I have a relation who was diagnosed in her twenties with schizophrenia (and she was full-blown psychotic), but it seems to have just disappeared. She’s been fine for decades and has a full-time, demanding job. So this news may help explain why:
Schizophrenia is classified as a psychotic disorder, one characterized by an inability to discern what is real and not real, to think clearly, have normal emotional responses, and act normally in social situations. As Elyn Saks told us last year, “it’s a waking nightmare, where you have all the bizarre images, the terrible things happening, and the utter terror — only with a nightmare you open your eyes and it goes away. No such luck with a psychotic episode.”
Scientists aren’t entirely sure what causes it, nor does it manifest identically in all people who have it (leading to the broader diagnosis of being on the ‘schizophrenia spectrum’). But links have been made to genetics, social factors (including early development), and neurobiology. The heritability link looks to be particularly promising, however; about 80% of the risk for schizophrenia is genetic. Yet scientists have struggled to identify which genes are responsible for the condition.
But a novel approach to analyzing genetic influences on more than 4,000 people with schizophrenia has finally allowed researchers to identify distinct gene clusters that contribute to eight different classes of schizophrenia.
We often hear temperature changes explained on a global scale, but just how are those changes playing out in your local temperatures? This calculator answers that question for every American state.
The new tool is the work of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Using data on average temperatures collected since 1895, you can look at how average, maximum, and minimum temperatures have shifted.
But, that data is not just available by year — you can also break it down further into winter, spring, summer, and fall, which is particularly useful as we hear more and more about temperatures busting through seasonal records. So, if you’re curious about how to contextualize new information about temperature changes in your area, you can see on a graph, for instance, how an average Texas winter would have felt over 100 years ago…
[…] To illustrate just how pervasive the changes are, the NCDC also put together a mapping tool that you can use to see the cumulative effect of how the averages have changed. For instance, look at this map of how far the average temperatures of 1901-1910 differed from 20th century norms…
I remember the nasty, often-racist things people said about Rep. Barbara Lee after this vote. But I applauded her. Leave it to a female Congress member to have the cajones to vote against the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) resolution, the same one Obama now plans to use to attack ISIS without a Congressional votes. That’s exactly what Lee predicted.
Very interesting article about her, and the reactions she got. I strongly urge you to read it, but here’s a small piece:
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lee’s story is how little credit she or her constituents receive for what they got right. Even though a majority now considers the war most understood the AUMF to authorize to be a mistake; even though it has been used to justify military interventions that no one conceived of on September 14, 2001; even though there’s no proof that any war-making of the last 13 years has have made us safer; even though many more Americans have died in wars of choice than have been killed in terrorist attacks; even though Lee and many of her constituents were amenable to capturing or killing the 9/11 perpetrators, not pacifists intent on ruling out any use of force; despite all of that, Representative Lee is still thought of as a fringe peacenik representing naive East Bay hippies who could never be trusted to guide U.S. foreign policy. And the people who utterly failed to anticipate the trajectory of the War on Terrorism? Even those who later voted for a war in Iraq that turned out to be among the most catastrophic in U.S. history are considered sober, trustworthy experts.
People whose plan was to install Western democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq–even today, they’re the ones who aren’t considered naive, and that’s even true in the Democratic Party, where the vice-president, the last two secretaries of state, and the secretary of defense were all supporters of the AUMF and the Iraq War. Lee and many letter writers who supported her were far more prescient in their analysis than Hillary Clinton or John McCain. Try telling the average American that many Berkeley liberals were more correct about the War on Terror than those two. They’ll laugh in your face, even if they personally supported and now oppose those two wars. Many Americans have grappled with their mistaken positions. But how many of those people now take Lee’s foreign policy analysis seriously?
The stand she took on September 14, 2001, is still being vindicated.
Even now, the AUMF gives the White House a free hand to wage war in many countries, just as Lee predicted. And last week, the Obama administration cited the September 14, 2001, AUMF to justify war in Syria without seeking or receiving permission from Congress. The target, ISIS, is a group that did not exist for years after 9/11, one that is explicitly separate from and antagonistic toward al-Qaeda.
In taking this action, Obama is calling for unity.
“I believe we are strongest as a nation when the President and Congress work together… to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger,” he said. But Americans are not united. And pressuring Congress to fabricate consensus does not strengthen America, it weakens us, as any student of the recent past should know–especially one who won the presidency touting his opposition to a “stupid” war. Had there been even more dissenters like Lee 13 years ago, had her tiny minority’s warnings been heeded, we’d be stronger today.
Whether offered in the bromides of Obama’s speeches or the ugly rants of Lee’s critics, calls for unanimity have no place in a pluralistic, representative democracy. For all who believe that a president is in error, dissent is patriotic—and useful.
WASHINGTON — The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.
But as President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be a yearslong military campaign against the militant group, American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East.
Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.” Continue reading “Deja vu all over again”→
Daphne Richards was a full-time manager at a Colorado Chick-fil-A when she received a breast cancer diagnosis in May. She took leave for a double mastectomy and when she had been cleared to return to work, she was shocked when management told her she was being demoted:
Richards’ documents show that not only was she being demoted, she was going from a 40-plus hour work week to a 10-to-15-hour week and her hourly wage was dropping from $14 to $10 per hour.
After the story began gaining attention, management eventually offered to increase her hours, but maintain she was demoted for poor performance and out of concern she wouldn’t be able to handle the work load….
So much for operating the company based on “biblical values.”
I was getting my hair cut the other day, and the woman sitting next to me started tsk-tsking over fast food workers asking for $15 an hour.
“Did you know they already pay McDonald’s workers that much in Europe?” I said. “They can afford it, they’d just rather pay it out in dividends to their stockholders.”
She looked shocked. “Go ahead, look it up,” I urged her. “I think it’s a real shame that people in this country have gotten so used to settling for crumbs that asking for a living wage seems ridiculous to them. If you work hard, you should make enough to pay your bills. Time to get out and vote, boot out these politicians who only want to help rich people.”
My hairdresser nodded. “I’m voting, everyone I know is voting.”
Good. Yes, the Dems aren’t that much better. But they’re still better, and when the economy is bleeding, you have to think in terms of triage.
