My thoughts on how the world works

New Scientist: Child psychiatric diagnosis on trial as mother is convicted of murder

WHEN Carolyn Riley was convicted of killing her 4-year-old daughter Rebecca by overdosing her with psychotropic drugs prescribed for the child, some jurors reportedly felt that the psychiatrist who wrote the prescriptions should also have been on trial.

That will not happen: the doctor was granted immunity when agreeing to testify in the case. But the validity of the condition for which Rebecca was being treated is being questioned by psychiatrists. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) says it needs to be replaced by an entirely new diagnosis, while others argue that this move could create fresh problems.
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Rebecca Riley was on an antipsychotic called quetiapine, the anticonvulsant valproate, and clonidine, which was being given as a sedative.

This is not a long article, if you are interested in the subject, you should read the whole thing. But you won’t be able to see the picture of the mother online.

One look at this showed me why her daughter was crazy: her mother was too. In my opinion, an all-too-common condition.

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New Scientist

Until now, the accepted view has been that our ancestors underwent a “creative explosion” around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they suddenly began to think abstractly and create rock art. This idea is supported by the plethora of stunning cave paintings, like those at Chauvet, which started to proliferate across Europe around this time. Writing, on the other hand, appeared to come much later, with the earliest records of a pictographic writing system dating back to just 5000 years ago.

Few researchers, though, had given any serious thought to the relatively small and inconspicuous marks around the cave paintings. The evidence of humanity’s early creativity, they thought, was clearly in the elaborate drawings.

I have a hard time understanding a lot of things in my old age. If I am reading a serious book – for example a biography of Marshall McLuhan, I can only digest about one chapter at a time. Since this book has 13 chapters, this is going to take me awhile – if I finish it at all.

I am having an even worse time understanding my course from the Learning Company on Complexity. In some of my other studies – about the economy, for example – they often mentioned they were complex systems, and they had to be understood that way – and let it go at that. Since I knew nothing about complex systems, I had to know more.

Sure enough, it is an important subject – probably the most important subject of our times – if we don’t understand this, we might as well fold our tents and go home – because this is the kind of world we live in. But people show little interest in how the world really works – and just keep blundering on. Disaster is staring us in the face – and it won’t be the wrath of God that does us in, but our own ignorance.

TED talks (video)

While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world.

I have been in the Maldives myself, and it was an interesting experience – like going back in the world several centuries.