CD of the Week: MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

It’s got a Rolling Stones Sound Plus Sgt. Peppers, Joy Division and a hint of modern post-modern music. delightful. trippy.

Ooops, you might have an STD…

Web site allows anonymous warning of STD infections
Reuters: http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – A Web site that enables people with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to send anonymous email warnings to their partners could help slow a rise in new infections, a New York health official said.

InSpot.org uses the E-Card model to send messages like “I’m So Sorry” to notify people that they may have been exposed to a disease. It also offers information about getting tested and treatment.

“Making use of some of the emerging technologies makes sense,” said Sue Blank, of New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“We’re getting the word out to the community.”

Blank hopes the site will help to reduce new syphilis infections in New York which rose by 56 percent during the first half of the current fiscal year.

Users of the site, which went online in San Francisco in 2004, can choose from a selection of messages.

“It provides an easy, convenient, anonymous way for people to be responsible about notifying their partners about a possible exposure to an STD,” said Deb Levine, of the San Francisco Internet Sexuality Information Services, which created InSpot with the city’s Department of Public Health.

There are 15 million new cases of STDs in the United States each year, according to the Web site. The rise in syphilis in New York mirrors a national trend that shows syphilis has risen sharply among gay and bisexual men in the United States this decade.
Levine said that in San Francisco, syphilis rates have fallen since the site was introduced.

In addition to New York and San Francisco, the Web site is now active in six other U.S. cities. It has also been launched in eight U.S. states, as well as two Canadian cities and Romania.

Hamburglar meet Tacopirate

Robber only wants tacos
Daily Bulletin: LINK

FONTANA – An armed robber who sneaked up on a bicyclist Sunday night didn’t want the man’s money, wallet or anything else of great value.

He wanted tacos.

The victim, a 35-year-old Fontana man, had just bought about $20 in tacos from a stand at San Bernardino and Fontana avenues and was riding home when the bandit confronted him. “He approached him from behind, saying, `Give me your tacos,”‘ said police Sgt. Jeff Decker. “He grabbed the bag of tacos, punched him in the face and began to flee.”

The victim demanded his tacos back when they were taken.
“The suspect then pointed what appeared to be a black handgun at the victim,” Decker said.

The taco bandit, standing about five feet from the victim, threatened to kill him, then ran.
Police said the robbery was at 9:15 p.m. on Hawthorne Avenue east of Catawba Avenue.
The suspect is described as a 25- to 30-year-old man, 5 feet 10 inches tall and 190 pounds. He has brown hair and eyes and wore a black hooded sweat shirt. The man also had a long mustache.
Decker said food robberies are not uncommon when the victim is delivering pizzas, but he considered this crime to be odd.
“Doing an armed robbery for tacos, that’s a little out there,” he said.

I’d Have the Order of Business, with Sex on the Side

The Business Trip (X-Rated)
New York Times: LINK

Because your on business does not mean you are just allowed to commit infidelity. you’re alone? BOO HOO! here’s my sympathy.

Two European business executives who travel to the world’s most glamorous cities like to get the most out of the endless launch parties, art fairs and exhibitions they attend. But when the fun is over, the two men agree not to speak about their exploits again: not with each other, nor with anyone else.

Their strategy is based on the Las Vegas advertising slogan that many business travelers employ when their behavior might be considered indecorous: “What happens here, stays here.”

Business travel presents the temptation to indulge in the kind of activity executives wouldn’t want their mothers to know about. Often that includes visits to strip clubs and one-night stands.

“You’re in the same industry, you go to the same shows and that’s when it happens,” said Jeffrey Pataky, vice president for sales at a software company in Phoenix, describing what he often saw on the road. “Everyone is just sleeping around. It’s funny and it’s sad.”

Ian Sanders, a London-based business and marketing consultant, remembers when he was single and working in the music and television business. He says work often felt as if he were on the road with a rock ’n’ roll band. “You’d have a meeting till 10 p.m., then everyone would go to the bar and occasionally you’d end up in bed with someone.”

Mr. Sanders, author of the career advice book “Leap! Quit Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free,” said there was constant pressure to party: “To say you were tired was frowned upon: taboo. You’d be viewed as a party pooper. The whole thing on a business trip is you have to be taking part, married or single. You’re at a hotel, another destination, flirting is part of the territory and maybe you end up in bed.”

Dr. Debi Yohn, a counseling psychologist based in Shanghai, sees how affairs on business trips continue beyond the one-night stand. “When you are traveling, you feel alone, you’ve had too much to drink, and things lose their perspective,” she wrote in an e-mail interview. “You do it once, get away with it … do it again. … Then it seems O.K.”

