Swivel-chair Psychologist

One Good Foley Scandal Outcome

2006-10-08T10:16:00.000-04:00

Gay members of both parties describe the Foley matter as something that could jeopardize the role that gay men and lesbians have assumed in Republican politics.
—New York Times 10/08/06

I certainly hope so. If gay staffers and other gays connected with the Republican party and supporting it all have to leave it, depriving it of talent, numbers, and money, how is that a bad thing? Many of these assholes have actually worked to advance hateful legislation against American gays.

Kip Hawley is an idiot

2006-10-01T10:03:00.000-04:00

Kip Hawley is an idiot. He is the director of the Transportation Security Agency. To understand in better detail why Hawley’s an idiot, see frequent flyer Ryan Bird’s account of an encounter with one of Hawley’s flying monkeys at a Milwaukee airport on September 26.

Update: There’s a website, www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com, that tells you how to make a “freedom bag”(!) like Bird’s. (Via PZ Myers and Jim Lippard.)

"Cavalier" not very

2006-09-14T16:14:00.000-04:00

The ombudsman of the University of Virginia’s The Cavalier Daily, a student newspaper, has determined that art must be limited to what can be understood representationally. Or maybe to what she can understand. (It’s not clear.)

The paper printed two comics last month by student Grant Woolard (this one and this one) that provoked protests by some religious people because they treated religious subjects unfavorably. Actually, ombudsman Lisa Fleisher’s essay doesn’t say what the religious people found objectionable about the cartoons; it only says what she found objectionable about them, which was that she didn’t get them. I’m not exaggerating. Quote:

While I don't think an apology is necessary, the managing board should consider changing its policy to ensure the cartoon has a clear message.

and

Woolard's two items, unfortunately, were quite inscrutable. […] [T]here needs to be a solid, understandable point or message involved..

A famous art critic (whose famous name I can't remember) said that people at first doubt that abstract art can really represent anything. But when it is shown to them that some abstract works can clearly do so, they then make the corollary mistake of insisting that every work of abstract art is explicitly representational. This is similar to the mistaken assumption that Cavalier ombudsman Fleisher suffers under: If it can't be put into words, it isn't art.

Plenty of recent cartoons in The Cavalier Daily don’t have explicitly editorial points to make: they’re just cute or funny, like comics all over the world. Start here on August 23rd to see the other comics The Cavalier printed with Woolard’s and click forward toward today to see what I mean. Why single out those comics as insufficiently understandable.

On the basis of no evidence presented in her essay other than that some people outside the university said they were angry, Fleisher determines that Woolard’s comics were gratuitously offensive. She says of them, “Offending just for the sake of offending -- or even to get people talking -- is juvenile and unprofessional.” But surely the fact that the religious ideas in question can be so easily ‘offensively’ juxtaposed in this way is a very strong and clear editorial comment. That people were offended by it seems to demonstrate irrefutably that this art is understandable.

Christians for Wife Beating (new group)

2006-09-07T09:44:00.000-04:00

[I shamelessly lift in its entirety this 09/04/2006 blog post by Richard Kim at The Nation.]

Christian Conservatives for Domestic Violence?

When a raft of state defense of marriage amendments (DOMAs) passed in 2004, observers (including yours truly) warned that such amendments would not just ban gay marriage but also imperil domestic partnership agreements, next-of-kin arrangements and domestic violence protections for unmarried people. Right-wing backers dismissed such concerns as left-liberal paranoia. Well, I normally love to say “I told you so,” but in this case it brings me no pleasure. Nonetheless, I told you so.

Ohio was one of 11 states to pass DOMAs in 2004, and pundits alleged then that “State Issue No. 1,” as it was called on the ballot, played a major role in John Kerry’s defeat. Whatever the case may be (and let’s hope the ballots are still around to see), one immediate fallout is clear: domestic violence protections for unmarried women.

In late August, Ohio’s Citizens for Community Values (CCV), a right-wing organization devoted to promoting “Judeo-Christian moral values,” filed an amicus brief on behalf of an alleged domestic abuser. For the past 25 years, Ohio’s domestic violence law has covered married couples as well as unmarried and divorced individuals. According to CCV, such protections run afoul of Ohio’s DOMA, which bars the state from recognizing any legal status for unmarried people that “intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.” If CCV has their way, “persons living as a spouse” (i.e. unmarried, live-in partners) would no longer be protected under Ohio’s domestic violence statute. Apparently, it’s more important for CCV to preserve the distinction between married and unmarried couples (and pre-empt gay marriage) than it is to prosecute domestic abusers. So much for Judeo-Christian values…

No comment

2006-09-03T11:59:00.000-04:00

This year, Montana made it an offense to drink while driving, one of the last states to do so. But there was heavy opposition.

Wyoming still allows passengers in a vehicle to drink, as long as the driver is not holding the container. A bill that would have made [consumption by passengers] illegal was defeated.

—“Boredom in the West Fuels Binge Drinking”
by Timothy Egan 09/02/06 New York Times. (Emphasis added)

Still More Flag Insanity

2006-08-12T10:15:00.000-04:00

[From The Chatanoogan 8/9/06.]

Conservative political activist June Griffin has been arrested for the theft of a Mexican flag from a Dayton [Tennessee] business.

The 67-year-old Ms. Griffin, who ran for Congress in the recent election, is facing misdemeanor charges of theft, vandalism and harassment and felony charges of civil rights violations.

Ms. Griffin, who said it is the first time she has ever been arrested, posted a $5,000 bond.

She said on July 18 she had noticed a small Mexican flag at an Hispanic grocery in the former Rogers Drug Store.

She stated, "I went in and there was nothing English in the store. There was one man who could not speak a word of English."

She said she was outraged about the Mexican flag, saying it was an "act of war" and it "insulted my citizenship."

Ms. Griffin said as the Hispanic man watched, she tore off the flag from where it was suctioned to the building and left with it.

She said, "Foreigners should learn English or leave."

Ms. Griffin, who said she will represent herself in court, said it was done openly and was not a theft. She said she later returned the Mexican flag to a police officer.

She said a much larger Mexican flag was later put in its place, but she said it is no longer there.

She said she had been to local governments trying without success to get them to ban all but American flags.

Ms. Griffin said the operator of the Days Inn at Dayton "flew a British flag on of all days July 4." She said she went to him to protest the British flag.

She said afterwards "the British flag was torn up in a storm, but the Tennessee and American flag were spared. I took it to be an act of God."

She denied being guilty of vandalism, denying that she damaged a hinge when she took the flag.

She also said she was not harrassing when she called the grocery owners to ask them to take down the larger flag.

She is due in court on Friday for arraignment.

__________

Note: Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars) called Griffin the Ugly American of the Year but said it’s “ridiculous” that she’s facing a felony civil rights violation charge. I don’t understand that, either. She’s not a police officer, just mentally ill.

Update 9/1/06: Griffin will be in court today to plead not guilty. She's been charged with, among other things, “civil rights intimidation”, which, according to Tennessee jury instructions, seems tailor-made for this situation:

(1) that the defendant damaged, destroyed or defaced any real or personal property of another person; and (2) that the defendant did so with the intent to unlawfully intimidate another from the exercise or enjoyment of a right or privilege secured by the constitution or laws of the state of Tennessee.

Jesus Christ!

2006-07-30T11:47:00.000-04:00

Blogger John Lynch of Stranger Fruit posted a great justaposition.

There was an article in the New York Times Saturday on the Dobriches, the Connecticut Jewish family that’s being hounded out of their town by its Christian majority. Responding to the report about classmates taunting the 11-year-old Dobrich boy, one Spirit-filled asshole shouted at a school board meeting,

“If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.”

A few days earlier, the Wall Street Journal had reassured us all,

Christian anti-Semitism […] is largely a thing of the past, especially in this country. Anti-Semitism today is chiefly the province of the Muslim world and the secular, multicultural left.

Please pick your jaw up off the floor. Someone might trip on it.

What sends one’s head reeling even more is that the Journal said this in response to anti-Semitic comments by self-proclaimed devout Christian Pat Buchanan.

The weekend’s news about the explicitly anti-Semitic (and audio-recorded!) spew by self-proclaimed devout Christian Mel Gibson probably would not affect the Journal’s analysis, either, as it is factual.

More flag insanity

2006-07-29T13:18:00.000-04:00

The irony is that this is taking place in Kansas (see last paragraph).

For J.R. and Robin knight, owning a bed and breakfast is everything they've always wanted. "We came here in search of our dreams, my wife always wanted a bed and breakfast and I always wanted a restaurant," says California native J.R. Knight. But recently their dream has turned into a nightmare, all because of a flag they're flying outside. “It's a rainbow flag - to some people it means friendship to some people it means gay pride," says Knight. But for knight, it was just a souvenir from his 12-year-old son.

Knight says the local Meade [Kansas] newspaper is trying to put him out of business and was frustrated when it ran an article about the flag and did not even bother to contact him regarding why he put it up. In fact, most people we spoke to in Meade said they didn’t even know what the flag meant until the article ran. But once word got around, the reaction was harsh.

