Interesting Study Results regarding Dating Violence

Posted on September 27, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

This was posted this morning, September 27, 2018, at www.studyfinds.com and I thought it fascinating, especially in light of the MeToo movement that has gripped my nation. The narrative propounded by those in the movement may need to moderate a tad, don’t you think?

VANCOUVER — Who is more likely to be victimized by teen dating violence? If you think it is always girls, new data shows you may be wrong. In a surprising twist, recently published research indicates boys are more likely to report being victims of dating violence committed by partners who hit, slap or push them.

Researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) conducted a longitudinal study of dating violence. While reports of physical abuse went down over time, they say there is a troubling gender-related trend.

Five percent of teens reported physical abuse from their dating partners in 2013, down from 6 percent in 2003. But in the last year, 5.8 percent of boys reported dating violence compared to 4.2 percent of girls.

“It could be that it’s still socially acceptable for girls to hit or slap boys in dating relationships,” says lead author Catherine Shaffer, a PhD student with SFU, in a release. “This has been found in studies of adolescents in other countries as well.”

Researchers looked at data collected from three British Columbia Adolescent Health Surveys conducted over a 10-year time-span. Participants were 35,900 students in grades 7 through 12 who were in dating relationships. This is the first North American study to compare statistics for boys and girls and the first Canadian study to consider teen dating violence over the course of a decade.

Shaffer believes the overall decline in dating violence is positive. “Young people who experience dating violence are more likely to act out and take unnecessary risks, and they’re also more likely to experience depression or think about or attempt suicide,” she says. “That’s why it’s good to see that decline in dating violence over a 10-year span. It suggests that healthy relationship programs are making an impact among youth.”

Elizabeth Saewyc, senior study author and a UBC nursing professor, thinks the results tell us that teens in dating relationships need more support programs.

“A lot of our interventions assume that the girl is always the victim, but these findings tell us that it isn’t always so,” notes Saewyc. “And relationship violence, be it physical, sexual or other forms, and regardless who the perpetrator is, is never okay. Health-care providers, parents and caregivers, schools and others can protect teens from dating violence by helping them define what healthy relationships look like, even before their first date.”

Researchers say a study is needed to find out why boys are experiencing an increase in dating violence.

The study results were published on July 18, 2018 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

 

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Why I Do NOT Let Students Use Technology in Class: Reason No. 4

Posted on September 22, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

This, from The Hill, written by Dennis Powell, sums up Reason No. 4: I want my students to learn how to think critically and not engage in echo chamber reasoning (at least, for the 3 hours I have them every week):

Today, an estimated 95 percent of North Americans have internet access and information is doubling every 12 months. The world should be experiencing a new Enlightenment, but we may be heading in the opposite direction.

A June 2018 survey by Pew Research, measuring the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that “most Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses.”  In this study, 28 percent of adults identified two or fewer factual statements and 22 percent, two or fewer opinion statements.

A San Diego University psychology professor noted in a 2017 article in The Atlantic, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” that,

“Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs. … It was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.”

The social findings included not hanging out with friends; no rush to learn to drive; less dating; and increased loneliness.

Technology addiction “will increase as technology continues to advance and application, game and gadget developers find new ways to ensure users’ long-term engagement with technology,” cautions as assistant professor of management information systems at Binghamton University-State University of New York.

Smartphones have given us the ability to self-segregate and interact only with like-minded people. This may help to explain, in part, why our politics have coarsened, and real political debate quickly devolves into anger and name-calling.

In 2017, Pew reported, “The gap between the political values of Democrats and Republicans is now larger than at any point in Pew Research Center surveys dating back to 1994.” The researchers noted that, “Overall, although many Americans continue to hold a mix of liberal and conservative views across different issue areas, that share has declined over time.”

Have our political beliefs become tribal? Today, if you are conservative or liberal, you have your own television networks, newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, media watchdogs, foundations, opinion research, authors, thought leaders and benefactors. Pew found that 85 percent of New York Times readers believe in news from trusted sources, as do 84 percent of Rush Limbaugh listeners.

Technology has created an infrastructure that insulates ideas while protecting those deemed important. Scientists who question the orthodoxy of climate change are labeled “deniers” in a context approaching religious zealotry. Political discussion on immigration quickly devolves to racist, sexist, Fascist, Nazi or even Hitler invectives. Today’s political belief structures are not built to withstand scrutiny. Rather, they are being erected to embrace conformity.

