"Solar power and zero-gee sex"

NASA has green-lit another shuttle mission. NASA has been in the news a bit lately - a sex scandal involving an astronaut having the hots for another astronaut, astronauts drinking on the job, sabotage...

So they're hoping that the public will focus on the job and stop obsessing about the scandals (link from ABC Aus).

I don't know about you, but what this member of the public is thinking is "What are they going to get up to this time?"

Strange insights into the way minds work

I have just sat through a meeting with a representative of an accreditation agency, examining my (well, my department's, which means my) progress against a Quality Action Plan.

Ignore the title, that's bad enough but ignore it for the time being.

We were talking about collecting demographic information on clients, and I stated that we now had the systems in place, paper and electronic, to collect ethnic status on clients where appropriate.

"What about indigenous status?" He asked.

Huh? I'm sorry, I thought "ethnic" referred to any racial/cultural grouping, Anglo-Saxon included? I thought ATSI status is a specific ethnic status. Apparently not. I carefully worded a response indicating that yes, we did do that, there was even a specific box for just that (discriminatory) purpose, but I was also very careful to make mention of ATSI being a sub-set of "ethnic". He appeared happy with that.

I'm not entirely sure I was happy with his question.

Once again, it's the little things that really piss you off

I have a fondness for full-screen windows, which means that Alt-Tab (in any environment I'm playing in - don't know what the OSX options are, don't get a chance to play there) or some form of pager or taskbar is how I navigate between programs. And I have an almost irrational need to minimise/hide a window I'm finished with so that I know it's out of the way, instead of lurking ready to unexpectedly be there and take an unwanted mouse-click when I'm least expecting it.

This is just one of the numerous good reasons I have for my intense loathing of programs that (are allowed to) jump up and steal focus, obscuring what I was concentrating on and receiving seventeen key clicks before my brain catches up with first my eyes and then my hands.

One consequence, however, is that I will ask for a program to open, jump to another program to check on something while waiting for program1 to respond, wonder where it got to and, if I'm on WindowsXP at work, hit Windows-M to minimise all windows and display the desktop.

Here's where it gets entertaining. Warning or dialogue boxes don't get a taskbar entry, so you don't know they're there. And if I hit Windows-M when a box is sitting waiting for action (press OK or enter a password, usually), I don't get to see it. So I try and open the same program again, which does nothing, because I haven't responded to it yet.

So I have to use Alt-Tab to see if there's a dialogue box I don't know about...

Which quickly becomes annoying. Then graduates to infuriating.

I hear Spike Milligan singing "Eat more fruit!"

This is far too funny on so many levels:

Indian cops go bananas over necklace thief (ABC)

But honestly, at that point wouldn't you try surgery? With a khukuri, if necessary.

We're a suspicious bunch, aren't we?

There is nothing that will not make us think "Methinks he doth protest too much!" Or, alternatively, "Hey, what are they trying to pull?!"

Surprise, surprise, the Federal Government's new Industrial Relations advertising campaign is making people more frightened, not less.

I myself have, on numerous occasions, thought "Oooh, I hadn't considered that possibility!"

They really don't have a clue, do they?

My first spam comment. I'm so proud.

I've been spammed by a nutjob! Cool!

Or, alternatively: I've been spammed by a nutjob bot, given the circumstances.

Checkout the first (okay, only) comment on my recent post There really is nothing new under the sun. You can even read the article, if you like. But might be NSFW, in case you fall off your chair laughing hysterically and attract the unwanted attention of management.

What do caffeine addicts and people wtih ADHD have in common?

Norepinephrine. AKA Noradrenaline.

Both ritalin (and other ADHD stimulant medications) and caffeine stimulate the production of norepinephrine in the brain, and norepinephrine, which is also implicated in depression, is identified as the we-still-don't-know-how-it-works factor in how ritalin, um, works.

From which you can draw the hypothetical conclusion (and you wouldn't be the first) that many caffeine addicts are self-medicating for ADHD. I have even seen reports from mothers who noticed behavioural improvements in their children after including caffeine-containing substances in the normal diet. In fact, the children even requested their "food medicine".

Now, I work with the public and there is no way in hell I am going to take a self-report like that at face value. But I also work with brain injury and there is no way in hell I am going to deny the possibility of ADHD pathology being the result of biochemical processes in the brain, so if anybody feels like arguing that ADHD is just a result of parents not being able to cope with kids who misbehave: Don't bother unless you have evidence.

Which is the problem. We don't yet have a diagnostic test for ADHD which is not behavioural, so diagnoses are never going to be, in these situations, absolutely trustworthy. Then again, we don't have a diagnostic test for schizophrenia or depression which is not behavioural, either - we base our diagnoses and our definitions upon patterns of behaviour which occur so consistently in each other's presence that we may as well give in and label it. A good clue to whether or not a diagnosis is correct is if the standard medication results in the desired improvement. If it doesn't, then you may have to face the fact that you're a crap parent, or your kid has a food allergy, or they're acting up at school because they're smarter than their teachers and they're bored rigid.

I'm placing my bets of EEG or fMRI studies being the most promising.

But, being a heavy caffeine user who is prone to depressive episodes, has difficulty staying on track, terrible time-management skills and a tendency to have periods of low-energy-crash early morning or afternoon, the thought that I might unintentionally be self-medicating I found rather amusing. So I went looking for self-diagnostic tests, because I was supposed to be doing something else and therefore clearly wasn't concentrating properly.

From the sarcastic to the suspiciously short, there are a plethora out there. I found one which seemed worthwhile, not only for comprehensiveness but for what it says about the behaviours which are regarded as "problematic" (clue: you've probably got most of them - that's what you get when you list almost everything). And yes, it does say IMPORTANT: This is not a tool for self-diagnosis at the top. Naughty me.

My results? I can't see a measure for what the total score means, but based upon the general pattern of responses I show definite clusters of ADHD symptomatology in several areas, and an overall strong likelihood of being affected.

So I wrote myself a prescription to visit the percolator. Bottoms up.