"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Archilochus
David Carr in the New York Times celebrates the still (to me) mystifying Twitter, going so far--perhaps slightly tongue in cheek here--as to deem it the cyberspace equivalent of plumbing, something that far from being faddish, will become second nature to all but the most benighted among us. The power of Twitter? Access to information, but not just any information, rather, fresh information, what is happening now.
If people can be divided into Platonists and Aristotelians, or hedgehogs and foxes, then perhaps they can be divided into those who crave information and those who crave wisdom. The former view life as an engineering project--if we could ever have adequate data and organization, we could develop the promised land. The latter view the problem as failing to make use of the information we already have, perhaps even a universal "datum" that we have lost sight of or can't seem to fully appreciate.
Is life more of a moral or a technical challenge, or is this a false dichotomy? The technophiles are forever anticipating the next big thing(s), whereas the moralists await the once and future "thing." (Or perhaps people can be divided into those who relish dichotomies and those who don't).
Showing newest posts with label Technology. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label Technology. Show older posts
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Doctor's Orders?
A couple of quasi-medical links worth noting...Karen Houppert in Salon considers the factors that may have led to a schizophrenic woman, Otty Sanchez, to not only kill but consume parts of her newborn baby. In accounting for why Sanchez reportedly was off of her meds (and according to the article claimed to have been hearing voices telling her to do the deed), Houppert suggested that a doctor probably told her to stop taking them due to breastfeeding. Say what?
It is not for me to comment on Sanchez's specific case beyond saying generally that it is overwhelmingly more likely that she was off of her meds because, in the case of schizophrenia and other severe and persistent mental illnesses, non-compliance is more the rule than the exception. When one considers that the disorders in question often involve poor self-insight, and that the medications are often extremely expensive and have significant side effects, non-compliance ceases to be surprising. I have no idea whether she was even in active treatment around the time of her pregnancy or delivery, but by the time the baby was born the only potentially life-saving intervention would have been social services intervention to ascertain her mental status and fitness for motherhood at the time.
Houppert commendably offers a view of "killer moms" as desperate and hopeless women rather than as amoral monsters. However, in our contemporary glorification of maternal instinct it is easy to overlook the fact that infanticide, far from being unnatural, has in fact been a routine practice in numerous "primitive" cultures in various times and places. While the practice seems to make no evolutionary sense at first blush, it actually does inasmuch as infanticide usually happens when a mother (often a particularly young one with poor social and financial support) feels overwhelmed and unable to raise the baby safely. In that case, it makes evolutionary sense for the mother to punt, so to speak, and preserve her own well-being as she can live on to reproduce again. This is obviously not to condone a heinous deed (murder and rape are "natural" as well), but it is to argue that it is not inherently psychologically puzzling.
In another vein of risky behavior, a local story looks at the persistent popularity of tanning beds despite new data suggesting that they dramatically increase the lifetime risk of skin cancer. However, a 78-year-old woman in the article justifies her habit (I have never had the pleasure of visiting a tanning salon, but I never would have expected to encounter the 70-and-over crowd there).
The reasons for this practice are interesting. Some just thumb their nose at medical recommendations, which is a useful reminder that there are values in life apart from cautious self-preservation. Tanning salon operators (who might be said to be biased) maintain that their services are actually healthful inasmuch as they provide vitamin D in a controlled fashion (according to the article some folks actually arrive with doctors' notes advising them to get more vitamin D).
There is also the fact that while skin cancer is common, and undoubtedly more common with tanning bed use, it is also an eminently treatable cancer in most cases when caught early. I don't mean to trivialize it, but apart from the rare melanoma, your average skin cancer is not, say, pancreatic or ovarian cancer.
In an overview of biotechnology's effects on the human body, William Saletan in the New York Times points out that many current and developing medical interventions seek to compensate for risky behaviors, from overeating to running on bad knees. So my inference is that advances in the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer may have the eventual paradoxical effect of boosting tanning salon profits.
It is not for me to comment on Sanchez's specific case beyond saying generally that it is overwhelmingly more likely that she was off of her meds because, in the case of schizophrenia and other severe and persistent mental illnesses, non-compliance is more the rule than the exception. When one considers that the disorders in question often involve poor self-insight, and that the medications are often extremely expensive and have significant side effects, non-compliance ceases to be surprising. I have no idea whether she was even in active treatment around the time of her pregnancy or delivery, but by the time the baby was born the only potentially life-saving intervention would have been social services intervention to ascertain her mental status and fitness for motherhood at the time.
Houppert commendably offers a view of "killer moms" as desperate and hopeless women rather than as amoral monsters. However, in our contemporary glorification of maternal instinct it is easy to overlook the fact that infanticide, far from being unnatural, has in fact been a routine practice in numerous "primitive" cultures in various times and places. While the practice seems to make no evolutionary sense at first blush, it actually does inasmuch as infanticide usually happens when a mother (often a particularly young one with poor social and financial support) feels overwhelmed and unable to raise the baby safely. In that case, it makes evolutionary sense for the mother to punt, so to speak, and preserve her own well-being as she can live on to reproduce again. This is obviously not to condone a heinous deed (murder and rape are "natural" as well), but it is to argue that it is not inherently psychologically puzzling.
In another vein of risky behavior, a local story looks at the persistent popularity of tanning beds despite new data suggesting that they dramatically increase the lifetime risk of skin cancer. However, a 78-year-old woman in the article justifies her habit (I have never had the pleasure of visiting a tanning salon, but I never would have expected to encounter the 70-and-over crowd there).
