Rip N Roll campaign snuck this one in. ACL too busy to notice.

So ACL, you just got RipNRolled.

In case you don’t know what the story is about, see this article and this press release. Short story: Australian Christian Lobby organises a bunch of complaints to get an ad taken down for being “offensive”.  Adshel pulls the ad. People find out, get outraged (including me, I wrote to Adshel telling them how spineless they were and that they owed the campaign free advertising for the inconvenience), the backlash causes Adsel to grow a spine and stand up for a safe sex campaign against bronze age morons called the ACL.

The end.

Here’s some things the recent funding expansion could have been spent on that don’t violate parental right to a free, secular education in our public schools.

Qualified (Real) School Counsellors

Apparently the reason we need chaplains is because we don’t have enough counsellors to go round. Well, in 2010, across Australia, there were 6,743 government schools and as far as I can see from the salary figures for Australian school counsellors that would get us 3083 school counsellors or 2658 senior counsellors.
Let me do the division: that would be around 1 new counsellor to every 2 schools. Just the new counsellors alone would be a 1 to 751 ratio. If you look at the figures for 2008 ratios they’re:

• ACT 1: 850 (1 Assistant Manager, 5 Senior Counsellors, 45 FTE positions for School Counsellors)
• NSW 1 : 1,050 (678 Counsellors 113 DGOs 1 PEOs ie 1 per region across the state)
• NT: 1:2500 when all positions are full  (19 School Counsellors, 2 Senior. School Psychologists, 8 School Psychologists – however, rarely are all positions filled)
• Qld: 1:1,300 in secondary schools (about 350 combined GO and SGO positions)
• SA: 1:3779 for GO,  1:1944 for ECP (GO – 43.4 FTE in the field in 2008, with 3.1 FTE in specialist positions. ECP – 8.9 FTE in the field)
• Tas: 1 :1,800 (36 school psychologists, 8 senior school psychologists)
• WA: 1:1200 to 1:2000
• VIC: no data.

So you can see that those numbers are all blown out of the water (in a good way) if the money had gone to that. Of course the money could go toward the Northern Territory’s problem with hiring staff or to address the states with most urgent need. Or, hell, it could just go to paying the existing ones better pay so more staff are easily found and retained. For a government supposedly concerned about mental health it would surely make sense to hire qualified counsellors with that money rather than preachers who are only really there for a small percentage of the kids who are genuinely religious enough to need to talk to a religious ear.. and even then: only for certain types of advice (e.g. “I think I like my best friend in a sexual way” might not go down too well with an evangelist who thinks gays are sinful or unnatural).

Teachers

Despite Access Ministries actively trying to turn kids against teachers and toward Chaplains via propaganda teachers are the lifeblood of the school and are the real educators.

Teacher ratios in public schools are a problem thanks to the decade or so of the Liberal government under Howard systematically dismantling public education in favour of private education. You remember that right? Back when Abbott was just a RU486 hoarding health minister who couldn’t separate his faith from his ministerial responsibility.

Anyhow, $222m of wasted chaplaincy money could pay for 2220 teachers on a pretty healthy old $100k a year. Or let’s say we pay for a bunch of teachers on $70k, that would get public schools an extra 3,171 teachers.

As of 2010′s ABS figures there are 183,725 teachers.

So we could give them all a $1200 bonus for putting up with the less than desirable funding arrangement that neglects them in favour of funding for extra indoor swimming pools for private schools.

Renewable Energy for Schools

I’ve talked in the past about my view that government buildings should all have solar installations on the roof.

Divided amongst all the schools you could prepare a “renewable energy for schools” programme which would be a lump sum payment of $33k to purchase solar panels for the rooftops of the new school halls. This would help in many ways: it would reduce the electricity bill.

Solar panels could be on school halls

According to Origin energy’s FAQ a 1.5kW system starts at $4k. So let’s say $1k worth of extra cost. So every school could be a 9-10kW solar installation.

So that’s 6743x10kW = 67430kW = 6.7 MW distributed power station. Sure the real yield would be lower that that and you only generate for X hours per day.. But it’s a definite start toward freeing us from fossil fuel dependency.

School Gardens

Instead of learning the “historic fact” from a Christian Chaplain about how all of mankind was forever cursed and kicked out of the garden of Eden each school could get a $33k grant toward creating and maintaining a school garden. The garden could be used to encourage healthy eating or used as an ongoing fund raising device. The added advantage would be education going home via the kids as to what is actually in season, leading to better choices at the super market. With $33K you’d be able to do some serious gardening.

