“It’s a sad fact of military aviation that helicopters flying in combat are accidents waiting to happen.” They are slow, they fly low, and they have lots of external vulnerable targets. They can be brought down by small-arms fire. Most of the downings that the Pentagon is quick to assert did not result from hostile fire actually turn out indeed to have been shot down. The role of copters in the upcoming ‘surge’ remains to be seen… (Time)

Also: 

Copter Crashes Suggest Shift in Iraqi Tactics: “American officials say the streak strongly suggests that insurgents have adapted their tactics and are now putting more effort into shooting down the aircraft….Some aspects of the recent crashes indicate that insurgents have become smarter about anticipating American flight patterns and finding ways to use old weapons to down helicopters, according to military and witness reports. The aircraft, many of which are equipped with sophisticated antimissile technology, still can be vulnerable to more conventional weapons fired from the ground.” (New York Times )

I am puzzled by what I think is a specious distinction here. There are many ways to be a problem drinker. Alcoholism is an imprecise term that has little utility and serves to make people either defensive or self-satisfied. It is a common occurrence for people entering treatment for alcohol-related problems to bolster their denial with the assertion that, after all, they are “not alcoholic”. It is true, not all problem drinkers are alcohol-dependent, by which we mean physiologically addicted, needing to drink daily, going into withdrawal if deprived of access to alcohol, and requiring a medical detox to become sober. DSM-IV, the ‘bible’ of official psychiatric diagnoses, makes a distinction between alcohol dependence and alcohol abuse, but IMHO both qualify as “alcoholism”. Just my .02.

Four-year old Rebecca Riley was found dead on the floor of the family home in Hull on December 13. Prosecutors are charging her parents with first-degree murder for allegedly “regularly giving her drug overdoses, ostensibly to keep her calm and help her sleep”. (Boston Globe)

Rebecca had been diagnosed at age 2 1/2 [sic] with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder and was being medicated by a Tufts-New England Medical Center psychiatrist who was also prescribing nearly identical drug regimens for her older brother and sister. The medical center rushed to stand behind their clinician, stating

With the caveat that of course I don’t know the clinical details of Rebecca Riley’s case, I would have to say that there is at least one psychiatric colleague here in Massachusetts who questions the appropriateness of the care little Rebecca received. I find it difficult to imagine how any 2 1/2-year old could possibly be diagnosed with these disorders in the first place. As readers of FmH know, I think the field suffers from rampant overmedicalization of variant behaviors. In particular, I have vented my spleen about the irresponsible epidemic of diagnosing ADHD — there is not an epidemic of ADHD; there is one of diagnosing it! (Perhaps we ought to have a psychopharmacological treatment for disordered diagnostic practices among caregivers…) And childhood bipolar disorder, a controversial diagnosis which seems defined, Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, by little more than the fact that it does not present anything like the adult bipolar disorder with which we are familiar, is the newest abused diagnosis in child psychiatry. Then consider for a moment, even granting the validity of the diagnoses, whether one should ever medicate small children so heavily, or medicate them at all. The only possible consolation from this horrendous travesty of medical care will be if Rebecca’s death becomes a cause celebre that leads to earnest reform. Whatever aspersions one might cast on the parents’ role in their daughter’s death, this entire family should be considered poster children for the affront to human dignity that mental health diagnosis and treatment have become.

Your thoughts?

Hmm, sounds like it should be right up my alley, and in fact I find cognitive dissonance a psychological concept of crucial importance. We change our beliefs to avoid the distress of conflicting thoughts. Is it to salve our egos or to avoid agonizing over past mistakes, as the New York Times birthday appreciation poses the question? I actually think there is not much of a distinction. A sense of certainty allows us to have confidence in our minds, our ability to decipher the world and to act decisively. It is one of the foundations of effective functioning. As a mental health clinician, I see every day how devastating it is to lose confidence in the reliability of one’s own thought processes and the lengths to which people will go to avoid doing so.

Debra J. Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness and An American Story, argues that Obama is “black” rather than black, as he cannot claim ancestry from African slaves.

