Take an axe to the TV. Turn off the radio. Read a book. No, not a book on computers. A nice, eighteenth century book. Look up the big words if you have to. Stop driving anywhere that you can avoid -- you'd be amazed where you actually DON'T need to go. Walk everywhere you can. Use the computer at work and, at home, TURN THE DAMNED THING OFF!
I recently had the pleasure of studying the Amish (for an article in my church's in-house newspaper). I finished my study convinced that they had the right idea.
You see, the Amish don't think that technology is evil. They think that it has potential to corrupt their society. That technology, run wild, can reduce Amish society to rubble. So, they only allow technologies in on a case-by-case basis. Even when they allow a technology, they try to keep it as far away as possible.
So, they can have calculators, but not computers. They can have tractors, but no in the field or on the road. The can have generators, but not light bulbs or most appliances. (Ever lived a farm-sleep cycle? 12 hours of sleep in the winter! It's incredible. Now you know why most amish have 10 kids:)) They can have a phone, but only in the barn. All these apparent contradictions are to keep technology at a distance.
That's not to say that they're right about everything. But I think that they do have a point about technology -- it's not necessarily harmless, not necessarily necessary, and should be used only after careful consideration.
Of course, that doesn't mean I practice what I preach. After all, palm-pilots are too nifty to pass up:)
I find the moderation system around here hopelessly amusing. Whenever I post on a secular topic, it tends to go straight to the top with no negative moderations. When I post admitting my religious biases, it tends to be moderated up (interesting/insightful) and down (offtopic, overrated). For example, the article above has currently been moderated up once (interesting) and down one (overrated). Which is it? I betcha if it were secular with similar quality of opinion it wouldn't have gotten the downcheck.
I always try to keep my comments at least mostly topical -- certainly as topical as the average. The only explanation I can conceive is that people moderate (up and down) based on their religious opinions. I thought moderation was not supposed to be based on whether you agree with the author? Didn't I read that somewhere?
Not that it matters... People will read, or not read. I just think it says something about that percentage of dotheads who will howl grieviously about censorship when someone wants to label their porn as porn, but will ruthlessly suppress any religious message they don't agree with.
Maybe I should start posting as a Buddhist and see what happens? I used to be a Buddhist monk and could probably fake it convinicingly. It seems that, in our society, it is okay to be anything but Christian.
As those of you who have read some of my postings may have noticed, I am (or at least try to be) a devout Christian and pretty vocal about it. I am also in some sense a scientist, althought out of date and not professional. Is there a conflict? No. There is no conflict.
People seem to assume that philosophic naturalism must push out all other philosophies. Nothing could be further from the truth. I regard my own naturalism as the study of God's methods, and so, indirectly, the study of God himself. In fact, there are many places in the Bible (for example, half the book of Job) where God defines himself and his "Godhood" in terms of his creation. In Romans 2, Paul writes that God reveals himself to all men through the glory of His creation.
Where I draw the line is at the phenomenal hubris of assuming that what I can see with my physical senses is all there is. That's not to say that I don't see evidence for God -- I do. But that evidence is spiritual and (yes) emotional. Not rational. C.S. Lewis -- highly recommended -- said that "The irrefutable and the undeniable are the two weapons that he [God] cannot use". Why? Because he wants us to freely serve him out of love for Him: not out of fear, and his precense "in anything but the most attenuated form" would overwealm us. (I have probably misquoted: the book is Screwtape letters, and I don't have it with me).
Which brings us to Galileo: the quotes in this review make it obvious that Galileo was deeply religious. Yet the author seems puzzled by this in face of the persecution that Galileo suffered. What Galileo knew (and many today apparently do not) is that God and the hierarchy of the Church often have very little to do with each other! The assumption today is often that travesties like Galileo's treatment invalidate Christianity. They don't. They only invalidate organized Christianity.
Never forget that Jesus was a rebel against organized religiosity, and often sharply criticized the authorities of his day for their failings. Don't associate Him with something he never advocated. Religion without Jesus is like beer without alcohol: it may taste good, but in the end you don't get a buzz.
