Stuff in the News

[inulro]

I meant to do these earlier, but my body seems to have decided to work on setting a new record for doing nothing but work and sleep.

Anyway: Waah! It's all the ISPs fault! is an exercise in self-justification by a woman whose husband became an internet kiddie porn "addict". I particularly like "But it is also absolutely wrong that those 10 pictures and thousands like them can be accessed in minutes by anyone via an internet service provider (ISP), a search engine and a credit card". If you need to give them your credit card number, lady, they were in no way stumbled over by accident! What is it about Christians who don't appear to believe in personal responsibility?

Moving right along, there's the issue of doctors' training. The DOH spokesperson said "This will create doctors who are fit for purpose. For example, not all doctors need to know how to perform paediatric cardiac transplants". This is an incredibly bad example - very few doctors know how to do this already. There's something frightening about training doctors to be "fit for purpose". When it comes to medicine, one should hope something closer to "striving for excellence" is the benchmark.

Another book you should all read (as recommended by girfan) is The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler. Some of his writing style is a bit awkward, and parts are out of date now, but it's a real eye-opener nonetheless. I had no idea that American zoning laws were so messed up, and that when a lot of Americans say they "can't" live a more ecologially sustainable lifestyle, they're not moaning and too lazy to make any changes, but they really can't!

So why should we non-Americans read it? Because European countries now seem to be adopting a lot of the worst features of American town "planning" when they should know better.

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I can see both sides of the doctor training argument, but though I know nothing of medical matters I also thought that to be a spectacularly bad example. Anyway, yes, I'd like to know how we compare with the rest of Europe rather than with the US in respect of specialisation.

[mina-laury.livejournal.com]

The same sites continually inserted themselves into our "Favorites". ???????

I'm not familiar enough with the spamming tactics of child porn sites to know whether they can do that, but it seems a lot more likely that her husband put them there.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

HTML and JavaScript (including that delivered by email) can do this. Although he could also have put them there himself, that strikes me as just a _bit_ of a stupid thing to do.

Remember that these people are saved christians, so no matter what he gets up to, they're still better people than you or I are!