scaredlemur

One less reason to smoke

2006-02-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

By Ed EdelsonHealthDay Reporter Thu Feb 16, 11:51 PM ET
THURSDAY, Feb. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Specific personality traits might boost the risk for Parkinson's disease, British researchers report.
cautious, risk-averse approach to life may be linked to increased odds for the motor neuron disease, says a team reporting in the February issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
"This study raises the possibility that there is a neurobiological link between low sensation-seeking traits which might underlie the parkinsonism personality," the researchers wrote.
And because more reserved types are less likely to smoke, the finding could throw water on the notion that smoking somehow protects against Parkinson's disease, the researchers added.
In fact, the study was undertaken not primarily to look at personality but to examine the effects of tobacco, alcohol and caffeine on the condition, explained Dr. Andrew H. Evans, who worked on the study while in England and now is a neurologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia.
"Over the past 10 to 15 years, there has been an abundance of evidence linking smoking, coffee and alcohol intake as a protective factor," Evans noted.
Investigating further, researchers at the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies in London examined the drinking and smoking habits and consumption of caffeine of 106 people with Parkinson's disease and 106 unaffected individuals.
They also compared participant answers from three standard personality tests measuring depression, anxiety and the willingness to seek sensational experiences.
As expected, the Parkinson's patients drank less, smoked less and consumed less caffeine-containing beverages -- not a surprising finding, since earlier studies have found the same thing, leading some neurologists to speculate that smoking might protect against the disease.
The more striking finding was that the people with Parkinson's disease scored higher on the tests for anxiety and depression and lower on the sensation-seeking test.
They suggest several explanations for the link, including the possibility that shyer, more cautious folks are more vulnerable to Parkinson's disease.
A different explanation is offered by Dr. Kevin Black, a professor of psychiatry, radiology and neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis, who has been doing work along the same line, using brain scans in addition to testing.
"My personal hunch is that it's more likely that whatever ends up producing parkinsonism starts very early in life," Black said. "When it is mild, it can affect personality -- how much you can be addicted to, or be able to quit, something. Then as it progresses, it affects nerve endings. It makes you more likely to be exposed to whatever causes parkinsonism."
Parkinson's disease is a progressive condition that usually is seen in older persons. It often starts with a slight tremor of one arm, leg or hand, then moves to the rest of the body, causing constant trembling, difficulty in walking and shaking of the head, among other symptoms.
That there is a "Parkinson's personality" has been evident for some time, Black said, "Anecdotally, and then with increasing evidence, that people who develop Parkinson's disease have a more straight-laced personality. When they come to clinic appointments they are always on time, they are law-abiding types."
The British study is valuable because it looks at all the factors believed to be involved in parkinsonism, including cigarette smoking, caffeine and personality traits, Black said. One result of the study is to strike down one postulated positive effect of smoking, he said.
"People have looked for evidence of some good things in tobacco," Black said. "This makes it seem a little less likely."
The study "raises questions rather than answers them," Evans noted. Neurologists studying Parkinson's disease now "maybe must take into account more complex factors, such as personality," he said. But it does weaken the theory that smoking can protect against parkinsonism, he added.

Young and ugly

2006-02-18T07:18:00.000-08:00

Washington -- Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes on prom night, they're also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say two economists who tracked the life course of young people from high school through early adulthood.
"We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking," say Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University.
Mocan and Tekin analyzed data from a federally sponsored survey of 15,000 high schoolers. One question asked interviewers to rate the physical appearance of the student on a five-point scale ranging from "very attractive" to "very unattractive."
These economists found that the long-term consequences of being young and ugly were small but consistent. Cute guys were uniformly less likely than averages would indicate to have committed seven crimes, including burglary and selling drugs, while the unhandsome were consistently more likely to have broken the law.
Other studies have shown that unattractive men and women are less likely to be hired, and that they earn less money than the better-looking. Such inferior circumstances may steer some to crime, Mocan and Tekin suggest.

Maybe part of it is that ugly people are more likely to get caught.

A good article on violence

2006-02-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

This is pretty long but worth reading if you are interested in the causes of violence:

Violent Crime Rising Sharply in Some Cities
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: February 12, 2006
MILWAUKEE — One woman here killed a friend after they argued over a brown silk dress. A man killed a neighbor whose 10-year-old son had mistakenly used his dish soap. Two men argued over a cellphone, and pulling out their guns, the police say, killed a 13-year-old girl in the crossfire.
Ryan Donnell for The New York Times
Law enforcement officers trying to serve a warrant in South Philadelphia. With 380 homicides, 2005 was the deadliest year in that city since 1997.
While violent crime has been at historic lows nationwide and in cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, it is rising sharply here and in many other places across the country.
And while such crime in the 1990's was characterized by battles over gangs and drug turf, the police say the current rise in homicides has been set off by something more bewildering: petty disputes that hardly seem the stuff of fistfights, much less gunfire or stabbings.
Suspects tell the police they killed someone who "disrespected" them or a family member, or someone who was "mean mugging" them, which the police loosely translate as giving a dirty look. And more weapons are on the streets, giving people a way to act on their anger.
Police Chief Nannette H. Hegerty of Milwaukee calls it "the rage thing."
"We're seeing a very angry population, and they don't go to fists anymore, they go right to guns," she said. "A police department can have an effect on drugs or gangs. But two people arguing in a home, how does the police department go in and stop that?"
Here in Milwaukee, where homicides jumped from 88 in 2004 to 122 last year, the number classified as arguments rose to 45 from 17, making up by far the largest category of killings, as gang and drug murders declined.
In Houston, where homicides rose 24 percent last year, disputes were by far the largest category, 113 out of 336 killings. Officials were alarmed by the increase in murders well before Hurricane Katrina swelled the city's population by 150,000 people in September; the police say 18 homicides were related to evacuees.
In Philadelphia, where 380 homicides made 2005 the deadliest year since 1997, 208 were disputes; drug-related killings, which accounted for about 40 percent of homicides during the high-crime period of the early 1990's, accounted for just 13 percent.
"When we ask, 'Why did you shoot this guy?' it's, 'He bumped into me,' 'He looked at my girl the wrong way,' " said Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson of Philadelphia. "It's not like they're riding around doing drive-by shootings. It's arguments — stupid arguments over stupid things."
The police say the suspects and the victims tend to be black, young — midteens to mid-20's — and have previous criminal records. They tend to know each other. Several cities said that domestic violence had also risen. And the murders tend to be limited to particular neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a homicide in about five years, but in largely black neighborhoods on the north side, murders rose from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.
"We're not talking about a city, we're talking about this subpopulation, that's what drives everything," said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "When they calm down, all the numbers go down. When they heat up, all the numbers go up. They hurt each other over personal stuff. It's respect and disrespect, and it's girls."
While arguments have always made up a large number of homicides, the police say the trigger point now comes faster.
"Traditionally, you could see the beef growing and maybe hitting the volatile point," said Daniel Coleman, the commander of the homicide unit in Boston. "Now we see these things, they're flashes, they're very unpredictable. Even five years ago, in what started as a fight or dispute, maybe you'd have a knife shown. Now it's an automatic default to a firearm."
In robberies, Milwaukee's Chief Hegerty said, "even after the person gives up, the guy with the gun shoots him anyway. We didn't have as much of that before."
Homicide rates are driven by different factors in each city, but even cities whose rates have fallen have seen problems with disputes, though those disputes are often about drugs or gangs. "As the murder universe continues to shrink in New York, the common denominators remain consistent," said Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. "In most instances, killers and victims knew each other, each had criminal records, and they were engaged in disputes, usually over narcotics."
Nationally, the homicide rate peaked in 1991, declined steadily after 1993 and has remained essentially flat since 1999. But in the first six months of 2005, according to preliminary statistics from the F.B.I., the number of homicides nationwide rose 2.1 percent, with the greatest increase, 4.9 percent, in the Midwest.
Yet many cities have seen far steeper increases. In Boston and San Francisco the number of homicides last year was at its highest in a decade, and in Prince George's County, Md., outside Washington, it was the highest ever.
In St. Louis, the number of homicides rose to 131 last year from 113 in 2004. Tulsa had 64 murders, 2 more than in 1993. Charlotte jumped from a record low of 60 homicides in 2004 to 85 in 2005. And the murder rate for 2005 was above the 15-year average in Kansas City, Mo., and Nashville.
A large part of the problem, the police say, is simply more guns on the streets as gun laws have loosened around the country. In Philadelphia, Commissioner Johnson said, since the state made it easier to get a gun permit in 1985, the number of people authorized to carry a gun in the city has risen from 700 to 32,000.
But the police also blame lax sentences and judges who they say let suspects out on bail too easily. Here, Deputy Chief Brian O'Keefe recalled a man who was released from prison on an armed robbery conviction after two years, with five years' probation, and killed someone within three months. In Nashville, Chief Ronal W. Serpas recalled an 18-year-old who had been arrested 41 times but was out on bail when he killed a bystander in a fight over a dice game.
"We have people who've done two, three, four, five shootings who are back on the streets," said Kathleen M. O'Toole, Boston's police commissioner. "Unless we have bail reform, unless these impact players with multiple gun arrests are kept off the streets, we won't reverse this problem."
Still, some of the problems are hard to address with tougher laws.
The neighborhoods with the most murders tend to be the poorest. In Milwaukee, Mallory O'Brien, an epidemiologist brought in to direct the new homicide review commission, said suspects and victims tend to have been born to teenage mothers. The city has one of the nation's highest teen pregnancy rates for blacks, and among black men, one of the lowest high school graduation rates. An industrial base that used to provide jobs for those without a high school diploma has shrunk.
Chief Corwin of Kansas City said that in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, people had explained it as a "lack of hope." "If I don't have skills, I don't have training, my socioeconomic situation looks desperate, do I really have hope?" he said. "I think that ties into the anger. If the only thing I have is my respect, that's what I carry on the street. If someone disrespects me, they've done the ultimate to me."
Those who study crime debate whether the cities where homicide is rising represent a trend.
"It's a couple of cities with bad luck and with local problems which are very real, but not necessarily part of a national pattern," said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at Berkeley who is writing a book on the crime drop of the late 1990's.
But Mr. Kennedy, at John Jay, said the decrease in homicides in big cities has obscured the problem in many other places.
"In many places — both cities and increasingly suburban and rural settings — things never got as good as they did nationally," he said. "Even if things got better, they didn't get as better as they did in Los Angeles or New York. In many places, they're getting worse."
Certainly, the number of homicides is lower than its peak in the early 90's — Milwaukee had 168 killings, not including Jeffrey Dahmer's serial murders, in 1991. But the number is far higher than in recent years, and alarming to a public that has gotten used to good news. Boston, which peaked with 151 murders in 1990, had declined to 31 in 1999. Nashville in 2004 had its lowest homicide rate in the history of city government, with 58 murders, before jumping to 99 last year.
"Because for this decade the sense is that crime is down, it's very hard to speak out about it and not look as though you're doing something wrong," said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a research and public policy group in Washington. "People's expectation of crime has significantly changed."
In some of the cities, overall crime has declined, thanks to a significant drop in property crimes. But the rise in homicides and robberies causes alarm.
"It's hard for people to look at it in depth and understand that they're not likely to be a victim if they get along with their family members and neighbors and don't live a high-risk lifestyle," said Darrel Stephens, the police chief in Charlotte.
Cities say they are going after illegal guns and are trying to stop disputes from becoming homicides. Kansas City used to investigate only some aggravated assaults; now it follows up on all cases, on the theory that next time, the assault might be a homicide. Boston and Philadelphia are sweeping neighborhoods for people who have violated warrants. In St. Louis, the police have put cameras in high-crime neighborhoods and have sent gang units to talk to parents of chronically truant students.
But recognizing that the problems have deep roots, cities are also going beyond traditional law enforcement, trying to involve churches, schools and social service agencies. In Boston, the neighborhood sweeps are followed by work crews that repair potholes, trim trees and remove graffiti.
Here in Milwaukee, the police are tagging "M.V.P.'s," or major violent players — people with several arrests, who are more likely to be involved in arguments and homicides, according to Ms. O'Brien's analysis. Those names are announced at daily police briefings.
The city has also put prosecutors and probation and parole officers on patrol with police officers, because they have more immediate power to rein in chronic offenders by enforcing curfew, nuisance laws, and restrictions against alcohol or drug use and association with gang members.
The homicide review commission has frequent, formal meetings with corrections officers, prosecutors and social service agencies to identify problem families, and is meeting with schools to assess what they are teaching about conflict resolution and how to reduce truancy.
Next month, police officials say, they will have the first of several town hall meetings with the neighborhoods with the highest homicide rates, to get residents' ideas on how to stop the killings.
"We didn't get here in a day," said Ms. O'Brien, the epidemiologist. "There's no simple solution."

What a role model

2006-02-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

According to a report in Friday's Rocky Mountain News, a Nuggets fan alleges that Martin had one of his buddies confront him during Wednesday night's game in Denver.
Martin, who sat out Wednesday's game against the Bulls, denied having anything to do with the incident.
"I know the person, but I didn't direct nobody to go into the stands," Martin told the Rocky Mountain News Thursday. "I was watching the game."
According to the report, team officials and Denver police offered clashing accounts of the controversy swirling around Martin, the highest-paid player in team history, who is injured and now the subject of numerous trade rumors.
Don Miller, a fan sitting close the situation, told the Rocky Mountain News that he saw Martin point his friend toward the heckler. He said it all started when a fan sitting two rows behind him yelled at Martin, "Suit up, you chump."
"If this guy had stood up and come up to defend Kenyon Martin on his own, without Kenyon Martin telling him to do it, I would not be talking to you now," said Miller, who attended the game with his 15-year-old son.

Why do people continue to say that sports builds drug free responsible youths, from my perspective it seems to build a bunch of self-indulgent primadonnas

More interesting than missing white women

2006-02-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

'Stone Age' killers keep law away from bodiesFrom Dan McDougall in Delhi
RELATIVES of two fishermen who were killed by warriors of one of the most primitive tribes in the world were shown their graves through binoculars yesterday, unable to set foot on the remote islands where they died.
Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari were killed by poison arrows after their boat beached on the desert island home of the Sentinelese in the Indian Ocean. Police investigating their murder have been unable to retrieve their bodies, which were buried by their attackers in shallow graves next to their boat.
According to B. S. Negi, the chief civilian administrator of the Andaman Islands, the area is guarded by 20 naked Sentinelese who are armed with bows and arrows.
Dharmendra Kumar, the police chief in charge of the Bay of Bengal archipelago, told The Times: “We cannot move in and take the bodies, as we strongly believe there would be casualties on both sides. The coastguard has flown over the islands in a helicopter and they were fired upon with bows and arrows. We think it is best to let things cool down and, once the tribals move to the island’s other end, we’ll try and sneak in and retrieve the bodies. Our best chance will be at night.”
Described by anthropologists as a lost tribe of Stone Age aborigines, the Sentinelese have lived in isolation for 60,000 years, despite the threat of tourism and the tsunami of 2004.
But last night the very future of the tribespeople, who are thought to number no more than 200, appeared to be in the balance, after officials in the archipelago opened an investigation into the murders of Mr Raj, 48, and Mr Tiwari, 52.
North Sentinel Island is one of hundreds of environmentally protected areas in the Andamans that remain out of bounds to visitors. According to the coastguard, the fishermen were murdered when they beached on the island while attempting to poach lobster and crabs from the rich coral reefs.
The police are not confident of bringing the perpetrators to justice. Mr Kumar said: “This is a very complex matter, and it isn’t as easy as steaming up to the island and solving the murder. Our biggest problem is there are no witnesses other than the tribespeople themselves.” Four other ancient tribes live in isolation on the Andamans: 99 Onge, 350 Shompens, 39 Andamanese and 350 Jarawas.
The Sentinelese subsist on turtle, fish, forest vegetables, fruits and wild pigs. They have a reputation for hostility to outsiders. Marco Polo, coming across the natives of the Andaman Islands in 1296, wrote that they “kill and eat every foreigner whom they can lay their hands upon”. Members of the tribe wear the jawbones of dead relatives around their necks.

This has murder in an exotic local all it needs is white women to make a national enquirere story.

Kids are depressing

2006-02-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

LiveScience Managing EditorLiveScience.com Wed Feb 8, 3:00 AM ET
Any parent will tell you kids can be depressing at times. A new study shows that raising them is a lifelong challenge to your mental health.
Not only do parents have significantly higher levels of depression than adults who do not have children, the problem gets worse when the kids move out.
"Parents have more to worry about than other people do—that's the bottom line," said Florida State University professor Robin Simon. "And that worry does not diminish over time. Parents worry about their kids' emotional, social, physical and economic well-being. We worry about how they're getting along in the world."
Simon knows from experience.
"I adore my kids," she said in a telephone interview. "I would do it over again. There are enormous emotional benefits. But I think [those benefits] get clouded by the emotional cost. We worry about our kids even when they're doing well."
The depressing results seem to be across the board in a study of 13,000 people. No type of parent reported less depression than non-parents, Simon said.
Some parents are more depressed than others, however. Parents of adult children, whether they live at home or not, and parents who do not have custody of their minor children have more symptoms of depression than those with young children all in the nest, regardless of whether they are biological children, step children or adopted.
Other research has shown there's a bright side to raising kids, too. One study of people with younger children found the parents have greater social networks and higher levels of self-confidence than non-parents.
"Young children in some ways are emotionally easier," Simon said. "Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems."
The research, announced today, was published in the American Sociological Association's Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Simon also found that married parents are less depressed than the unmarried. But, surprisingly, the effects of parenthood on depression were the same for men and women.
Part of the problem, Simon figures, is that Americans don't get as much help at parenting as they once did, or as is the case in other countries.
Please, our entire society is built around kids don't pretend that if someone gave you some help your life would be less pathetic.
"We do it in relative isolation. The onus is on us," she said. "It's emotionally draining."
The primary data was pulled from a study done in the late 1980s. But Simon checked the results against a repeated version of the study from the mid-90s and reached the same conclusions, and she said there is little reason to expect a new survey would yield much different results.
"People should really think about whether they want to do this or not," Simon said of parenting.

Maybe many people who have kids did it because they were depressed in the first place and were looking for something to give their life meaning, and it did not work.

