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An Intervention for Malibu

Malibu, Calif. -- Cliffside, Summit, Milestones, Seasons. The names suggest New Age spas or, perhaps, recent-vintage vineyards. They sprawl across the scrubby foothills of this storied coastal town and survey its expensive, eroding beaches, their comforts rivaling those of world-class resorts.

They promote their privacy and exclusivity even as they bask in the reflected glory of their celebrated patrons. (Anyone who passed a newsstand last month knows that Lindsay Lohan spent her summer vacation at Cliffside.) And they’re spreading. As of July, there were 35 state-licensed drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities in this city (population 12,645), in addition to a multiplying number of unlicensed sober-living homes.

Question: What are Malibu’s only growth industries? Answer: Winemaking and sobriety. The locals may have a sense of humor about the situation, but that doesn’t mean they are happy with it. They fret that the playground of the rich and famous is turning into the capital of detox for the rich and famous. “The rehabs are overwhelming our neighborhoods,” Lou La Monte, a Malibu city councilman, recently said. “We have safety issues, noise issues, traffic issues. We’re going to take our city back.”

The largest and most expensive treatment center here is called Passages, which sits on a bluff across the Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean in the Sycamore Park neighborhood. Passages’ 35 clients live in several palatial residences scattered across a 10-acre campus that includes two pools overlooking the ocean, a tennis court and a glass-enclosed gym. Guests receive “integrative holistic treatment” that eschews traditional 12-step recovery methods in favor of such ministrations as hypnosis, life-purpose counseling and sound therapy. Marc Jacobs was a Passages client, as was Mel Gibson. Treatment starts at $64,000 a month. (...)

Blame the Malibu Model for it all. Fifteen years ago, Richard Rogg, a real estate developer who turned to treating substance abuse after kicking a cocaine habit, opened Malibu’s first drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. From the beginning, Promises Malibu, originally housed in two rambling Mediterranean-style residences in the Big Rock area, was meant to serve as an alternative to hard-line traditional programs. Promises offered customized care — drawing on psychotherapy and holistic practices like yoga, meditation, and biofeedback — in vacationland surroundings. Mr. Rogg registered Malibu Model as a service mark for his treatment plan.

Lots of high-octane substance abusers embraced this model. That van containing Mr. Affleck, Mr. Downey and Charlie Sheen belonged to Promises. Britney Spears and Diana Ross are graduates. Promises grew: there are now five houses (and three pools) accommodating 24 rehab patients. Their daily regimen revolves around a therapy session (group or individual) in the morning and two in the afternoon. These are broken up by meals prepared by a chef (specialties include lobster tail and osso bucco) and complemented by optional activities like massage, tennis lessons and equine therapy. There are also excursions to A.A. meetings, a local gym and a beauty salon.

The Malibu Model proved to be a highly marketable paradigm. A surge in prescription drug use, along with a 2000 state statute promoting treatment rather than jail time for drug offenders and lax state licensing procedures, fueled a sharp increase in residential rehab centers. Nowhere was the growth more significant than in Malibu, whose setting and high-profile inhabitants, detoxifying or not, provided free advertising for the programs. By 2007, there were two dozen treatment centers in the city.

“Why Malibu? Because they can charge the big prices here,” Mayor Joan House said. While 85 percent of drug and alcohol treatment programs in the United States are nonprofit ventures, the luxury facilities in Malibu are commercial operations. Room tabs at the better-known centers make the Four Seasons look like a discount chain: rates start at around $60,000 a month and can exceed $100,000 a month for V.I.P. accommodations like private rooms or pet boarding. (By comparison, Hazelden, the 64-year-old treatment center network founded in Minnesota, charges as much as $32,000 a month.)

by Peter Haldeman, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Gary Hovland

Priscilla Ahn

[ed. Thanks, Deb]

[ed. Rain delay: Seattle vs. 49er's (lightening delay, actually). Despite the general perception that it rains all the time, we've had over two months of hot, beautiful weather this summer in the PNW. Kind of nice to see a little precipitation again (except maybe for the folks at Century Link field tonight.]

