Noli Irritare Leones

These are my notes on a key note address from the California Depressive and Bipolar Support Alliance conference this year.

Po W Wang, MD is associated with the Stanford University School of Medicine. He and Terrence Ketter, MD (who gave another key note, on which I will blog later) are also associated with the Stanford Bipolar Disorders Clinic.

Wang’s key note address talked about:

1. Recognizing different episodes and subtypes of bipolar disorder.
2. Bipolar vs. unipolar depression.
3. Bipolar disorder in children.
4. Improving the quality of diagnosis.
5. Different treatment priorities.

On average, it takes 10 years from the first symptoms to an accurate diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The most common inaccurate diagnoses are unipolar depression (in adults) and ADD (in children).

Complications of delayed diagnosis include delayed, ineffective treatment and mood destabilizing treatment.

Is the medication you respond to a diagnostic criterion? That’s complicated. People with unipolar depression may also respond to lithium, just in a different way. Compare aspirin and the heart: just because aspirin helps your heart, that doesn’t mean you have a headache.

It is particularly tricky to diagnose people who come in depressed.

Bipolar vs. schizophrenia: Voices alone don’t necessarily mean schizophrenia; you need to take a longitudinal look at the history of the illness. Suppose your patient just went out and bought a new car, etc.? Psychosis could mean a severe mania.

Problems of using antidepressants for bipolar disorder, stimulants for bipolar disorder misdiagnosed as ADD.

DSM-IV-TR Mood Disorders include Major Depressive Disorder, Disthymic Disorder, Bipolar I, Bipolar II, Cyclothymia, Secondary (due to alcohol, drugs, or medical illness), and Bipolar Not Otherwise Specified.

Bipolar III, etc. are based on research studies, and vary by study, so don’t worry about these.

What does it mean to have cyclothymia, and is it passed genetically? We don’t know, because cyclothymia isn’t well represented in studies.

Bipolar I vs. Bipolar II: The distinction is how elevated people get (I is mania, II is hypomania).

Wang presented slides of manic episode criteria and depressive episode criteria from the DSM. You can find these with Google, so I’m not going to write them up at this time (but I may, when I’m done blogging my notes on the various talks, make another post with links to things referenced in the talks, like these criteria).

Wang noted that, though one criterion for a manic episode is that it lasts > 1 week, you can ignore this criterion if the mania is bad enough (and the person is hospitalized).

Bipolar I doesn’t have to include depression (although 90% of people diagnosed with Bipolar I do have depression).

Bipolar II is not a mild form of bipolar disorder (the mania is mild, but the disease isn’t).

Cyclothymia is milder.

Rapid cycling is officially defined as at least 4 episodes a year, and can come with any of these diagnoses.

Mania is the hallmark feature of bipolar disorder, but it’s not the most common feature. Depression is more common. Someone with Bipolar I may be depressed 3 days for every day of elevation, and someone with Bipolar II may be depressed 40 days for every day of elevation.

There can be a rebound effect from going off medication.

Major depression vs. disthymic disorder: disthymic disorder is more chronic and low grade.

Early diagnosis is challenging. 73% of those with bipolar disorder get an alternate explanation for their symptoms, and only 20% are correctly diagnosed from the start. 25-31% are diagnosed as unipolar.

Out of every 5 people who are clinically depressed, 1 is bipolar.

Causes of missed bipolar diagnosis:

Complex symptoms (e.g. irritable mood elevation, mixed states that can mimic agitated depression, hypomanic episodes with elevated function).

Depression is the most common symptom.

Insufficient information - Patients don’t recall of recognized mood elevation.

Other disorders, such as substance abuse.

In identical twins, if one has bipolar disorder, the chance that the other will have it is about 70%.

Improved checking for hypomania symptoms in patients presenting for depression can catch more bipolar disorder.

Mixed episodes, with depression and mania at the same time, should be treated like mania, not like depression.

Tomorrow I’ll write a bit about Kettering’s lecture (I have fewer notes for that one, because it was during lunch, but I found the lecture interesting).

I remind those of my readers who are in California that, if you’re not registered to vote, October 20th is the deadline.

Also, now’s the time to volunteer to call voters in swing states (or go to swing states to campaign if you’re able), walk precincts, etc.

And, remember, here in California Proposition 8 is still close.

I think I’ll have a post on Propositions 7 and 10 sometime soon, since this election is unusual in seeing two propositions on behalf of the environment that seem to have environmental groups recommending against them, as badly formulated.

Walk cheerfully over the earth, answering that of God in everyone.

George Fox

At meeting for worship this week, my thoughts were largely on the election. Like Liz, I find it easy to get distracted from God at such times. I settled myself, in the end, only by focusing on the Godspell song “When wilt thou save the people?” which was somehow easier to attend than my usual breath meditation. One woman spoke; she spoke of similar struggles, and what it means to be Quaker in such a time.

Around the time I was in college, Jeanne Kirkpatrick went to speak at Berkeley; it was reported that she was shouted down. And for some time after, conservative would drag out that incident as evidence of the anti-free speech thuggishness of everyone on the left. And it would make me angry. You weren’t there, I would think, at the demonstration when Cap Weinberger was invited to speak at Stanford, and a handful of people started to shout over his speech, but the rest of us hushed them, and said, no, we are here to express our views, but also to hear him. You weren’t there, I would think, at the demonstration where people showed up to burn flags, and several of us negotiated with them, talked about why that would not send the message they said they intended, and talked them out of it - but boy will you remember, as a sign of the anti-patriotism of the left, any demonstration where a flag does get burned.

A little later, after I’d graduated, came the controversy at Stanford over the Western Culture requirement. It was said, by some, that when Jesse Jackson spoke on campus, people were shouting, “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Western culture has got to go!” And it was countered, by others, that this was a misrepresentation of the rally, that only a small handful of those present had joined in that chant, and that Jesse Jackson had rebuked them for it. I wasn’t at that rally, but I do know the professor who headed the committee to reexamine the reading list for the Western Culture classes, and I do believe that, whatever a handful of demonstrating students may have said, the faculty who were evaluating the reading list were having a serious academic discussion, not, as their critics would have it, knuckling under to political correctness by modifying a list that initially consisted only of white men.

So I understand what it’s like to feel misrepresented, and taken for whatever looks worst on your side. Conservative and liberal are broad words, that embrace many different philosophies and people. And the Republican and Democratic parties are broad, messy coalitions, of people choosing a party for varied reasons.

Some conservative bloggers are expressing frustration, now - why, say they, should we be blamed for a handful of people here and there at rallies calling “Terrorist!” or “Traitor!” And, then again, some (though obviously not all) of the conservative bloggers making that argument are the same people stoking the flames. At the Corner at National Review, not one, not two, but half a dozen bloggers are pushing the Obama as ally of terrorists line, and you can find posts seriously arguing, not just that McCain is not hitting this line hard enough, but that Sarah Palin “trivializes” with the phrase “palling around with terrorists” - evidently it’s not serious enough to accuse Obama of being buddies with multiple terrorists, when you should also accuse him of sharing their whole terrorist world view. And then you’ll see a “why should we be blamed for a few bad apples” post, about the cries at rallies. Sorry, no, you are stoking the flames. And you are race baiting. And you have no business batting your eyes and acting innocent at what your words reap. Look, I defend a very wide freedom of speech; I defend the American version of the libel rule, where even false statements against public figures are very hard to judge libellous (you need to show “actual malice” and all that). But that doesn’t mean no tag backs, it doesn’t mean words can’t be dangerous, and it doesn’t mean I don’t get to call you on it when you do write words which are false, and rabble rousing and dangerous.

And at the same time, there is this - when McCain spoke at that town hall meeting and said that Obama should be treated with respect, and wasn’t someone to be scared of, it’s said that his own people booed him. And I listened to the Youtube of it, and it’s true - some of his own people booed him for that. But others cheered him. Others wanted an end to this stuff.

