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[STEPHEN KOSSLYN:] For the last 30 years I've been obsessed with a question: What shape are a German Shepherd's ears? Of course, I'm not literally interested in that question, since if I were I could just go out and look at dogs; I'm really interested in how people answer the question from memory. Most people report that they visualize the dog's head and mentally "look at" its ears. But what does it mean to visualize something? What does it mean to "look at it in your mind"? It's a bit absurd, because there can't be a little man in there that is actually looking at a picture. If there were, there would have to be a little man inside that man's head, and so forth, and it doesn't make any sense.
For many years we tried to collect objective evidence to show that when you have the experience of visualizing, there's actually something pictorial in your head. It turned out that the best way to approach this was by turning to the brain. There are parts of the brain that are physically organized such that when you look at something, a corresponding pattern is physically laid out on the cortex. Even the first visual area in the processing stream is often activated during visual imagery — even if your eyes are closed when you visualize. Moreover, the way it's activated depends on what you're visualizing. If you visualize something that's vertical, you find activation along the so-called vertical meridian ; if it's horizontal, the activation flips over on its side. It's absolutely amazing. Similarly, visualizing objects at different sizes changes the pattern of activation in ways very much like what occurs if you are actually seeing objects at the corresponding sizes.
But I've been working on this for over 30 years now and I want to move on. Instead of trying just to establish that there actually are mental images and that these images are bona fide representations that have a functional role in processing systems, I want to ask: So what? Who cares? Why should my mother be interested in this kind of thing?
Lately I've been working on something that I'm tentatively calling the "Reality Simulation Principle." It is built on my lab's findings that about two-thirds of the same brain areas are involved in visual mental imagery and visual perception. This finding occurs even when the tasks seem very different on the surface (for example, visualizing an upper case letter in a grid and deciding whether an X mark would fall on the letter if it were actually in the grid versus deciding whether a spoken name is appropriate for a picture). This is a huge amount of overlap, which leads us to suspect that an object seen in a mental image can have the same impact on the mind and body that the actual object would have. My notion is that once the brain systems are engaged, they don't know where the impetus came from. This means that they can produce the same effects whether you activated it endogenously (from information in memory) or exogenously (from looking at something).
The "Reality Simulation Principle" describes how to use mental images as stand-ins for actual objects—to manipulate yourself, basically. It is useful to understand it in conjunction with what I call the GITI cycle, which stands for Generate, Inspect, Transform, Inspect. If mental images can simulate or stand in for actual objects and scenes, you can generate the image, inspect what you've got, transform it, and inspect the result. This can be done iteratively, meaning that you can use imagery to take advantage of the "Reality Simulation Principle"to do all sorts of good things for yourself.
What kinds of good things am I talking about? Memory is one obvious example. From the work of Alan Paivio and countless others, we know that you're able to remember objects better than pictures of objects, and pictures of objects better than words. It also turns out that if you visualize the objects named by words you do better than you would otherwise. Consequently, we're interested now in things like hypnosis. We can hypnotize you, have you visualize an object, and imagine that it's actually a three-dimensional object, appearing in glorious vivid detail. In this case, your memory would be boosted even further.
Mental practice is another candidate. Neuroscientists such as Marc Jeannerod and Jean Decety have shown that imagining doing something recruits most of the brain mechanisms that would guide the corresponding actual movements. And people in sports psychology have shown that by imagining that you're engaging in some activity you'll actually get better at doing it. This process involves generating an image, inspecting the image, transforming it by imagining your movements, seeing what the result would be, and then cycling through again. The next time through you can change the image as a function of the result you saw. If you imagine you're playing golf, for example, and your ball doesn't get in the hole, you can imagine what would happen if you whacked it a little more softly. Mental practice clearly works. By understanding how mechanisms of imagery works we can actually optimize this mental practice.
The "Reality Simulation Principle" can also be used to acquire self-knowledge. Try this one out. Imagine it's dusk, you're walking alone, and you're late. You start to walk faster and then notice a short-cut through an alley. It's getting a little dark, but you really don't want to be late, so you start to go towards it, and you notice that there are three guys lingering near the mouth of the alley. Now think about a first scenario: The three guys look like they're 20 years old, are wearing long droopy shorts, dirty t-shirts, baseball caps that are on backwards, and are smoking cigarettes. As you get close, they stop talking, and all three heads swivel and fixate on you and start tracking you. How do you feel?
Now try the same thing, except instead of those three guys, make them three balding middle-age, overweight accountants wearing suits. They're standing there smoking cigarettes, and their heads swivel as they track you. How do you feel now?
You can start simulating the effects of different attributes. For example, what if the guys are black or Latino teenagers. How do you feel? If you can start actually sorting out your own emotional landscape by running these kinds of mental simulations, you may, in fact, discover certain things about yourself that may be surprising.
Some people who confront their own beliefs may think they've got some racial issues, and it may turn out they're actually class issues. Make those middle-aged accountants black and see how you feel. Those kinds of simulations can help produce self-knowledge, and can help a person to improve his emotional intelligence.
You can also manipulate your body. It's obvious that if you have a sexual fantasy you manipulate your body by imagery. Also, if you imagine something scary—an anticipated encounter with an authority figure or a walk along a narrow path in the mountains that is starting to crumble—your palms will sweat and your heart beat will change. It's clear that mental imagery can affect the body, but it turns out that it may be more interesting than that. For example, one of the things we're studying now is how to change your hormonal landscape by manipulating your images.
There's something called the victory effect, where if you're a male and you win some sort of contest your testosterone goes up afterwards. If you lose, it goes down. This is not a surprise. It also turns out that if you watch your favorite team win your testosterone will go up. If your team loses, it'll go down. This even works if you're watching chess, so it's not about being aroused. In fact, it works for the chess players and for the people who are watching chess games.
Why is this interesting? With men it turns out that spatial abilities vary as a function of testosterone levels. In the fall, males' testosterone levels are relatively high. They go down thereafter, and then they pick up again. Much research suggests that the relation between testosterone levels and spatial abilities is a U-shaped function; your spatial abilities are not as good if you have too much testosterone or too little testosterone. As you get older, both testosterone levels and spatial abilities drop. There is a lot of evidence that there is a connection between the two. The question is, can we manipulate one's spatial abilities by having you run simulations of watching yourself win or lose? If "Reality Simulation Principle" is correct, manipulating your own testosterone levels would in turn affect your spatial abilities. This is work in progress in my lab, in collaboration with Peter Ellison and Carole Hooven; stay tuned.
My point is that you can use "Reality Simulation Principle" in lot of different ways, including some ways that are not intuitively obvious, such as manipulating your hormonal landscape. Mental imagery is also important in creativity and problem solving. Einstein reported that most of his thinking was done with images prior to any kind of verbal or mathematical statement. We know quite a bit now about how to use images in the service of solving problems and being creative. In fact, Ron Finke has written a couple of unusually creative books on this topic.
Other people have also claimed that you can even manipulate your health by using what I'm calling the "Reality Simulation Principle". I'm a little skeptical about this. We may look at that eventually, but not right now. It's certainly the case that you can manipulate the placebo effect to some extent, but the medical effects of "Reality Simulation Principle" are probably not huge. It's not going to cure cancer.
My premise has always been that the mind is what the brain does. Of course, that's a little too glib; really the mind is what the cortex does, since the brain does things like respiration that are not mental. If this is the case, then the question becomes, how do we understand information processing in the brain?
Switching topics, let's return to the role of computation in all of this. The computer is convenient because it allows us to think about how events at different levels of analysis can interact. This is one of the deepest questions in psychology, and probably science in general. It's really a mystery. How is it that semantics and the meaning of things dictate a sequence of events in this wet machine? The wet machine itself has neurons, each of which have an average of ten thousand connections. Sure it's complicated, but ultimately you can understand the whole thing in terms of chemistry and physics.
But how does this machine produce semantically interpretable, coherent sequences of activity, and allow these activities to be modulated by the semantics of what it registers from the world? When you say something to me, it's obviously not just sound patterns, since the content influences what my brain is doing. How I'm going to respond is a consequence of what my brain did to produce the output.
