j7uy5 | March 22, 2007What
can you say?
Arch Gen Psychiatry is one of those non-open-access journals that
publishes one free-access article in each issue. Usually the
free article is not particularly interesting; they do not seem to make
use of the open-access articles routinely to make material of general
public interest available to all. This is an exception.
At first, I was almost offended that this article was published.
Why bother to even pose the question? The question,
in this case, being whether there is any scientific basis for
distinguishing between torture and other bad things.
href="http://…
j7uy5 | March 21, 2007Yet
Another Critique of Pay for Performance
style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
The concept of Pay for Performance is one of those things that seems
sensible and appealing on the surface. But if there was ever
a better example of the maxim, "the devil is in the details," I haven't
seen that particular devil yet.
The latest critique is in the New England Journal. This has
already been mentioned at
href="http://burkemed.blogspot.com/2007/03/make-data-work.html">Medviews,
but I want to add some points.
style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
href="…
j7uy5 | March 20, 2007Not
only that, but the genetically modified "organism" is an engineered
HIV. At least, that is what researchers at Emory College in
London are contemplating.
style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1533745.ece">Disabled
Aids virus could provide cure for cystic fibrosis
style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
Mark
Henderson, Science Editor
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March
19, 2007
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From
The Times
style="font-…
j7uy5 | March 19, 2007Sunday,
I drank some unusually good tea. It was green tea, mostly,
with some added ingredients: young hyson and dragonwell teas, orange
peel, peppermint leaf, jasmine flowers, lemon verbena, marigold
flowers, blue malva flowers, and pineapple flavor.
It was Revolution Tropical Green Tea. The logo has the R in a
circle. like this:
If you are curious, their website is here:
href="http://www.revolutiontea.com/index.html">http://www.revolutiontea.com/index.html
It is hard to know why I liked this tea so much. Partly, it
is because of the complexity of the flavor, and the fact…
j7uy5 | March 19, 2007
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/photogalleries/wip-week20/index.html">National
Geographic POD
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Edinburgh,
Scotland, United Kingdom, March 13, 2007—For gentoo
penguins, it's all about who's got the best rocks. Like a human
offering jewelry, this gentoo male at the Edinburgh Zoo presents a
large pebble on Tuesday in hopes of winning over a female.
But
sometimes finding the flashiest gifts isn't enough. During the mating
season—which begins in March and lasts up to six
weeks—males suffering from "pebble envy" will steal…
j7uy5 | March 19, 2007Various
ScienceBloggers have been thumping all over Egnor's case, which is a
well-deserved thumping.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2007/03/18/sunday_paleopathology_blogging/?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=sublink">The
Egnor Challenge: Tooth Decay and Human Origins (afarensis)
href="http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/03/pigheaded_egnorance_antibiotic.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=sublink">Pigheaded
Egnorance, Antibiotic Resistance, and Tautologies (MarkCC)
href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/03/…
j7uy5 | March 17, 2007
I know people come here to read about psychiatry, mental health,
neuroscience, and political/social issues related to those topics.
No, scratch that, I have not idea why people come here.
But this post is straight politics. Well, it's
politics and a little sociological musing and opinion.
The
cartoon came in an email from the left-leaning Center for
American Progress. They rarely send me anything, so
I figure they figure this is a big issue. The cartoon is
window dressing. The article they link to is not.
href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/now_you_tell_us.…
j7uy5 | March 16, 2007
href="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/03/science_spring_showdown_2007_t.php#more">
class="inset" alt=""
src="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/upload/2007/03/showdownsmall.jpg"
align="left" border="0" height="144" width="144">
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I must admit,
I am pretty much a spoilsport when it comes to sports. Even
though my colleagues have been stocking up and draining down PRBs all
week, and chomping at their bits, and chafing at their straps, and
frothing at their mouths, and gnashing at their teeth, and stomping at
their feet about the
href="…
j7uy5 | March 16, 2007A
while back, I posted a picture of this area's most expensive Pizza,
from Pizza
House in Ann Arbor. That one was only about $25.
Now I see there is one that is a wee bit more than that:
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN1429852020070315">Meet
the $1,000 pizza..
Thu Mar 15,
2007 2:07PM EDT
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - A New York restaurateur has cooked up the most world's
most extravagant pizza -- a $1,000 pizza topped with six sorts of
caviar and fresh lobster.
