Good looking blokes are horrible partners

A study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, showed that couples in which the woman is physically more attractive than the man are happier than couples in which the man is physically more attractive than the woman. Why is this? Why is it better for the couple if the woman is physically more attractive than the man? If you have been keeping score at home, the findings of this study should have come as no surprise to you. There are two different reasons why couples in which the woman is more attractive than the man are more successful and happier than couples in which the man is more attractive than the woman The Evolutionary Psychology of Marriage”), handsome men on average make bad husbands. Men can maximize their reproductive success by pursuing one of two different strategies: Seek a long-term mate, stay with her, and invest in their joint offspring (the “dad” strategy); or seek a large number of short-term mates without investing in any of the resulting offspring (the “cad” strategy). All men may want to pursue the cad strategy; however, their choice of the mating strategy is constrained by female choice. Men do not get to decide with whom to have sex; women do. And women disproportionately seek out handsome men for their short-term mates for their good genes. Even women who are already married benefit from short-term mating with handsome men if they could successfully fool their husbands into investing in the resulting offspring. The women then get the best of both worlds: Their children carry the high-quality genes of their handsome lover and receive the parental investment of their unknowingly cuckolded but resourceful husband. (In order to help the women accomplish this, evolution has designed women to be more likely to have sex with their lovers when they are ovulating and therefore fertile, and have sex with their husbands when they are not.)

Thus, handsome men get a disproportionate number of opportunities for short-term mating and are therefore able to engage in the cad strategy. Ugly men have no choice. Since women do not choose them as short-term mates, their only option for achieving any reproductive success is to find one long-term mate and invest heavily in their children -- the dad strategy.
Consistent with this logic, studies show that more attractive men have a larger number of extra-pair sex partners (sex partners other than their long-term mates). Interestingly, more attractive men have more short-term mates than long-term mates, whereas more attractive women have more long-term mates than short-term mates. Most importantly for our current purposes, handsome men invest less in their exclusive relationships than ugly men do. They are less honest with and less attentive to their partners. McNulty’s new study of newlyweds confirms this. Their data show that the more physically attractive the husbands are, the less supportive they are of their wives in their interactions.

I hasten to add that “good” and “bad” (as in the title of this post “Why handsome men make bad husbands”) are value judgments that scientists do not make. However, empirical data do demonstrate clearly that handsome men have more extra-marital affairs and are not as committed to their marriages, which many wives would undoubtedly consider undesirable. In this sense, handsome men make better lovers than husbands.

Vampire movies

Personally, I feel that the young generation and later is in general to caught up in the 'Paranormal' genre. From the Anne Rice books to the Twilight books to the House of Night, as well as the Anita Blake novels and Kim Harrison. Now, don't forget the movies like Underworld, Blade, Ultraviolet, and for some, Resident Evil. I will admit that I have read a lot of them, but I know too many kids who wish that they were a vampire, or a werewolf.

I may not be the first to say this, but if all of the paranormal things like this were real, hell yes I would offer myself up to one of the two main 'monsters'. I can tell you though, that it would not be a vampire I would want to be. Being dead, not being able to technically eat, and not being able to spend the day time with friends and family, not my cup of tea. I would rather be a wolf and furry, than have to drink blood.

The thing with it is, that I know this is not reality. My reality consists of going to work, earning money, enjoying my life, and spending time doing the things I like. Plenty of the kids I see going to school with my children, who liked most of the same things as them, take these things way to seriously. I have a friend that swears up and down that she's a vampire. While there are some people who are considered to be 'psychic' vampires, they arent at all common, and tend to keep to themselves.

All in all, yes, my kids generation and those after, take the paranormal things too seriously, and eventually they are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee, because that's not the way the real world works. Then, there will be those people who will forever live in their fantasy worlds, even after they've had kids, and grow old. So, its something that we as a people, as a world, as a culture, will have to deal with. Because it won't go away. And it won't get any better. The best we can hope for with this obsession is for it to not get worse. Of course, this is my observations, but there are far too may mystic movies about at the moment.

Tattoos

In today's society a lot of people tend to misjudge tattoos. A lot of people who see someone with a lot of tattoos will automatically think negative thoughts. Those who have tattoos are just like anyone else, except for the fact that they wish to stand out and broadcast who they are, simply because they have a strong sense of who they are. Those with tattoos aren't afraid to show them, as they put them on their body to let others know who they are and what they are about.
No matter where you look these days it's a common thing to see someone with at least one tattoo. This doesn't mean that society is dwindling in any way, nor does it mean that mankind is becoming a bunch of clones following after one leader. Tattoos have built there own reputation over the years, gaining in popularity. Over the years more and more people have decided to get them - which only goes to show the phenomenon that is tattoos.
Although most tattoos are applied with no problems at all, there are some tattoos that result in a not so good outcome. No matter how safe you may think they are, you simply can't overlook the risks involved with getting a tattoo. Tattoo artists may tell you that there are no risks involved - although this isn't the case.

Animal abusers are more likely to commit violent crimes against people

Animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people and four times more likely to commit property crimes than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. Research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, animal cruelty is considered one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.
If you break it down to its bare essentials:
"Abusing an animal is a way for a human to find power/joy/fulfillment through the torture of a victim they know cannot defend itself."
Now break down a human crime, say rape. If we substitute a few pronouns, it's the SAME THING.
"Rape is a way for a human to find power/joy/fulfillment through the torture of a victim they know cannot defend themselves."
Now try it with, say, domestic abuse such as child abuse or spousal abuse:
"Child abuse is a way for a human to find power/joy/fulfillment through the torture of a victim they know cannot defend themselves."

