Diagnosis by cellphone?

Click on this link to read a Washington Post article about how physicians are using cell phone photos of wounds sent by their patients to make initial diagnoses.  There is a large push nationally for doctors to do more of their work from a distance via technology.  Do you think this is a good trend, or only one justified by emergency?

Straddling bus solution to mass transit

Click on this link to read a Sarasota Herald Tribune article (8-26-10) about a new kind of bus in China that drives above cars on the road by straddling them.

A Show of faith, or an act of hate?

Click on this link to read a Sarasota Herald-Tribune piece about an evangelical Christian pastor in Gainesville who is planning to publicly burn the Quran.  His plan has provoked widespread protest, but also support from some.  Do you believe this is an exercise of religious freedom, or a dangerous idea?  Both?

Tax on bloggers?

Click on this link to read a Washington Post story (8-24-10) about how Philadelphia is taxing bloggers who make money from advertisements running on their blog page.  They regard such bloggers as "running a business" and therefore expect a $300 "privilege fee" for doing so.  Do you think this is a legitimate form of taxation?  The article lists several other web-based, advertisement-laden activities; should these be included too?  How long do you think it will be before the Web becomes the focus of attempts by government to regulate and tax it?

Death threats apparently OK after all

Court Rules Death Threats Against Corporations Are Legal

In a 2-1 decision, the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a conviction against Kurt William Havelock, the 40-year-old Arizona man who plotted a massacre outside of the 2008 Super Bowl in his home state because his death threats were not mailed to any specific targets. "It will be swift and bloody," Havelock wrote in letters sent to media outlets half an hour before he abandoned his plan. (He still made it all the way to the site of the Super Bowl with his new assault rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition.) "I will sacrifice your children upon the altar of your excess." Havelock was arrested after turning himself over the local police and was convicted on six counts of mailing threatening letters, for which he was sentenced to a year in prison. In making the decision Tuesday that overturned those convictions, Judge William Canby wrote that the threatening-letters statute requires that any death threats be addressed to an individual and not an institution or corporation. "The result of the majority's interpretation is that the statute prohibits sending a threatening communication only if the outside of the envelope or package explicitly directs deliverty to a natural person," Judge Susan Graber wrote in her dissent, which argued that the convictions should stand. The law, she noted, was adopted "to protect individuals from mailed threats of kidnapping, ransom demands, threats of bodily injury or death, and certain other serious threats." The court, she said, should have interpreted the word person in the statute to include other entities and should consider the context of the letters.

Read original story in Wired | Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010

Earth Overshoot Day

Click on this link to visit a website that "celebrates" Earth Overshoot Day.  This is the day of the year when we have outspent the earth's annual resources (air, water, etc.) for our human activities.  Here's a link to a video about the overshoot.

Another good story on the NYC proposed mosque

Click on this link to read a Washington Post story (8-20-10) about how New Yorkers are responding to the media debate surrounding the proposed Islamic Center to be built in the neighborhood (but not on the site) of the September 11th destruction.  The article notes that the congregation proposing to build the center is a Sufi congregation--a branch of Islam very different from that espoused by Al Qaeda.

Exploding cell phones

Man Killed Midconversation When Cell Phone Exploded

There were no witnesses to the incident, but it is believed that Gopal Gujjar, a 23-year-old man from from India's Banda village, was killed when his cell phone exploded midconversation, causing serious injuries to his ear. Gujjar's body was found near his farm along with the charred remains of his cell phone and battery Tuesday morning. Gujjar suffered burns on his left ear as well as on parts of his neck and shoulders, according to the police who recovered his body earlier this week.Gujjar was using a Nokia 1209, a model that came out in 2008, according to the New York Daily News. "It is probably the first incident in the country in which a mobile phone exploded while it was not being charged," the Times of India reported. "However, there have been cases when users sustained injuries as phones exploded." Earlier this year, a woman was killed when talking to her husband on a Chinese-made cell phone while it was plugged into the wall. And deaths from mobile phones have been reported in a handful of other countries, including Korea and Nepal.

Read original story in The Times of India | Friday, Aug. 20, 2010

Ear buds causing hearing loss?

From Slate (8-18-10):

Experts Link Headphone Use to Shocking Rise in Hearing Loss

One in every five teenagers in the United States today has slight hearing loss, according to the authors of a new report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The proportion of teenagers with slight hearing loss has jumped 30 percent in the past 15 years.While the new report doesn't speculate as to the causes of problem, a similar study done in Australia this year linked hearing loss to the increased use of headphones and many experts have agreed with those findings. "Personal stereos are the most important change in the culture in the last 15 to 20 years," said Dr. Tommie Robinson Jr., president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. "Everybody has their own little device now, and how many times have you passed somebody and could hear their music?" Reportedly, even slight hearing loss can have a significant impact on speech perception, self-image, social skills development, and learning. "It may seem like they are not in touch," Dr. Gary C. Curhan of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said of teenagers with slight hearing loss among their peers, "and kids are very aware when someone is a little different." Curhan co-authored the report, which found that males are more likely than females to suffer hearing loss, as are teenagers living below the poverty line. "A variety of factors can increase susceptibility to hearing loss, including genetics, certain medicines, head trauma, very loud noises and the existence of hearing loss, which predisposes a person to further loss," the Chicago Tribune reported. Extrapolating the findings of the study, which analyzed data on nearly 3,000 12- to 19-year-olds from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey conducted by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would mean that nearly 6.5 million teenagers in the U.S. suffer from slight hearing loss.

