Category: humor

Autumn Miracles

We saw the miracles of autumn the other day, out on the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. It was quiet, only a light breeze set the flowers and grasses swaying.

There were almost no birds out. No ducks were out on Sand Lake.

On the other hand, I guess there were birds, sort of. We greeted other walkers, an older couple who turned out to be snowbirds. They’ll be heading to Florida soon for the winter. They had no worries about the weather down there. They’ll be in the middle of the state, presumably far away from storm surges. They stay in an RV park over the winter months. It’s not far from a place called The Villages, which is a famous planned retirement community, which got a reputation for being a haven for older but wilder swingers. They have a very large Homeowners Association (HOA), which is sort of a very large and expensive Disney World for older retirees. It’s often called a golf cart community because that’s how most residents get around the place. While there are no HOA fees per se, there is a community development district fee of around $120-220 a month. Dave Barry wrote a chapter about The Villages in his book “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.” I told the couple about Dave Barry’s take on The Villages. I don’t think they ever heard of him. They’re excited about returning to the RV park soon.

I was a little alarmed by a loud voice, calling out like a policeman, “Get on the ground!” I looked up ahead and didn’t see a policeman. But occasionally, we heard the barking order, “Get on the ground!” Eventually we saw a young man on a walk, apparently under someone’s supervision. This was the man who was yelling “Get on the ground!” He greeted us politely. As he passed by, every so often he blurted out, “Get on the ground!” I wondered if he might be someone with a form of Tourette’s Disorder, compelled to blurt out something every few minutes. The supervisor was walking side by side with a man who seemed uncomfortable, holding his hands up to his eyes which appeared sunken in the sockets. He made no sound at all. I wondered if, peaceful as we thought the day was, whether he found it difficult to bear what might have been a sensory storm for him. The supervisor was polite to us and paid close attention to the other two men.

Mostly we watched the breeze blowing the grasses and the flowers–and were grateful.

Wendy’s New Pumpkin Spice Frosty

We got over to Wendy’s to try the new Pumpkin Spice Frosty yesterday. I thought it was pretty good. Sena was OK with it at first—but then decided she wouldn’t get it again.

We’re now focused on trying the Peppermint Frosty. We might have to wait until mid-November, though. I read this was out last year around the same time (mid-November). I don’t know how we could have missed it.

Dr. Igor Galynker and The Suicidal Crisis Syndrome

I was looking at my bookshelves and found the copy of the book, “The Suicidal Crisis: Clinical Guide to the Assessment of Imminent Suicide Risk.” It was written by Dr. Igor Galynker. It’s a fit topic for this month because September is National Suicide Prevention Month.

This brings back memories. I still have a gift from Dr. Galynker. It’s a stuffed animal called Bumpy the Bipolar Bear.

It arrived at my office at The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in 2011. It was in a box addressed to:

WordPress

Attn: James Amos

200 Hawkins Drive

Iowa City, IA 52242

 I’m still not entirely sure why he sent me Bumpy. There was no letter of explanation. I was writing a blog at the time called “The Practical Psychosomaticist” and I might have posted something about some research he published on suicide risk assessment.

I bought a copy of his book a few years ago. I barely had time to skim a few of the chapters because I was too busy conducting suicide risk assessments in the emergency room, the general hospital, and the clinics in my role as a psychiatric consultant. In fact, I think it’s an excellent resource.

I also found a YouTube video (posted about a month ago) in which he describes his suicide crisis syndrome assessment. You can find the actual set of questions for the assessment here and in a link posted in the description below the YouTube.

Brand Spanking New Air Purifier!

Sena got a brand spankin’ new air purifier and it’s whisper quiet. It’s made by RENPHO. Air purifiers probably don’t reduce virus particles but they at least they give you the impression you’re doing something to keep the air clean in your home.

We had an air purifier years ago, and the whole unit had to be cleaned occasionally. This one has a filter you change every 6 months or so.

It’s easy to operate. Basically, you turn it on and forget it. Some of the directions are a little interesting. One of them is a table of what the different button symbols are. The title is “Defination.”

The list of cautions includes the instruction, “Do not place anything on top of the appliance and do not sit on the appliance.”

Why it would occur to anyone but an extraterrestrial to sit on the air purifier is beyond me.

There’s an air quality sensor light which glows a different color corresponding to how good or bad the air is in your house. Blue is very good; Green is good; Orange is bad; Red is polluted. Ours always glows a nice, comforting blue.

There’s a note below the air quality sensor light description:

“Note: Compared with professional instrument, the detecting result of this air quality sensor may has tolerance in accuracy, we suggest you regard the sensor detecting result as a reference only.”