Simply planting some trees might also be a good use of the funding which would offset some of the emissions for heating/cooling the school.

Meals

The money could be used to supply a free apple or orange to every kid in the public school system every day for 20 weeks.

Apples for the students instead! No stories about snakes and gardens needed.

Or perhaps a decent sized fruit salad for half that time.

That’d surely help with the obesity rates and encourage healthy eating.

Books or Technology

Public schools, having to make do with giving away 2/3 of the federal funding to private schools, are lagging behind in adoption of technology like smart boards and computing facilities.  Schools could have $95 worth of extra spend per student on books or technology. So for every 10 students you could fund a laptop. So that’s two extra computers for every classroom. For a small school of 200 students that would be a computer lab. For every 50 students you could have a brand new smart board put into a classroom.

For the price of funding one god fearing chaplain at a school (at $20k of tax dollars) you could give an entire classroom of 20 kids a set of laptops for the year.

If you wanted to splash cash around you could pay a commercial IT consultant, Engineer or Scientist to come in once a week at consulting rates for 20-30 weeks to teach kids about technology rather than bronze age mythology. Which type of inspiration is likely to lead to a career that isn’t complete nonsense and sponging off Govt public schools violating our (supposed to be) secular education system?

Could hire a bunch of roaming consultants to educate the teachers in the technology they have as I know first hand just how little assistance teachers are given. Hell, I was the school technology expert all the way through my schooling from about year 3 onwards (I used to get called up from class in primary school by the high-school teachers to go help fix the clunky Microbee network). Although that was a useful life skill, I now do that with enterprise integration architecture problems.

Disadvantaged students

There are lots of kids in financial, emotional, physical or other disadvantage. I don’t have figures for these, but I guess I’ve touched on the special schools funding.

Let’s assume we can assist students via hiring people at $25/hour (minimum wage is lower, but let’s not be cheap with our chappy cash bonanza). That would pay for 1,184,000 days of paid helper time. So spread over the schools that would be 175 extra days per school, or 35 extra working weeks of hiring someone to come in. So spread that over a few part time people and you’ve got yourself a magic amount of extra assistance with reading, writing etc.

To give you the background: many public schools rely on volunteers currently. Now wouldn’t it be great to pay those people? If we paid $18-20/hour we’d get even more time out of people. Those people would not be there to convert by stealth, preach about nonsense (or in one instance at least of a chaplain grooming children).. No, they’re there to help without preaching.

This would also be a benefit to give people a good part time source of income, particularly mothers/fathers who have their kids at the school and who aren’t working elsewhere.

What else?

What else could the money have gone to that’s school/education related?

No joke, no rant.. Just do it.

Other posts on vaccinations/quack treatments:

• Vaccination conspiracy: The Ill-uminati – about the great conspiracy theory that is the evil doctor/drug company devils
• Homoeopathy, Letter to Boots and the 10:23 campaign – touted as a vaccine alternative.. pfft..
• Published rant! Mary Mackillop’s not-miracle – people praying to Mary Mackillop rather than getting proper medical treatment.

If you thought bottled water was a scam, listen to this.

Homoeopathy (homeopathy for the yanks?) is based around the idea that water has a memory. Although it seems the memory only works immediately after preparing a homoeopathic preparation (the past 4 billion odd years of floating through everything from oceans to dinosaur bladders to beer kegs is forgotten).

Homoeopathy has a memory right?

Anyhow, the water is shown/exposed/whispered something nasty that would cause the symptoms or make them worse (so for cancer you’d stir it with a cigarette? For stiffness you pour it over a playboy magazine.. makes sense right?), then diluted to the point of a drop of water in the pacific ocean or something similar. So basically turned back into plain old water. It remembers what the bad stuff was and somehow magically does the opposite and makes you well.

I propose homoeopathic cures are paid for with homoeopathic solutions of money. Take money, show it to water, dilute til no more money left. Could even be delivered via bladder.

It’s touted as a cure for everything. I was going to list out what it is claimed, but like all good snake oil it fixes everything (and given it is water: also cleans your dishes!).

If homoeopathy worked: drinking water would simultaneously kill and heal you for any number of ailments. A swim would mean no one ever died from skin cancer cos I’m sure somewhere in the ocean some time ago there was cancerous material diluted away.

What is the 10:23 campaign then?

