Huskerzoo

On 5/2/2018 at 1:26 AM, Edison's Enemy said:

 

On 4/23/2018 at 12:30 AM, PasstheDamnBallGuy said:

 

What do you mean by this? The VA has not approved or studied marijuana in any form as far as I'm aware. And yes they do have insanely high suicide rates, partly because of their archaic stance on drugs. Their stuborness and ignorance cost so many lives. 

 

You keep talking about studies, but the problem is that the government is only barely beginning to allow marijuana to be studied and still its a huge hassle because its still schedule 1. If you want anecdotal evidence then just look around you. Half the country is using it and functioning just fine. Also just because someone is relying on a drug doesn't immediately mean that its terrible and is ruining their life. I'd like to see how this country functioned if they outlawed caffeine for 1 month.  Everyone has things they use to cope. Some people just have the unfortunate circumstance of relying on something that is caught up in political BS and misinformation. 

Studies on marijuana can be difficult in an experimental setting, but if you're not administering the drug it's doable. There's an R01 going on at the University of Washington looking at the effects of exposure therapy on individuals who regularly use marijuana. Data aren't out yet but I'm fairly sure no one in that study has killed themselves. It's a naturalistic observation but it's still good data. As a treatment itaelf most data aren't going to be great yet, especially since the marijuana that you can buy from the government significantly deviates in potency than that you would find at a dispensary. 

With all of that said. Once I'm not at an airport I'm going to branch off the marijuana conversation as we should be talking about Gregory. 

On 5/5/2018 at 12:20 PM, Warrior10 said:

Don't have to change it for me Mav, but it appears he ran a 4.59 at a sparq verified camp last year. 

https://www.theopening.com/national-leaderboard

I updated it for us. 

3 hours ago, knapplc said:

Brown shoes with blue pants/suits looks stupid.

All shades or just some? 

1 hour ago, deedsker said:

The excitement with bitcoin is a decentralized place to hold money, no need for a bank, make transactions across the globe, no need to exchange different currencies or be tied to the market of a particular currency, and do so anonymously.

 

The reason you keep hearing about it is that people made a whole bunch of money getting in a the ground level and the value skyrocketed. It has become mainstream to look into investing into the multitude of different players in the game since bitcoin and a few others hit some form of legitimacy.

I'll second this. The decentralized idea is a huge draw for people. Right now when you spend money people start tracking you. Visa charges you fees, your bank charges you fees, you give data out. Things like that. Decentralization removes the power of banks and government. Right now, the dollar only works because we all say it works. What happens if the dollar fails due to a trade war or something like that? 

Here's a very basic primer. https://ripple.com/insights/the-case-for-more-decentralization/

I'm assuming we can take them at their best. Pre injury T-Mart I could've seen eventually getting to New York. Horrible throwing motion and everything, he was something else. 

31 minutes ago, Mavric said:

 

While I think that Duval is probably spinning it the right way, that second quote is completely wrong. 

7 hours ago, MichiganDad3 said:

Living in the Houston area means many Huskers games will not be televised, especially when the team is not ranked. In the last two years, that didn't bother me too much. I would usually listen to the web cast and gain insight from the board ... or just do something else. I can't bear to miss any games this year. The sports bars in the Houston area are not that desirable. Too much noise from other games, and uncomfortable seats. What are the best options for viewing all the Husker games? I am stuck with comcast cable.

I know that there are some husker bars in the area. Maybe that will be a little more palatable. If you figure out a good solution, let me know. I'll be in Houston almost every other weekend during the season. Wouldn't mind someone else doing the scouting for me. 

7 hours ago, dudeguyy said:

Do you think Ted Cruz realizes how hypocritical and tone-deaf this line of attack is?

 

 

Beto is awesome imo. I'm also of the thought that this is free publicity for Beto. We learned during the trump campaign that getting your name recognized counts for a lot.

All that said, this song annoys me a lot. His name is pronounced Bet-o not bay-toe. 

I've written two resolutions presented to the United Nations. 

2 minutes ago, ScottyIce said:

Yeah, but the majortiy of our fan base doesn’t follow recruiting as closely as we do on HB. 

 

So the average fan is going to say...

Hey, these two guys are from Nebraska and Frost said we are going to be #Homegrown but he couldn’t even land the 2 best prospects in our state?

 

I guess that was the real question from my post before. I realize they are tough pulls because they have roots elsewhere.

I thought I saw 17 SR’s on scholarship. Add in 3-4 for attrition at least and we are right around 24-25 for this class I would venture to guess.

