MOTHER JONES: The remarkable thing about Humane Society of the United States’ latest factory farm video exposé is how banal it is. No illegal acts like “downer” animals being forced down the kill line with fork lifts, or getting their brains bashed in with a pickax. What we have here is the everyday reality of pigs’ lives on a factory farm, without regulations flouted or spectacular violence committed. It is abuse routinized and regimented, honed into a profitable business model.

The video looks at two aspects of the dirty business of raising thousands of pigs en masse in close quarters: 1) the way pregnant pigs live as they wait to have their litters; and 2) what happens to baby pigs with they’re weaned after just three days. Neither is for the squeamish. In case you couldn’t watch, the video illustrates the well-known, widespread practice of confining gestating pigs for months on end in 2 foot by 7 foot crates that deny them room to move or even turn around; and the ghastly (though perfectly legal) custom of snipping off baby pigs’ tails without use of painkillers.

A note on videos like this one. Factory animal farms routinely deny journalists and concerned citizens entry to animal factories, citing both proprietary and biohazard concerns. The USDA, which regulates meat production, has shown zero interest in educating the public about the conditions under which they’re meat is raised—much less in improving those conditions. So the few companies that US dominate meat production blithely go about their dirty business behind the cloak of bucolic supermarket labels—that is, they would do so if animal-welfare groups like HSUS didn’t keep sneaking investigators into factory farms posing as job seekers. MORE

You might not know it from the recent media focus, but there are photographers living and working in South Philadelphia not named Zoe Strauss. One of them is Ted Adams, who just unveiled an overview of his work stretching back to the 80s at the Robin Rice Gallery in the West Village. The small exhibit is an overview of Adam’s photography, some pieces dating back to the 90s. These’s nothing digital in this exhibit. Adams shoots with a vintage Leica and Kodak Tri-X film. He also processes his own film and prints in the darkroom at his house. In fact, Adam’s style can’t be achieved with digital cameras or Photoshop algorithms. He prefers what he calls “primitive analog functionality.” The photos are small, just 4 x 6 inches, and are presented uniformly within thick black frames that threaten to overwhelm them. His style is simple and focused, almost minimal. Each photo shows just one or two things that draw the eye, and the juxtapositions reveal just how thin the line is between the whimsical and the metaphysical: A bowler hat sits on a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower;  a picture of Gregory Peck from a Hitchcock film is glued to a bent, hand-painted mailbox; a dog sitting restfully amid a field of black boots lined like headstones; an urban wall with two public phones below of mural of a young woman in a bikini surfing a wave; a plain industrial building with no sign of life except for a large bright sign of the word Beyond. Ted Adams’ pictures capture those in-between moments when, for a split second, The Great Beyond can be glimpsed lurking just below the surface of everyday moments and ordinary things.  – MIKE WALSH

TED ADAMS’ WORK IS CURRENTLY ON DISPLAY AT THE ROBIN RICE GALLERY IN NEW YORK THRU FEB. 26

PREVIOUSLY: Q&A With Ted “E.C.” Adams

FRESH AIR

It’s no coincidence that Baratunde Thurston’s new memoir and satirical self-help book How to Be Black was slated for release on the first day of Black History Month. “I feel great about that,” Thurston tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I think we have a moment every year in our country where everyone buys black stamps and thinks more explicitly about black people and blackness, so it was a perfect month to release a book on this subject.” Thurston, a stand-up comedian and The Onion’s digital director, says that he doesn’t get as many gigs this month as one might think. “There aren’t as many black spokespersons to go around, so I’m happy to play that role from time to time,” he says. “But I think this year will probably be a little bigger than years past.” That’s because How to Be Black is partially a practical guidebook for anyone looking to befriend or work with a black person, become the next black president or challenge anyone who says they speak for all black people. But the book isn’t just filled with comedic advice. Thurston weaves together his comedy with thoughtful missives about his own education at Sidwell Friends and Harvard University, and his childhood in one of the worst crack-addled neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. His father was killed in a drug deal when Thurston was 6. His mother was what he describes as a “pan-African hippie type of woman who marched in the streets” and named him Baratunde as a way to “get back to Africa.”"My version of being black adheres as much to the stereotypes as it dramatically breaks from them,” he writes in How to Be Black. “And that’s probably true for most of you reading this: if not about blackness itself, then about something related to your identity. Through my story, I hope to expose you to another side of the black experience while offering practical, comedic advice based on my own painful lessons learned.” MORE

