Report: Employers seemingly scared of PTSD risks among 'workplace warriors'

           Good Day World!

As a Vietnam veteran, I’m distressed to see that our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are facing the same stigma we were: discrimination against veterans with PTSD. Of course back in my time no one was talking about PTSD – it was an unknown subject – but veterans who came back and had problems adjusting to civilian life quickly became stigmatized.

A small amount of these thousands of returning combat veterans became violent and “freaked out” – killing innocent civilians. The media at the time seized on the idea of “crazed killer vets” roaming America’s streets and terrorizing people.

One thing really stands out to me; back in the early 70s, after I got out of the Army, I made sure not to mention my military service on job applications, unless specifically asked. The stigma of being a “crazed vet” would have hurt my chance at getting a job. I saw it happen to too many people that I actually knew who couldn’t find jobs because they mentioned they served in Vietnam during interviews.

That’s why I was so distressed when I read this article. It’s all happening again. When the hell will we learn? Our warriors deserve better. Read about how hard it is for our veterans to get jobs compared to the rest of society.

“A think tank convened to gauge the financial well-being of “workplace warriors” says home-front job prospects remain “discouraging” for ex-service members, with many hiring managers seemingly scared off by the possibility that candidates have post-traumatic stress disorder.

For even casual watchers of the ex-military vocational plight, the larger conclusion is hardly striking: the “combat-to-corporate” path has long been paved with good intentions, but clogged by application dead ends. What’s more, the group’s downbeat assessment comes amid some rays of improvement. Last month, the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans finally nudged lower, to 9.7 percent, two full points below the jobless pace during than the same month in 2011, according to federal figures.

But, the experts contend, too many American companies have failed to boost their own internal ranks of former troops, ignoring the military-friendly examples set by Walmart, the Hartford, Citi and several other businesses under the "hire our heroes" mantra.

"Few employers are fully prepared to meet the needs of disabled veterans in the workplace, according to research from Cornell University and the Society for Human Resources Management," think tank members wrote.  "... Nearly 20 percent of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan screened positive for PTSD." (That reported military-PTSD rate has decreased during the past five years, Cornell scientists have found, noting the drop is due largely to interventions by the U.S. military.)

The 2012 Workplace Warriors Think Tank, composed by business, military and health leaders, originally gathered in 2007 — before the Great Recession — to examine the same lag in ex-military hiring. Since then, the nation’s slow economic recovery has sidelined tens of thousands of veterans along with millions of other American workers. “But I’m sure, in the case of some employers, the economy is an excuse for them just to say ‘no’ to veterans,” said the report’s editor, Marcia Carruthers.

And while the think tank does see threads of tangible progress in the private sector, such as the 100,000 Jobs Mission, it added that: “The fruits of these efforts have yet to fully materialize. More needs to be done” to open opportunities for civilian soldiers and full-time military members.

In large part, that’s because just below the simple math of supply and demand, a dark group-psychology seems to be at play, Carruthers said. Battle-related mental illness — diagnosed in some returning veterans but apparently associated with all of them — is tainting many or most job-hunting veterans.

“The stigma of PTSD is at the top of the list,” said Carruthers, president and CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition, a nonprofit.

“These veterans are exactly the kinds of people you’d want to hire — they’re used to working as a team; they’re loyal; you give them an order and they follow through,” Carruthers said. “So some of this is related to the types of injuries we’re seeing — and, I would say, really, due to the fear of employers in terms of bringing back these people. If they were coming home with broken legs, it would be a different thing. There’s a fear factor.”

Among veteran-friendly companies with representatives on the think tank are insurance provider MetLife and technology consultant Booz Allen Hamilton. While some large U.S. companies are clearing space to bring veterans in house, it’s the “smaller organizations that often struggle,” Carruthers said.

“They don’t have many employees, and not many of their people have been deployed. They also may not have HR departments that are aggressively seeking diversity,” she added. “So it’s more the smaller organizations that are just not as aware of this issue — or that don’t feel they have the resources. But it’s small business that definitely make up our economy.” (article source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

This week’s Top 10 Learnist Boards Popular with Teachers – Guess who has the number #1 Board?

It’s election time. This week’s Top 10 Learnist Boards will provide some resources to learn more about or teach the election. They were particularly tough to choose this week because there is so much political material on Learnist, much created by experts.

Of particular interest this week are “parent boards” and “paired boards.” A parent board is a board that embeds other boards—this week’s example is the parent board on the 2012 Presidential and VP Debates by Crystal Morgan. As a teacher, I find these to be extremely useful in curating information from separate boards and organizing it in one board for my students. It allows me to credit the boards’ authors and synthesize the material I want for my students. Paired boards are boards on the same topic from different perspectives or authors. I use these in class all the time to ask students to identify and analyze points of view, which is a skill addressed in the Common Core State Standards.

1. Presidential Election 2012

Retired newspaper editor Dave Stancliff created this board on the 2012 elections. It covers the candidates and several issues contested in the Presidential election.

2. The Electoral College

Amelia Hamilton discusses the reasons behind the creation of the electoral college and how it affects the United States’ presidential election.

3. Youth Activism

In this board, activist Jack Ori shows examples of youth activism, showing the issues young voters hold closest to their hearts.

