(Learning to Accept Failure)

There have been billions of dollars spent on the 'war-on-drugs', and, in the end, there seems to be no effect on the drug market. High school kids find drugs, especially marijuana easy to obtain. Despite spending billions on its eradication. The US has aggressively fought coca production in middle America, and yet it is still grown. It isn't really that surprising, in hind sight. You can grow a lot of drugs in a little dirt with some water. People can grow these plants. Illegalizing peyote is a little like Illegalizing wheat. It's impossible to enforce, extremely expensive. A lot harder than illegalizing something like a gun. It is also so much more pointless to pursue. Why would we try so hard to protect people from themselves? Especially when one of the side effects is getting people killed by drug cartels...?

It's a lot like basketball. The game of basketball has long since outgrown its rules. Professional basketball is played as a strange strategic contest against the rules for the last 10% of play time, not as a sport. There is something in the design of the game which leads to mono-stardom, not teamwork. If you are the kind of person who can throw a ball through the hoop no matter where you are on the court (and it helps if you are tall enough to throw it over anyone else's head), then that's all ya really need. You are unstoppable. Game over.

Someone might argue that I'm wrong, but the rules need to be changed. It's not working.

It is appropriate that it is an American Game. Invented at the Young Men's Christian Association in 1891. It closely resembles our broken politics. Our politics have become a depressing game, played more against the rules than for anything else. Except, worse even than pro basketball, there are only two teams to watch.

Each team has about 5 positions that anyone knows about, and only one that people care about. One super-star who becomes the face of the team. The locus of all their faith and hopes. The others are just there to support him 

For a long time, the players mill about, pretending to do their job. Pretending to compete in prowess and logic. And then, in the last seconds, the game heats up.

But instead of being a rational process, following the purpose of the game, our elections have become a strategy against the rules. It is bickering and arguing and placing falsified blame until the overwhelmed and underintelligent voting public pick the person they are least afraid of. Not the one who makes the most sense, or lies less. Often, the one who lied more successfully. Or had their timeout or fouled at the right time before that buzzer rings and its all over.

It is at this point we need to step back and think of what went wrong. What can be done better. Like the war on drugs, we must scratch off tactics which are not successful. We need to change rules that are easy for the cruel or immoral to misuse. Because, we can all agree, there is a lot of broken morals behind our broken politics, whatever side of the fence you are on.

being misuesed more than 

 of ra

Our elections, what is supposed to be the 

 Like the war on drugs, we need to think of a different strategy. Rework the rules of the game.

  Jeffrey A. Miron wrote a study that fou

Johnston, L. D.; O'Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G. & Schulenberg, J. E. (November 30, 2005). "Table 13: Trends in Availability of Drugs as Perceived by Twelfth Graders" (PDF).Teen drug use down but progress halts among youngest teens. Monitoring the Future

 there have been numerous studies suggesting that we spend all the money we do on legal enforement o

Luck of the Evoloved

Survival is said to go to the fittest in little bits of conventional wisdom. It is what we have been taught since Darwin postulated his still controversial (and highly probable) theory. When times are easy, perhaps all but the lame or crippled will thrive; In hard times, such as famine, the strong may triumph of their weaker siblings; the best forager will eat; the lazy or simple will have trouble sustaining their bodies. It rings true enough to be acceptable. However, as with anything else in this crazy, mixed up, complicated reality we dwell in, this is too simple. There are others who will succeed along with the fit, perhaps even more often. And those are the lucky.

Luck is difficult to define and pin down. Like the soul, It doesn't really have a trace one can find. It is only loosely discussed as if it is a personified deity, or a part of your brain. Or, perhaps, it is mere happenstance. Those who are lucky today are lucky because someone else wasn't; but tomorrow, that can change, in the next hour that can change. In the next second. But, just as it is possible to flip 10 heads in a row (even probable if one sits with a coin for several days, flipping and flipping), eventually there will be that one who is successful for long enough that all of there accomplishments are due to chance. They got those heads. There are those who have stumbled upon success. The deer who happened upon the cherry bushes or the mosquito who bit while their victim was focused on a board game. They mayn't have been the strongest, but survive they did anyway.

