I Speak of Dreams

Long Term Care Insurance

I've been doing some thrilling stuff like investigating long-term-care insurance, the cost of annuities, and the cost of moving into a continuous care community.  I'm too young!  But I need to know.

And Jumper Girl needs a will and some other legal documents before she leaves for college.

A Universal Non-Apology

At Language Log, Geoff Pullum has  posted a helpful universal non-apology for public persons accused of wrong-doing.

Funny!

Do You Feel Safer Now?

Psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar lives and works in Vancouver, BC, and was in the habit of traveling across the Canadian-US border to visit friends and his children, who are US residents.   Not any more.  See, Feldmar, who is now 66, used LSD therapeutically, and legally,  in the 60s and 70s--the latter under the direction of R. D. Laing, in England.  That makes him an "inadmissible person," forever barred from entering the US.

Do you feel safer now?

 

A Father Speaks: Autism

Big White Hat: An Open Letter To Autistics and their Parents.

Autism is consistently a subject in the media lately. But it is usually couched in the context of victim hood. I am no victim. Neither is my son. My Tiger is fearfully and wonderfully made. I am blessed to have a son like him. So I think it is time to take Autism awareness out of the pity category. It is time to see autistics for the extraordinary people they are.

Start of Good News for Dyslexic Students in New Zealand

In New Zealand, up until now, dyslexia has not been recognized in the educational system.  The good news is that the New Zealand government recently announced that it will study dyslexia best practices around the world.  The bad news is that the Davis Dyslexia Method is firmly entrenched in the New Zealand dyslexia establishment.  I do hope that more scientifically based methods, such as the Orton-Gillingham approach  and Direct Instruction, will be able to get a toe-hold.  (Davis Dyslexia criticizes the brain research;  are quite negative on both O-G and DI).

Can She Publish An Opinion Piece Advocating Tolerance?

Box Turtle Bulletin is a blog I admire tremendously. (See the Why I Went to "Love Won Out" series). Today they wrote about high-schooler Megan Chase and the faculty adviser Amy Sorrell to the high-school paper, The Tomahawk.   Chase wrote an opinion piece (reproduced in whole below the fold), advocating tolerance for those who are other than heterosexual.  Sorrell's job is on the line for approving the column.

Chase was not disciplined, but Sorrell was.  There will be a hearing April 28 to determine if Sorrell, who has been on paid leave since March 19, 2007, will lose her job.

At issue is whether Chase's opinion column advocating tolerance of homosexuals was suitable for a student newspaper distributed to students in grades 7 through 12 and whether newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell followed protocol in allowing the column to be printed.

insults from the book of Leviticus...go!

The Educat teaches high school in Oklahoma.  She has

I am tired, tired, tired of the misuse of words in order to hurt others. I've been writing referrals, assigning detentions, and generally waving my arm in defiance until I lose feeling in it and I fear it will fall off. Today, I hit the wall on the most misused and overused insult--gay.

She goes on to say,

I have now decided that I will respond to that word in kind, I will use other laws from the book of Leviticus as insults.    

• "Man, you need to quit! That's so crazy it allows cattle to graze with cattle of other kinds!" 
• "Oooh, you totally wear clothing made from more than one kind of fabric." 
• "You touch the skin of unclean animals. You do it alla time, so's your momma!"

She asks her readers to come up with some more.  Go help out.

Mapantsula Rebukes Dinesh D'Souza

Mapantsula* keeps a diary at Daily Kos :

I am an atheist and a professor at Virginia Tech. Dinesh D’Souza says that I don’t exist, that I have nothing to say, that I am nowhere to be found.

But I am here.

He wrote a multi-part response to D'Souza, and his reaction to the death of his colleagues and students.  A quote below the fold, but do go read the whole thing.

Should The VTech Students Have Reacted Differently?

In Blasted are the Meek, Joey DeVilla responds to some bloggers' assertions that a cultural weakness was exposed by the VTech students' failure to bring down the gunman.

He said it better than I, and I posted a comment in response. 

Are "Tough Love" Programs Effective In changing Angry, Defiant Kids?

A mom asked for a referral to a "Scared Straight" program.

"Any information on this program or something of this nature would be a great help. My son will be 16 in March and he is an Angry, Defiant creep of a kid."

I went looking.

As a result of the film, many states introduced "scared straight" programs in an attempt to rehabilitate young delinquents. The effectiveness of such programs has been questioned, most significantly by a meta-analysis of 7 such programs by Anthony Petrosino et al (2002, updated 2003), which found that 'scared straight' programs not only failed to deter crime, but actually led to more offending behavior.

Petrosino's group said,

Results of this review indicate that not only does it fail to deter crime but it actually leads to more  offending behavior. Government officials permitting this program need to adopt rigorous evaluation to  ensure that they are not causing more harm to the very citizens they pledge to protect. 

Download ScaredStraightReview.pdf (820 KB)

I would recommend that the mother call her local county mental health hotline to find services for families.  She mentioned she was in southern California.

The number in Los Angeles county is (free, confidential mental health information, referrals to service providers, and crisis counseling at any day or time), call our 24/7 ACCESS hotline at 1-800-854-7771.