WileyWorld

"Big Birther" Bill Gains Momentum

2011-04-24T17:57:00.000-04:00

    According to Donald Trump and unnamed Republican Party operatives, the Mississippi House will sponsor a bill to force President Obama and every other Democrat Office holder in the U.S. to show greater proof of their Americaness than the always suspect, "Birth Certificate".
    Unimpressed by the overwhelming proof of Obama's birth on American soil, Red State Officials and Tea Party Activists insists that they need more than" just Truth and Common Sense" to quit their current Crusade. The bill heading to the State Legislature demands that Obama and all Democrats must prove that they were indeed conceived on American Soil and in an "American" Manner.
   On Fox News, Tea Party leader and Birther firebrand , I.M. Gnuts, leaked some key demands included in this piece of legislation stating, "first off, we must demand proof that conception occurred on America soil. Secondly the act of conception must have been performed 100 percent of the time in the All American Position (i.e Missionary Position). Lastly, no degenerate actions took place while the seed was being implanted." According to Gnuts, these degeneracies include foreign elements such as "French" kissing as well as the Left Wing indecency of the woman actually enjoying the Procreative act.

Intolerance and the Cultural Wars in America

2009-12-31T16:04:00.001-05:00

   I have grown increasingly aware and disturbed regarding the rise of Intolerance among the various components of the American People to thoughts, ideas and belief systems that do not seem to conform with their own. Although this is a Global issue and has been the norm rather than the exception in most eras in the US and in other World Cultures, I believe that increased access to Information,extensive Media Penetration, rapidly accerating technology and the "Shrinking of the Globe" ( by internet or travel) coupled with increasing US multiculturalism have actually fueled a Closure of the American Mind rather than the expected average American becoming more a Citizen of the World.
    I grew up and have lived the vast Majority of my life in the American South. I was a child in the 1960's
so missed much awareness of the Social upheavals of that era. Until the rise of Cable TV, the Internet(essentially the advent of the Information Age) , influx of Non-European Immigrants,  do I believe that the Cohesion of America began to fray in this fashion.
   The terrorist incidents of 9/11 shook many to the very core, and the Public and Private Response to this "War on Terror" contributed greatly to a need for Americans to engage the World..not as Partners but as potential or actual enemies.
   The "Circling of the Wagons" among mainstream Americans to Actual and Perceived Danger is a fairly normal initial Societal or Group response. However, the misuse of this aspect of Human Group Behaviour by those with agendas not in the Spirit of Uniting America, such as the Fearmongering in the Political and Journalistic Arenas has led to degeneration and fragmentation, which weakens our society and nation.
The meaning of what it is to be Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat, Religious or Non-Religious is so skewed and polarized that the confusion this engenders just greatens the divide. You are either a supporter of FOX News or CNN, for example.
     The intolerance of members of either side of these Ideological Warzones make establishing a Middle Ground nearly impossible at present. People seem to show an unwillingness or inability to look reflectively upon the beliefs of the other. I do not think it is an unwarranted fear to think that this Country could slide into increasing divisiveness in which the US could plumment into a somewhat passive death spiral, Revolution or Civil War before mid-century.
   America was once a Revolutionary society that presented the world with a Model for the Rights of Men and Justice. Some of this was always a sham...but the idea of America as a Shining Beacon to the outside World is tarnished and unless we see fit to understand, tolerate and reach out to All of our Fellow Citizens, that Beacon may be finally and tragically extinguished.

Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow

2009-12-29T04:21:00.000-05:00

Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow

For once, social scientists have discovered a flaw in the human psyche that will not be tedious to correct. You may not even need a support group. You could try on your own by starting with this simple New Year’s resolution: Have fun ... now!

Then you just need the strength to cash in your gift certificates, drink that special bottle of wine, redeem your frequent flier miles and take that vacation you always promised yourself. If your resolve weakens, do not succumb to guilt or shame. Acknowledge what you are: a recovering procrastinator of pleasure.

It sounds odd, but this is actually a widespread form of procrastination — just ask the airlines and other marketers who save billions of dollars annually from gift certificates that expire unredeemed. Or the poets who have kept turning out exhortations to seize the day and gather rosebuds.

But it has taken awhile for psychologists and behavioral economists to analyze this condition. Now they have begun to explore the strange impulse to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today.

Why, for instance, is it so hard to find time to visit landmarks in your own backyard? People who have moved to Chicago, Dallas and London get to fewer local landmarks during their entire first year than the typical tourist visits during a two-week stay, according to a study conducted by Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, who are professors of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego, respectively. The Chicagoans in the study had visited more landmarks in other cities than in their own, and even their relatively small amount of local sightseeing was done mainly in the course of entertaining out-of-towners. Otherwise, the only time Chicagoans rushed to see the local landmarks was just before they were about to move to another city, when that deadline inspired sudden passions for taking architectural tours and going to the zoo.

When there is no immediate deadline, we’re liable to put off going to the zoo this weekend because we assume that we will be less busy next weekend — or the weekend after that, or next summer. This is the same sort of thinking that causes us to put the gift certificate in the drawer because we expect to have more time for shopping in the future.

We’re trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained, but we’re not accurate in our estimates of “resource slack,” as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Hence you’re more likely to agree to a commitment next year, like giving a speech, that you would turn down if asked to find time for it in the next month. This produces what researchers call the “Yes ... Damn!” effect: when the speech comes due next year, you bitterly discover you’re still as busy as ever.

Dr. Shu and Dr. Gneezy demonstrated another effect of this fallacy by giving people gift certificates good for movie tickets and French pastries. Some got certificates that expired within two to three weeks; others got certificates good for six to eight weeks.

The people who received the long-term certificates were more confident than the others that they would redeem the gifts — a logical enough assumption, given all the extra time they had. But they just kept putting it off, and ultimately they were more likely to let the gift go unredeemed than the people who had received the short-term certificates.

Once you start procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be.

If you’re determined to get the absolute maximum out of those frequent flier miles, you can end up wasting them, as Dr. Shu found in an experiment offering people a chance to use discount coupons in the course of buying a series of plane tickets. Once the subjects were told that they might have a chance at a free flight worth $1,000, they scorned lesser awards and hung on to their coupons so long that in the end they had to use them for much cheaper flights.

“People can become overly focused on an ideal,” Dr. Shu said. “Even if they know it’s unlikely, they get so focused on the perfect scenario that they block everything else. Or they anticipate that they’ll kick themselves later if they take second-best option and then see the best one is still available. But they don’t realize that regret can go the other way. They’ll end up with something worse and regret not taking the second-best one.”
But even if you know about all this research, how can you apply these lessons? How can you avoid the temptation to postpone pleasure? (You can offer suggestions at nytimes.com/tierneylab.) One immediate strategy, Dr. Shu said, is to cash in quickly any gift certificate you received this holiday season. “The biggest danger is that it will be forgotten and expire,” she said. “One of the best presents you can give back to the giver is to use it quickly and then tell them how much you enjoyed it. The regret from not using it will be bigger than the regret from using it on a nonperfect occasion, for you and especially for the person who gave it.”

Another tactic is to give yourself deadlines. Cash in the miles by summer, even if you can’t get a round-the-world trip out of them. Instead of waiting for a special occasion to indulge yourself, create one. Dr. Shu approvingly cites the pioneering therapeutic work of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, who for the past decade used their Wall Street Journal column on wine to proclaim the last Saturday of February to be “Open That Bottle Night.”

But you don’t even have to wait until Feb. 27. Remember the advice offered in the movie “Sideways” to Miles, who has been holding on to a ’61 Cheval Blanc so long that it is in danger of going bad. When Miles says he is waiting for a special occasion, his friend Maya puts matters in perspective:

“The day you open a ’61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion.”

2009-12-29T04:15:00.002-05:00

The Beatles -Let It Be

2009-12-24T03:41:00.001-05:00

For Christmas!!!!
Happy Holidays to All of You ! All the Best!
Peace,
Wiley

The God Gene

2009-11-15T16:22:00.000-05:00

As I have long been interested in the development of Religion/concept of God or Gods, and the impact that different Religions have had on the Rise or Fall of the the group/Culture that adopts a certain religion. Certainly Religions that offer an Afterlife as one of its key tenants, would to me be obviously a more motivated Group to fight, develop Arts, etc. as the Members would all have a Purpose.
Of course, Religion could be stifiling but in cases such as Sumer vs.Israel..who has survived?

From NY Times
IN the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.

Universal Religion has been found in societies at every stage of development. Catholic Bishops as they filed into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2008, and at a temple in South Korea, Buddhist monks paid homage to the Buddha.

During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state.

This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

But the evolutionary perspective on religion does not necessarily threaten the central position of either side. That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.

It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival. Their rituals emphasize not theology but intense communal dancing that may last through the night. The sustained rhythmic movement induces strong feelings of exaltation and emotional commitment to the group. Rituals also resolve quarrels and patch up the social fabric.

The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago, to judge from living hunter-gatherers, would have lived in small, egalitarian groups without chiefs or headmen. Religion served them as an invisible government. It bound people together, committing them to put their community’s needs ahead of their own self-interest. For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community. Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it, and genes that prompted the mind toward ritual would eventually have become universal.

In natural selection, it is genes that enable their owners to leave more surviving progeny that become more common. The idea that natural selection can favor groups, instead of acting directly on individuals, is highly controversial. Though Darwin proposed the idea, the traditional view among biologists is that selection on individuals would stamp out altruistic behavior (the altruists who spent time helping others would leave fewer children of their own) far faster than group-level selection could favor it.

But group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.

A propensity to learn the religion of one’s community became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry, according to this new view, that religion was retained when hunter-gatherers, starting from 15,000 years ago, began to settle in fixed communities. In the larger, hierarchical societies made possible by settled living, rulers co-opted religion as their source of authority. Roman emperors made themselves chief priest or even a living god, though most had the taste to wait till after death for deification. “Drat, I think I’m becoming a god!” Vespasian joked on his deathbed.

Religion was also harnessed to vital practical tasks such as agriculture, which in the first societies to practice it required quite unaccustomed forms of labor and organization. Many religions bear traces of the spring and autumn festivals that helped get crops planted and harvested at the right time. Passover once marked the beginning of the barley festival; Easter, linked to the date of Passover, is a spring festival.

Could the evolutionary perspective on religion become the basis for some kind of detente between religion and science? Biologists and many atheists have a lot of respect for evolution and its workings, and if they regarded religious behavior as an evolved instinct they might see religion more favorably, or at least recognize its constructive roles. Religion is often blamed for its spectacular excesses, whether in promoting persecution or warfare, but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society. But perhaps it doesn’t deserve either blame or credit. If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.

Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times, is the author of “The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures.

Terrorist Swine Attack! The Twin Silo's and many American IHOP destroyed!

2009-11-12T03:47:00.000-05:00

Led by a Beady-Eyed, Snorting Fanatic... O' Sow-A been Larden, the radical sect of Pigstyism is taking hold in the world's impoverished and Marginalized Swine. Unknown even to much of his species, let alone the Unsuspecting American Public, 'been Larden has carrried off an attack of such magnitude that makes 9/11 look like a "day in the Park".

Lulling gulllible Mexicans into crosing the Border, with a Biogenetically altered "Swine" Flu, (for which the author was vaccinated against in third Grade), they streamed into America's Heartland last Night and by hijacking three "Really Big Tractors" form Iowan Farmer, Fatty Arbuckle, they rammed these vehicles fully loaded with exposives, apparently made of Fertilizer amd Farm Wastes, into the Famous Springfield , MO's MidWest GateWays Mall's, Larget Twin Silos in the US of A"

Loss of Life is untold at this moment, but initial reports state that the Twin Silo's were leveled.

    Dr. Wiley Dickerson, reknowned Swine terrorist Expert, expects more of these attacks to occur. "These Crazy Pigs are everywhere, I believe that given the Prominence of North Carolina Pig Farming and the Symbolic Value of "South of the Border" to I-95'ers, The American South,and Mexicans the next strike is imminent."

Public health Officails have warned all, from ingesting any Ham, Bacon, all Pig related Poducts as they believe Suicide Pig terrorists have intentially Poisoned themselves, so there By Products will bring down the very Fabric of American Society, by ruining Breakfast Buffets and Bar-B-Q 's eveyrhere.

We received a cryptic message.."Pedro sez, Oink, Oink, Pigs will come Tamale."

The President echoes the warnings of Dickerson and Homeland security, Gather your families bring in the Dogs....I read Animal Farm" by Orwell and realize the enormity of the crisis.

   Israili Leader, Noshi No'ham cast support, but also an admonishment..."you think we Jews avoid Pork for fun...Hell No, you don't want to Piss Off that many Huge, Fat, Mudlovers, make them as happy as a Pig in shit! Worse than the Ham-ass Terror Group, I'd say"

       "I hope the Dolphins and Chimps don't hear of this Terrorist Pig Organization, run by O'sow-A been Larden and activate their Cells or we will be in Deep Shit, said the President" at the end of this moment's Press Breifing. He will be off to Camp David later, with KFC only.

Travelogue Completed

2009-11-12T03:37:00.000-05:00

Reknowned Expert on Human Misbehaviour, Dr. Wiley Dickerson has finally completed his long anticipated Travelogue entitled, "Take 'em, Wait, and the Pick 'em Up".

     It is expected to rise to the International Bestseller lists quickly, although some heralded Critics including Claire Dickerson has pronouced the book, "gross, embarrassing, and random". St. Pete's Gazette Editor, Will Dickerson declared after reading an advance copy, that" the Author is way too dramatic and tells too much of his Kid's Personal Stuff".

    Child Advocate,Professor Donna Whalen, stated the dangers of such a Travelogue. " Dr. Dickerson is placing his entire family in harm's way by publishing exact itenararies of his Childrens activities. One Day a Plain, White Van will show up driven by Mexicans and toss his kids in the back. You all know what happens next..... He will regret his MegaBucks then, Let me tell you."

    Finally his former,staunchest supporter turned vocal Rebutalist, his Wife, Kimberly Ann, has spoken out against the Book. "He is a real Whiner.....,Drive, Drive, Drive...., he writes....He really doesn't do crap. I work all day and who do you think picks up the kids 90% of the time. He just sits on the computer, trying to get people to feel sorry for him. What a Matyr he is! Put this book under Fiction, For Sure!" The interviewer had a chance to ask the Author's 11 year-old son, George,what he thought of his Dad's book. " I am the Star of the book from what I heard so I like it so far. I don't really read, so I thought Dad was just making up stories again. He does that, you know...."

Dickerson feels that this controversary his book is generating is a lot of Jealousy from Has-beens and Wannabees and relishes the Press, Good or Bad.

"Everybody like to hear something bad about you, this load of BS from those Losers is gonna send my Sales through the Roof ! Nobel Prize , Here I Come!!!

Book will hit the stores April 1 for $29.99. Book tour dates: TBA.

Winner,Winner...Chicken Dinner!!!!

2009-11-12T03:33:00.000-05:00

Coach Wiley Dickerson pushed his own son, George, down on the ground and ran into the game to score the final Goal that clinched the Beaufort "Blue Crabs" victory in the SC State Soccer Cup on Sunday in Columbia.

" I deserved it" , says undefeated Coach D. Despite the fact that the boys played all four games destroying all who dared oppose them, Dickerson still asserted, " The kids were like Pawns..I just used my Giant Brain and the Players moved exactly as I telepathically instructed them to".

Dickerson was seen later to kiss, polish and fondle the Team's large Trophy and muttering, "My Precious" repeatedly under his breath.

Youth Socer Coach, Wiley Dickerson, loses mind after "being robbed of Victory today!

2009-11-12T03:24:00.000-05:00

Coach Dickerson before Police arrive

Previously well-respected Youth Soccer Guru and Prominent Beaufort, SC Physician, really lost it today according to well placed sources at the Under 12 Elite Division Low County seimifinals against the NASA-Strikers, when his Sea Island Sharks lost 2-1. Says his son, 11 year old Striker, George Dickerson,

" the old man really went crazy, there was some bad calls, but there was no need for what he did.

Its really embarrassing!"

Apparently Dickerson initially became angry believing that the Strikers had added his team's Arch Nemesis, Jimmy Derkins to the Lineup as a Guest Player for the Semi-Final Match. His wife , Kim comments, "I don't know why I don't divorce him, I am totally humiliated. These are Kids and he acts like its the World Cup!"

Dickerson began screaming after several handballs and an offsides were not called. "Then the shit really hit the fan! ", comments assistant coach, Kenny Campbell." he began yelling that he was not going to be robbed of his championship, by any Ref, blind as Bat and had obviously paid off by the Striker-Derkins Cabal", then he did a Slide tackle on the Possible Derkins, as he lept off the bench"

Quickly came the Red card and ejection, which was handed to him by the wary Chief Referee, Lars Larrson. By then he had thrown all the chairs onto the Field, and was spitting on the Striker Coaches although attempts were made to restrian him. Pounding the Ground, Howling and Crying allowed the Mt. Pleasant SWAT team to Taser him and take him downtown to be booked.

His wife has no plans to bail him out, , "he never shuts up about the team and wants to run plays with me , the Dogs, Cats and Lawn Furiture every Evening." He is a real Mainiac..its ironic he is a
Pychiatrist"
well, I guess its Physician Heal thyself and Happy Mothers Day to me! "

Renowned Beaufort Parent, Wiley Dickerson, asked for "THE TALK" by 11 year old Son

2009-11-11T22:12:00.000-05:00

Well known Psychiatrist, Sexologist and Respected Parent, Dr. Wiley Dickerson, was shocked into momentary speechlessness today when asked by his eleven -year old son, George to be given "THE TALK".

Although there has been a rash of reported girlfriends reported by his son, Dr. Dickerson felt the time was not yet right for "the Talk" to be given. Questioning his apparently precocious Child, he dismissed the issue initially by stating " the TALK" you don't need a talk, except on how to clean your room, even if you knew anything.... what are you going to do about it? "

His son retorted that, he quote " knew it all already but was just giving Dad a chance to fill in some gaps" In derision, Dickerson Sr, fired back"What do you know about any of the TALK?!

His son then mentioned his Fiend Noah's " BOOK" , and that he knew it all from South Park anyhow (which is going to get him in trouble)". When asked how all of it works from Noah's Book and the all- knowing South Park, he answered,

"The Daddy puts his Hoo-Hoo Dillly in the Momma's Cha-Cha !"

At that Dr. Dickerson's jaw dropped in amazement at the accuracy of this depiction of the Act of Sexual congress that he further disclosed information previously classified to young George, while looking up all the sexually transmitted disease Pictures he could find on the web.

Later the two went out for beers at the local Hooters.....

"Talks with Doc Wiley, Part 3" , August 2008, Time Magazine

2009-11-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine, 8/15/2009

Third Part of Ongoing Feature Interviews with Wiley Dickerson, M.D. re' "Social Networking and the New Intellectualism"

DW: Well, as to the story that I actually started Facebook, I would say...well, it kind of invented itself, didn't it?

TM: Of course, but you were instrumental in making it come together...true?

DW:Yeah, I mean... I was there at the beginning and contributing a lot, but I would not claim to have invented it...maybe I did...hmmm, but it wasn't really like that. It was like a core group of very brilliant, Futurist people from all over Cyberspace just throwing out vibes of Raw Creativity and Intellect.

You may find it funny but back then, we called it the "Book of Minds" and every one had a symbol or concept or maybe nothing at all to represent themselves....it was wild..I can still smell the coffee, Adderall and Clove Cigarettes.

TM: Things changed though?

DW: yeah..yeah they did. Everything seems to... doesn't it? ....the Universe expands..people grow up.

TM: Well, I am asking you about FB in Particular...

DW: Well, there was a cadre of people, G-Force was one of them who wanted to take the Abstract out of it all, you know..make it smart but real. She called it the "Book of Faces" and the idea was sorta like... "Hey anemic,computer Geek, get out from behind the Console, put your "Real Face" out there and maybe these intricate, imaginative, and really awesomely influential thoughts would become more real to us...and others.. I guess. You'd have to ask her, but that's what I thought it meant.

TM: And then what happened,?

DW: Man , we lost all control and the masses took over...that's why I would claim to be an innovative force behind the Birth of Facebook, but once there was a Real Face with Real ideas, everybody began to jump on the bandwagon and They were the Real Inventors. We were saying at first," put YOUR face on your Web Page, Skip the Bullshit, and just let it all hang out, your Photo, your creativity, your intellect, your imagination....Man...Put YOU out there.

TM: Then the teens jumped in...

WD: Jumped! ...Holy Shit!... They dove in Facefirst, but they didn't give a damn about the intellectualism, that we were all about....they wanted to chat, flirt, play games..share all kinda of crap with each other.

However.... It wasn't until the young and mid-Life Adults got grooved on to it, did it get weird. At the time, there was no filter..so anybody could write stuff on your page and just be a voyeur on your site.

I rember People writing" F-Off Wiley" or "WTF DOCTOR. DORK, ROFL" on my Page.

I had to laugh, but it was making people uncomfortable, all of a sudden, your ex- from High School was wrting, the guy you hate down the street, People you didn't even remember from ..like... Pre-K !

I think it was Mindy Murff, who got overwhelmed first, almost went catatonic,with all these Weirdo's from High school writing on her "personal" space, sending strange notes, asking her out.... etc....Dr. Patti Walton who wrote "You better Leave my Ass Alone!: No more Cyberbullying!", suggesting putting the Friend filter in..........

Doc Wiley, while Professor of Futurology at Paris-Sorbonne University , 2004.

Local Man Breaks out in Sweat at Wife's Wardrobe Question

2009-11-11T22:07:00.000-05:00

Prominent Beaufort Civic Leader, Wiley Dickerson broke into a Sweat and felt "kinda trapped" this afternoon, when his Wife asked a Question about a New Outfit she bought.

Says Dickerson, "I was minding my own business, when my wife Kim came out from Bedroon wearing a nice Floral Ensemble. She had been shoppng that day and had a few questions for me."

Imediately alert, Dickerson said he felt adrenaline began to course through his body.

"Do you think this outfit makes my hips big?......and then " I mean do I look Fat in this?" his wife of many years, Kim Dickerson asked expectantly.

A veteran of this type of question, which to his knowledge, he has never answered correctly, he states to this Reporter that he fought back the urge to blurt out too quickly...."No way! It looks Beautiful on you, makes you look thinner, in fact!", as a too spontaneous assement could be interpreted as Dickerson not really considering the Hip and Fat implications Properly.

Trying not to let on to the fact this Anxiety level was rising...He waited , Looking with an Air of Studiness that he has cultivated, at his Wife's clothes and then asking her to make a turn. "Why... does it already make me look Fat from the Front!!!" she demanded. "No, No", Dickerson reports he stated said in a placating voice , "It 's very beautiful, I just want to see it all the way around you...you asked my honest opinion, Didn't you? " he cleverly answered back.

