Metaphysical One Hand Clapping

Neuroscience is closing in on the physics of the mind/body connection, however there will still be that yearning for understanding Being (self-consciousness), the higher states of human consciousness, and the meaning of it all.
Metaphysical (beyond physics) theorists won’t be out of a job, yet.

Many modern metaphysical thinkers (like Bateson, Capra, Pirsig, and Wilber) have created interesting patterns and hierarchies to try and explain Being (albeit some of their attempts to simplify things turn out quite complicated). My favorite is Schumacher. He’s the most practical out of all of them.
Most people are probably more familiar with Capra’s Tao Of Physics which is still intriguing stuff, even today, despite the New Age-y odor.

Metaphysists bang their heads against or try and jump over the ageless dichotomy of subjective and objective realities.
How do the objective (not-I) and subjective (I) communicate most effectively? Through senses and symbols, obviously. But what is the optimum set of symbols/language?
Religion offers metaphorical symbols (more subjective).
Science offers mathematical symbols (more objective).
And Metaphysics, right or wrong, tries to find a pattern connecting the two.

But it’s like apples and oranges, religion and science, fables and formulas. They use totally different forms of symbols to communicate very different information.
Furthermore Math is fairly easy to understand, but Metaphorical language often gets its symbols stuck in the subjective lint trap which, unfortunately, rarely gets cleaned.

The best way, I think, to clean the metaphorical lint trap is to study other people’s metaphors, other mythic stories and religions. The comparative study of mythology breaks down the subjective bias and opens up a deeper understanding of how others’ metaphors have the same meaning as mine, despite the different symbols we may use. Once you recognize your symbols mean the same as another person’s, then you move on to that “higher” state of consciousness beyond the duality of subjective and objective gobbledygook, and get on with a richer life.




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Jumping The Shark Every Day!

I think this blog is evolving rather well. I'm getting better at the linkage and I hope it's interesting.
I've thought about pictures, but no, I don't want any.

I try to post more about nursing, but after working a several 12 hour shifts in a row it's hard to be enthusiastic enough to write stuff.
I like to escape into other realms instead.





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Forgive Me A K-Tel Record Moment

I keep hearing that LimeCoke commercial with the "Coconut" song--"She put de lime in de coconut, she drank dem both up..."
For some reason it keeps reminding me of the Ernie Kovacs show with the Nairobi Trio doing that song. Then I start thinking about that K-Tel classic Hot Butter synthesizer song "Popcorn".

Every kid in the seventies dreamed of owning a Moog synthesizer. Ok, at least I did.
It was the ultimate in commanding a huge array of mesmerizing knobs, buttons, and levers straight out of those sci-fi B-movies they showed every Saturday night at midnight on the Wally Woofer show (one of those Elvira-type shows where they had some local-studio shenanigans around the commercial breaks during the featured B-movie which you could not miss, no matter what, as you sat up late into the fuzzy, flickering womb of the TV-lit early morning hours, never really making it awake to the very end and somehow finding yourself back in bed via a kindly parental-unit who was cued by the station sign-off "America, The Beautiful" music and ensuing end-of-all-things static).

Just like the Univac, the Moog now can fit in some silly-small file that takes up less than .o1% of your hard drive.

Ok, back to the "Five O'Clock World"




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Viagra For The Press, Please

I am fascinated with the current impotent plight of the Fourth Estate. I first began paying attention to the matter right after 9/11 when, of course, everyone was following the news.
For example, I noticed that the White House Press Corps is as limp as a wet noodle because anyone asking a "hard-hitting" question is banished to the ignore-list. I wonder why the WHPC put up with that? Why don't they band together and all demand answers to those "hard" questions instead of resigning to listlessly tossing softballs.
Of course they are not alone in this impotence. All of America and Our Congress has resigned itself to lethargic unconcern for seeking truth.
But the Press is supposed to be that vigilant bastion of truth, relentlessly seeking it out, relentlessly banging on closed doors, relentlessly demanding details and showing intolerance for patriotic platitudes, going in-depth on important issues, etc. This is not some by-gone romantic idealism--this is their vital function in our democracy.

