Today looks to be typical
Scanning the news, doing the fewest possible household chores consistent with human decency, buying minimal groceries, sifting through further proceedings in People v. Santana, Vasquez and then writing it all up and posting it.Yup, it looks like a more or less typical day is shaping up for me. [Insert yawn here.]
But first some news items I found interesting today:
If you hoard stuff, you could be sick – really, really sick
A new book, "Stuff," is out that explores this hitherto unexamined, What?, mental illness, condition, quirk?
Looking around my room it dawns on me. I might suffer from it. Do you suppose there is any way I can wangle some kind of disability insurance out of it?
"Six million to fifteen million Americans suffer from hoarding that causes them distress or interferes with their ability to live," authors Randy Frost and Gail Steketee write."You may have noticed some of the signs but have never thought of it as hoarding. . . . The attachments to objects among people who hoard are not much different from the attachments all of us form to our things."
The writers here take the position that hoarding is an actual physical and neurological condition that may be related to OCD or autism or Asperger's syndrome, not a simple bad habit that can be cured by an afternoon spent in the company of a clutter organizer. It is not a symptom of a lax character or bad work habits or something that reading a few articles in popular women's magazines can mitigate.
The authors are refreshingly uncertain about what the causes of hoarding might be; it certainly seems to cluster in families. It might be the result of a genetic condition, but whatever it is, it's serious and should be approached in a serious manner. Hoarders who are suddenly and unfeelingly stripped of their possessions -- whether they be grand pianos or gum wrappers -- may become suicidal. Even more sobering is the likelihood that there is no easy or sure-fire treatment. After things have been cleaned up around them, hoarders very often fill up their empty dwellings again.More at: Washington Post
Please, doc, tell me when I will die and from what
An apparently healthy man has become the first person in the world to be prescribed a medicine based on an analysis of his genome, the entire set of genes that he inherited from his parents.
Stephen Quake, 40, a professor of bioengineering at the Stanford School of Medicine in California, has started treatment with a statin, the drug to reduce cholesterol, despite his relative youth, after researchers who assessed his chances of developing 55 conditions warned him he was at increased risk of a heart attack.
The development heralds a brave new world for medicine, in which patients will for the first time be offered personal risk analyses predicting their chances of developing dozens of diseases, and their responses to different drugs, based on a study of their genetic make-up.
But it also raises difficult ethical questions over how much patients will want to know, the harm that may be caused by information they can do nothing about and the cost of providing and explaining such highly complex data.
Last summer, Professor Quake deciphered his entire genome for less than $50,000 (£33,000), a fraction of the cost incurred by earlier pioneers who numbered no more than a dozen.More at: The Independent/UK
Hawking’s advice on aliens: shut up, blend in
The hunt for intelligent species outside Earth may be a staple of literature and film – but it is happening in real life, too.Nasa probes are on the lookout for planets outside our solar system, and astronomers are carefully listening for any messages being beamed through space. How awe-inspiring it would be to get confirmation that we are not alone in the universe, to finally speak to an alien race. Wouldn't it?
Well no, according to the eminet physicist Stephen hawking. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," Hawking has said in a forthcoming documentary made for the Discovery Channel. He argues that, instead of trying to find and communicate with life in the cosmos, humans would be better off doing everything they can to avoid contact….
If we were really worried about shouting in the stellar jungle, [Seti Institute’s Seth] Shostak says, the first thing to do would be to shut down the BBC, NBC, CBS and the radars at all airports. Those broadcasts have been streaming into space for years – the oldest is already more than 80 light years from Earth – so it is already too late to stop passing aliens watching every episode of Big Brother or What Katie and Peter Did Next.More at: The Guardian/UK
Also of interest:
Daily Beast picks nation's most corrupt professions
Radio Mafia: All your favorites, all the time
Arthur Mercante: He made champs and unmade them
posted by Tom Nadeau at 4:35 AM
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