Victoria L. Dunckley, M.D., – A Curious Case of Depression

Dan was a twenty-year-old young man with mild social anxiety and attention deficit disorder who — despite a genius-level IQ — was failing out of college. His social life had gone from being fairly active to nonexistent, his sleep-wake pattern was almost completely reversed, and he rarely left his room. Although not actively suicidal, Dan reported he often felt he ’d be “better off dead” and didn’t “see much …

William K. Black – Wall Street’s Message to Young Adults: ‘You Are Clueless’

Wall Street CEOs are very upset with young adults. They believe you are “clueless” and “voting against [your] own interests” when you support Bernie Sanders. A Wall Street CEO took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to decry the fact that, “Millennials are flocking to Sanders.” It would be cruel to note that one has to be clueless to believe …

Steven Maxwell – Homeless Activists Go Organic And Feed An Entire Shelter With Rooftop Garden

Every activist has read the increasing number of stories where homelessness is being criminalized, as if simply being homeless isn’t punishment enough. However, there is a rising tide among all walks of life that is beginning to view homelessness in a very different light. As a sinking economy and the criminal actions of the banking elite are leading many middle …

David Swanson – Probing Bernie Sanders’s Identity

Every time I write about a book about Bernie Sanders, somebody sends me a better one. If this keeps up, by the time his campaign is over I should be reading the best book ever written and be completely out of touch with reality. The latest isThe Bern Identity by Will Bunch. These books don’t make me like Bernie Sanders …

Kevin Loria – This man’s potentially huge medical breakthrough can’t get any funding — and now he’s trying something desperate

Four years ago, Todd Rider was on top of the world. The MIT-trained bioengineer had developed a radical idea for killing viruses. Initial test results showed that his therapy, called DRACO, could kill every virus he threw it at: 15 viruses were killed in human cells, and two in mice. It seemed like there was a chance it could be the biggest discovery …

Kate Essig – Activism Or Slacktivism? How Social Media Hurts And Helps Student Activism

On Oct. 1, 1964, hundreds of University of California-Berkeley students surrounded a police car to protest the arrest of a student. Students stood on top of the car to deliver speeches and sing, “We Shall Overcome,” to a crowd that grew to include roughly two thousand students. Years later, on Nov. 21, 2013, students gathered in Saint Louis University’s student …

KEVIN CAREY – Student Debt in America: Lend With a Smile, Collect With a Fist

The American student loan crisis is often seen as a problem of profligacy and predation. Wasteful colleges raise tuition every year, we are told, even as middle-class wages stagnate and unscrupulous for-profit colleges bilk the unwary. The result is mounting unmanageable debt. There is much truth in this diagnosis. But it does not explain the plight of Liz Kelley, a …

Joshua Krause – 77% of Two-Year-Olds Now Use Mobile Devices on a Daily Basis

There is no doubt that the pace of technological development we’ve seen in recent years has been both amazing, and frightening. It’s certainly made our lives easier, but no one can ignore the fact that these developments are happening faster than the human race can adapt to them. Predictably, this has spawned a widespread fear of technology in our culture …

John Michael Greer – The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

There are certain advantages to writing out the ideas central to this blog in weekly bursts. Back in the days before the internet, when a galaxy of weekly magazines provided the same free mix of ideas and opinions that fills the blogosphere today, plenty of writers kept themselves occupied turning out articles and essays for the weeklies, and the benefits …

The media misses the point on ‘proxy war’ – Gareth Porter

The term “proxy war” has experienced a new popularity in stories on the Middle East. Various news sources began using the term to describe the conflict in Yemen immediately, as if on cue, after Saudi Arabia launched its bombing campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen on 25 March.  “The Yemen Conflict Devolves into Proxy War,” The Wall Street Journal headlined the following …