Death threats against a 5-year-old: Our terrifying troll culture - SALON

"....and that apparently is what life, now, is. If you put yourself out there in public even the slightest way, this is what you’ll get. You can be Miss America and they’ll call you a “terrorist” for having dark skin. You can be a football star and they’ll call you a “monkey.”  You can be a critic with cancer and they’ll say they “can’t wait for you to die.”You can be an ordinary high school student who’s just come out, and you’ll get a letter that “You don’t deserve to live in this world.” And of course, if you’re a woman and if you’ve ever expressed an opinion anywhere in public, you can be pretty sure someone’s going to let you know you ought to be assaulted and mutilated. In my own past, I’ve had readers volunteer to come to my house to rape me with a knife, and express the wish that my own children smother me to death. Just this morning, because I’ve written about Woody Allen, I got an email from a reader sharing his hope that my two daughters be sexually abused..."  CLICK HERE TO READ HORRIFYING FACTS

Interactive: How Twitter responded during every moment of the SOTU speech

The folks over at Twitter have culled their massive data set of user reactions to the State of the Union and put together this nifty visualization of last night's speech. On top, you'll see a timeline of the speech with the volume of tweets at any particular moment reflected by the width of the color bar. The big spike in the middle is for Twitter users' apparent enthusiasm for the President's Mad Men reference.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

"Are You a Mental Redneck?" - Take a test here and find out....

Karl Albrecht, Ph.D.

Dr. Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. He is listed by Executive Excellence Magazine as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in the area of leadership. He is a recognized expert on cognitive styles and the development of advanced thinking skills. His books Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success,Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense, and his Mindex Thinking Style Profile are used in business and education. The Mensa society presented him with its lifetime achievement award, for significant contributions by a member to the understanding of intelligence. Originally a physicist, and having served as a military intelligence officer and business executive, he now consults, lectures, and writes about whatever he thinks would be fun. CLICK HERE TO READ

40% of World's Population of School Age Kids Can't Read, Report Says - Huffington Post

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — At least 250 million of the world's 650 million primary school age children are unable to read, write or do basic mathematics, according to a report Wednesday commissioned by the U.N. education agency.   CLICK HERE TO READ

5 Biggest Problems with Revenge—and Its 3 Best Remedies

This post will lay out the reasons that—both ethically and pragmatically—your viewpoint on revenge should be decidedly negative. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

Who Holds Our Debt?

Q: Who are the holders of U.S. debt?

A: The biggest are the Social Security trust funds (16 percent), the Federal Reserve banks (12 percent), China (8 percent), Japan (7 percent) and mutual funds including money-market funds (6 percent).........     CLICK HERE TO READ FACTS

"4 Secrets for Setting Rock-Solid Boundaries" - World of Psychology

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. is an Associate Editor at Psych Central and blogs regularly about eating and self-image issues on her own blog, Weightless.    CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ABOUT SETTING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES

KUDOS TO "THE LIVING ROOM"! "For Psychiatric Crises, Alternatives to ERs Have Their Advantages" - Psych Central News

“The experiences of (emergency departments) for persons in emotional distress were characterized by feelings of insecurity, loneliness, intimidation, fear, and discomfort,” the study noted. “Participants described feeling unsupported by (emergency department) staff.”    CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THIS WONDERFUL RESOURCE!

Mind Control - WantToKnow.info

This mind control summary is based on astonishing excerpts from three landmark books:Bluebird by Colin Ross, MD; Mind Controllers by Armen Victorian; and A Nation Betrayedby Carol Rutz. The authors provide hundreds of footnotes to support their thorough research. Their revealing information is derived largely from 18,000 pages of declassified CIA mind control documents. To order these key documents from the U.S. government,click here. Join in powerfully building a better world for all by spreading the word.  CLICK HERE TO READ FACTS

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. / New York Times - reposted by WantToKnow.info

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows
2014-01-07, New York Times
Posted: 2014-01-13 16:19:46
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows...

On a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside. They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters ... would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups. Perhaps the most damning document from the cache [was] a 1970 memorandum that ... urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups. “It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox.” Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college campuses. But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities [included] a mysterious word: Cointelpro ... shorthand for Counterintelligence Program.Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide. The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.

