Pretty much any psych med by itself will affect sex drive. I see folks taking a half a dozen of them, and then another med or two to counteract the side effects. The pdocs tell us that they DON’T because they don’t want us to quit taking them.
Perhaps we should refer to our meds as a “pharmaceutical chastity belt.”
Anything that tweaks your dopamine down is going to get rid of the emotional spark required to have something resembling a sex life. And anything that tweaks UP serotonin receptors does so at the expense of dopamine receptors. See this article, Notes on Anhedonia and SAD.
For men, there’s also the problem of peripheral blood flow – a strictly mechanical problem. Can’t get the old hydraulics to run, eh? Viagra and Cialis work by improving blood flow. Heck, coffee dilates the blood vessels too, and if you brew it at home it’s way cheaper than an ED pill. Diabetes is common cause of ED, so antipsychotics that affect blood sugar (most of the atypicals) might contribute to it.
Maybe the whole idea is to give us drugs that prevent us from breeding lots of little bipolars.
Well, unless I die sometime today, I’m going to e~file my 2007 Federal Return tonight. I use TurboTax because my brokerage recommends it.
It’s not so bad, really. TurboTax has a scoreboard at the top of the screen that shows your progress. It’s kind of like a text adventure game where you’re trying to get your money back from the pirates.
When I go to one of the local tax services I always feel rushed. The guy works on a schedule and I can’t stop in the middle of the return to get a cup of tea or start a load of laundry. With TurboTax, you can walk away for an entire day, or even until the next weekend. (Oops.)
If the guy comes up with additional deductions and I didn’t happen to bring the documentation, too bad. It means rescheduling and another trip. Working at home with TurboTax means my file cabinet is right behind me. I can stop and go online to bank or credit card sites to look up the numbers for a new deduction I hadn’t prepared for.
Maybe the guy made a snap judgement based on my clothing and skipped one question that could have brought up a whole new set of deductions. The software is objective.
Using the on-line software has the additional benefit that you can log on from anywhere and make changes. I needed to get some paperwork at work to finish up this time, so I logged in from there, changed a couple of numbers, and let TurboTax recompute my return.
There’s even a free TurboTax version for folks with simpler returns.
And don’t forget – you have to file to get your economic stimulus check, even if you had ZERO income.
Perhaps you’ll feel much better about tithing the government if you read about the Good Works they do with your money. Farm subsidies for landowners who never ever got dirt on their hands. Faith-based initiatives to help churches build wedding facilities for their parishioners. Highways to nowhere, also known as “pork.” Defense spending. Homeland Stupidity! I’m going to order the Death and Taxes 2008 Poster
Death and Taxes is a representational graph of the federal discretionary budget. The amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes.
Here are some quotes on Death and Taxes to get you through the ordeal.
Benjamin Franklin
Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Daniel Defoe
“Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.” The Political History of the Devil, 1726< /dd>
Margaret Mitchell
“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.” Gone With the Wind, 1936
George H. W. Bush quote:
“Read my lips: no new taxes” spoken at the 1988 Republican National Convention
Paul McCartney
“Now my advice for those who die, (taxman) Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)” “Taxman”, from the Revolver album
Every summer, Mr. X does what he calls “The Gathering of the Flashlights.” A leftover habit from our Philadelphia Folk Festival and camping days, The Gathering is Mr. X’s ritual of collecting all the flashlights in the house and replacing batteries and bulbs.
Well, National Geographic emailed me an ad for the gem pictured above – the National Geographic Self-powered Emergency Radio. What self-respecting engineer wouldn’t want a flashlight with a hand-crank? Let’s face it, folks, Green is more than a bumper sticker. 90-seconds of cranking gives an hour worth of battery for the radio. No fumbling in drawers in the dark trying to find the right size battery.
Ok, so National Geographic is more impressed with the radio aspect. And it’s a cell phone battery charger. It even gets international shortwave radio bands.
Oh, get this – it also has a red flashing beacon and a siren.
Today I learned that the Arabic word for mental illness has the same etymology as the Arabic word for evil spirits. This has an unfortunate effect on how the mentally ill are perceived in the Middle East.
Language is an odd thing. It enables you to express your innermost thoughts and feelings. BUT it almost guarantees that the thoughts and feelings you express have been totally shaped by the language itself. In the words of comedian Lenny Bruce,
“Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed. I speak English. That’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else.”
