| A huge list of aptonyms, names which suit their bearers’ occupations or roles. As readers of FmH will recognize, I am charmed by and have written about aptonyms before here, although I did not know the (dare I say? apt?) term. Again, my favorite was a psychiatric conference on violence I attended several years ago at which the three keynote speakers were Schouten, Swearinigen and Blood. (via Language Log) I am sure FmHers have their own wonderful examples. |
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Daily Archives: 31 Mar 08
Pinakothek
Writer Luc Santé has a weblog ‘about pictures’… “Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my pack mule, and self-contradiction is my trusty old jackknife.” (Pinakothek) [From Wikipedia: “A pinacotheca is a picture gallery in either ancient Greece or ancient Rome. The name is specifically used for the building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens, Greece…(The word) is used for a public gallery on the continent of Europe, as at Bologna and Turin. At Munich there are three galleries known as the Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek and Pinakothek der Moderne.”]
Incredibly Poignant
Click over to Open Reading Frame for this striking picture of an ‘athymic mouse’.
Could we hear alien physics experiments?
“If aliens have built a massive collider to smash particles together, a new detector could soon pick up the signs.” (New Scientist)
How to transform your arm into a wing
“…[A] reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison …has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.” (New Scientist)
How to be reincarnated as a queen
“After a miserable life of hard labour and daily suffering – ending in death – it would be great to be reincarnated as royalty. Now we are able to reveal what to do to ensure just that outcome.” (New Scientist)
‘They’re here’:
The mechanism of poltergeist activity revealed: “The sight of small blonde girls watching television is guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of anyone who has watched the movie Poltergeist.
We’re right to be terrified, say physicists. Children generate poltergeist activity by channelling energy into the quantum mechanical vacuum.” (New Scientist)
Once Upon a Time in the North
Philip Pullman’s forthcoming prequel to His Dark Materials excerpted in The Guardian.
Are We Really That Ill?
“America has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens – 67.5 million – have taken antidepressants.
These statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders. Studies indicate that 40% of all patients fall short of the diagnoses that doctors and psychiatrists give them, yet 200 million prescriptions are written annually in America to treat depression and anxiety. Those who defend such widespread use of prescription drugs insist that a significant part of the population is under-treated and, by inference, under-medicated. Those opposed to such rampant use of drugs note that diagnostic rates for bipolar disorder, in particular, have skyrocketed by 4,000% and that overmedication is impossible without over-diagnosis…” — Christopher Lane, professor of English at Northwestern University and author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (The New York Sun op-ed)
A plea, with which as a practicing psychiatrist (even though I have no desire to be out of a job!)I very much agree, for reining in rampant overdiagnosis, setting the bar higher to qualify for having a mental illness, and “resurrecting the distinction between chronic illness and mild suffering.” Lane quite rightly observes that if everyone is mentally ill then no one is.
