Wimbledon has had the longest match in tennis history.

The threatened life of a World Cup matches winner picking “psychic” octopus.

A C16th air mattress, with bellows.

Placing countries so as to “map” cultures.

Japan attempts to regulate waistlines.

We are much more likely to die as the result of the consequences of personal decisions than our ( Read more... )

“You are being shagged by a rare parrot”: Stephen Fry, a kakapo and hilarity.

A checklist for distinguishing science from pseudoscience.

Searching for cheap DNA sequencing that may make personalised medicine possible.

New ring discovered around Saturn.

A Yank, a Pom and a Tasmanian share the Nobel Prize in Mediicine

Studying why women have sex ( Read more... )

Friday night went to mrsbrown and mr_bassman’s place for an impromptu bbq and good-bye for their dog Binka. montjoye, doushkasmum and sacred_chao were already there. Z and T turned up later ( Read more... )

Found myself backsliding into a depressive state. When I realised that I was accepting an internal narrative that cast me as helpless, the depression went away remarkably quickly.

The anger without enthusiasm definition of depression has a lot going for it. Something about your life--perhaps unresolved issues from the past--provide intense ( Read more... )

How to tame your email beast.

About the positive aspects of depression and bipolar disorder. Via p_cat.

A ship full of nearly three thousand Mazdas develops a 60degree list, so they hired this salvage company and … Via evildrakey.

US frontline troops are (finally) geting the military version of Google™ maps.

Al-Qaeda has improved its online encryption ( Read more... )

The US Dept of Homeland Security managed a bit of an email oops.

A documentary that cannot get commercial distribution in the US is going online to drum up business.

Review of a book on whether sorrow is depression and whether depression is mental illness.

Review of a book about the launch of Sputnik. Hannah Arendt’s 1963 essay on what Man-in- ( Read more... )

Maria Prendergast’s Understanding Depression is the best book for understanding the phenomenon of depression I have come across. She has previously written Understanding Asthma and Understanding Migraine, so I take it she has a formula for such books.

If so, it’s a good one. One of the great strengths of Understanding Depression is she lets ( Read more... )

The following are some excerpts from an essay I have drafted which is intended for publication. Folk may find them helpful.
...
Depression-which has been written about for centuries under the older term of melancholia-is a pattern of thought, belief, feeling. It is-in the powerful metaphor of Australian-born psychologist Dorothy Rowe, whose ( Read more... )

I had already worked out that much of what people suffering depression do-no matter how destructive-can be understood as a rational response to managing pain. Dorothy Rowe in her challenging and insightful book Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison argues that it goes further than that. That the constructed prison of depression itself is a ( Read more... )

Apparently, it got to about 39 degrees C today. I spent most of today in air-conditioning, so not too bad. My housemate, Snake, nowadays works as a motorbike courier, so he had a bit of a different experience

The morning was the office Christmas Party, so various folk went to the cafe at Readings on Glenferrie Rd and had a jolly time. Then mishymoocow and ( Read more... )