Year: 2007
Neofeudalism in the Microchip Age
Posted on September 6, 2007 in Privacy
During the Clinton days and for a little while before that, you used to hear a lot about the “Universal Bar Code” which was to be tattooed on every person’s arm by the [[Anti-Christ]]. This was a rallying point for right-wing zealots who feared Big Government. Here in California, a move is underway to ban companies from requiring employees to accept RFID implants as a means of tracking them. And who is behind the move to protect you? Of course, the Democrats!
Republican legislators led the opposition. Bob Margett (R-Arcadia) claimed that the legislature was creating a problem before it had appeared, despite two facts: first, Verichip has been licensed to manufacture radio-tracking implants by the USFDA; and that, second, one company, Cincinnatti-based (it would be Ohio) CityWatcher.com now requires its employees to have said microchips implanted in their arms.
There is a problem here and now. Any delaying action works in the favor of those who implement this invasion of personal privacy.
It would be interesting to see what kind of connections Margett has to the microchip industry or to businesses which are interested in implementing such technology within their workforces. Since 9/11 Republicans have sponsored a number of initiatives that erode our privacy and circumvent rules against government agencies using surveillance, torture, etc. by the vehicle of “private investment”. If there is a profit in it, there’s a company trying to do it.
Let’s look at it like this: there are two styles of government existing in the country today: public and private. We’ve seen public government disarmed — from protecting us from private governments. Republican initiatives have given many functions once reserved to governments — for example, the monopoly on coercion and violence — to for profit concerns. And this has meant that we have seen our power to have a vote over what these quasi-governmental agencies do taken away from us. Slowly, the Republicans have created undemocratic (and unrepublican) fiefs within our nation, little countries governed by warlords who cannot be voted out of office, whose shareholders want them in the business of violating human rights because there is money to be made at it.
It’s about time that our elected government is putting a stop to this neo-feudalism.
Risks Outweighing the Benefits
Posted on September 6, 2007 in Depression Suicide
UPDATED
Remember how a few years ago, they put out warnings that certain anti-depressants might increase the risk of suicide? Well, here’s a gem for you:
A 22% drop in prescriptions for antidepressants for teens and children following government warnings about hazards of the drugs led to a sharp increase in suicides the following year, according to Chicago researchers.
The change in labeling in 2003 warned that use of the drugs could increase suicidal thoughts and behavior among youths, but the labeling seems to have backfired, according to a report in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
In the year after the change in labeling, the suicide rate rose 14% among those younger than 19, the largest increase since the government started collecting suicide statistics in 1979, said biostatistician Robert D. Gibbons and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A similar drop in prescriptions in the Netherlands led to a 49% increase in youth suicides over a two-year period, the team reported. They estimated that every 20% drop in antidepressant use among all ages in the U.S. would lead to a nearly 10% increase in suicides, an additional 3,040 deaths per year.
Science Daily had this to say.
[tags]depression, suicide, mental illness[/tags]
Must Be Run by FEMA
Posted on September 6, 2007 in Journalists & Pundits Weather
Two days after temperatures drop into the bearable zone, the Los Angeles Times finally publishes this.
Hurricane Watch
Posted on September 4, 2007 in Whimsies
If you’re in a destructive mood, check out Duracell’s Rule the Storm.
You Want to Know How Hot It Is?
Posted on September 4, 2007 in Weather
It got this hot.
Right now it is as warm as a late spring afternoon and it is the middle of the night.
High in Trabuco Canyon was 112 degrees [[Fahrenheit]].
Just Which God are You Talking About?
Posted on September 4, 2007 in Myths & Mysticism
Reverend Jim Burklo is a friend who came to our wedding nineteen and a half years ago. His recollections on encounters with atheists is worth the read:
I’ve had plenty of encounters with people who are adamant that there is no God. I often ask them which God they don’t believe in. Invariably, it’s a God I don’t believe in, either. So they don’t find me to be a worthy partner for an argument. Proving or disproving the existence of God misses the heart of my faith. God is what happens when I am overcome with wonder and gratitude before the transcendent mystery of existence. Some atheists say they have this experience, too, but just don’t call it God. Other atheists get peeved at me, saying that I’m not really religious at all. Since I don’t believe in a supreme being in the the way they assume religious people are required to do, what I have to say doesn’t count!
Jim is right. Too many atheists tend to argue as if there is only one way to be a Christian, one way to be religious, one way to be a believer. Back in my still-Christian-but-not-a-Fundamentalist days, I ran into an atheist who told me that Fundamentalism made more sense to him than what I believed. In the case of this one individual, I posited an extreme case of simple-mindedness and single-mindedness when it came to spirituality (and atheists can be spiritual, by the way). When I see an atheist who must condense religion into the straw man presented by Fundamentalists, I see someone who does not live by the logical principle of understanding where your opponent is coming from before entering into debate with him.
The challenge that few atheists take on is to argue with Jim where Jim stands without trying to cram him into the God Machine Box that they think is the end of all religion.
I am agnostic because after thinking on these things and considering all sides, I cannot arrive at an answer. The faith of some Christians, such as Jim, is not repugnant to me because they, too, embrace uncertainty. It is in uncertainty — religious or philosophical — that matters and disputes about the nature of the universe had best rest, I believe, for the peace and stimulation of all minds.
For the record, as an agnostic, I am lucky to count all varieties of believers and nonbelievers as friends. All that I quote is grist for the great mill of thinking.
