MRI examinations of the brain in a well person

Yesterday I went to a truly excellent lecture at Edinburgh's Science Festival.
It was about MRI investigations of the brain
and
What should happen when it shows something, that is giving no symptoms and is just an incidental finding?
In the trade this is called - an incidentaloma.
also
Should we all be encouraged or discouraged from having such investigations as part of a routine check up?
Many of us have incidentalomas which will be there all our lives and cause us no harm.
In a few very rare cases they may be troublesome, however preventative intervention may cause problems too.
The lecture was given by one of the top scientist/medics in that field
The message I took home was
Doing an MRI on a well person is a waste of time
Private companies charge £2000-£3000 and they are not done or read by experts.
If something is found the person is told to go and talk to their GP about it and he /she is no expert. So a referral then has to be made to an NHS expert who has better things to be doing than trying to allay anxiety in a well person.
If for some reason an MRI has to be done, the patient should be told beforehand that it may show an incidentaloma. They should be asked beforehand whether they want to be told about it.
Years ago when I was a medical student, a friend working in medical physics borrowed me and my brain for an hour to test his new machine.
Something in my brain looked weird, except the machine was so new he wasn't sure if it was his machine or my brain.
I worried about this for a few years.
But I am a here - still alive and a pensioner.
My friend was killed in a climbing accident shortly after he did that test.

We are all doomed

So - the way  I read the present situation is - crisis.
This little episode in Cyprus is going to precipitate terrible things for us all.
It is telling us that no money is safe in any bank in Europe (except Germany).
I have my life savings tucked away in several different UK Banks some mainly owned by us - the public.
BUT.
Nothing is safe
Banks can go bankrupt
Government can overide promises to guarantee deposits as is happening in Cyprus
Governments can go bankrupt
Countries and their banks can go bankrupt.
Pensions get taken away or disappear
The Euro is about to blow-up
The EU is not going to be able to cope with Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy all going under.
France and Britain may follow
Britain's debt has doubled in size instead of improving. It will soon be larger than our GDP.
We are all Dooooooooomed

This is how religion should be

I have just heard a wonderful story
A church in Aberdeen stands next door to a very small mosque. The congregation of the mosque had increased so much that the overflow where having to pray outside on the pavement in the cold (Aberdeen is very cold).
So the Minister arranged with the Imam to share his church. They mainly pray on Friday he mainly prays on Sunday. And he says they are all praying and that is what religion is about
The arrangement is working really well with the 2 communities now sharing certain celebrations such as mince pies and pakoras on Christmas Eve and the following September joining together to remember the dead of 9/11 with readings from the Bible and the Koran.
Yes - brilliant

Germany now demands payback

In my recent blog I wondered why it was that Germany seemed not to mind being responsible for and paying for  all of Europe's debts.
I spoke just too soon
Germany obviously does mind and is now saying - no more
Poor old Cyprus. Imagine suddenly being told that your government is going to take part of your precious hard earned savings from your bank account
Especially when the EU had promised to protect bank accounts up to a certain level.
Apparently the only option otherwise would be Cyprus and it's  banks going bust and everyone losing all their money.
England very kindly bailed out our two Scottish banks, otherwise an awful lot of people here would have lost all their money.
The message for us all is that our savings are not safe in any bank  in Europe.
The trouble is where on earth to put them

Germany paying Southern Europe's bills

I have just read an article by someone knowledgeable saying something that little me has been thinking for ages.
Why are the German people not getting fed up with Europe?
Don't they see that they are the ones having to pay for everything?
I wrote a blog recently titled
Would you pay your neighbour's mortgage?
I was referring to England not wanting to bail out Scotland if Scotland insists on becoming independent.
Poor old Germany is bailing out all of southern Europe and will be for ever and ever.
The countries they are bailing out seem to hate them for it.
Don't they mind?

Women segregated at University of London

Apparently at some lectures and public debates at some London University Colleges such as UCL, women are being segregated - they have to sit separately from men.
 I went to medical school at London University and if any of us female students had come across situations where we were being segregated, there would have been riots.
 It was the time of the anti apartheid movement and there were riots in London against the segregation of black people from white in South Africa.
To think that any form of segregation could now be occurring in this country,  in Britain, is horrifying.
It is being done to pander to the religious beliefs of Muslim fundamentalists. Their men claim that pure Muslim women do not want to be sullied by sitting next to men.
So they are given separate seating at the back of the hall.
Instead of asking questions as the men do, directly, the women have to write their question down on a piece of paper.
To my mind this is treating women as second class citizens
It would seem that this is also happening in other British Colleges.
I find this so awful that I struggle to find words.
British women have fought hard for female equality, from the suffragette movement onwards. We cannot allow our hard one battles to be undone for the sake of anyone.

Why is knitting wool so expensive

I knit as a fidget. I reckon it is better than smoking or some such thing. For some strange reason I find it very soothing as long as I don't have to think about what I am doing-  then it becomes a stress.
I therefore knit boring things like squares that require no brain input at all.
The trouble is that knitting wool is horribly expensive nowadays. It is cheaper to buy a woolen jumper than to  knit one. I cant think why. The poor old farmers round here get so little for the  fleeces from their sheep that it is not worth their trouble shearing them and shipping the fleeces off .
There  must be some big rip-off going on somewhere.
So I go around the charity shops and buy any odds and ends of wool that they have and I knit it into either socks or squares.
This week I decided that I had enough squares to join together. The picture shows them laid out.
I am showing my masterpiece at this stage because I suspect that from now it may be all downhill.
The thought of sewing all these squares together is daunting and will require concentration and I am sure to get them all muddled up.
But - I dedicate to - the sheep