Sunday, March 31, 2013

Keep Drinks Upright with a Roll of Tape

Keep Drinks Upright with a Roll of Tape If you find yourself in a situation where your drink might get bumped, sticking it inside a big roll of tape can keep it from spilling.

This trick could come in handy at a party where someone might knock it over, but it has its uses in everyday life as well. I might use this at my computer desk or when playing video games so my drink won't get upended by any wires, and it could also save you from a big headache at your workbench, where an erratic swing of a hammer could send it flying.

My Drink Anti-Tipping Device | Reddit

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/W1uzodpvz3Y/use-a-roll-of-tape-to-keep-your-drink-upright

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Texas county district attorney and wife found dead

(Reuters) - Authorities in Texas were investigating the deaths of the Kaufman County criminal district attorney and his wife on Saturday, in what news reports said was a shooting at their home.

The deaths of Criminal District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife follows the January slaying of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, who was shot and killed as he walked from his car to a Dallas-area courthouse.

"We are investigating the deaths of the Kaufman County district attorney and his wife," said Kaufman County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lieutenant Justin Lewis.

Lewis said the investigation was at a preliminary stage and that he had no further information.

The Dallas Morning News, citing unnamed sources, said that the couple was found shot at their home.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix, Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/texas-county-district-attorney-wife-found-dead-032732367.html

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Group plans free shotgun give-away to boost safety in Tucson

By Brad Poole

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) - A non-profit group plans to hand out free shotguns to residents of Tucson, Arizona in an effort to show that more guns mean less crime.

The Houston, Texas-based Armed Citizens Project has raised about $12,000 or enough to fund about 36 weapons, Shaun McClusky, a Tucson realtor who launched the Tucson effort, told Reuters on Friday.

The group has begun tracking illegal activity in three crime-ridden neighborhoods and will continue to monitor the crime rate after guns are distributed.

"This is about public safety. This is about people protecting themselves," said McClusky, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in the city's last election.

Each single-shot weapon will come with a lock and training. Single-shot weapons were chosen because they are inexpensive and are unlikely to be stolen as criminals don't want them, McClusky said.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, a Democrat who has advocated for stricter gun controls in Tucson does not agree with the underlying premise of the giveaway program.

"To suggest that giving guns to people in high-crime neighborhoods will make them safer is ridiculous. I think it's dangerous," Kozachik said.

He called the program a "solution seeking a problem," and predicted city residents will reject the program as it becomes more widely publicized.

Tucson rocketed to the forefront of the nation's gun-ownership debate on January 8, 2011, when college dropout Jared Loughner opened fire at a political meet-and-greet with former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Six people died and 13 were injured, including Giffords who was shot in the head with Loughner's legally-obtained Glock handgun. She later resigned from the House of Representatives to focus on her recovery.

Loughner, who was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia, pleaded guilty to murder and other charges stemming from the rampage and is serving seven consecutive life sentences and an additional 140 years, without the possibility of parole.

Earlier this year, Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, founded the non-profit Americans for Responsible Solutions to advocate changes in federal gun laws. Giffords and Kelly are gun owners and support background checks for prospective gun owners and limits on the size of ammunition clips.

The Tucson gun giveaway is part of a broader program based in Texas. University of Houston graduate student Kyle Coplen founded the Armed Citizen Project hoping to show that crime rates drop when more residents are armed and trained to use the weapons.

"In training and arming law-abiding residents, we are saturating neighborhoods with defensive weapons, and measuring the effect that a heavily armed society has on crime rates," the group's website says.

McClusky agrees that guns can be an effective deterrent to crime. His current effort will include signs in each neighborhood telling potential criminals the guns have been distributed.

"You won't know where, and you won't know how many," he said.

The effort is locally supported by Black Weapons Armory, a gun shop that specializes in assault-style weapons. The shop will provide background checks and shotguns, said owner Tommy Rompel.

It will be a few weeks before the shop can get guns to residents, because a wave of "panic buying" followed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut, which left 26 people dead, including 20 children.

Virtually every type of weapon the shop sells - handguns, shotguns and assault-style weapons - is on back order, Rompel said.

"After the Sandy Hook shooting, the entire nation basically went crazy buying guns," he said.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Leslie Gevirtz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/group-plans-free-shotgun-away-boost-safety-tucson-224736420.html

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Drones over America: How unmanned fliers are already helping cops

It was getting dark, and the sheriff of Nelson County, N.D., was in a standoff with a family of suspected cattle rustlers. They were armed, and the last thing anybody wanted was a shoot out.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which monitors police radio chatter, offered to help. Their Predator was flying back to its roost at the Grand Forks Air Force base and could provide aerial support. Did the sheriff want the assist?

Yep.

"We were able to detect that one of the sons was sitting at the end of the driveway with a gun. We also knew that there were small children involved," Sheriff Kelly Janke told NBC News, remembering that tricky encounter in the early summer of 2011. "Someone would have gotten seriously injured if we had gone in on the farm that night." He decided to wait.

The next day, the drone gave them an edge again by helping them choose the safest moment to make a move. "We were able to surprise them ? took them into custody," Janke said. They also collected six stolen cows.

Rodney Brossart, the arrested farmer, sued the state, in part because of the cop's use of a drone. But a district judge ruled that the Predator's service was not untoward.

