Morbidly useful

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YouDeparted.com - Welcome! Prepare for the unexpected
Welcome to YouDeparted.com * Secure electronic safe deposit box accessible anywhere 24/7 * Release instructions, estate info, and messages if something happens to you * Get organized and help your family avoid common problems and costs.

Military-grade encryption, backups, and monitoring.
Items in a desk drawer could be lost, destroyed, or stolen. Your computer can crash. We keep your info in one secure location so you can have peace of mind.You can access your account 24/7 anywhere in the world.


I'd need to be pretty certain this site wouldn't vanish without trace one day but, with that proviso, it looks like a pretty sound idea.

Via TechCrunch



So it's not all roses beyond the NHS?

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Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog: Patients as customers
The incursion of business practices into our profession has made uncomfortable bedfellows of those with an avocation and those without. The union leaves our professions, especially the nurses, in a fragile state right now. If you derail the dignity and mission of what we do, we'll simply stop and do something easier. Indeed, it's happening. Nearly 150,000 nursing jobs languish unfilled today in the U.S. (We've already lured over every nurse that Ireland and the Philippines had to offer, and now we're recruiting in sub-Saharan Africa.) And these are good-paying jobs. There's a doctor shortage too — and those jobs pay even more.

What's wrong? The answer is simple: we've lost sight of that boring and corny moral imperative to do what's right for those in need, to love your patient as yourself. That approach has always driven good medicine. Not customer satisfaction.



I Am the Way, the Truth, and the (Second) Life

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Jesuits say take word of God to Second Life
ROME - Catholic missionaries have always trekked to dangerous parts of the Earth to spread the word of God -- now they are being encouraged to go into the virtual realm of Second Life to save virtual souls.

In an article in Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, academic Antonio Spadaro urged fellow Catholics not to be scared of entering the virtual world which may be fertile ground for new converts wishing to better themselves. "It's not possible to close our eyes to this phenomenon or rush to judge it," Spadaro said. "Instead it needs to be understood ... the best way to understand it is to enter it."



Lordy, lordy!

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English like it should be spoken

'Carelessness about our beautiful language is sprouting everywhere' according to Graham Lord in The Spectator:
Nobody under the age of 40 ever uses the words ‘said’ or ‘says’ any more: it’s always ‘go’, ‘is’ or ‘went’: ‘So ’im and me goes dahn a boozer an’ ’e’s like, “Hey, man, check the babe in the corner!” an’ I go, “**** me! I’m in love,” an’ ’e went, “Hands off, man, I saw her first” so I’m like, “Too bad, man, she’s mine.”’

Yes, that's just how under 40's speak now.

What a fucking prat!

Hint: Try and get out a little more Mr Lord, preferably in the UK. (Oh, and do you still live in the south of France, by any chance?)




Free at last...erm

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‘New Labour flushed liberty down the toilet’ | spiked
Freedom has become a dirty word. So dirty, in fact, that there is now a brand of toilet paper called ‘Freedom’. Seriously. You can buy it at Tesco. It’s light blue, perfumed and it has the word ‘Freedom’ emblazoned across its packaging. What’s that all about? Freedom from skidmarks? ‘Man’s butt cheeks are born clean, but everywhere they are being stained!’ You can now literally wipe your arse with ‘Freedom’.



How do you find the rapist, guilty or not-guilty?

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Putting the Term "Rape" on Trial
Words are powerful. In court, they can make or break a case. But just how far should the judicial system go to control them? That's the question central to one case in Lincoln, Nebraska, where a sexual assault trial has morphed into a federal case over the First Amendment rights of witnesses and, more broadly, the language surrounding rape...

Judge Jeffre Cheuvront banned the words rape, victim and assailant from the trial — including from (the alleged victim's) testimony — arguing that such words would be "unfairly inflammatory, prejudicial, and misleading." The ban was later expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse.

Via Amy Aklon



Warning!

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...reading just one online article in The Daily Mail may lead to extreme rage and acts of violence against your computer screen.


Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%

 Think for a moment just how that claim could possibly be justified. The research required. The evidence needed. The number of psychotics who just happened to smoke a single joint earlier in their life. This is rubbish. Complete and utter tosh. But, of course, it will be eargerly welcomed by our miserablist, son-of-the-Manse Prime Minister to justify his 'gut feelings':

The Prime Minister is said to have a 'personal instinct' that the change (in cannabis classification) should be reversed, with more arrests and stiffer penalties for users.

So there we have it. What a wonderful decision making process!

Crap science coupled with Gordon Brown's bowels.

AKA: Shit in, shit out.
 

56 days?

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Haneef terrorism charges dropped
The Australian authorities have dropped terror charges against an Indian-born doctor over the failed car bomb attacks in the UK. Mohamed Haneef had been accused of giving "reckless support" to terrorism by providing a relative in Britain with his mobile phone SIM card. Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg said, following a review of the case, that "a mistake has been made".



Acts of exclusion

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The ivory tower behind the Apartheid Wall
If a boycott of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the methodical destruction of an educational system? If Patry warns about potential "acts of exclusion" against Israeli academics, isn't he concerned that right now, as we speak, all but a handful of Palestinian students are excluded from Israeli institutions and that even within Palestine, the Israelis exclude Palestinian students from their own universities by refusing to issue them the necessary travel permits? Might he see the deportation and nineteen-year exile of his colleague, Birzeit University president Hanna Nasir, as an "act of exclusion"?

My own university principal, Karen Hitchcock, is committed to "defend the freedom of individuals to study, teach and carry out research without fear of harassment, intimidation, or discrimination." Do these "individuals" include Palestinians, one wonders? If so, is she prepared to address the erection of checkpoints outside of universities, such as the one outside of Birzeit that resulted in a 20-40 percent reduction in class attendance in 2001 according to Human Rights Watch? The philosopher and critic Judith Butler argues, "If the exercise of academic freedom ceases or is actively thwarted, that freedom is lost, which is why checkpoints are and should be an issue for anyone who defends a notion of academic freedom."

Margaret Aziza Pappano, Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Read the whole article