Wednesday Links

Wednesday Links

Drug Interactions in Psychiatry: A Practical Review Useful information for understanding how certain psychiatric medications interact, and why. Supporting information – because serotonin receptors have a bigger impact on the body and brain beyond mood, understanding How Serotonin Receptors Can Shape Drug Effects can help with targeting drug therapies and avoiding dangerous side effects.

All the wonderful information we will eventually get from post-natal genome sequencing will eventually be put to use in prenatal testing. What then?

A couple of thoughts about evolution and purpose. Like, evolution doesn’t have a purpose, it just happens. Pharyngula addresses this by way of criticizing a bad paper that assumes “direction” to evolution. Sandwalk does it by talking about random genetic drift.

Honest to goodness, I read through this and don’t understand the application because it’s beyond my frame of reference. But I can imagine that it’s a good thing for genetic research. Same thing with this one. Just the idea that DNA can be taken apart, looked a piece by piece, put back together. . .blows my mind.

Good thing I at least read them, though – maybe they’ll find a way to fix the headache I got from reading them.

No Animals this week. Unless you consider dirty girls who like Benedict Cumberbatch to be animals.

Wednesday Links

Wednesday Links

Chiropractors playing to a parent’s deepest fear – SIDS. We don’t know what causes it, we know little about how to prevent it, but Chiropractors lay claim to secret knowledge and take advantage of new parents’ willingness to do anything for their children by lying to them.

Ed Yong tells an inspiring story of a triumph in genomic medicine. Lilly Grossman carries a gene mutation that fills her nights with shaking and seizures instead of sleep, but finding it delivers the treatment she needs to live an almost normal life. Grab your hankies.

This won’t make a lot of sense to many people, but an abstract that shows a possible neurobiological connection for skin picking and hair pulling (dermatillomania and trichitillomania) makes me think how nice it would be to eventually find a way to fix it.

Take this, people who think diet can prevent all disease. So there.

This may seem like a wonderful advancement in prosthetics, but can you say. . .mind control?!?!?

Recognize a pattern? Republican sticks to party platform, opposes gay marriage. Republican offspring comes out as gay. Republican weasels out of original stance.

I can’t say this where it’s appropriate, but you can tell when someone thinks he knows more than he actually does when he’s not even wrong. Unfortunately, the Dunning-Kruger effect means it will be impossible to educate him as to why this is so. He does not experience the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and learns only what strengthens his confirmation bias. Worse, this is willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty. Rationalwiki is an appropriate source of information to reflect my repressed snarkiness. Enjoy.

Bookmark this site for when you need a good laugh or a healthy dose of schadenfreude. There is simply too much here for me to give it to you a bit at a time. Bask in its guanophrenic glory as it slowly loads the page bit by bit up to the top. If you really want to get in the spirit, go to the pantry and get some tinfoil to make yourself a party hat first.

AWWW!! ELEPHANT BAYBEEE!

Wednesday Links

Wednesday Links

Colin McGinn, in the New York Review of books, has plenty to say to Ray Kurzweil (and anyone else who thinks that brains are like computers) in his review of “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.”

The only people who think that there’s such a thing as genetic determinism are environmental determinists. So over at Discover online, An anthropologist explains the gene!

If these porn stars‘ before pictures were put up on facebook, there’d be no shortage of nasty comments about their looks. The transformations are amazing – and show how deceptive makeup can be!

Scientific American shares some interesting history about, um, butt-wiping.

I suppose if you’re going to major in something dangerous, it helps to be able to laugh about it.

When I first saw the video of this amazing small space, I didn’t think about much else but how cool it was. Gawker, on the other hand, has some insightful things to say about its owner’s exhortation to “live with less.”

OTTERZ!!!

I saw this adorable page of what looked like a pet otter. Obviously, I needed to read it in English to find out um, what goes into obtaining caring for one of these sweet little creatures. Let’s just say that Google translate still has a few bugs to work out! (I’m especially fond of the picture subtitled, “Dark, dark, dark cousin dark ~ ♪ ~ ♪ ~ Dai favorite Crotch, crotch, crotch crotch us ~ ♪ ~ ♪ ~ Dai favorite”)