7 Color Lagoon

Robert Altman died after making The Prairie Home Companion. It was his last movie and was about death even if he planned to make yet another movie fighting both his pancreatic cancer and the heart transplant he kept confidential for 10 years. His swan song was really the masterpiece, Gosford Park. In my memories of movie-making it is the epitome of the Altman touch. Every cliche of the who-done-it mystery from the days of Agatha Christie and big, weekend hunting parties in England is brought out in loving detail and wonderful camera work. The servants dress in tails and eat downstairs much as the upstairs family. Alan Bates presides as the perfect butler. The chaos of the downstairs resolves into yet another complex family of another time. The valets and ladies’ maids are called by their masters’ names and their masters stay in the many rooms called by their color (”Your master is in the green room”, says the housekeeper whose life is far more important than her position belies).

The mystery is not a huge mystery. The violence is not so much violence that Altman can’t pan over it and leave it behind. The crime becomes the perfect crime but still a crime of human feelings and inter-connected relationships in a complex world. Each cliche is lovingly skewered, distorted, broken or turned into a joke. Only the death of the lord of the manor is left as reality but he is not mourned; his history exposed and forgotten, the principals are not those a Hercule Poirot would have wanted and the party moves on to the world that had begun with Maggie Smith arriving in a yellow Rolls-Royce exuding British aristocratic haughtiness.

Garrison Keeler thought Prairie Home Comapanion was about his radio show and Altman said it was about death. Altman envisioned an angel in a white trench-coat that “even the rain wouldn’t dare fall on” who enters stage center into a circle of white light under a streetlight. Altman’s angel of death is white, blond and all mid-Western sweetness. It had been a bad penguin joke on the radio from The Prairie Home Companion that killed her. This angel is mysterious and dead. To Garrison Keeler she only says, “it’s not your time, yet.” (more…)

In Mexico I always wondered about the name for this widely used chile. I still haven’t learned and remembered it in Spanish. I tend to call it a “banana chile” because it reminds me of what such a thing would look like. But no one else would know what you were talking about.

However, in Mayan it is tak ik where ik is the generic word for chiles. The fruit itself packs a lot of taste, is used a lot in dishes like salsa Veracruzana and can be reasonably mild — or not.

Food
Travel

Your spouse has just clutched their chest, began to have trouble breathing and has fallen to the ground. They begin to have convulsions, their eyes roll up and breathing stops. It is your wife or husband, your son or daughter, your friend or the old guy you’ve known for ten years in your office. You can help. You can learn how to bring life to a lifeless body.

If possible have someone else call the emergency number while you start chest compressions. In the advanced countries emergency workers are trained and equipped for quick response. If another person is available have them light the way and (safely) guide the rescuers to your location.

In a recent cardiac arrest situation here in southern-border Mexico, I was alone and realized the Red Cross (Cruz Roja) ambulance had a 20 - 30 minute trip to get to us and that the emergency call to 066 might not go as quickly as needed, due to my mediocre Spanish and the past quality of local dispatchers. There are always decisions to be made when life hangs balanced before your eyes. I worked at resuscitation in the best way I knew until breathing was restored (luckily, before my own physical resources were used up). It was not by the book but, more importantly, get trained, stay up to date, try to make good decisions and more people can survive cardiac arrest.

Begin CPR – for which you should have taken a course or, at least, have studied on the Internet. The University of Washington has a fine site, “Learn CPR. You Can Do It”. They present a great introduction. Then tell you to take a course. Take the course!

El mismo sitio en Español es ”Aprendà RCP. Si, Se Puede!” RCP para adultos, ninos, infantes, gatos y perros.
Tambien, informaciòn sobre casos de atragantamiento.

A new study shows that changing Cardiopulmonary Resuscition to Cardiocerebral in cardiac arrest cases can improve survival rates 300%. Outside hospital cardiac arrest emergencies now show a 2-3% survival rate. Improving that kind of score is a worthwhile goal. The study shows that the chest compression component is more effective than was the mouth-to-mouth part of the process. I did not know that but saw that the compressions were being more effective so I concentrated on them and hoped I was not killing my wife. This new study and technique reassured me – as did her survival for which I fought hard and long.

The new technique shows a survival rate after cardiac arrest 300% better according to “Gordon A. Ewy, director of UA Sarver Heart Center, where the new approach was developed. Ewy is one of few people in the world named a “CPR Giant” by the American Heart Association.”

