Glider

Frontline is prescription only and only available from vets (in the UK anyway), but it is the best stuff. It kills fleas the come into contact with the animal, it also carries inhibitors for eggs and larvae so they won't develop. It's the best stuff generally and protects for four weeks at a time. I wouldn't get too freaked out by the fleas though. I just had to treat my cats who became infested (warm, humid weather = more fleas). However, fleas are quite specific and cat and dog fleas don't like humans so, although you might occasionally find a flea on you, it won't stay long.

There is a theory that deja vu results from information being 'accidentally' (or prematurely) encoded from short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM). As YT says, a bit like a cardiac palpitation, but this happens in the hippocampus (which is assocaited with the laying down of long term memories). When this happens, the information is not 'logged' correctly and becomes associated with memories already resident in LTM and not relevant to the current situation. When the information is recalled from LTM, which it is immediately as one is still in the relevant situation, it carries with it something akin to a time-stamp 'cookie', telling your brain that this information is from the LTM, which is translated as "I've experienced this before, longer ago than now". It also carries the traces to the other information already resident in the LTM that it became associated with, which translates as "and I first experienced this under different circumstances" (e.g. a dream or another memory).

You make a good point (sorry I missed it first time around). Yes, the trend has existed for a long time. In the 19th century, infant mortality was very high (somewhere around 300-500 per 1,000 live births, depending where you look). Whilst all social classes were affected, the distribution was uneven and infant mortality was a lot higher in the poorer families. The increased fertility of the poorer families could be viewed as a compensatory mechanism: increased numbers of pregnancies = increased probability of one or two surviving. However, since the 19th century, the demographic distribution of infant mortality rates has changed. With the increase in education, standards of living, health and health care that you point out, infant mortality has reduced significantly and is still dropping (it reduced by another two-thirds since 1950 down to around 4.3-5 per 1,000 live births in the developed world), but the SES imbalance in birth rates has not changed so much (there is possibly a social mechanism at work here, i.e. coming from a larger family may increase the desire to produce a large family). Possibly, but there is a social trend for poorer families to be larger anyway, even without accidental pregnancies (it must be the pregnancy that is accidental rather than the birth. Most women get some warning ). I don't think it's stictly a dichotomy between 'accidental' or 'planned' anyway. There is a laissez-faire approach too; not strictly planned, but cool (and wanted) if it happens. It's true that men are quite keen on spreading themselves around (their biological imperitive), and it's possible that many women might be more willing if the man was sterile, although I think there's probably more to it than that. But overall, your point depends on the assumption that all married men are cheats (which is possible I suppose, but I don't have data on it). You seem to have an even more cynical view of people than I do. Hats off to ya! . However, your point implies that men are really, really dumb and would be working under the assumption that their unsterilization only works with their wives, or that they have absolutely no self control or personal means to adapt their behaviour to their new condition whatsoever. I think it more likely that a man who had been unsterilized would be aware of the implications of the procedure and would work to avoid the negative ramifications such as a sudden influx of paternity suits or severe beatings by cuckolded husbands. After all, the man would have made the conscious choice to be made fertile and I think most men would have some idea of what that means. Anyway, back to the original point. I think, if it ever came to it, that the only way to avoid abuses would be to impose a blanket restriction on number of children per family. Giving everybody an equal chance would address any imbalance but would not favour (or disadvantage) any particular group. However, that too is pretty tricky. If you were to apply blanket sterilization, there is still the ethical issue of informed consent. If you don't apply sterilization, how do you enforce the restriction? For example, if there are financial penalties e.g. the state will only provide financial support/assistance for x number of children per family (e.g. tax breaks, family credit or whatever), then you are favouring the rich who don't need such support and thus disadvantaging the poorer.

