In Defense of the Beta Blocker

Posted on by

Skeletal formula of propranolol, the first cli...

A performance-enhancing drug that is fair to use? “From a competitive standpoint, this is what makes beta blockers so interesting : they seem to level the playing field for anxious and non-anxious performers, helping nervous performers much more than they help performers who are naturally relaxed. In the British study, for example, the musician who experienced the greatest benefit was the one with the worst nervous tremor. This player’s score increased by a whopping 73%, whereas the musicians who were not nervous saw hardly any effect at all.

One of the most compelling arguments against performance enhancing drugs is that they produce an arms race among competitors, who feel compelled to use the drugs even when they would prefer not to, simply to stay competitive. But this argument falls away if the effects of the drug are distributed so unequally. If it’s only the nervous performers who are helped by beta blockers, there’s no reason for anyone other than nervous performers to use them.” — Carl Elliott, University of Minnesota bioethicist (Atlantic)

Sukiyaki Western Django

Posted on by

Django

“English-language Western by Japanese director Takashi Miike. The all-Japanese cast, augmented by Quentin Tarantino in two cameo roles, learned their English dialogue phonetically and attack their lines as if the words were small furry animals that need to be beaten into submission. The dialogue is crammed with weird, Christopher Walken-esque line readings and bizarre placement of emphases—phrases like “You old biddy,” “Dang!” and “You reckon?” become hilariously divorced from meaning. But, like an alcoholic reduced to drinking sterno, the more you drink, the more brain cells you fry, and the better it tastes. Before long you not only start to understand Miike’s “through the looking glass” English but also to appreciate the cadences. It’s something like the dialogue in Deadwood or Cormac McCarthy’s writing: stiff, alien, occasionally silly but not without a hypnotic elegance all its own.

But why? The answer is simple: It’s a Takashi Miike film. The hardest-working man in showbiz, he’s made close to 80 movies, ranging from the good to the bad to the ugly, and if he’s going to make a Western, then it’s going to pay tribute to the truth that Westerns have never been solely an American undertaking—they’re an international language. With a title that’s one part Japanese (sukiyaki: the everything-in-a-bowl beef dish) and one part Italian (Django: the title character of Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti-Western classic), Miike offers up an explosion of influences that mocks the idea of a monoculture that’s immune to foreign influence. Sukiyaki Western Django is a blend of Buddhist philosophy, film noir fatalism, Shakespeare’s Henry VI, and Japan’s very own 12th-century Genpei War. It’s a Wild West pageant of American history seen through Japanese eyes, reducing our entire frontier mythology to an ultraviolent grab for gold.” (Slate)

End of the line?

Posted on by
Jon Henley on the fate of the semicolon: “An unlikely row has erupted in France over suggestions that the semicolon’s days are numbered; worse, the growing influence of English is apparently to blame. Jon Henley reports on the uncertain fate of this most subtle and misused of punctuation marks. Aida Edemariam discovers which writers love it – and which would be glad to see it disappear…” (Guardian.UK)

The Smell of Cancer

Posted on by
“People who are prone to developing skin cancer have to undergo frequent exams and biopsies of suspicious moles in order to catch tumors at an early stage. But a new finding suggests a quicker, noninvasive method for detectionScientists have identified a characteristic odor profile given off by skin-cancer tumors, which might one day allow diagnosis by a wave of a detector across the skin.” (Technology Review)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged

Road Tolls Hacked

Posted on by
“Despite previous reassurances about the security of the system, Nate Lawson of Root Labs claims that the unique identity numbers used to identify the FasTrak wireless transponders carried in cars can be copied or overwritten with relative ease.

This means that fraudsters could clone transponders, says Lawson, by copying the ID of another driver onto their device. As a result, they could travel for free while others unwittingly foot the bill. ‘It’s trivial to clone a device,’ Lawson says. ‘In fact, I have several clones with my own ID already.’

Lawson says that this also raises the possibility of using the FasTrak system to create false alibis, by overwriting one’s own ID onto another driver’s device before committing a crime. The toll system’s logs would appear to show the perpetrator driving at another location when the crime was being committed, he says.” (Technology Review)

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

Posted on by

A poem by James Tate:

The disorganization to which I currently belong
has skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there’s a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She’ll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that’s the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don’t know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or another.
That’s why I joined up in the first place,
so somebody could teach me a few useful phrases,
such as, “Good afternoon, my dear anal-retentive Doctor,”
and “My, that is a lovely dictionary you have on, Mrs. Smith.”
Still, I hardly feel like functioning even on a brute
or loutish level. My plants think I’m one of them,
and they don’t look so good themselves, or so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it’s how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I was just making a stab at conversation.
It is not my intention to alarm anyone, but dear Lord
if I find a dead man in the road and his eyes
are crawling with maggots, I refuse to say
have a nice day Suzie just because she’s desperate
and her life is a runaway carriage rushing toward a cliff
now can I? Would you let her get away with that kind of crap?
Who are you anyway? And what kind of disorganization is this?
Baron of the Holy Grail? Well it’s about time you got here.
I was worried, I was starting to fret.

