And Canuck fans wonder why no one likes them?

Canucks fans party like it's 1994. Fucking embarrassing.

The Doctor at the royal wedding = pure awesome.
I'm sure that has to be photoshopped, but still pretty cool.

In other news: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003393/How-Citigroup-hackers-broke-door-using-banks-website.html

This article calls them "hackers", and quotes a "security expert" calling it a "browser vulnerability" that would have been "hard to prepare for". The vulnerability in question? Logging into the website and changing the account number in the URL. Damn those browsers and their security flaws, now citigroup looks stupid because of the insecure ability to change the URL on the client side...

I'm know I don't know everything there is to know about security, but damn, that's about the most insanely stupid thing I've ever seen - for a banking site even.

And I'd love to know who that "security expert" is that considered this "hard to prepare for".

Hey Par, have you and Nadeesha seen this?

As former med students, how do you think the faculty should react to the Dean of medicine plagiarizing a graduation speech?

How do you come off as a legitimate institution without some form of clear reprimand, since students are expected to obey the plagiarism rules? ... not that anyone gets reported. We attempted to flunk a student in the class I TAed and the dean wouldn't stand by it, despite glaringly obvious evidence.

Technology for 2000, as imagined in 1910:

via Copyranter.

Now THIS is how you own a DeLorean
.

Congratulations Paras! I like the phrase "terminal assessment of knowledge and skills" ... although, I sincerely hope that doctoring isn't going to kill you.


And Beck, the person circled, speaking of doctors, is Matt Smith, dressed in the tweed suit and bow tie (because bow ties are cool) of the current incarnation of The Doctor. I still can't believe it took me so long to cotton on to this reincarnation of the series. I always though K-9 was lame, and as a result didn't watch it while growing up, but this new series is pretty awesome. ... particularly the current cliffhanger. (Thanks Albert for the Christmastime exposure to the newest Doctor!)

Oh, and Albert, I agree, he IS quirky etc. in real life, to the same extent as the Doctor, but in a different way... a colourful socks and mickey mouse t-shirt kind of way, apparently... not so much bow ties.

Congratualtions Par!

So easy to be ranty.... sigh.

An interesting (but comprehensive) view is given in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. And yes, I do need a new hobby. I encourage any interested parties to refer to the original article, which is quite well written.

"many theorists have argued that our current diagnostic categories, as compiled into DSM-IV-T-R (American Psychiatric Association 2000), are faulty because they are derived from observable variables rather than underlying physical pathologies. These theorists are sceptical about many existing psychiatric diagnoses, and not just on empirical grounds; they see DSM diagnoses as collections of symptoms rather seeing them as medicine understands diseases—in terms of destructive processes realized in bodily tissues. Genuine mental illnesses, on this view, are not just sets of co-occurring symptoms but destructive processes taking place in biological systems......But we often know very little about the mental illnesses that psychiatrists study, and much explanation in psychiatry involves case studies or narrative accounts that cite the characteristics of a disorder, rather than underlying systems."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychiatry/

Which is to say that I agree with Par that mental illnesses are better described as syndromes (which don't presuppose a known underlying cause) than as diseases. While certain symptoms cluster together, we can't necessarily say why they do, or by what mechanism they occur. The backwards extrapolation from an effective treatment (ie. an antidepressant) to assuming the basic pathophysiology of a disease is troublesome and prone to logical error.

My last word on this subject.

And, many congratulations Dr. P. Welcome to the world of gainful employment.