Speed post 2

No time, no time.

1. a Howard adviser paints a quick picture of what it was like for his boss in the lead up to the election. He notes:

Try managing the equivocation of nervous colleagues who believe you should cut and run, when not so long ago they were begging you to stay. Try keeping your focus (and temper) while you and your family suffer cheap attacks fuelled by those ever-brave unnamed sources. Try maintaining your dignity while feral union activists wait outside hospitals and hotels to call you and your wife "Liberal c-ts" and tell you they wish you would die a "slow and painful death". All while your opponent coasts along, forgiven frequent errors of judgment, congratulated for the genius of his political flummery, by a largely uncritical media. Howard kept going where others would have faltered.

2. Contrast John Quiggan, a lefty who does indeed run an exceptionally polite blog, who said this recently:

Throughout the last few years of the Howard government, anyone who criticised the government, or suggested that Howard was not the best person to be Prime Minister of Australia, could be sure of being labelled a “Howard hater”....

This was always silly. Perhaps there were people motivated to oppose the government because of a personal animus against Howard rather than his actions and policies, but if so I never met any.

Yes, it would seem John needs to get out more.

3. Apparently, Peter Garrett was a bit hot under the collar in parliament yesterday, but I didn't see it on the TV news.

4. I didn't know that psychiatrists often had a very personal interest in mental illness:

Study after study has shown that psychiatrists have higher rates of mental illness than the general population.

Research published in 2001 revealed that 56% of female psychiatrists have a family history of mental illness, and just over 40% have experienced one themselves - almost twice the rate of other doctors. Undoubtedly as a consequence, psychiatrists have double the rate of suicide of the general population.

5. While on mental health, the Washington Post looks at Paranoia magazine. At last, I can publish my expose on the secret world of horses.

6. Now for the paranormal. Physicist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance wants the American Association for the Advancement of Science to kick out the Parapsychological Association from its current affiliation membership.

Disheartened that some people would come to the defence of legitimate psi research, Sean follows up with a long post "proving" how (at the very least) telekinesis is not scientifically possible. More well argued rebuttal follows.

If ever a person deserved a mystifying experience that is not readily explicable in his scientific mindframe, it's him. It would seem, however, that if you refuse to believe that it is even possible, nothing strange ever happens to you. Of course, you could also be like me, an open-minded person, who nonetheless seems to be about as psychically inclined as a piece of wood.