4. 2012 Presidential and VP Debates

Crystal Morgan compiled this parent board—a collection of boards housed under one board. This contains all the boards from all the debates, including boards from many perspectives. (Note: 3 of the Learnings are by Dave Stancliff)

5. Decoding the Rhetoric

GOP political strategist Dina Fraioli helps educate us on what the candidates are really saying—with so much by way of stumping, spin, rhetoric and regurgitation, it’s tough to know what it all means—Dina sorts it out.

6. Politics in the Age of Social Media

Activist Jack Ori shows the impact of social media on elections in an age where we can interact with the parties and candidates on the issues that matter most to us in real time.

7. Voting Against Your Own Economic Self-Interest

Jake Becker stirs up some controversy in this board by positing the question “Why do voters vote in ways that do not benefit them?” The comment section shows the full potential of Learnist—the comments are alive on this one, showing that part of the learning is to spark the debate and conversation on tough topics.

8. Religion’s Role in the 2012 Presidential Election

Dave Stancliff analyzes the role of religion in current and past elections, providing information on areas where God and Politics intersect in the minds of voters.

9. The Vice-Presidential Debates: A Conservative View

Life-long Republican and author of the children’s book One Nation Under God: A Book for Little Patriots Amelia Hamilton takes the conservative approach to the debates.

10. Biden vs. Ryan Debate: A Liberal View

Dave Stancliff takes the opposing view when creating his VP debate board—this is one of the great things about using Learnist—the experts curate the materials, but the learner can find many perspectives on the same issue.

Source – Edudemic  View all of Dave’s Boards here.

Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known…

                   Good Day World!

Let’s warm up with some unusual facts to get things going:

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.
2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.
4. Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight. The Wright brother's invented the airplane.
5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.
6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
7. The word "set" has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.
8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.
9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.
10. Kangaroos can't walk backwards.

11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.
12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.
13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.
14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.
15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.
16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.
17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.
18. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.
19. Octopus have three hearts.

20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.
21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.
22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.
23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.

24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.
25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.
26. Most cats are left pawed.

27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

28. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant.

29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!

30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours.

31. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Death, mortality and having a good day

 

  By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard  
  Do you treat each day like it might be your last?
  I asked myself that question when my Mother (Margaret Jane Stancliff) died unexpectedly on October 3rd.
Or, like most people, are you too busy to even think that today might be your last hours of life? 
The California Healthcare Foundation released a study (2/12) titled, “Snapshot - Final Chapter: Californians’ Attitudes and Experiences with Death or Dying.” The study reveals 41 percent of Californians’ say they have “too many other things to think about right now” instead of talking about death. (http://www.PDF download.org ).

I try to get the most out of every day. It’s not easy. Giving in to the negativity that surrounds me everyday is easier than trying to be positive about what I see and hear. It takes more muscles to smile, but the end result can light up the world around me for a moment.
I don’t adhere to any one ideology, philosophy, or religion when it comes to how I approach each day. Instead, I motivate myself in many ways. I look for stories about people who do take each day as a gift in their lives.
Memories of friends and loved ones who passed too soon urge me to slow down and smell the proverbial flowers. I sometimes imagine it is my last day on earth and how I should spend it.
This helps me shake off the lethargy of living, and look at hours and days as more precious than any amount of gold or material things. It helps me refocus when I get thrown off track, something that happens to the happiest of us.

 It’s not a perfect world and that’s okay. It shouldn’t affect your day. If you’re healthy and can get about and do various activities, you should take advantage of that as a way to enrich your life and to give each day more meaning.
Millions of people are handicapped in one way or another. Their stories of survival and later thriving energizes me to the core. I often look at their daily challenges and their bravery in making the best of their conditions, as a way of motivation.
 An epiphany sometimes comes after experiencing the loss of a loved one. You realize there’s no guarantee you won’t die today, or tomorrow. The sky is suddenly bluer. The birds songs inspirational. The grass is greener, and the world has taken on a new luster.
My opinion on how important today is - as opposed to yesterday or tomorrow - comes from a lifetime of experience. I’ve done years of research on subjects ranging from the power of positive thinking, to oriental religions and disciplines to maximize my days.

  I learned a long time ago, there will be bad days in my life and it is up to me to cope with them. That’s life. That’s reality. Bad things happen to all of us, regardless of how rich or poor, or how religious we are.
  Because every person’s circumstances are different, having a nice day can have a broad definition. Someone working in a lumber mill for eight hours who comes home to a good hearty hot meal, would probably say they had a good day.
  They made money and were productive. Someone re-learning how to walk after an accident who manages to take a few extra steps one day, would call that a good day. A child who was able to eat a full meal one day, would consider that a good day if he/she was among the starving children of the world.
  I admit that decades ago, when I heard people use the line, “Have a good day,” I thought that was a shallow statement. A mental picture of a round yellow happy face accompanied the thought.

Funny how things change. Now when someone says “Have a good day,” I enjoy hearing it and quickly wish the same for the speaker. Somewhere along the line I managed to become less skeptical of everything in life.
As we all know, life is an ever evolving situation. We can choose to grow and bloom, or wither on the vine of negativity. It does come down to personal choice, despite what life hands us.

  As It Stands, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about death and your mortality as one way to have a better day.

The 20 Weirdest Religious Beliefs: Test your knowledge of which strange belief belongs to which religion

                   Good Day World!

 We find it easy to dismiss the fantastical beliefs of people in other times and places, but those that we’ve been exposed to since childhood seem not so far out.

