thud, then struggled to its feet, its head lolling grotesquely against its side, its legs pumping wildly in a wide, wobbly circle. I watched as the circle grew smaller, the blood trickling down to a gurgle, until finally the bird collapsed, lifeless on the grass.

Lolo rubbed his hand across my head and told me and my mother to go wash up before dinner. The three of us ate quietly under a dim yellow bulb—chicken stew and rice, and then a dessert of red, hairy-skinned fruit so sweet at the center that only a stomachache could make me stop. Later, lying alone beneath a mosquito net canopy, I listened to the crickets chirp under the moonlight and remembered the last twitch of life that I’d witnessed a few hours before. I could barely believe my good fortune.

Good fortune? Why does the boy — as remembered by the man — connect the killing of the bird to his own good fortune? Is it some elemental realization that simply to be alive is amazing, the bird being dead? Or is he excited to be in this new place with lots of thrilling new activities like beheading a bird and shortly thereafter eating it? Or is it the connection to the father figure, who's so eager to show the boy what life is really about and so easily overcomes the reticence of the mother? The next thing that happens in the book is that Lolo teaches him how to deal with bullies: Don't cry over the lump where he hit you with a rock; learn boxing. Lolo buys boxing gloves for him and teaches him to "keep moving, but always stay low—don’t give them a target." Good advice!

And it's on the very next page that Lolo teaches him to eat dog (and snake) meat. The dog-meat paragraph begins with them boxing and proceeds to a quick summary of things done in the first 6 months in Indonesia: he'd "learn[ed] Indonesia’s language, its customs, and its legends," he'd "survived chicken pox, measles, and the sting of my teachers’ bamboo switches," he'd made friends with "children of farmers, servants, and low-level bureaucrats," and they'd run about "hustling odd jobs, catching crickets, battling swift kites with razor-sharp lines." The point is: Life was a big adventure. And meat was part of the adventure — meat from real animals that lived and died.

Do you eat meat? If you eat meat, but not dogs, is it because, with respect to the meat that you do eat, you don't know where your dinner is coming from?

"You return force with force when somebody assaults you. George was out of breath, he was barely conscious."

"There would have been George dead if he had not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed."

Zimmerman's brother speaks:



Quoted in the linked article, at CNN.com, is Marcia Clark, the prosecutor who failed to convince a jury that O.J. Simpson was guilty. She's talking about the photographs of George Zimmerman, which people on the web are saying prove he didn't have a broken nose.

Suddenly, everyone's a doctor, the kind of doctor that does diagnoses through blurry web videos. Flashback: Remember when Senator Bill Frist — a Harvard-trained doctor — questioned the diagnosis of Terri Schiavo "based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office"? He got slammed for that.

But here's Marcia Clark: "Anyone who's seen a broken nose is aware of the fact that the blood spurts. That leads to a lot of bleeding. You would have expected to see blood on the front of George Zimmerman's shirt collar. Blood — you know, in many more places."

Anyone knows. Of course, a broken nose is a veritable geyser. So says the expert on blood evidence. I know she's seen a lot of blood. Blood does gush from slashed throats. But a broken nose? I'm going to Google that. Here's a list of symptoms, according the Mayo Clinic website (boldface added):

Signs and symptoms of a broken nose may appear immediately or may take up to three days to develop. Signs and symptoms may include:

Pain or tenderness, especially when touching your nose
Swelling of your nose and surrounding areas
Bleeding from your nose
Bruising around your nose or eyes
Crooked or misshapen nose
Difficulty breathing through your nose
Discharge of mucus from your nose (rhinorrhea)
Feeling that one or both of your nasal passages are blocked

I am trying to fathom the depths of mendacity around the Trayvon Martin case. Why aren't people afraid of uttering statements that are so easily devastated?

For a prosecutor to make extreme and overconfident statements about evidence, when the statements are not even remotely accurate and the inaccuracy is detected through 5 seconds of Googling? I understand why people want to lie and deceive, but to throw away your credibility so carelessly?

What sort of place should you want to live in as you get old? A place with "non-Western ideas about healing"?

From a discussion with an architect (Wid Chapman) and a gerontologist (Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld):

Along with grab bars (which are frequently mentioned in your book, though none is visible in the pictures), what makes a house suitable for aging?...

