This week's video shows me drawing some little mindful faces using my favourite Faber Castell watercolour pencils. I wanted to show a simple glimpse of how they work when you add water to the pencil marks. I am very much a beginner at the moment and pretty much just slosh it on! I love the messy imperfect effect and the texture that the pencils create.
Once again, I'm learning a lot about editing with each video I make. This week I learnt about adding an adjustment layer to brighten footage, when I realised that everything I had filmed made it look like it was twilight! Premiere Pro is so brilliant, I know I am only scratching the surface at the moment and can't wait to learn so much more.
I've lived in London for many years and had never visited Holland Park so I left the house early when half the city was still asleep and had a lovely wander round. I started by spending some time sharing my breakfast with the squirrels in the Japanese garden and then strolled by the peacocks to get a coffee and to admire the wisteria which was in full bloom. The park looked amazing in the sunshine and I found myself totally absorbed in drawing. Filming footage on my iPhone SE was easy and mini projects like this are really helping me to learn more about editing with Premiere Pro. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse of London in the sun.
Hello lovelies! So, I really enjoyed making my Drawing Mr Handsome video last week. It made me feel nostalgic for my teenage years when I used to play around filming my sister on a massive old VHS camera as she pretended to be a presenter. I then went on to study media at university mainly so I could run around with a camcorder. I loved it.
I've also been feeling curious about Premiere Pro as two friends of mine who are editors have recommended it. So I downloaded a trial from Adobe and while I was out for the day visiting some friends I filmed some footage on my iPhone. I also signed up for a trial of Skillshare so that I could watch some Premiere tutorials to get started. It took me a bit of trial and error but below is the result of my first attempt. I loved making it and it's really inspired me to think about more video ideas. I'm not sure where this fits into my plan for my illustration / publishing business but it's sparked my curiosity so let's see! I hope you enjoy watching it. Please comment on the video on YouTube if you like it.


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This pristine Kitchen is loaded with upscale finishes including sleek Stainless Steel appliances, double ovens, granite counters galore, and over sized island with built ins for additional storage, custom tiled backsplash, farm house sink and lovely cabinetry!
This pristine Move in Ready home is loaded with elegant features that are sure to impress! Nestled on a peaceful subdivision lot with NO BACK NEIGHBORS, this home offers a 4 car garage, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, Gameroom, Study, 2 staircases, an expansive backyard, pristine kitchen and Master Suite and MUCH MORE!
Immediately notice the soaring 21' ceilings, rich hardwood floors and elegant curved staircase with custom wrought iron threads!
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Simply Stunning entrance with hardwoods and custom threads on staircase, gorgeous chandelier and 21' ceiling foyer!
This lovely foyer boasts 21' ceilings and plenty of natural light! All front facing downstairs windows feature Plantation Shutters!
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text:
Ülke haritaları: Turks and Caicos Islands
Haritalar: village Balfour Town
Çok Yönlü Spor Sahası (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Manzara Noktası (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Müze (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Otel (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Misafirhane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Motel (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Cazibe Merkezi (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Apart Otel (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Süpermarket (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Spor Ürünleri (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Fotoğrafçı (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Alışveriş Merkezi (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Çamaşırhane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kuyumcu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Hırdavatçı (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kuaför (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Hediyelik Eşya Mağazası (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Mobilya Mağazası (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Çiçekçi (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kuru Temizleme (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Giyim Mağazası (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Araba Parçaları (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Oto Galeri (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kitapçı (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Güzellik Salonu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Fırın (Turks and Caicos Islands)
İçki Dükkanı (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Avukatlık Bürosu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Şirket Bürosu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Yüzme Havuzu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Stadyum (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Lunapark (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Abide (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Veteriner Hekim (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Üniversite (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Tiyatro (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Okul (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Restoran (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Postahane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kilise (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Eczane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Otopark (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Gece Kulübü (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Pazar Yeri (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kütüphane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Hastane (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Benzin istasyonu (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Fast Food (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Doktor (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Diş Hekimi (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Kolej (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Sinema (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Casino (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Araç Yıkama (Turks and Caicos Islands)
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Bar (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Banka (Turks and Caicos Islands)
Havaalanı (Turks and Caicos Islands)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Samaritans' Online Suicide Surveillance App an Ethical Minefield
In Gigaom, privacy and security journalist David Meyer discusses the release of a new app from the UK Samaritans called "Radar." The app monitors and automatically "alerts people to potentially suicidal tweets made by those they follow." Meyer admits at first he liked the app, but with links to a wide range of other commentators, he now describes the app as an "ethical and legal minefield."
According to CNN, the app flags phrases such as "help me," "tired of being alone," "hate myself" and "need someone to talk to."
"Samaritans Radar is in its infancy and won't get it right every time," the Samaritans reportedly said in a statement. "It's not good at sarcasm or jokes yet! But there's a way for you to give feedback on whether a Samaritans Radar alert was correct, so the service improves for everyone."
Meyer quotes the blogger Delusions of Candour, who described the difference between personally responding to a friend's distressed tweet and setting up an automated system for doing so: "The latter feels invasive and intrusive. It's not dissimilar to the contrast between bumping into a friend in the high street, and following that friend down the high street so you can engineer an encounter. There is also a risk that this app could be used to target vulnerable individuals; I have at least one friend who is outspoken about her mental illness and receives all kinds of abuse as a result, even (sometimes especially) when she is in crisis."
Meyers also quotes an email that a woman sent to the Samaritans: "Vulnerable people need to feel that they are calling the shots with regard to their own wellbeing. Samaritans Radar sweeps that away, simply by having no 'opt-in' facility…. By launching software that specifically purports to be activated 'discreetly', which a user's followers will have no knowledge of until they receive a communication checking up on them, you are sending the message that vulnerable people cannot be trusted to make their own choices about who to communicate with."