I think the average fan doesn't look at where people are from. I think they just look at stars and say great. At the point you're looking at where guys are from, you probably know enough to know that the families of those guys aren't around. That transition goes pretty quickly with not a lot of middle ground imo. 

As for Nebraska fans, I think we have a little time before we run into the excitement going away. Right now, guys my age are having kids these are going to be kids raised by parents that got the glory years in their childhood. I think we have another 10 years or so before we start worrying about recruits from Nebraska not having a pull. 

17 minutes ago, Cdog923 said:

Kind of hard to believe this thread isn't about cheese fries yet. 

Please don't

49 minutes ago, huskerfan333157 said:

How many of those 20 win teams have only beat 1 team in the top 60?

Given that there's only 1 team on the list, this feels like a trick question. I'm gonna go with 7.

2 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I understand...at least up until they commit a crime.  For instance, you can't mandate alcohol treatment.....until someone gets arrested for DUI.

 

To me, how to deal with people who need treatment but refuse treatment, is quite possibly the biggest problem in all of this.

I would be very interested in knowing how other developed countries handle this.

There's a whole theory set up around identification and intervention that's really fascinating. See below, we try to do the same thing. However, group level intervention results in reduced precision in changing behavior. A good example was DARE. It was an attempt to change behavior, but it didn't work well. Everyone got it though which was good. If we developed better group level interventions that we include in school programming it could go a long way. You're starting to see some of this pop up in the form of mindfulness programs in school. Unfortunately, folks do not fully understand why we use mindfulness skills, so some of the benefits may be lost. This is a very important step for research, it's just difficult (and expensive) to track long-term outcomes of an infrequent behavior (e.g. homicidal acts of violence). 

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.med.uottawa.ca/sim/data/Images/Prevention_stages_e.gif&imgrefurl=https://www.med.uottawa.ca/sim/data/Prevention_e.htm&h=529&w=945&tbnid=Kq35e7cUiNHtEM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=211&usg=__dpAaO5GGbKnCkWqvuUqLrNE9Eyo%3D&vet=10ahUKEwiTps7nn6vZAhVFR6wKHbI5ApgQ9QEIMDAA..i&docid=4rkY1iSWJDD7yM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTps7nn6vZAhVFR6wKHbI5ApgQ9QEIMDAA 

3 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I fully understand the individual rights issues that were prevalent when we had large institutions that we put people in against their will.  So, we got rid of them.  But, I think it's also important to realize that this also causes other major issues in society.

 

Many people with mental issues are not going to voluntarily go into a treatment center.  But, they still need treated.

 

Society has got to figure out how to handle this.

I agree and disagree. I think people would benefit from treatment, but you cannot mandate treatment. Society would also benefit from people receiving treatment. Additionally, you can make the argument that most mental illness are just extreme manifestations of normal behavior. We need to teach foundational skills to keep, we need to de-stigmatize mental health services, and we need to work as a society to promote access to services. 

7 minutes ago, Comfortably Numb said:

If a train leaves Boston going 65 MPH and another train leaves San Diego going 49 MPH, what are the chances they are even on the same railroad track?

6.24? (I'm not always the best at math). 

38 minutes ago, commando said:

is it a smart idea to sell assault type weapons to teenage boys?   what % of these teenage boys are not mature enough to handle the responsibilty of said weapon?  would raising the legal age to own these weapons to 21 possibly help alleviate at least some of these school massacres?

This crosses over into a domain that I can't really answer (surrounding the intersection of developmental psychology and policy). 

I'm a pacifist. I don't like violence and while I can understand hunting guns actively scare me and I'd prefer that we limit access to them. That is to say that I'm biased here. However, I think "assault-style" needs to be operationally defined. The variables that seem important to me are things such as rate of fire and the damage produced by each round. I think it would behoove us as a country to use language that defines what we're scared of and why rather than a blanket term (such as assault style or mental illness...which realistically as I understand them can mean just about anything). 

To bounce back to your question. Age is a poor metric for any restrictions one way or another in my opinion. We set those guidelines to say "on average people at this age posses the skills we want for this behavior/action". If I was ever going to set an age limit on anything I would set that number at 25 in every case. At age 25, the prefrontal cortex has completed its development. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is most responsible for attention, complex planning, impulse control, and control of emotional reactions. Barring an age limit of 25, I would want to develop some sort of task that assesses emotional impulsivity.  

