Today, the first Friday of February, is national "Wear Red" day in honor (or observance) of Women's Heart Health Awareness, as spearheaded by the "Go Red for Women" campaign. So of course I will be wearing red to work and I've been handing out Red Dress pins.

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There have been a couple of recent threads on LinkedIn regarding the definition of a "cure" for diabetes.

As everyone here who takes insulin will agree, diabetes cannot be "cured" by diet alone. And as everyone whose diabetes is currently controlled in part, or entirely, by diet and exercise will agree, just like "insulin is not a cure", "eating the right foods" is not a cure, either.

Merriam-Webster defines "cure (noun)" in our sense as the following:

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Sometimes, what I know, and what I believe, isn't politic to proselytize.

I don't mean religion in it's Deity-centric sense, or partisan politics the way it is played out in our system of Federal, state, and local governments. I'm talking about diabetes politics.

I tend to turn the "more insulin, more strips" outcry on its ears, because when I look at the issue I don't see it as a public health issue or an access-to-healthcare issue, but as issues of crime, infrastructure, and -- at it's most basic level -- poverty. While I understand the "Type 1 versus Type 2" issues of proportion, confusion, alarmist publicity, and palliation-versus-remediation, I'd much rather us present a united front to those we approach for funds to prescreen, arrest, remediate, and (eventually) cure all types of diabetes than get caught up in internicine squabbles that would turn our benefactors away.

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Earlier this week, it was announced that the focus of national anger for most of this century had met his Maker, courtesy of the United States military. The TV news showed people reacting by dancing in the streets.

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Ring around a rosy, a pocket full of posies...

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us know that the seemingly-nonsensical nursery rhymes of youth were sharp political snipes and sarcastic observations at the time of their composition. We know, for example, that the "ring" or "rosy" was the distinct buboe of bubonic plague, that it was believed that carrying around fresh flowers would help ward off the Plague, that the belongings of a Plague victim would be burned to try to limit the spread of the disease, and that all too many people had succumbed -- and would succumb -- to its horrors.

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One of the odd observances of the Christmas Skeptic is the effect of today's gift-giving Santa Claus on the development of greed amongst children. The observation is somewhat paradoxical considering greed is considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

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