Two ex-Georgia narcotics cops face criminal charges on unrelated crimes

Arrest warrants were sworn out Thursday for two former Gwinnett County narcotics investigators, one of whom is accused of using county funds to pay for a motel room and items at an adult novelty store.

Officer Vennie Harden and Maj. David Butler are charged with unrelated crimes, but their offenses came to light at about the same time earlier this year.

Butler, a 24-year veteran of the department who supervised the narcotics and vice units, turned himself in at the Gwinnett County Detention Center on Thursday. He is being held on $20,000 bond.

Investigators say Butler used a county credit card on Aug. 4, 2008, to purchase unspecified items at the Starship Enterprise adult novelty store in Suwanee and on Jan. 6 to pay for a motel room in Lawrenceville. The warrants also state that Butler stole $4,000 in “flash money” from a safe in the department’s Special Investigations Section. Officers show flash money to suspected drug dealers to establish credibility when setting up undercover drug buys, said Gwinnett police spokesman Cpl. David Schiralli, a Gwinnett police spokesman.

Butler resigned from the department July 16 after being confronted about the missing cash, police said. Harden resigned from the department May 13.

“If somebody is going to break the law and they’re a police officer, we’re going to do everything in our power to bring them to justice,” Schiralli said. “The department doesn’t tolerate this kind of action by any of its officers.”

Harden is charged with three counts of first-degree forgery and one count of violation of oath of office. Police say he forged a supervisor’s name to authorize a payment of county funds three times between February and April of this year. The money has since been accounted for and Harden has not been charged with theft, Schiralli said. Police did not release information about what the money was used for or whose name was forged on the documents.

Harden turned himself in at the Gwinnett jail Thursday and was released on $11,800 bond.

Gwinnett police declined to release records pertaining to the internal affairs investigation of the two officers, even though those documents are typically made available to the public 10 days after the investigation is closed. Schiralli said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter asked investigators not to release the records while prosecution is pending.

Porter could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Don't go to court intoxicated.

Aside from the fact that I shouldn’t have to tell anyone this (it should be obvious), I shouldn’t have to state more about it. In no manner is this a good idea or to your advantage.

Maybe you don’t get noticed (hope that you don’t get noticed). Or if your intoxication doesn’t break the law (you had a ride to court) or any probation that you are on (were you ordered to remain sober?), if it does get noticed the procedural result will probably to reschedule the hearing; the court won’t allow you to address your legal rights, be it a family, civil, or criminal law matter, while you are impaired.

However, there are only a handful of acts that would give the opposing side greater leverage than you appearing for court intoxicated.  It will become a material issue in any family law case. In any criminal case it greatly weakens your attorney’s ability to present you a dignified defendant whom the prosecutor shouldn’t want to risk taking to trial. And overall it demonstrates such poor decision making that it will rejuvenate & sustain the determination of the opposing side to get what they want (a.k.a. denying you what you want).

Just to be clear, this applies to alcohol, non-prescription meds, all drugs including weed, and anything else that will get you high in a fashion that our culture deems morally culpable.

Lastly, a related note that is not often discussed is that if you are on prescription medication or otherwise emotionally frazzled such that either affects your ability to consider, argue for, and represent your legal rights with your attorney in a court of law you should tell her or him immediately. There are ways to ensure that you are fully present and ready to address such important issues.

Do You- Live as Your Authentic Self

Everyday, I meet people who try hard to project themselves as someone radically different from who they truly are. Whether they are driving the best car, wearing expensive clothes, or portraying themselves as a know it all, I find it sad when I see people try hard to be someone completely different from their authentic self. By striving to be someone different from one’s authentic self, many dangers can come into play.

Addiction- The purpose of a vice is to have an outlet for stress. When it comes to drug addiction, the addict is trying to escape the reality of their life but at a high cost to their health and wellbeing.  Any unhealthy distraction will eventually have dire consequences.

Living a lie- lying  is very destructive. When we lie, we have to mentally work twice as hard to keep up with the lie and in the end, the truth is always discovered. We lie for many reasons, to protect ourselves and others from the truth, to crate a fallacy of who we are, or to add excitement to what we may feel is a dull life.

Stress- the number one killer. Stress is the worst for our health, yet stress is the most common trait amongst us all. Everyday there are stressful situations, or stressful people in our routines. To combat stress, find a healthy outlet, eat healthy food, create an emotional support system, or choose to think differently by learning skills to change your self-defeating thoughts.

Freedom is to be you! The more we live as our authentic selves, the greater our life experiences will be. Deeper relationships will be created from letting people into our reality, stress reduction will occur when we accept ourselves and we will find the greatest joy in life doing what we want to do and being who we want to be. Live your truth and live as you truly are because you only get one life.

Afghan president’s brother on CIA payroll

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported. –Photo by AP

 

WASHINGTON: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the embattled Afghan president and a suspected drug trafficker, has been on the CIA payroll for most of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, the newspaper said, such as fielding recruits for an Afghan paramilitary force operating at the CIA’s direction in and around his home city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.

He also helps the CIA contact and sometimes meet Taliban followers.

Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan’s lucrative illegal opium trade, has a ‘wide-ranging’ relationship with the CIA, the Times said, citing US officials.

On top of helping the agency operate the paramilitary group that targets suspected violent militants — the Kandahar Strike Force, Karzai is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations forces to rent a large compound outside Kandahar that once served as the home of Taliban founder Mullah Omar.

‘He’s our landlord,’ a senior US official told the newspaper.

Karzai denied receiving CIA payments or playing any role in the booming opium trade that helps fund the Taliban-led insurgency.’

‘I don’t know anyone under the name of the CIA,’ he told the newspaper. ‘I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan.’

The report came amid increasingly tense ties between President Barack Obama’s administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, long a darling of the West but whose legitimacy has been shaken by a fraud-marred first round of elections in August. A run-off has been set for November 7.

Some US officials argued that relying on Ahmed Wali Karzai undermines Washington’s efforts to help develop an effective and reliable Kabul government that can stand on its own.

‘If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,’ Major General Michael Flynn, the top US military intelligence official in Afghanistan, told the daily.

While some US officials said Karzai was likely linked to drug trafficking, others said the intelligence was inconclusive.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told the Times: ‘No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kinds of allegations.’ —AFP

Courtesy – DAWN

From the Ashes of Dying Newspapers Will Come Authentic News

A company called the Audit Bureau of Circulations measures how many actual newspapers are sold by US dailies and has just released its September 2009 six-month report. Newspaper companies pay the Audit Bureau to conduct this measurement to be able to show potential advertisers how many readers – especially the upscale kind – their ads will potentially reach.

The latest audit brings, not surprisingly, very bad news for the American newspaper and its corporate model of journalism.

Of the 25 most widely read newspapers in the US, all but the Wall Street Journal – treading water at 2,024,269 readers, the Journal is now the de facto top daily in the country (but that, with only a tiny elite of 0.6 percent of US residents reading its pages) – have lost significant readership since a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau.

USA Today’s circulation dropped 17.5 percent in one year to 1.9 million, sinking it to second place. Reportedly the paper can no longer afford to artificially boost its circulation numbers by providing a free copy at your hotel room door and then counting you as one of its “readers.”

The “big three” dailies are in an ever-faster free fall: The third place New York Times’s readership fell 7.3 percent and is now at under a million readers a day. Fourth place Los Angeles Times, now at 657,467 readers, lost 11 percent of its customers. And the fifth ranked Washington Post, at 582,844 readers, lost 6.4 percent.

The sixth and seventh place finishers – the New York tabloids, the News and the Post – hover near half-a-million readers apiece. That means in what used to be a “newspaper town” of the Big Apple, if we combine the entire circulations of the Journal, the Times, the News and the Post, even including their national circulation, together they don’t reach even four million readers in a metropolitan area of 18 million.

It’s over. The advertiser-funded model of daily newspapers is now circling the drain.

