Duck Travesty

You know I really try not to watch the news anymore because it's either depressing or just plain aggravating, but I unfortunately saw the Duck Dynasty/Phil Robertson crap that's going on. I had originally told myself I wasn't going to comment on it, but I can resist no longer. This is what Phil Robertson had to say:  "It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical...  Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong.  Sin becomes fine...  If somebody asks, I tell ’em what the Bible says.  All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups"
*Sigh* there is a part of me, the bitter and jaded part that thinks "NOT SURPRISING: the Duck Dynasty dude doesn't endorse homosexuality. SURPRISING: people actually give a shit what the Duck Dynasty dude thinks."
But of course, that part of me is very small, and the kind, caring, right's for all people, part of me is pretty pissed actually. Firstly nobody needs to comment "oh it's freedom of speech" because yes it is, however he signed a legally binding contract with A&E to uphold a certain standard of conduct, which he violated. A&E really had no other option than to suspend him, unless they fired him.
Secondly there is zero logic in attraction. None at all. Taking a cursory look around people have ended up attracted to the people they wouldn't get along with if they weren't attracted to them.
Also, stating that there is a lack of Jesus in groups of people, that aren't sects of religion is really ignorant. The Nazi's? Not a religion. Communism? Not a religion on it's face. Shinto? Also not really a religion, more of an indigenous spirit. So his statement that there was no Jesus is invalid.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson is quoted in GQ. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” 
Then Phil Robertson dribbles this tripe about Jim Crowism that is just as bad, if not worse than the earlier statement. For one thing the cultural climate in the Southern states was one of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. It was the time of that "separate but equal" bullshit that we all know was completely false. For those of you who don't know Jim Crowism were racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the state and local level. They mandated de jure (meaning according to rightful entitlement or claim; by right) racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. African Americans were not happy at this point in time and apparently Phil Robertson was oblivious to the lynchings and the severe racism going on. The dumbass.

Numbness or Happiness?

It's like I've emotionally flat-lined

So it has been a little over nine months since I started taking Zoloft to treat depression. For the first seven months I felt nothing, no change, no anything, it was almost as though I was taking a placebo. But for the past two (ish) months I have felt...okay. Not desperately suicidal, but not overly thrilled with anything either. Originally I thought "Great! I'm getting better!" but now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just becoming more and more numb. It's kind of like using weed, in that over time the body gets used to it, so you have to use more and more to get the same high that was attained during the first time you got high. Maybe my mind is just getting used to being depressed all of the time, and it takes more and more to make me as sad as I was. It's almost as though I've emotionally flat-lined, I just don't know it yet. I don't really remember what it was like to be happy, I mean there's "happy" for me, my standards, and there's everybody else's. I just don't know whose standards I'm at, for my standards I'm fine, for everybody else's, not so much.
There are things that I do that I enjoy, and I smile, and laugh, but there are others that I do, that I used to enjoy so much, and now I can barely stand to participate in.
Of course I barely have a relationship with my mother anymore, we don't ever talk, and when we do it's for like a minute on the phone and then it's done. But in that one minute, all the hurt, all the pain, all the sadness, all the anger, comes flooding back. I saw a picture of my mom today and I cried for about ten minutes, and I'm not entirely sure why. I miss her. In a sick twisted way, I just want everything to go back to where it used to be. When I lived at my mom's house, when I lived in constant grief and anguish. Because I had lived there for sixteen years, and it felt normal to me, the abuse, the constant fighting. By now I'm sure you're thinking "Wow, Nate's totally fucked in the head" Well maybe I am. But why do victims of domestic abuse go back to their abusers? Because being abused was normal to them.

Kanye West + Kim Kardashian = Romeo and Juliet?

So a few days ago Kanye West went on the some radio station and was talking about his significant other, Kim Kardashian, and their baby North West. He said that the love he has with Kim was a "love for the ages" and then he likened it to the classic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. 

First of all, no your relationship is not like Romeo and Juliet. For many, many reasons. One being the age difference. Romeo and Juliet were teens, while you are thirty six and your significant other is thirty three. Also, and this is the main reason why Kanye and Kim are not at all like Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet both DIE at the end. And yes I do know that everyone dies, but not everyone dies from foolish choices, and misinformation that lead up to their ultimate suicide.

Just thought that I'd point that out.

Empathy, Emotion and the Supramarginal Gyrus

I’m ok, you’re not ok

Egoism and narcissism appear to be on the rise in our society, while empathy is on the decline. And yet, the ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes is extremely important for our coexistence. A research team headed by Tania Singer from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences has discovered that our own feelings can distort our capacity for empathy. This emotionally driven egocentricity is recognized and corrected by the brain. When, however, the right supramarginal gyrus doesn’t function properly or when we have to make particularly quick decisions, our empathy is severely limited.

When assessing the world around us and our fellow humans, we use ourselves as a yardstick and tend to project our own emotional state onto others. While cognition research has already studied this phenomenon in detail, nothing is known about how it works on an emotional level. It was assumed that our own emotional state can distort our understanding of other people’s emotions, in particular if these are completely different to our own. But this emotional egocentricity had not been measured before now.

This is precisely what the Max Planck researchers have accomplished in a complex marathon of experiments and tests. They also discovered the area of the brain responsible for this function, which helps us to distinguish our own emotional state from that of other people. The area in question is the supramarginal gyrus, a convolution of the cerebral cortex which is approximately located at the junction of the parietal, temporal and frontal lobe. “This was unexpected, as we had the temporo-parietal junction in our sights. This is located more towards the front of the brain,” explains Claus Lamm, one of the publication’s authors.

On the empathy trail with toy slime and synthetic fur

Using a perception experiment, the researchers began by showing that our own feelings actually do influence our capacity for empathy, and that this egocentricity can also be measured. The participants, who worked in teams of two, were exposed to either pleasant or unpleasant simultaneous visual and tactile stimuli.

While participant 1, for example, could see a picture of maggots and feel slime with her hand, participant 2 saw a picture of a puppy and could feel soft, fleecy fur on her skin. “It was important to combine the two stimuli. Without the tactile stimulus, the participants would only have evaluated the situation ‘with their heads’ and their feelings would have been excluded,” explains Claus Lamm. The participants could also see the stimulus to which their team partners were exposed at the same time.

The two participants were then asked to evaluate either their own emotions or those of their partners. As long as both participants were exposed to the same type of positive or negative stimuli, they found it easy to assess their partner’s emotions. The participant who was confronted with a stinkbug could easily imagine how unpleasant the sight and feeling of a spider must be for her partner.

Differences only arose during the test runs in which one partner was confronted with pleasant stimuli and the other with unpleasant ones. Their capacity for empathy suddenly plummeted. The participants’ own emotions distorted their assessment of the other person’s feelings. The participants who were feeling good themselves assessed their partners’ negative experiences as less severe than they actually were. In contrast, those who had just had an unpleasant experience assessed their partners’ good experiences less positively.

