j7uy5 | August 4, 2007An
article in the Honk Kong Medical Journal reports on a seried of cases
of Mah-jong Epilepsy. This is something I had not heard of
before: it is considered a subtype of cognition-induced epilepsy.
rev="review" href="http://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v13n4/314.htm">Mah-jong-induced
seizures: case reports and review of twenty-three patients
Richard SK Chang, Raymond TF Cheung, SL Ho, Windsor Mak
Department of Medicine, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong
Hong Kong Med J 2007;13:314-8
'Mah-jong epilepsy' is a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome, manifesting as
recurrent epileptic seizures triggered…
j7uy5 | August 4, 2007This
little devil gets a rating of over one million
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale" rel="tag">Scoville
heat units.
It's
the Bhut
Jolokia (ghost chile), also called the
href="http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/sagajolokia.asp" rel="tag">Naga
Jolokia.
According to the
href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2007/08/01/1185647946289.html"
rel="tag">Brisbane Times, the
growers hope it will replace the sagging tea farming in northeast
India...
Researchers
at the renowned
href="http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/welcome.html?t=chile"
rel="tag">Chile…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2007Foreign
Policy magazine has released the results of their
second survey of 100 foreign policy experts, on the topic of national
security. The results are compiled into what they call the
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3700"
rel="tag">Terrorism Index. Their sample
is bipartisan, with about 40% of the
participants identify themselves as conservative. 80% have
worked in Government, 26% in the military, 18% in intelligence.
The results this year are
equally dismal.
Eighty-eight
percent of the experts believe that the war in Iraq is having a
negative…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2007That
is the conclusion of the most review review of the security of the
Dielbold voting machines in California. Most damning is the
finding that many of the previously-reported vulnerabilities have not
been fixed.
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">...Although we present
several previously unpublished vulnerabilities, many of the weaknesses
that we describe were first identified in previous studies of the
Diebold system (e. g., [26], [17], [18], [19], [33], [23], and
[14]). Our report confirms that many of the most serious flaws that
these studies uncovered have not been fixed in the…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2007I
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:
href="http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/191/50/s71">Schizophrenia
outcome measures in the wider international community; and
rev="review"
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/164/8/1173">A
Longitudinal Study of the Use of Mental Health Services by Persons With
Serious Mental Illness: Do Spanish-Speaking Latinos Differ From
English-Speaking Latinos and Caucasians?…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2007
title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS
has an open-access article describing the current state of knowledge of
the genetics of
rel="tag">autism. The authors looked at
information from the Autism
Genetic Resource Exchange and two other databases; one from
the University of Michigan, the other from the
href="http://www.iancommunity.org/">Interactive Autism
Network (IAN) Research Database. Their findings
indicated that most cases of autism can be explained by one of two
mechanisms. The concluded that most cases arise from
spontaneous mutations, with a…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2007
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Microsoft
(the company, not the cat) is planning
to introduce a free,
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070801/tc_nm/microsoft_works_dc_1;_ylt=AvNzaQ0YzHMN8HgffxSZzmYE1vAI">adware
version of Microsoft Works.
Works is their stripped-down version of Microsoft
Office. Works already
comes bundled with many newly-purchased Windows machines.
Most people are not aware of paying for it anyway.
The
version they are planning come conveniently pre-loaded with
advertisements stored on the hard drive. When the user
connects to the Internet, more ads are…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2007HR 2102 IH -- Free Flow of Information Act of 2007
US Reps Rick
Boucher,
href="http://mikepence.house.gov/">Mike Pence,
rel="tag" href="http://www.house.gov/conyers/">John
Conyers,
rel="tag">Howard Coble,
href="http://yarmuth.house.gov/" rel="tag">John
Yarmuth, and
rel="tag">Greg Walden have introduced a bill that
would provide some protections to blogger-journalists.
HR 2102 IH, the
href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110%3AH.R.2102%3A">Free
Flow of Information Act of 2007, so far has only
been approved by the House
Judiciary Committee.
The…
j7uy5 | August 1, 2007This
is the face the USA presents to the rest of the world:
href="http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003619296">Bush
Insults BBC Political Editor at Press Conference
By E&P Staff
Published: August 01, 2007 10:50 AM ET
NEW YORK At a recent press conference at Camp David,
President George
Bush insulted BBC political editor Nick Robinson, the Daily Mirror
reports.
