The LowEnd Generator

Media - WATCH: Portland Cello Project Covers Pantera… Seriously

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:30:24 -0500

Media - WATCH: Portland Cello Project Covers Pantera… Seriously:

filtermagazine.com

So here is something you don’t see/hear every day… an orchestra… covering Pantera.
You read that correctly. Portland Cello Project covered Pantera’s “Mouth for War” from the album, Vulgar Display of Power,…

Love it when an orchestra does a metal cover! WATCH: Portland Cello Project ( @PdxCelloProject) Covers @OfficialPantera… Seriously http://t.co/dX63eUfd

Macy Gray Sings Metallica, Radiohead and More on...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:28:30 -0500

Macy Gray Sings Metallica, Radiohead and More on ‘Covered’
By Steve Baltin, rollingstone.com

Gray on crossing genres: ‘I imagine if I was a metalhead, I would feel bad about rearranging James Hetfield’
Macy Gray is set to release Covered March 27, and the singer says this project is a long time coming. “After my first record I…

Macy Gray Covers Metallica, Radiohead, My Chemical Romance, etc.

Alternative Press | News | Hot Water Music, Braid, Darkest Hour,...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:05:31 -0500

Alternative Press | News | Hot Water Music, Braid, Darkest Hour, Comeback Kid to play free SXSW showcase
altpress.com

Shirts for a Cure have announced a special free daytime SXSW showcase to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Hot Water Music (pictured), Braid, DYS, Darkest Hour, Comeback Kid, Coliseum, Anti-Flag and Tim Barry are among the bands…

Hot Water Music, Braid, Darkest Hour, Comeback Kid to play free SXSW showcase

The Cult Return With Intense New Albumrollingstone.com Click to...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:34:23 -0500

The Cult Return With Intense New Album
rollingstone.com

Click to listen to the Cult’s ‘Lucifer’ The Cult are set to release Choice of Weapon their ninth studio album on May 22nd The record is their first full-length work in five years though the band has kept active by putting out “capsules” of new…

Ian Astbury, Billy Duff, Chris Wyse & John Tempesta are set to release their 9th studio effort. #TheCult’s “Choice of Weapon” was co-produced w/Chris Goss (#QOTSA, #UNKLE) & Bob Rock (#Metallica, #Aerosmith)

Peter, Paul and Mary Bassist Dick Kniss Dies By Miriam Coleman,...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:54:48 -0500

Peter, Paul and Mary Bassist Dick Kniss Dies
By Miriam Coleman, rollingstone.com

Kniss also helped write John Denver’s hit ‘Sunshine on My Shoulders’
Dick Kniss, the bass player for Peter, Paul and Mary, died on Wednesday of pulmonary disease in Kingston, NY. He was 74.
Kniss had joined Peter, Paul and Mary in 1968, af…

R.I.P. Mr Dick Kniss

The Beautiful Colors Of Autumn! I just love the earth tones of...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:54:26 -0500

The Beautiful Colors Of Autumn! I just love the earth tones of fall!!!

New At Robb Wolf's Blog: Big 'FAT' Blog Post - Part 1

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:55:03 -0400

New At Robb Wolf's Blog: Big 'FAT' Blog Post - Part 1:

Robb Wolf (@robbwolf on #Twitter) is co-owner of NorCal Strength & Conditioning. He’s a former research bio-chemist and author of the New York Times Best Seller, “The Paleo Solution”

Depression And Music Therapy

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:35:33 -0400

Finland researchers, Professors Jaakko Erkkilä, Christian Gold, and their colleagues, enlisted the help of 79 “of work age” people (18 to 50 years old) living in the country, who had been diagnosed with depression using the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders.

When combined with “standard” medical care, music therapy appears to be an effective treatment for depression, at lease in the short term, by helping people express their emotions, , at least in the short term.

Twice a week, with the help of trained music therapists, in one-to-one sessions, the participants in the intervention group learned how to improvise music using a mallet instrument, a percussion instrument or an acoustic, West African djembe drum. On average, each participant in this group attended 18 sessions with 88% (29 individuals) attending at least 15 sessions.

Professors Erkkilä & Gold assessed all case studies clinically at the start of the study, then at 3 months interval up to 6 months afterwards. The assessment included taking measures of depression, anxiety, general functioning, quality of life and alexithymia (or the difficulty in identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal or the difficulty describing feelings to other people)

The University of Jyväskylä researchers found that:

- The participants, after 3 months of receiving music therapy and standard care showed greater improvement than those group receiving standard care only in symptoms of depression (mean difference 4.65, 95% Confidence Interval CI 0.59 to 8.70), anxiety (1.82, 95% CI 0.09 to 3.55) and general functioning (-4.58, 95% CI -8.93 to -0.24).

6 months after the course of the study however, although the improvements were still pretty much evident, the differences between the two groups were no longer statistically significant.

The Generated LowEnd:

A holistic approach in the treatment of medical conditions, whether the condition be of physical or cognitive nature, if combined with proven medical methods can further enhance its therapeutic effects. As this study shows, published in the August issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, individual music therapy combined with standard care is effective in the treatment of depression among working-age people with the said diagnosis, even if it was documented in the short term. The results of this study along with the previous research indicate that music therapy with its specific qualities is a valuable enhancement to established treatment practices. The challenge? To have my colleagues in the medical and health care communities embrace this concept.