What's wrong with automatically scanning Twitter for suicidal tweets? (Gigaom, October 30, 2014)
New app helps flag suicidal tweets (CNN, October 29, 2014)
Previous articleReflections on MIA's Film Festival and Our Collective Human Future
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Steve McCrea November 4, 2014 at 5:36 pm
Creepy as heck!
kim November 4, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Worse than creepy – decidedly dangerous!!!
It could actively prevent people being honest about how they're feeling or from reaching out, however tenuously, in times of need in case someone who knows them overreacts and calls in the crisis team. It could also bring things crashing down around the ears of people who are in absolutely no need of help, but merely using some idiom that the app deems suspect or doesn't recognise as a joke. This truly is offensive.
Ethical nightmare or just plain nightmare?
These are very bad samaritans indeed.
B November 6, 2014 at 11:29 am
WTF? Now you'll have another awesome form of thought police – if you dare to share your feelings with other people and they are anything but rainbows and unicorns you can get a knock on the door and spend some delightful locked up in a psych ward. With attractions such as forced drugging, nude searches, shitty food, restraints and if you get it really bad involuntary ECT. What a lovely idea.


The exponentially accelerating use of public networks to facilitate private communications is exposing vital information to eavesdropping, tampering and regulatory compliance violations. In addition the conversion of Voice and Video to IP reveals intimate details of an enterprises telecommunication, perimeter surveillance and video conferences to easy observation with shareware packet sniffers.
Then there is the false sense of the security of Private Networks. Private Network Service provider networks, such as Metro Ethernet and Telco WANs, have unmanned facilities or minimal security at manned locations. Access to interconnecting circuits can be obtained at Telco Switching locations or at a multi-tenant building's common phone closet. Network service providers utilize collocated common equipment that is maintained by unvetted technicians. Increasing innovative industrial espionage among highly competitive businesses requires that extensive security measures are employed.
Stringent information security standards are mandated by a variety of legislative actions, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, California Database Security Breach Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, EU Data Protection Directive and the Federal Information Security Management Act.
"With the threat of a data breach looming large over every corporation that handles sensitive information, encryption has become the No. 1 answer to the question, 'How do I protect myself?' Then there are the mandates -- the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Graham-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley, the Payment Card Industry data security standard, and other regulations -- that require data protection, for which encryption is again the obvious answer." – Network World (10/2007) Encryption is the key to ensuring confidentiality, data integrity, and accountability. Advanced Encryption Standard is the government approved solution for protecting Data, Voice and Videotransmissions. AES, specifically using 256 bit keys, offers the enterprise network a secure method for transmission of confidential and secret corporate and government information.
The Engage Black•Bond and Black•Door products ensure the confidentiality and integrity of Intranet and Internet networks with the strongest commercially available cryptography that provides a secure and cost-effective solution for voice/video/data encryption that is compatible with VoIP, Video over IP, Multicast and its latency sensitive applications.
Engage Communication's packet and circuit Encryption solutions are purpose built encryption appliances that take the cryptic out of cryptography.
Every aspect of public and private communications security needs to be under scrutiny. From private infrastructure to shared public networks, the considerations for security are essentially the same.
• Is the Data, Voice or Video transmission secure and protected?
• Is compromised encryption technology being relied upon such as DES or 3DES?
• Does the encryption solution marginalize the capabilities of the primary equipment?
Engage's Black·Door transparently AES encrypts Ethernet Voice, Video or Data packets. The Black·Door operates intransparent bridge, VPN, tunnel or route modes.
As a transparent bridge all but the MAC layer is encrypted. This mode of operation is well suited for shared wireless networks such as Wi-Fi, or in LAN environments where the layer three protocols may not be IP. Bridging mode also protects network segments within an organization such as separating accounting from marketing. In tunnel mode a LAN segment is "tunneled" through a public or private network allowing a transparent bridge through any IP cloud. In route mode, individual encrypted routes are built to allow traffic flows over public or private IP networks. The unencrypted LAN segments at each end point can have unique keys to other remote peer networks. This method of operation has many applications in private enterprise as well as the public sector.
Engage's Black•Door Ethernet Encryptors protects the confidentiality and integrity of Intranet and Internet Ethernet networks with the strongest commercially available cryptography. Black•Door Ethernet Encryptor, which supports Point to Point and Multipoint information assurance configurations with unique dynamic keys, is specifically designed for real time wireline backbones and the full spectrum of outdoor Wireless WAN technologies including: Free Space Optics, licensed and unlicensed Radios.
The Engage Black•Door GIG Encryptor offers customers Gigabit speeds for securing existing packet based networks. The AES based encryption algorithms offer industry standard security levels at multiple layers of the network OSI while supporting up to Gigabit Ethernet transmission speeds. The Black•Door GIG Encryptor is installed at the edge of the existing network interfaces and means instant security upgrades for customer satisfaction and network invisibility.
Auto learning functions such as DHCP allow mobile use of the Black•Door permitting end user mobility and ease of use, ideal for road warriors, mobile operations, and temporary installations. The Black·Door and the Black·Bond also have the sophistication to support complicated full-mesh point to multipoint layer 2, VPN or layer 3 topologies. Engage supplies configurations for each topology and also offers drop ship pre-configuration.
AES Circuit Encryption is employed to prevent interception, tampering and disruption of public or private communication channels. Engage's Black•Bond T1/E1 Link Encryptor utilizes the AES to secure secret and sensitive information transmitted over point-to-point or dial-up T1/E1 communication links.
Black•Bond's are inserted between the Phone System's T1/E1 interface and the T1/E1 circuit. The Black•Bond operates at the Layer 1 or Layer 2 or Layer 3. In layer 1 mode the Black•Bond encrypts T1/E1 frames. Voice timeslots within the T1/E1 frames are AES encrypted. The signaling channel, which can be PRI, SS7 or Proprietary, is unencrypted.
