Dissociative Fugue: Amnesia and Related Disorders: Merck Manual Home Edition:

Dissociative fugue is a disorder in which one or more episodes of sudden, unexpected, and purposeful travel from home (fugue) occur, during which a person cannot remember some or all of his past life.

Dissociative fugue affects about 2 of 1,000 people in the United States. It is much more common in people who have been in wars, accidents, or natural disasters.

Causes

The causes of dissociative fugue are similar to those of dissociative amnesia. Dissociative fugue is often mistaken for malingering, because both conditions may occur under circumstances that a person might understandably wish to evade. However, dissociative fugue occurs spontaneously and is not faked. Malingering is a state in which a person feigns illness because it removes him from accountability for his actions, gives him an excuse to avoid responsibilities, or reduces his exposure to a known hazard, such as a dangerous job assignment. Many fugues seem to represent a disguised wish fulfillment (for example, an escape from overwhelming stresses, such as divorce or financial ruin). Other fugues are related to feelings of rejection or separation, or they may protect the person from suicidal or homicidal impulses.

When dissociative fugue recurs more than a few times, the person usually has an underlying dissociative identity disorder.

Symptoms and Diagnosis

A fugue may last from hours to weeks or months, or occasionally even longer. A person in a fugue state, having lost his customary identity, usually disappears from his usual haunts, leaving his family and job. If the fugue is brief, the person may appear simply to have missed some work or come home late or, if confused, may come to the attention of medical or legal authorities. If the fugue lasts several days or longer, the person may travel far from home and begin a new job with a new identity, unaware of any change in his life. During the fugue, the person may appear normal and attract no attention. However, at some point, the person may become aware of the memory loss (amnesia) or confused about his identity.

Often the person has no symptoms or is only mildly confused during the fugue. However, when the fugue ends, the person may experience depression, discomfort, grief, shame, intense conflict, and suicidal or aggressive impulses.

The AQ Test From Wired

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.

Agree: 2,5,6,7,9,12,13,16,18,22,23,26,33,35,41,43,45,46: 1 point
Disagree: 1,3,10,11,15,17,24,25,27,28,34,36,37,38,44,47,48: 1 point
Score: 35

The Latin Abbreviations i.e. and e.g.: "The Latin abbreviation i.e., which stands for id est, means that is, that is to say, or in other words. The letters e.g. stand for the Latin phrase exempli gratia, which means for example."

I DID IT! IS OVER FIREFOX
Originally uploaded by andres_agudelo.

I had been trying this for ages

Chuck Norris Facts:

• Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills People.
  
• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
  
• Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
  
• The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
  
• There is no chin under Chuck Norris' Beard. There is only another fist.
  
• Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.
  
• The leading causes of death in the United States are: 1. Heart Disease 2. Chuck Norris 3. Cancer
  
• Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.
  
• Chuck Norris is my Homeboy.
  
• Chuck Norris doesn't go hunting.... CHUCK NORRIS GOES KILLING"
  

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "USB powered, mouse-aimed airdart launcher

This airdart launcher draws power from your USB and is aimed using your mouse. Twenty quid at M&S. Link (via Red Ferret)

"

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later: "The possibility of total control of the viewer exists, especially the young viewer. TV viewing is a kind of sleep-learning. An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion. In addition, much of the information is graphic and therefore passes into the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than being processed by the left, where the conscious personality is located."

"Firefoxit is a Firefox extension that puts tiny little widgets or web applications on a kind of desktop launched from Firefox. Firefoxit has been tested on Windows XP, 2000, 98, Linux and Mac OSx86."



"Sometimes apps just don't look cool occupying an entire webpage. Firefoxit widgets are intended to be anything from a weather widget to a notepad or a spreadsheet."



The site: http://firefoxit.mozdev.org/

Languages like Java and C++ are too general. In the future languages will be specific. There will be languages for every case. I think.

Bloop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Bloop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.



The Bloop is the name given to an underwater sound, first heard in 1997, that is occasionally heard by sonar equipment. The source of the sound remains unknown, but is thought to have originated somewhere around 50 degrees South; 100 degreew West.