Knight says the radio station has called him threatening to remove the restaurant’s commercials if he does not remove the flag. A local pastor stopped by said it was equivalent to hanging women’s panties on a flag pole. When Knight jokingly said he might consider that – the preacher said he would have him arrested.

His business has suffered - down to only a few local customers. The folks in Meade who've boycotted say it's too offensive for them to eat there.

Local resident, Keith Klassen says the flag is a slap in the face to the conservative community of Meade. “To me it's just like running up a Nazi flag in a Jewish neighborhood. I can't walk into that establishment with that flag flying because to me that's saying that I support what the flag stands for and I don't," says Klassen.

Knight says it's not meant to be a gay pride symbol but he doesn't mind if that's how it's taken. “Any gay or lesbian people that do stop by will be treated with the best service I can give you," says Knight

But despite the local ridicule and loss of business, Knight is determined to stand his ground. “When this rainbow flag shreds, I will buy another one, and another one, and another one - just like my American flag, I'll buy another one."

Knight says his son gave him the flag after a trip to Dorothy's house, a museum about the Wizard of Oz. The flag reminded the boy of "somewhere over the rainbow."

[from KWCH-TV News (Witchita) and Pandagon.]

Update: In early August the rainbow flag was “cut away … leaving behind only tattered corners” by vandals, according to the AP. The Knights said they will replace it.

Signal of Distress

2006-07-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

From Matthew Rothschild's McCarthyism Watch in The Progressive

Dale Klyn raises beef cows in Corydon, Iowa.

For the past six years, he has been flying an American flag on his property.

But since May 21, that flag has been upside down.

He gives two reasons.

First, he’s angry at a judge for allowing a debtor of his to declare bankruptcy. The debtor, who had bought a business from Klyn on a contract and still owed him $282,000, now only has to “pay me six cents on the dollar,” says Klyn. “The judge approved that on the 18th of May. I was pretty upset about that.”

Second, he wants to show solidarity for Terri Jones.

She’s the Iowa mom who has been flying her flag upside down after her son returned from the Iraq War and committed suicide. (Klyn had never met her before.)

“When I got the Des Moines Register and read the article about Terri Jones and how her son didn’t get the medical attention he needed, I decided I’m going to support her and oppose what the judge had done and fly my flag upside down,” he says.

It got a reaction.

“I went to the local Case equipment dealer and bought some parts, and the salesman come out and he asked me why I was flying the flag upside down,” Klyn says. “So I explained it to him.”

But the salesman wasn’t sold, telling Klyn, “I’ve lost all respect for you. I’ll buy you a one-way ticket anywhere you want to go out of the country,” Klyn recalls.

Klyn says his postal worker also remarked on it.

“The mail carrier left me a personal note,” he says.

A local TV news reporter then came out and did a story on him.

“The next thing I knew I’d been charged with disorderly conduct,” he says. “I was surprised. I have the right and the freedom to do that.”

On July 6, Klyn, represented by the Iowa ACLU, met with a magistrate.

“I pled not guilty,” Klyn says. “No trial date has been set.” Terri Jones, by the way, went to court that day to support him.

“She came to my hearing," he says. “It was very kind of her.”

Alan Wilson, the county attorney who is prosecuting the case, did not return three phone messages for comment.

But Klyn’s troubles go beyond this court case.

He faces death threats from a forum on a Marine vets’ website, www.leatherneck.com, which calls itself the “Marine Corps Community for USMC Veterans.”

That forum contained the following remarks from four different Marines:

“Any scout snipers live in Corydon, Iowa???”

“Corn hole ’m.”

“Fly him under it upside down.”

“If the flag is flying upside down, it means he is in trouble, right? I think we Marines should show up and get him ‘out’ of trouble.”

Says Klyn: “I view it as a threat.”

Anti-descriptivism

2006-07-14T09:42:00.000-04:00

Using what people actually say and write to determine appropriate English usage is […] like writing an ethics textbook based on what people actually do.
–“Revenge of the Language Nerds” in Slate, July 12, 2006

Cheney as Businessman

2006-06-28T08:12:00.000-04:00

William Greider of The Nation magazine has a bit on Dick Cheney's time in “the real world” of business. For 5 years, he was CEO of Halliburton, before picking himself to rule the world.

When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George W. Bush's running mate, the Republican ticket was touted as two tough-minded business executives running against wimpish politicians. "The American people should be pleased they have a vice presidential nominee who has been successful in business," Karen Hughes, Bush's then-communications director, enthused.

We remember. But…

A rather different story is told by a class-action investor lawsuit against Halliburton, recently revived after languishing for four years. It describes Cheney as not much different from other corporate titans ensnared by accusations of fraud. Brushing aside facts and subordinates' warnings, CEO Cheney made a series of daring but wrong decisions that were disastrous for the company. The managerial incompetence was compounded by fraudulent accounting gimmicks that concealed the company's true condition. Cheney, however, relentlessly issued bullish assurances, hiding the losses and pumping up the stock price.

Eventually, the truth caught up with the company —its stock tanked— but Cheney was already off to Washington, $40 million richer and running the country. He sold his shares at the top. HAL, the Halliburton stock symbol, began falling a few months after his resignation, from $53 to an eventual low of $8. By then Bush/Cheney were rolling out another bold venture — the invasion of Iraq.

A pity voters didn't know this side of the story back in 2000. Cheney's performance as CEO predicted his subsequent behavior as Veep: the willful ignorance and bullying manipulation of policy, the arrogance that led the country into deep trouble.

Unmitigated assholes. Those who voted for them have a lot to answer for.

Michael York, part deux

2006-06-20T17:38:00.000-04:00

In my earlier post about actor Michael York, I said I'd just bought his memoir of making the fundamentalist Christian apocalytptic Omega Code movies. I wondered why he participated in them.

This was a failure of imagination on my part. I can't imagine helping the Crouch family, founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network, spew their hateful, bigotted, dysfunctional, antidemocratic, authoritarian mythologizing. But I'm not an actor.

York did it, according to the book, because that's what he does for a living: act in movies. The movies come from all kinds of sources, and you never really know what's going to be great or terrible. York's been in more dogs than gems, and it sounds like the pay is the same either way.

York was probably attractive to the Trinity people because he's pretty straight: married 25 years (then) to the same woman and no drug or other classic Hollywood scandals to his name. He never hints in the book whether he himself has faith in Jesus Christ, though he had little in George W Bush. York simply comes across as quite a nice fellow. (Of course, this is from his point of view, but still.) And he's not a bad writer at all.

York shows us, probably inadvertently, little hypocrisies on the part of the religious extremists making the movie. I doubt he realized the significance of their gaudy wealth, religious media profiteering, or alcohol cultivation and consumption. These are small solaces, but I am being mean.

Despite his Oxford education, showy literacy, worldwide experience, and obvious intelligence, it would be churlish to expect York to consider the adverse social, political, and cultural consequences his collaboration with these angels of light would have. He's an actor, after all.

prah-sess-EZZ

2006-06-16T14:12:00.000-04:00

Several years ago I wanted to start a web site documenting the many pseudointellectuals who pronounce the plural of process as “prah-sess-eez”.

Terry Gross is one, by the way. So is the intolerable Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday, who did so just now. Actually, NPR is rife with Seezers, as they may be called.

The confusion in their conventional wisdom-besotted minds stems from contact with words like parenthesis and basis, which are in fact pronounced in the plural with the unusual “-eez” ending. But note that you don't tack the suffix onto the original word: you drop the original -is ending and substitute another — in LATIN.

In process, we make the plural by adding the English plural suffix to the unmolested base word, resulting in processes, like blesses or confesses and similarly pronounced.

If this abomination unto the Lord is committed in my presence, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

Terry, Mary; they're contrary

2006-06-13T12:54:00.000-04:00

Terry Gross (of NPR's Fresh Air) is no good at politcal interviews. Some malcontents have questioned whether she's good at any interviews, but I don't agree. Her political naivete leaves her pretty much incapable of asking anything worthwhile, asking questions everyone knows the guest's answers to and letting slide multiple opportunities for revelatory questions. Her movie stars and jazz musicians would not be able similarly to get away with all of their snow-job answers intact.

It's pretty obvious that she's unread in politics and has little interest in it. Yet she has everyday liberal assumptions that end up leading a charge against right-wing guests. It's absolutely painful to hear.

With a conservative politico, Gross's questions are like a frigid mother forcing herself to talk about sex with her twelve-year-old child. Awkward and embarrassed and full of disagreement, yet straining not to give offense, Gross's halting questions nevertheless always go straight to some hot-button opinion that she can't understand why her guests hold. No carressing of the guest, no establishment of rapport. Just the clumsy and ignorant, "Why did you feel that way?"

Today's interview with Mary Cheney was less strained that that with her mother Lynne Cheney, who left Gross impaled somewhere back in 1973. Both interviews were utterly agonizing and unenlightening.

Gross should bring in Dave Davies for these, as she does with sports figures.

[No links; no photos. Christ I hate blogging.]

Super-Dyke

2006-06-03T13:03:00.000-04:00

DC Comics new “52” magazine will feature the return of Batwoman — as a lipstick lesbian.

That's great.

But as Peter Sagal (of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me) pointed out, it would be a far more radical innovation to have an ugly, overweight superhero.