I have written before, here (“A New Way to be Mad”; scroll down or use your browser’s search function to find ‘apotemnophilia’) (2000) and here (“Costing an Arm and a Leg”; ditto) (2003), about apotemnophilia. It is back in the news because of this Guardian article, but it seems it has a less tongue-tying name now — BIID or body identity integrity disorder. Here are a spate of recent references (Google) under the new name. [“Squick!” — acm]

This Vancouver office building is less than 6′ wide [via digg]

“Insomniacs can take heart from a new drug that makes the brain enter a state similar to narcolepsy.” In narcolepsy, people suddenly fall asleep, probably because neurons that normally release orexins, proteins that promote the waking state, are defective. Swiss researchers have developed an orexin-receptor blocking drug which, in preliminary tests, promotes sleepiness in laboratory animals and human subjects. As opposed to current sedative-hypnotic drugs, this sleep would be more physiological, i.e. natural: “Unlike other sleeping pills, the drug also increases the time spent in REM sleep, when the brain is thought to organise memories, so it may not cause the forgetfulness and memory disruption linked to regular sleeping pill use.” (New Scientist)

“This is a list of lists of unsolved problems in various subjects” (Wikipedia). Just choose your discipline, devote the major part of your creative years to one of these questions, and retire on your Nobel Prize proceeds.

From Cognitive Daily via kottke

My family and I never tire of these, having visited a number of such sites (Roadside America ) in the US (as well as abroad). I always detour if one is within reach of our road trip route. (By the way, I subscribe to the theory that these are not-very-mysterious optical illusions.)

A weblog about mental healthcare from an investigative journalist who has been a mental health consumer.

The test is not yet commercially available, and take note that the detection rate is only around 2/3 although there is a negligible false positive rate. But it is far safer than amniocentesis as a first screen.

And:

Doctors Without Borders: “The humanitarian crises that the media isn’t covering, but should be.” (via Utne Reader)

“Scientists from across the world gathered Monday to hammer out the final details of an authoritative report on climate change that is expected to project centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless there are curbs in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.” (New York Times) The central consensus is that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are reaching twice preindustrial levels as a result of human activities, and that this will result in a 3-8 degree (F) increase in ambient temperatures. Where the consensus founders is on the extent of sea level rise and coastal impact. Some climate scientists fear that existing models are too conservative, in light of recent findings about the instability of Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Competing agendas have led to leaks of information from the upcoming reports designed to be either as frightening or reassuring as possible. (Which would you rather hear?)

Wake up and smell the coffee, Nancy: ‘In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president’s minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new “way forward” for U.S. forces in Iraq.

“He’s tried this two times — it’s failed twice,” the California Democrat said. “I asked him at the White House, ‘Mr. President, why do you think this time it’s going to work?’ And he said, ‘Because I told them it had to.’ ” ‘ (The Politico) When has Bush’s rationale for any Presidential decision ever gone beyond groundless confidence and infantile willfulness?

In the wake of the insurgent downing of a Blackwater helicopter and the execution-style killing of its crew hours before the State of the Union address, Democracy Now! interviews Jeremy Seahill, author of a forthcoming book profiling Blackwater . Does Bush’s call for a troop surge obscure a more substantial but undeclared private mercenary surge in Iraq?

“The attempts of brain damage victims to imagine falter thanks to an inability to marshal the places of the past.” (Scientific American) Bilateral damage to the hippocampus is known to cause amnesia. Now a study from the University of London found deficiencies in the abilities of five amnesiac men, compared with matched subjects, to imagine. It points to a greater role for the hippocampus in adding a temporal dimension to our experience; without its functions we exist in a timeless present. It makes a sort of sense that if you cannot have the experience of remembering a time gone by, you cannot imagine a time when the present moment will have passed. And one FmH reader [thanks, Joel] noted the resonance with T.S. Eliot:

And right action is freedom
From past and future also. (The Dry Salvages)

Steve Silberman:

