The Cockroach Catcher

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Hong Kong Earthquake: PCCW.

No, this time the waves are caused by humans: they are the three judges of the appeal court in Hong Kong.
Forbes reported today:
Hong Kong court of appeal topples tycoon Richard Li's $2.1 billion buyout bid.
Richard Li Gets Denied On PCCW
Tina Wang April 22, 2009.

“In a stunning, and fittingly dramatic, fashion, Hong Kong's court has stymied tycoon Richard Li's tumultuous $2.1 billion bid to privatize telecom giant PCCW. The court of appeal sided Wednesday with Hong Kong's market regulator, which presented evidence of voter manipulation in the shareholder approval of the buyout.”

PCCW is Hong Kong's biggest fixed-line telecom operator.

“The three-member Hong Kong Court of Appeal overturned a lower court's ruling in favor of. ……Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission has accused Li of rigging a shareholder meeting by handing out shares to new investors so that they can participate in the shareholder vote on the buyout.”

“A plan by Li, who is the son of the world's 11th richest billionaire Li Ka-shing, to pay himself and Beijing-backed partner

China Netcom (now part of China Unicom ) up to $2.4 billion in cash dividends from PCCW once it was privatized was also plagued with controversy.”

Li Ka-shing is of course involved in the controversy of the naming of the first medical school in Hong Kong after he donated HK$1 billion.

Back to PCCW:
“Earlier this week, a judge on the appeal court, Anthony Rogers, called this scheme ‘outrageous.’ He also suggested that Li's buyout plan takes advantage of minority shareholders, who have been hurt by the dramatic fall in PCCW's share price, from over 120 Hong Kong dollars ($15.48) to over 2 Hong Kong dollars over most of the last decade.”

"A regulation intended to protect minority shareholders, Hong Kong law says a buyout can be approved if a majority of shareholders, regardless of how much stock they own, other than the buyout partners, vote in favour of the deal. Theoretically, majority investors seeking to privatize a company can split their shareholdings among new investors. Hong Kong regulators say that hundreds of insurance agents at Fortis' Hong Kong unit, once controlled by Li, were handed PCCW shares in exchange for votes. The court's decision may boost some momentum for reform of the market regulations that has been discussed for years.”

Mingpao, the influential local paper in its leader column stated that Hong Kong has become the biggest winner as it has demonstrated to the rest of the world that the rule of law, freedom of speech and expression in this little city of China outshone the rest of the world. And the regulator, Securities and Futures Commission, played its definitive role.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Teochiu Recipe: Caramelised Taro, Pumpkin and Sweet Potato

From The Cockroach Catcher

“……During Chinese festivals there was always much sharing of food, and that was traditional style Teochiu food that I have come to miss……”

Teochiu is the ancestral home of the Cockroach Catcher. Outside China, Teochiu cuisine may not be as well known as Cantonese, Shanghai, or Peking cuisine. However it is no less tasty. I am of course totally biased. To celebrate New Year Day, my wife made Teochiu Braised Goose.

Recently I met a Teochiu friend who happens to be a master cook of traditional regional dishes and he kindly cooked for me this one, which certainly brought back sweet memories.

Teochiu caramelized taro, pumpkin and sweet potato:

In many countries now you can get taro, pumpkin and sweet potato. It may be confusing as in some places taro is called yam and in others sweet potato is known as yam, and so I have avoided that name altogether.

It is a simple enough dish. Cut up the two different root vegetables and the pumpkin into chunky cubes (inch to inch and a half). Fry them in a wok with your oil or fat of choice. For authenticity that should really be goose fat. The biggest secret is the use of chopped spring onion and a light sprinkling of sugar. If you are watching the sugar you can skip that, I suppose. A little water may have to be added depending on the heat you use. The dish is ready when the vegetables are cooked and caramelized.

