Trifles and Tribulations

Nickelodeon Doing a Special with Kids of Deployed Parents

2008-02-06T21:40:00.000-05:00

I participate in this bulletin board. I got this e-mail earlier today. This kind of thing may put some kind of public pressure on the people who hold the purse strings for benefits and programs for families. Certainly not saying that throwing money at the problem is the appropriate solution, but added funding for family programs isn't a bad thing. Check it out if you're interested and feel free to pass it along.

VA Joe.com was contacted by Jessie Findlay over at Nickelodeon recently with this announcement. Help spread the word!

"The Nickelodeon news series “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee” is looking for kids of soldiers currently home from deployment who are willing to be interviewed about the readjustment process. We’re looking for a few well-spoken kids around 11 to 15 years old to talk about how life has changed now that Mom/Dad has come home - particularly those dealing with a physical injury, divorce or PTSD. This show will recognize that war affects whole families, acknowledge the sacrifices of American troops and their families - especially their kids, and portray the good feelings that come with being reunited. Filming will be completed by the end of February.

Interested families please contact Coordinating Producer Jessie Findlay at Lucky Duck Productions - 212-463-0029 ext. 153 or jessie@nicknews.com. "

Thank you,
-VAJoe.com

Men's Room Etiquette

2008-02-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

You know, sometimes someone does something that makes me stop and ponder if the filter in the genetic pool is functioning properly.

Let me paint this picture for you. Most Friday nights I participate in a sanity saving exercise at the local country & western club. Good company, usually okay bands, decent exercise. Gives me the chance to escape the gremlins of life. But something happened this past Friday night that made me think about the gene pool filter.

Men's Room Etiquette 101

Without going into the fine intricacies of what actually should happen in the men's room, there are some basic rules that should be followed.

Let me give you the layout of this men's room. As you enter, on the left wall are 4 urinals. On the back wall are 2 stalls. On the right wall there are 2 urinals and on the front wall there are 3 sinks. Not a complicated layout at all.

I enter the men's room and there's 1 guy in there using urinal #4 (the far urinal) on the left wall. I have 2 real choices, either of which will allow me a large buffer zone between myself and the other person in the men's room as well as provide respect for his personal business. I could go into a stall, but since those are primarily reserved for urination only when the men's room is full, I choose a urinal on the right wall next to a sink.

As I begin, guy #1 finishes up and starts to wash his hands when guy #3 enters. He basically has the same choices I had earlier. Go into a stall or use a urinal on the opposite wall. This is where things get quirky.

Guy #3 saddles up in the urinal next to me on the right side. This is completely out of line. It's what he does next that just baffles me. HE LOOKED OVER THE PARTITION.

By this time, guy #1 has dried and left. Somewhat flustered, I make eye contact with guy #3 (something only done in extreme circumstances when one or more of the parties is in active use of a urinal) and I ask him quite matter of factly, "Have you lost something?" Guy #3 quickly snaps to the front and stares at the wall for the duration.

I finish up and wash up and guy #3 leaves without a flush or a wash.

Having been invaded and violated, my thoughts of revenge were soon put to rest when I exited the men's room to see guy #3 dancing with a woman, the song ending. I encounter the woman and say to her, "I think you should go wash your hands because he doesn't wash his."

After a brief look of surprise, she thanks me and proceeds directly to the ladies room, never to dance with guy #3 again.

Test your own Men's Room Etiquette.

Men's Room Etiquette 101

2008-02-05T19:37:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year, I'm back

2007-12-31T17:02:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. I slipped off the grid for a while. The last semester was considerably more time onsuming and strenuous than I anticipated. BUT, Scully got to take her mid tour over Christmas. Just put her on a plane back to Iraq this past Saturday. I'm not going to make this a long post, but I'll post something more substantial later on. Just wanted everyone to know I'm still alive and I haven't forgotten about you all. I've just had my hands more than full. For those of you who e-mailed, thank you so much for your concern and warm thoughts. I look forward to getting back into the swing of things here.

Happy New Year to everyone. :)

What a sad world...

2007-08-22T20:39:00.000-04:00

I heard a radio show the other morning, 8-20-07, where parents can get their kids armor plated backpacks! I thought it was a joke at first, but no. They run about $175.00 a pop! This is insane. What kind of world are we living in?!

I say world because the Brits are doing it too! This thing allegedly stops knives, hatchets, machetes, piercing weapons, and bullets from a .22 cal. long rifle to a .45 Magnum handgun at a weight of only 20 oz.

There is a video associated with it. I don't completely believe the statistics they provide about survival rates. These students would have had to have the presence of mind and physical ability to maneuver these backpacks in front of their bodies, but here it is.

Worst Case Scenario (Part 2)

2007-08-17T16:03:00.000-04:00

So, here we go again with companies looking to make a buck at the cost of our own privacy and potentially our own safety. This company, Intelius is selling personal cell phone numbers, with addresses, and sometimes with family member’s names for $15.00. Apparently, they’re compiling cell phone numbers from business to government agencies with some 90 million in hand already and an addition of another 70 million in the next few days.

If that isn’t bad enough, there are hundreds of companies called data brokers that will, for a little over $100 on the low end, sell to a consumer the last 100 out-going calls from a cell phone. All the consumer needs is the name, address, and phone number, available above for $15, and he or she can know who you last called!

This is absolutely ridiculous. Intelius says, “Oh, you’ll be able to check on your teen, see who they’re calling, or you can do a background check on a nanny.” I would think that if I wanted to see who my teen is calling, I would use the itemized statement I get from my cell phone provider. If there’s suspicion that they’re up to something illegal, I can always take the numbers to the police. As for checking on a nanny, there are background check services that are legal and licensed that I could use. I would be more concerned with the fact that over 62% of 11-14 year-olds have cell phones and granting pedophiles access to their personal information is irresponsible.

Data brokers claim things like, “Think your spouse is cheating? See who they’ve called!”

This type of psychological marketing is weak, deceptive, and outrageous. You’re trying to appeal to my sense of protection for my children or my marriage by violating my privacy? Give me a break!

Illinois has implemented some legal protection preventing people from “pre-texting” or pretending to be the account holder of the cell phone account with the intention of gaining access to cell phone records. Missouri has followed suit as have California, New Jersey, Washington, and perhaps others.

None the less, there is a family in Washington that has changed their cell phones and numbers three times and still have a stalker harassing them, their family, and friends. In some instances, hijacking the teenage daughter’s cell phone and using it to send threatening text messages or voice mails.

What about in the context of national security? Are we handing terrorists an invitation to call, threaten, and stalk military members and their families? This isn’t unheard of. It happened in the United Kingdom just last year and to families of Danish Troops just this month!

I think it is time to start writing letters and making phone calls to our representatives and senators demanding action protecting our privacy.

Personal Cell Phone Numbers Are Only a Click Away
Web site Sells Cell Phone Numbers and Other Personal Information

(ABC News)
From World News with Charles Gibson
Aug. 14, 2007

Home phone numbers have been available to the public for a long time, so many Americans treasure the fact that their cell numbers can be kept private -- or so they think. Now, all it takes is a few bucks and Internet access to find tens of millions of personal cell phone numbers.

A Web site named Intelius has created a clearinghouse of cell phone numbers that can be purchased online for $15 each. Its source -- every business and company you've ever provided with your personal information.

"We do pay for the data, everything from government agencies to third party companies, where we compile a lot of this information together," said Ed Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing at Intelius.

Intelius already has 90 million cell phone numbers, and it's adding 70 million more in the coming days, along with the addresses that go with them.

"Frankly, it's the Wild West when it comes to our personal information," said Avivah Litan, director of research at Gartner Inc.

Intelius claims it is providing a public service that will help parents track down who is calling their children, or families checking on a nanny, but many individuals are upset that their information can be bought online.

ABC's David Muir attempted to buy the records of three people he approached today in New York City, and they were shocked to learn he'd purchased every cell phone number and address they ever had.

Intelius even had the number of a minor.

"That's my son … he's 14," said Winsome Jones.

"You can't even assume that minors have privacy rights. Maybe this is a wake-up call once we see congressmen's cell phone numbers on the Internet. Maybe they'll finally start acting, but the data brokers are not regulated," Lihtan said. "No one's looking over their shoulder and saying you can or cannot do this."

And until Congress takes action, Intelius' business of selling personal information is perfectly legal.

If you want to opt-out of having your information listed in Intelius' database, log-on to OPT OUT [(Scully's Moulder comment): I should point out that Intelius states that their Opt Out option is only temporary as they are constantly updating their records requiring you to opt out frequently.]

Personal Cell Phone Numbers Are Only a Click Away
1
Read All 41 Comments and Post Your Own

Does Dream Therapy Really Work?

2007-08-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

This article was published yesterday, but I wanted to take some time to look into it a little further before I commented on it. Does Dream Therapy work for every person every time? No, but neither does FDA approved medications. Individuals respond as individually to therapy as they do to medication. There are proponents and opponents for Dream Therapy, depending on which theory of psychology/psychiatry you embrace. Here are some abstracts and criticisms about Dream Therapy.

My biggest question, I suppose, I that since research on this has been done for years, why is it just now making waves in the military? The VA published an article about this several years ago calling it Imagery Rehearsal Therapy. The VA’s report is mainly based on studies conducted at the University of New Mexico.

If you’re into study numbers like I am, here’s an in depth look at a 2001 study based solely on women with PTSD.

Dream Therapy also goes under the name of Cognitive Restructuring. Whatever you call it, even if it only has a chance of working, this opportunity should be afforded to everyone suffering from PTSD. While having bad dreams is only 1 of 17 symptoms of PTSD, dealing with the dreams, when present, are shown to positively affect other symptoms as well.

Dream therapy a coping tool for combat stress

Psychologist suggests it’s best to sleep through nightmares
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Aug 9, 2007 17:39:13 EDT

ASAD, Iraq — For 1½ years, Cmdr. Beverly Dexter’s husband gently shook her awake when she screamed in her sleep.

But one night, even as she begged him to wake her up in an unusual case of sleep-talking, he let her continue her nightmare.

She never screamed in her sleep again.

Now the combat psychologist says she may have a key to help those who never sleep through the night because they wake themselves rather than face dreams about the battlefield deaths of their buddies, the disturbing images of Iraqi — or Vietnamese — children handling explosives, or even traumatic scenes from their own childhoods.

“There’s no such thing as a bad dream,” said Dexter, chief of the Combat Stress and Readiness Clinic at Al Asad Air Base. “You’re working through things when you sleep.”
Though Dexter is careful to say she needs to do more research about her theory and that her book, “No More Nightmares,” will not be published until she retires and is able to look at it more closely, she’s excited that veterans have told her their dreams have disappeared within a day of her sleep-therapy lessons, which she teaches here in a classroom-type setting.

Military officials say they want to see more case studies and proof that Dexter’s theory works before commenting on it or recommending it. Dexter is the only therapist who uses her program, which she calls Planned Dream Intervention.

Even Dexter, a fellow of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, said she is not yet sure why the therapy works, though she has ideas. And word has gotten around. Troops recommend it to each other, chaplains have come to her for advice on how to use it and other therapists send their clients to her to try to rid them of never-ending sleepless nights, she said.

“I know this works,” she said. “I know it sounds ridiculously too good to be true, but it is.”

After her husband let her sleep through her nightmare, Dexter said she woke up refreshed and stunned to hear she had even had a bad dream.

As she thought about it, she realized people don’t wake up out of good dreams — no one wakes screaming after winning the lottery. So, when she woke up in a foul mood after an odd dream where the Roman Colosseum — traveling on a pickup truck — began crushing the truck, she wondered how she could make it a happy dream.

“I know,” she said, snapping her fingers and speaking with her whole body as she does when she gets excited. “What if the bricks became hundred-dollar bills?”

That night, she did not wake up. This was significant, she said, for a woman who had suffered nightmares almost nightly since she was 4.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized her solution was more about empowerment — about resolving the bad situation in the dream.

“You have to think, ‘What do I want to happen next?’” she said. “But I don’t know if it’s getting back into the dream and finishing it or the waking resolution that works.”

Soon after Dexter’s peaceful night, clients — as usual — complained of nightmares, and she began asking them to think of scenarios where those dreams could become good. She told them to work only with the point where they woke up — not to rewrite the dream — and think about what’s next. She had them write down the positive outcome, then read it before they went to sleep.

It worked, she said. People began sleeping through the night.

In one case, a woman Dexter said she had helped sleep through dreams of childhood abuse woke up in the middle of such a dream when her alarm clock chimed. In the new dream, however, the woman went into the dream as an adult and saved her younger self from her abuser, Dexter said.

At the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va., where Dexter works when she’s not deployed, most of her patients deal with combat stress, and she has used the new therapy with them, she said, with good results:

* A soldier suffering combat dreams began sleeping through the night — and stopped spanking his children. Dexter wonders if he resolved his anger issues by finishing the dream.

* A woman had a nightmare that she kicked her boss’s head off. The next day, she thought about him sprouting a new head and apologizing for his bad behavior, and she slept through the night.

* A woman who woke up through 25 years’ worth of sexual-abuse dreams began sleeping through the night.

* A Desert Storm veteran suffering for 10 years with a nightmare about watching civilians die — something he had seen in reality — came up with a new outcome, slept through the night and made peace with the idea that he had done the best he could in that long-ago situation.

* A Marine who dreamed about hurting his daughter at first refused to try Dexter’s therapy because it seemed “flaky.” Out of desperation, he tried it and slept through the night — and stopped being afraid to be near children, she said.

Other troops’ flashbacks have stopped after they began sleeping through the night, she said.

In Iraq, Dexter offers a two-hour group therapy class to teach service members not to wake up during their nightmares.

Eight Marines and soldiers sat in one of her classes recently in the basement of a 399th Combat Support Hospital building. They ranged from a private with recent combat experience to a colonel who had been dreaming since Vietnam. Some seemed into the idea, and others looked skeptical as Dexter explained the process.

She told them their “sleeping brains” say, “I’m not going to let you go there” when a nightmare hits, and that they need to train themselves to sleep through it. In a combat zone, where people remain hypervigilant, that can be tough, but she compared it to “potty training.” Parents teach their children to wake up when they feel bladder pressure.

With her process, people train themselves to think differently about nightmares.
“No one dies in dreams,” she said. “Even if a dream has incredibly shocking pieces to it, I have to trust whatever my sleeping brain is going to do. If you start sleeping peacefully through the night, you wake up more refreshed, and that can make you calmer during the day.”

And, she said, the brain may be using the nightmares to work things out as people sleep.

“Experts say that in dreams, you may forget what we don’t need,” she said. “If you stay asleep, you probably won’t remember your dreams. But we believe the brain biochemistry is doing balance work, and you have to let it.”

She also said it’s important not to interpret dreams. So, if a soldier dreams of killing a friend or sleeping with a loved one’s wife, it means nothing in real life, and allowing it to happen in a dream could work out anger or guilt issues people don’t realize they have.

