j7uy5 | October 22, 2007One of the
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/02/science-policy-questions-good-bad-and.html">first
things I wrote about on Corpus Callosum was the tense and
ambivalent relationship the current Administration has with the
scientific community.
Note that the ambivalence is one-sided: it occurs entirely on the side
of the Administration. The scientific community is decided
univalent on the subject.
Now, the Center for Inquiry (publishers of the Skeptical
Inquirer) has published a paper calling for reform.
It is a well-researched and charitably-worded examination of
the…
j7uy5 | October 21, 2007Sometimes we hear the allegation that the war in Iraq is
about oil.
That is only an approximation of the truth. Really,
it is about money. Oil at this point is merely a proxy for
money.
Certain corporations that are in Iraq stand to make a
fortune regardless of whether the oil ever is exploited. If
the place settles down enough to permit exploitation, they will make
money developing the oilfields and/or providing security. If
it does not settle down, they make money fighting the war.
They win either way.
Remember before the War, from time to time we would read about how
despots…
j7uy5 | October 20, 2007
BMC Psychiatry, an
open-access journal, has an article on
href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml"
rel="tag">Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD):
href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/7/56/abstract">Altered
oscillatory brain dynamics after repeated traumatic stress.
This is yet another indication that PTSD has an enduring
physiological basis.
The insula, as a site of multimodal
convergence, could play a key role in understanding the pathophysiology
of PTSD, possibly accounting for what has been called posttraumatic…
j7uy5 | October 20, 2007The FCC is doing something unusual. Instead of
acting like footsoldiers
for
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/19/opinion/main3385282.shtml">corporate
America,
they are imposing fines on a broadcaster for pushing State-paid
propaganda.
href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6492542.html">FCC
Pushes Ahead with ‘No Child Left Behind’ Fines
Sonshine, Sinclair Broadcast Group Fined for Airing The
Right Side with Armstrong Williams, America's Black Forum, Respectively
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/18/2007 3:10:00 PM
The Federal…
j7uy5 | October 19, 2007
Steve Ballmer tells reporters that
href="http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/10/ballmer-microso.html">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 if they have something to sell.
So, I went out to my garage to see if I had any old companies laying
around. Nope.
Then it struck me: we could sell ScienceBlogs!
What would Microsoft get in the deal?
A modicum of favorable attention (nobody has ill will toward
ScienceBlogs), some positive…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2007Traditionally, the oil industry has tried to paint a rosy
picture when it comes to Peak Oil. That is changing,
according to industry insiders:
href="http://www.oilonline.com/news/headlines/internet/20071016.New_find.24707.asp">New
findings on peak oil timing and impacts to be presented at Houston
Conference
by: OilOnline
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
SPO-USA World Oil Conference, Oct. 17-20, in Houston, Texas.
HOUSTON, TX
The Conference will present new research and findings that indicate
Peak Oil impacts may hit sooner and harder than previously predicted,
according to Steve…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2007The Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS)
is a
major NIH-sponsored study of the treatment of adolescents with
depression, in which
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine" rel="tag">fluoxetine-only,
rel="tag">cognitive-behavioral therapy
only, combination treatment, and placebo are compared. The
study
is expected to generate a number of papers. One was published
a
few days ago in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The paper
is
not yet open-access. The study team, however, has a
href="https://trialweb.dcri.duke.edu/tads/index.html">website
with…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2007NY Times
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/business/16fund.html?ex=1350187200&en=c71cef9b628ff8d5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">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, and use the money to
buy securities that otherwise might be dumped on the market.
Just what we need, another circus, but this time with More Smoke! More
Mirrors!
I am skeptical, obviously. But don't…
j7uy5 | October 15, 2007Yeah. Private companies are always more efficient
that government programs. According to a
href="http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1015-06.htm">recent
study by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:
The private Part D insurers report
administrative expenses, sales costs, and profits of almost $5 billion
in 2007 -- including $1 billion in profits alone. The administrative
costs of the privatized Part D program are almost six times higher than
the administrative costs of the traditional Medicare program.
