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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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Monday, November 19. 2012The evolution of the Harvard guinea pigsThe author of the piece about the famous long-term study of Harvard students from college to old age says that George Vaillant has demonstrated little more than that an ability to adapt predicts an ability to adapt. From Their Right Stuff -The evolution of the Harvard guinea pigs:
I am sorry to say that the socio-cultural bias is a darn shame. My profession is half-good at defining problems, but terrible at defining relative health. Everybody has at least one problem, and having problems is normal. Everybody struggles with problems. As CS Lewis reminded us, bear that in mind whenever you meet somebody. Therefore be kind (but always be alert to predators).
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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16:33
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Sunday, November 18. 2012In Defense of FavoritismIs "fairness" just a nicey-nice word for nursery school teachers? From Asma, In Defense of Favoritism:
and
A good, provocative essay about human nature and our need for tribal affinities.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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16:41
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Sunday, November 11. 2012Patterns of male friendshipModern males forge deep bonds with core friends. Yes they do, and they should. There is nothing modern about it, though. The Maggie's Farm "Gettin' in Shape for Winter" Cheap and Easy Fitness Program
1. Want to lose flab? Go on a no-carb, or almost-no-carb, high meat diet. Carbs are the devil, the delicious fat on the meat is not. Salad is for rabbits, anorectics, or for fun. Fruits are pure carbs. A few kinds of vegetables are low in carbs and tasty, but not necessary except to fill the tummy. Little to no nutrition in them. If you are a food-worrier, take a multivit to relieve your anxiety. 2. Aerobics: 30-40 minutes/day (running, treadmill, spinning, erg, swimming, or especially elliptical), pushing it as tolerated 3. Lower body: Several sets of lunges and squats as tolerated. 4. Abs: Several sets of bicycle crunches, as tolerated. 5. Upper: Push up sets and free-weight (not heavy) military press sets 6. Back, etc: Sets of The Plank, pushing sets as tolerated. This is fun, only takes an hour/day, and gets your head ready for a good day of mental work. To save time, you can alternate days, aerobics on one day and the rest on the next day. That's enough to tune up an already-fit body. I wonder what our readers do to keep themselves from going to pot in an America in which fewer and fewer people do real labor. Thursday, November 8. 2012Big Medicine and The Cheesecake FactoryIn The New Yorker, a Boston physician studies The Cheesecake Factory in an effort to decide whether Big Medicine can be more efficient and effective than the usual: Big Med. It begins:
I'm no fan of Big Med - I practice Cottage Med and I prefer to do it my own way. However, it's a fascinating article and actually makes me want to try a meal at The Cheesecake Factory too. I had thought of it as a kind of cheesy place, but I love wasabi-crusted tuna as long as it is just seared. Monday, November 5. 2012The future of PsychiatryDr. Robert Michels discusses the future of Psychiatry in an interview. A quote:
Sunday, November 4. 2012The dream of life without consequences or bad thingsI heard on the radio that residents of Bridgeport, CT were pelting utility workers with sticks and eggs (where did they get those eggs?) to "express" their disgruntlement about having no power two days after a powerful Nor'easter his their town. (It was a Nor'easter at that point, more or less, or a hybrid but not a genuine hurricane.) It was necessary to assign police to escort the utility repairmen, who had come there from all over the country and from Canada to repair their lines. My rhetorical question is this: Where do people get it into their heads that bad things, and bad consequences, should never happen and, if they do, that there is someone to blame? It seems like the height of immaturity to me. Who taught people that this is what life is like? Wednesday, October 24. 2012Is sex "always in the air"?Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends"? The age-old question is addressed in a sloppy study in Scientific American. Humans aren't Bonobos, but in human connections there is always some sex in the air. The popularity of "friends with benefits" relationships among the youth, and now middle-aged singles - makes that clear. Lots of other things are in the air too, like competitiveness, childish emotional wishes, familial-type feelings, feelings of tribal affiliation. loneliness, delight or amusement in another's company, shared intellectual or recreational fun, exploitative aspirations, etc., etc. My profound and earth-shaking point here is simply that human interactions and connections partake of all aspects of being ... human. There's one thing I know for sure: Put a guy and a gal who are pals in a comfy place away from home, add alcohol, stir, and anything can happen. Alcohol numbs the prefrontal cortex.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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16:58
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Monday, October 22. 2012Dr. Eric Kandel on Vienna, and other thingsInterviews with Nobel laureate Kandel are always stimulating. 'I See Psychoanalysis, Art and Biology Coming Together':
Thursday, October 18. 2012What Happened Before The Big Bang?
