Besides cancers and other similar conditions, most problems facing the health care industry are caused by lack of exercise and eating the wrong kinds of food, and its a hard thing for people to change. And generally health care professionals are afraid to give definitive health advice because of the opportunity of lawsuits. How many times have doctors told patients that they should "reduce" instead of "eliminate" or "substitute" some offending substance?
Not trying to be argumentative, but when some talk about changes in diet which changes seems to be a variable not only on the speaker but on the individual in question.
Example: Recently I tried a vegan diet. Now, I had no specific medical condition I was trying to treat but thought it might be useful for weight loss. After two meals, I had blinding headaches and light sensitivity. When I went off the vegan diet and back to a more omnivorous diet those conditions vanished.
I've just upped the exersise routine to compensate, although by using free weights I'm sure I'd flunk any body mass index scale at first pass, since they don't seem to account for muscle development.
I think that no matter what doctors, tech, or the government does, its gonna take a sea change for Americans to wake up and smell the coffee and start taking their own health in their hands.
To a large extent I agree, but in an ideal system how would those who engage in "unhealthy" behaviors be delt with?
Do we refuse to treat people for diabeties if, say, they eat fast food? Do we make fast food illegal?
However, TFA says that Bolles spent 3 days in jail, presumably waiting for the results of a test.
I've been stopped for a broken tail light in my country, and the police certainly did not use this as an excuse for searching my car. Is it usual in your country for people to be imprisoned for so long on so little evidence, after so minor a motoring offence?
To be fair to the police, he was acting suspiciously.
police: "A drummer.... with soap? S'yah right! Must be drugs, you dirty hippy!"
I agree with you. It's not a matter of keeping score, but there's a reason soldiers the world over are armed with rifles instead of pistols; they're more effective.
This bodycount is unusually high. The Chicago Sun Times is saying the shooter could have been a chinese imigrant on a student visa. Perhaps he had some training... but military training doesn't fit, since infanty and SPECOPS training tends to focus on rifle use, and pistols where used here.
There's still a lot of questions to be answered here.
When I lived in Japan, I knew two people who were murdered. Their killers used knives. It's not the tool, it's the criminal."
You must be kidding.
Nope. Wish I was. On base, one service members wife murdered another wife over jewelry. Right as the USS Independence took over from the USS Midway, a sailor killed another sailor. Both murders involved knives.
Oh, it takes a bit of strength and training, and might take a little longer, but in a room of 30+ people where only one has a big-ass knife, and the determination to use it? A knife can indeed be a tool of mass killing.
True that. Now I'm hearing reports the gunman ordered people to lie down, then shot them execution style. One could do the same thing with a big knife / sword.
Your point that no guns == everyone is safer just isn't born out by statistics, either in this country or in others.
When I lived in Japan, I knew two people who were murdered. Their killers used knives. It's not the tool, it's the criminal.
Put another way, firearms ownership does not lead to more crime. Look at any of the states with shall-issue CCW permits and note their lower crime rates than areas with extensive gun bans.
However, removing weapons from the market makes it much harder, and that means that fewer people die; hence, why some people place their personal safety in front of their right to bear arms, and call for tighter gun control.
Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.
The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for "very serious" offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed.
AFAIK, the high conviction rate in Japan is mainly due to the fact that persons accused of crimes in Japan have very few rights.
True, but there's another factor. Regular citizens are eager to help the police, at least when the crime is violent.
When I lived in Japan, a sailor murdered another sailor with a knife in Roppongi. The killer was in a car passing by the victim, who seemed to be arguing with a woman. The killer stopped the car, got out, and attempted to "defend" the woman. He was losing the fight, so he drew a knife and stabbed the victim. As the victim was bleeding out, the killer jumped back in his car and drove off for ( IIRC ) NAF Atsugi.
Before the car had left, a number of witnesses wrote down his license plate and dialed up the Japanese Police. By the time the car reached the gates of the base, the Japanese Police had alerted the Navy who arrested the killer on the spot.
Perhaps it's Japanese society; the idea of Japan as a number of small villages pushed together holds some weight; violent crime disrupts the village. Common people seem to come together to deal with the disruption, so to speak.
Also, it's much cheaper and faster to ask you how you feel rather than to perform an MRI
Oh I agree, and as you point out a hippocampal deficit does not necessarily indicate depression.
However, perhaps you might agree that a survey isn't the most precise tool for diagnosing an illness?
After all, as others have pointed out, a person with depression might not answer the survey honestly ( ex: meh... I don't care, so I'll tell them what they want to hear so they'll leave me alone ).
