A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn’s political action committee to the group’s supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats.” (Associated Press )
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Mental Notes is a weblog by a Texas psychiatrist. In his sidebar, he has compiled a list of other weblogs by psychiatrists. In addition to listing mine, here are his other links:
I have browsed them a little. It should not surprise you that they are quite diverse from both stylistic and content perspectives. Other than for completeness’ sake, some would never belong on any self-respecting blogroll of mine. Several are eloquent and fascinating. Please consider sending me any other links to psychiatrists’ weblogs you find, so I can keep the list up to date.
Here’s what Donna Wentworth says in a recent post to her Copyfight weblog:
Here is what I have said from the inception of FmH:
Early on, when it still seemed necessary to explain to people what this weblogging stuff was all about, this was on the main page of FmH. Now the link takes you to my “About FmH” page. My usage of the term was already old by 2001 when I revisited it in response to a reader’s question.
You will notice that I use ‘blink’ simply as a contraction of web+link, while Wentworth is making more of a distinction between the one-liners and the extended weblog entries. Perhaps she was not reading weblogs when almost all blinks were one-liners and weblogs were exactly that — annotated logs of one’s websurfing, so that others in your social circle could see what was interesting you. That’s what I saw when I woke up to the weblog phenomenon over the latter half of 1999, and that was the nature of the weblogs that directly inspired me — honeyguide, camworld, rebecca’s pocket, and the late lamented robot wisdom, for instance. While there were also online diaries or journals as well, the two phenomena did not converge for awhile longer. It was a long time before I dared to think readers would be receptive to any post longer than about a three-sentence paragraph.
The only notice my usage of the term ‘blink’ got was a peevish comment once on MetaFilter from someone who found it too cutesy. (I can no longer find it by searching MeFi, alas.) I couldn’t take too much umbrage at him, however, because his dig at me was in the context of trashing the fact that the word ‘weblog’ had universally been replaced by ‘blog’, a phenomenon about which I share his disdain. [I know, I know, I’m not being consistent. Maybe if ‘blink’ became overwhelmingly popular, I wouldn’t like it either. Story of my life… — FmH] And no one has even deigned to notice that I proposed using it as a verb as well.
Since to my knowledge the usage of ‘blink’ has so thoroughly failed to take hold, I wonder how in the world Bruce Umbaugh recognizes I should get the credit.
“When someone famous or otherwise notable dies, The Memory Hole often files a FOIA request for his or her FBI file. We post the ones we receive, but not everyone has a file. Mainly for the aid of other researchers, this page contains a running list of deceased people who are not the subject of a file, according to the FBI’s FOIA office.” (Memory Hole via pas-au-delà) [It’s a short list. — FmH]
Most of you have heard by now of the story of the potential oil spill from the breakup of a disabled Malaysian freighter in the Aleutians yesterday, and the Coast Goard helicopter crash during the attempt to rescue the stranded crew. I first heard coverage of this on NPR and puzzled over the name of the island where the calamity has ensued — Unalaska. At first I could not figure out, literal me, why they kept referring to this as an Alaskan story if it happened at an Un-Alaskan location. Does anyone know how Unalaska came by its name?
My prayers go out, by the way, for rapid containment of the oil spill. From what I understand, No. 6 fuel oil is nasty stuff, and there are 500,000 gallons of it on the foundering ship.
According to a federal hazardous materials fact sheet, the type of bunker oil on the ship is “a dense, viscous oil … (that) usually spreads into thick, dark colored slicks” when it is spilled on water.
“It’s a lot of heavy oil,” said Gary Folley with the state DEC. “What makes this one, I think, different, is the fact that if it does hit the beach … it’s an extremely difficult place to get to. It is chock full of sensitive areas and wildlife. There are no roads.” ” (Anchorage Daily News )
Another fascinating fact I learned in the NPR coverage was that the nearby town, Dutch Harbor AK, is apparently the US’ largest producer of processed seafood products (like the fish that goes into fast food fish sandwiches).
Babs’ 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs’ mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs’ hand and stroked her mother’s stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs’ arm.
…Babs had an incurable kidney condition and was euthanized Tuesday. Keepers had recently seen a videotape of a gorilla wake at the Columbus, Ohio, zoo and decided they would do the same for Babs. Gorillas in the wild have been known to pay respects to their dead, keepers said.” (CNN via adam)
Adam, in sending me this poignant story, mentioned other anecdotes he has seen establishing that animals grieve their dead companions. This search (Google ) will be revealing if you want to pursue it further (although, sorry, because of the syntax I used, it includes some items about grieving for departed animals as well as grieving by animals). Some of what I find poignant in this article, however, lies in the anthropocentric attitude it betrays. An earlier version of the article actually had it in the headline; now it was altered (because of such criticism, I wonder??) but it is still the premise of the article that it is acceptable that the zoo keepers decided to allow the gorillas to mourn their loss. I know that in this instance, since Babs was euthanized, they had to deliberately determine to bring the body back into the gorillas’ enclosure for that purpose, but should it really be a matter for our discretion whether the animals we steward are allowed to grieve?
Although it is not exactly clear that the mental activity detected represents images flashing through the monkeys’ brains, it is suggestive of being a precursor of conceptual representation and thus closer to human thought than many had appreciated. The human ability for empathy for others of our kind is built on our capacity for a ‘theory of mind’; we can conceive of the mental experiences that must go through another’s mind based on our sense of congruence with our own inner experiences, to which we have introspective access. Does this study help us to conceive better of what must be going through a monkey’s mind under certain circumstances, implying that we can begin to have a theory of monkey mind and thus a more empathic connection to our primate cousins than otherwise?
… Rumsfeld yesterday told U.S. soldiers in Kuwait who are part of the military coalition in neighboring Iraq that “you have to go to war with the Army you have.” He was replying to Army Specialist Thomas Wilson, who asked, “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?”” Bloomberg
By the way. if Spec. Wilson is, as described in press coverage, “a disgruntled soldier,” there were hundreds or thousands gathered to hear Rumsfeld. What most of the media clips of this interchange did not include was the rousing wolf-whistles and cheers that went up from the assembled masses in response to his insolent question.
Unicef’s flagship annual study showed more than one billion children are being denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by the UN’s 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Researchers found one in six (90 million) children is severely hungry, one in seven (270 million) has no healthcare at all and the report shows that nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in war since 1990 have been children.” The Scotsman
