Where Should You Get Your Mental Healthcare?

Via my mom.  Once again, I'm not certain what message she's really sending:

Ever since I was a child, I've always had a fear of someone under my bed at night.  So I went to a shrink and told him “I've got problems. Every time I go to bed I think there's somebody under it. I'm scared. I think I'm going crazy.”

“Just put yourself in my hands for one year,' said the shrink. “Come talk to me three times a week and we should be able to get rid of those fears..'

“How much do you charge?”

“Eighty dollars per visit,” replied the doctor.

“I'll sleep on it,” I said.

Six months later the doctor met me on the street. “Why didn't you come to see me about those fears you were having?” he asked.

“Well, Eighty bucks a visit three times a week for a year is an awful lot of money! A bartender cured me for $10. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went and bought me a new pickup!”

“Is that so!' With a bit of an attitude he said, “And how, may I ask, did a bartender cure you?”

“He told me to cut the legs off the bed! Ain't nobody under there now!!!”
 

Forget the shrinks.  Have a drink and talk to a bartender!

No Nativity Scene...

A seasonal oldie-but-goodie, via my mom:

The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the United States' Capital this Christmas season.

This isn't for any religious reason. They simply have not been able to find three Wise Men in the nation's Capitol.

A search for a Virgin continues.

There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.

Taken Out the Plane Window...

I didn't take this picture, or any of the 100 out-the-plane-window pictures you'll find in this collection.  I have, however, been to quite a few of those places and seen very similar sights.  The photo of Mt. Ranier at right (note the shadow of the mountain in the clouds), and of the salt ponds in San Francisco Bay that appears in the linked collection, are both things I've seen many times.  Some of these photos are remarkably good considering the usually dirty, scratched, dual-pane windows they were taken through...

Political Correctness vs. Common Sense...

At JFK airport in New York, this past week, TSA agents strip-searched a ticketed passenger going through security. 

Why? Because the passenger didn't want to go through the X-ray equipment, fearing that it might interfere with her defibrillator.  The usual alternative is a pat-down search (something I've had done myself), but in her case, they opted for a strip search. 

Why?  That's a bit unclear, as the passenger didn't fit any threat profile I've ever heard of: she's white, 85 years old, weighs 107 pounds, and uses a walker.

Somehow in the process of doing the humiliating strip search, they managed to injure her as well.

The only reason the TSA would strip-search a passenger like that is in their eagerness to avoid “profiling”.  In an all-too-familiar example of the triumph of multi-culturalist political correctness over common sense, our TSA has decided that we cannot recognize the rather clear fact that terrorists seem to be overwhelmingly (1) Muslim, (2) young men, and (3) Middle Eastern.  Not that there aren't exceptions (though I'm pretty certain that 85 year old Caucasian women are not amongst them), but the preponderance of terrorists do, in fact, fit this profile.  There, I did it: I used the politically-incorrect word.

The good news: Europe, where our “elites” get their cues, seems to have figured out that the multi-culti movement has been a disaster for them.  The first steps to reversing the ravages of multi-culti are underway.  If they can avoid a new Nazi takeover as the pendulum swings the other way, even our “progressives” will wake up and start singing a different, politically-incorrect song.

I can hardly wait!

How Doctors Die...

A thought-provoking piece by Ken Murray, a retired M.D.  The assertions he makes will be a topic the next time I meet with my doctor; I'd like to know whether he agrees with them.  From our own experiences with our animals at the ends of their lives, I find this entirely plausible.  The intro:

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

V838 Mon...

Gorgeous astrophotography of a mystery event.  In 2002, the star V838 Mon suddenly brightened to about a million times as bright as our sun (becoming, briefly, the brightest star in the entire Milky Way galaxy).  Just as suddenly, a month or so later, it rapidly dimmed.  The curve of its luminosity over time is unlike any other event astronomers have ever recorded, and there's a great debate and investigation into what the mechanism might have been.

For almost 10 years, that pulse of light (or flash) has been expanding outward from V838 Mon, illuminating an ever-expanding light-month thick “bubble” of interstellar gas and dust.  The Hubble telescope took the photo below in February 2004.  The accompanying description says the bubble at that point is about 6 light-years in diameter, but I think that must be mistaken – it should be 4 light-years in diameter at that point.  Via APOD, of course.

Obama Worshipper – Not!

Reading today's Day-by-Day cartoon strip, you definitely get the feeling that Obama is not a President that cartoonist Chris Muir looks up to.  An excerpt from the character's dialog:

The massive corruption, the transfer of our wealth to themselves and their cronies, the endless vacations, golf trips, parties, a private jet for their dog, the sheer hypocrisy of it all!

