j7uy5
Posts by this author
September 23, 2008
Ever since the inception of the Global and Perpetual War on Terror,
there has been concern about the role of professionals with training in
psychology and psychiatry in the design, conduct, and interpretation of
torture programs.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) banned such participation…
September 22, 2008
No, this is not a conspiracy hypothesis. There really is a
href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/27/news/newsmakers/gross_banking.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007112810">shadow
banking system. There is even a
href="https://www.aei.org/research/projectID.15/project.asp">Shadow
Financial…
September 22, 2008
This is a nice photo, with a Creative Commons license. It's a
female Anna's
Hummingbird, Calypte anna.
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/grandpamikey/2365843288/sizes/l/">
alt="clickto see Flickr page" title="clickto see Flickr page"
src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3231/…
September 21, 2008
USNORTHCOM is the organizational unit of the US military that
is
assigned to North America. They are the ones who are
responsible
for defense of the homeland.
href="http://www.northcom.mil/News/2008/091308I.html">Religious
Support Teams providing hope after Ike
September 13, 2008…
September 21, 2008
The economic crisis is reported to be responsible for a recent increase
in calls for mental health services:
href="http://delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/BUSINESS/809200314">Economy
worries driving more people to seek help
By ROB WATERS and DAVID OLMOS
September 20,…
September 19, 2008
A prominent political candidate had her email account pilfered.
It is not known, openly, how this was done.
Reportedly, it was a simple password, a word that could be
found in any English dictionary. That was a mistake.
Still, it was wrong for people to do it. Period.
Yes, the act does make…
September 17, 2008
Within the past few days, I've noticed quite a few bloggers and news
writers make comparisons between the hurricanes and the financial
meltdown. It just occurred to be that there is another facet
to this analogy. This has to do with a very real problem that
has been stirred up, literally.
In…
September 14, 2008
One important concept in psychotherapy studies is the concept of
href="http://www.indiana.edu/%7Efamlygrf/units/ambiguous.html">ambiguous
loss. This is a loss that is, in some
way, less than definitive. If you are at the hospital
visiting an ill beloved family member, and see the death, it…
September 13, 2008
As
href="http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/09/nasa_views_ike.php">noted
on Dynamics of Cats, The Oil Drum
has some details about loss of production of oil, natural gas, and
refined oil products, due to hurricanes
href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4525">Ike and
Gustav.
(They've…
September 12, 2008
Here is a photo from the space station, showing some really big
thunderheads:
It is an inset from a high-resolution photo of Ike, courtesy of NASA:
href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/272686main_ISS017E015708_hi.jpg">
The photo posted on the NASA site is 2098x3072 pixels. Click (…
September 12, 2008
There have already been several posts about
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091100263.html">hurricane
Ike on Scienceblogs (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/09/ike_texas.php">1
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/09/…
September 11, 2008
Geophysicists have
href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/whoi-m2e091008.php">issued
a warning, that the May earthquake in China has increased the
risk of a follow-up quake.
Geophysicists used computer models to calculate the
changes in stress along the Xianshuihe, Kunlun, and…
September 10, 2008
Probably everyone has seen it by now, but the NYT has a headline about
the "culture of ethical failure" at the Department of the Interior.
In a way it is not news; I, among others,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/08/culture_of_corruption_part_ii.php">wrote
about it two years…
September 8, 2008
Toward the end of last week, the
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHs5OM3gFG_DytQQZFbWfgPT08MAD9303VJ01">US
stock market declined precipitously. Within the
space of a few days, we learned that
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/business/economy/06econ.html?partner=rssuserland…
September 7, 2008
One of the controversies about VP candidate Sarah Palin has to do with
the sale of the gubernatorial jet. She attempts to bolster
her claim, that she is a fiscal conservative, by saying that she sold
the State's jet, claiming it was an unnecessary expense.
She sold the 2.7 million dollar jet for…
September 3, 2008
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_brain_stimulation"
rel="tag">Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) currently…
September 2, 2008
Within the past year, public sentiment has shifted. It has
been changing slowly, but steadily. Sometime in the past
year, it
reached the crossover point. Now there is a simple majority
who think that religious groups should stay out of politics.
From the Pew
Research Center for the People…
September 1, 2008
First, I learn that sheriffs in Minneapolis are engaging in
href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html">preemptive
detention of persons suspected of planning protests.
Then I learn that the Federal government
href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/…
August 31, 2008
Many denture adhesive creams contain zinc. This has always
been known. The zinc is harmless, or so we thought.
The problem is thought to be rare. The peculiar thing about
this finding is that no amount of safety testing on the zinc itself
could have detected the problem. That's because the…
August 30, 2008
McCain has explained his choice of running mate, saying it will "shake
up the status quo in Washington."
It's time for a fact check, comparing Palin to the status quo...
width="480">
FEATURE
CHENEY
PALIN
Anti-environment
Yes
Yes
Anti-science
Yes
Yes
Oil Industry
Supports
Supports…
August 26, 2008
JAMA 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-…
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…
August 22, 2008
Speaking 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.
August 22, 2008
There 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…
August 22, 2008
Republicans 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…
August 21, 2008
Just 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…
August 21, 2008
In
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…
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…
August 15, 2008
This 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 ,…
August 14, 2008
I 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…