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Walton Simons posted:Nope, tremor is one of the cardinal signs of PD. Yah, the shakiness is caused by uncontrollable muscle spasms that gradually increase in frequency until there's no more time between spasms so eventually leading to complete rigidity.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:20
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Olewithmilk posted:Yah, the shakiness is caused by uncontrollable muscle spasms that gradually increase in frequency until there's no more time between spasms so eventually leading to complete rigidity. Yeah my bad -- though the more important point is that the end result of severe Parkinson's is physical paralysis. One injection of MPTP can result in full-blown physical paralysis akin to severe Parkinson's.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:56
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BattleMaster posted:I guess the thought was that there would be fewer men on the battlefield rather than a larger number of men being killed more efficiently as they charge a single guy with a machine gun. This is exactly his idea. When a hundred men can do the work of a million, why not keep the rest home to work in their fields? Of course, machine guns developed further and just a few years later men were charging straight into them by the hundreds in France, so I suppose the militaries of the time didn't agree with the concept. On the other hand, he also tried selling them in various configurations and to every nation who would pay for them, so his motivations may have been more financial than altruistic.
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Mar 9, 2015 15:44
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Walton Simons posted:Nope, tremor is one of the cardinal signs of PD.  Levodopa does cause dyskinesias though, so in curing your tremors it gives you tremors 
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Mar 9, 2015 15:48
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nocal posted:Yeah my bad -- though the more important point is that the end result of severe Parkinson's is physical paralysis. One injection of MPTP can result in full-blown physical paralysis akin to severe Parkinson's. One teaspoon of Super-MPTP in the butt causes FULL BLOWN PARKIE!
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Mar 9, 2015 20:09
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I've been reading a novel about demonic possession. One of the characters, a skeptical Jesuit priest, mentions the gospel of Luke about Jesus praying at Gethsemane: "then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground”, and brings up hematidrosis. Unfamiliar with either the Biblical or the medical phenomenon, I looked it up. Turns out that's actually a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematidrosis To sum it up --- you really can get so stressed out you sweat blood.  Here's an abstract from PubMed: quote:Cases of hematidrosis (bloody sweat) are extremely rare. This disease has been described in various terms and has been often tied to religious belief as stigmatization. We report a typical patient with hematidrosis in a 14-year-old girl who frequently bled from her scalp and palms, and, occasionally, from trunk, soles, and legs. The bloody sweat from her scalp contained all blood elements. Immediate biopsy after there was bleeding on her scalp showed multiple blood-filled spaces that opened directly into the follicular canals or on to the skin surface. Immunoperoxidase studies failed to demonstrate vascular nature of these spaces. Our study explained how and why there was bleeding in our patient and in patients with related conditions as described in earlier literatures. We also explained why this phenomenon was intermittent because the spaces indicated above will disappear after exuding their content but then reoccurred after the blood flow was reestablished. edit: for clarity in a butchered sentence. JacquelineDempsey has a new favorite as of 20:49 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 20:44
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DumbparameciuM posted:So I was thinking I'd do a post on a specific massacre of Indigenous Australians, but I was having trouble finding a wikipedia article for the specific incident I was searching for.  http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/send-cask-arsenic-exterminate.html quote:COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
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Mar 9, 2015 21:08
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Wild T posted:This is exactly his idea. When a hundred men can do the work of a million, why not keep the rest home to work in their fields? Of course, machine guns developed further and just a few years later men were charging straight into them by the hundreds in France, so I suppose the militaries of the time didn't agree with the concept. On the other hand, he also tried selling them in various configurations and to every nation who would pay for them, so his motivations may have been more financial than altruistic.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:18
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Your side needs fewer people because it has the machine guns. Drone warfare in the service of modern imperialism are kind of the end-state for that kind of thinking. Still, the countermeasure for it is terrorism, which is kind of a different philosophy.
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Mar 10, 2015 02:00
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I'd say it was a early form of MAD theory. Everybody would be so horrified of machine guns/areal bombardment that nobody would actually go to war again. On that note, the sieges of Vicksburg and Petersburg, and Gen. Sherman's march to the sea were just a preview of what was going to happen in Europe. There was even a early use of wire obstacles at Fort Sanders in Tennessee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sanders quote:The Confederates moved to within 120-150 yards of the salient during the night of freezing rain and snow and waited for the order to attack. Their attack at dawn has been described as "cruel and gruesome by 19th century standards." They were initially confronted by telegraph wire that had been strung between tree stumps at knee height, possibly the first use of such wire entanglements in the Civil War, and many men were shot as they tried to disentangle themselves. When they reached the ditch, they found the vertical wall to be almost insurmountable, frozen and slippery. Union soldiers rained murderous fire into the masses of men, including musketry, canister, and artillery shells thrown as hand grenades. Unable to dig footholds, men climbed upon each other's shoulders to attempt to reach the top. A succession of color bearers was shot down as they planted their flags on the fort. For a brief time, three flags reached the top, those of the 16th Georgia, 13th Mississippi, and 17th Mississippi.  European military observers however pretty much ignored what was going on. Von Moltke apparently dismissed it as being a "war of armed mobs" that nothing could be learned from.
