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Traditional tourist maps of the future?
By Paul Johnson on Jun 02, 2009 in Maps, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
With an increasing reliance on all things internet, you could be forgiven for thinking that the traditional paper map has had its day. I mean, there's Google Maps now, and there are iPhones, as well as a variety of GPS devices, so it's easy to get an up-to-date map at your fingertips in minutes. […]
Don't overlook Krakow!
By Paul Johnson on Mar 13, 2009 in Caribbean, Central America, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Europe, Guatemala, Illinois, Japan, Magazines, North America, Poland, Regions, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, USA
The Polish city of Krakow, too often overlooked by travellers, has been recognised as one of the world's top five cities by readers of Wanderlust magazine. The self-styled magazine "for people with a passion for travel" placed Krakow fourth place in its list of favourite cities for 2009 and described it as a "bargain destination". […]
Get ready for Soneva Kiri from the incredible Sonu and Eva Shivdasani
By Paul Johnson on Feb 02, 2009 in Accommodation, Asia, Magazines, Maldives, Regions, Resorts, Thailand, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
Thirteen years after they created Soneva Fushi – the Maldives benchmark for high-end, eco-friendly, all-natural opulence – the innovative husband and wife team Sonu and Eva Shivdasani are getting set to launch Soneva Kiri, just the third Soneva on the planet. In the interim, they have built Six Senses Resorts & Spas into a company […]
51st annual list of Mobil Travel Guide four- and five-star awards is now out
By Paul Johnson on Jan 25, 2009 in Accommodation, Going Out, Hotels, Resorts, Restaurants, Spas & Pampering, Speciality Travel, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
Mobil Travel Guide has unveiled their annual winners for the coveted Mobil Travel Guide four- and five-star awards. This list has defined the industry's highest standard for excellence in hospitality for over fifty years. This year, two destinations made history by achieving the most Mobil five stars ever awarded to one destination. Sea Island Resorts […]
A successful first year for 'qualia'
By Paul Johnson on Jan 21, 2009 in Accommodation, Australia, Magazines, Oceania, Regions, Resorts, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
qualia, Australia's newest world class luxury resort on Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef, has much to celebrate since its opening 12 months ago. Most notably it was awarded "Best New Tourism Development" at the 2008 Whitsunday Tourism Awards; in May 2008 qualia was also featured on the cover of the UK version of […]
Hg2 Eat New York goes mobile
By Paul Johnson on Dec 08, 2008 in Bars, Books, Food and Drink, Going Out, New York, North America, Regions, Restaurants, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany, USA
A mobile version of Hg2's groundbreaking new restaurant guide, Eat New York, goes live on UBI UBI™ today. It's the only high-end restaurant and travel guide designed exclusively for the smartphone platform. With a unique take on the restaurant world, Eat New York is designed specifically for savvy residents and sophisticated travellers, with 150 insider […]
Bushmans Kloof shines with top tourism awards
By Paul Johnson on Dec 01, 2008 in Accommodation, Adventure Travel, Africa, Hotels, Magazines, Regions, Resorts, South Africa, Speciality Travel, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
Bushmans Kloof has been named among the world's finest hotels in the Forbes Traveller 400 Best Hotels for 2008/2009, one of the world's premier lists of deluxe hotels, as determined by a team of 79 distinguished luxury travel experts. At the same time, it has been named among the Top 10 Resorts in Africa in […]
Special Hotels of the World 2009
By Paul Johnson on Nov 17, 2008 in Accommodation, Books, Hotels, Regions, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany, Websites, Worldwide
The Great Hotels Organisation has officially launched the Special Hotels of the World 2009 Exclusive Travel Collection Directory. The latest edition includes a hand-picked selection of over 50 of the world's best hotels that offer something special or unique to the discerning traveller. The new coffee-table style directory features breathtaking photography, hotel facts and tips […]
And the winner of the best hotel in the US is…
By Paul Johnson on Oct 17, 2008 in Accommodation, Hotels, Illinois, Magazines, North America, Regions, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, USA
The Peninsula Chicago has received the highest possible rating given by Conde Nast Traveler readers in the 2008 Conde Nast Traveler Readers' Choice Awards. The top shelf, luxury property was named number one hotel on the list of the "Top 100 United States Hotels". The awards, which were announced last Wednesday at a gala ceremony […]
Louis Vuitton City Guides 2009
By Paul Johnson on Oct 14, 2008 in Books, Luggage, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
Think Louis Vuitton and you instantly think 'luggage'. But, unbeknown to many, there is another aspect of the LV brand – Louis Vuitton City Guides – which has been running for 10 years. The 2009 edition is out now, featuring many new destinations. They will be available from LV boutiques worldwide from tomorrow.
Special feature: Sony PRS-505 Reader
By Paul Johnson on Sep 08, 2008 in Accessories, Books, Gadgets, Special Features, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany
I've managed to get my hands on a Sony PRS-505 Reader which has been out in the US for a while now, but has only recently become available in the UK through the High Street retailer Waterstones (priced at £199). As soon as I opened the box, I was immediately struck by the look […]
Travel+Leisure World's Best Awards 2008
By Paul Johnson on Jul 09, 2008 in Accommodation, Africa, Asia, Hotels, India, Kenya, Magazines, Regions, South Africa, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
It's that time of year once again when Travel+Leisure releases its World's Best Awards. I haven't had time to study them in detail just yet, but have noted that Singita Sabi Sand at Kruger has taken top spot in the World's Best Hotels section, up one place from last year. Second is Oberoi Rajvilas in […]
Interview with Kevin May of Travolution
By Paul Johnson on May 20, 2008 in Africa, Asia, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Interviews, Magazines, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, North America, Oceania, Peru, Regions, South America, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany, Vietnam, Websites
Kevin May is editor of Travolution, an industry-focussed magazine for online travel and division of Reed Business Information. It consists of a blog, e-news service and a physical magazine, and is a leader in its field with an advisory board that comprises some of the biggest names in the travel industry. What is it […]
Luxury travel links of the week
By Paul Johnson on May 11, 2008 in Accommodation, Europe, Food and Drink, France, Hotels, Italy, Magazines, Mexico, North America, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany, Vacation Rentals, Websites, Western Europe
A weekly pick of luxury travel links for your perusal… Island properties from Greek Islands Club A Corsican gem: La Maison Rorqual The European-influenced Four Seasons Hotel México, D.F. Wine recommendations from Decanter magazine
By Paul Johnson on Apr 06, 2008 in Cruises & Boat Travel, Food and Drink, Magazines, Regions, Speciality Travel, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature, Travel Miscellany, Worldwide
A weekly pick of luxury travel links for your perusal… Be inspired by Luxury Travel Advisor Discover The Land of a Thousand Flavors Worldwide luxury villas from Villas de Maitre A fine selection of superyachts from Nigel Burgess
A strange way to do business
By Paul Johnson on Mar 12, 2008 in Magazines, Travel Equipment, Travel Literature
About a year ago, I accepted an invitation to subscribe to Luxury Travel magazine, published by the Haymarket Media Group. I have enjoyed reading it up to now, and always passed copies on to clients and colleagues when I'd finished with it. Anyway, just now I took a telephone call. It started […]
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It could be a late one! What time will Crystal Palace get their deadline day deals done?
Transfers are often left late on deadline day - and it may be no different this time around
Most people will have finished their day's work now, but for those involved in transfer deadline day - it often doesn't get busy until 5pm.
During the last five deadline days 70 per cent of deals involving Premier League and Championship clubs were announced between 5pm and the early hours of the following morning.
It is worth staying until the end though - the busiest time of the whole day is between 10pm and 11pm, usually the last hour of the window.
It still takes some time after that for deals to filter through.
Double delight? Crystal Palace expecting two new arrivals on transfer deadline day
A full 36 moves have been announced between 11pm and midnight on deadline day during the last five windows.
Last summer we had to wait until this late stage to learn of Fernando Llorente's move to Tottenham and Wilfried Bony's return to Swansea.
After that it begins to die down, although occasionally big name deals are announced into the small hours of the following morning.
Transfer deadline day live: Guaita, Amadou, Batshuayi - All the latest from Crystal Palace
Last summer for example, Danny Drinkwater's move to Chelsea and Mamadou Sakho's move to Crystal Palace were announced at 1.30am and 2am respectively the following day.
Hour / Deals
07:00 to 08:00 / 1
10:00 to 11:00 / 16
Mamadou Sakho

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Myth of Er as a Rationalizing Recording Device
Michael Weinman
Bard College Berlin, Germany
Abstract: This essay introduces the idea of a rationalizing recording device, a mechanism by which the thoughts and actions of one or more persons are both preserved and made more accessible to reason. Plato's Myth of Er is depicted as being such a device, since its story is cinematic in the contemporary sense. Just as films can affect viewers by making one aware of thoughts that cannot be carried in the medium of the moving image itself, so too does Plato express his thoughts about the telos of the cosmos and the moral judgment one must make when confronted with choosing how to live through the external medium of a moving image.
Keywords: Plato; Er; myth; dialectic; poetry; narrative; film-philosophy; representation.
