FDA has approved trials of Ecstasy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder

This is according to Science:

In people with PTSD, a small sensory trigger such as a sound or a smell can bring a traumatic memory rushing back. “The disabling element of PTSD is the fact that when the memory starts, the emotions completely override you and overwhelm the brain,” Nutt says. Studies suggest that MDMA can dampen the emotional response to the memory, allowing people to relive their trauma and work through it, he says. The MDMA-treatment consists of several sessions of psychotherapy, some conducted while the patient is under the influence of the drug…

A small U.S. study that first suggested MDMA could help treat PTSD was published in 2011. Since then, researchers in Canada, Israel, and the United States have jointly carried out larger phase II trials funded by MAPS; their results, which remain unpublished but have been reviewed by the FDA, were very good, says Doblin. Overall, 107 participants who had suffered from PTSD for an average of 17.8 years were treated in the phase II trials, Doblin says. Of the 90 patients who were available to be studied 12 months later, 61 no longer had PTSD.

In late July, says Doblin, MAPS and FDA agreed on how the coming phase III trials—usually the last hurdle before seeking a drug’s approval from regulators—should be conducted.

climate change and Hurricane Harvey

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, has posted a long (for Facebook) article on Facebook about how climate change contributes to events like this. In short, climate determines the probability of a particular weather event occurring, but ultimately any one particular weather event is a roll of the (now slightly loaded) dice. Warmer water and warmer air than in the past have both made events like this more likely, and are making events like this more destructive when they do occur. The article has links to several journal articles which would be worth reading to know something about hydrology and climate change. But right now I can’t do that because I’m late for my job where I have to convince people I know something about, among other topics, hydrology and climate change.

Sea level rise attributable to climate change (some is due to coastal subsidence due to human disturbance e.g. oil drilling) is more than half a foot over the past few decades (see http://www.insurancejournal.com/…/sou…/2017/05/31/452704.htm for a decent discussion).

That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction.

In addition to that, sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades, from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures (30.5-31 C or 87-88F). There is a simple thermodynamic relationship known as the “Clausius-Clapeyron equation (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relat…) that tells us there is a roughly 3% increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C (~1F) of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average temperatures, which translates to 1-1.5C warmer than the ‘average’ temperatures a few decades ago. That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.

No Man’s Sky

I was somewhat of a gamer before I had children. That was then, this is now. Maybe when they are safely off to college. I don’t know how fun I would find this game, but the interesting thing is that the universe itself is procedurally generated, which means generated by the computer using a set of rules, rather than designed by the programmers. This means it can be enormous and you can just wander around in it as long as you want.

rise of fascism in the U.S.?

Openly fascist attitudes are undoubtedly more visible in the media and on the street over the past year or so. I have been reading the headlines, but hadn’t seen a whole lot of photos or footage until recently. What I see now that I am looking, for example in this video and article from The Intercept, is pretty shocking. It definitely has echos of semi-official street gangs that did the bidding of Hitler and Mussolini early on, with the government not yet openly involved in the violence but choosing to look the other way. The next step after this is traditional elites outside the government, like business, organized labor and organized religion, choosing to align themselves with what they perceive as the winning side, because they think that will lead to the largest personal gain. Eventually, all these groups unite based on a narrative of internal and/or external enemies, agree that the threat is great enough to abandon traditional political institutions, and our republic is no more.

Or not. We seem to have taken some steps down this slippery slope of an openly fascist movement with significant popular support, and some government, business, and political elites looking the other way. We can hope that the right wing movement isn’t actually growing in membership but is simply more visible and emboldened by events over the past few years. One thing on the side of the republic is simple demographics – outside of an absolute fascist state taking power by sheer force, the angry white men do not have the numbers to dominate the rest of our society. I think that may be the case, but it is not safe to count on it. The vast majority of reasonable people need to resist, not through violence because that only fans the flames, but by taking full advantage of our still semi-functional political system to get this thing under control. That means actively recruiting and supporting rational politicians, fighting for a system where one person gets one vote and money gets no votes, and nonviolent protest actions if and when it becomes clear that is the only thing that can get the attention of our politicians and elites.

planning and landscape architecture podcast

The American Society of Landscape Architects has a blog post listing a bunch of podcasts about planning and landscape architecture. I have no professional training in either (actually, I have plenty of training and experience in practical water resources planning and green infrastructure, just not urban and regional planning the credentially profession), but these sound pretty broad so I might try a listen in my vast free time. Okay, realistically, if I find myself having a bout of insomnia in the near future.

