Wednesday, February 29, 2012

One Out Of Every Ten Wall Street Employees Is A Psychopath, Say Researchers

I had read once that salespeople tend to suffer from ADD and that Attention Deficit Disorder actually helps them be people-persons and easily influence others in their sales environment, but this is absolutely shocking!

This is not a cynical blog calling Wall Street workers psychopaths, this is the result of research by psychological and social professionals, peer-reviewed and published by the Huffington Post. Here are excerpts from the article:

A clinical psychopath is bright, gregarious and charming, writes DeCovny. He lies easily and often, and may have trouble feeling empathy for other people. He's probably also more willing to take dangerous risks -- either because he doesn't understand the consequences, or because he simply doesn't care.

An appetite for risk can seem like a positive business trait on Wall Street, where big gambles sometimes lead to big rewards ...

At the same time, the fast-moving, high-pressure environment of Wall Street probably compromises the mental health of some of its employees. A recent study found that many young bankers develop alcoholism, insomnia, eating disorders and other stress-related ailments within just a few years on the job.

Stockbrokers have also been shown to experience clinical depression at a rate more than three times as high as the general population.

DeCovny writes that for someone with a "latent" compulsive gambling problem, a job trading stocks can trigger pathological responses that send the person into an escalating pattern of lies, debts and even embezzlement and fraud.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Muslim assaults atheist, Judge dismisses case



According to the CNN blog entitled Judge’s dismissal of atheist's harassment claim against Muslim makes waves,

The judge also scolded Perce, saying he’d been needlessly provocative on an issue sensitive with Muslims.

"You have that right, but you're way outside your bounds of First Amendment rights," Martin said, according to a recording Perce made of the court hearing. "I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did."

The judge went on to point out that in many Muslim countries, ridiculing Mohammed could warrant the death penalty under Islamic law.

Critics say Martin's lecture shows he used Muslim cultural grounds to excuse a deplorable assault, and failed to defend an atheist's First Amendment rights.

"That's greatly disturbing to people that believe in free speech," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. "You can say things that are hurtful to others. We hope that you don't, but you most certainly can be protected. People like Thomas Paine spent his entire life ticking off people across the colonies."

Former terrorism prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, writing on the blog of National Review, accused the judge of allowing the Muslim suspect to invoke a "Sharia defense – what he claimed was his obligation to strike out against any insult against the prophet Mohammed."


Atheists.org also issued a blog in response to the attack and the judge's actions, saying

This reeks of those cases we used to read about where a woman is blamed for her own rape because she “was asking for it” by virtue of the clothing she chose to wear, and then having the Judge set the rapist free.


Blaming the victim: religions are pretty good about that. This case does make it feel like atheists, although a much bigger minority than Moslems (atheists are believed to make up about 18 % of US citizenry these days), are one of the few minorities whose freedoms and rights it's okay to violate, who when attacked by religious zealots do not deserve protection from the state and from the law. I should close by citing the First Amendment of the foundational document of the United States of America.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Dolphins formally declared 'non human persons' by scientists

According to the article Experts ask: Should they be treated as humans?:

So dolphins are people. Well, ‘non-human persons’ to be more accurate, and as such they deserve to have the same rights and be protected as humans.

That’s the extraordinary conclusion that scientists came to this week. Their claim — made at the world’s biggest science conference, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver — has been prompted by the latest findings about the amazing abilities of dolphins and whales.

Studies now show that these cetaceans, as they are technically known, possess the next most impressive brains after humans, even ranking above the great apes.

... Each animal has its own signature whistle which it uses to identify or introduce itself — in effect, its own name. Crucially, this indicated a sense of individuality, and of self-awareness.

...Experts believe that within a generation we will have learned to ‘talk’ to dolphins by decoding their clicks, 200 different types of which have already been identified.


Also read: They're so smart we must treat them as 'non human persons' say scientists

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Hundreds of suspected pedophile priests plague California

This won't stop until the pope gets arrested and the Vatican is dismantled because the State of Vatican is a refuge for predator priests.

When Boston Cardinal Bernard Law realized that he was going to be arrested he immediately met with Pope JPII and media made it look like he got admonished by the pope but that's impossible because cardinals make a vow of unconditional obedience to the pope and everything that Barnard Law did fell within the pope's policy of purchasing the silence of the victims and covering up the aggressors. He had fulfilled the pope's wishes.

