tioedong's Xanga

Fort Hood Shooting

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:16:17 GMT

NPR has an interesting interview from someone who knows stuff about the shooter's time at Walter Reed:

ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what if people decide investigating this that people missed potential warning signs about the guy?

and notice that when he gave a "lecture" on the Koran, it was another Muslim doc who told him he had things wrong...

Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

Questions about the Fort Hood Murders No one will ask

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:37:33 GMT

One has some questions not being raised in the press about the psychiatrist who killed at fort Hood.

These questions won't be asked, because they are too sensitive in our"PC" world, so don't get excited when I say the unspeakable.

Indeed, that is why I'm posting it here instead of my BNN blog, at least for now: Because only a cop or a doc would wonder about these things, and even they might not be so un PC to say it out loud.

One: He was a second generation from a Palestinian family.
Most Palestinians who emigrate are Christians who fled persecution by both sides. Indeed, most Arabs in the US are Christians for this reason (although most of them are Lebanese).

Was he a convert, as first reports suggested?
This does not exclude "Jihad": after all, the first Jihadi killer in the US was a Christian: Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Bobby Kennedy.

Two: He had reports saying he didn't get along with patients. These reports go way back into medical school.

I've worked with religiously strict physicians who were so uptight they didn't get along with patients (usually I worked black or Native americans, and of course if you work in the emergency room most of those you saw were intoxicated.)

Now, most Muslim docs got along fine with our patients but I've seen a few who, if they were white Christian fundamentalists, would fit into the KKK because they would see a black or Native American face and treat them like dirt.

Yet from reports, this is a psychiatrist who chose to work with addiction. Strict Muslims don't drink, and are prejudiced against those who do....Something wrong here.

As for comments that he had been ridiculed for his religion: Yup. If you work with drunks and addicts, they will call you names. I even got a window shot out at one point. Nothing personal. They were projecting their rage at the nearest target.

The main question is: why didn't a psychiatrist recognize this? And why didn't he have insight into his own rage?

The military put him through school, and one wonders why he chose psychiatry and not Medicine or surgery.

In my medical school, half the guys who chose Psychiatry did so because they weren't very good at working with sick people, or were bad in science, or were active in politics.... and others chose it to help them get an insight into their own psyche (Psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate in medicine for example).

Yes, some chose psychiatry because they wanted to help the mentally ill, but it makes one wonder why a person who had trouble with patients chose psychiatry and then chose to work with addicts, the most frustrating aspect of medicine, and one where a strict Muslim might not have a lot of empathy for the patients.

Three: I was once suspended after a nurse accused me of making "terroristic threats". She was absent on her usual prolonged coffee break, leaving me with three patients who needed dressings etc. I mumbled I'd kill her when I found her, and the nurse, who we couldn't fire because she knew every trick in the book to stop complaints, reported me. Never mind that I was a woman, an ex missionary, and in the National Guard had a waiver not to carry a handgun and had only shot rifles a few times (I did "own" my husband's handgun: Because I bought it for him, I had to register it in my name).

I know it was done to "prove" they didn't profile "threats". The irony was that they didn't suspend me right away: They waited until the clinic was quiet and could afford to be minus one doctor. Everyone knew it was a crock of caca, but the regulations were followed, so it didn't matter (I would have quit right then, but was scheduled to retire in six months so stuck it out).

But here is a "muslim" who was defending jihadis and fighting with patients about the war, and known to the FBI, but no one intervened.

That suggests negative profiling.

Four: He was "quiet" and didn't show anger, according to one report. But then there were reports of his outbursts. This suggests passive agression, or that he "went amok" (something we see here in the easy going Philippines, when a quiet guy just goes nuts and machetes folks).

And no one saw it coming?

Five. He attended mosque every day. I suggest someone find out if they were preaching anti American pro jihadi propaganda at the mosque...and I suspect the mosque in Silver Springs MD not the one in Texas.

Most Muslims in the US are not radical, but the real danger is the Saudi extremist religion being pushed into mosques all over the world.

From Ralph Peters:
.

Al Qaeda was merely the instrument of 9/11. Saudi bigotry, fanaticism and hate-mongering fostered it. Saudi funding made those attacks possible. And Saudi money continues to spread hatred wherever there's a Muslim community. Now we have a president who bows to the Saudi king. Peace be upon you .

Six: He was unmarried.

Hmmm....ultra religious man... passive aggressive...in the Army Medical Corps...

