Maggie's FarmWe 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. |
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Wednesday, June 18. 2014Do "annual physicals" make sense?Not really. I don't know any doctors who get them. Annual physical exam is probably unnecessary if you’re generally healthy
Tuesday, June 17. 2014The Limits of Neuro-Talk
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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13:33
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Friday, June 13. 2014Seen your Hospitalist lately?My Father and Hospitalists - Obamacare can be deadly. It was for my father. It's all the rage these days. Salaried docs who work for the hospital on shifts, like nurses. Thursday, June 12. 2014A Biological Basis for Race?
There is nothing new there in the age-old nature-nurture game. Does it really need saying that people who are more closely related likely have more traits in common? "Race" and "ethnicity" are just words for common ancestry, like "distant cousins." Early humans spread around the earth, and bred with others in their own neighborhoods just like Darwin's finches. Naturally, differences happened but not to the extent of new species, but enough so that people recognize their cousins. Alcoholics AnonymousAA is a wonderful thing which has helped countless people, and countless patients of mine. I have no idea why our internet friend thinks that we shrinks do not appreciate it immensely: Does AA Work? In fact, I have often said that there should be an AA for non-alcoholics. Its general approach could help people grow up even if they aren't drunks. As we have posted in the past, the format of AA was based on a Methodist program for personal spiritual growth, and spiritual and emotional maturity.
Sunday, June 8. 2014Condemned to Joy
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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15:13
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Are mammograms useless?We are also informed that PSA testing is useless. Indeed, many medical tests may be useless. Friday, June 6. 2014A few links
No, he did not. You cannot make a diagnosis based on brain imagery. - An entertaining site, found via AVI: Neuroskeptic At Maggie's Farm, we are always skeptics - Does hyper-parenting damage marriages? Of course it does. Marriage must always come first. It's the job of kids to adapt to the family, not vice-versa. - Another link re Schneiderman's book: "The Last Psychoanalyst" Have not read it, but I can sort of guess where he is coming from. However, many of us are still transforming lives with psychoanalytic principles. Sunday, June 1. 2014My experience at the VA
The joint medical school-VA staff there were wonderful and more practically-minded than the full-time academics and researchers at the med school. They let us do things and procedures which the regular med center would never have let us do, and that was good experience. The patients, mostly WW 2 and Korea vets, but some Vietnam vets (they were still youthful and healthy then) were poor, on the whole, lacking in financial and overall life resources. There were plenty of veterans admitted to the regular medical center too but, at the time, I had no interest in how these systems worked. Now I understand the the VA is plain old government medicine. Here's Charles Krauthammer, MD:
This article is good: Transform The VA Into A Pro-Growth Model For First Rate Health Care. There is no reason for the VA to exist today. It's an obsolete government program and does no favors to American vets.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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15:49
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Thursday, May 29. 2014Not all suffering is mental illnessHow many times have I said that here? Life is traumatic, at times it is a vale of tears. That's not illness. From Lynn Jones, Each scar is different - PTSD has come to signify the moral, social and political suffering of war. But not all suffering is a mental illness
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15:23
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Sunday, May 25. 2014Mad or bad?
Psychiatry has little influence over evil. That's for theology. Evil fantasies are things we (and everybody, pretty much) deal with routinely, but actions are another matter. The devil is stronger than we doctors are. Some evil is everywhere, from boardrooms to government to priests and pastors to teachers to cities to campuses. Please do not tell me that this kid had "PTSD," or an "anger management problem." Some people lack a moral compass almost entirely, but that moral compass spectrum spans from none to spotty to obsessionally scrupulous and fearful. We can deal with the latter relatively easily, but not the former. The truth is that some people are "born to be hanged," and, at the least, removed from the gene pool. We too often piously imagine that happy and good are default settings for humans as if we could get everybody there with a rearranged psyche and a right environment (we term that "psycho-utopian"). It's an evil lie and an evil vision because it denies the existence of evil itself. My life, and history, have taught me that sin has great power. For all we know, violence, deceit, and destruction of good cheer are the default settings, and civilized behavior a special, difficult undertaking. That happens to be what Freud concluded, and he was smarter and a deeper thinker than I am. Not to mention many prophets, and Christ himself. It is a positive comment on our level of Western civilization that we are surprised by gross acts of evil rather than taking them for granted. Quite remarkable in human history. Good and evil remain the basics, as they always have done. Addendum: I realize that my metaphors sounded as if I believed that evil is genetic. What I mean is that some people simply seem destined for trouble.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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15:32
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Monday, May 12. 2014More on dietary fat: It's not "bad for you"I view part of my duty as to debunk folk myths about health and medicine. Readers know that one of my bugaboos concerns the human diet and the First World preoccupation with what we eat as if it mattered all that much. Food faddism has always been part of American life since we became a wealthy country and had food choices. Eating fats does not make you fat. Carbs make you fat. That is no longer in dispute. Do saturated fats "cause" heart disease? There is no evidence for it. Bacon and eggs is the Great American Breakfast, with or without grits, or biscuits and gravy. In the WSJ, The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease -Are butter, cheese and steak really bad for you? The dubious science behind the anti-fat crusade.
