Category: News

Kaiser Health News offers a fresh take on health policy developments with Randy Bish’s “Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk.”

Kaiser Health News staff writer Julie Appleby reports on the details of the House bill’s abortion restrictions. “The House-passed health bill bars insurers from selling policies that cover abortion to anyone who gets a federal subsidy. But it does allow insurers to offer optional abortion coverage that consumers could purchase with their own money. Based on some states’ experiences, it’s unlikely insurers would sell such coverage” (11/10). Read entire story.  

Newsdemon loves to love you, baby. They’re offering two months of Usenet access for $2 starting right now and ending at 11:59 PST tomorrow. You can sign up here.

In more interesting news, they’ve also unearthed the original memo from Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis about the foundation of Usenet. It begins:

Invitation
A group of UNIX systems at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have established a uucp-based computer communication network. Admission to the net is open to all UNIX licensees. In addition to providing the “uu” services available in the Seventh Edition of UNIX (remote mail, file transfer, job execution), it will provide a network news service. A prospective node must have a call in facility, call out facility, or some other means of communication with another UNIX net system. The node must have, or be able to legitimately obtain, uucp and related software..
Systems which do not call-out to the net must be polled occasionally. We will poll any system that so requests, and will bill the polled system for phone costs. The phone costs are expected to be $10-20/month. Requests for an application should be sent to
James Ellis
Department of Computer Science
Duke University
Durham, NC 27706

They also have a great little interview with some of the greats of Usenet. Check it out.

Boy, I remember the days of play spy gear in the past. Crappy motion detectors, fingerprint kits that were nothing more than flour and tape, and mirrored sunglasses — never anything like this. And I remember thinking, too, when Ethan Hunt had those camera-glasses in the first “Mission: Impossible,” I scoffed, thinking yeah right, there’s no way. Now, a mere decade later (actually that’s quite a long time, but bear with me), you can get one for pocket change. And by pocket change I mean quite a bit of money. And by quite a bit of money I mean $150, which really isn’t that bad.

The pen has a pinhole camera, as you can see, which shoots at 640×480. The monitor is actually a fully functioning PMP, with support for a million formats (the controls are on the side; it’s not a touchscreen device) and has an SD slot and built-in speaker. I’m assuming it can record the video from the pen-cam, though that’s not specifically stated.

I know, I know, there are lots of these sorts of things. But this one looks solid, and $150 is a pretty good deal. Brando’s got lots of great stuff like that.

This could be awesome: Aspex, a company that makes scanning electron microscopes for those among us who need them, says you can send in stuff and they’ll put up pictures of it. Pictures they took through their scanning electron microscope. Ever wondered what coffee looks like up close? How about dustballs? Bananas?

Well, send ‘em on in. If they can take Pharyngula’s traffic, they can take ours too. Follow the guidelines, please. You do have to fill out forms and stuff.

Blockbuster, observing the popularity of services like RedBox (a DVD rental kiosk), has decided they’re going to skip a step and start offering movie rentals that come on an SD card. The new kiosks would load a DRMed movie onto your own SD card, and the content will expire after X viewings or days. They’re hoping that the better quality of the movies (vs. streaming ones or regular DVD) will bring users back. You might have picked a format that’s actually supported by media devices, guys.

SD cards are everywhere, indeed, but there are precious few DVD players, TVs, and personal media players that support them. Your computer has an SD card reader, or else you’ve bought one by now, but I don’t think people want to rent things to play them on their computers if they can stream them so incredibly easily. Sure, working out how to get an SD card’s content onto your TV may be easy for tech-oriented people like you and me, but for the people grabbing a movie on the way out of the grocery store… not so much.

With luck, Blockbuster will wise up and allow a USB drive to be plugged in. I mean, why didn’t they do that first thing? Everybody has those sitting around. And not that many people have high-capacity SD cards. If the movies are over 2GB, a lot of people are sunk because they only have the card that came with their camera (likely 512MB or thereabouts). Oh well, it’s a step in the right direction. Although I guarantee you’ll see a Blockbuster DRM-stripping app out there within a few weeks of these hitting the street.

