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Forget Resolutions, Let Data Points Shape Your New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:50:00 +0000

In case you haven't heard, there are some really geeky people scattered around the world who have founded a new version of self-involvement called QS:Quantified Self, subtitled "Self Knowledge Through Numbers". They meet at conferences, have plenty of web presence, wear gadgets like the FitBit, get their own blood tests and body scans, and are reading some very heavy, scary-sounding books.

So what? you say. I weigh myself, know my way to and from work even without GPS assistance, and can name a few food groups. What could these undoubtedly preoccupied techies have that I don't already have, or might actually need?

Well, they have an accumulation of data points about themselves, and you probably don't. If you'll give me a few minutes of your time, I'll take a shot at explaining why this could be a very good, even a transformative, thing - collecting data points, that is.

Data points are just individual bits of information, in this case, about you, like your weight, your height, your time walking a mile on a treadmill, the number of hours you sleep at night, how many Advil you take each day, how many times a month you go to a yoga class. A data point is anything that you can quantify.

Maybe you have kept a food log, matching calories in to weight lost or gained over time. You might have drawn marks on the doorway with a name and date to record your kid's growing up. In those limited instances you've been dabbling with QS.

But what if you went big in 2012 and made a commitment to keep track (quantify) half a dozen or more data points about yourself in an Excel file or on a piece of paper for the next 6 months or a year? It's just between you and the paper, no need to go public (unless you want to and there are websites where you can do just that). You pick the data, you pick the time intervals (although daily is the most interesting IMO).

Here's some possibilities:
1. Weight
2.   Activity (steps walked, or just 1,2,3 for levels of activity, 3 being very active for you)
3.   Allergy pills consumed
4.   Hours of sleep
5.   Pain pills consumed
6. Calories estimated
7.   Carbohydrates estimated
8.   Alcoholic drinks consumed
9.   Respiratory infections/migraines/reflux - whatever your have that comes and goes
10. Mood (give it a number)
11. Hours in front of a computer screen
12. ???

Here's a simple example using an Excel file and 4 data points per day, weight (with a 0 removed so that 115 becomes 15.5), pain = Advil per day, food (with some 0's removed so that 1500 calories becomes 15), and exercise (given an arbitrary value in the 30s which puts the data line above the others to make it easier to read the trends - 10 couch potato, 30 sedentary, 38 treadmill and weights).

After 3 months of collecting data points you might learn something interesting about yourself: You take less pain medication when you exercise more; you tend to push the activity a few days and then take a week off before you start to feel like a sloth, and then you overdo it; you eat a lot on weekends. Who knows what you will discover!

And that's the point of the data points. Discovering what the small things that make up your life mean, how they interact, how they might be influencing each other, how you could tweak your life and make it better just by becoming aware of something that's happening right under your nose.

And as techie as this all sounds, it has an interesting resonance with another kind of self improvement you might already be familiar with - being present, being in the now, being aware of everyday things, self care, self-regulation, to name a few buzzwords. Data point collecting fits very nicely with any and all the above.

For more, much much more:
Quantified Self
Cake Health Free Healthcare Expense Management
Fitocracy
Tech resources for health
Why people track themselves

Happy 2012 or whatever year it is where you live. Thank you for sharing your time and comments!

(Robin's chart, at the head of this article, which I included just to show you another chart, comes from a collection of QS devotees profiled by Canada's National Post)

Wishing You Bright Lights For Your Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:32:00 +0000

Happy end of year celebrations and holidays to WNL readers around the world. It has been a pleasure to connect with you throughout the year, and I'm looking forward to a wonderful New Year for us all.

What Did Dorothy Sandusky Know?

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:49:00 +0000

Dorothy Sandusky

According to Grand Jury testimony, gathered in a long secret investigation, Jerry Sandusky is quite possibly a pedophile who used his talent as a football coach at Penn State to set up the perfect system of unrestricted access to vulnerable young boys. Apparently there were people who knew things, there was a trail of victims, and there were investigations of suspicious activity before the big blow up and arrests last month. But what about his wife, Dorothy? What did she know? Is it possible that she knew less than anyone?

WNL has been looking around for some answers to this question, or at least more information. Here's what we came up with:

1. Not for the first time, a UK paper, in this case The Mail OnLine, asks the most direct questions about Dorothy Sandusky, and points out that some of the incidents of abuse documented by the Grand Jury occurred in the family home. There's lots of good reporting here, with this conclusion:

"There is no suggestion whatsoever in the indictment that Mrs Sandusky was aware of her husband's sexual relations with Victim 1 or any of the other seven victims.

Experts have suggested that she and her children could well have been kept in the dark.

'[Abusers are] very good at hiding it from everyone,' clinical social worker Farlie Chastain told WRCB TV. 'Very good at seducing the child and manipulating the child not to tell.'

However, Chastain, who counsels sexually abused children and teenagers at Parkridge Valley, Tennesee and at Foxus Psychiatric Services in Tennessee Valley, adds: 'I've seen it both ways, in which the family knows and is in denial.'"

2. Here's an insider perspective from The Daily Beast, headlined "Seven years ago, Darlene Ellison’s charismatic ex-husband was arrested for sex-related crimes he hid for over a decade. Now, she reveals how Jerry Sandusky’s wife may have been kept in the dark as well."

Darlene, who has become a nationally known children's advocate and has written a book about her unique point of view as the unsuspecting wife of a pedophile, "The Predator Next Door", includes this paragraph in her article:

"I have never met Dorothy Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky’s wife of four decades, who goes by “Dottie,” nor have I met any of their six grown, adopted children. Yet I feel like I’ve walked in the very painful shoes I imagine they’re walking in today. In the wake of the Penn State allegations, many people are publicly wondering, “Did Dottie know?” And “how could she not know?” I’m sure people wondered that about me, because I wondered it about myself. While I would never be so bold as to presume what Sandusky’s loved ones knew, it seems entirely plausible to me that he was living a “secret life” right under their noses; that he took great pains to hide his alleged abusive behaviors from those closest to him. Sex offenders’ families are often collateral damage to their crimes."

3. Darlene Ellison is the perfect person to raise the issue of one partner having a fully-developed secret life within a marriage, something which in its more traditional cheating/mistress/second family manifestations is part of the dark underbelly of marriage we all know about. When your best friend tells you she's discovered her husband has a long-time mistress and a love child, it's perfectly believable that she didn't know.