Today’s Audit Bureau numbers also disprove one of the theories that newspaper ideologues have floated in recent years: that the larger “regional” papers – like the Timeses of NY and LA and the Post of DC – would emerge to gobble up the readers of other dying dailies in geographic proximity to become healthy regional giants. The data clearly demonstrates that that ain’t happening at all.

When the topic comes up, this final generation of daily newspaper editors and reporters typically takes its hands off its eyes and ears just long enough to blurt out a rant about how “bloggers” can never replace newspapers. But before one can engage them with, say, real facts (those mere props in the US daily newspaper mythology) about other news sources that are growing and thriving today (like this online newspaper you’re reading right now, much more diverse in our models than blogs only), and the different methods we use to investigate and report the news, these Cro-magnons typically go back to the monkey-see monkey-do pose as if in tantrum to express that they’re not listening.

In their increasingly public ruminations about why this is “happening to them” there is zero self-reflection about the biggest factor behind their demise: That they have lost credibility with their former public. Asking “why” just isn’t done in polite company. The big dirty secret that they must deny at all costs is that they did this to themselves by abandoning the interests of the majority of the public in favor of targeting only those readers with expendable cash that advertisers want to reach.

Which is why it is particularly poetic that, for example, the Miami Herald, which had transparently become what I’ve long called “Oligarch’s Daily” in its efforts to pander to the wretched refuse of the oligarch diaspora in Southern Florida, saw its circulation fall over the last year by 23 percent to just 162,260: it now reaches only three percent of its 5.4 million metropolitan area population. Those numbers simply are not sustainable to keep fielding a gaggle of professional simulators like Frances Robles to pretend to be “journalists” in order to disinform the US public about events in Latin America. The pink slip begins its inexorable journey into hers and others’ hands. It truly is only a matter of time.

There are days when this online newspaper exceeds the daily readership of most of those US dailies, and we’re not even close in sheer numbers to those like Markos Moulitsas and Andrew Sullivan who out-gun all of them every single day in circulation.

And yet while the US version of the newspaper is dying, we’ve written about print news projects in Latin America that are growing while their north-of-the-border counterparts are shriveling up. The daily Por Esto! in less than two decades became the third largest daily in Mexico by opening its arms and doors to the larger community and hosting public assemblies to listen to its readers rather than just talk at them.

Today, Narco News correspondent Belén Fernández reports on the fast growth of Tegucigalpa, Honduras’ El Libertador (and the efforts by the coup regime to buy its loyalty and then to shut it down when it could not be bought), now with a daily readership of over 80,000 in a country of 7.5 million. By the numbers, it already enjoys a larger percent of the national population’s readership than the largest daily in the US, one which was founded in 1882.

Some of us professional journalists, allied with the lay citizenry in our distrust of the advertiser model of media, saw this coming years ago and set about building the authentic journalism renaissance from below. Our work is an international hemispheric laboratory in creating what will replace the old model of daily newspapers. We do it without investors or advertisers. That you, kind reader, are here reading these words is your first evidence that it is working.

And every time a daily newspaper of the obsolete model lays off another round of reporters, more of them come to us to study and learn the craft anew from this very different and opposite angle: from below, as opposed to the top down model that encrusted around them and doomed the previous version of their careers.

Truth is, there is a direct correlation between the space in the media sphere that gets freed up every time a daily newspaper loses circ or dies and the increased reach that we and others have as we replace them with a better more people-powered model.

So don’t mourn the American daily newspaper. Anything you liked about it will continue but from a different set of new media. The time will come when one or more of those publications, or a new one yet to come in the US, will turn to the models that work for the daily Por Esto! or El Libertador or others South of the border, kissing their slavish dependence on advertisers goodbye and throwing their lot in, instead, with the larger multitudes of society.

The garden of authentic democracy grows stronger when the weeds are pulled out of the soil. And so day in, day out, we tend to this garden, water and feed it, watching the seeds we planted and protected grow bigger and stronger than the former parasitical vines and weeds that society mistook, based only on their size, for the garden itself. It’s all good: Evolution wins again.

a purely commercial enterprise

Lorber Bacchus, Cesar concern, nothing succeeds like very a letter. For example, the budget for the national Institute of drug abuse increased by 16.2% from 2001 the 2002 alone, which would be quite a credible performance if it had been a purely commercial enterprise. $1,226,000 was added to its budget., but it would be brave or foolhardy man who asserted that a single drug addict stop, or ever will stop, take a drugs because of this extra funding. Nor would you have to be Nostradamus to predict that the budget will be keep growing, however many or few addicts. There are, unless of course there is a general economic collapse necessitating drastic budget retrenchment. One can say with a fair degree of certainty is that the funding of the NIDA will remain sturdily independent of the importance of usefulness of its findings, and of the social importance of otherwise of the problem to address. The drug situation to waste is always more to waste.

It is true, of course, that the official bureaucracy of drug addiction is a very minor partner of the drug smuggling and distribution industry, and with only a fraction of its resources, but it does have the inestimable advantage of being woolly legal and above board. When it comes to honesty, however, is a close run thing. It seems to me likely that, from the standpoint of self-awareness, the drug smugglers as is. To the repair addict counterparts. Necessity is the mother, if not of all, than at least of a great deal of intellectually honesty, and a drug smuggler can afford no illusions. By contrast, allusions are a precondition of the bureaucracy growth and continued existence.

The Drug War Leads to Gun Control

A fundamental principle of interventionism holds that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions, in order to “fix” the problems of the previous interventions. At the end of this road lies omnipotent government and the loss of freedom.

A good example of this phenomenon is being provided by a group called the Binational Task Force , whose co-chairman , Robert C. Bonner, is former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The group, which also includes two former U.S. ambassadors to Mexico, wants to reinstate the assault-weapon ban that was enacted during the Clinton era.

Guess what the group cites as its justification for such gun control: the drug war. Yes, that war that everyone admits has failed to achieve its objectives despite 45 years of vicious warfare. The task force is saying that reenacting the assault-weapons ban will reduce the drug-war violence that now pervades Mexico.

If I were a believer in extra-terrestrial life, my question would be: What planet are these people from? Do they honestly believe that gun-control intervention is going to alleviate the horrific consequences of their drug-war intervention? Can anyone really be that stupid?

Not likely. My hunch is that these people are simply looking for new excuses for gun control and are latching onto the war on drugs to advance that agenda.

Let’s restate some important principles that are involved here.

The drug-war itself is the root cause of the drug-war violence in Mexico, the United States, and elsewhere. If there were no drug laws — that is, if drugs were legalized — there would be no drug gangs, drug cartels, and drug-war murders, assassinations, robberies, bribery, and the like. All the violence associated with the drug war would disappear for the obvious reason — there no longer would be a drug war.

The black market inevitably attracts an unsavory producer, one who has no reservations about employing violence and political corruption to expand his market share.

Making drugs illegal doesn’t cause consumers to stop desiring drugs. Making them illegal simply makes it more difficult and more expensive for the consumer to acquire them. Thus, oftentimes poor drug users resort to robberies, muggings, and thefts to acquire the money to pay the exorbitant black-market prices for the drugs they seek.

Rarely does this happen in a free and open market. Competitors compete against each other on the basis of such things as quality and price. Generally, prices are within reach of most everyone.

After all, when was the last time you saw Al Capone type of gangs distributing beer? When was the last time you saw a wino mugging someone to get the money to pay for a bottle of wine?

Prohibition-related violence disappeared with the repeal of Prohibition. That’s precisely what would happen if drug prohibition were repealed.

The statist notion — the notion being advanced by the Binational Task Force — is that by reenacting the assault-weapons ban, drug gangs in Mexico would no longer be able to acquire the weaponry to initiate drug-war violence.

That’s ludicrous. For one thing, the drug gangs can acquire weaponry from all over the world. For another, the assault-weapons ban didn’t really ban assault weapons — it simply required modifications of them, such as shorter clips or no bayonet. People could still acquire AR-15s, AK-47s, SKSs and other assault rifles.

