Armchair Musings:
The Ubuntu craze is sweeping SciencBlogs: Aardvarchaeology, Scientific Indian, Greg Laden, Corpus Callosum, even PZ's kid. At SB, we strive for logic and precision. Enough so, that we swoon over passages such as this one, from Gottfried Leibniz: "The...
Read on »
Posted on April 28, 2008 8:01 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Here at ScienceBlogs, we've regularly posted about the thorny issue of antibiotic overuse, and the subsequent antibiotic resistance. This is a good example of evolution in action; it's also a good reason why we need to study and understand evolution....
Read on »
Posted on April 15, 2008 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I wasn't sure whether to put the quotes around "Ruthlessness Gene," or "Discovered." I suppose I could have just left them out entirely, but I have this urge to spice things up a bit with punctuation marks. Don't blame me...it's...
Read on »
Posted on April 7, 2008 9:15 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps. This item caught my attention, because I had an uncle who was part of the CCC. He did forestry work in the U.P. This helped my father's family eat...
Read on »
Posted on March 19, 2008 8:53 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This photograph expresses my hopes for the new year: From Flickr (set of photos); photo by Cliff Kemper (Cliffk1999). I do not know the story behind this portmanteau vehicle, so I am free to make stuff up. (It's the...
Read on »
Posted on January 2, 2008 8:30 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What would you do if a series of archaeological expeditions uncovered ancient texts that indisputably showed that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each independently quoted Jesus as having said that waterboarding is immoral?...
Posted on December 29, 2007 11:47 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The term evolution, presented without any modifiers, generally is held to refer to genetic change within a population. Of course, behaviors can change over time, too. This includes behaviors that are quite specific and complex. Ungulates are mammals with...
Read on »
Posted on December 22, 2007 10:18 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Christians have a solemn duty. The reason will become clear. Recently, there was a strong reaction in the Blogosphere about Governor Mitt Romney's "Faith In America" Address. I noticed in particular the posts on Effect Measure, Matthew Yglesias, and Dispatches...
Read on »
Posted on December 14, 2007 9:09 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
1. Good music can neither be created, nor destroyed. All the good music already exists. It does not matter how many hours you spend at the keyboard trying to come up with something new. All of your efforts are in...
Posted on November 27, 2007 9:44 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Currently, both the House and the Senate are leaning away from granting immunity to telecommunications companies that were involved in warrantless domestic spying. In an unrelated debacle, the State Department tried to grant immunity to Blackwater personnel who shot...
Posted on November 16, 2007 7:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I haven't gotten to the actual research paper yet, but this is sufficiently interesting that I wanted to put up a quick post about it. Live Science has an article about some research, showing that persons who think of themselves...
Read on »
Posted on November 15, 2007 3:04 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Click for full-sized version From: Dilbert Internet Archive There is elitism, and anti-elitism. In pure form, both are bad. I recommend, as an alternative, something called mutual respect. In politics, there is a long history of us-versus-them-ism. In the...
Read on »
Posted on November 14, 2007 8:25 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Norman Lear Center recently commissioned a Zogby poll regarding the relative media preferences of liberals, moderates, and conservatives: The Zogby/Lear Center Survey On Politics And Entertainment. The typology revealed three significant clusters of respondents: "conservatives," as we decided to...
Read on »
Posted on November 13, 2007 8:51 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nov. 5 event at U-M will feature top experts discussing alternatives to “criminalization” of America’s mentally ill ANN ARBOR, MI – Across America, prisons serve as an unofficial holding system for the mentally ill. Families desperate to get treatment...
Read on »
Posted on October 30, 2007 12:35 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PZ has already written about this, primarily to dismiss it as nonsense. He is correct, but there is one point (or two) that I want to add. Oliver Curry is described in WIkipedia as an evolutionary theorist as well as...
Read on »
Posted on October 27, 2007 8:46 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Steve Ballmer tells reporters that Microsoft will buy 20 companies a year for the next 5 years, paying "between 50 or 100 million to a couple hundred million each." He also gave his email address, for anyone to use...
Read on »
Posted on October 20, 2007 2:04 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
NY Times reports that large banks are working on a perpetual motion machine: The new entity, called a Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit, or M-LEC, could raise as much as $200 billion or more through the issuance of its own securities,...
Posted on October 16, 2007 7:07 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today is Blog Action Day, during which many persons have agreed to write a blog post about environmental concerns. This is one of thousands. Consider Climate Change, and consider the Iraq War. Other than both being among the biggest mistakes...