 Virgin birth? Water turning into wine? A fig tree shriveling on the spot? Dead people getting up out of their graves and walking around?

 All of the following beliefs are found in respected religions today. They have been long taught by religions that either are considered part of the American mainstream or are home grown, made in the U.S.A., produced here and exported. Some of these beliefs are ensconced in sacred texts. Others are simply traditional. All, at one time or another, have had the sanction of the highest church authorities, and many still do.

How many of them can you match up with a familiar religious tradition? (The answers are at the bottom.)

1.      The foreskin of [a holy one] may lie safeguarded in reliquaries made of gold and crystal and inlayed with gems--or it may have ascended into the heavens all by itself. ( 2)

2.      A race of giants once roamed the earth, the result of women and demi-gods interbreeding. (1, 6). They lived at the same time as fire breathing dragons. ( 1)

3.      Evil spirits can take control of pigs. ( 1)

4.      A talking donkey scolded a prophet. ( 1, 3 )

5.      A righteous man can control his wife’s access to eternal paradise. ( 6)

6.      Brown skin is a punishment for disobeying God. ( 6)

7.      A prophet once traveled between two cities on a miniature flying horse with the face of a woman and the tail of a peacock. ( 4)

8.      [The Holy One] forbids a cat or dog receiving a blood transfusion and forbids blood meal being used as garden fertilizer. ( 7)

9.      Sacred underwear protects believers from spiritual contamination and, according to some adherents, from fire and speeding bullets ( 6)

10.  When certain rites are performed beforehand, bread turns into human flesh after it is chewed and swallowed. ( 2)

11.  Invisible supernatural beings reveal themselves in mundane objects like oozing paint or cooking food. ( 2)

12.  In the end times, [the Holy One’s] chosen people will be gathered together in Jackson County, Missouri. ( 6)

13.  Believers can drink poison or get bit by snakes without being harmed. ( 1)

14.  Sprinkling water on a newborn, if done correctly, can keep the baby from eons of suffering should he or she die prematurely. ( 2)

15.  Waving a chicken over your head can take away your sins. ( 3)

16.  [A holy one] climbed a mountain and could see the whole earth from the mountain peak. ( 1, 2 )

17.  Putting a dirty milk glass and a plate from a roast beef sandwich in the same dishwasher can contaminate your soul. ( 3)

18.  There will be an afterlife in which exactly 144,000 people get to live eternally in Paradise. ( 8)

19.  Each human being contains many alien spirits that were trapped in volcanos by hydrogen bombs. ( 5)

20.  [A supernatural being] cares tremendously what you do with your penis. 1,2,3,4,6,7,8.

Key:  1-Evangelical or “Bible Believing” Christianity, 2-Catholic Christianity, 3-Judaism, 4-Islam, 5-Scientology, 6-Mormonism 7-Christian Science 8-Jehovah’s Witness

Each of these beliefs is remarkable in its own way. But the composite goes beyond remarkable to revealing. What it reveals is an underlying belief that is something like this:

The process that produced this world and human life is best unveiled not by the scientific method but by the musings of iron age herdsmen (1,2,3,4,7,8) or science fiction writers (5), or con artists (6) whose theories are best judged by examining only assertions that cannot be falsified.

Underlying that belief is a sort of rational swiss cheese that is going to keep cognitive scientists investigating and  arguing for decades.

We humans are astoundingly  susceptible to handed down nonsense. Human children are dependent on their parents for a decade or even two, which is why nature made children credulous. When parents say,  eat your peas, they’re good for you,  kids may argue about the  eat your peas part but they don’t usually question the factual assertion about nutrition. When parents say Noah put all of the animals into the ark,  it is the rare child who asks,  Why didn’t the lion eat the guinea pigs?

Even as adults, we simply can’t afford to research everything we hear and read, and so, unless something isn’t working for us, we tend to accept what we are told by trusted authority figures. We go with the flow. Religion exploits this tendency by, among other things, establishing hierarchy and by ensuring that believers are in a certain mindset when they encounter religious ideas. A friend once gave me a button that said,  Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church . I didn’t really want to wear a button that said “I’m an arrogant jerk,” but the reality is that even the best of churches aren’t optimized for critical thinking. Quite the opposite. The pacing, the music, the lighting—all are designed for assent and emotion, for a right brain aesthetic experience, for the dominance of what Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman  has called System 1 thinking, meaning intuition and gut feel rather than rational, slow, linear analysis.

Some of our ancestors were doing the best they could to understand the world around them but had a very limited set of tools at their disposal. It would appear that others were simply making stuff up. Mormonism and Scientology appear to fall in the latter camp.  But when it comes to religious credulity, the difference matters surprisingly little. For example, Mormonism is more easily debunked than most other religions, both because of its recency and because it makes so many historically or  scientifically wild claims , and yet it is also one of the fastest growing religions in the world proportional to its membership. Wild claims matter less than whether a religion has  certain viral characteristics .  (Story source)

- Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light" and "Deas and Other Imaginings." Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Meet the Eleven Main Enemies of Marijuana Legalization

In 1990, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates told a Senate committee that people who smoked pot occasionally “ought to be taken out and shot.” That kind of fanaticism, which dominated the debate on drugs 20 years ago, seems to have faded. Today’s politicians are more likely to dismiss cannabis concerns as “not serious” than to rail against the demons of dope—but the powers that be are still bent on keeping pot illegal. U.S. cops bust an average of almost 100 people every hour for pot, and an array of think tanks and nonprofit groups continues to pump out prohibitionist propaganda.