Isn't it reasonable to push the boundary a bit and include wives of serial pedophiles and even serial murderers in the "didn't know" category? It's still a secret life - just a bigger, more shocking secret.

4. Consider the now well-documented case of serial sexual murderer Herb Baumeister and his wife Julie. Books, articles, TV shows have been made about the Baumeister murders of young men in the Indianapolis area in the 1990s. All of them conclude that Julie didn't know anything. Here's a summary of the case from People Magazine in 1996.

For a complete rundown, CourtTV offers a virtual book on the mystery, the investigation, and about Herb and Julie's life together. Enough time has passed and enough energy has been expended on the Baumeister murders to allow a level of disclosure that will be a long time coming in the Sandusky matter. Insights like the following may give us who are trying to understand how all this happened in the context of a normal-appearing marriage a place to hang while we wait:

Behind the bedroom door, there was little pacificity to their marital problems. "Julie later admitted that she and Herb had engaged in sex only six times in the 25 years they were married," detective [Virgil] Vandagriff [the private detective who first connected the murders to one perpetrator] explains. And, according to authors Weinstein and Wilson, Julie never saw her husband nude. "Herb dressed in the bathroom (and) when it came time to go to bed he would always put on pajamas (slipping) between the sheets." He was ashamed of his skinny body.

"That should have been a tip-off to Julie that something was wrong," Vandagriff adds, reflecting again on those "danger signals" of bad, bad things to come. "But, she was an over-trusting woman who, despite their problems, put complete stock in her husband’s actions."

Julie, probably in trying so hard to reconcile their differences, threw her mental state into a complete dependency on Herb. "I think deep inside she chose not to see the signals," Vandagriff continues.

WNL: I'm thinking that the time for outrage and indignation has passed, and it's time to start the long process of trying to understand what happened and why. What are your thoughts?

PS: Syracuse Coach Bernie Fine's wife Laurie DID know he was abusing young boys in the basement of their home. Here's the tape one victim made of his conversation with her about the abuse, about Bernie, and her theories on how Bernie worked his secret life. This scandal is just getting rolling.

What Does It Mean to be No One?

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:53:00 +0000

Our lives are sprinkled with anxieties about identity theft. But what if you have no identity, none, none at all? That's an accurate description of 1.2 Billion people currently living in the Asian subcontinent of India. They live and move without trace from one end of the country to the other, and speak more than 300 languages and dialects. They don't worry about identity theft, but, and the great majority, let us keep in mind, are women and children, do worry about the reality that with no verifiable identity they can't get government benefits, a bank account in which to deposit their meager pay, insurance, or credit.

Along comes Aadhaar (which means "the foundation"), a massive unique identification project which combines fingerprinting and iris scans of the 1.2 billion and proposes to link them to unique identification numbers which can then be used for all the practical purposes to which we put birth certificates and photo IDs.

This amazing visionary project is in progress as we speak thanks to the rising tide of technological devices and software, the organizational and motivating skills of billionaire Nandan Nilekani, nicknamed the "Bill Gates of Bangalore", and the Indian government, not known for it's ability to get anything accomplished. Here's Nilekani speaking about India in a way you may not have heard before.

The full story of India's groundbreaking Universal Identification Project is laid out, with the wit and intelligence I've come to expect, by Vince Beiser and "Wired Magazine". Not only is this article morally uplifting and intellectually stimulating enough to enhance your holiday season, "Wired" deserves kudos for providing top-notch journalism without selling your eyes to a multitude of advertisers by making you click through page after page just to follow the thoughts. Nor do they, like "Time Magazine", follow every paragraph with a link to some other article (gotta sell those page views), using an algorithm that makes "suggestions" that can only be described at times as bizarre.

Back to the point of this post. While it may be fairly obvious how having the ability to get a bank account, get credit, etc. can benefit India's outsiders, here's what their inclusion in the economy has to offer India.

Today, less than half of Indian households have a bank account. The rest are “unbanked,” stuck stashing whatever savings they have under the mattress. That means the money isn’t gaining interest, either for its owner or for a bank, which could be loaning it out. India’s impoverished don’t have much to save—but there are hundreds of millions of them. If they each put just $10 into a bank account, that would add billions in new capital to the financial system.

WNL: I'm thinking, if the Government of India can partner with a techno genius to connect 1.2 billion citizens with a reliable form of universal information in a massive database, why can't the US do the same? Screams about Antichrist and totalitarian takeovers will be heard of course. But think how many government and commercial interactions could be streamlined and policy problems, like immigration for one, could be addressed if America adopted such an extremely reliable, nontransferable, nonfakable way to identify individual human beings? It may be time for us to stop dithering and take a hard look at identity issues again - and maybe catch up with India.

In case you are interested in the discussion going on in India about Aadhaar in more detail, take a look at this opinion piece in "The Hindu".

Stalking - Why You Don't See It Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Part 1 of Stalking: Real Fear, Real Crime

The problem with stalking, which can be defined as "the willful, malicious and repeated following and harassing of another person" (one of many definitions), is that it starts small, individual instances seem harmless and may even have a benevolent character, and it's not logical. You may not realize, even after a pattern of continuous unwanted contacts, that you are actually being stalked.

The online Stalking Resource Center suggests starting with a quick quiz to see how much you already know about stalking. After taking the quiz, check out the 3-part 20-minute video, "Stalking: Real Fear, Real Crime," narrated by Erin Brockovich. Parts 1 and 2 are the tragic story of a stalking victim, but in part 3 a stalking and domestic violence expert, now retired from law enforcement, gives guidelines for police and for victims that will help you understand what is happening and how to communicate your concerns to the police if you suspect you are being stalked.

Who gets stalked? Mostly women. Mostly by someone they know. Women stalk men occasionally, famous people sometimes have problems with obsessed fans who stalk them, and even ordinary people can acquire a stalker who has no prior relationship whatsoever. Nevertheless, most stalking is male on female and there has been some, sometimes even imagined, previous relationship. The people left out of this conversation so far are those in same-sex relationships. Stalking occurs in those as well, and it's just as serious and twice as hard to get authorities to pay attention.

