Archive for 2012

Taliban attack wounds teen activist blogger

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

– I have no time for people who want to take us back into the darkness of the 13th century and who want to impose their dark fundamentalist ideas on us.

– I appreciate the idea of multiculturalism as well as the next fellow, I think.   But respect has to be reciprocal   It’s hard to deal with folks who believe on faith that they are right and doing God’s work and that you are evil incarnate.

– So, when it comes to Islamic fundamentalists (or Christian Fundamentalists who’d like to subvert secular states to the their own literal translations of biblical verse), I have no patience.  None.

– dennis

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Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — Malala Yousufzai’s courageous blogging against the Taliban set her apart from other 14-year-old Pakistani girls.

Growing up in a region once dominated by the Islamic extremists, she knew the fear associated with the word Taliban.

One of her fears came to pass Tuesday, when gunmen sought her out and opened fire on her school van, leaving her seriously wounded along with two other classmates.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, Taliban spokesman Ihsnaullah Ishan told CNN. Ishan blamed the shooting on Malala’s activist blogging.

Although she is now hospitalized in stable condition and “out of immediate danger,” a bullet is lodged in Malala’s neck and will be difficult to remove, her doctor said.

The attack began when armed militants stopped a van as it was taking her and two other girls home from school. The attackers asked which girl was Malala, said Kainat Bibi, one of the wounded girls. When the girls pointed Malala out, the men opened fire, Bibi said, wounding the girls before the van’s driver was able to speed away. The other two girls’ injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Malala lives in northwest Pakistan’s Swat Valley — one of the nation’s most conservative regions. Her frustration with the Taliban’s restrictions on female education in her town prompted her to use the Internet and speak out, effectively making herself a target.

– More…

– Research thanks to Lise L.

 

In Germany, workers help run their companies. And it’s going great!

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

– Bravo for some ‘new thinking’.

– dennis

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Think workers don’t have enough of a say in U.S. companies? Look to Germany, Boston College professor Kent Greenfield argues in the latest issue of Democracy.

Through a process called “codetermination,” large German companies are required to elect half their board of directors by a vote of their employees, rather than of their shareholders. And it’s “now the economic powerhouse of Europe,” Greenfield contends.

How much the latter is true is pretty arguable. Germany does not have the kind of widespread unemployment that plagues the rest of the continent, but it also has much moresevere wage stagnation. So it’s hardly a paradise. But Greenfield’s piece raises a good question: What have the results of codetermination been for Germany, both for growth and for workers’ share of that growth?

The best research on this in English-language publications has come from John Addison of the University of South Carolina. He, along with Claus Schnabel and Joachim Wagner, recently produced a literature review summarizing all 17 studies that have been conducted on codetermination to date. There have been three stages of research, each using better data than the last, but the most recent is almost uniformly positive toward the councils.

While there’s little evidence that they increase sales or overall employment, they do seem to have a positive effect on productivity, according to the two most recent studies on that question. One, from Bernd Frick, found that Western German firms saw a huge 25 percent spike in productivity, while Eastern German firms transitioning out of Communism saw an even bigger 30 percent jump. Previous research almost uniformly found that the councils increase wages.

– More…

 

Software Patents and the End of Innovation

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

From Nancy Heinen, Apple general counsel until 2006:

When patent lawyers become rock stars, it’s a bad sign for where an industry is heading.

Yes it is. And from the same article:

Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings.

The whole piece is worth a read.

 

-Thx to Mother Jones.

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

– Simple empathy should tell one this.   Anyone who has ever loved a dog would know this truth.

– It’s what Buddha was talking about when he mentioned compassion for all living beings.

– We take ourselves way too seriously and judge everything that is not human as lesser.

– But they feel, they love and they hurt just like we do.

– dennis

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– Read about it here and here.

– Research thanks to Sharon R.

 

Two excellent movies in two days

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Last night, I watched “The Hunter“.  A film that takes place in Tasmania about 2001.

Tonight it was “The Tracker“, which takes place in New Zealand just after the Boer War.

Both excellent and recommended.

