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"I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career... I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate."

—Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

Saturday, April 1

500-year old moon myth resolved 

[Image 'http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0604/gcmoon_ranger9_apr1.jpg' cannot be displayed]Astronomy Picture of the Day: "Using the new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a marked date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a 'sell by' date. 'To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow,' a spokesperson advised."

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Friday, March 31

Prescribing of hyperactivity drugs is out of control 

A New Scientist review raises the same hue and cry I have been voicing in posts here and in my worklife:
"Now, amid reports of rare but serious side effects, leading researchers and doctors are calling for a review of the way ADHD is dealt with. Many prescriptions are being written by family doctors with little expertise in diagnosing ADHD, raising doubts about how many people on these stimulants really need them. Just as worrying, large numbers of children who do have ADHD are going undiagnosed.

Both trends could lead to problems with drug dependency, argue specialists in addiction."

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Featuring Fascism 

Ed Fitzgerald, at unfutz, lays out several thinkers' defining characteristics of fascism. Don't point a finger at Washington as you read; the proper direction for scrutiny should be inward, at the question of our own susceptibility.

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Device warns you if you're boring or irritating 

"A device that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.

One of the problems facing people with autism is an inability to pick up on social cues. Failure to notice that they are boring or confusing their listeners can be particularly damaging, says Rana El Kaliouby of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'It's sad because people then avoid having conversations with them.'" (New Scientist)

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British ‘replication’ of the Stanford Prison Experiment 

"Back in December 2001 British social psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher conducted a replication of Philip Zimbardo’s classic Stanford Prison Experiment. Fifteen male participants were divided into ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’ and kept in a specially constructed ‘prison’ for eight days, in order to explore “theoretical ideas about the psychology of power and resistance, tyranny and order”. The whole experiment was filmed by the BBC and broadcast in the BBC2 programme “The Experiment”. The study was controversial, not only from an ethical standpoint, but also because it challenged many of the original Stanford findings, and Reicher and Haslam had to devote a fair amount of energy to defending themselves." (Psychology and Crime News)

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Is language changing your personality? 

Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching: "Four studies examined and empirically documented Cultural Frame Switching (CFS; Hong, Chiu, & Kung, 1997) in the domain of personality. Specifically, we asked whether Spanish–English bilinguals show different personalities when using different languages?"
The answer appears to be yes, at least with respect to dimensions of extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. (Science and Consciousness Review)

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Prion Theory of Mad Cow Disease Called Full of Holes 

"...[A]bnormal prion proteins implicated in the development of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, may be markers for disease rather than the infectious agents." (Medpage Today)

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Getting Fresh With Mozart 

"He wrote about 650 pieces; why do we always hear the same old six?" (Seattle Weekly)

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Moving On Down the Line 

Impeaching Bush is Just the Start: "...[I]n the end there will be plenty of abstentions, and some nastiness and hurt feelings, and Brookline will congratulate itself for sticking it to Bush. That's the easy part." — Dennis Fox (Brookline Tab)

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Thursday, March 30

Embarrassed by the President Day 2006 

[Image 'http://www.democracymeansyou.com/brown/images/but-still-embarrassed-RED15.gif' cannot be displayed]
April 1st; no fooling! National "I'm Still Embarrassed by My President" Day. Wear a brown ribbon to protest the BS from the White House.

And thanks, Seth, for suggesting readers go to www.itmfa.com as well.

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Patients with Tourette's have more self-control, not less 

"People with Tourette’s syndrome can’t stop themselves from making sudden repeated movements or noises, so you might infer that they have an impairment in their mental control processes. On the contrary, according to a new study they actually have greater cognitive control than healthy people, suggesting the cause of their symptoms lies deeper, in their subcortical inhibitory mechanisms."
They should have conferred with novelist Jonathan Lethem, whose most extraordinary achievement, IMHO, was his portrayal of a petty gangster with Tourette's syndrome, the main character of Motherless Brooklyn. (Lethem, as far as I know, does not himself have Tourette's.) He nailed this issue of the dialectic between disinhibition and increased control, and what it does to one's experience of self in relationship to the world.

Tourette's and obsessive-compulsive disorder have some epidemiological intersection and some phenomenological similarity, nevertheless they are not exactly the same thing psychiatrically. My only quibble with Lethem's character is that his Tourette's has alot of OCD to it.

