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Chinese medicine has always included acupressure as an effective treatment. Indeed, it predates acupuncture -- not surprisingly, people noticed "it feels better if I press and rub here" before they thought, "hey, what if I stick a bamboo splinter into my skin so I can stimulate that point but free up my hands?" Pick up an acupuncture products catalog and you'll find a variety of "pellets" which can be taped to the skin to stimulate the points without puncturing the skin.

So at best, "sham" needles -- i.e., acupressure -- as a control for acupuncture is like using aspirin as a control while investigating a new painkiller.

The study that Yong (not "Tong") mentions also featured treatment via a set of points determined in advance by one therapist, and delivered by another. But when I see my acupuncturist (or even when I give a shiatsu treatment including the use of acupressure points), point selection is determined in part by the response to earlier points. So this is rather different than acupuncture as practiced by knowledgeable practitioners.

That study also excluded patients with previous acupuncture treatment for any condition; based on my experience, however, it seems that it takes some experience with acupuncture to learn how to give feedback to the practitioner, to recognize and report the de qi sensation, so the effectiveness of the treatment increases with experience. (Perhaps there is also something like the habituation required for a cannabis "high" at work here, with the patient learning to interpret and respond to new sensations.) And the study also excluded those with "specific causes of back pain", so would seem to likely include a high proportion of those whose complaints had a strong psychosomatic component, and so would be poorly suited to investigating the physiological mechanisms involved.

This is all too representative of the problems with much acupuncture research: what gets tested often has little to do with Chinese medicine as it is applied by knowledgeable practitioners.

Despite these problems, this study found that "Compared with usual care, individualized acupuncture, standardized acupuncture, and simulated acupuncture [i.e., acupressure] had beneficial and persisting effects on chronic back pain." Nor does the study's comparison of individualized acupuncture vs. standardized acupuncture justify Yong's claim that it did not matter where the needles were placed. It takes some twisting to interpret this study the way that Yong would like to.

And of course the placebo effect plays a role -- as it does in any treatment, including surgery. If my acupuncturist is doing nothing beyond triggering a placebo response in me, the results are still real, and what I pay her for the little show she puts on that lets whatever part of brain is responsible do its thing, is a bargain.

(My bias: I'm and NCCAOM Diplomate in Asian Bodywork Therapy; my practice is a small sideline to my computer geek day job.)

Want to start a lawn care business? Some states require a license as do some counties and cities.

Which is annoying (trust me, I run two small businesses that require me to have licenses or registrations with Maryland, I know the pain) but not generally fatal.

The only reason to have a regulation requiring me to have a license or be certified is to prevent me from doing lawn care.

Or to collect sales taxes. Or to make sure you're not exploiting employees, or hiring undocumented workers. Or to make sure you're not poisoning the environment with misuse of pesticides or fertilizer. Or to make sure you're aware of local noise ordinances so you don't wake me up at 7am with a gorram gas-powered weed whacker. Or to see to it that you post a bond as insurance that you won't collect a whole season's payment up front and then skip town, or that Mrs. Jones will be reimbursed if you mow down her expensive rosebush.

Is it overkill to make a kid mowing his neighbor's yard get a state license? Probably, I sure didn't have one when I was 15. Is it overkill to make a large landscaping company get a state license of some sort? Probably not. Is it some great conspiracy if the kid gets caught up in the regulations meant for the large landscaping company, some deliberate attempt to keep the kid from mowing lawns? No, it's most likely simple oversight or bad planning, and in most cases I expect the kid and his or her customers will ignore the law without consequence.

The only legitimate excuse for a giant library is if you are an academic researcher or an author. A good writer is a good reader, as they say. I am not a writer so I have no such need to keep things on file like that.

That may be part of it; though I'm a poet, my style is definitely informed by the prose I read. And certainly my book collection has swelled a bit the past few years as I've been doing research for the historical sections of my non-fiction book. Though for that I've also made extensive use of Google Books, the Sacred Texts archive, and Project Gutenberg, as well as some more specialized sites. Nothing like being able to find rare, long out-of-print original sources on-line.

Also many of my books pertain to my "other jobs", references related to martial arts and acupressure and massage. (For the day job, software, I have a few dead trees, but most of them I acquired pre-Web, or at least back in the days of dial-up.)

But I do enjoy just having books around. I prefer "collector" to "hoarder", thank you very much. :-)

Of course I think most of us who HAVE gone to college realize that's not really the point. College is a chance to be a kid for 4 more years, scoring with women, and hopefully meet your future wife or husband. The reason people remember their alma maters so fondly is because it was the last time they lived without any responsibility.

