If you are taking the anti-depressants Prozac, Effexor, Paxil or Serzone, don’t read this post.

Are they gone?  Are all the millions of people who take Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone-who-are-not-severely-depressed gone?  Good.  Now we can talk. The rest of you have probably already read the news that:

Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and the drugs work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said Tuesday.

Why would the news media ever report the truth regarding these wildly-hyped antidepressants?   After all, scientists have long known that most of the power of these drugs is in the placebo effect.  Or, at least, scientists should have suspected this, because the FDA was refusing to release the full data sets regarding these drugs trial, at least until the good scientists who work on this new report (Prof Irving Kirsch and colleagues) requested “the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.”  Gosh, it appears that some of the relevant data wasn’t available to the forty million people taking these drugs, until long after the release of these drugs through massive corporate guerilla marketing.

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In its advertisements, the manufacturer of Prozac, Lilly, doesn’t say anything about the drug not working well for large numbers of the patients for whom it was being prescribed.  In fact, Lilly makes this claim:

The safety and effectiveness of PROZAC have been thoroughly studied in clinical trials with more than 11,000 patients. There have been more than

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I’m going to summarize a supermarket tabloid newspaper for you this week, so you can save your money.

At the supermarket last week, I picked up a copy of the Sun.  Actually, I think the full title of the newspaper is Sun: God Bless America, based upon the front cover. I was intrigued by the front page headline: “Seven Miracle Prophecies That Will Come True on Easter Sunday.”  I wondered what those prophecies were, and now I’m going to share them with you so you don’t have to spend your hard earned money on the Sun: God Bless America.

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It’s going to be quite a day this Easter Sunday, that’s for sure.  Based on reading the lead article in the Sun: God Bless America, I now know that the following things will be happening on March 23, 2008:

  • 1.  George W. Bush will announce that all of our troops will be coming home from Iraq, and that the Iraq government will take over full responsibility for Iraq’s security. 
  • 2.  There will be numerous miraculous healings all over the world, including people with cancer, heart disease and arthritis.  People will rejoice and no one will have to live in despair any longer.
  • 3.  Pollution will miraculously reverse itself.  In fact, according to the article, the levels of pollution will all return to where they were before the Industrial Revolution.  The authority for the statement is “Professor Jonas Peake, an authority on Biblical prophecy at Britain’s famed Cambridge University.”
  • 4.  Congress and the White House will pour lots of that money that was destined for Iraq into the
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Marty Kaplan on the pros and cons of Ralph Nader’s candidacy

Marty Kaplan, a research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, repeatedly raises important points relating to our dysfunctional news media. He posted today on his ambivalence with the recently announced candidacy of Ralph Nader. Nader, who skipped the primaries, says that his third-party race will inject into the…

Continue ReadingMarty Kaplan on the pros and cons of Ralph Nader’s candidacy

What in the world is going on? Check the World Clock.

This fellow claims to have lots of important statistics displayed on a big real-time dashboard.   Assuming his data to be accurate (I don't have any reason to dispute it), it's especially interesting to hit the "Now" button to reset this "World Clock," then to watch the numbers grow from zero.  …

Continue ReadingWhat in the world is going on? Check the World Clock.

I don’t like Trivia Nights

[Warning: This Post is rated “R” for Rant] 

I’ve been to several Trivia Nights, so I do have some basis for opining on this topic. It’s time that I made my feelings absolutely clear: I do not like trivia nights.  I don’t see the point of trivia nights.  Trivia Nights are things that keep people from having good conversations. I will explain further.

I understand that Trivia Nights are often held to raise money for good causes.  I don’t have any problem with raising money for good causes.  Actually, I would happily pay a reasonable sum of money in order to not have to sit through another Trivia Night.  I will pay my fair share to help raise that money for that good cause, as long as I don’t have to attend Trivia Night.

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I should also make it clear that I sometimes enjoy trivia.  Occasionally, I find myself reading a list of trivia questions, the kind of list where I can immediately check the answer.  In that way, I can review dozens of questions per minute, until I’ve had my fill of trivia (which is usually a minute or two). Not a bad diversion, once in awhile.

What I don’t like, however, is an intentional onslaught of slow-motion trivia.  Trivia Nights consist of intentional onslaughts of slow-motion trivia.  Each question is read slowly to a room filled with dozens tables that are each filled with people.  The tables compete against each other.  Each question is simultaneously considered for a …

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