SnowWorld, developed at the University of Washington HITLab in collaboration with Harborview Burn Center, was the first immersive virtual world designed for reducing pain. SnowWorld was specifically designed to help burn patients. Patients often report re-living their original burn experience during wound care, SnowWorld was designed to help put out the fire. Our logic for why VR will reduce pain is as follows. Pain perception has a strong psychological component. The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted as painful or not, depending on what the patient is thinking. Pain requires conscious attention. The essence of VR is the illusion users have of going inside the computer-generated environment. Being drawn into another world drains a lot of attentional resources, leaving less attention available to process pain signals. Conscious attention is like a spotlight. Usually it is focused on the pain and woundcare. We are luring that spotlight into the virtual world. Rather than having pain as the focus of their attention, for many patients in VR, the wound care becomes more of an annoyance, distracting them from their primary goal of exploring the virtual world.
The virtual world is said to be based on a snowball fight with penguins and snowmen where “snowy cold is supposed to cancel out and help distract them from remembering their original injury”:
Gunshow Undercover revealed today that investigators who went to a Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Phoenix on January 23rd did not have to pass any checks to purchase the same weapon used by Jared Loughner.
Two weeks after the tragic shootings in Tucson, undercover investigators went to a gun show in Phoenix, Arizona and purchased guns – no background check, no questions asked. […] An undercover investigator purchased two 9 millimeter pistols from two different sellers, even after the investigator told the sellers that “I probably couldn’t pass a background check.”
During the sale you see the seller say “No Tax”, “These are a bunch of private people…”; he asks the buyer to only show ID to “make sure you’re not from California”.
The site says their 2009 tests found 63% (19 of 30) of private gun dealers also required no background check to complete a sale.
Three issues here seem notable:
The site points to a legal loopholes that allows persons who sell weapons as a private citizen, instead of as a dealer, to avoid performing a background check. Presumably this loophole is meant to help private-citizens profit from weapon sales as well as avoid regulation of private-party commerce. However, private-citizens are regulated in other forms of commerce; high-risk items often are prohibited. The justification of the loophole therefore seems tenuous.
The site indicates that buyers who inform a seller that they probably couldn’t pass a background check are still sold a weapon. This shows that even laws in place are violated — private sellers are prohibited from selling to someone they have a “reason to believe” would not pass a background check. This begs the question of why sellers flaunt the law. Does room for discretion leave the door open to abuse or negligence, or is it because enforcement is too weak? They warn buyers not to show them a California ID, so some forms of enforcement obviously work. Arizona only gets 2 out of 100 on a scale of gun trafficking laws according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. California gets 79 out of 100. Arizona gets 0 out of 10 on a scale of laws that curb illegal trafficking according to Trace the Guns. California gets 8 out of 10.
There is no current known internal enforcement mechanism at these gun shows. A show reserves the right to ask a seller to leave, but it is unclear whether they have ever done so and whether they would do any compliance tests on their own accord. A lack of transparent self-regulation increases the need for external assessments like that performed by Gunshow Undercover.
the question is if what will ever happen with a group that feels little emotional connection to cars, and mentally associates the sound of the motor with noise pollution and horsepower with accidents.
As part of the Sept. 8 deployment of 504 National Guard personnel to the Tucson Sector, National Guard troops assigned to operate the remote video surveillance system at the Naco station observed several individuals just south of the international boundary fence preparing a catapult. Border Patrol agents assigned to the International Liaison Unit contacted Mexican authorities who responded to the area and disrupted the catapult operation. Camera operators observed individuals fleeing the area, presumably to avoid apprehension
Or maybe they fled because they were afraid of being cited for improper catapult safety precautions.