Related

35 Greatest Works of Reverse Graffiti

Posted on by
“Welcome to the world of reverse graffiti, where the artist’s weapons are cleaning materials and where the enemy is the elements: wind, rain, pollution and decay. It’s an art form that removes dust or dirt rather than adding paint. Some find it intriguing, beguiling, beautiful and imaginative, whereas others look upon it in much the same way as traditional graffiti – a complete lack of respect for the law. Reverse graffiti challenges ideals and perceptions while at the same time shapes and changes the environment in which we live, whether people think for the better, or not.” (Environmental Graffiti)

FDA Approves Sale Of Prescription Placebo

Posted on by
‘In its most common form, placebo is a white, crystalline substance of a sandy consistency, obtained from the evaporated juice of the Saccharum officinarum plant. The FDA has approved placebo in doses ranging from 1 to 40,000 milligrams.

The long-awaited approval will allow pharmaceutical companies to market placebo in pill and liquid form. Eleven major drug companies have developed placebo tablets, the first of which, AstraZeneca’s Sucrosa, hits shelves Sept. 24.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to finally get this wonder drug out of the labs and into consumers’ medicine cabinets,” said Tami Erickson, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca. “Studies show placebo to be effective in the treatment of many ailments and disorders, ranging from lower-back pain to erectile dysfunction to nausea.”

Pain-sufferers like Margerite Kohler, who participated in a Sucrosa study in March, welcomed the FDA’s approval.’

Physician substance use by medical specialty

Posted on by

//www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1302558/2/istockphoto_1302558_doctor_offering_pills.jpg' cannot be displayed]

Abstract:: “Self-reported past year use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, and two controlled prescription substances (opiates, benzodiazepines); and self-reported lifetime substance abuse or dependence was estimated and compared for 12 specialties among 5,426 physicians participating in an anonymous mailed survey. Logistic regression models controlled for demographic and other characteristics that might explain observed specialty differences. Emergency medicine physicians used more illicit drugs. Psychiatrists used more benzodiazepines. Comparatively, pediatricians had overall low rates of use, as did surgeons, except for tobacco smoking. Anesthesiologists had higher use only for major opiates. Self-reported substance abuse and dependence were at highest levels among psychiatrists and emergency physicians, and lowest among surgeons. With evidence from studies such as this one, a specialty can organize prevention programs to address patterns of substance use specific to that specialty, the specialty characteristics of its members, and their unique practice environments that may contribute risk of substance abuse and dependence.” ([J Addict Dis. 1999] – PubMed Result)

I’m certainly interested in the results for my own specialty, psychiatry. Does the proportional overuse of benzodiazepines indicate that the work is more anxiety-provoking than other specialties? I am not aware of significant benzo- use/abuse among anyone I have come across in the field, although of course I wouldn’t necessarily notice. But could prescribing predilections be an indicator? I have long been concerned with the rates at which psychiatrists in the communities in which I have practiced prescribe benzos for their clientele, seemingly oblivious to the adverse effects I see and to the established medical body of evidence about the risk/benefit balance for this class of medications.

Who Framed George Lakoff?

Posted on by

Democratic Party logo

The “…noted linguist reflects on his tumultuous foray into politics… For years he’s been at the center of some of the biggest intellectual disagreements in linguistics (most famously with Noam Chomsky) and has helped create an important interdisciplinary field of study, cognitive linguistics, that is reshaping our understanding of the complex relationship between language and thought. More recently he has been vying for respect among people notoriously hard to persuade about anything — politicians and their financial backers.”

(The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Could this be the presidential campaign in which the Democrats finally take his work seriously enough to make the difference I believe it should and could?

“It is the political ramifications of Lakoff‘s theory that preoccupy him these days. An unabashed liberal (he insists on the label “progressive”), he says that Republicans have been quick to realize that the way people think calls for placing emotional and moral appeals at the center of campaign strategy. (He suspects that they gleaned their knowledge from marketing, where some of the most innovative work on the science of persuasion is taking place.) Democrats, Lakoff bemoans, have persisted in an old-fashioned assumption that facts, figures, and detailed policy prescriptions win elections. Small wonder that in recent years the cognitive linguist has emerged as one of the most prominent figures demanding that Democrats take heed of the cognitive sciences and abandon their faith in voters’ capacity to reason.”

