“study confirmed that people with experience of mental illness are capable of working… many were working in highly skilled, demanding occupations.” – I Haven’t Told Them, They Haven’t Asked – Debbie Peterson

“There have been biographical studies of earlier generations of artists and writers, which show that they have 18 times the rate of suicide as compared to the general population, 8-10 times the rate of clinical depression, and 10-20 times the rate of bipolar disorder.” – Is Creativity A Symptom Of Bipolar Disorder

I introduced my ongoing discussion about mental illness here. I have always worked in jobs where being bipolar was useful or even desirable. Industries like engineering, hospitality and advertising where long hours and creative thinking are expected. It is hard to know if I was attracted to those industries because I was bipolar or if being bipolar lead me to end up in those industries.

“With each regulatory error, the person’s symptoms become more noticeable, and more serious. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill: eventually the circadian rhythms and other regulatory systems are completely off track, resulting in extreme mood swings, and bringing on depression, mania, or other abnormal states of mind. The affected person may start to have noticeable errors in thinking. He may even hear sounds or voices that aren’t there, feel that he’s being watched, or think that he is a special person with a great mission to accomplish.” – psychcentral.com

Disturbed circadian rhythms are an important factor in triggering a bipolar episode. The latest and most destructive episode ( which cost me everything that is important to me ) was foreshadowed by a change in sleeping routines. I began to work longer hours, sleep less and become increasingly emotionally disconnected from my family.

I became increasingly disconnected from reality and delusional with self aggrandizement leading me to overestimate my own abilities and worth. I felt intensely creative but it was directed in unhealthy ways. Instead pursuing creative projects that would have contributed in a positive way to myself and my family I pursued ones that were damaging and destructive.

I engaged in behaviors that I cannot discuss because to do so would hurt once again those that I love and care about.  While in a manic state risk taking behavior becomes more prevalent as the normal social filters are disabled. There is an increase in confrontational behavior and hyper-sexuality.

The problem with the manic phase is that it feels good. It feels great to be able to work long hours, feel mentally energized with ideas flowing freely. It is only a temporary condition and will soon be replaced by depression and regret.

Unfortunately there is no external hand that can correct the damaged plot narrative of your life.

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“Tiger will lose his cool, and get busted rooting around. Maybe he will lose his cool for getting busted rooting around. Actually he probably will.“ - Whaleoil

Sexual addiction is a very serious issue that if undiagnosed and untreated can destroy lives. It can wreck relationships and families, can kill careers, write off savings and in the worst cases lead to death from suicide or AIDS. Sexual addiction can have a number of causes ranging from the chemical to events like childhood sexual abuse.

There is a sexual addiction as a psychological/psyciatric disorder on its own:

“Most sex addicts live in denial of their addiction, and treating an addiction is dependent on the person accepting and admitting that he or she has a problem. In many cases, it takes a significant event—such as the loss of a job, the break-up of a marriage, an arrest, or health crisis—to force the addict to admit to his or her problem.

Treatment of sexual addiction focuses on controlling the addictive behavior and helping the person develop a healthy sexuality. Treatment includes education about healthy sexuality, individual counseling, and marital and/or family therapy. Support groups and 12 step recovery programs for people with sexual addictions (like Sex Addicts Anonymous) also are available. In some cases, medications used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder may be used to curb the compulsive nature of the sex addiction. These medications include Prozac and Anafranil.” – MedicineNet

Or it can be part of a bigger form of mental illness like bipolar affective disorder:

“When someone wrote to Ask the Bipolar Expert about a bipolar friend addicted to internet pornography, the doctor pointed out that this kind of behavior can be “driven, at least in part, by the physical activation, heightened sensory and sexual interest, and risk-taking that characterize mania.” … while there have been no systematic studies, there appears to be an unusually high correlation between bipolar disorder and a history of child sexual abuse, which could be explained by the fact that bipolar disorder is so often inherited, and the parent abuser may well have done so due to his or her own manic depression. In these cases, hypersexuality appears to have led to compulsive, reckless, or deviant behavior.” - About.com

Like other addictions the addicted person is almost always in denial about the addiction until a tragic and traumatic event occurs that forces them to face up to their problem. Treatment may require a combination of medications like Lithium for the treatment of bipolar affective disorder, psychotherapy to address aetiology like childhood trauma e.g. sexual abuse and support systems like 13 step groups like SLAA.

It is vital to get help before the disease destroys your life. Sexual addiction can only be beaten by taking the tiger by the tail.

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The Atlanta-based “breast-aurant” chain — famous for the scantily clad waitresses who serve up its burgers and spicy wings — is beckoning prospective buyers, sources told The Post.

Hooters has recently shopped itself to a number of private-equity firms as sales have sagged with the recession, sources said. The closely held company, meanwhile, is in advanced talks with a Connecticut-based investor that has been granted certain rights of refusal on any potential transaction, according to one source. – New York Post

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Looking forward to seeing the Google Buzz feature activated on my Gmail account shortly. I have a couple of Gmail accounts as well as a self-hosted account for my professional domain. I pop them all into a single Gmail account and apply labels for easy management.

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With the big issue of the day being tax reform and the television being over run by the usual suggestions that we all move to Australia I thought I would write about spirituality or rather an individual experience of a spiritual or the supernatural. This was inspired by an email discussion I have been having about the www.mandm.org.nz blog.

The religious experience is typically characterized by a sudden illumination of individual consciousness, where the experience itself is somewhat fleeting or momentary and lacks specific content, yet leaves the individual with an overwhelming feeling of having made contact with a power much greater than the self. Eliade, 1961 Typically, what ensues is an intense and pressing recognition of one’s insignificance in the larger cosmos and a heightened recognition of the interrelatedness of all life-forms, ultimately leading to feelings of peace and humility. – A Quality Exploration of the Wilderness Experience

During the nineties I spent five years attending meditation classes. These were held in two story building at 280 Great North Road , Grey Lynn. The classes were held in the spiritual centre on the first floor. On the ground floor was a panel; beating shop.

The class I attended started at 6pm on a Friday night. We would sit cross legged opposite a partner as the objective was to achieve to attempt spiritual unity with the other person and then expand that out to include the group and then the world. At 6:30 the panelbeaters would end work for the week and would roll the door down. The sound would penetrate deep into my psyche as by that stage I was well into the meditation. Oddly it wasn’t disturbing or distracting as it was just part of being connected into the ’sea of life’.

I had some amazing experiences of unity during those classes. I had experiences of something moving between me and the person I was working with: some sort of physical connection without touch. Over the last decade I have become increasingly cynical and have lost my connection with the profound. I have lost that connection at a deep personal cost to myself and those that I love.

“Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.

Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology.

The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr Michael Persinger’s experimental subjects report that an artificial magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of ‘not being alone’. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.

His work raises the prospect that we are programmed to believe in god, that faith is a mental ability humans have developed or been given. And temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could help unlock the mystery.” – God on the Brain

I do not know if my experiences of spiritual connectedness were a result of phenomena beyond nature or a neurological state as described above but they were certainly real at the time and added immense value to my life. I mourn their loss and the life that I have lost because I arrogantly cast them aside.

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Diesel advertising campaign using climate change as a theme

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From the Stephen Colbert Show:

There is one sports story out there that has really got me peeved. Accenture has ended their sponsorship deal with Tiger Woods. And just when I’d almost figured out what Accenture was. Well listen up Accenture, I know it must have been heartbreaking to find out that Tiger was endorsing other companies on the side. But you and Tiger made such beautiful ad copy together.

“Go On. Be A Tiger.”

Why break up when you can just change your slogan to, “Ho On. Do A Tiger.”

And now folks…and now Gillette is rethinking Tiger’s endorsement…possibly after seeing some of Tiger’s alleged mistresses. After all, is this really the best a man can get?

But you know what? You know what buddy? Stay strong Tiger. You are gonna bounce back. No one in the world is better at getting their balls out of a trap.

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Last Thursday I went blogger drinks in Auckland with my host at Gotcha!. Though I have worked professionally in the ‘blogosphere’ for several years I had never been to blogger drinks though had heard about some of the antics.

I believe that Cactus Kate had to be restrained from punching Phil U late last year. Personally I would have let her go to it, photographing and blogging the action would have been a significant source of traffic. Having been assaulted in the pursuit of a story I can assure Phil U that it is well worth the page views to get a black eye.

I got talking to Madeleine of the Christian blog MandM. I was very impressed with the way they ran their blog and more importantly how successful it was. Not so much in terms of absolute numbers of pages delivered but in terms of respect and profile.

On the strength of their blogging Matthew & Madeleine had been invited to participate earlier that day in the “Marae: The Great Waitangi Debate,” broadcast on Television One last weekend. That recognition by the real media confirms the value they offer.

Talking to Madeleine & Matthew and then reading their wonderfully crafted blog I was reminded of the invention of Kevin Roberts : Love marks.

“How Do I Know A Lovemark?

Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect – but there the similarities end.

Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.

Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. Lovemarks are a relationship, not a mere transaction. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately. That’s why you never want to let go.”

Even though I am a dreadful post-theist MandM is now on my RSS feed. It takes a lot for a blog to make it on so MandM should feel honoured LOL.

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In the early 1980’s I went to a very disturbing Brazilian film , Pixote, the Law of the Weakest. It is the most disturbing film I have ever watched. It included a scene of implied rape of a small boy in a reform school.

I find it very disturbing that:

“plans to make a seven-year-old girl the ‘queen’ of a samba school in this year’s Rio de Janeiro carnival.

The role of ‘drum corps queen’ is normally given to a barely-clad model or soap opera star.”

“Brazil has long had a problem with sexual exploitation of children, especially in the lawless Amazon region.

Allowing Julia to be a drum corps queen ‘would increase the treatment of children as sexual objects in Brazilian society,’ said Carlos Nicodemos, director of the Rio de Janeiro state Council for the Defense of Children and Adolescents.

‘We’re not against kids participating in Carnival; it’s part of Brazilian culture,” Nicodemos said. ‘What we can’t allow is putting a seven-year-old girl in a role that traditionally for carnival has a very sexual focus.’“ The Daily Mail via Jezebel

Sexualising children is totally wrong.

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“The phrase “Better Living Through Chemistry” is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, “Better Things for Better Living…Through Chemistry.” DuPont adopted it in 1935 and was their slogan until 1982.”

Wikipedia

“And she’s even considering returning to him? My God. She packed the children up on holiday and Tiger’s gone to a sex addiction clinic. Allegedly she’s now a participant in his cure sessions.

You cannot cure wandering eyes and itchy pants. You can restrain it by being with a man 24/7 but there is no cure. Men who behave this way don’t have an illness or anything that can be cured with any clinic or drug other than chemical castration. They are merely opportunists, that’s all. She was there, and I could so why not?”

Cactus Kate

So is Cactus correct ? Is infidelity a moral flaw, is it a conscious choice or is it a disease and/or chemical imbalance ? Can we have a more moral society through chemistry ?

One person I discussed this issue with responded like this:

“[8:22:52 PM] sometime we have to accept that we can spend our lives excusing ourselves for our behaviour but bottom line is no matter how challenged our mental state of mind is(excuse extreme cases of delusion of course) we h ave to be accountable”

Yes we have to be accountable for our actions and live with the consequences. That is not the same as being totally conscious of the consequences of our actions when we took them.

There are health issues that can lead to inappropriate sexual behavior:

“Hypersexuality is symptomatic of mania in bipolar disorder and promotes an exceptionally vulnerable time for both parties in the relationship and if not recognized and properly handled can lead to emotional turmoil and family breakups.” – Hypersexuality and Bipolar

“Obsessive-compulsive disorder afflicts one in fifty people. It is not well-understood by the general public, and thus many suffer needlessly because they do not know what is wrong with them or where to get help. Although thirty percent of OCD sufferers have sexual obsessions, we rarely hear about this specific manifestation of the disease.” – BrainPhysics

Both of these conditions can be treated by medication and therapy. Sure the individual is responsible for their behavior but it is an over simplification by Cactus to say that they are an opportunist.

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I am an artist not a scientist so I will just offer a list of random links from Googling “climate change denier”:

1) Information Is Beautiful

I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources.

Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it’s like for people trying to learn about climate change online.

My conclusion is “what a nightmare”. I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical.

2) RealClimate

RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science. All posts are signed by the author(s), except ‘group’ posts which are collective efforts from the whole team. This is a moderated forum.

3) Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.

4) Lord Monckton’s lies about the “hockey Stick”

Lord Mockton has been a prolific propagator of this lie. He even appears in the infamous “climategate” emails saying of the “hockey stick”: “the US National Academy of Sciences has described as having “a validation skill not significantly different from zero”. In plain English, this means the graph was rubbish.”

Problem is – search through the NRC report and you just won’t find those words (“a validation skill not significantly different from zero”). Nevertheless this allegation has been repeated innumerable numbers of times in conservative newspapers and websites. Some of these also claim (as does Poenke) that the IPCC had abandoned the data (see for example the policy Brief from the Commonwealth foundation – Climate & Penn State – demanding a McCarthyist-style investigation of Mann). But even Mockton acknowledges that“the UN continues to use the defective graph.”

5) Monbiot’s royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers

Mel P ( Melanie Phillips Daily Mail columnist ) appears to believe that half the scientists on earth are engaged in a series of giant conspiracies. Like Christopher Booker (below), she dismisses not only climate change but also the entire canon of evolutionary science. She also stoutly defends the thesis that MMR injections cause autism.

6) Climate Denial Dot Org

The Deniers have always understood this. They use language that is designed to appeal to deeper values (such as freedom, independence, progress). The narrative they tell of being determined (and even persecuted) free thinkers standing against the tide of oppressive and self-interested conformity is designed to create an aura of integrity and trustworthiness.

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Sent a friend a text message yesterday asking what was happening. Got the reply that Alison Mau was a carpet muncher. Carpet muncher ? What the fuck is a carpet muncher ? Catching sight of the “Herald on Sunday” as I sat down for a long black I discovered that carpet muncher was code for being a lesbian.

Across the leader board of the Herald on Sunday was a photograph of Alison Mau and her lover. Clearly having this content in the most visually privileged position of the paper meant that the editors considered it would be of significant interest to readers and would induce them to purchase and read the news paper. And more importantly read the advertising.

So why are we so fascinated in the sex lives of celebrities ? If Alison Mau had a new male lover would be as interested as her having a female lover ?

A couple of thoughts on why it is of interest to the general newspaper reader:

a) having a photograph of the attractive Alison Mau and her attractive lover allows all the sexually frustrated men and in some cases their wives to indulge in a erotic phantasy over the corn flakes. It is a form of soft core pornography: legitimizing sexual thoughts. Mrs Smith of Hillcrest having a quiet sexual phantasy about going down on a girl.

b) there is still a strongly puritanical component to the New Zealand psyche with an attitude that disapproves of homosexuality: “The influence of evangelicals and dissenters, that had so marked an effect on the moral tone of Victorian England, found its way to New Zealand as an invisible export and made itself felt before the colony was many years old.”- Te Ara

Ian Wishart does a good job of illustrating this puritanical obsession:

The enigma of Helen Clark may finally have been solved – a troubled child of the 60s who now has the power to address the perceived wrongs of her youth. The sickly, bookish archetypal nerd who now has the ability to kick sand in everyone else’s faces. Forced to go to church, brought up in a family with strict morals, forced to marry when she didn’t believe in it, made to feel a criminal for her sexuality.

What relevance did Helen Clark’s sexuality have to her role as a politician ? Bugger all. Very relevant is Wishart’s overt Christian beliefs. I discovered that lesbianism isn’t necessarily prohibited by Christianity::

Is a Christian Threesome Possible?

two main issues of concern to Christians, those of homosexuality and adultery…. the act of sharing a woman and being together in a sexual situation is nevertheless homoerotic … For this reason, we feel it is best for a couple to avoid bringing another man into the picture.

The one passage that is frequently cited as condemning female homosexuality is found in Romans 1:26-27: “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions: for their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature.” The idea of women going “against nature” is typically interpreted to mean women lusting after women. However, we believe that what Paul is referring to when he speaks of women “going against nature” is not female homosexuality per se, but rather the reversal of sexual roles

Perhaps someone should tell Wishart.

3) Alison Mau is attractive and therefore makes a good photograph on the cover of the Herald on Suinday. If she was less attractive ( like say Sue Bradford ) would she have had had her photograph in the leaderboard position ?

4) Oddly it is not only straight people who are obsessed with finding out if someone is lesbian. Over at unPC Lesbian there has been a long running thread speculating on the sexual orientation of Jillian Michaels.

I wonder what the reaction would be if Simon Dallow had a male lover ? Would there be the same level of interest ? Would Simon Dallow get a leaderboard photograph ? Is there a double standard applied to women ?

There appears to be when it comes to the cougar.

“Feminists love the idea that, as they put it, “50 is the new 25″ and that newly “empowered” women of a certain age are free to conduct their sex lives just like men.

The only thing Washington Post writers Monica Hesse and Ellen McCarthy found to dislike about cougars is the name — so double-standard-ish. “There’s a corresponding name for single males who prefer to date younger females,” Ms. Hesse and Ms. McCarthy complain. “They’re called ‘men.’” “ – Washington Times

And this nugget from feminist blog Jezebel where it is implied that it is ok for a gay man to like younger men but not ok for women to like younger men.:

“but here, the women are just set up to be really foul, awful, pathetic people who seem to be chasing teenage boys, setting them up to be more like pedophiles than 40 year old women who prefer dating younger men. And then comes Alec Baldwin, playing a gay man who also likes younger men “ – Jezebel

Reusing the quotation above it is interesting that the cougar turns the conventional sex roles on their head:

Romans 1:26-27: “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions: for their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature.” but rather the reversal of sexual roles

As a friend said when I told them that I was blogging on this topic: the cougar is ultimate act of feminism.

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