What the statists fail to recognize — or perhaps not — is that a fierce war on guns — that is, one waged like the war on drugs — would do nothing more than produce the same type of violence, if not more, than that produced by the war on drugs.

The solution to the failure of interventionism is not more interventionism. The solution is the repeal of interventionism. Americans would be wise to reject the statist recommendations of the Binational Task Force. Contrary to what these people say, it’s not possible to fix their failed war on drugs with a war on guns or with anything else. The only way to end the drug-war violence is by ending the drug war.

Behavioral and Integrative Treatment Development Program Grants

Funding Source: National Institutes of Health
Funding Type: Discretionary, Grant
Total Available: N/A
Award Ceiling: N/A
Deadline: 01.07.13
Eligibility: Virtually Unrestricted

Description:

The purpose of this FOA for R03s is to encourage early career investigators or investigators who are striving to make a shift in their research to propose discrete, well-defined projects that can be completed within two years with limited resources. Projects of interest fall within the research domain of behavioral, combined, sequential, or integrated (behavioral/pharmacological) (1) drug abuse treatment interventions, including interventions for patients with comorbidities, in diverse settings; (2) interventions to prevent the acquisition or transmission of HIV infection among individuals in drug abuse treatment; (3) interventions to promote adherence to drug abuse treatment, HIV and addiction medications; and (4) interventions to treat chronic pain. Specific examples include: 1) Stage I pilot or feasibility studies; 2) secondary analysis of existing data; 3) small, self-contained research projects; 4) development of research assessments or methodology; and 5) development of new research technology.

Marriage equality battles

The Marriage Equality battle keeps getting more and more intense. A new public policy poll shows an exact tie in Maine. Meanwhile in Washington the anti-gayers keep showing more and more lies in their ads. First it’s the scare tactics that children learn about gay sex at a young age(under at school, this is simply not true. That children learn that gay couples can get married should not even be a scare tactic anymore, because what’s bad about that?. No kid turns gay upon hearing that and it does not harm them in any way. It’s just the parents that do not wanna explain in some cases. Protect Marriage Washington says in an ad that in 2004 Scandinavia legalized gay marriage and in that year alone suicide doubled and illicit drug use increased 19 times. What a bunch of bullshit, first Scandinavia is not a country, no Scandinavian country legalized gay marriage in 2004 and the other numbers are just to ridiculous for words. Do people really believe lies like that??

GenericRxDrugStore

Generic Drugs have gradually become one of the major concerns of the 21st century. A Generic drug or a brand drug can be dissimilar only in terms of Shape, Size, Color and Manufacturing. The necessity for medication and the various food supplements has tremendously encouraged online pharmacies to ensure convenience and delivery speed. It is true that an online chemist often costs less as compared. Drugs are usually available in various brand names and generic structures.

Online buying of medicines has facilitated individuals in various ways. Through online purchasing of medicines, we can always save on time and money. Just scan the prescription from an authorized doctor listing all the medicines you need; we will deliver the original and quality medicines at your doorsteps. Other than the drugs, various products are also available including diabetic check gadgets, massage oils for loss of hair and herbal products relating to many health problems.

GenericRxDrugStore.com presents all the major brands for delivering the licensed medicines such as:

• Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US
• Medicines Control Agency (MCA), UK
• Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australia
• Medicines Control Council (MCC), South Africa
• National Institute of Pharmacy (NIP), Hungary
• Pharmaceutical Inspection Convention (PIC), Germany
• World Health Organization (WHO)

Take the benefit of our competitive prices today by ordering your needful drugs to cure various ailments.  GenericRxDrugStore.com is a sure shot and definite way to save a lot of money, especially on the purchase of Food and Drug Administration approved drugs and formulations. With the help of GenericRxDrugStore.com you can rest assured of receiving the uppermost quality of medications from the well-experienced and trained pharmaceuticals. Further, we provide medications on the discounted prices, without compromising on the quality of the medicines.

100% satisfaction is certain when you purchase medicines from GenericRxDrugStore.com

Medical Marijuana & The Justice Department

Perhaps someone in the Justice Department read our article Drug Prohibition Is A Failure. Perhaps a bit of pragmatism is at work since as more states establish laws permitting the use of marijuana for medical purposes the Justice Department has to use increasingly limited resources without the help and cooperation of local law enforcement agencies.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement accompanying the memo. “But we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”

The Attorney General seems to still be confused on an important fact born out by this unfolding drama:

In emphasizing that it would continue to pursue those who use the concept of medical marijuana as a ruse, the department said, “Marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels.” Going after the makers and sellers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, will remain a “core priority.”

It is a fact that the single greatest destructive force on the profits from the sale of marijuana lining the pockets of Mexican drug cartels are the mom and pop operation now in business in 14 states. If something as simple as decriminalization for medical purposes can have such a profound impact on such a reliable source of profit for murderously violent criminal gangs, it stands to reason that full nationwide legalization of would eliminate marijuana as a source of income entirely.

Current small operation in states with medical marijuana laws have increased the nationwide supply of marijuana which is both high quality and cheap. Since the overall scale of operations is still small, Mexican drug cartels take advantage of breaks in crop cycles when supplies are low to flood the market with their product. Such lulls would not exist if marijuana was grown in a large scale corporate fashion, the way we do with other crops, like wheat and corn.

There is another factor at work here. Many states are now facing tremendous amounts of debt coming due at a time when the economy is depressed and tax receipts are at an all time low. Although prohibition has proven to be a failure, full legalization has not yet happened because states have had a perverse incentive to continue fighting this futile war. Congress allocates money to the states based on their efforts in combating illegal drug use. If those funds were to dry up because of the bad economy, states desperate for revenue may do the one thing they have been fighting so hard against – legalize it and tax it.

Here is a list of the states which have laws permitting marijuana for medical purposes:

1. Alaska
2. California
3. Colorado
4. Hawaii
5. Maine
6. Maryland
7. Michigan
8. Montana
9. Nevada
10. New Mexico
11. Oregon
12. Rhode Island
13. Vermont
14. Washington

This story is far from over. A memorandum is a suggestion, nothing more, and prosecutors ultimately have discretion over which cases they choose to take on. Prosecutorial misconduct along with laws which make everyone a felon is the real problem. Someone should write a book about it or something.

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Generic Viagra and its benefits

9 Reasons to Buy Generic Viagra

Generic Viagra is the fastest growing oral medication in America today. Millions of men are utilizing self-help with respect to their sexual dysfunction by taking Generic Viagra as an oral treatment for Erectile Dysfunction. This powerful drug is available online, so when you buy cheap Generic Viagra, you are saving money.
Here are eight other reasons why you should buy Generic Viagra:

* Generic Viagra has the same molecular combination of drugs, including Sildenafil. Sildenafil is the drug that inhibits the production of the enzyme PDE5, which has been found to restrict the flow of blood to the penis. Sildenafil allows the smooth muscles around the penis to relax, and with accompanying sexual stimulation, the blood flows freely to the penis.

* Generic Viagra is FDA approved. The U.S. FDA has approved Generic Viagra for use as an effective oral medication in the treatment of ED. Therefore, you are guaranteed that the product you buy, Generic Viagra, is as effective as its brand name counterpart.
* Generic Viagra will make you feel whole again. When you buy Generic Viagra and take the pill, you will be able to maintain an erection. You’ll no longer doubt your manhood, and your partner will respect you even more.
* Online generic Viagra is a safe and discreet way to make your purchase. Because you will not suffer the humiliation of telling a nurse practitioner or a pharmacist’s assistant about your condition, no one will ever know that you suffer from the emasculating effects of Erectile Dysfunction. Your medication will be shipped to you in a confidential, safe and discreet way.
* Online Generic Viagra requires no prescription. That’s correct! No prescription is necessary when you buy Generic Viagra online, so you avoid all unnecessary and potentially embarrassing interactions with others.
* Generic Viagra works fast. When you buy cheap Generic Viagra online, you are getting the same effective medication as you would if you had paid three times the amount of money in a pharmacy. Generic Viagra will work within a half hour after you take it, and will continue to remain effective for up to 4-5 hours after you take the famous “Blue Pill.”
* Generic Viagra will decrease your symptoms of depression and elevate your self-esteem. Once you take Generic Viagra, your performance worries will be gone forever as will any signs of depression and loss of self-esteem.