Here are 11 of the worst—the most powerful and the most vehement.

                     1. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart

A holdover from the Bush administration, Leonhart was formally appointed to head the Drug Enforcement Administration by Barack Obama in 2010. The antiprohibitionist movement strongly opposed her, citing the DEA’s raids on medical-marijuana growers in California—including one on a 69-year-old woman who had been the first grower to register with the Mendocino County Sheriff. 

As the DEA’s acting director in January 2009, she overruled a DEA administrative-law judge’s recommendation and denied the University of Massachusetts a license to cultivate marijuana for FDA-approved research. “This single act has blocked privately funded medical marijuana research in this country,” NORML head Allen St. Pierre said in July 2010.

Leonhart often carries hardline views to absurd extremes. In 2011, asked about the drug-cartel carnage in Mexico, she told the Washington Post that “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” because the cartels were fighting each other “like caged animals.” In June 2012, asked by Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) if crack, heroin and methamphetamine were worse for your health than marijuana, she repeatedly answered, “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.” Asked if opioid painkillers like OxyContin were more addictive than marijuana, she answered, “All illegal drugs in Schedule I are addictive.” GO HERE TO READ THE REST

Ocelots, pro baseball pitcher and pipeline builder tangled up in lawsuit

       Good Day Humboldt County!

How did a pro baseball pitcher (Josh Beckett of the L.A. Dodgers), ocelots and a natural gas pipeline builder make it into the same news headline?

They’re all part of a lawsuit filed by Beckett after the company used eminent domain to clear land on his 7,000-acre hunting ranch in south Texas.

Beckett alleges the company, Eagle Ford Midstream, violated the Endangered Species Act by clearing land that was habitat for the ocelot, of which only 100 are thought to be left in the wild in the U.S.On Wednesday, two Beckett companies filed a restraining order against Eagle Ford from continuing work inside the ranch. That followed a lawsuit filed Tuesday that states "multiple big cat tracks" were photographed there as recently as June and that Beckett saw ocelots as recently as last November, MySanAntonio.com reported.

Eagle Ford engaged in "willful destruction" by clearing land after a notice of intent to sue was filed in August, according to the lawsuit by Beckett Ventures Inc and Hall of Fame Land Ventures LP. Beckett also claimed Eagle Ford was urged to choose a shorter, direct path rather than the diagonal swath that was cleared. Ocelots are protected in Texas and at the federal level. A company found to have destroyed habitat could face fines and be forced to do mitigation work.

Eagle Ford did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment, but it filed a response with the court Wednesday, arguing that hunting on the ranch posed a greater threat than their pipeline. Beckett owns the Herradura Ranch in LaSalle County and runs a hunting lodge out of the premises. "The Herradura has offered superb dove, quail and trophy whitetail (deer) for over a decade," its website states.

Eagle Ford, in its court response, alleged that "the protection of the ocelot was merely a sham to leverage additional money from (Eagle Ford) in exchange for an easement." A state court earlier this month denied Beckett's similar request to halt the project, the company added.

It also noted that e-mails it received from Beckett's lawyers in April made no mention of ocelots and instead requested an alternative route because of the impact on an irrigation system and the ranch's hunting business.

Eagle Ford's environmental consultant earlier determined the land "does not exhibit the necessary density, coverage or structure generally described for potential ocelot habitat," adding that the nearest known population of ocelots was 120 miles away in Kennedy County.

Based on that information, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined no further action was required. Nocturnal wild cats that can weigh up to 30 pounds, ocelots prefer dense shrub habitat. While abundant in Central and South America, ocelots in the U.S. have been reduced to an estimated 100 in Texas and Arizona.

A key ocelot habitat in Texas has been the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but "more than 95 percent of the dense thorn scrub habitat (there) ... has been converted to agriculture, rangelands, or urban land uses," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted in its plan to help the species recover.

Other problems facing the Texas and Arizona population, the service added, include inbreeding, border fences separating the natural range that goes into Mexico, and ocelots becoming roadkill. (source)

Wasteful spending of your tax dollars: Martian menus, the “non-profit” NFL, and a $132 million do-nothing Congress

Think Congress does not have much to show for itself this year? Think again. A new report from Senator Tom Coburn's office highlights dozens of examples of government waste in 2012. Included for the first time on this list: Congress. The very people looking into government waste find they themselves are wasteful. Coburn's report estimates $132 million of taxpayers' money was wasted on "the most unproductive and unpopular Congress in modern history."

"The waste is unbelievable," says Coburn. "We're bankrupt, this country is bankrupt, and people just don't want to admit it."

Loopholes are part of the problem. The National Football League, for example, pulled in more than $9 billion last year, yet is technically a "non-profit" organization, costing the federal government tens of millions of dollars every year in lost revenue.

"We have some of the biggest corporations in America paying no taxes whatsoever, you know something is wrong with the code," says the Republican senator. Millions of dollars have also been spent on questionable items, like $325,000 on a squirrel robot, realistic enough to fool a rattlesnake, and developed with a National Science Foundation grant; $40,000 to produce a video game where players can virtually enjoy a pond in Massachusetts; and $516,000 to create a video game called "Prom Week," which simulates the interaction of teenagers surrounding the biggest social night in high school.

