Feeling Your Pain

9/29/09. Book review of "The Age of Empathy" by Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University who studies altruistic behavior among primates.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574427221837352110.html

Monday Quotations

9/29/09. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the United Nations last week:

"Yesterday, the man who calls the holocaust a lie spoke from this podium... "

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438943327751128.html

Kristol Clear

9/22/09. Irving Kristol died a few days ago at age 89. He was a tireless champion for free markets and open minds, understanding how the remarkable engine of American free enterprise created opportunities for so many people from all over the world to improve their lives.

Below is a lecture Kristol gave in 1991 entitled "The Capitalist Future."

http://www.aei.org/speech/1674

David Brooks writes about Irving Kristol in today's New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&hpw

Charles Krauthammer on Irving Kristol.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/25/a_great_good_man_98456.html

Joseph Epstein remembers Kristol's genius of temperament.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/004plmdz.asp

Monday Quotations

9/21/09.

"You can't find the soul with the scalpel."

--- Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)


"Heaven defend me from a busy doctor."

--- Welsh proverb


"The diseases of the mind are more destructive than the diseases of the body."

--- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. - 43 B.C. )

Monday Quotations

9/14/09.



"There is no observer outside the experiment."

--- Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976)



"The psychopathology of schizophrenia is one of the most intriguing, since it permits a many-sided insight into the workings of the diseased as well as the healthy mind."

--- Eugen Bleuler (1857 - 1939)



"Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death."

--- Frances Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Man vs. God

9/14/09. Two prominent thinkers debate God, science, evolution, and religion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html

Sorting Fact from Fiction in Health Care

8/31/09. Two physicians express their worries about evidence based medicine, and the potential harm of the government coming in between you and your doctor. The road to hell is paved...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574378542143891778.html

Monday Quotations

8/24/09.

("Doctor" Hugo A. Hackenbush, played by Groucho Marx, attempting to take Harpo's pulse:)

"Either he's dead, or my watch has stopped."

A Day at the Races (motion picture) (1937). Screenplay by Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, and George Oppenheimer.

---Jules Henry "Groucho" Marx (1895 - 1977)


"Life without this sort of examination is not worth living."

---Plato (429 B.C. - 347 B.C.)


"It is only with the heart that one can see
rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

---Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

Health Care Reform

8/22/09. American businesses compete with each other for the privilege to serve their customers --- at the best price and with the highest quality products. Most customers of health insurance do not directly choose their health care and thus have very little comparative information about the quality, price, and restrictions of their health plans.

We need to open markets and minds.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/22/government_should_get_back_to_the_basics_on_health_care_97986.html

Monday Quotations

8/17/09.

(Cowardly Lion, played by Bert Lahr, speaking) :

"What makes the elephant charge his tusk
in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What
makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage!"

The Wizard, played by Frank Morgan, speaking) :

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

"A heart is not judged by how much you love;
but by how much you are loved by others.

--- The Wizard of Oz (1939). Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf.

Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head

8/14/09. Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutritional Research and Practice.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2009-03/spector.html

Of Mutts and Men

8/10/09. Do animals or people get better health care in Britian? Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist, muses on the question.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204908604574334282143887974-lMyQjAxMDA5MDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

100 Years of Freud in America

8/7/09. Freud's genius still permeates our culture ---

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574330991380910578.html

New Therapy on Faith and Sexual Identity

8/7/09. The American Psychological Association, religious faith, and sexual identity.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950491516608883.html

Monday Quotations

8/3/09.

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."

"You can know the name of a bird in the all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird...So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."

--- Richard P. Feynman (1918 - 1988)

From Emmitt Till to Skip Gates

8/1/09. Shelby Steele on race, reality, and rhetoric in 2009 America.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322054186035002.html

Is There a 'Right' to Health Care?

7/31/09. A retired British psychiatrist who spent his career as a physician treating patients in prisons says beware when health care becomes a right.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306170677645070.html

The Jail Inferno

7/27/09. A descent into the bowels of the modern prison --- chaos, delusions, disorganization, violence...and the discipline required to run such institutions.

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_jails.html

Monday Quotations

7/27/09.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

--- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)


A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

--- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

BIG GOVERNMENT MEDICINE

7/23/09. Is BIG GOVERNMENT MEDICINE the cure for our health care woes? Don't ask many Canadian and British doctors and patients what they know.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/23/big_government_medicine_97588.html