Rafe Colburn comments: “I’m always amazed when people who live and work on barrier islands are shocked at the damage that hurricanes do. Barrier islands are just big piles of sand that ordinarily migrate up and down the coast with changes in weather and currents, and yet we brilliant human being insist upon building things on them and doing our best to make them stay in one place. I know people love to live on the beach, but the price of that is periodic utter destruction.” rc3

I feel the same way when I hear people bemoan what they’ve lost in the latest flood without considering whether they should continue to live on the floodplain; and those devastated in the California mudslides and brushfires, etc. etc… We forget we still ought to be humbled by the more formidable displays of nature’s grandeur and power.

Big Pharma and the buying of psychiatry: Outspoken and inspiring psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey shares many (most) of my concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatrists’ practice habits. Here he focuses on the marketing carnivals that international psychiatric symposia have become, essentially buying and selling psychiatrists’ souls. A more comprehensive statement of concern, however, would not focus on the small number of psychiatrists who attend major international conferences and the even smaller number who are given all-expense paid junkets to these conferences even if they are not presenters but only attendees, because their prescribing practices are being bought. In the past decade, marketing representatives have, I am convinced (from watching my colleagues) become the main source of continuing education of psychiatrists, and pharma-funded research the only type of published “scientific” findings published in the major psychiatric journals (for that small subset of practicing psychiatrists who still read the literature). The American Prospect

Can your beliefs about religion make it across our intellectual battleground?

“In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way which is rationally consistent. What this means is you need to avoid choosing answers which contradict each other. If you answer in a way which is rationally consistent but which has strange or unpalatable implications, you’ll be forced to bite a bullet.” The Philosophers’ Magazine

The President’s Resumé [via Rittenhouse]

“One glance at the giddy crowd during a (Neil) Gaiman reading held last month at the Wall Street Borders and it’s obvious just how popular he is. While he read from The Wolves in the Walls, his latest book for children, it’s safe to say that most in attendance were drawn by their love of Gaiman’s brooding, lanky personification of dreams, the Sandman. After a seven-year break from writing the fantastical-historical-mythical stories that made him famous, Gaiman has returned to his best-loved characters with The Sandman: Endless Nights, a dizzyingly lush grouping of seven tales, each focused on a different sibling in the family known as the Endless. The intervening years have been busy ones for the prolific Gaiman—three children’s books, three novels, two collections, and a smattering of TV and movie projects—but it’s still The Sandman that inspires the most fervent dedication.” The Village Voice

James Ridgeway: Looking for weapons of self-destruction:

…For the Bush camp, by far the most unsettling situation is the California recall election—whenever it eventually takes place. A win by Arnold Schwarzenegger would not necessarily be a win for the Republican right. The Terminator is a more or less liberal Republican—pro-gay, pro-choice, sympathetic to environmentalists. He has said the Clinton impeachment made him ashamed to be a Republican. The Bush administration is gangbusters on cutting taxes, but Schwarzenegger is noncommittal on this key GOP strategy. As an immigrant, he is scarcely opposed to immigration per se, as are many on the right who call either for a moratorium or severe racial profiling. In sum, at least on paper, Arnold represents everything the GOP right detests. And yet, many of the right-wing leaders—the same ones blathering on and on since Reagan about sticking to their “principles”—have lined up behind him. Pat Robertson is embracing Schwarzenegger—who did drugs and participated in orgies in the ’70s—as his kind of guy. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly all have fallen for Arnold. That may be fine for the California recall, but having a moderate Republican stir the blood is not necessarily good for the GOP right-wingers’ big vote next year.The Village Voice

Boxing George Bush into a corner in 2004: “t is an unlovely fact, but a fact nonetheless. The surest way to win a presidential election is to successfully scare the bejesus out of the voters about what will happen if the opponent becomes, or remains, president of the United States. Not a pleasant thing for Democrats, who like to be nice, to have to ponder. Fortunately for the squeamish, they will simply be telling the truth. George W. Bush is scary. Going negative against him, early, even right out of the box, might be not just a winning strategy. It will also be the patriotic thing to do. Just ask Rand Beers.” The Village Voice