husmusen

Even if they always do the "right" thing, they will probably get voted out.

Especially considering that that the "right think" differs from group to group, and even person to person.

 

Anyone who seriously tries to tackle the problem has no chance of election.

Most any action will alienate some group or another, so the best track for popularity is all too often inaction.

Well obviously politicians should be able to reflect a range of views.

That's in the essence of democracy.

But I think what the earlier poster was alluding to was How

they reflect them and If they reflect them.

It ought be possible to reflect and argue your constituents views, without villifying, telling lies, misleading parliament, presenting false documents, running drugs, and engaging in that drivel that passes for debate during parliament question time.

The "Senator Bob Brown is a Nazi speech" particularly comes to mind..

And also issues like, should parties be allowed to charge for

"Face time" with a minister,( at a rate of 10K per half hour or part

thereof)?

To me that seems corrupt.

As for political inaction, I fear you are correct, at least with party politics.

Example:

We have a skills shortage in Australia, it's growing worse by the

year, and after a decade of not doing anything about it,

Howard comes up with a pretense of trade collages.

Why is this a joke?

Because the collages aren't even meeting replacement levels of output.

Cheers.

Gut feeling == Male intuition.

aswokie, you are not alone, I can't count the number of times I've

heard similar things.

I also know people who claim to have "felt" when loved ones died.

I suppose that's a kind of gut feeling.

Do you think that the ability to feel when someone is staring at you is

similar to what your describing?

Cheers

ee sumimasen dak-san.

I've kept putting it off due to post exam+2 Assignment tiredness.

Well I'm back.

Someone else has the very good(and very exp) language kit at the library

so my posts will stay simple for a while yet.

So lets see, I fear you got something wrong too but my japanese

isn't sufficient to be sure what. Perhaps one of the others

can give us a clue.

Watashi wa kaibougaku to seirigaku konomui datte

rinshou to bunshiseibutsugaku konomui desu.

(but I'm not very good at the last one(yet).)

[Hide]

I like A&P also Pathology and Molecular biology.

[/Hide]

Cheers.

It was certainly not my intent although perhaps my post could have been

clearer, now that I am not pressed for time I'll restate and expand.

My main point was that it was much more complex than individual

personalities, and that whether politicians "have the same range of altruistic and selfish motives as the rest of us." was irrelevant as once you get a

certain "culture" at a workplace that culture begins to eject/supress some

types and encourage others. Therefore regardless of the initial

spread of personality you soon end up with a narrower range, or a

few people voicing opinions and the rest toeing "The party line".

At least that is my experience from seeing Australian politics in action.

Hence this is a major cause of why many politicians are scumbags.

But if all politicians were sincere (or even 20% or so), that would go

a very long way to improving things. But how do you encourage

that when the political culture seems to actively knock out decent

people, at pre-selection, election and ministerial appointment?

Cheers.

I disagree.

You can have a set of workplaces, all staffed by the same "range" of

people, some workplaces are great to work at, others are,

to put it bluntly, toxic.

It's all down to culture.

Culture is complex, but when you have things such as the

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, saying that the

detention of children under the age of eight is not a matter of

conscience. That is an example of something affecting culture.

In Australian politics, you have a combination of intense cynicism,

massive voter disengagement, and a blame the victim mentality.

Howard has made this ten times worse.

It could be your username. Quicksilver is also a gaming site for MoO 2 players.

But I can trump you.

Tertiary institution, who run a filter that told me I had been reported for

trying to Download "The Forged Coupon" by Leo Tolstoy.

"This document contains 832 barred keywords, this constitutes a gross attempted breach of the internet user guidelines, this attempt along with the URL of the page you were trying to access has been reported to the I.T. depertment for disciplinary assesment."

So I tried downloading it 50 odd times. (And we really need an evil grin smiley). Hopefully generating yet another report each time.

Anna Karenina BTW contains several thousand barred keywords.

And Charles Dickens is positively evil according to the censorware.

(This isn't a primary school BTW but a tertiary institution.)

Other documents I cannot download, included the

UN anti-torture convention. Yet another report to the admin.

Some SFN topics.

Personally I use it for word now, but that's it.

Cheers.

I am very definitely not saying that because of this the game should be censored, re-written, abandoned, or whatever.

Thats cool.

Cheers.

Sometimes when I take a glass from the pantry I pour myself some Coke and drink some only to realize that the glass was just recently washed. In the Coke I could taste some detergent residue. Is drinking of detergent in small amounts harmful?

In those tiny doses, there is no evidence to show any harm.

But usch it would taste.

As for daks comment, there is a mythbusters episode that immerses a tooth

in weak phosphoric acid for 24 hours (used in cola) the results are

quite unsettling.

YT2095:

things like washing up liquid or houshold soap are non toxic, although they can have a laxative effect when taken in large enough doses.