Maybe they should offer this in college

2006-02-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 4, 5:59 PM ET
WASHINGTON - They are the
Pentagon' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Pentagon's new "rules of engagement" — the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called "How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk."
The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army — active, National Guard and Reserve — have divorced since the campaign in
Afghanistan'Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of Iraq' in 2003 and stretched the service thin.
Troops also are coming home with life-altering injuries.
Many come back better people, others worse-off — but either way, very changed from who they were when they wed.
"Being in the military certainly raises the stakes when you choose a mate," said Lt. Col. Peter Frederich, head of family issues in the Pentagon's chaplain office.
The "no jerks" program is also called "P.I.C.K. a Partner," for Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge.
It advises the marriage-bound to study a partner's F.A.C.E.S. — family background, attitudes, compatibility, experiences in previous relationships and skills they'd bring to the union.
It teaches the lovestruck to pace themselves with a R.A.M. chart — the Relationship Attachment Model — which basically says don't let your sexual involvement exceed your level of commitment or level of knowledge about the other person.
Maj. John Kegley, a chaplain who teaches the program in Monterey, Calif., throws in the "no jerk salute" for fun. One hand at the heart, two-fingers at the brow mean use your heart and brain when choosing.
Though the acronyms and salute make it sound like something the Pentagon would come up with, the program was created by former minister John Van Epp of Ohio, who has a doctorate in psychology and a private counseling practice. He teaches it to Army chaplains, who in turn teach it to troops.
It also is used by social service agencies, prisons, churches and other civilian groups.
Commanders once discouraged troops from starting a family while serving. Thus the old saying: "If the Army wanted you to have a wife, it would have issued you one."
Today, the military supports families more than any other employer, Frederich said.
The Bush administration proposes to spend $5.6 billion in the next budget year for quality-of-life services for troops and their families.
That includes help with child care, education, spouse job hunting, legal assistance, commissaries, relocation counseling — programs on every family issue imaginable — to promote stability, and thus troop readiness.
Such support notwithstanding, "not everybody is cut out" to marry into the military, said Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd.
Some 740,000 people — or a little more than half of all troops in the active-duty armed forces — are married. Of those, some 96,000 had spouses also in uniform in the 2004 budget year, according to Pentagon figures.
The Army hopes the "no jerks" program will help couples decide if they are ready for a long-term commitment and can cope with the unique stresses of military life.
"Settings like military bases are incubators," said Van Epp, of Medina, Ohio. "They try to hatch ... relationships extremely fast," leading to higher divorce rates and more domestic violence.
The program teaches troops not to cave in to the pressure of a ticking clock — like rushing to marry before shipping out for a deployment, or too soon after homecoming.
Last month, Van Epp sent 200 program workbooks to troops in Iraq.
___

for later

2006-02-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

THE NATION
Falling Jobless Rate Boosts Wages but Fuels Concern on Prices and Profits
By Bill Sing, Times Staff Writer
A strong job report Friday helped revive a troubling theme prominent during the economic boom of the late 1990s: What's good for workers may not necessarily be good for investors and monetary policymakers.The U.S. Labor Department reported a solid gain in jobs in January along with significant upward revisions in employment for November and December. The unemployment rate fell to 4.7%, its lowest level in more than four years, while workers' average hourly earnings rose more than expected. Wage growth on an annual basis hit a nearly three-year high.
The percentage of unemployed people without work for at least six months — what is considered to be long-term unemployment — declined sharply.The bottom line: The labor market is tightening, which means more bargaining power and stronger wage growth for workers. Their earnings have failed to keep up with inflation during a five-year economic recovery marked by rising energy costs and growing competition with low-wage countries such as China and India.Sluggish wage gains, along with lackluster job creation during the early part of the rebound from the 2001 recession, are a primary reason many Americans have been skeptical about the economy's strength and dissatisfied with President Bush's economic policies. But the prospect of better rank-and-file pay and lower joblessness spooked some investors Friday because it threatened to reignite inflation and limit corporate profit growth. Investors fear that inflation pressures could force the Federal Reserve and its new chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, to boost interest rates more than hoped for. That, along with weakened profit growth, could halt what has been a promising 2006 stock market rally. Some analysts Friday altered their forecasts of what the Fed will do, with the prospect of rate hikes in March and May now seen as more likely. Before Friday, many had thought the central bank would raise rates at its next policymaking meeting March 28, the first for Bernanke, but take a breather in May. "Today's labor report could not have been more disheartening to those who thought the Fed had ended its monetary tightening," said Eugenio J. Aleman, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis, who now predicts the Fed will raise its benchmark short-term rate to 5% in May, instead of stopping at 4.75% in March. More Fed rate hikes could lead to higher mortgage rates, further cooling a once red-hot housing market, analysts said. The stock market, which had been primed to open higher Friday morning before the release of the job data, stumbled instead, with major indexes closing lower. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 60 points and the Nasdaq composite index lost nearly 20. The market has been weak since Tuesday, when the Fed raised rates and signaled that inflationary pressures could lead to more increases. Friday's stock market tumble after good news for workers was reminiscent of the late 1990s. Then, investors often cheered weak employment numbers because they reduced pressure on the Fed to boost interest rates.The return of such a dynamic "is unsettling for me," said Jared Bernstein, economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "Don't take the punch bowl away just because workers are arriving at the party…. The fact that wages are catching up to inflation is a good thing and a dynamic we ought to nurture, not stomp on," Bernstein said. He said stronger wage growth would stimulate the economy and boost consumer spending, which helps corporate bottom lines.Friday's job report provided strong evidence that the economy was rebounding from a surprisingly weak final three months of last year, analysts said. U.S. employers in January added a net 193,000 jobs, an improvement from the revised 140,000 in December, the Labor Department reported Friday. Although the January number was lower than the 250,000 that had been expected by economists, job creation for the two previous months was revised upward by 81,000 positions. Good weather in much of the country was given some credit for the strong job gains. Hiring growth was spread across many sectors, with increases in such fields as construction, mining, food services, healthcare and financial activities. Construction added 46,000 jobs amid Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts, while service industries gained 135,000 positions. Meanwhile, the 4.7% unemployment rate represented a 0.2-percentage-point drop from December and was the lowest rate since July 2001, when the figure was 4.6%. The number of people without jobs plunged 335,000.The percentage of unemployed workers who had been jobless for at least six months fell to 16.3%, down from 18.2% in December and 21% a year earlier, and was the lowest level since March 2002. Stubbornly high long-term unemployment, including among people with college degrees, had been a key reason some analysts considered job creation in the current recovery to be subpar.Average hourly earnings rose to $16.41 last month, up 0.4% from December, better than the 0.3% gain expected by economists. On a year-over-year basis, hourly wages increased 3.3%, the highest growth rate since February 2003. The economy added 1.98 million jobs during all of 2005, down from the 2.1 million generated in 2004, according to annual revisions by the Labor Department released Friday. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration lauded the job report.President Bush, speaking in Rio Rancho, N.M., where he took part in a discussion at Intel Corp. about the role of research, development and technology in the nation's economic future, said, "We've got a strong economy.""We got steady growth. And that's important. We want our people working. We want people to be able to realize opportunity and hope. And in order to do that you got to have a growing economy, obviously," Bush said.Accelerating wage growth indeed is the norm for the latter stages of an economic recovery, as was the case in the late 1990s. Under these conditions, businesses typically expand to meet growing sales, but amid falling unemployment, they must bid up wages to attract workers. Knowing this, people with jobs seek higher raises — and increasingly have the bargaining power to get them. But some analysts said it was still too soon for workers to fully celebrate their improving wage fortunes. The 3.3% annualized wage gain still lags behind the 3.4% yearly inflation rate, economist Bernstein said. And continuing pressures from globalization will subdue wage gains for some workers, he said. Employers in many industries still can shift production to countries with cheaper labor."If you are a white-collar worker in an occupation where information can be digitized, there is a good chance you are competing now with workers who are equally skilled but earn a tenth as much as you do," Bernstein said. "Of course that will have an impact." *Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Rio Rancho, N.M., contributed to this report.

For later

2006-01-30T10:54:00.000-08:00

CULTURE WAR POLITICS....Matt Yglesias reminds me today that I had planned to excerpt another part of Garance Franke-Ruta's article, "Remapping the Culture Debate," but forgot to do it. Here she's talking about why low income voters — who seemingly ought to be receptive to liberal pocketbook politics — are instead strongly receptive to conservative culture war politics:
Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle class people they want to be like. It should come as no surprise that the politics of reaction is strongest where there is most to react to. People in states like Massachusetts, for example, which has very high per capita incomes and the lowest divorce rate in the country, are relatively unconcerned about gay marriage, while those in Southern states with much higher poverty, divorce, and single-parenthood rates feel the family to be threatened because family life is, in fact, much less stable in their communities. In such environments, where there are few paths to social solidarity and a great deal of social disruption, the church frequently steps into the breach, further exacerbating the fight

Of interest

2006-01-29T07:27:00.000-08:00

Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
Some Experts on Global Warming Foresee 'Tipping Point' When It Is Too Late to Act
By Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, January 29, 2006; Page A01
Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.
This "tipping point" scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.
The debate has been intensifying because Earth is warming much faster than some researchers had predicted. James E. Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, last week confirmed that 2005 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 1998. Earth's average temperature has risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, he noted, and another increase of about 4 degrees over the next century would "imply changes that constitute practically a different planet."
"It's not something you can adapt to," Hansen said in an interview. "We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something."
Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer, who also advises the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.
While both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets as a whole are gaining some mass in their cold interiors because of increasing snowfall, they are losing ice along their peripheries. That indicates that scientists may have underestimated the rate of disintegration they face in the future, Oppenheimer said. Greenland's current net ice loss is equivalent to an annual 0.008 inch sea level rise.
The effects of the collapse of either ice sheet would be "huge," Oppenheimer said. "Once you lost one of these ice sheets, there's really no putting it back for thousands of years, if ever."
Last year, the British government sponsored a scientific symposium on "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," which examined a number of possible tipping points. A book based on that conference, due to be published Tuesday, suggests that disintegration of the two ice sheets becomes more likely if average temperatures rise by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit, a prospect "well within the range of climate change projections for this century."
The report concludes that a temperature rise of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit "is likely to lead to extensive coral bleaching," destroying critical fish nurseries in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Too-warm sea temperatures stress corals, causing them to expel symbiotic micro-algae that live in their tissues and provide them with food, and thus making the reefs appear bleached. Bleaching that lasts longer than a week can kill corals. This fall there was widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidad that killed broad swaths of corals, in part because ocean temperatures were 2 degrees Fahrenheit above average monthly maximums.
Many scientists are also worried about a possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, a current that brings warm surface water to northern Europe and returns cold, deep-ocean water south. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who directs Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has run multiple computer models to determine when climate change could disrupt this "conveyor belt," which, according to one study, is already slower than it was 30 years ago. According to these simulations, there is a 50 percent chance the current will collapse within 200 years.
Some scientists, including President Bush's chief science adviser, John H. Marburger III, emphasize there is still much uncertainty about when abrupt global warming might occur.

"There's no agreement on what it is that constitutes a dangerous climate change," said Marburger, adding that the U.S. government spends $2 billion a year on researching this and other climate change questions. "We know things like this are possible, but we don't have enough information to quantify the level of risk."
This tipping point debate has stirred controversy within the administration; Hansen said senior political appointees are trying to block him from sharing his views publicly.
'Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or When Hansen posted data on the Internet in the fall suggesting that 2005 could be the warmest year on record, NASA officials ordered Hansen to withdraw the information because he had not had it screened by the administration in advance, according to a Goddard scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. More recently, NASA officials tried to discourage a reporter from interviewing Hansen for this article and later insisted he could speak on the record only if an agency spokeswoman listened in on the conversation.
"They're trying to control what's getting out to the public," Hansen said, adding that many of his colleagues are afraid to talk about the issue. "They're not willing to say much, because they've been pressured and they're afraid they'll get into trouble."
But Mary L. Cleave, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Office of Earth Science, said the agency insists on monitoring interviews with scientists to ensure they are not misquoted.
"People could see it as a constraint," Cleave said. "As a manager, I might see it as protection."
John R. Christy, director of the Earth Science System Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said it is possible increased warming will be offset by other factors, such as increased cloudiness that would reflect more sunlight. "Whatever happens, we will adapt to it," Christy said.
Scientists who read the history of Earth's climate in ancient sediments, ice cores and fossils find clear signs that it has shifted abruptly in the past on a scale that could prove disastrous for modern society. Peter B. deMenocal, an associate professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, said that about 8,200 years ago, a very sudden cooling shut down the Atlantic conveyor belt. As a result, the land temperature in Greenland dropped more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit within a decade or two.
"It's not this abstract notion that happens over millions of years," deMenocal said. "The magnitude of what we're talking about greatly, greatly exceeds anything we've withstood in human history."
These kinds of concerns have spurred some governments to make major cuts in the carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming. Britain has slashed its emissions by 14 percent, compared with 1990 levels, and aims to reduce them by 60 percent by 2050. Some European countries, however, are lagging well behind their targets under the international Kyoto climate treaty.
David Warrilow, who heads science policy on climate change for Britain's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that while the science remains unsettled, his government has decided to take a precautionary approach. He compared consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels to the strategy of the Titanic's crew, who were unable to avoid an iceberg because they were speeding across the Atlantic in hopes of breaking a record.
"We know there are icebergs out there, but at the moment we're accelerating toward the tipping point," Warrilow said in an interview. "This is silly. We should be doing the opposite, slowing down whilst we build up our knowledge base."
The Bush administration espouses a different approach. Marburger said that though everyone agrees carbon dioxide emissions should decline, the United States prefers to promote cleaner technology rather than impose mandatory greenhouse gas limits. "The U.S. is the world leader in doing something on climate change because of its actions on changing technology," he said.
Stanford University climatologist Stephen H. Schneider, who is helping oversee a major international assessment of how climate change could expose humans and the environment to new vulnerabilities, said countries respond differently to the global warming issue in part because they are affected differently by it. The small island nation of Kiribati is made up of 33 small atolls, none of which is more than 6.5 feet above the South Pacific, and it is only a matter of time before the entire country is submerged by the rising sea.
"For Kiribati, the tipping point has already occurred," Schneider said. "As far as they're concerned, it's tipped, but they have no economic clout in the world."

No wonder people are scared all of the time

2006-01-21T06:56:00.000-08:00

By Dafna LinzerWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, August 2, 2005;

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."

To hear some people talk about Iran you would think that they will have a bomb tomorrow. The problem with exagerating threats is that some solutions are missed in the hurry to act. For example maybe Iraq could have been handled better.

I've gotta watch this

2006-01-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - NBC's Nashville affiliate has closed "The Book of Daniel" after the show, whose main character is a pill-popping Episcopal priest with a gay son and a pot-dealing daughter, drew thousands of complaints.
WSMV-TV General Manager Elden Hale Jr. said he decided to pull the show starring Aidan Quinn after NBC rejected the station's request to air it overnight instead of during "family viewing time."
Despite its third-place finish nationally, the show won its time slot last Friday in the Nashville TV market. Hale said viewers objected to the language, the sexual content and the portrayal of Jesus, who appears to Quinn's character for regular chats.

If people are getting this mad about it, it must be entertaining

Wouldn't this also stop the learning process

2006-01-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Sat Jan 14, 1:04 PM ET
Suppose you could erase bad memories from your mind. Suppose, as in a recent movie, your brain could be wiped clean of sad and traumatic thoughts.
That is science fiction. But real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event like rape, may make the resulting memories less painful and intense.
Will it work? It is too soon to say. Still, it is not far-fetched to think that this drug someday might be passed out along with blankets and food at emergency shelters after disasters like the tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.
Psychiatrist Hilary Klein could have offered it to the man she treated at a St. Louis shelter over the Labor Day weekend. He had fled New Orleans and was so distraught over not knowing where his sisters were that others had to tell Klein his story.
"This man could not even give his name, he was in such distress. All he could do was cry," she said.
Such people often develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a problem first recognized in Vietnam War veterans. Only 14 percent to 24 percent of trauma victims experience long-term PTSD, but sufferers have flashbacks and physical symptoms that make them feel as if they are reliving the trauma years after it occurred.
Scientists think it happens because the brain goes haywire during and right after a strongly emotional event, pouring out stress hormones that help store these memories in a different way than normal ones are preserved.
Taking a drug to tamp down these chemicals might blunt memory formation and prevent PTSD, they theorize.
Some doctors have an even more ambitious goal: trying to cure PTSD. They are deliberately triggering very old bad memories and then giving the pill to deep-six them.
The first study to test this approach on 19 longtime PTSD sufferers has provided early encouraging results, Canadian and Harvard University researchers report.
"We figure we need to test about 10 more people until we've got solid evidence." said Alain Brunet, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who is leading the study.
It can't come too soon.
The need for better treatment grows daily as American troops return from
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq and
Afghanistan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Afghanistan with wounded minds as well as bodies. One government survey found almost 1 in 6 showing symptoms of mental stress, including many with post-traumatic stress disorder. Disability payments related to the illness cost the government more than $4 billion a year.
The need is even greater in countries ravaged by many years of violence.
"I don't think there's yet in our country a sense of urgency about post-traumatic stress disorder" but there should be, said James McGaugh, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California at Irvine.
He and a colleague, Larry Cahill, did experiments that changed how scientists view memory formation and suggested new ways to modify it.
Memories, painful or sweet, don't form instantly after an event but congeal over time. Like slowly hardening cement, there is a window of opportunity when they are shapable.
During stress, the body pours out adrenaline and other "fight or flight" hormones that help write memories into the "hard drive" of the brain, McGaugh and Cahill showed.
Propranolol can blunt this. It is in a class of drugs called beta blockers and is the one most able to cross the blood-brain barrier and get to where stress hormones are wreaking havoc. It already is widely used to treat high blood pressure and is being tested for stage fright.
Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard University psychiatrist, did a pilot study to see whether it could prevent symptoms of PTSD. He gave 10 days of either the drug or dummy pills to accident and rape victims who came to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room.
In follow-up visits three months later, the patients listened to tapes describing their traumatic events as researchers measured their heart rates, palm sweating and forehead muscle tension.
The eight who had taken propranolol had fewer stress symptoms than the 14 who received dummy pills, but the differences in the frequency of symptoms were so small they might have occurred by chance — a problem with such tiny experiments.
Still, "this was the first study to show that PTSD could be prevented," McGaugh said, and enough to convince the federal government to fund a larger one that Pitman is doing now.
Meanwhile, another study on assault and accident victims in France confirmed that propranolol might prevent PTSD symptoms.
One of those researchers, Brunet, now has teamed with Pitman on the boldest experiment yet — trying to cure longtime PTSD sufferers.
"We are trying to reopen the window of opportunity to modulate the traumatic memory," Pitman said.
The experiments are being done in Montreal and involve people traumatized as long as 20 or 30 years ago by child abuse, sexual assault or a serious accident.
"It's amazing how a traumatic memory can remain very much alive. It doesn't behave like a regular memory. The memory doesn't decay," Brunet said.
To try to make it decay, researchers ask people to describe the trauma as vividly as they can, bringing on physical symptoms like racing hearts, then give them propranolol to blunt "restorage" of the memory. As much as three months later, the single dose appears to be preventing PTSD symptoms, Brunet said.
Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscience professor at New York University, is enrolling 20 to 30 people in a similar experiment and believes in the approach.
"Each time you retrieve a memory it must be restored," he said. "When you activate a memory in the presence of a drug that prevents the restorage of the memory, the next day the memory is not as accessible."
Not all share his enthusiasm, as McGaugh found when he was asked to brief the President's Council on Bioethics a few years ago.
"They didn't say anything at the time but later they went ballistic on it," he said.
Chairman Leon Kass contended that painful memories serve a purpose and are part of the human experience.
McGaugh says that's preposterous when it comes to trauma like war. If a soldier is physically injured, "you do everything you can to make him whole," but if he says he is upset "they say, 'suck it up — that's the normal thing,'" he complained.
Propranolol couldn't be given to soldiers in battle because it would curb survival instincts.
"They need to be able to run and to fight," Pitman said. "But if you could take them behind the lines for a couple of days, then you could give it to them after a traumatic event," or before they're sent home, he said.
Some critics suggest that rape victims would be less able to testify against attackers if their memories were blunted, or at least that defense attorneys would argue that.
"Medical concerns trump legal concerns. I wouldn't withhold an effective treatment from somebody because of the possibility they may have to go to court a year later and their testimony be challenged. We wouldn't do that in any other area of medicine," Pitman said. "The important thing to know about this drug is it doesn't put a hole in their memory. It doesn't create amnesia."
Practical matters may limit propranolol's usefulness. It must be given within a day or two of trauma to prevent PTSD.
How long any benefits from the drug will last is another issue. McGaugh said some animal research suggests that memory eventually recovers after being squelched for a while by the drug.
Overtreatment also is a concern. Because more than three-quarters of trauma victims don't have long-term problems, most don't need medication.
But LeDoux sees little risk in propranolol.
"It's a pretty harmless drug," he said. "If you could give them one or two pills that could prevent PTSD, that would be a pretty good thing."
Klein, the Saint Louis University psychiatrist, said it would be great to have something besides sleep aids, antidepressants and counseling to offer traumatized people, but she remains skeptical about how much long-term good propranolol can do.
"If there were a pill to reduce the intensity of symptoms, that would be a relief," she said. "But that's a far step from being able to prevent the development of PTSD."
Only more study will tell whether that is truly possible.