A six-year study of over 360 million Facebook users and interactions with news media concluded, “Despite the wide availability of content and heterogeneous narratives, there is major segregation and growing polarization in online news consumption.”

Similarly, a study of more than 2.7 billion tweets, from 2009 to 2016, confirmed that Twitter users see mainly political opinions that agree with their own, noting, “The findings indicate a strong correlation between biases in the content people both produce and consume. In other words, echo chambers are very real on Twitter.”

And then there is the fake news. “Facebook, Google and Twitter function as a distribution mechanism, a platform for circulating false information and helping find receptive audiences,” says a professor of government at Dartmouth College. This has forced media to take sides to gain market share: MSNBC is dependably liberal and FOX conservative, for example.

Today, most Americans can access much of the information humankind has ever produced on a smartphone. Add to this the fact that 66.7 percent of 2017 high school graduates, ages 16-24, were enrolled in colleges or universities in October 2017. So, you would think that we would find ourselves entering a new Age of Reason.

Instead, we find ourselves a culture being shaped in echo chambers, stunted by closed-mindedness and unwilling to learn from each other. Has smartphone technology helped to dumb down America? You decide.

(c) 2018, The Hill

Editor’s Note: So, I lived through the 1960s when polarization threatened to destroy our country. No smartphones then, but we did have the explosion of television news – live, and in your face. History does repeat itself. As I tell my students: “Gather all the information you can, from a multiplicity of sources, and then MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND.”

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Tetrachromacy (I had no idea)

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

Color me fascinated at learning today about the condition (or blessing, as it were) of tetrachromacy. I cannot wait to tell my students about it.

Now, we all know about color blindness and the fact that it is most prevalent in men. In fact, it is quite probable that you know a man who is color-blind. I do. To a minor extent, I am one of them. Call it a perception-reducing malady, or call it just a minor inconvenience, I struggle with some color gradations on the spectrum. So far in life it hasn’t been a problem (I can see the color money quite well, thank you very much).

There is a much less known perception-enhancing condition and one that is genetically based, called tetrachromacy. And from what I can tell, we didn’t know about it until the 1990s.

Here’s the rub, and the pay-back if you will: it exists only in – wait for it – women. Thaaat’s right: Only women, and at that, only about 5% of them.

Think here of the digital camera and the means by which its sensor works.  The sensor is the heart of a digital camera. Sitting behind the lens, it converts lights rays into electrical signals for further processing inside the camera. A sensor contains pixels of the three primary colors: Red, Blue and Green. When light is allowed to fall on these pixels, by means of the shutter release, the electrical signal corresponding to the correct combination of colors (according to the scene) is generated.

You know the drill: The more the pixels on a sensor, the better details we get in an image. That is why people want a camera with the most pixels possible (my collection of digital cameras have anywhere from 16 to 25 megapixels).  Mind you, we don’t need more than about 6 MP, but camera manufacturers are keen to sell us as many as they can.

What does this have to do with tetrachromats? Well, a normal human eye has a set of three color-detecting “cones.” You guessed it: They are evolutionarily disposed to pick up on Red, Green, and Blue. Each cone set can pick up about 100 colors. When all three are combined together by the brain, a human can see about 1 million different unique shades of color.

Turns out, tetrachromats have a fourth cone cluster that exists on the color spectrum between red and green. This extra set of cones adds in another 100 potential shades of color and boosts the potential combinations up to 100 million unique shades! Whereas the average person sees 5-7 shades of color in the rainbow, a tetrachromat would see 10 or more.

Ironically, the easiest way to find a tetrachromatic woman is to look for a colorblind man. The same genes that cause color blindness in men – by providing an over abundance of green and red cones – are linked to the extra set of cones in women. The mothers of colorblind men are dramatically more likely to have tetrachromatic mothers.

You learn something new every day.

Color me fascinated!

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Why I Do NOT Let Students Use Technology in Class: Reason No. 3

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

Here is Reason No. 3 for why I do not let students use technology in the classroom (and, students, I HOPE you are reading this!):

Because, as Anne Frank once said, “paper has more patience.” 

Simply put, I would rather that students spend their note-taking time quickly capturing key points of my lectures rather than negotiating with a software application. And remember this: I spent 25+ years in high technology and am, perhaps more than any of your instructors, readily familiar with that time when we did NOT have software to help us take notes.