For those not in the know, the 10:23 (or ten to the power of 23) is a campaign against the afore mentioned quack remedies on shelves next to real medicine.

10:23 Campaign.

The 10:23 (or 10²³) refers to the time of day the campaign was to take place and a nod to Avogadro’s constant (a chemistry figure that you learn about in highschool chemistry and then forget sometime between now and then.. but basically dealing with concentrations/atoms etc).

Letter to Boots about the above

Boots is a chemist/pharmacy chain in the UK. It (like other chemists) seems to be pushing homoeopathy as a viable treatment for a range of ills. My letter to boots about homoeopathic “remedies” in response to the underwhelming death-rate (e.g. zero) of the 10:23 campaign.

To Boots customer support,

It has been well established that homoeopathy has no active ingredient, described by various medical groups as “quack treatment” or “snake-oil” and consistently fails to differentiate itself from placebo in any scientific tests performed. Additionally people may take these treatments instead of actual medicine/vaccines which means treatable conditions end up going untreated. Of particular worry is the notion that people can cure anything from headache to cancer or replace vaccinations with this snake-oil “treatment”.

So in light of that: why is Boots stocking such ridiculous products?

If they are to be sold they should be labelled as sugar pills (and sold in the same location) as the sweets and chocolate bars.

Please could you also explain or comment on:

• What medical benefit you think this provides beyond placebo?
• Will you be pulling them off the shelves after the rather convincing 10:23 homoeopathy “overdose” which resulted in no noticeable impact on hundreds of people worldwide?

and

• Will you clearly label these products as having no medical affect whatsoever other than as a placebo so that customers are not lulled into believing they are purchasing a real medical treatment?

Regards,
Nathan Lee

Take that with some magic memory water Boots..

Will post up the reply (if I get one).
Does it really matter?

If you’re thinking “what’s the harm” perhaps check out some of the examples given by Simon Singh in “What’s the harm” including:

• Homoeopathy practitioners advising parents against vaccines (many diseases are returning thanks to this and other vaccine crackpot theories about vaccines)
• Might replace conventional (i.e. “useful”/”real”) treatment e.g. malaria prevention

In addition millions of dollars are spent on these sugar pills and overpriced water.

People can, have and will continue to die from these things because they are fed a load of rubbish instead of real medical advice.

There is, I think, a moral duty (that Boots and other chemists would do well to consider) to inform people of what is real (backed by real results) medicine vs some made up shit.

That’s why it matters.

The BBC’s graphic on not sitting up “too straight”:

Correct posture (image from the BBC)

But the real position for corporate situations I think is quite often more like this:

Correct corporate posture.

The struggles post disaster although heightened dramatically are but a big bang version of the daily problems faced ongoing in developed nations. Extreme disease, poverty, health issues, hunger, thirst and helplessness are a constant when you’re in that half of the world that live on less than $2 a day.

Water

The most urgent need after any widespread disaster would have to be availability of clean water. The massive infrastructure damage that follows earthquakes is no exception: pipes and dams rupture, sewage leaks, electricity is knocked out to pumping stations, transport routes disrupted etc. For tsunamis the contamination of drinking water is a major problem. War and plague situations the problem becomes competition for limited fresh water or crowding near water which results in disease outbreak. Michael Pritchard’s got a device to turn undrinkeable water drinkable:

As a side note to get an idea of the scale he’s talking with the filtration of virii see my earlier post: Zoom in! Enhance.. Enhance! Oh, look! There’s a carbon atom.

So the idea is instead of shipping the rather heavy, bulky and “single shot” bottles of water: ship these filtration packs. They can then turn thousands of litres into drinkable water and most importantly they can do it away from central distribution centres (which means less risk of people in close contact spreading disease and less need to make risky treks or relocation to camps). If it can make the Thames water + rabbit shit + pond sludge drinkable then it can be used by people to get drinking water from the flood waters or stagnant dams.

Health

Life threatening injuries require urgent medical assistance, which often involves delivering things like vaccinations, antibiotics and other medications. These are sometimes delivered by doctors, other times by semi-skilled healthcare volunteers and sometimes by completely untrained people.

Marc Koska looked at what happens in poorer nations with reuse of syringes in poorer nations and proposed a solution that doesn’t cost any more than the standard syringe out there in circulation today:

So to prevent a natural disaster (or simply being a poor nation) turning into a subsequent AIDS/HIV, Hepatitis or other blood borne outbreak after the dust has settled: any and all syringes sent into a disaster zone need to have this “fire once and break” mechanism.

