Archive for the ‘Behaviour’ Category
November 10, 2012
I find most things about the monstrous behaviour of Anders Behring Breivik almost inexplicable. Now the killer of 77 people complains about the inhumanity of having to use a “bendy” pen!
Considering his rather luxurious incarceration for 21 years (extendable) for killing 77 people, his 27 page complaint about the inhumane conditions he is being held in ought to be dismissed out of hand. But instead it will probably waste a lot of people’s time and a lot of public money.
The Guardian: Anders Behring Breivik, who is serving a 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage last year, has complained that he is being held in inhumane conditions and is being denied freedom of expression, his lawyer has said.
….. The Norwegian tabloid, VG, which said it had acquired a copy of the letter, quoted Breivik as saying he was allowed to use only a soft and bendable safety pen described by its manufacturer as “stab-resistant” because it yields at the slightest pressure and cannot be used as a weapon.
Living cell at Ilas Secure Department FOTO: ILA FENGSEL OG FORVARINGSANSTALT/GLEFS AS
Tags:Anders Behring Breivik, behaviour, Breivik's cell, inhumanity, luxurious incarceration
Posted in Behaviour, Norway | 1 Comment »
November 2, 2012
An Australian group of scientists have published the results of a new study in the October issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This then passes for “scientific research”!!!
From the New York Times:
…. Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.
By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said. ……
Ah well! They are scientists, probably wear white coats and could not possibly be idiots.
Tags:Cigarette, Health, Life expectancy, Television
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Trivia | Comments Off on Cut out one hour of watching TV and you can smoke two extra cigarettes!
November 1, 2012
I have posted earlier about the disturbing ethical questions with the “Care Pathways” in the UK which operate in the grey zone between euthanasia and execution.
But it is more than just disturbing when UK hospitals run by NHS trusts apparently get financial benefits if they increase the number of terminally-ill patients who are put onto the so-called “Care Pathways”. Once someone is “put on a Care Pathway” they are effectively written off. Medication may be withdrawn, water and food may be withheld and any chance of continuing to live or of any recovery are removed – intentionally – from the equation. “Care” is provided but now with the intention of causing death. The sooner such patients die the better the use of resources!
I cannot see how any “Care Pathway” where there is an incentive to ensure that a patient dies and dies quickly can be anything other than an intentional termination of life. But is it euthanasia or is it murder or is it an execution?
Where the patient truly wishes to die it is effectively euthanasia. But where the patient would wish to live if he could only get better we get into a dangerous zone between euthanasia and execution. Can all attempts to “make the patient better” be abandoned by a hospital because someone other than the patient has decided that the patient cannot get better? When it is relatives who are pushing to get the patient onto a “Care Pathway” it comes close to murder. And when it is the hospitals or the hospital staff who are “incentivised” to get the patient onto the “Care Pathway” it gets close to being an execution. The decision to put someone onto a “Care Pathway” is itself then an irrevocable sentence of death. Why not – having passed sentence – just give them a quick, quiet lethal injection after putting them on a “Care Pathway”? Why go through the charade of care while ensuring the patients rapid demise? The 33 hours these patients survive on average after being put on a “Care Pathway” could be reduced to zero. Why not provide incentives to hospitals to
- maximise the number of patients put onto a “Care Pathway”, and then
- minimise the amount of time spent on such a Pathway?
This could get rid of many hundreds – if not thousands – of problematic and elderly patients who only absorb resources, no longer provide any useful contribution to society and are just a pain for their relatives. It would not be a very large step to converting the corpses to Soylent Green.
The Telegraph:
The majority of hospitals in England are being given financial rewards for placing terminally-ill patients on a controversial “pathway” to death…
Almost two thirds of NHS trusts using the Liverpool Care Pathway have received payouts totalling millions of pounds for hitting targets related to its use, research for The Daily Telegraph shows.
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the full scale of financial inducements for the first time.
They suggest that about 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts – just over half of the total – have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.
At many hospitals more than 50 per cent of all patients who died had been placed on the pathway and in one case the proportion of forseeable deaths on the pathway was almost nine out of 10.
Last night the Department of Health insisted that the payments could help ensure that people were “treated with dignity in their final days and hours”.
But opponents described it as “absolutely shocking” that hospitals could be paid to employ potentially “lethal” treatments. ……
Tags:Care Pathway, Euthanasia, execution, Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient, murder, NHS, NHS trust
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, UK | 2 Comments »
October 17, 2012
An article in The Telegraph caught my eye while watching the US Presidential debate at my hotel.
A rather disturbing development in the UK and I don’t like the ethics of the situation. Euthanasia is voluntary but I am not sure that the Liverpool Care Pathway is. It is a pathway which leads to the death of the patient /victim in about 33 hours. I wonder who this pathway serves? At first sight it seems to be primarily for the benefit of hospitals and doctors and health care system costs. Perhaps for relatives.
