Nautilus Magazine: Why Your Biology Runs on Feelings

As for the idea, it is very simple: feelings have not been given the credit they deserve as motives, It is true that humans still make good use and greatly benefit from automatic controls: The value of glucose in the bloodstream can be automatically corrected to an optimal range by a set of complex operations that do not require any conscious interference on the part of the individual. The secretion of insulin from pancreatic cells, for example, adjusts the level of glucose. In humans and in numerous other species endowed with a complex nervous system, however, there is a supplementary mechanism that involves mental experiences that express a value. The key to the mechanism is feelings. [...]

The alignment of pleasant and unpleasant feelings with, respectively, positive and negative ranges of homeostasis is a verified fact. Homeostasis in good or even optimal ranges expresses itself as well-being and even joy, while the happiness caused by love and friendship contributes to more efficient homeostasis and promotes health. The negative examples are just as clear. The stress associated with sadness is caused by calling into action the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and by releasing molecules whose consequence is reducing homeostasis and actually damaging countless body parts such as blood vessels and muscular structures. Interestingly, the homeostatic burden of physical disease can activate the same hypothalamic-pituitary axis and cause release of dynorphin, a molecule that induces dysphoria. [...]

The point to be made is that feeling pain is fully supported by an ensemble of older biological phenomena whose goals are transparently useful from the standpoint of homeostasis. To say that simple life-forms without nervous systems have pain is unnecessary and probably not correct. They certainly have some of the elements required to construct feelings of pain, but it is reasonable to hypothesize that for pain itself to emerge, as a mental experience, the organism needed to have a mind and that for that to pass, the organism needed a nervous system capable of mapping structures and events. I suspect that life-forms without nervous systems or minds had and have elaborate emotive processes, defensive and adaptive action programs, but not feelings. Once nervous systems entered the scene, the path for feelings was open. That is why even humble nervous systems probably allow some measure of feeling. [...]

Ultimately, feelings can annoy us or delight us, but that is not what they are for. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social conditions of our lives. Feelings tell us about risks, dangers, and ongoing crises that need to be averted. On the nice side of the coin, they can inform us about opportunities. They can guide us toward behaviors that will improve our overall homeostasis and, in the process, make us better human beings, more responsible for our own future and the future of others.

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Nautilus Magazine: Antonio Damasio Tells Us Why Pain Is Necessary

That’s not the whole story. Of course, we couldn’t have minds with all of their enormous complexity without nervous systems. That goes without saying. But minds are not the result of nervous systems alone. The statement you quote reminds me of Francis Crick, someone whom I admired immensely and was a great friend. Francis was quite opposed to my views on this issue. We would have huge discussions because he was the one who said that everything you are, your thoughts, your feelings, your mental this and that, are nothing but your neurons. This is a big mistake, in my view, because we are mentally and behaviorally far more than our neurons. We cannot have feelings arising from neurons alone. The nervous systems are in constant interaction and cooperation with the rest of the organism. The reason why nervous systems exist in the first place is to assist the rest of the organism. That fact is constantly missed.  [...]

Very late in the game of life there’s the appearance of nervous systems. Now you have the possibility of mapping the inside and outside world. When you map the inside world, guess what you get? You get feelings. Of necessity, the machinery of life is either in a state of reasonable efficiency or in a state of inefficiency, which is most often the case. Organisms with nervous systems can image these states. And when you start having imagery, you start having minds. Now you begin to have the possibility of responding in a way that you could call “knowledgeable.” That happens when organisms make images. A bad internal state would have been imaged as the first pains, the first malaises, the first sufferings. Now the organism has the possibility of knowingly avoiding whatever caused the pain or prefer a place or a thing or another animal that causes the opposite of that, which is well-being and pleasure. [...]

Feelings triumphed in evolution because they were so helpful to the organisms that first had them. It’s important to understand that nervous systems serve the organism and not the other way around. We do not have brains controlling the entire operation. Brains adjust controls. They are the servants of a living organism. Brains triumphed because they provided something useful: coordination. Once organisms got to the point of being so complex that they had an endocrine system, immune system, circulation, and central metabolism, they needed a device to coordinate all that activity. They needed to have something that would simultaneously act on point A and point Z, across the entire organism, so that the parts would not be working at cross purposes. That’s what nervous systems first achieve: making things run smoothly.