Now, some Media can be almost forgiven for their embarrassing attention-deficit disorder for shiny objects like car chases and Michael Jackson trials. However, the main Media cannot serve that superficial end of the spectrum and must stay in the central realm of important issues, checked-facts, and thought-out words. When they don't, it is unforgivable.

Obviously, when the Fourth Estate declines in its essential function then the lies, misrepresentations, and other forms of untruth quickly begin to pile up and allow opportunistic people like Carl Rove rub their hands together with diabolical glee. (One bright encouraging star that has risen out of this dark time is the phenomenon of blogs which have been checking facts and calling fouls like SuperNannies of the news.)

This is the information age and a free society will, of course, ultimately uncover truth. It's just that the Press is supposed to be the main enzyme in that process to keep it from the dangers of sluggishness. They're not supposed to wait for a period of fear and name-calling to pass before they demand answers.

They are supposed to be Atticus Finch. At all times!




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A Walk Through Time

We Can Grow Dinosaurs On Mars

Opening Day for Jurassic Park has been moved up some more. Scientists can now extract soft tissue from dinosaur bones.

You know, for all the crap going on in the world, this is still the most exciting time to be alive, from a private rocket flying into space to landing on Titan to DNA-sized robots to new elements being discovered...

There is no excuse to be bored.






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The Best Paper Airplane

The Ctrl-Alt-Delete Weekend Of Easter

This week's Newsweek has a cover article on Jesus (gee, think that'll sell well during this Easter weekend?).
The article says nothing new, just goes over the mysterious events around the death of Jesus, His Resurrection, and the meaning of it according to the Apostles.
It rightly points out the importance of this mythological gem, and why it has helped Christianity endure for a few millennia. It wrongly tries to figure out the idolatry of it.

In order for a religion to survive, it must reinterpret its symbols every so often. Christianity hasn't done that very much for reasons related to its formation alongside law (hence all the 'God is dead' brouhaha), but the Death and Resurrection of Jesus has just enough gorgeous transcendent/transformative symbolism to keep itself fresh.

In basic terms the Crucifixion of Jesus is the death of a symbol. Jesus, the man, was an idol and the crucifixion helped remove that false worship so that His Meaning could be truly known.
(Though the Crucifixion symbol more often than not stays stuck in idolatry, as the man, even today.)

The Resurrection, naturally following, is the re-birth of Jesus's teachings, His Meaning, into that ego-less realm where idolatry cannot go. The symbol of Jesus is thus reinterpreted into the symbol of Christ, Profane to Sacred, free of form. The temporal symbol of the cross is discarded and the spiritual lessons of eternity shine free. The cave is empty.

The Self is re-born and has left behind, hopefully, all that old subjective baggage that was thought to be truth.

The beautiful agricultural / sacrifice symbolism used in the Last Supper (bread as body, wine as blood) helps set up and outline this metaphorical Death/Re-birth and remains one of the most meaningful rituals of the Catholic Mass today.

The death of the Self on Good Friday, those lunar-mythic three days of Non-Self, and the re-birth of Self on Easter at the start of Spring are all wonderfully man's mythic journey in a nutshell.




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Ultra Bubble Wrap Fun

Hurry Up And Be Autumn Again!

Listen, there's only 7 short months left until Halloween! It's time to start on a costume and look for a place for that pumpkin patch.

The summer months could be filled with a little spooky reading while those pumkins grow, or some haunted house practice could be enjoyed.

Perhaps another trip to the catacombs? Or a little, fun adventure?

Don't fret yet, the best Halloween movie of the year will come just in time.