With his best look of Women's Fashion Apparale Appraisement, he studied the look and fit for 41.3 sec, which he had previously determined optimal for believability. Deciding not to push too hard by asking her for another turn, which this Reporte note he has had only a 47% success rate, Dickerson, calmly as he could muster, despite his skyrocketing sense of Doom, smoothly delivered.. " You know honey, I think it reminds me of that blue dress that you bought that I like so much, you look good....I think its a good fit"

She apparently looked at him with narrowed eyes," you said that last time, when I asked you about clothes...plus you never said anything about it making me look skinnier or normal......

Descending in despair, he quickly retorted but with a bit of desperation in his voice, which she detected.."You didn't ask me about Skinny, you said does it make me look Fat! "

"Well if you didn't think I was fat, you would have said it" he noes she said delivering the Coup de Grais...while he sunk low into the couch.Reaching to break even...."but you always look Skinny and Beautiful to me! "

Hoping against hope..he met her gaze evenly although he felt his left eye give a slight nervous tic..."You always say that..." she noted neutrally but not angered, and then pivoted and went back to the bedroom, while Dickerson sunk into the Couch relieved but mentally exhausted.

He had done it though.. his Husband Survival Skills came through.. "Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner, he laughed to himself as Self satisfication set in and he turned on ESPN.

Then he heard a voice from the Bedroom," Hun, Don't go anywhere I want to Show you these Pants"..............

A Slow Death

2009-10-25T06:01:00.001-04:00

The ER was hopping, traumas were coming in and I was called in to see a Suicidal Patient, Rob G.
He was 21, self declared "Emo", and was down from the Upstate visiting a sister. She had called the Police as she was afraid he might harm her children.
     When I went into the room, he was in the Fetal Position and only began talking after he realized it was the quickest way to get me to leave.
Doc Wiley: So what's up? How did you end up in the ER?
Rob G. : My sister called the cops, said I was weird, and then she kicked me out.
(Just then my favorite Night Nurse ,Katie, brings me his Urine Drug Screen.)
DW: Impressive, You managed to pop positive in 6 out of 7!
  RG: what did I miss?
  DW: Hallucinogens..too bad , almost a straight sweep.
RG: What are those...
DW: you know LSD, 'Shrooms
RG: Oh yeah, I don't like them, they mess me up......
DW: Hmmmm.... So I hear you were wanting to kill yourself.
RG: ...........
DW: ...And..
RG: I was going to jump in front of a car.
DW: What stopped you?
RG:  They were all going too fast.....I was waiting on a slow one.
DW:  Seems like a fast Car would work better though..doesn't it? I mean if you are trying to kill yourself.
RG:   Well I didn't want to get too hurt bad, even if I was killing myself.

Pluff Mud -Dirigible Squadron Scrambles for Balloon Boy Pursuit

2009-10-18T22:36:00.001-04:00

PLUFF MUD: ONCE YOU GET IN

....YOU CAN'T GET OUT

Pentagon Officials Estimate the Cost of "Balloon Boy" Pursuit to the U.S. Taxpayer at 50.1 million dollars. The U.S. Air Force's Special Dirigible Squadron was scrambled as soon as news reached the Air Guard's Post at Hindenburg Field in Windy Hill, NC that a small boy had accidently taken off in a Balloon.

With a Service that has a storied and sometimes controversial history that includes the downing of a disguised Kansas State Fair Balloon, at the time believed to be an alien vessel, piloted by the popularly called "Wizard of Oz", alias Oscar Zoraster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs an Omaha, Nebraska sideshowman, ventriloquist, and magician , as well as the most recent celebrated saving of the Poughkeepsie, NY native, Miss Tibbs, a Brown Tabby Cat who had climbed up the tallest tree in the area, and was believed to be stuck before the intervention of the USAF SDS.

On Thursday, six-year-old Falcon Heene's parents called 911, claiming the boy was in the UFO-shaped balloon when it drifted away from the family's backyard.

When the balloon landed after being disabled by one of the Dirigible Services Pursuit Craft, "The Pufferfish" an 80-kilometre flight, Falcon was nowhere to be found. He was discovered five hours later at home, hiding in the rafters of the family's garage.

Soon after realizing that the 6 year old brat had pulled a fast one, the Pentagon began work on the cost that this stunt had caused the US, hoping it would distract the American Public from the recent disclosure of the 1.6 trillion in R & D for the Prototype Nuclear Attack Zepplin, the He-2.

Chimps don't Overdose

2009-10-15T20:53:00.001-04:00

A Long, Melancholy Roar
On a recent evening at twilight, I was sitting on the grass in Regent’s Park — one of London’s most manicured public spaces — when I heard the fierce, melancholy sound of a lion’s roar.
I wasn’t dreaming: it was coming from the zoo. Listening to it, I began to reflect on predators — and us.
   On returning home, I did some reading. I discovered that between 1990 and 2004, lions attacked 815 people in Tanzania, killing 563. Some of the victims were pulled out of bed during the night after lions forced their way inside huts. Between January 2000 and March 2004, crocodiles in Namibia attacked 35 people, killing 23. In the 34 months from January 2005 to October 2007, leopards in the Indian state of Kashmir attacked 18 people, killing 16. In the Sundarban swamps of Bangladesh, tigers killed at least 20 people last year. Dig around, and you can also find records of deaths from attacks by bears, cougars, sharks and a number of other wild beasts.
It’s hard to imagine how terrifying such a death must be. To be asleep in bed and to wake to hear a rustling sound, to see an animal leaping, to feel its breath on your face — think of the sweat, the panic, the contraction of your gut, the pounding of your heart, the gasping screams.
   For many of our fellow creatures, such terrors are part of daily life: other animals exist in a world of threat that humans today rarely glimpse. These days, thankfully, we are not used to being hunted. Most of us are more likely to be struck by lightning than we are to die at the paws of a bear or the teeth of a shark. And so we spend little time in that dark, primeval place of alarm, fear, adrenaline and (perhaps) gory death. For us, death usually comes in other forms.
    Of our ancient enemies, microbes are now the most fearsome. Indeed, next to the figures for viruses and other infectious agents, deaths caused by predators are barely worth mentioning.
    Just think: HIV/AIDS chalked up 2 million deaths across the planet in 2007 alone; tuberculosis was close behind, with more than 1,700,000. The year before, malaria escorted almost a million people to their graves. We should be far more scared of mosquitoes than we are of bears; but we’re not.
    Why not? It’s hard to be sure, but my guess is that it has to do with the way our brains are wired up. Just as the moose fears the wolf and the chickadee the owl, we easily fear lions and bears because the connection between danger and the animal is clear and immediate. It is harder, I suspect, to evolve fear of a mosquito because the deadly fever it brings does not happen straight after the bite. Instead, there is a time delay of days, weeks or years. In fact, the connection between mosquito bites and malarial fever is so obscure that we weren’t sure of it until 1897. But our forebears have been making connections between predators and death for ages.
    Although predators are not an important problem for most of us today, they surely were for our ancestors. Indeed, millions of years ago, fear of predators would have been one of the forces that caused our ancestors to evolve to live in groups. The seeds of our social lives were watered with blood and nurtured by the roar of the lion and the claw of the leopard.
     More recently, however, it’s been the case that the mammal most likely to kill a human is: a human. Murder and war have long been more important causes of death for us than predatory wild animals.
     You can see it in the landscape. In northern Romania, monasteries were fortified against marauding armies, and painted inside and out with scenes of martyrs being massacred. Further south, in Transylvania, the churches were fortified to withstand siege. In northern India, almost every town has a fort. Southern France is littered with the ruins of fortified castles and towns. In English forests, you can often find the remnants of iron-age defenses. All traces of peoples defending themselves from attack. We are our own most fearsome predator, and have been so for thousands of years.
    Some other animals are also important predators of themselves. A lion has more to fear from another lion than it does from any other animal but us. Males taking over a pride routinely kill all the cubs they can find, and lions from neighboring territories sometimes kill each other. Chimpanzees kill each other at an alarming rate; and they are far more aggressive towards each other on a daily basis than we humans are.
    But here’s the thing. Today, in many parts of the world, the human being most likely to cause your violent death is: you.
     Yes. You are the person most likely to kill yourself violently and on purpose. Suicide rates have risen dramatically over the past 50 years. Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves. The true number is probably higher, because for many countries there is no data. In some countries, suicide is now among the top ten causes of death. For the young, worldwide, it’s in the top five.
     A huge effort has rightly been devoted to trying to understand the particular causes of suicide in different places — unemployment, drug addiction, relationship breakdown, intelligence, predisposing genes, what your mother ate while you were in the womb and so on.
     But here’s another way to look at it. No other animal does this. Chimpanzees don’t hang themselves from trees, slit their wrists, set themselves alight, or otherwise destroy themselves. Suicide is an essentially human behavior. And it has reached unprecedented levels, especially among the young.
     I’m not sure what this means. But it has made me think. We live in a way that no other animal has ever lived: our lifestyle is unprecedented in the history of the planet. Often, we like to congratulate ourselves on the cities we have built, the gadgets we can buy, the rockets we send to the moon. But perhaps we should not be so proud. Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair.

Texting, Surfing, Studying?

2009-10-13T07:10:00.000-04:00

Texting, Surfing, Studying?

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

Certain subjects make self-righteous parents of us all: our children thinking they are doing homework when in reality the text messages are flying, the Internet browsers are open, the video is streaming, the loud rock music is blaring on the turntable — oh, wait, sorry, that last one was our parents complaining about us.

Heaven knows, I understand the feeling. And not just as a pediatrician. I have my own children — a high school student, a college student and a medical student — and I know the drill.

But if you ask the experts, they are pretty unanimous that we don’t know much.

“The literature looking at media and its impact on attentional skills is just in its infancy,” said Renee Hobbs, a professor of mass media and communications at Temple University and a specialist in media literacy.

Another expert, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington who is a leading researcher on children and the media, agreed. “The pace of science has not kept up with technology,” he told me.

And Dr. Victor C. Strasburger, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, said, “Kids are spending an extraordinary amount of time with media,” but added: “We don’t really know what they pay attention to, what they don’t. We don’t know how it impacts their school performance, whether it impacts their school performance.”

A recent and much-discussed study showed decreased productivity in adults who were multitasking — or as Dr. Christakis put it, “The truth is you don’t really multitask, you just think you do; the brain can’t process two high-level cognitive things.” What you are actually doing, he went on, is “oscillating between the two.”

So are teenagers any better at oscillating?

“It may be that multitasking is more of a problem for us old brains,” Professor Hobbs said. Dr. Christakis speculated that teenagers might have some advantages, partly because of their presumably greater mental dexterity and partly — “and this is the part we don’t understand,” he said — “because they really have come of age with these technologies.”

That generational and technological gap reflects all the unanswered questions about what it means to grow up in this era, and probably accounts for some of the bewilderment many parents feel as they watch their children navigate the many and varied connections of modern adolescence.

Parents are digital immigrants, Dr. Christakis said; children are digital natives. “In the 20th century, you worried about a digital divide separating rich from poor,” he said. “That’s narrowed, and the one that’s emerging is separating parents from their children. We’re fairly clueless about the digital world they inhabit.”

So where does all this leave parents trying to help their own digital natives develop good study habits? Harris M. Cooper, a professor of psychology at Duke who has spent many years studying homework and its effects, says it’s important to keep in mind the overarching purpose of the assignment.

“One of the things that homework is supposed to do for us is help us generalize where we feel we can learn,” he told me, adding that part of successful adult functioning is “matching the task to the context.” In other words, you have to learn how you work and under what circumstances.

So I decided to test my digital immigrant biases — which tell me that no one can study effectively while watching, listening, surfing, messaging — against my professional experience, which tells me that medical students who don’t study effectively can’t learn the huge and complex body of material they have to master, and will therefore not pass their frequent tests. In other words, I asked my son and his friends, people in their early to middle 20s who do an awful lot of studying.

These medical students did sound like expert studiers, in that they had paid close attention to the different kinds of concentration required for different tasks.

“If I’m studying to memorize,” my son told me, “I’m still usually chatting” — instant messaging, that is. “But it’s usually not real-time chatting. I’ll look up every once in a while and I’ll chat; I may have a movie going on in the background, but I’ll go for a movie I’ve already seen.”

He had even conducted an experiment: “So I did a time study where I calculated on average how many pages of a paper I could read when I had a movie on in the background versus when I didn’t. I found I could read at about 80 percent efficiency.” So the distraction was worth it; it meant he could go on reading for much longer stretches.

That question of how to keep yourself studying for long periods preoccupied other medical students. One said she did her best studying at the gym, usually on the elliptical machines; she taped the lectures and played them over at a fast speed while working out.

But you can’t work out all the time. “The day before a big test,” she said, “I usually do go to the gym and listen and work through one of the lectures that I might feel is more important, and then I would just go through everything.”

As an immigrant, I will always lack a certain fluency when it comes to the digital world. And learning how we learn, the overarching assignment that Dr. Cooper described, is one that we parents can’t complete for our children — no, not even the most hopelessly overinvolved parents, the ones who stay up all night putting together the seventh-grade biology poster. (You know who you are.)

The advice my older son gave me about my younger son was, “Don’t worry about it till there’s something to worry about. If he’s doing well in his classes and his homework, fine!” And that was also Dr. Cooper’s advice to parents: “If they’re doing well, permitting them to have some choice permits them to find their own style.”

Ah, but I thought to myself mournfully, I still feel that something is lost. What about the all-consuming pleasure of reading something, really reading something, with no distractions? And the creative complexity of writing, making language flow from sentence to sentence, listening only to your inner voice?

And then I reflected on my own work habits, and the ways I have adopted the customs of this new country, and I wondered: Is this the slightly suspect nostalgia of the immigrant for the lovely but already mythological terrain that she herself has left behind?

2009-10-07T19:58:00.003-04:00

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest-
-a kind of optical delusion of the consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us....We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.
---Albert Einstein

I read this as an opening quote for a book about the importance of "Consequential Strangers" in our lives. In that there are people who are not our close friends but interact with us in some way that enriches our lives.

In thinking of Einstein's quote, although there are those who claim detachment from the World or an Absorption into the Godhead, his words seemed to presuppose something that may not be part of human experience as yet known.
As he would suggest, this "Breaking" of the Bubble of our personal consciousness ( how we perceive that we are alive and on this Earth , Existing) is entirely subjective. Only we are experiencing our own selves no matter how close another being can come. The Barrier is still there, another cannot share or affirm your experience of Consciousness.

If Einstein was alive now would he see the Internet and the experience of Virtuality as a step towards humanity's survival?

In my Personal Bubble, the advance in linking humans more by mind and thought rather than body, would seem to be a step towards what Einstein's feels is the breakdown of individual consciousness and more the development of a "Group Mind or perhaps a World Consciousness"

Religion, Philosophy, Materialism have not delivered on their promises, so could Technology possibly be the Catalyst? It is one reason why I have been so interested in the development of Massive Virtual Environments such as World of Warcraft, to a lesser extent Second Life and the rapid growth of Social Networking in Facebook or Twitter.

If this is the path to saving Humanity by breaking the bonds of self...we do run the risk of becoming victims of Virtuality, such as the world generated by the Victorious AI's in the Movie The Matrix. This layer of false reality imprisoned humanity in this movie. Could a Virtuality that only appeared to break down walls of Personal Consciousness, just be an Opiate for the Masses, especially designed to blunt the inescapable truths of Existence.

We Live, We Die, Our Person hood is stripped from us, so is there a realistic solution to this fate in which we combine and perhaps lose ourselves in another level of consciousness? Maybe at some point in the future, but I doubt Einstein would bet the survival of Humanity on his Facebook Page.

The Three Things We Fear Most

2009-09-27T19:42:00.001-04:00

The Three Things We Fear Most
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by Ezra Bayda
When things upset us, we often think that something is wrong. Perhaps the one time this is truest is when we experience fear. In fact, as human beings, we expend a huge portion of our energy dealing with anxiety and fear. This has certainly been apparent in the present economic upheavals and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We live with an everyday reality that is tinged with personal and cultural anxiety. Our fears are not just the product of global events, however—they go to our very core. On a day-to-day level, fear often motivates how we act and react, and sometimes even how we dress or stand or talk. But fear makes our life narrow and dark. It is at the root of all conflict, underlying much of our sorrow. Fear also blocks intimacy and love and, more than anything, disconnects us from the lovingkindness that is our true nature.
Even considering how prevalent fear is in our lives, it nonetheless remains one of the murkiest areas to deal with, in daily life as well as in practice. This may sound bleak, but what is really the worst thing about fear? Though it is hard to admit, especially if we see ourselves as deeply spiritual, the main reason we have an aversion to fear is that it is physically and emotionally uncomfortable. Woody Allen put this quite well when he said, “I don’t like to be afraid—it scares me.” We simply don’t want to feel this discomfort and will do almost anything to avoid it. But whenever we give in to fear, we make it more solid, and our life becomes smaller, more limited, more contracted. In a way, every time we give in to fear, we cease to truly live.
We’re often not aware of the extent to which fear plays a part in our lives, which means that the first stage of practicing with fear requires acknowledging its presence. This can prove to be difficult, because many fears may not be readily apparent, such as the fear driving our ambition, the fear underlying our depression, or, perhaps most of all, the fear beneath our anger. But the fact is, once we look beyond our surface emotional reaction, we will see that almost every negative emotion, every drama, comes down to one or more of the three most basic fears: the fear of losing safety and control, the fear of aloneness and disconnection, and the fear of unworthiness.
Munch, from the series "Fear," Trenton Doyle Hancock, 2008, mixed media on paper, 22.25 x 22.5 inches. © Trenton Doyle Hancock, courtesy of the James Cohan Gallery, New York City
The first most basic fear is that of losing safety. Because safety is fundamental to our survival, this fear will instinctually be triggered at the first sign of danger or insecurity; the old brain, or limbic system, is inherently wired that way. This particular fear will also be triggered when we experience pain or discomfort. But in most cases, there is no real danger to us; in fact, our fears are largely imaginary— that the plane will crash, that we will be criticized, that we’re doing it wrong. Yet until we see this dimension of fear with clarity, we will continue to live with a sense of constriction that can seem daunting.
A central component of spiritual life is recognizing that practice is not about ensuring that we feel secure or comfortable. It’s not that we won’t feel these things when we practice; rather, it’s that we are also bound to some times feel very uncomfortable and insecure, particularly when exploring and working with our darker emotions and unhealed pain. Still, there is also a deep security developed over the course of a practice life that isn’t likely to resemble the immediate comfort we usually crave. This fundamental security develops instead out of the willingness to stay with and truly experience our fears. Isn’t it ironic that the path to real security comes from residing in the fear of insecurity itself?
Insecurity can also manifest as the fear of helplessness, often surfacing as the fear of losing control, the fear of being controlled, the fear of chaos, or even the fear of the unfamiliar. For example, nearly all of us have experienced the emotion of rage, which is like being swept into a mushroom cloud explosion. Think of the kind of day when nothing seems to go your way, or even just the last time your TV remote stopped working and no matter what buttons you pushed, you couldn’t get it to do what you wanted. The urge to throw the remote against the wall can feel like angry rage, but as we bring awareness to this experience, we can discover that the feeling of rage is often just an outer explosion covering over the quieter inner implosion of feeling powerless. Rage may give us a feeling of power and control, but how often is it an evasion of the sense of powerlessness that feels so much worse?
We all dread the helplessness of losing control, and yet real freedom lies in recognizing the futility of demanding that life be within our control. Instead, we must learn the willingness to feel—to say yes to—the experience of helplessness itself. This is one of the hidden gifts of serious illness or loss. It pushes us right to our edge, where we may have the good fortune to realize that our only real option is to surrender to our experience and let it just be.
During a three-year period in the early 1990s when I was seriously ill with no indication that I would ever get better, I watched my life as I had known it begin to fall apart. I not only lost my ability to work and engage in physical activities, I also experienced a dismantling of my basic identities. At first, it was disorienting and frightening not to have the props of seeing myself as a Zen practitioner, a carpenter and contractor (my livelihood), a husband and a father. But as I stayed with the fears, and particularly as I was able to bring the quality of lovingkindness to the experience, there came a dramatic shift.As the illusory self-images were stripped away, I experienced the freedom of not needing to be anyone at all. By truly surrendering to the experience of helplessness, by letting everything I clung to just fall apart, I found that what remained was more than enough. As we learn to breathe fear into the center of the chest, the heart feels more and more spacious. I’m not talking about the heart as a muscle in our chest, but rather the heart that is our true nature. This heart is more spacious than the mind can ever imagine.
The second basic fear is that of aloneness and disconnection, which we also can feel as the fear of abandonment, loss, or death. Our fundamental aloneness, which is a basic human experience, ultimately must be faced directly, or it will continue to dictate how we feel and live.
It’s interesting that one of life’s most vital lessons is something we are never taught in school: how to be at home with ourselves. When I first began going to meditation retreats, where there was no talking or social contact for days on end, I would sit facing the wall hour after hour, and invariably an anxious quiver rose up inside me. Sometimes it was so strong that I literally wanted to jump out of my skin. But just sitting there, doing nothing, brought me face to face with myself, with my fear of aloneness.
Most people will almost instinctively try to avoid this fear. Many enter into relationships or engage in affairs. In fact, the extent to which people have affairs is often proportional to the urgency of needing to avoid feeling alone. However, the only way to transcend loneliness is to stop avoiding it, to be willing to face it—by truly residing in it. Further, if we wish to develop genuine intimacy in our relationships with others, it is crucial that we first face our own neediness and fear of aloneness. How can we expect to truly love or be intimate with another if we’re still relating to them from our fear-based needs?
Naturally, we still want and expect other people to take away these fears; we think that if we’re with someone who will pay attention to us, our loneliness will disappear. But if this particular deep-seated fear is part of our makeup, the mere act of our partner being engrossed in a book when we’re expecting attention will be enough to make us feel abandoned. We may try to deal with this by demanding or attempting to attract his or her attention, but even if that demand is met, our fear is unlikely to be assuaged for long.
Furthermore, getting the attention we desire does not necessarily mean we will experience intimacy. True intimacy comes instead when we’re willing to acknowledge the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and fear that are part of our own conditioning; it comes when we can say yes to them, which means we’re willing to finally feel them. It may be uncomfortable to feel the fear of loneliness, but breathing that aching fear into the center of the chest and surrendering to it allows us to take responsibility for our own feelings. We no longer ask that others protect us from feeling these fears we had previously turned away from. We can discover that the more we face our own fear of aloneness, the more we experience true connection, and the more we can open to love.
The basic fear of aloneness may also include a related anxiety that is not usually recognized: the fear of disconnection— from others as well as from our own heart. This fear penetrates more deeply than loneliness and often manifests as a knotted quiver in the chest or abdomen. Remember, at bottom, the heart that seeks to awaken, to live genuinely, is more real than anything. It is the nameless drive that calls us to be who we most truly are. When we are not in touch with this, we may feel the existential anxiety of disconnection.
In a way, much of spiritual practice is geared toward helping us address our feeling of basic separation. How does this occur? First, we acknowledge our fear and see it clearly for what it is. We need to remember that the fear is, in fact, our path itself, our direct route to experiencing the lovingkindness at our core.
Then we must face the fear directly, saying yes to it. Essentially, this means we are willing to experience it—to sit with anxiety in the center of the chest and truly feel— rather than run away from it. When fear arises, in order to replace our usual dread with a genuine curiosity, we might ask, “Here it is again, how will it be this time?” As we breathe the sensations of anxiety into the heart, our familiar thought-based stories begin to dissolve. As we get out of our heads, we can experience the spaciousness of the nonconceptual: the healing power of the heart. No longer caught in fear or our sense of separateness, we are free to experience connectedness, which is our basic birthright and comes forth naturally on its own.
The third basic fear is that of unworthiness. This fear takes many forms, such as the fear that I don’t count, the fear of general inadequacy, of being unworthy of love, of being nothing or stupid, and so on. The basic fear that we’ll never measure up dictates much of our behavior; for example, for some, it impels us to continuously and forcefully prove ourselves, while for others, it might prompt us to cease trying. In either case, isn’t our motivation the same: to avoid facing the basic fear of unworthiness? We may fear the feeling of unworthiness more than anything.
In fact, we are often merciless in these self-judgments of unworthiness—not just when we’re upset at ourselves, but as an ongoing frame of mind. Even if they’re not glaringly obvious, our self-judgments are always lurking under the surface, waiting to arise. For example, those who have stage fright, including the anxiety of public speaking, may feel the constant underground dread of having to deal with it. There’s a joke that people can fear public speaking so intensely that at a funeral they would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy. I can attest to the lurking dread of stage fright, as I had to face this particular fear for years. And yet ultimately giving public talks has been a very fruitful path.
Fear of public speaking triggers the dread and shame of public failure and humiliation. But what is really being threatened? Isn’t it just our self-image of appearing strong, calm, insightful, or whatever our own particular narrow view is of who we’re supposed to be? We certainly fear appearing weak or not on top of it. Why? Because that would confirm our own negative beliefs of unworthiness. Even though there is no real danger, isn’t it true that the fear of failing often feels fatal? Yet ironically, our very attempt to fight the fear is most often what increases it and may even result in panic.
There is a better alternative: We must learn to let it in willingly, to breathe the sensations of fear directly into the center of the chest. In other words, to say yes to the fear.
At one point in my life, when I was struggling with my fear of giving public talks, I joined Toastmasters, a group designed to help develop skills in public speaking. But I didn’t join to learn to give better talks, or even with the goal of overcoming my fear. I joined so that I could have a laboratory, a place to invite the fear in and go to its roots. In a way, I actually began to look forward to the fear arising so I could breathe it right into the heart, entering into it fully. Paradoxically, the willingness to be with the fear completely is what changes the experience of fear altogether. It’s not that fear will no longer arise; it’s that we no longer fear it.
Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know that they are only beliefs, and not the truth about who we are. By entering into this process willingly, by seeing through the fiction of who we believe ourselves to be, we can connect with our true nature. As Nietzsche put it, “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” Love is the dancing star, the fruit of saying yes, of consciously and willingly facing our fears.
When we can feel fear within the spaciousness of the breath and heart, we may even come to see it more as an adventure than a nightmare. To see it as an adventure means being willing to take the ride with curiosity, even with its inevitable ups and downs. Over the years, because I had to speak in public quite frequently, this situation provided an opportunity to tap into what was really important to me—to remember that my aspiration is to learn to live from the awakened heart. Whenever I remembered this right before giving a talk, it was no longer an issue of whether or not I felt the discomfort of fear. This allowed me to say yes to it and to willingly breathe the fear right in. In other words, when we connect with a larger sense of what life is, negative beliefs such as “I’ll never measure up” may still come up, but they no longer dictate who we are. Instead, we begin to use the fear as our actual path to learning to live from lovingkindness.
Remember, it’s a given that we don’t want to feel the fear of unworthiness, but at some point we have to understand that it’s more painful to try to suppress our fears and self-judgments, thus solidifying them, than it is to actually feel them. This is part of what it means to bring lovingkindness to our practice, because we are no longer viewing our fear as proof that we’re defective. Without cultivating love for ourselves, regardless of how much discipline we have, regardless of how serious we are about practice, we will still stay stuck in the subtle mercilessness of the mind, listening to the voice that tells us we are basically and fundamentally unworthy. We should never underestimate the need for lovingkindness on the long and sometimes daunting path of learning to awaken.
Please note that these three basic fears—insecurity and helplessness, aloneness and disconnection, and unworthiness— are not just mental. Scientists tell us that fear is written into the cellular memory of the body, particularly into a small part of the brain called the amygdala. That is why simply knowing about our fears intellectually will not free us from their domination. Every time they are triggered, we slide into an established groove in the brain. So until we can see our fears clearly, we will not be able to practice with them directly.
When I was a child, my father told me repeatedly, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Although his intentions were good, what I actually heard was that I should be afraid of fear! Fear thus became the enemy. We have to remember that fear is neither an enemy nor an obstacle; it is not a real monster. When we feel fear, we need to remind ourselves that it is our path; and when we truly understand this, we can welcome it into the spaciousness of the heart.
Interestingly, it is this nonconceptual experiencing of our fears that allows the grooves in the brain, which are preprogrammed to react to fear, to slowly be filled in. How this works is a mystery; it is no mystery, however, that unless we can clearly see our individual fears for what they are, it is unlikely we will overcome our habitual and instinctive aversions to them. The bright side of this is that once we are able to face our fears, once we willingly let them in, they become a portal to reality.
Ezra Bayda lives and teaches at Zen Center San Diego. He is the author of four books, including Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life. This article has been adapted from his latest work, Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion.