WASHINGTON POST: In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA. Consumer groups protested the appointment because Taylor had formerly served as a vice president for Monsanto, the controversial agricultural multinational at the forefront of genetically modified food. In recent days, a petition calling for the former Monsanto VP’s ouster is gaining steam. “President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor,” the petition on Signon.org reads. “Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when genetically modified organisms were allowed into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty.” Over the weekend, the petition was signed by thousands of people. At this writing, it has around 60,000 signatures of its 75,000 goal. Signees of the petition argue that Monsanto should not have influence at the FDA because it will hurt farmers and threaten plants and animals. They cite scientific research that has found genetically modified foods could be a cause for chronic illnesses or cancer in the U.S. The petition was launched by Frederick Ravid, a financial analyst in Atlanta who also has a blog devoted to spirituality. The petition calls Taylor’s appointment an example of a “fox watching the hen house.” Taylor’s position, which is currently deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA, includes ensuring that food labels contain clear and accurate information, overseeing strategy for food safety and planning new food safety legislation. He is the first individual to hold the position. Before he joined the FDA, Taylor was the vice president for Public Policy at Monsanto from 1998 to 2001. MORE

Monsanto control by firestone1105

NEW YORK TIMES: Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home early Wednesday morning in what appears to be a suicide, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county coroner’s office said. He was 75 years old. A person called the police from Mr. Cornelius’s house on Mulholland Drive in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood just before 4 a.m. and reported shots had been fired, a police spokesman, Chris No, said. When officers arrived, they were let into the house and found Mr. Cornelius lying lifeless on the floor with a gunshot wound to the head that appeared to be self-inflicted, said the Los Angeles County assistant chief coroner, Ed Winter. “Soul Train” was one of the longest-running syndicated shows in television history and played a critical role in spreading the music of black America to the world, offering wide exposure to musicians like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson in the 1970s and 1980s. “Don was a visionary pioneer and a giant in our business. Before MTV, there was ‘Soul Train.’ That will be the great legacy of Don Cornelius. His contributions to television, music and our culture as a whole will never be matched.,” said Quincy Jones, according to the Associated Press.  Mr. Cornelius, a former disc jockey, created the show in 1970 in Chicago on WCIU-TV and served as its writer, producer and host. Quickly becoming a success, the show was broadcast nationally in 1971, beginning its 35-year run. MORE

?UESTLOVE: i just wanna use my position to really let people know that next to Berry Gordy, Don Cornelius was hands down the MOST crucial non political figure to emerge from the civil rights era post 68. the craziest most radical thing of all is i don’t even consider Soul Train his most radical statement. yes the idea of the young black teenager NOT mired in legal trouble on the 6 oclock news getting camera time was a new idea to most…so of course the fact the U.S. really got its first vicarious look at our culture was amazing. but the TRUE stroke of genius in my opinion was how Don managed to show US how important we were. which was NOT an easy task. not by premiering the newest jam by james brown, not by focusing on the latest dance craze, not by the crazy outfits….ill tell you how Don really made a radical statement. and he himself acknowledges it: the commercials. MORE

GAMBLE & HUFF: “Don Cornelius and his creation of ‘Soul Train’ and its legacy had a great impact on American culture. Don’s vision allowed for African-American artists to be exposed to people all over the world through the power of television. We were glad to help Don Cornelius fulfill his dream and legacy by creating the theme song for his hit show. The ‘Soul Train’ and TSOP brands will forever be inseparable. We thank Don Cornelius for his tremendous contributions to the entertainment world. Our deepest sympathy goes out to Don’s family and everyone he touched.”