The line separating an animal abuser from someone capable of committing human abuse is much finer than most people care to consider. People abuse animals for the same reasons they abuse people. Some of them will stop with animals, but enough have been proven to continue on to commit violent crimes to people that it's worth paying attention to.
Virtually every serious violent offender has a history of animal abuse in their past, and since there's no way to know which animal abuser is going to continue on to commit violent human crimes, they should ALL be taken that seriously. Animal cruelty is not a harmless venting of emotion in a healthy individual; this is a warning sign... It should be looked at as exactly that. Its a clear indicator of psychological issues that can and often DO lead to more violent human crimes.
A person feels powerless and develops a warped sense of self-respect. Eventually he/she  feel strong only by being able to dominate a person or animal.

Financial crisis- the second

What caused the financial and economic crisis the first time around? Understanding what went wrong  should be important because it provides a guide to the best types of legislative and regulatory responses to use to minimize the chances of this happening again. In assessing the causes of this crisis, one clear culprit was the failure of regulators and market participants alike to fully appreciate the strength of the amplifying mechanisms that were built into our financial system. These mechanics exacerbated the boom on the way up and the bust on the way down. Only by better understanding the sources of these damaging dynamics can we construct solutions that will strengthen our financial system and make it more robust.At its most fundamental level, this crisis was caused by the rapid growth of the so-called shadow banking system over the past few decades and its remarkable collapse over the past two year. Though the shadow banking system was often credited with better distributing risk and improving the overall efficiency of the financial system, this system ultimately proved to be much more fragile than we had anticipated. Like the traditional banking system, the shadow banking system engaged in the maturity transformation process in which structured investment vehicles (SIVs), conduits, dealers, and hedge funds financed long-term assets with short-term funding. However, much of the maturity transformation in the shadow system occurred without the types of stabilizing backstops that are in place in the traditional banking sector.

The explanation of the crisis begins with the excess liquidity that came from low interest rate policies adopted by central banks in the wake of the dotcom bubble, and the additional liquidity that came from the excess of savings relative to the profitable investment opportunities in China and other developing countries. This excess liquidity found a home in mortgage markets due to the false promise of relatively low risk returns, a false promise that came from ratings agency failures, failures of risk assessment models, and the belief that we had entered a new era where housing prices would continue to increase for a substantial period of time.
When this excess liquidity was combined with an array of incentive and other problems in mortgage markets such as no recourse loans for borrowers, banks being able to remove loans from their balance sheets through securitization, the lack of transparency for some of the complex financial assets that were created, appraisers too cozy with real estate agents, CEO pay favoring short-run returns even at high risk, ratings agencies being paid by the firms issuing the assets they are rating, and so on and so on, there was, in retrospect, a clear path to disaster.
This disaster could have been prevented by a strong regulatory response, but the belief that markets would self-regulate, i.e. that firms would maintain adequate capital reserves and take other steps to ensure they weren’t exposed to excessive risk, led to a regulatory hands-off approach to the growing shadow bank industry, an industry that provided the means to inflate the housing bubble to dangerous levels. The hands-off regulatory approach was a mistake.
So what should we do try to prevent this from happening again? Fixing these incentive problems is certainly a start, as is bringing the shadow banking system under the same regulatory umbrella as the traditional system. And there are additional things we can do to reduce the extent to which shocks are magnified to a disastrous size within the system, i.e. to reduce the “amplifying mechanisms that were built into our financial system.” Along these lines, I would be in favor of limiting leverage ratios (through higher capital requirements), a key factor in how much damage a particular shock can do. The ratios we saw prior to the crisis of 30-1 or more leave the system far too vulnerable.
We also need to make sure that financial firms are not too big or too interconnected to fail. And if it turns out that somehow a troubled financial institution is more interconnected than we thought and hence systemically dangerous, despite our efforts to make sure that doesn’t happen, we need to have the plans and the legal authority in place to deal with insolvent financial institutions, something that was very much needed but missing in the present crisis.
When it comes to more specific legislative or regulatory change, those that target particular assets or particular types of financial firms (e.g. hedge funds), I think we need to be more careful. Not all financial products, even very complex financial products, are bad and sweeping with too broad a brush can do unnecessary damage. But there are some types of financial products, e.g. naked CDS’s that amount to an insurance contract between parties with no stake whatsoever in the outcome of the bet they are making, that need close scrutiny before allowing their continued use. And as a general principle, we need much more transparency in these markets and in the assets that are traded. All financial transactions should either pass through organized exchanges, or be subject to some sort of strict reporting requirements to regulators.
Anything that limits the ability of the financial industry to do the things they have done in the past, or to do whatever new things they dream up, will face substantial resistance. The financial industry will do all that it can to delay reform while it mounts a defense against it. The biggest danger of all, in my opinion, is that the delay tactics will be successful and the passage of time along with the eventual recovery of the economy will cause us to lose our will to battle the special interests that will have to be overcome to impose any sort of meaningful change on the financial industry. If the industry’s tactics are successful, then the reforms will be too watered down and too limited to do much good. The sooner we begin the difficult process of reforming the financial sector, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to impose the type of change that is needed. Too much power in one or just a few hands has never turned out to be a good thing. Unfortuntately it seems, nobody of the "big" people has really learned from what has happened.

