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News Briefs 02-12-2010

By red pill junkieon

December is finally here, boys & gals! Better start twittering those gift lists to @santaclaus

  • NASA’s ET life news embargo broken? (It’s arsenic life). Damn you Wikileaks for setting a bad example!!
  • [VIDEO] At first, police mocked the 911 call about the UFO sighting–but then they saw it too.
  • New study finds that alternative treatments lead to “poor outcomes” for asthma sufferers –I beg to differ: homeopathy cured *my* asthma.
  • Computer game makes you a genetic scientist –be sure to thank Tetris when you accept your Nobel prize.
  • Authenticity of Teotihuacan’s Malinaltepec mask verified.
  • [VIDEO] Dr. Brian Hare, apostle of the bonobos, says there’s a lot we can learn from our indecent cousins.
  • Look out Japanese whalers: here comes Gojiraaaaa!
  • Image of the day: the ‘eye of God’. Looks more like the ‘sphincter of God’…
  • Bugs so WTF weird they look as if taken out from a Dali painting (H/T Boing Boing).
  • Just what exactly constitutes “mental illness” nowadays?
  • We’ve all suffered the slowness of snail-mail, but have you ever heard of snail-telegraph? Now THAT is what I call steampunk!
  • “Botox Shmotox!” says Jeff Bridges. There’s no better place to rejuvenate the looks than Dr. Tron’s clinic.
  • Binnall of America kick-starts season six with Conspiracy Czar Jim Marrs, discussing his book The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy [Amazon US & UK] –alternative title: Zombi Nation.
  • Heads: they win; tails: they keep the coin. Winner-Take-All Politics tries to explain the broadening gap chasm between the rich & poor in America [Amazon US & UK].
  • From RPJ’s Xmas gift ideas for 2010: Seven dwarfs PEZ dispenser set, & C-3PO tape dispenser.

Thanks Greg.

Quote of the Day:

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

Miguel de Cervantes(*), The Man of La Mancha

(*) The fictional character, not the historical figure.

red pill junkie
Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the 'moron' part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or 'paranormal' --a term he personally detests... When he's not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City. absurdbydesign.com
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22 Comments

  1. Mental Illness
    And then there are transient or episodic bouts of mental illness such as my wife used to characterize her menstrual periods which drove her crazy. There is also alcoholic intoxication and the subsequent hangover both of which present as mental illness. Getting really high on strong pot can often present as mental illness. Stress can make people mentally ill. Bereavement can make people mentally ill. There are so many things that can and do upset the fragile vessel of our brains that perhaps the terminology of psychic disorder needs to evolve, and mental illness should be considered a common condition and perhaps something that makes us human or rather makes us animal. Pets are according to our crude definitons perpetually mentally ill, but it doesn’t seem to bother them much. Msny snimsls are obsessive/compulsive. It seems to confer adaptive advantage.
    One of the common maladies of the 1960’s and 70’s was to worry about whether or not one was mentally ill which brooding almost invariably initiated mental illness. Thank god for “Don’t worry – be happy” and “I’m ok – You’e ok” Shallow as these pop pronouncements were they at least gave people permission to be mentally ill and not obsess over it.

  2. Blind leading the blind
    Psychiatry does not know its toes from its teeth.
    With twenty different schools, all following their own exclusive
    doctrine without ever seeing that one should find the best treatment
    and not one based on what their particular hero advocates.
    The average psychiatric, neuronal, worker has never heard or cares
    about such people as Stanislav Grof, who have produced real testable
    results for 60 years.
    They prefer to work with the latest crazy notion, such as, washing
    ones feet in paraffin, cures schizophrenia.
    They know nothing and talk as if they know everything

  4. You’re mad
    Mental illness is really hard to define. There is a tendency now to view anyone who is not “normal” as being sick.

    But what about people who are better than normal? Some people are a lot more intelligent than normal, do they have mental illness? And if so, should it be treated to make them as dumb as the rest of us?

    There are school systems who discourage above-normal achievement by kids, because it leads to lack of socialization. Of course it does, the brilliant kids get bored with the rest of the class, and the rest of the class doesn’t understand them. Better socialization doesn’t mean the behaviour is healthy.

    Then we come to an approach that I disagree with (not being a mental health expert):
    [quote]
    It’s a behavior or pattern occurring in an individual, causing clinically significant distress or impairment, reflecting an underlying physical dysfunction, and is not primarily the result of social deviance or conflicts with society.
    [/quote]
    As it goes, this is not bad. But it leaves out a significant part:

    What if the problem in the individual arises from a sick society?