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Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking May Be Statistical Haze 

"All those health benefits of moderate drinking may be based on nothing but a common methodological error in the studies, a meta-analysis suggested." (Medpage Today)

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Mass. high court says nonresident gays cannot marry in the state 

"The court that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage ruled Thursday that same-sex couples from other states where gay marriage is prohibited cannot marry here.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a challenge to a 1913 state law that forbids nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state." (Boston Globe) And Gov. Mitt Romney breathes a sigh of relief vis á vis his 2008 Republican Presidential aspirations...

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Study Backs Equal Coverage for Mental Ills 

"Providing insurance coverage for mental illness equal to that for physical illness does not drive up the cost of mental health care as many insurers feared, a new study of health benefits for federal employees says.

President Bill Clinton ordered such equal coverage for federal workers in 1999, and the changes took effect in 2001. Under the policy, known as parity, insurers were forbidden to charge higher co-payments or impose stricter limits on psychiatric care or treatment for alcohol and drug abuse." (New York Times )
Parity is one of the rallying cries of the battle for fair treatment and against societal stigmatization of mental health problems.

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Wednesday, March 29

Just another wingnut? 

McCain Drain: "E.J. Dionne hits the nail on the head today when he says that the positions that John McCain will need to take in order to win the Republican primary may very well lose him the support of the more moderate voters who've hailed him as a maverick, to his perhaps permanent electoral or reputational detriment..." (Tapped)

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Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome 

A User Guide to Adolescence by Luke Jackson, a 13-year old with Asperger's Syndrome. Social morés in adolescence are difficult enough, but the lack of interpersonal perceptual skills in autistic-spectrum disorders can make it an unmitigated disaster from which recovery is difficult. Some of this was gotten at in Mark Haddon's poignant novel Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but this gets at it more explicitly.

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Visions of the dying 

"'Iknew something had happened to him – I just knew it'; 'There was this light which seemed to come from him'; 'She smiled, as if she was greeting someone – and then she died'. Intimations of a loved one's death; warm, enveloping lights; visions of dead relatives – deathbed phenomena such as these have become a passion for Dr Peter Fenwick, a consultant in neuropsychiatry at the universities of London and Southampton."
Fenwick, doing ongoing research on deathbed phenomena, feels they are common, they are not attributable to medication effects, and they are more diverse than the stereotypical "going toward the light" phenomenon.

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Celebrity Death Watch 

Could The Country's Insane Fame Fixation Come to an End?: "For years, I’ve thought that the intense fascination with famous people must be about to end—and I’ve been repeatedly, egregiously mistaken. But now—truly, finally—I believe that we are at the apogee, the zenith, the plateau, the top of the market. After 30 years, this cycle of American celebrity mania has peaked. I think. I hope." — Kurt Andersen (New York Magazine)

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A Poverty of the Mind 

Orlando Patterson: "Several recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it." (New York Times op-ed)

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Tuesday, March 28

The End of Deinstitutionalization in my State? 

Massachusetts proposes new mental hospital: "Massachusetts has closed 13 of its 16 state hospitals since 1973 as mental illness increasingly has been treated on an outpatient basis. But state officials say the push to deinstitutionalize patients has overlooked the needs of hundreds who are too sick or too dangerous to themselves or others to live on their own." (Boston Globe with thanks to Pam)
It is a complicated story, but the movement to close the asylums was originally supposed to have gone fist-in-glove with the community mental health movement. This supremely humane reform effort was co-opted by the budget mavens, however, who did the former without supporting the latter. Among other things, the story of homelessness in America is in large measure the story of the bereft and abandoned deinstitutionalized mentally ill turned out to the streets with no provision for fending for themselves. In fact, this current proposal for a new hospital grew out of Governor Romney's budget-slashing effort to close one of the remaining three hospitals in further deinstitutionalization. Indeed, the new hospital will replace two crumbling existing ones and will result in an overall reduction in the number of state hospital beds in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, it is the first new expenditure for the sickest of the chronically mentally ill in a long time in this state. I am no fan of mental health bureaucrats, but the Department of Mental Health under its current commissioner Elizabeth Childs MD seems truly dedicated to its constituency. It is at the forefront of the nationwide effort to eliminate involuntary medication, seclusion, and restraints from the practice of hospital psychiatry as well.

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Al-Qaida Plotters Dismiss Moussaoui's Role 

After Moussaoui's gift to the prosecution, his defense attorneys scrambled to put on testimony from high-ranking al Qaeda detainees that he was a poseur and a nuisance who did not have the role of which he boasted in the 9-11 attacks. Moussaoui now says that his previous denials that he had been involved in the 9-11 plot were lies designed to facilitate the fruition of the attack despite his arrest. It is not much of a stretch to join in speculation that, in making the prosecution's case and undercutting his attorneys' efforts to defend him, he may be seeking a martyr's death.