-The Bassist From Hell

Down Fifth Ave #NYC #NY #FifthAve #5thAve (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:10:09 -0400

Down Fifth Ave #NYC #NY #FifthAve #5thAve (Taken with instagram)

My Favorite Bridge #Brooklyn #Brooklynbridge #NY #NYC (Taken...

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:44:08 -0400

My Favorite Bridge #Brooklyn #Brooklynbridge #NY #NYC (Taken with instagram)

Hello You Sexay Thang #caffeinefix #starbucks (Taken with...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:47:33 -0400

Hello You Sexay Thang #caffeinefix #starbucks (Taken with instagram)

& when was the last time you actually listened to yourself, young lady?!? Hell—go for it!...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:28:50 -0400

& when was the last time you actually listened to yourself, young lady?!? Hell—go for it! Lol RT (cont) http://tl.gd/blgu1k

Icing on a truly busy day at work: a) Derek Jeter going 5 for 5 in pursuit of 3000 career hits b)...

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:36:04 -0400

Icing on a truly busy day at work: a) Derek Jeter going 5 for 5 in pursuit of 3000 career hits b) @EzLana bringing steak home. #awesomesauce

Charts Waiting For Me So Far. http://instagr.am/p/HRype/

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:46:50 -0400

Charts Waiting For Me So Far. http://instagr.am/p/HRype/

With his 3rd inning HR off Tampa’s LHP David Price, #Yankees Captain SS Derek Jeter becomes...

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:05:39 -0400

With his 3rd inning HR off Tampa’s LHP David Price, #Yankees Captain SS Derek Jeter becomes the 28th player & 1st Yankee to hit 3000 in his career!!!

Choking the neck of my bass like it owes me money. \m/ Yeeeeeeaaah!!!

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:58:49 -0400

Choking the neck of my bass like it owes me money. \m/ Yeeeeeeaaah!!!

Who’s Ready To Shake This Place Down??!! Yeeeeaaah!! \m/...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:51:50 -0400

Who’s Ready To Shake This Place Down??!! Yeeeeaaah!! \m/ #Ampeg (Taken with instagram)

One of my all time favorite live acts ever—-Foo Fighters -...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:47:50 -0400

One of my all time favorite live acts ever—-Foo Fighters - Rope (Live on Letterman) (by foofightersVEVO)

The Employment Situation In June - The White House Blog

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:35:05 -0400

The Employment Situation In June - The White House Blog:

This is the latst blog entry from The White House Blog about our current employment situation as poted by Mr. Austan Goolsbee, who currently is the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

Harvard, MIT & NBER Study On Medicaid

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:45:02 -0400

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—-Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and Providence Health & Services have all found that expanding low income adults’ access to Medicaid substantially increases health care use while reducing financial strain on covered individuals, and improves their self-reported health and well-being. This is the first study to evaluate the impact of insuring the uninsured in the U.S. using a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard in medical and scientific studies.

”This study shows that Medicaid substantially expands access to and use of care for low-income adults relative to being uninsured,” said Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics at HSPH and co-principal investigator of the study. Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, covers the health care costs of eligible low-income individuals and families. The 2010 Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid to cover additional low income adults in all states in 2014.

The state of Oregon in 2008, held a lottery to accept additional low-income, uninsured residents into its Medicaid program; about 90,000 applied for the 10,000 available openings. The researchers collected data on the lottery participants from many sources - including hospital records and mail surveys - and compared outcomes between those randomly selected by the lottery and those not selected in order to determine the impact of Medicaid.

Although many previous studies compare health or health care use between the insured and uninsured, inferring the impact of health insurance from such comparisons is difficult because differences between the insured and uninsured, such as in income, employment, or initial health, may affect the health and health care outcomes studied. This study is the first to avoid this problem by taking advantage of the random assignment created by the Oregon lottery.

Solely based on the first year of this ongoing study, some of the key findings show that Medicaid coverage:

Increases health care use:

Increases the likelihood of using outpatient care by 35%, using prescription drugs by 15%, and being admitted to the hospital by 30%, but does not seem to have an effect on use of emergency departments. This translates into about a 25% increase in annual health care spending.
Increases the use of recommended preventive care such as mammograms by 60% and cholesterol monitoring by 20%.
Increases access to care: Increases the probability individuals report having a regular office or clinic for their primary care by 70% and the likelihood they report having a particular doctor that they usually see by 55%.
Reduces financial strain: Decreases the probability of having to borrow money or skip paying other bills to pay for health care by 40%, and decreases the probability of having an unpaid medical bill sent to a collection agency by 25%. Declines in unpaid medical bills also benefit health care providers, since the vast majority of such debts are never paid.
Improves reported health: Increases the probability that people report themselves in good to excellent health (compared with fair or poor health) by 25% and increases the probability of not being depressed by 10%.

THE GENERATED LOWEND

I guess there will be people wondering whether Medicaid coverage has any effect. I believe the joint studies from these reputable institutions have made it clear that indeed it does. People from the randomized controlled trial reported that, both their physical and mental health were substantially became better after a year of insurance coverage, and that they were much less likely to have to borrow money or go into debt to pay for their care. Health care and insurance reform is obviously necessary. Yes, funding is the ultimate question, but continued bipartisan politicking and putting party interest ahead of what our citizens truly need is just unforgiveable. For the first time since the inception of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, an administration truly wanted to move forward with this. Can someone in Washington just please, for once, put US ahead?

-The Bassist From Hell