Part of the reason we react to stress in the way we do is to learn from it. This would stop that process. Maybe we should just teach people to cope better.
___

They might even take Tom

2006-01-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

GI SchmoHow low can Army recruiters go?
By Fred KaplanPosted Monday, Jan. 9, 2006, at 5:06 PM ET

Three months ago, I wrote that the war in Iraq was wrecking the U.S. Army, and since then the evidence has only mounted, steeply. Faced with repeated failures to meet its recruitment targets, the Army has had to lower its standards dramatically. First it relaxed restrictions against high-school drop-outs. Then it started letting in more applicants who score in the lowest third on the armed forces aptitude test—a group, known as Category IV recruits, who have been kept to exceedingly small numbers, as a matter of firm policy, for the past 20 years. (There is also a Category V—those who score in the lowest 10th percentile. They have always been ineligible for service in the armed forces and, presumably, always will be.)
The bad news is twofold. First, the number of Category IV recruits is starting to skyrocket. Second, a new study compellingly demonstrates that, in all realms of military activity, intelligence does matter. Smarter soldiers and units perform their tasks better; dumber ones do theirs worse.
Until just last year, the Army had no trouble attracting recruits and therefore no need to dip into the dregs. As late as 2004, fully 92 percent of new Army recruits had graduated high school and just 0.6 percent scored Category IV on the military aptitude test.

Then came the spiraling casualties in Iraq, the diminishing popularity of the war itself, and the subsequent crisis in recruitment.
In response to the tightening trends, on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s. Even so, in October, the Army had such a hard time filling its slots that the floodgates had to be opened; 12 percent of that month's active-duty recruits were Category IV. November was another disastrous month; Army officials won't even say how many Cat IV applicants they took in, except to acknowledge that the percentage was in "double digits."

This entire article came from slate

Update on the runaway cow

2006-01-11T22:06:00.000-08:00

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 5:30 p.m. ET Jan. 11, 2006
GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A cow that escaped last week from a Montana slaughterhouse, leading workers and police on a six-hour chase, will be spared following a wave of popular support, officials said Tuesday.
Del Morris, manager of Mickey’s Packing Plant in Great Falls, said he decided to let the cow live the instant he saw it cross the Missouri River through Great Falls.
Town residents will now decide through a telephone poll whether the cow will remain a resident of Montana, where it will live out its life on pastureland surrounding the packing plant, or be shipped to an animal sanctuary in Seattle

From Yahoo News

2006-01-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A cow that escaped a slaughterhouse dodged vehicles, ran in front of a train, braved the icy Missouri River and took three tranquilizer darts before being recaptured six hours later. News of the heifer's adventures prompted a number of people to offer to buy the animal.
The black, 1,200 pound heifer jumped a gate at the packing plant at around 5 a.m. Thursday and apparently wandered through residential areas. Police received reports at about 9:30 a.m. that it was in the middle of a busy intersection.
Police tried to catch the cow, and had her wedged between a stock trailer and a fence, but the heifer barreled through the fence toward the river, nearly being hit by a Chevrolet Suburban.
It was the first of many near-death experiences.
With the police in pursuit, the cow ran toward the railroad tracks and darted in front of an oncoming locomotive, briefly giving the police the slip again.
Crossing another road, the cow was nearly struck by a semi tractor-trailer.
"By then it was a madhouse," said police officer Corey Reeves. "People were coming out of the woodwork to see."
When police, animal control officers and slaughterhouse workers surrounded the cow in a park near the Missouri River, the cow jumped into the icy water.
As she swam to the west bank of the river, Reeves said she sank lower in the water and was being swept downstream. But the cow found a sandbar near the river's west bank and walked to shore.
"I was totally amazed she was able to swim the river," said Del Morris, the slaughterhouse manager.
As police scrambled to head off the cow on the other side of the river, a veterinarian with a tranquilizer gun was called.
Pursuers again believed they had the cow cornered at a chain link fence, but the heifer ran through a perimeter set up by officials.
The chase began to slow as the cow ran up against several strong fences. Dr. Jennifer Evans of Big Sky Medical Center shot the cow with a tranquilizer dart.
It had little effect.
Two darts later, the heifer showed no signs of going down. Slaughterhouse workers created a makeshift pen with metal panels that led to a stock trailer.
The heifer walked into the trailer at 11:45 a.m.
The cow was taken back to the slaughterhouse, where it was put in a pen — with a stronger fence — and given food and water

Comment:
Any creature that wants to live this bad deserves a chance

Hard to feel sorry for these people

2006-01-07T06:59:00.000-08:00

By Peter Whoriskey
Updated: 12:36 a.m. ET Jan. 7, 2006
ELTON, La. - The dizzying downfall of lobbyist Jack Abramoff means more than just another Washington political scandal in this rural outpost of tin-roofed homes and fraying trailers.
It is a measure of vengeance.
Led on by what they say were his false promises of political access, leaders of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which is based here, paid Abramoff and his partners about $32 million for lobbying and other services -- more than $38,000 for each of their 837 tribal members. By their accounting, they got very little in return.
It was thievery, tribal members said, that echoes the historic losses of Native Americans to European settlers.
"Abramoff and his partner are the contemporary faces of the exploitation of native peoples," said David Sickey, a member of the tribal council. "In the 17th and 18th century, native people were exploited for their land. In 2005, they're being exploited for their wealth."
The money the Coushatta Tribe and other tribes with casino interests paid to Abramoff helped him spread favors and gain access in the nation's capital -- the subject of speculation about a widening political dragnet. But even more rankling to many Coushattas is the knowledge that Abramoff had, in released e-mails, referred to some of his Native American clients as "monkeys," "troglodytes" and "morons."
"That hit a nerve," Sickey said, frowning and pausing. "That really hit a nerve."

My Comments:
Essentially this tribe was paying Abramoff to keep other tribes from starting casinos. Even though other tribes have as much of a right to open casinos as these guys. They did not want anyone else to enjoy the benefits and were worried that it would cut into their profits. When you get greedy this is what happens, you get taken advantage of. But now of course they are playing the victim card. They are victims of their own greed.

Just liked this one

2006-01-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

By Ed Stoddard Tue Jan 3,12:38 PM ET
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African mugger fleeing the scene of his crime hides in a tiger enclosure.
On the country's coast, a woman attempts to be a good Samaritan by pushing a young seal into the sea, believing the poor thing is stranded.
Both people paid heavily for their stupidity, underscoring one of nature's truisms: humans do dumb things around wild animals.
"I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you," said James Cameron, a South African professional hunter.
The cartoon image of wildlife may have prompted a 49-year-old South African woman in October to try to help a seal which she believed was stranded, allowing her 1-year-old grandchild to stroke the creature in the process.
The seal responded by biting off the woman's nose.
Cape Fur Seals are common on South African shores and many have become accustomed to humans.
They are a popular tourist attraction and can be viewed playing in the sea by Cape Town's waterfront -- which may also give a false impression of placid friendliness.
"Cute" seal pups have also been used as potent symbols by groups such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare, further enhancing the animal's "cuddly status."
But they can in fact be dangerous and sometimes attack people who venture too close -- as South Africa's noseless do-gooder discovered to her horror.
TIGER TROUBLE
Then there was the South African robber who made the mistake last month of taking refuge in an enclosure which turned out to be home to a pair of unimpressed tigers.
He had fled into a nearby zoo after security guards heard the screams of a couple he had just mugged in Bloemfontein, about 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Johannesburg.
Not surprisingly, he was mauled to death by the big cats.
The mugger was not the first South African criminal to err in hiding among zoo animals.
Max, a 200 kg (440 lb) gorilla, won fame in 1997 after being wounded by a terrified gunman who jumped a moat into his space in Johannesburg's zoo while fleeing police.
Max pinned the fugitive against the wall of his enclosure and guarded him even after being shot until police arrived, making him an instant folk hero in crime-ridden South Africa.
Other people don't realize that you shouldn't get between a mother and her offspring -- especially when dealing with the world's largest land mammal.
In April of this year, an elephant gored a tourist to death in a Ugandan national park after the man, carrying an 8-year-old boy in his arms, approached the animal's calf.
"I think many people are just far removed from nature. People who live in cities often see nature as something that is tame and manageable," said Sue Lieberman, director of the global species program for conservation group WWF International.
"And wrongly so. We don't need to tame nature, we need to keep the wild out there," she told Reuters.
SHOW-OFFS
Then there are the show-offs.
Lions mauled a South African teen-ager in March who came too close to their enclosure while trying to impress his girlfriend.
The sixteen-year-old, his girlfriend and his mother were having lunch with the lion keeper when he ignored advice and went off with his girlfriend to see the lions in the breeding section of the park just north of Johannesburg.
The boy went into an area off-limits to the public and touched a lion through the mesh fence.
The lion quickly sank its teeth into his arm and dragged him under the fence before the curator came, drove the four adult lions in the enclosure away and rescued the teen-ager.
"It just shows a total disregard and disrespect for wild animals," said Cameron.
The boy was luckier than a couple from Taiwan in 1993, who got out of their car to photograph lions up close at a South African game park -- and who were quickly savaged to death by the beasts.

people deserve to see bloody mary

2006-01-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Hall Thu Dec 29, 7:14 PM ET
Did Comedy Central grant the Catholic League its Christmas wish?
Following the Dec. 7 season finale of South Park, titled "Bloody Mary," the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights slammed the network for its irreverent portrayal of church icons and sought to block the episode from being rebroadcast.
It appears the group may have met with success. A repeat of the finale was scheduled to air Wednesday night, but was pulled from the Comedy Central lineup without explanation.
In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is believed to be bleeding from its rear end, inspiring faithful parishioners to flock from miles around to be healed by the miraculous blood.
Eventually,
The Pope is called in to investigate, whereupon he determines that the statue is actually menstruating and thus is nothing special.
"A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle," the pope declares in the episode. "Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time."
Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and "a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD."
The Catholic League also sought a personal condemnation from Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano Jr., who the group noted is a "practicing Catholic."
Califano was only too happy to oblige. After viewing the episode, he released a statement calling the episode an "appalling and disgusting portrayal of the Virgin Mary."
"It is particularly troubling to me as a Roman Catholic that the segment has run on the eve and day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day for Roman Catholics," Califano said.
Califano also pledged to have Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston review the episode.
Comedy Central did not respond to a request for comment on why "Bloody Mary" was yanked from the schedule.
Screencaps of the episode were no longer available on Comedy Central's press site or on comedycentral.com's South Park section.
The Catholic League previously tangled with Comedy Central in 2002 over a South Park episode titled "Red Hot Catholic Love," but failed to produce any results.

I hope comedy central is not giving in to the religous right, it was the last decent network.
If anyone has a copy of this episode I encourage you to make it available for download or sell it on E-bay. People deserve to see bloody mary.

This guy got some alone time with Pamela Lee

2005-12-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK - A 19-year-old PETA staffer has legally changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.
Chris Garnett, youth outreach coordinator for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said he changed his name in support of the group's anti-KFC campaign.
"People don't believe me at first when I tell them my name, but it never fails to spark a discussion," Garnett, er, KentuckyFriedCruelty.com, said in a statement. "Many vow to boycott KFC after I explain the company's indifference to cruelty to animals."
Norfolk, Va.-based PETA's complaints against KFC stem from video footage shot last year recording alleged mistreatment of birds at a Pilgrim's Pride Corp. plant in Moorefield, W.Va. The plant is a KFC supplier.
Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, has disputed the claims of mistreatment. In June, a grand jury refused to indict former workers at the West Virginia chicken plant.
"Stacked" star Pamela Anderson, who has narrated a PETA video showing the alleged abuse, supports Garnett's name change.
"I'm sure Chris can't wait till KFC stops torturing chickens so he can change his name back," the actress said in a statement, adding that the chicken abuse "is awful and has to stop."
___

Why didn't I think of that?

2005-12-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

By Peter Graff Thu Dec 29, 1:04 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.
Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.
Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.
He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university.
The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.
He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.
That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.
So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multi-colored confetti of ads.
"All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew told Reuters from his home in Wiltshire, southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test so I've bought myself a little black mini."
The site features testimonials from advertisers, some of whom bought spots as a lark, only to discover that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.
Meanwhile Tew has had to juggle running the site with his first term at university, where he is studying business.
"It's been quite a difficulty trying to balance going to lectures and doing the site," he said.
But he may not have to study for long. Job offers have been coming in from Internet companies impressed by a young man who managed to figure out an original way to make money online.
"I didn't expect it to happen like that," Tew said. "To have the job offers and approaches from investors -- the whole thing is kind of surreal. I'm still in a state of disbelief."

Interesting article

2005-12-25T11:22:00.000-08:00

Scientists find 'mass dodo grave'

The bones are at least 2,000 years oldScientists have discovered the "beautifully preserved" bones of about 20 dodos at a dig site in Mauritius.
Little is known about the dodo, a famous flightless bird thought to have become extinct in the 17th century.
No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of bones was destroyed in a fire at a museum in Oxford, England, in 1755.
Researchers believe the bones are at least 2,000 years old, and hope to learn more about how dodos lived.
A team of Dutch and Mauritian scientists discovered the bones in a swampy area near a sugar plantation on the south-east of the island.
The bones were said to have been recovered from a single layer of earth, with the prospect of further excavations to come.
Sections of beaks and the remains of dodo chicks were thought to be among the find.
'Foolish' bird
The discovery was hailed as a breakthrough in the Netherlands.
RAPHUS CUCULLATUS

Forest-dwelling and flightless
Waded in ponds to catch fish
Killed by sailors for extra food
Ship animals stole its eggs"This new find will allow for the first scientific research into and reconstruction of the world in which the dodo lived, before western man landed on Mauritius and wiped out the species," the country's Natural History Museum announced in a statement.
Dutch geologist Kenneth Rijsdijk, who led the dig, said DNA samples from the dodo bones could revolutionise understanding of how the birds lived.
The dodo was mocked by Portuguese and Dutch colonialists for its size and apparent lack of fear of armed, hungry hunters.
It took its name from the Portuguese word for "fool", and was hunted to extinction within 200 years of Europeans landing on Mauritius.

Should we be putting so much emphasis on sports?

2005-12-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

Athletes and dancers may face a greater risk for the development of an eating disorder. The incidence of eating disorders among athletes continues to be on the rise especially for those involved in sports that emphasize being thin. It is estimated that up to 62 percent of females who participate in "appearance sports" such as gymnastics, figure skating, dancing, and diving are suffering from an active eating disorder. High incidence of eating disorders also occur in endurance sports that emphasize low body weights such as running, cycling and cross country skiing; sports that have weight classifications such as wrestling, horse racing and crew; and sports were the clothing is revealing such as swimming, volleyball, track, cheerleading and bodybuilding.
Many of the attributes that are part of the formula for a successful athlete may predispose them to the development of an eating disorder. Athletes' personalities tend towards being perfectionist, overachieving, competitive, compulsive and people pleasing. These traits, when focused on the body can have devastating consequences. Athletes and often their coaches are preoccupied with controlling body weight and shape to enhance athletic performance. Weigh-ins and body fat analyses are often a weekly occurrence. The worst part is that these activities are usually done in a public setting with personal weights revealed to the entire team and staff. This can cause embarrassment and foster competition among team members to obtain the lowest weight through dangerous dieting methods. Teammates and coaches are significant people in athletes' lives and can have an inordinate amount of influence. A recent study reported that 75 percent of gymnasts who were counseled by their coach es they needed to loose weight resorted to dangerous weight control measures.
Judges in sports where athletes are evaluated on technical and artistic forms have admitted they consider thinness to be an important factor in deciding excellence and have even told athletes they should loss weight to achieve their athletic goals. This was the case with the elite gymnast Christy Henrich, who stated that a United States gymnastic judge told her she was too fat and needed to lose weight if she wanted to make the Olympic team. Christy felt this statement was the impetus for her to severely restrict her food intake in order to make weight. At the age of 22, Christy Henrich died as a result of her eating disorder. When their bodies are being constantly assessed personally and by coaches, judges and spectators, it is understandable why so many athletes fall prey to disordered eating.
When athletes diet, they often go to extra ordinary lengths to reduce their percentage of body fat. Severely restrictive dieting is the most common method, but many also engage in the purging methods of vomiting, laxative abuse and diuretic abuse. Restricting food intake can results in fatigue, dizziness, muscle wasting, stress fractures, depleted food stores, weakness and fainting. Initially competitive performance may be unaffected but ultimately the athlete's performance and health will significantly decline. Because of the addictive nature of eating disorders, even though their performance may be suffering, many eating disordered athletes find it difficult to stop their disordered eating.
Long term and serious medical complications include cardiac problems and what is known as the "Female Athlete Triad". The Triad refers to disordered eating, loss of menses and osteoporosis. The resulting medical complications are often permanent and irreversible. Bone loss starts as soon as six months from loss of menstruation. A study found that anorexics were seven times as likely to develop stress fractures as a result of their bone density loss. This not only has immediate consequences on their performance but also long term consequences such as chronic joint problems and increased risk of fractures for the rest of their lives.
Coaches, parents, teammates and friends need to be alert to the early signs of eating disorders among athletes. Often, the eating disorder is well concealed, and the symptoms are misinterpreted as athletic burn out. Any of the following warning signs being present should be a cause for concern:
Restrictive dieting
Stating feeling fat despite being at weight or underweight
Purging through vomiting, diuretics or laxatives
Withdrawal from teammates
Chronic fatigue
Changing to mainly wearing sweats during workouts
Excessive exercise outside of routine training periods
Inability to complete workouts
Avoiding dressing in front of teammates
Avoiding eating in front of others
Resistance to recommendation for weight gain
Weight loss
Loss of menses
Loss of concentration
Dehydration
Pale dry skin
Hyperactivity
Gastrointestinal problems
Frequent use of restrooms
Cold Intolerance
Changes in mood
Isolation
Depression
Fainting
Light-headedness
Decreased stamina
Because of the unique situation and influence of coaches, athletic trainers and teammates, they can help prevent eating disorders among athletes. To accomplish prevention, the following should be kept in mind:
Recognize and educate athletes on the symptoms and warning signs of eating disorders.
Educate athletes on the physical risks of maintaining a low body weight.
Do not overplay the impact of weight on athletic performance.
Promote total and healthy nutrition.
Eliminate public weigh-ins and body-fat analyses.
Provide a resource for emotional counseling.
Eliminate ridiculing or flippant remarks about body shape or weight.
Set realistic goals, taking into account the individual athlete's body type and shape.
Recognize when healthy training regimens turn into obsessive regimens.
Encourage positive self-image and self-esteem.

