Good news on drug and alcohol addictions

I know, we look around at the modern world and see that there's the news all around us that we're in the grip of a virulent epidemic of addiction. To booze, to drugs, to sex, to self-harming behaviors of every kind. So it might be difficult to espy good news in this field but good news there is. We're getting much better at drug treatment, much better indeed.

The traditional method was pretty simple really: drug treatment meant getting the addict off their drug of choice and then hoping that they would stay off it. While there's a certain robust simplicity to such an approach it's not actually all that effective. For example, we now know that it may not be the addiction that's the root problem: sure, it's a problem, but there's something else under there which is leading to the addictive and damaging behaviour, not just the desire for a certain drug. So we've developed dual diagnosis treatment which looks for that underlying cause and treats it as well.

And we also realise now that different people will react better to different drug treatments. It might be best medically managed (heroin treatment can be greatly aided by methadone for example) or perhaps entirely therapeutically. We do know that taking the addict out of their day to day environment is extremely helpful and we also know that what works for one type of addiction can work well with others. So we now also know that integrated and holistic centers do better than others: for there is that continual cross fertilization of ideas and techniques which drives our knowledge and thus success rate forwards.

Click through any of the links for more information on one of those very integrated centers.

New York Yankees Parade

The New York Yankees Parade will be on Friday at 11 am.

As is traditional when one of the home teams wins the World Series, there will be a parage through central Manhattan in their honour. As it was the Yankees who won this time then it will be the New York Yankees parade.

It all starts at 11 am at Battery Place, then up Broadway and ending at City Hall. This route os sometimes referred to as the Canyon of Heroes for this is where all of the returning heroes have traditionally been welcomed by the City.

The New York Yankees parade will also likely be the last appearance of Hideki Matsui in a Yankees uniform as the World Series 2009 MVP becomes a free agent in the winter and so is unlikely to stay with the team. And of course, being the World Series MVP isn't a bad way to start a career as a free agent now, is it?

Katie and Tom 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.

Far Eastern Food

Whatever will they think of next?

Look, I know that there's all sorts of things that go into Chinese food, sea slugs and the like, but do we really have to have black chicken as well?

Yes, it's pretty much a regular chicken, just that the bones and flesh are black. It's just that the colour is more likely to turn me off than make me think "yummy"!

Sophia Loren Strips!

Well, she might:

A striptease by 72-year-old actress Sofia Loren could be one of the more outrageous ways that Napoli fans will celebrate if the team are promoted to the Italian top flight this season.

Loren, a movie sex siren from the 1950s and 1960s, is a big fan of the Naples club who have fallen on hard times since winning their first Italian championship 20 years ago.

"I hope that Napoli win these last few games. You watch if we go up I will do a striptease," she told Gazzetta dello Sport in an interview Tuesday. "The fans have a total passion, the city deserves promotion."

Napoli are third in Serie B, Italy's second division, and have five games left to force their way into the top two or face a promotion playoff.

Weird fact: Benito Mussolini's son, Romano, married her sister.

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.

Red Hat and RHEL 5

A new release of linux for the geeks:

Red Hat, one of the most well-known names in Linux today, has announced a new version of RHE (Red Hat Enterprise) Linux. RHEL 5 was created with a close and strong working relationship with customers unlike other versions that used very few suggestions if any. Red Hat is taking the open source collaborative principles that customers are using today and applying them to other parts of the business, including services, systems management and partnerships.

"We have been developing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for two years with our customers and partners driving the agenda. Their pain points were clear: they were unable to consume all of the technology being sold to them, and it was not solving their business problems effectively. Our resolve has been and will always be that we will deliver software that solves real business needs," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice President of Engineering, Red Hat.

I can't remember who said it but someone did: Linux was invented so that geeks could get laid.

Predicting Earthquakes

Scientists believe they have some encouraging news about how and when to predict earthquakes:

Paris - Geophysicists poring over an earthquake hotspot beneath southern Japan believe massive temblors may be preceded by slow, barely perceptible quakes that can last for days or weeks.

In a new paper published in the British journal Nature, the scientists say the warning signs are buried in tiny seismic signals caused by a slip deep within a fault.

Their focus is on phenomena that lie far below the threshold of human sensation called low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) and non-volcanic tremor.

Seismologists have until now mainly viewed non-volcanic tremor as a weak shaking of the Earth, and LFEs as a swarm of small temblors, with a magnitude of just one or two, that can last for weeks or even months at a time.

These low rumblings are typically found in subduction zones - the regions on the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" that have unleashed the mightiest quakes on record, say the US-Japanese team, led by David Shelly of Stanford University, California.

As someone who has lived in two earthquake prone areas, I say this can only be good news (although, oddly, the only one I've ever felt was in hte UK).