Particularly quick decisions cause a decline in empathy

The researchers pinpointed the area of the brain responsible for this phenomenon with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging, generally referred to as a brain scanning. The right supramarginal gyrus ensures that we can decouple our perception of ourselves from that of others. When the neurons in this part of the brain were disrupted in the course of this task, the participants found it difficult not to project their own feelings onto others. The participants’ assessments were also less accurate when they were forced to make particularly quick decisions.

Up to now, the social neuroscience models have assumed that we mainly draw on our own emotions as a reference for empathy. This only works, however, if we are in a neutral state or the same state as our counterpart – otherwise, the brain must counteract and correct.

Ashamed And Embarrassed

On October 1, 2013, the United States federal government entered a government shutdown, forcing furloughs of 800,000 workers and suspension of services not exempted by the Antideficiency Act. Because Congress did not enact regular appropriations or a continuing resolution for the 2014 fiscal year, appropriations have lapsed and about 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed without pay, while another 1.3 million were required to report to work without pay until an appropriations bill is passed or their function is no longer excepted. The most recent previous U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96.
A "funding gap" was created when the two chambers of Congress failed to agree to a compromise continuing resolution. The Republican-led House of Representatives offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"). The Democratic-led Senate, offered several "clean" continuing resolutions. Political fights on this and other issues between the GOP House on one side and President Barack Obama and the Senate on the other have led to a budget impasse which threatens massive disruption.
The fight centered on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution of 2014 which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, 2013.The Senate stripped the bill of the measures related to the Affordable Care Act, and passed it in revised form on Friday, September 27, 2013. The House put the measures back and passed it again in the early morning hours on Sunday, September 29. The Senate refused to pass the bill while it still had measures to delay the Affordable Care Act, and the two sides could not develop a compromise bill by midnight on Monday, September 30, 2013, causing the federal government to shut down due to a lack of appropriated funds.
The first day of the 2014 federal fiscal year, October 1, 2013, was also when many of the Affordable Care Act's measures took effect.The health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act launched as scheduled on October 1.
A fiery Sen. John McCain urged fellow lawmakers to resolve the shutdown crisis during a passionate speech Tuesday on the Senate floor, saying they should all be “ashamed” over denying military death benefits.
“Shouldn’t we as a body –Republican or Democrat–shouldn’t we be embarrassed? Ashamed? What do American people think when they see that death benefit for those who served and sacrifice- they’re not eligible?” He added, “I’m ashamed! I’m embarrassed. All of us should be.”
The so-called “death gratuity,” which the government sends to families of active duty service members within three days of their death, has been suspended as a result of the ongoing government shutdown. These payments help cover the immediate cost of funeral services, travel expenses to meet the coffins and give families some financial cushioning before life benefits kick into effect.
The Arizona Republican spread the blame across party lines, but took a specific dig at members of his own party for refusing to fund the government over President Obama’s health care reform law. “Somehow to think that we were going to repeal Obamacare was false and did people a great disservice!"

You know what? I'm ashamed and embarrassed of you, Mister John McCain. I'm ashamed and embarrassed  of ALL of you. I'm to the point where I think it would be okay if we took everybody out of their respective positions and put someone else in. Somebody who can see that ObamaCare is is a faux pa, but that the DEBT CEILING IS QUICKLY APPROACHING! Get that figured out, and then carry on with your temper tantrum, you moronic toddlers. ObamaCare is NOT what you think it is. Obamacare’s employer mandate incentivizes smaller companies to shift their workers to part-time status because employers are not required to provide health coverage to part-time workers.

According to a study completed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, America is projected to have a shortage of 91,500 doctors by the year 2020 due in part to an overwhelming negative view that many of them have on Obamacare. In fact, a survey completed by The Doctors Company, found that 60% of doctors feel that the pressure to reduce costs, increase volume, and improve quality will have a negative effect on patient care, causing 43% of physicians to also contemplate early retirement.

Obamacare is really happening. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, 42% of Americans in general are unaware that the law is being implemented, while 51% of Americans ages 18-29 are unaware that the bill was signed into law in March 2010. The most commonly cited sources of information about the law were from friends and family (named by 40%), “newspapers, radio or other online news” (36%), and cable news (30%). About 10% of Americans report getting any information from a health insurance company, their doctor, an employer, or a non-profit, and few name any of these as their most important source of information about the law or how the exchanges will affect their health plans. The public remains divided on how they view the overall goals of Obamacare, with 35% reporting a favorable view, 40% an unfavorable view, and a full 24% reporting they have no opinion on the law.

Rape Culture

This is what rape culture is like:

Imagine you have a Rolex watch. Nice fancy Rolex, you bought it because you like the way it looks and you wanted to treat yourself. And then you get beaten and mugged and your Rolex is stolen. So you go to the police. Only, instead of investigating the crime, the police want to know why you were wearing a Rolex instead of a regular watch. Have you ever given a Rolex to anyone else? Is it possible you wanted to be mugged? Why didn’t you wear long sleeves to cover up the Rolex if you didn’t want to be mugged?

And then after that, everywhere you go, there are constant jokes about stealing your Rolex. People you don’t even know whistle at your Rolex and make jokes about cutting your hand off to get it. The media doesn’t help either; it portrays people who wear Rolexes as flamboyant assholes who secretly just want someone to come along and take that Rolex off their hands. When damn, all you wanted was to wear a nice watch without getting harassed for it. When you complain that you are starting to feel unsafe, people laugh you off and say that you are too uptight. Never mind you got violently attacked for the crime of wearing a friggin time piece.

Imagining all that? It sucks, doesn’t it.

Now imagine you could never take the Rolex off.

Murder Or Relieving Someone Of Suffering: Where Do We Draw The Line?

Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering.
There are different euthanasia laws in each country. The British House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics defines euthanasia as "a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering". In the Netherlands, euthanasia is understood as "termination of life by a doctor at the request of a patient".
Euthanasia is categorized in different ways, which include voluntary, non-voluntary, or involuntary. Assisted-suicide is legal in several jurisdictions, including Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and four American states (Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana).Non-voluntary euthanasia is illegal in all countries. Involuntary euthanasia is usually considered murder.
So hopefully we all know who Jack Kevorkian is, "Dr. Death" is pretty famous I'd say. His work is the very reason I wonder where we draw the line of murder, and the right to die. Rebecca Badger, a patient of Kevorkian's and a mentally troubled drug abuser, had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The report also stated that Janet Adkins, Kevorkian's first patient, had been chosen without Kevorkian ever speaking to her, only with her husband, and that when Kevorkian first met Adkins two days before her assisted suicide he "made no real effort to discover whether Ms. Adkins wished to end her life," as the Michigan Court of Appeals put it in a 1995 ruling upholding an order against Kevorkian's activity.According to The Economist: "Studies of those who sought out Dr. Kevorkian, however, suggest that though many had a worsening illness ... it was not usually terminal. Autopsies showed five people had no disease at all. ... Little over a third were in pain. Some presumably suffered from no more than hypochondria or depression."
"What difference does it make if someone is terminal? We are all terminal." Jack claimed. Well yes I suppose, but why exactly do we need help committing suicide? I'm more than sure that people are capable of committing suicide on their own. For instance, Oregon requires a physician to prescribe medication but it must be self-administered. What happens when your patient can barely remember how to hold a spoon let alone remember what the hell you said five minutes ago? Even if they do consent, what if they don't remember it?? I just have this feeling that there are too many variables to somehow make this okay

He Speaks, But Is He Really Saying Anything?

