Stilgherrian » health

Links for 30 April 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:08:20 +0000

Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.

Dissociative Identity Disorder | Wikipedia: This is what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. I'm reading about it because a friend was recently so diagnosed.
End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers | TechCrunch: Michael Arrington's article begins: “Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream”, or lack thereof.
Upside Down Text Generator: A silly utility for turning text upside down. Fun for all the family. ??u??p ?s?l ???? p?? ???? ?ou plno?s ?ll??? ? [OK, so it doesn't work in this cross-feed.]
ACMA Communications Report 2006-07: The Australian communications & Media Authority's annual report to parliament. The numbers aren't as recent as they could be, but still lots of good data.
A Visit to Beijing's Exclusive Penis Restaurant | Spiegel Online: A specialist restaurant serves painstakingly decorated gourmet meals made only from the naughty bits.
Learning to Live Like an Early Bird | WSJ.com: Tips for turning a night person into a morning person. I'm already a morning person, but I know people who could use this…

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Hacking the human heart, literally

Stilgherrian — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:11:52 +0000

Excellent. It’s possible to wirelessly hack into a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker and re-program it to shut down or deliver fatal jolts of electricity. Hat-tip to Memex 1.1.

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Australia 2020 brings out the whingers

Stilgherrian — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:11:29 +0000

Another day, another lobbyist for one specific community sector fails to understand what the Australia 2020 Summit means. This time it’s Professor Warren Hogan whinging that “the ageing population” isn’t mentioned enough.

As reported in that august journal Australian Ageing Agenda, Hogan reckons the “omission” of aged care from the Summit agenda is “inexplicable”.

“An immediate worry with the new Government comes from the failure to address any issues in aged care for the 2020 summit,” he said.

No, Professor Hogan, what’s really “inexplicable” are:

Why you haven’t bothered looking at the list of topics at the Summit website, which clearly says: “Health — a long-term national health strategy — including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population.” [my emphasis]
How you reckon the Summit fails to address this issue when it hasn’t even happened yet.

I’m getting pretty goddam sick of the narrow-mindedness and short-term thinking shown by so many of the commentators so far.

The Summit is organised thematically, people — things like infrastructure, the economy, our place in the world and so on. Each community sector is affected by and has input into all of these themes.

So, Professor Hogan, once we all say, “Gosh, the population is ageing,” as if every planner hasn’t already been saying that for a decade or two, we notice that this affects how we’ll have to structure health care, housing, transport, taxation — wow, just about everything. And maybe our 1000 “best and brightest” can take that on board and then move on to the next step, which is working on the future vision.

Professor Hogan, are you really so blinkered that you can’t see how “the ageing population” fits into the Summit unless it’s spelt out for you? Or, as Robert Merkel reports in Lavartus Prodeo today, is it just that every medical specialty in town is trying to drum up publicity because we’re renegotiating the federal-state health funding agreement?

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NSW health overhaul critical after years of inaction

Stilgherrian — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:27:14 +0000

My mate Bernard Kealey has scored the Sydney Morning Herald’s lead letter today for this scathing criticism of the NSW health system. Fight the good fight, brother!