And anyway, DC sued a Chelsea art gallery last year for making Batman and Robin's relationship explicit in trademark-infringing watercolor.

New psycho-diagnostic manual

2006-05-15T16:30:00.000-04:00

A coalition from various psychodynamic associations has produced a new diagnostic manual as an alternative to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the main one currently used by psychiatrists and therapists to give patients a code number for purposes of treatment, research, and prognosis — but mostly health insurance reimbursement.

The new group's manual is the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM), which allegedly “attempts to characterize the whole person — the depth as well as the surface of emotional, cognitive, and social functioning.”

In contrast to the DSM's total focus on dysfunction, the PDM claims that its basis is the belief that “a comprehensive conceptualization of health is the foundation for describing disorder”. I'm actually not impressed by that philosophy. It still assumes a (socially) normative range of behavior as “healthy”, human, and approved.

The PDM editors also claim to “require a fuller description of the patient's internal life to do justice to understanding his or her distinctive experience.”

Yeah, well, okay. Beautiful thought. But how it actually executed?

Dimension I: Personality Patterns and Disorders

All patients get assigned to personality categories, because, “for example, a depressed mood may be manifested in markedly different ways in a person who fears relationships and avoids experiencing and expressing most feelings and in an individual who is fully engaged in all of life's relationships and emotions.”

But what is the real basis for assigning the person in front of you to one specific category of or another? Is “personality” so perfectly cut-and-dried? What if you start seeing the patient through your initial diagnosis, but she actually has more variation in her responses? Won't her assigned code number blind you to her complexity? No? If it doesn't affect your ongoing interaction with her, why assign it in the first place?

The new PDM supposedly improves on the DSM because where the DSM only had one narcissistic disorder, the PDM includes two subcategories:

P104 – Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• P104.1 – Arrogant / Entitled
• P104.2 – Depressed / Depleted

Those poor Arrogant / Depleted folks are still out in the cold.

I would say the main problems of the DSM are rampant in this system. I prefer an idea I've read at Psycho-Babble: personality disorders are code numbers for judgments of personal distaste.

The new approach also includes “PCA109 – Histrionic Personality Disorder”! Oh my god. Aren't they embarrassed to be using that word in the 21st century??

The main outline list of PDM diagnoses is here.

Dimension III: Manifest Symptoms and Concerns begins with the DSM-IV-TR categories…. We approach symptom clusters as useful descriptors. Unless there is compelling evidence in a particular case for such an assumption, we do not regard them as highly demarcated biopsychosocial phenomena.

Well, if they're not real phenomena, how are they “useful”? What on earth is going in these friggin’ shrinks’ heads!!

And if this 600-page book just adopts the DSM's lists and clusters, how is it an improvement? Or even a change?

According to Garry Cooper's Clinician's Digest column in the current Psychotherapy Networker, the PDM editors “have no illusions that the PDM will replace the DSM as insurance companies' coding manual of choice.” That's good. I think we'd have to label them MCA207 (Major Defects in Basic Mental Functions) if they thought otherwise.

But their stated hope that the PDM will “encourage the next generation of therapists to start thinking about clients as something more than a collection of symptoms” is groundless. In fact, they're further contributing to the arbitrary, authoritarian, dehumanizing process of diagnostic bullying; they've just put a barely different cover on it.

Personally, I think effective diagnostic categories — ones that point to specifically effective treatments — might someday be based on brain scans and genetic testing, in addition to in-life observations (like in the home) and today's history-style interviews. But we're not there yet.

Mary Cheney is worthless. Or worse.

2006-05-13T21:37:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to post about Mary Cheney for a long time. The occasion of her autobiography sales-promotion campaign is opportune.

But I could not do better than the anonymous reader who helpfully clarified the situation for Andrew Sullivan:

I wish I had the time to write a calm and reasoned response to your entries about Condi Rice and Mary Cheney, but since I don't, this is going to be from the heart:

It's irrelevant that Rice or any of the other members of this administration are "tolerant" of GLBT people or that they have gay/lesbian family members or friends, when they win elections by stirring up anti-gay prejudice in this country. Why don't you see this?

Of course, Condi and the Bushes and the Cheneys are tolerant of gays and lesbians. They are sophisticated people who have known gay people as neighbors, colleagues, family members, and friends all their lives. If anything, that makes their cynical exploitation of gays as a campaign issue all the more contemptible.

As for Mary Cheney, yeah, I'm glad she's FINALLY spoken up. But she has it pretty cushy, no? No matter what happens to the rest of us --- when "marriage protection" laws go into effect in state after state, potentially depriving us of existing domestic partner benefits, wills, powers of attorney, guardianship, or any other rights that "approximate" marriage --- she and Heather will still be sheltered by the wealth and privilege they enjoy by being members of the Cheney family.

Until all gay people have equal rights and protection under the law, I don't give a good god damn that Condi Rice was sweet to some transgendered person or that the Cheneys love their lesbian daughter. Did you read Mary Cheney's coming-out story? She said that her mother wept out of sadness and fear that her daughter would face a life of "pain and prejudice" as a lesbian. From whom I wonder? Oh yeah, right, the people who put her father in office.

Oh, well said. Now if only you'd write in after every other time Sullivan posts an opinion.

March of the Penguins

2006-04-17T11:03:00.000-04:00

I liked March of the Penguins a lot. The DVD is even better because the documentary about making the film gives a lot more information about what you see in the main movie.

For example, did you know that these noble, long-marching birds are morons? The sea is a short walk from their camping place, but in a different direction. Instead of waddling 60-70 miles one-way to breed or feed, they could just go HALF A MILE in the direction of the filmmakers' outpost to the water's edge. (Even when it's iced over, access to that part of the sea would presumably not be more than about 10 miles away.)

I agree with the points made in this skeptical review.

Titles

2006-04-09T15:31:00.000-04:00

Books

Why? by Charles Tilly of Columbia U (great rev at NYer by Gladwell)
*no local yet

NEJM March 23 2006 issue failed antidep studies GDL
*G-HQ, FP

by Robert Cialdini
Influence - how and why people agree to things (1984)
*FP 153
Influence : The Psychology Of Persuasion (1993)
*GD-GB 153.852
Influence : Science And Practice (2001) 4th ed?
*GD-O 153.852

Lincoln's melancholy
by Joshua Wolf Shenk (2005)
*GD-F-HQ-GB Biog

Going Sane: Maps of Happiness
by Adam Phillips (2005)
"why a sane life might be more worth living than, say, a happy life, or a healthy life, or a successful life." pos rev in WP 02/19/2006
*GD-F 616.89

Satisfaction: the Science of Finding True Fulfillment
by Gregory Berns (2005)
pos rev in WP 02/19/2006 – SCI AM gave it thumbs down; excerpt is a waste of time
*ELPL, Bf Twp, etc

What about the Gigerenzer I ordered?

Tristram Shandy, who broke all records for meandering, was in his 40's.
by Laurence Sterne
*

Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star
By Tab Hunter & Eddie Muller (2004or5)
*GD-F

MY FATHER THE SPY: An Investigative Memoir
by John H Richardson [Jr] (2005)
*

Inventing Modern: Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins
by John H. Lienhard (and lots of other Lienhard books)
*GMI

Traveling through the Boondocks: In and Out of Academic Hierarchy
Terry Caesar 2000 (essays, incl "On Teaching at a Second Rate U")
*MSU, UM-AA EMU WSU

Movies

Movies in the UN:
>America! doc Alastair Cooke *GD-F,D,Fen,GB,M,O
>N by NW *GD-C,D,Fen,GB,M,MtM
>Peacemaker, The (1997) Clooney & KIDMAN! *GD-F,D,Fen,GB

*Before Night Falls (2000) something gay?
GD-C,D,Fen,M,MtM

*fantastic four
GD-FT-F-GV etc

*Mean Girls (Tina Fey movie)
GDL-B-GB-M-SC etc

*Mar Adentro The Sea Inside (2005) right-to-die
GD-Fen-GV-GB

The UN Headquarters

2006-04-06T20:01:00.000-04:00

Did you know that in 1946, when the UN was first being formed, the initial thought was to create a sort of independent city-state for it headquarters? Get a peice of ground several miles on each side and put up a city with residences for something like 40,000 people! They considered several huge sites, including the Presidio in San Francisco for it, before George Lucas took it over.

Isn't that interesting?

Then some guy died and plans fell through and Mr. Junior offered the riverside lot in New York City with space just for assembly rooms and administrative offices and voila, the UN we know and love.

I found this out from architect Le Corbusier's book about the process, complete with napkinlike sketches, such as the one below. Frank Lloyd Wright said about Corbu something like, “[Oh, now he's gone and built something. I suppose he'll write 3 books about it now.]”

(I flipped it so it would say "UN"!)

It is truly a beautiful building. I watched Sydney Pollock's The Interpreter 4 times last weekend. It was filmed at the UN and offers many shots of its captivating design, especially if you luxuriate over them frame-by-frame on the DVD. But the new giant video screens completely ruin the impressiveness of the front of the General Assembly room. They're like a goofy airplane's wings. Compare the before and after:

Blog’s fate uncertain

2006-04-05T15:53:00.000-04:00

Writing for this blog is not paying off well for me. I feel both constrained and pressured in unproductive ways. I think I may keep it around and add perfunctorily to it from time to time, just so I have a place on the web to post pictures or refer people from forum posts if there's something I can't put at a forum post.