Aside from the immediate/urgent injuries of the masses affected by the disaster there’s also the medium to longer term concerns. Many are instantly thrown below the poverty level as their possessions may have been lost, destroyed or left behind. Sight is perhaps one of the most important sensory tools we have as humans and Josh Silver has an amazing demonstration of cheap, easily adjustable liquid filled eye glasses which could restore clear vision to people. This is in addition to the worth of such a device in any developing nation as a means for increasing productivity and removing poor vision as a barrier to economic independence for many aging people.

Bill Clinton (an idol of mine for public speaking) talks about the core problem with many developing/poor nations: the need for healthcare systems.

He makes the interesting point that one of the biggest problems in nations without systems is that in an environment of chaos you have no guarantee that effort will result in certain outcomes. Everything becomes a struggle, absolutely everything. Take a developed nation: you know that making the effort to go to a doctor with a child for vaccination will almost always result in you walking away with a vaccinated child (or an appointment the next day if for some reason they couldn’t see you that day).

Bill’s talk is about creating a repeatable model for installing self maintaining healthcare systems in countries that will address the issue of incapacity in those nations which is starting to become the biggest hurdle to tackling various health problems.

Money
A huge need for any disaster recovery is via emergency relief funds flowing in quickly and to the right people. This is what I’d probably call top down aid. But taking a step either side of the disaster event (lead up or later stage recovery) and you have a need for funding at the bottom level in the developing world.

The individual need for economic growth beyond organic funding (e.g. you need a piece of equipment that you simply do not have the cash for but which will allow you to generate income). What will work is not charity necessarily as the old “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” states.

Jacqueline Novogratz proposes an alternative to straight out charity she calls “patient capital”:

So rebuilding and pre-building (preparing a nation to be strong and ready to cope with disasters) this is of great importance. Low income entrepreneurs need access to finance too. There are now a number of micro-finance or micro lending options out there.

Now I’ll stretch the mandate of this blog entry (I am the boss of it after all) a bit and attempt to link into post economic credit crisis (see here for my background on the credit crisis in pretty pictures and animations) consumer spending habits and how it could be a good thing for having money available for such disasters. Watch John Gerzema talk about value shifts in consumerism:

So the idea he was discussing was that we’d move away from mindless consumption (I hope it sticks!). People becoming more humble in their purchasing or indeed less likely to purchase unnecessary goods in the first place.

Tourism is trending towards trips that are a bit more low key (which would perhaps make less “touristy” places more likely destinations, perhaps helping to get tourism going in developing nations).

Consumers could also start to put pressure on companies to make ethical choices and be less exploitative/more inclusive of the 3rd world (e.g. stuff like the Fair Trade Association).

I could go on for pages and pages with extrapolations from this basic concept with respect to the 3rd world, but perhaps I’ll leave that for another time.

Education
Education can’t be quickly dropped from helicopter and stuck in a kids arm via some healthcare worker. BUT I strongly believe that the key to solving just about any of our problems (and dramatically lesson the impact of natural disasters) is via education.

Health problems, inescapable poverty, religion based persecution/superstition etc. can all be pushed out of the spotlight by giving people access to education. Access to good, secular education (yes, I do happen to think that teaching kids that “god did it” instead of real science is a rather horrible thing to do) can and does help people’s lives get better. Unfortunately the very worst of bible thumping misinformation (Dying from AIDS is preferable to using a condom type stuff) is getting pushed in massive amounts into the poor nations where lack of funding leaves a massive gap.

But I digress!

With education comes the ability to read and write. This means health pamphlets, coordination with government/aid workers etc. It means independent research/learning can take place (see the end for a great example!).

So in the pre-disaster situation: with education comes the opportunity to better your position in life (economically, intellectually etc). Women are often (always?) the last in a given society to access this basic mechanism for improvement. With that in mind, Michelle Obama’s plea for education (filmed last year) directed at girls is definitely worth a listen:

Education is one of those ways of “disaster proofing” (well.. strives toward disaster proofing at least). It replaces ignorance with knowledge, superstition with reason and prevents a whole sway of flow on consequences throughout society if people are uneducated, poor and with no possibility of escaping such a situation.

