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Click here to see the video.

Though the local time was 3pm, as I walked down the main corridor aboard Air Force One, it may as well have been the middle of the night given row after row of sleeping people.  This is officially day three of the President’s trip to Asia, and if our colleagues who travel ahead of us to get things set up (called the advance team) are to be believed, this is when the jet lag catches up with you. It gets better from here. 

Don’t tell that to David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to the President. When I arrive to set-up this taping, I find David hard at work along with Robert Gibbs in the Air Force One conference room. "Maybe I should do the taping after dinner? Should I even be eating dinner? What time is it?"

What time is it actually? A glance at almost any wall on the plane gives you three time zones to choose from, the most unsatisfactory is 4:30am Eastern Standard Time.

David’s eyes slide from the food tray to the beckoning computer, "We better do that taping now. Are you all set?"

Arun Chaudhary is the official White House videographer

News outlets covering the health reform debate noted that Republicans are continuing their arguments against Democratic legislation and outlined what might happen in the coming week in the Senate.

The Hill: “The latest push for Republican ideas for health reform was made Saturday by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who also used the GOP radio address to promote his own Senate candidacy. Kirk outlined core elements of Republicans’ health reform proposals in the address, arguing that the healthcare bill passed a week ago by the House would do little to reform the system, and result in higher taxes. ‘The Pelosi healthcare bill has no significant lawsuit reforms and does not guarantee your medical rights from government waiting lines or restrictions,’ Kirk said” (O’Brien, 11/14).

Chicago Tribune  “Kirk, one of nine Republican candidates seeking the Feb. 2 nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Rod Blagojevich Democratic appointee Sen. Roland Burris, contended his proposal aimed at curbing malpractice lawsuits and allow people to buy insurance across state lines was a ‘common sense’ approach to health care reform. ‘Unfortunately, all of these common sense Republican reforms were rejected by (House) Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi’” (Pearson, 11/14)

Related KHN story: The Debate Over Selling Insurance Across State Lines (Galewtiz, 11/8).

CQ HealthBeat reports on one controversial aspect of the House bill – whether people who didn’t buy health insurance would go to jail – and reports:  “In theory, it is possible under the House version of the health care overhaul bill — but likely would only happen in very rare circumstances, and only for those who willfully refuse to pay taxes assessed in the form of a penalty tax. ‘In actual implementation, I can’t believe anybody is going to go to jail over this’” said Linda J. Blumberg, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Urban Institute who’s closely followed the health debate. … The approach for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would be the same as with other delinquent tax filers who face the possibility they will wind up imprisoned if they refuse to pay and undergo criminal prosecution, said Ed Haislmeier, senior research fellow in health policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. ‘At the end of the day is it theoretically possible? Yes,’ said Haislmaier. But fewer than 100 convictions were obtained last year by the IRS for willful failure to pay taxes” (Norman, 11/13).

Meanwhile, Roll Call reports, “Senate leaders do not expect to receive an official cost estimate on their health care reform bill until sometime next week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is prepared to keep the Senate in session the week of Thanksgiving in order to get debate started on the measure before the holiday. Senate aides acknowledged that the Congressional Budget Office is not expected to produce a cost estimate of the bill on Friday as expected and that Reid is hoping to receive the score by Tuesday or Wednesday” (Pierce, 11/13).

CNN: “Reid won’t release the legislation until he knows the cost of the bill. He has been waiting nearly three weeks for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to return its score, or cost. Reid’s aides said they expect the CBO’s score any day. … Asked when Reid hopes the legislation will get to the president, Rodell Mollineau, one of Reid’s top communication staffers, said, ‘our goals remain unchanged. ‘We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that’” (Bash, Keck and Helton, 11/14).

The Associated Press: “The wait has been lengthy precisely because Reid is aiming to ensure that when the budget office releases its analysis it hits certain marks. The complex legislation, which Reid is taking a free hand in writing based on two committee-passed bills, must not exceed Obama’s specified price tag of $900 billion over 10 years, and it must not add to the deficit.”

