Excellent news – Congresswoman Giffords is back and voting tonight!”

This is the most remarkable news I have heard all year. I want to start a petition for Gabrielle Giffords to be able to pound nails into assailants (I don’t like to say his name, because he gets’ off on that) skull for 12 hours a day and the other half of day they keep him alive to feel the pain. Will you sign my petition? Teary eyed reporting brought to you by Accidental Bear.

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl (@JonKarl) and Sunlen Miller (@SunlenMiller) report:   Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., returned to Congress tonight for the first time since being shot in the head in January, casting a vote in support of the compromise debt ceiling bill.

“Gabrielle has returned to Washington to support a bipartisan bill to prevent economic crisis,” read a message posted to Giffords’ Twitter account while members began casting their votes on the House floor.

Minutes later, Giffords slowly entered the chamber to loud, sustained applause and a standing ovation by her colleagues, who huddled around her to give hugs, kisses and handshakes.

Vice President Joe Biden, with a big smile on his face, walked to the House floor and said, “I came to see Gabby, that’s why I’m here.” MORE

Handpicked News: Michelle Obama Mum, Teens Allegedly Beat Gay Man, Gabrielle Gifford, Google New Social Network

 

Anderson Cooper Is Sick of Hearing About Kim Kardashian’s Ass, Too

Brave: Pixar’s New Hero Is a Little Ginger Girl 

Swedish Preschool Bans GenderA public preschool in a liberal part of Stockholm has created an environment where gendered pronouns are not used, the children are referred to as “friends” instead of “boys and girls,” and toys are deliberately gender neutral. Sounds crazy! It also sounds like a conservative’s worst fucking nightmare. From the New York Daily News:

Michelle Obama Mum on Marriage If Michelle Obama supports gay marriage, she’s not saying so publicly.The first lady’s communications director, Kristina Schake, told Politico today that “Mrs. Obama has never made any public statements about same-sex marriage.”

 Gay Weddings to Boost N.Y. Economy

Springfield Teens Allegedly Beat Gay ManSPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Nine teens and preteens were arrested for allegedly beating and robbing an openly gay man at a Springfield park Tuesday morning. The 30 year-old victim was badly hurt in the attack, which police are labeling a hate crime. According to Springfield Police Sergeant John Delaney, Shay Andre Edwards, 19, of Springfield was arrested on charges of unarmed robbery and violation of civil rights with injury. Four other teen boys and four teen girls are also facing the same charges in connection with the attack. Their identities are not being released because they are underage. Delaney says the attackers ranged in age from 12 to 19 years old.                                                                                                          Gabrielle Giffords Makes First Public Appearance  Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) made her first public appearance since being wounded in a tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona earlier this year in which numerous victims were hurt or had their lives taken, ABC News reports. According to the outlet, Giffords attended a ceremony at Space Center Houston in Texas at which her husband astronaut Mark Kelly — who recently announced his retirement from NASA, effective October 1 — was awarded the Spaceflight Medal, which is given to shuttle members upon safely returning home from their missions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Google Announces New Social Network Google has finally launched its long-awaited social network, the Google+ project. The Google+ network is designed around users’ social circles (called +Circles) and lets users selectively share with specific groups within their personal network, rather than sharing with all their social connections at once.The search giant emphasizes Google+’s privacy customizations and hopes that users will choose to use the new service over more established networks like Facebook and Twitter.

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• First Photos Of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Released (ironmill.wordpress.com)
• Scribner to Publish Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords Memoir (readersread.com)

BEARIZONA : I Don’t Make this Shit Up

When in Rome… When in Arizona…

http://www.bearizona.com/

MISSION AND VISION

What is Bearizona?

Bearizona is a North American wildlife park that allows visitors to drive into the wilderness and witness herd and pack life from the safety and comfort of a private vehicle. Bearizona is an adventure!

Our Mission

Bearizona’s Mission is to promote conservation and preservation through safe, affordable, memorable and educational encounters with North American wildlife in a natural environment.

