"I like to be comfy at home."
Funny Animal Photos by Ty Buchanan
New System to Watch Workers
Spying is everywhere these days and researchers with employer backing are studying the way employees move during work tasks. They don't seem to care what effect this has on a workers mental state, considering you will have a contraption fitted that will go into the bathroom with you.
The DorsaVi company based in Melbourne has developed a monitoring system called ViSafe. It attaches to the body by means of sticky pads that measures muscle impulses and body motion. Critically, it measures the speed at which one is moving. This will help to make the employee move faster by explaining that he/she does not move fast enough during work hours - hands up for running on the spot!
Data are examined by the subject, researcher, workplace assessor, oh and another employee who is there to make up the numbers. Just where workplace assessor gets his skills and expertise from is a mystery. Like those wonderful abstract tests they give to job applicants that are never tested in real life situations - indeed, which are irrelevant to real life and measure, well, nothing actually.
It is okay to use such technology on sports people, but in the workplace they can cause a build up of stress in employees that employers with there great intelligence cannot seem to understand. This is mainly because employers can please themselves about what they do during the day and workers cannot. Employees are trapped in a prison of compulsory work tasks. "ViSafe can tell you in a quantifiable way how far a worker can bend over." That will prove useful.
Technology by Ty Buchanan
Drug Companies and Pharmacists Want More Regulation
It is always a worry when drug manufacturers and pharmacists force themselves on decision-making bodies. Self interest rules both groups. Drug manufacturers want to increase sells and raise prices by "hook or by crook". Pharmacists want to hold onto their monopoly provided first by a piece of paper provided by a college and secondly by the government paymaster.
Pharmacists are like real estate agents - there is one on every street corner. In a competitive market this shouldn't be the case. Skills learned at university in chemistry is never used. Everything today is prepackaged. An unskilled person could do the job. They even want to do the work of doctors extending prescription repeats.
The Victorian Pharmaceutical Misuse Summit includes the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. They want to bring in a medication monitoring system to reduce the number of drug overdoses. Being cynical, confiscation would be an ideal tact to increase sales. But aren't overdoses mainly taken by those intending to take their own lives? Surely, they are "barking up the wrong tree". More treatment facilities for mental illness are what is needed not medication controls.
We do not need another level of costly bureaucracy that clearly will not have any benefits. Obstructing patients from getting morphine based pain killers will only drive them into the illegal market. More regulation and policing of this "industry" has had not impact whatsoever over the years. In the US they have arrested so many drug dealing people it has become a nation of prisons, Do we want that here?
In Australia, GPs make a joke to patients when they have to phone up with the patient's details and get a prescription number in order to prescribe strong painkillers. Even doctors see it as an unwanted bureaucratic process. A doctor decides to write the prescription before he makes the phone call and the request is never turned down.
Health by Ty Buchanan
Climate Change is Inevitable
Australia is one the world's major producers of wheat. If climate change reduces national output there will be widespread consequences. The economy will suffer with the need to import wheat. Internationally, a wheat shortage will put prices up and many poor people will have to go without.
On the positive side some regions of Australia will get more rain. People will still be able to "fatten up" on sugar and rice, despite research showing that sugar contains no nourishment whatsoever for the human body. Two centuries ago a group of British sailors was shipwrecked on the west coast of Africa. The ship was beached. Even though the ship had a full load of West Indian sugar they all died of malnutrition.
Getting back to the main point. There will be competition for arable land pushing land prices up. There is also a link between the land and sea. Climate change will reduce the fish catch. Living in the bush will become impossible with farming failing to prop up local economies.
Potential for farmers to move up into higher areas is limited because Australia is a flat continent. Of course, we could all choose to move south. This would create the need for massive new investment in infrastructure.
These problems will affect the generation of children living today. By 2050, the food bowls in South Australia for sheep and beef will be no more. Man had little impact on the environment in the past, so we do not have the "genes" to change our ways. Pollution will inevitably continue until all the damaging changes above come to fruition. People working today will for the most part be dead. "It isn't our worry is it mate?"
Agriculture by Ty Buchanan
Blue-Green Algae Causes Motor Neuron Disease
Motor Neuron Disease (MND) in not something that just happens to certain people with no hope of recovery. There is new hope about the cause and future treatment. It seems that the marine pest blue-green algae which grows in freshwater and saltwater is the cause. Apparently, it is more widespread than previously thought.
It can be present in marine food that we consume and even in plant seeds. Like other toxins it moves through the food chain becoming more concentrated in species at the top of the line of consumption. It drastically changes the human body interfering with the way proteins function.
The Australian research was based in Guam the place where motor neurone disease is the highest. People there have a taste for bats. When the food chain of these bats was followed it lead to the seeds of a cycad tree. Blue-green algae was found growing around the tree particularly on its roots.
If a drug can be developed that can stop the toxin's action on the body's proteins this would at least be a treatment for Motor Neuron Disease. If you want to lessen the chances of getting MND then stop eating sea food. However, flavoring from marine species is added to pre-prepared meals. Health products like vitamin B and iron supplements have blue-green algae added because it is a source of protein.
Science by Ty Buchanan
Ancient Britons Were Cannibals
Watch out Caribs: your reputation could be under threat. This group of tribal people found in the West Indies when explorers first arrived there were given the "badge" of real cannibals. It now seems cannibalism was practiced elsewhere, in Britain as a matter of fact. Yes, in jolly old blighty.
Ancient Britons sat around the fire enjoying bloody drinks from skulls. They reached out to grab pieces of human flesh from the spit. Human remains from a dig at Glough's Cave show dismemberment of some bodies. There is evidence of butchering with bone marrow being removed. This is the most nutritious substance that can be obtained from a body. The edges of skulls were also made smooth to make them more comfortable to drink from.
While using skulls as drinking vessels is not evidence in itself that ancient Britons drank human blood from craniums - some non-meat eating people in Asia used them - prying damage on the skeletons does clearly point to cannibalism occurring
Ancient Britons sat around the fire enjoying bloody drinks from skulls. They reached out to grab pieces of human flesh from the spit. Human remains from a dig at Glough's Cave show dismemberment of some bodies. There is evidence of butchering with bone marrow being removed. This is the most nutritious substance that can be obtained from a body. The edges of skulls were also made smooth to make them more comfortable to drink from.
While using skulls as drinking vessels is not evidence in itself that ancient Britons drank human blood from craniums - some non-meat eating people in Asia used them - prying damage on the skeletons does clearly point to cannibalism occurring
History by Ty Buchanan
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