I'm sorry to be the one to have to break the news, but that Norfolk alien that appeared yesterday was the first of many, and Bryan has become an abductee. He tells me it was a very interesting epxerience, about which he'd rather not say more till he recovers from the rectal probe. Meanwhile, I'd better say something about this - or rather say nothing much, since I've never knowingly taken SSRIs (and am a sucker for placebos). Anyone out there going to speak up for Prozac etc? What I do know is that plenty of fairly brisk walking, preferably in beautiful surroundings, does tend to keep the black clouds rolling past...
But potentially the best news of the day might be that Turkey is working on an extensive revision of the Hadith. This is an old link, I know, but the best I can find - the latest word is that the scholars are cutting out disobliging references to Christianity etc. Could it be that some kind of Islamic Reformation is finally getting under way? If there's ever to be one, it will surely start in Turkey...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I've only read a few newspaper articles about the SSRI stuff, but it strikes me that we need to be careful to define our terms here. Otherwise, our Soviet-style bureaucracy will merely seize on this as an excuse for cost-cutting. We tend to use "depression" as an umbrella term for all sorts of things, ranging from "feeling a bit blue" - don't we all from time to time? - to OCD or acute anxiety and on to serious and incapacitating mental illness. For a start, we need to know what GPs think. They are at the sharp end of this. Personally I find it hard to believe that SSRIs have so little effect, and there is some danger of falling for conspiracy theory here: the only way these allegedly useless pills could have fooled us all for decades is a the result of a sinister big pharma con trick, etc, etc. Hmmn, not convinced.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed Nige, the Turkish story is the big news of the day. I once attended a big inter-faith pow-wow where the men from the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, as well as some Turkish journalists, were incredibly intellectually impressive. How heartening that this is coming from there rather than from the sinister Tariq Ramadan in Oxford.
ReplyDeleteSo how stupid does Rowan Williams look now ?
ReplyDeleteThey've wrokes fine for me. I've tried everything from eating healthy for months, no booze, green tea, exercise, meditaion, yoga etc People i know who take them swear by them too. And it's definately not a placebo as i can feel the dizzying buzz for the first hour in the morning after taking it. And the withdrawel symptoms definately aren't a placebo.
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