sisu

Land that I love

RIPD ( Rest in Peace Department) is the name of the Men-in-Black type movie that's coming out about a year and a half from now. A cutie-pie crew of scouts were out in our yard yesterday (above) taking shots of our own house to use as the out-the-window views of the main house, the decreptit home of our old pal Eddie across the lawn now shuttered and robbed of its copper piping. That's the kind of place we call home. They're going to reconstruct an interior for most of the action in Readville near Dedham, a few miles west of Boston.

What a revelation. Driving to the super this morning for the weekly restocking of the larder, we tuned in to NPR to find the usual suspects beside themselves with shock and awe at how the land of the free and the home of the brave was shocking, shocking our civilized counterparts across the sea.

How dare we dither and deliberate our differences according to the dictates of the Constitution of the United States when Europe and the rest of the world were waiting, with bated breath, for us to save their souls — and their pocketbooks — NOW? It was at that moment that we fell in love once more with our own messy and sometimes soul-depleting democratic process. As we twittered:

I felt protective of our idiotic #debtlimit side show when I heard pompous NPR radio types tearing hair out that "the world" is horrified.

A republic, madam, if you can keep it. God bless America.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Singing to females makes male birds' brains happy

It was the totally awesome Professor William A. Jacobson, fellow Brown Revolution foot soldier, who called our attention to the need "to print Sitemeter histories, apparently. So here is mine," he writes, "with a month of January likely never to be repeated. Unless Scott Brown runs for President, or something." Above, the graphical record of our own once-in-a-lifetime brush with history.

Did you know that "Singing To Females Makes Male Birds' Brains Happy"? That's what scientists are telling us. Sometimes they'll tell us a lotta lies to shore up their status within a peer group, but this one rings true:

The melodious singing of birds has been long appreciated by humans, and has often been thought to reflect a particularly positive emotional state of the singer. Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have now demonstrated that this can be true. When male birds sang to attract females, specific "reward" areas of their brain were strongly activated. Such strong brain activation resulted in a similar change in brain reward function to that which is caused by addictive drugs.

The brain of humans and other animals is programmed to have a positive emotional response to rewarding stimuli, such as food or sex [or Instalanches, see above and below images]. A critical part of this reward signal is thought to be provided by increased activity of neurons containing dopamine in the brain ventral tegmental area, VTA. Along with natural rewards, the same brain circuits can also be strongly activated by artificial rewards such as addictive drugs.

"A rush of dopamine at our first Instalanche, followed by dopamine's falling at our first really nasty comment," we wrote way back in March of 2004, noting that "at such a time, it is helpful to remember that "dopamine's action can explain both the highs of romantic passion (dopamine rising) and the lows of rejection (dopamine falling)."

Now comes more scientific evidence of what everyone knows on a gut level, that "Brain Dopamine Receptor Density Correlates With Social Status":

Dr. Martinez explains their findings: "We showed that low levels of dopamine receptors were associated with low social status and that high levels of dopamine receptors were associated with higher social status. The same type of association was seen with the volunteers' reports of social support they experience from their friends, family, or significant other."

That's why it feels so good when you get an Instalanche or a kind word from someone you love.

Roll over, Alfred Nobel, and tell Jimmy Carter the news

"Barack Obama is the third sitting US President to be given the prize after Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson," The Times captions above image. It figures (see Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism). Kevin Lamarque/Reuters photo.

Vanderleun trumps Drudge on Twitter:

Drudgereport still has Nancy Pelosi up. Guess he's got to sleep sometime... that or he's crafting the headline "WTF!!?"

But what could be more appropriate? As we twittered, while Drudge slept:

PEACE IN OUR TIME. NOBEL COMMITTEE CHANNELS CHAMBERLAIN Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

ROLL OVER, ALFRED NOBEL, and tell Jimmy Carter the news.

Update: Greg Pollowitz twitters:

Breaking News:  President Obama has been awarded the Nobel in Physics for his 10th grade science fair project.

Appeasement in our time.

According to sources, the President is "humbled." First time?

Update II: Drudge scores: "OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE" headline and triumphal image paired with "Iran to 'blow up the heart of Israel' if attacked..." So much cognitive dissonance, so little time.

Update III: "No freakin way" rants blog buddy Dan Riehl, whose disarming outspokenness has attracted a BBC World Service radio producer (tune in at 11:30 ET to hear what he has to say). The blogosphere, twittersphere and immediate world are abuzz. We're off to immerse ourselves in the irresistible awfulness of it all!

Con-Man Aversion Derangement Syndrome (CADS) epidemic spreads

"Savoring the revealing contrast between Drake's seafaring 'reach for the stars' vision and Michelle Obama's landlocked 'audacity of whining,'" we wrote last May in "Because we sailed too close to the shore," a post about the Obamas' soft bigotry of low expectations, illustrated by this image of the heart of a grapefruit revealed by the early morning light.

