Do Never Feel

Tom Clark:

All manner of experiences can cause PTSD–rape,murder, disasters like Katrina, but exposure to combat is overwhelmingly the primary cause of this acute and often untreatable disorder.

Notwithstanding the bogus precision of the DSM and its list of PTSD symptoms, I would argue that combat-induced PTSD remains both poorly understood and under-diagnosed. No one has a clue about the actual incidence of PTSD in either of the two world wars, partly because it was not yet a bonafide psychiatric diagnosis, and partly for the same reason it remains woefully under-diagnosed to this day: that is, if the scrofulous old men who cause wars and declare wars allowed the citizenry to fully comprehend what actually happens–psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually–to the legions of young men they send off to fight their unjust wars, there might be a true anti-war movement, based not on politics but on horror and revulsion against war.

From Turgenev’s 1861 novel, Father’s and Sons, a line which is lamentably appropriate to the whole PTSD tragedy:

“The true horror, gentleman, is that there is no horror.”

Indeed.

Hyperbolic Discounting

Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:

1. Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay. Outcry and outrage.
   
   
2. Climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. Most could care less.
   

Why are people incensed about flag burning or sex? We are not equipped to assess risk.

We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists.

First in Worst

Eileen Waldow says our health is not for profit.

The only place the United States ranks at the top in health care is in the amount we spend per capita.

When comparing the health results of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, we have the shortest life expectancy, the highest infant mortality rate and pay more than twice per capita than five of these countries.

And in all these countries, everyone is covered.

Noise of the incapable.

Our leadership culture has become a grand argument, victory made on vitriol, and we are shaped into opposing forces standing not with strength but for spite.

There's planks in California hoisted by both parties where stubborn is a virtue, wit is chaos, and courage is enduring loss.

It’s all a nasty game that puts cronyism, partisan bickering, and corrupt, despicable self-interest above the needs of increasingly desperate citizens.

Forgetting to invent both economy and community, our boards and committees and legislatures cannot assemble workable society.

More clear cut junk

Story at Gawker cites players' impressions:

"In the end, [chief strategist] Steve Schmidt, architect of the McCain campaign's wildly shifting meta-narratives and stunts, was smart enough to realize that his hail-mary VP stunt had backfired, terribly. And so his relationship with Palin, a paranoid narcissist, suffered."

CBS posts infighting:

"The Joe The Plumber narrative was the Republicans' secret weapon -- the last chance to put a chink in Obama's seemingly impervious armor."

Revenue increasing sickness

Harmful Effects of Healthcare, Journal of American Medical Association

"Although healthcare's objective should be to improve health, its primary emphasis has been on producing services.

"'Fee-for-service' payment encourages using more treatment, new technology, and extra testing. These additional services, and their attendant extra costs, may harm health."

The huge industry is diverting dollars away from education, jobs, and environmental quality.

Your Daily Plastic

BPA is found in baby bottles, water bottles, canned foods, and much more. New tests show, in rats, that low levels of Bisphenol-A impacts female reproductive health.

Healthcare? Just do it!

Chronic diseases account for more than 75% of the nation’s $2 trillion medical care costs. [link]

Reducing cancer death rates by 10% would generate roughly 180 billion dollars annually. [link]

A cure for cancer would be worth about $50 trillion! [link]

Gains in lifespan from 1970 to 2000 were worth roughly 95 trillion dollars to current and future Americans - roughly 3 trillion dollars per year. [link]

Cultural attitudes

Europe equals leisure while America equals wealth.

Why so Different?

I find all of this a bit like a rat in his cage chasing a hunk of cheese.

After all, there are only so many hours in the week to divide between family, leisure, work and sleep. And, there is only so much you can borrow against future income. At some point, lenders figure out they have lent more than you can possibly earn and pay back.

And that’s the message here and now, isn’t it?

If you could see it all

Deric Bownds is hoping to explain:

Our conscious model of reality is a low-dimensional projection of the inconceivably richer physical reality surrounding and sustaining us...

Our brains generate a world-simulation and an inner image of ourselves as a whole so perfect that we do not recognize it as an image in our minds...

We are not in direct contact with outside reality or with ourselves, but we do have an inner perspective.

We can use the word I.

We live our conscious lives in the ego tunnel.

All this is just the content of a simulation in your brain...

The Ego is a transparent mental image: You look right through it.

In Part Two Deric asserts:

Cognitive neuroscience has shown that the process of conscious experience is just an idiosyncratic path through a physical reality so unimaginably complex and rich in information that it will always be hard to grasp just how reduced our subjective experience is.

No surprise

A thorough follow-up at Vanity Fair:

The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

Staff and Republican stalwarts are still shaking their heads over McCain's selection of Sarah Palin.

Palin's lack of aptitude in her new starring role as VP candidate became obvious quickly.

The friction between McCain and Palin was so intense that it carried over into election night...

...one close adviser to McCain "was heard to refer to Palin as 'little shop of horrors' during the campaign.

As Palin has piled misstep on top of misstep...

...they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be.

When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth.

For a split second she stops, pauses, turns her head and shoulders just so, and smiles. She holds the pose until she’s sure the man has his shot and then moves on.

Sloppy painkillers

Acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S. [newsvine]

Tylenol and dozens others reports the FDA.

Lost Undersea Forest

Seagrass fixes as much carbon dioxide as tropical forests.

The University of Western Australia found that since 1980, 29% of seagrass has disappeared and the overall rate of loss has accelerated from 0.9% a year, before 1940, to 7% a year, since 1990.

Nutrients in sewage and run-off from agriculture and industry are the major cause of seagrass death, says Kendrick.

These nutrients trigger the growth of algae, plants and animals that grow above or on seagrass, and stop it from getting the sunlight it needs. [story]

Not Going Gently

Essay at Slate:

"These war metaphors, which pervade the coverage of celebrity cancer cases, perpetuate the false notion that survival is directly related to how hard the patient tries to live." - Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University

old-fashioned values

Census Review of Republican Voters:

Eight of the 10 states with highest divorce rates.
Eight of the 10 states with highest teenage birthrates.
Highest subscriptions to online pornography.

Do norms favor violation of norms?

Reagan was wrong

Henry Fairlie said Republicans sowed their present-day destruction from the start.

When he arrived in America, he expected to find conservatives with similar beliefs. Instead he found the Republicans.

He described his kind of conservative as one who stands alongside "the King and the People, against the barons and the capitalists".

"The conservative can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who are on the make", he wrote.
"Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited; ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying; trivially moral, falsely patriotic; family cheapening, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious."

Republican 'booboisie'.

Scrotum wars

Evidence on domestic violence by women suggesting that it happens at an equal rate to domestic violence by men. "In 100 domestic violence situations approximately 40 cases involve violence by women against men." [metafilter thread]

Facts rather than hype

Debunking Canadian health care myths
By Rhonda Hackett
Denver Post

Very much worth reading.