What does answering that of God mean, when you feel real, justified anger, at things that really deserve to be called out, but also know that those on the other side can’t be reduced to their worst deeds?

Edge of the West has fun with Jack Cashill’s claim that Bill Ayers ghost wrote Obama’s autobiography Dreams From My Father.

… Cashill opens by demonstrating that Obama, unlike every undergraduate ever, published crap poems in a college literary journal. These crap poems “show not a glint of promise,” Cashill tells us, nor did a “heavily edited, unsigned student case comment” published in the Harvard Law Review. He then quotes an attorney consulted by Politico, who called it “a fairly standard example of the genre.” Cashill has a point here:

The “temperate legal language” of “a fairly standard example” of “a heavily edited, unsigned student case comment” is completely different from the style Obama would employ a few years later in his autobiography. Cashill is right to be suspicious. Who wouldn’t write their autobiography in the temperate language of an anonymous legal brief? What style is better suited to the tale of being abandoned by a father and raised to be a black man by a white woman in the wake of the Civil Right Movements? …

Timothy Noah notes that

The logic of this argument, which is accompanied by a remarkable dearth of evidence, is founded on the patently false conceit that Ayers’ 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, was well-written. Excuse me, but this is a book that begins with the words, “Memory is a motherfucker.” It goes down from there.

And Ta-Nehisi Coates says

… In fairness, there’s been some pushback over at The Corner about this latest nuttery. Still, I’m going to say this one last time–actually I’m going to say it until they put me under: I don’t ever want to hear anyone complaining about black people and their conspiracy theories….

The fire season has started. The wind roars past our house, and we put a coat on the little dog before we take him out for his walks. Yesterday morning, when I was walking him, a chair was blown down from a second floor condo patio, not far from us. He jumped.

Before I get to the silly season campaign stuff, I want to be sure to link the stuff that actually gives real information about how Obama would govern. So, first, Obama’s recovery package. Andrew Sullivan supplies a transcript of Obama’s economic speech. He also links a New Yorker profile of Joe Biden. The Economist’s blog comments on Obama’s recovery plan. They also have an amusing metaphor for California politics.

The political centre in California is not only undefended but largely uncontested. You could peacefully graze sheep on it.

You may also have noticed that the government’s talking about nationalizing banks. Paul Krugman can’t resist an “I told you so.”

I see the rhetoric about Obama as radical friend of terrorists isn’t getting dialed back after all. And the National Review’s Corner blog continues its odd frenzy; Andrew Sullivan gave his Hewitt Award to Mark Levin for this rhetoric.

The only candidate who has surrounded himself with and befriended a freak show of racists, anti-Semites, and America haters is Barack Obama. This isn’t guilt by association. These are Obama’s life experiences. And you’d think it would be more problematic than a few people in an audience shouting out some nasty things about Obama …

I have half a mind to write a satirical piece about how Obama is sure to overturn Roe V. Wade because - look! See how many staunch pro-life folks he has that are somehow acquaintances of his! He associates with Tom Coburn! He associates with Sam Brownback! Let’s take a look at every community board he was ever on and sift it for people who want abortion to be illegal; let’s take a look at everyone who has ever contributed time or money to an Obama campaign who wants abortion to be illegal. Etc. I’m not sure people would recognize it as satire, though. And I’m sure they wouldn’t see it as satire if I tried the same game with McCain associates that the National Review is trying with Obama associates. Take Mark Levin’s post.

Re ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Frank Marshal Davis, Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, Raila Odinga, and all of the assorted leftists and figures of ambiguous or veiled allegiance …

ACORN is a community organization that does voter registration, among other things, and that, sure enough, is left of center. In this weird election, that makes it worth grouping with “figures of ambiguous or veiled allegiance,” and “a freak show of racists, anti-Semites, and America haters.” In reality, it’s not only an organization that Obama once represented in case in his role of lawyer; it’s also an organization that McCain and the GOP used to support. So, if ever having associated with ACORN taints you with vote fraud, I guess the two candidates are both tainted.

Bill Ayers, of course, lived in Obama’s neighborhood and served on a board with him. As all of us who have ever served on boards know, that makes him absolutely Obama’s best buddy, and makes Obama responsible for his deeds of 40 years ago - you know, the way Osama Bin Laden is absolutely responsible for the 9/11 terrorists. Yes, exactly the same. Just ask a certain Virginia GOP chairman. What’s more, he’s a twofer. Since he’s married to Bernardine Dohrn, we’ve shown that Obama is associated with two dangerous lefties, not just one. And they’re undoubtedly both anti-Semites and racists as well. After all, Mark Levin tells us Obama’s friends are all anti-Semites and racists, so it must be true.

Frank Marshal Davis is a black poet who really was associated with the Community Party, and who also really was someone Barack Obama talked with often as a teen. Obama speaks of him in Dreams from My Father, with some affection. Never mind that he also describes Davis as trapped in a 60s time warp and as representing a point of view that he himself comes to reject. If you’ve ever been close to a Communist, you must be one yourself; none of us are ever fond of people while differing from their politics. And, no doubt, Davis must also be an anti-Semite and a racist.

Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour is alleged, by a fellow named Sutton, to have raised money for Obama’s Harvard Law School education. This claim has not been independently corroborated by anyone, and has been said by someone else in the Sutton family to be false. Clearly, this is strong evidence that al-Mansour and Obama are close buddies. Thus showing that Obama associates with scary Muslims.

Raila Odinga is the leader of one side in the recent post-election controversy in Kenya; Kibaki represents the other side. To boost his post-election standing, Odinga claimed to be Obama’s cousin. I passed this on at the time, having gotten it from a British paper, but other papers, investigating further, haven’t been able to confirm a family relationship as close as Odinga claimed. Obama’s father is certainly Luo, like Odinga, and the families in Kenya might have some sort of connection, but it’s also certainly the case that Obama’s not in closer contact with Odinga than with other Kenyan politicians, and didn’t take a side either in the election or in the post-election conflict. It’s also hard to see how Odinga is “racist” in the American sense of the word (he may be biased toward his Luo tribe, and Kibaki biased toward his Kikuyu, but “racist” applied by American whites to black men means someone who hates white people), or anti-American. His party does support more government involvement in the economy than Kibaki’s, but stretching “Obama might be related by blood to someone in another country who might favor some level of increased government involvement in that country’s economy” to “Obama is a scary leftist” seems a bit much.

But the thing is, if you list enough names, you can hope that no single one of them has to hold up that much. Surely Obama couldn’t have accumulated so many questionable associates without there being something fishy about him. Something, in fact, racist and anti-Semitic, because, hey, proof by assertion, all we have to do is say that these people form one undifferentiated racist and anti-Semitic mass, and that they’re all close to Obama, and that he agrees with all of them. So, pad the list with any connection you can think of that might fit even one of your adjectives, Levin, including people who aren’t particularly close to Obama at all.

Similar reasoning, some years back, got us the burgeoning Clinton death list, where anyone who died accidentally and also had known an extremely extroverted and gregarious politician was: Fishy! Suspicious! Probably a victim of foul play! After all, they killed Vince Foster! And so must have killed everyone else!

Similar reasoning, if applied to me personally, would prove that I’m both a Maoist (yes, I did associate with real live Maoists in college) and a Libertarian, and, to boot, a devoted member of the Religious Right.

Will try to get the stuff about the talks by the psychiatrists from the Stanford Bipolar Clinic typed up tonight.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: A thug for them dead-enders thugging for me. (Eve is right about the general awesomeness of TNC.)

Steven Barnes: Why Talk To The Tree?

Drima: Reading Your Way to a Lonely Place.

Michael Ross at The Root: Oh, Lord, Kumbaya.

