Flipping the script on psychiatry

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychiatry, mental illness, bipolar, recovery, twelve step programs

After reading Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance by Laura Delano, I became even more thankful that I escaped the depths of psychiatric treatment. Psychiatry is a black hole; getting in is easy, while getting out is usually impossible. Let me settle two pieces of business before going further.

First, a piece of extremely serious advice: If you are feeling depressed and you seek the help of a medical or psychiatric professional, do not ever loosely say you have been thinking of suicide. To be clear, if suicidal thinking dominates your thinking all day, every day, and has done so for as long as you can remember, then it is worth telling this to a professional. Otherwise, beware: if a psychologist or psychiatrist becomes convinced that you are likely to harm or kill yourself, they are required to commit you to psychiatric care in a mental hospital. That's one way of dropping straight into the black hole. If you have no trusted friend or family member, contact the Inner Compass Initiative, founded by Laura Delano. Something to ponder: psychiatrists are people, with the same foibles as all of us. Many of them got into psychiatry because they wanted to find out why they had certain experiences (see image following!).

Second, a very brief mental history of myself. I was diagnosed with "Bipolar II Disorder" at age 54. In retrospect, it made certain old stories make sense. During my K-12 years, I would occasionally "flip out". Otherwise I was a quiet kid, sometimes bullied but too big for the bullies to feel safe going too far. The school I attended in grades 4-6 had an abandoned chimney, the ruins of a demolished house, at the back of the property. One day in 5th grade I led a group of kids to "Play Santa Claus" by climbing down the chimney. We returned to class covered in soot. On a few other occasions I was overcome by a burst of energy and spent the lunch period running through a stand of Sumac, holding a branch and whacking the plants. During the high school years I became the family's firewood chopper and splitter. This continued into college; it is a great way to blow off steam. During my first year at college, on two occasions I was overwhelmed by overwork—I tend to take on more work than I am capable of completing—and wound up in the school clinic under sedation. As an adult I wondered how I could be so moody, so unpredictable, but only for short periods at long intervals. I distinctly remember reading an article that quoted several creative people who discussed their swinging moods (at that time the usual term was "Manic-Depressive"); one writer expressed it this way, "When I am up, I write, and when I am down, I edit." I sat back and thought, "Oh, neither mood swing is essentially bad because both can be useful." At age 53 I made a new friend. He told of spending 10 years taking Zoloft, but being concerned that it wasn't working well any more to control his experiences of major depression. He also told of sometimes spending three days obsessively cleaning his apartment, or seven hours washing a car. I said, "That sounds manic (by this time I knew a little about Bipolar "disorder"). Why don't you mention these things to your shrink the next time you see her?" He did so and was switched from Zoloft to one of the anticonvulsive drugs that are useful in mediating Bipolar mood swings. He was re-diagnosed as Bipolar I (stay tuned). The next time I had a depressive period of my own, that had come on without reason, I spoke to my doctor about it. He prescribed a low dose of Zoloft. At the follow-up appointment a month later, I was high as a kite. He said, "OK, this is mania. Let's try something different." Zoloft is an upper, not a mediator. I don't recall which drug was used. It was apparently helpful, but I began to need a daily nap and I gained some weight. I went to see a psychiatrist, one of only two that I consider competent, named Valentine. She explained more, saying that I seemed to be between Bipolar II and Cyclothymia, and suggested using half the dose of the medication. Six months later, I found that she had moved out of state. There followed a period of yearly visits with four different psychiatrists, all "bottom of the barrel"; I could tell they were crazy, and had got into psychiatry mainly to figure out their own issues...and failed. One of them wanted me to switch my medication to Depakote. I said, "I know someone who takes that. He gained 90 pounds. I already feel bad about being a little overweight. How will this keep me from getting suicidally depressed?" I stormed out and didn't pay the bill when it came. Finally I got another competent psychiatrist, who switched me to Abilify, a low dose, saying, "This will keep depression from going too deep, and allow you to have a little 'fun' when you're manic." I deduced that it was a milder form of Zoloft. It worked quite well, but I still needed a daily nap, and continued to gain weight. Then one day, going to a scheduled appointment, I found his office locked and dark, and nobody in the building knew what happened to him. I had wanted to discuss with him how I could stop the meds completely. I had been taken by a friend to get acquainted with a man who had a severe case of Bipolar I, but had weaned himself off all medications, with his wife's help. Rather than try to find another doctor, I decided, "I'm done with this." I had another month's supply of Abilify. I cut the pills in half and took a half dose for a month, then cut the remaining half-pieces in half and used them up over the next two months. In the meantime, I consciously practiced awareness of my mood. Like the writer, I have things I can do when I am "up", which I call "open", and other things I can do when I am "down", which I call "closed" or "reserved". Now I am 78, off meds for more than 15 years. My wife, who has put up with me just over 50 years, is more relaxed: I am more stable. I thank God I was never institutionalized, and never put on a 4- or 5-drug cocktail. Such regimens are an admission of failure to find an effective treatment.

