Implement Sleep-Right Rules

Once you’ve turned your bedroom into a healthy, sleep-inducing oasis, the next critical step is to start sleeping correctly. You may not have known that there is actually a proper way and time to sleep. It’s true!

When, how and how much we sleep is important. Failing to follow these recommendations can impede the fat-burning and hormone-balancing benefits you should gain from sleep each and every night.

Here are The Clear Medicine System guidelines for hormone-enhancing sleep:

Sleep in complete darkness. Again, even a small amount of light can hamper your sleep.

Sleep nude (or at least with loose-fitting nightclothes – but nude is better). Do not sleep in tight undergarments (bras, girdles, briefs, etc). Tight clothing will increase your body temperature and interfere with melatonin release while you sleep.

Establish regular sleeping hours. Try to get up each morning and go to bed every night at roughly the same time. Oversleeping can be as detrimental as sleep deprivation. How you feel each day is an important indication of how much sleep is right for you.

Get to bed by 11 p.m. Since the invention of electricity (not to mention television and computers), we have begun staying up later and later. This change has resulted in a largely sleep-deprived society. Our stress glands, the adrenals, recharge or recover most between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Going to bed before 11 p.m. (in fact, 10 p.m. is even better) is optimal for rebuilding your adrenal reserves. I know this can be difficult to change so I recommend to my patients they start going to bed 15 minutes earlier each week until they reach their new target time.

Sleep 7 ½ to 9 hours a night. The American Cancer Association has found higher incidences of cancer in individuals who consistently sleep less than six hours or more than nine hours nightly. Oversleeping is just as harmful as sleep deprivation. Consistently needing more than nine hours of sleep every night warrants a visit to your doctor for further investigation, as this may indicate an underlying medical condition such as hypothyroidism or depression or a deficiency of iron, folic acid or vitamin B12. Some of us simply require more or less sleep than others. If you awaken without an alarm and feel rested, you’re likely getting the right amount of sleep for you.

See the light first thing in the morning. Daylight and morning sounds are key signals that help awaken your brain. Turning on the lights or opening the blinds is the proper way to reset your body clock and ensure that your melatonin levels drops back to “awake” mode until the evening. Exposure to morning light has also been proven to be one of the simplest ways to increase your energy for the entire day. It’s also been shown to boost testosterone in men and fertility in women by stimulating luteinizing hormone release from the pituitary gland. Enhance this action further by exposing yourself to sunlight and by getting outside during the day. I can’t say enough about the benefits of getting outside, even for 10–20 minutes in the morning light.

Keep household lighting dim from dinnertime until you go to sleep. Believe it or not, this simple step not only prepares your body and hormones for sleep, but it also helps your digestion.

The most important step in selecting a natural sleep aid is to first determine the cause of your sleep disruption because different supplements can be more effective than others for specific sleep-robbing conditions. Difficulty falling or staying asleep may result from stress, vitamin or mineral deficiency, excess caffeine intake, certain medications, menopause, anxiety, depression, low melatonin, muscle tension, pain and a whole host of other reasons too numerous to list. Fortunately, many herbal remedies, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and hormones are available to assist you in your quest for a good night’s rest.

Magnesium or calcium/magnesium is recommended for all causes of sleep disruption – in addition to one or more of the following for the specific sleep imbalances:

Cant fall asleep – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol/stress:
Seditol – 3 at bedtime with magnesium 200 to 800 mg
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed
Ashwaganda – 500 to 1,000 mg twice daily

Can’t stay asleep – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol/stress or low melatonin
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed
Ashwaganda – 500 to 1,000 mg twice daily
Melatonin – sublingual form is best 3 mg – best for those over 45 to 50 years

Waking too early– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low serotonin/anxiety or depression
RX to increase serotonin – fish oils – 6 grams per day
Vitamin D3 2000 to 5000IU per day
5 HTP 200 to 400 mg per day and add Cenitol (metagenics), which is inositol, to protein shakes daily to enhance serotonin in the brain

Racing mind in bed at night– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol
Phosphatidylserine – 300mg at bedtime
Vitamin B6 -100mg at bedtime

Can’t sleep because of anxiety or body tension/pain– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low GABA, a naturally calming brain chemical
Gaba – 500 to 1000mg at bedtime

Can’t sleep due to PMS – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low progesterone which helps to prevent headaches, anxiety and insomnia before your period
Evening primrose oil – 2000mg daily for 2 weeks prior to menses
Natural progesterone cream – prescription through MD or ND

Can’t sleep due to Menopausal or Perimenopausal symptoms- Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low progesterone/low estrogen and/or high cortisol, which can cause hot flashes, night sweats, anxiety, palpitations, broken sleep

Suggestions for progesterone above
Herbs to increase estrogen – clear estrogen 2 to 3 at bedtime
Natural Bi-est cream – prescription through your MD or ND
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed to reduce stress at menopause

Normally a lot of these shows are filled with drivel — but this one is worth reposting — and worth watching if you can deal with the product placements. It’s remarkable in that it is so through and so free of the usual bandaid solutions.

Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated climate change with Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, one of the rightwing libertarian groups that rose from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist party. Fox is a feared interrogator on the BBC show The Moral Maze. Yet when I asked her a simple question – “do you accept that some people’s freedoms intrude upon other people’s freedoms?” – I saw an ideology shatter like a windscreen. I used the example of a Romanian lead-smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbours. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbours? She tried several times to answer it, but nothing coherent emerged which would not send her crashing through the mirror of her philosophy.

He’s right – but he’s missing a key point: The libertarian movement has rightly seized on one of the fundamental tenants of the doctrine of freedom taught by Paul: For freedom to be freedom, freedom must be absolute.

But, they miss the foundational logic behind such. The entirety of Scripture is pretty clear on one key point: people with un-transformed hearts need the law. They need to be controlled and they need a system of punishment to back such or other people would be harmed.

The intention of other people not being harmed has never changed.

All that has changed is the mechanism of the delivery of such. It’s based on the foundational assumption that people’s hearts can be changed and that every other part of them can be made new – such that they want new things. It’s based on the belief that it is possible to have such a profound encounter with love in the form of the person of Christ that the human heart can come to feel the pain of others and care as deeply for the pain of another as if it were their own pain. It’s based on the assumption that a person can come to hear the voice of God and, indeed, can come to long to do so.

A person who is that deeply transformed can be set absolutely free for they no longer need the control of law to cease hurting and commence loving others.

Libertarian ideology ignores once simple reality: Not all hearts have been transformed.

They could be – but some don’t want to be, some are too damaged to understand how to be, some are too afraid to be and some are so deluded that they actually think the evil that defines their lives IS transformation.

Those people need the law that the adherents of this level of extremism want to and have largely succeeded in abolishing.

Ironic thing is, it’s predominantly Christians who are promoting the ideological delusion that setting people free with un-transformed hearts is consistent with the Gospel…

On the other hand you have something PG calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glassand as soon as someone distracts you, it all comes barreling down and shatters into a thousand pieces.

Finally, an explanation!

Dec. 13, 2011 — Girls and young women who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) appear to be no more likely than those who are not vaccinated to engage in sexually risky behaviors, a CDC survey finds.

After all of the drama, handwringing and false guilt about teens being given a free pass to have sex via safety from only one of oh-so-many sexually transmitted diseases, it turns out that the only thing this vaccination manages to do is keep children from dying of one sexually transmitted disease.

And, actually to the contrary of the above, it seems to at least be correlated somewhat with a rather high willingness to insist on condom use in women.

The students could not go from their vague discomfort to a rational ethical conclusion because they have never learned traditional philosophy of ethics. Therefore, their objections have no force and, for all that they sense injustice, they will likely do very little good in the world. And the “accept everyone, accept everything” assemblies they attend unwittingly feed the problem: They learn to accept gay rights in North America and stoning gays in Afghanistan.

For centuries, the Church (Protestant and Catholic) was the center of moral thought. She defined goodness, ethics, morality and truth and, as dubious as some of the definitions may have been, they were societally accepted – though they were founded on very little in the way of rational thought and mostly based on the writings of ancient teachers.

And, the years passed and the faith slowly changed. More and more the basic concepts of grace and freedom became a tired footnote to a reconstituted law we used to control people. The strident hostility she formerly displayed towards the Gnostic ideas that regarded the body as bad and the spirit as good were replaced by a bland acceptance of such. The ancient and even enlightenment ideals of God calling humanity to heal and change the world for good slowly became replaced with a cosmic vending machine of the Divine which is purchased by an ever changing subset of moral requirements.

And, society responded. The more educated did what the Church had long since ceased to do – read the Bible – and rejected us because the strange Judaism, Gnosticism and New Age Movement based beliefs we were now following in no way resembled the teachings of Scripture. The less educated simply looked at us in the hard cold light of reality and judged us to be idiotic. And, they were both right.

And, with us went our morality.