[Artwork by JAY BEVENOUR]

INQUIRER: Cardinal Anthony Joseph Bevilacqua, 88, whose 15 years as shepherd of the 1.5 million-member Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia was marked by both celebration and crisis, died in his sleep Tuesday night in his apartment at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood. After retiring in 2003, he left the cardinal’s residence on City Avenue for the apartment at the seminary and rarely appeared in public. Cardinal Bevilacqua was emblematic of the church to which he had devoted himself since age 14: progressive on some social-justice issues, staunchly orthodox on matters of doctrine and sexuality, and unfailingly deferential to the will of Rome. […] His most agonizing period was surely the clergy sex-abuse crisis that erupted in 2002 and culminated three years later in a searing indictment of his leadership. In September 2005, after a 40-month grand jury investigation into clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a report excoriating Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol for systematically allowing hundreds of abuser priests to go unpunished and ignoring the victims. The report named 63 priests working in the archdiocese who had abused children during the previous 50 years, and surmised there might have been 100 more whose crimes were concealed by murky record-keeping. “Sexually abusive priests were left quietly in place or ‘recycled’ to unsuspecting new parishes - vastly expanding the number of children who were abused,” the 418-page report concluded. Cardinal Bevilacqua did not respond publicly to the charges. His successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, called the report “very unfair” for not addressing abuse in other religious denominations and public institutions. Acquaintances described Cardinal Bevilacqua, already suffering some depression after his retirement, as devastated by the report. He rarely appeared in public afterward and granted no interviews. MORE

WASHINGTON POST: An indicted Catholic church official is showing signs he won’t take the fall alone for the priest abuse scandal in Philadelphia, with his lawyer saying Wednesday that a successor threw him “under the bus.” Monsignor William Lynn, 61, is the only official from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia facing trial for allegedly failing to remove accused predators from the priesthood. He served as secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004. Defense lawyers argue that Lynn took orders from then-Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and other superiors in the church hierarchy. Prosecutors hope to include dozens of old abuse allegations to show a pattern of conduct at the trial, which is scheduled to start in late March and last several months. One such case involves a West Chester University chaplain accused in 1994 of taking pictures of students in their underwear. He next became chaplain of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worked with a parish youth group and later admitted taking boys on overnight trips, one to Jamaica, before retiring to the New Jersey shore, prosecutors said. When a New Jersey diocese asked the Philadelphia archdiocese about the priest, Monsignor Timothy Senior allegedly wrote in a letter that Lynn, his predecessor, did not fully investigate complaints against the priest. “Maybe that’s an answer to why Monsignor Senior is not here (as a defendant). He obviously doesn’t mind throwing Monsignor Lynn under the bus,” defense lawyer Jeffrey Lindy argued. Prosecutors call the archdiocese “an unindicted co-conspirator” in the case. A 2005 grand jury report blasted Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, for their handling of abuse complaints, but they were never charged. Bevilacqua is now 88 and in failing health. A judge will hear more arguments Monday on whether 27 of the 63 priests described in that grand jury report can be referenced at Lynn’s trial. Prosecutors want to show that Lynn kept them on the job despite knowing of complaints stored in “secret archives” at the archdiocese. They have detailed the cases over a three-day pretrial hearing this week. The cases include a priest who allegedly pinned loincloths on naked boys playing Jesus in a Passion play, and whipped them, in keeping with the drama; a priest who held what prosecutors called “masturbation camps” at the rectory, having boys strip naked and teaching them to masturbate; and a pastor written up for disobedience for complaining to Bevilacqua about an accused priest being transferred to his parish. “I truly would love a jury to see how these were handled,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington said in court. “The more cases they see … the clearer the picture becomes.” MORE

CBS: Will Cardinal Bevilaqua’s death (see related story) affect the ongoing priest-abuse case?  Not much, says one legal expert who is very familiar with the case. There is now a gag order imposed on all parties in the case (related story), so neither the prosecution nor defense can make statements in reaction to Bevilacqua’s death. Bevilaqua underwent a deposition in November, and a judge this week overruled defense claims that he was not a competent witness (another related story). MORE