A couple of jobs ago (don't ya love this industry?) I worked as senior network/unix dude for a medium sized university. I would've KILLED for something like this. In fact, I setup something not so very different, but at a much higher cost.
What I did was I bought X-terminals from HDS and backended them all on a Sun UE5000. The upshot was that I got/incredible/ performance, and incredible reliability. I had no downtime, ever (except once caused by a cracker -- but I squished him). This setup supported about 100 simultaneous users comfortably. For the educational market, it was wonderful.
The problem in the.edu setting tends to be that very few of the mainline "solutions providers" understand the market. There is one critical fact in this market that stands out: Students cannot be trusted. Students are not impacted when the machines go down, they are young and often irresponsible, and the best and brightest often cause the most trouble because they try things that shouldn't be tried (legitimately trying to learn). In a UNIX/Terminal environment, I can lock them down enough that they can't impact reliability for everyone else, but leave them open enough that the students can still see how the system works.
The other problem is that almost all machines are shared by almost all the users. Repeat after me: POP based email is a disaster because it downloads (by default) all the student's email to a public pc. Another persistent problem (especially on windoze) is that students load software on the PC's, change the settings, fill the browser caches with pornography, etc. etc. All this might not matter on their personal PC, but on a public PC in a computer lab is horrible.
Bluntly, if this system had been available 3 or 4 years ago, I would have probably bought a gross.
Oh yeah, don't forget the administrative costs!!! I've heard a couple of people grumbling about the cost of Sun servers. The fact is that Sun servers are a lot cheaper than the horde of administrators you have to hire to manage a couple of hundred PC's that are constantly being trashed by 3l33t h4x0rs. Bluntly, a competent PC TECH (forget networking admin, just a pc tech) is going to cost you $30K/yr time you pay benefits. It doesn't take long to buy a UE4500 at that price.
OK, folks, this guy may be a fanatic, and nothing I say may get past his rejection of antidepressants.
Okay, so let's label me and that invalidates what I say? Come now.
I neven said that anti-depressants have no purpose. I said nothing of the sort. But the simple fact is that Drs. prescribe anti-depressants without trying ANY OTHER therapies. I think this is crazy: screwing with your brain chemistry is not something to do lightly.
I will also observe that, in every post I have made, I have consistently pointed people to independent, non-anecdotal evidence. This guy just calls names.
I would just hate to see people go through the kind of hell I went through to learn that anti-depressants are an often abused medicine. If that makes me a fanatic, then fine. But it leasnt I'm a logically well supported fanatic instead of some jerk who just drops an assertion and runs.
Luvox is not for treating compression. It's often used for that because the pharmaceutical companies have found depression to be a better market than it's approved use: treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Seriously: I've done the homework. I am convinced that there is no basis in fact for the number of prescriptions that we have for Lubox. See my postings regardint he proven interaction of sugar with depressive symptoms.
You give it away at the start of the article, when you say "Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind?". In a word: the answer is yes!.
Every single school shooting that I'm aware in the past several years (since Jonesboro, AR) has involved a child on a psychotropic drug.
Oh yeah, you say "the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered". Read the product insert for Luvox and tell me that that is appropriate!!! It says, specifically, that the drugs are to be given in the smallest quantity possible and that children are to be treated regularly.
Oh yeah: most of the drugs don't come from Psychiatrists or even licensed counselors: they come from family doctors who know very little about psychiatry.
Never said that it was useless. Just radically over-prescribed.
I remember a kid in my church. He was classically depressed -- didn't eat, slept all the time, morose. He's also a geek.
The school asked his parents to take him to the doctor for depression. They did, and the Dr. said "Let's try putting him on Zoloft and see if that helps". No test. No attempt at counseling. Just try a drug and see what happens. I heard about this, and I jumped up and down, screamed, begged and pleaded to get them to try nutrition first.