The essay runs down a number of influential objections to Lakoff’s position from both hte political and academic domains. The political objections strike me as pitiful efforts to cling to the outmoded paradigm that it is the message, not the medium, that matters. Some of the academics say that Lakoff’s appeal is based on the new neuroenthuiasm. Put neuro- in front of anything and it seems novel and exciting. This is a more credible objection, I feel (as one who can often be seen as a neuroenthisiast myself). Much of what Lakoff wants to convey would do as well without the trappings of neurocognitive science. It is about the power of metaphor, essentially, certainly an old concern. But, perhaps, in terms of grappling with its appeal, shouldn’t we understand that the medium is the message as well?

13 things that do not make sense

Posted on by

I do not know anything about the author of this page, but s/he has a handle on a number of mysteries. Even if there are innocent explanations for many or most, those for which there are none present important challenges to the adequacy of our understanding of the universe.

FDA Approves Sale Of Prescription Placebo

Posted on by
‘In its most common form, placebo is a white, crystalline substance of a sandy consistency, obtained from the evaporated juice of the Saccharum officinarum plant. The FDA has approved placebo in doses ranging from 1 to 40,000 milligrams.

The long-awaited approval will allow pharmaceutical companies to market placebo in pill and liquid form. Eleven major drug companies have developed placebo tablets, the first of which, AstraZeneca’s Sucrosa, hits shelves Sept. 24.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to finally get this wonder drug out of the labs and into consumers’ medicine cabinets,” said Tami Erickson, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca. “Studies show placebo to be effective in the treatment of many ailments and disorders, ranging from lower-back pain to erectile dysfunction to nausea.”

Pain-sufferers like Margerite Kohler, who participated in a Sucrosa study in March, welcomed the FDA’s approval.’

Caught in the grips of linguistic paranoia

Posted on by
“Is Obama wrong to point out the obvious, that when future generations’ knowledge of other languages is restricted, so is the prospective well-being of our nation? The Quality of Life Index, published by The Economist in 2005, showed that the five countries with the highest standard of living were Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Sweden. Aside from having a European address, all of these countries have one key thing in common – they promote multilingualism.” (Boston Globe op-ed)

Demons Inner and Outer

Posted on by
Adam Kirsh: “Almost seven years after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, readers still display a surprising hunger for the definitive ‘9/11 novel.’ The acclaim that greeted Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland earlier this year was a sign of this appetite: Critics outbid one another to welcome a book that might make sense of the always receding, ever-present horror. Clearly, the more deeply committed one is to the moral possibilities of literature — the more one believes that, even in a mediatized age, the novel can still be D.H. Lawrence’s ‘bright book of life’ — the more is at stake in the emergence of ‘the’ novel about the attacks. If fiction cannot cope with the biggest event of our lifetimes, then its long-prophesied death is surely at hand.” (New York Sun)

The Descent of Men

Posted on by
“Wilco Van Rooijen, a Dutch mountain climber, managed to survive the debacle this week that took the lives of 11 others in Pakistan on K2, the world’s second-highest peak. Describing the chaotic events that ensued when a pinnacle of ice collapsed and swept away fixed ropes that climbers from several expeditions high on the mountain had counted on to aid their descent from the summit, Mr. van Rooijen lamented: “Everybody was fighting for himself, and I still do not understand why everybody were leaving each other.”

Himalayan mountaineering is an inherently dangerous pastime, and climbers are always at risk from the unexpected. But mountaineering has become more dangerous in recent decades as the traditional expeditionary culture of the early- and mid-20th century, which had emphasized mutual responsibility and common endeavor, gave way to an ethos stressing individualism and self-preservation.” (New York Times op-ed)

Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash…

Posted on by

…and Lightning:

//theworld.com/%7Eemg/volcanicstorm.jpg' cannot be displayed]

“The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a ‘dirty thunderstorm.’ The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges — just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.” (National Geographic via julia)

Large Hadron Collider nearly ready

Posted on by
“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September – and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years. (27 photos total)” (Boston Globe)

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

Posted on by
Glenn Greenwald in Salon: “It’s extremely possible — one could say highly likely — that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain — as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax — is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).

Seven years later, it’s difficult for many people to recall, but, as I’ve amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply — by design — into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country.”

Senate bill would restrict Bush from secret executive orders

Posted on by
“The President will no longer be able to change published executive orders in secret if a bill introduced to the Senate Thursday becomes law.