KELELE - The African Bloggers’ Conference.

The Republic of T: Equality in Connecticut.

Southern Poverty Law Center blog: Fox’s Cavuto Wins SPLC’s Dobbsy Award for Pinning Blame on Minorities for Mortgage Crisis.

Thor: Some sincere campaign advice for John McCain.

Feminist Mormon Housewives: Show a Little Love (and Understanding).

Echidne: Politics in Pictures. A Feminist Essay. Related, Ann Bartow on Politics, Feminism and Firsts.

Balkinization: Open Thread on Posts on The Future of Sexual and Reproductive Rights. (This one has all the guest posts related to that conference that have been featured at Balkinization, all 19 of them.)

davenoon on Ethics to Nowhere.

Writing Raven at Alaska Real: Palin “Troopergate” report released. (By an Alaskan, about how Alaskans are reacting.)

Writing Raven at Alaska Real: Make sure you take a second look. (Not about Palin, but rather about Alaskan villages.)

hilzoy at Obsidian Wings: The Palin Report. (She read more of it than I did.)

Diary of an Anxious Black Woman: Because We All Need Reassurance Again from Michella Obama: “Be Not Afraid”

Publius at Obsidian Wings: Obama’s Ghostwriters — ObWi Exclusive!!

Joel and *Christopher recommend this video:

Camassia visits a UU church in DC: Two Sundays.

Liz Opp: Distracted from God.

Philocrites: Insightful observations about Gov Sarah Palin.

Lee: Human uniqueness qualified (if not debunked) and Notes on human uniqueness and the Imago Dei.

Lee also informs us about John Henry Neumann’s post-mortem Disappearing act and discusses the Invasion of the left-wing body snatchers.

I largely agree with John’s take on the whole Obama-as-closet-radical idea being pushed by the (increasingly desperate) McCain campaign and its media fellow travelers. (Be sure to follow the links he provides too.) I have plenty of lefty friends, and they certainly don’t think Obama is a radical lefty. On everything from health care to taxes to foreign policy he’s staked out positions well to the right of hard-core lefties/progressives.

Of course, no matter how conservative the Democrat may seem, the GOP always tries to convince voters that he or she is “really” a wild-eyed liberal who, once in power, will turn America into a cross between Cuba, France, and the Harvard faculty lounge. Bill Clinton, easily the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland, received this treatment in spades….

Jane Hammsher unpacks the perennial “most liberal Senator ever” meme that crops up every election to be flung against the Democratic candidate (isn’t it funny how self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders never gets ranked as the “most liberal Senator”?). Hat tip to Avedon Carol.

The Panda’s Thumb on Christians v. Intelligent Design: Featured: George Coyne.

Neuroanthropology: Carolyn Nordstrom: Fighting for a Healthy Global Economy.

Moomin Light: Washington National Cathedral: The Gargoyles.

Via Talking Points Memo, a transcript at Theuptake of an interview with the woman McCain interrupted and corrected, who was calling Obama either an Arab or an Arab terrorist, depending on whose account you believe (the video only shows the word “Arab,” but some observers say she added terrorist after the mic was cut or when she was too far away from the mic to be heard - “Arab terrorist” was the phrase Ana Marie Cox heard and reported). The woman is a volunteer at the McCain headquarters in Burnsville, and has been sending out flyers to random people in the phone book explaining that Obama’s one of those dangerous Arabs. She’s made this decision on her own, not at the direction of the campaign, but in a context where she says that “a lot of” campaign volunteers where she works believe the same things she does, and where she seems not to have registered that McCain himself really doesn’t share her mistaken belief that Obama is an Arab and a Muslim (and that these things make him scary and dangerous).

The Times Online reports that McCain tussles with Palin over mob mentality. I’m a bit skeptical of this one - it’s customary for the Presidential candidate to be given the high minded statements while the VP candidate gets the attack dog ones - but you can read it and judge for yourself.

Iceland is different from the US department: The wife of the president of Iceland says “I have yet to meet someone who does not want a naked picture of their loved ones with text about themselves.” Via Crooked Timber.

*Christopher on Coming Out or Resting In?: Queer in the House of the Lord.

Al Muhajabah: kind of scary.

Islamicate: Event: Art of the Qur’an.

Jana Remy: not afraid.

The Economist: When fortune frowned. Good discussion of the current financial crisis, with historical perspective from other financial crises in various countries.

Hugo has his ballot proposition endorsements up. I’m behind him, and haven’t looked at them all yet, but I’d better do so if I’m going to do early voting. So, as I set out to look at them, a few links.

First, here are the Friends’ Committee on Legislation of California recommendations on the November 2008 ballot propositions, as emailed to me by a member of my meeting.

FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATION OF CALIFORNIA

NOV. 2008
See www.fclca.org for details.

Prop. Recommendation Description

1A Neutral Bonds for High-Speed Rail

2 Yes Standards for Confining Farm Animals

3 No Bonds for Children’s Hospitals

[Because it seems contrary to Quaker values to recommend "No" on this
proposition, I included the essence of FCL's statement].
“Children’s hospitals provide a magnificent service… but they are not designed to provide basic, preventive care that is the most pressing need and the most cost-effective treatment. … We doubt it is good public health policy to sell bonds to benefit one class of hospitals. There are many other health care entities, such as county hospitals, which have equal or greater needs than these eight hospitals. Does it make sense to offer state funds for hospital construction when the state is cutting funding for health care, including health care for children?”

4 No Parental Notification/Minor Pregnancy

5 Yes Non-violent Drug Offense/Sentencing/Parole

6 No Law Inforcement Funding/Criminal Penalties

7 No Renewable Energy Generation

8 No Elimation of Same-Sex Couples’ Right to Marry

9 No Victim’s Rights/Parole

10 No Alternative Fuel Vehicles/Renewable Energy Bonds

11 Yes Redistricting

12 Neutral Veteran’s Bond Act

The Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, every election, assembles information about the California ballot propositions,

including non partisan analyses, official voter information, background materials, pro-and-con websites, newspaper articles and editorials, opinion polls, political endorsements, and financial-contribution records. See our new Ballot Initiative Endorsements page for positions on the propositions by major organizations.

Here’s their page for the November 2008 ballot propositions.

No matter where you live (in any state), SmartVoter.org, the League of Women Voters site, is a useful source of nonpartisan election information. Just enter your address for information about what’s on your ballot.

If you have suggestions on where else to look for election information, whether for propositions or for those not so publicized down ballot races, feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

UPDATE: If you want to know how the Orange County Bar Association rated the judicial candidates, the link is here.

In a “surprise move, in defiance of a power-sharing deal,” Robert Mugabe grabbed “all key Cabinet posts, including the crucial security ministries” for his own Zanu-PF party. The cabinet ministry assignments, as announced in the party newspaper, are detailed here. Tsvangirai’s MDC party has denounced in a press release this unilateral allocation of ministries, “which is a betrayal of the wishes, expectations and aspirations of the majority of Zimbabweans” and a “ploy” to “pre-empt the visit of the mediator.” Tsvangirai had called a deadlock in talks with Mugabe on Thursday, and ex-South African president Thabo Mbeki had been recalled to help end the deadlock.

Sokwanele contrasts the Ministerial allocations according to MDC-T and ZANU-PF.

This talk, from the 2008 California DBSA conference, was by Linda L. Banner, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and sex therapist in San Jose. Her web site is www.bettersexdoc.com.

From her hand out, here are other resources:

Banner, Linda - Advanced Sexual Techniques
Hendrix, Harville - Receiving Love, 2007 and Getting the Love You Want, 1988
Kasl, Charlotte - If the Buddha Dated, 1999
May, Rollo - Man’s Search for Himself, 1953
Zilbergeld, Bernie - The New Male Sexuality, 1999

www.asect.org - Sex therapist listing
www.smsna.org - Sexual medicine listing

Linda Banner has done Viagra research. In one experiment, she was able to get 70% of a set of patients, many of whom had failed with Viagra before, to the point where they no longer needed Viagra.