She also told the service members not to worry about the violence or inappropriateness of the dream intervention they come up with. Early on, her therapy didn’t work with someone who dreamed about two friends he had seen killed in a gruesome way.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I thought, ‘What? The magic fairy dust doesn’t work?’”
She asked him about his intervention.

“He said, ‘I had the insurgent guys lay down their weapons and walk away,’” she said. “‘I’m not doing that violence thing.’”

But that, Dexter said, wasn’t gut-level enough. Still, he said he was a Christian and couldn’t gun the insurgents down, even in a dream. Instead, he had them float away as dust — which worked.

“Abstract is fine,” Dexter said.

But it has to hit at the “caveman” level because dreams are ancient ways to handle stress. In other words, a group hug in dreamland probably won’t do it, but fire-breathing dragons swooping to blast the enemy might.

Sometimes, the dreams make no sense. One client kept having a surgery dream that wasn’t a nightmare, but he also had pain in his leg that no one could find a cause for. But he liked his surgeon, so he didn’t understand the dream.

“Think caveman,” Dexter said she told the man. “On a subconscious level, this man cut you open and hurt you.”

In the dream intervention, the patient beat up his surgeon, and the dreams and the pain went away, Dexter said.

“I’ve had some really odd, remarkable pain that could not be explained disappear with the dream,” she said. “You just have to think, ‘What do I want to happen next?’ It’s like having magic fairy dust.”

Seven steps to planned dream intervention
* There is no such thing as a bad dream.
* Think only about the part of the dream that woke you up.
* Think, “What would I like to happen next?”
* Come up with a quick idea that feels right: Bashing the bad guy, turning spiders into golf balls and whacking them with a club, watching a dead friend enter an elaborate castle in the sky.
* Write it down.
* Read it before you go to sleep.
* If it doesn’t work, come up with another Planned Dream Intervention. The emotional level has to be the same as that of the dream.

Gender Equality in Television

2007-08-10T02:37:00.000-04:00

I wrote this paper for a recent sociology course I was in. It's somewhat narrow in scope and certainly more in depth research should be done for clarification, but it is representative. I removed my personally identifying information. If you'd like to use part of this for scholastic or educational purposes, just drop me an e-mail at drexxell@hotmail.com to get written permission.

As Assessment of
Gender Equality in Television

Abstract

Television is the primary source of information for more than eighty-five percent of the population in the United States of America. Over the past several decades, television has been the focus of many research projects designed to identify and point out differences in national representation as it relates to portrayal of characters in day-time, prime-time, and weekend television programs. Researchers have also studied content in commercials in these three viewing periods to identify portrayed gender differences and target audiences. This report is an evaluation and comparison of the work of John Condry (1989) focusing on sex and gender inequalities in television programs and commercial advertisements.

An Assessment of
Gender Equality in Television

As early as the 1950’s and 1960’s, the content of television programs and commercial advertisements has been the focus of research for many psychologists and sociologists. Hundreds of studies have been generated to measure varying effects of sex role portrayal in children viewers; differences in gender equality as it relates to traditional and non-traditional gender associations; the effects of viewing violence by children; and the effects of viewing changing attitudes of sexual permissiveness in society, to name a few. It is, however, important to continue to generate research on this topic as children are more and more involved in digital media such as television, movies, and video games. These issues should be studied further because of the influence that television programming and commercial advertising has on young children and adolescents, as well as adults.

Social Developmentalist John Condry (1989), after reviewing and performing secondary analysis on over 660 secondary sources, concluded that, “Even though women make up the majority of the audience, television is a world of men” (p.68). Television viewing behaviors (the amount of time watching television) are also important to note as television viewing “has replaced the family as a source of recreation” (Eshleman & Bulcroft, 2006, p. 69). Additionally, television is frequently used as a baby-sitting tool and claims have been made that American children spend more time watching television than they spend in school (Eshleman & Bulcroft, p. 56). These notes are especially important as parents have been replaced as role models by children’s favorite television characters allowing children to gain their moral and social attitudes from network directors, sit-com producers, or commercial marketers.

All of this information presents a sociological issue that, while it has been studied, has not been addressed in terms of resolution. The objective of this report was to evaluate current television programming and commercial advertisements and to discuss the potential impact on today’s children and adolescents.

Method

Sample

Due to the narrow scope of the assignment and the limited time allotted to complete the research, I confined my viewing periods of daytime and prime time television programs and commercial advertisements from Monday July 23rd, 2007 to Friday July 27th, 2007. All daytime viewing was done between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM Eastern Time and covered 10 half hour situation comedies in syndication and 140 commercial advertisements. All prime time viewing was done between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM Eastern Time and covered 5 one hour long night-time dramas in syndication and 190 commercial advertisements. All viewings were digitally recorded and played back for observation. The channels observed were available on local broadcast networks not requiring cable to obtain.

Qualifications for Inclusion in Analysis

Statistical data resultant of these observations was produced by only counting actors or actresses who played significant roles in the television programs or commercial advertisements. Extras and background actors or actresses were not included in this analysis. Actors and actresses were not sorted by age or race; only by gender. Thus, the resultant data include all ages and all racial/ethnic categories.

Results
For the television programs in the specified daytime viewing time frame, I found that the ratio of male to female performers was 1.2:1. Additionally, for commercial advertisements in the same time frame, the ratio was 1:1 while the ratio for voiceovers for the commercial advertisements was .7:1. Commercial advertisements were broken down into the following groups: alcohol; cellular phone service; charity; female beauty; female hygiene; finances/money; food; insurance; internet services; legal services; medical services; and real estate/timeshares. Categories where the ratio of male to female performers was significantly disproportionate in favor of men (≥ 2:1) included: alcohol; cellular phone service; food; insurance; and legal services. Categories where the ratio of male to female performers was significantly disproportionate in favor of women (≤ .5:1) included: charity; female beauty; and female hygiene. Categories where men and women were portrayed equally in number, or without significant disproportion, (> .5:1 through < 2:1) were: finances/money; internet services; medical services; and real estate/timeshares.

For the television programs in the specified primetime viewing time frame, I found that the ratio of male to female performers was 2.7:1. Additionally, for commercial advertisements in the same time frame, the ratio was 2.2:1 while the ratio for voiceovers for the commercial advertisements was 3.5:1. Commercial advertisements were broken down into the following groups: advertisements for other television programs; automobiles; cellular phone service; cleaning products; education; food; insurance; medical services; real estate/timeshares; and travel. Categories where the ratio of male to female performers was significantly disproportionate in favor of men (≥ 2:1) included: advertisements for other television programs; automobiles; cellular phone service; food; and insurance. Categories where the ratio of male to female performers was significantly disproportionate in favor of women (≤ .5:1) included education only. Categories where men and women were portrayed equally in number, or without significant disproportion, (> .5:1 through < 2:1) were: cleaning products; medical services; real estate/timeshares; and travel.

Discussion

My overall assessment of the data supports Condry’s (1989) claim that television is a man’s world. This is not only evident in the majority of the sex ratios depicted in television programs and commercial advertisements disproportionately favoring men, but also in the roles that the characters assume.

In daytime television programs, the sex ratio is only slightly imbalanced at 1.2:1. However, male characters were portrayed as having jobs such as executive; junior copywriter; doctor; psychiatrist; police detective; actor/model; and paleontologist. Female characters, on the other hand, were assigned jobs like waitress; radio station producer; fashion designer; chef; musician; and physical therapist. While categorizing jobs such as these as masculine or feminine is subjective at best, it appears that men are portrayed in higher status positions. With only a few exceptions, all characters observed were young (less than 35), in good physical shape (male), and thin and attractive (female).

In daytime commercial advertisements, the sex ratio is equally balanced at 1:1. However, subjective assessments of gender roles become concrete objective assessments as men are portrayed in positions of authority, as decision makers for financial issues, or as working in a traditionally masculine job like construction worker; tow-truck drivers or business executive. In advertisements concerning food, men were portrayed as decision makers as it relates to choice of restaurants, but women were depicted as decision makers in terms of groceries. Advertisements for services, more often than not, portrayed women in need of assistance and men as having expert knowledge or the power to provide the required assistance. In advertisements for female beauty products, women were shown as focused on personal appearance while men, if present, were depicted as inept or as only seeing a woman in terms of how she looked. In medical advertisements, characters of both sexes discussed issues from diabetes to Medicare to adhesive bandages; however, men were shown playing golf or otherwise out of the home setting and women were shown in the home in all cases. In the instances of adhesive bandages, women were shown in the home treating the skinned knees, chins, or elbows of their children. In commercial advertisements where women were shown as having the same status position as men, in terms of employment, the women were out numbered 3 to 1 and women were never depicted in supervisory roles.

In night time dramas, the sex ratio was close to Condry’s (1989) findings of 3:1 (2.7:1). Male characters were shown in positions of authority, leadership, or power; i.e. congressman; lobbyist; district attorney; police captain; college professor; business executive; and murderer. Female characters were typically shown in positions of service or weakness; i.e. waitress; cashier; victim; and police informant; however, one female character was portrayed as a medical examiner. In the instances where men and women were depicted as having the same status position, in terms of employment, women were out numbered 4 to 1. Overall, in prime time viewing, men not only out number women in terms of characters, they seem to dominate the higher status positions. The majority of characters portrayed were young, in fit physical condition (men), or were thin and attractive (women).

Commercial advertisements during the specified television programs were closer to 2:1 (2.2:1). The data indicate a slight improvement of the 1989 findings. Traditional gender role portrayal in prime time commercial advertisements is far greater than the ratio of performers indicates. Especially of note is that while advertisements for cleaning products have a sex ratio of 1.1:1, females are depicted as those who clean and males are shown as those who enjoy the cleanliness or the fresh scent of the product. Also of interest are the addition of some advertisement categories and the elimination of others between daytime and prime time viewing. Prime time advertisements did not include the categories of: alcohol; charity; female beauty; female hygiene; finances/money; internet services; or legal services. Categories included in prime time advertisements that were not included in daytime advertisements included: advertisements for other television programs; automobiles, cleaning products; education; and travel.

The inclusion of the category of automobiles in prime time viewing of commercial advertisements is incredibly important. There was an average of 5 automobile commercials for each 1 hour night time drama. There were no females shown in any of the automobile commercials. Men were depicted driving over rough terrain and in general shown as tough and masculine. This indicates that men are the dominant decision makers in terms of automobile purchases.

Also interesting is the inclusion of advertisements for other television programs. The sex ratio for these commercial advertisements was 2.2:1 and the gender inequalities were even more pronounced than in the night time drama itself. Men were depicted as tough, strong, masculine and assumed positions of power and prestige while women were shown scantily clad in short skirts, revealing tops, or as wearing bikinis in a beach setting.

It is noteworthy to point out that all advertisements for food in the prime time area were for restaurants and not for groceries. The sex ratio for these commercial advertisements in prime time was 5.4:1 compared to the 2:1 ratio for daytime commercial advertisements for food. In all cases where women were in food commercials, they were portrayed as service providers while men were shown as consumers. This solidifies the male as the decision maker in terms of choice of restaurant.

Another drastic difference in sex ratio from daytime to prime time is in the category of cellular phone service. The daytime sex ratio is 2:1 while the prime time ratio is 8:1. In those cases where women were in the advertisements, they were portrayed as needing service (asking for directions) or as fulfilling a service role (customer service representative) while men were portrayed as having expert knowledge. This also leads a viewer to believe that men are the decision makers in terms of cellular phone service.

These findings seem to support Conrdy’s (1989) claim that in situation comedies, men and women are generally portrayed as more egalitarian and equal; and that night time dramas are specifically catered to a male audience. They also support earlier findings of gender inequality in commercial advertisements, especially in prime time viewing. The significance of these findings is that as children and adolescents view the content of these television programs and commercial advertisements, they become acclimated to the ideas that men and women are not and can not be equals. As it relates to television content in daytime and prime time viewing hours, gender inequality begets itself.

References

Condry, J. (1989). The psychology of television. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Eshleman, J.R., & Bulcroft R.A. (2006). The family. Boston: Pearson

Child Abuse in Deployed Families (Part 2)

2007-08-08T17:13:00.000-04:00

You're welcome. I had been mulling this for a while. I was really getting ticked with the titles of the news reports that were coming out. Very deceptive headings. Made it sound like it was categorically true of all military families when the truth was that only 1,771 families were looked at world-wide and those families already had prior incidences with abuse. And these families studied did not include officer's families or single parent families.

What those news reports don't show is that prior to deployments starting in 2003, instances of child maltreatment in the military community were considerably less than those among their civilian counterparts per 1,000 children. This last report indicates that while incidents of maltreatment among active duty army families have increased, they're only marginally higher than those reported in the civilian sector.

Very few studies exist making a comparison of child abuse between military families and civilian families. Those that do exist are really not representative of the complete military community. For example, guard and reserve families are often not included because there's not a base anywhere near where they live. Underreporting could be happening in cases involving military families due to reports going to Child Proctive Services (CPS) instead of to the Family Advcacy Programs (FAP).

Additionally, there is no uniform definition of what maltreatment or abuse is. Each branch of service has it's own definition and it's own reporting system as do all 50 states. Some report by incident instead of by the case. Others report by the family instead of by the child. Until an across the board system and definition are put into practice, results from these kinds of studies are going to have some sort of bias to them.

What is consistent, though, is the lower the rank, the younger the parents, and the younger the child, the greater the potential for maltreatment. Also of importance is whether or not the family has experience with prior deployments in how to cope with the stressors involved.

It's also important to point out that this most recent study was a secondary analysis of data collected from September 2001 to December 2004. Since that time, MANY improvements have been made to FAPs for all branches. So, this study is really looking at specific time period of post 9/11 predeployment and comparing that to a first time deployment time frame of about 20 months.

I really don't think JAMA or RTI are the bad guys here. They published an objective report covering a specific time period. For the media to frenzy on it like they have is irresponsible. The report from FOX News just set me off. I knew it wascoming because FOX likes to report some pretty left-side stuff, but getting Stacy Bannerman to comment for the article was inappropriate. First, she belongs to an anti-war group composed of military families. Second, she has no children. Third, her marriage dissolved after her husband returned from Iraq. Who better to ask about the effects of deployments on child abuse?

Now, I'm not painting a bulls eye on Miss Bannerman. Don't go sending her nasty hate mail. I don't agree with everything she has to say, but she makes some valid points. She was a deployed spouse as so many of us have been. That kind of service is not measurable and I embrace her for enduring and suffering the months of lonliness. Miss Bannerman is right that more needs to be done in terms of VA treatment for veterans. She's especially right that more needs to be done in terms of outreach programs for national guardsmen/women and reservists who don't have ready access to base facilities and programs. I applaud her for her trips to DC to try to correct these issues that have seemingly slipped through the cracks.

