Your cholesterol can be too low: Here are the results of a Google search on “low cholesterol” and “suicide”, the association between which was recently brought to my attention. Does low cholesterol or some aspect of a cholesterol-lowering lifestyle (rigidity? self-discipline? preoccupation with one’s cardiac risk factors? anxiety about one’s physical health in general? lower body weight? some effect of cholesterol-lowering drugs? some metabolic effect e.g. on brain chemistry of low cholesterol?) contribute to depression, or perhaps to poorer treatment response to antidepressants, somehow? Does a depressive biochemistry or personality somehow contribute to low cholesterol? Or are both correlated, without a causal link, with some other factor?

Dialogue in the Mountains

You ask me why I lodge in these emerald hills;

I laugh, don’t answer — my heart is at peace.

Peach blossoms and flowing waters

go off to mysterious dark,

And there is another world,

not of mortal men.

—Li Po (701-762 AD)           

wood s lot reminded us to beware of aibohphobia, the fear of palindromes. This Metafilter thread on the occasion of the palindromic date 10-02-2001 has some good ones to be afraid of. My favorite new discovery there: “Rettebs iflahd noces, eh? Ttu, but the second half is better.” Speaking of palindromes and nonsense, 9-11 is palindromic in Roman numerals. Many have noted that there is no natural monicker for the new Day of Infamy coming to mind. We’ve fallen back on referring to the ‘unfortunate events’, the ‘disaster’, the ‘terrorist attacks’, the ‘attacks on America,’ by their date. Should we call it “IXXIMMI”, “ixximmi“? It rhymes with “infamy” too, sort of…

Don’t shoot the messenger, says al Jazeera. “A senior journalist from groundbreaking Arab television channel al Jazeera has urged the White House not to try to stifle media coverage of comments by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden.

“We should not shoot the messenger just because we hate the message,” said Hafiz al Mirazi, Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief.

The Bush administration appealed to newspapers on Thursday not to publish in their entirety statements issued by bin Laden and his top aides, asserting they may contain coded messages to followers to carry out fresh attacks on U.S. targets.’ Yahoo! The administration appears disingenuous about this; the concern about coded messages is probably largely a pretext for not wanting bin Laden’s inflammatory message spread. The major news outlets, to their credit, acknowledge this distinction but, to their shame, have acceded to the “patriotic” request unquestioningly. This is effrontery to the public’s right to know. Many commentators, certainly not just this Arab critic, have noted that of course the best way for the American people to evaluate propaganda claims is to hear them, and that goes for propaganda from both sides.

The Pacifist Weblog. Nevertheless, from Sam Smith’s Progressive Review, “…just a few reasons a non-pacifist might oppose the war:

• It will just lead to worse problems including increased guerilla actions.
  

• It is a war we can’t win.
  

• It is not a just war.
  

• It is unconstitutional.
  

• It violates international law including the UN Charter.
  

• It is wrecking our constitutional system.
  

• It is a high risk act of mindless machismo
  

• It is poorly planned by incompetent and corrupt leaders.
  

• It is giving the nation a mass case of agoraphobia, making us prisoners of our own fears.
  

• It is a war without defined objectives, a defined enemy, or a definition of victory.
  

• It is a war we can’t win without simultaneously ending our imperial role in the Muslim world.
  

• It will badly hurt the American economy.
  

• It is a war premised on the assumption that 6,000 innocent Americans’ lives are worth more than the 500,000 innocent Iraqi children’s lives lost during the Iraqi embargo.
  

• It is a war for unstated corrupt ends, including the interests of multinational oil companies.
  

Those who are labeling as pacifists all critics of the war don’t want to deal with such issues. Instead writers for major papers — such as Michael Kelly in the Washington Post and Scott Simon in the Wall Street Journal — create a deceitful dichotomy with some of the most intellectually dishonest arguments of recent times.” [via wood s lot]

MIT makes available on the web course materials for all its undergrad and graduate courses. The MIT press release makes it clear this is neither a distance learning initiative or a way to get an MIT degree remotely, but that “Institutions around the world could make direct use of the MIT OpenCourseWare materials as references and sources for curriculum development. These materials might be of particular value in developing countries that are trying to expand their higher education systems rapidly.”

Susan and Jay Love Each Other, and Their Dog, and Their Pharmacologist. ‘(A)ccording

to Dr. Amy Banks, a psychiatrist at the

Stone Center for the Study of Relationships

at Wellesley College: ”There are two categories of medicated couples.

There are those in which the medication allows the rightful relationship to

emerge, and then there are those in which medication serves as a screen

to cover up real issues. How can you tell them apart?” It’s a good

question. But let’s put that aside for a moment and just consider the

phenomenon. For now, maybe we should not be asking whether our

relationships are more or less true under these pharmacological conditions

but, simply, what does love look like in such a strange state of union?’ (by Lauren Slater, a psychologist who runs a mental health and substance-abuse clinic in Boston. Her most recent book is Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir.) NY Times Magazine [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Collateral Damage (cont’d.): Death From Above Devastates Simple Afghan Village: “There aren’t many witnesses to say

what happened to Khorum village in eastern Afghanistan last

Wednesday night.

There aren’t many survivors.” And: Pentagon Says Error Led to

Bombing of Houses in Kabul: “A Navy jet

mistakenly dropped a 2,000-pound bomb

today into a residential neighborhood of Kabul, the

Pentagon said. Initial reports from the Afghan

capital said four people had been killed and eight

others wounded in the attack, which occurred as the

bombing of Afghanistan resumed after a pause for

the Muslim holy day on Friday.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Bush Is Said to Scale Back His Religion-Based Initiative NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Susan and Jay Love Each Other, and Their Dog, and Their Pharmacologist. ‘(A)ccording

to Dr. Amy Banks, a psychiatrist at the

Stone Center for the Study of Relationships

at Wellesley College: ”There are two categories of medicated couples.

There are those in which the medication allows the rightful relationship to

emerge, and then there are those in which medication serves as a screen

to cover up real issues. How can you tell them apart?” It’s a good

question. But let’s put that aside for a moment and just consider the

phenomenon. For now, maybe we should not be asking whether our

relationships are more or less true under these pharmacological conditions

but, simply, what does love look like in such a strange state of union?’ (by Lauren Slater, a psychologist who runs a mental health and substance-abuse clinic in Boston. Her most recent book is Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir.) NY Times Magazine [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]