Friday, April 30, 2010

Ye Shall Know Us By Our Sign


Friends of Leon Berger Society
Communique #1: May Day weekend 2010

Persons wishing to see the fulfillment of Mr Bergers' plans have swelled the membership to unprecedented levels. As we attend May Day ceremonies, festivities and events let's all recognize each other with a unifying symbol - a red thread tied around your neck will identify you as a friend and show gratitude to an innovative man. Time does not forget good ideas.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Another Isolated Incident


It's Everywhere, man

An unemployed man entered a kindergarten in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province on Thursday morning and stabbed 28 kindergarten students and three adults, critically wounding at least five children, local authorities and state news agencies reported.

It was the second mass stabbing of young students in two days, and the third in less than a month.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Crazier Every Day


1 in 76:

In, 1987, prior to Prozac hitting the market and the current ubiquitous use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans. Robert Whitaker was curious as to what was causing this dramatic increase in mental illness disability. The answers are in his new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, April 2010).

Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Future is Cloudy


Start "Em Young, Hooked Forever:

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry,"

The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.

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If There Is Ever A Reason:

Hamas officials in Gaza burned nearly 2 million painkiller tablets in a hospital incinerator today in a crackdown on a drug that has become an increasingly popular escape from the hardships of daily life.

"We're all living in a hard psychological situation and we used Tramadol to forget our daily worries and problems," Khalil, a 25-year-old student in Gaza City told the Associated Press. "I go to Tramadol so I can forget all that."

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Help Is On The Way:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

It's A Wonderful Life


Clarence, Where Are You?

A man who told police he "just wanted to go for a swim" apparently jumped into the Chicago River this morning near Clark Street and Wacker Drive, police said.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Good Germans Don't See It



On Our Watch

Since 1970, the prison population exploded from under 300,000 to eight times that number now. In the December 1998 Atlantic, Eric Schlosser called it "The Prison-Industrial Complex," a recent phenomenon with about 1,000 new prisons and jails built in the 1980s and 90s, and the trend continues in the new millennium, not because of more crime, because of getting "tough" on it against more people getting longer sentences under harsher conditions.

Marc Mauer, author of "Race to Incarcerate," says America locks up people at five to eight times the rate of other industrialized nations, including many who shouldn't be there in the first place. Nearly two-thirds are blacks and Latinos. The vast majority are poor and disadvantaged. One in three black males and one in six Latino males will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. Black males are imprisoned at nine times the rate for whites, and in some states up to 26 times. Penalties include "mandatory minimums, one size fits all (and) three strikes and you're out." Yet from 1970 - 1994, violent crime rates were stable, and the overall rate fell. The murder rate is the lowest since 1966, and from 1980 - 2000 it dropped 43%. It costs as much or more to imprison someone as send them to college and for older inmates three times as much. Higher incarceration rates for longer periods is unrelated to the crime rate. The prison-industrial complex is one of America's biggest growth industries, exceeding $60 billion annually, and private security adds another $100 billion. Crime fighters and prisoners comprise around 4% of the workforce.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A Sign of Empire Pathology


We See But We Don't See, We Know But We Don't Know:

Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defense, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Letter From A Brother


Wesley , I'm starting to think there is a disturbing analogy between IBEW members ( I think it's much broader than IBEW etc. but.... ) and abused/neglected children. In the analogy, the union is 'the family' or the 'parents' who either abused the child or stood by and did nothing to defend the child etc. The "kid" ( child or union member in this case ) later grows up but even though no longer a helpless child , the full grown adult ( union member ) remains perversely loyal to his parents ( union ) who actually abused him ( or her ).
Says things like," Well, mom and dad had a good side, too... let's not forget that... after the beatings I always got a hug. "
Anyway, that's a rough approximation, but you can see what I mean. All the elements are at hand. Sanctioned authority figure who can't be questioned, helpless object of abuse, overwhelming social approval of entire set-up, damaged subject of abuse who constantly struggles to rationalize/ repress the facts of his or her persecution, and of course " siblings" who will turn on you the minute you come up with a question that casts mum or pops in a bad light...
 Ahhhh , ain't it grand

Monday, April 12, 2010

Bite your tongue!



Chicago CEO Bans Office Gossip
By GAIL ROSENBLUM, Star Tribune
April 25, 2008

Here's something to dish about at work: A CEO in Chicago has banned office gossip. Can't do it, not even a little. And if you're caught trying, you'll be introduced to something called "completion," where you must face the person you've been whispering about and 'fess up.

Tummy aches all around!

Exactly, said Sam Chapman, CEO of Empower PR. A year ago, Chapman said he got so tired of a "bad gossip problem" at his 17-person firm that he hired a business coach to help him fix it. The solution? Zero tolerance for tattling.