This dish goes really well with cilantro crusted barbecue leg of lamb. You will find the cilantro a refreshing change from the traditional rosemary and more delicate. This fresh herb is used widely in Teochiu cooking but the cilantro barbecue lamb is a Cockroach Catcher invention. To prepare the leg of lamb for barbeque, first rub with salt, and then insert six to eight whole garlic cloves into the meat after making pockets at random intervals with a sharp pointed knife. The paste for the crust is a simple enough affair. Just mix your favourite mustard with pepper and cilantro. Then spread the paste all over the joint. Preheat the kettle barbeque (or barbeque with lid). For a five pound leg, barbecue (indirect heat of at least 450°F) for about two hours for rare, and add another half hour for medium rare. Do not put the joint directly over the charcoal (preferred by the Cockroach Catcher) or gas source.

For a wine to accompany the lamb, my choice right now happens to be: a second wine of Château Prieuré Lichine (4th Growth), Château de Clairefont 2005. The vineyard is located next to Château Brane-Cantenac and Château Palmer. It is a great value wine and is ready to drink now whereas the first wine still needs some bottle years. The vineyard was bought by Alexis Lichine in 1951 for £8000, and sold in 1999 by his son for a handsome sum of $28.5 million. Granted there were additions to the original vineyard, but it was a good story.

What about greens, you might ask. Chinese broccoli briskly braised in good home made chicken stock will do the trick.

Wine posts:
Global Warming: Wine
Bottled Water for Dogs and Birds
Wine, Media and The Mind
The Cockroach Catcher and Pompano
Pleasure Principle and Wine

Teochiu posts:

Chinese New Year and the Goose

Antioxidants and cooking

Teochiu cookery site here.

Grand Rounds: Six Until Me a well known diabetes blog by Kerri

Friday, April 17, 2009

The Dark Side: Il Trovatore

Another Baby Murdered: Mother threw own baby in fire

“A mother stole a baby from a wealthy family. She proceeded to throw her own baby into a fire and bring up the baby from the wealthy family as her own.”

That was not another Social Services blunder.

That was at the Royal Opera House on the 13th of April 2009.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore is probably well known to most for its Anvil Chorus. For me it is about The Dark Side, the dark side of human nature.

“My hunch is that despite media coverage many of us still fail to grasp the dark side – the dark side of human nature. Until we do, we shall continue to read about child abuse, abductions and murders of the worst kind.” From The Cockroach Catcher.

Much has been written about training others to do the doctor’s work in an attempt to save health cost. What is not covered is the fact that there is training and there is a broader aspect of education. The ability to transmit culture external to genetic coding is what distinguishes Homo sapiens from other animal species on Planet Earth. Many bloggers are well educated in this cultural respect either by design, by choice or by accident. There is now an uncomfortable feeling of de-education in the Brave New World. Will the next generation of doctors, nurses and bloggers be as cultured? I do wonder!

In Il Trovatore, Azucena is the mother who killed her own baby and Manrico was brought up by her. Manrico is the brother of Count Di Luna that burnt Azucena’s mother for being a witch. Azucena had to avenge her mother’s death. How much hate can you hold. She had to throw her own child in the fire, bring up Manrico so that he would one day be killed by his own brother! Unbelievable! The full synopsis here.

Well, that roughly is it, Il Trovatore and the dark side. One of Verdi's best!

London debut: US soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in Il Trovatore

Telegraph

The Royal Opera House. Il Trovatore: unitl May 7, 2009.

The Metropolitan Opera Il Trovatore: until May 8, 2009

Opera posts:
Doctor Atomic
Illness and Morality
Lunar Eclipse

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Mid-Staffordshire? Not Just Mid-Staffordshire!

