"ian. r" -> "Iran". Coincidence? Doubtful.
Note, too, that Brock is British. I don't think you get to mock our teeth any more until you stop relying on our charity for your own dental care...
He was on sixty minutes, and Becks blogged it. Brock said something about bringing a team of dentists to the UK, since that's an area where public provision of services is really inadequate.
Not all British people have bad teeth. Eton assumes that its pupils will want to opt in to dental insurance, and plenty of girls at my sister's public school were getting fancy orthodonture treatment.
Speaking of teeth, I took PK to the orthodontist yesterday and was pleasantly surprised that the orthodontist was perfectly affable with PK's "I don't care if my teeth are crooked as long as I don't have any problem eating, so let's just leave them alone" attitude. Hurrah!
OT:This photo, taken by the Mars Orbiter, of the Phoenix lander parachuting into a Martian crater is the one of coolest things I've ever seen.
I don't care if my teeth are crooked as long as I don't have any problem eating
Ah, they're so cute before they start dating.
Appalachia, again. I sure hope that poverty-tour-with-John-Edwards targets this region. Not because BHO doesn't know about this misery, but because he has to be seen looking at and reacting to it, like RFK was.
Here I am running '67-'68 in my head again, a really common habit this year. What do those of you who've noticed old liberals doing that, a lot, feel about it?
40th Anniversary of 1968. LA times had a piece on it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-daum25-2008may25,0,4227776.story
6: Indeed. The opthamologist said "come back and check again in a year" and also pointed out that we can always take care of it when he's, oh, say, 12....
opthamologist
Wait, I thought PK need braces, not glasses. Little money pits, kids are.
Oh, I meant orthodontist. We saw the opthamologist last week, and yes, he needs glasses. Which are waiting until our vision insurance kicks in because I am a BAD MOM.
I figured that you meant orthodontist, B, but I did chuckle a bit at the idea of straightening out PK's eyes.
Four eyed brace face with long hair who likes mice and wears pink nail polish? His junior high gym teacher will have an aneurysm.
What do those of you who've noticed old liberals doing that, a lot, feel about it?
Old liberals have been re-running 1968 for about the last 39 years, so the rest of us are pretty much used to it by now.
14: If he stays in the school he's in--which is a big if, because the head teacher has the shittiest management skills, ever--he'll pretty much fit right in. Which is one of the reasons I like this school.
Back in the mid to late 60s I went on several medical "and work "missions"* sponsored by my church to eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. The one setup was pretty similar to that described in the article, volunteer doctors from my church (and other churches when we weren't there) manned a clinic that was moved about to different fairly remote places. Most of the folks were clearly not getting much health care and there was a big demand for the service, but I certainly had no insight into all of the causes (I supect many had no insurance) other than that there was a general lack of doctors and facilites and a number of folks who did not seem to have the time or means to get to a population center where they could get treatment. No idea what the of rates of insurance coverage in those areas has been between now and then. (Here is a chart for private insurance coverage in the US as a whole from 1940-1990.) I also wonder if those type of efforts stopped soon after I was involved, given the coming of Medicare etc. and generally improved economic conditions and overall infrastructure in Appalachia.
4: My dentist told me that he didn't think he could stand to wear false teeth either. I told him that I can eat anything but nuts and raw carrots, and he told me that for nuts and carrots, false teeth are no good either.
The laydeez don't like toothless old guys, but I've renounced that.
Re: old liberals and 1968. What I've noticed is the DLC rerunning 1972 ad infinitum, and supporting GWB in his attempt to outdo LBJ in the bloody fraud competition. (I give Bush the medal for fraud, but he hasn't approached LBJ for bloodshed yet.)
19: You are right Ben, per the asterisk I did mean to elaborate on that. This was mainsteam Protestant, I just did not have another word that really described what we did. Just about everyone I met was far more religious and knowledgable about scripture than I was, the only mission in that sense was bringing small city Midwestern early teen secular values into otherwise very religious communities.
re: teeth
What would be the point in braces until adolescence anyway? The whole shape of the jaw changes so much.
21
"What would be the point in braces until adolescence anyway? ..."
Sucking money out of insecure parents?
Sucking money out of insecure parents?
Nah, that what spacers are for.
21: Couple things. Depending on what's going on, there may be serious problems developing, like a tooth actually being forced sideways above the other teeth (i.e., into the palate). That, you'd want to correct immediately. Or you could have bite problems. Or the kid could, y'know, be being made fun of if the teeth were *very* crooked, or bucked, or something.
I think, though, that the main thing is to let the teeth grow in more or less straight from the get-go, so that kids don't have to go through the awkwardness of adolescence with the added geekiness of braces. (FWIW, the doc was suggeesting spacers to do this, while I was saying things like, "what if we just pull a couple of baby teeth to make room for the adult teeth to come in and assume his mouth will grow enough by the time he's 12 that there'll be room for the molars--which is what my childhood dentist did.)