Poetry, Myth, and Philosophy
Plato's Myth of Er is best understood as a rationalizing recording device, by which I mean a form of recording technology that both preserves some person, place, or activity and does so in such a way that makes that person, place, or activity accessible to reason.1 The essential character of this kind of recording technology resembles cinematic imagery in the contemporary sense; which does not mean that its formal features are like film but that the experience of the myth is like the experience of film. I understand Er both as one of a series of closing muthoi that famously and controversially permeate the corpus, and as the one that comes at the end of Plato's Republic.2 The opening moments of Er's tale show how a soul's salvation can be achieved through the recording and reproduction of lives and show what makes this experience cinematic in a contemporary sense of the term that is not anachronistic and not metaphorical. The argument here rests on an understanding of the cinematic as an affection of the soul that is integral to understanding Er's story as expressive of Plato's commitment to the independent resourcefulness of myth as a form of poetic, productive discourse that is irreducible to logical expression, and for this reason carries the distinctive feature of experiencing recognizably cinematic objects in the contemporary sense.
Being a cinematic object in a recognizable sense, the Myth of Er is an integral part of Plato's philosophical project, contrary to what might appear from the Republic's infamous putative hostility to so-called irrational discourse in its poetic, figurative, imagistic form, tout court and most of all in Book Ten. Andreas Avgousti provides a helpful overview of scholarly interpretations of Plato's dialogues when he discusses the link between "poetry literature" and "myth literature."3 Avgousti laments "the way these literatures are divided" (BUS 22n6), especially in the attention he gives to the fact that the division is often in the service of insisting that the myths have a primarily positive, specifically rhetorical, purpose—perhaps, to ease the presentation of philosophical content, perhaps to ease a polemic against poetry—while poetry as practiced by the poets he knew, or even as such, is wholly and essentially objectionable. He arrives at the forceful conclusions that Platonic "dialogue disparages neither poetry nor myth" (BUS 22), and that, put positively, in Plato's dialogues in general and in the Republic in particular, "there is in fact room for imitation of a particular kind" (BUS 25). I present my reading of Er as a rationalizing recording device, as an explication of how, at least in this one instance, Plato embraces muthos as an end in itself, as a mode of discourse that has its own independent means and ends with which the philosophical erȏs must come to terms in a positive, productive fashion.
Having said this much about the overarching interpretive concern of the role of myth in Plato's philosophical dialogues at large, it is necessary to say something about the presence of Er as a concluding myth in the Republic in particular. Francisco Gonzalez argues forcefully that the encounter with Er at the very end of the Republic must present a genuine enigma that is not to be resolved by simply flattening the dramatic tension to suggest that Er either is a "lame and messy ending,"4 pace the writings by Julia Annas and H. S. Thayer.5 Instead, Gonzalez states that the myth shows the choice of lives by the characters in the Myth of Er, perhaps most noticeably Odysseus, to be "a pitiful, funny, and surpassingly strange sight" (CO 269) that challenges—essentially, not accidentally—many of the agreements about choice and justice that Socrates had extracted earlier from Glaucon and Adeimantus. Here I follow Claudia Baracchi, who, in what she calls an "unending" conclusion, is centrally concerned with why it is that insofar as the "saving of a muthos concludes the dialogue," the work of Republic "both is and is not concluded"; it is concluded, she writes, in that "thanks to [Er's] contemplation of the whole, the dialogue would find rest," but it is not insofar as "the final discourse, precisely as myth, tends obliquely to evade the demands that only the logic of a system would have fulfilled."6 In other words, even as the dialogue expressly aims—in the re-articulation of the prohibition on imitative poetry in Book Ten—to bring human discourse wholly in line with nomos and logos, it recognizes the ultimate impossibility of this project.
Facing this, many of the standard interpretations of Plato's dialogues, especially in English-language philosophy of the twentieth century, have either suppressed or tried to rationalize both this myth and muthos altogether; in short they have endeavored to understand Plato as arguing that the conflict between muthos and logos can be resolved by subordinating the former to the latter. This is a manifestation of the incoherent overall attitude toward Plato's response to myth and to poetry that we saw Avgousti bemoan above. Responding to one of the more influential instantiations of this tradition of interpretation, that of Annas (IPR 349-53), Baracchi also calls attention to how Annas (as with any other reader who seeks to rationalize muthos in this way) displays "a quite remarkable reluctance to acknowledge the irreducible opacity, questionability, and manifoldness of language" (MLW 6) to which Plato himself expressly calls attention by offering myths at critical junctures of his philosophical dialogues. On the contrary, Baracchi understands that for Plato "far from having an arbitrary, accessory or even unnecessary character," myths actually "disclose language as intrinsically and essentially imaginal" (MLW 6). In particular, I shall argue, it is the fantastic moving image of the cosmos as a realm of ceaseless judgment, as encountered through the mediation of Er's power of vision, that leaves one with a final reminder of the limits of logos, and not its triumph.
Muthos and Logos in the Republic
It is necessary to consider the placement of the Myth of Er as the concluding myth in the Republic. Four central elements can be shown to make sense of this myth as a fitting conclusion to the book and to the dialogue as a whole. First, the initial version of the three kinds of skeuē analysis (597b-e) with its "three kinds of couches" passage. Next, the refinement of this analysis in the second version of the three kinds of skeuē analysis (601d-602b). Third, the statement concerning the "old quarrel between poetry and philosophy" at 607b-c. Finally, we have to look at the passage where Socrates insists on the justice of demanding back from the two brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus the opening assumption he allowed them to make regarding injustice escaping the notice of gods and men (612c-e). Read together, this string of passages shows that there is a single dialectic movement that holds not only all of Book Ten together, but also weaves that whole cloth of Book Ten into the more comprehensive unity of the dialogue as a whole. Given these elements, the myth of Er can be seen as an instance of philosophical poetry that has the power to settle the old quarrel between the two competitors precisely because it channels the productive possibilities of poetry into the rationalizing power of dialectic.
The "three kinds of couches" analysis is likely the closing element of the book that is best known and most discussed, and it introduces a pair of triads that correspond with one another. There is the triad of makers with its corresponding triad of things made by art (skeuē). On the one hand, there is the divine demiurge, the human demiurge, and the imitator; on the other hand, there is the form of the couch, the couch, and the image of the couch. The correspondence is assured by the activity of imitation: beginning from the least real of the three couches, the idea is that the imitator produces the image of a couch by imitating the actual couch that was produced by a human demiurge (a carpenter) by means of imitating the form of the couch that was produced by a divine demiurge. This is well known and not especially surprising. However, striking and telling about this moment is the fact that this "three kinds of couches" analysis is not the definitive version of the "three kinds of skeuē" analysis that Plato's Socrates provide in Book Ten. For, while this first version helps us to see how the same signifier, such as "couch," of course, but also "soul" or "human being" functions in multiple ways, it has a crucial flaw: it gives the false impression that being is a copy. Insofar as the "imitation of an imitation" analysis implies that the actual artifact (the human being as well as the couch) is itself a mere copy, in the service of the argument that the image of the couch is just a copy of a copy, the "three kinds of couches" version actually points away from the presence of the ideal in physical reality. To correct this, Plato has Socrates offer a second and improved analysis at 601d-602b.
In this second analysis, Socrates corrects what is misleading in the first version by showing that the diminishing return of truth rests not in the manner of production, that is in whether the skeuos in question is the form (made by the divine demiurge), the actual artifact (made by a human artisan), or an image (made by an imitative painter or poet). This time, the emphasis is rather placed on the relationship between production and consumption. So, while the three-tiered analysis remains, as does the underlying condemnation of imitation as having little or no being, the difference between the tiers of reality does not rest in the object itself as a product of one or another kind of production, but rather in the epistemic relationship that the producer or user of the artifact bears to the artifact.
Socrates describes this with reference to a different skeuos, namely, a flute. With respect to a flute, it is possible to have the epistemic relation of the imitator, who—having neither produced a flute nor used a flute, but merely having made an image of a flute—has neither knowledge nor a right opinion about the flute, and thus can only charm or deceive when it comes to the flute and its use (602a-b). The same bottom tier assignment to imitation is now on very different grounds: the problem is not that the imitator's flute itself is an imitation of an imitation, it is rather that the imitator's relationship to the flute he produces is predicated on ignorance, on the absence of either truth or right opinion. In the second version of the three kinds of skeuē analysis, this is compared with the condition of the user and the maker of a real flute, where the former—whose orientation is based on trust (the epistemic condition of the second part of the so-called "divided line" in Book Six [509d-511b])—possesses a right opinion of the flute, while the flute-player, because of his actual use of the flute has knowledge (601e-602a). We are left with a clear hierarchy of three terms, with the imitator as the third and worst, and then two increasingly preferred terms. But notice that, this time while the imitator remains in the worst position, and the human tekton remains second, the best term has shifted from the divine demiurge to the human who uses rather than produces the skeuos. While the image based on imitation of an artifact remains the least real (or true) of the three kinds of skeuos, and the actual artifact as an object of production remains second, these two are now not contrasted not with the divine-created idea of the artifact, but rather with the actual artifact as an object of use. The most real now is not the ideal form created by the demiurge, but rather the flute that is known to the flute player who actually makes use of it by actualizing its function purposively.
A second pair of passages that is relevant from the first two thirds of Book Ten is the passage about the "old quarrel between philosophy and poetry" (607b-c), along with the intimately connected passage in which Socrates demands from the two brothers, "return to justice what justice is owed" (612c-e).