In The Belfast Telegraph:
Tuesday, 7 April 2009Tragedy of patient who froze to death

“A confused patient froze to death just hours after wandering out of a hospital in his slippers, an inquest has heard.
“Alcoholic William Scott (51) fled the accident and emergency department and disappeared into undergrowth on the perimeter of Lagan Valley Hospital. Police were not informed by staff.
“Coroner Brian Sherrard said steps had been taken to try and prevent a repeat of the March 2005 tragedy in Lisburn, Co Down. ‘There definitely has been a breakdown in communication at some stage,’ he said.
“He said staff at the hospital had been searching for Mr Scott, who was admitted to the hospital on March 12 suffering from alcohol-related seizures, after he went missing from his cubicle the following bitterly cold day. He was agitated and confused.
“His family had to tell police of the disappearance themselves two hours later.
“The victim, from Warren Park, Lisburn, was found dead on March 31 from hypothermia on a steep swampy bank close to the ambulance station and the Lagan River towpath.”
.
Not that long ago the Healthcare Commission reported on the high death rate in a Hospital Trust in England: The Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust.

The Independent headline:Patients die in 'third-world' hospital
17 March 2009“Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period, the head of the investigation for the Healthcare Commission said.
“Families have described ‘Third World’ conditions at the trust, with some patients drinking water from vases because they were so thirsty and others screaming in pain.
“The Commission launched an inquiry after concerns were raised about higher than normal death rates in emergency care, in particular at Stafford Hospital.
"It was like a Third-World country hospital. It was an absolute disgrace."

Perhaps the Health Secretary should go and look at the Third World hospitals, they may not indeed be as bad. They really do not have ridiculous targets and despite poor financing the doctors and nurses do the best they can. Also in the Third World, there would be riots if things like this happened.

Later in The Sunday Telegraph:Ten NHS trusts have worse death rates than 'shocking' Mid Staffordshire
29 Mar 2009

“Ten health trusts have worse death rates than the hospital where at least 400 patients died needlessly because of ‘shocking and appalling’ standards of care, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.”

You won’t believe this:
“Since the data was prepared, Swindon and Marlborough has been renamed Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Bolton Hospital has been renamed Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.”

Rebranding still cost money in logo and headed papers, money that could be spent on direct patient care. It used to be that criminals change their names after release from prison like this medical student in Sweden after serving his sentence for murder.

I suppose killing patients is a form of murder.

In the meantime Healthcare Commission has also been rebranded and is now called Care Quality Commission (CQC) and is headed by none other than Cynthia Bowers who used to be head at The West Midlands Strategic Health Authority (SHA) that oversee The Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. The best known medical blog NHS Blog Doctor in England had a good post. Read about it here. Do you think Cynthia might want to change her name too! Jobbing Doctor hade a go too: read about it here.
In England they do not just reward bankers and insurers.

Notable posts:The Witchdoctor: Yo-Yo Management - The Staffordshire Story
NHS Blog Doctor: How to complain about the NHS; Cynthia Bower : April Fool NHS Blog Doc
The Jobbing Doctor: Stafford - unearthing the reasons; More nonsense
Dr Rant: Central Credit: Local Blame
Dr Grumble: Mid Staffs Investigation
Ward 87: A Big Thankyou to Private Eye
My other posts:Mid-Staffordshire: Media Media Media.
Mid-Staffordshire: Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Unbelievable!
Mid-Staffordshire: Where Are The Doctors?
House M.D. : 95% vs 5%
House M.D.: Modern Tyranny
Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust: Learning From The Past.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Autism: Leo Kanner--- A Discussion

The following is an abstract taken form the DISCUSSION SECTION of Kanner's original paper. It may be useful to have another look at what Kanner observed all those years ago. Fortunately for us, he had no other motive except for his keen medical curiosity and observational power:

......The outstanding, "pathognomonic," fundamental disorder is the children's inability to relate themselves in the ordinary way to people and situations from the beginning of life. Their parents referred to them as having always been:

“self-sufficient"; "like in a shell"; "happiest when left alone"; "acting as if people weren't there"; "perfectly oblivious to everything about him"; "giving the impression of silent wisdom"; "failing to develop the usual amount of social awareness" ; "acting almost as if hypnotized."

It is therefore highly significant that almost all mothers of our patients recalled their astonishment at the children's failure to assume at any time an anticipatory posture preparatory to being picked up.

Eight of the eleven children acquired the ability to speak either at the usual age/or after some delay. Three (Richard, Herbert, Virginia) have so far remained "mute." In none of the eight "speaking" children has language over a period of years served to convey meaning to others.

