inkbluesky

Music may help ease symptoms of depression

Music therapy might help ease the symptoms of depression, though its effectiveness as a stand-alone intervention is not certain, according to a recent review of five small studies.

Four of the studies found reduced depression symptoms in participants receiving music therapy compared to those who did not. The fifth study did not find any difference.

Because the of the various and inconsistent ways the music was used - some patients listened while painting, some while engaged in other activities, they did not find a definitive cause and effect, only a correlation. Still it does seem that many patients liked the idea of music being incorporated into their treatment. For someone severely depressed to take an interest is a good indication that those providing the therapy have found a way to engage the person, a good first step. Perhaps solving Rob’s dilemma from High Fidelity, which came first the music or the misery.

tulip harvest

Those people 

Pittinsky’s research suggests that negative and positive attitudes are not opposite ends of a spectrum, but at least partially independent - that all the tolerance training in the world would not instill affection for a group. Pittinsky’s investigations - conducted among diverse populations in the Middle East, New England, and elsewhere - suggest a novel approach to transforming relations among social groups.

Instead of merely training people to hate each other less, Pittinsky says, it may be time to teach them to like each other more.

“Would you want to be tolerated?” Pittinsky says. “The synonyms are even worse - to endure, to put up with. . . .We can and must do better than tolerance.”

Sounds like a concept that I would have latched on to in my teens, maybe even college, but I’m at the stage where I’d  settle for everyone just gritting their teeth and putting down that AK-47.

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you’re getting this down.” ~ Woody Allen

broken wall 

Bid to gain pardons for ‘witches’ 

It is thought some 4,000 people, mainly women, were prosecuted and often put to death for witchcraft.

The last Witchcraft Act conviction was in 1944 when Scottish medium Helen Duncan was imprisoned for allegedly disclosing World War II secrets.

She told a seance a warship had sunk before the news had been released.

If you predicted that a ship was sunk in 1944 your prediction was bound to come true. Duncan might well have been insulted that some people are claiming that its ridiculous to call her a witch and having the powers that one presumes go along with being a witch. So in a strange way pardoning her does an injustice to what she believed herself to be. Government bodies on the other hand have no business promoting witchcraft as a serious phenomenon worthy of prosecution on behalf of the people.

Man Saves His Trash For The Entire Year

The 35-year-old Berkeley caterer said he has saved every piece of trash he has generated over the past year to see how much garbage one person creates. In his case, it was about 96 cubic feet.

Once in a while I’ll forget trash day and end up with two weeks worth of trash and I thought that was bad. If he mad each cubic foot into an actual block and piled one on the other he’d have a pile almost 30 meters high. The container below is 27 meters long. Note the size of people by comparison.

old growth forest

Mark Halperin a journalist(?) at Time magazine gives advice on how to attack Senator Barack Obama,

5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use. 6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama. … 11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

Inspired by the obviously high journalistic standards of Mr. Halperin a clever commenter at The Nation climed in with his own suggestions,

#12 he’s a black panther

#13 he eats with chopsticks

#14 he plans to grow an afro once in the white house

#15 all federal employees will be made to wear dashikis.

#17 - Once shot a man in Reno…just to watch him die!

# 23 - He’ll get you, my pretty…and your little dog too!

# 24 - He’s done far worse than kill you. He’s hurt you. And he wishes to go on… hurting you. He shall leave you as you left him, as you left her. Marooned for all eternity, in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive… buried alive.

#31 he’s a HIP-HOPER

#32 he’s off to see the wizard

#33 he wears ruby slippers to bed.

Stories of the macabre. The short version is that there are basically two groups of people that need in one case and want in another, skin grafts. The ones that need the skin grafts are burn victims or others that have been disfigured in accidents. The other group is composed of people that need a little cosmetic touch up. Some of those cases deserve some sympathy as we certainly live in a society where appearances mater, but ethics sometimes requires prioritizing. People whose lives are in danger deserve priority over the cosmetic cases, unless you’re  Steve Kirby, a venture capitalist with a large stake in Collagenesis Inc., a company that makes a bigger profit on selling skin to cosmetic surgeons then to hospitals treating burn victims. Steve is being courted by the Republican Party of South Dakota to run for Senate. He does seem to have the traditional Republican set of values.

orange transitions wallpaper 

i’m somewhat illustrator disabled especially once adobe went to CS2 and CS3 so i made the above by placing the eps file in photoshop and playing around with it there. These folks at The Mixed Media group at flickr are decidedly not disabled in their creative endeavors using bits of vectors, photos and whatever in the mix.