Notes from the talk:

Sex is a biological need (procreation), a psychological need (intimacy), and a social need (connection). It affects all aspects of our quality of life.

Physical aspects of sex: There was a slide on the sexual response cycle (Masters & Johnson); I didn’t take notes here, because I already know about the sexual response cycle.

Gender differences: Men have 5-10 times more testosterone. Men tend to be more visual and tactile, while women are more relationship oriented. OK, you’ve heard all that part, right? The thing I got from the lecture that I hadn’t heard was about differences between men and women in arousal cycles. Women have a monthly arousal cycle; we have more testosterone at the time of ovulation (unless we’re on birth control pills). Men have an annual cycle; their testosterone levels are higher in the spring and the fall.

Banner said that we have only begun in the last 10 years to look at women’s sexual function from a recreational, not procreational, perspective. Also, men’s brains look more like women’s brains as they age. [LG: Unfortunately, my notes don't say specifically how those aging brains look more alike.]

How do you increase testosterone in the brain? DHEA increases the availability of testosterone in the brain. But a questioner said that she’d heard that DHEA can increase the propensity to hypomania. [LG: Remember, this was a lecture where most of the audience was either people with bipolar disorder or family members with bipolar disorder, with a few people with depression in the mix.] Banner didn’t have any information on that.

Banner recommends Lonnie Barbach’s book Pause for women going through menopause.

Cute cartoon of men vs. women: Lots more switches for women.

In brain scans, women showed more prefrontal cortex activation with sexual arousal than men did. We need more brain scans, but get no Federal funding for research on sex as recreation (rather than procreation).

Viagra research wasn’t federally funded; that was drug company funded.

There was a slide on sex across the lifespan, on which I didn’t take notes.

Psychosocial aspects of sex: Any anxiety or stress at all with take down sexual function.

Intimacy = vulnerability? Sex = self-esteem?

1 out of 2 men between 40 and 70 have some degree of erection problems.

It’s desirable to ejaculate at least once a week - use it or lose it.

Sociological aspects of sex: Humans are “wired” to connect. Sex takes two, and is our most intimate act.

Relationship stressors with depression and bipolar disorder. Impact on partner & family with these diagnoses.

What works for sexual problems related to depression and bipolar disorder is cognitive-behavioral therapy with brief sex therapy.

Collaborate with physician. Make peace with the diagnosis. Focus on positives.

She gave examples of homework assignments used in therapy - a couple who visited a sex toy shop together, another couple who had an assignment of “surprise,” and the woman came to the front door and flashed her husband.

Communication 101: Validate the other and then yourself.

Replace “but” with “and.” Replace “you” with a general statement.

Disclaimer.

Hold hands and focus on breathing.

Remember that sex is a “basic need.”

Brief CBST (cognitive-behavioral sex therapy):

Directive - understanding puzzle pieces.

Communication, negotiation, relationship skills.

Homework - behavioral exercises, books, videos, hypnosis, guided relaxation. E.g., go dancing, sensual massage.

Enhance our Quality of Life. Increase self-esteem. Forgive and accept ourselves.

Next I’ll blog the lectures by the two psychiatrists from the Stanford Bipolar Disorders Clinic, and then Kent Layton’s workshops on impulsivity and mania, and finally the clutter panel. I hope to get to these over the course of the next week.

John Holbo from Crooked Timber gives David Frum less credit for sense than I gave him (while making a similar point to hilzoy on the current state of the Corner).

Or, in the 10% less crazy Frum version, he’s just got to be an incredibly corrupt Chicago pol. Because he’s from Chicago….

Maybe he’s right; I don’t know. I thought Frum was making a weaker version of the “he’s a Chicago politician” argument, partly because Frum seemed so unconfident that the argument would suffice to win McCain the election.

Because, the thing is, there’s a very weak sense in which the “he’s a Chicago politician” argument is true. Not that Obama’s shown evidence of being an unusually corrupt pol - he hasn’t. Still less that he can automatically be presumed corrupt because he’s from Chicago (which, yeah, is sort of implied by the Chicago part of “Chicago politician”). But in the sense that, yeah, Obama’s a politician, and no, he’s not simply good and earnest Mr. Smith going to Washington, but a guy who’s skilled at playing the political game. And who is not so very high-minded that he’ll never, in his ambition, cut a corner to his advantage.

The thing is, the people we now have in the race, on both sides, have gotten where they are in part by being good at convincing people that they, unlike other politicians, are especially genuine. Whether it’s the “Straight Talk Express,” or Sarah Palin as “the real deal,” or Obama - heck, even Biden, old news though he may be, and hence undercovered, isn’t part of why he’s not hurt much by his gaffes the fact that his lack of filtering makes him convincing as the guy who can’t not speak his mind?

And, yes, actually, I think that Obama is, in general, rather more honest and genuine than the average pol - I believe, in fact, the opposite of what that “Chicago politician” thing is supposed to convince me to believe. But of course, none of them are the messiah, and, of course, I understand the temptation for all of us, once we’ve found a politician who seems more honest than most, to hope that he’ll be much more honest than most, that, in fact, he’ll be the one honest man of the lot.

And of course, men or women, they’re all flawed; they all cut corners sometimes. As, indeed, in our own ways, do we.

Still, I don’t require knowing that I’m supporting the one perfect honest man in politics to make those calls to voters in swing states. Just being convinced, as I am, that I’m supporting the guy who will be the better governing choice.

So I made my calls tonight, and will make more tomorrow.

Because, after all, I’ve been promising it for a week at least. I’ll try to keep more current with these.

In Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai and Mugabe are still not in agreement on the new cabinet, and Tsvangirai has suspended talks while waiting for the return of mediator Thabo Mbeki. Meanwhile, IRIN asks, of Zimbabwe, How do you rein in 231 million per cent inflation?

Kenyans, unsurprisingly, are excited about Obama’s lead in the polls. But I’ll skip the Obama related posts, and instead link one in which jAnaM discusses the limitations of circumcision in preventing AIDS/HIV.

Following some African countries government’s advice that circumcision lessened chances of contracting HIV/Aids, many young men formed very long lines outside health centers to have their foreskins severed. Innocent “Onyango” had just given the nod to circumcision when he acknowledged that he has been made a ware that, men who are circumcised are 60% more likely to be protected against HIV during sexual intercourse….

Young men like “Onyango” point out that, these Aids people(activists) have spoken for long about fighting the disease, but they had never come up with a practical solution as good as this one(circumcision). Don’t have sex, don’t do this, don’t do that. Eh, man, how can a young man such as I forfeit sex, eh? And the condoms – where is the sense in putting on a condom when you are having sex? Sex is about feeling, and so no young person likes them!”
You can view it from young men’s side and be humbled by it, but you should be doubly afraid for the future as far as the hydra known as HIV/AIDS is concerned, and its potential to wreak more havoc against a young population that loves and values fun more than security of life….

It is counseling that will help those young men who are rushing to get circumcised in order to ‘enjoy’ their sex unhindered, to get informed that there are many things to consider before they place their unprotected little friends into the mouth of infected vessels, placing all their faith in their circumcision hype. This is not bashing circumcision per se but rather looking at things in perspective….

In other news, the Kenyan government is launching an anti-malaria campaign.

‘A Child of Nigeria’ won the Nobel prize for literature.

Women were jailed in Juba in south Sudan for wearing trousers.

It all resulted from a local order by the Juba County Commissioner that got loose. Anyway, he came out and apologized, the edict withdrawn and the madness stopped….

Social media in Africa.

Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet….

This is absolutely true. Several members of my sister-in-law’s family, for example, are on Facebook.

