Bite Point

Protests, Both Sides of the Story, and the Internet

I went to Penn Dental in Philadelphia, graduating in the very late 80's.  Hey- very late 80's, I'm not that old!  I did not go there for undergrad; I attended Muhlenberg College, a small and truly remarkable college in Allentown.

The University of Pennsylvania is an excellent place to get an education; it is, however, a very... corporate place.  It's the Ivy League school with the least heart and soul, in my considered opinion.  I state that simply to increase your appreciation of what was happening when I was there.

In those days South Africa was in the throes of Apartheid and severe unrest, as the ruling class of white peoples struggled to keep an iron grip on the black population.  P.W. Botha was still president, the relative reformer F.W. de Clerk hadn't yet come to power, and Nelson Mandela was still in jail, not being released until 1990 after many social and political upheavals had occurred.

More here for those who love their history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_under_apartheid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._W._Botha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_Willem_de_Klerk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

So anyway, U Penn's massive endowment was invested rather heavily in South African business interests.  Students got ahold of this and started to protest, much as the Occupy WallStreeters have done today.  They set up actual shanty towns, just like in the Districts in South Africa, and in an astonishing move to show solidarity with the suffering people there, many well-off middle-class students started to actually live in their cardboard and sheet metal constructs:

http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/archives/image.html?id=ARCHIVES_20070627005

http://articles.philly.com/1986-04-09/news/26078005_1_penn-students-penn-officials-penn-board

(I'm sure their parents were thrilled about paying for room and board at the same time haha.)

Here's the thing, and my point in telling you all this: there were two extremely different viewpoints that came out of this protest.  

The students said, "Divest from South Africa, it's wrong to be invested there when they treat people the way they do under Apartheid."

The Trustees of the University said, "By investing there, we can make a difference."

Wow.

If we think about this objectively, without coming in with any assumptions, each point of view has a chance of being valid.  There really could be two partners in a tech or manufacturing firm, real people, people who would be happy to talk to you, named, say, Cecil Benoist and Kenward Fitton, who were gradually but steadily using their influence to change things for the better, and being absolutely transparent about it.  I doubt it, but there could have been.

The thing was, in 1987 you needed an army of reporters, working for a mega-corporation news organization, running through insane levels of money and resources, to even have a tiny chance of finding out.  Even then, they might be locked up by the repressive regime themselves.  Game over. Nothing learned.

Now?  Now, the free exchange of information via the Internet, and even more importantly, the ability of people to connect and make a difference, has changed that game, probably forever.  As an example, the multiple revolutions in the Middle Ease in 2010-2011 all had as their proximate cause: the ability of people to really know what was going on outside of their narrow part of the world; the ability to know what terrible things their governments were responsible for, and what they were stealing from their citizens; and the ability of those citizens to connect and organize via technology.

The Internet.  It's not just for posting Red-Cup Party Pictures anymore...

Actually, of course, it never was just for frivolous things, and although there is a great deal of misinformation and clutter out there, even evil things, we should respect all that and beware of it, but mainly we should be focusing on how it can connect us to folks who want to move forward together, and use it to change the world around us in ways big and small.

It is now extremely difficult for anyone- a government, a business, a person- to do evil in the dark.  Not for long.  The bright light of free flowing information brings everything out in the open in time.  It's all a matter, though, of where we direct our precious Attention.  Attention is a fixed quality, as there are only 24 hours in a day for all of us, and that's the thing that limits us.  

If today's information technologies had been available in the late 80's, all the activities that UPenn's investments were leading to, good or bad in their effects on South African society, would have come to light.  The trustees would have a choice to proudly trumpet their accomplishments, through the means of business investment there, or they would have had to divest and retreat in horror at the public relations scandal that their investments had caused.  Back then, they successfully hid the truth, whatever it was.  Now, they couldn't.  Simple.

The Occupy Protestors are apparently trying to hide much of their own goals and tactics, falling into much the same pattern as the corporate entities against which they protest.  Not a great strategy in today's world.  Sigh.  People as individuals learn so fast.  People as large groups- they never seem to learn.

It pays to really examine the power of our Attention, though.  If there's interest, I'll do just that in a future blog post.  For now, let me say that our precious Attention is our most powerful weapon, far more powerful than guns or money or yelling in the streets.  For if we turn our Attention away from anything in sufficient numbers, that entity will wither and die.  Examples?  If no one paid attention to those Kardashians, they wouldn't be rich and famous.  If half of the people who now shop at Walmart suddenly stopped, say in protest against their treatment of employees, well then within two months Walmart would be brought to its knees and would change the way it treats its employees  (I'm not saying we should necessarily do that, but we could.)  If we didn't do business at a certain bank- no more bank. If we all voted against the incumbent just one time, on a local, state, and federal level- all politicians would be permanently afraid of us, and would actually respect us for the first time in a century.