But, the Church had no fear. Our laws safely projected our moral system and a societal acceptance of virtue – thus, the acceptance of our morality was not really that necessary. So, we continued with our passivity, pulled back into our stained glass hidey-holes, repeated the writings of long dead thinkers and acted like everything was fine while we continued to do nothing to alter our refusal to actually think about what we believe.

But, little by little, something was changing. While our laws still promoted most virtues, the society quietly forgot truth could even exist – and the law started to seem silly. And, a Church promoting anyone’s law – especially long dead people’s laws – began to seem absurdist, and MOST WORTHY of strident censure themselves.

So, then we finally get here: We arrive at a place where a class full of high school students no longer can look at a culture where women are property, can be executed at will, have their noses hacked off and may be abused by their husbands or families as a matter of course and conclude that this is not a good thing to be happening.

Why? Because way back when, we decided it was a good idea to stop thinking. We decided we would base our teachings on dead guy’s thinkings instead of founding them on anthropology (The study of what it means to be human) and we decided our stained glass hideouts would attract people in all by themselves.

And, ultimately, we decided to quit engaging culture and thought.

The ironic reality is that when we quit engaging and thinking, even secular thinkers are waking up and realizing that thinking basically seems to have ceased – right along with the ability to stand up for much other then not standing up for much of anything other then seals and trees – especially that which may suggest that some things simply do not fit well with our Anthropology.

And, starkly and significantly absent from an article that so clearly grasps the problem, is even the remotest grasp of anything but a plan to go back to teaching a set of rules that these students should then accept and make moral judgments on the basis of.

And, we’re still waiting for the Church to stand up…

We expect to carry on our lawful lives free from police intrusion unless a judge can be persuaded that the police are justified in their intrusion into your life, including the fact that the intrusion relates to a lawful investigation into criminal wrongdoing. Lawful access would remove the only check and balance, allowing police the ability monitor citizens without any reason.

Just in case you thought plans for a police state here in Canuckistan have finally died their natural death, think again…

It’s back, it hasn’t changed much and it still has exactly the same goal: the removal of the only firewall we have to modify the behavior of those we have given the power of life and death, bondage and freedom and rights vs. responsibilities.

And, it still needs more voices speaking out against it.

It’s short, bullet form and exactly as surgically clear/simple as a person in pain needs.

Before I go on, I feel I must say something one time. Today’s post is not about homosexuality. It’s not about Christians. It’s not about religion. It’s not about politics. It’s about something else altogether. Something greater. Something simpler.



It’s about love.



It’s about kindness.



It’s about friendship

Honestly, I usually find this guy a bit insipid and annoying – but this is so worth reposting. Because it’s real. Because it’s so constant.

For example, subjects were asked if they’d administer harmless but painful electric shocks to another person. They chose to shock those fully clothed significantly more often than those exposed above the waist. So if you’re looking for sympathy, maybe show a little skin.

After years of church and society ranting about how a woman showing a little skin is the woman dressing for a rape, it turns out the opposite is true. Men and women who show a little skin actually elicit sympathy, not predation, from others.

Doesn’t it also seem rather interesting that the schools which treat children in the most severe ways also tend to be those which have the most stringent uniform demands…

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy — work hard, play by the rules, get ahead — has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the news media, almost to a journalist, simply fails to grasp what is going on world wide as the protests in the world wide financial centers multiply and the frenzied rhetoric calling for the arrests of the protestors out of the financial leaders increases in pitch and volume. They write curious articles wondering who these people are, what they want and about how silly they are to be there.

Strangely, the financial leadership is NOT giving voice to the same wonderment. They already know.

What they know is this: when the people of Egypt came to understand that they had a two tiered court system, that they had been fleeced out of their money, that they were under surveillance and control, that they were living in fear, that normal means would not get the job done and that they needed a change in those who were ruling over them, they went to the seat of power and overthrew those leaders. (Sadly they failed to figure out what they would replace it with…)

Well, the rest of the world has too figured out that they have a two tiered court system, that we have been fleeced out of our money, that we are under surveillance and control, that we are increasingly living in fear, that normal means will not get the job done as our political critters are all on the take and that we need a change in those who are ruling over them, they went to the real seat of western power and are clearly working to overthrow the real unelected overlords of our society. (Sadly they also have failed to figure out what they would replace them with…)

But, make no mistake, the loudest protests are not coming from the guys on the mattresses in the park out front – they are coming from the 33rd floor of the building because, unlike the press, they get it. They get that their paid shills in Congress, the Senate and on the North Side of the 49th may have to finally grow a spine and admit that the sort of theft these uber-rich managed to get written into law is just wrong. Perhaps, they may even have to do something about it – hopefully by tossing these thieves in jail.

