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How to Protect Yourself from a Dog Attack

From an abcnews.com article of the same title:

What Not to Do

  • Take flight. Don't run away from the dog, because it triggers the dog's prey drive. Once that happens, the dog will want to turn and chase you.
  • If the dog catches you and starts attacking, don't hit it. The more you fight back, the more the struggle feeds into the dog's defensive drives and the more he wants to kill that prey and take it home.

What to Do

  • If you are approached by a vicious dog, relax and be as still as possible.
  • Drop your head so you don't make eye contact, but maintain an upright position.
  • Cover you ears and press your elbows to your sides. This way, if the dog bites you, your ears, eyes, rib cage and vital organs are protected.
  • If the dog grabs your arm or your leg, try to remain motionless. If the dog thinks you're dead, it should let go of you.

How to Rescue a Child

  • Grab an object and start hitting the dog so you can redirect it. You can also grab the dog's "scruff" - the area on the sides of the dog's neck. This should control the dog's head and keep it from swinging around to bite you.
  • You can go one step further and grab the dog's Adam's apple and choke him.
  • Do not pull the dog off the child. That can rip the skin right off the child.

When bark comes to bite, I really wonder how many folks who know these guidelines would put them into practice. They make sense in response to a dog's instincts, but people have instincts too…and they're contrary to these guidelines.

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Abortion's dead poets society

From an opinion piece of the same title by Kathleen Parker, originally printed in the Orlando Sentinel and reprinted here in the Chicago Tribune:

Britain's Sunday Times reported that more than 20 babies had been aborted in advanced stages of gestation between 1996 and 2004 in England because scans showed they had clubfeet. Had these parents never heard of Dudley Moore, the British actor who also had a clubfoot? Another four babies were aborted because they had extra digits or webbed fingers, according to the same story. In 2002 a baby was aborted at 28 weeks because of a cleft palate. Last year, a 6-month-old fetus was aborted when ultrasound revealed that part of a foot was missing, according to the Times. One doesn't have to believe in the supernatural to wonder what might have been. . Since abortion was legalized in 1973, estimates are that some 50 million of them have been performed in the U.S. Of that number, relatively few have been owing to fetal defects, compared with lifestyle concerns, according to a 2004 Alan Guttmacher Institute study. While it may be intellectually easier to justify aborting a fetus in cases of severe abnormalities, terminating a pregnancy because of easily corrected imperfections should disturb our sleep. If parents can be moved to abort their babies because of smallish flaws, how long before designer babies become the norm--or abortions are performed when babies have the wrong eye color or are the wrong sex? The list of accomplished people with birth defects, meanwhile, is long. Two born with clubfeet are Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic champion figure skater, and U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), who helped draft the 14th Amendment and the Reconstruction Act. Imagine what our cultural conversation would have been without Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist philosopher--a hunchback with uneven legs. Or Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, the 17th Century Mexican dramatist, who also was a hunchback and wrote some 20 dramas, including "La Verdad Sospechosa." Translated, "The Suspicious Truth" is an apt title for the argument that reproductive choice always trumps all other considerations, or that any and all birth defects conscribe a child to a life not worth living. If we don't want to grant life to those afflicted with small deformities, where do we set the bar for "good enough"? More important, perhaps, what is the cost to our humanity--not to mention the poet's soul--when the imperfect have no place among the living?

Passive TV viewing related to children's sleeping difficulties

From a press release of the same title from the University of Helsinki:

A recent Finnish randomized population-based study shows that TV-viewing, and particularly exposure to adult-targeted programs, such as current affairs programs, TV series and police series and movies, markedly increases the risk of sleeping difficulties in 5-6 year old children. Also passive exposure to TV increases sleeping difficulties. Questionnaires concerning TV viewing, sleep disturbances, and psychiatric symptoms were administered to 321 parents of children aged 5-6 years, representing the typical urban population in three university cities in Finland. The results of the study have been published recently in the Journal of Sleep Research. Main results:

  1. All the families that participated in the study had at least one TV set. In 21% of families, there was a TV set in the children's room. On average, the TV was switched on for 4,2 h a day. Children actively watched TV for a mean of 1,4 h a day and were passively exposed to TV 1,4 h a day.
  2. Both active TV viewing and passive TV exposure were related to shorter sleep duration and sleeping difficulties, especially sleep-wake transition disorders and overall sleep disturbances.
  3. There was also a clear association between the contents of actively viewed TV programs and the sleep problem scores. Watching adult targeted programs, such as current affairs programs, police series, movies, series, was related to an increased frequency of various sleeping difficulties.
  4. Watching TV alone was related to sleep onset problems.
  5. Watching TV at bedtime was also associated with various sleeping problems, especially sleep-wake transition disorders and daytime somnolence.
  6. Particularly high passive exposure to TV (>2,1 h/day) and viewing adult-targeted TV programs were strongly related to sleep disturbances. The association remained highly significant when socio-economic status, family income, family conflicts, the father's work schedule, and the child's psychiatric symptoms were controlled for statistically. The adjusted odds ratios were 2.91 (95% CI 1.03-8.17) and 3.01 (95% CI 1.13-8.05), respectively. There was also an almost significant interaction between passive TV exposure and active viewing of adult programs (AOR 10.14, 95% CI 0.81-127.04, p=0.07). By contrast, active TV viewing time and the viewing of children's programs were not correlated with sleep problems.

Rift Opens Among Evangelicals on AIDS Funding

Here's another article describing how Dobson is letting his light shine by erecting road blocks in the path of the global battle against AIDS. Right, James, of course abstinence is the best (only?) option to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa!?!

Good news, bad news for tube-watching tots

tv.JPGFrom an AP article of the same title from MSNBC.com:

The reality: There is little clear data on how TV affects child development at any age, much less before age 2 - and even less research on computers for tots, video games and other now-pervasive electronic media... "Content does matter. Television designed to enhance cognitive development does so," said University of Massachusetts psychologist Daniel Anderson, referring to the well-studied preschool shows "Sesame Street" and "Blue's Clues." But, "other kinds of TV or too much TV may interfere with cognitive development," he warned. "Most immediately, we need to know the effects of very early media exposure." The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under 2 shouldn't watch TV at all, and that older kids should watch no more than two hours a day. Yet the Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2003 that two-thirds of children under 2 were watching TV an hour a day plus spending almost another hour on computer or video games. Almost half of 4- to 6-year-olds had TVs in their bedrooms. And after age 8, "screen time" - TV plus computers and other electronic media - soared to 6.5 hours a day, on average... There's little disagreement that violent programs are bad for kids, leading to fear and aggressive behavior, and that TV in a kid's bedroom leads to sleep disorders. Other issues are confusing. A few studies suggest that baby or preschool TV might lead to attention disorders, because the rapid pace of programming alters brain development _ while other studies directly contradict that... Among the suggestions offered Monday:

  • No adult TV when youngsters are in the room. Rachel Barr of Georgetown University says parents think babies aren't paying attention, but research showed that when "Jeopardy!" was on in the background, tots' play was distracted.
  • If you need to pop in a video for the under-2 set while you cook dinner, talk them through it. "Look, that's a ball, just like your ball." "Oh, see the kitty - what does a kitty say?" It helps their comprehension, Barr's research shows.

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