Funny, I'm more of a "kid" in many ways now than I was in college...sure didn't score with women! (Young geeks - it *does* get better! Have hope!) I was taking challenging classes -- was actually trying to do a dual degree in CS and physics, before my brain started to melt and I decide that was Not Fun. and working part-time, certainly not living with no responsibility.

When I look back at my college days, the thing I remember most fondly is the continual encounter with new ideas. Yes, that is something that you can and should keep going for the rest of your life. And I have, to some degree -- besides voracious reading on many topics, I went back to school a few years ago to study Asian Bodywork Therapy, and in the past few years I also took two semesters of Japanese at the community college.

But as an undergrad, my prime occupation was learning new stuff.

There's a Roger Zelazny novel where the protagonist inherits a trust fund that supports him so long as he's in college -- so he manages to keep changing his major, and doesn't gradate for over a decade. I always thought that sounded like an excellent way to live.

What does a Doctor gain by prescribing you a treatment that isn't needed?

Your money? In a fee-for-service scheme, the more treatments my doctor gives me, the more she gets paid. Fortunately, my own physician is a person of high moral character; and an office visit with a family practitioner doesn't get the sort of payments from an insurance company that drug therapies or surgeries do.

I am of course tlkaing about science based medicine

As this incident proves, "science" and "medicine" are often far apart.

Natural path, homeopaths, acupuncturist and others of there ilk are a different matter. They charge of treatments that do no damn good.

My physical therapist took my money for months, and did me less good than my acupuncturist. As an Asian Bodywork therapist I use some of the same techniques as acupuncturists, and my clients pay me and come back and refer their friends, because my treatments do some good. And I even have some science to back that up.

Placebo effect? Perhaps. It plays a role in any treatment, including surgery. My mom used the placebo effect to help relieve people's suffering when she was a nurse, she got paid for that. If someone can put on a little show that gets my brain to release endorphins and stop the pain, I don't see a problem with paying for that performance, whether it's a nurse's "beside manner" or a shaman's ritual.

(Hey, I just found yet another case where a surgical technique was found no more effective than a placebo surgery. That makes 5. I have yet to find a trial where a surgical intervention was compared to a sham in a blinded trail and proved superior.)

What does a Doctor gain by prescribing you a treatment that isn't needed?

Your money? In a fee-for-service scheme, the more treatments my doctor gives me, the more she gets paid. Fortunately, my own physician is a person of high moral character; and an office visit with a family practitioner doesn't get the sort of payments from an insurance company that drug therapies or surgeries do.

I am of course tlkaing about science based medicine

As this incident proves, "science" and "medicine" are often far apart.

Natural path, homeopaths, acupuncturist and others of there ilk are a different matter. They charge of treatments that do no damn good.

My physical therapist took my money for months, and did me less good than my acupuncturist. As an Asian Bodywork therapist I use some of the same techniques as acupuncturists, and my clients pay me and come back and refer their friends, because my treatments do some good. And I even have some science to back that up.

Placebo effect? Perhaps. It plays a role in any treatment, including surgery. My mom used the placebo effect to help relieve people's suffering when she was a nurse, she got paid for that. If someone can put on a little show that gets my brain to release endorphins and stop the pain, I don't see a problem with paying for that performance, whether it's a nurse's "beside manner" or a shaman's ritual.

(Hey, I just found yet another case where a surgical technique was found no more effective than a placebo surgery. That makes 5. I have yet to find a trial where a surgical intervention was compared to a sham in a blinded trail and proved superior.)

The VAST majority of alternative doctors are swindlers and con-artists, or simply ignorant.

Much of mainstream modern medicine is not evidence-based -- i.e., is based on ignorance. And for that which claims evidence, a lot of it is simply made up,

Alternative medicines are also commonly psychosomatic, which is where many of the claims of "It works!" originate from.

The fact that modern mainstream medicine remains rooted in a sort of Cartesian dualism that divides a human into "brain" and "everything else", is one of its greatest failings. The way that alternative medical systems like Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda inherently address psychosomatic issues is their strength.

The problem with alternative medicines though is when people turn down medical care or treatment in favor of alternatives. This can get people killed, or exacerbate their conditions.

Indeed it can, and and reputable CAM practitioner will advise a patient to not discontinue their medical care, and will refer a patient to a physician if there is evidence of a serious condition. As a shiatsu therapist, I take a more detailed health history than many physicians, and I've got my hands all over someone for an hour; several times I've noticed something that concerned me and suggested to folks, "You ought to see your doctor about that."

It's too bad that few physicians will do the same, that you almost never hear a surgeon say "Before we cut you open and see if we can do anything about that knee pain (and if we canit may well be a placebo effect, maybe you should try seeing an acupuncturist -- after all, we can always cut you open later."

There's no such thing as a 'proven alternative treatment'. Once it's proven to work it's not alternative medicine any more, it's just medicine.