Bottom line is most youth sports are about the parent not the child

Donate one beers worth

2005-12-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

Colorado's wild animal sanctuary is facing a major budget crisis. To learn more about their work, how to donate, how to volunteer or how to visit the sanctuary, click on Wildlife-Sanctuary.org

If you cannot afford to donate click on my sponsor links above and I will donate any money I get from adsense to the shelter.

Skip one beer and send the money to this place they could use it

If you are mad write a comment

2005-12-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

I guess some people are mad at me. If you are one of those people leave a comment I don't edit them. In fact I am to lazy to edit them so say whatever you want. Some people disagree with my opinions on Beth Twitty, send me an e-mail at Amber2512@hotmail.com if the e-mail is coherent I will even post it.

BTW, if you disagree with my ski area takes SCREW YOU. I have got my priorities

Anyone been to Vail?

2005-12-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

Copper is almost 100% open and the coverage is great although a little windblown at the top of Sierra. Mary Jane has great coverage as well. Anyone know about Vail? Thinking about using one of my 10 visits, is it worth it yet? If you have been to any other resorts let me know how they are?

Real victims

2005-12-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

People continually accuse me of being cold hearted because I don't feel sorry for Beth Twitty. I feel very bad for the the family of Taylor Behl or Tara Grinstead and I don't make fun of them. So why do I make fun of Beth Twitty. Part of it is, look who the women hangs out with. Tim Miller, nut job. Joe Mananna violent nut job. Jaime Skeeters (AKA the tape Doctor) If Beth Twitty was truly concerned about her daughters well being she would work with the police not against them. In addition none of these other victims are bringing in whack jobs to "help"

I was reading an interview of Beth Twitty at Boycottaruba.blogspot.com within one or two questions Beth twitty was talking about her dress size. Beth Twitty has an uncanny ability to make everything about her. My guess is that is why her daughter ran off, that and I wonder if Jug was abusive.

I make fun of the Twitty's because they deserve it.

saving this one here for later

2005-12-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

By Shankar VedantamWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, December 10, 2005; Page A01
The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.
These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.

Darrel A. Regier of the American Psychiatric Association favors research but says it is not clear that establishing a diagnosis would be useful. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
,'The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement."He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."
Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.
Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.
If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias.
Several experts said they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But they agreed that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness.
"Has anyone done a word search for 'racism' in DSM-IV? It doesn't exist," said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry's manual of mental disorders. "Has anyone asked, 'If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?' The answer is 'Hell, no!' "
The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study.
Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the psychiatric association, said he supports research into whether pathological bias is a disorder. But he said the jury is out on whether a diagnostic classification would add anything useful, given that clinicians already know about disorders in which people rigidly hold onto false beliefs.
"If you are going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism," Regier said. Critics would ask, " 'Are you pathologizing all of life?' You better be prepared to defend that classification."
"I think it's absurd," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and the author of "PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine." Satel said the diagnosis would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense."
Psychiatrists who advocate a new diagnosis, such as Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital, said social norms play a central role in how all psychiatric disorders are defined. Pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, Belkin noted, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.
"Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole manual reflects social context," said Belkin, who is planning to launch a study on pathological bias among patients at his hospital. "That is true of depression on down. Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression."
Advocates for the new diagnosis also say most candidates for treatment, such as the man Solomon treated, are not criminals or violent offenders. Rather, they are like the young woman in Los Angeles who thought Jews were diseased and would infect her -- she carried out compulsive cleansing rituals and hit her head to drive away her obsessions. She realized she needed help but was afraid her therapist would be Jewish, said Dunbar, a Los Angeles psychologist who has amassed several case studies and treated several dozen patients for racial paranoia and other forms of what he considers pathological bias.
Another patient was a waiter so hostile to black people that he flung plates on the table when he served black patrons and got fired from multiple jobs.
A third patient was a Vietnam War veteran who was so fearful of Asians that he avoided social situations where he might meet them, Dunbar said.
"When I see someone who won't see a physician because they're Jewish, or who can't sit in a restaurant because there are Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in mental health says, 'This is not our problem,' " the psychologist said. "If it's not our problem, whose problem is it?"
Opponents say making pathological bias a diagnosis raises the specter of social engineering -- brainwashing individuals who do not fit society's norms. But Dunbar and others say patients with disabling levels of prejudice should be treated for the same reason as are patients with any other disorder: They would feel, live and function better.
"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.
"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."
Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.
"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."
* * *
Amid a profusion of recent studies into the nature of prejudice, researchers have found that biases are very common. Almost everyone harbors what might be termed "ordinary prejudice," the research indicates.
Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychologist at Harvard, developed tests for such biases. By measuring the speed with which people make mental associations, the psychologists found that biases affect even those who actively resist them.
"When things are more strongly paired in our minds, we can respond to them more quickly," Banaji said. "Large numbers of Americans cannot as swiftly make the association between 'black' and 'good' as they can between 'white' and 'good.' "
Similarly, psychologist Margo Monteith at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that people can have prejudices against groups they know nothing about. She administered a test in which volunteers, under time pressure, had to associate a series of words with either "America" or a fictitious country she called "Marisat."
Volunteers more easily associated Marisat with such words as "poison," "death" and "evil," while associating America with "sunrise," "paradise" and "loyal."
"A large part of our self-esteem derives from our group membership," Monteith said. "To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism."
If biases are so common, many doctors ask, can racism really be a mental illness?
"I don't think racism is a mental illness, and that's because 100 percent of people are racist," said Paul J. Fink, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. "If you have a diagnostic category that fits 100 percent of people, it's not a diagnostic category."
But Poussaint said there is a difference between ordinary prejudice and pathological bias -- the same distinction that psychiatrists make between sadness and depression. All people experience sadness, anxiety and fear, but extreme, disabling forms of these emotions are called disorders.
While people with ordinary prejudice try very hard to conceal their biases, Solomon said, her homophobic patient had no embarrassment about his attitude toward gays. Dunbar said people with pathological prejudice often lack filtering capabilities. As a result, he said, they face problems at work and home.
"Everyone is inculcated with stereotypes and biases with cultural issues, but some individuals not only hold beliefs that are very rigid, but they are part of a psychological problem," Dunbar said.
The psychologist said he has helped such patients with talk therapy, which encourages patients to question the basis for their beliefs, and by steering them toward medications such as antipsychotics.
The woman with the bias against Jews did not overcome her prejudice, Dunbar said, but she learned to control her fear response in social settings. The patient with hostility against African Americans realized his beliefs were "stupid."
Solomon discovered she was most effective dealing with the homophobic man when she was nonjudgmental. When he claimed there were more gays and lesbians than ever before, she presented him with data showing there was no such shift.
At those times, she reported in a case study, the patient would say, "I know, I know." He would recognize that he was not being logical, but then get angry and return to the same patterns of obsession. Solomon did not identify the man because of patient confidentiality.
Standing in the central yard of the maximum-security California State Prison with inmates exercising around her, Chaiken explained how she distinguished pathological bias from ordinary prejudice: A prisoner who belonged to a gang with racist views might express such views to fit in with his gang, but if he continues "yelling racial slurs, assaulting others when it's clear there is no benefit" after he leaves the gang, the behavior was no longer "adaptive."
Prison officials declined to identify inmates who had been treated, or make them available for interviews.
Chicago psychiatrist Bell said he has not made up his mind on whether bias can be pathological. But in proposing a research agenda for the next edition of psychiatry's DSM of mental disorders, Bell and researchers from the Mayo Clinic, McGill University, the University of California at Los Angeles and other academic institutions wrote: "Clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of a delusional process, a consequence of anxiety, or a feature of an individual's personality dynamics."
The psychiatrists said their profession has neglected the issue: "One solution would be to encourage research that seeks to delineate the validity and reliability of racism as a symptom and to investigate the possibility of including it in some diagnostic criteria sets in future editions of DSM."

Does anyone care?

2005-12-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

Does anyone care that they fired Gary Barnett. I caught a few minutes of the news and they were acting like it was a big deal. The team sucked and their was that little rape scandal. The only thing that is surprising about his firing is that is took them so long to do it, and they gave him 3 million dollars to leave. Next time they want to raise tuition I suggest they ask Barnette to pay it.

No one cares about football at CU and the program is a drain on the other departments. If they are going to insist on having a football team can they at least keep them from raping anyone.

If you are reading this seek help

2005-11-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: December 1, 2005
REDMOND, Wash.
THE waiting room for Hilarie Cash's practice has the look and feel of many a therapist's office, with soothing classical music, paintings of gentle swans and colorful flowers and on the bookshelves stacks of brochures on how to get help.
But along with her patients, Dr. Cash, who runs Internet/Computer Addiction Services here in the city that is home to Microsoft, is a pioneer in a growing niche in mental health care and addiction recovery.
The patients, including Mike, 34, are what Dr. Cash and other mental health professionals call onlineaholics. They even have a diagnosis: Internet addiction disorder.
These specialists estimate that 6 percent to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, and they are rushing to treat it. Yet some in the field remain skeptical that heavy use of the Internet qualifies as a legitimate addiction, and one academic expert called it a fad illness.
Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the same toll on health or family life as conventionally recognized addictions. But, mental health professionals who support the diagnosis of Internet addiction say, a majority of obsessive users are online to further addictions to gambling or pornography or have become much more dependent on those vices because of their prevalence on the Internet.
But other users have a broader dependency and spend hours online each day, surfing the Web, trading stocks, instant messaging or blogging, and a fast-rising number are becoming addicted to Internet video games.
Dr. Cash and other professionals say that people who abuse the Internet are typically struggling with other problems, like depression and anxiety. But, they say, the Internet's omnipresent offer of escape from reality, affordability, accessibility and opportunity for anonymity can also lure otherwise healthy people into an addiction.
Dr. Cash's patient Mike, who was granted anonymity to protect his privacy, was at high risk for an Internet addiction, having battled alcohol and drug abuse and depression. On a list of 15 symptoms of Internet addiction used for diagnosis by Internet/Computer Addiction Services, Mike, who is unemployed and living with his mother, checked off 13, including intense cravings for the computer, lying about how much time he spends online, withdrawing from hobbies and social interactions, back pain and weight gain.
A growing number of therapists and inpatient rehabilitation centers are often treating Web addicts with the same approaches, including 12-step programs, used to treat chemical addictions.
Because the condition is not recognized in psychiatry as a disorder, insurance companies do not reimburse for treatment. So patients either pay out of pocket, or therapists and treatment centers bill for other afflictions, including the nonspecific impulse control disorder.
There is at least one inpatient program, at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Ill., which admits patients to recover from obsessive computer use. Experts there said they see similar signs of withdrawal in those patients as in alcoholics or drug addicts, including profuse sweating, severe anxiety and paranoid symptoms.
And the prevalence of other technologies - like BlackBerry wireless e-mail devices, sometimes called CrackBerries because they are considered so addictive; the Treo cellphone-organizer ; and text messaging - has created a more generalized technology addiction, said Rick Zehr, the vice president of addiction and behavioral services at Proctor Hospital.
The hospital's treatment program places all its clients together for group therapy and other recovery work, whether the addiction is to cocaine or the computer, Mr. Zehr said.
"I can't imagine it's going to go away," he said of technology and Internet addiction. "I can only imagine it's going to continue to become more and more prevalent."
There are family therapy programs for Internet addicts, and interventionists who specialize in confronting computer addicts.
Among the programs offered by the Center for Online Addiction in Bradford, Pa., founded in 1994 by Dr. Kimberly S. Young, a leading researcher in Internet addiction, are cyberwidow support groups for the spouses of those having online affairs, treatment for addiction to eBay and intense behavioral counseling - in person, by telephone and online - to help clients get Web sober.
Another leading expert in the field is Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, the director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She opened a clinic for Internet addicts at the hospital in 1996, when, she said, "everybody thought I was crazy."
Dr. Orzack said she got the idea after she discovered she had become addicted to computer solitaire, procrastinating and losing sleep and time with her family.

One more thing NOT to be afraid of

2005-11-27T11:13:00.000-08:00

By Alice Hung Sun Nov 27,12:40 AM ET
TAINAN, Taiwan (Reuters) - Fears that migratory wild birds will spread a deadly strain of avian flu across the world have little, if any, scientific proof and chances of them infecting humans are even more remote, experts said.
The experts, who attended this week a meeting of the International Waterbird Society in Taiwan, said the biggest threat of the H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic bird flu comes from domestic poultry, not wild birds.
"Wild birds are implicated spreading the disease because they travel a long distance. There is no absolute proof of that yet," professor Ron Ydenberg said on the sidelines of the three-day meeting that ended on Sunday in the southern city of Tainan.
"The real issue is where the highly pathogenic strain of the virus comes from. That's not in wild birds. It's almost certain it comes from poultry population," said Ydenberg, who heads the Center for Wildlife Ecology at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
Scientists have warned for months that the virus, which has killed 68 people in Asia, could trigger a pandemic and kill millions once it mutates into a form that is easily transmissible among people.
The
World Health Organization' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Health Organization says there are more than 120 documented cases of people contracting bird flu, most of whom were infected directly from poultry.
While acknowledging the risk of the lethal H5N1 virus, experts attending the meeting said there was no need to panic and adopt draconian measures such as killing migratory birds.
"I think bird flu fear has been over-emphasised," said Leslie Dierauf, director of the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin, the United States.
"It's a very complex virus. In order to be highly pathogenic you have to mix and match with other viruses and mutate. There is no predictability to that. We don't know when it's going to mix, when it's going to match, or when it's going to mutate, or where," she said.
Rather than discouraging bird watching or calls for culling wild birds, it is more efficient to reduce contact between domestic fowls and wild birds and to improve biosecurity in the poultry industry.
"Concentrating on wild birds as the main suspect is wrong and dangerous," said Marco Lambertini of BirdLife International, based in Britain.
"The cull of wild birds in order to prevent the disease is unreasonable and impractical," Lambertini said.

I doubt the people who like to be afraid will listen to the experts, they will just run-around scared like usual.

Why doesn't anyone talk about this?

2005-11-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

WHO Says Domestic Violence Against Women is Widespread, Worldwide
By Lisa Schlein Geneva24 November 2005
Schlein report - Download 363k Listen to Schlein report
A World Health Organization study reports domestic violence is widespread, and has
Domestic abuse victim Carolyn Thomas speaks to high school students in Waco, Texasserious implications for women's health. This study, for the first time, compares data gathered in developing, as well as developed countries. It finds violence operates similarly in rich and poor countries alike. Surveys were carried out in 10 countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Peru, Namibia, Samoa, Serbia-Montenegro, Thailand and Tanzania.
The World Health Organization says the home is not a safe place for many women in this world. WHO surveyed 24,000 women of reproductive age in 10 countries. It concludes partner violence is the most common form of violence in women's lives. It says domestic violence is far greater than assaults or rape by strangers, acquaintances or any other perpetrators.

Everyone is afraid of stranger abductions and violence perpretrated by strangers yet the biggest dangers are at home. I wonder if people will ever realize this or if they will just continue to fear the boggieman ignore real danger.

Say goodbye to the worlds most self centered spy

2005-11-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

By Joal Ryan Thu Nov 24,12:36 AM ET
Some spies are felled by poison darts. For Sydney Bristow, the culprit was the curse of Mork & Mindy.
Bristow went down Wednesday, with ABC confirming what the Nielsen ratings had been saying all season: Alias is done.
The Emmy-winning action-spy series that made a brand-name star of
Jennifer Garner' will air its final episode in May, the network said.
Alias' exit makes it the latest series to meet its end on ABC in the 8 p.m., Thursday time slot. No scripted show has survived more than a year there since Mork & Mindy was canceled in 1982.

Watching Jennifer Garner waddle around shows that pregnant women do not make good action stars, and her constant whining about the father of HER child and HER sister and HER mother and HER father was grating. Good riddance.

De we spend to much time trying to be happy

2005-11-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

By Amy Norton Thu Nov 24, 1:14 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of U.S. children and teens who were diagnosed with depression more than doubled between 1995 and 2002, while the use of antidepressant drugs rose and the use of psychotherapy or counseling declined.
The findings, say researchers, point to possible instances of inappropriate prescribing to children.
While guidelines call for children to be treated with either mental health counseling or a combination of counseling and medication, the study found a trend of antidepressants replacing talk therapy.
In addition, although only one antidepressant, Prozac (fluoxetine), has been specifically approved for patients younger than 18, prescriptions for other antidepressants rose after 1995 as well -- with children receiving prescriptions for them on an "off-label" basis.
"These trends raise concerns regarding the widespread off-label use of antidepressants lacking reliable evidence of safety and efficacy for use in children and adolescents," the study authors report in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
It's not clear why antidepressant use increased during the study period, according to lead study author Dr. Jun Ma of the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California.
But, she told Reuters Health, it likely reflects a combination of factors, including widespread drug advertising, perceptions that drugs are more effective than therapy and the fact that taking medication is more convenient than counseling.
Whether antidepressants will continue to supplant counseling for children and teens is in question. Last year, U.S. health officials directed manufacturers of all antidepressants to place a "black-box" label on their products, warning of the increased risk of suicidal behavior that has been linked to certain antidepressants.
Ma said it will be important to track how this change affects prescribing trends. She noted, however, that the warning label is not intended to "scare" doctors and patients away from antidepressants, because the drugs can be an important part of treating children with major depression.
The study is based on U.S. government health statistics collected yearly between 1995 and 2002, the most recent year for which data were available.
Ma's team found that among children ages 7 to 17, the number of doctor visits for depression more than doubled -- from 1.44 million in 1995-1996 to 3.22 million in 2001-2002.
At the same time, treatment with psychotherapy or counseling declined, with 68 percent of children receiving this form of therapy by 2002, compared with 83 percent between 1995 and 1998. In contrast, the proportion of visits in which antidepressants were prescribed rose to 52 percent by 2002 compared with 47 percent between 1995 and 1998.
Prozac was the most commonly prescribed antidepressant, but Zoloft (sertraline) and Paxil (paroxetine) were close behind.
The fact that counseling declined as antidepressant use rose suggests that for many children, drugs were used instead of, rather than as a complement to, counseling, according to Ma and her colleagues.
Current evidence, they point out, indicates that Prozac, used along with talk therapy, should be the first-choice antidepressant for children, and only if that fails should other drugs be considered.
This study, the researchers conclude, "raises concerns about physicians' adherence to evidence-based medicine."

Reading this I wonder if we are becoming a nation that cannot cope with problems. If you are down or having a bad day then you must need therapy or drugs. Maybe it is not realistic to expect to be happy all the time.

A better punishment

2005-11-23T14:04:00.000-08:00

Woman Sentenced To Night Alone In Woods
Ohio judge wants woman to feel pain of kittens she abandoned
NOVEMBER 18--An Ohio woman convicted of leaving dozens of kittens in two parks has been ordered by a judge to herself spend a night alone outdoors so that she can experience what if feels like to be abandoned, albeit only for about a dozen hours. Michelle Murray, 25, last month pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for dumping the kittens in September. At a hearing yesterday in Painesville Municipal Court, Judge Michael Cicconetti sentenced Murray to 90 days in jail, though she will spend only 14 of those days in custody. Cicconetti ordered her to surrender to park rangers at 6 PM on November 23, when she will be brought to a "remote location" of a local park and left there until "the light of dawn on November, 24, 2005," according to a court judgment, a copy of which you can find below. Murray will not be allowed to carry and food or beverages other than water, nor will she be provided with shelter. However, she will be given a "means of communication for emergency purposes only." During the sentencing hearing, Cicconetti said that he wanted Murray to "listen to the coyotes, hear the raccoons in the dark of night."