Note: To learn about the brave citizen burglars who have now revealed themselves and watch the engaging video covering this story, click on the link given above. For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

» Prepare for Parenting by Healing Your Childhood Wounds - Attachment Matters

"Before parents can even fathom relying on their gut feelings in how to approach their parent-child relationships in a healthy, sensitive way, it is my firm belief that they must first address and heal from any childhood emotional wounds they may be carrying around, often without their realization until they bring a new child into the world, and even sometimes not even then."  CLICK HERE TO READ FURTHER

» Raising Assertive Kids - Psych Central

"....just like adults, kids can have a tough time being assertive. One of the reasons assertiveness is difficult is because kids want to get what they want without the potential for pain, Schab said. “If we think that standing up for ourselves and asking for something directly might result in a ‘no’ for an answer and our egos can’t take that, we do what we think will get us what we want,” she said.....  CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

The Agony of Instagram

....."Instagram, rather, is about unadulterated voyeurism. It is almost entirely a photo site, with a built-in ability (through the site’s retro-style filters) to idealize every moment, encouraging users to create art-directed magazine layouts of their lives, as if everyone is suddenly Diana Vreeland".......CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE!

How to help a young child learn generosity - The Washington Post

......"But of course he doesn’t really understand yet. “There’s a big disconnect between the people ‘over there’ and my piggy bank,” said Vicki Hoefle, a parenting educator and author of “Duct Tape Parenting.”.........CLICK HERE TO READ!

25 Ways to Teach Kids Compassion

During his talks, the Dalai Lama emphasizes how important it is for children to experience compassion from their caregivers from birth.True compassion means being highly attuned to your child's needs and accepting them for the unique persons they are. It is not the same as sympathy, empathy, or altruism although each plays a part. The compassionate person feels the suffering of another and makes positive steps to alleviate that suffering.,,,,,,,,,CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Dysfunctional Religion Versus a Spirituality That Builds Intimacy and Community - Huff Post

CLICK HERE TO READ: Dysfunctional Religion Versus a Spirituality That Builds Intimacy and Community

'Spiritual but Not Religious': A Rising, Misunderstood Voting Bloc

STEVEN BARRIE-ANTHONY is a research associate at the Social Science Research Council and a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A former Los Angeles Times staff writer, he also writes at Reverberations and The Immanent Frame      .CLICK HERE TO READ

How Can We Help Our Children Become “Grittier”? - Psychology Today - Kenneth Barish, PhD

Kenneth Barish is the author of Pride and Joy: A Guide to Understanding Your Child's Emotions and Solving Family Problems. Pride and Joy is winner of the 2013 International Book Award.

 CLICK HERE TO READ: How Can We Help Our Children Become “Grittier”?

HAPPY NEW YEAR? or........

I want to express my gratitude for the outpouring of comments about some of the subjects posted.  I watch the emails and general trends often to hear the information most needed by you, my readers. Your emails have been wonderfully informative, and I deeply appreciate your links.  

It interests me deeply when I "construct the umbrella" which you all provide me. While I "go with the flow", I have listed categories for posts.  As to my post title, I wonder if the phrase, "Happy New Year" has evolved so rapidly that we scarcely keep up with it.

Of course! Who doesn't wish to be happy?  Yet..... learning (which, for me, encompasses experience, compassion, perhaps a real rasher of disappointment and/or sadness in that process) usually takes us through a "dark night of the soul"  (What, again?!?!).  The only way is straight through the middle, I am told...and believe.  Like many of you, that "middle" is chock full of kicking and screaming.  That is, until we settle down and soak up all those stages of grief.  That is, until we can find some perverse humor embedded in the process.  That is, until we mature into a place where we accept ... yes, accept ... that a particular experience is simply in our lives.  

It is then that we return to "Houston" ... safe for take-off. True, we may be wizened, more clearly self-defined, purified, disinfected, and with almost a "post-modern", conscious mindset. 

That process is rich and "the path less taken".  It feels perilous and terrifying at first.  That feeling is not the outcome;  it is merely confronting our own resistance.

So, I no longer wish for myself a "happy" New Year.  I wish for myself one whose (as usual!) bounty is discovered as courage, "staying power", a sort of Viagra for the soul and spirit!  This world is on a multi-faceted trajectory, the likes of which we haven't seen before.  I wish for you the same... the little blue pill of soul and heart courage. Many will not "make it".  They will balk from doing "the work" because it simply seems easier to maintain the status quo.  I challenge each of you not to balk.....in a broad definition, that "status quo" is the kiss of death.
Madelaine

EXCELLENT! "The Covert Narcissist: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" - YouTube Video