Plus, I can keep track here of what books I want to borrow from the library, since I always leave my list at home and I don't have a Blackberry yet.

So, this is the first in a long line of perfunctory posts. Bloggin's not for me, I guess.

Acceptance of what?

2006-03-30T12:38:00.000-05:00

Acceptance may be the single most-overlooked helpful strategy in psychotherapy. I started this blog two months ago mainly to talk about therapeutic acceptance — and other issues raised by Steve Hayes's acceptance and commitment therapy (which I cottoned onto a couple years ago, before it was cool).

When I was deep into my expensive, destructive, “neo-Freudian” psychoanalysis, I said, after a lot of thought on the subject, that the ultimate goal of therapy could only be having a different attitude toward the things that come up within yourself. My analyst surprised me when he agreed.

Therapeutic acceptance is, I think, the acceptance of those things that come up within yourself: the thoughts and feelings and other occurences that are sort of in between that seem to surface (or bob near the surface) like from a deep, deep well you have no control over and can't possibly see into. It's not so much, in my expression to my analyst or in Hayes's literature, acceptance of things outside yourself, like environmental conditions or other people's behavior.

I think maybe that's where initial interest in this therapy approach can get derailed a little, even as presented by Hayes & friends. Because “acceptance”, as commonly used, usually refers to acceptance of factors outside yourself, not to, well, YOU. I've seen what looks like a complete lack of interest in acceptance as a approach on a psychotherapy consumer board I go to, for example.

Albert Ellis's “Unconditional Self-Acceptance” and “Unconditional Other-Acceptance” also paint with a little bit broader brush than I use in this area. I think the distinction is that you don't have to accept that you have a big nose, but you can accept the feelings that come up from your unfathomable inner well about your big nose. And unlike Ellis, I would allow conditions on that acceptance, at least insofar as something like, “I'm ashamed to feel this way, but I hate my big nose.”

O Liberty, Sweet Liberty!

2006-03-29T11:28:00.000-05:00

Long, long, long, long post

2006-03-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

Despite my glorious blog, I am not a very successful person, even judged by my own generous standards. I have been clinically depressed, often severely, and without a single full day of remission, for over 20 years. By “severely” I mean, for example, that I lie on the floor with my eyes open for six hours without moving because moving is impossible. By “often” I mean often.

I have tried a lot (3 dozen regimens) of prescription psych meds, unilateral ECT, vitamins, lights, exercise, sugarless diets, and the passage of time. I've done conventional weekly psychotherapy, daily neo-Freudian psychoanalysis, cognitive behavior therapy, and shitloads of self-help books, and I have a shelf full of journals documenting a self-analysis that would give Karen Horney pause.

Not one bit of it was more than minimally helpful. Some of it was harmful.

Through a process that deserves several blog posts of its own, I recently acquired a prescription for buprenorphine (Subutex®), a synthetic opioid usually given to people like Vicodin addicts in recovery programs. (I've never been addicted to anything and tried it for its potential antidepressant properties.)

Bupe has had significant benefits for me, for which I am grateful (but to whom?). It is the only drug I've ever tried that has been effective against depression for more than a few days. I recommend trying it if you're a treatment-resistant depressive. (Good lucking getting any, but that's another blog.)

Thing is, there are critical areas of my life that bupe has not helped with. Chiefly, it is still impossible for me to do anything significant that would be, to me, “successful”. This despite throwing all the CBT techniques in the library at such problems, even while on a double-dose of bupe, just in case. I am really at an impasse. What can be done next to get me over or through this huge problem?

I'm willing to add various psych meds back into my bloodstream in hopes that one or more of them that didn't help before might help now, now that I'm using bupe as well. I think I probably will try something like that before too long.

But I also feel that I must do something significantly different in my own head, something substantial that I haven't really tried before. One thing that makes sense to try in this regard is related to my first blog post: the principle that, universally, people are doing the best they can.

Some people (like me) would have trouble applying that to certain politicians. But taken simply as a principle, its application is straightforward even in cases of the most horrific assholes, rapists, mass murderers, and compassionate conservatives. It's hard work, and it doesn't always last, but it can be done repeatedly, and the effect on your own thinking is remarkable. You can see clear though to assertive solutions instead of getting bogged down in “shouldy” thinking about the people who upset you. (Was that Ellis’s or Horney’s word?)

But one place I realized I could never apply my principle (which still needs a name) was to my dad and my brother, at least as they were in my childhood, in their treatment of me. I'm only going to say that it was not ideal.

There was no way, as I knew when I first came up with that doing-the-best-they-can idea, that I could apply it to Dad & “Ken”. Maybe ever. Yet I realized that such an event (“forgiving” them) would plausibly either be therapeutic itself or be the ultimate result of successful therapy for me. But I couldn't actually imagine doing it.

But I think now that there may be no way around it if I am ever going to have ANY good kind of life. I think (and I won't go into details) that understanding and thereby (eeyyccchh, this is hard to write) forgiving those assholes for their conduct toward me may be the only way to free up my own behavior in regard to anything that looks like success.

Here's why

They feared and punished my success when I was a kid, persistently, sometimes viciously, and for all of my childhood. (Other people who were there have independently arrived at that conclusion; it's not my delusion. My CBT therapist pointed out that my brother would not have continued in it without my dad's blessing!)

The result of this long-term and fairly consistent treatment, I believe, is that today, I expect almost any meaningful personal success to be followed by some catastrophic punishment. Despite having some successes that weren't obviously punished, this deep fear has not abated in the least.

I think that's because I don't see any connection between the expected punishment and the independent, external circumstances or consequences that vary from situation to situation. I see that the independent variable triggering the punishment is ME, not anything else. As long as I am there, a success will be punished.

If I could let Dad & Ken off the hook, I could possibly see that there were other causes for their treatment of me. The independent variables causing them to inflict pain on me was other stuff in their lives; it wasn't me. I would be able to see, as most people do, that whether I am “punished” or not for a particular success TODAY depends on all kinds of external factors which can be monitored and managed, that it's not just because I'm the one who's doing something successful that the outcome has to be bad. If my childhood punishments were caused by other, external factors, then there probably isn't anything inherent in me that automatically requires a punished outcome.

I need to let Dad & Ken off the hook in order to change that conditioning. By keeping up my resentment for them, I keep myself in the picture as the independent variable. If there's some other cause of their bad treatment of me (like dementia or their own bad learning), then I have to give up my resentment. And if I do that, then it's like I can never get justice or revenge or make them stop it so hard they'll never threaten me like that again. Grudge-carrying is a very old reptilian urge. It comes pre-packaged with your brain. It has its usefulness but not in this situation, even though I feel it here so very strongly.

Unless I free up Dad & Ken from my lust for revenge, I will never see that they were not responding to ME. If I see that they had other causes, then (1) I no longer consider myself inherently punishment-evoking, which would be nice, but (2) I would have to give up forever my very passionate belief that they need to be punished themselves for what they did to me.

I doubt this would make sense to another human being, and I'm certain no human would read this far, LOL. But I wanted to post it, to be clear about it, on the record: Without forgiving D&K, I, plausibly, will never be able to extinguish my own fear of my success.

And here's the thing: last night, I really saw that it's a bit of a toss up. Even if it would cost me (as it will) having any meaningful accomplishment for the rest of my life, I'm really not sure that I would be willing to give up my hatred and resentment for what they did. No matter what factors influenced them to behave so badly toward me, the fact is that they should NEVER have behaved that way despite such influences! Am I supposed to just forget that? To just say, “Hey, that's okay! No problem!”?

HELL NO! Sometimes I think I am put together with resentment.

Of course, I'm not able to get back at them by holding such a grudge, I realize that. Dad's dead! But I could do still hold it! I could hold a grudge for the next 40 years, and have a rotten, destitute, bankrupt, desiccated, lonely life just to prove a point to no one. I really could.

Straight? Unhappy? Sue somebody.

2006-03-27T12:01:00.000-05:00

Michael York is 64!

2006-03-27T09:47:00.000-05:00

Today is the 64th birthday of British actor Michael York, star of Logan's Run (1976), the movie in which people get a wonderful life but have to take manditory death at age 30. I haven't seen it since I was in my mid-twenties, but this good (i.e., helpful) review has convinced me to see it again — with York's DVD commentary, of course.

What really makes me curious about York, though, is his participation in the Christian evangelical apocalyptic Omega Code series (1 & 2), which seems to stand in apposition to every other movie he's ever worked in, not least the Austin Powers series.

Does York believe that end-of-the-world stuff? He's an actor, so naturally, he will do anything for money, and I assume the doomsayers paid him well enough. All I've ever been able to find out about what York thinks of the actual beliefs the films promote is equivocal-sounding stuff about the forgotten Christian audience. There's this, but it's an indirect quote, re-written by the reporter:

“York says many people believe that the first film and this sequel are actual truisms that could occur because it's based on the Bible.” –Zap2it

Did York really say exactly that? What could he have meant by truism? Surely not the dictionary definition (obvious or undeniable). His not-recently-updated official web site is silent on matters of faith.

