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Reproduction star by Bettina Havig
Vintage star block.
Black on white prints are
an excellent clue to a post-1890 date.
Black cotton prints were not available before 1890 or so.
Before that date black dyes were too unreliable.
They faded or destroyed the cotton fibers.
What a novelty true blacks must have been at the
end of the 19th century.
Grays in the blocks and setting strips in a quilt date-inscribed 1897.
This had to be a hot look in 1897.
Another hot look was Asian-influenced prints characterized by figures such as carnations and grasses, images one might see in Japanese design. Sets were tossed and figures were far apart, giving a distinctive airiness to prints of the 1880-1910 years.
The figures were spaced so far apart in this black ground print that
they hardly made it into the patchwork.
Tillie McCoy's name is in the house quilt above, dated 1897.
That wheat or grass print was one of the novel
fashions of the time. Indigos were important for an Asian look.
Grasses in indigo and browns.
Two graceful prints cut a little too small to show off their best features.
We often just get a glimpse of these Japanese-inspired prints in patchwork.
Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt, about 1908.
Notice the wallpaper--- birds in grasses---
very Japanese-inspired.
Calico ditsies and Asian-inspired design in a vintage block.
Becky found a great Asian-style print for this repro star.
Detail of a charm quilt top with several tossed, widely spaced figures along the top row.
The blue-gray polka dot fabric has a lace border print. (See the last post.)
The unknown maker picked prints in novel styles
and colors, probably in the 1880s
Another detail showing two colorways of one of these widely spaced designs.
The unusual figure is rings of beads, another minor fad in the 1880s and '90s.
And then there were prints that were just strange.
Here's a repro block Shawn stitched when we were doing California Golds.
These black and gray reproductions seem plentiful right now---
Good time to buy a bunch of fat quarters and make a box that
says BLACKS 1890-1920
Vintage Shirting and Dress Prints by Barbara J. Eikmeier
Several excellent blacks among the shirtings, blues and claret-colored reds.
Reproduction star by Bettina Havig
Kathy Schmitz has several in her current Sturbridge line.
Betsy Chutchian's Eliza's Indigo, scheduled for October delivery,
includes a nice variety from black through gray to white.
Judie Rothermel periodically does a collection from the 1890-1920 period.
Mourning Grays by Carrie Quinn
mixes lovely purples with black and gray prints.
Asian-influenced prints are more difficult to find.
One of my favorite lines was called
Leaving the Century. which Terry Thompson and I did for
Moda in 1999.
Our theme: Asian-style prints
imitating fabrics from 1899.
The background in Becky's repro star is from that line.
Roseanne Smith, Leaving the Century, 1999-2015
Roseanne just got her quilt back from quilter Lori Kukuk.
Lots of blacks and Japanese-style florals in that collection.
Three repros from Nancy Gere.
What to Do With Your Stack of Stars?
Sash them with Cornerstones.
Quilt from the last quarter of the 19th century
Stella Rubin's Shop.
This seems like a go-to set for us today.
Set blocks on the straight with sashing separating them.
At the intersections put a contrasting cornerstone square.
The cornerstone is almost as large as the center square here.
Maggie Potter's design for the Lands End collection:
a contemporary quilt with a similar set.
Vintage quilt, about 1900
But setting blocks in a straight grid parallel to the edges
was not the obvious choice before 1880 or so.
This antique is set with a claret-red polka dot.
An Amish quilt (?) with the cornerstones as large as the star's center square
You don't see much of this set until after 1870.
Amish quilt of solid colors,
probably mid-20th century
Quilt dated 1864.
Earlier quilters were more likely to use a diagonal set.
If you are looking for a set typical of the 1880-1920 period consider a horizontal/vertical grid of sashing (wide or narrow) with contrasting squares in the corners.
Linsey quilt (coarse wool/cotton fabrics)
Linsey quilts are hard to date as the fabrics could have
been woven in 1810 or 1890---at home or in a factory.
In this case the sashing and cornerstones are almost as large as the block.
End of the 19th century.
Proportions: sash as wide as the star's center
One More Thing About Black Cottons
Rotten black in a 1930s quilt
Black dyes were notorious for their unreliability. Even after discoveries of analine dyes that inexpensively colored cotton a good black, serious problems remained.
Some blacks damaged the fabric so much that it shredded.
One culprit was (and is) sulfur black.
But there were other unreliable chemical mixtures. Crookes in his 1874 dye manual shows a scrap of that wiggle stripe dyed with "Lucas black [which] finds no favor either with dealers or consumers." He tells us it has "bad properties" but doesn't say what those failures are. Fading or rotting are the likely problems.
With rotting being most likely.
Read more about black dyes here:
And about current problems with sulfur black at this blog post:


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Find fellowships, conferences, grants and awards deadlines, workshops and networking opportunities, crowd-sourced leads to job banks, reporting toolkits, hundreds of MOOCs and more. GO >>
Society for Risk Analysis Meeting in Baltimore, MD
Key Policy Issues Up for Discussion at Science and Risk Conference in Baltimore
The Society for Risk Analysis Meeting set for Baltimore, MD, December 9-12, 2013, will include sessions on sustainability, Big Data, bioterrorism, nanotechnology, toxics, climate change, food safety and whether regulation kills jobs, among many others.
More than 600 environment, food safety, security, engineering and economic experts will be detailing emerging research evidence, practical experience and public policy tools relevant to important government and private-sector decisions at an upcoming conference held by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in Baltimore, MD, December 9-12, 2013.
Addressing a wide range of relevant science, policy and regulatory topics, the annual SRA meeting is the "highest profile event for linking science and decisions for policymakers and those involved in their efforts," said SRA President-Elect Ortwin Renn of Stuttgart University. Keynote speakers include a panel on risk science and policy making, featuring Anne Glover, chief scientific advisor to the European Union, and Sir Marc Walport, chief scientific advisor to the U.K. government and a panel of international experts on "Exploring Risk, Ethics, and Decision-Making: Three Cases." In addition, Norman Loayza of the World Bank and Director of the World Development Report, 2014, will discuss "Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development," reflecting the global scope of SRA.
The annual meeting, which draws a broad cross-section of U.S. and international technical experts and policy professionals, is focused this year on the theme "Risk Analysis for Better Policies" reflecting the goal of SRA to provide an open forum for all those who are interested in risk analysis and its application to improving safety, public health and environmental quality. Sessions at this year's conference will address drinking water, catastrophic risks, the evaluation of regulations, nuclear power, predicting adversary behavior, managing natural disasters, evaluating emerging threats, press coverage of environmental debates, air pollution, ecology and communicating about risk, among other pressing topics.
The 2013 SRA annual meeting will be held at the Hilton Baltimore Hotel in Baltimore's Inner Harbor and right next to major sports arenas. With members spanning many disciplines such as health sciences, communications, development, law and policy as well as economics, psychology and other sciences, "SRA analysts leverage the perspectives and tools offered by risk scientists and practitioners from all disciplines and share a commitment to sound decision support," said current SRA President George Gray of the George Washington University.
Nearly 100 plenary and technical sessions will be featured on diverse subjects of pressing international, national, regional, state and local concern. For more information on conference sessions: http://birenheide.com/sra/2013AM/program/sessionlist.php3
SRA is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, scholarly, international society that provides an open forum for all those who are interested in risk analysis. Risk analysis is defined broadly to include risk assessment, risk characterization, risk communication, risk management, and policy relating to risk, in the context of risks of concern to individuals, to public and private-sector organizations, and to society at a local, regional, national, or global level. www.sra.org
Contact: Attending the meeting as reporters is free for credentialed journalists and freelance reporters. To secure press credentials for the conference at the Hilton Baltimore in the city's Inner Harbor, please call the SRA Secretariat at: 703.790.1745 or email: email@example.com. To arrange an interview with SRA representatives, contact Steve Gibb at 202.422.5425 or firstname.lastname@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Rosseau V was the fifth planet of its star system. This planet had an asteroid belt located around or near it. The region was unique in that it was surrounded by neutrino clouds that formed a harmonic resonance. Eventually the resonance becomes synchronous, making the place sound like it "has a voice."
In 2365, Wesley Crusher took Salia to the holodeck and showed her, among other things, an environmental simulation of the asteroid belt of Rousseau V. (TNG: "The Dauphin")
The script spelling for this planet was "Rosseau V" [1]; however, several other sources, including the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 2, p. 239, as well as the episode's closed captioning, spelled it as "Rousseau V."
In the same script, rather than neutrino clouds forming the harmonic resonance, it was stated that the harmonic resonance occurred after "the orbits of the moons [became] synchronous."
Visual Effects Supervisor Dan Curry used lava rocks he found in the buildings supply for this scene. He was very careful sorting the right rocks out. (TNG Season 2 DVD special feature "Departmental Briefing Year Two: Memorable Missions - The Dauphin")
External link[]
- Rosseau V at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works


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Set of two (2) art prints featuring a mixture of marine algae specimens I collected on the Texas coast.
These Giclee prints were made from high-resolution photographs of the original presses and printed on natural (light ivory) colored heavy-weight acid-free watercolor paper for archival quality. Each print is signed on the back with the scientific name(s) and collection information. Prints will be shipped with backerboards in plastic sleeves within a rigid envelope.
*frames not included, prints only
Get notified of new item releases, upcoming events, and receive special promotions by joining the mailing list!


