Random Thoughts Part 4 - Split Thread

[OmCheeto]

I've decided that 5 year olds, are universally evil.*

I had 3 of them on my front porch the other day, trying to abscond with one of my new goldfish.

I took this image, from INSIDE my house.
When I opened the door, they scattered, like rats!

But then, they stopped, and looked over their shoulders at me.
I asked, in a mean old man grumpy voice; "What do you want!"

They said; "A goldfish".

So I went outside, and caught one for them.
And they took it home.

--------
*When I was 5, I taught my little brother how to steal candy, from the convenience store.
The convenience store owner, being wise to my nefarious deeds, notified my dad one day as we walked in, and dad snuck up behind us, and asked if I had money to pay for the candy. Oooops!

 

[wukunlin]

Now that their general manager have signed the documents. they just need to pass it on for me to sign, and then I will be heading for my second full-time job

 

[Lisa!]

As much as I love traveling, I hate packing!

 

[WWGD]

As much as I love traveling, I hate packing!

Women tend to pack way more stuff than man do. It seems as if they were moving to the place where they are traveling.

 

[ShayanJ]

Its strange that every time I see the phrase "ground meat", it takes me some time to realize its not ground as in Earth's surface, but the p.p. of grind!
Just imagine me thinking:"WTF, what is ground meat?"!

 

[WWGD]

Its strange that every time I see the phrase "ground meat", it takes me some time to realize its not ground as in Earth's surface, but the p.p. of grind!
! < Snip>

Grind has a passport?!?

 

[ShayanJ]

Grind has a passport?!?

Gosh, you never had ground any meat?! Of course you need passport for doing that!

 

[JorisL]

No way. I had to uninstall update KB3035583 to get rid of the "reserve a windows 10 copy" application. Now I check for "more information" on every KB-update before downloading. My daughter was visiting and last night we were discussing this. Her opinion was that they kept dumbing down the operating systems.

There's a reason they need to dumb it down. Mostly because most people are dumb.
Heck I'm trying to "teach" my baby sister to be a critical thinker. Instead of solving problems I tell them to google the sh*t out of the issue.
Not only computer problems but any problem. The other day she wanted to eat pomegranate but didn't know how to get the seeds out.
Told her to google it, she still hasn't because she's stubborn and at "that" age. It was one of the first times my mom supported my answer.

Oddly my mom has a decent schooling regarding computers. She even worked with old mainframes, pre-internet. She seems to have lost most of that knowledge...

 

[WWGD]

In political-themed tv shows, when a senator or rep appears, his/her name is followed by their political affiliation and state (both abbreviated). So when you have a Democrat from Ohio, you get : Mr/Mrs so-and-so, followed by ( D-OH). I once just got a glimpse of it while distracted and thought it was a Simpson's thing: D-OH!

 

[WWGD]

Finally understood the difference:
Whining: When you don't like the person doing the complaint and/or disagree with the complaint. Otherwise, the person is complaining.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Its strange that every time I see the phrase "ground meat", it takes me some time to realize its not ground as in Earth's surface, but the p.p. of grind!
Just imagine me thinking:"WTF, what is ground meat?"!

This is probably a goal of genetic engineers, to bypass the cow, and even the grass, and create meat that just grows straight out of the ground.

 

[OmCheeto]

This is probably a goal of genetic engineers, to bypass the cow, and even the grass, and create meat that just grows straight out of the ground.

Whatever you do, do not tell Shyan the German word for Strawberries. (Erdbeeren)

----------------------
Erde: earth, Earth, ground, soil, world, dirt
Beeren: berries

And don't invite mfb either. I'm sure he'll argue that it doesn't really mean "dirt berries":
Es zimplee means zat zee berries are layingk on zee grund. Doch! Sind diese beeren gemacht von straw? Nein, dumkopf!

ps. Translation available on request.

 

[DiracPool]

Shoot for a star, hit a bird. Shoot for a bird, hit a rock.

 

[Astronuc]

Tech entrepreneur lost $1 million and made it back before 25
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/from-...d-back--indinero-s-jessica-mah-172014956.html

One of the key elements to inDinero’s rebirth? Couples therapy. Last year Mah and cofounder Andy Su, 24 decided to go to marriage therapy to improve their business partnership. The couple has never been in a romantic relationship. “Business partners have conflict sometimes,” she explains. “We yell at each other but we love each other too. Marriage counseling has really helped us figure out how to be better partners for each other.”

