Sim-O

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

I tried my new wristbands today.

It’s was only a short journey of about 9 miles each way. I only had mild motion sickness, but I think that was due to the short journey rather than the wristbands.

They are quite tight on the wrist and even after only 10-15 minutes of wearing there was quite a mark left around my arms, the sort you get round your leg when your sock are too tight, and I wondered if the mark where the nylon bobble was, was actually going to leave a bruise. After 10 minutes or so the marks had disappeared.

When I put the bands on, they felt very tight, as I mentioned previously, and I thought it would annoy and start to itch and stuff, but they didn’t. I think they could on a long journey, though.

Getting the bands in the correct position may be a struggle and will need a bit of trial and error to get right.
You’re supposed to have the bobble three finger widths up your arm from the first wrist crease, and then in between the the tendons. The distance up from my wrist is fairly obvious, but I can only find one tendon. I don’t know if I’m a freak with just one tendon, although everything seems to work ok, it’s hidden behind other stuff or I just don’t know what I’m looking for, but I could only find one.

I think that may be the biggest stumbling block to getting the bands to work correctly, if they do indeed work, is the positioning of them. They need to be in a certain position and you’re trying to get an untrained person to get them in the right place with a basic diagram and short description.

Well, that’s my initial thoughts on them: comfy enough on short distances, not sure if they’re postioned correctly, but they didn’t work. I am not put off though, in my quest to have my head screwed by a cheap bit of woo I shall carry on and try them on a longer journey. Although when that’ll be, I don’t know yet.

I have never been troubled by travel sickness. Well, I may have puked in the car on the way to Skegness when I was five years old, but if I did i) i can’t remember it and ii) who hasn’t?

I’m fine in aeroplanes, even better when I’ve had a few beers. I’m good in cars, I’m not troubled by trains and when everyone is emptying their guts out the wrong end on a ferry, I’m out on deck laughing as the waves crash over the side of the boat.

That is until we bought our latest car.

That car is a Mazda 5. It’s a great car. It seats more than five people. It goes quite well, has loads of cubby holes for storing stuff, has six gears so cruising at 70mph is at about 2k rpm and the bit the kids love the best: sliding rear doors.

The problem I have with it is that everytime I’m a passenger, in the front or back, I need to puke. Or sleep. Or puke then sleep.

How do I know it’s the car that’s the problem? Well, as I mentioned at the start of this post I have never suffered travel sickness before. I have never suffered it previously on any other form of transport, in any vehicle with any driver. The closest I’ve come to it is a condition of the inner ear called ‘benign paroxysmal positional vertigo‘. This involved getting out of bed and instead of walking down the bed to the end of the room, I walked diagonally across the room and nearly through the window. I felt sick just bending over to put my socks on.

Now. I could resort to travel sickness tablets, which I have been using. They work, too. Presumably they contain the same substance doctors give you before a general anaesthetic to stop you puking whilst unconscious flat out on your back. The trouble with that is that travel sickness pills ain’t cheap and the cost soon adds up. I’m looking for an alternative.

I’m gonna give these babies a go…

(the one on the left is inside out)

The blurb on back of box says…

Using the ancient Chinese principles of acupressure, many people find wearing the bands on both wrists can help control nausea including all forms of motion sickness.

Acupressure is believed to work by restoring the balance of negative (Yin) and positive (Yan) ions in the body as imbalances are believed to affect health.

What do you reckon? Will they work? Yin and Yan? Acupressure? They’ve been known about for centuries. Of course they work.

Don’t they?

Boots, whose own brand product this is but made by Sea-Band, don’t seem quite so sure. No mention of trials or percentages of people that find these work. Using words like ‘believe’ in the blurb, too. Using “many people believe” is the same as “lots of unqualified peoples’ opinion”.

Not being an actual scientist chap I could be wrong, but I didn’t realise that Yin and Yan were ions. I thought that ions were ions. After a quick look at the all-knowing Wikipedia, there is in fact positive and negative ions, but they’re not called Yin and Yan and whether they are positive or negative ions depends on how many electrons they have compared to how many protons.

