From the Omaha World-Herald:
Published Thursday
March 3, 2005
New use proposed for Norfolk facility
BY MARTHA STODDARD
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
LINCOLN - Norfolk State Sen. Mike Flood proposed tackling two problems at once Wednesday by turning the Norfolk Regional Center into an inpatient methamphetamine treatment center for nonviolent offenders.
Such a center could help Nebraska deal with the growing scourge of meth, he said.
It also would provide jobs for regional center staff who lose their positions as the state's mental health reform progresses.
A reform plan approved last year calls for closing the Norfolk and Hastings regional centers as psychiatric hospitals.
The Hastings facility has found new life as the home of a program for people with both developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. The facility also has a substance abuse program for juveniles and residential treatment for adults.
Flood described a similar plan for the Norfolk center to members of the Appropriations Committee. His plan would make use of about 105 beds.
"We have a choice in Madison County whether we want to be proactive and part of these reforms or whether we want to lay down and say 'over my dead body,'" he said.
Flood offered the proposal during testimony about Legislative Bill 539, introduced by State Sen. Kermit Brashear of Omaha.
The bill would appropriate money for substance abuse treatment of adults charged with felony drug crimes. The original bill called for $5.1 million per year. Brashear said the total could be reduced to $3.7 million because other funds could help.
Treating drug and alcohol abuse is a key part of efforts to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison, Brashear said.
Fees charged to people on probation and parole will help fund another part of the effort - increased supervision and community services to teach new skills.
In the long run, Brashear said, substance abuse treatment and other community services will reduce the numbers of people in prison and prevent the state from having to spend more than $85 million to build a new prison.
He cautioned that fiscal results will not be immediate but said results from other states show that the approach can be effective.
"We're not the first people to the party," Brashear said. "This is a long-term project with long-term goals."
Kevin Piske, a psychologist at the Norfolk center, said Flood's proposal would fit with the broader effort to treat drug offenders.
Studies have shown that offenders who go through treatment programs have a 25 percent chance of getting in trouble with the law again. That compares with 80 percent or more among untreated drug offenders, Piske said.
Norfolk Regional Center staff already are familiar with methamphetamine's effects, he said. About a quarter of the patients at Norfolk have meth addictions along with mental illnesses.
David Wegner, interim state probation administrator, said he wasn't familiar with Flood's proposal. But he said that meth treatment can be difficult and that inpatient treatment might be something to look at.
Flood did not have a cost for his proposal. But based on experience from Wyoming, inpatient treatment could cost about $69 per day, he said. Imprisonment at the Nebraska State Penitentiary costs about $76 per day.
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©2005 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved.
This is a great idea -- except for one thing. The money is for for people convicted of felony drug crimes. When are they going to realize, if more treatment were available, there would be fewer felonies??? Most of the forgeries, car break-ins, burglaries, etc. are drug-related. People stealing sh*t to sell for dope money or trade for dope. That was Nick's problem — but because the first time he was locked up, they didn't do anything about his drug problem, he got out and went right back to what he was doing. They could have saved themselves $60,000+ if the system didn't have its head up its ass. But what can you expect in a Republican state?
posted by decemberx 11:31 AM[edit]
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: My Little Chickadee This is an interesting little piece...
My Little Chickadee
Published: March 3, 2005
Bird feeders across much of America are mobbed with black-capped chickadees at this time of year. Can you tell them apart, one by one? Probably not; it's hard enough to distinguish male from female in this species, let alone recognize individuals in a flock. But scientists are starting to suggest that if we look closely enough, we can distinguish birds of a single species by personality. A team of Dutch scientists, testing a European relative of the chickadee, has found that some birds are shy and others are bold, broad personality differences that have a genetic foundation. This finding doesn't erode the basic differences between Homo sapiens and Poecile atricapillus (the black-capped chickadee). But it substantially enlarges the similarities.
We take the range of personalities among individuals in our species for granted, yet it seems surprising to think of similar diversity in other species. Many people find the implications of that genuinely shocking. If bird personalities have a strong genetic and evolutionary basis, there is good reason to suspect that human personalities do, too.
Humans do not like to think of themselves as animals. Nor do they like to think that their behavior may have genetic or evolutionary roots. But the richer perspective - morally and intellectually - lies in examining and coming to terms with the kinship of all life. There's a certain tragic isolation in believing that humans stand apart in every way from the creatures that surround them, that the rest of creation was shaped exclusively for our use. The real fruit of that perspective is, in fact, tragic isolation on an earth that has been eroded by our moral assumptions. Science has something much wiser to tell us about who we are. So do the birds around us.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
and another good one, about women & aging --
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March 3, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Frozen Mermaids, Scary Sirens
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington
I went to see Al Pacino's "Merchant of Venice" movie the other day.
It was funny to watch the climactic courtroom scene in which the cross-dressing Portia sets a dazzling legal trap for the cross Shylock.