Now to the book. Ms Delano is apparently prone to overreaction to emotional stimuli. It is common for a young girl to one day look in the mirror and think, "Who is that? Who am I?" In her case, at age 13, it seems to have led to a panic attack, or something very like one. She became edgy and uncooperative at home, and after some time her mother took her to see a psychiatrist. She got a diagnosis (Bipolar) and a medication. That was the entry gate to fourteen years of increasing misery, including a few periods in mental facilities, yet she managed to complete a degree at Harvard. At one point she committed suicide but was rescued.

Along the way she was given various diagnoses—Bipolar wasn't mentioned after the first year—culminating in Borderline Personality Disorder with Treatment Resistance. Those six words really mean, "We don't know what the Hell is going on, she's just impossible to handle." This exposes the darkest part of the underbelly of psychiatry. You can't get away with stopping a psychotropic drug instantly. It is like a heroin addict stopping "cold turkey". Withdrawal symptoms are dreadful, and can kill. I experienced a little of that the few times a drug was switched for me. She had it in spades! When a doctor recommends "tapering off" a drug, they typically recommend a two- to four-week taper. That's too fast. Half a year to a year is better, and in the case of Lithium, it may take several years to wean your body from lithium toxicity. Remember this principle: withdrawal symptoms are very similar to the condition being treated. This does not mean relapse. It means the tapering needs to be more gradual.

Side note: I have read a few times that "the therapeutic window for lithium is narrow," which means that the amount that helps is only a little less than the amount that harms. Actually, that window is negative: The "help" that lithium affords is actually a side effect of lithium toxicity. Lithium "helps" by damaging your nervous system, reducing a harmful syndrome by reducing everything! This is compounded by growing lithium dependence, which takes years to shake. See the "Tapering" section of Inner Compass for more information.

Chapter 34, "Critical Thinking", deserves special mention. It outlines the sad circumstance that psychiatry has become big business. The largest proportion of political lobbying (bribery) is by the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors of all kinds, not just shrinks, are aggressively pushed (sometimes coerced) to push pills at every juncture. Analyzing the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the "psychiatrist's Bible"), the author finds that many of the items listed share more with fads than with facts. Assertions without appropriate evidence, and suppositions without logical reasoning. Maybe you've heard that "chronic depression is an imbalance in brain chemistry." Would it surprise you to learn that no such imbalance has ever been measured? Never, in spite of much trying.

A word about tapering. Drugs are dispensed in sizes of 1,2,4 or ½,¼, etc. If the basic dose is 10 mg, and you're on 40 mg, there's no 30 mg to taper to. And you may need to reduce from 40 to 35 for a week or two, then 30, and then 27, 25, 23, and so forth. What can you do? I suggest pill splitting. My wife takes a statin drug for cholesterol. But she doesn't need much. The smallest available dose is 10 mg. She splits it to 5. For a while she cut the pills into 3 pieces, but that wasn't quite enough. So if you need to go from 40 to 35, what do you do? Have the doctor (it might take a lot of negotiation) prescribe 20's and 10's and 5's. 20+10+5=35. Next reduction, 20+10=30. Then split a 5, so 20+5+2½ = 27.5, and so forth. You get my point.

I'll leave it to you to read this book. If you have any kind of "personality disorder", or know someone who has, get it and read it. Me Delano's Odyssey out of the sloughs of psychiatry is epic. Truly Epic. She is "unshrunk" now, and much happier for it. I also am happier, having escaped the clutches of a system that "disorders" everything.

So get the book!

----------------------------

A little glossary:

• Syndrome: A collection of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a specific condition. 
• Disorder: A disruption or impairment of normal bodily functions or mental processes.
• Bipolar I Disorder: Characterized by manic episodes, which are periods of abnormally elevated mood, energy, and activity levels. Individuals may also experience major depressive episodes. 
• Bipolar II Disorder: Involves hypomanic episodes, which are milder forms of mania, and major depressive episodes. Individuals do not experience full-blown manic episodes. 
• Cyclothymic Disorder: A chronic condition characterized by numerous periods of hypomania and mild depressive symptoms that do not meet the full criteria for Bipolar I or II. Also known as Bipolar III.

Note that a syndrome describes a condition, which may be a disorder, but not always. The condition of physical fitness, which includes strength, vitality, and energy, can be considered a syndrome. It is in no way a disorder. The key term about disorder is "disruption or impairment".