Stalking starts early. After the stalking stops, victims can catch their breath and look back. When they do, they are able to recognize with hindsight that there were red flags if they had only known what to look for and what they were looking at. Red flags like insisting that you do like something when you have said you don't; feeling "insecure" if you aren't forthcoming with computer passwords, social networking pages, and names and addresses of your friends, your gym, your favorite grocery store and restaurant. Like announcing to friends and family that you are a couple when you haven't had that discussion; telling you how much you mean to him even to the point of "can't live without you"; showing up at your home or work with surprise plans for dinner, a show, or a weekend away and expecting you to acquiesce.

What I'm calling red flags in the paragraph above could just as easily be called being attentive, spontaneous, head over heels in love with you. Expensive gifts - are they signs of devotion or a way to make you ignore your gut feeling that you are being manipulated and bought? Unless you have previously been stalked or been close to someone who was, how are you going to see these red flags? Women expect rape and are on the lookout for it, but stalking, not so much.

The Breakup. You still aren't expecting this to turn into a stalking situation. People break up all the time. No means no. I'm not ready, I've met someone else. Just part of life. But some people don't move on well. He texts you multiple times a day, sometimes with threats, sometimes begging you to reconsider. Shows up during your daily routine or drives by your house at night. The stalking has begun. It might stop after a few weeks...or not. You have no way of knowing how long or how far this will go.

Now is the time to get real and stop minimizing his behavior, and start to keep detailed records. Stalking is a pattern of behavior designed to cause fear in a reasonable person, and no one is going to be aware of that pattern if you don't document it. Part 3 of the video linked at the opening of this post explains how the small details of stalking behavior are what defines the lethality level, and also give clues to how to catch, and hopefully control, the stalker.

Getting help. Being nice doesn't stop stalking. And because you don't know what your stalker is capable of, it is imperative to get support and help as soon as possible. This is not a situation, however embarrassing, that you can handle on your own. Keeping a record of every incident and talking to police is one option - but you may not be taken seriously. You might have enough to get an order of protection but maybe not, and maybe your instincts tell you that being served with such an order will make your stalker more active rather than less.

Here are some things that always move you in the right direction:

1. Tell your friends and family what is going on. Don't pull any punches or minimize. If you are stressed and afraid, tell them.

2. Educate yourself online, starting at The National Center for Victims of Crime's Stalking Resource Center.

3. Print off the Center's Stalking Incident Log and use it! Provide log pages for anyone your stalker is contacting about you. The messages he leaves on friends' Facebook pages about you, the hangup calls your mother is getting, phone calls to your girlfriends explaining how mean you have been to him - these are all part of the pattern. You will be amazed to find out how far into your life your stalker has been reaching if you bring up the subject and ask those you know to use this log.

4. Talk to trained counselors on a stalking or domestic violence hotline. They can talk you through your situation and help you safety plan for your specific situation. You don't have to convince anyone to believe you (like dealing with the legal system), and the hotlines are aware of options you need to know about.

5. ASSUME THAT YOUR PHONE, YOUR COMPUTER, YOUR LAPTOP ARE ALL BEING MONITORED. YOU MUST THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX TO MAKE SURE YOUR COMMUNICATIONS AND WHEREABOUTS ARE NOT BEING TRACKED SO THAT YOU CAN MAKE EFFECTIVE PLANS TO PROTECT YOURSELF AND ALSO DEPRIVE YOUR STALKER OF INFORMATION.

WNL: If all this stalker talk doesn't apply to you, consider yourself lucky - so far. Like sexual assault, date rape drugs, and sexual harassment, stalking is a part of life for women. Be aware, be an aware friend if one of yours has a stalking situation, and consider becoming an activist in your own way to make the world safer for all of us.

This is Part 2 of a series on safety planning. Here's a link to Part 1 - Why You Really Do Need a Safety Plan.

Coffee and Caffeine - Your New Best Friends, Seriously

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:50:00 +0000

Coffee and caffeine are among the more studied and opined upon substances in the modern world, and all of us have been subjected to the "it's bad/it's good" flipping judgment generators over the years. Perhaps you remember the flap about caffeine causing lumpy breasts? Or the overcaffeinated executive jokes? The addiction/withdrawal warnings that leave one wondering if caffeine is also a gateway drug, and if so, a gateway to what?

But amid all this attention there seems to be lately some thoughtful research linking caffeine/coffee consumption to some unexpected positive health benefits. Like reducing your risk of basal cell carcinoma and several kinds of strokes, type 2 diabetes, and, what about this -

"Women who drink one to five cups of coffee a day—including decaf—reduce their risk of death from all causes by 15 to 19 percent compared to women who drink no coffee at all."

Anneli Rufus (writing for the Daily Beast) has assembled a summary of interesting research results concerning coffee. WNL appreciates not only the headlines summarizing the 13 positive and 1 negative study she includes in her article, but also that she includes links to the journal where the article appeared. Where medical study conclusions appear in print is a very important part of the information non-medical readers need to help them evaluate the reliability of the information. You can click on the links and go read the article for yourself!

But there are still those negatives. The cost, for one thing. And remember that lady who got burned by her takeout coffee from McDonalds and not only had private part skin grafts but national ridicule for her trouble? The beans are loaded with pesticides from what I hear, and every sort of labor and slavery abuse has been brought up in connection with both coffee and chocolate. Free trade organic the only answer?

How about this? Time Magazine reports that entrepreneurial Harvard biomedical engineering professor David Edwards has developed no-calorie, inhalable lime-flavored (? why not coffee flavored) caffeine puffs from a tiny Chapstick-size dispenser. The product is called AeroShot and Time's Maia Szalavitz reports and reviews this new way to get your wake-up buzz.

WNL: People can get pretty worked up about coffee (chocolate, too), maybe because they are so public and ubiquitous, but also so very personal. Hope you enjoy this new information and let me know what you think of AeroShot? I can't imagine it taking the place of a luscious latte, but it might have a use for times when you can't get to your favorite coffee place.

(Video: "Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever" recently appeared in Andrew Sullivan's popular column "The Dish")

America's Child Abuse Epidemic

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:10:00 +0000

Seema Jilani wrote this frank, and frankly horrifying, piece on the currently occurring epidemic of child abuse in America for UK's Guardian. Along with the stories and statistics she quotes in the article, Seema provides a link to a BBC News 6-screen summary of their documentary on American child abuse - well worth reading as well.

There's nothing more for me to say here at WNL. I hope you will read Seema's article and get some facts, sadly provided by another country's TV network resources, on the state of America's children. Come back to comment, please.