He produced a book about his experience playing the Omega antichrist (now selling for 45¢ in remainders at Amazon), which I may have to read to get a better answer.

Update: I just ordered a 46¢ remaindered copy of Dispatches from Armageddon: Making the Movie Megiddo...a Devilish Diary! by the birthday boy. Clearly this blog will stop at nothing in its relentless search for the truth.

Update 6/20/2006: I finally read York's book and posted the result here.

‘Newsweek’ errs on Freud’s influence

2006-03-25T09:37:00.000-05:00

So Newsweek gave Freud a cover this week (issue date 3/27/06), an article on his early career, an article about his lasting influence, and an interview about Freud with real Nobel prizewinner Eric Kandel.

I didn't think the article was great, although it contained these gems:

And Freud's debunkers are finding much to confirm what they've said all along, that his canonical "cures" were the product of wishful thinking and conscious fudging, and his theories founded on a sinkhole of circular logic.

“I'm afraid he doesn't hold up very well at all.… It almost feels like a personal betrayal to say that. But every particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, infantile sexuality.” –Peter D. Kramer

It was enough to get this out of a blogging psychoanalyst (or his patient, I'm not quite sure): “Regardless of what scientists can prove or disprove about his theories, I think the bottom line is this: psychoanalysis can be extremely effective”. That's the spirit. No matter what's disproved, keep on truckin’.

The Newsweek bit had a few errors and misleading statements, like: “The American Psychological Association, which represents psychotherapists without medical degrees, has 150,000 members”. I think most psychotherapists are MA or MSW clinicians (not APA members) and a huge portion of that 150,000 are not clinical psychologists doing psychotherapy. (But I can't find any numbers this morning, drat.)

I disagreed with most of Kandel's statements about Freud. He said, for example, “Much of what we do is unconscious. That is a revelation that largely comes from Freud.” But Freud's assertions about our randy, tripartite mind have nothing I mean nothing to do with modern research on unconscious brain activity.

Kandel also excused Freud for Freudianism's unscientific basis: “The problem with psychoanalysis, and it's a deep problem, is not with Freud. Subsequent generations have failed to make it a more rigorous, biologically based science.” Um, that's maybe because it can't be done? Just a guess. If Freud had set up a attitude of subjecting psychoanalytic assertions to ANY controlled research, then maybe you could say that the “deep problem” wasn't with Freud.

But the wrongest thing

in Newsweek was a graphic in the print addition (not online yet, I guess) that showed a sort of family tree of modern psychology flowing out of Freud's head. Although most of it was various psychodynamic writers, it also showed the behaviorists Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner on a vein flowing out of Freud! Absolute bogus nonsense malarky! I hope there are indignant letters to the editor in coming editions.

(That tree also showed Beck coming out of Skinner, which is debatable. Beck started as a Freudian.)

What George & Dick understand

2006-03-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

Jacob Weisberg, over at Slate, gets it right about U.S. military conscription:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney react angrily to any suggestion that a draft might be needed, because they know that the prospect of conscription would make their decision to invade Iraq even more unpopular. Having lived through Vietnam and [having] shirked the draft themselves, they understand that if people anywhere near their own station in life were forced to fight, any remaining support for wars of arguable necessity would dry up and blow away.

If the U.S. population on the whole isn't willing to put up it ought to shut up where our intervention in Iraq is concerned.

It isn't well-known that draftees go AWOL at one-fifth the rate of volunteers. Draftees have far fewer criminal problems while enlisted than volunteers and perform better overall. That's a little counter-intuitive, but the fact is that military service often looks most attractive to those who have no other options. Young men with enough competence and ambition to have other options (like skilled-trade jobs or higher education) aren't nearly as likely to choose to be yelled at, take craps in public, and run a high risk of death, paralysis, or having hooks for hands or a freak show for a face.

Draftees cost less money and give better service. If George is really doing all he can to protect us, isn't he obligated to get the best people he can for the armed forces?

Blogspot® SUCKS!

2006-03-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

I had a brilliant idea. It would've saved money, saved the environment, saved the Heathen, and let everybody in the whole world live together in happiness and harmony forever. But because Blogspot® absolutely SUCKS with their fucking “filer upgrade”, I couldn't get on to post it for over 24 hours. And now I've forgotten it!

Way to go, billionaires.

B F Skinner at 102

2006-03-20T13:43:00.000-05:00

Today (March 20,2006) is the 102nd anniversary of B. F. Skinner's birth. He is probably the most-misunderstood psychologist of the 20th century, and that's saying something.

He gave psychology the term reinforcement, which is among its most-misused terms. This is especially true in the phrase positive reinforcement, which is so widely misused that its incorrect meaning has gained authoritative recognition. Oh well.

I first stumbled onto Steve Hayes's acceptance and commitment therapy a couple years ago when I Googled for depression "b f skinner" . I was looking for some way to think about clinical depression that made good sense from a Skinnerian, radical behaviorist point of view. I wanted that because behaviorism can bring amazing clarity to muddied situations. It has often seemed to me like “universal acid”, which Daniel Dennett said Dariwinian thiking is for him.

Depression is a terribly muddy subject. It is simply not well understood. But Skinnerian “accounts” (to use a Skinnerian word) of it have not gotten very far, either.

It's been suggested (I have no reference at the moment, but I've read it, trust me) that when person is depressed, things that were “reinforcing” for her in the past just aren't anymore. Well, that's probably true, but that's a misuse of the term. The fact is that the depressed person just doesn't do any of the things we'd normally expect her to do, so those actions can't possibly be reinforced by anything because they don't occur! (Get it?)

So the failure of the reinforcers, technically speaking, must've happened earlier, before she got depressed. Because if they'd been effective reinforcers, she be engaging in the reinforced actions now. Presumably.

Mostly, I wanted to note Skinner's birthday. I don't really have anything to say. I'm too depressed.

(That is, of course, a very NON-Skinnerian attribution of behavior to an emotional state, but oh well.)

I hate Arianna Huffington

2006-03-17T09:18:00.000-05:00

Oooh! George Clooney nailed I mean nailed Arianna Huffington. I hate her.

Her staff took excerpts from interviews George had done with the Guardian and Larry King. (By the way, Larry King looks, sounds, and moves like he's in his nineties, not just 73.) They mortared them together and published the result on Arianna's very-slow-loading web site, the Huffington Post, as if it were an original blog post by George.

But when he found out about it, boy, was he mad! Supposedly the Huff had permission from George's publicist, who's probably in for it frm George. (I would hate to get bawled out by that man, or Batman, let me tell you.) George says he's never had a ghostwriter. The Huff has since removed the offending page.

It galls me that people take Arianna seriously. When George started making a stink about this, “She said some things that I won't share, but she did tell me that this could be bad…for my career,” he told Lloyd Grove. Are you kidding me?! Arianna thought she could threaten pinnacle-level superstar, director, multiple Emmy®- and Oscar®-winner George Clooney's career with her stupid word-vacuum?

The less delicious but more nutritious take-home from this incident, however, is the knowledge that the Huff probably pulls such shit all the time. Desperately trawling for content to fill up their for-profit site, they need opinionated stuff by really famous people. Problem: most really famous people don't have many interesting or thoughtful opinions on subjects outside their careers. Since there's a lot of stuff on the Huff by really famous people opining outside their careers, the staff there may be primarily composed of ghosts.

Anything on the Huffington Post that's written by a famous person who's not a professional writer is now suspect. As far as I'm concerned, anything there that's written by a movie star is fake.

You may rest assured, however, that everything on this blog really is written by George Clooney.

This blog’s true intention

2006-03-17T08:13:00.000-05:00

The primary reason I started a blog at all was to write about “acceptance and commitment therapy”, its creator Steve Hayes, and appurtenances thereto. But I wanted to get established as a blogger first. Not necessarily establish an audience (’tis to laugh) but at least post enough so that I had a style and wasn’t a one-note piper.

That approach isn’t working so well. It’s like walking around with your head poked through the bottom of a garbage bag so people will take you seriously when you wear your new sweater.

It’s like eating a chunk of Styrofoam® every day to get yourself ready for waffles and syrup.

It’s like— You get the point.

So don’t be surprised if this blog now becomes obsessive, pitiful, and pathetic; focuses on sick, idiosyncratic minutiae; and veers dangerously close to the self-involved.

(Promise?)

Abortion

2006-03-16T10:50:00.000-05:00

It's clear from my site traffic reports that I need to post more often. My public demands it. It's also clear that I need to enhance my revenue stream. But blogging is more fun. So...

Contentious Topic #1: Abortion

My opinions on abortion would enrage anyone on either side. I'm never going to be pregnant or get someone pregnant or personally perform an abortion or personally stop a woman from getting one, so my opinions are more-or-less harmless, except that they might persuade someone else who is in a position to do/not do these things. Nevertheless, I usually keep my universally-enraging opinions about it to myself.

You will see in a moment why.

That moment is now.

Uhhhnnn... No, not yet.