The reasons for this practice are interesting. Some just thumb their nose at medical recommendations, which is a useful reminder that there are values in life apart from cautious self-preservation. Tanning salon operators (who might be said to be biased) maintain that their services are actually healthful inasmuch as they provide vitamin D in a controlled fashion (according to the article some folks actually arrive with doctors' notes advising them to get more vitamin D).
There is also the fact that while skin cancer is common, and undoubtedly more common with tanning bed use, it is also an eminently treatable cancer in most cases when caught early. I don't mean to trivialize it, but apart from the rare melanoma, your average skin cancer is not, say, pancreatic or ovarian cancer.
In an overview of biotechnology's effects on the human body, William Saletan in the New York Times points out that many current and developing medical interventions seek to compensate for risky behaviors, from overeating to running on bad knees. So my inference is that advances in the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer may have the eventual paradoxical effect of boosting tanning salon profits.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Ballooning
Every now and then one comes across a book that seems written-to-order, which may also mean that one should have researched and written it oneself. So it is with me and Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. I had enjoyed Holmes's two-volume biography of Coleridge a few years ago, and the title of his current volume made it irresistible.
I'll have more to say when I finish it, but for now I thought I'd share his account of one of the first hot air balloon rides. The first one took place in Paris in November, 1783; it was a 27-minute relatively low-altitude and haphazard drift over the rooftops (but given that it was the first ever of its kind, triumphant nonetheless). The second one occurred just ten days later, also in Paris, and was reportedly watched by several hundred thousand spectators (somehow one doesn't think about such massive assemblages prior to modern times). Here is Holmes's description:
Dr. Charles later recalled his feelings as the balloon lifted above the trees of the Tuileries and across the Seine. "Nothing will ever quite equal that moment of total hilarity that filled my whole body at the moment of take-off. I felt we were flying away from the Earth and all its troubles for ever. It was not mere delight. It was a sort of physical ecstasy. My companion Monsieur Robert murmured to me -- I'm finished with the Earth. From now on it's the sky for me! Such utter calm. Such immensity!" Benjamin Franklin, American Ambassador in Paris, watched the launch through a telescope from the window of his carriage. Afterwards he remarked: "Someone asked me -- what's the use of a balloon? I replied -- what's the use of a newborn baby?"
Two hours later they landed twenty-seven miles away at Nesle, skimming across a field and chased by a group of farm workers, "like children chasing a butterfly." Once the balloon was secured, in a moment euphoria Dr. Charles asked M. Robert to step out of the basket. Released of his weight, and with Charles alone aboard, the balloon rapidly relaunched and climbed into the sunset, reaching the astonishing height of 10,000 feet in a mere ten minutes. One thousand feet per minute: a truly formidable and terrifying ascent. Dr. Charles kept calmly observing his instruments, and making notes until his hand was too cold to grasp the pen. "I was the first man ever to see the sun set twice in the same day. The cold was intense and dry, but supportable. I had acute pain in my right ear and jaw. But I examined all my sensations calmly. I could hear myself living, so to speak."
He began gently to release the hydrogen gas-valve. Within thirty-five minutes he was safely back on terra firma--a term that took on new meaning--alighting a mere three miles from his first landing point. His ascent had been almost vertical. It was the first solo flight in history. "Never has a man felt so solitary, so sublime,--and so utterly terrified." Dr. Charles never flew again.
For sheer novelty and adventure, did the moon landing have anything on this?
I'll have more to say when I finish it, but for now I thought I'd share his account of one of the first hot air balloon rides. The first one took place in Paris in November, 1783; it was a 27-minute relatively low-altitude and haphazard drift over the rooftops (but given that it was the first ever of its kind, triumphant nonetheless). The second one occurred just ten days later, also in Paris, and was reportedly watched by several hundred thousand spectators (somehow one doesn't think about such massive assemblages prior to modern times). Here is Holmes's description:
Dr. Charles later recalled his feelings as the balloon lifted above the trees of the Tuileries and across the Seine. "Nothing will ever quite equal that moment of total hilarity that filled my whole body at the moment of take-off. I felt we were flying away from the Earth and all its troubles for ever. It was not mere delight. It was a sort of physical ecstasy. My companion Monsieur Robert murmured to me -- I'm finished with the Earth. From now on it's the sky for me! Such utter calm. Such immensity!" Benjamin Franklin, American Ambassador in Paris, watched the launch through a telescope from the window of his carriage. Afterwards he remarked: "Someone asked me -- what's the use of a balloon? I replied -- what's the use of a newborn baby?"
Two hours later they landed twenty-seven miles away at Nesle, skimming across a field and chased by a group of farm workers, "like children chasing a butterfly." Once the balloon was secured, in a moment euphoria Dr. Charles asked M. Robert to step out of the basket. Released of his weight, and with Charles alone aboard, the balloon rapidly relaunched and climbed into the sunset, reaching the astonishing height of 10,000 feet in a mere ten minutes. One thousand feet per minute: a truly formidable and terrifying ascent. Dr. Charles kept calmly observing his instruments, and making notes until his hand was too cold to grasp the pen. "I was the first man ever to see the sun set twice in the same day. The cold was intense and dry, but supportable. I had acute pain in my right ear and jaw. But I examined all my sensations calmly. I could hear myself living, so to speak."
He began gently to release the hydrogen gas-valve. Within thirty-five minutes he was safely back on terra firma--a term that took on new meaning--alighting a mere three miles from his first landing point. His ascent had been almost vertical. It was the first solo flight in history. "Never has a man felt so solitary, so sublime,--and so utterly terrified." Dr. Charles never flew again.
For sheer novelty and adventure, did the moon landing have anything on this?
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