Alan Gerow was the first of a few folks to send in the news that some independent filmmakers not only discovered that their film, Ink, had ended up being widely available via Bittorrent, but that they were quite happy about the exposure. Alan sends over the email that the filmmakers sent out:

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you’ve each helped us create. We’ve had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you’ve generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don’t know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films”

Again, we’ve seen this with other films as well, but it’s always nice to see filmmakers who realize it doesn’t make sense to freak out, but to look for ways to take advantage of this as a promotional opportunity.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

While the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is often seen as being inherently in favor of stronger intellectual property rights, every so often, the organization shows itself open to more reasonable approaches. A few years back, for example, it questioned the evidence on patents, and had trouble finding any real evidence that stronger patents resulted in greater innovation. Now, via Slashdot, we hear about a discussion at WIPO concerning “enforcement” issues where a number of papers were presented that pushed back on excessive pro-IP positions. These included a paper by WIPO Chief Economist, Carsten Fink, which calls out many of the previous studies on “losses” due to counterfeiting and piracy, and notes how misguided many of them are. While I think Fink uses some outdated and since disproved economic theory in his paper, overall it’s nice to see at least some acknowledgment of moving more towards evidence based policy setting, rather than the maximalist’s default “more is better” position.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Having a blast playing Modern Warfare 2(PC, PS3 and Xbox 360)? Well it looks like Infinity Ward is already working on the next iteration of the game, …

I suck at GoldenEye. There, I’ve said it. I get schooled every time I play, even if I’m Odd Job. And chances are, everyone who reads this is better than me at Halo, Killzone, and pretty much every other console FPS. That’s just an upfront disclosure in case you want to skip this post and get right to the flaming. After all, I’m just writing this because I’m bad at these games, right?

The thing is, I would probably ruin you in Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2. In fact, it seems to me that every time I read about a PC team going up against a console team in the same game, the console team gets manhandled. Why is that? Well, probably because a mouse and keyboard is a better way of controlling a first-person shooter. You know it, I know it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.

Here’s the thing: the gaming world isn’t governed by players and their preferences. It’s a business, subject to market forces, development pressures, and all that sort of thing. Remember when Halo was going to be a Mac exclusive? That didn’t happen for a reason: because there was more money to be made in launching it with a new console. Was it a better or worse game for it? I don’t know, I’m not a freaking oracle. And that’s not the point of this post anyway.

Look, making a big game is a nightmare. A studio needs to get a return on a huge investment, and where are the sales? In the piracy-ridden, heterogenous PC market, where you have to cater to every possible hardware configuration? No, but the game will probably be at its best on a high-end PC, so you kind of want to hit that anyway. But the main thing is to get a game onto the PS3 and 360 in as playable a form as possible. That way you have a guaranteed base of 40 or 50 million units that will all run it perfectly and work together just the way they’re designed to. Maybe they won’t have a mouse, but so what?

So you get AAA FPS titles like Modern Warfare 2 on a console, where people can play the game just fine against each other and enjoy the full experience — with a dual shock. Is the PC version the “definitive” version of the game? With MW2 I would suggest not, but with others it may be the case (GTA4 for instance). To make a blanket statement on this would be to commit a pretty foolish error. At the same time, don’t take someone to task for saying that Borderlands is better on the PC. I mean, what? It is!

Besides, I don’t think it’s an insult against console gamers or their games to say that a mouse and keyboard is the better control method. It’s like saying a wheel controller with pedals is a better controller for racing games. It just is! It doesn’t mean that everyone sucks without one, or that games that don’t support wheels are garbage. It’s just presenting an ideal. Can there be great FPSes on consoles? Sure! But let’s be honest about it and qualify that by saying that there’s auto-aim, the enemies shoot slower, and they generally have a more horizontally-orientated environment. It just makes it a better game on the console. They switch it up for the PC version, if they make one; if I can get headshots 90% of the time in Gears on PC, versus 10% on console, they better damn sure make it so that doesn’t break the game.

The console versus PC debate, which is what the mouse vs. controller thing is really about, ends up being a kind of silly one. There are fantastic games on both platforms, and some just work better on one or the other. Platformers are best with a specific controller, joystick sensitivity, and button layout. Real-time strategy demands a level of versatility, precision, and resolution that’s only available on PCs. And if we’re honest, so do FPSes in their ideal format. But that’s not always possible; the convenience and standard hardware of consoles often means a better deal for developers, and sometimes a better game for the consumer.

I may never be good at GoldenEye, but I could never say that game sucked. So let’s stop being such prideful bastards about our games and just agree to say “whatever works for you.”

“DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY!”

ABOUT DESTRESS YOURSELF DOT COM

Destress Yourself is about finding permanent stress relief and creating happiness, energy, and vitality.

My name is Elizabeth Stanfill and I am the creator and writer of destress yourself dot com and of The Destress Yourself Blog.