In a major scoop, Silberman, who has become one of the best-informed and best-sourced reporters about neuroscience and medical topics, exposes an epidemic of multiply resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infecting wounded troops in the ‘evacuation chain’ from field hospitals in Iraq through medevac facilities to civilian hospitals in Europe and the US; it has already spread to civilian patients in those hospitals. Although the US government long maintained that the organism originated in Iraqi soil and infected soldiers wounded by IEDs, it is clear that the real culprits are the unsterile conditions and unrestrained use of broad-spectrum state-of-the-art antibiotics in US field hospitals in Iraq. Silberman does a good job of laying out the factors that continue to prevent an effective response to these issues. These include, of course, Rumsfeld’s doctrine of fighting the war on a shoestring and the military’s misuse of medical resources to keep casualties on the front lines as long as possible.

Silberman’s story is one of the Huffington Post’s “most huffed stories.” Huffit is HuffPo’s new Digg-like feature in which readers register which stories they feel are most newsworthy.

Multiply-resistant strains of bacteria are becoming a fact of life. As a physician working in a medical hospital, I am dealing with increasing regularity with patients with MRSA or C. difficile. The situation is only going to become worse as resistant bacteria’s sharing of drug resistance genes (a process which Silberman aptly likens to sharing open source software code) accelerates and we enter a fallow period in antibiotic development. There has always been an ‘arms race’ (another apt metaphor) between infectious disease organisms and medical tactics, and medicine is losing out. Could the Iraq war end up playing a major role in the end of the era of medical ascendancy over infectious disease?

After a patient who had had a stroke that damaged his insula readily and abruptly quit smoking, researchers at the University of Iowa looked at a number of other stroke victims and found that those with insular damage often quit smoking effortlessly and suddenly. (Forbes)

The emerging neurobiology of addictions (both behavioral and substance) emphasizes a two component system, one of which controls cravings and the other the satisfaction or reward associated with the addictive behavior. Separate and complementary interventions target these two components; for example, the concurrent use of the medications acamprosate and naltrexone to assist relapse prevention in recovering severely alcohol-dependent patients. The insula seems to be instrumental to the craving component.

Neuroscientists have long relished studying patients with circumscribed lesions in specific brain areas, to see which functions those areas subsume. Far more precise knowledge can be derived than the newer brain imaging techniques to study regional activation during certain mental tasks.

Rarely Seen Sea Monster Captured, Then, Following Script, Dies: “Yet another rare-freaky sea creature has made a rare-freaky video appearance — courtesy Japanese marine researchers — before being promptly declared dead.” (New York Times )

A report from Cambridge University researchers suggests that people lease clothes instead of buying them, in light of the resource impact of the textile industry. New York Times readers respond. The point seems to be to encourage reuse rather than discarding clothes. If leasing caught on, it would essentially be a piece of jiu jitsu to achieve an expansion of the second-hand clothes market. My guess is that tying the concept of leasing to the resource reuse meme will actually do little to promote it, given the intimate relationship most people have with their clothing. A P.R. campaign about the ludicrousness of buying clothes in response to everchanging notions of style foisted on consumers by the clothing industry (whether we are talking about high-end couturiers or The Gap), rather than durability and serviceability, would be energy better spent. Along with this should come efforts to encourage donation of used clothes or even the implementation of frank recycling systems similar to those in place for other resource-intensive genres of waste.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was overrun by the most disruptive and extensive of an increasing number of pseudo-epidemics caused by faith in rapid screening tests that ultimately turn out to be false positives — sensitive but not particularly specific.

The so-called epidemic of pertussis at Dartmouth turned out to be a spate of run-of-the-mill respiratory infections. Specific, but slower, tests failed to find any pertussis in any of the affected individuals. Proponents of the rapid tests argue that there is no way to be prepared for a potentially devastating pandemic without the risk of false positives from the rapid tests.

Researchers at Duke University have shown with functional MRI that the degree of activation of the posterior superior temporal sulcus [PSTS], a brain region activated when people observe others’ actions but not perform them themselves, correlated with personality ratings of subjects’ degree of altruism. (Hindustan Times ) This has some relationship to the ‘mirror neurons’ with which I have been fascinated and about which I have written repeatedly in FmH, which I think of as the neurophysiological basis for interpersonal empathy and — to extrapolate — socialization.