The sound, detected by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines, matches the audio profile of a living creature. There is no known animal that could have produced the sound, however, and if it is an animal it would have to be huge: much larger than even a whale according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon.



Some postulate that the sound may come from a huge and as-yet undiscovered species of octopus or squid. Others dispute this, pointing out that no known species of cephalopod have the physiology that would allow this type of sound to be produced. To date there has been no explanation for what it is, exactly, that could have produced the sound and most seem unwilling to rule anything completely out."

I spend a lot of time browsing and I am also really p00r so have to use this 800x600 resolution because my monitor is small. I've found a nice and compact way to organize Firefox's toolbar, and want to share it. Here it is:



Explained:

1. Bookmarks in a big empty space left by menus.
2. Search box switched to center-left. I use it more than the URL box.
3. URL on the right.
4. Big navigation buttons. Added the always useful add new tab and new window.
5. Shortcut to downloads and to the handy del.icio.us extension.

Everything is done through left click customize.

Although Doom always caused me headaches I enjoyed killing ducks with this remake: Duck Doom Deluxe

BackRub was the first Google name.

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "Mixing together anecdotes, graphics, and fables, Rucker teases out the implications of his new worldview, which he calls 'universal automatism.' His analysis reveals startling aspects of the everyday world, touching upon such topics as chaos, the internet, fame, free will, and the pursuit of happiness. More than a popular science book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul is a philosophical entertainment that teaches us how to enjoy our daily lives to the fullest possible extent."

Wow, I digged this yesterday and today made it on the popular diggs page. I am finally popular. I think. How does it feel like two million people reading something you wrote? I dont know. Maybe there arent two million anyway. Actually, I don't feel nothing.

http://digg.com/gaming/Zelda_first_commercial_EVER._Cool_Rap_and_NES

This code may be useful to get UpdateLayeredWindow for GDI working. It took me hours to get this working by the way. There are not good and working examples arround. You should replace "GetDC(hWnd)" later with a bitmap that contains four chanels (One for alpha). You only need a window handle for this: hWnd, if it works you should see a weird white window.

RECT rt;
POINT ptSrc = {0,0};
SIZE size;

SetWindowLong(hWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE,
GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE) | WS_EX_LAYERED);

GetWindowRect(hWnd,&rt);
size.cx = rt.right - rt.left;
size.cy = rt.bottom - rt.left;

BLENDFUNCTION blendFunc = {AC_SRC_OVER,0,128,AC_SRC_ALPHA};

int res = UpdateLayeredWindow(hWnd, NULL, NULL, &size,
GetDC(hWnd),&ptSrc,0,&blendFunc,ULW_ALPHA);

Just take an old keyboard and remove the plastic cover and keys. Luckily it will be made of silicon. You'll get a nice transparent and soft keyboard with no key names of course (time to practice!). The new "keys" are soft and don't make any noise. Try it!

Ideas. Ideas should be shared. Something that has never been thought by any, and somehow comes to somebody. That somebody should share it. Specially If its an idea that can be useful for others. That will help a lot our society. Comunities will evolve faster...



Outsource your job to earn more! - The Times of India

[2F01] Itchy and Scratchy Land: "Marge: See all that stuff in there, Homer? That's why your robot never worked."

Got a nice answer over at the Italian Wikipedia IRC's channel about the word “Capisci”:

Wikimedia Italia http://www.wikimedia.it
--- Topic for #it.wikipedia set by Frieda at Tue Jun 21 03:57:55 2005
--- #it.wikipedia :[freenode-info] Welcome Tor users! Please stop by ##tor
to compare notes and to report any freenode Tor problems.
>hi everyone? can I ask a qustion about italia? >italian
>of course
>go on
>when they say in movies something like capicci or something like that, 
>meaning "ok" how do you speel that word?
>is it gapcci, capice, ..?
>it's "capisci?" = "do you understand?"
>or "capisco" = "I understand"
>the first is read ka-PEE-shee
>the second is read ka-PEES-ko
>yeah that's the one
>thanks!
>you're welcome