Antidepressants = suicide.

 The NY Times reports that the U.S. suicide rate has surged to a 30-year high. A snippet: "particularly among women and middle-age Americans, according to federal data released Friday. The suicide rate for women ages 45-64 increased by 63 percent from 1994 to 2014, while it jumped 43 percent for men in the same age range, according to a National Center for Health Statistics study. The overall suicide rate climbed 24 percent during the period of the study." Hmm.


A 2011 article from the Harvard Medical Journal noted that over a similar period anti-depressant use surged.


The age group and the stupid amount of prescribed "feel good" pills are killing off American adults. It isn't social media or isolation that is killing people, it's self interested doctors earning their pharma bonuses and trips by telling their patients to take a pill to fix their blues. What they should be telling them is to get of the couch, skip the fast food, and for God's sake take a walk now and then.


Nobody can be surprised by this connection. There are warnings with those drugs. They tell users and doctors that suicidal thoughts may result from taking the pills. It's okay though, "they have to put those warnings with the pills", I've heard my doctor say about Cipro, a tendon obliterating antibiotic with a "black label" warning. But he downside risk is too dramatic to be minimized by its probability. All it takes is one in a billion if you're the "one".


The connection is there to see.


The actual side affect warnings should read: "Ingesting this drug occasionally leads to suicide. Not suicidal thoughts, but actual put a gun to your head and pull the trigger bloody-mess suicide."

Great news for coffee and booze drinkers.

http://aol.it/1ouRcD6

Sheep don't surf.

My 15 year-old daughter was crying and it was my fault. It was ten to seven in the morning and she had just told me to hurry up and take her to school. She was way early; and I was not ready to go. "Did you eat?" I asked.

"No, but I’ll get some cereal."

She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.

"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.

"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"

I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.

I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.

We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.

Baa. Baa. Baa.

Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.

Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.

Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.

Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.

Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they  carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.

My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.

　

　

　

　

　

Stars in the dark

Do it now. Limited time only. This deal won’t last. There has never been a better time to buy.


Why do we take this bait? Why does anyone?

There is no limit to time. There is always another opportunity coming. There will always be a time to buy, or sell, or jump, or eat or sleep, or even fall in love.

As long as you are alive there is opportunity to act. It’s okay if you don’t squeeze the juice out of every moment. Even the guys who cheat death for RedBull videos on YouTube spend countless boring hours planning, arranging and practicing for their 30-90 seconds of fame.

Often we act as mice in a maze, bouncing against walls of our own making, scrambling from event to deadline to event, until we stop, exhausted, and sometimes without ever having eaten the cheese. (Cheese, glorious cheese).

Many of us feel we have to be "productive" at home, on days off, even on vacation at the beach (Maria), anytime when we aren’t working for someone else. This is when we desperately need to slow down and live. Breathe in, breathe out. Just float in the water, catch a wave, look up at the stars and wonder just where you are, just for the sake of wondering.

Looking at the night sky is one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve found that if I can see some stars, I can focus on a point between two or three, in what appears to be dark emptiness, and just try to see as far as I can imagine seeing, then, to my delight, a pin-point of light will materialize where I am looking.

The stars are there, in what seems to be darkness. They are always there. Just like opportunities. Take a moment. Breathe. Look. See.

Life. Bulbs.

First blackness and calm, then crackling and pulsing alertness.



Everyone in the circle is awake and glowing. There are hundreds of them, six or seven different outlooks, but all connected for the same bright purpose.



They don’t live on their own. It’s the shared energy that animates them. The same force that propels thoughts, movement and light. It gives life to them, maybe to all of us.



One of them stops. It no longer participates in the group. Its family stops and stares, still glowing and feeling. What can they do for this one?



Evolution of their kind allows them to live and work all together on the same wavelength, and to continue even when one of them departs. Earlier families would live until their weakest member passed. Then they would all die together, as one.



Now they try to recover their own. They make a fuss. They crackle and hiss. None wants to believe there is no way back for one.



But there isn’t a way. Sometimes darkness is all there is.



So they go on beaming and gleaming, until it’s time to sleep, and the switch is flipped.

　

　

　

　

　

　

ISIS is pathetic not fearsome

It is horrible that some black-clad wackadoos took 118 lives in Paris. How many Americans were killed by fellow Americans over the weekend? Its 30,000 a year, so from Friday through Sunday it must have been about 100 

Did we call out the troops? Curtail travel and unfettered activity? No. Timothy Mcveigh killed 168 people in 1995 by bombing a building. Did troops appear on street corners in Oklahoma City? Did. We consent to searches of our stuff? 

Why the heck are 118 deaths in a huge city in an even bigger country an ocean away making news here? Why is it making you scared? You are not under any threat. Your chance of seeing or being personally affected by a bad guy has not changed.

ISIS is a name only. It is not a meaningful threat to any American. The bigger, real, threats to Americans is that they develop diabetesor, or have a heart attack, or get in a car accident, or get shot by a police officer.  

Don't be scared. And don't let Trump or Cheney or anyone else who accumulates government power tell you to be scared. Americans don't cower. Your ancestors got on a rickety boat and sailed over rough seas for months just to get away from the overreach of the King and his power. Don't you think you have what it takes to face a graphic TV image without surrendering your liberty or dignity? 

GI Joe suicide cop was so credible. Like a politician.

The suicide cop story out of Fox Lake, Illinois shows that credibility trumps integrity, but thankfully only for a little while. Joe Gliniewicz, GI Joe, Kingpin of Corruption, the Rot that Fox built, was the poster child for honorable police officers. He was loved and respected by coworkers and the community. From a distance he was a clean shaven, tattooed knight in blue. Up close? A skittering cockroach, reeking of stolen money and cheap perfume.

He expertly cultivated a look. An appearance that villagers wanted to believe. He carefully sculpted a facade that gave him the power to rob his fans. It is a sadly familiar story. While the dullards were glorifying his veteran-cop image he was betraying their foolish trust and stealing their money to buy hookers, jewelry, and a bigger house.

As a sociopath, he was unmatched, with Ted Bundy-like charisma serving his selfish needs. He projected honesty and credibility, but he had no honor, no integrity and no moral standing. Today a news report said that he contracted to have the village manager killed. Why? Because that lady might uncover his misdeeds. This was the kind of cop that kills people, plants a gun, and makes up a story about how his life was in danger.

When a person appears too good to be true, they are. They really are. There is no purely good person. Anywhere. Those who strive to project their own perfection are usually desperate to fill the crags in their character. They smooth over their flaws, but the gaps are still there, rotting deeper under the veneer of respectability.

It is the political season and here they come dressed in pin-striped suits, wearing flag pins. The media loves the smooth, well-coiffed faces of those oh-so-credible smooth-talkers who want to  be in charge of your tax dollars, your relationships and your bodies. Remember GI Joe and be cautious. Be very cautious.