Let's think for a moment about physical events such as the status of bytes in the computer. Each bit in each sequence of 8 bits is either on or off. You can physically describe the nature of this machine and the hardware, but you can also think about representation: What does that pattern of physical activity stand for, and represent in its absence? You can think about interpreted rule-based systems, where the representations have an impact on other parts of a system, causing other representations to be formed, or combined, or operated on in various ways, and outputs to be generated. In this regard it's useful to think about computation in a computer to describe how the mind works, even though it's a wrong metaphor for the brain.
A computer is based on a Von Neumann architecture, where you have a strict separation between memory and the central processing unit. This means that there is a strict separation between operations and representations, which sit passively in memory. The central processing unit is essentially a switching device that uses instructions to dictate what it's going to do, both in terms of how it interprets successive sets of instructions and what it does with the representations. The very idea of representation depends on how the CPU is set. The exact same pattern of bytes can represent a number, a letter, or part of a picture depending on how it's being interpreted. Once an operation is performed, the results go back into memory, and serve as input for additional processes. The computer is useful as a way of thinking about all of this, but it's not going to turn out to be a model of how the brain works; the brain doesn't work like this at all.
The critical thing about the computer — in thinking about computation as a model for understanding the brain — is that it really lets us think about how advanced the mutual interaction of different levels of analysis is. It's a wonderfulmystery. How can an idea arise from wet stuff? How can an idea influence what's going on with the wet stuff? Here, the analogy really works with the computer. We really can think about the notion of representation in the computer, and how it dictates the sequence of physical events through the organization of instructions.
Even though I try to track developments in computational ideas, I'm not known as somebody who espouses the computational model of mind. Nor am I considered a neuroscientist. In fact, as far as I can see, I'm not known as a card-carrying member of any particular approach or subfield. I've always been on the fringe. When I was a graduate student I stumbled onto the basic phenomenon I've been studying for 30-odd years now. In my first year of graduate school at Stanford—this was 1970—the idea of semantic memory was really hot. Collins and Quillian had published a simulation model in 1969 in which they claimed that information is stored in long-term memory in the most efficient way possible. (This makes no sense for the brain, by the way, since storage space is apparently not an issue although it is in a computer.) They posited that memories are organized into hierarchies in which you store information in as general a representation as possible. For example, for animals, you've got a representation of animals, and then birds, mammals, reptiles, etc. And then under birds you have canaries, robins, etc. The notion was that you store properties as high up in the hierarchy as you can rather than redundantly duplicating them. For example, birds eat, but so do lizards and dogs, so we store this property higher, up with the concept of animals. You tag the exceptions in a lower level.
One way to test this theory was to look at response times. If you give somebody a statement like "A canary can sing," that information should be stored right in the same place and "canary" and "sing" should be bound together. But if you ask him, "Can a canary eat?" he should have to traverse the network to find a connection between the two (assuming that "eat" is stored up with "animal"). It should take a little longer, and it does! Unfortunately for the model, distance in a semantic net turned out not to be crucial. My first year project at Stanford showed that the response time was just due to how closely associated the terms were, not distance in a net.
One of the experiments was particularly interesting. In one item I asked people to verify the statement: "A flea can bite—true or false?" Two people in a row said false, and afterwards I asked them why. One said that he "looked for" a mouth, and couldn't find one. The other said he "looked for" teeth and couldn't "see" any. This idea of "looking for" and "seeing" didn't fit in at all with Collins and Quillian's network-based computer model, so I started thinking about it. My idea was that maybe imagery has something to do with this. I telephoned everybody whom I'd tested already, and asked them if they had tended to visualize when they were answering the question. Roughly half said they did and about half said they didn't. I simply plotted the data separately for the two groups. What was dictating the response time of the people who said they didn't use imagery was how associated the properties were with the objects. For the people who used imagery, that had nothing to do it—it was how big the properties were.
I immediately designed an experiment where I pitted the two characteristics against each other. For example, I asked people, "True or false?: A mouse has a back," which is a trait that is big but not highly associated. I also asked whether it has whiskers, which is small and highly associated, or wings, which is not true. I found that if I instructed people to visualize, the critical thing was how big the properties were. The bigger they were the faster the responses were. If I asked them not to visualize, but to answer intuitively as fast as they could, the pattern reversed. In this case, the response speed depended on how associated the traits were, not how big they were.
The next question was how to think about these results. Fortuitously, at the same time I was doing these experiments I was taking a programming class. This was in the days when you used punch cards. You had to go to the computer center, submit your stack of cards, and stand around looking at a monitor, waiting for your job to come up and see whether it bombed, which you could tell by how long it was running. At the end they gave you a big printout. One of the exercises in the class was to program a set of little modules that generated geometric shapes, like triangles and squares and circles, and to adjust how big they were and where they were positioned. You had to do things like make a Christmas tree by recursively calling the same routine that generated a triangle, and plotting the triangle at different sizes in different positions, overlapping them to produce the design.
As I was doing this, it suddenly occurred to me that this is an interesting model of mental imagery. We could think of imagery as having four main components: It's got a deep representation, which is an abstract representation in long-term memory; it's got a surface representation, which is like a display in a cathode ray tube; it's got generative processes between the two , so the surface geometry is reconstructed in the surface image on the basis of the deep representation; and, finally, it's got interpretative processes that run off the surface image, interpreting the patterns as representing objects, parts or characteristics.
This metaphor was neat, and led me to conduct a lot of fruitful research. But it had the drawback that no matter how hard you hit somebody in the head, you're not going to hear the sound of breaking glass—there's no screen in there. Even if there were, would just be be back to that problem of the little man looking at the screen. This immediately led me to start thinking about how to program a system where there are arrays that function as a surface image and points that are positioned in space depicting the pattern that represents an object. And then you have something much more abstract that's operated on to produce that.
One of the real virtues of thinking by analogy to the computer is that it focuses you on the idea of processing systems — not just isolated representations or processes, but sets of them working together. Nobody had ever tried to work out in detail what a processing system that uses images would look like. In fact, the few detailed models of imagery that existed all focused on very specific, artificial tasks and tried to model them using standard list-structures — there were no images in the models of imagery. We decided to take seriously the idea that perhaps mental images aren't represented the same way as language; perhaps they really are images. Steve Schwartz and I built a series of simulation models that showed such an approach is not only possible, but allows you to account for much data. We published our first paper on this in '77, and another in '78. I also wrote a book on it in 1980 called Image in the Mind, where I worked this out in much more detail than anyone ever cared about. As far as I can tell it had almost no impact. I remember asking one my professors at Stanford about it, and he thought the book was too detailed, and that for somebody to start working on the topic now they'd have to look at it, think about it and get into it, and it was just too much trouble. Psychologists generally don't like having to work with a really detailed theoretical framework, and that was basically the end of it. I have a mild frontal lobe disorder that leads me to perseverate, and thus I've continued to work out the theory and do experiments anyway. My 1994 book on imagery is a direct outgrowth of the earlier work, but now maps it into the brain. The Europeans (especially the French) and Japanese seem interested, if not the Americans.
That said, I should note that lately there are signs that interest in mental imagery might be picking up again. This might be a result of another round in my old debate with Zenon Pylyshyn. He's a good friend of Jerry Fodor, but unlike Fodor, Pylyshyn has maintained forever that the experience of mental images is like heat thrown off by a light bulb when you're reading: It's epiphenomenal, it plays no functional role in the process. Pylyshyn believes that mental images are just language-like representations and that it's an illusion that there's something different about them. He published his first paper in 1973. Jim Pomerantz and I replied to it in 1977 and the debate has just been rolling along ever since. Pylyshyn has great distain for neuroscience, to put it mildly. He thinks it's useless, and has no bearing at all on the mind.
I really don't know what brings him to this conclusion. I suspect it's because he is one of the few (less than 2 percent of the population) people who does not experience imagery. He apparently doesn't even "get" jokes that depend on images. He also probably rejects the very idea of imagery on the basis of of his intuitions about computation, based on Von Neumann architecture. He's clearly aware that computers don't need pictorial depictive representations. His intuitions about the mind may be similar. But this is all speculation.