I would prefer that the three levels of Bipolar be called "syndromes" rather than "disorders." In my case, with appropriate understanding and practice, Bipolar II is a condition that I can take advantage of to experience a broader range of social interaction. Furthermore, I consider bipolar syndromes, regardless of severity, as exaggerations of the normal mood cycling that is inherent in the human condition. A doctor friend of mine (definitely not a psychiatrist; he's to sane to be one) explained it this way: 

The scale of moods runs from zero to ten, from the lowest possible to the highest possible. Most people rock along in the 4-6 range, where 5 is "contented, neither sad nor excitedly happy". After a very fortunate event, such as a promotion, a marriage proposal or acceptance, or reaching a tough goal, we feel extra happy, even excited, getting into the range of 7 or 8 for a while. This can't be sustained for long, and we settle back to a 6, and then a 5. After a very unfortunate even, such as being fired, or the death of someone close to us, we feel very low, even depressed, in the range 2-3. Death of a parent, child, sibling or spouse causes us to experience grief, a solid 2 or even 1, for about a year. But this eases over time and we resume our usual "setting" near 5. A depressive person has a chronic setting near 2 or 3. A maniac is stuck at 7 or 8. Normal mood swings run between 3 and 7, though most of the time the 4-6 range is "home base". Bipolar II and Cyclothymia swing between 2 and 8, while Bipolar 1 ranges between 1 and 9. Hitting zero leads reliably to suicidal thinking and often a suicide attempt. Hitting 10 leads to both internal distress and social ostracization for being "too crazy". Extreme Bipolar I bangs these limits on a regular basis and probably does need medication.

There is also the matter of cycling frequency. Normal mood cycles last 3-12 months. Having a "blue mood" each winter is a sign of a 12-month cycle, emphasized or even triggered by seasonal changes. Rapid cycling is three months or less. I am a rapid cycler, which is common for Bipolar II. I have 4-8 depressive (or "quiet and reclusive") episodes yearly, and shorter periods of hypomanic mood (on the edge and extra social) in between. If I am in a quiet phase but must perform a social task such as giving a speech, I can do so, but I "pay the price" with the need to "hide out" for a number of days thereafter. When I am on an even keel or even hypomanic, giving a speech is no problem; it is a pleasure. I just have to keep myself in check when I am up; I tend to interrupt myself or lose track of a train of thought.

Perhaps all this is foreign to you. You may be solidly sane. I am so glad for that! If any of this rings a bell, recognize that you are still most likely close to normal, perhaps just "a little more than normal." Gravitate to friends or family who give you space without judgment. Be wary of psychiatry, but don't write it totally off. Sometimes it's needed. Just don't give up your autonomy to a shrink.

Freakonomics with a stethoscope

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, medicine, economics, motivation, biases

You're 48 years old. You have a pain in your gut. Over the next few days it gets worse, and you begin to have diarrhea. You see a doctor, who says it might be an ulcer and suggests an OTC antacid. That seems to help, but not 100%. Being an agreeable sort, and in the midst of a demanding career, you carry on for several months. The diarrhea and pain come and go, come and go. Then the pain gets worse, and the diarrhea gets worse, and gets darker, even tarlike. What now?

This happened to a young friend's mother, and "What Now? meant seeing her doctor quickly, getting a colonoscopy at age 49, and dying of colon cancer a month later.

Now suppose the age above was not 48 but 52. The fourth sentence and what follows is likely to read, "You see a doctor, who orders a colonoscopy. Cancer is confirmed, and removed in an operation. Several months of chemotherapy follow, and you live many more years."

When I had gut pain at age 53, the doctor should have ordered a colonoscopy, but didn't. Why? The insurance industry scores doctors badly who order too many of the more costly tests! I eventually did have a colonoscopy, but I had to order it myself! I soon had a serious operation, half a year of chemotherapy, and now I am 78. Had I waited for this rather passive doctor to get around to ordering the test, I'd have died 25 years ago. I didn't go back to that doctor. There's a further wrinkle in this, which I'll return to.

What's the difference between age 48 and age 52? I could have used 49 and 51. The cutoff for "elevated risk of colon cancer" is age 50. Not only is it hard to get the insurance company to pay for a colonoscopy if you are "too young", the guidelined cutoff is a mental barrier for your doctor, who probably just won't think of investigating more deeply.

Such cognitive biases and blind spots are the subject of Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health, by doctors Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham. Dr. Jena is host of the podcast Freakonomics, M.D., and the book takes an approach similar to that in Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics by Steven Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, two books I have close at hand. Together, these three books emphasize that at its root, economics is the study of motivation, of why people do things.

In the dozens of cases reported in the book, the doctors and their associates plumbed the databases of Medicare and the CDC for information that allows them to winkle out the little anomalies that reveal biases such as the "first digit bias" that puts age 48 or 49 into the "forties" bin and 51 or 52 with the "fifties". Untimely deaths can and do result form such biases.

