One for the Money stars Katherine Heigl in the role of Stephanie Plum, Evanovich’s bounty hunter protagonist of a series of novels. The first Stephanie Plum movie is based on One for the Money, the first book in the Stephanie Plum series. Irish actor and TV star Jason O’mara plays the male lead, Joe Morelli. Ranger is also played by an actor mostly known for TV roles.

I plan to review the movie when it comes out but wanted to discuss the casting issues here. The original offer for the role went to Reese Witherspoon who apparently turned it down. It is a big career decision to take on a part like this, and Katherine Heigl is likely to be as associated with the Stephanie Plum movie character as Sean Connery is with James Bond, even if she does only a few of the seventeen (at least) sequels that are inevitable.

Sandra Bullock was also discussed, especially by Evanovich fans, as the best choice for the One for the Money lead, but it is well-known that she was out of commission for some time, only recently returning to work on movies, after she had a bad romance.  

Debby Reynolds as Gramma Muzur was also not a first choice. Many wanted Betty White, and I would be curious to learn (does anybody know?) if the first choice was actually Debby Reynolds, or was it Betty White?

I also was surprised that the male chosen to play Ranger was not taller, and why he was not expected to wear his hair in a pony tail. He should have been cast as a contrast to the Jason Omara character, who might be expected to be comparatively more clean cut.

 As I mentioned above, I plan to review this when it comes out and expect I will enjoy it, and it will enjoysome  box office success as fans of the Stephanie Plum books will not be able to resist taking a look.

He plans to ask John Edwards to be his running mate, because John is the only politician who can make Newts affair look normal (both cheated often on their spouses while they were dying of cancer, but Gingrich can argue that at least he was willing to get a divorce.

Their motto would be “A line of credit at Tiffany’s for your mistress!” Newt plans to accept Romney’s 10K bet, as he hopes to take his campaign staff along on his next Greek Island cruise. He and Edwards also plan to co-author a book entitled “The Two America’s: Those Who Commit and Those Who Won’t.” A second book Cheating for Dummies, is being co-authored with Sarah Palin.

Newt, ever the idea man, seems to have no idea how sleezy he seems.

Alas I wont be attending but hope to share any news I hear on the grapevine. The Diabetes Cafe is the organizing structure allowing delagates and speakers to interact and network with one another. It will include debates, forums, and speaker’s corners.

Today marks the start with a Global Diabetes Forum, but this is an invidtaion only event which looks at political and government factors as they relate to industy and society.

The hours will be 10.00- 17.00 of the main conference Monday through Wednesday, and closing on Thursday at 13.00. Intenet access will be provided free in the exhibition hall, and all sessions will be held in English.

Dubai is the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates. Some CME is provided for medical continuing education including for the sattelite symposia.

It was fairly common to find people stealing things out of other people’s shopping carts, a surefire way to express the holiday good cheer. And I am sure you saw the people stepping over the man who had fallen, and heard of the lady who used pepper spray instead of mistletoe to get her way.

It is easy to chock this up to the moral decline in america, or to the bad economy stressing everyone, but I can tell you who I blame, and you can follow the money! These stores, at great profit, delberately attempt to create a “rush” or panic and spend a good sum of money on insuring that people will act like the running of the bulls.

The stores could offer IOU’s that would allow customers a chance to pick up an out of stock item a week or two later, or better yet, they could stay open 24/7 — if its such an all-fire important event — and maybe stagger the sales every hour or two, (or when the blue light goes on).

Given our bad economy, these merchants (of death?) might even hire 5% or 10% more workers for the season, to help keep the shelves stocked, the stampede moving, and the cash registers ringing. Black Friday used to refer to the moment when businesses first went into black, after being in the red all year. Now it is when they first turn on shoppers and rend them.

They used the techniques of the discipline to examine the stories — previously discounted — of the eye witness accounts of nearly 300 Germans who were rescued from a German ship involved in the same skirmish. The stories that were told by the eyewitnesses were even more fuzzy than most eye witness accounts.

The psychologists were able to pin point the spot that had the most in common with all the different versions, and came within less than 3 miles of where the ship Sydney actually was found.

While this may not be all that helpful in finding other ships (unless there were lots of eye witnesses), it might be useful in figuring out where our politicians really stand. We could map out all of Rick Perry’s or Barak Obama’s comments about social security and see where the truth is buried!

