Pocket Litter

Thursday, November 07, 2002

Scientists Pinpoint Brain's Fear Control Area

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have pinpointed an area of the brain involved in overcoming fear which may help to improve treatments for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety attacks....

"We've found an area of the brain that is activated, or turned on, when fear is reduced. Consistent with that, if we stimulate that area electrically we can reduce fear," said Gregory Quirk of the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico....

"We think we found it because in this part of the prefrontal cortex (of the brain) it is the first time an area has been activated, or turned on, when fear is reduced," he added in an interview....

Quirk and his colleague Mohammed Milad think the job of the prefrontal cortex, which they found by studying recordings of nerve cells in the brains of rats, is to inhibit the fear response.

They suspect the prefrontal cortex reduces fear by inhibiting the amygdala, a hub of fear memory deep in the brain.

People with post-traumatic stress disorder appear to have weak activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, according to the scientists. They believe a painless experimental technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation might help them control fear.

"Now that we have identified the area it should be straightforward to strengthen the connections in this area so they have stronger safety memory," Quirk said.

This is fantastic news!

Pocket : 11:52 AM :

US intelligence: seeing what it wants to see in Iraq

WASHINGTON – The CIA and Defense Department are at it again. As usual, this is about their different approaches to the analysis of intelligence. CIA analysts tend to call it like they see it. Defense analysts tend to call it like they want to see it, or sometimes more to the point, how they want Congress and the public to see it. The subject this time is Iraq.

Dissatisfied with what the CIA is telling the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has set up his own unit to analyze reports from the CIA and other agencies. He is relying on this process for justification of his bellicose policy toward Iraq – something he thinks he is not getting from the CIA. Rumsfeld starts with a policy and looks for intelligence to support it. The CIA (most of the time anyway) stays with what it thinks the intelligence shows and leaves it to policymakers to come up with answers on what to do about it.

Pocket : 11:43 AM :

Bochco's 'Marriage' 'Sopranos' Successor?

Steven Bochco's coming to HBO. In a deal that will unite one of television's best-known producers with the medium's most prestigious network, the co-creator of "NYPD Blue" will produce a show titled "Marriage," which will air in 2004.

The move, announced Tuesday, is a big deal for a couple of reasons. Foremost: "Marriage" will be joining the HBO lineup when "The Sopranos" is in its fifth, and possibly final, season. So the obvious question: Could this show emerge as a successor?...

The show, to be based in New York, was described by HBO as "chronicle" of a marriage that's five or six years old, and will take place in the bedroom, bathroom and - adding its own cryptic touch - "the closet."

Pocket : 11:00 AM :

Murdering Maniac Molests Mild-mannered Manatees

Why oh why can't he be the one to get the bubonic plague?

Pocket : 10:48 AM :

Michigan bans itself from postseason for one year

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan punished its men's basketball program Thursday, imposing a postseason ban for 2003 and forfeiting all victories from four seasons because of a scandal involving a former booster.

Michigan also will remove banners from Crisler Arena for the 1992-93 season, as well as the three between 1995 and 1999....

Michigan also said it would return to the NCAA $450,000 -- money it earned for appearing in the postseason.

The scandal centers on former booster Ed Martin, who pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to launder money. Martin has said he took gambling money, combined it with other funds and lent it to former Michigan star Chris Webber and other players, as well as their families.

"There is no excuse for what happened. It was wrong -- plain and simple," university president Mary Sue Coleman said. "This is a day of great shame."

Bravo, Mary Sue Coleman!

Pocket : 10:36 AM :

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Addendum to The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

Since Carmela made a big thing about Adriana and Christopher's having a traditional Italian wedding, her unusual choice of Mums as flowers can only serve to reinforce the theme of death and perhaps widows (all the widows at the wedding shower, Carmela's wearing black widow's weeds as she signs the living trust).

From http://www.memoriesflorist.com/flowers.html

Chrysanthemum - Commonly called "mums" or "tansies," this popular perennial's name comes from the Greek chrysos (gold) and anthos (flower). While chrysanthemums generally denote cheerfulness and rest, individual colors do carry specific messages: red for love, good luck and best wishes; white for truth; and yellow for slighted love. Chrysanthemums will be welcomed throughout the British Isles and North America for any occasion. In Italy, however, their exclusive association with the dead makes chrysanthemums acceptable only for funerals.

So, who will get wacked at the wedding?

Pocket : 5:00 AM :

Monday, November 04, 2002

Unfinished Business (Book Review)
by Barbara Seranella
Scribner; ISBN: 0743212665; (May 2001)

Munch Mancini, Seranella's protagonist and alter ego (they share much of the same personal history), is in hot pursuit of a serial rapist-murderer (that's it - that's the plot). The Munch character is interesting enough (female mechanic to much of Hollywood, former drug abuser, and so on), but in this mystery, Seranella has turned her protagonist into a puppy dog lapping around with her tongue hanging out and all for a man. After three books, Munch's crush on homicide detective, Mace St. John is becoming tedious already, and threatens to turn the mystery into a romance novel, and trust me on this, Munch is not the usual romance heroine material, although that might have been a far more interesting slant - to have set Munch in a romance novel - than the premise of this book.

