Facebook is the cool site to hate these days, because while you just know they are going to come up with yet another appalling way to violate your privacy, you keep going back, because, well, all your friends are already there. It’s like a giant party that no one is having very much fun at, but no one wants to leave because there ain’t nothing going on anywhere else. Of course, you could have said the same thing about MySpace back in 2006, and Friendster before that. The conventional wisdom says that eventually something will come along to topple Facebook from its perch at the top of the social networking world. (More after the jump!) Read more…
Thursday, I took my last exam in my graduate certificate program at East Carolina University. It only took two and a half years to complete a four course sequence, but I’m done at last! Looking back at my original post on the program, I realize that my personal and career objectives have changed, and that I probably won’t see any real utility from this certificate (at least not immediately), but I’m still very glad to be done.
Would I recommend the program to others? Well, it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s an AACSB-accredited graduate certificate that is super affordable (less than $3K for the whole program, books and all). On the other hand, ECU’s finance department is horribly understaffed, so the courses you need to complete the program don’t come up often enough. The administration understands this, and has promised to hire more instructors, but I’ve been listening to that for almost three years now. Also, I have some concerns about the workload – I feel like it’s a little too light, and that too much time is spent reviewing basics like time value of money and bond pricing, and not enough time was spent on stuff like derivatives and financial engineering and the more “meaty” topics of finance. Teamwork was generally pretty good, I got to know some of my fellow students well, although there were some terms where I felt like I was carrying three other people on my back.
This was the first program I’ve been in that used proctored exams, and although I was worried about it at first, it proved to be pretty much a non-issue. The UNC system (NC’s public university system, of which ECU is a part) has proctoring down to a science, so finding and utilizing proctors was no big deal – just go to the proctoring website, and point and click till you find someone close by and available.
Overall, it was a positive experience. I didn’t get what I wanted out of the program, but that was more because my life and the economic environment both changed dramatically over the last three years. I had my first child during the program, and the economy went into the toilet, both of which made staying in my current IT job much more appealing that trying to start over again in the world of finance. I did learn a lot, and maybe a little later down the road, I’ll test the waters somewhere else.
What’s next? Well, I think that my wife is ready for me to take a serious hiatus from schoolwork. For basically the entire duration of our ten years together, I’ve been chasing one degree or another, starting with on-campus coursework at NC State, moving on the my BSBA program at Wyoming, through the MBA at Duke, and finally the certificate program at ECU. She’s stood by me the whole time, but I think that it is time that family occupies the center of my life. I’ll continue to be an evangelist for DL, spreading the twin Gospels of CLEP and DSST, but I’m pretty sure I’m done as a student, at least for the foreseeable future.
My host (Hi Andy!) was changing ISPs, and I knew I was going to have to change my DNS information, but I never got around to doing so, so the blog has been offline for a while. Sorry about that. We’re back after 59 days of downtime (according to Google), absolutely none of which was due to the hosting provider. I suppose if I’m going to be a blogger, I should keep my DNS entries up to date.
Sometimes, especially if you’re a long-dead economist, you have to climb down from your ivory tower and speak to the youth of today in a language that they can understand. In this music video, two giants of economics break down their differing views on how to fix what ails us when it comes to boom and bust.
There has to be more to this story, but MercuryNews.com only has a short blurb about an unnamed teen who walked into a Vallejo emergency room with a gunshot wound to his most private of parts. I’d make a joke, but they kind of make themselves, don’t they?
From the “only in North Carolina” file, 30-year-old Richard Peterson had a meeting with his probation officer, but he didn’t show up. Instead, his probation officer turned on the TV, and was stunned to see his missing charge bragging about a one night stand with a stripper on “The Jerry Springer Show”. Peterson’s stunt earned him three days in jail, and presumably, a spot in the dumb criminals Hall of Fame. WRAL News has more information, courtesy of The Gaston Gazette.
Mike Celizic of NBCSports.com has an interesting post on CBS’s decision to accept anti-abortion advertising from conservative evangelical group Focus On The Family featuring University of Florida football star Tim Tebow. He’s dead on when he says that the only reason CBS is taking this ad is that the market is soft for advertising in general and for 30-second spots that cost two and a half million dollars in particular. Unfortunately, there’s really no downside for CBS – who’s not going to watch the Super Bowl because of one commercial? Still, I wish the Good Without God folks or the Atheist Bus Campaign could afford to pay for a rejoinder ad. Actually, what I really wish is that CBS could keep political and religious advertising off the air during an event that has nothing to do with either.
Imagine, if you will, a list of life’s make-or-break decisions. Choose well, and you find eternal bliss with a loving God. But stray from the one true path, and you will burn for all time in the lake of fire. The Watchtower has a few examples of these critical moments in the life of a Jehovah’s Witness. But look at the list, and you will see that one of these things is not like the others. Unless you belong to a brainwashing cult that keeps its members prisoner by encouraging ignorance. Shameful.
[Note: This post is not the work of the usual author of this blog. Simon Singh was recently successfully sued for libel in England by the British Chiropractic Association for publishing the following article about the dangers of chiropractic treatment. In order to ensure a wider dissemination of the information that the lawsuit seeks to suppress, many bloggers have chosen to post an edited version of Singh's article on their blogs. The original article, which contains the supposedly libelous material, can be found here.]
Beware the spinal trap
Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal
Simon Singh
The Guardian, Original version published Saturday April 19 2008
Edited version published July 29, 2009
You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.
I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
– Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.
1 comment - What do you think? Posted by
Verlin -
July 31, 2009 at 12:04 am