The spending approaches intergalactic proportions -- sort of. NASA has no plans for a manned mission to Mars, but is spending nearly a $1 million a year researching what kind of food astronauts could eat if they ever get there. "What was once a great country has been mortgaged and bankrupted by the egos and ethics of career politicians," says Coburn, who adds the only way to change the system is to vote out all the incumbents.

"If you want to change the trajectory of our country, if you want to get rid of the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste every year, you have to change who is there." For more examples of government waste, including another highly-subsidized, yet rarely-used airport, check out this week's Spinners and Winners. (source)

As It Stands presents Stupid Laws in Swing States – today we’ll visit Ohio

      Good Day Humboldt County!

Just for fun, let’s look at some stupid laws in Ohio as it’s in the news a lot this week.

President Obama and Gov. Romney are busy kissing babies and shaking hands in the state right now hoping to get undecided voters to vote for them.

Everyone is talking about how important the Swing States are in this year’s presidential election, but I’m taking the opportunity to share some stupid laws from these states…just because:

In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker’s stand, you can be fined $25. Full text of the law.

It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house. Full text of the law.

No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July. Full text of the law.

                                                                  CITY LAWS IN OHIO

In Akron - No person shall solicit sex from another of the same gender if it offends the second person. Full text of the law.

In Bexley - Ordinance number 223, of 09/09/19 prohibits the installation and usage of in outhouses.

In Canton - If one loses their pet tiger, they must notify the authorities within one hour.  Full text of the law. and, Power Wheels cars may not be driven down the street. Full text of the law.     

In Cleveland - Women are forbidden from wearing patent leather shoes, lest men see reflections of their underwear and, It’s illegal to catch mice without a hunting license!

There’s more stupid laws in Ohio here

Time for me to walk on down the road…

'The Simpsons,' make list of 25 most powerful TV shows of the last 25 years

Television fans, there's a great new list out that gives props to the medium for having the power to sway elections, create catchphrases and change the way we think.

Mental Floss' list of "25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years" makes the claim that more than the Bible or Shakespeare, "The Simpsons" has changed the way we speak. D'oh!

The long-running cartoon takes the No. 3 spot on the list, which cites University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman, who credited the show in research in 2005 by saying, "'The Simpsons' has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catchphrases, and sundry other textual allusions."and sundry other textual allusions." The list gives "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" (No. 11) credit for spawning an entire academic discipline, Buffy Studies; "Sex and the City" (No. 15) boosted the pregnancy rate, according to a RAND Institute study that reported girls between 12 and 17 who watched that and other shows with "high sexual content" were more than twice as likely to become pregnant. And the show that "rewired kids' brains"? That goes to No. 8 on the list, "SpongeBob SquarePants." Rest of the story here

Taking a BLOG BREAK…death in the family

I’ll be back at a future date.

My Mother passed away today.

Follow tonight’s Presidential Debate with Dave at Learnist

Join me at Learnist from 6:00 p.m. PST - (9:00 p.m. ET) to watch/ listen to the Presidential Debate LIVE tonight.

Click the above link and scroll down to the last (#9) “Learning” on the Board, and you’ll find the ALL the resources you need to keep track of the first of four debates between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.

Shocking Bipartisan Senate Report: Homeland Security 'Fusion' Centers Spy on Citizens, Produce 'Shoddy' Work

                          Good Day Humboldt County!

                  Here’s something to think about today: 

 The Department of Homeland Security has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a network of 77 so-called “fusion” intelligence centers that have collected personal information on some U.S. citizens — including detailing the “reading habits” of American Muslims — while producing “shoddy” reports and making no contribution to thwarting any terrorist plots,  a new Senate report states.

The “ fusion centers,” created under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama, consist of  special   teams of  federal , state and local officials collecting and analyzing  intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country.  They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as “one of the centerpieces”  of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. But a bipartisan report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released Tuesday concludes that the centers “often produced irrelevant” and "useless” intelligence reports. “There were times when it was, ‘What a bunch of crap is coming through,’” one senior Homeland Security official is quoted as saying .

A spokesman for Napolitano immediately blasted the report as “out of date, inaccurate and misleading.” Another Homeland Security official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that the skills of officials working in them are “evolving and maturing.”

While dismissing the value of much of the fusion centers’ work, the Senate panel  found  evidence of what  it called  “troubling” reports by some  centers that may have violated the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. citizens.  The evidence cited in the report could fuel a continuing controversy over claims that the FBI and some local police departments, notably New York City’s, have spied on American Muslims without a justifiable law enforcement reason for doing so. Among the examples in the report:

• One fusion center drafted a report on a list of reading suggestions prepared by a Muslim community group, titled “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” The report noted that four of the authors were listed in a terrorism database, but a Homeland Security reviewer in Washington chastised the fusion center,  saying, “We cannot report on books and other writings” simply because the authors are  in a terrorism database. “The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that something in the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity.”
• 
• A fusion center in California prepared a report about a speaker at a Muslim center in Santa Cruz who was giving a daylong motivational talk—and a lecture on “positive parenting.” No link to terrorism was alleged. 
• Another fusion center drafted a  report on a U.S. citizen speaking at a local mosque that speculated that --  since the speaker had been listed in a terrorism data base — he may have been  attempting “to conduct fundraising and recruiting” for a foreign terrorist group.

“The number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write into this (form),” a Homeland Security reviewer wrote after analyzing the report. The reviewer noted that “the nature of this event is constitutionally protected activity (public speaking, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion.)”

