j7uy5 | August 26, 2008JAMA has an article on the history of continuing medical education
(CME). Annoyingly, they did not make it one of the
open-access articles, so they don't get a link. However,
there are some telling excerpts and some good commentary over at
href="http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-jama-history-of-cme-when-will-we.html">The
Carlat Psychiatry Blog.
There was a time when families used to sit, all together, at the dinner
table, and eat dinner together. I grew up in those days.
Dad, an MD, would sit at the head of the table. My
little sisters would sit next to him. The…
j7uy5 | August 25, 2008
href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/">Black Box Voting
has sent out emails, suggesting that technologically-astute persons
consider signing up for temporary tech support jobs, to provide support
for the election process. Oddly, the
message is not on the front page of their website, but
href="http://dantheserene.livejournal.com/392715.html">someone
else already posted it. Sounds like a good idea, if
you have the time.Perhaps the more
widely-applicable suggestion, though, is to make extra sure that your
voter registration still is active, and double-check your voting
location. That…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008Speaking of art, Rodger Payne has a
href="http://rpayne.blogspot.com/2008/08/hypocrisy-watch-georgia-edition.html">beautiful
post highlighting the hypocrisy of the US Government's
responses to Russia's actions in Georgia.
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008There have been many collections and compendia of artistic works by
persons with psychiatric illness. They are interesting.
In fact, it was a chance encounter with such a book that
first got me interested in psychology.
Thre is a story there, which I won't tell here, other than to say that
it is a good argument for supporting public libraries. Bored
teenagers in a new town are better off in a library than in other
places they might end up.
Anyway, now I encounter the art-psychiatry connection again, but with a
twist. Rather that art produced by the patient, it is art
produced by a…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008Republicans see that they are losing on this issue, so they just make
the issue go away:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082100310.html">U.S.,
Iraqi Negotiators Agree on 2011 Withdrawal
Withdrawal from Iaq is one of Obama's stronger points. So it
is a smart move for the Administration to just make it into a
non-issue. Ok, whatever, just stop the
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/6/army_recruiter_suspended_for_threatening_high">illegal
coersion of kids to join the Army.
Follow the link to listen to the interview and the aurio…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008Just in case you thought you were having a good day, here is a
href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOGNONBR?cid=123">graph
from the Fed that shows how much money the banks have:
Don't panic. The final number is from 1 July 2008.
I'm sure they've fixed the problem by now.
HT:
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/financemarkets-monitor/252626/looting_the_vaults_at_the_central_banks">London
Banker, on Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/index.php">RGE Monitor).
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008In
the late '60's - early '70's, is was commonplace for bands to write
songs that were utterly meaningless, then pass them off as great works
of art. The products of pure genius.
I
head one such song on the way home from work:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Horse_with_No_Name">A
Horse With No Name, by America, released in 1972.
Here's
a review on a site that has song lyrics:
bad
lyrics | Reviewer: george | 4/15/2008
This
song has a pretty good melody. It sounds good, IF YOU IGNORE THE
LYRICS. For example,
"in the desert, you can't remember your
name
'cause there ain't no…
j7uy5 | August 18, 2008
href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/huntington/huntington.htm"
rel="tag">Huntington's Disease is a serious,
progressive disease that involves degeneration of part of the brain.
In particular, there is loss of neurons and development of
gliosis in the striatum. The disease is named after
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Huntington"
title="George Huntington">George Huntington,
who described it in 1872.Huntington's
Disease can be diagnosed by
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/huntingtons_and_genetic_testin.php">genetic
testing. There has been a lot…
j7uy5 | August 15, 2008This seems very odd. The Internet -- including web sites and
email -- has been found to have a very serious security flaw.
Civilized places such as Sweden and Puerto Rico are already
fixing the problem. There are plans to improve security for
US .gov and .mil sites (government and military , respectively).
Yet, the most important fix for the rest of us, which is
under the control of the US government, is being delayed.
Given that the Russian military attack on Georgia was
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0813/p01s05-usmi.html">preceded
by an Internet attack, it would seem pretty…
j7uy5 | August 14, 2008I am wondering if the USA, as a whole, is more prosperous now that it
was in 2000.
We are told that the GDP has gone up every year. Population
growth has been modest. The published per-capita GDP has gone
up, from $33,000 to $46,000 (as of 1 January 2008). That
seems positive...
From CIA World Factbook, via
href="http://indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=67">Index Mundi:
But we are running a deficit. The USA's
href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html">account
balance was $ -738,600,000,000 in 2007. There has
been…
j7uy5 | August 11, 2008It'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.
From Crooked Timber:
href="http://crookedtimber.org/2008/08/05/abominations-of-the-world/">Abominations
of the World
by Henry on August 5, 2008
title="">Scott
at his other place blogs about the latest McCain video (which is so
staggeringly bad at achieving its purported aims that it…
j7uy5 | August 10, 2008We'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 technology that allows for some
fairly realistic rendering of emotional expressions, on video
characters that are entirely fabricated.
rel="tag">Pendulum Studios has released a
href="http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-incredible-3d-tech-demo-shows-realistic-facial-animations…
j7uy5 | August 6, 2008August 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.
j7uy5 | August 5, 2008I 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/full/65/8/870">Selecting
Among Second-Step Antidepressant Medication Monotherapies.
This is their one open-access article, so I will mention it
first. A little background: We've known for a long time that
all antidepressants work for some people, but nothing works for
everyone. A lot of effort…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2008There 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-dyn/content/article/2008/07/31/AR2008073102824.html">Pelosi:
Save the Planet, Let Someone Else Drill
Friday, August 1, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the
moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on
the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2008Mammon 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 children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught
but a follower.
from The Book of Mozilla,
11:9
(10th Edition)
[
href="http://hehe2.net/linuxhumor/10-cool-open-source-easter-eggs/">source,
background]
j7uy5 | July 31, 2008This 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 included.
The graph is from an article at Economist.com,
href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?source=most_read&story_id=11792366">Workingman's
Blues.
The article itself is annoying.
Phil Gramm, a former senator from Texas and adviser
to Mr McCain's campaign…
j7uy5 | July 29, 2008This 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.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0213-61632007000400006&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en">Neuroleptic
malignant syndrome: Possible relationship between Neuroleptic Treatment
And Smoking Cessation
Mª José MartÃn Vázquez PhD MPsych*, Teresa Jimeno
Beltrán MD**
Eur. J.…
j7uy5 | July 28, 2008Sustainability 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 the USA was at an all-time high (69.2 percent).
It was important for him to point this out, just before the
election. The reason is that he was advocating trickle-down
economics. He needed to show that concentrating wealth in the
hands of a few could lead to improved standards of living for…