The rest of the characters were cookie-cutter and two dimensional, and the plot was as thin as one of Winona Ryder's Marc Jacob's dresses.

Unfinished Business was aptly titled. The novel seemed unfinished, slapped together to meet a deadline. Several times throughout the novel, and for 5-plus pages at a stretch, many pages at a time were simply filled with information direct from pamphlets or expert interviews. At times I felt like I was in a Guidance Counselor's office reading about volunteering at Meals-On-Wheels, working at a cancer fundraiser, or helping rape victims.

Does that mean that I think writers should erase their politics in order to write about them or those they feel strongly about? Absolutely not, but at least they should be skillful enough to have learned after three books and much critical acclaim to intertwine and synthesize the information gleaned from pamphlets and interviews instead of regurgitating it as a less-than average high school student might do on an essay test.

Start the story on page one, not on page fifteen. I mean that literally, not figuratively. Either by arrangement with the publisher, the agent, or the author herself, every page before the actual narrative began was counted in the page count. Don't cheat the reader and expect her to return.

I would not recommend this book to anyone unless it were as a recommendation for it to be used in a novel-writing class about how not to incorporate research into fiction.

Try something from Katy Munger, Liza Cody, Sparkle Hayter, or Janet Evanovich instead.

Pocket : 7:05 AM :

Saturday, November 02, 2002

EFF Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act That Relate To Online Activities (Oct 31, 2001) via Stand Down

1. Be careful what you put in that Google search. The government may now spy on web surfing of innocent Americans, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. The person spied on does not have to be the target of the investigation. This application must be granted and the government is not obligated to report to the court or tell the person spied up what it has done.

Pocket : 12:20 PM :

The wild, wild Bush Boyz via Media Whores

Republicans always promise law and order. But last year, homicide, rape, robberies, burglaries, car thefts, and petty thefts all went up for the first time in 10 years. While those supposedly out-of-control big Eastern cities - which harbor the people least supportive of Bush in the 2000 presidential election - continued to have decreases in homicides, the Bush strongholds of the West, Midwest, and South had the biggest increases.

Now that we have more wounded travelers, neighbors, classmates, and teachers on the road to Jericho, the Bush Boyz are still on the other side. The economy has continued to drift and decline. The number of Americans without health insurance rose last year from 39.8 million to 41.2 million, or from 14.2 percent to 14.6 percent. The number of people living in poverty rose last year from 31.6 million to 32.9 million, or from 11.4 percent to 11.7 percent.

Median income fell nearly $1,000, from $43,162 to $42,228. This has been of no concern to the Bush Boyz. Sheriff George is still counting his pennies from the $848,000 he got selling Harken Energy stock, a sale that according to a recent report in the Globe looks more and more like a case of insider trading.

Deputy Cheney is still dragging his feet on releasing documents that might show whether his energy task force meetings had any influence on the administration's allegiance to Big Oil and its nearly complete dismissal of concerns about the environment. Facing a Nov. 5 deadline for releasing the documents, the Bush administration said this week it had only reviewed two of 12 boxes.

This does not exactly inspire trust over cynicism.

Pocket : 12:16 PM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

WIDOWS WEEDS AGAIN

Last week, Carmela wore her black widow's weeds as Tony signed the Living Trust, and this week, the widows attend Adriana's wedding shower. How many widows at Adriana's wedding shower? Christopher's mother, Adriana's mother, and Rosalie Aprile (who not only lost a husband, Jackie Senior, but she also lost a brother(?), Richie and a son, Jackie Junior). Three at present count, with the possibility of more to come.

Was the warning about how it was bad luck to cut a ribbon at a wedding shower meant as a portent? The kinds of gifts were centered around hearth and home - a Cuisinart, serving platters, cappucino makers, etc. They were matronly gifts. The shower chatter echoed Christopher's warning about how being married would mean no more late nights at the night club and settling down.

If Adriana marries Christopher, will she be the next Soprano family widow? Can she handle making thousands of cheese melts for Christopher?

I think not.

Pocket : 8:56 AM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

PERSONAL SQUEEZEPLAYS

- Adriana squeezes Christopher to marry her.

- Tony squeezes Ron Zellman, who squeezes Maurice Tiffen to go along with the inner city real estate scam.

- Carmela would like to squeeze Furio and Furio might want to reciprocate.

- Paulie Walnuts tries to squeeze Tony for more cash for his mother's care and for her Green Grove Retirement Community stay, and he later tries to squeeze Johnny Sacks at the restaurant when Paulie tries to squeeze by Johnny Sacks with his claim that he's not a complainer.

- Johnny Sacks may have the goods he needs to put the squeeze on Tony.

- Tony squeezes every last dime out of the crack houses.

- Zellman's conscience squeezes him when the kid asks him, "Is there gonna be a nice house here now?"

- Adriana wants to squeeze others for wedding swag

- Chris wants to squeeze his veins.

Pocket : 8:51 AM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

CULTURAL SQUEEZE PLAY

-Comparison/Contrast shots of Houses, Neighborhoods, Urban/Suburban

Exterior/Interior shots of Zellman's home show it to be a split-level modern in a cookie cutter suburban tract, yet on the inside, it's warm and lived in. Inside it's very much middle class, with plants, family pictures and heirlooms abound, plus there's a piano against one wall in the living room/dining room combination that's obviously played (sheet music was out and bench was worn).

Exterior/Interior shots of Maurice Tiffen's home show it to be a 2-story traditional Colonial on a tree-lined street with houses with yards, and on the inside there's lots of gleaming dark cherry/mahogany woodwork and an open stairwell with wooden finials. Opulent, traditional, leather tufted chairs are found in a wood paneled den with a fireplace, which puts it into an upper middle class range. Financially speaking, even though he's paying alimony to his ex-wife, Maurice is doing far better financially than Ron, who is separated from his wife, is doing.

Exterior/Interior shots of the Soprano home show it this season more than other seasons to be an enormous and almost cavernous house that looks cold, vacant and void; even some model homes look more lived in and homey than the Soprano's house. The furniture is cheesy, overstuffed modern leather furniture, and the woodwork is bleached/whitewashed blonde with a peaches and green color scheme. Most of the furnishings look like they fell off a truck even though Tony brags about how his house is worth three times what he paid for it during this episode. The most used piece of furniture on the house is the dining table and Tony's chair at the table.

-Comparison/Contrast of the drugs of choice in the neighborhoods

When the neighborhood residents approach Tony's Suburban, they ask him "smoke, crack, or crank?" Poor people's highs. Contrast those drugs with what Soprano family members are seen doing - cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. Only Meadow and AJ are ever seen doing any other recreational drugs - AJ smokes pot and Meadow has dabbled in E and crank to stay awake to study.

-Comparison/Contrast father and son

Tony and AJ - Generational differences squeeze between Tony and what he would like AJ to be - just a little smarter streetwise and more aware of what things are like on the 'mean streets,' even though Tony knows AJ doesn't have what it takes to make it in the Soprano family.

-Comparison/Contrast Mob culture vs. other cultures

In this episode, Mob culture says maximum return for minimum effort. A code of honor is supposed to be over all, yet rats and dishonorable behavior abounds. Counterculture says everyone is family, all are equal. How did Meadow get her name anyway?

Pocket : 8:47 AM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

COUNTERCULTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS & PANGS OF CONSCIENCE, or Doing the Right Thing vs. Doing "Our Thing"

Maurice Tiffen and Ron Zellman, chums and 60's Counterculture radicals at the University of Michigan, get involved in an inner-city real estate scam that Carmela's cousin Brian cooked up over breakfast after Paulie Walnuts' homecoming party at the Bada Bing, a party that left cousin Brian flat on his back on the strippers' stage without his pants on. At first, the real estate scam seems pleasing to all involved because everyone will get a piece of the action: Maurice's greed for money to pay first wife's alimony and Zellman's interest in lining his threadbare public-servant's pockets drive them to agree.

As the episode progressed, it became more and more apparent that thirty-plus years had changed the inner sense of each man's consciousness regarding "doing the right thing" as opposed to doing what will produce a "maximum return for minimum effort." For example, compare and contrast Maurice's comment about not being expected to be the only "honest men" as he and Zellman leave the Bada Bing after collecting their 10% vs. the attack of conscience look in Zellman's eyes and his body language as the black kid asks him about whether or not there'd be a new house built in the neighborhood, the same neighborhood that Zellman represents in the New Jersey Assembly.

Whereas both men used to look out for others and do the right thing, now they're in the game for themselves and involved in "Our Thing," yet will it finally dawn on Zellman that Tony was treating him as his whipping boy, just as Tony normally does? Will Zellman's emerging conscience allow him to continue to take his beatings or will he stand up and do the right thing for himself and his constituents?

Pocket : 8:19 AM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

RON ZELLMAN, TONY'S WHIPPING BOY

Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel,
Like I been tied to the whipping post,
Tied to the whipping post,
Tied to the whipping post,
Good lord, I feel like I'm dyin'.
-Allman Brothers, 'Whipping Post"

Tony, his rage seething, says to Zellman as he takes off his belt, "Of all the girls in New Jersey, you had to fuck this one?" Was Tony upset because Assemblyman Zellman had muscled in on his property (Irina) or was he also upset because Zellman had made Irina unclean for him because Zellman is a Jew? Was that about Tony's 'property' being defiled or defaced in more ways than one? Was that racial violence? What was Tony's moral code behind that violent eruption?

TS started out whipping Zellman about the chest, back and shoulders, much as a master would have belt-whipped/strapped a slave, but still as an adult-adult dynamic, even though one was the owner and the other was the owned. However, Tony's looming over Zellman as he spanked the Assemblyman's ass with the belt at the end of that scene reminded me of a parent or adult looming over a child that was being abused, thus changing the dynamic ot that of adult-child. The way the camera shot TS from the floor up to exaggerate his size and importance and TS's whipping of the bum reminded me of that.

Was Tony having a flashback to his childhood as he played out that scene with Zellman? Is he getting close to hitting bottom, to having a complete catharsis?

Tony's comment at the end of the whipping, "Go ahead, cry like a bitch," echoed his own tears on the way to Zellman's house, and no doubt echoed what he heard while growing up. His tears in the Suburban on the way to Zellman's house come at the song, "Oh Girl" by the Chi-Lites, a song about a troubled man who says this about love and how to accept and embrace it, "I don’t know where to look for love, I just don’t know how." It's clear that Tony's never had a loving relationship model to follow and that he's lying to himself and to Melfi about being able to control and suppress his anger.

Pocket : 7:59 AM :

The Art of the Squeeze Play: The Sopranos, #46 "Watching Too Much Television"

TONY SOPRANO, MIDNIGHT RIDER

I got to run to keep from hiding
And I'm bound to keep on riding
And I've got one more silver dollar
But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider
-Allman Brothers, "Midnight Rider"

Is Tony honestly trying to tame his demons or is he beyond help? Is he actually capable of sustaining personal growth? He keeps showing over and over again that although he'd like to see himself as the "strong and silent type," he's unable to do so. He can't break the cycle of violence and abuse that he has come to internalize.

Perhaps in order to give AJ a sense of his place in the Soprano family history -- since Tony already told Melfi at the end of the third season that AJ doesn't have what it takes to make it in the family (even though Ax's panic attacks are just like Tony's and his father's) -- and to give AJ some kind of context, Tony is returning to old neighborhoods and is giving fatherly advice to buy real estate, much like Uncle Junior or his father might have done with him. I say might because Tony's own father spent much of his life in prison. Was Uncle Junior the best role model Tony had while he was growing up? When I say role model, I mean that in a positive way, in a way that would model normalcy for Tony - going to a baseball game, tossing a baseball around the yard, visiting the old neighborhood - that Ward & Wally Cleaverish kind of thing.

I can't see Uncle Junior's having starting the abuse cycle with Tony and since his father wasn't around, that leaves his mother, Livia as the probable culprit. After all, would a mother who loved her child put a hit out on him? Talk about a cycle of abuse!

Although it's made clear during Tony and Carmela's trip to the military school that they considered for AJ at the third season's conclusion (EP#39, "Army Of One") that Tony believes in but doesn't practice the "spare the rod, spoil the child" philosophy of child-rearing, I've noticed throughout the seasons that Tony hasn't subjected AJ or Meadow to seeing/experiencing any of his violent behavior in person, whereas I don't know for certain if that's how it was for Tony as he was growing up. I'm betting on Livia's being the child abuser in that house.

TS has made enough comments throughout the seasons indicating how he feels about whiners and cry babies, or those who use their abused childhoods as excuses for their behavior or situations now. What he seems unwilling to confront, however, is that he has most likely been an abused child and that many of his emotional problems as an adult can probably be traced back to his childhood. Until he gets straight with himself and his upbringing, the cycle of abuse will most likely continue.

Pocket : 7:38 AM :

Friday, November 01, 2002

Outrunning the self

Renee, who has one of the loveliest blogs I've yet to see (I think she could be making a fine living illustrating children's books!), says in one of her Friday Fives:
Change is not bad. Change is necessary. I think I cannot run so far or so fast as to outrun myself or my shadow; when I try to feel in a ways incompatible with with my inner compass, my truthsense, it tells me to stop.

This resonates deeply with me. I feel as though recently I'm trying to do just the opposite of what I should be doing, which is listening to my "truthsense" and embracing the shadow part of me.

Pocket : 2:53 PM :

Hope This Helps

A payment of $10.00 has been sent to National Novel Writing Month.
Item Name: National Novel Writing Month

Pocket : 5:45 AM :

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

I've signed up for the 2002 NaNoWriMo. it's just a "50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time."

Save me. Or at least give me a better working title than This Space Blank.

That blogger will be at Pocket Litter's 2002 NaNoWriMo blog.

Pocket : 5:35 AM :