If these two doctors stepped into the waiting room and you had the chance to choose one of them to perform your yearly physical, which would you choose? (The image was generated using Leonardo AI)

Granted, neither you nor I will be offered the chance to choose a doctor "on the spot," but if you were…? Here's the wrinkle from above: Fifty years ago I would have been more inclined to choose the man, not because of race but because he's male. Since then I've had to change doctors a number of times because of my moving or doctors moving elsewhere or retiring (or the passive doctor I "fired"). I've had both male and female doctors. By age forty, a man starts getting the "digital prostate exam", sometimes called the "golden finger". Having been probed by both male and female doctors, I found that I really prefer a doctor with long, slender fingers! A female musician who happens to be a doctor fits the bill perfectly. I've also learned that women are more willing to take an extra few minutes, and more likely to think sideways in case there is a second factor, not just "the diagnosis". My current doctor is female, and is tied for best doctor I've ever had.

What do doctors Jena and Worsham have to say about that? They studied Medicare records of 1.5 million hospitalizations, and gathered information about the outcome of care by 58,000 doctors, of which 32.1% were women. The criteria were thirty-day survival and rate of readmission. After the data were normalized to eliminate confounding things, here are the key facts:

• 11.3% of the patients died within 30 days of being hospitalized.
• For women internists, mortality was 11.1% and readmission rate was 15.0%.
• For men internists, mortality was 11.5% and readmission rate was 15.6%.

Are these differences small enough to be negligible? No. More than 10 million seniors are hospitalized for medical conditions (excluding accidents) yearly. The doctors conclude, "…if male internists were performing at the level of women, there would be thirty-two thousand fewer deaths…each year." 32,000. That's 80% of the death toll from highway accidents.

Earlier in the book, we find that the month a child is born influences the likelihood of getting a flu shot during yearly pediatric exams. That influences the number of kids that get the flu. Why? The new flu shots become available in autumn, preparing to deal with the surge of influenza in the wintertime. A parent of a youngster whose checkup is in May or June is told to return to the doctor in October for a flu shot. Less than half do so. Some may take the child to a drug store clinic or instant clinic, but that is a small percentage. So kids with birthdays in the spring or fall, or even late winter, are less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to get the flu, or to get a bad case.

The last chapter of the book dwells on the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of politics in medicine. Humans have been called "the political animal"; politics gets into everything! The struggle for power is the source of the world's greatest evils. I'll leave it up to you to read their insipid take on the matter (sorry, docs!). Instead I'll riff on the experiences of myself and my wife.

We were reluctant to get the mRNA agent that was being called a vaccine. We learned some stories of people who survived the disease well enough, but had "Long Covid" and in some cases were debilitated for months. That tipped the scales; we decided to get the shots, which we did in April 2020. We were generally compliant with things like masking and "social distancing". By the time various "boosters" were announced, we'd done sufficient research to realize that the "vaccine" was usually useless and often harmful. Here is a point I wish the doctors had put in the book: The yearly number of serious adverse reactions to the mRNA agent is just a little greater than the sum total of serious adverse reactions to all other vaccines combined!

How many remember in the middle of the controversy, Dr. Anthony Fauci saying, "I AM Science!" He had already admitted to lying a couple of times, and had been caught in a few other lies. Here he lost all remaining credibility. He doesn't understand science, not even a little bit!

Here is what the mRNA agent does: It induces your body to create a particular protein found on the spike of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. That protein triggers the immune system to create antibodies to that single protein. It is a two step process. By contrast, a vaccine consists of broken-up viruses or proteins extracted from them, which triggers the immune system to create antibodies to most or all of the proteins in the vaccine. The extra step that came before increases the variability:

• Different people have different levels of response to a "foreign" protein. One person's immune system may produce ten or one hundred times as many antibodies as another's. This is why vaccines aren't 100% effective. Flu vaccines in particular show this effect.
• Different people have different levels of response to the mRNA agent. One person may wind up with ten or one hundred times the level of "spike protein", which in turn is subject to the range of variable response noted above.

A good portion of my career I used the statistics of distributions. I'll save you the agony of figuring out any equations. Rather, let me just say that when you have two distributions, the mathematical tool used is called convolution. The final, overall distribution is very wide indeed. In this case, a range of a few thousand to one. Also, you may have heard of the "Gaussian distribution", also called the "Normal curve", a smooth curve with a symmetrical hump in the middle. That's not what we have here. The response distributions here are more likely Lognormal distributions, which have a small number of large values and a much larger number of small values. Convolving two of these yields an extra-wide distribution, but heavily weighted toward very few powerful responses, a large-ish number of "middling" ones (centered on the "target" response the pharma company aimed for), and an overwhelming number of small to almost nonexistent responses. These small responses led to the "breakthrough" cases of COVID-19 disease among those who took the shots. For some people, the shot may as well have been distilled water.