Modern Day Slavery

African children are being sold for "modern-day slavery" in Britain by impoverished parents on promise of better life. Hundreds of young children are being sold and trafficked to Britain from Africa to be exploited as modern-day slaves. Teenage girls – including some still pregnant – are willing to sell their babies for less than ₤1,000.

Trafficker in Lagos claimed to be buying up to 500 children a year.

In Britain, these children are used to obtain illegal housing and other welfare benefits. They are exploited as domestic slaves, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day, cleaning, cooking and looking after other younger children, or put to work in restaurants and shops.

According to the report, these children are also subjected "to physical and sexual abuse, while others even find themselves accused of being witches and become victims of exorcism rites in 'traditional African churches in Britain."

They are being cynically used by adults as slave labour and to defraud the state and then when they get older and have served their purpose and no longer attract entitled to benefits they are thrown out on to the streets with no papers even to prove who they are. Left to fend for themselves, many fall into crime and the sex trade.

A recent figure by the Government's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre claimed that 330 children, many of them from Africa, have been trafficked to Britain over the past year. Many, however, believe that this is just the "tip of the iceberg".

Underage sex

A large percentage of teenagers are having underage sex, and one in 20 before they were 12, according to a survey.Nearly two thirds (60%) of teenagers have at least once chosen not to purchase condoms because they considered them expensive.
South Asian teenagers are also much less likely than Afro-Caribbean or white teenagers to get condoms from their GP and a high proportion said they had a poor service from their health clinic.

Catholic Priests

Initially the catholic priest was allowed to get married, however, because of the doctrine that sexual intercourse with a woman makes a man unclean, married priests were prohibited from celebrating the Eucharist for a full day after sex with their wives. Because the trend was to celebrate the Eucharist more and more often, sometimes even daily, priests were pressured to be celibate just to fulfill their basic religious functions and eventually they were prohibited from ever having sex with their wives. Celibacy was thus somewhat common by 300 CE, when the Spanish Council of Elvira required married bishops, priests, and deacons to permanently abstain from sex with their wives. The pressure this put on marriages was not important and the consequences for the wives would only get worse. In 1139, the Second Lateran Council officially imposed mandatory celibacy on all priests. Every priest's marriage was declared invalid and every married priest had to separate from their wives leaving them to whatever fate God had in store for them, even if it meant leaving them destitute. Of course this was an immoral thing to do to those spouses, and many clergy realized that there was little religious or traditional basis for it, so they defied that order and continued in their marriages. The final blow against priests' ability to marry came through a technicality at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The church asserted that a valid Christian marriage must be performed by a valid priest and in front of two witnesses. Banning such clandestine marriages effectively eliminated marriage for the clergy.
Opposition to ending the requirement of celibacy for Catholic priests is strong — but isn't it strange that, despite this requirement, there are so many married Catholic priests who seem to be doing as good a job as unmarried priests? If celibacy is so vital, why do married Catholic priests exist at all? This isn't something that the Roman Catholic Church is anxious to advertise. They'd much rather keep the matter quiet in order not to "confuse" rank and file Catholics. Most married Catholic priests are part of the Eastern Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern Rite, who can be found in places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and other nations along the border between Western and Eastern Christianity. These churches are under the jurisdiction of the Vatican and they recognize the authority of the pope; however, their practices and traditions are much closer to those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. One of those traditions is allowing priests to marry.Why are they married? They got married while serving as priests in other Christian denominations, usually the Anglican or Lutheran churches. If such a priest decides that he would be better off within Catholicism, he can apply to a local bishop who then submits a special application to the pope, with decisions being made on a case-by-case basis. If accepted, he is certainly not expected to get divorced or otherwise separate from his spouse, so his wife comes right along as well. This exception to the celibacy rule was created on July 22, 1980.

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Opposition to ending the requirement of celibacy for Catholic priests is strong — but isn't it strange that, despite this requirement, there are so many married Catholic priests who seem to be doing as good a job as unmarried priests? If celibacy is so vital, why do married Catholic priests exist at all? This isn't something that the Roman Catholic Church is anxious to advertise. They'd much rather keep the matter quiet in order not to "confuse" rank and file Catholics.
In this context, "confuse" seems to mean "let them know that when we say that celibacy is a requirement, we don't really mean that it is necessary." In effect, then, greater control over Catholic believers is maintained in part by ensuring that information which might cause them to question the decisions of the hierarchy is not publicized too widely. Like any organization, the Catholic Church depends upon the ability to control followers in order to ensure its survival.

Who Are Married Catholic Priests?

Most married Catholic priests are part of the Eastern Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern Rite, who can be found in places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and other nations along the border between Western and Eastern Christianity. These churches are under the jurisdiction of the Vatican and they recognize the authority of the pope; however, their practices and traditions are much closer to those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. One of those traditions is allowing priests to marry.
Some estimates place the number of married priests at around 20% of all Catholic priests in the world. This would mean that 20% of all Catholic priests are officially and legally married, even though celibacy continues to be a requirement. But marriage is not limited to priests who are part of the Eastern Catholic Churches — we can also find about 100 Catholic priests in America who are married and who are part of the Western Catholicism that comes to mind when most think of Catholicism.
Why are they married? They got married while serving as priests in other Christian denominations, usually the Anglican or Lutheran churches. If such a priest decides that he would be better off within Catholicism, he can apply to a local bishop who then submits a special application to the pope, with decisions being made on a case-by-case basis. If accepted, he is certainly not expected to get divorced or otherwise separate from his spouse, so his wife comes right along as well. This exception to the celibacy rule was created on July 22, 1980.
Thus, a current Catholic priest who wants to get married must choose between marriage and the priesthood (even though celibacy isn't an essential feature of being a priest), while a married Lutheran priest can apply to become a Catholic priest and keep his wife — he doesn't have to choose. Naturally, this causes some hard feelings for those Catholic priests who leave the clergy in order to pursue marriage; yet others are hoping that the presence of such married priests will eventually allow priests who have left to marry to eventually return.

