j7uy5
Posts by this author
March 2, 2010
The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two
articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and
mental health. One article presents the results of a study; the
other is an editorial.
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajp;167/3/305">…
February 21, 2010
James Gunn, the director for the movie
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slither_%282006_film%29">Slither,
seems to be enthralled by creepy crawly things. He also has a
blog-like website, on which he posted
href="http://www.jamesgunn.com/2009/07/02/evolution-fucked-your-shit-up-the-worlds-50…
February 14, 2010
Sometimes I see sad-looking plants on clearance, buy them, and try to
heal them. This activity provides me with a gratification that is
similar to that which comes from healing sad-looking people, but
without the tribulations that occur if it does not work as well as we
had hoped.
I even have some…
February 10, 2010
The American Psychiatric Association has
href="http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx">gone public with the
details
of their proposed revisions to their Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual. As expected, most of this is bland and not worthy of
attention from the general public.
Unfortunately,…
February 1, 2010
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">Objective diagnosis is in some
ways the holy grail of medicine. It has been maddeningly elusive
in psychiatry. Now comes a paper in which the…
January 30, 2010
I decided to try using Google Chrome as a web browser. The reason is that it is supposed to be faster, particularly for sites that make heavy use of Flash. It turns out that installing it is a hassle if you do it the obvious way, because Flash does not work without fiddling around. That sort of…
January 25, 2010
I saw this headline on Google Fast Flip, and had to read it. I'm
always game for an anti-big-pharma story: even though I appreciate
their efforts to relieve suffering, I do like to take notice of their
shadier practices.
href="http://business.theatlantic.com/2010/01/…
January 19, 2010
Susanne Sternthal, a writer based in Moscow, has published an article
about the ecology of stray dogs. The article is in Financial
Times, of all places. Why is that?
href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html">Moscow's
stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
January 16…
January 18, 2010
I've been mulling this over for a few days, finally deciding to write
about it. There was an article in the NYT on 13 January 2010
about an NEJM article:
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/research/14morphine.html">
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/research/14morphine…
January 15, 2010
The earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent in a series of
catastrophes stretching back over two centuries. It was not
always like this. Haiti, in fact, was once the most prosperous
colony in the New World. When it was a French colony, known as
class="bc_2">St. Domingue (
also called The…
January 11, 2010
Those of us who watch the drug development pipeline have been pining
for a nonaddictive anti-anxiety drug. Occasionally there are
glimmers of hope. One candidate is
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emapunil">emapunil, aka XBD-173
or AC-5216. In 2004, there was an article in the British…
January 1, 2010
...for canceling the showing of a creationist film, Darwin's
Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. The
background is on Greg Laden's Blog,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/los_angeles_venue_cancels_inte.php">Los
Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film:
You'll…
December 28, 2009
Thanks to a tip from a reader, for this one.
A photographer named
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky">Sergei
Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made glass negatives in
the early 1900's that could be used to create color images. He
did this by inventing a camera…
December 23, 2009
Visiting with Kevin, went hiking in Soledad Canyon. The light was
crazy, alterating between awful for photography, and interesting, but
always challenging. When it stopped snowing and the wind wasn't
blowing me around, I was able to get some decent pictures.
style="display: inline;">
December 23, 2009
Nicely illustrated in this photo:
Thanks to Jim R., who doesn't have a blog to link.
December 23, 2009
From Shorpy (Always Something Wonderful), this is a photo of the
href="http://www.shorpy.com/node/2119">Christmas tree at the home of
Wilbur and Orville Wright, in the year 1900.
style="display: inline;">
December 22, 2009
One of the more enlightening and worrisome articles I read recently was
href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/11/24/081124ta_talk_surowiecki">The
Perils of Efficiency, by James Surowiecki. The article
was a discussion of the practical effects of the mathematical concept,
that you…
December 14, 2009
Today is the 90th anniversary of the first Felix the Cat cartoon.
href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz26t_1919felix-the-cat-feline-follies_fun">1919-Felix
The Cat - Feline FolliesUploaded by iToons.
- Watch more
comedy videos and sitcoms.
Needless to say, it changed a lot over the…
December 14, 2009
I couldn't resist that title, but I must admit it isn't mine; the
author's post is
href="http://pasadenasubrosa.typepad.com/pasadena_sub_rosa/2009/12/let-them-eat-antipsychotics.html">here.
This is about the NYT article about the finding that children on
Medicaid are more likely to be…
December 11, 2009
This is a tip for selecting the fastest DNS server.
href="http://www.opendns.com/">OpenDNS already has
fans at ScienceBlogs (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/turkish_ass_shuts_down_a_slice.php">1
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/08/connectile_dysfunction.…
December 7, 2009
This is a
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41500">high-resolution
photo of Pearl Harbor (click to enlarge). When I saw that it had
been posted to the NASA Earth Observatory, I wondered -- momentarily --
why they would post a photo of Pearl Harbor. Then I remembered:…
December 7, 2009
I wrote about this before, a couple of times, most thoroughly
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/06/national_infrastructure_protec.php">here.
I was reminded of this topic when I saw that the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE) have updated their
href="http://www.…
December 2, 2009
Sharon Astyk will be joining Scienceblogs soon. Everyone is
encourage to
href="http://sharonastyk.com/2009/11/30/new-shiny-stuff-classes-contests-and-the-new-blog-announcement/">read
the post about her upcoming transition. I would especially
encourage my sciblings/colleagues here to read what…
December 2, 2009
This post is about a journal article that describes mortality rates in
populations of persons with eating disorders. It is sort of
about that. The article is in the APA green journal, which is not
openly accessible. Only the abstract is free. Usually I
don't write about closed-access articles…
November 29, 2009
While we have a cold, dreary rain here: a photo of brighter, hotter
times:
style="display: inline;">
This is from September 2007. It is a desert spiny lizard (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceloporus_magister">Sceloporus
magister) on a desert willow (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/…
November 26, 2009
Environmental regulations have greatly reduced the amount of sulfur in
gasoline. This has created many benefits. But did you ever
wonder what happens to all that sulfur? Perhaps not, if it was
never clear to you why you should care.
The reason you should care is this: Sulfur is present in coal…
November 23, 2009
The USA still leads the world int he number of scientific papers
published per year. Germany and Japan were essentially tied
for second, for years. According to a recent report by
Thomspon-Reuters ISI, there is a new player at the table:
class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display:…
November 23, 2009
Is there some kind of especially violent undercurrent right now, in the
right-wing river of hate?
Ed Brayton just
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/missouri_republicans_call_for.php">posted
about a billboard put up by the GOP, specifically the
href="http://…
November 20, 2009
Reasonable persons still wonder why some others insist that permitting
gay marriage will threaten heterosexual marriage. Now we find
out: it happens as an unintended consequence. Take Texas (please):
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1340136.html">Texas'
gay marriage ban…