They did after I practically threatened them. Their child is now healthy, happy, and drug-free on Vitamin B. I'm serious. I'm not some health food idiot who swears by St. John's Wort. I don't take any other vitamins than B. But I am convinced beyond a doubt that most depression is caused by vitamin B deficiencies.
This theory neatly explains the downgrade of our society: ever since the 1930's, americans have been consuming more and more pure sugar. In order to metabolize concentrated sugars, your body depletes your reserves of vitamin B, which in turn impacts brain function. (sugar also causes a bunch of other problems, but that's another issue. Get off the poisonous stuff!)
This is adequately proven by a number of studies from reputable research facilities, including Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins.
Yet Drs. don't prescribe Vitamin B for depression. Why not? No one advertises it (see my post above). Instead, we kill our children with unnecessary drugs, all in our mad rush to worship at the altar of the almighty buck.
Yes, I AM bitter. So bitter I could SPIT.
(p.s. Do not just stop taking any anti-depressant drug that you have been on long term with the help of a Doctor. I'm serious, this can cause suicidal depression!!!!!!!! But do get off the drugs. Life is too short.)
(p.p.s. If you get a Vitamin B supplement, get a B-Complex with 100% of the RDA of biatin -- biatin is one of the vitamin b's that make up the complex. Email me if you need help.)
That's right. The Bible. The 20th century is not the first time somebody has cried out against injustice and materialism. It's not the first time that people have needed a message that was jarringly non-materialistic. This attitude is present in the Old Testament as well... You just have to learn to look at it within the context of a document that was written in 1000BC.
What never ceases to amaze me is the way people (read: the Christian Right) warp the Bible in support of our societies crass commercialism and knee-jerk conservatism. Jesus was the original radical, which means that God is too!!! Never forget it.
I will go ahead and forego my +1 and save the moderators the trouble, since anything that doesn't endorse pseudo-scientific rationalism is doomed to a -1 around here.
Y'know... I could see that being true of some doctors. But my observation has been that many (most?) doctors have reached the point where they simply no longer care.
I base this on extensive experience in the medical establishment: they care far more about their next vacation than their next patient. I don't know a solution... I just know that it's royally screwed up.
And while you may accuse me of being idealistic, I doubt a well-educated doctor would attatch any significance to the fact that a drug rep is goodlooking.
Then why are they/all/ good looking? Logically, a drug company would not go to the trouble and (ultimately) expense of hiring a good looking rep if they didn't find them to be more effective.
I will refute your assertion that advertising is irrelevan quite simply: this class of drugs is clearly one of the most heavily advertised classes (it's not just a drug company pen: it's a ZOLOFT pen). And they are also the most over-prescribed.
How did we survive all those millenia without these drugs? Something like 1 in 4 kids is on them now! I simply can't believe that they are that necessary.
Oh yeah: speaking from experience (it took me years to find a doctor that knew this) most depression is caused by a vitamin B deficiency consequent to taking in too much sugar. This is adequately established by MANY clinical trials (done by places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School, not some cheasy alternative medicine place.)
Don't believe me? Try taking a good supplement of Vitamin B and see if it works.
Classically, it would be something like a direct and dire insult to your mother's character phrased in the rudest possible way which was ultimately untrue and known to be untrue.
Both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were on psychotropic drugs -- that is anti-depressant therapy. In one of their cases, it was Luvox. According to the autopsy, he was taking it as directed in normal doses.
This drug has been known to cause mania and psychosis in clinical trials!!! Don't take my word for it: read the product insert.
Guys -- these kids were drugged into doing this by liberal education and its refusal to deal with Kids who don't match the norm. Make no mistake about it.
So: don't blame the parents. Don't blame the other students. Blame the schools, the NEA, the APA, the drug companies, and the doctors that pass this stuff out like it's candy.
Why do they pass it out like this? Simple: the drug companies advertise these "vanity drugs" extremely heavily. I used to work in the medical field, fixing systems for doctors. I would regularly see these gorgeous women come in as drug company reps. They would cook lunch for the staff, chit-chat with the doctor, and leave all kinds of name-branded junk for him to use.