Robinson, who has asked Bush pointed questions in the past such as
whetherthe president was “in denial” over the Iraq
war,
posed a question to Bush about whether he could trust…
j7uy5 | August 1, 2007A
couple of months ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/06/psychologists_and_torture.php">wrote
about the revelation that the a committee of the American
Psychological Association had been manipulated into tacitly supporting
the involvement of psychologists in developing harsh interrogation
techniques.
A couple of weeks ago, journalist Katherine Eban published an article
with more detail on the subject. Her article,
href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707">Rorschach
and Awe, appeared in Vanity Fair
on 17 July 2007.
Democracy…
j7uy5 | July 31, 2007
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/Carmona-CTAGlobalHealthdraft.pdf">This
report (PDF 260KB file) is what set off the controversy over
the former Surgeon General of the United States. It is a
draft report, entitled The Surgeon General’s Call
to Action on Global Health 2006. It was written by
the former Surgeon General, Dr.
href="http://www.hhs.gov/about/bios/sg.html">Richard Carmona.
In this post, I will review the history of Dr. Carmona's service as
Surgeon General, outline the controversy, and end with a discussion of
of some recent criticism of the controversy…
j7uy5 | July 30, 2007This
is a visual amusement, courtesy of
href="http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/" rel="tag">Websites
as Graphs. The top one is Corpus Callosum.
The bottom one is the ScienceBlogs main page.
The
key is as follows:
What do the colors mean?
blue:
for links (the A tag)
red:
for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green:
for the DIV tag
violet:
for images (the IMG tag)
style="color: rgb(255, 255, 51); font-weight: bold;">yellow:
for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
style="color: rgb(255, 153, 51); font-weight: bold;">orange:
for linebreaks and…
j7uy5 | July 29, 2007In
general, the Corpus Callosum celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit.
This may be the best example of Yankee ingenuity I've ever
seen.
This
being a family-oriented site, it would be too risqué for me
to show the photo uncropped. Plus, my mother reads this
sometimes.
So the full monty is below the fold...
The
href="http://markmaynard.com/index.php/2007/07/29/24_hour_panty_people#comments">Artist's
post is here; the newspaper article
href="http://www.mlive.com/annarbor/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1185692833237380.xml&coll=2">here;
the online Ypsipanty
store is here…
j7uy5 | July 28, 2007President
George W. Bush will have a brief opportunity to know what it is like to
be in command, when VP Dick Cheney undergoes surgery to replace his
automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator. White House
spokesman Tony Snow told reporters, "This will be an historic occasion.
Under the terms of the 28th Amendent, for the first time
ever, VP Cheney will hand over power to the President." He
noted that it will be the first time the 28th Amendment has been
invoked. He did not, however, disclose the full contents of
the 28th Amendment, citing national security risks.
The Justice…
j7uy5 | July 27, 2007This
is a follow-up to my
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/07/this_is_what_they_are_hiding_1.php">post
from yesterday:
I'm not sure what "GOP fingerprints..." are, but I gather it was
important
to avoid them.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/voter-caging.JPG">
The image is from a PDF of a fax, then reduced to fit. Click on it if
it is hard to read. Better yet, go to
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072607A.shtml" rel="tag">Truthout
and get the link to the PDF (RNC emails). Then read the
transcripts of interviews with fired US…
j7uy5 | July 27, 2007
cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="500">
valign="middle" width="500">
OK,
here's another front-yard bird.
j7uy5 | July 27, 2007This
is why some in Congress are issuing subpoenas and talking about
contempt citations. This is why...
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062201291.html">William
Mercer
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052700896.html"
rel="tag">Sara Taylor
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/washington/16elston.html?ex=1339646400&en=1257150980027b82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss"
rel="tag">Michael Elston
href="http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/06/monica-goodling-resigns/"
rel="…
j7uy5 | July 27, 2007
This
bird was in my front yard a couple of days ago. It flew away
before I could get a better picture.
j7uy5 | July 26, 2007For
some reason, my Father used to say that when he made an
indisputable point of some significance. It is in the
href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=put+that+in+your+pipe+and+smoke+it"
rel="tag">Urban Dictionary in case you are curious
about the expression. It is also the title of
href="http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/17/put-that-in-your-pipe-and-smoke-it-fords-made-of-hemp/">a
post on Autoblog about a 1941 Ford made of organic plastic,
which had been made from plant material. Apparently they now
are researching a similar idea using hemp.
href="http://blog.…