I don't agree with her views about if we should even be in Iraq, but she's entitled to her opinion on that matter and I respect that. I don't agree that not funding the war is the best way to "Support Our Troops". I think she swings from both sides of the plate with that conviction while at the same time demanding better training and equipment for the guard and reserve. IBA doesn't grow on trees. Neither does night vision goggles, MREs, fuel, amunition, transportation, MRAPs, or anything else.

Miss Bannerman also contends that deployments cause more divorces. A study by Rand Corp. contests her claim by stating that wartime and peacetime divorces are pretty much equal. You'll notice a .5% gain in percentages of divorces, but that is explainable by looking at the numbers or couples getting married in the military vs. the numbers getting divorced in a given year. For example, if there are 1,000 married couples in 2001, 100 couples get married, totaling 1,100 and 75 get divorced, the divorce ratio is approx. 6.8%. This leaves 1,025 carried over to the next year. If only 50 couples marry in 2002, totaling 1,075 married couples, but the number of divorces stays constant at 75, now the divorce rate is very close to 7%.

I have searched and searched and I can not find any article, prior to the release of RTI's data review, where Miss Bannerman adressess child abuse in military families. From what I have seen of her book reviews, it also does not address child abuse. There's no doubt that Miss Bannerman is an educated woman with some alphabet soup behind her name. Her opinion is as educated as the next person; but, what is it that makes her qualified to speak on the topic of child abuse? I have no idea.

My point here is this. FOX News used Miss Bannerman, in or out of context (it doesn't matter), to support it's political stance on this war and to be able to have another bullet for it's political weapon. "Deployments cause child abuse! Bring the troops home!" Bologna. Parents/caregivers cause child abuse. Military or civilian.

Along those same lines, "Deployments cause undue stresses, lower academic performance, and higher rates of depression in children! Bring the troops home!" This one is true, but the same can be said for divorce, the death of a loved one, a hurricane, or any other traumatic life change.

I really want to encourage people to look closely at issues that popular media presents in articles and stories. Ask yourself the critical questions. Research it if you like. Just never ever take the word of the media at face value.

Child Abuse in Deployed Families Gaining Lots of Attention

2007-08-07T21:01:00.000-04:00

I didn't include the text of the report in this post, but you can get to it by clicking above. When I first saw this, I discarded it as inaccurate. But since it's gaining such attention, I feel it's important to address it here. There are several other sources for this story by several different writers. I've only seen a few reports that include the actual numbers. RTI, Journal Watch, Fox News, and USA Today all comment on the original report, but I didn't see where any of them made it a point to emphasize that this is not inclusive of all military families.

Looking at the original report from The Journal of the American Medical Association with a skeptical and scientific eye, it clearly states that the families included in the research are those with previously established occassions of abuse.

I think the reports are incomplete. A general assumption that all deployed spouses are child abusers can't be made from this report. What the researchers looked at were families where at least one confirmed case of child abuse had already been substantiated.

That being said, the sample taken for this study was not representative of the population that the researchers are reporting on. To me, the people who published these reports, without that disclaimer, are irresponsible.

The fact that DoD defines child abuse differently or more strictly that their civilian counterparts also plays this out in a different light. When we were all kids, corporal punishment was a norm, just like riding around in the back window of the car.

My advice, just look at it as a wedge being driven between the morals of US society and the war. They're playing on the sympathies of the US public. I believe they think if they show deployments as destructive to the home life of military families, US support for the war will drop even further and politicians will feel even more compelled to push for withdrawals and quick resolution.

Until these researchers come out with a more comprehensive examination that is inclusive of all military families or is more representative of the military family population, this report will only be viewed as a black mark.

At best, this report is good to see how the stress of deployment effects families that already have at least one occurrence of child abuse in the home. The fact that occurrences in child abuse for deployed wives where child abuse has already happened increases when their husbands are deployed is not surprising.

Representative samples of the US population where child abuse occurs indicates that women are more than twice as likely than men to be abusive to their children. But again, we’re working with different definitions, like comparing apples to oranges.

Potential Added Financial Protection for OCONUS PCSs/Deployments

2007-08-06T23:24:00.000-04:00

Companies that don't do this voluntarily already ought to be ashamed. You do it because it's the right thing to do.

Bill would bar phone, car insurance penalties

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Aug 6, 2007 10:49:56 EDT

Service members receiving orders to deploy or for reassignments to and from overseas bases would be allowed penalty-free cancellation of contracts for their phone, cable television service, automobile insurance and utilities, under a bill introduced by an Iraq war veteran.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., calls his plan the 21st Century Servicemembers Protection Act. The bill, HR 3298, would greatly expand financial and legal rights under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act to allow the termination or suspension of contracts signed before military orders were received.

The bill was referred to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which already is considering updates to the current SCRA.

Murphy is a former Army judge advocate who deployed to Iraq in 2003 as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. Since being elected to Congress in 2006, he has pushed to update military personnel policies. He is not a member of the veterans’ committee but does sit on the House Armed Services Committee, which makes recommendations about changes in legal protections for deployed troops but does not have legislative jurisdiction over the law governing service members’ rights.

With 22 co-sponsors, Murphy is proposing a major extension of current cancellation rights that allow apartment and automobile leases to be canceled when a service member receives permanent-change-of-station orders or is deployed for more than 90 days for housing and 180 days for vehicles.

His bill specifically would apply to cellular phone service, cable or satellite television service, Internet service, automobile insurance, water, electricity, oil, gas, telephone and other utilities.

Under Murphy’s proposal, a service member or a service member’s dependent would have the option of terminating or suspending a service contract if he receives reassignment orders to or from a location outside the continental U.S., or receives orders for a deployment of 90 days or longer, or has received orders to deploy a minimum of 180 days.

A company could be notified by hand, fax, mail or private messenger of the termination or cancellation. A company could not impose an early termination charge and would have to refund any fees paid in advance, However, canceling a contract does not mean a service member or his dependent does not have to pay any balance for service provided before the cancellation takes effect. In cases where fees were paid in advance, a company would have 30 days from the effective date of the termination to provide a refund and a service member could also receive up to $10,000 in damages and have his attorney’s fees covered for each violation.

Murphy’s bill also would increase the potential penalty for companies that do not comply with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by lowering debt interest rates to 6 percent for pre-military loans when service members are mobilized for active duty. Up to $10,000 in fines plus attorney fees would be allowed as damages when a creditor willfully or negligent violated the law.

Telling Stories on your Kids (Story # 1)

2007-08-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

I was recently inspired by a fellow parent to create this post. I believe I will make it a frequent occurrence.

My daughter would be horrified if she found out I told this story on her, but she's 12 now and I'm Daddy, so it's my job, right?

So, here she was in her crib. Mommy was working swing shifts so it was just Daddy and, at that time, two kids. She hadn't, at this point, learned to climb out of her crib yet, or I'd have been in deeper doodoo than I was. (you'll see the hilarity of that in a moment)

It was summer time so the oldest one wasn't in school yet and I didn't have to be up too early, except that I did because my daughter was producing hideous little giggles from her room at 0600. After about 5 minutes of rolling around in bed wondering what she thought was so amusing as such an early hour, I decided that this was not normal behavior and got up to "find the funny".

After tossing on a bath robe, I peered into her room and found that my darling little princess had completely disrobed herself, diaper included. The contents of said diaper had become the material for her "creative expressionist period" as she had used the poopoo to "finger paint" the walls and her crib. She had applied the poopoo as "war paint" on her face and body.

One of those "OH...MY...GOD"s spilled from my mouth as my still sleepy brain processed the scene trying to produce a course of action. It was at this point that my daughter noticed I was standing in the doorway. She slowly pulled the corners of her mouth upward with her cheek muscles to show me, not the figurative, but the literal definition of "shit eating grin". Another "OH...MY...GOD"

Now, my brain and my body decided not to cooperate.

BRAIN: Go turn on the bath.

BODY: ::walks over to the crib::

BRAIN: Don't pick her up with your bare hands!

BODY: ::reaches out to meet the awaiting little arms in the crib::

BRAIN: Dude, you smell that?

BODY: ::gags::

There's nothing like the threat of vomiting to make your brain and body sync up. I admit it. I have a weak stomach and certain situations just set it off. In this case, I could have taken the sight or the smell, but not both in harmony. What to do...

To the shock and dismay of her highness, I turned around and left the room and started the bath. A few more minutes in her present condition wouldn't hurt her, right? I went to the linen closet, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around my face. "Better to smell fabric softener and deal with the sight", I thought.

I turned off the bath and went to retrieve the little princess. As I walked back into her room, she looked up at me again, eyes big like golf balls in sharp contrast to her newly acquired skin tone. Then came roaring toddler laughter. The kind that is contagious to adults. So now, against my own wishes, I was laughing along with her, even though the situation wasn't the least bit comical to me. I reached out to pick her up.

BRAIN: Bare hands, dude.

Oh, hell. What to do... I took a deep breath, inhaling as much Downy scented air as my lungs could hold, unwrapped my face turban, wrapped it around my "little stinker" of a daughter and carried her to the bath, dreading the bedroom clean-up more than the bath itself.

A few extra minutes won't hurt her my eye! It's amazing that discovery dawns on people in times of crisis. In my case, I discovered that the water content in poopoo evaporates quickly when spread thin and exposed to toddler body heat. I also discovered that it does not reconstitute in bath water.

Fortunately, my little princess decided that the rewards of artistry did not outweigh the costs of the ensuing scrub down that followed and she did not repeat this malodorous behavior. Well, maybe she decided that, or maybe it was because Daddy started getting up before she did to prevent such things from happening again.

Good Ideas for Families of Injured Servicemembers...

2007-08-03T22:12:00.000-04:00

They really are good ideas. Better than anything else on the books. I don't think they should have attached this stuff to tax relief bills though.

Bills give families more leave, job protection

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Aug 3, 2007 11:48:50 EDT

The Senate passed two pieces of legislation Thursday aimed at helping the families of injured or ill active-duty service members.

Three Democratic presidential candidates are the chief sponsors of the legislation.

One initiative, sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would allow family members to miss up to 52 weeks of work without being fired, denied promotion or hit with any other adverse action by a private employer.

His plan, called the Military Family Job Protection Act, was attached by amendment to the Small Business Tax Relief Act. It would apply to spouses, children, parents and siblings who are on invitation orders to care for a recovering service member, are receiving military per diem payments or are nonmedical attendees for recovering active-duty, Guard or reserve members who are undergoing medical treatment, recuperation or therapy, or are in a medical hold status for injuries, illness or disease incurred or aggravated while on active duty.

Obama, one of the front-running Democratic presidential candidates, is a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee who has taken a big interest in care for combat-wounded troops. His proposal, however, would apply to families of both those with combat and non-combat injuries.

The second family-related initiative, also passed as an amendment to the small-business bill, is sponsored by Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Hillary Clinton of New York, both presidential candidates.

Called the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act, it would provide up to six months of unpaid leave for the families of wounded military personnel, expanding the 12 weeks currently available under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The expanded leave was recommended last week by the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors. Dodd was asked by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., to sponsor legislation to implement the recommendations because Dole and Dodd had worked together on the original Family and Medical Leave Act.

In a statement, Dodd said “I believe that Congress has few higher priorities than the safety and well-being of America’s combat heroes. The very least we owe them is our total support for their family and medical needs.”

Clinton said the 12 weeks of leave now available doesn’t fit the needs of many military families.

“All too often, this is just not enough time, as they struggle to care for loved ones grappling with traumatic brain injuries, severe physical wounds and other problems upon returning home from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” said Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Eligibility is similar to that in Obama’s bill.

The fate of the two initiatives is unclear because they are attached to tax relief bill, which provides tax incentives for small businesses to provide health coverage to employees, which is not directly relevant to helping military families. That makes them easy to be cast aside when negotiators write a compromise bill.

More Recalled Toys Due to High Lead Levels

2007-08-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

Once again, here we go. Except this recall is from Fisher Price, not Soldier Bear.

Exchanges sold some recalled toys

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Aug 3, 2007 13:56:53 EDT

The military exchanges are among the many stores that carried some of the 92 Fisher-Price toys that have been recalled because of the possibility that they contain high levels of lead.

The toys included some Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer and other children’s toys. Surface paints on the toys could contain excessive levels of lead, which can be harmful if ingested by young children.

The various figures and toys were manufactured between April 19 and July 6, 2007, and were sold alone or as part of sets. Stores nationwide sold them from May through Aug. 2, when the recall was issued. Only toys manufactured and sold during these time periods are affected.

Customers who bought the recalled toys should immediately take the toys away from children and contact Fisher-Price at (800) 916-4498 anytime, or visit the firm’s Web site. Information will be provided about how to return the product, and the customer will receive a voucher for a replacement toy of the customer’s choice, up to the value of the returned product.

Navy exchanges sold:

Sesame Street Musical Lights, Sesame Street Shake Giggle & Roll, Sesame Street Elmo in Giggle Box, Sesame Street Silly Parts Talking Elmo, Dora Figures, Dora Talking House, Giggle Doodler, Diego ATV, Sesame Street Giggle Tool Belt, Sesame Giggle Drill, Dora Talking Pony Place, Diego Talking Gadget Belt, Diego Mobile Rescue, Dora’s Talking Horse.

Marine Corps exchanges sold:

C-1211 Giggle Gabbers Assortment, and G-3825 Vamanos Van.

Army and Air Force exchanges sold:

39054 Sesame Street Shape Sorter, H4187 Dora Figures in Tube, J9692 Dora’s Talking Pony Place, K3414 Diego – Talking Gadget Belt, K3571 Go Diego Go Mobile Rescue Unit, M0732 Dora’s Talking House.

As AAFES spokesman Judd Anstey notes, the stores may have carried some of the other toys, but they were not affected by the recall because the merchandise on the shelves was manufactured before April 19.

Customers should examine the complete list to determine if any toys bought at another civilian retailer could be part of the recall.

Going to PCS Soon? Check Out the New Rules for Damaged Household Goods

2007-08-02T22:15:00.000-04:00

Full replacement value for damaged household goods starting in October. Take a look.

New moving coverage takes effect Oct. 1

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Aug 2, 2007 12:51:34 EDT

If you’re making a permanent-change-of-station move later this year and scheduling a household goods move, you might want to take note of the start dates for the Defense Department’s new program providing full replacement value for anything that is lost or damaged.

Most of the coverage will take effect in October and November.

And also note that the deadline for filing claims to get that full coverage is nine months, and you file the claim directly with the moving company. If you file it after the nine-month deadline, but before the two-year time limit for filing the claim, the company is liable only for the depreciated value of lost or damaged items — as the system works now.

Following through with their plans reported earlier this year, the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command has announced it will start implementing full replacement value coverage for service members and Department of Defense civilians this fall, beating a March 2008 deadline set by Congress last year.