Saturday, May 10. 2014Why Most Published Research Findings are FalseRe-posted It is not only true in medicine, it applies to all statistical research. Here's Why Most Published Research Findings are False. 1 Boring Old Man has been devoting himself to uncovering the Pharma-Psychiatric research cabal, but nobody is really listening. My rule of thumb is to take everything I read with a a few grains of salt.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
in Fallacies and Logic, Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss
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14:01
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Friday, May 9. 2014Your brain and being overweightI agree with some of this, disagree with some of it. For one thing, she ignores insulin physiology. For another, she ignores menopause. She is right that losing weight is difficult given all of the abundant and cheap carbs available to everybody, and she is surely correct that people without weight issues are those who hear an internal signal that says "That's enough." In the end, though, carb "addiction" is the main challenge for anyone who is overweight.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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14:12
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Wednesday, May 7. 2014The ancient and ongoing pharmaceutical scamsA Cholagogue containing Iron, Quine, Strychnine, and who knows what else:
I found this somewhere: ABOUT VERACOLATE Continue reading "The ancient and ongoing pharmaceutical scams" Tuesday, May 6. 2014How Much Is a Stay-At-Home Mom Worth These Days?
I worked part-time when my kids were young, and almost 3/4 time when they entered grade school. Right or wrong? I don't know. Monday, May 5. 2014This is your brain on murder
The neuroscientist discovers that he has a sociopathic brain:
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17:58
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Sunday, May 4. 2014Classic Mike HammerFilm noir, with a beautiful Psychoanalyst. The whole 1953 film.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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14:12
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Friday, May 2. 2014Sexual adventure in Victorian/Edwardian England
This seems to have been culturally normative, at least for their class, and accepted by all. Did they need moral leadership? Every person has such impulses of course, but it has often seemed to me that the wealthy and powerful often come to believe that the rules apply to the little people. That is true in America today.
Thursday, May 1. 2014A cool shrinkology journal I just heard aboutNEUROPSYCHOANALYSIS - An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences Neuropsychoanalysis is a hot new area in Psychiatry. Even Nobel Laureate Erik Kandel is into it. Wednesday, April 30. 2014The Mental Life of Plants and Worms
He begins:
Tuesday, April 29. 2014Another discouraged physicianIt's the new, new model of mass production, by-the-book medicine, and it ain't good: Why I work at the fringe. I admire her (youthful?) idealism.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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15:34
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Monday, April 28. 2014Psychopaths: how can you spot one?
A few points: not all psychopaths (sociopaths) have been in jail and not all are glib and charming. Do they target people? Yes. Does Psychiatry have anything to offer them? No. Friday, April 25. 2014Your diet and cancerStill no links found. No links found for diet and heart disease, either. Nutrition remains folklore, magic, superstition, and there is essentially no science in it except to avoid scurvy and Beriberi. Of course, being overweight predisposes to almost all medical ailments except starvation. If you do not want to be fat, quit those tasty carbs and try to satisfy yourself with something else like reading blogs, or sex, or doing unto others. If you want to be strong, exercise hard or do physical labor. Otherwise, quit with the magical thinking and accept that death will arrive (unbidden usually) no matter what you do. People hate to accept that reality because it feels powerless. Well, people don't dine on sacred offerings to gods anymore, and food is no longer magic medicine. Vegetables and fruit? I do not particularly enjoy them so I am always pleased that they supposedly don't matter. For me, vegetables are just an excuse to eat the olive oil or butter. About fruit, when I get the impulse, I will occasionally eat a whole lemon or a whole lime, skin and all. Oranges are too sweet for me. Otherwise, fruit is good only for cheese. Pears, especially. Somebody recently told me that they refused to donate to the American Heart Assoc. because she preferred to go by heart attack rather than by cancer. Well, those are the two main choices on life's menu these days, with the eradication of many infectious diseases. Carpe diem, and pursue what your soul needs before it's too late. I am grateful that my needs are simple other than Jimmy Choos, that my life is rich and complete, and that food is not very important to me other than Shad Roe and caviar.
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12:20
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