Like any good teacher, the ones servicing the eager young minds in developing nations will need materials. So to address that, from a technology standpoint: Richard Baraniuk talks about a system for sharing/open sourcing learning:

I don’t need to go into how beneficial free, shareable knowledge can be in boosting the education levels in any given country. A number of universities have opened up their course materials to anyone with an internet connection. Of course this does tend to be a bit inaccessible where internet is not available or computers are scarce so I guess he talks about community authored, publish on demand inexpensive books which could be extended to poorer nations with little access to the internet. This links in with the programs to bring laptops and internet to the developing nations, so access to content in the first place is definitely an important part of multi-pronged approach to educating the poor.

Mapping

Back to an immediate need in any disaster operation: The need for maps in terms of directing basic humanitarian functions through to use of GPS devices for efficient transport is critical.

There are programmes out there like Tracks 4 Africa who take the approach of handing out GPS mapping units to a community of volunteers and create an average of some fairly volatile paths.

Another community/volunteer approach is described in the “Making maps to fight disaster, build economies” by Lalitesh Katragadda at TEDIndia last year:

Communication

“Data is king” an old buddy of mine Rob once said and making sense of the massive amount of data that is produced during these disasters is far beyond anyone’s ability to sift through it all. So Erik Hersman’s TED Talk on reporting crisis via texting proposes a solution:

It’s a bit of a longer term goal, but a universal means of communication is important in any disaster situation. While I won’t claim that English is the panacea of communication the point is made by Jay Walker on the world’s English mania. It certainly seems like English is in many places in the world the possible “go between” language to unite many different nationalities.

In terms of lifting up the developed world the vast quantity and quality of materials available in English is undeniable, so ability to understand that is great.

Information Visualisation

Hans Rosling shows the best stats about the developing world you’ve ever seen (maybe you have seen it before in my previous post), particularly important to make the right policy decisions and to separate out the myth from that supportable by the data:

Having the right data analysis and visualisation tools is important for managing both the recovery from a disaster (the obvious problem being the collection of data to begin with. The wild variations over initial days of crisis of “estimated deaths” is but one example) and the prevention of the next event via generally improving the country’s situation to begin with.

Optimism for the future

I’ll end this rather lengthy post with some talks (or “grim inspiration” for the first one) on Optimism.

The first (a bit of a long one) by Robert “I’m not Mr optimism” Write is assuring us that history has an overall direction despite the apparent downs. From single cell organisms to today there is hope found in our evolution(s):

And I think a great example of how someone with nothing but a bit of ingenuity and some scraps of materials can do something quite impressive:

and his return to TED two years later a much more confident speaker (even throwing in some jokes..).

Which reinforces my earlier section on education and access to knowledge. William had access to a fairly hard won education. In his readings he came across one book that talked about the principles of wind electricity generation. This gave him the inspiration to dig up some pipes, an old bicycle dynamo and some other bits to make a windmill to power lights, radios and later irrigation pumps and the neighbours’ mobile phones.

If there’s a thing that people need particularly in a disaster situation or at the bottom of the economic rung: it’s optimism.

As William said in his speech: “Trust yourself and believe. Whatever happens don’t give up.”

Donations

All the best wishes for those doing good in Haiti and helping rebuild a destroyed country.

In terms of providing no bullshit assistance (without trying to convert people/spend it on bibles) I’d recommend Oxfam and the Red Cross, two great organisations that have helped millions over the years:

• Oxfam Australia’s Haiti donation page (or the US one for the yanks and UK one for the poms)
• Australian Red cross Haiti Quake appeal (or the US one, UK one)

In terms of some of the longer term goals I talked about, I think the tireless work of people like Fred Hollows is invaluable (restoring sight to people in the poorer nations). See The Fred hollows foundation to donate there. Again, another “let’s get maximum bang for buck” type organisation.

FOOTNOTE: As a (kinda) disclaimer I donate to the above charities as per any “ordinary bloke” off the street might, but have no financial/business or any other ties whatsoever. This blog is not funded by anyone other than myself.

A few years back (ok a handful of years back.. I’m getting old) I had the “pleasure” of having a seat next to the trading floor while I was consulting at Macquarie bank. It was a fun team to be sitting with, but the constant roar of non-nonsensemustgetthistradecommunicatedtosomeonebyyellingquickly got a bit hard on the nerves. Sure: you were awake, but it was more of a fight or flight type instinct.

Unlike the economy, I escaped from the insurance bankers and got back to a quieter seat, but I’d have to say that too much exposure to that sort of environment day in day out would slowly but surely fray your nerves.

