10.7.07

Samanlaisuus on sairautta

Kaksoisagentti-blogi on hieman epäkunnossa, joten siirrytään sulavasti B-suunnitelmaan ja nakataan muistilinkit tänne.

Pain Management: A Fundamental Human Right
Despite the growing number of initiatives by prestigious organizations and thought leaders to improve pain management, powerful myths (and their proponents) are well entrenched and continue to spread with the ease of an epidemic, independent of any need for logic or rationale. The belief that pain is an inevitable part of the human condition is widespread. The word "patient" itself is derived from the latin patiens, meaning "one who suffers." Examples of pain myths shared by health professionals and patients alike include the notions that pain is necessary, natural and hence beneficial, that pain is essential for diagnosis, that "good patients" do not complain and never challenge health professionals, that under-treated pain has negligible economic consequences, that severe pain after surgery or in association with cancer is unavoidable and that many patients with chronic noncancer pain are malingerers or have purely psychologic problems.

On Bioengineering, Modification, and Motivation - Anne Corwin
If you’ve ever lived in a gated community, you’ve almost certainly been subject to a lengthy list of rules and regulations regarding the appearance of your home — no bright curtains, no garden gnomes, basically nothing that deviates too far from beige. These regulations are in place in order to maintain property values; difference is perceived as being something that degrades its surroundings. -- Of course, the above represents an exaggerated and stereotyped description of a gated community. But “gated community” is the image I frequently tend to get in my head while reading some people’s notions of what the future ought to look like. It isn’t exactly an encouraging image; in fact, I find it to be rather nightmarish. Yes, people might feel safer, and yes, some particular real risks might indeed be mitigated. But “gated community” thinking as applied to the future of sentient life seems to doom that future to a self-perpetuating cycle of suboptimization — only “approved” configurations will be permitted to exist in the first place, and it will become more and more difficult not to see differences as defects.

Guys And Dolls - Dokumentti Realdollien poikaystävistä.

Charles Stross: ...the first decade of the 21st Century, when recorded history "really" began
You don't ever need to forget a conversation again, even if all you can recall about it is that it was with a stranger you met in a given pub about two months ago and someone mentioned the word "fishhooks". -- Using nanoscale diamond as data storage, six hundred grams (about one and a quarter pounds, if you're my generation) can store a lifelog, a video and audio channel, with running transcript and search index, for six billion human beings for one year.

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