All three of those things suggest he was a closeted gay. (Randy Shilts once described an Army hospital where the flirting resembled a gay bar...but in the "don't ask don't tell" days, no one wants to bring up all those gay male nurses any more than one wants to bring up lesbians with guns).

Gays who have conflicts often chose places with strict rules to help them hold in their "evil" impulses: Which is why so many fled to monasteries and the priesthood, and then came out of the closet when the sexual revolution occurred.

A closeted gay working in a hospital however would be like a gay in some monasteries: constant temptation, and a gay subculture.

It would be interesting to hit the gay bars in Silver Springs and find out who knew the guy, and if he was sending off signals either negative or positive to his gay collegues...but with "don't ask don't tell", I doubt anyone will talk to a reporter.

Another hint that he might be a closeted gay is that no woman would have him.

Well, he could just be a nerd...or highly dedicated to his profession...but even nerdy docs usually have nurses or secretaries who seduce them for their annual income.

But then we read this:

"He wanted a wife more religious than him," Faizul Khan told the Daily News. "She had to pray five times a day. She had to wear the hajib. He was a young, good looking guy and a physician but he couldn't find anybody."

Hmm...wants a perfect "woman", not a real one...male chauvenist pig, or just one who wants a show wife, not a human being?

Even if he was not gay, he had some major sexual conflicts going on.

So maybe someone should talk to the female nurses and secretaries who worked with him, and see how he interacted with them, either negatively or positively....

So there you have it. A guy full of rage against the world, but whose rage might have been from family rejection or from self loathing because of his sexual conflicts.

Mix with a Saudi propaganda machine in the mosques, and propaganda machines from the radicals in the middle east that will stoke his paranoia, and voila, instant "amok".

notice I didn't say anything about the war? Well, it was because he never went to the war...

Medical news of the week: Fat is good for you

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:28:57 GMT

A couple weeks ago, I saw an article saying that the US Air Force found they had less accidents and more alertness if they fed high fat meals to their pilots.

I presumed this was due to the ability of fatty fools to equalize the blood sugar (which tends to go up and then down after a high carb meal).

Now, one study shows that you need fat to make memories:

The Hopkins team, reporting Oct. 29 in Neuron, reveals how palmitate, a fatty acid, marks certain brain proteins -- NMDA receptors -- that need to be activated for long-term memory and learning to take place. The fatty substance directs the receptors to specific locations in the outer membrane of brain cells, which continually strengthen and weaken their connections with each other, sculpting and resculpting new memory circuits.

Moreover, the researchers report, this fatty modification is a reversible process, with some sort of on-off switch, offering possibilities for manipulating it to enhance or even, perhaps, erase memory.

I'm not sure what this means, but other studies show that the big "say not to transfat" fad might have some problems.

Transfats do NOT increase the rate of diabetes, for example, and the substitute being mandated by the health police in New York and other places may not be safe either:

The Malaysian-Brandeis collaboration compared trans-rich and interesterified fats with an unmodified saturated fat, palm olein, for their relative impact on blood lipids and plasma glucose. Thirty human volunteers participated in the study, which strictly controlled total fat and fatty acid composition in the subjects' diet. Each subject consumed all three diets in random rotation during four-week diet periods. This study further confirmed previous studies in animals and humans, indicating once again that trans fats negatively affect LDL and HDL cholesterol. Surprisingly, the interesterified fat had a similar, though weaker impact on cholesterol.

"In this study we discovered that trans fat also has a weak negative influence on blood glucose.

in the meanwhile, the "bad evil food of the day" this week is high fructose corn syrup.

my take? Better nourished kids may be partly due to fast foods, but the ability of people to feed their children is a good thing...it leads to taller kids here in Asian, and increased IQ's...but it also leads to obesity.

Tricorder anyone?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:38:20 GMT

We all know about Dr. McCoy's tricorder.

Well, now GE is producing a mini ultrasound machine.
V SCAN

Called Vscan, the clamshell designed gadget is aimed at doctors, and possibly would-be parents who could use it in their office or in the field to check the progress of unborn babies or other medical instances, rather than sending their patients to a specialist department for a scan.

The WTF research story of the day

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:43:26 GMT

via Physorg:

young men who voted for McCain or Barr, your testosterone level dropped when they lost.
But if you voted for Obama, it stayed the same.

Uh, who is Barr, and how did they find a statistically significant number of young men to enter into the study?

