Ask Your Doctor….

If you watch any commercial television, you have surely noticed how much of the advertising is for prescription drugs If you think that the advertising for prescription medication has increased over the past few years, you’re correct. Such advertising is legal in only four countries, with the U.S. being one of the four. Marketing of pharmaceutical products has been “big business” for a long time, of course. Companies making such products trained an army of sales representatives to take samples around to physicians and others responsible for writing the prescriptions.

They also initiated a major lobbying effort to persuade . . . → Read More: Ask Your Doctor….

When the Mode of the Music Changes

You can tell a lot about people based on their musical preferences. I borrow my title from a radical group from the ’60s, the Fugs, and one of their old songs:

It would be pretty hard to know me well without knowing when and where I grew up and how I had been influenced by the music of my youth. I assume that the same is true for everyone. The concept has been most fully explored by Morris Massey, who wrote about the three main periods in a person’s maturation process:

The Imprint Period. From birth . . . → Read More: When the Mode of the Music Changes

Sticking to Our Guns

Some of you have noticed that it has been a long time since my last post. It isn’t so much that I had nothing to say as it is that I was overwhelmed by how much needed saying. A lot has been going on, and even areas where not much has been happening (the U.S. Congress), the inaction is fraught with meaning.

Where a lot has been going on—forest fires in the U.S., flooding in the U.S., wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East, and changes related to global climate change—it is hard for me to know . . . → Read More: Sticking to Our Guns

Evidence Procedures, Part 2

It has been almost two months since my last blog entry. I have been busy, and a lot has been happening, some of which I thought would make good posts, and some of which interfered with my writing. In that category, if you have been following Debra’s and my SCS posts, you know that Debra needed to have a complete hysterectomy. She is now recovering and still hoping to spend the coming winter in Florida, which she has been thinking of as a “healing garden.”

Some of the discussion following the shooting of the children at the Sandy Hook, . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures, Part 2

Lesser of Two Weevils

In the movie, “Master and Commander,” Captain Jack (Russell Crowe) asks the ship’s surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) to choose one of the two weevils crawling around in their food. The doctor initially says that they are the same in the critical aspects: “Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.” When Captain Jack insists on a choice, the doctor chooses the larger one. The captain says that he has chosen incorrectly because “in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils.”

Now that the political . . . → Read More: Lesser of Two Weevils