I am not meaning to imply these guys have different positions just because of faulty memories, but the distortions of memories that we all have may provide the statistical noise that allows us to find what was the essence of what they were saying.

As a clinical psychologist who also likes to stay on the cutting edge, I am a big fan of TED, (technology, entertainment and design) in my opinion the most innovative group of people you can conference with. Ms. Taylor gave this gift of a lecture/video during a TED conference in the spring of 2008.

The right hemsiphere and left hemisphere have very different functions, as many of you know, and she likens the non-dominant right hemisphere to a parallel processor, concerned not only with creativity, and connections, but with the here and now.

The left hemisphere, the dominant one, she likens to a parallel processor, and it is involved with linear, methodical thinking and language. These are not new concepts, but she is able to vividly describe how they feel, as she experiences one side or the other as her stroke progressed.

Her most unique contribution was, however, was to note that the non-dominant hemisphere feels connected to the whole universe, and fails to distinguish us as separate from our surroundings. It is all about the present, and in that moment, we are all one.

The dominant hemisphere — in contrast –sees us as separate. It is focused on the past and future, and be seeing us as disconnected from our surroundings and the present, it narrows our sense of self.

Of course both sides are useful, for different kinds of tasks, but I think you may well enjoy, as much as I did, her vivid and inspiring descriptions of her stroke and recovery. I strongly recommend TED conferences to anyone who likes this video.

The study, by Lobue and Deloache in the Brittish Journal of Developmental Psychology , casts doubt on recent speculation that the preference has to do with an innate preference for louder colors, like pink. Indeed if there was such an innate preference we would likely see it reflected sooner.

In the study, toddlers indicated their preference by a paired choice of otherwise identical items, differing only in color. While this choice seems to overlap with a developmental phase that includes verbalization of some ability to distinguish genders verbally, it is still a long way from showing that these changes reflect acculturation.

The study did not look at a preference for blue, a preference that has not been shown to be very robust.

An interesting approach would be to control for language development, and look at the children of parents who themselves have differing views of gender equality, to see if these results are independent of these two factors.

The DSM-5 committee looking at personality disorders, apparently heavily influenced this go-around by psychologists seemed to be headed towards a change from the current system, which has personality categories to a new system that looked instead at dimensions of personality.

While one could (and I did) quibble with the specifics of the dimensions, it seemed to be a step away from the system that earlier versions used, and which was widely regarded as deficient.

However when the committee reported out their recommendations people were confused, and so, in response to feedback from the powers that are currently in charge of DSM, they added six of the personality categories back in (with some minor modifications) and introduced the new dimensional model in an experimental new addition. The dimensions are intended to be used whenever one of the six diagnoses cannot be made, and instead (in the old system) there would be something akin to Personality Disorder, NOS.

This makes for an even more confusing hybrid of two conflicting models. It is not lost on this psychologist that the original six categories were, for the most part, an outgrowth of a system ny Ted Millon, which at least theoretically originated in a dimensional model as well.

In a future post I will attempt to clarify this new hybrid so we can all understand it better, and plan on my psychology knowledge website to introduce it more fully, well before next spring.

To quote from their email:

“We regret to inform you that BookTour will be shutting down….fewer author tours and changes in book marketing budgets have made our company financially unviable.”

While stores like Borders are closing and ceding territory to Amazon and other eBook vendors, the emerging market for eBooks has put a premium on online promotion and virtual book tours, not to mention social media in general.

For book publicists this is a new wrinkle in the terrain, and raises further the question of what role publishers, publicists, book chains, and Indies will be playing in the new market.

Ms. Evanovich’s latest Stephanie Plum Novel Smokin Seventeen has been on the best-selling Kindle list for over 100 days.

These are the mainstream authors, but for 99 cents each independent author John Locke’s million books sold have earned him a comfortable cushion that leaves many mid list and even top-selling authors in awe.

Current trends suggest that close to 15% of all Americans own an eBook reader like the Kindle.  With Harry Potter riding the eBook broomstick, the die seems to be cast, especially for the next generation of readers.

I for one welcome the changes, and think it may be a good way for psychologists to get useful self-help and other information to the public, and health care professionals everywhere should see the value as a preventative intervention.

More importantly, we are still in the first wave of innovation. With advances in the technology, the Kindle eBooks should become much more interactive, and include links to important web supplements, and begin to blur the entertainment boundaries to include music, games, and social media components.