The capacity to have an interior experience upon watching someone else’s behavior similar to the experience of performing that behavior yourself may be a basis of the sense of inherent congruence between others’ feelings and thoughts and our own, the ability to have a so-called ‘theory of mind’, which is an important developmental achievement for humans. As suggested in the article, this body of work may help explicate the neural basis for certain conditions, in which I am interested in my work as a clinical psychiatrist, in which the capacity for empathy or mutuality break down, such as antisocial personality disorder or autistic spectrum disorders. (I am overwhelmed by the incident at Lincoln-Sudbury [MA] High School, down the road from my hospital, last Friday in which a student with a mild autistic-spectrum condition stabbed another student, apparently unknown to him, to death in one of the school restrooms.)

Here is what you come up with if you search on PSTS and ‘mirror neurons’ together. Two good starting point reviews of the nascent field of social cognitive neuroscience, which is built on these and similar observations and speculations, are these papers by Rebecca Saxe of MIT (Current Opinion in Neurobiology) and the Friths of London (Science). And, while I was browsing related materials, I came upon this paper by Chatterjee (Journal of Medical Ethics), which you might find intriguing if you are interested in this area at all.

Hillary runs for the White House as ‘new Thatcher’ (Sunday Times of London) and Bob Harris finds her ‘unelectable, and rightly so’.

or are right-wing demagogues killing two Democratic birds with one stone? (Media Matters)

According to a poll… by Fox News of all people… More Americans Dislike Bush Than … Cheney! (TPMCafe)

“Doomsday Clock” Moves Two Minutes Closer. Since 1947, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has graphically gauged the world’s proximity to nuclear devastation with its famous clock, which edged as close as 3 minutes to midnight during the era of US and Soviet arms development and testing; and as far away as 15 minutes to the hour, after the nuclear test ban treaty. Now the clock edges two minutes closer to doomsday. “Reflecting global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, the decision by the BAS Board of Directors was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.”

Interesting broadening of their considerations to include the dangers posed by climate change, another global catastrophe paralleling the effects of a thermonuclear exchange, but not as far afield as it might seem, given that the devastating changes of ‘nuclear winter’ would envelop the earth after a nuclear war. Here’s a timeline of the advances and retreats of the minute hand over the past 60 years of the nuclear era.

Interestingly, the propagandistic Voice of America covers the BAS announcement. I suppose it is because the BAS decision focuses heavily on the nuclear threats posed by those the U.S. so needs to demonize, Iran and North Korea as well as the extant Soviet arsenal, thus allowing obliviousness to the fact that the US has always represented the preeminent nuclear threat to the world.

(Washington Post)

Philosophers/physicists have long drawn parallels between information theory and quantum theory. The contention that the physical world is built, ultimately, of information — that the distinction between the world and information about the world is murky — has troubled me, until I read this description of Viennese physicist Anton Zeilinger’s explanation of quantum mechanics.

Researchers identify one of the important molecular constituents of the long term potentiation process thought to underlie the deposition of memories. This has potentially monumental implications, although the reporting is restrained. (New Scientist)

With the arrival of a film adaptation of Perfume, discussion of so-called ‘unfilmable’ novels is burgeoning. Here is Screenhead‘s list of the supposedly hardest novels to film, for example, and here a discussion from Time Out London. But the adaptability of a novel is only a problem if one somehow believes that the book and the film are in some sense the same thing; this is usually the same mindset whose grasp of a work of art goes no further than what it is ‘about’; in the case of narrative arts what story they tell and visual arts what they show.

I thought the twentieth century was all about art transcending the denotative and freeing us to have a more complicated reaction to a work of art, experiencing a complex and subtle interplay between what we think and feel in the encounter. We grasp this in Literature 101 and Film 101 early in our college education, it seems to me. The experience of reading a book and that of seeing a film, even if they have the same title and even the same plot, are intrinsically and irreconcilably distinct. (In fact, one might argue, so are two different film adaptations of the same story!)