Let’s just hope they all figure out how to spell, “Wrong,” before, as in Egypt, our overlords are dragged in the street.

The article in Relevant magazine, entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” cited several studies examining the sexual activity of single Christians. One of the biggest surprises was a December 2009 study, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which included information on sexual activity.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.

Ok, contrary to the wide eyed wonder all over this one, none of this is exactly news. Actually it’s so well known as to be banal — and the stats are even worse in the more fundamentalist Evangelical states. But, few of said Evangelicals have the guts to ask the following question — much less two of them in one article:

Yet the article also asks a question that rarely comes up in discussions about abstinence movement. Relevant notes that in biblical times, people married earlier. The average age for marriage has been increasing in the U.S for the last 40 years.

Today, it’s not unusual to meet a Christian who is single at 30 – or 40 or 50, for that matter. So what do you tell them? Keep waiting?

Too bad none of them had the guts to answer it though…

Twenty years after onset of alcohol dependence, three-quarters of alcoholics are in full recovery. . . .more than half of those who have fully recovered drink at low-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence. . . .only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence receive specialty alcohol treatment (AA, rehab).

“Yes, there is that drop off because alcohol and drug abusers die in such droves.”



In other words, according to this vision of the world, 7 percent of all 18- to 25-year-old Americans die annually of alcohol and drug abuse, since the prevalence of drug/alcohol abuse/dependence drops by 7 percent for the late 20s age group. Do you believe that? Because if you do, you are psychotic.

It’s taken years but there is a backlash finally growing against this ideology/religion that has held captive even large parts of the psychological community. We’ve long known that really rich people who seek treatment in North America will almost never be subjected to the AA model – but the enormous weight of the AA lobby efforts in North America are hardly slacking for the rest and so few have been willing to stand up and admit it is based on fiction and just does not work.

That’s finally starting to change – though it is unfortunate that those who are finally speaking have had to get to this level of rage and name calling to do so…

So what’s keeping kids indoors? Fear of abduction is a big one, followed by worries about kids getting hit by cars and bullies, surveys have found.



Those fears have created legions of overprotective parents rearing “wimps” who are unable to cope with the ups and downs of life because they have no experience doing so, said Hara Estroff Marano, the New York-based author of the book A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting.



“The home of the brave has given way to the home of the fearful, the entitled, the risk averse, and the narcissistic,” Marano said. “Today’s young, at least in the middle class and upper class, are psychologically fragile,” Marano said in an interview published in the journal.



Hovering parents, these researchers said, also deprive their children of something else — joy. One survey found that 89 percent of children preferred outdoor play with friends to watching TV.



“Parents have to remember that childhood is this special time. You only get it once, and you don’t want to miss it,” LaFreniere said. “Mixing it up with other kids in an unrestrained manner isn’t just fun. It isn’t a luxury. It’s part of nature’s plan.”

Apparently, there’s something rather positive to be said for mediocre parenting…

With all the helicopter parenting, early childhood education, language immersion and other tactics we are all so sure will help our kid to get ahead, we’ve forgotten how to raise humans who know how to get along. Perhaps we finally have an explanation for the American political system…

And postwar record levels of long-term unemployment and underemployment mean that people will seize on any opportunity to shift basic needs toward self-provisioning in the household, informal, gifting and barter sectors. Unprecedented new technical possibilities are coming into existence at just the time when the desperate incentives to adopt them are also at an unprecedented level. It’s a perfect storm.

When the storm is over, the outcome will be a society in which the hollowed-out shells of state and corporate hierarchies — to the extent they exist at all — will be in constant retreat. In their place will be a society of neighborhood micromanufacturers, neighborhood and community permaculture operations, low-overhead household microenterprises, and digital currencies, all networked together on an encrypted darknet economy.

When motive, means and opportunity coincide, the “consciousness” will take care of itself.

You know, sometimes you have to look to the fringe groups and the crazy people to provide a mirror for that which is too close to yourself to see. Kevin Carson may be one of those people — but this is about as clear a vision of what is actually going on in the massive cultural, financial and social upheaval currently rioting on the streets of london, wearing masks in front of financial centers, funding projects on KickStarter and preparing to make 3D printers accessible to 10yr olds.

Governments, long bowing before the purse strings of their Movie, Record and Industrial Industry overlords, no longer have credibility and the media sources they own are no longer believed. People are talking to other people, financing other people, teaching other people and, on both religious and social fronts, refusing to take orders from the age old channels of power. Those holding the reins of power are panicking, of course, and acting like this is some sort of new fascist revolution in disguise that will destroy the world as we know it.