Don't believe me? Go in a doctor's office sometime and see what kind of pen he's using. 50/50 chance it says Zoloft or Luvox on the side.
The net result: the doctor, when presented with a Kid with behaviour problems (too much sugar and too little discipline) says "Let's just try this and see if it works". Doctors are human too, and "a beautiful woman told him that it would help this, so it must be true," right?
It's better than having the government censor domain names.
Is he seriously asserting that, in the absence of the NAACP/ACLU/ADL/whoever, the alternative should be censorship?
Censorship on this basis (racial opinions) would be so outrageously unconsitutional it wouldn't even be funny. Even THIS supreme court wouldn't allow it. And the "fighting words" doctrine would probably not be applicable -- that is reserved only for those words that are EXCLUSIVELY provocative and devoid of meaning beyond their provocative nature.
Which brings up another question: I, as a Christian Libertarian, will allow you to read any kind of trash you see fit. My only request is that you don't try to slip it in under my radar by disguising it as legitimate material (see www.whitehouse.com or try searching for a lost windows serial number sometime). However, when you deliberately try to decesive me into using material that is not of any redeaming value, it seems to me very injust.
It seems to me that the NAACP and friends are stepping over the line here -- they are trying to slip in their own political philosophy by underhanded means. While I cannot endorse the political philosophies that they are trying to defeat, neither can I entirely tolerate their deliberate abuse of the domain system by registering false and/or misleading domains.
Of course, it's not really relevant -- who uses domains to find stuff anymore? But it seems to me that the ends may well NOT justify the means. At what point is it legitimate to lie to make a point, even if it is worthwhile?
This is probably off-topic, and will be moderated as such, but all I can say is AMEN! Love is critical.
Consider the following:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, [2] but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1Corinthians 13
Paul said it best. "Love never fails." So stop campaigning and strategizing and all this nonsense and get out there and love each other!
I'm a radical-Christian Libertarian who thinks that race is overblown as an issue -- and that the best solution to the issue is to interbreed until we're all a nice chocolate brown.
First, if I were looking for hate groups I probably wouldn't look at "n-word".com (Urk. Ugly, self-conscious, orwellian phrase -- if I were sure that the companies firewall wouldn't pick up the real thing I would use it). Why not? Because I wouldn't expect to find hate groups, but some kind of inner-city rap group. Think NWA here guys.
But that's beside the point. What occurs to me is that domain names are becoming meaningless. Nowadays, when I need to locate something on the web, I don't go to "www.company.com" because it is not very semantically rich. There are too many companies on the web now for each one to try to be www.whatever.com.
I remember, when I was growing up, there was a clothing store in town called "Sears Betty & Bob". It was entirely unrelated to Sears. Apparently the owners name was "Sears", and so they had a right to use it even though it was a trademark.
But back to the hate groups. This is an unbelievable waste of money. People, when faced with the loss of semantic content in domain names, no longer just type in "www.whatever.com" -- they go to google, type a couple of keywords, hit "I'm feeling lucky" and get to the site. It's not as though you are going to keep people from finding the stuff if they really want to anyway.
If I were a contributor to one of these organizations, I'd be angry at the waste of money. Wouldn't it be better to counter these groups with facts than simply trying to suppress them?
FWIW, my sarcasm was directed less at your article than at the dot-heads around here whining about how it wouldn't play quake-2 very well and completely missing the point that most people don't play quake:)
I have to suspect that Sun's aims for the home market are primarily for that low-end segment currently valiantly resisting the forces of WebTV.
Slashdot Mirror
Just say no.
:)) They can have a phone, but only in the barn. All these apparent contradictions are to keep technology at a distance.
:)
Take an axe to the TV. Turn off the radio. Read a book. No, not a book on computers. A nice, eighteenth century book. Look up the big words if you have to. Stop driving anywhere that you can avoid -- you'd be amazed where you actually DON'T need to go. Walk everywhere you can. Use the computer at work and, at home, TURN THE DAMNED THING OFF!
I recently had the pleasure of studying the Amish (for an article in my church's in-house newspaper). I finished my study convinced that they had the right idea.
