Cliff Weathers, - The Raw Story/Alternet
Stephan: SR has been following the story of the collapse of the science on depression for about seven years now (see archives). Here is the latest.
Credit: Shutterstock
A study is challenging the relationship between depression and an imbalance of serotonin levels in the brain, and brings into doubt how depression has been treated in the U.S. over the past 20 years.
Researchers at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center and Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit have bred mice who cannot produce serotonin in their brains, which should theoretically make them chronically depressed. But researchers instead found that the mice showed no signs of depression, but instead acted aggressively and exhibited compulsive personality traits.
This study backs recent research indicating that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, may not be effective in lifting people out of depression. These commonly used antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Zoloft, and Lexapro, are taken by some 10% of the U.S. population and nearly 25% of women between 40 and 60 years of age. More than 350 million people suffer from depression, according to the World Health Organization, and it is the leading cause […]
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Steven W. Thrasher, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the Guardian's research on American police violence. It is an increasingly ugly story. Something has gone seriously wrong about the way we train and regulate our police. The evidence is the evidence. We are way past polemic argument on this subject.
The fact that this is coming out in the most prestigious British newspaper, when no American paper is tracking police violence like this, makes it all the more damning.
You don’t expect your Golden Years to be ended by a police. But it happens.
Credit: Cultura RM/Alamy
You’re never too old to be killed by an interaction with a police officer in the United States: though the Guardian’s analysis of every police killing in 2015 to date found that the average age of people killed by police is 37, some 20 people killed this year have been in their 60s, seven in their 70s, and two in their 80s – about six elderly people a month.
The circumstances behind the killing of elder citizens by police mirror the many reasons why Americans of all ages (some 473 in total this year as of the time this was published) are killed by police.
But police encounters with the elderly which turn deadly are largely triggered by three things: vehicular slaughter; episodes of extreme violence – sometimes with the victim possibly intending […]
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Joe Romm , - Climate Progress
Stephan: Here is another confirmation of a prediction about coastal real estate I first made in SR in 1991, and have reiterated numerous times since. We are rapidly approaching a collapse of the high value coastal real estate market, and it is going to produce devastating consequences.
Note that the states with the highest value of real estate at risk are all Red value states that deny climate change is real or caused by humans.
Taxpayers are propping up wildly-inflated coastal property values. At some point, we’ll stop doing that, and coastal property values will crash.
Unless they have already crashed because Miami gets hit by its equivalent of Superstorm Sandy. Or because the smart money pulls out of coastal real estate ahead of time after realizing that our climate inaction has made the crash inevitable — due to a combination of faster-than-expected sea level rise and ever-worsening storm surges.
The main prop is the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers $484 billion in Florida property alone, “often at below market rates,” as Reuters has explained. Florida state officials denying the reality of climate change does not help either.
But a
recent study, “Climate Adaptation and Policy-Induced Inflation of Coastal Property Value,” points out that taxpayer-subsidized beach sand replenishment programs are also inflating the bubble. The researchers found “that a sudden removal of federal nourishment subsidies, as has been proposed, could trigger a dramatic downward adjustment in coastal real estate, analogous to the bursting of a bubble.”
How big a crash would the subsidy […]
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Ian Millhiser, - Justice Scalia Blows Creationist Dog-Whistle During Graduation Speech At Catholic High School
Stephan: This story got almost no traction in U.S. corporate media. Indeed I could not find a major newspaper that even touched the story. But I think it is not only important but very telling.
One of the ultra-conservative associate justices Antonin Scalia, based on his own statements, appears to be inclined to creationist young Earth theology, and sees the Devil as a person. The implications are mind-boggling, and this man should not be on the Supreme Court.
Like the piece I did yesterday on the Clinton Impeachment, orchestrated by serial adulterers, it gives us a measure of the extreme cynicism and hypocrisy that pervades the Republican Party.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Credit: AP Photo/David Tulis
Justice Antonin Scalia spoke on Thursday at his granddaughter’s graduation from a Catholic high school in Bethesda, Maryland. During the speech, however, the sitting Supreme Court justice offered a subtle nod to young earth creationism, the belief that that the earth was created by God and is only several thousand years-old.
“Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented,” Scalia said, adding that “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”
Humanity began to develop much more than 5,000 years ago. Early human ancestors began to diverge from the chimpanzee lineage about six million years ago. The first members of the species Homo sapiens are believed to have lived in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and cave […]
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Amanda Marcotte, - Slate Magazine
Stephan: One of the defining hallmarks of the Corporate Theocratic Right is an obsession with sex, and a strong need to write laws that force women into a submissive subordinate status.
It always amazes me that large numbers of American women consistently vote themselves into this second class status.
The state legislative season is beginning to wind down, so it’s time to squeeze in some last-minute attacks on women’s access to health care. Last week’s Worst State of the Week honors were handed out on grounds of sheer weirdness, but this round is defined mostly by mean-spiritedness.
Third place goes to North Carolina, where the state Senate passed a bill that would expand the abortion waiting period from 24 hours to 72 hours, because lately women have become even more slow-witted and need yet more time to think over their decisions. This move isn’t just about hassling women and their doctors, however. State legislators are also screwing over Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who won his swing state in 2012 by promising not to sign more abortion restrictions; McCrory has been dodging and weaving when reporters ask if he plans to sign this bill. You’d think McCrory’s Republican colleagues would avoid putting him in this no-win situation, but apparently forcing women to stay pregnant 72 hours longer than they’d otherwise choose was just that important.
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