“The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.”
- Armistead Maupin
April 26, 2011
Quote of the Day: Honesty and Change
April 25, 2011
Quote of the Day: Direct Therapy
“I’m starting to discover that I am one of those therapists who is unable to be anything but direct. Life is too short to hide in the shadows, especially when the shadows are often our own.”
- Helen Hill MFT
April 25, 2011
McDonald’s Basher of Transgender Has Attacked Others Before [gawker.com]
Maureen O’Connor — Teonna Monae Brown—the Baltimore woman charged last week for a beating up a transgenderMcDonald’s patron while a passive crowdmade videos—may have been a repeat offender. The Smoking Gun reports that the 18-year-old had previously been arrested for punching a mother of two in the face, then beating her with an umbrella, then trying to rip out her hair, while friends attacked the lady’s daughters. Just as ogres like to hide under bridges and terrorizs passing billygoats, violent jerks apparently like to hang out at McDonald’s and beat the snot out of strangers.
Fast food fisticuffs: The absolute nadir of depressing Americana. Included in that assessment is the soul-crushing way we consume these messes, via grainy cellphone videos sold for the equivalent of a few Happy Meals to Schadenblog hell World Star Hip Hop. McDonald’s patrons are the new gladiators; YouTube the amphitheater for watching them fight to the death. [TSG, mugshot via TSG]
http://gawker.com/#!5795392/mcdonalds-basher-had-brawled-there-before
April 24, 2011
McDonalds Transgender Victim of Beating Comes Forward [gawker.com]
Anyone in my predicament should not be afraid to walk the streets,” Polis said. “They should not have to go into a restaurant and get gawked at and made fun of. They shouldn’t be afraid to leave the house. It’s just wrong.
Max Read — Chrissy Lee Polis, the 22-year-old transgender woman who was the subject of a video-recorded beating in a Baltimore-area McDonald’s last week, spoke out for the first time in an interview with The Baltimore Sun.
Polis’ account confirms most of the Facebook-driven speculation that she’d been targeted for using a woman’s bathroom. She says the attack was “definitely a hate crime,” and tells the Sun that the dissemination of the tape on the internet has worsened the aftermath of the assault:
She said seeing herself all over the Internet and all over the news has been “like walking out of the closet all over again.” Polis is concerned that the public attention could trigger more violence – and worries it could hurt her chances of getting a job. “I want to cry, but I need to hold my head up,” she said.
Though hate crime charges against Polis’ attackers—said by police to be two women ages 14 and 18—haven’t yet been filed, the state’s attorney says that a review will take place next week to determine “if [they] need to make additional charges.” The McDonald’s employee who recorded the video has been fired, and the franchise owner says he may take further action against other employees.
http://gawker.com/#!5795129/mcdonalds-beating-video-victim-comes-forward
April 24, 2011
Ashes of Hope, Renewal from Living
I think my soul did die today.
I can really see no other way,
When love turns out to be
Ashes of hopes from long ago.
My hopes should have been left
To be blown with the wind,
To all places on this lovely earth,
Where flowers bloom and we find our worth;
My life renews yet again,
Not from ashes so forlorn,
But in deeds and friends who cross my path;
Not by living in the past.
April 23, 2011
I am Pissed Off: Transgender Girl beaten until she has a seizure over using a bathroom at McDonalds
Article from the Daily Mail – Headline by Helen
By PAUL BENTLEY of the Daily Mail
Last updated at 7:54 PM on 23rd April 2011
- McDonald’s says incident is ‘disturbing and troubling’
- Police consider charging black girls with racist hate crime
The victim brutally beaten to the point of having a seizure in McDonald’s as staff passively watched on is believed to be a transgender woman, it has been revealed.
Shocking footage captured the horrifying assault as McDonald’s staff in Rosedale, Baltimore, idly stood by. The assault, which happened on April 18, was so severe the 22-year-old victim had a seizure in the restaurant.
The attack was believed to have been sparked after an argument over using a bathroom in the restaurant.
‘It does appear that the victim was a transgender woman, and she was brutalized while people stood by and watched,’ Lisa Polyak, vice president of the board of directors for Equality Maryland, told the Baltimore Sun.
The LGBT group is now calling on police to investigate the attack as a hate crime.
During the brutal attack, which lasted for several minutes, the young white girl was repeatedly kicked in the head and stamped on by two black girls in the fast food store.
Staff stood by and even laughed as the attackers grabbed the girl’s hair and dragged her across the floor.
After shocking footage of the assault spread across the internet, with one site alone receiving 450,000 views by mid-afternoon, police said a 14-year-old girl had been charged as a juvenile, while charges were pending against an 18-year-old woman.
While the incident remains under investigation, local police told the Baltimore Sun they were looking into whether or not there was racist motivation.
You can see the horrific video accompanying the Daily Mail article here at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379691/Transgender-girl-beaten-seizure-McDonalds-attack-victim-hate-crime.html#ixzz1KNoct2Qv
April 23, 2011
Saturday Lite: Botox Could Make You An Insensitive Jerk [gawker.com]
Anna North — We’ve already read that Botox may dull people’s emotions. Now it turns out the popular face-freezer may hamper users’ ability to judge how others are feeling.