I think a better idea would be to sentence her to a night in a mens prison so she could see what it is like to be stalked by predators all night.

Copper Mountain

2005-11-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

Most of Copper Mountain is open and the coverage is great. Back to riding.

Peace

A good cause

2005-11-21T21:40:00.000-08:00

more Natalee Holloway because I need the hits

2005-11-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Aruban police confirm questioning of Natalee Holloway's familyJAY REEVESAssociated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Aruban authorities have investigated relatives of missing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway to "exclude all possibilities" and still consider three island men to be suspects in her disappearance, a top police official said.
Assistant Aruban Police Chief Gerold G. Dompig also said in an interview that Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, has hurt the investigation by releasing sensitive information during her frequent appearances on U.S. television shows. And Holloway's classmates need to be questioned more because of "disturbing" statements they've made public on TV and the Internet, he said.
Dompig made his comments Thursday in an interview conducted by e-mail with The Associated Press.
A graduate of Mountain Brook High School in suburban Birmingham, Holloway was last seen leaving a bar with three young men from Aruba during a graduation trip to the island on May 30.
Holloway's family praised Aruban authorities for their work on the case for weeks, but they recently turned more critical and joined Alabama Gov. Bob Riley in calling for a nationwide boycott of travel to Aruba, citing alleged incompetence and conflicts of interest.
The family also sought the removal of Dompig and two Aruban officials from the case, but Dompig said the investigation is moving forward.
"We have expanded the team and set crystal clear investigative goals for the next 60 days," he said.
Holloway's father, Mississippi insurance agent Dave Holloway, said Aruban police should have investigated suspects more rather than asking questions about the family. The probe is stalled and police are trying to keep up the appearance of progress, he said.
"I've tried to get them to follow the solid leads they've got," he said Friday.
Beth Twitty, the missing teen's mother, did not return messages seeking comment.
Holloway's relatives have publicly criticized Aruban police for asking questions that seemed to turn the focus of the hunt for the teenager toward her family. Investigators have questioned Twitty and Dave Holloway about possible life insurance money and a trust fund established to accept donations from the public after Holloway's disappearance.
Dompig said authorities "had to ask certain questions concerning related issues because in any investigation one should be able to exclude all possibilities."
"This is also standard procedure in (the) U.S. in any investigation," he said. "The family should not have felt this as an insult nor a witch hunt."
Despite seeking information on the family, Dompig said police "never stopped looking at our suspects being the three boys in Aruba, and there is no reason at all for us to focus on other individuals when we are speaking of suspects."
Dutch national Joran van der Sloot was held for weeks as a suspect, along with Surinamese brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. Van der Sloot has admitted leaving the bar with Holloway but denied harming her, and all three were freed.
Dompig said Holloway's mother "has absolutely hurt the investigation" by revealing too much about the case during TV appearances.
"Information given to her in confidence, being the mother of the missing girl, was repeatedly used/twisted by Mrs. Twitty on TV shows," he said. "This gave away several plans to the suspects' lawyers even before the investigators could act."
But Dave Holloway said police haven't told family members they were saying too much about the case.
"What they're complaining about is that they couldn't sweep it all under the rug and the media got hold of it," he said.
FBI agents have questioned some of the 125 or so Mountain Brook students who went on the trip with Holloway, but the group left Aruba before the investigation was in full swing. Dompig said additional questions that need to be asked could be "crucial" to the investigation.
"We still need to question a couple of the schoolmates because some earlier given statements to the FBI do not match and some students also gave disturbing (new) information about the trip on several television shows and on the Internet," he said.
Few of Holloway's former classmates have commented publicly on details about the trip, but some have given seemingly conflicting accounts of when Holloway and other members of the group first encountered van der Sloot.
Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested June 9, but Aruban authorities released them after a court ruled there was not enough evidence to continuing holding them.

What I don't get about this article is why does anyone care whether the Arubans talk to the other people who were on the trip with her, and why does the family not want to answer questions.

The family knows what happened, Natalee Holloway ran away from her nut job family and they should stop trying to hide behind victimhood.

Now really is a good time to join

2005-11-19T11:22:00.000-08:00

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970's, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the G.A.O. report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military's ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am not saying this to be snarky, if you agree with the war now might be your last chance to help.

Wanna Fight? Join the army

2005-11-18T14:35:00.000-08:00

I have seen in several places that the armed forces are in severe need of more recruits. Here is your chance if you believe in the war, join up. If you don't the US will have no choice but to abandon operation Iraqi freedom. I am not real political but I know some of you are, now is your time to put your money where your mouth is.

Homeschooling

2005-11-14T21:50:00.000-08:00

Some of you my have been following the case of the 18 year-old guy who killed the parents of his 14 year-old girlfriend. I did not bother to get the names. The interesting thing about this case is that all these kids are homeschooled and "good" christians. The young lovers apparentely met at an event for homeschooled children. The reason for homeschooling is to keep your kids away from bad influences and those kinds of children. Sounds like it did not work.

My point is that as hard as you try to avoid danger and bad people they may find you anyway. More important is teaching people how to cope and handle dysfunctional people. By isolating their daughter the victims in this case probably made their daughter especially vulnerable to an 18 tear-old psycho.

I know most the people who read this blog are Columbine graduates and do these kids remind you of someone. The only reason this kid was not shooting up his high school is that he did not have one. The moral of the village is alive and well in this story.

Interesting science

2005-11-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

Caution over HIV 'cure' claims

Andrew Stimpson said he was one of the luckiest people alive
See the interview Doctors say they want to investigate the case of a British man with HIV who apparently became clear of the virus.
Scotsman Andrew Stimpson, 25 was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2002 but was found to be negative in October 2003.
Mr Stimpson, from London, said he was "one of the luckiest people alive".
Chelsea and Westminster Healthcare NHS Trust confirmed the tests were accurate but were unable to confirm Mr Stimpson's cure because he had declined to undergo further tests.
A statement from the trust said: "This is a rare and complex case. When we became aware of Mr Stimpson's HIV negative test results we offered him further tests to help us investigate and find an explanation for the different results.
I think I'm one of the luckiest people alive
Andrew Stimpson
Bacteria modified to fight HIV
"So far Mr Stimpson has declined this offer."
A trust spokeswoman added: "We urge him, for the sake of himself and the HIV community, to come in and get tested.
"If he doesn't feel that he can come to Chelsea and Westminster then he should please go to another HIV specialist."
'Miracle'
There have been anecdotal accounts before from Africa of people shaking off the HIV virus.
Mr Stimpson, who is originally from Largs in Ayrshire, said: "There are 34.9 million people with HIV globally and I am just one person who managed to control it, to survive from it and to get rid of it from my body.
"For me that is unbelievable - it is a miracle. I think I'm one of the luckiest people alive."
Mr Stimpson told the News of the World and Mail on Sunday that he became depressed and suicidal after being told he was HIV-positive but remained well and did not require medication.
Further tests
Some 14 months later he was offered another test by doctors, which came back negative.
He sought compensation but has apparently been told there is no case to answer because there was no fault with the testing procedure.
He has told the papers he would do anything he could to help find a cure.
Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National Aids Trust, said: "This appears to be a highly unusual case and without further tests it is impossible to draw any conclusions for people living with HIV.
"The virus is extremely complex and there are many unknowns about how it operates and how people's bodies react to it.
"Therefore, if this case were able to shed further light, it could be extremely valuable for research into treatments or a cure."
Vaccine clue
Aids expert Dr Patrick Dixon, from international Aids group Acet, said the case was "very, very unusual".
"I've come across many anecdotal reports of this kind of thing happening in Africa, some quite recently, but it's difficult to verify them," he told BBC News 24.
"You have to be rock-solid sure that both samples came from the same person, no mix-up in the laboratory, no mistakes in the testing, etc.
"This is the first well-documented case."
He said the case was important because "inside his immune system is perhaps a key that could allow us to develop some kind of vaccine".

More politics

2005-11-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

NewsEx-Powell Aide Suggests Pre-War Memo Was Kept From BushBy Marc PerelmanNovember 11, 2005A former top official in the Bush administration is suggesting that a White House memo outlining the need for hundreds of thousands of troops for the Iraq invasion was kept from the president. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell during President Bush's first term, said in a November 7 speech that the National Security Council had prepared a pre-war memo recommending that hundreds of thousands of troops and other security personnel were needed. “I don't know if the president saw it,” Wilkerson told the audience of military officers and international lawyers, who had gathered at the military for a conference on on international humanitarian law. In response to a follow-up question after his speech, Wilkerson, a retired U.S. army colonel, said he believed that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had blocked the memo, but he acknowledged that he had no clear evidence. In the end, about 135,000 U.S. troops were sent - a decision that critics said has hurt America's ability to defeat the insurgency in Iraq and has led to increased American casualties. In July 2003, USA Today reported the existence of the NSC memo, which examined the level of troops in peacekeeping operations and concluded that some 500,000 troops would need to be deployed to Iraq. USA Today raised doubts as to whether the president saw the memo. However, Wilkerson's assertion seemed to take the matter a step further, suggesting that aides who supported the war intentionally kept the president in the dark. Wilkerson drew national attention last month, when, during a speech at the Washington-based New America Foundation, he accused Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of forming a “cabal” to hijack American foreign policy. “This was not a 'troop estimate,'” Wilkerson said of the alleged NSC memo, in an e-mail to the Forward. “It was a comprehensive analysis - succinct to be sure - of the potential post-war situation, which incidentally, as one would expect, included estimates of security, engineer, police, and other forces DOD might have to provide, as well as those of other agencies/departments (at least that's my memory of the preliminary stuff).” Wilkerson added, “The reason I suspect it got stopped is simply that they knew [Cheney] and [Rumsfeld] dissented strongly and did not want to reopen that box of worms.” The NSC declined to comment. An administration official referred to a quote given by the NSC to USA Today in 2003, saying, “The NSC staff does not make recommendations or provide estimates to the president on the number of troops needed for any mission.” When told of this response, Wilkerson said, “If the NSC was not doing such papers, it was grievously remiss in my humble opinion.” In his speech this week at West Point, Wilkerson said that officials in the Pentagon and in Cheney's office “really pushed the envelope” on permitting harsh interrogations and treatment of prisoners. Wilkerson recounted how military lawyers who opposed a series of guidelines allowing harsh interrogation techniques were silenced, and how he found out instances of two detainees who died in American facilities in Afghanistan as early as December 2002. The deaths, he said, were only confirmed by the Pentagon earlier this year. “We have some 25,000 prisoners and among them maybe 100 real terrorists and we decided to apply those guidelines,” he said, arguing that torture was morally wrong, eroding America's image and providing little intelligence. Wilkerson told the audience that while he disagreed with many of the administration's foreign policy moves, what most “got [his] attention” and made him “very anxious” was the treatment of detainees advocated by other officials. Just before the infamous pictures from Abu Ghraib were made public, Wilkerson recounted, he was ordered by Powell to assemble a comprehensive paper trail because “this would be big.” Wilkerson said that when the president outlined in a memorandum that prisoners should be treated humanely in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva conventions and in conformity with U.S. values, he and others in government and the military took it to mean that U.S. troops were told to treat detainees in a decent manner. “But this is not what I saw in the paper trail with regards to the office of the vice president and the Pentagon,” Wilkerson said, adding that he had returned the documents to the State Department upon his retirement earlier this year. “They really pushed the envelope.” Turning to Iraq, he blamed Bush, for whom he voted twice, for failing to assert himself in the intra-cabinet feuding over the preparations for the war. “We went in with a plan that was so inept that it was impossible for me to believe [the president] had been briefed about it and approved it,” he said, expressing his conviction that the decisions were made by the top officials at the Pentagon and by Cheney, whom he described as “the most powerful vice president” in history. “If you want to change my opinion, Mr. President, please come out and say you took the decision yourself,” Wilkerson said. Wilkerson praised his former boss at the State Department, but acknowledged that his recent criticisms had estranged him from Powell, who is known for preferring to work behind the scenes. In the spring of 2004, Wilkerson said, he was writing resignation letters “twice a week” but, out of loyalty to Powell, decided to stayed on. “Some nights, I wish I had [resigned],” he added. Of Powell, Wilkerson said, “The way they treated him in the end was humiliating, I think he wanted to leave.”

After reading this I feel sorry for the imasculated Colin Powell

Thought this was interesting

2005-11-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

Avoiding detection at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
By DOUG THOMPSONNov 11, 2005,
Wary White House aides, under constant scrutiny from a paranoid Bush administration hell bent on stopping leaks, have turned to a technique used by drug dealers and criminals to avoid detection – prepaid, disposable cell phones.
The phones, which can be purchased for as little as $30 each from discount stores, offer prepaid minutes and can be discarded when the time is used up. They require no contract or sign-up and are difficult to trace.
“It’s about the only way we can ensure any privacy,” one bitter White House staffer told me this week. “Our office and home calls are monitored along with our normal cell phones.”
Enterprising White House staffers have pooled their resources and use third parties to purchase the phones in bulk from retailers like WalMart in small towns outside the National Capital Region. When one phone’s minutes are used up, they toss the handset and activate a new one.
Drug dealers and organized gangs use such phones to avoid wiretaps and call monitoring by law enforcement agencies. That White House aides have turned to the same techniques indicates just how tense life in the West Wing has become.
“Every time a new story emerges in the press, everyone here comes under suspicion,” says one aide. “We spend most of our time covering our asses instead of tending to the nation’s business.”
White House sources tell us that even senior aides like embattled Presidential advisor Karl Rove uses the prepaid phones to avoid having certain calls show up on call logs or other records that might be subpoenaed.
“You do what you can to avoid leaving a paper trail,” says one aide.
Other techniques employed by administration officials to avoid detection include:
--Free email accounts through services like Hotmail, Lycos, Yahoo and Gmail. Staff members create multiple accounts and create new ones often.
--Increased use of cash instead of credit or debit cards. “Gas receipts can show where you’ve been. When you pay cash there’s less of a trail to follow,” says one staff member.
--Use of cars belonging to friends or increased use of public transportation like the Washington metro system because “it’s easier to get lost in a crowd.”
“I know this all sounds like a dime store novel but that’s the depth we’ve all sunk to around here,” says an aide who has worked in previous administrations as well as on the current White House staff.
One female staffer says working at the White House has gone from “the most exciting time of my life to a daily hell. You’re always being watched, always under suspicion, always second-guessed. I hate it now. I just want it to be over.”

lets hear it for John Cleese

2005-11-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

ZURICH, Switzerland - Most people know him as the Minister for Silly Walks on "Monty Python" or as Q in James Bond films. Researchers from the University of Zurich have named a newly discovered species of lemur — one of the most primitive and endangered primates in the world — after the British comedian in honor of his work with the animal.
The avahi cleesei, which weights less than two pounds and eats leaves, was discovered in Western Madagascar in 1990 by a team led by anthropologist Urs Thalmann and his colleague Thomas Geissman of Zurich University.
The name is a tribute to Cleese's promotion of the plight of lemurs in the movie "Fierce Creatures" and documentary "Operation Lemur with John Cleese," the university said in a statement. A lemur even appears next to Cleese on his Web site.
The lemur's long legs are the only physical attribute it shares with Cleese, Thalmann told New Scientist magazine. "Woolly lemurs can't really walk — but they do enjoy silly jumps," he said.
___

Always wear a beacon

2005-11-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

Berthoud Pass - A massive avalanche Sunday killed a 32-year-old Denver snowboarder who was not wearing a crucial piece of safety equipment, marking the first fatality of Colorado's 2005- 06 snow season.
Sam Teetzen was snowboarding with two others just east of Berthoud Pass on Mines Peak about 10:30 a.m. when he was swept away in an avalanche that left a path about 220 yards long and 165 yards wide. A second avalanche was triggered a short time later, authorities said.
Backcountry riders in the area joined local rescue groups in hopes of saving Teetzen, who was buried for two hours before being pulled from about 4 feet of snow at the bottom of the slide.
Officials said he was not wearing an avalanche beacon, which could have helped crews find him sooner.
Rescuers worked to revive Teetzen for more than 30 minutes before pronouncing him dead about 1 p.m.
Teetzen worked at Brooklyn's at the Pepsi Center. The restaurant was closed Sunday afternoon so Teetzen's friends could gather there in private.
"He was very loved by his friends," said his mother, Jane Teetzen. "He was very loved by his family too."
Teetzen's mother said her son's dog also was killed in the slide.
Teetzen and the two others were traveling in a dangerous area known as Mines 1.
"There are two chutes over there, and if you look at them, they're avalanche chutes," said Grand County Sheriff Rob Johnson. "They slide every year."
Several acquaintances of Teetzen's stood, some crying, for hours in the cold Sunday waiting for rescuers to bring his body out of the wilderness. They declined to comment.
They were joined by skiers and snowboarders who had helped in the rescue attempt.
Dave Elkan, 28, of Denver said the slide was so large that it wiped all the snow
out of the chute.
"It was just unbelievable," he said. "It took the guy all the way to the bottom."
Greg Askin of Golden said it was hard to watch as rescuers tried to revive Teetzen.
"It's pretty scary," Askin said. "The guy looked like any of us."
Spencer Logan, a forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center in Denver, said it's not unusual to see snowslides in early November.
"Sometimes these can be the trickiest conditions because everybody is anxious to get out and ski, and the places where there's enough snow to ski and snowboard are the places where there's still enough snow to avalanche," he said. "And people aren't thinking about the danger. They're thinking: 'There's not enough snow to hurt me."'
High winds in the Berthoud Pass area Thursday and Friday created a brittle slab of early-season snow that was covered by heavier snowfall Saturday, Logan said.
Teetzen's death is at least the fourth near Berthoud Pass in the past 10 years.
Alpine Rescue Team spokesman Howard Paul encouraged skiers and snowboarders to be extremely careful in the backcountry.
"Know where and when to go or not to go," he said. "The route you take may have the least fun, but it has the least risk."

Someone should invent a dog specific beacon.

Latest on on Beth's daughter:

2005-11-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) — Aruban prosecutors said Friday they have new witnesses and leads into the disappearance of a U.S. teen who vanished on a school trip to the Dutch Caribbean island more than five months ago.
Natalee Holloway, then 18, was last seen early on May 30 leaving a bar with Dutch national Joran van der Sloot and Surinamese brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. They were arrested on June 9 but released after a court ruled there was not enough evidence to hold them.
The Aruban prosecutor’s office said it was conducting new interviews of witnesses in the disappearance.
“From this review the team has concluded that there are several aspects that need more attention,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “There are people living in the United States of America who have to be interviewed again.”

I wonder how Beth Twitty will stop them from interviewing the Mountain Brook students? If she really wants to find out what happened you would think she would try to facilitate interviews, not obstruct them.