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The impact of North Carolina teacher unions, or even whether there is such a thing, is a frequent point of debate on this blog. A recent study on the strength of U.S. teacher unions, done by The Fordham Institute and Education Reform Now, indicates there's good reason for the back-and-forth.
North Carolina got a weak overall rating (read the state profile here), with relatively low membership and financing for the N.C. Association of Educators and "the most restrictive bargaining laws in the nation."
"It is one of only five states that prohibit collective bargaining in education," the report says. "No union or professional association may collect agency fees from non-members. The state does not allow teacher strikes."
But the study notes that many in North Carolina perceive the influence of the union to be strong, and that the state's laws are more aligned with traditional union interests than those of most other states.
"North Carolina does not support performance pay, does not require districts to consider teacher performance in determining layoffs, and does not include student learning in tenure decisions. Further, teachers are dismissed due to poor performance at a lower rate than most other states."
The report, released just before the election of Republican Pat McCrory as governor, notes that union influence is likely to decline further with the departure of Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.
South Carolina's union standing was rated among the nation's weakest (read the S.C. profile here).
Monday, November 19, 2012
N.C. teacher unions: Weak, but ...
39 comments:
- Anonymous said...
Don't you LOVE how the NCAE is constantly proclaiming itself to be 'NOT a UNION' when we ALL know its a great BIG LIE! The NCAE is EVIL like ALL UNIONs these days! How do those people sleep at night?
- November 19, 2012 at 6:10 AM
- Anonymous said...
If we had an educator's union in North Carolina educators would be treated more like the professionals we are. Without a union we are at the mercy of CMS executives. We have all witnessed the way CMS executives use out of context numbers, baffle them with B.S. and blame the public, parents and county leadership to cover up for CMS woes. Without a union the community is as helpless and must stand by and watch the deterioration of CMS while the executives get six figure salaries to run an organization that will continue no matter who is running it or how badly or how much the executives are paid. Perhaps the new Chief of Communications will be able to spin CMS into a more positive light after receiving many thousands of dollars from the Broad Foundation.
- November 19, 2012 at 6:44 AM
- Anonymous said...
Dear Anonymous, Teacher Unions are the reason we have lottery's in NC and SC. While the unions promised overflowing buckets of money for K-12 education, and all the teachers crying for them, the gambling industry laughed, and is still laughing all the way to the bank. I got a newsflash for you, public education in NC and SC is so messed up without unions contributing to the fiasco. I am so thankful we DON't have unions to murky the water. They are a joke, and don't do anything but cost even more taxpayer money.
- November 19, 2012 at 7:09 AM
- Wiley Coyote said...
I can assure you that you would be treated like those union members who just helped Hostess put over 18,000 people out of work.
Only about half of Hostess workers were union but now 100% have no jobs.
Unions are the bane of America.
All one has to do is look at the recent teacher strike in Chicago to get a full dose of how "helpless a community can be" at the hand of union thugs. - November 19, 2012 at 7:48 AM
- Anonymous said...
6:44 is correct. There are no teacher unions in NC. Period. End of story.
- November 19, 2012 at 8:01 AM
- Skippy said...
6:44 - did you miss the memo, CMS executives are liberals... Joke is on you.
- November 19, 2012 at 8:09 AM
- Anonymous said...
"North Carolina does not support performance pay, does not require districts to consider teacher performance in determining layoffs, and does not include student learning in tenure decisions."
Come January the Legislature begins their all-out assault on teachers and their profession. Those things mentioned above will be changed; with a supermajority the Republicans will have no reason to listen to anyone, period. Not that they would listen to the NCAE anyway. Only hope is that they are reasonable and understand that any changes must be gradually phased-in. If not then the one thing the NCAE will be good for would be a lawsuit. Just remember, career status (not tenure, people) is a property right and due process must be followed. - November 19, 2012 at 8:18 AM
- Wiley Coyote said...
So that explains CMS' dismal graduation rate and achievement gap over the past 40 years...
They are phasing it in... - November 19, 2012 at 8:23 AM
- Anonymous said...
From the report -
"teachers are dismissed due to poor performance at a lower rate than most other states." - November 19, 2012 at 10:11 AM
- Anonymous said...
I am a long term educator. I taught in unionized states as well as in non-unionized states. Want to know a big difference besides pay? Recently 18 students started showing up on my attendance roster for the first semester. The reason? The instructor teaching them in not licensed in the subject area being taught but I am. So, I am now the teacher of record of students that I never see and will never see yet when the CO, Helms, and NCDPI publish test results, guess which teacher will be associated with these students. Would you like to discuss pay-for- performance?
- November 19, 2012 at 11:02 AM
- Anonymous said...
"North Carolina does not support performance pay, does not require districts to consider teacher performance in determining layoffs, and does not include student learning in tenure decisions. Further, teachers are dismissed due to poor performance at a lower rate than most other states."
How much more backwards can NC get??? - November 19, 2012 at 11:08 AM
- Garth Vader said...
"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for officials to bind the employer. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937 - November 19, 2012 at 12:02 PM
- Anonymous said...
@ 11:08
I think you should be held accountable for the test scores of students that you do not teach just so the admin and distrct can skirt the law. - November 19, 2012 at 12:17 PM
- Anonymous said...
My wife has been a teacher in CMS for almost 20 years and has never paid union dues nor benefited in any way from any union. For all intents and purposes, there is NO union that benefits and/or hinders teachers or affects instruction in any way shape or form.
Any union or alleged union involving CMS students or teachers impacts so few people that it might as well not exist. - November 19, 2012 at 12:45 PM
- Anonymous said...
There's so much wrong information in this article AND the comments - I cannot even begin to address it. Society is going to pay dearly for this undeserved war on teachers. It is so sad. I marvel anyone is left to teach your children.
- November 19, 2012 at 1:39 PM
- Anonymous said...
NCAE is not a union by any means. It thinks it is. You cannot even have a meaningful conversation with its leader as he speaks broken english. Many teachers have never even heard of this group either. They represent a minority group and its clear look at their leadership history.
- November 19, 2012 at 3:09 PM
- Anonymous said...
Stop being a "co-conspirator" and report the law-breaking to Ann or someone. - November 19, 2012 at 3:09 PM
- blockhead1 said...
There are several anti-union comments here. Let me set you straight.
Whenever you see the word union, substitute in your mind, the word workers. Or people.
Now, understand what you owe to unions: your 40-hour work week; health insurance; paid vacations; no child labor; workplace safety rules.
Understand that the reason North Carolina has high unemployment is that it has the nation's lowest union rate. Sound strange? Not really. The state's traditional anti-union laws and union hatred has for the last 100 years, attracted industries interested only in cheap, docile labor. As soon as cheaper, more submissive labor could be found elsewhere - Mexico, Asia, Africa - they flew the coop. Same for industries that have replaced people with technology. Hence, our anti-union stand has only served to drive up unemployment. One of the lowest unemployment rates? New York, with one of the highest union rates.
Hostess' bankruptcy? Glad you mentioned that. You might have noticed that the executives of the company approved 80% pay increases for themselves last year, while asking workers to take 25% pay cuts and gutting their pension plans. Yet the bankruptcy is the workers fault? I think not.
Wise up people. Most of you replying here are not rich. Like it or not, you're suffering from the lack of unions. - November 19, 2012 at 3:16 PM
- Anonymous said...
Please stop parroting the pay increase - it simply is not true and it discredits everything you say.
I won't even mention that NY is at 41/50 and we are 47/50. None of the top 10 states with highest Union workers are in the top 10 of lowest unemployment. 5 are in the bottom 10 and only 1 (Hawaii) is in the top 25.
Let me guess - my comment changed your thinking? Or will you continue to justify?
- November 19, 2012 at 3:36 PM
- CMSteacher said...
We do not have a teachers' union. We have professional organizations that can lobby on teachers' behalf but have no legal recourse to block decisions made at the state or local level. We do not have collective bargaining rights. The state and districts make decisions and unless teachers can successfully lobby the legislature (not likely) whatever the state or district decide becomes policy. (translates to "Bend over") We are a right-to-work state meaning we can be terminated easily. We cannot strike. We do not have union reps. North Carolina does not have a teachers union.
- November 19, 2012 at 3:43 PM
- Anonymous said...
CMeS is all about false data and damned lies with the statistics. So much rampant abuse goes on that taxpayers have no idea about. Unions are one thing but the WASTE of taxpayer money is above all else. When will the general public learn and demand accountablity from those making over $100 GRAND, with little to no impact on students in the classroom. - November 19, 2012 at 4:07 PM
- Anonymous said...
Two thirds of teachers in NC do not belong to NCAE. Stop punishing everyone in order to get political retribution. It's unfair.
- November 19, 2012 at 4:11 PM
- Anonymous said...
Who is getting punished?
- November 19, 2012 at 4:16 PM
- blockhead1 said...
anonymouse at 3:19, sadly, none of what you say is true. Here is what just moved over the Associated Press wire two hours ago, about Hostess:
Hostess Brands, the maker of sweet snacks like Twinkies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, will ask a bankruptcy judge today to approve a plan that will allow it to pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of its executives. The unions are now protesting Hostess' request for the bonuses, though they are unlikely to prevail, CNN Money reports:
Under the plan, bonuses ranging from $7,400 to $130,500 will be paid to 19 executives.