My wife and I count ourselves lucky. We had mild reactions to the mRNA shots, a little stronger than the "sore arm" we get from a flu shot, but not too bad. The same-day response was to the mRNA itself, and the next day's soreness was in reaction to the protein thus created. We learned later that some people dropped dead on the spot! These must have been those with a super-strong response in both steps of the process. Their immune responses overwhelmed the body.

I have several friends who are doctors. One of them, because of his work, was doubly treated; he received both the Pfizer and the Moderna mRNA agents. He has since had COVID twice. But before that, he and I worked out a strategy to deal with the infection: Stop eating for a couple of days. Those who died from the infection actually died from pneumonia, which was caused by the body's overreaction to the virus. The ones with the strongest immune systems died first! What is the gooey junk that fills the lungs during pneumonia made from? Sugar. This is why diabetics have the highest risk. What happens when we skip meals? Blood sugar is reduced. It drops a lot. This hinders pneumonia.

Secondly, the two "Democrat-hated" drugs, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, are useful not because they are anti-viral. They aren't. It is because they tamp down the cytokine reactions that lead to pneumonia. HCQ works in the first day or two, and Ivermectin later on. My doctor friend obtained supplies of both medications for himself and for my wife and me.

At the end of August, 2022, I caught COVID. Here I found out that the joke was on me. The primary symptom I had was powerful nausea. I threw up everything, and I couldn't even drink water! So I couldn't take HCQ!! I went to the one clinic in the area with antivirals on hand, and was given those plus anti-nausea pills so I could swallow the meds and keep them down. Although I'd moved to the spare bedroom the day I woke up sick, my wife got sick a week after I did. She had a very sore throat, making it painful to take any pills. She went to the clinic and also got the antiviral. Both of us recovered quickly. By the way, I had lingering low appetite, my kind of "long Covid", and I took advantage of it to lose some weight, around 30#.

A year and a half later, the above scenario was repeated. Same symptoms, same need to get the antivirals, same quick recovery. I was able to lose another 15#, and I learned what it takes to hold my weight. So I count SARS-Cov-2 my friend!

Another year or so has passed. My family doctor is in agreement with what we've done and with my determination never to get a "booster." They're too dangerous.

That is a long digression from a wonderful book. Doctors Jena and Worsham show how and why doctors make certain kinds of errors, and discuss ways these errors are being mitigated. Reading this book is useful to all of us as patients, so we have the mental tools to work with our doctor(s). We can't replace them, but we can either help or hinder their work. We all know that something will get us sooner or later. Together we can make "later" be even later, and thrive in the meantime.

Finding Rex

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, paleontology, biographies, dinosaurs, t rex, tyrannosaurus rex

The last summer that I was a geology student I spent six weeks in an area above Lee Vining in the Sierras. Midway through, in the early afternoon I was resting near a pond when several backpackers came by, hiking toward a wilderness area another mile along the trail. I asked them how long they would be there. One said, "A week. How long have you been here?" I answered, "Three weeks." "Wow! That's neat," another one answered. I grinned ruefully and said, "Not really." I was already getting tired of tenting. Of course, since part of my daily routine was gathering rocks and hauling 10-20 pounds of them back to base camp for identification, I suppose I wasn't having quite as much fun as the average tourist. By the end of the summer I was pretty clear that I wasn't cut out for a job that required lots of field work.

Reading The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How it Shook Our World by David K. Randall, I could only admire the grit of Barnum Brown. To this day, roughly half of the dinosaurs and early mammals on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City are specimens he collected. In addition to an iron constitution, he had a quick mind and had learned to recognize the kinds of geological deposits most likely to contain great fossils. He had also learned enough anatomy to make a good guess as to what animal a new bone belonged to.

While Barnum Brown collected on most of the continents, his main stomping ground was the great fossil beds of north-central United States. This was the area made famous by the "bone wars" of Professors Marsh and Cope, from 1877 to 1982. These rivals went broke trying to outdo each other as they collected, and described, species after species of large vertebrate fossils. In the end, the biggest and baddest dinosaur of all escaped their grasp. Brown found the first specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex in 1902, and for some years, during which he found a few more, he was the only collector to find any.

The book is largely a biography of Barnum Brown, who was named for P.T. Barnum almost on a whim, because the circus was in town. The author details his "life and hard times" and the resulting drive that motivated him to seek solace in the wilderness. Yet he wasn't antisocial, as so many "mountain men" are. In addition to great strength and persistence and lively intelligence, he could be intensely social, the kind of guy who is the life of the party, whatever party he happens across. This enabled him to befriend ranchers and farmers in the field and to maintain a, if not good, at least useful working relationship with the notoriously prickly director of the American Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborne. It greased many a relationship necessary to get access and tips to the best bone deposits. Brown lived just days short of ninety years.