When advocates express concern about government drones threatening people's privacy, the Brossart case is one they bring up. It's one of the first instances of a flying robot doing a cop's dirty work, and this kind of intervention is likely to be more and more commonplace, as the FAA fulfills a congressional mandate to increase its granting of drone permits ? certificates of authorization, or COAs.

Cops and flying robots
At the moment, there are only 327 active COAs, all held by these organizations, and all for unarmed crafts, of course. A tiny sliver of these permits are in the hands of law enforcement agencies, and from them, we're seeing the first glimpses of drone use in policing and emergency response.

"The FAA has approved us to cover a 16-county area," Sheriff Bob Rost of Grand Forks County, N.D., said of their COA. "To look for missing children, to look for escaped criminals and in the case of emergencies." In the spring, they will use two mini-copter drones ? a trusty DraganFlyer X6 and an AeroVironment Qube ? to check on flooded farms.

The police department in Arlington, Texas, also recently got FAA clearance to fly their drones after two years of testing. The two battery-powered Leptron Avenger helicopter drones won't be used for high-speed chases or routine patrol, the department explains. In fact, the crafts will be driven in a truck to where they're needed, and when they're launched to scope out incidents, local air traffic control will be informed.

In Mesa County, Colo., the police department has used drones to find missing people, do an aerial landfill survey and help out firefighters at a burning church. For them, it's seen as a cost-cutting technology.

"It's the Wal-Mart version of what we'd normally get at Saks Fifth Avenue," said Benjamin Miller, who leads the drones program in Mesa County, comparing drones to manned helicopters that would otherwise give police officers help from the sky.

In Seattle, the police department received an FAA permit ? but had to give back its drones when the mayor banned their use, following protests in October 2012.

Protests and red tape
"Hasn't anyone heard of George Orwell's '1984'?" the Seattle Times quoted a protester as saying. "This is the militarization of our streets and now the air above us."

Protesters, not just in Seattle, seek more legal definition of what a drone can or can't do, and debate whether or not current laws sufficiently protect citizens from unauthorized surveillance and other abuses.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks of police drones as an inevitability ? "We're going to have them," he recently said in a radio interview ? while those on the police (and drone) side say the fears are unfounded.

"This hysteria of [a drone] hovering outside your backyard taking a video of you smoking a joint, it's just that ? hysteria," said Al Frazier, an ex-cop from Los Angeles who is now an assistant professor of aeronautics at the University of North Dakota, and a deputy at the Grand Forks sheriff's office.

The reason the sky isn't lousy with drones already mostly has to do with red tape. The FAA's highly restricted drone application for government agencies is supposed to take about 60 days, though unofficially, we're told it's much longer. COAs are also very strict about where, when and by whom a drone is flown.

"I think there are many agencies who would like to use [drones] for public good, but they're stymied by the process," Frazier said.

That's likely to change ? and soon. Last February, Obama signed a mandate that encourages the FAA to let civil and commercial drones join the airspace by 2015. This will take new regulations from the FAA for safe commercial drone flight, and it may take some convincing of local anti-drone activists (who sometimes don't differentiate between drones great and small). It may even require the passing of a few new privacy laws.

Folks like Frazier and Miller don't see the permit process getting easier any time soon but eventually ? inevitably ? and for better or worse, your local police department will get its drone.

Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.

Related:

The drones are coming ... but our laws aren't ready

Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a26de47/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Ctechnolog0Cdrones0Eover0Eamerica0Ehow0Eunmanned0Efliers0Eare0Ealready0Ehelping0Ecops0E1C9135554/story01.htm

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Saturday, March 30, 2013

Weekly Ketchup: New Tomb Raider Reboot In the Works

This week's Ketchup includes movies development news stories that include new roles for Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey, and news about the sequels Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

This Week's Top Story

THE TOMB RAIDER REBOOT MOVIE IS STILL IN THE WORKS

Based upon the existence of this story, we can now gather that the notion of there ever being another Tomb Raider movie was hinging upon the success of the recently released videogame reboot that took Lara Croft back to her first adventure as a young lady. Something else that this is a sign of is that this was a slow news week. Anyway, the Tomb Raider reboot also has a new studio in the form of MGM, which is not really that surprising inasmuch as MGM is the place where they've never met a reboot or remake they didn't love. The two movies starring Angelina Jolie were produced by Paramount Pictures, and then Warner Bros was trying to get a reboot going for a few years there, too. There isn't much else to know or report about this Tomb Raider reboot, except that one might speculate that the new movie might follow in the steps of the new video game, and de-age Lara Croft to tell a similar "my first adventure" type of story. The success of a movie like The Hunger Games might, therefore, have also been a factor in this project continuing to attract attention from a studio like MGM.

Fresh Developments This Week

#1 MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY OFFERED LEAD ROLE IN CHRISTOPHER NOLAN'S INTERSTELLAR

With eight films now under director Christopher Nolan's figurative belt, a movie fan might feel like they have a pretty good grasp for the sort of actors that Nolan might be considering for his next project, the sci-fi movie Interstellar. Nolan in the past has been pretty big on Aussies (Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman) and Brits (Christian Bale, Tom Hardy). Right when such choices appear to be that predictable, that's when the news hits that Christopher Nolan has offered the lead role in Interstellar to Matthew McConaughey. Which was the Internet's cue to start breaking out the "lawbreaker" and "alright alright alright" jokes. Because those are things characters played by Matthew McConaughey have said in movies that people have seen the trailers for. Paramount Pictures has scheduled Interstellar for a release date in November, 2014.


