Eideard

The event reminder on Melissa Weinblatt’s iPhone buzzed: 15 minutes till her shrink appointment.

She mixed herself a mojito, added a sprig of mint, put on her sunglasses and headed outside to her friend’s pool. Settling into a lounge chair, she tapped the Skype app on her phone. Hundreds of miles away, her face popped up on her therapist’s computer monitor; he smiled back on her phone’s screen.

She took a sip of her cocktail. The session began.

Ms. Weinblatt, a 30-year-old high school teacher in Oregon, used to be in treatment the conventional way — with face-to-face office appointments. Now, with her new doctor, she said: “I can have a Skype therapy session with my morning coffee or before a night on the town with the girls. I can take a break from shopping for a session. I took my doctor with me through three states this summer..!”

Since telepsychiatry was introduced decades ago, video conferencing has been an increasingly accepted way to reach patients in hospitals, prisons, veterans’ health care facilities and rural clinics — all supervised sites.

But today Skype, and encrypted digital software through third-party sites like CaliforniaLiveVisit.com, have made online private practice accessible for a broader swath of patients, including those who shun office treatment or who simply like the convenience of therapy on the fly…

Still, opportunities for exploitation, especially by those with sketchy credentials, are rife. Solo providers who hang out virtual shingles are a growing phenomenon…

Other questions abound. How should insurance reimburse online therapy? Is the therapist complying with licensing laws that govern practice in different states? Are videoconferencing sessions recorded? Hack-proof?

Another draw and danger of online therapy: anonymity. Many people avoid treatment for reasons of shame or privacy. Some online therapists do not require patients to fully identify themselves. What if those patients have breakdowns? How can the therapist get emergency help to an anonymous patient? “A lot of patients start therapy and feel worse before they feel better,” noted Marlene M. Maheu, founder of the TeleMental Health Institute, which trains providers and who has served on task forces to address these questions. “It’s more complex than people imagine. A provider’s Web site may say, ‘I won’t deal with patients who are feeling suicidal.’ But it’s our job to assess patients, not to ask them to self-diagnose.” She practices online therapy, but advocates consumer protections and rigorous training of therapists.

RTFA. Some of it is hilarious. Yes, I realize we’re discussing mostly legitimate needs and mostly legitimate practices designed to sort them.

If I didn’t have so much fun blogging I might wander into the shrink-wrapped Skype therapy trade. Though I’d hate the record-keeping required to keep the IRS and insurance companies happy.

The AM General auto assembly plant in Mishawaka, Indiana is where they used to build Hummer H2s. Now, its workers are making something a little less … controversial. It’s a van called the MV-1, MV standing for “Mobility Vehicle,” and it’s designed specifically for wheelchair-using passengers. Its designers claim that it is better suited to the handicapped than converted conventional vans, and the first factory-built model rolled off the assembly line yesterday.

A product of Miami’s Vehicle Production Group, the MV-1 has a large 56 x 36-inch side door, and a 1,200 pound-capacity deployable ramp that stows under the floor when not in use. It can accommodate two wheelchair-using passengers, or one wheelchair and five additional traditionally-seated occupants, if the optional jump seat is used. Floor tracks are used to secure wheelchairs and scooters. The non-handicapped driver sits behind the wheel in a regular-style seat – perhaps future versions could allow wheelchair users to also drive, using something like RUVID’s hand control device?

The vehicle is based around a body-on-frame configuration, and is powered by a Ford 4.6L 2V EFI V8 engine with an electronic four-speed automatic transmission. For the energy and/or environmentally-conscious, however, a factory-installed Compressed Natural Gas fuel system is also available. Vans with the CNG system should have a driving range of approximately 290 miles.

More specs and other information can be found on the MV-1 website, where vehicles can also be ordered. The base SE model is priced at $39,950, for American customers only.

The sounds pretty price competitive to me. Though most of what I’ve ever seen has been van conversions which is more expensive by definition – compared to a production operation in a modern factory.

A Namibian delegation left for Germany on Sunday to reclaim about 20 human skulls used by colonial-era scientists who sought to prove the racial superiority of whites over blacks.

Namibia’s Herero ethnic group, incensed by German settlers stealing their land, cattle and women, launched an uprising against their colonial rulers in January 1904.

Around 300 skulls were taken from the Herero and ethnic Nama who died in German-run prison camps over the four-year conflict, according to some estimates. Many are still stored at the Medical History Museum at the Charite teaching hospital in Berlin.

“We are finally bringing our ancestors and heroes back home,” Herero Chief Kuiama Riruako said before departing for the airport…We will perform traditional rites as we arrive on German soil Monday morning and when we receive the skulls,” he said…

In the days after launching their uprising 107 years ago, Herero warriors massacred about 200 German civilians and were quickly met with a ruthless response from the German forces…

General Lothar von Trotha, who was under the direct command of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Berlin, later issued a notorious “extermination order.”

The figures for the total Herero population alive at the time range from 50,000 to 80,000.

It is estimated that tens of thousands were butchered, with only some 15,000 surviving when the campaign ended in 1907. Many historians called the killings the first genocide of the 20th century.

