A Beautifully Simple Idea

Sometimes the simplest solution is so easy and basic to understand that it hits you between the eyes and you go, "no shit!"

German nursing homes are using a novel strategy to stop Alzheimer's patients from wandering off: phantom bus stops.

The idea was first tried at Benrath Senior Centre in Düsseldorf, which pitched an exact replica of a standard stop outside, with one small difference: buses do not use it.

The centre had been forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their often non-existent homes and families.

Then Benrath teamed up with a local care association called the "Old Lions". They went to the Rheinbahn transport network which supplied the bus stop.

"It sounds funny but it helps," said Franz-Josef Goebel, the chairman of the "Old Lions" association.

"Our members are 84 years old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works, but the long-term memory is still active.

"They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home."

The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

"We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later and invite them in for a coffee," said Richard Neureither, Benrath's director. "Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave."

This idea has an obvious application here in this country--not only for nursing homes, but for Veteran's hospitals. Yes, there should be real bus stops, but interspersing a few fake ones in there to help keep the people we need to care for from escaping might save some lives.

h/t to Greater Greater Washington, a fantastic blog about quality of life and mass transit issues in the Washington DC area.

--WS

Doffing my Cap to German Law Enforcement

Just hours after it was revealed that David Addington in 2004 was "preying" for another terrorist attack so the Bush maladministration could seize even more dictatorial power in the name of fighting terrorism, it was revealed that German police have arrested three terrorists who were in the final stages of preparation for bombing high-value targets in Germany that represent vital American interests.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining a vast six-month investigation. She said that the suspects had amassed huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical used to manufacture the explosives used in the suicide bombings in London in July 2005.

...The arrests came a day after the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot there. The German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots, despite similarities, including a suspected link to Al Qaeda. Six of those suspects have already been released.

Germans officials said the attacks could have come within days, noting that the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks falls next week and that the German Parliament will soon take up a politically sensitive debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan.

“There was an imminent security threat,” the German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said on state television.

Ms. Harms said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union, a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

While this group has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe, it has claimed credit for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the United States and Israeli Embassies in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The group has called for the overthrow of the secular government in Uzbekistan.

I have a whole different outlook on terrorism and effectively combating it than most of my fellow Americans, because it has been on my radar for over 20 years. I was an Air Force wife in the 80's - Hello? Rome Airport, anyone? Lets just say that lots of couples never went out dancing in Germany, either, and leave it at that. Back then, spouses and children routinely took a different commercial flight to an overseas billet than the service member who was required to fly in uniform. I have the utmost respect for the European law enforcement community that stemmed those problems back then.

Europe has been dealing with terrorism, and doing so effectively, for many years now, and they have done so with common-sense security measures and with good, old-fashioned police work. Today, they led the way once again, showing us once more that the way to effectively fight terrorism is law enforcement, not blowing shit up, invading countries that didn't attack us, and terrorizing the citizens of said country.

Get it yet?