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The Bookworm walks down the aisle with 'A History of Marriage.'
By Elizabeth Abbott
$24.95 hardcover, 460 pages, includes index
The diamond is firmly on your finger, third from the thumb, left hand, snuggled next to your pinky. It's a beautiful ring, sparkly and just as meaningful as the ceremony at which you got it.
Oh, you'll never forget that ceremony! There you stood, promising to cherish your beloved always. Flowers were everywhere. The best man cracked jokes. Your mother cried. And you ended that day with a celebration that friends and family are still talking about.
So why did you do it? Was love the sole reason for the ceremony, the ring, the best man or the wedding whoop-it-up? Find out in "A History of Marriage" by Elizabeth Abbott.
Whether you had a quiet religious ceremony or televised nuptials, whether you wore frippery or flip-flops, your wedding probably started like nearly everyone else's: Boy meets girl, boy dates girl, boy marries girl.
But it wasn't always a grown-up affair. Hundreds of years ago - and, indeed, until relatively recently - boy met girl in preschool.
Child marriages, says Abbott, were one way to cement social relationships and to prevent scandalous out-of-wedlock pregnancies. But pity the Chinese bride, who was often raised by her in-laws to ensure that she was familiar with their "personal needs."
Just like every couple starting out, you had bumpy spots. The good news is that you had plumbing and heat and a chance to know your beloved before the ceremony, unlike 737 women who traveled from France to New France (now Canada) in 1670. The "les filles du roi" arrived in the wilderness, intended to be the intendeds of fur-traders and colonists. Despite the hardships, the experiment worked; Abbott says that millions of French Canadians are descended from the ensuing marriages.
But your marriage is unique… although that's nothing new. Early unions didn't require a ceremony; a couple simply agreed that they were married. Unstable slave marriages were sometimes allowed and sometimes forced - multiple times. Wedding gowns were once practical, and rarely white. A bride's virginity (or lack thereof) was announced to all by the shape of a wreath on her head. Families have always gone heavily into debt for receptions, children were always expected to follow soon after the nuptials, and divorce was always available if things didn't work out.
Oh, and gay marriage? It's as ancient as civilization.
Looking for something engaging to read this summer? Then say "I do" to this book.
From the centuries BCE to just a few years ago, author Elizabeth Abbott lifts the veil off the world's betrothals, weddings, ceremonies and the customs that influence all three. Then she examines how cultures have influenced wedded bliss, what happens when marriages are broken and where hitching is heading in the future.
This book is like taking a centuries-long, world-wide trip down a petal-strewn aisle, and I loved it.
If you enjoy a good wedding, are first in line to dance the Hora, or you've divorced yourself from boring reads, then find "A History of Marriage." For you, this book has a ring of fun around it.


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Packers sign second-round pick Lacy
Green Bay, WI – The Green Bay Packers agreed to terms with rookie running back Eddie Lacy, the team's second-round pick in April's NFL Draft, on Thursday.
The Packers selected Lacy, the Offensive MVP of January's BCS Championship Game while at the University of Alabama, with the 61st overall choice. The former Crimson Tide standout is expected to compete with holdovers DuJuan Harris, Alex Green and James Starks for Green Bay's starting running back position during training camp.
Lacy entered the draft as a junior after putting together a stellar 2012 campaign for the Crimson Tide, during which he rushed for 1,322 yards and 17 touchdowns to earn first-team All-SEC honors.
The deal leaves UCLA defensive end Datone Jones, Green Bay's first-round pick, as the lone unsigned member of the Packers' draft class.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Ted finally finishes telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, on the special one-hour series finale of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, Monday, March 31 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Pictured: Neil Patrick Harris as Barney. Photo: Ron P. Jaffe/Fox © 2014 Fox Television. All rights reserved


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For some, the 17th annual Surf City Marathon is just another stop on their race tour. But for others, like Lina Fichera, it's something they've been waiting to cross off their bucket list.
Fichera, 49, survived coma and a prognosis of never being able to walk again and now, on Feb. 3, she will attempt her second half-marathon, something she never thought possible.
Fichera moved back to Huntington Beach this month after living in Connecticut and, most recently, Jacksonville, Fla. for the past three years.
Fichera had always considered California her home, despite growing up in Connecticut. She said when she and a relative backpacked in California in 2002, she fell in love right away.
"I don't want to go back. I don't feel like [Connecticut] is my home," Fichera said to her relative during their last day of their trip.
But her path back to Huntington Beach wasn't a smooth one.
Fichera underwent surgery in 1997 in Connecticut. Doctors told her the procedure was simple and would take no longer than an hour, but things took a wrong turn.
"All I remember was waking up in the middle of the night and then blacking out," Fichera said.
Fichera said doctors accidentally punctured her organs during the surgery, causing toxins to enter her brain. This in turn caused her to swell up and eventually put her into a coma for more than two months.
After coming out of her coma, Fichera found herself paralyzed from the neck down and had to relearn how to talk, walk and perform other motor functions.
With the help of the Easter Seals and other community members in Connecticut, Fichera was able to function normally again after three years, even though doctors told her should wouldn't be able to.
"I didn't want to be paralyzed. I didn't want to stay in a wheelchair," she said. "If they asked me to take 10 steps, I would force myself to take 20."
Once she was ready, Fichera moved to Huntington Beach in 2003 and would stay there for seven years.
During that time, she would always observe people running around the city, but never thought too much about it.
"I was always intrigued with running, but nothing hardcore [like marathons]," Fichera said. "I've always had the desire to run a race. It was a bucket list thing, but I never knew how to approach it."
Fichera had to move back to Connecticut in 2010 for personal reasons, but as she was looking for ways to stay fit, she found a running group that was training for a 5k run.
It was with that group that Fichera found her way into the world of running.
Though she still has physical setbacks from her illness, Fichera completed her first 5k in 2010 in Old Wethersfield, Conn. and hasn't looked back since. It didn't matter that she finished that race in 45:34, Fichera said. Crossing the finish line was enough for her.
"Take that, doctors who told me I couldn't walk," she said.
After moving to Jacksonville in 2011, she met with Coy Orange and his running group "Absentee Runners" and began to participate in events with them.
Members of the running group include people coming out of rehabilitation, as well as those with varying medical conditions.
"When we run, we don't leave anyone behind," Fichera said.
Fichera has 11 5k runs under her belt and just added her first half-marathon in December. This will be her first Surf City half-marathon.
Up to 20,000 runners are expected to participate in either the 26.2-mile marathon or the 13-mile half-marathon.
Running not only helps Fichera stay healthy, but helps her cope with what she went through 16 years ago.
"It's a personal competition with myself and it keeps me going. I'm just addicted to it," she said. "If I don't run, I get severely depressed."
After hearing word of the upcoming Surf City Marathon, Fichera and the "Absentee Runners" group from Florida decided to participate.
But for Fichera, it was more than the excitement of traveling to another state to do a marathon.
"For me, I was going home."
Twitter: @acocarpio
If You Go
What: Surf City Marathon
Where: 21100 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach
When: Marathon begins 6:30 a.m.; half-marathon at 7:45 a.m. Feb. 3
Information: Registration is closed. Street parking will be available along Beach Boulevard and Huntington Street. No admission fee for spectators.


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Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb html
Seth Braun eats Kale and Chocolate. Not at the same time.
He is dad, husband and dude. Seth is the author of the best-selling Healthy, Fast and Cheap series, a vastly overrated artist and underrated guitar player, he is currently surfing the sea of creative entrepreneurship serving holistic health and wellness professionals as a business coach, creatives as a consultant and bringing the the thunder as a speaker to corporate clients, associations and conferences.


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My HIV Journey: 13 Months of Videos Following My Diagnosis
August 2012
I am simply a guy who on June 6, 2011, received the news that more than 33 million people have received: I am HIV positive. I decided in that moment to record the journey that I was embarking on so that I might help others as they receive that news. I'm not a doctor and I don't endorse any agenda other than simply living a healthy life.
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The Lions have a bad track record of getting little talent out of late draft picks, and two more examples of that trend were demonstrated today.
The Lions have released cornerback Chris Greenwood, a fifth-round draft pick last year, and receiver Corey Fuller, a sixth-round draft pick this year, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Greenwood missed his entire rookie season because of a hernia and didn't play well this year in the preseason, while Fuller struggled to get on the field this year in the preseason.
The Lions also cut linebacker Jon Morgan, offensive lineman Darren Keyton and offensive lineman Kevin Haslam, and waived-injured safety Martavius Neloms.
UPDATE 11:42 a.m. ET: Add another draft mistake to the list: The Lions released seventh-round linebacker Brandon Hepburn.


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One of the only disappointments of the 'Culture, Mind and Brain' conference in Los Angeles this weekend — and there were plenty of things that turned out even better than expected — was that Prof. Tanya Luhrmann of Stanford was not able to join us. However, because she couldn't be here, she was kind enough to prerecord her lecture: Hearing Voices in Accra and Chennai: How Culture Makes a Difference to Psychiatric Experience.
Tanya Luhrmann's hearing voices (link to video)
(The video doesn't seem to want to embed for me. I'll try to fix it, but let's get this up sooner rather than later.)
Luhrmann explored in her talk whether culture makes a difference in the voices that patients with serious psychotic disorder experience. She has elsewhere made the argument that the types of voices may vary, based on available research on patterns of hallucination. In a review in the Annual Review of Anthropology, Luhrmann writes:
local theory of mind—the features of perception, intention, and inference that the community treats as important—and local practices of mental cultivation will affect both the kinds of unusual sensory experiences that individuals report and the frequency of those experiences. Hallucinations feel unwilled. They are experienced as spontaneous and uncontrolled. But hallucinations are not the meaningless biological phenomena they are understood to be in much of the psychiatric literature. They are shaped by explicit and implicit learning around the ways that people pay attention with their senses. This is an important anthropological finding because it demonstrates that cultural ideas and practices can affect mental experience so deeply that they lead to the override of ordinary sense perception. (2011: 72)
(The last line, although not the way I would phrase it certainly, will not be news to readers of Neuroanthropology: because of my work on sensory learning, we've frequently discussed ways that the concept of 'ordinary sense perception' itself is probably not defensible. But that's a tangent to Luhrmann's discussion and not terribly important here…)
In the talk she recorded for the Culture, Mind and Brain conference, Luhrmann discusses findings from field research with patients in the US, Accra and Chennai, who all had auditory illusion as their primary symptom. In all cases, the subjects of her research were seriously and negatively affected by the presence of their voices. (Luhrmann has argued elsewhere that there are fundamental differences between pathological and non-pathological hallucinations; see Luhrmann et al. 2010.)
Although Luhrmann acknowledges that schizophrenia is a difficult and messy diagnosis at times, she was satisfied with the fact that she was dealing with 'loosely the same phenomenon' based on the extensive interviews she did. Especially in the US, the voices were much like those that Luhrmann describes in her Annual Review of Anthropology article on the subject,
People with psychosis hear phrases repeatedly; they can hear long conversations commenting on their behavior; they can hear back-and-forth conversations about them in the third person. These hallucinations are unpleasant, even horrific. In the condition we identify as schizophrenia, hallucinations are primarily auditory (in all cultures) and they are often accompanied by strange, fixed beliefs (delusions) not shared by other people (for example, that malevolent government agents are running an electrical experiment in one's brain). This pattern of hearing distressing voices appears to be universal and recognized as illness everywhere. (Luhrmann 2011: 75)
What was more interesting, however, was that the fieldwork in Chennai and Accra showed some significant variation in the nature of the voices, which caused (and was caused by) a profoundly different experience of the condition. Luhrmann and her research assistants asked patients about their voices: how many, what sorts of voices, their relationships to the voices, could they identify any of the voices, what sort of control they had. The interviews paid close attention to the experiential quality of the voices: were they stressful and why; were any experiences of hallucination positive; whether the patients thought that the voices were 'real'; and what they felt the causes of the voices was. In the video, Tanya details the different topics fairly comprehensively, but I'm only going to gloss them quickly here. (If you're interested, you really should watch the video; she discusses the specific questions asked around 7:00 mins into the clip.)
Hearing voices in the US
The US patients almost all self-identified as 'schizophrenic' and used the diagnosis to talk about their condition; they knew the 'textbook' definitions of the condition and ideas about hereditary illnesses. The patients know that 'hearing voices' is a sign you're 'crazy,' so they often try to conceal their experiences. They dislike hearing voices and try to deny their existence.
Luhrmann describes in an article in The Wilson Quarterly that admitting to being 'crazy' in this context is itself painful, especially when confronted by most therapeutic institutions in the US:
In care as usual, people diagnosed with schizophrenia are regarded as severely disabled and thus as appropriate recipients of supported housing and other benefits. People are required to get their diagnosis to justify their placements, sometimes being asked to collect an actual piece of paper from one office and turn it in at another. Many people with schizophrenia cycle through long periods of homelessness. Few of them like it. You would think that they would line up to be housed. But they dislike the diagnosis even more than they dislike being out on the street, because the idea of being "crazy" seems even more horrifying to them than it does to those of us who have roofs over our heads. (Beyond the Brain)
For Westerners, 'hearing voices' is so clearly indicative of insanity that, in an experiment reported by Rosenham in Science in 1973, a number of researchers were all institutionalized when they reported hearing indeterminate voices, but no other symptoms. Moreover, once institutionalized, they were detained for up to two months and prescribed antipsychotics even though all of the experimental 'patients' (Rosenham's collaborators) reported to psychiatrists that they no longer heard voices as soon as they were admitted. (I teach this article in the psychological anthropology class I teach with Gabrielle Maranci at Macquarie.)
For Lurhmann's American subjects, the voices themselves are generally unknown; rarely, some patients heard famous people and a couple of subjects heard individuals who had sexually molested them as children. Luhrmann found that all of the subjects heard 'horrible voices, telling them that they were worthless and should die.' Sometimes voices told them to torture others or 'go to war,' or that the sufferer should commit suicide or was destined for a horrible end; one patient referred to her 'suicide voice.'
Hearing voices in Ghana
In Accra, Luhrmann and her assistants found that the patients heard an 'audible God' who actually advised them to ignore other 'evil voices.' In contrast to the US, in Accra, hearing voices didn't necessarily mean that you were 'crazy'; instead, the local explanation of the condition often referred to the subject being under 'spiritual attack' by either spirits or witches. To be the victim of a witch carried less stigma than to have a mental illness, and people generally didn't talk about 'schizophrenia'.
Some of the voices that individuals in Accra heard were familiar people — family, kin, employers — and half the patients reported that they heard primarily or only positive voices, telling them to do good or offering advice. Even when individuals in Accra heard aggressive or critical voices, they also reported hearing 'good' voices that told them to ignore these negative influences. Interestingly, Luhrmann reports that, if you push patients in the US, asking them about 'good' voices, they will report that they 'live for these days,' suggesting that they don't even really consider this type of experience 'schizophrenia,' ignoring positive voices when asked about their condition without prompting. In Accra, positive voices are central to the experience; in the US, they are treated as an aside, peripheral to their primary condition. In Accra, people even said that the voices had 'kept them alive.'
The experience of these voices, of course, was much less distressing than the horrible things that American patients reported. Over time, even if the individual initially experiences horrible voices, as their condition progresses, the voices often become more helpful, with new protectors or companions displacing distressing voices. The voices often provide patients with company and advice, with at least half the patients having positive experiences.
Hearing voices in India
In contrast, the patients in Chennai, who were all diagnosed with schizophrenia, tended to hear 'annoying relatives who told them to get dressed and clean up.' Kin form the lion's share of voices, sometimes criticizing them, sometimes advising them and keeping them company, consoling, or helping to motivate patients.
Some of these voices are reassuring, even playful. Luhrmann says that the playful voices can even become imaginary companions. One woman reported hearing Hanauman, the monkey god, who at first encouraged her to do horrible things and threatened to punish her, but over time became a playful companion with whom she 'had pillow fights' and parties, playing pranks on each other. However, the voices often talk about sex, which is spectacularly embarrassing.
As Luhrmann explains in an essay in The Wilson Quarterly, the Indian approach to schizophrenia is markedly different to that in the US:
Indian families also don't treat people with schizophrenia as if they have a soul-destroying illness. As an anthropology graduate student, Amy Sousa spent more than a year in northern India, sitting with doctors as they treated patients who came with their families into a dingy hospital where overworked psychiatrists can routinely have 10 appointments an hour. Many of the doctors didn't mention a diagnosis. Many of the families didn't ask. There was a good deal of deception—wives grinding medication into the flour for the daily chapattis they made for their husbands, doctors explaining to patients that they were completely well but should take strengthening pills to protect themselves from the ravages of their youth. As a result, none of the patients thought of themselves as having a career-ending illness, and every one of them expected to get better. And at least compared to patients in the West, they generally did. (Beyond the Brain)
Why the differences?
Luhrmann warns that the research is in early stages but that the experiences may be different because in each case, people are encouraged to have different sorts of opportunities when they start hearing voices. Although the local explanations of the condition or the models of the condition vary, the point is that mental practice or patterns of interaction and attention to mental events are also distinct.
The way that individuals experience the 'mind' in each place also matters. When the research team asked American patients whether the voices were 'real,' the question was easy for US subjects to answer; they recognized the distinction between 'real' voices and voices 'inside your head,' in part because the mind was understood to be a closed space. Having some other agents in your mind was clearly a sign of illness or dysfunction, so the voices were 'extremely disconcerting.'
In contrast, even the distinction between 'real' and 'not real' didn't quite make the same intuitive sense to the subjects in other places, perhaps because their understanding of 'mind' was less private. Although Luhrmann cautions that her ideas are preliminary, she suggests that 'mind' in Chennai was more transactional and social, rather than purely private, but that it was important to achieve calm.
Although it's not clear to me how this relates to the question of 'reality' of voices, Luhrmann suggests that, in Accra, mind was seen as a moral quality, and thought as having effects in the world. To have good thoughts was to bring about desirable effects, so people strove to exercise control over their thoughts in order to influence the world around them.
Talking with your voices
Perhaps one of the most interesting things that Tanya says in her lecture, however, is a discussion she also picked up in a piece in The American Scholar (Living with Voices). In a single slide, toward the very end of the talk, Luhrmann discusses the 'Hearing Voices' movement, a therapeutic movement in Europe, America, and elsewhere, that encourages individuals to have more of a positive and engaged relationship with the voices that they hear. She suggests that cross-cultural research offers an opportunity to examine 'natural experiments,' in which different local relationships to auditory hallucinations might influence the prognosis for schizophrenia.
Luhrmann describes the Hearing Voices movement:
…recently a new grassroots movement has emerged. It argues that if patients learn to address their voices directly and appropriately, as if each voice had intention and agency, the voices will become less hostile and eventually go away. From the perspective of modern psychiatry, this assertion is radical, even dangerous. But it is being taken seriously by an increasing number of patients and psychiatrists. (Living with Voices).
The Hearing Voices movement was initiated by Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romme and his wife, Sandra Escher, together with their patients. Romme had met patients in his psychiatric practice who seemed to cope surprisingly well with hearing voices, so he advertised on national television in the Netherlands to make contact with people more broadly, including those who had never shared their experiences with psychiatrists (see Luhrman's Living with Voices piece for a more comprehensive account). Romme learned that a surprising number of people who responded to his call got along quite well in spite of their audio hallucinations.
Talking with those who got along well, Romme, together later with Escher, found that those who were less disturbed by voices told individual stories that followed a common pattern: 'Some voices had started out mean and difficult, and the hearers had first responded with startled fear, but once they had chosen to interact with them, the voices settled down and became more manageable, sometimes even useful' (Living with Voices). As Luhrmann explains elsewhere, the irony of treating the voices as independent agents, recognizing them, means 'they are imagined as having the ability to choose to stop talking' (Beyond the Brain).
Julian Jaynes and the bicameral mind
Romme and Escher were partially inspired by the work of Julian Jaynes, a controversial American psychologist who proposed that modern consciousness arose from a 'breakdown' in a prior 'bicameral mind'. Julian Jaynes (1990) had argued that, prior to its 'breakdown,' humans survived mostly from habit, acting on the basis of stereotypical reflexes, and they did not possess elaborate 'consciousness'. When faced with an unfamiliar situation, they were not capable of sophisticated self-reflection or meta-consciousness, that is, being able to think about how they thought. Rather, they heard voices — gods, spirits, chiefs, or other authority figures — as if from an upper house or assembly (hence, 'bicameral') — ordering them what to do.
Jaynes found an example of this bicameral experience in the Iliad. There, we find individuals who don't have inner dialogues or contemplate their situation; rather, they seem to experience gods interacting with them, shaping their reactions and motivations. Jaynes argued that these accounts of divine intervention were not poetic devices or dramatic devices of epic poetry:
The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections. It is impossible for us with our subjectivity to appreciate what it was like. When Agamemnon, king of men, robs Achilles of his mistress, it is a god that grasps Achilles by his yellow hair and warns him not to strike Agamemnon (1:197ff.). It is a god who then rises out of the gray sea and consoles him in his tears of wrath on the beach by his black ships, […] a god who leads the armies into battle, who speaks to each soldier at the turning points, who debates and teaches Hector what he must do, […] (p. 72; cited by Erik Weijers; note: Weijers' page numbers are from the 1976 edition, I believe.)
The 'voices' that our ancestors heard were a kind of introjected order from a leader, experienced as the voice of a god or authority figure, according to Jaynes: 'The gods were in no sense 'figments of the imagination' of anyone. They were man's volition' (p 202; cited by Erik Weijers). Internalized speech was not a constant companion, as it is for us, but rather an unusual, seemingly divine interruption in the course of a normally quiet, habit-guided reality.
Only later did the 'mind' become invented, especially as social, technological, and cultural upheaval multiplied the sources of authority and threw humans back on themselves to make their own decisions, bereft of a clear internalized authoritative voice. Jaynes explained: 'And as this complexity develops, there is the first unsureness, the first need for personal gods to intercede with the higher gods, who seem to be receding into the heavens where in one brief millennium they will have disappeared' (p 202; cited by Erik Weijers).
Jaynes' ideas are controversial, to say the least: Richard Dawkins, for example, has said that his book is 'either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between' (cited in Jaynes' Wikipedia entry; see also review by Block 1981; Cavanna et al. 2007). Some of Jaynes' most contentious ideas — especially that consciousness is a construct with heavy cultural influence — are likely less controversial to anthropologists. But Jaynes' account of the emergence of self-reflection through the developing of internal language is also provocative for a number of theorists working on the evolution of 'mind' (e.g., Willliams 2011).
The consequences of listening & talking back
Romme and Escher's work in the Netherlands led to meetings, publications, and eventually what might be called a therapeutic 'movement.' Luhrmann describes:
In a series of workshops, Romme and Escher taught that people who heard voices should take them seriously and pay attention to what they said. In 1993 they published Accepting Voices, with techniques, case studies, and commentary by mental health professionals and patient activists (the activists sometimes call themselves survivors of psychiatric care). More detailed manuals and books followed. The workshops grew into conferences. Soon Romme and Escher were the unofficial leaders of a movement. …
Its method, to treat voices like people, is almost the inverse of the biomedical understanding of psychotic voices and a completely different perspective on how to handle them. The organization insists that hearing voices is a normal human experience, which indeed it is, although what is common (and thus "normal") is hearing a voice as you slip into sleep, perhaps calling your name, perhaps your mother's voice. About half of a standard subject pool (read: university undergraduates) will say that they have had some experience like that at least once. Many more will say so if the experimenter gives them examples. The Hearing Voices method takes this fact and turns it into an attitude. The problem is not the voices but the relationship to the voices, and the goal is to help voice-hearers live with them as if they were sharing a cramped apartment with crabby roommates. The voice-hearer is asked to talk directly to the voices and negotiate with them: asking what they want, offering to meet them partway if they will leave the hearer alone for a time. The hearer is told to treat the voices with respect, just the way you would treat a roommate you cannot kick out, whose behavior you really want to change. (Living with Voices)
Western psychiatry was not always so hostile to the content of audible hallucinations. In some of the earliest research on schizophrenia or Dementia Praecox, Eugen Bleuler, who directed Burghölzli asylum near Zurich from 1898 to 1927, argued that the voices, however seemingly outrageous, represented all the patients' 'strivings and fears … their entire transformed relationship to the external world … above all … [to] the pathological or hostile powers' (from Chapter 4 of Oliver Sacks' forthcoming book, Hallucinations, cited here).
Elsewhere in the article, Luhrmann explains why the idea that the voices might be taken seriously is so radical as to be considered even dangerous by more mainstream forms of contemporary psychiatry:
When a patient heard an audible voice, it was the sign of an illness that had to be treated with medication [according to most psychiatrists]. Thus would the symptom be removed. These days, talking much with a patient about voices is often seen as encouraging that person's belief in the false reality the voices represent. In biomedical psychiatry, mental health professionals ask whether the patient hears voices, not what the voices say. The goal is to get rid of the voices, like getting rid of a fever, and the mind-numbing, sleep-inducing antipsychotics are prescribed toward that end. (Living with Voices)
The current biomedical approach encouraged a scorched earth pharmacological assault on the patient's voices, with many of the patient's other psychic attributes—attention, ability to concentrate, sexual desire, even sense of well-being—the regrettable collateral damage of the war on madness. Luhrmann tells the story of Hans, a Dutch man who increasingly experienced disturbing psychotic delusions. He entered treatment and wound up on Clozaril, an atypical antipsychotic drug that caused him to pack on weight and become preternaturally calm; he slept all day even though he still heard voices. Then Hans found a Hearing Voices group:
Hans joined a group of people like him who met once a week. They talked about their voices, and they were encouraged to talk back to them. They were even encouraged to negotiate with their voices. One of Hans's voices thought he would be better off if he devoted his life to Buddhist prayer. Hans is not a Buddhist—like many Dutch, he grew up as a secular Protestant—and he did not want to follow the voice's command. The group persuaded him to cut a deal with his voices. He told his voices that he would read a book on Buddhism every day for one hour—but no more. He would say one Buddhist prayer every day—but no more. And if he did this, he told them, they had to leave him alone.
The significance of voices
At the end of her Culture, Mind and Brain talk, Luhrmann asks about the significance of cultural differences in patients' relationships and interactions with their auditory illusions. Might crosscultural variation in the relationship between a schizophrenic and his or her 'voices' lead to a more benign outcome for the disease? Is the quality of this relationship part of what explains the better-than-expected prognosis for schizophrenics in the developing world relative to in the developed world (Luhrmann cites this, and I discussed it here)?
In his forthcoming book, Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks talks about how Western attitudes toward hearing voices have changed (preview of Chapter 4 here). He writes about Daniel Smith, an author with a history of audible hallucinations in his family that stretched across changing attitudes toward these hallucinations:
The voices that are sometimes heard by people with schizophrenia tend to be accusing, threatening, jeering, or persecuting. By contrast, the voices hallucinated by the "normal" are often quite unremarkable, as Daniel Smith brings out in his book Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity. Smith's own father and grandfather heard such voices, and they had very different reactions. His father started hearing voices at the age of thirteen, Smith writes:
These voices weren't elaborate, and they weren't disturbing in content. They issued simple commands. They instructed him, for instance, to move a glass from one side of the table to another or to use a particular subway turnstile. Yet in listening to them and obeying them his interior life became, by all reports, unendurable.
Smith's grandfather, by contrast, was nonchalant, even playful, in regard to his hallucinatory voices. He described how he tried to use them in betting at the racetrack. ("It didn't work, my mind was clouded with voices telling me that this horse could win or maybe this one is ready to win.") It was much more successful when he played cards with his friends. Neither the grandfather or the father had strong supernatural inclinations; nor did they have any significant mental illness. They just heard unremarkable voices concerned with everyday things — as do millions of others.
Smith's father and grandfather rarely spoke of their voices. They listened to them in secrecy and silence, perhaps feeling that admitting to hearing voices would be seen as an indication of madness or at least serious psychiatric turmoil. Yet many recent studies confirm that it is not that uncommon to hear voices and that the majority of those who do are not schizophrenic; they are more like Smith's father and grandfather.
It is clear that attitudes to hearing voices are critically important. One can be tortured by voices, as Daniel Smith's father was, or accepting and easygoing, like his grandfather. Behind these personal attitudes are the attitudes of society, attitudes which have differed profoundly in different times and places.
The importance of this question is not simply practical and therapeutic —although these are both crucial considerations. Luhrmann points out that, currently, in Western therapeutic practice, the experiential qualities of the hallucinations —what the voices are saying and how they are saying it— is largely treated as an 'uninteresting sequelae': a symptom or experiential sign of an underlying cause or disease mechanism. As symptoms, the voices are largely irrelevant except that they point to the existence of the underlying condition.
But if we recognize that experience itself can affect our neurological and psychological development, including the trajectory of a condition like schizophrenia, than listening to hallucinations is likely to matter. Rather than simply trying to chemically erase the hallucinations, therapy and social interaction might transform the way that hallucinations are lived, with potentially crucial importance to the prognosis for the condition.
Mechanisms for explaining difference
Luhrmann's research may point to the way that cultural influences may facilitate adaptation to hallucination: or as she puts it, 'the world as imagined can change the world as it is' (Beyond the Brain). These local influences include local disease models (whether you think your voices are a sign of an innate, inherited condition that is a life sentence or that you are under attach by a witch) and opportunities for experiencing your mind in different ways (whether these voices violate a rule that a mind be absolutely private or mix in amongst other interactional and social elements in mental experience).
The opening panel of the conference (presented by Steven Heine, Marco Iacoboni and me) asked how the skewed sample we have of psychological and neurological subjects in most research might bias our understandings of human nature and neurology. How does the fact that psychology subjects are disproportionally WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) lead us to understand human nature? Luhrmann's presentation puts another wrinkle on this subject for me: how does our own culture bias our understandings of psychopathology? And might WEIRD understandings of the audio hallucination in schizophrenia, our own horrified and medicalized reaction to hearing voices, shape the unfolding of the condition?
I find these ideas, touched on clearly in Luhrmann's various discussions, absolutely plausible. A number of neuroanthropological mechanisms might be partially responsible for the variation that Luhrmann has observed, and noted by the Hearing Voices movement.
- For example, one of the key themes of day two of the Conference (as Daniel has discussed) was the profound genetic, endocrine, and psychological effects of stress. If one finds audio hallucinations especially stressful, for example, if one firmly believes that these hallucinations both assure and justify a life of institutionalization, unemployment, disappointment and madness, one can only imagine how stressful they would become.
- Another possibility is that the act of seeking to repress auditory hallucinations actually reinforces them and further strengthens the sense that they are an alien imposition on one's 'mind.' Attentional dynamics might lead to exaggerated reactions to 'voices,' such as the way that having someone say, 'Don't think about an elephant,' makes it virtually impossible to do anything else.
- Or, since we know that the perception of alien voices tends to occur especially in times of stress (see Sacks' discussion, for example), the stress of fearing them might actually summon voices that appear particularly vivid (or angry or insulting or deranged).
- If a particular brain mechanism underwrites auditory hallucinations, these stress-related and attentional dynamics might actually reinforce any aberrant neurological activity, in essence, making hallucination-producing mechanisms more practiced and easy-to-initiate.
- If hearing voices is not that unusual, but that most of us have a facility to identify these perceptions and suppress them, perhaps those who hallucinate simply have an underdeveloped or under-practiced mechanism for suppressing hallucinations or identifying them as hallucinations.
- If hallucinations arise from normal subvocal or sub-perceptual thought processes, perhaps those who hallucinate are simply better at paying attention to them (or comparatively weaker at paying attention to the internal dialogue upon which they would prefer to concentrate).
Listening to voices & repressed memories
In her piece in The American Scholar, however, Luhrmann also points out the dangers of taking one's voices seriously. In the United States, the powerful alignment of therapists' receptivity and patients' imagination produced the scandal of the 'repressed memory' movement:
European psychiatrists have no history with the ravages of the repressed memory movement, when thousands of American women discovered memories of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of their fathers and pressed charges on the basis of those memories, so that many fathers were falsely arrested and even imprisoned. European psychiatrists do not know about the strange collusion between some therapists and some patients, when patients seemed to deliver one alter after another, satisfying the eager expectations of their determined therapists. By the early 1980s, many of those memories included accounts of horrific satanic rituals in which women were forced to eat their own babies before masked and murderous men. Patients struggling with whatever had brought them into therapy now also had to deal with the anguished grief of remembering that they had cannibalized their own children. A thorough FBI investigation found no evidence to support these assertions, and not one police report had been submitted at the time that the babies supposedly had died. (Living with Voices)
As Luhrmann cautions, the Hearing Voices movement appears to be doing fascinating work, although no randomized clinical trial has yet demonstrated that the technique works. The fact that some practitioners are moving toward treating hallucinations as suppressed memories, especially of sexual abuse, is likely to raise red flags for some in the US therapeutic community. But the core insight of the movement appears to be linked, as Luhrmann herself also pointed out in her talk at the Culture, Mind, and Brain conference, to the evidence from the cross-cultural research:
The search for hidden memory is not intrinsic to the movement's central insight, which is that the way we understand our mental experiences has the potential to alter them fundamentally. The Hearing Voices proponents believe that if you do not envision schizophrenia as a life sentence, you increase the chance that patients will be able to discover their own resilience. That is a profound insight, and it offers hope to those who face the horrors of psychosis. (Living with Voices)
What does seem to be indisputable is this final point: how we understand an experience like hearing voices — including the emotional reaction we have, the way the community treats us, and the way that the world changes in response to our hallucinations — will affect the subsequent experiences we have with the same symptoms, and perhaps even the unfolding of the condition over time. Whether we fear each time that we hear a voice that our world may come unraveled, or whether we listen and hope for positive voices to advise us and even keep us company, may turn out to be a self-fulfilling expectation.
- Hearing Voices Australia.
- InterVoice the International Community for Hearing Voices.
- Exclusive First Read: 'Hallucinations,' By Oliver Sacks at NPR, with podcast. (According to the site, Hallucinations will be published on 6 November.)
A bit more about Tanya Luhrmann's research
- Tanya Luhrmann's website, including information on her new book: When God Talks Back.
- Living With Voices by T. M. Luhrmann at The American Scholar.
- Beyond the Brain by Tanya Marie Luhrmann at The Wilson Quarterly.
- Episode 104: Religious Experience (with guest Tanya Luhrmann) podcast with Luhrmann at Reasonable Doubts weblog.
- Visions For All from Science News, coverage of When God Talks Back.
- Vaughan discusses another, related piece by Luhrmann at Mind Hacks.
For more on Jaynes, see the Julian Jaynes Society webpage.
Also Erik Weijers' excellent summary and discussion, from which I also extracted passages of Jaynes.
A few more reads on delusions and schizophrenia across cultures
If you want to read more about delusions and schizophrenia, consider clicking onto Daniel's recent post, Othello Syndrome, Denial, and Delusion, which discusses the implications of delusions leading to severe jealousy. Or, a few of our older posts:
- Greg Downey, Slipping into psychosis: living in the prodrome (part 1) and Delusions, odd and common: Living in the prodrome, part 2.
- Daniel Lende, Demon's on the Web about online communities of conspiracy and shared paranoia that have been discussed by Mind Hack's Vaughn Bell in a story in The New York Times: Sharing Their Demons on the Web.
Block, N. 1981. Review of Julian Jaynes' origins of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Cognition and Brain Theory 4: 81–83.
Cavanna, A., Trimble, M., Cinti, F., and Monaco, F. 2007. The "bicameral mind" 30 years on: a critical reappraisal of Julian Jaynes' hypothesis. Functional Neurology 22(1): 11-15. (abstract here & available for download)
Jaynes, J. 1990 (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Houghton Mifflin.
Luhrmann, Tanya. 2011. Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides. Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 71-85.
Luhrmann TM, Nusbaum H, Thisted R. 2010. The absorption hypothesis. American Anthropologist 112(1): 66–78.
Myers, Neely. 2011. "Update: Schizophrenia across cultures," Current Psychiatry Reports 13(4): 305-311.
Rosenhan, David. 1973. On Being Sane in Insane Places. Science 179: 250-258.
William, G. 2011. What is it like to be nonconscious? A defense of Julian Jaynes. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 10: 217–239.


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It's Friday, the music is still pumping, Sony execs are still ambiguous, and the most of the Los Angeles strippers have turned out for day three of the flesh fest. One of the nicer looking promotional girls in attendance gave me a taste of Booth Babe 101, and a chocolate phone. I recorded the whole thing for accuracy, but the recording turned out as junk thanks to the pulsating boom-boom music behind me.
Meet Courtney Michelle. She dropped her last name for modeling purposes, but the first two are accurate:
Read on for an approximate transcript of the session from my written notes.
Kurt: OMG A/S/L?
Michelle: 19 / female / Los Angeles
Kurt: Whose products are you here promoting?
Michelle: THQ Wireless
Kurt: Do you know anything about what they do, or are you just eye candy?
Michelle: Ha ha (yes, she laughed). They gave me a list of things to talk about, so I'm not totally clueless. THQ Wireless lets you download games to your mobile phone. Things like Hello Kitty and Southpark. Do you want the whole list?
Kurt: No thanks, Hello Kitty is all I'm interested in. Did they make you attend any kind of orientation session so they could tell you that stuff, or do you really know anything about the company?
Michell: They gave me a list of things to talk about since I got here.
Kurt: Do people listen to the spiel, or are they more interested in pictures?
Michelle: No, just the pictures. My face is twitching from smiling.
Kurt: Have you been creeped out yet?
Michelle: Yeah, way too many wandering hands. You just have to be firm and take control to make people stop.
Kurt: Is this your first E3?
Michelle: Yeah, I do lots of clothing conventions, but they just have me hand things out. I thought they were going to have me do the same thing here, but it's different.
Kurt: How much are you getting paid?
Michelle: Lots, they told me not to talk about it though.
Kurt: I noticed you pose every time someone takes a picture, how many poses do you have?
Michelle: Haha… I don't want you to write that if I tell you.
Kurt: I'll exaggerate if you want me to.
Michelle: I have ******* poses I use.
Kurt: That blond girl you're standing with, did you know her before this?
Michelle: Kinda, we've worked together once before.
Kurt: Are you ready to be done with E3?
Michelle: Yes. These people are obsessive about this stuff, it's scary.
This is probably the most interesting thing you'll read out of E3 today, believe it or not. Being the nice guy that I am, I let her write on my tablet. Consider this a valuable autograph:


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Tilt-n-Spin Squirrel repeller
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Benefiting from experience and an enviable track record from the world's top drum and bugle corps, the 8300 Series Field-Corps™ Marching Bass Drum features a maple shell and a consistent 14" shell depth throughout the lineup, adding solid power and presence to the bass line. Designed for top tier marching programs, Field-Corps bass drums provide a deep, resonant tone and punchy attack. From the focused tone of the smallest size to the thunderous boom of the largest model, these bass drums are versatile enough for both indoor and outdoor marching percussion activities.
All shells in the 8300 Field-Corps™ Series are maple, and all have a 14" depth. Air hole size and location has been individually optimized for each drum size. Ample power and punchy bass is provided in relatively slim shells that are manageable and mobile.
The 7-ply maple shell provides a precise balance of deep, resonant tones and solid, punchy attack. This shell configuration not only sounds great it has a much lighter carrying weight than its all-hardwood counterparts.
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The DA4016 Case is constructed of high-density molded plastic featuring quick release latches, heavy-duty straps and hardware for maximum durability. Heat, cold and moisture resistant, these lightweight cases are backed by a 10-year warranty.
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Diana M. DiNitto
This entry defines comorbidity and similar terms used in various fields of practice. It addresses the prevalence of comorbidity, suggests explanations for comorbidity, and discusses integrated treatment for comorbid conditions and the importance of the concept of comorbidity in social work practice.
Health Care: Overview
Colleen Galambos
This entry provides an overview of the state of health care in the United States. Service delivery problems such as access and affordability issues are examined, and health care disparities and the populations affected are identified. A discussion of two primary government-sponsored health care programs—Title XVIII (Medicare) and Title XIX (Medicaid), and the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act—are reviewed along with various health care programs and major existing service delivery systems. Ethical conflicts in providing health care, and new directions and challenges are discussed, along with future roles for social workers.
Military Social Work
Jesse J. Harris, Col. USA Ret. and Kyle L. Pehrson, Col. USA Ret.
The history of military social work in the United States is rooted in the civilian professional social work community and is a microcosm of that sector. Military social work has a rich history of providing services to military men and women and their families during periods of peace, conflict, and national crises. They have been involved in humanitarian operations and have participated in multinational peace-keeping operations. Social work in the Army, Navy, and Air Force is tailored to the mission of their particular service. However, joint operations between the services are becoming more frequent. Military social workers adhere to the NASW code of ethics while providing service to an institution with its own unique culture, standards, and values.


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Practical Introduction to Non-Linear Finite Element Analysis
2-day training course
This non-linear Finite Element course is intended for delegates interested in using FE to analyse advanced non-linear problems involving material non-linearities, geometric non-linearities and contact problems.
The objectives of this Finite Element course are:
- To provide delegates with an introduction to the fundamental theory of non-linear Finite Element analysis.
- To highlight the possible difficulties that may be encountered in using FE software to analyse non-linear problems.
Who Should Attend
This non-linear FE course is aimed at engineers and scientists who want to gain an understanding of the fundamental theory of non-linear Finite Element analysis and its application to practical problems.
As this is an advanced FE course, a pre-requisite for this course is a reasonable knowledge of linear FE theory and applications. However, no prior knowledge of non-linear Finite Element theory is required. The course is independent of any FE software code.
Technical Content
● Brief Overview of Linear Finite Element analysis
A brief overview of linear Finite Element formulation, numerical algorithms, etc. to provide a foundation for the non-linear formulation.
● General Introduction to Non-linear problems
Classifications of non-linear problems, Comparison of linear and non-linear FE analysis, Non-linear algorithms and procedures, Difficulties in modelling non-linear problems.
● Plasticity
Basic plasticity theory, Uniaxial and multi-axial plasticity, Work hardening, FE treatment of plasticity, Solution strategy and accuracy, Discussion of typical practical plasticity applications.
● Creep and Visco-elasticity
Basic theory of creep, Finite Element algorithms for creep problems and time marching, Explicit and implicit time integrations, Discussion of typical practical creep applications.
● Contact Problems
Basic theory of contact mechanics, classification of contact configurations, Hertzian and non-Hertzian contact problems, FE contact algorithms, Penalty methods and Lagrange multipliers, Difficulties in modelling contact problems, Tips and guidelines, Discussion of practical contact problems.
● Geometric Non-linearity
Basic theory of geometric non-linearity, GNL stress-strain definitions, FE algorithms for geometric non-linearities, Arc-length and line-search methods, Solution strategy and accuracy, Discussion of typical GNL problems.
● Brief introduction to other advanced Finite Element Applications
A brief overview of Fracture Mechanics, Fatigue Analysis, Explicit FE codes, Buckling analysis.
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Wollaton Street
We have secured a limited number of rooms at the venue hotel, at a special rate of £75, including VAT on a bed & breakfast basis. Please contact the hotel directly, stating that you are attending a NAFEMS training course and quoting reference NAF0810, to book rooms at the discounted rate. This reduced rate is applicable to NAFEMS delegates until four week prior to the course date.
Upcoming Presentations
Event Type: Course
Location: Nottingham UK
Date: October 6, 2015
Course Tutor
Adib Becker is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nottingham. He has been teaching Finite Element courses for over 25 years, and has delivered many short courses on FEA aimed at industry. He has written three textbooks on both linear and non-linear Finite Element analysis, and has published over 260 papers on computational mechanics.
Prof. Becker has been involved in many NAFEMS activities, and has been the Chairman of the NAFEMS Education and Training Working Group since 2006. He is past Chairman of the IMechE Structural Technology and Materials Committee (2010-2012).
Events - Cancellation Policy
Please note NAFEMS cancellation policy for all UK events is as follows:-
- Cancellation up to 3 weeks before the event date: free of charge;
- Cancellation up to 1 week before the event date: 75% of registration fee non-refundable;
- Cancellation up to 1 week before the event date: all seminar credits non-refundable;
- No show at the event: 100% of registration fee non-refundable;
NAFEMS will discuss the possibility of transferring to an alternative event/course, however an administration charge will be applicable.
This policy is subject to change.
*Special discounts are being made available to members for this course. For more information on joining NAFEMS, please visit our membership section.


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By Fred W. Baker IIIJuly 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- A new prosthesis under development will give servicemember amputees more flexibility and help them better perform their military jobs if they choose to stay on active duty.
A preview of the new technology July 17 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here drew key staff and several servicemember amputees. The open forum allowed users to see improvements in prototype form and ask developers questions or offer suggestions.
In 2006, Otto Bock HealthCare, a global provider of prosthetic components that started out providing devices for German World War I veterans in 1919, began developing a prosthetic knee system that is an upgrade to its already popular C-Leg. It was awarded a three-year $1 million contract to develop a leg that will allow more servicemembers to stay on active duty if they choose to.
The prosthesis is for above-the-knee amputees and uses a microprocessor to control the knee's hydraulic functions and anticipate the wearer's actions and make changes in real time.
This will give servicemembers greater flexibility to change speeds or directions without sacrificing stability.
The project began in 2006 and developers are through the prototype development. Barring any technical problems, the new prosthesis should be available to servicemembers in 2009.
Mobility will be improved, allowing more movement without the user having to concentrate on the knee, said Hans-Willem van Vliet, the program manager.
The new system will have more sensors, a faster hard drive, more memory and will provide smooth transitions between movements such as level-ground walking, climbing stairs and running.
It also will allow servicemembers the ability to turn around while walking and walk backward in one fluid movement, something that is not possible with the current C-Leg. It will adapt automatically between walking speeds and gaits, Mr. Vliet said.
He emphasized that engineers have not simply improved the C-Leg, but have completely rebuilt the technology on the inside.
Engineers also are working to stretch battery life to 50 hours on one charge. This will give servicemembers on long road marches the duration they need to reach a power supply for recharging.
Requirements also call for making the system salt-water resistant, a difficulty with the onboard computer systems. They also are planning a remote control, about the size of a car-lock remote, that will allow the user to switch among as many as 10 modes with the click of a button.
The current C-Leg allows servicemembers two operating modes: one for walking and one for bicycling or other activity. To switch between modes, the wearer has to swing the leg forward in a jerky fashion. In some instances the user may not be able to switch modes because of limited movement. Reprogramming a mode requires a visit to a technician.
Air Force Lt. Col. Andrew Lourake, a pilot at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., is the first above-the-knee amputee to return to active duty as a pilot. He was fitted with a C-Leg five years ago.
Colonel Lourake said he could not do his job without the C-Leg because it allows him to switch between walking and flying modes. Still, he said, he is impressed with the new design and plans to be one of the first to own one, even if he has to pay for it out of his own pocket. The current C-Leg costs about $30,000. The new system is expected to cost about the same.
"I'm excited," Colonel Lourake said. "It has a lot of the stuff that I asked for a couple of years ago. It's huge in functionality and active living."
Right now, he has to reprogram his second mode from flying mode to bicycling or running. With the new leg, he won't have to make as many visits to his prosthetic technician.
"I'll have everything right in the leg, and I'll never have to touch the computer again," he said.


text: Specifications SpecificationsConditionNewBrandExpress Office FurnitureColorBlackFeaturesBack Support, Heavy Duty, Height Adjustable, On Wheels, Rolling, Swivel, TiltMaterialMetal, PolyurethaneCapacity1 Person Shipping ShippingWe offer services for white glove delivery and assembly in the south central Wisconsin region. If you are outside of this zone the item can be shipped direct to your door via UPS Ground or freight depending on the size of the item. If you prefer to pick this up direct from our facility, just let us know. In most cases orders are processed in 1-3 business days and leave the facility in 3-5 business days. If you have any questions about purchasing just give us a call (608) 831-1012. Warranty WarrantyExpress Office Furniture provides a 5 Year Limited Warranty on their products. For complete details click here.Related ProductsHeavy Weight Office Chair with Brown Upholstery$310.00Heavy Duty Executive Mesh Back Office Chair with Adjustable Arms$455.00Heavy Duty Office Chair 450 Lbs$405.00ProductsDesksOffice ChairsFiling CabinetsBookcasesConference TablesCubiclesDesksExecutive DesksL Shaped DesksU Shaped DesksT Shaped DesksReception DesksWorkstationsUsed Office FurnitureUsed DesksUsed ChairsUsed Filing CabinetsUsed TablesUsed CabinetsServicesBusiness Floor PlansBusiness LiquidationFurniture InstallationOffice Furniture RentalDocument StorageMadison Liquidators • 2224 Pleasant View Rd. Suite 10, Middleton, WI 53562 • Phone (608) 831-1012Call (608) 831-1012 to order!Contact Privacy Policy © 2019 Madison Liquidators All Rights Reserved.


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The compliance and enforcement tab replaces ST108 – AER Monthly Enforcement Action Summary and contains information starting from July 2014.
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NEW: Olivia Culpo Broke Up With Tim Tebow, Say Reports
Monday, November 30, 2015
Reports say the former Miss Rhode Island, Miss USA, and Miss Universe has broken up with with former Heisman winner Tebow.
A Tweet posted from Culpo's account over the Thanksgiving holiday was as follows:
Being rejected from something good just means you were being pointed toward something better.
Reports in Media
InTouch reported "Olivia Culpo Calls it Quits with Tim Tebow Over His Abstinence."
Lads' mag Maxim was even more explicit.
"Former Miss Universe Dumps Tim Tebow For Not Having Sex With Her."
Related Slideshow: Rhode Island's Reality TV Stars
Claudia Jordan
The Real Housewives of Atlanta (Season 7)
Claudia Jordan was recently picked up by Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" for Season 7 which is set to air in 2015.
The Providence native and former Miss RI is most recognized for her model stint on the hit show, "Deal or No Deal," but got her start as the second African-American woman ever to become a Barker's Beauty on "The Price is Right." Following her first run on "The Celebrity Apprentice," Donald Trump chose Jordan to host the 2009 Miss Universe pageant on NBC.
Jordan most recently appeared on the All-Star Celebrity Apprentice Season 6, representing the charity organization The Tom Joyner Foundation.
Lynne Diamante
Game of Crowns
Cranston native and CEO of OPTX in Johnston Lynne Diamante is a life-long pageant queen and lawyer.
When Diamante is not on Game of Crowns, she and her family are busy supporting Hasbro Children's Hospital. She also represented Rhode Island at the 1991 Miss USA Pageant.
Photo: Bravo
Amy Diaz
The Amazing Race (Season 23)
Providence native Amy Diaz recently became the latest in a string of Rhode Islanders to capture reality gold by winning the twenty-third installment of the hit CBS reality competition series The Amazing Race. Diaz, along with her boyfriend Jason Case were crowned the winners on Sunday night's episode. Diaz is a former Miss Rhode Island titleholder, radio host, and a graduate of Classical High School.
Interestingly, fellow Rhode Islanders Daniel and Jordan Pious won season 16 of The Amazing Race in 2010.
Joseph Aaron Segal
Project Runway (Season 11)
The latest Rhode Islander designer to compete in Lifetime's popular fashion competition show, Joseph Aaron Segal works full-time designing and making World of JAS and Pretty Snake collections.
The Providence resident also teaches part-time in the textiles department at Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned an MFA in textile design. Segal finished in 13th place in Project Runway Season 11.
Chris Mercurio
Making Mr. Right (Season 1)
Maybe it was the fact that he admitted that he had his mom from Cranston pack his bags, but the bachelor makeover dreams of Chris Mercurio were short-lived on the new VH1 reality dating show, which premiered in early January, 2013.
He left the show in the second episode.
Lauren Marchetti
The Bachelor (Season 17)
Perhaps the former GoLocalTV host and New England Patriots cheerleader should not have told ABC's newest bachelor, Sean Lowe, that her father would be a, well, threat if he dumped her.
Unfortunately for Marchetti, it played the opposite way, and she was not given a rose in episode 1.
Pauly D
Jersey Shore
He's become such a brand unto himself, it may be tough to remember that Johnston's Paul "DJ Pauly D" DelVecchio got his start as a member of the cast of MTV's wildly popular reality series. While not a reality competition per se, one might argue that Pauly D, who has emerged with resident DJ contracts at top-flight Vegas hotspots, collaborations with the like of 50 Cent, and his own spin-off show, took top prize.
Speaking of top prizes, Pauly won back-to-back Teen Choice Awards for Male Reality Star, in 2011 and 2012.
Richard Hatch
Survivor (Season 1)
Perhaps the most famous of all RI's reality stars, Newport resident Richard Hatch out-survived them all. By the final episode, 51 million Americans watched him "outwit, outplay, outlast" the last of 15 other contestants for the prize of one million dollars and a Pontiac Aztec.
Hatch returned to Survivor in 2004 for the All-Stars season, where, with a cry of, "I"ve been bamboozled!" he was voted off in the fifth episode.
Hatch stayed in the news when he was subsequently sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for failing to declare his winnings to the IRS.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck
Survivor 2: The Australian Outback
Rhode Islanders survived on national television back-to-back, as Elizabeth Filarski, who grew up in Cranston, fought her way to fourth place before being voted off the island.
Filarksi (now Filarski Hasselbeck—she married Washington Redskins quarterback Tim Hasselbeck in July 2002), is perhaps one of the most successful Survivor contestants so far. She traded on her reality show face time to land a hosting job on a show called The Look for Less on the Style Network, and a co-hosting gig on ABC's The View with fellow Rhode Islander Meredith Vieira. She recently retured to co-host Fox and Friends on Fox News after a cancer scare.
Helen Glover
Survivor 5: Thailand
The third Rhode Islander to rise to the extreme physical and emotional challenges of Survivor, the Navy swim instructor from Middletown graced the small screen in Survivor 5: Thailand.
Glover made it to fourth place and launched from there to hosting The Helen Glover Show, on Rhode Island's 920 WHJJ radio. The conservative radio host endorsed Ken Block's gubernatorial campaign earlier this year.
The Associated Press has also named her best talk show host a record five times.
Rafe Judkins
Survivor 11: Guatemala
We're a tough lot here in Rhode Island, which is why Survivor's producers may have dipped into the Rhode Island pot again for Survivor 11: Guatemala, casting 2005 Brown University graduate Rafe Judkins. Judkins, who managed a wilderness program at Brown, got all the way to the final three, but his conscience ultimately caused him to give up any chance at the million-dollar prize. Conscience? Perhaps he's not a true RIer after all.
Footnote: Survivor 19: Samoa included Californian Mike Borassi who attended URI from 1965-1969. The sixty-two-year-old personal chef was pulled from the game in episode 2 after experiencing shortness of breath and low blood pressure.
Jonathan Joseph Peters
Project Runway (Season 7)
The URI graduate had left Rhode Island for Manhattan for 3 years when in 2009, he returned to Providence and was cast on Lifetime's hit design-challenge reality show hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum.
Peters made it all the way to the final 6 of 16 before heading home with his tools. Since then, the designer has taken a prominent role in launching and supporting fashion and design events in the region, including StyleWeek Northeast, where is is Creative Director and VP of Brand Development.
DownCity Restaurant
Kitchen Nightmares (Season 4)
An entire restaurant became the star on a March 11, 2011 episode of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey's high-voltage reality show on FOX about remaking restaurants that are desperately in need. The star? Providence's DownCity restaurant and its stubborn co-owner Abby Cabral.
Ramsey read Cabral et al the riot act, then returned to Providence on July 5, 2011, to check on DownCity's progress. He found a restaurant that had seemingly learned from his contentious earlier visit, and the episode aired October 21. But the changes and notoriety weren't enough to save DownCity from a down economy, and the restaurant closed its doors forever on December 10, 2011.
The Pious Brothers
The Amazing Race (Season 16)
In what has to be a unique situation, two contestants (or in this case, teams) from Rhode Island competed in the same season of a reality show. On the popular, far-flung CBS show that highlighted teamwork and creativity, two teams hailed from the Ocean State: undercover detectives Louis Stravato & Michael Naylor, and Daniel & Jordan Pious, brothers from Barrington.
And maybe two's a charm--the Pious brothers went on to win the whole thing. They were also the first male siblings to win the competition.
Krisily Kennedy
The Bachelor (Season 7)
Warwick resident Krisily Kennedy (Miss Rhode Island USA 2003) graced the spring 2005 season of the show featuring bachelor/actor Charlie O'Connell. She made it all the way to the final two before being rejected, in the May 16 finale, in favor of Sarah Brice, a nurse from Texas.
Kennedy became a contestant on the first season of ABC's spinoff, Bachelor Pad. She made it through four episodes before being eliminated.
Jay Resmini
The Bachelorette (Season 6)
The Barrington native was one of the eight contestants cut during the rose ceremony in the first episode of season six (aired May 24, 2010).
But before he left he was featured in a brief profile in which he visited his parents' home in Barrington, Barrington town hall, and the inside of a Providence courthouse. Resmini is a lawyer with his father's firm, Resmini Law Associates.
Erika Van Pelt
American Idol (Season 11)
While this wildly popular show may not be hard-core reality TV, it's still merits mention that South Kingstown singer Erika Van Pelt made it to tenth place before being eliminated on March 22, 2012.
Her first appearance was in the second episode during auditions in Pittsburgh, which aired July 15, 2011. The episode prior to her elimination included a profile of Erika that showed her home in the Green Hill neighborhood of South Kingstown and a shot of Wakefield's Main Street.
Jennifer Anderson
Bridezillas (Season 9)
With Newport being a worldwide wedding capital, it's no wonder that Fall River's Jennifer Anderson would bring her bridezilla wedding to Newport, and put herself on the brides behaving badly A-list show on the WE network.
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Lately, I find myself observing how people look at exhibitions, how they interact with the objects, the amount of time they will take to look/read… ultimately, I'm facinated by how we LEARN. Exhibition design is changing – must change – to reflect new audiences, their broad interest in culture and how the best absorb information. The static exhibition is giving way to the exhibition experience, and when designed by innovative thinkers, the sky is the limit.
The fall issue of the UK-based EYE Magazine has a terrific article by designer Abbott Miller, whom many of you will know as a Partner at Pentagram Design, editor/designer of 2wice Magazine, the designer who re-designed the look of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust's calendars, posters and note cards as well as the identity for the "Ansel Adams At 100" exhibition and publication. One of my favorite exhibition identities and installations was the brilliant work he did with video artist/author Ann Fessler for her exhibition "Everlasting" at MICA.
Miller has written a facinating article called "From Object To Observer" for Eye that I urge you all to read. I quote here the first paragraph: "Exhibition design deals with the dispositio of objects in space: their conceptual and physical relationship to one another and to the observer. Coordinating this complex interaction makes the exhibition designer a choreographer – of objects, images, texts and people. How we behave in an exhibition, what we feel permitted to do, and how we interact with what is on discplay are all aspects of design. Exhibitions blend the complex factors of architectural space with the narrative concerns of book and magazine design."
Read this article and become an observer as well as a viewer when attending exhibitions of all sorts – I hope it will help you address how to present your work to your target audience.


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15349 39th Lane N.W., Williston, ND
Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center (MYCIC)
Museum exhibits and interpretive walking trail tell the stories of the Confluence. Store, walking path, picnic area and meeting room.
Top Features
- Guided Tours
- Open Year 'Round
All Features
- Guided Tours
- Open Year 'Round
Cost of Admission
- Admission: Adult, $5Children 6-15, $2.50Children Under 6, Free Price includes a guided tour at Fort Buford State Historic Site.
General Information
- Hours of Operation: May 16-September 15: Monday-Sunday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. CST; September 16-May 15: Wednesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, 1-5 p.m. CST
- Countryside
Local: 701-572-9034
Fax: 701-572-9033Facebook


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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the six-strikes-aka-two-outs-or-0.3-matchbooks dept
This week, Comcast users were no doubt relieved to learn that their ISP would not terminate their accounts for racking up six strikes (read: accusations) under the new "voluntary" regime that's sweeping the nation, instead opting to block every website. To question the wisdom of six strikes is to whine about the enforcement of copyright, or so our regular critics insist... Michael Becker, however, took most insightful comment of the week with a more accurate interpretation:
This isn't enforcing copyright. This is guilt by accusation with no due process.
"Nay!" say the entertainment/ISP industry 'shippers—a breed of fandom I was not previously aware of. "Your complaints, like those of New Jersey's Carl Bermanson, only stem from disrespect for copyright, and this, its newest incarnation!" And in this it is harder to fault them, because disrespect is one of many apt terms for the common opinion around here of today's arcane, obsolete and overreaching copyright laws. Gwiz took second place on the insightful side by articulating this fact:
If it's respect for copyright that you are wanting, why aren't you advocating changes to copyright to restore the public's respect for it?
Seriously, you can only whack a dog so many times with a rolled-up newspaper before it turns and bites you. Even our four-legged friends have a basic concept of respect that far exceeds what some of the copyright maximalists around here can muster.
But the almighty copyright had a better idea: shutting down The Real Calvin & Hobbes. One really does wonder where all this disrespect for copyright is coming from! Just look at Josh in CharlotteNC showing zero respect (and winning our first editor's choice) by learning a very appropriate lesson from this pointless stifling of creativity:
So again, we have a promising artist creating new content that tried to do the "right" thing and ask for permission. What did it get him? Shut down. Silenced. Censored. By copyright.
The lesson?
Don't ask for permission to create art. Don't apologize for creating something new and beautiful. Just do it.
Art can be great business, and money has played a massive role in determining what art gets made at what scale at many points in history. But when you take a broad view you see that, overall, the progress of art and creativity has less to do with wealth and productivity than perhaps any other field of human endeavour. It's swayed by these powerful forces, but it doesn't rely on them for fuel. Masters of commerce and marketing can ape creativity to make a quick buck, but the real path to success that matters is sincerity. Amanda Palmer gets that, and so does our second editor's choice winner, Zac Shaw:
The feeling Palmer describes makes many in the music industry uncomfortable because it accentuates the bankrupt morality of a business model based on exploitation.
As someone who's slept on a few of the same floors she did while on tour, I can tell you there's a reason Amanda Palmer is THE modern-day hero for musicians. Social bonding has always been the purpose of music. It's always been why we play. To say music is entertainment is like saying food is deliciousness. The nourishment music gives comes from shared experience -- literally SHARING MUSIC -- and yet for the last 100 years we've minimized that decade by decade until most came to think of music as purely an entertainment product.
The purpose of music is not to make people rich. The purpose is social bonding. If you accomplish social bonding -- the purpose of music -- it's human nature to reciprocate, to acknowledge value.
This is what all the folks at Trichordist and other musicians nostalgic for pre-Napster days have sadly forgotten in their holy war to force fans to pay for access to the music they originally created hoping for wide exposure, wide social bonding. They'll hide behind "it's about the music, man" but it's not about the music for them. They're obsessed with all the money they're losing. They're looking for someone to blame -- the fan, the industry, other musicians -- but they have no one to blame but themselves. They are losing money because they no longer are making connections. They are actually being negative and trying to put people off. I know I change the channel immediately when a Cracker song comes on. Wait, I always did that.
Let's go back to Comcast now for our funniest comment of the week, courtesy of an anonymous commenter:
Comcast is upset that they lost the worst company of 2012 to EA so they're trying harder this year.
Much like these comments, that's a highly competitive category. But perhaps not as competitive as Dumbest Thing Said By A Lawmaker, which doesn't even have rankings anymore, just a really long list of unsorted winners to which we can add this doozie from Georgia's Earnest Smith: "No one has a right to make fun of anyone. It's not a First Amendment right." Smith was upset about the scurrilous Photoshopping of his head onto a porn star's body, and an anonymous commenter took second place by wondering if Smith was the only one upset by this:
To be fair, I'm sure porn stars don't like their faces covered up by a Congressman's face either.
Luckily, yet another anonymous commenter was there to win first editor's choice by suggesting a swifter route to justice:
Or, instead of passing that law he can photoshop the person who made the image, to make them look like they're in jail.
Good idea. Of course, what I'm sure Smith really wants is a way to reach into the past and prevent the photo from ever having existed. Incidentally, either such a method has already been invented, or the six strikes program that kicked off this post is at best unnecessary and at worst counterproductive when it comes to the supposed goal of the industry: increasing sales. After all, sales were up before the system came into effect, and not because of anti-piracy measures. One final anonymous commenter takes our last editor's choice for illuminating that first possibility:
Wow! 6 strikes works fast! Also retroactively, apparently.
Presumably, having perfected this temporal technique, the industry now plans to shift time back to 1992 and freeze it there. See you at the record store!


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Hello, naive newbie here. I wonder if you could solve a mystery for me. I have my eye on a domain name...I won't divulge the name if you don't mind, it's commercially sensitive for one of my clients.
Currently, the domain is registered to someone for a year - records show it was registered from 22nd July 2013 and due for renewal on 22nd July 2014.
However, I noticed the domain wasn't working 'page couldn't be found'. Another record said the domain name expired on 22nd January 2014. How can this be when its year is only halfway in from initial registration?


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Beach life
Pinterest is an online pinboard. Organize and share things you love. Beach life. Photo of Ruth Egeressy SunTrooper® Ruth Egeressy SunTrooper®. 13 followers, 9 pins. Comment · Repin Like. a day on the …
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MarketWatch.com is a highly regarded website which provides stock market news, financial insight and many press releases from companies and analysts. It's a handy source of information, but as today has proved, not everything should be taken as the absolute truth.
In a press release from a South African finance website, which concentrated on Google and Yahoo's recent performance, the following snippet of "news" was slipped in at the end:
"Most recently the company [Google] has begun discussions to acquire the website 4chan which would bring with it a large user base."
So, that's a press release from a group of analysts published on a respected website, "reporting" one of the most bizarre rumors we've heard in a while.
It's hard not to believe though, as 4chan, the home of /b/ and the birthplace of just about every meme you've every smirked at, must be at the top of every billion-dollar corporation's shopping list.
We foresee an Instagram-beating sale price and Facebook-levels of hype surrounding an IPO in the near future.
Yeah, right
Of course, there's not a chance this is true.
Despite using a gmail.com email address, and including more links back to its registration page in its press release than there are pony references on 4chan, the company does get its press releases published on other financial sites too, including Bloomberg. Meaning there will be a few sites who may not immediately dismiss it as nonsense.
To help clear things up, Buzzfeed.com asked 4chan founder Christopher Poole for a comment, to which he replied "seems legit."
What it isn't though, is original, as way back in 2008, comedy news website scrapeTV.com wrote a story about Google preparing to buy 4chan. Perhaps this is the analyst's mystery source?
Amusement at the absurdity of Google buying 4chan aside, this acts as another reminder — as if one were needed — not to believe everything you read on the Internet.
Editors' Recommendations
- Where to download free stock photos and public domain images
- The best free music download sites that are totally legal
- PlayStation 5 rumors: Everything you need to know
- Disney Plus: Here's what we know so far about the upcoming streaming service
- Google Home vs. Amazon Echo: Which smart speaker is better?


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Four Years and One Hell of a Ride
February 23, 2014
Four years come and gone, and what a hell of a ride it has been.
Today, Feb 23, 2014 marks my four year anniversary of when I was officially diagnosed with HIV. Since then I have had plenty of ups and even more downs, and it has been a slow process but I am finally getting back to feeling more like myself.
At the beginning, I would not think about the future because I never saw myself as having one, but boy was that a lie. I always felt like everyone was lying when they said there was no reason I could not live a long, normal, and healthy life. I now know they were not. I just had to come to that realization in my own time and in my own way. To be blunt, I never thought in the beginning that I would still be here four years later to write this.
I remember sitting in the support group at Naval Medical Center Balboa and listening to my fellow peers talk about how they had been HIV-positive for 5+ years. I was always in awe of them for having the strength to fight this so long and that they seemed to be winning the fight. it just baffled me at the time how they seemed to be happy because I felt like I never would be again.
I have been writing about my experiences since the beginning just as a way to vent. It was mainly for myself and I was not that regular in keeping up with it.
It was not till my anniversary last year when I set down to write that I made the decision to kick it up a bit and take this to the next level.
This day in the past has always been kind of a downer day for me. I always just want to be left alone and not be bothered by anyone, but today I refuse to let myself get like that. I do not see today as a day of grief or remorse anymore, instead it will be a day of celebration. To celebrate that I am still here and that with each passing year I am becoming stronger and happier with the person I am becoming.
This past year I have seen the biggest change in myself. I have been given some great opportunities such as creating my own website and blogging for TheBody.com and they have allowed me to grow, and in my own small way help in the fight against HIV/AIDS. I have been able to be in contact with some great individuals in the community who have become part of the backbone to my support system. I also started medication, which I was scared of at first, bit in just a few months I reached an undetectable viral load. This is also for me another reason to celebrate.
So if this past year alone is any indication as to what my future has in store for me ... I am ready to embrace it with open arms. I am not saying it is going to be all good days and that I am not going to have hard times because we all know that would be a lie, but I am ready to tackle any challenge thrown my way.
It is still my anniversary, but it is no longer a day that will bring me sadness. It will be a day to rejoice for the 2nd chance I have been given to make the best of the life I have been given.
Bring it on world, I am ready for anything you can dish out at me.
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AMarineAnd HIV
Brian Ledford
This is my story of how I found out I was HIV-positive while still on Active Duty in the United States Marine Corps and how I have tried to put the pieces of my life back together through the good times and the bad. I am currently a full time student working on a degree in Information Security Technology, which seems to be taking forever. I want to help make a difference and erase HIV related Stigma in the South, where due to lack of education people still do not know that much about HIV. If my story reaches out and helps at least one person, then I have made a difference.
Visit Brian's website, A Marine and HIV
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Recent Posts:
April 28, 2016 - My First Serodiscordant Relationship: A Blog Entry by Brian Ledford
April 27, 2016 - The Changing Face of HIV: A Blog Entry by Brian Ledford
September 10, 2015 - Suicide, My Own Journey: A Blog Entry by Brian Ledford
July 17, 2015 - I Have HIV, but I'm Not HIV Positive Part 2: A Blog Entry by Brian Ledford
June 30, 2015 - Yes, I Have HIV but I Am Not HIV Positive: A Blog Entry by Brian Ledford
A Brief Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed by TheBody.com's bloggers are entirely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of TheBody.com itself.
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Giving people more than they expect is the key to great customer service. And this is a service business. Unfortunately, for many companies, of all sizes, customer service is a misnomer. We want you to have the very best experience possible and are committed to delivering that to every customer.
Whether you are buying, selling, or just dreaming we appreciate the opportunity to serve you. We always look forward to reconnecting with old friends or acquaintances and enjoy the chance to meet someone new. Please stop by anytime and enjoy a beverage in our customer lounge.
Looking for a particular power or sailing yacht? Then you've come to the right place.


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Following the launch of Scott's new Scale 700-series of 27.5-inch carbon hardtails, German company Focus is now tossing its hat into the ring with its new Raven 650b 1.0 – a close cousin of the existing 26" and 29" Raven carbon hardtails but with specific geometry to accommodate the new 'tweener wheels.
Focus is offering the new Raven 650b 1.0 as a single complete build for now that includes a Shimano Deore XT 3x10 group, a RockShox Revelation fork, and house-brand aluminum clincher rims built around Shimano SLX hubs with a thru-axle front and quick-release rear fitment. Actual weight for the bike pictured here is right around 11kg (24.3lb).
Lots of Bs: BB30 bottom bracket shell on the 650b Raven
We've yet to ride the new Focus hardtail but the geometry looks promising with a sub-70° head tube angle, 425mm-long chain stays, and 28mm of bottom bracket drop. Suggested retail price is $3,950 and bikes are available now.
Well-heeled fans of European road racing, on the other hand, might find interest in the new Izalco Team SL Ag2r team replica bike. Built around the company's top-end Izalco Team SL frame, the new replica machine features a Campagnolo Record EPS electronic group, 50mm-deep Fulcrum Racing Speed carbon tubulars wrapped with Schwalbe Ultremo tires, and a fi'zi:k Arione saddle.
Ag2r replica bike, complete with Campagnolo Record EPS electronic group
The one major exception to the team spec is the FSA cockpit as fi'zi:k currently doesn't have its new bars and stems in sufficient quantities.
Suggested retail price is $9,500 and Focus will also offer a lower-priced version built around the Izalco Pro frameset with Campagnolo Chorus for $3,800. Shipping is scheduled to begin in July.