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Hawaii Tells Woman to Change Her Name to Fit on Driver's License

[ed. Worth watching just to hear the local reporter pronounce her name (flawlessly).]

Janice Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele has a really long last name. She got it from her late husband, and the state of Hawaii wants her to change it since it won’t fit on her driver’s license.

by Jon Aravosis, Americablog |  Read more:

Mimi Tong Extended Coastline I, 2007.
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The Gift Shift: What's Social About Social Media?

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the cover art of the July 23rd issue of the New Yorker [ed. 2012] is a critical disquisition. A middle class family poses for a photo on a sunny tropical beach. Given that this is the New Yorker, we can assume that they are Americans citizens, perhaps in Hawaii or the Bahamas. Presumably they are on holiday. The point that is implied by the image is that, whoever and wherever they are, their attention is somewhere else. Instead of celebrating the moment and being together, they have their heads bent over their mobile phones, texting, tweeting, checking status updates… Who knows, perhaps they are checking the weather. Whatever they are doing, they are not engaging with one another.

The irony is palpable. To bring it into focus, let’s assume that these folks are using social media. Viewed this way, the image calls to mind a common criticism of social media. Social media, it is said, isolates us from one another even while it brings us together. In my classes on Philosophy and Social Media, I hear versions of this criticism all the time. Social media makes us slaves to our gadgets. It commits us to spending valuable time isolated from the people around us, texting, tweeting, posting, or just surfing feeds. The nub of it is that social media, in practice, is a solitary pursuit. Social media is supposed to bring us together, but in reality it sets us apart.

This criticism has merit. What worries me is how quickly people leap from this observation to the conclusion that social media isn’t social at all. It is true that there is a solitary aspect to social media. Anyone who has shared a train with a troop of early morning commuters knows that in public spaces, people use their mobiles as a means of isolating themselves from the people around them. Still, this shouldn’t lead us to question the social dimension of social media per se. On a behavioural level, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are things that we do independently of one another. Understood on a psychological level, however, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are not isolated activities at all. Tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are activities that we undertake in the presence of crowds. Insofar as they are informed by thought and invested with feeling, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are intrinsically social activities.

Take another look at the picture of the family on the beach. I want you to imagine that each of these people is enjoying a unique online social experience. We might criticise them for their decision to engage with virtual crowds when they might otherwise be enjoying a special moment with their nearest and dearest. But setting aside this rebuke, think against the grain of the artist’s intentions and imagine that you are looking at four socially engaged individuals. There is no denying that this is a possibility. Why is it, then, that when we see people in the presence of one another using social media, we think first of all of the social experiences that they are missing out on having, rather than wonder what excellent experiences they are enjoying online? Why is it that when we see an image like this one, we immediately assume that we are looking at people who arenot engaged in a fulfilling social pursuit? Why do we devalue online social experiences?

It is true that not all online social experiences are fulfilling. But online social experiences can be fulfilling, and so we shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. If we do dismiss online social experiences out of hand, it is probably because we don’t understand what makes them fulfilling in the first place. Many people take completely the wrong perspective on online social experiences. They misunderstand the nature of these exchanges. It is no wonder that they take a poor view of them.

Usually when we think about social life, we think about individuals meeting with other individuals in groups. Individuals meet with others to chat, exchange information, and transact with each other in various ways. This way of understanding social life is second nature to us, to the extent that we find it difficult to think about social experiences in any other way. Social media, on this view, provides a virtual space for individuals to meet with other individuals to undertake more or less the same kinds of activities that they conduct face-to-face. But since they are not face-to-face, these experiences can only be less engaging and rewarding than their real world alternatives.

Is this how you understand social media? If the answer is ‘yes’, it’s time for a conceptual upgrade.

by Tim Rayner, Philosophy for Change |  Read more:

Image: Mark Ulriksen

MGMT

[ed. I like this version by Josie Charlwood the best.]