So, buy Generic Viagra online and see the difference it’ll make in your life.

RSS

Favorites & Reflections from / on 2012 Poll

there’s a facebook poll called “What do you do now if 2012 is the end?” It looks like bullshit movie hype, but the comments under it contain an intense debate about the actual 2012 subject we all stand to learn from. I can’t link to the survey without it going to the movie’s adpage so find it for yourself if interested. There appears to have been a limited time window to participate in this poll as well.

The poll looked like this:
What would you do now if 2012 is the end?
Spend Time With My Family (45%)
Max Out My Credit Cards (22%)
Pursue My Crush (28%)

Now if we choose to, we can read a lot into these three choices juxtaposed with the idea of “the end of the world.” It is assumed through some strange Hollywood-inspired principle that if the world is going to end that every individual will go into reckless hedonic abandon. This survey tells us something that should already be obvious: that three of the accepted societal outlets for emotional, existential, political, and spiritual confusion do nothing but perpetuate that society’s assumptions, both harmless and deadly.
Spend Time With My Family (45%)
The nuclear family, through the enforcement through media and law of “family values” is in many cases a repressive microcosmic unit enforcing macrocosmic social values of comformity and control. Fortunately the parent-child relationship is much older than this unit, and maybe in this ancient power lies one of our hopes for radical social transformation.
Max Out My Credit Cards (22%)
The unhealthy nature of this option should also be fairly obvious. The forces governing our society use people’s desire for stupid shit they don’t need in order to render them passive and distracted. The presence of this option may be a subtle (or not-so-subtle) attempt by credit card companies to overtly encourage destructive spending habits as these habits are the ones that make their investors the most money.
Pursue My Crush (28%)
This option can represent both a recapitulation to societal values and the opportunity to step outside them, as sex and love often transform people’s lives. It could be simply seeking sex or romance as a commodity and base satisfaction – either of these things are easily reintegrated back into the socio-sexual value-fabric. It could also represent the abandonment of one’s roles, limitations, and responsibilities and the pursuit of a pure and burning desire. Who knows.

Here are some of the more interesting comments that appeared below the poll, in response to the question “What do you do now if 2012 is the end?” There are many references here to sex, drinking and other drugs, and I have extracted the ones I feel to be the least redundant. I have left some spelling errors intact. I am not suggesting anything in particular by presenting this, just examining possibilities. This may be a window into our collective mindspace concerning the so-called “end of the world.” There are many reality-tunnels represented here.
here goes:
”none of these are what i would do”

”2012 is the beginning no more obama “

“Cannot wait till this shit hits the fan!!! just the preview agian”

“have an orgy”

“break as many nonviolent laws as possible. LOL”

“None of the above.”

”Loose My Vaginity.”

“The end of what? Hopefully the end of hate, bigotry, war, pestilence and famine. Maybe 2012 will just be a resetting of the cosmic clock and a fresh chance for humanity to get things right. “

“Just don’t run around naked. Cause if nothing happens, you will always be remembered as the person who ran around naked lol. “

“Watch the tv blow up with mY BFFF ALICIA !!! ♥ “

“drill a shit load of girls”

“wooopie cant wait -emo voice- dont ask y bein emo today… “

“Where is the “Party Like A Rockstar” option?”

“how about: burn everything down so it all goes a bit faster, then get totally wasted, have sex for the last time, and just sit it all out?
i don’t really like my family THAT much, i don’t need a credit card when there’s no one left to pay, i’ll just take what i want, and i don’t see how the third option makes much sence, the end of the world isn’t going to change that anyway :p “

“Repent”

“knoing the unkno i dont know! “

“I hope if 2012 is the end of this world, It will not be ill… “

“Hey!!! At least we all die together “

“All of this is lies .. Only Allah knows when is the end of the world . “

“@ people with “only god knows when the world ends” and “pray to god!” comments: oh get real kids, there is no god, never will be, and he’s not going to help you anyway. “

“If it does i’m sure they’ll build a space ship, just like the enterprise “

“kick ass like bruce lee did! “

“YOU’D WANNA BE SOME BASTARD NOT TO BE WANNA BE WITH YOUR FAMILY “

“-Travel the world “

“Crazy sex.”

“Spend time with family also i hope aliens snag some of us but hey you never know .
we are not alone….. “

“the myans predicted that 2012 would be an enlightenment the end of time, and the calendar is a cosmic one…not like our made up calendar. and the thing is there is going to be a cosmic alignment. that will synchronize our brains to the correct frequency. but that will be after the world war 3, unless someone prevents that…i just hope they dont use nukes. “

“My family? I’d have overdosed by the time it ends “

“its gunna happen fast …ppl say its not the end till we see jesus but he will take us after it happens…n make us safe…he will weather the storm…he always does!”

“its not gonna end its gonna be a new beggining “

“Chill… Prepare for Changes… Create awareness and get actively involved & continue to spread the truth… Its real – its coming and its her and now!!! “

“If there other born new world then i’m change to Female. I had enough with being Male! “

“I dont think the world will end in 2012, but we will go into a major shutdown period with mass catastrophic events millions killed, wars, famines, diseases, financial meltdown.
It could be fair to say its just started in the past few weeks with the recent big earthquakes and Tsuanami’s and warnings of Tsaunami’s.
And look what we are now doing … Read Moremessing with our neighbour the moon, blowing holes in it for scientific evidence good one put it off whack and that buggers our tides etc.
I think by 2030 things will start to settle down again and a new life will be re started along with some newly formed islands and landmasses from rising plates.
Hold on tight the start has begun. “

“can’t wait to die! conway twitty is waiting “

“i would rape meghan fox “

“ok honestly so many people get worked up about this! the guy writing the calender probably died or something and so many people are going to not want to witness it they are going to commit suicide if i see anything thats going to kill me i would find my family and enjoy what i can while i can “

“I would think about what I’m going to do if 2012 is NOT the end.. “

“THIS IS STUPID GROW UP”

“012!!! Solar flares, massive hurricanes, dawn of new technology, nebaru etc….2012 will be such an exciting year. We are such an insignificant species compared to the billions of life forms out in the universe. Things die ALL the time..planets, stars and other celestial objects so if earth came to and end….it’s just another cycle of the … Read Moreuniverse. Think about it…even if we all died because the weather patterns changed on earth, that HAS happened before. The earth heats up, cools down, heats up and cools down every so often…we are due for a cataclysmic event it’s only a matter of time and there is NOTHING we can do. There is no god. We have evolved from tiny micro-organisms because our planet is able to support life because of our atmosphere. There ARE other planets like ours. The universe is too big to fathom. Our milky way alone is 100 million light years in diameter, the probability of there being life somewhere in the universe is high. When the earth ends, we are just another species that will be extinct. When we die, we just die and that’s part of how the world works.
-hmm though what might happen is that computers will shut off ( kinda like what happened in Chicago where all flights were grounded).”