Even as it blamed unions for the bankruptcy and the 18,500 job losses that will ensue, Hostess already gave its executives pay raises earlier this year. The salary of the company's chief executive tripled from $750,000 to roughly $2.5 million, and at least nine other executives received pay raises ranging from $90,000 to $400,000. Those raises came just months after Hostess originally filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
The same is true for your statements about union versus nonunion states. I'll say (politely) that you're mistaken. - November 19, 2012 at 4:29 PM
- Anonymous said...
blockhead 1-
You are quoting a quote from the UNION! They are getting exactly what they want. You think some big wigs jacked up their salaries and dumped the company. That quote has been around for days. I know it is tough - but try and understand that they were converting performance based compensation into cash. Wouldn't you? The funny thing is that the workers could have had this option had they originally bargained for it - why wouldn't union workers want performance based incentives?
Now onto the union states. They are
I trust you can look up unemployment rates. - November 19, 2012 at 4:41 PM
- Wiley Coyote said...
blockhead, everything you say about management of companies can be said about the thugs who run unions....
In 2011, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.8 percent,essentially unchanged from 11.9 percent in 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million, also showed
little movement over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union
data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were
17.7 million union workers. - November 19, 2012 at 4:44 PM
- Anonymous said...
How about the THUGS in the HR Department of CMeS. One teacher got almost a $Million, but what about the hundreds who got nothing except abuse.
- November 19, 2012 at 5:08 PM
- Anonymous said...
Union or no union - does anyone believe a school board that has Ericks E-S as its Chair would be good for students?
- November 19, 2012 at 5:09 PM
- blockhead1 said...
To Coyote and anonymous:
This is cut and pasted directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are also the states with the lowest wages, and among the highest unemployment, except for Virginia. Last post - no need to try to reason with people who have no regard for facts
Seven states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2011,
with North Carolina having the lowest rate (2.9 percent). The next
lowest rates were recorded in South Carolina (3.4 percent), Georgia
(3.9 percent), Arkansas (4.2 percent), Louisiana (4.5 percent), and
Tennessee and Virginia (4.6 percent each). Three states had union membership rates over 20.0 percent in 2011: New York (24.1 percent),Alaska (22.1 percent), and Hawaii (21.5 percent).
- November 19, 2012 at 6:04 PM
- Anonymous said...
North Carolina is filled with small minded and undereducated people who couldn't tell you the difference between a union and an onion. I have lived in several states and find NC to be the most hypocritical in demanding that teachers not unionize, yet North Carolinians will allow themselves to be sucked dry by corporations and politicians alike. North Carolina will continue to rank with Mississippi and Arkansas in education.
- November 19, 2012 at 7:14 PM
- Wiley Coyote said...
blockhead...the point being that union membership has been declining for decades and only represents a very small portion workers in the US...
My favorite union stories is of autoworkers striking and picketing as the auto industry was going in the toilet over the past 30 years.
Second would be union teachers in Chicago making large salaries while the graduation rates are abysmal. - November 19, 2012 at 7:17 PM
- Anonymous said...
While it's off topic - Hostess has been owned by a private equity firm and then hedge funds for the past 6-8 years. The sole intent as leaked by those with connections was to get money out of Hostess while selling off the brands to the highest bidders.
They never once cared about the unions, or their jobs - the #1 concern was to make money for their investors. The CEO tripled his salary in the past 15 months to over $2.5 million.
Wylie, I heard the CEO and other executives didn't want those raises but those dadgum union thugs put a gun to their ends and forced them to accept it. You can hate on unions all you want, but you need to get your facts straight before showing your ignorance. And yeah, I'm sure you'll have some nice sarcastic reply because that's what you do when you get challenged and can't come up with a real reply. - November 19, 2012 at 8:36 PM
- Wiley Coyote said...
Anon 8:36...
I don't need to come up with anything but the facts and the one big fact is, the unions don't own Hostess and therefore management can do what they want with the company.
That is what you and unions don't get.
Witty enough for ya? - November 19, 2012 at 8:54 PM
- Anonymous said...
Who gives a dang about Hostess?!
What about the years of salary loss, vision and dental benefits loss, healthcare premium raise and loss of retirement / cost of inflation steps.
Good luck finding a quality workforce CMeS.
Only 6 out of 10 of ADMINISTATORS even filled out your morale survey - November 19, 2012 at 9:13 PM
- Jeff Wise said...
Hey Wiley,
My brother's a 20-year teacher in Ohio generally regard by his peers, students, their parents and others as a pretty good teacher.
He's part of a union and for the last couple of contracts he's been on the negotiating team. Would you consider him a thug too? - November 20, 2012 at 10:07 AM
- Anonymous said...
blockhead 1 -
So only ONE state (NC) with Union membership under 5% has higher unemployment than the state with the highest union membership (NY).
Got it. Thanks for the data. - November 20, 2012 at 1:01 PM
- Anonymous said...
Nc teachers need a real union! Elementary education is out of control. These teachers are bombarded with paper work and with no assistance. Every year more and more. Nothing is ever taken away just more added.Someone needs to start a REAL union. Facebook would b a good starting point
- January 11, 2013 at 7:33 PM
- Anonymous said...
I have a child in NC elementary school. And I am so sick of hearing the whining that goes on by the administration and the teachers. I agree things are tuff with cut backs. But this nothing new for anyone. I know of very little jobs that are not throwing more on its employees and giving less pay. However NC seems to have this idea that their close minds ways are honing to make everything ok. Well parents being looked at as not needed in the schools is NOT the answer. And teachers coming up with this idea that parents can teach their children at home to the point that all a NC teacher needs to do is stand at the classroom door and hand out a test paper and that is the extent of their job on a daily basis as a public educator is NOT the answer.
If school officials are miss using funds for schools then parents and teachers need to come together as one and do something about it.
I can tell you right now there are teachers in these schools that have no business being anywhere near children much less teaching them. And that to me is salary monies that could be going to deserving teachers.
I come from another state where there is a governor who always has education for our children as a top priority. The school are great. All of schools make the schools systems are partnership between the adminitration and the parents. They request the help of parents and they get it. That does not happen here in NC as far as I can see. What I see and hear from NC schools is " I do not have time, don't have the money, and that is not how we do it here. And the general feeling I get is parents are not wanted around to witness some of the things that they are ashamed of doing. All I can say I am seriously thinking of getting out of this state and let them just fall flat on their faces. - May 12, 2013 at 10:48 AM
- Science Lady said...
Anonymous, as a teacher in NC it is untrue that I don't want parents in my classroom. However, I don't want parents with your antagonistic attitude in my classroom. I can't imagine why!
I don't care if there is a union in this state or not. I just want to be able to pay my extremely low mortgage. At this point, I'm unable to do so. - September 26, 2013 at 1:02 PM


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Professor Tom Mortier |
A mentally-ill Belgian woman sought euthanasia to escape her problems. The doctors told her, sure, why not?How my mother died
Since 2002 a law was passed in Belgium that allowed people to be euthanised when they were suffering intractable and unbearable pain. Today euthanasia is more often granted to people suffering from mental illnesses like chronic depression, schizophrenia, chronic anorexia nervosa and borderline personality disorder, etc.
The law requires that a patient's free decision has to be established before medical doctors can give the lethal injections.
The death of my mother has triggered a lot of questions. How is it possible that people can be euthanised in Belgium without close family or friends being contacted? Why does my country give medical doctors the exclusive power to decide over life and death? How do we judge what "unbearable suffering" is? What are the criteria to decide what "unbearable suffering" is? Can we rely on such a judgment for a mentally ill person?
Is it life or is it death?


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Data-sharing culture has changed
Simon Hodson of JISC examines how technology and funding policies have changed the ways that researchers share data
'Scientists would rather share their toothbrush than their data!' Few academics today would agree with Carole Goble's purposeful misquote from 2006 – especially as the internet, coupled with advanced computing facilities, has changed the speed and interfaces through which research is conducted making collaboration and sharing easier. In fact, science has always been a gradual collaboration of knowledge over time: witness Newton's 'if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants'.
Researchers themselves have been quick to realise the potential of collaboration, genomics being one of the best-known areas. Figures from a JISC survey in July 2009 showed that 65 per cent of academics in the humanities have collaborated with someone inside their department or outside their institution in the last five years. Websites like myExperiment provide a means of sharing workflows. This allows, for example, information on sleeping sickness in African cattle to be repurposed for research into better treatment for people in intensive care.
Data sharing clearly works in those areas where it has gained community traction such as biomedical research. For example, JISC's work in virtual research environments has given teams at the University of Oxford involved in cancer imaging a means of sharing images, information and algorithms to help advance cures for different forms of cancer.
Most research councils now encourage or mandate the sharing of data, stipulating that funding applications must include data management plans detailing measures that will be taken. Meanwhile journals like Nature require that supporting data sets be made available for verification. Universities and research centres are increasingly concerned to make sure that data are exploited to the full. This means putting into place effective systems for managing and sharing data, retaining data when staff leave and preserving it beyond the life of particular projects.
Funders are thereby encouraging a shift in culture. For example, JISC's 'Managing Research Data Programme' is funding eight large pilot research data infrastructure projects in universities. Another strand of work, coordinated closely with the research councils, will produce case studies and model data management plans for wider adoption. The JISC-funded Digital Curation Centre has created a widely-acclaimed introductory digital curation course as well as a 'data management plan checklist' to help researchers when they are preparing funding bids to consider data issues from the project's inception. The UK Data Archive, furthermore, has produced an excellent best practice guide to 'Managing and Sharing Data'.