Hmmm - a business (partnership) is like a marriage.

 

[OmCheeto]

Tech entrepreneur lost $1 million and made it back before 25
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/from-...d-back--indinero-s-jessica-mah-172014956.html

Hmmm - a business (partnership) is like a marriage.

Makes sense to me.

But I find it weird, that she was interviewed, in MY rose garden.
I don't remember seeing any studios there.

 

[WWGD]

This is probably a goal of genetic engineers, to bypass the cow, and even the grass, and create meat that just grows straight out of the ground.

If they do that with bacon, they will run out of grass in a few hours. Sadly, I have not yet heard of ground bacon.

 

[WWGD]

I literally seriously EDIT hurt my mouth when chewing on a chip that was way too sharp. Now I have an inflammation.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If they do that with bacon, they will run out of grass in a few hours. Sadly, I have not yet heard of ground bacon.

They should be giving bacon away for free. There are 6 million feral hogs roaming the United States, and they do 1.5 billion in crop and property damage every year.

 

[lisab]

A GOOD thing happened today!

Since last summer, my knee has really been bothering me - especially going down stairs or down a slope. With a pack on it was excruciating, so I've had to bow out of several backpacking trips this summer. I thought that just resting it would let it heal, but it wasn't getting better. Well finally I decided to see if I can get my knee fixed.

I go off to physical therapy. They have me bendy-bendy, lifty-lifty, don large rubber band on my ankles and stretchy-stretchy. Repeat. Home exercises, daily. It's been about 10 days since I started.

Early this morning I go to the grocery store. I suddenly realize: I'm not in pain. I'm walking normally (how long have I been walking weird?!). Amazing. I didn't even realize I was in pain, it had become just part of my life.

Hats off to you PT folks! You know your stuff !

 

[WWGD]

They should be giving bacon away for free. There are 6 million feral hogs roaming the United States, and they do 1.5 billion in crop and property damage every year.

I wonder if wild, feral boar meet is tender-enough to make for good bacon. I imagine those animals are pretty muscular, living in the wild and all.

 

[jim hardy]

I wonder if wild, feral boar meet is tender-enough to make for good bacon. I imagine those animals are pretty muscular, living in the wild and all.

It barbecues well.
Every spring the Everglades Conservation Club hosts its "Wild Hog Jamboree", serving up wild hog
http://www.wildhogbbq.com/wild-hog-bbq/

Who we are...
The club was formed in 1950 by eight men, interested in conserving the wildlife population in the Big Cypress and Everglades. At the time the State of Florida had only recently established the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.

The club is located at Monroe Station, 40 miles due west of Miami, immediately south of the western intersection of the Tamiami Trail and Loop Road (state road 94). The club property consists of 40 acres, the clubhouse and service buildings plus a camp ground. A paid custodian maintains the grounds at all times. There are only about 150 members, the club membership is kept small, because the club wants to insure that it is composed only of those people that have worked for the clubs objectives.

The most important thing about the Club membership is that virtually everyone truly loves the Everglades and the Big Cypress and is personally prepared to work hard to protect it. Members work closely with the Game Department officers in reporting game violations, assessing game populations and water levels. The club has supported projects to propagate game through releases into under-populated areas. It has dug water holes in dry weather and fed animals in wet and flooding weather. We have supported Youth Camps and both Boy Scout and Girl Scout clubs. A number of club members have assisted law enforcement, fire and emergency forces in performing rescue work when airplanes have crashed or have been forced to land in the deep swamp and to fight fires.
The club holds an annual “Wild Hog Barbecue”, its sole fund raiser to cover its expenses and conservation efforts.

This information is excerpted from the book “Forty Years In The Everglades“, By Calvin R. Stone, a founding member of the club.

Share this
© 2015 The Everglades Conservation and Sportsmen's Club All rights reserved Fastfood theme by TwoBeers Crew - Powered by WordPress

i had the honor to work for Mr Stone at FPL.

Here's his book, and it's fascinating.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/for...des-calvin-r-stone/1000340309#productInfoTabs

 

[zoobyshoe]

A GOOD thing happened today!