Pylyshyn is not only against theories that are rooted in neural mechanisms (he thinks theories of the logical structure of language should be a model for all other types of theories… really!), he's also against neural network computational models. I've probably published eight to ten papers using network models. At one point in my career I did work on the nature of spatial relations. I had the idea that there are actually two ways to represent relations among objects. One is what I call categorical, where a category defines an equivalence class. Some examples of this would be "left of," "right of," "above," "below," "inside," "outside," etc. If you are sitting across from me, from your point of view, this fist is to the right of this open palm, and that is true for all these different positions [moving his hand about, always to the right of the vertical axis created by his fist]. "Right of" defines a category, and even though I move my hand around, all of these positions are treated as equivalent.
This is useful for doing something like recognizing a hand, since the categorical spatial relations among my fingers, palm, digits, and joints do not change. That's handy for recognizing objects because if you store a literal picture in memory, an open-palm gesture might match well, but if I make another gesture with my hand, say clenching it, this would not match well — so you want something more abstract.
Categorical spatial relations are useful computationally for that problem, but they're not useful at all for reaching or navigating. Just knowing that a fist is to the left of this palm won't allow me to touch it precisely; I've got to know its exact location in space. If I'm walking around the room knowing the table's in front of me, "in front of" is a categorical relation and thus is true for an infinite number of positions relative to it. This is not good enough for navigating. Thus, I posit a second type of spatial relation, which I call coordinate: Relative to some origin, the metric distance and direction is specified.
In my lab we have shown that the left cerebral hemisphere is better at encoding categorical spatial relations, which makes sense because categories are often language-based. On the other hand (hemisphere), the right hemisphere is better at encoding coordinate spatial relations. This is true in normal people, it's true when we and others have done neuroimaging, and it's true when you look at deficit sin patients who have brain lesions. We've constructed a whole raft of neural network models that showed that, in fact, if you split a model—a network—into two separate streams (one for each type of representation), it does better than if you have a single system trying to make both categorical and coordinate representations. The point is not so much that the hemispheres are different, but rather that the brain relies on two distinct ways to code spatial relations. This claim caused a mini-controversy. I'm delighted to see that in a recent issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience researchers (who I don't know) tested over a hundred people after they "turned off" one hemisphere at a time for medical reasons, and showed that with challenging tasks where you have to make categorical versus coordinate spatial relations judgments, the laterality effects I predicted worked beautifully. If it was too easy it didn't work, which also fits perfectly with our modeling and previous experiments— so it looks like this controversy has been settled (but experience has taught me that those are famous last words….).
This is really just one little corner of what I do, and ultimately is related to my imagery work. I've always argued that imagery has to be understood in a system that includes language-like propositional representations as well as depictive representations. I don't think of the mind as purely imaginal. That can't be true. It's got to depend on coordinating many different types of representations that interact in intricate and interesting ways. The distinction between the two types of representations invites a further distinction between different forms of imagery, which make use of the different sorts of spatial relations. And in fact we have evidence for such a distinction. One clear conclusion from all this: "Imagery" isn't just "one thing."
Getting back to computational theorizing in psychology per se. From my perspective—and maybe I'm missing something—computational theorizing has reached a plateau. That's not to say there isn't progress, but it's incremental and is currently within a paradigm that was set perhaps ten years ago. I don't see any revolutionary work out there. Right now, the connectionists are probably the leaders in computational theorizing relevant to the brain. David Rummelhart did terrific work. Terry Sejnowski is excellent, as is Jay McClelland. These are people who have been at it for years. I don't see too much really new on the horizon.
In terms of interesting theorizing, Dan Dennett and Steve Pinker and their colleagues are trying to cash out the evolutionary psychology program. Instead of trying to think about behaviors as being the products of evolution, they are thinking about how the modular structure of information processing in the brain is a consequence of evolution. That's an interesting program. My objection is that this enterprise is not particularly empirical. Science is the process of finding things out. You've got to go out and do studies to find things out. It's very helpful to have theories as a base from which you can direct your attention to issues and questions, but then you're got to go do the actual research.
If you asked me to explain the direction of mind science writ large, I'd say that what you're going to see is a bridging between cognitive neuroscience—where the mind is conceived of as what the brain does—and genetics. Those are the two really hot areas right now, and there's a giant gulf between them.
I was recently writing a introductory psychology textbook chapter on intelligence, and read a lot of behavioral genetics. I was really struck by the fact that these guys are trying to bridge the gap from genes to behavior in one fell swoop, and they're not doing that good a job at it. They're not doing that well in linkage studies that try to connect variability in a behavior with variability in different types of alleles. Sometimes they manage 2% of the variance. It occurred to me that they're leaving out the middle man. They want to think in terms of the model: genes —> behavior. But it would be much better to think in terms of: genes —> brain, and then brain —> behavior. Genes influence behavior and cognition via what they do to the brain. Thinking about this has gotten me very interested in genetics, but not in the sense that genetics is a blueprint. Most genes functioning in the adult brain seem to be up-regulated and down-regulated by circumstances. They turn on and off.
Here's an example developed by Steve Hyman that can serve as a metaphor: If you want to build muscles you lift weights. If the weight is heavy enough it's going to damage the muscles. That damage creates a chemical cascade and reaches into the nuclei of your muscle cells, and turns on genes that make proteins and build up muscle fibers. Those genes are only turned on in response to some environmental challenge. That's why you've got to keep lifting heavier and heavier weights. The phrase, "No pain no gain," is literally true in this case. Interaction with the environment turns on certain genes which otherwise wouldn't be turned on; in fact, they will be turned off if certain challenges aren't being faced. The same is true in the brain. Growing new dendritic spines, or even replenishing neurotransmitters, is linked to genes that are being turned on and turned off in response to what the brain is doing, which in turn is responding to environmental challenges.
I'm really interested in how genes allow the brain to respond to the tasks at hand. When genes are turned on and off, this affects what neurons are doing; which then, of course, affects how blood is allocated; in turn, affecting cognition and behavior. There is a gigantic project yet to be done that will have the effect of rooting psychology in the rest of natural science. Once this is accomplished, you'll be able to go from phenomenology—things like mental imagery—to information processing—thinking about things you can model on the computer—to the brain—thinking about how a particular kind of information processing arises from this particular brain we have—down through the workings of the neurons, including the biochemistry, all the way to the biophysics and the way that genes are up-regulated and down-regulated.
This is going to happen; I have no doubt at all. When it does we're going to have a much better understanding of human nature than is otherwise going to be possible. If you want to understand evolution, the residue of evolution is the genes. Why not study the genes if you want to understand the reasons behind the brain's organization? There are reasons we have those genes rather than other ones—that's where the evolutionary story comes in. But my particular brain or your particular brain is the way it is not only because of the particular genes we have, but also because of the way the environment up-regulated or down-regulated those genes during development, sculpting our brains certain ways, and the ways our genes respond to environmental and endogenous challenges. All of this is empirically tractable. The tools are available, the questions are clear, and we know what sort of answers to seek. Time to get cracking!


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Three things have drawn me repeatedly to the red rock landscape around the small north-central Arizona city of Sedona. First, and most obvious, is the landscape itself, which counts among the most distinctive and stunningly beautiful in the world. Second is the set of processes that landscape has set in motion in the conditions of late capitalist […]
Posts Tagged 'Red Rock Country'
Returning to Sedona
Posted in Eco-culture, Science & society, Spirit matter, tagged Arizona, Claiming Sacred Ground, Coconino National Forest, eco-pilgrimage, ecological management, environmental management, heterotopia, landscape, National Forests, political ecology, Red Rock Country, sacred landscapes, Sedona, Sedona Verde Valley Red Rock National Monument, U. S. Forest Service, vortexes, vortices on November 20, 2016 | 1 Comment »

subset: commoncrawl


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This mix lacked a bit of oomph, so I stripped out the yé-yé pop and some of the softer numbers, et voilà.
We don't seem to have many all girl / woman rock bands in NZ, I mean 4 on the floor hard rock, as opposed to soft rock like When the Cats Away. Instead we blighted the world with the Popstars and, gulp, Truebliss (although a Kiwi was responsible for an all girl band that recorded as the New Runaways and I haven't forgotten Look Blue Go Purple but they were more Cure than Ramones)
Anyways, I wonder why this is so in a country that promotes women so strongly. Perhaps its the lack of role models and hence why most of the rocky all girl bands are from the USA, home of The Runaways and Josie & The Pussycats (or better here)
Here is another girl / girl group focused mix.