Barriers to sharing
Of course, not all data can or should be shared. Issues of privacy, commercial potential and intellectual property rights all need to be taken into account. Fundamental characteristics of academic culture also need to be respected – to a point. Academic reputation is built upon publications. And publications are built upon data. Hence there is pressure on researchers not to share their data, at least until they have published, for fear of being pipped at the post. This latter deterrent to data sharing will remain until alternatives are developed to assess an individual's suitability for progression up the research career ladder.
Researchers have an important stake in the data that are produced by their long hours conducting interviews, running simulations, or studying images from microscopes. This is highlighted by recent blog posts on Nature Network where researchers shared the very human concerns that someone else may find their data erroneous, or may use their data in a way that brings their work into disrepute. These misgivings are understood and many research councils mitigate their data-sharing policies by allowing embargo periods to assuage researchers' concerns.
But there are other hurdles to be overcome, closely associated with our publication-driven academic culture. Preparing data for sharing and reuse can represent a considerable overhead. Why, many researchers will ask, should I provide the context and screen upon screen of metadata that I may never reuse again? I want to publish the article and move on.
However, if research data are to be given the respect and care they deserve, the process of managing data needs to be streamlined, and it may be that more fundamental practices need to change. In a world of data-driven science, the peer-reviewed publication of data may become the norm. Journal publishers and universities are already beginning to think about how scientific journals might adapt to reflect and lead the changing culture.
If we are serious, as we must be, about the value of data, we must think about how well mechanisms for academic recognition reflect the work that is put into creating and preparing high-quality data. This necessarily begs the question of to what extent the excellence of shared and published data should be recognised in evaluation processes such as the UK's Research Excellence Framework.
Simon Hodson is e-Research programme manager at JISC in the UK


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In the wake of the global financial crisis, stories from the pundit class and blogosphere abound proclaiming the imminent death of the conservative movement. This is part of a longer and broader discussion with roots in the post-Reagan era of American politics. (As you'll see in my comments below, I'm not so inclined to think that a move toward particular kinds of populism is necessarily a move away from conservatism.)
Writing in the American Conservative earlier this month, Claes G. Ryn argues that our recognition of the corrupting nature of power shouldn't make us abdicate all forms of government and authority:
Without some people governing others, basic social order could not exist, to say nothing of effecting desirable change. The prejudice against power-seeking has left politics too much to people with the wrong kind of ambition, most of whom desire power as an end in itself. Yet wanting power need not be immoral. Pursuing it can be a means to good.
Ryn is professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and chairman of the National Humanities Institute. He notes, in agreement with the older liberal tradition, that,
the old American constitutionalism is inseparable from the moral-spiritual culture that gave it birth. Limited government and liberty were made possible by people who, because of who they were, put checks on their appetites, ran their own lives and communities, and generally behaved in ways conducive to freedom under law. Restoring American constitutionalism would presuppose some kind of resurgence of that old culture. Americans would have to rearrange their priorities and start acting differently, placing more emphasis on family, private groups, and local communities. They would have to want to take back much of the power ceded to politicians far away. Is that likely to happen? If not, the Constitution may not be salvageable.
Ryn discusses what he calls the "coup from within," where under the guise of conservatism, "People of great ambition who want to exercise the power being abdicated by Americans are trying to make us accept and even welcome the final disappearance of constitutionalism and its culture of modesty and self-restraint."
I'm not as pessimistic as Ryn about the seemingly inevitable outcome of the crisis and the government interventions and consolidations of power, at least in the economic sphere. He says of those perpetrating the coup, "Their response to the crisis, which they have aggravated, will hasten the crumbling of the American constitutional order. Their prescriptions contain the outlines of tyranny." He may well be right about that, and Ryn's concerns shouldn't be limited to the American scene but apply to the international scene as well. As John Witherspoon said, "A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."
But despite all this, common sense folk are realizing again that virtues like frugality, thrift, and self-discipline are necessary parts of a broader view of stewardship. This is in part why the bailout has had difficulty finding any serious measure of popular support…it is a plan that is counter-intuitive on so many levels, and despite the media's best efforts to sell the bi-partisan scheme, the American citizen isn't convinced. In fact, the concept of stewardship is a pretty good model for Ryn's view of the appropriate pursuit of power.
It is certainly an uphill battle to practice traditional virtues against a government and a culture that tells us to spend all we can on credit. We have just about maxed out the credit borrowed from the moral and cultural capital of previous generations. In response to those pushing the expansion of federal and executive power, it's time to, as Ryn says, "expose their false solutions to what are real problems and to explore by what measures the best of our civilization might, despite daunting odds, be given a new lease on life."
The impending death of conservatism might just be the kind of big-government conservatism that is virtually indistinguishable from big-government liberalism on the scope and size of the government. If that's the case, then let us celebrate: "Conservatism is dead. Long live conservatism."


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(We're updating this post as the story develops. Hit "refresh" and scroll down to see our latest additions.)
Under intense pressure from the European Union, Greece's prime minister has scrapped the idea of asking the country to vote on whether to accept the terms of a bailout package.
Prime Minister George Papandreou made the announcement in a speech to parliamentary colleagues. The AP reports Papandreou also invited the opposition to join negotiations on a bailout. His opponents, reports the AP, "reversed themselves and agreed to broad austerity measures in exchange for a European bailout."
The AP reports that Greece's finance minister confirmed the country would not hold a bailout referendum.
From The Guardian, which is live-blogging the day's events, here's a part of Papandreou's speech:
I believe deeply in democracy, the values inherent in democracy, and when I announced the referendum ... our partners wanted everything to go like clock-work, to work robot like .... if we can't respond to our commitment the issue of the euro will be on the cards.
The decision of the referendum would be a guarantee of us staying in the eurozone. What is of priority is not the referendum but whether as a country we are willing to enforce the commitments [outlined] in the October 26 agreement.
I told our partners that if we had political consensus, if we could vote through the rescue package [with the main opposition party] there would be no need for other solutions.
In his speech, Papandreou also ignored calls for him to resign, but the prime minister is still facing a vote of confidence on Friday.
Our original post, and earlier updates:
It's looking less and less likely that the Greek people will be asked to vote on a referendum concerning a European Union/International Fund financial bailout package that might save their nation from going into default — but only if Greece makes serious budget cuts and takes other austerity measures designed to get its fiscal house in order.
And if Prime Minister George Papandreou's plan for such a referendum is scrapped, that might prevent a "financial contagion" from spreading to other weak European nations. European and IMF leaders have warned that the uncertainty of a referendum (and the likelihood that Greek voters would reject the bailout plan) could mean no more aid for Greece.
As of midday in the U.S.:
-- Papandreou, who has been under pressure to resign, had told his cabinet that "I will be glad even if we don't go to a referendum, which was never a purpose in itself."
-- The prime minister's government appeared headed for a confidence vote in parliament at midnight Friday in Athens.
The government led by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou could collapse within the next few hours.
Sources are telling the BBC that Papandreou is about to resign. Reuters says that senior "ruling party" lawmakers are urging the prime minister to step down. The Financial Times reports that:
"Speculation is rampant that when Papandreou meets the [Greek] president he's going to offer to step down and ask for a coalition government to be formed. But the FT's Kerin Hope in Athens says, after speaking to a senior member of the ruling Socialist party, that there have been such rumours before — that he would step down in favour of a national unity government. But that didn't happen."
And The Associated Press says that "Greece's embattled Socialist government was on the point of imploding Thursday as a revolt against Prime Minister George Papandreou's planned referendum on the country's hard-won international bailout package gathered pace." The wire serve adds that:
"His shock referendum decision Monday angered European leaders and many of his own party lawmakers, several of whom have called for the prime minister to step down and a cross-party national unity government to be created in order to safeguard the bailout. Speculation that the referendum pledge may be abandoned alongside a caretaker government has helped calm frayed nerves in the markets."
As Marketplace Morning Report's Stephen Beard said today, if a referendum is held and Greeks vote "no," the country would "likely default [on its debts] and possibly crash out of the eurozone, with unpredictable consequences for the global economy."
We wrote yesterday that leaders of other European nations told Papandreou that Greece would not get its next aid installment — $11 billion — unless the austerity measures are OK'd. The BBC's Justin Rowlatt said on Marketplace yesterday that "if there's no Greek rescue, then there's likely no stomach — not to mention not enough money — for an Italian rescue, or Spain, and so on down the line."
Update at 1:25 p.m. ET. Eurozone Leaders Will Meet Tonight:
After Greece announced it was scrapping plans for a referendum, eurozone leaders said they would meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France to discuss a way forward.
The AP reports:
The official says the meeting will include the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as representatives of the ECB, the EU and the IMF. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Update at 11:25 a.m. ET. More From Papandreou On Possibility Of Scrapping The Referendum.
Reuters reports that in a statement to his cabinet, later released by the prime minister's office, Papandreou said:
"I will be glad even if we don't go to a referendum, which was never a purpose in itself. I'm glad that all this discussion has at least brought a lot of people back to their senses. ... I will talk to (opposition leader Antonis) Samaras so that we examine the next steps on the basis of a wider consensus."
Update at 11:15 a.m. ET. Referendum Might Be Scrapped?
Reuters, which is live-blogging developments, writes that "a proposed Greek referendum on the country's bailout package will be scrapped if ruling and opposition parties strike a deal to resolve the country's political crisis, an official from the prime minister's office said. 'There is no reason to have a referendum if there is consensus between the two large parties,' the official said."