Sen. Russ Feingold… and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse sponsored the bill as a response to an unreleased statement from the Justice Department Office of Legal Council that the President can alter or deviate from a previous executive order without public or Congressional knowledge.” (The Raw Story)

This is one to call your senators about…

How hospitals are killing E.R. patients

Posted on by
“Despite increasing evidence that crowded E.R.s can be hazardous to your health, hospitals have incentives to keep their E.R. patients waiting. As a result, there has been an explosion in E.R. wait times over the past few years, even for those who are the sickest.

…E.R. boarding allows hospitals to insulate themselves from the burgeoning needs of the poor. E.R.s are safety nets: By law, we who work in them see any and all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. But as more E.R. beds are devoted to boarders, the E.R. has less space for new patients, which keeps a lid on the number of un- and underinsured. So unless you are having a heart attack and can jump the line, your emergency—though it may still be serious—may wait for so long that you give up and go home. Bad for you, good for the hospital’s bottom line. ” (Slate)

How hospitals are killing E.R. patients

Posted on by
“Despite increasing evidence that crowded E.R.s can be hazardous to your health, hospitals have incentives to keep their E.R. patients waiting. As a result, there has been an explosion in E.R. wait times over the past few years, even for those who are the sickest.

…E.R. boarding allows hospitals to insulate themselves from the burgeoning needs of the poor. E.R.s are safety nets: By law, we who work in them see any and all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. But as more E.R. beds are devoted to boarders, the E.R. has less space for new patients, which keeps a lid on the number of un- and underinsured. So unless you are having a heart attack and can jump the line, your emergency—though it may still be serious—may wait for so long that you give up and go home. Bad for you, good for the hospital’s bottom line. ” (Slate)

Exposed: Harvard Shrink Gets Rich Labeling Kids Bipolar

Posted on by
“Meet the man who got rich by popularizing bipolar disorder for children. Congressional investigators and the NY Times expose the scandal.” (AlterNet)

This is part of what makes me despair about my profession. From my position in the trenches in Boston psychiatry, you have to take my word for how influential Biederman’s influence has been on diagnostic and therapeutic practices… and how few clothes I have always thought the Emperor was wearing.

The Science of Happiness: Is It All Bullshit?

Posted on by
Just because a Harvard academic says something is so, doesn’t mean it is. ‘A “Daily Show” interview that hit a chord for me was Jon Stewart’s conversation with Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches “positive psychology” at Harvard and has written a self-help book. Early in the interview, a suspicious Stewart declares, “I am a psychology major, so I know a lot of it is bullshit.”

Stewart, however, politely gives Ben-Shahar a chance to explain the value of his book and his course on positive psychology. Ben-Shahar is proud that his course is the most popular one at Harvard, to which Stewart gets an audience laugh by suggesting that perhaps the real reason it is so popular is because it is easy. This results in a nervous laugh from Ben-Shahar, who retorts that his exams are “actually quite difficult.” Ben-Shahar then explains that there is now a “science of happiness” and offers a study to prove it, but an unimpressed Stewart quips, “How is that science?”

Finally, Stewart is no longer able to restrain his amazement that platitudes are considered profound at Harvard nowadays (the “Six Happiness Tips” on Ben-Shahar’s website are about acceptance of negative feelings, positive attitude, meaningful activities, being grateful, simplifying life and physical health). Stewart ends the interview in Groucho Marx fashion by saying, “It’s a fascinating subject and one that I can’t believe you are getting away with.” ‘ (AlterNet)

Esquire Print Mag Will Use E-Ink Cover

Posted on by
“The [issue of Esquire that hits the newsstands in September] will have an e-ink cover. 100,000 of the total 720,000 print run will be assembled by hand, with parts criss-crossing the globe before ending up newsstands, jumping out at your eyes with shifting images.

Esquire first thought up the idea eight years ago, but the technology was still too clunky. Since then, the Kindle has gone on sale, and the same company that invented the tech used in Amazon’s device — E Ink — is making the covers. The price, although undisclosed, is prohibitive, and Ford has been brought in as a ‘sponsor’: A moving car ad will appear on the inside cover. Esquire even had to design a battery (a ‘six-figure investment’) that was small enough to fit into a magazine and keep things running until the mags are sold. The batteries will last for 90 days.” (Wired)

Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan

Posted on by

Juan Cole in Salon:

“Barack Obama’s Afghanistan and Iraq policies are mirror images of each other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves with which he treated the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat to hit at al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls of outrage from Islamabad.”