I watched the development of software for personal computers, technology which held the promise of freeing us from the many arduous, manual, and error-ridden processes of our day. I was even a “beta tester” of products like Microsoft Word and Power Point. Excel was especially game-changing for accountants, like me, in their work both on the job and at home. I consider myself a “power user” of these products.

But not once did I stop taking notes by hand.

Why? Because paper has more patience than software. Miss one important stroke or input and all your work is lost. Not so with paper. 

A battery goes dead and your ability to take notes goes with it. Not so with paper.

Software is finicky. Paper has far more patience.

Fiddling with software will distract you and you WILL MISS important points in a lecture, many of which will be on a test someday, or more importantly, which could come in handy in your professional practice as an educator.

So, I don’t let students use technology in my classroom. I want them to quickly jot down an important point and to return to active listening.

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Why I Do NOT Let Students Use Technology in Class: Reason No. 2

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

In this series of the Top Ten reasons why I don’t let students use technology in my classrooms, I present …

Reason No. 2: Because they are distracting to me as the course instructor. 

I work hard preparing lectures and designing content to keep students engaged in what can be rather boring, pedantic “stuff.” Consequently, I want their complete attention, and cell phones and computers are just as distracting to me as they are for the students (even though they won’t admit it).

Occasionally, I will admit, I will ask students to use their devices as a part of a classroom exercise and for those few moments, the technology can come in handy. But … ONLY IF I ASK THEM TO DO IT.

We are gearing up for another semester here at RussoHouse in Laramie, Wyoming, and I am planning my three courses. I encourage students to read my blog and am hopeful that through this series of reasons why, the students will gain an appreciation for my rules.

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Why I Do NOT Let Students Use Technology in Class: Reason No. 1

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

In my class syllabi, I tell my freshmen students that they are not allowed to use their computers to take notes. In this series of blog posts, I will give the Top Ten reasons why.

Reason No. 1 – Better Grades

In a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology in April 2018, researchers examined how smartphones affected learning in a lecture class with 160 students at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

They found that students who didn’t bring their phones to the classroom scored a full letter-grade higher on a test of the material presented than those who brought their phones.

It didn’t matter whether the students who had their phones used them or not: All of them scored equally poorly.

A study of 91 secondary schools in the U.K., published last year in the journal Labour Economics, found that when schools ban smartphones, students’ examination scores go up substantially, with the weakest students benefiting the most.

Researchers have argued that the primary mechanism underlying the negative effects of cell phone use is through reduced attention to the classroom lecture. By reducing attention during class, information is not properly stored, thus resulting in poor retention of the material.

Evidence has shown that at least 30% of the information is lost when texting during a lecture (Froese, 2012) and as many as 89% of students shifted their attention to leisure activities during class rather than paying full attention to the lecture (Levine, 2007).

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Want to Improve your Self Esteem? Take a Proper Inventory

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

In my practice as a therapist, I am often asked what it takes to achieve, or to improve our self-esteem.  The question is incoherent at one level: achieving self-esteem implies that it exists to begin with! We must feel ourselves capable of doing at least that much right.

Just like with global warming, when I ask, “Okay, so you want to cool the earth, Mr. Gore, but pray tell – what’s the RIGHT temperature?” I will ask my clients, “Okay, so you want to improve your self-esteem, but pray tell – to what level?” I cannot help people who are intent on complete and abiding self-love. To me that smacks of a certain kind of narcissism. Self-acceptance seems to be the better goal.

My first step, therefore, is to establish a proper inventory of what they like and dislike about themselves and then proceed to work on the latter. But … even that is fleeting. We all, ALL OF US, do things from time to time that we wish we hadn’t. Shame is at work in these moments and shame is a good “check” on our behavior. The key is to have a healthy sense of shame. And from there, to accept oneself as an imperfect member of the human race.

Now, plenty of people engage in self-loathing, to be sure, but if we are to pause at look at this somewhat metaphysically, self-loathing implies the existence of an inner self that precisely knows the parts to be esteemed and those parts we wish to work on.  Complete self-loathing seems to me to be the antecedent to suicide, but even that that, there is a piece of self-esteem which can assert that by committing self-murder we are doing the “right” thing. Does that make sense?