— Lenny Bruce, quoted on Rakes Progress: Lenny Bruce is not afraid
So what’s happening is that as long as the doctors use that old-fashioned word to describe mental illness, demon-possessed the mentally ill will remain.
Arabs don’t have a monopoly on superstition though. The following TinyUrl will take you to a google search for “mental illness exorcism.” http://tinyurl.com/5gwe4p
Does the word “uncompromising” mean “having strong values” or does it mean “selfish, stubborn, and uncooperative?” Mostly I hear the word uncompromising in advertisements for large gas-guzzling SUVs. Stand your ground, you deserve as much gasoline as you can get!
Ok, let me parse that word that is so proudly used in advertisements, and worse, by our leaders.
Ah, inflexible. Are we talking about a lack of neuroplasticity again? I submit, then, that if a person is uncompromising then they have a mental deficiency that renders them incapable of making the compromises that smooth interpersonal and even international relationships. That explains a thing or two.
Main Entry: in·flex·i·ble
Pronunciation: \(?)in-?flek-s?-b?l\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin inflexibilis, from in- + flexibilis flexible
Date: 14th century
1 : rigidly firm in will or purpose : unyielding
2 : not readily bent : lacking or deficient in suppleness
3 : incapable of change : unalterable — in·flex·i·bil·i·ty \-?flek-s?-?bi-l?-t?\ noun — in·flex·i·ble·ness \-?flek-s?-b?l-n?s\ noun — in·flex·i·bly \-bl?\ adverb synonymsinflexible, obdurate, adamant mean unwilling to alter a predetermined course or purpose. inflexible implies rigid adherence or even slavish conformity to principle <inflexible in their demands>. obdurate stresses hardness of heart and insensitivity to appeals for mercy or the influence of divine grace <obdurate in his refusal to grant clemency>. adamant implies utter immovability in the face of all temptation or entreaty <adamant that the work should continue>. synonyms see in addition stiff
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary: inflexible
HA! Merriam-Webster doesn’t have an entry for neuroplasticity. I guess they’re Republicans too.
Beelzebufo ampinga was a frog that lived in Madagascar 70 million years ago. At 16 inches long and weighing in at an estimated 10 pounds, this bad boy was so mean he may have fed on newly-hatched dinosaurs.
The largest living frog species is the goliath frog of West Africa, a mere 12.5 inches long and 7.2 pounds.
Paleontologist David Krause of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, is one of the scientists who discovered the bones in 1993. They pieced together Beelzebufo’s skeleton and recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Beelzebufo took down lizards and mammals and smaller frogs, and even — considering its size — possibly hatchling dinosaurs,” Krause said in a telephone interview.
Beelzebufo has some modern relatives in South America, more evidence supporting the theory that there may once have been a land bridge linking Madagascar to Antarctica and South America. These relatives, the Argentine Horned Frog, are nicknamed the “PacMan Toad” because of the size of their mouths and the way they hunt.
What is Semafox? Semafox is an easy way to create a smart 2D barcode (aka a semacode) using your web browser. There’s nothing to install or uninstall. Bonus… the QRCode reader from KAYWA can decode it.
As always, my search for this item resulted in something totally unexpected, in this case a Ruby on Rails book called BLiXy’s PREDOMINATELY IMPROMPTU big book of cryable, injectible ruby. Oddly enough, it is a Ruby tutorial in comic book format. This is a sample entitled When You Wish Upon a Beard.
Yes, it’s Yet Another Meatspace Tag. This one requires a free membership to get the tags. Seems like a bit of a privacy hassle.
MYTAGO is a little different from QRCode or Shotcode. There’s no phone app. Instead, take a picture of the tag and use one of these methods to get the tag data -a bookmark and description:
Take a picture of the tag image. Next time you sync your phone to your PC, upload the jpeg image to the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
Enter the URL of an online tag image and get the tag data.
Type the 12 digit code from a tag image into the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
Install an Uploader Tool on your PC.
Email the tag image or the 12-digit tag code to yourusername@mytago.com with your PIN as the email subject line. The tag data will be available next time you log into MYTAGO.
Bad Behavior
Member of American Mensa, Ltd.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Potential Threat To The Nation
Amazon.com Daily Deals