Why you should not drive in Rhode Island

Posted on by

R.I. police say man had 0.491 blood alcohol level… reportedly the highest ever recorded in someone who was not dead highest ever recorded in Rhode Island in someone who was not dead. (SFGate via boing boing)

Effects of alcohol in terms of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) (drugrecognition.com)

* 0.03 BAC – Slowed reaction time.
* 0.04 BAC – Federal prohibited limit for commercial drivers license.
* 0.05 BAC – Increased risk taking and American Medical Association recommended prohibited limit.
* 0.08 BAC – Recommended prohibited limit for criminal charges and impaired vision.
* 0.10 BAC – Poor large muscle control, loss of balance, and prohibited limit in most states.
* 0.17 BAC – National average blood alcohol level of drivers in a fatal crash.
* 0.19 BAC – National average for first time DUI offender and of persons who have killed police officers.
* 0.20 BAC – Loss of emotional control.
* 0.22 BAC – National average for repeat DUI offenders at time of arrest.
* 0.30 BAC – Loss of orientation as to time and place.
* 0.35 BAC – Blackouts and stupor.
* 0.50 BAC – Published overdose level leading to death.
* 0.74 BAC – Highest recorded blood alcohol level by a US hospital.

Jenny Diski Tries to Stay Awake

Posted on by
“If you set aside the incomparable cruelty and stupidity of human beings, surely our most persistent and irrational activity is to sleep. Why would we ever allow ourselves to drop off if sleeping was entirely optional? Sleep is such a dangerous place to go to from consciousness: who in their right mind would give up awareness, deprive themselves of control of their senses, volunteer for paralysis, and risk all the terrible things (and worse) that could happen to a person when they’re not looking? … Apart from the dangers of letting your guard down, there’s the matter of time. Instead of trying to extend the life of human bodies beyond their cellular feasibility, the men and women in lab coats could be studying ways to retrieve all the time we spend asleep.” (London Review of Books)

The social psychology revolution is reaching its tipping point

Posted on by
“…[A]n intellectual revolution is under way that will change the way we think about public policy just as the free market economists did in the 1980s. I wonder whether one day soon a future party leader will turn round to his agent and say: “Finally, I’ve got it! Human behaviour.”

Those who doubt that there is something going on in the world of ideas should get themselves a publisher’s catalogue. One month there is a book called Nudge, the next a book called Sway. A volume called Predictably Irrational follows another called Irrationality. Since the success of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, books on tipping points have reached a tipping point.

Behind this publishing explosion, with its PR hoopla, is real and solid intellectual progress. It comes from two streams of thought, developing alongside each other. The first is the idea of evolutionary psychology… The second stream of thought is behavioural economics. For twenty years now, some economists have been looking at the psychology of economic decision-making. Instead of seeing humans as rational calculating machines, behavioural economists have been conducting experiments to assess how real choices are made…” (Times of London)

R.I.P. Artie Traum

Posted on by
Stalwart of ’60s Folk Music Scene Is Dead at 65. “In a long and varied career, Mr. Traum played folk music and smooth jazz; recorded 10 albums of his own and four with his brother; produced albums; composed film scores; created guitar-instruction books and videos; teamed with his brother for a radio program; and made a documentary film about the Catskill water system.” (New York Times)
 //graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/22/arts/traum190.jpg' cannot be displayed]

Gone, and Being Forgotten

Posted on by
“How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy? Instead these masters of Western thought are taught in fields far from their own. Nowadays Freud is found in literature departments, Marx in film studies, and Hegel in German. But have they migrated, or have they been expelled?” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Admit it, you’re as bored as I am

Posted on by
Joe Queenan: “Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public’s lack of imagination.” (Guardian.UK)

Queenan objects. I pity him his boredom…

Reentry

Posted on by
Reversing Mass Imprisonment: “For the first time in decades, political leaders seem willing to consider the toll of rising incarceration rates. In October last year, Senator Jim Webb convened hearings of the Joint Economic Committee on the social costs of mass incarceration. In opening the hearings, Senator Webb made a remarkable observation, “With the world’s largest prison population,” he said, “our prisons test the limits of our democracy and push the boundaries of our moral identity.””(Boston Review)

The motivation for blocking investigations into Bush lawbreaking

Posted on by
Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon: “With regard to illegal Bush programs of torture and eavesdropping, key Congressional Democrats were contemporaneously briefed on what the administration was doing (albeit, in fairness, often in unspecific ways). The fact that they did nothing to stop that illegality, and often explicitly approved of it, obviously incentivizes them to block any investigations or judicial proceedings into those illegal programs.”

Pathologists Believe They Have Pinpointed Achilles Heel Of HIV

Posted on by
It would be very nice if this pans out: “Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.

The weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Normally the body’s immune defenses can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus. However, HIV is a constantly changing and mutating virus, and the antibodies produced after infection do not control disease progression to AIDS. For the same reason, no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available.

The Achilles heel, a tiny stretch of amino acids numbered 421-433 on gp120, is now under study as a target for therapeutic intervention. Sudhir Paul, Ph.D., pathology professor in the UT Medical School, said, “Unlike the changeable regions of its envelope, HIV needs at least one region that must remain constant to attach to cells. If this region changes, HIV cannot infect cells. Equally important, HIV does not want this constant region to provoke the body’s defense system. So, HIV uses the same constant cellular attachment site to silence B lymphocytes – the antibody producing cells. The result is that the body is fooled into making abundant antibodies to the changeable regions of HIV but not to its cellular attachment site. Immunologists call such regions superantigens. HIV’s cleverness is unmatched. No other virus uses this trick to evade the body’s defenses.”…

Paul’s group has engineered antibodies with enzymatic activity, also known as abzymes, which can attack the Achilles heel of the virus in a precise way. “The abzymes recognize essentially all of the diverse HIV forms found across the world. This solves the problem of HIV changeability. The next step is to confirm our theory in human clinical trials,” Paul said. ” (Science Daily)

Kafka Dept.

Posted on by
Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names: “The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list.

‘Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,’ said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.” (American Civil Liberties Union)

eBay listing offers Bigfoot Hunting services

Posted on by
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, will search for and find – eBay (item 260259571943 end time Jul-16-08 15:13:16 PDT): “With all the stories and rumors surrounding the legend of Bigfoot,I think it is time to have the right person hunting (searching) for the real answers.Most of the Tv shows,books,and articles covering the search for Bigfoot are a joke.Nothing but pure amatuers.Most searches involve people setting up trail cameras,etc.,in stationary settings,this is totally the wrong approach.My methods would be covering lots and lots of territory in very remote country.I have been a big game hunter nearly all of my life and am an experienced big game hunting guide and am currently employed by a big game hunting outfitter in Wyoming.Contact me if you would be interested in funding an expedition that will get results.” [via boing boing]

In Japan, Buddhism May Be Dying Out

Posted on by
“The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines. Weddings hew to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones.

When it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist — so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism,” a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding deaths and memorial services.

But that expression also describes a religion that, by appearing to cater more to the needs of the dead than to those of the living, is losing its standing in Japanese society.” (New York Times)

The Outquisition: Post-apocalypse without the militias

Posted on by
Cory Doctorow: “WorldChanging’s Alex Steffen and I sat down last week for a cup of coffee and got to talking about post-apocalyptic life. I noticed that while there’s a whole ton of stories — and people who emulate them — about heavily armed survivalists bravely holding off the twilight of civilization after the Big One, there are damned few stories about super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how to put it all back together. I even came up with a name for it: the Outquisition; the opposite of the Inquisition — missionaries who come to your town to remind you of how awesome it can all be, leave behind a bunch of rad, life-improving systems and tools, and generally get on with the business of being happy, well-fed and peaceful.

Alex wrote up a great post about this and 24 hours later, some WorldChanging readers created Outquisition.org. I’m not sure what they’ll do there, but in my dreams, they’re off building a non-secret society of emergency-preparedness Nice People who think that the response to catastrophe isn’t lifeboat rules and militias, but humanitarian aid and kick-ass tools.” (Boing Boing)

Rethinking psychosis

Posted on by
The disadvantages of a dichotomous classification now outweigh the advantages. “Recent molecular genetic findings have demonstrated very clearly the inadequacies of the dichotomous view, and highlighted the importance of better classifying cases with both psychotic and affective symptoms.” (PubMed abstract)

As readers of FmH know, I have always been a psychiatric classificatory skeptic. In particular, the attempt to decide whether a patient presenting with psychotic symptoms has a schizophrenic disorder or an affective psychosis has always seemed flawed to me. Rarely have I seen a patient present as a pure, unmixed exemplar of one of those categories. The central distinction between ‘thought disorder’ and ‘affective disorder’ may be specious. (Should we, in fact, rethink our dichotomization of ‘thoughts’ and ‘feelings’?)

Prescription Narcotic Consumption

Posted on by

This interactive map from the Las Vegas Sun accompanies a feature article on Nevada’s no.-1 ranking in national rates of narcotic abuse. You can pick a narcotic medication and a year since 1997 and see the relative rates of consumption in the 50 states. (NB: although the map accompanies an article about drug abuse and the data on which the map is based came from the D.E.A., it details consumption and as far as I can tell does not distinguish licit from illicit use.) Some who pointed me to this map were intrigued by the regional differences in choice of particular narcotic drug. This is probably a function of regional prescribing differences among physicians, marketing and distribution decisions by drug manufacturers, and the shaping of consumer preferences largely by word of mouth. What is more interesting is the overall increase across the years listed. Is this a function of increasing abuse or dramatic increases in rates of legitimate prescribing? (All the medications listed are manufactured pharmaceuticals, not cooked up in backyard home labs.)