Domestic Violence Tragedy: Surprise! Intelligent Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:56:00 +0000

A quiet California beach town was rocked last week by the unbelievable shooting of 8 people in a hair salon by the husband of one of the victims. Aside from the unusually high body count, this episode of domestic violence is notable for the fact that it was reported nationally, here linked to a Huffington Post article written by Associated Press reporters Amy Tazin and John Rogers, as straight-up DV, with intelligently gathered background information, and a profile of both the shooter and his primary target, his ex-wife.

They even took the time to establish that the motivation for the vengeful shooting of the woman and her friends and co-workers was the accused's rage over his inability to get complete decision-making control over their child, a 7-year-old son.

Contrast this article with the typical "domestic dispute" reporting where it's all about the guy (rarely is the woman in the relationship the murderer in these stories) who is described at length by neighbors and coworkers as a great guy, a give you the shirt off his back type, who inexplicably snapped and did something no one could have predicted. Dead spouse and children are barely mentioned. It's all about him and the big mystery of how the violence could have happened.

WNL was particularly impressed with the time the AP team had obviously taken to interview friends, neighbors, a court-appointed psychologist, relatives on both sides, and shooter Dekraai's personal psychiatrist, who testified in the recent court hearing where Dekraii's demand to be awarded "'final decision making authority" when it came to matters involving their son's education and his medical and psychological treatment' was denied by the judge.

This is one of the rare treatments of a fatal domestic violence episode in the press where, even right after the fact, journalists made an effort to tell the whole story, dirty laundry and all, so readers aren't left thinking "a nice guy just snapped". HPost even included a video and a series of 26 photos taken at the scene to bring home the reality of this tragedy.

Takeaway: It happened to people just like you and me, and there is an explanation - it's called domestic violence.

For additional coverage and photos, UK's Daily Mail also did an excellent job of reporting the story.

Why You Really Do Need a Safety Plan - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:53:00 +0000

Why this series: I talk about safety planning a lot because I'm a domestic violence advocate and the women who come to the nonprofit where I offer my time are trying to modify or leave relationships that have more than the usual problems. Yet the response I often get, even from someone who has just been in court asking for a Restraining Order against her spouse (same thing as a Protective Order), is "No, I don't need to do any safety planning. I have it covered."

Time passes, and without fail, there's another incident, usually something that could have been prevented or at least made unlikely with some prior actions on our client's part, yet even then safety planning is far from her thoughts. She's shocked, rattled, dismayed, can't quite believe the new situation. Safety planning still remains a hard sell.

I feel frustrated and helpless. Now is not the time to tell the woman in front of me "Why didn't you listen to me? We could have taken some simple steps to protect your property (privacy, money, or whatever)." This series of articles on safety planning, to be honest, is as much to calm my frustration as it is to give you a heads up about protecting yourself. Let's hope both of us get some benefit from the information that follows.

SAFETY PLANNING PREVENTS MESSES THAT ARE HARD TO CLEAN UP

Situation: Brenda is faced with the possibility that she may not be able to salvage her 10-year marriage to Brad, who has lost his promising career and responded to the stress by becoming unpredictable, hostile, and, Brenda suspects, using drugs, maybe meth or cocaine. She asks him to leave and he goes to stay with a friend, leaving her and two school-aged children in the family home.

Brad misses the children, so Brenda allows him to visit them on Saturday afternoon while she goes out. While she is absent, and in front of the children, Brad packs and moves valuable items from the home, including some of the children's toys. On Brenda's return, he says he wants the children to have some of their things at his new place, and besides half of everything belongs to him so he can do whatever he wants. Brenda is horrified, and now has to deal with two confused and upset children, who do not understand why Dad took their toys.

Later, Brenda realizes that all the money from the children's college account is missing, and that Brad went into her computer and deleted or copied things from the hard drive. A few weeks later, Brenda realizes she is not getting any mail. At the post office, she discovers Brad put in a change of address for the family and all mail is now going to his friend's house.

Brenda feels violated and is in a state of panic. She doesn't know what Brad will do next. She retains a divorce attorney, who refers her to a domestic violence services organization near her. Things will get worse before they get better, but at least Brenda is making a start at getting an out-of-control situation toward a more stable "new normal".

What could Brenda have done differently? Brenda is not a stupid person, and she is hardly to be blamed for not anticipating situations completely out of her experience with Brad or anyone else for that matter. But there are some things Brenda could have done to protect herself, family finances and property, and her peace of mind.

The first thing Brenda could have done when living with Brad became so strained that she was considering asking him to move out is call a domestic violence hotline for a confidential conversation with someone who could listen to her and give her some perspective on what might be happening, and what might happen next. This person could help her evaluate Brad's potential to be dangerous, something which might be hard for Brenda to face, but severe stressors and drug use raise the risk of something very bad happening.

Why a domestic violence hotline? (Brenda doesn't want to go into a DV shelter and she may be angry and frustrated with Brad, but she may not be afraid of him.) Because domestic violence personnel are uniquely equipped, unlike therapists, clergy, marriage counselors, family doctors, and even police, to have a calm, frank, nonjudgmental conversation about what's going on behind the closed doors that every family presents to the world.

Brenda could also have looked to the collective wisdom of the internet, which, though no one source is infallible, offers so many points of view that if you are looking to learn about your situation, bits and pieces can add up to quite an education in a short time. She might even have read an article like this one.

Resource Quick List:

National Domestic Violence Hotline - They care about your safety on the computer and give instructions up front about how to keep your visit to the hotline from being tracked.

Safety Planning - Same site as above. This is the direct link to safety planning resources.

How Dangerous Is Your Partner?

Brenda could have gone to the library or bookstore and done some browsing in the marriage self-help/divorce strategies section. She could start reading a copy of "Why Does He Do That" by Lundy Bancroft. Chances are good she will find her story in its pages, along with an outstanding analysis and prediction of what lies ahead for her and the children. Scary? Maybe a bit. But at this point Brenda is already scared, and adding being completely in the dark about her situation isn't helping. Some expert advice and wisdom is just what she needs.

Any of the above could have alerted her to how vulnerable she was - Brad has moved out but they have not gone to court to get an order for temporary custody arrangements. Alerted her to the need to change her locks, secure her mail with a PO box, change the passwords on all the computers and online bank access, and not let Brad back into the home.