If proof == "medicine" and no proof == "alternative treatment", then why is massage or acupressure or dietary changes considered alternative treatment?

I do shiatsu acupressure, and I can cite studies on its effectiveness.

And why is surgery considered "medicine"? Every placebo controlled study of a surgical technique has found it no better than a placebo operation.

Why is giving SSRIs out like candy considered "medicine", when they work no better than a placebo for most categories of patients?

Medicine is an art wherein clinicians apply their skills to relieve the suffering and promote the well-being of each individual patient. Of course a good clinician will consider all available evidence to figure out what's likely to work best, but the goal is not to do what's most effective who most people, but for this single patient. You only get evidence of that via treatment.

I know that some of what I - or any clinician, from bodyworkers to brain surgeons - do is the placebo effect. So what?

It's the measure of money moved around, using goods and services as a way of measuring it.

No. The GDP is the measure of goods and services produced, using money moved around as a way of measuring it.

Summing the market value of all production will only tell you how much was produced. I can give you a bottle of milk. After you drink it, what's left of its value?

The value of a consumable good, just like that of a service, lies in the satisfaction of human needs and wants. The value of that milk after I drink it goes into the satisfaction of my thirst and the improved nutritional state of my body. (Pretending that I consumed dairy products, that is.) It's the same value I create when I give someone a shiatsu session: I have improved the state of their body in a manner which they value.

Other people are investing their past efforts (but it's only money now) on the company, you're not the only one creating value there.

The workers are the only ones creating value. The owners of capital aren't creating anything, any more than I'm creating something when I lend out my hammer. Sure, the owners are a necessary catalyst under the current system; but their necessity is an artifact of an insane system.

If you're the one with a good package for hammer renting (price + convenience + etc), there is nothing wrong with it. Your hammer is not a godsend, it has its own value. He can buy his own if he wants to.

It's hard for him to save enough to buy his own hammer while I'm sucking away most of the value he produces. (Obviously, not literally true in the case of hammers.) The fact that under our current system it's hard for our "carpenter" to "buy his own hammer" - for the people who do the work to control the capital with which they do it - is the problem.

This system whereby control of capital is concentrated into the hands of a few is not a "godsend" either. It is the result of deliberate actions by the state, which creates and enforces various "property rights" and which enacts policies that favor the interests of capital over those of labor.

That does not changes who the money owner is. It is still the average worker. Your disagreement with the rules or management of these funds is a whole different issue.

There is no "money owner", as there is no money. There is stock that may be eventually sold for money.

Ownership is defined by control. If you don't control the stock, if you can't vote it in favor of your interests rather than those of the fund, you don't own it. Making up an idea of "money owners" is a sad way to try to deny this fact.

In the end, all of your points were extremely weak and mostly based on right-wing capitalist ideology. The worst part of your message was all that nonsense and ranting about how drinking milk destroys its value - followed quickly by that "money owner" nonsense. I give it a 4 out of ten: unoriginal and lacking rhythm, you can't even dance to it. But at least the instruments were played competently.

You appear to be the sort of nutjob^H^H^H^H^H^Hfellow that confuses private personal property with private control of capital; such people often become confused when it is pointed out that modern corporate capitalism is not necessary the final apex of human society, that something other than the L-curve is possible.

HTH. TTFN.

I think he is saying that nobody has done placebo-controlled trial of a useful surgery.

Ah, but without a placebo-controlled trial, how do we determine that a surgery is useful?

It's a tricky question. The placebo-controlled double-blinded trial is supposed to be the "gold standard" for medical research, but its structure is biased towards drug therapies. It's hard to do placebo surgery, placebo bodywork (acupressure, massage, etc.), placebo acupuncture, placebo diets, placebo psychological therapies, or placebo exercise programs. Heck, surgery is the easiest case of those - you get to knock the patient out so they don't remember the actual treatment!

Clearly something else as going on, how do I know? acu[uctures studies always have failed.

Not accurate. Studies have shown acupuncture to be effective in treating a variety of conditions including depression, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2567439">alcoholism, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis

Yes, there are some studies with negative findings. All such studies I've seen either don't apply the principles of Chinese medicine to treatment, and so don't test acupuncture as it's actually used; or use poor controls such as comparing acupressure to acupuncture, which is sort of like using aspirin as your placebo in a test of ibuprofen.

More thoughts on this, as well as links to several studies on acupressure, at my shiatsu website.

Og, by the way, the concept "Chinese Medicine" and "Western medicine" is a false dichotomy. There is just Medicine. It is falsifiable and pass, or it doesn't.

Western medicine uses a structural model based on anatomy. Chinese Medicice uses a functional model based on the concept of "qi". So there is clearly a distinction.