In the old quarrel passage, Socrates reiterates the rejection of imitative poetry in Book Three on grounds that are ultimately ethical, epistemological, and ontological, and unlike in the earlier discussion, also states the condition under which imitative poetry can pass ethical muster. For this reason, Baracchi notes, the "Myth of Er should be viewed in the context of the Socratic pronouncements [397b-e, 507b-c] against…the logic of mimetic absorption," for the myth as a form of Socratic narration would "be the locus within which the exposure to and emergence of strange voices becomes perspicuous, manifests itself as such, instead of disappearing into the lie" (MLW 121) of poets such as Homer, who pretend to identify exactly with those who speak through them. It is precisely in not lying in this way, while still practicing mimēsis that the Myth of Er, as a piece of Socratic poetry could disclose the way that, as Socrates says (607c), "poetry directed to pleasure and imitation" could "have any argument to give...showing that they should be in a city with good laws." More pointedly, Socrates demands (607d) that imitative poetry should be prepared to present an apologia that "it's not only pleasant but also beneficial to regimes and human life," regarding which Baracchi argues, it means that "properly speaking, the problem was never the lie of mimēsis, but the comportment to it—the ēthos" (MLW 124). If it is right to understand the accusation against poetry in Book Ten as an apologia for the earlier, less genuine and ultimately incomplete accusation in Book Three, this means for Baracchi that Er needs to be understood as "the enactment of a further apology—the apology enacted by the Socratic legein itself and not merely prescribed to poetry" (MLW 125). Somewhat less poetically, the composition of the Myth of Er and its placement at the conclusion of the Republic can be understood as Plato's gesture on the part of speech itself to reconcile, through the lexis of mimēsis, the two dominant modes of linguistic expression alive in dialogue, its author and its reader, muthos and logos.
Socrates refers to Er's tale as the apology (614b) that "should be heard so that in hearing them each of these men will have gotten back the full measure of what the argument owed" (614a). This apology of philosophy to poetry ends with the conviction that, "it isn't holy to betray what seems to us to be the truth" (607c). In the passage immediately preceding the presentation of Er's tale, Socrates demands that the two brothers "give back to me what you borrowed in the argument," namely, "the just man's seeming to be unjust and the unjust man just" (612c-e). Responding to this request, Socrates invokes Cephalus's definition of justice offered at the very outset of the dialogue in order to see where the main argument of the dialogue went wrong; namely, at the beginning of Book Two when Socrates agreed that, "even if it weren't possible for this to escape gods and human beings, all the same, it had to be granted for the argument's sake so that justice itself could be judged as compared with injustice itself." It is no accident that we have to return to that moment where Glaucon first troubled the seeming truce between Thrasymachus and Socrates with which Book One concluded; for it was there, in a gesture not corrected throughout the entirety of the discussion through Book Nine, that the argument deprived the just of their deserts and at the same time wronged justice itself. Socrates implies:
On justice's behalf I ask back again the reputation it in fact has among gods and among human beings; and I ask us to agree that it does enjoy such a reputation, so that justice may also carry off the prizes that is gains from seeming and bestows on its possessors. [612d]
Just at this moment, logos, which provided the basic shape for the dialogue from the end of Book One until this moment near end of Book Ten now gives way to an apology given in mythic form. Baracchi describes this situation, "it is in such a striving to say justice and do justice that the logos will have become an apologos" (MLW 95). I maintain that the apologos is the Myth of Er.
Resolving the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy
Plato's Republic ends with the Myth of Er, which surely looks like imitative poetry in the relevant sense of Book Ten, even though the main point of much of Book Ten is to call for an end to imitative poetry. It is thus necessary to ask why is the Myth of Er acceptable to Socrates, notwithstanding the thoroughgoing critique of the class of imitative poetry to which this Myth surely belongs? The Myth of Er appears to be guilty of the "greatest accusation" against poetry (605c). One could argue that this myth is not really imitative poetry in the relevant sense, in which case the myth can be seen as evidence that Plato hopes to have Socrates ends therewith the "old quarrel" in favor of philosophy and against poetry. Another response would be that the myth itself is imitative poetry conjoined with logos that according to Socrates (607c) can be admitted into the realm of logos and nomos, the space of justice that is oriented toward the form of the good. This second response, according to which Book Ten, with its concluding Myth of Er, actually decides the old quarrel for philosophy as poetry, and not against poetry, is the one I advocate. The following close reading of the myth intends to vindicate my position.
Just before Socrates begins recounting Er's story (614a), he provides this prelude to the song of Er:
I will not however tell you a story of Alcinous, but rather of a strong man [alkimous], Er, son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian. Once upon a time he died in a war; and on the tenth day, when the corpses, already decayed, were picked up, he was picked up in a good state of preservation. Having been brought home, he was about to be buried on the twelfth day; as he was lying on the pyre, he came back to life, and come back to life, he told what he saw in the other place.
There are numerous noteworthy details in this way of framing Er's narrative—such as the following: (i) the playful, yet deadly serious reference to Odysseus' apology in describing the protagonist of this story as alkimou and not Alkinou; (ii) the naming of Er, whose name itself simultaneously elongates the e and contracts the ȏ of erȏs, expressly link the myth with dialectic and "the philosophical erȏs"; (iii) Er's patronym, which identifies him as deriving from a "middle space" that is also a no man's land; (iv) his nationality being identified as "that of every kind or sort"; (v) the decaying corpses that echo the story of Leontius (Resp., 4.439e-440a); (vi) the numerology, which follows throughout the myth, with 7, 8, 10, and 12 consistently being stressed and given certain significations. I only mention these at this juncture, and I shall focus now instead on how this introduction points toward Er and his story. It does so, by representing Er as lying on the pyre, between life and death, suddenly awaking from a death-like state speaking of a vision, Plato has Socrates introduce a theme that can be recognized as the "flashback scene." That is, Er's vision—whose cinematic effect on the reader will be the focus of the upcoming analysis—is encountered through a framing device that focuses the reader's conscious attention (the inner eye) through the lens of Er's own eyes as he awakes in a lying position, looking up, into a space that defies all orientation in terms of our ordinary perceptual experience on earth.
This means that the reader joins Er's vision of "the other place" through the mediation of Er's eyes. Socrates speaks of "the journey in the company of many" (614b) that Er says his soul made "to a certain demonic place, where there were two openings in the earth next to one another, and again, two in the heaven, above and opposite the others" (614c). The connection between this vision of the cosmic architecture and the ethical question, mirroring the shift from the ontological to the epistemological foci of the first and second versions of the "three kinds of skeuē" analyses earlier in Book Ten, is immediately evident as Socrates has Er continue his account:
Between them sat judges who, when they had passed judgment, told the just to continue their journey to the right and upward, through the heaven; and they attached signs of the judgments in front of them. The unjust they told to continue their journey to the left and down, and they had behind them signs of everything they had done. [614c-d]
As a result of having read this connection between the cosmos' construction and the judgment of the souls together with the two versions of skeuē analysis, I point out the following two observations:
Firstly, similar to the story of Timaeus, also the Myth of Er is profoundly concerned with what James Adam refers to as "a picture of the harmonies and revolutions of the Universe [that it is our] highest duty and privilege to live."7 The first version of the "three kinds of skeuē" analysis would relate to the divine demiurge, the second version was needed in order to make plausible the suggestion that the accounting of the cosmic architecture could be legitimated by its usefulness for responding to the two brothers' question concerning justice and not the need of knowing the cosmos as only a god could. It was necessary to base the greater reality of the type-1 skeuos on its use by humans and not on its manner of production by some god, which is just what the second version does in contrast to the first. Secondly, Er's vision of cosmic justice differs from the Timaeus' account of the goodness of created beings as the purpose of their souls' emanation and the divine demiurge's role in producing the cosmos. While Timaeus in Timaeus is happy to endorse an ontology such as the one at work in the first version of the skeuē analysis, Socrates in the myth of Er does not. The reason for this is that Socrates' immediate audience—Glaucon—does not need an account of what is, since it is accessible to the divine mind who is the producer of the world in its rational order, but instead rather favors an account of how a narrative can be useful.
Both of these critical differences are at work in understanding what makes the experience of the myth a cinematic experience in the relevant sense, and both point exactly to the importance of the first person perspective that predominates the Myth of Er and which crucially distinguishes the discussion of its cosmic choreography from the related presentation of the same in Timaeus, and is in turn the ground of the uniquely cinematic experience to which the reader is introduced by the encounter and unfolding of Er's story. In the words of Socrates:
And when he himself came forward, they said that he had to become a messenger to human beings of the things there, and they told him to listen and to look at everything in the place. He saw there, at one of the openings of both heaven and earth, the souls going away when judgment had been passed on them. [614d-e]
Two central features of the myth of Er—what can be called its representation of the "scene of judgment" and the "cosmic choreography"—are here expressly linked to one another. The above and below, the conduits or openings from above and below to the world as we know it, and of course, the cosmic turmoil, all this is to be seen with reference to the great judgment of souls and the choosing of a pattern of life by the souls that follows chronologically as well as ontologically from this judgment. This explicit tethering of these two features must be understood together with the second version of the "three kinds of skeuē" argument. Specifically, the readers must recognize what they are supposed to learn from experiencing Er's experience. His message is not primarily about the rewards of a just or unjust life, and even less so a message about the way the cosmos is ordered, since most of all it is a message about how to receive messages. The Myth of Er primarily shows that a human who uses an implement or artifact is the one who knows it. This holds for the cosmos itself. In this case, Socrates uses cosmos for the sake of saving the souls of the two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, and of whoever else might hear the tale who was saved and it might save the reader as well (see 621c). For it is a work of imitation that nonetheless understands how the imitated skeuos might best be used, as the maker in this case is trained in the use of this particular skeuos.