Well, taking a contraceptive pill is voluntary now isn't it? Yet the problem exists in spite of it. I think if you introduced a contraceptive that only had to be taken once (as opposed to every day) and had to be chemically reversed, many might think it a real boon in terms of convenience, but I suspect that those who would choose it would be the same people who have chosen to take currently available contraceptive measures. So, you may have made contraception more convenient (which would be a good thing, especially if males could take it too), but you won't have addressed the problem of skewed birth-rate demographics. That's still an abuse. In this case the abuse exists not in the biased selecction of who gets unsterilized, but in sterilizing people without their informed consent in the first place . I agree with Sayonara, once you have a population that is sterile by default, then abuse has to happen for the main problem to be addressed. If the unsterilizer is given on demand, then people will demand it and you won't have addressed the inital problem, although you will have eliminated accidental pregnancies (not a bad thing in itself). To address the problem, you'd have to introduce quota breeding (so many births alowed from each SES stratum), which, given that the problem is an inbalance in the first place, means that people from certain strata will have their applications denied. That abuse would have to happen or the exercise would be completely useless as the solution to that problem. That's often the case here However, an interesting point is that Flynn talks only about women: "He suggests that the solution is to develop a new form of contraception - one in which all women are essentially rendered infertile, but can take a treatment to become fertile.". Exactly why he targets only women is another discussion, but I think if such a hypothetical solution was to be considered, then for many reasons it would be more practical to concentrate on men. The practical problems of reversable sterilization are a lot simpler in males, and has in fact have already been solved (see here). Males are at least as responsible for unwanted pregnancies as women, and are generally much more likely to engage in 'hit and run' sex than women anyway (it's the male biologial imperative to spread their genes). However, the ethical issues still apply.

I don't think it does really. Class can be a determinant of measurable IQ due to differences in environment, activities, social interactions and socially acquired beliefs and reasoning skills from infancy, and of subsequent opportunities later in life. Also, people of lower SES (socioeconomic status) do tend to have more children. This is not restricted to New Zealand and has been measured in the UK too. There are probably data on this for the USA and other countries also. However, these are just observations and not value judgements, so as far as they go, I don't see much to be offended about. I think all Dr. Flynn is doing there is stating the probable combined effect of these observations. Having said that, I think his proposed solution; the idea of rendering all women infertile by default, is unethical and unworkable. The kicker is that any solution is likely to be unethical because it's likely to involve the artificial and almost certainly legislative manipulation of human reproduction rates. The first thing to go therefore would be the principle of informed consent.

Check out, or for a less biased report . Not a 'stun' setting, but it looks really effective.

The Zulu, Masai and Turkhana are tall and slim. The Kalahari bushmen have an average height of around 4' 10''.

Interesting perspective. I'm sure it'll go along way towards gaining the respect of the rest of the world.

But if you present those answers in the style you present that post, they still won't be understood.

Here are a couple of papers on the mirror test in dolphins: Reiss, D. and Marino, L. (2001). Mirror self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: A case of cognitive convergence. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98 (2001), pp. 5937–5942. Marino, L. (2004). Dolphin cognition. Current Biology, 14: 21, 910-911 This paper shows also how the test was conducted. I can't find the stuff on belugas. It's been a while since I read this, so I may have confused myself.

Hehehe...I love it.

No. If anything, it would be the other way around, but it's not so precisely quantifiable.

The mirror test (aka mark test) tests whether an animal is self-aware (i.e. is aware of itself as an individual independant from other members of its own species). Up until the early 90s it was conducted only on land animals. Since then it has been conducted on dolphins and certain whales. Dolphins and beluga whales both passed.

Eewww! Now nobody can drink it!

Your experience may be anecdotal, but it is a good example of how easy it is to miss other possible underlying problems. Tired kids are also fractious, have problems concentrating and can be snappy/antisocial. As I say, diagnoses of ADHD can't be done by just observing the behaviour. It takes more in-depth investigation which should include things like diet and sleep patterns. You're right, pharmacutical companies are not so loud in the UK. They do apply sales pressure to medics and the hospitals are usually full of drug reps, but mainly they're just a good source of freebies (tournequets, pens and so-on), but it's the medics that get to make the decisions based on a solid knowledge base. It's still not a perfect system, but it's better than trying to influence the public directly, as they generally don't have the clinical background required to make an informed opinion. Tom Cruise just kind of popped in there as a good example of an uninformed (or completely misguided) opinion. You're right about the celebrity view that their opinions carry more weight, when in fact, they're just louder. Unfortunately, their opinions do matter to their fans and they do have the power to sway public opinion to a degree (depending on their popularity). Most 'celebrities' (how I hate that term) don't understand the principle of 'Noblesse Oblige' and seem to think that their status gives them the right to hold forth on subjects in which they are not qualified with no thought for the weight their words carry with other people. I don't mind people slagging of Psychology as long as they understand what it is they're slagging off. Like all other fields of investigation, )Psychology is not perfect and should always be open to critical evaluation. However, critical evaluation of Psychology is best undertaken by people who know what Psychology is. I thought Tom Cruise was a good example of people who don't and think they have the answers but haven't done the ground work and made sh*t up instead (or bought into a completely spurious belief system) because to them 'it's just common sense, innit?'. I think you'll find that the most effective treatment is a combination of drug intervention and CBT. Severely depressed people are stultified by their condition. They are not in a position psychologically to engage with a therapist and don't have the energy to take any independant action. Drug therapy as a first-stage intervention alleviates the worst of the symptoms and allows the person to engage and take the action required. CBT is the better therapy in terms of getting to the roots of the problem, and has a very good maintenance record compared to drug therapy alone, which deals with the symptoms only whilst leaving the cognitive behavioural depressive cycle untouched, but it's not an either/or situation, so it's not really appropriate to test one versus the other. Each has a different function and the combination is exremely effective.