The terms

A philosophy professor I had said people who argue about abortion too often make reference to the need to “define your terms”. This is ridiculous, he said, because the entire discussion is over the definition of the terms and nothing else. Does person include a fetus? a zygote? an unimplanted cluster of cells? a sperm that's really near an egg? If you can define it the debate is over. Similarly with body, life, freedom, etc.

He said an abortion arguments often run like this.

Zoe: “I have the right to do with my body what I choose.”

Moe: “Do you have the right to throw your body over my face so that I cannot breathe?”

Zoe: “No, because that would harm another person.”

My professor then rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders as if to say QED.

My opinion on abortion also involves definitions. I come down at a particular point to mark the beginning of a new human life, for example. But my ethical criteria about abortion are pragmatic and don't depend on anybody's verbal definitions, even mine.

So, my long-secret abortion ruling...

...will soon follow.

Preventing pregnancy

What's most perplexing to me is that people (other than Roman Catholics) who are opposed to abortion aren't doing everything possible to prevent the pregnancies that result in abortions. They don't want to encourage premarital sex, okay; I get it. But isn't that a lesser offense than (in their eyes) murdering unborn babies?

I, for one, would have no problem with a cultural tradition of temporarily “fixing” all boys and girls until they were, say 21 years old. Lots of other people would object to that, but not, I hope, on the grounds that people under 21 need to have babies. Or even should. Not these days.

Of course the official Roman Catholic position is beyond adequate words. It's one thing for intellectually isolated, officially celebate, monomaniacal prelates to have odd, purely theoretical ideas about sex. But many of those who tout the no-contraception line are healthy, young lay people! Bollocks-lobed, boob-brained, terribly confused, silly-thinking nitwits who believe married-to-each-other heterosexual adults should not use condoms, ever, when having penis-in-vagina intercourse because it's inherently immoral — but pulling the penis out before ejaculation is moral, although after both interventions the sacred sperm ends up in the same bedroom wastebasket!

Michigan's own pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan is pressuring the pharmacies in his Catholic development in Florida not to carry condoms! He lumps their sale on the side of “evil”! I don't think he really believes that. I think he enjoys bothering people by saying goofy things. The local independent hospital, though, says it will NOT supply birth control hormones to women who go to Monaghan's school, even though they provide them to everybody else. Read it! It's right there in the article!

I remind myself that all people are doing the best they can.

My opinion on abortion

As I said, it would upset anyone. Let me start by saying that it doesn't bother me if (most) teenagers are experimenting sexually with each other, if they've had safety and emotional issues thoroughly explained to them, if it's something they want to do, if they're able to say no, if they have responsible, competent adults they trust and can turn to, if they're using disease- and pregnancy-prevention, and if they realize it's optional, unnecessary, and less cool than current political science. That's a lot of ifs.

I want contraceptives to be as freely available as mints at restaurant cash registers, as pennies in gas station penny cups, as daily junk mail. I want any government program that reduces unplanned conceptions and conception in women 19 and under fully funded.

Now to the hard part.

I think human life begins at

Sorry. I gotta run to the bank before 4:00. I'll pick up here later!

This means you

2006-03-15T13:10:00.000-05:00

What a great scary notice! I think I may put it on every one of my posts:

You may link this article to your website… provided your link does not depict this article, its author, or [this site] in a negative manner.

Since the author is apparently a lawyer himself, you really have to wonder if he actually believes it has any legal power. I suspect it’s a tongue-in-cheek joke.

Nevertheless, I propose expanding it. I may send postcards to everyone I know and hand out cards to people I pass on the street and wear a T-shirt or button warning all in my radius that they may point at me or mention me provided they don’t depict me (or my parents) in a negative manner. Consider yourself warned!

Oh, and by the way, the silly notice is here: link.

I whiff at Pharyngula

2006-03-12T16:40:00.000-05:00

I submitted a comment at biologist PZ Myers' blog Pharyngula. That was this morning. They have to get approved by a moderator (I assume PZ?) before they appear. Quite a few hours later, he allowed one making the same point, I guess in a better way. Mine said:

Forrest comments on the sociology and politics of the creationist movement and on evolutionary science in education and popular culture — categories in which she is a qualified academic researcher. She's published on those subjects in professional and technical journals and is a full professor in Southeastern Louisiana University's Department of History and Political Science.

The one he published said

I don't see your point. If you bothered to read the interview, you would know that Forrest testified about the history of the Intelligent Design Creationism, not the "science". Also, since ID is not science, but is religion, (which is now backed by legal precedent) Forrest, as a philosopher seems perfectly well qualified to comment on it. I don't see how this compares to mechanical engineers and lawyers commenting on the probability of biological phenomena.

Mine was focused, less contentious, had links, grammar, and sentence structure. But it wasn't as good, and he knew it for hours before he even saw the other one. Sigh. That's okay. I have a blanket I can crawl under.... There's no way I could do grad school. Why do I keep thinking that's possible? I'm stupid in a way you can't cure by trying harder or being more careful. A stilted, unimaginative bore.

cynicillin

2006-03-10T14:33:00.000-05:00

At Pharyngula yesterday, PZ Myers coined (as far as I know) the word cyniclin:

“I'd be more enthused if the earlier hype hadn't switched on my skeptical gland and flooded my system with cyniclin, the hormone of disillusionment.” –News from Enceladus 3/9/06 5:19 PM

I guess it'd be pronounced SIN-ihk-lin, not sin-EYE-klin. That would bridge between cynic and hormone names like adrenalin, insulin, and so on.

But I like poster SEF's idea better:

“At least you also have lots of natural cynicillin to protect you against all those infectious religion memes though. It's just a shame so many people are apparently allergic to critical thinking.” –SEF | 3/9/06 06:59 PM

I think it sounds funnier, and the idea of protection is more easily conveyed by the -cillin ending.

Other antibiotics (like ampicillin) have picked it up as well, even though, like copter in newscopter or burger in cheeseburger, it has no etymological significance. Penicillin comes from penicillus, meaning a little penis – a tail or brush. That's how it looked under the microscope. (There was article I'd like to read on the “Irradiation of the Suffix cillin” in the American Dialect Society's American Speech, but they keep it behind a $$ wall. Their site sucks wad, by the way.)

No googlits for cyniclin OR cynicillin. There is a PC-CILLIN “leading antivirus software” that's in a domain name dispute. [Update: Last year at LiveJournal, there apparently was (briefly) a blog or blogger called cynicillin, but it was touted as “the cure for cynicism?” – very different than these senses.]

Cynicillin is healthy to have around, but you don't want to overdose on it.

Crackpot criteria are always conventional?

2006-03-10T13:58:00.000-05:00

I feel like I can draw a distinction between crackpot assertions and ideas that are merely contentious or wrong. Don't you? But what makes that difference? I think I can do better than “I know it when I see it.”

I would put in the crackpot category: sincere (as opposed to politically opportunist) Holocaust deniers, opponents of evolution, and those who believe the US government can't legally collect income taxes. Also HIV-AIDS denier Celia Farber, who just got more of her crackpot HIV-does-not-cause-AIDS-throw-away-your-medicines writing published — in Harper’s, for God's sake.

Contentious ideas: Freudianism, behaviorism, Reagan (or FDR) was the greatest president, No one likes me, There is (is not) a God ...

Wrong ideas: This is 2005, I fail at everything I try ...

I realize I'm slightly confounding crackpots (people) and crackpot ideas that the people promote. But I want to get this posted, so I'll sort that out later. Maybe.

I think they're different because the crackpot assertions about HIV or tax legality are about out-in-the-world phenomena where we all, including the crackpots, really do agree on most of the ways we evaluate such ideas’ truthfulness or validity or strength. Whereas for merely contentious ideas, proponents and opponents both generally acknowledge that we don't agree on the terms. Either (a) we agree on the criteria but the evaluations are subjective and iffy (“I do love him!”), or (b) we all acknowledge that we don't agree on the criteria, like when capitalists and communists focus on different economic outcomes.

Maybe a wrong idea that persists despite contrary conventional evidence wouldn't be crackpot if the person simply rejects the conventional criteria. As in, “I know he says he doesn't love me, and he moved away, and he got a restraining order against me, and he married someone else, but something tells me he does love me, deep-down.”

A crackpot idea is one whose proponents seem to agree that the idea can be, should be, and is evaluated according to conventional criteria. The proponents just repeatedly refuse to accept the conventionally-provided evaluations of those criteria. They minimize, dismiss, or flatly ignore an evaluative source otherwise accepted by everyone including the crackpots — but only when that source disputes or weakens their idea.

Maybe this insight is unremarkable to most people. Maybe it's wrong! But it bugged me not to understand the difference I felt between AIDS deniers and, say, cultural conservatives, since I disagree with both. (Conservatives sometimes fall into the crackpot category but not necessarily.) The distinction I see, which allows a lot of gray area between the poles, is this: Crackpots say they're playing by the same rules, but they're not.

Hypnotic “rigmarole”

2006-03-09T13:27:00.000-05:00

An article in the American Psychological Association Monitor summarizes a bunch of recent hypnosis research. Among the findings, hypnosis researcher Amir Raz says, “We now have evidence showing that highly hypnotizable people do not need to be hypnotized in order to benefit from suggestion”. (I think benefit from here means be controlled by.) In one of his studies, “highly hypnotizable” people who were NOT hypnotized at the time were told that certain words they were about to see would be gibberish. They then performed certain tricky tasks involving those words as if the words were gibberish when in fact they were not.

