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"I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career...

I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate."

—Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Why should we have eight hours' sleep? 

"A survey is suggesting that only a tiny minority of us are getting eight hours' sleep a night. But do we really need that much?" (BBC)

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San Francisco Doctors want Pap test for gay men 

"The goal is to push back rising rates of anal cancer, a preventable disease that has increased 37 percent in the United States since a decade ago, when the total number of cancer cases increased only 1 percent.

Anal Pap smears would help doctors spot precancerous lesions and wipe them out before they have a chance to turn malignant, say supporters of widespread use of the exam among gay men. But nationwide, doctors have been reluctant to embrace the screening test, partly because there is disagreement over whether it's effective or even necessary." (SF Chronicle)

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Colleges face surge of troubled students 

"Reasons for the surge include the Americans with Disabilities Act, which gives mentally ill students the right to be at college, and increasingly sophisticated medications which enable them to function better than in the past. Recent surveys and studies underscore the scope of the increase..." (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

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After Suicide, a Window on a Patient’s Other Self 

A psychiatrist encounters her patient on MySpace after his death: "I had thought of him as struggling under the constant hold of hallucinations. But he had ignored his hallucinations long enough to write of a different yet equally true self here, and he had found friends who identified him not by psychiatric symptoms but by astrological sign. In this world, he was a Pisces, not a schizophrenic." — Elissa Ely (New York Times )

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Friday, April 20, 2007

Blogger and Podcaster 

Are you an "aspiring new media titan", as the cover says? Then this is the periodical for you! First issue of Blogger and Podcaster magazine. So "blogging" (as you know, I have always eschewed the term and insisted on calling this a weblog) has made it so big it has its own slick new 'old media'-style rag. For better or worse, it seems to make its appeal to everything FmH is not. However, the user interface is interesting. Click on the upper right corner of the page to turn the page ('old media' style).

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'Devastating' Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming 

"The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called 'Buying the War,' which marks the return of 'Bill Moyers Journal.' E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week.

While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility. " (Editor and Publisher thanks to Micheline)

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When a Brain Forgets Where Memory Is 

New York Times psychology reporter Jane Brody on the fascinating phenomenon of dissociative fugue:

"People with this problem suddenly and unexpectedly take leave of their usual physical surroundings and embark on a journey that can last as little as a few hours or as long as several months. During the fugue state, individuals completely lose their identity, later assuming a new one. They don’t know their real names or anything about their former lives, and they do not recognize friends or family. They may not even remember how they got to where they are.

While loss of memory can occur for many reasons, dissociative fugue has no direct physical or medical cause. Rather, it is precipitated by a severe stress or emotionally traumatic event that is so painful the mind seems to shut down and erase everything, like a failed computer hard drive."


Several years ago on FmH, I wrote with fascination of an apparent case of dissociative amnesia, a largely mute piano-playing young man institutionalized in a British mental hospital after apparently washing up on a beach. But, although they appear with regularity as literary or cinematographic devices, fugue states are encountered rarely if ever by clinical psychiatrists like myself in the course of our work. Of course, an exhaustive effort to rule out other, more neurologically based, causes of acute memory failure must be made. At the other end of the spectrum, so too it is at times difficult to distinguish fugue states from more consciously motivated attempts to deny one's identity.

I am not alone in wondering if fugue is a disease of modernity, requiring an emphasis on the self and personal sense of identity to shape a subconsciously-motivated attempt to lose one's self. I wonder what effect the modern challenges to identity, such as the influence of mass media on identity, the diffusion of the self through online presence, or the threat of identity theft, will do the the manifestations of dissociative fugue.

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Shopping with a Conscience 

by Duncan Clark & Richie Unterberger: "...a no-nonsense look at the in's and out's of the plethora of choices you can make to change and manage your impact." (Cool Tools)

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Kucinich to launch Cheney impeachment push on April 25 

"Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the former mayor of Cleveland who is seeking the 2008 Democratic nomination for president for the second time, has selected a date to introduce articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

A source who asked to remain anonymous told RAW STORY that the articles of impeachment would be introduced next week." (Raw Story )
This may be seen as an audacious grandstanding move by Kucinich, with his indefatiguable Presidential aspirations. On the other hand, if successful it would remove the major stumbling block to the impeachment of George Bush.

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Got nicotine? 

