Random Thoughts

DocBrain says:

Each day you get 24 hours to spend. Spend them well as you won't get them again.

Learning requires three steps:

1. information input
2. testing of that information against other sources and your internal world image for validity and reliability.
3. assimilation of that information into your own internal world image. This usually requires erasure or modification of something you previously believed to be true.

So, don't expect too much too soon of yourself when you are exposed to something that rattles your internal world. Give yourself a little time to put it together.

Give others the same time. Remember that all information is incomplete. We just make our best judgement based upon what we know.

If you expect other people to be perfect, you will be disappointed. If you believe you are perfect, you will never be.

If you are polite and appreciative of other people, you will profoundly effect the world in ways you may never know.

Is Suicide Painless?

Suicide bombings. Suicide killings. Words used in the American press to describe actions most popularized in the Middle East. But, are these really suicides?

DocBrain looked up the definitions for the word "suicide". There are two components needed for the definition to be true:

1. Primary goal
2. Personal loss

If your primary goal is to kill yourself and, inadvertently, you harm another person, it is suicide. The harming of others must be inadvertent, or at least, of secondary importance, in order to meet the criteria for suicide.

If your primary goal is to kill others and, in order to accomplish this, you willingly sacrifice your life, it is not suicide, but perhaps martyrdom or just plain homicide. And terrorism.

DocBrain believes that the press uses "suicide" as the adjective to describe the bombing or attacks because they do not want to use the word "terrorism".

Terrorism has developed a negative connotation of "cowardly" and "deceitful", but is a well known and longstanding method of waging war.

Assuming those who perform these acts are not coerced into doing them, DocBrain has coined the following descriptive words: "martyrrorist" and "martyrrorism". (They are not Kamikazes. Kamikaze referred to a "divine wind" that expelled the Mongol invaders and later the martyr acts of identified combatants [pilots] who attacked military targets).

So, we have martyrrorist bombings and attacks of martyrrorism. And these words make us ask "What are they martyrs for?" We might then find use for a term such as Islamomartyrrorism. That, I think, is important to never forget.

It's a war out there, people!

We are insulated in the US. It has been said that Americans are very religious people, but I doubt it. I think we are very spiritual people. We look for G-d in our daily lives. We gain inspiration from the belief that by doing the American thing we are walking in some way with G-d. There is a feeling of kinship between those of multiple religions in America as we work together to make this world a better place through better goods and services, scientific and artistic advances, better camaderie among all peoples, and a better quality of life for everyone.

That is not how it really is out there. We are living in an oasis in a religious warzone. Like Rick in his cafe in Casablanca, we just want to sit on the sidelines and let it play out around us. Every now and then, one of the combatants comes into our area and tries to win our sympathy and support or tries to scare or intimidate us.

Discouraged with the current state of Islam, many people are now being converted to Christianity.

http://www.blessedquietness.com/alhaj/append-19.htm

So many people are converting to Islam from Christianity and Judaism that they have their own websites.

http://www.islamfortoday.com/converts.htm

http://www.themuslimwoman.com/WhySoManyWomenConverting.htm

http://www.jews-for-allah.org/

This trend frightens the religious, who seek to punish or kill those who convert.

http://www.azadiradio.org/en/news/2006/03/17B27179-5FE6-4381-A819-E04908362FD9.ASP

http://www.domini.org/openbook/pal20030729.htm

http://www.dhimmi.com/NearEast.html

Interestingly, all these cases of punishment for conversion are concerning converts from Islam. DocBrain could not find any non-Biblical examples of punishment for conversion from Judaism. Punishment for conversion from Christianity gave no pertinent google results.

So, there is a war. The traitors and deserters from Islam are being imprisoned and killed, while other religions, in the name of ecumenicalism, just let the deserters go on their merry way. Turning the other cheek may be the way to heaven, but DocBrain would like to delay that trip for awhile.

If a religion is a based upon beliefs and if a religion cannot stand without freedom of choice to believe otherwise, is it really a religion?

One rabbi stated that it is easier for a sighted man to go blind than for a blind man to see. DocBrain agrees.