The Triple Threat

2009-09-20T18:30:00.003-04:00

I was taking overnight call at the State Hospital when the phone woke me out of a shallow sleep. Rather than the usual, it was the County Police asking if they could pick me up to go see a patient.

Immediately I went into Good Resident's, extra work blocking mode, "Whoa, Guys, I would love to help but I can't leave the hospital grounds. I am the only doc in the whole hospital.

"Sir, we understand that, but we have one of your patients just off grounds and you need to come talk her down or we are going to have a big problem.

To me it seemed like we must already have a big problem, but the car came and I got in with two exasperated deputies. "We got one of your ladies," he said sarcastically,"down by the tracks".

As there was a rail line that bordered the property, this was certainly possible..still, I started cursing under my breath, as I was sure it wasn't that simple.

" So what's she doing down there, to drag you guys out so late?"

"You will get to see it soon enough, I think" laughed Smart ass Cop #2.

We drove over the hill and down the dirt road toward the Tracks, and there she was.

Brenda S, Forty-ish, Flirty and a Fatty. They neglected to mention that she was not just "on the tracks" but was actually on the train trestle, almost exactly in the middle. The Deputies and Hospital Security were on either side but nobody looked to be in the rocky creek below.

Brenda.."Oh Shit!", she was well known for quasi suicidal stunts and had her only real Psychiatric Diagnosis as Borderline Personality, with histrionic traits. She was likely loving this , Oh Man,what a stage for her to display her talents.

She saw me walk up, yelled sweetly, "I knew you would come for me, Lover" and then proceeded to totter purposely on the bridge. "Check out what else she has" whispered Smart Ass #1.

"Lord, what did I do wrong". Not only was she threatening to jump, but she had a razor blade in one hand and pills in the other. So ....she could jump, OD, and slice her wrist all at the same time. A surreal feeling overcome me, and I almost laughed out loud. This would not have been good. The Triple Threat!

"Brenda, what are you doing up there" I asked innocently.

"You know what I'm doing , Sweetie" she retorted.

"Come on over and lets get you back before you freeze to death..or I do" I spoke with my best "Come hither" voice.

"I don't think so, Hon, if I am going to kill myself why would I worry about a little cold? Huh? You're Head shrinking again" she noted with fairly good humored laughter.

While we were talking one of the more experienced cops had run a rope underneath the bridge and was moving under it towards Brenda. So maybe now I would just have to keep her talking for a minute or two and then see if he could sneak up on her and snag her, or otherwise he'd probably scare her into accidentally falling off. I knew she didn't want to die, but she would play this for all it was worth. I knew her too well.

"Hey Brenda, how we gonna get married if you are jumping off bridges?" I called out. I swear to God a fat dimple showed and she made a tickled sound almost like a "Tee-Hee".

We chatted for a few more minutes and then the James Bond Cop, jumped up and grabbed her firmly and his fellows all rushed her.

She put up a little fuss, more when she knew she was safe off of the trestle. I think that with that many guys chasing and grabbing her was probably the most fun and male attention she had received in some time.

They had her cuffed, but she was smiling. I got in beside her in the sheriff's back seat.

"Hi , Doc Sweetie..what next"

"Lets go home Brenda, I'll buy you some Coffee"

The Simplicity of Attachment

2009-09-13T07:09:00.001-04:00

The Simplicity of Attachment

We don't have to let go, we simply have to not hold on.

–Joseph Goldstein, from “Empty Phenomena Rolling On

Seizure Patch

2009-09-11T13:01:00.004-04:00

In thinking about the Powers of Suggestibility and how susceptible some are to it, I had a memory from the "Way Back".

When I was doing a Neurology Rotation at UVA, we would often get called down the the Emergency Room to evaluate a patient. Many times the ER Doc was looking for some advice as to whether a patient had just had a seizure or not. Often when Psychiatric issues were present or the Seizure was diagnosed as a Pseodoseizure and shipped home.

Pseudoseizures are a physical manifestation of an emotional disturbance. They resemble epileptic seizures, but, unlike the seizures caused by epilepsy, they are not caused by electrical disruptions in the brain. People experiencing pseudoseizures often experience loss of consciousness, grand mal-like twitching or jerking, and aggravated emotional states. These episodes may last for 20 minutes or more. Physicians believe that pseudoseizures are psychological defense mechanisms, and may be brought on by episodes of severe stress or emotional trauma. The seizures tend to occur when patients try to suppress the trauma, often taking the person suffering with them by surprise, as do epileptic seizures.The difference between epileptic seizures and pseudoseizures can be difficult to recognize, even for trained medical professionals. The physical appearances of epileptic seizures and pseudoseizures are virtually identical. Generally, a diagnosis of pseudoseizures is reached after a complete neurological work up is performed, thorough seizure history and description is obtained, and the results of an electroencephalogram (EEG) are analyzed to gauge differences in the brain's electrical activity from what would be expected of someone prone to epileptic seizures.One of the most common complications involved in the diagnosis and treatment of pseudoseizures is the misconception that people who suffer from the phenomena are hypochondriacs, hysterics, or "faking it." The name for the condition alone, "pseudoseizures," leads some people to think of the occurrences as medically suspect.Many patients who experience pseudoseizures are urged to seek counseling. This can be a good or bad therapeutic option, depending on the context. As pseudoseizures are a physical manifestation of intense emotional or psychological stress, or a physical response to a childhood trauma, counseling to work through the underlying cause of the pseudoseizures is certainly an important step toward resolving the concern.

Not to lose the point of this, There was this Smart -Ass, Neurology Resident, somewhat of a bright spot among the usual dull, neurology types. He is yelling "Dickerson, get your Ass over here. We got a Serious test to run."

As I went over to the veiled area, he finally shut up and there he was just watching a 26 year old woman, in hospital Garb. He winked at me and began a monologue about the fact that he was going to use a Prototype drug to induce a Seizure in the Patient, so we could reach a diagnosis.

I was thinking, "What the hell is he talking about" but the lady seemed to be into it so I just watched.

He had a a piece of Gauze, that was soaked in a brownish fluid and the gauze piece had tape on it. He spoke more to the woman in a lower tone about how he would attach the Medicine to her arm, it would be absorbed by the skin within 5 minutes and he Guaranteed it would cause this poor woman another seizure. To make me part of this, I got to tape the Gauze to the patients inside wrist.

At that, we sat back...and within 30 seconds the woman was in an apparent seizure except that it looked different than most Grand Mal seizures I had seen. She was thrusting her Pelvis, Arms were tighter and she was not incontinent. Also when he casually spoke to me , "The effects of the Seizure Patch" are almost gone. Give her 10 more seconds and check her vitals.

Sure as the world, within 10-15 seconds , the Patient woke, not in a confused , Post-ictal state like most who had seizures, but awake and oriented.

He took off the patch, told the woman he had found a cure, and promptly strode out through the curtains.

"Dickerson, you need this more than I do.....and he through me gauze patches, tape and a bottle of Betadine.......The Betadine Seizure Patch!

Back in Yonder's World

2009-09-08T23:55:00.005-04:00

Standing like old Sentinels of some long and bygone war,

A Gateway of Cedar Trees from home leads afar,

They say the clock runs backward, Time's Banners they stand furled,

and Yesterday's Tomorrow back in Yonder's World

As I awoke one morning, in the ditch beside the way,

Drownded in Demonic Dreams and the Wine of Yesterday,

Thinking of my Wasted Life, did my Spirit go,

When a team of Horses I did spy, coming over the road

Where are you travelling Sir, I did inquire,

Where is your Wagon bound and are you for hire,

Your clothes are all ragged, you shoes they are worn,

Why do you gaze at me with Amusement and Scorn

I traveled through the swamps, my boy, and the Mountains, Rusty Red,

Up and across the Great High Plains my Journey it has led,

Turn yourself around my Boy, in the strength of your Youth

Set not upon the road that lies the Pathway of Truth

We met upon this rutted road in the Gray light of Day,

I'm travelling up and across the fields, you're going the wrong way

And Speaking to his horses and lifting of the reins,

He drove between the Twisted Trees, the jingling of a chain

To the summit of that grassy Hill, so swiftly did I go,

and gazed across the Ragged Brush to the road down below,

The Wagon and the Tired Old Man, nowhere could I see,

And I wondered if his Yonder's World was called ....Eternity

Standing like old Sentinels of some Long and Bygone War,

A Gateway of Cedar trees from home leads afar

They say the Clocks run Backwards, Time Banners stand furled

And Yesterday's Tomorrow, Back in Yonder's World

Yes , the Clocks they all run backwards

Time's Banners, they stand furled,

And a Man Might Live Forever,

Back in Yonder's World

Norman Blake

Coloring for Aggression

2009-09-08T06:54:00.002-04:00

I walked into Psychiatric Unit Public Roon where an ex-con, weight lifting, Paranoid Schizophrenic was coloring page after page of Easter drawings.

Mr. M.: "Motherfucker, if you are not here to discharge me, then get your Whitey Face from this Space and out of this Place."

Doc Wiley: "Oh, OK...... "

Punching her ticket

2009-09-04T23:37:00.005-04:00

Today I was asked by a Marine wife to do her a favor. Apparently, Tricare will allow the

active duty spouse of a Marine to recieve a one time elective surgery. In my experience this is always either Cosmetic Surgery or a Gastic Bypass. When asked, I laughed heartily and she did not. I then was fairly suprised, amused, incensed and then finally figured "What the Hell! "

My patient wanted a Boob Job, which is of course is a real shocker. She explained to me that to get these Big Fake Boobs, I needed to write a letter describing the damaging Psychological effects her small boobs had caused her. I felt like I was really getting into the Groove of this one so I wrote:

Dear Tricare,

I am writing to you in regards to the Trauma my Patient, Laura S. has suffered as a result of Congenital Breastapenia. She has since Puberty not developed her Mammary Glands in a Fashion that has allowed her to feel loved by her family, boyfriends and now her husband. Society itself frowns upon these measly mosquito bites she claims are A's.

A minus..I would say.

I myself found that I could not imagine such an afflicted woman growing up to be Married to an

American War Hero, who gets home from Iraq or Afghanistan to bury his Psychic Wounds in the Bosom of his wife, but instead raps his yearning buzz-cut head against the Hard, uncompromising "Flat as a Board" chest of his Harridan of a wife.

They both have discussed the increasing trips to the video store by her husband to watch "Exercises Videos" in his locked Man Cave. During their twice daily acts of intercourse, Laura has noticed how he closes his eves until he can view her firm rear or nether parts, which he say says are looking " Real Good."

My position on this Tricare, is when will this Warrior Couple have suffered enough? All Mrs. S wants is her allotted right for Tricare to give approval to have her Breasts enhanced to a normal size, which she has assured me are modest 36 Triple C's .

I would stake my professional opinion that allowing this woman to fill out a triple C cup would relieve the chronic depression, anxiety, and marital difficulties this poor Woman has suffered from far too long. it may even save the life of this woman and allow a baby to one day suckle at something more than an unhappy and sour teat.

I hope you would proceed with fulfilling her rights under Tricare and I would be happy to speak with you if there are any questions or concerns.

Best Regards,

J. Wiley Dickerson, III M.D.

Medical Director

B Memorial Hospital.

Max, The King and an Everychild

2009-09-04T04:59:00.005-04:00

Where the Wild Things Are is a 1963 children's picture book by American writer Maurice Sendak, originally published by Harper & Row. The book is about the wild adventure of a boy named Max who is sent to his room without his supper by his mother as punishment for misbehaving. Max wears a distinctive wolf costume during his adventures and encounters various mythical creatures, the "wild things". Although just ten sentences long, the book is generally regarded as a masterpiece of American illustrated children's literature.

The book tells the story of Max, who one evening plays around his home, "making mischief" in a wolf costume by chasing the dog with a fork and growling at his mom. As punishment, his mother sends him to bed without supper. In his room, a mysterious, wild forest grows out of his imagination, and Max journeys to the land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are fearsome-looking monsters, but Max conquers them "by staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once," and he is made "the King of all Wild Things." However, he soon finds himself lonely and homesick, and he returns home to his bedroom, where he finds his supper waiting for him, still hot.
Background
The original concept for the book featured horses instead of monsters. According to Sendak, his publisher made the switch when she discovered that he could not draw horses, but thought that he "could at the very least draw 'a thing'!".[2] He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, whom he had studied critically in his youth as an escape from their weekly visits to his family's Brooklyn home.[2][3] When working on the opera adaptation of the book with Oliver Knussen, Sendak gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Bruno, Emile, and Bernard.[4]
Francis Spufford suggests that the book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger".[5]

In the Now: Sendak at Maurice Sendak is 81, but he still knows what children know--that life is risky business, that there is trouble in the world, and sorrow, fear and violence--especially violence.
From his 1963 book, Where the Wild Things Are, to his newest offering, Sendak--a slightly wild looking man with imposing eyeglasses--has given young readers generous credit for what they know.
In doing so, he gives children a respect they rarely receive from more traditional children's writers. And it is a gift, he says, that empowers kids to protect themselves, to fight back, to survive.

Devo - Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth

2009-09-01T04:22:00.001-04:00

Duty Now For The Future!!
De-Evolution!
A good Glimpse of the Plastic Hair!

The Leather Giant

2009-08-31T06:05:00.003-04:00

It was a slow Saturday afternoon in the "Doc -on -Call "Apartment that we used at the State Hospital, until a Car Dar slammed and I heard rough voices, some of them "police-like ", one definitely not. All were loud, and trying to watch the end of the Football Game, I knew I was doomed when the Phone rang. I didn't even bother answering , I just opened the door, past the newly arrived Winchester, VA Police Car and headed into Admissions.

There (and I kid you not) was a 6' 10'' White Guy all in an Outrageous Bike Leather Outfit. The Costume was a cross between 50's Motorcycle Gangs, Punk Rock Leather, and Something out of the Village People. It would have been more comical except tor the immensity of the Guy. I am 6 foot tall and he looked like a White Boy, Leather Bound Wilt Chamberlain that could smack me down like an annoying bug.

Unluckily this was apparently the Annual "Shrimp Day" in Admissions with all workers and Security not able to achieve Five and a half feet in stature.

While we were marveling over the guy, still cuffed, the Winchester Police made a hasty and sneaky exit. Wary but feeling a little OK as the guy looked Majorly Hung -Over, I introduced myself....he did the same. He said his name was Black Ace and could he "Piss like a Race Horse, right now, so I gotta go so I don't fuck up my Leathers."

I was for not letting the cuffs off as he had ready access to a zipper in the right spot among the multitude of the Zippery Options of his silver zippered suit. The Shrimp Security thought at least the cuffs should be in the front, so I acquiesced.

The bathroom in Admissions is small so I wondered how he maneuvered in there, but he did.

He was in there way too long and security knocked on the door asking him to come out. Nothing was heard except a slight hissing sound and coughing.

Worried I opened the Door that swung Outward into the hall and the Biker, Punk ,Village Person fell from the Bathroom door, which I assume he was leaning on. He fell as if Pole-axed, at full body stretch until his long body ran out of space in the 4 foot hallway and he smashed his head into the tiled walled opposite him. Blood spattered and after an "Oh Shit", I called for Medical back-up.

Black Ace looked at me exhaling a smokey Vapor. The nurse reached into the Bathroom and held up a now empty can of Aerosol "poor man's" Lysol as evidence. He began breathing better and color came back somehow to his already very pale features. He was going to be OK.

Mr Ace, Mr Ace are you OK...I yelled in his ear.

Startled at he obviously foolish question, he must have pitied me and answered.

"Yep......Man , O Man......... that was some really Good Shit in there"

Book of Dreams

2009-08-30T03:17:00.006-04:00

I would climb up the creaking old stairs into a place only safe to visit in Day. The light came into the lone window and cracks between boards above and at times below me. I was much smaller then and more prey to fears of Spiders, Bats, and Ghosts than I am now.

The room was large and Ancient, not as large or as grand as the House below but always older as if it held time firmly, greedily. There were crates and cases, and furniture deemed worth keeping, but not for display. There were dress manikins, curved and bare, that somehow seemed shaped for a woman, not seen in this day. I was embarrassed by them , me the intruder.

I had long ago found the sword, and canes and large Baseball Posters and claimed them as prizes to be kept in my room below. The other items would call to me for inspection, the window that gave town a new look as yards , roofs and Steeples became clearer as whole objects rather than the partial view that we were always granted from below.

Today, the cloying scent of Wisteria that climbed the trees almost overpowered the dusty oldness of the place. The Steamer's Trunk wrapped in leather and always shut tight against the elements, such that were, in this dim place, sat on a large Wooden table, where I had moved it many years ago, with the help of Father. Was it many or just a few?

Amid the old histories, garments, and treasures collected in several lifetimes of the ancestral Family was the Book of Pictures. Like a Time Machine, I could open it anywhere and be transported through time and space.

Time ruled, more than Space or Place now, in the Book. My hands grasped it more firmly these days. I no longer struggled to keep its unwieldiness under control. The Time held sway over me as well, I knew.

