Saturday Links for the Week: December 9, 2006

See How Patients Rate Doctors: It’s brand new, but this site allowing North American patients to rate their physicians has great promise. It will be interesting to see if the AMA/CMA try to shut it down. Thanks to my work colleague Carolyn Lonsdale for this link and the one that follows.

…And See How Patients and Doctors Rate Their National Medical Systems: A fascinating 7-country international survey (excerpt in graphic above) suggests that European healthcare is better than North American by a mile, though Germany’s healthcare system is in sudden and sharp decline. And, for Canadians, a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that, while Canada’s healthcare system is far from perfect, switching to the even more flawed American system would be a disastrous mistake.

December 15 is Esperanto Day: I’ll be posting one of my articles on the Gift Economy in Esperanto that day. Lots of other bloggers are participating as well. Learn more about Esperanto here.

Further Outrages of the US Patent Office: In its zeal to support the corporatist agenda to crush entrepreneurship and innovation by making every kind of intellectual idea and thought patentable (and hence ‘owned’ by rich patent holders with legal armies to enforce it), the US patent office recently patented the idea of Communities of Practice! If you want to establish a community with someone in the future, better be prepared to pay the company that now ‘owns’ that idea for the right to do so. Thanks to John Maloney for the link.

Is Knowledge Management Dead?: Dave Snowden says it is, at least as we have known it in the past. I think he’s exactly right. Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

China Increases Influence Over Alberta Tar Sands: HTWW reports that China, which already has a significant interest in the eco-holocaust that is Alberta’s tar sands, is now proposing to manufacture in China the monster extraction technologies needed to gouge the pristine earth and process the sands before dumping the remaining sludge back in the ground. How much oil will be needed to make and transport this Frankenstein machinery is beyond conception. Sheer insanity, thanks to Canada’s Conservative corporatist global-warming-denying minority government.

Sony’s New Wireless Uses Your Body as Connection: A new technology developed by Sony uses the electrical system of the human body to transmit music and other data from your headset to your MP3 or other wireless device, boviating the need for Bluetooth-type short-range wireless transmission technologies. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

Thoughts for the Week:

From Nietzsche, via Steve Layland: “Annoying! The same old story! When one has finished oneís house one realises that while doing so one has learnt unawares something one absolutely had to know before one began to build. The everlasting pitiful ëtoo late!í ñ The melancholy of everything finished!”

From Pascale, or Millard Fuller, via Andrew Campbell: “It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a newway of acting.”