Two: The study was done at Durham NC (DUKE U) and Ann Arbor (Michigan).

Heh. I didn't know that any republicans lived in Ann Arbor.

But the "results", that testosterone drops, is not a new idea.
The findings mirror what other studies have found in men who participate directly in an interpersonal contest -- the winner gets a boost of testosterone, while the loser's testosterone drops.

and then there is this pseudo scientific "survey" that showed

In a post-election questionnaire, the McCain and Barr backers were feeling significantly more unhappy, submissive, unpleasant and controlled than the Obama voters.

what does that mean? Controlled? Submissive?

and the other question: If the young were so happy about an Obama victory, and if "winners" usually have a testosterone spike, then why didn't the Obama supporters have an increase in their testosterone level?

Place anti Obama joke here.

Other Medical headlines

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:09:56 GMT

NYTimes notices Father Damien...and notes that in many countries, Hanson's disease still results in ostracism by the public.

Father Damien is being canonized as a saint...he lived at the leper colony of Molokai and helped reform the place, arranging to bring in nuns to nurse the sick, and fighting the thugs who terrorized the weak...he ended up dying of leprosy..

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NYTimes also notes that the Polanski case echoes the ethos of the 1970's, but that now people take such things more seriously.

Yes, the reason? A lot of those 13 year old girls grew up and became feminist lawyers...
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From StrategyPage: Fried foods win the air war...

Recent U.S. Air Force studies have shown that pilots that eat high fat (lots of butter and oil) diets perform better in tests of alertness, and mental performance in general. This is important, because some 80 percent of aircraft accidents (military and civilian) are caused by pilot error

One of these days, such things will be noted by the diet gurus..
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Is the increase in premature births due to fertility treatments?

. A study released last week by the March of Dimes cited fertility treatments as one of the main reasons for a 36 percent increase in prematurity in the last 25 years.

it's the hyperthermia, stupid.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:42:49 GMT

A bunch of people die in a so called "sweat lodge".
It is actually a sauna, and one victim who died was a 38 year old woman with no health problems.

The problem is probably hyperthermia.

Emergency responders took 19 people to hospitals for burns, dehydration, respiratory arrest and kidney failure. All but one, who remained in critical condition Saturday night, was released.

If you go into a sauna or even a hot tub at a hotel, you will note warnings about people with heart problems, and that you shouldn't stay inside long.

These people were in the "sweat lodge" for two hours...

When I was in the National Guard, we weren't allowed to do "NBC" training in our MOPP suits before we measured the temperature...back during the cold war, we trained with charcoal suits and gas masks, which were hot. But there was always a known danger of heat stroke, so we checked first.

Francis Dinsmore describes the Chippewa sweat lodge LINK

It would involve only four men, and as described would not last so long (perhaps those running the sweat lodge were mixing up the sweat lodge with the peyote ceremonies which last for hours and do involve a larger number or people).

I am mainly familiar with the medicinal sweats...you have to realize that in Minnesota it is cold and people suffer from the heat. A good sweat, like a sauna, will make you feel better, and not Dinsmore notes that religious sweat lodge experiences don't end up with rubbing down the bodies.

I use Dinsmore's description because a lot of "new age" types are mixing up customs of indigenous peoples.

And why the sweat lodge of northern, cold climate tribes was being used in one of the hottest areas of the US, I'm not sure. That area frequently hits the 80's in October...

But of course, to new age types, they aren't after the entire world vision of one indigenous culture: They are what the expert on mysticism, John of the Cross, sardonically calls "spiritual gluttons" who seek a religious "high" from prayer and spirituality, and go from one spiritual experience to another, often a more extreme one, not to seek for God, but to get a spiritual "high".

And to new age types, all "indigenous" types are the same...

My favorite example? When we visited the terraces at Banaue here in the Philippines, among the "traditional artifacts" were dreamcatchers, which are of course Chippewa, not Iflugo.

Be prepared for the flu

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:42:36 GMT

Get your very own HelloKitty face mask...

(here in Asia they sell them in pharmacies and people wear them when they might be in contact with infectious disease)

Science headlines

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:16:32 GMT

Not "science" per se, but this article discusses how Filipinos lay their grief at the foot of the cross (to use the Catholic saying): They give their sorrows to God instead of raging against a scapegoat (and alas there are many scapegoats behind the Manila flooding).
But then the article does note:
While Roman Catholic and Protestant churches offered special prayers for the victims, many of their members were actively involved in accepting and distributing relief goods.