From rawstory.com

2005-11-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Impeachment support is greater among all adults than likely voters
A new poll of likely voters by Zogby International has found that a majority of Americans support Congress considering the impeachment of President Bush if he “did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq,” RAW STORY has learned.
The poll, to be released this afternoon, finds that 51 percent of likely voters want Congress to eye impeachment, while 45 percent do not. It was commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a coalition of progressive groups seeking a Congressional investigation of the events leading up to war in Iraq.
Among all adults surveyed, the numbers were higher: 53 percent supported impeachment, while 42 percent did not. The poll, which has a +/- 2.9% margin of error, interviewed 1,200 U.S. adults from Oct. 29 through Nov. 2.
Not surprisingly, Democrats supported the consideration of impeachment by a broad margin (76 percent) while Republicans opposed (66 percent). However, 29 percent of Republicans told Zogby pollsters that they supported Congress examining impeachment over Iraq.
"These results are stunning," AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik said in a statement. "A clear majority of Americans now supports President Bush's impeachment if he lied about the war. This should send shock waves through the White House - and a wake-up call to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who have sole power under the Constitution to impeach President Bush."
Whites were more likely to oppose impeachment proceedings, while Hispanics and African Americans supported them. Asians who took the poll were more likely to oppose impeachment, though only 21 answered questions about their views.
Also notable: 46 percent of those who considered themselves "born again" said they would support Congress considering impeachment.
The House of Representatives has the sole authority to impeach a president. Democrats, however, have not touched the issue, and they do not constitute a majority in the chamber.
Zogby last polled likely voters on impeachment in June. At that time, 42 percent supported considering impeachment, while 50 percent opposed.
Another poll of American adults conducted in early October by Ipsos, the agency used by the Associated Press, found that 50 percent supported Congress examining the issue, while 42 percent opposed.
RAW STORY placed calls to some of the more liberal members of the House, among them Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Bob Filner (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). None of the offices returned calls for comment.
Fertik, who also runs Democrats.com, has also set up ImpeachPAC, a political action committee aimed at supporting Democrats who say they will seek impeachment.

Is this occuring because we are losing the war or because he lied to get us there?

Attack of the frumpettes

2005-11-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

BY JIMMY GREENFIELDRedEyeNovember 2, 2005
With a few words on their T-shirts, Abercrombie & Fitch lets young women send a message: "Who needs a brain when you have these?"A group of female high school students have a message for A&F: Stop degrading us.The Allegheny County (Pa.) Girls have started a boycott--or girlcott, as they're calling it--of the retailer. The campaign, conceived three weeks ago during the group's monthly meeting, went national Tuesday morning on NBC's "Today" show."We're telling [girls] to think about the fact that they're being degraded," Emma Blackman-Mathis, the 16-year-old co-chair of the group, told RedEye on Tuesday. "We're all going to come together in this one effort to fight this message that we're getting from pop culture."Abercrombie has been a lightning rod for criticism. In 2003, a catalog containing photos of topless women and bare-bottomed men provoked so much outrage that the company pulled the publication.Last year, after the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team failed to win a gold medal, the company sold T-shirts with the phrase "L is for loser" next to a picture of a gymnast on the rings. Those shirts were pulled from the racks after USA Gymastics called for a boycott.While Abercrombie backed down in those cases, it show no signs of doing so this time."Our clothing appeals to a wide variety of customers. These particular T-shirts have been very popular among adult women to whom they are marketed," a company spokesman said in a statement.News of the girlcott hadn't reached Tawana Clark, 20, who was applying for a job at the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Water Tower Place on Tuesday. But she doesn't think the protest will work."I think it's only older people that have a problem with it," she said. "Teenagers don't have a problem with it."Clark sees the shirts as funny, not offensive."It's not to be taken seriously," she said.Kristine Campbell, 20, of Lincoln Park won't wear the T-shirts. Although she's not offended by them, she doesn't think much of girls who wear them."It tells me that they're shallow and that's all they care about," said Campbell, who was also applying for a job at A&F on Tuesday."There's not much substance to that person if you have to wear something like that."The aim of the girlcott is to convince people that the T-shirts are offensive, but young people don't care if they are, according to David Krafft, senior vice president of Chicago-based Graziano, Krafft and Zale Advertising."You figure they're appealing to a younger audience demographic and (young people) are going to want go for brands that are more cutting edge, or viewed as more cutting edge," Krafft said. "So it's just going to be a benefit anyway to Abercrombie & Fitch."The attention from this boycott is likely to help Abercrombie's image, and its audience will be attracted to the controversy, said Steve Bassill, president of Libertyville-based QDI strategies, a marketing consulting firm."That's been their whole strategy, isn't it, to be radical?" Bassill asked. "I think that's what we've seen for quite a while from them."Krafft says the "Today" show appearance was tantamount to free advertising.According to Chicago-based media company Starcom USA, a 30-second commercial on "Today" costs approximately $58,000.The girlcott girls were on for several minutes. The girlcott almost is "playing into their hands," Bassill said.Heather Arnett, adviser for the girls' group, said it doesn't matter if Abercrombie gets free advertising. They're already a giant as far as she's concerned. What matters is empowering young women, she said, who in turn serve as examples to other young women."A week ago, Katie Couric knew who Abercrombie & Fitch was, but she didn't know who Emma Blackman-Mathis was," Arnett said. "A bunch of teenage girls are being interviewed by national media about what they think. And that is the news."Blackman-Mathis admits that, at first glance, the T-shirts are a little funny.But the more she looked at them, the less amusing they were. She's still stunned to have appeared on national TV and is hopeful the message will reach young girls."Worst-case scenario, I just want girls to at least think about everything that they buy," Blackman-Mathis said. "Think about the message that it conveys to themselves and other people when they wear it."Her best-case scenario?"They would stand up and say something for themselves and for girls."

The frumpier you are the less of a sense of humor you have.

Better than a movie

2005-11-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

From Salon.com

By Michael Scherer
Up-and-coming Republican hacks would do well to watch closely the ongoing Senate investigations of superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his former business partner Michael Scanlon. The power duo stand accused of exploiting Native American tribes to the tune of roughly $66 million, laundering that money into bank accounts they controlled and then using it to buy favors for powerful members of Congress and the executive branch.
But they sure did know how to play the game.
Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tx., sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.
"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

Maybe the war is not going so great

2005-11-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Security has been tightened at the U.S. military prison in
Afghanistan' following the escape of a suspected al-Qaida leader, a U.S. official said Wednesday. Indonesian anti-terrorism officials accused Washington of failing to tell them of the breakout.
Omar al-Farouq, born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents, was considered one of
Osama bin Laden' Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in 2002 and turned him over to the United States.
He was one of four suspected Arab terrorists to escape in July from the detention facility at Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan. It was not clear how long he had been held in Afghanistan.
Although the escape was widely reported at the time, al-Farouq was identified by an alias and the U.S. military only confirmed Tuesday that he was among those who fled.
A video the four men made of themselves after they escaped from Bagram was broadcast on Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya on Oct. 18, the broadcaster said.
In the video, the four men said they escaped on a Sunday when many of the Americans on the base were off duty, and one of the four — Muhammad Hassan, said to be Libyan — said he picked the locks of their cell, according to Al-Arabiya.
In the video, apparently shot in Afghanistan, they show fellow militants a map of the base and the location of their cell. Another shot in the video showed Hassan leading the others in prayer. Editors at Al-Arabiya would not say how they received the video.
An Indonesian anti-terrorism official, Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, on Wednesday sharply criticized the U.S. government for failing to inform him that al-Farouq was no longer behind bars.
"We know nothing about the escape of Omar al-Farouq," he said. "He is a dangerous terrorist for us, his escape will increase the threat of terrorism in Indonesia.
"We need to coordinate security here as soon as possible to anticipate his return," he said. "The escape of al-Farouq could bring fresh wind to the operation of terrorism and could energize the new movement of terrorist actors in Southeast Asia and the world."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asked by CNN about how the four escaped and Mbai's comments to The Associated Press that Indonesia was not told about it, said: "I don't know all the facts of this particular incident. Obviously, we consider this a very serious problem and one we'd have to look into the details of."
A top security consultant in Jakarta played down concerns that al-Farouq would make his way back to Southeast Asia and rejoin Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist group linked to al-Qaida.
"He's Iraqi after all. If he's not hiding out (in Afghanistan or Pakistan), he's probably headed to
Iraq' to join the fight there," said Ken Conboy, who recently published a book on Jemaah Islamiyah.
Al-Farouq was recruited into al-Qaida in the early 1990s and went to the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan from 1992 and 1995, Conboy wrote in his book "Intel."
In 1995, he was sent to the Philippines, originally to enroll in a flight school so he could become proficient enough to commandeer a passenger plane on a suicide mission. He failed to gain entry and instead went to a camp in the traditional Muslim homeland of Mindanao, where he trained in jungle warfare tactics along with other Jemaah Islamiyah trainees, the book says.
From there, Al-Farouq traveled by sea to neighboring Indonesia, where in 2000 he set up training camps for radicals engaged in sectarian clashes with the nation's Christian minority. He was also reported to be planning a series of attacks on U.S. embassies and other Western interests throughout Southeast Asia, the book says.
In 2002, al-Farouq was captured in a town south of Jakarta. Indonesian security officials turned him over to the United States and he was eventually transferred to Bagram.
Yuri Thamrin, Indonesia's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said he had heard nothing about al-Farouq's escape, but conceded that Washington may have directly informed security officials in Jakarta.
"We have to check and make sure whether the U.S. has given the information to Indonesia or not," Thamrin said.
Military officials have declined to elaborate on how the men escaped from the heavily fortified jail, the only detainees they say have managed to do so. But a spokesman said Wednesday that an investigation into the breakout had turned up weaknesses in security and that these have been corrected.
"Physical security upgrades include improvements to an external door and holding cells," Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said, reading from a statement.
More than 500 suspected militants are held in the prison, a plain-looking building of about three stories in the heart of Bagram, next to the runways and the command center.
Several razor-wire fences surround the base and areas outside the perimeter remain mined from Afghanistan's civil war and Soviet occupation. Military teams patrol constantly, and the main entrance is a series of heavily guarded checkpoints.
A U.S. military statement issued in August about the breakout said an inquiry had found that "the guards and supervisors did not follow standard operating procedures" on the night it occurred.
"These failures led to the escape of the four detainees on 10 July," it said, adding that "action has either been taken or is in the process of being taken" to fix the problems.
The military conducted a massive manhunt after the breakout. U.S. troops, backed by Afghan police and soldiers, searched houses, manned roadblocks and zigzagged in helicopters across a dusty plain around the base.
Kabir Ahmed, the government leader in the area, said the American investigators had found where the men escaped from the base and fled through a field of wild grapevines.
"The soldiers found the escapees' footprints still in the mud," he said. "It was an amazing breakout. How they did it exactly I still don't know."

Fill in the headline yourself

2005-10-30T21:42:00.000-08:00

Sun Oct 30, 8:56 PM ET
WACO, Texas - A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after grabbing a microphone while partially submerged, a church employee said.

The Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in water up to his shoulder in a baptismal at University Baptist Church when he was electrocuted, said Jamie Dudley, a church business administrator and wife of another pastor there.
Doctors in the congregation performed chest compressions, she said. Lake was taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, where nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said he was pronounced dead.
The woman Lake was baptizing was not injured, Dudley said.
Pastors at University Baptist Church routinely use a microphone during baptisms, Dudley said.
"He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear," Dudley said. "It's the only way you can be loud enough."
About 800 people attended the morning service, which was larger than normal because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University, Dudley said.
Lake, who had a wife and three children, had been at the church for nine years, the last seven as pastor, Dudley said.

From washingtonmothly.com

2005-10-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

A McMARTIN APOLOGY....The McMartin Preschool case is, in some sense, old news. By now, it's common knowledge that the charges of child abuse and satanic rituals at McMartin were untrue, whipped up by hysteria, local newscasters, and bad child psychology into one of the most monumental miscarriages of justice in recent memory.
Still, the individual stories are compelling. Today, in the LA Times Magazine, one of the victims, Kyle Zirpolo, tells the story of what really happened to him at McMartin and why he made up the sensational stories he did back when he was nine years old. It's a cautionary tale, but it was this passage that really caught my eye:

One particular night stands out in my mind. I was maybe 10 years old and I tried to tell my mom that nothing had happened. I lay on the bed crying hysterically—I wanted to get it off my chest, to tell her the truth. My mother kept asking me to please tell her what was the matter. I said she would never believe me. She persisted: "I promise I'll believe you! I love you so much! Tell me what's bothering you!" This went on for a long time: I told her she wouldn't believe me, and she kept assuring me she would. I remember finally telling her, "Nothing happened! Nothing ever happened to me at that school."
She didn't believe me.
We had a highly dysfunctional family. We argued and fought all the time. My mother has always blamed anything negative on the idea that we went to that preschool and were molested. To this day, she believes these things went on. Because if they didn't, how can she explain all the family's problems?
That has the ring of profound truth to me. We often embrace bad news far more easily than good, I think, because it so convincingly provides both an explanatory and an exculpatory power that good news lacks. Explanatory because it's easy to believe that bad outcomes are the result of a single bad event while good outcomes are usually more complex, and exculpatory because it provides a explanation for bad outcomes that relieves us of our own responsibility for them. Once we've internalized that, the bad news can be rejected only at the cost of giving up the comfort that comes with it. And so the bad news becomes a psychic totem, clung to with increasing intensity until, eventually, it becomes part of the fabric of our worldview, never to be released regardless of where the truth actually lies.

And therein lies the power of our modern, siege mentality political environment: explanations based on the evil of others are simply more compelling — and comforting — than explanations based on good. At least in the short term. Not so much in the long term, I think, but what good politician ever thinks in the long term anymore?

I wish I could write this well

Beth Twitty on fox

2005-10-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

I watched Beth Twitty on fox with Greta Sustern, and Twitty made it very clear she does not want Aruban authorities talking Mountain Brook students who were on the trip with her daughter. What is she hiding? Her tone almost has a sense of desperation, she really wants to stop Aruban authorities from talking to these kids. All you Bethinistas who say you would act exactly like Beth Twitty if your daughter was missing, I have a question. Would you also tell the police not to question people who might have information? Beth Twitty is not acting like a bereaved parent she is acting like a desperate criminal.

From rielworld

2005-10-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

I am starting to like this guy:

Well, it appears, according to the Aruban investigators, that some of the Alabama youngsters claim to have forgotten many of those very things. Translation: the Alabama youngsters have withheld information, if not outright been untruthful.
More here at SM: According to Dompig another important question is also, why is this money not being used to pay for example those who are coming to search in Aruba. Commisioner Dompig referred to the tremendous work that Fred Golba did with his two dogs some time ago and he explained that Golba wants to come back to keep looking. Seering as he is searching for funds to pay for his ticket and stay to Aruba to come help, why can’t he get funds from the millions that Beth Twitty has through this fund. This is also a very important part in the investigation. This because in a case like Natalee’s there are different scenarios. One scenario is that a person killed Natalee, or for whatever motives Natalee isn’t alive anymore. Another scenario could be that she’s alive, but this whole case is a “set up”, for gain in some way or the other. A possibility is for example where it is said that he/she died, where they can get the money of the life insurance of the person, while in reality he/she did not die, but another way is like this fund, where people of good hearts send money to this fund and the family enrich themselves. If the mother gives information on the amount of money and how much she is spending and on what, then there is not a problem, however if the mother keeps everything a secret and does not cooperate with people who came to help find her child, this because a part of the investigation, because it gives the case another light.

The last her mother wants is for her daughter to return. That would mean and end to the TV appearances and she would no longer be an A-list celebrity victim.

Indictments:

2005-10-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

I got this from Rawstory.com I know some of you have an interest in this stuff so here it is:

Prosecutor in leak case seeks indictments against Rove, Libby, lawyers close to case say
Jason Leopold and John Byrne

Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.
Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. They said the prosecutor believes that Libby violated a 1982 law that made it illegal to unmask an undercover CIA agent.
Libby’s attorney, Joseph A. Tate, did not return a call seeking comment.

Celebrity victims

2005-10-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

Beth Twitty In Ohio
Beth Twitty, Mother of missing and presumed dead Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, is in Ohio at a Crime Stoppers event with millionaire Joe Mammana. It was hard not to notice that despite her tremendous hardship she appeared almost effusive on TV last night while discussing her time spent with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, presumably regarding Natalee's tragic disappearance.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2005/10/beth_twitty_in_.html#comments

Someone else is starting to see the truth

For you Natalee Holloway addicts:

2005-10-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

Try this place:

http://www.thesearchfornatalee.blogspot.com/

They seem to take a different perspective on the disapearence but at least most of you will not get banned. Just don't mention thongs.

Hope thins guy wins

2005-10-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

By DAN SEWELLThe Associated PressMonday, October 24, 2005; 2:54 PM
CINCINNATI -- Paul Hackett, the Democratic veteran of the Iraq war who narrowly lost a special election in a heavily Republican congressional district in August, made his official entry into a U.S. Senate race Monday.
He faces a tough Democratic primary with Rep. Sherrod Brown in the race for the nomination to challenge second-term Republican incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine next year.

Paul Hackett, the Democratic veteran of the Iraq war who narrowly lost in a special election in a heavily Republican congressional district in August, announces his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Monday, Oct. 24, 2005, at his home in Cincinnati, Ohio. (AP Photo/Al Behrman) (Al Behrman - AP)
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Hackett's only political experience is a stint as a small-city councilman.
"I'm asking all the people of this great state, regardless of political affiliation, to consider my message and to consider joining me in the fight to take back our government from the career politicians and their special interest support groups who have hijacked our government," he said as he announced his campaign at his home in suburban Indian Hill.
Hackett decided to run for Congress earlier this year after completing a seven-month tour of duty in Iraq as a Marine reservist. That special election in southern Ohio's seven-county 2nd District was to replace Rep. Rob Portman, who left his seat to become the U.S. trade representative.
Hackett won the Democratic nomination, then battled Republican Jean Schmidt, a former state legislator, in a campaign in which he linked her to embattled Republican Gov. Bob Taft while sharply criticizing President Bush's handling of the war.
Schmidt won on Aug. 2 with 52 percent of the vote, though Portman had consistently won re-election in the district with more than 70 percent and Bush had carried it in 2004 with 64 percent.
Hackett's strong showing in a state that was a pivotal presidential battleground solidified the attorney as a likely 2006 candidate for Congress or statewide office.
After Hackett decided to oppose DeWine, Hackett was irked when Brown, with three decades of elective politics behind him, decided he also would run.
Brown, a former state legislator and Ohio secretary of state, is in his seventh congressional term, representing northeastern Ohio's 13th District. He's expected to officially launch his Senate race in early November.
Brown said Monday he initially didn't plan to run because of family reasons, but changed his mind with his family's encouragement. He said he wasn't expecting the race for the May 2 primary to damage his chances of defeating DeWine in the general election.
"I've had primaries before," Brown said. "It makes me a stronger candidate."

It would be nice to see someone with real experience in the senate.

from washingtonmonthly.com

2005-10-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

TABOR BLUES....Colorado's Republican governor, Bill Owens, is fighting to overturn his state's TABOR law, a spending cap that has devastated the state so badly that even the business community now wants to get rid of it. Here's what Owens says about the law:
"I don't think it was designed to cripple government," he said of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR, amendment his state's voters approved. "This is an unintended consequence."
Idiot. Of course it was intended to cripple government. That's why Grover Norquist and Dick Armey and the rest of the tax jihad army are still fighting to keep it around. To them, destruction of state services is a feature, not a bug. They won't be happy until Colorado and the entire rest of the country look like Mississippi.

