| Name : | Tang Wen |
| Age : | 16 year-old (in 2010) |
| Heigh : | 176 cm |
| Hometown : | Yichun |
| Title(s) : | Miss China Universe 2010 |
Gallery - Tang Wen, Miss China Universe 2010
Temper Tantrum Tuesday: Project Savior on Drugs
With General McChrystal resigning from the war on Afghanistan, Americans are remembering we have a war in Afghanistan. A few are even wondering why we are losing, or at least not winning.
A big problem that American politicians see in the war is the drug-lords who can use drug money to fight our troops. They can also use their drug connections to influence any Afghan politician who is using drugs. If we could just identify the Afghan politicians who are using drugs the war would turn around.
People who have been to Afghanistan have come up with a pretty simple test to check if an Afghan is using drugs, Are they from Afghanistan? If so they are probably on drugs.
Pretty much from the time of the Civil War America has been the most anti recreational drug country on Earth, and during the 40 year, “War on Drugs” we have gotten more so. Despite the direct costs of roughly $77 Billion dollars a year to the US Government the number of people who have used drugs remains about 85%. That’s in the US where there is a pretty heavy social stigma against drug use.
In Afghanistan everyone uses drugs bringing the War on Drugs to them is stupid. If we haven’t won that fight over here, how on Earth are we going to stop the Afghan’s from using drugs?
Still destroying the drug trade in Afghanistan is one of the goals in the war. Since nobody has a realistic idea of how to do that the war is lost as long as that remains a goal.
The war in Afghanistan is already the longest in US history. How much longer will we need to be over there pushing a program that hasn’t worked in the US and certainly won’t work in a place where the entire culture has evolved around the use of recreational drugs.
We could easily win the war in Afghanistan if we decided to admit defeat in the War on Drugs. If recreational drugs like Marijuana were to become legal in the US the Afghan drug lords would be fighting to be our allies so they could take advantage of that market.
It would also help the US economy as when you start taking in tens of billions in tax revenue, and hundreds of billions in savings on the Wars on Drugs and Afghanistan pretty soon you are talking real money.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts
Gallery - Veronika Machová , Miss World Czech Republic
| Birth name | Veronika Machová |
| Birthdate | August 17, 1990 (1990-08-17) (age 19) |
| Birthplace | Rokycany, Czech Republic |
| Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) |
| Eye color | blue |
| Hair color | blond |
| Title(s) | Czech Miss World 2010 |
Any of my Kentucky readers please help
I’ve whined and complained about the Mainstream Media a lot. But the owner of one of the blogs I read actually does stuff about it.
Barefoot and Progressive is a Lexington, KY based blog that is unlike most Political Blogs, or local newspapers, because the site’s owner goes out and talks to the people he talks about.
Often times he gets stories that the local newspapers don’t bother with. It is the very example of good Blogging/Journalism.
Unfortunately, his work takes money to support it. I’m asking all of my readers, especially the ones that live in Kentucky to give him a little support by at least visiting his site to drive his numbers up which will boost his ad revenue. Or, if you care about good reporting in the Bluegrass area of Kentucky maybe throwing him some love by donating.
Gallery - Jurema Ferraz , Miss Angola 2010
| Name : | Jurema Ferraz |
| Birthdate : | 26 year-old (2010) |
| Height : | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Hometown : | Namibe |
| Title(s) : | Miss Angola 2010 |
| Major competition(s) : | Miss Universe 2010 ( Contestant ) |
Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Alcoholic Anonymous
I was reading a post over at "Rick’s World" about Howard Hughes and totally disagreed with him. To fill you in Rick is a recovering alcoholic who is going through AA to get better.
He suggested that Howard Hughes extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) could be helped by going through AA. I know a little bit about OCD, writing 1,000 to 5,000 words a day and feeling sick if I don’t. I even studied it pretty heavily for my novel “Invasive Thoughts” so I told him the simple fact that AA doesn’t help people with OCD and behavioral therapy to “cure” OCD makes it worse for a person with the Disorder, as they are being told to control something that is out of their control. OCD can’t be cured only managed, like turning my Compulsion to write into a writing career.
After the expected Ad-hominen attack (I’ll explain later why it was expected) he said AA would have helped Hughes with his “moral character”. Howard Hughes was deep into a OCD loop where he thought germs were out to get him, it was a mental problem that few people need to deal with but it is horrible having your mind rebel against you, while at the same time stood up to Congress and the entire Military-Industrial Complex and stopped America from having a National Airline, and in doing so gave the US the advantage in the Commercial Aircraft Industry for 30 years. “Moral Character” was not a failing of Hughes.