For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope.In that context, brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, made aboard the papal airplane on the way back from his first foreign trip, to Brazil, resonated through the church. Never veering from church doctrine opposing homosexuality, Francis did strike a more compassionate tone than that of his predecessors, some of whom had largely avoided even saying the more colloquial “gay.”

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”

Francis’s words could not have been more different from those of Benedict XVI, who in 2005 wrote that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” and an “objective disorder.” The church document said men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not become priests.

Vatican experts were quick to point out that Francis was not suggesting that the priests or anyone else should act on their homosexual tendencies, which the church considers a sin. But the fact that he made such comments — and used the word “gay” — was nevertheless revolutionary, and likely to generate significant discussion in local dioceses, where bishops are divided over whether to accept priests who are gay but celibate.

Yeah okay great. Does anybody realize that the Pope is not actually saying anything. "Gays are okay" yes obviously. So being labelled as gay is okay, but if you engage in homosexual acts that's not okay apparently. So essentially we are back to square one. That's like saying it's okay to be called Christian, but it's not okay to participate in something trivial like going to church. Way to not actually say anything Mr. Pope.

Egg Girl and the Yahoo Answers Fail

WARNING NOT FOR CHILDREN!!


So the other day I was on tumblr and saw a yahoo answers question that said: "Masturbation question? please help!?
Ok you guys just listen to what i have to say. I am really confused ok so a while ago I was masturbating with an egg and I was just about to orgasm when all of a sudden my vag just like sucked it up. It was like a vacuum, and not just a regular vacuum it was like a hoover or a dyson. You know, the ones where the guy talks about the vacuum never losing suction? Yeah, my vag is a dyson.
Anyway, I was so scared and spent the rest of the night trying to queef out that egg but it wouldn't come out.
So the other day I was playing basketball in the gym and the egg fell out! Into my gitch! I was too afraid to take it out and people probably though I was growing a penis or something. So I didn't take it out of my underwear until I got home and the ***** was hardboiled. My vagina is a vacuum and a pot of boiling water. It hardboiled an egg! Im not done! So I put it in the fridge because I didn't know what else to do. A couple hours later, my dad was eating an egg salad sandwich!"

I'm not kidding. And it just made me wonder: why?
I guess I don't have a ton to say about this particular post but I must say that after I was done laughing I was horrified. Mostly for the Dad.
But anyway it really makes me wonder why people could be so stupid. If that wasn't enough I saw several others.
For Example: "How can I get back at my mom without shoving pizza crust up my butt-hole?
I shove pizza crust up my butt every-time me and my mom fight, so that she gets pissed because she has to take me to the emergency room....
Are there any other ways to get back at her?"

Again I'm still not kidding. I can't even keep going, but for the love of god why are people that dumb

Depressed People have a More Accurate Perception of Time

People with mild depression underestimate their talents. However, new research carried out researchers at the University of Limerick and the University of Hertfordshire shows that depressed people are more accurate when it comes to time estimation than their happier peers.




Depressed people often appear to distort the facts and view their lives more negatively than non-depressed people. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness and of being out of control are some of the main symptoms of depression. For these people time seems to pass slowly and they will often use phrases such as “time seems to drag” to describe their experiences and their life. However, depressed people sometimes have a more accurate perception of reality than their happier friends and family who often look at life through rose-tinted glasses and hope for the best.



Dr Rachel Msetfi, senior lecturer in psychology, University of Limerick and one of the studies authors, said: “We found that depressed people tended to be more accurate when estimating time whereas non-depressed people tended to be less accurate. This finding, along with some of our other work, suggests that depression leads to more attention paid to time passing. Sometimes this might lead to a phenomenon known as ‘depressive realism’, though on other occasions time might seem to be moving more slowly than usual.”





In the study, volunteers, who were classified as mildly depressed or non-depressed, made estimates of the length of different time intervals of between two and sixty-five seconds. Overall, those volunteers who were mildly–depressed were more accurate in their time estimations.

Dr Msetfi noted that: “Time is a very important part of everyday experience, it flies when we are having fun or enjoying ourselves. One of the commonest experiences of depression is that people feel that time passes slowly and sometimes painfully. Our findings may help to shed a little light on how people with depression can be treated. People with depression are often encouraged to check themselves against reality, but maybe this timing skill can be harnessed to help in the treatment of mildly-depressed people. These findings may also link to successful mindfulness based treatments for depression which focus on encouraging present moment awareness.”





The paper, “Time perception and depressive realism: Judgement type, psychophysical functions and bias”, is published in PLOS ONE.

Putting The Brakes on Pain

Neuropathic pain — pain that results from a malfunction in the nervous system — is a daily reality for millions of Americans. Unlike normal pain, it doesn’t go away after the stimulus that provoked it ends, and it also behaves in a variety of other unusual and disturbing ways. Someone suffering from neuropathic pain might experience intense discomfort from a light touch, for example, or feel as though he or she were freezing in response to a slight change in temperature.

A major part of the answer to the problem of neuropathic pain, scientists believe, is found in spinal nerve cells that release a signaling chemical known as GABA. These GABA neurons act as a sort of brake on pain impulses; it’s thought that when they die or are disabled the pain system goes out of control. If GABA neurons could be kept alive and healthy after peripheral nerve or tissue injury, it’s possible that neuropathic pain could be averted.

Now, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found a way to, at least partially, accomplish this objective. The key, they determined, is stemming the biochemical assault by reactive oxygen species that are generated in the wake of nerve injury.

"GABA neurons are particularly susceptible to oxidative stress, and we hypothesized that reactive oxygen species contribute to neuropathic sensitization by promoting the loss of GABA neurons as well as hindering GABA functions," said UTMB professor Jin Mo Chung, senior author of a paper on the research now online in the journal Pain.

To test this hypothesis — and determine whether GABA neurons could be saved — the researchers conducted a series of experiments in mice that had been surgically altered to simulate the conditions of neuropathic pain. In one key experiment, mice treated with an antioxidant compound for a week after surgery were compared with untreated mice. The antioxidant mice showed less pain-associated behavior and were found to have far more GABA neurons than the untreated mice.

"So by giving the antioxidant we lowered the pain behavior, and when we look at the spinal cords we see the GABA neuron population is almost the same as normal," Chung said. “That suggested we prevented those neurons from dying, which is a big thing."

One complication, Chung noted, is a “moderate quantitative mismatch" between the behavioral data and the GABA-neuron counts. While the anti-oxidant mice displayed less pain behavior, their behavioral improvement wasn’t as substantial as their high number of GABA neurons would suggest. One possibility is that the surviving neurons were somehow impaired — a hypothesis supported by electrophysiological data.

Although no clinical trials are planned in the immediate future, Chung believes anti-oxidants have great potential as a treatment for neuropathic pain. “If this is true and it works in humans — well, any time you can salvage neurons, it’s a good thing," he said. “Neuropathic pain is very difficult to treat, and I think this is a possibility, a good possibility."

