Thursday, December 18. 2008
I feel badly for this young Psychiatric resident at Baylor, who discussed a mutual romantic attraction to a patient with a supervisor (my bolds): “I think you need to take this one to Dr Gabbard. I have never seen a resident with this problem before.” “Never!?” I thought, “I’m the only one!?” I worried incessantly about what was wrong with me to feel so incapacitated, unable to feel in control of the therapy in this particular case. I kept thinking in circular fashion, “I should not have this problem. I must stop it. I can’t stop it. I should not have this problem”—and on and on.
 Well, I am glad she finally got to Dr. Gabbard, because he is one smart guy. Still, I found her supervisor's reponse deeply disheartening and soulless - if not neutered.
Fact is, as everybody knows, humans are prone to affection, attraction and attachment and there is nothing necessarily different about whether that occurs in a shrink's office, or between a businessman and his secretary, teacher and student, clergyman and congregant, trainer and client, doctor and nurse, lawyer and client, classmates, or business associates and office colleagues. Romantic feelings in offices (like many other emotions) are ubiquitous. Sometimes it's mutual. The proximity and intimacy of some associations naturally builds more closeness than the usual and more contentless (but sometimes powerful) chemistry of strangers in bars. When you put people together, things of all sorts happen. Analysts and psychotherapists have the peculiar and challenging task of figuring those things out rather than acting on them. So rather than viewing this resident's issue as a "problem," I see it as a healthy sign of vitality. Humans are, among many other things, relentlessly sexual machines and attachment machines, and no PC baloney, laws, psychoanalytic exploration, or rules could or should ever change that. Obviously, acting on such feelings can destroy the doctor's role, potentially ruin a doctor's life, and end a patient's hope for real internal improvement. That's why analytically-oriented therapists maintain various sorts of rules and boundaries. The doc's gratification is meant to come from doing a job and from getting paid for it, but it's impossible and undesirable to remove the human elements - emotions, fantasies, etc. People fall for each other all the time: it's basic biology. Mr. Spock would not make a good shrink. I would go so far as to say that a shrink who never has such emotional experiences with patients is too robotic to practice in the field of intense and confusing human emotion. Of course, one must ask oneself about transference and countertransference and transference resistance and acting out and patient seductive manipulations and the state of one's own psychology and all that stuff we analytically-oriented shrinks get paid the big bucks to think about - but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The world is full of charming and appealing people. Can a shrink effectively treat a patient they have lasting romantic feelings about, whether it's mutual or not? Probably not, if a chat with a colleague and a little introspection can't deal with it. Refer them out, same as one would with a patient you strongly disliked or distrusted so you can get back to doing your job. (If any resourceful reader can figure out how to forward this post to the honest Baylor Psychiatry resident, Dr. Raymer, who wrote the linked piece, I think she might appreciate it.)
What ails literary studies? It's by a lit prof at Annapolis, Bruce Fleming. He begins: The major victory of professors of literature in the last half-century — the Great March from the New Criticism through structuralism, deconstruction, Foucauldianism, and multiculturalism — has been the invention and codification of a professionalized study of literature. We've made ourselves into a priestly caste: To understand literature, we tell students, you have to come to us. Yet professionalization is a pyrrhic victory: We've won the battle but lost the war. We've turned revelation into drudgery, shut ourselves in airless rooms, and covered over the windows.
It's good. Read it.
Wednesday, December 17. 2008
Once again, posting early because busy in the AM. Outside of the finance biz, lots of work in NYC this year. Just a photo suggestion for the fellas: If you have any $ left, and she is kind and gentle, worries about your contentment, speaks soothingly to you after a tough day, and takes good care of you, why not give her some diamonds?  Fairfield, CT: What sort of dumb town would put 14% of their pension assets into a single hedge fund? And to read about that Orthopedic group is pathetic. Even docs should know better than that. Are these guys going to do hips and knees into their 90s?
