According to a recent study conducted by researchers in the US, Canada, and the UK from the Public Library of Science, and according to documentation won by investigators who sued under freedom of information, antidepressant drugs don’t work.

Much of the information that was obtained through the investigation and in the resent study was already known by US drug regulators – by law, drug companies must deliver all studies, even those that show its product as ineffectual, to regulators before the drug is approved for public consumption.

While these recent findings have sent shock waves through lobbying firms and made sheepish the clinically depressed public, pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, have denied they withheld studies showing that their products had no more of an effect than dummy pills. Read the rest of this entry »

Possibly as early as tonight, the United States Navy will attempt to shoot down a rogue satellite with a deteriorating orbit that has been threatening to dump toxic fuel and spare parts on the world’s population. Good lord.

As part of a missile-defense network, the brainchild of Ronald Regan and adoptee of President George W. Bush (much to the chagrin of the Russians), the missile has been modified in a matter of weeks by the Navy to shoot the satellite out of the sky (it was originally intended to shoot ballistic missiles out of the sky), according to Navy officials as quoted in the Philly Inquirer. It scares me that they were able to do this in such a short period of time.

I’ve always been against the buildup of defensive missiles and measures in this country, but this type of thing fascinates me. God and liberals forgive me, but I love it when stuff blows up. If it misses, then I’ll definitely have something to write about – I’ll just have to write about it quickly. Great googly-moogly.

Check out a slide show of some of the greatest pictures of 2007.

bestpictures.pps

For more insanely good pictures, go to Reuters.

In Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice, the author very politely suggests a different approach to education. His intentions are made in a vague preamble; he is not trying to replace the fundamental assumptions of other theories of learning, but instead offers the reader a different perspective – education as a social phenomenon, a process within the context of our daily lives, i.e. work, school, hobbies, community groups, etc.

Wenger does offer up a noble idea of social theory, one worthy of a book, certainly. But the vignettes he hammered into the text as examples of communities of practice are excruciatingly dull. The stories smack of tedium and prohibit the working and open mind from grasping even slightest lessons he implies through stale, two-dimensional characters who babble on and on about the meaningless, grinding minutia of insurance claims and adjustments. Read the rest of this entry »

The relatively even split of delegate votes between the Clinton and Obama camps means a democratic candidate may not be decided until the Denver Convention in August, according to most news sources.

If Super Delegates are a key deciding factor (most of whom are likely to throw their support toward Clinton, unless it were up to shear mathematics, in which Obama would win) and the decision comes down to the wire, I’m afraid the party will be weakened going into the November elections, no matter which candidate is chosen.

As quoted in the Philly Inquirer, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said, “The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario.”

Sen. John McCain has until November to rally his base, but the longer we wait for a Democratic Nominee, the less time the Democratic Party will have to come together and defeat what is quickly becoming a very strong Republican nominee for President. Great googly-moogly.

Are your hands closer to you than your feet?

According to the Independent, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, expressed concerns about the sentencing of journalism student Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh, 23, after surprise visits to the Afghan capitol.

Last Week, Kambakhsh was sentenced to death in a lower Afghan court after forwarding to fellow-students and teachers a report(s) (more of a parody of Islamic gender issues) that suggest(s) the Koran is being misused to treat Muslim women as second-class citizens.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has not yet granted clemency to Kambakhsh, but said, “justice will be done.” He may yet intervene in the Afghan Supreme Court, which is expected to uphold the decision to execute the student.

This case has sparked international protest, and highlights the divide between remnant Islamic hardliners in the country’s eastern tribal regions and NATO’s prolonged effort to establish democracy in the region.

CNN’s coverage of Super Tuesday, with its mural-sized flat screens and shots of pundits manning rows of laptops, looked more like a scene out of NORAD at Defcon 4 than a national network tallying delegates for the 2008 democratic and republican primaries. I laughed out loud at one point as Wolf Blitzer stood in front of the day’s projections – he seemed more like a weatherman in front of a blue-screen blathering about the destruction of a hurricane.

Networks even employed alarming hyperbole; at one point, I heard an anchorwoman say, “And when we return, we’ll look at the aftermath of Super Tuesday.” Excuse me? Is this a primary or another blundered response to a national emergency?

Expect the worst.

It might come in a wave, swiftly and impenitent,

Or it may creep like an unscratchable itch in your ear.

Regardless, we will toast to our shadows on the wall—

The only testament to our being here, at all.