John Evans, Regal Ceremony
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From Cat Food to Sushi Counter: The Strange Rise of Bluefin Tuna

In January, a single bluefin tuna was purchased by a wealthy restaurateur in Tokyo for nearly $2 million—something of a publicity stunt yet indicative of just how much the modern sushi industry values this creature. Japanese chefs handle cuts of red bluefin flesh as reverently as Italians might a white truffle, or a French oenophile a bottle of a 1945 Bordeaux. And a single sliver of the fat, buttery belly meat, called toro, or sometimes o-toro, in Japanese, can pull $25 from one’s wallet. The bluefin, truly, is probably the most prized and valuable fish in the world.

But it wasn’t always this way. Several decades ago, the very same fish were essentially worthless worldwide. People caught them for fun along the Atlantic Coast—especially in Nova Scotia, Maine and Massachusetts—and though few ever ate their catch, they didn’t usually let the tuna go, either. During the height of the tuna sport fishing craze in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, the big fish were weighed and photographed, then sent to landfills. Others were mashed up into pet food. Perhaps the best of scenarios was when dead bluefin tuna—which usually weighed at least 400 pounds—were dumped back into the sea, where at least their biomass was recycled into the marine food web. But it all amounts to the same point: The mighty bluefin tuna was a trash fish.

The beef-red flesh, many say, is smelly and strong tasting, and, historically, the collective palate of Japan preferred milder species, like the various white-fleshed fishes and shellfish still popular among many sushi chefs. Other tuna species, too—including yellowfin and bigeye—were unpopular in Japan, and only in the 19th century did this begin to change. So says Trevor Corson, author of the 2007 book The Story of Sushi. Corson told Food and Think in an interview that an increase in tuna landings in the 1830s and early 1840s provided Tokyo street vendors with a surplus of cheap tuna. The meat was not a delicacy, by any means. Nor was it even known as a food product. In fact, tuna was commonly called neko-matagi, meaning “fish that even a cat would disdain.” But at least one sidewalk sushi chef tried something new, slicing the raw meat thin, dousing it in soy sauce and serving it as “nigiri sushi.”

The style caught on, though most of the chefs used yellowfin tuna. Occasionally, chefs made use of large bluefins, and one trick they learned to soften the rich flavor of the meat was to age it underground for several days. The way Japanese diners regarded raw, ruddy fish flesh began changing. This marked a turning point in the history of sushi, Corson says—but he points out that the bluefin tuna would remain essentially unwanted for decades more.

by Alastair Bland, Smithsonian | Read more:
Image: Steven Nelson, Flickr

Anton Marrast, Slon Mag #5 cover, 2013
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Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights
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The Other Sea

It was 500 years ago in a tiny square of the world on the Caribbean that Vasco Núñez de Balboa first heard of the “other sea”. Balboa and his fellow conquistadors had been inching their way around Hispaniola for 13 years, slaughtering, pillaging, stealing gold off the necks of local women, baptizing tribal leaders, making friends. It was a day in early 1513. Balboa’s men were resting up after successfully conquering the lands of a tribal leader they named Comagre, and whining about the amount of gold they had been allotted. Comagre’s son Panquiaco happened to be lingering nearby. It was one thing for these men to invade their land in the name of the Spanish crown, murdering and plundering as they went. But this petty display of greed was the last straw. Panquiaco jumped up in a fit of rage (or so the story goes) and knocked over the scales used to measure the gold. He then screamed at the Spanish men: "If you are so hungry for gold that you leave your lands to cause strife in those of others, I shall show you a province where you can quell this hunger.” Then Panquiaco told the Spanish of a wealthy kingdom just over the bend where everything was made of gold. The people of this kingdom were so rich, said Panquiaco, they ate off golden plates and drank from golden cups and worshipped in a temple of gold. This sounded pretty good to the conquistadors and Balboa made plans for the next expedition.