And the BBC, on its live-blog, says "a statement from Mr. Papandreou's office, cited by AP news agency, said he was prepared to drop plans for the referendum. 'The referendum was never an end in itself,' Mr Papandreou told the cabinet. 'We had a dilemma - either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum.' "
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Perhaps for the first time in badminton history, the competitiveness and popularity of Women's Singles rivals that of Men's Singles – filled with explosive action and unexpected possibilities!
In some ways, contemporary Women's Singles has elements that even Men's Singles does not. The rivalry between the top ten women is keener than among the men. The diversity of styles among the women is certainly greater. Women's Singles is therefore no more the sideshow but the main act. Over the past year, the battles among the top ten have elevated the sport and all signs are that 2014 could be a landmark year in terms of the standards set.
The factor that has caused this happy situation is the emergence of strong talent from Japan and Thailand. Players from those countries – along with their peers from China, Chinese Taipei, India and Korea – treated fans to some of badminton's most enthralling matches last year.
The most encouraging aspect of Women's Singles is that established stars are all in their early 20s and should have many years ahead of them. Any challenge to their reign will likely come from teenaged prodigies springing up periodically. It is also entertaining to watch distinct styles on show – the guile of Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon (BWF home page), for example, against the athleticism of China's Wang Yihan; or the defensive skills of Japan's Akane Yamaguchi (below) against the clever strokeplay of Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu Ying.
Badminton fans have rarely had it so good!
For the moment, the Chinese trio of Li Xuerui, Wang Yihan (above) and Wang Shixian have an edge over the rest of the field, but only just. While they have dominated this category, the domination hasn't been total or one-sided. China's Big Three came up against inspired performances that required them to be on top of their game to prevail. At times, notably at the BWF World Championships, China's iron grip on Women's Singles title has been broken. Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon became the first non-Chinese player since Denmark's Camilla Martin in 1999 to become World champion. Her victory was also only the third by a non-Chinese player since China debuted at the World Championships in 1983. The Thai's wristy, deceptive style has introduced a different dimension to Women's Singles and spices up her rivalry with other leading players.
Most encouragingly for Thailand, Intanon is not a one-off success story. Her rise has coincided with the emergence of others; the most well-known being Porntip Buranaprasertsuk, Nichaon Jindapon, Busanan Ongbumrungpan and Sapsiree Taerattanachai. Buranaprasertsuk was nearly spectacular through 2013, reaching two Superseries finals and becoming something of a thorn in the side of Olympic champion Li Xuerui. The Thai beat her in all their three matches in 2013 and, although she couldn't add a Superseries title, did enough to suggest that she could be one to watch this year.
The rise of Japan's Akane Yamaguchi has been incredible. The schoolgirl lived a fairytale at her home Superseries tournament – the Yonex Open Japan; emerging from qualification to win it. She then bagged the World Junior title. Primarily a retriever, Yamaguchi has shown maturity beyond her teenage years and that bodes well for the future of Women's Singles badminton. Strong performances in the first two Superseries of 2014 – including a victory over Intanon – have convinced the badminton community that she is here to stay. She will perhaps be the most keenly followed of the younger generation.
The emergence of players like Sayaka Takahashi and Asian Junior champion, Aya Ohori, has given Japan additional reason to be pleased.
The top-ten player who would probably feel the most disappointed about her lacklustre form in the past year is India's Saina Nehwal. Success in front her countrymen at the India Grand Prix Gold in late January salvaged the situation somewhat and might give her the confidence to regain her form of 2010, when she stood toe-to-toe with the very best.
Her younger team-mate, PV Sindhu (above), has had a steady run and a bronze at the BWF World Championships last year should serve as an appetiser for bigger conquests.
Another budding prospect who has already achieved much beyond her teenage years is Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu Ying (below; right). The prodigy delighted crowds in Malaysia during the year-ending BWF World Superseries Finals last year after an incredible comeback over the in-form Wang Shixian in the semi-finals.
Two others who deserve mention are Korea's Sung Ji Hyun (below; left) and Bae Yeon Ju, who have cemented their places among the elite.
Considering the rich fare on offer, the women have certainly have stolen some – if not all – of the spotlight away from the men!


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Grammy Noms Announced
The Grammy Awards celebrated the diversity of music as six different artists tied for lead nominee —
Auerbach received five nominations as a member of the Keys and also is up for producer of the year, earning a spot with the others at the top of the list as the Grammy's primetime television special came to his hometown Wednesday night.
"We're speechless," Auerbach said in a statement to The Associated Press from Germany, where he's on tour with drummer Patrick Carney.
The rockers little resemble any of the other acts at the top of the list. The nominations for Jay-Z and West, two of hip-hop's most important figures, is a familiar refrain. Each has routinely been at or near the top of the nominations list for the last several years.
Indie pop band fun., a featured performer during the show, aired live from Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on CBS, rode the success of its anthemic hit "We Are Young" featuring Janelle Monae to sweep of the major categories, earning nods for best new artist, song and record for "We Are Young" and album of the year for "Some Nights." The band's producer Jeff Bhasker is up for four nominations.
"When you call your band fun. with a period at the end of the sentence, you set a very high standard for yourself and for fun itself," Taylor Swift, the concert's co-host, said in introducing them. "Fortunately this band from New York has lived up to the name in the best possible way."
R&B singer Ocean, whose mother was in attendance, made a bold social statement earlier this year when he noted he had a same-sex relationship in the liner notes of his new album "channel ORANGE," and The Recording Academy rewarded him with the nominations for best new artist, record for "Thinkin Bout You" and album of the year.
And British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, which made an auspicious debut in front of an international audience during the 2011 Grammys, is up for album of the year for "Babel," one of 2012's best-selling releases.
Miguel, who helped Ocean shake up the R&B world this year, and jazz great Chick Corea join the Keys with five nominations apiece. Nas and recording engineer Bob Ludwig join Bhasker at four apiece.
There were no major snubs. Most of 2012's inescapable hits are represented in some way — Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" is up for record of the year and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" garnered a song of the year nod. Drake, Rihanna and Nashville residents Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Jack White and best new artist nominee Hunter Hayes were among 16 nominees with three nods.
In many ways the nominations reflect a singles-driven year when no album rose to the level of acclaim as Adele's "21" or West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which dominated the Grammys last February.
The best new artist category is a great example of this year's diversity. From the minimalist R&B of Ocean, the pop-influenced sounds of fun. and Hayes, the soulful rock of Alabama Shakes and the Americana swing of The Lumineers, there's little resemblance between the acts.
"I think people listen to a lot of types of music and Spotify has proven that, and iPod has proven that," Lumineers member Wes Schultz said. "… Every person in that audience tonight, I saw them freaking out about various artists that have no relationship to each other."
Alabama Shakes drummer Steve Johnson noted the diversity in the category after the show, then made a surprising statement: "If I were on the other side of the fence, I'd vote Frank Ocean personally."
The members of fun. were "dorking it up" as they learned about their nominations, lead singer Nate Reuss said, and were especially excited to show up in the album of the year category, which also included Ocean's major label debut, the Keys' "El Camino," Mumford's "Babel" and White's "Blunderbuss."
"It's been an incredible year in music," guitarist Jack Antonoff said. "It feels like alternative music is back, looking at album of the year, especially those nominations. We couldn't be more proud to be in there. … I think when we were sitting in our chairs out there, when we saw Jack White up there, that's when we really pinched ourselves. We felt so honored to be in the same category."
Miguel also had his mind on the forgotten art form of the album. Nominated in the major category of song of the year for "Adorn," he said in a phone interview from New York that he was most excited about another category — urban contemporary album.
"Of all of the categories to be nominated for, that is the one that means the most to me just because I just, I miss great albums. That's a huge compliment to say that your entire body of work was the best of the year," he said. "I don't know. That's the one that means the most to me. I'm really hoping maybe, just maybe."
He'll find out when the 55th annual Grammy Awards take place Feb. 10 in Los Angeles. Trophies will be handed out in 81 categories.
The 5-year-old nominations show was held outside Los Angeles for the first time and showcased Music City for its growing role in the music industry. The Bridgestone Arena marked the largest venue the show has been held in and it may have been a dress rehearsal for a chance to host the main awards show sometime in the future.
LL Cool J returned as host, sharing duties with Swift, whose hit song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" earned a nod in the jam-packed record of the year category. She was joined by fun., Gotye, Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)," The Black Keys' "Lonely Boy" and Ocean's "Thinkin Bout You."
Song of the year nominees were Ed Sheeran's "The A Team," Miguel's "Adorn," Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" and fun.'s "We Are Young."
Swift and LL Cool J opened the show by putting together a beat-box version of Swift's hit "Mean." Hayes displayed his versatility while announcing the best pop vocal album by singing snippets of each star's hit song. Maroon 5 played headliner, singing three songs mid-show before finishing off the live broadcast. The group stuck around for an hourlong performance afterward for the crowd in attendance.
Assisted by Monae, fun. reimagined "We Are Young" with orchestral strings as the crowd sang along, Ne-Yo, in wine-colored bowler, kicked things up with a cadre of dancers on his new club-infused song "Let Me Love You." And the show tipped its hat to Nashville with a salute to Johnny Cash by Dierks Bentley and The Band Perry.