I am reminded of the various instances in history when greatness was not appreciated in the moment. Think here of Winston Churchill who was more or less tossed out of office … twice! Or, of Amelia Earhart who had to get a job as a social worker because no one would allow her onto the pilot’s chair.

We could list hundreds if not thousands of people, arguably of true and abiding greatness, who were not fully appreciated in their own time. Most of them did not let it get them down. They persevered. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and got back into the game. They knew, at some visceral level, what they had to offer the human race and went on to deliver.

What I have found is that the root of self-loathing is, more often than not, an exaggeration of the rejection by others that all of us feel from time to time. Earhart was rejected. Churchill was rejected. Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency three times before winning. He too was rejected.

So, the question becomes, “Why do you think it’s going to be any different for you?”

The truth is, you will be rejected from time to time. At various points in your life you will not be appreciated as you believe you should be. Not by your parents. Not by your lovers. Not by your bosses, or by your country, or by your own children.

But then again, why should you be? Appreciating you is not their job.

It’s your job.

That’s why it’s called self-esteem.

Expecting, or worse, demanding, approval or recognition from other people is a dead end. It’s outside your circle of control. Are you going to anchor your happiness and self-worth on something as precarious as that? Why, I wonder, would you want to be their prisoner?

No, you must base your own appreciation on the actions you take in service of what you know is right, and of being the person you know it’s right to be.

That appreciation is borne of a proper inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Pure and simple. Be honest with yourself and stop leaving the plus category empty. That’s complete and utter bullshit. We ALL have pluses and most of the time they outweigh the minuses by oodles.

Stop and take inventory.

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The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fcuk

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

Traveling in South Australia at the moment and getting caught up on my reading.  I have enjoyed several great books, including Hans Rosling’s Factfulness (highly recommended, by the way) and this one by John Truant.  The title can be annoying but, if you walk around every day on eggshells, nervous about making a mistake or looking stupid, then you should read this.

As I was reading through it, and as luck would have it, the Daily Stoic came out with a wonderful piece about how you don’t really have an excuse for not being the best man or woman you can be. I was also reminded of how many people search for excuses for their poor behavior, or for their choices, on the basis of some imagined conspiracy of the universe against them (be it racism or ageism or sexism, or what have you).

The universe? My goodness – how we can stretch to find people or things or an entire universe to blame for what we do or what we have failed to do.

Look, the universe is very big and you, my friend, are very small. In fact, you’re so small and so insignificant in the big picture that you don’t even register to the eye of the cosmos. The universe was here before you were born and will be here long after you’re gone, and your life is barely a blip on its vast, vast radar (f even that!).

If your life is to matter, it’s not going to matter to the universe. It’s up to you make your life matter in the only way you can: by doing things that make a difference to you, to those around you, and to those whose lives you touch.

Time is short. You have exactly NOW to do whatever it is you’re here to do, or to let the inexorable passage of hours and days and years kill your potential like fruit left to die on a vine.

The universe doesn’t hate you, but it doesn’t love you, either. You’re just an atom in its infinite workings. The universe doesn’t care if you live, die, suffer, or thrive. Whatever your life here will mean is up to you.

Stop worrying so much about what others think and start being who you’re supposed to be. It’s time to do some epic shit.

The Daily Stoic reminds us of how Freud was so very fond of Shakespeare. In fact, he frequently turned to Shakespeare’s plays for analogies. In one of Freud’s essays on personality types, he explains how nearly every person imitates–on a smaller scale–the pathology of Richard III.

And in case you don’t recall Dick the Third’s particular brand of malevolence, suffice to say that Shakespeare didn’t just assume the pathology of 15th-century English politics but instead wondered what was wrong with a man who plotted to kill everyone, including family members, who stood between him and “his” throne (kinda like some politicians today, when you stop to think about it. Memo to The Donald: Re-Read this play. Vladimir is in it.)

In short, Shakespeare concluded that, when we come to believe that we have somehow been deprived or slighted by nature, we feel somehow justified in becoming inordinately and murderously angry. We assume ourselves to be entitled to special treatment or exemption from the rules.

Freud wrote:

We all think we have reason to reproach Nature and our destiny for congenital and infantile disadvantages; we all demand reparation for early wounds to our narcissism, our self-love. Why did not Nature give us the golden curls of Balder or the strength of Atlas or the lofty brow of genius or the noble profile of aristocracy? Why were we born in a middle-class home instead of in a royal palace?

