…at least they can’t read my thoughts even if behavioural science can predict my next move:
Tag Archives: mass media
Was this story written in the time of Socrates or in 2013?
Another view of one’s colon viewed by a scope
Colonoscopies under the microscope of the journalism “newspaper test”.
BTW, here’s my colonoscopy cost breakdown from the Huntsville Endoscopy Center:
Colonoscopy Flex, w/REMV: $1087
==> Insurance payment: $736.40
==> Insurance non-allowed: $0.60
Patient balance: $350.00
Cash is as good as cash these days!
Would you rather pay a discounted rate to see your physician, pay concierge pricing to have an MD on retainer, or pay using your health insurance and play Russian roulette with your medical bills?
Dr. Michael Ciampi may have the right diagnosis to answer the question.
Music du jour, however timeless
The Patriot Game never ends…
Lyrics to The Patriot Game :
(Billy Behen)
Come all you young rebels and list while we sing for the love of one’s country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame and it makes us all part of the patriot game.
My name is O’Hannon and I’ve just gone sixteen. My home is in Monaghan where I was weaned.
I’ve learned all my life cruel England’s to blame and so I’m a part of the patriot game.
It’s barely two years since they wandered away and it was with the local battalion of the bold IRA
For they’d read of our heroes and they wanted the same to play their own part in the patriot game.
This Ireland of ours has for long been half-free. Six counties are under John Bull’s tyranny.
So, we gave up our boyhood to drill and to train and play our own part in the patriot game.
And now as I lie here, my body all holes, I think of those traitors who bargained in souls.
I wish that my rifle had given the same to those Quislings who sold out the patriot game.
First of all, congrats to the Spelling Bee winner, Arvind Mahankali. However…
First of all, congrats to the Spelling Bee winner, Arvind Mahankali. However, ESPN followed a long Western tradition of exploiting underage brown-skinned people by showing the Spelling Bee on TV but not compensating the participants at the usual actor’s/professional athlete’s pay scale.
Way to go, ESPN! You rock…not.
Book review
First time reading a romance novel May 30, 2013
By Rick
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book was sent to me as a gift. I am not a romance novel reader — neither a fan nor a hater. My preference for books tends toward science fiction, business philosophy, biographies of fiction writers/business leaders/military figures, and science. Therefore, opening “How to Pursue a Princess” was opening a new world of fiction to me.
My exposure to tales of heroines and damsels in distress comes from Disney movies, my sister telling me about the books she read as a child (“Anna Karenina” and “Nancy Drew” series), and my wife watching books-adapted-to-cinema such as “Sense and Sensibility.”
I suppose in some of the science fiction and fantasy books I’ve read, there were the heroines as damsels in distress, although, for the most part, the women in the stories were just as strong and technically proficient as their male counterparts.
Working my way into the storyline of “How to Pursue a Princess,” learning about a matchmaking duchess intent on pairing a woman in financial straits with a man of financial means, I made it to page 69 of the 383 pages in the paperback edition, having in my thoughts a clear picture of 18th 19th century Scottish upper-class society — to that, I credit the author with painting sufficient pen strokes to describe the countryside, mannerisms, architecture, fashion and food of the times that I need not have worried about how much she researched 18th 19th century Scotland and the accuracy of her portrayal of the times that I might accidentally remember as history I would mention in casual conversation (but the written dialogue made me wonder if Scottish aristocracy spoke with an English accent or with a bit of Scottish brogue [e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khrpy4V0-U4%5D).
Page 69 is as far as I got.
I tried to imagine this story being told on Mars in the 24th century, in 20th century wartime Europe, or in another galaxy far, far away (a la “Star Wars,” substituting Princess Leia for Lily Balfour, for example) to see if I would have read this story in the science fiction or military history genre.
But I could not.
I cannot say whether the author’s writing style influenced my decision to stop reading.
I can say that the plot was not of interest to me — a woman, manipulated by another, having to decide between two men to marry, who would then be expected to support her and her family financially — it’s like having to sit through a marathon viewing of the television reality show “Say Yes to the Dress” with my wife…zzzz…getting sleepy…think I’ll go outside, trim the hedges and earn my mancard points for the day.
= = = = =
[Disclosure: Karen Hawkins was in the same high school together with me. We were not close friends but were acquainted with each other so this review is biased even if I want to pretend it wouldn’t be.]
Karen, I wish you continued success in your writing career. My wife has asked to read this book and provide her own review from an unbiased woman’s viewpoint. I’ll then pass it on to my mother, who enjoys romance novels, and get her opinion for you.
Accents for the day
Joie de vivre interrupted
How do we award, reward, reinforce and otherwise encourage our behaviour?
There is beauty and there is the beautiful.
A scar across one’s face may lend one an air of distinction but we see in the mirror only an ugly scrape across our once unblemished visage.
Perception vs. reality.
At mid-life, I see my skin and its many changes due to sun/UV damage, knife cuts, wrinkles, blood donation needle entry points, and cat scratches.
None of these external marks on my body have affected my ability to drive a motorcar.
With age, however, my reaction times have slowed.
Therefore, my driving capabilities are diminished from the time, a year or so after getting my driver’s licence over 30 years ago, when I was best able to speed dangerously fast on backcountry, twisty roads, racing other kids in their late teens and early twenties.
There is, in other words, a time and place where our health, both mental and physical, is and isn’t detrimental to our sharing highways with other drivers of multitonne killing machines.
Yesterday, while dining with my wife at Nick’s Restaurant, a young man of 18 years crashed through vehicles at a traffic light and then proceeded 1.5 miles to the next intersection where he crashed into several more vehicles, killing a ten-year old child in one of them.
According to comments by readers on a local news company’s website, the driver is “Very sweet kid, good student and athlete!” and “an amazing kid and a close friend of mine he is diabetic”.
Yet, here we are looking at a dead child and many injured people because of one driver.
Should people with known medical conditions, which could endanger others — epilepsy, diabetes, old age related reaction times, etc. — be kept from driving, much the way aeroplane pilots lose their licences due to findings in medical examinations?
What is the threshold we’re willing to set that puts the best qualified people behind the wheel of a vehicle?
We already set age cutoffs.
Another reader commented, “How do you pass out from low blood sugar and keep driving? I know the family of the little girl who died. I am absolutely heartbroken for them. Praying for all involved.”
We could look at statistics which point out the benefits of a road system that sets a relatively low qualification threshold for driving a vehicle has increased our economic output higher than the detrimental effect of death/injury by many magnitudes much like we can say that the economic costs (gains?) of our “war on terror” is magnitudinally higher than the economic loss of dead/maimed military.
A ten-year old girl didn’t wake up to see the sunrise this morning or eat breakfast with her family.
Why?
Because an 18-year old boy drove when he shouldn’t’ve.
Perhaps cars and trucks of the future, before they’re all autonomously-controlled, will use technology that could have prevented yesterday’s tragedy.
Perhaps…
Let’s hope so.
The life of your ten-year young child may depend on it.
OMG! I don’t know what to say…
For some, a shock heard ’round the world. For others, what they’ve waited for.
Either way, here’s an alternative history lesson — what if the Boy Scouts integrated homosexual boys back in 1962? Let’s take a look…bringing the innocence of 1962 into this new controversy…
This issue also sponsored by the following:
treetrunkdings 