Environment: South African bloggers herald SA’s first electric car.

Kenya: Role of technology in post-election crisis.

Don’t cut aid to Africa, AU head pleads to world.

Ushahidi Updates from Nairobi.

Chad: Aid Agencies Suspend Work in East.

Vanity Googling myself was dull; I just turned up the web pages I remember having. But I did find this when 2001 Googling Andre Braugher:

The way he menacingly strides into the Beverly Hills hotel room you
half expect Homicide’s Andre Braugher to put you under arrest.

Heh. Menacingly? In real life? Are we talking about the same Andre? The link is long dead, though, so I don’t get to read what may have been said in that Beverly Hills hotel room.

Meanwhile, back in the world of current searches, Joel found and pointed out to me this Youtube video of Barack Obama dancing on Ellen.

I hope to make this my last post on the Ayers nonsense. I’m making it partly because I see I need to make a correction to my comment here replying to John Courage. Not a correction to my defense of Obama, of course - but one to my reference to “prosecutorial misconduct.” This was the information I had from the web, but the prosecutor himself, in a letter to the New York Times, explains that it wasn’t misconduct by the prosecutor, but illegal activities (wiretappings, break-ins, etc.) by John Mitchell, whom people my age and older will recall as the attorney general brought down by the Watergate scandal (to be followed by the two attorney generals Nixon had to go through to fire Cox).

More relevant to the campaign, the former prosecutor also has this to say:

As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

In other news, McCain has made several remarks today dialing back the hostility to Obama, whom he described as “a decent person and a person you do not have to be scared [of] as President of the United States.”

For the record, I tend to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates when he says

I believe, as I did when this started, that these guys really are ignorant of the forces they’re dabbling with. I don’t think they actually believed that their crowds would start to actually resemble a mob.

Sarah Palin, judging from that article in The New Republic about the Wasilla part of her career, has a history of sharp culture war edged campaigning against her rivals (asking for one person to produce a marriage license because husband and wife had different last names?), but that’s against white opponents, without the added factor of a set of people who are unhinged over the black man with scary middle name factor. And, I haven’t personally seen the video where the guy at the McCain rally shouted terrorist, but people who were criticizing McCain were still saying he looked surprised at that reaction.

I also agree with TNC about exactly where this stuff crossed a line and went too far.

I don’t think pushing the Ayers line is so bad, as in, arguing that Ayers is a despicable guy who Obama didn’t distance himself from. I don’t buy that line, but I’m not supposed to, I’m an Obama supporter. But when you start accusing homeboy of “palling around with terrorists,” you’ve gone too far. Think about it logically–terrorists caused 9/11. And we basically believe that they are worthy of death.

Final Bill Ayers trivia: he appears to have a blog. And it reads as if it probably really is his blog, not someone else’s blog satirizing him.

There. I now hope to never blog about Bill Ayers again. Tomorrow, I’m back to blogging about the DBSA conference, with a post about the workshop by the sex therapist.

UPDATE: OK, it’s tomorrow by now, but I don’t want to make a new Ayers-related post, so I’m updating this one instead to link the Daily Kos diary Its Not About Cocaine or Terrorists!, which, in addition to some discussion of racial code words, has a clear rebuttal to the “It’s all about Obama not being forthcoming about Ayers” argument - based on a fuller transcript of the first primary debate where he was asked about Ayers.

On the one hand, I don’t want to flog a dead horse. At this point, it’s the economy stupid. And in some ways, wild “he doesn’t see America the way we do” accusations about Obama are an irrelevant side show. “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” isn’t going to win the election for the Republicans. Flogging Ayers’ dead corpse isn’t going to win the election for the Republicans. Denouncing Obama as unpatriotic and unsupporting of the troops by selectively quoting from an argument he once made that we need more troops in Afghanistan so they will be better able to do their job* isn’t going to win the election for the Republicans.

The Republicans should, absolutely, keep fighting till the end - the stakes are important enough to be worth it, and if nothing else they can minimize the chance that Obama will wind up with a veto proof majority. But they’ll serve their interests best if they listen to saner voices like David Frum, Ross Douthat, and David Brooks about how to fight, because, Obama as wild-eyed radical? Just not doing it.

There is, it’s true, the “Who will kill this turbulent priest” problem, that various bloggers have been warning about, where certain people have taken this all way too seriously and have been shouting things like “terrorist” and “traitor” and “kill him” at McCain and Palin rallies. Which is, to be sure, a far scarier result of the rhetoric than any effect it could possibly have on the vote. But set that aside for the moment. What’s bothering me now is the fact that the conservative bloggers at the National Review’s Corner blog seem to have lost touch with reality.

The election will come in a few weeks, McCain will very probably lose, and he will, no doubt, be really pissed off to have lost to a man he doesn’t much respect and whom he considers much less fit to lead. But he’ll shut up, at that point, about Obama’s supposed alignment with the old Weather Underground, and will move on to figuring out what he can still do as a Senator to advance his favored policies. Palin will settle back into being Governor of Alaska, perhaps simultaneously planning how she can build her career toward an eventual Presidential run. Neither of them has a long term incentive, past November, to push accusations about Obama that don’t hold water, and I have trouble imagining they will.

But the commentators? Will they return to common sense, once the heat of pre-election partisanship is over? (Sadly, I don’t hold much hope for their returning to common sense before that.) Because, as hilzoy of Obsidian Wings points out,

So, if I understand this correctly: Barack Obama is in fact a radical; if not himself a Maoist, then at least someone who “fits comfortably” with people who are “more Maoist than Stalinist.” But he is disguising this fact in order to infiltrate bourgeois institutions and implement his radical vision from within. A quiescent media does not press him for specifics, thereby allowing his centrist disguise to go unquestioned. Only his relationship with Bill Ayers allows us “a peek behind the curtain.”

This is delusional. It would be interesting to ask, for instance, why so few of Obama’s law students have come forward to talk about his attempt to transform them into Maoist cadres, or why the lawyers in his firm have not mentioned his commitment to cultural revolution, or how he has managed to conceal his desire to nationalize the means of production from, well, everyone. Was he secretly plotting to get asked, unexpectedly, to speak at the Democratic Convention, take a chance on running for President, and succeed, back when he was on the Harvard Law Review? That, plus absolutely iron self-control, might explain why no one caught a glimpse of Obama’s secret radicalism: he has been concealing it for decades, the better to bore away at our bourgeois institutions.

There’s only one problem with that hypothesis: if Obama were as stealthy as that, if he had lived a secret life for decades, completely concealing his inner Maoist, he would never, ever have blown his cover by getting on a board with William Ayers.

Corner: you’re getting into When Prophecy Fails territory. Get a grip.

And, here’s the part that bothers me. OK, we know that Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd, was for several years a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. That Sarah Palin’s made nice with them in the past, giving a keynote address at their 2006 convention and recording a greeting for their 2008 convention. That the Alaskan Independence Party is a secessionist party, whose official platform calls for Alaska to be able to vote on seceding from the US.

We know these things, and they’ve been pointed out ad infinitum by various bloggers. And it makes a fun gotcha, right? Here Palin is getting on Obama’s case for a very tenuous connection with the Weather Underground (or with one guy who used to be in the Weather Underground 40 years ago), when she has a much closer connection with a secessionist party. (And here the Palin-friendly voices may jump in - “Smear! She’s a lifelong Republican!” But let’s leave that argument aside for the moment.)

Now, raise your hands, everyone who has an easy time seeing Palin as a wild-eyed secessionist. Right, that’s how many of you? How many Democrats, even? How many people who absolutely detest Palin, even?