Shepard by the yellow river can't stand the pollution smell.

Villager in Guangdong province washes in polluted water.

Wroking in heavy dust, migrant workers invariably start to have health problems after 1-2 years.

See here for some explanations of the pictures, original source is from here.

Some other equally scary pictures from China (originally from here):

Man collecting dead fish in Guanqiao Lake in central China's Hubei province.

Migrant workers sort through industrial and household waste in Beijing.

I’ve posted in the past about the idea that China may solve global warming (kinda) because of the pressures such massive growth puts on it, but as I mentioned (at length): it is paying a hell of a price currently. Let’s hope with that comes the ability to clean-up the vast unliveable areas (and soon!).

The answer seems to be: “nothing good”. They are an unnecessary level of proxy between person (e.g. you, me, the average guy in the street) and medical care provider (e.g. doctor, anaesthetist, pharmacist, ambulance service, nurse).
Now in the field of Software Engineering we often add in a proxy between two things for a number of reasons:

• caching (e.g. the proxy accumulates things so it can supply them quicker)
• auditing/logging (e.g. “a paper trail”)
• for coordinating and performing a number of calls to other things (e.g. to talk to A you need to first ask B something)
• for handling errors and exceptions in a nice way

The downside is:

• increased overhead (memory/performance hit)

As far as I can see the only one of those “benefits” are there.. Increased paper-trail. Which in the case of medical care isn’t really a good thing given how much of one there is to start with.
I mean I live in a country with public health (“socialised socialized medicine”.. only the USA calls it that to incite fear of communism, so the z is appropriate) and I’ve only recently been effectively forced to get additional private health cover because the government is pretty much screwing you if you don’t (via tax penalties and lifetime penalties based on age that will kick in for me now) and I can see just how little private health cover offers if you end up outside certain average needs (e.g. waiting lists for various things, lifetime limits, yearly limits, certain hospitals/providers, gap payments.. ). BUT the difference is a year of the near highest cover level of private costs me about what it costs per month in the USA.

Current system costs an arm and a leg

Over half of bankruptcies in the USA are caused by medical costs a recent study said. Some scary bits:

“Unless you’re Bill Gates, you’re just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of medicine. “Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick.”

and shockingly:

Most of those seeking court protection from creditors had health insurance, with more than three-quarters reporting they had coverage at the start of the illness that triggered bankruptcy.

So it wasn’t even those who didn’t have insurance, it was the ones who did have it but got screwed anyhow!

This sort of thing is pretty much unheard of in the nice public health safety net we have in Australia. It isn’t necessary for me to get private health cover other than to avoid the tax implications and shorten the waiting period if I need elective surgery.

Whether I have private cover or not, if I need treatment (ranging from the “hit by a bus” type situation to developing leukaemia to having a head cold etc) then I’ll get treatment. The same isn’t the case in the USA with private cover needing to cover everything that could happen to you.

I remember during orientation with a US based company: I have never seen so many adults listening so intently to the list of “benefits”. It was like watching kids hearing a fairytale, although this one was about the fantasy of “full coverage”.

Private health-cover in Australia

I’m pretty against the notion of private health-cover in Australia and that the government has to really twist people’s arms to get them to take it up (and they leave in droves when that tax benefit is changed). Having a system that is propped up by people trying to avoid tax is just stupid and means you end up with a bunch of people with pretty much useless cover (e.g. sure, it qualifies you for avoiding the tax break, but can you actually use it? Generally these “minimum cover to get tax relief” schemes provide such poor coverage and high gap payments that you’d have to use the public system)

What it means is that you’re artificially inflating an industry which doesn’t really offer that much benefit and which takes up hospitals which should be available to all for no cost. It also drives a hell of a lot of money to alternative medicine treatments as people try desperately to get some value out of their tax-penalty-enforced private cover. This has three negative consequences in my opinion:

• driving up private health cover further
• promoting health treatments that have no proven benefit whatsoever
• upping the cost of everything because the insurer is paying most of it

Lobbying out of control

This debate in the USA seems to be divided amongst two concerns:

• improving the healthcare provided to all
• maintaining health insurance company profits

Is it just me that thinks one of those is on very shaky ground. What amazes me further is the vast sums of money spent on bribing congressmen from the piles of cash syphoned off the current medical costs (born by US citizens).

Just how many people were denied coverage for something to be able to donate the 9 million dollars to John Kerry’s campaign?

