j7uy5
Posts by this author
August 11, 2008
It's all over the Internet, so I won't belabor it. People are
talking about the McCain video that allegedly implies that Obama might
be the Antichrist. It's said to be a "dog-whistle," meaning
that only the intended audience gets the message. Others
might see it, but miss the hidden meaning. …
August 10, 2008
We've already seen photoshopped images that have been used in
political
campaigns. Sometimes they are used to discredit opponents.
href="http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp">
However,
still images never will have the emotional impact that videos
have. Already, there is…
August 6, 2008
August 6 is the anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon in
war.
href="http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/08/debt-rattle-august-6-2008-pointed-at.html">
This is a work of the US Government, and is not subject to copyright.
August 5, 2008
I chose three articles from this month's edition of Archives
of General Psychiatry, upon which to comment. For
those not familiar with it, Arch Gen Psychiatry is
an AMA journal, like JAMA, but for psychiatrists. It's an
influential journal.
1.
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/…
August 3, 2008
There are other, more interesting things to write about. But
someone is WRONG on the Internet, so it must be corrected.
Moreover, we must speculate about the rationale for this
blatant
misstatement. And wonder why it was printed in a prominent
newspaper.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-…
August 2, 2008
Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over
the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times
and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning
of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as
promised by the sacred words, and spoke
of the beast with their…
July 31, 2008
This chart shows that the economy is almost back to normal.
Just a little farther to go, then the mission will have been
accomplished.
What is odd about this, is that it excludes income
from capital gains. I suspect that the income disparity would
be even greater, if capital gains were…
July 29, 2008
This is a nice little case report from the European Journal
of Psychiatry. The translation is a little rough,
but the information is good.
href="http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0213-61632007000400006&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en">
href="http://scielo.…
July 28, 2008
Sustainability is a modern-day buzzword. It is used so much
that it is at risk of suffering from a dilution of meaning.
But is still is an important concept.
In August 2004, President Bush
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040809-9.html">boasted
that home ownership in…
July 23, 2008
Harvard
Medical School recently completed a review of their required
premedical curriculum, culminating with the development of recommended
changes. The outcome of this process is reported in an
article in the recent issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine. It's one of their open-access…
July 21, 2008
Many years ago, I was browsing thought the Borders bookstore, one of
the earliers ones, on State Street in Ann Arbor, and encountered a book
about psychotherapy. It claimed to be a sort of encyclopedia
of named styles of psychotherapy. I can't recall the number
of them, but I think it was between…
July 20, 2008
The Pew Research Center informs us that
href="http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=585">
today's number is 46%. That is the percentage of
independent voters who are undecided about their choice for President
in the November election in the USA. This is "much higher"
than the…
July 18, 2008
The House is considering
legislation that would do two things: force oil companies to
give up unused leases, and ban the export of oil from Alaska.
It's brilliant because it highlights the absurd
fallacy: that opening up more land for drilling would lower gas prices.
The fact is, oil companies…
July 16, 2008
This is a photo from a collection of images that were modified using
href="http://www.gimp.org/">GIMP - The GNUImage Manipulation Program.
There is a small collection of such photos at
href="http://www.junauza.com/2008/07/25-best-gimped-images.html">Tech
Source From Bohol. This
href…
July 15, 2008
href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/restless_legs/restless_legs.htm">Restless
Legs Syndrome has been more in the public eye lately.
I understand this is because of aggressive direct-to-consumer
advertising. I'm not much of a consumer, so I haven't seen
the ads, but people tell me about…
July 14, 2008
I got twenty dollars out of the bank today. What should I get: two shares of Fannie Mae stock, or four Happy Meals?
July 10, 2008
This post is not about mental health parity. Although it is a
very important topic, there is no reason for me to write about it.
If you are interesting in the topic, just go read the (open
access) Perspectives column in the current NEJM:
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/2/113…
July 9, 2008
Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital
reported, in the
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=t768481832%7Etab=issueslist">Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, on a case of a person
with delusional beliefs regarding climate…
July 7, 2008
There is an interesting and thought-provoking essay at The Oil Drum.
It was written by
href="http://www.uvm.edu/giee/?Page=about/students/Nathan_Hagens.html&SM=about/about_menu.html">Nathan
Hagens, a student at the Gund Institute, University of
Vermont.
He makes some errors in the…
July 6, 2008
Responding
to the innate human desire to have the faster browser possible, I am
almost happy with Firefox 3. But not quite. Thus,
the
experiment: compile from source. This is accomplished as
follows:
0.
Kubuntu does not come with the packages necessary to build from source,
by default. You must…
July 6, 2008
We decided to let one artichoke blossom, just to see what it looks
like. It turns out that it looks sort of like a thistle.
That's because it is a kind of thistle.
I hadn't known that. The thistle is the national
flower of Scotland.
July 5, 2008
Seems like everything is being made so you can attach an iPod.
Shown below is the
href="http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204553512&adid=17070&dcaid=17070">George
Foreman iPod Grill. With
10-watt speaker.
How patriotic is that?
And what are we to make of one of the…
July 5, 2008
The League
of Conservation Voters is half-way through the process of
selecting the dozen worst environmental offenders in elected office.
Each election year, they select approximately 12
politicians to target for their campaign, in an effort to unseat, or
deny seats to, the politicians with the…
July 3, 2008
At last, they are being honest with us: you
have no rights.
Attorney General said so. He admitted it.
So, at least he's honest. See his picture to the
right? Doesn't he look like an honest gentleman? He
is.
In a recent
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hngKSYm06_-…
July 1, 2008
40% of Internet users do not upgrade their browsers to the most secure
version. Internet Explorer users have the worst record, with
more than half having failed to update.
OK, people, do your patriotic duty and get with the upgrades!
Then we can see the National Threat Advisory go down to blue,…
July 1, 2008
Leave it to the scientifically-minded among us to solve the world's
economic crisis. All it takes is an understanding of the
elements.
At this point, there is little doubt that a serious economic crisis
awaits the people of planet Earth.
The Bank
for International Settlements (BIS) released…
June 29, 2008
This is a photo of two White Storks, Ciconia ciconia, nesting atop a primary school chimney near the south coast of Portugal. The photo is by Valter Jacinto, and has a Creative Commons license. Link.
The White Stork is the national bird of Poland.
In the USA, we would never allow storks to nest…
June 29, 2008
On 6 June 2008, the Federal Register in the USA
href="http://www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2008-06-06-E8-12671">contained
a notice, that the Department of Homeland Security is
conducting a review. They are reviewing the National
Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP).
The Federation of…
June 28, 2008
Meteorology is outside of my usual topics for posting, but this
particular news item seems to have received little attention elsewhere: there is evidence that the jet streams are moving, systematically,
toward the poles.
The jet streams are high-altitude streams of air, about 7 to 16
kilometers…