Here are the implementation dates:

* Oct. 1 for shipments to and from overseas. Hawaii is included in the definition because household goods go there by sea.

* Nov. 1 for domestic moves — to include the lower 48 states and Alaska.

* March 1, 2008, for permanent storage shipments and some special types of shipments.

Will full replacement value coverage, lost or destroyed items will be replaced, or service members will be paid the replacement cost of the items. The moving company will be liable for the greater of: $5,000 per shipment, or $4 times the net weight of the shipment (in pounds) up to $50,000.

Military families or civilians do not pay extra for this coverage. But you must submit DD Form 1840, listing all damage discovered at delivery, or DD Form 1840R, listing all damage discovered after delivery to the moving company, within 75 days of delivery.

In order to receive full replacement value coverage, the claim for damage must be filed directly with the company within nine months of delivery by using DD Form 1844.

The company will repair or pay to repair damaged items, and the company will pay full replacement value on items that need to be replaced or have been lost or destroyed. The company will be responsible for obtaining all repair and replacement costs, according to SDDC.

If the company denies the claim, or does not make an acceptable offer on the claim, or does not respond within 30 days, the customer can then transfer the claim to the Military Claims Office.

More information is available at SDDC’s Personal Property Web site.

Got Screwed on Tuition or Credits due to Deployment? Hopefully, Not Anymore

2007-08-02T21:40:00.000-04:00

If this passes, it will be so awesome. Certainly, military personnel should not be punished for serving their country when called. Kuddos to Sgt. Campbell for his efforts.

Vet Rewrites The Law To Help Others

Paul Rieckhoff | June 28, 2007

When Sgt. Patrick Campbell returned to law school after serving a tour in Iraq, his student lender told him that he was defaulting on his payments. Due to his deployment to Iraq, he had used up all of his permissible grace period. Unlike his non-veteran classmates, the lender was going to require Patrick to start repaying his loans the day after graduation. Finally, after writing dozens of letters and spending hours on the phone, he was told that the only way to restore his pre-deployment status would be to rewrite the laws. So he did just that. Patrick spent his final year in law school writing the Veterans Education Tuition Support Act (VETS) to help returning student-soldiers.

Today that bill was introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) and Representative Susan Davis (CA). This new legislation will fix the loopholes that were punishing young Iraq vets like Patrick. The Veterans Education Tuition Support Act, or VETS Act, will:

Require colleges to refund tuition for service members who deploy (or provide future credits)

Restore veterans to their academic status when they return

Cap student loan interest payments at 6% while the student is deployed

Extend the period of time a student-soldier has to re-enroll after returning from abroad

Patrick's story is reality for the thousands of other National Guardsmen and Reservists who are also college students. For these troops, deployment poses extra financial burdens - including thousands of dollars in lost tuition and overdue student loans.

Sgt. Todd Bowers, IAVA's Director of Government Affairs, experienced this first hand. When he was activated on his second deployment to Iraq, Todd was forced to withdraw from his university only two weeks before finals. After he returned from Iraq, the school would not allow him to take his finals or finish his classes, and they refused to refund his tuition. Only after local media picked up on his story did the university permit Todd to finish his finals and complete his classes.

We at IAVA are incredibly proud of Patrick for pushing to make this bill a reality. He has shown how one motivated young veteran can make a difference. The VETS bill will help reassure men and women in uniform that serving their country opens doors to higher education, instead of closing them. Join us now in making sure it gets passed. You can learn more now at www.iava.org. Tell your members of congress that college students shouldn't be punished for deciding to serve their country.

Bill Lets Taxpayers Opt Out of War Funding

2007-08-01T17:32:00.000-04:00

I have always felt strongly about this. Quite frankly, it sickens me to see how some comgressmen and comgresswomen define "supporting our troops". It's as simple as this. Funding for our troops and the decision of if and when there is a pullout should never be addressed on the same piece of legislative paper.

The very idea of "supporting our troops" by not funding them to force them to come home is insulting to me. Do I want my wife to come home? Absolutely. Do I want her to not get the finding she needs to perform her job? Absolutely not!

I really don't know how to express the outrage I feel that this kind of thing is still being entertained. Work on resolving the issue of bringing them home or don't, but don't stop funding them while they're there.

Bill lets taxpayers opt out of war funding

By Amy Doolittle - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 31, 2007 19:01:32 EDT

A New York congresswoman has renewed an effort to divert money from the military by allowing taxpayers to opt out of funding the war in Iraq when they file their tax returns.

The bill, HR 3190, was introduced late last week and would let taxpayers choose to instead send their money to reduce national debt, finance the Head Start program or fund a college grant program for the children of veterans.

“Our brave service men and women have sacrificed too much already for a war that was ill-conceived and poorly managed,” said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y. “The best way to support them is to bring them home, and if the American people make the choice to stop the funding, we can end this now.”

Unlike a similar bill introduced in June by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., taxpayers under this legislation would not have to state a reason for their decision and would instead be required to check an opt-out box. While the Lewis bill calls for immediate troop withdrawal and would divert funding from the entire military to a religious peace tax fund, the Velazquez bill would block money only from funding the war and would still allow money to be spent on troop withdrawal and Iraq humanitarian relief.

The Lewis bill, HR 1921, which has 22 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, has not been scheduled for a hearing and is not likely to pass. The Velazquez bill, which has 30 co-sponsors, including Lewis, was referred to both the ways and means committee and the House Committee on Labor and Education. It is likely to face a similar fate.

Worst Case Scenario

2007-07-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

I have recently posted some articles about security failures as it relates to computers that can't be accounted for and sensitive digital information transmitted in an unsecured way. That's not to mention the laptop computer that was taken home by a Veterans Administration employee and was subsequently stolen compromising some 26.5 million records. And then we bring into play the complete charlie foxtrot that CITIGROUP has made of the processing of US Passports.

What gives?

I mean, we're talking about a complete lapse of security and accountability here. From one aspect, military personnel not only have to be deployed to war zones, but now they have to worry about their own and their family's identities? That's the kind of distraction that could get someone killed. Shame on you, SAIC.

Then there's the retired military personnel, the veterans, who may not have much in the way of economic stability in the first place, who have to worry about the same issue. Veterans information was exposed once, but TWICE this year. Proud men and women serve their country bravely and their repayment is exposure to potential bad guys. Shame on you, VA.

If all that weren't bad enough, US Passports are back-logged in proportions never before seen. It's one thing when your vacation plans are fouled because your US Passport was delayed until the 12th of Never. It's another thing when you finally get your US Passport, but there are errors like a wrong date of birth, incorrect birth location; but, my favorite is it having the wrong picture (I can't make this stuff up). The kicker is when your US passport application gets lost completely. Your photos, application, application fee, and your birth certificate or previous passport are just gone (POOF!). Shame on you, CITIGROUP.

"OK. All that sucks, but why are you birthing a calf over it?"

Aside from identity theft within the country, which has become a past time for some bad guys, what happens if Al-Qaeda gets their grubby little hands on this information or some of the missing passport applications? They've got their computer geeks too, you know.

Digital and domestic terrorism, that's what happens. This goes far beyond the scope of the Red Cross Scam that targeted the spouses of deployed service members. Who knows how that information got leaked.

Please allow me to present a plausible scenario to you.

The bad guys get the information because it is lost, stolen, or otherwise misplaced. They steal the identities of veterans, military personnel and their families and cause complete economic havoc by running up credit cards and transferring savings to off-shore accounts to fund further terrorist activities. Millions of people become poor and destitute while they wait for the government to "solve the problem". What an incredible horror to know that not only have you lost everything, but that what you lost went to finance terrorist activities.

The second wave comes when military families and other citizens start getting threatening phone calls or suspicious letters containing a "strange white powder". Can you imagine the terror that would be instilled? You get a spooky phone call at three in the morning or open a letter you think is junk mail only to have white powder fly all over you and you rush to the Emergency Room. Now that Federal and Local law enforcement have their hands more than full, the next step comes.

The bad guys get the passports applications that were "lost", replace the pictures and reapply using false ID, which isn't that hard to get. And in the cases where the fees were paid with a money order, the poor person whose application was lost in the first place has now paid for a bad guy to gain access to the country. It's an open back door that anyone can walk right through while authorities are tracking down who was responsible for the first two steps.

The insanity of this is that I just thought of it. Me. A simpleton, for all intents and purposes. If I could dream up a nightmare like this, so can the bad guys. Or maybe the can one up me.

The time has come for us as citizens to start demanding the protection we're entitled to and the protection we were promised. Write your Representatives and Senators. Inundate them with letters, e-mails and phone calls. If everyone gets involved and does this, maybe, just maybe, for one day, a committee of some sort, perhaps the entire House or Senate won't be able to conduct business because of concerned and angry correspondence and phone calls. Then they'll step back and really look. "Why can't we do business today?" could turn into "Who's responsible for the lack of security?" and that could lead to action.

This is our time. Do we wait for the bad guys to come to us? I mean, certain government agencies have all but invited them, right? Or do we kick somebody in the pants to motivate them for our own protection? We elected our government officials and we pay their salaries. It's time they started working.

Do the Math: Soldiers' Return Plus 9 Months Equals Base Baby Boom

2007-07-26T12:03:00.000-04:00

Now this is the kind of article I enjoy reading, except for the whole re-deploying bit. It is interesting to me to see the trend or the pattern between soldiers' returns and the ensuing fruits of romantic entanglement that follow. I would have to look for more data on this issue, but I do not believe that this is only a recent occurrence. I have a neighbor that lives just up the street from me. They have two little boys and he's been deployed right before each was conceived. (ponders)

Do the Math: Soldiers' Return Plus 9 Months Equals Base Baby Boom

By KRISTIN M. HALL
Associated Press Writer
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky.

Army Spc. John Luckey and his wife, Kerry, already had five children and no plans for more when he came home from a year's duty in Iraq. But there was romance in the California air when the entire family went on a vacation to see the giant redwoods.

Nine months later, Kerry Luckey gave birth to a daughter, EmLee Rae.

Apparently many military couples at Fort Campbell celebrated like the Luckeys when about 20,000 soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division came home last fall, because the military hospital here is now seeing a baby boom.

The hospital...

...expects to deliver 210 babies a month soon, nearly twice the usual number of deliveries, and more are expected at other nearby hospitals in Tennessee and Kentucky.

"You go around town and there are these big bellies everywhere. It's kind of fun to have all the babies around," said Kerry Luckey, who lives in Clarksville, near this Army post.

A temporary increase in births is not uncommon after soldiers return, but the boom this year is the biggest the post has seen in decades, said Lt. Col. Diane Adams, chief of women's health at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital.

The base is seeing "a lot more folks with family on the mind when they returnedthis time around," Adams said.

About 19,000 soldiers returned to Fort Stewart, Ga., in the first months of 2006, and the hospital there saw a baby boom nine months later, delivering more than 100 babies a month, compared with 76 per month the previous year. Fort Hood in Texas saw deliveries peak at 289 in March 2006, well above the 213 average.

Lt. Trena Buggs, a labor and delivery nurse at Blanchfield, got pregnant herself not long after her husband, a Special Forces soldier, returned from Iraq in early 2006, and she gave birth in May. She knew what to expect when the 101st Airborne came back between August and December of last year.

"We knewthat any time the soldiers are deployed, we knew the one thing they liked to do best when they come home is get a little bit of loving," she said.

In many cases, the father was back in Iraq by the time the baby arrived; many soldiers have heard their children's first cries via cell phone.

In the Fort Campbell hospital's busy maternity waiting room, many new mothers do not even seem to notice when Brahms' lullaby starts playing over the public address system _ the signal that another baby has just been born.

Adams hears the lullaby about seven times a day.

"We should be close to 2,300 for the year," she said. "Last year we delivered1,352, to give you a comparison."

The baby boom at Fort Campbell is expected to continue through December, which also happens to be when three units from the 101st Airborne are set to return to Iraq. Another three units are scheduled to leave for Afghanistan early next year.

About 20 percent of the new mothers at Fort Campbell are active-duty soldiers themselves, Adams said.

New mothers are exempt from deployment for four months. But after that, husband-and-wife soldiers have to arrange for child care if they are both sent overseas. Often, relatives or close friends take care of the children.

Many soldiers at Fort Campbell have beensent to Iraq three times already. Back-to-back tours can play havoc with family planning.

"When you're in your first deployment, if you haven't started your family already, you think, `Well, we'll go ahead and do that after the first one,'" Adams said. "They've put it off long enough, and now they want to get going on getting the family situation straightened out."

Copyright 2007 by the Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

VA Lost 53 Computers, Auditors Say

2007-07-26T00:54:00.000-04:00

Oh, for the love of God. What's this, the third time this year? Somebody needs to pull their head out and make sure accountability is happening.

VA lost 53 computers, auditors say

Amy Doolittle - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 25, 2007 10:59:08 EDT

The Veterans Affairs Department has lost 53 computers that could include veterans’ sensitive, personal information, a new Government Accountability Office report said.

The computers are missing from four locations across the country. McCoy Williams, director of financial management and assurance at GAO, said veterans’ information possibly could be stolen as a result of the losses.

Williams said VA does not know who was using the computers before they went missing or what information was stored on them.

“We’re not sure ... we basically looked at the environment from a standpoint of ‘could it happen,’ and based on what we saw, the possibility exists” for information to be stolen, he said. “In a situation like this, you only need one case for messing up a whole lot of people.”

VA officials cautioned that missing laptops do not necessarily equal stolen information but nevertheless said the chance for a security breach still exists.

“I would say there’s a slim chance of it being stolen,” said Robert Howard, assistant secretary for information and technology at VA. “With all of the problems we’ve had, I have not encountered any case to my knowledge of identity theft as a result of these instances. Will information be exposed to the wrong people? Yes, we do have knowledge of that.”

The GAO audited three VA medical facilities and VA headquarters as part of their investigation. They found that as of March, officials at the Washington, D.C., VA medical center did not know the location of 28 percent of their information technology inventory. Six percent of the IT inventory was missing from the Indianapolis medical center, 10 percent from the San Diego center and 11 percent from D.C. headquarters.

“The four locations we audited put IT equipment at risk of theft, loss and misappropriation and pose continuing security vulnerability to our nation’s veterans with regard to sensitive data maintained on the equipment,” Williams said Tuesday at a hearing of the House Veterans Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee.

The GAO also found that used hard drives waiting to be cleared were stored in unsecured bins at the facilities, even though many of them contained sensitive data. Rooms where potentially sensitive data was stored also lacked required security, auditors said.

“When you leave those hard drives, there’s always a possibility that someone will come in and take it,” Williams said at the hearing.

In addition to the items that are currently missing, the audited VA locations reported a total of 2,400 missing IT items valued at $6.4 million over 2005 and 2006, GAO found.

VA officials said they are working to put in place better safeguards to keep tabs on where equipment goes and who has it. They said they have put together a handbook for tracking equipment and will soon put in place new tracking software.

