Most Shared Articles On Facebook In 2011
1. Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami (New York Times)
2. What teachers really want to tell parents (CNN)
3. No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed (CNN)
4. Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps (CNN)
5. (video) - Father Daughter Dance Medley (Yahoo)
6. At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan (Yahoo)
7. You’ll freak when you see the new Facebook (CNN)
8. Dog in Japan stays by the side of ailing friend in the rubble (Yahoo)
9. Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines (Yahoo)
10. New Zodiac Sign Dates: Ophiuchus The 13th Sign? (The Huffington Post)
11. Parents keep child’s gender under wraps (Yahoo)
12. How to Talk to Little Girls (The Huffington Post)
13. Stop Coddling the Super-Rich (New York Times)
14. Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior (Wall Street Journal)
15. (video) - Twin Baby Boys Have A Conversation! (Yahoo)
16. Man robs bank to get medical care in jail (Yahoo)
17. Why You’re Not Married (The Huffington Post)
18. A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs (New York Times)
19. Ryan Dunn Dead: ‘Jackass’ Star Dies In Car Crash (The Huffington Post)
20. Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’ (Yahoo)
21. Notes From a Dragon Mom (New York Times)
22. A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy” (The Huffington Post)
23. Obama’s and Bush’s effects on the deficit in one graph (Washington Post)
24. Penn State, my final loss of faith (Washington Post)
25. Golden-Voiced Homeless Man Captivates Internet (Yahoo)
26. The most typical face on the planet (Yahoo)
27. Widespread destruction from Japan earthquake, tsunamis (CNN)
28. Permissive parents: Curb your brats (CNN)
29. A father’s day wish: Dads, wake the hell up!(CNN)
30. (video) - Laughing Baby Loves Ripping Paper! (Yahoo)
31. Epic Cover Letter: How To Get Hired For Your Dream Job (PICTURE) (The Huffington Post)
32. New Zodiac sign dates: Don’t switch horoscopes yet (Washington Post)
33. Things Babies Born in 2011 Will Never Know (Yahoo)
34. The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s Death (The Huffington Post)
35. (photo gallery) - ‘Where Children Sleep’ (New York Times)
36. Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet, shifted Earth’s axis (CNN)
37. Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies (CNN)
38. China’s latest craze: dyeing pets to look like other wild animals (CNN)
39. Grant Hill’s Response to Jalen Rose (New York Times)
40. Steve Jobs’s Patents (New York Times)
Top 25 Psychiatric Prescriptions for 2009
These are the top 10 of the top 25 psychiatric medications by number of U.S. prescriptions dispensed in 2009 as well as the percent change from 2005 according to IMS Health. Note that the total U.S. population rose approximately 4% from 2005 to 2009.
- Xanax, used for anxiety, up 29%
- Lexapro, used for depression/anxiety, up 13%
- Ativan, used for anxiety/panic disorders, up 36%
- Zoloft, used for depression/anxiety/OCD/PTSD/PMDD, down 28%
- Prozac, used for depression/anxiety, down 9%
- Desyrel, used for depression/anxiety, N/A
- Cymbalta, used for depression/anxiety, up 237%
- Seroquel, used for bipolar disorder/depression, up 88%
- Effexor XR, used for depression/anxiety/panic disorder, down 13%
- Valium, used for anxiety/panic disorder, up 16%
“The biggest declines we see are drugs that have gone off-patent, including Wellbutrin (a decline of 73 percent in prescriptions) and Paxil (which didn’t even make it on this year’s list). Strattera — prescribed for ADHD — lost 42 percent of the prescriptions it had in 2005. And despite Zoloft’s strong showing in 4th place — down from 2nd place four years ago — it also lost 28 percent of its previous prescriptions.”
Doctors immediately discontinue prescribing drugs once they become unprofitable to pharmaceutical companies, meaning they are pushing drugs for personal financial (and sometimes sexual) gain at the expense of patients’ health.
Such a dad-like orangutan
New York Times Most Looked Up Words of 2011
- panegyric
- immiscible
- Manichean
- inveighs
- crepuscular
- legerdemain
- churlish
- risible
- anathema
- recognizance
- omertà
- superannuated
- perfidy
- hauteur
- samizdat
- avuncular
- inchoate
- duplicitous
- perfunctory
- dyspeptic
- opprobrium
- cronyism
- anomie
- alacrity
- buttress
- dilettante
- insouciance
- exegesis
- hubris
- schadenfreude
- excoriated
- surfeit
- ascetic
- realpolitik
- unambiguous
- misdemeanor
- protean
- pariah
- quixotic
- Blasphemy
- brinkmanship
- incarcerated
- sanguine
- feckless
- quorum
- nascent
- austerity
- ebullient
- juggernaut
- ubiquitous
cf. most looked up words of 2010
We Must Be Superstars
“about the nineties: In any given week of the decade, there was a 10 percent chance the No.1 song was by Boyz II Men. Add Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Bryan Adams, and chances hit 24 percent. Americans spent a quarter of a decade listening to this sort of thing: big, lavish ballads, built to charm middle-aged and middle-school listeners alike. Try to picture an environment or purpose for these songs, and the mind drifts to graduations, school-gym talent shows, Olympics montages.
In the aughts, there was still a one-in- four chance that any given week’s chart-topper came from one of four artists. But those artists were Usher, Beyoncé, the Black Eyed Peas, and Nelly, and their hits were pointed at a very different kind of public environment: They were club songs. The old-school, all-ages ballad spent much of the decade reduced to a tiny corner of the charts, populated by nice-guy crooners like James “You’re Beautiful” Blunt and Daniel “You Had a Bad Day” Powter.
One simple explanation for this development: We now have access to a ridiculous variety of media. The music we spend our private time on, and use to build our identities, varies more wildly than ever from person to person. But there’s at least one kind of music that needs consensus to function, and that’s the stuff we dance, party, and strut around to. “The club” might be the last remaining space where strangers are all forced to pay attention to the same songs.”
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you might recall the Social Regions of the United States according to our Facebook connections. The above map is a similar concept, showing what our state lines might look like if they were drawn based on who we communicate with most as determined by our cell phone calling data. The map based on SMS data is slightly different from the one based on actual phone calls, which I’d guess has to do with texting being a more strictly personal activity.
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur [1998]
- Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the National Security Adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
- Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
- Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
- Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
- Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
- Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
- Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
- Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
- Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
- Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Argentina’s Nahuel Huapi Lake is currently covered with ash from the Puyehue Volcano eruption in Chile.
Rob Halford of Judas Priest singing on the witness stand during his subliminal message trial:
In 1990 Judas Priest was involved in a civil action that alleged they were responsible for the self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 1985 of 20-year old James Vance and 18-year old Raymond Belknap in Sparks, Nevada. On December 23rd 1985, Vance and Belknap, after hours of drinking beer, smoking marijuana and allegedly listening to Judas Priest music, went to a playground at a church in Sparks with a 12-gauge shotgun to end their lives. Belknap was the first to place the shotgun under his chin. He died instantly after pulling the trigger. Vance was the next to follow suit but only blew away the lower half of his face. This was possibly because the weapon was slippery with blood.
The men’s parents and their legal team alleged that a subliminal message of “do it” had been included in the Judas Priest song “Better By You, Better Than Me” from the Stained Class album (actually a cover of a Spooky Tooth number). They alleged the command in the song triggered the suicide attempt. The trial lasted for a month in 1990 and the suit was dismissed.
USA! USA!
“Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with ‘dictionary selection,’ in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, ‘General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.’”
