New Born Hearts Can Fail

Medical News: Pediatric Cardiac Assist Device Approved - in Public Health & Policy, FDA General from MedPage Today: "The FDA has approved the first cardiac assist device for children with heart failure awaiting a transplant.

The approval of the EXCOR Pediatric System comes six months after an FDA advisory panel unanimously agreed that the device was safe and that its benefits outweighed any risks.

The EXCOR from Berlin Heart is the only cardiac assist device that comes in sizes appropriate for children, from newborns to teens."

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Global Online Privacy

Still Disgusted by Obama Treatment of Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning leak case hearing resumes - CBS News:



Bradley in the middle.

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I let specifics get to me as mega-benchmarks. Like when CBS quashed the Smothers Brothers. The President could free Bradley Manning with a word and he should do so yesterday. I am FOR Obama. But this is his blind spot and I have never managed to reach him and I am afraid this little screed will likewise go into the ether. Bradley is a hero as much as any soldier consigned to die by W. The President owes one to conscience.



Global Online Privacy

Suzanne Vega Takes Temperatures (Video)

Global Online Privacy

Search should enable users to filter teaser content

Search should enable users to filter teaser content Teaser content is anything that ultimately requires you to sign up to get the rest of the textSearch should enable a user to access text that is free to read online when one clicksOn the sourceSearch should also indicate sites where the pervasiveness of advertising is obviousSearch should be a moderator between legitimate commerceAnd accessible contentMy contribution is to never refer to a site where you read a bit and Are directed to a site which requires you to sign up to read the whole thingThe heroes of the Web who should be compensated They are those who provide free content
Global Online Privacy

Anonymity should end on most of the Web

Anonymity should end on most of the WebThis is as clear as it can beWords are weapons and there are ways to wage warWe all do itNot to do it under a real name can be cowardly and bullyingSo yes there is an argument for being open with one's identityAnd the groups and entities on the Web that permit or encourage anonymityShould examine their complicity in cowardice and bullyingWeb # whatever should make real names pervasive
Global Online Privacy

Long and short form writing coexist here

Are long and short form writing mutually exclusive? | Poynter.: "Yet, audiences want both short and long writing, often from the same writers. While many writers walk up and down that continuum, some find that certain content demands a certain length."

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ShortFormContent at Blogger is a stab at a metablog - it has short pieces that lead to long form writing here and elsewhere and pieces that are short by reason of the appropriateness of shortness to the piece. The rise of short is simply due to the growth of the literate population and the popularity of scanning as a mode of reading.

The long form items by me are included in the Blog Complex on the right hand sidebar along with a few subject blogs. In general I am seeking to create an accessible collection of thoughts and reactions under the rubric of the various subjects and works found here.

Logic is an analysis of forms not a study of the mind.

Logic is an analysis of forms not a study of the mind. It tells 'why' an inference follows not 'how' it arises in the mind. It is the business therefore of the logician to break up complicated inferences from numerous premisses into the simplest possible parts and not to leave them as they are.

C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, p. 217. Charles Sanders Peirce, "Harvard Lectures 'On the Logic of Science'", (1865), 'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857-1866', Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

Cap tip Jon

Bored with apocalypse? Try Hodgman's.

Q&A: John Hodgman's That Is All takes a lighthearted look at apocalypse | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com:

"Well, traditional apocalypse narratives deal with the unfortunately all-too-likely scenarios of catastrophic war or catastrophic environmental change. They tend to overlook things like the Bloodwave, which is a giant tsunami of blood, which will consume much of the central part of the North American continent; the Omega Pulse, which is the giant electromagnetic pulse that wipes out every hard drive and every computer chip on the planet, except for a few outliers; the Dogstorm, the day when all dogs in North America abandon their owners to join together in a hundreds-of-miles-wide dog pack that ravages most of the American South; or, for that matter, the return of the 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Gods."

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Charles Sanders Peirce on Logic as Semiotic

"Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for 'semiotic' (Greek 'semeiotike'), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs. By describing the doctrine as "quasi-necessary", or formal, I mean that we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an observation, by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what 'must be' the characters of all signs used by a "scientific" intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience. As to that process of abstraction, it is itself a sort of observation.

"The faculty which I call abstractive observation is one which ordinary people perfectly recognize, but for which the theories of philosophers sometimes hardly leave room. It is a familiar experience to every human being to wish for something quite beyond his present means, and to follow that wish by the question, "Should I wish for that thing just the same, if I had ample means to gratify it?" To answer that question, he searches his heart, and in doing so makes what I term an abstractive observation. He makes in his imagination a sort of skeleton diagram, or outline sketch, of himself, considers what modifications the hypothetical state of things would
require to be made in that picture, and then examines it, that is, 'observes' what he has imagined, to see whether
the same ardent desire is there to be discerned. By such a process, which is at bottom very much like mathematical reasoning, we can reach conclusions as to what 'would be' true of signs in all cases, so long as the intelligence using them was scientific."

- Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.227. Eds. Note. "From an unidentified fragment, c. 1897".

Cap tip Jon

There is a simple way to pay for the bill

Senate Strikes Deal on Payroll Tax Cut – Vote Coming Saturday - ABC News:

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We need a fair tax system beginning with a reversion to the rates Clinton had in the 90s. The GOP is hoisted on the petard of Grover Norquist. So we may have to wait for a Democratic landslide in 2012 or whenever it might come to accomplish what is obvious and reasonable.

Markman: A Film About Jesus: Markman: A Film about Jesus Complete Text