Read original story in The Chicago Tribune | Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010

Don't send in the clones

Click on this link to read a New York Times column (8-10-10) by Maureen Dowd that argues for the importance of diversity in picking college roommates.  Dowd worries about services that now help incoming students to pick roommates matched exactly like themselves.  Do you agree that living as a roommate with someone very different than oneself is a good preparation for future life and profession, or could such a selection turn out to be disastrous?

Off road vehicle race accident raises safety questions

Click on this link to read a Sarasota Herald Tribune story about spectators were killed at a desert race of off road vehicles.  Should these races be more tightly regulated or is there a place for this kind of dangerous recreation (dangerous to the racers and to spectators)?

Did our ancestors give up easy sex for beer?

Did Humans Give Up Easy Sex for Easy Beer?

Did our ancestors inadvertently sacrifice a smorgasboard of sexual partners for easier access to beer? That's what Gizmodo's Joel Johnson thinks after reading Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha's Sex at Dawn and Patrick McGovern's Uncorking the Past. In Sex at Dawn, Ryan and Jetha argue that "before humans settled down into civilization, we were small bands of hunter-gatherers who had no notion of sexual monogamy." But after humans began cultivating, "it became important to ensure that you weren't wasting your precious grains on someone else's offspring, especially if it meant you own kid was getting short shrift. Hence monogamy." McGovern, who has done the hard work of studying the history of alcohol, thinks it's possible that humans first began tilling the soil to grow grain for beer, not bread. "I'm sure it seemed like a great idea at first," Johnson says. "Who wouldn't want to get drunk whenever they chose?" But those industrious agriculturalists had no idea that "in just a few generations the idyllic, if unpredictable era of lazy browsing, casual sex, and occasional fruit-fueled orgies would give way to the terrible force of civilization—all so we could bring home a six-pack every night."

Read original story in Gizmodo | Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010

Dangerous intersection or stupid drivers?

Click on this link to read a Sarasota Herald Tribune story (8-11-10) about an intersection (pictured) in Sarasota where people keep running into a clearly-marked wall.  If accidents continue to occur there, is this a sign that the intersection is poorly-designed, or must we write it off to idiocy of drivers on Florida roads?

Strippers protest at church

Strippers Protest Church for Protesting Strippers

Dancers from the Foxhole, a gentleman's club in Coschocton County, Ohio, stood outside the New Beginnings Ministries in their bikinis to protest against the church for protesting against them. "For the last four years, the pastor at New Beginnings has led a protest outside the Foxhole every weekend," Consumerist reported. "Beyond just voicing disapproval of the strip joint, the church members also videotape the license plates of the bar's patrons and then post the info online." Fed up, the club's employees decided to turn the tables. And they know how to protest: Churchgoers arrived to find the ladies writing down their license plate numbers, but also cooling themselves off with Super Soakers. When they weren't busy grilling hamburgers, the women held up signs with Bible quotes: "Matthew 7:15: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing; Revelations 22:11: He that is unjust, let him be unjust still." "When these morons go away, we'll go away," said the strip club's owner, who has tried to sue the church in the past. "The great thing about this country is that everyone has a right to believe what they want. They're just mad because their wives won't let them come to my club." The pastor, who has said he protests not to condemn the dancers, but to offer them an alternative, said that strippers outside of his church would only strengthen his conviction. "These church people say horrible things about us," said one of the dancers, a married mother of six. "They say we're homewreckers and whores. The fact of the matter is, we're working to keep our own homes together, to give our kids what they need."

Read original story in Gawker | Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010

Another recent political ad

Rick Barber ad encourages a new American Revolution

Russian fires choke Russian capital

Click on this link to read a story about Russia's hottest summer ever.

Cutting the arts to balance gov't budgets?

Click on this link to read a Washington Post article (8-4-10) about the radical cuts in government funding of the arts in Britain that are being contemplated to reduce levels of public debt.

Be gay: break the law (in 76 countries)

Study Finds Being Gay Is a Crime in 76 Countries

A comprehensive study of gay rights conducted by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association found that being gay is a crime for which individuals are persecuted in 76 countries worldwide. Seven of those countries punish same-sex acts with death. "On a global scale, the nations doing something positive for gay rights are dwarfed by those behaving negatively," the Independent on Sunday reported after seeing the study. "While 75 countries will imprison you if you are gay, only 53 have anti-discrimination laws that apply to sexuality. Only 26 countries recognize same-sex unions." While Britain, home of the Independent, is considered a relatively progressive nation where gay people can adopt children, can enjoy civil ceremonies, and are protected from discrimination by legislation, Stonewall, a gay rights organization, says there is still work to be done. "We are mindful that however remarkable the progress we might be making in Britain is, there are countries around the world where people still live in fear of their lives just because of the way they were born," said Ben Summerskill, Stonewall's chief executive. Even in Britain, Stonewall says, two-thirds of young lesbian, gay, and bisexual students are subject to homophobic bullying in school. According to Amnesty International, sub-saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are the areas of greatest concern for gay rights, but the group is quick to also call out "Western nations becoming complacent." Referring to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Widney Brown of the group said: "The U.S. is the only country in NATO with a prohibition of being openly gay in the military."

Read original story in The Independent on Sunday | Monday, Aug. 2, 2010