Officials said that since the investigation was concluded, 1,457 of the 1,900 items missing from headquarters have been recovered. That leaves 443 items that are simply lost and likely will never be recovered, they said.

Last year, the personal information of over 26 million veterans and active-duty personnel was lost when a VA laptop was stolen from the Maryland home of a VA analyst. That computer was recovered several months later.

Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., an Iraq veteran, said the effects of data insecurity extend beyond potential loss. He said the carelessness of VA is demoralizing to veterans.

“It has a very corrosive effect in trusting the VA in general,” Walz said. “Each of the [committee] members are sensing the frustration among constituents and veterans that this is one of the issues we speak of often and see very little movement on.”

Awesome Sweepstakes Getaway Opportunity for Authorized MWR Patrons

2007-07-24T00:46:00.000-04:00

Until August 31, 2007 authorized MWR users can enter for a change to win the "Great Getaways" vacation package. This is the grand prize. It's a trip for two to any of the four Armed Forces Recreation Centers. The trip includes a seven night stay at any of the four AFRCs, round trip air fare for two, a seven day car rental, and a set of luggage.

The four Armed Forces Recreation Centers are:

Dragon Hill Lodge in Seoul, South Korea;

Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch, Germany;

Hale Koa Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii; and

Shades of Green on Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Other prizes include $100 gift cards, digital cameras, PlayStation Portables, and golf clubs.

Military Spouse Magazine Announces 2007 Who's Who of Military Spouses

2007-07-23T16:15:00.000-04:00

Do you recognize anyone?

Military Spouse magazine announces 2007 Who's Who of Military Spouses
By Military Spouse magazine, a Victory Media, Inc. publication
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the last few years, the military spouse community has changed. Spouses have taken charge of their community and created the much-needed resources to meet the shifting requirements of military spouses worldwide.

The 2007 Who's Who of Military Spouses list recognizes military spouses who have made significant contribution in the military community for all military spouses. The leaders of the military spouse community were chosen based on their service-wide appeal, commitment to military spouses and professional development. Military Spouse magazine, a Victory Media, Inc. publication, is proud to be the resource to bring you this comprehensive list of deserving spouses in the world of the military. The listed spouses will be profiled in the next three issues of Military Spouse magazine as noted below.

September/October 2007:
Sue Hoppin, Military Officer Association of America (MOAA), Assistant Director for Spouse Outreach, Air Force Spouse
Sarah Smiley, syndicated columnist, author of Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife, Navy Spouse
Deb Kloeppel, Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN), Founder and President, Navy Spouse
Meredith Leyva, Operation Homefront, Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Navy Spouse
Andi Hurley, Spouse BUZZ, Founder, Army Spouse

November/December 2007:
Joyce Raezer, NMFA, Chief Operating Officer, Army Spouse
Jacey Eckhart, syndicated columnist, radio personality and author of The Homefront Club, Navy Spouse
Roxanne Reed, Jane Wayne Gear, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Marine Corps Spouse
Tanya Biank, Author of Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage, Army Spouse
Kathie Hightower and Holly Scherer, motivational speakers and co-authors of Help! I'm a Military Spouse and I Want a Life, too!
Victoria Parham, Military Spouse Talk Radio, President and Founder, Army Spouse

January 2008, first monthly issue:
Who's Who Spouses to watch in 2008
Kristin Henderson, Author
Janet Farley, Author
Karen Pavlicin, Author
Nicole Alcorn and Karie Darga, Military Spouse Monument, Founders
Krista Wells, Ph.D, The Military Spouse Coach TM
Shannon Maxwell and Robin Kelleher, Hope for the Warriors non-profit, Founders

H&R Block Offers Free Tax Course for Military Spouses

2007-07-23T16:09:00.001-04:00

I thought this was interesting. You can take the course for free. You don't have to go to work for them, but you can if you want to.

H&R Block Offers Free Tax Course for Military Spouses
Week of July 16, 2007

See if you'd enjoy earning extra income preparing taxes. If you're a military spouse, our beginning course will get you started at no charge, with no previous training required. Even if you don't go on to become a tax professional, you'll be able to complete your own return and help others with theirs. To learn more about this special offer, view the H&R Block Free Tax Course PDF.

Some Gerber Baby Food Recalled

2007-07-23T16:01:00.001-04:00

Been a long time since I had any this small, but maybe some of you do.

Some Gerber baby food recalled

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 18, 2007 5:26:25 EDT

Commissary officials are warning parents to stop using 8-ounce packages of Gerber Organic Rice and Gerber Organic Oatmeal cereals because of concerns about a potential choking hazard for babies.

Commissaries as well as civilian stores have pulled these cereals from their shelves.

Gerber Products Company issued a voluntary recall July 13 on the products, which may contain lumps of cereal that do not dissolve in water or milk. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia’s food safety office on Tuesday issued a notice to commissary officials about the recall.

Gerber had received reports of choking, but there have been no reports of injury.

These particular cereals have been distributed in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

Anyone who has these cereals should stop using the products and return them to commissaries for a full refund. Consumers can also call the Gerber Parents Resource Center at (800) 443-7237 or (231) 928-3000 to return the product and receive a full refund.

The affected cereals’ universal product codes can be found on the bottom right side of the box. Gerber Organic Rice and Gerber Organic Oatmeal cereals are sold in 8-ounce boxes, and all codes are being recalled, according to Gerber officials. The UPC codes are:

* Gerber Organic Rice: UPC Code 15000 12504

* Gerber Organic Oatmeal: UPC Code 15000 12502

No other Gerber products are affected by the recall.

NLU Reduces Tuition for Service Members

2007-07-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

Ok. Here's the skinny on this one. NLU cut it's tuition costs for Active Duty, Reserve, Guard, Spouses, and dependents. The catch is, you can't take classes on campus. Only online, on-base, or off site. And for Active Duty folks only, this tuition is covered by Tuition Assistance.

NLU Reduces Tuition for Servicemembers

Military.com | National-Louis University | July 09, 2007

Tuition Cut By 43%

NLU Reduces Price For Active Military Personnel, Veterans, Military Spouses and Dependents, National Guard and Department of Defense Employees.

Beginning Fall Semester 2007, National-Louis University (NLU) is reducing the per credit hour cost of its tuition for active military personnel, veterans, military spouses and dependents, National Guard and Department of Defense employees. Tuition is now $167 per credit hour for undergraduate degree programs and $250 per credit hour for graduate degree programs. The new rate is covered by the Tuition Assistance (TA) for active military and is only available for programs offered online, on base and off site through NLU’s Virginia campus.

The new tuition represents a 60 percent reduction from NLU’s current rate—and a 43 percent reduction of the rate previously available to the military.

NLU is a private, regionally accredited, not-for-profit university founded in 1886 with a long history of serving the military in Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. NLU faculty understand the needs of military students—and know what it means to be deployed. NLU is a member of the Virginia and Florida Advisory Council on Military Education (ACME) and Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (SOC)—and many of the NLU faculty are retired from the service.

Military personnel can immediately begin earning a B.S. in Management and Management Information Systems and beginning next winter a B.S. in Health Care Leadership in about 16-18 months. Certain requirements must be met for these accelerated programs. Two graduate degrees—the MBA and M.S. in Management—are also available online and in face-to-face classes off site.

If certain criteria are met, transfer credits for military students can be evaluated in two hours and the entire enrollment process can be completed within ten days.

Fall classes begin in September 2007. More information is available online at www.nl.edu/military and by phone toll-free at 1-888-550-8040.

Remember: Not applying for scholarships is like turning down free money. Get started on your search for scholarships today - visit the Military.com Scholarship Finder.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2007 Military.com. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.

President Set to Veto College Cost Reduction Act

2007-07-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

I started to get upset when I read the title to this one. No worries, it's not as bad as the attention grabbing headline make out. Basically, Bush doesn't think the House's Bill is strong enough.

President Set to Veto the College Cost Reduction Act

What was once called the "largest investment in college financial aid since the GI Bill, helping millions of students and families pay for college," now faces a certain veto.

Military.com recently reported on the introduction of the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 (H.R. 2669). According to the author, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the bill would make the single “largest investment in college financial aid since the GI Bill, helping millions of students and families pay for college.”

One of the most important aspects for servicemembers and veterans is the proposed $500 increase in Pell Grant scholarships over the next five years. When combined with other Pell scholarship increases passed or proposed by Congress this year, the maximum Pell Grant could reach $5,200 by 2013, up from $4,050 in 2006. Roughly 5.5 million students would benefit from this increase.

The College Cost Reduction Act also includes a number of other provisions that would ease the financial burden imposed on students and families by the cost of college:

Tuition assistance for excellent undergraduate students who agree to teach in the nation’s public schools;

Loan forgiveness for college graduates that go into public service professions;
Increased federal loan limits so that students won’t have to rely as heavily on costlier private loans; and

New tuition cost containment strategies.

“For years, college costs have been growing rapidly, far outstripping families’ ability to pay them,” said Congressman Miller. “With this bill, we are saying that no one should be denied the opportunity to go to college simply because of the price.”

However, in a statement issued by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, the bill fails to meet that goal. “[The bill] does little to benefit America's neediest students and essentially diverts a majority of savings in the bill to individuals out of school rather than focusing on aiding low-income students in school,” wrote Spelling.

According to Secretary Spelling, the House bill devotes only 38 percent of its savings to benefit low-income students, with only $5.8 billion dedicated to increase Pell Grants. While the President’s budget plan invests nearly 100 percent of its proposed savings to help students most in need, including $19.8 billion to support increases to the Pell Grant.

According to the official policy statement issued by Sec. Spellings’ office, the President’s senior advisors have recommended that he veto the House bill if it passes as introduced.

These Department of Education programs have a significant impact on servicemember and veterans’ “out-of-pocket” education expenses.

Forclosure Protection Could Have Hidden Risk

2007-07-23T15:35:00.000-04:00

Here's something to be careful of. I'll put in the whole article and the link is above. Basically, it just says that if you've used forclosure protection due to military activation, be careful on the backside of the deployment. All that lower payments and interest could end up getting tacked onto your next 12 payments making it harder to play catch up when things get back to normal.

Foreclosure protection could have hidden risk

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 17, 2007 22:32:58 EDT

A House committee voted Tuesday to extend mortgage interest caps and foreclosure protection for activated service members despite warnings the move could make it more likely, not less, for someone to lose a home if they have financial problems.

The bill, HR 1315, the Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act of 2007, includes a provision that would provide protection against foreclosure for 180 days after separation from the service and also would keep the 6 percent cap on mortgage interest promised under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act for the same 180 days.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee passed by bill by voice vote as one of five measures it considered on Tuesday.

Currently, the 6 percent interest cap, which applies only for loans that began before military service, applies only for the period on active duty. Current law also provides 90 days of foreclosure protection after separation.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., said the 180 days of protection is a compromise from the initial proposal by Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., that asked for one year of foreclosure protection but did not extend the interest cap.

Herseth Sandlin said the 180-day period would give a service member who might have fallen behind on their mortgage while on duty time to get current on payments, to sell the home or to work out some other arrangement short of foreclosure.

However, mortgage lenders warned the committee that a six-month freeze on foreclosure could end up making things worse instead of better, because the longer a homeowner does not pay their mortgage, the harder it becomes to catch up.

Rep. John Boozman, D-Ark., called the bill a “fairly radical change,” and tried — but failed — to limit the foreclosure protection to just three months. “These things do have consequences,” Boozman said. “My concern is in trying to do something good we may be hurting them, not helping them.”

The benefits bill includes a small change in a current adaptive housing grant program that allows a disabled service member temporarily living in the home of a family member to receive a grant of up to $14,000 to modify a home to meet special needs for severe service-related disabilities. It also creates a scholarship program to encourage college students to get degrees and certificates in blind rehabilitation.

AAFES Recalls Soldier Bear Toys Over Lead

2007-07-23T15:29:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a bit. I'll try to get my catch up posts in today. Here's something I found for all y'all with kiddos.

AAFES recalls Soldier Bear toys over lead

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 18, 2007 11:42:41 EDT

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, in cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has voluntarily recalled 13,200 “Soldier Bear” toy sets with action figures and animals that contain high levels of lead.

Consumers should immediately take these toys away from children and return them to the nearest AAFES store for a refund. The toys were sold between August 2005 and April 2007. The various action figures, dinosaurs, animals and vehicles were made in Hong Kong by Toy Century Industrial Co. Ltd., and were part of AAFES’ “Soldier Bear” private label toy brand in their inventory.

No injuries have been reported. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children, and can cause adverse health effects.

Although 13,200 sets were made, only 8,381 were sold. Because of another recall earlier this year, and in the interest of safety, AAFES pulled remaining Toy Century inventory from the shelves in May and AAFES’ quality assurance team commissioned additional independent testing, said AAFES spokesman Judd Anstey. Lab results showed four of nine styles contained lead in excess of government standards.

While the AAFES quality assurance team does physical performance and safety tests on every private-label item before it can be sold in the stores, toxicity testing is required by the manufacturer, Anstey said.

The style number, Universal Product Code and Soldier Bear logo are printed on the package of the recalled items. The four sets recalled are:

* Heroes — Dino Mega Cruiser — style number 00047, UPC number 4 98567 00047 4

* Dinosaur Adventure Set — style number 91068, UPC number 6 98567 91068 1

* Wild Animal Adventure Set (1 of 2 assortments) and Dinosaur Adventure Set (2 of 2 assortments). Both have style number 91074 and UPC number 6 98567 91074 2

* Heroes Vehicle Play Set — style number 85939, UPC number 6 98567 85939 3 (Three styles in three different boxes: military, police and fire rescue.)

Anstey said Toy Century has not manufactured products for AAFES since March 2006. Each year, AAFES reviews thousands of products from hundreds of manufacturers, he said, in making decisions about what to sell in their stores.

AAFES still sells Soldier Bear toys that are manufactured by numerous other companies, Anstey said.

More Military Medical Records Exposed

2007-07-20T23:01:00.000-04:00

Not just military, but dependant too. I hope none of you all are caught up in this.

Data security lapse affects almost 900,000
By William H. McMichael - Staff writerPosted : Friday Jul 20, 2007 15:38:36 EDT

The coded personal health care records of nearly 900,000 troops, family members and other government employees stored on a private defense contractor’s nonsecure computer server were exposed to compromise, the company announced Friday.

SAIC said the information, maintained under several health care contracts with the government, included combinations of names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates and/or “limited health information in the form of codes.” It was stored on a single, SAIC-owned, nonsecure server in Shalimar, Fla., and was in some cases transmitted over the Internet in an unencrypted form. The information was exposed while being processed, the company said.

SAIC said a forensic analysis by top computer security experts “has not yielded any information that any personal information was actually compromised,” but added that “the possibility cannot be ruled out.”