Since last summer, my knee has really been bothering me - especially going down stairs or down a slope. With a pack on it was excruciating, so I've had to bow out of several backpacking trips this summer. I thought that just resting it would let it heal, but it wasn't getting better. Well finally I decided to see if I can get my knee fixed.

I go off to physical therapy. They have me bendy-bendy, lifty-lifty, don large rubber band on my ankles and stretchy-stretchy. Repeat. Home exercises, daily. It's been about 10 days since I started.

Early this morning I go to the grocery store. I suddenly realize: I'm not in pain. I'm walking normally (how long have I been walking weird?!). Amazing. I didn't even realize I was in pain, it had become just part of my life.

Hats off to you PT folks! You know your stuff !

That's great. I love that feeling when you suddenly realize a pain you've put up with for ages is suddenly gone.

 

[Enigman]

That's great. I love that feeling when you suddenly realize a pain you've put up with for ages is suddenly gone.

 

[PWiz]

But is he really mouthing that?

 

[Silicon Waffle]

:D of course no...or more correctly, he never said so.

 

[DiracPool]

That's great. I love that feeling when you suddenly realize a pain you've put up with for ages is suddenly gone.

Speaking of which, I have tinnitus in my left ear from years of playing in bands with amplified music. Talking to my audiologist one day, he recounted several stories of long-suffering tinnitus patients that rushed into his office in a panic because all of a sudden their tinnitus ceased. Sometimes your pain can serve as something of a comfort blanket, I guess. Personally, I'd have no problem with my tinnitus ceasing.

 

[Borg]

Speaking of which, I have tinnitus in my left ear from years of playing in bands with amplified music. Talking to my audiologist one day, he recounted several stories of long-suffering tinnitus patients that rushed into his office in a panic because all of a sudden their tinnitus ceased. Sometimes your pain can serve as something of a comfort blanket, I guess. Personally, I'd have no problem with my tinnitus ceasing.

Maybe it was so ingrained that they thought that their hearing had stopped.

 

[DiracPool]

Maybe it was so ingrained that they thought that their hearing had stopped

I think that was exactly it. When you've had an affliction such as this that has tormented you for years, the cessation of it could only mean the "rapture" or something like that has commenced. And who knows what that has in store..

 

[zoobyshoe]

Speaking of which, I have tinnitus in my left ear from years of playing in bands with amplified music. Talking to my audiologist one day, he recounted several stories of long-suffering tinnitus patients that rushed into his office in a panic because all of a sudden their tinnitus ceased. Sometimes your pain can serve as something of a comfort blanket, I guess. Personally, I'd have no problem with my tinnitus ceasing.

Interesting because I have left ear tinnitus that comes and goes daily. It usually quiescent when I wake up. At various later times of the day I'll suddenly realize it's back.

Regardless, what I was referring to from my own experience was a sharp pain in my left heel when I walked, that lasted about a year and a half, then one day I was suddenly aware it was gone, and I felt elated.

 

[DiracPool]

what I was referring to from my own experience was a sharp pain in my left heel when I walked, that lasted about a year and a half, then one day I was suddenly aware it was gone, and I felt elated.

Well, I'm equally elated. Nobody likes physical pain.

Interesting because I have left ear tinnitus that comes and goes daily. It usually quiescent when I wake up. At various later times of the day I'll suddenly realize it's back.

I'm convinced that tinnitus is as much a psychological problem as it is an organic problem. For example, I went to see the new Mad Max movie a couple months ago and didn't take my usual ear prophylactic measures, which include a $400 dollar pair of custom made earplugs and just basic toilet paper in a fix. The movie was so loud that I was convinced I had further damaged my hearing and was distraught to the point of, well... And this was over a movie at a movie theater. I thought I was going to be tormented for the rest of my life, but after 4-5 days, it was gone. It was just my mind obsessing on it. Or else it would still be tormenting me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I'm convinced that tinnitus is as much a psychological problem as it is an organic problem.

There's that one guy out there (Linneus?) who believes tinnitus is due to "edge effects" in the thalamus. In other words, he believes it's completely neurological rather than having anything to do with the breakdown of the mechanics of the inner ear.