But, then, I guess you all learned about this in the Colonial Africa section of your school studies about modern world history. Right?

A Frenchwoman found proof of the maxim that nothing in life is certain except death and taxes, when she received a bill in the name of a grandfather who died in 1949.

“I didn’t think I’d hear any more about my grandfather, whom I never knew,” Martine Courtois told AFP, after reading the 13-euro land inheritance tax bill addressed to her grandfather, Pierre Barotte.

“Everything was done legally at the time, we didn’t get any demands from the tax office,” said Courtois, who lives in the small eastern town of Bruyeres.

The local tax office said the situation was entirely normal and “happens all the time” when an unpaid tax debt, through interest or late payment fees, goes beyond 12 euros. “The day the money due goes over this threshold, the machine gets going,” a tax spokesman told AFP, asking not to be named…

Courtois has not paid the bill and instead sent a letter to the tax office: “My grandfather died in 1949, please do what’s necessary.”

I was looking around to see if there was a more detailed version of this tale. Ended up returning to this publication of the AFP release in the Telegraph. I thought about explaining what happened – and then read the comments from typical Kool Aid Party-types whose presumption always is that someone in government bears individual responsibility.

Though it does seem to give patent-leather-libertarians an opportunity to vent their spleen. A recurrent image in a world containing politicians like Ron Paul.

Daylife/AP PHoto used by permission

The policy is gone, but the lawsuits continue. Two days after the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell“, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union were in United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington Thursday arguing on behalf of service members who say they received only half their separation pay when they were discharged for their sexuality.

The lead plaintiff is a former Air Force staff sergeant, Richard Collins, who served nine years before two civilian co-workers observed him exchanging a kiss with his civilian boyfriend and reported it to his superiors. When he received an honorable discharge under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” his separation pay was half what it should have been…

According to a statement by the A.C.L.U., “Federal law entitles service members to separation pay if they have been involuntarily discharged from the military after completing at least six years of service. But in 1991, the Defense Department adopted an internal policy that automatically cuts a former service member’s separation pay in half if the service member is discharged because of ‘homosexuality.’”

The A.C.L.U. said that the half-pay policy was enacted before “don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed, and so was not changed when that law was repealed. The group said the Defense Department can change the policy on its own, without congressional approval.

The government has asked the court to dismiss the case…proving once again that the Pentagon not only doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution it is supposed to be fighting for – our military executives couldn’t care less about the rights of members of the armed forces who have served loyally and diligently.

Beancounters are the same everywhere. Saving a buck while screwing individuals is OK in their book.

 
A crocodile, known as Snappy, who lives in the city of Geelong, near the Australian city of Melbourne, has suddenly and unexpectedly turned orange.

The eight foot saltwater crocodile began to turn an interesting shade of orange, causing his keeper Tracy Sandstrom, who runs a mobile reptile display called Roaming Reptiles, to fear for his health.

“I thought he was really sick. I thought he was dying,” said Ms Sandstrom.

It turned out the crocodile, who sleeps in a heated bath at night, had been chewing on the water pipes, damaging the filter. This caused the filter to stop working and pH levels in the water to rise.

Experts believe red algae or tannins from fallen leaves which would normally have stayed out of his water due to the filter managed to get in, which combined with the raised pH led to the change in his colour.

In time he should return to his natural green colour.

“There’s no change in his behaviour, his aggression, his territorialism. He’s still a really nasty crocodile,” said Ms Sandstrom.

Har!

No. I do not want one. Even if he had a clock in his belly.

Arizona wanted her to stop teaching English because she has an accent

Ms. Aguayo is a veteran teacher in the Creighton Elementary School District in central Phoenix as well an immigrant from northern Mexico who learned English as an adult and taught it as a second language. Confronted about her accent by her school principal several years ago, Ms. Aguayo took a college acting class, saw a speech pathologist and consulted with an accent reduction specialist, none of which transformed her speech.

As Ms. Aguayo has struggled, though, something else has changed. Arizona, after almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers’ articulation, recently made a sharp about-face on the issue. A federal investigation of possible civil rights violations prompted the state to call off its accent police.

“To my knowledge, we have not seen policies like this in other states,” Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant federal secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview. She called it “good news” that Arizona had altered its policy.

Silverio Garcia Jr., who runs a barebones organization called the Civil Rights Center out of his Phoenix-area home to challenge discrimination, was the one who pressed the accent issue. In May 2010, he filed a class-action complaint with the federal Department of Education alleging that teachers had been unfairly transferred and students denied educations with those teachers. The Justice Department joined the inquiry, but federal investigators closed Mr. Garcia’s complaint in late August after the state agreed to alter its policies.

“This was one culture telling another culture that you’re not speaking correctly,” Mr. Garcia said….