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Mar 10, 2015 10:24
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C.M. Kruger posted:I'd say it was a early form of MAD theory. Everybody would be so horrified of machine guns/areal bombardment that nobody would actually go to war again. To be fair, the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 was so swift that it seemed like the American Civil War was an aberration, and the Russo-Japanese war suggested that offensive élan could still overcome prepared defences with acceptable casualties. The generals of late 19th/early 20th century Europe weren't complete idiots.
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Mar 10, 2015 15:02
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AdjectiveNoun posted:To be fair, the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 was so swift that it seemed like the American Civil War was an aberration, and the Russo-Japanese war suggested that offensive élan could still overcome prepared defences with acceptable casualties. The generals of late 19th/early 20th century Europe weren't complete idiots. The French officer corps scores high on that scale. Not to mention the obsession with cult of the offensive, they also insisted on using old fashioned uniforms like this. The cavalry even worse, the French cuirassiers still wore this. Imagine on a sunny day, they are spotted by the enemy miles away thanks to the shiny metal on their uniforms. The results of this where sadly quite predictable.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:36
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JacquelineDempsey posted:I've been reading a novel about demonic possession. One of the characters, a skeptical Jesuit priest, mentions the gospel of Luke about Jesus praying at Gethsemane: "then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground”, and brings up hematidrosis. Unfamiliar with either the Biblical or the medical phenomenon, I looked it up. My friend's doc thought he had this once, but it turned out he had just thrown up so hard he burst a blood vessel in his forehead.
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Mar 11, 2015 06:24
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Dyatlov chat coming up - apologies!  Just read I. Lobatchev's (written with two others) Dyatlov Pass Keeps Its Secret 2013 (available via Amazon). First off (besides its terrible cover), it has serious flaws: the translation from Russian is awful. It isn't so bad that you can't understand any of it and there are many pages without errors. (One example: tent contents list includes "videofilm" - which must be a mistranslation as there were no video cassettes at the time and the team didn't have a 15-mm camera or anything similar. Just a translation goof.) Second, the authors go with the avalanche theory that they completely debunk in their text! Idea not feasible because: avalanches unknown in that location, snow conditions not favourable for avalanche, no evidence for avalanche, tent intact, floor of tent undisturbed, grave injuries of 3 in ravine site probably resulted in immediate incapacity and loss of consciousness. It is 1.5 km from the tent so no way they could have been carried etc. Another few good reasons why not also. So: if the avalanche theory is complete bollocks, why bother raising the book at all? Well, there is mass of newly translated statements from Russian, including lists of tent contents, clothing of bodies, pathology reports, conditions, useful info on weather and preservation of the footprints. (Also a few more unpublished photos.) So, for pure data this has a lot of great data. People worry that one of the bodies was missing a tongue - what they fail to tell you is that it was also missing teeth, lips, eyes and had been partially submerged in running water for months. It was decomposition, my dear Watson.  Like many who read Eichar's book, I thought the case was settled. Eichar's solution seemed to tie up loose ends very well but.... there are many problems with Eichar's theory, undermined (or at least complicated by) the facts that he left out of his account (Lob.'s book appeared before Eichar so he must have known this stuff): * Eichar says they panicked. Apparently not. Although they left the tent in haste, footprint evidence suggests they walked a steady pace away from the camp as a group. It was an orderly evacuation. (But why leave boots and clothing behind?) * Footprints suggested they made directly for tall cedar tree which could be seen from the tent in daylight but not at night. Frustratingly, Lob. does not discuss visibility. She gives evacuation time at about bedtime - 8pm or so (as Eichar does) - well after dark (5pm). Anyway, the fact they headed for the nearest tall tree to build a fire suggests there was some visibility - contradicting Eichar and Lob. * Slobodin was found between cedar and tent. He had a serious skull fracture not consistent with a fall. He was nowhere near the ravine. Was he assaulted? * The injuries to the 3 in ravine Eichar describes as fall injuries are not entirely consistent with falls - no protection injuries (arms held up for protection etc), no broken skin consistent with striking rock. * Grey fluid in lungs consistent with shock-induced vomitting or crush from heavy weight (avalanche). But pathologist did not determine death of any by suffocation (which happens with avalanches). In short, Eichar's solution is very neat but there are many facts that contradict it. For the record, I think the conspiracy stuff is bollocks but the evidence is against Eichar on many points and his statement that (roughly) "everything before and after the abandonment of the tent is explicable" is not true. There are many confusing and contradictory facts about the team in the snow. I think the causes were natural/human and didn't involve anything crazy or outsiders but ....I can't figure it out.  If you think there is too much Dyatlov chat, we can start a thread for it. I don't wanna bug you guys with it. EDIT: Ok, there is a new thread PYF Dyatlov Pass Theory here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3706392&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post442739486 But feel free to reply to this post here or continue the chat on the new thread.  EDIT 2: If you guys think the new thread is too much then I'll close it.  I suspect it might get shitted up.