So maybe hypnosis isn't the real independent variable? As long as you're dealing with suggestible people, you can just make the suggestions without performing “hypnotic induction using methods such as guided imagery and visualization,” as in the hypnosis studies, and if you're not working with suggestible people, the hypnosis won't work anyway?

Have adequate controls never been placed on this research, in all the years of publications in all the dedicated journals all over the world? Only now has anyone checked to see if all that stagecraft stuff was needed?

I wish the Monitor article had explored that. Maybe the article misrepresents the state of hypnosis research. But given the article's closing quote, I'm not sure.

Hypnosis psychoneurophysiology researcher John Gruzelier (Imperial College London), while acknowledging that easily hypnotizable people are suggestible even when not hypnotized, still maintains that hypnosis itself is crucial. His words as quoted by the article are a little troubling:

“It's my feeling that we wouldn't bother going through the whole rigmarole of hypnosis if it was unnecessary,” he says.

Obviously, this is one quoted sentence, lifted by a magazine writer from whatever else Gruzelier may have said. He is an enormously active, well-published researcher whose views are surely more nuanced than represented here, and it would be unfair to paste him on the basis of this quote.

Nevertheless, the view as presented is senseless. We might “go through the whole rigmarole” because no one had done the proper research to notice it wasn't needed! We may go through it because we're professionally committed to the idea of hypnosis or because we like the feeling we get when executing the procedures. Or because we're fascinated by the attitude of the hypnotized subject before us. There are many, many reasons people, even researchers, might persist in a superstitious behavior. A psychologist should know that better than anyone.

The intimation of intimidation

2006-03-07T09:13:00.000-05:00

Longtime readers of this blog (both weeks) may know that I think media commentator Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post and CNN is a fart-head. Here is an exchange from his online chat yesterday:

New York, N.Y.: […] My question is, will the latest scare tactics by the White House intimidate journalists? Or will it embolden them to dig even deeper? Thanks.

Howard Kurtz: […] I don't think it's a question of being intimidated. I do think that any reporter who relies on anonymous sources now has to think twice and three times about whether he or she is willing to go to jail if necessary to protect the sources, and as a result whether the story at hand is worth doing. Also, some sources themselves may be growing more cautious because of this highly charged environment.

Causing the vicitm to hesitate two and three times, fear punitive consequences, and make trade-offs for freedom and safety against what she would otherwise do are the usual intentions and outcomes that identify intimidation.

Update: Ernie Moran, news editor of the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram, compared Kurtz’s idea of non-intimidation to the dictionary’s, but I beat him by more than an hour. ;-)

Blogspot sucks because...

2006-03-06T19:10:00.000-05:00

...I cannot post to it in the evenings. Again and again I have a flash of brilliance after 6 pm, but I can’t get through to post it.

Believe me, this blog would’ve been so much better if I could’ve posted that shit when I thought of it.

UPDATE 3/8 I can't upload pictures now, either. And there's no serious help section. And that "Issues" page hasn't been updated in 4 months.

I know, I know. It’s free. What did I expect? Why don't I get a life?

Better; and, Then I wouldn't be blogging.

“SHAM” is a shame

2006-03-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

Enthusiastic overstatement of banalities seems* to often be a trait of conservative writers. Like this by Steve Salerno on page 2 of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless:

Pet lovers read endlessly about pets.

People don't read “endlessly” about anything. No pet owner/lover I know reads pet books except rarely. Salerno's dumb hyperbole makes the reader work so much harder, discounting and re-evaluating mild ideas for which a better writer could get unreserved assent.

I wanted to write a review of SHAM, a book intended as a send-up of what Salerno calls the “self-help and actualization movement”, but the book was so bad that it would take another book twice as long as it to explain and correct it. I couldn't find a toehold for organizing a review. Anyone who could be persuaded by Salerno's unreferenced assertions and hyperbolic writing would not be persuaded by the calm presentation of referenced fact and supported, deliberative, nuanced conclusions. Anyone with half a brain would dismiss most of the book on their own.

Nevertheless, I recommend the one-star review by Susan Wise Bauer (among several good bad ones) at Amazon for the best brief broadside against it.

For myself, I'll just look at a few quotes from the last full page of text in the book, page 262. Talking about the process of researching the book, Salerno says,

“In one or two cases, I've watched as sources were effectively conscripted in to the movement and became unwitting gurus, of a sort, in their own right. They shall remain nameless, though the alert reader can probably take a stab at who's who.” (pg 262)

What the hell? What sort of information did these sources give Salerno that they must remain nameless? And does he mean these authors wrote self-help books without realizing it — or what do unwitting gurus do? If they are public figures, why not name them and tell what you know? If they are not public figures, how could a reader figure out who they are? And which is it, one or two?

Addressing readers who may disagree with his conclusions, Salerno says at the end of the book,

If we seem to have arrived at different endpoints, so be it. That is, after all, what the pursuit of “self” is really about, or should be—isn't it? (pg 262)

Does Salerno think the self-understanding or personal identity is essentially or fundamentally “about” having different conclusions after exposure to the same factual evidence and rational arguments? Scholarship, even pop-scholarship like this book, is about persuasion and agreement resulting from the compilation of substantive factual evidence and its analysis through commonly-held rational methods. The pursuit of personal preferences and bias is something you try to set aside in the pursuit of understanding the world. It's people who simply like having strident opinions who defend them with the sort of factual relativism Salerno is invoking.

But if this book achieves nothing else, my most fervent hope is that it provokes some thought about the things you always took as “givens”.... (pg 262)

How can an author whose most fervent hope is instilling skepticism of other sources go on to write a book wholly without references or bibliography?

Are we predestined, or at least predisposed, to do what we do? If we don't know the truth about such matters, we cannot know the absolute answers to the questions put forth in this book. (pg 262)

I don't know what “the questions put forth in this book” are. It seemed to be assertions from the get-go. If he means a question like, “Which self-help techniques are more effective?” then that, just like, “Which car gets better mileage?” can be answered without solving the whole determinism / free will thing. A fair amount of research has been done on the former question, and various cognitive techniques seem to have the edge, with others gradually appearing and in development. (Watch this blog for more information.)
____________

*I’m open to counterexamples.

Tina Fey on transdermal selegiline

2006-03-05T12:52:00.000-05:00

Last night on Weekend Update, Tina Fey announced the approval of Emsam®...

“The FDA this week approved the first ever transdermal patch for the treatment of depression. Simply remove the backing and press the patch firmly over your mother's mouth.”

I think it could've been funnier. Mother-in-law's mouth would be, but it sounds dated these days. Spouse's or boss's mouth...

Oh! How about: “Simply take two of the patches, and stick them in your ears.”

O happy, happy hatred

2006-03-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

In my first blog post I presented the principle that people are doing the best they can (all people, always) and said that it has to be taken on faith, if at all, but that the results of believing it are readily observable. But it’s often hard to imagine how it could be true, and (more obstructively) it’s expensive. You sometimes have to give up an invigorating, clarifying hatred of the “Other”.

This cost is demonstrated in the title of a new book by Will Blythe: To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever. I haven’t read the book, which is about a college basketball rivalry, but the title is the point. Who can’t relate?

Pope Dobson

2006-03-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

Responding to a statement by pro-choice Cathoilics in the House of Representatives, a Family Research Council spokesman said opposition to abortion is the Catholic belief.

“What is at the core of being Catholic is the life issue, and that's something the pope has never strayed from. While other issues are important — such as helping the poor, the death penalty, views on war — these are things that aren't tenets of the Catholic Church.” –Tom McClusky

(The FRC is predominantly Protestant, and its founder & leader, James Dobson, is a Nazerene. McClusky, its acting vice president for government affairs, is a Catholic.)

What a relief to know that helping the poor is not a “tenet” of the church. That'll save people a lot of money. I guess Jesus was confused.

But how is opposition to the death penalty not part of “the life issue”? How do they possibly draw that line?

You know, Protestants have always mocked the Catholic idea that the pope can give doctrine infallibly. But these Evangelical preachers always think they are speaking ex cathedra.

A few recent Babble posts

2006-02-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

I've been going to the internet forum Psycho-Babble by Dr. Bob for about 5 years, on-and-off, to get info unavailable elsewhere and to opine about human psychology, psychotherapy, psych meds, and books. Here's a few Babble posts I've spotted (some, I noticed, are by me):

•Someone complains that Dr Bob has cited her for including a vulgar word (frig) in a post, when all she was doing was discussing the name of the Norse goddess Frig. A compromise is reached to spell the sacred name by the alternative Frigg. Jesus Christ, civility is tricky. admin 613415

•Acceptance and commitment therapy and its creator, Steve Hayes, were profiled in Time magazine's Feb 13 '06 issue. I was surprised that virtually no interest was expressed in the Babble thread linking to the article. Maybe people are turned off because it sounds too much, at a cursory level, like Dr Laura-ish suck-it-up coldness. psycho 611694

•A poll: If you could ask your therapist anything, what would you ask? Many would want to know what the therapist “really thinks of me.” Many would want to know about the therapist's childhood traumas. psycho thread 611620.