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So without futher ado, the first excerpt:
"...adolescent literature is as often an ideological tool used to curb teenagers' libido as it is some sort of dipiction of what adolescents sexuality actually is. Adolescents certainly do not have one shared sexuality or even share common opinions about sexuality, but many YA novels seem to assume that the reader has a sexual naiveté in need of correction. Some YA novels seem more preoccupied with influencing how adolescent readers will behave when they are not reading than with describing human sexuality honestly. Such novels tend to be heavy handed in their moralism and demonstrate relatively clearly the effect of adult authors asserting authority over adolescent readers. Moreover, adolescent novels that deal with sex, whether they are obviously ideaological, usually contain within them some sort of power dynamic wherein the character's sexuality provides him or her with a locus of power. That power needs to be controlled before the narrative can achieve resolution."
(P 85, Trites, 2000)
So what do you think? Do authors try to dictate how teenagers should behave sexually? Or is Trites wrong, and they are actually describing human sexuality honest? What do you think of Trites thoughts?
Trites, R. S. 2000. Chapter 4 - "All of a sudden I came": Sex and Power in Adolescent Novels in Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.


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When most people think of "Big Brother", they think of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other shadowy government agencies. Yes, they are definitely watching you, but so are many big corporations. In fact, there are some companies that are making tens of millions of dollars by gathering every shred of information about all of us that they can and selling it for profit to anyone willing to pay the price. It is called "data mining", and these data miners want to keep track of literally everything that you do. Most people know that basically everything that we do on the Internet is tracked, but data mining goes far beyond that. When you use a customer rewards card at the supermarket, the data miners know about it. When you pay for a purchase with a credit card or a debit card, the data miners know about it. Every time you buy a prescription drug, that information is sold to someone. Every time you apply for a loan, a whole host of organizations is notified. Information has become an extremely valuable commodity, and thanks to computers and the Internet it is easier to gather information than ever before. But that also means that our personal information is no longer "private", and this trend is only going to get worse in the years ahead.
You have probably never even heard of many of these companies that are making millions of dollars selling your personal information. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the biggest names in the industry, and most of the time they are selling your information to companies that want to sell you stuff.
Almost every single day, very personal information about you is being bought and sold without your permission and it is all perfectly legal.
A recent article in The Week says the following about Acxiom….
An Arkansas company you've probably never heard of knows more about you than some of your friends, Google, and even the FBI — and it's selling your data
The scale of the information gathering that Acxiom does is absolutely mind blowing. If you can believe it, Acxiom actually keeps track of more than 190 million people inside the United States….
The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.
So what does Acxiom want to know about you?
The following is from a recent New York Times article about Acxiom….
IT knows who you are. It knows where you live. It knows what you do.
It peers deeper into American life than the F.B.I. or the I.R.S., or those prying digital eyes at Facebook and Google. If you are an American adult, the odds are that it knows things like your age, race, sex, weight, height, marital status, education level, politics, buying habits, household health worries, vacation dreams — and on and on.
Companies such as Acxiom literally want every shred of information about you that they can possibly get.
Once they gather all that data, Acxiom analyzes it, packages it and sells it to large corporations such as Wells Fargo, HSBC, Toyota, Ford and Macy's.
And being in the "Big Brother business" is very, very profitable.
Acxiom made more than 77 million dollars in profits during their latest fiscal year.
Some members of Congress are very alarmed by all of this. According to U.S. Senator John Kerry, this industry is virtually unregulated….
"There's no code of conduct. There's no standard. There's nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road."
So what do big corporations do with all of this data after they purchase it from companies like Acxiom?
Well, for one thing, they use it to try to predict how you will behave. A Daily Beast article gave some examples of how this works….
Predicting people's behavior is becoming big business—and increasingly feasible in an era defined by accessible information. Data crunching by Canadian Tire, for instance, recently enabled the retailer's credit card business to create psychological profiles of its cardholders that were built upon alarmingly precise correlations. Their findings: Cardholders who purchased carbon-monoxide detectors, premium birdseed, and felt pads for the bottoms of their chair legs rarely missed a payment. On the other hand, those who bought cheap motor oil and visited a Montreal pool bar called "Sharx" were a higher risk. "If you show us what you buy, we can tell you who you are, maybe even better than you know yourself," a former Canadian Tire exec said.
I don't know about you, but I find that a bit creepy.
Later on in that same article, how some U.S. companies are using this kind of information was explained….
Other industries have bolstered their bottom lines by predicting how consumers will behave, according to Super Crunchers. UPS predicts when customers are at risk of fleeing to one of its competitors, and then tries to prevent the loss with a telephone call from a salesperson. And with its "Total Rewards" card, Harrah's casinos track everything that players win and lose, in real time, and then analyze their demographic information to calculate their "pain point"—the maximum amount of money they're likely to be willing to lose and still come back to the casino in the future. Players who get too close to their pain point are likely to be offered a free dinner that gets them off the casino floor.
So is all of this data gathering harmless?
Does it simply make our economy more efficient?
Or is there a greater danger here?
At some point could all of our personal information be used for more insidious purposes?
One thing is for sure – this is a trend that is not going away any time soon.
As our society becomes even more integrated through the Internet, data gathering is going to become even more comprehensive.
Eventually these complicated computer algorithms will be able to make very detailed predictions about your future behavior with a very, very high degree of accuracy.
When you add government snooping into the equation, it becomes easy to see why privacy advocates are going crazy these days.
Our society is literally being transformed into a technological monitoring grid. Virtually everything we do is monitored, tracked and recorded in some way.
If we are not very careful, eventually we could end up living in a society that is much more oppressive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of.
So what do you think of all of this snooping, spying and data mining?
Do you believe that it is harmless or do you believe that it represents a significant threat?
Feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….


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Our ordinary ways of talking about ourselves and other people, of justifying our behavior and explaining that of others, express a certain conception of human life that is so close to us, so much a part of common sense that we can hardly see it. It is a conception according to which each person has (or perhaps is) a mind; the contents of the mind—beliefs, fears, hopes, motives, desires, etc.—cause and therefore explain our actions; and the continuity of our minds is the source of our individuality and identity as persons.
In the past couple of centuries we have also become convinced that this common-sense psychology is grounded in the brain, that these mental states and events are somehow, we are not quite sure how, going on in the neurophysiological processes of the brain. So this leaves us with two levels at which we can describe and explain human beings: a level of common-sense psychology, which seems to work well enough in practice but which is not scientific; and a level of neurophysiology, which is certainly scientific but which even the most advanced specialists know very little about.
But couldn't there be a third possibility, a science of human beings that was not introspective common-sense psychology but was not neurophysiology either? This has been the great dream of the human sciences in the twentieth century, but so far all of the efforts have been, in varying degrees, failures. The most spectacular failure was behaviorism, but in my intellectual lifetime I have lived through exaggerated hopes placed on and disappointed by games theory, cybernetics, information theory, generative grammar, structuralism, and Freudian psychology, among others. Indeed it has become something of a scandal of twentieth-century intellectual life that we lack a science of the human mind and human behavior, that the methods of the natural sciences have produced such meager results when applied to human beings.
The latest candidate or family of candidates to fill the gap is called cognitive science, a collection of related investigations into the human mind involving psychology, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence. Cognitive science is really the name of a family of research projects and not a theory, but many of its practitioners think that the heart of cognitive science is a theory of the mind based on artificial intelligence (AI). According to this theory minds just are computer programs of certain kinds. The main ideological aim of Hofstadter and Dennett's book is to advance this theory.
The book consists of twenty-seven essays "composed and arranged" by the two editors, all but one of them followed by "reflections" written by the composers and arrangers. The book's aim, they tell us, is "to provoke, disturb, and befuddle its readers, to make the obvious strange and, perhaps, to make the strange obvious." The result is a very heterogeneous collection, almost a hodgepodge, in which such well-known works as "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" by the British logician Alan Turing and Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" appear along with two pieces of fiction by Borges, and several works of science fiction—three of them by the Polish author Stanislaw Lem; and a selection by the biologist Richard Dawkins occurs alongside fantasy dialogues by Hofstadter and an imaginative piece about brain-splitting by Arnold Zuboff. In addition to their reflections, the editors include three pieces by Hofstadter and one by Dennett.
The table of contents is heavy with philosophers—Nagel, Nozick, Cherniak, Dennett, Leiber, and Smullyan, as well as the present reviewer. This is perhaps not surprising because, though the argument of the book is in favor of cognitive science, the issues it raises have mostly to do with the philosophy of cognitive science and not with actual contemporary practice.
A standard device used throughout the book is the "Gedankenexperiment" where we are asked to imagine some more or less fantastic eventuality as a way of challenging and testing our common sense and theoretical convictions: What if…your brain was transferred to another body, your brain was split in two, you were a brain in a vat, the information in your brain was put into some other medium; what if your brain were separated from your body but still controlled it, what if inside your head were tiny conscious demons, etc.?
With the exception of a few of the pieces, the general tone of the book is whimsical, almost playful, and the composers and arrangers are inordinately fond of puns. I think many readers will find all the conscientious whimsy, the eager cuteness, a bit wearying. One can put up with "Is the soul greater than the hum of its parts?" but one senses a certain straining for effect when one reads "Prelude…Ant Fugue" as the title of a dialogue involving an anteater. It is the sort of collection that publishers describe as "delightful."