I do not think legal gun ownership by the individual fully addresses our concerns. It can certainly make things harder, but the same way kids still find ways to get alcohol or illegal drugs, if it's out there people will get it. To address happenings of school shootings I do believe that we need to make drastic changes to access to weapons such as what has been done in England and Australia. This will slowly change things, but it will take a lot of time and it will be a bumpy ride. I don't think this will happen as we have significant cultural variables that factor into a fear of a tyrannical government or invading foreign power that evoke a lot of fear from people. When you let fear instead of values guide action, you tend to get messy outcomes. 

34 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

What roll do you think deinstitutionalizing people with mental health problems has lead to problems such as homeless and crime?

 

Are there other countries that treat mental health in a much better way that you can point to as what we need to move towards?

Institutionalization is an issue with a lot of information around it that you need to take into account. First, we don't really have institutions anymore, we have in-patient treatment facilities. The majority of people that are put into an in-patient setting are there voluntarily. This is important because to put someone in this type of treatment facility without their consent is taking away their constitutional rights (freedom) that are usually only taken away in the event that you violate the law. 

According to the 2010 annual homeless assessment report suggests that 46% of individuals in shelters (where we can collect data) can be diagnosed with severe mental illness or a substance/alcohol use disorder. We also know that crime/violence is strongly correlated with substance/alcohol use.  While correlation doesn't imply causation, it seems like a reasonable step to work towards a system where we maximize access to treatment and assess the impact on homelessness and crime. 

With regards to macro-level treatment, I'm pretty naive about other countries ways of approaching treatment. I specialize in understanding what it is about treatment that makes a difference. So I can't say there's a way another country does things that we should emulate. What I can say is that there's a general thing that I think we should teach everyone (school age kids being the first group). Namely, we should work on validating feelings even if we don't understand or agree with why they are happening. Additionally, we should work on accepting feelings instead of working to teach people how to get rid of feelings or ignore them. There's a strong evidence base to point to that would suggest that many problems in mental health are an artifact of ourselves or others not accepting our feelings. 

24 minutes ago, NUance said:

Anything?  Well, okay.  The entirety of my knowledge in psychology comes from the psych 181 class I took my freshman year at UNL.  But I remember one chapter in particular that described a rat maze study.  I have a two part question about that study:   

 

1) The study concerned a rat maze experiment with two groups of rats and a control group.  Group 1 was trained to run a maze to reach a food reward.  After a number of cycles their maze times improved significantly.  Then Group II and Group III (control group) were put through the same learning process.  Group II learned the maze faster than control Group III by a statistically significant amount.  The difference was that before maze training of Groups II and III, the Group II mice were fed the brains of the Group I mice who had previously learned the maze.  Eating the brains of the Group I mice who had already learned the maze made the Group II mice learn it faster.  

 

2)  Where can I purchase human brains?  Preferably from smart people?

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ypwjev/the-brain-market-how-to-acquire-brains-both-legally-and-illegally

22 minutes ago, zoogs said:

Thanks for starting this thread, zoo. 

 

One of the things that always comes up in response to another slaughter-by-firearm is the idea that the fault lies in inadequate mental health treatment. Do we have more of a "mental health" problem in the US than in other countries? Are people with various "mental health" issues more dangerous and likely to become violent criminals? How often does a severe "mental health issue" go undiagnosed until after the fact? 

Happy to offer something of interest. 

Question 1: Does the USA have more of a mental health problem than other countries:

To answer your question, I think it's extremely important to understand mental health and mental illness. The too long didn’t read is, it’s really hard to tell, but it’s possible (though there may be a better explanation, see below). In a 2004  study published in the Journal of the American Association, The World Mental Health Survey Consortium found “The prevalence of having any WMH-CIDI/DSM-IV disorder in the prior year varied widely, from 4.3% in Shanghai to 26.4% in the United States, with an interquartile range (IQR) of 9.1%-16.9%. Between 33.1% (Colombia) and 80.9% (Nigeria) of 12-month cases were mild (IQR, 40.2%-53.3%). Serious disorders were associated with substantial role disability. Although disorder severity was correlated with probability of treatment in almost all countries, 35.5% to 50.3% of serious cases in developed countries and 76.3% to 85.4% in less-developed countries received no treatment in the 12 months before the interview. Due to the high prevalence of mild and subthreshold cases, the number of those who received treatment far exceeds the number of untreated serious cases in every country.”

A 2014 meta-analysis published in the international journal of epidemiology published by Steel et al., supported this conclusion. “There was also evidence of consistent regional variation in the prevalence of common mental disorder. Countries within North and South East Asia in particular displayed consistently lower one-year and lifetime prevalence estimates than other regions. One-year prevalence rates were also low among Sub-Saharan-Africa, whereas English speaking counties returned the highest lifetime prevalence estimates.”

