j7uy5 | March 9, 2009
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href="http://xkcd.com/552/">
(comic from
href="http://xkcd.com/552/">kxcd)
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alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
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This post
will discuss some findings about the factors that
are correlated to clinical response to
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clozapine">clozapine
(Clozaril® , FazaClo® ).
Clozapine is a drug used to treat psychosis. It usually is
used for…
j7uy5 | March 5, 2009Obama has made
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030200371.html?wprss=rss_nation">two
important appointments, to positions that will influence healthcare
policy. The attention so far has been focused on
href="http://www.governor.ks.gov/">Kathleen Sebelius, who is in
line to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, assuming she is
confirmed by the Senate. Sebelius already has
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/god-and-country/2009/03/03/kathleen-sebelius-and-the-fight-over-whos-truly-catholic.html">attracted
controversy, coming under…
j7uy5 | March 3, 2009At first I was happy to see some good news on the Internet, a
refreshing break from the avalanche of bad stuff rolling down every
peak.
href="http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/03/02/fewer_children_have_high_lead_levels/">Fewer
children have high lead levels
Associated Press / March 2, 2009
CHICAGO - In a stunning improvement in children's health, far fewer
children have high lead levels than 20 years ago, according to new
government research.
Federal researchers credited the improvement on aggressive efforts to
reduce children's exposure to lead in old house paint, soil…
j7uy5 | March 1, 2009There you go again, Mr. George Will.
In case you've somehow missed the fray, George Will has posted two (
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html">2/15/2009,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/AR2009022602906.html">2/29/09 2/27/2009
) columns containing misinformation about climate change. These
have been debunked and otherwise criticized on
href="http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=george+will&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=search">ScienceBlogs
and elsewhere…
j7uy5 | February 27, 2009
href="http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/03/02/090302po_poem_cohen">In
The New Yorker
Poetry
A
Street
by Leonard Cohen
[...]
I see the Ghost of Culture
With numbers on his wrist
Salute some new conclusion
Which all of us have missed
[...]
The ghost of culture is so much wiser than us all.
j7uy5 | February 26, 2009Psychiatrists of old, never gave advice. But here's some advice:
And never trust with your money anyone making a potential
bonus.
From
href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa89be08-02aa-11de-b58b-000077b07658.html">Nassim
Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan; HT:
href="http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/02/february-25-2009-put-it-all-on-red.html">Automatic
Earth.
How bank bonuses let us all down
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: February 24 2009 19:53
One of the arguments one hears in the compensation debate
is that the bonus system used by Wall Street - as John Thain,…
j7uy5 | February 25, 2009When Bush announced the Global and Perpetual War on Terror, and shifted
funding away from environmental, worker, and consumer safety functions,
I speculated that "the terrorists" would not have to do anything to
kill us: our own corporations would do the job for them. This has
turned out to be the case, many times, and here is yet another
example:
Feds searching for CEO in case of tainted syringes
February 24, 2009, 11:46 p.m.
The Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. - For months, prosecutors say, technicians in
the gloom of a run-down North Carolina plant prepared life-sustaining
syringes and…
j7uy5 | February 25, 2009Folks, please help me understand
href="http://www.michnews.com/J_Grant_Swank_Jr/430598.shtml">this:
Why did God create Israel in 1948?
He did so, not for the Jews' sake primarily, but to vindicate His holy
name.
I guess you have to read the whole thing to get the full effect.
Well, maybe not. None of it is any more rational than the passage
above. Even if you believe in God, why would you think that God
needs to vindicate his name in the eyes of us pitiful mortals? It
just doesn't make any sense.
j7uy5 | February 19, 2009The NEJM has published a provocative article about the ethics of the
globalization of clinical trials. (The article is openly
accessible.) The big issue is this: clinical trials are very
expensive. It is cheaper to do them overseas, but this raises
questions of scientific integrity, as well as questions of ethical
integrity.
Ethical
and Scientific Implications of the Globalization of Clinical Research
Economic globalization is an important development of the past half
century. Proponents of globalization highlight the benefits of greater
economic growth and prosperity; critics point to…
j7uy5 | February 18, 2009The UN Office of Drugs and Crime brings us
href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-DRUGS.php">this
cheerful news:
VIENNA: The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has
indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep
banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as
saying on Sunday.
Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an
interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often
became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of
control last year…
j7uy5 | February 16, 2009This is a photo of an embarrassing misattribution. It features a
quote often misattributed to Charles Darwin: It is not the
strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
rather the one most adaptable to change.
title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative Commons license associated with this image.">
src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif"
alt="There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image."
style="border: medium none ;" align="left" border="0" height="31"
width="88">photo by
href="http://www.flickr.com/…
j7uy5 | February 13, 2009A minor controversy has erupted over the health care provisions that
were slipped in to the economic stimulus bill without discussion.
It has provisions such that..
Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a
federal system...One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of
Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure
your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and
cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and "guide" your doctor's
decisions.
This verbiage is found in a
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039…
j7uy5 | February 10, 2009The new Congress and new Administration passed a law already. It
was barely notied by the media. It is a reauthorization and
expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP). Given the expected resistance to major changes in
health care, it was astonishingly easy for Congress and the President
to get this done.
Details are in an open-access article in NEJM:
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0900461">Expanding
Coverage for Children -- The Democrats' Power and SCHIP Reauthorization
John K. Iglehart
NEJM February 4, 2009
(doi:10.1056/NEJMp0900461)…
j7uy5 | February 10, 2009Wouldn't you know it? Right after I post a compilation of
graphical representations of the
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-naw-obama10-2009feb10,0,7686262.story">winter
of our hardship, out come some more (HT:
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/02/why-we-need-a-big-fiscal-boost-program.html">DeLong,
href="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/02/job-losses-during-recessons.html">CR).
The first shows the absolute number of job losses in this recession,
compared to all other post-WWII recessions. It looks bad.
But, to put this in…
j7uy5 | February 9, 2009Just like I was saying. HT:
href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/financial-times-martin-wolf-team-obama.html">Naked
Capitalism. With videos.
This is not from some marignalized doomer. It is from the
Financial Times.
j7uy5 | February 9, 2009This chart shows what the stock market had been doing since the summer
of 2007, when the effects of the economic crisis were openly recognized
by the Administration. You can see that that various
interventions have resulted in brief improvements, but nothing
sustained. The overall trend clearly is downward.
Unfortunately, I can't recall where I got the graph (I saved it a
few days ago, decided to not write about it, then changed my mind).
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Now, let's compare that to the historical record. What happened
after 1929? The chart below compares the Dow during the…
j7uy5 | February 5, 2009I used to wonder why we, the people of the USA, tolerate our
government. Then I read
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=au4Y7Cudw2Xo&refer=home">this:
“Front-running isn’t
who’s getting the benefit; it’s who’s
paying the price,” says Henning, noting that
Madoff’s market- making customers expected the firm to obtain
the best price available when buying or selling stocks. Instead, their
interests were apparently subordinated to those of Madoff’s
investment clients.
Front-Running
While front-running is illegal, it didn’t horrify
Madoff’s champions…
j7uy5 | February 2, 2009This needs to be replicated before any conclusions can be drawn, but it
is encouraging. 21 patients with relapsing-remitting
href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html?scp=1-spot&sq=multiple%20sclerosis&st=cse">multiple
sclerosis, in whom conventional treatment failed, were given a stem
cell treatment. 17 patients improved; 16 had no relapse at all;
none got worse. They were studied over a period of two to four
years. The study was published in The Lancet Neurology, (
Early Online Publication, 30 January 2009) $ for full access:…
j7uy5 | January 28, 2009Our man in Chicago turned me on to Charlie Stross. Little did I
know, Stross' writings have become something of a sensation in the
academic world.
One of the first blogs I read was Crooked
Timber. I think it was our man in Chicago who showed me the
way there, IIRC.
Anyway, Crooked Timber has a
href="http://crookedtimber.org/2009/01/27/charles-stross-book-event/">new
Crooked Timber book event, about Stross' books. There are
essays by the famous bloggers Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, et alia.
Starting off with a heavy hitter, we've got
href="http://www.henryfarrell.net/stross/2008/…
j7uy5 | January 27, 2009On 26 January 2008, major employers in the USA announced 60,000 jobs
would be lost. The market responded positively, as it often
does. The S&P 500 gained 0.56%.
Clearly the best thing that businesses could do would be to fire
everyone. A quick Google search indicates that there are about
150 million jobs in the USA. If everyone lost their jobs, the
S&P should gain 1,400%.
At that point, anyone with just $35,000 in a retirement fund could
retire tomorrow with a half-million dollars, assuming their fund did as
well as the S&P 500.
Oh, but if nobody were working, that…