Sad reflection on the treatment of the Maori that, despite as many towns in which this street name exists, only one town council is acknowledging and fixing the problem…

Here’s a question I just posted to “Ask MetaFilter” about a minor, but vexing, problem I have. It is sometimes maddening to be a nonprogrammer and know how simple this would be to solve if I could write trivial code. FmH readers are welcome to take a stab at this one too…

Best advertising use of squid yet [requires Flash]

Claims for alternative and complementary remedies in healthcare have always been undercut by the fact that, whatever they are, they are not shown effective in double blind placebo-controlled studies, the touchstone of clinical research. Adherents have often reached to outlandish and tortured explanations of why the failure of empirical validation is irrelevant, often using quasi-mystical pseudoscientific applications of quantum uncertainty. Here we learn that, because of quantum entanglement, the placebo and the active treatment get enmeshed, as do the observer/investigator and the experimental subjects. So there is no such thing as either placebo-controlled or double-blind, Virginia. (Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine – 12(3):271)

“Caroline has helpfully decreed that the name of the recent quasi-terrorist non-event is The Exploding Shampoo Plot. It’s a fine memorable descriptive name. Everyone should use it.” (Making Light)

The study, authored by Bruce Dohrenwend from Columbia University and associates, and published in Science, cross-referenced veterans’ combat records against claims of disability, based on data the Veterans’ Administration had collected to search for fraudulent claims. There has long been a sense that the reported prevalence of PTSD in Vietnam veterans was implausibly high. Some studies place the rate above 30% despite the fact that only an extimated 15% of Vietnam-era veterans saw frontline combat. The new study estimates the overall prevalence rate at around 19% instead. It agrees with earlier studies estimating that half of diagnosed PTSD sufferers remain disabled by their symptoms.

However, for several reasons we should not leap to the conclusion that the overdiagnosis was the fault of exaggerated or fraudulent claims, although I am sure that veterans’ anger at their abandonment by American society upon their return certainly fueled an attitude in some of exploiting the disability system. It is ridiculous to say that war traumatizes only those who saw grunt combat. This first of ‘modern wars’ did not have conventional front lines or easy ways of distinguishing enemy combatants from civilians (as in Iraq). As the study authors point out in rejecting the idea that veterans have consistently exaggerated their claims, there was broad traumatic exposure to ambushes and shellings as well as treating casualties. Also, this was the first war with a high degree of efficient depersonalized remote-control killing by carpet bombing, which traumatizes participants and observers in a different but often no less profound way. As in the Iraqi action, a widespread sense of cynical disaffection and betrayal by their country came with the realization that the war was based on disingenuous intentions and lies and that the soldiers were cannon fodder for immoral and misguided old men.

But there are other reasons that previous estimates about the prevalence of PTSD have been inflated. First of all, as readers of FmH have heard me opine before, the label is often applied in a fast and loose manner rather than diagnosed by rigorous criteria. There really is a disease state that arises from exposure to overwhelming trauma threatening one’s survival or bodily integrity or that of those around you, with lasting psychological and physiological damage and substantial resulting impairment of functioning, sometimes for the rest of the sufferer’s life. But it takes an experience outside the pale of what can reasonably be expected in human experience, and outside of the stress parameters our nervous systems evolved to cope with. It does not happen after any ol’ upsetting experience. So I place the fault for the overdiagnosis of PTSD as much on the shoulders of naive and unsystematic practitioners as I do with exaggerating complainants (whether we are talking about combat trauma or alleged sexual abuse victims, the other segment of the society with epidemic PTSD diagnosis rates). Dohrenwend’s group applied tight criteria in making the diagnosis, which I favor. Furthermore, the study also, quite rightly, excluded trauma disability claims in veterans which originated with events prior or subsequent to their military service, e.g. devastating auto accidents etc.