And, it could be true.

OR, those power brokers could simply be getting collectively fired by a society which, “No longer requires their services,” as the costs of people getting enough communication contact with each other (such that they no longer need to be told what to think by others) have fallen to near-zero.

There are both plant and animal sources for omega-3 fats, and there are differences between them. All have different ratios of three important omega-3 fatty acids—ALA, EPA and DHA. DHA is the most important for your brain. EPA is also required by your brain, but in smaller amounts.



Plant-based omega-3 sources like flax, hemp and chia seeds are high in ALA, but low in EPA and DHA. Although ALA is an essential nutrient, the key point to remember is that the conversion of ALA to the far more essential EPA and DHA is typically quite inhibited by impaired delta 6 desaturase, an enzyme necessary for you to convert the ALA into the longer chain EPA and DHA. Because of this, it is important to include animal-based sources of omega-3 fats, such as krill oil, in your diet, and this supplement regimen would likely be incredibly useful for those in the military, as it is for the majority of Americans.

There is just a stunning amount of information coming out about the effectiveness of these oils – information that is more then just a little contested by the vegetarian sector that is pushing flax oil and the like. Problem is, the flax oils are not generating the decrease in inflammatory response that most are taking these oils for. Here’s why.

Barna blames pastors for those oddly contradictory findings. Everyone hears, “Jesus is the answer. Embrace him. Say this little Sinner’s Prayer and keep coming back. It doesn’t work. People end up bored, burned out and empty,” he said. “They look at church and wonder, ‘Jesus died for this?”‘



The consequence, Barna said, is that, for every subgroup of religion, race, gender, age and region of the country, the important markers of religious connection are fracturing.

It’s so about time Barna returned to this subject!

What he’s really saying is that the whole,”Get saved. Get holy. Get busy.” story we’ve been fed for years isn’t selling anymore then the, “New calling God has for you to work in nursery – what was your name anyway?” routine worked. That people are tired of becoming an institutional support crew as a substitute for real community and have completely had it with formulaic religion and doctrine.

That’s the amazing and oh-so-welcome piece of this.

Unfortunately, there’s also a darker underbelly… The sad reality is that more and more are just giving up the search for it (or the longing to create it) and are settling for what the author is calling, “Designer,” but what is actually a complete freak-show of much greater levels of control and use/abuse.

StopSpying.ca

This is probably the second most offensive plan Ottawa has set in motion – and they need to hear your voice. Like, a in, yesterday!

That too is my view: that the GOP, deep down, is behaving as a religious movement, not as a political party, and a radical religious movement at that. Lofgren sees the “Prosperity Gospel” as a divine blessing for personal enrichment and minimal taxation (yes, that kind of Gospel is compatible with Rand, just not compatible with the actual Gospels); for military power (with a major emphasis on the punitive, interventionist God of the Old Testament); and for radical change and contempt for existing institutions (as a product of End-Times thinking, intensified after 9/11).

That’s how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.

Religion has replaced all of this, reordered it, and imbued the entire political-economic-religious package with zeal. And the zealous never compromise. They don’t even listen. Think of Michele Bachmann’s wide-eyed, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget. My fear – and it has building for a decade and a half, because I’ve seen this movement up-close from within and also on the front lines of the marriage wars – is that once one party becomes a church with unchangeable doctrines, and once it has supplanted respect for institutions and civility with the radical pursuit of timeless doctrines and hatred of governing institutions, then our democracy is in grave danger.

Ok, just for a min, ignore that Richard Dawkins is all over this like ugly on an ape. Ignore Sullivan himself and his attitudes as well. Just think about the message…

He’s right.

I spent my early childhood years mostly on the dark continent watching every imaginable form of political chaos and genocide take place. And I learned something: Democracy will not work everywhere. Democracy will only work where a population places greater allegiance in concepts like the rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, humanist care for the common good, reason, logic and all of the above are elevated over concepts like family and religion or ideology.

When a political party cheers for the death of a sick or foolish person who is ill because it fits their ideology, we’re already there.

Even if the death penalty were morally legitimate (and I think it isn’t), and even if we could be justifiably confident that every one of those 234 executed prisoners was actually guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced (and I think we can’t), it would still be grotesque to react to those executions with cheers and applause, as the audience did at this week’s Republican debate. Surely a mood of solemnity and regret would be more appropriate. These Republicans howling and hooting over executions are the kind who formerly reveled in seeing Christians thrown to the lions. The fact that they now have the effrontery to call themselves Christians only adds insult to injury (literally).