“‘We’ve sent them a list of options; they raise questions. We answer them, we raise other questions, they answer them. The goal is to put together the best bill possible,’ Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Friday. ‘Senator Reid made a decision a while ago that he wants to get this right before taking it to the floor.’ Senators wanted more generous subsidies to help lower-income people afford insurance; Reid has weighed that. Making subsidies more generous or scaling back a tax on high-value insurance plans that’s unpopular with union members and some Democrats would require more money. Reid began considering a new Medicare payroll tax on people earning more than $250,000 a year, as The Associated Press first reported this week. CBO must do the math in response to each new idea from Reid, then redo it as Reid tweaks his proposals” (Werner, 11/14).

The blog reviewed here is ‘Psychotherapy Brown Bag. Discussing the Science of Clinical Psychology‘.

Appearance and Design

The background is white including in the title pane. The title pane features what looked to me like a series of progressively fading blue trees. However this might be a concrete interpretation. So they could also be letters (o, p and q) which is consistent with the image of a blog (words) or people with the tear drop shapes representing heads (so looking from above it would be a group of people huddled together) which would fit with psychology (maybe this is a variant of the Rorschach test!). Just below the title pane is an index – here the reader can navigate using the archives menu while there is also an ‘About Us’ and ‘Links’ section (amongst others) that can be accessed. The articles occupy the left two-thirds of the screen. On the right hand one-third of the screen there are a large number of features – a search bar, twitter, options, RSS feed icon, subscribe option, recent comments, recent posts and categories as well as adverts. At the end of the articles themselves there are a number of options including the ability to disseminate the articles using social media tools as well as a rating system.

Articles

The first article in the archives is from February 2009. A number of articles contain a number of references to the research literature, suporting the main arguments in the articles  themselves. Many of the articles give an overview of a topic (e.g. Distress Tolerance in Problematic Behaviours). In an article on binge eating, Anestis explains the diagnosis in more detail and also includes links to a number of books on the subject. In this article, he explores impulsivity in detail. The authors cover current research, discussing studies in detail. For instance in this article, there is a discussion of a study looking at an interesting (almost abstract) computerised therapy for social anxiety which showed promising results. Indeed there is a series of articles on online treatment approaches for different conditions (e.g. insomnia). Michael Anestis, doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, writes two interesting articles on dialectical behavioural therapy and explains how this can be used with a mindfulness-based approach (see here and here). The authors also look at the use of approaches to specific contexts  (e.g. see this article). A number of the articles address commonly posed questions such as this article on why group data is useful for informing individual therapeutic approaches. In an article about a related topic, Anestis addresses the role of clinical intuition versus actuarial approaches to decision making. A number of articles such as this one on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder look at changes that might take place in DSM-V.

Conclusions

The ‘Psychotherapy Brown Bag’ blog is in my opinion an excellent resource for those wanting to learn more about different forms of psychotherapy both from an experiential and more prominently an evidence-based perspective. The authors have written a number of very interesting and useful articles on pragmatic issues and have utilised a systematic approach in doing so. They also intersperse these articles with commentaries on contemporary issues for instance news stories reported in the media.

Twitter

You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link

Podcast

You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast).

Responses

If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail [email protected]

Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists Podcast series has a new podcast featuring an interview with Dr Simon Moore, a clinical psychologist based in the Cardiff School of Dentistry who was involved in a longitudinal study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in which there was found to be a significant association between ‘excessive’ childhood consumptions of confectionary and conviction for violent crime by age 34 (available here). Moore suggested a number of mechanisms including impulsivity and delayed gratification that could account for this association.