Their new technique tends to downplay mouth-to-mouth in favor of chest compressions. Dr. Ewy explained that “In out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, the brain and the heart need resuscitation, not the lungs,”

This change will make it easier and less frightening for many – passersby, rescuers who are not equipped as would be the professional lifesavers who will come to your first-world telephone call for help. However, you cannot wait for them. Every second counts if the person is no longer breathing. Every second they drift further away from this world and the brain begins to be damaged or to die from lack of oxygen. Every second is a second gained for you to breathe – or now, to push – life into a human soul.

The U. of Washington site says: “Call” 911. “Blow”. Give 2 mouth-to-mouth breaths. “Pump”. Compress the chest and continue to give 30, yes 30, compressions to 2 mouth-to-mouth air transfers. I was taught, 25 or more years ago, to use almost equal chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth air transfer.

Originally it was thought that rescuers, even trained, non-professionals would need 4 seconds to switch from compressions to air transfer. The reality is an average of 16 seconds. “Eager” medical students have been found (and they are healthy, young people) to need 14 seconds. Each of those seconds is time lost, brain cells lost, survival chances lessened.

“But when you stop chest compressions to give mouth-to-mouth ventilations, no blood is moved and the organs essentially are starved.” Dr. Ewy said, “In fact, during CPR, blood flow to the brain and the organs is so poor that stopping chest compression for any reason - including so called ‘rescue breathing’ - is not helpful.”

About 490,000 Americans die yearly from cardiac arrest out-of-hospital. Even with life-saving efforts the survival rate over the last 20 years has remained a pretty sad 1-3% in large cities (without external defibrillators which this study does not include). The 300% improvement means a 9% survival rate which is not comforting for the other 91%. But it is a big improvement. Somehow my wife is one of the 1-9% and that pleases me. An earlier study in the American Journal of Medicine showed EMS people in two Wisconsin counties were able to bring their survival rates from 15 to 58% in cardiac arrest cases where the heart had a “shockable heart rhythm” — was “quivering” rather than beating but could still be shocked by a defibrillator into normal beating — and where they used the new CCR protocol. I was very unhappy during my recent problems to realize that the automatic defibrillator in my chest did not come with jumper cables. Hopefully Guidant will soon fix that oversight. All I needed was little Radio Shack wires with alligator clips from nipple to nipple and red and black markers and all would have been well.

Check with the American Heart Association for more informacion about classes in your area.

Hay mas informaciòn en el sitio del AHA en Español.

Then check with the American Red Cross for the availability of first aid and CPR courses in your community. It is a little time and some energy but they do it so well that it will stay with you in case or until you need it so desperately that you will never forgive yourself if you didn’t put out that effort.

The Mayo Clinic has a good on-line first aid guide. The Clinic site is also helpful with information on many topics and a weekly email newsletter.

Dr. Ewy’s team also found that the technique that eliminates mouth-to-mouth will entice far more people to learn it and perform the technique.

Members of the UA Sarver Heart Center CPR Research Group started the “Be a Lifesaver” program to teach the new approach to the public at no charge. Bystander Cardiocerebral Resuscitation is easy to learn and easy to remember. To learn more about the program and to watch an instructional video online, visit their teaching site.

The new technique shows a survival rate after cardiac arrest 300% better according to “Gordon A. Ewy, director of UA Sarver Heart Center, where the new approach was developed. Ewy is one of few people in the world named a “CPR Giant” by the American Heart Association.”

Their new technique tends to downplay mouth-to-mouth in favor of chest compressions. Dr. Ewy explained that “In out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, the brain and the heart need resuscitation, not the lungs,”

In my case I wrote about it almost a year ago when my wife suffered sudden death syndrome. Sadly, here in the jungle, where I do have a fine cardiologist, she wanted the local ÒdoctorÓ who was charming and came to the house. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a totally incompetent, dishonest, immoral quack who, in the US, could be sued and his licence taken. Here, it is not worth the effort to try.

However, as an aside, tourists and visitors to Mexico and other “developing” nations should investigate medical evacuation insurance. The air ambulance from Miami/Fort Lauderdale takes about a day or so to arrange, requires about $13000US cash or credit card in hand before they will even lift off from Florida and then 3 hours round trip. It is not something to be taken lightly. We residents don’t have the option of the insurance and, as good as our Equitable major medical policy is, it will not reimburse air ambulance fees except in limited situations in the USA.

I here add a quoted text from the Medical News Today story. I want it exact and I am not a medical professional and I sincerely hope that many people will visit these sites and consider one of the fine courses the AHA or the Red Cross offer.

Bystander Cardiocerebral Resuscitation involves three simple steps:

1. Direct someone to call 911 or make the call yourself.

2. Position the patient on the floor. Place the heel of one hand on the center of the chest with the other hand on top of the first. Lock your elbows and perform forceful chest compressions at a rate of 100 per minute. Lift your hands slightly after each push to allow chest to recoil. Take turns with a bystander until paramedics arrive.

