short notes: will brady's ruminations

SCENIC VISTAS
Mount Greylock, outside North Adams, Massachusetts, has some breath-taking scenery | The panoramic view is from Carl Heilman II's Nature Panoramas | Click on it to see a rotating panorama |The smaller photo here is mine and was taken last spring while enroute to visit Ian in North Adams | That's Greylock in the background shrouded in the mist | Click on that picx for a full sized image |
     Greylock is Massachusetts' highest peak. surrounded by 11,000 acres of forested preserve | The Appalachian Trail traverses through the Mount Greylock Forest Reservation | |

WEB PRESENCE
New Specialty Blog | Madbook | I've started a new subsection that will have posts related to mental health, systemic problems and the like co-posted | I may invite some other interested parties to post to this as well | |

WEBSITES
contemporary arts, edible wild mushrooms, intrusive spy software, responsible firearms use | basically a mish-mash

 • MASS MoCA | We plan on seeing Bill T Jones Dance Ensemble in October | It happens that the performance is to be held during a North Adams, MA Arts Festival weekend |
 • Mushroom Expert | It's season a little early, thanks to all the rain we've been having | What you see here is a type of honey mushroom, one of the mushrooms I found today | To become stock for soup |
 • Ojibway Nature Center, Windsor, Ontario, CA | The mushroom page | worth a visit to the rest of the site | Every locality ought to have such a resource |
 • Edible Mushroom Chart from Gourmet Mushroom Products | Americans are wary of mushrooms | People think most every kind is poison | These two posters show a sampling of many that are edible and tasty |
 • Malware | A Warning! | There's lots of ways that spies can be snooping inside your home computer | Walt Mossberg makes note of some, and provides links to some free spyware cleaning software |
 • Cybershooters | I've long believed that part of the problem with firearms is that most folks [particularly in Europe and the USA] are not taught how to handle them responsibly | We are far less concerned about that much more lethal weapon, the car | We expect people know how to use it before handling one, however | This British website has some practical starting info for the uninformed |

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DRUG WARS || BREAKING NEWS

click on the letter [below] for a pdf file with full text

Congressman queries FDA on Neurontin | Earlier this year, New York state congressional representative Maurice Hinchey [22nd Dist.] learned of an independent study conducted regarding any links between suicides and the use of the psychpharm drug Neurontin | The study looked at people who commited suicide yet who had no previos history of mental illness | A conference call was then held between staff from the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] and the law firm that authorized the study | FDA personnel expressed concern and suggested that the informaion gathered on Neurontin was "the world's most important data set" regarding adverse psychiatric events and use of Nuerontin | That was last spring |
     Although the FDA also said the evidence suggested a potential "imminent health hazard" they did nothing about this except as the law firm who reported this to conduct more studies on the drug |
     I thought independent studies was the FDA's job | Instead, Congressman Hinchey makes reference to the FDA's active participation in assisting drug companies in lawsuits against them |
     Incidentally, this is not the first time Neurontin has come under closer scrutiny | In March 2004, an article in the New York Times reported that the original manufacturer, Parke-Davis, [now owned by Pfizer] has "...illegally promoted the drug to prescribing physicians for at least 11 "off-label" (unapproved) medical conditions, using their own employees, euphemistically called "medical liaisons." | Even where I work [a psychiatric facility], doctors are wary about prescribing this drug for psychiatric patients, who may have clinical conditions for which the drug was originally authorized | They won't say so on the record, but they opine about Nuerontin in front of non-clinical staff; the most common comment is that the drug is clinically "worthless" |
     The FDA officials haev known about the rsiks of Neurontin since [at least] March 2004 | Congressman Hinchey's letter [and subsequent press release - click for the pdf version] makes this notice more public | Now let's see how long these "permanant" government employees continue to sit on this problem | |

HISTORY LESSONS || IMPACT ON TODAY


Finally got around to watching THE LAST SAMURAI | Good to finally see Tom Cruise in a movie where he didn't look to squeaky clean to be believeable | It's a troubling film, but one that has more lessons for me than Farenheit 911 [which I still have yet to see; but that's more due to inability to get to first run movie theatres than any antipathy to the subject matter] But I really don't want to compare mobies here, just use Last Samurai as a start point in discussion |
     Anyway, the reasons I think it holds more to think about is for the quite plausible bad behaviors of the members of the 1876 American Trade Delegations to Japan, eager to sell weapons and military training to the nascent Japanese Army; enthusiastic about helping kill off an ancient culture if they have to, all for the Almighty Dollar!
     Americans, and Europeans [not incidentally] wrongly perceived the Japanese [and, for that matter the Chinese] as ignorant savages | The film accurately portrays this | But "ignorance" is something that arises from lack of knowledge and understanding | And attitudes and opinions propelled by self-satisfied, hurried, impudent people ~ such as were the Western World's emmisaries then, are not infrequntly ignorant ones |
     Contrast this with the observations of Deirdre Bonnycastle regarding the Samurai:

Compare this to the education of the Samurai, the warriors of Japanese history. A Samurai was expected to be well versed in warfare, both through reading the works of strategists and through the use of weapons. On the other hand, writing poetry, drawing, tea preparation, meditation and flower arranging were also considered essential skills for a warrior. This is difficult for people in European cultures to fathom unless we understand that all of those skills were signs for the ephemeral nature of life, beautiful and then gone. A Samurai was like the cherry blossom; a beautiful object to behold both on the tree and floating to the ground in death; a life to be relished in the moment and released in jubilation.