Atheist Psychiatrists and Good Medicine
Posted on September 3, 2007 in Agnosticism Depression Grief
The atheist world should be abuzz with concern and I, an agnostic, am one to join them. I have seen what religious counselling does to patients with mood disorders. I do not recommend them:
“A patient presents to you with continued deep grieving two months after the death of his wife. If you were to refer the patient, to which of the following would you prefer to refer first” (a psychiatrist or psychologist, a clergy member or religious counselor, a health care chaplain, or other).”
Overall, 56 percent of physicians indicated they would refer such a patient to a psychiatrist or psychologist, 25 percent to a clergy member or other religious counselor, 7 percent to a health care chaplain and 12 percent to someone else.
Although Protestant physicians were only half as likely to send the patient to a psychiatrist, Jewish physicians were more likely to do so. Least likely were highly religious Protestants who attended church at least twice a month and looked to God for guidance “a great deal or quite a lot.”
“Patients probably seek out, to some extent, physicians who share their views on life’s big questions,” Curlin said. That may be especially true in psychiatry, where communication is so essential. The mismatch in religious beliefs between psychiatrists and patients may make it difficult for patients suffering from emotional or personal problems to find physicians who share their fundamental belief systems.
Personally, I wonder about the doctors who avoid referring them: are they up to snuff on their medicine or are these backwoods GPs whose suspicions of modern medicine manifest in other ways in their practice? I have known people to give up their meds on the advice of a faith healer and consequently end up arrested after embarking on wild sprees. The problem is that many patients are looking for magical answers and when they are offered reality-based somatic therapy (replete with side effects) they balk.
Curlin seems to promote a model where the patient sets the therapy. While I do not believe in forced medication except where the patient is gravely impaired by her/his illness, I also feel that a wise patient works with the psychiatrist on a series of experiments designed to find an effective treatment for the illness. Religious talk therapy alone just does not work that well for severe depression and bipolar disorder. It’s practitioners are either woefully ignorant of what psychiatry can do or deliberately hostile lest they lose “souls” — translation: paying customers.
Deceptive Twilight of the Late Afternoon
Posted on September 3, 2007 in Daily Life Weather
We became creatures of interiors until nightfall when we went out to pick up a prescription for anti-nausea medication and eat at a new fast fish restaurant. The trees along Live Oak Canyon road insisted that the day was green and cool. We sped from place to place under broken thunder clouds, ahead of the deceptive, gelid-seeming twilight of the late afternoon. Thermometers told the truth and it was not kind.
Two Hospitals
Posted on September 3, 2007 in Body Language Psych Wards
A friend of mine was in lockup at Royale Santa Ana, so I zipped over there after my Saturday morning support group meeting to see how she was doing. There were three units on the site and it took me a few minutes of walking about in the sun to find the right one. The white paint on the building and the broad asphalt apron did not make it any easier on my uncovered head and eyes, but I finally found the door leading to where I wanted to go.
A Latina who called herself the receptionist waited behind a metal cart outside the unit door. She took my keys and Bluetooth, then ran a metal detector about the shape of the paddles they used to use on us in junior high school around my extremities. “Do you have any medications?” she repeated two or three times. Then she paged my friend to the nurse’s station before opening the door to a long, pale turquoise hall where inmates sat or stood and my friend waited for me behind a thick red line.
She introduced me, straightaway, to a guy she’d met on the ward. He was the One, she told me. The two of us then paced the floor, there being a distinct lack of chairs and private meeting space. Conversation went to how this joint compared to South Coast Medical Center and what you needed to do to get off the ward and back into society. We hugged goodbye and I rounded the building yet again, in 105 degree plus sunlight, back to my car.
A nap, too much food, and a trip to Trader Joe’s filled most of the interval between my visit to Royale and a second to Mission Hospital. While watching a DVD, I began to feel a lacerating headache that went round my head and into my eye. More significant than this was nausea that went nowhere. Fine sweat pushed out of my pores. I checked my blood sugar — it was high, so I called the Mission Hospital ER. They suggested that I come down, so Lynn drove me, stopping once so I could entertain the dry heaves.
I spent the hours from about eleven to three being pushed about on carts beneath (I noted) three different styles of ceiling tiles. They poked me with an IV, sampled my bodily fluids, and put me through the magic donut for a CT scan. When it was all over, the doctor hazarded that it might be a migraine. They had good drugs. One tablet of Zofran ended my bout of nausea, but getting a home prescription for it proved prohibitive because many insurance companies just won’t cover the $32 pop per pill. I was told to drink lots of water and see my endocrinologist on Tuesday for further evaluation of my blood sugar and a possible referral to a neurologist.
When we came home, our neighbor — a San Bernardino city fireman — was setting out to his job. Lynn crashed on the upstairs couch while I lay me down, mostly free of the aches that had scourged me.
[tags]mental wards, hospitals, migraine, bipolar disorder[/tags]
The War on Terrier Continues
Posted on September 2, 2007 in War on Terrier
A Feline operative emerges after checking a critical Internet hub for signs of Terrier sabotage.
Latest from the War on Terrier
Posted on August 31, 2007 in War on Terrier
A Feline demolitions expert checks wiring after a report of a Terrier bomb.
[tags]War on Terrier, Humor[/tags]
One hundred and eight degrees
Posted on August 31, 2007 in Weather
As the temperature pressed towards the upper, rounded end of the thermometer, clouds crowded in to gawk at all the people wearing shorts and tank tops. I went down to the garage, picked out two one gallon drinking water jugs, brought them upstairs and put them in the freezer, a hedge against the power going out. We’re ready for the worst this Labor Day weekend.
Watch my Twitterings for microdevelopments.
[tags]weather, Southern California, California, southwest, Southwest United States, heat wave[/tags]