Something like a blood test would seem to be cheaper than an MRI, and perhaps more accurate as well. Hardly perfect of course... blood serotonin levels don't seem to correlate well with brain levels, for instance.
Whatever the mechanism, more accurate objective diagnosis would seem very beneficial.
Thus, the video game is a more revealing measure of spatial memory and a more sensitive measure of hippocampal dysfunction -- a more powerful tool for exploring the link between the hippocampus and depression. It may one day be a tool for detecting hippocampus deficits in depressed patients.
Emphasis mine.
I'd like to see an objective rather than subjective test for depression.
If nothing else, an objective test would be useful in convincing potential patients ( and those who care about them ) that the potential patient has depression, rather than just "feels bad" [1]. The results of, say, a blood test vs. the responses on a questionnaire.
This seems like a step in the right direction, but also still seems subjective.
[1] Yes, I know severe depression looks a lot worse than someone who just "feels bad", but if someone is spending hours/days in the fetal position crying, that's kind of a hint. Thinking of detecting depression before it gets that bad.
These kids do not know the difference between things like "to", "too", and "two". I cannot count the number of times I've seen someone write something like "I'm going two the store." "There", "their", and "they're" is another one that they don't seem to be aware of. Then there are the kids that write papers like they send IM and text messages, "UR 4 real?"
[obligatory]Well, at least they're qualified for/. [/obligatory]
For those who disagree with the insightful parent post, consider:
Every government is nothing more than a collection of humans.
Humans dislike things; for liberals it could be the very idea of self defense ( see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm for an example ), while for conservatives it could be homosexuality, abortion, et. al. . Humans tend to dislike other humans who hold contrary opinions.
Perfect tracking of citizens enables a government to perfectly identify those citizens who dissent from their world view. This enables them to act against such dissenters.
I'm not saying a national id system would be perfect, but the utility for tyrany from a centralized database of citizens should be obvious.
Our entire system of government is based on a fundamental distrust of authority; otherwise, why not have just a President, and disband Congress, the Supreme Court, and all State and Local governments?
Any system which enables the opression of political dissent takes away from that distrust of authority, and thus weakens our nation.
The spider can also be configured and trained to look at particular economic niches -- a useful feature for compiling lists of business in industries that traditionally have high rates of non-filing. "For instance, weight control (yields) 85,000 hits, some for products... also services," says Sweden's Hardyson.
Once the web pages are screen-scraped, Xenon's Identity Information Extraction Module interfaces with national databases containing information like street and city names. It uses that data to automatically identify mailing addresses and other identity information present on the websites it has crawled, which it puts into a database that can be matched in bulk with national tax records.
So the spider scrapes a publically available site for the business or shipping address, adds that to a database and then someone at a later point checks to see if there's an income tax form from that address.
Wouldn't that generate false positives if the billing address is, say, a post office box while the corporate tax forms are filed from the home office?
Uh, yeah it is. We have speed limits to keep me safe. I have to wear a seatbelt to keep me safe. I can't drink and drive to keep me (and you) safe... How is this any different?
When did drinking and driving become a Federal offense?
Slashdot Mirror
Not trying to be argumentative, but when some talk about changes in diet which changes seems to be a variable not only on the speaker but on the individual in question.
Example: Recently I tried a vegan diet. Now, I had no specific medical condition I was trying to treat but thought it might be useful for weight loss. After two meals, I had blinding headaches and light sensitivity. When I went off the vegan diet and back to a more omnivorous diet those conditions vanished.
I've just upped the exersise routine to compensate, although by using free weights I'm sure I'd flunk any body mass index scale at first pass, since they don't seem to account for muscle development.
To a large extent I agree, but in an ideal system how would those who engage in "unhealthy" behaviors be delt with?
Do we refuse to treat people for diabeties if, say, they eat fast food? Do we make fast food illegal?
Exactly.
I translated the microsoft speak as "We suck... so everyone else should too! Cancel or Allow?"
To be fair to the police, he was acting suspiciously.
police: "A drummer.... with soap? S'yah right! Must be drugs, you dirty hippy!"
[badum-ching]
So, this is an example of why windows is popular?
I agree with you. It's not a matter of keeping score, but there's a reason soldiers the world over are armed with rifles instead of pistols; they're more effective.
This bodycount is unusually high. The Chicago Sun Times is saying the shooter could have been a chinese imigrant on a student visa. Perhaps he had some training... but military training doesn't fit, since infanty and SPECOPS training tends to focus on rifle use, and pistols where used here.