“wow talk about a misleading poll. My pysch stats teacher would be pissed.
NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN. NOTHING EVER DOES. Y2k, JESUS CHRIST APPEARING, THE YETTi, ALIENS APPEARING, EVEN NOSTRODOMASS WAS JUST OVERHYPED BY THE MEDIA, HE WAS WRONG SOOOO MUCH. READ HIS ORGINAL WRITES. “

“All n’ all, I can pray and try to make my life significant. It is only in ones beyonds hands to take care of a fragile exsistant Earth like us. Things have occured in history people have never been prepared for; extraordinary things. Erotically captivating and sorrowful happenings we can’t posses. If we blame others and think al this hipocracy is … Read Moreexempt; we never really fully understand full meaning of “theory”. That like -wise judging I comply that slyness and cocky addittude should not be pre-empted to battle with. All of us are equal, all of us are famine, what we recieve is what we get; live it up with no regrets! “

“There is no “Mayan Prophecy.” December 21st, 2012 is simply the end of a great cycle. I do not know why people buy into this apocalypse crap, and do not bother to even learn about the calendar and what it actually says. The dates start at some point, and they end. This does not symbolize the end of the world just simply the end to a great cycle. “

“Y2K all over again…people grow up. “

“Look man! Think of it this way. We live and we die eventually. In this world 95% of the people live by a rule of fearing death and they only live to accomplish things before they go. But Think of it this way take a whole new approach to death accept it and don’t fear it. Life will go much smoother.
I fear death but I accepted it already. Thats why I enjoy every single day like it could be my last. I don’t regret anything that I do.
If 2012 is the end. Than it shall be that way. But right now it is still 2009 so accept it now and live a happy life. and than on Dec 21 2012 we will all look back at today have a great laugh and grab a few drinks “

“I always put this possibility in my head when ever i am afraid to do something. i always ask myself if we really only have 3 years and 2 and a half months left. many scientists have guessed that the world will end that year due to causes having nothing to do with the Mayans. I dont want to regret not doing anything. Im not afraid to die, i just dont want to go alone. “

“didnt the mayans use drugs so why do we believe their calender. “

“before 2012 probably millions of are going to die anyway 2012 is only a date …and spend time with the family no matter what …..laught out loud ..peace people “

“people believe way too much of what they see on tv and read. this is just a topic that gets peoples intrest therefore generates money in the box office “

“-I believe God is always in control!”

“okay, CLEARLY, the mayans just didn’t know how to count to 2013, and that is why their calendar ends in 2012 “

“to be honest i feel like this is bullshit, watch everyones gunna go crazy and kill themselves or everyone around them, then there will be an “end” “

“People are ridiculous. There is only so much that can be written or stored on a surface. Our civilization has only recently been able to “save” that much information on a hard drive even. Does the world end when you buy a new calendar? The “Mayan calendar” was one of many. 2012 is symbolic for a myriad of reasons. It will not bring the end of the … Read Moreworld or existence but a new age of enlightenment. And to all the suggestive and blatantly discriminatory comments here, they only display your fear/ignorance. Don’t believe the hype. “

“lol, have u ever heard of the term “the second comming”? that is y he would end the world. plus, according to isaac newton, the world is goin to end in 2060… “

“Now I remember that the world should have ended already but the world can end for an individual at anytime so you should live every day as if it were the last. Thank you and Peace Out Everyone. “

“Hahahaha if it ends up me shooting zombies then fuck yeahh ill love it but if its different then o well Fuck everyone Fuck u fuck u and screw u guys im going to hell hahaha “

“God doesn’t exist so don’t bring religion into this. I can already see the night of December 21th 2012…all the insane christians hugging their bibles and and crosses…and then when nothing happens, they’re gonna say “OH GOD SAVED US!!!”
Isn’t it possible that they got BORED? Instead, take that idea and twist it into a fucked up theory about the world ending. Y2K, 6/6/06, 2012, it’s all the same.
This is a stupid thought(and movie, I might add) made by conspiracy theorists. “

“I can understand why God would want to take man out as the highest life form and keeper of His creation. Would you want to leave mankind in charge of keeping up with anything if you had the choice. We destory and consume more than we save or produce, we litter and leave behind more waste that does not break down for centuries and polutes the … Read Morewater and land we also live on. The list goes on and on. Most of the right wing just turns their head to these issues (the ones that want to be in charge of who can and cannot raise childern) I no longer worry about it. The world will retain it’s splendor as long as I am here. If the majority of people are more worried about who I am ntaurally atracted too or sleep with over the amount of plastic floating around in the Pacific…go for it. “

“Wow. This is intense. I don’t know if I believe it or not, but it sure is fun watching all of you debate over it. It’s like watching kids fight over candy. “

“hey. i think i just scraped god off the bottom of my shoe… oh wait. thats just dog shit. eh… same difference. “

“My fiance and I thinking about getting married on Dec 21, 2012. It might be a backwards wedding too, considering the world might end, so the honeymoon will be first XD “

“the movie will be cool but nothing will happen in 2012. remember the ppl who made this calendar also killed their own ppl to make the sun come up every day.”

“people who think they are so right about it not being the end of the world how do you know? have you done research? or are you jus stating your opinions? stupid ignorant fucks!!!!!! i hate stupid fucking people. dumb bitchs”

“I mean look, they said we were all gonna die on 2000. Of course we didn’t. Did we die on 6/6/06, no. I mean like I’m in the middle of yes and no. We will just have to see. I mean I believe in “Evolution more than God” not trying to offend any Catholics or Christians. The bible could’ve been made by any person. So we will just have to wait and see what happens. We’re not just gonna die instantly, it might have to deal with Science. “

“I just think this whole 2012 thing is ridiculous, its just an excuse for assholes to talk shit about god and other things because obvioulsy they arent very fufilled with their miserable lives, believeing is not bad its ok if u dont but u should at least respect others…maybe thats why the world would end.. and nowhere is it ever written that the … Read Moremayans predicted that the world was gonna end it just the date where the cycle closes and the new one starts… i suggest people get their facts straight because not even the own mayans believe this crap….its just an easy way to get people scared and make easy moeny with stupid shows and retarded movies… “

“Are people really acknowledging all this nonsense? This isn’t 13th century turkey. There’s no science behind any of this hocus pocus.”

“REAL Scientists have flatly denied this.”

“No, people don’t have to respect other’s views on unfounded blind/uneducated faith. Shall we respect views of those who believe in goblins next? An ending calendar is just that folks. “

“To tell you the truth, at first it really scared me. I’m still in damn highschool and people are telling me that my life is gonna end in 2 years? That is so retro. F*** them all, I’m just gonna live day by day to the greatest I can, so when it all comes down to so called “doomsday”, I can look back and tell myself I did good, and on Dec. 22 I will be laughing my head off at all of the stupid people who killed themselves before the so called ‘end’. “

“Everyone is missing the point. It is the pagan religions (which really rule our world as a kind of shadow government) have their “end game” stratagy planned for 2012 / 2013. Look up the significance of these numbers and this occultation to these religions and you’ll have a much better idea of what 2012 is really about. Not the end of the world… but the begining of a final stages of implementing a New World Order. “

“ok seriously. god does NOT control the outcome of planet earth. we the people on earth do, duh. AND GOD DOESN’T CONTROL ANYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE EARTH. and the earth will not end on 2012. just because there is a movie doesn’t mean that it will become true. the world didn’t end with that metor hit the earth and killed off all the dinosaurs. … Read Moreso it’s not going to end anytime soon. and plus the advancement of the technology these days can really do anything. so STFU about this whole earth is ending. “

“Dec 31 2011, party at my place one last blow out just encase, lol b.y.o.b “

“I credit 2012 about as much as I credit Christian mythology, well it gets a little more credit because the idea for it is older then Christian mythology, but it’s all crap, does look like a cool movie at least”

“Obviously No One Know’s When The World Is Gonna End. Look At Y2K, Did It End Nahhhh, God Will Make His Appearence. Thats What I Think, Pretty Sure Actually, Im Young And Want To Live My Life SO I Dont Worry Cause I Know Where I’m Goin. But For Now Party On MotherFuckers. ‘Cause Its Fun “

“Imma Do My Best To Survive 2012 While The WEAK DIE”

“Smoke me a pound… spend every moment i can with my soulmate, and just be merry =] “

Just want to add my ‘two cents’ here, the Mayan Prophecies say nothing about the ‘end of the world’. It does say it is the end of a CYCLE (solar cycle). The Great Cosmic alighnment is due then. This is also the time of another great native American prophecy of the ‘Great Purifacation’. The G.P. is directed to those whom side with religions and … Read Moredivisions of their brothers (all relations)…to those people-you better get ready for the spiritworld because in the new cycle,there will be no time the satanic forces at hand on the planet. Money cannot undue a pole shift….what the ‘news’ and governments calls ‘Global Warming’. Its amazing what the indigenous peoples of Africa, Turtle Island (America), Asia, and Europe say is to come (BRING IT).

