what genre book should I be given for self-help with my generalized anxiety disorder?
Dune.
I occasionally used the Litany Against Fear to manage anxiety back when I was a teenager. (This despite never finishing the book. I did quite like the Litany Against Fear, though, even if the Bene Gesserit creeped me the heck out.)
A bit of Amazon history I haven't seen anyone mention:
Back in 2002, there was a kerfluffle over Amazon carrying pro-pedophilia books. I think this probably started with Judith Levine's respectable (if controversial) book Harmful to Minors, but shortly after getting all bent out of shape over that, some people noticed that there were some honest-to-God pro-pedophilia books listed on Amazon, including Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers.
This was largely a controversy on the conservative blogs, I think; I knew about it because it also got heavily discussed on parenting message boards. Specifically the "boylovers" one -- I mean, people were not fans of Judith Levine but no one was calling for her to be censored. There were definitely people who thought the boylovers book ought to be pulled from Amazon.
Amazon actually got sued over this. I don't know if this lawsuit went anywhere at all; I'm guessing not, since I didn't find anything about this beyond "USJF sues Amazon."
After all this, Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers is still on Amazon.
It's there, but despite the most utterly neutral category metadeta you could ask for (sociology/general, sociology/marriage & family) and a handful of not terribly inflammatory tags (boylove, boys, and damaging -- one iteration of each), that books has no sales ranking. So while I think the "books were delisted based on metadata" theory is really likely, it wasn't JUST metadata. Clearly some books were delisted by hand.
Harmful to Minors -- also de-ranked, despite its wonkish, scholarly metadata.
I would be really curious to know how long those books have been unlisted -- whether it goes back to 2002 or 2003, or whether it's more recent.
I'm bringing this up NOT because I think there's any comparison between books about "boylovers" and any of the books that have been mentioned in the last day, from Lady Chatterly's Lover to the Drag Queen of Elfland (never mind Heather Has Two Mommies). But, I do wonder if it was that controversy in 2002 that made them realize that they could avoid a lot of trouble by making certain things harder to find. And this makes me wonder if USJF are the right-wing villains behind this latest set of problems, or if this was pre-emptive stupidity rather than stupidity in response to other stupidity.
@26 said: One obvious moral: if you have backwards-facing child seat, use the front seat. The airbag isn't going to do any damage then.
I wanted to post to say that this is not correct: a rear-facing child seat hit by an airbag can collapse and kill the kid. This is a life-threatening solution.
Also, to add to the human hacks that have already been suggested (putting your purse / briefcase / coat / lunch / phone in the back seat), you can also buy a little mirror to attach to the rear window with suction cups so that you can see your baby's face in your rear-view mirror (and your baby can see you). These are not entirely safe either, as they will come loose in an accident and become a hazardous flying missile. (As will anything else that's loose in the car, from your briefcase to your dog, FYI.)
The fundamental problem with any human hack is that it requires the human to admit their own fallibility. I really like the idea of building something into car seat buckles that communicates with a gadget on your key fob. So each time you turn off your car, the fob will say, "Your child is in the back seat," or if you get a certain number of feet away it will say "your child is in the car," or whatever. One problem that would need to be solved: parents often trade off who drives the kid around, and it would be important that my fob not start randomly going off as my husband drives the kid to school.
If there were a sexbot which was a better deal than low-end prostitutes, the world would probably be a much better place.
I am sure that there are people who go to prostitutes because they want sexual stimulation with no requirement to shower first, initiate pleasant conversation, etc., who would be delighted by a well-constructed sexbot.
However, there are also absolutely people who go to prostitutes (especially the low-end sort) because they get a sexual thrill from having a human being they can degrade and abuse. I don't think a sexbot would do it for most of these people; they would still seek out human prostitutes, and the more desperate, the better.
James @9, is there a particular plan you think Bligh would've followed that would have resulted in all those divorced, irate first class passengers?
Scott @18:
it was my understanding that pilots in airspace controlled by... ground control... do what they're told.
It has been a while since I saw the movie, but the way the bad guys engineer the crash is not to cause a mid-air collision, but to cause a plane to crash into the ground by sending false information to its altimeter. Immediately after seeing the movie, I e-mailed my friend who works in aviation to ask if this was in any way possible, and he confirmed what I would have assumed, which is that a plane's altimeter does not rely on ground control for its data, and even if it did, the scenario in the movie required a completely brain-dead pilot. (Maybe Rayford Steele was in the cockpit?)
I looked up a summary just now (it's Die Hard 2, if you're curious) and this reminded me of the other thing that drove me crazy: there are all these planes in holding patterns, acting like the only thing they could possibly do is to continue to circle Dulles. Rather than diverting to -- say -- Washington National.
Many movies do not hold up well on close inspection but when the big explosions fail to distract me from the huge problems, they're doing it wrong.
I was a professional tech writer when this movie came out, and my favorite thing about it was that an unseen technical writer saves the day: the President is able to figure out how to use the cell phone because he reads the manual. Why anyone would carry their cell phone instruction booklet around with them is not explained.
I also have fond memories of the Future Postmaster General fax scene.
As for the rest of the movie, you just can't stop to think about any of it or it falls apart. At least it makes more sense than the Die Hard movie where the terrorists are supposedly crashing planes by feeding incorrect information from ground control, but that's setting the bar really, really low.
Leigh @30: We did the only thing we could, which was to stand in her line of sight, keep her talking, and try to be comforting presences, until the firemen got there with the Jaws of Life.
I've described this accident here before, but: my sister was in a terrible car accident in 2001. Afterwards, in her panicky, adrenaline-charged daze, she was convinced she needed to get out to seek out help. She did not know that her neck was broken in two places.
Someone stopped his car, came running, told her to stop trying to move, and then held her hand and kept her calm until 911 arrived.
Her neck was broken, but the nerves stayed intact, and after three months in a halo vest, she was back to normal rather than adjusting to life as a ventilated quadriplegic (one of the broken vertebrae was C2) or a paraplegic with partial hand functionality (the other one was C7).
Never underestimate the value of just being there to reassure someone.
If it were me:
I would dial 911 on my cell while running towards the pedestrian. I would expect that other people would be getting out of their cars; if one of them had actual medical training, I would let them deal with the pedestrian and I would check on the people in the cars or, if there seemed to be multiple people with more first aid training than me, I would work on directing traffic, running to get things requested by the people who knew what they were doing, etc.
If I was the Most Qualified Person On Scene (is there a term for that?) I would instruct any other helpful bystanders to check on the people in the cars but NOT move them, to tell them to stay put and wait for the ambulance, and I would go to the pedestrian. I would check airway and breathing, apply direct pressure to any serious bleeding (and hold their hand if no direct pressure was needed), cover the person with my coat if I had one, reassure them that everything would be okay, and wait for the ambulance.
Alas, I would probably not remember that I have a first aid kit (complete with gloves) in the back of my car until I was trying to control the bleeding of a stranger with my ungloved hands.
I would not try to hold c-spine. I looked at the instructions and diagram Jim posted before and it's simply not clear to me what to do -- also, I have a hand tremor, and it gets worse under stress. I would fear that I would cause damage rather than preventing it.
When the ambulances showed up I would get the hell out of the way and let the professionals take over. I would answer questions if anyone had any for me, and then I would use my cell phone to call a friend or relative to pick me up, because there is no way in hell I would be in any shape to drive.
Wash your hands (in known good water) after using the toilet and before preparing food.
The "known good water" part strikes me as impractical in many places where the water is likely to be unsafe. As a college student, I spent a semester in Nepal, where all the water can be safely assumed to be fecally contaminated. (Unless you are standing on top of Mount Everest, you are downstream from other people.) I did not drink anything that hadn't been boiled or treated with iodine, but I didn't have the luxury of treating my wash-water, especially as boiling water required firewood in most parts of the country, and deforestation was a huge problem already. The UV water treatment gadgets they make for hikers may have improved the situation, but honestly, worrying about wash-water has always struck me as a recipe for driving yourself nuts while traveling in a developing country. Do you also worry about the water that falls on your face while you're showering? About the water your dishes were washed in? I would go ahead and embrace paranoia if I were in an area that was experiencing a cholera epidemic, but while traveling in South Asia as a student I stuck with normal precautions (don't drink or brush teeth with untreated water, cook vegetables or choose fruits and veggies with a nice thick peel, tea is your friend) and beyond that, trusted in the protection of (a) my knowledge of how to orally rehydrate myself if I got sick and (b) my well-nourished privileged first-world immune system.
My uncle had an occlusive stroke in the late 1980s, when he was 35 years old. He realized while sitting at his desk one day that he'd lost feeling in one of his legs, and the numbness was spreading. He called 911, and was able to crawl to the door to unlock it; by the time they arrived, he could no longer move or speak.
He was active, a non-smoker, and had no risk factors we knew of. He was just really unlucky.
The good luck started when he got to the hospital. The neurologist had just the previous month been to a medical conference, where he had gone to a presentation on a promising new treatment for stroke, tPA. The results were preliminary but very encouraging, aside from the fact that some of the patients died instead of recovering. The neurologist was willing to give it a try; my uncle was no longer able to consent to treatment, but they were able to reach his wife, who did; and they started treatment within the three-hour window.
The recovery was not instantaneous, but it was truly remarkable for the time, when the standard care was just to wait and hope for the best. I think he did take the fall semester off (he's a university professor) but he was teaching again by January. He felt like his speech was still a little slurred, so he arranged to have his classes videotaped and said he came out of it a better teacher.
My family still considers tPA a wonder drug.
There was a book
my husband read recently (the title is slipping my mind, but it's
current and fairly popular). When he requested it from the library, he
noticed that about 80% of their copies were listed as being "At
Bindery." The book itself had no dust jacket, but had a cut-out in the cover itself (star-shaped, IIRC). When his copy arrived, we took a look at how the cover
was put together and noted that it was funky looking but quite possibly
the most impractical design we'd ever seen for a hardcover book. The pointy bits of the cut-out had clearly gotten snagged on things several times, and the whole cover looked like it would be coming apart soon.
At least here the overlapping die-cut bits and pieces and be slipped
wholesale into the plastic wrapping libraries put on all their dust
jackets.
Mukasey promised to review any "coercive interrogation techniques" used by U.S. intelligence operatives once confirmed.
In Malcolm Nance's article linked in #16, Nance says, "As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception."
If Mukasey were planning to "review" this interrogation technique by arranging to have SERE waterboard him under the controlled conditions they use when training their instructors, I might take his promise more seriously.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 4 |
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| 2007 | 1 |
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