On a slightly related note I also watched one of the recent Horizon series which is available here (see restrictions however) titled ‘Why do we talk?’.  Although obviously not a podcast, I thought this was a very interesting episode which looked at the development of and origins of language. The episode features a researcher who has captured footage of his child learning to talk and is in the process of analysing a considerably large data-set. An example was given of the child gradually shaping the words ga ga into water. They also include footage of EEG activity in a baby while the mother speaks and there is also a brief interview with Noam Chomsky who proposed that language is innate. I was surprised to see footage of animals including dogs vocalising and to see that the position of the laryngeal apparatus was changed during the vocalisation process thus countering the prominent suggestion that humans are able to speak because their laryngeal apparatus is found inferior to the placement in other species. This apparently increases the range of movements that are available but increases the risk of choking (also the larynx is higher in human babies although it has been suggested that this doesn’t significantly reduce the range of available movements – also in the same article there is the suggestion that the larynx descended as far back as 600,000 years ago in Homo Heidelbergensis). The result of this evidence is that there is likely to be another explanation for humans having language and not chimpanzees for example. This means that the explanation is most likely to be found in the central nervous system. In this regards they also talk to some of the researchers and subjects who were involved in the research that led to the discovery of the FOXP2 gene which has been implicated in a number of conditions. Indeed only recently there was found to be a difference between the behaviours of the human and chimpanzee gene products at the cellular level. This has also been an area of interest in the study of Neanderthals where the version has been found to be the same as in humans and is intriguing in light of recent suggestions that Neanderthals and humans interbred although it is still unclear if there was any contribution to the modern human gene pool. There was then an interview with an autistic man with quite remarkable language abilities having learnt over 20 languages. During the interview he is observed learning a number of words from a new language (to him) and does this effortlessly and the researcher suggests that this in some way relates to an ability to master the rules of language although this is an entire topic in itself. There is also a fascinating look at a male finch that was reared separately from other members of its group and learnt to produce a rudimentary song. What was interesting here was that when the offspring was reared together but away from other members of the group that were able to produce full songs, they were able to improve their songs with time and were soon producing complex songs familiar to their species. This reminded me of one of Steve Pinker’s books on language in which he described how children were able to develop creole language without the intervention of adults. This seems to be consistent with Chomsky’s theory of an innate grammar. I thought this was an excellent episode which drew together many different lines of investigation to shed light on human language.

Twitter

You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link

Podcast

You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast).

Responses

If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail [email protected]

Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

Click here to see the video.

While getting ready to do this taping with Jon Favreau, the President’s Chief Speechwriter, my Blackberry was buzzing in my pocket, carrying new instructions for a motorcade movement, pushed up by over 2 hours. What was going to a leisurely stroll to find the perfect location for our Japan update, became a scramble to secure a suitable section of the lobby.

Ever thought of taking Isaac’s plasma cutter into an online match to see who’s better at Dead Space’s strategic dismemberment concept? If an Electroni…

Read translations of the President’s speech in Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese or Korean. 

For some, our relationship with the nations of Asia may not always be at the forefront of their minds.  The President’s sweeping speech at Suntory Hall in Tokyo was a powerful argument for why that should not be so.  Indeed the President noted that to the extent this attitude has been reflected in our government’s neglect of the emerging multilateral organizations in the region, this mistake would not be made again: "I know that the United States has been disengaged from many of these organizations in recent years. So let me be clear:  Those days have passed."  The rapid pace of development on virtually every front in Asia creates an environment of almost endless opportunity for collaboration and innovation through our ties.

Long gone are the days when 10GB of hard disk were more than plenty for any average user. Today’s computer user can’t get enough even with 500GB of hard disk storage, given all the free information and documentation one can find on the Internet. And if you add some more to the mix of data, one thing is for sure: you can never have a large enough hard disk.

One downside to large storage devices filled with information is that finding what you need may become a much more time consuming task than you anticipated. This is one situation when TheSearchMan may come in handy. It is a small-weight software (only 35 kb in size) designed to help you find the data you need in no time.

Moreover, the application is free to use, which is really a big plus, and doesn’t need any fancy installation. You just unzip the program in a specific location and it’s good to go. But this does not mean that it is portable and you can carry it on a portable device to use on just any computer.

TheSearchMan comes with a single requirement and that refers to the fact that you must have the .NET Framework 3.5 installed on your system. We’ve tested it on Windows 7 and it works very well thus proving itself Win 7 compatible.

The first thing that you will most probably observe when opening TheSearchMan is that its interface is ver… (read more)

Created by the design firm STORM of London, the Circuit MK2 is an LED watch integrated into a stainless steel bracelet. While it looks like it might have a bit of a learning curve, it definitely has a unique look that should stand out from your standard analog dial or digital display.

It’s a fairly basic watch, there’s no chronograph functionality (obviously) but it does display the time and date. Sure it’s not quite as bling as a Tokyoflash watch, but this one you might actually be able to read. Retail price starts at $200.

The Prime Minister has said the Government will focus on building a “stronger, fairer Britain” during the Queen’s speech next week.

• Listen to the podcast
• Transcript: PM podcast on Queen’s Speech

On Wednesday, the Queen will outline the Government’s legislative plan for the next parliamentary session which will include details of plans for health, job creation and tackling crime and terrorism.