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Mar 14, 2015 20:32
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Jack Gladney posted:Your side needs fewer people because it has the machine guns. Drone warfare in the service of modern imperialism are kind of the end-state for that kind of thinking. Still, the countermeasure for it is terrorism, which is kind of a different philosophy. Pretty much; in a way Gatling was fairly prescient on using technology as a force multiplier. Military technology eventually turned armies from huge masses of guy trained on the basics of fighting to incredibly small but far more lethal forces that often double as technical experts as much as fighters. Using the perspective of his time, even if the entire US military was obliterated Gatling could shrug and say "they lost a million and a half, if it wasn't for my gun it would have lost ten million." One of the best examples of this is in airpower. Even during WWII when aircraft were developing at a rapid pace and were cutting-edge, they routinely flew hundreds of aircraft with thousands of men in a single raid when now a handful would be flown. Granted total warfare versus counterinsurgency is kind of apples to oranges but the idea is the same.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:37
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I'd heard of references to Iraq having chemical weapons/gassing Kurds, but I'd never read about any of the incidents in question. The Halabja Massacre The largest chemical weapon attack on a civilian population in history; killed thousands, injured as many as ten thousand. 
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Mar 17, 2015 17:24
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drat shame what they did to that cat.
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Mar 17, 2015 17:33
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Jack Gladney posted:Brian Dunning didn't sell Skeptoid. He just can't host it right now because he's in federal prison for massive fraud: Haha, holy poo poo.
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Mar 17, 2015 18:02
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Actually it was eBay, and while they made a couple million dollars the actual case was over something like ~500 grand. There's a massive amount of misinformation about the case floating around, a lot of it verging on full on conspiracy theory poo poo. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to do time, but it's highly inaccurate to call that "massive fraud". El Estrago Bonito has a new favorite as of 19:04 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 19:02
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Well, they only prosecuted the first 500 thousand, but he probably got something closer to 5 million. That seems like a pretty massive fraud for a single smug libertarian to pull off. And I thought part of the original story involved amazon referrals getting hijacked, but that seems totally wrong.
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Mar 18, 2015 01:49
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Jack Gladney posted:Well, they only prosecuted the first 500 thousand, but he probably got something closer to 5 million. That seems like a pretty massive fraud for a single smug libertarian to pull off. And I thought part of the original story involved amazon referrals getting hijacked, but that seems totally wrong. It was a 15 man company that made ~5 million over a few years. So decent income, and I think he certainly was paid a million or or dollars in that time frame but I believe the assertion was that only the 400k wasn't legitimate and the other income was made through actual strategies that eBay said were more or less legitimate. They basically got taken down because they were Libertarians and so they ruined a perfectly reasonable and profitable legal tech company by using underhanded tactics to earn a basically not worth it amount of extra money by trying to fleece rubes and a shocking amount of Libertarian run companies and projects end up going down due to this exact level of minor greed.
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Mar 18, 2015 03:21
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El Estrago Bonito posted:It was a 15 man company that made ~5 million over a few years. So decent income, and I think he certainly was paid a million or or dollars in that time frame but I believe the assertion was that only the 400k wasn't legitimate and the other income was made through actual strategies that eBay said were more or less legitimate. They basically got taken down because they were Libertarians and so they ruined a perfectly reasonable and profitable legal tech company by using underhanded tactics to earn a basically not worth it amount of extra money by trying to fleece rubes and a shocking amount of Libertarian run companies and projects end up going down due to this exact level of minor greed. If libertarian business owners are anything like bitcoiners they seem to feel a moral imperative to rip people off, and the fact that it's in any way possible to do a shady thing means that obviously they're obligated to do it.