So why am I skeptical?

The DSM-5 (Diagnostics and Statistics Manual; and the previous iterations) is a document that was designed as a descriptive rather than explanatory text. To make a diagnosis, you observe a set of behaviors and you say "oh we call these things occurring together major depressive disorder". This is in the direct contrast to the medical model which is explanatory where you observe a set of behaviors and say "You're doing this because you're depressed". Within psychology, there is more or less a consensus to reject the medical model. There is ongoing research to justify the medical model that is primarily conducted by psychiatrists but so far the results do not support an underlying disorder (equivalent to having a virus or bacterial infection) that would explain alterations in human behavior. 

The rest of the world (for the most part) uses a different standard of diagnosis which is the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) manual. There have been continued efforts to synchronize these texts, but I do not believe they're at 100% (not my specialty area). What this means is that even from our starting point what we in the USA recognize as a disorder or mental illness is not always (though it is most of the time) what other parts of the world view as mental illness. That is to say, we're comparing apples to something that's very similar to an apple, but not quite an apple. 

The next thing we have to understand why people are diagnosed. If we look at diagnostic criteria for a disorder, you regularly encounter something like this: there are 12 possible symptoms, if you endorse 8 of them you “have” the disorder, if you diagnose 7, you don’t. This doesn’t mean that people who are sub-clinical aren’t distressed. It just means that they don’t meet that criteria. To go back to our medical model example, imagine going to the doctor with a bunch of symptoms that are similar to the flu, but you’re told you come back negative for the flu. Would you expect insurance to pay for your flu treatment (that they don’t think you need…because you don’t have the flu)? So psychologists and others will routinely have some flexibility in diagnosis in order to give distress individuals access to treatment. This artificially inflates numbers. It’s also important to note that lots of people just plain suck at diagnosing. You’ll get a lot of things like PTSD diagnosis for individuals who experienced a “social trauma” which is not a diagnostic criteria. The bad diagnosis problem is further complicated by the people who give the most diagnoses and treatment; primary care providers. Even psychiatrists don’t’ receive any training in mental health until after they’re done with med school. Most PCPs have a very limited understanding of mental health despite the fact they are almost always the first point of contact. They want to prescribe meds to help (that’s the tool they have), so they need to provide a diagnosis that justifies the use of meds. All in all, the impact of our insurance system has a HUGE impact on diagnostic over expansion.

Question 2: Are people with various “mental health” issues more dangerous?

The long and short is no. You’ll see certain symptom presentations that do predict an uptake in this such as paranoid features and command hallucinations (a voice telling you to do something).

However, research suggests that overwhelmingly individuals diagnosed with a mental health disorder and likely to be the victims of a violent crime rather than the person who commits the crime. The biggest predictors of violent behavior is a past history of violent behaviors and substance use. Violent acts are overwhelmingly committed against people you know as well instead of strangers. I need to step out of my office so I don’t have the time to find the citation right now, but I’ll search for that in a bit.

Question 3: “ How often does a severe "mental health issue" go undiagnosed until after the fact? “

Diagnosing “after the fact” cannot be done. The people who do this are acting unethically. To make a diagnosis you need to sit down and talk to the person. It’s the same reason people making diagnoses re: Trump or Charlie Sheen are full of BS. You cannot diagnose unless you sit down and talk to a person.

One of the things I'm most passionate about is mental health especially as it relates to treatment. I usually start talking when there's a school shooting to dispell some stigma surrounding mental health. I find that folks have a lot of questions or misunderstandings, I figure it wouldn't hurt to give everyone a chance to ask questions to their heart's content. No judgment, no bs, just my opinion and any science I can find to back it up. 

On 2/14/2018 at 9:54 PM, Making Chimichangas said:

I want to start out by saying that I do believe our climate is changing.  However...

 

Is it caused by humans?

 

Skeptical that there is global warming on Mars?

 

I do believe our climate is changing.  Are humans a (or the sole) cause?    

 

As for genetically modified food, I don't necessarily have a problem with it and can see the benefits of it.  Imagine crops that are resistant to drought, bugs, etc.  Seems like there's a lot of potential there.  And plus, anyone want to go back to seeds in grapes?  Or has anyone seen a non-GMO tomato?  It seriously looks nothing like the perfectly round, and bright red we're so used to seeing.