Mr. Rosenfeld: When you mentioned grab bars, it reminded me that most of the homes in the book speak to a Western medical aesthetic, but a few support non-Western ideas about healing. There’s one in particular, Bioscleave, in East Hampton, N.Y., that builds on the idea of reversible destiny: that the home can challenge and stimulate inhabitants to keep them youthful. Everything about that home is colorful. It’s angular. It’s full of intentional surprises and quirks.

I’m glad you mentioned Bioscleave. I wanted to ask about the sloping, textured floors the architects designed to make walking more of an “adventure.” Isn’t that the kind of adventure that can lead to a broken hip?

Mr. Rosenfeld: The house is occupied by a person who lives there part time. A mature person. I haven’t dared ask her age, but I can say that neither of her hips is broken.

Colorful, angular... stimulate and challenge... this made me think of crib toys. They're thinking of old people like babies. I found that repulsive. We've thought a lot about moving to a simpler house, which would also be the house where we'd grow old — hopefully, extremely old. (I see that in the discussion, the gerontologist says he's "beginning to think about how [he and his wife are] going to deal with our inevitable aging." But getting old is not inevitable. It's preferable!)

What Meade and I have talked about wanting is a completely uncluttered, cleanly modern place. I don't look to the walls and floors for stimulation. I want a place that doesn't distract and bother me while I'm doing what I want to do, like read or talk to somebody.

Bioscleave sounds utterly insulting, like old people are babies. Then I looked it up. My lord! It's like old people are hamsters!



Ridiculous! Hilarious! And who cleans that place? Especially of all the blood.

I'm looking at that word "Bioscleave." "Bios" is the Greek word for life in the sense of one's life, course or way of living, lifetime. "Cleave" is a word that famously has 2 meanings. It's an auto-antonym. It can refer to clinging — let's say, to life — or to separation — which, in the case of life, would refer to death.

Take a look at that Bioscleave again. If they try to take you there... get out. I don't want your Hamster Habitat of Death. And I'm not charmed by your burbling about "non-Western" ideas. I don't want your Bioscleave just like I don't want your acupuncture. I want an ultra-Western ultra-modern house to go with my ultra-Western modern medicine.

Woman stabs a man 300 times — allegedly — in sexual activity that got "out of hand."

The 18-year-old man — according to the police affidavit — met the woman on line and traveled from Phoenix to Milwaukee for some consensual activity:

"Once he got to the residence, he was bound and stabbed numerous times over a time frame of what he described as two days," the affidavit states....

Officers followed a blood trail to an apartment in the 900 block of E. Knapp St, where the door to one of the units was open. Inside, there was blood on the floor and on bedding in a bedroom as well as duct tape that appeared to be a restraint, according to the affidavit.

A 22-year-old woman introduced herself to officers, saying, "I think you are here looking for me."...

When police searched the apartment, they found a book entitled "Werewolf's Guide to Life," a necromantic ritual book; and a black folder called "Intro to Sigilborne Spirits." According to various websites, Sigilborne spirits include female werewolf spirits who engage in sexual acts.

Ow-ooh... Werewolves of Milwaukee.

"Happy Labor Day: Top 10 union thug moments of the year."

Michelle Malkin catches the holiday spirit.

Only #8 and #5 take place in Madison, Wisconsin. And #1, which takes place in Boston, is a rally "in solidarity" with the Wisconsin protesters. The Democratic congressman, Mike Capuano, tells people to "get a little bloody":



Now, let's be fair. The full quote is: "Every once in a while you gotta get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary." Every once in a while — not all the time. Get a little bloody... a little! Not a lot. When necessary — no gratuitous violence. That's almost surgical. Does that deserve to be labeled "thuggery"?

The word "thug" has evolved over the years. Here's the etymology:

thug — 1810, "member of a gang of murderers and robbers in India who strangled their victims," from Marathi thag, thak "cheat, swindler," Hindi thag, perhaps from Skt. sthaga-s "cunning, fraudulent," possibly from sthagayati "(he) covers, conceals," from PIE base *(s)teg- "cover" (see stegosaurus). Transferred sense of "ruffian, cutthroat" first recorded 1839. The more correct Indian name is phanseegur, and the activity was described in English as far back as c.1665. Rigorously prosecuted by the British from 1831, they were driven from existence, but the process extended over the rest of the 19c.

