We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Forever Young? 20 of the Hottest Women Over 60 Years Old. 65 is the old 45. All it takes is some care, some flair, some estrogen, some exertion, and a little cash for teeth, hair, and skin.
Re the below by Peter Arno, Are you? Is he the young man you married?
In my career as a doctor in prison, I met a few swindlers in my time and on the whole I liked them. They had charm and intelligence, which perhaps is unsurprising. It isn’t easy to imagine a charmless swindler, after all; it is almost a sine qua non of the trade. Whether their charm preceded their swindling or they developed it in order to practice their swindling is hard to say, though the former is more likely. Be that as it may, their charm was their stock-in-trade and human gullibility the market in which they sold their wares.
High Price is the harrowing and inspiring memoir of neuroscientist Carl Hart, a man who grew up in one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods and, determined to make a difference as an adult, tirelessly applies his scientific training to help save real lives.
Young Carl didn't see the value of school, studying just enough to keep him on the basketball team. Today, he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist—Columbia University’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences—whose landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction.
In this provocative and eye-opening memoir, Dr. Carl Hart recalls his journey of self-discovery, how he escaped a life of crime and drugs and avoided becoming one of the crack addicts he now studies. Interweaving past and present, Hart goes beyond the hype as he examines the relationship between drugs and pleasure, choice, and motivation, both in the brain and in society. His findings shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs, and explain why current policies are failing.
I could discuss the topic of suicide and suicidality for days. Suicide is not one thing. It is endlessly complex, and definitely not always accompanied by clinical depression or other mental illness. Shame, guilt, loss, or anger are often prominent components, along with personality disorders, Bipolar, psychosis, and other things.
PTSD? Readers know that I tend to think that it is not a "disorder" but a normal variant. The people who put the DSM together can't tell the difference.
Psychiatry has seen its share of damagingly-erroneous fads over the years: multiple personality, satanism, "recovered memories." It's important to learn from such fads and errors, not to hide them in embarrassment.
Every branch of medicine, and of science in general, experiences erroneous fads and false enthusiasms. Only a few years ago, the climate scientists were going nuts about global cooling, and soon, perhaps, they will do so again.
It's fascinating how crowded Everest is becoming these days, with queues of mountain tourists for the rope lines. The highways are all mapped out, ladders installed, ropes installed, sherpas hired, etc., so it's almost like a rich man's chilly Disney World.
The medical part - and the risk of bad weather - seem to be the greatest challenges. First World Problems, if you will, because nobody needs to do this. However, if it is made too safe, where's the credit?
As with the Olympics, I think it's wonderful that some people want to try these sorts of adventures in life, but I do not admire the amateur tourists. Good film:
In a contemporary, and often unacknowledged, rebooting of Freud, many psychologists have concluded from such findings that unconscious associations and attitudes hold powerful sway over our lives—and that conscious choice is largely superfluous. “It is not clear,” the Baylor College neuroscientist David Eagleman writes, “how much the conscious you—as opposed to the genetic and neural you—gets to do any deciding at all.” The New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests we should reject the notion that we are in control of our decisions and instead think of the conscious self as a lawyer who, when called upon to defend the actions of a client, mainly provides after-the-fact justifications for decisions that have already been made...
Of course, recommendations like this change all the time, just as do all dietary recommendations. I take it all with a grain of salt or, I should say, with plenty of salt. I love salt.
There apparently was too much swelling in his leg to do the needed surgery, so the current stabilization technique (photo yesterday) is temporary for a week or so, then I assume a tibial rod or other internal fixation.
Guys gotta do what guys gotta do, and sometimes they have to get banged up in the process. I applaud these male efforts - and female efforts - to remain in the game and not to quit despite the risks to bones, pride, etc.
A medical colleague emailed me a photo of his own left tibia this weekend, acquired when skiing at Jay Peak. Ouch. An MD degree is not required for this diagnosis. For a layperson, this is a version of a "broken leg." This will need pins or a plate or something. Some metal and some screws, and I think he'll miss a day or two of work.
An annual re-post, but re-posted again because we seemed to help a number of people with this:
Forget the "Obesity Crisis." That's a crock. Abundant, good food is a blessing and a rarity in human history so it is a great privilege and luxury to be overweight. It certainly is true that, when tasty food is cheap, people will eat a lot of it and their bodies will kindly store what they don't need to survive today, to the detriment of our knees, hips, appearance, comfort, and general vigor. Trouble is, we won't need that storage tomorrow - or ever. It's like hoarding.
We can all be as fat or fit as we wish to be. It's a free country, and being fat (but not obese) isn't terrible for your health unless you are diabetic or want to be able to get around energetically. But don't listen to the Dieticians and Nutritionists. They will want you to get in shape slowly and in a "sustainable" way. In your heart, you know that will never happen. If you are bothering to read this, you just want to get in shape as quickly as you can without liposuction or use of the vomitorium.