Not many, right? There’s a ton of images that come naturally to mind, for Palin, some good and some bad. There’s the ignorant ditz portrayed so well by Tina Fey (”I can see Russia from my house!”). There’s the down home, folksy hockey mom who is “the real deal,” more genuine than all those other politicians. There’s Sarah Palin the would be book burner. There’s the woman with the big messy family. The woman who’s “not an in-depth person. Never has, never will be” and who’s intimidated by the intelligent and educated. The maverick who resigned in protest from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, revealing ethics problems there, and who went on to run on a clean government platform. The vindictive woman who used her office against a personal enemy (Troopergate). The woman who nobly put her values into practice by carrying a Down syndrom child to term. The woman from the scary wild-eyed Pentecostal church that preaches that we’ve reached the end times. All these things have been said about Sarah Palin, and all of them have some resonance in the Palin you actually see, enough that you can sell them - easier than you can sell Palin as secessionist.

Even though she has, in fact, had some sort of dealings with a party that’s pro-secession, the inference people make most naturally is, gee, that’s some weird stuff in Alaska, I suppose she’s making nice with them as an Alaskan politician, rather than, gee, does she really see America like I do? Can I trust her to love our country?

And, to a large degree, the same is true of Obama. The Ayers stuff doesn’t have legs in part because it’s disconnected with people’s real concerns about the economy, and comes off as a wild attempt to change the subject. But even during the primary, pre-financial crisis, the story didn’t have legs. Because Obama himself is so darn moderate, benign, even professorial a figure that most people just can’t see him as that dangerous guy who doesn’t see America like we do, and that’s why he’s buddies with this terrorist, and that’s why he hates the troops in Afghanistan and thinks they’re there just to kill civilians, and, we’re not going to talk about Jeremiah Wright, that’s off the table, but, wink/wink, nudge/nudge, it does put his patriotism in a dubious light that he’d associate with such a preacher.

That’s sanity. Obama is a center/left guy of moderate temperament, and, as hilzoy says, has a very long career of failing to show radical, socialist, possibly Maoist tendencies.

Democratic Socialists of America once endorsed him? Oh, maybe. They probably did. I used to hang with DSOC people (and Libertarians - I was eclectic in my political friendships) in college, and even then, the group endorsed Democrats all the time - part of their incremental strategy, where liberal or even center/left Democrats are closer to what they’d want than Republicans are. Obama is a wild-eyed socialist? Yeah, sure, that’s the ticket. That’s why that terribly socialist magazine The Economist has defended him on that score and why their poll of academic economists (”not many Marxists in that group“) shows they trust Obama more than McCain.

Friend to terrorists? Give me a break. No, I’m not buying that bridge. And no one else is.

So why are the people at the Corner so eager to buy it/sell it? What possesses them, that they think “guy who leans toward Maoism” is actually a plausible Obama? Obama the nuanced, Obama the moderate, Obama the calm, Obama the inspiring speaker and bland debater, but never Obama the new Black Panther? What possesses them, that they so easily project onto him a wild and scary radicalism utterly at odds with his actual person and record?

And are they going to return to common sense, post-election, and start thinking seriously about how to be an effective and useful conservative opposition (maybe to come back in the next election), or are they going to become like the people who used to circulate lists of people Bill Clinton has supposedly killed?

* Yes, I’m a pacifist. I don’t make arguments about how many troops we need to do what job. Obama, though, isn’t a pacifist, and that is in fact the argument he was making, from which Palin’s been selectively quoting.

I was at a bit of a disadvantage at this conference, because I lost a chunk of hearing before we left, and didn’t have time to see a doctor about it (I’ll be seeing the doctor today, and in all probability it will be wax, as it usually is - but I couldn’t manage to fix it before we left). I sat up front, to compensate, and could hear most of the speakers (but not all the questions); however, I don’t, under the circumstances, have any confidence that I heard the Hindi names of the chakras right. For this reason, I’m blogging the alternative practitioners first, before I do the (more numerous) presentations by regular psychiatrists and psychologists, so that I can crib the names from Steven Barnes’ post about the chakras, which he conveniently posted just a day before I listened to Acharya Shree Yogesh’s lecture, and which I want to reference while it’s still on his front page.

The risk with alternative stuff, for people with bipolar disorder, is that people may ditch medicines that they really need, in hopes of self-managing without. After all, the meds have bothersome side effects, and the alternatives promise less. Joel and I have known people to go astray, with faith healing, or supposed natural treatments, or whatever. So, first important positive of the people who were actually at the conference: they all emphasized that the meditation or Reiki or whatever should not substitute for your what your psychiatrist has prescribed; it’s an adjunct.

Anyway, first the chakras. Here are my notes.

There are seven main chakras (can be 5, 6, 700). A Yogi is someone that is a master of the seven chakras. Yoga is not religious, but a system to keep you healthy. The ayurvedic system of medicine increases good bacteria in the body and has no side effects. [LG: That's how I understood what he was saying. I actually believe that it's impossible for a form of medicine to exist that's powerful enough to be effective and that has no side effects. Just treatments where, to borrow terms from the drug trial lecture later, the Number Needed to Treat is low relative to the Number Needed to Harm.] The seven chakras are the centers of the 700 found in Chinese medicine (acupuncture).

First chakra - Muladhara - base of spine - root chakra. This chakra, if active and open, should feel well balanced, sensible, stable, secure. You don’t distrust people, feel present, and are connected to your physical body. If this chakra isn’t working, go to a forest and walk among plants. If it’s underactive, you tend to be fearful and nervous, unwelcome. If it’s overactive, you feel materialistic, insecure, and unwelcome. For this chakra, you need to visualize a red color at the base of the spine. What visualization is: if you look at a candle in a dark room, and stare at the flame, you can still see the flame if your eyes are closed. The mantra for this chakra is “lam” (with the m sort of between m and n). Eat well, and eat light, easy to digest food. Here the speaker advised us not to eat beef and steak.

Second chakra, Svahasthana, base of navel. To activate visualize orange light two inches below the navel. If not active, eat fresh oranges, or fresh squeezed orange juice. This chakra governs feelings and sexuality. If it is open, feelings are expressed easily and without being over emotional. Sex is expressed. If it is not open, you are unemotional. If it is overactive, you are very sensitive and emotional all the time, and may be oversexed. If you are married, both partners need to be balanced. This chakra is helped by swimming, the water element. It is the seat of the unconscious mind. Visualize an orange color two inches below the navel. Keep orange light at night in your room, and wear orange. Mantra - vam. The question was asked whether this was also the center of creativity. Yes.

Third chakra, Manapura, in the navel. Confidence in a group. When open, you are in control and dignified. When not open, you are underactive, indecisive, and apprehensive. When overactive you are imperious and aggressive. Eat early, before sunset, or at least 3 hours before you go to bed. Early to bed, early to rise. This is the center chakra, so it needs to be balanced. Visualize yellow light in the navel. Mantra - ram.

Fourth chakra, heart, Anahata, all about love. When open, you are compassionate, friendly, and have good relationships. When underactive, you are cold, unfriendly. When overactive, you suffocate people with your love. Need to visualize a green color at the heart, have a burning flame in your room. Mantra - yam.

Fifth chakra, throat, self-expression and communication. [LG: I didn't catch the Indian name for this one at all, and it turns out Steve doesn't have it listed either.] When it’s open, expressing yourself is easy, and art comes easy. When it’s underactive, you tend not to speak much, and are shy. When it’s overactive, you speak too much, and won’t listen well. You need open space, open sky, visualize a bird, need a lot of space. Visualize a light blue color. This also helps thyroid problems. Mantra: xam. [LG: The x sounded more like the Greek chi than an x.]

Sixth chakra, agga-something, middle of forehead, third eye. It heals with insight. When it’s open, you give excellent advice. When it’s underactive, you feel you don’t know anything. When it’s overactive, you have uncontrolled anger. Visualize a blue (not light blue this time) color. Mantra: aum.

Here there was some discussion of subtle bodies.