How To Prevent Rape

1. Don't put drugs in people's drinks
2. When you see someone walking, on their own, don't rape them
3. If you pull over to help someone because their car broke down, remember not to rape them
4. If you are in an elevator, and someone gets in, don't rape them
5. If you encounter someone who is asleep, the safest course of action is to not rape them
   
   
   

The Anorexic Brain

In a spacious hotel room not far from the beach in La Jolla, Calif., Kelsey Heenan gripped her fiancé’s hand. Heenan, a 20-year-old anorexic woman, couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Walter Kaye, director of the eating disorders program at the University of California, San Diego, was telling a handful of rapt patients and their family members what the latest brain imaging research suggested about their disorder.

It’s not your fault, he told them.

Heenan had always assumed that she was to blame for her illness. Kaye’s data told a different story. He handed out a pile of black-and-white brain scans — some showed the brains of healthy people, others were from people with anorexia nervosa. The scans didn’t look the same. “P
eople were shocked,” Heenan says. But above all, she remembers, the group seemed to sigh in relief, breathing out years of buried guilt about the disorder. “It’s something in the way I was wired — it’s something I didn’t choose to do,” Heenan says. “It was pretty freeing to know that there could be something else going on.”

Years of psychological and behavioral research have helped scientists better understand some signs and triggers of anorexia. But that knowledge hasn’t straightened out the disorder’s tangled roots, or pointed scientists to a therapy that works for everyone. “Anorexia has a high death rate, it’s expensive to treat and people are chronically ill,” says Kaye.

Kaye’s program uses a therapy called family-based treatment, or FBT, to teach adolescents and their families how to manage anorexia. A year after therapy, about half of the patients treated with FBT recover. In the world of eating disorders, that’s success: FBT is considered one of the very best treatments doctors have. To many scientists, that just highlights how much about anorexia remains unknown.

Kaye and others are looking to the brain for answers. Using brain imaging tools and other methods to explore what’s going on in patients’ minds, researchers have scraped together clues that suggest anorexics are wired differently than healthy people. The mental brakes people use to curb impulsive instincts, for example, might get jammed in people with anorexia. Some studies suggest that just a taste of sugar can send parts of the brain barrelling into overdrive. Other brain areas appear numb to tastes — and even sensations such as pain. For people with anorexia, a sharp pang of hunger might register instead as a dull thud.

The mishmash of different brain imaging data is just beginning to highlight the neural roots of anorexia, Kaye says. But because starvation physically changes the brain, researchers can run into trouble teasing out whether glitchy brain wiring causes anorexia, or vice versa. Still, Kaye thinks understanding what’s going on in the brain may spark new treatment ideas. It may also help the eating disorder shake off some of its noxious stereotypes.

“One of the biggest problems is that people do not take this disease seriously,” says James Lock, an eating disorders researcher at Stanford University who cowrote the book on family-based treatment. “No one gets upset at a child who has cancer,” he says. “If the treatment is hard, parents still do it because they know they need to do it to make their child well.”

Pop culture often paints anorexics as willful young women who go on diets to be beautiful, he says. But, “you can’t just choose to be anorexic,” Lock adds. “The brain data may help counteract some of the mythology.”

Beyond dieting

A society that glamorizes thinness can encourage unhealthy eating behaviors in kids, scientists have shown. A 2011 study of Minnesota high school students reported that more than half of girls had dieted within the past year. Just under a sixth had used diet pills, vomiting, laxatives or diuretics.

But a true eating disorder goes well beyond an unhealthy diet. Anorexia involves malnutrition, excessive weight loss and often faulty thinking about one of the body’s most basic drives: hunger. The disorder is also rare. Less than 1 percent of girls develop anorexia. The disease crops up in boys too, but adolescent girls — especially in wealthy countries such as the U.S., Australia and Japan — are most likely to suffer from the illness.

As the disease progresses, people with anorexia become intensely afraid of getting fat and stick to extreme diets or
exercise schedules to drop pounds. They also misjudge their own weight. Beyond these diagnostic hallmarks, patients’ symptoms can vary. Some refuse to eat, others binge and purge. Some live for years with the illness, others yo-yo between weight gain and loss. Though most anorexics gain back some weight within five years of becoming ill, anorexia is the deadliest of all mental disorders.

Though anorexia tends to run in families, scientists haven’t yet hammered out the suite of genes at play. Some individuals are particularly vulnerable to developing an eating disorder. In these people, stressful life changes, such as heading off to college, can tip the mental scales toward anorexia.

For decades, scientists have known that anorexic children behave a little differently. In school and sports, anorexic kids strive for perfection. Though Heenan, a former college basketball player, didn’t notice her symptoms creeping in until the end of high school, she remembers initiating strict practice regimens as a child. Starting in second grade, Heenan spent hours perfecting her jump shot, shooting the ball again and again until she had the technique exactly right — until her form was flawless.

“It’s very rare for me to see a person with anorexia in my office who isn’t a straight-A student,” Lock says. Even at an early age, people who later develop the eating disorder tend to exert an almost superhuman ability to practice, focus or study. “They will work and work and work,” says Lock. “The problem is they don’t know when to stop.”

In fact, many scientists think anorexics’ brains might be wired for willpower, for good and ill. Using new imaging tools that let scientists watch as a person’s mental gears grind through different tasks, researchers are starting to pin down how anorexic brains work overtime.

To glimpse the circuits that govern self-control, experimental neuropsychologist Samantha Brooks uses functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a tool that measures and maps brain activity. Last year, she and colleagues scanned volunteers as they imagined eating high-calorie foods, such as chocolate cake and French fries, or using inedible objects such as clothespins piled on a plate. One result gave Brooks a jolt. A center of self-control in anorexics’ brains sprung to life when the volunteers thought about food — but only in the women who severely restricted their calories, her team reported March 2012 in PLOS ONE.

The control center, two golf ball–sized chunks of tissue called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC, helps stamp out primitive urges. “They put a brake on your impulsive behaviors,” says Brooks, now at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

For Brooks, discovering the DLPFC data was like finding a tiny vein of gold in a heap of granite. The control center could be the nugget that reveals how anorexics clamp down on their appetites. So she and her colleagues devised an experiment to test anorexics’ DLPFC. Using a memory task known to engage the brain region, the researchers quizzed volunteers while showing them subliminal images. The quizzes tested working memory, the mental tool that lets people hold  phone numbers in their heads while hunting for a pen and paper. Compared with healthy people, anorexics tended to get more answers right, Brooks’ team wrote June 2012 in Consciousness and Cognition. “The patients were really good,” Brooks says. “They hardly made any mistakes.”

A turbocharged working memory could help anorexics hold on to rules they set for themselves about food. “It’s like saying ‘I will only eat a salad at noon, I will only eat a salad at noon,’ over and over in your mind,” says Brooks. These mantras may become so ingrained that an anorexic person can’t escape them.

But looking at subliminal images of food distracted anorexics from the memory task. “Then they did just as well as the healthy people,” Brooks says. The results suggest that anorexic people might tap into their DLPFC control circuits when faced with food.