The vengeful loan shark can take his pound of flesh from Antonio, she tells him, but it has to be exactly a pound. And if Antonio bleeds, the laws of Venice dictate that all of Shylock's lands and goods will be confiscated.
The 16th-century Shylock skulks off. A 21st-century Shylock would have had a solution: liposuction.
Shylock could have extracted his precise pound of flesh, and the fashionably epicene Antonio could have come out of it looking even sleeker.
Shakespeare wrote a lot about the power of beauty and the withering of beauty. As one pre-Botox sonnet went: "When forty winters shall besiege thy brow/And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,/Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,/Will be a tattered weed of small worth held."
Shakespeare also wrote about narcissistic personalities and the treacheries of time. So I'm sure he would have been fascinated by the obsession of our modern culture with freezing the clock - and the face - with lifestyle drugs and medical treatments.
Cosmetic enhancements have become so common that you can now get "frequent flier" cards for wrinkles - racking up rewards every time a dermatologist or a plastic surgeon sticks a needle in your face.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that, following up on Pfizer's success with Viagra "value cards," which offer repeat customers discounts, Medicis Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Restylane, an anti-wrinkle skin filler, is offering a rewards program "to encourage injections every six months by offering gifts that escalate in value with each subsequent appointment - adding up to $375 after the fourth follow-up visit."
A Restylane treatment is about $500 to $750 and lasts about six months, according to the article. So Medicis says it aims to keep customers on track to maintain their "corrected look."
You just get the Restylane syringe box top from your doctor and send it in, as you used to do with cereal boxes to get toys. And you can keep your "corrected look" going until you hit that "Alas, poor Yorick" phase.
What Shakespeare could have done with this material. And wouldn't you love to hear the Bard on the Oscars?
Others found the Oscars boring; I found the show slightly alarming.
I used to worry that women were heading toward one face. Sometimes in affluent settings, like the Oscars or the shoe department at Bergdorf's, you see a bunch of eerily similar women with oddly off-track features - Botox-smoothed Formica foreheads, collagen-protruding lips, surgically narrowed noses, taut jaws - who look like sisters from another planet.
It's like that futuristic Sylvester Stallone movie "Demolition Man," set in 2032, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as president and Taco Bell as the sole survivor of the Franchise Wars.
In the future, there will be only one face. And if the Oscars are predictive, there will be only one body - big chest, skinny body - and one style. It was bizarre how actress after actress came out in the same mermaid silhouette: a strapless sheath with a trumpet-flared or ruffled skirt.
Where are the good old wardrobe malfunctions of Cher and Barbra?
In decades past, each top glamour girl aimed for a signature face and measurements, a trademark voice, a unique walk. You never saw Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner showing up in the same dress, or Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe looking like a pair of matching candles.
In some wacky, self-defeating conspiracy, stylists have joined forces with surgeons to homogenize today's actresses so it's hard to tell one from another; the Oscars had a safe, boring, generic look. Top female stars who have had a lot of work done start looking like one another on magazine covers, and being confused for one another at publicity events.
Chris Rock was right: star power is in short supply in a town where women would rather be conventional than individual. It's the same problem Hollywood has making movies: too much cloning, not enough originality.
As Shakespeare wrote of the ultimate glamour girl, Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."
Women have become so fixated on not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
posted by decemberx 10:05 AM[edit]
The New York Times > Washington > New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans Really??? All those clueless sheep who voted to "re"-elect the Chimp are just now figuring this out?!?!? It's a little late now. I can sit back and say "I told you so" but unfortunately, he's f'n up my life too.
posted by decemberx 9:43 AM[edit]
Television Obscurities - Keeping Obscure TV From Fading Away Forever
posted by decemberx 10:24 AM[edit]
The Smirking Chimp Ask not at whom the chimp smirks — he smirks at you.
"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"!"
posted by decemberx 10:12 AM[edit]
President George Bush's ''Ownership Society'' - Independent Media TV
posted by decemberx 10:02 AM[edit]
Photos It's Sideshow Bob!
posted by decemberx 12:12 PM[edit]
Drew Barrymore What the hell is Cruella de Ville doing in this picture? Is that Susan Lucci? A "furry" wannabe? WTF??
Another picture with that scary person in it...
posted by decemberx 11:51 AM[edit]
Photos Kate Winslet looks great, but what is up with the scary woman behind her!!!! If you are large, it's a good bet that gray is not a good choice for your outfit......
posted by decemberx 11:40 AM[edit]
united.com - Restricted articles damn, I can't take my straight-edge razor or my hockey stick on the plane... what will I do????
posted by decemberx 1:28 PM[edit]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Feel free to be outlandish and bizarre today, DEE. Let loose from reality and enjoy a much freer headspace. Rent a couple movies, or better yet, make your own. Buy a new outfit for your wardrobe and give your imagination a touching up by breaking out the finger paints and decorating your bathroom walls. Let your free-spirited nature come out and play. Share your greatest fantasies with others and let your daydreams dictate your actions of the day.
you gotta love a horoscope like that...
posted by decemberx 12:53 PM[edit]
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