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Mar 18, 2015 09:50
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After watching the Vice documentary on Krystle Cole (was it linked in this thread?), which pretty much portrays her as an innocent small town girl victimized by evil drug lords, I started reading up on what happened between her, Gordon Todd Skinner and Brandon Green. I am astounded that she is not in jail on a multiple life sentence, if even half of this article is true. I mean yeah, Skinner is a monster, but Cole's scary as gently caress. http://thislandpress.com/gordon-todd-skinner/ Some seriously hosed up stuff went on between those people. And what is Krystle Cole doing today? She's running a website (http://neurosoup.com) and Youtube channel promoting "responsible drug use". Gives me the loving chills to think about. E: Here are some direct excerpts from the report on Skinner/Cole/etc.: https://www.reddit.com/r/LSD/comments/1xx059/former_stripper_krystle_cole_talks_about_her_time/cffn1i5 Which paints an even darker picture of Krystle Cole. Question from Pre-Trial Investigator: "Do you believe the Defendant is a serious threat to the community?" Answer: "Yes, very much so. She is young, evil and enthusiastic." KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 13:11 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 12:53
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KozmoNaut posted:After watching the Vice documentary on Krystle Cole (was it linked in this thread?), which pretty much portrays her as an innocent small town girl victimized by evil drug lords, I started reading up on what happened between her, Gordon Todd Skinner and Brandon Green. I am astounded that she is not in jail on a multiple life sentence, if even half of this article is true. I mean yeah, Skinner is a monster, but Cole's scary as gently caress. Read that and look at this at the same time, and you can see how people wouldn't be the wiser.
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Mar 18, 2015 13:16
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Yes, absolutely. The same thing goes for the Vice documentary on her. I mean, she seems so giggly and carefree, mostly like someone who's just been on psychedelics for too long. She doesn't seem evil or insane or psychopathic or anything. That just makes the whole thing even scarier to me, because you can't really trust the testimony of anyone involved in that case, not even the victim Brandon Green, as they were all constantly hosed up on mind-altering drugs.
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Mar 18, 2015 13:33
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Watching The Homesman last night led me to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness There's something disturbing about so many lonely, desperate people heading out into a giant flat nothing, and being driven insane by the sheer difficulty and frustration of even surviving. Despite a lot of the accounts being embellished or fictionalised, it still happened enough for it to be a recognised phenomenon.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:01
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chalk posted:Watching The Homesman last night led me to this: I'm reading a book on this. From the sounds it prairie madness was mostly poorly diagnosed PTSD. The causes usually being animal attacks on households, children dying, untreated depression, or periods of winter starvation.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:19
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Loneliness and isolation fucks all apes up, and we're certainly no exception. Isolation is one of the few ways you can make literally any person lose their mind; no matter how tough they are, it's only a question of how long it takes. I bet if we ever seriously explore space, something like "prairie madness" will be a thing out there, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair Imagined has a new favorite as of 17:28 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 17:26
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Oh I'm sure that the isolation hurts and makes them more prone to mental illness, but all of the case studies I read had some clear trauma as the breaking point. So sort of like how being really cold can't literally make you sick, but it makes you more vulnerable to sickness that you would otherwise shrug off. There were a lot of problems with single family farms where the kids all died from some illness and as a result one or both of the parents would have to be carted off to an asylum. Similar thing for animal attacks when someone was left alone in the house. Your home some place that you thought of as a safe place is invaded by creatures trying to kill and eat you. Even if you aren't physically injured you're unlikely to ever feel safe again.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:43
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chalk posted:Watching The Homesman last night led me to this: Driving through Kansas or Wyoming or something is enough to give you prairie madness, I can only imagine what it's like to be some kind of homesteader.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:49
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PresidentBeard posted:Oh I'm sure that the isolation hurts and makes them more prone to mental illness, but all of the case studies I read had some clear trauma as the breaking point. So sort of like how being really cold can't literally make you sick, but it makes you more vulnerable to sickness that you would otherwise shrug off. There were a lot of problems with single family farms where the kids all died from some illness and as a result one or both of the parents would have to be carted off to an asylum. Similar thing for animal attacks when someone was left alone in the house. Your home some place that you thought of as a safe place is invaded by creatures trying to kill and eat you. Even if you aren't physically injured you're unlikely to ever feel safe again. Yes, of course. People back then were probably directly diagnosed with "Prairie Madness" as though it was a specific illness, but we can use it nowadays as a blanket term to cover the various psychological responses to the various horrific things that happened - to a number of settlers large enough to write books about. Based purely on isolation, space madness is a definite possibility, and that one-way Mars colony mission should be an interesting study if it ever goes ahead. I remember this being on the news a few years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500 although the "psychological effects" section is more  than scary or unnerving.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:11