When a condition is due to misbehaving neurons, a psychological event can potentially trigger it: neurons cause other neurons to fire, after all. In this manner, both seizures and Migraine can be triggered by psychological stress without being psychological problems. Touchy neurons. One theory behind seizure control is to starve the brain of glucose, which is a good fuel, and make it burn ketones instead, which is not such a good fuel, thereby counteracting the neuron's eagerness to fire with little provocation. See: the high fat, ketogenic diet.

 

[DiracPool]

I don't know about that, but I believe if you have hearing damage it is directly related to organic damage of the sterocilia. I don't think it has anything to do with the thalamus specifically. But the thalamus is connected to the cognitive operations of the brain, and this is where the psychological aspect comes in and things get fuzzy. I have a good friend of mine who I forced to see an audiologist who said his hearing was just fine, yet this friend of mine swears he can't sleep because he hears buzzing in his ears all night. This guy is obsessive-compulsive and I'm convinced that his hearing problem is not real. He's got such an active mind he might have developed a "sympathy tinnitus" because I complain about mine so much. This is the power of the human mind.

 

[Astronuc]

John Oliver Started His Own Church: Donate Now! No, Don't!
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/john-oliver-review-televangelist-robert-tilton-126912656040.html

Do not send money.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't know about that, but I believe if you have hearing damage it is directly related to organic damage of the sterocilia. I don't think it has anything to do with the thalamus specifically.

O.K. You made me google:

Abstract
Tinnitus is the perception of a sound, a so-called “phantom sound,” in the absence of a physical sound. The phantom perception persists after transection of the auditory nerve, indicating that the site of tinnitus manifestation is in the central nervous system. Imaging studies in tinnitus sufferers have revealed increased neuronal activity—hyperactivity—in subcortical and cortical auditory centers. These studies have demonstrated that non-auditory brain areas, such as the limbic system, are involved in the neural basis of tinnitus, Finally human imaging studies have led to novel hypotheses for the generation of tinnitus, such as the thalamocortical dysrhythmia hypothesis. Imaging in animal models of tinnitus exhibit similarities to results from human studies and have revealed hyperexcitability of auditory brain centers as a neural correlate of tinnitus. We propose that the comparison between animal model and human studies will aid in the design of appropriate experimental paradigms aimed at elucidating the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying tinnitus.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3343475/

But the thalamus is connected to the cognitive operations of the brain, and this is where the psychological aspect comes in and things get fuzzy

Mechanistically, tinnitus had been considered for many years as a peripheral disorder; a disorder of the external ear. This view has changed as sectioning of the eighth cranial nerve was an ineffective surgical treatment of tinnitus (House and Brackmann, 1981; Barrs and Brackmann, 1984) and collateral sectioning of the auditory nerve with tumor removal surgery even caused tinnitus in some patients (Berliner et al., 1992; Baguley et al., 2006). These results indicate that it is the auditory central nervous system—and not the periphery—that maintains the percept of tinnitus.

I have a good friend of mine who I forced to see an audiologist who said his hearing was just fine, yet this friend of mine swears he can't sleep because he hears buzzing in his ears all night. This guy is obsessive-compulsive and I'm convinced that his hearing problem is not real. He's got such an active mind he might have developed a "sympathy tinnitus" because I complain about mine so much. This is the power of the human mind.

Another thing that can cause "buzzing" in the ears is a simple-partial seizure. If your pal has OCD I'd reakon his neurons as compromised and wouldn't be surprised if he had this going on. Seizures are episodic, of course, and if he weren't having one while his hearing was being checked, his hearing would test normal. On the other hand, you might be right. He might be an excellent self-hypnotist and be unconsciously able to will himself to replay a memory of some actual buzzing he's heard so vividly he can "hear" it.

 

[OmCheeto]

Yesterday and today, were both odd, in that Led Zeppelin came from four different sources.
Today was doubly odd, and ended up on a good note, as no one lost an eye, nor a finger.

 

[Silicon Waffle]

Fake sexual arousal .

 

[Astronuc]

White House launches plan to counter explosion in heroin use
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/white-house-launches-plan-to-counter-explosion-in-126925908536.html

EDGARTOWN, Mass. (Reuters) - The White House announced a new strategy on Monday to tackle the explosion in heroin use in a collection of eastern states, focusing on treating addicts rather than punishing them and targeting high-level suppliers for arrest.

The move is a response to a sharp rise in the use of heroin and opiate-based painkillers, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has described as an epidemic.
. . . .

Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have pushed for such policies for more than a year in Congress.

White House Launches Program To Fight Heroin Epidemic
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/17/432619104/white-house-launches-program-to-fight-heroin-epidemic

More than 300 people in New Hampshire died from overdoses last year alone!

White House Plan To Tackle Heroin Abuse Focuses On Treatment
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/17/432619111/white-house-plan-to-tackle-heroin-abuse-focuses-on-treatment

 

[Silicon Waffle]

White House launches plan to counter explosion in heroin use
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/white-house-launches-plan-to-counter-explosion-in-126925908536.html

White House Launches Program To Fight Heroin Epidemic
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/17/432619104/white-house-launches-program-to-fight-heroin-epidemic

More than 300 people in New Hampshire died from overdoses last year alone!

White House Plan To Tackle Heroin Abuse Focuses On Treatment
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/17/432619111/white-house-plan-to-tackle-heroin-abuse-focuses-on-treatment

I can't imagine how miserable my life will be if my husband is a drug addict!
What's wrong with these people when they decide to legalize it ?

 

[Astronuc]

I can't imagine how miserable my life will be if my husband is a drug addict!
What's wrong with these people when they decide to legalize it ?

Nobody is proposing to legalize the use of heroin. They are proposing treatment, ostensibly with the objective of getting folks off the drug, rather than incarcerating them.

The widespread use/abuse of illicit drugs and illicit use of illegally-obtained prescription drugs indicates a systemic problem in the general population, likely tied to poverty, lack of opportunity and lack of education.

 

[wolram]

Astronuc, i think my beard is almost as long as yours.

 

[DiracPool]

O.K. You made me google:

Well, since you went through all the trouble of googling, I will return the favor and tell you my (abridged) story. It all happened one night after a typical night on the town. At the time I was living in a rooftop garden above the "Central" and the "JM Cafe" in Pioneer Square in Seattle. I woke up with a hangover and a curious ringing in my left ear. I just kind of put it off, because a pounding in my head and "mystery bruises" were commonplace when I patronized the JM Cafe, especially. However, the next morning it was still there, and the morning after that as well. At this point you can't explain it away and some sort of panic sets in. It's like a bifurcation point. You know it when you feel it. This thing might never go away.

It really turned my life upside down. At the time I was in a band and we had what you could call a "breakthrough" gig for us coming up on the east side of the lake. I knew immediately that I was going to have to quit the band. I've been doing transcendental meditation since the 80's, and the prospect of having to focus on the ringing in my ears rather than my mantra was daunting. As much as I liked the band I was in, it wasn't worth damaging my hearing further. So I went to see an audiologist who told me that, indeed, I had hearing loss in my left ear. When they come in after the exam and ask you the question, "What do you do for work?", you know the prognosis is probably not good.

In any case, I did the gig at this place called the Belly up Tavern, and endured the hard hitting drummer that really slammed those cymbals. However, I was wearing custom fitted "musicians" earplugs with 25 decibel filters. Then the next day I quit the band and entered a long depression. But, again, the great thing about the human mind is that it can pretty much attenuate to anything, except maybe for intractable pain, which I'm grateful I don't have. So I still go out to clubs occasionally and do karaoke, but I won't get onstage with a live drummer and I always have my earplugs with me. I take them everywhere. Incidentally, almost every career musician suffers from tinnitus if they've been doing it a decade or more. The so-called "ear monitors" you see them wearing on stage are actually earplugs. Yes, there is sound coming through them, but you don't need them to play, the stage monitors work just fine. These musicians just endure it because that it there profession. I didn't want to endure it.

 

[DiracPool]

Nobody is legalize the use of heroin.

I understand the concept of the legalization of drugs and crime prevention. Just look at the misplaced (but perhaps good intentioned) case of prohibition. Some psychoactive chemicals need monitoring and some don't. Being familiar with opiates I don't distinguish among them. Heroin is the same as vicodin is the same as percocet is the same as oxycontin. If you put bottles of these up on the over-the-counter shelves at Walgreens next to the vitamin supplements, you are going to create a nation of addicts. These drugs are Jacob's ladder. The same thing with the benzodiazepines like xanax and valium. These are the real hooks. Alcohol and pot have their own addictive potential, but in my mind they are self-regulating. The analogy I came up with is like paying your tab at a bar. With alcohol, you have to pay your tab every night, and you start fresh anew every day. With opiates and benzos, you can run a tab for weeks or months, and when it comes time to pay, it's going to hurt bad.