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256 bit keys is utilized by the Black•Bond to protect electronic data. The AES algorithm is a symmetric block cipher that encrypts and decrypts information. AES is a FIPS approved symmetric encryption algorithm that may be used by U.S. Government organizations (and others) to protect sensitive information.


text:
Health Care Reform Economics and Forecasts
James Joyner · Tuesday, March 23, 2010 · 16 comments
There has been some interesting analysis of the impacts on our health care system of the bill President Obama signed into law earlier today by libertarian economists Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan, and Tyler Cowen. Many of the ideas have been floating around for a while (the bill's been in development for more than a year and the Senate version upon which it's based was passed in December) and we've discussed them quite a bit here on the blog and, especially, on OTB Radio but the aggregation is nonetheless interesting.
Kling calls the overall package "a clumsy way to redistribute wealth from the healthy to the sick." Which, in many ways, it is. But while I'm generally not a fan of government-imposed redistribution schemes, the sick would seem to be an especially deserving charity case.
Less philosophically, there are either some rather serious unintended consequences or incredibly calculated pitfalls in the plan as passed — even presuming that the reconciliation fixes go through.
Free Rider Problem Increases
The near-immediate ban on denial for pre-existing conditions and the delayed-until-2014 individual mandate actually increases the free rider problem that the latter was supposed to fix.
As Kling puts it, "The anti-discrimination provision alone reduces the incentive for healthy people to obtain insurance. Instead, they may prefer to wait until they get sick. To the extent that they do so, premiums will rise to reflect the average cost of health care for a sick person."
Caplan writes, "In practical terms, then, Heads I win, tails I break even remains the winning strategy. And as adverse selection drives up the drive of insurance, paying the uninsured penalty until you're seriously ill gets smarter and smarter."
Employer-Paid Insurance Going Away?
It was rather obvious that the combination of a public option and a low penalty for not covering employees was a backdoor way of shifting to a single payer system. But, of course, the public option died and we were left only with the penalty.
Caplan observes, "the penalty seems to asymptote to $2000/employee" annually. He observes "I have a feeling that post-recession jobs are going to be a lot less likely to offer health insurance." While I agree — employer-provided insurance is a model based on an economy that started evaporating in the 1950s — we didn't have any employee mandate at all previously. Presumably, though, the creation of the Exchanges provides a dumping ground for low value employees.
And most employers would be glad to give up the burden of insuring workers — especially blue collar workers — as it puts them at a competitive disadvantage versus overseas firms that have government provided systems.
Subsidy and Reimbursement Disparities Increase
While the main achievement of the bill is to cover more of the working poor, it nonetheless creates some strange inequities. As Cowen explains:
Many Americans will receive subsidies for insurance, from what I understand roughly in the range of 6k to 12k. Many other Americans — namely those who already have health insurance — will not receive direct subsidies of this nature. Yet the subsidy-receiving and non-subsidy-receiving Americans will very often belong to the same income classes.
This disparity does not bother me personally (I have other worries about the subsidies), but I believe it will be very unpopular once it is publicly understood. One way or another, the "firewall" between the exchanges and the employer-supplied system will break down. Some people will want to spread the subsidies, others will want to limit them. Yet the former is budgetarily problematic and the latter will be politically difficult.
A second and related issue is that the differences in reimbursement rates — across private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid (highest to lowest) — will become a more pressing issue. For one thing, Medicaid patients will be crowded out by those buying private insurance on the exchanges, plus they will be crowded out by the growing number of Medicaid (and Medicare) patients. There will be pressure to fix this problem and the difference in rates will lead to growing supplier gaming, queues, quality differentials, and so on.
Over time, reimbursement rates across programs (insurance subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid) will converge to an increasing degree. Subsidies will be increasingly determined by income class rather than previous insurance history.
In the limiting case (I'm not suggesting we will get there), everyone will receive means-tested subsidized vouchers for regulated private insurance. In this strange way, Medicare and Medicaid could end up partially privatized and Ezekiel Emanuel — a voucher advocate — will end up being more influential than his brother Rahm. We will have to live with the problems of means-testing to a higher degree than today, but we will have something closer to a unified system, as do most other countries with universal coverage. There will be political pressure for compulsory health care savings, as they have in Singapore, to lower costs of finance.
And this will all be much more transparent than current inequities, since more of it will be in the public sphere than is currently the case.
We'll All be Driving Cadillacs in the Future
Most of us have noticed this already but it's worth pointing out again: The tax on "Cadillac" insurance plans will kick in in 2018, by which time quite a few people will suddenly finding themselves driving "Cadillacs," since health insurance costs are skyrocketing while the brackets are only indexed to inflation. Over time, most middle class folks will be taxed on what they now consider ordinary plans.
Indeed, Ezra Klein has contended all along that this is precisely the point: It's a means of forcing costs down. But, since insurance companies are private, for-profit businesses (although ones on the verge of being public utilities under the new system) lower cost plans will inevitably be lower benefit plans.
Backdoor Single Payer?
My suspicion all along is that these problems were obvious to the bill's framers but that they were kicking the can down the road. Higher penalties, of course, would solve some of the above problems but they weren't politically possible in the current environment. Ultimately, though, they serve as a backdoor path to a single payer system, which most Democrats want but for which the votes aren't yet there.
The current health care delivery system (by which I mean the one that existed when we woke up this morning, not ObamaCare as it's being gradually phased in) is unsustainable. And while the new system will solve parts of the problem, especially access for the working poor and the permanently non-emergent sick, it does little to contain the exploding growth in costs and nothing to defuse the ticking demographic bomb.
And, if it ultimately undermines the employer-provided insurance model, which has most Americans very comfortable with their own medical situation, some sort of government-run system will look awfully good.
