A War on Press Freedoms in the Name of National Security
One reliable bipartisan characteristic of U.S. leaders is an obsession with shaping the foreign policy narrative and concealing any information that contradicts their version of events. Indeed, many of them harbor the desire to prosecute anyone who leaks classified material that exposes blunders, lies or crimes. Two events in the past few weeks demonstrate that the desire to squash such disclosures is running at high tide: the attempt toextradite and prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on espionage charges, and President Trump ’s angry outburst accusing theNew York Times of “treason” for its story disclosing U...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 25, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
The Long Emergency: The Second Necessity
The first necessity is of course oxygen. Without it you ' ll die in a couple of minutes. The second is water, without which you ' ll be lucky to last a week.If you enter " Global Water Crisis " into your favorite Internet search engine, you will get pages of documents with enough information to earn a Ph.D. I actually recommendthe Wikipedia article in this instance, which is very thorough and well presented. It ' s also very long so you might want to take a look at the more succinct entryat the World Resources Institute. That one is a couple of years old and things have already gotten worse.The fact is that over the past c...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 24, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Patient Privacy Rights: Comment on Regulatory Capture
Deborah C. Peel
Adrian Gropper
By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD and DEBORAH C PEEL, MD
To ONC and CMS
We begin by commending HHS, CMS, and ONC for skillfully addressing the pro-competitive and innovative essentials in crafting this Rule and the related materials. However, regulatory capture threatens to derail effective implementation of the rule unless HHS takes further action on the standards.
Regulatory capture in Wikipedia begins:
“Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concern...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 24, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Health Policy Adrian Gropper Deborah C Peel ONC Patient Privacy Rights regulatory capture Source Type: blogs
The Fenland Pearl – a local moth for local people
No spectacular Hawk-moths today, nothing even particularly brightly coloured or intriguing at all…except for this little creamy white one with two distinctive black spots and lots of speckles.
The Fenland Pearl, (Anania perlucidalis, Hübner 1809)I couldn’t ID it so turned to Twitter and got an identification from lep expert Sean Foote within minutes – Anania perlucidalis (Hübner, 1809) and about the same time by Chris Knott on the Facebook group “Moths UK Flying Tonight“. The species only has an official scientific name, the modern common name is Fenland Pearl, and is not necessarily in the ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - June 14, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
Swallow Prominent, Pheosia tremula
Now…the brown and grey moths are not intrinsically boring, each is the pinnacle of millions of years of evolution. But, when you spot something in the scientific trap on a cold, wet morning that isn’t just one of the 25 Heart & Darts in there, nor one of a handful of Vine’s Rustics, Turnip or Cabbage moths, then it is something of a treat. The Puss Moth was a big highlight, and of course the various Hawk-moths that have come along in recent weeks including: Lime, Poplar, Eyed, Elephant, Small Elephant, and Privet.
But, there are some moths that seem so delicately marked as if dusted with charcoal and...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - June 12, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Moths Source Type: blogs
Speaking of Faux News . . .
Holy crap, this has got to be the stupidest goddamn thing I have ever read in my life.From Tucker Carlson. whose bow tie is evidently choking off the oxygen supply to his tiny brain:TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny -- the metric system. From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Lusaka to London, the people of the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. The United States is the only major country that has resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds. ... JAMES PANERO: I am joining you tonight as an anti-metr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 6, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Practicing Hygge: What We Can Learn from the Danish Culture on Mental Health
Do you enjoy making your environment around you cozy? You might already be practicing hygge more than you think. hygge is a concept originated in Danish culture that focuses on living with a sense of comfort, coziness, and peace. It has often been described as creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things that life has to offer with positive energy surrounding you.
What is so intriguing about practicing hygge, pronounced either “hue-guh” or “hoo-gah, is that there are actual health benefits to living a hygge-focused lifestyle. Happiness researchers continually find Denmark to have some of the ...
Source: World of Psychology - May 29, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Emily Waters Tags: Habits Self-Help coziness hygge stress reduction Source Type: blogs
The greatest scientists are artists too
Albrecht Dürer, considered the greatest German artist of the Northern Renaissance, produced masterpieces that had an enduring influence on natural sciences for centuries.