This becomes clearer still, as Socrates has Er speak of the actual experiences of the numerous just and unjust souls with whom he has travelled in the demonic place, the space between death and life. Being mindful of Er's experience related to the just and unjust souls, a comparison can be made between this version of the relative estimation of a soul's happiness or unhappiness when it lives justly or unjustly, with the two earlier versions in the Republic: Glaucon's version in Book Two (360b-361d), following from his use of the Ring of Gyges myth, and Socrates' account of a wrestling bout between two souls in Book Nine (580a-588b). Of particular interest here is the difference in the representation of the just and unjust souls in their character as moving images within Glaucon's version of these souls, which Socrates implicitly criticizes (361d) as fundamentally static, "just like two statues" that have been polished, when compared with the procession of souls that are summoned for judgment in Book Nine (580a), which are modeled, as Allan Bloom claims (PR 470n5), in the mode of award ceremonies in tragic and comic competitions.
Er's eyes function here in a manner that is phenomenologically equivalent to the camera lens, at the site of a judgment that is always in motion and beyond the conventions and artifices of human creation:
As to the other two openings, souls out of the earth, full of dirt and dust, came up from one of them; and down from the other came other souls, pure from heaven. And the souls that were ever arriving looked as though they had come from a long journey...[The unjust souls] told their stories to one another, the ones lamenting and crying, remembering how much and what sort of things they had suffered and seen in the journey under the earth—the journey lasts a thousand years—and those from heaven, in their turn, told of the inconceivable beauty of the experiences and the sights there. [614e-615a]
In this passage of the myth, Er is inaugurated as the messenger who communicates how the myth can account for itself, and gives details of the myth that the reader can use in the right way: to persuade oneself of the cosmic orientation toward the form of the good.
Socrates then concludes this opening movement of the myth with this summary of its relevance for the central theme of the dialogue as a whole, namely, the defense of justice as the path to a happy life:
For all the unjust deeds they had done anyone and all the men whom they had done injustice, they had paid the penalty for everyone in turn, ten times over for each. That is, they were punished for each injustice once every hundred years; taking this as the length of a human life, in this way they could pay off the penalty for the injustice ten times over. [615a-b]
It seems clear that this judgment scene of the Myth that ends with a ten-times-worse-argument is just as artificial as Glaucon's "statuary of the just and unjust souls" (360-361); what is different here is that in the place of souls that are presented as static objects for leisurely evaluation, souls are now presented that are ever in motion, carried along with and also serving as an efficient cause of the cosmic choreography—the spinning of the great whirl of whirls that makes up the visible universe.
As with the judgment scene, the cosmic choreography is introduced with an orienting description that informs the reader how to understand what is about to be told, which is to say, what directs the inner eye in such a way that one's imagination takes up the visual and auditory data—mediated through Er's experience—that will make up the account of the cosmic architecture. Socrates recounts Er's vision:
When each group has spent seven days on the plain, on the eighth they were made to depart from there and continue their journey. In four days, they arrived at a place from which they could see a straight light, like a column, stretched from above through all the heaven and earth, most of all resembling the rainbow but brighter and purer. [616b]
Here again, this trope of the numbers 7, 8, and 12 being especially noteworthy, resonates in interesting ways with the place of these numbers in Timaeus. What is worth attending to here, however, in terms of the emphasis that we are placing on Considering the contrast between Timaeus and the Republic concerning the question of cosmic architecture and especially regarding the point of how one is to experience this architecture, the reader's first encounter with the cosmic whirl is different from the "likely story" in Timaeus, inasmuch as it is partial and the result of an imaginary arduous journey undertaken together with Er as he joins other souls in the realm of judgment.
From here, facing the All, the very boundary between life and death is encountered. Socrates tells us that Er relates the encounter with the spine of the cosmos (the stem of the spindle of necessity) around which the cosmic whirl turns:
And there, at the middle of the light, they saw the extremities of its bonds stretched from heaven; for this light is that which binds heaven, like the undergirders of triremes, thus holding the entire revolution together. From the extremities stretched the spindle of Necessity, by which all revolutions are turned. [616c-d]
What is remarkable about this passage, read in critical comparison with Timaeus' demiurge construction of the cosmos, is how light binds the heaven. This is in striking contrast with Timaeus where we get two different pictures of "the binding mechanism" of the cosmos, in the course of Timaeus' similar story.
The two accounts of the binding mechanism in Timaeus are as follows. First, in the "first founding" (29e ff., especially relevant for the comparison is the discussion of the motion of the heavens at 39a-40d), the circular construction of the cosmos and all the moving gods and souls and heavenly bodies within it is the work of "true adornment, cunningly embroidered over the cosmos" by the divine intellect, that are "joined together by force" (35b). Later, in the "second founding" (48a ff.), Timaeus finds it necessary to add a third element to the two that were given in the first founding, so that there is again being and becoming, and in addition the new element of the mysterious chore (receptacle). Whereas in the divine nous in the first founding of the cosmos the whole cosmos can be propagated from the work of likenesses to the forms, here there is a need for the receptacle to serve as "the wet nurse of becoming, being liquefied and ignited and receiving the shapes of earth and air, and suffering all the other affections that follow along with these" (52d). It is clearly Timaeus' intention (though perhaps not Plato's) to show that these two stories can actually work together. Relying on the interpretive principle that it is productive to read together the "cosmological passages" of the Republic and Timaeus, especially when they specifically revolve around the way in which harmony can mediate between discrete and continuous quantities, that is between geometry and number, I want to call attention to the following facts: (1) in Er's tale, light itself suffices to hold the cosmos together; (2) in Timaeus, only force or else the receptacle holds the cosmos together; (3) taken together, (1) and (2) suggest that the explanation in Er is so different—in kind as well as in detail—from either of the versions of the binding mechanism in Timaeus that the difference demands some kind of justification.
The justification will need to show how it can be the case that light-as-a-binding-mechanism is acceptable in the Republic, when careful scrutiny of Timaeus gives reason to believe that as a true opinion about the nature of the cosmos, it is surely untenable for Plato. This untenability can be seen from the following argument. (1) The fact that the two suggestions of a possible "binding mechanism" offered by Timaeus—either force or a perfectly-plastic-but-nevertheless-materially-determined-space or place called "the receptacle"—each indicate a manner of physical yoking, which surely the "cosmic axis" ("spindle of Necessity") requires in order to come into being and then produce the cosmic circular motion. (2) Light—the candidate named in Er's tale—cannot possibly meet this test. (3) By (1) and (2), we can see that light-as-a-binding-mechanism cannot meet the condition of "being a candidate for the binding mechanism of the cosmos," at least as that condition is understood by Timaeus in Timaeus.
It is necessary to ask why light-as-binding-mechanism would be deemed satisfactory within the discursive space between Socrates and Glaucon, and between their discussion and the reader. Throughout the retelling of his tale, and so unlike in Timaeus, or the concluding myth of Gorgias, one only ever sees the cosmos through Er's eyes, from his liminal and even marginal position in the daimonic place. And, from this vantage point, light itself does—for all he (and the readers who have epistemic access through him) could possibly know—bind the cosmos together. This is a shining example (literally) of how some sort of right opinion can be enough truth, perhaps, for our use of the relevant skeuos, and how mythic discourse can disclose truth of the relevant kind—in this case, the kind of truth that can save one's soul, which is not after all the truth of how the world-soul was constructed or how it preserves itself in motion.
This understanding of the difference between the conditions placed on a possible likely story about the binding mechanism of the cosmos by the Myth of Er, on the one hand, and the two foundations of Timaeus, on the other hand, gains credence when we turn to what Er describes next: the three daughters of Necessity, seated on their thrones, surrounding the "lap of Necessity," which is utterly static, again in fruitful distinction from the Necessity presented as a "wondering cause" in Timaeus (48a-b). This raises a question which resonates with our deeper question regarding the relation of muthos and logos and how the Republic acquired what we heard Annas call its "lame and messy ending" (IPR 353). Following Baracchi, one can ask why it becomes
necessary or unavoidable to present necessity allegorically, literally to allude to necessity while speaking of something else (allo agoreuȏ), indeed of someone else—whose proper name is Necessity. [MLW 191]
Both Er in the Republic and Timaeus in Timaeus come around to talk about necessity, but in each case, they do so indirectly through another name—Necessity in Er, chora in Timaeus. Why should this be, why is necessity both at the center of the analysis concerning being and yet it is also always named with reference to another metaphysical category, in this case, that of becoming.
Reading 617b-c, Baracchi believes this is so because necessity is nothing other than the ceaseless cycle of coming-forth and receding, birth and death, motion of the same and motion of the other (MLW 192). Necessity's nature as nothing more than procession and recession would then explain the presence of the Fates as daughters of Necessity, their spatio-temporal position, and their characteristic activity of weaving, which is responsible for the heavenly motions and hence for the cosmological principle of time, with its irreversible course of thereby creating past, present, future. This, in any case, would be how the cosmos appears to a soul, such as Er's, which participates in the ceaseless cycle of heavenly motions and earthly judgments, even if that soul is, for a moment, suspended in the demonic place between heaven and earth. For this reason, light would be sufficient for the likeness to be understood as truth, as this light binds the cosmos precisely (and only) as that in which justice, "as the order of the living, should be understood," (617b) for justice is nothing other than "the vision of the cosmos in its glowing and resonant unfolding" (617c). The light binds the cosmos here, because the light is literally the unfolding of justice, ever proceeding and receding, and thus for a soul that can see in the right way—a soul that has suffered the proper, cinematic, experience—this is what holds the world together.