Unless the signs tell us otherwise:
$665.....................Retail price of the Beast
$699.25................Price of the Beast plus 5% sales tax
$769.95................Price of the Beast with all accessories & replacement soul
$656.66................Walmart price of the Beast
$646.66................Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
00666...................Zip code of the Beast
1-666 ...................Area code of the Beast
1-900-666-0666 ..Live Beasts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute.
660.......................Approximate number of the Beast
DCLXVI.............. Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000.............Number of the High Precision Beast
0.666 ....................Number of the Millibeast
/ 666 .....................Beast Common Denominator
666 ^ (-1)...............Imaginary number of the Beast
1010011010...........Binary of the Beast
Phillips 666...........Gasoline of the Beast
$6.66 9/10..............Price of a Beast gasoline
Route 666..............Way of the Beast
666 F.......................Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k........................Retirement plan of the Beast
666i ....................... BMW of the Beast
668..........................Next-door neighbor of the Beast
666 mg....................Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
Lotus 6-6-6............Spreadsheet of the Beast
6 h. 66 min.............Beast Standard Time (BST)
6/6/66.....................The birth date of the Beast
666-66-6666...........The Social Security number of the Beast
6666........................The PIN of the Beast
25.806975...............The square root of the Beast
Motel 666..............Beast Western
333..........................The Semi Christ




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Saturday Mornings 1974

Dumb All Over, And A Little Ugly On The Side

Here's my opinion on the Terri Schiavo case: It's none of my business.

For some strange reason after observing the frightening Orwellian involvement of Congress and the President into the Schiavo case, I began to think about book burning.
I did a quick search for the last book burning on record and found WHOA!....book burning intentions just last month here in my own state!!

Amazing! And the lucky candidate was Bless Me, Ultima, a 30-year old book that is often used in English studies because of its masterful mix of cultural and religious imagery to explore to coming-of-age consciousness of a young boy.

The author, Rudolfo Anaya, one of my favorites, must have sighed that great weary and heavy sigh that so many have had to endure after the ignorant, knee-jerk anger of a metaphorically-challenged mob drunkenly mauls their creativity.

I guess the burners couldn't wait for the next Harry Potter book. (Two years is a long time between books; they had to find something to burn.)


An interesting book that came out last year is The Language Police, by Diane Ravitch. It discusses the current culture of over-the-top political correctness that has been ingrained into the industry that creates our childrens' textbooks.
A few examples of textbook alterations:
Objection to portraying frontier women as being able to sew because it's too stereotypical.
Objection to a passage about peanuts being nutritious because some kids are allergic to them.
Objection to a true story about a blind mountain climber because it's biased against not only blind people but against people who live in non-mountainous areas!
Objection against the Aesop fable "The Fox and the Crow" because of gender stereotyping.

It makes you laugh at the absurdity of it all, and cry at the utter tragedy.

It also makes you want to read Huckleberry Finn at the top of your lungs.




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The Poop On Pain

For a while now there's been a push to add pain as the "fifth vital sign", the others being blood pressure, heart rate, rate of respirations, and temperature.

The problem with that is the subjectivity. The classic vital signs do vary among people--for some a blood pressure of 90/60 is normal, for others 130/80 is normal--but the parameters have limits. At certain points there is not enough pressure to perfuse the body's vital organs, and on the other end there is too much pressure which congests them.

When you measure pain on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the most tolerable and 10 being the most excruciating, you find the most variation between people. A needle poke to one person may be a "1", and the same poke to another is a "10". It's entirely subjective. That can be a problem when you are giving them a heavy narcotic instead of a couple Tylenols or an ice pack.

Pain is certainly a signal that something is wrong. Ideally there is only one pain scale: pain or no pain. The types of pain in the acute setting can narrow down the cause, and a proper assessment is warranted. However, using a pain scale is of little use other than to find which medicine gives the best relief until the cause can be fixed.
Pain scales are more useful in treating chronic pain, like cancer pain, where the juggle of pain medicine is a factor of daily functioning.

