How true

i love simplicity, especially when it produces something solid and irrefutable:

You cannot use logic to talk someone out of a position they did not use logic to adopt. 

Your Mind Can Be Fooled - Mine Was

Well, this is probably the laziest blog entry ever, since it's just a link. But what a link. Watch this video start to finish (it's about four minutes) and you'll quickly realize that whether you are a republican, democrat, rich, poor, christian, jewish, muslim, black, white, man, woman, etc. that your mind can be easily tricked.

Think of this video as you form opinions regarding the upcoming election and politics in general

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f29kF1vZ62o&feature=related

The Penn State Sex Scandal: how do you know what you know, pt 89

You know the story.  Penn State University is mired in a scandal where an assistant coach allegedly used  university facilities to sexually abuse young boys. When this was reported to those in charge, they didn't report it to the police and now the proverbial stuff has hit the proverbial fan.  And everybody has an opinion, including the alleged perpetrator Jerry Sandusky, who recently made statements to the press saying he never did any of the stuff he's accused of.

So now it's in the news and everybody's 'taking a stand'. Trouble is, those stands are based on a lot of innuendo, hearsay, partial stories reported in a biased or half assed manner, etc.  This is typical of Americans: grab a  handful of facts from your favorite source - left, right, doesn't matter - draw a conclusion and then argue the point vehemently with anyone who disagrees.

This is like two twelve year olds debating the validity of string theory: neither one of them understands what they are actually discussing, they are just disagreeing based on their take on 'the facts'.

Proof of my point ladies and gentleman - the actual grand jury report related to the Penn State scandal. You can view it here: http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4181508116.PDF

It's available because it's a public record. It was conducted according to the laws of the state which means people who are NOT reporters, columnists, opinion makers and social critics did NOT write it. It's just a bunch of information gathered by people who talked to everyone involved. There's no motivation to sell it, make money from it, base your campaign for governor/president/dog catcher on it. It's just a report.

And i bet you didn't read it.  If you had, you would have all the facts, not just the ones your favorite media mouthpiece wants you to have.  Mostly it's boring. But the parts that are not are graphic and sickening.

It's really a shame that 'news' sources are required to print this thing in its entirety. It's also a shame that people who consider themselves intelligent didn't do the obvious thing - google it and go find it like i did.

Now just imagine how many self appointed know-it-alls are out there shooting off their mouths with just fragments of information taken from one source.  "Big thinkers" talking about 'what oughta be done' about immigration/gun control/poverty/jobs/exploring space/giving vaccines to kids, etc while none of them has read anything in depth on any of these subjects.

So the next time you open your mouth to preach - or stand up to applaud your favorite commentator - ask yourself this: how do i "know" what i "know?" and how does that commentator/source "know" what he/she/it "knows?"

Mocking the homeless - i have a house and you don't, ha ha ha hah ha

Usually, this type of thing will spur me to climb my soapbox and rant for days. But i was both furious and honestly shocked by this incident - to the point where i am speechless.  How any group of people could think this was funny is beyond me.  And pointing it out to them is useless. If you have to be told this sort of thing is wrong, it's too late.....you're soul is dead.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/313691

Jerry Doyle, conservatives and what's really wrong with America

This is a short post.

Jerry Doyle is a right wing talk show host who wrote a book called "Have You Seen My Country Lately?: America's Wake-Up Call."

The problem with the conservative right in America is contained in the title. "Have You Seen MY Country Lately?"  Not our country. MY country. Got it? Jerry's country. Jerry's America.  The right's America.

This has been the same drum the right has been beating since Reagan got into the white house: some of us are "true Americans" who "get it" and we're being pushed aside by godless liberals who want to give away the country and sell our values down the river.  Us vs. them. Take back the country. The "moral majority."  It's a war, a battle, a fight, a brawl, grab that flag and take hold of it before those horrible liberals destroy everything wonderful about America.

No Jerry, it's not YOUR country. It's not the conservative right's country. It's not the Tea Party's country. It's OUR country.  That means you live here and I live here and we disagree and that's just too bad because that, my friend, is what America is all about.

Doyle, is it? I'm an O'Meara. It always stuns me when Irish-Americans, whose ancestors were mercilessly shit on by the British for centuries turn into intolerant blowhards. 

Obliterating bad information pt.1: schizophrenia and insanity

Note: this is part of an ongoing series in which commonly held beliefs are shown to be wrong and corrected).


Schizophrenia does not mean "split personality."  Somehow that idea crept into the public consciousness and pops up regularly in dinner party conversation, sitcoms, cartoons, movies, etc. It's incorrect, so get it out of your head right now.

The word 'schizophrenia' was coined by a Swiss doctor named Eugen Bleuler sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century.  It is applied to one of the best known forms of mental illness, a diagnosis that is best known in the public mind as crazy, bonkers, insane, wack-o, etc. If someone hears the voice of God telling them to burn down their house with their family in it or decides that wearing a tin foil hat will prevent the CIA & KGB from reading their thoughts, we're probably talking about schizophrenia.  Though not necessarily. Because in medicine we start with symptoms. What are the patient's symptoms? If they symptoms are the scenarios i described above, those are symptoms of what we call psychosis. The person is exhibiting psychotic thinking.  So the next question is, why is he/she psychotic? Side effect of some medication? Drugs? Brain damage from drinking cleaning fluids?