The return of the Old Left. Oh man, not again. How many times can they crawl out of their grave? When the economy is good, taxes go up because supposedly people can afford them. When the economy is poor, taxes go up to cover govt deficits. See NYS for example. But people can't raise their incomes to cover them, can they? Where's the $ supposed to come from? For shame! Illegally cutting down trees in a nature preserve. Are they legally culpable? Secular decline of the semiconductor biz, plus the Kondratieff Wave Theory Iowahawk: My Five-Year Plan Failed Rangel Watch: Yet another Rangel scam. Will it ever end? No doubt there wil be more to come. It's the Rangel Circus. Obama talks good, doesn't he? Let's watch the grammar, O, or we'll set a bad example. Only for those without Econ 101. Coyote Watching TV ruins womens' love lives. Want perfection? Try a different planet. Nude models on strike in Paris. Some strikes are good. Via Insty, this is both smart and wise (a rare combo): MATTHEW KAMINSKI: Don’t expect global Obamania to last. “One hates to spoil a good party, but here’s a bet that’s far safer these days than a U.S. Treasury bill: Even with Obama at the White House, they won’t really like us any more than before. It’s not because America’s not a special country, a City upon a Hill, from the Pilgrims to Obama, the Blagojevich couple and other American horrors notwithstanding. It’s because it is. And as ever, our earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness–not to mention its reality in and of itself–is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism. . . . The departure of George Bush will change the mood music in America’s relations with the world, but–here’s the heartbreaker for our romantics–it won’t change how most people see America. Because, for ‘anti’ masses, it’s not really about us; it’s about them.”
| Krauthammer on Caroline Kennedy. Is this a family entitlement? Are they really down to a choice between JFK's daughter and Mario Cuomo's son? What are their qualifications? And what happened to her last name? Thought it was Kennedy-Schlossberg. Did Mr. Schlossberg go away? It's the Dem Circus, coming soon to your town. |
Looking for Christmas books? Check out Bolano. One quote from the Chronicle review of his work: Such is the craze around the world for Bolaño's oeuvre that almost everything he wrote is being made available in translation at a dizzying pace. In English, his luminous short stories — Last Evenings on Earth — and his masterful novellas — Distant Star and By Night in Chile — have made it into the canon in Spanish departments and creative-writing programs. In 2007 his magnum opus, The Savage Detectives — which had been awarded the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the highest distinction for a novel in the Hispanic world, in 1999 — was offered in translation. The story of Arturo Belano (the author's alter ego) and another visceral realist, who search for the mysterious founder of the movement, it has been embraced by critics as proof that literature might be losing readers, but it isn't losing its guts.
He's not for everybody.
Good news from DU HQ this week: Despite a global economic downturn, DU supporters rallied to raise the largest revenue in DU history: $261 million. Of that, Ducks Unlimited spent a record $231 million on its conservation mission. That’s an 88 percent efficiency rating, which sets another record for Ducks Unlimited and exceeds our long-term goal to spend 80 cents of every dollar on DU’s conservation mission. And that’s the bottom line – habitat conservation.
Last year, in the United States alone, Ducks Unlimited conserved nearly 300,000 acres of the country’s most critical breeding, migration and wintering habitats. This annual report highlights several of those habitats and key donors who helped make DU’s work possible. We tip our hats to the people highlighted here and to all the DU members, volunteers and partners across the continent. We’ve come a long way together.
It is gratifying and enjoyable to support this fine organization. Many of us at Maggie's are happy to be part of it.
it's waiting for its brief period of glory before it dies: 
Cornell Medical Center's Dr. Richard Friedman on the crisis of confidence for financial workers. One quote: ...the relationship between self-esteem and achievement can be circular. Some argue that that the best way to build self-esteem is to tell people at every turn how nice, smart and talented they are. That is probably a bad idea if you think that self-esteem and recognition should be the result of accomplishment; you feel good about yourself, in part, because you have done something well. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine people taking the first step without first having some basic notion of self-confidence.