In a podcast released today, the PM said:

“This is a difficult period for our country. But Britain has a bright future; one I’m optimistic about and which I believe can be one not of austerity, but progress, and one where all the people of Britain move forward together.”

Gordon Brown outlined plans to reduce Government borrowing and encourage growth through targeted investment that creates jobs and builds a “modern, green infrastructure” for the digital age.

He also outlined plans for a “transformation” of financial sector policing, where consumers are able to take collective action to hold banks to account.

Mr Brown added that credit card companies would be banned from encouraging people to borrow more than they can realistically afford.

On public services, the PM said:

“A better Britain means world class public services underpinned by guarantees not gambles. So we are moving to a system where patients, parents and local communities have enforceable rights over the services they receive – and front line staff have more freedom to shape the service they give.”

We will have more coverage of the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday, 18 November.

Aksys Games has announced a release window for Record of Agarest War, an SRPG developed by Compiled Heart, RED Entertainment, and Idea Factory. They a…

Why? Just because. This looks like an amazing game. Nicholas will have a review up tomorrow.

via ConsoleNintendo

When the Motorola Droid launched this month everyone was amazed that a company so down on its luck was able to put together a well-designed phone running a powerful, “brand new” OS. The whole package – hardware, software, and marketing – seemed flawless. In fact, phones running Android 1.5 now look hopelessly outdated and with 2.0’s gesture, CDMA, and search support you’d wonder why handset manufacturers like HTC, LG, Kyocera, and Samsung are using 1.5 at all.

The reasons have more to do with Google than any decision on the carriers’ part. In fact, according to a source close to the handset business, Google’s Android team directly assisted Motorola and Verizon in building the Droid’s software from the ground up and is currently assisting another, unknown, handset maker in Korea to create a finely-tuned hardware and software combination. Most important, however, is that this is sort of assistance most manufacturers do not receive and, in the end, they are dinged for running an “older” version of Android.

These two bits of information – that Google assists certain companies in making specialized hardware and software and that Google is now helping another manufacturer to the detriment of others – sounds like sour grapes. However, the original vision for Android (as it was understood by lay users like myself) was an open, free OS available to multiple manufacturers and carriers. This preferential treatment is an anathema to that thought. This is akin to Linus Torvalds building a special version of Linux just for a commercial partner and refusing to release it until that partner has milked its value.

While it is clear that some manufacturers like HTC are keeping a stiff upper lip and running their special special UIs over 1.5, reviewers consistently ding manufacturers for running 1.5 while the Droid is given a pass.

And 2.0 matters. We asked Ross Rubin from the NPD Group about his thoughts on 2.0 and got back a half a book:

Android 2.0 brings refinement and more integration to the operating system, Examples include support for Microsoft Exchange and Facebook, which are the digital contact centers of many people’s professional and social lives. It also brings a revamped and much faster browser, albeit one that Google isn’t yet deriving from Chrome. The other big application improvement is Google Navigation, which it has introduced as a free service on top of Maps. Many carriers, including Verizon, charge for such functionality in other devices. Google is aggressively driving a major update while Microsoft is between major revisions of Windows Mobile.

We asked him why he thought Motorola got 2.0 early. He wrote:

As to why it debuted on a Motorola device, there could be several reasons. Verizon’s subscriber strength and more direct competition with AT&T and the iPhone may have led it to push for Android 2.0 to be more competitive. Or it could be simple product development timetables. Moving forward, HTC will want to put its Sense user experience on top of Android 2.0, which requires development time. Google wants a healthy Android ecosystem and a competitive Motorola contributes to that.

While this desire is absolutely understandable on Google’s part, there is a method to this madness. Google releases major updates on one handset and one handset alone. These updates are then pushed out to other android partners. Case in point:

• 1.0 went to the HTC G1

• 1.5 went to the HTC Hero
• 2.0 went to Motorola

In short, they offer exclusivity to a certain partner in exchange to unfettered access to the design process which, in Motorola’s case, was gravely needed.

Why is there no outcry? Handset manufacturers are deathly afraid of Google. They worry that they will be cut out of the upgrade process and lose access to Google’s Android team.