There are some videos that are so stark, some messages so telling and some heart attitudes so chillingly cold they tell their own story to any who has eyes to see such that no other comment is necessary.

“Whatever it takes” is an attitude that drives not just Kirkkojarvi’s 30 teachers, but most of Finland’s 62,000 educators in 3,500 schools from Lapland to Turku—professionals selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education. Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try something else. They seem to relish the challenges. Nearly 30 percent of Finland’s children receive some kind of special help during their first nine years of school. The school where Louhivuori teaches served 240 first through ninth graders last year; and in contrast with Finland’s reputation for ethnic homogeneity, more than half of its 150 elementary-level students are immigrants—from Somalia, Iraq, Russia, Bangladesh, Estonia and Ethiopia, among other nations. “Children from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. “We try to catch the weak students. It’s deep in our thinking.”

When Ros and I were looking at schools to place our daughters in, we did a lot of research and found that there is literally only one school in Calgary (Charging about $14k/child/yr) that would publicly state: “We are responsible for your child’s education. If your child is not learning it is our problem. We ask you sit your child down to do homework, but please do not assist. If your child can not complete the homework assigned, we want to know.” Apparently, in Finland, it’s national education policy standard.

There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town. The differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.

In the United States, which has muddled along in the middle for the past decade, government officials have attempted to introduce marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as vouchers, data-driven curriculum and charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, has apparently bet on compe­tition. His Race to the Top initiative invites states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not fly in Finland. “I think, in fact, teachers would tear off their shirts,” said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience. “If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.”

Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.

Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”

And, the teachers are highly respected as well — to say nothing of very highly trained at Government expense:

Practically speaking—and Finns are nothing if not practical—the decision meant that goal would not be allowed to dissipate into rhetoric. Lawmakers landed on a deceptively simple plan that formed the foundation for everything to come. Public schools would be organized into one system of comprehensive schools, or peruskoulu, for ages 7 through 16. Teachers from all over the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not prescriptions. Besides Finnish and Swedish (the country’s second official language), children would learn a third language (English is a favorite) usually beginning at age 9. Resources were distributed equally. As the comprehensive schools improved, so did the upper secondary schools (grades 10 through 12). The second critical decision came in 1979, when reformers required that every teacher earn a fifth-year master’s degree in theory and practice at one of eight state universities—at state expense. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers.

Essentially, you stop treating teachers like they are idiots, they develop pride in their work and make it their mission to help children learn — instead of just putting on a tolerable performance so they keep their jobs:

Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive. In 2010, some 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots, according to Sahlberg. By the mid-1980s, a final set of initiatives shook the classrooms free from the last vestiges of top-down regulation. Control over policies shifted to town councils. The national curriculum was distilled into broad guidelines. National math goals for grades one through nine, for example, were reduced to a neat ten pages. Sifting and sorting children into so-called ability groupings was eliminated. All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind. The inspectorate closed its doors in the early ’90s, turning accountability and inspection over to teachers and principals. “We have our own motivation to succeed because we love the work,” said Louhivuori. “Our incentives come from inside.”

So much so that they no longer even need government supervision — they want to excel from the depths of the pride in who they are and the honor they receive from society.

Some of the more vocal conservative reformers in America have grown weary of the “We-Love-Finland crowd” or so-called Finnish Envy. They argue that the United States has little to learn from a country of only 5.4 million people—4 percent of them foreign born. Yet the Finns seem to be onto something. Neighboring Norway, a country of similar size, embraces education policies similar to those in the United States. It employs standardized exams and teachers without master’s degrees. And like America, Norway’s PISA scores have been stalled in the middle ranges for the better part of a decade.

Oh, and it’s not just some European thing where that people group somehow does better either. Though, it just may have something to do with a national policy of treating everyone fairly decently:

It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is on play and socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns 17. Ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool, where children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free.

And the moral of the story is: Take care of people, treat them with respect and give them the tools to do their jobs and they will take pride in their work and give you one of the best education systems in the world. Don’t be a dick to children, make sure they get to spend lots of time being mothered, feed them, make sure they are healthy and unstressed and they will learn better then most of the world.

Whodathunkit???

