Hayseed Dixie Walk This Way

Thanks to Roberta X.

What, me racist? Part 2.

After breaking the bartender's nose on the bar Gus takes out his pistol and says:
Now if you'd care to turn around you can see how we looked when we were younger and the people around here wanted to make us senators. Now the thing we didn't put up then was dawdling service and as you can see we still don't put up with it.

Driving home past the local elementary school yesterday just when parents are collecting their chilluns. There are some people standing near the corner talking. About half the group is white and are standing on the sidewalk. The other half is black and they are standing in the crosswalk in the middle of the street. They were not blocking my path, that crosswalk crosses a side street that does not get much traffic, but still! Why are you holding a conversation in the middle of the street? To me this just smacks of stupidity, or rudeness. There is no reason to be standing in the street like that. You could just as easily have your conversation while standing on the sidewalk. Standing in the crosswalk means any traffic that does come along is going to have to look out for you, and anytime you depend on other people to do what they are supposed to do you run the risk of being disappointed. In this case fatally.
     A few years ago I was at the local community college and I come up behind some black kids sauntering down the road. They are crossing the road, but at such an extreme angle that they would be 200 feet farther down the road from where they started when they got to the other side. I wasn't in any hurry so I just sat and waited for them to complete their moseying, because it was moseying. Normal walking pace is about three miles an hour. This kids were barely making one. What I don't know is whether that was their normal pace or whether they were deliberately dawdling to piss off the old redneck in the pickup truck who was breathing down their neck. I don't understand slow walking. The reason you are walking is to get someplace. Do some people enjoy walking that slow? Or is it a form of rebellion? Or just lack of impetus?
      It might not be a race thing at all, it might just be city slicker versus country mouse. 25 years ago this was a sleepy farming community. If you saw someone you knew while you were driving, you could stop in the middle of the street and have a nice long conversation and be reasonably confident that no one would disturb you. I come from the suburbs where people have to be on the go constantly in order to feed the giant money machine, so no, you don't have time to stop and talk to people, and you sure don't stop in the middle of the street because some madman racing down the street will be running you down.

Why I Will Never, Ever, Go Back to the United States

Darling daughter is studying up on immigration and visa requirements and she comes across this story from a Dutchman trying to travel to New Orleans, which is where we get the title for this post. He's been all around the world, and unfortunately for him, most of the places he's been are hotbeds of crazy mussulmen, places like Yemen, Singapore and Malaysia. He was in Yemen to visit the island of Socotra, which is right in the middle of pirate territory off the horn of Africa. Niels, our Dutchman, says it is one of the strangest places on Earth, so I have to go check it out. I am not sure whether the scenes in this video are beautiful or terrifying.

Hard Case

Brain scan of white matter fibers, brainstem and above. The fibers are color coded by direction: red = left-right, green = anterior-posterior, blue = ascending-descending (RGB=XYZ). The Human Connectome Project, a $40-million endeavor funded by the National Institutes of Health, aims to plot connections within the brain that enables the complex behaviors our brains perform so seamlessly. Courtesy of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA and Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. This image is not really connected to this story, but hey, cool brain picture.

Grouchy, angry, irritable and depressed: the hard cases

October 08, 2013 By Melissa Healy in the Los Angeles Times

    After languishing for years in the shadows of psychiatry's definition of adult depression, irritability is finally getting some respect again. It's about damned time, you might say.
    A new study has found that people suffering a major depressive episode who report they have become grouchy, hostile, grumpy, argumentative, foul-tempered or angry will likely have a "more complex, chronic and severe form" of major depressive disorder than those who do not acknowledge irritable feelings and behavior.
    We're not talking about a small minority of the depressed either: In this 30-year study of 536 subjects who first presented with depression, 54% acknowledged irritability in feelings and behavior. And while cussedness is increasingly recognized as a hallmark of depression in men,  the current study found that a majority of women fell into its "irritable" group as well.
    Compared with the merely sad, guilt-ridden and lethargic, the irritable depressed had more severe depressive symptoms. They stayed depressed for longer. They relapsed more readily. And they were more likely to experience other psychiatric conditions as well, including anxiety and substance abuse disorders, impulse-control problems and antisocial behavior, the study showed.
    The difference between the two groups was so stark as to suggest that major depression with "overt irritability/anger" might be diagnosed and treated as a distinct form of the disorder, requiring more intensive treatment, the authors wrote.
    Indeed, the researchers suggested, such depression may spring from different biological origins than depression in which manifestations of anger or irritability are absent. That is also suggested by the study's finding that subjects expressing irritability were more likely than those who did not to have a family history of bipolar disorder.
    The latest research, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, began in 1978 to track 536 adult Americans in five U.S. cities who were seeking help for an episode of major depressive disorder. Researchers interviewed subjects about their symptoms twice a year for the first five years and at least once a year thereafter for an average of more than 16 years. More than 45% of the subjects were followed for 20 or more years, giving researchers an unusually detailed perspective on the long-term course of depression.
    The study's authors did not count those who said they experienced "occasional snappiness" among the depressed and irritable. To be counted in that group, a subject was required to acknowledge he or she was "somewhat argumentative and quick to express annoyance," that he or she "often shouts or loses temper" or that he or she "throws things, breaks windows, or is occasionally assaultive." In the most extreme manifestation of irritability, a subject would be "repeatedly violent against things or people."
    Irritability is formally seen as a hallmark of major depressive disorder in children and adolescents. But in 1987, the American Psychiatric Assn. dropped it as a diagnostic criterion of major depressive disorder in adults.