I was going to refer Rick to my “Shut-up Stupid” post on AA then I realized that I had somehow missed them. My fault, I guess there is just so much stupid in the world and so little time.
Alcoholics Anonymous has been an institution here in America since it was founded in 1935 and was a step (or 12) up from the previous way of dealing with Alcoholics, which was to slap them up side the head and tell them to straighten up, or lock them in jail.
AA works the same way a cult works, it just does it with a noble purpose and has systems to prevent abuse. It “recruits” people when they are down and out and at their weakest mentally, then promises them a better way. AA and cults rebuild peoples self esteem by giving them a group that accepts them and the natural herd instinct makes them want to please the group.
The herd instinct is strengthened in cults by the desire to defend your group. That’s why they send their members out to the airports dressed in silly costumes so that people will laugh at them. The individual members aren’t thinking they are being laughed at for their outfits they are thinking people are laughing at their friends and the natural instinct is to defend your friends, strengthening the bond.
AA talks about “moral character” and other unquantifiable measures to make their members talk with an unjustified smugness to invite attacks, they naturally respond by wanting to protect the group. That is why criticism of AA is almost always met with an Ad-hominen attack, however AA, as opposed to cults, encourage a dual group mentality, one within AA and one with their normal social circle, so after the knee jerk reaction is done an AA member will tend to give a rational rebuttal. AA does encourage members to interact with outsiders and not just put up a wall in defense.
AA fosters a place where people can foster this power of group identity to replace alcohol. So far, so good, but does it work?
The success rate for quitting physically additive drugs like heroin or nicotine is roughly 18% in a control group (people who receive no treatment). By its very nature AA can’t be analyzed, whole Anonymous part of its name, but unscientific polls place the success rate at around 23% or 5% above the apples and oranges control group.
A 5% increase is good, better than anti-smoking drugs than can claim, however if someone tries an anti-smoking drug and fails they don’t blame themselves for the failure they blame the drug.
With AA members pushing that overcoming Alcoholism is due to “moral character” and how they have built up a myth that AA has great success rate when it is less than one in four, it makes anyone who has tried it and failed feel worse and less likely to seek a treatment that works for them.
While I encourage anyone who thinks they have a drinking problem and doesn’t have a moral objection to the protestant message that AA uses, to go to AA because it’s free and they have taken a lot of effort to prevent mental abuse that non-professional behavior modification programs often have. Just remember the success rate is one in four so it doesn’t work for most people.
To the AA members who go on about “moral character” and feel that AA is a cure all for any individual’s problems with society, I say, “Shut-up Stupid, I hope you are one of the 23% AA works for, I truly do. But the program doesn’t work to keep the majority of people who use it sober and it certainly won’t help people with problems besides Alcoholism.”
By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts
Fantastic Future Friday: Looking closer at 7th grader’s holes
A middle school class in Cottonwood Calf. Spotted a hole at the top of a lava tube on Mars. This opening gives any future attempt at colonization of Mars a great place to start.
Lava tubes form as lava travels across the open ground, the outer magma cools and turns solid insulating the inner magma which drains off leaving a very hard tube or cave.
With the identification of openings to these lava tubes Martian Explorers will have a place to start a colony that is free from radiation and the extreme Martian environment. The will also have a pre-made structure that will support large building projects, they will just need to make it airtight, pressurize it pipe in heat and light from the surface and they’ll have a large place to grow food generate oxygen and all the things needed for life.
Finding these openings to Martian Lava Tubes gives Martian Colonists a good place to start and that will lead to a fantastic future.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts
Writing Wednesday: Prepositions
A preposition links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. The word or phrase that the preposition introduces is called the object of the preposition.
The other day my wife asked me if we could would get some take-out for dinner, I asked why and she replied, “Look … the fridge.”
I realize I missed the preposition in that sentence so rather than asking her to repeat herself, I filled in my own. I decided that the word I missed was, “At”.
So I looked at the fridge. I had to admit it was pretty ugly.
The side of it wasn’t much prettier.
An hour later I had a fridge that anyone would be proud to store food in, or at least wouldn’t be appalled to look at.
I looked inside my masterpiece and found out it was empty and then remembered I was supposed to pick some groceries on the way home from work the night before.
The moral of the story is pay attention to your prepositions as the wrong one can totally change the meaning of a sentence and lead to unexpected results.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts
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