James Lock has also seen signs of self-control circuits gone awry in people with eating disorders. In 2011, he and colleagues scanned the brains of teenagers with different eating disorders while signaling them to push a button. While volunteers lay inside the fMRI machine, researchers flashed pictures of different letters on an interior screen. For every letter but “X,” Lock’s group told the teens to push a button. During the task, anorexic teens who obsessively cut calories tended to have more active visual circuits than healthy teens or those with bulimia, a disorder that compels people to binge and purge. The result isn’t easy to explain, says Lock. “Anorexics may just be more focused in on the task.”

Bulimics’ brains told a simpler story. When teens with bulimia saw the letter “X,” broad swaths of their brains danced with activity — more so than the healthy or calorie-cutting anorexic volunteers, Lock’s team reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry. For bulimics, controlling the impulse to push the button may take more brain power than for others, Lock says.

Though the data don’t reveal differences in self-control between anorexics and healthy people, Lock thinks that anorexics’ well-documented ability to swat away urges probably does have signatures in the brain. He notes that his study was small, and that the “healthy” people he used as a control group might have shared similarities with anorexics. “The people who tend to volunteer are generally pretty high performers,” he says. “The chances are good that my controls are a little bit more like anorexics than bulimics.”

Still, Lock’s results offered another flicker of proof that people with eating disorders might have glitches in their self-control circuits. A tight rein on urges could help steer anorexics toward illness, but the parts of their brain tuned into rewards, such as sugary snacks, may also be a little off track.

For many anorexics, food just doesn’t taste very good. A classic symptom of the disorder is anhedonia, or trouble experiencing pleasure. Parts of Heenan’s past reflect the symptom. When she was ill, she had trouble remembering favorite dishes from childhood, for example — a blank spot common to anorexics. “I think I enjoyed some things,” she says. Beyond frozen yogurt, she can’t really rattle off a list.

After Heenan started seriously restricting her calories in college, only one aspect of food made her feel satisfied. Skipping, rather than eating, meals felt good, she says. Some of Heenan’s symptoms may have stemmed from frays in her reward wiring, the brain circuitry connecting food to pleasure. In the past few years, researchers have found that the chemicals coursing through healthy people’s reward circuits aren’t quite the same in anorexics. And studies in rodents have linked chemical changes in reward circuitry to under- and overeating.

To find out whether under- and overweight people had altered brain chemistry, eating disorder researcher Guido Frank of the University of Colorado Denver studied anorexic, healthy-weight and obese women. He and his colleagues trained volunteers to link images, such as orange or purple shapes, with the taste of a sweet solution, slightly salty water or no liquid. Then, the researchers scanned the women’s brains while showing them the shapes and dispensing tiny squirts of flavors. But the team threw in a twist: Sometimes the flavors didn’t match up with the right images.

When anorexics got an unexpected hit of sugar, a surge of activity bloomed in their brains. Obese people had the opposite response: Their brains didn’t register the surprise. Healthy-weight women fit somewhere in the middle, Frank’s team reported August 2012, in Neuropsychopharmacology. While obese people might not be sensitive to sweets anymore, a little sugar rush goes a long way for anorexics. “It’s just too much stimulation for them,” Frank says.

One of the lively regions in anorexics’ brains was the ventral striatum, a lump of nerve cells that’s part of a person’s reward circuitry. The lump picks up signals from dopamine, a chemical that rushes in when most people see a sugary treat.

Frank says that it’s possible cutting calories could sculpt a person’s brain chemistry, but he thinks some young people are just more likely to become sugar-sensitive than others. Frank suspects anorexics’ dopamine-sensing equipment might be out of alignment to begin with. And he may be onto something. Recently, researchers in Kaye’s lab at UCSD showed that the same chemical that makes people perk up when a coworker brings in a box of doughnuts might actually trigger anxiety in anorexics.

Usually a rush of dopamine triggers euphoria or a boost of energy, says Ursula Bailer, a psychiatrist and neuroimaging researcher at UCSD. Anorexics don’t seem to pick up those good feelings.

When Bailer and colleagues gave volunteers amphetamine, a drug known to trigger dopamine release, and then asked them to rate their feelings, healthy people stuck to a familiar script. The drug made them feel intensely happy, Bailer’s team described March 2012 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Researchers linked the volunteers’ happy feelings to a wave of dopamine flooding the brain, using an imaging technique to track the chemical’s levels.

But anorexics said something different. “People with anorexia didn’t feel euphoria — they got anxious,” Bailer says. And the more dopamine coursing through anorexics’ brains, the more anxious they felt. Anorexics’ reaction to the chemical could help explain why they steer clear of food — or at least foods that healthy people find tempting. “Anorexics don’t usually get anxious if you give them a plate of cucumbers,” Bailer says.

Beyond the anxiety finding, one other aspect of the study sticks out: Instead of examining sick patients, Bailer, Kaye and colleagues recruited women who had recovered from anorexia. By studying people whose brains are no longer starving, Kaye’s team hopes to sidestep the chicken-and-egg question of whether specific brain signatures predispose people to anorexia or whether anorexia carves those signatures in the brain.

Though Kaye says that there’s still a lot scientists don’t know about anorexia, he’s convinced it’s a disorder that starts in the brain. Compared with healthy children, anorexic children’s brains are getting different signals, he says. “Parents have to realize that it’s very hard for these kids to change.”

Kaye thinks imaging data can help families reframe their beliefs about anorexia, which might help them handle tough treatments. He thinks the data can also offer new insights into therapies tailored for anorexics’ specific traits.

One trait Kaye has focused on is anorexics’ sense of awareness of their bodies. Peel back the outer lobes of the brain by the temples, and the bit that handles body awareness pops into view. These regions, little islands of tissue called the insula, are one of the first brain areas to register pain, taste and other sensations. When people hold their breath, for example, and feel the panicky claws of air hunger, “the insula lights up like crazy,” Kaye says.

Kaye and colleagues have shown that the insulas of people with anorexia seem to be somewhat dulled to sensations. In a recent study, his team strapped heat-delivering gadgets to volunteers’ arms and cranked the devices to painfully hot temperatures while measuring insula activity via fMRI.

Compared with healthy volunteers, bits of recovered anorexics’ insulas dimmed when the researchers turned up the heat. But when researchers simply warned that pain was coming, other parts of the brain region flared brightly, Kaye’s team reported in January in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. For people who have had anorexia, actually feeling pain didn’t seem as bad as anticipating it. “They don’t seem to be sensing things correctly,” says Kaye.

If anorexics can’t detect sensations like pain properly, they may also have trouble picking up other signals from the body, such as hunger. Typically when people get hungry, their insulas rev up to let them know. And in healthy hungry people, a taste of sugar really gets the insula excited. For anorexics, this hunger-sensing part of the brain seems numb. Parts of the insula barely perked up when recovered anorexic volunteers tasted sugar, Kaye’s team showed this June in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The findings “may help us understand why people can starve themselves and not get hungry,” Kaye says.

Though the brain region that tells people they’re hungry might have trouble detecting sweet signals, some reward circuits seem to overreact to the same cues. Combined with a tendency to swap happiness for anxiety, and a mental vise grip on behavior, anorexics might have just enough snags in their brain wiring to tip them toward disease.

Now, Kaye’s group hopes to tap neuroimaging data for new treatment ideas. One day, he thinks doctors might be able to help anorexics “train” their insulas using biofeedback. With real-time brain scanning, patients could watch as their insulas struggle to pick up sugar signals, and then practice strengthening the response. More effective treatment options could potentially spare anorexics the relapses many patients suffer.

Heenan says she’s one of the lucky ones. Four years have passed since she first saw the anorexic brain images at UCSD. In the months following her treatment, Heenan and her family worked together to rebuild her relationship with food. At first, her fiancé picked out all her meals, but step by step, Heenan earned autonomy over her diet. Today, Heenan, a coordinator for Minneapolis’ public schools, is married and has a new puppy. “Life can be good,” she says. “Life can be fun. I want other people to know the freedom that I do.”

The bowl of pasta sitting in front of Kelsey Heenan didn’t look especially scary.

Spaghetti, chopped asparagus and chunks of chicken glistened in an olive oil sauce. Usually, such savory fare might make a person’s mouth water. But when Heenan’s fiancé served her a portion, she started sobbing. “You can’t do this to me,” she told him. “I thought you loved me!”

Heenan was confronting her “fear foods” at the Eating Disorders Center for Treatment and Research at UCSD. Therapists in her treatment program, Intensive Multi-Family Therapy, spend five days teaching anorexic patients and families about the disorder and how to encourage healthy eating. “There’s no blame,” says Christina Wierenga, a clinical neuropsychologist at UCSD. “The focus is just on having the parent refeed the child.” Therapists lay out healthy meals and portion sizes for teens, bolster parents’ self-confidence and hammer home the dangers of not eating. Heenan compares the experience to boot camp. But by the end of her time at the center, she says, “I was starting to see glimpses of what life could be like as a healthy person.”

Treatment options for anorexia include a broad mix of behavioral and medication-based therapies. Most don’t work very well, and many lack the support of evidence-based trials. Hospitalizing patients can boost short-term weight gain, “but when people go home they lose all the weight again,” says Stanford University’s James Lock, one of the architects of family-based treatment. That treatment is currently considered the most effective therapy for adolescent anorexics.

In a 2010 clinical trial, half of teens who underwent FBT maintained a normal weight a year after therapy. In contrast, only a fifth of teens treated with adolescent-focused individual therapy, which aims to help kids cope with emotions without using starvation, hit the healthy weight goal.

Few good options exist for adult anorexics, a group notorious for dropping out of therapy. New work hints that cognitive remediation therapy, or CRT, which uses cognitive exercises to change anorexics’ behaviors, has potential. After two months of CRT, only 13 percent of patients abandoned treatment, and most regained some weight, Lock and colleagues reported in the April International Journal of Eating Disorders. Researchers still need to find out, however, if CRT helps patients keep weight on long-term.

The Depression Causation Exploration

Brain scans, blood samples, and other diagnostic tests could one day direct doctors to the best treatments for depression patients and uncover the biological basis of the condition.

When someone is diagnosed with depression, patient and doctor often begin a long trial-and-error process of testing different treatments. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, so patients may try several options before finding the best one. But in the future, a brain scan, blood test, or some combination could help guide doctors to the best drugs, or lead them to suggest talk therapy.

Recently, Emory University researcher Helen Mayberg reported that a PET scan, a commonly used imaging method, can reveal whether a patient will respond better to an antidepressant or cognitive behavioral therapy. And in May, Medscape reported that David Mischoulon of Massachusetts General Hospital presented findings that the amount of a particular protein in the blood of depression patients could indicate whether a patient would do better by adding a form of folic acid to his or her treatment.

A key goal of such research is to distinguish between causes of depression. “The presence of certain biomarkers might give us a clue whether [a particular patient’s] depression is truly biologically driven, or whether it is depression like sadness over an event,” says Mischoulon. “If we can identify people who have these biological bases, it might suggest these patients might do better with medications, as opposed to psychotherapies or meditation.”

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability globally. Many people do not seek or do not have access to treatment, and among those who do, fewer than 40 percent of depression patients improve with the first type of treatment they try. The problem is not that treatments like antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy don’t work, it’s that no one treatment works for every patient. Researchers from many disciplines, from neuroscience to genomics, are studying this complex disorder, which likely represents many different conditions with unique origins and treatments. Large clinical trials to predict a patient’s response to therapy or drugs based on brain or body biomarkers could improve treatment for future patients and perhaps uncover a clearer understanding of depression’s origins.

“You see now a number of big studies on predictive biomarkers,” says Mayberg, who has pioneered pacemaker-like implants as a treatment for severe cases of depression. She’s also involved in a large study of patients who will be treated with antidepressants or cognitive behavioral therapy based on brain scans. “It’s going to be interesting over the next year or two to see how this plays out,” she says. One question will be whether researchers will be able to identify markers that are both unambiguous but also practical to test. Brain scans may be the best place to start, she says, because they focus on the origin of the condition, but once good biomarkers are identified via brain scan, surrogates found in the blood may provide a simpler and more affordable option.

One challenge for researchers is that depression is probably a conglomeration of many diseases, says Madhukar Trivedi, a University of Texas Southwestern researcher heading a large trial that is trying to distinguish patients who respond better to one type of antidepressant compared to another. “There are a lot of subtypes in depression, so any given marker, whether genetic, protein, imaging, or EEG, ends up accounting for only a small percentage of variance for any group of patients,” says Trivedi.  

If these researchers are successful, they could dramatically change how depression is treated and perhaps diagnosed. Doctors in the United States use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, to diagnose depression. The diagnoses are largely based on the collection of symptoms presented or described by patients. In May, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health, Thomas Insel, announced that his institution would focus its research in areas other than the categories presented by the DSM. “Patients with mental disorders deserve better,” he said.

Bruce Cuthbert is heading the NIMH’s project to establish new ways of studying mental illness and potentially to improve future versions of the DSM by more precisely identifying the brain abnormalities in various diseases, including depression. The idea behind the project is to map out the genetic, circuit, and cognitive aspects of mental illness and to focus on individual features of disorders instead of clinical diagnoses. It could provide the information necessary to improve the DSM so that it is based on neuroscience and not just collections of symptoms. “In the future, we might define the disorders differently, or we might not. But this project will provide a framework to look at neural systems and how they operate and how that contributes to disease,” says Cuthbert.

Perhaps more immediately, the NIMH project could help researchers tune clinical trials of drugs to the right patients by focusing on discrete symptoms. For example, anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure or seek pleasure, is a major symptom of depression, but it is also found in other patients, such as those with schizophrenia. By recruiting patients with measurable anhedonia, drug developers may be more likely to succeed in clinical trials than if they focused only on depression patients, says Cuthbert.

The NIMH project could also help to identify biomarkers of depression. “It could give us a structure to look at the pathology through different markers of the disease,” says Trivedi. “The goal is fantastic, but the proof is going to come in doing it.”

The Genetics Of Olfaction

No two people smell exactly alike. That is, noses sense odors in individual ways. What one nose finds offensive, another may find pleasant, while another might not smell anything at all. Scientists have long known the way things smell to us is determined by our genes.

Now, two studies appearing in the journal Current Biology
have identified “the genetic differences that underpin the differences in smell sensitivity and perception in different individuals.” And while some of these differences merely help determine our culinary preferences, others appear to play a subconscious role in how we choose our sexual partners.

For the first study, 200 people were tested to determine their sensitivity to 10 different chemical compounds commonly found in foods. The researchers found four of the ten odors had a genetic association. These were malt, apple, blue cheese, and a floral scent associated with violets.

The research team, led by Sara Jaeger, Jeremy McRae, and Richard Newcomb of Plant and Food Research in New Zealand, used a genome-wide association study. Their first task was to identify which test subjects could smell each chemical compound and which could not. They then searched the subjects’ genomes for areas of DNA that differed between these people.

“We were surprised how many odors had genes associated with them. If this extends to other odors, then we might expect everyone to have their own unique set of smells that they are sensitive to,” explained McRae

“These smells are found in foods and drinks that people encounter every day, such as tomatoes and apples. This might mean that when people sit down to eat a meal, they each experience it in their own personalized way.”

They further found there is no regional differentiation. A person in one part of the world is just as likely to be able to smell a particular compound as a person in another part of the world. In addition, sensitivity to one compound does not predict the ability to smell another compound.

The genes that determine our ability to perceive certain odors all lie in or near the genes that encode olfactory receptors. These receptors occur on the surface of sensory nerve cells in the upper part of the nose. A particular smell is perceived when these receptor molecules bind with a chemical compound wafting through the nose, causing nerve cells to send an impulse to the brain and producing our sensation of smell.

For the violet smell, caused by a naturally occurring chemical compound known as β-ionone, the researchers were able to pinpoint the exact mutation in gene OR5A1 that determines whether the smell is perceived as floral, sour or pungent, and whether it is found to be pleasant.

These findings might have future marketing value. According to Richard Newcomb, “Knowing the compounds that people can sense in foods, as well as other products, will have an influence on the development of future products. Companies may wish to design foods that better target people based on their sensitivity, essentially developing foods and other products personalized for their taste and smell."

SEXY OR STINKY?

A separate study was conducted by Leslie Vosshall of the Rockefeller University Hospital. Humans have about 1,000 genes that influence smell, and around 400 of these are responsible for sensing a particular odor molecule.

Testing 391 human subjects, Vosshall studied olfactory responses to two closely related steroids, androstenone and androstadienone, which are found in male sweat. People generally have strong reactions to these steroids, finding them either sweet and florally or rank and noxious. The gene 0R7D4 determines the intensity of these odors as well as the perception of them being either pleasant or repulsive.

According to Vosshall’s report: “People who found the smell repulsive were more likely to have two functional copies of OR7D4; those who perceived it as a more mild smell tended to have one or two impaired copies of the gene.”

This study is part of the larger goal of understanding how genetic and neuronal factors influence behaviors.

A 2002 study published in Nature Genetics provided more insight into the effect of male pheromones on women. This study looked at the link between women’s preferences for the odors given off by men and a group of genes called the Major Histocompatibily Complex (MHC) which contribute to a persons’ immune response.

In this experiment, a group of 49 women were asked to smell 10 boxes. Some of the boxes held t-shirts worn by men with different MHC genes, and others contained familiar household odors such as bleach or cloves.

The t-shirts were worn by men who slept in them for two nights and avoided contact with other scents during that time, even to the point of avoiding other people. According to the report, “the women were then asked to rate each scent based on their familiarity, intensity, pleasantness and spiciness, as well as choose the one odor which they would choose if they had to smell it all the time.”

What the researchers found was the women did not choose the scents of men whose genes were similar to their own, nor did they choose those whose genes were too dissimilar. The women showed no preference for odors from men who had the same genes as their mothers, but did show a preference for odors from men who shared genes they inherited from their fathers.

Scientists believe there are two reasons for preferring a mate whose MHC genes are different than one’s own. One is that it would tend to create offspring with more genetic diversity and thus more robust immune systems. The other is it helps to avoid inbreeding.

Of course, when people choose their mates, there are a number of social factors that come into play as well. However, studies have shown married people tend to have different types of genes than their spouses.

So, the next time you like the way a person smells, keep in mind it may mean you have complementary genes.

The Weiner Recurrence

On May 27, 2011, Weiner sent a link to a sexually suggestive photograph of himself via his public Twitter account to an adult woman who was following him on Twitter. After several days of denying he had posted the image, Weiner held a press conference at which he admitted he had "exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years". He apologized for his earlier denials. After an explicit photo was leaked through the Twitter account of a listener of the The Opie & Anthony Show, Weiner announced on June 16, 2011, that he would resign from Congress, and he formally resigned on June 21.
Now I personally thought this would be the end of the Weiner scandals (pun intended) and that former Congressman Anthony David Weiner would just fade into the background, like many other people before him. But no...Anthony Weiner the peter tweeter is at is again.
The Weinergate scandal has renewed itself, a second scandal began on July 23, 2013, several months after Weiner returned to politics in the New York City mayoral race. Explicit photos were allegedly sent under the alias 'Carlos Danger' to a 22-year-old woman with whom Weiner had contact as late as April 2013, more than a year after Weiner had left Congress.
 "Nearly a week after acknowledging that he exchanged lewd messages with as many as three women since he resigned from Congress over similar behavior, the New York City mayoral candidate has been pilloried by rivals, abandoned by his campaign manager and pummeled in the polls, his front-runner status all but a distant memory." Damn isn't that a shame. Seriously though, my main question is why Huma, Anthony's wife, is still with him?

Tumblr Is Strange

http://nathanshaveninvasion.tumblr.com/

Come on over guys, teach me how to use this goofy site. Because currently Tumblr and I have a love hate relationship

"Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me"

President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance at the White House Friday to discuss African-Americans' reaction to last weekend's verdict in the George Zimmerman case, saying that "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."

"You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn't go away," he said.

It's not just the African American community that is effected. The whole country is effected because we allowed a guilty man to walk free...again.

"The African American community is painted with a broad brush"

Yes...just like the rest of us. Everyone has misconceptions and misjudgments made about them. Everybody, from every race, religion, culture, from every walk of life.

Heroin=Bad Idea Kids

On July 13, 2013, at the age of 31, Cory Monteith was found dead in his room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in Vancouver. He had been scheduled to check out that day following a seven-night stay, but when he failed to do so, hotel staff entered his room and discovered his body around noon. The Vancouver Police Department stated that the cause of death was not immediately apparent, but foul play was ruled out. An autopsy released by the BC Coroners Service was completed on July 15, and stated that Cory died from "a mixed drug toxicity" consisting of heroin and alcohol, and that his death appeared to have been accidental.
Monteith's body was cremated in Vancouver on July 17, following a private viewing by his immediate family and girlfriend, Lea Michele. His father said he did not find out about the viewing or cremation actions until after the fact.