But the federal review found that the state had written up teachers for pronouncing “the” as “da,” “another” as “anuder” and “lives here” as “leeves here…”

In the Creighton Elementary School District, where about a dozen teachers attracted the attention of the state monitors, an accent reduction specialist, Andy Krieger, was brought in from Canada last year. Mr. Krieger, who has taught actors, business executives and others from around the world to speak American English, said some of the teachers had what he considered heavy accents…

It was Ms. Aguayo’s principal and not the state monitors who first questioned her accent and suggested that she join Mr. Krieger’s class, Ms. Aguayo said. Because she was told that state policy forbade her to teach students who were learning English, she has filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“I have the same credentials as everyone else, and I don’t think it’s fair that I’m being singled out,” Ms. Aguayo said, adding that her school has teachers with a variety of regional American accents. “I know I have an accent. It’s been hard to get rid of it. I think I’ll always have it…”

Arizona is still the Mississippi of the West. The bigots-in-charge decided the best way to maintain political control of the state is to inhibit any and all opportunities for non-Anglos to advance. Indios or Hispanics, it doesn’t matter. Even if you collaborate you are suspect. Your children are suspect. Have an accent? You are suspect.

The drill is designed to keep whole generations from feeling they have a chance to change anything. So, make certain schoolkids see that if their teachers don’t fit the Anglo mold – they will be dumped. An object lesson for how to fit into Arizona society.

Scientists have gained a rare glimpse into the sex life of the mysterious deep-sea squid.

By studying footage taken by underwater vehicles, US researchers have found that this rarely seen creature will often engage in same-sex mating. They believe this is because encounters with potential mates in the dark depths are rare, and the squid may be unable to tell the sexes apart…

The species that was observed is called Octopoteuthis deletron, a tentacled beast that measures about 12cm-long with impressive hook-lined arms…

Until now, little was known about this creature’s sex life, apart from the fact that the male uses a long, penis-like organ to deposit spermatophores, complex structures containing millions of sperm, onto a female, which are then absorbed into her tissue. But by studying footage of this deep-sea squid, they were able to find out much more.

Lead author Hendrik Hoving, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), explained: “We did not observe two animals mating, but we found evidence of mating – sperm packages on males and females…

The researchers found equal numbers of female and male squid that had had sperm packages deposited on them, indicating that same-sex mating was as frequent as encounters between squid of the opposite sex.

The number of sperm packages that had been deposited also suggested that these animals were promiscuous, the researchers said…

“We suggest that same-sex mating behaviour by O. deletron is part of a reproductive strategy that maximises success by inducing males to indiscriminately and swiftly inseminate every squid that they encounter.”

Hey – at least they’re not intimidated by social class.Or size.

Click on map for larger view

How do you combine an obsession with Zombie movies and data analysis of Google Maps?

Simple, you produce the map, above. It was created by Oxford University’s Internet Institute – and the guys behind the fantastic dataviz site, Floating sheep: Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook and Monica Stephens.

Using a keyword search for “zombies”, it visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.

The map reveals two important spatial patterns. First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning “zombies” whatsoever. Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities…

Graham, whose favourite Zombie movie is the original Romero Dawn of the Dead (“the classic of the genre”) says of the map:

The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse.

Actually zombie movies bore the hell out of me. I much prefer to be scared by extraterrestrial aliens.

Here in pig country, the pigs are vanishing.

This month, 150 pigs — each one weighing more than an average grown man — disappeared from a farm building in Lafayette despite deadbolts on its doors. Farther north near Lake Lillian, 594 snorting, squealing hogs disappeared last month, whisked away in the dark.

And in Iowa, with added cover from the vast stretches of tall cornfields, pigs have been snatched, 20 or 30 at a time, from as many as eight facilities in the last few weeks, said the sheriff of Mitchell County, adding that among other challenges, the missing are difficult to single out.

“They all look alike,” said Curt Younker, the sheriff, who said he had only rarely heard of pig thefts in his decades on the job. “Suddenly we’re plagued with them.”

Some livestock economists pointed to the thefts in this hog-rich region as…a reflection of record-high prices for hogs this year and the ease of stealing pigs from the large barns that are often far from the farmer’s house.

“This is the hot commodity of the moment, like copper…and gold,” said Ryan Bode, whose family company, Rebco Pork, discovered that 150 of its pigs were missing on Sept. 16, shortly before they were to be taken to market…

Mr. Bode seemed doubtful about seeing his pigs again. “My guess is that they’re bacon and pork chops already…”

Investigators suspect that the pigs may have been taken to meat-processing plants or affiliated “drop-off” facilities or that they were sold at auction barns, which are less common these days as more large pig producers have direct arrangements with food-packing companies.

But that has raised an uncomfortable suggestion in an industry where many of the biggest farmers and pork buyers know one another personally and where a stranger pulling up to sell 100 hogs should give pause.

“Someone in the business somewhere has the answer as to who’s doing this,” said Sheriff Marc Chadderdon.

RTFA. Crime stories are a magnet for me. Not only catching the thieves; but, how the thieves pulled off the job.

Some of the article is hogwash. It’s absurd for an informed journalist to blame the lousy economy for the thefts – though she tries to. It’s the skyrocketing value of the pigs that motivates these crooks. Easy access to something worth stealing – and someone ready to buy.