What does modern drug treatment look like?

Well, if we're to be honest, modern drug treatment looks a lot like what the Pat Moore Foundation does in Orange County. That is, takes the things we've learned about addiction and its treatment over the years and apply them in a caring and sensitive environment. The first and most obvious point that we've had to grasp to move into this modern world is that addicion is a disease, a disease that requires treatment. Once we had in fact grasped that we could then move on to trying to work out what was the best form of treatment for it.

That best form though has proven highly elusive. It seems that there is no one best treatment: other than the best being whatever gives the best outcome for the specific individual. Drug treatment is as if there were five, eight, ten different treatments for a cold and you didn't know which one was going to work best until you actually started treatment. So we've learnt further that to be effective a treatment house needs to be able to offer all those treatments which have proven successful for some. This will range from near entirely medical interventions through to therapy and yes, the 12 step program first worked out by AA. As each individual is different so is the treatment they will respond to.

The final seriously important thing that we've worked out about drug treatment is that it is often not the only problem. We thus recognize dual diagnosis as being an important point. Not just, "what are they addicted to?" but also why are they addicted? Is there, whether physical or psychological, another problem that also needs to be dealt with as part of the treatment?

Click through any of the links to find out more about what a modern addiction program looks like.

Emmanuel Lewis

Wow, this enttry on Emmanuel Lewis doesn't really do him any favours.

OK, so they get all of the details right. Emmanuel Lewis is indeed African American, he is indeed short and he is indeed an actor who has been in a number of TV shows and has had the honour of appearing in an episode of South Park (well, a cartoon of Emmanuel Lewis appeared in South Park with his voice).

But the slightly unfair part is that they imply that Emmanuel Lewis' career was rather manufactured. In essence, that Gary Coleman was a star as a short African American actor on TV so they looked around for another short African American actor to turn into a TV star and alighted upon Emmanuel Lewis.

Hey, it might even be true, but it's not very kind to actually go around saying so, is it?

Tom and Katie News

Are you fascinated by hte train wreck that seems to be the marriage between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes?

If so then you'll want to check out the blog dedicated to news of the couple. Is it Katie Holmes' marriage that fascinates?

Or the scientology, her husband, the baby Suri, or what?

Whatever it is, check out the link for all your Katie Holmes news needs.

Chinese Food

Yes, we all know that Chinese food can mean eating the very odd parts of even weirder animals.

Tiger penis for example, and bear's paw.

But I really didn't think they would come up with a black chicken.

It's a simple chicken, yes, but the skin, bones and flesh are all black.

McNuggets anyone?

Teh Gays!

Looks like gay rights might be some time coming in the East:

Trolley-bus drivers in a Lithuanian town refused to drive their vehicles while they were carrying advertisements promoting tolerance toward gay men and women, a company official said Monday.

Algirdas Krivickas, director of the trolley bus company in Kaunas, said employees had reacted strongly to the adverts which read: "A gay can serve in the police" and "A lesbian can work at school."

Drivers had refused to take out trolley buses bearing the adverts. These had now been taken down.

"Some said they feared the trolley bus could be vandalized, some said they do not want friends to laugh at them," Krivickas said.

Conservative attitudes are common in the former eastern bloc.

It's actually a bit weird in Russia. Public attitudes are very po-faced indeed. But cottaging in hte parks isn't regarded as "gay"...it's not true to say that someone who has gay sex is gay. Weird.

Ringtones Links

"Everybody loves ringtones. So i decided to have a search for the best ringtones sites. Maybe everyone knows Ringophone.com or Ultrasonic-ringtones.com but to tell the truth the best site for free ringtones to download is GoldRingtone.com. Download the best Ringtones for free! Doesn't it sound attractive? The site has a weekly update (as they inform me with their press release) so you can continuously find the best new free ringtones.

The site is simple. The users can download free mp3 ringtones from any carrier. Besides, there are sections for all carriers. You can get free Sprint Ringtones, or free Cingular Ringtones.

Google and Search Records

Google has finally announced that they'«re going to stop keeping records of everyone's searches:

 

Internet search giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced Wednesday it will take steps to improve the way it handles data obtained as millions of consumers search for products and information online.

Within the next year, the company said, Google will change its privacy policy and begin deleting personally identifiable information 18 to 24 months after it has been logged.

"We will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses) -- but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users," Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel-Europe, and Nicole Wong, deputy general counsel, posted on Google's company blog.

It's not perfect, but then again, as they say, they do need to have data to improve the services.

Viacom and Google

It's all the fault of the Supreme Court in fact:

 

LAST week, Viacom asked a federal court to order the video-sharing service YouTube to pay it more than $1 billion in damages for some 150,000 videos that Viacom claims it owns and YouTube users have shared. “YouTube,” the complaint alleges, “has harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale,” threatening not just Viacom, but “the economic underpinnings of one of the most important sectors of the United States economy.”

Yet as federal courts get started on this multiyear litigation about the legality of a business model, we should not forget one prominent actor in this drama largely responsible for the eagerness with which business disputes get thrown to the courts: the Supreme Court.

For most of the history of copyright law, it was Congress that was at the center of copyright policy making. As the Supreme Court explained in its 1984 Sony Betamax decision, the Constitution makes plain that “it is Congress that has been assigned the task of defining the scope of the limited monopoly,” or copyright. It has thus been “Congress that has fashioned the new rules that new technology made necessary.” The court explained that “sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for copyrighted materials.” In the view of the court in Sony, if you don’t like how new technologies affect copyright, take your problem to Congress.

The court reaffirmed this principle of deference in 2003, even when the question at stake was a constitutional challenge to Congress’s extension of copyright by 20 years. Challenges are evaluated “against the backdrop of Congress’s previous exercises of its authority under the Copyright Clause” of the Constitution, it wrote. Congress’s practice — not simply the Constitution’s text, or its original understanding — thus determined the Constitution’s meaning.

These cases together signaled a very strong and sensible policy: The complex balance of interests within any copyright statute are best struck by Congress.

But 20 months ago, the Supreme Court reversed this wise policy of deference. Drawing upon common law-like power, the court expanded the Copyright Act in the Grokster case to cover a form of liability it had never before recognized in the context of copyright — the wrong of providing technology that induces copyright infringement. It announced this new form of liability even though at precisely the same time Congress was holding hearings about whether to amend the Copyright Act to create the same liability.

The Grokster case thus sent a clear message to lawyers everywhere: You get two bites at the copyright policy-making apple, one in Congress and one in the courts. But in Congress, you need hundreds of votes. In the courts, you need just five.

You want to listen to Lessig: he's an expert in this area.