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Showing posts from June, 2014

Snapshots: What makes us happy, what makes us sad

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1.  Where did she go?  She was here just a minute ago. That's me, first row, far left. When people say, "I can't help it," meaning they can't help the way they feel, considering how they are wired and what they have experienced, I get it. Easy for therapists to say, "Sure you can change how you feel, it's all attitude. And we have all of these techniques, you see." But there are autonomic emotional reflexes that merely kick in when we hear things, see things, and as much as we would will them away, biology rules. Not that it isn't worth the fight. Most of us beat depression eventually, but winning and timing depends upon what kid of depression it is. Grieving is one that isn't worth the fight, not in the first year of a loss. Just feel bad and accept it , the general rule. I'm coming to the end of that first year, following my mother's death. It will be almost four years since my father died, broke us in a little. There is still a cer

Blurring the Digital and Real Worlds: Child Stabbings in Wisconsin

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People Magazine -Morgan Geyser and AnnisaWeier I know people hunt in the woods of Wisconsin. But deer, not one another. Two twelve-year old girls stabbed another nineteen times in a wooded park in Waukesha, leaving her for dead. The victim, released from the hospital yesterday, narrowly escaped death, a wound to the heart a fraction of an inch off the mark. The reason? Curry the favor of an Internet paranormal, Slenderman, a monster developed or perhaps embellished (it is said to be a very old tale) by a story teller at the Creepy Pasta website. Creepy Pasta catalogs all things creepy. It will come out, the pictures of the crime, the videotape, evidence that will incriminate these youngsters in court, for they will be tried as adults. And here they only wanted to make an impression on a supernatural being, or the brains behind a cartoon, an online horror guru, a cult leader. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, both 12, have been charged as adults with first-degree attempted homicide in the