What really happened in that meeting is that it was arranged that Bernard Law would move to the Vatican and avoid conviction, he got his own cathedral, a salary and even a personal assistant and he remains there today. He helped to elect the current pope, who is the author of the church's policy of covering up abuse.

The Vatican is a den of snakes. A refuge state for predators where they can evade the laws of all the other countries, and because it has sovereignty, other countries' laws don't apply there.

Hundreds of suspected pedophile priests plague California

Spanish Catholics colonized California starting in the 1700s, paving the way for what would become one of the most populated — and popular — of the 50 United States.

Today, however, the footprints of those missionaries reveal something far scarier than most realize.

According to a Los Angeles-based attorney, around 200 Catholic priests tied to allegations of child abuse live across the Golden Coast state of California. What’s more is that none of them have been charged with crimes and most reside in communities completely unaware of their presence.

“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” attorney Ray Boucher tells MNBC. Yet due to a milestone settlement that served as a mere slap on the wrist for several hundreds of allegations of sexual assault on minors, those alleged offenders are free from persecution — and publication.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese paid out an unprecedented settlement in 2007, one that awarded 500 plaintiffs who insisted that priests had abused them to the tune of $660 million. As part of the plea, however, many of the hundreds of priests named in the case escaped relatively unscathed. Some admitted their crimes and other remained only alleged sex criminals. None of those priests were actually convicted though, which allowed them to slip through the cracks and into obscurity where an estimated 200 now reside, uncharged and unknown to the families around them.

Boucher has provided MNBC with a map he made that pinpoints dozens of locations populated by alleged child molesters. From the SoCal city of Ocean Side and up through Sacramento, the attorney has identified 60 separate locations where suspected priests are thought to live today. With no convictions ever handed out, however, they live there to do as they wish.

“They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers,” explains Boucher. Some of them victims are aware, and doubt that the taboo nature of Catholic Church sex scandals will allow much to be done.

Dan Smith says he was molested by a parish priest growing up. “He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” he tells MSNBC 20 years after the fact. As the press prefers to ignore the realities of the sex crimes, Smith explains that more people would be left uncomfortable if they knew the harsh realities of the all-too-common crimes.

“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” says Smith. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”

Despite being brought to tears two decades later though, those alleged assailants have escaped persecution. As part of the settlement, many priests avoided admitting to wrongdoing and were whisked out of the cities — and sometime out of the country — by the church itself.

“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher says. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”

Elsewhere, settlements have allowed others to walk away without fearing persecution. In Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Regali allowed 21 of 37 priests pegged as alleged abusers to stay with the church after a Grand Jury indictment. In Seattle, hundreds of priests were accused of sex abuse in a case that was just settled by the church last year.

Some say that is should end just there.

“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” says Donald Steir. “That’s not fair.” Steir represents several California clergymen and tells MSNBC that just because they are accused of crimes doesn’t mean they are criminals. Mr. Steir is obviously correct in his assumption, but with hundreds of priests running from allegations and escaping unscathed — it creates hundreds of cases where future crimes that could otherwise be thwarted will instead be unavoidable.

“Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher adds. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”

Monday, February 13, 2012

I think religion is a drug. Can God deliver a religion addict? (laughs)

This is not a Marx quote. These are the words of Marjoe, in his biographical documentary film which I learned about from youtuber gogreen18 -a brilliant atheist and ex-Mormon-, tells the story of a child who was raised to be a preacher and began preaching at age 4. In it, he speaks of his career as a preacher, and of religion as a business ... and is frank about his personal lack of belief. The documentary is from 1972 and served as his coming out atheist story and his chance to break with his religious past.

The film is a great focal point for discussion with church goers, particularly when arguing against tax exemptions for religious organizations that provide no real non-profit services except the false promises and false hopes of faith. It includes cheerful counting of huge amounts of money after a service, as well as conversations about a pastor's family's trips to Brasil, and even land owned and being used for profit in foreign lands - presumably purchased with church money. In it, he explains how easy it is to manipulate people of faith and to make money from a church business. Very educational!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

RIP
WHITNEY HOUSTON

WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU!
WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR BEAUTIFUL VOICE!