As with other sciences, the function of Psychology is simply to observe and explain - we observe natural phenomena (in the case of Psychology, human behaviour and cognition) and then try to explain the underlying processes. It is engaging in the observation - theorising - hypothesis testing process that makes the difference between a Psychologist and someone who has read some Psychology. The difference, when it comes to explantations that seem 'obvious', is that a Psychologist will have done the appropriate work and generated some empirical evidence in support of their contention rather trying to suport it with 'well, it's common sense, innit?'. Many of the things that appear 'obvious' only do so once they have been explained. A bit like explaining how a magic trick is done, once someone else has done the work, other will always chime in with "Ohhh...but that's obvious!" That's a dumb thing to say for too many reasons to go into here, but a couple of the more obvious flaws are that: Not all drugs of abuse are stimulants. Not all drug abusers take drugs to remove a negative state, but rather to induce an artifically augmented positive one. Addiction, as defined by the presence of an associated pattern of physiological changes and symptoms of withdrawal, is a condition that in itself is enough to drive the continued use of the drug. ADHD is not necessary. It's often due to pressure, of time, of parents, and/or of 'ticking boxes'. GPs did the same thing with antibiotics and fluoxetine and other 'drugs of the moment'. Everybody wants a quck-fix ands GPs are under huge pressure to deliver,even when there is no quick fix solution. I don't know the numbers. I'm not sure anyone does, but successfully treated true cases compare very well against untreated true cases. I believe the idea behind treatments such as ritilin is to maintain a low maintenace-dose rather than 'party' bolus doses, and also to limit the period of treatment as much as possible. As it comes down to low levels of arousal, it's hard to compare environments as people find different environements differently arousing. To some, a trip to a museum is exciting, to others it makes them want to open a vein, so no, the symptoms would not be apparent in 'any' environment. However, there are environments that kids share in common, e.g. school and to a lesser extent (due to variance between families), home. Boredom presents common symptoms, such as the inability to concentrate on a task for even short periods of time, frustration with tasks that demand concentration, hypermania and aggression. Like many psychological conditions, reaching a diagnosis can be tricky and can't be done with a cursory visual examination. It requires a more in-depth investigation that takes time (something very few GPs have much of). Even your example of a 'clear cut' symptom: 'my child hears voices' is not as clear-cut as you seem to think. Of what do you think it is a clear cut example? Yes. Profound changes in behaviour (reduction in disruptive/agressive/antisocial behaviours) and increased scholarly achievement have all been recorded. No, I don't think so. I believe it would be better to refine the diagnostic process. I believe that drug interventions should absolutely not be dealt out like smarties at the first sign of fractiousness in a child. Tighter controls do need to be in place, but the benefits of correctly treating genuine cases of ADHD are too large to dismiss out of hand. The abuses surrounding the condition (and there are, no doubt, many) have given anything to do with it a bad name, I understand that. Nonetheless, the condition does exist and is treatable. The current treatment may not be the best, but it is effective and until something better is found...(research continues). I suspect that many of the abuses occur because some parents just don't want to put the effort into parenting. If your child is a little difficult at times, it's often easier to get a clinical diagnosis from a sympathetic GP and fill the kid with 'Shut The F**k Up' drugs than to put in the time actually being a parent. Ritalin and other drugs have come under fire, but they're just drugs. The abuse is not in the substance, but in how it's used. Tom Cruise (lunatic scientologist) conducted a diatribe agains psychiatry and chemical interventions in general: "Do you know now ritalin is a street drug?" (see here). Well, diamorphine (heroin) is also a street drug, but it still the best method of controlling the severe pain of terminal cancer known. Abusing a drug does not make the drug wrong, it makes the abuser wrong. Cruise also suggests that scientology is a better solution to things like ADHD and clinical depression than any drug intervention. If people want to go that way, that's fine by me. It might even allow us to do some comparative studies: drug intervention Vs bollocks.