Sadly, however, the narrative does not close with the identification of light and justice and the presentation of this light-justice as the "binding mechanism" of the cosmos. Rather the vision of the fates seated surrounding their silent mother Necessity, endlessly turning the spindle that moves the world issues related in the famous speech of Lachesis' spokesman, that introduces the "choice of a life" in which "the whole danger for a human being" rests and which seems to be the point of Socrates' retelling Er's tale for Glaucon and thus—at least at first glance—for the presence of Er at the conclusion of Republic. This moment that follows and then concludes the narrative is the one in which we encounter the display of paradeigmata, patterns, of lives, from which the souls are to choose and thus take up a new "death-bearing" cycle. While the surface lesson of this scene is or at least seems to be the stirring conclusion that "virtue is without a master," while "the god is blameless" (617e), we ought to be careful in drawing such a conclusion. First of all, as Baracchi (MLW 195-7) notes, this is after all the words of the spokesman encased within the prophetic disclosure of Er to which Socrates both is and is not giving himself up, as he retells the tale. It is precisely in this rhetorical tension concerning who exactly is speaking that a series of choices of lives is encountered, made by souls with a history more or less well known to the descendants of Hesiod, Homer, and Orpheus that the myth presumes humans to be. One thinks here especially of the account of those who lead virtuous lives out of habit, without philosophy, and then on grounds of that back story often come to choose the life of a tyrant (619d4 f.), forever condemning themselves to a life of unceasing horror. Reflecting on this terrible yet also majestic scene, Andy German writes, "The Republic closes with an emphasis on the precarious," which shows that "the myth is not about choice at all but about the significance of history."8
In his rather somber, yet also (following Nietzsche) cheerful and goodhearted conclusion concerning Er's depiction of the irreversibility of the past and the way how that past invariably brings about circumstances that in retrospect cannot but strike us as tragic, German suggests that the Republic closes with Er in the service of "a peculiar expression of philosophical detachment" (TP 61). It is precisely this moment of philosophical detachment that I am arguing here to be the affect (not the effect) of a cinematic experience that the specific modality of the retelling of the tale of Er brings about—with Er acting thereby as a site of an ideal identified vision. This affection of the soul, this adoption of Er's field of vision, is the reason why Plato has Socrates taking the reader to the demonic place, where one can meet justice as the binding light of the cosmos and also encounter the souls in their encounter with the patterns of lives that Er encounters in his journey. All this is done, not to illustrate the dialogue's main argument concerning justice as its own reward, but rather to correct the experienced error, when—at the conclusion of Book Nine (592b)—the readers were grounded on earth looking up to the ideal form in heaven.
My reading of Er, fading out here on this image of the position of perspective within the retelling of Er's tale, hopes to have shown that Er appears in the Republic as a messenger not of Socrates' conclusion concerning justice and happiness, but of the only-ever-partial way in which any story about the nature and the qualities of human souls can be told. If I have succeeded then we can now see that it is precisely by yoking one's position of vision and its corresponding epistemological horizon to that of Er that Socrates has saved a tale that might save the reader as well. In so doing, in offering the Myth of Er as a rationalizing recording device, that the myth compels one to encounter the cosmos as it appears to a soul in the daimonic place. This is the best way, I suggest, of understanding the cosmic choreography at the heart of the myth, which often puzzles commentators who try to make it fit with the rest of the myth and the dialogue as a whole. Read properly, both the unity of the myth as a whole—as a comment on the impossibility of immediate knowledge and the resulting justice to be found in embracing the mediation—and its place within the drama of the Republic come into focus. This focus, a term used here in the literal sense, is the object of the lens that Er's status as an ideal viewer of the binding mechanism of the cosmos established, and it is the result of our cinematic experience of the Myth of Er in the contemporary sense of the word. Only such a cinematic experience of Er, one that refuses to understand his tale as a rhetorical strategy or a simplification of the arguments offered earlier in the Republic, and obviously least of all as a lame and messy ending, can bring us closer to a resolution of the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry. At least, along the lines that Plato himself might, after all, have wished to resolve that quarrel.
1	An earlier version of this essay is posted at www.academia.edu/20760681/The_myth_of_Er_as_a_rationalizing_recording_device
2	Passages of the Republic are taken from, Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, New York, NY: Basic Books, 1991. [Henceforth cited as PR]
3	Andreas Avgousti, "By Uniting It Stands: Poetry and Myth in Plato's Republic," Polis 29/1 (2012), 21-41, here pp. 22-6. [Henceforth cited as BUS]
4	Francisco J. Gonzalez, "Combating Oblivion: The Myth of Er as both Philosophy's Challenge and Inspiration," in Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, eds. Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez, pp. 259-77, here p. 259. [Henceforth cited as CO]
5	Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, New York, NY: Oxford University Press 1981, p. 353. [Henceforth cited as IPR], Horace S. Thayer, "The Myth of Er," History of Philosophy Quarterly 5/4 (October 1988), 369-384, here p. 380.
6	Claudia Baracchi, Of Myth, Life and War in Plato's Republic, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 2002, p. 219. [Henceforth cited as MLW]
7	James Adam, The Republic of Plato, 2nd edition, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1963, p. 441.
8	Andy German, "Tyrant and Philosopher: Two Fundamental Lives in Plato's Myth of Er," Polis 29/1 (2012), 42-61, here p. 59. [Henceforth cited as TP]


A phenomenon that sometimes occurs when a well blows out.
Rocks, sand, clay, and other debris clog the hole and stop the blowout.
A tube placed around the retrieving neck of a retrievable bridge plug to "catch" debris.
A phenomenon in which a pressure concession occurs by suddenly stopping the flow of liquids in a closed container. Also called water hammer.
» Find the definition of Bridge over in Wikipedia.


If you ever find yourself with a glut of milk in the fridge, a great way to use it up is to make Paneer. Paneer is a fresh cheese commonly found in Indian cooking, and is really easy to make.
Take your milk and heat it in a large pan. You don't want to bring it to the boil, just heat it so that it's fairly warm. Take the pan of milk off the heat. Next add lemon juice. The amount of lemon juice you need will depend on how much milk you have, and how big and juicy your lemons are. Reckon on about one lemon per litre of milk. Stir well, put the lid on the pan and wait. After about five or ten minutes, you should see the curds separating out of the milk. If they don't look like they're properly separating, add a little more lemon juice.
After half an hour or so, take a piece of cheesecloth or muslin and strain the contents of the pan. Allow this to drain, and you will be left with the crumbly cheese curds. This is paneer.
You can eat the paneer just as it is (try some on a cracker), but more commonly, it is pressed into a block, squeezing out more of the liquid. Take your cloth and gather in the sides and twist them into a closed bag containing the curds.
Now you need to press the cheese. I usually sandwich the cloth bag between two chopping boards and then place a heavy weight (typically a large pan filled with water) on top. Leave for an hour or two, and then unwrap the cheese, which should now be quite firm.
Thanks for this! I'm going to try it.
I love paneer, and it's so easy to make. You should definitely give it a whirl. Let me know how it goes!


text:
Metabolic Risk Factors and Cardiovascular Safety in Ketamine Use for Treatment Resistant Depression
Authors Szarmach J, Cubała WJ, Włodarczyk A, Gałuszko-Węgielnik M
Joanna Szarmach, Wiesław Jerzy Cubała, Adam Włodarczyk, Maria Gałuszko-Węgielnik
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
Correspondence: Adam Włodarczyk
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, 7 Dębinki Street, Building 25, Gdansk 80– 952, Poland
Email aswlodarczyk@gumed.edu.pl
Introduction: Ketamine exhibits antidepressant properties in treatment-resistant depression (TRD) with some concern over its cardiovascular safety and tolerability issues. This paper reports on the cardiovascular safety in short-term intravenous ketamine treatment in TRD inpatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BP).
Materials and Methods: The observational study population comprises 35 MDD and 14 BP subjects treated with intravenous ketamine.
Results: Blood pressure (RR) and heart rate (HR) values returned to baseline within 1.5-hours post infusion with no sequelae for all study subjects. Six time points were analyzed for each infusion: 0', 15', 30', 45', 60' and 90' for RR and HR. After the infusion significant peaks in systolic (p = 0.004) and diastolic (p = 0.038) RR were seen. In concomitant medication with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), higher RR peaks (p = 0.020; p = 0.048) were seen as compared to other subjects. The decrease in HR was greater (p = 0.02) in the absence of concomitant medication with mood stabilizers as compared to subjects receiving mood stabilizing medication accompanied by the observation of a greater decrease in diastolic RR among those taking mood stabilizers (p = 0.009).
Limitations: The study may be underpowered due to the small sample size. The observations apply to an inhomogeneous TRD population in a single-site, pilot study, with no blinding and are limited to the acute administration.
Conclusion: The study demonstrates good safety and tolerability profile of intravenous ketamine as add-on intervention to current psychotropic medication in TRD, regardless of the MDD or BP type of mood disorders. The abatement of elevated RR and BP scores was observed in time with no sequelae nor harm. Still, cardiovascular risks appear to be more pronounced in subjects with comorbid arterial hypertension and diabetes mellitus.