Very few therapies from either tradition have been well-tested with blinded studies.

It's fascinating how some self-styled skeptics will demand double-blinded studies of herbs or acupuncture or "alternative" therapies, and yet willingly submit themselves to the surgeon's knife. Every placebo-controlled test of a surgical technique - there have only been a handful - has found the surgery being tested to be no more effective that placebo surgery.

the assumption that a youthful two hundred year old person would have the same impulsive stupidity of a youthful twenty year old. This seems extremely unlikely to me.

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." -- H. L. Mencken

I see plenty of impulsively stupid old people. Politics is full of them: they've got a major party candidate in the U.S. presidential election, for example.

Most people decline to learn any new facts, or change any habits of thought, after their late 20s (if that late). A great deal of the suffering of aging results directly or indirect from this hardening of the mind - this "psychosclerosis", as one of my bodywork teachers put it.

So according to some weird twist of philosophy if you set up shop in a state you OWE YOUR EXISTENCE to it?

Uh, no. I am a person. The state didn't create me by issuing a corporate charter.

If, however, I someday incorporate one of my small businesses, that corporation will exist only because of a charter issued by the State of Maryland; it will owe its existence to an act of government.

Corporations are "artificial persons" created by governments. Amazing how this simple fact is often overlooked by people who talk about "getting government out of business".

If Washington state chose to dissolve Microsoft (never mind that would never happen and is impossible)

Laws are on the books in all 50 states that provide for the revocation of corporate charters. It is indeed possible. (Though I grant, very unlikely).

Also investors are more than gamblers who expect to get paid without working. Investors are your pension, 401K plan, retirement account, mutual funds, and one of the ways our economy is so strong.

If I put money into stocks - whether in retirement accounts, mutual funds, or whatever - I'd be doing so in the hope that someone will buy them later at a higher price. That's a gamble. And I'm doing it without working for the companies involved, without laboring.

Gamblers may of course work very hard at their gambling, studying the odds and whatnot, but that doesn't make it productive labor.

Our economy is a house of cards, so far removed from the realities of making stuff and filling human needs and wants that it's staggering to consider. We abstract labor and materials and other resources into money, then abstract money into investments, then investments into speculative markets, until it reaches a point where everyone can panic and the whole thing fall apart based on the performance of those speculative markets - even though they day after a stock market crash, we have the same labor and materials and other resources we had the day before.

As Alan Watts once noted, "it was just as if someone had come to work on building a house and, on the morning of the Depression, the boss had said, 'Sorry, baby, but we can't build today. No inches.' 'Whaddya mean, no inches? We got wood. We got metal. We even got tape measures.' 'Yeah, but you don't understand business. We been using too many inches and there's just no more to go around.'"

Americans' caloric consumption increased 12 percent, about 300 calories, between 1985 and 2000. The idea that this is unrelated to the fact that Americans are getting more and more obese is an extraordinary claim; advocates of high-protein diets have produced no extraordinary evidence to back it up.

My shiatsu teacher once noted that it's easier to get people to change their religion than it is to get them to change their diet. Probably true - if early Christians had made Gentile converts keep kosher, Jesus of Nazareth would likely be historical footnote today. The way that high-protein diet advocates cling to their beliefs is just another example.

As for the broader question of the scientific basis of medicine, most medicine is based on observation and experience, not controlled studies. It's hard to experiment on human beings in a controlled fashion, after all. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not scientific - astronomers don't get to do controlled experiments on stars, either.

But it is true that a lot of accepted medical "knowledge" has little evidence to back it up. It's interesting that many "skeptics" who demand double-blind studies of, say, acupuncture, are likely to have no qualms about undergoing a surgical procedure which has undergone no such testing. Medicine has the look of "Science" even when it doesn't have the substance. (More about science and Chinese medicine here, if anyone's interested.)

the FSF position is incompatible with a company that wishes to produce software and sell a license to use it. It completely destroys that business model.

I think that's correct, yes. Since the software produced by that business model is mostly a large pile of suck, and since that business model requires draconian measures to supress people's natural inclination to share information and does not respect freedom, let it die. Why in the world should we make and enforce copyright laws to prop up a model that's not in the public interest to benefit the stockholders of COTS companies?

There would still be plenty of software jobs. As I said, most software is bespoke - ESR estimated that 90-95% of software produced is not meant for sale.

I'm not interested in putting myself out of work. (Even though, as I see outsourcing and age discrimination playing a larger role, I have decided to get skills in another field.) I've made my living from creating software since the early 90s, and only about one year of that was in environment where we were selling "licenced" software - and really, even there we were more selling a supported system to a handful of customers, and probably could have GPLed our software without affecting revenues. (That company failed anyway...opening the source might have prodded them to fix their code before it got so ugly it couldn't be maintained.)

watched U.S. Marines deliver food aid after typhoon Yoyang in 2004. I kept wondering, "where's the aid workers from Japan? Where's the aid from China? Where's the aid from Taiwan? Where's ANY OTHER COUNTRY AT ALL?".