I’m not sure how to interpret this note. Does “tolerance in accuracy” mean it has only tolerably fair accuracy, meaning good enough for government work? Would a canary work just as well?

The trouble shooting section contains an entry that might be helpful:

Problem: You can’t adjust any of the controls.

Cause: An Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE) is sitting on top of the air purifier. Some EBEs are pretty finicky about air purifier settings. They might prevent you from changing them by contacting their superiors, who will abduct you and conduct various experiments using large probes.

Solution: Let the EBE have its way.

A Summer Cold

Well, as I predicted in an earlier post, I caught Sena’s head cold. I have not had one of these in over 3 years, believe it or not.

It was easy to distinguish my cold from Covid-19, influenza, bubonic plague, and abduction by extraterrestrials. I usually get a dry cough, which causes a headache, a runny nose, mild fatigue and general achiness.

When I’m abducted by extraterrestrials, they usually just want directions to a decent rib joint.

I also had mild nasal congestion, for which I didn’t bother to take phenylephrine. I didn’t take aspirin, or acetaminophen. I didn’t have a fever. I did finally take some cough medicine, which I usually hate. I tend to think the guaifenesin makes me gag, although it’s more likely coughing itself causes that. Raspberry is definitely not my favorite cough syrup flavor.

I took a quick look at the CDC website about colds and found a page on how to distinguish colds from influenza. Colds aren’t that big a deal, but you can get pretty miserable. I don’t know if a summer cold is different from a winter cold. Rhinoviruses cause the common cold and infections tend to cluster in early fall and spring.

The head cold cramped my style. I was too busy sneezing, blowing, and coughing to practice juggling or exercise. It also interfered with sleep.

Interestingly, it didn’t stop me from watching the Men in Black trilogy on TV this week. Funny how that works.

I think we just caught a late summer cold. There was an old Contac commercial about it in the 1970s. I can find the jingle but I can’t find a video of the original commercial.


“A summer cold is a different animal, an ugly animal, ooo…cause it hits you in the summer, when you got a lot to do.”

I don’t have that much to do—but I’d rather not be down with a cold.

The Trouble with HOAs According to the X-Files

I just recently saw an old rerun of the X-Files episode, Arcadia. The Wikipedia spoiler link is here, but I’m going to talk about it anyway. Arcadia in Greek mythology was the home of the gods, Hermes and Pan. In the X-Files episode, though, it’s more like one of the deepest circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

I think I saw this one in 1999, but I can’t be sure. I did vaguely recognize the fake names Mulder and Scully assumed when they investigated the Home Owners Association (HOA) cursed neighborhood to investigate disappearances of 3 residents. The fake names were Rob and Laura Petrie. Remember the Dick Van Dyke show about a cute, lovable, wacky married couple? You don’t? Shame on you!

The idea of the show’s nightmarish depiction of horrible HOAs was taken from the real-life experience of the guy who wrote the script. He arrived late in the evening to move in to his new house in the HOA—which fined him $1,000 for the offense of moving too late in the day. No kidding, this really happened to the poor guy.

Anyway, if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s in this neighborhood, a giant garbage goblin rises out of the yard and tears you limb from limb. Sound like fun?

Don’t put pink flamingos in your garden and definitely don’t put a basketball hoop in your driveway.

By now, those of you who have ever lived in an HOA know what this episode is driving at. We’ve lived in a couple of them and we didn’t care for the concept.

If you’ve never lived in an HOA, then you’re not just lucky. You’re probably part of a minority in this country because the HOA concept has been embraced by a growing number of Americans since the 1960s. I frequently see horrible news headlines about them in which people who don’t obey all the little rules get fined or worse. Often, the main recommendation by some experts is to take the HOA to court.

And maybe you’ll get a visit from the garbage goblin.

A Short Review of Dixie Paper Coffee Cups

Sena bought some Dixie coffee cups the other day. They don’t contain polystyrene foam, which is what Styrofoam cups are made of. Dixie cups are made from paper with a polyethylene coating and contain 80% cellulose fiber by weight, according to the Dixie company website. On the other hand, many recycling centers won’t take paper cups because they have a coating on the inside of the cup to hold liquids and prevent leaks. So, recycling centers won’t take Styrofoam or Dixie cups. They both have to go to the landfill.

So, are Dixie cups more environmentally friendly or not?

I’m not sure. I know they transmit the heat of hot coffee to the outside of the cup. That means I have to double cup my coffee. I stick the hot coffee cup inside of another paper cup so that I can hold it without burning my fingers.

