j7uy5 | September 3, 2006A couple of days ago, I heard this
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5746173">interview
on NPR, with Steve Inskeep. Inskeep was
interviewing
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/01/ap/national/mainD8JRRH080.shtml">Spc.
Mark Wilkerson, just before he turned himself in for having
gone AWOL.
Wilkerson served one tour of duty in Iraq, but refused to go back.
He sought CO status, but was told it would take a
long time before his status would be reviewed. Apparently, he
was told to go ahead with his redeployment, and they would let him know
later…
j7uy5 | September 3, 2006I remember thinking about this film, shortly after the fall of Baghdad.
After yesterday's University of Michigan win over Vanderbilt,
which happened on the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in 1945, I
was reminded again.
From Wikipedia:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared">The
Mouse that Roared is a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_literature"
title="1955 in literature">1955 novel by
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland" title="Ireland">Irish
writer
title="Leonard Wibberley">Leonard Wibberley that
launched a series of
title="…
j7uy5 | September 2, 2006The August 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has an
interesting article with policy implications. Unfortunately,
they did not make this one freely accessible.
The authors argue that the increased medical costs that we faced
between the years of 1960 to 2000 have been a good investment.
They point out that the life expectancy in that time frame
increased by 6.97 years. The increase in medical costs per
person, divided by the increased expenditures per person, yields a
cost-per-year-of-life-gained of $19,900.
The Value of Medical Spending in the United
States, 1960–2000
D.…
j7uy5 | August 30, 2006One of the articles that I read, early in my career, that influenced
the way I think about neuroscience, was this one:
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/9/681">Caudate
glucose metabolic rate changes with both drug and behavior therapy for
obsessive-compulsive disorderL. R. Baxter Jr, et. al., Arch Gen Psychiatry.
1992;49:681-689.
We used positron emission tomography to investigate local cerebral
metabolic rates for glucose (LCMRG1c) in patients with
obsessive-compulsive disorder before and after treatment with either
fluoxetine hydrochloride or behavior therapy.…
j7uy5 | August 29, 2006This meme involves going to the random quotations page, and picking
five quotes. The rules: “Go
href="http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3">here
and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect
who you are or what you believe.”
I saw my SciBlings doing it, but passed...until I saw that gonesavage
at
href="http://gonesavage.blogsome.com/2006/08/19/5-random-quotes/"
rel="tag">Cyberspace Rendezvous did it
too.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those
who find it.Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2006murrmann_nolawounds_320.jpg
Originally uploaded by icki.
This is a photo from an Ann Arbor blogger, known to the world as Icki, who has been in New Orleans lately. This is from his Flickr collection; click on the photo to go to his Flickr page.
His blog is called Down on the Street. It is one of the better photoblogs I've seen.
For some reason, this photo got my attention. Icki's caption is: "Six months after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward, one of the worst hit areas, remains largely untouched by clean-up efforts."
I posted that six months after Katrina. I'm not…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2006This is from a recent White House press conference. The
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060821/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_text">transcript
is on Yahoo News.
QUESTION: A lot of the consequences
you
mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been
there if we hadn’t gone in. How do you square all of that?
BUSH: I square it because imagine a world in which you had
Saddam
Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who
was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who had relations with
Zarqawi.
You know, I’ve heard this theory about, you know,…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2006The
href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/UPDATE/608210400">Michigan
Civil Rights Commission ruled recently that small insurance
companies that cover prescription drugs must also cover the cost of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_contraceptives"
rel="tag">oral contraceptives.
Firms with more than 15 employees are already under the jurisdiction of
federal law, so the ruling affects only small companies. But
the ruling will have a wide impact: 60% of firms in Michigan are
affected.
This ruling is consistent with recommendations from major medical…
j7uy5 | August 26, 2006The New
England Journal of Medicine has two
freely-accessible articles this week. As is usually the case,
their free articles are about important topics at the intersection of
medicine and social policy, and are worth reading. However,
this time, both articles rub me the wrong way. (Hat tip:
href="http://psychmatters.blogspot.com/2006/08/colossal-collection-of-wandering-eye.html">Psych
Matters)
The first,
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/8/753">Imposing
Personal Responsibility for Health, by Robert
Steinbrook, M.D., is an opinion piece about the the concept of…
j7uy5 | August 25, 2006Years ago, I read a paper in which the authors proposed a model, in
which the immune system was conceptualized as a sensory organ for the
central nervous system. They did not think of it as the
primary purpose of the immune system, but they wanted to highlight the
fact that immune system activity does provide information to the brain,
and that information is, to some extent, perceptible of a conscious
level.
