March 9. 2011.  The NY Times ran a decent piece March 9 that covered the bike lane controversy in Park Slope.

March 10, 2011. Community Board 6 held a forum in the overheated 70′s institutional John Jay High School on Seventh Avenue.  The NY Times ran another decent, if uber-pragmatic piece.
Here’s their take.

The Gothamist reported
“It’s open night mic on bike lanes tonight,” announced Community Board 6 Chairman Daniel Kummer at the start of last night’s public hearing on the infamous Prospect Park West bike lane in Park Slope. (You may have read about it… in the UK’s Guardian!) The two-and-a-half hour meeting, held in the muggy auditorium at John Jay High School, drew an overwhelming number of bike lane supporters. Out of an estimated 350 people in attendance, perhaps a dozen spoke against the bike lane through the course of the evening.
Here’s the Gothamist reel of speakers.

While most articles spin the debate as borderline silly this truly is a class war. While most articles cite Slopers as overblowing the issue, they aren’t.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/11/dtg_bikelanehearing_2011_3_18_bk.html

I am mis quoted in this article too

http://gothamist.com/2011/03/11/video_ppw_bike_lane_community_board.php#photo-1

Disposable Women...NY Times. by Anna Holmes, 3/3/2011

someone finally got it.  thank gawd.  i am not the only one who cringes every time i see a promo for the bachelor or think about shows like the bachelor or the bachelorette or shedding for the wedding and on it goes.

Talk Doesn't Pay So Psychiatrists Turn to Drugs

Here we go again.

Another nail in the coffin for self-awareness or conscious action. Now more and more insurance companies don’t cover the “talking cure” — only the chemical temporary fix.

This therapist from the 70s used to “know the internal life of his patients better than his own wife’s.”  The emotional backlash of that marital gaff notwithstanding, that is how it should be.

To quote from this NY Times article:

“Like many of the nation’s 48,000 psychiatrists, Dr. Levin, in large part because of changes in how much insurance will pay, no longer provides talk therapy, the form of psychiatry popularized by Sigmund Freud that dominated the profession for decades. Instead, he prescribes medication, usually after a brief consultation with each patient. So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved.”

Drug companies have won.  With the Feds lifting the ban on advertising prescription medicine, the last 10 years have been an unrelenting attack on resolving emotional conflict the old fashion way: dealing.

Depression Hurts.  Pristiq can help.

The American people (just ask them) have been successfully brainwashed.  Ask anyone.  Is depression a disease?  Oh, yes.  And can it be treated?  Oh yes.  Is it psychological or emotional? What?

To paraphrase buddhist philosophy, “Depression arises because of conditions.”  It is a response to conditions.  Do I need to repeat that?

One of my personal heros — the late, great social theorist, author and professor, Christopher Lasch nailed it when he wrote, “Bureaucracy takes social grievances and turns them into personal problems.”

While we are pummeled with statistics like that posted by the DOH saying that more than 22 million people have crippling depression, there is zero interest in the WHY of this massive group-hurt.  What are people responding to?

Here’s the latest discovery that, on the face, looks positively cheery.

EXCEPT it gives people the false expectation that if and when we destroy what has been this miraculous eco-majestic planet earth with its oceans under seige, as new oil drilling contracts are being negotiated off of Cuba and around the world — even in the face of the mind numbing oil dump and sludge massacre of what was the pristine area formerly known as our Gulf coast — this kind of “discovery” tells folks – Don’t worry, we can just manufacture new life, better life, some place else.

Stop kicking up a fuss.  Nothing here that can’t be replaced.

And it’s a LIE.  We have a planet that nurtures organisms.  Maybe we ought to be nurturing IT.

everybody knows somebody who loves a honda.

Pamela Paul/ NY Times Magazine, 25 August 2010

Above, the link to the 25 August 2010 NY Times Magazine article that seriously questions whether or not preschoolers can be clinically depressed.  Can you see the collective saliva forming in the jowls of big pharma?  Just when you thought medical warnings against current chemically induced euphoria might be slowing down Big Pharma’s drugging of America, apparently side effects such as kidney failure, strokes and/or thoughts of suicide are swell for children under the age of five.

PROZAC FOR PREMIES
For the past 13 years (that’s how long its been since the FDA changed the law banning pharmaceutical companies from advertising on television) American households have been watching and listening to unrelenting, bogus and authoritative “DEPRESSION HURTS” advertising to the point that most people if polled would regurgitate, “depression is a disease.”

Depression is NOT a disease.
“Depression’s roots are….psychological….”

If your toddler IS depressed then you need to do some investigating.  Have you noticed that he/she doesn’t like it when you leave him/her alone with your creepy nanny or other child care provider? How much time do you actually spend together? Have you been listening to complaints and taking them seriously?

