j7uy5 | October 30, 2007
href="http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/crazy.htm">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 for their loved ones’ psychiatric issues
instead wind up retrieving them from the police station. And judges
wrestle with the prospect of sentencing the same people again and again
for minor offenses, instead of steering them to effective mental health
programs.
These…
j7uy5 | October 30, 2007
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j7uy5 | October 30, 2007Medscape
has an article about a study that shows a relationship between the
amount of eduction a person has, and how rapidly memory loss occurs
when they get senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT).
The more education a person has, the faster the memory loss
occurs. (
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/564996">Higher
Education Delays Dementia Onset but Is Linked to More Rapid Progression,
free registration required)
At first this seems counterintuitive. But think about it.
Speaking
of memory, I remember when I was in college, there was a newspaper
article about a kid who…
j7uy5 | October 29, 2007
A guy was sitting at a stoplight, minding his own business,
when a wrecking ball crashed into the trunk. The man was not
seriously injured.
The wrecking ball was being used in demolition, but apparently had a
defective cable.
HT: DNA
Lounge.
href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07191/800583-85.stm">Meadville
mishap defines wrecking ball
One breaks loose, goes on tear near college
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
By Steve Levin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Alex Habay was in his Ford Taurus, stopped
at a traffic light in downtown Meadville, Crawford County, yesterday
morning, thinking about…
j7uy5 | October 29, 2007I don't think I am being unduly harsh in saying that this
was an
incredibly stupid thing to do:
U.S. Forest Service investigators were on
campus last
week to question Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members about an Oct.
11 incident at the Lower Gallinas Campground in which a tree was cut
down and burned along with plastic chairs and several other items,
according to an NMSU police report.
A road was also blocked and a large amount of trash was left at the
campground.
Forest service officers pulled several documents with the SAE
letterhead from the fire. The report states an…
j7uy5 | October 29, 2007When he said:
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain
search for absolute security.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
(source)
j7uy5 | October 27, 2007Today I watched the C-Span broadcast (
href="rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/energy/energy102307_warming.rm">link
to Real Player file,
80 minutes) of Dr. Gerberding's testimony to the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works. The topic: The potential
effects of
climate change on public health.
After seeing it, I have to agree that she was able to make many good
points, and the Senate is more informed as a result. That
fact
does not excuse the White House censorship of her written report;
rather, it simply means that their anemic efforts at censorship were
relatively ineffective…
j7uy5 | October 27, 2007PZ has already
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/dont_worry_kids_curry_is_just.php">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 a political theorist. He was granted a
Ph.D., on the topic of morality as natural history, by the
Government Department of the London School of Economics.
Apparently, he is fond of saying that humans will divide into
two species, approximately 100,000 years from now.
The article PZ…
j7uy5 | October 27, 2007Not much to add to this. I do want to make sure
that more people see it.
Why did you include a chapter on
your bout with postpartum depression and were you concerned that the
CIA would look unkindly on the fact that you sought help for your
condition?
I included the chapter on postpartum depression (PPD) frankly because
my publisher, Simon & Schuster, allowed me too, even though it
is a departure from the rest of the themes of my book. It is something
that I feel passionately about and was actually somewhat painful to
write. With the birth of my twins in 2000, I experienced serious…
j7uy5 | October 26, 2007The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, and amended in 1977
and 1990.
It has been mildly controversial, but most people supported
it then and support it now.
A retrospective
economic analysis done in the early 1990's indicated that the
cost of implementation from 1970 to 1990 had been about $523 billion in
1990 dollars. What did we get for that money? The
same study indicated that the economic benefit had been somewhere
between $5.6 to $49.4 trillion,
with a mean (among various scenarios) of $22.2 trillion.
Allowing for various uncertainties, it was estimated that the
benefit/cost ratio…
j7uy5 | October 25, 2007Dr. Gerberding's congressional testimony was heavily edited
by the Administration. Fortunately, that fact was picked up
by the MSM. As of now, there are 711 mentions on Google News.
In the interest of completeness, however, I noted that Dr. Gerberding
herself denies that there was censorship. As
href="http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/news/stories/2007/10/24/cdcgerberding_1024.html">reported
in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Gerberding said Wednesday she was happy
with her testimony and that the review process was normal. In a
lunch-hour speech before the Atlanta Press Club,…
j7uy5 | October 25, 2007One of the occasional problems with commercial software is
the need for
"activation." One problem with any software is the potential
for inevitability of bugs. Both problems are
illustrated
in the screenshot.
So I only have 12,209 years to act.
I would like to be able to trust Symantec to have reliable software,
but this calls their QA into question.
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007From
href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/24/baloondog-anatomy.html">BoingBoing,
an illustration of the neuroanatomy of balloon dogs:
Original source:
href="http://freeny.deviantart.com/art/Pneumatic-Anatomica-53318794">Pneumatic
Anatomica.
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007The Honorable John Dingell has drafted legislation that
would bring an end to the war in Iraq. There is no bill
number yet, so it is a bit too early for us all to write our
Representatives to urge support.
href="http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/mi15_dingell/PR071023iraqpullout.shtml">Dingell
Introduces Legislation Requiring U.S. Pullout from Iraq by January 20,
2009
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Washington, DC - Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15)
today introduced legislation setting a hard date for a pullout from
Iraq. The bill does not yet have a number. The
Congressman made…
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007The Medicare
Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee
currently is in the process of examining the question of whether to pay
for in-home testing for the diagnosis of
href="http://www.sleepapnea.org/" rel="tag">sleep
apnea. If approved, this could lead to a
significant loss of income for sleep specialists.
Pulmonologists can't get a break, can they? In the 1980's
many lung specialists faced declining income, because of the reduction
in the number of cases of tuberculosis. Then the number of
smokers began to decline, leading to reduction in smoking-related
illness. Many…
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007Most people expect a wait when they call tech support.
Knowledgeable users arrange to have something to do to kill
some time: a book, magazine, something like that.
This is the story of Timothy Scott Short, who is going to have to wait
a very long time.
Short stole a specialized printer, used to make driver's licenses.
When he got it home, he realized he'd need the printer
drivers. So he called tech support.
Two days after the theft, Digimarc's tech
help line got a call from someone named "Scott" who wanted to buy
software for the same model of printer that was stolen from the…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2007
A couple of days ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/lets_improve_the_quality_of_th.php">wrote
about the government reforms proposed by
href="http://www.centerforinquiry.net/advocacy/protecting_scientific_integrity_2/">The
Center for Inquiry. Specifically,
Enact legislation to specifically permit
government scientists to communicate freely with the media and the
public.
Re-establish the Office of Technology Assessment
Reform the Data Quality Act
Now, Think Progress has a post in which
they detail how the
Administration
href="http://thinkprogress.org/…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2007When I was in junior high, I used to do this. I
don't know
why. Probably I was bored with something that is inherently
boring. It does not spice things up very much. But
some spice is better than none.
href="http://www.hourlylaff.com/15-amazing-ways-to-tie-your-sneakers/">This
article shows 15 idiosyncratic ways to ties one's shoelaces.
I did not do all 15, but I did do several. The Loop
Back was my favorite.
HT:
href="http://tipnut.com/15-amazing-ways-to-tie-your-sneakers/">TipNut.
Most of the tips on TipNut are practical. This one is not.
Even so, it is nice to know…
j7uy5 | October 22, 2007
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j7uy5 | October 22, 2007This one is good for several seconds of enjoyment.
Source:
href="http://www.moillusions.com/2007/10/infinite-zoom-coast-illusion.html">Mighty
Optical Illusions.