Nino
Selimaj, who runs six pizza restaurants in New York, on Wednesday
unveiled his Luxury…
j7uy5 | March 15, 2007Everyone's
heard of blue lasers by now. Some people have them in their
homes. The reason they are important, is that blue light has
a shorter wavelength than the red lasers that were used in the first CD
and DVD devices. The shorter wavelength means that the laser
can see smaller dots. Smaller dots mean that more information
can be packed into the same space. That means more
information can be put on a DVD is a blue laser is used, compared to a
red laser.
A few years ago, companies started working on ultraviolet
light-emitting diodes and lasers. Because UV light has even
shorter…
j7uy5 | March 14, 2007
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901894.html">Don't
flush your old prescriptions, or other medications.
They end up in the water, and that is bad. Just
throw them away. If you are concerned about someone digging
through your trash, then mix them with used kitty litter or some other
noxious substance.
Also, remember that those prescription labels have personal information
of them. You might want to obliterate that before you throw
out the bottles.
And of course, the federal government has
href="http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/…
j7uy5 | March 14, 2007The
playoffs are not even underway in the 2007 Science Spring Showdown, yet
already the teams are maneuvering for any advantage they can get.
The match-ups are so even, that everyone knows it is the
intangibles that will make a difference.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/03/chair_bracket_here_we_go_scien.php">
alt=""
src="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/upload/2007/03/benbracket.jpg"
border="0" height="399" width="480">
In
the highly-competitive "Chair" Bracket, the world's scientific
community has its eyes riveted on the IAU vs. Pluto game. As
href="http…
j7uy5 | March 13, 2007I
really liked Jonah's post at The Frontal Cortex,
about
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/dreaming_smelling_and_memory.php">Dreaming,
Smelling and Memory. But I have to take issue with
his treatment of the use of dream interpretation in Freudian
psychotherapy.
I know this is a nit-picky point, and is completely tangential to the
point of his post. But this close to Piday, we need to be
thinking about things like tangents.
It is true that psychoanalysts refer to dreams as "the royal road to
the unconscious." It is true that the interpretation of
dreams can be an…
j7uy5 | March 12, 2007The draft for
the
href="http://www.ipcc.ch/">IPCC report for this
year paints a distinctly disturbing picture of the near future.
As reported in
href="http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-03-11-climate-report_N.htm?POE=NEWISVA">USA
Today (among many others)...
Tens
of millions of Latin Americans who now
have water will be short of it in less than 20 years.
By
2080, between 200 million and 600 million
people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.
About
100 million people each year could be
flooded by 2080 by rising seas. [Think Central…
j7uy5 | March 12, 2007One
of the embarrassing things about Michigan Politics is that many of the
national politicians, while generally fairly progressive, do not get on
board with mandates for cars that pollute less.
The auto makers argue that it would take too long to develop the
technology to meet higher fuel economy standards, etc.
But now they have been proved wrong.
href="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/new-vehicle-design-surpasses-0011.html">New
Vehicle Design Surpasses State Global Warming Standards
Engineers
Design Affordable, Clean Car Using Existing Technology and Fuels…
j7uy5 | March 11, 2007
There really isn't much to say about this, if you adhere to the notion
that if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at
all...
src="http://www.mlive.com/images/article/grp_news.gif"
alt="Grand Rapids Press" border="0" height="50"
width="333">
href="http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-2/117359923256810.xml&coll=6">Verdict
of perjury
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Conviction
of vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby last week had little to do
with the core allegations in the CIA leak affair, but it said something
big about American law…
j7uy5 | March 11, 2007This
is from a meme; Tikistitch has put up a list of the "
href="http://tikistitch.livejournal.com/570773.html">Most
Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years".
I got this from
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/08/essential_science_fiction.php">Coturnix,
who got it from
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/uh_yeah_i_guess_i_do_read_some.php">Myers.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/03/sf_and_me.php">John
Wilkins has done it, too.
The idea is to put the ones you've read in boldface. One
thing I don't like about this is…
j7uy5 | March 10, 2007What
would happen if Tux went to a famous portrait artist to get a
makeover?
href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/modigliani/">Modigliani
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli">Botticelli
This was done using the method
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/patches_modiglianized.php">described
previously.
j7uy5 | March 9, 2007
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902082.html">
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902082.html">Privatized
Walter Reed Workforce Gets Scrutiny
Army
Facility Lost Dozens Of Maintenance Workers
By Steve Vogel
and Renae Merle
Washington
Post Staff Writers
Saturday,
March 10, 2007; Page A03
The
scandal over treatment of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center has focused attention on the Army's decision to privatize the
facilities support workforce at the hospital, a move…