Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
A Word About "The Test"
Thanks for the many kind and encouraging comments about yesterday's test run of a video.
The content, the actually video, is an old piece I have had sitting on my desktop for ages. It is a sampler, what is called a "demo reel," that I have used for one purpose or another over the years.
The "testing" part was getting the thing uploaded to my blog.
I have been encouraged by a few friends to post video monologues or even interviews on the blog and to that end I have now tried about 14,000 different methods of doing so.
I bought a JVC Everio Camcorder.
It's wonderful.
The picture and sound are movie-quality, first-rate.
The thing boasts "one-touch YouTube upload."
Ha!
I have two friends who are computer-wizards and even they have been pulling out their hair trying to solve this dilemma.
So yesterday, I tried a different system, "Vimeo."
Well, as you can see, it worked with that old demo reel.
BUT!
It still won't take the material from my camera.
As of this morning, I think I may have another solution.
Hm...
So, bear with me while I continue to try to solve this little annoying mystery.
In the meantime...
Would you be so kind as to tell me if you would prefer that I post video monologues or continue writing or offer a mix of the two?
Have a wonderful Christmas and holiday.
There is still nothing wrong and everything right with the old traditional greeting:
Peace on earth and good will to men.
Almost There
No country in the world spends more money in total or more money per capita on Health Care than the United States of America and gets less meager results.
The highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy for openers.
America also has almost 50 million citizens with no health insurance.
But it is likely that by end of day today a Health Care Reform Bill will pass.
That's the good news.
The not-so-very-great news is that, according to a wide-ranging piece in this morning's Globe by Konrad Yakabuski, the bill is an unwieldy mess.
"It will serve to fatten insurer profits and deepen the country's budget crisis. It's not clear it will make Americans any healthier. And it certainly won't make the system any simpler."
Under the current American system, "as much as a quarter of the $2.5-trillion Americans spend on health care annually goes toward administrative costs, compared to less than 10 per cent in most developed countries with universal health coverage."
"No wonder insurance company stocks have soared as investors contemplate 30 million new insurance consumers and the absence of new competition in the form of a public health-insurance plan for Americans under 65."
I understand the Americans' long-bred and almost natural hate of government.
But the evidence is in.
Canada, England, France, Denmark, among other Western democracies have been operating single-payer, government-based universal health insurance programs with considerable success for many years now.
For the Americans to ignore this, and worse, to hiss at these successes and call them names (COMMIES! SOCIALISTS!) is childish and self-destructive.
I repeat that I can only hope that this reform, watered down and confusing at it is, might be the first step in moving an adolescent culture into maturity.
When the USA creates and supports a universal health care insurance program, we will know that a New Day has truly arrived.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
At the Heart of THE BIG LIE
As reported here yesterday, a noxious fog has descended upon us.
Your governments will spend many millions of dollars giving 300+ heroin addicts free heroin and heroin pill substitutes over the next four years.
The mad fools behind this wasteful, destructive scheme are all honorable men and women, leaders in our community.
They bring to mind Hannah Arendt's famous dictum about "the banality of evil."
These are some of the people who sit on the board of the strangely named InnerChange Foundation:
Richard Mulcaster.
I know Richard and I like him.
I had lunch with him last year to discuss this very matter.
Richard was for many years the President and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation, for whom he did a wonderful job.
When he left, he told me that he would probably do some international charity work for CEDA.
Instead, he surfaced with this job.
Knowing my staunch and unchanging opposition to horrible bad ideas like this one, he invited me to talk about it over some good food at a favorite local eatery.
As always, he was good company. He's a good man.
But he is mistaken.
He is wrong about this endeavour and although I asked him, "WHY?" he could never really tell me why an otherwise reasonable person would champion such nonsense.
He sang the praises of the German psychiatrist who is at the core of this "experiment."
Dr Michael Krausz, MD, PhD, FRCPC
- UBC/Providence Health Care Leadership Chair in Addiction Research Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (CHEOS) St.Paul's Hospital
- Founding Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health at UBC
- Member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC
- Member of the Research Advisory Council of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research
- Member of the Canadian Centre of Substance Abuse (CCSA) of the Vancouver Foundation
- Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation (WIF)
Dr. Krausz started his professional carrier as a nurse in adolescent psychiatry working especially with young psychotic clients. After Medical School in Hamburg the H. Böckler Foundation awarded him a doctoral grant. He wrote his thesis on long-term course of schizophrenia starting in adolescence. In 1985 he started his residency in Adult Psychiatry until 1991. Parallel he wrote his PhD on "Psychosis and Addiction" evaluating the entanglement of severe mental illness and harmful use of psychotropic substances, which then became the major research focus of his further work. He became then responsible for big studies about mental illness among intravenous drug users with over 1000 individuals and especially the German Heroin trial as biggest randomized clinical trial in Addiction Research in Europe in this field. He could show, that it is possible to improve the most difficult to treat clients with the appropriate intervention and contributed to an important paradigm shift through clinical research. He founded and edited two scientific journals, which until now have a mayor impact in this area: European Addiction Research and Suchttherapie. 240 publications and even more invited presentations standing for his scientific contributions until now. After over 20 years in different positions in Germany he was selected as the first Providence BC Leadership Chair for Addiction Research in 2005.
As you can see, Dr. Krausz has made himself a world authority on the subject of addictions.
I have only one question for the good doctor.
How many addicts have you helped become clean and sober, sir?
I have helped thousands and so have my friends and colleagues in the rehab business.
But oh.
I'm sorry. I forgot.
You're not in the people helping business.
You're in the scientific research business.
The nutty research business.
The business that pays no mind to the dreadful harming consequences of your arcane research.
Here are two more doctors at the heart of InnerChanges:
Dr. John Blatherwick
Dr. John Blatherwick is currently retiring as the Chief Medical Health Officer of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. He has been the Medical Health Officer in Vancouver since 1984. Prior to this he was the Medical Health Officer in the Simon Fraser Health Unit for nine years.
Dr. Blatherwick was awarded the Order of Canada in 1994 for his work in public health and received an award as a Canadian Health Hero from the Pan American Health Organization in 2002. He was also the recipient of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.
Dr. Perry Kendall
Dr. Kendall is the Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia. He has pioneered programs for Harm Reduction, AIDS/HIV and drug abuse prevention in British Columbia and Ontario. He helped to form the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario, and the Addiction and Mental Health Services Corporation.
In 1991 he was recognized for leadership in substance abuse prevention in Ontario and received an Addiction Research Foundation Community Achievement Award. He was awarded the Order of British Columbia for his contributions to Public Health practice and to harm reduction policy and practice in British Columbia.
Isn't the phrase "first do no harm" a central part of the Hippocratic Oath...
No, it isn't, but over the years we have all come to believe that this is a core dedication for doctors.
Explain then how these two good men and imminent physicians can want to give drugs to drug addicts and still sleep at night?
Why aren't they joining the good fight to help addicts NOT use more drugs?
"And how dare I question or challenge these honorable men?"you ask.
Because I have done the work and, in spite of all their awards and citations, they have not.
I know next to nothing about the flow and composition of blood in the human body, as they know next to nothing about addictions.
The sooner they re-focus on the practice of medicine and leave the addictions work to people who understand it, the better off the whole community will be.
And finally, bringing up the rear of InnerChanges, where he belongs is:
Hon. John Reynolds, P.C.
Mr. Reynolds started his political career in 1972, when he was elected a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament for the British Columbia riding of Burnaby-Richmond-Delta. He was also elected to the BC Provincial Legislature, and served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and as Minister of Environment. He returned to the House of Commons as a Reform Party Member and served as Opposition House Leader and Leader of the Official Opposition. He co-chaired the national Conservative Party campaign in the 2006 federal election. He is currently a Senior Strategic Advisor to Lang Michener, a law firm in Vancouver.
All back room, all cloak-and-dagger, all out-of-sight string pulling.
So...
So write and email your MLA and your MP and your City Council member and point out that we are all mad, that we are throwing good money after bad to further enslave and entrap people who are already caught in the web, that we need to get more bang for our buck by funding REAL TREATMENT THAT WORKS.
That there is an officially sanctioned evil amongst us and it should be discredited at every possible turn.
There is no surer example in our culture today that I can think of that so clearly demonstrates how far off the rails we have fallen.
Wash Cycle
Torture issue Afghan problem, not Canadian: PM
It's fascinating to observe on a regular basis how Stephen Harper makes it so hard for us to like him.I'm sure he would point out that his job is running the afairs of the country and not winning popularity contests.
However...
Here is his cheapest shot of all:
“The allegations are not being made – I hope – against Canadian soldiers.”
No, Mr. Prime Minister and you know very well that Canadian soldiers were never at question here.
It is the policy makers and leaders who are under fire for violating Geneva Conventions on the handling of detainees and prisoners.
To pretend that anyone was blaming soldiers on the front is specious at best and creepily manipulative at worst.
Get a new spin machine, please.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
THE BIG LIE
And verily I say unto you...
That NAOMI begat SALOME
and SALOME was DISASTER.
It is a peculiar day today, a puzzling day.
The skies are clear and sunny here in Vancouver, but there is a deep dark cloud hovering over us all.
It is this:
Landmark heroin study set to begin in Vancouver
This very expensive and very sick madness is being hailed as something that will "transform lives" and "treat the root cause of homelessness on the Downtown Eastside."
It is the Silver Bullet that all the fools have been looking for lo these many unproductive, destructive years.
O.K. Enough with the rhetoric.
What is it?
SALOME is the Study to Assess Longer-term Opiod Medication Effectiveness.
In this so-called study, 322 chronic addicts will be given heroin and heroin pill substitutes at a private clinic.
This program is run by an organization that calls itself with no shame or irony the "InnerChange Foundation."
Little question.
How does taking free heroin or a heroin replacement constitute "inner change?"
Inner change requires investigation and hard work and honesty and commitment. It is not an easy road. It is not found by showing up at a "clinic" once a day for your free fix.
A woman named Trish Walsh is the Executive Director of InnerChange.
Her qualifications are what exactly?
Her knowledge of addicts and addictions comes from what experience, please?
The people she has helped number how many and are named what?
But listen to Trish Walsh's voice of authority:
“This could revolutionize heroin treatment internationally."
By the way, this "treatment" - and it in no way qualifies as a "treatment" - is to run for four years.
And yet, as shams like this always do, this program throws in the little rider that
"While the long-term goal is to help the addicts get off hard drugs, in the short term, the plan is to get them away from the more dangerous and troubling aspects of heroin addiction, such as committing crimes, sharing needles and shooting up in back alleys."
No it isn't.
There is no demonstrable part of this project aimed at getting anyone off drugs.
It is entirely about giving addicts drugs in the mistaken and completely erroneous hope that that will alter the landscape...which, of course, it won't.
Ms. Walsh has also claimed that this magic act "would be a groundbreaking new treatment in a field where few options are available, especially in Canada."
What Walsh doesn't tell you is that this program will cost about $8 Million a year for the next four years.
In January I will go once again to Winnipeg to run a week of workshops with the staff and resident clients at the Behavioural Health Foundation.
At BHF, there are over 100 men, women and children who are resident clients. There is a 6 month waiting list. People are graduating every day at BHF from high school matriculation and University and college programs. Every one is clean and sober. The total cost of the program is less than $6 Million annually, which means that the individual cost is less than $50,000 annually.
When Walsh and her crew of mistaken pseudo-scientist lunatics backed by opportunist ex-politicians, when these ghouls hand out dope to dope fiends will they include breakfast, lunch and dinner? A roof over the addicts heads, clean clothes and bedding? Music, dancing, singing, group and individual therapy, swimming and hockey, concerts, laughter and tears?
No they won't.
But the Behavioural Health Foundation and Portage and Welcome Home and the handful of other therapeutic community programs and peer-group programs will do all of this and more.
You see, Walsh, there are other options in Canada. Not enough of them, yes.
But it's hard to get funding for real programs run by real people that really work for other real people when so much money is being given to hateful, detestable, mushy-headed obscenities like this latest atrocity.
Our Health Bill is our single largest line item in all our governments across the land.
So many legitimate needs are being ignored.
Seniors care, home care, child protection.
Yet there are the Sam Sullivans and the Larry Campbells and the others who can persuade governments and private benefactors to piss dollars down the drain on giving free narcotics to narcotic addicts, as if this is a new and untried idea.
As if this would add to the common weal.
It may be sunny today.
But for me, this is one of the darkest days I've ever seen.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Health of the Nation
President Barack Obama's health bill will pass, but will it pass muster, particularly with his own Democratic colleagues?
The bill will have no public health plan.
It will extend access to insurance to all Americans, but at what costs and to whom?
It is astonishing to witness this struggle from the smug and superior position of Canadiana.
Perhaps you find it as difficult and mystifying as I do to see decent and reasonable people fighting what should be best for them all because of some ingrained and frankly simplistic outmoded belief systems.
In a classic case of the Law of Unintended Consequences, the private insuring companies are probably singing all the way to the stock market this morning.
As for Ms. Poor and Desperate with three kids...good luck.
Obama has played politics with this enormous issue.
But what did people expect?
He is not a shoemaker. He is a politician. He came from nowhere and grabbed the White House.
This bill is far from ideal, but it is something.
Let's be optimistic (if a little dewy-eyed, I admit) and pray that in the coming years this flawed compromise will be seen as the building block to something that really pays off for those who need it and ought to have it in a modern democracy.
Especially one that spends more on health care per capita and gets less results than any similar democracy in the world today.
Person of the Year
Frank Rich has written an excellent piece that appeared in the NY Times yesterday morning.
Rich argues that it has been a decade of deceit.
Enron, Bernie Madoff, weapons of mass destruction...
And now Tiger.
It is a sad but compelling article.
Just Asking
Curious.
Think about it.
Have any of you ever seen Pittsburgh Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and French film star Gerard Depardieu in the same room at the same time?
Just wondering...
Follow-Up
Yesterday's little post about Sinatra and Tony Bennett brought out a number of readers' favorites.
Below are two of them.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Clarity
The depth of my ignorance is made clear by this simple fact:
I still don't know the names of birds, flowers and stars.
Pop
It’s only taken about 40 years, but finally – finally – I have sorted out my thoughts and feelings about Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.
In short, Sinatra may be the greater artist, but I’d rather listen to and watch Tony any time.
Here’s why.
KCTS has been running a number of their all-time favorites during their recent pledge drive, including “Sinatra at Carnegie Hall.”
I taped the 90-minute piece and watched it in several sittings between bites of food, Seinfeld re-runs and other mindless diversions.
Sinatra, about 55 or 60 at the time, was terrific.
So were the orchestra, the arrangements and the worshipping audience.
But.
There were three big buts.
And one of them was a butt.
A cigarette butt.
There was a time not so very long ago in Magic Land when most of us smoked cigarettes and many of us developed certain styles and nervous tics with our habits that we believed spoke of sophistication, urbanity, hipness and cool.
We were wrong and deluded, of course, but it was great fun while it lasted.
A bit of an anachronism to witness therefore, the Chairman of the Board dragging the last possible hit out of his filter job – whilst singing up a storm no less – and then, before our very eyes, flicking the damn thing onto the hallowed parquet floor of the stage of Carnegie Hall and then grinding the thing in with the heel of his many-lacquered tuxedo slipper.
A cultural oddity I realize, forgivable by the relativity we call Time.
But the second offense was not a passing fancy.
It was essential core Sinatra.
Sinatra has always been famous for, among many other things (just ask Ava Gardner), crediting the great songwriters and tunesmiths just before he opens his pipes and delivers what is usually the defining version of a given melody.
In the concert I was watching he did just that with a song by Carol Bayer Sager.
Then for some inexplicable reason, he began riffing on her name, ending in a dreadful disrespectful insult, which he clearly thought was funny and clever.
It was neither.
“Carole Bayer Sager. Or, Carol Sager Bayer. Or, Bag Lady…”
Bag Lady?
I have never heard him do this with the names of Gershwin – George or Ira – Irving Berlin, Jimmy van Husen, Sammy Kahn, Rogers & Hart or any other of the great contributors to The American Songbook, which is Sinatra’s stock and trade.
But of course they are all men.
I would suggest that this odd and not amusing little sideways outburst has a lot to do with Sinatra’s great love for and fear of women.
Women have always been Man’s kryptonite.
Men adore the fairer sex and knowing at the deepest level our dependence on them, we fear them mightily.
It was Sinatra who insisted on calling them “broads.”
Finally, there is a palpable sense when one watches Sinatra that we are witnessing a guy who is oh so very in love with himself. He is so hostile and angry with you and you and me and so pleased with his own very wonderful self, that much of the potential for communication is cut off by the glory of the performance.
He was a marvelous actor, possibly the best pop singer in living memory, a pretty fair Sunday painter, a complete entertainer and a fascinating complex character.
He has left us much to cherish.
But you know what?
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