The Physician On Salary: Health Care Reform Will Not Address Fee-For-Service Model

The principal reason the Cleveland Clinic (and the Mayo Clinic, which Obama has also praised) is able to deliver high-quality care more cheaply than other similarly prestigious hospitals is that its doctors are not independent contractors who get paid for performing individual procedures. As the clinic explained in a press release about the visit, "Cleveland Clinic's physicians are paid a salary only. There are no bonuses or other financial incentives for the number [of] procedures performed or the number of patients seen. Every physician has a one-year contract and renewal is based upon the results of an annual performance review." Obama didn't mention this in his official remarks either before or after the visit. Partly that was to avoid alienating the American Medical Association, which has endorsed the House version of health care reform. Mainly, though, it was because health care reform would do almost nothing to dismantle fee-for-service medicine.

link: Why Obama's trip to the Cleveland Clinic is misleading. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

Cloud Leopards, Believed Extinct, Found in Bangladesh

Andrew Buncombe writes:

Conservationists in Bangladesh are celebrating after remote tribespeople discovered a rare and threatened leopard that was believed to have been extinct in the country for almost 20 years.

Villagers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in south-east Bangladesh captured the clouded leopard cub after they disturbed it, its sibling and their mother eating a dead monkey in the jungle. The others escaped, but the villagers captured the three-month-old and put it in a cage. It is understood the tribespeople planned to sell the animal but, after news of the discovery spread, conservationists persuaded them to release the leopard back into the wild. They did so yesterday.

"We are delighted. For many years now, we had thought this animal was gone or was going," said Professor Anwarul Islam, head of the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh. "It's good to know that they are still there and that they are breeding."

link: Villagers discover 'extinct' leopard cub eating a monkey - Nature, Environment - The Independent

City Point, VA, 1864

Circa 1864. "City Point, Virginia (vicinity). Building used as a stable." Wet-plate glass negative, photographer unknown.

link: City Point: 1864 | Shorpy Photo Archive

Toucan: Big Bill, Big . . . uhh, Heat Reduction Benefit

For centuries, scientists have puzzled over why the toucan's bill is so remarkably large - but now one team thinks it might have an answer.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say that the toucan uses its enormous beak to stay cool.

They used infrared cameras to show the bird dumping heat from its body into its bill, helping it to regulate its body temperature.

The toucan has the largest bill of any bird, relative to body size.

It makes up about one-third of its total body length.

link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Hot secret behind toucan's bill

Smart People Can Be Conformists Too! (Hey, Where'd You Get That Tweed Jacket?)

Nicholas Wade writes:

“Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don’t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.”

So says Thomas Bouchard, the Minnesota psychologist known for his study of twins raised apart, in a retirement interview with Constance Holden in the journal Science.

Journalists, of course, are conformists too. So are most other professions. There’s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss’s shoes, and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters.

The strength of this urge to conform can silence even those who have good reason to think the majority is wrong. You’re an expert because all your peers recognize you as such. But if you start to get too far out of line with what your peers believe, they will look at you askance and start to withdraw the informal title of “expert” they have implicitly bestowed on you. Then you’ll bear the less comfortable label of “maverick,” which is only a few stops short of “scapegoat” or “pariah.”

link: Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com

Gates Case: What is "Disorderly Conduct" in Terms of the Law

Andrew Sullivan passes on a response from one of his readers:

I have been a Massachusetts appellate lawyer for more than twenty years, and will attempt to outline relevant state law to you. This is a quick answer, and I will look at some more cases.

The criminal prohibition against "disorderly conduct" can be found in Chapter 272 of the Massachusetts General Laws, under a category that penalizes "crimes against chastitity, morality, decency and good order." It is penalized under Section 53, which provides fines and possible imprisonment for "Common night walkers, common street walkers, both male and female, common railers and brawlers, persons who with offensive and disorderly acts or language accost or annoy persons of the opposite sex, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons in speech or behavior, idle and disorderly persons, disturbers of the peace, keepers of noisy and disorderly houses, and persons guilty of indecent exposure."

I do not think you need to get far, if at all, into nuances of First Amendment law in order to discern that a "disorderly conduct" is an offense against the public peace, and it is difficult to fathom how it ever properly could be charged for one's behavior in one's own home.

In my decades of practice as a state prosecutor, I have never seen "disorderly conduct" charged for acts which did not originate and occur in a public setting. I cannot conceive of a case in which a prosecutor would pursue a charge of "disorderly conduct" occasioned by tone or speech in one's own home. Nor have I seen tone or content of speech as a basis for charging disorderly conduct even in a public place. At the risk of restating the obvious, "disorderly conduct" aims to penalize what it says: conduct. Disorderly conduct is something more than "disorderly speech." In my opinion, the criminal prohibition would be fatally and unconstitutionally overbroad were it to be deemed to apply to pure speech. What citizen then meaningfully would be on notice to what speech would be viewed as "disorderly" and risk criminal prosecution and penalties?

link: Google Reader (48)

The End of Days, 1746

Hades, Heaven, Meru, Valhalla, Elysium, Olympus--the places at the end of the terrestrial road, the great emancipation. In some theological doctrines these places are reached collectively after the great conflict at the end of time; the end of days in the Old Testament, when the earth is devoured by holy vengeful wrath and reconstituted for godly comings –and-goings.

This fine little book is the brainchild of clergyman Jodocus Frisch (1714-1787), who delivered to the (un-) waiting world his vision of how the earth and heaven will come to an end, there at the end of days. Die Welt im Feuer, Oder das Wahre Vergehen und Ende der Welt, Durch den letzten Sünd-Brand (printed in Sorau by Gottlob Heboldm in1746) is one of very few works that depict (in a series of illustrations) the destruction of the earth, and even though Frisch illuminates biblically-based theory, the idea of the earth exploding into bits in primordial fire and so on was extraordinary in the extreme. The images were done in four colors representing the four elements: yellow, brown, green and white represented (respectively) fire, earth, water and air. In this image, we see the fire-centric earth encircled by a sphere of water, which is surrounded by a sphere of fire, which in turn is surrounded by a sphere of air. with much bad stuff happening.

link: Ptak Science Books: Exploding and Destroyed Earth, Part III: End Days, 1746

ETA Hoffman's Mouse King

"Illustrated by Dagmar Berková. Published in 1964 in Prague. "

link: MONSTER BRAINS

Pakistan: Report of Death of bin Laden's Son "Rubbish"

A Pakistani intelligence officer has dismissed as "rubbish" a reported claim by an American counterterrorism official that the son of Osama bin Laden was likely killed in a U.S. missile strike.

National Public Radio quoted a senior U.S. official as saying American spy agencies were "80 to 85 percent" certain the al Qaeda boss's son had been killed in Pakistan. The source did tell NPR that it was impossible to confirm the identity, as there was no body on which to conduct DNA tests.

"People get very excited over unconfirmed information claiming the possible death of a bin Laden," a Pakistani official told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in response to the report.

"At this point, unless proven otherwise, I am treating this news as no more than rubbish… There is no proof of Saad bin Laden's death," the official said Thursday. "Let's not forget, such claims have been made before."

link: Pakistan Dismisses Report of Bin Laden Son's Death - World Watch - CBS News

Albino Hunters Jailed in Burundi

Five men have been jailed in Burundi for murdering African albinos and selling their body parts to witch doctors. . . .

Police believe parts of the bodies of 11 murdered and mutiliated albino men, women and children were smuggled across the border into Tanzania and sold to witch doctors, who claim albinos' flesh brings luck in love, life and business.

link: Al Jazeera English - Africa - Killers of Burundi albinos jailed

Nashville, 1864

1864. "Nashville, Tennessee. Rail yard and depot with locomotives." Wet-plate glass negative by George N. Barnard.

link: Nashville: 1864 | Shorpy Photo Archive

India: Have You Heard the One About the Farmer's Naked Daughter? Weather Gods Embarrassed

Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.

Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.

"They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains," Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar's remote Banke Bazaar town.

"This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily."

India this year suffered its worst start to the vital monsoon rains in eight decades, causing drought in some states.

link: Naked girls plow fields for rain | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Lima: 50 Homeless Families Evicted so Archaeologists can Harvest One Mummy

LIMA (Reuters) - A pre-Incan mummy and eight other skeletons have been dug up from under what used to be a shanty town in the middle of Peru's capital, archeologists said on Wednesday.

Urban squatters had lived on the Huaca Huantille ruins for years, unaware they contained an ancient burial site.

Archeologist Roberto Quispe working on the excavation said the bones were from the Ychsma civilization dating from between 1000 and 1400 AD.

The burial site was found after city officials and Peru's national institute of culture kicked out 50 homeless families that had built a shantytown on the ruins, and later started excavations.

link: Pre-Incan mummy dug up in center of Lima | Science | Reuters

Bees Use Resin to Sterilize their Hives

Honeybees sterilise their hives with antimicrobial resin, scientists have discovered.

In doing so, they give the whole colony a form of "social immunity", which lessens the need for each individual bee to have a strong immune system.

Although honeybee resin is known to kill a range of pathogens, this is the first time that bees themselves have been shown to utilise its properties.

The team published details of their discovery in the journal Evolution.

link: BBC - Earth News - Honeybees sterilise their hives