Legalization of Drugs

The Obama administration should legalize soft drugs like marijuana and harmless hallucinogens like LSD. Hard drugs should be administered only in medical preparations in cases of great pain. But why are soft drugs not legal? Tobacco and alcohol consumption is legal at a certain age limit but why not these drugs since the use of these, similar to tobacco and alcohol, goes back to prehistoric times.

 

It is a question of lobbying and lobbying for Congress needs money and connections. No congressman would want to be labelled as a hippie, stoner or a destroyer of kids’ future. However, they sure are dumb not to realize that their country is the largest importer of illegal substances. By taxing these drugs a certain amount, the black market would have a lower share of the profits. This also generates income in the form of taxation. Pardon the mafia bosses and let them continue on their business as long as they pay their taxes. Taxes should be high enough to discourage chronic drug use but just enough for people to continue recreational use. If the mob bosses do not want to give in, kill them! CIA still does assassinations. The US can also use its propaganda machine i.e. mass media in the form of conservatives which they can bribe like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly

Read this America and be enlightened!

Cot deaths linked to co-sleeping

According to an article published in the Irish Times today, more than half of cot deaths happen when a baby is sleeping with a parent, a study revealed today.

Researchers said this could be linked to the baby’s parent having been drinking or taking drugs.

Despite a dramatic drop in the rate of cot death in the UK since the early 1990s, experts are advising parents to avoid dangerous co-sleeping arrangements in order to help reduce these deaths even further.

A team of researchers at the Bristol and Warwick universities studied all unexpected infant deaths — aged from birth to two years old — in the south west of England from January 2003 to December 2006.

To investigate a possible link between cot death and socio-economic deprivation, they compared these deaths with a control group at ‘high risk’ — young, socially deprived mothers who smoked — as well as a randomly selected control group.

The parents were interviewed shortly after the death and information was collected on alcohol and drug use.

A detailed investigation of the scene and circumstances of death was also conducted by trained professionals.

Of the 80 cot deaths analysed, more than half (54 per cent) occurred while co-sleeping compared to one-fifth (20 per cent) co-sleeping rate among both control groups.

Much of this risk may be explained by the combination of parental alcohol or drug use prior to co-sleeping (31 per cent compared with 3 per cent random controls), and the high proportion of co-sleeping deaths on a sofa (17 per cent compared with 1 per cent random controls), say the authors.

A fifth of cot death infants were found with a pillow and a quarter were swaddled, suggesting potentially new risk factors emerging.

The researchers said some of the safety messages were getting across to parents and may have contributed to the continued fall in the cot death rate.

However, the majority of the co-sleeping deaths occurred in a hazardous sleeping environment.

The safest place for an infant to sleep is in a cot beside the parental bed in the first six months of life, the study published on bmj.com said.

The term sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was introduced in 1969 as a recognised category of natural death that carried no implication of blame for bereaved parents.

Since then, a lot has been learnt about risk factors, and parents are now advised to reduce the risk of death by placing infants on their back to sleep, placing infants in the ‘feet to foot’ position at the bottom of the cot, and

keeping infants in a smoke-free environment.

But it is not clear which risk messages have been taken on board in different social or cultural groups, and little is known about the emergence of new or previously unrecognised risk factors.

Lead author Prof Peter Fleming, Professor of Infant Health and Development Physiology at Bristol University, said: “We have been able to look at the conditions that make sharing a bed or sofa with a parent hazardous.

“People understand the implications of drinking and driving and the vast majority follow that advice.

“So we want parents — if they’ve had a drink or taken drugs — not to co-sleep with their baby.”

Prof Fleming said many parents got up in the middle of the night to feed their baby on a sofa or armchair — believing it was safer than feeding them in bed, however, the opposite was true.

“It is really important that parents should not fall asleep with their baby on a sofa as it is very, very dangerous,” he said.

“It is 25 times more risky than having a baby in bed with you.

“After parents have fed a baby it is really important they put them back in their cot.”

Source

The Real Crisis

It was approximately eight thirty pm tonight, and I feel myself slipping further and further away, dissociation, by its technical term, a strange phenomenon but a real response to stress and fear. My vision becomes blurry, and my ability to hear is greatly reduced. My brain freezes, stops all cognitions, and at my worst, I am unresponsive to communication. I feel nothing, completely dead inside. The sensation can last for hours, or minutes.

Like most things in my life, it passes. I come back into the self-actualized me, and I’m fully aware of my surroundings again.

It was how I protect myself as a small girl in situations of abuse, but even as an adult, PTSD is genuine day-to-day problem for me. The best anti-anxiety medication for me is expensive, and has horrendous withdrawal symptoms, although it is not psychologically addicting like benzo’s. I’ve been living without it for the past few months for economic reasons, but I’ve noticed a difference. I have more anxiety attacks, and I’m more sensitive to being overstimulated.

Every day, I wonder how long I can go without health insurance, taking my chances already with my own wellbeing. I have few options of getting coverage. One of my professors who has been studying the health care crisis suggested moving out of state, where my medical records won’t easily be transferred. Before suffering needlessly (or going into further debt), I will go out of the country, either spend my last dime to fly to England or borrow a vehicle and drive into Canada. I’m hoping to be approved for Medicare within a couple of months, but with budget cuts and my nasty Republican governor, the odds are dindling. While SSDI is a national program, people who are selected for benefits are selected through state employees, making it largely a state problem.

I’m wondering if I could get a full time job with benefits, before I become too ill to work, if I’m forced with seeking treatment versus my own education. The University’s psychiatrist and staff doesn’t want to touch me, and they will be very unlikely to prescribe morphine, if they can at all. It’s a class II drug. They keep recommending county health, but I’m afraid to go because I’ve heard enough stories. Somehow I think if things become that dire, I’ll march to a different country.

America -- Struggles and Hopes Inside Foster Care

All a kid needs is one person to hang on to, to listen, to care, to show up consistently.  (Dr. Maureen Brennan, psychiatrist of residential treatment facility)

Imagine … abandonment, sexual abuse, lies, secrets, guilt, shame, drugs, distrust, nightmares.

Imagine … Help!  Hope!  Healing!

In America, there are more than half a million kids in foster care.  Once they reach 18 and age out of the system, only two out of ten will make it.  Others will end up homeless, in prison or dead.

We can do better.  We must.  These kids don’t belong to someone else.  These kids belong to all of us.  They are America’s children.  THEY ARE AMERICA.

Gossip, Marge Simpson in Playboy, Rihanna or Prince, George Michael split

The November issue of Playboy will have a very interesting model. Marge Simpson will pose on the cover and have a three-page spread in sexy cartoon-lingerie!! Will the carpet match the drapes ?? Pity it´s not Selma or Patty, haha. Wow, Levi Johnston for Playgirl and Marge for Playboy, interesting choices.

Is it me or does Rihanna slowly morph into Prince?. I thought she was hot a year back but now with the shaved sides, the pompadour on top and her ridiculous slightly masculine outfits not so much anymore.

George Michael and his partner of 13-years Kenny Goss have split up according to many tabloids. Last Christmas, haha, Kenny had enough of George but they managed to keep it a secret until now. All the cruising and drugging that were made public were apparently too much for Kenny. George denies they broke up.