Eliminating carbs reduces or eliminates carb craving in most overweight people over several weeks.
This can be a one- to three-month program as desired. Maintenance is another topic.
I never expect honest answers from questions about sex, substance use, or money, so I won't expect perfect honesty here.
However, in an effort to warm up this frigid winter season, here's my scientific Maggie's Farm poll question for today:
How often during a normal day out and about in the world do you think "Hmmm, that's appealing; I think I wouldn't mind having some sex with that guy or gal"?
"Most important job in the world"? You betcha. It can be joyful, boring as heck, frustrating, and mindless drudgery. In my opinion, Moms need plentiful adult-oriented breaks from child-rearing tasks, and the husband must always be the priority. The best way to kill a marriage is to make the kids more important than the spouse.
The US government recommends 9-11 servings of fruits and/or vegetables daily.
What are they smoking? Unless a stalk of raw celery or a leaf of spinach counts as one vegetable.
If you ate all that, you would be obese, especially with the fruit which, as I always say, is God's dessert. Unless you are at a starvation weight, you don't need fruit. Fruit is just sugar, and you might just as well have some ice cream.
Is there any justification for that in a free country?
We debated the topic at dinner last night. At the end, I had to admit that sentiment and tradition were not adequate reasons for laws and, especially, criminalization. When I (rarely) refuse my hubbie nighttime pleasures, he has been known to mumble "I shoulda been a Mormon." I know he'd enjoy a threesome, in fantasy anyway, but that's not how I roll. I am a traditionalist.
Most of the studies he discusses avoid defining happiness, and just let people report. At issue, of course, is that as long as one is not in dire straits, happiness and contentment in life depend on non-economic factors: temperament and personality, relationships, family, hobbies and interests, etc.
There is no one "happiness." Some are most happy when taking risks, others more comfortable when they feel more secure. Material gain is not a universal goal.
I am a fan of online dating, especially for those who are out of school. There is just no other way to interview so many available candidates efficiently, with the advantage of screening them in advance.
When people get divorced, I usually recommend that a person have a coffee with at least 25-30 candidates, at minimum, before deciding to get involved with anyone. That's because the recently-divorced are usually lonely, unhappy, sex-starved; often hurt or angry or worried about the future, and generally prone to poor judgement and poor choices. However, those things may apply to many single people.
Back in 1991, the sociologist Scott Feld made a surprising discovery while studying the properties of social networks. Feld calculated the average number of friends that a person in the network has and compared this to the average number of friends that these friends had.
Against all expectations it turned out that the second number is always bigger than the first. Or in other words, your friends have more friends than you do.
Researchers have since observed the so-called friendship paradox in a wide variety of situations. On Facebook, your friends will have more friends than you have. On Twitter, your followers will have more followers than you do. And in real life, your sexual partners will have had more partners than you’ve had. At least, on average.
I always figured that it was because my friends are friendlier than I am.
Antidepressants fail to help around 70% of depressed patients on the first try.
Antidepressants are now the treatment of choice for anyone with acute or chronic symptoms of "major depression," ie anxiety, disturbed sleep, hopelessness and helplessness, self-hatred, appetite loss, irrational guilty feelings, loss of sex drive, inability to concentrate, sometimes suicidal feelings, and inability to find pleasure or interest in things. In my experience, the vast majority of patients with a fair number of those symptoms feel better with antidepressants, but, in my view, medicine should never be given without psychotherapy of some sort.
Where it gets complicated is that 1. there are many kinds of depression besides major depression; 2., the personality type, and personal strengths and weaknesses can effect the way depression occurs, and whether it occurs at all, and, 3. life circumstances have a real impact on the ability to improve depression with medicine (if your business is going bust, or your child dying with cancer, no antidepressant will make you merry).
I'll try to keep it brief. The generic term "depression" runs the gamut from the heavily-inherited form that occurs in Bipolar Disorder (which is probably a brain-wiring abnormality), to the grief-like depressive reactions to life-events, especially loss, which occur in vulnerable people. In between are sad-sack people with chronic mildy depressed mood, and many people with chronic mood problems due to personality disordersor neurotic problems. My point is that there is not one "depression". The word refers to a group of symptoms, not a diagnosis.
Because depression is not a unitary phenomenon, different forms require different treatment approaches, whether psychotherapeutic or chemical, but the research says preferably both for severe depression.
It is not widely understood that the new SSRI antidepressants are not "mood elevators." They have no effect whatsoever on people without depression, which is why they are never abused.
I will have to follow-up with a Part 2 later, because this is getting too long, according to our blog rules. "Short and sweet." But some subjects are complex and nuanced, as our esteemed French Senator likes to say.
She points out the (rather obvious) practical and economic advantages of committed relationships. I can't imagine handling all of the complexities of life without a partner.
I never expect honest answers from questions about sex, substance use, or money, so I won't expect perfect honesty here.
Antidepressants fail to help around 70% of depressed patients on the first try.