3D Worlds

DocBrain likes 3D worlds and artificial life. Here is a brief survey of 3D creation software:

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/
A program for beginners that is quick, fun and easy (as long as it doesn't crash your computer as it does for DocBrain). About $80 US

http://www.hash.com/
Animation Master is an incredible program! There is much to learn and it can do just about everything the big boys can do! About $300 US

http://blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
Complicated but very powerful. Free!!!

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6871843&siteID=123112
Maya is a top end program, too expensive for DocBrain. $1900 will get you started. 3D Studio Max is about $3500 US. These professional products are beyond DocBrain!!

http://www.newtek.com/
Lightwave ($800 US) is a very good program as well. DocBrain has no personal experience with this product but did see it demo'ed 2 years ago and was greatly impressed!


http://www.ac3d.org/index.html
A $60 US modelling program. Looks like fun!

http://www.anim8or.com/
Anim8or is a nice free program. Looks like fun.

http://www.toonboom.com/
A 2D animator that looks like fun for only(!!) $300 US

Later, DocBrain will review AI/chatterbot software, a special interest of DocBrain.

The Enemy of My Enemy

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-rally0320.artmar20,0,787620.story?coll=hc-headlines-local

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/14136811.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/15/sprj.irq.protests.main/


and their allies in this cause:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11921893/from/RSS/

One good way to see if what you are saying is right is to see who is on your side.

Fantasy at Night

One of DocBrain's favorite spots to photograph!

Stories vs Statistics

Stories are a lot more fun than statistics. Stories have a hero, victim and villain. Stories have a moral. Stories tell what happened to one person. Stories can be true. We are born to love stories.

We like the story of the poor but hard working widow who wins the lottery. We like the story of the villain who gets his just deserves.

Statistics are almost always fictions. They tell what happens, in general, to a group, but not what happens to an individual. In fact, what happens on average may not happen to any one! Statistics are about probabilities.

When it comes to health care, doctors and patients speak different languages. Doctors speak statistics; patients speak stories.

The only health care providers who speak the patients' language are those who sell the stories. These are the testimonial storytellers that we see on television and hear on the radio...the alternative care advocates and their successful clients who tell their tales of individual success.

Doctors know good stories too, but are forbidden from telling these if they violate patient privacy. Furthermore, if a patient is wooed to a treatment based upon a testimonial or anecdote and something goes wrong, the doctor can be held liable for not providing "informed consent" which is a statistically based approach to a description of possible outcomes of treatment.

Unlike P.T. Barnum, DocBrain will give you no moral to this story. We live in the natural world where important things should be explained by rules and numbers. Yet, where the rules and numbers are not satisfying, a good story may just be what the patient wants, even if it is not what the doctor ordered.

Rahmatullah Hashemi '09

Do you know who Bruno Malitz was? No? How sad! He was the spokesperson for Nazi Germany before WWII. He has faded into history, with little more than an occasional reference to him. Google his name and you will get 63 references. Google Rahmatullah Hashemi, the spokesperson for the Taliban before the Afghanistan War and current Yale student, and you get 47,300 references.

Both were anti-diversity and anti-American. To matriculate Hashemi at Yale in the name of diversity is comical, sort of like bestowing Hitler membership in a Jewish Synagogue.

I believe that viewing of the movie "The Mouse that Roared" should be required for all Americans. In that movie, a country goes to war against the USA because it is in financial trouble and knows that we treat our defeated enemies very well, while we tend to ignore others in need. Our kindness and open-mindedness can be used against us. Our news media, which focuses on the underdogs, particularly those who we have most recently interacted with, leads those driven to help others to focus on our most recent "victims", often to the exclusion of those who are in more need and are more deserving.

That Yale was unable to find an applicant who was more deserving of admission on the basis of spreading their kindness and openness is a sad reflection on the attention span and breadth of awareness of the leaders of that institution.

Memories of Summer '05

Today is a cold and wintry day here in Pittsburgh.

A sunny summer evening on the Allegheny River.

Money for Nothin'

Question: What expectations and obligations of the recipient should be tied to receiving charity?

In the USA, all the recipient must do is show up at the welfare office and fill out appropriate paperwork. Is this necessary and sufficient? Should welfare have a higher purpose than just to dole out money to people who need it?