And often this isn't really due to anything. If one walks by a mud puddle in the early summer, it will be pecked thoroughly by the killdeer and pigeons searching for arthropods and grubs. Most of them will be eaten, through no merit or lack-there-of on their end. And yet, their species is not extinguished. Many will survive. But it is hard to imagine it was on their merit. Their egg was only laid a millimeter off from the deadly beek of foraging bird.

Greed is Greed

Residents of communities with a higher-than-average standard of living, little poverty, and low crime give a smaller portion of their income to charity than those in less well-off communities, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

In an analysis of giving behavior as measured against quality-of-life indicators in 2,670 counties across the United States, the Chronicle found an inverse relationship between a community's relative affluence and its charitable giving. Based on data from the How America Gives study, which shows share of income given by state, metropolitan area, county, and ZIP code in 2012, and the Opportunity Index, which scores socioeconomic well-being by county, the analysis found that counties in New England tend to have either moderate or high standards of living and low giving ratios, while those in Florida, the mid-Atlantic region, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast have moderate standards of living and low giving ratios and counties in the Southeast tend to have either low or moderate standards of living and moderate giving ratios.

Notable among the outliers were counties in Utah and the southeast corner of Idaho, where both standards of living and giving ratios are moderate, with the exception of a few counties with low socioeconomic well-being and high giving ratios. Previous studies have found that people who are religious tend to give more, and both Utah and the Southeast have some of the highest rates of church attendance in the country.

The Chronicle notes that the giving ratios it calculated are based on data from taxpayers who itemize their charitable deductions, representing about 80 percent of all U.S. giving, but leave out giving by individuals who don't itemize, give more than the limit eligible for a deduction, or have wealth but no reportable income. In addition, because the giving ratio is calculated as a percentage of residents' income, the dollar amounts donated in high-income areas with lower giving ratios are often larger than those in low-income areas with higher giving ratios.

Nevertheless, the inverse relationship between socioeconomic opportunity and giving is "a compelling, counterintuitive finding" which pushes against assumptions that "places with higher scores would have higher rates of giving," said Russell Krumnow, managing director of Opportunity Nation, one of the nonprofits behind the Opportunity Index. People with lower incomes may be more willing to give, he added, because they identify more closely with the challenges faced by others in their communities. And that's a shame, because we "really need everyone's hands in this work…the work of expanding opportunity is everyone's."

Rebecca Koenig. "A Mismatch Between Need and Affluence." Chronicle of Philanthropy 07/09/2015.

Subjects: philanthropy / voluntarism

People: russell krumnow

Organization: chronicle of philanthropy

Location: National

 

Re: Genetic / Inherited effects of stress

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/ptsd/biological-consequences-and-transgenerational-impact-violence-and-abuse

Psycological damage can quickly become chronic.

-"adverse childhood experience' -> attempted suicide + Early life stress (common enough to get its own acronym: ELS) -> pathophysiological (Pathology is the medical discipline that describes conditions typically observed during a disease state, whereas physiology is the biological discipline that describes processes or mechanisms operating within an organism) change in the CNS -> more vlunerable to stress later own = predisposed to mental and physical disorders.

Shit. Talk about a negative feedback loop.

Physical/sexual abuse effects mental health. Duh.

-Women with a history of sex abuse -> more likely to be depressive after a stressful live event than those without such history.

-Interesting: girls abused before 13 = PTSD or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

--girls abused after 13 = more likely PTSD

So: To let reality set in: Your body has it's physiology; that is, the way that it functions. Normally, that physiology is a healthy condition: your body's functions are essentially designed to work. For a long time.

However, there are times when the body's physiology, its processes, mechanisms, functioning, are not healthy. They are damaged, and can cause more damage. Like dirt in an engine slowly scraping away at finely tuned parts. We have a compound word for this: 'pathophysiology' (or, from another angle, 'physiopathology'). The processes and mechanisms operating within your organism--your body-- are diseased.