The Senate panel found 40 reports -- including the three listed above -- that were drafted at fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns the documents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they mentioned.”

Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for  a year or more after they had been  canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so.

The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a document should not be retained, “The U.S  person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately.”

The investigation was led by the Republican staff of the subcommittee but the 107-page report was approved by chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich and ranking minority Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.  It stated that much basic information about the fusion centers – including exactly how much they cost the federal government — was difficult to obtain. Although the fusion centers are overseen by Homeland Security, they are funded primarily through grants to local governments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although Homeland Security “was unable to provide an accurate tally,” the panel estimated the federal dollars spent on the centers between 2003 and 2011 at between $289 million and $1.4 billion.

The panel’s criticism of the fusion centers was shared in part by Michael Leiter, the former director of the National National Counter-Terrorism Center and now an NBC analyst. “Since 9/11, the growth of state and local fusion centers has been exponential and regrettably in many instances it has produced an ill-planned mishmash rather than a true national system that is well-integrated with existing organizations like the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces,” Leiter wrote in an email when asked about the report. 

In its response to the Senate panel , Homeland Security said that the canceled reports could still be retained “for administrative purposes such as audit and oversight.” The report cited multiple examples of what it called fusion center reports that had little if any value to counterterrorism efforts.

One fusion center report cited described how a certain model car had folding rear seats to the trunk, a feature that it said could be useful to human traffickers. This prompted a Homeland Security reviewer to note that such folding rear seats are “featured on MANY different  makes and model of vehicles” and “there is nothing of any intelligence value in this report.” (Read the rest of the story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Future Technology: 3-D printed gun project derailed by legal woes

             Good Day Humboldt County!

This rapidly developing “printing technology” would have left Flash Gordon in shock.

It sure blows my mind. Actually printing solid objects. This new story points out this technology is going to bring a lot of legal challenges…soon.

It kinda creeps me out thinking about untold thousands of people printing up guns for themselves. I foresee a big problem with that. See what you think.

“After raising thousands of dollars to develop a free, 3-D-printable handgun, a group calling itself Defense Distributed has had to put its plans on hold, after the company providing their printing hardware refused to do business with them. It's an early episode in what is likely to be a long controversy.

Defense Distributed is a loosely organized group that intends to explore the possibility of creating weapons entirely using 3-D printed parts — and providing the files to do so freely online. They are unrelated to another recent project that partially built an assault rifle that way, but the concept is similar.

The group originally tried to raise money to develop the Wiki Weapon, as they call it, on the crowd-funding website IndieGoGo. The site pulled the plug, however, before the $20,000 the group was hoping to collect was pledged. Undeterred, Defense Distributed solicited donations in the Bitcoin virtual currency, and soon achieved their funding goal.

With the money, they leased a powerful 3-D printer from a company called Stratasys. But before they even had a chance to take the device out of its box, Stratasys caught wind of what its hardware was going to be used for and canceled the contract, sending someone to pick up the printer immediately.

Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson had expected some controversy, but the cancellation by Stratasys caught him by surprise. Speaking to Wired's Danger Room blog, he emphasized that what the group is doing is legal, since manufacture of weapons is not prohibited as long as they are not for sale or trade. This permits enthusiasts and artisans to create such things freely, but for anything more than personal use a license is required — a license Wilson doesn't have.

Stratasys may have erred on the side of caution (it commented to Wired that the company would not "knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes"), but it may also have been motivated by the equally understandable desire not to be associated with a potentially controversial project.

But as Wilson points out, the cat is out of the bag: The design and testing of a 3-D printed gun is inevitable given that the cost of doing it has dropped, and there is almost certainly a market for such devices. Defense Distributed is doing it openly and, they believe, legitimately — but others could easily do the same without bothering about the red tape. In the meantime, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating, though they told Wilson they consider printed weapons a grey area at present.

The question of creating weapons at home, especially sophisticated and deadly ones like an automatic handgun, is bound to be a controversial one. The ability to bypass firearms regulations, not to mention the social and civil implications of cheap, ubiquitous and anonymous guns, will be a serious issue in the coming years, and Defense Distributed intends to be at the center of it.

More information about the Wiki Weapon and Defense Distributed's plans and rationale can be found at their website. Readers concerned with the legality and justification of producing printable weapons may find some answers in the FAQ. Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Another study that has to make you wonder: ‘Can You Tell A Woman's Politics By Looking At Her Face?’

                 Good Day Humboldt County!

Here’s an interesting study about perceptions of people based upon their appearance. Women are apparently very good at guessing who belongs to which party. But how do they do it?

            Scientists call it the “Michelle Bachmann Effect.”

                             Test yourself below.

Can you guess which of the US Representatives below is a Republican, and which is a Democrat, just based on their faces? (Answers are at the bottom, no peeking — unless you already recognize all these congresswomen, in which case you can scroll right down to the science.)

                                    

                                  1.                                                                         2.

                                3.                                                            4.

              

                              5.                                                                                  6.

        

                                7.                                                                                             8.

 

Answers:

1. Martha Roby, R-Alabama
2. Lois Capps, D-California
3. Grace Napolitano, D-California
4. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut
5. Judy Biggert, R-Illinois
6. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kansas
7. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine
8. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Missouri

That's a shorter version of the test psychologists Colleen Carpinella and Kerri Johnson gave undergraduates at UCLA for a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The undergrads were significantly better at guessing than would be expected by chance, and they were especially accurate with women. The likely reason, according to the study: Republican women are more likely than Democratic ones to have stereotypically feminine facial features.

