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| Brown Bear, Katmai Wilderness, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska [Image credits: Robert Amuroso] |
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
4th & 5th of 18 Photos from The Smithsonian’s “Wilderness Forever” Photo Contest
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| Climbing the Summit Pyramid Of Sahale Mountain, Washington [Image credits: Ethan Welty] |
Don't you dare sign up for this! "Memo to Therapists: It’s Not Me, It’s You." [Henry Alford, NY Times]. Excerpt:
That I’d never met my therapist, and would never meet her, made it no less difficult. We’d been paired up on a new app called Talkspace. Here, for $25 a week, you can text an assigned therapist whenever you want, and then she’ll get back to you when she can. First, I was asked by a facilitator whether I had a gender preference for the person I would text with (no) and what my most pressing issue was (responding appropriately to others’ bad manners). The facilitator introduced me to my licensed therapist, whom I’ll call Donna.
"Stop Spying on Wikipedia Users." [Jimmy Wales & Lila Tretikov, board member & executive director, respectively, of the Wikimedia Foundation, NY Times] Excerpt:
Today [March 10], we’re filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency to protect the rights of the 500 million people who use Wikipedia every month. We’re doing so because a fundamental pillar of democracy is at stake: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas.
Our lawsuit says that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance of Internet traffic on American soil — often called “upstream” surveillance — violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008.
Most people search and read Wikipedia anonymously, since you don’t need an account to view its tens of millions of articles in hundreds of languages. Every month, at least 75,000 volunteers in the United States and around the world contribute their time and passion to writing those articles and keeping the site going — and growing.
On our servers, run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, those volunteers discuss their work on everything from Tiananmen Square to gay rights in Uganda. Many of them prefer to work anonymously, especially those who work on controversial issues or who live in countries with repressive governments.
These volunteers should be able to do their work without having to worry that the United States government is monitoring what they read and write. Unfortunately, their anonymity is far from certain because, using upstream surveillance, the N.S.A. intercepts and searches virtually all of the international text-based traffic that flows across the Internet “backbone” inside the United States. This is the network of fiber-optic cables and junctions that connect Wikipedia with its global community of readers and editors.
As a result, whenever someone overseas views or edits a Wikipedia page, it’s likely that the N.S.A. is tracking that activity — including the content of what was read or typed, as well as other information that can be linked to the person’s physical location and possible identity. These activities are sensitive and private: They can reveal everything from a person’s political and religious beliefs to sexual orientation and medical conditions.
The notion that the N.S.A. is monitoring Wikipedia’s users is not, unfortunately, a stretch of the imagination. One of the documents revealed by the whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden specifically identified Wikipedia as a target for surveillance, alongside several other major websites like CNN.com, Gmail and Facebook. The leaked slide from a classified PowerPoint presentation declared that monitoring these sites could allow N.S.A. analysts to learn “nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet.”
Will Rogers once said, "If all the girls at the Yale prom were laid end to end, I would not be a bit surprised." I would have a similar reaction if the story, "EXCLUSIVE: Parkinson's link to statins: Calls to end widespread use of the drug," is true. That is, I would not be a bit surprised. Excerpt:
Dr. Kailash Chand, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, was speaking following research which found those who take the cholesterol-lowering drugs are more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease in later life than those who do not.Another correspondent on the article: Several prominent Brits, including one who was instrumental in advocating for statins in primary prevention of heart disease (but no longer), are sounding this alarm. Part of the reason is that the benefits of statins for primary prevention have proved elusive, which renders any actual or potential adverse effects (AEs) intolerable.
A study last week showed statin use increases the risk of diabetes by 46 per cent.
It has led to calls to end to the widespread use of the drugs.
The Parkinson’s research carried out over 20 years, and involving nearly 16,000 people, suggests cholesterol may have a vital role in protecting the brain and nervous system.
"The risks of side-effects of these drugs are far greater than any potential benefits and it is high time these drugs were restricted in the low-risk population," said Dr. Chand.
And one more: This does not surprise me. As you know, except for a B12 pill taken every five days, I take no medications or supplements whatsoever, because if the truth be known they are all pretty much bad news. As I see it, the pharmaceutical companies run the medical profession. This special-interest group pushes pills through medical doctors that by and large large do no good and potentially do harm in the long run. Take fish oil for example. The public has been led to believe that the omega-3 fats in fish oil are heart healthy. Yet these fats ultimately come from green vegetables. Fish get them by eating algae and humans get them naturally by eating plants. Studies I am familiar with demonstrate that there is no benefit to the heart from taking fish oil and other studies link fish oil as well as other oils to cancer. My brother was a big aficionado of fish oil. He recently died of kidney cancer.
John Oliver said it well. And he’s Funny!
Value the lessons your mistakes teach you. Mistakes are okay; they’re the stepping stones of progress. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not trying hard enough and you’re not learning. Take risks, stumble, fall, and then get up and try again. Appreciate that you are pushing yourself, learning, growing and improving. Significant achievements are almost invariably realized at the end of a long road of failures. One of the ‘mistakes’ you fear might just be the link to your greatest achievement yet.