I have to get ready for work, so I am not going to try to find the
reference. At least right now. I might get curious
enough to go looking for it later.
Now, we hear of another finding…
j7uy5 | August 24, 2006There is nothing mystical about the act of understanding.
Sometimes it may seem like it, when one has an Aha! moment,
or when understanding emerges in the context of meditation or spiritual
reflection, but there really is nothing supernatural about it.
Understanding, after all, is merely an act of description. It
arises from the collation of observations.
To understand something is to be able to describe that thing on all
pertinent levels of abstraction. In the case of mental
illness, that means description on levels from the molecular to the
sociocultural. At least at this time. It…
j7uy5 | August 23, 2006In Part I, I gave a brief review of an article in Scientific
American, entitled
href="http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945">The
Expert Mind.
The article described the outcome of research into the mental
processes of expert chess players. The motivation for the
research is to find out how expertise works, to see if there is a
systematic way to develop expertise in a variety of fields.
Perhaps the most important finding in this endeavor is that experts
have developed, through a great deal of practice, an excellent capacity
for pattern…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2006The August issue of Linux
Format has an article showing how all the the
most-anticipated features of Windows Vista are available today, on
Linux. Although Microsoft touts these as "innovations," they
are not new, or at least won't be new by the time Vista is actually on
retail shelves.
One of these features is
href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/searchorg.mspx">Instant
Search. It indexes everything on your hard drive,
so you can find anything quickly.
The comparable Linux tool is Beagle. It not only reads and
indexes the contents of text files, but it…
j7uy5 | August 20, 2006The Washington Post today has an article on
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900842.html">Brazil's
milestone achievement: this year, their oil exports will
equal or exceed their imports. This is significant for a few
reasons. For one, it shows that it can be done, at least in
one sizable country. Although the fact that they were able to
do it does not prove that we could do it too, it does indicate that we
could be doing a lot better than we are. It also shows that a
country does not have to be an academic or technological powerhouse to…
j7uy5 | August 20, 2006
Found on
href="http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/big-time-youtube-blooper-fox-news-anchor-shep-smith/">Et Cetera: Publick
and Privat Curiosities.
(In case the embedded object does not work, the direct link to the
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0snyiFIQok">YouTube
video is here.)
j7uy5 | August 19, 2006Scientific American has an article in which the
author reviews research into the expertise of chess players.
He ponders the questions of what makes an expert player an
expert, how is the problem-solving strategy of an expert different from
that of a novice, and is there a way to train people to be experts?
What makes this interesting is not so much the questions regarding
chess, in particular; rather, what is interesting is the question of
how generalizable the findings are. The people who study this
question are really interested in the the latter. They
consider chess to be the Drosophila…
j7uy5 | August 19, 2006Sometimes I see links on other sites that exaggerate or misstate what
is to be found on the other end on the link.
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">Huffington
Post
is notorious for this. They come up with sensationalist
titles, then link to articles that may be rather tepid.
That is what I expected when I saw this link on
href="http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org">e Pluribus
Media:
href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1220089.ece">Members
of Parliament from our biggest ally in Bush's war of choice (Britain)
reach a popular consensus: Bush really is Crap 8-…
j7uy5 | August 18, 2006I don't think there is anyone left in the USA who seriously believes
that the war in Iraq was a good idea. Most accept it as fact,
that lies were told to get the public on board with the war, and that
war crimes have been committed.
It is clear at this point that the only motive for this was was profit.
It certainly had nothing to do with national security.
Although the war could have been led with an humanitarian
goal (to free the people of Iraq from a dictator), that clearly was
never the intent.
But what I'm writing about today is different. Today, we see
that the Administration is…
j7uy5 | August 17, 2006For decades, corporate influences, primarily in the media, have
pressured women to have poor body images. This has spurred
growth of entire industries in fashion, weight loss, etc. No
doubt, billions of dollars have been made in this way. The
only price to society has been the epidemic of eating
disorders.
However, the marketing impact has largely been limited to women.
Now, it appears, men are increasingly affected.
A study by Dr. Tracy
Tylka, presented at the annual American Psychological
Association meeting this year, provides the details:
href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/…
j7uy5 | August 16, 2006The buzz right now on ScienceBlogs is about Pluto.
Specifically, about the fact that Pluto has retained its
official status as a planet.
Pluto, as we all know, was discovered by the late
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh" rel="tag">Clyde
Tombaugh, a professor at New Mexico State University.
In 1990, a new elementary school in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
was named after him. After all, he is one of the very few
famous people with any connection to Las Cruces. And it was
the discovery of Pluto that made him famous enough to name a school
after him: Tombaugh
Elementary…