Clinton at least pretended there was any kind of law, but Obama truly is the example of the self-stroking ego of the boomers.

Wow.  Not a fan, Mr. Muir...

Cain Out...

Watching what's happened to him, my constant thought was “Is it any wonder that good, normal folks don't want to run for elected office?”

I have no desire to run for any elective office.  I'm certain I'd make a terrible politician.  But if I did want to run for office, the crap that candidates must endure (whether justified or not) is not something I would ever sign up for.  I don't know about you, but I know about me: my life has been far from perfect, and there are a great many things I've been responsible for that I regret.  They've also made me a better man.  But there's no way I'd offer my life up for the kind of scrutiny (and potentially false accusations, as if the true ones weren't enough!) that a candidate like Herman Cain had to endure.

You have my deepest sympathy, Mr. Cain.  I have no idea what kind of a president you would have made – and our corrupt, low-substance political process has unfortunately ensured that I never will...

On that Drop in the Unemployment Rate...

The “unexpected” drop in the unemployment rate (from 9.0% to 8.6%) isn't quite what it seems like.  More than half of that drop was caused by a drop in the “participation rate”.  What's that?  It's the main fudge factor used by the government to dress up the widely reported overall unemployment statistic – it's one of the “adjustments” they make to the largely unreported raw unemployment number.  This adjustment removes those people the government believes have permanently removed themselves from the ranks of those looking for work – including those who the government believes (or asserts) have permanently given up on the idea that they will ever be able to find a job.  This oh-so-conveniently gives the government a tool to make the widely reported number look better than the raw number.

Me, I think that person who gave up (assuming they really did) is just as much unemployed as the person who hasn't given up – and they should be reported as part of the overall unemployment number.  But I'm a well-known crank about such things...

Accessible ClimateGate 2.0 Summary...

Stephen Hayward (an excellent commentator in general) has a great piece up at the Weekly Standard summarizing his findings upon reading about a third of the ClimateGate 2.0 document trove.  There will be more, but in the meantime this is a very easy to understand summary (even for those not familiar with the ClimateGate brouhaha) of just why ClimateGate 2.0 is so disturbing...

Ode to the Incandescent Lamp...

I detest the light emitted by fluorescent lamps (including the very best CFLs) and by the top-notch LED lamps.  Even more, I detest the loss of freedom that occurs when the government takes away a choice of mine.  I like incandescent lighting, and I'm willing to pay extra to get it.  I just placed an order for a stockpile of 100 watt and 250 watt lamps, and I will use them with pleasure until we run out of them.  By then I'm hoping that either new technology for broad-spectrum lighting will be available, or the nanny statism we're current suffering under will be reversed, or that there will be an established black market for incandescents.  Meanwhile, I can entirely sympathize with the viewpoint expressed here:





By the way, Reason magazine is one of the very few periodicals I still subscribe to. I get the same sort of joy from its arrival that the heroin addict gets when his next nickel bag is in his hands...

Awesome!

Just Disgraceful...

More about the internal bumblings of the Justice Department on the “Fast & Furious” project.  One can't help but observe the silence of the lamestream media on this scandal – compared with the trumpeting that would be happening if it were a Republican administration.  Here we have bureaucratic screw-ups that killed American citizens, and the general public, for the most part, doesn't even know they occurred...

Airless Tires...

Bridgestone is working on them...

Most Popular Tools...

For web designers, that is, in a nice infographic (click the thumbnail below for something you can read).

Mission Impossible: Squirrel Edition...

A Little Maine Humor...

Via my mom, who says:

This actually happened with some guys from Maine.

They dressed the truck up with the guy dummy spread eagle on the roof.

The driver and passenger put on Moose Heads.

Down the Maine Toll interstate they went causing about 16 accidents.

They went to jail.

Personally, I don't think that's an accurate account of events.  The Mainiacs I know would never convict these guys of a crime...

Go, Miki, Go!

Debbie and Miki had six runs in agility competition this past weekend.  This time we go them all on video!

On the Nature of Science...

Daniel Botkin has an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal...

Hide the Decline: Even Worse than We Thought!

Steve McIntyre finds some new evidence showing that to enhance the “hockey stick” nature of their temperature graph, Mann et al deleted 20 more years of data than we had previously believed.  Truly this is shameful behavior on the part of these scientists – and arguably even more shameful on the cover-up of it...