A joke to make your day. Or is it?

Posted by on

CALLER:
Is this Gordon’s Pizza?

GOOGLE:
No sir, it’s Google Pizza.

CALLER:
I must have dialed a wrong number. Sorry.

GOOGLE:
No sir, Google bought Gordon’s Pizza last month.

CALLER:
OK. I would like to order a pizza.

GOOGLE:
Do you want your usual, sir?

CALLER:

My usual? You know me?

GOOGLE:

According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called, you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.

CALLER:

OK! That’s what I want …

GOOGLE:

May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?

CALLER:
What? I detest vegetables!.

GOOGLE:
Your cholesterol is not good, sir.

CALLER:
How the hell do you know!

GOOGLE:

Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.

CALLER:

Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetable pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.

GOOGLE:   Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you only purchased a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once, at Drug RX Network, 4 months ago.

CALLER:
I bought more from another drugstore.

GOOGLE:
That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.

CALLER:
I paid in cash.

GOOGLE:
But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.

CALLER:
I have other sources of cash.

GOOGLE:   That doesn’t show on your last tax return unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law.

CALLER:
WHAT THE HELL!!!

GOOGLE:
I’m sorry, sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.

CALLER:

Enough already! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I’m going to an island without internet, cable TV, where there is no cell phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me.

GOOGLE:
I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago.

My comment:  Very funny, but I am sure Epicurus would be appalled at the lack of privacy, and to what amounts to the spying on us all.  Innocent enough at the moment, I suppose, and done, maybe, with good intentions. But in the hands of a dictator?  Or someone who believes he is above the law?

Loneliness in America

Posted by on

More than three in five Americans are lonely, with more and more people feeling they are left out, poorly understood and lacking companionship, according to a survey led by the health insurer Cigna, which found a nearly 13% rise in loneliness since 2018, partly caused by workplace culture and conditions.

The report surveyed over 10,000 adult workers using a measure of loneliness called the UCLA Loneliness Scale, used as a standard within psychology research.

Pervasive loneliness is strongly linked to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.  Evidence shows that it doesn’t end with mental health. One’s relationships, closeness, connectedness , the conversations and bonds you have with people, affect physical health as well.

 Loneliness appears to be more common among men (The survey found 63% of men to be lonely, compared with 58% of women).  Among heavy social media users,  73% of them considered themselves lonely, as compared with 52% of light users.

The troublesome statistic is that young people, 18 to 22 years old,  had the highest average loneliness and isolation score on the 80-point scale (about 50).  Boomers, however, had the lowest (about 43), which is still a significant figure.

Conditions in the workplace are important. Those with good co-worker relationships were 10 points less lonely on the 80-point scale, and where colleagues felt they shared goals, average loneliness scores dropped almost eight points. Those with  a close friend at work were also less lonely.

Employers should be interested in this.  Lonely workers are more likely to miss work owing to illness or stress, and feel their work is not up to par.

One optimistic note: More than three-quarters of survey respondents had close relationships that bring them emotional security and well-being. And respondents without such relationships had a loneliness score of 57 out of 80, almost 15 points higher than those with them.  ( An edited, for length, version of a piece in NPR Health by Elena Renken, an NPR science desk intern.  24 Jan 2020).

Shutting down the internet

Posted by on

Authoritarian governments all over the world have latched onto a great way of stopping unwelcome criticism and subversive thought – suspending data services, phone calls, texting and participation in social media.  As internet penetration has surged during the past decade, especially in the developing world, so have attempts to switch off the flow of information.  The internet freedom group, Access Now, recorded 75 internet outages  in 2016; in 2018 the figure was 196. During the last year the leader in this tactic was India, with 134 switch-offs, 68% of the world total. One of those lasted 137 days in Kashmir, which is majority Moslem and handed to India at partition only because Nehru was born there.

Countries like China, Russia and Iran are shutting off their internet systems from the rest of the world, offering only home-grown versions.  The People’s daily in China opined that shutting down the internet in an “emergency” should be “standard practice for sovereign countries.”

