People in power make better liars, study shows

This revelation will come as no surprise to the majority of Americans. I find it interesting that there was actually a study done to prove this.

In my opinion, all you have to do is follow politics. Every day brings revelations of more lies by politicians and the public becomes numb to their offenses.

So what can we conclude here? It’s really quite simple; people seeking power lie their asses off to get it.

Findings suggest that dishonesty comes more easily to those on top

Excerpt:

“There’s old saying: power corrupts. And a new Columbia Business School study titled, “People with Power are Better Liars,” finds there may be some truth behind the cliché.

“People in power are able to lie better,” said Dana Carney, a management professor at Columbia Business School and one of the co-authors of the study. “It just doesn’t hurt them as much to do it.”

Above Photo source -

“Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who is serving 24 years in jail for his role in the energy giant's 2001 bankruptcy in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history, has appealed his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. His lawyers are challenging a 1988 federal law that makes corporate bosses liable to prosecution for depriving shareholders of "honest services."

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Where the heck is Saint Helier?

There’s been 342 total visitors to this blog as of 1:00 p.m. PST today. Almost half have been International. I’m always amazed to find a Country/Island I never heard of. Today’s Island is - SAINT HELIER. Here’s what I found out about it:

       (Left)Coat of arms of Saint Helier Saint-Hélier - (Right) Location of Saint Helier Saint-Hélier in Jersey

Saint Helier (French language: Saint-Hélier, Jèrriais: St Hélyi) is one of the twelve parishes of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. St. Helier has a population of about 28,000, roughly 31.2% of the total population of Jersey, and is the capital of the Island (although Government House is situated in St. Saviour). The urban area of the parish of St. Helier makes up most of the largest town in Jersey, although some of the town area is situated in adjacent St. Saviour, with suburbs sprawling into St. Lawrence and St. Clement. The greater part of St. Helier is predominantly rural.
The parish covers a surface area of 4.1 square miles (10.6 km2), being 9% of the total land area of the Island (this includes reclaimed land area of 494 acres (2.00 km2) or 200 ha).
The parish crest is two crossed gold axes on a blue background, symbolising the martyrdom of Helier and the sea.

More International Visitors (as of 1:00 PST) were from:

Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Bandar Penggaram, Johor, Malaysia; Huddersfield, Kirklees, United Kingdom; São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Zoetermeer, Zuid-holland, Netherlands; Dartford, Kent, United Kingdom; Antalya, Turkey; Luzern, Switzerland; London, United Kingdom; Redditch, Worcestershire, United Kingdom; Durban, Kwazulu-natal, South Africa; Rezekne, Latvia; Athens, Attiki, Greece; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine; Longueuil, Quebec, Canada; Skopje, Karpos, Macedonia; Delhi, India; Parksville, British Columbia, Canada; Mumbai, Maharashtra, India; Caldicot, Monmouthshire, United Kingdom; Orthez, Aquitaine, France; Stilli, Aargau, Switzerland; Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine; Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, United Kingdom; Bucharest, Bucuresti, Romania; Dunfermline, Fife, United Kingdom; Köln, Nordrhein-westfalen, Germany; Luzern, Switzerland; Antalya, Turkey; Dartford, Kent, United Kingdom; Dublin, Ireland; Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, United Kingdom; Lisburn, United Kingdom; Bristol, United Kingdom; Steenwijkerwold, Overijssel, Netherlands; Hradec Králové, Kralovehradecky Kraj, Czech Republic; Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal; Birmingham, United Kingdom; Borovnica, Bohinj, Slovenia; Barnet, Hertford, United Kingdom; Preston, Lancashire, United Kingdom; Kynsperk Nad Ohri, Karlovarsky Kraj, Czech Republic; Riyadh, Ar Riyad, Saudi Arabia; Store Heddinge, Storstrom, Denmark; Kosice, Slovakia; Hemel Hempstead, Hertford, United Kingdom; Nancy, Lorraine, France; Madrid, Spain; Hilversum, Noord-holland, Netherlands; Wynberg, Western Cape, South Africa; Stip, Macedonia; Paris, Ile-de-france, France; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Minia, Al Minya, Egypt; Birmingham, United Kingdom; Gdynia, Gdansk, Poland; Male, Maldives; Espoo, Southern Finland, Finland; Glasgow, Glasgow City, United Kingdom; Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Bogor, Jawa Barat, Indonesia; Sofia, Grad Sofiya, Bulgaria; Lindfield, New South Wales, Australia; Stuttgart, Baden-wurttemberg, Germany; Rivne, Rivnens'ka Oblast', Ukraine; Saint Kilda, Victoria, Australia; Leigh, Lancashire, United Kingdom; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Rome, Lazio, Italy; Etikhove, Oost-vlaanderen, Belgium; and Nasik, Maharashtra, India.

images source

AS It Stands: Orientation study says getting lost could be in our genes

By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 03/14/2010 01:27:36 AM PST

Hi. My name is Dave and I have a reputation for getting lost.