Among the others, a woodcut of a rhinoceros that remained the animal’s ‘official’ scientific image until the 1700s; the first known pictorial representation of a syphilitic man; an astonishing terrestrial map of the eastern hemisphere in perspective; and woodcuts of the northern and southern skies shown as polar projections. His influence as a visual artist on science is profound because he “helped visualize changing conceptions of the universe...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - May 23, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: Roberto Garbero Tags: Biology Health Publishing art citizen science history of science mental health Source Type: blogs
Even People Without Mathematical Training Experience The “Beauty” Of Maths
By Matthew Warren
Philosophers and mathematicians have long held that maths can be aesthetically pleasing. “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty,” wrote Bertrand Russell, while Carl Friedrich Gauss proclaimed that “The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal themselves in all their beauty only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it”.
But a study published recently in Cognition suggests that even those whose lives don’t revolve around logic and numbers also have an appreciation for mathematical “beauty”. People tend to see similarities between mathemati...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 23, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Aesthetics Perception Source Type: blogs
Wherefore the Freedom Caucus?
In acolumn for Reason Magazine yesterday, Matt Welch asks “What’s the point of a ‘limited government’ bloc that doesn’t limit government?” Indeed, in the Trump era some of the President’s most strident defenders can be found amongst the ranks of the Freedom Caucus, and, as my colleague Chris Edwardspoints out, they seem every bit as comfortable with big deficits as the other fiscal-conservatives-cum-spendthrifts in the GOP.But, to my knowledge, nobody has yet performed a systematic analysis of the Freedom Caucus ’ voting behavior vis-a-vis other Republicans in the House. Do they, as a caucus, even vote cohe...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 22, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Derek Bonett Source Type: blogs
Will Human Intelligence As We Know It Disappear In The Age Of A.I.?
Who is more intelligent: a caveman, a smartphone or
your brother? What if we also put artificial intelligence in line? Humanity has
come a long way from the African savannah to arrive at the urban skyscrapers,
and not only physically, but also cognitively. Stone tools, speech, writing,
pen, and paper all proved to be decisive tools in putting human intelligence on
a path never seen before. What could happen with the emergence of A.I., in which
case it’s not about using an instrument anymore but to collaborate with a
created, but responsive source of intelligence? Is humanity ready for it?
Human intelligence in perspec...
Source: The Medical Futurist - May 18, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: And Beyond Artificial Intelligence in Medicine AI extended mind future history human human intelligence Innovation technology Source Type: blogs
Scorpion Protein Used to Help Visualize Brain Tumors
Clinicians at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Institute, along with scientists at Blaze Bioscience, Inc., have developed a new way to visualize brain tumors. The new imaging technique utilizes a special, high-sensitivity near-infrared camera developed at Cedars-Sinai, along with tozuleristide, or BLZ-100, the tumor-cell binding imaging agent developed by Blaze. The imaging agent contains a synthetic version of an amino acid compound found in scorpion venom. This combination can help clinicians visualize the boundaries between tumors and non-tumors more effectively, allowing them to remove tumor cells while sparing normal brain ti...
Source: Medgadget - May 13, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Siavash Parkhideh Tags: Materials Neurosurgery Pathology Source Type: blogs
Physicians and patients must work together to improve health care
According to Wikipedia, a livestock guardian dog is a type of pastoral dog bred for the purpose of protecting livestock from predators. If only our doctors had these noble creatures to protect them from the predators of the world, to alert them when those interested in only the“bottom line” entered the halls of healing, […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 8, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/michele-luckenbaugh" rel="tag" > Michele Luckenbaugh < /a > < /span > Tags: Patient Patients Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
The Paracetamol Papers
I have secretly obtained a large cache of files from Johnson& Johnson, makers of TYLENOL ®, the ubiquitous pain relief medication (generic name: acetaminophen in North America,paracetamol elsewhere). The damaging information contained in these documents has been suppressed by the pharmaceutical giant, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.1After a massive upload of materials to Wikileaks, it can now be revealed that Tylenol not only...eases social rejectionmends a broken heartlessens mortality salience(i.e., fear of death)reduces antisocial behaviortreats chronic anxiety disorder...but along with the good c...
Source: The Neurocritic - April 26, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
