Posts by Stephen Judd
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This just blows my mind. I mean, I knew American politics were corrupt, but the shameless perversion of justice is still shocking.
Interesting that the main informant has been run off the road and her house burned down in the last month...
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One possible conclusion to draw from the observation that the drugs work better than placebos for the more severely depressed is that mild depression is not the same illness.
(Or, to be provocative, not an illness at all, which would tie in nicely with the notion that drug companies are pathologising normal unhappiness.
The best products, from a drug company's point of view, are not the cure for cancer but treatments for the symptoms of chronic ailments that you will take every day of your life...)
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Re the placebo thing: placebos really do work. They produce results. They are not the same as no treatment.
(To be facetious, perhaps the medical profession are cursing at being found out, and will now have to find something else to give people...)
So I agree with Steve R - personal accounts of "it worked for me" aren't proof, because placebos can and do have significant effects on people.
Having said that, I'm getting the sense from my reading is that it's all way more complicated than the headline story. Eg, SSRIs as a class are in some doubt; yet individual SSRIs do something. So maybe they work, but not for the reasons that have previously been advanced. And we know that people vary enormously in their responses. And maybe "depression" isn't actually one disease, but several with different causes but similar symptoms.
Given that complexity "Anti-depressants don't work" seems like a very irresponsible headline, one that isn't even supported by the story underneath it.
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Did you know that the minimum height for a human skull to crack when dropped on a hard surface is about 7 feet?
That's why I believe professional basketballers should wear helmets in the bathroom.
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Why does Obama have less substance than (H) Clinton?
They can go head to head on policy issues such as healthcare plans; just have a look at his website. And it's not as though Clinton has any more stellar a career in government office than Obama.
Also note that his campaign is far better organised than hers. He had people on the ground in Texas months before her people showed up (and then admitted they didn't understand the Texas caucus rules). He's been running a campaign based on street-level organising, she's been relying on Mark Penn's PR skills. So if competence is the ability to engage and organise people who are themselves competent, he's more competent than she is.
The fact that he's a far better orator doesn't mean he's only an orator.
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Next time I'll have a man walk ahead with a flag.
Zing! I think I might have to steal that.
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I would have thought it would be a sad day when the death of a young child is not worth covering.
Sure, but no one's saying it's not worth covering. The question is how it's covered.
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I think the intrusion lies in pressing the people closest to a tragedy for reaction.
If they come to you, cool. If you show someone sobbing in the distance, well fair enough. The famous "how do you feel?" Not so much.
What's the audience's interest in that footage, other than prurience?
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"we were vultures, picking over their dead moko's body."
But that was true. The fact that the truth comes from a bunch of ratbags does not stop it from being true.
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I'm pretty sure it was Holmes who ushered in the era of "how did you feel when your daughter/husband/close relative/puppy was stabbed to death/garotted/fell into an industrial meat mincer?"
On the other hand, if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.
I used to think it would be neat if a grieving interviewee would turn on the journalist and tell them where to get off with their nosiness - but then I realised that perhaps that does happen, but we never see it, which in turn would help to train people that your proper response when in the depths of personal agony is to blub obligingly (but not too incoherently) for the camera.