 

 

 

 

2

Re: climate change, I think this is part of the problem. Many people take the notion of man made climate change to think that humans are the only variable in play. No scientist is ever going to say that because by definition the natural laws that govern properties of the universe are in play. There are an inconceivable number of variables that are changing at any given point in time and frankly, we do not have the technology to capture these variables, the computing power to factor them in, or a model that would do them justice.  However, we have a pretty good understanding that the stuff that we're doing does contribute. 

To take a parallel from my field. There is much debate in the lay public about if "mental illness" or even simply human behavior is a nature or nurture issue. Turns out we know the answer and we've known for quite awhile. Human behavior consists of: Genes, biology, learning history, and current environment. Now there are different behaviors that have different contributions from each of these. If you look at DSM disorders, the only one that is accounted for by over 50% biological/genetic factors is alcohol use disorders. Schizophrenia is in the 40s, everything else below that. That doesn't mean that we should stop investigating how genetics contribute to behavior that interferes with a person's life, it simply means that none of these solutions are the end all be all of mental health. 

Climate change is undoubtedly going to be similar. At this time, the intervention point is going to be on man-made factors. This will remain true until we can do things like creating a Dyson sphere and frankly that is significantly down the road. 

29 minutes ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

I'm not going to debate the difficulties in defining mental illness, because I don't disagree with you.  Somehow drafting effective legislation on that would be difficult.

 

I was simply illustrating that on many gun control proposals, there is a large majority of Americans that hypothetically would be in favor of them.  Mental Illness just happened to be the one with the highest level of support from both parties, and from gun owners and non-gun-owners.  I mean, Friggin' 90%!

 

The fact that the NRA digs its heels in on any and all gun control legislation, even (hypothetical) proposals with 90% support, was my point.

 

I could have chosen some of the other gun control proposals with majority support from that poll, like:

 

1. Background checks for private sales and at gun shows = 84% in favor

2. Barring gun purchases by people on no-fly or watch lists = 83% in favor

3. Creating a federal database to track gun sales = 71% in favor, including 54% of gun owners

4. Banning assault weapons = 68% in favor, including 48% of gun owners

5. Banning high-capacity magazines = 65% in favor, including 44% of gun owners

 

But none of these initiatives will ever see the light of day because of the NRA's influence.  That was my point.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/americas-complex-relationship-with-guns/

I can get behind the idea that people are in support of control variables. I'm sorry for my strong reaction. There's so much stigma in mental health already that I get defensive quickly. My bad for missing the point. 

1 hour ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

Exactly.  I wonder if there is any support from Americans for laws that prevent the mentally ill from purchasing guns?....  Let's check a recent poll....

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/americas-complex-relationship-with-guns/

 

ONLY

89% of non-gun-owners

89% of gun-owners

90% of Democrats

88% of Republicans

 

would support that legislation, so it's fine that the NRA lobbies against it.  I mean, it's such a PARTISAN and CONTROVERSIAL proposal.

 

SMDH

FFS, I tried to get ahead of this, but lets have the discussion.

How many of you know what a "mental illness" is? How many of you have any notion of the statistics surrounding violent crime associated with specific diagnoses? What about the "severely mentally ill" do you know what goes into that?

Do you really want to rely on 18 year olds to say someone else has "mental issues" because I can promise you even a good chunk of my master's students have no clue. 

Let's do a quick knowledge check before we advocate for something because I'd wager really good money that this isn't going to work out well for the side of the general consensus. 

5 minutes ago, Making Chimichangas said:

There is no way to predict when and where these tragedies will occur.

 

What are we supposed to do?  Pre-emptively arrest people on the idea that they might do something like this?

 

I have no idea what the solution is, or could be.

 

 

 

You look at the variables that are different between our country and others where this doesn't happen. You systematically manipulate them and see what the outcome is. Unfortunately there is going to be many situations where the cat is out of the bag. 

I think England is a country to look at as a model for changes. The intervention has to be environmental. 

I'll try to get in before the issue comes up: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=Beauty&utm_campaign=kirstie-alley-las-vegas-shooter-stephen-paddock-psychiatric-medications

"Our brief review suggests that connections between mental illness and gun violence are less causal and more complex than current US public opinion and legislative action allow. US gun rights advocates are fond of the phrase “guns don’t kill people, people do.” The findings cited earlier in this article suggest that neither guns nor people exist in isolation from social or historical influences. A growing body of data reveals that US gun crime happens when guns and people come together in particular, destructive ways. That is to say, gun violence in all its forms has a social context, and that context is not something that “mental illness” can describe nor that mental health practitioners can be expected to address in isolation."