A young man handsome and jaunty posed beside a new roadster with laughing women , surely none my Grandmother. Here again on a Baseball Diamond in a cityscape that could never be our small Southern Town. That same jaunty man beside a biplane in a muddy Field, this time surrounded by other men jockeying to be photographed, arms around each other, in uniforms from French to American to British. The men for some reason seemed happier to be together than they did with the women that would come in go through the Photographs.

With another turn of the pages, more soldiers, in Grey Uniforms.......but with pale haunted eyes, not smiling as my Grandfather did in his War. Perhaps the always too Bushy Beards and long thick Mustachios didn't show the Smiles and Grins. Somehow, I doubt that was right. It didn't seem to be a Smiling Race, just formal and posed, filling the Pages, out of a duty to be recorded for posterity.

Places and things that only History books and the Town Library could have prepared me for popped up randomly. Steam ships, Paris, Indian Fakirs, along with Fierce looking Indians of another sort. New York, Charleston, Savannah peppered with black folk in the background, who had became something different to me recently with Minister King shot and the Schools changed.

My Father as a Boy, looks like me. Here standing with hunting rifle and herds of dogs standing beside the now, more Sturdy and not Jaunty Man. Here my Grandmother as a Young Woman makes an entrance. She carrying a Baby, and the once jaunty man looking Proud.

Prouder than he did in the War or the Baseball Diamond......maybe this is when he Grew up...

Al Stewart - Year of the cat

2009-08-29T22:11:00.001-04:00

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat.

She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

She looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat.

Well morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
BUt for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat.

Terminator Meets Jesus

2009-08-29T01:26:00.001-04:00

Wow!

eye of fatima pt 1

2009-08-28T05:18:00.001-04:00

Love this Band..Cool California Surf-Skateboard meets Witty Lyrics. saw them in Concert ..One of the Best for just fun, witty Stuff,

2009-08-26T14:26:00.006-04:00

ONCE YOU ARE IN IT, YOU CAN’T GET OUT!

Prominent Beaufort Civic Leader, Wiley Dickerson broke into a Sweat and felt "kinda trapped" this afternoon, when his Wife asked a Question about a New Outfit she bought.Says Dickerson, "I was minding my own business, when my wife Kim came out from Bedroon wearing a nice Floral Ensemble. She had been shoppng that day and had a few questions for me."Imediately alert, Dickerson said he felt adrenaline began to course through his body.
"Do you think this outfit makes my hips big?......and then " I mean do I look Fat in this?" his wife of many years, Kim asked expectantly.A veteran of this type of question, which to his knowledge, he has never answered correctly, he states to this Reporter that he fought back the urge to blurt out too quickly...."No way! It looks Beautiful on you, makes you look thinner, in fact!", as a too spontaneous assement could be interpreted as Dickerson not really considering the Hip and Fat implications Properly.Trying not to let on to the fact this Anxiety level was rising...He waited , Looking with an Air of Studiness that he has cultivated, at his Wife's clothes and then asking her to make a turn. "Why... does it already make me look Fat from the Front!!!" she demanded. "No, No", Dickerson reports he stated said in a placating voice , "It 's very beautiful, I just want to see it all the way around you...you asked my honest opinion, Didn't you? " he cleverly answered back.
With his best look of Women's Fashion Apparale Appraisement, he studied the look and fit for 41.3 sec, which he had previously determined optimal for believability. Deciding not to push too hard by asking her for another turn, which this Reporter notes he has had only a 47% success rate, Dickerson, calmly as he could muster, despite his skyrocketing sense of Doom, smoothly delivered.. " You know honey, I think it reminds me of that blue dress that you bought that I like so much, you look good....I think its a good fit"
She apparently looked at him with narrowed eyes," you said that last time, when I asked you about clothes...plus you never said anything about it making me look skinnier or normal......Descending in despair, he quickly retorted but with a bit of desperation in his voice, which she detected.."You didn't ask me about Skinny, you said does it make me look Fat! ""Well if you didn't think I was fat, you would have said it" she said delivering the Coup de Grais...while he sunk low into the couch.
Reaching to break even...."but you always look Skinny and Beautiful to me! "Hoping against hope..he met her gaze evenly although he felt his left eye give a slight nervous tic..."You always say that..." she noted neutrally but not angered, and then pivoted and went back to the bedroom, while Dickerson sunk into the Couch relieved but mentally exhausted.He had done it though.. his Husband Survival Skills came through.. "Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner, he laughed to himself as Self satisfication set in and he turned on ESPN.Then he heard a voice from the Bedroom," Hun, Don't go anywhere I want to Show you these Pants"..............

Announcing Pluff Mud !!!!

2009-08-26T05:25:00.003-04:00

PLUFF MUD: ONCE YOU GET IN ....YOU CAN'T GET OUT

Another WileyWorld Feature on its Way through the NetherSpace and into your Mind.

Satyricon

2009-08-26T05:04:00.007-04:00

Satire. A manner of writing that mixes a critical attitude with wit and humor in an effort to improve mankind and human institutions. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples. See "The Purpose and Method of Satire" for more information

Gaius Petronius (~27-66 A.D.), the author of the Satyricon, was the emperor Nero's advisor in matters of luxury and extravagance (his unofficial title was arbiter elegantiae). As befitted his office, he slept days and partied nights. He was a lover of style, manners, and literature, and his personality was characterized by freedom, a lack of self-consciousness, a loose tongue, and an attitude. A rival's jealousy turned Nero agains Petronius, and he was forced to commit suicide. However, before his death, he lampooned Nero in his will and sent the emperor a copy.

The Satyricon was probably written around 61 A.D.and first printed in 1664. It is a very long work, of which we only have fragments. Petronius probably read it in installments to his friends, and possibly to the court of Nero. The Cena is one of the longer fragments; its survival in its entirety suggests that people have been enjoying it as a separable story for a long time. A banquet is the traditional setting for the kind of light conversation that is featured in the Cena.
The Satyricon itself, as its name implies, is a satire. The origin of the word "satire" has been a subject for academic debate: some say it comes from satura, or medley, while others theorize that it refers to something which is goat-like, like a satyr (smelly, rude, unkempt, and hairy?). Petronius satirizes anything and everything, using taste as the only standard. This is NOT a moralistic story intended to produce reform, as we often imagine a satire to be. We never know Petronius's own opinion (although he warns prudes not to criticize his story), because he doesn't give it to us directly. The only opinions we have are those of the characters in the story. Encolpius, as we shall see, criticizes Trimalchio, but Encolpius is no great prize either, so what is his criticism worth?
More specifically, the Satyricon is a Menippean satire. This genre, originally a humorous discussion of philosophy in alternating prose and verse, is characterized by the use of many different styles. In the Satyricon, accordingly, we find proverbs, verse, interpolated stories, and varied levels of language (from the very vulgar to the very elegant).
Some of the stories told by Trimalchio's guests are part of the genre called Milesian tales. These are funny, often questionable, stories characterized by a great deal of variety and incongruity in their plots, and by lots of digressions. They have a lot in common with the more outlandish controversiae of the rhetorical schools, as we shall see.

T S Eliot's seminal poem of cultural disintegration The Waste Land is prefaced by a verbatim quotation out of Trimalchio's account of visiting the Cumaean Sibyl, a supposedly immortal prophetess whose counsel was once sought on all matters of grave importance, but whose grotto by Neronian times had become just another site of local interest along with all the usual Mediterranean tourist traps:
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere,
et cum illi pueri dicerent: "Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις;" respondebat illa: "ἀποθανεῖν θέλω".
(I myself saw the Cumaean Sibyl with my own eyes, hanging in a basket, and whenever the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?", she used to answer, "I want to die.")

The Waste Land[A] (1922) is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem – its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures – the poem has nonetheless become a familiar touchstone of modern literature. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih."[C]

The Catch

2009-08-25T17:10:00.001-04:00

My Favorite All Time Team with a Super Bowl win that seemed to come out of Nowhere. Joe Montana to Dwight Clark who seems to jump a mile to snag the High Pass that you wonder if Montana was trying to thow away.
Super Bowl , Super Team!

The High Priestess of Snakes

2009-08-25T04:46:00.002-04:00

In working at a State Hospital as a Resident , I found it too be many things, but mostly a Psychiatric Disneyland. There I found things that would amaze, humor and entertain me. There were equals amounts of things that would shock , scare and disturb me.

A feature of State Hospital Life was Rounding. Most of the Mornings, a team of Nurses, Attending Psychiatrist, Staff Psychologist and a motley crew of hangers on such as Residents and Medical and Nursing Students. After discussing the condition of the patients on that ward, we would have them come hear our pronouncements and have a chance to give a rebuttal or the rare agreement of our assessment of their current state.

The High Priestess was a woman in her late 50's , who could have passed for 70. Fingers brown with Nicotine, skin lined and creased, Hair limp, too long and slightly greasy, she could have passed for a haggard woman worn by a hard life on the streets, a end-stage, institutionalized Schizophrenic, or a Witch. ....She was likely all of these.

She came into the room and in a very limber fashion that did have a serpent like quality, she slid into the chair assuming a modified Lotus Position. She then did her Trademark Snake Hiss, which I believe that day was one of her best.

She took her tongue, protruded it from her mouth ,tight between her teeth, and then vibrated it just right, with saliva flying, to give what I thought was an exact rendition of the Ancient Snake-God manifested on this Earth, whose Cult she claimed to rule. The result among most of the staff was boredom, impatience, but I did notice the Horrified and Disgusted look from my delegated Medical student. If I am not mistaken, the new interning Nurse fresh from a rotation of Pediatrics, peed on herself and excused herself very quickly from the room.

Before we could speak, the High Priestess raised her hand in a Queenly Gesture of Silence which we all respected. "When you are through with slicing, dicing, pickling, brainwashing and having Sexual Intercourse with me.....I would like to go outside and smoke.

We looked at the Attending, he looked at her and at us...and said, "We won't hold you up...Have a Good Day"

With an uncoiling of her body, a parting hiss and a Gesture that looked like the "Evil Eye" that she stabbed with her right hand at the even more horrified and disgusted Medical Student , she walked out of the room and went off to smoke.

Who you think you are, may not be You...

2009-08-24T19:06:00.009-04:00

Many aspects of personality are related to morality. Many aspects of behavior are influenced by moral motives. And many conflicts and misunderstandings are driven by differences in morality.

This link http://www.yourmorals.org/ takes you to a Series of Psychological/Moral/Political Tests that are quite interesting in helping on define one's self as Conservative vs. Liberal, Moral vs. Immoral. I took the tests and was surprised at the results. I was not really the "label"I had given myself.

This does go back to Previous Points I was trying to make, is that many terms, Conservative, Liberal, Fascist, Socialist are being hurled back and forth across our Political and Moral Battlegrounds. I still believe that most of the foot soldiers and many of the Leaders do not know or use these terms correctly.

Check this site out..and learn a little about yourself. They were developed by Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia Scholar featured in a UTNE Reader Article "Liberals Aren't Un-American. Conservatives Aren't Ignorant. : The Demonization that mars our politics is a failure of moral imagination."

2009-08-23T20:37:00.005-04:00

Istanbul - They Might Be Giants. MTV Europe, 1990

2009-08-23T20:37:00.003-04:00

Always a Favorite...Off of the CD, "Flood" which is by far their best!

Thank the Good Lord , I am not addicted!

2009-08-23T16:46:00.001-04:00

Internet Addiction Test (IAT)
Would you like to use this Test?
How do you know if you're already addicted or rapidly tumbling toward trouble? The Internet Addiction Test is the first validated and reliable measure of addictive use of the Internet. Click here to read the study. Developed by Dr. Kimberly Young, the IAT is a 20-item questionnaire that measures mild, moderate, and severe levels of Internet Addiction.
To assess your level of addiction, answer the following questions using this scale:
1 = Rarely.2 = Occasionally.3 = Frequently.4 = Often.5 = Always.
1. How often do you find that you stay on-line longer than you intended?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
2. How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
3. How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
4. How often do you form new relationships with fellow on-line users?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
5. How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
6. How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
7. How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 =Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
8. How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
10. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
11. How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go on-line again?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
12. How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
13. How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
14. How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
15. How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
16. How often do you find yourself saying "just a few more minutes" when on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
17. How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend on-line and fail?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
18. How often do you try to hide how long you've been on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
19. How often do you choose to spend more time on-line over going out with others?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply
20. How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back on-line?
1 = Rarely 2 = Occasionally 3 = Frequently 4 = Often 5 = Always Does Not Apply

Your Score:
Results:
After you've answered all the questions, add the numbers you selected for each response to obtain a final score. The higher your score, the greater your level of addiction and the problems your Internet usage causes. Here's a general scale to help measure your score:
20 - 49 points: You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.
80 - 100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.
After you have identified the category that fits your total score, look back at those questions for which your scored a 4 or 5. Did you realize this was a significant problem for you? For example, if you answered 4 (often) to Question #2 regarding your neglect of household chores, were you aware of just how often your dirty laundry piles up or how empty the refrigerator gets?
Say you answered 5 (always) to Question #14 about lost sleep due to late-night log-ins. Have you ever stopped to think about how hard it has become to drag yourself out of bed every morning? Do you feel exhausted at work? Has this pattern begun to take its toll on your body and your overall health?
For immediate help, visit our Counseling Services which provides affordable and confidential counseling or review our array of Books and Tapes on Internet addiction to learn more.

Multitasking or Multitorture

2009-08-20T05:07:00.005-04:00

In the current issue of Tricycle ,a journal devoted to Western Bhuddism. I noted an article by Marc Lesser, author of , "Do Less Acomplish More, of interest to me what I see happening to me regarding the Dangers of Distraction that are all around us:

"In the age of cell phones and the Internet, many of us have become smitten with the distractions of choice— texting, instant messaging, twittering, listening to iPods, checking email, reading the news online. These distractions can be fun, and, when seen as multitasking, even necessary. The problem is that some distractions are more detrimental to our focus and happiness than others. Most distractions fall into one of two categories: those that draw us in multiple directions at once, resulting in confusion and an inability to complete a thought or action, and those that provide mental relaxation, offering small “breaks” that support intense focus and effort. Clearly, we want less of the former and more of the latter. "

There has been a spate of Articles written about this issue. I myself have found that as I am increasingly absorbed into the online Information Cloud that promises access to all Data and People, I feel a need to keep up..and actually feel more pressure to keep up with virtual obligations.. my Facebook Page, 5 Different Foreign Nespapers, Email, my Blog...etc, etc,.......

The result of this has been noticible lack of focus in longer tasks that involve one topic, such as "reading a novel." My Attention and Concentration are worse, and its not just my 46 year old mind slowing down.

Is this Good or Bad..or is it just Today's Reality? Another article of interest was posted in Atlantic Magazine, "Is Google Makng us Stupid? " This article noted below discussed many of these issues froma different slant:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what’s going on.

For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. . They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report: It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today.

The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration. The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either.

As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles.

In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.

Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.

Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

Is this True though? I assume Yes and No. I watch my teens grow up learning in these shallow bursts of Data that they have a their Fingertips. They are learning. It is not the same as I learned ..but is that Bad or Poor Learning?

We are meant to evolve and the Information Age has forced the Human Brain to evolve faster. Perhaps we have reached a point where a different type of thought is required..maybe we should be faster proccessors of information and not worry over the details.

The details of course, can be Googled later..........

The Conjurer

2009-08-19T20:35:00.004-04:00

It has long been known that Superstition is often Fact, in our World. And in the Psychiatric World it is even more so. "It must be a Full Moon", is heard so regularly and frequently that I could even set a Digital Watch by it. This saying occurs mostly when the ER is full and all manners of Human Wildness are occurring.

When I was an intern in the University of Virginia, Emergency Department basking in the full glory of my young Doctorhood, an incident occurred where I learned more of the Powers of the Mind.

I was on a medical rotation in the Emergency Room when they first brought him in. Two city cops had what I thought was a kid, handcuffed and being drug into Room 6. He was only struggling a little, so "No Worries." I thought.

It was certainly not unusual to see a cop or three in the ER and even a kid brought in by the Police was fairly common, so I did not think much of the incident. It was in between running to do some menial task that the Attending Physician had me doing for my "education" and flirting with one of the Nurses that the ruckus began.

I heard "CODE ORANGE!" blare on the Loudspeaker, which always amused me as it meant some violent altercation was occurring somewhere. Probably one of my poor colleagues was getting Taken to the Cleaners by an Ancient Demented Lady in Geriatrics. It also always brought up the thought of the Fictitious "Code Brown", the eternally humorous Alert when there was a Fecally Incontinent Patient found.

However on this night, I heard the Second Calling of the Alert, "CODE ORANGE, EMERGENCY ROOM, BED 6". The young guys like myself, as well as anyone else around in the mood for a tussle, (which did not usually include Hospital Security) were expected to help out and turn the "Code Orange" into an "All Clear".

I ran into the room where the cops had taken that handcuffed kid, and saw that four people had made it in first. The Cops were gone (No Shock...) but the room was so small that the 4 Guys; 2 Residents a male Nurse, and an Aide, were all in the way surrounding the bed with the flailing kid. I could not figure out how I could get my Superpowered "Hand of Restraint" into play and was maneuvering for a limb to grab. That is when the Restraining Mob Parted like the Red Sea and .....rising like a Colossus, was........ The Dwarf!

I did not comprehend this at first glance but this was not just any Dwarf. Certainly not any Little Sweet Munchkin of a Dwarf.

Nope, Not at All!....He was a Bleeding, dirty, Stinking Drunk, Pissed Off dwarf and no friend to any of us.

I didn't quite comprehend it at that instance , but what we had here in our very own Room 6,was something like an avenging Devil, the Wrathful Dwarf God of Dwarf Rage,Dwarf Vengeance and Dwarf Dirty Fighting!

Dr. Scott yelled, "It's a Damn Dwarf!" which made me snicker, looking at his flushed face and his now wrinkled White Doctor's Coat. This Pronouncement caused a resurgence of efforts by the restrainers to tackle the Patient, who slipped in and out of Holds like an Olympic Wrestler.

Suddenly, the Aide yelled, "He's got a knife!!" and the Medical Staff backed away very quickly leaving the dwarf to rule Supreme in Room 6. I, at least had the Presence of mind to close the door, so he was trapped and couldn't run amok through the entire ER.

This is when the Cops returned and after consulting with the Attending, opened the door and with a fantastic shot, tasered the Little Guy out of commission. The cops then wrapped the leads of the taser up, and then rapped it up with Bed 6 by allowing, the now confident, Dr. Scott to suture the man up.

Then quick as you would like, the Cops handcuffed him, and drug his little sluggish body out of the ER and Down to the Police Detention Center. We stayed, of course, ignoring needy patients to congratulate ourselves on our stellar performance.

"CODE ORANGE, ER, ALL CLEAR! "

______________________________________________________________

Now the Scene moves to 4 years later, when I was taking night call in the Psychiatric Portion of the Emergency Department. I was a Senior Resident by then, and quite experienced in the ways of Psychiatry and Human Misbehavior.

I was sitting in the call room with the Social Worker who was fielding the odd call from the HELP Hot line. I was reading a Novel and becoming progressively more bored by the hour. We were complaining about how slow time was going. Complaining was something you were very good at in your 4th year of training.

I thought of things to enliven the night, and by sheer Genius decided what needed to happen...

Then, I said it...

"You know .....what we need tonight is for that Goddamn Dwarf to show up."

It was approximately 2 hours later at 11pm that the Cops came in dragging a familiar shape. It was him! That knife wielding maniac of a Dwarf....!!!!!

It seemed surreal, and a lot spooky to see this happen. "What are the odds of him showing up tonight?!" I kept thinking.

There really wasn't much time for thinking after that. Wiser now..I asked the Police to stay and search him for weapons. He didn't have any on him , but the search apparently had him quite agitated and he had gotten loose somehow..again. Like Old Times.

This time, I let the cops handle it and watched them grapple with the Master of Hand to Hand Midget Combat. the Police kept trying to use their standard method of taking down a miscreant by sweeping their legs out from under them but the dwarf just kept dancing away. Trip after trip failed. Tired, Irritated and Plain fed up, the three cops just tackled and sat on the Little Guy sustaining some bites and Bruises in the Process.

Held down, I looked him over , still amazed that all it took was a Remembrance said out loud to bring this menace back into my life. I pulled down his pants and shot a cocktail of Haldol,Benadryl and Ativan in his butt.

Soon he was off to sleep.....

With that crisis calmed, I went back outside. One of the cops came out of the room, shaking his head...in a weary acceptance of some knowledge gained.

"Well, you know Doc.....I guess you just can't trip a Dwarf."

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

2009-08-16T19:08:00.001-04:00

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

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Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling"

2009-08-16T08:53:00.001-04:00

I hate to post Black eyed Peas next to Grateful Dead..but I do think will.i.am has more talent than most in today's Music , such that it is.....

Grateful Dead - St Stephen

2009-08-15T22:32:00.001-04:00

The Grateful Dead performing "St Stephen" for the beautiful people on Playboy After Dark, 1969

Da Root is on Me

2009-08-14T05:55:00.009-04:00

When in Medical School, I had planned to go into Orthopedic Surgery and practice Sports Medicine. However, as I have been discussing , there were various events and happenings in the Field of Psychiatry to where it captured me quite unexpectedly.

In the previous Blog I was discussing African American beliefs among the Population of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. In particular the belief in Hexes and Spirits. The Hexes that originate from a Person meant to do you harm is called "The Root". I did have several Patients that intrigued me with dabbling in the Black Arts while in medical School, thus leading me further down the path of Psychiatry as a Career.

There was in the Charleston , South Carolina VA hospital, a patient, named Jonas, who was there when I arrived for my first day of the rotation, who would not eat or drink. He rarely slept and remained Mute for much of the time. He was from the Frogmore area near my current Hometown of Beaufort, which was heavily influenced by Hoodoo and Belief in the Root.

He had reached a critical point after being on the Psych ward for about a 10 days, where we had to continue IV hydration and install a feeding tube. We had very little understanding of what was happening to him. he was given medication for Depression, Psychosis and worked up thoroughly by the Medical team without an answer forthcoming as to what he was suffering from.

As time went by, we truly thought he was going to die, and called his Family who had not been in contact with him since his admission.

It was while they visited that they very furtively told the Chief Resident and myself that Jonas had the "Root" put on him because he had slept with a Friend's wife. This was confirmed with a very weak, but wide-Eyed Jonas, only by him nodding his head slightly. The family had ideas of how to help and so did the Resident.

Our attending Professor of Psychiatry was very disinclined to believe in "This Root Foolishness, The Man is Psychotically Depressed and we need to do ECT".

However between the Family and my resident's knowledge....we consulted a local Root Doctor, who had a shop in downtown Charleston.

