my_wits_end

Just kidding. I managed to rid myself of those pesky things. They were getting in the way of an accurate perception of The Way Things Are.

Listening to the radio on the drive to work I was thinking the exact same thoughts later expressed by one of the ED docs during my shift —

Piss on a corpse: Utterly deplorable.
Desecrate a living, breathing human body using advanced weaponry: Now you are doing an honorable job.

When urinating on the dead is outrageous, and meanwhile no one sees anything wrong with a vast military-industrial killing machine... Anything wrong with this picture?

Today during biostats lecture I collected data on the types of laptops people had.

MacBook Pro 13"  5
MacBook Air      2
MacBook          3
iPad             1

"Life is and always will be a competition."

Like a Villain - A-OK (Live at the People's Yoga) from Kaleida on Vimeo.

I just got back from seeing Tali Sharot speak about how our brains are hardwired with an optimism bias, and David Eagleman spoke about... lots of stuff, really, but ended by talking about his vision for the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into the future proceedings of the legal system.

David Eagleman is a captivating speaker. His enthusiasm is infectious, and he is very good at conveying the wonder that brought him into the field, and anyone, really, should be afflicted with if they reflect on the workings of what is so commonly referred to by brain scientists as 'the most complex known object in the universe' that is the human brain.

I should mention, I came into this talk with this article still fresh in my mind. I didn't even really know anything about Eagleman until I read it, but now I'm following him on Twitter and seeing articles about him everywhere, for example in The New Yorker and today in The Atlantic, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that he is promoting his new book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. The first article is quite critical of Eagleman. So critical, in fact, that it almost led me to suspect some degree of jealousy or resentment on behalf of the author. However, it is actually refreshingly removed in such a way as to seem more nearly objective and not swept away with Eagleman's charisma. The part that really raised my eyebrows the most was this paragraph:

In conversation, in radio interviews, in Incognito, with blithe confidence and genuine wonder, he ventures well beyond his area of expertise. The field of neuro-law is relatively new but surprisingly well populated. There are think tanks, anthologies, classic papers, and classic refutations. Eagleman shows up in no neuro-law bibliography that I encountered. There are stars in the field, authorities, and up-and-comers. I contacted five of them: Though a couple had heard of him, none were familiar with his work in the field. Nor, in many cases, was he familiar with theirs: I found myself forwarding papers to him, describing basic arguments that he should have been describing to me.

At the end of the talk, I was left wondering what role, exactly, he sees neuroscience playing in the judicial process. The idea of having a forward-looking legal system, one focused more on rehabilitation than retribution, is not exactly novel and not exactly dependent in any essential way on neuroscience.

As he was signing my copy of the book, Eagleman asked if I was a student here, and I said yes, I am interested in studying psychiatry. I told him that I have been reading a lot of books lately that are critical of the field, with its emphasis on pharmaceuticals over psychotherapy and other non-chemical treatments. He was insistent, however, that "you can't talk someone out of a clinical depression." I remained skeptical and said I have heard conflicting views on that topic. I would have liked to hang around and continue to converse with him about it, but I didn't want to monopolize his time, and I think I will be better equipped to have that debate some time from now. But from my understanding, the evidence is not as conclusive as he seems to think.

One of the books I have in queue right now is The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, by Irving Kirsch, Ph.D. Kirsch is a clinical psychologist who has examined the evidence in depth, including all of the negative studies that remained unpublished, and concluded that antidepressants are just as effective as "active placebos," i.e. placebos with side effects.

I don't completely doubt that antidepressants work, and are in some cases, perhaps, more effective than placebo because they have physical effects at the synapse, but the theory behind their mechanism is much more flimsy than people have been led to believe.

eye
stomach
finger
tongue
hand
arm
knee
head

(Hint - some body parts will not work)

( ETA: Updated list )

1 - Go to Wikipedia and click "random article." The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit "random quotes." The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days.” Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop, PSP, the Gimp, or similar (pixlr.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.
5 - Post it your and add these instructions so your friends can join in.


It's a little bit eerie how well the picture matches up with the band name.

ETA - Oh, and this was the quote:

I'm a fan of laundry: the smell of fabric softener, the warm clothes in your hands. It's so good.
- Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, 2008