Applying To College With Physical Disabilities: What You Need To Know
Applicants should try to visit campuses and prepare, as students, to advocate for their needs. There are about 1.1 million physically disabled undergraduates in the…
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I saw this story on the BBC News iPhone App and thought you should see it.
** Gulf spill evidence ‘destroyed’ **
BP accuses services firm Halliburton of destroying evidence relating to last year’s deadly oil well blast, which caused America’s worst offshore spill.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16044836 >
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I saw this story on the BBC News iPhone App and thought you should see it.
** What does the body language of Sarkozy and Merkel tell us? **
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Paris for crunch talks with the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. How was their non-verbal communication?
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16029013 >
** BBC Daily E-mail **
Choose the news and sport headlines you want – when you want them, all in one daily e-mail
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/email >
** Disclaimer **
The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC’s views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified.
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Check out this article that I saw in USA TODAY’s iPhone application.
Silence common in child sexual abuse cases
To view the story, click the link or paste it into your browser.
To learn more about USA TODAY for iPhone and download, visit: http://usatoday.com/iphone/
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WATCH: Bachmann Left Speechless After Encounter With 8-Year-Old Boy
Michele Bachmann was left speechless after an awkward encounter with a young activist named Elijah at a South Carolina book signing. As seen in the…
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I’m at a conference having to do with disability, access, and digital media. Here we are at the FCC headquarters in Washington, DC. We are waiting for the presentation to start. It’s my ardent hope that a new marriage of government and the private sector will usher in an era of real inclusion. We shall see…
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I couldn’t climb high enough
& now you hold in air like visible ideas,
Wishes mostly, ones the horse may have had
Dreaming in his stall under his night blanket.
It is foolish, addressing you
For you are shining in another world.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I found the following story on the NPR iPhone App:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/01/143017520/foster-kids-even-infants-more-likely-to-be-given-psychotropic-drugs?sc=17&f=1001Foster Kids Given Psychiatric Drugs At Higher Rates
by Jenny Gold
Kaiser Health News – December 1, 2011Children in foster care are significantly more likely than other kids to be given mind-altering drugs, according to a study of five states released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.The report, which focused on children in the Medicaid program, also found that foster kids were more likely to be prescribed five or more psychotropic drugs at an age and at doses that exceed the maximum FDA-approved levels — both of which carry serious health risks.Some 3,841 infants under age one were prescribed a psychotropic drug in the five states the report looked at. Seventy-six of them were in foster care. Experts say there’s no good reason for infants to take such drugs, the GAO notes.The report “confirms some of my worst fears,” Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., said in a Senate hearing on the issue Thursday, adding that states and the federal government have not done enough to monitor the problem.The two-year investigation in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas found that foster children were prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates 2.7 to 4.5 times higher than other children in Medicaid in 2008. Psychotropic drugs include those used to treat ADHD, anxiety, depression and psychosis.In total, the five states spent more than $375 million in Medicaid funds for psychotropic drugs for both foster and non-foster children.The higher prescribing rates don’t necessarily mean that states are acting inappropriately, the GAO points out. Psychotropic drugs have proven effective in treating mental illness, and the higher rate could be “due to foster children’s greater exposure to traumatic experiences and the unique challenges of coordinating their medical care.”A recent study in the journal Pediatrics also found that foster children are prescribed multiple antipsychotics at higher rates than other children.Ke’onte Cook, a 12-year-old from Texas who testified at the Senate hearing, was on up to five drugs at a time while in foster care, including for bipolar disorder. The drugs made him irritable and exhausted, he said, caused a loss of appetite and “put me in a lights-out mode 15 minutes after I’d taken them.” Cook was adopted two years ago, and is now off all of the medications he was on while in foster care.”I think putting me on all of these stupid meds was the most idiotic thing I experienced in foster care, and the worst thing someone could do to foster kids,” Cook said. “I was upset about my situation, not bipolar or ADHD.”The Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, passed in September, requires states to come up with protocols for appropriate use of psychotropic drugs for foster kids. But the GAO says that’s not enough: HHS should create nationwide guidelines to “help states close the oversight gaps we identified and increase protections for this vulnerable population.”HHS agreed with the recommendations in written responses to the report. [Copyright 2011 Kaiser Health News]To learn more about the NPR iPhone app, go to http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews
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“There are two kinds of taste,” said William James, “the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.” I think it’s safe to say that contemporary American politics is entirely about the emotions of recognition. The GOP is officially the party of entrenched hatreds; the Democrats are trapped in cathectic demonizations. The public, watching the 24-7 cable news has acquired the taste for emotive confirmation and you don’t have to be an artist to know that isn’t going to get you very far.
In the art world emotions of surprise are not prescriptive–that is, they can be spurred in a variety of ways. Sometimes the artist is the enfant terrible, troubling the public nerve (the bourgeoisie) with outrageous pictures–Robert Mapplethorpe comes to mind, but so does Walt Whitman and Baudelaire. While the city elders of Cincinnati fumed about Mapplethorpe, America was starting to take on the AIDS epidemic despite the log-jammed emotions of recognition, the old confirmatory and small minded emotions.
Sometimes the artist simply shows us what was already there but shows it to us in a fresh way. I’ll argue that Theodore Roosevelt did this when he created our national parks; Ansel Adams did it with his photographs; the poet Robert Bly does it in his lovely short poem “Watering the Horse”.
In these times America needs a leader who trusts emotions of surprise rather than the talk radio and poll driven emotions of confirmation. I think President Obama should talk more often to our current poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin. Let’s surprise the nation with boldness, which is what the people are desperately waiting for.
Planet of the Blind 