3. If an automated external defibrillator (AED) is available, attach it to the patient and follow the machine’s voice instructions. Otherwise, keep pumping.

NOTE: Gasping is not an indication of normal breathing or recovery. Initiate and continue compressions even if patient gasps. For cases of suspected drowning, drug overdose or collapse in children, follow guideline CPR (2 mouth-to-mouth breaths for every 30 chest compressions).

I also want to make sure people understand that medicine in Mexico, especially here on the edge of the jungle far from urban areas except for the tourist havens of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, is 50-100 years behind the US. If something bad happens here you don’t have a lot of help. The one local doctor was incompetent, unprofessional, immoral and uncaring enough to be incarcerated elsewhere.

However, and it is an important “however”, all physicians are not created equal in the US, UK or here. We have a very fine cardiologist in the nearest city, Chetumal, who has cared for my heart for the past 8 years and now has my wife’s under control with medications. The damage to her heart was slight and I seem to have somehow ventilated her brain enough so the major loss seems to be some of her sense of humour – and that may come from the damage I did to cartilege in her chest during the compressions I gave when I realized that my heart would not allow me to continue more that a few seconds more and I gave it “my all” which was a bit too much but started her heart. This cardiologist is equal to or better than my upstate New York cardiologists after my heart attack, charmed my wife, and has enough equipment to make his diagnosis, enough competence and compassion to control the situation. In him we hit the jackpot as much as the local barefoot doctor should be hung by his primitive toes.

Take the course. Visit the sites. Consider that someday, somehow, for some reason you might need the knowledge of how to save a life. Think how you will feel if you don’t know what to do.

Health and wellness

NASA headquarters in Washington and the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California communicated with me today, 21 November, that the Mars Global Surveyor — that “little spaceship that could” — may be ending its heroic career. Surveyor lasted the longest and sent back the most information of any craft sent to Mars.

If it cannot be found and contacted with commands that would, perhaps, make it functional again; it will still have made a grand contribution to our knowledge of the red planet and it will still have given us all a model of perseverence and valor in the service of man’s knowledge.

“Mars Global Surveyor has surpassed all expectations,” said Michael
Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA
Headquarters, Washington. “It has already been the most productive
science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries as the
treasury of observations it has made continues to be analyzed for
years to come.” Its camera has returned more than 240,000 images to
Earth.

Fuk Li, the Mars Exploration Manager at JPL said today that efforts have been and will continue to be made to contact Surveyor but that “”Realistically, we have run through the most likely possibilities for re-establishing communication, and we are facing the likelihood that the amazing flow of scientific observations from Mars Global Surveyor
is over.” However, he went on to promise “… We are not giving up hope.”

Even if Surveyor remains silent in the cold of space, lighted by the pale, red light of its new home, Tom Thorpe, the Project Manager for the Mars Global Surveyor listed the immense effort the little spaceship made during its 10 year sojourn alone in space. He eulogized the craft with this description: “It is an extraordinary machine that has done things the designers never envisioned despite a broken wing, a failed gyro and a worn-out reaction wheel. The builders and operating staff can be proud of
their legacy of scientific discoveries and key support for subsequent
missions.”

Surveyor helped pick out landing places for both NASA rovers that landed in 2004 and helped to choose places for Phoenix and Mars Science Lab missions in the future. It was used as a relay for the rovers and helped by mapping the areas around them and watched atmospheric conditions as the newer orbiter spacecraft slowed to their orbital speeds around the planet.

The JPL navigators for the little spacecraft that showed such spunk for so long point out the major discoveries — among many — that it made during its ten year career as pathfinder for the recent Mars exploring spacecraft and visits by the Rover robot cars.

Surveyor found gullies that had been cut into slopes. The slopes were not part of craters which means they are young (on a planetary scale) which scientists assume indicates liquid water in basically modern time.

Surveyor located a hematite region for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to land. Hematite is a mineral “that often forms under wet conditions.” It also used its laser altimeter to make a global topographic map of Mars. It showed many highly eroded craters that hadn’t been seen before and made maps of canyons in the polar ice caps. Its magnetometer found out that Mars had a global magnetic field like that of Earth. The field protects Earth from too many cosmic rays.

Surveyor photographer an area that seems like an ancient river delta from water flowing over the surface during a long period of time long ago. The fact that Surveyor survived so long as a functioning robot spacecraft allowed it to record planetary changes (such as CO2 ice near the South Pole changing size over a period of 3 years which indicates that there are climate changes on what was called a “dead planet”.