If you were still wondering after you got back to somewhere with net access (I'm assuming that was sparse after such a disaster), a few minutes with Google would have told you that Japan sent money, doctors, and relief workers. China, Singapore, Korea, Belgium, Germany, and the U.S. all provided significant aid.

More recently, Japan has sent one million dollar in food aid for victims of Reming.

As for ongoing aid, here is the JICA page for the Philippines. And here's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs page on Japan-Philippines, chock full of stats and press releases.

Nobody was there except the USA.

Maybe you didn't see anyone there besides American military relief. Maybe that's a function of where you were, maybe you weren't looking very hard, I don't know. But several other nations were there, including Japan.

They did not have this attitude about the U.S., and they were glad she was going to marry an American. This is a fair characterization of attitudes there.

People's attitudes don't change the historical reality. Both the U.S. and Japan have, in the past, done horrible things in the Philippines. The U.S. atrocities were a little longer ago and were less horrific. But they were still atrocities. Both the U.S. and Japan now send significant aid to the Philippines.

If you believe American has victimized the Philippines (for example), and this matters to you (you care), are you willing to help the Philippines?

I generally do my international charitable contributions through the Red Cross. My money's tight now (I'm about to spend the spring in Japan, doing some informal study of the culture behind the martial and healing arts I've studied), but if $20 or so can be leveraged to some good, I could PayPal you or something.

I personally do have Adblock installed on my machine here, but I only use turn it on for sites that uses ads in a way that are obtrusive

The only ads that are not obtrusive are text-based. Google got it right smack in the center of the bullseye with that one.

Banner ads suck. (Animated banner ads, of course, go far beyond sucking, and the just damnation that awaits those who use them is terrible to contemplate.) Simple text links that tell me, "this message brought to you by EarthTouch Shiatsu and Catonsville Seido Karate" don't bother me at all and are occasionally (very occasionally) even useful.

I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive.

Then I suggest you take Google's hint.

the failure of the existential quest - that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we're doing has appallingly little value.

I spent the first three years after graduate school working on the "Trusted Mach" project. The code I wrote, three years of my professional life, now sits on a shelf somewhere at the NSA, never deployed.

After that I spent a year working on a firewall product for Norman Data Defense systems. Ever hear of it? Europeans may know Norman ASA for its antivirus software, but I believe the firewall had all of about six customers worldwide.

There are a few other projects where I'm not sure whether the code i wrote was ever deployed or not. I believe my work on EDOS helped sling around the bits received from the Terra and Aqua satellites, that brings me some comfort.

But I've spent a good chunk of my professional career writing code that ultimately made no difference to anyone. That's why I'm satisfied now to do part-time less complex software development work for a small business (where what I write gets deployed immediately, and if it doesn't change the world at least helps our customers), and work part-time as a shiatsu therapist (where what I do makes a definite impact).

Considering that the majority, if not all of Osteopathy is a pseudoscience and treatments like Bowen technique are unproven it's no surprise your doctor wouldn't recommend it. I'd question any doctor who would.

Intelligent and skilled clinical physicans will use all information, including anecdotal evidence, to find a conservative and effective treatment. They will recommend conservative and safe CAM treatments for which research evidence (may I suggest Asian Bodywork Therapy?) or anecdotal evidence exists before radical and risky treatments like major surgery or toxic drugs.

I'm not familiar with the Bowen technique; from the descriptions I found with Google, it sounds a little bit like some of the gentle release techniques used in tui na (Chinese "medical massage"). It is massage, not osteopathy, as it works with soft tissue. A quick PubMed search turns up some case and pilot studies - that's enough that a physican interested in finding relief for their patient (rather than acting as an enforcer for current medical orthodoxy) should say, "Other people have said this helped them. It's not proven, but you might consider trying it out before we move to the next conventional treament, which is to cut you open, move your parts around, and sew you back up like a ripped overcoat."

It's interesting that many people who demand scientific proof of the effectiveness of CAM treatments, will unquestioningly accept conventional medical treatments which are unproven (and often will simply refuse to accept studies that do show CAM treaments to be effective). The same guy who demands to see double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, for example, will gladly submit himself to surgical techniques for which no double-blind controlled studies exist. (And yes, while it's very tricky to design, there are a few double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, which show positive results; meanwhile, the only placebo-controlled trials of surgical techniques I'm aware of have found the technique under investigation no better than placebo.)

It's not that people past 30 can't think, it's just that it's slightly harder for them to learn. It's not that they can't learn either, it's just harder.