I don't know if pain should be included as a classic vital sign. It's not that objectively measurable other than being present or not. It's more of a symptom like nausea, dizziness, weakness, etc.





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Every Picture Tells A Story

In The End It's Always Them Damn Cows!

It was around 2 am when old Frank came out to the desk and asked where the cows were.
"Cows?" I said, "Hmmm, let's go see," leading him back to his room.
Frank was 75 yrs old and had taken some Ambien to help him sleep. Sometimes the stuff made you a little loopy.
As we walked back to his room Frank demanded that we go let the cows out to pasture. "We gotta do it now!" he said, poking me in the chest with a finger, "You hear me! We gotta do it now!"
I tried to gently reorient him to where he was and the time.
"Bullshit! Quit playing around! We gotta go get them cows!"
I sighed. My night was going to be spent redirecting this guy for hours. The agitated delusion wouldn't subside for a long while and there was nothing you could do except call the Doc and get more drugs (like Haldol) for sedation or a restraint order to posey the old guy in bed, neither of which was very fun for the patient. Sometimes though, you could go along with them for a bit and bend their delusion enough to get them back into bed.
"Oh, Frank, I should've told you. I already let the cows out last evening. They're all out to pasture right now. We'll go check on 'em in the morning. Can't see 'em now, it's too dark."
Frank poked that finger at me again, "You know damn well the cows ain't out yet! You lazy sonofabitch!"
I had got him to his room. "Ok, I'll go do it. You're right. You just get some rest. I'll take care of it," I said.
This seemed to be working. Frank sat down on the bed for a bit, yawned, and then lay back and closed his eyes.
Yes! I did it!
I waited for a few minutes then quietly stole out of the room and back to the nursing station.
After a little while, Frank was coming down the hall again. "Hey! Hey!" He sounded panicked. "I can't get them cows out!"
I tried again to go with the flow and re-direct him back to bed, but the guy was wild-eyed and extremely anxious. Sweating, too! Uh oh... not a heart attack! Please, don't be having a heart attack!
I told someone to call for a stat EKG as I tried to lead Frank back to his room and get some oxygen on. He went with me surprisingly easily.
When we got to his room there was a nasty odor and his sheets were smeared with brown stuff. What was that?
It looked like dark shampoo. It smelled like shampoo and shit. It was shampoo and shit!
Frank sat down on the foot of the bed. "Get 'em out, get 'em out..."
He needed to have a bowel movement all along and had been trying to disimpact himself using shampoo as a lubricant!
The EKG and vital signs were normal enough, so I set about on that dirty job of carefully letting them cows free.
Frank and his little pokey finger finally went to sleep.




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International Center of Bathroom Etiquette

Eating The Menu Instead Of The Meal

Why is it that many comedic people speak out against religion?

Mark Twain:
"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
"Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven."

George Carlin:
"Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!"

Bill Maher (ok, he's not very comedic):
"I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder."
"I believed there was a virgin birth, I believed a man lived inside of a whale, and I believed that the Earth was 5,000 years old. But then something very important happened to me -- I graduated sixth grade."

Woody Allen:
"I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."
"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

Ambrose Bierce:
"FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
"RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."


It is when someone uses religion in a profane (non-religious, literal) way that ire is raised and allows at best a comedian to speak out and at worst a suicide-bomber or war to strike.
Peoples' religious beliefs are sacred (holy, transcending) so long as they do not use them in a metaphorically challenged manner.

Most religions beautifully teach the same core morals and spiritual growth through metaphorical means.
One must be discerning and responsible enough to sift through the soot and baggage that has been attached to their religion over the ages.
Once that is done a Holy Grail shines warmly upon the soul.




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Good Movie Afterglow

We are a movie-going family. We absolutely love 'em.