There's still a lot of questions to be answered here.
Nope. Wish I was. On base, one service members wife murdered another wife over jewelry. Right as the USS Independence took over from the USS Midway, a sailor killed another sailor. Both murders involved knives.
Banning guns does not ban violence.
True that. Now I'm hearing reports the gunman ordered people to lie down, then shot them execution style. One could do the same thing with a big knife / sword.
Your point that no guns == everyone is safer just isn't born out by statistics, either in this country or in others.
When I lived in Japan, I knew two people who were murdered. Their killers used knives. It's not the tool, it's the criminal.
Put another way, firearms ownership does not lead to more crime. Look at any of the states with shall-issue CCW permits and note their lower crime rates than areas with extensive gun bans.
No, not really.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/26568
Moderated: +1 / Sad but True.
Kudos to the kids for discovering this... but why the frak did it take a school science project to figure out the ingredients weren't as advertised?
Really? I had no idea. Very interesting, considering that I know where a few Priuses (Prii?) are parked.
Just how easy is removing the batteries?
[badum-ching]
True, but there's another factor. Regular citizens are eager to help the police, at least when the crime is violent.
When I lived in Japan, a sailor murdered another sailor with a knife in Roppongi. The killer was in a car passing by the victim, who seemed to be arguing with a woman. The killer stopped the car, got out, and attempted to "defend" the woman. He was losing the fight, so he drew a knife and stabbed the victim. As the victim was bleeding out, the killer jumped back in his car and drove off for ( IIRC ) NAF Atsugi.
Before the car had left, a number of witnesses wrote down his license plate and dialed up the Japanese Police. By the time the car reached the gates of the base, the Japanese Police had alerted the Navy who arrested the killer on the spot.
Perhaps it's Japanese society; the idea of Japan as a number of small villages pushed together holds some weight; violent crime disrupts the village. Common people seem to come together to deal with the disruption, so to speak.
So like, what... avoid Detroit completely?
I keed... I keed... well, kinda.
Good point though... even first world countries have bad sections.
Well, the SPECT test you mention seems a bit... erm... contraversial.
. html
http://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen
Oh I agree, and as you point out a hippocampal deficit does not necessarily indicate depression.
However, perhaps you might agree that a survey isn't the most precise tool for diagnosing an illness?
After all, as others have pointed out, a person with depression might not answer the survey honestly ( ex: meh... I don't care, so I'll tell them what they want to hear so they'll leave me alone ).
Something like a blood test would seem to be cheaper than an MRI, and perhaps more accurate as well. Hardly perfect of course... blood serotonin levels don't seem to correlate well with brain levels, for instance.
Whatever the mechanism, more accurate objective diagnosis would seem very beneficial.
Emphasis mine.
I'd like to see an objective rather than subjective test for depression.
If nothing else, an objective test would be useful in convincing potential patients ( and those who care about them ) that the potential patient has depression, rather than just "feels bad" [1]. The results of, say, a blood test vs. the responses on a questionnaire.
This seems like a step in the right direction, but also still seems subjective.
[1] Yes, I know severe depression looks a lot worse than someone who just "feels bad", but if someone is spending hours/days in the fetal position crying, that's kind of a hint. Thinking of detecting depression before it gets that bad.
[obligatory]Well, at least they're qualified for
A former boss had a similar method. He took all the chairs and tables out of the room.
Staff meetings went from 2+ hours to about 20 minutes.
UpnAtom, I applaud you.
For those who disagree with the insightful parent post, consider:
Every government is nothing more than a collection of humans.
Humans dislike things; for liberals it could be the very idea of self defense ( see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm for an example ), while for conservatives it could be homosexuality, abortion, et. al. . Humans tend to dislike other humans who hold contrary opinions.
Perfect tracking of citizens enables a government to perfectly identify those citizens who dissent from their world view. This enables them to act against such dissenters.
I'm not saying a national id system would be perfect, but the utility for tyrany from a centralized database of citizens should be obvious.
Our entire system of government is based on a fundamental distrust of authority; otherwise, why not have just a President, and disband Congress, the Supreme Court, and all State and Local governments?
Any system which enables the opression of political dissent takes away from that distrust of authority, and thus weakens our nation.
Wouldn't that generate false positives if the billing address is, say, a post office box while the corporate tax forms are filed from the home office?
Perhaps for these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_guided_bomb
Put another way:
[badum-ching]
As the posters name is 'Rob T Firefly', I suspect that even if he did have big boobs not many would watch.
man boobs
(shudder)