I'm not sure where it started. I might have earned it in junior high when I got lost in the school's surrounding neighborhoods while running with the track team. Having “directional challenges” is a label I've tried to shed most of my life.

This is the part where I confess past orientation situations and feel real silly while doing it. For starters, I need a navigator when I go further from home than the local post office.

My friends and family accept this, and are willing to assume the navigator's role at a moment's notice. Once, when my three sons were very young, my wife and I decided to take them to this refuge for cats (it was called a “Cattery”) about an hour's drive from where we lived.

It should have taken an hour. Three hours later, I gave in to my wife and sons and stopped to get directions. All guys know this is hard to do. This incident is embedded in my sons' memories, and despite the fact they are men now and have their own children, they bring up the incident all too often at family gatherings.

Go here to read the rest.                                                                  image source

It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt

“A lot of people are very upset about the rapidly increasing U.S. national debt these days and they are  demanding a solution.

What they don't realize is that there simply is not a solution under the current U.S. financial system.”

Go here to read the whole article.

Catholic Church in Europe facing abuse claims

I’ve always had a problem with organized religions Each seems to attract extremists, and to believe it’s the “One True” religion.

It’s this narrow-minded attitude of self righteous people that turns me off. The “My Way or the Highway” religion requirements are hypocritical at best, and dangerous at the worst. Think Muslims who practice international terror in the name of Allah.

Then there’s this other terrible dynamic that seems all too common in the Catholic Church; Pedophiles. Sexual abuse cases with Catholic priests fondling children are being exposed worldwide daily. That trend has become one of the biggest threats to the Catholic Church yet; lawsuits suing dioceses that harbor pedophile priests.

Lawsuits alleging cover-up of pedophile priests could bankrupt dioceses

“Pope Benedict XVI, left, meets Archbishop Robert Zollitsch in his private library at the Vatican on Friday. Germany's top bishop says the pope encouraged him to pursue the truth about cases of clerical sex abuse in the pontiff's native Germany.”

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Prime-Time Supremacy – The New Look of Hate

 

The new FX series “Justified” shows a real and growing problem. Racism is alive and well in America today as more angry whites swell the ranks of White Supremacy groups. I have a column waiting in the wings about an all-white basketball league that is currently recruiting cities to play in.

Excerpt from NewsWeek: 

“Harlan is not the charming, genteel Mayberry you'd expect from a small town in Kentucky with a population around 2,000. At least not in Justified, the new FX series starring Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, a maverick U.S. marshal dispatched to Harlan after he gets trigger-happy on a suspect in a Miami restaurant.

It turns out that Harlan's little local white-supremacy group is part of a real and growing problem. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, membership in white-extremist groups is ticking upward, as downtrodden, angry Caucasians seek an outlet for their anxieties about a black president, illegal immigration, and a leaky economy. Still, the supremacy surge seems to be much more acute in Hollywood than anywhere else in the country.”

Read the whole story here.                                                       Photo(s) source

The reason the Mayan calendar ends in 2012

A laugh for Friday…

and a rainy day…

cartoon source

Past Pot Column Appears on T-S reader polls Today

I noticed that a column that ran last October was the 2nd Most Viewed on the Times-Standard list this morning at 8 a.m. It dropped down to #3 when the article “Three arrested in Eureka POP raid” took the top spot. It’s still the 2nd Most Emailed. I find it interesting to see something I wrote six months ago on today’s reader input gage Online. Here’s the column:

Marijuana proven effective in treating different types of cancers

Here’s links to the web sites that picked it up:

Tulsa NORML – Cannabis News – Hemp News – Michigan Medical Marijuana Association –Medical Cannabis – a patient research platform – Lobita – Worldwide Marijuana Seeds – Cannabis Culture – Legalize Cannabis Alliance News Database – Soft Secrets Forum –Cannabis To You – Canned in Totnes (Note: this site plagiarized my article and claimed to have written it)- Hemp Info- The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation – The Cancer and Marijuana Blog – Medical Marijuana Doctors – Cannabis News (this site ran the column – 1/11/2010) – The Washington Post – Post Partisan (Quick takes by Post Opinion Writers – Google shows my column here - but I had trouble finding it in their WP archives – I think you have to subscribe) – The Marijuana Cancer Cure Cult (this site ran my column on 2/3/10) – and Cannabischat (scroll down).

Photo source

The 21st century version of Alice in Wonderland

Michael Ramirez Cartoon

School Cancels Prom Rather Than Let Lesbians Attend

Homophobia is still rampant in Jackson, Mississippi. Just ask 18-year old high school senior Constance McMillen.

Rather than let her wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the high school prom school authorities cancelled the prom!

Here’s what they had to say:

"However, at this time, we feel that it is (cancelling the prom) in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District, after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students."

Whose safety are they worried about? McMillen and friend, or the entire student body? It’s a point to ponder after reading the whole story here:

School prom off after lesbian’s date request