Global Market for Weight Loss Worth US$586.3 Billion by 2014

WILMINGTON, Del.– According to a new healthcare market research report Global Weight Loss and Gain Market (2009 – 2014)’, published by MarketsandMarkets (www.marketsandmarkets.com), the total global weight loss market is expected to be worth US$586.3 billion by 2014. The market has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.9% from 2009 to 2014

Global Market for Weight Loss Worth US$586.3 Billion by 2014

WILMINGTON, Del.–According to a new healthcare market research report ‘Global Weight Loss and Gain Market (2009 – 2014)’, published by MarketsandMarkets (www.marketsandmarkets.com), the total global weight loss market is expected to be worth US$586.3 billion by 2014. The market has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.9% from 2009 to 2014

The food and beverage (F&B) market is the largest segment and is expected to reach $355.7 billion by 2014 at a CAGR of 12.2%. The F&B market owes its growth to the introduction of new components in this segment, as well as increased demand from consumers.

U.S. is the largest geographical segment; and is expected to be worth $310 billion by 2014. . Its 12.2% CAGR (2009 to 2014) is driven by the greater availability of products and services, as well as greater consumer awareness in this region.

The next largest segment is Europe, which has a CAGR of 10.9%. It is expected to reach $238 billion by 2014. This segment is growing due to the increasing number of products and services in this region. Consumers are becoming more health-conscious and also have greater awareness about the availability of weight management products.

REPORT TITLE: Global Weight Loss and Gain Market (2009 – 2014)
PUBLISHING DATE: June 2009 PRICE: $4650

MarketsandMarkets, a research and consulting firm, publishes 120 market research reports per year. Each strategically-analyzed report contains 250 pages of valuable market data, including more than 143 market data summary tables, and in-depth five-level segmentation for each of the products, services, applications, technologies, ingredients and stakeholders categories. Our reports also analyze about 200 patents and over 50 companies and micro markets which are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

Amara's Arrival

As I write this, Amara’s sucking her thumb and rolling over, or watching the screen.  She’s so big at 4 months now!  She has to be my favorite baby right now. 

This is what I wrote on our personal web page that Geocities won’t be hosting any longer, so I’m moving it here.  Enjoy!

—

AMARA ROSE BORN

Weight: 8 lbs 13 oz (4000 grams)
Height: 22.4″ (57 cm)
Head: 14.4″ (36.5 cm)
Name explanation: We became convinced it was a girl early on so we only really considered girls names. I had prayed that God wouldn’t let me get pregnant until at least after August, so when we discovered that I must have conceived around September 1st, it was kind of funny but humbling to realize God’s exact answer to prayer. I wanted a name that meant something like “God’s time is perfect” and looked that up on a baby name search website (behindthename.com, my favorite). It came up with “OGECHUKWUKAMA” which means “God’s time is the best” in Igbo. Well, that was exactly what I was looking for, but ….welll….there was no way we were using that, we can’t even pronounce it! However, I thought it interesting that there was a name with that meaning so I looked up “Igbo”. It’s a people group from southeastern Nigeria. The majority are Christian today, but there is some evidence of a Jewish diaspora affecting Igbo history. I looked up all the Igbo names on the baby website and most use God in their meanings. One name that caught my eye in particular was Amara, which means “grace” in Igbo. I liked the sound of it and mentioned it to Nathan. That’s about all that happened on the name front for the next four months. By the end of the pregnancy, we hadn’t found anything else we liked and came back to Amara, which over time had really grown on us. So we went with that as our tentative first name and started thinking of middle names. One night Nathan came up with Rose and we liked the sound of that, although we bounced several other possibilities around with it. By the time she arrived, Amara Rose was our first choice and that’s what we ended up going with. We like it, and we hope she does too!
One note: other baby names websites link the meaning of “Amara” with eternal or everlasting, attributing it either to Latin or Sanskrit. We think that’s nice too but it’s not why we chose it.

Amara’s birth
Amara’s birth was perfect…and humbling. “Praise God” is the general theme, I think. With our previous births, whether due to complications or other factors, there had been a lot of “interventions” – induction, IV antibiotics, and epidurals. I had always wanted to “make it” to the end without drugs but ended up having them each time. So with birth number four coming up, I chose to stay at the local hospital instead, where epidurals and C-sections aren’t even options. I read up on natural childbirth (again) but didn’t really think about it much, because by this time (number four) I was mostly looking forward to meeting the little one who had been kicking my insides for so long.
Each birth I’ve had has started with my waters breaking, and this time was no different. The only surprising thing was that they broke on the morning of my ultrasound due date, a first for us with our overdue baby history! (LMP due date was three days earlier so she could theoretically have been past due date). We slept as much as possible and called a few people in the morning to warn them (and ask for prayer). Because we’d gone to the hospital too early with previous labors, I wanted to stay home as long as possible this time – I apparently have deep aversions to hospitals and invariably stall my labor just thinking about going to them. So we let the kids know the baby was coming today, then went about our usual routines. Nathan and his dad went and picked up a swingset a friend had offered to give us, so the big news for the day for the kids was the swingset. I went outside and weeded to try to get labor going, since it hadn’t really started yet. By lunchtime I was double-checking “active labor” signs and was pretty sure things had started for real. Nathan dropped off the kids at his parents ~1:30pm and then came home to be with me and time contractions. We left for the hospital ~2:30 when the contractions were getting pretty intense and were about 3.5 min apart. I was actually secretly hoping things would slow down in the car by this point! I’d been “vocalizing” through the contractions and by the time we got to the hospital (20 min) I was getting pretty loud, although the contractions were further apart. By the time Nathan came with the wheelchair to take me in I was yelling! We got into the labor room and the nurse judged me to be about 6-7 cm dilated. She started reminding me to breathe through the contractions instead of yelling. I was asking about drugs and telling Nathan I didn’t think I could do it at this point, and when the nurses said I wasn’t in the “transition” phase I got really discouraged. Turns out I was, because a few minutes later I was getting the urge to push! They went to get the doctor to check me, but by the time he made it to the room there wasn’t even enough time between contractions for him to check me, and then Nathan pointed out that they could see the head. They quickly wheeled me into the next room (delivery) and started rushing to prep for the imminent arrival. It took a few more minutes because Amara decided to stick her hand up by her head, but after the doc rearranged her she popped out. All in all, it was 23 min. from arrival to birth.

I guess that’s why I can call the birth “perfect”. She was safe, it was quick and no interventions were done. But it was also very humbling because I can say that if there had been a needle in range I would’ve jabbed it in myself by the end. Before the birth I’d decided to try ‘natural’ because the only drugs available at the hospital all have side effects for the baby, and I didn’t want that…but by the end I didn’t really care anymore. I’m very grateful for Nathan’s support, he kept telling me I could do it and he told the nurses that I had explicitly said no drugs beforehand. Also, by the time we got there, drugs weren’t even an option because they would’ve compromised the baby’s breathing after birth…but I still wanted something. Very humbling, and I’m very grateful that God only gave me as much as I could endure and so it was a VERY quick transition and delivery. Nathan noticed right off that Amara was more alert and responsive than any of our other children have been after birth, and I think some of that is due to not having any drugs in her system. God is good! =D

Why substitution isn't really a problem

Beau’s lingering concerns with the ability of dynamic concentration to reduce Crime rather than reduce the incidence of a particular kind of crime are well taken, but I think ultimately misguided.  He assumes a dedication to criminality that I don’t think the evidence supports in most cases.  That, for instance, is why employment programs for reentering prisoners are really good ideas.  Still, even the people that one would assume are the most “dedicated” to a criminal lifestyle – hardcore drug addicts – respond very well to dynamic concentration.  In Hawai’i, where Project HOPE utilizes a form of dynamic concentration in the probation system, drug addicts are warned that they will be subject to weekly drug tests with 24 hours notice and that violation will result in an immediate but brief period of incarceration (starting at 2 days and increasing with every violation).