It's what Bill Clinton wanted in 1993 but couldn't get. And what Obama wanted in 2010 but was smart enough not to try. But by expanding on the already high proportion of the population getting their health coverage through the government and weakening the incentives for companies to insure their own employees, the leap will be smaller next time.
I'm not scaremongering here, just looking down the road to what seems like an inevitable junction. And it's where most of the developed world wound up decades ago. If our goal is to cover everyone, regardless of ability to pay or preexisting condition, then we're not talking about insurance but a social welfare system. And it would be cheaper and more efficient to centralize it than to piecemeal it.
Philosophically, I'm not sure I wouldn't be happier with something closer to a European system than the public-private patchwork monstrosity we've now got. We're much more likely to wind up with a French- or German-style system than a bureaucratic British National Health Service. My guess is that it'd be something akin to Medicaid for everyone with optional private supplemental insurance, with high value workers getting the latter from their employers.
FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, Health Care, US Politics, Arnold Kling, Bill Clinton, Bryan Caplan, economics, Ezra Klein, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Inflation, libertarian, Medicaid, Medicare, President Obama, Public Option, Recession, Redistribution, subsidies, Tyler Cowen
About James Joyner
James Joyner is a Security Studies professor at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm vet. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
spago says:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 15:34
Scaremongering…I don't remember the President saying anything about single-payer…or a high ranking member of congress suggesting the exact same thing you are…if they didn't openly present that consequence that would be disingenuous.
PD Shaw says:
I think Kling has a point that the free rider problem will probably be worse than it would have been had the mandate and premium increases been coordinated closer together. The bigger issue is that many don't think the mandate taxes will actually be enacted, so all of the premium-spreading benefits of the mandates will never occur.
OTOH, it's hard to game one's uninsured status and protect one's property from an unexpected accident or ailment. I would expect middle class compliance to still be high, as long as the payments don't jeopardize their class.
The CBO reported that mandates generally reach a 60% to 90% compliance rate. We are currently about 85% insured without a mandate, so the value of the mandate is probably more in preventing back-sliding. The effectiveness of the mandate will more depend upon the appeal of the subsidies, personal financial condition and personal values/social norms. I think the delay of the mandate, and increasing perception that it's just a tax, will severely undercut the social norm of compliance.
john personna says:
To make any "free rider" difference, in real numbers, you'd have to get people to cancel their insurance. Changing behavior in the small number of "new seekers" is not going to make a huge difference.
I don't see the insured canceling because they don't insurance it again until they get sick or 2014, whichever comes first. I'm not, any of you that crazy?
The Q says:
Mr. Joyner,
You write, "I'm not sure I wouldn't be happier with something closer to a European system than the public-private patchwork monstrosity we've now got. We're much more likely to wind up with a French- or German-style system…."
Speaking of Euro models, I always wondered why the Swiss system of public-private coverage wasn't talked about more by conservatives as a viable compromise to the left/right extremists on this issue.
It seems the Swiss model combines the left's desire for universal coverage with the right's desire that private sector market efficiency be freed from government control and in Switzerland, individual's make their policy choices, not government or employers.
I think if conservatives would have championed a clear alternative to "Obamacare" based on more progressive Euro style private/public cooperation, they could have contributed mightily to an intelligent civil discourse on a hugely important issue.
But, alas, they settled for the strategy of "baby killer", "Marxist takeover" "death panels" etc.
Hence, my utter disdain for their infantile behaviour and vacuous policy alternatives.
Steven Taylor says:
My suspicion all along is that these problems were obvious to the bill's framers but that they were kicking the can down the road.
I have little doubt that a lot of it is can-kicking. A lot of it, too, is that legislation is usually messy as attempts are made to please multiple constituencies.
It may well be that this is all going to radically alter the way in which insurance is provided, although I can equally see that what has happened is that insurance (and insurance companies) have become even MORE entrenched and institutionalized in our health care system making dislodging them and moving to a single payer system all the more difficult.
There is never going to be a British system here. Indeed, people who use that as the comparison are simply incorrect. The models you note (such as Germany or France) are probably better ones to emulate. At a minimum there really has not been a serious debate about alternative models and most American has a general sense that all universal health care is just like the British model (and that Canada has the same system as the British). Certainly columns and such constantly conflate those two and ignore all the other options.
James Joyner says:
I think most conservatives are genuinely ideologically opposed. Perhaps, having grown up in around the military's socialized medicine, I'm not deathly afraid of it. Although, frankly, the military's model is worst than most.
At a minimum there really has not been a serious debate about alternative models and most American has a general sense that all universal health care is just like the British model (and that Canada has the same system as the British). Certainly columns and such constantly conflate those two and ignore all the other options.
I think that's right. Almost everyone seems to think NHS is THE model for socialized medicine. It's almost assuredly the worst of the major countries' systems.
I think you err in your assumption about single payer. What is important is to try to get everyone into a single system. Ideally we would do away with Medicare and have everyone in the same system. It could be a market based system, a Singapore type approach or a German/French system or single payer. Our patchwork system is designed to create inefficiencies and interest groups. It makes it hard to achieve any workable solution.
Tyler Cowen thinks we are going to vouchers, which is a little bit weird for me because it felt like I was the only one saying vouchers there for a while.
Maybe there enough moderate Republicans who, like James, are willing to work toward something 'less bad' at this point.
After all, holding the line on what we've got could never have been the long term solution. It was always a holding strategy, until the Republicans could get back in.
employer-provided insurance model, which has most Americans very comfortable with their own medical situation
Perhaps you have been "inside the beltway" too long. My wife and I have health insurance that most people would envy. But good times don't last forever, and today's comfortable white collar couple can easily see those benefits vanish due to layoffs. It's happened to me before, and being a top performer at that job did not save me when head count cuts came around.
So while I am very thankful for our hight quality & affordable insurance, I am far from comfortable. Maybe you need to get out more.