Of course there are implications from this study for the estimated rates of combat trauma with which Iraq veterans will come home, and planning for mental health services for them. Despite my pet peeve about ‘formal’ PTSD being overdiagnosed in modern American mental health practice, the numbers of those returning from the Middle East who will be psychically devastated and their ability to function in civilian society impaired will be more extensive, not less, than the services the Veterans’ Administration has planned to provide. The debate over the legitimacy and extent of the PTSD diagnosis should not mislead us into thinking that only those with ‘official’ PTSD need services. Let us hope the sophists do not use this study to justify withholding any chances of recovery and resumption of civilian functioning to tens of thousands of decommissioned soldiers returning from the Middle Eastern actions.

Ghost Riding the Whip: “…leaving the wheel of a moving car and walking, running, or dancing beside it….” (ABC News)

New York Times news analysis: “The fate of the cease-fire may lie in whether the Lebanese regard the conflict as a victory or blame Hezbollah for the destruction.” And which do you suppose is more likely? Here is an interactive map of the toll of the war day-by-day.

More on Morgellons , the ‘internet syndrome’ about which I wrote a derisive piece in May. This caught my attention:

I suspected that Leitao’s vested interest in the condition might have aspects other than the quest for scientific truth, and so it seems does her board.

The article also has some discussion suggesting that forensic lab analysis of the strange fibers, which sufferers report sprout from their skin in the condition, do not match any common fibrous materials. This stands at odds with other sources I have reviewed, as I mentioned in the May post.

“Homegrown U.K. terror is a growing threat, multicultural ‘tolerance’ can’t combat it, and the war in Iraq will only make it worse.” — Andrew Brown (Salon)

And: Inside the Iraqi Forces Fiasco: “The U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces — and bring our troops home — is mired in bureaucratic mismanagement, inept recruits and astonishing shortages of equipment.” (Salon)

Eat turmuric, avoid Alzheimers. I love curry; I may be doing my brain alot of good. On the other hand, I have hayfever; my brain may be in trouble. (New Scientist)

Seymour Hersh on the real reasons for US support of the Israeli air war. Essentially, given that Iran has helped Hezbollah with underground munitions installations and ‘hardening’ of targets, this may be a practice run for the US preemptive strike on Iranian buried weapons complexes, Hersh says. And all evidence indicates that the plans for this strike on Hezbollah were drawn up, with US knowledge, support and probably assistance, long before the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers which sparked off the conflict.

The dysadministration feels they will advance both its simple-mindedly conceived goal of democratization in the Middle East and the TWoT® (timeless war on terror). There have been cross-border incidents before; the kidnapping of the soldiers just happened at the right time, which also seems to have had some relationship to Hamas’ inching closer to resuming terrorist activity, feeling that their transition to a legitimate political force was not going well and that they were losing standing with the Palestinian people.

A major bombing campaign targeting Lebanese civilian infrastructure was supposed to turn the Lebanese Sunnis and Christians against Hezbollah, an idea similar to one US scenario for an air war against Iran. Interestingly, Hersh notes, the war in Kosovo was closely studied as a model for their Lebanon scenario as well.

Intelligence about Israel and Hezbollah, according to Hersh’s sources, is being ‘manhandled’ in the same way that the Bush administration distorted pre-war intelligence about Iraq to suit its preordained purposes. The strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and the miscalculation of its resources, may or may not be a setback for US neocon hopes against Iran. More likely, the lesson, like all other recent lessons, will never be grasped by the hardliners. There is evidence that Cheney believes the war against Hezbollah is working and should not be halted. In the post-Iraq era, however, as Hersh’s article ends, one cannot avoid considerably less unanimity of outlook, and more fractiousness, either within the US administration, between the US and Blair’s UK, or within Blair’s government. This parallels a similar process within Israeli debate. (The New Yorker)

The article cites research suggesting that a high proportion of so-called ‘sinus headache’ sufferers may really have migraines. If migraines are more common than recognized, is there a spectrum of severity from the utterly disabling attacks which most of us understand as migraines to something in the milder, merely inconveniencing, range, akin to a common tension headache? I know that the vast majority of the chronically depressed women, especially the personality-disordered ones, I see in my psychiatric practice, no matter what the severity or frequency of their headaches, have either been diagnosed with migraines or adopt that label themselves. Should there be a severity criterion for diagnosing someone with a migraine?