Chapman fired the employee who was earning a gossiping gold star (for personal trashing and sharing trade secrets outside of the firm), then canned her two cronies. Now Chapman hires only people "who appreciate a no-gossip zone. Gossip is a reputation-wrecker for everybody: the person who [the gossip is] about and the one doing it, who is hurting his or her own reputation."

Chapman said that "problem gossip" now occurs about once a week, instead of several times a day. "We changed our culture immediately. You'd be amazed at how quickly a no-gossip community can tighten up and behave themselves."

Ashley Gonias, 22, was an intern at Empower before the ban and said she literally can feel the difference. "You walked into a room before and it was heavier," said Gonias, a senior account executive. "Seriously, I can say almost to the day that it was implemented. It was just lighter. You had that freedom to talk, to say, 'This really bothers me.' Before, you would never say it, and it would just sit there and fester."

Dana Leavitt, 26, joined Empower after the ban and, while supportive in theory, admits the policy is challenging. "When I catch myself doing it, I'll stop myself," Leavitt said. "I don't think I was ever conscious of it before ... how easy it is to gossip. You never think about it when you're doing it."

Don't say what?

Which raises the question: Outside of one small company, is a gossip ban humanly possible? Or, put another way, if we can't gossip at work, what will we talk about?

We live in a culture, after all, that has elevated gossip to an art form. Just last week, gossipreport.com launched as a way for web users to dish on neighbors, co-workers and potential dates. The site encourages users, mostly college-aged, to vote on gossip and rate their peers based on personality, looks and how good or bad they are in bed.

This comes on the heels of juicycampus.com, another gossip site that's getting heat, and gaining popularity, for its anonymous threads of potentially devastating dirt (much of it false) about fellow students' sex lives, religious preferences and physical attributes. ("Who's that tall girl who works at the info desk??? Her muffin top is GROSS.")

"My initial reaction was, 'Good for them. What an initiative,'" said Minneapolis business consultant and author Sue Morem about Chapman's initiative. "But it's not possible. Part of what makes an office co-worker situation work is keeping up on people's lives."

Morem was one of many people interviewed who noted that gossip (juicycampus aside) isn't always bad. "There is a lot of truth and value in gossip," she said. "We need to be able to reach out." In times of downsizing rumors or leadership shifts, for example, talking with co-workers "helps us process," she said.

On the personal front, she recalls a pregnant woman who got troubling news from her doctor. She came back to work "desperate to talk about it, but she didn't feel like she should be the one to bring up her personal problems." One co-worker told others, and many people came over to ask how she was doing, which was tremendously comforting, Morem said. "There is benefit to reaching out and sharing our concerns."

Ascan Koerner, a communications studies professor at the University of Minnesota, agrees. He calls Chapman's concept "silly."

"People inherently are interested in what those around them are doing and the consequences of those behaviors. Not only does [the ban] go against human nature, but if people would really not gossip at all, the organization would fall apart."

By talking about what others are experiencing, Koerner said, we learn "what behaviors are encouraged and socially appropriate," and what behaviors are a bad idea.

Unfortunately, plenty of gossip heads south from there.

Tanya Gajewski, manager of Client Services at the Storefront Group in Minneapolis, has seen gossip used in deliberately dangerous ways to sabotage or gain power over others, "diminishing them in others' eyes by emphasizing their mistakes and vulnerabilities." Gossip, she said, is powerful, whether good or bad.

That's why Chapman did what he did. "I have to stop myself, too," he said. He's also been told to do some "completing" of his own. "But it sure is a lot easier to focus on your work when people aren't gossiping about you," he said.

Chapman does make one distinction, however. His employees may still talk about Britney, and read US Magazine.

And you heard that here first.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.


Friday, April 9, 2010

Brain Study



It's Hard To Get By When Shy:

The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Once A Slave...



Big Fat Bully Opinions Rule The Day:

"I'm going to mark it as the day the ‘social web' became antisocial," Haque wrote on his blog. "Increasingly, today's ‘social web' doesn't empower people. It empowers hate, exclusion and polarization".

Friday, April 2, 2010

Coming In For A Landing


Who Is In Control Now?:

Some pilots taking medication for mild or moderate depression will be able to fly as early as next week under a new government rule aimed partly at getting those taking antidepressants to disclose the treatment.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

About Time


Ignored For Too Long:

Monday’s bombshell indictments of nine teens in the Phoebe Prince tragedy have parents peppering authorities with bullying complaints, including a flurry to one prosecutor whose “phone is ringing off the hook.”

“The message is that we as a society are not going to sit back and allow the incessant, nonstop bullying of children which can lead us to such tragic consequences as what happened to Phoebe Prince,” Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz told the Herald. “We have an obligation to make sure we try to prevent this.”