•The degrees after a psychotherapist's name don't tell you much about his or her treatment philosophy. psycho 614260

•There's a link to a free downloadable (14 MB) 3-D brain physiology tutorial. babble 613711

The death penalty

2006-02-25T23:52:00.000-05:00

The State of California is having an awful time finding a medical professional who will help them kill Michael Morales. The professional won't even have to kill Morales, just help. (Hey, they could move him to Oregon!)

Lord, I apologize for that and be with the surfeited reactionaries down in Orange County. Amen...

There are murderers I'd be happy to know met an early, drawn-out, painful death. I can even give you their names, and the names of their victims, off the top of my head. Notwithstanding that, I am against the death penalty.

I am against the death penalty because it cuts off the possibility of redemption. I don't mean rehabilitation or making the con a productive member of society. I mean personal redemption of the person, like with his soul.

George Bush says he knows about redemption; he says he's been redeemed. But I don't know how anyone who's actually experienced such a thing himself could ever willfully deny that opportunity to another human being.

It is no good saying, "They've had years in prison to think about what they done. They've had their chance!" No one who understood what redemption actually means would ever turn it down. If they have not been redeemed, then they have not had the chance.

"These hard cases will never change!" Maybe that's true, though I don't know how you could say that for sure, if you really have yourself undergone any significant interior change. Your transformation was not big enough to be impress you?

I guess those Christians who clamor for executions believe each death-row criminal is the rock God made that's so big He can't lift it.

But I don't believe in God, or souls, or an afterlife. Just redemption: being freed from the torture chambers within our own skulls. A civic commitment to the possibility of redemption and responsibility is a common good — for ourselves and our non-criminal loved ones; and for our unloved ones and our disliked ones, too. Convicted murderers offer an opportunity to remind ourselves how important such an idea is.

I doubt that redemption is always possible. But I think providing that hope is not a bad use to which we can put otherwise useless murderers.

Guess where “Pinocchio” is...

2006-02-23T17:54:00.000-05:00

My friend Nancy sent me a link to the homepage of a man who has covered his body with tattoos of Disney® characters. He had 1,700 as of April, 2005.

Bertrand Russell said he was just riding his bicycle one day, and BANG! he was not in love with his wife. For decades (I think) he loved her, and then, one moment later, he never loved her again.

What if that happens with this guy and Disney? Actually, it looks like his web site hasn't been updated in 10 months, so maybe the air's already gone out.

Would the tattoos prevent him from admitting that his cartoon tastes had changed? That huge, public, physiological commitment might force him to keep telling himself he still loves Disney, just so that he doesn't feel like a fool.

On the other hand, such strategies don't necessarily work too well with people who get tattoos of their human love objects and make public commitments to them. Adultery and divorce happen all the time. (Look at Bertrand Russell.)

A Freudian might say the guy really hates Disney, deep down. The tattoo display is reaction formation or self-punishment for his Disney-hating thoughts.

Freudians are so boring.

Movies!

2006-02-21T14:49:00.000-05:00

I had a deal on DVDs last week. These are just a few that I smeared my eyes over.

Finding Neverland (2004) DVD •½ I expected to love this, but God it was awful. I gave up after about 40 minutes.

The Great Train Robbery (1979) DVD •••• Michael Crichton is an arrogant fool when it comes to global warming (and much else besides, one suspects), but his writing and direction of this are awesome. A fun, luscious, hilarious romp. Listen to his commentary track about (well, all of it, but especially) filming Sean Connery on the roof of that train. No special effects! That's really Sean's head that almost gets opened by those overpasses at 50 miles an hour.

Grizzly Man (2005) DVD •••• There's an awful lot in this movie.

November (2004) DVD ••• Marvelous. First-time viewers may be put off, because you really can't figure out what's going on until the end, and even then you have to think about it quite a bit. I can give this much away without spoiling it: You know how they say that when you think you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes? Well, it may not be your whole life. The entire movie takes place, without exception, in about one minute of real time on the evening of November 7.

Cabin Boy (1994) DVD ••½ I'd always wanted to see this for David Letterman's appearance, which did not disappoint. The rest of the movie had its moments but was mediocre overall. Did you know that Brian Doyle-Murray is Bill Murray's brother?

The Yes Men (2004) DVD ••• Fun and sad, too. These are the pranksters who impersonate WTO economists. They say outrageously hideous things and the capitalist running-dog audiences just nod in blithe agreement. Are all of them gay? (I can ask that, right?)

Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) DVD ••½ This was okay, but it just lacked the charm and focus of the original shorts. I can understand why Richard Roeper gave it a Thumbs Down®, but I wouldn't go that far.

Child Star (2004) DVD ••• By Don McKellar, whose other work (as actor and auteur) I've liked. There's a commentary track on the DVD, but it's not listed anywhere on the menus, not even on the Special Features menu. Isn't that crazy? I'm glad I looked for it on my own. McKellar never comments on the irony, however, of actually using (i.e., exploiting) a child actor to make a movie about using (i.e., exploiting) a child actor to make a movie about using (i.e., exploiting) a child to save the President...

Blogger® don't know “blog”

2006-02-20T18:08:00.000-05:00

The Blogger® spell-checker doesn't recognize the word blog.

People are doing the best they can

2006-02-20T16:47:00.000-05:00

I want to start my blog on a hopeful note. I expect that 90% of my posts hereafter will be dispiriting, small-minded vitriol, so some inaugural hope will be good for balance.

My hopeful note is this: You can respond to others more effectively if you accept the principle that people are doing the best they can. The principle is pretty much an article of faith: I can't prove that people are always doing the best they can, and sometimes it's hard to see how it could be true. But the outcome of acting on that principle — better, effective living — is pretty easy to test. (And I'll leave that to you.)

I got the idea from Garret Keizer's 2004 book, Help: The Original Human Dilemma. Keizer got it from a local but insightful pediatric psychiatrist (Mike Moseley), who said it is an indispensable belief for people in the helping professions (p 123), where it is often hard to imagine that a person's effort is really optimal.

Keizer and Moseley don't specify what people are trying their best to do, but I think it's the obvious: contributing to the well-being of family and community, developing as a person, living a productive life, using resources efficiently, "being good", doing well, and so on.

Who benefits?

The biggest objection I imagine to the principle is that it seems to let bad behavers off the hook. Is Osama bin Laden really doing the best he can to be a good human being? Was Hitler!

But the principle doesn't let anyone off the hook, except the person who believes it. For example, a while ago I broke up with a friend. He was, for whatever reason, always ragging on me and making insulting jokes that were steadily getting louder and more vicious. He acknowledged the nastiness, but despite my requests, he didn't stop. So I wrote him a letter: "You're mean. I must stay away." Now, if he was doing the best he can, shouldn't I relent and get together with him?

Not necessarily. The best he could do was to be an asshole to me. That's sad and unfortunate, but it doesn't mean I need to spend any more time around him. It does mean I don't need to hate him or waste time fuming about his atrociousness or stewing in resentment. The principle allows me to focus on the harmful behavior instead of the man. It frees me to be open to new friends, who are also trying their best, and whose behavior may better fit my needs. If my old friend's behavior changes for the nicer, then I won't be blocked by lingering resentment from joining his company again.

The point is not that assholes and screw-ups can now escape justice thanks to my Pollyanna buzz. The point is that I am less caught up by furious indignation. I can think of more assertive, economical responses to the assholes and screw-ups who frustrate me. I no longer need to destroy them or convince them of their own stupidity.

Who can use it?

With a little imagination almost anyone can apply it, at least hypothetically, even to very upsetting miscreants. Consider all the unknowns of someone else's genetics and development and history, and the huge assortment of good and bad teachings they were involuntarily exposed to and absorbed from family and neighbors and friends and strangers and teachers and ministers and liberals and people on the news, AND the many unknowable influences of their current environmental stressors, rates of neural degeneration, insulin levels, and so on, and you can imagine how it might be true even in a very terrible case that people really are doing the best they can.

But the principle is still hard to apply. The real difficulty comes from the fact that using the principle results in the loss of righteous anger. That's a serious cost. We become afraid that if we don't hate bin Laden, we might end up tolerating his evil deeds or even agreeing with his philosophy, since we generally tolerate and at least politely agree with people we don't hate.

I am reluctant to imagine that the President is doing the best he can. I'm afraid that if I cant be angry at him, I might stop opposing his assaults on our civil liberties and economic security. But the opposite is actually the case. It isn't easy and it doesn't last, but when I get the idea that the President is doing the best he can, then I can concentrate on exactly those of his efforts that actually threaten me. All the rest that he is and does becomes irrelevant, no matter how colorful or salient those other features are. I become immune to distraction.

Maybe you are not as easily frustrated as I am. Maybe you never get so upset with a cruel or difficult person that your responses to her are less effective than they could be. Some people seem to be naturally temperate and open to others in this way.

But if you've never thought that both Bush and bin Laden are doing the best they can to achieve truly good ends, then you might benefit by trying this principle. It's an empirical issue, after all. You can test it in vivo, right now. I can almost guarantee it's reversible.