The report on Surveyor’s hopes and accomplishments was thanks to Erica Hupp and Dwayne Brown at NASA headquarters in Washington and Guy Webster at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A mission overview with links to galleries of Surveyor photos, a slide show and other multi-media links offers a better look at the little spaceships life and accomplishments.

Students, kids and teachers should note that the NASA Home Page has numerous galleries, links, videos and the ability to join “My NASA” to collect interesting stuff.

Space

The Mars Global Surveyor is in trouble. The little spaceship was launched to Mars on 7 November 1996. On its’ 10th birthday its guardians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory of C.I.T. had a busy and frustrating time.

The Surveyor is the oldest of 5 spacecraft sent to Mars. Originally NASA had planned for it to orbit our little, red neighbor for two years. NASA has continued to extend those deadlines. In October of this year it again gave the robot spaceship another extension.

The Mars Global Surveyor has stuck around beaming its’ information back to Earth, “Hello, Houston,” longer than any other human artifact sent to Mars. Therefore, we are not surprised that it sent back “more information about Mars than all earlier missions combined.” The persevering little ship has been around long enough to see two more orbiters arrive — Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The Jet Propulsion Lab tells me that,

Mars Global Surveyor has found many young gullies apparently cut by flowing water, discovered water-related mineral deposits that became a destination for NASA’s Opportunity rover, mapped the planet topographically and examined many potential landing sites on Mars.

On 2 November Surveyor began a normal maneuver to move its solar panels. One of its’ motors suffered some error and systems ended up putting it in “safe” mode — “… a pre-programmed state of restricted activity in which it awaits instructions from Earth.” Only one weak signal has been heard from it since.

Friday, 17 November, NASA was reported by Yahoo News to have enlisted the aid of one of those two, new orbiters, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the most powerful probe ever sent to mars, in the effort to save Surveyor. Reconnaissance has scanned the area where Surveyor may be in an effort to locate it. Since it seems to be waiting to receive a signal telling it to point one of its’ redundant transmitters toward Earth, finding it could help get it a clear signal. It will be next week before the scans can be read to see if Surveyor has been found.

JPL’s description of The Little Spaceship That Could tells of a vehicle that is about 10 feet (3 meters) tall and, when it has its’ solar panels deployed, it is 40 feet wide. It weighed 2342 pounds when it was launched but has lost some weight over the years unlike some people I know. It was put together with some spare parts from an earlier spaceship, the Mars Orbiter.

They describe Surveyor as built partly from surplus parts –

To minimize costs, spare units left over from the Mars Observer mission were used in portions of the spacecraft’s electronics and for some of the science instruments. The spacecraft design also incorporated new hardware - the radio transmitters, solid-state recorders, propulsion system, and composite material bus structure-and retains many backup and redundant features of the original Mars Observer design in case of failure of critical elements such as the primary processors, recorders or transmitters.

The probable culprit in the loss of our little Surveyor is connected to its’ antenna and communications system These are a “1.5-meter (59-inch) diameter high-gain antenna dish that sits at the end of a 2.0 meter (6.6 foot) long boom attached to the propulsion module.” One of the two functions is for Surveyor to receive command programs from Earth that tell it what it should be doing for up to the next 7 weeks. When she is receiving her command programs, command sequences are delivered at about 500 bits per second.

The antenna system’s other use is to transmit data to Earth. It does that at 8.4 ghz on the X-band — that’s 84000 on the FM dial. It sends its’ signal at 25 watts. By the time it gets to this planet the signal has so little juice that, JPL, explains, “it would take 30 million years to store enough charge to run a wrist watch for one second.”

The receivers are called the Deep Space Network, a set of 112 foot in diameter receivers from Spain, Australia and the Mojave Desert. A big ear to listen for a little ship.

When I was very young, perhaps only 4, long, long ago in a galaxy right here around us, my favorite record (a big, breakable thing that ran at 78 rpm) was The Little Engine That Could. It had a simple book with pictures of the little engine with his determined look and brave action. When the time came that he was needed to save the day, that small engine everyone had laughed at, said “I think I can. I think I can” and then, after a long struggle to get up the hill, he did.

Here we go 54 years later and millions of miles away in the cold, dark night of space. A little spaceship is lost. He can’t hear his programs from Houston nor say, “Copy that, Houston.” The other, newer spaceships are looking for him because he has been such a brave spaceship, paving the way for them and looking after the robot rovers down on Mars.

It is time to forget the jihadists and bomb-makers, the killers and killer-storms and send up a shout of hope for the little spaceship that can. We hope he can. Earth needs a 10 foot tall hero pretty badly right now.

Space
Science

A new study from Australia has purported to show that physicians faced with difficult cases would benefit from Googling the symptoms and the disease or treatments. Not all the medical profession is jumping into the great search engine of the Internet. I was intriqued by the present and future possibilities and the alternatives for physicians now who use the Web for professional information.

Medical News Today reported in “Google Good Source For Doctors To Diagnose Hard Cases” by Christian Nordqvist that researchers from Brisbane, Australia (as reported in the British Medical Journal ) that using Google to search for information in difficult medical cases was helpful 58% of the time.

Medicine man outside his teepee. From the National Institute of Health.

The basis of the study was that physicians needed ever higher amounts of knowledge to accurately diagnose illnesses – especially those that are less ordinary. The two they used (of 26 “hard-to-diagnose” cases) had been found in the New England Journal of Medicine were Cushing’s syndrome and CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease).

The report showed that the physicians used 3 to 5 search words in Google for each medical case. Theoretically, they did not know what the correct diagnosis should be beforehand. The three highest ranked diagnoses based on symptomatology (when compared with the New England Journal were taken. “They say that 58% of diagnoses carried out using Google searches were correct.”

The British Medical Journal reports the results as the Google searches came up with a correct diagnosis in 15 cases which translates to 58% of the time – which shows a “ 95% confidence interval 38% to 77%.

They conclude “As internet access becomes more readily available in outpatient clinics and hospital wards, the web is rapidly becoming an important clinical tool for doctors. The use of web based searching may help doctors to diagnose difficult cases.”

What I found the most interesting in these articles about a mass data search for important diagnostic tools in medical treatments was not the somewhat simplistic study but the response in the comments (just like Blogcritics, medical people can now discuss medical journal articles as they appear) section of the BMJ. The first was Dr. Joseph
Britto who is the CEO and Clinical Director of Isabel Healthcare Inc. in Reston, Virginia which provides an Internet-based DDSS (diagnosis decision support system) for professional healthcare providers. His system he feels far superior and more professional for medicos. I must quote him since the programming math is far beyond me. His “Isabel” system,

uses natural language processing algorithms that searches by context and meaning a databse of medical textbooks and journals - to understand’ rather than just ‘find’. Isabel suggests diagnoses rather than documents and these diagnoses are filtered using the patient’s age, gender, pregnancy state and geographical-region prevalence heuristics. Further, as a quality metric, we analyze and make available on Isabel results of Isabel’s diagnostic performance on current NEJM CPC cases. A study submitted for publication looked at Isabel’s performance on 50 NEJM CPC cases from 2005 using whole text data entry [entire case presentation cut and pasted verbatim] and entry of extracted clinical features. Isabel came up with the final diagnosis in 74% and 96% respectively.

Joy Kennedy, a reference librarian from Virginia, commented that she was initially shocked at the idea of using Google for such technical research but then decided that “…By using Google to search the web, they were essentially doing a fulltext search of a giant database. Admittedly this database contains good, bad and indifferent material but the concept is not an unreasonable one. There is great value in searching the fulltext of journal articles, tables of content of books and other, more reputable tools…”

Similarly an Emergency Physician from Spokane noted that “…One can imagine the benefit to young doctors in developing country who now have access to a grand medical library in their hands.”

Not only can a young doctor in a developing country use the giant search engine to figure out what is going on in the system of his patient, but the expatriate or traveler on the edge of the jungle in a developing country can use it to help with the self-care that is necessary when you are far from first world resources.

Here in Mexico a medical emergency is going on with my wife and the medical resources are limited to my excellent cardiologist and little else. Medicine is decades behind and this jungle-edge area is even further removed from modern practices or cleanliness. The idea of Internet advice for third-world doctors and searches (Google or otherwise) available to help young and poorly-educated physicians seems like a worthy goal for Google and for services like Isabel. In medicine and the sciences, the more information, the better the service.

My little test of Google was to search “Dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever.” which produced 290,000 results. They were primarily of the layman’s type and included warnings of symptoms and outbreaks in places like Puerto Escondido and CDC travelers’ warnings. I chose the subject which may not be a difficult diagnosis for most physicians who have any contact with tropical, contagious diseases but there were also sites such as the National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health which showed more substantial articles on what is now considered an world-wide pandemic. It had piqued my interest after the brother-in-law of our bodyguard survived a bad attack just recently. A judicial policeman in an area of cruise ship excursions, rich part-time visitors and poor fishermen; the mosquitos found him anyway. A Mexican doctor would probably be able to diagose it quickly. A North Dakotan might not immediately recognize the symptoms.

With my limited knowledge of both information technology and medicine, it is my belief that any addition to the arsenal of information available to medical professionals in both the developed and undeveloped world will be of immense benefit to global health and to the hope of stopping or slowing the scourges of pandemics that continue into the 21st century like dengue, polio, avian flu and others.

Health
Internet

Fox News reported a few minutes ago that with 91% of the vote counted, Daniel Ortega had 38% and Eduardo Montealegre 29%. Nicaraqua requires 35% minimum and 5% as a lead to win without resort to a runoff.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who was an official observer, contacted Condoleeza Rice who, he said, “assured me that no matter who was elected, the U.S. will respond positively and favorably.”

Current Affairs

Christopher Wanjek, the Live Science Bad Medicine blogger/columnist reported on a recent study by the Pew Internet Project about the abundance of unsubstantiated trust many people put into health reports they have found on the Internet. Millions use the Internet to search for explanations, treatments and alternatives to health problems from the minor to the serious, possibly fatal illnesses. They are not always discerning in their reading said the Pew study.

It seems that 25% of the people who search the ‘Net for health information do NOT check the sites and statements for date, source information or other indications of veracity and applicability to their needs. It is a dangerous situation. According to these figures 110 million Americans search the Net for information on matters of health. It is, writes Wanjek as “Bad Medicine” columnist, a dangerous situation because of the plethora of bad or questionable facts and advice available on the Web.

On the other hand, how large a percentage of print media readers checked out each article of health interest by looking at journals and study results? One of Wanjek’s suggestions was to use common sense – something which is too often in short supply. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

He specifically offers the example of (he suggests) taking a deep breath and running a search on “urine therapy”. I followed his advice and found that Google had pages of links on this “therapy”. I had never even thought of let alone considered it nor will I try it even to offer proof for the facts of this article. Sorry. Biomedx’s website — one of the search results — sounds scientific but introduces its’ urine therapy page by stating that,

Urine therapy can be a very effective healing modality. Sometimes when all else fails, urine therapy will turn a person around. We will be covering some of the reasons why this may be so, and in that regard will lightly touch on homeopathy and isopathy. Both of these concepts are often discussed by holistic practitioners. You will get a deeper understanding of isopathy as it is touched on here if you take the Rot & Rust Tour in one of the educational sections of this website.

Another likely site that includes this liquid treat is Shirley’s Wellness Cafe. The name of the site may not sound as scientific as “Biomedx” but it surely encourages this same “therapy”. Take a deep breath and enjoy thoughts of using this cure with newly found faith because it is, after all, on the Internet. Who knows what other fine, medical surprises can be found. I can’t even think what else to search to come up with as tasty an idea.

One way to check medical sites is to use HONcode , a UN and World Health Organization sponsored site that keeps tabs on immense numbers of medical websites world-wide. The Geneva-based organization was founded after a conference in 1995 to “promote the effective and reliable use of the new technologies for telemedicine in healthcare around the world.”

Some seemingly odd and useless treatments are matters of controversy for some people. I consider “chelation therapy”, a long series of IV drips to leech “heavy metals” (not the musical variety) from the blood, a piece of expensive, unpleasant and probably useless quackery and left an M.D. who pushed too hard for this (12 years ago) $5000 non-reimbursable series of long treatment. When I wrote this in a BC article, “Health News: The Chelation Therapy Controversy”, I heard from people with stories of how much it had helped and how wrong I was. I have read a few books and many web sites on it and continue to survive heart failure without it, but there is, obviously, a difference of opinion. Today, checking the HON website in Geneva, there are articles on the current, major study of whether or not the therapy is valid.

The fact of the matter is that, like those nice Nigerian bank people who are kind enough to offer you millions of dollars in a badly spelled email; think about what you are finding, who wrote it and why, who backs them and how to check the veracity. Go to primary sources which the Net has made easier than ever before. Look for corroboration or other opinions and check that sometimes telling box marked “about”. It is surprising how many medical sites are backed by corporate sponsors. However, their involvement does not necessarily mean the advice or resources are not valid. Like everything else — check it out.

Wanjek also complained about many articles that appeared last year after a study about the health benefits of chocolate. He was not very positive about

Countless vapid news articles last year relayed the news about the chocolate-anticancer link. Readers were left with the impression that candy is good for you; it was the kind of ironic story the press loves to report. Yet a simple jump to the source of that report—to Georgetown University and a press release from its Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center—would have revealed that it’s not chocolate candy per say that has anticancer properties: It’s an ingredient in cocoa, from which chocolate is made, called pentameric procyanidin.

I wrote one of those articles and I must say that it may or may not have been vapid but I was very careful to make sure that it was not misleading. The source materials were identified and I noted that the study did not suggest the addition of M&M’s was therapeutic but that the basic, active ingredients of the chocolate bean was effective and that the study was done with properly unprocessed chocolate. Checking sources and looking for more information is the writer’s job — and the reader’s is to try to make sure that what they are reading is reliable as well as interesting, truthful as well as convincing.

However, it is the reader’s responsibility to understand that cancer, diabetes and heart disease will not be cured by adding Milky Ways to your cheeseburger, fries and milkshake. Not even when added to your steamed rice, vegetables and salmon.

“Don’t believe everything you read” remains the same good advice it has always been.

Health

The Internet, which began as a U.S. military construct for global communications, quickly became the international communications utility. Today it is the globe-eating spider-web of consumerism, expression (free and otherwise), love, hate, politics and religion. Perhaps it will be a protector of free expression and defense against closed, authoritarian governments and oligarchies. Or it will be some other force for censorship and control.

At the end of the ’90s the New York Times writer, Thomas Friedman predicted in The Lexus And The Olive Tree that “…two great democratizing forces - global communications and global finance - will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic.” Global finance surely has not. Global communication in the rapidly expanding and evolving Internet is the great hope. Like many of man’s inventions that promise to raise our freedom and equality, the promise may not be fulfilled. Forces are even now gathering like Ghost Busters’ demons over a Manhattan condo (The Dakota) to use the ‘Net to control and censor. We are at a crossroads and the future is unclear.

We now have a global network of inter-connected servers that create a spider-web (the Quechua word of Peruvian/Bolivian Indians for the ‘Net) of access in which the world has now become dependent. It has, in much of the world, become part of our lives, totally necessary for the economies, governments, businesses and banking systems that connect our world. It is a fragile web (when will the terrorists target the linked servers and what Google calls “server farms”?) but we believed it to be the means to democratize and free the world. How, after all, could the dictators not fall and societies not become open and free with information and communication so easily accessible?

The Lumeta Corporation has been involved in the mapping of the virtual web that is the Web. The image included with this piece is a detail of one of the maps of the Internet Mapping Project of Lumeta.

The Global Policy Forum, a group whose stated mission is “to monitor policy making at the United Nations, promote accountability of global decisions, educate and mobilize for global citizen participation, and advocate on vital issues of international peace and justice,” tells the story of Shi Tao in China who was sentenced to 10 years in prison last April in China. The crime was “providing state secrets to foreign entities”. According to the report in the Forum , he gave the Asia Democracy Forum and “Democracy News”, a website, information about an order for censorship in China. One group, “Reporters Without Borders” (RSF) found themselves surprised by the facility with which the Chinese authorities had apprehended Mr. Shi Tao. He had carefully used an anonymous Yahoo Mail account to send the emailed information.

RSF managed to get a translation of the Chinese verdict and found the answer and the fault in the argument that “global communications … will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic.” Yahoo, it was noted in the verdict, provided the authorities with his ‘phone number and address. Handing out information that we assume to be secure is not high-tech magic. Some things — snitching, for instance — never change. Yahoo ratted the man out. There goes the idea of the Internet as a force against which no dictator can stand.

What are the major forces against the Internet as a high-pressure wash of freedom over the world? Number one and, in the end, always the prime mover in plays of power, is the self-interest of those who rule. That some rule from raw power or demagoguery and others from networks of the wealthy who act to maintain their wealth and will bow to the desires of the powerful because that makes money.

Thomas Friedman wrote that “Thanks to satellite dishes, the Internet and television we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every conceivable wall. … no one owns the Internet, it is totally decentralized, no one can turn it off … China’s going to have a free press … Oh, China’s leaders don’t know it yet, but they are being pushed straight in that direction.” Having witnessed people in Iran watching “Baywatch” he predicted that “within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own … government and the one next door”.

The New York Times today reported that M.I.T and the University of Southampton (UK) announced that they are opening a joint department for the study of “Web Science”. It will be an academic (but will probably have great impact on web businesses) program investigating the social networks and human interactions that the Web has created.

The program director is to be Tim Berners-Lee who the Times reports “… invented the Web’s basic software… An Oxford-educated Englishman, Mr. Berners-Lee is a senior researcher at M.I.T., a professor at the University of Southampton and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet standards-setting organization.” Steve Lohr at the Times elicited this from Professor Berners-Lee,
“The Web isn’t about what you can do with computers…” “It’s people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesn’t tell you about what happens on the Web.”

Back in the late ’80s I was photographing a lecture at Bard College by a political scientist from a prestigious, Boston university. He spoke of the coming break-up of the Soviet Union that would, if it happened, be caused by global communication systems. The fall of that wall was no more surprising than will be the fall of the Bush Wall on our Southern border. The Soviet Union was pulled like Lenin from its’ pedestals by more than just the emerging PC and the phone and fax but by its’ own incompetence. Higher technology communications just got the word out better.

The Guardian provides an example in the story of a 2002 promise in writing by Yahoo to the Chinese to follow “self-regulation” declaring that it would not allow the Internet publishing of “pernicious information that may jeopardize state security”. In 2005 Google admitted to not allowing links to banned materials by their servers in China. The writers of messages including the words “liberty”, “democracy” or “human rights” receive a warning that their message contains “forbidden language” which they must delete.

In the wake of the Tianaman Square massacre in Beijing in ‘89 the focus word of the demonstration was “democracy”. They even (while America considers melting the real one into border walls) sculpted a make-shift statue of liberty. Many said that without access to copy machines, PCs and, especially, fax services, the democratic movement and the world’s knowledge of its’ violent end would not have been possible. My photograph here is from a Chinese-American demonstration in a Hudson River city in memorial to the slain and imprisoned demonstrators staged during the days of and surrounding the episode.

A second Internet weakness is what the OpenNet Initiative published recently. They showed that the Chinese government is succeeding in censoring the Internet. They control the companies that control the routers and, with filtering systems — which they are reporting now as increasingly sophisticated in China and in Viet Nam — messages that contain certain words can be blocked. “We had the dream that the Internet would free the world, that all the dictatorships would collapse,” opined Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders. “We see it was just a dream.”

The OpenNet site offers PDF and HTML reports on its’ findings. Bulletin 012 is frightening enough in its’ description of new rules for Internet use which starts with the reasonable requests (not spreading false rumors) and heads toward the monitoring of communication and news gathering. Blogcritics Magazine would not be welcome under these regulations.

China has “the most extensive and effective legal and technological systems for Internet censorship and surveillance in the world.” The new Internet news regulations make several specific regulatory changes that strengthen China’s grip on news media. More broadly, the regulations demonstrate a continued determination on the part of the Chinese state to align the content of the Internet with official views and policies. While the long-term implications of the regulations are not yet clear, Chinese citizens and organizations involved in Internet news, analysis, or commentary will likely continue doing so warily, if at all.

It was also reported that the Chinese have made a new word, “egao”, which is used to make satirical references to “social phenomena” using media clips. “Mashup” is our new word for it. Fines of what would be large money in yuan ($600+US) could be levied for anybody on the ‘Net” satirizing others especially using video clips.

The issue of the nature, the freedom and the future of the Internet is being discussed this week as Internet experts meet in Greece. This is to be the first Internet Governance Forum (IGF) sponsored by the U.N. A major topic is going to probably be “grumblings” about America’s dominance of the ‘Net as it is presently organized. This is a four day affair in Athens.

A number of countries, like China and Iran, complained about “… having the key Internet systems managed by the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization under tender from the US Department of Commerce.” The meeting will have “…major industry players including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu and Ericsson.”

The question, now that study about the Internet is entering the world rather than being a question of just those who study, design and play with computers and networks, is about the nature of human actions, reactions and interactions. It is becoming a question of individual freedom, freedom of expression, proliferation of hate sites and of the hate for pornography that has blossomed on the once military web.

It is a complex and frightening web we have woven around our world. It seems both too strong and too fragile and has also become too indispensable for the modern world. Will it sweep away the chance of autocracy and censorship? Will it remain a Western, industrialized artifact or be taken over by the developing world that is so quickly, astonishingly quickly, absorbing it and learning to rely on it. Here in Mexico it seems like the status of telephones when we came here ten years ago. The wiring of America that was pretty much completed in the 1930s and after the War in the US did not happen in Mexico. In 1996 we arrived and were surprised to find that the cell phone had leaped into dominance. The cell phone is changing the nature of many less-developed societies. Here, we have ‘phone poles now and phones in the house as well as broadband service (about 4 months ago). The world is being wired now and becoming more wireless. We found some villages well into the back-country near the Guatemalan, Belize borders where a pole held a public cell phone with a solar panel at the pole-top. Hello, Central. The centers of little villages change. Powerful cities change. The globe sports this new spider-web and it remains to be seen what the spider will bring with it.

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Boston Scientific released news today that three of their implanted cardiac re-synchronization devices (Contak 3) will soon have new software which will improve their ability to synchronize the chambers of the heart.

Heart failure patients with these devices — like me — should look forward to it especially since the software can be changed digitally during a normal visit using the device’s “controller”. I must wait until I return to Miami in, perhaps, January or February. Physicians are said to be receiving the new software “in a few weeks”. Guidant is now owned by Boston Scientific which was gobbled, I think, by Abbot Labs.

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