The Amerindian genocide

In 1492, when the European invasion of the Americas was instigated by a human error that saw Christopher Columbus get lost at sea while trying to reach the Indies, and making landfall instead in the Americas, the two Continents were not, as some would have us believe, two vast and vacant land masses that were created by the Great Spirit for the specific purpose of enriching Europeans. In fact, both Continents were widely populated by humans who were citizens of hundreds of well established diverse civilizations - a statement of fact that may not set well with those who buy into the White Supremacist belief that the inhabitants of the two Continents were not civilized human beings but savage animals. Unfortunately, because of the lack of reliable statistics the number of humans that were residents of the Americas in 1492 can only be estimated. Thus, over the eons, using various methods, experts have made estimates that vary widely - a few million to a hundred million. However, I believe, due to the fact that the vast land mass was populated from the Arctic to the tip of South America, including deserts, islands, swamps, Jungles, and mountains, that a total population estimate of 100 million would not be far of.
The citizens of these Nations spoke hundreds of different languages and resided in societies that covered the spectrum - hunter gatherer to sophisticated city dwellers. Farms that fed thousands of citizens of these Nations existed, and many cities had large populations. The norms of human interaction such as marriage, divorce, social assistance, etc., were in place. Such disciplines as engineering, astrology, medicine, etc., were available for educational pursuit in many societies. Calendars, suspension bridges, and record keeping, etc., were also part of the fabric of many societies. Trading patterns between most Nations were developed and well established.
Politics ranged from democratic to autocratic. For instance the Aztecs, Inca and Maya lived under emperors, while most of the North American Nations were democratic. In fact, shortly after the invasion started, the democratic ideals of these Nations soon gave rise to the democratic aspirations of long oppressed Europeans. Proof of it lies in the fact that both the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America were modeled to a large extent after the democratic ideals and laws of Indigenous American Nations, in particular an Iroquoian law entitled “The Great Law of Peace”. The before mentioned adoption of American Indian democratic values and ideals was officially acknowledged for the first time by Caucasians when the US Congress did it by Resolution in November1988.
Over ten thousand years ago American Indian horticulturists engineered a plant they christened Maize, commonly known today as corn. In modern times the harvest of corn provides approximately 21 percent of human nutrition across the Globe. Interestingly, it took until 2010 before modern science could finally figure out how they did it. Further, American Indians were very ingenious in domesticating food sources; including corn, they domesticated nine of the most important food crops that feed and sustain the modern world’s population.
Another long ignored fact to ponder. Over five thousand years ago the Indigenous People of California, utilizing a process they had perfected to take the bitterness out of Acorns , were milling flour out of them. To assure a reliable supply of acorns they grew and groomed large orchards of Oak trees. This was at a time when many Europeans were still hanging out in caves.

GCSEs and A-levels are now far too easy

I was talking to my neighbour the other day about my daughter's GCSEs  and the A-levels of my son and she was saying how 'honestly though, they've got it much easier now - when I was at school there was no coursework so there was far more pressure on exams!' (my neighbour's in her 40s now).

I thought, well yes, more exam pressure. But, for a start coursework is very annoying. Secondly, they only did 7/8 subjects then (My daughter would love to be doing 7!! That's 4 less subjects than what she is doing/did!!). Also, far less people stayed on at college/6th form, let alone uni, in the 1970s (especially women) so there must have been less pressure on gaining good results, right?

I don't really know what life was like for my mum's generation. However, it just really annoys me when people decide to have a moan about how our kids lives are so easy when they don't even know! Maybe if they went back to school they would be very surprised?

My neighbour told m: "You must admit that GCSEs are relatively easy when compared in the days of yore, when there were things like O Levels or something of that sort. When I looked at some past O Level papers, they seemed ridiculously hard (not because I'm thick). People used to rarely achieve straight As before. But now, or last year, I remember something like 40 people getting straight As in their GCSEs in my year.
Labour has definitely dumbed down the education system to achieve his pledge of getting at least 40% of people into higher education.

Angry and Depressed About the Recession?