Keywords: ketamine, treatment resistant depression, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, cardiovascular, safety, tolerability
There is evidence for ketamine use in treatment resistant depression (TRD) for major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BP). Several concerns arise regarding ketamine use with the safety and tolerability of the drug.1–4
One of the main concerns is the possibility of adverse events related with cardiovascular symptomatology.5 There is evidence of frequent cardiovascular symptoms, but safe in treatment resistant depression (TRD) in both major depressive disorder (TRD-MDD) and the depressive phase of bipolar disorder (TRD-BP). However, the data on cardiovascular safety in BP is limited to a few papers.6,7
Since the very beginning of ketamine use in medicine, temporary cardiovascular stimulatory effects have been reported with ketamine, beginning abruptly after dosing for general anesthesia (at doses of 0.5–2 mg/kg intravenously), including an increase in arterial blood pressure (RR) and heart rate (HR).8 The indirect sympathomimetic effect dominates in physiological conditions, it is responsible for ketamine's direct cardio-depressant and negative inotropic effects, in which systemic release of catecholamines, inhibiting the 10th (vagal) cranial nerve and inhibiting norepinephrine and epinephrine reuptake at peripheral nerves and within the myocardium plays a significant role.9 Some evidence that ketamine may produce clinically non-significant RR and BP elevations with IV infusion of ketamine (0.5 mg/kg over 40 min.) in patients with MDD was associated with mean systolic RR and diastolic RR increase by approximately 3.2 mmHg at peak, 0.5 hour into the infusions, and returned to baseline levels during post-infusion monitoring.10 Still, Wan et al reported high, transitory RR increases (peak increase of 19.6 (systolic)/13.4 (diastolic) mmHg based on 205 ketamine infusions).11 These cardiovascular effects may be confusing for the treatment of patients with TRD who have somatic comorbidities such as arterial hypertension and/or cardiovascular diseases. It seems important to study the cardiovascular effects of ketamine, given that patients with TRD are at amplified risk of cardiac morbidity. To our best knowledge this is the first study reporting the results for multiple ketamine administrations for bipolar disorder cohort.
We report herein the cardiovascular effects of ketamine adjunctive to an oral antidepressant/mood stabilizer, in patients with TRD. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between cardiovascular measures and psychometric outcomes in the course of intravenous ketamine treatment in treatment refractory inpatients with MDD and BP.
Methods and Population
This study includes post hoc data analysis obtained from the naturalistic observational protocol (NCT04226963) for ketamine use in mood disorders including safety, tolerability, and efficacy measures in adult individuals. The diagnosis of MDD or BP was established based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria and Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). Treatment resistance was defined as therapeutic failure to respond to at least two lines of antidepressant interventions for the current major depressive episode.12,13 Study followed the same rater-per-patient rule for repeated psychometric measurements as Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and Columbia–Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS). The exclusion criteria included uncontrolled medical conditions, diagnosis of psychotic disorder, current substance use disorder, cognitive decline, pregnancy or breast feeding.
The study was carried out in accordance with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Independent Ethics Committee of the Medical University of Gdansk NKBBN/172/2017; 172–674/2019.
Study Design: Ketamine Infusions
The study followed an observational design with all patients continuing baseline standard-of-care medication. Patients received 8 ketamine infusions over 4 weeks. Ketamine was dosed at 0.5 mg/kg and diluted into 0.9% saline solution administered over 40 minutes. Safety monitoring was assessed by the study clinician before, during and post-infusion every 15 minutes up to 90 minutes post-infusion. Safety, including vital signs, mental status and adverse incidents, were monitored and recorded at 15 minute intervals. Psychometric assessment with MADRS and YMRS was performed before first, third, fifth and seventh infusion and one week after last infusion. The ECG was carried out before every second infusion and one week after the last ketamine infusion. All clinicians were board-certified psychiatrists, familiar with behavioral management of patients with marked mental status changes and prepared to treat any emergency behavioral situations. Additionally, an on-site clinician was available and evaluated the patient for potential behavioral risks, including suicidal ideation, after the end of each session. As a risk mitigation measure, guidance on BP monitoring on intranasal treatment days was provided to investigators (ie, no dosing if predose SBP >140 mmHg (>150 for age >65 years) or DBP>90 mmHg; dose interruption if postdose SBP ≥200 mmHg (≥190 for age >65 years) or DBP ≥110 mmHg (≥100 for age >65 years)); subjects with elevated BPs were referred to a specialist for evaluation and hypothetical treatment. Blood pressure and heart rate measurements were assessed after the patient had rested for at least 5 min and were measured supine, either with a certified, completely automated device at predose (0 minutes), and at 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90 minutes. A subject was defined as a responder at a given time point if the percent improvement from baseline in MADRS total score was at least 50%. A subject was defined as remitter at a given time point if the MADRS total score was ≤10 points.14 The groups (remitters, responders, non-remitters) were determined at the end of the study, during follow-up, when final MADRS evaluation took place.
The primary outcome of interest was change in SBP and DBP from pre-infusion to highest post-infusion measurement. The analysis was conducted using the IBM statistical software SPSS Statistics version 25.0. To determine the differences between responders, remitters and non-responders for sociodemographic variables and the occurrence of diseases and treatment, frequency analyses were carried out with Fisher's exact test. When assessing the statistical significance between dichotomous groups, the Mann–Whitney U-test was utilized. For within subject and group analyses the Kruskal–Wallis tests were conducted. α = 0.05 was adopted as the level of significance for the purposes of this analysis.
Due to the small sample size non-parametric tests were used and in inequities among groups analyzed were used for the analysis for discrete and continuous variables.
The clinical and demographic characteristics of the study group are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 Clinical and Demographic Characteristic of the Study Group
Analysis of variance was performed for repeated measurements for HR and RR systolic and diastolic. Six time points were analyzed for each infusion: 0', 15', 30', 45', 60' and 90'. Analyses were carried out for each measurement (infusion) separately checking the differences between the measurements according to the time scale. All infusions were well tolerated and there was no need for interruption of the infusion due to unstable vital sign values or psychomimetic side effects. None of the subjects required pharmacological intervention to treat elevated RR or HR.
First, analyses were made for HR. Collective results for the analyses are presented in the Table 2.
Table 2 Analysis of Variance with Repeated Measurement for HR
A comparison was made in patients who received from the first to sixth infusion to evaluate if there was a development of tolerance or tachyphylaxis.
The analysis showed that for infusion 1 significant differences in HR were noted between the measurements made after 30' and 90' (p = 0.030), the HR level after 90 minutes was significantly lower than after 30 minutes. For infusion 2, significant differences in the HR level occurred between the measurements after 30' and 60' (p = 0.011) and 30' and 90' (p = 0.003). The HR level at 30' was significantly higher than for later measurements. For infusion 3, significant differences in the level of HR occurred between the measurement at 30' and 90' (p = 0.046). HR measurement at 30' was higher than at 90'. For infusion 5 the differences in the HR level were analogous to the previous ones, for the measurement after 30' the HR level was higher than for the measurement after 90' (p = 0.014). For infusion 6, the HR level measured at 30' was significantly higher than for the measurement at 60' (p = 0.017) and 90' (p = 0.001). Figure 1 presents the means for the analyzed measurements.
Figure 1 Mean HR fluctuations over time.
Similar analyses were performed for systolic RR.
A comparison was made in patients who received from first to sixth infusion to evaluate if there was a development of tolerance or adaptation.
The results are presented in Table 3 and demonstrate that a significant increase was shown in systolic RR after 30' (p = 0.006) and 45' (p = 0.028) as compared to the 0' measurement for infusion 1. Measurement at 15' was significantly higher than that made at 90' (p = 0.001). The systolic RR measured at 30' was significantly higher than the measurement for 60' (p <0.001) and 90' (p <0.001). Also, the measurement made at 45' was significantly higher than that made at 60' (p = 0.002) and 90' (p <0.001). For infusion 2, analysis of the results showed that the measurement at 90' was significantly lower than for the measurement at 30' (p = 0.016) and 45' (p = 0.038). For infusion 3, the systolic RR at 30' was significantly higher than for 0' (p = 0.010), 60' (p = 0.008) and 90' (p = 0.001). The systolic RR at 45' was significantly higher than for 60' (p = 0.002) and 90' (p <0.001). For infusion 4, the level of systolic RR at 90' was significantly lower than for the measurements at 0' (p = 0.024), 30' (p = 0.001), 45' (p = 0.001) and 60' (p = 0.008). The measurement of systolic RR at 30' was significantly higher than for the measurement at 15' (p = 0.014) and 60' (p = 0.036), and at 45' was higher than at 60' (p = 0.011). For infusion 5, the systolic RR level measured at 30' was significantly higher than at 0' (p = 0.005), 60' (p = 0.009) and 90' (p <0.001). The measurement at 90' was significantly lower than the measurement at 45' (p <0.001), as was the measurement of 60' lower than at 45' (p = 0.001). Detailed analysis of the results for infusion 6 showed that the measurement of systolic RR at 30' was significantly higher than for the measurement at 90' (p = 0.003), and the measurement at 45' was significantly higher than that at 60' (p = 0.021) and 90' (p = 0.003). For infusion 7, the measurement at 15' was significantly higher than at 0' (p = 0.016), 60' (p <0.001) and 90' (p <0.001). Analogous differences occur for the measurement made at 30' (p <0.001). The systolic RR was significantly higher for the measurement at 45' than for 60' (p = 0.013) and 90' (p <0.001). The measurement at 90' was significantly lower than the measurement of systolic RR between 15' and 60' (p ≤ 0.001). For the last infusion, the systolic RR at 30' was significantly higher than that at 60' (p = 0.001) and 90' (p <0.001). The measurement of 15' was higher than that of 90' (p = 0.001). The measurement at 90' was significantly lower than the other measurements, except 0' (p ≤ 0.011). Systolic RR in 60' was lower than in 45' (p = 0.001). Figure 2 presents the means for the analyzed measurements.
Figure 2 Mean RR changes over time in individual measurements (infusions).
Table 3 Analysis of Variance with Repeated Measurements for Systolic RR
Similar analyses were also carried out for diastolic RR which we present in Table 4.