I thought detergent and toilet soap was quite alkaline?

that wouldn't be very good for you, it could screw up your pH.

Insane A':

if it was toxic enough for you to worry about you'd either puke it up, feel really really bad or be dead.

Or permanently crippled.

Dak:

That'd be some interesting dihoreahh... I wonder if it would bubble?

Ask the Tokyo Shock boys. Kak-tos Weh-Jii

Cheers.

I wonder how he'll work with intelligence? How do you guys think he'll implement that rung of the evolutionary ladder? I saw mention of an interstellar race, but how would that be "engineered" [read: created] by the player?

A good question.

The first thing that pops into my mind is a massively enhanced

forn of the MoO 2 or MoO3 Species attribute points.

E.g. Ranges for gravity, atmosphere tolerances, acidity tolerances,

water->Dryness tolerances, Creativity, intelligence, organic redunancy,

metabolic sources, cyberbetic, and so on.

Of course that's just what I would do, they no doubt have ther own ideas.

Cheers.

And there are people who play chess who think that makes them

automatically smart and logical.

I don't pick on chess for this.

Well, I refrained from a broadside because I thought the poster must

have just skimmed the title and completely misunderstood.

I feel that objecting to this game is as inappropriate as objecting

to say genetic algorithms , on the grounds they may "indoctrinate" people

into becomming mindless slaves of evolution.

It's silly.

But JDurg pretty well said everything I was thinking.

By opheolite to jdurg:

where in my posts, I suggest that there is any conspiracy.

anti-evolution propaganda.

Doesn't "propaganda", imply some sort of organised, willful attempt to

disemminate ideas and notions in order to advance a cuase or interest?

Cheers.

atinymonkey"

Actually I had formed the odd idea that the President was elected by vote

of the member nations (The EU actually has a rotating presidency).

That is I was conflating the EU with the effin FN. (UN in English).

That says all you need to know about how long I'd been up.

However I still maintain that Neither Blair nor Chirac are flavour of the week

in the Pro-Eu camp tonight.

Dave:

I agree that the contitution has, or rather had, issues, but it also had a

lot of good. I think that the EU is going to happen, if it the new result ends up giving countries more flexibility on social policies, I think that's a good

thing, I think there is too much momentum behind this for a single "no" vote,

to kill it.

Hopefully they will go back, improve it, and retry.

Cheers.

the population could continue to grow rather rapidly

Incorrect assumption implied.

That population growth is determined by impregnation rates

and ability to carry young.

It's no good having lots of young, if they all get pinched by the

neighbouring tribe, if they all, or even many, die from protein energy,

starvation because there is no game, and so on.

Or more relistically end up as 4 foot adults competing with six foot

neighbours.

It's not nearly so simple an interaction,

at least not in humans.

Cheers.

It quickly became the best-selling PC game of all time and opened up a different understanding of what a game was and how real life itself was much like a game.

Strange I thought the Japanese had life simulation games before the anglos.

So, he's squarely in the Intelligent Design camp, then. More sub-cutaneous, anti-evolution propaganda.

Talk about touchy.

That said.

This game sounds like iit could be a really cool game. I mean like a

game I'd be willing to upgrade the PC to play.

It all depends on wether they make the results truly user

driven, or wether it ends up being a, you get to choose from

a subset of choices, game.

I don't see cost as being such a huge issue, games are big business

now, and a blockbuster could reap a tidy amount.

Cheers.

Update:

It seems from the news reports that the AMA has it's butt

well and truly covered, they've shown evidence of informing

the minister and hospitals that there were problems from day 1.

From the transcript(I'm only up to day 4), there has been a

very interesting question raised.

Commissioner:

How can a person who is banned under Queensland law from calling

himself a surgeon be given a position of locum general surgeon?

Dr. Miach:

I don't know.

Commissioner:

No doubt Dr Keating (The guy who appointed patel) will tell us.

Dr. Leck has completely dodged the moral issue, he has basically taken the attitude that, "It was not my job to deal with this, legally I am not legally at fault." (Regardless of what he knew)

(In the same way as there is no legal requirement that you intervene to

stop a person you see buggering a child in the middle of Central St.

You can't be tried for not risking life and limb to stop it.)

I'm sure I remember some legal charge called "Accessory to knowledge" or

"Accessory to knowledge of/after the fact", but I'm not 100% on that or

if it would apply in this circumstance.

Things are slowly becomming clearer.

Apparently there is a real culture of intimidation and bullying in Qld health.

The whistleblower nurse was threatened with charges of racism if

she complained.

And an almost military obsession with Chains of Command.

To Qld Health beurocrats, going outside the chain is apparently

a far worse sin than patients dying at the hands of incompetent &^*&'s.

Management use things like privacy laws as a tool against staff,

while flouting them when it suits them too because staff are becomming

inreasingly isolated(information wise).