     Japan Guide writes on it's webiste that

"...Like other subjugated Asian nations, the Japanese were forced to sign unequal treaties with Western powers. These treaties granted the Westerners one-sided economical and legal advantages in Japan. In order to regain independence from the Europeans and Americans and establish herself as a respected nation in the world, Meiji Japan was determined to close the gap to the Western powers economically and militarily. Drastic reforms were carried out in practically all areas.
     In order to stabilize the new government, the former feudal lords (daimyo) had to return all their lands to the emperor. This was achieved already in 1870 and followed by the restructuring of the country in prefectures. The education system was reformed after the French and later after the German system. Among those reforms was the introduction of compulsory education. After about one to two decades of intensive westernization, a revival of conservative and nationalistic feelings took place: principles of Confucianism and Shinto including the worship of the emperor were increasingly emphasized and taught at educational institutions.
     Catching up on the military sector was, of course, a high priority for Japan in an era of European and American imperialism. Universal conscription was introduced, and a new army modelled after the Prussian force, and a navy after the British one were established.
     The new government aimed to make Japan a democratic state with equality among all its people. The boundaries between the social classes of Tokugawa Japan were gradually broken down. Consequently, the samurai were the big losers of those social reforms since they lost all their privileges"

     Similarly, the manner in which Europeans and Americans regarded and treated the Chinese, even to the point of starting the Opium Wars by having drug pushers [oh, excuse me, purveyors of Free Trade] trying to force the native people of China to becme additced to opium, speaks to crude history of the Western nations and their approach to international diplomacy | Opposition and disgust was elicited then about the west's practices, of it's tendancy to wrap venality and arrogance in religion while actually promoting a brutal reign of terror using the arsenal of commerce - cojoined with weapons of war |
     The imperialism of the commerical gainers may have been ignored or unknown by the average person in Europe and the USA but it wasn't lost on the Chinese | One writer opined in Letters from a Chinese Official, written and published in 1903:

When first your traders came to China it was not at our invitation; yet we received them, if not with enthusiasm, at least with tolerance. So long as they were content to observe our regulations we were willing to sanction their traffic, but alwasy on the condition that it should not disturb our social and political order. ...the trouble arose over a matter in regard to which you yourselves have not ventured to defend your own conduct.
     ...To a Chinaman who reviews the history of our relations of the past 60 years must you not appear to be little better than robbers and pirates?
     ...Which of us has been the aggressor ~ we who, putting our case at the worst, were obstinately resolved to maintain our society, customs, laws, and polity against the advances of an alien civilization, or you who, bent of commercial gains, were determines at all costs to force an entrance into our territories and introduce along with your goods the leaven of your culture and ideas? If, in the collision that inevitably ensued, we gave cause of offence, we had at least the excuse of self-preservation. Our wrongs, if they were that, were episodes in a substantial right; but yours were themselves the substance of your actions.
     ...Consider the conditions you have imposed on a proud and ancient empire, and empire which for centuries has been at the head of civilization. You have compelled us, against our will, to open your ports to your trade, you have forced us to permit the introduction of things which we believe are ruining our people; you have exempted your subjects residing among us from the operation of our laws; you have appropriated our coasting traffic, claim our inland waters as your own. And yet all the time you have posed as civilized peoples dealing with barbarians.
     ...You have compelled us to receive your missionaries, and when they by their ignorant zeal have provoked our people to rise in mass against them, you made an excuse for new depredations till we, not unnaturally, have come to believe that the cross is the pioneer of the sword, and that the only use you have for your religion is to use it as a weapon of war.
     ...It was at the point of the sword that you forced us to receive Embassies whose presence we have always regarded as a sign of national humiliation. But you say our mobs were barbarous and cruel. Alas, yes. But your troops? And your troops, nations of Christendom? Ask the corpses of murdered men and outraged women and children; ask the immocent mingled indiscrimnately with the guilty; ask the Christ, the lover of men, whom you profess to serve, to judge between us who rose in mad despair to save our country and you, avenging crime with crime, did not pause to reflect that the crime you avenged was the fruit of your own iniquity!