The editors are also a bit coy about stating their own views. Their thesis is often insinuated by asking rhetorical questions. Thus we are asked "Is mentality like milk or like a song?" The correct answer is supposed to be "song." But in spite of their protestations about wanting only to "provoke, disturb, and befuddle" the editors are in fact using the book throughout as a platform to promote their own theory. There is nothing reprehensible about using your book to state your theory, but there is at least a hint of the disingenuous in advertising your book as a collection of ideologically diverse musings and then loading it largely to favor one side. They indirectly admit that this is what is going on, in the introduction, where they state the theory and discuss how they will deal with the various "roadblocks" that it faces.
The theory, which is fairly widely held in cognitive science, can be summarized in three propositions.
- Mind as Program. What we call minds are simply very complex digital computer programs. Mental states are simply computer states and mental processes are computational processes. Any system whatever that had the right program, with the right input and output, would have to have mental states and processes in the same literal sense that you and I do, because that is all there is to mental states and processes, that is all that you and I have. The programs in question are "self-updating" or "self-designing" "systems of representations."
- The Irrelevance of the Neurophysiology of the Brain. In the study of the mind actual biological facts about actual human and animal brains are irrelevant because the mind is an "abstract sort of thing" and human brains just happen to be among the indefinitely large number of kinds of computers that can have minds. Our minds happen to be embodied in our brains, but there is no essential connection between the mind and the brain. Any other computer with the right program would also have a mind.
Theses 1 and 2 are summarized in the introduction where the authors speak of "the emerging view of the mind as software or program—as an abstract sort of thing whose identity is independent of any particular physical embodiment."
- The Turing Test as the Criterion of the Mental. The conclusive proof of the presence of mental states and capacities is the ability of a system to pass the Turing test, the test devised by Alan Turing and described in his article in this book. If a system can convince a competent expert that it has mental states then it really has those mental states. If, for example, a machine could "converse" with a native Chinese speaker in such a way as to convince the speaker that it understood Chinese then it would literally understand Chinese.
The three theses are neatly lumped together when one of the editors writes, "Minds exist in brains and may come to exist in programmed machines. If and when such machines come about, their causal powers will derive not from the substances they are made of, but from their design and the programs that run in them. And the way we will know they have those causal powers is by talking to them and listening carefully to what they have to say."
We might call this collection of theses "strong artificial intelligence" (strong AI).1 These theses are certainly not obviously true and they are seldom explicitly stated and defended.
Let us inquire first into how plausible it is to suppose that specific biochemical powers of the brain are really irrelevant to the mind. It is an amazing fact, by the way, that in twenty-seven pieces about the mind the editors have not seen fit to include any whose primary aim is to tell us how the brain actually works, and this omission obviously derives from their conviction that since "mind is an abstract sort of thing" the specific neurophysiology of the brain is incidental. This idea derives part of its appeal from the editors' keeping their discussion at a very abstract general level about "consciousness" and "mind" and "soul," but if you consider specific mental states and processes—being thirsty, wanting to go to the bathroom, worrying about your income tax, trying to solve math puzzles, feeling depressed, recalling the French word for "butterfly"—then it seems at least a little odd to think that the brain is so irrelevant.
Take thirst, where we actually know a little bit about how it works. Kidney secretions of renin synthesize a substance called angiotensin. This substance goes into the hypothalamus and triggers a series of neuron firings. As far as we know these neuron firings are a very large part of the cause of thirst. Now obviously there is more to be said, for example about the relations of the hypothalamic responses to the rest of the brain, about other things going on in the hypothalamus, and about the possible distinctions between the feeling of thirst and the urge to drink. Let us suppose we have filled out the story with the rest of the biochemical causal account of thirst.
Now the theses of the mind as program and the irrelevance of the brain would tell us that what matters about this story is not the specific biochemical properties of the angiotensin or the hypothalamus but only the formal computer programs that the whole sequence instantiates. Well, let's try that out as a hypothesis and see how it works. A computer can simulate the formal properties of the sequence of chemical and electrical phenomena in the production of thirst just as much as it can simulate the formal properties of anything else—we can simulate thirst just as we can simulate hurricanes, rainstorms, five-alarms fires, internal combustion engines, photosynthesis, lactation, or the flow of currency in a depressed economy. But no one in his right mind thinks that a computer simulation of a five-alarm fire will burn down the neighborhood, or that a computer simulation of an internal combustion engine will power a car or that computer simulations of lactation and photosynthesis will produce milk and sugar. To my amazement, however, I have found that a large number of people suppose that computer simulations of mental phenomena, whether at the level of brain processes or not, literally produce mental phenomena.
Again, let's try it out. Let's program our favorite PDP-10 computer with the formal program that simulates thirst. We can even program it to print out at the end "Boy, am I thirsty!" or "Won't someone please give me a drink?" etc. Now would anyone suppose that we thereby have even the slightest reason to suppose that the computer is literally thirsty? Or that any simulation of any other mental phenomena, such as understanding stories, feeling depressed, or worrying about itemized deductions, must therefore produce the real thing? The answer, alas, is that a large number of people are committed to an ideology that requires them to believe just that. So let us carry the story a step further.
The PDP-10 is powered by electricity and perhaps its electrical properties can reproduce some of the actual causal powers of the electrochemical features of the brain in producing mental states. We certainly couldn't rule out that eventuality a priori. But remember: the thesis of strong AI is that the mind is "independent of any particular embodiment" because the mind is just a program and the program can be run on a computer made of anything whatever provided it is stable enough and complex enough to carry the program. The actual physical computer could be an ant colony (one of their examples), a collection of beer cans, streams of toilet paper with small stones placed on the squares, men sitting on high stools with green eye shades—anything you like.
So let us imagine our thirst-simulating program running on a computer made entirely of old beer cans, millions (or billions) of old beer cans that are rigged up to levers and powered by windmills. We can imagine that the program simulates the neuron firings at the synapses by having beer cans bang into each other, thus achieving a strict correspondence between neuron firings and beer-can bangings. And at the end of the sequence a beer can pops up on which is written "I am thirsty." Now, to repeat the question, does anyone suppose that this Rube Goldberg apparatus is literally thirsty in the sense in which you and I are?
Notice that the thesis of Hofstadter and Dennett is not that for all we know the collection of beer cans might be thirsty but rather that if it has the right program with the right input and output it must be thirsty (or understand Proust or worry about its income tax or have any other mental state) because that is all the mind is, a certain kind of computer program, and any computer made of anything at all running the right program would have to have the appropriate mental states.
I believe that everything we have learned about human and animal biology suggests that what we call "mental" phenomena are as much a part of our biological natural history as any other biological phenomena, as much a part of biology as digestion, lactation, or the secretion of bile. Much of the implausibility of the strong AI thesis derives from its resolute opposition to biology; the mind is not a concrete biological phenomenon but "an abstract sort of thing."
Still, in calling attention to the implausibility of supposing that the specific casual powers of brains are irrelevant to minds I have not yet fully exposed the preposterousness of the strong AI position, held by Hofstadter and Dennett, so let us press on and examine a bit more closely the thesis of mind as program.
Digital computer programs by definition consist of sets of purely formal operations on formally specified symbols. The ideal computer does such things as print a 0 on the tape, move one square to the left, erase a 1, move back to the right, etc. It is common to describe this as "symbol manipulation" or, to use the term favored by Hofstadter and Dennett, the whole system is a "self-updating representational system"; but these terms are at least a bit misleading since as far as the computer is concerned the symbols don't symbolize anything or represent anything. They are just formal counters.
The computer attaches no meaning, interpretation, or content to the formal symbols; and qua computer it couldn't, because if we tried to give the computer an interpretation of its symbols we could only give it more uninterpreted symbols. The interpretation of the symbols is entirely up to the programmers and users of the computers. For example, on my pocket calculator if I print "3 x 3 = ," the calculator will print "9" but it has no idea that "3" means 3 or that "9" means 9 or that anything means anything. We might put this point by saying that the computer has a syntax but no semantics. The computer manipulates formal symbols but attaches no meaning to them, and this simple observation will enable us to refute the thesis of mind as program.
Suppose that we write a computer program to simulate the understanding of Chinese so that, for example, if the computer is asked questions in Chinese the program enables it to give answers in Chinese; if asked to summarize stories in Chinese it can give such summaries; if asked questions about the stories it has been given it will answer such questions.
Now suppose that I, who understand no Chinese at all and can't even distinguish Chinese symbols from some other kinds of symbols, am locked in a room with a number of cardboard boxes full of Chinese symbols. Suppose that I am given a book of rules in English that instruct me how to match these Chinese symbols with each other. The rules say such things as that the "squiggle-squiggle" sign is to be followed by the "squoggle-squoggle" sign. Suppose that people outside the room pass in more Chinese symbols and that following the instructions in the book I pass Chinese symbols back to them. Suppose that unknown to me the people who pass me the symbols call them "questions," and the book of instructions that I work from they call "the program"; the symbols I give back to them they call "answers to the questions" and me they call "the computer." Suppose that after a while the programmers get so good at writing the programs and I get so good at manipulating the symbols that my answers are indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers. I can pass the Turing test for understanding Chinese. But all the same I still don't understand a word of Chinese and neither does any other digital computer because all the computer has is what I have: a formal program that attaches no meaning, interpretation, or content to any of the symbols.