Since we weren’t given these things, does that automagically excuse us from being decent, from being a self-disciplined, contributing member of society?

Nope. In the end, it is nothing but ridiculous, impotent rage.

Okay, so your parents didn’t give you everything you wanted; So, someone you loved cheated on you; So, you’re not as tall or as pretty or as athletic as other people around you seem to be.

Is that an excuse to be a jerk? To not utilize your other talents and appreciate your other

Old Markie Arelius

blessings?

As Marcus Aurelius liked to quote from Euripides, “Why should you feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”  Or, to quote Johnny Truant, “the Universe doesn’t give a flying fuck.”

And it’s certainly not going to give you reparations because Fortune was not as generous as it could have been.

What is is. What matters is what you’re going to do. No excuses. No anger. Take responsibility for your life and live it. Right now. Today.

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Memo to America’s “Journalists” – Please Stay Hinged

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

Yesterday, in the heat of the moment in Helsinki, Donald Trump said some rather surprising things. Obviously tired, he rambled on about Hillary’s servers and those of the Democrat National Committee (the “DNC”); suggested that he believed Putin’s statements that Russia, the state, did not meddle in America’s elections; and, implied that the world could trust Vlad the Impaler.  The Left went ballistic, with some suggesting that Donald’s comments rose to the level of treason and had become a demonstrable basis for impeachment.

The “heat of the moment” can be rather hot, discomfiting, and downright confusing, even to the best extemporaneous speakers. In my lifetime, I am not sure that any of our presidents have been particularly good at reacting in real time to stupid questions from the press, although JFK and Ronald Reagan were darn good at it. Even Bill Clinton had his moments. In that same lifetime I have seen the perfection of ambush, gotcha “journalism” that requires an inordinate presence of mind to overcome. I suspect that no one can match the ever-evolving ability of reporters to ask the wrong, most stupid question at the wrong, most uncouth moment, hoping against hope to embarrass a world leader.

Look, Donald Trump was never seen as a great orator, not even a good one. But he worked hard and got elected. Now, he is being treated to a cavalcade of criticism of his various post-summit statements in Helsinki, with many on The Left reminding us of the greatest Presidential orators (mostly democrats) from our past. We need, I think, to stop and review what missteps even the best of them (from both sides) have committed, and to remind ourselves that dealing with Vladimir Putin was a series of heated moments, any one of which would wear on any great extemporaneous speaker.

Anyway, one of our esteemed mainstream network anchors thought it timely to review what other presidents have had to say in similar heated moments. And I thought it equally timely to question their references.

“One man with courage makes a majority,” said Andrew Jackson (supposedly) in the heat of a moment way back in 1823 (or thereabouts). He was the first democrat president and in 1835, the only president to completely pay off the national debt. Of course, he was also a slave owner. But … there is considerable doubt as to whether he actually ever spoke those words. Remember, people love to attribute clever sayings to famous people like Jackson and, especially, Abraham Lincoln. Be skeptical. Go back to the original historical record. When a striking quotation like this one shows up out of nowhere, there’s likely something fishy going on.

“The buck stops here,” is one of The Left’s favorites and is attributed to Harry S. Truman at various points in his presidency when confronted with an obstreperous Republican congress. Only, he never said it.

Truman didn’t originate the phrase, and it isn’t likely that he’d ever even heard it. In fact, it was a friend of Truman’s, Fred Canfil, who “borrowed” the phrase from something he saw at a prison in Oklahoma in 1945. He thought it would appeal to the plain-speaking Truman and arranged for a copy of it to be made and sent to him. It was seen on the President’s desk on and off throughout the rest of his presidency.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” said John F. Kennedy at his inauguration in 1961. Not exactly extemporaneous, but illustrative anyway (and trotted out incessantly by the Left).  I was too young to remember him saying it, but we can confirm that he did say it because of the various newsreels of the time.

But … did you know that he stole that line from the headmaster of his private school?  Indeed, he did. Chris Matthews, of all people, makes the claim in Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero. He unearthed notes written by George St John, the President’s former headmaster at Choate School in Connecticut, which suggest he had been aware of the ‘ask not’ line for many years.