There is a recent movie that tops the list in satisfaction. It fully succeeds on every level. It's the kind of movie you see and a week later you say, "Damn, that was a good movie!" It's just full of WOW. The story, the characters, the mood, the music, the camera work, the inventiveness... Everything meshes perfectly, it's done smart, and it just happens to be animated.
It's The Incredibles.

Pixar is now 6 and 0. What a company!


We also went to see another animated film last weekend, Robots. It's a visually gorgeous movie but the mundane storyline demands extraordinary character development. Blue Sky succeeded at that with Ice Age, but here they didn't.

Story and character development are key to making a good movie of any type, especially when an animated medium is used.
Just look at the tragedy of George Lucas. Here is a guy who owns the Star Wars universe and made three wonderful initial movies about it, then decided later on when CGI came into its own to make three more.
If you believe him that he was "waiting for the technology to catch up to" his vision for the prequel movies, then you have to ask why his storytelling didn't. The character and story development are absolutely horrendous. When you watch the prequels on DVD all you wait for are the few eye-candy parts, and the acid test is that my kids want to see the old Star Wars movies more than the new.
The third prequel coming out this Spring undoubtedly will be just as wooden. I can't wait to see the cool effects, but I have little hope for any depth or development in the story. And if Ol' George screws up such a classic theme as a main character turning evil, then his movie-making skills will be complete.....a complete failure.

The not-so-ironic thing is that The Empire Strikes Back is considered the best of the Star Wars movies, and it was the only one not directed by Lucas.


Brad Bird, who wrote and directed The Incredibles, also did The Iron Giant, another great movie that pays brilliant attention to story and character.

George, meet Brad. Brad, George.




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What's that stuff?

Godaholics Anonymous

It's amazing (and ironic) that most of today's conflicts come from the Fertile Crescent around the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, where Western civilization began.

That is where nomadic tribes who had previously been wandering, hunting, and gathering for tens of thousands of years began to slowly congretate and create agriculture, city-states, writing, laws, and a turbid mix of mythologies.

Out of which grew most of the world's main religions.

These nomadic mythology combinations read like a skeleton key of today's big three: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Because the Big Three were forming at the same time civilized law was forming, they were ingrained, endured and are now impossible to remove.

In most ways we are in conflict just like those nomadic tribes who had formed myths to explain the world and were then forced to live with other tribes whose myths they believed were different from their own.
But they weren't.





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Implanted Brain Devices Leave No Scars

My favorite patients when I worked in the psych hospital were the schizophrenics, the psychotic.
For all their unpredictability, bizarre-ness, danger, and sadness, there seemed to always be a glimmer of some purpose to their madness.

At first I thought I could figure out that purpose, that there was some key to it all. It is a very intriguing problem. One can't help but take the behavior of a schizophrenic and try to fit it into some pattern that will ultimately explain the why of it. I think everyone grapples with that when they first meet these type of patients.

But try as you might, their behavior and thought always stays just out of reach of a standard pattern. There have been some trials at a non-pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia which are somewhat successful. The books of John Weir Perry are fascinating in this area. The application of mythical patterns to help guide a patient through psychosis may help a few, but many psychotics have brain anatomy that is beyond such an approach.
Medications help dull the dangerous thoughts and behaviors enough for many schizophrenics to function safely in society, but that's about all they do--dull things. This dullness plus the many side effects of such medications create a high rate of noncompliance.
The cause/causes of schizophrenia just aren't understood enough yet for a truly successful treatment.

The most interesting and dangerous of schizophrenics are the paranoid type. They typically take whatever symbols are prevalent in society and apply it to their paranoia. In these modern times that usually involves a belief that some sort of technological device is implanted in their head, or the government is watching them or chasing them. In the past these beliefs usually used some sort of religious bent, such as the devil or demonic possession (which a good witch-hunting community couldn't pass up).
You can argue with a paranoid schizo until you are blue in the face (or until they punch you in the face), but their belief system will not falter. Everything that happens is incorporated into their delusions and logic fails.
Medication at its most therapeutic will allow a paranoid schizo to admit there isn't a device in their head anymore, but if you keep talking earnestly to them they will admit that they are lying to the treatment team because that's what the treatment team wants them to say. That's not entirely a bad thing, because a paranoid schizo at the height of their agitation can do plenty of harm.