#2 AFTER THE AVENGERS 2, MARVEL PHASE THREE IS ALL ABOUT... THE DEFENDERS?

The first movie of Marvel's Phase 2 (Iron Man 3) is still not yet released, but already, we know about the six movies after it that Marvel has planned, taking us into Phase 3 already. Phase 1 and Phase 2 are both known to end, respectively, with The Avengers and its sequel The Avengers 2, but news came this week that Phase 3 might end quite differently. Let's put the pieces together: Last week, the news broke that Robert Redford has been cast as an unspecified S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There's also been rumors of Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones) being cast in a cameo role in Thor: The Dark World as Brunnhilde the Valkyrie. And finally, we know that the second movie of Phase 3 is expected to be Doctor Strange (after Ant-Man in late 2015). Tying in with all that are the reports this week that the third Phase 3 movie will be Namor the Sub-Mariner, devoted to one of Marvel's oldest characters (dating all the way back to 1939), who also, by the way, predates by two years the more famous DC Comics "Atlantis monarch" character Aquaman. We also know that Marvel plans on using the Hulk in more movies in the future, but not necessarily in another solo Hulk movie. Which brings us, finally, to what exactly ties Doctor Strange, Namor, Valkyrie, Robert Redford's mysterious character (who might be "Kyle Richmond"), and the Incredible Hulk? That answer may come in the year 2017 with the release of the final movie of Marvel Phase 3... The Defenders, based upon Marvel's other major superhero team which isn't The Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Inhumans, the Eternals, Alpha Flight, West Coast Avengers, Force Works, Midnight Sons, the Invaders, S.H.I.E.L.D., S.W.O.R.D., the Warriors Three, Heroes for Hire, X-Force, X-Statix, Excalibur, the New Mutants, The Initiative, Power Pack, the Runaways, Young Avengers, Pet Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers, or the Champions. That's right, The Defenders, that 1970s team of misfit superheroes that started around the trio of Doctor Strange, the Hulk, and Namor the Sub-Mariner, and grew to include... anyone that wasn't already in a super team, because... why not. It sold comics... for a while. And then... APRIL FOOL'S! (admittedly, a few days early, but this column only gets published on Fridays, and April 1st is a Monday this year). We swear The Defenders is the only joke entry in the Weekly Ketchup.


#3 PEPE LE PEW, CHARLES BOYER AND THAT ONE GUY FROM THE ARTIST, MEET... BATROC THE LEAPER!

For all these many years since we first heard that Marvel might really someday make a Captain America movie, those who love all things cheesy about superhero comics have wished (perhaps secretly, perhaps in denial) that we could maybe someday have a movie that featured Batroc the Leaper. There are basically two types of comic book fans, and that division can come right down to what they think of Batroc; it's basically a question of whether or not they like "fun" (and those on the anti-Batroc side of course deny that they despise fun). Batroc is French, has a ridiculous accent, speaks in puns, wears purple with a silly mask, kicks people in the head, and calls himself a "lea-PAR." Well, anyway, that day has finally come, it appears, because current UFC Welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre has reportedly been cast in Captain America: The Winter Soldier as Batroc the Leaper. Keep in mind that we don't know how big of a role Batroc actually plays in the film (it might be one scene or even just part of a montage or something), but it appears to be real. Georges St-Pierre isn't technically French, but he does come from the French part of Canada (Quebec), which might make him even more "French" than actually being French would. Walt Disney Pictures has scheduled Captain America: The Winter Soldier for April 4, 2014.


#4 ANNE HATHAWAY AND CHLOE MORETZ TO PLAY PALS IN LAGGIES

Director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister's Sister) is still definitively "indie," but the cast that she's able to recruit for her films continues to work its way up the "A list" ladder. Anne Hathaway, Chloe Moretz, Sam Rockwell, and Mark Webber are now all in "deep" negotiations to star in Lynn Shelton's next indie film, Laggies. If all goes through, Hathaway will play a late-20-something who is freaked out by her boyfriend's (Webber) wedding proposal, and so she spends a week pretending to be a teenager hanging out with an actual 16 year old (Moretz). Laggies sounds like a movie that premieres at Sundance, and so it probably will the next time the festival occurs, which will be in January, 2014.

#5 CLINT EASTWOOD MAY ABANDON A STAR IS BORN FOR JERSEY BOYS

The continued stumbling blocks for two different musicals may combine to ensure that at least one of them actually gets produced sometime soon. And the winner is... the Jersey Boys movie, based on the hit Broadway musical, itself based upon the true story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. And likewise, the loser may be Warner Bros' long-standing attempts at making another A Star is Born entry. The defining factor here may be whether Clint Eastwood really does sign on to direct Jersey Boys, rather than work on A Star is Born, which he's been developing with Warner Bros for several years now (formerly with Beyonce Knowles, more recently with Esperanza Spalding). As for Jersey Boys, the last we heard, it was a project that Jon Favreau had been considering directing, but then he dropped out, which may be where Eastwood steps in (if he does).

#6 ANDY SERKIS GETS SIMIAN COMPANY FOR DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

We've been hearing so much about the humans in the sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that it might have been forgivable if someone guessed that Andy Serkis would remain the only "name actor" attached to play any of the apes. But, alas, nope, we finally have news of someone else playing an ape, and she's even a lady type person. Judy Greer (Arrested Development) has been cast as Cornelia, the female chimp love interest for Caesar. This will presumably mean that Greer will soon have lots of little ping pong balls attached to her personage, if this sequel is filmed the same way the first movie was. Filming of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes starts in April, and 20th Century Fox is expecting to release the film on May 23, 2014.


#7 AFTER A ROUND OF DIRECTOR WHACK-A-MOLE, MATTHEW VAUGHN FINALLY DECIDES UPON THE SECRET SERVICE

Director Matthew Vaughn's name has come up a few times after X-Men: First Class, most notably with either the sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, or as one of the contenders to direct Star Wars Episode VII. We finally know now what he will be directing next. The answer keeps Matthew Vaughn at 20th Century Fox, for whom he will direct an adaptation of the Mark Millar comic book The Secret Service. As the title suggests (albeit deceptively), The Secret Service is about the world of spies and other espionage-type craft work. 20th Century Fox has scheduled The Secret Service for a release date of November 14, 2014.


Rotten Ideas of the Week

#8 HUGH GRANT TO STAR IN A COMEDY CURRENTLY TITLED UNTITLED HUGH GRANT COMEDY

This was a slow news week. How slow? Even with an April Fool's Day joke, there was still enough space to cover a Hugh Grant comedy that reunites him with the director of Two Weeks Notice, which in most weeks probably would have not made the 10 story cut. Writer/director Marc Lawrence has also worked on movies like Miss Congeniality (and its sequel) (as screenwriter, not director), and Did You Hear About the Morgans? Lawrence's RT Tomatometer has many more green splotches than "Fresh" tomatoes, which is why this untitled comedy is one of the week's Rotten ideas. Marisa Tomei, J.K. Simmons, Alison Janney, and Chris Elliot will also costar in this story of an Academy Award winning English screenwriter who takes a job at a small college where, instead of picking up young students, he instead falls in love with an older single mother (Tomei). And love (and possibly other high jinks) ensues.


#9 ALL FOUR NINJA TURTLES ARE NOW CAST... EVEN IF THEY'RE NOT TEENAGE OR MUTANT

There are stories, hopefully every week, that remind this writer what a fun job he has, getting to cover the hottest movie development news. And then there's Michael Bay's reboot (as producer) of (not Teenage, not Mutant) Ninja Turtles, of which, yeah, this is the part where it feels more like a job. So, we now know the names of the four actors who have been cast as the four turtles. And sure, enough, they are indeed names. Alan Ritchson (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, and Noel Fisher have been cast, respectively, as Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michaelangelo. Paramount Pictures has scheduled Ninja Turtles, which will also costar Megan Fox, for release on June 6, 2014.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927146/news/1927146/

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Newtown rampage took just 5-minutes

Police tape seen outside the Lanza home in Newtown (Getty Images)

NEWTOWN, Conn.?Police investigating the school massacre here seized a small arsenal of firearms, knives and swords along with medical records and computer equipment from the 20-year-old gunman's home in the days after the shooting, court documents released Thursday reveal.

Also Thursday, the state prosecutor overseeing the case said that Adam Lanza killed 26 people within five minutes of storming into Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning a gun on himself.

The documents?85 pages of affidavits and search warrants that include a list of items seized from the car and Newtown home Lanza shared with his mother, Nancy?paint a chilling picture of a killer who had been stockpiling weapons in the weeks and months leading up to the Dec. 14 massacre.

Lanza shot and killed his mother at their home before driving to the school, where he forced his way in and opened fire.

State Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III said in a statement that Lanza killed all 26 victims with a Bushmaster .223-caliber model XM15 rifle before taking his own life with a Glock 10 mm handgun. Lanza also had a loaded 9mm Sig Sauer P226 handgun with him inside the school, Sedensky said, as well as three, 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster. One-hundred-and-fifty-four bullet casings were recovered at the scene.

According to the unsealed documents, investigators found an empty box for "Battle Tested" vest accessories and hundreds of rounds of various gun ammunition inside the two-story Lanza home.

Among the other items seized by police:

Item #71 - Reciepts and emails documenting firearm/ammunition and shooting supplies.
Item #77 - Blue folder labeled "Guns" containing receipts, paperwork and other firearm-related paperwork.
Item #81 - Paperwork titled, "Conncticut Gun Exchange, Glock 20SF 10mm FS 15 round FC," dated 12/21/11
Item #83 - Email re: Gunbroker.com dated 10-12-11.
Item #85 - Printed photographs, miscellaneous handwritten papers, and Sandy Hook report card for Adam Lanza
Item #86 - "Look Me in the Eye?My life with Asbergers" book, "Born on a Blue day?Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant" book, "NRA Guide to the Basics of Pistol Shooting" book.

Exhibit # 605 - One (1) receipt for Timstar Shooting Range located in Weatherford, Ok and one (1) NRA certificate for Nancy Lanza.

Exhibit #606 - One (1) Paperback book titled "Train Your Brain To Get Happy," with pages tabbed off.

Exhibit #608 - Three (3) photographs with images of what appears to be a deceased human covered in plastic and what appears to be blood.

Exhibit #609 - Seven (7) journals and miscellaneous drawings authored by Adam Lanza.

Exhibit #612 - One (1) holiday card containing a Bank of America check #462 made out to Adam Lanza for the purchase of a C183 (Firearm), authored by Nancy Lanza.

Exhibit #630 - One (1) New York Times article on 02/18/08 of a school shooting at Northern Illinois University.

In addition to several guns inside the home, police also recovered three Samurai swords and a long pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the other. Inside the car Lanza drove to the school, police recovered a 12-gauge shotgun and two magazines containing 70 rounds of ammunition, the documents show.

Lanza in an undated photo (AP/File)

According to the search warrant, when officers arrived at the school, they discovered Lanza "dressed in military style clothing, wearing a bullet proof vest lying deceased on the floor in the middle classroom." He "was in possession of several handguns as well as a military style assault weapon."

When police arrived at the Lanza home, they found Nancy Lanza "lying in supine position on a bed in the 2nd floor master bedroom" with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. Investigators located a rifle "on the floor near the bed."

On Dec. 14, according to a warrant released Thursay, FBI agents interviewed an unidentified resident who described Lanza as a "shut in" and "avid gamer who plays Call of Duty" and rarely leaves the house. The witness said Lanza had a "gun safe containing at least four guns." Lanza had attended Sandy Hook Elementary School, the person told the FBI, and "that the school was Adam Lanza's 'life.'"

[Related: NRA blasted over Newtown robocalls]

Superior Court Judge John Blawie ordered parts of the documents redacted after state prosecutors requested that the identity of a key witness not be revealed for another 90 days. The judge also approved blacking out some phone numbers, credit card numbers and the serial numbers of some property confiscated from the Lanza home.

Connecticut State Police briefed family members of the Newtown shooting victims on Wednesday on what was recovered inside Lanza's home and car. About 50 family members attended the briefing, according to the Connecticut Post.

Thursday's release came after state lawmakers, media and Newtown residents criticized police officials for leaking details of their investigation at a convention of police chiefs in New Orleans, which were then published by the New York Daily News.

[Related: Images from Newtown, Dec. 14-21, 2012]

"If state police officers can leak details of the Newtown investigation at conventions, surely that information can be shared with the Connecticut public," the Hartford Courant said in an editorial. "It has more of a right to know than out-of-state police chiefs do. ... This isn't information to be hoarded and shared only at the state police water cooler. The longer information is kept under wraps, the more questions there will be about why. Most important, the details will inform the debate about gun control, mental health and violence in society. There's no reason to fear an informed public."

Connecticut's General Assembly has been considering gun-control legislation in the wake of the Newtown shootings, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. State lawmakers said on Monday they would delay a vote on gun control until after search warrants related to the school shootings were unsealed.

The final police report on the massacre is not expected to be released until June.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/adam-lanza-newtown-search-warrants-released-131056789.html

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Sand From Fracking Could Pose Lung Disease Risk To Workers

A worker stands on top of a storage bin on July 27, 2011, at a drilling operation in Claysville, Pa. The dust is from powder mixed with water for hydraulic fracturing.

Keith Srakocic/AP

A worker stands on top of a storage bin on July 27, 2011, at a drilling operation in Claysville, Pa. The dust is from powder mixed with water for hydraulic fracturing.

Keith Srakocic/AP

When workplace safety expert Eric Esswein got a chance to see fracking in action not too long ago, what he noticed was all the dust.

It was coming off big machines used to haul around huge loads of sand. The sand is a critical part of the hydraulic fracturing method of oil and gas extraction. After workers drill down into rock, they create fractures in that rock by pumping in a mixture of water, chemicals and sand. The sand keeps the cracks propped open so that oil and gas are released.

But sand is basically silica ? and breathing in silica is one of the oldest known workplace dangers. Inside the lungs, exposure to the tiny particles has been shown to sometimes lead to serious diseases like silicosis and cancer.

Traditionally, silica exposure has been associated with jobs like mining, manufacturing and construction. But, as Esswein, a researcher with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and other safety experts have started to realize, some workers in the newly burgeoning fracking industry may be at risk, too, because of their exposure to silica dust.

"When sand was handled ? that is, when it was transported by machines on site, or whenever these machines that move sand were refilled ? dust, visible dust was created," Esswein says.

Dust blows off a pile of fracking sand at a mine near Chippewa Falls, Wis., on Dec. 15, 2011. Some of the air samples the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health experts collected at fracking sites had such high levels of silica that the respirators typically worn by workers wouldn't offer enough protection, according to NIOSH standards.

Steve Karnowski/AP

Dust blows off a pile of fracking sand at a mine near Chippewa Falls, Wis., on Dec. 15, 2011. Some of the air samples the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health experts collected at fracking sites had such high levels of silica that the respirators typically worn by workers wouldn't offer enough protection, according to NIOSH standards.

Steve Karnowski/AP

He was visiting fracking sites because he wanted to study the potential chemical hazards for oil and gas workers, and he initially figured he and his colleagues would probably assess workers' exposures to chemicals like drilling fluids. But when he saw the plumes of dust coming off the sand-handling machines and surrounding workers, he realized it could be a real hazard. The government has long set limits on how much workers can inhale.

"Knowing what I know about silica and respirable dust, that was the particular chemical that we chose to look at," Esswein says.

He and his colleagues visited 11 fracking sites in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas. At every site, the researchers found high levels of silica in the air. It turned out that 79 percent of the collected samples exceeded the recommended exposure limit set by Esswein's agency.

There were some controls in place, says Esswein, who notes that "at every site that we went to, workers wore respirators."

But about one-third of the air samples they collected had such high levels of silica, the type of respirators typically worn wouldn't offer enough protection.

These unexpected findings have come just as federal safety officials are trying to set stricter controls on silica for all industries. Some proposed new rules have been under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget for more than two years.

Peg Seminario, director of safety and health with the AFL-CIO, a group of unions that has been pushing for stronger silica regulation, says the situation with fracking is a wake-up call.

"Hopefully it will give some impetus for the need for the silica regulation ? that there is a whole other population at risk and those numbers are potentially growing," says Seminario.

A local contractor closes the valve on his tanker truck on July 27, 2011, after watering the roads to help keep down dust at a hydraulic fracturing operation in Claysville, Pa.

Keith Srakocic/AP

A local contractor closes the valve on his tanker truck on July 27, 2011, after watering the roads to help keep down dust at a hydraulic fracturing operation in Claysville, Pa.

Keith Srakocic/AP

Workplace inspectors with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration wouldn't have been aware of this potential risk for fracking workers before this recent study because, unless they receive a complaint or there's an accident, they generally don't see the process of hydraulic fracturing. That part of setting up a well happens quickly ? and once a well is up and running, contractors move on to the next one.

Government officials and the fracking industry say they're now working together to reduce workers' exposures. They started with quick fixes, like putting up warning signs and simply closing hatches on sand-moving machines.

Some oil and gas companies are also testing new technologies. Tim Hicks, a safety expert with Encana Corp., says they've been trying vacuum systems that attach to sand-moving machines and suck up the dust.

The results so far are encouraging, Hicks says, but his company is still testing to see how much of a reduction in airborne silica is reasonably achievable.

"We'd like to envision a site that, you know, we could handle sand and sequester it all, and perhaps someday not need to use respirators," says Hicks.

He says he's not sure whether that goal is possible, or how long it would take to get to that point. "But I can say that at the rate we're going," Hicks says, "we're much more likely to hit that [target] than we were prior to this issue being recognized."

Hicks says he has only been working in this part of the oil and gas business for a few years and couldn't speculate as to why the industry didn't recognize this potential health risk earlier. People, he says, seemed to think the dust was basically just dirt.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/28/175042708/Sand-From-Fracking-Operations-Poses-Silicosis-Risk?ft=1&f=1007

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Friday, March 29, 2013

Common gene variants explain 42% of antidepressant response

Mar. 28, 2013 ? Antidepressants are commonly prescribed for the treatment of depression, but many individuals do not experience symptom relief from treatment. The National Institute of Mental Health's STAR*D study, the largest and longest study ever conducted to evaluate depression treatment, found that only approximately one-third of patients responded within their initial medication trial and approximately one-third of patients did not have an adequate clinical response after being treated with several different medications. Thus, identifying predictors of antidepressant response could help to guide the treatment of this disorder.

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry now shares progress in identifying genomic predictors of antidepressant response.

Many previous studies have searched for genetic markers that may predict antidepressant response, but have done so despite not knowing the contribution of genetic factors. Dr. Katherine Tansey of Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London and colleagues resolved to answer that question.

"Our study quantified, for the first time, how much is response to antidepressant medication influenced by an individual's genetic make-up," said Tansey.

To perform this work, the researchers estimated the magnitude of the influence of common genetic variants on antidepressant response using a sample of 2,799 antidepressant-treated subjects with major depressive disorder and genome-wide genotyping data.

They found that genetic variants explain 42% of individual differences, and therefore, significantly influence antidepressant response.

"While we know that there are no genetic markers with strong effect, this means that there are many genetic markers involved. While each specific genetic marker may have a small effect, they may add up to make a meaningful prediction," Tansey added.

"We have a very long way to go to identify genetic markers that can usefully guide the treatment of depression. There are two critical challenges to this process," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "First, we need to have genomic markers that strongly predict response or non-response to available treatments. Second, markers for non-response to available treatments also need to predict response to an alternative treatment. Both of these conditions need to be present for markers of non-response to guide personalized treatments of depression."

"Although the Tansey et al. study represents progress, it is clear that we face enormous challenges with regards to both objectives," he added. "For example, it does not yet appear that having a less favorable genomic profile is a sufficiently strong negative predictor of response to justify withholding antidepressant treatment. Similarly, there is lack of clarity as to how to optimally treat patients who might have less favorable genomic profile.."

Additional research is certainly required, but scientists hope that one day, results such as these can lead to personalized treatment for depression.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Elsevier, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Katherine E. Tansey, Michel Guipponi, Xiaolan Hu, Enrico Domenici, Glyn Lewis, Alain Malafosse, Jens R. Wendland, Cathryn M. Lewis, Peter McGuffin, Rudolf Uher. Contribution of Common Genetic Variants to Antidepressant Response. Biological Psychiatry, 2013; 73 (7): 679 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.10.030

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/z5l4WA6eDzU/130328091730.htm

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Deal of the Day ? 23? Dell U2312HM UltraSharp 1080p IPS-panel LCD monitor

LogicBUY’s Deal for Thursday is the?23″ Dell U2312HM UltraSharp 1080p IPS-panel LCD monitor for?$219.99. ?Features: Anti-glare screen with hard-coat 3H surface LED backlit 8ms response time, 2,000,000:1 typical dynamic contrast ratio, 300nit brightness 4-port USB 2.0 hub, DVI and VGA connections EPEAT Gold rated Height-Adjustable stand with tilt and swivel adjustments and built-in cable management [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/03/28/deal-of-the-day-23-dell-u2312hm-ultrasharp-1080p-ips-panel-lcd-monitor/

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Slow Internet? Ongoing attack on web watchdog rippling out online ...

Raphael Satter, The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013 1:56PM EDT
Last Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013 3:39PM EDT

LONDON -- A record-breaking cyberattack targeting an anti-spam watchdog group has sent ripples of disruption coursing across the Web, experts said Wednesday.

Spamhaus, a site responsible for keeping ads for counterfeit Viagra and bogus weight-loss pills out of the world's inboxes, said it had been buffeted by the monster denial-of-service attack since mid-March, apparently from groups angry at being blacklisted by the Swiss-British group.

"It is a small miracle that we're still online," Spamhaus researcher Vincent Hanna said.

Denial-of-service attacks overwhelm a server with traffic -- like hundreds of letters being jammed through a mail slot at the same time. Security experts measure those attacks in bits of data per second. Recent cyberattacks -- like the ones that caused persistent outages at U.S. banking sites late last year -- have tended to peak at 100 billion bits per second.

But the furious assault on Spamhaus has shattered the charts, clocking in at 300 billion bits per second, according to San Francisco-based CloudFlare Inc., which Spamhaus has enlisted to help it weather the attack.

"It was likely quite a bit more, but at some point measurement systems can't keep up," CloudFlare chief executive Matthew Prince wrote in an email.

Patrick Gilmore of Akamai Technologies said that was no understatement.

"This attack is the largest that has been publicly disclosed -- ever -- in the history of the Internet," he said.

It's unclear who exactly was behind the attack, although a man who identified himself as Sven Olaf Kamphuis said he was in touch with the attackers and described them as mainly consisting of disgruntled Russian Internet service providers who had found themselves on Spamhaus' blacklists. There was no immediate way to verify his claim.

He accused the watchdog of arbitrarily blocking content that it did not like. Spamhaus has widely used and constantly updated blacklists of sites that send spam.

"They abuse their position not to stop spam but to exercise censorship without a court order," Kamphuis said.

Gilmore and Prince said the attack's perpetrators had taken advantage of weaknesses in the Internet's infrastructure to trick thousands of servers into routing a torrent of junk traffic to Spamhaus every second.

The trick, called "DNS reflection," works a little bit like mailing requests for information to thousands of different organizations with a target's return address written across the back of the envelopes. When all the organizations reply at once, they send a landslide of useless data to the unwitting addressee.

Both experts said the attack's sheer size has sent ripples of disruptions across the Internet as servers moved mountains of junk traffic back and forth across the Web.

"At a minimum there would have been slowness," Prince said, adding in a blog post that "if the Internet felt a bit more sluggish for you over the last few days in Europe, this may be part of the reason why."

At the London Internet Exchange, where service providers exchange traffic across the globe, spokesman Malcolm Hutty said his organization had seen "a minor degree of congestion in a small portion of the network."

But he said it was unlikely that any ordinary users had been affected by the attack.

Hanna said his site had so far managed to stay online, but warned that being knocked off the Internet could give spammers an opening to step up their mailings -- which may mean more fake lottery announcements and pitches for penny stocks heading to people's inboxes.

Hanna denied claims that his organization had behaved arbitrarily, noting that his group would lose its credibility if it started flagging benign content as spam.

"We have 1.7 billion people who watch over our shoulder," he said. "If we start blocking emails that they want, they will obviously stop using us."

Gilmore of Akamai was also dismissive of the claim that Spamhaus was biased.

"Spamhaus' reputation is sterling," he said.

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/slow-internet-ongoing-attack-on-web-watchdog-rippling-out-online-1.1213610

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Kansas GOP to legalize quarantine of HIV patients (Americablog)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/295069999?client_source=feed&format=rss

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New Theory of How Giant Stars Grow Unveiled

Baby stars can grow to an incredibly large size ? 10 times more massive than the sun, at the least ? if they are cocooned in a group of older stars feeding gas to the youngsters, a new study suggests.

This theory could explain how young stars get so big, rather than pushing away gas as they grow and starving themselves once they get about eight times as massive as the sun.

Researchers spotted evidence of this type of "convergent constructive feedback" with the Herschel Space Observatory. It took pictures of a large dust and gas cloud called Westerhout 3, located about 6,500 light-years from Earth, in wavelengths ranging from infrared to part of the microwave spectrum.

"This observation may lift the veil on the formation of the most massive stars, which remains, so far, poorly understood," said Alana Rivera-Ingraham, lead author of the study. She was at the University of Toronto when the research was performed, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Institute of Astrophysics and Planetology in France. [Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts]

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Star corral

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Stars typically form in the midst of huge gas clouds. The force of gravity squeezes the gas until it is compressed enough to start the nuclear fusion process that fuels stars.

Newborn stars are constantly balancing two opposite forcesas they grow. Gravity sucks in gaseous material to feed the protostar, while radiation pressure emanating from the protostar resists the inward pull of gravity and pushes away some of the gas surrounding it.

The bigger a star gets, the greater the radiation pressure, until it reaches a point where the gas should ? by conventional theory ? be blown away.

The densest part of Westerhout 3's gas cloud, researchers noted, is enclosed by a crowd of older, large stars.

That thick environment is no coincidence, scientists said. Providing the older stars are in the right position ? surrounding a gas reservoir ? the gas they push away through radiation could compress and form new stars.

"The process is similar to the way a group of street cleaners armed with leaf blowers can stack leaves in a pile ? by pushing from all sides at the same time," officials at the University of Toronto said in a statement. "This corralling of dense gas can give birth to new, high-mass stars."

The group still needs to test this theory through simulation, and by comparing observations of Westerhout 3 to those of similar stellar gas clouds.

"Only then will [scientists] be able to discern the mechanism ? collective feeding or not ? that gives rise to high-mass stars in these giant clouds," according to the statement.

Another solution proposed

In 2009, another group of researchers proposed a different way that stars can grow massive.

The group ran a three-dimensional simulation of how a large interstellar gas cloud falls into itself and creates a huge star. The computer showed instabilities where the radiation sent part of the cloud out into space, while gas continued to spiral in toward the star through other channels.

"This shows that you don't need any exotic mechanisms; massive stars can form through accretion processes just like low-mass stars," study leader Mark Krumholz of the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a 2009 SPACE.com interview.

Previous to that research, scientists believed radiation pressure would push away the gas surrounding a protostar before it could reach a mass 20 times that of the sun.

The theory, though, was contradicted by multiple observations of supermassive stars, which do exist but are rarer than small stars.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/theory-giant-stars-grow-unveiled-210105279.html

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Reuters: Wal-Mart looking into crowd-sourcing online delivery

Reuters WalMart looking into crowdsourcing online delivery

Walmart is considering the slightly insane sounding idea of using its in-store customers to deliver online orders to help it compete with bricks and mortar-less competitors like Amazon, according to Reuters. The big box outfit currently ships internet purchases from just 25 of its stores using the likes of FedEx to handle delivery, but plans to drastically increase that number going forward. In theory, customers could sign up for the chore and drop packages off to customers who are on their route home in exchange for a discount. CEO Joel Anderson he could "see a path to where this is crowd-sourced," adding that "this is at the brain-storming stage, but it's possible in a year or two." Naturally, there's a gauntlet of insurance, theft, fraud and legal issues Walmart would need to run first -- along with the slightly skeevy idea of having a random stranger show up with your packages.

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Source: Reuters

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/7PFZWAb5Afo/

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UFC lightweight champ Benson Henderson goes 2-1 at jiu-jitsu tournament

UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson will fight Gilbert Melendez on April 20, but he took on other competitors over the weekend. Henderson competed in the 2013 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championships. He won his first two matches, but lost 8-0 to Jaime Soares Canuto.

Henderson, a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, decided to do the tournament for fun. It wasn't a break from training for the bout with Melendez. Henderson's coach said he did six rounds of MMA sparring on Saturday before competing on Sunday. Instead, it was just a little bit of competition.

He tweeted about the tournament:

What are your thoughts on Henderson competing just weeks before his fight? Speak up in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-lightweight-champ-benson-henderson-goes-2-1-200528627--mma.html

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads ...

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.? When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior?my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.? ?If you ask anything in faith, believing,? they said.? ?It will be done.? I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

Religious Trauma Syndrome- AnguishBut my horrible compulsions didn?t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn?t just the bulimia.? I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn?t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Marlene Winell portraitDr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold ? A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren?t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls ?Religious Trauma Syndrome? (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a ?relatively niche topic.? One commenter said, ?A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.?

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

Let?s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn?t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call ?reclaimers,? have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I?d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that ? the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the ?end times? for nonbelievers.

?I was taken to see the film ?A Thief In The Night?. WOW. ?I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn?t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who?s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is ?You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.? (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship and there is a group organized ?to oppose their incursion into public schools. ?I?ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can?t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life,?I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that?I was taught but?I thought that?I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

I?ve spent literally years injuring?myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn?t have to punish me. It?s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like ?lean not unto your own understanding? or ?trust and obey.? People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I?ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the ?will of God.? The words here don?t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can?t, you know, wake up in the morning, ?What am I going to do today? Like I don?t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I?m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I?m losing my country. I?ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person?s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I?m way past that but I still haven?t quite found ?my place in the universe.

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one?s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference ? no other ?self? or way of ?being in the world.? A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. ?True believers? who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren?t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply ?walk away? because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don?t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don?t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn?t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote ?Spare the rod and spoil the child? as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I?m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait?That?s not enough!? There?s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

There?s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I?ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I?m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn?t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals.? They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like ?recovery from religion? and ?religious trauma syndrome? are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a ?niche topic,? and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. ?More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the ?religiously unaffiliated? have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It?s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other. The huge population of people ?leaving the fold? includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help. ?For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference. ?I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim ?which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren?t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves.? Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped.

?-? Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant?in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of Leaving the Fold ? A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion.? Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.? She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org.? Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Related:
Recovering from Religion? Give Yourself Time
From AwayPoint on Youtube: How Beliefs Change
The Fragile Boundary Between Religion and Child Abuse
Don?t Want Pro-Genocide Bible Lessons in Your Public School? Fight Back! Here?s How.
Ten Proofs That There is No God.

A good, clear article that differentiates between toxic and helpful religion. I did some training years ago that talked about spiritual abuse, which is more or less what Dr. Winell is talking about here. It is vitally important for people in the religious communities to be aware of the problem. It isn?t necessarily that this denomination or even this church is abusive. I have encountered programs within very healthy congregations that were spiritual abuse. They were run by one person or a small group and were not flagged by other leadership.

Source: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/tarico20130326

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