If a child is listless or seems to exhibit signs of depression, for God’s sake, don’t reach for a pill.  Ask the hard questions.  Is Uncle Eddie spending a lot  of time alone with little Alice? Has she started to wet her bed?  Come on.  Sorry to offend your parenting bubble but one in five girls are incested by some member of the family.

Those are the questions to ask when and if your child seems sad.  Here is the question NOT to ask.

What drug should we start giving [little Alice] to make her happy?

TOM CRUISE GOT IT RIGHT
Well, minus the belief that  scientology is the be all and end all and his strange ownership of the entire history of psychology, psychiatry and all recorded investigation into the human psyche.  So, who’s perfect?  Anyway, when Tom said, “Drugs simply mask the problem,” he had me at ‘mask’.

Ask anyone whose been stabbed, pushed, prodded, poked, raped, mugged or assaulted by a newly released criminal who stopped taking his meds.

Bill Maher and the government’s drug problem.
Simply stated, the answer isn’t (always) another pill.   It’s been documented that the proliferation of  ”Ask your doctor” drug adverts has led to the over-prescribing of drugs.  Especially for children who — at 1, 2, 3 — generally run around spewing bodily fluids, screaming at high pitch and lack maturity.  But, wait, “There’s a pill for that.”

Depression is a reaction to conditions.
When the FDA signed off on depression as “disease,” big pharma, exploded.  Qualifying depression as a disease was like winning the medical America’s Got Talent.  Drug companies went viral with whirlwind tours pushing and pedaling their magical potions.  Most which, in clinical studies done with control groups being dosed with placebos, fared about equal.

Getting to the Cause
In the September ’08 issue of Psychology Today, Dr. Stephen Diamond, a clinical and forensic psychologist and author of Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity stated,
Antidepressants and mood stabilizing drugs do something that psychotherapy cannot: they provide relatively rapid relief of the painful and debilitating symptoms of depression and stabilize otherwise dangerously labile mood swings. Does this prove that depression is primarily a biological disease? Not at all. It only demonstrates that we have fortunately found biochemical means to counteract and control the most acute symptoms of depression: sleep and appetite disturbance, lack of motivation, apathy, depressed or manic moods, anxiety, suicidality, etc. But….even when the symptoms of depression are mitigated by medication, the underlying depressive condition evidently remains, rendering even medicated patients susceptible to future episodes. More than half of those suffering a first major depressive episode are likely to experience subsequent episodes at some time. The probability of recurrence increases dramatically (90%) after three such episodes. What is this underlying susceptibility? It seems to suggest the presence of something biochemical treatment doesn’t resolve. What is this latently persisting vulnerability? It is the depressive core of the personality. It is the figurative heart of the Hydra.

No Other Countries Allow Consumer Drug Advertising
Here’s the 2007 NYTimes Article.  Well, except New Zealand.  But come on.  Except for NZ, only the US?  Does that seem like a good thing?

New York Times, August 17 2010

So the important thing to make note of here is not the fact that the moose in this study are suffering from arthritis due to malnutrition and to make a plan to remedy.  The important thing here is how this suffering can benefit humans in some way.

I see little if any mention of steps being taken on behalf of the moose surveyed.

send your thoughts to the NY Times writer – Pam Belluck

TARGET 1960's LITE

Youtube has gotten over 32,000 hits asking “What is that song???” – the bright and inspirational little number that Target is currently using in their back-to-school media blitz.

Here is the Ad

The song is the first four lines of the Ms. Foundation’s 1972 anthem, “Free to be you and me” which was a series of songs and programs targeted (ha) at young girls in the early 70s.

Presumably all of these young ladies are moms now and Target’s advertising pitch is headed straight at ‘em. They may or may not consciously recall the song, but it’s a huge hit as well as the media blitz.

I would take an educated guess that the children who grew up with “Free to Be You and Me“ songbooks and videos are right about now an impressive purchasing demographic.  Something that marketeers and advertizeers have seized upon.  TARGET ads have hi-jacked their “Free to Be You and Me” anthem so that these (now) grown up (power buyers) children will associate their product with childhood songs of agency and independence.

So my question.  Did the Ms. Foundation willingly sell rights to their signature song or has Target stolen the first four lines (The “four line rule” where advertisers can use four lines of a song without obtaining rights).

Note: In the early 1970s,  a faux-rock group called “The Hill Top Singers” created by mad men recorded some of the very first coke ads.  You may recall those ads co-opted folk songs from the 1960′s and created the faux-folk song,

“I’d Like to teach the world to sing”

People thought that the song was “real” so the group eventually recorded it and lifted out the advertising line, “I’d like to buy the world a coke” and replaced it with “I’d like to build the world a home…”

Let’s do the math.  Coke=peace on earth, good will toward men + 40 years = Target.