I went back to school to study shiatsu ("acupressure massage") when I was 33. This involved a rigorous study of both Western anatomy and the principles of Chinese medicine. This year, at 36, I took my first class in the Japanese language.

I found it easier to learn now than I did when I was in college or graduate school. I had a richer variety of knowledge and experience to which to tie new ideas; I had clearer motivation; and I certainly had better study skills.

I think the idea that older people have difficulty learning comes from observing people who go to school in their youth, then stop any significant learning for many years; and then try to pick it up again.

The ability to learn is like anything else - use it or lose it. Be a lifelong learner. In those years between graduate school and massage school, I'd taught myself C++, PHP, SQL, a bit of Perl, Java, and Javascript, and some more general technical stuff; I continued to study karate and music and poetry and history and politics and philosophy; taught myself to juggle devil sticks, at least enough to impress young kids...I think I kept the grey matter tuned up enough that new learning is no problem.

There are some areas where certain modes of perception can be best shaped while the brain is still young, language and music for example, but it seems that "young" in this case means single digits. There's a big difference between starting to learn a new language at 5 versus 15, but I think little difference between 15 and 35.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- The Once and Future King, T. H. White

they will just refer you to the next quack's accupuncture needles. They might calll themselves 'alternative' but the correct term is 'unproven' or for most of those treatments it is just 'proven to be total bullshit'.

There is in fact significant evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture and acupressure in a wide variety of conditions.

Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be?

Markets can only produce efficient solutions when buyers and sellers meet with equal power, and with all costs accounted for. That's not the case in health care.

If you're having a heart attack, you're not able to shop around for the best deal or wait until an end-of-the-month sale.

Also and my neighbor's inability to afford treatment for communicable diseases puts me at risk. As we consider bird flu pandemics and bioterrorism, we need to understand access to basic health care as part of national defense.

BTW, from the blatant self-promotion department: stress kills. Massage and bodywork therapy fights stress.

I know you said "without attending to classes", but I'd suggest you reconsider. I'm taking a class at the local community college and finding it well worth the time and money. (A class at a community or commuter college may be much better suited to the part-time student - the intro Japanese class at UMCP is six credit hours, which would be difficult to fit into my schedule, while the one I'm taking is only three.)

I was motivated to finally take a class after my second trip to Japan last fall. After meeting one Spanish woman who spoke four langages, and a Polish woman who was there teaching English and studying shodo, I was embarassed that after twenty years of karate training in a Japanese style, and shiatsu training, and two brief trips to Japan, I knew only enough Japanese to say "thank you", "excuse me", and "please bring me a beer". (Well, and "roundhouse kick to the neck", but that's not a phrase that comes up much in polite conversation.)

The class is sociologically interesting, though - a bunch of 18 and 19 year old anime fans, and me at 36.

Why should we quit smoking, lose weight, stop drinking, ... and generally "live better" (in your words) if we don't have to?

You don't "have" to, but if you take crap care of yourself you lose all right to complain when you get sick, and have no right to expect a doctor or other health care provider to "fix" you. (I see it even as a bodywork therapist, people want me to "fix" their aching bodies but won't even try to change postural or movement habits...I'm tempted to keep some sort of gelding apparatus around for the next such "fix me!" request...)

I'm all in favor of drugs that let us do whatever the hell we want, as long as they work and are cheap (which they eventually will be).

I'm all in favor of free magic fairy dust too. But until it comes along, you've got to deal with reality-as-it-is, which is that that drugs (as great as they can be when properly applied) make a piss-poor substitute for healthy living.

Age is a bigger issue.

Yep.

My father was a programmer. He turned 55 in 2000; in the lead-up to Y2K he did pretty well, having skills with older systems, but after that...nothing. He was out of work for years before moving on to a different field (real estate.)

That made me look around the office. How many developers over 40 were there? Few. Over 50? One.

I decided to go back to school and get a job skill that can't be outsourced and (if I stay healthy) I can keep going into my 60s or later. (I'm still doing software part-time.)

Spoken like someone who's never known anyone with a mental illness!

Don't tell me who or what I don't know. Among my friends and acquintances are "bipolars", "depressives", at least two "PTSDs", two who could be probably be diagnozed "multiple personality disorders", one sure and one probable "borderline personality disorders", and a few "panic disorders". Oh, and of course a few "addicts", anyone in the Baltimore area knows some former junkies. And a "co-dependant". (Some of these overlap, of course.)

A few of these people are former lovers. I've talked them through panic attacks, PTSD flashbacks, and the really really strong desire to fall off the wagon. Another was a housemate, who I visited several times after she checked herself into the local mental hospital.

And I've had clients and students with various "mental illnesses".