Gedankenexperiments, yes.  Impractical "thought experiments"- but they demonstrate, through extreme examples, what could happen.

We all have tremendous power now.  Our Attention is more valuable and powerful than it has been since we inhabited tiny Villages and there were no kings, no corporations, no gatekeepers of information and power at all.

What, then, shall we do with it?

 

Guest Post: Epidemic of Malingerers Driving Up Insurance Costs

Commentary: Epidemic of Malingerers Driving Up Insurance Costs

We have a very insightful and powerful guest post written by a private detective who wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons that shall be apparent. Here we go:

No one really knows the true cost of fraudulent insurance claims that plague our health care system; however, estimates by several fraud associations in the United States attribute anywhere from $50 billion to $110 billion in total healthcare spending annually.  The problem with detecting this type of fraud is that individuals who are intent upon 'cashing in' do so in a manner that is generally undetectable. To curb these costs, insurance companies dutifully hire adjusters to monitor claims and detect fraudulent activity; however, their investigations are generally limited to perusing papers and digital databases from behind a desk.  Hence, a private detective may be called upon to 'check-up' on various individuals to determine their daily activities and provide an objective opinion of one's physical capabilities utilizing overt and covert video documentation. This is where my expertise lies. As a private detective who has investigated workman's comp claims spanning seven states over the course of a decade, I have documented over 2,000 'malingerers' conducting their day-to-day activities yielding video evidence that has disproven their claims. Granted, I have also observed individuals whose activities were so limited that their claims were warranted. However, if I were to establish a percentage of illegitimate claims based on total files, the numbers would be astonishing. In my experience, I estimate approximately 90% of total assignments to have been fraudulent. And it is my belief that this high number is due to an epidemic of individuals in our society that want 'something for nothing' and know that under the current system they can actually get it with little to no recourse.

I have worked cases where Claimants have sought anywhere from $15 thousand to nearly $6 million in damages, testified against them in court, and seen the life and dollar signs drain from their eyes as images of them working construction, painting houses, mowing lawns, chopping wood, deer hunting, riding roller coasters, rock climbing, kayaking, water skiing, lifting weights, shoveling snow, and even pole dancing flash across a jumbo screen. Alas, there is no greater satisfaction. But don't let me mislead anyone in saying that every case yields some fantastic 'movie-trailer' for attorneys to drool over.

There are cases where Claimants state that they cannot operate a vehicle and therefore cannot return to work. For example, this woman worked as a home inspector, requiring her to utilize her personal vehicle to transport herself to and from locations during the day to inspect residential properties. Surveillance was conducted, and for three consecutive days she operated her personal vehicle to over twenty different locations.  On the fourth day, she requested that she have her employer provide her with transportation to and from her appointment as, of course, she could not drive.

Then there are your typical Claimants who are temporarily totally disabled. This gentleman diving into the swimming pool worked as a delivery driver for a very well known soda company and received disability payments for nearly four years after claiming to have fallen and injuring his shoulder and back. There was no witness to his 'accident' on the job, but there were at least ten other witnesses to his belly flop in the pool on this day.

Perhaps the most common case is that of the 'double-dipper'. This Claimant received comp payments for ten years due to neck and upper back pain from heavy lifting as a medical supply salesman. Since he resided in a very rural area, the insurance company felt as though surveillance would not be beneficial and therefore made "announced" wellness check visits with him twice a year. Records from those visits documented that the Claimant stated he had limited mobility and that he had no quality of life as he rarely strayed from the couch.
A new adjustor reviewed the file and felt as though surveillance should be conducted. This Claimant was investigated over the course of two weeks, and was caught working a full-time job as a medical supply salesman, even lifting and carrying all the wheelchairs and walkers in and out of the building to a transport van or other customer vehicles. But this guy wasn't just satisfied in scamming his former company, this Claimant took his current company van during an actual work day and ran errands for family members, at one point he even picked up his father's push mower from the repair center at Sears, drove it to his father's residence, and unloaded the mower. What you cannot see in this photo is a sign on the rear of the business van that clearly states "This vehicle carries medical supplies only." Not only did this Claimant work a full-time job conducting the exact same duties that he claimed he could not perform, but he was also caught taking a two-day kayaking trip. I wonder what his definition of 'quality of life' is exactly.

