John Lewis/Waitrose: Shops of Choice for Champagne Socialists?
I heard an actor on the radio a couple of weeks ago, going on about the evils of capitalism. It might be alright for him to pontificate about large salaries, but he showed little knowledge about how market forces work. In other words if we had a hundred percent tax on all salaries over say £50,000, we’d lose anybody of talent. Well not all, as surely black-marketeers and tax fraudsters would have a field day.
But he did put in a good word for John Lewis and its Waitrose subsidiary, as they are partnerships in which all employees have stakes.
So does this explain why in this recession, they have done so well? Perhaps, those of the left feel that they must spend their money where it doesn’t go to shareholders.
A New Face for an Old Lady
I found this article on the British Library web site. It’s called Stroke and Coeliac Disease and is from Italy.
I’ve ordered it. I hope it’s worth the price.
Another Paper
This paper has the title of “Effect of B vitamin supplementation on plasma homocysteine levels in celiac disease”. It sounds boring, but I think it says that if you have low B6 and folate levels, then you might be more likely to get a stroke.
In any case I’m going to get my homocysteine, folate and B6 levels checked. I know the B12 are OK.
Coeliac Disease and Ischemic Stroke
I’m up early and playing on the Internet with Google. I’ve just typed “stroke coeliac” into the search engine with a couple of modifiers to cut out some of the things I already know about.
I have now found this paper by El Moutawakil B, Chourkani N, Sibai M, Moutaouakil F, Rafai M, Bourezgui M and Slassi I working in Casablanca in Morocco, entitled Coeliac Disease and Ischemic Stroke. This is the extract.
INTRODUCTION: Neurological manifestations of celiac disease are various. An association with ischemic stroke is not common and has not been well documented. We report two cases.
OBSERVATIONS: The first patient had experienced several transient ischemic strokes in the past 2 years and then had an acute ischemic stroke involving the territory of the right posterior cerebral artery. Investigations revealed celiac disease with no other recognizable etiology. The clinical course was marked by persistent visual aftereffects, but no new vascular event. The second patient had been followed since 1998 for celiac disease confirmed by pathology and serology tests. She was on a gluten-free diet. The patient had an ischemic stroke involving the territory of the left middle cerebral artery. Apart from a positive serology for celiac disease and iron deficiency anemia, the etiological work-up was negative.
DISCUSSION: The mechanisms of vascular involvement in celiac disease are controversial. The most widely incriminated factor is autoimmune central nervous system vasculitis, in which tissue transglutaminase, the main auto-antigen contributing to maintaining the integrity of endothelium tissue, plays a major role. Other mechanisms are still debated, mainly vitamin deficiency.
CONCLUSION: Being a potentially treatable cause of ischemic stroke, celiac disease must be considered as a potential etiology of stroke of unknown cause, particularly in young patients, and even without gastrointestinal manifestations.
I’d always fancied going to Casablanca to see the ghost of Humphrey Bogart.
Google Flu Trends
I found reference to Google Flu Trends in The Economist in an article about how Google are searching blogs and other information to find out what is going on.
An interesting graph is shown, but why are the UK, Finland and Denmark left out?
I wonder if the same techniques could be used to check for relationships. For instance, I wonder if my being a coeliac means that I am more likely to have strokes. So what if there are a lot of blog posts, with these two words in them? Obviously, it would need powerful and correct statistical analysis.
As an aside here, some years ago I wrote a program that used Google to deep search the Internet, create a database of all possible results and then display them in a Daisy chart. It showed a lot of promise, but I then had other things to do. That’s my life all over.
The Anonymous Widower 