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It’s all the rage. Everybody wants to cut and cry and puke and write bad poetry.

From an article on PubMed : “Patients on treatment with antipsychotic drugs had a lower current full scale IQ, lower general memory scores, and lower working memory scores.” I submit that psych meds actually make you less capable of effectively participating in your treatment, or even in life. Why are they doing this to us?

My husband is an electrical engineer like I am. He is a much better electrical engineer, in part because he still has a memory. His father has been ill and has let his Prius sit for a while. Six weeks or so. So my husband went over to take him for a ride in the Prius. The old boy wants to go to Valhalla. Or something like that, he’s going on about some non-existent amusement park with ferris wheels and roller coasters up Rte. 413 near the Burlington-Bristol bridge. Valhalla. I suggested he set the car on fire and push them off the bridge. Where *is* that man’s sense of humor? So my husband just called. The Prius is dead, he said. The doors don’t unlock. Can I give it a jump without blowing up my car? It’s only been six weeks, it can’t be dead! Is the hood lock electrical? Yes, ok. Take a deep breath, Leslie. The car is dead because – well, my classic Prius supposedly uses 75mA when it’s just sitting. But people also tell me that the...

Well, I finally made it to the big time. Well, no, what I really mean is that the spambots found “Into The Void” this week and they are hammering my WordPress blog with comment spam. I’ve received 500-some requests in the last 48 hours. Would anyone in their right mind patronize a company that has its people dump irrelevant ads into sites? The most common were drugs and online casinos, followed by mortgages, and then a specific bank’s credit cards. Oh, yes, let me just give all my financial information to someone who uses a fake email address. Anyway, I installed Bad Behavior . Let’s see how it goes. Update 9/22/2007: Bad Behavior, when it isn’t used in the sense of “Leslie’s hobbies,” is a WordPress plugin that blocks spammers from the site. Bad Behavior works great. See the bottom of the page for stats. FYI, Homeland Stupidity has moved to a new website . They also have an immensely satisfying project called Project Honeypo...

The world would be a far more convenient place if everything in it could be hosed off.

Flush with my recent success running Tiki Wiki under Windows XP SP2, I thought it might be fun to try Subdreamer, too. Subdreamer is a Content Management System and is different from a Wiki mainly in the way it organizes and presents data. Subdreamer has the advantage of allowing me to integrate my phpBB forum into it so that my current users have the same user id and password on the new CMS. In case anyone else wants to smear Linux web apps all over their harddrive, it’s not very hard to do. In this article I’ll walk you through the four main tasks required to evaluate the Subdreamer CMS on a Windows XP box. You will be using an application called PhpTriad. PhpTriad contains Windows versions of the ubiquitous Apache server with PHP support, MySQL database software, and phpMyadmin. You’ll have no trouble at all getting PhpTriad running. Next you’ll get the free version of Subdreamer and unzip it onto your hard drive. If you want more functionality when you t...

“See, I will send venomous snakes among you, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you…” – Jeremiah 8:17 You might remember a few months ago when the ‘Net lit up over the upcoming Samuel L. Jackson film, SNAKES ON A PLANE . Not to be left out of the fun, I blogged it, too. Well, kids, it’s almost here. And for your enlightenment and amusement, here are some scenes from the movie. Get your copy of the player here

From CNN Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.” I believe it’s been like that in most wars. Has our culture stopped evolving? Certainly a large block of Americans, most of whom voted for Bush, fight evolution tooth and nail. I guess fear of change goes very deep in some folks. I seem to recall an interview with a fellow who was a doctor in WWII. He told about how when soldiers came in shell-shocked (severely traumatized), they’d keep them in the field hospital, dope them into oblivion for a period of time to let the worst of it pass, then take them off the drugs a...

To persuade a man that his experience is not real or is worthless is to be a propagandist for some vested interest.

The other night we were watching TV and my husband decided that he didn’t want to watch Crossing Jordan because it looked “too heavy.” I was about to get up and limp to the computer room, but he had flipped to a medical show called “ Gray’s Anatomy .” They were wheeling in injured patients on stretchers and busily milling about. Ok, I thought, could be interesting. I watched this show once before and I don’t recall actively hating it. Umpteen minutes later the show was over without ever having actually begun. There was no diagnostic drama, no medical facts. Just a bunch of people wandering around in a daze, occasionally bumping into one another and reacting to their own reactions. Incomprehensible medical decisions were made, preceded by much fanfare and pointless drama but little logic. My husband said it’s a chick show. I have to ask this, then, because I have always thought like an engineer… The show was clearly intended for...

In appearing normal to others, one becomes a habit-ridden plaything of social pressures and expectations.

The criterion of “success” has shifted from exclusive attention to behavior to concern for the quality of experience.

<RANT> I am not swayed by vague, impassioned arguments. If I was, I’d be a Republican. The reason the Republicans are stomping us is this: They put huge amounts of money into the infrastructure of the party. Think Tanks, framing the arguments. The Democrats don’t invest, they throw money away. The tone of the latest JohnKerry.com email was just plain dumb. It is far below Kerry’s intellectual capabilities and I’m getting rather tired of his ineffectual stumping. PLEASE, get a backbone. Be proactive: as long as you are reactive you don’t have a good enough foothold to argue your point. We have to be proactive participants in the Democratic process, not reactive little paramecia. Listening to Kerry trying to be politically correct during the debates was painful. Stop trying so hard not to offend anyone. Progressives’ morality on the abortion issue is about the QUALITY of life vs. the inhumane exercise of bringing unwanted children into th...

You’re out of the woods, You’re out of the dark, You’re out of the night. Step into the sun, Step into the light. Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place On the Face of the Earth or the sky. Hold onto your breath, Hold onto your heart, Hold onto your hope. March up to the gate and bid it open…………….open. From The Wizard of Oz , Optimistic Voices , lyrics by EH Harburg and music by Harold Arlen Check it out: Dr. Charles K. Bunch PhD, the author of “Soft Bipolar : Vivid Thoughts, Mood Shifts and Swings, Depression, and Anxiety of the Mild Mood Disorders Affecting Millions of Americans” has put out a new book about cinematherapy , how to use the metaphors in popular cinema as a vehicle for healing. And what more powerful movie than The Wizard of Oz? Admit it, you saw it every year for the first ten years of your life and can recite it from memory. You undoubtedly have at one time or another used the characters in the ...