Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

This is sort of old news to me, but will be new to many. In the book I wrote (but haven’t yet published) about the use of visualization to improve health, I pointed out that the placebo effect should be called the miracle effect. As this article from Newsweek, via a friend, demonstrates.

Placebo Nation: Just Believe

It’s not that medicines are ‘crummy,’ but that placebos are so powerful. It’s time scientists learned why.

Sharon Begley

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 12:22 PM ET Mar 8, 2008

When you write about science, there is no shortage of topics that incite the wrath of readers. Climate change. Evolution. Racial differences in IQ. But say that dummy pills with no pharmacologically active ingredients—placebos—are about as effective as antidepressants in treating depression, and watch out. People are incensed at the very thought that the (often expensive) meds they rely on might be 21st-century versions of the magic feather that Dumbo, the flying elephant, was told would make him airborne. It was only when Dumbo dropped the feather he was clutching in his trunk while in free fall, and started flapping his ears, that he grasped that his powers actually came from within, allowing him to fly.

No one is saying “positive thinking” can cure cancer, or that patients should throw out their pills, let alone that illnesses that respond to the placebo effect are “all in your head”—imagined. But there is no denying the drumbeat of studies on the therapeutic power of placebos. Over the years they have been shown to relieve asthma, lower blood pressure, reduce angina and stop gastric reflux. An inert solution injected into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease reduced muscle rigidity about as well as standard drugs. In a bizarre finding, sham surgery of the knee, in which patients got sedation and an incision but no actual procedure, relieved the pain of osteoarthritis better than actual arthroscopy—and produced an equal improvement in joint function, scientists reported in 2002. And last month an analysis of clinical trials of a range of antidepressants found that, except in the most severe cases, placebos lifted the black cloud as well as meds did.

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I always worry when I find myself agreeing with something on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, but this one, which appeared several days before this blog entry appears, is right on the money. Okay, that’s a terrible pun, but nonetheless, you can take this one to the bank. Er — what I mean to say is, this is what is really at issue in an on-going currency crisis that is not even slightly funny. From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120519657936325885.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Bush and the Dollar
By DAVID MALPASS
March 11, 2008

When President George W. Bush addresses the Economic Club of New York on Friday, his comments on the dollar crisis will be the crucial issue for markets and the economy. The best thing he could do would be to state clearly that he wants a stronger dollar. That would draw liquidity back to the U.S., lower inflation risks, and head off the growing calls for government bailouts and support programs.

Absent administration support for the dollar, recent Fed rate cuts have simply sped up the flood of capital away from the U.S. without providing enough domestic stimulus. The rest of the world is already full of cheap dollars, pushing gold and oil to new highs, European tourists onto Madison Avenue, and petro-dollar sovereign wealth funds into building islands to use up their excess.

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First they set up this incredible mystery. How on earth can these people do these things? Then they speculate on how maybe the only thing they’re doing differently — controlling their body temperature with their mind — just might have something to do with it.

Gee, do y’ think?

From an unknown source, because via a friend who didn’t include the information.

Iceman on Everest: ‘It Was Easy’

Wim Hof’s Amazing Abilities to Withstand Freezing Temperatures

By JOSEPH ANGIER
March 7, 2008

It’s a bitterly cold winter day and students on the University of Minnesota campus are bundled up, hurrying to their next class. Wim Hof, dressed in shorts, sandals and nothing else, appeared from the doorway of a school building.

He’s known as ‘The Ice Man.”

Scientists can’t really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person.

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Little by little, the space age comes into being. If we hadn’t squandered so many uncounted hundreds of billions of dollar on stupid imerial adventures that involve killing lots of people and letting insiders steal like mad, we could have kept our leading place in this human endeavor. But it was not to be. From http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/mar/10/spaceexploration.spacetechnology

Flawless launch for Europe’s automated space freighter

· Craft ferries supplies to orbiting astronauts
· 20-tonne vehicle will take over role of Nasa’s shuttle

A space freighter loaded with crucial supplies and an ageing copy of a Jules Verne novel thundered into orbit in the early hours of yesterday on its maiden voyage to the International Space Station.