I myself could probably have found someone to diagnose me as "depressive", or perhaps the more trendy "bipolar", at least until a few years ago. My doctor dropped Prozac hints at me on more than one occasion. I'm feeling much better now, thanks.

if you've ever known someone who is actually manic-depressive, or suffers from true clinical depression, you know it's as real as heart disease.

The question is not whether it's real. The problems are very real. The question is whether it's useful to label problematic states of consciousness, ideas, and behaviors as "diseases" or "illnesses", or whether other ways of thinking of them may be more useful.

My frustration with the idea that these problem are disease states comes not from ignorance, but from seeing how unhelpful - indeed, sometimes harmful - the "disease model" has been for most of these people.

1: Seasonal affective disorder .this is caused by a chemical imbalance due to the lack of daylight . A high powered solar lamp can help you here will alleviate many many symptoms . Again see a doctor

The "depression is a chemical imbalance" theory is not as rooted in research as the drug peddlers would like you to beleive.

My own experience: years ago I asked my doctor about SAD. I wasn't even asking her about treatment, just "do you think this is real, or just another trendy diagnosis-of-the-moment?" The first sentance out her mouth was something about Prozac. Thanks, no. (YYMV; I'm not criticizing anyone else's choice here. My own winter blahs weren't that severe that I felt the side-effects worth it.)

A year or so so later, I decided to give St. Johns Wort a try. Took it over the winter, did seem to feel better - even avoided putting on the extra few pounds of weight I usually added over the winter. Weaning off it in the spring was a little trickier than I anticipated, but I'd still rate it a positive. Did it again the next winter. Obviously my own experience is not a controlled study, though there is clinical evidence for its effectiveness in mild cases of depression.

About three years ago this summer, I started receiving acupuncture. When winter rolled around, I asked my acupuncturist about seasonal depression. She gave me a "duh!" look and pointed out that animals are supposed to be less active in the winter. It is not a disease to feel less energetic this time of year! Of course there's "feeling less energetic", and there's "debilitating, crushing, want-to-slit-my-wrists depression". The later is certainly a serious problem requring less subtle intervention, though I'm skeptical of applying the term "disease".

Slowing down and feeling different in the winter means that you haven't become disconnected from the natural world. Chinese medicine teaches that we should live more in harmony with these natural rhythms; indeed, it's much more about these lifestyle elements than about acupuncture, herbs, or bodywork. I've been trying to do that the past few years, and it's working for me.

Again, YMMV; I'm not advising anyone to stop taking their meds or anything like that.

if it is rooted in "reflexology" and "traditional chinese medicine" then I'd have to bet that there will never be any truly scientific studies that prove this product...

Reflexology has nothing to do with Chinese Medicine.

And remember folks, think critically. Anything that advertises itself using "accupressure" or "hidden pathways" is bunk.

"Thinking critically" also means being skeptical of the claims of current medical orthodoxy - looking at the actual evidence rather than being swayed by name-calling.

I don't know anything about reflexology, or about this particular study. But I know more than a little bit about acupressure and Chinese Medicine. While the research is still scanty, there are good clinical studies showing acupressure to be effective.

The NCCAOM has started working more closely with the NCCAM, and I hope to see more and better research forthcoming. Meanwhile, acupressure is an extremely safe treatment that seems to clearly have, at a bare minimum, positive non-specific effects in relieving stress and chronic muscle tension.

I commented on the relationship between the physiological/reductionist and the Chinese Medicine models here a few days ago, I'll take the liberty of briefly repeating myself:

There are several physiological theories about the meridians and points of acupressure, three that I know about involve nervous reflexes, the electrical properties of fascia, and a supposed network of less-differentiated cells throughout the body. It's possible that different points work by different mechanisms. Certainly the "placebo effect" plays a role - as it does in any treatment. Google for placebo surgery, it's fascinating.

Many pracitioners of Chinese Medicine don't care much about trying to find a Western Medicine explanation for how acupuncture, Asian bodywork therapy, and Chinese herbs, create their effects. They see it work every day, that's enough for them. (The same can be said of many Western physicians, a surprising number of whom have little interest or knowledge of biology.) But there is certainly a subset of the community that is interested in understanding from both points of view.

IMHO it's unfortunate that many practitioners of CM have latched on to the idea that qi, a fundamental ascept of the CM model, is some sort of electromagnetic-like energy field. This is a misinterpretation, attempting to fit Taoist concepts of the Universe into a Aristotelian grid. The CM model is very much a functional, not a structural, one; the Vital Substances, the Zang-Fu organs, and the meridians are best understood by what they do, not by chopping people up looking for them.

I recommend Ted Kaptchuk's book The Web That Has No Weaver to those interested in learning more about Chinese Medicine.

