Interesting Links for 25-04-2012

[andrewducker]

• In Therapy Forever? Enough Already
  (tags: psychology counselling therapy )
• I read about the woman who gave her 7-year-old a breast-augmentation voucher, and now the screaming in my head won't stop.
  (tags: women PlasticSurgery children headdesk society )
• Even positive stereotypes can hinder performance (removes locus of control)
  (tags:

Comments

[bart_calendar]

I don't think that long term therapy is a bad thing. I've been seeing my shrink for about four years and can see that I'm making progress (really dramatic progress between where I am now and where I was four years ago) but, you know, life constantly throws new challenges at you and sometimes causes setbacks and I'm still learning more about myself over the course of time and finding new ways to handle situations

[andrewducker]

I don't think it's bad for everyone - there are always people with a massive amount of baggage, neuroses, and other problems which aren't going to shift quickly (if at all). My own counselling took about a year and a half.

But (from my understanding) a lot of people are just a bit miserable because they're stuck, and could be helped to move out of their rut reasonably quickly, but have therapists who are more interested in hanging on to them than actually helping them get better.

[laplor]

I think the big issue is that there are people who are in therapy for years. You've had ongoing steady progress.

It's even apparent to strangers from across the ocean that you are better than you were a year ago. Some therapists see patients for a really long time with no noticeable result.

[bart_calendar]

You can actually tell from my blog that I'm better?

That's cool!

[cartesiandaemon]

*sympathy*

But yeah. The author made the (I assume correct) observation that lots of people need something more decisive but get stuck in a rut of not really making any progress and not really expecting to. And recognises that some people have long-term issues that do need constantly propping up. But because those people never really came to him for therapy, doesn't necessarily know how _many_.

[cartesiandaemon]

"Tor drop DRM on their ebooks. Charlie Stross points out how this in their best interests."

That's pleasingly balanced.

It's probably true (and something that I, and most people I know forget) that most people DON'T care about e-book portability and durability, and hence don't care about DRM*. But I'm very glad that someone is catering to my market!

We should probably all rush out and buy a bunch of Tor books!

* FWIW, I'd be totally happy with a special purpose device for reading non-portable e-books provided I had any expectation that it would GO ON working and not randomly delete my books, die with no way to back up my books, stop being produced with no alternative made available, etc, etc. I bought a lot of paper books from amazon, even I likely shouldn't have done, because it was convenient, and because I could always start buying elsewhere if I needed.

[andrewducker]

My Nook only has non-DRM epubs on it. Either because that's how I got them, or because I stripped the DRM off after I bought them. Those cannot be taken away from me. If they could, I wouldn't be happy paying for them (although I probably would use a Spotify-like streaming model for books).

[cartesiandaemon]

although I probably would use a Spotify-like streaming model for books

Hm. It feels very strange to do that, since I'm so used to actually owning books. But it would fit my reading model well.

[andrewducker]

My feeling is that I want access to things, not ownership. I want to be able to watch DS9 whenever I feel like it, and if someone else will hold onto it on a file server and stream it to me at a moment's notice, then that's awesome. And if not, then I'd better have a local copy instead!

[cartesiandaemon]

"If you remember floppy disks then this will make you feel old..."

I mapped a network drive to B: once. I felt very adventurous! :)

[cartesiandaemon]

"7 Commonly Corrected Grammar Errors (That Aren't Mistakes)"

Hm. I haven't previously given in to the new use of "literally". But maybe it's time to do so??

Another pet peeve is when people are correcting people who say "literally" to intensify something figurative, and say "you don't mean literally, you mean figuratively". NO THEY DON'T. Everyone KNOWS it's figurative. They're not trying to say it's figurative -- they're trying to say "very" or "I really mean it".

Come to think of it, what word would be best to use in place of "literally" if you want to mean "this is an analogy, but an exact one, that's not exaggerated"? "Actually"?

[andrewducker]

The "literally" one still gets to me somewhat. But I grit my teeht :->

And I think that you have to go with the context. I can't think of an alternative.

[marrog]

Yeah, I get that 'literally' annoys people, but I don't get why people get so angry about it. I'll only tease someone about the 'literally' thing if what they've just said would be amusing in some way if literal - if I think that the mental image is funny enough to draw attention to. And if it's not disruptive to the flow of the conversation.

I'm a bit of a grammar fascist even though I'm in principle trained to be a descriptivist, so I was relieved that the only one of these drums I bang is less/fewer, and even then it's reflexive, not something I care that much about any more.

I mean, some of those things I'd never do - I tend to avoid split infinitives for example - but I don't criticise them in others - to be honest, I thought even the prescriptivists had given up on split infinitives by this point

[cartesiandaemon]

I don't get why people get so angry about it

I'm not sure, but I think that level of anger is what you get when people feel defensive -- when they feel sure they're right, but they feel stupid because they can't EXPLAIN why they're right, so they hope the argument will just go away. The same sort of thing where people hate Harry Potter because it's so popular, but they didn't think it was so innovative.

'never end a sentence with a preposition'

I still tend to mentally categorise rules into "those that provide some benefit, which may or may not be worth it" and "those whose benefit is solely showing that you know to follow the rules".

Eg. using usual capitalisation rather than all-caps or no-caps provides a specific benefit: it's possible to read it. So I think it's a good idea.

Eg. Capitalising random nouns is not usual so it's wise to avoid it, but only because that's what everyone else does: if we did capitalise important nouns, the language would probably be equally good