The Telegraph:
Mary Cooper, 79, died a few days after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
The pathway, originally designed to ease the suffering of terminally ill cancer patients in their very last days, is being used more and more widely in NHS hospitals.
The idea behind the LCP is to give patients a ‘good death’ by avoiding unnecessary and burdensome medical interventions.
However, there have been accusations it hastens death because it can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition.
The LCP leads over 100,000 people to death every year – just in the UK. It smacks of execution of the elderly for convenience.
Daily Mail:
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. …. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
An assisted death for someone who does not wish to die is an execution.
Tags:ethics, Euthanasia, execution of the elderly, Liverpool Care Pathway, National Health Service
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, UK | 3 Comments »
October 12, 2012
The European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 and the choice only confirms that the Peace Prize has become ridiculous and irrelevant and has little to do with Peace in the World. The brand value of the Nobel prize is only damaged by the bizarre choices of the Norwegian committee which chooses the recipients.
The present Norwegian Nobel Committee (from left): Geir Lundestad (secretary), Gunnar Stålsett, Berit Reiss-Andersen, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, Kaci Kullmann Five and Thorbjørn Jagland (leader) © Photo: Odd-Steinar Tøllefsen / Norwegian Nobel Institute
The recipient is selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a 5-member committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway and which is now becoming a laughing-stock. The laureates chosen in this century demonstrate that the Committee is living in some dream world of its own. That the choice is a political choice is inevitable. But in this century the choices have all represented a “political correctness” which has bordered on the cowardly. The recipients have had very little – by way of achievements – to do with the furthering of peace in the world. Liu Xiaobo may be a very worthy individual but what on earth has he done for world peace? Barrack Obama was chosen on hope and not for anything achieved. The three winners in 2011 were chosen from a politically correct desire just to prove that developing countries and women were not being ignored. Al Gore & Co. were a sop to politically correct alarmism and not for any achievement. The choice of the United Nations was because nobody else could be thought of. Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank may well have contributed to the development of rural areas (though not without controversy) but they did nothing for world peace. Martti Ahtisaari – for one – had actually been an effective mediator and he was at least active in the right field. But his achievements were not something so very extraordinary in the world context. The International Atomic Energy Agency made a complete hash of Iraq and its WMD. And what on earth did Wangari Maathai or Jimmy Carter or Shirin Ebadi or Kim Dae Jung actually achieve for world peace?
This year’s choice of the European Union is about as ridiculous as they come. NATO would be a more relevant choice – but politically incorrect.
Alfred Nobel would not be pleased.
| 2012 |
The European Union (EU) |
| 2011 |
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman |
| 2010 |
Liu Xiaobo |
| 2009 |
Barack H. Obama |
| 2008 |
Martti Ahtisaari |
| 2007 |
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. |
| 2006 |
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank |
| 2005 |
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei |
| 2004 |
Wangari Maathai |
| 2003 |
Shirin Ebadi |
| 2002 |
Jimmy Carter |
| 2001 |
The United Nations ( U.N.) and Kofi Annan |
| 2000 |
Kim Dae Jung |
Tags:Alfred Nobel, European Union, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel prize, Norwegian Nobel Committee
Posted in Behaviour, Norway, Politics | Comments Off on Nobel Peace Prize committee has become ridiculous
October 9, 2012
Even if anthropogenic effects on climate were significant – which they are not – the arrogance of politicians and bureaucrats is astounding when they believe they can
- control the climate, and
- achieve this control by a “rebranding exercise”
The sun will continue on its merry way and our climate will perforce follow willy-nilly, even if our politicians and bureaucrats and so-called climate scientists think that modern day “rain dances” will give them climate control.
Perhaps they truly believe that man can control climate – and then it would not be arrogance – just gullibility or just plain stupidity! The modern-day King Canute syndrome.
Tags:climate, climate change, climate control, global warming, Politician, rebranding green energy
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Politics | Comments Off on Climate control – no less!! “A world you like – with the climate you like”
October 8, 2012
Thirty years ago when living in the UK I was a daily purchaser of The Times. Three years ago I was a daily visitor to the The Times website and an occasional purchaser of the newspaper (around 30 copies per year when I was travelling). Then they introduced their hard paywall and I abstained. But withdrawal symptoms did not last too long and I don’t miss them very much – if at all. In fact, the absence of The Times from my daily reading has had far less impact than I would have imagined. Nowadays it is very rarely that I find any references to articles in The Times that I would like to follow up on. The Times is no longer the paper of record in the UK and its restricted access makes it of little value as a reference for others.
I have a theory that the simplistic introduction of paywalls is not the model which will work for a very complex behavioural change in reading and news gathering and reference habits that is currently evolving. I suspect that the successful models will probably be those that involve an expansion of what can be viewed freely, but where this expanded readership can then be enticed into an increase in the purchase of valuable downloadable content. Restricting the initial readership – I think – can only lead to a collapsing spiral of interest and a destruction of brand value. The total circulation of The Times today for both the online and the paper versions together is less than the paper circulation before the paywall.
In an article actually about the Bonniers struggling to find their own model, Svenska Dagbladet writes about The Times:
It is well understood that for putting value on journalism it is central to be creative in the development of payment models. However, there are some really bad examples. Worst of all is the newspaper that really listened to Jeanette Bonnier.
End the free reading! Close the store! If you want to read, you must pay!
Which paper was that then? A certain paper called The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch / News International. Just over two years ago they introduced a so-called hard pay wall. Not a thing was released over the fence without payment. The decision to completely close the site for open access – and even to the search engines, which they were forced to back down from the other week – possibly was by following Jeanette Bonnier’s intuition. Or was it a way for Murdoch to provoke the industry to act. Either way, it was a gigantic failure.
Before the pay wall The Times Online had 21 million readers each month. Today, they have … drum roll! … 130 000 paying customers. Nowhere else in the history of journalism have so many readers – and so many advertisers – been scared away so effectively.
Even more interesting is the effect on the paper version. Its circulation during the same period fell from 570,000 per day to 397000. It is much more than what other newspapers have lost.
The explanation?
- A brand fatally weakened as fewer and fewer read the content, and
- Subscribers to the paper version shifting their allegiance to the much cheaper on-line, pay-walled version
The result was fewer subscribers, sharply lower revenues and a significantly depleted brand. And that’s what happens if you’re looking for simple solutions to handle a complex situation.
I have the strong “guesstimate” and rather more than just a belief, that if The Times had increased their online (free) readership they could have bucked the trend and even increased their paper circulation – by offering more content in the paper version where such content was also available on-line – but for a fee.
Tags:brand equity, media, Paywall, Rupert Murdoch, Subscription business model, Svenska Dagbladet, Times
Posted in Behaviour, Media, UK | Comments Off on The Times’ paywall has destroyed its brand equity and its circulation
October 7, 2012
The care of the elderly passing from family members to institutions is one of the apparently irreversible developments in all cultures today. It is not just a phenomenon of “Western” civilization but is a trend across the globe. As “joint families” have given way to nuclear families and as couples have both gone out “to work” and as the elderly desire greater independence and as people live longer, the responsibility for the care of the elderly has passed to institutions from ever-more burdened children or relations.
But a model for institutional care – whether by private players or the State – which works without the degradation of the elderly has yet to be found. I suppose the fundamental reasons are that
- to die quietly and with some dignity and with as little discomfort as possible is only of value to the dying,
- those who are “in care” have limited opportunities to make themselves heard, let alone to complain,
- those “in care” are no longer worth very much to the society they live in and are only seen as a cost,
- even for the relatives and children of those in institutional care, the elderly are seen primarily as “duties” and they would rather not complain if the only solution is a responsibility devolving upon themselves, and
- for institutions providing care there is always a financial benefit to not providing care and they get no “extra bonus” when they do provide care.
(more…)
Tags:Ageing, degradations of ageing, Elderly care, institutional care, longevity, Sweden, UK
Posted in Behaviour, Business, Ethics | Comments Off on The price of longevity is degradation of the elderly
October 6, 2012
“Owning land” is relative.
Nina Paley has put this together
I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it’s the first (and so far only) scene I’ve animated. As the Bible says, ”So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
And the same story is evident all over the globe and not just in the Middle East.
Tags:Animation, Nina Paley, This Land Is Mine (film)
Posted in Behaviour, Media | Comments Off on This Land is Mine
October 5, 2012
I am amazed.
I would not have thought it possible that for whatever the ends a government agency could justify such means.
JunkScience carries a report today:
EPA admits to Court: Human subjects ‘may die’ from air pollution experiments
EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes — and $12 per hour.
EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against its ongoing human experiment (called “CAPTAIN”) involving the air pollutant known as PM2.5.
In the declaration of Martin W. Case, the EPA clinical research studies coordinator for CAPTAIN, Case claims he verbally warns study subjects before the experiment as follows:
… My first approach after being introduced to the subject by the medical station staff is to ask the subject if they have read the consent form. The subjects for CAPTAIN have been given the informed study consent form on a previous visit, and, they are also given the same consent to read again if they have not read the consent the day of the training…
I provide participants with information about fine particles (PM2.s). I say that PM2.s are particles so small that they are able past through your airways and go deep into your lungs, these particles are so small that your usual lining and cilia of your airways are not able to prevent these particles from passing into your lungs, Therefore, if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York, and it’s been a very hot day, and you can see the haze in the air, and you happen to be someone that works outside, and if you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age; the chances are that you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…
………..
Tags:Air pollution, CAPTAIN, EPA, human guniea pigs, Human subject research, Particulates, United States Environmental Protection Agency
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics, scientific misconduct, US | 1 Comment »
The k2p blog 