A ‘faithful’ adaptation of a novel will become a ‘movie’, not a film, which an audience receives merely as a good yarn and whose reaction begins and ends with how ‘awesome’ it was or not.

Addendum: as a counterpoint, I just came across this line from a London Review of Books review of The Prestige, based on a novel I had enjoyed several years ago.

What follows is a list of vendors with links to their 2007 DST fixes. (edgeblog)

Astronomy Picture of the Day, January 9: “The brightest comet in decades is unexpectedly now visible. The most optimistic predictions have Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) shortly becoming one of the brightest comets of the past century. For the next few days, its short tail and bright coma can be spotted with the unaided eye close to the Sun and near the horizon in both evening and morning skies. “

A little New York Times reading this morning:

With all the furor about the Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq’s nonexistent ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and with Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, let us not forget that the major proponent of WMD in our time has been the U.S. One of the most egregious historical legacies of the Bush administration will be its reversal of the world’s nuclear stability. Now we learn that it will be announcing this week a major step forward in the building of the first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. continuing its single-minded destabilization of the ‘arms race’. Yes, the new weapon would not add to, but replace, existing nuclear armaments, but as an untested and, some say, risky hybrid incorporating elements from competing designs it will require costly refurbishment of the nation’s entire nuclear weapons manufacturing edifice and seems likely — probably by design — to force an end to the U.S. moratorium on nuclear weapons testing to make sure the new design works. As with most of its follies these days, the administration insults our intelligence, justifying this boondoggle by invoking the War on Terror® — that it is necessary to make our arsenal more secure from theft by terrorists. (Are we now to believe that assurances about the last generation’s nuclear security measures were lies?)

…and We Might Not. Now I’m a psychiatrist, and sometimes I even call myself a neuropsychiatrist, but don’t waste my time with this pitifully reductionist take on an act of heroism:

And especially when you are going to end up with a conclusion acknowledging how little you’ve really ‘explained’:

Dr. Ronald Pies’ sensitive reflection on a patient’s humble gift to her psychiatrist. (New York Times )

Utterly fascinating feature about a new Japanese fad and what it says about the essence of play. I got this from kottke’s assemblage of his best links of the year.

Far too little outrage was inspired by Saddam Hussein’s hanging. (New York Times ) Despite the heinousness of his crimes, his execution should have inspired widespread repugnance from the civilized world (as the invasion of Iraq should have in the first place). Mockery that his trial was, he will never stand trial for his major crimes against humanity. Insult was added to injury by setting the killing on the eve of Id al-Adha. All in all, this is entirely in the spirit of unilateralism by the US and its Iraqi puppets, and its historical significance is likely to be an inflammatory one.

This is a reprise and an amplification of a New Year’s Day post from FmH in years past:

Years ago, the Boston Globe ran a January 1st article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the bowl games and making resolutions.

A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…

“Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors. First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.

In Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.

A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.

In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year. In Rio, you would be plunging into the sea en masse at midnight, wearing white and bearing offerings.

In China, papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.

Elsewhere: pancakes for the New Year’s breakfast in France; banging on friends’ doors in Denmark to “smash in” the New Year; going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland; making sure the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland is a tall dark haired visitor. Water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits. Cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin. It is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.

Some history; documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (“Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (“head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.

The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)

The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest withthe previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.

Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (although I prefer George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty! [thanks to Bruce Umbaugh for research assistance]

Far too little outrage was inspired by Saddam Hussein’s hanging. (New York Times ) Despite the heinousness of his crimes, his execution should have inspired widespread repugnance from the civilized world (as the invasion of Iraq should have in the first place). Mockery that his trial was, he will never stand trial for his major crimes against humanity. Insult was added to injury by setting the killing on the eve of Id al-Adha. All in all, this is entirely in the spirit of unilateralism by the US and its Iraqi puppets, and its historical significance is likely to be an inflammatory one.

“Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?” George Packer writes in The New Yorker about a new breed of cultural anthropologists who bring their analysis to bear on the current climate of ‘Islamic insurgency’, arguing that it is not ideology but social networking factors which recruit. “All fifteen Saudi hijackers in the September 11th plot had trouble with their fathers…” The thesis is succinctly put this way: “There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior’.” The social scientists, who are pitching their potential contribution to the ‘global counterinsurgency’ effort, argue the intimate need to understand local social particulars to win the ‘battle for hearts and minds.’ The US is actually serving the insurgents’ purposes by trumpeting a global ‘war on terror’, offering an inherently appealing global cause to new recruits. This is no surprise to those who have long understood how it was the Bush administration’s efforts which gave the Iraqi resistance common cause with the jihadists, or turned ‘al Qaeda’ into a franchised brand name for disparate insurrectionists throughout the Islamic world. The article likens Iraq in the context of the global counterinsurgency effort to Vietnam in the context of the Cold War, of course. The US took a long time to understand that the Cold War was only to a small proportion a military conflict or conflicts and in vast preponderance a propaganda battle.

However, I am not sure that social science substantially informed our Cold War struggle either. I was a student of ethnography and cultural anthropology in the early ’70’s before I went to medical school and became a psychiatrist; the article helped me to understand in a new way the relationship between the growing irrelevance of cultural anthropology and our defeat in Vietnam. No administration has ever embraced one of the corollaries of the light that cultural relativism can bring to bear on our understanding of ideological battles — that, if not a Manichaean battle between Good and Evil, the superiority of either side is all relative, all in the eye of the beholder. There may actually be less to choose between the two sides than the ideologues would have us believe; it is inherent that we demonize the opponent in protracted conflicts, as we did in the Cold War and are doing again. The jaded secret agent literary genre so well represented by Le Carré and, currently The Good Shepherd (although the Matt Damon character never seems to get the message despite the ongoing tutorial he is receiving from his Soviet adversary), reflected this relativistic, amoral moral calculus best. So, although I suppose it represents semantic progress to call what is happening now a global counterinsurgency struggle rather than a global war on terror (WoT®), I am troubled that this new anthropological insight seems to be being pitched as an improvement to our propaganda battle rather than helping us disengage from — and transcend — the fray.

Although Packer tries hard to read between the lines, social scientists who want to consult to the administration are of course averse to criticizing their potential bosses. There are indeed several statements in the piece to the effect that there are no prospects for a new mindset until Bush is out of office — as if anyone had any doubts on that score. It is not surprising that Bush thinks like that — let’s start, for example, with the fact that his alcoholism reflects a cognitive style in large proportion based on the effort to reduce diverse and nuanced problems to one one-size-fits-all solution. IMHO, the more important contribution social scientists could make would be to understand how such a rigid worldview as Bush’s could ever have become dominant and been allowed, unchallenged, to make such a dismal global mess of things.

This 403 — Web Page Not Found — page is a clever collection of pointers to post-apocalyptic films and books (a genre I used to think was fiction). I don’t even recall what page I was looking for when I was redirected to this.

For personal reasons I can’t go into here, FmH will be on indefinite hiatus. I’m not yet prepared to say that I am hanging up my keyboard but I can’t say when, if, I will resume posting. Readers who would like to be updated on any changes in the status of FmH can write me at “FmH at gelwan dot com” with the subject line “FmH updates” and I will add your name to a list of those I keep informed. I’m sorry I just can’t elaborate further at this point, despite the esteem and appreciation in which I continue to hold my readers.

For personal reasons I can’t go into here, FmH will be on indefinite hiatus. I’m not yet prepared to say that I am hanging up my keyboard but I can’t say when, if, I will resume posting. Readers who would like to be updated on any changes in the status of FmH can write me at “FmH at gelwan dot com” with the subject line “FmH updates” and I will add your name to a list of those I keep informed. I’m sorry I just can’t elaborate further at this point, despite the esteem and appreciation in which I continue to hold my readers.

I will be away from the computer, in parts unknown, and not posting until September. I hope FmHers enjoy the rest of your summer! Thanks for your continued readership.

I will be away from the computer, in parts unknown, and not posting until September. I hope FmHers enjoy the rest of your summer! Thanks for your continued readership.

FDA approves viruses as food additive. They will supposedly kill most of the bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses. (CNN)