But perhaps one of the most rare claims that I have investigated is that of a woman who was employed at a hospital and stated that she could not work because she believed she had been exposed to swine flu while working in the ER. She also claimed to have had persistent respiratory distress symptoms and required the use of an oxygen tank. Eventually, her claim was denied as the hospital was able to prove that there had been no confirmed cases of swine flu and the video evidence of her smoking (essentially a pack a day over the course of three days) was enough for her attorney to excuse himself from the case.

If stiffer penalties for fraudulent claims were instituted or if more people reported these individuals to proper authorities, maybe the costs to our society would be reduced. But inevitably, where there is an opportunity to make a quick buck, or quite a few bucks, someone will always be waiting in line to cash in. In the meantime, I have job security.

Written by: Anonymous 2011

11/11/2011...11/11/1918

11/11/11...it makes me think of 11/11/1918, at the 11th hour, when mankind's greatest madness ended. And yet it didn't end; it started up again, fueled by even greater evil, and continues to flare to life to this very day. In 2011 the very last of those soldiers from The Great War passed away. Ten million of them (and seven million civilians) never made it past 11/11/18. What would best honor their noble memory is to stop using violent conflict to further the aims of nations.

Teeth, Modern Humans and Neanderthals

New evidence from the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit in England on fossil teeth and jaws shows that modern humans ("modern" in the sense archaeologists use the word, not meaning "with an iPad2") have been in Europe for 45,000 years. Since Neanderthals went extinct 30,000 years ago, that means we co-existed with Neanderthals for 65 times as long as America has been a country. Sobering thought, that.

Actually, if we include the U.S. Congress as part of our considerations, we are STILL coexisting with Neanderthals...

Straight Teeth Means the Vertical Too

When we think of "straight" teeth we mean of course teeth lined up on nice even curves, not all crooked and crowded.  This image of lower front teeth shows some significant crowding:

Less often talked about than lining up teeth in the visible area of our smiles is the concept of how they are situated vertically in relation to each other.  This has huge implications to the formation of cavities, at the times when those nasty holes in our teeth do start to occur as a consequence of eating and drinking too much sugar and not cleaning between our teeth well enough.

Here are some back teeth, visualized in an X-ray, that are even with each other in terms of their vertical position; the arrow points to a cavity between these teeth:

 

 
(The dark area is the decay and the lighter area on the adjacent tooth is an existing composite resin restoration.)

Cavities between teeth tend to form just under the place where the teeth contact each other.  These remarkable images from the DDS GP iPad app show different stages of cavity formation between teeth:

This is all bad enough.  When teeth are uneven and crowded, it's worse, for two reasons.  Crowded teeth are harder to clean between.  And cavities tend to be in hard-to-reach areas, so they are more likely in the first place, and grow faster once they start.

When teeth are uneven in the vertical dimension, things can get really out of hand.  Cavities tend to be on the root surfaces of the "higher" tooth, and this is very close to the pulp (root canal) right from the get-go.  Also, we often have a very hard time restoring such teeth.  The entire set of contours of both teeth is off kilter, and no matter what we do the area will remain hard to clean and more decay is very likely.

Here is an X-ray of a cavity in one of these tricky locations where the teeth are at uneven heights: 

And here is a larger cavity, again occurring in that tricky area below the enamel, on the root:

For a better understanding of the differences between the cavities represented on these two X-rays, here is an image from DDS GP that shows root cavities:

Compare to this one again:

When we consider that the black areas are decay and the orange area with the symbolic artery, vein and verve in it is the root canal, we can see how the chance of root canal infection from decay is much higher for even small root cavities than it is from "normal" between-tooth cavities.  And root cavities are more common when teeth are at uneven heights with respect to each other than they are when teeth are well aligned.

This is one more benefit of aligning teeth with conventional braces or Invisalign orthodontic treatment.  It is also, in folks young or old who have recently had braces, an excellent reason to wear retainers.  Conventional or computer-generated Vivera retainers from Invisalign are both excellent options, but letting well-aligned teeth drift and expose the patient to increased risk of decay (or gum disease) due to crowding and uneven heights of teeth in the arch is just not a good idea.

 

Further reading and info:

http://rickwilsondmd.typepad.com/rick_wilson_dmds_blog/2010/06/orthodontic-relapse-and-invisalign.html

http://rickwilsondmd.typepad.com/rick_wilson_dmds_blog/2010/08/invisaligns-vivera-retainers-voxels-of-stability.html

www.invisalign.com

http://www.ddsgp.com/DDSGP/DDS_GP___Home.html