Another tidbit:
The drug price
rebates negotiated by the…
j7uy5 | October 15, 2007Today 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 ever made by humans, it is
not obvious, immediately, that they have much in common.
However, there are common elements, and those common elements
help explain why the threat from both is persisting so long...
Both Climate Change, and the Iraq War, are going to be
enormously expensive. But for both, the bulk of the expenses
are going to be paid later…
j7uy5 | October 15, 2007Previously, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/01/transcranial_direct_current_st.php">wrote
about investigation of
href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/04/newsci_head_electric.html">tDCS
for treatment of
href="http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fibromyalgia/DS00079"
rel="tag">fibromyalgia. Now there is
evidence that it may have a role in treatment of an entirely different
pain syndrome:
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/migraine.html"
rel="tag">migraine.
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct07/5599">Researchers
Testing New Electric…
j7uy5 | October 14, 2007I suspect that the recent article by
href="http://vedantam.com/">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.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101400993.html?hpid=topnews">When
Immigration Goes Up, Prices Go Down
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A03
Why would the same company charge you 14
percent more for an identical product in one location?
Because it can.
That's the simple answer. The free market relies on…
j7uy5 | October 14, 2007This is not a traditional review, in that I am not going to
discuss the
distro in any systematic or comprehensive fashion. There
already are several reviews out there in the
href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse">usual
places. Rather, I am going to outline my
experiences with installing and using
href="http://www.opensuse.org/">OpenSUSE 10.3,
with an emphasis on my particular hardware.
My machine originally was purpose-built to be an office machine, with
an emphasis on being quiet foremost, and inexpensive, secondarily; now
it is a hobby device. It has an…
j7uy5 | October 14, 2007What will
href="http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/10/solar_farm_wagon_small_bi.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890">they
think of next?
j7uy5 | October 13, 2007Romney thinks he has a winning strategy, but he's wrong.
href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071013/UPDATE/710130417/1020/NATION">Presidential
hopeful Romney vows to help pull Michigan out of economic slump
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Saturday, October 13, 2007
GRAND RAPIDS -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt
Romney promised on Saturday to help raise his native state out of its
economic crisis and defended himself against accusations from John
McCain that he failed in the past to support Republican policies and
candidates.…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2007US Secretary of State
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice">Condoleezza
Rice has some choice words for
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin" rel="tag">Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin.
href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3726309">Rice
Worried by Putin's Broad Powers
Rice Criticizes Putin's Concentration of Power, Says It
Interferes With Move to Democracy
By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW Oct 13, 2007 (AP)
The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so
much
central authority that the power-grab may…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2007His
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
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct07/5557">anatomy of
crash-test dummies. Geeks can have a sense of
humor, especially when it comes to anatomy. The body is,
after all, such a laughable thing, when compared to something
engineered
-- something sensible.
Pictured above, Fred, a 50th-%ile Hybrid III male, Is made
by Denton ATD
somewhere near Detroit Michigan. It is their leading product
for automotive safety…
j7uy5 | October 12, 2007On October 15, 2007, over six thousand blogs will have a
post about the
environment. It was not intended as a tribute to our new
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/13nobel.html?ex=1349928000&en=3f45aeb1eeb5f59c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">Nobel
Peace Prize recipients (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore" rel="tag">Al
Gore and
rel="tag">IPCC), but it will be a
fitting recognition of the seriousness of the topic.
HT to
href="http://zenhabits.net/2007/10/50-ways-to-help-the-environment-today-plus-blog-action-day-in-5-days/"…
j7uy5 | October 12, 2007He alleges
that the war in Iraq was botched for a reason: it will be easier for us
to steal their oil if they do not have a functioning government.
Some excerpts:
Indeed, the US may be
‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be,
which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
The value of Iraqi oil, largely light
crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion
at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected
total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
The draft law that the US has written for
the Iraqi congress would cede…
j7uy5 | October 11, 2007
Just in case people did not get the allusion in my post about
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/peak_oil_and_health_care_chall.php">peak
oil and health care.
Artist: Prine John
Song: Spanish Pipedream
Album: Great Days: The John Prine Anthology
She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the juke box broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke
Chorus:
Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country,…