Treasury Secretary warns against banking deregulation

According to Project Syndicate, the U.S. Treasury Secretary made a recent statement warning against any rollback of regulations that were put in place following the 2007 financial crisis.

He argued that the United States’ political system “may be taking us in a direction that is very dangerous.” Referring to moves to roll back elements of the new regulatory order established in response to the debacles of 2008-9, he lamented that “everybody wants to go back to the status quo before the great financial crisis.” And he declared that “one cannot understand why grown intelligent people reach the conclusion that you should get rid of all the things you have put in place in the last ten years.”

The article goes on to argue that deregulation is actually not likely because academics and the press are against it. But the statement is not about academics and the press, it is about “the political system”. And who has control over the political system? The finance industry. And of course they want deregulation to boost short-term profits, even though it is not in their long term interests to destroy the world economy they depend on to operate.

 

10 things I didn’t know about Robert E. Lee

I really should know something about Robert E. Lee. I had not only a total of three years of U.S. history in grade school (along with 0 years of world history), but a full year of Virginia history in fourth grade. I grew up in Southwestern Virginia until I was 10, then moved to Pennsylvania for my formative high school and college years. So part of my perception of differences between the two states probably has to do with where I was in my personal development, but one difference that always struck me was that in Virginia the state was something important, something to be proud of and know the history of, whereas in Pennsylvania the state was just sort of an amorphous political entity that exists to serve you, and doesn’t do a particularly good job of it. So my childhood was the 1980s, not the 1850s, but I could see some rough echos still of what might make a person like Lee feel loyalty to a state and be willing to fight for it. I’ve been to Washington and Lee University where he is buried (along with his horse), Gettysburg, and Arlington National Cemetery. So, without further ado, here are 10 things in the Wikipedia article on Robert E. Lee that I either forgot since fourth grade, or never knew.

  1. He was trained as an engineer at West Point, and served in the Army Corps of Engineers early in his career.
  2. His wife was a step-great-granddaughter of George Washington.
  3. He served with Ulysses S. Grant in the Mexican-American war.
  4. His in-laws were wealthy slaveowners who owned a large tobacco plantation.
  5. When his father-in-law died, his will stated that his slaves were “to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease.” Apparently the slaves knew they were to be emancipated in the will, but didn’t know about the five years. Lee took the full five years to do it, during which time some ran away and he had them captured and whipped, although there is some controversy over the details.
  6. He fought on the Union side at Harper’s Ferry, before Virginia seceded (I must have learned this in fourth grade, but haven’t thought about it since at least high school).
  7. He was a Union commander at a fort in Texas when Texas seceded.
  8. In 1865 he favored a plan to “arm and train slaves in Confederate uniform for combat. Lee explained, ‘We should employ them without delay … [along with] gradual and general emancipation.’ The first units were in training as the war ended.”
  9. His U.S. citizenship and voting rights were stripped after the war, although he received a pardon and was not prosecuted or imprisoned. They were restored posthumously by the U.S. Senate and Gerald Ford in 1975.
  10. Arlington National Cemetery was his family home.

So there you have it. He certainly wasn’t perfect, but I personally don’t think it is very productive pulling down statues to people who fought and suffered in what they believed was a necessary struggle to defend their homeland 150 years ago, and who mostly didn’t have a choice in the matter (although Lee did). I would rather see interpretive signage, museum displays, tours and school curricula that put the uglier parts of our history in context rather than sweep it under the rug. But what happens is that a few assholes choose to appropriate a particular symbol for their asshole cause, and then nobody else is allowed to interpret that symbol as meaning anything else, so we tear it down, sweep it under the rug, and maybe repeat our mistakes later. So I say leave Robert E. Lee rest in peace and let’s focus on real solutions to real problems affecting the descendents of all the people involved in the civil war – like poverty, inequality, education, physical and mental health, the environment and climate change.