Dixie does make a “perfect touch” insulated paper cup which is made with air bubbles. I tossed the plastic package containing the cups in the garbage and didn’t find out until later that Dixie makes insulated cups.

The reviews on the web are generally positive and I couldn’t find any stores on the web that didn’t sell non-insulated cups. I found a few reviews advising caution about the insulation not being effective and that the cups could get too hot to handle. They’re also not recyclable at every center because they contain food residue.

And we found out that the coffee temperature gets to 160-180 degrees in the Dixie cup after brewing in the Keurig machine, which makes it comparable to the double wall glass mug. The difference is that I can hold the glass mug without fear of burning my fingers.

There are times when paper cups are handy. They’re great on picnics when you don’t want to use your fancy dishes. They’re also helpful for keeping your hands warm when you’re drinking coffee or hot chocolate outside in the brisk fall weather. But I would need gloves anyway.

Phenylephrine Spelled Backwards is Enirhpelynbehp

News headlines are screaming about class action lawsuits being filed against drug companies selling the oral form of a nasal decongestant that the FDA says doesn’t work. It’s called phenylephrine. Phenylephrine has been around since the early 1970s and it’s a common ingredient in over-the-counter (OTC) cold remedies found in grocery stores in the medicine aisle.

The FDA advisory committee met on September 11-12, 2023 about phenylephrine-containing oral products and there is a clarification of the FDA committee’s decision to identify them as ineffective that was posted on September 14, 2023.

A common OTC containing the agent is Sudafed PE. The Equate version of it is Suphedrine PE, which is cheaper. The name capitalizes on its similarity to the name Sudafed, which is pseudoephedrine—which is an effective oral agent for relieving nasal congestion. The problem with it is that it’s been behind-the-counter since 2006 because it can be used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

Sena bought a box of Suphedrine PE the other day because she caught a head cold. She thinks it’s helplful.

I took a quick look at a few of the presentations of the FDA Advisory Committee meeting. Mainly I just noted the last slide of the FDA presentation, which said that recent studies showed phenylephrine 10 mg was not significantly different from placebo.

Another presentation showed that a large consumer survey indicated that Americans rely on phenylephrine and thought it was an effective nasal decongestant.

This reminded me of Serutan, which is just Nature’s spelled backwards. Serutan was not a placebo; it was a fiber-based laxative, but a lot of people made fun of it. But that, in turn, reminded me of Geritol, which was sold as a tonic a long time ago and which, for a while, was thought by many people to help women get pregnant. Who knows? Maybe some people still believe that, although even the manufacturer disputes the claim.

On the other hand, this in turn reminded me of a medication called Obecalp. You can find many web entries about Obecalp, which is just “placebo” spelled backwards. Some physicians may still be prescribing Obecalp (placebos don’t always have to be pills). In general, the opinion about the ethics of the practice is expressed in a recent paper (Linde K, Atmann O, Meissner K, Schneider A, Meister R, Kriston L, Werner C. How often do general practitioners use placebos and non-specific interventions? Systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys. PLoS One. 2018 Aug 24;13(8):e0202211. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202211. PMID: 30142199; PMCID: PMC6108457.):

“Although the use of placebo interventions outside clinical trials without full informed consent is generally considered unethical [1–3], surveys in various countries show that many physicians prescribe “placebos” in routine clinical practice [4–7].”

There’s actually a fairly large body of research about placebo effects. One really long paper has interesting conclusions and key points (Wager TD, Atlas LY. The neuroscience of placebo effects: connecting context, learning and health. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2015 Jul;16(7):403-18. doi: 10.1038/nrn3976. PMID: 26087681; PMCID: PMC6013051.):

Conclusions:

A substantial part of the therapeutic benefit patients experience when undergoing medical treatment is caused by their brain’s response to the treatment context. Laboratory investigations of placebo effects provide a way of examining the brain mechanisms underlying these effects. Consistent findings across studies include reduced activity in brain areas associated with pain and negative emotion, and increased activity in fronto–striatal–brainstem circuits. In most cases, the creation of robust placebo effects across disorders and outcomes seems to require appropriate conceptual beliefs — maintained in prefrontal cortical networks — that are supported by experience-dependent learning in striatal and brainstem circuits. However, the critical ingredients for eliciting placebo effects, at both the psychological and brain level, are just beginning to be understood. These ingredients may differ substantially depending on whether the outcomes are symptoms, behaviours or changes in physiology. A better understanding of the neuroscience of placebo could yield rich benefits for both neuroscience and human health.