Knowing the Attending's Disregard for this, we secretly brought the Root Doctor in for a Consultation. Dressed in a Light Blue Suit and Wearing Blue Shades, "Doctor Fox", brought in a bag of jars, powders, liquids all designed to take away the Root. First he was paid by a Brother of Jonas with some money chipped in by myself and the other Medical Students.

That night he made his Diagnosis that a Root had been put on Jonas and that he would surely die..unless drastic Measures were taken. Dr. Fox was in charge of most of this, but he did task us with obtaining Grave Dust from a Famous Criminal in the Area. We did not know of any, and were not that excited to be caught digging in graves. So that night we brought in a bucket full of some fine sand found in the VA Hospital Parking lot.

Apparently after much Preparation Doctor Fox came in Same Suit, Same Shades. The nurses looked the other way as we made a procession down the Hall. My Part in this was carting the "Grave Dust" which Doctor Fox had transferred into a small Coffin Shaped container.

We went into Jonas' Room, he looking like Death warmed over. The Root Doctor spoke in a Sing Song Voice and we were kicked out. White Folks probably decreasing his potency.

However, I did hear him tell Jonas that the sand we dug up from the Parking lot was from Pee Wee Gaskins' Grave, an infamous mass murderer. He lined the "Grave Dust" in a circle around the bed. He had told us the purpose of the Dust from an evil person's Grave would still have such evil powers that it would "Out-Evil" the Root put on Jonas. An Anti-Root Force Field, I imagined.

Well all this went on for almost an hour, Family and us waiting outside the Room expectantly.

Suddenly the door flew open and out strode a satisfied looking Doctor Fox...he didn't speak or look at us at all, but went straight for the exit, confidence in his long step.

We stumbled over each other to get in the room. There in the Room was Jonas, weak but pulling out IVs , Feeding tubes...which had to hurt like hell. the IV sites were bleeding nicely which gave us something to do, staunching the bleeding.

Jonas got out of bed Wobbly, but on his own, took off his hospital Gown. He put his pants,shirt and shoes on, and asked for Dinner.

He went Home, a new man, still weak in body, but strong in spirit, the very next day.........

That HooDoo that You Do...

2009-08-12T13:05:00.002-04:00

This will probably be one of the first of many postings about the Gullah People of Beaufort County and their Beliefs, especially their Spiritual Ones. The Gullah are the descendants of Slaves found mainly living in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. These slaves were relatively isolated, which allowed the continuation of many of their African Tribal Beliefs. The Gullah people are also called Geechee, after the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. The term Geechee is most commonly used in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Slaves, many of whom were from the West African Region of Angola gave rise to the the Name used for them. Angola was believed to have been corrupted into the term "Gullah". Some scholars have also suggested it comes from Gola, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, another region where many of the Gullahs' ancestors originated.
For a Catchy title, I used the Word Hoodoo, which is one of the terms used for the beliefs found among the Gullah. Hoodoo is African spiritualism mixed with the Protestant Beliefs found among their owners and Missionaries to the slaves. Voodoo on the other hand is a term describing the combining of African Spiritualism and Catholicism such as found in Louisiana.
Prominent among the beliefs of the Gullah culture was a belief in herbalism and black magic. The "Root" was the Gullah called a charm used for bad and sometimes good. These charms in other places are called "mojo"or "gris-gris"
Usually made as a small pouch or a small vial of Liquid the roots were used and distributed by Root Doctors, wearing Purple or Blue Sunglasses as a way of Signifying their Profession. they usually took the name of an Animal, such as the Famous (or Infamous) Dr. Buzzard whose Fame made its way into Popular American Culture, with the Publication of John Berendt's book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" which was also made into a Popular Movie in 1998.

I-Phone apps : The ParanoiaMeter

2009-08-12T05:54:00.002-04:00

iPhone App Of The Day: The Paranoiameter
Summer iPhone Must Have Apps
All this week: Our technology experts have been busy testing some of the best apps available for your iPhone this summer.
We start off with a must have app for your vacation - The iPhone Paranoiameter ©®™.
The iPhone Paranoiameter ©®™ allows you to calculate the real time actual danger you are in based on your geographical position. The software calculates in real time both perceived and actual peril and warns the user accordingly.
The iPhone Paranoiameter ©®™ uses GPS, Google maps, Google local news feeds, iPhone's own database on areas where iPhones get stolen a lot and a database of known danger areas held by the CIA. It displays a percentage danger rating which ranges from 5% mild peril, all the way up to 99% which is imminent nuclear catastrophe.
We took the Paranoiameter to a number of popular vacation locations to give it a thorough test run and we were pleased with the results.
In North Beach Hawaii it successfully told us about a guy on our bus with bad breath who talks a lot, sitting two seats to our left...

In Yosemite National Park it correctly sensed a bear was coming up from behind allowing us to run in a north easterly direction after counting to three.
.

But it was in Beirut, Lebanon, that this little gadget's full usefulness became apparent.
The iPhone Paranoiameter allowed us to dodge bullets, hand grenades and gave a running commentary as we ran as fast as we could.

Shamed Straight: Educators Adopting Humiliation Tactics to Correct Woeful American Children

2009-08-12T05:43:00.004-04:00

Shamed Straight: Educators Adopting Humiliation Tactics to Correct Woeful American Children
Desperate to combat an epidemic of egocentric malaise, stagnant test scores, and rising obesity rates amongst America's children, many schools around the nation have begun adopting new negative reinforcement tactics in an effort to turn the tide. "Nice has its price - and that price is failure," remarked Reginald Paxton, Vice Chairman of Lompoc Unified School District in California, "It's a tough world out there, and telling our kids that they're all special in the face of cold, hard evidence of the contrary is not doing anyone any good. Lazy, fat and stupid is no way to spend a life."
Throughout the K-12 public schools of Ohio's Franklin County, where the failures of underperforming children have long been overshadowed by the commendation of less incompetent students, the shortcomings of kids most in need of motivation are now being publically recognized with non-awards and certificates of failure.
Commented Sarah Bowers, Principal of Garfield Elementary School in Columbus: "Any parent is willing to put a bumper sticker on their car that says, 'My child is an honor student at Garfield Elementary', but we're trying to emphasize to folks that it is just as important to display a sticker that says, 'My child is a below average student at Garfield Elementary', or, 'My child is wasting everybody's time at Garfield Elementary'.
Citing the power of shame to correct impudent, slothful conduct, Broward County Superintendant of Education Monroe Burdick defended his own schools' new motivational stickers and t-shirts, that bear such messages as, 'My child is the fattest student at Millikan Middle School', and 'My daughter shit her pants at Fowler Elementary'.
"These methods work. Granted, the child will experience some moderate to extreme embarrassment, but I defy anyone to argue that this is somehow not preferable to suffering a curtailed lifetime addled by symptoms associated with morbid obesity, much less the interminable shame of chronic self-defecation."
Supporting Burdick's claims are testimonials from children who've had his tactics applied to them.
Ryan Ruttermen, 9, described the positive results he's experienced since his mother began making it public knowledge that the confines of his school are barely large enough to accomodate the size of his enormous ass: "Everybody laughs and makes fun of me. I'm nervous all the time and can't sleep or eat."

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

2009-08-11T07:03:00.001-04:00

A hilarious Piece of Work, and a lead in to the artcle above.

Socialism, Social Democracy and Socialized Medicine

2009-08-11T07:01:00.007-04:00

With all the "Hue and Cry" over People discussing Health Reform, I thought it would be useful to Respond to what seems the GreatFear among many is that President Obama and a Liberal Democratic Congress will force "Socialized " Medicine on us...to our ruin

I began to wonder if many of the younger generation who were not old enough to live during the Cold War even knew what Socialism was. After the Soviet Union fell, I wonder, if those of us who do remember those times even really know what these terms mean and how they are being used to define the current debate about Health and American Societal Reform. also do People really understand what Liberalism and Consevatism means as well.

People in the U.S. have grown up in a societal structure that vilifies both socialism and communism with defining qualities usually attributed to: totalitarian, repressive, dictatorial, authoritarian, feudal-like, monarchical regimes conducting societies where the masses suffer while the few elite ride upon their backs enjoying a life of opulence.

Liberals are people who are under the only partially mistaken impression that altering the structure of government is the best way to influence people and resources. Conservatives are people who are under the only partially mistaken impression that altering the people in power is the best way to influence other people and their culture.
To put it more simply: Liberals want the decision to be spread out among more people, preferably everyone; conservatives want the decision to be made by as few people as possible, preferably just one.
Socialism, as envisioned by Marx and Engels was, ideally, a where everyone would share the benefits of industrialization. Workers would do better than in the English system at the time (The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848) because there were more workers than bosses and the majority would rule. As a purely economic system, socialism is a lousy way to run a large scale economy. Socialism is not a political system, it's a way of distributing goods and services. At their ideal implementation, socialism and laissez faire capitalism will be identical as everyone will produce exactly what's needed for exactly who needs it. In practice, both work sometimes in microeconomic conditions but fail miserably when applied to national and international economies. And they fail for the same reason: Human pervserity. Too many people don't like to play fair, and both systems only work when everyone follow the same rules.
Socialism is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the economy works. Democracy is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the government works. "Democracy," said Marx, "is the road to socialism." He was wrong about how economics and politics interact, but he did see their similar underpinnings.
Communism is conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just the Party Secretary) have any say in how the economy works. Republicans are conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just people controlling the Party figurehead) have any say in how the government works. The conservatives in the US are in the same position as the communists in the 30s, and for the same reason: Their revolutions failed spectacularly but they refuse to admit what went wrong.
A common mistake is to confuse Socialism, the economic system, with Communism, the political system. Communists are "socialist" in the same way that Republicans are "compassionate conservatives". That is, they give lip service to ideals they have no intention of practicing.
Communism, or "scientific socialism", has very little to do with Marx. Communism was originally envisioned by Marx and Engels as the last stages of their socialist revolution. "The meaning of the word communism shifted after 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a repressive, single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies." (quote from Encarta.). Those socialist policies were never implemented.
Whereas Marx saw industrialized workers rising up to take over control of their means of production, the exact opposite happened. Most countries that have gone Communist have been agrarian underdeveloped nations. The prime example is the Soviet Union. The best thing to be said about the October Revolution in 1917 is that the new government was better than the Tsars. The worst thing is that they trusted the wrong people, notably Lenin, to lead this upheaval. The Soviet Union officially abandoned socialism in 1921 when Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy allowing for taxation, local trade, some state capitalism... and extreme profiteering. Later that year, he purged 259,000 from the party membership and therefore purged them from voting (shades of the US election of 2000!) and fewer and fewer people were involved in making decisions.
Marxism became Marxist-Leninism which became Stalinism. The Wikipedia entry for Stalinism: "The term Stalinism was used by anti-Soviet Marxists, particularly Trotskyists, to distinguish the policies of the Soviet Union from those they regard as more true to Marxism. Trotskyists argue that the Stalinist USSR was not socialist, but a bureaucratized degenerated workers state that is, a state in which exploitation is controlled by a ruling caste which, while it did not own the means of production and was not a social class in its own right, accrued benefits and privileges at the expense of the working class."

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That being said, to discuss what Social Democracy is , I referenced Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology of the political left and centre-left that emerged in the late 19th century from the socialist movement and continues to exert influence worldwide.[1]
The concept of social democracy has changed throughout the decades since its inception. The fundamental difference between social democratic thought and other forms of socialism such as orthodox Marxism is the belief in the primacy of political action as opposed to the primacy of economic determinism. [1] Historically, social democratic parties advocated socialism in the strict sense, achieved by class struggle. In the early 20th century, however, a number of socialist and labor parties rejected revolution and other traditional teachings of Marxism and went on to take more moderate positions, which came to characterize modern social democracy. These positions often include support for a democratic welfare state which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, usually resulting in the form of a mixed economy.[2] This differs from traditional socialism, which aims to replace the capitalist system entirely with a new economic system. Social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of programs that work to counteract or remove the social injustice and inefficiencies they see as inherent in capitalism.
In many countries, social democrats continue to exist alongside democratic socialists, who stand to the left of them on the political spectrum. The two movements sometimes operate within the same political party, such as the Brazilian Workers' Party [3] and the French Socialist Party. In recent years, several social democratic parties (in particular, the British Labour Party) have embraced more centrist, Third Way policy positions. This development has generated considerable controversy.
The Socialist International (SI) is the main international organization of social democratic and socialist parties. It affirms the following principles: first, freedom—not only individual liberties, but also freedom from discrimination and freedom from dependence on either the owners of the means of production or the holders of abusive political power; second, equality and social justice—not only before the law but also economic and socio-cultural equality as well, and equal opportunities for all including those with physical, mental, or social disabilities; and, third, solidarity—unity and a sense of compassion for the victims of injustice and inequality. These ideals are described in further detail in the SI's Declaration of Principles.[4]

History

Pre-World War II
Many parties in the second half of the nineteenth century described themselves as social democratic, such as the German Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein and the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (which merged to form the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the British Social Democratic Federation and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In most cases these parties were avowedly revolutionary socialist, seeking not only to introduce socialism, but also to introduce democracy into nations lacking democratic institutions. Most of these parties were to some extent influenced by the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were at that time working abroad, in London, to influence Continental European politics.
The modern social democratic movement came into being through a break within the socialist movement in the early years of the twentieth century. Speaking broadly, this break can be described as a parting of ways between those who insisted upon political revolution as a precondition for the achievement of socialist goals and those who maintained that a gradual or evolutionary path to socialism was both possible and desirable.[1] Many related movements, including pacifism, anarchism, and syndicalism, arose at the same time; these ideologies were often promulgated by individuals who split from the preexisting socialist movement, and held a variety of quite different objections to Marxism. The social democrats, who had created the largest socialist organizations of that era, did not reject Marxism (and in fact claimed to uphold it), but a number of key individuals wanted to reform Marx's arguments in order to promulgate a less hostile criticism of capitalism. They argued that socialism should be achieved through evolution of society rather than revolution. Such views were strongly opposed by the revolutionary socialists, who argued that any attempt to reform capitalism was doomed to fail, for the reformers would be gradually corrupted and eventually turn into capitalists themselves.
Despite their differences, the reformist and revolutionary branches of socialism remained united through the Second Internationale until the outbreak of World War I. A differing view on the legitimacy of the war proved to be the final straw for this tenuous union. The reformist socialists supported their respective national governments in the war, a fact that was seen by the revolutionary socialists as outright treason against the working class; in other words, the revolutionary socialists believed that this stance betrayed the principle that the workers of all nations should unite in overthrowing capitalism, and decried the fact that usually the lowest classes are the ones sent into the war to fight and die. Bitter arguments ensued within socialist parties, as for example between Eduard Bernstein, the leading reformist socialist, and Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading revolutionary socialists within the SPD in Germany. Eventually, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the world's socialist parties fractured. The reformist socialists kept the name social democrats, while many revolutionary socialists began calling themselves communists, and they soon formed the modern Communist movement. These communist parties soon formed an exclusive Third Internationale known globally as the Comintern.
By the 1920s, the doctrinal differences between social democrats and communists of all factions (be they Orthodox Marxists, Bolsheviks, or Mensheviks) had solidified. These differences only became more dramatic as the years passed.

Post-World War II
See also History of socialism.
Following the split between social democrats and communists, another split developed within social democracy, between those who still believed it was necessary to abolish capitalism (without revolution) and replace it with a socialist system through democratic parliamentary means, and those who believed that the capitalist system could be retained but needed dramatic reform, such as the nationalization of large businesses, the implementation of social programs (public education, universal health care, and the like) and the partial redistribution of wealth through the permanent establishment of a welfare state based on progressive taxation. Eventually, most social democratic parties have come to be dominated by the latter position and, in the post-World War II era, have abandoned any commitment to abolish capitalism. For instance, in 1959, the Social Democratic Party of Germany adopted the Godesberg Program, which rejected class struggle and Marxism. While "social democrat" and "democratic socialist" continued to be used interchangeably, by the 1990s in the English-speaking world at least, the two terms had generally come to signify respectively the latter and former positions.
In Italy, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party was founded in 1947, and from 1948 on supported the idea of a centrist alliance. Since the late 1980s, many other social democratic parties have adopted the "Third Way", either formally or in practice. Modern social democrats are generally in favor of a mixed economy, which is in many ways capitalistic, but explicitly defend governmental provision of certain social services. Many social democratic parties have shifted emphasis from their traditional goals of social justice to human rights and environmental issues. In this, they are facing an increasing challenge from Greens, who view ecology as fundamental to peace, require reform of money supply, and promote safe trade measures to ensure ecological integrity. In Germany in particular, Greens, Social Democrats, and other left-wing parties have cooperated in so-called red–green alliances. The present government in Norway is a red-green alliance.

Present
Many of the policies espoused by social democrats in the first half of the 20th century have since been put into practice by social democratic governments throughout the industrialized world. Industries have been nationalized, public spending has seen a large long-term rise, and the role of the state in providing free-to-user or subsidized health care and education has increased greatly. Many of the reforms made by social democrats in Europe, such as the establishment of national health care services, have been embraced by liberals and conservatives, and there is no support outside of a radical fringe for a return to 19th-century levels of public spending and economic regulation. Even in the United States, where no major social democratic party exists, there are regulatory programmes (such as public health and environmental protection) and welfare programmes (such as Medicare [5] and Medicaid [6]) which enjoy bipartisan support.
However, since the 1980s, there has been a perception that social democracy has been on the retreat in the Western world, particularly in English-speaking countries, where social democratic values are arguably not as firmly rooted in local law and culture as elsewhere. In recent years, a number of historically social democratic parties and governments have moved away from some traditional elements of social democracy by endorsing Third Way ideals and thus supporting both the privatization of certain state-controlled industries and services and the reduction of certain forms of regulation of the market. The adoption of Third Way ideology by many social democrats has proved divisive within the broader social democratic community. Traditional social democrats argue that Third Way ideology has caused the movement to become too centrist, and even that the movement may be becoming centre-right. In general, apparent reversals in policy have encountered significant opposition among party members and core voters; many of the latter have claimed that their leaders have betrayed the principles of social democracy.[7]
Supporters of Third Way ideals argue that they merely represent a necessary or pragmatic adaptation of social democracy to the realities of the modern world: traditional social democracy thrived during the prevailing international climate of the post-war Bretton Woods consensus, which collapsed in the 1970s. It has, moreover, become difficult for political parties in the developed world to win elections on a distinctively left-wing platform now that electorates are increasingly middle-class, aspirational and consumeristic. In Britain, where such an electorate rejected the Labour Party four times consecutively between 1979 and 1997, Third Way politician Tony Blair and his colleagues in the New Labour movement took the strategic decision to overtly disassociate themselves from the previous, strongly democratic socialist incarnations of their party. The Labour Government that came to power in 1997 continued the tradition that Margaret Thatcher started in the 1980s of selling out nationalized industries, and the income gap between the rich and the poor grew. This challenge to traditional social democractic ideals alienated many backbenchers, including some who advocated a less militant ideology of social democracy.[8]
The development of new social democratic policies in this environment is the subject of wide-ranging debate within the left and centre-left. A number of political think-tanks, such as Policy Network and Wiardi Beckman Stichting, have been active in facilitating and promoting this debate.

Ideology

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007)
In general, contemporary social democrats support:
A mixed economy consisting of both private enterprise and publicly owned or subsidized programs of education, health care, child care and related social services for all citizens.
An extensive system of social security (although usually not to the extent advocated by socialists), with the stated goal of counteracting the effects of poverty and insuring the citizens against loss of income following illness, unemployment or retirement.
Government bodies that regulate private enterprise in the interests of workers and consumers by ensuring labor rights (i.e. supporting worker access to trade unions), consumer protections, and fair market competition.
Environmentalism and environmental protection laws; for example, funding for alternative energy resources and laws designed to combat global warming.
A value-added/progressive taxation system to fund government expenditures.
A secular and a socially progressive policy.
Immigration and multiculturalism.
Fair trade over free trade.
A foreign policy supporting the promotion of democracy, the protection of human rights and where possible, effective multilateralism.
Advocacy of social justice, human rights, social rights, civil rights and civil liberties.

Political parties
Social democratic political parties, which sometimes also include a democratic socialist element, operate in many developed and developing countries, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Israel and Brazil. Most European social democratic parties are members of the Party of European Socialists,[9] which is one of the main political parties at the European level,[10] and most social democratic parties worldwide are members of the Socialist International.[11] In many cases, social democratic parties are the dominant (India, United Kingdom, Portugal) or second-placed (Italy, Sweden, Germany) players within their respective political systems, though in some cases they are minor parties (Canada, Ireland, Russia). The United States is the only industrial nation that does not currently possess a major social democratic party.
Since the 1960s, many social democrats have broadened their objectives beyond the field of economic policy to include aspects of environmentalism, feminism, racial equality and multiculturalism. Another notable development is the tendency since the 1980s for social democratic parties to distance themselves from distinctively left-wing economic policies such as public ownership and dirigisme, adopting instead policies that support a relatively lightly regulated economy and emphasize equality of opportunity. This trend, known as the Third Way, is controversial among some of the left, many of whom argue that Third Way parties (such as the UK's Labour Party)[7] have moved too far to the centre, or even the centre-right. Others, such as the leadership of the UK Labour Party, reject this critique.[12]

Criticism

This section needs additional citations for verification.Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not present a neutral point of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the material in such sections into the article as a whole.
The majority of contemporary criticism of social democracy comes from fiscal or social conservatives and classical liberals. Critics advance the following arguments:
The regulations placed on the market by social democracy tend to limit economic efficiency and growth, and impede the creation of wealth that may be needed to alleviate global poverty.
Social democratic programs sometimes entail large government outlays, which can result in sizable budget deficits.
State provision of education, health care, childcare and other services is inefficient, limits individual choice, and requires users to pay more if they opt to use privately-run services.
Social democrats reply along the following lines:
Social democratic policies actually enhance individual rights by raising the standard of living of the great majority of the population, giving equal opportunity in education, increasing social mobility and raising the power of workers and consumers in society.
The unregulated market that fiscal conservatives advocate is incapable of addressing global poverty and inequality in an equitable way.
Social democracy stabilises economic conditions by providing economic security and health care to individuals and eliminating the threat of extreme poverty.
The argument that social democratic governments spend too much and run up deficits is undermined by the record of conservative administrations (e.g. in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom) which have run up unprecedented deficits.
By restricting some economic rights, social democracy makes the market fairer (for small businesses and consumers, for example).
There is also criticism of social democracy from socialists and communists, who regard it as an obstacle to truly radical reform of society. Left-wing critics claim that social democrats are forced to operate within the constraints of the existing capitalist system, and that they buy into that system to such an extent that they eventually become indistinguishable from pro-capitalist right-wingers. To take specific examples, it is argued that Tony Blair (UK), Gerhard Schröder (Germany) and to a lesser extent Göran Persson (Sweden) violated the principles of social justice and equity while in office by implementing tax cuts, cuts in social spending, privatisation and deregulation.