Well, certainly not our brilliant and fearless leader — who is busy exporting both our worst educational failures and the associated testing systems to the rest of the world…

By contrast, secular society is embracing masturbation as a way for women to better understand their bodies and enhance their pleasure with their partners. Millions of women struggle with reaching orgasms during sex, so, more and more, sex-ed teachers are including masturbation in their curricula. Last year, the United Nations released a report suggesting that children as young as 5 learn about masturbation. The National Health Service in Britain recently released a pamphlet for teenagers with the headline “An Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” advocating that regular masturbation is good for cardiovascular health. In Spain, one regional government has just launched a sex-ed campaign with the slogan “Pleasure Is in Your Own Hands,” stating that masturbation boosts confidence and self-esteem. And even Oprah Winfrey, the standard-bearer for mainstream American ethics, has discussed the benefits of female masturbation many times on her talk show. One of Winfrey’s frequent guest experts, Laura Berman, says encouraging girls to masturbate can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences.

But Renaud isn’t pleased with secular society’s increasing acceptance of porn and masturbation for women. Interestingly enough, she’s fine with teaching young children about the existence of masturbation and porn—as long as they don’t try it. “It’s a very dangerous society that we live in,” she says, “when we’re telling women that it’s OK to look at porn.”

Many girls in Renaud’s ministry think that once they get married, they will be free to express their sexuality and enjoy orgasms with a man. This causes some to take the fast track to the altar, only to find that after they’ve married, they still feel the same taboo urges. One forum commenter married at 19 in the hope that pious matrimonial intercourse would rid her of her sinful thoughts—only to find that during sex with her husband, she would have the same fantasies. “I cannot cleanse my mind of these images,” she says. “I try so hard to focus on my husband only, but my thoughts are so warped.”

One of the most striking pieces of this article is the subject’s inability to grasp any sort of difference between the erotic (part of every society and artistic practice around the world) and the pornographic (rage based materials designed to dehumanize, degrade and shame those depicted so as to allow those who are so awash with hatred that they do not view themselves as capable of connecting or becoming stimulated in a normative bonding based manner to become aroused.) The result of such is a strange, dichotomous hostility to everything erotic and to every thought of sexuality (no matter how relationally oriented) that is meshed with a completely artificial separation of secular erotica from Scriptural erotica (Psalm of Solomon for example) but yet still denounces even the thought of such arousal response that Scripture itself could generate.

In other words: Internal inconsistency to the point of the insane…

The article is also completely devoid of any sort of grasp of the difference between fantasy (Mental expression of need and preparation of the person for the pursuit of the legitimate meeting of said need that draws us into the beauty of permanent intimate love that God designed for us) and lust (The predatory desire to use, consume and then dispose of the person with no thought for the other’s well being.)

It is then overlaid with a pseudo science that holds that the neurological release of any chemical indicating pleasure is indicative of addiction (and thus to be avoided) that completely ignores that dopamine is also released as a result of, er, bowel movements… (It’s a rather convenient way of avoiding addressing anything approaching modern psychological understanding of said bondage that basically leaves them free to demonize anything they want.) An addiction is, to quote Patrick Carnes from memory, “A pathological relationship with a mood altering experience.” In other words, it is a bent way of replacing a person with a substance, experience or mental state and using such not to feel/to feel numb.

Stoicism and Gnosticism would be proud – for to them, pleasure and the body were the enemy…

But, the most striking part of the whole mess is on the first page:

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape—from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution—Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.” Renaud’s advocacy is labeled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not. When you peel back the layers, the core of her crusade is against sexual thought—even within marriage—unless those thoughts are about your husband while you are engaging in intercourse with him.

Read it carefully: She is fully aware that the women in her group have been damaged, severely abused and often had their sexuality commercially exploited and are in desperate flight from soul wrenching pain, but she’s more concerned about that which Christ already took away: their sin.

Matthew 23:1-15 New International Version

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteriesa wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Like in the time of Christ, the entire charade exists to ensure only one result: That the human leaders of the charade ensure their own place at the helm of the lives of their members — where Christ alone should stand.

CPS involvement did not improve long-run outcomes, a 2010 study found. Such involvement sometimes harms children by taking them from their families unnecessarily – which, in my office’s experience, happens more than 100 times each year in the District. These removals traumatize children and devastate families.

I wish I could disagree with the study, but, while I have always followed the code drilled into me at least once every month of my training and constantly by every brief of the laws I am under, about 2/3rds of the time, I ended up wishing I had not. Most of the time, it’s like watching an episode of some sort of absurdist sitcom entitled, “The invasion of the mental munchkins.”

The same is true when adults report rapes etc. It’s been my experience that less then 2-3% of the offenders ever see a night in jail – while the victims get to experience a system that pretty much torments them for months and leaves them tormenting themselves long after. I’d say that the majority of the PTSD symptoms that later emerge are not the result of the rape but, rather, the result of police and social services stupidity.