 Vision

The Bearizona Wildlife Park is a vehicle for connecting visitors to wildlife and the land in which they inhabit, while using best practices for economic, environmental and social sustainability.
1500 E. Rt. 66, Williams Arizona, 86046
928.635.2289

 

Who Doesn’t have Your Gay Back? Anti-gay Groups Increase Spending

“The groups intend to pass anti-gay marriage amendments, curtail abortion rights and, in at least one case, ban ‘transgender bathrooms.’ ”

via coloradoindependent.com

Anti-gay groups plan increased spending, activity through 2012

Anti-gay rights groups around the country will see a cash infusion over the next two years through a plan called “Ignite an Enduring Cultural Transformation.” And the groups are remaining mum about who is responsible.

The campaign, which largely targets states where Republicans won control of legislatures or governorships, has garnered the support of Republican political superstars such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.). The groups intend to pass anti-gay marriage amendments, curtail abortion rights and, in at least one case, ban “transgender bathrooms.” READ MORE @ coloradoindependent.com

Do Crazy People Have Crazy Dreams?

Why Yes, I Do

By Brian PalmerPosted Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011, at 4:04 PM ET

A man dreaming Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner was obsessed with the meaning of his dreams, according to a friend. Loughner recorded them in a notebook every morning and attempted to interpret them. Do mentally ill people have particularly crazy dreams?

Probably not. There are anecdotal reports that mentally ill patients have especially strange dreams, and some psychologists insist they can use dreams to identify a descent into psychosis. However, what little evidence exists on the question suggests that the dreams of the mentally ill are no weirder than anyone else’s. In 2008, a team of Italian researchers gathered dream reports from 30 schizophrenics and 30 people in good mental health. Judges scored the dreams on a “bizarreness index,” considering the number of impossible or improbable elements in each one. On average, the schizophrenics’ dreams were almost exactly as bizarre as those of the control group.

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RELATED IN SLATE

Brian Palmer examined whether you can choose the subject of your dreams. Mason Currey attempted to control his dreams. Dana Stevens reviewed the dream film Inception.

This is one of the many unsettled questions about the significance of dreams. While some psychologists believe that dreams analysis can uncover a person’s hidden anxieties and emotions, no one has been able to prove it. Most of the evidence consists of individual case reports and a scattering of studies in which patients who engage in dream interpretation report better self-awareness and personal insight, increased likelihood to stick with therapy, and a decrease in troubling, recurrent dreams. The skeptics counter that none of this proves that dreams provide a window into a person’s psyche. There are also a handful of studies in which experts accurately predict a subject’s personality traits based on dream descriptions, but these studies have serious methodological flaws. For example, the subjects might give away their traits through the way they describe their dreams.

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Practitioners of dream analysis have not coalesced around a single method for their work. Today, there are at least12 major schools of dream interpretation (PDF), which can be broken into two broad groups: Some psychologists, taking their cue from Freud and Carl Jung, think that dreams are a counterpoint to the waking mind. In dreams, they say, the mind lets loose the concerns, emotions, and desires that it cannot play out in normal life. The psychologist’s job is to decode the symbols and images in the dream. Continuity theorists, inspired byAlfred Adler and others, believe elements of a dream are usually direct representations of their real-world analogues. If a patient described fighting with his best friend in a dream, a continuity theorist might think that the patient was angry at his friend. A Freudian would try to figure out what the figure of the friend represents.

Despite the plethora of dream theories—or perhaps because of it—74 percent of clinical psychologists report using dream interpretation only occasionally or not at all. And, in most cases, it is the client, not the analyst, who initiates the dream conversation.

Many laypeople are convinced that their dreams are significant because they confuse genuine REM-sleep dreams—which are prolonged, dialogue-heavy, and usually replete with bizarre plot elements—with the hazy imagery that occupies your mind as it fades into or out of sleep. It’s important to keep these two categories separate, because mere sleep thoughts are a part of your conscious, wakeful mind. It’s not at all surprising that an assassin might envision a murder while falling asleep. But there’s no evidence that a murderer dreams of murder more often than anyone else during REM sleep.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Mark J. Blechner, author of The Dream Frontier, J. Allan Hobson of Harvard Medical School, and Antonio Zadra of the Universite de Montreal.

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Related Articles

• Jared Lee Loughner was obsessed with dreams. Do crazy people have extra-crazy dreams? (slate.com)