For my practical purposes, in the beginning was logos - the Word. Which brings me to my topic of thought and communication as poetry and metaphor. I just completed one of Prof. Robert Sapolsky's Great Courses, Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Neuroscience. It's only 2 DVDs, but it is an inspiring introduction. In one section of his presentation, he mentions James Geary's I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World. The WSJ reviewer said this about the book:
From a Platonic point of view, it's not just the meat of language, it's the meat of thought. Sapolsky says that most communication is the residue of poetry.
Wednesday, October 17. 2012IQ and Life
Unfortunately, g turns out to be highly heritable. Wiki has a good introductory discussion of g. As they say:
When I applied to medical school, they gave us an IQ test and a personality-oriented interview (along with the usual exams we all took). For every kind of task, g is the best single predictor of performance. Not the only, but the "best single" predictor for performance in all life settings (but diligence, adaptability, social skills, judgement, emotional maturity, integrity, collegiality, ability to delay gratification, sports skills, appearance, and all the rest of individual traits and talents and psychological traits obviously matter too, to varying degrees). Related, The 5 Unique Ways Intelligent People Screw Up Their Lives. If you think you're too smart to need this, you're who it's aimed at. When 90% of people were dirt farmers, or hunter-gatherers, etc., these distinctions did not matter so much. Thursday, October 11. 2012On the topic of death, Bill Keller at the NYT gets it wrong againKeller seems to have written his glowing essay about the Liverpool Protocol, If he had spoken with American doctors, he would know that most American internists do something very similar with patients whose condition is hopeless, and do so routinely. Daily. Everybody dies. American hospitals have plenty of patients with "DNR" (Do Not Resusitate) orders on their charts, and hospice units and hospice centers are common in the US. I see two exceptions, occasionally. One is when the family or patient is adamant about "Do anything and everything." These tend to be people who don't know much. The second is with some terminal cancer patients. I have seen terminal cancer patients, with widespead metastatic disease in the ICU, dying while the latest cancer chemotherapy is still being pumped into their veins. It's pitiful. Generally, doctors know when to give up and do not view death as an enemy. Unfortunately, Bill Keller seems to be addressing a straw man. Keller should read this: Why Doctors Die Differently - Careers in medicine have taught them the limits of treatment and the need to plan for the end. Doctors know when they're a goner, and when their patients are too. Most docs do not offer false hope, and do wrong when they do.
Tuesday, October 9. 2012Maggie's Shrink Update: Mind vs. BrainDr. Dalrymple has a post: Why Psychiatric Disorders Are Not the Same as Physical Diseases. They sure aren't. That's why we don't term them "diseases." But it's more complicated than that. Psychiatrists address most complaints which concern the mind. Some are caused by wiring abnormalities in the brain (eg autism, PDD, probably schizophrenia), some by brain damage (eg strokes, Alzheimers, hydrocephalus, trauma). Many complaints seem to combine brain vulnerabilities of some sort with the mind and personality of the person (eg OCD, Bipolar spectrum problems, severe depressions, etc etc). However, most often in outpatient settings we deal with complaints which appear to be "all in the mind" or mostly so (eg neuroses, personality problems, relationship problems, character flaws and weaknesses, fears and phobias, addictions - first in the mind, then engraved in the brain -, emotional immaturity, major life dilemmas, milder and reactive forms of depression, etc etc). Dalrymple's post is about Dr. Oliver Sachs' determination not to label his symptom as a neurotic one. There is much comfort in believing that one's complaint is "physical" or, as we often term it, "organic." In fact, many Psychiatrists today seek to over-medicalize Psychiatric complaints. Did your beloved spouse of 60 years just die? Oh, you have Depression, a chemical imbalance requiring 40 mg of Paxil daily. Our trademark term "Psycho-utopianism" refers to the idea that we would all be thoroughly happy and fulfilled in life were we only given the right drugs or psychotherapy. Reality would be undone, and Eden restored. Thus there can be a sort of conspiracy between patients and Psychiatrists (perhaps aided and abetted by the structure of the DSM and the drug companies) to view all or most complaints and symptoms as external or alien to the mind, so to speak, instead of, often, embedded in it or part of it. Part of oneself, that is. During one of my residency inpatient rotations, we were to sit with hospitalized schizophrenics, addicts, and Borderlines for 4 hours/week. We were instructed not to attempt any "therapy" or to try to fix anything, but just to use the time to try to comprehend where they were coming from, what was going on in them, and how they were interacting with us. This was a remarkable experience in more ways than I have time or space to write. The neuroscience craze of the 1990s grossly overpromised future clinical usefulness. My advice to the neuroscientists is to be as humble as Eric Kandel because Oliver Sach's hysterical paralysis will never be located in brain matter just as my love for tennis never will. Related: Was it really me? - Neuroscience is changing the meaning of criminal guilt. That might make us more, not less, responsible for our actions Also related: Googlizing Neuroscience I touched on some of these topics recently in Psychiatry’s Legitimacy Crisis
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
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16:25
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Thursday, October 4. 2012Political medicineAt American Thinker, The Verdict on 'Doctors' Obama and Romney:
Sunday, September 30. 2012Stethoscope bluesThe article is at Ricochet. The comments are good. For young docs these days, it's about paying off $200,000 in loans (not to mention 3-4 years after that as an intern and resident on a pittance), the incredible burdens of paperwork and new regulations, conflicts between wanting to be independent and the security temptations of getting a salary. The big change in the past 20 years is women becoming 50% of medical school students. When I went to med school, it was around 25%. Many of the women, I have observed, are happy working limited hours, do not mind being salaried, and do not welcome the burdens and risks of private practice, taking full personal responsibility for patients, being on call, etc. They want to have babies, with work as a sideline. It's a big change from the independent cowboy medical practice of the past. Those cowboys were my role models. Without wanting to sound sexist, I do have to observe that women are more comfortable following the rules than men are.