You see, the Amish don't think that technology is evil. They think that it has potential to corrupt their society. That technology, run wild, can reduce Amish society to rubble. So, they only allow technologies in on a case-by-case basis. Even when they allow a technology, they try to keep it as far away as possible.
So, they can have calculators, but not computers. They can have tractors, but no in the field or on the road. The can have generators, but not light bulbs or most appliances. (Ever lived a farm-sleep cycle? 12 hours of sleep in the winter! It's incredible. Now you know why most amish have 10 kids
That's not to say that they're right about everything. But I think that they do have a point about technology -- it's not necessarily harmless, not necessarily necessary, and should be used only after careful consideration.
Of course, that doesn't mean I practice what I preach. After all, palm-pilots are too nifty to pass up
Alcohol free beer does not taste good.
:)
Neither does Jesus-Free religion.
Maybe I could deal with it if I were drunk enough to not taste the difference?
I find the moderation system around here hopelessly amusing. Whenever I post on a secular topic, it tends to go straight to the top with no negative moderations. When I post admitting my religious biases, it tends to be moderated up (interesting/insightful) and down (offtopic, overrated). For example, the article above has currently been moderated up once (interesting) and down one (overrated). Which is it? I betcha if it were secular with similar quality of opinion it wouldn't have gotten the downcheck.
I always try to keep my comments at least mostly topical -- certainly as topical as the average. The only explanation I can conceive is that people moderate (up and down) based on their religious opinions. I thought moderation was not supposed to be based on whether you agree with the author? Didn't I read that somewhere?
Not that it matters... People will read, or not read. I just think it says something about that percentage of dotheads who will howl grieviously about censorship when someone wants to label their porn as porn, but will ruthlessly suppress any religious message they don't agree with.
Maybe I should start posting as a Buddhist and see what happens? I used to be a Buddhist monk and could probably fake it convinicingly. It seems that, in our society, it is okay to be anything but Christian.
As those of you who have read some of my postings may have noticed, I am (or at least try to be) a devout Christian and pretty vocal about it. I am also in some sense a scientist, althought out of date and not professional. Is there a conflict? No. There is no conflict.
People seem to assume that philosophic naturalism must push out all other philosophies. Nothing could be further from the truth. I regard my own naturalism as the study of God's methods, and so, indirectly, the study of God himself. In fact, there are many places in the Bible (for example, half the book of Job) where God defines himself and his "Godhood" in terms of his creation. In Romans 2, Paul writes that God reveals himself to all men through the glory of His creation.
Where I draw the line is at the phenomenal hubris of assuming that what I can see with my physical senses is all there is. That's not to say that I don't see evidence for God -- I do. But that evidence is spiritual and (yes) emotional. Not rational. C.S. Lewis -- highly recommended -- said that "The irrefutable and the undeniable are the two weapons that he [God] cannot use". Why? Because he wants us to freely serve him out of love for Him: not out of fear, and his precense "in anything but the most attenuated form" would overwealm us. (I have probably misquoted: the book is Screwtape letters, and I don't have it with me).
Which brings us to Galileo: the quotes in this review make it obvious that Galileo was deeply religious. Yet the author seems puzzled by this in face of the persecution that Galileo suffered. What Galileo knew (and many today apparently do not) is that God and the hierarchy of the Church often have very little to do with each other! The assumption today is often that travesties like Galileo's treatment invalidate Christianity. They don't. They only invalidate organized Christianity.
Never forget that Jesus was a rebel against organized religiosity, and often sharply criticized the authorities of his day for their failings. Don't associate Him with something he never advocated. Religion without Jesus is like beer without alcohol: it may taste good, but in the end you don't get a buzz.
Anybody I haven't offended yet? No? Good.
A couple of jobs ago (don't ya love this industry?) I worked as senior network/unix dude for a medium sized university. I would've KILLED for something like this. In fact, I setup something not so very different, but at a much higher cost.