On September 1, 1513 Balboa set out along the Isthmus of Panama, the thin strip of land that links North and South Americas. He took with him around 200 Spaniards, a small brigantine, a flotilla of canoes, a handful of local guides and a pack of dogs. The party murdered their way through that isthmus until at last they reached a range of mountains that stretched along the Chucunaque River. The natives told them that, from the top of the mountains, they would see the South Sea (later known as the Pacific) on the horizon. At around 10 a.m. on the 25th of September (or possibly the 27th) in the year 1513, Balboa told his men to stand back. He wanted to ascend the mountain alone; he wanted the name Balboa to stand alone. Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached the top of the mountain by noon, and it was just like the locals said. The ocean was as boundless as it had been in his dreams. From that moment, Vasco Núñez de Balboa would be evermore known as the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean from the vantage of the New World. Not even Christopher Columbus, Balboa’s adventuring mentor, could say the same. Columbus was seven years dead and it was he, Balboa, who had “discovered” the Pacific. From then on, the Atlantic and the Pacific would be connected by the power of human aspiration. It’s not exactly a true story, but no matter. Conquests are always forged in the light of myth. Without mythology human beings just wouldn’t have the stomach for domination.

There is an anonymous 19th-century etching of Balboa standing up to his knees in Pacific waves. He wears a suit of armor and holds up his sword in defiance of geography, claiming the ocean for Spain with his eyes. He could be the Greek god Poseidon emerging from the spray, raising his trident over the quaking earth. They say that as Balboa and his surviving men stood high above the South Sea weeping with joy, the expedition’s chaplain intoned the Te Deum. The men took a tree and shaped it into a cross, surrounding it with a pyramid of stones. They carved crosses on the trees with their swords and they sang:

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of thy glory.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.

Here are a few facts about the Pacific Ocean. It is the biggest ocean by far. Four of our seven continents border the Pacific, and Antarctica would too if not for the Southern Ocean. The Pacific comprises 46% of the world’s water surface and one-third of its overall surface. This makes the Pacific Ocean bigger than all the Earth’s land area combined. The Earth is mostly water as we are mostly water, and if we think of ourselves as citizens of the world then all of us are children of the Pacific.

The moles of the new-built California towns, the endless Archipelagos, the skirts of Asiatic lands — all are washed by the same waves of the Pacific. That’s what Herman Melville wrote. “Here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.” The Pacific is the great Potter’s Field of four continents, wrote Melville — the Indian and the Atlantic are merely its arms. From the middle of the Pacific we could be floating in space, and human life would be just as significant. Crossing the Atlantic makes us feel important. Crossing the Pacific makes us feel anxious and small. In the peaceful Pacifico is a Ring of Fire. Beneath the Pacific lies the deepest, darkest hole in the Earth.

by Stefany Anne Golberg, The Smart Set | Read more:
Image: uncredited

Patients Take Control of Their Health Care Online

Not long ago, Sean Ahrens managed flare-ups of his Crohn’s disease—abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea—by calling his doctor and waiting a month for an appointment, only to face an inconclusive array of possible prescriptions. Today, he can call on 4,210 fellow patients in 66 countries who collaborate online to learn which treatments—drugs, diets, acupuncture, meditation, even do-it-yourself infusions of intestinal parasites —bring the most relief.

The online community Ahrens created and launched two years ago, Crohnology.com, is one of the most closely watched experiments in digital health. It lets patients with Crohn’s, colitis, and other inflammatory bowel conditions track symptoms, trade information on different diets and remedies, and generally care for themselves.

The site is at the vanguard of the growing “e-patient” movement that is letting patients take control over their health decisions—and behavior—in ways that could fundamentally change the economics of health care. Investors are particularly interested in the role “peer-to-peer” social networks could play in the $3 trillion U.S. health-care market.

“Patients sharing data about how they feel, the type of treatments they’re using, and how well they’re working is a new behavior,” says Malay Gandhi, chief strategy officer of Rock Health, a San Francisco incubator for health-care startups that invested in Crohnology.com. “If you can get consumers to engage in their health for 15 to 30 minutes a day, there’s the largest opportunity in digital health care.” (...)

Ahrens, a 28-year-old Web developer who was diagnosed at age 12, says he created the site out of frustration. Billions are spent testing drugs in elaborate clinical trials. But would a simple dietary change bring greater relief? Doctors often don’t know because no one has studied the question.

