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America the Illiterate

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:32:40 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Quite an interesting article that won't be read by too many people in 'Merika...*sigh*

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

By Chris Hedges

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radicall

over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate

Can a 13-year-old refuse treatment?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:06:57 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "How old is old enough to decide whether to live or die? Priscilla Alderson, professor of childhood studies at the Institute of Education, says her research had found that even very young children could give or withhold informed consent to medical treatment. Decisions about treatment, or even about whether to live or die, cannot be based on age, she argues.

"Our research has found that age isn't a helpful criterion - but experience is," she says. She has found that even at four years old, a child who has diabetes can understand the principle of insulin treatment - and it is vital they do understand or they risk interpreting the pain they as some kind of parental punishment."

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Hannah's choice

'I've been in hospital too much. I've had too much trauma associated with hospital," Hannah Jones said as she tried to explain why she turned down a heart transplant

Instead, she wanted to return home, where she is likely to die in the company of her parents, her younger brother and her two sisters

but Hannah Jones hit the headlines because she is only 13 years old

When Hannah met the child protection officer at her home near Hereford, she took just one hour to convince the officer to argue for the abandonment of the court action

allowing Hannah to remain at home

They have been keen to stress that the decision to refuse a heart transplant was Hannah's alone

When is a child old enough to understand and give consent to complex medical treatment?

What happens if medical opinion goes against a young patient's decision?

"I'm not a normal 13-year-old,"

"I'm a deep thinker. I've had to be, with my illness. It's hard at 13, to know I'm going to die, but I also know what's best for me."

Tags: ethics, children, choice

Life Sucks And Then You Die

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:38:24 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Have a great day!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

Clip Source: thinkexist.com

Denis Leary quotes

“Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.”

Tags: attitude, happiness, life

Frozen embryos' health benefit

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:41:50 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

More evidence has emerged that babies born from frozen embryos are healthier than those that develop from fresh embryos, researchers say.

Three studies presented to a US fertility conference found frozen embryo babies were less likely to be premature and under weight.

Previous research has suggested this is down to only the strongest embryos surviving the freezing process.

Fertility experts said more work was needed on the issue.

A Finnish study, to be presented to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting in San Francisco, found that babies born from fresh embryos were 35% more likely to be premature and 64% more likely to have low birthweight than those born from frozen.

A second study, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, found that babies born from fresh embryos were 51% more likely to have low birthweight and were 15% more likely to die around the time of birth than those born from frozen embryos.

Tags: frozen embryos, health, benefit, fertility

Time to test time

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:47:21 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Yet if Hogan's ideas are right, noise associated with this fundamental fuzziness should be prominent at GEO600, a joint British and German machine operating near Hannover, Germany, that is searching for gravitational waves. These waves are thought to arise during events such as the massive cosmic collisions of black holes and neutron stars. Confirmation of the idea — which could come as experimental upgrades to GEO600 are put in place over the coming year — would be a big step towards a verifiable quantum theory of gravity, a long-sought unification of quantum mechanics (the physics of the very small) with general relativity (the physics of the very big). Hogan outlines his predictions in a paper published on 30 October in Physical Review D1.

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Poets have long believed the passage of time to be unavoidable, inexorable and generally melancholic.

Quantum mechanics says it is fuzzy, ticking along at minimum intervals within which the notion of time is meaningless.

And Craig Hogan claims he can 'see' it — in the thus far unexplained noise of a gravitational-wave detector. "It's potentially the most transformative thing I've ever worked on," says Hogan, director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

"It's actually a possibility that we can access experimentally the minimum interval of time, which we thought was out of reach."

In a classical view of the world, space and time are smooth.

The minimum scales at which, according to quantum mechanics, the smoothness breaks down — the Planck length and time — can be derived from other quantities, but they have not been tested experimentally, nor would they be, given their impossibly small size.

Tags: physics, time, quantum gravity

Evolving my theory of mind

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:21:22 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: This is quite a respectful reading list about how the brain and mind function.

Clip Source: growchangelearn.blogspot.com

Whenever we are presuming that people will learn from what we're designing, saying, or presenting graphically, we are making assumptions about our brains. We are relying on a theory of how our minds function when presented with additional information in the context of other's expectations. Refining my own "theory of mind" has fascinated me for years. Here's some of the highlights in how my own theory has evolved most recently.

Stumbling on Happiness

Sway - the irresistible pull of irrational behavior

Ready or Not Here Life Comes

A Whole New Mind

The Art of Learning

Mindset

Inner Knowing

Hare Brain Tortoise Mind