BY ZIVIT SHLANK Guitarist, composer, educator and 2011 Guggenheim fellow David “Fuze” Fiuczynski is the quintessence of authentic artistry. The self-proclaimed “black, funky, German expressionist,” by his own admission, tried tirelessly to fit into pre-ordained boxes early on. However, he soon realized that the music he was pursuing, despite feeling the opposite, didn’t exactly have the widest appeal. No matter, that hasn’t stopped him and in fact, it further fuels and intensifies his fire. He moved to NYC post-collegiate in the early 90s, and went on to record and perform with countless artists across the musical spectrum including John Medeski, Meshell NdegéOcello, Bernie Worrell, Steve Coleman and Philadelphia’s own Jamaaladeen Tacuma, among others. His most prolific baby to date, Screaming Headless Torsos, demands an adventurous spirit and a fearless, headfirst plunge into the unknown sonic stratosphere. Not the easiest plunge to make at first but once you do, you’re hooked, seduced by its bold and dynamic hypnosis. Interestingly enough, there are some parallels between Fuze and American Black Rock icon Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix, too, tried to fit into the box of the R&B scene, aka the Chittlin Circuit, in early 60s Nashville. He outgrew that and quickly realized that he wasn’t destined to play by anyone’s rules but his own. He moved to NYC in ’64, played sideman to the likes of Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. Two years later, the The Jimi Hendrix Experience was born and the rest is history. Call it divine intervention, but it seems as though it was serendipitously written in the stars that the worlds of Fuze and Hendrix would ultimately collide. Brace yourself, Philadelphia, and prepare to be electrified by Fuze and the Screaming Headless Hendrix, along with the Planet Microjam Institute Ensemble, as they re-imagine the life and music of Jimi Hendrix at the Painted Bride Arts Center tonight at 8pm! Phawker recently got on the line with Fuze to gain more insight.

PHAWKER: Let’s go back to those early days with the guitar. When did music cross that line from just listening to a learning experience? Who or what inspired you to make music?

DAVID: I started on piano, but I didn’t like it. When I was 13, my mom said, “you should play an instrument” as a way to broaden my horizons, she didn’t necessarily want me to have a career in music. We made a deal where I’d pick the instrument and the teacher. That’s when I started playing guitar and back then, I was happy if I could play the chords or a simple tune like “House Of The Rising Sun”. I was lucky enough to have been in a class with a guy whose older brother was a guitarist, this guy named Markus Wienstroer, one of the few people in Germany who’s making a living as a studio sideman. This is where I can say one teacher can really make a difference. I went to his house, he fixed up my guitar, and then he played me some bebop and I was just hooked. I started taking lessons with him and I’d leave after each one, I’d bike home with my guitar, and my head was filled with music. Early on, it wasn’t so much about being a musician then, but realizing that I just had a different way of listening to music. I would buy one record because of a good melody, another record because of a cool harmony and another because of a cool rhythm or style. Then I’d always be curious and think ‘well, what if I mixed all these elements together?’ I would talk to friends like this, and I just assumed everyone listened to music like that…but I quickly learned that I was the odd man out. As far as taking the step to become more than just a listener but a maker of the music, it wasn’t until fairly late, like around 19 or 20. I moved back to the states from German to attend Hampshire College in Massachusetts doing liberal arts, not really specializing in anything, but I ended up only taking music classes. I thought to myself ‘well, if this is what it is, then I might as well go for it.’ So I transferred to the New England Conservatory.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:Once upon a time, many months and Lana Del Rey posts ago, we asked Aubrey Plaza what was on her iPod. The Parks and Recreation actress tipped us off to the then-unreleased “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” from J. Tillman, formerly of the Fleet Foxes, and mentioned that she’d be starring in its video. Under the moniker Father John Misty, Tillman has released the song (now titled ”Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”) as the lead single off his forthcoming debut Fear Fun (out May 1), as well as a video to match. Named for one L.A.’s oldest burial grounds, the droney psych-rock dirge is a bit of a departure from Fleet Foxes’ fey forest-folk, but one that will likely please old fans nonetheless. MORE

NMA TV: Lana Del Rey’s new album Born to Die has been panned by Billboard, Spin, Pitchfork and Stereogum. Video Games, voted best song of 2011 by the Guardian, was the first we heard of Lana Del Rey, but subsequent performances, including an appearance on Saturday Night Life, have been terrible. Her performance on SNL was so bad Brian Williams wrote an email to Gawker calling her a “Brooklyn hippster [sic]” and her performance “one of the worst outings in SNL history.” Juliette Lewis also tweeted negatively about her performance. Del Rey fans say her songs are good and she simply needs more time to come into her own. Critics say she is a manufactured phenomenon with no talent. Either way, is this amount of publicity healthy for such an inexperienced artist? MORE