Welfare seems based upon the concept of social responsibility. Here is a succinct review.

http://www.answers.com/topic/social-welfare

Welfare is nothing more than charity, administered by a bureaucracy rather than by individuals or religious groups. Welfare can be multi-dimensional as compared to charities, which tend to be unidimensional (food, shelter, health care, or education).

When you help someone in need, you feel good about yourself. It is not important that the person helped even know who you are, it is just a good thing to help. Those who you help may have no knowledge of how you worked to earn the money you gave them, but you do and it feels good to be able to give of yourself to help.

Yet, it is also true that the one who is helped in some way must acknowledge that help for their own peace of mind and self respect. The concept of paying it forward (helping others in turn) is one way. Another way is doing all you can to be as little a burden on society as possible. Some examples (not mutually exclusive) include: raising your children to be productive members of society; doing menial tasks that in some way improve or beautify our country; being good, law abiding citizens. Each of these could be done as charity, without acknowledgement, making the receiver of welfare a donor as well.

Instead we see the expectation of entitlement. This is a poisonous attitude that leads to backlash among those who pay for welfare (taxpayers) and a desire for tighter reins on giving (such as lower donations and closer scrutiny as can be done by community based charities).

The concept of expectation of those receiving welfare to put forth social effort is missing in our system. It demeans those who receive welfare and cheats those who give it.

DocBrain will write more about charity and social welfare in the future.

Iraq

Civil unrest and anarchy began less than one year after they were rid of their oppressive ruler. On one occasion, over 4000 troops were needed to quell an uprising. It took 4 years for things to settle down and another two years to get a workable constitution. DocBrain did not fool you, did he? Yeah, the USA.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/continental/timeline2f.html

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=3496&HistoryID=ad11

A Positive Message

The weekend is a good time to recharge your batteries. Here is a good link to help.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/positive.html

If you are striving to be a better person, here is the short list of postive things to work on:

Friendship and love

Creativity, curiosity, love of knowledge

Bravery, persistence, and integrity

Fairness

Self discipline, prudence, forgiveness, humility

Humor, gratitude, hope, appreciation of beauty, excellence and life

Have a nice day!

DocBrain uses Dirty Words

George Carlin once opined that there are 7 words you can't say on television. DocBrain gives you this link if you do not know them: http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml

DocBrain has discovered that there are 7 dirty words you can't say to liberals. These are: nationalism, patriotism, duty, self-made, Jesus, charity, and liberty. George W. Bush, Haliburton, Cheney, and Abu Ghraib are NAMES not WORDS...we are talking about words here!

Just try to use these words in a conversation with a liberal and see what happens, especially if you try to apply the word to the liberal. It is like swearing at them.

Here are some one liners. Try them just for fun.

"If Jesus were here, He would not like the way you refer to George Bush."

"I think that colleges should have the liberty to enroll the best applicants regardless of race."

"Charity is better than government entitlements, since charity makes the giver feel good and the receiver feel obligated to pay it forward."

"As a citizen of the United States, you should subjugate your different racial, ethnic and religious identity in favor of nationalism and national camaraderie."

"It is your patriotic duty to defend our country."

"You are self-made. You could have been better or done more, but have just chosen to be as you are. It is no one's fault but your own."

DocBrain is bawdy and wants to know more dirty words. Feel free to add to my list.

ADDled education!!

True Story

Imagine you have a little girl. She is in 4th grade. She rides the bus to school. She is nice and sweet. Everyone likes her. Well, almost everyone.

Imagine there is a 5th grade boy who physically and psychologically abuses her on the bus. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows. So, you complain to the school because there is a rule that if a child is bad on the bus, the child may not ride the bus.

Guess what? You are told that because the boy has ADD, he MUST ride the bus.

The boy spends many days with his grandfather. The grandfather is a retired policeman who has many guns around his house. The boy threatens to bring guns on to the bus and shoot the girl.

Guess what? You are told that because the boy has ADD, he MUST ride the bus.

You ask, "What if my daughter hits this boy?" You are told that your daughter will be forbidden from riding the bus for 1 week and that it will be your responsibility to get your daughter to school. Why? Because your daughter does not have ADD.