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'Heckuva Job' Dept. 

"Only Bush would see Bolten as the kind of official in need of a promotion." (Carpetbagger)

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Scalia has hand gesture for critics 


"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by making a hand gesture some consider obscene.

A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.

'You know what I say to those people?' Scalia replied, making the gesture and explaining 'That's Sicilian.'

The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper.

'Don't publish that,' Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said.

He was attending a special mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and afterward was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Lawyers' Guild luncheon." (UPI)

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Who Do Voodoo? 

Sean Penn has Coulter Torture Doll: "Hollywood activist Sean Penn has a plastic doll of conservative US columnist Ann Coulter that he likes to abuse when angry. The Oscar-winner actor has hated Coulter ever since she blacklisted his director father Leo Penn in her book Treason. And he takes out his frustrations with Coulter, who is a best-selling author, lawyer and television pundit, on the Barble-like doll. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, 'We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places. She's a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn't believe a word she says.'"

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Supreme Court Justices Question Law on Detainee Trials 

"At least five justices appeared ready to reject the administration's argument that the court has no jurisdiction in a detainee case." (New York Times )

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Roe for men? 

"The National Center for Men filed suit to establish reproductive rights for men. Is a father's right to choose an idea worth debating, or just a distraction?" (Salon)
The NCM has looked for around a decade for an appropriate plaintiff to sue for relief from the obligations of paternity after unintentionally conceiving a child. Now they have one...

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Oglala Sioux Tribe on the South Dakota Abortion Ban 

Cecilia Fire Thunder, former nurse and Oglala Sioux President: "To me, it is now a question of sovereignty. I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction." (Nativetimes.com via SF Bay Area Indymedia)
As some have suggested, it seems a worthy cause to contribute to, if the Oglala people are soliciting donations. If anyone knows, please send me a link, thanks.

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Cult musicians 

A rundown of rock'n'roll s*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*i*s*t*s (Guardian.UK)

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Sunday, March 26

Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists 

"Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date." [via dangerousmeta]

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How to Save the World: a reading list 

From Dave Pollard's weblog of the same name. Ever since the demise a few years ago of the Whole Earth Review/CoEvolutionary Quarterly, to which I subscribed from its outset to its final issue, it has been more difficult to access this sort of ethic in the media. We could do worse than reading Pollard.

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50 things to eat before you die 

"In March 2004 we asked you to vote for the top 50 things everyone should try a bite of in their lifetime. This is how you voted." (BBC [via ...Clever Name]) I have seven to go.

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A Recording Engineer's Guide to the Secrets of iTunes and iPod 

"Most critical listeners from outside the recording industry don't realize that most audible artifacts are part of the recordings they buy, not the gear used to reproduce them. These folks, often called audiophiles, spend their lives trying to work around the nasty things we do to the audio before it gets to you. Do your own tests if you prefer. Beware that many of the defects many people blame on data compression are in the CDs they bought in the first place. I listened for differences between the original CD and the iTunes rendition. Hearing no difference is perfection, and I got that at 128kbs VBR. Better compression schemes can't get rid of defects." [via Blivet]
He is pleasantly surprised with the audio quality he gets from his iPod, having been given one as a present after turning up his nose at the whole idea. He goes on to tell you how to tweak your settings for maximal listening enjoyment.

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Top 10 Vehicles Owned by Billionaires 

A list compiled by Forbes Magazine, garnered from motor vehicle dept. records, on the 10 richest people on their 2005 list, to whet the appetites of the superrich-watchers while waiting for the 2006 list. Forbes observes,
"It seems that for the super-rich, a vehicle is seen not as a status symbol, but as a means to an end in which to get from point A to point B. Status is something that these billionaires need not prove to others. In many cases, the people on our list prefer to live inconspicuously, avoiding the limelight at all costs."
It feels like a stretch to me. True, there are no Ferraris, Lamborghinis, or even BMWs. However, you will find a number of Porsches, some Bentleys and of course the Lincoln town cars. How about concluding that some billionaires are more ostentatious than others? Here's an exercise for you to do. Before you check out the cars themselves, look at the list of ten illuminati and rank them based on your intuitive sense of where they fall on a continuum between ostentation and humility.

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