We had a situation recently where a GP didn't bother to inform

the hospital, that a patient was a violent psychotic, due to privacy

laws. So a poor nurse got clobbered.

I just noticed that I called a patient, a patient, again.

(that's a big no no, I keep getting slapped for it by my lecturers)

They are "clients" now, good grief.

The amount of crap we have to go through in order to care for people

is really starting to get me down.

I understand the motives and rationale behind it but I feel this

"atomisation" of healthcare staff, because most healthcare staff are really commited to helping people, I think it will backfire also I feel that it is being used by the hospital administrators as a political tool.

Cheers.

To put a european perspective on Tony Blairs chances

of becomming the head of Europe.

Nej, Nej, Nej, Nei,

Non, Nein, Ne, Ni,

Neen, Nao, Nayir.

An English man may very well one day be "Head of Europe",(If UK joins),

but he won't be the first head, and nor will a frenchman I daresay

given recent events .

Dave:

For starters, a constitution shouldn't be a rather idiotic 500 pages long if they want people to actually read and understand what they're

voting for.

It's not the length, but the failure to explain it.

Better a long and well planned watertight document, than a

simplistic one full of holes.

What are your thoughts on language problems,

while I value the language preservation in the parliament,

I think they need a subset of languages for official documentation.

Or even better a nice neutral language, like Swedish, as the

official language of Europe .

Cheers.

I don't think anyone would argue it wasn't a setback.

As to the Netherlands, I don't have my time machine handy.

But if they do vote no, (even if they had always been going to vote

no from the start of creation), guess who's going to get the blame?

Cheers.

From what I've seen they are becomming increasingly common.

A good thing too.

Cheers.

I find a lot of what Phi has said here seems to me to be pretty

common sense.

I would add though that, and it's sadly not always possible,

the best method of discpline is when the child sees their community

living the same values and principles they preach to and expect from

the younger generations.

I know because I grew up in a little country town up in the deep

north of Sweden, and that's what they did, for example children were

expected to be respectful to their elders, but their elders also

treated them with respect, which is quite seperate from authority.

For example, you still had to obey your parents but your

parents would explain why they asked you to do, or not do,

such and such.

Beneficial side affect: Child learns.

Children find it very easy to live by principles they see everyone

else living by.

They find it very hard to live by principles, when they seem to be the

only one.

Also I think wisdom is important.

My parents always gave me an opportunity to own up of my own

accord, they never raced off the second they found out about

something.

And we had a wealth of morality rich tales and myth.

The emporers new robe.

Bamse: The worlds strongest bear.

The three questions.

Neglect a spark and the barn will burn down.

How much land does a man need.

Joseph,

Noah,

Job.

The crow who tried to walk both roads at once.

The hare and the tortoise.

God sees the truth but waits.

The two old men.

The three old men.

Just to scratch the surface.

Cheers.

sayo:

I for one have the "wake on impact" experience quite frequently

Interesting.

I often feel falling when just on the border of sleep.

Sometimes it wakes me up with a start.

Other times I feel like I fall for a long time and then like

I'm floating, then I fall asleep completely.

Cheers.

aswokie:

I understand where your coming from now, Yes I agree that an

ultramarathon type event would blunt quite a few of mens advantages.

Someone once told me though that ultra-elite sports are more

a measure of pure fanatical obsession as extreme fitness is

just the entrance requirement.

Cheers.

My understanding is that moles are static, they don't change over

time much, melanomas are malignant melanocytes(The pigment

producing cell in skin), The 4 rules are,

A for assymetry.

B for border, is it irregular?

C for colour, is it changing or uneven?

D is for diameter, is it bigger than 6mm?

There is also a suggestion by the original researchers to

add an E for evolving, that is, is it changing over time?

My own suggestion is: no, don't wait and see, if it matches 2

of the above go to the doctor straight away because if it escapes

your basically up shit creek without a paddle.

Cheers

I strongly doubt you could design a psych test that could stand up

to the concerted efforts of hunderds of psychologists and millions

of election dollars to crack it.

Cheers

Once your license is revoked in one state, it becomes very hard to keep your licenses in other states. I doubt he'll be allowed to practice here again.

That makes me feel much better.

It had been my impression that the US regulatory system was

highly fragmented, and that he could, in theory, go and kill 100 patients

in just about every state, because they didn't talk to each other.

I'm just worried a little still because this guy is apparently very

skilled at manipulating people, which in and of itself is not a bad

thing except when it's combined with a massive ego, inability

accept blame, and no conscience.

In short if there is a loophole, he will probably find it.

Or he might vector from the US to the UK or Canada. But he is running

out of english speaking countries.

"In one, according to documents, Patel performed a colostomy backward, blocking the patient's gastrointestinal system."

 

Oh my.

Read the rest of the transcripts, actually if the above bothers you, dont.