Officials celebrated what they described as a flawless launch of the 20-tonne Automated Transfer Vehicle as it lit up the night sky before clearing the thick cloud cover that hung over the European Space Agency’s damp, forest-bordered spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana at 4.03GMT.

Unusually, the take-off had to be timed to the second, to ensure the ATV would be released into an orbit that exactly matches that of the space station. Seconds after launch, the rocket turned north-east on to a trajectory that took it over the southern tip of Britain and onwards towards the Pacific.

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This isn’t that hard to figure out. People want to rule their own country, have their own religion, and support their own rulers. From the International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/17/asia/beijing.php

China’s tough line in Tibet is seen to have brought only resentment

By Jim Yardley
Published: March 17, 2008

BEIJING: Champa Phuntsok, the taciturn chairman of Tibet’s government, left no doubt Monday morning on whose shoulders the Communist Party places blame for the violent Tibetan protests that have become a domestic political crisis and an Olympic-year public relations nightmare: the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, and “splittist” forces colluding to splinter China.

Speaking at a hurriedly organized news conference, Phuntsok described the violence that erupted Friday in Lhasa and is still spreading to other Tibetan regions as if it were a meticulously orchestrated surprise attack.

But to many Tibetans and their sympathizers, the unleashed fury is sad and shocking yet not a complete surprise. Tibetan anger has simmered over Chinese policies on the environment, tightening religious restrictions and a harder political line from Beijing. Ethnic tensions and economic anxiety have also sharpened as Chinese migrants have poured into Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

“Why did the unrest take off?” asked Liu Junning, a liberal political scientist in Beijing. “I think it has something to do with the long-term policy failure of the central authorities. They failed to earn the respect of the people there.”

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From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080229183818.htm

Antarctica. The West Antarctic rift is a region of volcanic activity and crustal stretching that is roughly the size of the western United States. (Credit: Alaska SAR Facility, Copyright Canadian Space Agency)

Could Volcanic Activity In West Antarctic Rift Destabilize Ice Sheet?

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2008) — The West Antarctic rift is a region of volcanic activity and crustal stretching that is roughly the size of the western United States (from Salt Lake City to the Pacific Ocean).

About 98 percent of it is buried beneath glacial ice, up to 2.5 miles thick, and bedrock beneath the ice is 2000–3000 feet below sea level over large areas. All of this makes it a difficult region to study.

It is interesting nevertheless, because volcanic eruptions beneath the ice could destabilize the ice sheet, leading to as much as 25 feet of sea-level rise. How likely is it that this could happen is a question scientists have debated for over a decade. LeMasurier addresses the question by comparing the West Antarctic rift with similar areas of crustal stretching elsewhere in the world.

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This is a little more vitriolic than I am comfortable with, but at least SOMEBODY is citing the emperor’s nakedness. Buckley fits the same mold as Bush in at least one respect: “Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple.” Buckley, Reagan, Bush I and II — the whole tribe of them seem to share the ability to connect as individuals and the inability to connect the dots to see that the country and the civilization is larger than their own narrrow backgrounds and interests.

A Dyslogy for Buckley

by Ed Martin

William F. Buckley has been praised for his wit, charm and erudition. He was exposed to an excellent education. But, it’s easy to see that the wit, charm and erudition was a facade and the exposure to education did not educate.

The most obvious thing that his education did not teach him was to look around him and see that there are other people, lots of other people, in the world who are not like himself. Buckley’s background, being brought up with privilege, isolation and exclusivity produced a man in the same way that the poisonous mushrooms are produced: only under special, unnatural, sheltered conditions. And, Buckley was no less deadly and dangerous than those mushrooms.