Aryan Olsen twins

2005-10-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best posts I have seen regarding the Aryan Olsen twins:

http://right-thinking.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10906/

More on the desecration of corpses

2005-10-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

Stench Prompted U.S. Troops to Burn CorpsesThe desecration of Taliban dead prompts outrage in Afghanistan
There simply wasn't enough room on the rocky hilltop above Gonbaz village in southern Afghanistan for the U.S. platoon and the corpses of the two Taliban fighters. The Taliban men had been killed in a firefight 24 hours earlier, and in the 90 degree heat, their bodies had become an unbearable presence, soldiers who were present have told TIME. Nor was the U.S. Army unit about to leave — the hilltop commanded a strategic view of the village below where other Taliban were suspected to be hiding.
Earlier, Lt. Eric Nelson, the leader of B Company, I-508 platoon leader had sent word down to Gonbaz asking the villagers to pick up the bodies and bury them according to Muslim ritual. But the villagers refused — probably because the dead fighters weren't locals but Pakistanis, surmised one U.S. army officer.
It was then that Lt. Nelson took the decision that could jeopardize his service career. "We decided to burn the bodies," one soldier recounts, "because they were bloated and they stank." News of this cremation may have remained on these scorching hills of southern Afghanistan, had the gruesome act not been recorded on film by an Australian photojournalist, Stephen Dupont. Instead, when the footage aired on Australian TV on Wednesday, it unleashed world outrage. A Pentagon spokesman described the incident as "repugnant" and said that the army was launching a criminal investigation into the alleged desecration of the corpses, which is in violation of the Geneva Convention on human rights.
Fueling the furor was the fact that the TV report showed that after the bodies were torched, a U.S. Psychological-Operations team descended on Gonbaz in Humvees with their loudspeakers booming: "Taliban, you are cowardly dogs. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady-boys we always believed you to be."
Muslims traditionally bury their dead, and as one Kabul cleric Mohammed Omar told newsmen, "The burning of these bodies is an offense against Muslims every where. Bodies are burned only in Hell." But as one U.S. officer in Kandahar pointed out, the Taliban and al Qaeda never show any qualms about defiling the bodies of dead Afghan or American soldiers. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, anxious to quell any new wave of protests against the U.S. troops in Afghanistan of the sort that followed allegations of Koran desecration at Guantanamo, publicly condemned the burnings. A statement from the U.S. military command for Afghanistan said, "Under no circumstances does U.S. Central Command condone the desecration, abuse or inappropriate treatment of enemy combatants."

I disagree with some acts of torture that I have heard about but this seems like something that is part of war.

Jennifer Garner

2005-10-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

Can Jennifer Garner get any fatter?

Hoax??

2005-10-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

By RON HARRISAssociated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO
Rescuers searched Wednesday night for the bodies of at least two young children who were reportedly tossed in San Francisco Bay near a popular waterfront stretch in a case being investigated as a homicide, authorities said.
A man called 911 at 5:30 p.m. to report that two, and possibly three children, were dropped from Pier 7 into the chilly water, said Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White.
"Because of the nature of the injuries, the possible fatalities, at this time this case is now assigned to our homicide unit," said Police Chief Heather Fong. "We believe there possibly are three children."
The children were believed to be under 10 years old, Fong said.
Coast Guard boats and a helicopter searched the waters as darkness fell.
The incident happened in the Embarcadero area, which draws tourists to the historic Ferry Building within view of Coit Tower and the landmark Transamerica pyramid.
The long, wooden pier lined with a wrought-iron fence was recently refurbished.

UPDATE:

I was wrong!!!!

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A woman who was hearing voices tossed her three young children off a pier into San Francisco Bay, authorities said. Rescuers had found one body, and the other two children were feared dead.
The mother, Lashaun Harris, 23, of Oakland, was booked on three counts of murder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in Thursday's editions. Her children were identified as Trayshaun Harris, 6, Travante Greely, 3, and Joshua Harris, 1.

Unlike some people I will admit it.

Is it a generational thing?

2005-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

From talking to people on the net and in person I have noticed that people under 20 seem to believe that Natalee Holloway left of her own accord. People over 20 especially those with children seem to have a different belief.

If I had to bet on it, I would say that Natalee Holloway wanted to start over in a better enviroment and she took advantage of her trip to Aruba to do it. I have said it before and I will probably say it again, I could be wrong. At this point their is no evidence to suggest what happened and everyone can have a opinion. Many things could have happened but the only PC explanation is that she was abducted by three guys in Aruba who somehow planned the the perfect crime and the entire government is covering for them.

The main argument the mainstream types use is that the three boys lied so therefore they must have done something wrong. That is no better than the argument that the Twitty family has lied so they must be involved in some sort of fraud.

Personally I think younger people understand the pressures that she may have been under and can understand why she would want to get away from her family. Older people live in fear of their children doing something like this and of course want to believe that a child who grew up in an affluent area would never want to leave. At this point no one knows what happened but believing one thing over another does not mean that you are good or bad. More information from the family might clear up some of these issues but her close friends, if she had close friends, are being kept silent. As long as the family policy of secrecy remains so will the suspicions that she willingly left.

On a personal note I appreciate that everyone here is keeping the conversation civil, have a good night everyone.

It is not my fault

2005-10-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

Abnormal brains wired for lies
Pathological liars may have structural abnormalities in their brains, a new study suggests.
Researchers have found that individuals who habitually lie and cheat have less grey matter and more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than normal people.
Dr Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang of the University of Southern California and colleagues report their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Past studies have found that the prefrontal cortex shows heightened activity when normal people lie.
It is believed to be involved in both learning moral behaviour and feeling remorse.
The new study suggests that because grey matter consists of brain cells, while white matter forms the "wiring" or connections between these cells, pathological liars may have more capacity to lie and fewer moral restraints.
"They've got the equipment to lie and they don't have the disinhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers," Dr Raine said.
The researchers used a series of psychological tests and interviews in a group of volunteers to identify 12 pathological liars, 16 people with antisocial personality disorder but no history of lying, and 21 normal people.
They then examined the brains of all study participants using magnetic resonance imaging.
Liars had 26 per cent more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than people with antisocial personality disorder, and 22 per cent more than normal people.
But they had 14 per cent less grey matter than normal individuals.
Interestingly, autistic people - who are known to have difficulty lying - show a shift in grey-to-white matter ratio opposite to that seen among liars in the current study.
"Although autism is a complex condition and cannot be taken as a model for lying, these results on autistic children, combined with the prior fMRI findings on lying in normal controls, converge with current findings on adult liars suggesting that the prefrontal cortex is centrally involved in the capacity to lie," the authors write.
The authors also note that while small children are not good liars, by the age of 10 - by which time a burst in white matter volume has occurred - they become much more proficient in telling falsehoods.
While the findings have no practical implications at present, if confirmed they could be useful in clinical diagnoses of whether a person is pretending to be sick.
They could also help in criminal justice settings by helping police determine if a suspect is lying, and in pre-employment screening.
- Reuters

Looks like people have a whole new set of excuses, "I am sorry I guess I have to much white matter".

The truth about Natalee Holloway

2005-10-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

My super secret source in Mountain Brook Alabama, who I will call Patrick, reports that privately most people are sick of the attention and wish the issue would go away. Most students are tired of reporters milling about and they would like to get back to the business of being students without being under a microscope.

Of course the cable news networks need young virgins to satisfy the appetites of their viewers so they will hang around Mountain Brook until another virgin is sacrificed to the ratings gods. That is all Natalee Holloway is, a cheap way to get ratings. Even I do it, I will get more hits out of this post than anything else that I might talk about so why not take the easy way out and talk about Natalee Holloway.

She probably ran off. Everyone talks about how they would do the same things as Beth Twitty if their child was missing. I would do the same thing as Natalee Holloway, if my mom was like Beth Twitty. I would get as far away from that control freak as possible. On some level I have a feeling that Beth Twitty suspects this as well, and that is why she keeps obstructing the investigation and trys to control the information coming out of Alabama.

I could be wrong, if I am I will admit and move-on, maybe certain people should do the same.

Beth Twitty on FOX

2005-09-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

I am not proud to admit this but I watched a few minutes of an interview with Beth(don't call me Holloway) twitty. As near as I can tell from her rants her whole reason for persecuting the three Aruban guys, is that one of them bought her little girl a drink. Therefore he is responsible for all bad things that may have happened to her. I doubt it was the first time alcohol touched her little girls lips. Whatever happened to personal responsibility, no one forced Natalee to take a drink, Momma T needs to get a grip.

The women is crazy, I know why Natalee ran off, she is scared of her mother.

Speechless

2005-09-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

From washingtonmonthly.com

BREAKING NEWS....The lead story on the local Channel 2 news at 6 pm was a helicopter report — a helicopter report! — about a baby locked in a car. The baby was in no danger, police officers were there, and they were apparently just waiting for a locksmith to arrive and open the car.
I am not making this up.

Does anyone else see the problem here?

Beached Whale

2005-09-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Police Blow Up Stranded Whale

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Cape Argus (Cape Town)
September 14, 2005 Posted to the web September 14, 2005
Police today used explosives to kill the Southern Right whale stranded on Mnandi beach, angering many onlookers.
But Nan Rice of the Dolphin Action Group said it was a humane way to put the whale down.

The blast destroyed the top part of the whale's head, bloodying the water.
Robin Adams, deputy manager of the Table Mountain National Park marine area, said it was "very sad".
The 10m whale was still alive early today, but Marine and Coastal Management officials made the decision to euthanase the animal, which they said could not be saved.
"I'm relieved," said Rice. "The whale was either sickly or injured and had to be put down. Bullets or even harpoons are a slow way of killing such a whale with all its blubber, and would have just prolonged its agony."
Yesterday the beached whale attracted curious onlookers who watched rescuers, aided by volunteers, help keep the whale wet. Marine and Coastal Management, environmentalists, members of the National Sea Rescue Institute and the police dive unit were at the scene to try to save the whale.
Onlookers said they had seen "something strange" moving towards the shore between 2.30pm and 3pm yesterday.
"We were swimming, and someone said that something was in the water and then we saw the tail lift out the water," said Melissa January of Tafelsig.
Relevant Links
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"The smaller children ran out the water because they were scared, but other children went up to touch it."
Three police divers were sent out at about 5pm. Rescuers attached ropes to the whale's tail in an attempt to position its head facing the sea and pull it further out. But all efforts failed last night.

From pandagon.net

2005-09-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Posted by Amanda Marcotte at 07:21 AM
It's a pretty famous fact that men on average have shorter lives than women. There's a lot of factors involved in this, but a new study shows that a major factor is....the patriarchy. Yes, male dominance is fatal to the dominators.
The study found that women lived longer than men in all 51 countries. The study also found that those countries with higher rates of female murders (indicating higher levels of patriarchy) also had higher rates for male death and shorter male life expectancies, compared to countries with lower female murder rates, the researchers said.
In fact, statistical analysis showed that variations between countries in rates of violence against women accounted for close to half (49 percent) of the variation in male death rates, the researchers noted.
"Our data suggest that oppression and exploitation harm the oppressors as well as those they oppress," researchers at the University of Liverpool concluded.
You have no idea how much this amuses me. If you ever wade into the cesspool of men's rights activists sites or literature, you'll find that they fetishize men's shorter life spans as some sort of rock solid proof that men are the ones that are oppressed. Well, if they are, it's a sort of, "Stop hitting yourself" kind of oppression.
But I have to say, these results don't surprise me one single bit. If nothing else, I've noticed that male dominance can be extremely stressful to men, especially when they are engaging it deliberately. If I've been remiss in pointing that out lately, I do apologize. There are a couple of really obvious ways that male dominance hurts men. It is a poison in their relationships with women and with their children, for one thing, and a lot of men are a lot lonelier and more pent-up emotionally than they need to be, which is a big source of stress. Male dominance very clearly encourages unhealthy and risk-taking behavior, especially amongst younger men who often feel in constant competition with each other. And, as a side note, the Texas version of male dominance encourages a rather unhealthy, meat-dominated diet, which is not good for the heart. I can see how all this feeds into men's shorter life spans pretty easily.
So guys, join the feminist cause! You'll live longer, for one thing.

Control freaks of both sexes can probably learn from this.

More on the dolphins

2005-09-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, September 15, 2005 now part of stylesheet -->
Jackson, Miss. (AP) --
Two dolphins that were swept from their aquarium tanks into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina were rescued Thursday, but six others remained at sea.
The two rescued dolphins were captured after scientists in a boat coaxed the trained animals into sliding onto mats.
The dolphins had cuts and appeared to be the worst injured of the eight, Jeff Foster, a marine specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They were being moved to a hotel swimming pool.
Trainers and scientists hope to catch more of the dolphins on Saturday, but said that may be tougher because the dolphins "get pretty wise to our tricks," Foster said. Nets are also an option, a NOAA spokeswoman said.
The marine mammals had spent much of their lives in captivity at the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport. After Katrina's storm surge washed them away, they were spotted Saturday swimming off Gulfport by NOAA scientists conducting an aerial damage survey.
Scientists worried that the dolphins might not have the instincts to avoid predators and boat traffic.
The dolphins' home had been a 30-foot high tank. The Marine Life Oceanarium was destroyed by Katrina.
Moby Solangi, the aquarium's owner, said the staff had been worried that the dolphins had died. "We are just thrilled that they have stayed together during the past couple of weeks," Solangi said.

Another animal story

2005-09-14T23:03:00.000-07:00

Swept from aquarium pool, dolphins found alive offshore
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff September 14, 2005
Eight bottlenose dolphins that were washed out of their Mississippi aquarium pool during Hurricane Katrina have been found alive, huddled together in the fetid waters off Gulfport, Miss. Now, deeply worried about the dolphins' chances of survival, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials and aquarium biologists are racing to rescue the weak and wounded animals -- some of which have never before ventured into the wild.
''These animals found us, they came back after Katrina . . . they came home," said Moby Solangi, director of the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport. ''All eight are together. It's the most wonderful news."
Established in 1956, the facility suffered catastrophic damage in the storm. Along with the dolphins, 19 sea lions were swept out of their pools when a giant storm surge engulfed the Oceanarium. Five of them are missing.
When Katrina hit last month, the employees of the aquariums, zoos, and roadside animal attractions in its path scrambled: Emergency generators in fish pools were turned on; dolphins were moved to local hotel swimming pools, and stockpiles of food were amassed for zoo and aquarium creatures.
The storm, however, proved too devastating for some shoreside facilities. Emergency generators at Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans failed after a forced staff evacuation, resulting in the death of most of the facility's 6,000-fish collection, including some 9-foot sharks.
Still, amid the mammoth destruction across the region, there was some good news. The Aquarium of the Americas was able to save a number of animals, including delicate sea dragons and a giant sea turtle. Two sea otters and 19 penguins that survived were airlifted Friday to Monterey Bay Aquarium in California for safekeeping until the facility reopens. While zoos suffered some damage, few of their animals died as a result of Katrina.
Even the dolphin story may have a happy ending.
As the forecasts became increasingly dire before the hurricane hit, Oceanarium staff scrambled to move the animals. Three dolphins were moved to a Best Western swimming pool in Gulfport, while three others were taken to a Holiday Inn pool specially prepared for the dolphins. Eight sea lions were moved by trailer from the park to a staff member's home. Out of time, workers left 19 sea lions at the facility -- and the remaining eight dolphins in their 30-foot tank.
The tank had survived the devastation of Hurricane Camille in 1969 and every storm since. The tank did hold up this time, but it was submerged in the tidal surge, and the dolphins and sea lions swam -- or were pushed -- out.
Soon after the storm eased, the surviving sea lions were rescued from under back porches and houses and in piles of debris. Some were found in residential swimming pools. But the pack of dolphins was missing, and biologists had little hope that they survived or, if alive, that they were still in the area.
Solangi wasn't able to get up in a helicopter to look for the group until four days ago. In the first 15 minutes of the trip, he and his group spotted them.
''I think one of the [staff members] in the helicopter had to be restrained from jumping down to be with them," said Solangi, whose staff has since been feeding the animals fish and antibiotics by boat to build up their strength. He believes the dolphins will be strong enough in about two days to be rescued. Trainers are working with the dolphins to have them jump up on a float that can be towed toward shore.
''They totally perked up and are just delighted to see" the trainers, he said.
Five of the dolphins know how to forage for food in the wild. Three captive-bred animals -- Tony, Eli, and Noah -- have never fared for themselves.
The animals, officials warn, are in deeply polluted water, and it's not yet clear how sick they are -- or even whether they will survive if rescued. Dead chickens, trash, and chemical and oil residues are floating near them, according to NOAA officials. Once rescued, the dolphins will be quarantined in temporary pools until it's clear they will not spread disease.
Another concern in rescuing the animals from the polluted water, NOAA officials said, is to ensure humans don't get sick if they need to help the dolphins. The agency is attempting to find special swimming suits for rescuers.
''We are very pleased to have found these animals and that they all stayed together," said Teri Rowles, lead veterinarian with NOAA fisheries. She cautioned, however, that the animals were weak, underfed, and sick. ''We remain cautiously optimistic they will recover from this ordeal."

Have at it

2005-09-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

I was going to make fun of this but I do not seem to have the energy today. If any of my three readers feel like it, have fun.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2005/09/taylor_behl_dis.html#comments

Another nice animal story

2005-09-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - The first major airlift of dogs from the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast left Louisiana on Sunday, carrying about 80 pets to new temporary homes in California.
The Continental Airlines flight from Baton Rouge, La., was chartered for about $50,000 by Texas oil tycoon Boone Pickens and his wife, Madeleine, in a movement dubbed "Operation Pet Lift."
Some dogs were placed in cages in the cargo section while others rode in the passenger cabin, where they barked and wagged their tails.
"They'd been in cages far too long. We felt like they needed to be free so they sat on our laps, and we played with them the whole way," said Christine Penrod, Madeleine Pickens' sister, who accompanied the animals on the flight.
About half the dogs were headed for San Diego, with the rest bound for San Francisco. Sunday's move was organized by PetRelocation.com, based in Austin, Texas.
"The goal was to help rescue 200 dogs," Pickens' spokesman Jay Rosser said. "They're overjoyed that they were able to rescue 80, but clearly disappointed and dismayed at the bureaucracy, which prevented them from taking the full 200."
Organizers complained that some legal requirements were impractical, such as waiting out a 30-day quarantine before transporting the animals.
Kelly Harrington, director of disaster response services for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said a makeshift shelter for up to several thousand dogs had been set up at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, La., about 45 miles northwest of New Orleans.
She hoped additional dogs would be flown out in the coming days, but said the effort was taking time.
"Every animal has to be vet checked, vaccinated and microchipped ... so we can track these animals in case an owner does find them," Harrington said.
Petfinder.com was setting up a database of pet pictures to help reunite owners with lost animals.
Andrew Rowan, executive vice president of operations for the Humane Society United States, said animals must be moved out of the Gonzales facility quickly to make room for "maybe 50,000 or more dogs and cats in New Orleans that need to be rescued."
"There are vans and cars and trucks all over the place," he said. "Dogs are barking, cats are meowing. It's a tremendous logistical operation to provide the care that these animals need."
The Humane Society's Dave Pauli, director of the Gonzales facility, said 200 animals were shipped out Sunday by truck to Houston, but rescue teams expected to bring in about 300 more in the afternoon.
About 200 animals have been reunited with their owners at the facility.
"That's what keeps us going," Pauli said. "Every one of them brings a tear to your eyes and makes these sleepless nights worth it."
___

Is the registry a good idea?