MTV: But the emerging pop star, whose debut album for Interscope, Born to Die, hit stores Tuesday (January 31), thinks she did a perfectly fine job on the legendary sketch show, telling Rolling Stone,“I actually felt good about it. I thought I looked beautiful and sang fine … I know some people didn’t like it, but that’s just the way I perform, and my fans know that.” Del Rey did admit to being nervous, though in a more general sense, saying live performance has never been her strong suit because she is “not a natural performer or exhibitionist” and that when she was younger she “hated the focus; it made me feel strange.” As the backlash intensified, Daniel Radcliffe, who hosted the January 14 show, came to Del Rey’s defense, telling reporters at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations, “It was unfortunate that people seemed to turn on her so quickly. I also think people are making it about things other than the performance … if you read what people are saying about her online, it’s all about her past and her family and stuff that’s nobody else’s business. I don’t think [the performance] warranted anywhere near that reaction.” Del Rey echoed those same sentiments during her brief sit-down with Rolling Stone, chalking the intensity of the criticism up to people’s general disdain for her public persona. “There’s backlash about everything I do. It’s nothing new,” she told the music mag. “When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. People don’t have anything nice to say about this project.” MORE

SLATE: A few years ago, the singer and songwriter Lizzy Grant reinvented herself online. This seems overwhelmingly unremarkable behavior in the 21st century, particularly for a would-be pop musician, but it proved scandalous. Grant, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from upstate New York, recorded an EP and an album in the late 2000s. Some time before the summer of 2011, according to a recent Billboard story, she deleted her social-networking profiles and a site bearing her name, and withdrew her album, Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Rey, from iTunes. Last August, she uploaded a music video to YouTube under the stage name Lana Del Rey—goodbye Grant. The clip was for “Video Games,” a beguilingly morose love song. Helped along by music blogs and BBC Radio 1, which supported the track early, the video became a hit: Today, it’s been viewed more than 22 million times.There seems to have been nothing more duplicitous in Del Rey’s jettisoning of Grant than there was in Dylan’s jettisoning of Zimmerman, but when the fact of her previous incarnation came to light, the response from online detractors was irate and impassioned: This was no diamond in the digital rough, pure and uncompromised. Grant’s debut album had, it emerged, been produced by David Kahne, an industry big with Paul McCartney and Sugar Ray on his résumé. She had, in fact, signed with the powerhouse major label Interscope a month before she’d uploaded the “Video Games” clip. A particular point of scrutiny were her lips, which appear significantly plumper today than they do in photographs from the Grant days, suggesting a surgical procedure—further fakery. In posts and comment sections on many of the same blogs that had helped Del Rey take off in the first place, listeners lashed out as though they’d been betrayed, expunging the abject corporate product they’d accepted so trustingly into their hearts. In this blood sport, the blog Hipster Runoff played the (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) head cheerleader: “She was basically a failed mainstream artist who is being ‘rebranded’ behind major label dollars,” one post sniped. MORE

RELATED: Metracritic

FRESH AIR: Once the drummer for the grunge band Nirvana, Dave Grohl formed Foo Fighters after the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in 1994.  Foo Fighters’ sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, includes a song Grohl wrote for two miners who, trapped in an Australia mine collapse, asked rescuers to send down an iPod loaded with Foo Fighters songs. Grohl sent them a note, then met with one of the miners after they were rescued. Grohl is a percussionist, guitarist and songwriter — and an actor, having appeared both on Tenacious D’s debut album and in the 2006 movie Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. MORE