/incredible/ performance, and incredible reliability. I had no downtime, ever (except once caused by a cracker -- but I squished him). This setup supported about 100 simultaneous users comfortably. For the educational market, it was wonderful.
.edu setting tends to be that very few of the mainline "solutions providers" understand the market. There is one critical fact in this market that stands out: Students cannot be trusted. Students are not impacted when the machines go down, they are young and often irresponsible, and the best and brightest often cause the most trouble because they try things that shouldn't be tried (legitimately trying to learn). In a UNIX/Terminal environment, I can lock them down enough that they can't impact reliability for everyone else, but leave them open enough that the students can still see how the system works.
What I did was I bought X-terminals from HDS and backended them all on a Sun UE5000. The upshot was that I got
The problem in the
The other problem is that almost all machines are shared by almost all the users. Repeat after me: POP based email is a disaster because it downloads (by default) all the student's email to a public pc. Another persistent problem (especially on windoze) is that students load software on the PC's, change the settings, fill the browser caches with pornography, etc. etc. All this might not matter on their personal PC, but on a public PC in a computer lab is horrible.
Bluntly, if this system had been available 3 or 4 years ago, I would have probably bought a gross.
Oh yeah, don't forget the administrative costs!!! I've heard a couple of people grumbling about the cost of Sun servers. The fact is that Sun servers are a lot cheaper than the horde of administrators you have to hire to manage a couple of hundred PC's that are constantly being trashed by 3l33t h4x0rs. Bluntly, a competent PC TECH (forget networking admin, just a pc tech) is going to cost you $30K/yr time you pay benefits. It doesn't take long to buy a UE4500 at that price.
I'm not going to dignify that with a response.
The only point you make worth looking at is the "1/100" point. How many kids on Luvox does it take to make one in 1000 shoot up their school?
I'm done posting on this thread. The evdence is their. My email address is there. If you want information, contact me.
OK, folks, this guy may be a fanatic, and nothing I say may get past his rejection of antidepressants.
Okay, so let's label me and that invalidates what I say? Come now.
I neven said that anti-depressants have no purpose. I said nothing of the sort. But the simple fact is that Drs. prescribe anti-depressants without trying ANY OTHER therapies. I think this is crazy: screwing with your brain chemistry is not something to do lightly.
I will also observe that, in every post I have made, I have consistently pointed people to independent, non-anecdotal evidence. This guy just calls names.
I would just hate to see people go through the kind of hell I went through to learn that anti-depressants are an often abused medicine. If that makes me a fanatic, then fine. But it leasnt I'm a logically well supported fanatic instead of some jerk who just drops an assertion and runs.
Need I say more?
Luvox is not for treating compression. It's often used for that because the pharmaceutical companies have found depression to be a better market than it's approved use: treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Seriously: I've done the homework. I am convinced that there is no basis in fact for the number of prescriptions that we have for Lubox. See my postings regardint he proven interaction of sugar with depressive symptoms.
You give it away at the start of the article, when you say "Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind?". In a word: the answer is yes!.
Every single school shooting that I'm aware in the past several years (since Jonesboro, AR) has involved a child on a psychotropic drug.
Oh yeah, you say "the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered". Read the product insert for Luvox and tell me that that is appropriate!!! It says, specifically, that the drugs are to be given in the smallest quantity possible and that children are to be treated regularly.
Oh yeah: most of the drugs don't come from Psychiatrists or even licensed counselors: they come from family doctors who know very little about psychiatry.
Sorry, but I think it's important.
/me mutters something to the effect of "Smart-aleck moderators make a liar out of me".
Never said that it was useless. Just radically over-prescribed.
I remember a kid in my church. He was classically depressed -- didn't eat, slept all the time, morose. He's also a geek.
The school asked his parents to take him to the doctor for depression. They did, and the Dr. said "Let's try putting him on Zoloft and see if that helps". No test. No attempt at counseling. Just try a drug and see what happens. I heard about this, and I jumped up and down, screamed, begged and pleaded to get them to try nutrition first.