Read on »
Posted on October 15, 2007 9:01 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I suspect that the recent article by Shankar Vedantam, in the Washington Post, will largely be taken as fuel for the immigration debate. However, that is not why I find it interesting. When Immigration Goes Up, Prices Go Down By...
Read on »
Posted on October 15, 2007 12:09 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
His bare buttocks rest on the cold steel shelf; the smooth, hairless skin has a ghastly pinkish-orange hue. That is the opening to an article (in the IEEE magazine) on the anatomy of crash-test dummies. Geeks can have a sense...
Read on »
Posted on October 13, 2007 12:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Researchers studying the European common lizard (Zootoca vivipara, formerly Lacerta vivipara) have learned of a three-part mating strategy. Different members of the species have disticutly different mating strategies. Additionally, the colors of the bellies are correlated with the mating...
Read on »
Posted on October 9, 2007 8:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is a powerful piece of work. I became aware of it after a tip from a reader. I saw the video "trailer" for the book, and knew I had to blog about it. But it has...
Read on »
Posted on October 8, 2007 12:14 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the most recent debate among Presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party, there was an exchange regarding the so-called "ticking bomb" question. The question itself, and the way it was handled, reveals shortcomings in the way we evaluate our candidates....
Read on »
Posted on September 30, 2007 8:29 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The implantable cardioverter defibrillator is a device placed under the skin, near the heart. It delivers an electric shock to the heart when a dangerous abnormal rhythm is detected. As you might suspect, it hurts when this shock occurs (doctors...
Read on »
Posted on September 28, 2007 9:35 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I was prompted to rant again about health insurance, after reading a post at Blogcritics. The author was highly critical of the SCHIP proposals. SCHIP: It's for the Insurance Companies, Not the Children Written by Dave Nalle Published September...
Read on »
Posted on September 26, 2007 7:48 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
CNN has an interesting article on the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium. A reporter was allowed to accompany a mission in Viet Nam to remove some cold war era highly enriched uranium from a US-built/USSR-fueled nuclear reactor. It is kind...
Read on »
Posted on September 16, 2007 4:36 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There may be another crisis brewing in health care finance. In the early 2000's, health insurance premiums were increasing by ~10% per year. The increase in premiums was greater than the increase in health care costs. Why would...
Read on »
Posted on September 1, 2007 10:40 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I happened to run across a couple of articles pertaining to cultural influences on mental health. Neither presented modern first-world culture in a positive light. The two articles are: Schizophrenia outcome measures in the wider international community; and A Longitudinal...
Read on »
Posted on August 3, 2007 8:06 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The New York Times contained two statements, in different contexts, that say opposite things. The first appears in their "most blogged" box. It is from July 15: The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age By...
Read on »
Posted on July 20, 2007 11:15 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of hearing Amy Goodman interview Chris Mooney about the subject of his new book, Storm World. It was a segment from Democracy Now! I won't trouble you with a synopsis, you can...
Posted on July 11, 2007 4:44 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
We are most accustomed to seeing power generation windmills on dry land, here in the USA. In Europe, some are on land and some are offshore. They generally are considered eyesores. Myself, I think they are beautiful. I love to...
Read on »
Posted on July 9, 2007 12:02 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is kind of a rambling rehash of an old post. But it turns out to be topical now. What is more it illustrates some interesting points about evolution: some obvious, others subtle. One thing is shows very nicely is...
Read on »
Posted on June 14, 2007 11:16 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is not exactly news, but it is nice to have some specifics that put the issue in perspective. CEOs' compensation can significantly impact shareholder value By Kathy M. Kristof, Times Staff Writer 1:11 PM PDT, June 9, 2007...
Posted on June 10, 2007 8:17 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I am on call today, so I am about to go in to the hospital for a full day of work. But while drinking my coffee I encountered an article that I need to get back to. Maybe some of...
Posted on May 28, 2007 8:07 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is in response to a comment from a prior post. There are a few related questions here. Can preemies develop PTSD, can they be labeled with PTSD, if they can get PTSD is it fundamentally the same as it...
Read on »
Posted on May 23, 2007 8:02 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
USA Today's top story: Drivers cut back -- a 1st in 26 years. Why is this the most important headline for today?
Read on »
Posted on May 18, 2007 9:22 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A recent article in Health Affairs attempts to put drug safety and risk in perspective. But will it do any good?