Some of this, however, is not only down to political plots and motivations (bad as they are).  In 2018  India struggled to contain malicious rumors of child kidnappers on the loose.  This raced whipped up mobs who lynched at least 30 people across the country.  Deadly riots against Moslems in Sri Lanka were sparked by hate speech on the internet

This is reminiscent of the 1930s, and I am not just talking about the developing world.  Why is it that human beings take a service designed to draw people together and then use it for selfish, cruel, even bestial purposes?

Why is it that some people want to control everyone, bully them and tell outrageous lies to bolster their power and control.  This is so foreign to those who follow Epicurus. We have to support open and honest government under the rule of law.

Drug pricing in the UK: a big bone of contention

Posted by on

Britain’s medicine prices are among the lowest in the world, thanks to the NHS’s buying power, and the tough value-for-money tests imposed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. This is a major bone of contention. US prices are 2.5 times higher than ours, and Donald Trump thinks that Americans are “subsidising” low prices abroad, which is “unfair” and “ridiculous”. The US pharmaceutical industry wants to charge the NHS more, not just because the UK is a big market: NHS prices are used as benchmarks for 14 other nations.

Dr Andrew Hill of Liverpool University calculates that, in the worst-case scenario, the NHS drugs bill would rise from £13bn to £45bn – a massive extra expense. The Tory manifesto promises that neither the NHS nor drug prices will be “on the table”, but leaked documents noting preliminary talks show that the subject is certainly on the agenda: “competitive pricing” and extending patents for American drugs were both mentioned. US negotiators have driven hard bargains on drugs in recent deals with South Korea, Canada and Mexico. Britain would be a weaker partner in any deal and might find it hard to resist some concessions. (The Week 14 Dec 2019)

Meanwhile, polls show that British people overwhelmingly oppose privatization of the National Health Service. A 2017 YouGov survey found that 84% were against it., even as it has been, under the radar, significantly privatized already.  For right-wingers in power anything that doesn’t make a profit for themselves or their buddies is (horror!) socialism (several visits to a local private hospital last year suggest that the well-off are well- insured and use private doctors and hospitals already, so they are o.k, yes?).  The fact is that the private sector is now so embedded in the NHS that it cannot afford to sacrifice any of its capacity.  After France, Britain has had (past tense) the best health service in the world, until recently mostly free at point of delivery, even if expensive to the taxpayer. The NHS has offered peace of mind to the sick and the aged for seventy years; an Epicurean project.   Rest in peace?

Finding a partner on the internet

Posted by on

”Tinder doesn’t seem to be as good at finding you a partner as you might think. An analysis of the match-making service, admittedly a small, one off survey, found that most people don’t meet up with others through the app and the chances of meeting someone interested in a long-term relationship are relatively low.

”Trond Viggo Grøntvedt at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and his colleagues surveyed 269 students in Norway who said they were current or former Tinder users. About 60 per cent of the students were women.

”People reported that on average they had been matched to more than 100 other people during their time using the app. But only about half of the participants said they had ever actually met one of their matches in person. The likelihood that a study participant would use Tinder to meet a potential partner was the same for men and women.

”Only about 25 per cent of study participants said they had used the app to meet someone interested in a long-term relationship.

”Grøntvedt’s team also discovered that roughly 20 per cent of people had used Tinder to meet a partner for a one-night stand – although the participants also reported to be just as likely to engage in a one-night stand with a partner they had met via other means.

Gareth Tyson at Queen Mary University of London is sceptical about the idea that Tinder has had much effect on dating. “Tinder may not be rewriting the fundamentals of modern dating: similar patterns continue, simply in a new arena,” he says. Tyson adds that there is value in the new study. “The paper challenges the stereotype that [Tinder] is purely a ‘sex app’, instead finding that this applies to only a small minority of users.”.     (Journal reference: Evolutionary Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1007/s40806-019-00222-z   Chris Stokel-Walker, New Scientist)

I don’t know how young people meet the right partners these days.  All I can say is there is nothing better, or Epicurean, than finding genuine love and the right person.