2005-09-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

By Reed Stevenson
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A 35-year-old Washington state man was charged with double murder on Thursday after telling police that he had decided to hunt down and kill two sex offenders listed in an online sex offender registry.
Michael Mullen told police that he decided to find and murder sex offenders in Bellingham, Washington, 90 miles (140 km) north of Seattle, after the high-profile arrest of a sex offender in Idaho in July.
"He provided information about the murders that only the person responsible should have known," the Bellingham Police Department said in a statement.
Mullen, who turned himself in on Monday, killed two men who were roommates in a house in Bellingham on August 27, possibly as revenge for being molested as a child, Police Lt. Craige Ambrose said.
"He had claimed being abused as a juvenile during our interview with him," Ambrose said.
Mullen asked police, "Can I have a speedy trial?" during a preliminary hearing, according court officials.
"I would like to plead guilty," he said at the hearing.
Sex offenders in most U.S. jurisdictions are required by law to register with local police when they take up residence, and such information is often provided on a Web site for community residents.
The prosecutor's office for Whatcom County said that Mullen would face arraignment on September 16.
Police learned on August 27 that Victor Vazquez, 68, and Hank Eisses, 49, had been killed by a man posing an FBI agent, according to a public notice.
Police believe Mullen confessed to the murders in an online journal on AOL before turning himself in. In one Internet archive, someone identifying himself as Michael Mullen claims responsibility for the murders and adds "they are not the last to be executed unless things change for the better."
Mullen also told police that he began looking for sex offenders after Joseph Duncan, a convicted sex offender, was arrested on July 2 in Idaho for abducting an 8-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother after killing their mother, brother and mother's boyfriend.
"Mullen also said that he had planned the murders for sometime and that on July 13th, 2005, he had accessed the Whatcom County Sheriff's sex offender Web site and from that, selected at least one of the two victims," the statement added.
Mullen is being held in Whatcom County Jail with bail set at $1 million.

Waste of money

2005-09-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

I cannot think of a bigger waste of money than this:

Faced with fading fundraising prospects, organizers of the effort to build a permanent memorial to the victims of the 1999 slayings at Columbine High School are cutting back on the scope of the project.
"We are looking at about a million-dollar reduction in the overall cost of our original design," Bob Easton, chairman of the Columbine Memorial Committee and executive director of the Foothills Park and Recreation District, said Thursday.
The district operates Clement Park, where the proposed memorial is to be built on a one-acre parcel near the high school.
For six years, the committee has tried to raise the money for what was planned as a $2.5 million memorial. That goal - and an additional $500,000 needed for an endowment to maintain the site - has eluded it.
A final push to raise money for the memorial has been postponed until the fall to avoid competing with Hurricane Katrina fundraising efforts.
Previous fundraising campaigns also have suffered from competing endeavors, including those following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean late last year, Easton said.
"We've been working on this thing from both ends, the fundraising and reducing costs, and that puts us in a position where we are still about between $500,000 and $550,000 short of what we need to build this scaled-back plan," Easton said.
The latest design was presented to family members of the victims last week. Easton said the families were pleased.
The families also agreed to bolster the money already raised with about $300,000 in funds left over from renovating the school's library, where many of the Columbine victims were killed or wounded by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Harris and Klebold killed 12 of their fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives at the school.
The latest design includes a smaller version of an original 80-foot water wall and the elimination of two staircases that would have taken visitors to the top of a hill that overlooks the school, Easton said.
The new design still incorporates two memorial rings, an inner Ring of Remembrance and an outer Ring of Healing.
The inner ring will include 13 stations, one for each of those killed, with engraved messages written by their families.
The outer ring will contain the engraved words of injured victims and those of other Columbine students, teachers and staff, and community members.
Easton said the committee plans to break ground for the memorial this spring.

Finally, a positive story regarding animals

2005-09-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

MSNBC
Updated: 3:07 p.m. ET Sept. 8, 2005
Amid the heart-wrenching moments of devastation from deadly hurricane Katrina, there is at least one bright spot. Snowball, a small white dog taken by police from a sobbing little boy as he and his family were boarding a bus at the Superdome, has been located, USA Today reported Thursday.
Snowball is now at the Louisiana SPCA in Gonzalez, La., and will be reunited with his owner, U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian Terry Conger told the newspaper. The Humane Society of the United States and the Louisiana SPCA rescued 43 dogs and 16 cats from the Superdome and delivered them to a temporary shelter at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center.
The dog is reported to be among an estimated 3,000 animals brought into the Louisiana shelter system.

When the police took the dog during the Superdome evacuation, the boy cried "Snowball! Snowball!" until he vomited. At the time authorities said they didn't know where the boy or his dog ended up.
The sad story of Snowball prompted an outpouring of emotion from pet lovers around the country who went on the hunt for the boy and his dog. One woman set up a reward offer to encourage the search for Snowball.
The story was first reported by The Associated Press.
Late Monday, there was a ray of hope when the United Animal Nations said Snowball was safe, citing news from the state veterinarian’s office. However, the information could not be verified because there was some confusion over whether Snowball was a terrier mix, a poodle or a bichon frise.
On Thursday, the president of the Humane Society of Southeast Texas in Beaumont blasted officials for not doing enough to take care of the pets of hurricane victims.
The organization is offering to temporarily take care of the pets while the evacuees find a new home, said Cindy Meyers, board president of the group.
It’s important that animals are taken care of in evacuations, Meyers said, adding that it’s “inexcusable” that pets are being separated from their owners.
"Pets are family members and they need to be cared for just as the people do," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story

What kind of politician are you?

2005-09-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

This seems to run the gamut of what our "leaders are saying"

Religious Conservative
God hates faggots and the rich white unmarried college kids who travel down to the French Quarter every year to drink, carouse, and deposit various genital secretions on or in each other. Thus, he killed a bunch of straight black people with families.

Economic Conservative
New Orleans was destroyed because it was a pitiful welfare state, the root cause of which was a mixture of the endemic nature of black people to rely on Big Daddy government coupled with the endemic nature of liberals to prey on black people. This explains their reluctance to pay $5 for a waterlogged Twinkie - years of socialism have stained their ability to understand that market economics require the fucking over of black people during emergencies, lest the government actually help them and turn their children into welfare-loving parasites. Gay welfare-loving parasites.

Cultural ConservativeThe race pimps and hustlers keep saying this is about race. It isn't. It's about niggers being too stupid to move out of the way of the storm.
Faux-Moderate Conservatives
We're in the midst of a crisis here - there's plenty of blame to go around. We'll apportion Democrats' now and the rest to Republicans when New Orleans is rebuilt...in 2025.

Compassionate Conservatives
Finally, Katrina has done what years of government intervention couldn't - herd all the poor black people into a giant stadium where they can be dealt with by giant trucks of crap from Wal*Mart. Where's my firefighter calendar?

Hell on earth

2005-09-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 5,11:40 AM ET
ATLANTA - As Valerie Bennett was evacuated from a New Orleans hospital, rescuers told her there was no room in the boat for her dogs. She pleaded. "I offered him my wedding ring and my mom's wedding ring," the 34-year-old nurse recalled Saturday. They wouldn't budge. She and her husband could bring only one item, and they already had a plastic tub containing the medicines her husband, a liver transplant recipient, needed to survive.
Such emotional scenes were repeated perhaps thousands of times along the Gulf Coast last week as pet owners were forced to abandon their animals in the midst of evacuation.
In one example reported last week by The Associated Press, a police officer took a dog from one little boy waiting to get on a bus in New Orleans. "Snowball! Snowball!" the boy cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog.
At the hospital, a doctor euthanized some animals at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned and starve to death. He set up a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog kennel.
"The bigger dogs were fighting it. Fighting the gas. It took them longer. When I saw that, I said 'I can't do it,'" said Bennett's husband, Lorne.
Valerie Bennett left her dogs with the anesthesiologist, who promised to care for about 30 staff members' pets on the roof of the hospital, Lindy Boggs Medical Center.
"He said he'd stay there as long as he possibly could," Valerie Bennett recalled, speaking from her husband's bedside at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital.
On Saturday afternoon, she said she saw a posting on a Web site called petfinder.com that said the anesthesiologist was still caring for the animals.
Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy, who was helping with relief efforts Saturday, said some evacuees refused to leave without their pets.
"One woman told me 'I've lost my house, my job, my car and I am not turning my dog loose to starve,'" Kennedy said.
Kennedy said he persuaded refugees to get on the bus by telling them he would have the animals taken to an exhibition center.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals picked up two cats and 15 dogs, including one Kennedy found tied up beneath the overpass next to an unopened can of dog food with a sign that read "Please take care of my dog, his name is Chucky."
The fate of pets is a huge but underappreciated cause of anguish for storm survivors, said Richard Garfield, professor of international clinical nursing at New York's Columbia University.
"People in shelters are worried about 'Did Fluffy get out?'" he said. "It's very distressing for people, wondering if their pets are isolated or starving."
The Bennetts had four animals, including two beloved dogs.
They moved to Slidell, La., in July when Valerie took a job at an organ transplant institute connected to Lindy Boggs. Lorne, a former paramedic, is disabled since undergoing a liver transplant in 2001.
On Saturday, as Hurricane Katrina approached, both went to the hospital to help and took all four animals with them.
They fed their guinea pig and left it in its cage in a patient room. They couldn't refill its empty water bottle because the hospital's plumbing failed Sunday, they said. They poured food on the floor for the cat, but again no water.
"I just hope that they forgive me," Valerie Bennett cried.

I hope people read this and send money to the Humane society, or spend a little extra time with their own pet.

Animal lovers

2005-09-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

For those of you concerned about animals effected by the hurricane, you may want to donate to the humane society relief effort at the link below

https://secure.hsus.org/01/disaster_relief_fund_2005?

This is especially important as the Red Cross refuses to allow pets into their shelters.

Silly MSM

2005-08-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV is reporting that martial law has been declared in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish after levee breaks caused major flooding in the city Tuesday morning, sending waves of water through the downtown and French Quarter. Mayor Ray Nagin is estimating that 80% of the city has been flooded. WWL-TV provides continuing updates on its Katrina Blog.
12:02 PM ET - WWL-TV says that a break in 17th Street Canal Levee is 200 feet wide and water from it is gradually inundating the city.
12:16 PM ET - WWL-TV reports that martial law is now in effect in Plaquemines Parish southwest of New Orleans, where 60% of homes are said to be flooded; persons found on the streets there will be arrested. WWL-TV is broadcasting live video via KHOU in Houston. Some looting has begun in New Orleans, according to AP.

How can the MSM be talking about stuff like this when thier are missing white women.

Fundraiser for Natalee Holloway

2005-08-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Courteney Cox and David Arcquett orginized a fundraiser for Natalee Holloway, this even was held in a wharehouse, and about 1500 people attended. For more details see here http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/?p=1471

Given the circumstance is a benefit "Rave" really a good idea?

Maybe the Yankees should sign this guy

2005-08-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. Border Patrol helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing after illegal immigrants pelted it with baseball-sized rocks, damaging a rotor, a spokesman for the agency said on Thursday.
There were no injuries as the helicopter's pilot was able to set the aircraft down just north of the All American Canal on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Gramley said.

A guy with that good of an arm has to have a future in baseball

Another thought on the war on terror

2005-08-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

when you act from fear you make mistakes. For example in the 60's we were afraid of communism so we went to Viet Nam, and fear of failure compounded the mistake.

Vietnam looked exactly as hard back then as Iraq does now. In Iraq we have an insurgency we don't know how to beat. We're afraid that if the insurgency wins it will spread to other countries. We're afraid that if we leave we'll look spineless.

Those fears turned out to be exaggerated 30 years ago, and they'll probably turn out to be exaggerated again. We just need to be clear-eyed enough to admit to ourselves that today's problems aren't really all that different from yesterday's. They only seem that way.

Again it comes back to being so scared that you make the problem bigger than it needs to be. Bin Laden attacked the US so the US attacked an Arab country. Seems like it would have made more sense to go after Bin Laden.

Fatherhood

2005-08-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

From MSN:

Two Canadian studies suggest that there is much more to masculinity than testosterone. While testosterone is certainly important in driving men to conceive a child, it takes an array of other hormones to turn men into fathers. And among the best fathers, it turns out, testosterone levels actually drop significantly after the birth of a child. If manhood includes fatherhood, which it does for a majority of men, then testosterone is hardly the ultimate measure of masculinity.

In fact, the second of the two studies, which was recently published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, suggests that fathers have higher levels of estrogen the well-known female sex hormone -- than other men. The research shows that men go through significant hormonal changes alongside their pregnant partners changes most likely initiated by their partner's pregnancy and ones that even cause some men to experience pregnancylike symptoms such as nausea and weight gain. It seems increasingly clear that just as nature prepares women to be committed moms, it prepares men to be devoted dads.
"I have always suspected that fatherhood has biological effects in some, perhaps all, men," says biologist Sue Carter, distinguished professor at the University of Maryland. "Now here is the first hard evidence that men are biologically prepared for fatherhood."
The studies have the potential to profoundly change our understanding of families, of fatherhood and of masculinity itself. Being a devoted parent is not only important but also natural for men. Indeed, there is evidence that men are biologically involved in their children's lives from the beginning.

I have a friend who says dads just look and act different, maybe it is the Hormones

From talkleft.com

2005-08-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, I see that USA Today has a new article on sex offender statistics that dispels some of the myths created by recent high-profile cases. Among them:
Sex crimes against children have dropped dramatically in the last decade. An online national sex-offender registry was launched in July. And recent research shows doctors can better predict which offenders may strike again....
Dramatic drop in cases. Government figures show the rate of sexual assaults against adolescents ages 12 to 17 plunged 79% from 1993 through 2003, and the number of substantiated sex-abuse cases involving kids of all ages fell 39% in the same time period. [One expert], who has analyzed the data, sees multiple reasons for the decline: Greater incarceration of offenders, more therapy and use of psychiatric drugs, economic improvement in the 1990s and heightened public concern. ...
Treatment helps. Group therapy dropped the recidivism rate from 17% to 10%, according to a 2002 study that [anther expert] co-wrote. He studied 9,454 sex offenders in 43 states.
I wrote about the release of Colorado's first "sexually violent predator" earlier today over at 5280. He was a 20 year old convicted of raping a 17 year old inebriated female he met at a party. He did six years in prison for the crime. The police chief of Fort Collins held a town hall meeting in a packed church to warn the community about the offender's release. What point does this ostracism make?
Here are some more myths and facts about sex offenders from the Department of Justice Center for Sex Offender Management.

While sex offenders are disgusting they are certainly not waiting around every corner, as the culture of fear would like us to believe

Schilling

2005-08-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

In an interview with Boston radio station WEEI on Wednesday, Schilling recalled that he and Palmeiro sat together in March when both testified before Congress. Palmeiro denied taking steroids at the time, but was given a 10-day suspension Aug. 1 after failing a drug test.
"He obviously sat next to me in Washington and lied," Schilling said. "I don't know that there's any way to prove that anything he did was not under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs."

Isn't this the same Curt Schilling who has sucked since they started testing for steroids, and over the last two years has seen his head grow to the size of a large watermelon. Most people don't like a cheater, but a self righteous cheater is far worse.

Freedom of speech

2005-08-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am trying to avoid politics but free speech is near and dear to my heart:

NEW YORK The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, constitutional protections be damned. "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu. The delegates vowed to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Freedom to assemble and protest is important for any group whether you agree with them or not.

That is one of the many reasons that I do not discourage thong comments, although in the future can we only discus thongs on women under 25.

Another thought on DID

2005-08-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

As a personal aside, I actually tried to watch some coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance on Fox News the other night. (She's the Alabama teen who went missing in Aruba.) And while I was able to derive bits of cheap pleasure from the Michael Jackson trial and even the Scott Peterson saga, I must say this story seems utterly mind-numbing. Of course one feels for Natalee's family and hopes against hope that she turns up alive. But there was clearly so little to discuss -- the case seems pretty well stalled -- it just felt like an excruciating waste of time. The only fun part was watching Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes trying to feign real interest. Yet this stuff gets incredible ratings. Call me out of touch, but I find that nothing short of bizarre.
Another depressing footnote: one guest on this show was Mark Fuhrman, who has apparently made a new career as an author and commentator on trashy tabloid crimes. Ten years after he was revealed to be an astonishingly hateful racist, leading one of his assocates to say "Fuhrman's life is in the toilet. He has no job, no future," Fuhrman seems to be doing pretty well for himself.

Meet the newest Damsel in distress(DID)

2005-08-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

A young Ohio woman has disappeared without a trace near the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, according to the Ohio News Network.
Julie Popovich (search), 20, of neighboring Reynoldsburg, disappeared more than ten days ago from an off-campus bar she had visited with friends, the network said.

I wonder if this one will be able to live up to the standard set by Natalee Holloway, who remained in the news for almost 60 days, and made a lot of money for her parents. I am pretty sure that Natalee Holloway set a record for a DID not sleeping with a congressman. Without the xenophobia that fueled the Holloway case, this case will probably only get about a 5 day run.

Maybe people will start a boycott of Ohio, like the attempt by the Alabama legislature to boycott Aruba over Natalee Holloway. The only difference is no one wants to go to Ohio anyway, if my boss tries to send me there, maybe I can refuse on the grounds of this unsolved dissapearance.

You cannot reason with the people who like to be scared but you can make fun of them.

Dad of the year

2005-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

From the AP
CRAWFORD, Texas— A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch.The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall."If I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that," said the soldier's father, Gary Qualls, a friend of the local business owner who started the pro-Bush camp. He said his 16-year-old son now wants to enlist, and he supports that decision.

Seems like this guy is a little to happy to get rid of his kids.

Bangledesh, the next Afganistan?

2005-08-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

Here is something that might really be worth worrying about:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/20/133443/242

Sandra Geisel

2005-08-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

A former teacher at Christian Brothers Academy in suburban Albany, Geisel has been free on bail since her arrest Aug. 1 arrest on two counts of third-degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student. Geisel was initially found by police in a parked car with a 17-year-old student in June. Though no charges were filed in that incident because the teen was of legal age, Geisel was fired from her teaching job. During that investigation, a 16-year-old boy came forwarded and said he had sexual intercourse with Geisel on two separate occasions, leading to the charges against her, police said.

I have seen pictures of this women and I doubt she was doing any harm to these "kids". I don't know any normal 16 year olds who would complain and she was not forcing them to do anything, maybe the morals police should give it a rest.

Amber alerts

2005-08-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

Latest Ambber alert:

AMERICUS — Two neighboring sheriff’s offices are asking for the public’s help in locating two missing girls last seen more than a week ago. According to a press release from the Crisp and Sumter County Sheriffs Offices, the parents of the girls and authorities are seeking any information on the whereabouts of Amber Eve Goodman, 16, of Sumter County and Arielle Nicole Dorminey, 17, of Crisp County.
Best friends, the pair were last seen at their respective homes late Wednesday night, Aug. 3. Also missing is Goodman’s vehicle, a white 2003 Ford Taurus. The car has a gold Triple A Plus Kentucky sticker on the right side of the back bumper and a silver tag displayed on the front side of the car with the names “Roxy” and “Amber” written in pink letters.
The car’s license plate number is ALB7939. Through investigation, authorities have learned that the last know location of the girls was in Duncanville, Texas, around midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on Aug. 5. It is believed the two are en route to either California or Las Vegas, Nev. A reward of $3,000 is being offered for any pertinent information should it lead to their recovery. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office at 928-4635, ext. 226 or ext. 239 or the Crisp County Sheriff’s Office at 229-276-2604 or 229- 276-2600 Ext. 226. Callers who wish to remain anonymous may do so.

16 and 17 year olds who have their own car and are en route to Las Vegas or California. Seems like an overreaction, these kids probably just wanted a break from Georgia. At this point the Amber alerts are ignored because of stuff like this, in most cases amber alerts involve custody disputes or in this case probably a couple of teens mad at their parents.

Overreacting hurts the cases that really warrant an Amber alert.