“As a patient, it’s extremely important to me to get the right information to treat my condition that’s unbiased by economics,” says Ahrens. “Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.” He says he built the site “to give the power to patients to study things that weren’t currently studied.”

by Ted Greenwald, MIT Technology Review |  Read more:
Image: uncredited

linda vachon, 3437828
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Collage by Beth Hoeckel
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Dina Litovsky
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The Case Against Larry Summers

Lawrence Henry Summers is one of the world's most eminent economists. He won the John Bates Clark Medal given every two years to the nation's best economist under 40—an award so competitive that some economists say it's as prestigious as a Nobel Prize. His fellow economists cite his work even more frequently than that of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. Summers also has more experience than any senior U.S. official in memory, including Bernanke, in dealing with the financial crises that have become the regular responsibility of Fed chairmen since the Great Depression. He started in the Reagan administration, when he was senior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers, then moved on to become Treasury secretary under President Clinton, and, finally, President Obama's chief economic adviser in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Summers holds mostly middle-of-the-road but profoundly informed views on finance that make him fairly uncontroversial as a prospective steward of the Fed's mandate, which is to control inflation, reduce unemployment, and guide economic growth.

So, on paper, Summers is a superb candidate to succeed Bernanke in a post that the brilliant 58-year-old Harvard professor has pined for since his earliest days in Washington, according to longtime associates. Obama is reportedly fond enough of Summers that he may name him in the next few weeks, passing on a chance to appoint Janet Yellen, the widely admired current vice chairwoman, who is said to be the other major contender, as the first female Fed chief in history.

And yet Summers is a very risky choice for chairman—far riskier than Yellen, who would undoubtedly win overwhelming confirmation and was recently rated the Fed's most accurate forecaster since 2009 on issues from growth to jobs to inflation.

The Federal Reserve chairman wields such enormous power, with so little accountability, that he or she is said to be the second-most-powerful person in government after the president. Decisions are habitually made in secret. The job requires a person of great personal tact, subtlety, and self-control. It requires someone who knows how to build consensus at the highest levels for the right kind of policies—someone who possesses the maturity and character to admit error and shift course when needed.

But, according to numerous accounts from those who have worked with him, Summers has often displayed the opposite attributes during his long career. Behind the scenes, he has used his power, combined with intellectual arrogance, to bully opponents into silence, even when they have been proved right. He has refused to allow his dissenters a voice at the table and adopted a policy of never admitting errors.

And Summers has made a lot of errors in the past 20 years, despite the eminence of his research. As a government official, he helped author a series of ultimately disastrous or wrongheaded policies, from his big deregulatory moves as a Clinton administration apparatchik to his too-tepid response to the Great Recession as Obama's chief economic adviser. Summers pushed a stimulus that was too meek, and, along with his chief ally, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he helped to ensure that millions of desperate mortgage-holders would stay underwater by failing to support a "cramdown" that would have allowed federal bankruptcy judges to have banks reduce mortgage balances, cut interest rates, and lengthen the terms of loans. At the same time, he supported every bailout of financial firms. All of this has left the economy still in the doldrums, five years after Lehman Brothers' 2008 collapse, and hurt the middle class. Yet in no instance has Summers ever been known to publicly acknowledge a mistake.

Wielded by a Fed chairman, those personal traits and policy attitudes are a potentially combustible mix at a time when the Federal Reserve has become, more than ever, the most powerful economic institution on earth, and when re-regulation of the global financial system is substantially in the hands of the Fed. The man whom Summers once considered a model chairman, Alan Greenspan, offers an example of the dangers of being too certain of one's views without much accountability. Back in 1994, Congress instructed the Fed to police unfair and deceptive practices related to mortgage loans. But because the chairman believed in minimal regulation, no rules were ever written; Greenspan quietly slapped down efforts by governors such as Ed Gramlich to warn him; and the Fed did little to intervene in the emerging subprime fraud.

There is no question about Summers's intellect and experience. But would he have the character, temperament, and maturity to listen to a naysayer enough to admit error and reverse course in the next crisis? His history suggests otherwise.

by Michael Hirsh, National Journal |  Read more:

Image via: CNN