In other words, Brenda could have been proactive rather than reactive. To get a protective order something bad has to have happened - a protective or restraining order restricts a person's civil rights and Brenda would need to show cause before a judge will order one put into effect - but Brad's lower-level but nonetheless traumatizing behaviors are aimed at making Brenda's life miserable, and it is up to Brenda to think about what might happen and plan accordingly.

The thinking here is very much like planning for a power outage from a snowstorm, or an earthquake, or a flood. The upsetting influence is another human rather than an act of God, but the mindset is similar. Because this is someone you loved, and probably still love, it can be difficult to be proactive, but maybe reading Brenda's story will give you some hints as to why it is worth taking another look at safety planning.

(Graphic by Keith Haring)

Part 2: Stalking - Why You Don't See It Coming

"Use Your Outdoor Voice" - New Graphic from Lyn

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:17:00 +0000

Here's the latest graphic from Lyn Southworth Words and Pictures, encouraging in no uncertain terms, the end of being voiceless as part of the definition of being a good girl. As far as WNL is concerned, Ariel the mermaid should be the last woman without a voice!

Enjoy, send, wear, and decorate your environment with one of the many iterations of this image. And don't forget to comment. Art is a two-way street.

The Best Domestic Violence Poster Yet

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 22:07:00 +0000

This is the best advert educating people about domestic violence that I've ever seen. The camera gimmick that changes the picture when it senses somebody looking at it is perfect for this application.

I wish I knew more about it, where it came from, who designed it, where it has been displayed, people's reactions, etc. If you know anything, please clue us in.

Michelle Obama's Official Portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:28:00 +0000

Don't settle for this small version of The First Lady's official portrait - go to Michael Shaw's article and photo at BagNewsNotes, the home of photojournalistic comment and analysis. This amazing photo is indeed worth 1,000 words.

Marriage and Divorce - Small Pieces of a Worldwide Puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Marriage and divorce happen all over the world. At any given moment, these two big milestones in individual lives end up making news for one reason or another. Here's a collection that's been growing for a while in my bookmark pile. You'll notice that, like pieces of a puzzle you might find at a yard sale, these newsworthy items are just pieces, but they do make their little contributions to figuring things out.

1. First up, this story headlined "The Cheating Cheaters of Moscow", and in smaller type "How infidelity has become accepted and even expected in Russia". Julia Ioffe (writing for Slate.com) starts her explanation of the current state of affairs (so to speak) like this:

"This is quite a shift, given that 20 years ago an affair was considered a career-wrecking scandal. But by 1998, a study showed that Russian men and women led their peers in 24 other countries in their willingness to engage in and approve of extramarital affairs. Since then, these attitudes have taken hold more deeply after a prolonged consumer boom that encourages Russians to indulge their whims and desires. What does this culture of infidelity look like, and what are the costs?"

She's got historical background and some great quotes from Russian girls, including one who changed her lover's name to "Traitor" in her phone.

2. Next up, what's behind the strange demographic shift in the US where, for the first time in history, "rural Americans are just as likely to be divorced as city dwellers". NYT writers Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff interviewed social scientists who are studying these changes along with locals in Iowa to get clues about the big picture and how people are experiencing this change to what used to be called "urban values or lack thereof".

3. Is marriage only for the well-educated and affluent? Article #2 hinted that might be the case. This article, also in the NYT, comes right out with a resounding "probably". Starting out with quotes reflecting a reversal of the 70s and 80s feeling that divorce was liberating, the article settles down to what WNL thinks is more likely going on -

“That this change has occurred mainly among the affluent suggests it’s not just a reaction to the divorce epidemic of the ’70s,” [sociology professor] Dr. Cherlin said. “The condemnation of divorce is also coming from the group that is most confident it can make its marriages succeed, and that allows them to be dismissive of divorce.”

4. Next, we have a series of stories from participants and from divorce attorneys (with a little therapist input for completeness) about bringing a sexual affair into the marital bed and why, as you might suspect, that bit of behavior is universally considered the worst of the worst. Here's an example from divorce attorney Susan Bender:

Another client, who learned what Ms. Bender called “the classic thing — her husband was having sex with the nanny,” did not make the visit to the divorce lawyer her first course of action.
“She goes to bed with her husband that night, doesn’t complete the sex act, took a match and she threw it on the bed,” Ms. Bender said. “Of course, he flips out. The story ends with her walking out of the bedroom naked and him trying to put out the fire.”
Did she explain why?
“She was angry,” Ms. Bender said. “The problem with litigation is that it takes a long time. You’ve got that need for instant gratification, that need to get you back. Some people need that, they need to get you back right now.”

There's a moral to each and every one of these stories. Do I need to spell it out for you?

5. Ending on a more modern note, here's a look at what's ahead for same-sex marriages. After all, being able to legally marry means you might also need to divorce some day. Surely they thought of that when the legislation was passed (as in New York) or court-mandated as in other states. Well, surely they did not. NYT's Sunday Review gives you just a taste of the confusion to come.

WNL: If you've read any of these articles perhaps you will welcome this bit of advice from an old blogger - if you aren't married, don't get married, and if you are married, don't have children. A happy life awaits.

"Small Voices" Cartoons - What About ME?

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:25:00 +0000

More cartoons and other madness at Lyn Southworth Words and Pictures. Come and visit.

Menstruation Machine - Show THEM How It Feels

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Japanese artist Sputniko has achieved the impossible, constructing a device that delivers the feelings and sensations of having your period, complete with electric shock "cramps" and dribbling red stains. Look here for some philosophical musings on the mystery of menstruation. I skipped the philosophy and watched the video on the same page of a male-to-female who put on the device and went shopping with a girlfriend, thrilled to experience one more level of girliness.

Happy change of seasons to you all, dear readers.

PS: To Sputniko - thank you for building such a beautiful shiny device. How I wish that menstruation could be put on and taken off as depicted here, and that it was in reality the beautiful fashion accessory you created. I am in awe!

Gut Bacteria's Influence Starts When You Are Born

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:26:00 +0000

You know you have bacteria in your colon; altering the balance of that bacteria between "good" and "bad" is why you are spending money on probiotic capsules, or a pricy yogurt concoction. Well, for your holiday reading, here's the backstory, just now emerging from scientists' labs, on how that colon bacteria got started, and even more interesting, how those bacteria have been shaping your life ever since they were implanted.

You'll never take your personal bacteria stash for granted again, we promise.
(Beautiful artwork from Science Photo Library)

Update Your IUD Info, Get Reviews From the Hive

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:12:00 +0000

Not the Devil, Maybe an Angel in Disguise

The two main reasons women won't consider an IUD (an implanted plastic or copper coil in your uterus to prevent pregnancy) are bad reputation (Don't those things make you sterile or give you infections?) and not knowing anybody who has one so you can't get a trusted girlfriend's opinion the way you can with birth control pills.

But things are changing in the IUD world. Wired Magazine's fact and interview-packed article in the August 2011 issue lays out, with simple words and big pictures, the history of almost all the IUDs ever on the market, what the problems were, or weren't, including what's available now.

Implantable devices are back in the game after being shelved for a generation, and they are on your TV screen (Mirena) and in your doctor's office. The original comeback was targeted only at women who had already had children, but that's changing too, thanks to researcher and ob-gyn Laura MacIsaac, who took on the huge job of educating doctors about ParaGard, another new IUD entry.

Ob-gyn Eve Espey took the next step to making IUDs a first choice for young women instead of an option only for mothers. Wired writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel shares the personal story behind her efforts:

Her freshman year at Harvard, Espey got pregnant accidentally and dropped out. In 1979, right after giving birth to a baby boy whom she would raise alone, she had a copper IUD inserted. She subsequently finished college and medical school, and when her son was 12 they moved to a rural area of New Mexico, where she worked at the Gallup Indian Medical Center. At the time, the county had one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the US. It became clear to Espey that short-term methods like the pill just weren’t doing the job for her patients. They required too much consistent effort on a woman’s part. “There’s such a huge gap between perfect and typical use,” she says.

So Espey started the ball rolling to expand official approval of the new generation of IUDs with her passion and her research with teens. In 2005 IUDs were approved as a first-line choice for teenagers.

Now there's another milestone for IUDs and contraception in general: (From Slate.com)

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was classifying contraceptives (among a whole slate of women's health services) as preventative care, meaning that under the Affordable Care Act, insurers must provide these services without a co-pay starting in 2013. You wouldn't necessarily know it from the news coverage of the announcement — much of which focused on how the pill would now be free — but this has the potential to remake American women's relationship with birth control in profound ways. Although it may go without saying, lowering (or removing) the cost of something typically increases demand for it. [bold by WNL]

Read the rest of the article for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between birth control in all forms and cost, all the way back to your mother's diaphragm. Fascinating stuff!

The Slate article makes an important point that, along with cost, knowing somebody you trust who is using a certain form of birth control is a big factor affecting what you might choose for yourself. We are hivers, after all, socially connected and motivated before anything else, and the internet is our connection to the wisdom of the hive. Here are three terrific sources where you can just lurk or jump in and ask any question about birth control, including IUDs. You won't be disappointed - you'll hear real stories from your new online girlfriends to help you make up your mind.

Top of my list is a subreddit (social community) called 2XChromosome s. Lurk or join, it's free and you can make up any name you want to be able to ask a question. There are tons of BC questions there to peruse, lots of personal stories, good and bad. You'll hear it all on Reddit.
Woman-friendly Bust Magazine has a Forum called "Our Bodies, Our Hells" with some in-depth IUD experiences. You can ask a question there too, but the traffic is not as brisk as Reddit; it may be a while before anyone responds, but the info already there is worth a look.
Berkeley Parents Network has so much hive input you might be overwhelmed, but they do sort it out into more specific topics, so you don't have to read through the whole thing to address your concerns.
WegoHealth has some great links for more information. Light on the personal experiences, but some interactive BC quizzes, info from Planned Parenthood, an in-depth article from the NYT. You get the idea.

WNL: Birth control is the best gift we give to ourselves and now it looks like cost may no longer be a barrier in just a few years. Go for it!

Asian Women Refusing Marriage - The Effects of Saying "No" are Far-Reaching

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:00:00 +0000

These two articles from The Economist are both long and excellent, with lots of graphs and in-depth reporting, so I won't keep you from reading them by writing a wordy post.

The first article is more of an over view of what's going on with half the world's women. The second one is more in-depth, exploring all the possibilities, and, an especially nice touch, refusing to consider Asia as a uniform giant, instead recognizing there are several different traditional patterns of marriage, multiple attitudes towards women's education, contraception use, and women's roles as the baseline.

The decline of Asian marriage
Asia's lonely hearts Women are rejecting marriage in Asia.
The social implications are serious

Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.

The flight from marriage
Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. This has profound implications for women, traditional family life and Asian politics

WNL: These huge changes in women's attaitudes and actions will affect those of us outside Asia as well. I hope you will take the time to get acquainted with the New Asian Woman.

What to Do About "Food Babies"

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 02:03:00 +0000

Many women are familiar with bloated, distended bellies that magically appear after we eat, and someone among us invented the nickname "food babies" to describe the situation. Flat stomach when you wake up, and as the day goes on you get more and more pregnant-looking, can't button your pants, and wonder "Am I the only one with this problem, and what can I do about it?"

Food babies are unrelated to the full or even overfull feeling you get after you visit the all-you-can-eat buffet or finish a second piece of pie after Thanksgiving dinner. Nothing could be more normal. Food babies are those possibly painful (depending on your personal version), maybe gassy, abdominal protrusions that are obviously unrelated to the amount of food you have consumed. Some people get one going after the smallest snack.

If you talk to your doctor about the situation you might hear about diagnoses like irritable bowel disease, lactose intolerance, gluten sensitivity, or intestinal dysbiosis. Various tests may be suggested, along with leaving out food groups to see what helps. WebMD has an excellent, doctor-reviewed article on all aspects of both bloating (the mild form) and distention (bloating on steroids so to speak). At the end readers have added comments about their own experience and what worked for them.

WNL found an even better chat/exchange between food baby sufferers in one of the everydayhealth.com forums. Looking at the variety of solutions forum participants report worked for them, it's clear that there is no one solution. Take away: If at first you don't succeed, don't give up. Relief may be around the corner - an antibiotic, a probiotic, charcoal tablets, enzymes, who knows?

Brigham and Women's Hospital has posted an excellent article on bloating that lists foods and behaviors that can contribute to the problem, and suggests eating habits designed to minimize bloating. The article includes a list of over-the-counter remedies and a list of herbal remedies for you to try.

U.K.'s Daily Mail recently ran a food baby story worth noting. "Kerri Dowdswell is a trim young woman who has no trouble fitting in to her size 10 jeans... until she eats her dinner. The 23-year-old has a mystery condition which means minutes after she eats a meal her stomach becomes so bloated that strangers think she's about to give birth.Within hours, her stomach has shrunk back to its normal size - but the problem has got so bad that Kerri now wears maternity trousers when she goes out for dinner." Kerri generously allowed a few photos to accompany the article, and she has a wonderful attitude about it all. (Below, Kerri before and after a meal, wearing her maternity pants.)

WNL: I am delighted that this embarassing, bothersome, body image-frustrating condition is coming out of hiding and has gotten the delightfully normalizing name "food baby". Until somebody figures out the cause(s) of bloating, which seems to affect women much more often than men, we might as well relax about it and enjoy life.

One remedy I did not find on the web is the connection between cramping, bloating and gas in the GI tract and spasms of the muscular airways found in asthma. Many people with asthma use a smooth muscle relaxer in the form of an inhaler, some version of albuterol. The muscles of the GI tract are also smooth muscles, and some albuterol users, who also have food baby issues, report that when they use their asthma inhalers, their tummies also calm down and forget to bloat. Anybody out there ever noticed the connection?

Dog Helps Rape Victim Testify

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:07:00 +0000

Rosie and her handler

The NYT this morning has an article on Rosie, the first judicially approved courtroom dog in New York, reporting that her presence next to a 15-year-old girl who had to testify her father raped and impregnated her made all the difference to the girl, who after the conviction was read, said she was "most grateful to Rosie, above all". For the rest of the story, including use of support dogs in other states, and defense challenges to their use, look here.

Warren Jeffs' Sexual Assault Convictions - Behind the Headlines

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Yesterday FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs was convicted by a Texas jury of 2 counts of sexual assault of underage girls. Its been quite a ride for Jeffs since his 2006 highway stop arrest when he was on the FBI's Most Wanted List. WNL has collected a couple of sources if you'd like to know more details beyond the conviction headline.

This guest post by true crime author Cathy Scott writing for Forbeswoman blog has additional details and background, including copies of these sad wedding photos of Jeffs and his 12-year-old "comfort wife", pictures which remind me of nothing so much as junior high father-daughter event photos.

The day before the verdict, Anderson Cooper interviewed Arizona investigative reporter Michael Watkiss and reporter Gary Tuchman, who attended the trial. Both had some excellent on the scene observations which they shared in this CNN News video. An audiotape, recorded by Jeffs himself, of his sexual initiation of his little child bride, in front of a cadre of FLDS witnesses, had just been played for the jury and those in the courtroom.

Carol McKinley pulls back from the trial itself to document how Jeffs saw himself not just as the husband and prophet of all his followers, but also had built up quite a Big Brother-type operation to enforce isolation and fear in the community

WSJ's Law Blog asks the question "Would Jeffs Have Fared Better With a Lawyer at his Side?" Jeffs started out with lawyers aplenty, but fired them all, representing himself at the end. The article looks at conviction statistics for those who go it alone versus those defendants with lawyers, finding there is surprisingly little difference between the two groups.

Lindsay Whitehurst, who writes "The Polygamy Blog" for The Salt Lake Tribune [Utah], says now that the conviction is in, the trial gets really interesting with the sentencing phase:

"Texas prosecutors look to be ready to lay out not only Jeffs' polygamous and underage marriages, but 22 years of misdeeds, including the whole of his 8-year-plus leadership of the FLDS Church.

That includes, according to Nate Carlisle's great story today: "breaking up 300 families by re-assigning wives and children, and taking property; expelling young men from FLDS to have more girls for himself and his inner circle; having 'contempt for the law of man;' creating refuges to hide women from law enforcement; and evading law enforcement himself.""

She provides links to some of her many previous posts on the subject of Jeffs and the larger topic of polygamy. WNL suggests you check out her blog, especially if you are a fan of "Big Love", the HBO series, or "Sister Wives," the TLC so-called reality show.

As always, WNL is interested in your comments.

Be On the Safe Side - Think Revenge

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:42:00 +0000

Seemona Sumasar - Finally out of jail! (photo, CBS News)

If you are trying to extricate yourself from a bad dating or marriage situation, this story from The New York Times might sound off some internal alarms. Imagine a business woman in a big city who meets a charming guy who says he is in law enforcement. He insists on moving in, and won't move out. One day he restrains and rapes her. When she files charges and won't back down, the craziness starts.

A year later, she has spent 7 months in jail on revenge charges he invented, lost her home and business, and he is currently now in jail, claiming he is innocent and she is framing him (exactly as he framed her). The abuse and control continues.

WNL: People who have no personal experience with coercive control (intimate partner abuse) say "Why doesn't she stand up for herself? Why doesn't she just leave?" Because it gets worse and not better, and control is not about divorce or breakups, it's about CONTROL.

Who needs to read a depressing story like this? Well, if you know that something this diabolical can happen to an ordinary unsuspecting woman, you now know that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that something similar could happen to you, your sister, or a friend. And WNL believes knowing how bad things can get is the best defense for keeping bad things from happening, and from escalating into really bad things.

You Can Tell If Someone is Lying, Right?

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:53:00 +0000

Now that world-famous Sofitel Hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo has given an extended interviews to Newsweek and to TV's ABC News,* and everybody in the country has had plenty of practice analyzing Casey Anthony's every eyebrow movement, you can tell if someone is lying, right? You, your friends and family, and those expert talking heads on the small screen.

Just google "tell if someone is lying" and 73 million links to articles, books, etc pop onto your screen. Surely a million of those must give reading microexpressions and mismatches in body language or blink rate some credibility. Here's a typical one from Forbes Magazine if you've never explored the subject, and, unlike a lot of the lying information gurus, author Elisabeth Eaves is experienced journalist enough to put a disclaimer at the front of the article, titled "Ten Ways to Tell If Someone is Lying":

[Disclaimer:] "Psychologists who study deception, though, are quick to warn that there is no foolproof method. Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes that “lying is not a distinct psychological process with its own unique behavioral indicators. It does matter how liars feel and how they think.” Indeed, many of the tell-tale signs common to liars, like fidgeting and sweating, can also be signs of ordinary anxiety. It’s tough to tell the difference between a liar and an honest person who happens to be under a lot of stress."

Unfortunately, this paragraph registers with the reader the same way the "I agree" radio button impacts your brain when you are loading new software, i.e. not at all. Yeah, yeah, but what are the 10 ways!

Time to put on the breaks with this everyman/woman as lie detector thing, IMO. Two very capable bloggers have put the facts about lie detecting within everyone's reach, journalist Scott Henson, who writes "Grits for Breakfast", and attorney Scott Greenfield, writing "Simple Justice". These links will take you to two posts which completely debunk, from inside the legal system and the law enforcement/interrogator nexus, the lie that everybody to some extent, but especially experts, can tell when someone is lying.

I recommend, for your own education, and to keep you out of disastrous personal situations where you plow ahead believing with all your heart that you have correctly assessed truthfulness and reliability, only to have the facts smack you upside the head at a later date, that you read these blog articles. To get you started, here's a taste:

"Numerous controlled studies have shown that people are not good intuitive judges of truth and deception, typically performing at no better than chance levels of accuracy. Controlled studies have also shown that even investigators and other supposed experts who routinely evaluate deceptive behavior are highly prone to error. Moreover, Kassin and Fong have shown that police interrogators and others specifically trained in the [Behavioral Analysis Interview technique taught by John Reid and Associates] not only fail to discriminate accurately between true and false statements much of th time, but also that behavior analysis training actually lowers the ability of police interrogators to discriminate accurately between true and false denials. Further, such training inflates their confidence in their judgments. (citations omitted) [Richard Leo, Police Interrogations and American Justice pp. 98-99][bold added by WNL]

WNL: Humility and doing the hard work of what corporate attorneys call due diligence (digging out the facts before making a deal) will serve you in personal relationships or your public duties as a juror far better than relying on your abilility, trained or untrained, to tell lies from the truth. There is no such thing as a lie detector test no matter what you may have seen on TV (are those black boxes even plugged in?)

*Link to a video at CNN where Newsweek's John Solomon speaks to Brooke Baldwin about interviewing the hotel maid accusing DSK of sexual assault, and includes clips from the piece.

Video Surveillance for Victims - Looxcie LX2

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:57:00 +0000

Looxcie LX2 personal videocam

If you are going through something, like, say, a nasty divorce/custody thing, you've probably wished you could just videotape those hideous exchanges at the police station, or the time he stood menacingly outside the restaurant window where you were eating but didn't actually do anything you could explain to police. That way your attorney, the children's therapist, or the minor's counsel, could actually SEE what happened rather than staring at you while you try to explain how unnerving your ex can be without actually pulling a knife.

Of course there are surveillance cameras in many public places already, and, as at the police station, there may be a video of your latest traumatic exchange, but you'll have to subpoena the PD to get it. Have you considered being your own videographer?

How about the Looxcie over-the-ear (Bluetooth style) continuous video recorder? While it's not perfect, like all innovations in their earlier versions, the camcorder was recently featured in Time magazine’s top 50 inventions of the year. Here's a full review from Hejorama.com that takes you from opening the box through uploading the video onto your computer, and even includes updates as new information has become available. Right now the latest Looxcie, the LX2, is available at Amazon.com for $150.00. Don't miss Amazon reviewer "witness digital's" comments. He seems to have been an early adopter and explains the changes in this new model.

What about legal issues? Do you need permission? Can you get in trouble? Ask your attorney before you go this route. Obviously the usual rules about playing nice are not working out or you wouldn't be thinking about doing a defensive videotape, so your situation is not the usual peeping motivation or trying to see people's PIN numbers. While a videotape you make is likely not admissable as evidence in the courtroom, it might really help you explain your stalking/harrassment/emotional abuse situation to people you need on your team. The Lawyers.com link at the top of this paragraph reflects only the most general videotaping guidelines. Every state is different.

WNL: There are situations in everyday life, and then there are SITUATIONS that come up for people trying to get out of abusive controlling relationships that nobody else can relate to, and in these cases, a videotape can be a plus, however obtained. The Looxcie is not invisible and that might be a good thing, both as a defense against secretly recording someone (they can see it sticking out between your eye and your ear), and as a warning. Who doesn't modify their behavior when they know a person, or a camera, is watching.

WNL readers - What are your thoughts about doing your own videotapes? Have you been in a place where you would have given anything to have a tape to prove what happened?

Women in Politics - Just Look at the Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Lyn Southworth) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:27:00 +0000

Martin Frost has been working in government and politics since 1979, and in that time among the many things he's learned is that you have only to look at the photo of a female politician appearing with an article about her to know whether she's going up or going down in the media's opinion.

Frost maintains that this phenomenon does not extend to male politicians, at least not in the same way or degree. They rarely vary much from photo to photo no matter what is going on in the article beneath.

Here's Frost on Nancy Pelosi:

The most recent example is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A very attractive woman at 71, Pelosi generally looked great in newspaper and magazine photos during her first two years as speaker, from 2007 to 2008. She was riding high after leading the Democrats back into the majority in the 2006 elections.

However, after President Barack Obama was elected, she had to do a lot of heavy lifting on his agenda during his first two years, pushing through controversial legislation in 2009 and 2010. The print photos of her then were often far less flattering. She didn’t exactly look like the Wicked Witch of the West — but they weren’t that great a good bit of the time. She appeared grim or angry, for example.

Nancy Pelosi during the health care bill battle in 2010

Pelosi pictured in 2011, the way she looked both before and after the health bill fracas.

So, as the political year heats up in preparation for the 2012 US elections, perhaps you don't need to do much reading, just look at the pictures if the subject is female, i.e. Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or other women running Congress or State Legislatures.

Read all of Frost's insightful article in Politico here, including an anecdote about a female federal judge he worked for forty years ago who had the same bitchy picture problem.

WNL: Another tiresome reminder that women have to do the same things as men, but do them backwards and in high heels (reference here is to the old Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movies of the 1930s), and are endlessly vulnerable to being trivialized by images.

We've come to expect that every commercial female image we see will have been photoshopped (don't even need to capitalize the word now that it is just part of the language). We may not be quite so aware that all this time the pictures of women we see attached to jobs in the big world are also manipulated.

If you are interested, as I am, in the larger subject of photojournalism and the analysis of news photos, check out this marvelous blog started by clinical psychologist Michael Shaw in 2003, BagNews Notes. You won't be disappointed.