Do human intestinal microorganisms make their hosts fat? (New York Times Magazine)

“Homegrown U.K. terror is a growing threat, multicultural ‘tolerance’ can’t combat it, and the war in Iraq will only make it worse.” — Andrew Brown (Salon)

And: Inside the Iraqi Forces Fiasco: “The U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces — and bring our troops home — is mired in bureaucratic mismanagement, inept recruits and astonishing shortages of equipment.” (Salon)

Start out by wondering if our universe could be a membrane floating in higher dimensional space and repeatedly smashing into a neighboring universe. Go from there. I favor no. 10 as the explanation for much I have experienced of the universe. (New Scientist)

If the scheme emanated from the UK, why are the US and the EU cancelling flights into Heathrow??

This should not be so addictive. Block falling streams of sand, salt, water and oil by building walls, planting plants, sowing fire, etc. I was clearly among that class of little boys who loved building dams across little streams in the woods or rivulets of draining water in the streets after rainstorms; this is the net version. File in the major net timewasters dept.

Update:

Debunked?

The powerful skill set that is eye contact. (Smart Money)

John Rogers is a TV and filmwriter, standup comic and former bartender. His comments on Dershowitz come with the authority of having served him at a Harvard Square restaurant (now defunct and sorely missed by me and my family). A lengthy anecdote about a Saudi prince which precedes this conclusion explains the epithet.

The neocons’ next war: Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon that the Lebanese conflict is being supported by US provision of signal intelligence to Israel as part of the neocon proxy war on Iran and Syria, emanating as it does from the office of the vice-president-in-chief. The ineffectual and bumbling Condoleezza Rice has been ‘briefed’ on these activities but, as of her first big international crisis as secretary of state, is already marginalized because of neocon opposition to her intentions to pursue diplomatic as opposed to interventionist options regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Blumenthal says. He is certainly one of those who sees evidence that the neocon shadow government continues to dictate US foreign policy. I am not sure, however, that Rice started to arouse neocon ire by proposing to negotiate with Iran. It is more likely that the choice of an ineffectual bumbler to head the State Dept. was engineered from the first — as it was in Bush’s first term with Powell and, indeed, as it was in the choice of Cheney’s running mate in the first place in the lead-up to 2000.

Meanwhile: others find the Lebanese war to be the first trumpet blast of Armageddon. Can apocalyptic vision be driving US encouragement of our Israeli proxies? After all, the other wing of the rabid right, along with the craven neocons, are the evangelicals. But, by and large, the born-again wing of the Republican constituency is being played for patsies by the men who believe in doing their damndest during their first and only life.

The famous notebook maker shows pages from the notebooks of the famous.

I highlighted Watada’s case here awhile ago. As FmH readers know, I feel publicizing the war resistance among the military is crucially important. Forward this to those you know in the service, or post it where they might see it.

Stop those witches’ knickers flapping: Discussion of various approaches to cutting use of plastic shopping bags in Europe. Evocative title. (Guardian.UK)

Did I miss something? Here is a Der Spiegel report on an incident at a nuclear plant in Forsmark, Sweden last week triggered by an electrical short. A power outage compounded by the failure of two out of four backup generators ultimately led to the closure of the plant (and, as a “precautionary measure”, half the nuclear plants in Sweden) in what plant workers described to Swedish media as a near-meltdown. Assessments call it the worst nuclear mishap since Chernobyl. Did this get any coverage at the time in the US press? If not, why not?

Could this be a career-ending mistake? While we hear from time to time about a surgeon removing the wrong kidney or amputating the contralateral limb, the argument from symmetry makes those simpler errors to understand. Misidentifying the organ, though??

Bruce Sterling in Wired on the threat of the “two technologies that have shaped the life I lead today”:

His concern about ‘stateless aliens’ and ‘stage 4 warfare’ —

— is, somewhat paradoxically and, one might say inexplicably, counterbalanced by faith that we can ‘outthink the marauders’ and think of ways to reintegrate the Vandals.

Israel agrees to 48-hour suspension of bombing. (Yahoo! News)

<a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2” title=””>Suspension over. (ABC News)

Israel agrees to 48-hour suspension of bombing. (Yahoo! News)

<a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2” title=””>Suspension over. (ABC News)

Or is it? Opposed in principle to the practices of the Coca Cola Corp. but compelled by their customers who crave the real thing, the managers of an alternative cinema in Bristol are on a quest to replicate the recipe themselves. (Guardian.UK)

In last month’s “Medlogs controversy” here, the anonymous commenter contrasted my printing of lengthy excerpts from the New York Times with his/her ‘true’ journalism. Apart from the fact that (a) commentary is not journalism; and (b) the commenter betrayed her/his lack of understanding that excerpting and logging is one of the original traditional forms of weblogging, a news story like this one illustrates potently how some stand on their own without need for fatuous pseudo-punditry and that I have served the purpose I intend merely by pointing you to them.

My point for a long time with regard to the atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq has been that the influences, if not the direct orders, shaping them emanate from the top, by intention, despite insidious efforts from the right to portray each of the burgeoning number of such events as attributable to some ‘rogue’ soldiers who snapped, or who were sociopaths to begin with. Draw your own conclusions. And, please, by all means, shoot the messenger once you have done so!

The fabulous furry Freakonomics brothers said:

While testosterone can be an aid in training, it is not a night-before performance enhancer, and it is much more useful in sports performance requiring explosive bursts of energy rather than the endurance challenges of the Tour de France. If Landis’ impetuous use of an illegal drug after his disastrous performance in the prior stage had been the explanation of his comeback, I would have expected him to use something like epoeitin instead. And as for the comparison with Bode Miller, Landis drank in despair, he says, for one night when he thought he was washed up. Miller’s debauchery was part of his training regimen, it seems, and one reason for his performance deficits. Why, then, is testosterone among the banned substances, one commenter to this post asks. For part of the answer, listen to the interviews with the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency and tell me if there doesn’t seem to be a veneer of religious zeaoltry and missionary zeal there. [thanks, walker]

• Nexcare Home Safety First Aid Tips, free from 800-537-2191

This is a movement spurred by civic organizations mostly concerned with — shudder! — declining consumption of US goods and declining tourist revenue, it seems. Instead of diverting the rest of the world from their largely accurate perceptions of US policy — selfish, unilateral, swaggering and exploitive — and the behavior and values of the ‘ugly Americans’ — boorish, materialistic, ignorant and xenophobic — these civic groups should be expending their effort on regime change and culture change at home. Otherwise, it is more of the same — attempting to bully the rest of the world into doing it our way, to meet our selfish ends!

Extraordinary Russian experiments suggest that many other characteristics of domesticated animals — physical characteristics such as changes in coloration, rolled tails and differences in skull shape — come along if all you breed for is ‘tameness’, i.e. tolerance of humans. This work, which has been done in foxes and rats, seems to hold across species. A relatively small number of genes — or perhaps even one — may control the traits associated with domestication. And the factor linking all this may be the embryonic neural crest, a structure which is the source of cells that will form the face, skull, pigment, elements of the nervous system and the adrenal glands, which control stress hormone release and aspects of the fight or flight reaction. If you select for animals with less constitutional fear, they may be able to see humans as social collaborators instead; they may appear ‘smarter’ than their wild forebears. It is not outlandish to speculate that selecting for tame animals is selecting for underdevelopment, or delayed development, of the neural crest.