    Seems to me the assumption that society is healthy is often unwarranted. There are plenty of examples of societies that show (and still have) pathological behaviour, which they impose on individuals.

    Take the many examples of societies that suppress certain groups – women, children, blacks, asians, non-asians, Jews, people who wear glasses. Anyone can end up on the receiving side. And of course this isn’t just the past, this is the present in many places.

    In such sick societies the oppressed people often will show abnormal mental behaviour. But the oppressing class will too – who is sick in the oppressing class, those who participate, or those who don’t?

    I would suggest that the predominant, “normal” social influences make a lot of people mentally ill, in a biochemical sense.

        1. Flowers For Algernon
          When I was in college, I took a class on science fiction —yep, a college course in science fiction; just how cool is that?!— and the teacher let us read the short story Flowers For Algernon.

          I kind of feel that story might be pertinent for the present discussion on “mental illness”.

          If you haven’t read it yet. Here’s a Scribd link, in hoping you get the chance to do so. Not only is it a great story, but IMO it is one of the most ingenious use of language and grammatical structure in order to understand the mindset of a character,

  5. NASA: Life as we don’t know it

    In case you haven’t read it already, here’s a more updated article re. Nasa’s discovery

    And here are the little buggers:

    Not quite the "take me to your leader" seminal moment we’re still waiting for, but it’s an exciting discovery nonetheless.

    2. an opportunity
      Of course firstly it is evidence that chemistry other than the fundamentally orthodox stuff can work. It is a derivative of the orthodox, but still this is a first step.

      We also have an opportunity here – this could be the start of a profitable new religion.

      1. Or
        Or even new ways to profit from people’s fears and hypochondria:

        Is your house safe from arsenic-eating life forms?
        Are they in your tap water? in your bed sheets? in your blood?

        Order our screening test kit TODAY!

          1. Who knows?
            But the fact is that anything that’s new is potentially scary to people. And there’s no better commercial incentive than fear.

            In a society where there are people afraid of the fluoride that’s added to the water to prevent rotten teeth, you bet your butt someone could make a buck out of these “arsenites” —yeah, that’s a good marketing name right there! 🙂

          2. marketing
            Right, this is about marketing, not reality.

            Fear is pretty reliable as a marketing tool. We can sell arsenite prevention, arsenite removal tools, and arsenite insurance.

            Hey this can work!

          3. Yep
            All we need to do now is get us some mechanic jumpsuits, add to them a wrist patch, and find a cool-looking bag pack to carry around.

          4. fear mongering
            [quote=red pill junkie]But the fact is that anything that’s new is potentially scary to people. And there’s no better commercial incentive than fear.

            In a society where there are people afraid of the fluoride that’s added to the water to prevent rotten teeth, you bet your butt someone could make a buck out of these “arsenites” —yeah, that’s a good marketing name right there! :)[/quote]

            Oh yes without question! It is the only way the media can stuff information (misinformation?) into the minds of those who are “afraid of the fluoride,” for example. If it scares the sheep, they will make a move.

            So in other words, if IPhone want more buyers all it needs is to show them that they can watch this:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA
            …and everything will be fine 😉

    3. Arsenic-based life
      Apparently, this story didn’t resonate with the mainstream media. I regularly check the network news sites as well as several major newspaper sites daily, morning and afternoon, and I had to dig to find it.

      This is a major breakthrough in our understanding of the essential mechanisms of living organisms, but Brittany’s alleged abuse is apparently far more important to advancing our understanding of the universe around us.

      1. I hear ya
        Same thing happened with the finding of the 1st habitable exo-planet. Probably the same thing will repeat when Klatuu comes visit –unless Gort starts some nasty sh*t first to catch CNN’s attention.

  6. Interesting Post!
    Red Pill,

    The eye of god looks more like the sphincter of god; because, if there was a god, god would be a sphincter!:)

    The Malinatepec Mask is very interesting. Who do you think crafted it? Toltecs? Mayans? Other? I think that it is too old to be Aztec. I think that it might be Toltec.

    1. Teotihuacans
      The mask was originally crafted by Teotihuacans. It has the characteristic features of their art –wide “triangular” face with slanted horizontal eyes. The controversy around the mask started because it was decorated with small mosaics at a later period.

      This is interesting to consider because IMO it’s not often that archeologists would consider that an object created in an ancient time could be enhanced or altered at a later period –you know where I’m getting at here, dontcha? 😉

      As for the sphincter of God… it does not necessarily mean God is all sphincter –it would only confirm that we’ve always been in the worst receiving end of things 😛

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