It would be more interesting to see this type of data for other classes of drugs of abuse as well — cocaine, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, hallucinogens, ‘club drugs’ etc., as well as heroin. In addition to reflecting differences in distribution patterns, such a comprehensive map might have something to say about regional lifestyle and temperamental differences. (Pet peeve of mine: many people use the term ‘narcotic’ broadly, and inaccurately, as a synonym for illicit drugs in general, or for drugs with addictive potential in general. The term means neither of these; it is synonymous with ‘opiates’.)

‘Don’t Get in Your Patient’s Boat’

Posted on by

I was pointed to this New York Times article on the pitfalls of psychotherapy with the superrich from kottke. As a psychiatrist myself (who never, alas, treats the superrich), I was interested by the number of notable psychiatrists who seem to be making it their niche. True, treating the superrich overlaps with the issues, long considered very challenging in psychotherapy, of treating the very narcissistic. But the article is, I think, too polite about what I assume are added ingredients of a mix of therapists’ voyeuristic and purely mercenary interests in taking on the extremely wealthy in particular. The patients and their struggles are not inherently more interesting; in fact, they are probably less so, on the whole, despite the pat statement quoted by a therapist of the rich that she “considered a rich person’s unhappiness or emotional anguish no less serious than anybody else’s”. As the writer correctly points out, most of these patients have less of an impetus to work things through than the rest of us, and even than the rich patients of days past, more and more insulated from a recognition of personal dissatisfaction in an ever more materialistic and spiritually vacuous society as they are. Thus, a therapist treated more often as just another member of the client’s personal entourage flirts with being readily disposed of if s/he too readily emphasizes unpleasant aspects of these clients’ lives, which is after all what therapy is all about. And if the therapist refrains. s/he of necessity becomes a sycophantic supporter of self-indulgence.

In fact, arguably, psychotherapeutic practice originated with the treatment of the affluent, and the psychoanalytic style of practice inherited by those in Freud’s lineage has remained expensive, largely unreimbursed by health insurance, and only affordable by the wealthy. (Perhaps that has shaped the compelling focus of this school of treatment on narcissism as a central issue?) Only relatively recently in the lifespan of psychotherapy has it migrated down to other strata of society, its techniques and the nature and extent of the problems upon which it focuses morphing in the process. This in large measure helps to explain the two divergent cultures of the modern practice of therapy and psychiatry — the rarefied, isolated and often interminable world of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice, and the urgent unsystematic intensity of community mental health aimed at the lower and middle classes. Only as psychotherapy transmuted to deal with the ‘real world’ problems of the rest of us has there been an impetus to incorporate consideration of social, economic and political factors urgently impacting on patients’ lives and welfare. Ironically, only the superrich can afford the possibility of change from lengthy depth analysis, and only they can afford not to change…

Related:  While we’re on the topic of unethical mercenary behavior among psychiatric luminaries, the name Alan Schatzberg will certainly mean something to any psychiatrist FmH readers.

‘Don’t Get in Your Patient’s Boat’

Posted on by

I was pointed to this New York Times article on the pitfalls of psychotherapy with the superrich from kottke. As a psychiatrist myself (who never, alas, treats the superrich), I was interested by the number of notable psychiatrists who seem to be making it their niche. True, treating the superrich overlaps with the issues, long considered very challenging in psychotherapy, of treating the very narcissistic. But the article is, I think, too polite about what I assume are added ingredients of a mix of therapists’ voyeuristic and purely mercenary interests in taking on the extremely wealthy in particular. The patients and their struggles are not inherently more interesting; in fact, they are probably less so, on the whole, despite the pat statement quoted by a therapist of the rich that she “considered a rich person’s unhappiness or emotional anguish no less serious than anybody else’s”. As the writer correctly points out, most of these patients have less of an impetus to work things through than the rest of us, and even than the rich patients of days past, more and more insulated from a recognition of personal dissatisfaction in an ever more materialistic and spiritually vacuous society as they are. Thus, a therapist treated more often as just another member of the client’s personal entourage flirts with being readily disposed of if s/he too readily emphasizes unpleasant aspects of these clients’ lives, which is after all what therapy is all about. And if the therapist refrains. s/he of necessity becomes a sycophantic supporter of self-indulgence.