Diacetylmorphine, almost always still called by its original trade name of heroin in non-medical settings, is used as a recreational drug for the transcendent relaxation and intense euphoria it induces. Anthropologist Michael Agar once described heroin as "the perfect whatever drug." Tolerance develops quickly, and users need more of the drug to achieve the same effects. Its popularity with recreational drug users, compared to morphine, reportedly stems from its perceived different effects. In particular, users report an intense rush, an acute transcendent state of euphoria, which occurs while diacetylmorphine is being metabolized into 6-monoacetylmorphine (6-MAM) and morphine in the brain. Some believe that heroin produces more euphoria than other opioids upon injection; one possible explanation is the presence of 6-monoacetylmorphine, a metabolite unique to heroin - although a more likely explanation is the rapidity of onset. While other opioids of recreational use produce only morphine, heroin also leaves 6-MAM, also a psycho-active metabolite. However, this perception is not supported by the results of clinical studies comparing the physiological and subjective effects of injected heroin and morphine in individuals formerly addicted to opioids; these subjects showed no preference for one drug over the other. Equipotent injected doses had comparable action courses, with no difference in subjects' self-rated feelings of euphoria, ambition, nervousness, relaxation, drowsiness, or sleepiness.  Like most opioids, unadulterated heroin does not cause many long-term complications other than dependence and constipation. Due to increased vulnerability to infectious agents, particularly viruses and intracellular bacteria resulting from the suppression of various cell-mediated immune pathways, the use of heroin and other opioids, even at normal therapeutic levels, may lead to opportunistic infections, which carry their own lasting effects.The average purity of street heroin in the UK varies between 30% and 50% and heroin that has been seized at the border has purity levels between 40% and 60%; this variation has led to people suffering from overdoses as a result of the heroin missing a stage on its journey from port to end user, as each set of hands that the drug passes through adds further adulterants, the strength of the drug reduces, with the effect that if steps are missed, the purity of the drug reaching the end user is higher than they are used to and because they are unable to tolerate the increase, an overdose ensues.

That being said, Montieth had just recently completed rehab for substance abuse,  he used the same amount of heroin that he used before he went to rehab to get high, his body couldn't tolerate the mix of alcohol and heroin, and he died. (my own conclusion)

Now Cory was an idol of mine, and his death really really sucks. But I think that there is a positive to his death, and that would be a Cory Montieth's story is a cautionary tale, maybe kids will be less likely to do smack.

Let's Make Dzhokhar Tsarnaev An Idol, So He Can Have Fangirls

Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and our thoughts are always with them and their families. The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens. –THE EDITORS

Well okay, so then why didn't you put James Holmes on the cover, he is around the same age as your target age readers.
And the fact that the Rolling Stones cover featuring Tsarnaev is deemed to be "sexy" is even worse. You see there is something in the psychology of some females (not all, but some) that makes them become hoplessly infatuated with people who have done truly terrible things, so long as those monsters don't look half bad. Dzhokhar looks like he could be part of a boy band. Some think he is innocent, some don't care either way. All of them are bat shit crazy and are in need of some intense therapy.
Like this girl, named Alisha, she's a waitress, and she's getting a Tsarnaev quote tattooed on her forearm. How dumb can you get? I hope all these people are just trolling. But probably they aren't

Mental Disorders In Winnie the Pooh

Eating disorders are conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual's physical and mental health. Pooh is constantly looking for honey, and he goes completely out of his way to get it. Pooh could also be characterized as a substance abuser.

Piglet could be characterized as having general anxiety disorder. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry.   Individuals often exhibit a variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, fidgeting,  muscle tension, muscle aches, difficulty concentrating, trembling, twitching, irritability, agitation, sweating, restlessness,and inability to fully control the anxiety. Piglet is consistently terrified of everything.


Tigger could be characterized as having ADHD. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder  is a psychiatric disorder or neurobehavioral disorder characterized by significant difficulties either of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsiveness. There are three subtypes of the disorder which consist of it being predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI or ADHD-I), predominantly hyperactive-impulsive (ADHD-HI or ADHD-H), or the two combined (ADHD-C), which shows all three difficulties. Tigger has an inability to sit still, and is constantly bouncing around.

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry; by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety; or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; and nervous rituals, such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room. Rabbit is a complete and total neat freak. If things are done differently than he would have done them, its wrong.

Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings and sense of well-being.  Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, worried, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, hurt, or restless. Eeyore is the poster-child (poster-animal?) for depression. You cannot tell me that you didn't make that connection when you were little. That Eeyore was always sad or miserable.

Narcissism is a term that originated with Narcissus in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Currently it is used to describe a person characterized by egotism, vanity, pride, or selfishness. Whenever Owl is asked a question he goes of on a tangent about himself or his relatives.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by a deficit of typical emotional responses. Common symptoms include auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.
Christopher Robin, believes that all the previously stated animals can talk, and that they interact with their environment, with him, and with each other

The Vomit Artist: Probably The Worst Idea I've Ever Seen

So Millie Brown is known as the vomit artist. She drinks colored milk and then jams two fingers down her throat, to regurgitate the colored milk on a canvas. Brown's work is called "Nexus Vomitus," About her art, Brown says: "I drink colored milk — the process is not painful but after several hours of vomiting it can take its toll, which is why I limit the number of colors I use. … The use of canvas is a natural progression from my early performances. I started puking down myself in various outfits, but wanted more longevity from the end result."

Does nobody get that, by shoving two fingers down her throat and calling it art, she is encouraging people to be bulimic. Basically she is saying "Here Kids! Jam two fingers down your throat and you can create art and be skinny all at the same time!"

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating and purging, or consuming a large amount of food in a short amount of time followed by an attempt to rid oneself of the food consumed (purging), typically by vomiting, taking a laxative, diuretic, or stimulant, and/or excessive exercise, because of an extensive concern for body weight.

Imagine if someone cut themselves and it was recognized as art. We'd have a bunch of people creating permanent scars on their body for the sake of art...oh wait we already have that. It's called scarification modification.

Does anybody get what I'm trying to say here??

Beautiful isn't it?

You Aren't Stuck Unless You Choose To Be

What did you want to be when you were young? A Ballerina? An Astronaut? The President of The United States? A Nobel Peace Prize Winner?
Let me guess, now that you're older, you have "realized" that those dreams are "hopeless." That you're just stuck. Stuck in a monotonous job, in a shitty home life, car is wrecked, spouse decided that they were sick of your sorry ass, bills are late, and money can only stretch so far.
Or you're fresh out of highschool, and you were the popular guy, got all the girls, had the muscles, but didn't have the brains to pass the 8th grade, but the teachers keep barely passing you, just so they didn't have to see your face anymore. Senior year came and went, and *gasp* guess what buddy? Nobody gives a shit that you were top dog in your school, because now you're just another face in the crowd.
But either way you aren't stuck.
In what grade do we stop believing in ourselves. In what grade do we stop believing period. I mean someone has to be a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, someone has to be a Ballerina, so why not us?