Christian

"I will say that I loved the Peter Kupperburg, pre-Morrison Doom Patrol. They were completely disfunctonal, and it was great. Niles' wife was obsessed with finding her dead husband, Negative man and Negative woman were going to kill each other over the negative energy, and Cliff Steele was only there because he had nothing better to do."

-You are a very sick man.

 

Indy superhero teams? Who the hell is an indy superhero team?

Doom Patrol?!

You're not counting Image or Awesome or WildStorm as indy....

"1 more so far than Rogan."

 

HA!

Now we both are ahead of Rogan.

....I'm not sure it's something to be proud of though....

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know, it's 1 a.m. here right now. The night crew of the STH is working. We tend to get very weird and crazy and lonely.

I'm thinking when John McMahon gets on here after we've gone to bed, he wonders what the hell is going on every day, you know?

Shite! All these choices make me feel like I'm living in America instead of the Soviet Union!

 

I voted for Alpha Flight, because no one else in a hundred years ever will! :lol:

 

Hey! Where the fuck are my Defenders?! Steve Gerber, J.M. DeMatteis, some hippy guy....who's had better writers than that???

 

Which X-Men team are we talking about? I'll vote "X-Men" if it's Claremont's original "all new, all different X-Men".

Which Avengers? Because EVERYONE has been an Avenger....even non-super powered people like Jay Leno, even non-Marvel characters like Batman, hell, I've even been a member at one time!

It's ok, because they're laughing at you, not with you!

 

(hey! This is starting to sound like the Monkey Paw's Game now!)

"Have any of you tried writing a long story?"

What do you mean by a long story?

I'm working on a novel, currently. My motivation stopped for a while, but I made it to around page 175.

I have at least two short stories that stretch a little past the 100 page count.

That self-defecating humour can get pretty messy!

"I don't go to church because he told be those evil gay people would come"

 

I see he's doing his job!

Didn't they recently release a sequel to "Jumangi" or something.....?

 

Sue(with an accent straight out of Dickens): "He's a beaver! He shouldn't be saying anything! He should be doing my tax returns!"

Information Technology - IT [ 1 ] [5.26%]

Advertising [ 1 ] [5.26%]

Government Service - tsk, a civil servant [ 2 ] [10.53%]

Insurance [ 0 ] [0.00%]

Practicing Profession (.. hanging a shingle of sorts) [ 0 ] [0.00%]

Consulting [ 0 ] [0.00%]

Creative Works (Painter, Writer, and the like...) [ 5 ] [26.32%]

Etc .... [ 10 ]

 

We have FIVE people working in the creative dept., ten people who voted "etc.", which I'm guessing means "unemployed"....I'm thinking we've got a hell of a lot of poor people hanging around these Forums! :lol:

No way! That isn't possible!

Video games don't hold my interest anymore. The only game that got me excited in 2005 was "X-Men Legends 2" (which is an awesome game).

In 2006?

Only Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess

No, that doesn't explain anything, inca.

Just admit you were a fatty! The girls won't think any less of you.

We're talking about a drug that could erase memories, although the discussion has been divided between the "erase a bad memory completely" or "I'd dampen the pain associated with a bad memory".

:lol:

Wow! "Hellblazer" is over for you, you just finished "Lucifer"....What are you going to do with all your spare time now?

 

It was a fun ride and your last 3 issues are classics.

Does Alan Moore really have a giant head?

See, that's what confused me, in that the drug is classified as a Beta-blocker, so even though it's shown that Beta-blockers can be effective for anxiety disorders, I'm not sure how the "easing the trauma of memory" figures in....maybe the strength of the dosage?

Of course, that's quite dangerous with a Beta-blocker which can cause blood pressure to drop or a too slow heart beat.

Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt are all nearly completely supported by U.S. aid and are all banes of contention amongst the Muslim world.

Yeah, Inca is just talking about that fearfulness around strangers, and then he's going to go up to teenage girls and discuss masturbation with them! :lol:

 

Josh-I'm glad to know that it isn't just me. I've noticed that trend very strongly, and was beginning to worry that people were creeped out by just me.

 

Americans have always been a curiously fearful people, and there's a few reasons for this, but it still boggles my mind!

Outside of Terrorism, Americans are so scared to death of this illegal drug epidemic....well, if you look at statistics, America is average in these numbers when compared to other industrial countries and is actually lower than certain other countries.

 

"though more Americans will die from something like malnutrition than will be killed by terrorists this year. Don't see the government launching a War on Malnutrition do yer."

Reagan did! It was called, "I'll make ketchup a vegetable!"

