Month: May 2013

Freudian Furniture

Freuds Sofa

Christopher Turner lays out the history of one of civilization’s most famous sofas:

It is hard to imagine an issue of the New Yorker without a cartoon featuring a psychoanalytic couch, behind which sits the analyst. Freud – who referred to the couch as an ottoman or examination bed – apparently disliked eye contact (he wasn’t much of a hypnotist). He couldn’t, he said, ‘put up with being stared at by other people for eight hours a day’. He could observe the analysand’s facial expressions, but they couldn’t be influenced by his, which, he said, helped ‘to prevent the transference from mingling with the patient’s associations’.

(Photo of Freud’s sofa by Robert Huffstutter)

How Entertaining Should Education Be?

Jimmy Wales thinks dull lectures need to die. Ari Kohen pushes back:

Wales asks, “why wouldn’t you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people’s heads?” Is there evidence that the most entertaining lecture is the one that gets “knowledge into people’s heads”? Again, I’m not suggesting that a boring lecture is going to do the trick, but I’m arguing that entertaining students doesn’t necessarily equate with teaching them something. When I lecture on Kant, I don’t think I’m really entertaining my students. In my opinion, Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals doesn’t lend itself to entertainment; it’s a dense text that needs some serious explication. Now, I don’t speak in a monotone and I try to find relevant examples to help them make sense of the material, but I’m not standing in front of the class hoping that they’ll all have a great time; I’m standing there with the express purpose of teaching them about Kant.

Daniel Nexon chips in two cents:

It isn’t inevitable that the students-as-consumer model should translate into an understanding of “customer satisfaction” as “having a good time,” but it’s pretty hard to avoid that trap, especially when dealing with (1) outcomes that can’t easily be assessed at the end of a semester; (2) evaluations that focus on the personal characteristics of an instructor; (3) cultural ideals of educators as sources of personal inspiration, and (4) the blending of entertainment and educational media.

How They Got To “Sesame Street“

The naming of the classic kids’ show was apparently a last-minute operation:

Pressure was put on the production staff and Workshop employees to come up ideas for names and hundreds of titles were suggested. Potential names included The Video Classroom and 1-2-3 Avenue B. “Everything from the mundane Fun Street,” [producer Joan Ganz Cooney] would later recall. 1-2-3 Avenue B was seriously considered and worked well with the show’s set design, which resembled an urban, inner city neighborhood complete with a corner store, subway station and brownstone stoop. It also made reference to the show’s educational goals. However, the name was eventually rejected for fear that the show’s title would not appeal to viewers outside of New York City.

The name Sesame Street is credited to Virginia Schone, a writer for the show. Almost everyone on the staff disliked the name. There was concern that young children would have trouble pronouncing it. But time was running out and the show needed a name. Finally, Executive Producer Dave Connell put out a memo to the staff saying “if nobody came up with a better idea, as of Monday we were going to call it Sesame Street.” As Joan put it, “We went with it because it was the least bad title.”

Above is the beginning of the very first episode of Sesame Street, which aired on November 10, 1969.

(Hat tip: Laughing Squid)

The 411 On The 302

Pondering the case of Robel Phillipos – one of the friends of the Boston bombers who faces charges of making false statements to the FBI – Harvey Silverglate encourages us to “withhold judgment not only as to what Phillipos did or did not do, but also as to what he did or did not say when questioned by FBI agents”:

FBI agents always interview in pairs. One agent asks the questions, while the other writes up what is called a “form 302 report” based on his notes. The 302 report, which the interviewee does not normally see, becomes the official record of the exchange; any interviewee who contests its accuracy risks prosecution for lying to a federal official, a felony. And here is the key problem that throws the accuracy of all such statements and reports into doubt: FBI agents almost never electronically record their interrogations; to do so would be against written policy. …

[S]uch interview tactics seem virtually geared toward establishing as fact what the FBI wanted to hear from the witness. Frightened and confused interviewees, who, if they deny they said what any 302 report claims they uttered, can then be indicted for making false statements. The FBI is thus able to put words into a witness or suspect’s mouth and coerce him to adopt the FBI’s version as his own. The FBI thus establishes the official version of what a witness said, and the pressure on the witness to adhere to the 302 version is enormous. Any deviation, after all, raises the question: “Were you lying during your FBI interview, or are you lying now?”

Fighting PTSD With Pot, Ctd

New research strengthens the connection:

The research, published online [Tuesday] in Molecular Psychiatry found that people with PTSD have a greater number of CB1 receptors, cannabinoid protein receptors, and a lower concentration of one of the neurotransmitters that binds to them, anandamide. This provides empirical evidence for the theory that marijuana, which also binds to the cannabinoid system, can help alleviate some of the symptoms of PTSD, although the paper doesn’t recommend it as a treatment option. …

“There’s a consensus among clinicians that existing pharmaceutical treatments such as antidepressants simply do not work,” [researcher Alexander Neumeister] said in a press statement. “In fact, we know very well that people with PTSD who use marijuana — a potent cannabinoid — often experience more relief from their symptoms than they do from antidepressants and other psychiatric medications.”