I live in Sunny Central/Southern (on the boarder) California in Beautiful Town USA. I’m a Mommy, a Daughter, a Sister, and a Friend. Most importantly, a daughter of the Most High, Heavenly Father. I love hanging with family, friends, and helping people.

When I am not writing and blogging about destressing yourself, I provide free crisis intervention and direction, teach an assortment of stress management classes, and I teach stress management one on one with personal clients.

The research and writing about stress management began in 1993. Originally, I was an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), then a Field Training Officer (FTO), and I was a 911 Senior Operations Supervisor for several years.

During 1997 and 1999, while obtaining my Masters in Counseling, I was interning as a Counselor at the University Counseling Center. My focus became Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM). Subsequent to gaining Certification I became a Peer Counselor. Soon after designing a CISM Program for the largest ambulance company in the United States, I became the CISM Coordinator, and trained the Peer Counselors in the Southern Pacific Region.

As a result of my experience and my education, I have had the fortunate opportunity to teach thousands of people CISM and Stress Management.

My passion is Critical Incident Stress Management, Stress Management, and Overcoming Burnout. This is what I call Destressing Yourself, and I have been researching, teaching, and writing about this particular subject for about a decade.

My expertise is teaching how to ‘Destress Yourself‘ and what this means is I instruct individuals how to discover their stressful habits, that are causing discontent, or worse in life, how to eliminate these habits, and replace them with successful practices that allows explosive jumps in personal and professional performance.

This is my passion and I am dedicated to helping you discover the journey to ‘Destress Yourself“.

WHY DESTRESS YOURSELF DOT COM?

If you are unhappy, something must be done. If you are not living life with happiness, energy, and vitality you must do something about it. You can learn to be happy by destressing yourself and I can show you how, for free!

If you are stressed out I can help! For Free!

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Subscribe to this blog.
On the left column you can sign up via email.  Put your email address in the box provided and receive updated posts, to this blog, in your email.

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter.
When you go to destress yourself dot com, you can sign up for our free weekly newsletters in the bluish box in the right column. This free weekly newsletter will give you education and exercises that you can do to enhance your permanent stress relief.

Download our free audios on stress management. You will find free downloadable audios in our store.

I hope this is helpful.

Until next post, don’t forget to have fun and be playful, because it is in your nature.

WITH GOD, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

Elizabeth

Dark Helmet writes in to alert us to an article discussing a recent Larry Lessig speech concerning conflicts between copyright and education, leading DH to write:

“What do we, as a society, value more: business rights or education rights?

Because we’re more and more often hearing stories about IP law effecting things like text book answers, lesson agendas, syllabi, etc. It seems that we are so wrapped up in the idea of personal rights and personal walls around the content that we create or organize that we’re losing sight of some truly important values, none more so than the ability to educate our emerging leaders to their fullest. After all, what could do more to promote the progress of our society and way of life as a whole than to educate our masses to the fullest? What standing could one possibly have to impede another’s education to eke out further profit?”

Indeed. For quite some time it’s appeared that there’s a bit of a conflict in the basics of copyright and the concept of education — which is all about sharing information and spreading that information. It’s one of those things that copyright maximalists (especially the ones who are professors) usually don’t like to talk about.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The paper reviewed here is ‘Somatic Awareness in the Clinical Care of Patients with Body Distress Symptoms’ by Bakal and colleagues and freely available here. The authors describe Body Distress Symptoms thus

‘Symptoms of somatic or body distress (BD), more widely known as medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) or functional somatic syndromes, are characteri(s)ed by patterns of persistent physical complaints for which adequate examination does not reveal specific pathology’

Thus the authors equate Medically Unexplained Symptoms, functional somatic syndromes and symptoms of body distress in their definition. The authors go on to justify their favouring of the term BD and cite evidence suggesting that reattribution therapy which attempts to move the explanation for functional bodily symptoms to a psychological cause does not lead to an improvement in outcome measures. However the article is concerned with BD rather than RT meaning that the efficacy of RT would be explored in more detail in a systematic review which may result in more complex conclusions. The authors then go on to discuss the origins of Bodily Distress Disorder (BDD), discussing the three factor model and then focusing on how core symptoms might relate to the regulation of breathing.

I disagreed with the section on ‘depression and sadness in context’. While it is important to distinguish between ‘normal’ sadness and depression (for which there are many diagnostic criteria) the authors also make some suggestions about prolonged antidepressant use and then finish the section by stating that they do not think that antidepressant treatment is the answer. I would argue on the other hand that appropriate treatments are made only after a carefully considered assessment and that recommendations regarding the optimal treatment strategies should be guided by this individual assessment, the evidence base and the local treatment protocols.