DocBrain asks these questions: Where are the randomized controlled trials showing lack of effectiveness of pain or physical intervention as a deterrant to bad behavior in ADD? Where are the randomized controlled trials showing that pain as a way of getting the child's attention to focus on learning not to do bad behavior doesn't work in children with ADD? Where are the randomized controlled trials showing that aggressive, badly behaved children become better when allowed to bully other children? Where are the randomized controlled trials showing that good children benefit from being bullied by aggressive, badly behaved children?


Children with ADD have special needs. They need to be able to be the best they can be.
Children without ADD have special needs. They also need to be the best they can be.

This story made DocBrain's brain explode!!!

The End of Sudoku?

Oh, NO!!!


http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/microscopy_and_the_art_of_sudo.php


(thank goodness DocBrain has not gotten addicted to this.....yet)

Be Good at Math

People who are bad at math go broke and die young. It's true!

Go to Las Vegas and look around. Big, fancy hotels that charge no more for a room than your local Courtyard Marriott. How do they do that? Well, here is a clue: you are not likely to win at the tables or with the one armed bandits. Look at the many rituals that gamblers perform and you will see desperate people trying to control the laws of chance that are stacked against them. Yes, it is possible to do better with more skill and knowledge (some card counters have done well in blackjack), but you are not that talented.

Many times I hear from patients (yes, DocBrain is a doctor) "Smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. People who never smoked die of lung cancer and people who smoke 3 packs a day can live to be 100, so it is all just luck, all a 50:50 chance. You get it or you don't, so quit hassling me about smoking."

In the great wheel of fortune that is your life, you are statistically better to keep the wedges of the wheel that lead to bad outcomes as small as possible so that when the wheel spins, you are likely to have a good outcome that day. Bad outcomes include: disease, injury, poverty, ignorance, punishment for violating laws, having nothing to live for and having nothing to die for. Unfortunately, you cannot take the bad wedges off the wheel entirely. Using the presence of bad wedges to justify activities that increase the size of the bad wedges or justify avoiding activities that decrease the size of the bad wedges is not really statistically smart. One day, your wheel will stop on black. One day, you will get the dreaded double zero. I am not telling you not to enjoy life, as a life without enjoyment is really no life at all. Try to pick the enjoyments that enhance your life's quality and duration. You can do this and still not worry and have a good time!

Bring G-d Back To The Middle East

The Middle East: the area of the world touched by G-d; where Abraham, Jesus and Mohammad all walked; the birthplace of three major world religions; the place in the world where more have heard the voice of G-d than anywhere else; where walking with G-d should be second nature. Yes, this is the place where warfare, murder, hate, xenophobia, tribalism, religious intolerance, greed for land and money, oppressive governments, and crazed out radical religious groups have thrived and prospered over the centuries. Does anyone besides me see something wrong with this picture? If G-d is good, kind, compassionate, forgiving, and tolerant, then where are the people who strive to be like G-d in the Middle East? Who thinks that G-d desires strife, hate, and killing in His name? Who thinks that G-d is so narrow minded as to only want humans to follow one religion? And if that were true, what kind of person would believe that He wouldn't have made it a lot easier, obviating the need for the bestowing of death and oppression in such great numbers over the centuries? For anyone who believes in the power of G-d, look at the Middle East and I ask you, is this the power of G-d that you believe in?

Abortion and the law

OK, contraversy right out of the gate. Here goes. Those who oppose abortion on demand do so because of their belief that human life begins at conception. The key word here is "belief". Various religions have defined the beginning of human life at different stages, and as any scientist knows, life is a continuum, passing from one organism to its offspring. A sperm cell and an ovocyte are not dead! They are very complex live cells. So, when life begins is a belief, and as such should be regulated according to all beliefs...personal choice. No woman should be forced to have an abortion (or use contraception) if it is against her beliefs, nor should any woman be forced against her beliefs to be inseminated or to carry a fetus to birth. Any other ruling by the courts is just a contamination of state by religion, and specific subunits of religion to be most correct. If we are doing everything by the Book, then let the woman choose between having the child and being stoned to death. Otherwise, lets just allow good people to choose what they believe.

Welcome to my blog!

Well, I have finally done it! I have created my own blog. In this blog I will opine on all that I find interesting, amusing, or totally outrageous. I may post some pics. Who knows?