So if schizophrenia doesn't mean 'split personality' what does it mean.  In psychiatric medicine there is a differentiation between thought disorders, mood disorders, paraphilias, etc. Schizophrenia is a thought disorder. It simple terms it means that the schizophrenic brain perceives reality differently than everyone else.  If you and i watch a totally fictional TV movie about a man who can talk to plants, the schizophrenic might watch the same thing and think it's a message from the creator directed at him/her personally, so that he/she finally understands that he/she was put on the earth to go around talking to plants.

That's an oversimplification but it's accurate enough to show you that schizophrenia has nothing to do with a split personality.  The "split" is with reality.  In extreme cases, when a schizophrenic is very psychotic, they may hear multiple voices telling them conflicting things; they may perceive heat as cold or vice versa; they may step on a nail and not feel the pain; they might see a soda machine turn into the face of a demonic robot laughing at them, or shadows on a pond turn into angels who beckon them to come into the water and ignore the fact they can't swim.

While the cause of schizophrenia remains unknown and while some treatments or medications are questionable in some cases, a very large number of persons with this disease have been able to return to something like a normal life by taking anti-psychotic medication.  It typically appears when a person is between 18 and 21, affects people of all races and ethnicities as well as both genders and has what are known as positive as well as negative symptoms. Negative symptoms would be things like not speaking, ignoring people who talk to you, isolating in a room or under a bridge, in short withdrawing into another world. Positive symptoms are things like talking to oneself, doing very bizarre and/or dangerous things, speaking in long rambling nonsensical monologues, etc.  Not all schizophrenics experience the same symptoms or experience them to the same degree. Some never hear voices. Some always hear voices. Some never have hallucinations.  Some are paranoid and angry. Some are not paranoid at all and laugh about anything and everything.  There is no correlation between intelligence and schizophrenia.  Some are very bright. Some are not.

And by the way, "split personality" or "multiple personality disorder" (believing you have different 'selves' controlling your life) doesn't exist. We'll get to that later. The famous book that started it all "Sybil" was a total fabrication. A like. A fake.

Don't believe me? Click here http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141514464/real-sybil-admits-multiple-personalities-were-fake

Fast food, fast cars, fast knowledge

I can't recall the name of the comedian who said the modern world has made us all impatient.  She (i remember it was a she) had a line that went, "I bought my father a microwave and now he stands there and yells at it saying 'Come on! I don't have all minute!'" Which nicely sums up the American attitude toward coffee as well as the economy. Fix it NOW!

But some things in life take time, that's all there is to it. I was once speaking to a geologist who said to me, 'do you realize that any rock in your driveway is at least a million years old?'  A million years and it's still a rock. It hasn't been ground into sand or dust yet. That takes another million or so years. Like it or not, you can stand over your tomato plants and threaten them and call them names but that isn't going to get you a fresh tomato any sooner.

Here's a shocker for some of you:  getting a bit of information from the TV, radio, magazines, newspapers or the CNN website has nothing to do with knowledge and education.

It used to be against the law for someone to ride into town, gather a crowd and hold up a bottle of colored water with flavoring in it, claim it would cure gout, rheumatism, heart disease, athletes foot and warts on your buttocks and then collect money from suckers who couldn't wait to buy a bottle or ten.  Apparently that's no longer true.  You can say any damn fool thing you want, even something that is scientifically incorrect or made up and get away with it in print or on the airwaves. People can compare Barack Obama to Hitler and be listened to, despite the fact that even a cursory reading of the totalitarian regime the nazis imposed isn't remotely similar to anything any president has ever put into place. The Bush administration can stand in front of the American people and lie - lie - about Iraq's role in the September 11th attacks and weapons of mass destruction and drag the entire country into war and nobody bats an eyelash except a few cranks like me who are called "unpatriotic." (For the record, staunch conservative Bill O'Reilly admitted on the David Letterman show a few nights ago that going to war with Iraq was a mistake but he supported the invasion because all of the "reportage" indicated weapons of mass destruction. So much for accurate reportage).  So yes, you can sell snake oil. And if you get caught at it, nobody's going to say or do a damn thing.  If you've been following the news you know that Bernie Madoff has been bragging in letters to friends about being treated like a celebrity in prison. He ought to be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for $3.50 an hour, all wages to go to some charity. He ought to be sold into slavery. But instead he's a guest of the taxpayers and laughing about it. All things considered, not a bad ending to his story, considering what would have happened to him in, say, Saudi Arabia if he had embezzled the king's money.

But I digress.

So back to the questions: what do you "know" and how did you "learn" it?

Learning takes time.  You have to do a little research, ask people more knowledgeable than yourself, read more, more research, re-consider your hypothesis, examine things from different angles, etc.  And most people are not willing to do that.  They want the answer NOW.  And dishonest politicians and arrogant know-it-all talk show hosts are happy to provide them with an answer now.  A wrong answer, an answer that is poorly thought out, an answer where repercussions are never considered, but what the hell, it's a bunch of words that sound good.

Unfortunately, if you get your "information" from people who aren't experts, might as well have a bright seventeen year old high school student with a copy of "Cardiac Surgery for Dummies" do your quadruple bypass.