 

[jim hardy]

Long exposure to loud machinery will cause tinnitus. I'm really surprised to hear it described as a central nervous system pheomenon, i'd just assumed it was damage to the cochlea.
http://american-hearing.org/disorders/tinnitus/

Most tinnitus comes from damage to the inner ear (see Figure 1), specifically the cochlea. Tinnitus can also arise from damage to the nerve between the ear and brain (8th nerve, also called the vestibular nerve); from injury to the brainstem (Lanska et al 1987); and, rarely, to the brain itself.

Mine sounds about as loud as normal conversation. I once estimated its frequency using headphones and an audio oscillator, i have several simultaneous tones from about 6 khz to 11 or 12..

Luckily it doesn't bother me psychologically, and with the frequencies being above human voice i can converse.
But it's hard to understand high pitched voices on the telephone or TV set.

Use earplugs. NEVER shoot a high powered rifle, or any pistol , without them.

 

[DiracPool]

Long exposure to loud machinery will cause tinnitus.

Yeah, in my earlier post when I said they came in and asked me what I did for work, they were thinking construction or a truck driver. Again, the typical progress as it has seemed to be in your case (and mine) is that you just get used to it and forget it. Well, not really forget it, but after a while it just seems to devolve into an old ball and chain that you just begrudgingly put up with. This is what the audiologist told me when I rushed into his office in a panic. He said he's seen this 1000 times and everyone comes in initially all freaked out but then they settle down. In fact, they settle down so much that they don't come in for the 6 months follow up exam. As I didn't

But your case is interesting, several frequencies... I have just one, single annoying frequency.

Use earplugs. NEVER shoot a high powered rifle, or any pistol , without them.

Btw, my buddy I mentioned in an earlier post attends tinnitus support groups, kind of like the AA of the tinnitus world, even though I'm convinced he doesn't have any real hearing damage. But he says a lot of people at the groups are military or ex-military. Probably gun or artillery related hearing issues

 

[DiracPool]

Long exposure to loud machinery will cause tinnitus.

Just as an afterthought, my grandpa on my dad's side...Grandma re-married so would that be a step-grandpa? In any case, he worked for Entemann's bakery in New York ever since I could remember as a kid growing up. I always thought he was cool because he would show up all the time with a big box of donuts and cakes. He was deaf as a door nail though. You had to get up right in his face and yell at him to talk to him. Turns out it wasn't from the bakery job but from work he did at a newspaper printing press in the 50's and 60's. I never thought to ask him if he had ringing in his ears. I just always assumed that if you had hearing loss, your hearing was just dulled, it's a lot more complicated than that.

 

[Borg]

John Oliver Started His Own Church: Donate Now! No, Don't!
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/john-oliver-review-televangelist-robert-tilton-126912656040.html

Do not send money.

I love John Oliver.

http://www.ourladyofperpetualexemption.com/donate.html

Upon dissolution, any assets belonging to the Church at that time will be distributed to Doctors Without Borders, a non-profit charitable organization that is tax-exempt under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN: 13-3433452) and which provides emergency medical aid in places where it is needed most.

Isn't he supposed to buy a private jet with that money?

 

[OmCheeto]

Nobody is proposing to legalize the use of heroin. They are proposing treatment, ostensibly with the objective of getting folks off the drug, rather than incarcerating them.

The widespread use/abuse of illicit drugs and illicit use of illegally-obtained prescription drugs indicates a systemic problem in the general population, likely tied to poverty, lack of opportunity and lack of education.

Greg started a thread back in March about Portugal's similar initiative. I'm not sure how their experiment is going at the moment.

But I had conversations about drugs yesterday with two different people. My sister is in town, and she seems to think that prescription drugs are the cures for all of my ills. I politely disagreed with her, regarding all of the drugs she thinks I should be taking.
When I got home, I found my new bff in driveway, and we started discussing auto repairs. (I try and initiate discussions regarding things that we have in common.)
At one point, he said that he had, in his youth, difficulty replacing the starter in his 1955 Crown Victoria, so he "dropped" 25 "cross tops".
I think that is a type of lysergic acid diethylamide, and it made me kind of cringe, as I took it once, 26 years ago, and I don't think my brain ever recovered. It is one of the few things I regret doing in my life. But lots of people I've met claim to have done tons of acid in their lives, and they seem to be now functioning normally, so it may be just my unique type of brain chemistry/wiring. Likewise, although it's now legal where I live, to smoke and grow pot, I still avoid it like the plague, as its effect on me, is 95% anesthetic.