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Socialized Medicine

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialized_medicine for further details)

Socialized medicine is a term used primarily in the United States to refer to certain kinds of publicly-funded health care. [1] The term is used most frequently, and often pejoratively, in the U.S. political debate concerning health care.[2][3][4][5][6]
Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina, maintains that the term does not mean anything at all.[7] Exact definitions vary, but the term can refer to any system of medical care that is publicly financed, government administered, or both.
The original meaning was confined to systems in which the government operates health care facilities and employs health care professionals.[7][8][9][10] This narrower usage would apply to the British National Health Service hospital trusts and health systems that operate in other countries as diverse as Finland, Spain, Israel, and Cuba. The United States' Veterans Health Administration, and the medical departments of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force would also fall under this narrow definition. When used in this way, the narrow definition permits a clear distinction from single payer health insurance systems, in which the government finances health care but is not involved in care delivery.[11][12]
More recently, a few have used the term more broadly to any publicly funded system. Canada's Medicare system, most of the UK's NHS general practitioner and dental services, which are all systems where health care is delivered by private business with partial or total government funding, fit this broader definition, as do the health care systems of most of Western Europe. In the United States, Medicare, Medicaid, and the US military's TRICARE fall under this definition.
Most industrialized countries, and many developing countries, operate some form of publicly-funded health care with universal coverage as the goal. According to the Institute of Medicine and others, the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care.[13][14]
The term is often used in the U.S to create an understanding that the health care system would be run by the government, thereby associating it with socialism, which has negative connotations in American political culture [15]. As such its usage is controversial.[4][5][6][16]
Contents[show]

History of the term
When the term "socialized medicine" first appeared in the United States in the early 1900s, it bore no negative connotations. Otto P. Geier, chairman of the Preventive Medicine Section of the American Medical Association (AMA), was quoted in The New York Times in 1917, praising socialized medicine as a way to "discover disease in its incipiency," help end "venereal diseases, alcoholism, tuberculosis," and "make a fundamental contribution to social welfare."[17] However, by the 1930s, the term socialized medicine was routinely used negatively by conservative opponents of publicly-funded health care."[18][19] Universal health care and national health insurance were first proposed by U.S President Theodore Roosevelt.[20][21][22] President Franklin D. Roosevelt later championed it, as did Harry S. Truman as part of his Fair Deal [23] and many others.
However, at around this time it was ardently opposed by the AMA which distributed posters to doctors with slogans such as "Socialized medicine ... will undermine the democratic form of government."[24] Ronald Reagan once recorded a disc exhorting its audience to abhor the "dangers" which socialized medicine could bring. Other pressure groups began to extend the definition from state managed health care to any form of state finance in health care.
In more recent times the term came up again in the 2008 U.S presidential election by Republicans.[25] In July 2007, one month after the release of Michael Moore's film Sicko, Rudy Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, attacked the health care plans of Democratic presidential candidates as socialized medicine that was European and socialist,[26][27][28] Giuliani claimed that he had a better chance of surviving prostate cancer in the U.S than he would have had in England [29] and went on to repeat the claim in campaign speeches for three months[30][31] [32][33][34][35] before making them in a radio advertisement.[36] After the radio ad began running, the use of the statistic was widely criticised by FactCheck.org [37], PolitiFact.com [38]., by The Washington Post [39] and others who consulted leading cancer experts and found that Giuliani's cancer survival statistics to be false, misleading or "flat wrong", the numbers having been reported to have been obtained from an opinion article by Giuliani health care advisor David Gratzer, a Canadian psychiatrist in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal where Gratzer was a senior fellow. [40] The Times reported that the UK Health Secretary pleaded with Guilliani to stop using the NHS as a political football in American presidential politics. The article reported that not only were the figures 5 years out of date and wrong, but that US health experts disputed both the accuracy of Mr Giuliani’s figures and questioned whether it was fair to make a direct comparison.[41] The St. Petersburg Times said that Giuliani's tactic of "injecting a little fear" exploited cancer, which was "apparently not beneath a survivor with presidential aspirations."[42] Giulliani's repetition of the error even after it had been pointed out to him earned him more criticism and was awarded four "Pinnochios" by the Washington Post for recidivism. [43][44]
Health care professionals have tended to avoid the term because of its pejorative nature, but if they do use it they do not include publicly funded private medical schemes such as Medicaid.[3] [45][46] Opponents of state involvement in health care tend to use the looser definition.[47]
The term is widely used by the American media and pressure groups. Some have even stretched use of the term to cover any regulation of health care, whether publicly financed or not.[48] The term is often used to criticize publicly provided health care outside the US, but rarely to describe similar health care programs in the US, such as the Veterans Administration clinics and hospitals, military health care,[49] nor the single payer programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. The term is almost always used to evoke negative sentiment toward health care reform that would involve increasing government involvement in the U.S health care system.
Medical staff, academics and most professionals in the field and international bodies such as the WHO tend to avoid use of the term.[citation needed] Outside the US, the terms most commonly used are universal health care or public health care.[citation needed] According to health economist Uwe Reinhardt, "strictly speaking, the term 'socialized medicine' should be reserved for health systems in which the government operates the production of health care and provides its financing".[50] Still others say the term has no meaning at all.[47]
In more recent times the term has gained a more positive reappraisal. Documentary movie maker Michael Moore in his documentary Sicko pointed out that Americans do not talk about public libraries or the police or the fire department as being "socialized" and nor do they have negative opinions of these. Media personalities such as Oprah Winfey have also weighed in behind the concept of public involvement in healthcare. [51] A 2008 poll indicates that Americans are sharply divided when asked about their views of the expression socialized medicine, with a large percentage of Democrats holding favorable views, while a large percentage of Republicans holding unfavorable views. Independents tend to somewhat favor it.[52]

History
The first system of socialized medicine based on compulsory insurance with state subsidy was created by Otto von Bismarck after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.[53] Socialized health care was implemented by the Soviet Union in the 1920s.[54] New Zealand was the first country with a mixed economy to provide the direct provision of health care by the state when, in 1939, it provided mental health services free of cost to the recipient following the passing of the Social Security Act of 1938.[55] After World War II in the 1940s the United Kingdom established its National Health Service which was built from the outset as a comprehensive service. A socialized model was used in China in from the 1950s to the 1970s during the first two decades of communist rule.[56] Cuba adopted socialized medicine in the 1960s under the leadership of Fidel Castro.[57] Also in the 1960s, the United States initiated its Medicaid program to help poor mothers and their children.[58]

Examples

Australia
Main article: Health care in Australia
In Australia, primary health care remains the responsibility of the federal government, elements of which (such as the operation of hospitals) are overseen by individual states. The current system, known as Medicare coexists with a private health system. Medicare is funded partly by a 1.5% income tax levy (with exceptions for low-income earners), but mostly out of general revenue. An additional levy of 1% is imposed on high-income earners without private health insurance.

Canada
Main article: Health care in Canada
Statisical source: Healthy Canadians: Canadian government report on comparable health care indicators
Health Canada, a federal department, publishes a series of surveys of the health care system in Canada based on Canadians first hand experience of the health care system. The following data are from the latest report.

Waiting times
Although life threatening cases are dealt with immediately, some services needed are non urgent and patients are seen at the next available appointment in their local chosen facility. The median wait time in Canada to see a special physician is a little over four weeks with 89.5% waiting less than 3 months.
The median wait time for diagnostic services such as MRI and CAT scans [59] is two weeks with 86.4% waiting less than 3 months. The median wait time for surgery is four weeks with 82.2% waiting less than 3 months.

Prescription drug costs
Although Canadians get the services of their physicians and hospitals included, they do have to meet the cost of prescription drugs themselves. Many take out insurance for this but this is not compulsory. Some people do meet some expenses themselves out of pocket.
34.3% of adults reported having no out of pocket costs for prescription drug costs. 96.2% of adults pay less than 5% of their disposable income on prescription drugs.

Overall satisfaction rate
85.2% of Canadians reported that they were "satisified" or "very satisfied" with the way health care services are provided in their country and an even higher number (89.8%) rated their physician in the same way though slightly lower ratings were awarded to hospitals (79.9% being "satisified" or "very satisfied").

Cuba
Main article: Healthcare in Cuba

Finland
Main article: Healthcare in Finland
Finland has a highly decentralized three level socialized system of health care and alongside these, a much smaller private health care system.[60] Overall, the municipalities (funded by taxation, local and national) meet about two thirds of all medical care costs and the remaining one third by the national insurance system (nationally funded), and private finance (either employer funded or met by patients themselves). [60] Private inpatient care forms about 3–4% of all inpatient care. [60] In 1999 only 17 per cent of total funding for health care came from insurance, comprising 14.9% statutory (government) insurance and 2.1% private health insurance. Spectacles are not publicly subsidized at all although dentistry is available as a municipal service or can be obtained privately with partial reimbursement from the state.[60]
The high proportion of taxtion meeting health care costs in Finland (60.8%)[60] means that Finland falls into the cluster of European nations such as the UK, Spain, Denmark and Sweden that are more highly socialized than others such as Germany, France or Belgium (which are mostly funded by compulsory insurance). [61] The quality of service in Finnish health care is considered to be good and according to a survey published by the European Commission in 2000, Finland has one of the highest ratings of patient satisfacton with their hospital care system in the EU: 88% of Finnish respondents were satisfied compared with the EU average of 41.3%. [62] Finnish health care expenditures are below the European average.
There are caps on total medical expenses that are met out of pocket for drugs and hospital treatments. All necessary costs over these caps are paid for by the National Insurance system. Public spending on health care in 2006 was 13.6 billion euros (equivalent to US$338 per person per month). The increase over 2005 at 8.2 per cent was below the OECD average of 9 percent. Household budgets directly met 18.7 per cent of all health care costs. [63]

Israel
Main article: Health care in Israel
Simcha Shapiro calls Israel's health care system "socialized medicine with a privatized option".[5]
Israel has maintained a system of socialized health care since its establishment in 1948[citation needed], although the National Health Insurance law was passed only on January 1, 1995. The state is responsible for providing health services to all residents of the country, who can register with one of the four health service funds. To be eligible, a citizen must pay a health insurance tax. Coverage includes medical diagnosis and treatment, preventive medicine, hospitalization (general, maternity, psychiatric and chronic), surgery and transplants, preventive dental care for children, first aid and transportation to a hospital or clinic, medical services at the workplace, treatment for drug abuse and alcoholism, medical equipment and appliances, obstetrics and fertility treatment, medication, treatment of chronic diseases and paramedical services such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy.[64]

Russia under the Soviet Union
Main article: Health in Russia#Reform
In the Soviet Union, the preferred term was "socialist medicine"; the Russian language has no term to distinguish between "socialist" and "socialized" (other than "public", Rus: obshchestvenniy/общественный, sometimes "collectivized" or "nationalized", Rus: obobshchestvlenniy/обобществленный).[65][66]
Russia in Soviet times (between 1917 and the early 1990s) had a totally socialist model of health care with a centralised, integrated, hierarchically organised with the government providing free health care to all citizens. Initially successful at combating infectious diseases, the effectiveness of the socialized model declined with underinvestment. Despite a doubling in the number of hospital beds and doctors per capita between 1950 and 1980, the quality of care began to decline by the early 1980s and medical care and health outcomes were below western standards.
The new mixed economy Russia has switched to a mixed model of health care with private financing and provision running alongside state financing and provision. The OECD reported [67] that unfortunately, none of this has worked out as planned and the reforms have in many respects made the system worse. The population’s health has deteriorated on virtually every measure. The resulting system is overly complex and very inefficient. It has little in common with the model envisaged by the reformers. Although there are more than 300 private insurers and numerous public ones in the market, real competition for patients is rare leaving most patients with little or no effective choice of insurer, and in many places, no choice of health care provider either. The insurance companies have failed to develop as active, informed purchasers of health care services. Most are passive intermediaries, making money by simply channelling funds from regional OMS funds to healthcare providers.
Main source: OECD: Health care reforms in Russia

United Kingdom

This section may stray from the topic of the article into the topic of another article, Health care in the United Kingdom. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page.
See Healthcare in the United Kingdom for a description of the services from the user perspective.
The National Insurance Act 1911 granted all workers of 16 years or over free medical coverage as well as unemployment benefits.[68] In 1948 the system was extended to the entire population and a new service, the National Health Service or NHS was established.[69] Today it is the world's largest publicly funded health service.[70] It was set up on July 5 1948 to "provide healthcare for all citizens, based on need, not the ability to pay." It is funded by the taxpayer and in England it is managed by a government department, the Department of Health, which sets overall policy on health issues [71] which, for the English NHS, are summarised in the NHS Constitution for England. There are four separate health services for each of the three constituent nations (England, Scotland, and Wales) and one for Northern Ireland. In practice, they work closely together and provide a seamless service based on the same core principles.[citation needed]
The NHS is committed to providing quality care that meets the needs of everyone, is free at the point of need, and is based on a patient's clinical need, not their ability to pay.[72]

Choice
Every person in the UK has the right to choose to register with any general physician of their choice practising in their area.[73] If the GP has contracted to provide NHS services, as virtually all do, then all consultations with the GP will be free of charge to the patient. An NHS GP is usually not allowed to refuse to register a patient and patients usually choose to maintain a relationship with that GP over a long period in order to maintain continuity. All treatments are offered on the basis on the informed consent of the patient and, when a referral is made to a specialist at a hospital, the patient can choose which hospital to be referred to.[74] A web site informs patients which NHS hospitals in their area offer the referred service and gives details of the quality, sevice indicators (such as number of procedures each year and percentage of successful outcomes) as well as details of the wait times (if any) for that service. NHS patients will have a choice of providers, including at least one private provider, all of which will receive the standard NHS tariff for the standard NHS level of care. The patient can make the appointment themselves at home using the internet or obtain assistance from the GP or his staff to make the booking.
Some people choose to be treated in private hospitals which may have more modern surroundings and waiting times can be shorter. Most private treatment options are at the patient's own expense, but sometimes the NHS may have sub-contracted work to a private operator in which case the NHS will offer to pay for episodes of care in a private facility. Patients choosing to go fully private will have to pay for that episode of care themselves (including the cost of folllow up care and medications) or through insurance.
In a recent survey, ninety percent of NHS patients and ninety two percent of independent sector patients were able to get to the hospital of their choice for treatment or had no preference of hospital. Only seven percent of NHS and five per cent independent patients had been unable to get to their preferred hospital.[75]

Funding
The estimated cost of the NHS in England in 2008 is £91.7 billion[76] (this excludes the cost of health care in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Funding for the NHS is met from tax and national insurance contributions paid by all persons over the age of 18 and employers in the UK. There is no direct correlation between national insurance payments and health care costs because UK National insurance is part of much wider plan for social insurance, funding health care, retirement pensions and other social security benefits such as Jobseeker's Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Bereavement Benefits, and Maternity Allowance. Unlike other benefits paid from National Insurance, health care entitlement is not dependent on a person's National Insurance contribution history but is instead dependent on a person's right to be permanently resident. Temporary residents such as tourists are only entitled to free emergency care.

Quality
In an international comparative study of the health care systems in six countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States), the British health care system was ranked in first place for quality of care. It also gained first rank position for equity and efficiency and a top place ranking for performance overall.[77] Donald Berwick the American Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and who assisted in the modernization of the NHS begun by Tony Blair was particularly involved in the area of health quality. This was an area he admits that, at that time, he was a novice in, but acknowledged that "in the decade between about 1998 and 2008, the UK accumulated more knowledge and more expertise per capita than almost any other nation I know about how to improve healthcare as a system". He went on to say "In some ways the period between the publication of the Modernisation Plan for the NHS in 2000 and the third election of Tony Blair seems to me a golden era for the pursuit of improvement in the NHS. I daresay that no other country did quite so well at a national scale.". [78]

Primary care
At the core of the service are the general practitioners (GPs or family doctors) who are responsible for the care of patients registered with them. GPs are mostly self-employed doctors that choose to contract with the NHS to provide services to patients commissioned by primary care trusts. Some have employment contracts with GP practices and a few are directly employed by the local primary care trust. Self-employed GPs have considerable freedom in the way that they choose to work.[79] Most GPs are therefore paid a capitation fee and certain performance related payments. Patients are free to register with any GP in whose practice catchment area they live. NHS prescribed drugs are subsidized by the taxpayer, in some cases fully subsidized. For example if the person is being treated in medical setting or at home by an NHS medical professional, or if the person is under 18 or over retirement age, or if the patient lives in an area such as Scotland where the local NHS has decided to meet the cost of all drugs.[80][81] All cancer drugs will be free of charge from April 2009.[82] In England, people of working age usually pay a fixed price of £7.10 (or about US$11) for each prescribed drug collected from a retail pharmacy.[83] The pharmacy invoices the cost of the drugs (less any fixed price patient contribution) to the NHS [84].

Hospitals
Only GPs (NHS or private) can refer their patients to a hospital (NHS or private) for acute care.[85] Most patients choose to be treated in NHS run hospitals. Private hospitals mostly specialize in routine surgery and do not have the range of equipment that is available in NHS general hospitals. They do not, for example, provide Accident and Emergency services. In the event of an unforeseen emergency following surgery in a private hospital, a patient might be transferred to the nearest NHS emergency department, and then later moved back again. Some people therefore think it is safer to be in a public hospital for all but the most routine of surgeries.[86] The quality of care in NHS hospitals is comparable to that in private hospitals and the services obtained (medicines, surgeons and other care workers, and even meals) are free of charge to the patient, whereas private hospitals bill for these.[87]Ambulance services, mental health, and ancillary services such as physical and occupational therapy, in-home and in-clinic nursing is met from the NHS budget. [88][89] GPs do not follow their patients into hospital but each patient is referred to a specialist employed by the hospital. On discharge, the home GP receives a report back of the treatment(s) given and the results with recommendations for any follow up actions to be taken.[citation needed]

Electronic records
Most doctors and hospitals already keep electronic patient records, but a wide ranging IT upgrade programme is in progress to integrate these systems.[90][91] Patients in England already can book their own hospital appointments electronically (either aided at the GP office or elsewhere via the internet), choosing a hospital and time to suit their needs and some can already access their summary care records electronically.[92] The English NHS was the first G8 country to fully implement a digital Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS) to store and retrieve x-ray and other scans in all of its hospitals nationally. [93]
Future IT developments are primarily about integration synergies, such as data sharing, such as electronic prescriptions (direct to the pharmacy) and quality management recording. Patients can choose to have their personal GP and hospital medical records mirrored centrally. In this way their complete medical history will be fully available at any hospital or doctor's office in the country at any time. [94]

Waiting times
GP appointments - 41 per cent of UK patients reported being able to get a same day appointment with their GP, with 13 per cent reporting having to wait 6 days or more (2004 data[95]).
Hospital referrals - For hospital treatment, a timer for Referral to Treatment (RTT) starts running when a GP first agrees to refer a patient to the hospital. A number of steps then typically follow. The first hospital appointment must be booked; all tests completed; a diagnosis made; a follow up appointment (if necessary); an appointment made for inpatient treatment (if appropriate); or the patient prioritized to a waiting list (if there is waiting list for that procedure - about one third of hospital admissions are from a waiting list). At some point, hospital treatment will commence at which point the clock stops. The hospitals are targeted to complete these steps within 18 weeks.[96] The 18 week RTT targets is met for 90% of patients in England found to need admission (and 95% for those for whom outpatient treatment was sufficient). Two thirds of patients needing a hospital admission experience RTTs of under 12 weeks.[97]
Accident and emergency treatment - There is a maximum four-hour wait for treatment in accident and emergency. Patients are triaged and treated according to clinical priority so that those requiring emergency life saving treatment are treated immediately.[98]
The latest patient survey data compares satisfaction levels regarding wait times in NHS and independent (private) sector care. Seventy nine percent of NHS patients were either very satisified or fairly satisfied with wait times to see a specialist, compared to eighty seven percent of independent sector patients.[99]

Other statistics
NHS hospitals in England carried out almost 13 million inpatient admissions in the NHS reporting year 2006/07. Of these admissions 36% were emergencies, 13% had been deferred for medical or social reasons and 35% were admitted from a waiting list. 15% were admitted for other reasons (such as maternity care or childbirth.[100] 99.6% of hospital admissions took place on time as planned.[101] Only 0.02% of all planned admissions were cancelled and not subsequently admitted within the following 28 days. Performance data for all hospitals for all common procedures (such as number of similar operations per year, clinical and patient ratings, wait times, re-admission rate) are publicly available on-line at the main NHS web site. [102]
There is popular support for the NHS[103]. The Healthcare Commission also undertakes regular surveys of patients' opinions of the NHS. In its most recent survey (2007), the experience of hospitals in England was rated by inpatients as follows: excellent (42%), very good (35%), good(14%), fair (6%) and poor (2%).[104]

United States
See also: Health care in the United States, Health care reform in the United States, and Health insurance in the United States
The Veterans Health Administration, the military health care system,[105] and the Indian Health Service are examples of socialized medicine in the stricter sense of government administered care, although for limited populations.[citation needed]
Medicare and Medicaid are forms of publicly-funded health care which fits the looser definition of socialized medicine.[citation needed] Medicare is not a free service.[citation needed] There are certain deductibles, premiums and co-pays which must be paid by the insured.[citation needed] Entitlement is subject to prior eligible employment criteria.[citation needed] Although most seniors will be entitled to Part A (Hospital) coverage, seniors must contribute the first $1,068 of hospital care up to 60 days, and increasing amounts thereafter until the point at which when 150 days of hospital care is reached at which point all costs fall on the senior and not on the government.[citation needed] Part B coverage (Medical) requires a monthly premium of $96.40 (and possibly higher) and the first $135 of costs per year also fall to the senior and not the government.[106]
A poll released in February 2008, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and Harris Interactive, indicated that Americans are currently divided in their opinions of socialized medicine, and this split correlates strongly with their political party affiliation.[107] Two-thirds of those polled said they understood the term "socialized medicine" very well or somewhat well.[citation needed] When offered descriptions of what such a system could mean, strong majorities believed that it means "the government makes sure everyone has health insurance" (79%) and "the government pays most of the cost of health care" (73%). One-third (32%) felt that socialized medicine is a system where "the government tells doctors what to do".[citation needed] The poll showed "striking differences" by party affiliation. Among Republicans polled, 70% said that socialized medicine would be worse than the current system. The same percentage of Democrats (70%) said that a socialized medical system would be better than the current system. Independents were more evenly split, with 43% saying socialized medicine would be better and 38% worse.[citation needed] According to Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, "The phrase ‘socialized medicine' really resonates as a pejorative with Republicans. However, that so many Democrats believe that socialized medicine would be an improvement is an indication of their dissatisfaction with our current system." According to Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Polls, "Only just over one third of adults think that socialized medicine would be worse than what we have now, and majorities associate the words with popular policies such as Medicare and a government guarantee that everyone has health insurance. Clearly socialized medicine is not the scary bogeyman it used to be."[citation needed]
Physicians' opinions on "socialized medicine" have evolved.[citation needed] A 2008 survey of doctors, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, shows that physicians support universal health care and national health insurance by almost 2 to 1.[108]

Political controversies in the United States
See also: Health care economics
Although the marginal scope of free or subsidized medicine provided is much discussed within the body politic in most countries with socialized health care systems, there is little or no evidence of strong public or other pressure for the removal of subsidies or the privatization of health care in those countries. The political distaste for government involvement in health care in the U.S is counter to the trend in other developed countries which has generally been towards political pressure for more rather than less government financing or involvement in health care.
In the United States, neither of the main parties is in favor of a socialized system which would put the government in charge of hospitals or doctors but they do have different approaches to financing and access. Democrats tend to be favorably inclined towards a reform involving more government control over health care financing and citizens' right of access to health care, whereas Republicans are broadly in favor of the status quo or else a reform of the financing system to give more power to the citizen, often through tax credits.[citation needed]
Supporters of government involvement in health care argue that government involvement ensures access, quality, and addresses market failures [109] specific to the health care markets. When the government covers the cost of health care, there is no need for individuals or their employers to pay for private insurance.