Strangled?! This gives me an idea for another top 10 list: Top 10 judicial thug moments of the year! I've got your Wisconsin judicial thuggery right here. Help me fill out the list. It needn't be literal strangling. Other brutish behavior, physical or otherwise, may make the list, especially if you're fingering a cunning ruffian (or armor-plated fossil).

Balloons and blood in the Wisconsin State Capitol.

"The incident allegedly involved a citizen, a state worker and a balloon..."

Protesters have been releasing red heart balloons throughout the months of demonstrations... More than a dozen balloons were released in the rotunda Friday, but all of those had been removed by Monday morning.

The protester involved in Monday's incident told a Capitol police officer that the worker came at her with a knife. She did not appear to be injured, but was holding a blood-smeared paper bag and what looked like popped red heart balloon.

Other protesters who had been attending the daily singalong in the rotunda told the State Journal that the worker said he was sick of removing balloons from the dome and attempted to pop it. They said he apparently stabbed or cut himself in the process....

More balloons were released in the rotunda Monday afternoon after the incident.

The words that jump off the page are "came at her with a knife," but if you settle down and read that carefully, it seems more likely that you have an exasperated state worker clumsily attacking a balloon. Obviously, an actual knife attack would be terrible, but it doesn't sound as though that's what happened. On the other hand, deliberately releasing balloons inside the rotunda is vandalism. It's not cute and fun-loving. Dealing with this new "protests" is wasting state money and, apparently, upsetting at least one state worker.

UPDATE: Here's the story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"The citizen allegedly brought a balloon into the Capitol and the state employee allegedly broke the balloon. The state employee indicated that before the incident he slipped on the stairs and cut his hand," a statement released by the Department of Administration said. The statement made no mention of how the employee cut his hand or broke the balloon.

The citizen...  said... an assistant facilities director in the Capitol, approached her with a knife and slashed her balloon. She said that when the incident occurred [he] had a handkerchief over his hand, which was bleeding.

So the approach with the knife, it seems, was about popping balloons to prevent the troublesome release into the dome. No one was attacked or threatened, and the state worker carrying out the balloon-release prevention technique somehow managed to cut himself.

ADDED:  I have heard from an extremely trustworthy eyewitness that the police were talking to a weeping woman who claimed to have been assaulted.

AND: Blue Cheddar has some more detail:

Jenna says that she was standing with Leslie when Ron [Blair, the assistant facilities director,] approached “out of nowhere”. Leslie was holding a heart-shaped balloon that according to a @joevittie tweet, she had brought to give to a legislator. Jenna says Ron rushed at the balloon and popped it and then darted down a back stairway. In the course of the action Jenna says he did not say anything she could clearly hear, though he may have been mumbling.

Jenna says they were on the 2nd floor of the Capitol and he ran down to the 1st floor. She and Leslie followed close behind yelling at him and asking him why he popped the balloon. Jenna said he stopped at the 1st floor and turned. At this point they were very close, only “a couple of feet away” from Ron. Jenna says Ron lunged at Leslie grabbing her wrists and throwing her into a bathroom door. The force of the lunge was enough to push Leslie into the bathroom and he also came in the room with her. Jenna says that at this point Leslie started to scream and call “Help!”.

Interestingly, Ron Blair pushed Meade last March, as recorded in this video.

"It is the job of every generation to be the Van Helsing who slays the vampire that sucks the taxpayers' blood..."

"... that is, the train."

"The blood drive at the state Capitol was cut short Tuesday because American Red Cross workers decided it was too loud inside the rotunda to continue."

What the hell? We've quit monitoring the protests at the Capitol. What is going on these days? Stopping a blood drive?!

Next to the meat, concern for the fish... and for fraud... chanting "shame"... yelling "Koch suckers!" at a 14-year-old girl... laughing at Andrew Breitbart's "Go to Hell!"