What needs to be done? In the interest of fairness, all updates should roll out to the general ecosystem before heading to any one carrier. Sadly, this hippie attitude is no good for Google’s business and by creating flagship devices featuring their latest and greatest they ensure forward momentum for the platform. Fairness, it seems, stops at the grade school sandbox.

Again, you can take this as a complaint or a call to action. Android is an excellent platform but Google’s tendency towards “flagship” phones is detrimental to the general ecosystem, especially once the OS falls in along with RIM and Apple as a preeminent smartphone platform.

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your content on third-party sites if those sites ceased to exist? You may own your content on them as it stands now, but what if they went away? 

Would you be ok if your tweets or your status updates disappeared? Discuss here.

You may recall earlier this year when URL-shortening service Tr.im announced it was going to shut down and sparked a big discussion about what happens to all of these links if such a service just decides it doesn’t want to exist anymore. It is an interesting discussion, and it ultimately led to Tr.im having a change of heart and deciding to remain functional.

Now, the Internet Archive has announced the launch of 301Works.org, a service, which archives shortened URLs. The organization sums up the need for such a service pretty well:

The use of shortened URLs has grown dramatically due to the popularity of Twitter and similar micro-streaming services where posts are limited to a small number of characters.  Millions of shortened URLs are generated for users every day by a wide variety of companies.

But when a URL shortening service shuts down, the shortened URLs people put in their blogs, tweets, emails and web sites break.  Unless users have kept a record of each shortened URL and where it was supposed to redirect to, it’s not possible to fix them.

Over 20 URL shortening services have gotten involved with 301Works.org, and Bit.ly (Twitter’s service of choice) has already begun donating archives.

"Short URL providers have in the space of eighteen months become a corner stone of the real time web — 301Works.org was conceived to provide redundancy so that users and services could resolve a URL mapping regardless of availability.  The Internet Archive is a perfect host organization to run and manage this for all providers," said Bit.ly CEO John Borthwick.

"The Internet Archive is honored to play this role to help make the Web more robust," added Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The issue of archiving the web of course touches a much broader spectrum than that of URL-shorteners. 301Works should go a long way for maintaining shortened URLs, but what about Facebook updates? Tweets? What if Facebook or Twitter decided to shut down one day? According to Twitter’s terms of service, you own your content, but Twitter does host it and they have control over it regardless of whether or not you own it. Jesse Stay talked about this with WebProNews in a recent interview:

The concept of Twitter or Facebook shutting down seems far-fetched, but the same thing probably could’ve been said about Geocities 12 years ago. Now Yahoo has shut it down. It’s just something to think about. Given the speed of the real-time web, it seems that archiving could become a concept of growing importance.

Do you agree that archiving is growing in importance? Share your thoughts here.

Related Articles:

>Ushering In a Whole New Era of Linking Questions

>R.I.P. GeoCities: A Community is Killed

>Who Really Owns Your Tweets?

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch claims to have heard from "a reliable source" that Google will be launching the much-anticipated Chrome OS within a week. The tech industry media has been punked on Chrome OS in the past, but as Arrington notes, Google has said to expect it in the fall, and fall is running out.

Chrome OS is Google’s attempt to "rethink what operating systems should be." It’s an open source, "lightweight" operating system to be initially targeted at netbooks.

"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS," Google said upon the Chrome OS announcement. "We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform," the company continued. "All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Arrington says he thinks driver support will be an issue with Chrome OS. "…Having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work," he says. "We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one."

If Arrington’s source truly is reliable, then we should see how the launch of Chrome OS pans out very soon. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Google competes with Microsoft in the operating system space, as it is doing in both search and web browsers.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Chrome OS Challenge Windows?

> Fake Chrome OS Screenshots Punk Tech Media

> Steve Ballmer Skeptical Of Chrome OS

2009Nov14: Land development, along with warmer temperatures and rising seas that many scientists link to climate change, have greatly reduced the Pacific turtle population (New York Times).

Reference: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html

Image Description: Aerial photo of Playa Tamarindo and River mouth showing the town and beach of Tamarindo, Costa Rica, and the Pacific Ocean. Photo by Tamarindowiki, 2007. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Costa_Rica_Playa_Tamarindo_and_Rivermouth_2007_Aerial_Photograph_Tamarindowiki_01.JPG Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.