The authors answer some of these points in their section on tacit knowing and somatic awareness. Even here I would argue that they are discussing an area which includes the clinician’s intuition and that where this is carefully honed it should be consistent with related areas such as the clinical evidence base. I would argue that the clinical evidence base is not an area distinct from clinical accumen but is an investigation of clinical data and an attempt to draw meaningful knowledge from this area. The definition of ‘tacit knowledge’ adds an air of mystery by referring to knowledge at the periphery of attention. Within this section, the authors refer to non-verbal material which the physician may use during the clinical process. Such ‘tacit knowledge’ can be systematically converted into explicit knowledge by a close study of such phenomenon and indeed various methods for measuring such factors have long since been developed and employed both in clinical practice and research.

I found the discussion of somatic awareness to be a more interesting contribution if we consider the mind to be both a function of brain as well as being better described by a symbolic system that differs from that used in discussion of the ‘brain paradigm’ (e.g. see here). I was interested however to find out a little more about how the authors intended to align ‘neurobiology’ and ‘consciousness’ as according to the paradigm discussed in the previous sentence this might not be a suitable starting or indeed end point. The authors invoke some of Damasio’s thoughts on the mind-body relationship. My interpretation of what the authors were trying to say was that there is mind-brain-body relationship and that as the body is involved in this relationship it can serve as the focal point for discussions and that this is just as valid as making the mind or the brain the focal points. The justification for this would be that any ‘focal’ point is in itself a simplification of the more complex relationship that occurs between the three and so it doesn’t matter which of the triad serves as this focal point it will still be a simplification and explanations will always return to the complex interactions between mind, body and brain. However by using the body as a focal point for this discussion, the model is apparently made more accessible.

In the final section the authors consider how ’somatic awareness’ might be incorporated into medical practice. Again I disagreed with many of the points in this section. For instance, the withdrawal of medication was difficult to justify as patients may be on a number of medications for different conditions. Although some may not be prescribed as psychotropics they may in some cases have such side-effects and it would be useful to see the management suggestions in such cases where withdrawal is not possible. As above, a blanket statement about medications does not address the complexities of individual needs and even on a theoretical basis there are many counters to this suggestion. Encouraging a focus on introspection and monitoring both symptoms and bodily sensations seems to be a useful approach that could be developed further in a subsequent article again with reference to the evidence base.

In summary, the authors broach psychosomatic issues by consideration of ‘body distress’ although I found a few statements that seemed axiomatic and could be argued to be too simple to address the complexities of individual needs without careful consideration of process, the evidence base and consequences. It is useful however to have discussions in this area.

 

Twitter

You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link

Podcast

You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast).

Responses

If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail [email protected]

Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

Well, the spirit of giving arrived a little early this year! For my birthday last month, Google announced it was partnering to offer free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights until January 15th. Great, thanks Google, now I have to check the feeds even while flying at 500MPH. But I guess that wasn’t enough kindness to satisfy the Goog.

They’ve just announced that they’re going to be extending the free Wi-Fi to 47 entire airports. And not only that, but there’s a raft of giveaways, charity matching, and other nonsense in the bargain as well. I’m starting to think that it’s not “Don’t be evil” so much as “Give away enough stuff that people forget about the evil.” Maybe that’s disingenuous. In fact, I’m sure it is. Oh well, ’tis the season for moral ambiguity.

Here are the details, as briefly as I can state them.

• All airports on this list have Wi-Fi right now. Except Sea-Tac, which is getting it later (just my luck).
• Google will match any donation (up to $250K) made via the Wi-Fi in one of the airports. The airport that has the most donations on January 15 will get a $15,000 credit to donate to a local charity of their choice.
• The service is provided by “Boingo, Advanced Wireless Group, Time Warner Cable, Electronic Media Systems, Lilypad as well as numerous airports that provide wireless services themselves.” i.e. Google is just paying the bill, everything else is the same.
• No data is being collected besides the donation data (you’re not a guinea pig).
• At some point you’ll be able to submit a photo of yourself via the Wi-Fi in order to enter for a prize drawing. Okay…? That’s kind of weird. I guess “Don’t be creepy” isn’t in the Google charter.

Sounds good to me. If anyone finds a catch, let us know, but I think it’s pretty straightforward. More info at the Free Holiday WiFi page, if you’re interested or feeling FAQ-y.

Also, as commenter Harold points out, Yahoo! will be providing Times Square with Wi-Fi for a whole damn year, and Microsoft is partnering with JiWire to put Bing-sponsored free Wi-Fi in “hotels and airports.”

[via LA Times and Black Book, and The P-I for that last bit]

This week brings the 2009 Wise Traditions Conference hosted by the Weston A Price Foundation – and I’ll be blogging live from the conference. The conference will cover sustainable farming practices, traditional diets, radical medicine, alternative approaches to cancer and infertility as well as myriad other topics focused on just how nourishing foods can help us to heal our bodies and our planet. If you can’t join us, you can still keep up to date on the conference, its lectures and fabulous meals in real time by checking in here at Nourished Kitchen, Hartke is Online, Cheeseslave and Kitchen Kop.

Highlights of the Wise Traditions Conference

Friday: Traditional Diets, Gut and Psychology/Physiology Syndrome, Radical Medicine, What Every Grass-based Farmer (and Consumer) Should Know, Cooking, Sacred Foods, Live Blood Analysis and Film Screenings.

Saturday: Honoring Sacred Foods, Artisanal Farming with Livestock, Behind the Fuzzy Logic of Raw Milk Opposition

Sunday: Healing with Traditional Foods, Plant Food Toxins, Holistic Cancer Treatments, Real Food Economics and Lifestyle, Farm Direct: the New Face of Marketing and Distribution

Speakers: Speakers will include Sally Fallon Morrell, RJ Ruppenthal, Chris Masterjohn, Baden Lashkov, Scott Gryzbek and others who have made notable strides in the traditional and sustainable foods movements.

Real Food: What excites me the most is the food. Lunches of artisanal cheeses and sourdough breads. Suppers featuring wild-caught salmon and grass-finished meats.

Updating the Post Schedule for Wise Traditions

Wise Traditions begins this Friday and ends Sunday – so this week I’m deviating from the norm to bring you new posts directly from the conference, its lectures and events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this week. We’ll resume our regular Monday through Friday posting schedule on Monday, November 16^th. Over the course of these three days, each post will focus on a single aspect of the conference. For up-to-the-minute action, please consider finding me on twitter and facebook where I’ll be posting videos, photographs and details of the conference in real time.

Follow the Conference Live on Twitter and Facebook

Twitter: Follow me (NourishedMama) on twitter for live, real time updates of the conference. Ann Marie of Cheeseslave and Real Food Media, Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Kimberly of Hartke is Online will also be publishing real time updates discussing the conference.

Tweet Chat: Keep it simple and checkout Tweet Chat – a service that allows you to follow specific conversations on twitter as they occur. Type in the hashtag #wapfconf which will keep you in the loop about every tweet discussing the Wise Traditions Conference as it occurs. If you have a specific question to ask or comment to make about our experiences at Wise Traditions, ask it here and you’ll get an answer in real time. It doesn’t get any more live than this!

Facebook: Don’t forget, we’ll also be updating Facebook with links, photos, videos and status reports throughout the conference. Friend me on Facebook to keep fully updated about the conference and its progress. Don’t forget to friend Ann Marie, Kimberly and Kelly – each of whom will also be covering the conference live on facebook.

Attending the Conference

Attend the Conference Virtually: Don’t forget that we’re attending this conference in person not only to further our interests and knowledge about traditional foods, health and healing, but also to share our experiences at the conference with you – our readers. So, if you can’t make it, spread the love: chat us up! Tweet, retweet and share these posts and updates as they go live! You can even download conference handouts and even recipes.

Attend the Conference in Person: If you’re planning to attend the conference in person, please stop by the Real Food Media booth while you’re there. Tee-shirts, bags and other goodies will be available for sale while and there may be a giveaway or two up our sleeves. Indeed, I’ve got a recipe cards available for free to any reader who stops by the booth and asks.  We love to meet our readers and anyone who has a passion for real food.

Don’t forget: if you live within driving distance of Chicago, plan to attend the conference if only for a single day. Day passes are available for $75, not including food.

---

More from Nourished Kitchen

Looking for grass-finished beef or wild-caught fish? What about that exotic sourdough starter you’ve been after? Or water kefir grains? Check out the Nourished Kitchen Where to Buy List that outlines great companies that sell or support real and traditional foods.

Don’t forget: I’m not a doctor, I’m a mom who loves preparing wholesome, natural foods for her family and I enjoy sharing our reasons in choosing these nourishing foods. Read the disclaimer and advertising/link policy and the privacy policy.

© Jenny for The Nourished Kitchen, 2009. |
Permalink |
4 comments |
Add to
del.icio.us

Post tags: