Sunday, March 20, 2016

Pioneers of Hospice: Changing the Face of Dying

I saw this video recently. Here is the first 18 minutes on Youtube:



The full video runs about 50 minutes. It's very informative, well worth watching the whole thing. I've been looking for a copy, but the DVD seems to be out of print, with no indication of when it might become available again. Does anyone know? https://www.academicvideostore.com/video/pioneers-hospice offers it for $249.00, but that's way beyond my budget.

I'm surprised the video has not been re-released and made more readily available. IMO, Hospice is a much misunderstood concept. This video does a lot to clear up those misconceptions. I hope that whoever owns the copyright will release the video for publication again, or else release it into the public domain, where it could do a lot of good.
     

Saturday, March 12, 2016

An amazing photo of the U.K.

I love this photo:
It's from this article: The Brexit Won't Happen, Buy The British Pound, which is about whether or not the U.K. will exit the European Union:
[...] Although the Brexit vote is some way off, we still feel an exit from the European Union is not going to eventuate. Because of this we have taken advantage of the lower pound and increased our long position.

Boris Johnson may be charismatic and popular with the people, ourselves included, but he is also considered quite wacky, so to speak. We feel many of the British public will take his view that the United Kingdom should exit the European Union with a pinch of salt, and don't consider him to be a true threat here. [...]
But the photo is amazing. Click on it to look at it in it's full size. You can still see the sky above the horizon, so I suspect it was taken from the very upper reaches of the outer stratosphere. So beautiful.

   

When are we going to STOP the insanity that is the useless Daylight Savings Time?

I'm serious. It seems to do more harm than good:

Daylight Saving Time is hot garbage
End the madness!
When Benjamin Franklin proposed Daylight Saving Time — he invented it — it was a joke. These days, it's more like a practical joke we play on ourselves every single year. It's time to end this dumb prank once and for all.

[...]

Proponents of DST will tell you that it saves energy. This is because a study in the 1970s found a 1 percent benefit to energy use in Daylight Saving Time. You may notice, though, that the 1970s are now 40 years ago, and energy consumption has changed somewhat in the interim. More recent research shows no difference in energy usage in places where it doesn't go into effect, compared to places observing DST. A few studies suggest Daylight Saving Time actually means more energy is used, rather than less. Take, for example, this 2008 paper that looks at southern Indiana: DST actually increases electricity demand to the tune of $9 million a year in Indiana alone. [...]
The article goes on to describe the affects of sleep deprivation, and the spike in the number of car accidents and accidents at work that occur for six weeks after DST kicks in. There are many, many embedded links to support what she says; the author really did her homework. Read the whole thing for embedded links, the history of DST, Ben's joke, and more.