It is incredible how even simple ignorance can breed and feed a false sense of optimism and security. That it can be the basis for a book is even more unsettling.

While perusing an issue of the 'Journal of Statistical Psychology' not long ago, I came upon the stat that nearly 6 in 10 Americans now suffer some form of mental illness: BPD (borderline personality disorder); Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid syndrome, chronic depression, sociopathy and psychopathy.

The reasons for the increase in mental illness include much greater time pressures than in the 1970s, fewer support systems (especially since the arrival of Reaganism), and much more work stress - not to mention economic stress (e.g. since the 70s many more companies have replaced defined benefit plans with 401ks, putting the onus on workers to pay for their retirement)

The gist of all this? The increase in mentally ill, nearly doubling (and which goes far beyond the lower threshold reporting standards or therp sessions today) is indicative of an abiding threat that exists, not just for kids but for us all.

But kids are more at risk because they are more naive, defenseless in the face of determined adult psychopathic guile and mischief.

"Free range kids"? Sure - but not in this country. Not here in the land of psychos and gun nuts looking for any excuse to blow a fuse. In this environment of so many mentally screwed up people (expecially the schizoids) I would have no qualms keeping my kids inside at their computer. Or, if they do go out and about, it will be the occasion for a family hike or outing. Where there are numbers, a predator can be neutralized.

For a poor modern kid one on one with a predator, I wouldn't make such a bet.

Yeah, in the 50s my brothers and I while using a restaurant restroom in MS (on a family trip) had an unsettling encounter with a sick fuck predator. Fortunately, my younger brother had his jack knife with him and took it out - held the blade up to the creep's face and whispered: "You make one more move or breathe and we will cut your balls off"

The guy backed off and hid in a stall. We were 9, 10 and 11 at the time.

I doubt any kid would have the stength and fearlessness to do that today.

K Trout thus spake: "It surely hasn't stopped or inhibited me from masturbating. Are some of you trying to say that I'd have broken my record of 10 times in a day if I were uncut? "

NO, what we are saying is that you've been left so devoid of feeling-sensitivity that you have to jack off at least 10 times a day to get any remote sensation. Most non-circumcised males don't need to do it more than once per day, if that.

An excellent examination of the undercurrent of psychopathology that arise from circumcision appear in Harvey A. Hornstein's book Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggresion and Altruism, Prentice-Hall, 1976, 'We and They', p.13.

The brutal assault that occurs on an infant is planted forever in his subconscious just waiting to be impelled to brute violence as a way of reacting against the initial transgression.

The most extreme cases of multiple daily masturbators who had been circumcised as infants, were of course, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

They were left so deovid of sensation that they had to resort to mass murders to get off.

One of the best reasons religious numskulls have to lay off the knife. Damned all the tradition BS.

at the killer plage movies which featured people who became ill, died then were zombified....but..... can anyone say for a certainty that none of the so far dead from this Swine flu have not met a similar fate.

An interesting post (2 days ago) on a medical blog I saw, hypothesized that at death the swine DNA could re-activate the human cells briefly via exchange of ATP and ADP, and anaerobic respiration. The product would be a "zombie" which would exist from 24-48 hrs. How many have been created so far?

More to the point: Will they cross the border?

Further to the point: what would the wingnuts like Hannity have to say about this?

is a putz anfd enabling little media whore. I have no remote idea why anyone even pays this senile goat any mind anymore. From 2000 to 2004 I noted a continuous downward spiral in his columns, until eventually - by late 2005 - I basically stopped wasting my time with them.

Broder hails from a paper that's been contaminated since the new owners took over in the 90s. Thanks to that change, the WaPo became barely a bastardized shadow of what it was in the Watergate high era.

You had a whole slew of foul parrots and propagandists enter, from Dana Milbank, to Charles Krauthammer, and that pretend economist (can't recall his name) who keeps calling for cutting "entitlements".

I stopped reading the WaPo after that nitwit columnist Cecie what's her face started the rumors (during the 2000 campaign) that Al Gore "invented the internet" and claimed he was the central character in "Love Story".

Broder like the rest of this lamo bunch are one of the most glaring reasons so many newspapers are collapsing.

should read:

"the boy had this UNwanted attention "

a news report on CBS several days ago, the boy had this wanted attention and name calling after his family moved to a new location, new school. The lad had always been a happy 'smiler' which inevitably invites taunts of "gay" in many parts of this great land.

Gay, gay, gay.

Solution? You stop providing the fuel to the fire. Stop the smiling, giggling and and adopt a stone cold persona. Then they will look for a new target. Pity that someone didn't coach the poor kid to alter his outward persona.