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Sunday Cliché

600 Free Cups Of Coffee

Below: Lottery Director Mike Jones is interviewed at a cafe that's giving away 600 cups of coffee paid for by the Illinois Lottery Office. The coffee giveaway is in celebration of the record-breaking $600 million dollar Powerball jackpot drawing tonight. Lots of people are accepting the free coffee and saying things like: Huh? But why free coffee?

There were several satellite trucks parked nearby and more reporters were waiting to interview Jones. Lottery directors aren't usually all that visible, but Jones has been the subject of considerable controversy since he took the lottery job. Perhaps his ambitions go beyond running the state lottery and the coffee is a way to get his name and mug (sorry) in front of the public.

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Reader Shots

Office Life. Photo by Retriever.

Arizona State Student Consumed Way Too Much Tequila

I gasped when I got to the part about his BAC:

Pooley said the student consumed about 20 shots of tequila and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.47 percent, nearly six times the legal limit for driving. The student, who has not been identified, has been released from the hospital.

His friends left him at an ER with a Post-it note explaining that he'd participated in a drinking competition. People have survived considerably higher concentrations, but 0.47% is dangerously high.

Weee....

The Chicago Tribune:

Today's high of 91 degrees at O'Hare International Airport -- so far -- is a 55-degree increase from Monday morning's frosty 36-degree low.

You're probably next, New York.

What's in a name?

Family members of my parents' generation were, in many cases, given Italian first names that they dropped when they entered public grade schools. In most cases, English translations of their Italian names existed, but, in some instances, they didn't like the translations. My father was among the latter group and, as a consequence, he's gone by five different first names at various times during his life. Long story, I'll spare you the details.

Never Say Dry

Twelve years ago this month, I received a pricey ballpoint pen as a birthday gift. After using it for a short time, I tucked the pen away in a desk drawer, where it remained, still in the original presentation case, until today. The case is one of those objects I see almost every day, but my eyes pass over it without giving it a thought.

This morning, while cleaning out my desk, I noticed the case and it occurred to me that I could purchase a cartridge refill for the pen and start using it. With a big testing contract coming up, I'll be taking more notes than usual. It might be nice to see if there is any advantage whatsoever in using an expensive pen instead of the cheaper throwaways. Let's say I have my doubts.

Having assumed that the ink cartridge was dry, I ordered brand name refills from Amazon, so I'm not sure what prompted me to test the pen, other than that the pen was in my hand and a blank notepad was in front of me, on the desk.  After a couple of dry strokes, the ink began to flow smoothly.

Perhaps my pen is an exception, but at $13.00 per refill cartridge, I suppose these pens should have some superlative qualities.

Space Oddity Performed By An Astronaut

Commander Chris Hadfield performing aboard the International Space Station. H/T Tom Freeland

Sunday Shot

Sunday Shot

Fla. Siblings Charged With Stealing Frito-Lay Chips From Factory

GMA:

Two Citra, Fla., siblings were arrested and charged with burglary and grand theft after police caught the pair with a van full of allegedly stolen Frito-Lay brand products.

Police said they spotted Darren Hagerman, 25, and Jessica Huggard, 22, Thursday evening pulling away from industrial area of Ocala, Fla., where many factories are located. The siblings were pulled over when police noticed a 2-year-old jumping around in the backseat of their vehicle, according to the the Marion County Sheriff's Office.

When an officer looked inside the car, he noticed it was packed with hundreds of bags of Frito-Lay brand chips, ABC Orlando affiliate WFTV reported.

If you're of a certain age, you probably thought of this...

DSM

From a ridiculous article in the New York Times:

Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of a new edition of the so-called bible of mental disorders, the federal government’s most prominent psychiatric expert has said the book suffers from a scientific “lack of validity.”

I don't think I've ever heard anyone but a reporter refer to the DSM as the "bible of mental disorders." And yes, the DSM has [reliability and] validity problems, always has and almost everyone knows that. But the expert cited in this article, doesn't inspire hope for improvement.

The expert, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said in an interview Monday that his goal was to reshape the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms.

As if this way of thinking about psychological difficulties isn't part of the problem in psychiatry, and, itself, rife with fatal and obvious validity problems?

While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., is the best tool now available for clinicians treating patients and should not be tossed out, he said, it does not reflect the complexity of many disorders, and its way of categorizing mental illnesses should not guide research.

The best tool now available for clinicians treating patients? That's completely out of contact with reality. It's not a treatment guide and no one I know relies on it as a treatment tool or a treatment guide. As a blunt diagnostic instrument for a pharmacologist picking medications, I suppose it could be a starting place, but drug treatments don't depend on it.

I see two uses a clinician can make of the DSM: it can be used for coding insurance claims and as a paperweight.

Update:

In a post titled "groundhog day," 1boringoldman also commented on the Times piece. He said much more than I did, but I'll just share this:

So Insel woke up in this replaying of the day with a jolt, "his goal was to reshape the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms." But that’s what Robins and Guze said [1972]. That’s why there was a DSM-III in the first place [1980]. That’s what Kupfer et al said with their Research Agenda for the DSM-V [2002]. But Dr. Insel is saying it with all the freshness and naivety of a high school senior facing a brand new chapter in life like we haven’t heard it all before.

A Death At Wrigley Field

This story was painful to read. A 28-year-old woman and her brother were at Wrigley Field for the Cubs game on Sunday. During the pregame warmup, the woman suddenly collapsed over the seats in front of her. Intensive efforts to revive her failed. It was later learned that she choked on a hot dog, but prior to her collapse, no one noticed any signs of choking or distress of any kind.

You may recall that on Sunday I posted some game-time photos of Wrigley Field taken from the Addison el station. Later, when we were heading home, we happened to arrive at the Addison stop as fans were leaving the game. I overheard two women who'd been at the game talking about the incident, one of them saying that she "hoped the girl getting CPR was okay." They must have been sitting very close to the woman who collapsed. One of them said that she'd never before seen such a frantic situation with an injured person. I didn't ask them about it and hadn't heard or read anything further until coming across the story in the Tribune this morning.

Many people die tragically and unexpectedly every day, but something about this story tugged at my heart beyond what I usually feel when I read a news story about someone's death.