Table 4 Analysis of Variance with Repeated Measurements for Diastolic RR
The analysis presented in Table 4 showed significant differences between measurements within all infusions. Detailed analysis of the results showed that for infusion 1, the measurement of diastolic RR at 90' was significantly lower than that made at 30' (p = 0.016) and 45' (p = 0.009). For infusion 2, significant differences occurred between the measurement of diastolic RR at 30' and 90' (p = 0.007), in later measurement, diastolic RR was at a lower level. For infusion 3, the diastolic RR at 90' was significantly lower than for the measurement made at 30' (p = 0.004), 45' (p = 0.003) and 60' (p = 0.006). For infusion 4, the analysis showed that the diastolic RR at 0' was significantly lower than at 45' (p = 0.018). In addition, the RR measurement at 90' was significantly lower than the other measurements (except 0'; p ≤ 0.004). Diastolic RR at 45' was higher than at 60' (p = 0.006). Detailed analysis for infusion 5 showed that the diastolic RR level at 90' was significantly lower than measurements made between 15' and 45' (p ≤ 0.008). The measurement of 45' was significantly higher than the measurement at 0' (p = 0.042) and 60' (p = 0.028). For infusion 6, the diastolic RR at 0' was significantly lower than at 15' (p = 0.020) and 30' (p = 0.012). The measurement at 90' was significantly lower than the measurements at 15' (p = 0.005), 30' (p = 0.001) and 45' (p = 0.003). For infusion 7, the RR at 30' was significantly higher than at 0' (p = 0.013), 60' (p = 0.001) and 90' (p <0.001). The measurement at 15' was significantly higher than at 60' (p = 0.042). The measurement at 45' was significantly higher than at 60' (p = 0.009) and 90' (p = 0.005). For the last infusion, the diastolic RR at 30' was significantly higher than that at 0' (p = 0.004), 60' (p = 0.009) and 90' (p <0.001). The measurement at 45' was significantly higher than that at 60' (p = 0.045) and 90' (p = 0.002), and the measurement at 60' higher than from 90' (p = 0.003). Figure 3 presents the means for the analyzed measurements.
Figure 3 Mean HR changes over time in individual measurements (infusions).
Differences by Groups
Analyses were performed for different clinical groups. The analyses compared measurements in patients with and without essential hypertension, patients who were treated for TRD-MDD and TRD-BP, patients treated with different classes of psychopharmacological agents are presented in Table 5.
Table 5 Statistical Comparison Between Groups
Comparison of people suffering from and not suffering from arterial hypertension (HA) in terms of the medium-term rate of change in HR and BP showed that among people with HA, there is a higher increase in systolic RR after infusion 2 than among those who do not have HA. An analogous situation occurred for diastolic RR after 1 infusion - a higher increase in diastolic RR is observed among people with HA compared to those not suffering from HA.
Comparison of BP and TRD in terms of medium-term HR and BP rate change showed one significant difference between TRD and BP. In the BP group for diastolic RR for infusion 8 a higher decrease in RR is observed than in the TRD group. For the remaining measurements, the differences between the groups turned out to be insignificant.
The analysis comparing different classes of psychopharmacological agents to RR and HR changes showed that for people taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the level of systolic RR change after the 3rd infusion is higher than for people who do not take these drugs. In the group of people not taking these drugs, the decrease in systolic RR after the 8th infusion is greater than among those taking SSRIs.
Among those taking antipsychotic drugs, the HR fall after the 4th infusion is greater than among those who do not take these drugs. The decrease in diastolic RR after 1 infusion among patients after antipsychotic drugs is greater than in the group that does not take such drugs.
Among those not taking mood stabilizers, the decrease in HR after the 2nd infusion is greater than in the group of people taking this type of medication. In addition, a greater decrease in diastolic RR after the 8th infusion is visible among those taking mood stabilizers.
This research demonstrates the transient phenomenon of elevation of BP and RR related to ketamine infusion with good safety and tolerability profile of cardiovascular adverse drug reactions with ketamine as an add-on treatment to current psychotropic medication in TRD. The abatement of both, BP and HR, was demonstrated at the time of the treatment with no sequelae. Our analysis showed significant differences for cardiovascular scores before and after infusion in one measurement. Both BP and HR scores after infusion were significantly higher than before infusion for each of the 8 measurements. The effect strength for the differences was large. Which contributes to other data on ketamine IV studies in BP, as it is estimated that no more than 0.7% of the studies address BP in the population.15
When analyzing the different subgroups, it is apparent that hypertensive patients would have statistically significant increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure than people without HA. However, these differences resolve at the end of monitoring. This may suggest that patients with essential HA do not need to be excluded from receiving ketamine infusions if their blood pressure is well controlled with antihypertensive agents. There were no differences between HR/RR changes with regards to diagnosis, but psychotropic medication can be of importance. SSRIs, mood stabilizers and antipsychotic medication, but not selective serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), were associated with a significant decrease of HR and/or RR while ketamine infusion took place. Although, similar effects can be suggested, the changes were not significant and patients taking dose groups of medication should not be ruled out of the ketamine treatment.
The maximum value was reached at ca. 40 minutes after the start of administration in most of the trials and usually returned to the baseline (predose – 0') range by 1.5 hours after administration.17–19 In some studies, the side effects are mild or moderate, well-tolerated and transient as all of them cease within 4 hours post administration.20
Our study is in line with esketamine trials17–19 as it was shown to produce no harm with esketamine treatment and all of the patients only experienced any persistent dissociative or psychotic symptoms during follow-up visits.
Our study replicates previously shown data in a study by Doherty et al, 2020, where esketamine nasal spray was administered to TRD patients.21 The results described here provide reassurance on the cardiovascular safety of IV ketamine, when administered to patients without hypertension or with controlled hypertension and under the observation of a physician. Although, there is currently a scientific debate on the validity and strength of the data in favor of this drug,22 patient screening and careful monitoring of BP and cardiovascular functioning are important during the time patients are receiving treatment with esketamine. Patients with cardiovascular diseases should not be treated with ketamine if the risk outweighs the benefits in this population, but regardless of psychotropic medication taken it seems safe and well tolerated.
The methodological strength of our study was to strengthen the point that the tolerability and general safety of the administration of the drug and that result being in support with some previous ketamine studies mentioned above.
The key study limitations include small sample size and lack of randomization with the intervention blinding. Thus, it may be underpowered and its results shall be treated with caution as observational design does not warrant comparative or causative conclusions. The observations apply to treatment-resistant depression and include both MDD and bipolar depressed patients with a proportion of subjects diagnosed with somatic comorbidities and concomitant medication. Thus, the study population is inhomogeneous and represents subjects attending a tertiary-reference center. All safety and tolerability findings shall be replicated in a larger sample exposed to the intervention across the long-term study design.
The study results demonstrate good safety and tolerability profile of cardiovascular adverse drug reactions with short-term treatment with intravenous ketamine as add-on intervention to current standard-of-care psychotropic medication in TRD. The abatement of elevated HR and BP was observed at the time of the treatment with no sequelae nor harm. The side effects are mild or moderate, well-tolerated and transient as all of them cease within 4 hours post administration. The study results corroborate with the current state of knowledge contributing to the safety/tolerability data on ketamine use, in particular in bipolar disorder where very little published reports are available to date.16,23,24
This work is supported by the Medical University of Gdańsk, Poland (Grant No. ST-02-0039/07/221).
Dr. Joanna Szarmach has received research support from Actavis, Eli Lilly, Minerva Neurosciences, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, KCR, Janssen, Otsuka, Apodemus, Cortexyme, Acadia, and reports grants from Medical University of Gdansk, during the conduct of the study; personal fees from Actavis, outside the submitted work.
Prof. Wiesław Jerzy Cubała has received research support from Actavis, Alkermes, Allergan, Angelini, Auspex, Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cephalon, Eli Lilly, Ferrier, Forest Laboratories, Gedeon Richter, GW Pharmaceuticals, Janssen, KCR, Lundbeck, Orion, Otsuka, Sanofi, and Servier; he has served on speakers bureaus for Adamed, Angelini, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celon, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Krka, Lekam, Lundbeck, Novartis, Orion, Pfizer, Polfa Tarchomin, Sanofi, Servier, and Zentiva; has served as a consultant for Angelini, GW Pharmaceuticals, Janssen, KCR, Quintiles, Celon, and Roche, and reports grants, personal fees, non-financial support from Janssen, during the conduct of the study; grants from Alkermes,outside the submitted work.
Dr. Adam Włodarczyk has received research support from Actavis, Eli Lilly, Minerva Neurosciences, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, KCR, Janssen, Otsuka, Apodemus, Cortexyme, Acadia, and reports personal fees from actavis,outside the submitted work.
Dr. Maria Gałuszko-Węgielnik has received research support from: Janssen, Servier, Alkermes, KCR, Lilly, Biogen, Celon.
The authors report no other potential conflicts of interest for this work.
1. Berman RM, Cappiello A, Anand A, et al. Antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients. Biol Psychiatry. 2000;47(4):351–354. doi:10.1016/s0006-3223(99)00230-9
2. Correia-Melo FS, Argolo FC, Araújo-de-Freitas L, et al. Rapid infusion of esketamine for unipolar and bipolar depres- sion: a retrospective chart review. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2017. doi:10.2147/NDT.S135623
3. Diazgranados N, Ibrahim L, Brutsche NE, et al. A randomized add-on trial of an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist in treatment- resistant bipolar depression. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67(8):793. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.90
4. McCloud TL, Caddy C, Jochim J, et al. Ketamine and other glutamate receptor modulators for depression in bipolar disorder in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2015. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD011611.pub2
5. Szarmach J, Cubała WJ, Włodarczyk A, et al. Short-term ketamine administration in treatment-resistant depression: focus on cardiovascular safety. Psychiatr Danub. 2019. PMID: 3148878.