There is no single response to losing your fortune and your job. Rage, depression, anxiety? They seem appropriate. Sadness is another obvious one, so it's not surprising that the recession is making some people glum — even to the point of suicide. Others are more panicky and fearful. And some of us are understandably angry. Many surely feel all these emotions at once. It's easy to combine them into a toxic stew of pain and uncertainty. But it's possible to disentangle these feelings rather than be swept up in them. And it's also possible to use them to our financial benefit. Here's an easy psychological road map for getting out of this economic mess:
1. Be Sad
Sadness is terrible because, obviously, it hurts. But sadness also serves an evolutionary purpose. It helps us avoid bad choices in the future. As a team of researchers pointed out last year in Psychological Science, sadness can also stimulate something this economy desperately needs: consumer spending. The paper's authors call this the "misery-is-not-miserly effect": sad people are more likely to spend than those who aren't sad. In the experiments, people who watched a sad video (the last few minutes of the schlocky '70s tearjerker The Champ) were compared with those who watched a dry nature clip. Subjects who were induced to feel sad ended up spending far more money on bottles of water offered for purchase after the experiment than those who watched the nature video.
This doesn't mean the President should cry at a press conference. But his team should know that humans are inclined to make themselves feel better by spending money. One reason: consumer spending is a rare moral twofer. It's both selfish and kind — you experience joy from your new product, and you also help a businessperson stay employed.
2. Be Angry
Anger is usually seen as a negative emotion, but it has at least one effect that would be useful in undoing the recession. Right now, banks aren't lending enough, and too many consumers are hiding whatever liquidity they have under their mattresses. Both banks and consumers need to be a little more risky.
Feeling anger usually makes people more willing to take risks. Harvard's Jennifer Lerner has shown this in a series of papers. She and her colleagues gave random groups of people a classic risk test. The subjects were asked how they would respond to a disease outbreak expected to kill 600 people. The subjects were told that if the program were adopted, 200 people would be saved, meaning 400 would die. They were also told that if program B were adopted, there would be a one-third probability that all would live and a two-thirds probability that no one would.
Program B is obviously riskier: you might save everyone, but you would probably lose everyone. The subjects with a demonstrated propensity toward anger were much more likely to opt for program B. That may be a scary outcome when you're talking about public health, but our struggling economy needs risk takers, people willing to give up certainty for the possibility of grand success. Taking great risk to chase great reward is, arguably, the essence of capitalism; a couple of kids max out their credit cards and work late nights in a garage, and a few years later, they sell YouTube for $1.6 billion. Every few years, there are cautionary tales: the day trader who loses his house; the hedge fund that turns life savings into dust overnight. But we want risk takers to play in our economy, which is why policymakers should stoke our anger now and then. Be angry at Bernard Madoff; be angry at Richard Fuld Jr.; be angry at your 401(k) statements. Anger, as Lerner has written, is "associated with a desire to change a situation for the better."
3. At All Costs, Don't Be Scared
Fear is the enemy of action. Fear keeps us sequestered in our homes, watchful if a penny vanishes from our accounts. Lerner and her colleague Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley, showed the corrosive effects of fear in their 2001 paper "Fear, Anger and Risk," which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Those who scored high on measures of fear and anxiety were consistently less willing to take risks during games and more likely to predict negative outcomes in real-life situations. The fearful, in other words, are far more pessimistic. And it's a short line from pessimism to withdrawal.
We may not like feeling angry or sad, and it may be easier to relax in a warm bath of isolating fear. But anger and sadness prompt action, and that's something the country needs. This may even be useful advice for the President: Barack Obama won his victory partly because he has a steady demeanor. But he may need to encourage more raw emotion if he wants to jump-start this economy.

Is being a teenager just about looks?

Today's teenagers are struggling to cope with the expectations imposed by media images and peer pressure, the reality of low-paid work and a sexist culture.One girl for instance is too shy to speak above a whisper, but she wants to be a policewoman or a nurse. Her friend is studying to be a plumber. The most chatty of the group, is having a problem narrowing her options. "I want to be a firefighter, but I also want to be a paramedic and a midwife," she says. "The trouble is, there's just too much choice."
Slumped in the plastic chairs of a community centre, shovelling fistfuls of free sweets from the coffee bar into their mouths, the group of girls are all members of Aim High, a dance troupe set up by one of the girls and her, a 17-year-old, two years ago after they got in trouble with the police.
"My sister and I got into a car with some blokes one night and ended up getting home really late, so we told our parents we'd been snatched off the street by stranger" She half giggles, but flicks her hair over her face and refuses to look up. Before the girls knew it, their parents had called the police and a kidnap investigation had been set up.
When the shamefaced teenagers owned up, they were cautioned with wasting police time and asked why they had done it. "It was because we were bored," says the girl, who is 17. "There's nothing for us to do outside of school. My mum had youth clubs, sports stuff and drama when she was young, but we've got nothing."
With the support of the police, the Commission for Youth Enterprise and a few local groups, Aim High grew quickly from six dancers to 55. It now holds two classes a week, for young people aged eight to 18.
"It's completely changed me," says the girl. "I'm not an idiot any more, for a start. I've got plans and stuff I want to do with my life."
The assumption nowadays is that girls' lives have dramatically improved in recent decades. After all, compared with previous generations they have undreamt-of opportunities in terms of freedom and educational achievement.
How, then, to explain recent studies that have caused a ­groundswell of concern among experts? For, far from seeing the world as their oyster, it is becoming increasingly clear that teenage girls are a stand-alone demographic in crisis – a group about which much is assumed but little is known.
The first study that caused experts to question the quality of girls' lives was published late last year: a highly credible look at them mental health of teenage girls.
It concluded – to the surprise of academics, experts and politicians alike – that young girls were deeply depressed. It was found that, while the 15-year-old boys that were spoke to had experienced a small increase in psychological distress, the number of girls of the same age reporting mental issues from mild anxiety to more serious symptoms had jumped sharply.
The results were alarming enough: the incidence of common mental disorders including anxiety, depression and panic attacks among girls had increased from 19% to 32% (the increase for boys was just 2% to 15%).
But a study a few years later revealed an even greater leap. Girls across all social strata were now reporting mental disorders at a rate of 44%. Over a third admitted "they felt constantly under strain". Those who "felt they could not overcome their difficulties" had more than doubled to 26%. The number who said they "thought of themselves as worthless" had trebled in just 9 years from 5% to 16%.

The girls can talk endlessly about the alcohol-fuelled adventures they have had over the years, the fights they have started, the brushes with the police and the friends who have become pregnant.
"All the girls I knew at primary school were really nice and normal, then we go to secondary school and they all went a bit mad," says one. "From 12 or 13 years old, most of the girls I know just talk about sex, alcohol, sex, drugs and sex again. It's like it's this big competition and it gets everyone pretty stressed."
Her experiences echo a vast study of the well-being of youngsters across 30 industrialised nations. The recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report ranked Britain's teenage girls as among the worst off for health, lifestyles and school standards relative to public spending levels.
The report found that "risky behaviour" among girls – described as a combination of drinking, smoking and teenage pregnancy – was more acute in Britain than in any of the other nations apart from Turkey and Mexico.
Teenage pregnancy is far higher in the UK than the average across the OECD's survey. The UK has the fourth highest teenage pregnancy rate after Mexico, Turkey and the United States. In Britain, more than 23 teenage girls per 1,000 gave birth in 2005.
So what's going on? Experts have said it is highly significant that this slew of research has coincided with two fundamental social upheavals: the period in which girls began to outperform boys academically, and the obsession with celebrity culture and the pressure on younger and younger girls to become sexualised.
It is hard for those brought up in the 1980s to understand the world in which young girls are now having to develop their sexual and social identities. The worst that young women of the previous generation had to contend with was a stolid, lingering patriarchy, a sniggering, Benny Hill-style of humour that was obviously already on its last legs, and Page 3 girls; a lewdness that today seems more quaint than offensive.
The sexual politics girls find themselves confronting today couldn't be more different. The sex industry has moved from the margin to the mainstream. Girls are besieged by images that glorify a pornographic view of women. There is a lap-dancing club in every town centre, six-year-old girls are bought fashion accessories adorned with the Playboy logo, Shakira writhes on all fours in a cage on MTV.
David Cameron said children – and young girls, in particular – were having their ­childhood stolen by a "growing, unnecessary and inappropriate ­commercialisation and sexualisation that is beginning far too young".
But the the sexualisation of the young has already wrought ­irreparable damage on a generation of young girls.
Feminism's own language of empowerment has been turned against itself. The language of empowerment has been harnessed to confuse sexual liberation with sexual objectification. The impact has been insidious and profound.
Girls today are growing up in an atmosphere of unapologetic crudity. Stripping is widely cited as a method of empowerment. A student claiming to be from either Oxford or Cambridge University published her online sex diaries last week, claiming to be, "unapologetically and unquestionably, a closet nympho". It is an era of New Promiscuity, where emotion-free sex is both expected and celebrated. We are, living in a culture defined by pornographic sensibilities, where young women are willing participants in online "games" like Assess My Breasts.
A survey of teenage girls found that more than half would consider being "glamour" models – posing almost naked for men's magazines – and a third saw Jordan as a role model.
It is no coincidence,  that anorexia nervosa, the disorder of pathological self-starvation, is on the rise, with an 80% increase in hospital admissions among teenage girls over the last decade.

What we think of as 'normal' now in the way girls relate to their bodies would have been considered serious cause for concern 20 years ago. It's to do with the aspects of celebrity culture that are proffered to them – the post-Thatcherite notions of success and money as a fast track to happiness; the rapid growth of the beauty and style industries, which prey on teenage girls; the hypersexualisation of the culture; and the ambitions of the parents, who want their daughters to feel the world is their oyster."
The impact on girls struggling to comprehend both themselves and the world around them is not hard to predict. Who, after all, wouldn't feel confused and unhappy being raised in this brave new world that demands super-skinny, super-sexy and super-brainy all at the same time?
A 17-year-old from North London talks of how her string of A and A* GCSE results didn't seem enough for her parents. "They just seemed to take my exam success for granted," she said. "It was like, 'Well, you're a girl, of course you're going to do well.' I feel like I have to do more than do well at school and be a nice person to please them, but I'm not sure what else I can do. I sometimes think it might be a good idea to go off the rails for a bit, just so they do appreciate me."

Nurse' addiction

Addicts need help, not self-righteousness. Most people would agree with this. But this seems to be different if the addict is a nurse. It’s a moral issue, right? When a nurse starts abusing a drug she/he is a bad person, making a bad choice, and should be punished. After all they are nurses and should know better. At the very least, they should be able to quit on the spot. Nobody wants to employ an addicted nurse, so  the nurse’s job gets taken away—without seeing them through recovery. Why are addicted nurses treated so harshly?
There is a mistaken belief that someone can stop using if they really want to. And in cases where nurses suspect or know something is wrong, they don’t know what to do. They’re not sure if they should confront their coworker, but they would feel like a traitor who could cause the nurse to lose his/her job, if they let someone know.

When a nurse is discovered to be an addict, other nurses struggle with bitterness and anger about having been manipulated. They’re not ready to jump to an addict’s rescue.

There is also the “family secret” mentality. It’s important to keep the image of the “healthy, happy, functioning” facility/unit/staff intact. Many institutions like to pretend addiction doesn’t happen in their establishment. But this cycle of enabling puts patients in jeopardy--and the addicted nurse becomes increasingly ill.
But is this right. Are nurses different to "normal" addicts?

Animal tests - necessary or not?

