-research thanks to the Blog: http://kiwi-a-go-go.blogspot.com
Archive for 2009
That’s about right
Thursday, September 17th, 2009Money-Driven Medicine
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
– A friend, who is an M.D., sent me these links.  Here’s a professional expose of what’s wrong with America’s healthcare system.  And I guarantee you, folks, that without serious agitation from the common man in the streets, it is going to stay this way because big big money is involved and for them, profits come before people.
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➡ – Video: Bill Moyers – Money-Drive Medicine – Part 1
➡ – Video: Bill Moyers – Money-Drive Medicine – Part 2
➡ – Video: Bill Moyers – Interviews Wendell Potter
And more on Wendell Potter, Healthcare and Rescission… ➡
– Research thanks to Hans D.
Sayings of the Jewish Buddha
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
– Good stuff today from Barry Rithholtz.  original is here: ➡
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The Jewish Buddha says:
If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.
Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.
Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.
There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?
Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.
The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen. And sit up straight. You’ll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.
Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says, There is no self. So … maybe we’re off the hook?
A mean streak in the US mainstream
Saturday, August 29th, 2009– What to say?  This is one aspect of the U.S. that I will not be sorry to leave behind when I shift to New Zealand.
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The Independent (UK)
Tue, 25 Aug 2009
The US tolerates more inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here
When we Europeans – the British included – contemplate the battles President Obama must fight to reform the US health system, our first response tends to be disbelief. How can it be that so obvious a social good as universal health insurance, so humane a solution to common vulnerability, is not sewn deep into the fabric of the United States? How can one of the biggest, richest and most advanced countries in the world tolerate a situation where, at any one time, one in six of the population has to pay for their treatment item by item, or resort to hospital casualty wards?
The second response, as automatic as the first, is to blame heartless and ignorant Republicans. To Europeans, a universal health system is so basic to a civilised society that only the loony right could possibly oppose it: the people who cling to their guns, picket abortion clinics (when they are not trying to shoot the abortionists) and block funding for birth control in the third world. All right, we are saying to ourselves, there are Americans who think like this, but they are out on an ideological limb.
If only this were true. The reason why Obama is finding health reform such a struggle – even though it was central to his election platform – is not because an extreme wing of the Republican Party, mobilised by media shock-jocks, is foaming at the mouth, or because Republicans have more money than Democrats to buy lobbying and advertising power. Nor is it only because so many influential groups, from insurance companies through doctors, have lucrative interests to defend – although this is a big part of it.
It is because very many Americans simply do not agree that it is a good idea. And they include not only mainstream Republicans, but Democrats, too. Indeed, Obama’s chief problem in seeking to extend health cover to most Americans is not Republican opposition: he thrashed John McCain to win his presidential mandate; he has majorities in both Houses of Congress. If Democrats were solidly behind reform, victory would already be his.
The unpalatable fact for Europeans who incline to think that Americans are just like us is that Democrats are not solidly behind Obama on this issue. Even many in the party’s mainstream must be wooed, cajoled and even – yes – frightened, if they are ever going to agree to change the status quo. Universal healthcare is an article of faith in the US only at what mainstream America would regard as the bleeding- heart liberal end of the spectrum.
As some of Obama’s enemies warned through the campaign – and I mean warned, not promised – this is the philosophical terrain where, his voting record suggests, this President is most at home. But many more are not. The absence from the Senate of Edward Kennedy, through illness, and Hillary Clinton, elevated to the State Department, has left his pro-reform advocacy in the legislature sorely depleted.
But there is something else at work here, too, beyond defective advocacy, and it lays bare a profound misunderstanding. Europe hailed Obama’s landslide election victory as evidence that America had reclaimed its better self, turned to the left and bade farewell to ingrained racial divisions as well. That was a benevolent, but ultimately idealistic, gloss.
Obama’s victory can indeed be seen as a reaction to eight years of conservative Republicanism under George Bush and a turn by US voters to the left. But that left is still quite a bit further right than in most of Europe. Nor was it just a leftward turn that cost John McCain the White House; it was also a rejection of the weaker candidate. Obama’s great asset was that he came across as more competent on the economy, at a time of global financial meltdown. From this side of the Atlantic, we convinced ourselves that Americans had voted with their hearts, but there was a considerable element of the wallet as well.