Almost all the parents reported, usually with much pride, that the children had learned at an early age to repeat an inordinate number of nursery rhymes, prayers, lists of animals, the roster of presidents, the alphabet forward and backward, even foreign-language (French) lullabies.

Thus, from the start, language—which the children did not use for the purpose of communication—was deflected in a considerable measure to a self-sufficient, semantically and conversationally valueless or grossly distorted memory exercise.
It is difficult to know for certain whether the stuffing as such has contributed essentially to the course of the psychopathological condition. But it is also difficult to imagine that it did not cut deeply into the development of language as a tool for receiving and imparting meaningful messages.

"Yes" is a concept that it takes the children many years to acquire. They are incapable of using it as a general symbol of assent.

The same type of literalness exists also with regard to prepositions. Apparently the meaning of a word becomes inflexible and cannot be used with any but the originally acquired connotation.

Personal pronouns are repeated just as heard, with no change to suit the altered situation.

The repetition "Are you ready for your dessert?" means that the child is ready for his dessert.

The pronominal fixation remains until about the sixth year of life, when the child gradually learns to speak of himself in the first person, and of the individual addressed in the second person. In the transitional period, he sometimes still reverts to the earlier form or at times refers to himself in the third person.

Our patients, reversely, anxious to keep the outside world away, indicated this by the refusal of food. One child had to be tube-fed until 1 year of age. Most of them, after an unsuccessful struggle, constantly interfered with, finally gave up the struggle and of a sudden began eating satisfactorily.

Another intrusion comes from loud noises and moving objects, which are therefore reacted to with horror. Yet it is not the noise or motion itself that is dreaded. The disturbance comes from the noise or motion that intrudes itself, or threatens to intrude itself, upon the child's aloneness.

The child himself can happily make as great a noise as any that he dreads and move objects about to his heart's desire.

There is a marked limitation in the variety of his spontaneous activities. The child's behavior is governed by an anxiously obsessive desire for the maintenance of sameness that nobody but the child himself may disrupt on rare occasions.

Changes of routine, of furniture arrangement, of a pattern, of the order in which everyday acts are carried out, can drive him to despair.

Once blocks, beads, sticks have been put together in a certain way, they are always regrouped in exactly the same way, even though there was no definite design. After the lapse of several days, a multitude of blocks could be rearranged in precisely the same unorganized pattern, with the same color of each block turned up, with each picture or letter on the upper surface of each block facing in the same direction as before.

This insistence on sameness led several of the children to become greatly disturbed upon the sight of-anything broken or incomplete.

A great part of the day was spent in demanding not only the sameness of the wording of a request but also the sameness of the sequence of events.

It was impossible to return from a walk without having covered the same ground as had been covered before.

Objects that do not change their appearance and position, that retain their sameness and never threaten to interfere with the child's aloneness, are readily accepted by the autistic child.

Two patients began in the second year of life to spin everything that could be possibly spun.

The children sensed and exercised the same power over their own bodies by rolling and other rhythmic movements.

Every one of the children, upon entering the doctor’s office, immediately went after blocks, toys, or other objects, without paying the least attention to the persons present.

The father or mother or both may have been away for an hour or a month; at their homecoming, there is no indication that the child has been even aware of their absence.

After many outbursts of frustration, he gradually and reluctantly learns to compromise when he finds no way out, obeys certain orders, complies in matters of daily routine, but always strictly insists on the observance of his rituals.

There is a far better relationship with pictures of people than with people themselves. Pictures, after all, cannot interfere.

The astounding vocabulary of the speaking children, the excellent memory for events of several years before, the phenomenal rote memory for poems and names, and the precise recollection of complex patterns and sequences, bespeak good intelligence in the sense in which this word commonly used.

They all come of highly intelligent families. All but three of the families are represented either in Who's Who in America or in American Men of Science, or in both.