Madam Fathom is the pseudonym of a neuroscience PhD student with a weblog about her (I assume it's a her) field. This is an interesting post about the potential benefits of nicotine that offers a particularly lucid picture of brain function.

"There is a large body of research showing that nicotine, the ingredient that drives people to addiction, improves cognitive function in humans and laboratory animals. The most robust effect demonstrated in human smokers is an enhanced ability to sustain attention to a task for a prolonged period of time, an ability inextricably linked to learning and memory. Of course, learning and memory involve a number of processes (acquisition, encoding, storage, and retrieval), but the ability to concentrate on particular stimuli and screen out the rest is critical for the success of this operation.

Nicotine's beneficial effects on these "higher" cognitive functions have prompted efforts to develop nicotinic treatments for diseases associated with cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. However, this area of drug development is impeded by the complexity of nicotine's actions, including the observation that cognitive improvements have only been reliably detected in either smokers or the cognitively impaired. In contrast, nicotine tends to have deleterious effects on cognitive performance in "normal" non-smokers. (Another factor hampering the development of nicotine-based therapies is that they offer pharmaceutical companies little potential for financial gain, as nicotine sources are easy to come by.)..."

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Violent, antisocial, beyond redemption? 

"Whether you think of them as mad or bad, they are certainly dangerous to know. All societies contain a few extremely violent individuals, who are either psychopaths or have a related severe personality disorder. With no concern about the harm they inflict, little can be done to change their behaviour, psychiatrists say.

Now the UK government is challenging this dogma in the hope of protecting the public from these highly risky people. It has already altered criminal law to allow certain violent offenders to be given indefinite jail sentences. Over the coming weeks, parliament will debate legislation that could broaden the definition of mental disorders and increase existing powers to detain such people for treatment " (New Scientist)

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Benefits of Antidepressants Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents 

A new analysis adds to the evidence that antidepressants are effective in young people, prompting some to renew questions about a 'black box' warning required on the drugs since 2004.

The most comprehensive survey yet finds that the benefits of antidepressants outweigh the risks in children and teens during the first few months of treatment. The finding comes three years after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered pharmaceutical companies to put black warning labels—the strongest possible—on antidepressants cautioning that the drugs may increase the risk of suicidal behavior in kids." (Scientific American)

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The Question Mark in Harper Hall 

"He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses.. It was like talking to a hole sometimes.... Everything emptied out and seemed very dark when he entered."

Nikki Giovanni, the feminist poet and teacher at Virginia Tech who stirred the campus convocation yesterday with a poem, had Cho in a poetry class two years ago — and it wasn't long before she had him tossed out. "There was something mean about this boy," she said. "Troubled kids get drunk and jump off buildings. It was the meanness that bothered me." Giovanni recalled that Cho came to class in dark sunglasses and a hat. And every day, from very early in the semester, she would ask him to remove the one and then the other. "We would have this sort of ritual," she said.

Giovanni recalled that Cho "was very intimidating to my other students." Eventually, other kids began skipping class because of his behavior. The poet then wrote creative writing department boss Lucinda Roy a letter — in part to create a record — asking Roy to remove him from class. Giovanni said Cho turned in material that wasn't poetry but just junk. "He was writing weird things," she recalled. "It was terrible.... It was just intimidating." (Time)

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Bolton: US has no obligation to post-invasion Iraq 

Andrew Sullivan comments on a BBC interview with John Bolton: "The BBC's interviewers are not as deferent as some in America. Paxman is among the most aggressive. What staggers me about this clip is Bolton's point-blank view that the US had no responsibility to impose order after the invasion, and no responsibility for security within the country. Bolton actually says that the only error Bush really made was not giving the Iraqis 'a copy of the Federalist papers and saying, 'Good luck.'' Yes, he says he's exaggerating for effect, but he is conveying the gist of the policy. The casual recklessness and arrogance of these people never cease to amaze. The world is theirs' to play with - and the victims of predictable and predicted violence are left to help themselves."

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? 

"It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up." (Independent.UK)

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

There and Back Again 

"Last year, Midas, the muffler company, in honor of its fiftieth anniversary, gave an award for America’s longest commute to an engineer at Cisco Systems, in California, who travels three hundred and seventy-two miles—seven hours—a day, from the Sierra foothills to San Jose and back. “It’s actually exhilarating,” the man said of his morning drive." (New Yorker)

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