...but Said is not one of them, based on the summaries of his work, and Irwin's critique, published here.

Only a fool would deny Said's point that, say, American views of Iranian culture have only a tenuous hold on reality. Our ignorance of Iran is profound and almost completely skewed towards abetting a "we superior, they evil" agenda. In short, and to use brainy jargon, we buy into a delusional discourse of imperialism more often than not when it comes to discussing Iranian.

That said, Said clearly overstated his case in describing a ubiquitous, unchangeable and contemptuous discourse. Whether that overstatement was deliberate or inadvertent is open to debate, but that is why other scholars come along to refine, amplify, refect, and improve upon the work of earlier ones. In the case of Said, what is very clear is that the criticisms that Irwin makes, while serious, fall far short of the rampant dishonesty Kamiya accuses Said of practicing.

By contrast, a truly awful case of egregious distortion and fraud was perpetrated by the very famous scholar of American folk music, Alan Lomax. Lomax suppressed and minimized the extraordinary research of his (black) colleague John Work on the music and mores of Coahoama County, Mississippi. In addition, Lomax systematically ignored any data that didn't fit his particular brand of populism. The picture that emerges from studying Work's research is radically different than the one that is commonly believed about this area. Why does it matter? Because Coahoama County is one of the most important crucibles for the music we now know as blues, jazz, and rock.

Nothing Said distorted or omitted, as described in Kamiya's article, rises to this level of dishonesty (and I hasten to add that Lomax himself did invaluably great work for all his many truly serious faults). Perfect Said was not. And his opinions on music, while fairly informed for an amateur, are hopelessly conservative and often dull. But there are no reasons given to support the near-wholesale trashing Kamiya administers.

I. Lewis Libby is on trial. For obstructing a federal investigation.

There is nothing allegorical about this at all. Libby was caught, allegedly, lying to a grand jury. He is innocent until proven guilty, not tragically innocent.

As for submitting oneself to an all-dominant authority, there's a word to describe such behavior: masochism.

I'm as appalled as anyone here by the sheer incoherence of Haught's statements in re: Dawkins et al. But I can't forget his testimony at Kitzmiller, where he made the point that "intelligent design" creationism was not only bad science. It was also very poor theology. While I (and others) had been saying so for years, Haught was the first person to make the point in a context which mattered.

Regarding Haught's theology, many people, including many scientists, have said that the argument is not with God as some kind of transcendent, oceanic, sense of grandeur within nature. This notion, sometimes abbreviated, per Einstein, as "Spinoza's God," is not the focus of Dawkins' and Dennet's ire. It is the idea of God as The Guy In The Sky that the so-called "New Atheists" strongly object to. "The Guy In The Sky" is by far the most widely believed notion of God (by congregants and pasots) within most evangelical Christians, christianists, and similar movements In other religions.

In other words, Haught's theology is irrelevant because few care enough to argue about it. It is the notion of a *personal* God as obsessed over by christianists that appalls. And it appalls Haught as much as it does Dawkins.

No doubt: Anti-depressants are over-prescribed, and over-hyped. Yet the fact remains that depression, real depression is a crippling pathology, not merely the blahs. The medications, like ssri's, can lift about 10% of the depressive symptoms. It doesn't sound like much, but it can be the difference between life and death.

In regards to CBT, I''m sure it works for some, but many people do not like it, for one reason or another, just like many people do not like drugs. It's not laziness, just different strokes.

The author does have a very good point that the profits are in neurotics, not psychotics. That said, new meds in dealing with psychotic symptoms and schizophrenia have appeared. Surely they're not perfect, but for some they have worked wornders without as many crippling side effects as the older neuroleptics.

Finally, there is an unfortunate tendency in articles deploring the aggressive treatment of common unhappiness to indulge in moralizing. The Miserable One should suck it up, get over it. I can't think of a good reason why such an attitude is called for. Perhaps at the species level unhappiness has some adaptive potential. But there is no reason under the sun why an individual needs to suffer unduly, even if technically it's not a "real" depression. To withhold amelioration seems not only puritanical, but irrational.