Dean's World

The flea asks me to answer some ifs, so:

If I could be a musician... I'd play blues/jazz/rock guitar like a combination of Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and would form a band with Bo Bice.

If I could be a chef... I'd constantly be searching the various cuisines of the world, looking for the most unusual and interesting dishes, constantly seeking something new to expose people to.

If I could be a psychologist... I'd try to force the entire profession to stop using psychoanalysis as a treatment for any condition until they'd done the double-blind studies to find methods that actually work and aren't just pointless whining or navel gazing.

If I could be a librarian... I'd find some way to go back in time and salvage the entire contents of the library at Alexandria.

If I could be an athlete... I'd be a professional skydiver.

Bonus:

If I could be a writer... I'd finally have an agent for this bleeping novel.

I'm supposed to tag three others with this. Who can I annoy with it? Let's see...

(show)

(link)

Rune from Oslo Norway (mail):

I i could be a french left-wing intellectual i'd be André Glucksmann

4.28.2005 7:00am

Dean Esmay:

Interesting guy. I may have to take back all the nasty things I've said about French intellectuals the last couple of years.

4.28.2005 7:44am

Christiana (mail) (www):

I'd be interested to hear how you can do a double-blind study on a psychoanalysis method.

4.28.2005 9:44am

Not all that hard. Take X number of patients presenting with certain symptoms. Group A gets talk therapy, group Y gets placebo. Compare the results over time.

If you have more than one "talk therapy" method, test each the same way.

It'll take a year or three, but it's not hard to do ultimately.

4.28.2005 2:22pm

e-Claire (www):

They've done that for a great many approaches. What you get is called the Rule of Thirds. For any given therapy, about a third of the people get better, about a third stay the same and about a third get worse.

...'course the same applies for *no* intervention. ...but that's not important, now...

4.29.2005 8:44pm