2312

Sunday, September 9th, 2012

…to form a sentence is to collapse many superposed wave functions to a single thought universe.  Multiplying the lost universes word by word, we can say that each sentence extingushes 10^n universes, where n is the number of words in the sentence.  Each thought condenses trillions of potential thoughts.  Thus we get verbal overshadowing, where the language we use structures the reality we inhabit.  Maybe this is a blessing.  Maybe this is why we need to keep making sentences. Book = “2312”, Author = Kim Stanley Robinson

Skype and Colette

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

One of the constants in this long and wandering trip of mine has been Skype.   It has, thankfully, allowed me to stay in touch with my partner, Colette.  

We’ve done Skype video sessions nearly every evening; with her in New Zealand and me in whatever place I’m currently visiting – sharing the small stories of what’s happened to us on the day.  Indeed, on the days when a lack of Internet access have prevented these sessions, I’ve felt like an essential part of my day has been missing.

Between International texting, E-Mails, digital photos, small video clips and our Skype sessions, we’ve probably stayed in better communications on this trip than we’ve typically done when I’m in New Zealand and we’re living together.

So, here’s to Skype and the Internet.  And, here’s even more especially to Colette, my sweet and patient partner.

New tech – hotspots

Monday, August 27th, 2012

I encountered a very cool technology today.   A cellular hot-spot.    

This is a cell phone that can access the Internet via the cellular system and which then rebroadcasts the Internet access to other devices around itself via WiFi.

In the case I’ve found, it is an Android HTC  phone, tethered to the T-Mobile network here in the U.S.   The app itself is called “Hot-Spot” and it came with the HTC Android phone.

I’m told that cell providers like AT&T and T-Mobile here in the U.S. are not enthusiastic about the “Hot-Spot” concept and they are working out how to either block folks from sharing their signal or to charge them for the extra devices accessing the Internet via the hotspot.

There are also free-lance apps around (not from the cell phone maker) that can do this but I’ve read that these can be buggy.  One such is “MyWi”.

If you know more about all of this or have corrections to what I’ve posted here, let me know.

Dennis

U.S. Pharmacy Prices

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

I had a Prostatectomy in August of 2009.   One of the consequences of that operation is a tendency towards impotence since the nerves that control erections are seriously disturbed by the process of removing the Prostate Gland.  

If you are marginally impotent, as I was, following the surgery, Erectile Disfunction drugs like Cialis are indicated.   And they are, in fact a great help.

But the prices of Cialis is astronomical.   

I’ve tried ordering the cheaper generic stuff from India but, in truth, I have no confidence in it nor to I think it works.

So, that left me with ordering it in New Zealand or in the U.S.   New Zealand doesn’t subsidize Cialis as part of their medical system so they are simply charging U.S. prices with a shipment markup added.

In the USA, for 45 – 20mg pills, the cost is $1100+ USD.   Ouch!   I paid that last year when I was here and this time, I thought I’d have to do the same.

But, I had a trip up to Canada scheduled to visit a good friend of mine and, in the course of things, I found myself with most of a day to kill here while my friend was at work one day.

I decided to see if I could do better price-wise on Cialis here.

The bottom line is, “yes”, I could do better.   I paid only 60% of the US price here and got the ‘real deal’ Cialis from the genuine U.S. pharmaceutical firm that makes it.

If you need this stuff and live anywhere near the Canadian border, this is worth knowing about.

Get a U.S. prescription (original copy) and bring it to a Canadian walk-in clinic.   Pay the $60 CDN (your price may vary) to see a doctor and ask him to rewrite the prescription as a Canadian prescription.   Then carry that to a Canadian pharmacy and you’ve saved yourself 40% off the U.S. prices.

Why are U.S. prices so high?  Such an obvious question and none of our elected representatives (elected to supposedly represent our interests) can tell you.  Maybe it is all those Big Pharma donations that helped get them elected?

Dennis

An explanation of the New Zealand medical system

Saturday, July 28th, 2012

– I wrote this piece to explain to Americans how differently the New Zealand medical system works from the one Americans are familiar with.

– Dennis
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http://www.skyvalleychronicle.com/BREAKING-NEWS/DOCTOR-DOCTOR-MISTER-MD-BR-I-Can-you-tell-me-what-s-ailin-me-I-1070455