After a spell of two days in hospital following what amounts to a heart attack, I returned home and was shortly thereafter sent a document telling me my insurer refused to pay any of the $17,000+ bill. My friend Daryl (I have changed his name to preserve his privacy), a highly sophisticated and notably brilliant writer, said all this to me in an e-mail when I asked him how he was doing. He went on. ‘This is larcenous and disgraceful behavior; I’ve been paying ever increasing monthly premiums for years, and it is beyond belief that the insurer should now refuse to meet its responsibilities. Daryl had come here from another industrialized country where healthcare was considered a right; this was the first time he had asked anything of his insurer, and his disbelief was tinged with deep vexation. ‘When my attorney wife called them to protest, she was told cheerfully that this notice had been sent out routinely ‘before the situation has even been assessed’ and hence to ignore it-for the moment. Then I got notified that a crucial medication I have had prescribed for some years was being disallowed even though my specialist wrote the requested authorization […]
BANGKOK — The US reaffirmed its commitment to signing a global climate treaty Monday, with pressure mounting for Washington to take a leading role as negotiations resumed over the disputed draft text. ‘We want to be part of a new agreement,’ said Jonathan Pershing, the US head of delegation for the UN climate change negotiations, as meetings began in Bangkok amid fears that time is running out to break a deadlock on the pact. The talks here are the next to last before a showdown in Copenhagen at the end of the year, when 192 countries must agree on a treaty for tackling greenhouse gases beyond 2010, after the current Kyoto Protocol expires. The US — which signed the Kyoto deal but later saw it rejected by Congress — is due to introduce its new climate change and energy bill in the Senate this week and there are fears the bill will not pass ahead of Copenhagen. ‘The waiting is now on what position the US administration will take,’ UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer said at a press briefing Monday. ‘Will the US administration be able to take a position before US legislation has […]
TORONTO — Children whose parents use a firm parenting style that still allows them to test the rules and learn from it are more likely to assume leadership roles as adults according to a new study published in a recent edition of The Leadership Quarterly. Researchers used data from a long-term Minnesota study of twins. They found that children raised with an ‘authoritative parenting style – where parents set clear limits and expectations while also being supportive of their children – assumed more leadership roles at work and in their communities later in life. While these children were also less likely to engage in serious rule-breaking, children who did engage in serious rule-breaking were less likely to assume leadership roles. Good parenting may better prepare children for future leadership roles if the children happen to challenge the boundaries set out by their parents. This gives the children an opportunity to learn why the rules are in place and then learn from their parents how to achieve their goals without breaking the rules. ‘Some of these early examples of rule-breaking behaviour, more the modest type, don’t necessarily produce negative outcomes later in life – that was fairly intriguing, […]
According to a new review of neuroscientific research, coercive interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration to extract information from terrorist suspects are likely to have been unsuccessful and may have had many unintended negative effects on the suspect’s memory and brain functions. A new article, published by Cell Press on September 21st in the journal, Trends in Cognitive Science, reviews scientific evidence demonstrating that repeated and extreme stress and anxiety have a detrimental influence on brain functions related to memory. Memos released by the US Department of Justice in April of 2009 detailing coercive interrogation techniques suggest that prolonged periods of shock, stress, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control are more effective than standard interrogatory techniques in making subjects reveal truthful information from memory. ‘This is based on the assumption that subjects will be motivated to reveal veridical information to end interrogation, and that extreme stress, shock and anxiety do not impact memory’ says review author, Professor Shane O’Mara from the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. ‘However, this model of the impact of extreme stress on memory and the brain is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence.’ Psychological studies suggest that during extreme stress […]
LAWRENCE, Kansas — More than any other populace on Earth, Americans are on the move. Because of factors such as employment, climate or retirement, 14 percent of the U.S. population bounces from place to place every year. Now, one researcher at the University of Kansas has made a vital study of how a population in perpetual motion impacts local tax bases and economies around the nation. Art Hall, executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the KU School of Business, said he uncovered three key themes to American population shifts by looking at annual data collected by the Internal Revenue Service on county-to-county migration: He found that * Populations are relocating to coastal areas (with the major exception that inhabitants for the first time are taking flight from California’s prohibitively priced seaboard) * People are moving out from major metropolises to smaller cities * The general migration trend in the U.S. now is eastward rather than westward ‘California has been losing people for at least a decade,’ Hall said. ‘Two patterns of migration are under way in California. People are leaving […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