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Meet a Transvestite By You on-line!
There is a large transvestite community located in the state of Pennsylvania. There is also tons of transvestites in the Duke Center area. These transvestites are ussually hard to locate, but they often go on-line to find other men and women who share the same things. Find yourself a hot transvestite on-line today. See who's on-line below....
Start Searching Searching is 100% safe.
Check how many Transvestites live in Pennsylvania.
Check how many Transvestites live in Pennsylvania.


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Pedigree Choice Cuts In Gravy Beef & Country Stew Adult Canned Soft Wet Dog Food Variety Pack
Product Details
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By Prof Sir Malcolm Evans, Professor of Public International Law (University of Bristol Law School) and Chair, United Nations Subcommittee for Prevention of Torture.*
In recent years the relative importance of religion as an issue of legal and political significance has increased considerably. For example, it took nearly forty years before the first human rights case concerning freedom of religion or belief came to be considered by the European Court of Human Rights; and in the 1990s official reports of the Council of Europe could express surprise that religion was still proving to be an important political factor in some parts of Europe. Few would advance such a claim today.
Some put this down to the rise in the numbers of religious believers globally; that is, religion is becoming more important simply because there are more religious believers. It is certainly the case that there are now more people with religious beliefs on the face of the planet than at any time in history. But this does not explain the rise in the importance of religion in global politics. Nor does the increase in the absolute numbers of religious believers necessarily undermine the argument – so popular in Europe for so long – that religion is becoming increasingly unimportant to public life. (more…)


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Artist: Sera Knight (Woking)
Borough Market, London
Art Medium: Mixed Media
Image Size: Approx 25cm x 50cm
Availability: Original Painting For Sale
Price: Please contact the Artist
Contact The Artist
Sera Knight, SWA
Horsell, Woking, Surrey
Paintings in all Media
Commissions Invited
Phone: 01276 856 517
Please mention the Surrey Artists website
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: www.seraknight.co.uk
Products: Prints, Cards & Art Gifts
"Sera Knight's paintings are sensational"
About The Artist
Sera has been drawing and painting since childhood. She paints mainly in watercolour, acrylic and mixed media. Tackling human figure and perspective has always been her favourite subjects but she enjoys the challenge of different subjects. Regardless of the subject, to be able to use the light cleverly, create a mystical atmosphere together with technical and emotional strength is her aim. Sera also paints on glass objects to the effect of stained glass and exhibits these separately.
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Sera has a degree in Architecture. She lived in Stavanger, Norway from 1980 to 1993 and worked as an architect in the oil industry. Now living in the Woking area of Surrey, Sera is a member of various art societies and groups and exhibits her work regularly with these. She also teaches adult education classes and tutors private groups in mainly watercolour, mixed media and drawing mediums.
Fine Art Prints, Gifts, Greetings Cards & Christmas Cards
A collection of Sera's paintings have been made available as Art Prints, Greetings Cards and a wide selection of Gifts. You can see them here: Art Prints & Gifts Portfolio
A collection of her work is also availabe as Art Prints in a range of sizes and frame options here: Framed and Unframed Art Prints
Some of her winter art has been made available as Christmas Cards. See the website: www.fine-art-greetings-cards.com
Art Groups
Sera Knight SWA (Society of Women Artists) is also a member of Woking Society of Art, Guildford Art Society, Virginia Water Art Society & Farnham Art Society.


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This blog has been dormant for a while and the publication of Digital Media and Reporting Conflict: Blogging and the BBC's Coverage of War and Terrorism is the right time to formally close it.
It's been an amazing journey over the last five years or so and I've really enjoyed working on the project, working with people at the BBC and meeting people throughout the media industry.
I'd like to thank all the people who made this book possible - my family, my friends, my PhD supervisor at King's College London, everybody at the BBC who gave up their time to participate, the Frontline Club and the countless people I interacted with online.
When I decide to do something I put everything into it. I hope the book testifies to the high standards and hard work that I tried to bring to it.
But perhaps more than that I hope the book and the hundreds of blog posts I wrote continue to be a useful resource for students of warfare, media, journalism and the BBC.
I took most pleasure from knowing that other people found my work useful and that it contributed in a small way to public understanding of the changing nature of reporting war and terrorism.
Achievements come at a cost and over the last couple of years in particular I invested a lot of myself, my time, my financial and physical resources into seeing the book through.
I also spent a lot of time banging at academic doors that I found were closed to me or only open if I was willing to work for free which I sustained for far longer than I should have done.
In hindsight, all this effort was too much and I really burnt myself - not giving up is a great strength and a terrible weakness. I think it's a sacrifice I am only willing to make again in a different context.
A wise man once said that you have to give up your life in order to save it. And it's time to leave a road which had become intolerably tough and start something new.
I'm not entirely sure what that looks like yet but I have long been involved in Christian ministry and I'm pretty sure it involves achieving a lot less and loving other people a lot more. In the meantime, I need to rest, heal and rebuild my strength.
For those of you who want to remain in touch my current email address is mail-AT-dsbennett.co.uk.
Saturday 22 June 2013
Monday 19 November 2012
From Cast Lead to Pillar of Defense: How the IDF has learnt to communicate war in Gaza online
In 2009, I wrote a blog post arguing that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had "fallen off the social media bandwagon". Their digital media campaign in support of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was hastily conceived, unimaginative and anti-social.
New tools were used to disseminate traditional military messages with little regard for a new online culture of communication.
How times have changed.
Nearly four years later, the IDF's social media strategy is much more sophisticated, offering online audiences regular and engaging updates on the progress of Operation Pillar of Defense.
Comparing 2009 with 2012: YouTube and Twitter
The differences are striking. In the 2009 post, I included a link to this YouTube video:
As I noted at the time, this bland 'press statement' delivered by Capt. Benjamin Rutland takes place in a washed out 'non-place' with the Israeli flag propped up against the wall. Not exactly engaging content.
It's a far cry from the IDF's most recent YouTube videos which now include short, snappy infographic explainers:
And dramatic images of "precision strikes" in which the viewer is on-board with the missile, transported to a video-game like first person perspective:
(These videos offer a compelling illusion - apparently taking the viewer closer to the conflict, but at the same time distancing the viewer from the human cost as airstrikes appear to primarily affect buildings, infrastructure or only the most "evil" of enemies.)
Now the IDF Twitter feed is being written in plain English. What's more, the IDF is also using hashtags (#IsraelUnderFire), encouraging Twitter users to retweet their content and creating imagery that the IDF believe will be circulated by online communities.
It is also posting all manner of facts and figures and commenting on the issues which might affect the outcome of the battle for public opinion.
From 2009 to 2012: The IDF's social media learning curve
In 2009, Noah Shachtman revealed in Wired just how ad hoc the planning for the social media element of the information war had been during Operation Cast Lead, describing the IDF's YouTube campaign as "off-the-cuff" - a last-minute idea by a group of "twenty-something" soldiers.
Shortly after Operation Cast Lead, the IDF's Twitter fell silent for 179 days and only began updating again in August 2009. In December, Haaretz reported that a new media unit would be set up to engage online audiences on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
In the three years since then, the IDF has clearly revisited its approach to social media. According to Reuters the Israeli foreign ministry invested $15 million dollars in social media in 2010 and although the IDF was still learning it was notable that their YouTube channel was beginning to attract the attention of news journalists by the time of the Gaza flotilla raid in May 2010.
A 'behind-the-scenes' TV report demonstrated how the online presence of IDF Spokesperson was updated by a fully operational "New Media desk" by 2011.
Communicating conflict: The blurring boundaries
The 2012 online media campaign for Operation Pillar of Defense is undoubtedly a significant 'improvement' in Israel's attempt to communicate their version of the conflict using social media tools. But challenges remain.
In particular, the use of Twitter more explicitly blurs an already blurred boundary between psychological operations and public information campaigns.
In the last few days, the IDF has addressed all manner of online audiences with its Twitter feed.
Some updates are probably designed to be picked up by journalists - announcing the onset of the airstrikes via Twitter rather than in a news conference was an interesting departure, but hardly surprising given the widespread adoption of Twitter by journalists at media organisations.
A tweet on Sunday was even more obviously directed at journalists:
Advice to reporters in #Gaza, just like any person in Gaza: For your own safety, stay away from #Hamas positions and operatives. — IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 18, 2012The IDF's Twitter feed is also trying to leverage an active online community which is supportive of Israel's goals by producing content which can be disseminated online through retweets on Twitter and sharing on social networks. Other content, such as the YouTube explainers, can be seen as an attempt to convince sceptics of Israel's military operation.
These activities might all fall into the remit of public information campaigns, but at the same time the account is being used for purposes which could be viewed as a function of psychological operations.
One IDF tweet issued a warning to Hamas operatives and as Stuart Hughes pointed out on the BBC's College of Journalism blog the IDF's Twitter account has also attracted the attention of Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
It is no longer unusual for a war of words on Twitter to accompany armed confrontation. (See also ISAF Media vs the Taliban and the Kenyan Army vs Al Shabaab.)
Communicating messages successfully to different audiences in the same space is problematic, particularly when the 'audience' can write back. Critics have argued that the IDF's Twitter feed is a distasteful addition to an immoral military campaign. The Now Lebanon blog, for example, headlined a post with the title: 'IDF cheerily live-tweets infanticide'.
And the unanswered question is this: what difference, if any, will the IDF's social media campaign make?
A template for the future?
Nevertheless, the IDF's social media campaign in support of Operation Pillar of Defense might prove to be a template for future information operations online as militaries attempt to influence a more fiercely contested informational battlespace.
In 2010, Lt. Gen. W. Caldwell, Dennis Murphy and Anton Menning published an article in the Australia Army Journal in which they suggested that the US military could learn from the IDF's use of social media.
I think they were wrong then in relation to the Gaza conflict in 2009, but they might have subsequently been proved right by events in 2012.
Sunday 4 November 2012
KIA: The brutal reality of war behind the news headlines
Doug Beattie is a British soldier who has served in Afghanistan with the Royal Irish Regiment. I have long been an admirer of the bravery of his honesty. His willingness to openly contemplate, discuss, debate and publish his experience of war in Afghanistan is unusual, providing a rare insight into conflict in the 21st Century.
Over on his blog 'An Ordinary Soldier', he notes that we the hear the phrase 'Killed In Action' on the news on a regular basis, but in this post he takes us beyond the words to what it might mean in reality:
This is how his post 'KIA' begins:
"You turn on the TV news and there, somewhere after a report on the credit crunch and before the footie, you get the other stuff, events in brief, the stories they haven't got pictures for or don't think are important enough to warrant two minutes all to themselves.
"Amongst these fillers you hear the presenter say, 'A British soldier has been killed in action in Afghanistan after being hit by a roadside bomb'. Killed in action. KIA. It all sounds so unsentimental, so impersonal, so clinical. But it's not. It is usually brutal and bloody and painful. So here it comes, the wretched truth about KIA, a truth you'll never hear, let alone see, on News at Ten. This is what KIA is all about."
It's not 'easy' reading, but the rest is here...
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Random thought on news: process and package
Instant and alterable web publication has helped facilitate a shift in emphasis in online news: where previously it was always displayed as a processed package, now it is also presented as a packaged process.
Not a new idea of course, but hopefully never written as succinctly.
OK, it probably has been put even more succinctly...but no time to check that right now so I'll just claim it and carry on.
Not a new idea of course, but hopefully never written as succinctly.
OK, it probably has been put even more succinctly...but no time to check that right now so I'll just claim it and carry on.
Thursday 13 September 2012
Drone Journalism in the UK?
This blog started its life as a way of documenting my PhD project which is now long since finished.
I thought I might know by now what this blog is becoming - if anything - but I'm afraid I'm not quite there yet.
Which means the blog has kind of lost it's raison d'être ...and without that there's not a lot to be said by it or for it.
There are a few potential projects in the pipeline which might give it a new direction and hopefully next time you stop by, there might be something more - I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I've written something on drone journalism at the Frontline Club which you can read here if you haven't seen it already.
I thought I might know by now what this blog is becoming - if anything - but I'm afraid I'm not quite there yet.
Which means the blog has kind of lost it's raison d'être ...and without that there's not a lot to be said by it or for it.
There are a few potential projects in the pipeline which might give it a new direction and hopefully next time you stop by, there might be something more - I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I've written something on drone journalism at the Frontline Club which you can read here if you haven't seen it already.
drone journalism,
Wednesday 22 August 2012
US Navy to spend $249 million on "battlespace awareness"
The US Navy has announced that it will spend up to an estimated $249 million on "battlespace awareness".
Last Thursday, the Navy awarded a new contract to five intelligence, computer and security companies to provide both hardware and "the development, integration, and test of intelligence, battlespace awareness, and information operations applications".
In other words, the US Navy is embarking on a major new project in the area of surveillance, technology and data acquisition to provide military commanders with a detailed understanding of any conflict area.
According to the Department of Defense's own definition "battlespace awareness" includes an area's "environment, factors, and conditions", "the status of friendly and adversary forces, neutrals and noncombatants" and "weather and terrain."
The addition of "information operations" in the contract suggests the project will go beyond the remit of geospatial intelligence and may have some capability for commanders to organise messaging campaigns in an attempt to influence various actors in an area of operations.
The contract raises questions over exactly what information the US Navy is intending to collect and in which conflict areas.
The investment can be understood in the context of the influence of 'network-centric warfare' on US military thinking which emphasises the value of a digitally connected force as a means of improving situational awareness and military decisions.
A press release earlier in the year from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) calling for 'big data' projects noted that:
"the demands for actionable information have spiked as warfighters at every level—whether at the planning table or on patrol—are called upon to make well-informed decisions".
The battlespace awareness contract was awarded by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center and will initially last until August 2013. The US Navy has options in the contract to extend the work to 2017.
The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center reports directly to the Navy's Information Dominance Systems Command.
Thursday 31 May 2012
After Leveson? A 'State of the News Media' report for the UK
With each day of Leveson evidence new stones are overturned, shedding more light on the wider systemic and cultural problems that contributed to the phone-hacking scandal.
The 'post-Leveson' question becomes ever more pressing, as identified at yesterday's University of Westminster conference, attended by a range of international media researchers, as well as regulation and legal specialists.
But how will the national media report the outcome of the Inquiry?
The media's record in self-reporting is shaky, shown by its reluctance to give any credence to the Guardian's initial story in 2009 revealing serious flaws in the media's ability to self-regulate.
In an article for June's issue of British Journalism Review, Judith Townend and I demonstrate how a combination of personal, professional, political and commercial dynamics led to a failure of the media's role as an accountability mechanism in the public interest.
We believe a useful new accountability tool would be an annual audit of all UK news media content.
The lack of coverage of phone hacking
The failure of almost every other news organisation other than the Guardian to regard phone hacking as newsworthy has been well-rehearsed and we have previously shown that perceptions are backed up by the numbers.
But it's not a lone example of an issue that perhaps should have received more media attention or scrutiny.
We could also look at the reporting of financial institutions prior to the crash in 2008 or the build up to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.
As we demonstrate with phone hacking, working out why journalists regard some stories and angles as newsworthy requires significant analysis. But we don't even have a way of systematically understanding and monitoring what news stories are being published and how they are being covered.
This is beginning to seem a little strange in an era when we can collect and organise vast quantities of data from online news articles. There is no longer any reason why we could not monitor the news values of the media in a far more comprehensive manner for the benefit of the future of journalism.
Accessing article data
For the BJR essay, we were able to trace all news articles relating to phone hacking over a four year period. And academic research has benefited from resources such as the Nexis® UK database which allows searchable access to decades of news articles.
But research which considers all news topics is often limited to only a few media outlets for a very short period of time and Nexis® UK is only available through subscription.
In the past, it would have been exceptionally time-consuming, if not impossible to conduct an annual survey of every topic or subject that made the news. Today, nearly every news story that appears in print also appears online and news is relatively straightforward to archive.
