Image via Wikipedia The California Supreme Court recently decided that a woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle was not immune from civil liability because the care she rendered was not medically-related. The divided high court signalled that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It may be the first ruling by…
Image via Wikipedia According to an article entitled “Junk Science” (National Review, Vol. 46, October 24, 1994), here’s the story: “Investigators …. were perplexed at finding no discussion in the professional public-health literature of this ubiquitous [one in a million] rule, which is the make-or-break test for new pharmaceutical products. Eventually they traced it back…
See page 57 of Ancient Egyptian Medicine by John Nunn (Seehttp://books.google.com/books?id=WHfEnVU6z8IC&pg=PT1&dq=scholar:+Ancient+Egyptian+Medicine+Nunn#PPA57,M1 ). On this page, there is a drawing of a relief in the Deir el Medina tomb of a Dynasty XX (11th or 12th century BCE) man (necropolis worker) named Ipwy. The scene shows a group of workers building a catafalque (a platform to…
In a clinical trial, there are hazards to the rights of the participants and to the safety of the participants. There are also hazards to the trial itself–to its completion and to its reliability. The risks emerging from these hazards are complex, and the framing of these risks within the constraints of the ethical principles,…
California Labor Code Section 4850 requires that police officers and firefighters must be paid 100 percent of their pre-injury wage for up to one year while temporarily disabled (most other workers are limited to two-thirds of their salaries up to a maximum limit). This benefit is tax free such that temporarily disabled public safety officers…
Someone asked, “We have a public employee who’s nearly 90 that continues to work, but is slow, occassionally incontinent, and, in management’s opinion, ready to be let go. What do I do?” I answered, “Your municipality is lucky to have a nonagenarian that is willing and able to work. An employee’s decision about when to…
Following is a link to the audio of Rev. Jim Jones at Jonestown during and immediately after the mass suicide: http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16
The graphic above summarizes U.S. crime rates from 1960 through 2006, inclusive. The columns are defined as follows from left to right: year, overall crime rate, violent crime rate, property crime rate, murder rate, rape rate, robbery rate, assault rate, burglary rate, larceny rate, and vehicle theft rate. Overall, this shows that property crime rates…
Personal Radiation Detectors (PRDs) should not be used as a standalone law enforcement mechanism. Common items–bananas, spinach, peanuts, brazil nuts, pottery, kitty litter, patients with recent radiation treatment for cancer–emit gamma radiation that will cause false positives in PRDs. As an example, the Port of Long Beach has over 250 false positives per day. PRDs…
Barack Obama won the popular vote with 62,605,967 votes at 52.33% and John McCain lost the election with 55,512,629 votes at 46.38%. Obama won the Electoral vote with 338 votes to John McCain’s 163 votes. The Fair regression method of estimating the U.S. presidential winner accurately predicted the outcome. This supports the hypothesis that economic…