Dr. Yohn counsels expatriate families in their marriage troubles and explained that affairs are very common for men and for women who travel or live abroad.

“If you do not have a good marriage, or you are not having sexual relations with your partner, or you have just had another argument with your mate, you are ripe for an attraction to occur.”

Mr. Pataky said his marriage broke up, in part, because of the pressures of business travel. He said his wife feared what might be happening while he was traveling. “I had lots of opportunities, but I never did,” Mr. Pataky said.

Mr. Sanders counsels: “Seasoned business travelers need hard and fast rules. You go to bed early, you hang out in your room and watch a movie, do some e-mails and get some sleep.”

And what of the unwanted advance?

When asked for strategies in dealing with those, Terry Neese, president and co-founder of the Women Impacting Public Policy Institute, which advocates for women in business, said, “I have always found that if you act with professionalism and show integrity and total focus on your business, less of those things happen.” If that doesn’t do it, Ms. Neese suggests saying: “I’m not interested in where you’re coming from. I’m here to attend the conference.”

There are ways to avoid such awkward moments. On an airline, excuse yourself from the conversation and put on your headphones, says Paul A. Tucci, chief operating officer of a software developer, Iwerk, in Royal Oak, Mich.

Mr. Tucci, who wrote “Traveling Everywhere: How to Survive a Global Business Trip,” is an expert in avoiding people he doesn’t want to talk to on planes. He provides this advice: “Make up the name of the hotel, if asked, and never give out your cellphone number or e-mail address. Just smile, be caring and assertive and say, ‘Why don’t you give me yours, and if I have time, I’ll e-mail you,’ and be done with it.”

If necessary, he suggests, switch to an empty seat on the plane.

Not all executives get even the most obvious of messages. Lydie Thomas, a French woman who runs her own crafts Web site, artchestra.com, from California, said a salesman at a company she once worked for rang her hotel phone at night and then later tried the door. She told him to leave her alone, and the next day he acted as though nothing had happened. “It was very disrespectful of him to pursue me after I clearly told him I wasn’t interested.“

Harassment while on business trips isn’t something that only women have to deal with.

Kevin Davidson, a public relations executive in the entertainment industry remembers a similar problem he had with a female client who got too touchy. “It was frustrating because I was out on the road by myself. I reached out to my boss and asked what I should do.” His boss was unsympathetic, and reminded him he had work to do, to “just get it done.”

“Being away from home gives people a license to be somebody else.” Mr. Davidson added. “They feel they can leave regular lives behind and behave badly.”

World News: Trial Dejure, Take Our Women, Track Suit Resigns

China: Take Our Women
Weird Asian News: LINK
“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said. “We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.”

Mao circled back to the offer a few minutes later. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

Kissinger noted Mao was “improving his offer,” and the chairman is on record then saying, “We have too many women … They give birth to children and our children are too many.”

“It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied. “We will have to study it.”

The conversation occurred in 1973 in Beijing, China and as far as we could find… the promised 10 million Chinese women were not given to the US.
Spain: Real Women Need New Sizes
New York Times: LINK
After a yearlong study by the Health Ministry that included using laser scans to measure more than 10,000 female volunteers aged 12 to 70, the government hopes to persuade the fashion industry to devise a new standard for clothing sizes that would fit most women. The study concluded that Spanish women were not the very skinny tall types that designers idealize, but rather fell into three main body types: hourglass, pear shape and cylinder. It also found that 4 of 10 women had trouble finding clothes to fit, mainly because sizes varied from store to store and because what was on the racks was too small.

South Korea: First Trial By Jury
New York Times: LINK
A trial with a jury was held at a local court in Taegu, the first in Korea’s legal history. The nine-member jury heard the case of a 27-year-old man accused of assaulting a 70-year-old woman while trying to rob her house. After hours of deliberation, most jurors recommended a two-to-four year suspended prison sentence. Their verdict, and others to follow, was not binding; the final say still rests with a judge. “Still,” a court spokesman said, “the introduction of a jury will enhance the people’s confidence in court verdicts in our country.” In the trial on Tuesday, the judge later announced a four-year suspended sentence. “The judge concluded the jury’s decision was logical,” the spokesman said.

Cuba: Fidel Resigns

No more Power in a track suit, who’s next to don the track suit? I say Kim Jong Ill or Gordon Brown. or maybe Snoop Dogg when he becomes Presidizzle, my nizzle. or whoever Nike gets to sponsor for dictator next. maybe Nike Castro III?

Serbia: Kosovo Declares independence
Supporters: USA, GB, FR, GR, and GREECE?
Deniers: Serbia, Russia

Anyways, Good Luck. I’m sure you’ll become a nation, just hope you can sustain life in the sorry excuse for a Moon Landing filming site. (it’s barren is all I’m saying)

Daily Chuckle

Overheard in New York: LINK
I’m Gonna Win Every Hipster Fight!

Black hipster #1: Oh my god! These jeans are sick! They’re lime green and making my eyeballs hurt!
Black hipster #2: Oooh, oooh, show me!
Black hipster #1, exiting dressing room: Man, my dick hurts ’cause they so tight! But daaamn… I look good!

–American Apparel
(submitted by Jacki Isett – ;-) )

Finding a Job Made Easy

Finding your dream job takes more than nerve
USA Today: LINK

In 1999, Brian Kurth liked his job at Ameritech and was making good money, but he wasn’t fulfilled — and wasn’t going to be.

As he writes in Test-Drive Your Dream Job, “Making the world better through broadband technology just didn’t set me on fire.”

Kurth often dreamed about his ideal job, spending more time fantasizing than taking action. In 1999, he found the drive and the nerve to plan a new career.

He used an online company that provided short-term tryouts for various jobs but found none that excited him. Then inspiration struck. After setting up a domain name, he launched a company called VocationVacations, which helps people identify and find their ultimate jobs.

Clients choose from a list of internship-like experiences, ranging from bison rancher to TV producer, from chocolatier to not-for-profit director. They pay a fee ($900 to the mid-$1,000, not including accommodations) and embark on a one- to three-day immersion experience with a mentor.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Mark | Ameritech

Test-Drive Your Dream Job is a valuable how-to resource. It includes lists of questions for potential mentors, tips for creating a career-change action plan and sample timelines.

Kurth notes that remaining realistic is crucial: “Expect it to take twice as long as you think it will to become successful and to cost twice what you expected to get there.”

Anecdotes reveal how some people discover their ideal jobs aren’t dreamy after all. For example, 39-year-old Mark explored his dream of becoming a chef, only to realize that “cooking was a passion … but it was not his career. His career was sales.”

Kurth says disappointment can be positive. “The point was to learn those things now, risk-free, before you invested years and dollars in a career you didn’t love.”

Test-Drive Your Dream Job nicely pairs career coaching with practical tools for creating a more fulfilling lifestyle. “Going after my dream job didn’t require the daredevil leap. … It required a series of small, incremental steps,” Kurth explains.

The book also benefits from Kurth’s openness about his initial fear of trying something new and his grief when a long-term relationship became a casualty of his new approach to life. The mix of candor, concrete advice and real-life stories adds up to a must-read for those who are ready to shove aside the status quo and take a chance at a more satisfying career.

A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others’ Fate
New York Times: LINK

SAN FRANCISCO — Is your start-up worthy of investment? Ask the venture investor in a box. Two former Oxford University students are getting attention (and seed money) in Silicon Valley for developing new technology that automates aspects of the venture capital decision-making process.

Kirill Makharinsky, 21, and Bob Goodson, 27, call their software a “start-up predictor,” and they say their company, YouNoodle.com, might give an edge to venture capitalists and other investors trying to decide whether to sink money into an early-stage company.

“We don’t want to replace investors,” Mr. Goodson said. “We simply believe that industries of comparable size have utilized artificial intelligence to inform decision-making.”

“Give us some information, and we’ll give you some idea of what the company will be worth in five years,” he said.

Starting Monday, the company is emerging from a private test and is opening up parts of its Web site and services to the public.

The idea of a start-up predictor has drawn skepticism. Some venture capitalists say that the idea of using formulas or historical data from past deals to predict how other start-ups will do in the future has been tried many times in vain.

Paul S. Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and the author of the Infectious Greed blog, said that his industry was indeed inefficient at picking winners; typically, 90 percent of venture investments are not home runs. But he does not particularly trust a company that professes to be able to do better than venture capitalists.

“If their tool did such a good job, they’d raise a fund themselves and beat the tar out of us,” Mr. Kedrosky said. “It’s hard to imagine what their mathematical combination of factors is.”

On that point, the founders of YouNoodle.com are not forthcoming. They say their algorithm uses sophisticated modeling pertaining to how social capital and networks can affect an organization’s performance.

They also say that they are focusing in general on assessing the experiences and social and business contacts of entrepreneurs who start a company, and on how the entrepreneurs within that company might fit with one another. They will not disclose precisely what factors they use to predict a start-up’s success, or how their algorithm processes those factors.

They certainly have their own well-heeled network. YouNoodle’s financial backers include Paypal co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, and the Founders Fund, a venture capital firm. YouNoodle has not disclosed the amount of its seed financing.

The company is also is trying to build a network of early-stage companies, and to provide tools that can be used for business plan competitions, businesses school classes and other emerging entrepreneurial ventures. It provides those tools free, but in so doing the users provide data about their new ventures that YouNoodle uses to refine its predictor algorithm.

The company plans to give away a simple version of its predictor but will charge investors who want the newer and more powerful version of the software.

So the question arises: Has YouNoodle used the predictor to determine if it will itself succeed?

“So far, we haven’t run ourselves through it,” Mr. Goodson said, adding that the results could prove baffling. “If it says we’ll fail, and it’s right, that’s something of a paradox.”

State News

Tennessee: State Requires DNA sample for people arrested on violent felony charges. problem is that no funding is put towards this.
Why is this important? because if you get the DNA test, you may be arrested for outstanding charges. kind of like background checks when being pulled over for speeding. which I think is great.
The Tennessean: LINK
Nevada: Man puts $5000 hit on himself because of fatal illness. but proved to be a hoax. and people tried to collect. (so they tried to kill him, if you didn’t catch that)
Fox News: LINK
Florida: Pastor calls for a 30-day sex challenge. called on congregation that was married to try to fix the marriage with 30 days of sex, daily.
Kiro TV: LINK

Prejudice Among Patients

‘Have You Ever Been in Psychotherapy, Doctor?’
New York Times: LINK

A curious thing happened to one of my psychiatric residents not long ago. One of his patients caught him off guard with a challenging question: “Have you ever been in psychotherapy yourself?”
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Brian Stauffer

He was uncomfortable answering the question directly, so he spent some time trying to discover why it mattered to his patient. “He wanted to know if I knew what it felt like to be ill and helpless,” the resident said.

It was an interesting question, and it made me wonder whether one could be a good therapist without having been in psychotherapy. If the answer was no, it would appear to be at odds with what we do in the rest of medical practice.

After all, we don’t require neurologists to have a spinal tap or cardiac surgeons to have undergone bypass surgery before performing these medical procedures.

But there is something special about psychotherapy, I think, that sets it apart. Of course, the doctor-patient relationship is important in any clinical encounter. But in therapy, the relationship is the very instrument of the treatment.

If your cardiologist does not have the best bedside manner but effectively treats your hypertension, you might not be happy, but at least you are heading in the right medical direction. In contrast, if you do not have a rapport with your therapist, then the treatment is useless.

To be any good, a cardiologist should be an expert in the use of his instrument, whether the stethoscope or the cardiac catheter. But how does this principle apply to psychotherapists?

One way to think about it is that a therapist should not start exploring a patient’s mind without really knowing what is in his own. Therapists, just like their patients, bring their own life experiences into treatment, which influence their feelings about their patients — a process called countertransference.

Therapists who do not understand their own countertransference run the risk not just of misunderstanding their patients, but of confusing their own hang-ups with those of their patients.

Once a resident asked me to help him deal with a difficult patient, whom he actually dreaded seeing.

It was easy to see why. The patient, a 35-year-old man, told me that my resident was incapable of understanding him and then angrily dismissed his therapist as inexperienced (right) and unfeeling (wrong).

My resident turned out to have plenty of feeling that he did not know what to do with. He felt angry, humiliated and trapped. This patient, who felt disappointed and mistreated by the world, was simply giving the therapist a taste of his own narcissism.

It did not help that this patient bore a striking resemblance to my resident’s older brother, whom he found critical and demeaning. The resident had never had therapy himself, but just realizing the origin of his negative feelings helped him deal with this difficult patient.

Nowadays, most psychiatric residents finish their training without having had any personal psychotherapy. This is a departure from the past, when psychotherapy reigned supreme and a personal psychoanalysis was a rite of passage for trainees.

The explosion of neuroscience, along with the pressure of market forces, has had a powerful effect on the training of young psychiatrists. Not all of it is good.

Being a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, I could not be more thrilled with the promise of brain science. And there is no question that we have more effective biological treatments for the major psychiatric disorders than at any point in the past.

But even as we have been swept off our feet by sexy neuroscience, my field is in danger of losing touch with the rich psychological life of patients, something that is reflected in the waning popularity of therapy during residency training.

Does it really matter? After all, psychiatrists are too expensive and too few to treat the vast majority of patients who need psychotherapy. Psychiatrists of the future are more likely going to be consultants in the treatment of patients with the most serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, mood disorders and complicated substance abuse.

All true, but we are far from understanding the ultimate cause of most psychiatric disorders, despite the promise of brain science. We can effectively relieve symptoms and increase functioning, but we still have to help our patients live with illness.

Psychiatrists who have had the humbling experience of therapy themselves know something of what it feels like to be a patient — the sense of frustration, anxiety and dependence it entails.

As such, they can better understand the emotional reactions patients have to their illness — and to their doctors.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the kind of psychiatrist I would want taking care of me.

A Look at Prostitution

The Wrong Target
New York Times: LINK

A New York City police detective and his girlfriend have been accused of kidnapping and forcing a 13-year-old girl into prostitution.

According to the Queens district attorney’s office, the detective, Wayne Taylor, and the girlfriend, Zalika Brown, would parade the girl at parties and other places where adult men had gathered and force her to have sex with them for money — $40 for oral sex, $80 for intercourse.

The child was an investment. The couple allegedly told her that she had been purchased for $500 — purchased, like the slaves of old, only this time for use as a prostitute.

Other than the fact that one of the accused in this case is a police detective, there was nothing unusual about this tale of trafficking in young female flesh.

Our perspective is twisted. It was a big story when a television newsman was crude and thoughtless enough to use the term “pimped out” in a reference to Chelsea Clinton. The comment generated outrage — as it should have — and the newsman was suspended. But if someone actually pimps out a 13-year-old child, and even if that someone is alleged to be a police detective, it generates a collective yawn.

Across the country, young girls by the many thousands — children — are being drawn into the hellishly dangerous world of prostitution. They are raped, beaten and exploited in every way imaginable.

As part of the staggeringly lucrative commercial sex trade, the role of these children is to satisfy the sexual demands of johns who in most cases do not fit the stereotype of a pedophile.

“Many of the guys who buy sex with children would never consider themselves pedophiles,” said Rachel Lloyd, founder of an organization in New York called GEMS that offers help to under-age girls in the sex trade. “They’re not necessarily out there looking for 12-year-olds or teenagers. They just kind of don’t care.

“They feel like they have the right to buy sex from someone, and they prefer it to be someone who looks younger and cleaner and less drug-addicted.”

In the case of the accused New York City detective, the authorities acted promptly and effectively. The girl managed to escape and notified the police, who investigated immediately. Detective Taylor and Ms. Brown were arrested and the case has been turned over to the office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. Both are in custody.

But law enforcement does not always respond in a positive or constructive way. It is common across the country for under-age girls engaged in prostitution to be arrested, which is bizarre when you consider that it is a serious crime — statutory rape — for an adult to have sex with a minor.

If no money is involved, the youngster is considered a victim. But if the man pays for the sex — even if the money is going to the pimp, which is so often the case — the child is considered a prostitute and thus subject in many venues to arrest and incarceration.

“We often see the girls arrested and the pimps and the johns go free,” said Carol Smolenski, the head of Ecpat-USA, a group that fights the sexual exploitation of children. “One of the big problems is that there is this whole set of child sex exploiters who are not targeted as exceptionally bad guys.”

What’s needed is a paradigm shift. Society (and thus law enforcement) needs to view any adult who sexually exploits a child as a villain, and the exploited child as a victim of that villainy. If a 35-year-old pimp puts a 16-year-old girl on the street and a 30-year-old john pays to have sex with her, how is it reasonable that the girl is most often the point in that triangle that is targeted by law enforcement?

A measure of how far we still have to go is the fact that some enlightened officials in the state of New York tried to shift that paradigm last year and failed. The proposed Safe Harbor Act would have ended the practice of criminalizing kids too young to legally consent to sex. Under the law, authorities would have no longer been able to charge children with prostitution, but would have had to offer such youngsters emotional counseling, medical care and shelter, if necessary.

Legislative passage was thwarted in large part because prosecutors made the case that it was necessary to hold the threat of jail over the heads of these children as a way of coercing them to testify against pimps. In other words: If you don’t tell us who hurt you, little girl, we’re going to put you in jail.

It was an utterly specious case, filled to the bursting point with tragic implications and unworthy of a civilized society.