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Vaccines don't work as well in those who need them the most because of immune system weakness.
That is why children's pneumonia vaccine is a "conjugate" vaccine, to increase the immune response.

...a Journal of the American Medical Association study found that in individuals over t
a Journal of the American Medical Association study found that in individuals over the age of 70, influenza vaccination offered only 23 percent protection, and reduced responses have also been seen for tetanus and hepatitis vaccinations.he age of 70, influenza vaccination offered only 23 percent protection, and reduced responses have also been seen for tetanus and hepatitis vaccinations..."

That's why some argue the best "protection" to keep grandmom from getting the flu is to give the grandkids shots.

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Men more likely to have noise related hearing loss...

why yes. They often work with noisy machines. and are less likely to wear hearing protection.

When the US Army started their hearing screening and protection program for the National Guard (some were full time with the NG) we found most of our "older" (over 40) tank mechanics already had significant hearing loss.

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do Probiotics work?
"...Some probiotics can also alleviate the symptoms suffered by those with irritable bowel syndrome. As many as every fifth westerner suffers from this pain, also called spastic colon. Studies say that LGG probiotics are also an effective treatment method for reducing children’s atopic symptoms, and the risk of respiratory infections...."
but other studies deny this.
They are big here...I buy them for the kids whose parents work for us.
I prefer yogurt myself.

Science headlines

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:38:56 GMT

Duh.
High Heels linked with ankle/foot pain.

The problem? the article states:
The researchers found that the types of shoes women wear, specifically high-heels, pumps and sandals, may cause future hind-foot (heel and ankle) pain. Nearly 64 percent of women who reported hind-foot pain regularly wore these types of shoes at some point in their life.

Well, yes.
But sandals and pumps are usually low heel or flat.
And I suspect more than 64% of us wear heels, sandals or pumps at some point in our lives.

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Measles kills.
Worldwide, there are estimated to be 10 million cases of measles and 197,000 deaths from the disease each year.
One of the problems with Measles vaccine in third world is that you have to keep it refrigerated, you have to mix it shortly before you inject the vaccine, and you need a clean syringe for each shot.

All of this costs money, requires expensive equipment, and trained personnel.

When I worked in Africa, we took the vaccine to our baby clinics in a beer cooler.
But we also stored it in refrigerators that were designed to stay cold even if we had brownouts. What about smaller clinics?

So now they are working on a nasal spray type measles vaccine that can be stored at room temperature.

Faster, please.
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Another study about cannabis and psychosis.

Ah, but some people with schizophrenia take cannabis or alcohol to get rid of all those voices.
And a lot of marijuana use is associated with drugs that do have psychotic side effects.

And of course cannabis has other problems, by sedating people so they don't care any more...and being associated with a culture that now approves of getting high.
and unlike alcohol, it has a long half life, so is still in the brain the morning after...
When the drug epidemic started thirty years ago, the black community suspected it was to sedate them so they wouldn't be so uppity in trying to assert their rights.
Since the Brits used cheap gin for their slums, and cheap whiskey to control the Irish, and since alcohol worked also for american Indians, they might have a point...

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HIV spread as roads and transportation improved in Africa...
Again, this confirms what was suspected: The opening of the trans African highway allowed truckers to spread HIV to local hookers. A lot of Haitians, who spoke French, went to work in Africa and brought home the disease, which spread to the street kids who had sex with American gay pedophiles.
The sexual revolution that stopped the cops from closing bath houses where open multi partner sex was going on, was a major cause of HIV spread in the gay community, and since some gays used drugs, into the drug community.
In Europe, many cases are traced to heterosexual men from Africa.

Could this have been stopped?
Well, a lot of Cuban soldiers came back from Angola with HIV and were promptly placed into isolation.
It worked, at a horrific cost to civil rights.

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Why did life spans increase during the Great depression?
How they did the study suggests why:
The researchers analyzed age-specific mortality rates and rates due to six causes of death that composed about two-thirds of total mortality in the 1930s: cardiovascular and renal diseases, cancer, influenza and pneumonia, tuberculosis, motor vehicle traffic injuries, and suicide.

If you are poor, you don't drive cars, you eat less so are less likely to die of heart disease or diabetic kidney disease.
The real question is influenza and pneumonia/TB. Is it because people didn't bring the disease home from work? Or just a statistical fluke?