Although SAIC announced the data breach Friday, the company acknowledged it has known about the problem since May 29, when U.S. Air Forces Europe notified SAIC that it had “detected an unsecure transmission of this personal information,” said SAIC spokeswoman Connie Custer.

However, SAIC had concerns about a potential problem even earlier. Two weeks before USAFE contacted the contractor, SAIC shut down the server “based on general concerns regarding the security of transmissions,” SAIC spokeswoman Melissa Koskovich said. SAIC confirmed that personal information had in fact been transmitted in an unsecure manner and stored on an unsecured computer.

Koskovich said the server has been shut down ever since. Neither she nor Custer knew the length of time over which the security lapse occurred, or when the company first began storing data at the site. “We’re working that now,” Custer said.

Storage of the data on an unsecure server is a violation of both SAIC and Defense Department policy, Custer said. Asked why an unsecure server was used to store the data, she said, “We’re trying to find that out. We’re doing an investigation.”

The Pentagon immediately expressed concern.
“We take this very seriously, and we’re taking all the steps necessary to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith, who also confirmed the department’s requirement for secure storage of the data.

But Smith downplayed this particular instance, saying “the risk for compromise is low” and that “there’s been no evidence of compromise.”

SAIC Executive Vice President Arnold Punaro said the nearly two-month delay in announcing the problem was unavoidable.
“We regret that it took a little bit longer than we would have liked,” he said, but added the time was needed to make an “accurate assessment” of the extent of the problem.
“Our task force has been working literally around the clock,” he said. “It was a massive amount of data.”

Experts initially had to accurately assess exactly what data was on the server. Some, Punaro said, was no more than a piece of an individual’s record, such as an isolated medical appointment file. As such, all records had to be matched against government Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, or DEERS, records, to determine how, with government permission, to contact individuals, he said.

FBI, Secret Service and other top computer experts were brought in to help analyze the problem, Punaro said.

SAIC said it is notifying about 867,000 individual records were involved. That includes 173,939 soldiers; 151,315 airmen; 96,925 sailors; 26,171 Marines; 10,415 Coast Guardsmen; 2,164 members of the U.S. Public Health Service; and 104 members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The remaining 406,000 are family members of those personnel.

The company has taken full responsibility for the lapse.
“We deeply regret this security failure, and I want to extend our apologies to those affected by it,” said chairman and chief executive officer Ken Dahlberg. “We are concerned about the inconvenience and risk of potential compromise of personal information this may cause. The security failure is completely unacceptable and occurred as a result of clear violations of SAIC’s strong internal IT security policies. We let down our customers and the service members whom we support. For this, we are very sorry.”

SAIC said the company is working with the affected agencies to “mitigate any potential inconvenience or harm” the security lapse may have caused. It has retained Kroll Inc. to help out those whose records were exposed affected. Kroll will operate an Incident Response Center with extended hours, information resources and credit and identity restoration services for any victims of related identity theft.

Those potentially affected will be provided the contact information by mail, Punaro said. All assistance will be provided at no cost to the government or affected persons.
The company’s internal investigation is being conducted using outside counsel to determine how the security lapse occurred. It also has placed “a number” of employees on administrative leave pending the investigation’s outcome, it said.

For more information, go to http://www.saic.com/response.

DoD, States Work To Help Military School Kids

2007-07-15T13:24:00.000-04:00

If the Department of Defense gets cooperation from the states on this, it could make PCS transitions as it relates to schools a little easier. Let's hope that the states get on board.

DoD, states work to help military schoolkids
By Karen Jowers - Staff writer Posted : Friday Jul 13, 2007 17:09:43 EDT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In hopes of making school transitions easier for military children, the Defense Department and the Interstate Council of State Governments have developed a “compact” agreement dealing with issues children face during their frequent moves.

Defense officials will now seek legislation in the 54 states and U.S. territories to carry out the compact, said Leslye Arsht, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, at the annual conference of the Military Child Education Coalition here. More than 600 educators and other youth-serving professionals attended.

Schools operated by the Defense Department serve a small percentage — about 12 percent — of military school-age children, according to defense officials. The other 88 percent attend civilian public schools, charter schools, private schools or are home-schooled.

The Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunities for Military Children addresses such issues as:

*Education records and enrollment. For example, if a child has successfully completed kindergarten in one location and moves, he should be eligible for first grade at the next location, even if the new district requires children to start kindergarten at an older age.

*Placement and attendance. One example is how deployment-related absences are considered. One mother who took her child out of school in San Diego to meet the father’s ship received a letter of truancy from the school, said Laurie Crehan, regional quality of life liaison for the Defense Department’s state liaison office.

*Graduation requirements, such as giving consideration to students who transfer during their senior year, for example.

If states accept the compact and pass laws and policies related to it, Crehan, said, there are provisions to form state councils to resolve issues from district to district, and for an interstate council that will look at other issues that need to be addressed.

Considering Going To School While Your Spouse Is Deployed?

2007-07-14T17:12:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest things the spouse of a deployed service member has to consider is what to do with his or her time while their loved one is deployed. Certainly, having nothing to do with your time will make the deployment seem longer. If you're working or chasing kiddos around, you've got your hands full for sure.

Maintaining a house, a family, finances, cars... all of this seems like it would take a considerable amount of time. But what if you find yourself in a situation where you have the time and nothing to do? Have you considered continuing your education? Thinking about picking up a few college hours? Are your children old enough to take college courses?

Almost every state offers in-state tuition prices for military members and their families. That makes for incredible cost savings. Then consider the specific military scholarship programs available to service members and their families. I'll list a few here and also put them on my side-bar for easier access.

First, you have to choose a school. Internet or on campus, it all depends on your personal preferences and the time and resources you have to spend on it.

Then you have to complete the appropriate year Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). This can usually be accomplished online, unless you just like the old pencil and paper version better. Usually, when the FAFSA gets submitted to the school/schools you have chosen, the schools will apply on your behalf for State funded financial aid, such as grants, lottery money, etc.

"The Military Scholarships For Children Programwas created to recognize the contributions of military families to the readiness of the fighting force and to celebrate the role of the commissary in the military family community."

The National Military Family Association's Joanne Holbrook Patton Military Spouse Scholarship Program awards scholarships to "spouses of Uniformed Services members (active duty, National Guard and Reserve, retirees, and survivors) to obtain professional certification or to attend post secondary or graduate school."

The purpose of the Armed Forces Children's Education Fund is to be able to financially assist the educational needs of the surviving children of the U.S. Military men and women who lost their lives on or after October 7, 2001, the commencement of Afghanistan operations, as part of the global war on terrorism defined as "Operation Enduring Freedom".

America Supports You links to several service specific scholarship programs for children and spouses as well.

Additionally, FastWeb is an awesome resource for nation wide scholarships and it's search utilities can be customized to suit your individual qualifications for scholarships; i.e. field of study, local area scholarships, internships, minority scholarships, etc.

So, why not rack up a few college credits? It's a great way to occupy your/your children's time and it's likely to cost little or nothing. Good luck!

For Military Families with Pre-K Aged Kids

2007-07-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

I came across this and thought it would be something some folks might to keep an eye on. Good luck. :)

Report: All military kids need pre-K programs

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 11, 2007 17:28:47 EDT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All states should make all military children eligible for state-funded pre-kindergarten programs, according to two advocacy organizations for pre-K education and for military children.

Eligibility requirements vary among the 39 states that have state-funded pre-K programs. As states expand their programs, some base eligibility on income. But regardless of eligibility requirements, military families should have access, said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, a public education and advocacy organization based in Washington.

Many military families are middle-income, she said, and “middle-income families are very much left behind in this country.”

Pre-K Now and the Military Child Education Coalition issued a joint report July 11 at the coalition’s annual conference here, titled “Pre-K for Military Families: Honoring Service, Educating Children.”

Doggett said research has shown that all 3- and 4-year-olds benefit from high-quality pre-kindergarten education.

Several states, including Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma, provide pre-K education for all 4-year-olds. The Texas legislature passed a law in 2006 making military children eligible for the state’s pre-K program. That includes children of National Guard and Reserve members who have been activated, said Mary Keller, executive director of the Military Child Education Coalition. Their children would remain eligible when the service member returns from deployment.

The Kansas legislature in 2006 approved a test program that includes serving military children in six counties, including Geary County, near Fort Riley.

A pre-K education could give military children a foundation to help them adapt later in the educational process, Doggett said.

“Military families have more stress. They may move from a state with lower education standards to a state with high standards. If the child has a strong start, they have more chance of catching up,” she said. “This is learning that lasts a lifetime.”

Pre-K education can be expensive for parents in the private sector, but it varies from one location to another. A family in Texas, for example, could pay more than $8,000 a year for pre-K.

In 2006, Texas was home to 5,395 3- and 4-year-old military children, half of whom did not meet the previous requirements for the state pre-K program. If all eligible military children had participated in the program, it would have cost the state about $7 million, Keller said.

She estimated about 500,000 military children worldwide might be in the pre-K age range, although it is difficult to pinpoint how many military children would be eligible for pre-K because of the fluid nature of the population and the number of Guard and Reserve families with children that age.

She said states can work with military child development centers so that children can go to pre-K for half a day, then roll over to the child development center staff.

Doggett said the pre-K programs are growing not only in schools, but in conjunction with child care centers.

“The military child care program is the premiere child care program in this country, but it’s is still not pre-K and is not tied to pre-K standards,” she said. “There are also a number of military families who don’t have access to military child care.”

Saving Money and Pinching Pennies in the Military

2007-07-11T16:22:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again. Thinking about putting the kiddos back into school... dreading fighting with other parents to get through crowded isles and picking through the left over school supplies at whatever store you choose to shop at. Here's some helpful advice:

1. Get Organized. Don't wait until you get to the Wal-Mart to look for the school supplies list on the rack. Go online to your school's website and download it. If you've got more than one kiddo, download them all. Print them off and compare them, then make a master list. (One list is easier to keep track of than three) Chances are, your kiddos are going to need some of the same things. If your kiddos have color preferences for stuff, jot that down too.

2. Shop Smart. Get a Sunday Paper with all the advertisements in it. Pull out the ones from places like Walgreen's, CVS, Wal-Mart, OfficeMax, Office Depot, etc. Compare the advertisements to your master list and put check next to the items you find in the ads with a little note beside the item saying what ad you found it in. Keep all your ads and your list together. Take a pocket calculator with you "just in case".

3. GO ALONE. If you don't HAVE to take the kids to the store with you, don't. Get a sitter, get a spouse, a relative, something to watch the kiddos for you. Remember last year when you took the kids with you? How much hair did you pull out of your head? How many margaritas did you drink after you put the kids to bed? All the "OH, mommy look!" and "Ooh, I want..." and "Aw, can't I have..." will distract you, wear you out, and slow you down.

4. Shop Early. Don't wait for the "Tax Free" weekend. Everybody and their grandmother's dog is going to be shopping that weekend. Besides, at your PX/BX, you don't pay sales tax anyway.

5. Go Shopping. Usually, you can get 90-95% of everything you need at the PX/BX. Take all your fliers, your list, and your method of payment to the PX/BX. Get an AAFES flier on your way in and glance through it. It's not unheard of for sales items prices to be in the flier and not in the computers. Grab a cart and start checking off items as you throw them in.

6. Check Out. Here's where your fliers come in handy. I'll almost guarantee that the prices in the other stores fliers are going to be less expensive than the shelf price. The PX/BX will price match ANY advertised price for the same item. AND there's no sales tax. AND you didn't wait to fight the hoarding mobs. AND if you're lucky, the kiddos are watching cartoons or something under the supervision of another responsible person who owes you a favor. ;)

That's just for the supplies. Of course, you're going to have to take the kiddos with you when you buy their school clothes. I do my school shopping in two trips. One by myself for supplies and one with the kids for their clothes. Limits the amount of stress on everyone involved. ;)

One thing I did not mention above (intentionally) was coupons. But now, I'm going to address that as well.

If you have a Star Card and you want to use it, DEFINITELY find that coupon in the AAFES flier that says "$10, $20, or $30 off your purchase when using your Star Card". And while you probably won't find coupons for pens, paper, folders, or glue, you can certainly find coupons for other products like hand sanitizer and facial tissue. And don't forget about the "$1.00 of any Exchange Select Item" coupons.

The Coupon Master

This website performs a "coupon collection" service. Basically, they collect and cut whatever coupons are available and many times get shipments directly from the manufacturers. There is a very minimal charge for their services and it is more than made up for in the savings. The first time I visited this site, I spent roughly $6 and change and saved almost $90 at the commissary!

I'm not ashamed of saving money. In fact, I rather enjoy it. I usually check this site every couple of weeks for new updates. Most of the time there is no limit to the number of coupons of a certain product you can order. (Unless it a really hot product) I already save between 30-40% just by shopping at the commissary. And when I coupon, depending on what I buy, I save another 22-28% off of that.

Granted, I have some pantry space available for me to use as well as a chest freezer. I tend to buy in bulk when something is already on sale and coupon it down.

Sometimes, though, the commissary's prices aren't the best. So the grocery store ads that you didn't look at when making your school supply list are going to be your friends now. Don't make special trips to out of the way grocery stores. If you're already running an errand and pass by a store that you know has a sale, stop in there, get the sale items, present your coupons and go on home. I keep a notebook with my coupons, a calculator, and the weekly fliers in the car "just in case".

Here's some grocery store shopping tips:

1. Get Organized. Don't wait until you get to the commissary/grocery store to decide what you're having for dinner for the week. Plan out a menu. Take suggestions from family members. Create a shopping list based on that menu and add other necessities. (bath tissue, laundry detergent, etc.) It takes me about 20-30 minutes per week to make a list and sort my coupons.

2. Don't Shop Hungry. This leads to impulse buying and you end up with more in your cart than you planned on. The commissary usually isn't like this, but other grocery stores are. That DANGED BAKERY right in the front of the store. You walk in, smell warm fresh bread and impulsively buy more.

3. Shop Smart. Check the sales fliers for the grocery stores that come out of the Sunday Paper. Look at those coupons too. On your shopping list, put a check next to the items that you have coupons for and pull those out. But go ahead and take your entire coupon book into the store in case you find an unadvertised sale as well.

4. GO ALONE. Same reasons as above plus a few others. Candy aisle. Cereal aisle. Ice cream aisle. Plus, kiddos are ALWAYS hungry.

5. Go Shopping. Take your calculator. Look at the unit price, not the items price (per ounce vs per box). The best deals aren't always in the larger packages. Look up and look down. Usually, the most expensive items in a category (pasta sauce for example) are at eye level. Less expensive items will be above or below that. There are certain things that my wife and I absolutely insist on having name brand stuff for. Other stuff, we don't care.

6. Now, you've taken your calculator for this very reason. When you apply a coupon to the shelf price of an item, it will change the unit price. Enter the shelf price, subtract the amount of the coupon, then divide by the number of units in the item. There's your new unit price. At this point, the larger item may now become the better value for your dollar.

