Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • Filtering, Surveilling and Blocking Internet Content

    The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University released an announcement from the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) on new studies of Internet filtering in the Middle East and North Africa.

    “Our latest research results on Internet filtering and surveillance in the Middle East and North Africa confirm the growing use of next generation cyberspace controls beyond mere denial of information,” said Ron Deibert, ONI Principal Investigator and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. “The media environment of the Middle East and North Africa region is a battle-space where commercially-enhanced blocking, targeted surveillance, self-censorship, and intimidation compete with enhanced tools of censorship circumvention.”

    “Internet censorship in the region is increasing in both scope and depth, and filtering of political content continues to be the common denominator among filtering regimes there,” said Helmi Noman, the OpenNet Initiative’s Middle East and North Africa lead researcher. “Governments also continue to disguise their political filtering, while acknowledging blocking of social content, and censors are catching up with increasing amounts of online content, in part by using filtering software developed by companies in the U.S.”

    (more…)

  • Traveling More Securely

    Perhaps it’s the economic state we find ourselves in that creates more worry about one’s safety and personal information. Taking a vacation or business trip either in the US or abroad (including on a cruise ship) might increase that concern. Here are some travel tips from Kroll, a risk consulting company and subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan.

    Lock it up at home. If you’ve entrusted the family dog or Aunt Zoe’s twenty-year old rubber tree to a caretaker while you’re gone, put identity-rich items away before you hand over the house key. Don’t leave out tax returns, credit card statements, utility bills and the like. It’s human nature to be trusting of others, but front-line experience confirms that a significant percentage of identity theft is perpetrated by someone known to the victim.

    If you must take along your laptop or PDA-berry, treat it like a cache of cash or fine jewelry. If the room safe isn’t large enough to hold a laptop, consult hotel or cruise ship management and arrange for storage in a centralized main safe or secure holding area. Locking your laptop in your personal quarters — no matter how smart a hiding place you contrive — creates needless exposure and worry.

    (more…)

  • V&A’s Fantasy and Fear

    Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London:

    The exhibition is in three sections: The Forest Glade is inspired by fantasy and nature evoking the spirit of fairytales. The Enchanted Castle exaggerates and parodies historical design styles often associated with displays of status. Heaven and Hell is concerned with themes of mortality and the afterlife.

    To explore the Telling Tales sections through these above named gateways you need Flash. If you don’t have Flash you can also view the exhibition objects on these pages here.

    “This exhibition explores the recent trend among European designers for unique or limited edition pieces that push the boundaries between art and design. It showcases furniture, lighting and ceramics, designed by a new generation of international designers, including Tord Boontje, Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey and Studio Job, who are all inspired by the spirit of story-telling. Each tells a tale through their use of decorative devices, historical allusions or choice of materials, sharing common themes such as fantasy, parody and a concern with mortality.”

    As all great exhibits have learned, creating an interactive section, drawing the viewer into and adding to the appreciative process at the site. So it is with Telling Tales:

    (more…)

  • Three Myths About the Ethics of Health Care Reform

    A statement was issued by the issued by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors’ Board of Directors on behalf of its members concerning health reform. EthicsShare is another site that can be consulted for additional information.

    The Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) represents the leadership of 60 academic bioethics programs across North America. At this critical juncture in the national debate about health care reform in the United States, our membership wishes to send a clear message about some myths that challenge the ethics of reform proposals.

    Myth #1: Health care reform will mean giving up control of my own health care decisions.

    Fact: The field of bioethics has long championed the rights of individual patients to make their own health care decisions in consultation with their physicians. If we thought the major proposals being considered posed a serious threat to these rights, we would be the first to speak out. But that is NOT the case. The right of individuals to make decisions about their health care is engrained in the ethics of American medical practice and that won’t change under any of the approaches to health care reform currently under discussion.

    (more…)

  • Road Trip

    Joan L. Cannon writes: I was using chopsticks to dip the most decorative slice of multi-colored mystery I’d ever seen into a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi, hoping to get the whole thing into my mouth without destroying its lovely design. I completely lost track of the conversation. Only the astonishing flavors kept my attention. I was, appropriately, hooked.

  • Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners or is it Vice-Versa?

    Regardless of whether you subscribe to the theory that dogs and their owners, over time, begin to resemble each other, this study conducted by a team of researchers in the journal, *Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, is an interesting one:

    Abstract:

    Previous studies conducted in the United States and Venezuela have demonstrated that people can correctly match portraits of unknown purebred dogs with their owners at statistically significant levels, suggesting that the popular belief in dog-owner physical resemblance is empirically valid.

    We investigated the perceived physical resemblance of dog-owner pairs in Japan, where the owners are racially more homogenous than in the countries in which the previous studies were conducted.

    In experiment 1, the matching performance by naïve judges was statistically significant, and a supplementary test suggested that perceived dog-owner physical resemblance plays a critical role in this.

    Experiment 2 presented a new procedure to test the perceived dog-owner physical resemblance and demonstrated that two-thirds of the judges selected a set of 20 real dog-owner pairs over a set of 20 fake dog-owner pairs, irrespective of whether it was an ownership-guessing task or a resemblance-based choice task.

    (more…)

  • Improving Emergency Room Performance

    When I took my husband to a local Emergency Room earlier this year for what was finally diagnosed as an illeus, I was asked if he showed any signs of a heart attack. Not knowing what was wrong with him (and it took seven hours for the ER staff to determine the cause of the intense pain), I said he had had pains around his chest area (true) but I also realized that he might be seen sooner; the emergency room at 9 pyem on a Saturday night was, not surprisingly, crowded. Because of that answer to the question, he was separated from the collection of assorted ailments on view that might have been considered less immediate in nature by the staff. My husband then spent the next five days in the hospital. This anecdote is to illustrate that the ER can be a foreign country and a passport and efficient method to traverse it are needed.

    The Commonwealth Fund, a “Private Foundation Working Towards a High Performance Health System”, has produced a report Emergency Department Operations in Top-Performing Safety-Net Hospitals. Selected paragraphs from its overview, findings and executive summary reveals the following points:

    Overview

    This report profiles five safety-net hospitals — Boston Medical Center, Denver Health, Memorial Regional Hospital, Memorial Hospital West, and Virginia Commonwealth University Health System —that made improvements to curb emergency department (ED) crowding, reduce long waits, and lower the number of hours spent on ambulance diversion. Hospitals used a combination of interventions, including: reconfiguring the ED to maximize efficiency; devising a pre-diversion system to alert staff of ED crowding; installing an electronic tracking system; designating staff members to be responsible for tracking patients; and developing meaningful performance metrics. To be successful, such interventions need to take place within a broader improvement strategy that entails: recognition that ED crowding is a hospital-wide issue; leadership provided by the CEO and other senior staff; vigilance in pursuing change, reviewing outcomes, and working to improve; transparency; and a commitment to quality for safety-net populations.

    (more…)

  • The Redistricting Game

    Part of the description of this game is copyrighted and contributed by the Scout Report, a respected and early finder of quality websites:

    The Redistricting Game [Flash Player]

    What exactly is redistricting? It is rather important in terms of American politics, and in most states state legislators get to draw the lines that create different political districts. This interactive game from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center allows players “to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system.” After a lively introduction, visitors can learn about potential abuses within the system and they will also learn about reform initiatives that have been proposed. In the “Resources” area, visitors can learn about their own representative in the US House of Representatives, take a look at their FAQ section, and learn a bit more via the glossary. If visitors enjoy the game, they can use the “Take Action” option to tell friends and others about the site. [KMG]

    The site reminds the viewer that the system is ripe for abuse and “allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives – including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.”

    Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and currently UC Berkeley Professor: “A leader steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system to work over the long term.” — Robert Reich

  • A Financial Blog: The Curious Capitalist

    Justin Fox, aside from being a Time magazine columnist, is the author of a book, The Myth of the Rational Market; A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street. An excerpt appeared in the magazine in June.

    As the only child of working parents who survived the Great Depression, they advised that even though the Stock Market had suffered the 1929 disaster, investing in Wall Street was still a sound idea. I wonder how they would have felt and reacted to events of late 2008.

    I’ve heard financial pundits repeat once again the W theory that visually describes which way our markets will continue to be shaped, before stabilization returns. In other words, perhaps I should forget about looking at online 401k statements once again instead of just filing them away unopened until the last leg of that W lands. I can hope, though, for a V configuration instead.

    But I digress, as they say. Here’s a link to Justin Fox’s contributions to Time’s blog, The Curious Capitalist.

  • Texting Acronyms for Parents, Grandparents and Newbies

    Most journalists use acronyms … its part of the job. Usually it starts with FYI: for your information. “I’m letting you know this upfront, so we can start from a similar vantage point and then go on from there.” Time Magazine’s house organ was titled ‘FYI‘, the source for rentals and sale listings as well as articles about the many companies under the Time Inc. corporate umbrella.

    When writing a story for the magazines, most writers and researchers would liberally sprinkle ‘TKs’ in the text, meaning ‘to come.’ In other words, a fact, a missing component or source identification would be addressed later, after the story was moved on to the senior editor, top editor, reporter-researcher in charge of checking the story. The process would reverse, starting up the ladder once more to the writer, senior editor, after the researcher added comments and corrections from correspondents in the field. Finally the copy editors were assigned the story for their thorough laying-on-of-hands.

    The top editor of one of the sections I worked for longest, Karsten Prager, would look it over one last time, usually between midnight and three ayem at the end of the edit week before handing it back to me, as the International Editions’ Head Reporter-Researcher, to make his final changes.

    Today acronyms are used consistently in text messaging and some of them are quite interesting, as defined by Netlingo.com, The Top 50 Internet Acronyms and Text Message Shorthand Every Parent Should Know. One of the least sexually-related acronyms, for example, is PAW: Parents are watching

    There are additional links that are pertinent for parents and the general texting public:
    50 More Internet Acronyms Parents Need to Know
    NetLingo List of Acronyms and Text Message Shorthand