In fact, arguably, psychotherapeutic practice originated with the treatment of the affluent, and the psychoanalytic style of practice inherited by those in Freud’s lineage has remained expensive, largely unreimbursed by health insurance, and only affordable by the wealthy. (Perhaps that has shaped the compelling focus of this school of treatment on narcissism as a central issue?) Only relatively recently in the lifespan of psychotherapy has it migrated down to other strata of society, its techniques and the nature and extent of the problems upon which it focuses morphing in the process. This in large measure helps to explain the two divergent cultures of the modern practice of therapy and psychiatry — the rarefied, isolated and often interminable world of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice, and the urgent unsystematic intensity of community mental health aimed at the lower and middle classes. Only as psychotherapy transmuted to deal with the ‘real world’ problems of the rest of us has there been an impetus to incorporate consideration of social, economic and political factors urgently impacting on patients’ lives and welfare. Ironically, only the superrich can afford the possibility of change from lengthy depth analysis, and only they can afford not to change…

Related:  While we’re on the topic of unethical mercenary behavior among psychiatric luminaries, the name Alan Schatzberg will certainly mean something to any psychiatrist FmH readers.

Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist, researchers report

Posted on by
“In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in ‘sacred mushrooms,’ produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.” (PhysOrg)

Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist, researchers report

Posted on by
“In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in ‘sacred mushrooms,’ produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.” (PhysOrg)

A timeline to Bush government torture

Posted on by
“[I]t is increasingly clear that the administration sought from early on to implement interrogation techniques whose basis was torture. Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA began an orchestrated effort to tap expertise from the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, for use in the interrogation of terrorist suspects.

…SERE training has nothing to do with effective interrogation, according to military experts. Trained interrogators don’t work in the program. Skilled, experienced interrogators, in fact, say that only a fool would think that the training could somehow be reverse-engineered into effective interrogation techniques.

But that’s exactly what the Bush government sought to do. As the plan rolled forward, military and law enforcement officials consistently sent up red flags that the SERE-based interrogation program wasn’t just wrongheaded, it was probably illegal.

On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted a hearing on the evolution of abusive interrogations under the Bush administration. Through a series of memos and documents released by the committee, some old and some new, the following timeline has now been established.” (Salon)

Waiting for the Water to Fall

Posted on by
“New York City is now 10 days away from the unveiling of “Waterfalls,” the much anticipated (and hyped) $15 million public art project by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The project, the biggest public art installation since “The Gates,” the Christo and Jeanne-Claude work in Central Park in 2005, is already being hyped, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying the work could evoke the awe that led 16th-century European explorers to compare the New York shoreline to the Garden of Eden. (Seriously.)” (New York Times)
 //graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/16/nyregion/waterfalls-533.jpg' cannot be displayed]

Happy Bloomsday

Posted on by
//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/54/The_Sensual_World.jpg/200px-The_Sensual_World.jpg' cannot be displayed] Bloomsday resources from Jorn Barger.

Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Penelope (Episode 18):

…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Mind like a comic strip

Posted on by
“To the editor:

David Bainbridge’s description of consciousness (26 January, p 40), including, for example, the fact that we do not know where in the brain consciousness happens, was evocative. Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics, describes a comic’s story as whatever is happening in the blank spaces between the panels.

What if our minds function like a comic: they snap pictures, and our consciousness is simply the story the mind constructs around those pictures?” (New Scientist)

A Remarkable Photo From Tornado Country

Posted on by
//graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/13/us/13tornado-blog.jpg' cannot be displayed]
One indelible image: “When the weather turned violent and stormy on Tuesday evening, Lori Mehmen, who lives in the small farming town of Orchard in northeastern Iowa, looked out her front door and saw a funnel cloud bearing down — and evidently had the presence of mind to grab her digital camera and capture this shot before taking cover.” (The Lede, New York Times)

An Interview with Jeff Warren

Posted on by
“‘…Consciousness exists in more wildly varied and abundant forms than simple waking, sleeping, and dreaming. By describing some of its different stations, I hope not only to give you some insight into the biological and psychological processes that underlie our changing experience of consciousness — to reveal, as it were, some of the operating rules of the Self — but also to show why this matters…[:] not only that we have far more agency over our changing mental states than most of us suspect, but also that each of these states taps into its own unique blend of knowledge and insight.’

Warren is an engaging field guide in these adventures, and The Head Trip will interest anyone curious about the black box of consciousness. In the interview below, he explains why “dreaming is bananas,” why we shouldn’t listen too seriously to the evolutionary psychologists’ Just-So stories, and why we should think more explicitly about our habits of mind.” (Bookslut)