How different is this from the scandal in Iraq? Driven by the inspiration of false prophets touting righteousness, but weilding only superior firepower, so that the likes of Halliburton [and other such corporate pirate nations] might gorge themslves on the blood of ancient cultures, and on the people they claim to be pursuing the advances on behalf of one other than the American Citizenry | History shall be the judge, even though some in power keep trying to rewrite that history as it happens | Truth always prevails |
     Letters from a Chinese Official concludes with the following remonstrances:

The lesson of the past is our only guide to the policy of the future. Unless you of the West will come to realize the truth; unless you will understand that events that [shake the world] are the Nemesis of along course of injustice and oppression; unless you will learn that the profound opposition between your civilization and ours gives no more ground why you should regard us as barbarians than we you; unless you will treat us as a civilized Power and respect our customs and laws; unless you will accord us the treatment you would accord to any European nation and refrain from exacting conditions you would never dream of imposing on a Western Power—unless you will do this, there is no hope of any peace between us. You have humiliated the proudest nation in the world; you have outraged the most upright and just; with what results is now abundantly manifest. If ignorance was your excuse, let it be your excuse no longer. Learn to understand us, and in doing so learn better to understand yourselves. To contribute to this end has been my only object in writing and publishing these letters. If I have offended, I regret it; but if it is the truth that offends, for that I owe and I offer no apology.

     Analogy closed | Obvioulsy, I'm talking about Iraq here | or Afghanistan | or Syria | or Iran | Each nations embroiled in their own problems, but ancient and wiser than the young holligans on our side of the Atlantic may ever understand them to so be | The lessons are clear | We need only to heed them | To ignore those lessons of history is to place ourselve in peril |

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DRUG WARS
Things are never simple | Vitamin Supplement providers, manufactures of "performance enhancing" drugs and Marijuana growers are excoriated and prosecuted with vigor by the Feds | Not that there aren't risks with unknown elements | But the Big Pharma Industry has generally been treated with kid gloves and tender loving care by the same politicians | Be it the no-hands approach to scadalous prescription drug costs, or a see-no-evil attitude about adverse reactions and dangers to drugs being legally pushed | Is it any wonder that mental patients complain of being guinea pigs? [rhetorical question on my part] Some of the latest stuff in the headlines |
Doping Bad [from The Mercury News †] There is Balco, the alleged Bay Area doping ring for elite athletes. And there is Balco, the cradle of conspiracies -- a source of carefully planted media leaks and an alleged political agenda at the highest level of government | A court hearing Friday morning in San Francisco federal court mainly dealt with the latter allegations. Judge Susan Illston took under consideration complaints and counter-complaints swirling around the case.
     ``Balco is now a household word, and, thanks to misinformation contained in the many leaks, it is a word as loaded as a hand grenade,'' the lawyers for Victor Conte Jr. and James Valente, Balco's president and vice president, respectively, wrote in an informational motion submitted Friday.
     ``It is now very doubtful that these defendants can ever receive a fair trial -- anywhere.''
     The political allegations are being leveled by J. Tony Serra, Anderson's attorney, who in April filed a motion suggesting that the case was powered by political motivations and was ultimately intended to help get President Bush re-elected.
     Serra had asked the judge to allow him to get an internal memorandum from the government that could show the case being orchestrated from the White House | Serra said the goal of eliminating performance-enhancing drugs from athletics was ``laudable,'' but that unless the judge orders the prosecution to produce the memorandums, ``We will forever believe that we are being sacrificed for the greater good of the establishment, and that's not right.''
     Prosecutor Jeff Nedrow argued that Serra had no evidence to support his charge.
     There's more... †
Merek to Tell the Public of Adverse Clinical Testing [from The New York Times †] Merck & Company says it will post the results of its clinical trials on drugs on a Web site run by the National Institutes of Health. The move comes ahead of a House subcommittee hearing this week where, it is expected, drug companies will be excoriated for refusing to publish unfavorable clinical trial results | Merck said Friday that it had already posted on the Web site, ClinicalTrials.gov, the outlines of 46 studies, or every trial for which the company is currently recruiting patients as well as some others. By the end of the month, the company will post 50 more trials that are already under way but where patients are no longer being recruited. And as the studies are published, Merck will post links to their results, the company said |
     "Merck has long been committed to publishing the results of all of our trials in a timely manner," said Dr. Peter Honig, a senior vice president, "and now we're strengthening that commitment." One reason for the new postings, Dr. Honig said, is the industry's growing image problem |
     "Let's face it, the perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole are not healthy at the moment," he said |
     There's more... †
Pfizer 'Fesses Up: Antipsychotics can cause Diabetes [from Associated Press] The Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. warned doctors that the company's antipsychotic drug Geodon has been linked to extremely high blood sugar and diabetes | Pfizer's letter to doctors, announced on Tuesday, follows a September 2003 FDA request that manufacturers of the six most widely used antipsychotic drugs revise labels to reflect additional risks | The remaining drugs affected by the FDA request include Eli Lilly's Zyprexa, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify, Novartis' Clozaril, Janssen's Risperdal and AstraZeneca's Seroquel.
     Pfizer's warning letter to doctors said "few reports" of hyperglycemia or diabetes were noted in patients prescribed Geodon. But it also noted fewer patients were treated with that particular antipsychotic | As a whole, so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs were linked to such adverse events as diabetes and high blood sugar - in some cases, extreme enough to induce coma or death | Geodon, approved to treat schizophrenia, on Aug. 23 gained FDA approval for the treatment of acute bipolar mania |
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ISP WOES - CLEARTEL
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