Here, once again, we come across the problem of terminology.

 

First of all, yes, it is quite impossible to control all of a country's citizens.

In the Capitalist democracies, the people control themselves. Propaganda systems are useless in Totalitarian systems, as everyone knows that the State lies, and in fact, the propaganda backfires on the State under those conditions. You don't need very strong propaganda models when you can throw someone in jail because you don't like what they say.

The U.S.'s propaganda model is far more powerful and intricate.

Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti are readily available almost everywhere in the U.S. Chomsky was totally banned in the Soviet Union.

At my local Border's book store, there are two shelves full of Chomsky books, but I like to joke (bitterly) that if I want privacy at Border's, I can just go sit in the Political Science section as no one is ever there.

 

Concerning the Bolshevik Russia, well, I think that's where the question of "what is art?" comes into play. Certainly the music written for Stalin is still quite beautiful, regardless of the circumstances.

Pat Robertson's "700 Club" does get relatively high ratings, but I'm not convinced it's because anyone takes him seriously, I think he's found a way to cash in on the popularity of shows like "Jerry Springer".

It's a car crash, you can't take your eyes away from it.

Robertson gets news coverage because he's the equivalent of a homeless, crack addicted, schizophrenic raving about his dog praying to God for Armageddon; BUT he's also got tons of money and name power.

 

"Ariel Sharon had a stroke for dividing God's land!"

"Hurricane Katrina happened because of abortions!"

"America needs to assassinate Hugo Chavez!"

"9/11 was God punishing America for homosexuality!"

 

If the man didn't make me retch violently every time he opens his festering, cancerous mouth I'd probably be watching his show every week just to see how fucked up the man can act.

 

Like I said before, I believe it's all an act just to get attention. We didn't hear much from Robertson anymore before Sept. 11th, and these kinds of religious fanatics need attention. I think he figured out a way to get attention again, and I think the American people are watching in shocked awe at the crazy man on the TV set.

"I scorn the lesson, but revere the experience!"

 

I take the "I'm tempted, but wouldn't do it" option, as there's too much to be lost along with the pain. It is very tempting though, that thought to find happiness through oblivion of the past.

Relates to Camus ala "choose your illusions" and also his quote from "A Happy Death" ala (paraphrased) "everything is forgotten.....that's what's so great about life, but also so sad".

"OK, I am officially bored by this phrase."

 

OK.....

If there were only 3 pictures I could look at all my days, yours would be one.

 

Is that better?

This is crazy, like something out of my wildest opiate dreams.

Read the article and then discuss whether you'd take a pill to forget all your bad memories or not.

 

Jan. 14) - Suppose you could erase bad memories from your mind. Suppose, as in a recent movie, your brain could be wiped clean of sad and traumatic thoughts.

That is science fiction. But real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event like rape, may make the resulting memories less painful and intense.

Will it work? It is too soon to say. Still, it is not far-fetched to think that this drug someday might be passed out along with blankets and food at emergency shelters after disasters like the tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.

 

Psychiatrist Hilary Klein could have offered it to the man she treated at a St. Louis shelter over the Labor Day weekend. He had fled New Orleans and was so distraught over not knowing where his sisters were that others had to tell Klein his story.

"This man could not even give his name, he was in such distress. All he could do was cry," she said.

 

Such people often develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a problem first recognized in Vietnam War veterans. Only 14 percent to 24 percent of trauma victims experience long-term PTSD, but sufferers have flashbacks and physical symptoms that make them feel as if they are reliving the trauma years after it occurred.

 

Scientists think it happens because the brain goes haywire during and right after a strongly emotional event, pouring out stress hormones that help store these memories in a different way than normal ones are preserved.

Taking a drug to tamp down these chemicals might blunt memory formation and prevent PTSD, they theorize.

 

Some doctors have an even more ambitious goal: trying to cure PTSD. They are deliberately triggering very old bad memories and then giving the pill to deep-six them.

 

The first study to test this approach on 19 longtime PTSD sufferers has provided early encouraging results, Canadian and Harvard University researchers report.

"We figure we need to test about 10 more people until we've got solid evidence." said Alain Brunet, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who is leading the study.

It can't come too soon.

 

The need for better treatment grows daily as American troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounded minds as well as bodies. One government survey found almost 1 in 6 showing symptoms of mental stress, including many with post-traumatic stress disorder. Disability payments related to the illness cost the government more than $4 billion a year.

 

The need is even greater in countries ravaged by many years of violence.

 

"I don't think there's yet in our country a sense of urgency about post-traumatic stress disorder" but there should be, said James McGaugh, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California at Irvine.