That wallet element helps explain the deep-seated misgivings that have surfaced about Obama’s plans for health reform. A majority of Americans believe they have adequate health cover. Their choice of job may be limited by their insurance requirements (and labour mobility reduced). And their calculations may be upset – sometimes disastrously – by accident or illness.
But with most pensioners protected by the state system known as Medicare, an “I’m all right, Jack” attitude prevails. It coexists with the fear that extending the pool of the insured, to the poorer and more illness-prone, will raise premiums for the healthy and bring queuing, or rationing, of care – which is why stories about the NHS inspire such dread. The principle that no one should be penalised financially by illness is trumped by the self-interest of the majority, then rationalised by the argument that health is a matter of personal responsibility.
The point is that, when on “normal”, the needle of the US barometer is not only quite a way to the political right of where it would be in Europe, but showing a very different atmospheric level, too. For there is a mean and merciless streak in mainstream US attitudes, which tolerates much more in the way of inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here, while incorporating a large and often sanctimonious quotient of blame.
This transatlantic difference goes far beyond the healthcare debate. Consider the give-no-quarter statements out of the US on the release of the Lockerbie bomber – or the continued application of the death penalty, or the fact that excessive violence is far more common a cause for censorship of US films in Europe than sex. Or even, in documents emerging from the CIA, a different tolerance threshold where torture and terrorism are concerned.
Some put the divergence down to the ideological rigidity that led Puritans and others to flee to America in the first place; others to the ruthless struggle for survival that marked the early settlement years and the conquest of the West. Still others see it as the price the US pays for its material success. What it means, though, is that if and when Obama gets some form of health reform through, it will reflect America’s fears quite as much as its promise. And it is unlikely to be a national service that looks anything like ours.
To the original… ➡
– Research thanks to John P. and Charles S.
Climate change impacts in our backyards: the Southwest
Friday, August 28th, 2009The Southwestern United States
A convergence of the highest population growth rates in the nation and the most rapid warming compared with other regions makes the American Southwest especially vulnerable to climate impacts.
“The fingerprints of climate change can already be seen in both natural and managed ecosystems of the Southwest. Future impacts on the landscape are expected to be substantial, threatening biodiversity, protected areas, and ranching and agricultural lands.” [quotes are from the June 2009 USGCRP report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States].
The Southwest already experiences very high summer temperatures and corresponding water and energy needs, intensified by a rapidly growing population. Projected temperature increases for the Southwest represent augmented stresses to health, electricity, and water supply in a region that is already at risk. As the climate warms, the current “tug-of-war among preserving natural ecosystems, supplying the needs of rapidly expanding urban areas, and protecting the lucrative agricultural sector, will be exacerbated.”
More… ➡
Tiny particles pose threat: scientists
Friday, August 28th, 2009– I’ve been beating this little drum for sometime now.  I think when we look back in the future on today’s science, this will be one of the big ‘gotchas’ we missed.
– I’ve written on this before here: ➡, ➡, ➡, ➡, and ➡.
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Tiny particles in consumer products sold in New Zealand and around the world pose health and environmental risks and need to be tracked, scientists say.
Amid growing worldwide concern about the potential effects of nanoparticles, Kiwi scientists, academics and officials want the Government to introduce a labelling system identifying nanomaterials used in products on supermarket shelves and to maintain a public database of nanoproducts.
Nanoparticles are about 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair and are used in more than 800 consumer products, including cosmetics, sunblock, clothing, food, washing machines and refrigerators.
A report on the opportunities and drawbacks of nanotechnology has just been published by the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. It lists more than 70 actions the Government should take.
Report editor and University of Canterbury physicist Simon Brown told The Press that apart from nanotechnology’s obvious advantages in the computer and electronics world, there were known and unknown hazards.
There was a strong sense the Government had yet to face up to nanotechnology.
More… ➡
Study Plunges Standard Theory Of Cosmology Into Crisis
Friday, August 28th, 2009
As modern cosmologists rely more and more on the ominous “dark matter” to explain otherwise inexplicable observations, much effort has gone into the detection of this mysterious substance in the last two decades, yet no direct proof could be found that it actually exists. Even if it does exist, dark matter would be unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between actual measurements and predictions based on theoretical models. Hence the number of physicists questioning the existence of dark matter has been increasing for some time now.
Competing theories of gravitation have already been developed which are independent of this construction. Their only problem is that they conflict with Newton’s theory of gravitation. “Maybe Newton was indeed wrong,” declares Professor Dr. Pavel Kroupa of Bonn University´s Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (AIfA). “Although his theory does, in fact, describe the everyday effects of gravity on Earth, things we can see and measure, it is conceivable that we have completely failed to comprehend the actual physics underlying the force of gravity.”
This is a problematical hypothesis that has nevertheless gained increasing ground in recent years, especially in Europe. Two new studies could well lend further support to it. In these studies, Professor Kroupa and his former colleague Dr. Manuel Metz, working in collaboration with Professor Dr. Gerhard Hensler and Dr. Christian Theis from the University of Vienna, and Dr. Helmut Jerjen from the Australian National University, Canberra, have examined so-called “satellite galaxies”.
This term is used for dwarf galaxy companions of the Milky Way, some of which contain only a few thousand stars. According to the best cosmological models, they exist presumably in hundreds around most of the major galaxies. Up to now, however, only 30 such satellites have been observed around the Milky Way, a discrepancy in numbers which is commonly attributed to the fact that the light emitted from the majority of satellite galaxies is so faint they remain invisible.
A detailed study of these stellar agglomerates has revealed some astonishing phenomena: “First of all, there is something unusual about their distribution,” Professor Kroupa explains, “the satellites should be uniformly arranged around their mother galaxy, but this is not what we found.“Â More precisely, all classical satellites of the Milky Way – the eleven brightest dwarf galaxies – lie more or less in the same plane, they are forming some sort of a disc in the sky. The research team has also been able to show that most of these satellite galaxies rotate in the same direction around the Milky Way – like the planets revolve around the Sun.
More… ➡
Beetles, wildfire: Double threat in warming world
Friday, August 28th, 2009HAINES JUNCTION, Yukon Territory (AP) — A veil of smoke settled over the forest in the shadow of the St. Elias Mountains, in a wilderness whose spruce trees stood tall and gray, a deathly gray even in the greenest heart of a Yukon summer.
“As far as the eye can see, it’s all infested,” forester Rob Legare said, looking out over the thick woods of the Alsek River valley.
Beetles and fire, twin plagues, are consuming northern forests in what scientists say is a preview of the future, in a century growing warmer, as the land grows drier, trees grow weaker and pests, abetted by milder winters, grow stronger.
Dying, burning forests would then only add to the warming.
It’s here in the sub-Arctic and Arctic — in Alaska, across Siberia, in northernmost Europe, and in the Yukon and elsewhere in northern Canada — that Earth’s climate is changing most rapidly. While average temperatures globally rose 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century, the far north experienced warming at twice that rate or greater.
In Russia’s frigid east, some average temperatures have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), with midwinter mercury spiking even higher. And “eight of the last 10 summers have been extreme wildfire seasons in Siberia,” American researcher Amber J. Soja pointed out by telephone from central Siberia.
Along with shrinking the polar ice cap and thawing permafrost, scientists say, the warming of the Arctic threatens to turn boreal forest — the vast cover of spruce, pine and other conifers blanketing these high latitudes — into less of a crucial “sink” absorbing carbon dioxide and more of a source, as megatons of that greenhouse gas rise from dead, burning and decaying wood.
American forest ecologist Scott Green worries about a “domino effect.”
“These things may occur simultaneously,” said the researcher from the University of Northern British Columbia. “If the bark beetles kill the trees, you’ll have lots of dead, dry wood that will create a really, really hot fire, and then sometimes you don’t get trees regenerating on the site.”
More… ➡