"It's mute or bricks, and TV replacement costs are high," ribtwitters Michael Hazenstab, a fellow Con-Man Aversion Derangement Syndrome (CADS) sufferer who shares our uncontrollable impulse to click on the mute button whenever the Leader of the Free World appears on TV. President Obama's "soaring rhetoric" may cause acolytes to feel a "thrill" going up their legs, but it leaves CADS victims heaving. We stumbled into a previously unknown "community" of persons living with CADS in the comments to Dan Riehl's post "You couldn't say this," where he observes:

Bill Maher is sick of seeing Obama on TV. So are conservatives. But if a Right-side pundit suggested Obama giving a WH tour was akin to the television show "Cribs," they'd be fired for being a racist.

Victor Davis Hanson is on the same wavelength with his must-read "Just Make Stuff Up":

The problem in the next four years will be not just that the president of the United States serially does not tell the truth. Instead, the real crisis in our brave new relativist world will be that those who demonstrate that he is untruthful will themselves be accused of lying.

Enter, stage right, the CADS samizdat communicating sub rosa in the Riehl World View comments. Commenter JAL speaks for us all:

Amazing. I, too, thought I was the only one who hit mute or changed the news on the radio when I saw or heard President Obama come on.

Think some Tea Party signs to the effect of "Mute the President" might spread the word?

Careful what you commit to print, though. Big Guy may be watching.

What's the matter with kids today

"A shuffling in the predawn darkness. Baby's got a mouse," we captioned this image of our late precious boy three years back, exulting in the happy fact that "Baby Cakes hits the big time with his first [unsolicited] InstaLanche": "Some first-rate catblogging from Sissy Willis.

"Baby held our hearts in his paws, too," writes Connecticut Yankee Betsy Frey in the comments to our earlier post, "Baby held the blogosphere in his paws," opening our eyes in a subsequent email to "what's the matter with kids today." It had struck us in blogging today that some of the bright young veterinarians at state-of-the-art Angell Memorial in Boston come across to us folk of a certain age as cold and detached, greeting us not by taking our beloved animal in hand to get a "feel" for what might be ailing the beast but rather, by ignoring the pussycat and heading straight to their laptops to input our answers to a series of bloodless questions and perhaps call up some notes from the database. Betsy Frey had this to say:      

A thought came to me when I went out for a walk about an hour ago that perhaps the problem with the clinical detachment of the vets you encountered at Angell is a generational issue, at least in part. I work as a freelance academic editor, and I remember being told by an in-house editor who has never met me face to face that I must be over 50. When I asked her how she knew, she said, "Because you have a feel for language that I find only in people who grew up with books rather than computers and word processors." In other words, there's a hands-on dimension to editing that comes only from many years spent reading books that one holds quite literally in one's hands. I think the same is true of medicine, both human and veterinary. I don't think it's an accident that both vets who have cared for my kitties are between 55 and 65 — that is, they received their basic training before the computerization of medicine. I wonder whether the vets at Angell who caused you such understandable distress are young, possibly still in their twenties or early thirties?

Yes, although Dr. Williams and several of the emergency doctors we found so empathetic these last few weeks at Angell were youngsters, too.

I'm attaching an article ["The Lost Art of the Physical Exam"] from the winter 2009 issue of Yale Medicine (the alumni magazine of the School of Medicine} that I copy edited only a few weeks ago, in hopes that it might be of some indirect comfort to you (as well as legitimate concern about the current state of human medical diagnosis). I'd forgotten about the article until your post today about the lack of a bedside manner in Baby's last days. Please take very good care of yourself (and Tuck, and Tiny) in the coming days — grief can take a real toll on your energy and immune system. Once again, God bless.

Thank you so much, Betsy, for your kind thoughts and provocative insights. More insights on this Brave New World from related imail with our sis this evening:

We: Egad. A totally awesome note from one of the readers. I've stumbled onto something big.

She: Indeed, you have. Keep on the case!!! It's not so much PC as the computerization of daily life. (As you and I communicate by instant-messaging). As I said the other day, I love writing handwritten notes to people, and everyone in the room looked at me in shock.

We: YES. It's HUGE, now that you mention it.

She: Putting pen to paper is far different from dashing off a quick e-mail. For one thing, you use up a lot of paper, what with mispelings [misspelling intended], etc.

The laying on of hands isn't just for religious believers any more.

Update: Hope springs eternal in the Goompster's heart in the comments:

Yes, the computerized world has lost the human touch in many cases, but a world of warmth and sympathy has also appeared in the blogosphere with the passing of Baby Cakes.

As our mother always, always said, look to the animals.

Update II:  Cat Blogosphere dedicates Carnival of the Cats #250 to "The Babe, Sissy’s cat who has been with the carnival from the beginning and is known and beloved by all who see him." Thank you so much.