 

He and a colleague, Larry Cahill, did experiments that changed how scientists view memory formation and suggested new ways to modify it.

 

Memories, painful or sweet, don't form instantly after an event but congeal over time. Like slowly hardening cement, there is a window of opportunity when they are shapable.

 

During stress, the body pours out adrenaline and other "fight or flight" hormones that help write memories into the "hard drive" of the brain, McGaugh and Cahill showed.

 

Propranolol can blunt this. It is in a class of drugs called beta blockers and is the one most able to cross the blood-brain barrier and get to where stress hormones are wreaking havoc. It already is widely used to treat high blood pressure and is being tested for stage fright.

 

Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard University psychiatrist, did a pilot study to see whether it could prevent symptoms of PTSD. He gave 10 days of either the drug or dummy pills to accident and rape victims who came to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room.

 

In follow-up visits three months later, the patients listened to tapes describing their traumatic events as researchers measured their heart rates, palm sweating and forehead muscle tension.

 

The eight who had taken propranolol had fewer stress symptoms than the 14 who received dummy pills, but the differences in the frequency of symptoms were so small they might have occurred by chance - a problem with such tiny experiments.

 

Still, "this was the first study to show that PTSD could be prevented," McGaugh said, and enough to convince the federal government to fund a larger one that Pitman is doing now.

 

Meanwhile, another study on assault and accident victims in France confirmed that propranolol might prevent PTSD symptoms.

 

One of those researchers, Brunet, now has teamed with Pitman on the boldest experiment yet - trying to cure longtime PTSD sufferers.

 

"We are trying to reopen the window of opportunity to modulate the traumatic memory," Pitman said.

 

The experiments are being done in Montreal and involve people traumatized as long as 20 or 30 years ago by child abuse, sexual assault or a serious accident.

 

"It's amazing how a traumatic memory can remain very much alive. It doesn't behave like a regular memory. The memory doesn't decay," Brunet said.

 

To try to make it decay, researchers ask people to describe the trauma as vividly as they can, bringing on physical symptoms like racing hearts, then give them propranolol to blunt "restorage" of the memory. As much as three months later, the single dose appears to be preventing PTSD symptoms, Brunet said.

 

Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscience professor at New York University, is enrolling 20 to 30 people in a similar experiment and believes in the approach.

 

"Each time you retrieve a memory it must be restored," he said. "When you activate a memory in the presence of a drug that prevents the restorage of the memory, the next day the memory is not as accessible."

 

Not all share his enthusiasm, as McGaugh found when he was asked to brief the President's Council on Bioethics a few years ago.

 

"They didn't say anything at the time but later they went ballistic on it," he said.

Chairman Leon Kass contended that painful memories serve a purpose and are part of the human experience.

 

McGaugh says that's preposterous when it comes to trauma like war. If a soldier is physically injured, "you do everything you can to make him whole," but if he says he is upset "they say, 'suck it up - that's the normal thing,"' he complained.

 

Propranolol couldn't be given to soldiers in battle because it would curb survival instincts.

 

"They need to be able to run and to fight," Pitman said. "But if you could take them behind the lines for a couple of days, then you could give it to them after a traumatic event," or before they're sent home, he said.

 

Some critics suggest that rape victims would be less able to testify against attackers if their memories were blunted, or at least that defense attorneys would argue that.

 

"Medical concerns trump legal concerns. I wouldn't withhold an effective treatment from somebody because of the possibility they may have to go to court a year later and their testimony be challenged. We wouldn't do that in any other area of medicine," Pitman said. "The important thing to know about this drug is it doesn't put a hole in their memory. It doesn't create amnesia."

 

Practical matters may limit propranolol's usefulness. It must be given within a day or two of trauma to prevent PTSD.

 

How long any benefits from the drug will last is another issue. McGaugh said some animal research suggests that memory eventually recovers after being squelched for a while by the drug.

 

Overtreatment also is a concern. Because more than three-quarters of trauma victims don't have long-term problems, most don't need medication.

But LeDoux sees little risk in propranolol.

 

"It's a pretty harmless drug," he said. "If you could give them one or two pills that could prevent PTSD, that would be a pretty good thing."

 

Klein, the Saint Louis University psychiatrist, said it would be great to have something besides sleep aids, antidepressants and counseling to offer traumatized people, but she remains skeptical about how much long-term good propranolol can do.

 

"If there were a pill to reduce the intensity of symptoms, that would be a relief," she said. "But that's a far step from being able to prevent the development of PTSD."

 

Only more study will tell whether that is truly possible