Towards an annual audit
By harnessing the potential of "big data" and digital search tools, we should be able to design a sophisticated piece of software which could be used to provide the public with an annual audit of all UK media articles for an entire year.
Data from news stories could be accessed to produce a breakdown of what news subjects were reported, how they were reported, by which journalists, how often and with how much prominence.
This data might be analysed in conjunction with data provided by audiences from clicks on web links and the number of times articles have been shared by web users on other websites. Information that is already being collected internally by news organisations.
This annual review of news could and should go beyond "newspapers" – a category of increasingly dubious relevance in a convergent media world. It could document all major online news sources whether they're newspapers, broadcasters, new media websites or influential bloggers.
Independent researchers could then analyse this data to write an accessible and publicly available online report on the nature of UK news content.
A report which would provide the public with a more detailed understanding of what was regarded as newsworthy and how news topics have been reported.
Learning from projects in the United States
An annual review of this nature is not only possible, it's also already being done outside the UK. In the United States, the Pew Research Center's "State of the News Media" report analysed 46,000 stories from 52 news outlets in 2011.
One section of the report offered a comprehensive understanding of which stories and topics were regarded as newsworthy by American journalists and included data for news being shared by bloggers and Twitter users.
There is also an interactive online feature on the Pew website which means the public can make their own comparisons between the coverage of news stories in different media outlets.
It would be useful to combine this approach with that of the Media Cloud project, run by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. This project includes an open source online tool highlighting which key words were used in relation to major news topics on a weekly basis by individual news organisations.
In the UK, perhaps the closest we have to anything similar is Journalisted.com, run by the Media Standards Trust. This website monitors articles written by individual journalists as well as a weekly and yearly round up of which news topics are "covered lots" or "covered little".
This represents a useful starting point, but the depth of data and analysis is limited compared with the projects in the United States.
The value of an annual audit
An annual audit of UK media content undertaken by an independent organisation would only be a small part of much more wide-ranging solution to the issues raised by the phone-hacking scandal.
It would not illuminate journalists' decision-making, hold them to account prior to publication or tackle newsroom culture and practices.
But it is a practical step forward which would provide a comprehensive overview of what stories are making the news and trends in the way those news stories are reported.
It would be an accountability tool that could benefit both news organisations and the public.
For journalists and editors, it would be a useful resource helping them reflect on the shape of their coverage over the course of a year.
For the wider public, it would provide a much more informed starting point for a broad debate on the how the media reports the news.
We would welcome comments, criticisms and suggestions to help us take this idea forward.


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Title: Notes & Roses (Stanford Creek #1)
Author: RJ Scott writing as Rozenn Scott
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: February 26, 2016
Megan Campbell is horrified when a stranger, covered in blood, collapses in her shop. When that same stranger, wild and angry, abruptly becomes someone very different, it's not her safety she is worrying about, it's her heart.
With his stalker behind bars, former boy band singer CJ Taylor is starting a new life. He's bought a house in a small Vermont town, and taken back the name he was born with. Two years have passed since he was last in the public eye and as Cody Brennan, he's finally feeling safe. Desperate to find some peace, all he wants is to connect to the music in his head, write new lyrics and forget the tragedy in his past.
What he doesn't count on is meeting Megan. From her amber eyes to her tempting smile, she is everything he thought he could do without, the very thing he promised himself to avoid. But he's thrown into her family and her life, and suddenly he's found a place he wants to stay.
Megan's first instinct is to tame the powerful attraction she has to this stranger, but very soon desire becomes something more. Between them can they find the words to make things right? And can they stay safe long enough to fall in love?
"Besides Notes and Roses being a beautiful name, Author Rozenn Scott has written a beautiful and heart warming story." - 5 Star Review Cutting Muse Blog Review
Chapter One
Megan Campbell stepped away from the cash register of Notes & Roses and leaned against the back counter. She put her right hand in her jeans pocket and, as carefully and unobtrusively as possible, she removed her cell phone and scrolled to Justin's name. What should she send to her brother? Help sounded like a good start. Or possibly, there's a man in my shop and I think he's drunk or stoned.
Yep, send something like that to Justin, and he would come in, all guns blazing. Then he'd pin the weird guy to the floor and read him his rights. And the man currently staring at a wall didn't look dangerous, just lost, homeless maybe?
Something more considered then, like, there is a vagrant in here, and he needs help, what should I do? The man moved a little. Away from her side of the store, the 'roses' part of the setup, and over to the 'notes' side. He was peering at the shelves; a collection of stationery and household bits and pieces like cushions and local crafts. He stumbled a little, turned to the side and looked up at the display of posters on the far wall. Landscapes of Vermont; rivers, small towns and red high-sided barns with gently rolling hills of emerald green.
"That's wrong," he said.
"Sorry?" Megan asked, but he didn't reply.
He's talking to the wall now. Should she add that to the text as well? This was going to end up being one hell of a lot of typing to explain what he was doing. Despite how odd it all looked, the visitor wasn't threatening her. Also, Rachel would be back soon, maybe between them they could sort this out?
He hadn't even spoken to her, but something wasn't right. Maybe it was the way he'd been standing; his hands in fists at his sides, staring now at the new Valentine wall display of flowers and hearts. Maybe it was the way he was dressed; dark jeans caked in mud, heavy boots that had tracked in the same mud. Not to mention the black hoodie with the hood partially hiding his face from her view.
Or maybe it was the despair in his hunched shoulders, the utter defeat in the way he had to support himself to stand.
Whatever it was, Megan was faced with two options. Talk to the strange man in her shop while she was alone in here, or call in reinforcements in case things went south.
Her visitor moved, not his feet, but his fists, unclenching and bringing his hands up to knuckle his eyes and then cover them. Megan's cop brother liked to explain these things to her, but she didn't need his help to recognize when despair in someone turned to anger.
She sent the standard 911 text, startled when she looked up and saw the stranger had stepped closer to her while she'd been distracted.
"Where am I?" he asked, his voice very soft.
"You're in my shop."
He shook his head. "I need the music. Someone took it, and I need it."
Okay, this was so not going the way she wanted it to go. He was incoherent. Maybe he was homeless and just needed a place to get out of the persistent snow that had plagued Stanford Creek the last few days. He'd evidently been somewhere slushy and muddy if his clothes were anything to go by.
"I don't understand, sir; what music do you need?" she asked, and waited for him to acknowledge her question. Instead, he took another, shaky, step forward, and covered his eyes again. "Hello? Can I help you?" she repeated when he didn't look at her.
That finally got his attention, and his hands came down, and she got her first clear look at his eyes and face. What she saw had her reaching to send another text. He had blood on him smeared down from his temple into his wild beard, and his blue eyes were bright with something. Drugs maybe? Long dark hair hid some of his features, and he looked like he was about to keel over.
"Where's the music?" he mumbled, his voice low and urgent. He gripped his temples hard and stumbled back, knocking a display of greeting cards to the floor. The sound was a loud clatter in the otherwise quiet room. "Shit… I didn't…"
"Sir?" This time, she was within reaching distance as he rounded on her, his lips pulled back in a snarl—or a grimace of pain, she couldn't be entirely sure. Whatever, it wasn't the look of someone who wanted to be spoken to. Time to leave. She glanced at the front door, then the fire exit. He was between her and the only possible ways out, and she was trapped. When she focused back on him, all she saw was a situation that could get out of hand. He was a good six inches taller than her five-nine, broad and built, with tattoos curling around his wrist, disappearing up under the sleeve of the hoodie.
Everything about him looked wrong. He didn't move again, or even acknowledge her; all he did was stare with bright sapphire eyes, focused on a point behind her. Scary and intense and so damned fixated with his expression in that scowl.
"What happened?" he groaned and covered his eyes again. "Call… Zee…"
She texted without looking, only glancing at the screen briefly to make sure she was sending another text to her brother and not some random person on her list. 911. Again. The standard sibling instruction for help me right the hell now, reserved for having one of her brothers rescue her from one of her many dreadful first dates. Garrett wasn't even in town, so there was little point texting him, and Justin may not even be in the sheriff's office. She hoped to hell he was, though, and had read her message. She'd know soon enough because the small sheriff's office was close.