I'm depressed, and often grouchy, hostile, grumpy, argumentative, foul-tempered or angry. Been that way for a long time. I take Prozac. Been taking it for a long time. It is only supposed to be effective for six months or so. It still seems to help. I am better behaved if I get enough sleep, but that is like a full time job. It goes better now that I quit trying to get a solid eight hours. Now I sleep for two or three hours, then I'll get up for an hour or two, then go back to sleep for three or four hours. And I'll take a nap in the afternoon. By the time I get up at 5PM I have finally gotten my eight hours and I am good to go, well, until one or two in the morning when I start the whole thing over again. My wife pointed out this story to me. I wonder why.

P.S. Just went for a walk and Yosemite Sam popped into my mind. Think he might be the archetype for a depressed grump?

How The Spirit Rover Got To Mars

The video is high resolution, so you can watch it full screen if you have a high speed connection to the internet. JPL's (Jet Propulsion Labratory) website. Via Post-Hip Scott.

Business Dinner Dream

This is just the strangest/coolest video. It repeats three times. I don't know why. Programming our brains?
There's a discussion going on on the other side of a  large table. They are talking about Champagne and another similar beverage with a similar name (Champile? I can picture it in my mind, it comes in clear bottle shaped somewhat like a brandy bottle. The label is white with black printing, no wait, it is becoming embellished with scroll work and subtle colors. It is a yellow liquid, much darker than Champagne).
    In my dream I have heard of this beverage, and I know that is held in high regard, but I didn't think it was capable of knocking off Champagne. Then I realize the guy who is praising this drink is not comparing it to authentic French Champagne, but to the mass marketed, American version. Well, it could very well be better than Andre or Cook's. I don't drink enough, and my nose doesn't work well enough to for this comparison to make any difference to me.
    Now he's comparing it to something called "Birdie" and I wonder if this is his execrable pronunciation of Bordeaux (Bor-dough), but I don't want to embarrass myself in case I am wrong, so I keep quiet. I mean, there might be some rarefied wine called "Birdie". Just because I haven't heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
     I start talking to the guy sitting next to me and he wants to know what I do for a living, so I tell him "computers" and how I used to work at Intel. I expect some kind of reaction from "Intel", but there is none. I ask if he has heard of them. No, he hasn't. I expound on how big and huge and dominant they are in the computer business, but none of this makes any kind of impression. He's never heard of them. I am surprised, but then I wake up.
    Now I wonder just how big Intel is. They totally dominate this area, they're why it's called the Silicon Forest, but now I wonder how big they really are. I think they are on the Fortune 500 list, but now I wonder how that list is ordered. I mean there are any number of ways to measure a company. You can rank them by:

• gross sales
• market value of their stock
• number of employees
• size of their payroll
• gross amount paid in dividends
• amount paid in taxes

Heretofore I've taken the Fortune 500 at face value, figuring that if a company is at one position on the list, it is probably at a similar position on other lists, but now I have my doubts.

Titan Medical Single Port Orifice Robotic Technology (SPORT)

I think I figured out what happened to all those people with the watchmaker gene. They are making all kinds of tiny, crazy stuff, like this remote control surgical hand.
    A 25mm hole (that's about one inch) may seems kind of big, but compared to the hole you would need to allow a surgeon to get his actual hands inside you, it's nothing. And flesh stretches, they would probably only need to make a single incision two inches long in order to get inside.
    It's not a true robot, it doesn't think for itself. It's more of a teleoperator, or a Waldo, for you Heinlein fans. Since there is no mechanical connection between the console and the robot, the surgeon would not even have to be in the same room, or even in the same city.
    This all kind of reminds me of the book Star Surgeon that I read a long time ago that I really liked. I mean, I must have liked it, it's been over 40 years and I still remember reading it. Looking for it now I find there are two different books with this title, one by Alan E. Nourse and another one by James White. The name Nourse rings a bell, but that's all I can tell you. Operating from another planet would be a little difficult, what with the time lag due to the speed of light.
    Titan Medical. Via Post-hipScott.