Where do you draw the line? Shouldn't you also avoid tables for the benefit of those still using NCSA Mosaic? What about the small but significant CERN Linemode demographic?

I don't have any Mosaic hits in my logs. I do have Netscape 4 and IE 4 hits - not a lot, but some. If you want the maximum audience for your content, that suggests where to draw the line.

Now that modern, standards-compliant browsers like Firefox exist and are freely available, it's more than about time to knock Netscape 4.7 on the head and tell those still using it to upgrade or be left behind.

Firefox requires a 233Mhz Pentium, and recommends a 500MHz box with 128 MB. Believe it or not, there are still people out there with computers that don't meet the required, much less recommended, spec.

For my personal websites, it's all content, and there's no reason to leave anyone behind for the sake of eye candy.

For the site that pays the bills, our members are antique dealers, and (at least according to the boss) as a whole they are a significantly non-tech-savvy bunch, so suggesting any sort of upgrade is right out. (Maybe antique dealers like using "antique" software and hardware, I dunno.) I pitch it to the lowest common denominator. I keep Javascript to a minimum and don't use the newest features.

What does it mean if you DO perform well on high-pressure tests such as the GRE?...Recently, I have actually felt pressured (first-year in grad school), and my tests have suffered as a result.

My hypothesis is that if you have a history of doing well on standardized tests, you don't see them as pressure. They're almost fun. I did well on the GREs - but I did well on the SATs, PSATs, all the way back to the Iowa standardized tests in elementary school. When you have the belief "I'm good at standardized tests", standardized tests aren't a lot of pressure.

(In fact I felt nostalgic a few months ago when taking the NCCAOM Asian Bodywork Therapy exam, which is given with old-school fill-in-the-bubble, #2 pencil forms, the way we used to take GREs and SATs back in the old days.)

But like you, I felt pressured in grad school. I didn't do as well as I would have liked. A decade later, and having recently gone back to school for a while to study therapeutic bodywork, I think the problem was that I had never developed good study habits - because I'd never had to.

Up until my junior year of college, pretty much everything I found interesting was fairly easy to learn. I actually was trying to do a double degree program - physics and computer science - in four years. (Not just a double major, mind you, but a double degree - requiring 150 credits. Ah, hubris.) I had the belief "I'm good in school," so there wasn't a lot of pressure or stress.

I managed to keep chugging along with the CS program, but the physics...when I hit the upper level classes, I just didn't get it. (Looking back I think the first problem was that I never got a firm enough grasp on differential equations.) And not getting the material was almost a completely new experience!

Sure, I'd hit the odd snag in trying to learn something new, but a few days of poking at it usually resolved it. This was different. Weeks of staring at it didn't make it go into my brain. I ended up dropping the physics side of my plan, finished my CS degree with good enough grades to get into grad school - where I hit the same problem of not knowing what to do when the way became difficult.

If I knew then what I know now, I might have tried such radical ideas as looking at the recommended supplemental reading, taking advantage of instructor's office hours, and studying with fellow students. But I'd gotten so far without even doing that, that it simply didn't occur to me. Maybe I even felt embarassed to try to get help. Pretty dumb for a "smart" person, eh?

So don't be like me! If things have been easy and suddenly get difficult, take advantage of all those support systems that "average" students use.

DO NOT BUY A HOUSE regardless of how rich you think you are in any job

Owning a home is still one of the best investments you can make - rent is money pissed away, while house payments build equity, and there's that nice tax break.

But you have to buy based on the assumption that your future income may be lower. (And you might think about renting out a room.)

I was lucky enough to get into the workforce and buy my house before the dot-com boom and bust, so my house payment is at a level I could afford at my entry level salary, which was around 42k. With my experience I can work part-time and still make the houe payment. (Working part-time as I shift into a new business that's unlikely to be outsourced, and that doesn't have the age ceiling that programming has.)

I've done a little side work in the computer field, once for a social worker FOAF (now wife-OAF) who was setting up a computer lab in the neighborhood where she worked, once for a former client of a former employer who hired me to do a little extra development.

These days I've doing software for this site part-time, and my side jobs are my shiatsu and massage practice and karate program (which is actully showing potential of moving from an expensive hobby to at least breaking even this year). And I've been talking lately with some folks about doing a little website set-up and hosting.

But back before the PC revolution (yes, young'ns, there was a time before everyone had their own machine), in the late 70s/early 80s my father had a reasonably profitable side job running off mailing labels for organizations.

A church group or a local union chapter could get a discount by sorting their mail by zip code, so my father would get time on the computers at his day-job employer and run off a batch of sorted mailing labels. I remember helping him carry the boxes of punch cards, and getting to go into the machine room with its whirring tape drives, clattering line printer, heavy-duty A/C...ah, geek nostalgia.