TALK OF THE NATION: Almost as soon as it was introduced in 1987, the antidepressant Prozac, which selectively targets the chemical serotonin, became a blockbuster. “Prozac just blew everything else out of the water,” Frazer says. This had less to do with the efficacy of Prozac (it is not better at treating depression than tricyclics, the earlier generation of antidepressants) than with the fact that the drug had relatively few side effects. “It was very free of side effects,” says Pedro Delgado. “And so it began to be used very widely, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it.” That understates the case. In a very short time, Prozac became wildly popular, and again, Prozac worked on just one chemical in the brain: serotonin. And really, it is because of the popularity of Prozac that the low-serotonin story took hold, even though, Frazer argues, the scientific research has not borne that out. “I don’t think there’s any convincing body of data that anybody has ever found that depression is associated to a significant extent with a loss of serotonin,” he says. Delgado also makes this argument. In the 1990s, he carried out a study that showed that if you take a normal person and deplete them of serotonin, they will not become depressed. He says he feels this demonstrates that low serotonin doesn’t cause depression. Coyle is less absolute in his dismissal of the evidence on serotonin. His take is that while low serotonin probably doesn’t cause depression, some abnormality in the serotonin system clearly plays a role. But most researchers have moved on, he says, and are looking at more fundamental issues like identifying the genes that might put people at risk for developing depression. “What’s being looked at are processes that are much more fundamental than just serotonin levels,” he says. “We need to move beyond serotonin, and I think the field is.” MORE

TALK OF THE NATION: Traditional antidepressants like Prozac work on a group of chemical messengers in the brain called the serotonin system. Researchers once thought that a lack of serotonin was the cause of depression, and that these drugs worked simply by boosting serotonin levels. Recent research suggests a more complicated explanation. Serotonin drugs work by stimulating the birth of new neurons, which eventually form new connections in the brain. But creating new neurons takes time — a few weeks, at least — which is thought to explain the delay in responding to antidepressant medications. Ketamine, in contrast, activates a different chemical system in the brain – the glutamate system. Researcher Ron Duman at Yale thinks ketamine rapidly increases the communication among existing neurons by creating new connections. This is a quicker process than waiting for new neurons to form and accomplishes the same goal of enhancing brain circuit activity. MORE

GAWKER: K is a form of Ketamine, which is usually manufactured for street use from horse or cat tranquilizers. It usually comes in a chunky powder that is a very pale yellow. You snort it. There is a really gross aftertaste. As Wikipedia will tell you, “Like other drugs of this class such as tiletamine and phencyclidine (PCP), it induces a state referred to as ‘dissociative anesthesia’ and is used as a recreational drug.”  MORE

TALK OF THE NATION: A growing number of scientists think it won’t be long before psychiatric care is transformed. And they are particularly excited about an experimental drug that is being tried in the NeuroPsychiatric Center next to Ben Taub hospital. It’s here that drug researchers are studying a drug that’s unlike anything now used to treat depression. And they’re giving it to patients who haven’t done well on existing drugs. One of these patients is Heather Merrill, who speaks to me in a small conference room that is part of the large and very busy outpatient clinic. Merill is 41, with three kids and a nice house in the suburbs. “I’ve suffered from depression for most of my adult life,” she says. “It got to the point where I kind of felt like there wasn’t going to be anything that was going to be able to help me.” At times her depression gets so bad that she can’t take care of her family or even herself, she says. And that’s how she was feeling the day before, she says, when doctors placed an IV in her arm and began to administer a drug. Because it was part of an experiment, there were two possibilities. The drug could have been just a sedative. Or it might have been something called ketamine. Ketamine has been used for decades as an anesthetic. It also has become a wildly popular but illegal club drug known as “Special K.” Mental health researchers got interested in ketamine because of reports that it could make depression vanish almost instantly. In contrast, drugs like Prozac take weeks or even months. And the frustrating thing is that depression medications really haven’t changed much since Prozac arrived in the 1970s, says Sanjay Mathew from Baylor College of Medicine, who is in charge of the ketamine study at Ben Taub. MORE

GAWKER: I remember one night at a gay discotheque in Washington D.C. when I was still in college being slumped up against the DJ booth while he played a Madonna track. It seemed like the song was going on for hours, being played on repeat over and over and over again. In the span of three minutes, I thought I lived an entire evening. I thought I was dancing, and I thought Madonna was there. I thought I was dancing with Madonna. I was sure I was, flailing my limbs about as the Material Girl kept time with me, coaxing me to enjoy the party, matching me beat for beat as the lights did slow pirouettes around us. And she laughed at my jokes and told me she liked my outfit. Madge and I were friends! Everything was amazing and spectacular, but on the outside I was a drooling mess, unable to move, and embarrassing myself. When my friends finally carted me away, I started to hit them, shouting in as loud of a voice as I could muster. “Stop it. I don’t want to leave. I’m dancing with Madonna. Madonna! Madonna!” This is why K is so incredibly stupid. MORE