So, if I follow these directions…

A band must be worn on each wrist with the button placed over the Nei Kuan point.

To find this point place your middle three fingers on the inside of each wrist with the edge of the third finger on the first wrist crease.

The correct point is just under the edge of your index finger and between the two central tendons. Position the button face downwards over the Nei Kuan point.
Can be worn while sleeping.

These elasticated bands with a nylon nobble on them will alter how many electrons my ions have and bring me back to balance and stop my travel sickness in our Mazda 5.

I’m not so sure it’s gonna work. But for a one-time payment of £7.99, I’ll give it a go. I’m willing to have my skeptic head turned inside out with a result that may not be quite what I expect.

I’ll keep you updated.

*if you have any other suggestions, apart from those rubber things that you dangle from the back of the car, then let me know in the comments

For the record:

Fibre content:
Acrylic: 64.2%
Nylon: 24.2%
Elastane: 11.6%

I got a new post up at Mailwatch. Some cunt thinks smoking is good and that smokers do the NHS a favour by dropping down dead prematurely, which obviously all smokers do, except the ones that die a protracted painful death over many years of course.

I didn’t even go into the nightmare that was the comments underneath it.

Yesterday the Guardian revealed the sheer magnitude of the sums of money spent by Lobbyists on both sides in the great healthcare debate in the US:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/01/lobbyists-millions-obama-healthcare-reform

Lobbyists representing the commercial interests of those who are opposed to the introduction of public health insurance have spent a grand total of $380 million on advertising campaigns, lobbying and direct political contributions, whilst those supportive of the bill, such as the Pharmaceutical companies, have stumped up $150 million.

These methods of lobbying have been described as ‘morally suspect’, rather an understatement of the situation, and indeed cast yet another dark cloud over the mechanisms of democracy, and the brand of democracy that the US are attempting to export all over the world.

What this shows us, alongside yet another damnation of the current democratic system, is that the Capitalist system is so wasteful and incapable of satisfying even the most basic of human needs. Anne Kruger, a famous neoliberal and pro-capitalist academic, wrote about ‘rent seeking’ in the 1990′s, arguing that rent-seeking, defined as the quest for access to  ‘super profits’ (profits gained over and above the profits one would expect to receive in a perfectly competitive market), is wasteful to the economy, as Firms compete for these super profits at the expense of investment. Kruegers’ original model was used to criticise certain countries in the Developing world for the non-market policies that they implemented. Supporters of the efficiency of the market would yet again hold up this model, and argue that the public medical insurance scheme proposed by Obama is government intervention is anti-market, which in a sense it is. The $430 million spent by the Firms in competing for the super profits could have been used more productively if it were invested.

So far so good, Ms Krueger, you almost have us convinced that Obamas’ proposed reforms have actually contributed to a reduction in the efficiency of the market. If you are arguing that this sum could have been invested in the  public healthcare system, not made it’s way into the pockets of the already super -rich that inhabit Capital Hill, sorry, Capitol Hill, then that is very admirable of you.

However, this kind of argument is consistently used to hide that basic fact that the market is simply defunct as a system that can fulfill even the most basic of human needs.  Another finding of Kruegers’ model is that the amount that Firms are willing to spend on competing for the super profits will eventually equal the amount of super profits available to them. As the legislation has not been passed yet, and we do not know how much more will be spent, what we can say is that there is at least $380 million in super profits up for grabs.

We can also say that without the proposed legislation, these $380 million worth of profits implicitly coexist,  and rely on the fact that an estimated 46 million of the poorest Americans are excluded from the healthcare system as they are unable to afford either the private medical insurance or the fees.  To put it bluntly, the ‘efficient’ market outcome trades off $380 million in profits against the healthcare needs of the poorest 15% of the US population. This is what ‘efficiency’ means in real terms, and is characteristic of the market outcomes that we see all over the world. It is one of the starkest examples of how the capitalist system places profit above human need.

