{"id":5730,"date":"2011-01-06T18:30:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T23:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2011-01-06T16:42:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-06T21:42:26","slug":"thursday-various-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5730","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.laphamsquarterly.org\/essays\/vanishing-act.php?page=all\">A fascinating story<\/a> about a young writer who disappeared. Although it&#8217;s arguably a story that has precious little to do with her having been a child prodigy and more the difficult circumstances of her life following her parents&#8217; divorce. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/ScottWesterfeld\" title=\"@ScottWesterfeld\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>With New York bracing for more snow tomorrow, I think it needs to be said again: Bloomberg and the rest of the city <a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/susie-madrak\/take-good-look-post-storm-new-york-ci\"><i>really<\/i> botched it two weeks ago<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.wordpress.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Meanwhile, New Jersey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/40887018\">wants to seize your unused gift cards<\/a>. I honestly don&#8217;t know enough about how gift cards work to know whether or not this is a <i>terrible<\/i> idea, but they&#8217;ve already been struck down in court. I&#8217;ve always been led to believe that stores view unused gift cards as essentially free money &#8212; they get the giver&#8217;s cash, but then never have to part with merchandise in exchange &#8212; but again, the bare-bones economics might be different. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cynical-c.com\" title=\"Cynical-C\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Meanwhile, Virginia revokes what may be <a href=\"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/5724684\/\">the greatest license plate ever<\/a>. <i>Won&#8217;t somebody think of not eating the children?<\/i> [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/auntbeast\" title=\"@auntbeast\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>And finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/magazine\/2010\/12\/ff_dsmv\/all\/1\">Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness<\/a>. A fascinating article &#8212; and I think not just to folks like me who happen to work in the field of mental health publishing &#8212; about the battles being fought over the forthcoming <i>DSM<\/i>-5.This exchange is particularly revealing:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>I recently asked a former president of the APA how he used the <em>DSM<\/em> in his daily work. He told me his secretary had just asked him for a diagnosis on a patient he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been seeing for a couple of months so that she could bill the insurance company. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really formulated it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he told me. He consulted the <em>DSM<\/em>-IV and concluded that the patient had obsessive-compulsive disorder.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Did it change the way you treated her?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked, noting that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d worked with her for quite a while without naming what she had.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So what would you say was the value of the diagnosis?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I got paid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.wordpress.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/asofterworld.com\/index.php?id=626\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/zebra.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"In bed.\" width=\"720\" height=\"261\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5731\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fascinating story about a young writer who disappeared. Although it&#8217;s arguably a story that has precious little to do with her having been a child prodigy and more the difficult circumstances of her life following her parents&#8217; divorce. [via] With New York bracing for more snow tomorrow, I think it needs to be said &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5730\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[67,83,177,60,54,37,157,10,114,111,12],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-america","tag-legal","tag-medicine","tag-money","tag-new-york","tag-news","tag-psychology","tag-various","tag-weather","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}