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The Atlantic: The 'Underground Railroad' To Save Atheists

But in many countries across the globe, the danger of expressing non-belief comes directly from the state. According to a comprehensive report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, a U.K.-based non-profit that aims to promote the rights of non-religious people, there are currently 12 nations in which apostasy (including atheism) can be punished by death: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Pakistan, meanwhile, threatens the death penalty for blasphemy, which may include expressions of atheism. [...]

When faced with these threats, many people are understandably reluctant to admit their religious doubts even to their closest confidants, making it difficult to gauge how widespread atheism actually is around the world. But there are signs that the numbers of atheists are sizable. A 2012 Win/Gallup International Poll, for instance, found that 19 percent of people in Saudi Arabia claimed not to be religious, with 5 percent identifying as convinced atheists—roughly the same proportion as in the U.S. That’s a surprisingly high number given the difficulties of exploring non-religious thought in this country, and the true figure may be greater; even if their responses remain anonymous, many non-believers may still have been reluctant to declare their religious doubts openly. [...]

In one early study from 2011, he found that people assume that atheists are more likely to commit immoral acts such as stealing money from a wallet left on the sidewalk, or failing to give the correct insurance information after a road accident. Indeed, of all the groups he measured—including Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, feminists, and homosexuals—only rapists were considered to be similarly untrustworthy. He has since shown that people are also more likely to implicitly associate atheism with incest, bestiality, animal torture, even murder and mutilation. Opinion polls, meanwhile, reveal that nearly 50 percent of people would rather that their children did not marry an atheist (compared to 34 percent who declared that they would be disappointed if their child married a Muslim).

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Vox: Mexico and Hungary tried junk food taxes — and they seem to be working

According to their review of the scientific literature on junk food tax bills and laws, a federal tax on unhealthy foods would be both legally and administratively feasible in the US. Instead of a sales tax that would show up at the point of purchase, the researchers argue for an excise tax on junk food manufacturers. That should increase the shelf price of junk foods and beverages, and deter consumers from bringing unhealthy food choices to the checkout counter in the first place. [...]

In a recent evaluation of the Mexico junk food tax, people bought 7 percent less junk food than they would have if the tax hadn’t been imposed. That effect was even stronger than the 5 percent dent the tax made in the first year it was imposed. The researchers came to these conclusions by using buying patterns before the tax was imposed to predict future purchases, then compared that prediction to what was happening in Mexico.

The World Health Organization has looked at the Hungary tax, and found that junk food consumption decreased both because of the price increase and also the educational campaigns around the tax — an effect also seen with soda taxes. “Consumers of unhealthy food products responded to the tax by choosing a cheaper, often healthier product (7 to 16 percent of those surveyed), consumed less of the unhealthy product (5 to 16 percent), changed to another brand of the product (5 to 11 percent) or substituted some other food (often a healthier alternative).” [...]

However, as health researchers have long pointed out, “the costs of obesity arising from individuals’ poor nutritional choices are borne by society as a whole through taxes, lost productivity, and an overburdened health care system.” Some junk foods are also engineered to have addictive properties, like tobacco or alcohol, so you can make the argument that the government should in fact use regulation to nudge people away from them.

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Chicago Reader: The Plan for Transformation has transformed Chicago’s built environment

In the aughts, it was possible to observe the past and future of U.S. public housing policy on the same Chicago block. After decades of deferred maintenance, lawsuits, and even a federal takeover, the portfolio of properties owned and operated by the Chicago Housing Authority was undergoing the nation's largest public housing rehabilitation, demolition, and reconstruction project.  [...]

I've been photographing the transformation since I moved to Chicago's south side from Columbus, Ohio, in 2002. When I started this series, many south-side public housing projects like the Robert Taylor Homes, the largest of the projects along State Street, were shadows of what they once were. I spent time in and around south-side developments like Stateway Gardens, the Ida B. Wells Homes, and Randolph Towers, as well as pockets of the north side's Cabrini-Green development that felt like a community until nearly the end. [...]

As a photographer and sociologist, I emphasize the built environment as a key factor in—but also as a symbol of—the transformation of residents' lives. I hope that focusing on this earlier period of fundamental physical changes makes the intensity of the conversion clear. The images in this set show not only the stages of the shift to mixed-income developments, but also the complexity of the changes. After all, 17 years after the launch of the Plan for Transformation, the CHA is transforming the plan itself, increasing the services it provides while still continuing to work on the goal of moving public housing residents into mixed-income communities. At present, of the 16,846 households included in the Plan for Transformation, only 7.81 percent live in mixed-income residences. Instead, there's an array of housing situations for most of the public housing residents who lived in traditional CHA developments.  