Autism posts:
Autism: Leo Kanner
Autism: Somalis in Minnesota and Sunshine
Autism: Gene Disruption?
Autism, the Brain and Tiger Woods
Autism and Money

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Autism: Leo Kanner

“In 1943 Leo Kanner published a paper that would, with Asperger’s work a year later, form the basis of present day understanding of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. He considered five features to be diagnostic. These were: a profound lack of affective contact with other people; an anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness in the child's routines and environment; a fascination for objects, which are handled with skill in fine motor movements; mutism or a kind of language that does not seem intended for inter-personal communication; good cognitive potential shown in feats of memory or skills on performance tests, especially the Séguin form board . He also emphasized onset from birth or before 30 months.” From the book, The Cockroach Catcher.

A case extract from his original paper:

Donald T. was first seen in October, 1938, at the age of 5 years, 1 month. "Eating,......has always been a problem with him. He has never shown a normal appetite. Seeing children eating candy and ice cream has never been a temptation to him."

At the age of 1 year "he could hum and sing many tunes accurately." Before he was 2 years old, he had "an unusual memory for faces and names, knew the names of a great number of houses" in his home town. "He was encouraged by the family in learning and reciting short poems, and even learned the Twenty-third Psalm and twenty-five questions and answers of the Presbyterian Catechism." The parents observed that "he was not learning to ask questions or to answer questions unless they pertained to rhymes or things of this nature, and often then he would ask no question except in single words." His enunciation was clear.

He knew the pictures of the presidents "and knew most of the pictures of his ancestors and kinfolks on both sides of the house." He quickly learned the whole alphabet" backward as well as forward" and to count to 100.

It was observed at an early time that he was happiest when left alone, almost never cried to go with his mother, did not seem to notice his father's home-comings, and was indifferent to visiting relatives.

He does not observe the fact that anyone comes or goes, and never seems glad to see father or mother or any playmate. He seems almost to draw into his shell and live within himself.

He seldom comes to anyone when called but has to be picked up and carried or led wherever he ought to go. In his second year, he "developed a mania for spinning blocks and pans and other round objects." At the same time, he had a dislike for self-propelling vehicles, such as Taylor-tots, tricycles, and swings.

He was always constantly happy and busy entertaining himself, but resented being urged to play with certain things. When interfered with, he had temper tantrums, during which he was destructive. He appears to be always thinking and thinking, and to get his attention almost requires one to break down a mental barrier between his inner consciousness and the outside world.

The father, whom Donald resembles physically, is a successful, meticulous, hard-working lawyer who has had two "breakdowns" under strain of work. He always took every ailment seriously, taking to his bed and following doctors' orders punctiliously even for the slightest cold. "When he walks down the street, he is so absorbed in thinking that he sees nothing and nobody and cannot remember anything about the walk." The mother, a college graduate, is a calm, capable woman, to whom her husband feels vastly superior.

When he desired to get down after his nap, he said, "Boo [his word for his mother], say' Don, do you want to get down?' "His mother would comply, and Don would say: "Now say 'All right.' "The mother did, and Don got down.

At mealtime, repeating something that had obviously been said to him often, he said to his mother, "Say 'Eat it or I won't give you tomatoes, but if you don't eat it I will give you tomatoes,' " or "Say 'If you drink to there, I'll laugh and I'll smile.' "And his mother had to conform or else he squealed, cried, and strained every muscle in his neck in tension. This happened all day long about one thing or another

When he wanted his mother to pull his shoe off, he said: "Pull off your shoe." When he wanted a bath, he said: "Do you want a bath?"

The word "yes" for a long time meant that he wanted his father to put him up on his shoulder. This had a definite origin. His father, trying to teach him to say "yes" and "no," once asked him, "Do you want me to put you on my shoulder?" *Don expressed his agreement by repeating the question literally, echolalia-like. His father said, "If you want me to, say 'Yes'; if you don't want me to, say 'No.' "Don said "yes" when asked. But thereafter "yes" came to mean that he desired to be put up on his father's shoulder. He paid no attention to persons around him.

He gave no heed to the presence of other children but went about his favorite pastimes, walking off from the children if they were so bold as to join him. If a child took a toy from him, he passively permitted it.

He was inexhaustible in bringing up variations: "How many days in a week, years in a century, hours in a day, hours in half a day, weeks in a century, centuries in half a millennium," etc., etc.; "How many pints in a gallon, how many gallons to fill four gallons?" Sometimes he asked, "How many hours in a minute, how many days in an hour?" etc.

When asked to subtract 4 from 10, he answered: "I'll draw a hexagon."

The paper is quite a gem and students of child psychiatry are well advised to read it. Leo Kanner continually questioned the given wisdom of the day; couple that with his keen observation power and curiosity and a natural irreverence to authority, it was only natural that he should have created history by being the first to describe Autism.

Leo Kanner “thought what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” Erwin Schrödinger Nobel Prize in Physics 1933

Autism posts:
Autism: Somalis in Minnesota and Sunshine
Autism: Gene Disruption?
Autism, the Brain and Tiger Woods
Autism and Money

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Harvard: Sleep Apnoea and Faking

It was Charles Dickens who accurately described the clinical picture of adult obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome in The Pickwick Papers. He would be turning in his grave if he knew what is happening today.

Office of Research Integrity (ORI)
April 6,2009

Robert B. Fogel, M.D., formerly of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, was found by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) to have engaged in scientific misconduct by falsifying and fabricating baseline data from a study of sleep apnea in severely obese patients.

Specifically, PHS found that for the data reported in the Sleep paper, the Respondent:

Changed/falsified roughly half of the physiologic data
Fabricated roughly 20% of the anatomic data that were supposedly obtained from Computed Tomography (CT) images
Changed/falsified 50 to 80 percent of the other anatomic data
Changed/falsified roughly 40 to 50 percent of the sleep data so that those data would better conform to his hypothesis.
Respondent also published some of the falsified and fabricated data in an abstract in Sleep 24, Abstract Supplement A7, 2001.

Sleep, the scientific journal had to retract the paper.
Fogel was the former co-director of the Fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a former associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Fogel now works at Merck Research Laboratories, where he is director of clinical research at its respiratory and allergy division.

Federal investigators had earlier subpoenaed financial records related to Scott S. Reuben, a Massachusetts doctor accused of faking data used in at least 21 anesthesiology studies.

Harvard related posts:
Bipolar Disorder in Children
Bipolar and ADHD: Boys and Breasts
Statins-Harvard-Roosevelt
Bipolar Disorder: Biederman Einstein God.
Faking related posts:
Coffee in Panama – Faking Is Not All Bad
Organic?
PTSD: Diagnosis du Jour
Anhinga in Costa Rica - Faking Is Not All Bad
Hemlock: Biology, Shakespeare, Socrates, House, M.D.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Easter Passion: Bach, Beethoven and Mahler

As it is Easter I am listening to St. Matthew's Passion. Would this indeed be the piece of music to take to your desert island? Richard Dawkins certainly picked it as one of his eight desert island discs which may surprise some.

In an earlier post Passion and Easter I wrote:

“On the Easter music note, it is perhaps appropriate to mention Mahler’s Second Symphony: The Resurrection. The text of the music made no biblical reference and it was Mahler’s very personal view of life and his life was full of tragedies and suffering, with the premature deaths of his siblings and daughter, and his own heart disease. There has not been a greater composer to emerge since his death.”

The Guardian:
Why we are shutting children out of classical music.
April 2, 2009 Tom Service
Tom Service is a 33-year-old classical music critic. For 25 years of concert-going he found himself to be amongst the youngest in the audience.

But there is something else that is strange:
“I've noticed that bus and train stations now pipe canned classical music, day-in, day-out, through their speakers as a way of stopping young people hanging around. So toxic have the associations become, that this experiment actually works: there is evidence that playing Beethoven and Mahler has reduced antisocial behaviour on the transport network.”

He went on:

“An entire generation, aged between 10 and 30, seems radically disenfranchised from classical music. How, and when, did this happen?”

Then in Finland:

“A couple of years ago, I saw a class of seven-year-olds in Helsinki enthusiastically learning Finnish and maths by performing sophisticated little songs with astonishing tuning and rhythm. And this wasn't a music school - just a typical Finnish state primary. Finland only developed its curriculum in the postwar period, but it works: today, the Finns are classical music world-beaters, and their education system has produced more great instrumentalists, conductors and composers per capita than any other country on earth.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen is of course the Principal Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Finland’s most famous music export in recent times.
I was at a concert recently and a large numbers of players in the orchestra were Koreans. Well apart from steel and TV and cars, the Koreans are now into golf and music in a big way. The LPGA is certainly dominated by Koreans. Could it be that music gave them the edge in golf as well, not just the chopsticks?

Tom again:

“Here is a ready-made answer to the problems of renewing classical music's role in society. Make them statutory requirements for every local authority, and give them the responsibility for rebuilding the network of classical musical possibility that used to resound throughout the country.”

And perhaps throw in golf for good measure.

It was in 1990 that American troops played deafening pop and heavy metal music day and night outside the Vatican Mission to Panama City that Noriega surrendered.

In future, this strategy might have to be changed, Beethoven, Mahler and God forbid even Bach.

Tom Service’s last words:

“We've already lost one generation - we can't afford to lose another.”

Nature Posts
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Hong Kong: Humpback Whale
Tasmania: Whales & Dolphins-Mother & Baby
It’s a Bird, a Reptile, a Mammal: It’s Platypus

Popular Posts:

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Monday, April 6, 2009

Earn More Than The Prime Minister: The Brightest

As it became clear with AIG that you have to pay good money to keep the brightest people, news broke today that Britain also paid good money for people to run its local councils. Some are paid more than the Prime Minister.

In The Independent today:
Revealed: the town hall staff who earn more than the PM
1,000 are paid six-figure salaries – and 16 take home more than Brown himself
Andy McSmith, Monday, 6 April 2009

“The latest figures, extracted via hundreds of Freedom of Information requests sent to local councils by the Taxpayers' Alliance, will fuel suspicions that some sectors of the nation's workforce are having an easier time of it than others during the recession.

“Out of 469 councils contacted by the Taxpayers' Alliance, 55 did not reply at all.”

“Despite these obstructions, the survey revealed that at least eight local council executives were paid more than £200,000 in the financial year 2007-08, and at least another eight were better paid than Gordon Brown, whose salary is £194,250 a year. There are 115 council officials in the survey paid more than £150,000 a year, and 182 on more than the £137,579 paid to cabinet ministers.”

So perhaps the brightest went to local councils apart from those that went to AIG, RBS, HBOS and other banks.

“The biggest bonanza went to John Foster, who left as chief executive of Wakefield Council in March 2008, after receiving a pay packet of £545,000. A month later, he was appointed chief executive of Islington Council, in London.”

Later in The Independent it was revealed:

“During most of his five years as chief executive of Wakefield council, John Foster was seen as one of the best in the business. When he arrived, the council's organisation was rated as ‘poor’; before he left, it had been upgraded to ‘good’. In 2006, Wakefield won an award as Britain's ‘most improved’ council.”
Who was doing the upgrading?
“But in August and September 2007 it was hit by two scandals in quick succession. Six former care staff won awards totalling £1m after being sacked for whistleblowing, and then the council admitted failing children in its care who were sexually abused by a foster couple.”

In The Yorkshire Post:
“Six care workers sacked for revealing a shocking catalogue of mismanagement in children's homes to the Yorkshire Post have won a £1m settlement from Wakefield Council.”
“The raft of failings included children as young as 12 being allowed to engage in sexual relationships; child sex offenders being inappropriately placed in homes with highly vulnerable other children; a care worker buying and smoking drugs with children in his care; woefully inadequate training; and failures in staff criminal record checks.”
“At the time of the exposé Wakefield Council insisted it had acted appropriately and claimed the NSPCC had investigated the whistleblowers' concerns.“That claim was shot down in August last year when it was revealed – in an independent rep-ort to the Children's Rights Director – that the council had ‘perversely’ blocked the NSPCC from carrying out a full investigation.”

Read the full story here and the abuse scandal here.

The Independent continued:
“Mr Foster announced then that he was leaving to pursue ‘other interests’, although he stayed in post until the end of the financial year in March 2008. He departed a wealthy man. He was paid £340,000 in what appears to have been a severance deal, on top of his £205,000 annual salary. In April, he obtained a new job, at roughly the same salary, in Islington, north London.”

Looks like it is the same “interests”.

Then later in The Independent:

“The highest salary paid to a council official, without any bonuses or other one-offs, was £225,000 paid to Peter Gilroy, chief executive of Kent County Council, which lost £50m it had invested in Icelandic banks.”
From the BBC:
Councils 'ignored Iceland risks'

“Seven English councils have been accused of ‘negligence’ for putting money into Icelandic banks days before they went bust last October.”

John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association, defended the salaries.

"Many councils have bigger budgets than FTSE100 companies and to get the brightest people to deliver the best services for local people they need to pay a competitive wage."

Currently many university lecturers in the UK are paid less than one twentieth of what John Foster was.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Autism: Somalis in Minnesota and Sunshine

I was in Thailand two years ago and I visited a friend who has a grandson in Minnesota. She said, "I could not understand him, from Thailand to Minnesota, the temperature in the winter is 100° different.

Even now it is between 11° F and 32°F.

But I told her that Minnesota is famous for the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), one of the most frequently used tests in psychiatry, her grandson was studying medicine there and wanted to be a psychiatrist!

Now it may become famous for something else.

In the New York Times today:
Autism Rates Are Higher for U.S.-Born Somali Children in Minneapolis
April 1,2009
"Confirming the fears of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Health Department agreed Tuesday that young Somali children there appeared to have higher-than-usual rates of autism.

"Though health officials emphasized that their report was based on very limited data, they concluded that young Somali children appeared to be two to seven times as likely as other children to be in classes for autistic pupils.

"Dr. Sanne Magnan, the state health commissioner, said the finding was ‘consistent with the observations by parents,’ who have been saying for more than a year that alarming numbers of Somali children born in this country have severe autism. Somalis began immigrating into the area in the 1990s, fleeing civil war in their homeland. The report made no effort to explain why the children had autism. Its authors did not examine children or their medical records. They accepted the diagnoses — some by doctors, some by school evaluators — that admitted children to special-education classes, and they calculated rates for different ethnic groups. They counted only 3- to 4-year-olds, only children in Minneapolis public schools, and only children born in Minnesota. They drew no comparisons with Somalis in other cities.

"There have been anecdotal reports of higher autism rates among Somalis in some American cities, and no formal studies. A small study in Sweden reported high rates among Somali schoolchildren in Stockholm.

"Idil Abdull, the mother of an autistic child who has long tried to draw attention to the Minneapolis situation, said she was “happy that they said, ‘Yes, there is a problem.’ ”

“But at least they didn’t say, ‘No, it’s all in your minds.’ If they had done that, I’d picket in front of their building.”

"Dr. Magnan noted that this study found “strikingly low” numbers of Asian and American Indian children in the same special-education classes. But she cautioned that the reason might not be lower autism rates; instead, parents might not be enrolling their children in those classes, or might be sending them to private schools.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) monitors autism diagnoses among 8-year-old children in 14 sites around the country, and in 2007 it estimated that about 1 child in 150 had an autism-spectrum disorder.

"Rates are roughly the same for whites and blacks, Catherine Rice, another C.D.C. official, said recently. They are lower among Hispanics, possibly because of poor medical care or cultural reticence, she said. Too few Asians were monitored to make estimates."

Could sunshine or the relative lack of it be the culprit here? Sunshine and Vitamin D3 is the new black.

World Autism Awareness Day

Previous post here.

Minnesota Department of Health: Autism and the Somali Community - Report of Study Fact Sheet (PDF )

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