“It depends what your definition of ‘is’ is,” said Bill Clinton in a rather heated moment, that during his deposition in the Monica Lewinsky affair. No making this up (who could?). Bill said it as only a good lawyer could.

“Those rumors are false.  I believe in the sanctity of marriage,” said The Left’s beloved John Edwards during the 2000 presidential campaign.  We will get to his running mate, Al Gore in a moment, but in the heat of the moment, when pressed on whether he’d had an affair (read: whether he’d CHEATED on his wife), Senator Edwards was able to muster what appeared then, and has since been confirmed, to be a lie. Johnny Boy said it. The heat of the moment is rather comparable, I suspect, to the heat of his extra-marital affair.

“I invented the Internet,” or something to that effect, has been attributed to Vice President Al Gore. To be fair, he never uttered those precise words, but he came close. Here is what he actually said:

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

This was another “heat of the moment” statement, uttered during Gore’s 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN. “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Darn close. And darn presumptuous when you stop to think about it.

What difference does it make?” said Hillary Clinton in a heated exchange during testimony on the Benghazi attack.  The “difference” is whether the murders in Libya were caused by a video or the result of terrorism and general anti-American sentiment. Here I have to agree with Hillary: there is no difference (to my mind) between a murder committed after watching a bad movie and a murder committed out of sheer anger. Here is what she said in the heat of the moment:

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” she said. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

The only problem, Mrs. Clinton, is that you made it clear to us that the murders, the blood, should be on our hands as Americans because we “allowed” someone to make a bad movie. She was part of the guilt machine that wanted everything to be America’s fault. Be careful with what you say in the heat of the moment – it can make a difference.

“America is, is no longer, uh, what it, uh, could be, uh, what it was once was, uh, and I say to myself, uh, I don’t want that future, uh, for my children,” said Barack Obama to a group of children during the 2008 campaign, at a time when he was running against Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination.  He said it in the heat of the moment (if answering questions from little kids can be heated) and was not his finest moment.

“Paying taxes is voluntary,” said the illustrious Senator Harry Reid in 2008 in the heat of the moment. Here is the transcript:

Questioner: If our government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people whose money is being taken feel about the government?

Harry Reid:  Well, I don’t accept your phraseology. I don’t think we “force” people.

Questioner: Taxation is not forceful?

Reid: No.

Questioner: It’s voluntary?

Reid: In fact, quite to the contrary. Our system of government is a voluntary tax system.

“We just have to pass the Healthcare Bill to see what’s in it,” said Nancy Pelosi in 2010 when the democrat Congress was rushing to pass ObamaCare. She did, in fact, say that, and it was in the heat of the moment and I suspect she regrets it. After all, as one proctologist once told me, “that is also the perfect definition of a stool sample.”

Lastly, there is supposed quote from Maxine Waters, no great orator: “My fear is if North Korea nukes us, Trump is gonna get us into a war.” However, there is no record of her actually having said that. But she DID say this, as for North Korea’s requests: “give them what they’re asking for.”

Contrast that with the complete meltdown on The Left after hearing Donald Trump suggest that negotiation is often a process of give and take, even if it involves a dictator.

Cool down. Everyone makes mistakes. What will really matter (the difference it will make, to paraphrase Hillary) is the extent to which Trump’s initial meetings with Putin bring about change in our relationship with a nation that controls half the world’s nuclear weapons. A responsible press would be doing just that: remaining calm, cool, and collected.

Please, let’s stay “hinged,” as Charles Krauthammer would have said.

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Airplane Food

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Dr Joseph Russo

We are on the very first leg of a trip that will take us to San Francisco, then Los Angeles, then Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane before flying back to Los Angeles; then to Boston before flying HOME to Laramie.

Lots of airplane rides and lots of food.

And plenty of opportunity to get food poisoning, which got me to wondering, “What do pilots eat?”

The answer of course is that they eat what we eat (in first class anyway). But, and this is the interesting thing, the captain and the first officer usually do NOT eat the same entree.

Why?

To avoid suffering from concurrent food poisoning. That’s why.

If that sounds a whole lot like one of the gags in the 1980 comedy Airplane, it should, because it was. Most of the crew, including the pilots, ate bad fish and suffered from severe food poisoning during the course of the film.

And for what it’s worth, food-borne illness is the leading cause of pilot incapacitation.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” is (hopefully) not what our pilots say to the flight attendant.

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