Key Points:

  • Placebo effects are effects of the context surrounding medical treatment. They can have meaningfully large impacts on clinical, physiological and brain outcomes.
  • Effects of placebo treatments are consistent across studies from different laboratories. These effects include reduced activity in brain areas associated with pain and negative emotion, and increased activity in the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum and brainstem.
  • Placebo effects in pain, Parkinson disease, depression and emotion are enabled by engagement of common prefrontal–subcortical motivational systems, but the similarity across domains in the way these systems are engaged has not been directly tested.
  • Meaningfully large placebo effects are likely to require a mixture of both conceptual belief in the placebo and prior experiences of treatment benefit, which engage brain learning processes.
  • In some cases, placebo effects are self-reinforcing, suggesting that they change symptoms in a way that precludes extinction. The mechanisms that drive these effects remain to be uncovered, but doing so could have profound translational implications.

I will probably catch Sena’s head cold. By the way, Phenylephrine spelled backwards is enirhpelynehp.

The Cat is Literally Littering the Litterbox with Her Litter

Is it OK to say that using the word “literally” for emphasis bugs me—a little? I don’t get enraged and break furniture when I hear it, but it does sound wrong. I get over it in a couple of days, literally without taking any hard drugs.

The problem is that some dictionaries say we can use “literally” as an intensifier, like “really” or even “virtually”. I won’t mention which dictionaries (MERRIAM-WEBSTER CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? GOOD GAAWD ALMIGHTEEE!).

But the on-line version of Merriam-Webster almost apologizes for the extension of the use of “literally” (they call it Sense 2): “Sense 2 is common and not at all new but has been frequently criticized as an illogical misuse. It is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.”

It then goes on at length with examples of the so-called misuse, almost as if to justify the practice.

I admit I’m literally no angel when it comes to writing. I break all kinds of rules. I used to write “begs the question” when I actually meant “raises the question.” The whole begging the question thing actually got started with Aristotle and his thoughts on circular reasoning. He was always causing problems like that.

Anyway, people get on rants about using the word “literally” in the original sense (exact equivalence) as opposed to using in the idiotic and totally wrong way of expressing emphasis.

Throw down dude, you literally can’t use the word “literally” that way!

You can find articles on the web which literally make fun of those who use the word “literally” as though they had cat litter for brains. Some experts think they’ve trounced the “literally” lovers by saying that the use of the word for emphasis has been around since the 17th century.

Some might reply “That may be true, but you are literally barking mad!”

I literally cringe whenever I hear the word “literally” because I know it’s not going to be used in the way I expect. No kidding, if you were in the room with me whenever that word is used as an intensifier by someone, you would literally see me cringing.

I am literally done with this subject for now.

Striking a Blow for Science with the Coffee Temperature Experiment!

We got our new thermometer the other day and did a coffee cup temperature test. It’s certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), but we’re not sure where it was manufactured. The instruction sheet looks like it was translated into English.

First, we measured the temperature of coffee in different cups. We measured the temperature of coffee in a double wall glass mug and compared it with the temperature of coffee in a stoneware mug. Stoneware is a type of ceramic.

Right after brewing, the coffee in the double wall glass mug was around 180 degrees. In the stoneware mug, the coffee temperature was around 160 degrees. After 5 minutes the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees in both mugs. Not a big surprise to learn that the double wall glass mug kept coffee hotter.

In fact, I previously noticed when I drank coffee from the stoneware mug last week, it was less hot right after brewing.

Sena wanted to test the Keurig machine to see if the preference setting for making coffee hotter actually worked. In fact, there was no difference in the coffee temperature in either the glass or the stoneware mug after setting the temperature higher.

We then tested the claim of the makers of our old Black & Decker coffee maker that preheating the carafe with hot water actually kept coffee hotter. We were a little surprised that it seemed to work for the stoneware mug, but not for the double wall glass mug.

Just in the interest of full disclosure, we used plain water for the last two experiments. We didn’t think getting buzzed out on coffee was a worthwhile sacrifice in the name of science.

So, the takeaways from this experiment:

  1. The preference setting for temperature adjustment on the Keurig may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
  2. The stoneware mug didn’t keep coffee as hot as the double wall glass mug in either the Keurig or the Black & Decker model.
  3. The stoneware mug seemed to stay hotter when we pre-warmed the carafe on the Black & Decker coffee maker by filling it with hot water before brewing. Be sure you empty out the hot water first.

If you don’t mind sacrificing hot temperature for looks, then go with stoneware mugs. I guess some male reviewers said things like, “Now there’s a man’s coffee mug! I guess maybe that’s because they’re broader than they are tall—I mean the mugs, not the men (although I don’t know if they sent photos of themselves).

By the way, extraterrestrials are not intimidated by a thermometer.