Attitudes need adjusting

One thing out of this whole stupid debate is just how the group attitude of “I ain’t paying for someone else” selfishness covers not only the usual culprits (conservative/republicans) but also many of the democratic/liberal types. I don’t want to further the whole idea that you can only have one of two types of opinion on things (e.g. you’re a liberal or a conservative and that’s all), but I’ve had conversations with people that are furious about a number of usual liberal type issues (same sex marriage, war in iraq, women’s right to abortion, religion separated from state etc) but who on this topic dig their heels in and say they don’t want to be forced to pay for other people’s healthcare.

Perhaps this is one of the weaknesses of the USA’s strength. The cut throat succeed mentality is probably why the USA is the world’s powerhouse economy, although it hasn’t been without casualties. Perhaps now is the time to re-evaluate the situation before the society implodes under the weight of medical costs (and the costs associated with putting off timely medical checkups).

Lots of “socialized stuff” already

Perhaps the people against public health can think about what they currently already pay for in the realm of the dirty socialist concept:

• public roads
• public transport
• public police forces
• public fire fighters
• public libraries
• public utilities
• etc

I really can’t see the same people objecting to healthcare for all taking up arms to protest against “socialised police force” (e.g. police won’t track down your mugger unless you pay for it) or fire brigades run by companies and on an “individual pays” policy (“Oh, your house is burning down.. I’m sorry, your fire brigade insurance only covers week day call outs.. we’ll put it out on monday”).

Some things are never meant to be money making ventures. Ethically healthcare needs to be universal in a civilised society.

TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED talks, in case you haven’t heard me rave about them (or watched one in a previous post) are short talks given by people on interesting ideas. Their motto is “Ideas worth spreading”.  TEDTalks came from TED conferences (I’d love to attend one one day) where a bunch of people get together to share ideas.

Here’s a quick handful that give you an idea of some of the incredible things that people present at TED talks. About the only ones I think fairly consistently suck are the song and poetry ones. Haven’t yet found a good one of either of those categories.

Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs
Captivating, engaging talk about how dirty jobs get a bad image.

Gever Tully teaches life lessons through Tinkering
Kids doing what they used to do before helicopter parenting and the death of fun.

Josh Silver demos adjustable liquid filled eye glasses
Amazing idea on self optometry for the masses.

Robert Full: Learning from the gecko’s tail
Nature is an incredible thing with surprising lessons for Engineers coming out about why the gecko needs a tail.

Jane Poynter: Life in Biosphere 2
I remember watching the Biosphere 2 people heading into the structure. Interesting to hear how things played out.

Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging
Aging need not be inevitable. Reasons why we should strive to beat aging. I first came across this idea under the banner “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)“.

Jay Walker on the world’s English mania
English really is the international language. Scarily so!

Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks
Unashamed geekery: making cool stuff with the wiimote.

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
Statistics done right!

Ed Ulbrich: How Benjamin Button got his face
Interesting technology used to age Brad Pitt.

The anti-vaccination mob are a dedicated lot.

Warning, tin foil hats are necessary while reading anti-vaccination material on the web

They’ll spend hours copy-pasting the same unreferenced rubbish, citing “concerned mother instinct” (helped by celebrity twits like Oprah) and claiming endlessly against all evidence that vaccines are linked with autism (the original source of this autism/vaccine link stuff was a complete fraud).

All medical researchers are evil mass kiddy murderers and vaccines are full of evil ingredients that turn you into a zombie or something. They’ll then claim complete faith in stuff like homoeopathy and magnet therapy etc. Fantastic stuff, really..

But just take a read of this piece of conspiracy garbage that alleges everyone from Obama through the UN, WHO and EU to testing labs and medical companies are part of some global “Illuminati” (is that Ill-uminati) biochemical plot to mass murder half the globe. Oh and the banking system, homeland security, FEMA, the CIA and even the Freemasons (must be spread by special handshakes eh?) are in on it too.

But the plot really goes from crazy to completely and utterly bat shit nuts at about this point:

They have installed a covert infrastructure of genocide in the USA, including FEMA camps with incinerators and mass graves.
They have trained police and other security and health organisations such as Homeland Security and FEMA to carry out the programme of genocide, and to target American patiots calling for a return to the Constitution as terrorists.

It most certainly is!

I guess this is not too much more than the average anti-vaccine stance that alleges vaccines are all about harming kids rather than preventing disease. I pity the poor doctors who have to put up with stupid parents arguing against giving their kids a way to avoid some childhood disease.