They did after I practically threatened them. Their child is now healthy, happy, and drug-free on Vitamin B. I'm serious. I'm not some health food idiot who swears by St. John's Wort. I don't take any other vitamins than B. But I am convinced beyond a doubt that most depression is caused by vitamin B deficiencies.
This theory neatly explains the downgrade of our society: ever since the 1930's, americans have been consuming more and more pure sugar. In order to metabolize concentrated sugars, your body depletes your reserves of vitamin B, which in turn impacts brain function. (sugar also causes a bunch of other problems, but that's another issue. Get off the poisonous stuff!)
This is adequately proven by a number of studies from reputable research facilities, including Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins.
Yet Drs. don't prescribe Vitamin B for depression. Why not? No one advertises it (see my post above). Instead, we kill our children with unnecessary drugs, all in our mad rush to worship at the altar of the almighty buck.
Yes, I AM bitter. So bitter I could SPIT.
(p.s. Do not just stop taking any anti-depressant drug that you have been on long term with the help of a Doctor. I'm serious, this can cause suicidal depression!!!!!!!! But do get off the drugs. Life is too short.)
(p.p.s. If you get a Vitamin B supplement, get a B-Complex with 100% of the RDA of biatin -- biatin is one of the vitamin b's that make up the complex. Email me if you need help.)
As for why we haven't been hearing about it... The only answer I have for that is a conspiracy theory, and I hate to sound like a nut.
okay, I'll sound like a nut, because those who don't agree already think I am.
Just consider the groups encouraing drug therapies, and consider the media's bias:
'nuff said.
Yeah. What he said.
A book to add to your list: the Bible.
That's right. The Bible. The 20th century is not the first time somebody has cried out against injustice and materialism. It's not the first time that people have needed a message that was jarringly non-materialistic. This attitude is present in the Old Testament as well... You just have to learn to look at it within the context of a document that was written in 1000BC.
What never ceases to amaze me is the way people (read: the Christian Right) warp the Bible in support of our societies crass commercialism and knee-jerk conservatism. Jesus was the original radical, which means that God is too!!! Never forget it.
I will go ahead and forego my +1 and save the moderators the trouble, since anything that doesn't endorse pseudo-scientific rationalism is doomed to a -1 around here.
Y'know... I could see that being true of some doctors. But my observation has been that many (most?) doctors have reached the point where they simply no longer care.
I base this on extensive experience in the medical establishment: they care far more about their next vacation than their next patient. I don't know a solution... I just know that it's royally screwed up.
WRONG!
They were suicidal while on anti-depressant therapy! So that just proves that ADT doesn't work as advertised.
Also, I didn't say hyper-activity. I said depression. And repeated clinical trials have shown a relationship between sugar intake and depression.
It's not just me saying this. See http://www.breggin.com/luvox.html.
Just thought I'd throw in some more documentation. For God's sake, get your kids off of this stuff.
And while you may accuse me of being idealistic, I doubt a well-educated doctor would attatch any significance to the fact that a drug rep is goodlooking.
/all/ good looking? Logically, a drug company would not go to the trouble and (ultimately) expense of hiring a good looking rep if they didn't find them to be more effective.
Then why are they
I will refute your assertion that advertising is irrelevan quite simply: this class of drugs is clearly one of the most heavily advertised classes (it's not just a drug company pen: it's a ZOLOFT pen). And they are also the most over-prescribed.
How did we survive all those millenia without these drugs? Something like 1 in 4 kids is on them now! I simply can't believe that they are that necessary.
Oh yeah: speaking from experience (it took me years to find a doctor that knew this) most depression is caused by a vitamin B deficiency consequent to taking in too much sugar. This is adequately established by MANY clinical trials (done by places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School, not some cheasy alternative medicine place.)
Don't believe me? Try taking a good supplement of Vitamin B and see if it works.
And what words would those be?
Classically, it would be something like a direct and dire insult to your mother's character phrased in the rudest possible way which was ultimately untrue and known to be untrue.
Both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were on psychotropic drugs -- that is anti-depressant therapy. In one of their cases, it was Luvox. According to the autopsy, he was taking it as directed in normal doses.