7. This is very important. Just because you have a coupon doesn't mean you have to buy the item. Don't clip coupons you won't use. You can take the extra coupons you're not going to use and leave them at the front of the store if you like. Other shoppers will pick through them and take what they want.

Good luck and have fun shopping and saving money!

The Coupon Master

Being a Deployed Military Wife

2007-07-03T20:28:00.000-04:00

OK. So I'm not a wife. I'm a husband. But I assure you, the worries are the same, the responsibilities are the same, the stress is the same. I'm a full time student as well as a full time single parent of 3 great kids. But biggest and foremost, I'm a full time deployed spouse.

All of our dynamics (deployed spouses and families) are different, but our needs are basically the same. We want to be able to communicate with our spouse that is deployed, however it is possible. If we have kids, we want our spouse to be able to communicate with them also. We knew what we asked for when we signed up, but we're not afraid to take help when it's offered.

Your first stop, if you haven't already, is to go to the Family Readiness Center at your local base. They'll have a list of programs and benefits that you can utilize.

After that, go here. http://www.iraqwarveterans.org/free_for_troops.htm and see what all you can do for your family and for your deployed Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine.

Additionally, many states have extra benefits for families of deployed service members. Check your local state governments web page for details.

If you'd like to help out my family or my deployed spouse, e-mail me at drexxell@hotmail.com and I will send you the information you need. Put "I want to help" in the subject line. These same services can be applied to any deployed service member or their family as long as you know their address.

Also, don't forget to look into Service Members Civil Relief Act (SCRA)(Formerly Soldiers and Sailors Act). This is especially use full for guard and reserve members who have been activated as it relates to their debts incurred prior to being called to active duty (Credit cards, car loans, mortgage loans). Many times, credit card companies will follow the directions of the SCRA for active duty members who have been deployed. Call your credit card company and ask.

As for cell phones, check this out http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/06/military_cellphone_cancelcontracts_070628w/.
This was just passed in June of 2007. Deployed members can have their cell phone accounts put on "Military Suspense" for the duration of their deployment. That means no monthly service charges on their phones (which they can't use because they have no coverage). It doesn't effect phones you're still using at home. Basically, call your cell phone provider and see what they require to make this happen.

My many thanks go out to the organizations that donate their time, money, and effort to supporting our deployed troops and their families.

Special thanks and praise goes out to the deployed Service Members themselves and the families they've left behind. God's safety to you all and God's speed home.

If there's anything I can do for your family or for your deployed member, please let me know.

For spouses and their deployed members, just remember this "It's not worth getting into a pissing contest on who's got it worse." The situation sucks from both sides, but for different reasons. Remember that you love each other. Remember that you love your family. Remember that war has bad effects on people and don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it.

http://www.militaryonesource.com/skins/MOS/home.aspx will give you a lot of tips on how to cope. Additionally, they'll give you 8 sessions of personal or family counseling, no questions asked, all billed to TriCare.

Find the support groups. Get involved in your spouses group at your base. If one isn't active, make noise and help create one. Best of luck to you all.

Human Growth and Development paper got an A

2007-03-27T15:15:00.000-04:00

The paper got an A so I'm going to share it. I've taken out identifying information. I did not include the images. This paper may be used for educational purposes when cited correctly with permission from the author (that's me). Any reproduction for profit is prohibited without express written permission.

An Observation of Shane:
Physical, Cognitive, and Emotional/Social Development

Acknowledgments
My thanks go to Miss Michelle, Academy Director at XYZ Childcare, for allowing me to utilize her facility for this observation project, to Miss Dorothy, Assistant Academy Director, for coordinating my requests and efforts with Miss Michelle and for assisting me with the scheduling, and to Miss Erin, Shane’s Academy Caregiver and Teacher, for working with me, providing background information, and for setting up observable tasks that allowed me to observe Shane in several different areas of development and for changing her class schedule around to accommodate my requests. I also give my thanks to Shane’s mother for allowing me to observe her child. Mostly, my thanks go to Shane for being a fun, challenging, and interesting child, for accepting me as part of his classroom, for giving me an abundance of information to use in my report, and for behaving like himself while I was there.

Introduction
Shane is 4 years 5 months old. He is of African-American descent in a middle socio-economic status family. He has an older sister, 10 years of age, who has skipped 2 grade levels. His mother works nights and raises him without the presence of his father; however, an uncle lives in the house with them. Shane has been at La Petite for almost 2 years as a student.

Development in the Physical Domain
Shane appears to be of average height and weight when compared to other 4 year old boys in his class. He has chubby cheeks and does not appear to have retained more than normal baby fat. His physical build appears slender and the appearance of the “pot-belly” associated with this age group is diminishing. His overall physical health appears to be good as no evidence of illness or injury was observed. Overall, his physical growth and physical health appear to be normal for a 4 year old. Shane is toilet trained and easily recognizes the urge to go.
As it relates to gross motor skills and development, Shane appears to have solid control over the large muscle groups. After Shane finished lunch on my first visit, he placed his paper plate and cup into the trash. He then spun in circles back to his chair approximately 8 feet away. During my second visit, Shane was in the “Housekeeping Center”, and he accidentally dropped a toy over the edge of the counter. He stepped over or around 3 playmates and various toys, without falling or losing his balance, to get around the edge of the counter to retrieve his toy. The overall distance of clear floor from the edge of the counter to where the toy had fallen was roughly 12 feet. Shane began by hopping with both feet, gaining 6 to 12 inches with each hop. This continued for 10 hops, at which point he skipped in a tight circle completing each skip, 2 hops on each foot, 4 times. At this point Shane intentionally fell to his hands and knees and “scooted” the remaining distance to the toy, alternately pulling himself with both hands, then pushing with both feet. After Shane retrieved the toy, he stood up and galloped the entire distance of clear floor back to the center where he resumed playing.
Out on the playground, Shane begins his outside time by running around the perimeter of the playground. His running appears smooth and fluid. Shane swings his arms normally as he runs, the right arm swinging forward as the left leg moves forward, etc. Shane runs with his arms straight; however, this may be the result of the bulk of his coat. Shane now turns his attention to the playground equipment and he climbs the rope netting smoothly and without reservation, alternating his hands and feet as he ascends. He maneuvers across the playground equipment and descends using the slide. After he reaches the bottom, he gallops for approximately 30 feet before engaging in a full force run as he chases another child. While Shane plays line judge for 2 other children who are having a race, he jumps up and down until the race it over, roughly 30 seconds. Following the race, Shane engages in a full out run again as another child chases him this time. Shane goes back to the playground equipment and climbs the stairs alternating feet. He slides down the slide, then climbs the slide and descends the stairs on the playground equipment one foot at a time. While he should be descending the stairs alternating feet, his movement may have been impaired with other children in front of him slowing his progress. Also, Shane’s proficiency with stairs could be impacted by the absence of stairs at home. Overall, Shane’s gross motor development appears normal for that of a 4 year old.
As it relates to fine motor skills and development, Shane favors his right hand in every task I have observed. He eats, uses scissors, writes, draws, and manipulates a glue stick with his right hand. Shane can roll a plastic spoon between his fingers, but when he uses the spoon to eat, he does not hold it like a pencil in three fingers, but instead with the whole hand like a shovel grasping it with his fist. This is normal development, but by the end of 60 months, he should be holding eating utensils like adults. Shane does not drop food off the spoon while transporting the food to his mouth. Also, he can intentionally alter the amount of food he puts on the spoon depending on the size of the bite he wants. Shane can hold a full cup in one hand and drink from it without spilling. During his lunch, Shane had a “wardrobe malfunction” and his jeans came unsnapped and unzipped. He zipped up his pants easily, but had difficulty with the snap. On my second visit as the children were preparing to go outside to play, Shane put on his coat but could not connect the zipper pieces to zip it up. Miss Erin had to zip his jacket for him. During my second visit, however, when Shane was playing in the “Housekeeping Center”, he took the clothes off a toy he was playing with and put them back on without difficulty.
While performing an art task during my third visit, the task was to cut out pictures of food and glue them to a sheet of construction paper. Shane’s use of scissors is difficult and labored. He is using safety scissors by inserting the first two fingers of his right hand through the larger hole in the handle completely up to the knuckle of the hand and his thumb in the smaller hole in the handle, also up to the knuckle. Shane uses the larger muscles of his hand to open and close the scissors instead of the smaller muscles in his fingers to manipulate them. Shane holds a glue stick in his fist and uses his whole arm to manipulate it on the paper. This may have more to do with the size of the glue stick in relation to the size of Shane’s hand that it does with an inability to manipulate it like a pencil or crayon. It appears that Shane’s proximodistal development as it relates to fine motor control may de delayed slightly in this aspect. While most children can cut on a line with scissors by 48 months, as well as zip articles of clothing, individual differences in ability and personal interests will invariably cause advances and delays across a wide spectrum of developmental issues. If Shane is not cutting properly with scissors and fastening and zipping his clothes by 60 months, he should see a developmental specialist to se if the delay is caused simply by disinterest or if there is a physiological component.
Shane’s writing ability is above that of his peers. While writing he always holds a pencil or crayon in a 3 finger grip and uses the fine muscles in the wrist and fingers to write and draw. Only twice while Shane was drawing did I observe him grasp the crayon with his whole fist and use his entire arm to draw. (See figure 2) Shane’s print is neater and more legible than that of his peers and as figure 1 shows he is making attempts at cursive writing. This is normally not done until roughly the 3rd grade. Given Shane’s ability to write as well as he does, I am inclined to believe that he has the aptitude to use scissors properly but the task does not interest him enough to practice it.
Shane displays impressive verbal skill. The phonology and articulation of his speech is well above that of his peers. He does not show difficulty with “S+T”, “S+K”, “C+H”, or “T+H” combinations as the majority of children in early childhood do. He also does not substitute some letters for others like “W” for “R” or “T” for “S”. Shane’s annunciation of words is clear and he is easily understood. This indicates that not all of his fine motor development is delayed. He displayed no morphology during any of my visits. He did not pluralize words that should not have been pluralized, nor did he add “ed” to verbs that were already past tense and did not require it. This speaks to Shane’s cognitive development as it relates to language acquisition. Shane’s phonology and morphology are advanced for his age. When Shane is tired, excited, or distracted his syntax occasionally slips and he will use the incorrect conjugation of a verb like, “She don’t say that.” for “She didn’t say that.” or he will leave out small unimportant words like, “I have to go field trip.” or “I have to go bus.”. The pragmatics of Shane’s language use is appropriate for children of his age. Authority comes through in his tone and diction only when he
is speaking to peers who have interfered with his play like, “Go away, I said, Devon!” or when a playmate has taken something that is his like, “No, C.J., that’s my paper!” Meanwhile, his normal tone with adults is much more submissive, even when he is in disagreement with them. Shane’s syntax and pragmatics are normal for his age and indicate normal emotional and social development in relations to language skills.

Development in the Cognitive Domain
Shane’s attention is above average for his age. If he enjoys the task, like reading or writing, he will attend to it for as long as he is allowed. With tasks he does not enjoy, like using scissors, he shows difficulty in focusing on the details of the task and becomes easily distracted. Shane shows exceptional recall and recognition, well above the norm for children his age. During my first visit, Shane told me about many of the activities the children do at the Academy, the different centers in which the activities take place, the songs the children sing, and then told me his favorite activities and songs. He also showed me all the artwork in the classroom, even if it was not his. He even told me who the artists are, pointing them out in the class. He finished his tour by showing me the behavior chart and explaining how it works, and pointing out that his tag was still on green, meaning he had a good day. Shane can read on a late 1st grade early 2nd grade level and has a plethora of 4 and 5 syllable words in his vocabulary. Additionally, Shane shows the appearance of some memory strategies that are usually not typical for 4 year olds. As I was leaving from my second visit, which was on a Monday, Shane asked when I would be back. I told him I would return on Friday. He said okay and as he was walking away, I could hear him say to himself, “Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday.” This type of rehearsal usually does not occur until children are presented with material on which they will be tested later.
He shows a great deal of interest in cars and can name the make of a car if told the model. Shane asked me, “Gary, what kind of car do you drive?” I replied, “A van.” He asked, “What’s it’s name? What’s it called?” I replied, “A Town and Country.” Shane asked, “A Chrysler?” I said, “Yes, a Chrysler.” Shane can also name the make and model of all the cars that all the Academy staff drives.
Shane identifies scripts for familiar settings, tasks and places. For example, he knew he would be going on a field trip to the Super Bi-Lo. He explained to me the process of going on the field trip and what he expected to see once he got to the grocery store. Shane also displays a firm grasp on Metacognition. He is aware of his own mental processes and makes statements about his beliefs of abilities to perform tasks. When Miss Erin asked Shane during the art center task involving scissors, “Can you cut out the salmon and glue it on the paper like C.J. did?” Shane replied “No. I can’t.” Shane recognizes that he has difficulty with that task, and as I will show later, he also knows that this particular task causes a great deal of frustration within him.
Shane displays limited egocentrism and did not display any animalistic thinking during my visits. Piaget would suggest that these two behaviors are normal for 2 to 6 years olds. After Shane finally got the salmon cut out, he could orient the picture on his construction paper in the same orientation as another playmate at his table. Also, when he had difficulty with the scissors and with the task in general, he did not say something like, “The scissors are mad.” but he saw the difficulty as a personal flaw.
Shane can recite numbers in order 1 through 49 and can count backwards from 10 to 1. He can also recognize numbers 1 through 20 printed on cards or paper. When asked to hold up a certain number of fingers on one hand, he frequently holds up all 10 fingers. Shane does not show conservation of number or the concept of number in quantities larger than 3. This is normal for his age and is typical of a Piagetian preoperational child.

