42 Days

42 Days For Total Alienation:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tenth-worker-at-ipad-factory-commits-suicide-1982897.html

The Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen is so vast that walking around its outer perimeter takes two hours. Its workers turn out components that are supplied to big Western electronics brands including Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. And it is here that most of the parts for Apple's iPhone, and the much-awaited iPad, which goes on sale in the UK this week, are manufactured.

Yesterday, Li Hai, a 19-year-old employee of the firm, jumped from the top of the building in Shenzhen to his death. It brought the number of suspected suicides at the factory this year to 10. There have been another two attempted suicides.

All of the deaths have been of youngsters between 18 and 25 years old. Li Hai had only been working at the plant for 42 days. The incidents have prompted intense soul-searching in China, about conditions in its factories and the social cost of breakneck economic development.

Weekend RoundUp

Long Hot Summer:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/05/at-least-8-people-shot-one-dead-on-south-side.html

At least nine people were shot on a hot night in Chicago, and one of them was killed, authorities said. No one was in custody for any of the shootings this morning.

Big Problems Simple Solutions

Man, I Loved That Movie:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7131555.ece

A breakthrough may lie in the hands of a Hollywood actor. Where the collective prowess of the oil industry has failed, Kevin Costner believes he may succeed after paying scientists millions of dollars to come up with an ocean-cleaning device — inspired by his 1995 film Waterworld — that could mitigate the environmental catastrophe.

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What's Next?:

http://www.rense.com/general90/grow.htm

Besides the chronically homeless, comprising about 18% of the total, homelessness results from factors including poverty, job loss, home foreclosure, loss of public assistance, divorce, domestic violence, drug or alcohol abuse, serious illness, mental illness, unaffordable housing, the lack of emergency help, and a federal government that doesn't give a damn.

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Tune In:

http://www.counterpunch.org/

The US position is that the biggest nuclear threat in the world today comes from those who do not have nuclear weapons, or whose nuclear armory is diminutive to the point of invisibility, and that global security is properly vested in the hands of those who have substantial nuclear arsenals, starting with the only country that has actually dropped nuclear bombs—and indeed lost them (eleven in the case of the United States since 1945).

Feed The Apple Monster

Works Kills The Soul:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100039883/what-has-triggered-the-suicide-cluster-at-foxconn/

Liu also wrote about the lack of connections in such a giant factory, with its transient population of workers. “There are hundreds of thousands of workers but they find they come to resemble each other. Dorm mates on different shifts barely get a chance to talk to each other, and even if you have slept in a dorm a few months you might not know the name of your room mates,” described Liu.

“If society is like a net, you can hardly become suicidal if you are in the position of a knot with many layers of connections. But if you have no links, other than on the production line, then you become one single and unconnected knot. Then you get suicidal facing a machine all day and with no way of releasing your anxiety like normal people.”

CBC Idea 05162010

Next Book On The Shelf:

http://www.amazon.com/Cure-Within-History-Mind-Body-Medicine/dp/0393065634

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Over the past several years, numerous medical reports have confirmed the connection between a positive mental attitude and good physical health. In this splendid book, Harrington (The Placebo Effect), chair of Harvard's history of science department, demonstrates that the belief in such a connection between mind and body is nothing new. She uses case studies and stories of healings to show how deeply embedded the idea of positive mental health is in the quest for physical health, as well as the ways that contemporary medicine has incorporated a focus on mind-body healing into its black bag. In her highly original analysis of this history from ancient times to the present, she discovers six different narratives about mind-body healing. These include the power of suggestion, the power of positive thinking and broken by modern life. In the body that speaks narrative, for instance, Harrington traces the idea that physical symptoms are the outward expression of the mind's secrets, and that revealing those secrets can heal, whether the revelation takes place in the confession box or on the analyst's couch. Harrington's study offers a first-rate cultural history of an age-old but still much debated topic.

You Lookin' At Me?

No Place Safe:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100039649/the-kindergarten-murders-show-fear-and-loathing-has-crept-into-china/

There’s an echo of Travis Bickle, the protagonist of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in each of the kindergarten killers. These are middle-aged men, left on the fringes of society, whose alienation and loneliness manifests itself in extreme violence.

Problem Solution

Drugs To Go To Work:

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg05102010.html

Do you work in customer service? Health care? The restaurant industry? You might be suffering from shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) says a new ad campaign from Frazer, PA-based Cephalon who makes the Schedule IV stimulants Provigil and Nuvigil. One out of four people working nontraditional schedules suffers from this hitherto unrecognized epidemic say radio ads which broke this week here in Chicago.

Hit Him Again

New Technology In The Workplace:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/05/06/tsa.scanner.assault/?hpt=T3

A TSA worker at Miami International Airport in Florida was arrested for allegedly assaulting a co-worker who had repeatedly teased him about the size of his genitals.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0506101tsa1.html

Om Is Where The Heart Is

Give It A Try, Doesn't Hurt:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/03/repetitive-physics-om-improbable-research?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

At the end, Gurjar and Ladhake say: "Our attentiveness and our concentration are pilfered from us by the proceedings take place around us in the world in recent times ... By this analysis we could conclude steadiness in the mind is achieved by chanting Om, hence proves the mind is calm and peace to the human subject."

Women In The News

Could Be Anyone:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-03-target-stabbing_

"Her facial expression was someone who was lost, confused, didn't know exactly where they were," Grant said.

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Don't Tease:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-bat-attack-follow-20100503,0,2851390.story

Marcy Cruz was not taking her medications for bipolar disorder last month at the time officials say she was involved in the savage baseball bat-beating of two women in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood, her father said Monday before a hearing on the case.

Shark Bait

Identification With No Solution:

http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthday/bulliestargetobesekids.html

New research suggests that just being overweight increases the risk of being bullied. And factors that usually play a role in the risk of being bullied, such as gender, race and family income levels, don't seem to matter if you're overweight -- being overweight or obese trumps all those other factors when it comes to aggressive behavior from other children.