And still the stranger stood there, staring at her. At least, he hadn't moved any closer.
He closed his eyes and wiped at the blood that was trickling down his face, looking down at his hand and staring at the red that streaked his skin. She thought she heard a sob, but couldn't be sure. Compassion welled inside her. Vagrant or not, dressed in soiled clothes and with the hood up, he didn't have to be a criminal.
"Sir? Do you need help?" She held out her hand, but he stepped closer to her and damn it, she may have had self-defense training, but she wasn't stupid. If the man was hopped up on drugs, she had to stay out of reach. The door opened, and Justin stepped in, all uniform and pissed-off attitude.
"Two 911's? This had better be good, Megs."
Megan inclined her head to the man who Justin evidently hadn't seen in his dramatic entrance. Justin could handle himself, and he had a gun, he'd know what to do.
"What the hell?" Justin said as he assessed the situation, his hand automatically resting on his holstered weapon.
"I think it's drugs," she said loud enough for Justin to hear. The man looked at Justin and then to her, before shaking his head a little.
"No." The voice was raspy, little more than a growl. "Not those." He appeared to be struggling to talk, and he pressed his hands to each side of his head. "Just the music; Zee will know," he added, but his voice slurred, and he coughed and doubled over.
Justin pulled his weapon and held it to one side, his other hand held in front of him as he stepped closer. "Sir? Are you hurt?"
Megan saw her brother's hand on the sidearm, the other placating and suggesting and warning at the same time. She'd seen him stand like this when he broke up the fight at the drugstore. Not that he'd drawn his weapon then; he'd dealt with it by intimidation alone, because everyone involved lived in the town and no one messed with the sheriff. Megan looked at her brother, who teased her, who'd hidden her dolls and pulled her pigtails as a kid, but who was now in a situation that was serious. He was all business.
"What's your name, sir?" Justin asked.
The stranger stepped back from him, straight into a pile of notebooks this time. The shelf shuddered and some of the display tilted. The movement translated into Justin grabbing the man's hoodie to stop him falling as he flailed and attempted to stay upright.
He took a swing at Justin, who ducked and swerved. The attempted hit missed Justin by a mile, and the man followed the momentum he had begun, smacked his fist against a shelf edge, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Then he didn't move, was absolutely still. Justin holstered his weapon and crouched next to the prone form of the hooded man, checking for a pulse and then talking into his radio.
"Dispatch, 390D, medical assistance required at Notes & Roses."
Megan didn't hear the response; she came out from behind the counter and stood next to her brother. The adrenaline that had flooded her to deal with this was beginning to ebb, and she went down in the same crouch. The hood had fallen back and exposed his hair. The stranger was young; maybe the same age as her, and a long cut on his temple oozed fresh blood. Thinking on her feet, she located a clean tea towel from the small kitchen in the back and as an afterthought grabbed the first aid box. There was nothing more than band aids and small bandages in it, but there may be something in there to press against the wound, something sterile.
Justin took the box and the towel and pressed the cloth against the man's temple.
"Who is he?" Justin asked.
Megan frowned at the unconscious man. "I have no idea."
"What was he doing in the shop?"
Megan glanced at her brother and resisted the urge to give him a sarcastic sister-type comeback. She needed to be professional.
"He came in and stood in the 'notes' side, staring at the wall."
"And he didn't say anything?"
"Something about wanting music and the letter Z. And when I asked him if he needed help, he turned and stared at me like he didn't know where he was."
"What the hell, Megan? You talked to him?"
"Well, what was I supposed to do? He was a customer, and looked like he needed help."
"What did I tell you about drug addicts?" Justin snapped.
"The same as attackers, drunks, and anyone else who got anywhere near me, call you. I did that."
The man on the floor moved, his eyes flickering open and staring up at Justin and Megan. "I don't feel…" He never finished the sentence, his eyes closing again.
All Megan could think was, whoever he was, he had pretty eyes, the kind of blue that jumped out at you and screamed gorgeous. She couldn't see much of his face, covered as it was with a bushy beard and blood.
"Should we find his ID or something?"
"SOP is not to go searching in drug addicts' pockets," Justin said with exaggerated patience.
"You think he's a drug addict?"
The door chimed again, but it wasn't the paramedic yet. Instead her business partner and cousin, Rachel, stood in the door, her jaw dropped and the cold of the rain blustering in behind her.
"Shut the door," Justin and Megan said at the same time. Rachel closed the door with exaggerated care, and her expression didn't change.
"Why is there a man lying on the floor of our shop?" she managed. Then she stepped closer, staring down at John Doe, and her eyebrows climbed before she paled and grabbed hold of the nearest display. "Shit, there's so much blood. Is he dead?" Like he'd heard her speak, the man coughed and curled in on himself on one side, muttering something, and she stumbled backward with a yelp.
"He's clearly not dead," Justin said. "Drugs, head wound, we don't know yet." Then he spoke into his radio. "Dispatch, do we have an ETA on the paramedics?"
"Three minutes out."
"10-4, dispatch."
"Is he bleeding out?" Rachel asked, her hand on her chest and her skin pale. Megan frowned; they really should get Rachel out of here. She'd never liked blood, not since the incident where she'd broken her arm in kindergarten and the bone had pierced the skin.
"Not enough blood for that," Justin said.
"Do we know who he is?" Rachel asked. "Should we check his wallet or something? He could be here with someone?" She glanced out the shop window as if expecting the man's friends or family to be searching for him.
"I can't look for his wallet yet," Justin explained. "SOP with suspected addicts."
"SOP?" Rachel half whispered as an aside.
"Standard operating procedure," Megan whispered back. "The guy could have needles on him."
"What about the recovery position?" Rachel pointed out. "Should we, at least, move him?"
Justin indicated the unconscious man with a wave of his hand. "Think he already did it himself."
Then in silence they stood and waited for the paramedics to arrive, and all that time Megan stared down at the stranger, memorizing every bump and scratch on his face. What a waste. He could be so handsome, almost pretty, with those stunning sky eyes and the plump lips. He'd be a killer if he smiled, she thought.
"He doesn't smell," Rachel commented, even though she wrinkled her nose. She gestured at him. "And those jeans? They're an expensive brand you know. So he's probably not homeless."
Megan didn't feel much like discussing the unconscious man. She just wanted the help to get here soon.
The paramedics arrived and in a flurry of motion, they asked rapid questions of Megan, which she couldn't answer in full. 'Did he have a fit? Did he choke?' She answered as best she could and hoped that was enough for them to have some idea what had happened. They checked John Doe's vitals, hefted him onto a gurney, and left, all without the man regaining consciousness. Justin followed soon after, giving Megan a quick hug and extracting a promise from her to stay safe, and then it was Rachel and Megan alone in the shop.
Rachel looked anywhere except at the blood and Megan knew she had to get her out of the shop. "You go up to Carter's and get some fresh coffee."
"You need help," Rachel began. She looked torn as she gestured at the floor.
"I'll clear this up. Go."
"What if someone else comes in?"
"Another vagrant covered in blood?" Megan smiled as she said it. She hoped she'd had her full quota of vagrants for this year.
"You never know," Rachel said, frowning.
Rachel looked at the door and back at Megan, as if she were expecting another strange man to come in while she was out and was worried about leaving her. Megan went back to the small storage room at the back of the store. She pulled out the mop and bucket and the cleaning supplies and by the time she came back out Rachel had gone. She wasn't surprised. Evidently alongside her phobia about blood, Rachel had analyzed the situation with her rational, logical approach and had decided Megan could manage another strange man collapsing on their floor if she had to. She cleaned up the smears of scarlet, the tracked in mud, and realigned all the notebooks and stationery on the knocked shelf. While she worked, all she could think was despite the shock and drama of what had happened, the man with the beautiful sapphire eyes hadn't seemed dangerous to her.
Confused, high or drunk, desperate, traumatized, wet, and muddy, maybe. But certainly not dangerous.
Full time romance writer Rozenn Scott creates passionate love stories with a guaranteed happy ever after.
Her series of novels, set in the beautiful Vermont town of Stanford Creek, focus on strong, independent women who find love.
Writing as RJ Scott, she is the author of over ninety bestselling gay romance novels and has never met a bottle of wine she can't defeat.