PSYCHIATRY ONLINE: Subjects who were maintained at therapeutic levels of lithium or valproate received an intravenous infusion of either ketamine hydrochloride (0.5 mg/kg) or placebo on two test days two weeks apart. The ketamine dose was based on the researchers’ previous study of subjects with treatment-resistant major depression, as well as several other studies. The Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) was used to rate subjects at baseline and at 40, 80, 110, and 230 minutes and on days 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, and 14 post-infusion. Within 40 minutes after receiving a placebo, subjects’ depressive symptoms lessened a little. But within 40 minutes after receiving ketamine, their depressive symptoms lessened significantly more. This improvement remained significant through day 3. The drug-difference effect size was largest on day 2. Seventy-one percent of subjects responded to ketamine, and 6 percent responded to placebo at some point during the trial. Ketamine was generally well tolerated; the most common adverse effect was the appearance of dissociative symptoms, though only at the 40-minute point on the first day. Dissociation is a common side effect of ketamine. “These findings are particularly noteworthy because a substantial proportion of study participants had been prescribed complex polypharmacy regimens in the past, with substantial treatment failures,” the researchers said in their report. “The mean number of past antidepressant trials was seven, and more than 55 percent of participants had failed to respond to electroconvulsive therapy. The toll of this protracted and refractory illness on the subjects was evident in that two-thirds of participants were on psychiatric disability, and nearly all were unemployed.” Zarate said, however, that at this point their findings do not have clinical implications. “The optimal dose of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression has not yet been established,” he said. “It is possible that lower doses of ketamine than what we used in our study would avoid the side effects.” He added that the results, “while encouraging, warrant further research in larger controlled studies to determine ketamine’s efficacy and safety profile in this population.” MORE

From Gomez + Gonzalez, Presented By Philagrafika, Galleries At Moore, Moore College Of Art & Design, Friday 7:01 PM by JONATHAN VALANIA

BY MIKE WALSH In 1951, at age 25, a young woman named Vivian Maier moved from France to New York City, where she worked for some time in a sweat shop. Maier also had a camera, and she spent much of her free time walking around NYC working class neighborhoods taking photos of people, places, and buildings.

She used a Rolleiflex camera, the type you look down into a two-inch lens to aim and focus. It used 120 mm film, a large format that, in the hands of someone like Maier, can capture incredible richness, detail, and depth of field.

In 1956, Vivian moved to Chicago where she worked for the next four decades as a nanny for numerous upper middle-class families. She continued with her photography in Chicago, taking photos obsessively. Lots of them. Tens of thousands.

Photos of wealthy women dressed in hats and furs on their way to social functions; dirty-faced children; roostering adolescents with flamboyant haircuts; a heavyset woman arguing with a cop; homes destroyed by a tornado; a salesman asleep in a car; the working class in action, and bums passed out on a sidewalk or the beach. Unusual buildings, street life, light, shadow, and clothing always drew her attention. She seemed to identify most with immigrants and the dispossessed.

In most cases, the subjects were not aware they were being photographed. Some seemed surprised and scowled at her. Others posed for her. Some glare, some smile. She hardly ever took more than one photo of anything.

Maier had no formal training in photography and no network of peers. She worked by herself. And somehow she became a great artist, but she never told anyone about her photography. She simply didn’t not stop pursuing her obsession long enough to share the results.

She didn’t date. She didn’t marry. She didn’t seem to have friends. She wasn’t interested in that. She showed little interest in human contact but, instead, channeled it into her photography, which is in fact drenched in humanity.

Each time she moved to a different job and a different family, she had more boxes of negatives and prints. Some were filled with home movies and audio recordings she had made. At one employer’s house, she stored 200 boxes of materials. At some point she inherited money from relatives in France and took a trip around the world by herself, taking photos along the way.

She took many wonderfully inventive self-portraits as well, mostly reflections of her and her camera in mirrors, plate glass windows, ceiling-mounted store mirrors, and chrome hubcaps. What we see is a tall, thin, homely woman, usually in drab clothing, the type you’d expect to see on a nanny with little income. Maier has chin-length hair parted on one side, a weak chin, and a nose that angles up. Some self-portraits show only her shadow.