6. Sanacora G, Frye MA, McDonald W, et al. A Consensus Statement on the Use of Ketamine in the Treatment of Mood Disorders. JAMA Psychiatry. 2017;74(4):399–405. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.0080
7. Fedgchin M, Trivedi M, Daly EJ, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Fixed-Dose Esketamine Nasal Spray Combined With a New Oral Antidepressant in Treatment-Resistant Depression: Results of a Randomized, Double-Blind, Active-Controlled Study (TRANSFORM-1). Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2019;22(10):616–630. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyz039
8. Traber DL, Wilson RD, Priano LL. Diferentiation of the cardiovascular efects of CI-581. Anesth Analg. 1968;47(6):769–778. doi:10.1213/00000539-196811000-00025
9. Miller R, Eriksson L, Fleisher L, Wiener-Kronish J, Cohen N, Young W. Miller's Anesthesia. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2015.
10. Riva-Posse P, Reif CM, Edwards JA, et al. Blood pressure safety of subanesthetic ketamine for depression: a report on 684 infusions. J Afect Disord. 2018;236:291–297. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2018.02.025
11. Wan LB, Levitch CF, Perez AM, et al. Ketamine safety and tolerability in clinical trials for treatment-resistant depression. J Clin Psychiatry. 2015;76(3):247–252. doi:10.4088/JCP.13m08852
12. Poon SH, Sim K, Baldessarini RJ. Pharmacological approaches for treatment-resistant bipolar disorder. Curr Neuropharmacol. 2015;13(5):592–604. doi:10.2174/1570159X13666150630171954
13. Chandler GM, Iosifescu DV, Pollack MH, Targum SD, Fava M. RESEARCH: validation of the massachusetts general hospital antidepressant treatment history questionnaire (ATRQ). CNS Neurosci Ther. 2010;16(5):322–325. doi:10.1111/j.1755-5949.2009.00102.x
14. Trivedi MH, Corey-Lisle PK, Guo Z, Lennox RD, Pikalov A, Kim E. Remission, response without remission, and nonresponse in major depressive disorder: impact on functioning. Int Clin Psychopharmacol. 2009;24(3):133–138. doi:10.1097/YIC.0b013e3283277614
15. Young T. What exactly is a mood stabilizer? J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2004;29(2):87–88. PMCID: PMC383340.
16. Zheng W, Zhou Y-L, Liu W-J, et al. A preliminary study of adjunctive ketamine for treatment-resistant bipolar depression. J Affect Disord. 2020;275:38–43. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2020.06.020
17. Daly EJ, Trivedi MH, Janik A, et al. Efficacy of esketamine nasal spray plus oral antidepressant treatment for relapse prevention in patients with treatment-resistant depression. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019;76(9):893. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.1189
18. Fedgchin M, Trivedi M, Daly EJ, et al. Efficacy and safety of fixed-dose esketamine nasal spray combined with a new oral antidepressant in treatment-resistant depression: results of a randomized, double-blind, active-controlled study (TRANSFORM-1). Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2019;22(10):616–630. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyz039
19. Popova V, Daly EJ, Trivedi M, Cooper K, Lane R, Lim P. Efficacy and safety of flexibly dosed esketamine nasal spray combined with a newly initiated oral antidepre- ssant in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized double-blind active-controlled study. Am J Psychiatry. 2019;176:428–438. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19020172
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21. Doherty T, Wajs E, Melkote R, Miller J, Singh JB, Weber MA. Cardiac safety of esketamine nasal spray in treatment-resistant depression: results from the clinical development program. CNS Drugs. 2020;34(3):299–310. doi:10.1007/s40263-020-00699-4
22. Gastaldon C, Papola D, Ostuzzi G, Barbui C. Esketamine for treatment resistant depression: a trick of smoke and mirrors? Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2020;29:e79, 1–4. doi:10.1017/S2045796019000751
23. Lu BY, Agapoff JR, Olson DJ, Williams SE, Roller A, Goeberta D. Rapid and sustained improvement in treatment-refractory depression through use of acute intravenous ketamine and concurrent transdermal selegiline: A case series. J Affect Disord. 2020;262:40–42. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2019.10.050
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May offers MPs a vote to prevent no-deal Brexit
Katy Balls
Faced with the prospect of defeat on an amendment to stop no deal, Theresa May has attempted to stave off that rebellion by promising MPs a vote to stop a no-deal Brexit. After a long and fiery Cabinet (James has the details here), the Prime Minister addressed the House to update MPs on her government's progress in the negotiations. She said that Geoffrey Cox was working with Brussels to win changes to the backstop and reconfirmed her promise to hold a meaningful vote on her deal by 12 March.
However, should her deal be rejected by the House for a second time, May promised to hold a vote by 13 March on whether this House supports the UK leaving without a deal. If the House does not support the UK leaving without a withdrawal agreement, a vote would follow the next day (14 March) on whether the House wants a brief A50 extension. May insisted that despite this move, it was impossible to take no deal off the table full stop. She said an extension cannot take no deal off the table completely, that can only be done by revoking A50 – something she will not do. May added that she is against extending A50 and believes focus ought to be on securing a deal.
So, will this be enough to prevent the Cooper/Letwin amendment forcing the government to extend A50 from passing on Wednesday night? Remain MPs are to meet this afternoon to decided a way forward but the early signs are promising. However, even if defeat is avoided, today's decision has big repercussions. At present, there is not a majority of MPs in favour of no deal so if MPs fail to get behind May's deal, the UK looks unlikely to leave the EU at the end of March.
no deal
A Halloween no-deal Brexit is no longer a scary prospect
David Paton
Since Article 50 was triggered, a no-deal Brexit has been the default
The government's no-deal Brexit plans aren't scary enough to satisfy Remainers
Theresa May is on course for an even worse defeat on her Brexit deal
MPs get cold feet about the Cooper no deal amendment
How many Conservative MPs would risk Prime Minister Corbyn over Brexit?


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Cyclone Transfer Target: Jalen Coleman-Lands
Jalen Coleman-Lands is a priority Cyclone transfer target. The former Depaul guard averaged over 11 points per game last season. He also added 2.7 RPG and 1.2 APG. The 6'4" guard has always been a strong scorer, averaging over 10 points during his whole career. The Indianapolis product will be immediately eligible after being granted a 6th year of eligibility this past year. He just included ISU in his top 5. The other schools are Michigan, USC, California and NC State. Looks for a decision in the next couple of weeks. Coleman-Lands would be a strong edition to the Cyclone backcourt.


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After gun found, Akron schools to seek fixed metal detectors, other security upgrades
Eric Marotta
The Akron Public Schools Board of Education will be asked to consider a proposal to purchase fixed metal detectors for middle and high school buildings next week.
Mark Williamson, spokesperson for the district, said the administration is putting together a proposal this week and plans to present it to the school board Monday.
"We're working on it as we speak," he said Tuesday. "We don't have a dollar amount on it ... you can say several million dollars."
The Akron Educators Association has sharply criticized Superintendent Christine Fowler Mack for what teachers say is an atmosphere of "fear, chaos and mismanagement" in school buildings after several recent incidents, including two stabbings, fights and a seventh grade student found Monday with a loaded handgun on school property.
More:'48 hours of chaos': Akron teachers union criticizes superintendent over school safety
Fowler Mack, in response to the incidents, announced the district will expand the use of metal detectors from a "random" to "routine" basis.
Williamson said the goal is to screen all students and visitors on a daily basis, hence the request for fixed detectors to be installed at school entrances. He acknowledged the plan requires school board approval, millions of dollars in spending, and months before the detectors are all in place, the staff is trained and protocols are established for their use.
In a statement from the school board, President N.J. Akbar said the board realizes "there is more we must and can all do together" and welcomed suggestions on solutions.
"The board shares the concerns of our community regarding recent incidents and are committed to incorporating an open and transparent process of identifying institutional and community-based solutions. A multi-pronged approach is necessary to realize more immediate and long term solutions and positive outcomes," the statement said.
APS adds 2 police officers
Williamson said that the district took its first step in bolstering its 63-member security staff last fall, when it added staff to its security force. This week, it added two police officers to the 13 school resource officers already employed by the district.
The next step is to review and tighten security around all school entrances, he said.
"Some of our schools have 30 doors," he said. "We are upgrading the security on as many of the doors as we can. We're going to upgrade the security systems on all the doors, not just the main entrance. These new school buildings have a lot of entrances and exits and they all need to be secured with the latest technology systems that are available.
"The front doors, the entrances what we want, and what we're trying to get done, is metal detectors that would be fixed."
More:APS to expand use of metal detectors after Litchfield CLC student found with loaded gun
Williamson said one issue with fixed detectors would be the length of time it would take to do morning screenings.
"This will represent significant delays in getting kids into school, because this will take so long. We can't have our kids missing an hour of school every day just to get in school," he said.
Each middle and high school now has one portable metal detector unit. Middle schools have three handheld metal-detecting wands, while high schools have five.
Students are checked at random times — not always at the beginning of the school day.
Williamson said the district is working out how to start shifting from random use of the portable detectors and wands to daily use, pending the installation of fixed detectors at entrances.
Eric Marotta can be reached at emarotta@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarottaEric.