Trashed Computer
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
There’s a reason I haven’t posted in a while….my system blew up and I’m trying to collect the pieces to build a new one.
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Monday, August 2nd, 2010
Food for thought people, think about who you follow, the influence they have and where they get their power from before you blindly follow them and give way to their influence.
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Local Newspaper article on Dads…
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Freelance Star: Wanted Dads
WHO NEEDS DAD? For years Hollywood has portrayed fathers as buffoons (“The Simpsons,” “Everybody Loves Raymond”) and exalted edgy, dads-are-optional lifestyles.
Television’s “Murphy Brown” chose to have a baby sans dad in the 1991-1992 season, and its been all downhill ever since. This summer, the silver screen will feature “The Switch,” in which Jennifer Aniston decides she’s waited long enough for Mr. Right and it’s time for a sperm bank baby. “The Kids Are All Right” will portray a lesbian couple raising children without a man.
But while the cultural elite may think it’s cool to declare dad obsolete, reality proves otherwise. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia marriage and family expert [see "'Mancession' wears on husbands, dads," D1], finds that kids raised without dads struggle. Teenage girls, for example, are more likely to drop out of school, become pregnant, or be depressed when divorce has disrupted their relationship with dad.
The Census Bureau says kids without dads in the home are five times more likely to be poor. The Justice Department says a study of over 13,000 women in prison found over half grew up without a father. And the statistics hold across national boundaries: Interpol reports that there is a strong correlation between single-parent families and violent crime.
Who needs dad? We all do. Perhaps the ultimate example of the absentee father is the sperm donor. Each year in America between 30,000 and 60,000 children are conceived through artificial insemination at a sperm bank. The donor is often a student looking for an easy way to make a few bucks. So what happens to those kids?
The Commission on Parenthood’s Future studied 485 of the children conceived in this process, now young adults between the ages of 18 and 45. The results, detailed in a report called “My Daddy’s Name is Donor,” are startling.
Two-thirds of the donor kids believe they have a right to know both biological parents. An astounding 44 percent believe it is “wrong toe delibrately conceive a fatherless child” and nearly half agree that “When I see friends with their biological fathers and mothers, it makes me feel sad.”
Donor offspring raised by single mothers are much less likely to believe they can rely on their families for support: 56 percent say they depend on friends more than families, compared to 29 percent of young adults born to two biological parents. The donor kids’ outcomes in terms of problems with the law, mental health issues, and substance abuse are markedly more bleak than kids raised with their biological parents.
But even donor offspring who don’t struggle with those kinds of severe problems feel loss because they don’t know their father: One young woman, writing in the Washington Post, said that she envied friends who had both a father and a mother. “I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I really truly, would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.”
The angst suffered by donor offspring is one reason Britain, Sweden, Norway, and The Netherlands no longer allow anonymous sperm donations. These countries require donors to allow at least one contact when the child reaches age 18.
Think kids need their dads? Hollywood mythology may ignore what Mr. Wilcox calls the “now-vast social scientific literature” proving fathers play an essential role in our lives, but most of us know in our hearts it’s true. Life wouldn’t be the same without him.
So take Dad the newspaper and a cold drink, let him prop his feet up and read, or watch the game or the race, and say thanks. Even if his name is Homer or Raymond, he’s your dad, and that’s enough.
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Science Fiction and Reality blurred
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Air Force PHASRs – US Air Force Release
11/2/2005 - KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFPN) – A laser technology weapon will be the first man-portable, non-lethal deterrent weapon intended for protecting troops and controlling hostile crowds.
The weapon, developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate, employs a two-wavelength laser system and is a hand-held, single-operator system for troop and perimeter defense. The laser light used in the weapon temporarily impairs aggressors by illuminating or “dazzling” individuals, removing their ability to see the laser source.
“In the past, the problem with lasers of this type has been that they often permanently blind human targets,” says Tobias Feakin, an expert at Bradford University’s Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project in the UK.
But he says newer systems may avoid this problem by using less powerful laser beams. “This new wave of low-intensity laser weapons do not have a permanently damaging effect, apparently,” he told New Scientist.
Several laboratories across the world are working on such weapons. But even low power laser systems can cause eye damage if they are used at close quarters or for extended periods.
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