Neumeister isn’t pushing for smoking pot to combat the symptoms, though. “I’m very much an advocate against smoking pot as a treatment for PTSD,” he says. That’s partially because chronic marijuana usage has been found to a decrease the amount of CB1 receptors in the brain, in effect mimicking PTSD, increasing anxiety and irritability. Instead, he’s focusing on developing a medication that could block the degradation of anandamide, balancing the endocannabinoid abnormality in the brains of people with PTSD.

There’s also a new study that correlates marijuana use with better health and lower weight:

The research, published in the American Journal of Medicine, shows that people who reported regularly using marijuana had a lower risk of insulin resistance and had lower fasting insulin levels, compared with people who never used marijuana. Researchers also found an association between using marijuana and having a smaller waist circumference and higher levels of “good” HDL cholesterol, compared with non-users. The research was conducted by scientists from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the University of Nebraska and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Previous Dish on PTSD and marijuana here.

Save The Rhinos!

INDIA-MONSOON-WEATHER-FLOODS-WILDLIFE

Dish alum Gwynn Guilford reports that Vietnam’s demand for rhinoceros horns – considered both a cure for cancer and a hangover remedy – has exacerbated a brutal campaign of poaching across Asia and Africa:

Some conservation groups, however, don’t think rhino horn’s newfound popularity in Vietnam has much to do with the cancer cure-all rumor (pdf, p.2). The more likely reason, they say, is that the horn powder is increasingly seen as a cocaine-like party drug, virility enhancer and luxury item—”the alcoholic drink of millionaires,” as a Vietnamese news site called it. … In fact, rhino horn is now more expensive than cocaine, which has helped build its cachet. It’s also ideal for greasing palms for business deals (pdf, p.36). That could be partly because newly affluent Vietnamese don’t have that much to spend their money on. The government has issued just 10 licenses for distributors of luxury goods. And its small size means Vietnam is still off the radar for many luxury brands. …

Paradoxically, the world’s dwindling rhino population threatens only to make this worse, as diminished supply makes prices climb even higher.

While the Dish has previously looked at horn farming as a partial solution to the demand, Martin Angler details another tactic – injecting an indelible dye into the horns of living rhinos:

The liquid dye is not just dye. It is actually a mixture between the bright pink dye and an ectoparasiticide, which normally is used for protecting rhino against ticks. In this case, however, the purpose is not to protect the rhino against ticks but to poison rhino horn consumers. The purpose: Discouraging the (typically) Asian clients to buy the horn and to prevent poaching in the first place. If they consume [the] treated horn powder, they will heavily suffer from nausea, stomach-ache and diarrhea. The effects are non-lethal but harmful to humans, which sparked off a debate on the ethical correctness of the procedure.

National Geographic recently chronicled the poaching epidemic with this heartbreaking gallery.

(Photo: Indian forest officials stand near a one-horned Rhinoceros that was killed and de-horned by the poachers at Karbi hills near Kaziranga National Park, some 250km east of Guwahati the capital city the northeastern state of Assam on September 27, 2012. By Biju Boro/AFP/Getty Images)

Wigging Out

Russia claims it arrested a CIA spy earlier this week:

Photographs quickly circulated of Fogle in custody, along with a disguise and gear — including two wigs, sunglasses, a knife and cell phone, a map of Moscow, a microphone, and an aluminum RFID shield.

Julia Ioffe is struck by the cartoonish nature of Fogle’s spy gear:

“Oh, you should talk to [former Moscow CIA station chief] Burt Gerber,” one espionage specialist exuberantly suggested. “He invented the pop-up kit!” The pop-up kit, if you must know, is what the Agency used in Moscow at the height of the Cold War: because all cars coming out of the U.S. embassy were tailed by the KGB, the American spook would have a driver who would make a sharp turn, the spy would jump out and disappear into a crowd, and a contraption in the shape of a human would pop up in the passenger’s seat. Then, there was the “spy rock,” in 2006. The Russians alleged that the British were using a rock to spy on them. It was all very funny until last year, when the Brits confirmed that, yes, in fact the rock had been spying on the Russians.

Hooked On Legal Drugs

Ann Silversides explores opioid abuse in Canada and the US, and the failure of drug companies and government in curtailing abuse:

When OxyContin was approved—1995 in the United States, the following year in Canada—Purdue Pharma began to aggressively market the drug for chronic-pain patients. In the US, alarm bells went off within a few years. In 2003, the US General Accounting Office, at the request of Congress, published a report on OxyContin abuse and diversion that noted the company’s marketing campaign. Four years later, the US Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations announced that Purdue had agreed to pay more than $600 million “to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in connection with a long-term illegal scheme to promote, market and sell OxyContin, a powerful prescription pain reliever that the company produces.”

One thing worth noticing: the suicide rate from prescription drugs has soared in the last decade or so. For eleven consecutive years, drug overdose deaths have risen in America, from 4,000 in 1999 to 16,000 by 2010, according to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control. An increasing proportion of the suicides are due to prescription drugs – opiate pain-killers like Oxycodone leading the way, but often combined with anti-anxiety medications. 60 percent of all drug overdoses now contain legal drugs. And yet we criminalize a plant that cannot kill anyone.