Liberal Catholicism and Liberal Protestantism at Inside Catholic, by David Carlin, author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America. He begins: Catholic liberals (by which I mean theological liberals, not political liberals) never cease to amaze me. On the one hand, they appear to have a sincere devotion to their religion. On the other, they campaign for moral and theological changes that, if carried into effect, would tend to destroy their Church. Why do I say this? Because the history of Protestantism has made it perfectly clear what happens when a Christian church turns liberal or modern. Unless a Catholic is quite unfamiliar with the sad history of liberal Protestantism, he would not call for the theological liberalization or modernization of Catholicism. In America, liberal Protestantism has always had three characteristics: (1) It is an attempt to find a compromise or via media between traditional Christianity and the fashionable anti-Christianity of the day. (2) In seeking this compromise, it drops certain traditional Christian beliefs as so much excess baggage. (3) To atone, so to speak, for this weakening of doctrine, it intensifies its moral commitments. Three great "moments" in the history of American liberal Protestantism illustrate what I mean here. The first was the emergence of Unitarianism in the first quarter of the 19th century. The fashionable anti-Christianity of the day was Deism -- as found, for instance, in one of the writings of Tom Paine (The Age of Reason). So Unitarianism, in pursuit of a via media, dropped the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, Original Sin, and a few other Christian doctrines. To make up for these discards, it strongly committed itself to the anti-slavery cause.
Sea levels would drop. Here's why. You can test it at home. Addendum: Well, it's almost true. Slightly off with salt water.
When the media uses a scary number, it is because the percentage is small. When the media uses a percentage without using a base number, it is because the number is small. Don Surber
 Do you view college as an investment? If so, see how they stack up in returns on capital.
Would you buy a new car from this company? Why government spending doesn't help in recessions. Betsy. (It's because the money has to come from somewhere.) The Ten Dopiest Leaders of 2008. h/t, Insty Caroline Kennedy? What's she ever done? I guess Teddy wants it done. Major study finds no relation between school spending and achievement Christmas Books: Thomas Sowell Fed rates to zero. That is dramatic, but how about -1%? Kudlow says only tax cuts can help. Pin-up from Theo
Tuesday, December 16. 2008
 Confessions of a Community College Dean addresses a debate: are teachers "workers" or "professionals"? One quote:
I’d argue that how one understands tenure will have a great deal to do with which position one takes. I’ve suggested before that it’s reasonable to have tenure or unions, but not both, and this debate helped me crystallize that sentiment. Tenure is a lifetime commitment by the institution. (Since the badly-misguided repeal of a mandatory retirement age, this is literally true.) To suggest that a lifetime commitment somehow doesn’t carry with it some sort of reciprocal obligation strikes me as narcissistic, if not laughable. Legally, tenure amounts to ownership of a job. Having tenure and a union amounts to negotiating against yourself, an ethically dubious proposition worthy of an Illinois governor. Being insulated for life against the vagaries of the economy is a privilege, and a rare one; for that privilege to bring with it a certain responsibility for stewardship of the institution is only fair.
I always thought of teachers as professionals, but not since the unions seduced some of them. And I have never really understood the concept of tenure at all, especially in a world in which profs and teachers can be paid quite well, and receive perks and pensions that most other jobs lack. I happen to be a partner in a firm, but the Exec. Committee could let me go tomorrow if they wanted to and I would be on the street like every other working stiff. Nothin' wrong with that.
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor. H.L.Mencken (h/t, Vanderleun)
Rush likes to joke about enviro-Nazis, but I didn't know how Greenie the Nazis actually were. And no, I am not invoking Godwin's Law here.
 A third of hedge funds will go down.
Grim tidings for the news biz. McArdle It's about morality: Thatcher's defense of free markets Politics as fashion statement: Gitmo lawyers and the new Radical Chic. Good grief. Our enemies are collapsing. Dick Morris Neoneo observes, as we have been doing for years, the growing numbers of vocal climate skeptics. She links Sen. Inhofe's most recent press blog. One quote from that: “Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
Related: Who's in denial? Am Thinker Quoted in the WSJ today: When folks like Mr. Madoff create a Ponzi scheme, it's called fraud; when the Federal government creates a Ponzi scheme, it's called Social Security.”
Monday, December 15. 2008
From Bill Gross in Fortune: While 2008 will probably be best known as the year that global stock markets had their values cut in half, it was really much, much more. It was a year in which every major asset class - stocks, real estate, commodities, even high-yield bonds - suffered significant double-digit percentage losses, resulting in the destruction of over $30 trillion of paper wealth. To blame this on subprime mortgages alone would be to dismiss an era of leveraging that encompassed derivative structures of all types, embodying a belief that economic growth was always and everywhere a certainty and that asset prices never go down.
another quote: The outcome essentially depends on the ability of the Obama administration to rejuvenate capitalism's "animal spirits" by substituting the benevolent fist of government for the now invisible hand of Adam Smith. Federal spending and guarantees in the trillions of dollars will be required to fill the gap created by the deleveraging of private balance sheets. In turn, lenders and investors alike must begin to assume risk as opposed to stuffing money in modern-day investment mattresses. The process will take time. Twelve months of the Obama Nation will not be sufficient to heal the damage ...