As she aged, Vivian’s financial situation got progressively worse, but she kept taking photos. She could afford to buy film but not to develop it, so she packed hundreds of rolls of undeveloped film in yet more boxes.

By 2000, Vivian was out of work and destitute. She was living on Social Security. Her negatives and other belongings were in storage, but she couldn’t pay the storage bill. By then the children she had cared for in the1950s were adults. When they found out about Vivian’s situation, they got her an apartment and paid her bills.

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In 2007, a 26-year-old Chicago real estate agent named John Maloof was working on a history of his neighborhood. He heard about some old photos from an abandoned storage locker that were being auctioned. He thought the photos might be useful for his book, so he went to the auction and purchased one of the lots for $400. This purchase changed his life.

What he had purchased were some of Vivian Maier’s photographs. He soon realized that the photos would not help him with his book, but he was suddenly a lot less interested in that subject. In fact, Maloof was so inspired, he abandoned the book and took up photography.

Maloof also scanned a handful of Maier’s photos, uploaded them to Flickr, and asked people what they thought of them. Flickr users were amazed by their power and beauty and deluged Maloof with comments, questions, and suggestions. Maloof soon started a blog to publicize Maier’s work.

Maloof then tracked down those who had purchased other lots from the auction of Maier’s belongings, and he was able to buy back most (but not all) of them. His collection of Maier’s work had grown to over 100,000 negatives, 2000 rolls of film, and 3000 prints, as well as home movies, audio tape interviews, and her original cameras. Maloof’s holdings represent approximately 90 percent of Maier’s work.

But Maloof still knew very little about Maier. Who was this woman? Where did she come from? Why hadn’t anyone heard of her remarkable work?

Then in 2009, he saw a small obituary in a Chicago newspaper. It was for Vivian Maier. She had died in a nursing home at age 83. By the time Maloof understood the value of what he had collected, he had lost the chance to speak with her.

Among the materials he had bought at auction, Maloof found a few names and addresses, and he was able to locate these people. They were children from the families for whom Maier had worked. One contact at a time, Maloof tracked down all of the families Maier had worked for, which included the family of TV host Phil Donohue.

They told him what they knew of Maier. Most described her as a quiet, private, but very opinionated person who did not discuss her photography with them. They said she was a socialist, a feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person. She learned English by going to theaters, and frequently wore men’s clothing and a large hat. She was also decidedly unmaterialistic. Through more digging, Maloof was able to piece together a few details of her early life as well. He was not able to find anyone who was familiar with her photography.

In the two years that followed her death, interest in Vivian Maier’s work exploded, and she is now a genuine sensation in the photography world. Maloof has worked to organize, protect, and publicize his collection of her work. He and his assistants are scanning her negatives, but it is a massive task, and many of Maier’s photographs still have not been seen by anyone.

Maloof has put together several exhibits of Maier’s photography that have shown in New York, Los Angeles, London, Norway, Amsterdam, Germany, Denmark, and elsewhere. Articles about her work have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time, The Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, and other many other publications. Prints of her photos sell for thousands, and a documentary film about Maier’s life is currently being prepared for release in 2012.

But in 2010, Chicago carpenter and artist Jeffrey Goldstein acquired another collection of Maier’s work from one of the original auction buyers—the one who refused to sell to Maloof. Goldstein’s Vivian Maier collection includes 15,000 negatives, 1,000 prints, 30 homemade movies, and numerous slides.

A book of Maier’s photography, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (Powerhouse Books, 2011), also came out recently. It contains two short essays, one by Maloof, but most importantly, over 100 pages of Maier’s beautiful black and white photos. Each one is rich in details and tells a story of American urban life in the mid 20th century.

And the attention devoted to Maier is not likely to end soon, especially since so little of her work has been made available to the public. Expect it to continue surfacing from Maloof, Goldstein, and other sources for years to come. Vivian Maier died in poverty and obscurity. She didn’t get a chance to enjoy the fame and wealth her incredible photography has recently garnered, but she probably would have preferred it that way.

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Forty Photos by Vivian Maier from the Goldstein collection are on display at the Steven Kasher Gallery, 521 West 23rd Street, New York, until Feb. 25.