Most of these poor souls aren't victims of modern mental health treatment which more often than not creates the problems it purports to fix. The psychotic are usually authentic.




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Gilgamesh

Is Your Pill Box Bigger Than A Breadbox?

It is amazing how many medications one person can be prescribed these days. Some people, especially the elderly, have a full page list of all the medications they take.

In most cases this is the unfortunate result of today's health care system where a person sees several different doctors. Too many cooks spoil the pot.

But other times a condition warrants several different medications, like Congestive Heart Failure for example. One may need a med to lower blood pressure by making the heart beat slower, remove excess fluid with a diuretic, prevent fluid build-up by increasing the heart's efficiency, replace potassium lost because of the diuretic, etc.
Add to that some other medical condition and its warranted medications and a person can easily chalk up 8-10 meds per day!
Now think about all the side-effects of those meds, not to mention all the interactions, known and largely unknown, they may have between them.

That can be one a nasty, scary stew!



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Old Faithful

Argh! There Are No Aliens! Argh!

I'd love to be a card-carrying Skeptic, but the stuff they have to do is absolutely tedious, monotonous!
Skeptics have to refute crazy claims.
If someone comes along and says ghost aliens are being sent to earth from the Pleiades to steal our cats, then Skeptics have to go through each part of that absurd theory and show what, when, where, why, and how it is probably false.
Argh!

The big issues that keep Skeptics busy these days include the attack by Creationists upon Darwin's theory of evolution.
Now, the theory of evolution is pretty solid; about as solid as the theory of gravity. Still, there are a few metaphorically-challenged people who want to interpret the Bible here in America literally and say that evolution is false.
Skeptics have to actually engage these people and listen to their logic games and refute them one-by-one.
Argh!

Skeptics do make headway, as evidenced by Creationists giving up and trying instead as Intelligent Designists. But geeze! What a farce!

The Sagan adage, Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence, falls short in defense against crazy theories these days. Why? Because they saturate debates with their unproven claims, knowing that the short American attention span won't wait for tested proof but will follow the easy road of belief.
Americans have lazy minds. We believe the absurd simply if it is repeated enough. (Look at the industry that has grown around the Atkins diet!)

Skeptics valiantly and methodically fight against darkness of thought. I salute them, even though I fail them with my own impatience.
Argh!




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How To Cut

Oedipus R Us

Freudian/Victorian influence has made the psychological aspects of Sophocles' play Oedipus Tyrannus famous over the twentieth century: Oedipus was banished from Thebes as a baby because of dire prophecy, he grows up ignorant of this, he meets his real father Laius at a crossroads and kills him in a fight, he ends up in Thebes to marry his real mother Jocasta and become king, and he pokes out his eyes when the tragic truth is revealed to him.

The play is part of a trilogy, and the last century seemed oblivious to the second play, Oedipus At Colonus, and the third, Antigone.

Oedipus At Colonus is the most pertinent to modern times.
In it Oedipus has been exiled from Thebes and is now an old blind man meditating on his life. Was he guilty of the tragedy even though he was unknowing in the acts of it? He realizes he's not guilty, but responsible. Laws of man find him guilty because of the acts, but his heart is innocent; he will accept responsibility for the acts, but he will not be guilty for them. Thus he progresses into grace, and Zeus takes him up into heaven. (Sounds familiar! And it was written around 400 BC!)

As the first play deals with the unconscious/"unresponsible" acts of man, the second deals with the consciousness of throwing off guilt, of taking responsibility, of the courage to say "yes" to what life has dealt and move on. (Saying "yes" does not mean promoting, but acknowledging. The wounds of life may heal, but the scars will remain.) One is responsible for compensating(with equal weight, balancing).

