Daily Archives: October 12, 2005

MS renewal

October 12, 2005 10:49 am

The Congress for the New Urbanism, led by Andres Duany, is going to be involved in rebuilding Mississippi. From Building Online:

Mississippi Governor Enlists Congress for the New Urbanism in Historic Coastal Planning Effort. Working with Gov. Haley Barbour, a national team of 100 architects, planners, development experts, and other professionals organized by the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, will gather in Biloxi, Mississippi Oct. 11 for a post-Katrina planning effort unprecedented in its scope and intensity.
Calling this “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to rebuild the Gulf Coast “the right way” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Barbour has made the CNU initiative an integral part of his post-hurricane strategy of “recovery, rebuilding and renewal.”

The CNU team, headed by leading Miami architect-planner Andres Duany, will join with local colleagues, elected officials, and other citizens in the region for an intensive, weeklong set of workshops, dubbed the Mississippi Renewal Forum. Over its six and a half days, the forum will produce planning and architectural tools that can guide local and state officials in rebuilding 11 cities in three counties along the entire length of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“Governor Barbour has made it clear that he wants the people of Mississippi to come out of this stronger than ever,” says John Norquist, President and CEO of CNU, a membership organization of 2500 professionals committed to adapting traditional city and town planning principles to today’s community building challenges. “These workshops create the opportunity to focus on the future and on rebuilding communities of vibrant neighborhoods.”

MISSISSIPPI GOV. BARBOUR ENLISTS CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM

You can visit the Mississippi Renewal Forum yourself. I think the move to land-based casinos will be a big part of the “new Mississippi,” at least along the Gulf Coast. I wonder if they will be applying the lessons of Atlantic City?

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Problem gambling pill?

October 12, 2005 9:39 am

A New Mexico doctor is stating trials on a pill that may “cure” problem gambling–by blocking the “pleasure pathways” of the brain. Why does think make me think of A Clockwork Orange?

From the Albuquerque Tribune:

When something gets skewed in the brain’s pleasure pathways, an ordinary person can turn into a compulsive drinker, drug-user or gambler.

The patterns in all three appear to be the same, and the cure might be as simple as a pill and some therapy, said Sandra Lapham, a doctor at the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque.

“The brain works in such a way that we get in these ruts in our neuro-chemical pathways, and that makes us fall into patterns of behavior,” Lapham said. “For some people, if you take away that underlying craving, change that pathway, then you take away the enjoyment of that behavior and can stop it.”

Lapham this month is starting a clinical trial to treat compulsive gambling with a pill that blocks the brain’s pleasure pathways and keeps the person from enjoying a gambling high. The name of the pill is confidential as part of the study, she said.

Treatment with the pill is typically given to addicts for three months. Lapham wants to try it for six months, because she thinks it will be more successful.

“A lot of people are able to stop after that amount of time and change their behavior and the pathways behind it,” Lapham said.

The medication also blocks pleasure from normal activities, however, so the goal is to take patients off it as quickly as possible.

“If you’re using a substance or gambling for an artificial high, the pleasure receptor sites in your brain down-regulate,” Lapham said. “They become less sensitive to naturally occurring highs from things like exercise, eating and sex. So you’re down-regulating a person who already is down-regulated.”

Because addicts already have problems experiencing pleasure naturally, sometimes they are treated with anti-depressants after the initial treatment is over, she added.

Bright Idea: N.M. doctor tests pill that may help gambling addicts

As bad as problem gambling is, is being unable to feel any pleasure at all any worse? This is a question bigger than gambling of course, and probably doesn’t have any easy answer.

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