In another experiment, Carpinella and Johnson used a computer program to measure how "sex-typical" the faces of male and female Representatives were, looking at characteristics like jaw shape, lip fullness, and cheekbone placement (they discounted things like hair, makeup, and jewelry). They found that Republican women were more likely to have stereotypically feminine faces — and the effect was more pronounced the more conservative their voting records were. The reverse was true for Democrats — the more liberal their voting records, the less traditionally feminine their faces. The study authors call this "the Michele Bachmann effect."

The study authors think that because the Republican platform advocates for traditional gender roles, women with more traditionally feminine appearances may gravitate toward the GOP. Interestingly, however, they found that Republican men actually had more feminine faces than Democratic men. This surprised Carpinella and Johnson, but they speculate that since governing is still seen as masculine in general, a slightly feminized appearance might not be an impediment to a Republican politician — he's already showing his masculinity by running for office in the first place. And Republicans may have an easier time getting away with slightly feminine faces than Democrats, since their political views are often seen as more masculine (cf. Arnold Schwarzenegger's claim that Democratic legislators were "girlie-men").

It's not clear if less-feminine women have a harder time making it in the Republican party (or if more-feminine women have difficulty being accepted by Democrats), or if people's physical appearances actually influence their political beliefs. Someresearch has found that political leanings can have genetic underpinnings — maybe the genes that affect liberalism or conservatism affect appearance as well. Or maybe the way women look as they grow up, and the way people respond to their appearance, influence how they vote later on. The less-principled in both parties are likely to spin this research in their favor — Democratic women are manly! Republican men are secret sissies! — but the reality is almost certainly more interesting.

Update: Asked what might be behind her findings, Carpinella said voter preference probably played a bigger role than genetics: "We have no evidence to support a biological interpretation of our effects — and that evidence favoring that would require a very different study. Instead, we believe this reveals more about the voters themselves. [...] Specifically, it appears that conservative voters insist that their policy preferences are reflected in the physical appearance of the political candidates who they ultimately put in office. Here, valuing traditional gender norms is apparent in the faces of successful politicians."

It would be interesting to look at the faces of ordinary Republican and Democratic voters, rather than elected officials, to see if the same appearance differences hold true.    (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Milestone Medical Marijuana case goes to court

                                          
            By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
 A rare opportunity for medical marijuana patients is coming on October 16th at 9:30 a.m. in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Science will be pitted against politically-motivated decisions for the first time. It’s a match-up the Feds have avoided for years.  
 Ten years after the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) filed its petition, the courts will finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic value of marijuana.
The D.C. Circuit Court agreed to hear oral arguments in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration.
"Medical marijuana patients are finally getting their day in court," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access, the country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group.
"What's at stake in this case is nothing less than our country's scientific integrity and the imminent needs of millions of patients," Elford said in a press release.
  This is a case that could have major implications for taking marijuana out of Schedule I, a category that also includes heroin and LSD.

  Schedule I drugs are described as substances that “have a high potential for abuse, have no current accepted medical use in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for the use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”
  Perhaps it was no coincidence that the announcement of oral arguments comes weeks after a study by Dr. Igor Grant was published in The Open Neurology Journal. He is one of the leading U.S. medical marijuana researchers, and claims marijuana's Schedule I classification is "not tenable."
  For years now, advocates for medical marijuana have submitted reports and studies showing the medicinal effects of marijuana but have been unable to crack the Fed’s wall of blind resistance to them. Dr. Grant and his associates have concluded it’s not true that marijuana has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. The study urged additional research, and stated that marijuana's federal classification and its political controversy are "obstacles to medical progress in this area." 
  The Obama Justice Department has been escalating its attacks in medical marijuana states, with dozens of new federal indictments and prosecutions. Though U.S. Attorneys often claim the accused have violated state law in some way, defendants are prevented from using any medical evidence or a state law defense in federal court.
Hopefully we’ll see sanity and logic prevail, and marijuana will be reclassified, allowing federal defendants to use a medical necessity defense in future cases.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have adopted medical marijuana laws that not only recognize the medical efficacy of marijuana, but also provide safe and legal access to it.
The DEA’s aggressive campaign against marijuana has escalated under the Obama administration and it’s more important now than ever for patients to get their rights back. The trend has to be stopped.
 How unreasonable have the Feds been? During congressional testimony earlier this year, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart refused to say whether crack or heroin posed bigger health risks than marijuana.
Really? I don’t know how Leonhart can look in the mirror after displaying that kind of stubborn ignorance. From day one, making marijuana illegal was a political ploy, based upon racism and ignorance.
  Now there’s a chance to reverse decades of a failed policy that should never have developed. Imagine how much more can be discovered about the medical properties of marijuana when legitimate research is funded instead of the bogus Fed-funded farces that have been the rule thus far?
  Millions of people will benefit. Millions of dollars can be diverted from the Lost War on Drugs if marijuana is rescheduled. The door will be open to legalization, something that fifty percent of Americans want according to national polls.
  As It Stands, this is a milestone case because it’s the first time the real merits of marijuana will be considered by a federal court that could change it’s legal status.

Mayan Calender Doesn’t Predict Coming Apocalypse Experts Claim

As the clock winds down to Dec. 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn't predict an apocalypse for the end of this year.

Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world. Archaeologists, anthropologists and other experts met Friday in the southern Mexico city of Merida to discuss the implications of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which is made up of 394-year periods called baktuns.

Experts estimate the system starts counting at 3114 B.C., and will have run through 13 baktuns, or 5,125 years, around Dec. 21. Experts say 13 was a significant number for the Mayans, and the end of that cycle would be a milestone — but not an end.

Fears that the calendar does point to the end have circulated in recent years. People in that camp believe the Maya may have been privy to impending astronomical disasters that would coincide with 2012, ranging from explosive storms on the surface of the sun that could knock out power grids to a galactic alignment that could trigger a reversal in Earth's magnetic field.

Mexican government archaeologist Alfredo Barrera said Friday that the Mayas did prophesize, but perhaps about more humdrum events like droughts or disease outbreaks. Experts stressed that the ancient Mayas, whose "classic" culture of writing, astronomy and temple complexes flourished from A.D. 300 to 900, were extremely interested in future events, far beyond Dec. 21.

"There are many ancient Maya monuments that discuss events far into the future from now," wroteGeoffrey Braswell, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego. "The ancient Maya clearly believed things would happen far into the future from now."

"The king of Palenque, K'inich Hanaab Pakal, believed he would return to the Earth a couple of thousand years from now in the future," Braswell wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "Moreover, other monuments discuss events even before the creation in 3114 B.C."

Only a couple of references to the 2012 date equivalency have been found carved in stone at Mayan sites, and neither refers to an apocalypse, experts say. Such apocalyptic visions have been common for more than 1,000 years in Western, Christian thinking, and are not native to Mayan thought.

"This is thinking that, in truth, has nothing to do with Mayan culture," said Alexander Voss, an anthropologist at the University Of Quintana Roo, a state on Mexico's Caribbean coast. "This thing about looking for end-times is not something that comes from Mayan culture."

Braswell compared the Mayan calendar, with its system of cycles within cycles, to the series of synchronized wheels contained in old, analogue car odometers. "The Maya long count system is like a car odometer," Braswell wrote.

"My first car (odometer) only had six wheels so it went up to 99,999.9 miles. That didn't mean the car would explode after reaching 100,000 miles." source

A country song about PTSD: 'All you've got left are these pieces'

Even well publically raising awareness about PTSD for the VA, Stephen Cochran was losing his own battle with the condition.

 Good Day Humboldt County!

As a combat veteran with PTSD, I really appreciate the efforts from fellow warriors like Stephen Cochran – who has been there, and done that.

His story is the new reality for thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home physically…but not mentally.

 

Please, take a moment and read Stephen’s story, and if you have time listen to his song “Pieces.”

“Everything you see in the music video happened to Marine-turned-country-singer Stephen Cochran: Pushing the girl away, boozing into oblivion, the gun on the blanket. It all went down last year. Even the actor who portrays Cochran is, himself, a former Marine and Iraq veteran who knows of post-traumatic stress, who has wrangled with identical demons. The actor was not acting.

The only on-screen tweak from reality was the type firearm shown. In his dimmest hour, behind a locked door in his Nashville home, exhausted, alone, and telling himself: “I’m done,” Cochran rested a loaded shotgun against his bed.

“I was just trying to get the nerve. I had it planned out,” Cochran told NBC News. “I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was tired of taking all these pills. I was going through a breakup. Couldn’t write anymore. Watching everything fall apart. I was ready to check out.”

Then: salvation, and a surreal rescue scene worthy of an epic ballad. His dog, Semper Fi, began scratching relentlessly at his door, bloodying her paws. Next, Cochran’s ex-fiancé unexpectedly entered the house, simply to retrieve a forgotten item, he said. She saw the anxious dog. She expected the worst. She barged into the bedroom, spotted the gun and physically restrained Cochran.

But from anguish came inspiration. Amid an existence long blurred by PTSD — the residue of Afghanistan firefights, Marine buddies lost in combat, and his own nearly fatal injury — one question blazed in Cochran's head. He jotted it down: “How do you paint a picture back in focus?”

“It was the only way I could describe trying to put your life back together, literally trying to do the impossible,” he said.

Around that single thought, Cochran penned an entire song, “Pieces,”an ode to the blackness from which he was aching to escape, a tale of reconnecting the scattered fragments of his shattered world, and a message of solidarity for his military brothers and sisters. The single — part of a CD with the same title — will be released in this country on Nov. 11. The song already has charted in Europe.

“It’s not just my story. So many of us think about (suicide) because you just get so tired, so tired of being the crazy guy. Or of hearing: ‘He’s weird.’ Or of hearing: ‘We can’t hire you because we really don’t know what post-traumatic stress is and you might come back and kill us all.’

“I really wrote it as my own healing, for what I was going through,” added Cochran, 33, who teamed with fellow musician Trevor Rosen to complete the song. It took them only 15 minutes.

But after playing it at several veterans’ benefits, Cochran heard from service members up and down the chain of command how they, too, connected with the lyrics. That feedback has turned “Pieces” into the soundtrack of the singer’s ongoing crusade.

“We have an epidemic of suicides in the military right now. At this point, we are physically losing both of these wars in the United States of America, not overseas.” (source)

Related: First opera about Iraq War reaches out to veteran suffering from PTSD

Time for me to walk on down the road…