What the heck goes on at this school?

A Real Life Hurt Locker

This is more than a little weird.

I appreciate what happened at Virginia Tech, but this simply doesn't pass muster. Whittington didn't make actionable threats. He wasn't even vaguely threatening. He just simply articulated his reactions to the very dark and crazed business of combat. And he did it quite well, it seems.

And really, what he was writing about is exactly what won The Hurt Locker all those Academy Awards.

I don't think he needs a psych eval. I think he needs to be encouraged to write more.

I think it's sad that we should glorify these wars in this country, but not allow our returning vets to speak honestly of them. We expect them to keep hushed about it because war doesn't affirm a positive, sunny outlook about the good intentions of mankind, I guess.

I feel sorry for this guy and I hope psychiatry doesn't damage him even more.

Can you say Party Town?

Something to pick him up. Something to chill him out. And for those extra-special times when he can't tell if his heart is still beating, he can have a hit of some prescription poppers. Good times.

from Pharmagossip

This is very exciting.

There aren't many works by Giotto left in the world. Many of his works were whitewashed and repainted over by later Renaissance artists. He is given the title "First Painter of the Renaissance," although his rendering of the human form was not quite there, as it would be with the work of the later artists.

His Flight into Egypt is the one most often seen in the anthologies:



One of my all time favorite works is his Adoration of the Magi:




I like it because of the camels. Giotto had obviously never seen a camel before. Like most people of 14th century Europe, he was insulated from things and experiences outside of his small world. He could only paint the camels from other people's descriptions and how he imagined them to be. They are not accurate camels, but they are *honest* camels, painted as passionately and as honestly as he could humanly paint them.

Winners and Losers

This dude just got elected for Florida governor. His resume sounds just as impressive as Meg Whitman's. CA had the good sense to reject nutMeg. However, endemic stupidity seems to have overcome all hurdles in FLA.

Moniz Madness

--shamelessly stolen from WunderNutbar, a newly found blog. I think it's appropriate for Nobel Prize week because Moniz, the man who perfected ramming an ice pick through another person's brain, won a Nobel Prize for it. In hindsight, it wasn't one of the Committee's better choices...

As a recovering addict and a psychiatric survivor, this kind of makes my blood boil:

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism conducted a representative survey of 43,000 Americans in 2001-2002, called the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Following are exact quotes from the NIAAA Web site.

# Twenty years after onset of alcohol dependence, about three-fourths of individuals are in full recovery; more than half of those who have fully recovered drink at low-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence.

# About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab) programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment.

In short:

75% of those who recover do so without any sort of treatment;

25% of the recovered are split between those who receive general therapy and those who enter rehab or AA.


I was told by the experts that psychotherapy and/or AA was the only way to get sober. I never found rehab or AA to be particularly helpful for my situation.

However, my older friends who'd also been through some very debilitating addictions to drugs and alcohol had a totally different perspective. They told me that eventually one day I'd wake up, decide I'd had enough and that would be the end of it. I always told my friends they were nuts. I was going to party till the day I died.

My friends were right. Both the experts and I were wrong. It happened more or less the way my friends said it would. I'm sitting here clean and sober for 14 years, a proud member of that 75%.

I have absolutely nothing against AA. A great many people swear by it because it has worked for them. I'm all for what works for people, particularly if that help is virtually free.

Perhaps, however, if we need to rein in health care costs, we need to look at the utility and cost of the psychotherapists and rehab programs. From the statistics, these "experts" earn only a fraction of their paycheck.