Last chakra, top of head. When it is open, you become enlightened. Crown or sesra (?) chakra. No one can take bliss away from you - they can take happiness, not not bliss. Visualize white light. Mantra: O.

Meditate from 1-5 minutes [LG: per chakra?]. Learn from a master. Can incorporate this alongside medicine.

Now, the Reiki talk.

Reiki is universal healing energy. It is not medical treatment. If you have a medical condition, you do need to see a doctor. A full Reiki treatment is around an hour, and involves hand placements in the front and back of the body. You can do Reiki just with hands on shoulders, though.

Reiki was discovered in Japan by a minister in the late 1800s or early 1900s. [LG: Don't trust me too much on these dates, given that my hearing was impaired when I heard the talks.] He looked into how to do hands on healing. One story is that he went up on a mountain. He then trained a doctor. These was a war going on, so he started training women as well as men. [LG: This is where I think I missed a step, because we started in the late 1800s, and suddenly we're in maybe WWII.] A woman from Hawaii, trained in Japan, brought Reiki to the US in the late 40s.

The information (about how to do it) isn’t supposed to be casually disseminated.

There are five Reiki principles - anger, worry, honesty, gratitude. [LG: I have to have gotten this wrong, since I only have four. I suppose if you want the five, Google is your friend.]

At this point, I stopped taking notes on the Reiki talk. The Reiki practitioners went around the room and put hands on our shoulders. Unsurprisingly, my experience of this was that I felt more relaxed, and a slight pain in one shoulder went away (unfortunately, that disappearance of pain only lasted for about five minutes after the Reiki).

Notes on talks over - what do I make of all this? Well, as someone more oriented toward regular medicine (with peer reviewed research, double blind trials, and the like), I get restless and fidgety in talks about alternatives (particularly if I’m hearing explanations I don’t think likely to be literally true, unaccompanied by any indication of what’s been researched here). At the same time, there is some stuff here that could work, even if I disbelieve the explanations for how it works. Specifically, meditation does have certain beneficial effects, whether or not you believe those effects have anything to do with chakras and subtle bodies. Even if the light and mantra recommendations are arbitrary, I can see how the relaxation effect of meditation alone could help people. I can also see where Reiki could have emotional value as a form of safe touch.

The chakras, also, strike me as a metaphor for something that’s also expressed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or in the recovery slogan H.A.L.T. (don’t let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired), or, in Western medical terms, in talk of the reptilian, monkey, and executive function parts of the brain. Namely, that we have certain basic needs that need to be met in order to get to the point of enlightenment or growth, that if you’re not meeting those H.A.L.T. needs, you’re not going to be able to focus on the ones that are higher up in Maslow’s pyramid. So I could see their category usefulness as metaphor for talking about how we do or don’t handle our needs in a useful way. (Steve’s post gets into this kind of thing, where he talks about a child’s approach to the chakras as opposed to an adult’s.)

The Ayurvedic lifestyle suggestions about eating and such could, I suppose, like any diet advice that hasn’t necessarily been researched, be sensible, irrelevant, or harmful (same goes for Western diet advisors who may or may not be basing their advice on research). Since this particular lecture pretty much advised us to eat light, eat oranges, avoid steak, and swim or walk, it’s hard to see any harm in it.

The NIH has a center for researching complementary and alternative medicine . There have, for example, been a bunch of studies on acupuncture, though the NIH says that

There have been many studies on acupuncture’s potential health benefits for a wide range of conditions. Summarizing earlier research, the 1997 NIH Consensus Statement on Acupuncture found that, overall, results were hard to interpret because of problems with the size and design of the studies.

In the years since the Consensus Statement was issued, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has funded extensive research to advance scientific understanding of acupuncture….

Here’s the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine page on Ayurvedic medicine.

To come: I’ll be blogging the other talks and workshops from the conference over the next few days.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

7:10 Man, everytime Obama talks the bar for women just shoot up. I don’t want to be sexist, but come on ladies, you ain’t heard a word he said! Admit it! Your just thinking “He’s soooooo dreammmyyyy…”

Sure, I’ll admit it, if you men will admit that you don’t hear a word Sarah Palin says when she speaks :-). Kidding, as I’m sure TNC is - we can all walk and chew gum at the same time, metaphorically speaking.

I guess, though, that TNC’s talking about the men/women graphics that got displayed on the TV screen during the debate - polls of the undecided people in the audience? Someone else, whom I can’t find now, said there wasn’t that much difference between the sexes, but that women were more positive about Obama and more negative about the war in Iraq.

Purple at the Economist’s Democracy in America blog:

9:17: Excellent layman’s explanation of how credit-market liquidity affects ordinary people from Mr Obama. I know to our august and educated readers it might have sounded reductive or obvious, but I’ll bet plenty of people have never been walked through it quite so simply. Mr Obama’s positives on the CNN ticker rose when he said nobody wants to hear politicians pointing fingers.

I liked that answer, too, from what I read in the transcript.

Purple again:

9:48: Interesting (by which I mean deeply worrying) that the male-voter ticker collapsed as soon as Mr Obama said that burning fossil fuels contribute to global warming. Do men tend to disbelieve in man-made global warming?

Eep!

Red at the same blog:

9:49: Alright, it’s the same old joke again, the two candidates pretending that there’s some kind of huge gap between them on energy policy. John McCain wants to drill. Barack Obama is alright with that, when it comes down to it. Ditto on nuclear power. Being politicians, they both favour a cap-and-trade system rather than the more efficient but unattractive-sounding carbon tax. Done. Tom Brokaw could have saved several minutes.

Actually, he’s kind of right - in an election where there’s a sharp distinction between the two candidates, energy policy does seem to be one area where there’s more rhetorical than real difference (not so on other issues).

Nothing to do with the debate, but Joel found this and told me about it while I was blogging this:

smearcasters.com, a site that “documents the public writings and appearances of Islamophobic activists and pundits who intentionally and regularly spread fear, bigotry and misinformation in the media. Offering a fresh look at Islamophobia and its perpetrators in today’s media, it also provides four snapshots, or case studies, describing how Islamophobes manipulate media in order to paint Muslims with a broad, hateful brush.”

Here’s an overview of our trip to Oakland:

Drove up Thursday. Avoided watching the VP debate, because Joel finds debates triggering. The next morning, I checked CNN and the web to see how it had gone, and also did some checking to find out whether, as I’d heard, mental health parity had been put into the Wall Street rescue bill. Answer: yes.

The conference was Friday and Saturday. The key notes and workshops were a mix of: psychiatrist/clinical psychologist presentations of standard medical treatments of mood disorders, peer-led workshops (such as a panel on dealing with clutter, or Georgia DeGroat’s talk on Advanced Directives), and alternative practitioner talks about chakras, Reiki, and yoga. Joel says that, relative to the national DBSA convention, there was less in the way of peer-led discussion, and more alternative stuff; both conventions had psychiatrist talks. While I’m not really an alternative sort of person here, I did attend two alternative practitioner workshops; I’ll blog about those before I blog the psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, just because of what I want to link there.

I missed the always popular Ask the Doctor session (which Joel attended) on Friday, in favor of having lunch with Karen Street. She blogs about climate change, and I work testing software for the insurance industry, which is taking an interest in climate change these days, so we talked a lot about climate change. I also found out, from Karen, that Proposition 7 (the California proposition this election that’s supposed to promote alternative energy) may not be the best idea, and is opposed by environmental groups as well as the utilities. I’ll blog more about that later.