And… there are some suggestions that humans are self-selecting themselves for domestic attributes, which may bear some genetic and embryonic similarity (although you would not know it if you look at the state of disharmony and belligerency in the world…) (New York Times via abby)

Does anyone remember the witty and clever 1980 film by Alain Resnais, Mon Uncle d’Amerique? Resnais made it as a collaboration with French biologist Henri Laborit and an homage to his theories about the ways in which the conditions of civilized life inherently conflict with our human nature. Some of the most hilarious moments of the film, in which Resnais jumpcuts from the dilemmas the main characters face to analogous vignettes with lab rats in their cages, upon which Laborit expounds, suggest that the central problem of modernity is the demand that the fight or flight reaction be inhibited. The highly original pathos of the film, and Resnais’ and Laborit’s compassion for their characters, is framed through this lens. But if we are, as the new research leads one to speculate, auto-domesticated, perhaps we ought not to be the objects of Laborit’s sympathetic gaze after all. Perhaps, instead, we should be pitied for having the spunk bred out of us altogether.

Leaked Memo: Coal Industry Coordinating Propaganda Blitz Attacking Global Warming Science (Think Progress)

Or: What has become of the Che icon? (The Sun)

“Physicist Costas Soukoulis and his research group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory on the Iowa State University campus are having the time of their lives making light travel backwards at negative speeds that appear faster than the speed of light. “

31-year old author’s Measuring the World, whose main character is astronomer/mathematician Carl Gauss (who discovered the curvature of space), is outselling Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling. (Guardian.UK)

Ask MetaFilter thread compiling a “list of famous people with science-related qualifications.” The poster wants to persuade his students “that studying science does not mean you have to become a scientist.” Some interesting and surprising people on the list; perhaps the most unexpected is Dolph Lundgren.

Here are more:

• Famous people with a philosophy degree
• List of musicians by academic degree
• Famous “nonmathematicians”

[The full article is available only to premium subscribers, but you get the picture…]

Darn, I just saw this; otherwise there would have been 600,000,001. Did it work, I wonder?

Actually, I think the only serious debate is between those who think Bolton has been a major player in advancing the cause of US isolation and those who feel he is merely holding his own with the sorry state of global US foreign policy failure he inherited. [Click the link, it is unbelievable…literally.]

[And how should PETA be defined in the dictionary, one might ask?]

It has long been said that people with autism are fixated on imagery but have difficulty processing words and language. Confirmation comes from a new brain scanning study showing that an autistic patient’s parietal cortex, active in others only when sentences contain imagery, is relied upon even when interpreting sentences without any imagery. Ironically, ‘focusing on the picture’ may cause them to ‘miss the big picture’. (New Scientist)

[And how should PETA be defined in the dictionary, one might ask?]

Congress has held a hearing to investigate Bush’s use of the statements, a bipartisan advocacy group has condemned their use, and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank has introduced a bill that would allow Congress to override content in them that contradicts signed legislation. But stronger action is called for in the face of this most outrageous and egregious exemplar of the despotic imperial presidency. Now a task force of the American Bar Association will recommend that Congress legislate judicial review of the signing statements. This might amount to asserting a Congressional right to sue. (U.S. News)

Error rates must certainly vary by hospital! I have never seen anything like one medication error per day per patient, even adjusting for those that do not come to light, in my hospital work. In fact, I think that is inaccurate by something like two orders of magnitude.

“How Asian horror films put the fear back into America’s scary movies — and brought the A list to a B genre.” (New York Times Magazine)

Neocons Are Nuts To Join Israel-Hezbollah Conflict. I’m sorry, I can’t make a reasoned, longwinded response to this latest neocon nonsense. Gingrich is so defensive about the idiocy of this assertion, that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is WWIII and that the US should not wait to get on the right side of the conflict — specifically by taking out Iran, Syria and while we’re at it that bastion of the worldwide anti-American Islamist conspiracy North Korea as well — that each time he defends it in the media his blowhard list of bits of evidence from around the world inflates more and more (in parallel with the inflation of his jowls and his presidential aspirations). In a sense, though, he is right, the enemies of the West, or the US in particular, are mustering, emboldened in solidarity around the world. The only problem is that the neocons do not notice that it was the US’s arrogant unilateral bellicosity they largely whipped up which engendered it.

Senate Renews 1965 Voting Rights Act (ABC News) Worth celebrating, but in a just society there would not even be a question.