Buckley must have been awfully proud to see his years of preaching the discredited, hard-right, conservative ideology come to fruition, an ideology that he clung to as the ultimate and only solution as to how to run the world, in spite of the fact that there was not, is not, and never will be, any evidence to support it.

That fruition came about with the apotheosis of all things Buckley believed in, the ultimate representation of conservative Republican hopes and dreams, the disastrous, the arrogant, the ignorant, the delusional, George Bush.

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Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

Garry Wills

From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Gibson-t.html?ex=1205125200&en=c184e1c385712e89&ei=5070&emc=eta1

What Jesus Really Did

By DAVID GIBSON
Published: March 2, 2008

Garry Wills is not only one of the country’s most distinguished intellectuals, but also one of its most provocative, bringing his learning to bear on great questions of history and contemporary politics, often at the same time. Add to this his regular disquisitions on the church (he is Roman Catholic) and you have a combustible mix that can delight, infuriate or illuminate, usually all three. The irony of Wills’s latest work, “What the Gospels Meant,” is that it lacks polemics yet is full of observations sure to rile fearful souls who view ambiguity as the enemy of faith.

This eminently readable volume is part of a series by Wills providing an overview of Christianity’s roots. The series began with “What Jesus Meant” and continued with “What Paul Meant.” There is less of Wills in this book than in the previous volumes — for good or ill, depending on what one is looking for. What readers will find here is an engaging look at the Gospels, informed by the best biblical scholarship, as well as by Wills’s own faith, which he discusses openly. Wills relies almost exclusively on the writings of the late Raymond Brown, a Catholic priest whose works are the gold standard of New Testament exegesis.

“What the Gospels Meant” starts straightforwardly with a helpful explanation of just what a Gospel is: “a meditation on the meaning of Jesus in the light of sacred history as recorded in the sacred writings.” Wills then parses the Gospel of Mark, the earliest account, as a “report from the suffering body of Jesus,” written to comfort early Christians facing persecution. Matthew’s is the teaching Gospel, recounting many of Christianity’s most familiar sermons. The erudite Luke presents “the reconciling body of Jesus,” a Gospel of poignant stories like the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan that display the humanity of Jesus and the universality of his message. John is, as ever, the theologian, a prophetic voice from “the mystical body of Jesus.”

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This is from http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/515759.html

Astronomers overhaul much of their understanding of our solar system

By ROBERT S. BOYD
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON Move over, Copernicus. Your once-revolutionary idea — that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around — has been eclipsed.

Recent years have brought a sweeping revolution in solar system astronomy. The Earth still orbits the sun, as Copernicus declared 400 years ago, but the planetary system in the textbooks you studied is now out of date.

“The entire view of astronomy you learned in high school has changed dramatically,” said Alan Stern, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “We’re really in a new age of discovery.”

The changes go well beyond the International Astronomical Union’s decision to demote Pluto — discovered by Kansan Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 — from the familiar list of nine planets.

Stern and other astronomers offered a revised description of the solar system at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last month in Boston. Stern said it differed from the previous understanding in several key ways:

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From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030303200.html

Immune Systems Increasingly On Attack

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page A01

First, asthma cases shot up, along with hay fever and other common allergic reactions, such as eczema. Then, pediatricians started seeing more children with food allergies. Now, experts are increasingly convinced that a suspected jump in lupus, multiple sclerosis and other afflictions caused by misfiring immune systems is real.

Though the data are stronger for some diseases than others, and part of the increase may reflect better diagnoses, experts estimate that many allergies and immune-system diseases have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in the last few decades, depending on the ailment and country. Some studies now indicate that more than half of the U.S. population has at least one allergy.

The cause remains the focus of intense debate and study, but some researchers suspect the concurrent trends all may have a common explanation rooted in aspects of modern living — including the “hygiene hypothesis” that blames growing up in increasingly sterile homes, changes in diet, air pollution, and possibly even obesity and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

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