This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (October 2008)
Opponents also claim that the absence of a market mechanism may slow innovation in treatment and research.
Both sides have also looked to more philosophical arguments, debating whether people have a fundamental right to have health care provided to them by their government.

Cost of care
Socialized medicine amongst industrialized countries tends to be more affordable than in systems where there is little government involvement. A 2003 study examined costs and outputs in the U.S and other industrialized countries and broadly concluded that the U.S spends so much because its health care system is more costly. It noted that "...the United States spent considerably more on health care than any other country...[yet] most measures of aggregate utilization such as physician visits per capita and hospital days per capita were below the OECD median. Since spending is a product of both the goods and services used and their prices, this implies that much higher prices are paid in the United States than in other countries. [110]". The researchers examined possible reasons and concluded that input costs were high (salaries, cost of pharmaceutical), and that the complex payment system in the U.S added higher administrative costs. Comparison countries in Canada and Europe were much more willing to exert monopsony power to drive down prices, whilst the highly fragmented buy side of the U.S health system was one factor which could explain the relatively high prices in the United States.
Other studies have found no consistent and systematic relationship between the type of financing of health care and cost containment; the efficiency of operation of the health care system itself appears to depend much more on how providers are paid and how the delivery of care is organized than on the method used to raise these funds.[111]
Some supporters argue that government involvement in health care would reduce costs not just because of the exercise of monopsony power, e.g. in drug purchasing [112], but also because it eliminates profit margins and administrative overhead associated with private insurance, and because it can make use of economies of scale in administration. In certain circumstances, a volume purchaser may be able to guarantee sufficient volume to reduce overall prices while providing greater profitability to the seller, such as in so-called 'purchase commitment' programs.[113][dubious – discuss].Economist Arnold Kling attributes the present cost crisis mainly to the practice of what he calls "premium medicine," which overuses expensive forms of technology that is of marginal or no proven benefit.[114]
Milton Friedman has argued that government has weak incentives to reduce costs because "nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own". [115] Others contend that health care consumption is not like other consumer consumption. Firstly there is a negative utility of consumption (consuming more health care does not make one better off) and secondly there is an information asymmetry between consumer and supplier. [116]
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells argue that all of the evidence indicates that public insurance of the kind available in several European countries achieves equal or better results at much lower cost, a conclusion that also applies within the United States. In terms of actual administrative costs, Medicare spent less than 2 percent of its resources on administration, while private insurance companies spent more than 13 percent.[117] The Cato Institute argues that the 2 percent Medicare cost figure ignores all costs shifted to doctors and hospitals, and alleges that Medicare is not very efficient at all when those costs are incorporated.[118] Some studies have found that the U.S wastes more on bureaucracy (compared to the Canadian level), and that this excess administrative cost would be sufficient to provide health care to the uninsured population in the US.[119]
Notwithstanding the arguments about Medicare, there is overall less bureaucracy in socialized systems than in the present mixed U.S system. Spending on administration in Finland is 2.1% of all health care costs, and in the UK the figure is 3.3% whereas the U.S spends 7.3% of all expenditures on administration [120].

Quality of care
Some in the U.S claim that socialized medicine would reduce health care quality. The quantitative evidence for this claim is not clear. The WHO has used Disability Adjusted Life Expectancy (the number of years an average person can expect to live in good health) as a measure of a nation's health achievement and has ranked its member nations by this measure [121]. The U.S ranking was 24th, worse than similar industrial countries which have very high public funding of health such as Canada (ranked 5th), the UK (12th), Sweden (4th), France (3rd) and Japan (1st). But the U.S ranking was better than some other European countries such as Ireland, Denmark and Portugal which came 27th, 28th and 29th respectively. Finland, with its relatively high death rate from guns and renowned high suicide rate came above the U.S in 20th place. The British have a Care Quality Commission that commissions independent surveys of the quality of care given in its health institutions and these are publicly accessible over the internet [6]. These determine whether health organizations are meeting public standards for quality set by government and allows regional comparisons. Whether these results indicate a better or worse situation to that in other countries such as the U.S is hard to tell because these countries tend to lack a similar set of standards.

Taxation
Opponents claim that socialized medicine would require higher taxes but international comparisons do not support this. The ratio of public to private spending on health is lower in the U.S than that of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or any EU country. Yet the per capita tax funding of health in those countries is already lower than that of the United States [122].
Taxation is not necessarily an unpopular form of funding for health care. In England, a survey for the British Medical Association of the general public showed overwhelming support for the tax funding of health care. Nine out of ten people agreed or strongly agreed with a statement that the NHS should be funded from taxation with care being free at the point of use. [123]
An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal by two conservative Republicans argues that government sponsored health care will legitimatize support for government services generally, and make an activist government acceptable. "Once a large number of citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their attachment to government. Every time a tax cut is proposed, the guardians of the new medical-welfare state will argue that tax cuts would come at the expense of health care -- an argument that would resonate with middle-class families entirely dependent on the government for access to doctors and hospitals."[124]

Innovation
Some in the U.S argue that if government were to use its size to bargain down health care prices, this would undermine American leadership in medical innovation. [125][126] It is argued that the high level of spending in the U.S health care system and its tolerance of waste is actually beneficial because it underpins American leadership in medical innovation which is crucial not just for Americans, but for the entire world.[127]
Others point out that the American health care system spends more on state-of-the-art treatment for people who have good insurance, and spending is reduced on those lacking it[128] and question the costs and benefits of some medical innovations, noting, for example, that "rising spending on new medical technologies designed to address heart disease has not meant that more patients have survived." [129]

Access
One of the goals of socialized medicine systems is ensuring universal access to health care. Opponents of socialized medicine say that access for low-income individuals can be achieved by means other than socialized medicine, for example, income-related subsidies can function without public provision of either insurance or medical services.[130] Economist Milton Friedman said the role of the government in health care should be restricted to financing hard cases.[115] Universal coverage can also be achieved by making purchase of insurance compulsory. For example, European countries with socialized medicine in the broader sense, such as Germany and Holland, operate in this way. A legal obligation to purchase health insurance is akin to a mandated health tax, and the use of public subsidies is a form of directed income redistribution via the tax system. Such systems give the consumer a free choice amongst competing insurers whilst achieving universality to a government directed minimum standard.
Compulsory health insurance or savings are not limited to so-called socialized medicine, however. Singapore's health care system, which is often referred to as a free-market or mixed system, makes use of a combination of compulsory participation and state price controls to achieve the same goals.[131]

Rationing
Some argue that in countries with socialized medicine governments use waiting lists as a form of rationing. Waiting lists in socialized system record all those in need and give highest priority access to those in greatest need. Some think that this is more humane than rationing via the patient's ability to afford the necessary health insurance coverage (and associated co-pays, deductibles, exclusions, and cap excess), and where a person who may have greater need is rationed out on affordabilty grounds to someone who may be in lesser need.
Waiting statistics in socialized systems are an honest approach to the problem of those waiting for care and inform the public debate about how much national funding should be provided for health care.[132][133][134] Some people in the U.S are rationed out of care by unaffordable care or denial of access by HMOs and insurers or simply cannot afford their co-pays or deductibles even if they have insurance.[135] These people are waiting an indefinitely long period and may never get the care they need, but their numbers are simply unknown because they are not recorded in any official statistics.[136]
Some argue that waiting lists result in great pain and suffering but again the evidence for this is unclear. In a recent survey of patients admitted to hospital in the UK from a waiting list or by planned appointment, only 10% reported that they felt they should have been admitted a lot sooner than they were. 72% reported that the admission was as soon as they felt necessary [137] Medical facilities in the U.S do not report waiting times in national statistics as is done in other countries and it is somewhat of a myth to believe that there is no waiting for care in the U.S Some argue that waiting in the U.S could actually be as long as or longer than in other countries with universal health care. [138]
Opponents of socialized medicine in the U.S say that healthcare is rationed in non-socialized systems through individual choice [139] but it is not clear what percentage of people who have been denied care by their insurer or HMO, or for whatever reason find themselves unable to afford care, would concede that their inability to access care has been a matter of their free choice.
In the UK, private health insurance contracts are more likely to ration health care than the public NHS system. Some large insurers exclude many common treatments and health servicesthat are freely available from the NHS.

Political interference and targeting
Some in the U.S express concern that politicians or their created bureacracies may end up restricting their access to the health care they need or may force them to pay for health care that they feel they do not need.
In the former Soviet Union, political direction of the health care system probably had caused distortions in clinical priorities creating an unbalanced system which favoured hospitals over general practitioners. But political interference does not always lead to bad medicine and lack of it does not lead to high cost. In European countries such as France and Germany, there is very little political interference in the supply side of the health care system beyond financing and setting public obligations but medicine there remain highly rated regardless of public financing. In others such as Japan, the health care system appears to work well even though the supply side is largely private but working within a pricing framework that severely contains costs.
In the UK, where most health care is delivered by government employees or government employed sub-contractors, political interference is quite hard to discern. Most supply side decisions are in practice under the control of medical practitioners and boards comprising the medical profession. There is some antipathy towards the target-setting by politicians in the UK. Even the NICE criteria for public funding of medical treatments were never set by politicians. Nevertheless politicians have set targets, for instance to reduce waiting times and improve choice. Academics have pointed out that the claims of success of the targeting are statistically flawed.[140] The veracity and significance of the claims of targeting interfering with clinical priorities are often hard to judge. For example, some UK ambulance crews have complained that hospitals were deliberately leaving patients with ambulance crews to prevent an Accident and Emergency department (A&E, or emergency room) target time for treatment from starting to run. The Department of Health vehemently denied the claim, because the A&E time begins when the ambulance arrives at the hospital and not after the handover. It defended the A&E target by pointing out that the percentage of people waiting 4 hours or more in A&E had dropped from just under 25 percent in 2004 to less that 2 percent in 2008 [141]. The original Observer article [142] reported that in London, 14,700 ambulance turnarounds were longer than an hour and 332 were more than 2 hours when the target turnaround time is 15 minutes. However, in the context of the total number of emergency ambulance attendances by the London Ambulance Service each year (approximately 865,000[143]), these represent just 1.6% and 0.03% of all ambulance calls. The proportion of these that attributable to patients left with ambulance crews is not recorded. At least one junior doctor has complained that the 4-hour A&E target is too high and leads to unwarranted actions which are not in the best interests of patients. [144]
Political targeting of waiting times in England has had dramatic effects. The National Health Service reports that the median admission wait time for elective inpatient treatment (non-urgent hospital treatment) in England at the end of August 2007, was just under 6 weeks, and 87.5 per cent of patients were admitted within 13 weeks. Reported waiting times in England also overstate the true waiting time. This is because the clock starts ticking when the patient has been referred to a specialist by the GP and it only stops when the medical procedure is completed. The 18 week maximum waiting period target thus includes all the times taken for the patient to attend the first appointment with the specialist, any tests called for by the specialist to determine precisely the root of the patient's problem and the best way to treat it. It excludes time for any intervening steps deemed necessary prior to treatment, such as recovery from some other illness or the losing of excessive weight [145].

The Chase

2009-08-09T23:58:00.005-04:00

I had an Senior resident who was seeing a Patient that we all knew from a multitude of Admissions to Blue Ridge Psychiatric Hospital, part of the University of Virginia set underneath Monticello.The Resident was Jorge Cortina and the Patient, I will call Stanley,

If you have ever read the Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, the Character of Ignatius, forever cursed with a Valve that would often get stuck, it would give you some decent imagery of Stanley. He was about 5' 8", 290 lb's, all blubber , topped off with Greasy Red Hair.

His issues were more those of a Severe inadequacy to Live in this Life in a Fashion that would keep him from Getting into trouble. He was Gay, and there were always issues of abusive or uninterested Lovers. They would take turns making each other miserable enough for one to leave and when Stanley was Homeless..... he would call 911 , get picked up by the Police,and thus arrive in the UVA ER. Once there, he would swear undying and Eternal suicidality in the UVA Emergency Room Psychiatric Triage Unit, thus earning a bed on the Psych Unit where dutifully to our admitting schedules we almost all had a chance to know him well over the years.

It was Jorge's job as Chief Resident to keep Stanley under wraps enough where we could all get a break from him. I thanked the Stars , it wasn't my job. I would make solemn vows to not quite measure up enough to my Professors' Standards ,so I would not be honored by them with entrusting me with someone of Stanley's Psychopathological Magnitude.

The day was going along uneventfully in the clinic, I was tossing out Prescriptions and trying to perform textbook Psychotherapeutic techniques on my own Patients, when I heard a Scream, a Shriek and Jorge's Voice, on the loudspeaker yelling, "Stop him, he's got a Knife ! ....I set back a microsecond and wondered who and where to stop this Miscreant, but then jumped up and ran to the stairwell that led out the back beside my office. To my amazement and several of my compadres', we heard Jorge yelling and High Pitched Squeals mixed with huffing and very heavy footfalls coming down this very Stairwell.

Jorge was on the 4th floor , I was on the first. On the stairwell landing in between 2nd and first, with a large black briefcase in his hand came Stanley flushed, wild-eyed, and already sweaty. Jorge as always, handsome and dapper in his calm, rational voice had stopped yelling and was just speaking loudly, "Stanley, hold up! "

The Game was up when Stanley saw us waiting below, the mysterious Black Briefcase making his Poor natural balance even worse.... and in a blink of an eye, Stanley had tripped, sprawled and splayed out, like a thrashing Carp and the possibly Weaponized Briefcase had Sprung open, now displaying its contents to the world.

Now, I have seen things that have made me one wonder about Human Nature and reflect upon whether it is ever truly safe to leave our homes, but the contents of this Large Battered Briefcase were stunning in their possibilities that led a Person to prepare it. Was it very Symbolic, Pedestrian, Metaphysical,Performance Art, or a Random Act?

Stanley's Black Leather Briefcase was not carrying a knife or any weapon..instead it was stuffed full of loose Beanie Weenies (at least 10 large cans, I approximated,) opened and dumped unencumbered into the Briefcase. In the Beanie Weenie Sea, were two Sauce covered XXL-Super sized Tidy Whitey's.

I do not have a Photograph of it or a YouTube Clip, but in my Mind's Eye, I know for sure that the Memory will play like a Blu-Ray Movie anytime I want and will never lose any of its Freshness, Poignancy, Shock or Clarity.

And I always...Always ....Laugh......

Southern Culture On The Skids - Camel Walk (1998)

2009-08-09T00:46:00.001-04:00

Well, it doesn't get much better than that. From Chapel Hill, NC to touring the World..throwing Fried Chicken at millions of People by now..Southern Culture on the Skids or SCOTS!
A real Genre Breaker!

Apocalypse THEN

2009-08-07T20:18:00.009-04:00

People often ask me why I became a Psychiatrist. The answers I have are many.

However, one of the true and eternal truths about practicing Psychiatry is that you do see and hear a lot of things that others do not AND that are Funny as Shit!

On my very first weekend Call as a Medical Student, brand new to Psychiatry, I was at the Charleston , SC VA Hospital, Psych Ward. This was in 1987, Independence Day...JULY 4th!!! Hot Damn!

Back then, there was no Iraq, so the Majority of the Psychiatric Unit were populated by Vietnam Veterans with a variety of Diagnosis.

PTSD, was one of the Big Ones.

In PTSD, exposure to Smells, Sounds and Sights that are mentally associated with the trauma incurred, such as hearing an artillery shell whistling, jets roaring, Napalm burning, and smelling the charred trees and humans, as you run among the Scene in the midst of a Fire Fight can stay with you forever and be reactivated by some of the same Stimuli or even something similar.

So to lay this out for you; here I was, green as they come in this Field ,with probably 25-30 Patients for the Staff, Resident, and Me to care for.

The day was going OK, no biggie. then the VA staff brought the Grills up to smoke sausage dogs and burgers. As if coordinated by an evil Genius, the light begin to dim and the Helicopters that the Citadel was using to give people free rides to see the City suddenly changed path to follow the Ashley River passing within close proximity to the VA...and us. This was done partially to give people in the copters a view of what was coming next.

All in an instant we heard a Fire Alarm go off because of the inside Grilling....then it got dark.

As if Thor in a Wrath had slammed his Mighty Hammer, the first Salvo of Fireworks Went off!!

KA-BOOM!!!!!

The Pandemonium I witnessed next, I do not believe I have ever again seen the likes of and I doubt that I ever will. Sirens blaring, Copters chopping, Grilled meat smoking and the the F*ing Artillery opens up!!!! Happy 4th!

Boom!!!! Men runinning , Some yelling, "INCOMING!!!!!", (SCREEEEETCCHH-BOOM) "HELP, HELP!!!!", "Ohhhh ShiiiIIttttTTTTT !!!!! ", "Goddamn Gooks!! , and the inevitable "TAKE COVER!!!!!!" Patients were hitting the floor, one knocked the Grill over, two began Fighting, but most were trying to get under the Beds, banging Heads , (TA, TA, TA....KAHBOOM!!)

In that moment, time seemed to change for me, sort of blur but also move like Slo-Motion, maybe just as it did for the Veterans back when it was their Real Vietnam...

As Time slowed, my vision clarified, my Senses became sharper, I felt aware of all things happening at once.....Here I thought....This is Where I was meant to Be.......

... And it Was.....

Somebody To Love/White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane

2009-08-06T06:22:00.001-04:00

Oh Man, how much Acid did we drop before we agreed to be on the Smothers Bothers?

Penetration of Health Care Reform by Big Money

2009-08-06T04:56:00.004-04:00

Penetration of Health Care Reform by Lobbyists and Big Money:

The behind the scenes deals with Pharmaceutical Corporations and Lobbyists signals the death knell for Obama's Health Care Reform, as this Private Agreement coming to light, with this big of Player in the Health Care overhaul means to me that the proposal will be unworkable. The President's Allure is that he is "Different", and that he will not do the things that is Part of the Corrupt, Old-Boy Way in making America a Great Country Again. Of Course this is Naive, but this is what he sold. People bought it. I for one hoped it would be true. Someone to trust in the White House to put the People ahead of Money, Special Interest and Politics; How Remarkable! As a Physician, I do not trust the American Medical Association to make the best choice for America. Doctors maybe, but not America. I would be willing to sacrifice my money for the greater good. However as the term implies Special Interests not the Greater Good. I have even less trust for the American Hospital Association, Insurance Corporations and Pharmaceutical among the myriad Big Money Groups. I wrote the White House and "almost" Tongue in Cheek suggested that only People who do not have any Industrial, Special Interest, or Political Backing should be allowed into the makings of a New Health Care System. Anyone who wants to be there, should not be allowed in the Room, so to speak. Unfortunately ,they are in the Back Room for sure, and I suspect are firmly seated in most of the Plush Chairs around the Policy Table. As the Lobbyist and Politicians bought by Special interest money penetrate Reform..no one can trust that the best thing is being done for the American People. At this Point , whose costs are we holding down?... I doubt it's the Tax Payers dollars

Retro-Obsessed Youths invade Poland

2009-08-05T22:53:00.004-04:00

A battalion of hip, '30s-obsessed German teens rolls through the streets of Warsaw."The '30s were, like, the coolest decade," said 17-year-old Grete Wunsch of Dusseldorf, one of the 840 young hipsters in the 55th Panzer Division who seized control of the capital city of Warsaw and set up a provisional German government. "The clothes, the music, the rallies—that whole Third Reich thing was just the best. I was so born in the wrong decade.""Lebensraum is totally where it's at," said Günter Groff, 19, a high-ranking officer in the popular teen retro-club which calls itself "The S.S." "We're tired of the mainstream, corporate clothes and pop music of the '90s. We hunger for something more, something to call our own, and we understand that the Fatherland must gain more territory if the superior Aryan Race is to claim its rightful destiny as rulers of the Untermensch."Throughout Poland, the air is filled with the exuberant sounds of traditional Bavarian "oom-pah" bands, the synchronized stomp of marching jackboots, and rousing songs of patriotic fervor, as German retro-fever takes the nation by force. The trendy German youths are getting Polish citizens into the act, too, issuing them passes, demanding to see papers, and strictly enforcing curfews on pain of execution by firing squad. Grete Wunsch of Dusseldorf, one of the countless German teens embracing the current retro craze.Despite the protests of the conquered Poles, who insist that the German retro craze is "played out," the trend shows no sign of waning any time soon. In fact, it seems to be gaining momentum, poised to sweep across all of Europe."The '90s are so boring. There are never any world wars anymore. That's why this retro thing is so awesome–it's finally our chance to do some of that cool stuff we missed," said Birgid Schumacher, 16, of Berlin. "I am so psyched to annex Czechoslovakia.""Things go in cycles, ja?" said 17-year-old Otto Meine of Stuttgart, a German Youth Brigade junior officer stationed in Gdansk. "Last year, the big thing with all the kids at school was The Spice Girls, but this year it's the violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Next year, who knows? It could be the construction of massive, industrial deathcamps and the wholesale conversion of the native Jewry into soap. There's just so much great old stuff to bring back."Meine's exuberant attitude seems to be contagious. Across Germany, young people are jumping on the retro bandwagon, wearing vintage brownshirt uniforms and attending massive "old-school" military rallies that draw hundreds of thousands to city squares.The biggest event of the retro movement, observers say, will likely come this summer, when two million youths are expected to flock to the French border for a star-studded, three-day festival. Tentatively titled "The Claiming Of Alsace-Lorraine," the festival will feature rock bands, extreme-sports competitions, and the brutal occupation of the long-disputed French border region by Germany. Organizers are so confident the festival will be a success, plans are already underway for a follow-up event for next summer: London Blitzkrieg '99.Despite the sudden and extreme nature of the current wave of retro fever, its young devotees insist that their love of the '30s and '40s isn't just a pose. It is, they say, a way of life."It's about finding real meaning, real truth, in your heritage, your nation and your race," said Berliner Klaus Hofbreit, 18. "This isn't just about the clothes I put on, or the music I listen to while marching across neighboring countries' borders. It's about finding strength in who you are and triumphing through sheer will. It's about my kultur, know what I'm saying? The totenkultur."Added Hofbreit: "Deutschland über alles, baby!"

