Just wanted to wish you the best with your treatment. I myself have exhausted standard treatment options for my cancer, and so have been researching any new treatment that comes along with hopes something might help.
You are right one when you state that many people don't realize that cancer isn't one disease. So many people shout "We need a cure for cancer!" Of course, this makes no sense since there are hundreds of types of cancer out there, each of which would need a cure.
Like you said, the popular cancers get the research, and as such new treatments will keep showing up every year for them; this trojan thing, though it will take years to actually be practically helpful if it works, could prove a bit more universal in terms of the number of cancers it could help, it seems. That would be a huge victory to those of us with rare cancers.
Two years is a long time to wait for a start of trials, but if I'm still around and still fighting this, I could see myself volunteering for that (if it is like the other phase I trials I've been on for "advanced cancer" rather than a specific type.) Even if it didn't work, the potential to help future cancer patients seems too great to pass up, I think. I'll be keeping an eye out for more on this.
Why not engineer different viruses to attack different cancers?
I think this is a great idea, but it does worry me in that it would be so specialized...what would happen to rare cancers who might benefit from a more universal treatment (different chemos, different types of radiation, etc.)? Without a huge increase in cancer research funding, I would be nervous about something that might divert money from research that could help more than one cancer type, and thus more people. (I'm speaking as someone with a rare cancer with currently barbaric modes of treatment, ie amputation of hip and leg, parts of lung, etc...).
It's a sticky question, though, because everyone wants cancer to be irradicated. Even if only the "popular" types of cancer can be treated with a virus of this sort, that would be best for society as a whole. And maybe then there would be money and attention freed up for the rest of us once those cancers are gone.
Of course, if there was a big increase in funding for these projects in addition to current research on chemo agents, for example, this wouldn't be much of an issue.
To get back to the article, if this could be made to apply to other forms of cancer, I think it would have huge benefits. Some cancers (like mine) are chemo-resistant...having something that opened up the option of chemo could literally mean the difference between life and painful death.
The question that comes to my mind, though, is should a clerk who sells an M rated game be punished as this plan proposes?
From the article: Under the governor's plan, the proposed fine for violating the bans would be a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison or a $5,000 fine.
I can see where some would want to limit a child's ability to buy M rated games (though I'd have to wonder where the child got the $50 to do so in the first place, if not from their parents)...but I cannot see punishing an 18 year old high school kid making minimum wage as a cashier with jail time for selling an M rated game to a minor. That is excessive...especially since the parents of the child who buys the game would not be punished, nor would the child.
I don't see the problem with the law being passed.
So you seriously think that a cashier who sells a M rated video game to a minor deserves up to 1 year in prison and/or a $5000 fine?
That's the part I don't agree with. Way to punish the poor kid working the counter for 5.15 an hour, but let the parents and the kid who actually did the purchasing off scott free. Real fair.
Thank you, I appreciate your response! I haven't encountered so complete an explaination of Christian belief before; thank you for sharing your views with me.
If you do what God says is wrong, you can expect that there will be consequences.
I know this is off topic, but may I ask your opinion on the book of Leviticus?
It seems to run contrary to what I understood to be Christian principles, but then I may not understand Christian principles very well, not being of that faith. From what I know of Leviticus, though, it seems like the rules in it don't apply (things like rules for owning slaves, eating shellfish, burning bulls...) How do Christians view this book of the bible? I thought Leviticus is also where the anti-homosexuality comes from (?), so obviously it is being looked to for guidance, but I think there are a lot of things in that book of the bible that are quite frankly appalling. I would be very interested to know how this book of rules fits in with modern Christianity, in your opinion.
Seriously, the 'oh the past was so great' thing is a bit silly. From the article:
The pervasive nature of the internet is such that participants often forgot or lost the desire to use 'old fashioned tools' like the phone book, newspapers and telephone-based customer service.
Forgot or lost the desire? Hm, there might be a reason for that.
Phone book: flip through a huge hunking book, making sure it covers the sections of town you need it to, needing to know the person's last name (argh, spelling can trip you up), and then finding the number is unlisted anyway. This doesn't work for people or places (like hotels) outside your area (unless you have a phone book for every region in the US, wow).
Newspapers: Ug, have you read a major newspaper lately? Half the time the articles are out of date by the time they are printed, you have to wade through pages and pages of poorly written stuff to get to what you are interested in, and then you'll discover that fasinating article on computer repair you heard about is really just two paragraphs telling people how to use control-alt-delete. And you get the inherant bias of your local area. No international views. Plus the trees! The poor trees!