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14:49
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Sunday, September 23. 2012Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocksThe neurosciences were the sexy new frontier in the 1990s, but popular writers often offered the impression that any basic science of the central nervous system might have clear implications for understanding the workings of the mind. From the article of the above title:
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13:54
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Sunday, September 16. 2012Pick a card - any cardUse the Force: How Magicians Can Control Your Decisions - Our choices are often not as independent as we would like to believe. It is certainly true that we frequently deceive ourselves about the rationality and the intent of our choices. As easily as we may deceive ourselves, we are easily deceived too. The article explains some of the tricks magicians use to "force" our "free choices." Friday, September 14. 2012Mood swings, and A Bipolar LifeIn Psychiatry today there is much discussion, debate, and confusion about diagnosing the varieties of serious mood or attitudinal instability (ie instability which is life-disrupting in some significant way). It's not your grandfather's Bipolar Disorder anymore. The numbers of people labelled as "Bipolar spectrum" has increased dramatically, for better or worse, in recent years. It may be "diagnosis creep," or it might be better understanding. A complicating factor is the overlap between Bipolar Spectrum problems and Borderline Personality, discussed here, where flips in attitudes towards relationships (eg idealization and devaluation) can be prominent in both (along with volatility, grandiosity, hypersensitivity, rage and paranoia). All of this mess can be treated. I have become a fan of Lamictal for mood instability and attitude shifts which do not rise to the level of full-blown Manic-Depression but which are well-outside the normal moods and shifts of daily life. Lamictal plus confrontational psychotherapy, and maybe an antidepressant. Here's Hornbacher's book, Madness: A Bipolar Life I often wonder what such peoples' lives (mostly women) were like before modern treatments. Not too good, I suspect, in the absence of a loyal spouse.
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13:16
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Thursday, September 13. 2012I wonder whether this is true‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’ A quote:
I doubt that it is widely true that young women have become the sexual exploiters and predators, but I know it is true to some extent. I wonder what our readers have observed. Saturday, September 8. 2012"I often have to cut into the brain and it is something I hate doing."Dr. Henry Marsh on brain surgery (h/t Vanderleun). A quote:
It's a wonder how many physicians are natural writers. Dr. Marsh is one. Friday, September 7. 2012Getting to 'I Do': The Secrets to Doing Relationships Right!
There is plenty of motherly and grandmotherly wisdom in that book. Men used to talk about "settling down." Women need to learn how to make that happen unless their desire is to live forever like Hollywood starlets. Here's a quote from the Amazon comments:
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Wednesday, September 5. 2012Poker: Skill or luck?Some of both, like most things in life. The Science of Poker:
Saturday, September 1. 2012Saturday Verse: Robert Pinsky
Essaying to distinguish these men and women,
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Friday, August 31. 2012My TakeWith the RNC done with, my shrink take is this: Big man with small ego vs. Small man with Inflated ego. The corner office vs. Hollywood; serious stuff vs. fainting teens; competence vs. tingles; real jobs vs. styrofoam pillars; freedom vs. Euroland. Admittedly, I am biased. I have never understood why so many in my field fall into the Leftist, statist side of politics rather than into the Libertarian. It makes no sense to me because our job is to have faith in individual people rather than seeing helpless, dependent masses.
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