Many studies published in the scientific literature comparing drug side effects in humans and animals have found animal tests to be less predictive than tossing a coin. One review of human-animal correlation in drugs that had been withdrawn because of adverse reactions found that animal tests predicted the human side effects only six out of 114 times.

Hundreds of drugs to treat strokes (eg, Cerestat, MaxiPost, Zendra, Lotrafiban, gavestinel, nimodipine, clomethiazole) have been found safe and effective in animal studies and then injured or killed patients in clinical trials. Cigarette smoke, asbestos, arsenic, benzene, alcohol and glass fibres are all safe to ingest, according to animal studies. Of 22 drugs shown to have been therapeutic in spinal cord injury in animals, not one is effective in humans. Of 20 compounds known not to cause cancer in humans, 19 do cause cancer in rodents. Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, was delayed for more than 10 years by misleading results from experiments in rabbits, and would have been shelved forever had it been tested on guinea pigs, which it kills. Well, this is what some articles say. However, others say exactly the opposite. After all, all alternatives like a mathematical formula, a computer simulation, or cells growing in tissue culture are even more unlike humans than are laboratory animals, yet such models are often successfully used in research. And the claim that no species can be used as a model for a different species is also invalid. If this were the case, a veterinarian needing to treat an exotic animal such as a tiger, would have no drugs or anaesthetics available, because none have been developed in tigers for tigers. In fact, there are a wide range of anaesthetics, drugs and antibiotics that are available to zoo vets, provided that they are used with care. There are species differences in response, but these are relatively insignificant. The fact is that the continued use of animals is essential both to maintain human health by the production of vaccines and pharmaceuticals, and to support research into the many serious diseases that still plague society. What animal welfare organisations should be doing, and many are doing, is to develop alternatives that do not also put human lives at risk. The enormous contributions that animal research has made to our understanding of human biology and the development of medicine have been discussed elsewhere. All good scientists now accept that every animal experiment must be scientifically justified and the cost to the animal in terms of pain and/or distress assessed. If the estimated cost to the animal is large in relation to the potential benefits to humans, then the research should not be done. The use of animals to test cosmetics, for example, is already banned in the UK. The aim of this article is to show how animals (and alternatives) can be used to model humans, even though they may differ from humans in many ways.

Strauss-Kahn Rape or Set-up

The case seemed to be clear. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the successful and powerful official tried to rape a poor chamber maid and to escape the US straight after. Thankfully he got caught a the border and would now be prosecuted. However,  this does not seem to be such a straight forward case after all. The chamber maid has a very colourful past and seems to be a criminal herself. She even tried to discuss money issues just a couple of hours after she went through the ordeal. So, who is right here - the people who think most rape cases are set ups and especially famous men are the victims of woman who accuse them of a terrible crime - or is it the people who are convinced he raped the woman and probably many more, but will get away with it because he is rich and powerful. How many rape cases are actually set up by silly woman and how many are real rapes which do not even get as far as being looked at in court, because there is no real proof. I personnally think there are a lot more real rape cases not being reported or thrown out at court - but because of a few stupid incidents of false claims it looks different.

Violent protests or moaning in front of the television

It seems to get from bad to worse at the moment when it comes to cuts in the UK. While normal people have to tighten their belts more and more, the rich seem to get richer. This causes a lot of demonstrations and protests at the moment and some of them turn violent. However, is this really bad. I mean, nobody likes smashed windows but do peaceful protests really change something or is this an illusion. Do politicans really listen to people or just secretley laugh about us. Is the only real solution violence to make them wake up or does it make things worse?

Japan - one in a lifetime disaster or the end of nuclear power stations?

The news have been talking about the recent disaster in Japan with no end in the last couple of weeks. But somehow the attention seems to shift away from the thousands of dead and homeless caused by the earthquake and the tsunami and concentrate on the potential danger of a nuclear power plant. Is this fear understandable and they right way of thinking, or do the media blow this out of proportion? Is it not more important to think of all the victims of the earthquake and the fact they are still suffering and do not have basic things like food and water? Even though the dangers and advantages of a nuclear power station are well-known, somehow lots of people seem to think of it more like some alien invention, that cannot be controlled and should be switched off as soon as possible. But can the huge amount which is produced this way really be replaced?

Women working full-time or being housewifes

Most people will agree, that women in today's days are just as good in their day to day jobs as men and should be given just the same chances. However, this changes when women become mothers. There is no subject that causes as much controversy like the question if a mum should stay at home or go to work if she wants to. I am not talking about the cases where the mother has to work, because there is simply not enough money or there is no man to earn the money. I simply mean is it a disadvantage for the child or children if the mother goes to work full-time shortly after the birth, simply because she wants to and does not want to depend financially on the man in the house. Well, there is no proof, that children who had working mothers do worse in life than children with housewifes as mothers. Of course it is nice for the men as well, if he does not have to shoulder all the financially responsibility on his own.

Banker versus Nurses

A subject that has been in the media quite often recently is bonuses and cuts. Bonuses for banker and cuts in the NHS health sector. Especially when it comes to staff, people had to accept a lot of negative news. Most people would agree nurses are more important than banker and therefore should be paid better. They look after the old and sick and get paid peanuts for the work they do.
Banker – on the other hand –do nothing or at least not much and get paid fortunes. But is this actually true? Fact is nurses are needed and should get paid better. But are banker really that bad. I think the two cannot be compared. Nurses work for the society and are mainly paid by the government (us). Banker work for the private sector. As long as both do the job they are meant to do, it will be a fact that Banker earn more money as they simply create profit for the company they work for. Nurses on the other hand create moral values but no monetary ones. As long as a nurse is valued by society and can make a decent living with her or his wage things are ok. But in recent years this has gone wrong. Banker have made huge mistakes which affected everybody and have not been punished for it. Nurses had their wages cut and staff have lost their job even though they did not do anything wrong. Fact is there will always be people who want to become nurses, as it is a satisfying job – providing the work and working hours are doable and the money is ok. Nobody would become a banker, if they would not get paid what the get paid. Believe it or not – banker work hard. It is no rarity to work 70 or more hours per week. Also, (decent) bankers are needed in a modern society. But they should have to take responsibility for their mistakes just as nurses have to. This means banks who had to be bailed out by the taxpayer should not pay bonuses to their stuff until they paid back the money they borrowed and nurses who are desperately needed should not loose their job. It could all be so easy…

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya - democracy or oil?

It had to happen that way. The collapse of systems in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya was only a matter of time. And these people have a right to enjoy freedom and democracy. No matter who you speak to in the UK at the moment about the current events – everyone seems to agree to this or similar statements. However, if we look a bit closer at the current events and the consequences for us one comes to the following result. We have failed. We sold our weapons and our surplus products, our highly-subsidized food to these despots. We fished from their waters and brought them into dependency from "Western democracies". We exploited Africa and still do today. We curse the despots and look with one eye on the fuel pumps. The dead in the stricken countries are secondary. We are concerned but only about the prices at the pumps. And we think hopefully all theses people will not come to us. This fear drives us. We are not interested in the least in creating democracy in these countries, but how we can get their oil and raw materials cheaply. Is it so or are we better ? Can we accept higher oil prices and more foreign people in our country in the name of democracy or are we really so selfish? Is oil all that matters, even for ordinary people?

Environment – Global Warming

I have always been a believer in man-made global warming until I read a bit about the subject. There are actual two opinions. But which one is the right one. The first one is the following:
We are at the end of an "interglacial" period. which means shortly before the beginning of a new Ice Age, which will probably begin in 2000-3000 and last for  a few thousand years like the last one. Within this "intermediate phase" fluctuations of up to + / - 4 ° C are completely normal and have already taken place several times in the history of evidence - before man had the capacity to blow fossil-bearing enriched CO2 into the atmosphere .

These temperature fluctuations are historically and biologically detectable (eg the growth of certain particularly temperature-sensitive plants) and have led to historical events (more frequent crop failures, particularly cold or warm winter or summer, etc). Also, the CO2 content has changed. The idea that the "global warming" only exists, since man can burn oil is a myth. That is not to say that we should not use our resources  in a sensible way. Pollution still exists. The only thing we should learn is that we do not harm primarily the earth if we mess up our environment, but us. The "big climate" will “move” completely unaffected by what we do now with our world into the next ice age in the next few thousand years.

The second theory is, of course the more known one:

Man influences the future climate with its behaviour.  The use of oil and therefore the creation of too much C02 influence the climate in a negative way. Scientific evidence has shown, that the climate in the 20^th century has changed a lot quicker, than in the past. Since man uses oil in an excessive way  - climate catastrophes have increased on a high level and will lead to a change of climate world wide in the near future.

So, what is the correct answer?

Religion

So what else have you got, if your pension is not as big as you would like it to be and you have to work longer than you wanted? Of course, religion!!!

God, has a reason for everything. He is there for you and even if you feel rubbish-he knows why. But maybe he is a she or even an it?

Also, how can you know what religion is the right one. There are so many and they all claim to be the one and only. Choices over choices…

What happens if you go with the wrong one and god does not like it. What if you pray five times a day and go to a mosque or a church, but he/she/it just wants you to be a nice person instead and does not give a… how often you pray, what you wear or eat?

What makes people think god is interested in what people wear and say, considering his day job is to look after millions of people, animals, mountains, planets…

And if he does, Why did he give you a brain which is able to create doubt?

Pensions

As we all know, pensions are there to protect us in old age. There are various types. People who never earn a lot of money will rely mainly on the state pension. This is of course not a lot. Other people will use a private or a pension provided by their employer. Let's be honest - we all want to retire as early as possible without loosing money. And being 60 years old, to do this is probably a good age. But what has happened in the last couple of years? Pension age has risen and risen. At the moment it is 65. But in countries like Germany it is already 67. Do we honestly believe it will stay at 65? No, rubbish. One day we will officially work until we are about 70 and just drop dead. Well, at least that's a comment I heard very often in the past few months. So, what is the solution. Yes, we do become older. But does someone really believe, people will be employed until they are 70? The age we can offically retire does not matter so much, if employers refuse to employ people above a certain age. And this is exactly the problem we have. Pension age is not the problem. The respect of the experience of older people and being willling to keep them in jobs is the big issue.

Provocative subjects

Most people have read something at one point in their lives, which they did not agree with or felt quite affended by. There are so many subjects and comment which some people feel pretty relaxed about and others cannot tolerate. Some problems can be solved by talking about it and others can’t.  And some have been talked about hundreds of years ago and are still the same. I would like to make people start thinking about differents things and will therefore just write about a different “provocative” subject in every new post. Let me think, what would be the best one to start with……? Ah, I know, what about pension. Yes, this seems to be a good one. people are quite worried about it at the moment. So, let’s talk about Pensions.