Stories that make you say "WTF"

 Forget the NSA snooping into your LOLCAT emails: Now your doctor will phone you if you buy the wrong stuff at Walmart.

 
While all information would be bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, he said he’s aware some people may be uncomfortable with data going to doctors and hospitals. For these people, the system is considering an opt-out mechanism that will keep their data private, Dulin said.

actually it's none of their damn business...except of course, under Obamacare, it IS their business to "keep us healthy" whether or not we want to be healthy.

While the patients may gain from the strategy, hospitals also have a growing financial stake in knowing more about the people they care for.
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, hospital pay is becoming increasingly linked to quality metrics rather than the traditional fee-for-service model where hospitals were paid based on their numbers of tests or procedures.

via Drudge, of course.

related item:

While yesterday’s Supreme Court decision unanimously rejecting the administration’s argument that a search warrant wasn’t required for the government to look at cell-phone records and data got a lot of attention, it’s not the first time the Obama administration has taken an anti–civil liberties stance. In last year’s case of U.S. v. Jones, the Justice Department essentially tried to convince the Supreme Court that the Fourth Amendment’s protections against search and seizure should not prevent the government from tracking any American at any time without any reason.

Another article about the 4th amendment HERE at PopMech:

In Wednesday's decision in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court has unanimously decided that the right of people to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects that is protected under the Fourth Amendment extends to cellphones and smartphones. In doing so, the Court settled a question of growing importance, and gave some hints of how it views search-and-seizure in the digital age...The right of the police to search a suspect during an arrest is based on two considerations: One is officer safety—making sure that the arrestee doesn't have a concealed weapon or other hazard. The other is evidence preservation—that is, making sure that the arrestee doesn't swallow or otherwise destroy evidence in his or her possession. 

Then why is it permissible for third parties to invade our privacy to know what we purchase?

And the next step: People (and school kids) buying chips with cash from the back of cars where their purchases won't be traced.

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 update: RevSensing has this posted on his blog.

24 percent of third world women can't take modern birth control because of the price or lack of access,  or maybe not.

In Africa, which has the highest reported level of unmet need (23.5% of married women), 8% of those women cite lack of access as the reason they do not use contraceptives.  In comparison, 28% cite concern about side effects, and 24% say they, their partners, or both, are opposed to the use of contraceptives.  So, 8% of 23.5% – 1.88% – of surveyed married women in Africa have a lack of access to contraceptives.
That’s less than 2% of married women without access to contraceptives in the region of the world experiencing the greatest poverty and highest rates of hunger – the UN’s World Food Programme saysthat 24.8% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t have enough food to eat.

reminds me of when I worked in Africa, when we had lots of children suffering from kwashiorkor, but any woman could get the pill from their local "pill lady" for free. Actually I support that, but the pill decreases the amount of breast milk and might contribute to the children's malnutrition, so we gave out Depo to increase breast milk to lower our rate of malnourished breast fed kids.

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No, I am not watching the world cup (here, the main sport is basket ball: lots of hoops in the side streets where boys play and shoot baskets).

My son played soccer with the local team (consisting of a bunch of Central American students, one deaf student, and one female from the local college, and a couple of rednecks. They won nearly all their games, partly because they shouted at each other either in ASL or Spanish).

Yet the yuppification of soccer (and the elites sniffing at American style football for being too violent) ignores the fact that the head injury rate of Soccer is the same as football.

actually, our medical school had only one team: a Rugby team. 
and the injury rate in rugby is higher than that of football...

It misses the point: The reason for sports is to let boys "blow off steam" and as Orwell pointed out: Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

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