Read on »
Posted on May 15, 2007 8:51 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
(Note: if the accent marks look weird, set your browser to view character encoding as Unicode (UTF-8)) One of the problems with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is that there is no clear rationale for the division...
Read on »
Posted on May 6, 2007 8:30 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, I turned on the TV, in all its 12-inch glory, and watched the show. It is as good as any articles of impeachment will ever be. Money quotes, from the transcript: BILL MOYERS: It didn't make sense to...
Read on »
Posted on April 26, 2007 12:40 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
For some, cognitive dissonance is a way of life....
Posted on April 14, 2007 12:42 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I know people come here to read about psychiatry, mental health, neuroscience, and political/social issues related to those topics. No, scratch that, I have not idea why people come here. But this post is straight politics. Well, it's politics...
Read on »
Posted on March 17, 2007 12:44 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Note: this post involves a very small amount of self-disclosure. That is a bit unusual. My father is also a psychiatrist. He told me once about his education in psychopharmacology. A guy got up to lecture, identified himself as the...
Read on »
Posted on February 28, 2007 10:45 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There is a whole field of evolutionary psychology. Let me get this out of the way: I remain skeptical of the entire endeavor, even though there is now a Center for Evolutionary Psychology. But when it makes it into the...
Read on »
Posted on February 26, 2007 9:02 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I won't rehash the distinction between faith-based and reality-based reasoning, figuring that most blog readers -- at least the progressive ones -- know the meaning and context. However, I would like to make one point. Reasoning that is not reality-based...
Read on »
Posted on February 24, 2007 11:50 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is a nice little study that deserve a brief comment. It's from Am J Psychiatry this month. What is shows is that participation in psychotherapy can alter the rate of reported adverse effects from medication, and decrease the rate...
Read on »
Posted on February 9, 2007 7:38 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yesterday, both Abel and I posted about the unexpected effects of lavender and tea-tree oils: they've been implicated as causing gynecomastia in boys. Blogpulse indicates that the Blogosphere has reacted quite a bit to this: the blog at Wired News...
Read on »
Posted on February 4, 2007 1:02 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Two different news organizations chose two different photos to illustrate the same event: Jimmy Carter speaking at Brandeis University, in response to criticism of his boook: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. The top photo is from the New York Times, At...
Read on »
Posted on January 24, 2007 7:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
You might think that developing a system for EMR would be fairly straightforward. After all, some of the things that computers are really good for, are the storing, retrieval, and display of information. But somehow, developing a system that actually...
Read on »
Posted on January 8, 2007 10:12 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have a confession to make. I once voted for a Republican Presidential candidate. That candidate was Gerald Ford. Why? Several reasons. For one, it was my first time voting, so I was not very good at it yet....
Posted on December 27, 2006 8:13 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Ambidextrous More Likely To Be Bisexual; Why Do We Care, Anyway? A new study coming from the University of Guelph. Dr. Michael Peters, a neuropsychologist, analyzed a survey of about 255,000 people, and come up with some interesting findings about...
Read on »
Posted on December 16, 2006 9:46 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The big news on the USA culture front: Rupert Murdoch has personally intervened, and canned the OJ Simpson deal. He actually apologized. So, maybe we have found the outer limit of decency. In other news, a court rejected the argument...
Read on »
Posted on November 21, 2006 10:08 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Philanthropy Expert: Conservatives Are More Generous By Frank Brieaddy Religion News Service SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous. The...
Posted on November 18, 2006 12:23 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Blogosphere has had a bit of a twitter over the issue of the impeachment of President Bush. The most assertive progressive are upset that the issue is "off the table," in the words of Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers....
Read on »
Posted on November 16, 2006 8:30 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
First there was Alternative Medicine, then there was Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, and now there is Integrative, Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. I guess the natural cynic in me becomes suspicious when I see acronyms undergoing hypertrophy. So is...
Read on »
Posted on November 15, 2006 8:01 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A good site to sample world media outlets, and to see what they have to say about the USA, is Watching America. Die Welt, Germany Right-Wing Extremist Viciousness Punished I actually don't agree with the anaylsis published in Die Welt...
Read on »
Posted on November 10, 2006 7:59 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's discouraging seeing so many people go so wrong all at once. It makes you question the idea that each of us has unlimited potential for good.Who said that? And what was the subject? ...
Read on »
Posted on November 2, 2006 6:52 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nature News reports on a preliminary study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. The study indicates that the cholesterol-lowering drugs in the statin family may protect against lung damage caused by cigarette smoking. The...
Read on »
Posted on October 24, 2006 8:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