What this simple argument shows is that no formal program by itself is sufficient for understanding, because it would always be possible in principle for an agent to go through the steps in the program and still not have the relevant understanding. And what works for Chinese would also work for other mental phenomena. I could, for example, go through the steps of the thirst-simulating program without feeling thirsty. The argument also, en passant, refutes the Turing test because it shows that a system, namely me, could pass the Turing test without having the appropriate mental states.2
The mental gymnastics that partisans of strong AI have performed in their attempts to refute this rather simple argument are truly extraordinary3 but the method employed by Hofstadter and Dennett is more direct: they simply fabricate a direct quotation that was never uttered by me and then attack the quotation. They claim "it is a mistake to try to impute the understanding to the (incidentally) animate simulator; rather it belongs to the system as a whole, which includes what Searle casually characterizes as 'a few slips of paper.' This offhand comment, we feel, reveals how Searle's image has blinded him to the realities of the situation." The trouble is, no such "offhand comment" was ever made by me, casually or otherwise; it is a complete fabrication, as any reader can verify from my article, which they reprint in full. Moreover, it is not an understandable slip since it runs dead opposite to what I do in fact say. Furthermore it is not an idle misquotation since it is repeated no less than five times by Hofstadter and Dennett and is made the basis of their "argument."4 Every author expects to be misinterpreted but to have a direct quotation fabricated and then made the basis of a misinterpretation is unique in my experience. Since Hofstadter and Dennett devote more space to attacking the Chinese room argument than to any other of their reflections in the book it is unfortunate that they did not trouble to get the elementary facts right.
The rest of what they have to say is mostly a repetition of points made by other authors and already answered by me. Specifically, they endorse the "systems reply" to the Chinese room argument, according to which the man in the room does not understand Chinese, but the system of which he is a part—including the instruction book, the Chinese symbols, etc.—really does understand Chinese. Adherents of this view believe, to my constant amazement, that though the man fails to understand, the room does understand Chinese. The obvious objection to this is that the system has no way of attaching meaning to the uninterpreted Chinese symbols, any more than the man did in the first place. The system, like the man, has a syntax but no semantics. And you can see this by simply imagining that the man internalizes the whole system. Suppose he has a super memory and a super intelligence so that he memorizes the instruction book and does all the calculations in his head. To get rid of the room, we can even suppose he works outdoors. Now since the man doesn't understand Chinese, and since there's nothing in the system that is not in the man, there is no way the system could understand Chinese. As near as I can tell Hofstadter and Dennett's only reply to this is to observe that no normal human being could perform such a feat of memory. This is of course quite true, but also quite irrelevant to the point, which, to repeat, is that from syntax alone you don't get semantics.
For reasons that seem to me utterly confused they think that my reply to one of the thought experiments actually commits me to accepting the systems reply. Suppose that the neuronal connections of a Chinese-speaking woman are broken, but suppose that a tiny, lightning-fast demon in her head makes all the connections in just the right order. Would she then understand Chinese? Assuming that the powers of her brain are fully restored the answer seems to me obviously yes. But to say that is in no way to endorse the systems reply, since in this case we are dealing with the specific causal powers of the human brain, whereas the systems reply claims that a system made of any substance at all could have mental states.
The details of how the brain works are immensely complicated and largely unknown, but some of the general principles of the relations between brain functioning and computer programs can be stated quite simply. First, we know that brain processes cause mental phenomena. Mental states are caused by and realized in the structure of the brain. From this it follows that any system that produced mental states would have to have powers equivalent to those of the brain. Such a system might use a different chemistry, but whatever its chemistry it would have to be able to cause what the brain causes. We know from the Chinese room argument that digital computer programs by themselves are never sufficient to produce mental states. Now since brains do produce minds, and since programs by themselves can't produce minds, it follows that the way the brain does it can't be by simply instantiating a computer program. (Everything, by the way, instantiates some program or other, and brains are no exception. So in that trivial sense brains, like everything else, are digital computers.) And it also follows that if you wanted to build a machine to produce mental states, a thinking machine, you couldn't do it solely in virtue of the fact that your machine ran a certain kind of computer program. The thinking machine couldn't work solely in virtue of being a digital computer but would have to duplicate the specific causal powers of the brain.
A lot of the nonsense talked about computers nowadays stems from their relative rarity and hence mystery. As computers and robots become more common, as common as telephones, washing machines, and forklift trucks, it seems likely that this aura will disappear and people will take computers for what they are, namely useful machines. In the meantime one has to try to avoid certain recurring mistakes that keep cropping up in Hofstadter and Dennett's book as well as in other current discussions.
The first is the idea that somehow computer achievements pose some sort of threat or challenge to human beings. But the fact, for example, that a calculator can outperform even the best mathematician is no more significant or threatening than the fact that a steam shovel can outperform the best human digger. (An oddity of artificial intelligence, by the way, is the slowness of the programmers in devising a program that can beat the very best chess players. From the point of view of games theory, chess is a trivial game since each side has perfect information about the other's position and possible moves, and one has to assume that computer programs will soon be able to outperform any human chess player.)
A second fallacy is the idea that there might be some special human experience beyond computer simulation because of its special humanity. We are sometimes told that computers couldn't simulate feeling depressed or falling in love or having a sense of humor. But as far as simulation is concerned you can program your computer to print out "I am depressed," "I love Sally," or "Ha, ha," as easily as you can program it to print out "3 x 3 = 9." The real mistake is to suppose that simulation is duplication, and that mistake is the same regardless of what mental states we are talking about. A third mistake, basic to all the others, is the idea that if a computer can simulate having a certain mental state then we have the same grounds for supposing it really has that mental state as we have for supposing that human beings have that state. But we know from the Chinese room argument as well as from biology that this simple-minded behaviorism of the Turing test is mistaken.
Until computers and robots become as common as cars and until people are able to program and use them as easily as they now drive cars we are likely to continue to suffer from a certain mythological conception of digital computers. This book is very much a part of the present mythological era of the computer.5
This Issue
April 29, 1982
"Strong" to distinguish the position from "weak" or "cautious" AI, which holds that the computer is simply a very useful tool in the study of the mind, not that the appropriately programmed computer literally has a mind. ↩
The "Chinese room argument" is stated in detail in my article "Minds, Brains, and Programs," pages 353-373 of The Mind's I. It originally appeared in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1980), along with twenty-seven responses and a reply to the responses. ↩
See the twenty-seven commentaries in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, op. cit., for some examples. ↩
The initials at the end of the "Reflections" suggest that the fabrication was done by Hofstadter and not Dennett. ↩
For more balanced presentations of cognitive science see Perspectives on Cognitive Science, edited by Donald Norman (Ablex, Norwood, NJ, 1981); Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, edited by John Haugeland (Branford/MIT Press, 1981); Hubert Dreyfus, What Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Intelligence (Harper and Row, 1972). ↩


text:
Having a good night's sleep is actually one of many people's favorite things to do. Moreover, it's a sign that the following day is going to be good.
One sign that you had a good night's sleep is if you noticed that from the previous night, you drolled. Yes, drooling is somewhat kind of normal because it's something that is uncontrollable.
But do you think that drooling is bad? Or is it actually good? Do you drool while you sleep? As a matter of fact, it actually is a sign of good health.
Sialorrhea or hypersalivation
If you're wondering, the act of drooling is Scientifically referred to as Sialorrhea or Hypersalivation. This is usually caused by a neuromuscular dysfunction, anatomic dysfunction, or hypersecretion.
It's not actually that bad but problems like you not being able to swallow properly, saliva forming in your mouth randomly, and other embarrassing things may arise. But being embarrassed versus the fact that it's a health sign? I would choose the latter.
Chronic drooling is often observed in people who don't have enough control of their face and mouth muscles. Furthermore, if you drool while you sleep, it's often because of your open-mouth posture or if you're sleeping on one side.
Sleeping comfortably can either root from a good position while sleeping, the time, the temperature of the room you are in, there are many factors on what can give you a good night's sleep.
However, drooling is something that might not provide a positive feedback from other people. However, it's actually a surprising sign that you had a good and healthy rest.
It's a sign that you have a healthy body
If ever that you notice a stain of saliva on your sheets or on your pillows, don't worry. It's a sign that your rest the night prior was one of a kind. Sleep problems or sudden changes in your body while you sleep happens.
But when you drool? It's a sign that you had an uninterrupted rest. More so, it's also an indicator that it's helping your digestion and in disinfecting the mouths.
You rested well
It's actually a sign that you were able to experience deep sleep better and a lot more comfortable than how you usually experience it.
If you drool while you sleep, it means that you had better dreams
Although dreams are still a mystery, researchers and Scientists are sure that drooling is a sign that you enjoyed whatever your dream was. The Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase is the unique phase of sleep that only mammals and birds. Based on its term, it is distinguished by the fast and random movement of the eyes.
This phase occurs and takes up about 25 percent of our sleep cycles; it transpires about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep.
Also, it is known that in this phase, we experience dreaming. So, when you drool while you sleep, it's a good sign that your REM was a bit heavy and had a positive note on your sleep.
So, drooling might be a bit embarrassing and it can actually be a bit tedious (because you'd have to wash sheets every now and then), but it's actually a good sign and indicator that you had a good night's sleep.
Never ever be afraid to drool! Why? Because it's proven as an actual sign that you entered deep sleep better than other people. Hey, everyone wants to have a good night's sleep – you had it randomly and without you forcing it, why should you be afraid and embarassed?
Don't worry, a lot of people drool when they sleep and it's not just you. Some experts even consider the people who drool lucky because of the fact that it's a significant indicator that a person had a good rest.
What are your thoughts? I'd be very thankful if you'd help it spread by sharing it on Pinterest. Don't keep this to yourself, please share this post on your Pinterest Board.