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Weight | 2 lbs |
Scented | |
Wicks | 100% Lead Free Natural Fiber |
Material | Paraffin |
Burn Time | |
Dimensions | 4.0" Diameter X 5.5" Tall |
Sold By | Individually |
16 oz Pine Jar Candles
We manufacture these 16 oz pine scented jar candles here in the U.S.A. The wax is poured into a beautiful apothecary style jar with a dome lid. We use paraffin wax and a single lead free wick which burns great, melting the wax all the way out to the edge. Our scented candles are perfect for use in the home, hotels, churches, and restaurants. This medium jar candle also would make a nice house warming gift.
What It Smells Like:
This scent is formulated using fir balsam, fir needle, cedar wood, crushed pine cones, and bergamot combined for a resinous, woodsy forest fragrance.


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Our 58mm Squared Off Silhouette Round Studded Accent Trim Sunnies are combination of colors collocate with customer taste and outfits. by using our fashionable sunglasses you can Embrace fresh mood everyday!
- These sunglasses are highlighted with colored mirror flat lenses to get you spotted for cool beach side and high-street styling.
- Significantly block 100% of UV radiation, effectively reducing eye strain and damaging effects on your eyes.
- Exquisitely designed, the strong material based hinges and flat thin temples allow for extra flexibility and stability, offering a custom fit while wearing these sunglasses.
- Ultra soft memory nose pads for added support while helping to relieve nose bridge pressure
Custom Design or Private Labeling is available for this product.
Please contact us for more information!


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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is a common childhood illness that can be treated. It is a health condition involving biologically active substances in the brain. Studies show that ADHD may affect certain areas of the brain that allow us to solve problems, plan ahead, understand others' actions, and control our impulses.
The primary symptoms of ADHD are hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention.
Hyperactive children always seem to be in motion. A child who is hyperactive may move around touching or playing with whatever is around, or talk continually. During story time or school lessons, the child might squirm around, fidget, or get up and move around the room. Some children wiggle their feet or tap their fingers. A teenager or adult who is hyperactive may feel restless and need to stay busy all the time.
Impulsive children often blurt out comments without thinking first. They may often display their emotions without restraint. They may also fail to consider the consequences of their actions. Such children may find it hard to wait in line or take turns. Impulsive teenagers and adults tend to make choices that have a small immediate payoff rather than working toward larger delayed rewards.
Inattentive children may quickly get bored with an activity if it's not something they really enjoy. Organizing and completing a task or learning something new is difficult for them. As students, they often forget to write down a school assignment or bring a book home. Completing homework can be huge challenge. At any age, an inattentive person may often be easily distracted, make careless mistakes, forget things, have trouble following instructions, or skip from one activity to another without finishing anything.
Some children with ADHD are mainly inattentive. They seldom act hyperactive or impulsive. An inattentive child with ADHD may sit quietly in class and appear to be working but is not really focusing on the assignment. Teachers and parents may easily overlook the problem.
Children with ADHD need support to help them pay attention, control their behavior, slow down, and feel better about themselves.
Many children and adults are easily distracted at times or have trouble finishing tasks. To be ADHD, however, the behaviors must appear before age 12 and continue for at least six months. The symptoms must also create a real handicap in at least two areas of the child's life—in the classroom, on the playground, at home, in the community, or in social settings.
If a child seems too active on the playground but not elsewhere, the problem might not be ADHD. It might also not be ADHD if the behaviors occur in the classroom but nowhere else. A child who shows some symptoms would not be diagnosed with ADHD if his or her schoolwork or friendships are not impaired by the behaviors.
Even if a child's behavior seems like ADHD, it might not actually be ADHD. Many other conditions and situations can trigger behavior that resembles ADHD. For example, a child might show ADHD symptoms when experiencing
The American Psychiatric Association defines Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as "one of the most common health disorders, affecting approximately 5 to10% of children in the United States. The hallmarks of the syndrome of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Symptoms of this condition are expressed in multiple settings and across numerous functional domains, thus demonstrating the pervasiveness of this condition." -American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press; 2000.)
Contents What is ADHD? How Common is ADHD? Common Signs and Symptoms Getting Treatment Supporting School Success The Teenage Years Working Together Resources


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There's a part of our body that's only now getting mapped: the trillions of microbes, mostly bacteria, that live in our guts.
Some scientists describe this community as a previously unnoticed vital organ. It appears to play a role in how quickly we gain weight and how well we fight off disease.
A study published in the journal Science suggests that changes in this community of microbes also may cause kwashiorkor, a kind of deadly malnutrition.
If you've seen the horrifying pictures of famine — listless children with swollen bellies — you've seen the face of kwashiorkor. It's not the most common form of malnutrition, but it is the most deadly. It can hit a child quickly.
Nutritionist Rebecca Stoltzfus, who directs the international nutrition program at Cornell University, says there's something baffling about this disease. Some children get it, while others, who seem to be eating the same diet, do not.
"What causes some malnourished children to transition into kwashiorkor, remarkably, remains a mystery after all these years," she says.
Many scientists, she says, suspect that there's something going on inside the gut. But what?
Enter Jeffrey Gordon, from the med school at Washington University in St. Louis. Gordon has pioneered studies of such microbial communities — what scientists now call the microbiome — and how this microbial community affects conditions such as obesity.
Gordon decided to take on kwashiorkor. He joined forces with other scientists who were already working in Malawi, a country in southern Africa where malnutrition is common.
They decided to study twins, so that they could compare children who were genetically similar, and living in similar environments.
"We recruited a group of 300 twin pairs, identical and fraternal, and followed them through their first three years of life," he explains.
None of these twins, at the beginning, were malnourished. But when they came back for checkups, a pattern emerged in almost half of the pairs of twins: "One twin, in the pair, remained healthy, and the other twin developed either moderate or severe malnutrition."
These children immediately were treated with therapeutic food. But before they were treated, and again afterwards, for several weeks, the scientists took samples of their feces, to study the bacteria that lived in the gut.
Gordon says, the children with kwashiorkor had a different population of microbes than their healthy twins. During treatment, a healthy community of microbes started to emerge, but the improvement didn't last.
It was clear evidence that this abnormal community of microbes was associated with malnutrition. But could it actually be the cause of their disease?
Gordon wanted to see if these microbes caused similar symptoms in laboratory mice. So he transplanted samples of the microbial communities from just three pairs of twins into special strains of mice that were raised in completely sterile conditions. Their bodies contained no other microbes.
The mice got food similar to what children eat in Malawi. And in two out of three cases, the mice that got microbes from the sick children started to lose weight.
Gordon says, it suggests that down the road, we might be able to treat severe malnutrition with better food and also new intestinal microbes. "Next-generation probiotics!" he says.
Other scientists aren't ready to go that far.
First of all, it's impossible to draw many firm conclusions from observations of just two or three pairs of mice. Even though the mice lost weight, you can't say they had kwashiorkor. And finally, we're a long, long way from a probiotic treatment.
But they agreed that this hint of a link between microbes and severe malnutrition is intriguing and worth pursuing further.
Stoltzfus, meanwhile, was struck by something else in Gordon's study. "The twin study makes it all the more perplexing: How did these babies get so different?" she asks.
They were genetically the same, growing up in the same home. Yet it was generally just one child in a pair of twins who had kwashiorkor — rarely both twins together.
"How are these babies being cared for? What's going on between these twins? How are they having such different life experiences," Stoltzfus asks. Answering such questions, she says, means getting into homes and understanding how families work.
It's something we can do right away, she says. And it might prevent kwashiorkor from developing in the first place.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Helen Lacefront - Dark Blue Wig
Product Code: S03DBL
Helen Lacefront Wig is full of versatility and offers a natural look in a variety of colours and styling options. It can be parted in a variety of different ways, all while easily hiding the wig's cap and the wearer's natural hairline. The overall length of this bangless wig is 15", with a layered back perfect for styling. Spike it up, smooth it down, or fluff it up for a voluminous, dimensional appearance. Our fibers are tangle resistant, making maintenance and styling an easy job.
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Helen Lacefront - Dark Blue Wig
Cap Size: 21.5" but can stretch up to about 23"
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