According to USA Today, researchers at USC and Duke compared subjects treated with Botox, Restylane, and a special gel that intensifies muscle signals. They showed each group pictures of faces, and asked them to identify the emotions they saw. Those treated with Botox were significantly worse at detecting feelings than their counterparts who got the gel. Study author David Neal says Botox’s inhibition of muscle movement is to blame: “if muscular signals from the face to the brain are dampened, you’re less able to read emotions.” That’s because people tend to copy other people’s faces as a way of understanding what they’re feeling — if you can’t do that, you may not be able to empathize. Your friends are going tolove that.
The study has a lot of interesting implications — if, as Neal says, “when the facial muscles are amplified, you get better at emotion perception,” might the muscle gel help people who have trouble reading others’ emotions due to developmental issues? But it also bolsters the case, building for a while now, that freezing your face may not be entirely benign. Botox is explicitly designed to stop the wear and tear on skin caused by having expressions, but those who use it may have to accept that they don’t get the benefits of those expressions either. And these benefits may be more wide-ranging than anyone realized.
Botox May Deaden Perception, Study Says [USA Today]
http://gawker.com/#!5795006/botox-could-make-you-an-insensitive-jerk
April 22, 2011
Biological links found between childhood abuse and adolescent depression [queensu.ca]
Kate Harkness has found that a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse in childhood substantially increases the risk of depression in adolescence by altering a person’s neuroendocrine response to stress.
Adolescents with a history of maltreatment and a mild level of depression were found to release much more of the stress hormone cortisol than is normal in response to psychological stressors such as giving a speech or solving a difficult arithmetic test.
“This kind of reaction is a problem because cortisol kills cells in areas of the brain that control memory and emotion regulation,” explains Dr. Harkness, a professor in the Department of Psychology and an expert in the role of stress and trauma in adolescent depression. “Over time cortisol levels can build up and increase a person’s risk for more severe endocrine impairment and more severe depression.”
At severe levels of depression, Dr. Harkness’ team saw that the youths with a history of maltreatment had a total blunting of the endocrine response to stress. These findings suggest that the normal operation of the stress response system can breakdown in severely depressed adolescents.
These results are important because they show that environmental stress in childhood changes the function of the brain in ways that may cause and/or maintain severe psychiatric disorders such as depression.
Dr. Harkness recently presented her findings at the International Society for Affective Disorders Conference in Toronto. The research was funded by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation and conducted in collaboration with Queen’s researcher Jeremy Stuart and Kathy Wynne-Edwards from the University of Calgary.
April 21, 2011
The Science of Cannabis and the Brain [io9.com]
Annalee Newitz — Archaeologists recently found a 2,700-year-old pot stash, so we know humans have been smoking weed for thousands of years. But it was only about 20 years ago that neuroscientists began to understand how it affects our brains.
Scientists have known for a while that the active ingredient in cannabis was a chemical called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC for short. Ingesting or smoking THC has a wide range of effects, from the psychoactive “getting high” to the physiological relief of pain and swelling. It also acts as both a stimulant and depressant. How could one substance do all that?
Meet the cannabinoid receptor
In the 1980s and 90s, researchers identified cannabinoid receptors, long, ropy proteins that weave themselves into the surfaces of our cells and process THC. They also process other chemicals, many of them naturally occurring in our bodies. Once we’d discovered these receptors, we knew exactly where THC was being processed in our bodies and brains, as well as what physical systems it was affecting. Scattered throughout the body, cannabinoid receptors come in two varieties, called CB1 and CB2 – most of your CB1 receptors are in your brain, and are responsible for that “high” feeling when you smoke pot. CB2 receptors, often associated with the immune system, are found all over the body. THC interacts with both, which is why the drug gives you the giggles and also (when interacting with the immune system) reduces swelling and pain.
Cannabinoid receptors evolved in sea squirts about 500 million years ago; humans and many other creatures inherited ours from a distant ancestor we share with these simple sea creatures. THC binds to receptors in animals as well as humans, with similar effects.
Tasty, tasty, tasty
Cannabis notoriously makes people hungry – even cancer patients who had lost all desire to eat. One study showed that cancer patients who thought food smelled and tasted awful suddenly regained an ability to appreciate food odors after ingesting a THC compound. There are CB1 receptors in your hypothalamus, a part of your brain known to regulate appetite, and your body’s own cannabinoids usually send the “I’m hungry” message to them. But when you ingest THC, you artificially boost the amount of cannabinoids sending that message to your hypothalamus, which is why you get the munchies.
Understanding this process has actually led to a new body of research into safe diet drugs that would block those cannabinoid receptors. That way, your hypothalamus wouldn’t receive signals from your body telling it to eat, and would reduce hunger cravings in dieters.
What you’re forgetting
What’s happening in your brain when smoking pot makes you forget what you’re saying in the middle of saying it? According to the book Marijuana and Medicine (National Academies Press):
One of the primary effects of marijuana in humans is disruption of short-term memory. That is consistent with the abundance of CB1 receptors in the hippocampus, the brain region most closely associated with memory. The effects of THC resemble a temporary hippocampal lesion.
That’s right – smoking a joint creates the effect of temporary brain damage.
What happens is that THC shuts down a lot of the normal neuroprocessing that goes on in your hippocampus, slowing down the memory process. So memories while stoned are often jumpy, as if parts are missing. That’s because parts literally are missing: Basically you are saving a lot less information to your memory. It’s not that you’ve quickly forgotten what’s happened. You never remembered it at all.
April 20, 2011
Quote of the Day: Pain and Loss
“Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. …a world, or a relationship. Everything has its time. And everything ends.” -Sarah Jane Smith