We're always open to suggestions. I agree to an extent. There do seem to be 'fad' conditions and ADHD seems to be one of them. It does exist, but as with most things, it exists on a continuum and some GPs (and most parents) are a little hazy as to where the clinical threshold is. As a result, I think many kids who are simply annoying have been wrongly diagnosed. I'm sure that as YT says, there have been many cases of misdiagnosis for many different reasons, but that doesn't mean ADHD doesn't really exist. In true cases of ADHD, an individual's threshold of stimulation is abnormally high. What this means is that situations/event that would normally stimulate/excite an individual do not, so whilst other kids are stimulated by what's going on, kids with ADHD are bored by it. Everybody needs a certain degree of arousal just to function normally (see the Yerkes - Dodson law), and boredom is a far from trivial condition. Try sitting in a room without music, books, computer, TV or any other form of stimulation for 8 hours. Kids with ADHD exist in a state of chronic and severe boredom (understimulation). Their often destructive and violent behaviour is a perfectly understandable (and even predictable) reaction to that state (so I would disagree with Rosmary Rowe, although I haven't seen her paper yet). Amphetamines are stimulants (as you may know if you have ever tried them). To a normal person, boring things become interesting and people on amphetamines can talk about boring crap for hours. In kids with ADHD amphetamines lower the threshold of stimulation so more stimulation 'gets in'. They remove the chronic boredom and consequently the negative behavioural reaction to the boredom goes away. This is another reason I disagree with Rosmary Rowe. I would predict that giving amphetamines to a kid who's behaviour stems from fear or severe anxiety (which are already states of high arousal) would elicit a whole different reaction. The reality is that in true cases of ADHD, amphetamine based drug intervention works. It might not be the best, but as yet there is nothing better and as I say, if you know of anything more effective, we are always open to suggestions.

I agree (that's why I added the word 'usually'). There are definitely occasions that warrent a good ol' swearie. I just think they're a lot rarer than many people seem to think.

I agree with gcol here. Swearing is an overt sign of pissed offness, but it's not usually helpful and usually reflects badly on the swearer. For example, in these hypothetical situations: response:Ok, you think I've done something wrong. Lets talk about it and sort something out. response:Ok, we could talk about it, but you are showing less control and have already attributed blame, so I feel less like talking about it and would you be listening anyway? response:F*CK YOU! (at this point you've lost control of the situation and any immediate chance of fixing it. The other person is not going to listen anyway, because they think you're a jerk. How can you hope to control a situation if you can't even control yourself?). This is a good example. The response to stubbing your toe is driven purely by emotion, there's no thought involved at all, but nor is there any other person. Swearing might be cathartic with a stubbed toe, but so would any other noise (your pain gives it meaning), but in situations involving other people, thoughtless emotional and uncontrolled outbursts are pretty useless. This is not to say I've not done it myself, but as I say, it was useless and usually did more harm than good. Ultimately, however pissed off I was, I was the one who ended up apologising.

There is that belief, but it's an incorrect stereotype. Hypertension doesn't make people angry. However, anger increases blood pressure and many people with hypertension are type A personalities (i.e. tend to be impatient, always in a hurry, tend to get frustrated quickly and so-on). These personality traits are implicated in hypertension. Yes. The kidneys are very sensitive to blood pressure. It's what they depend on to work correctly. Chronic hypertension can damage the kidneys and is a major cause of end-stage renal failure.