2009-08-05T04:48:00.003-04:00

Living in the Low Country of South Carolina, the conditions that People live in are appalling, I know people living under Porches, Doghouses, Sheds or just in the Woods. No wonder people run for the Hospital for 3 Hots and a Cot.

The Beaufort/Rural Poverty List would have to be altered. I'll do my List after the Urban one below:

For millions of Americans, the housing crisis began well before last year's front-page collapse. Bigotry and criminalization by an unjust system of policing and incarceration, combined with economic privation, have kept even the meager privilege of a subprime mortgage or slumlord lease out of reach for many. As the crisis unfolds, the number of homeless will grow.

Ten Things You Need to Know to Live on the Streets

Picture the Homeless, a social justice organization founded and led by homeless people in New York City, has joined The Nation to come up with a list of things you need to know to live on the street--and ways we can all build movements to challenge the stigma of homelessness and put forward an alternative vision of community.
1 Be prepared to be blamed for your circumstances, no matter how much they may be beyond your control. Think of ways to disabuse the public of common misconceptions. Don't internalize cruelty or condescension. Let go of your pride--but hold on to your dignity.
2 There is no private space to which you may retreat. You are on display 24/7. Learn to travel light. Store valuables in a safe place, only carrying around what you really need: ID and documents for accessing services, a pen, etc. You can check e-mail and read at the library. You can get a post office box for a fee or use general delivery (free).
3 Learn the best bathroom options, where you won't be rushed, turned away or harassed. Find restrooms where it's clean enough to put your stuff down, the stalls are big enough to change in and there's hot water so you can wash up. If you're in New York City go to Restrooms in New York.
4 It's difficult to have much control over when, where and what you eat, so learn soup kitchen schedules and menus. Carry with you nuts, peanut butter or other foods high in protein. Click here to find a list of soup kitchens by state.
5 Food and clothing are easier to find than a safe place to sleep--the first truth of homelessness is sleep deprivation. Always have a blanket. Whenever possible, sleep in groups with staggered schedules, so you can look out for one another, prioritizing children's needs over those of adults.
6 Know your rights! Knowing constitutional amendments, legal precedents and human rights provisions can help you, even if they're routinely violated. In New York, for example, a 2003 court-ordered settlement strictly forbids selective enforcement of the law against the homeless. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement offers another resource, and the ACLU has cards, brochures, fact sheets and films.
7 Learn police patterns and practices. Be polite and calm to cops, even when they don't give the same respect. Support initiatives demanding independent police accountability. Link with groups from overlapping populations of nonhomeless and homeless people (i.e., black, Latino, LGBT groups) that are fighting police brutality and building nonpolice safety projects, like the Audre Lorde Project's Safe OUTside the System in Brooklyn. Organize your own CopWatch--and photograph, videotape and publicize instances of police abuse. Consider and support models like the Los Angeles Community Action Network or the People's Self Defense Campaign of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Brooklyn.
8 The First Amendment protects your right to solicit aid (panhandling), especially if your pitch or sign is a statement rather than a request. To succeed, be creative, funny, engaging ("I didn't get a bailout!"). Find good, high-traffic spots where the police won't bother you.
9 Housing is a human right! Squat. Forge coalitions with nonhomeless but potentially displaced people in this era of mass foreclosures. Support United Workers in Baltimore, the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, the Nashville Homeless Power Project. Learn about campaigns against homelessness in other nations, including the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil and the Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa.
10 Don't go it alone! Always be part of an informal network of trust and mutual aid. Start your own organization, with homeless people themselves shaping the fight for a better life and world. Check out the Picture the Homeless Blog for news, updates and reports on homelessness in NY.

Now for Rural SC

Know where the Snakes and Gators are...and don't sleep near them.

Get your Medicaid if you can suffer the incompetence of DSS. Act Crazy, as it is Harder to disprove.

Know where your family is( even a third cousin on your Mom's side) and try to make nice. In SC , it often takes a lot to become a Family Pariah, so even if its the loving gift of a Shed on the Family Compound Property, take it and be nice. Even here, Homelessness can be relative (with proper Relatives) if you aren't a complete Asshole

When in very dire straits, yell help, threaten, and again act crazy. Makes the cops nervous and they are more likely to take you to the Emergency Room than Jail.

If you want to be admitted, try not to be a huge Druggie or Alcoholic as it engenders no sympathy. You could easily be kicked to the Curb. Instead the Magic Words of, "I am suicidal " has a 97% chance of getting you a bed for a few days.

Don't think there is safety in Crime. Selling drugs may help bring in the cash, but drug shootings are likely to end your life prematurely...especially if you are working out of a shed or under a porch Gangs for Robberies,theft, or Worse, are not great options either. Large percentage of Dead Gang Bangers fill the papers.

If you like jail and are picked up for something minor,( ex. disturbing the Peace etc.. ), when you go to Bond the next day, act like a smart ass to the judge. In SC, I guarantee you will do more time..Voila', a place to stay.

Make rounds at Goodwill, Salvation Army, Church stores to try to maintain appearances. Clothes make the man, and the better you look, the more likely to get into AA meetings or Publix where you can get free Coffee. Use a Public Bathroom to take even a "Paper Towel Bath". Try not to Stink!

Make a Pest of your self at the emergency room, especially if you have a destination in mind. Walk in their often (best at Night) with various ailments or Drug Issues and be enough of a Pain in the Ass that they would do anything never to see you again. When that state has been established, always mention..that "if I could just get to my Sister's House in Atlanta, I would be fine". You'd be shocked at the Greyhound Riders who have successfully pulled this off properly.

If you can help it , don't shack up with a Crazy Bitch or Abusive Guy...the misery is worse here than even out there alone in the World.

Stick to your own Kind

2009-08-04T22:41:00.004-04:00

I was sent a video of the Jon Stewart show where he discusses the news that a S.C man was arrested for having sex with a horse.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-3-2009/thank-you--south-carolina-

When I lived in West Virgina (a very short time working), there was a Patient at one of the Mental Health clinics who was found to be having Sex with Sheep.

How this was discovered, was that he had some other depraved soul take pictures of him in the Bestial Act with a Sheep in the Back Seat of an old Cadillac.

The pictures were developed then at a local drug store and an enterprising soul made copies of the prints and showed them to all who would dare look, at the local High School Football Game that Friday.

The town was only about 2000 peoople, so of course Law enforcement officials impounded the Pictures. He was arrested for several crimes, some of which are likely unique to West Virginia.

The real story is that he was sentenced to one of the State Penitionaries and there as all inmates were, assigned a job.

He was put in Charge of the stables!

POwer of Letters: X,Y and Z RULE!!!!

2009-08-04T15:57:00.009-04:00

I have always felt as a Physician that Pharmaceutical Companies, if stymied in an attempt to come up with a Brand Name that Conjures up an image of what it will do for you, begin to throw in certain letters to come up with names that could be either an Alien Race or a Hit Medication.

Names such as Cardizem (for its Cardiac effects) and Lipitor (for its ability to lower Lipids) are good examples of the "Make a name that sounds like what it does" Theory of Pharmaceutical Branding.

"The FDA won't approve a drug name that suggests what it does," states Jack Trombetta of the Jadik Marketing Firm, adding that he's surprised the agency approved the name Wellbutrin for an antidepressant because it sounds like a promise of wellness.
Experts note that Wellbutrin along with Celebrex (conveying celebration) and Claritin (implying clarity) are part of a growing trend in the use of experiential names for drugs. In other cases, the trade name is tied more closely to the drug's function.

To develop a trade name, drug-makers often work with branding agencies that use massive databases to help them generate unique names. The names often make use of linguistic tricks, such as plosive letters (P, T or D) to convey power, or fricative letters (X, F, S or Z) to imply speed. This, in part, helps explain the number of X's that show up in drug names.
"The marketing industry has been in love with the letter X forever," says Steve Manning, managing director of the Igor branding agency in San Francisco. "It's a sexy letter and it gives it a sort of techie sound. Plus, there aren't a lot of words that have an X in them that you use all the time."

As a Psychiatrist, I deal with drugs that seem to rely on the Power of certain letters, with X, Y and Z seeming to imbue the medication with extra Special, Super Powers! If combined with the "sounds like something good for you" then all the Better.

The amazingly successful Prozac , as the first Huge "Hit", "New antidepressant" may have started the trend with it's Sexy Z right in the middle. However that has gone Generic and the only one Z has lost its Star Power to be eclipsed by the anti anxiety Agent, Xanax, Antidepressant, Effexor, and what I feel is the drug that has the Power to shake the very foundations of the Earth,

the Anti Psychotic, ZyPrexa!.........Kaboom!!!

How they could have fit all these healing Letters into one molecule seems amazing enough to unhinge one's mind just enough to actually require its use.

Czech This Out

2009-08-04T04:17:00.005-04:00

Do too many V's in a Name, cause a Person to become too Outspoken? I have long been concerned by the effect of too many unusual letters and rows upon rows of consonants, such as Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski or those letters with fish hooks ( an example of too many accent marks and fish hooks, conştiinţă.

Apparently the Contrariness of the usually more relaxed Czechs, has been shown by their choice in leaders, the dissident turned National icon, Vaclav Havel and now the sceptical , outspoken Czech Representative to the European Union, Vaclav Klaus .

As to the possible link to Curmudgeoness in the Second Vaclav; " When the European Union and Russia held their most recent summit meeting in May, the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stunned European diplomats when he passed out copies of his book denouncing the fight against global warming — a central policy of the 27-nation bloc he was supposed to lead. " (NYT article,8/4/09.)

Mr. Klaus, a contrarian agitator who is also the head of state of one of Eastern Europe’s wealthiest democracies, does not agree with many things the European Union espouses — or even that Europe should have a strong union. He declined to display its gold-starred flag in his office during his nation’s presidential term.

Klaus is the ultimate provocateur and would relish the opportunity to create a mess and to see Brussels officials go ballistic,” said Jaroslav Plesl, deputy editor of the Czech daily Lidove Noviny, who has spent more than a decade covering Mr. Klaus.

Perhaps there are too many Consonants in the Czech Republic which is beginning to spill over into other area of International Provocation. the Czechs apologized to several countries for a public artwork they commissioned in Brussels to celebrate their presidency. The art installation consisted of an avowedly satirical map of Europe that depicted Bulgaria as a Turkish toilet and Germany as a highway resembling a swastika, among other offenses.the Czechs apologized to several countries for a public artwork they commissioned in Brussels to celebrate their presidency.

The Derivation of names in Czech is also quite fascinating and perhaps relates to the above "Wild Hairs" expressed by thse East Europeans. Czech surnames (singular and plural: příjmení) are similar in origin to English ones. Typically, they reflect a personal characteristic of someones ancestor (such as Malý, "Small"); where he was from or where he lived (e.g. Polák, Pole); what he did for a living (Kovář, "Blacksmith"); or the first name of a relative (Petr, "Peter"). Many Czech surnames, such as Sokol ("Falcon") or Zajic ("Hare"), are the names of animals. What is not shared with English but is similar to North American native languages is the extremely colorful nature of some Czech surnames, such as Skovajsa (Hide yourself), Skočdopole (Go jump into a field), Osolsobě (Salt your own meal), Ventluka (Knocking outward) and even Jebavý (Having sex) or Vražda (Murder).

Hopefully, they will keep at it! Signing off, Wvîlevşý Jebavý

10 People to be Polite to

2009-08-03T20:19:00.006-04:00

As a Psychiatric Resident, at University of Virginia, I often did moonlighting at the State Hospital. It was there that I learned from an old Sage Schizophrenic Man, Egg in his Black and Gray Beard, One of the Strategic Survival Guides of his Boisterous and Raucous Life.

10 Types of People to be Nice to:

10)Little old Ladies with food

9) Puerto Ricans

8) State Hospital Orderlies

7) Marines on a Saturday Night

6) Girls "Putting Out"

5) Anyone that grows "Weed"

4) State Hospital Psychiatrists

3) Jerome

2) Judges

1) "Anyone who can get me the Fuck Out of this Prison! "

After #1 was said rather loud and angrily, Two #8's approached and he was suddenly quite Pleasant again,

Clownphobia

2009-08-02T18:47:00.001-04:00

Clown Phobia
Fear of Clowns
By Lisa Fritscher, About.com
Updated: July 10, 2008

Coulrophobia, or fear of clowns, seems to be relatively common. A quick Internet search revealed 16,100 results. There are even websites dedicated to the subject, such as Ihateclowns.com, where coulrophobes gather to share their thoughts. Clowns are common characters at Halloween events such as Universal Orlando’s yearly Halloween Horror Nights, which has featured a killer clown as its main icon for several years. Clearly, the fear is real.
Nonetheless, very little scientific research has been performed on coulrophobia, so it is difficult to say exactly how common this fear is. However, a January 2008 report from BBC News suggests that clown phobia may be more ingrained than was previously assumed.
That article cites a recent study conducted by University of Sheffield researchers who polled children in several British hospitals about an upcoming hospital redesign. According to the news story, all 250 children (age four to sixteen) expressed a fear or dislike of clowns. The full results of the study have not yet been published.
Widespread Fear of Clowns
Why are we, as a society, collectively afraid of clowns? In a 2004 review article for Trinity University, Joseph Durwin postulates that there are two commonly accepted schools of thought. One is that the fear is based in a negative personal experience with a clown at a young age. The second theory is that mass media has created a hype surrounding evil clowns such that even children who are not personally exposed to clowns are trained to dislike or fear them. However, neither of these theories is entirely satisfactory.
Durwin continues into an impressive history of the clown, dating back to the jester or fool of ancient times. In those days, the clown was given permission, and even expected, to represent the deviant side of human nature, from openly defying the sexual norms of the day to mocking the gods. As time went on, the jester morphed into the trickster, a more sinister figure with intentions that were less than honorable.
The modern circus clown is an outgrowth of the tramp clowns of the Depression era. Tramp clowns were largely members of the “unsavory” underclass who entertained the more privileged with a caricaturized look at their daily existence. Although most tramp clowns were harmless, a seedy underbelly did exist among the clown circuit.
Weary Willie was the clown alter-ego of the legendary Emmett Kelly. While Kelly achieved stardom with his character, his personal life was a mess. His wife eventually filed for divorce, claiming that the character had taken over her husband’s personality. Their son, Emmett Kelly, Jr., took over the role on his father’s retirement. Kelly, Jr. took the character to even greater heights, but his wife, too, felt that Weary Willie eventually overtook Kelly, Jr.’s personality.
In the 1970s, two events occurred that may have fueled our collective fear of clowns. Paul Kelly, the son of Emmett Kelly, Jr., lost a leg in a train accident. Nevertheless, he eventually came to the conclusion that he needed to become the next incarnation of Willie. He began calling himself Emmett Kelly III and performing as Weary Willie. Simultaneously, he slid into a life of drugs and sexual freedom. In 1978, Kelly III was arrested for the murders of two of his homosexual partners. He admitted to the slayings, but listed “Willie” as an accomplice.
Eventually, Kelly III was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Willie had apparently taken over his personality as he had those of Kelly’s father and grandfather. Although this sort of case appears to be isolated, and most clowns do not show deviant behavior, the case was reminiscent of the malevolent trickster archetype of earlier lore.
The highly publicized murders committed by John Wayne Gacy also took place in the 1970s. From 1975 to 1978, Gacy sodomized and killed at least 33 boys and young men in the Chicago area. Although Gacy never worked as a professional clown, he did perform on a volunteer basis. This connection has been played up over the years in movies and films about the crimes.
By the 1980s, clown phobia had reached a peak. Rumors of ritual abuse of children were rampant, and clowns figured heavily into many of the stories. Spontaneous reports of clown harassment began pouring in from children nationwide. Soon Stephen King tapped into the national consciousness with the definitive killer clown work of fiction, "It."
In the decades that followed, killer clowns have become a part of our human mythos. At Halloween events -- from small town carnivals to internationally known destination haunts -- killer clowns are almost always a part of the festivities. Yet the killer clown’s innocent cousin, the circus clown, continues to delight and amaze the young and the young at heart.
How can we justify this seemingly incompatible coexistence? A possible explanation can be found by looking to the past. Throughout history, clowns have represented the side of us that is not acceptable to society. That side is formed from our most primal urges and is not always neat or pretty. Perhaps the clown both attracts and repels us because he or she holds up a mirror to our inner selves.
Until more research is performed, the causes of clown phobia will remain firmly in the realm of speculation. Fortunately, it is possible for mental health professionals to treat clown phobia, as any other phobia, without learning the precise reasons for its development.

Evil Clowns?

2009-08-02T17:48:00.005-04:00

I read a short story when I was younger, and although I cannot remember all the details, it involved a late teenage boy who began to see clowns every where that bad things happened. The clowns were shabby, dressed mainly in black and a sinister air about them. It happened that a car hit a pedestrian and killed he in front of the young man. He appeared to be the only one of a Crowd of onlookers who saw one of these unsavory clowns push the woman into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

By his reaction, the clowns that flocked to the scene could tell that the teen could see them. They began to follow him everywhere, despite his frantic attempts to warn others of the danger and to escape himself. Finally after seeing the Black Clowns perpetrate several more murders that appeared to others as unfortunate mishaps, he went home to spend the night.

Arriving late, he went to his Parent's bedroom determined to wake them and warn them of the Danger. When he reached to wake his Father and Mother up, he saw that it was not them at all, but two of the evil, dirty, unkempt clowns who apparently had killed his Parents and were attempting to take their place.

Knowing he had to act, he ran into the Kitchen, found a very large Knife and repeatedly stabbed the clowns until he was sure they were dead.

Exhausted , he then went to sleep, only to wake up the next morning, overcome with fear. He lightly dialed 911 for the Police and told them what had occurred.

The next scene is the Kicker! When the Police get there, all they see is the horribly bloodied bed with his Parent's butchered Corpses.

Stunned , he is taking in Custody by the Police for the Murder of his Parents. As he is being led to the Police Car in Shackles. On the way to the car he notices all around the car..are the Black Clowns.....laughing silently, at Him!

So did he really have the gift to see this Malevolent Clowns or was he insane?

AL and Rob - Back In Younder's World

2009-08-02T15:24:00.001-04:00

Alton Elliott and Robert Perkins - Back In Younder's World, a song written by Norman Blake. I heard it on a Norman Blake and Tony Rice Vol. 2.
I loved the Old time Style and the Imagery of Death and/or a Gateway to the Beyond that is called "Yonder's World" .
I feel is wonderfully evocative of a Time and Place but also
Existentially Powerful.
Damn good Guitar, as well !

Spill The Wine - Eric Burdon and War

2009-08-02T01:27:00.001-04:00

Students....This is an example of Music made when Psychedelic Drugs were often used very heavily.

Sci-Fi Closings

2009-08-01T08:32:00.003-04:00

Austin Grossman, Soon I Will Be Invincible:
"When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a super-charged elixir, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world." More books should suddenly veer into second person, as if this is all of us going on this journey of vengeance together — it just amps up the awful power of that last evil oath.

This came off Digg, Famous SCi-Fi Book's Last Lines.

This was a book that I found hilarious, a narrative of the Makings and Machinations of a Super-Villan.

Reverberations from Jupiter's Black Spot

2009-08-01T04:28:00.006-04:00

As the denizens of Edwin A. Abbott's, Famous Novel, Flatland must have harbored a fear of depth, and the great Comedian, Steven Wright proclaimed, A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths; I too share Similar Anxieties although they run to the Grand Scale.

Not kidding....When it comes to Run-Out-of -the -Room Panic, I put my money on the Thought that the Universe is Expanding!

Expanding into what? Not being a Religious Man, I can't brush it off with a Good Parable or take it on faith. Even Religious types, do they worry that it may be expanding into Heaven, and perhaps" taking their spot".

This leads to this weeks remarkable discovery that a comet slammed into Jupiter and produced this massive Gash. I was OK with this...No Asteroid slamming into Earth and extinguishing all Life as we know it.

Then they just had to mention that the divot produced in Jupiter was the size of the Pacific Ocean! If you look at the Hubble Images this gash the size of Earth's largest Ocean was comparable to a Comet hitting the Earth and taking out Los Angeles (which admittedly wouldn't be all bad) or the Isle of Wight ...but I digress.

I tried to read the NYT article, Jupiter,our cosmic Protector? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weekinreview/26overbye.html ,

to my 11 tear old son and he soon almost hysterically begged me to stop. Not his cup of tea either, I guess.

So this anxiety is either hereditary, or something Bigger. I believe it is an Existential Issue and as Woody Allen and myself ,would tell you, these Existential Wet Blankets are the Source of the "Big Fear".

In my Psychiatric Residency at the University of Virginia, other than the Neuroscience, I was most influenced by a book by Irving Yalom. In his book, Existential Psychotherapy, Yalom (1980), he organized the breadth of existential theory into four major themes: 1) Death, 2) Freedom (& Responsibility), 3) Isolation, and 4) Meaninglessness. According to Yalom, these four existential realities are the root of most psychological problems and have no ultimate answers.

I would still agree.

Rampant AI's to take over the World

2009-07-31T18:47:00.003-04:00

I was reviewing the outpouring for and against the article in the NYT where it was noted that:

"The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon."

Well I for one am all for it at least the early stages, where SkyNet is being Assembled and the Machines are not quite independent. As a Prepubescent (or maybe even early Pubescent" Youth, I loved the Movie, Westworld. I was enthralled with pretty much everything about it , although I would have gone to Medieval World than West or Roman World. That is a minor issue however.

The Point I am trying to make is that it was like Disney and Vegas combined!

The Robot Saloon Hooker peeling off her Dance Hall clothes, still haunts me to this day. This being prior to jumping in the Sack with that Wus ( what was he afraid of, I wonder?) .

It would be worth AI World Domination for those couple of hours with that CyberHussy.

Eyes

2009-07-31T13:15:00.000-04:00

WileyWorld:Beginnings

2009-07-31T06:41:00.000-04:00

This is an Auspicious Day for myself and all the People that I have deluged with images, ideas, humor, debate, (just to name a few sins, I will confess to) over the years on snail mail, phone calls, email, and most recently Facebook. Maybe they will be off the hook with me Blogging to entertain myself and anyone that cares to tune in.
I imagine the content will be as I imagine it; nothing more, nothing less.