The third play then deals with society, the role of the individual in the group of humanity, and the sharing/hording of each other's personal tragedies with the dilemma of how to apply mankind's laws when some things are sometimes beyond them.

In short:
Oedipus Tyrannus=Unconscious suffering, ignorance.
Oedipus In Colonus=Conscious resolution, enlightenment.
Antigone=Practical application, authentic living.




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I'd Rather Have A Free Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Prefrontal Lobotomy

One of the fun periods in psychiatric history was around 1950 when the lobotomy had its 15 minutes of fame.

Dr. Walter Freeman learned about the proceedure at a London conference and brought it back to the states in a big way, making a cross-country side-show of it by performing the proceedure anywhere, with an ice pick, and without anesthesia (other than a local anesthetic)!
The proceedure was simply jamming an ice pick through the bone above an eyeball and into the brain, then wiggling it around to sever brain fibers.
It quieted "raving lunatics" down, but ruined their judgement and social skills as they became more impulsive.

Electro-Shock was quite popular at the time (still used today!), along with short insulin-induced comas.

The only big psych drugs available at the time were mainly bromides until Thorazine hit the scene and started off modern psychopharmacological therapy (which they still don't understand fully, but hey, it quiets people down and helped 'de-institutionalize' America).

This is prefrontal lobe month, by the way.



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What's New

Saw Deer Hunter, Must Play Russian Roulette

Last night's 60 Minutes story on the effects of video game violence was interesting, but didn't give much of a case for games causing violence. A psychologist cites some brain studies at the NIH that show the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that helps mediate impulse control, among many many other things) isn't fully developed in teens, thus video game playing skews its "wiring" development and makes players predisposed to violence later on (if they play a lot of violent video games). But that is a very long correlation to make. The argument sounds more like a causual fallacy.

The human element of the story was a man who is suing the gaming industry because he thinks video games helped allow some young man shoot his brother who was a cop. 'Why do they make video games where people are allowed to shoot policemen?' the brother cries.

Uh....no.

Your brother was shot by a disturbed young criminal who happened to enjoy playing video games.
Video games are not some uber-powerful Orwellian brainwashing tools that allow kids to do anything. If a kid grows up in a criminal atmosphere (like the one who shot your brother did), then the probability of them commiting a crime is high, video games or not. Just as if a kid grows up in a normal atmosphere the probability of them committing a crime is low, video games or not.
Sure, some of the video games that portray violence are pretty sick-minded, but you need a lot more data to prove that violence in video games, movies, books, comics, or any other media causes the same, especially when the atmosphere in which a kid is allowed to play such games has more influence.

Then, you also have to add in the dumb human factor. Who can you sue for pure stupidity?




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Morphine With A Demerol Chaser

One of the most frustratingly annoying patients you can have is a drug-seeker. They sap the energy out of a hospital floor like some narcotic-fueled narcissistic vampire hell-bent on pushing that call light until it turns into a black hole and swallows up every staff member into an eternal vortex of servitude while all other patients around their cancerous energy shrivel up and die and thus keep the narcotic supply from being depleted.

The worst ones are the seasoned ones; they know exactly what vague symptoms to dramatize in the ER to get admitted, such as abdominal pain with rebound tenderness , chest pain with dizziness, or the novice ones like back pain or migraine pain. The art, though, is to fake it just enough to get admitted but not enough to have emergency surgery done (although there are some freakshows who go for the latter).
If they're really good, a drug-seeker can get admitted (sans insurance) and stay on the floor for several days while all sorts of tests are done to try and determine exactly what's wrong, despite even the sharpest of diagnosticians on the case. They kick back and enjoy their warm bed, morphine pushes, and three hot meals until the doc exhausts all avenues and discharges them. I've seen one master-of-the-game spend a week in the hospital. He tried many times to be re-admitted after that, but that opening performance was too memorable. The lesson from that is probably "don't allow your hospital course to go on too long, or they'll gather enough data to squash any more 'vague' complaints."