As sad as it is to say, it’s getting so therapists need to issue guidelines for reporting to them…

Just a few of the things that are never taught in the ivory castles of education by those who epitomize the statement that, “Those who can, do, the rest teach,” to say nothing of even being remotely grasped by the legal system…

Just needed to be posted...

So many adults are fearful that telling kids that sex is pleasurable will simply encourage young people to have it before they are physically and emotionally ready for the consequences. Better, they imagine, to emphasize that it’s important to wait and to stress the risks. But as it turns out, centering pleasure is a great way to minimize the chances that a teen will be pressured into doing something that they don’t want to do.

When we tell girls that sex is something people do when they love each other, it sets them up to believe that sex is sacrificial. So when Jassie falls in love with Bobby, and Bobby pushes for intercourse, she’s conditioned to focus on “giving it up” for him rather than on thinking about what feels good for her. The more she’s taught that her pleasure matters, the less likely she’ll be coerced into going farther than her body is ready to go. “It’s supposed to feel good”, she may remember, “and right now, being rushed and pawed doesn’t feel good. So I want to stop.” Centering pleasure gives young women a power that centering love doesn’t.

The same is true with boys. When we teach them that sex is about feeling good, we remind them that it isn’t about “losing it.” We think of adolescent boys as hormone-addled horndogs, and many of them are. There are some pretty damn horny teenage girls too, though we’re less comfortable acknowledging that. But what drives so many boys to focus on having heterosexual intercourse isn’t the pursuit of pleasure for either themselves or their partners. It’s the longing to “become a man” or to “score” in a competition that’s really about winning praise and validation from other men. Pleasure becomes less important than being a “stud” in other boys’ eyes. That’s not a lot of fun.So Cooper got it exactly right. While there are other reasons why people have sex, the desire to give and share pleasure is perhaps the most basic. And the more we center pleasure in our discussions with children, the more we equip them to say no to what hurts, what’s coerced, and what’s unwanted. And the more we empower them to say “yes” only to what feels good.

All I can add to this is that, just perhaps, we can then focus the rest of our energy on teaching them what a balanced relationship looks like, what it means to defraud another and what it means to only awaken that which the time has come for it to be awakened. In other words, empower them to really keep the hearts of everyone safe.

In a chapter titled "The Sun Will Save Your Life," you discuss the possible connection between autism and vitamin D deficiency. I was wondering if you could expand on that a little.

This is a fairly new study. There were two articles, one in Scientific American and the other in a Swedish journal, that presented compelling evidence that low vitamin D levels in pregnant mothers can be one of the triggers for this heartbreaking affliction. Unfortunately, a lot of autism groups still blame vaccinations even though this explanation really isn’t being borne out scientifically.

In what ways is the public misinformed about the dangers of sun exposure and how did we go astray?

Dr. John Canell, whom I interviewed for the book and is a council member for a nonprofit group of physicians studying the health effects of vitamin D, argues that we’re the first [modern] generation of cave people. Nature intended for man to take in a lot of sunlight. For proof, one need look no further than the statistic revealing that 10-15 minutes of sunbathing will provide us with the same amount of vitamin D as 200 glasses of milk. And this vitamin is one of our most potent anti-cancer agents. I think we started running into trouble when we shifted away from an outdoor, agricultural society to an indoor, manufacturing one.

The second blow was the invention of the air conditioner, which insured that everyone kept his or her windows closed. Window glass completely blocks out the ultraviolet rays that enable our bodies to manufacture vitamin D. Unfortunately for kids, I think the final straw has been the computer and video-game craze of the last 30 years. Unlike past generations, children today spend a lot more time indoors than they do playing around in the sun. Testing shows that our vitamin D levels are now a small fraction of what we think they were 100 years ago. These kinds of tests weren’t administered back then, so there’s no way for us to know for sure.

So does this mean the cast of "The Jersey Shore" is less likely to develop melanoma?

Ultimately, everybody knows how much sun they can safely take in. You really should try not to burn, especially if you have blue eyes, fair skin and red or blond hair. Melanoma claims approximately 9,000 lives in the U.S. per year, which is worrisome, but it’s also worth noting that upward of 250,000 lives could be saved from cancer-related illnesses if people had the proper amount of vitamin D in their bloodstreams. It’s better to get too much sun than too little.

Finally, real researchers are starting to stand up against the sunscreen fearmongering. And, the numbers are stark: Keeping the sun off your skin may prevent easily seen and removed skin cancer, but it makes you 27X more likely to enjoy organ cancer you can’t easily see or cut off.

Nice…