The New York Times recently claimed that PTSD "causes" chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in U.S. military veterans. A new paper questions whether mTBI actually exacerbates the risk of suicide in this population. This is important, because the more direct cause of CTE is likely to be repeated concussions. If these are not increasing suicide risk, then it doesn't seem that we should be expecting an epidemic of CTE in veterans, after all.

Does a history of mild traumatic brain injury increase suicide risk in veterans with PTSD?

Barnes SM, Walter KH, Chard KM.
Rehabil Psychol. 2012 Feb;57(1):18-26.

via Dr. Romeo Vitelli at Providentia

Born This Way Foundation - A movement to empower youth 

Social media researcher danah boyd notes that the foundation is guided by research:

Alongside John Palfrey, I am proud to be a Research Fellow on this project. For the last few months, John Palfrey and I have helped coordinate researchers and synthesize research in order to help inform the foundation. As part of our efforts to advise the Foundation, John and I created a working paper series where we work with scholars to synthesize research and provide grounded advice. We’ve been putting together all sorts of research material in order to help the Foundation and the public make sense of the amazing work that scholars have been doing for years. The first five documents that we prepared are now publicly available:

• “What You Must Know to Help Combat Youth Bullying, Meanness, and Cruelty” by danah boyd and John Palfrey
• “Bullying Prevention 101 for Schools: Dos and Don’ts” by Susan Swearer, Mia Doces, Lisa Jones, and Anne Collier
• “Implementing Bullying Prevention Programs in Schools: A How-To Guide” by Lisa Jones, Mia Doces, Susan Swearer, and Anne Collier
• “Changing the Culture: Ideas for Student Action” by Anne Collier, Susan Swearer, Mia Doces, and Lisa Jones
• “An Overview of State Anti-Bullying Legislation and Other Related Laws” by Dena Sacco, Katharine Silbaugh, Felipe Corredor, June Casey, and Davis Doherty

Here's the routine:

(1) Hire a ridiculous SEO company that employs low-paid workers from the Philippines.

(2) Have them do Google searches like this:

Search Engine - Google: site:.com inurl:blogspot "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "ADHD"

(3) Have them leave comments like this:

"Scott"  in Manila (IP Address 112.205.205.172) has left a new comment on your post "Born This Way?":

Such a great article it was this is a surface rendering of B.W.'s brain viewing the medial left hemisphere surface with thickened cortex highlighted, which approximates the lesion site. In which was discontinued after a few visits.During ages seven to nine B.W.'s parents describe a 'cause and effect problem' in which he would behave badly and be punished and the following day would engage in the same behavior that led to the punishment. Thanks for sharing this article.

Here's my advice:

Hey classicphotoboothrental, heathersandersonphotography, abetterexposure, thelandings-cda, jessesbluff-spokane!! Stop hiring idiotic SEO firms that use spammers from the Philippines to leave comments on blogs. Especially blogs that are completely unrelated to the product(s) you're trying to sell.

You're wasting your money and everyone's time! It doesn't work!*

* Although I suppose spammers from the Philippines need jobs too...

Americanitis Elixir, a tonic containing glycophosphates for the nervous exhaustion reportedly suffered by 20th century urban Americans.

SpongeBob: What if Squidward’s right? What if the award is a phony? Does this mean my whole body of work is meaningless?

(download)

Click here to download:

SpongeBob_SquarePants_-_s1e12b_-_Employee_of_the_Month_[Fester1500].flv (47.07 MB)

I couldn't resist the offer to 'EMBED THE IMAGE BELOW ON YOUR SITE'. So here it is.

via @BenjaminDYoung

Created by: Online PhD

Gaga Stigmata

 Established in March 2010 as the first mover in Gaga studies, Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga is a technological journal that critically-creatively participates in the cultural project of shock pop phenomenon Lady Gaga. Keeping with the spirit of our zeitgeist, Gaga Stigmata moves at the speed of pop.

Here's a sample essay that takes a psychoanalytic approach to the Marry the Night video:

The Warrior Queen: Marry The Night, Trauma, Regression, and Recovery

By K.M. Zwick

. . .

Sigmund Freud posited that sex (creation/joining) and violence (destruction/separation) are attractive to the most primal and perhaps truest internal aspects of all of us. He called us “polymorphously perverse,” which means that what we really want is often considered “perverted,” linking sex, fetishes, violence, comfort, nurturance, joy, and death together in so many different ways and, ahem, positions, that our unconscious is basically a clusterfuck of perversion, desire, and fantasy. Modern-day analysts might suggest there is no such thing as perversion, per se, in terms of what is desired within the mind, because perversion is so ubiquitous. Additionally, what is consensually enacted between two (or more) individuals might not be considered perverse as much as it would be considered honest – an honest engagement with what is often a combination of sex and death. Simultaneous creation and destruction. Our libidinal instincts intertwined with our aggressive ones can create powerful wishes, fantasies, fetishes, and proclivities that are not only intensely sexual but are also intensely mortal; that is, destructive. It is, perhaps, the constant repression of our deepest fantasies that leads to neurosis; it is, perhaps, the denial of the interplay between sex and death – pleasure and aggression – that results in anxious and escapist symptoms in so many. Telling ourselves that sexual and aggressive fantasies are “bad” or “wrong” is likely to lead to puritanical subversion of what is most basic, and therefore authentic, in us. Freud might have argued that we are not sick when we are in touch with our most primal instincts (in safe, consensual fashions) but rather that we are most sick when we deny their existence, relevance, and the pleasurable effect of such instincts.

So I'm 'Stuck on Fuckin' You'

01_Stuck_on_Fuckin'_You.mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

01_Stuck_on_Fuckin'_You.mp3 (12.74 MB)

Lady Gaga has 'leaked' a previously unreleased song via her Twitter page as a Christmas treat for her fans. The song, 'Stuck On Fuckin' You' was recorded during her Born This Way sessions, and was, according to the singer, "recorded live, in one take, on the tour bus. Uncensored."

The song, which you can listen to by scrolling to the bottom of this page, was written in Minnesota following her Monster Ball show. Running in over five minutes in length, you can hear one guitar, a drum machine, and Lady Gaga freestyling in the last minute of the song, before she cuts it off, laughing, saying "OK just stop it, I could go on forever".

-from NME, December 25, 2011 9:15

Emotional responses to a scenario will override the rational belief that complete determinism negates moral responsibility, according to expermental philosopher Joshua Knobe:

3:AM: So can you say a little about the kind of experiments you’ve been doing. For instance, there’s the experiments investigating intuitions about freewill that you’ve written about which might strike readers as being a strange thing to try and run experiments about.

JK: Yes, well, since the very beginning of philosophy and the Ancient Greek period philosophers have been debating about whether freewill is compatible with determinism. So the question is, if everything we do is completely determined, if each thing we do is completely determined by what happened beforehand, then can we still be morally responsible for the things we are doing? And some people say, ‘Obviously not! If everything is determined then we couldn’t be morally responsible for them.’ But some people say, ‘No, that’s no problem at all. Whether you are morally responsible has got nothing to do with whether you are determined. These are just two completely separate issues.’ So what we were interested in was what were the psychological roots of this conflict.

So we were interested in finding out what it is within people that is drawing them to the one side or to the other side of the issue. So we thought; maybe it’s people’s abstract theory that is drawing them to the idea that someone who is determined cannot be morally responsible. And that it’s people’s more immediate emotional responses that are drawing them to the view that people who are totally determined can be morally responsible. So we tried to devise these questions that would make people think about the issue either from a more abstract, theoretical perspective or from a more concrete, emotional, immediate perspective. So I guess the study you already know is the one where everyone was told about this universe, Universe A, where everything was determined. And then some people were just asked in the abstract, in Universe A, could anyone be held to be morally responsible for anything they do? And people said overwhelmingly no, absolutely not. We got the same response in America, in Japan, in India, in Columbia. Everyone was saying the same thing, giving the same answer: definitely not! You cannot hold anyone morally responsible. No one can be morally responsible in this universe. But then in the other condition, we asked a more concrete question. So we said, ‘Consider this one guy, his name is Bill, and he lives in this determinist Universe A. So this guy, Bill, he falls in love with his secretary. So he decides to leave his wife and family. Then he sets up an incendiary device to burn them all to death.’ And then we asked whether they thought this one guy, Bill, was morally responsible for what he did. And in this case people say ‘Totally!’ That guy Bill is morally responsible even though he lives in Universe A. Everyone said this. But in the other condition everyone said that no one in Universe A could be morally responsible. So it seems as if people who have been made to think about it in this more emotional way are giving one answer and people being asked to think about it in a more rational, more abstract way, are giving the exact opposite answer. And so this is a significant difference and helps us to think about why we believe what we believe.

-from Indie Rock Virtues - Josh Knobe interviewed by Richard Marshall

via @anibalmastobiza

“Gray wool, clinging to my legs, it's heavy to carry along”

The disastrous wedding reception of the severely depressed Justine precedes the end of the world, depicted as a highly stylized and artistic event feared by some but welcomed by others. Kirsten Dunst plays the role of von Trier's own melancholia, which was the inspiration for his film.

The image above occurred out of context, at the very beginning, during the bombastic Wagnerian apocalyptic prelude to Part One, "Justine" and Part 2, "Claire." We don't hear Justine say those words until later, when she had lost the ability to care for herself. "She should be hospitalized," I thought at the time, and wondered why no one was getting her psychiatric help. But then we wouldn't have a movie that deals with internal struggle and suffering.

Melancholia is also the name of the giant blue planet that destroys the Earth.

A beautiful movie about the end of the world