I just reckon it’s simpler (and more grounded in reality) to believe that vaccines are there to help prevent some nasty diseases that we’ve found a way to beat through the hard work of smart people. The billions of people that have had vaccines and subsequent healthy lives also lends weight to that theory.

Or maybe I’m just another of the Ill-uminati spreading the evil lies and plots to kill small children via MMR and fluvax injections..

Mwhahahahahaha..

Creationist swine flu

See the original one here.

A quick update as I’ve been a bit waylaid with getting back to the working world and haven’t even found much time for the new toy. But life’s going fine (and it’s nice to be earning an income after the bumming around on the bike touring in Europe). Heading into “winter” in Sydney I’m pretty relaxed about the temperature as I won’t be getting stuck in snow here.

Nath

But let’s face it: if the 10 pints of cheap beer and chips (erm.. crisps!) the typical kebab shopper has consumed before they’ve suitably damaged their self preservation instinct to utter the drunken “Letsh get a kebab Ihm fukken starvin’” haven’t damaged your health: a kebab with nasty stuff isn’t going to make much difference.

While most were clean, five per cent were discovered to be a potential health risk from salmonella, E.coli, staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus spp.

Given that the article talks of how a greasy kebab contains almost the entire day’s calorie intake for a woman it’s probably best if it does just pass right on through you via food poisoning.

Tips on how to statistically improve your chances of a squirt free kebab:

The researchers found that cucumber, which is handled for chopping, was most likely to be contaminated. Chilli sauce was the biggest risk of the various sauces.

For the Muslims/Jews with their ridiculous pork phobia, it’s quite likely a bunch of them are going to hell:

Also, a number of kebabs do not include the meat claimed.  Some sold as Halal and so suitable for Muslims were even found to contain pork, which is banned by the faith.

Given there’s no way to tell if beef is Halal other than if you know it has suffered more by bleeding to death (thousands of years of progress and animals are still essentially sacrificed by throat slitting to appease religion): I’d say a good portion of that would be just whatever beef they could buy cheaply, and thus another ticket to hell.

What makes a good Kebab?

Kebabs for me are like Indian food: it’s not really the taste that’s most important.

What truly matters is if you don’t get sick.

If your stomach doesn’t complain then it’s good. If you have a few stomach gurgles the next day then it’s “okay”. If you eat there a handful of times and your friends who have eaten there also have not been sick AND it tastes ok then it qualifies as a “great kebab”.

That’s really the only criteria that matters with any food that’s traditionally associated with liquefying your insides for days on end. It goes into your stomach already looking like vomit and occasionally comes back up looking the same. Thankfully I battle hardened my stomach in HK and tend to survive dodgy food pretty well. For those who haven’t gone through the bouts of 3-4 days of hellish food poisoning it takes to get a cast iron stomach kebabs are a potential landmine. So the more used to bad food your stomach is: the wider the range of “good kebab shops” there are.

Now I’m sure everyone’s got a “oh but I know a great kebab place”. Sure, when you stumbled there last time you were drunk and the sweaty looking guy managed to slice some half cooked substandard meat resembling spam off an inadequate cooking device and squirt the flavour out of a big squeezy bottle over some chopped tomato and parsley without wiping his nose while you were there: great. Such chef level skill required!

They all generally taste good because there’s typically enough grease in the meat for it to taste good regardless. Case in point: if you let the “juice” (e.g. fat, grease, sauce mix) soak into the wrapping too much you tend to find you’ve started to eat it (sometimes even the aluminium foil). Is it variety that might make a good kebab? Not likely! The thought of offering something “exotic” like sour cream, or avocado is enough to trigger many a dodgy kebab shop a small grease induced heart attack.

What really matters is how well they cleaned their hands, how many years old the meat was (see below for a German story on that!) and how long the stuff’s been sitting there. It shouldn’t matter, but that’s how it works currently.

The dodgy Kebab in the News past

Some other great kebab triumphs:

• 160 people get food poisoning from one Kebab shop
• Aussie snooker ace struggles after bad kebab
• A dodgy kebab turns out to be a baby
• 150 tons of spoiled 4 year old frozen meat thawed out and sold to dodgy kebab makers in Germany

But..

All that said, they do pack a good grease hit and who says you want something healthy after alcohol anyhow? Find one that doesn’t result in the squirts the next day and you’ve got yourself a “good dodgy kebab place”.