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Driving through Kansas or Wyoming or something is enough to give you prairie madness, I can only imagine what it's like to be some kind of homesteader. I remember driving through Nevada a couple of years ago, and it was so flat that even with the mountains way off in the distance I felt a scream sit right in my chest the whole trip. I've never been so claustrophobic as I was on that drive. That Krystle Cole story, holy poo poo. It was long, but...OMG.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:41
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Maggie Fletcher posted:I remember driving through Nevada a couple of years ago, and it was so flat that even with the mountains way off in the distance I felt a scream sit right in my chest the whole trip. I've never been so claustrophobic as I was on that drive. Meanwhile as (at least) a seventh-generation Okie I felt really claustrophobic and hemmed in in truly big cities where you can only see a sliver of the sky directly above you.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:51
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Imagined posted:Meanwhile as (at least) a seventh-generation Okie I felt really claustrophobic and hemmed in in truly big cities where you can only see a sliver of the sky directly above you. As a Texan who regularly drives the flat desolation between DFW, Houston, and Austin, I enjoy all places. 
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Mar 19, 2015 19:20
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PresidentBeard posted:I'm reading a book on this. From the sounds it prairie madness was mostly poorly diagnosed PTSD. The causes usually being animal attacks on households, children dying, untreated depression, or periods of winter starvation. What's the name of the book?
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Mar 19, 2015 23:45
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Maggie Fletcher posted:I remember driving through Nevada a couple of years ago, and it was so flat that even with the mountains way off in the distance I felt a scream sit right in my chest the whole trip. I've never been so claustrophobic as I was on that drive. A friend of mine is a schoolteacher in Singapore, and he was on a school trip to South Africa - when they spent a night camping under the stars, some of the kids had anxiety problems because they'd spent their entire lives in a crowded city and couldn't handle how big the sky was.
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Mar 20, 2015 00:50
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_birth The article is pretty dry but basically 'coffin birth' is when quote:...built-up gas pressure within the putrefied body of a pregnant woman pushes the dead fetus from the body of the mother.
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Mar 20, 2015 01:49
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Freudian posted:A friend of mine is a schoolteacher in Singapore, and he was on a school trip to South Africa - when they spent a night camping under the stars, some of the kids had anxiety problems because they'd spent their entire lives in a crowded city and couldn't handle how big the sky was. One of Asimov's most popular recurring characters, Lije Baley, is strongly agoraphobic from living his entire life in the "caves of steel." It's a significant plot point in many of the Lije Baley/R. Daneel Olivaw stories. Imagine having a crippling fear of an abstract concept like, "too open."
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Mar 20, 2015 03:46
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If you want to know horrifying, last year's Everest thread got into caving and cave diving after the mountain closed, and gently caress that poo poo. Basically start here and read on, there's stories of a cave called the meatgrinder and a guy who filmed his own death cave diving. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3626517&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=44#post433820355
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Mar 20, 2015 04:16
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Freudian posted:A friend of mine is a schoolteacher in Singapore, and he was on a school trip to South Africa - when they spent a night camping under the stars, some of the kids had anxiety problems because they'd spent their entire lives in a crowded city and couldn't handle how big the sky was. Oddly, the night sky doesn't bother me. I mean, yeah, it's overwhelming and I get dizzy, but it's so beautiful I guess that's the part I focus on. Then again, when I camp it's usually in the mountains, which is super different from being on the prairie. I don't think I could handle ACTUAL prairie; just that picture in the wiki article made me a little uncomfortable. It's really impressive, but I'm just not used to it. ranbo das posted:If you want to know horrifying, last year's Everest thread got into caving and cave diving after the mountain closed, and gently caress that poo poo. Basically start here and read on, there's stories of a cave called the meatgrinder and a guy who filmed his own death cave diving. Oh yeah, that's a hell to the no. I used to work with cave fish, and while I personally never had to go diving (these were in harmless cenotes in Mexico which would have actually been quite beautiful and interesting), some of those cave divers got into some situations that I couldn't even really look at the photos too long.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:23
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