I do see your point, but plagiarism detection software is subject to the same weaknesses as say, spell checker software. It doesn't get context. For example, to spell shecker, "Dear Sir or Madam" is no different to "Dead Sod or Moron". Both are correct, but one will go down less well with a potential employer. Plagiarism detection software is badly named as it does not actually detect plagiarism (same as 'lie detectors' do not detect lies) it simply detects identical text. The flagging system is simply based upon the amount of text recognised in other sources. For this reason, our plagiarism software always flags up all coursework at around 24% identical with other work submitted on the same module, but this is because when doing the same piece of coursework, most (honest) students will refer to the same original sources, so their reference sections will be more or less identical. I agree the best use of anti plagiarism software is the side-by-side checking facility. Really, that's all the software is for. It makes checking course work against possible sources a lot faster and easier than having to search for them youself, print them out and check hard copies. The only effective plagiarism detection mechanism is the tutor. The software only provides a statistical indication of the more obvious at risk papers and the original sources so that the tutor can check for themselves. Software can't perform the same function as a tutor. For example, I once got a student on plagiarism that the software failed to flag. I got her because it was her third piece of coursework in Research Methods, and I had come to know how she writes, which is what told me that she had not written that piece. Software can't match things like syntax, rhythm, cadence and overall 'flavour' of writing style to an individual. Basically, I think that to get sucked in by the name 'Plagiarism Detection Software' (like 'Lie Detector') is a mistake that could lead to over reliance on the software through the expectation that it can do what its name implies (which it can't). Students do the same thing with spell checker, but spell checker will never replace proofreading.

You insist on ignoring the context (observational humour), which is a bit like placing a fish on a table and saying you have refuted the the hypothesis that 'fish swim'. In the context of observational humour, truth is conducive to funny. Observational humour depends upon the truth of a character or situation for it to be funny. This is why it's called 'observational' humour. It is based on real life observation. Further, not only have you failed to refute the hypothesis "Truth is conducive to funny", you have failed to test it validly. Rather, you seem to insist on misinterpreting it as "All true things are funny", which is easily refutable, and then attempting to use that to refute "Truth is conducive to funny", which is a strawman argument. I'm not sure what you are attempting to show here, but you seem to repeatedly miss the point, either deliberately or because you don't understand it, and It's getting tiresome.

That's a good question. I think the point illustrates an independance between affective and intellectual responses. For me, knowing why things like the office is funny doesn't make them any less funny. The humour is based on a primary affective (emotional) response, but the knowing why is an intellectual process. Another example. I know how trees work; I know about their anatomy and physiology and how to manipulate it (e.g. altering the balance of auxins and other hormones), but knowing that doesn't make my bonsai any less beautiful to me. The intellectual processes help me to work with them on the horticultural level (maintain health, encourage strong but balanced growth and correct healing), but my primary response to them is an entirely subjective emotional one based on aesthetics. Things like bonsai and comedy rely on a primary emotional response. The intellect comes second, so if anything, the knowing how increases my appreciation. I can enjoy a bonsai (or a comedy programme) and then I also get to appreciate the skill and keen eye that went in to creating them. I think it's different with magic though. The astonishment (emotional response) in magic is not primary, rather, it's a result of confounding the intellect. If you can't work out how s/he's going to get out of the tank of water in time, you get tense. If you know how s/he's going to get out of the tank, you get less tense. Once you know the method behind a magic trick, then you have eliminated the 'how the hell did s/he do that?' astonishment thing, which is what magic depends on to be 'magic'. You could still appreciate the skill of the magician, but the astonishment (and the resulting emotional responses) would be gone. Yeah...it's a bit sore this morning Not really: "As nitpicking inherently requires fastidious, meticulous attention to detail, the term has become appropriated to describe the practice of meticulously searching for minor, even trivial errors in detail (often referred to as "nits" as well), and then criticising them.(From Wikipedia. Bold added). Critical evaluation is more about accurately identifying errors that actually make a difference.

It's what happens when quotes are taken out of context. 'It's funny because it's true' is the basis of observational humour. If you leave out the context of observational humour and try to apply the principle to arbitrary facts you get responses like: You are then faced with the prospect of having to explain the joke... Which is guaranteed to render the joke unfunny and is usually really awkward for the person doing it. But watching people have to do it is really funny because it builds a kind of empathic tension (embarrassment by proxy, if you will) in the observer which is relieved by laughing. This is why it's often used in observational humour based comedy and characters like David Brent from 'The Office'. In this case, the tree helpfully provided an excellent example of a 'Brentism'. The cringeworthy tension caused in the viewer from watching a social incompetant like David Brent only exists because we recognise elements of him in ourselves and/or others close to us so we can relate to Brent and the situations he finds himself in and we cringe by proxy. This builds tension which is relieved by laughing (a displacement behaviour). That kind of humour is only funny 'because it's true'. Ooh, Glider! You managed to tie the whole thread together! Nice catch!

Yes it is. Yes it is. However, from observation, I get the feeling that that happens less over here, or it might just be at this particular University (or it might just be that in 11 years of teaching there, I've never noticed it). But i have noticed the increase in cut and paste from crappy net sources and wikipedia.