The red flags go up whenever a patient says they're allergic to most non-narcotic pain meds and a select-few psychiatric meds (they don't want to be sedated, just high), or when they ask when their next shot is due while you're giving them one, or when they ask for narcotics by their generic names "I need 4 milligrams of hydromorphone", and so on.

Drug-seekers suck. Some may truly have psychological problems and need help, but they still suck.
Especially when they keep you from helping the genuinely sick.




Now here it is, your url of the day:
Guide to lock-picking

Mmmmm...Moon Liver.

Prometheus used trickery to steal fire from the gods. As a punishment he was chained to the side of a mountain (earth) where everyday an eagle (sun) came to eat most of his liver (moon) while every night it grew back.
The motif of the liver wound is often repeated in mythology.
Tityus, an equivalent to Prometheus, had to endure much the same fate.
Jesus was stabbed in his right side (right in the liver) by a Roman Centurion while he was on the cross.
The wound of the Fisher King takes that wound into a more psychological area.
Krishna (or maybe Balarama) is shot by a hunter in his liver while resting under a tree (or maybe in the foot, or maybe all over and crucified (now that looks suspicious!).

Since the liver regenerates itself it was often associated with the cycle of life. It is also a very black (dried blood) organ, which suggests night. The moon is the parent symbol to the liver.

The moon's cycle has often been used in mythology to symbolize life's cycle, menstration (a genetic meme from our evolution out of tidal pools perhaps?), and the dip into the unconscious before awakening. The three days between the new moon and the start of the visible moon compares with the limbo of death (Jesus's three days on the cross) that preceeds rebirth (to the right hand of the Father).
Snakes shedding their skins and being 'reborn' are good symbols to take over from there.

The mythic story of Jesus came from many myths out of Mesopotamia, and in turn those came from ten of thousands of years of mankind observing the heavens and functions of nature.
It is no surprise the moon has so much representation in mankind's mythological symbols, especially when merged with observations of our livers....and snakes.

Hey, watching the moon, reading livers, and catching snakes were all a lot of fun back then!




Now here it is, your url for the day:
http://www.realknots.com/knots/

It's All Good, Sayeth The Brave

One is responsible for their attitude. This does not mean feelings--one can certainly experience anger, sadness, happiness, etc., for they are a reaction to the world, but the stand one takes toward feelings and toward everything else is solely one's responsibility.

Seneca said, "The fates guide him who will, him who won't they drag."
This does not suggest being apathetic to life at all. Love of fate (amor fati) is not standing by, it is full participation in life and saying "Yes" to it all whether the outcome is good or bad.
Seneca said it this way too, "Not what you bear but how you bear it is what counts."

The movie Friday Night Lights which came out last year teaches this responsibility beautifully. The West Texas football team lives in a world where winning is everything. The parents and community constantly pressure the kids into believing that losing a game is unacceptable, it is an absolute failure of being.
However, the coach wisely teaches the team that winning is certainly the goal, but the responsibility of their attitude comes from no one else but themselves. Failure isn't losing a game, it is not playing with your heart. In the end when they make it to the championship and lose the final game, they are sad, but they do not adopt an attitude of failure. They are proud they played the best they could and lived in the moment with all their authentic being and ability.

That is responsibility for one's attitude.
If you did all you could genuinely do and the outcome happens to be tragedy, then what use is it to say "No" to it all like the West Texas community would have you do? All that does is make one feel guilty. It negates life. It cowardly puts the responsibility for one's attitude onto someone or something else.
We know that cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave just one (Anonymous). The brave football players therefore rise above the cowards of the West Texas community whose souls die at the drop of a hat.




Now here it is, your url for the day:
http://www.whitehouse.org/