Yesterday, at the Capitol Square, there was a big Tea Party rally, starring Sarah Palin, but it was opening day for the Dane County Farmers' Market. We pass a farmer's meat stand, and then we get to the signs. (Oh, it was a hard day yesterday, as I just indicated to myself by typoing, for "signs": "sighs.") There's a woman with a fish sign, blaming Walker for some piscine woes. There are a couple of anti-Prosser/pro-Kloppenburg signs alarming us about the possibility of election fraud. As Abe Lincoln strides across the green, the rally comes into view. I gotta feeling... despair is not an option.



At 0:40, we arrive at some "shame... shame... shame..." chanters. These are anti-Tea Party people, and maybe they're ashamed of themselves for not making it clear what the shame is. What's shameful about a Tea Party gathering? Be clear, folks! This chanting is inarticulate, unless your purpose is that we should all just feel terrible about ourselves. Is self-esteem passé? "Despair is not an option" but shame is the only option. I know you want to manipulate our feelings, but I can't even understand how you want me to feel... except very, very tired of you.

At 1:04, a woman's "Recall Walker" chant is hilariously half-hearted. Maybe we could just recall him a little. Let's not recall him. Let's reminisce about him.

At 1:07, we jump to the middle of that 14-year-old girl, speaking from the podium over clamorous chanting and heckling. Last night, I put up an edit of the video Meade shot during her speech. This is my video, from a different place in the crowd. There's an older woman in purple who yells "Corporate thief!" after the girl says "the debt... in my future is overwhelming." There are periodic outbursts from this woman, including "Koch suckers!" Imagine yelling "Koch suckers" at a 14-year-old girl.

At 1:46, I talk to the guy with the sign that purports to be "hand printed in union blood." (He should meet this artist who works in used Band-Aids.) (I guess the AIDS scare is over.)

2:15: "That girl was 14-years-old and she made more sense than Barack Obama," says the announcer.

2:25: The voice is Vicki McKenna, the local talk radio personality, who has no trouble powering over the "You lie!" characters in the union T-shirts.

2:53: A rag-tag band that had been at the corner gets the idea to march straight into the back of the Tea Party crowd, apparently with no idea of the danger of pushing into the back of a crowd. If people in the front were getting crushed against a barrier, these self-involved musicians would not realize what they were causing . To them, it's just brash, youthful misbehavior, fun-loving japery — shutting up the people who need to be shut up.

3:36: The voice is Andrew Breitbart, who gets to the point where he tells the counter-Tea Party protesters to "go to hell." As you can see, they laugh at him.

"When I was younger, I drank a quart of blood a day for about six weeks."

"I'd get it at the slaughterhouse. I'd heard about those Masais, you know, those seven-foot African guys; they'd drink cattle blood for strength. Then one day a little clot got stuck in my throat and that was it for me."

Coyote...

... roadkill silhouette in frost and warmth.

Dino De Laurentiis, "the high-flying Italian film producer," has died.

He was 91. His name is attached to some of the greatest films ever — notably "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria" — and some all-out trashy pop entertainment — like "Bararella" and "Mandingo."

Here's a list of his 166 movies. How many of them have you seen? I've got to say I've managed to steer clear of de Laurentiis films. Other than "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria" — 2 of my favorite films, directed by Fellini — the only one I've seen — and we watched it for a laugh — is "Conan the Barbarian."

I never saw the de Laurentiis remake of "King Kong," which was filmed in New York City in 1976. I was living there then, and I remember the open invitation to anyone to come down to Lower Manhattan to be in the crowd scene. I considered going but didn't. I read this article in the NYT on June 22, 1976:

Drawn by 1930's nostalgia and 1976 excitement, a horrified crowd of more than 5,000 New Yorkers surged past police lines at the World Trade Center last night on cue and fought its way to the spot where a giant gorilla lay dead after a 110-story fall from the North Tower.

The ape, constructed of styrofoam covered with horse hair and bleeding a mixture of Karo syrup and vegetable coloring was of course King Kong, the resurrected star of the 1933 thriller being remade by Dino de Laurentiis.

Ah! The unreachable past! When the the death was fake and not even human. What absurd fun we had!

The extras cheered when a technician climbed on the chest of the fallen 40-foot ape to replenish its oozing "blood."