My schedule for the two days looked like this (keynotes and workshops):

Po. W. Wang, M.D., of Stanford University, on Diagnostic Challenges in Bipolar Disorder

Linda Banner, PhD, Health Psychologist and Sex Therapist, on Optimizing Sexual Solutions to Enhance Quality of Life

Acharya Shree Yogeesh, Ph.D, on How To Activate The Body’s Energy Centers

Kent Layton, PSyD, on Impulsivity and Urgent Thoughts and Feelings

Brian Wetzel, The Voice In The Wilderness is Laughing (this one was a stand up comedian who suffers from clinical depression - I’m not going to be blogging notes from it because it makes no sense to take notes on this kind of thing, but he does have a DVD)

Reiki as a Tool of Recovery (by two Reiki Masters, Carol Patterson and Roy Crew)

Terence Ketter, M.D., also of Stanford, on New Treatments for Bipolar Disorders

Panel workshop on Clutter’s Last Stand

Kent Layton, Psy.D., on The Comprehensive Evaluation of Mania

Tomorrow I’ll blog the alternative sessions I went to (and also hopefully some African news), and then in the days following I’ll proceed to the other sessions.

I gather Obama’s being judged to have won the debate. We didn’t watch it, since Joel finds politics triggering, and likes to control his exposure. So, I process debates by looking afterwards for transcripts, clips, and live blogging by people like the Economist bloggers.

But I wanted to take a moment to talk about the corpse of William Ayers. It’s not a terribly interesting story, as a revelation of Obama’s character, and it’s been hashed over before back in the primary season, without showing any particular legs. Bill Ayers did dreadful things, as a leader of the Weather Underground, back when Obama was about 7 years old (Obama has agreed that Ayers’ behavior back then was dreadful). He hid out for a while, with his wife; they then reemerged, managed to avoid doing any time, and, since Bill Ayers was the son of a CEO, were able to be accepted again to polite Chicago society. Fast forward some years, and Obama arrives on the scene, and moves into Ayers’ neighborhood, where Ayers is already comfortably ensconced, and, as Kathy at G Spot puts it.

What I basically wrote then is that Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn are my neighbors here in Hyde Park, and if you live in this neighborhood and are a politically active liberal, you are bound to cross paths with them sooner or later. Ayers and Dohrn are activists involved in lots of groups and causes, they give speeches, host fundraisers, etc. You’d have to work pretty hard to avoid them.

Like many others in this city, and especially this neighborhood, I’ve had some contacts with them. And so, of course, has Barack Obama.

It should be obvious to anyone with a brain cell that just because you meet with someone, or work with them on a political or community issue, it doesn’t mean you agree even with what their politics are now, much less what they were 40 years ago. And God knows it doesn’t mean you condone every stupid and offensive thing they may ever have said or done, let alone past acts of lawbreaking and violence.

The whole point in politics is that you work and form alliances with a diverse coalition of groups and individuals….

Now, there is a reasonable line of criticism of Obama for this. And that would be - OK, maybe you shouldn’t go along to get along here. Maybe this is a corner that, as a Chicago politician, you shouldn’t cut. Opt out of that diverse coalition of groups and individuals, make waves, and take the hit in your political effectiveness to make a stand against Ayers, who, though he’s reportedly doing constructive charitable stuff now, by all accounts hasn’t shown any particular repentance for the genuinely bad stuff that he did 40 years ago.

Problem is, that line of criticism isn’t particularly exciting, since McCain and Palin, like Obama, are also politicians. All of them work with people they may not particularly approve of to get things done.

So instead we get the not so credible line that Obama is Ayers’ close buddy (fact checked by CNN and found to be false), with the insinuation that Obama, like Ayers, is some sort of scary radical. Of which, as David Frum points out

But Bill Ayers? Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical? And if not, then what is this fuss and fury supposed to show? It’s like Ronald Reagan’s opponents trying to beat him by pointing out that Birchers once supported him.

All this I relate as lead in to linking Ross Douthat’s take on the matter, From Willie Horton to William Ayers. I’ve faulted Ross, in the past, for being too resistant to seeing racism - partly because he seems to me oddly oblivious to Steve Sailer’s racism and partly because he’s given some past campaign advertising (e.g. the “Call Me, Harold” ad) more of a pass on racism than I think it deserves. But in this case, I found his look at non-racial aspects of the ads useful. He links the Willie Horton ad, and says

Okay, what was that ad about? “White racism!” cry the liberals. But table that argument for a moment: What else was it about? Crime. Take out the racial element, and you’re still left with a devastatingly effective ad for an era - the late 1980s - when crime rates were near an all-time high.

Similarly, he takes an anti-affirmative action ad, and ties it to then current concern about jobs. As I read this, I thought of Nicholas Kristof’s recent Racism Without Racists column.

“When we fixate on the racist individual, we’re focused on the least interesting way that race works,” said Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at U.C.L.A. who focuses his research on “racism without racists.” “Most of the way race functions is without the need for racial animus.”

For decades, experiments have shown that even many whites who earnestly believe in equal rights will recommend hiring a white job candidate more often than a person with identical credentials who is black. In the experiments, the applicant’s folder sometimes presents the person as white, sometimes as black, but everything else is the same. The white person thinks that he or she is selecting on the basis of nonracial factors like experience….

If few people are still such dyed in the wool racists that they’d consciously rule out someone for being black, if bias works more by making it easier to believe the positives of the person who looks like you, and easier to believe the negatives of the person who doesn’t look like you, then even ads that have a racial appeal have to work by tying into some other existing anxiety. Which, Ross is right, the Ayers stuff right now really doesn’t.

As regular readers know (and are probably tired of hearing about), one of the many things Grand New Party attempts to do is explode the notion - made famous by Thomas Frank, but really a near-constant in American political analysis; it shows up, for instance, in an uncharacteristically lazy Francis Fukuyama essay in this week’s Newsweek - that America’s working class is uniquely vulnerable to purely cultural and symbolic appeals from conservative politicians. Of course symbolic appeals have resonance in American politics, but that resonance is hardly limited to working-class America; more importantly, many of the issues that liberal pundits like to call “symbolic” - from crime to guns to affirmative action to “family values” - resonate with working-class voters precisely because they’re perceived as having socioeconomic as well as purely symbolic consequences….

But when I listen to Republicans talk about “taking the gloves off” where Barack Obama’s relationship to William Ayers is concerned, I hear the sound of conservative failure - the sound, say, of the 1992 campaign, when George H.W. Bush went to the culture-war well in the midst of a recession and ended up losing to a philandering draft-dodger even so….

But Bill Ayers can’t win you an election - he can’t come anywhere close, in fact - because unlike Willie Horton, Bill Ayers isn’t tied to any of the issues that are uppermost in voters’ minds. He tells you something about Obama’s judgment, maybe, and his ideological biases, maybe - and yes, yes, with enough innuendo and doomy music, you can imply that he tells you something about Obama’s softness on Islamist terrorism as well. But think about the directness of the Willie Horton ad. America has a crime problem. You don’t feel safe in your own home. And Michael Dukakis want to make it worse. Think about the directness of the “white hands” ad. The economy is tanking, and the Democrats want companies to hire underqualified minorities, instead of hiring you. And then think about the implications of any Ayers ad the McCain team could cut. The stock market is tanking. The global economy is in peril. And we think the most important subject on your mind should be whether Barack Obama was too chummy with a Sixties terrorist you’ve probably never heard of.

The downside, of course, is that, though Ayers is weak stuff when it comes to convincing the unpersuaded that they don’t want to vote for Obama, Ayers is just fine for riling up people who already don’t like Obama. Including some people who already don’t like Obama to a creepy degree. And so we get the recent reports of people yelling things like “terrorist” and “kill him” at rallies, and telling that uppity black sound engineer to “sit down, boy.” Presumably this effect isn’t actually what McCain and Palin are aiming for, but it’s a worrying sign all the same. How do we dial this kind of thing down?

On an unrelated note (except that it’s also related to the campaign), Ross Douthat has a post suggesting a future trajectory for Palin’s career, should McCain lose. I agree that this would be a smart way for her to proceed, though, as Chris Orr says, probably not a likely one.