Development in the Emotional/Social Domain
Shane did display some interactive play during my second visit. He played alongside 3 other playmates in the “Housekeeping Center”. Shane’s play, for the most part, did not involve the other children, unless the playmates were commenting on Shane’s play or Shane was commenting on theirs. While Shane’s play was Sociodramatic, in general it was parallel play and it involved only him and his interaction with other playmates in the center was limited. Shane exhibited out loud private speech while he set up his play area, and he showed a strong imagination as he used one toy figure to fly around and carry another toy figure. As Shane gets older, his interactive play with peers will increase, and he will begin to interact with them more as they all take on pretend roles in pretend situations.
Erickson would say that Shane exhibits a sense of guilt at his difficulty with cutting and art tasks. As I mentioned earlier, Shane saw his inability to manipulate scissors properly as a personal flaw; he thinks there is something wrong with himself. To help Shane overcome this difficulty, it is crucial that caregivers and parents are not critical of Shane’s difficulty with the task, but provide warm and positive feedback so that he gains a sense of initiative and the guilt he feels over this task does not carry over to other novel tasks later on. Shane is very aware of his emotions as well. As the cutting task continued, his frustration became more and more apparent. Shane became so focused on the task and his frustration that he completely forgot that I was there observing him. As if the cutting task was not frustrating enough for him, when he decided to glue what he had cut up onto his construction paper, he could not find the sheet of construction paper. He asked the playmate next to him, “C.J., is that my paper?” pointing to C.J.’s piece of construction paper with 5 items cut out and glued to it. C.J. replied, “No. That’s my paper.”
At this point, Shane could not handle any more frustration. Even though C.J. was looking for Shane’s construction paper, Shane placed his face in his hands and slumped down in a moment of defeat. He began to cry due to his frustration and Miss Erin was there to check on him within 30 seconds. After Miss Erin calmed him down some, she began scaffolding her instruction with the scissors, limiting her intervention at first. By the end of her scaffolding, she was holding the paper so Shane could cut out the salmon without having to dual-manipulate the scissors in one hand and the paper in the other. Again, Shane’s frustration increased and he began to cry and after Miss Erin asked Shane if he wanted to try again later and Shane agreed, was prompt to end the task for Shane and, shortly after, the rest of the class. Shane was so frustrated with this task that he told Miss Erin, during his second bout of frustration, “I don’t want to go to Kindergarten.” because he would be using scissors in Kindergarten as well. While he was crying he said to Miss Erin, “I’m a crybaby!” and Miss Erin assured him that he was not. This was self labeled name calling. No one in his group called him that. In fact, in the Academy, “crybaby” is a bad word and I never witnessed Shane say it unless he was tattling.
A few minutes after the cutting task had ended and Shane was calming down, he turned around and noticed me there still observing. At this point, a realization came over him that I had been there the entire time through his difficulty with the cutting task and crying. Shane became very embarrassed, his face turned red and he began crying again. Shane became even more frustrated as he could not stop himself from crying despite his attempts at covering his mouth to stifle the noise. This shows that Shane is aware of his own emotions and in fact has feelings about those emotions. Some contemporary psychologists refer to this as Metaemotion. This assessment is further reinforced by a conversation that Shane initiated with me 5 minutes later after he had calmed down again. I believe this conversation was to convince himself as much as it was to convince me. Shane said:

“Gary?” I replied,

“Yes, Shane?”

“I’m sorry, Gary.”

“You’re sorry? What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry that I cried, Gary. I’m not a crybaby.”

Shane is not only capable of recognizing emotion in himself, he also grasps the basics of emotions in other people and will say things in attempts to manipulate those emotions in an effort to produce a desirable outcome for himself. During my last visit, Shane engaged me in conversation about the theme of the day. Shane did not show interest in drawing construction tools with his playmates. I asked him, “Can you show me how to draw a hammer?” Shane replied, “No. I can’t. It’s too hard.” As I encouraged him to follow Miss Erin’s instruction and draw some tools in his journal, he became somewhat irritated with me and said, “That’s it, Gary. It’s over. It’s over, Gary. We’re not friends anymore.” This play on guilt is typical behavior for 4 year olds. Unable to avoid interaction, I convinced Shane to draw a picture of himself if I sat next to him. He then volunteered to draw a picture of me. (See figure 3)
As I was packing up to go from my last visit, Shane asked if he could go with me. I told him that he couldn’t because that was against the rules and that I would get into trouble if I took him with me. At this point, Shane attempted to convince me that he could go with me by saying, “No, Gary. It’s not in the rules. You won’t get in trouble.” While this little bit of deception was not malicious, it is normal behavior. At about 4 years of age, children begin to recognize deception in others, especially adults, and occasionally attempt to use it to their advantage. Finally, Shane realized that I was not going to take him with me and said, “You’re ruining my life, Gary. That’s it. It’s over, Gary.” This is a second example in one conversation of a normal play on emotions. Overall, Shane’s emotional and social development are normal.

Out of the mouths of babes

2007-03-23T09:09:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, inspiration, insight, and comfort come from the least expected places. Being taught a lesson in love by a 7-year-old is a humbling experience.

My poor son has a abscess in his tooth. A week ago, he told me after close of business that he had a toothache. I called the dentist anyway and got the recording, of course. I called again the following Monday and scheduled an appointment for my poor little guy for the following Monday. By Tuesday, he was completely miserable so I called again and managed an early morning appointment for Wednesday.

He was such a little trooper, only fussing when he got the shots of Novocain and cracking silly knock-knock jokes when the pedo-dontist wasn't in his mouth. It was almost unbearable to hear him cry out from the needle. I cried when he did. As the needle pierced his little gums, it also pierced my heart. Unfortunately, the infection in the abscess was so bad that the local anesthesia couldn't penetrate it to numb the tooth root. He went through all those shots for nothing as we were sent home with prescriptions for antibiotics and pain killers.

Later on that night, I was talking with him just before sending him to bed. He had come into my room and sat on the bed next to me.

"Daddy, I'm glad we're not rich."
"What do you mean, buddy?"
"Rich people don't care about a lot of stuff."
"Like what?"
"Like kids."

At this point, he reached up and put his little arm around my shoulders and squeezed. I looked at my son and said, "I'm plenty rich, buddy." and he gave me a huge hug.

Where do kids get this insight and how do they make it seem so simple?

Spring (not quite a) Break

2007-03-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

Spring Break is about to wrap up for me. I'd like to tell people I did something exciting, but who am I kidding? So far, I've done homework, checked homework, done housework, checked the kids chores, cooked dinner, spent a few hours on the phone with my wife and have given myself a headache from writing a paper on Susan Glaspell's "Trifles"; all the while sleeping alone while my wife is away on business. Not a bad Spring Break, right?

I think it's pretty good, actually. I mean, at least I'm not drunk somewhere naked being filmed doing something incredibly stupid that will later be shown on the Internet. I'm not drunk at a party somewhere volunteering to shoot bottle rockets out from between my butt cheeks. I'm not drunk, finding myself having to urinate with no bathroom around and saying, "Well, hell, the sidewalk is as good a place as any." and ending up in jail. But most importantly, I did NOT try to impress a girl by sticking a geranium up my urethra only to have it's barb-like hairs rip my urethra to shreds causing me an embarrassing ER visit and a complete urethra transplant. See how bad Spring Break can turn out?

All in all, I've spent the last week with 3 of the 4 people I most love to be with. Ironically these same 3 people would lead a person to drink and perhaps perform some of the afore mentioned acts of supreme stupidity. And while I would gladly give my lady a flower, it's bud vase would definitely not be my private parts.

It would have definitely been better if my spring break had coincided with my kids spring break. My wife wouldn't be out of town on business and we could have done something fun. I suppose those are the breaks, though. It's pretty much like having class without having to go to class. This has it's ups and it's downs. I'm not spending money on gas to and from class, but I have to wait until next week to get my test scores from before Spring Break. I'll post again later. CIAO

The WTF moment of February 2007

2007-03-07T15:23:00.000-05:00

It's break time. I've got 3 exams tomorrow and I've been pouring through 40 or so pages of notes since 8am. I thought I'd take the break to vent out on a news story I heard about yesterday.

Apparently 17-year-old Demetris McCoy and 18-year-old Vanswan Polty were smoked out of their heads and thought it would be entertaining to get McCoy's nephews high. The boys are 2 and 5. The boys mom, complaining of a tooth ache, was asleep in the back bedroom of the apartment and had asked McCoy to watch the boys. Not only did they coerce the boys to smoke pot, they FILMED it for posterity. The really say part about it is that nobody would have know if the cops hadn't gone to McCoy's apartment to look for stolen goods and found the tape. Nobody would have known?

Now, as I ponder the utter stupidity of these two teenagers (Gee, I think I'll commit two 3rd degree felonies and video tape it so when I get caught, the prosecution won't have a hard time putting my dumb ass in jail) I wonder how the mother didn't know. Pot has a very unique odor. The smoke permeates carpet, furniture, drapes, hair, clothes, basically anything with fibers. The mother says she didn't know what was going on, but apparently the tape shows the 5-year-old smoking all by himself without prompting. This had happened before. How could the mother not know that her brother and his friend were smoking pot in the apartment? At this point my only guess is that she smokes pot too. The boys are in the custody of Child Protective Services now.

As disturbing as that is, what's even more disturbing is listening to McCoy trying to justify his actions in an interview with CNN while in jail. (Where he still is, and it's a good thing too because Texas is a "shall issue" state. That means, if you want a permit for a handgun and you don't have a criminal record, you get the permit. Texas folk are nice till you mess with kids.)

"I seen it on TV, I got embarrassed, man. Make it just look... make it somethin' small. It ain't somethin' small because it kids and giving kids weed, but still, y'all makin' it just over... y'all over exaggerating it, man, with the whole thing. Y'all takin' it too far. Them kids was gonna smoke sooner or later, you know. So. It was gonna eventually happen whether I was to do it or what. I mean, I ain't sayin I'm the first to just 'Here, smoke this blunt', you know what I'm sayin'? They, you know, well, they, you know what I'm sayin'? This ain't nothin' to be famous for. This ain't nothin' good. I'm tellin' y'all, man, it was just somethin', I was high, it was just somethin' that happened. It wasn't supposed to happen. So, that's all I can tell y'all in this interview, and that's all that I'm gonna keep tellin y'all, that I'm sorry for what happened and I'm sorry for the pain that I caused to my sister and family." -- Demetris McCoy, Interview with CNN. (See link for story.) (Transcribed by me.)

They were going to do it anyway?! Sheesh! He wasn't the first to give them a blunt?! OMG Does the prosecution even need to show up? Oh, and the mother is pissed because CPS has her kids. That's laughable. A close second is the Florida man who crashed his car into a State Trooper's patrol car on I-95 this past Sunday. With 43 pounds of pot in the trunk and a stash of cocaine while driving DUI. But I digress.

I've heard of people getting their cats high. I've heard of people getting their dogs high. But kids? Toddlers? I don't have enough space to list the ways that is wrong.

I don't smoke pot or do any other drugs. (I drink sometimes and I use tobacco) I don't condone it either. I would venture a guess that even those of you that smoke pot wouldn't even consider giving it to toddlers.

The cognitive damage that has been done to these kids may be irreparable. I really feel sorry for them. This guy gets a DUMAS award.

Here's the story
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/04/pot.kids/index.html

The square root of stress cubed

2007-03-06T15:38:00.000-05:00

I know, it's been a month almost since my last posting so I'll try to make up for it.

Being thirty something and in college isn't a big surprise to most of us, but it is to me. I genuinely thought I was too old for this sort of thing, but I seem to be doing well enough. LOL I guess you can say 4.0 is well enough. While I realize that an A is an A regardless of where in the A range it is, I still fret the missing 4% here or 6% there. I used to be a restaurant manager and I'm spending more hours per week on college than I was working. At least in the food service industry, you have instant gratification when you make a dish. In college, you have to wait for the professor to grade whatever it is that you've turned in.

My school has had 2 ice days that have pushed back my first two classes instruction. I was supposed to have a psychology exam today (that's my major in case you didn't catch it earlier), but that's been pushed back to Thursday. An extra two days to study you say? heh I was also supposed to have a math quiz today, but get this... The professor forgot about spring break. (What?!) Sooo, he decides to change his mind and forget the quiz and instead schedule a half chapter test for Thursday. Okay, back to back exams first thing in the morning isn't so bad. Now the course we all love, Public Speaking. This mid-term was supposed to be today also, but nooooo, because some people think that not showing up on the day they're supposed to speak but showing up on exam day is fine. Well, rat-butt because we all had to listen to the late speeches and the exam was put off until Thursday. THREE BACK TO BACK EXAMS.

Now literature is another subject all together (all pun intended). No exam for this week, just the occasional quiz and ridiculous vocabulary assignments, but... We have an essay due the first day we get back from Spring Break and another one due exactly one week after that. At least three of my professors left Spring Break alone. :)

Spring Break is going to suck anyway. It's not at the same time that my kids have Spring Break and my wife is going to be TDY the entire week. I have a 15 year old that can, if he chooses, behave like a fine young man but decides that being rebellious and obstinate is the better choice. I have an 11 year old that talks faster than the human brain can process and I have a 7 year old whose imagination (especially when he's built something and wants mom and dad to come see it so he can explain it in detail for 30 plus minutes) is boggling.

On top of all that, my wife is going to Iraq for a year. Here I will be, a grown man in college again, raising three kids, maintaining a house and finances, etc. With every passing day the stress gets greater and greater. Now, I consider myself a psychologist in the making, perhaps pre-psychologist would be a better term. I'll just say this. Ever try to perform psychology on yourself? It's very difficult to get an unbiased opinion.

So, I just finished a lengthy project observing a 4-year-old which assessed his development. This kid is an absolute trip. Middle SES African American kid being raised by a single mom and an uncle. (huh?) Families come in all sorts, just remember. This kid is just smart. I could qualify that, but I don't want to bore anyone to death with psycho-babble. Maybe I'll publish my report on him after a little bit.

I'm going to close this for now. I'm done ranting and raving.

Things to be Proud of

2007-02-09T08:53:00.000-05:00

I have three kids, the oldest of which is 15. It is about the 15 year old that I write today. I've raised him since he was 2. The product of my wife's first marriage, and subsequent divorce, of my three, I think the 15 year old got the stinky end of the stick, so to speak. This young man, and I don't hesitate to call him that, has undergone some very atypical changes since he turned 15 in November of 2006.

Let me explain:

First, raising a teenager is as complicated as threading a sewing machine, blindfolded in the dark. (I'm a guy, in my 30's and I know how to sew. Sew what. Bite me.)

Sometimes, he's hysterical and others, he's downright obnoxious. Last night we had frozen pizzas for dinner, along with a salad. I have a cold at the moment, so my wife and eldest child were helping with dinner. (In my house, my wife is the primary bread winner and I do my best to maintain the chores while going to college. I don't want to hear any taunting on that note either.)

Basically, my wife put the pizzas in the oven, and my son was supposed to take them out when the timer went off. The pizzas came out well done, because my son "didn't hear the timer" even though he was 15 feet away reading a book; but that's not the funny part.

We have a porcelain top stove. An upgrade we insisted on when we bought our house. So, my son goes to take the pizzas out of the oven and puts the little pot holder mats on top of the stove. (As odd as this seems, it made perfect sense to him at the time he was doing it. We use those pot holders on the table all the time.)

So, this morning, I asked him, "Hey bud? Did you put the mats on the stove for the pizzas last night so you wouldn't burn the stove?"

There was about 3 seconds of a perplexing look on his face and he made a noise that resembled someone stepping on your chest while you're lying on your back. It was like "urgph", but in a tone that said, "You're right, that was absolutely ridiculous." not the typical 15 year old, "you don't know anything" tone. (Believe me, my wife and I hear plenty of that too.)

Many times, it's very difficult to find something to laugh about at 6am. Not this morning.
At any rate, I have homework to attend.