There are ways to affect the basic mechanics of an organism--its physiology. One of those ways is stress. Horrible experiences. Especially when those experiences are had during childhood. Pathophyiologists call this "Early Life Stress" or ELS. They can note all sorts of woeful things associated with ELS; such as marked increases in attempted suicide thoughout one's life, development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder (PTSD or MDD, because everything must have its acronym)... with the MDD being more common with abuse at younger ages.

Meaning that the ol' adages are true: abuse leads to depression, which can lead to more abuse, and perhaps pattern-mimicking. The learning of bad habits.

In fact, there is evidence that Early Life Stress can alter brain structure. It's physical structure. Decreasing hippocampal volume and undermining, at a biological level, a person's ability to deal with shit.

-changes in hippocampal cytoarchitecture after chronic stress have been associated with changes in mood and cognition.

(stress-indiced change in behavior; ELS exerts acute and long-term effects on neuroendocrine, cognitive, and behavioral systems.)

-Lab animals: exposed to stress during development -> adverse short- and long-term cognitive disfunction + abnormal behavior

--associated with alterations in normal physiology and genetic regulation of HPA axis (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis)

---adults sress response appear to be mediated (in part) thru effects of developmental stress in neural systems that deal with fear expression

----But also: quality of maternal care early in development may molify bad effects though the lifespan

Recap: Because this writing is excessively technical: Adult stress response depends on what came before it. Early Life Stress, especially, can wreck long-term (and also short-term) terror on an individual's ability to deal with stress. Their response, on the ontogeny (or every stage of life) if their existence, is affected negatively.

Chronic stress causes pathological damage.

There is evidence: lab animals abused by their scientist handlers then have cognitive and behavioral dysfunction. Scientists attribute some of this to alterations along the Hypothalamic-Pitutitary-Adrenal axis in the brain.

The good news: good mothering can make up for this. A bit.

You are here:

►Trauma exposure and neglect during both early life and adulthood substantially elevate adult risk for mood and anxiety disorders and alter hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis physiology. Exposure to a depressed mother either in utero or in the first months of life may also alter the HPA axis. - See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/ptsd/biological-consequences-and-transgenerational-impact-violence-and-abuse#sthash.TvZeiOI8.dpuf

--Analyze that.

Aug. 7 COVID - The US with its head in the sand

We are possibly the most selfish nation in the world. Riding my bicycle to work today, no one wants to give me any room on the road. How dare I slow them down. If I were a 10 ton piece of earth moving equipment, everyone slows down. Saw that yesterday. No one honked, no one tried to run him off the road. Because they would have torn their car apart.

A little bicycle? We can squish that guy without even having to file an insurance claim. All that matters is us in our own little lives. We have normalized greed to such an extent that we as a society don't even seem to care that we have one of the highest death rates to the global pandemic of Any country. Not just developed, rich nations (with hospitals and access to the internet... actually, wait, we are probably similar to Qatar in our access to hospitals and internet...), but of Any Other Nation on the Globe.

And we call ourselves the "Greatest Nation". Hubris. Pure and simple.

We are still top 10 in our inability to deal with COVID in all 8 categories the NY Times tracks: Cases, Case Rate, Recent Cases, Recent Case Rate; Deaths, Death Rate, Recent Deaths, Recent Death Rate. And it's mostly because of assholes (not everyone, but the assholes) in these states:

We are falling. Slowly. But are still worse now than we were in March when we started trying to care.

81 out of the 206 cases in my local community came in over July. That one month. That's almost half.  But fuck all if we'll actually DO anything about it.

Nope. Instead we're on the verge of letting our greedy, rich, 2nd home owners (immoral thing to have right off the bat. You should be ashamed.) have all the political control at a local level. Our "democracy" is a bloody joke. Wake up and fight for what little rights they've left you.

I realize I'm all doom-and-gloom. The good news, is that COVID is not as deadly as it once was. Not AS many people die. Still, The US has had over 7 thousand die in just the last week. Primarily because we're careless. Which is not what we want to hear, but it is what is true.

The rest of today's data: