Adam Victor Brandizzi

At the archives of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum, the front page of the original issue of the Nazi family magazine “Sonnie ins Haus” (Sunshine in the House) shows baby Hessy Taft as the ideal German Aryan baby, part of the Nazi propaganda developed by Joseph Goebbels. The magazine cover was recently donated by Taft to the museum as part of the “Gathering the Fragments” campaign. Hessy Taft (nee Levinson) was born in Berlin in 1934 to Jewish parents Jacob and Polin Levinson, who were originally from Latvia but later immigrated to Germany. By Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images.

imgur: the simple image sharer

In a stadium packed with Brazilians in a World Cup hosted by a Brazil eager to show itself off to the world, the country's national team delivers a shocking defeat, leaving fans stunned and searing a tragic scar on the nation's history.

Somehow, history has repeated itself.

After the 1950 Maracanazo, when Brazil lost to Uruguay during its first time hosting the tournament, it didn't seem like another soccer defeat of that magnitude could be possible. But today, it became a reality as Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany in its worst loss in 94 years. A new national tragedy was born, the Mineirazo, in a defeat made worse by the magnitude of goals and the team's poor performance. It was a culmination of a run that first began with a Brazilian player scoring on his own goal and a nail-biting Round of 16 game during which Brazil only eked out a win in penalties.

Throughout the tournament, Brazilians complained about the quality of some players, particularly striker Fred, who was often compared to a cone. Neymar's injury and losing one of the top players for today's game due to a yellow card hurt, but the team did so poorly that analysts called them amateurs and fans called them an embarrassment. The seleção has to play again on Saturday for third place, but it will not play a single game in Maracanã during this World Cup.

After the game, Brazilian fans were devastated, in shock by the sheer magnitude of the defeat, which some say is worse than in 1950. Even statisticians were surprised; Five Thirty Eight's Nate Silver called it "the most shocking result in World Cup history." It's hard to explain the impact of this kind of loss in Brazil. Europeans can relate, perhaps, but there's really no equivalent in the United States. It goes beyond soccer. Some fans take the loss personally, or feel some sense of responsibility.

 

When Brazil lost in 1950, it left a mark on the Brazilian consciousness and inspired the idea of the "mutt complex," in which Brazilians express self-doubt in the country and a type of inferiority complex in comparison to the rest of the world. After the game, Mauricio Santoro, a Brazilian human rights advocate and an overall Brazil expert, said that the mutt complex is officially reinstated.

A Brazilian on Twitter remarked that attempting any analysis of the game is akin to trying an autopsy on someone who fell from a 30-story building, so I thought I'd look at what the game won't mean.

6. It doesn't mean massive protests will start up again. There were some small protests today and ones throughout the past month against the World Cup, but nothing on the scale of the June 2013 demonstrations. Those massive, popular protests were linked to a complex host of social issues and not Brazil's soccer performance.

5. It doesn't mean Brazilians will lose complete interest in the World Cup. Besides having to play what promises to be a painful match for third place on Saturday, the tournament hosts are, after all, lovers of the beautiful game. Plus, they will be avidly rooting against Argentina. The only thing that could make this loss worse is if Argentina wins in Brazil.

4. It doesn't mean Brazilians will be unable to shift their focus to other issues after the Cup. Some of the comments I saw were for Brazilians to instead put their energy into moving the country ahead and to think about the issues raised during last year's protests, like health and education. "We should have built hospitals instead," fans joked on Twitter after the game. The faster this shift in focus happens, the better, to show how the country is changing its priorities.

3. It shouldn't overshadow Brazil's success as the host. The tournament has largely gone smoothly, in spire of predictions to the contrary. With the exception with some outbursts of violence in a few cities following the loss, overall the games have been a success.

2. This has nothing to do with the economy. There may be some analyses in the near future about how Brazil's World Cup disappointment echoes its economic disappointments. Productivity has definitely gone down during the tournament, and the games can have a short-term impact on the markets, but the team's performance won't have a long-term economic impact. (The cost of the hosting games, on the other hand, might.)

1. It's unlikely it will have an impact on the presidential election. Despite a lot of chatter and rumors that the World Cup could make or break Dilma's chances at reelection, past elections have shown that there's no definitive correlation between Brazil's World Cup performance and presidential votes. A recent UBS study confirmed there's no relationship between the two, and could only have a real impact if the games took place up to two weeks before the election.

Image: The site of the country's new big sporting tragedy, the Mineirão in Belo Horizonte. Photo: Evaraldo Vilela.

Updated July 9 with short doc from Folha de SP.

“Why I began to write for children,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer:

1. Children read books, not reviews. They don’t give a hoot about the critics.
2. Children don’t read to find their identity.
3. They don’t read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation.
4. They have no use for psychology.
5. They detest sociology.
6. They don’t try to understand Kafka or Finnegans Wake.
7. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.
8. They love interesting stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes.
9. When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
10. They don’t expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

(From his 1978 Nobel banquet speech.)

1. A Alemanha é melhor do que o Brasil

Eles possuem uma geração superior à nossa. Não é a primeira vez que isso ocorre. A  Holanda era melhor do que o Brasil em 1974, quando perdemos para eles. Algumas vezes, perdemos para times inferiores, como a Itália em 1982. Mas o Brasil não é supremo. Em algumas Copas, há times melhores do que o nosso

2. Nossa geração de jogadores é ruim

Fui criticado por escrever que esta era pior seleção brasileira da história depois de vencermos o Chile nos pênaltis. Mas, tirando o Neymar e talvez os zagueiros, ninguém seria titular das seleções brasileiras campeãs do mundo em 1958, 62, 70, 94 e 2002. Nem mesmo Neymar seria nas três primeiras e possivelmente tampouco na de 2002. Em 94, talvez estivesse no lugar do Bebeto. Além disso, craques da geração anterior ainda em atividade, como Ronaldinho, Kaká e Robinho, não atravessam boa fase e não foram chamados (poderiam ser e eu teria levado pelo menos o Kaká)

3. Nosso técnico é ruim

Sim, Felipão foi um grande técnico até dez anos atrás. Conquistou a Libertadores pelo Palmeiras e Grêmio e o penta pelo Brasil, além de ter levado Portugal para uma final de Eurocopa e semifinal de Copa. Mas decaiu bastante. No seu último emprego, levou o Palmeiras para a Segunda Divisão. Ele errou no jogo de ontem ao começar com Bernard e não soube mudar a tempo para evitar o desastre (é permitido fazer substituições no primeiro tempo)

4. A pressão foi sobrenatural

Os jogadores estavam pressionados de uma forma sobrenatural para ganhar o Mundial no Brasil. Eles podem não ser os melhores do mundo. Mas tampouco são inferiores à Argélia, Gana e EUA, que fizeram jogos duros contra os alemães. A Costa Rica, também inferior ao Brasil, fez uma Copa fenomenal e eliminou Itália e Inglaterra, venceu o Uruguai e chegou aos pênaltis contra a Holanda. Nossos atletas estavam emocionalmente destruídos. Carlos Alberto Torres, capitão do Tri, criticou corretamente os chorões. Aquilo não era normal

5. Contusão do Neymar e suspensão do Thiago Silva

A contusão do Neymar provocou um trauma no time, que ficou ainda mais abalado emocionalmente. Thiago Silva, ao lado de David Luiz, exercia um papel de liderança importante que faltou na semifinal

6. Black Swan

Sim, ocorreu um evento Black Swan. Isto é, algo completamente inesperado e absurdo acabar ocorrendo sem ninguém prever. Apesar dos 5 tópicos acima, nada justifica o 7 a 1 (poderia ser tranquilamente dez) e o apagão no primeiro tempo

Não sei como faz para publicar comentários. Portanto pediria que comentem no meu Facebook (Guga Chacra)  e no Twitter (@gugachacra), aberto para seguidores

Guga Chacra, comentarista de política internacional do Estadão e do programa Globo News Em Pauta em Nova York, é mestre em Relações Internacionais pela Universidade Columbia. Já foi correspondente do jornal O Estado de S. Paulo no Oriente Médio e em NY. No passado, trabalhou como correspondente da Folha em Buenos Aires

Comentários islamofóbicos, antissemitas, anticristãos e antiárabes ou que coloquem um povo ou uma religião como superiores não serão publicados. Tampouco ataques entre leitores ou contra o blogueiro. Pessoas que insistirem em ataques pessoais não terão mais seus comentários publicados. Não é permitido postar vídeo. Todos os posts devem ter relação com algum dos temas acima. O blog está aberto a discussões educadas e com pontos de vista diferentes. Os comentários dos leitores não refletem a opinião do jornalista

Acompanhe também meus comentários no Globo News Em Pauta, na Rádio Estadão, na TV Estadão, no Estadão Noite no tablet, no Twitter @gugachacra , no Facebook Guga Chacra (me adicionem como seguidor), no Instagram e no Google Plus. Escrevam para mim no gugachacra at outlook.com. Leiam também o blog do Ariel Palacios

Rebecca Ruiz observes that “inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive behavior may in fact mirror the effects of adversity, and many pediatricians, psychiatrists, and psychologists don’t know how – or don’t have the time – to tell the difference”:

[Dr. Nicole] Brown was completing her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, when she realized that many of her low-income patients had been diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These children lived in households and neighborhoods where violence and relentless stress prevailed. Their parents found them hard to manage and teachers described them as disruptive or inattentive. Brown knew these behaviors as classic symptoms of ADHD, a brain disorder characterized by impulsivity, hyperactivity, and an inability to focus.

When Brown looked closely, though, she saw something else: trauma. Hyper-vigilance and dissociation, for example, could be mistaken for inattention. Impulsivity might be brought on by a stress response in overdrive. “Despite our best efforts in referring them to behavioral therapy and starting them on stimulants, it was hard to get the symptoms under control,” she said of treating her patients according to guidelines for ADHD. “I began hypothesizing that perhaps a lot of what we were seeing was more externalizing behavior as a result of family dysfunction or other traumatic experience.”

Previous Dish on ADHD here and here.

actegratuit:

 PichiAvo paints new Pieces on Shipping Containers in Werchter // Belgium

Your female characters are so strong they’re flexing their way out of the written word, ripping the cover of your book apart, and leaping off the page to bench press unsuspecting readers.

Your female characters are so strong their hugs hurt. “Don’t,” your other, softer characters say, stepping back, when your strong female characters try to greet them. “I’m happy to see you. But — don’t.”

Your female characters are so strong they split their kneecaps yesterday at the squat rack in the gym.

Your female characters are so strong they can draw out leviathan with an hook, and his tongue with a cord which they letteth down; they can put an hook into his nose, and bore his jaw through with a thorn; he will make many supplications unto them, he will speak soft words unto them; he will make a covenant with them, and they will take him for a servant for ever. They will play with him as with a bird, and bind him for thy maidens.

Your female characters are so strong they’re kidnapping characters from other, better books and dragging them into their own scenes to liven up the dialogue.

Your female characters are so strong that Brutus’ idle threats pass by them as an idle wind, which they respect not.

Your female characters are so strong that when they rear from off the Pool their mighty Stature; on each hand the flames are driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rowld in billows, leave i’th’ midst a horrid Vale. Then with expanded wings they stear their flight aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air.

Your female characters are so strong that they play harder than they work, then work harder than they last played.

Your female characters are so strong they’ve developed stress fractures and tendonitis as a result of overtraining. Your female characters are so strong they’re developing microtears in their muscle fibers and have been advised by their doctors to take it easy for the next few weeks.

Your female characters are so strong they’re capable of asexual reproduction. Every one of your female characters has spawned seventeen unbelievably strong daughters. All of them have the same name.

Your female characters are so strong that if you strike them down now, they will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Your female characters are so strong they read ahead to the last page, barked ‘I DON’T LIKE THIS ENDING,’ and moved the ink around to change the final lines.

Read more Your Female Characters Are So Strong at The Toast.

New research suggests that violent videogames make players more “morally sensitive” by causing them to regret their own behaviors:

“This may, as it does in real life, provoke players to engage in voluntary behavior that benefits others,” notes lead author Matthew Grizzard [of the University of Buffalo] in a summary of the study, which is published (behind a paywall) in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. So, the suggestion is that not only is amoral in-game activity harmless, it might also be beneficial to society.

This conclusion rests on previous findings within sociology/social psychology that when humans feel guilt about some real-world behavior (or lab-simulated real-world behavior, rather) they will convert that feeling into actual prosocial behavior. A quick survey reveals a 2003 New Mexico State University study finding that feelings of guilt could be used to push real-world cooperation, suggesting that guilt may be used as “‘information’ about the future costs of uncooperative strategy.”

Related Dish on torture in videogames here.

Neymar, melhor jogador do Brasil na Copa, foi tirado dela por uma falta carniceira que lhe rebentou um pedaço da coluna. Não foi o primeiro jogador do mundial a ir parar no hospital, nem seu agressor foi punido sequer com um cartão amarelo, deixando claro o quanto o sistema (tanto as regras formais quanto as instruções e entendimentos informais) de arbitragem da FIFA é inútil. Zuñiga, o carniceiro escolhido para bater na Colômbia, explicou que "poderia ser ele, poderia ser o James, é assim mesmo." Mas ao invés de se ater à necessidade de reformar as regras para preservar o futebol dos Neymares e James contra os Zuñigas e Fernandinhos, o que se vê muito é gente da torcida antibrasileira (incluídos os muitos brasileiros que a integram - desconheço se o fenômeno é comum mundo afora) explicar que "Neymar não era nenhum santinho," ou que "o Brasil também é violento." Ora, se isso é, rigorosamente, verdade - e, de novo, precisa ser impedido, porque prefiro ver Neymar e James jogarem do que Zuñiga e Fernandinho, porrada já tem seus eventos esportivos - também é rigorosamente irrelevante. Nem pode-se argumentar que o animus de falar da violência brasileira esteja falando em "consequência" e não no "bem-feito,"  porque não há nenhum indício de que o técnico da Colômbia, Pekerman, ou Zuñiga tenham ficado dias insones olhando para as maldades de Felipão e Neymar, e jurado vingar suas vítimas. Felipão e Pekerman sabem bem que o jogo violento funciona, e por isso mandam bater; e mandariam mesmo que a seleção adversária fosse de quakers.

Se a vítima é boazinha, pura, ou inocente, isso não importa pra que a agressão seja um absurdo, não muda sua condição de vítima. "Vítima inocente" não devia ser um pleonasmo enfático, como fica sendo quando seguimos o raciocínio de que só pode ser vítima o inocente, nunca o culpado. Neymar poderia ter quebrado mil colunas que ter a sua quebrada não seria apenas uma justa paga. Há oito anos atrás, escrevi coisa parecida, quando da iteração daquele ano da longa marcha descivilizatória de Israel.

Otherwise known as Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation. Daniela Lamas investigates the fortunes of the medical process that “siphons blood out of the body and runs it through a machine that temporarily assumes the lung’s work—oxygen in, carbon dioxide out—and gives the injured lung time to heal,” avoiding the problems associated with respirators. The backstory:

Building on the principles of the heart-lung bypass machine used in cardiac surgeries, the first ECMO machines for lung failure came about in the nineteen-seventies. In an early, publicized case, a young man in California was dying after having injured his lung severely. His doctors put him on ECMO—the machine was the size of a car—for three days. He survived and his story was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 1972. The ensuing enthusiasm led to a medical trial in the seventies with the goal to test whether patients with lung failure did better with ECMO or with a respirator alone. In both groups, more than ninety per cent of patients died. The excitement about ECMO for adults with lung failure “fell back to earth,” Daniel Brodie, who directs the medical ECMO program at Columbia University Medical Center, told me.

But lately there’s been an ECMO “revival” – aided by much improved technology – and it began with a butt augmentation gone awry:

In the fall of 2008, a twenty-seven-year-old woman was admitted to the Allen Hospital after receiving silicone injections to enhance her buttocks. The silicone had leaked into her vessels and travelled to her lungs, causing massive bleeding. Even with a respirator at its highest settings forcing air into her lungs, she was, literally, drowning in her own blood. The doctor caring for the young woman called Brodie, who suggested ECMO. “By all accounts, she was surely going to die. We felt we had nothing to lose by trying, and everything to gain,” Brodie said. She survived. “When it worked, even we were a bit surprised. That one case may not have changed a lot of minds, but it certainly opened them up to the ever-so-faint possibility this wasn’t crazy.”

Then, in 2009, the H1N1 virus swept the globe and left some previously healthy people with severely injured lungs—a condition called acute-respiratory-distress syndrome. For patients whose oxygen levels still teetered despite the highest settings on the respirator, doctors started turning to ECMO. In the same year, a smaller ECMO apparatus that could get patients up and walking—older versions required patients to remain supine and sedated—won approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The coincidental timing—a new pandemic, a new machine—“opened the floodgates,” said Jose Garcia, a cardiac surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We’re redefining death, to the point that somebody we thought for sure was dead two or three years ago, well, they’re not dead anymore.”

Há uma crença generalizada de que o resultado da eleição será função do resultado da Copa: se o Brasil for campeão, Dilma será reeleita; se não for, o PT sairá do poder. Muitos torcem contra a seleção (o que é seu direito, naturalmente) na esperança de mudar de governo. Alguns até cogitam que o governo tenha comprado os resultados da Copa.

Perdoem-me, amigos, mas que tolice!

Para desmentir a teoria, basta comparar as Copas passadas com as eleições do mesmo ano. Houve apenas um ano em que a situação ganhou após a seleção sagrar-se campeã. Se a vitória seleção tem influência sobre a eleição seguinte, tende a prejudicar a situação – o que não faz sentido.

Ano	Brasil campeão	Situação ganhou
1994	Sim	Sim
1998	Não	Sim
2002	Sim	Não
2006	Não	Sim
2010	Não	Sim

Esta hipótese não advém da realidade, mas sim de uma visão simplória do eleitorado. Nesta visão, grande número de eleitores seria tão desligado da política que delegaria suas decisões eleitorais à única coisa que lhe interessa: o futebol. Este eleitor hipotético – conhecido como “despolitizado” – é tão ignorante da política que não é capaz de considerar mais nada em seu voto.

Isto é impossível, porém, porque ninguém pode ser isolado da política. Todo mundo é afetado pela segurança pública, fatores econômicos, saúde e educação públicas, transporte coletivo, infraestrutura. Não existe razão para o eleitor valorizar o resultado da Copa mais do que tudo que o afeta diariamente. Mesmo que se considere este eleitor tão ignorante e isolado que não possa assistir a um telejornal ou conversar com outras pessoas – uma situação bem improvável – sua própria vida é tão profundamente afetada por decisões políticas que, ainda assim, ele já teria uma boa base para suas decisões. De fato, como vários – mas não todos – postuladores do “eleitor despolitizado” não dependem (e às vezes nunca dependeram) de saúde, educação e transportes públicos, o tal “eleitor despolitizado” provavelmente terá muito mais conhecimento empírico sobre esses temas do que seus acusadores.

Considerando o estado lamentável da saúde, educação e transportes públicos, cabe perguntar por que, então, estes eleitores votariam em mais do mesmo. É impossível saber as motivações de todos os eleitores, mas algumas razões podem ser imaginadas.

Por exemplo, a economia. Embora eu mesmo seja bastante crítico das atitudes do governo na área, ela vai bem no que importa e é evidente para a maioria das pessoas. Apesar de certa redução na velocidade, a taxa de desemprego continua caindo. A inflação incomoda e o crescimento da renda média cai, é verdade, mas a renda continua subindo, e a inflação (que afeta mais o setor de serviços) está longe de afetar drasticamente o dia-a-dia.

O “eleitor despolitizado” também pode atribuir fatores diferentes a entes diferentes da federação. Se o ônibus está ruim, ele pode decidir por punir o prefeito, não a presidente; se a escola do filho vai mal, se oporá ao governador. De fato, os governadores tiveram avaliações piores que as de 2010. A divisão feita pelo eleitor pode ou não ser correta, mas existe.

Vale lembrar também governantes não são avaliados pelo quanto a situação está ruim, mas sim pelo quanto ela melhorou. Se o eleitor perceber que a situação está ruim, mas notavelmente melhor do que já foi, pode votar no governo atual. Eu, de fato, acredito que muita coisa melhorou – devido a esta administração, a administrações passadas e a fatores alheios – então não me estranharia que muitos votem por esta razão.

Algumas razões do opositor podem ser também as razões do voto pela continuidade – basta se pôr na posição de outra pessoa. Você pode achar que o Mais Médicos é uma gambiarra – mas para quem, no interior, não tinha médico nenhum ele pode ser a diferença entre vida e morte. Muitas faculdades favorecidas pelo Prouni podem não ser boas, mas seus cursos são a porta de entrada de carreiras promissoras. O programa Minha Casa Minha Vida pode ter externalidades negativas; ainda assim, muita gente saiu do barraco insalubre para a casa própria devido a ele. Estas mudanças revolucionam a vida das pessoas: é natural que guie o voto de muitas delas. O opositor pode apontar inúmeras falhas nestes programas, mas toda crítica, por válida que seja, será muito abstrata perante a concretude da mudança.

A Copa também pode influenciar votos – mas de outra maneira. O tão anunciado fracasso não se concretizou; ao contrário, considera-se esta a melhor Copa das últimas décadas. Consequentemente, o governo melhorou sua imagem por ter organizado um evento espetacular. Ademais, a confiança nos que professavam o caos caiu ante o fracasso de suas profecias. Ao invés do apocalipse previsto, vimos apenas soluços…

…até a tragédia de 3 de julho. A queda do viaduto em Belo Horizonte é uma mancha horrível na história desta Copa. Ainda assim, isto não deve afetar muito as intenções de voto país afora. A responsabilidade da catástrofe ainda não foi atribuída (e parece pender para o município). Ademais, este foi um problema isolado – de outro modo, haveria catástrofes nas outras cidades-sede. Mesmo com tão deplorável acontecimento, o saldo eleitoral da Copa deve ser positivo.

A tese de que o campeão da Copa definirá a eleição prejudica acima de tudo quem acredita nela. Leva à desistência do diálogo, ao fechamento em si mesmo. Não precisa ser assim: basta aceitar que pessoas podem ter motivos razoáveis para discordar de seu voto. Uma vez que se aceite isso, o diálogo se torna viável e, aí sim, há a chance de se mudar a opinião alheia – ou de se aprender com ela.

Então, não se preocupe: você pode torcer sem medo pela seleção amanhã e, com sorte, na final. (Ou pode torcer contra, também, se preferir; só não precisa fazê-lo.) O resultado destes jogos não fará diferença real nas eleições. Torcer contra com o objetivo de mudar a política é, perdoem-me, uma tolice: é pensar que fez a diferença quando não mudou a ideia de ninguém. Aceitar este fato tornará o debate muito mais respeitoso e interessante.

owlturdcomix:

We go forward.

image

twitter | facebook

Melhor resumo da vida que uma webcomic pode fazer.

Você conhece a Venus?

You can order a poster of this comic at my shop. Hang it above your desk to ward off negative, unproductive thoughts.

Yesterday, there was a strikingly good reported piece in the NYT magazine on the growing evidence that consciousness does not have some kind of radical break between humans and every other species on the planet. And by consciousness, at varying levels, I mean, for example, the ability to feel fear, or joy, or anxiety, or even grief. This is emphatically not about anthropomorphism. It’s about the reality of creation:

A profusion of recent studies has shown animals to be far closer to us than we previously believed — it turns out that common shore crabs feel and remember pain, zebra finches experience REM sleep, fruit-fly brothers cooperate, dolphins and elephants recognize themselves in mirrors, chimpanzees assist one another without expecting favors in return and dogs really do feel elation in their owners’ presence. In the summer of 2012, an unprecedented document, masterminded by Low — “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Human and Nonhuman Animals”[PDF] — was signed by a group of leading animal researchers in the presence of Stephen Hawking. It asserted that mammals, birds and other creatures like octopuses possess consciousness and, in all likelihood, emotions and self-awareness.

And then I come across this rather beautiful story about an elephant around my own age, captured in his infancy, chained and shackled his entire life, until he is released by an animal welfare group:

Fitted with painful shackles for nearly his entire life, Raju had been forced to walk the dusty roads of India, interacting with tourists in exchange for coins and food. His body bears the signs of malnutrition and the scars of physical abuse — but the emotional toll was no less profound. Late last week, a team led by the UK-based animal charity, Wildlife SOS, intervened to liberate Raju from his cruel keeper. As it started to become clear that they were there to help him, the elephant wept.

Wept? I was doubtful until I read other tales of exactly this phenomenon: in a book from Jeffrey Masson, When Elephants Weep, and a recent story about a newborn elephant calf, rejected by its mother, who then cried uncontrollably for five hours.

Does weeping mean in elephants what it does in humans? We cannot know, of course. But when it is occasioned by the kind of event that prompts human tears, it does not seem to me to be indulging in anthropomorphism to posit that something like grief or relief (or some elephantine version of either) is behind it. And that, to my mind, tells us a huge amount empirically about the way we treat animals in our society: we treat countless living creatures as if they had no feelings and as if we shared nothing in our experiences. That’s not just based on untruth; it is the kind of thing that future generations may well look back on in horror and disbelief.

To see what is in front of one’s nose …

(Photo: Tears run down the face of Motala the elephant. She is crying from the pain as vets clean up the damaged tissue that is all that is left of her front left foot. She is a patient at the Elephant Hospital where vets and doctors hope she will recover from extensive damage when she stepped on a landmine on the Thai/Burma border. The hospital was founded by Khun Soraida Salwala, and the NGO Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE). By Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The idea that someone knows whether or not I have cancer but is keeping it from me is ridiculous, but here it is, actually happening. “Your results are in. The doctor is out until Monday. Only the doctor can relay your results. I’m sorry, ma’am. Have a nice weekend.”

I can’t even bring myself to do a Lifetime movie style screaming rant at the “Have a nice weekend.” Even in a Lifetime movie, it’s hard to believe that someone would write a scene in which Judith Light or Meredith Baxter Birney is told that she won’t find out whether or not she has cancer until Monday, and therefore she should have a nice weekend. The searing rays of frustration, panic, and fury shooting through my brain but not, surprisingly directly out of my eyeballs, which would be appropriate, satisfying, and about as believable as “Have a nice weekend,” turn off for a moment and the ridiculousness of the situation washes over me. It’s almost comforting; that familiar feeling of on-the-verge-of-hysteria laughter comes over me, but it’s different this time.

It’s bitter.

I spend a lot of time reassuring people and myself that it’s ok, that I’m not going to die no matter what, answering my mother’s tearful plea of “Why you?” with “Well, why not me?,” reassuring my husband that he’s not going to have to live without me as he lies with his head on my chest repeating that he can’t live without me, and believing it, genuinely believing that this is just a bit of bad luck, just like finding a job right out of grad school with excellent health insurance and paid sick time was a bit of good luck, because I’m certainly not the smartest, hardest working, or most needy newly-minted librarian in the greater Boston area. I’ve faced this situation with something approaching aplomb, and yet, regardless of the stiffness of my upper lip, this is more than I can smile and nod at just now.

The fact that whether or not I have cancer is now, finally, known for sure and yet I will not be told until Monday and should therefore have a nice weekend is just over what I can handle. I handled an offhand remark from my oral surgeon that I have a thyroid nodule and I should get it checked out. I went on to handle my doctor telling me I need a biopsy but it’s probably nothing, having to tell my family that I need a biopsy but it’s probably nothing, a biopsy that showed something as opposed to nothing, and a surgery to determine whether or not the something is cancer. If it is, I will need a second surgery and then I will need to be treated with radioactive iodine, both of which I will handle. I will handle having cancer, in fact; I know that I probably do, but I need to know for sure, and I need some help.

I turn to my husband, who is wild-eyed and pale, as usual. I put my hands on his shoulders and look into his eyes and speak calmly and firmly to keep the searing rays from coming back just yet.

“I need you to call my therapist and tell her that my results are in, but the hospital won’t tell me what they are. Please have her call them and tell them that I am crazy. Have her tell them that I have an anxiety disorder and that I will spend the weekend out of my mind if I don’t know. If necessary, have her hint that I might hurt myself. I AM NOT GOING TO HURT MYSELF. But I need to know and I need your help because I can’t spend any more time on the phone right now. I can’t talk to you anymore right now. I’m going to take two Valium and I’m going to lie down. Thank you. I love you.”

I kiss his forehead, turn around, walk into the bathroom, and slam the door as hard as I can. I open the medicine cabinet, take two Valium, close the medicine cabinet, and look at myself in the mirror. I look pretty wild-eyed and pale myself, now that I’m alone. I pull a towel down from its rack, stuff it into my mouth, and scream as hard as I can. The searing rays are back. Between the scream and the rays, my head is now throbbing and I’m dizzy. I feel like I may faint, actually, and I would welcome fainting. I open the medicine cabinet back up and decide to take a third Valium, because I need to pass the fuck out soon. At the last moment, I sort of come to my senses and bite the pill in half so I’m only taking two and a half Valium. My doctor advised me to never take more than two, but I figure it’s a special occasion and my anxiety is high enough that the extra half will target it and not the part of me that might normally be hurt by extra Valium. I’m still present enough to know that doesn’t really make sense and that’s not how drugs work, but not for long. I open the door of the bathroom to hear my husband shakily repeating “Ok, thank you, doctor. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“She’s not a doctor, she’s a clinical social worker!” I unhelpfully holler down the hallway, as if it matters. I get into bed and blissfully drop my head onto the pillow. I can already feel the two and a half Valium dimming everything, turning down the searing rays to a nice manageable glow, unfurling my clenched muscles, highlighting how tense and rigid I usually keep my body and brain these days. I can actually feel my brow smooth out and my teeth come apart, relaxing my jaw that has apparently been clamped shut for possibly several days, judging from the ache spreading over my face. I want more blankets, even though there are four piled over me now. I want to be weighted down by something physical. I fall asleep.

***

It’s the day before my second surgery. I go to a yoga class to try and relax and center myself and all that other nonsense that I generally avoid. I need to take deep breaths, though, and I am never very good at doing so, so I’m going to force myself to calm the fuck down. It’s confirmed that I have cancer and that I will spend the next several months getting various treatments and then I won’t have cancer anymore. I’m 32 years old, which is young to have thyroid cancer, but apparently this works in my favor, too. This is comforting, actually, but no one will join me in being comforted.

My mother calls every day; every other day I take her call and reassure her that yes, I know she wishes that this was happening to her instead of me and yes, I know that she would trade places with me if she could. I’m not sure why she thinks I would find this reassuring; like most people, I am more afraid of my mother getting cancer than I am of actually having cancer.

This has been especially hard on her because not only has she had to endure the my-kid-has-cancer-and-there’s-nothing-I-can-do racket, the psychic powers on which she claims to have relied throughout her life have failed her as well. During the aforementioned Herculean process just to get a diagnosis, my mother remained calm and smiling because her “sources,” as I think of them, had assured her that I “do not have cancer and have never had cancer.” My mother’s sources comprise her own unique brand of spirituality; from what I understand, they include various spirits and angels, along with a hodge-podge of hunches, signs from the universe, symbolic coincidences, and a psychic advisor named Carol with whom she has consulted for many years. This was her mantra, always spoken in the exact same way–“Do not have cancer and have never had cancer”–as if there was a possibility that I HAD had cancer at some point but it had righted itself. Luckily, the fact that the cancer that was indeed present was also very treatable and, eventually, entirely removed from my body provided a loophole for the sources; to this day, whenever my mom passes along some advice for me from the sources, I remind her that the sources were wrong about my cancer, and she happily responds, “Yes, but, you don’t have cancer anymore, do you?”

This negates the “have never had” section of the sources’ diagnosis, but I don’t bring that up, and besides, she’s right; I don’t have cancer anymore.

Read more Not That Kind of Cancer at The Toast.

Only a few discount tickets left for GaymerX, which is the only con I'm doing in 2014!

 http://oglobo.globo.com/rss/blogs/84.asp

 http://ponte.org/feed/

Scientists seem to have discovered one:

In a [new study], Mohamad Koubeissi at the George Washington University in Washington DC and his colleagues describe how they managed to switch a woman’s consciousness off and on by stimulating her claustrum. The woman has epilepsy so the team were using deep brain electrodes to record signals from different brain regions to work out where her seizures originate. One electrode was positioned next to the claustrum, an area that had never been stimulated before.

When the team zapped the area with high frequency electrical impulses, the woman lost consciousness. She stopped reading and stared blankly into space, she didn’t respond to auditory or visual commands and her breathing slowed. As soon as the stimulation stopped, she immediately regained consciousness with no memory of the event. The same thing happened every time the area was stimulated during two days of experiments (Epilepsy and Behavior, doi.org/tgn).