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Quartz: The far-right was responsible for the majority of America’s extremist killings in 2017

White supremacists and other far-right extremists were responsible for 59% of all extremist-related fatalities in the US in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism. The ADL’s annual report—“Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2017”— found that the number of murders conducted by white supremacists US more than doubled last year, compared to 2016. [...]

In total, extremists killed at least 34 people in 2017. The far-right accounted for 59% of these deaths, or 20 deaths. The report linked several killings to the alt-right movement, which expanded and moved its operations from the internet into the physical world last year. The chaos in Charlottesville, where a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed and dozens were injured after a car driven by a white supremacist plowed into a group of pedestrians, marked the return of neo-Nazi street confrontations. The shift in tactic raises “the likely possibility of more such violent acts in the future,” the report notes.

Over the last decade, 71% of domestic extremist related killings in the US were linked to right-wing extremists, while Islamic extremists committed 26% of the killings, the report notes. An Islamic extremist committed the single deadliest incident in 2017: the New York City vehicle ramming attack killed eight people. Left-wing extremists and those who didn’t fall in the previous two categories carried out the other 3% of deaths. 2017 was the second year in a row in which black nationalists committed murders in the US.

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Vintage Everyday: JFK’s Assassination: Who Was the Mysterious Babushka Lady?

The Babushka Lady is an unknown woman present during the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy who might have photographed the events that occurred in Dallas' Dealey Plaza at the time President John F. Kennedy was shot. Her nickname arose from the headscarf she wore, which was similar to scarves worn by elderly Russian women (бабушка – babushka – literally means "grandmother" or "old woman" in Russian).  [...]

Conspiracy theories involving Babushka Lady proliferate, with some theories holding more merit than others. Some say she was a Russian spy, an assassin holding a camera gun, a secret service agent, or a man dressed as an older woman (her wide stance for example, as seen in Muchmore's film, could be viewed as a bit unusual for a woman in the 1960s—especially one dressed in a time-appropriate dress and trench).

Because it had been raining earlier that morning, some women in Dealey Plaza wore scarves on their heads; but, the rain had stopped at 10 a.m., and since the shots weren’t fired until 12:30 p.m., Babushka Lady wasn’t wearing a scarf to shield herself from active rain. Perhaps she was holding binoculars rather than a camera, which would explain why her photographic or video footage has never been found. But because she never came forward to tell law enforcement what she saw (unlike other spectators who witnessed the shots being fired), her identity (and what she may know) remains a mystery.

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Quartz: Europe’s solution to the drug crisis is working. Why won’t America follow it?

Parker knew that community programs that distributed clean syringes in Europe had been having success at preventing HIV transmission. But in the US, the notion of giving drug users sterile instruments to inject their drugs was met with resistance by both high-ranking government officials as well as local community leaders. From their perspective, supporting what became known as needle or syringe exchange programs also meant supporting — or even encouraging — injection drug use. Government funds couldn’t go near such heresy, despite evidence showing that such programs do not increase drug use. [...]

In 2016, over 60,000 people in the US died from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For context, that’s more people dead than during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 2005. Having reported on the overdose crisis for years, I fear these deaths aren’t being comprehended. These aren’t just numbers from a government report. Just two weeks ago in Chicago, my friend Mike, a 27-year-old getting his master’s in social work at the University of Chicago, died from an overdose. He’ll be counted as one among tens of thousands who died in 2017, which is expected to surpass the death rate from 2016. [...]

The number one driver of overdose deaths in America isn’t prescription painkillers or even heroin; it’s illicitly manufactured fentanyl, a super-potent opioid several times stronger than heroin. Ciccarone has told me that we’re no longer in the midst of an “opioid epidemic,” so much as what he calls a “poisoning crisis.” The heroin supply is more dangerous than it’s ever been, which makes the need for safe injecting spaces all the more urgent.

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Jakub Marian: Life expectancy at birth by region in Europe

The following map shows the life expectancy at birth of European countries by NUTS 2 regions (based on data by Eurostat from 2015). Eurostat does not collect data for all European countries; country-level statistics can be seen here.

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