Almost everyone seems to think NHS is THE model for socialized medicine
Again, you need to get out more. No one I know thinks this.
Rick DeMent says:
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 05:42
I always wondered why the Swiss system of public-private coverage wasn't talked about more by conservatives as a viable compromise to the left/right extremists on this issue.
Because they were simply not interested in a policy debate whatsoever. If I were a conservative I would be pissed that they essentially locked themselves out of the debate in favor of a scorched earth strategy to "get" Obama the way they "derailed" Clinton's presidency (and all that got them was a 2nd Clinton term). Conservatives could have gotten many concessions such as tort reform, increased market reforms (I'm often bewildered that the AMA, which is essentially a labor union gets such a free pass from conservatives since they are a big reason the competition for medical ides is stifled in favor of an over reliance on pharmacology treatment). Instead they played politics and got their ass handed to them.
Honestly, I think what congress just created is going to make things worse rather than better. It is almost like they wrote a bill that is likely going to make healthcare more expensive rather than more affordable, and access is still going to be a problem (just because a person has insurance, that doesn't mean they are going to be able to find a doctor).
I think at some point we are going to end up with some kind of government funded and run system from cradle to grave, but I doubt it is going to look like the UK's or Canada's system-although these are the two systems most Americans think of when the issue is brought up.
I also think part of the problem is we can't even define what should and shouldn't be covered as basic healthcare.
Most people don't spend a lot of time contemplating What if? scenarios. If they've been insured for years, they tend not to be particularly worried about being uninsured absent some specific layoff concern.
Just look at the debate on the issue. Almost everyone compares our system with a British-style, state-run system rather than a Continental model.
I'm afraid that was effective politics by the right. They wanted people to think there were two choices: our current system or a British/Canadian Bogey Man.
Raoul says:
When you look at the sausage you will find some ugly ingredients necessary to make the sausage. Without them, there is no sausage. We can nitpick amd I agree that some of the provisons are far from ideal but the real comaprison is- this bill as opposed to none. Its too bad pubbies picked up the marbles and went home.
Trump Administration Won't Defend Obamacare, Says Mandate Is Unconstitutional
Medicare for All's Unintended Consequences
The Cautionary Tale of Vermont's Failed Single-Payer System
Policy Analysts From Left, Right, And Center Criticize House GOP Obamacare Replacement
Some Observations On The Debate Over Health Care And Insurance, Part I


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Major engine service, Antifoul, Anodes, Cutlass bearing in June 2018. Invoices available for inspection.
In June 2017 the interior was given a professional deep clean by a boat valeting company.
In the last few months she has got new carpets and curtains.
Interior is in impeccable condition.
Brand new bar fridge installed. There is also a new VAX vacuum cleaner and de-humidifier in the package.
The yacht has a brand new bimini, bow cushions, front screen cover and full winter cover for the upper deck.
Brand new mooring warps and fenders with covers from May 2015.
New Raymarine Hybrid touch screen Bluetooth navigation plotter, Raymarine Auto pilot & new Radar. iPhone and iPad can be used to display and control navigational data.
Engine room fire system renewed.
This is one of those boats that has been loved to bits by the vendor. Over the last two years he has done everything to turn this boat into an impeccable yacht. The vendor has cruised the yacht on the south eastern and south western coasts of Spain and Morocco. In other words this yacht is not one that has sat in the marina for endless months. Despite that the boat has only 920 hours on the engines.
I don't normally tempt fate but I am sure that this boat would pass a survey with flying colours.
I recommend an early viewing. I can supply a list of all the improvements works carried out over the past two years to any prospective purchaser.
This Astondoa 46 Fly has been personally photographed and viewed by John & Lynda of Boatshed Gibraltar. Click here for contact details.


News Archives - White Square Chemical, Inc.
White Square Chemical (WSQ or the Company), a specialized materials technology company whose primary business is the manufacture and commercial exploitation of PNF™ (polyphosphazene technology), a specialty polymer, has today confirmed that it has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Novus BV for its lead product, Novus® a PNF™ based denture liner, covering the core European markets of the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium.
Novus® http://www.novusliner.com is a long-standing and proven FDA-approved denture liner that WSQ intends to commercialize through a series of investments and partnerships.
Novus BV has launched social media platforms at http://www.novusliner.nl and http://www.facebook.com/novusbv .
In the United States over 6.5 million new denture arches are fitted annually. The corresponding estimated figure for European countries is approximately 5.0 million.
WSQ is focused on promoting Novus® as a primary health care tool to address an historic issue with denture discomfort by providing an effective, long lasting cushion between the traditional hard acrylic material from which the majority of dentures are manufactured and human soft tissue and the alveolar bone. In addition, Novus® has a proven ability to reduce the incidence of bad breath resulting from bacteria build-up.
Novus™ is a PNF™ based denture liner. PNF™ is made from dichloropolymer ("DCP") and is an inorganic polyphosphazene material. The material was manufactured and sold in the 1980s and 1990s. PNF™ based products were originally developed and manufactured on a commercial scale by Firestone Corporation with US Department of Defense funding. Novus® was developed with a National Institute of Health grant and funding. Hygenic Corporation first commercially introduced the product into the international dental market in the late 1980s.
Since its formation in 2012, WSQ has been successfully developing a proprietary commercial manufacturing process for the production of DCP and PNF™. The existing manufacturing process is used today to provide large-scale production at WSQ's plant inWoburn, MA for the purposes of manufacturing Novus™.
WSQ's goal is to monetize its technology business by creating a continuous revenue stream based solely on DCP and PNF™ based products. Once an application is commercialized, WSQ http://www.wsqchem.com will form partnerships with strategic companies who specialize in the sector for which the PNF™ application is created. The Company has identified, and will bring to market during the course of 2016, other PNF™ based applications that were previously commercialized and have near-term cash generation profiles. In all, there are some 700-patented or identified applications for PNF™, which are stranded because of a lack of commercial scale manufacturing. These applications extend into the world of aerospace/defense, oil and gas, energy (lithium ion batteries) and biotech. WSQ is based in Wilmington DE and is managed by an experienced management team.


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Creatine Facts and Myths
This scientifically proven muscle-builder is one of the most popular supplements on the market—and one of the most misunderstood
by The Editors of Men's Health Published: Aug 21, 2012
Even if you're not a weight lifter, you've undoubtedly heard of creatine, one of the most researched supplements in history.
It's a combination of amino acids produced by the liver, kidney, and pancreas. Creatine is not a steroid—it's naturally found in muscle and in red meat and fish, though at far lower levels than in the powder form sold on bodybuilding websites and at your local GNC.
How does it work? Creatine reduces fatigue by transporting extra energy into your cells, says Ari Levy, M.D., who works with patients at the Program for Personalized Health and Prevention at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, is the compound your body uses for energy. For a muscle to contract, it breaks off a phosphate molecule from ATP. As a result, ATP becomes ADP (adenosine diphosphate). The problem: You can't use ADP for energy, and your body only has so much stored ATP. The fix: ADP takes a phosphate molecule from your body's stores of creatine phosphate, forming more ATP.
If you have more creatine phosphate—which you do if you take a creatine supplement—you can work out longer and do sets of, say, eight reps instead of six. Over weeks and months, that added workload allows you to add lean muscle mass, lift heavier weights, and become stronger. (Want the perfect workout to build muscle and torch fat? Check out the new 8-DVD metabolic training series from Men's Health Speed Shred.)
But should you worry about side effects? Does creatine cause you to lose weight when you stop it, or does it hurt your kidneys, like you may have heard? Here are the key myths and facts you need to know.
Creatine is similar to anabolic steroids. Myth. Steroids mimic testosterone and are banned in the Olympics and in professional sports. By contrast, the International Olympic Committee, professional sports leagues, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association do not prohibit creatine. (The NCAA won't let colleges give it to athletes, though.)
Creatine can help you build muscle mass without hitting the gym. Myth. It shows some improvement in kids with muscular dystrophy, even if they're not exercising, says Mark Tarnopolsky, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and medicine and director of the neuromuscular and neurometabolic clinic at McMaster University Medical Center in Ontario. "[But] the best effect in healthy humans is seen when creatine is combined with resistance exercise training."
Creatine causes gastrointestinal upset. True—but it's rare. Tarnopolsky says his studies show 5 to 7 percent of people experience either stomach aches, diarrhea, or both. (More seriously, we spoke to expert Lou Schuler about whether Creatine Will Make You Crazy.)
Creatine will help you run a faster 5K. Myth. Creatine helps athletes with more fast-twitch muscle fibers (used to swing a baseball bat) more than athletes with more slow-twitch ones (used by marathon runners). "If you're an endurance athlete, if you're not doing something that involves the fast-twitch muscle fibers, you don't need to be on creatine," says orthopedic surgeon Tony Wanich, M.D., a sports medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
If you do want to run a faster 5K, use this plan from Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S. You'll run only three days a week, but finish faster than ever before!
Creatine causes weight gain. Fact. (But that's kind of the point.) It pulls H2O into your muscles, which causes water-weight gain and makes muscles look bigger initially. (You don't actually gain muscle fibers until you work out.) "Creatine is a molecule that has a very strong attraction for water," says Gordon Purser, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at the University of Tulsa who studies creatine and has used it himself for the past decade. No two people will have the same results. "Weight gain of about 0.8 to 2.9 percent of body weight in the first few days of creatine supplementation occurs in about two-thirds of users," says Christine Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D., sports dietitian for Georgia State University Athletics and editor in chief of Sports Nutrition: A Practice Manual for Professionals. What can you expect after the water weight gain? In a study of 20-year-olds taking creatine and doing weight training, Tarnopolsky found some gained two pounds of muscle but one even gained 17 pounds of it—with the same amount of supplement and the same training.
Creatine doesn't work well for everyone. True. "One major factor with creatine is that some people have high levels in muscle naturally," says Tarnopolsky. Meat and fish eaters are less likely to respond than vegans, who have low levels in their diet. Your muscle makeup matters, too. Most people have about 50 percent fast-twitch fibers (responsible for sprinting and jumping) and 50 percent slow-twitch fibers (responsible for endurance exercise), says Peter Adhihetty, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of applied physiology and kinesiology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Those guys should respond well. But people with 70 percent fast-twitch and 30 percent slow-twitch muscle will see even more results, he says.
Creatine makes you look softer. True. There's a reason bodybuilders stop using creatine a month or so before a competition. "As the creatine hydrates itself, it causes water to flow into the muscle. That extra water may increase the volume of the muscles, but it also makes them look mushy rather than defined," says Purser. Your move: Take it during the fall, winter, and spring to build muscle. Go off it during the summer to show off your beach abs.
Do you have pounds of belly fat you want to lose? Check out The Lean Belly Prescription—the no-diet, no workout plan that's better than running 5 miles a day!
Creatine users will lose muscle when they stop taking the supplement. Myth. Your muscles may look smaller because creatine adds water volume. "The real question is, 'Will you maintain your strength and muscle mass, dry muscle mass, when you discontinue the use of creatine?' " says Purser. "The answer to that is absolutely yes. Once you have built the muscle, as long as you continue to lift, you will maintain it."
You shouldn't take too much creatine. Fact. "It is illogical to take more than 20 grams a day for a week max or seven grams a day for months," says Tarnopolsky. "[There is] no evidence that this would do anything more in terms of loading the muscle, so why on earth would someone waste money and time and effort for unknown risks and zippo added benefit. Anything in the world—sugar, coffee, fat, protein, salt—taken in excess can lead to health issues."
Have more questions? Check out Çreatine: What It Is, What It Does and Its Side Effects
So, you want to take creatine? Here's how.
You'll see a bunch of different forms of creatine on your supplement store's shelves. The one you want is creatine monohydrate. "Creatine monohydrate is the exact compound that more than 95 percent of the studies used, so why take a chance on another compound from a safety and effectiveness perspective?" Tarnopolsky says.
The first week you go on creatine, some experts recommend a "loading phase" of 20 grams a day for five to seven days. Afterward, go to 5 grams per day.
The fine print: See your doctor first if you have high blood pressure or diabetes, if you regularly take any prescription meds or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen (which can tax the kidneys), if you're over age 40 (since kidney function slowly declines after age 30), or if you have a history of kidney or liver disease.
The Editors of Men's Health
The editors of Men's Health are your personal conduit to the top experts in the world on all things important to men: health, fitness, style, sex, and more.
18 Healthy Cereals That Taste Great Too
Intuitive Eating Is the Solution to Good Nutrition
What Is Casein Protein Powder?
From Men's Health for Almond Board of California_US
5 Questions About Almonds—Answered
Jonathan Majors Shared His Bodybuilder Diet
Vitamins That Provide Immune System Support
7 Healthy Recipes From Tom Brady's Former Chef
How Morris Chestnut Ate to Get in 'Best Man' Shape
Why Your Immunity Drink Is A Scam
What an Obesity Physician Eats in a Day
What You Should Know About Probiotic Side Effects
The Lazy Diet Is the Only Diet You'll Ever Need
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Vice-Chairman, Peoples Leasing & Financial Services Ltd.
Capt M. Moazzam Hossain was born on 01 June 1961 in a respectable Muslim family of Barisal. He started his career with Bangladesh Navy as a Commissioned Officer and later on joined Merchant Fleet. He obtained Master Class degree from Australia and also FCIT from UK. He is a successful entrepreneur, industrialist, a businessman whose business interest has been successfully diversified mainly in Shipping, Ship Chartering, Investment, Readymade Garments and Real Estate Development.


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Uncategorized/ Fall 2009
By Alison Lobron Demographics 0 Comments Oct 22, 2009
INTRO TEXT three years ago, Dan Ladd of Lincoln closed up a real estate law practice and went back to school. Faced with a slow business climate and a desire for a skill he could take overseas, the former lawyer is now in training to be a veterinary technician.
Dan Ladd left real
estate law to become a
veterinary technician.
Ladd, 59, is one of thousands of Massachusetts residents who are in the throes, or on the cusp, of a significant career change. More than 3 percent of Bay State workers have lost their jobs since this recession began in December 2007; others are sensing uncertainty in the air and want to re-evaluate their current paths.
But professionals seeking change say they find little in the way of a clear pathway to get there — surprising, given how common the situation is. After all, the average US worker of the Baby Boom generation held 10.8 jobs before age 42. (Not all of those job changes represented career changes, but no one has a better number because the government says there's no consensus on what constitutes a career change.) The stories of Dan Ladd and other successful career changers offer a glimpse at what strategies work and which ones might work.
On the individual level, a satisfactory transition requires experiencing the day-to-day aspects of a profession before spending money on further education; getting to know people outside one's usual network; identifying transferrable skills; and opening oneself up to unheard-of careers.
For policymakers, fostering successful change means thinking more broadly about when, in a person's life, public educational dollars should be invested. Painful as it's been, this recession offers an opportunity for us to recognize the extent to which our current system — in which you pay a lot of money up front for an education, often before you have an idea what you want to do — is poorly suited to an era in which many people will work for 50 years. A good first step, career changers say, would be different financial aid policies for people with, say, more than 10 years of work experience. Another would be fostering more avenues for people to test-drive different careers without making a significant investment in education. A third may be acknowledging that men and women may approach transition differently, and that, for reasons that are unclear, state resources are now doing a better job reaching women.
There's also a cosmic cultural shift that needs to happen, a greater recognition that (measurable or not) career change is common. We still ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. The question that would better reflect our reality — and the likely future — is, "What do you want to try first?"
Courage from a sour economy
Ladd, a graduate of Boston University and Suffolk Law School, says he enjoyed practicing law for many years but increasingly craved a career that offered a "little more sense of adventure," where he might be able to take his skills overseas. "It wasn't a pull so much to the veterinary field as a pull to a field that had different characteristics from law — more physically active, more opportunities to be outdoors, where I could develop a skill that was transferable elsewhere," says Ladd.
"The idea of being a vet was always interesting to me," he says. "In the '90s, I thought about it, but didn't quite have the courage."
Courage came, in part, from a sour economy. Facing the beginnings of a real estate slump in 2006, and inspired by a girlfriend who had gone to nursing school in her 40s, Ladd sought help through Jewish Vocational Services. He knew only that he wanted hands-on work, likely involving animals or some form of landscape design. His counselor urged him to volunteer in as many fields as he found interesting, so he took a position at the Stone Zoo, then later switched to the animal hospital at the Franklin Park Zoo. While volunteering, he learned about veterinary technicians, a field that required less training than becoming a veterinarian would. He started a bachelor's of science program at Mount Ida College in January 2007 and expects to graduate next summer. While Ladd is eyeing work in Massachusetts, he also hopes to bring his animal-care skills overseas, perhaps as a Peace Corps volunteer.
While he says he felt some financial freedom because he does not have children, he still needed loans to supplement his savings, and Ladd found the financial-aid process frustrating because schools treated him, in effect, as though he were 18 years old. "They're really all structured around someone who is in their late teens or early twenties and getting loans based on parental income," he says. When he applied for loans, he had to show his own past income as an indication of "family income" — even though, unlike the parent of a 19-year-old, he wouldn't have the same salary while he went to school.
To be sure, financial aid is an anxious and uncertain process for students of all ages. But it's also one that assumes that 20-ish is the age for education investment — and the rest of life is the time when you reap the benefits — when in fact, many need the training later in life.
"That's why people like me are employed full-time!" jokes Phyllis Stein, a private career counselor in Cambridge. "There isn't a structure the way there is when you're in college. But that's often way before you have enough data and information about yourself" to make a good decision, she says.
Kerin Mayher, 33, invested a lot in a career that turned out to be neither satisfying nor especially stable. A Raynham native who now lives in Medford, she studied psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts –Amherst and, as part of her academic program, worked to help prepare prison inmates for release. Through on-the-job training, she got a license to work as a social worker with children in the court system. She quickly assumed she'd make more money doing similar work if she had a law degree, so she went to Suffolk Law School. When she graduated — with $100,000 in school loans — she found a job climate remarkably different than what she expected, and different than what she felt the school had promised her.
"What I failed to look into before I went to law school was that if you don't graduate in the top 10 of your class, you don't get one of those big law firm jobs that pay $150,000," says Mayher, who initially took a job in a general practice. "I was working my butt off to make $45,000."
In 2005, she got a job working for the state Department of Social Services, where she'd previously been a social worker. "It just wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I wasn't able to effect change like I thought I would," says Mayher. She remembers feeling envious of the social workers, who earned overtime when she didn't.
The next few years were a series of stops and starts, and personal challenges. After Mayher's parents suffered serious injuries in a car accident in 2007, she quit the Social Services job "cold turkey," she says. While helping her parents recuperate, Mayher managed her father's residential rental business and then worked as a legal recruiter, where, she says, she learned how many attorneys are unhappy with their work.
"It was a good position for me, but then I got laid off," she says. "I decided what I really enjoyed was the people contact, and helping professionals decide what they wanted to do. So I did some informational interviewing and joined some legal professional organizations, and gathered all the info I could. I took a temp job at the Northeastern Law School career office and did some career advising." Mayher is now employed at one of the state's one-stop career centers — where she tries to focus on ex-lawyers — and hopes to open her own consulting firm helping lawyers get re-trained.
Looking back, she wishes she'd spent more time in law offices. "I knew what a lawyer does, and of course I read tons of John Grisham books and it seemed really exciting," she says with a laugh. "I did a lot of internships in college, but I never did one at a law firm. I had no idea what it was really like to be a lawyer and, had I known that, I probably would not have gone down the path I went down. It isn't a good fit for my personality."
Self-assessment is key
Both Mayher and Ladd believe the key to a successful change is to have the chance to try things out, which can be difficult when you're already employed full-time. Indeed, the chance for exploration may be one of the few upsides to a layoff — though not everyone has the financial cushion for experimentation.
Suzanne Bump, state secretary for labor and workforce development, urges laid-off Massachusetts residents to take advantage of the state's 37 "one-stop" career centers. Low-income residents may be eligible for federal vouchers for work-training and for one-on-one counseling. But professionals of all income levels can participate in courses to help them figure out how to transfer skills from one field to another. Bump says the number of workers with some post-secondary education visiting the state career centers swelled in the last year. "There is a tremendous awareness of the need for skills assessment and a greater willingness to sit themselves down in the classroom and make a real investment in their skills capacity," says Bump.
But Bump says the state faces a particular challenge around gender and figuring out how to better serve men. She reports that although this recession has hit male workers harder than female ones, approximately 60 percent of the lower-income people who visit one-stop career centers are women, a statistic that's taken her office by surprise.
"There's a real openness toward self-assessment and mediation on the part of women in the workforce," says Bump. "Once we get out of crisis mode, I want us to really focus on what it is that we can do better to bring more men into the training system."
Chris Leuchtenburg of Acton is a man who did seek help when he was unemployed — though he did so from private counselor Phyllis Stein. Leuchtenburg spent 25 years in the computer industry, working his way up to the position of vice president of business development for a start-up. But when the first dot-com bubble popped in 2001, his job went with it. He spent a year without a job and began seeing Stein. "I'd been thinking of leaving the industry for some time, and this felt like nature's way of telling me the time was right," says Leuchtenburg. "I had a strong interest in music, so I looked at that, but I was also interested in the environment." He also wanted to do more hands-on work, in which he created a product rather than selling someone else's.
On Stein's advice, Leuchtenburg started a process that can strike dread into the heart of anyone who isn't a self-help book author: networking. His mother introduced him to a friend whose son worked for the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut, and that friend recommended he look into GIS. "I said, 'What's GIS?'" Leuchtenburg remembers.
As he learned about Geographic Information Systems, he got interested in the technical aspect of mapping, and began taking courses at UMass–Boston. He now works part-time for the state's Division of Ecological Restoration and part-time in the city of Cambridge's watershed division, making maps to help determine which rivers need restorations, and which dams could be removed.
While the technical environment is familiar, Leuchtenburg likes doing the hands-on piece rather than managing others. The father of three says his pay cut was significant, but it coincided with his wife's return to paid work after being home with their children. With some lifestyle cutbacks, they were able to afford the change, as well as the course work he needed.
Alison Lobron
It is difficult to legislate for serendipitous encounters like the conversation that introduced Leuchtenburg to GIS — especially for Bay State residents without much of a financial cushion to figure out their next steps. But Secretary Bump hopes the one-stop centers will provide people with networking opportunities, like the one that worked for Leuchtenburg, as well as emotional support. "A major function of career centers is to allow people to maintain social ties and avoid the isolation and shame that can come from unemployment," she says.
Leuchtenburg says the combination of networking and career counseling — which helped him expand his sense of possibilities and manage the anxiety of unemployment — worked for him. "During that year, when I didn't know if I would work or when, that was stressful," he recalls. But having emerged from the other side of the change, he says, "My job satisfaction is fabulous."
Tagged in: Demographics
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