Alone

A place that exists deep inside, a shadow inside a shadow.

To move forward requires, much like to be in love, a leap of faith.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and that is alone, simply you.

You, as strength, you as weakness, you as fear, you as a heart broken, you.

My favourite Paul Simon lyric, "losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody see's you're blown apart, everybody feels the wind blow."

I'm a shadow in the window-- Watching a love story.

Danish Media a step ahead on 911

What's happening with Al Franken?

Will the United States Senate finally get a dose of well needed left-leaning comedy? Voters in Minnesota thought they had made their intentions known back in November, but since then after multiple recounts comedian Al Franken's lead in the race over Republican Norm Coleman has hovered just around 200 votes. With such a narrow margin Coleman took the case to court to challenge thousands of votes. Things have not gone well for him and the outcome seems so far unchanged. Coleman has repeatedly challenged the validity of the vote asking for a new election, but the court so far has rejected such requests.

The court case has now wrapped up and it is expected that Franken will prevail. However it is also expected that Coleman will appeal the case to both the Minnesota Supreme Court and also the United States Supreme Court. It is not expected that either appeal will be successful as courts feel reluctant to overturn election results in the aftermath of the controversial Bush v. Gore Supreme court decision of 2000.

So it is likely that Al Franken will become Minnesota's junior Senator, but probably not until late April or even May.

Artistic revival in Detroit

With the average price of a house in the motor-city hovering at $7,500 and reports of some going for as low a $600, starving artists have flocked to the city. Out of the economic ashes of this once prosperous city artists are reportedly taking over some communities, buying homes and retro-fitting them with environmentally sound sources of energy such as solar panels. It has also been reported that they are starting community arts centres.

Some consider this to be a risky endeavour as many neighborhoods of condemned or abandoned homes have become over-run with crime and violence.

Condoms spread AIDS: Pope says.

Pope Benedict XVI embarking on a trip to Africa today remarked on the AIDS issue to reporters, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

When will the Catholic Church leave the dark-ages behind?

Debunking 911 Debunking

Please enjoy David Ray Griffin's eloquent and funny lecture as he pulls apart any claim to empiricism made by supporters of the "official conspiracy theory."

The happiness delusion.

In my thinking about anti-depressant medication and why so many people are taking it, it is impossible to ignore the giant corporate marketing machines that push these drugs, not just straightforwardly to the consumer, but more insidiously through doctors and medical institutions. Clearly, marketing campaigns of these multi-billion dollar businesses will go a long way in creating demand for their product. No where is this better evidenced than in what is, in the pharmaceutical industry, referred to as off-label prescription. This is where a drug is used by a physician, usually prompted by the drug-maker, to treat a condition or ailment, for which the drug was not governmentally approved. This is fairly standard stuff in the world of western medicine and is not always such a bad thing. The problem arises when the drug companies, begin themselves to have undue influence over what in fact is a diagnosable condition or ailment.

Take, for example, shyness. In his 2008 book, Shyness: How normal behaviour became an illness, author Christopher Lane traces the modern history of shyness from the point of view of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Shyness first appears as a mental disorder in DSM III in 1980, but is said to be rare. In 1994, when DSM IV was published it was then referred to as, "social anxiety disorder" and found to be extremely common. In 1999 GlaxoSmithKine, the pharmaceutical giant responsible for producing the anti-depressant drug Paxil received permission, after extensive lobbying, to market the drug for social anxiety disorder. Lane quotes Barry Brand, Paxil's Marketing director saying, "Every marketer's dream is to find an unidentified or unknown market and develop it. That's what we were able to do with social anxiety disorder."

More troubling than these marketing campaigns is the consumer demand that fuels them. We have, perhaps as a result of the great self-discovery movements of the last 40 years, become a society obsessed with personal happiness. The expectation that an individual should be happy most of the time is a new western construct, which seems both unrealistic as well as narcissistic. The world is not and has never been a happy place. Life is for most people a painful and difficult journey with many peaks and valleys along the way. That is not to say the world is not full of great beauty or that there will not be moments of great happiness in a persons life, but a desire for personal fulfillment seems to me a more mature approach to life.

Call me a grump if you like, but when people tell me they don't follow the news of the day because it depresses them I can't help but think, this is the world you live in. There are lots of terrible things happening in it. Your choice is either to engage in that world or else to pretend it is something it isn't. The same sentiment is also often found in people's attitudes towards politics. They can't stand to watch the endless squabbling of politicians, nit-picking over one issue or another. Again I feel like a grump when I think, what do they think democracy is? This is how humans live together. We argue, in some cases violently, and hopefully, eventually we find a compromise that usually neither side feels all that great about, but we move forward. We live with it. If you don't like arguments, maybe you should give North Korea a try.