But to keep this random, later, my bff last night told me that it was going to be 100°F here today, so I brought out my broken air conditioner. I extracted the double capacitor from the housing, and whilst trying to catch up with bff, alchoholicaly, could not figure anything out. Nothing made sense. (hic!)

ps. bff refers to "volt-ohm-meters" as "continuity checkers", and "capacitors" as "things kind of like batteries". I didn't argue with him, but said something to the effect; "That's pretty close".

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, since you went through all the trouble of googling, I will return the favor and tell you my (abridged) story...

Interesting story, but I'm addressing your belief: "I'm convinced that tinnitus is as much a psychological problem as it is an organic problem."

The link I posted points to the "auditory central nervous system—and not the periphery—that maintains the percept of tinnitus.":

Mechanistically, tinnitus had been considered for many years as a peripheral disorder; a disorder of the external ear. This view has changed as sectioning of the eighth cranial nerve was an ineffective surgical treatment of tinnitus (House and Brackmann, 1981; Barrs and Brackmann, 1984) and collateral sectioning of the auditory nerve with tumor removal surgery even caused tinnitus in some patients (Berliner et al., 1992; Baguley et al., 2006). These results indicate that it is the auditory central nervous system—and not the periphery—that maintains the percept of tinnitus.

So, even if your tinnitus were initially caused by hearing damage, the tinnitus itself, the "percept" of tinnitus, takes place in the brain, and has been demonstrated to persist even when the nerves between the ear and brain are severed. That being the case, it can also arise directly in the brain with no ear mechanism damage whatever, as when it's caused by a simple partial seizure. This goes contrary to your suspicion it might be "psychological" in some cases. I'm saying put that on hold, and consider the various ways the percept could be neurological rather than psychological. Any neurological cause that was episodic could easily be dismissed as "psychological" when it's actually not. Among many other manifestations...

Simple partial seizures in these areas can produce odd sensations such as a sense of a breeze on the skin; unusual hissing, buzzing or ringing sounds; voices that are not really there; unpleasant tastes; strange smells (also usually unpleasant); and, perhaps most upsetting of all, distortions in the way things look.

http://www.epilepsychicago.org/epilepsy-facts/seizure-types/partial-seizures/

Also:

A transient tinnitus (most often described as buzzing or ringing sounds) and transient loss of hearing are two characteristic aura symptoms of basilar-type migraine (Bickerstaff, 1961), a subtype of migraine with aura in the IHS classification.

http://www.migraine-aura.com/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e26596/index_en.html

So, there's good reason to relegate a purely psychological cause of buzzing in the ears to the very bottom of your list. There's actually nothing to indicate tinnitus is as much psychological as it is organic.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
Nothing made sense. (hic!)
...

Turns out it wasn't all the boozes fault. Today, instead of using my DC power supply, I hauled out my good for nothing anymore, deep cycle battery. While testing the capacitor, the voltages were doing quite strange things again. So I disconnected everything, and checked the battery voltage. It had started out at 12 volts, and had jumped to 13 volts. I noticed the voltage was rising, and when it passed 14.4 volts, I freaked out, as I had never seen such a thing, and moved it 30 feet away, as I decided it was in some freakish thermal overload, and was going to explode.

Then I checked my good deep cycle battery, and it read about 17 vdc.
At this point I replaced the 9 volt battery in my VOM, and everything returned to normal.

bff and I eventually determined that the fan motor was bad, and replaced it with a bathroom exhaust fan, and everything worked!
But it was too hot out to remodel the guts of the AC unit, and get a second fan, so I went inside and took a nap.

 

[dlgoff]

Mine sounds about as loud as normal conversation. I once estimated its frequency using headphones and an audio oscillator, i have several simultaneous tones from about 6 khz to 11 or 12..

I wonder if there would be a way to use noise cancelling techniques? I guess one would have to use some sort of cochlea implant?