So, Nadine Dorries, who wants to interfere with womens bodies and say what women can and can’t do with them when it has nothing to do with her, doesn’t like being told what she can and can’t do with her body…

I applaud the society of Chiropodists for pointing out to me the dangers of this; however, having done so I now respectfully ask them to leave it me and every other high heel wearing woman in the land to decide whether or not we wear high heels in the workplace..

[and yes. Dorries did put a double full stop at the end of that sentence. Probably the equivalent of 'hrumph']

I realise that aborting a feotus(sp?) and wearing heels are slightly different but the principle is the same. It’s about autonomy over your own body.

Once again, Dorries dismisses the medics.

Daily Mail…

The endless snacking could be a way of keeping hands busy. Or maybe food finally tastes good again.
But the real reason why people pile on the pounds after quitting smoking could lie in our DNA.
Scientists have identified a fat-burning gene that becomes more active when exposed to cigarette smoke.
The finding could help explain why slim smokers find their weight starts to balloon after the final cigarette is stubbed out.

The reason people put on weight when they pack in the fags is because most people think that smoking is an appetite supressant. I do not know if it is or not, but most smokers will feed their addiction over having a snack.
When someone packs in smoking, they think they are hungrier more often and just nibble and snack on things because that feeling they get when they want a cigarette for the first couple of days, that barely perceptable feeling in the chest/stomach area, is the same as slight hunger pangs.

There may well be something in smoking that burns calories quicker, but if there is is doesn’t burn many, by the amount of overweight smokers about.

The Mail

An agony aunt has been appointed to a taskforce aimed at improving social services following the Baby P tragedy.

No. No. You’ve got to be kidding?

communitycare.co.uk:

This week, ministers announced the 11 people who will join chair Moira Gibb and vice-chairs Andrew Webb and Bob Reitemeier on the taskforce, which is due to report this summer.

Unison and BASW on social work taskforce

Along with The Sun’s agony aunt, Deidre Sanders

Not everyone’s happy about it on CommunityCares’ discussion forum (the individual posts don’t have permalinks unfortunately)…

“sumag”

My colleague has just suggested that if the social workers go out to collect information they could then write to Diedre and she could in her commonsensical way tell us what to do next! She clearly has both the common touch and the ear of the government, what more could we want to help transform our profession? [Wink]

“lilybright”

More frontline social workers? What would we know about social work? No, the appointment of Dierdre Saunders is clearly inspired and anyone who suggests it’s a populist concession to tawdry media-led witchhunters is obviously a middle-class elitist with a dubious value base who should be drummed out of the profession forthwith.

I look forward to the day when scriptwriters from Casualty and Holby City are appointed to the professional bodies of nursing, medicine and allied health professions to raise standards of practice. It can only be a matter of time before one of those nice actors from Waterloo Road is appointed to the General Teaching Council.

No, it is clearly so eminently appropriate to have celebrities on professional bodies that I am left with only one question: why can’t we have Jeremy Kyle too?

“cb”

I’m also concerned about what message this sends to people about the function and role of social workers more generally if an ‘agony aunt’ is on the task force. Are we to be perceived as ‘talkers’ rather than ‘doers’. Actually the more I have thought about it, the more irritated I become.

fx7

Let’s get one thing straight – the summary dismissal of Sharon Shoesmith was not in the public interest – we had a right to hear the facts – we could have learned some vital lessons in safeguarding children and that this evidence could have been heard within the disciplinary context and this would have established whether Ms Shoesmith is a culpable party in this matter.

The Sun’s campaign against her was clearly a witch hunt – people did not just write into The Sun to complain of this evil woman, The Sun actually invited people to write in and tell them the politicians how evil she is.

