Just one word: Wow!

There’s one caveat, however. Your dedicated commitment to making holistic lifestyle changes. These strategies are designed to work together, so that all factors are addressed in some way. Simply put, failing to address one of these factors, lowers the effectiveness of your attempts to address the others.

Any approach worthy of your best efforts must necessarily be holistic in nature. For optimal results, these strategies work together to boost emotional, mental, physical healing – naturally. And yes, after more than a century of being conditioned to think of our body and brain as distinct parts, we all need to keep reminding ourselves that the body, mind and emotional (spiritual) self are part of one system.

It’s all about taking a proactive approach to:

Learn what your body and mind need to be healthy.
Recognize what is toxic to your mental and physical health, and avoid or replace them with healthy options.
Accept that the care of your mental, emotional and physical self are intrinsically connected.
Become aware of your options and the power of your moment-by-moment choices.
Fully embrace the responsibility for self-directing your own healing with a holistic approach.
When you treat your mind, emotions and body as one system, the positive benefits not only strengthen your confidence and ability to regulate your emotions, but also transform your attitude toward emotional pain and health. A system operates like a baby mobile, thus, what affects one aspect affects the whole system.

Taken together, the above strategies give you a choice to make a determined commitment to take the reins as captain of your emotional and physical state of being, and to employ the available strategies to consciously steer your life in the direction of personal health and healing.

Ok, this link is brilliant and so important I’m going to cut and paste the text into the comment section in case it ever gets taken down. Simply, read it — but follow the link to the main site where the formatting isn’t so messed up!!!

There is only one problem: Scared Straight programs don’t work. Actually, it’s worse than that: They do more harm than good. Several well-designed studies have been conducted, in which at-risk youth were randomly assigned to take part in Scared Straight programs or to a control group that did not, and then all the kids were followed to see whether they got into trouble. (A good summary of these studies can be found here.) These studies found that the kids who took part in the scared straight programs were subsequently more likely to engage in criminal activity by 1 to 30 percent, with an average increase of 13 percent. As I note in my book, Redirect, the New Jersey program is ongoing and has served more than 50,000 kids. “Let’s do the math,” I said. “Using the 13 percent figure, we can estimate that the program has caused 6,500 kids to commit crimes they would not otherwise have committed.”

Why do scared straight programs backfire? No one knows for sure, but there are at least two possibilities. First, many of the kids who participate probably were not that inclined to join gangs or commit crimes to start with. Having convicts yell in their faces and tell them about prison rape may make them think, paradoxically, “Joining a gang must be pretty attractive if the authorities are going to such extremes to scare me out of it.” Second, there is evidence that bringing at risk teens together can backfire, because they try to impress each other about how tough they are. Think about it—many 15-year-olds care much more about what their peers think of them than what authority figures want them to do.

I realize there are those in my profession who regard this as serious damage to the reputation of such. Personally, I’m delighted more and more of this is finally getting published.

It’s been so many years of psychology throwing it’s weight behind AA style interventions, bootcamps, scared straight programs and, by doing so, even tacitly giving acceptance to the thinking underlying the (Sometimes even barbaric) behaviour modification camps fundamentalism has forced same sex attracted children into in an attempt to reorient those who do not in any way desire reparative therapy. It’s really only in the last five years or so that the psychological community seems to have developed enough of a spine to stand up to the fear/shame based bogus interventions of these ruling mega-powers of, “Therapy.”

In part, it’s just because enough information is leaking out via the internet that the general public is starting to get cynical about the actual effectiveness of what they are offering — and, in part, it is a result of ceasing to allow these organizations to stand by their own numbers and aggressively subjecting them to external audit and study.

When we do, it’s the sort of stark numbers this study is reporting: 6,500 more criminals on the streets then would otherwise have been there and $487,500,000.00 spent on incarcerating them each for only one year in the name of nothing more then a baseless and failed ideology of shame, fear and punishment — to say nothing of the cost to their victims…

Think about it:

If doing NOTHING results in 6,500 less young people being converted into hardened criminals, I wonder what a little love and compassion would do? And, what if we added a little group therapy to the mix for these kids? What if we threw in free counseling of any sort for all of their families as well? Think we would have a prayer of even spending 10% of that number – even if we tried??? (That’s 286,764 free counseling sessions BTW…)

What if we even tried REALLY HARD to provide unnecessary counseling???

I was checking out a facebook posting in which people were asked to suggest one additional verse to the Bible. What was interesting was the number that said directly or indirectly that we were expected to think for ourselves. One of Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples was that they were no longer slaves but heirs. Being an heir means responsibility. It means that we need to think about what we are doing.