Telephone based customer service: Ha, should I even touch this one? Press one for English. Press two for Spanish. Press three to wait for an hour listening to muzak and then get disconnected. Press four to talk to someone who will try to convince you that you are a complete moron...
It kind of bugs me that the term junkie has reared it's ugly head.
Without internet junkies the internet may not have evolved to be what it is today...providing easy to use email lists, bulletin boards, email, etc. (Someone who finds pine baffling has no trouble with say yahoo mail, for example). This winter I lost my rt leg and rt hip to cancer, and let me tell you--without the internet I would be lost. My cancer was rare (about 1% of all cancers), but I found an online support group where I met people from all over the world with my condition. I am able to get and give support and updates on my health via my livejournal. I have met and talked to people from all over the world.
I don't have the option of going out and 'experiencing the real world' on my own. Often I'm too drugged out from treatments to read, and watching TV is so passive the appeal wears thin. But with the internet I've got a support system, a group of friends who I don't know IRL but who I know will be willing to chat with me about interesting things, I can get news, express my opinions, and watch silly flash cartoons to cheer me up when I'm home alone when my family is at work/school.
And best of all, no one can stare and gape like I'm a monster like they do when I go out in public now (omg, she has no leg!) I understand the shock, but damn is it nice to load up my laptop and be NORMAL. People become friends with me for who I present myself to be, not what I look like.
So I say it again...thank heaven for internet junkies. They are on the ones who help the net evolve and change so quickly.
As a cancer patient, I too worry that programs to lessen the 'abuse-ability' of certain drugs will make them useless to those fighting serious pain. At age 22 I was diagnosed with bone cancer, the tumor wrapped around my right pelvic bone and was inmeshed in with my nerves, giving me tremendous pain in my hip and all down the front and back of my right leg. In the last months leading up to the experimental surgery (amputation), I filled at least ten different pain perscriptions, at my doctor's suggestion, to attempt to find one that helped the pain (we'd try one, it wouldn't work, he'd write me a perscription for another...etc). After the first two, my perscriptions took longer and longer to fill...they would call the doctor and wait to get a call back confirming I really needed these drugs, and I wasn't just an addict. I know fellow cancer sufferers who were refused drugs, had perscriptions torn up, because the pharmacy believed they were drug addicts due to the amount of medication they required. I can only imagine how vaccinations would make this worse.
My surgery is another case where I am grateful vaccinations such as those in the article are not in use. I was given massive doses of Fentynol and various other heavy drugs in the hospital to attempt to control the tremendous pain from the hemipelvectomy (amputation of hip and leg, had part of my spine messed with, as well). If I had resistance to such medications, I never would have made it. As it was, it took about three months for me to get off the 'hard stuff' and onto the regular stuff (ie Percoset) because of the pain. If I had been resistant, I imagine I would never have been able to get out of bed, do physical therapy, and hell, eat because of pain.
I'm sorry to hear of your chronic pain...it makes me wish that instead of trying to 'fight drug use' they would put that money toward better pain medications with less side effects.
Donate Gmail invitations to troops
on
Gmail in the News
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As suggested over at Wil Wheaton's blog, 1 gig of space is a perfect amount for troops to recieve/send videos and other keep-in-touch files that other web accounts can't handle.
Help spread the word about this effort, and keep checking back
here for a link to the soon-to-be-built clearinghouse for requests.
A worthy cause, I should think. Currently, I believe people are just looking over at gmailswap for service men and women to donate their invites to, until this 'clearinghouse' is created.
I thought some slashdotters might be willing to participate.
Reading the book, you may even put some bookmarks on different pages and that's exactly how tabbed web browsing works: you may keep several sub-pages of the same web site temporarily bookmarked, switch between them with one mouse click and get rid of them (remove the bookmark) when they are no longer needed.
I'm failing to follow the metaphor of the book as worded here. When I browse webpages, opening links that I come across in new tabs takes one mouse click (middle click) in Mozilla (or, as the above poster states, two clicks if your preferences are different)...my links load in the background, in tabs. One click. And I can do it without much thought, with hardly a pause in my reading of the current webpage. It is very little like making a bookmark in the current book I am reading.
This seems more akin to having many books available to you all at once...the book you are reading, a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and other various related books to the topic all stacked up on each other. Tabbed browsing with the book metaphor is more like reading the page of your primary book (on Greek Mythology, let's say), while having the definition of a difficult word you keep coming across ready in your dictionary right under it, and a reference book with more information about say how Zeus came to power which the primary book mentions only briefly ready under that.
My metaphor doesn't work all that great, but it's more akin to what tabbed browsing is best at. I think the metaphor in the article only works if you only browse one webpage at a time, and click on links only available at that one website (internally browsing, no external links.)
In terms of the browser vs. spatial...like anything computer related, there are fans on both sides. One of the greatest things about open source development is that there is always choice, you can always tweek and modify what you dislike, though it may require you to learn more advanced programming skills to do so.)
I would have to agree--many (perhaps most) schools are not set up to be wonderful places to learn how to interact socially. Some are; those kids are the ones who would likely do better with primarily 'traditional' teaching methods vs. primarily computer/game based teaching methods because they already are in a situation that provides them with a well-rounded educational environment. Where I think the games would help is in the 'regular' classrooms, those 20-30 student classes where the #1 most often used phrase is "stop talking." I've observed a handful of different classroom situations, and it is astonishing how little social interaction goes on...and what interaction does happen is often not the kind I'd want to teach my kids ('if you dress differently than everyone else, they'll make fun of you', 'play dumb sometimes because no one likes the teacher's pet', etc.) I learned conformity in school, and I don't think that counts as a good social lesson.
It seems to me that if you want them to learn proper social skills they should be in an environment with people of different ages and backgrounds
There are many really good books on this idea, particularly associated with homeschooling, but the ideas could be applied to those 'in the system' as well. And the Skylark Sings With Me (by David H. Albert) is a terrific example of what social lessons kids can learn when they're not stifled in an environment that stresses same-ness, mindless compliance, and a distinct separation between adult and child.
I think perhaps the most value from game based learning (and e-learning, etc) would be for those schools who have 30 or more kids in a room with a teacher too overworked (and often underpaid and undertrained) to provide a good learning environment. Theoretically, e-learning and learning via games could potentially open up a great deal of opportunities for kids stuck in sub-standard classrooms, leveling the playing field for kids that normally wouldn't have a chance (that is, if the school would spring for the programs...)
Slashdot Mirror
Just wanted to wish you the best with your treatment. I myself have exhausted standard treatment options for my cancer, and so have been researching any new treatment that comes along with hopes something might help.
You are right one when you state that many people don't realize that cancer isn't one disease. So many people shout "We need a cure for cancer!" Of course, this makes no sense since there are hundreds of types of cancer out there, each of which would need a cure.
Like you said, the popular cancers get the research, and as such new treatments will keep showing up every year for them; this trojan thing, though it will take years to actually be practically helpful if it works, could prove a bit more universal in terms of the number of cancers it could help, it seems. That would be a huge victory to those of us with rare cancers.
Two years is a long time to wait for a start of trials, but if I'm still around and still fighting this, I could see myself volunteering for that (if it is like the other phase I trials I've been on for "advanced cancer" rather than a specific type.) Even if it didn't work, the potential to help future cancer patients seems too great to pass up, I think. I'll be keeping an eye out for more on this.
Take care.
Why not engineer different viruses to attack different cancers?
I think this is a great idea, but it does worry me in that it would be so specialized...what would happen to rare cancers who might benefit from a more universal treatment (different chemos, different types of radiation, etc.)? Without a huge increase in cancer research funding, I would be nervous about something that might divert money from research that could help more than one cancer type, and thus more people. (I'm speaking as someone with a rare cancer with currently barbaric modes of treatment, ie amputation of hip and leg, parts of lung, etc...).
It's a sticky question, though, because everyone wants cancer to be irradicated. Even if only the "popular" types of cancer can be treated with a virus of this sort, that would be best for society as a whole. And maybe then there would be money and attention freed up for the rest of us once those cancers are gone.
Of course, if there was a big increase in funding for these projects in addition to current research on chemo agents, for example, this wouldn't be much of an issue.
To get back to the article, if this could be made to apply to other forms of cancer, I think it would have huge benefits. Some cancers (like mine) are chemo-resistant...having something that opened up the option of chemo could literally mean the difference between life and painful death.
Just my random thoughts on the issue...
The question that comes to my mind, though, is should a clerk who sells an M rated game be punished as this plan proposes?
From the article: Under the governor's plan, the proposed fine for violating the bans would be a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison or a $5,000 fine.
I can see where some would want to limit a child's ability to buy M rated games (though I'd have to wonder where the child got the $50 to do so in the first place, if not from their parents)...but I cannot see punishing an 18 year old high school kid making minimum wage as a cashier with jail time for selling an M rated game to a minor. That is excessive...especially since the parents of the child who buys the game would not be punished, nor would the child.
I don't see the problem with the law being passed.
So you seriously think that a cashier who sells a M rated video game to a minor deserves up to 1 year in prison and/or a $5000 fine?
That's the part I don't agree with. Way to punish the poor kid working the counter for 5.15 an hour, but let the parents and the kid who actually did the purchasing off scott free. Real fair.
Thank you, I appreciate your response! I haven't encountered so complete an explaination of Christian belief before; thank you for sharing your views with me.
-Kristen
If you do what God says is wrong, you can expect that there will be consequences.
I know this is off topic, but may I ask your opinion on the book of Leviticus?
It seems to run contrary to what I understood to be Christian principles, but then I may not understand Christian principles very well, not being of that faith. From what I know of Leviticus, though, it seems like the rules in it don't apply (things like rules for owning slaves, eating shellfish, burning bulls...) How do Christians view this book of the bible? I thought Leviticus is also where the anti-homosexuality comes from (?), so obviously it is being looked to for guidance, but I think there are a lot of things in that book of the bible that are quite frankly appalling. I would be very interested to know how this book of rules fits in with modern Christianity, in your opinion.
Seriously, the 'oh the past was so great' thing is a bit silly. From the article:
The pervasive nature of the internet is such that participants often forgot or lost the desire to use 'old fashioned tools' like the phone book, newspapers and telephone-based customer service.
Forgot or lost the desire? Hm, there might be a reason for that.
Phone book: flip through a huge hunking book, making sure it covers the sections of town you need it to, needing to know the person's last name (argh, spelling can trip you up), and then finding the number is unlisted anyway. This doesn't work for people or places (like hotels) outside your area (unless you have a phone book for every region in the US, wow).
Newspapers: Ug, have you read a major newspaper lately? Half the time the articles are out of date by the time they are printed, you have to wade through pages and pages of poorly written stuff to get to what you are interested in, and then you'll discover that fasinating article on computer repair you heard about is really just two paragraphs telling people how to use control-alt-delete. And you get the inherant bias of your local area. No international views. Plus the trees! The poor trees!
Telephone based customer service: Ha, should I even touch this one? Press one for English. Press two for Spanish. Press three to wait for an hour listening to muzak and then get disconnected. Press four to talk to someone who will try to convince you that you are a complete moron...
Psh. I'd be happy to forget these 'tools'.
It kind of bugs me that the term junkie has reared it's ugly head.
Without internet junkies the internet may not have evolved to be what it is today...providing easy to use email lists, bulletin boards, email, etc. (Someone who finds pine baffling has no trouble with say yahoo mail, for example). This winter I lost my rt leg and rt hip to cancer, and let me tell you--without the internet I would be lost. My cancer was rare (about 1% of all cancers), but I found an online support group where I met people from all over the world with my condition. I am able to get and give support and updates on my health via my livejournal. I have met and talked to people from all over the world.
I don't have the option of going out and 'experiencing the real world' on my own. Often I'm too drugged out from treatments to read, and watching TV is so passive the appeal wears thin. But with the internet I've got a support system, a group of friends who I don't know IRL but who I know will be willing to chat with me about interesting things, I can get news, express my opinions, and watch silly flash cartoons to cheer me up when I'm home alone when my family is at work/school.
And best of all, no one can stare and gape like I'm a monster like they do when I go out in public now (omg, she has no leg!) I understand the shock, but damn is it nice to load up my laptop and be NORMAL. People become friends with me for who I present myself to be, not what I look like.
So I say it again...thank heaven for internet junkies. They are on the ones who help the net evolve and change so quickly.
As a cancer patient, I too worry that programs to lessen the 'abuse-ability' of certain drugs will make them useless to those fighting serious pain. At age 22 I was diagnosed with bone cancer, the tumor wrapped around my right pelvic bone and was inmeshed in with my nerves, giving me tremendous pain in my hip and all down the front and back of my right leg. In the last months leading up to the experimental surgery (amputation), I filled at least ten different pain perscriptions, at my doctor's suggestion, to attempt to find one that helped the pain (we'd try one, it wouldn't work, he'd write me a perscription for another...etc). After the first two, my perscriptions took longer and longer to fill...they would call the doctor and wait to get a call back confirming I really needed these drugs, and I wasn't just an addict. I know fellow cancer sufferers who were refused drugs, had perscriptions torn up, because the pharmacy believed they were drug addicts due to the amount of medication they required. I can only imagine how vaccinations would make this worse.
My surgery is another case where I am grateful vaccinations such as those in the article are not in use. I was given massive doses of Fentynol and various other heavy drugs in the hospital to attempt to control the tremendous pain from the hemipelvectomy (amputation of hip and leg, had part of my spine messed with, as well). If I had resistance to such medications, I never would have made it. As it was, it took about three months for me to get off the 'hard stuff' and onto the regular stuff (ie Percoset) because of the pain. If I had been resistant, I imagine I would never have been able to get out of bed, do physical therapy, and hell, eat because of pain.
I'm sorry to hear of your chronic pain...it makes me wish that instead of trying to 'fight drug use' they would put that money toward better pain medications with less side effects.
From the entry:
A worthy cause, I should think. Currently, I believe people are just looking over at gmailswap for service men and women to donate their invites to, until this 'clearinghouse' is created.
I thought some slashdotters might be willing to participate.
From the article:
Reading the book, you may even put some bookmarks on different pages and that's exactly how tabbed web browsing works: you may keep several sub-pages of the same web site temporarily bookmarked, switch between them with one mouse click and get rid of them (remove the bookmark) when they are no longer needed.
I'm failing to follow the metaphor of the book as worded here. When I browse webpages, opening links that I come across in new tabs takes one mouse click (middle click) in Mozilla (or, as the above poster states, two clicks if your preferences are different)...my links load in the background, in tabs. One click. And I can do it without much thought, with hardly a pause in my reading of the current webpage. It is very little like making a bookmark in the current book I am reading.
This seems more akin to having many books available to you all at once...the book you are reading, a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and other various related books to the topic all stacked up on each other. Tabbed browsing with the book metaphor is more like reading the page of your primary book (on Greek Mythology, let's say), while having the definition of a difficult word you keep coming across ready in your dictionary right under it, and a reference book with more information about say how Zeus came to power which the primary book mentions only briefly ready under that.
My metaphor doesn't work all that great, but it's more akin to what tabbed browsing is best at. I think the metaphor in the article only works if you only browse one webpage at a time, and click on links only available at that one website (internally browsing, no external links.)
In terms of the browser vs. spatial...like anything computer related, there are fans on both sides. One of the greatest things about open source development is that there is always choice, you can always tweek and modify what you dislike, though it may require you to learn more advanced programming skills to do so.)
--Kristen
I would have to agree--many (perhaps most) schools are not set up to be wonderful places to learn how to interact socially. Some are; those kids are the ones who would likely do better with primarily 'traditional' teaching methods vs. primarily computer/game based teaching methods because they already are in a situation that provides them with a well-rounded educational environment. Where I think the games would help is in the 'regular' classrooms, those 20-30 student classes where the #1 most often used phrase is "stop talking." I've observed a handful of different classroom situations, and it is astonishing how little social interaction goes on...and what interaction does happen is often not the kind I'd want to teach my kids ('if you dress differently than everyone else, they'll make fun of you', 'play dumb sometimes because no one likes the teacher's pet', etc.) I learned conformity in school, and I don't think that counts as a good social lesson.
It seems to me that if you want them to learn proper social skills they should be in an environment with people of different ages and backgrounds
There are many really good books on this idea, particularly associated with homeschooling, but the ideas could be applied to those 'in the system' as well. And the Skylark Sings With Me (by David H. Albert) is a terrific example of what social lessons kids can learn when they're not stifled in an environment that stresses same-ness, mindless compliance, and a distinct separation between adult and child.
I think perhaps the most value from game based learning (and e-learning, etc) would be for those schools who have 30 or more kids in a room with a teacher too overworked (and often underpaid and undertrained) to provide a good learning environment. Theoretically, e-learning and learning via games could potentially open up a great deal of opportunities for kids stuck in sub-standard classrooms, leveling the playing field for kids that normally wouldn't have a chance (that is, if the school would spring for the programs...)