July 2011
10 posts
What kind of health system does Ontario want? |... →
Great column on LHINs:
Ontario has to do decide if it wants to continue to have a health system in which decisional and spending power is concentrated in hospitals or whether it wants regional authorities – called LHINs or something else – that determine the right mix of spending among institutional care, community care, prevention programs and so on.
The fundamental problem is that...
Peel’s ‘hard-line’ police abuse the law: critics |... →
Disgusting:
For the second time in less than a month, a judge has set free someone charged by Peel Regional Police, and ruled that officers lied and intimidated suspects.
The double blow from the judiciary has done little to shake the police service that patrols the fast-growing cities of Brampton and Mississauga to the west of Toronto: It has no plans to investigate or discipline the...
The locavore's dilemma | Edward L. Glaeser →
In 2008, two Carnegie Mellon researchers analyzed the reduction in carbon emissions that might come from moving to local food. They found that American food consumption produces greenhouse gas equivalent to 8.9 tons of carbon dioxide per household per year. Food delivery represents .4 tons of that total; all agricultural transportation up and down the food chain creates one ton of carbon...
Richard Dawkins on vivisection: "But can they... →
… would you expect a positive or a negative correlation between mental ability and ability to feel pain? Most people unthinkingly assume a positive correlation, but why?
Isn’t it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain, precisely because we are capable of intelligently working out what is good for us, and what damaging events we should avoid? Isn’t...
Gary Greenberg’s “Manufacturing Depression” and... →
Many people today are infatuated with the biological determinants of things. They find compelling the idea that moods, tastes, preferences, and behaviors can be explained by genes, or by natural selection, or by brain amines (even though these explanations are almost always circular: if we do x, it must be because we have been selected to do x). People like to be able to say, I’m just an...
Hip Implants Show That New Is Not Always Improved... →
These stories are terrifically important if you are a healthcare policymaker, practitioner or consumer:
A review of the medical world’s embrace of the metal-on-metal hips over the past decade — including interviews with doctors, industry consultants, regulators, medical experts and patients — shows how innovation’s lure led almost everyone to seize on a product promoted as a breakthrough...
Death in the Pot | Deborah Blum →
An essay on food poisoning and food safety regulation:
History’s best-known poisoners, for the most part, aimed low rather than high. They mixed arsenic into oatmeal, aconitine into cake and curry, mercury into figs, and they served these toxic snacks to husbands and wives, lovers and mistresses, friends, family, and business partners, repeatedly demonstrating that deliberate poisoning of food...
Jonathan Lebed's Extracurricular Activities |... →
Fascinating story about a 14-year-old boy who started trading and promoting stocks on the internet (in 1999!) and eventually gave $285,000 to the SEC in a settlement — while keeping $500,000:
To anyone who wandered into the money culture after, say, January 1996, it would have seemed absurd to take anything said by putative financial experts at face value. There was no reason to get...