That’s right. God doesn’t want us to be stupid. If you haven’t read Lincoln Cannon’s excellent article on faith and thinking please do so. Faith and thought are not mutually exclusive. Faith and science are not enemies. These are lies that you have been told in order to make the world simpler. They are lies and they are insidious ones. It is this thinking that has kept the debate around global warming going long past the time that we should have been making radical changes to our way of life.

There are lots of people who are too lazy to think. They are not all religious people. Read any collection of comments on a youtube video that mentions any element of religion and you will be astounded at the stupidity of the responses, both religious and atheist. Because the world doesn’t work the way you want it to is not proof that God doesn’t exist; because the world seems work the way you want it to isn’t proof that God does exist.

Religion doesn’t make people stupid. Laziness makes people stupid. I know that religion is on Hank’s list of things that damage your intelligence. But I would argue that the causation is backward, the less intelligent chose a religion that won’t force them to think too much. Religion properly applied needs intelligence. To be faithful in the way that Lincoln talks about takes hard work. We look at drugs or neuro-stimulation as ways of enhancing morality, yet religious disciplines have been doing that for millennia.

All I can say is that this guy should have his title made into bumper stickers…

Notice that one of the foods listed under “unprocessed red meat”—and likely a major contributor to that category—is hamburger, the stuff fast-food dreams are made of. Although this study tracked whole grain intake, it didn’t track refined grain intake, so we know right away we can’t totally account for the white-flour buns wrapped around those burgers (or many of the other barely-qualifying-as-food components of a McDonald’s meal). And unless these cohorts were chock full of folks who deliberately sought out decent organic meat, it’s also worth noting that the unprocessed ground beef they were eating probably contained that delightful ammonia-treated pink slime that’s had conventional meat consumers in an uproar lately.

It’s irritatingly stupid to me that these pretend scientists are even allowed the airtime (by an even more clueless media) that lets them freak people out just to get their 30 seconds in the spotlight. But, I’ve had too many clients impacted by this lunacy not to post something on it.

The link above is as much a rebuttal of this year’s hysteria about meat — as it is a study in how real scientists think about data, how they reason and how they debunk fanciful assumptions about both.

It’s so well worth reading — over a delicious dinner of well trimmed, organic, range-fed steak with a garden salad, a glass of fine red wine and the one you love…

DA: You are talking about so many different levels and layers with the question “is it hyper-sexualized?” Compared to my understanding from Tremper (Longman III) about the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures, no, we’re not hyper-sexualized. If you compare where we are even in the context of other modern cultures’ engagement with sexuality, we’re still somewhat restrained, there is still some regard. Who’s the judge of the term “hyper-sexualization?”

Now, everyone knows at some level there is a profound flaw [in our culture] and there are many efforts to try and gain a window into what is wrong and what needs to be done, I still think there is a strong (and particularly within the conservative culture) notion from many that we live in a repressed culture.

So, it’s a battleground and one in that we need to search the frame of reference. There is still a significant restraint on our TV’s compared to European, South American, and Asian cultures.

TOJ: You mentioned that the conservative end of our culture is still repressed, could you maybe give some examples of that repression?

DA: I spoke or used to speak for Family Life Ministries in their arena events, and, nobody in the leadership did this, but several people suggested that I not use the words penis and vagina during the sex talk that I gave in the arena event. In part because just hearing the words penis and vagina was so unnerving, or supposedly unnerving for a large portion of the audience.

But, the people who told me that, how do they know? They didn’t run focus groups, they just had the sensibility. Particularly whenever I talk about sexuality, in more conservative circles, I’m often told that people have never heard such rank, honest, but also compelling pictures of sexuality.

A brilliant interview of Dan B. Allender where he calls the problem like it is. It’s not some illusionary fundamentalist notion of hyper sexualization in our culture — it’s the way we have merged sex and violence.

And an even more brilliant segment where he inadvertently exposes his solution and how that has played out with his own daughter:

I remember when my wife Becky took our daughter Annie, away to talk about sex for a weekend, and one thing we did was when she came back was to give her as much time with me after every time she was with her mom to talk about sex. This was a 12 year-old sitting down, she’s now with her father in a formal context to talk about sex, and one of her first questions is: “Do you and mom have oral sex and do you like it?”

Now that is parenting that really protects the heart of a little girl!!!

The way in which the next generation has been exposed to Christianity this past decade has been toxic to the faith. Christianism isn’t just corrosive of our political order; it is deeply destructive to Christianity itself. Go to any college campus and ask the uncommitted their views of Christianity. What I hear is intolerance, anger, anti-gay prejudice, sexual obsession, and hatred of Islam. How many people Rick Santorum has scared off Christianity for life is beyond reckoning. And the bile directed at gay people has been deeply damaging in getting across to people what Jesus’ message really was: which is, in many cases, almost the opposite of that of his current most prominent representatives in the media.

Some articles are so stunningly clear thinking and incisive they virtually demand nothing but a repost. It’s short, sweet and brilliant and, even if you don’t read the article, at least read these two paragraphs:

Most “nones” have not opted out of religion as such, but have opted out of affiliation with organized religion. Among Christians (the great majority of all survey respondents) there are different reasons for this disaffection. The two authors are very probably correct that, broadly speaking, those who are turned off by Evangelicals and conservative Catholics do so because they don’t like the repressive sexual morality of those churches (the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has not helped).

But the “nones” have also exited from mainline Protestantism, which has been much more accommodating to the liberationist ethic. Here, I think, there has been frustration with what my friend and colleague Thomas Luckmann long ago called “secularization from within”—the stripping away of the transcendent dimensions of the Gospel, and its reduction to conventional good deeds, popular psychotherapy and (mostly left-of-center) political agendas. Put differently: My hypothesis implies that some “nones” are put off by churches that preach a repressive morality, some others by churches whose message is mainly secular.

In short: Christendom has finally figured out there is a problem and people are leaving. We didn’t ask what the problem was, we didn’t even think it through. The conservatives just judged everyone even more forcefully (Because that is what they always did) and the liberals just watered down the message of the Gospel even more (Because that is what they always did).

Stunning if you think about it. The logical response to the utter failure of a system is, apparently, to work the system harder.

Neither even bothered to check in with the radical revolutionary that was (And still is) the Jesus that threatened every system He ever met…

This is, without a doubt, the best grasp of what needs to be fixed about the mess that passes as our education system I have ever seen. I started reading it just to see what he had to say, and ended up not being able to stop reading until I had read the entire book in one sitting. 

If you have children, care about some or are a teacher/school system leader, you need to read this book!

Disclaimer: There ARE many, MANY home school families which are simply that – families, often with one parent a former professional educator, which have chosen to educate their children at home. We can certainly debate the relative merits of those systems! But, in all of that exploration, it needs to be understood that this post IS NOT ABOUT THOSE HOME SCHOOLERS!!!

FYI: Quiverfull is basically a website pretending to be a populist movement that uses notions of its own grandeur mixed with nonsense theology and fear-mongering about contraception as a means of first legitimizing itself and then allowing its adherents (Read: Bill Gothard etc…) a mechanism for inflicting it upon others. It is as much an expression of a fundamentalist evangelical world view as it is an attempt to remake society into its own patriarchal image through a strategy of aggressive and unrestricted reproduction merged with a system of guilt and fear based indoctrination for children done under the guise of home schooling, courtship based dating and purity ring ceremonies.

The two links below are simply heart felt reflections of the stories of (now adult) children subjected to this fundamentalist ideology and the damage it left on their hearts, minds and their ability to form healthy intimate relationships:

The first is about what education actually took place – or not.

The second is about the impact of an ideology, the courtship movement, that has expanded well beyond the borders of this fringe group.

They NEED to be heard.

Both of these posts are brilliant in their own right at exposing what so many have predicted for years would be the fallout of this dynasty, but the second author makes a statement that simply must be highlighted:

Faced with failure, most people don’t accept their mistakes but instead cling more dogmatically to the same beliefs that created their errors.

Truer words have rarely been spoken. Think about it:

In a world where a desperate cry to fundamentally change education is coming even from technology authors (Seth Godin), where churches are emptying in droves, where those remaining seem to have the highest failure of adherence to the moral/sexual ideology they espouse and where the financial ideology ultra-right findamentalism promoted has seen its innate insustainability become the genesis of riots in the streets, one would think that we would see a wholesale departure from those ideals.

Or something… 

Actually, they’re alive, well, massively expanding for the 2012 season and busy blitzing this across the Internet…

Because, unless people with hearts for freedom stop hiding our heads in the sand, acting like this is just some other theological perspective and not speaking out on the reality that this is about the most harsh form of subjugation that could be devised for women short of adding a burqa to the picture, they’re never gonna knock it off…

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.