A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!
Here's an example of how people lose their arguments. A laudable objective. Stop war. I concur with that. I hate war as well. But the author forgets few things. That a state has to first and foremost keep its citizens safe and there are competing ideologies and missions which stop them from doing so. Think about the police. Why do you need them?
Second is to make silly comparisons. Don't make an aircraft carrier and instead use the money to build water systems. Good. Whose going to pay for that? Running costs for the next 30 years? The American taxpayer will pay for the world's water system? There's that little matter of democracy to worry about.
When people make arguments like this,, they cause more damage to their own cause. Just noise.
Furthermore: This US Memorial Day Remember War Is Murder
BY GLEN BARRY · MAY 25, 2014, Ecological Internet: We must stop glorifying war murders and their perpetrators, and demobilize globally in order to address the far greater threat of abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse. Murder has not, nor will it ever, make us free.
Well. You'll go through what I went through and to a lesser extent going through with your grandfather. We rely on doctors to tell us what to do. If I knew more about medicine I could challenge but I don't. So I just go with whatever they say. Look at mum. She's suffering from a frozen shoulder for the past year and countless trips to the doctor hasn't fixed the issue. Tests and poking and and and nothing. One of my friends keeps moaning about the epidemic of tests that the NHS orders here in the uk and fulminates against the quacks in London. But lessons learnt son. We need to ask more. And challenge more. Sometimes it's better not to do anything. But it needs some faith in yourself and the knowledge that sometimes you will make a mistake. And that's the problem. If you don't test, operate or what have you, what if you were wrong and it goes bad?
You know I suffer from hidranitis suppurativa. It's a problem with the endocrine glands and manifests itself in skin lesions who are horrendously painful. And then I've got to gobble painkillers like candy to get through the day. There's no cure. The only cure that the doctors said was to surgically remove the skins from around my groin and armpits. Which would be sodding disaster. So I told them to bugger off. I take turmeric. Stopped smoking. Cut out red meat. Stopped taking sugar. Am physically active. Switched from briefs to boxers. And and and. Surgery isn't fun son. Having gone through a few, it's painful.
Anyway you may have to decide for me or mum. So this article gives you some useful guidance on how to handle Medical treatments and say No sometimes.
Millions of Americans get tests, drugs, and operations that won’t make them better, may cause harm, and cost billions.
It was lunchtime before my afternoon surgery clinic, which meant that I was at my desk, eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich and clicking through medical articles. Among those which caught my eye: a British case report on the first 3-D-printed hip implanted in a human being, a Canadian analysis of the rising volume of emergency-room visits by children who have ingested magnets, and a Colorado study finding that the percentage of fatal motor-vehicle accidents involving marijuana had doubled since its commercial distribution became legal. The one that got me thinking, however, was a study of more than a million Medicare patients. It suggested that a huge proportion had received care that was simply a waste.
The researchers called it “low-value care.” But, really, it was no-value care. They studied how often people received one of twenty-six tests or treatments that scientific and professional organizations have consistently determined to have no benefit or to be outright harmful. Their list included doing an EEG for an uncomplicated headache (EEGs are for diagnosing seizure disorders, not headaches), or doing a CT or MRI scan for low-back pain in patients without any signs of a neurological problem (studies consistently show that scanning such patients adds nothing except cost), or putting a coronary-artery stent in patients with stable cardiac disease (the likelihood of a heart attack or death after five years is unaffected by the stent). In just a single year, the researchers reported, twenty-five to forty-two per cent of Medicare patients received at least one of the twenty-six useless tests and treatments.
Could pointless medical care really be that widespread? Six years ago, I wrote an article for this magazine, titled “The Cost Conundrum,” which explored the problem of unnecessary care in McAllen, Texas, a community with some of the highest per-capita costs for Medicare in the nation. But was McAllen an anomaly or did it represent an emerging norm? In 2010, the Institute of Medicine issued a report stating that waste accounted for thirty per cent of health-care spending, or some seven hundred and fifty billion dollars a year, which was more than our nation’s entire budget for K-12 education. The report found that higher prices, administrative expenses, and fraud accounted for almost half of this waste. Bigger than any of those, however, was the amount spent on unnecessary health-care services. Now a far more detailed study confirmed that such waste was pervasive.
I decided to do a crude check. I am a general surgeon with a specialty in tumors of the thyroid and other endocrine organs. In my clinic that afternoon, I saw eight new patients with records complete enough that I could review their past medical history in detail. One saw me about a hernia, one about a fatty lump growing in her arm, one about a hormone-secreting mass in her chest, and five about thyroid cancer.
To my surprise, it appeared that seven of those eight had received unnecessary care. Two of the patients had been given high-cost diagnostic tests of no value. One was sent for an MRI after an ultrasound and a biopsy of a neck lump proved suspicious for thyroid cancer. (An MRI does not image thyroid cancer nearly as well as the ultrasound the patient had already had.) The other received a new, expensive, and, in her circumstances, irrelevant type of genetic testing. A third patient had undergone surgery for a lump that was bothering him, but whatever the surgeon removed it wasn’t the lump—the patient still had it after the operation. Four patients had undergone inappropriate arthroscopic knee surgery for chronic joint damage. (Arthroscopy can repair certain types of acute tears to the cartilage of the knee. But years of research, including randomized trials, have shown that the operation is of no help for chronic arthritis- or age-related damage.)
A fellow alumni of yours died recently. I knew of him of course but didn't know the details. Till I read his obit in the economist. Quite an amazing man. He did so much but at end of the day, he did one thing which really appealed to me son, he 'lived' life to his full. You can't say much more than that can you? Full life. I've shared this with you before but it's worth sharing again.
You're applying for internships now and are slowly laying the foundation stones of your life. And you are living as well. I'm very happy with you son. I was talking about you with Dadu and he's very happy with you as well.
I went to walk in the Virginia Waters park yesterday morning. Very early in the morning to catch the morning dawn on a particularly beautiful bridge. It was truly breathtaking. Go for a walk sometime son. Down the riverside. Just you. No phones no music no nothing. Just go for a walk. 2-3 hours. With nothing but the river and trees and Swans and ducks and fish and the gentle lapping of water against the river banks. Do it as an experiment. Tell me how you feel afterwards.
Fun times eh?
Have a lovely week son. Beginning of your term. Fun times.
Baba
Success by Ralph Waldo Emerson
SUCCESS
To laugh often and much to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