Hmm. I thought the "hand" was meant to be invisible. I think it's working now, slowly grinding away and doing what it needs to do to adjust and correct for excesses. I tend to be skeptical every time I hear people say "This time it's different..." We're in a corrective recession, and we'll emerge eventually. And America will emerge first, because we have the most dynamic and creative economy in the world. The fantasy that somehow the government can spend the US out of a global recession is, I think absurd. But they have to appear to be doing something. To put it all in context, I borrowed this 20 yr. chart from My Trader's Journal, up through Oct 3. Today the S&P closed around 870, so we have been below the trend line for a while. Whatever that means. To my eyes, this chart shows a double bubble, and when the next one happens, I'm getting off at the top. 
Bernard Goldberg's amusing speech on Bias Like Never Before. One quote from the Q&A: My first job, four days out of college was with the Associated Press. In those days, it was, "Just the facts, ma'am," kind of news organization. Now, they actually have a policy. It's not by accident. It's a policy that they want their reporters to inject what they call accountability journalism into pieces. Accountability journalism, in plain English, is opinion journalism. And I've read stories on the AP wire that are as biased as can be. Nobody would argue, but that's what they want.
So when the AP, which is 162-year-old organization, decides that objectivity is old hat, it's yesterday, it's not exciting enough, I'm telling you, there's not going to be much left of the mainstream media to throw over the side of the ship. They're doing it themselves.
But that's another point, if I could make it briefly. When they finally are so irrelevant that none of us really give a damn about them, you know who they're going to blame. They're going to blame all of us, that we somehow poisoned the well, that conservatives turned the public on them, but the final wound will be self-inflicted. They're doing it to themselves.
 "Depression lust" on the part of the press.
World's most beautiful woman is Russian. It's true. They make beauties there. It's one of the few things Russia does well. Update on the Marc Dreier investment scam. And re the Madoff scam, look at the "sophisticated investors" he fooled. When a deal sounds too good to be true... I love the way Bush handled this press guy. The Brussels Journal and Tribal Nationalism: LGF Why are we still in Afghanistan? Beethoven and the Illuminati How Tom Daschle could destroy new drug development The change we wanted? Now Richardson under investigation. Dems have a greed problem. Ask Dr. Helen: How can I keep my students from becoming little Marxists?
We are still interested in more of your favorite venison recipes. Put 'em in the comments on that post, and we'll post it annually towards the end of deer season. Here's some venison on the hoof from a friend's Cuddeback scouting camera in Michigan earlier in the fall: 
 Watt's Up notes:
This is almost enough to make me turn in my Skeptic union card, but increased CO2 warming the earth makes some sense to me, the magnitude is in question. The fact that polar sea ice not melting is not an insignificant point. It is also important to realize that the changes are too small to fit with IPCC statements about the trend. Unlike trees, ice does make a good thermometer. I can’t say this strongly enough— This is a strong indication of substantial errors in the computer models and temperature data which needs to be addressed before we throw what’s left of our global economy to the wind. How would Earth’s total sea ice ignore such substantial warming? It’s a good question which deserves an answer.
Computer models aren't facts: far from it. Despite Al Gore's recent hysteria, there has been no loss of Arctic ice. I agree with others who observe that, as climate data fail to conform to computer models, the fearmongers become more shrill and desperate. This over-the-top AP story contains so many inaccuracies that it hardly counts as a news story. It's shameful climate propaganda, and satirizes itself by concluding that any global cooling is due to global warming. John at Powerline does a good job with it. Our position is that we are open to facts, but that the topic of climate has become politicized - which is never helpful to scientific endeavors. Furthermore, we suspect that some warming would be good for mankind, but unfortunately the data show that we have experienced ten years of climate cooling, with 30 years more of cooling predicted. So I think everybody should just chill. Photo: Last week's New Hampshire ice storm from No Looking Backwards
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