As for Dear Diedre’s statement “those working in the professions in the public sector can get cut off from what are seen as common-sense values in the real world where, if you get something wrong, you lose your job. It’s what would happen to me and it’s what would happen to most of our readers”

What planet is this woman living on? I have been spat at, kicked, punched, abused, chased by dangerous dogs all in the line of my duty of protecting children; for these reasons, I stopped this area of work years ago (but I really do admire most of my children and families colleagues for having to do such a dreadful job. I guess most of us have to such nasty sharp-end violence, and that this demonstrates that if anyone is cut off from reality it is her! As for the bits about losing one’s job if you get something wrong – then all the country would be unemployed and unemployable.

As for The Sun getting things wrong – it does it all the time – it is a paper which always seem to be in the courts over allegations of lying and invading privacy – such is the moral compass and voice for the downtrodden masses.

Then Dear Diedre goes on to state “A big problem after Baby P was that Haringey didn’t even want to say sorry to start with, didn’t seem to accept responsibility”

Well in the climate of hysteria generated by The Sun, individuals and organisations get immobilised by the moral panic with which they are beleaguered – apologies – my guess is that no one in the Local Authority wanted to get in Sun’s firing line, for fear a mob would be beating a path to his / her with a view to stringing him / her up from the nearest lamp post.

Dear Diedre concludes

“If our campaign was seen as a mere witch-hunt in the social work sector, it illustrates the communication gap we have in society”

This is exactly the problem – I have this to say The Sun’s campaign against Ms Shoesmith was vindictive and vitriolic – it harked back to Cromwell’s England when Major Generals, our own Taliban, wandered the burning witches or drowning them in ponds. The Sun is a very much like that – it breeds a climate of fear – sure, there is a communication gap between us and The Sun and this is for good reason. An entire city, Liverpool, has stopped this nasty little rag following its rather nasty little piece on Liverpool following the Hillsborough Tragedy.

As for Dear Diedre saying that she was not responsible for the editorial content with regard to Ms Shoesmith, this is bit like saying “I am not responsible for the gas chambers in Auschwitz, I merely stoked the ovens” These “no flies on me” kind of statements sound quite disingenuous.

And as a parting shot to all those those Sun apologists, what kind of filthy little rag has headlines “only ten days to go, Lads, before we can bare Lisa’s boobs?” Surely, it encourages filthy old men to commit sexually illegal against young women.

The interview “fx7″ references is here.

I’ll leave you with the notion that it could just be a damage limitation exercise by ministers, as Emma Maier muses…

… giving The Sun the inside track on the taskforce could be a clever because it is always more difficult to slate something you are involved in.

Hmm.

So, in another ‘looking after the children’ move, fags are going the same way as dodgy pr0n: under the counter.
And the reason?
The Guardian:

[Health Secretary Alan Johnson said] “When they [children] see a point of sale display and as a result of seeing of it they take up smoking … it’s the key evidence as to why 200,000 11-15 year-olds are smoking,” said Johnson.

You what? Is Mr Johnson seriously trying to tell me that spotty youths are going about their business, of buying football cards and Special Brew, spy this:
[[popup:fags.jpg:(thumbnail)::1:center]]
and suddenly, they are stood there, jaw open, dribble running down their chin, staring, mesmerised by the beauty of the cigarette display. The only thought running through their heads is “Pretty packets. Gotta have”.

That can’t be right, can it? If it is, then surely the logic follows that if you hide the spirits and booze, that’ll be the end of Binge Drink Britian.
It’s a good job kids don’t spend much time in pharmacists, their shelves are positively sexy.

New York Times:

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.

At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway.

People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.

FFS. It’s only stuff. Nothing is worth that.

The Lay Scientist:

“Healing therapist” Russell Jenkins tragically died after a minor injury to his foot became gangrenous when he refused to seek medical attention, an inquest has heard.

As local Portsmouth newspaper The News describes: “Russell Jenkins injured his left foot treading on an electrical plug at his home. The wound later became infected, but the 52-year-old shunned conventional treatment, saying his ‘inner being’ told him not to go to hospital. Instead he tried treating it with honey, an ancient remedy for the treatment of infected wounds.”

Fair play for sticking to his beliefs.

Anyone called the people at the Darwin Awards?