Rather than focus on Barnum Brown, I find most interesting the social changes in attitudes toward dinosaurs that resulted from the discovery of T. rex. All the large dinosaurs found previously were herbivores such as the familiar Brontosaurus and Diplodocus and duckbills such as Hadrosaurus. They were portrayed as overgrown cows, brainless, plodding beasts that had to move about half submerged in swamps to buoy up their enormous bulk. When the first Triceratops was described in 1889 by Charles O. Marsh, not many wondered what the great horns were needed for. Then when the first tyrannosaur was discovered by Brown in 1902, it soon became clear that those horns were sorely needed! Public interest was piqued, and as "tyrant king" specimens or replicas were displayed in a growing number of museums, museum attendance boomed.

T. rex is still the most popular dinosaur. The proliferation of celebrity knockoffs such as Barney and the popularity of tyrannosaur suits, used for all sorts of pranks, has made this terrifying beast almost a cuddly member of the household. But I'm sure I wouldn't want to stumble across this picnic in a nearby forest! (Image generated with the Flux1.Kontext engine in Leonardo AI.)

I'm a six footer. Were I in this picture, the top of my head would barely reach the larger animal's knee. Even the "babies" shown here would outweigh me by a big factor. The teeth of an adult T. rex are the size of bananas. Big bananas. Perhaps Plantains.

I have great admiration for men like Brown who can go into the field and bring back cool stuff. My style of collecting is day trips…no more weeks in a tent for me!

NET—A flawed translation

 kw: book reviews, partial reviews, Bible translation, Bible interpretation, annotations, grammar

In late February I reviewed the NET's rendition of Genesis.  See that review for background information and my impressions up to that date. NET is The Holy Bible, New English Translation. I considered at that time finishing my reading of the text and all the notes before reviewing again, but now having read the books of Moses and a few of the historical books, I think it worthwhile to write this update.

In the prefatory material, beginning on page XI, the Translation Team members are listed. A team of five worked on the books of Moses (the Pentateuch), and a team of four on the historical books, from Joshua to 2 Chronicles. I note that two persons are members on all the teams for the various sections of the Old Testament, so I presume they are the editors.

I am at present midway through 2 Samuel. Here I will focus on a few helpful notes, then on notes or translations that I consider the most egregious errors, and finally on obscure terms used without explanation in the notes, that were not found in notes on Genesis. I begin with positive or helpful items.

• Note E, Ex 4:19: The SN (Study Note) discusses the possible dates of the return of Moses to Egypt, supporting 1450 BC or soon thereafter, after the death of Thutmose III, who reigned 1504-1450. This places the Exodus early in the reign of Amenhotep II, who is thus denoted the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This is good. It is in marked contrast to speculations I encounter from time to time that the Exodus might have taken place two or three centuries later. Israel's sojourn in Egypt is stated to have lasted 400 years, making 1450 BC the latest possible date. Many exegeses confuse the city of Ramses with one or another Pharaoh of that name.
• Note C, Ex 10:22: The SN correctly points out the fallacy of trying to "explain" the plagues imposed on Egypt by various natural phenomena. God's miracles are God's miracles. A similar note is found as Note O in Dt 8:3, regarding manna. Natural products such as honeydew are no substitute for the real thing. Consider also that manna never arrived on the Sabbath day.
• Note G, Josh 15:63: The TN (Translator's Note) makes a good point that the writer was writing before David captured Jebus.
• Note d, Ju 5:27: discusses the word shadad and the NET translation "violently killed", which is better than most translations.
• Note R, 1Sa 25:37: A very good TN, that God's striking of Nabal needs no medical explanation, though this should be a SN.

Now, on to some questionable items:

• Conversions of units, such as the cubit, beginning in Ex 26:2. The numbers used, primarily 3 and 5 and the half-units 1½ and 2½, are important to interpreting the typology of the tabernacle and its furniture. They got the cubit wrong anyway (see further in the prior review). The numbers and their units belong in the text; it is best to explain such conversions in footnotes or marginal notes.
• Dt 11:13, 18: The translation of "heart and soul" as "mind and being" reveals that the translators are confused about the use of these words, and the rich meaning inherent in understanding human tripartness (spirit, soul, and body, with the "heart" composed of part of both spirit and soul). 
• Note a, Ju 5:15-16: The Text-critical note (TC) states, "The great majority of Hebrew MSS have 'resolves of heart,' but a few MSS read 'searchings of heart,' which is preferred in light of v. 16." This misunderstands Hebrew parallelism, in that a near-synonym was written to avoid repeating an expression. The two terms differ by a single letter and they rhyme. Sloppy translating!
• Note a, Ju 13:25: In the translation the word "control" is used where Hebrew has "stir." The note indicates what the Hebrew word is, but the word "stir" properly belongs in the text, and then no note is needed. "Control" is too harsh and absolutist.
• Note N, 1 Sa 1:12: It is curious that the 6th letter of Hebrew is spelled "vav" in the Notes to the Pentateuch, but "waw" in the Notes to the historical books. Didn't these scholars communicate amongst themselves?
• Note D, 1Sa 14:15: The TN states that "God" may have been used as an intensifier. This just waters down the force of the expression.
• Note E, 1Sa 24:6, 10: The word "anointed" is rendered "chosen one," which weakens the sense. Anointing by a prophet was a really big deal!

Of a total of 47 comments I have gathered from Exodus to the end of 1 Samuel, I see that ten are highlighted dark red, by which I indicate something really awful. Several of my comments refer to weakened expressions, such as "being" for "soul" or "leading" for "judging" and "show respect" for "sanctify". Besides these, I present just four:

• Note D, Ex 26:37: The SN derides typology and the study of symbolic meanings. Terrible advice! To the Jews, the Old Testament is history and is literally true. In the New Testament, Paul writes in a few places about the symbolic meaning of certain passages, even using the words "type" and "antitype", and in one place, "allegory". To a Christian, the Old Testament is a rich source of typology and symbolism regarding divine matters.
• Note R, Lv 7:32: The "heave offering", alternatively "lifted-up offering", is translated "contribution offering", which destroys the sense. This offering was literally tossed a few inches into the air (and then caught), and is a type of the ascension of Christ. Similarly, the wave offering (which NET properly translates) is a type of the resurrection of Christ.
• Note U, Ju 2:10: The Hebrew expression "gathered to their fathers" is translated "passed away", which obscures the beauty of this term; it indicates that there is an afterlife in which a dead person is reunited with ancestors. Many Christians think the Jews didn't (and don't) believe in an afterlife. The term "gathered to their fathers" proves the opposite. There are other indications also.
• Notes A, T, Dt 1:29, 45: More instances of a strong expression being toned down in the translation, and explained away in the note. Disgraceful!

I complained at length in the prior review that thousands of notes speak of adding or changing a word for "stylistic reasons" or "clarity". The volume would be quite a bit shorter if the historical custom of using italics to indicate supplied words had been used, and a single statement in the preface would then suffice.

I think that's enough to illustrate why I consider the translation to be flawed, and the scholarship expressed in the notes to be frequently sloppy. I don't recommend NET. Now, to explain another flurry of obscure grammatical terms. Firstly, a few more Hebrew verb tenses:

• hishtaphel - a very rare verb stem that expresses causative action in active voice.
• hitpoel (=hithpoel) - "to do something to oneself". Rare.
• poel - a verb stem based on the noun meaning "worker", referring to repeated action.
• khetib (properly ketib or ketiv, versus qere) - ketiv and qere are markings to indicate the difference between what was written and how it is to be read.

More grammatical terms almost nobody knows:

• cohortative - expressing desire, or a first-person demand.
• apodosis - the consequent clause of a conditional sentence: "If you asked me I would agree."
• protasis - the conditional clause, as "If you asked me..." above.
• frequentative - indicating repeated action, not necessarily iterative.
• paranomastic (-tia) - a fancy word for "pun" or double meaning.
• volitive - expression desire or volition; "volitional" is a better known synonym.
• asseverative - a statement made with great solemnity, certainty and conviction. Think of court testimony.
• epexegetical - added words to clarify meaning.
• talionic - a synonym for retaliation; talionic law, or lex talonis, is "an eye for an eye", for example.
• optative - a verbal mood expressing a wish, desire, hope or prayer; "if only..."
• aposiopesis - breaking off a sentence in the middle, to hint at the unspeakable or to express shock.
• adversative - in opposition to, like an adversary.
• casus pedens - probably a typo for casus pendens, the placement of a noun or pronoun first in a sentence, but modified later in the sentence. "Pendens" means "hanging".
• haplography - accidental omission of one or more repeated letters in a longer word, as philology→philogy. This is a particular occurrence in manuscript copying. "Haplo-" means "half".
• metathesis - in linguistics, swapping sounds or letters in a word, such as ask→aks or nuclear→nucular.
• homoloteleuton - literally, "similar ending", a near rhyme for rhetorical effect or to sort-of-rhyme a word that is hard to rhyme, such as "orange".
• casuistic - either resolving an ethical dilemma, or being rhetorically subtle and deceptive.
• erotesis - a rhetorical question that expects a negative answer: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
• merism - speaking of parts to refer to the whole, as "day and night" to mean "all the time".
• strophe - a defined section of a poem; often a synonym for "stanza".
• paraenesis - moral exhortation, usually basing one's argument on tradition.
• chiastic - literary structure best described as "going out the way one came in." Many stories detail a protagonist's trials to reach a goal, to be repeated in reverse order to return home.
• homoiarcton - when a series of lines begin the same way, a copying scribe may skip from one line to the next, leaving out an intervening portion of text.
• nunated - the use of the letter "nun" as a suffix; in Hebrew the letter is written differently when it is the last letter of a word.
• stative versus fientive - stative verbs express a condition, fientive verbs express actions.

I knew only four of these words previously. Even Blogger marks nine as unknown. It is a serious fault of the NET volume to omit a glossary.

At the rate I am reading, I expect to finish the Old Testament near the end of 2026. I hope I observe better results in the New Testament.

Yet another take on the origin of life, here and afar

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, biology, exobiology, origin of life, evolution

Seeing the book's title, Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life, by Mario Livio and Jack Szostak, I had a waking dream that this image evokes. Is someone out there, wondering if there is life elsewhere?

(It took a while to "persuade" OpenArt to make the base image, one to which I could add the other elements.)

I was surprised to find that in a book this small (just over 300 pages), the authors would deal with the two biggest questions that exist: "How did life arise?" (the question behind "Where did we come from?") and "Are we alone?" The authors survey what is currently known about the abiotic→biotic transition in six chapters, and they present the multitude of methods for finding signs of life off-Earth in six chapters. The final chapter summarizes the whole.

Concerning the chemistry and physics that might have engendered the first living cells, one must get a bit technical. So much so that they include an appendix to Chapter 3 ("From Chemistry to Biology") that one might call a pre-Primer for Biochemistry 001. In biochemistry as in geochemistry, chemistry is geometry, because the shapes of molecules matter. In fact, much of biological evolution has been taken up with creating innovative and useful molecular shapes for "doing things" (that is, proteins, particularly enzymes). This pre-Primer introduces this kind of geometrical chemistry.

Thus, Chapters 3-5 show the results of breakthroughs in recent years, that broke through a logjam that confounded the science of biotic origins for decades. They describe in particular the way certain necessary molecules could have been assembled step by step, rather than all-at-once, as earlier hypotheses required. 

There's no need for me to get into the weeds about that here. I'll just touch on this impression: Chapter after chapter filled with "could be" and "might have" sorts of statements begin to sound like a case of terminal arm-waving. What rescues this section from that fate is the salient fact that we really don't know what happened between the period, starting almost 4 billion years ago, and lasting about 0.2 or 0.3 billion years, until the time of the first unambiguous fossils of biological "something", and the time that the chemistry of Earth, its atmosphere, and its oceans, had changed enough to support whatever living beings then existed. We have a somewhat good idea of the chemistry of some 3.5 billion years ago, but only the rawest speculation about what came before. We surmise that the change came about largely because of living things, just as the later Great Oxygenation Event made an even more radical change. We still have a lot to learn!

As to, "Who might be out there?"…the only "experiments" we can perform are the various kinds of detection technologies: Telescopes of the optical, ultraviolet, infrared, and radio varieties. Contrary to the claims of the UFO (and now UAV) communities, there is no (publicly known) and concrete evidence that some kind of space aliens have visited or are visiting. A big part of the budget of NASA is devoted to ET-finding technology. It's great that a few exoplanets can now be seen, though not in any detail, and that thousands have been detected and catalogued. 

I once read a short story in which a signal is detected by SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, conducted with radio telescopes), and is found to be encrypted. The story ends with the protagonist wondering if the source is military in nature, which would not bode well for future relations. I wrote to the author, "Perhaps if the signal gets decoded, it will be bank transactions or inventory records." 

It's sobering to consider that the signals we have sent off into space by our radio and TV signals have yet to reach beyond about 100 light years, and if "someone" at a distance of 50-100 light years is listening in our direction, with technology at our level, they probably cannot yet detect it. Maybe in another 10-20 years…

Enrico Fermi's question still resonates: "Where is everybody?" How plausible is it that we are at the forefront? That, at least in a bubble a thousand or so light years in radius, we are the first planet with life to develop a civilization? Consider that it may be necessary for the Universe to evolve for 8-9 billion years, to produce a generation of stars with enough metallicity to have rocky planets that are roughly Earth-sized. Perhaps life can arise quickly once a planet's surface cools enough for oceans and lakes to exist. But then on Earth, at least, it took almost four billion years for biology to produce an animal that can build telescopes. I like the Copernican Principle, that we are about average. Maybe somebody, somewhere, developed faster and is millions or tens of millions of years ahead of us. Is that enough for them to develop the tech needed to send expeditions all around the galaxy, and find us? Maybe not.

In coming years, perhaps we will find out. Meanwhile, we have the great task of keeping the one planet we possess in good enough shape that we can survive long enough to be the visitors to someone else.