The art of snow
Gabi's relationship with the neighbourhood crows began accidentally in 2011. She was four years old, and prone to dropping food. She'd get out of the car, and a chicken nugget would tumble off her lap. A crow would rush in to recover it. Soon, the crows were watching for her, hoping for another bite.Democrats from across an ideological spectrum say they’d rather see Boehner remain atop the House than replace him with a more conservative Speaker who would almost certainly be less willing to reach across the aisle in search of compromise … “Then we would get Scalise or somebody? Geez, come on,” said [Rep. Raul] Grijalva, who referenced House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). “We can be suicidal, but not stupid.”
As she got older, she rewarded their attention, by sharing her packed lunch on the way to the bus stop. Her brother joined in. Soon, crows were lining up in the afternoon to greet Gabi's bus, hoping for another feeding session.
A couple of years later, Gabi and her sister began setting out food for the crows on a daily basis. It was after this ritual began that gifts started to appear.
The crows would clear the feeder of peanuts, and leave shiny trinkets on the empty tray; an earring, a hinge, a polished rock. There wasn't a pattern. Gifts showed up sporadically - anything shiny and small enough to fit in a crow's mouth....
There has been ample research done over the past few decades that show that birds, specifically crows, are considerably more intelligent than first thought....
Doyle asked Merle Haggard about President Obama, and the traditional "stone-country" singer-songwriter said he enjoyed meeting Obama and found the President to be quite different from what he had seen in the media. That's when Haggard interestingly added:
It's really almost criminal what they do with our President. There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he's doing certain things that he's not. It's just a big old political game that I don't want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down. I'm sure some of it's true and some of it's not. I was very surprised to find the man very humble and he had a nice handshake. His wife was very cordial to the guests and especially me. They made a special effort to make me feel welcome. It was not at all the way the media described him to be.
Nanosecond photo:
What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? You're too young to be smoking.
The morning after the party:
Why does Waldo wear a striped shirt? Because he doesn't want to be spotted.
"Gender Gap in Education Cuts Both Ways." [Eduardo Porter, NY Times] Excerpt:
Amid the din over top girls’ mathematical abilities, something important was forgotten: What is happening that so many boys are falling behind in pretty much everything else?....A couple's two mischievous boys, ages 8 and 10, were always getting into trouble. Their parents could be assured that if any mischief occurred in their small town their sons were likely to be involved, and they were at their wits end as to what to do about the two boy. The mother had heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked her husband if he thought they should send the boys to speak with the clergyman.
The gender gap in math persists, it found....
Test scores in science follow a similar, if somewhat less lopsided, pattern....
But these are hardly the most troubling imbalances. The most perilous statistic in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report is about the dismal performance of less educated boys, who are falling far behind girls.
Six out of 10 underachievers in the O.E.C.D. — who fail to meet the baseline standard of proficiency across the tests in math, reading and science — are boys. That includes 15 percent of American boys, compared with only 9 percent of girls. More boys than girls underperform in every country tested except Luxembourg and Liechtenstein....
“What will be the implication for society 20 years down the line, given that men have a larger potential for violent action?” [asked Gijsbert Stoet, who teaches psychology at the University of Glasgow and has studied educational inequality globally]. “Shouldn’t we actually be worried about this?"
He thought they might as well. "We need to do something before I really lose my temper!"
The clergyman agreed to speak with the boys, but he asked to see them individually.
The 8-year-old went to speak with him first. The clergyman sat the boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?"
The boy wouldn't answer, so the clergyman repeated the question in an even sterner tone, "Where is God?"
At that the boy bolted from the room and ran directly home, slamming himself in the closet.
His older brother followed him into the closet and said, "What happened?"
The younger brother replied, "We are in big trouble this time. God is missing and they think we did it!"
The Pile-Up
The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts and, as of 2001, has a population of 80 – 20 fewer people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, just as the Vatican is.
Limerick of the week:
Religious war burns on and beleaguers[Written November 26, 2006, and titled "No End in Sight."]
Iraq's Sunni and Shiite besiegers,
But it brings no relief
from dogmatic belief
But for stone-dead dogmatic believers.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
Thanks to my correspondents! Katmai National Park and Preserve, Summit Pyramid of Sahale Mountain, texting therapists, spying on Wikipedia users, something Will Rogers once said, Parkinson's link to statins, pharmaceutical pill-pushing, John Oliver said it well, thanks for JT: Another Mighty Midyett, value your mistakes, art of snow, reciprocating crows, Democrats prefer Boehner, Merle Haggard nails the near-criminal element, nanosecond photo, big & little chimneys, party morning-afters, why striped?, the double-cutting gender gap in education, mischievous boys, piling up, smallest sovereign entity, stone-dead Stone-age believers....
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