Even these hardcore drug users responded.  Roughly half stopped using after the warning alone.  Over the course of a few months, HOPE reduces the level of drug use by 90% while probationers not in HOPE actually use more drugs than before they started probation.  (When Brute Force Fails, p. 40).  Additionally, while HOPE’s primary focus is on drug testing (that is, it’s enforcement concentration is drug enforcement), HOPE participants are rearrested on other charges (including non-drug charges) half as often as non-participants and for less serious crimes.  (Ibid.)  That is to say, rather than causing criminals to substitute one form of criminal behavior for another one that is not being targeted, consistent enforcement of one rule results in a positive feedback loop that actually reduces lots of other kinds of crime.

Now, I can imagine someone positing that this phenomenon is limited to drug enforcement – arguing that the consequent crime reduction is the result of fewer drug addicts committing other crimes to support their habit.  I suppose that could be true, but a) wouldn’t focusing enforcement resources on drug crime be a good way to bring down overall crime rates?, and b) why not simply focus on a geographic area rather than on a particular kind of crime?  As I noted in my last post, most crime is local.  If you focus on geographic areas rather than types of crime, you are still going to get the benefit of concentrated resources, but the opportunity to substitute one type of crime for another is gone.  It doesn’t matter whether you rob a bank or deal drugs, the heat is going to be on. Most criminals won’t go very far to commit a crime because most of the time they can’t.  If you live in Watts and don’t have a car, it’s going to be pretty difficult to rob a bank in Westwood and then hop on a bus back home.

Additionally, targeting crime in terms of geography will have the added benefit of creating a positive feedback loop.  As crime levels drop, you will have fewer first-time felons which will mean fewer people with felony convictions trying to pass employer background checks (read, more economic opportunity).  You will also have safer streets which will make it a whole lot easier for small business to successfully operate since people will be less afraid to walk to a local restaurant for dinner.  Reducing crime can actually reduce the likelihood of a criminal resurgence (in economic terms, you can create a low-crime equilibrium). Focusing resources regionally, then, can address Beau’s substitution problem without any additional cost.

It also just so happens that if one prioritizes enforcement resources in terms of specific gangs, one will simultaneously be focusing resources geographically since gangs have “turfs” where they operate.  In fact, the phenomenon of gang “turf” makes geographic substitution less likely than in a normal case.  Even if a gang member from the Bloodstone Villians (a Bloods crew) had sufficient transportation to commit a crime in 53 Avalon Gangster Crip territory, it is really unlikely that he would because he’s probably afraid of getting killed (either during the course of the crime or later on as retribution).

The real substitution that I think is likely to happen with dynamic concentration is a transition from illicit to licit activity.  The best way to permanently break the grip of gang crime in the inner city is to create jobs.  The best way create jobs in the inner-city is to reduce crime.  And all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that the best way to reduce crime is dynamic concentration.  Still, I remain open to any evidence of a more effective solution.

Tales of the Apocalypse: The Sergeant

“A-at least I made a difference…” The effort sends blood flecking the boy’s lips. His lungs are slowly filling with blood spilling into Sarge’s lap with every cough. No, you fucking didn’t, Sarge screams, you’re just another useless fucking casualty. But the boy doesn’t hear. His eyes have gone out like the night’s last embers.

Sarge gets to his feet, the sack of meat slumping face down into the dust. He walks to the Command tent, passing rows of moaning men with filthy needles hanging from their arms. Brushing aside the tent flap, he takes out his pistol and sends a bullet into the General’s skull. A captain and lieutenant have their guns instantly trained on him. The lieutenant moves his gun hand away and shoots the captain in the stomach, his electric blue eyes inexpressive. Sarge’s moss green gaze flickers to the lieutenant’s bruised cephalic vein. “I shoot up with a saline solution,” the lieutenant says, going outside to see if anyone has heard the shots. He returns shaking his head. “We better get out of here. They won’t be too happy once they find out.”

“There’s something I want to do first,” Sarge says. He sweeps the ringstained maps from a trunk and takes from it a chunk of plasticine. The lieutenant looks at him for a moment before nodding. They arrange to meet at the outskirts of camp in fifteen minutes, and Sarge leaves for the doctor’s to cancel his prescription.

It was a maze of barbed wire and trenches stretching to the east and to the west. It smelled like a latrine. Sentries were fast asleep at their posts, guns pointed at the ground. A dog has died days ago, its bone etched flank squirming with maggots. When Sarge arrives, he finds the lieutenant with some guns, two packs of rations, and what little fresh water he could find. They look at the world their grandfathers left for them. Sarge spat on the ground.

“Let’s go north. I hear elk hunting is good at this time of the year,” says Sarge, pressing the detonator. At the center of camp the dwindling supply of heroin goes up in a pillar of fire, and the traitorous pair can hear the keening moan of the vast junkie army left without a fix. “The fresh air’ll be good for us,” the lieutenant says, smiling for the first time in years.

What is a symptom?

Symptoms can be tricky things right?  After all, when you go to the doctor, you usually begin by telling him or her what it is that’s bothering you… you give them a run-down of the symptoms you’re feeling.  You may say that your throat is sore, or that you have a headache, or you have night sweats.

But what if the symptom is the solution??

Often times we hear parents talking about how their child has a fever.  They rush to the medicine cabinet and get the tylenol or ibuprophen so that can “get that fever under control”.

But think about it for a minute… why do they have that fever?

Fever is the body’s way of changing the internal environment.  That’s right, when the body encounters an infection inside of you, it will raise your temperature because it knows that germs and infections can’t stand the heat.  So your body increases its metabolism and raises your temperature so that it can literally cook the infection out of your system.  What happens if you give your child (or yourself for that matter) a drug to lower your temperature?

Instead of the body being able to kill the infection, the fever is artifically reduced and the infection is allowed to live and go on creating problems in the body for extended periods of time.

This time, instead of trying to reduce the fever, take a moment and think about the inate intelligence of the body – the human species has been perfecting the art of dealing with infection and disease naturally for thousands of years… all without drugs!!

Listen to your body.  If you or your child run a fever, take some time off and rest, stay hydrated, and let your body do exactly what it NEEDS to do.  You’ll find that you will get healthy and stay healthier faster when you just listen to your inate.

In Health,

Dr. Ross

Lindsay Lohan; Say What?

About 4 years ago everyone couldn’t get off of Lindsay Lohan but when they did, this happened. Lindsay Lohan looks like a 65 year old Sienna Miller but worse. Sienna Miller is hot btw, that wasn’t a jab at her. In fact we prefer Miller of this unwrapped mummy any day. What happened to Lindsay Lohan though? She let herself grow up way too fast, so remember kids up with hope! Down with dope… Unless you are using it as describing something. Then its good.

Check out these Halloween costumes today and then build your own Lindsay Lohan costume this year!

Never a good idea to sleep on the job

This just in from the AP…

BROWNSVILLE — Two men found asleep on top of bundles of marijuana face federal drug charges in the Southern District of Texas.

The men have detention hearings scheduled for Thursday afternoon. They are charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute the marijuana.

According to the complaint, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent was following footprints left by six people early Saturday morning when he came upon the group sleeping atop bundles of marijuana. Four of the men fled, but two were detained.

The men told authorities they had entered the U.S. illegally and had taken turns carrying the bundles until they stopped to rest. Authorities seized more than 350 pounds of marijuana.

5 Million AIDS patients without meds!

“About 4 million people are now getting AIDS drugs worldwide — a 10-fold jump in five years — but 5 million others are still in dire need of the medicine, U.N. health officials estimated in a report issued Wednesday. The figures represented a major increase in rolling out drugs to patients across Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is focused, even though they were based on incomplete data and modeling.” – Maria Cheng, AP

That’s a HUGE number! I wish one day pharmaceutical companies start investing in various funds to help support their research, rather than jacking up the price of various meds and drugs that only people of a certain social strata can afford. I’ve seen first hand what HIV/AIDS does to people and their families in Tanzania! It’s time the world takes action!!