He also stabbed a guys chest 50 times, looking for fluid that wasn't

there, that the ultrasound and CT scan showed was not there, using a

needle that was way to large for that procedure.

He ran it through the guys heart a couple of times and, surprise surprise,

the guy died.

That was IIRC the father of the girl holding the photo.

Why would this man willfully mal-practice? Just what mental sickness drives someone to kill the people that trusts him.

He seemed to gain a great deal of pleasure from being seen as an important

surgeon, he also seemed to lack the ability to feel guilt, but I am just

speculating.

I am more concerned about the institutional sickness that allowed a

surgeon such as this to operate for so long, with such dreadful results and such extraordinary measures required to get something done about it.

Another point of intrest.

Why did Bundaburg Hospitals management think that monthly

M&M (Mortality and Morbidity) meetings were unnescessary when they

are standard practice in just about every other Australian hospital?

Taa dak, but you still havent told me which feilds of bioloogy your interested

in.

Greets Mag, you've tolds us which langs you are being forced to learn.

Which would you want to learn though?

Cheers.

I have decided to post this in the GD forum, because while it

touches on biomedical ethics, it also touches on many other areas,

including politics, religion, medical procedures etc...

I want a bit leeway for the discussion to explore things, from

personal responses to professional opinions. A holistic thread.

I may post in BM ethics some specific issues in which case I will link

to them here.

I also didn't want to further drag off the handwriting topic,

and I felt this topic was worthy of it's own page.

Nuff said.

Dr Jayant Patel, is suspected of having been responsible for

between 80 and 120 deaths at Bundaberg Base Hospital,

due either to reckless negligence, willful malpractice or

a combination of the two.

This individual, fled Australia when details of his behaviour became

public, with the assistance of Queensland Health excecutives,

Dr Keating and (possibly) Dr Leck.

The following is an article that acts as a good primer.

Melbourne Age background article.

The following is a link to the commission of inquiries transcript pool.

http://www.bhci.qld.gov.au/transcripts.htm

It should be noted that these executives kindly sent him to the

United States and that while his medical licence has been

revoked there in many states, he is still licenced to practice in others.

He also has several glowing letters of commendation given to him

by senior BH hospital management.

If you go to a new doctor that you haven't been to before who

matches the above photo for pity's sake don't let him operate on

you. Even better go to your local authorities and tell them the

guy is wanted for 100 deaths in Australia.

---------------------------------------------------

This case has deeply affected me on both a personal

and professional level.

Personal because when I was four I suffered (fortunately not

permanently) at the hands of a very similar type of surgeon.

And also because of the photo of the child in the Age article.

Professional because I am a nurse, and I have to seriously

consider what I would do, if I was put in the situation of having

a doctor killing people. And as such I'm trying to get an overall

undestanding of just what the *&^* happened here and how

procedures were compromised.

Part of the reason for this appears to be the near complete isolation

of the hospital excecutive and management(of any level) from even

senior "shopfloor" workers like the ICU Head nurse or the Director of

Medicine.

From the article

Leck told the Morris Inquiry on Thursday that in hindsight he wished he had

launched an investigation into Jayant Patel earlier. "I'm sure a lot of other people do too," Morris replied.

[/Quote]

 

I do not accept this.

There have been numerous witnesses that just days before the full

story came out, Leck had gone down to the nurses and BLASTED

them for raising the issue with a member of parliament. In which

he raved about Dr Patel's virtues for 30 minutes, he also threatened

them with criminal charges if he was ever able to prove who had

done it, specifically saying "2 years in jail" over and over again.

And decrying them for trying to "get the man lynched" and denying

him "natural justice".

 

He then stormed off, without waiting for a response.

 

If he genuinely was duped he has no one to blame but himself because

there were plenty of people telling him, and he had his fingers in his

ears, his head in the sand and he was humming reaaallll loud.

 

A second factor is how Dr Patel was able to arrange to be the one

doing the auopsies on the patients that died under his knife. That

immediately flags "uh-oh" responses in my conflict of interest

monitors.

 

I could accept that some of these were stuff ups, but when I see

a string of multiple tens of stuffups which as a group seem to

serve a collective purpose, I get another "uh-oh" flag.

 

Why wasn't his credentials checked.

 

Why did Dr Keating repeatedly downgrade a sentinel incident

which would go directly to a to the head of Qld Health to a

matter of serious concern (which ran though his office).

 

Why did the aneathetists and senior medico-surgical staff try and

deal with it "in the loop" for such an extended duration?

 

Why did Leck repeatedly give assurances that things were being done

about it to senior nursing staff when in reality nothing at all had been

done about it.

 

Why did Dr Keating(and possibly Leck) give 5 star employment references

to Dr Patel?

 

And in a darker humour why didn't someone drag this guy behind a carpark

and perform some hand surgery with a meat tenderiser.