This drug has been known to cause mania and psychosis in clinical trials!!! Don't take my word for it: read the product insert.
Guys -- these kids were drugged into doing this by liberal education and its refusal to deal with Kids who don't match the norm. Make no mistake about it.
So: don't blame the parents. Don't blame the other students. Blame the schools, the NEA, the APA, the drug companies, and the doctors that pass this stuff out like it's candy.
Why do they pass it out like this? Simple: the drug companies advertise these "vanity drugs" extremely heavily. I used to work in the medical field, fixing systems for doctors. I would regularly see these gorgeous women come in as drug company reps. They would cook lunch for the staff, chit-chat with the doctor, and leave all kinds of name-branded junk for him to use.
Don't believe me? Go in a doctor's office sometime and see what kind of pen he's using. 50/50 chance it says Zoloft or Luvox on the side.
The net result: the doctor, when presented with a Kid with behaviour problems (too much sugar and too little discipline) says "Let's just try this and see if it works". Doctors are human too, and "a beautiful woman told him that it would help this, so it must be true," right?
*sigh* This makes me MAD.
Censorship on this basis (racial opinions) would be so outrageously unconsitutional it wouldn't even be funny. Even THIS supreme court wouldn't allow it. And the "fighting words" doctrine would probably not be applicable -- that is reserved only for those words that are EXCLUSIVELY provocative and devoid of meaning beyond their provocative nature.
Which brings up another question: I, as a Christian Libertarian, will allow you to read any kind of trash you see fit. My only request is that you don't try to slip it in under my radar by disguising it as legitimate material (see www.whitehouse.com or try searching for a lost windows serial number sometime). However, when you deliberately try to decesive me into using material that is not of any redeaming value, it seems to me very injust.
It seems to me that the NAACP and friends are stepping over the line here -- they are trying to slip in their own political philosophy by underhanded means. While I cannot endorse the political philosophies that they are trying to defeat, neither can I entirely tolerate their deliberate abuse of the domain system by registering false and/or misleading domains.
Of course, it's not really relevant -- who uses domains to find stuff anymore? But it seems to me that the ends may well NOT justify the means. At what point is it legitimate to lie to make a point, even if it is worthwhile?
Consider the following:
Paul said it best. "Love never fails." So stop campaigning and strategizing and all this nonsense and get out there and love each other!I'm a radical-Christian Libertarian who thinks that race is overblown as an issue -- and that the best solution to the issue is to interbreed until we're all a nice chocolate brown.
First, if I were looking for hate groups I probably wouldn't look at "n-word".com (Urk. Ugly, self-conscious, orwellian phrase -- if I were sure that the companies firewall wouldn't pick up the real thing I would use it). Why not? Because I wouldn't expect to find hate groups, but some kind of inner-city rap group. Think NWA here guys.
But that's beside the point. What occurs to me is that domain names are becoming meaningless. Nowadays, when I need to locate something on the web, I don't go to "www.company.com" because it is not very semantically rich. There are too many companies on the web now for each one to try to be www.whatever.com.
I remember, when I was growing up, there was a clothing store in town called "Sears Betty & Bob". It was entirely unrelated to Sears. Apparently the owners name was "Sears", and so they had a right to use it even though it was a trademark.
But back to the hate groups. This is an unbelievable waste of money. People, when faced with the loss of semantic content in domain names, no longer just type in "www.whatever.com" -- they go to google, type a couple of keywords, hit "I'm feeling lucky" and get to the site. It's not as though you are going to keep people from finding the stuff if they really want to anyway.
If I were a contributor to one of these organizations, I'd be angry at the waste of money. Wouldn't it be better to counter these groups with facts than simply trying to suppress them?
FWIW, my sarcasm was directed less at your article than at the dot-heads around here whining about how it wouldn't play quake-2 very well and completely missing the point that most people don't play quake :)
I have to suspect that Sun's aims for the home market are primarily for that low-end segment currently valiantly resisting the forces of WebTV.