Posts by betterdaze

Hey! That's my salad. Mesclun mix, sliced pears, walnuts candied with cinnamon (and they must be homemade, none of that factory corn syrup crap here), dried cranberries, and crumbled bleu or feta. Balsamic vinaigrette.

If you change the salad at all, you will die at Armageddon.

I'll take my chances.

~Sue

Terrorist Threat On Border With Mexico

by betterdaze in

channel 2 investigates u.s. border security part 1. .

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438021/.

channel 2 investigates u.s. border security part 2. .

betterdaze

Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security Part 1

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438021/

Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security Part 2

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438712/

Terrorist Threat On Border With Mexico

Posted: 12:59 pm EDT May 3, 2010Updated: 7:03 pm EDT May 3, 2010
DOUGLAS, AZ -- The U.S. Border Patrol uses choppers, ATVs and horses to patrol the 2000-mile border between the Southeastern U.S. and Mexico. Agents say most of the illegals caught crossing are from Mexico or South America. Still, they say thousands of people caught are classified as O.T.M.'s, which stands for "other than Mexican". They report that includes hundreds of people from nations that sponsor terrorism.

Channel 2 Action News anchor Justin Farmer traveled to Arizona to view a detention center near Phoenix. He viewed records that show illegals in custody from from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen.

WEB EXTRA: People Other Than Mexicans, Including From Terrorist Nations Captured In The Last Two Years

Former Arizona U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth has seen the reports. "We have left the back door to the United States open," he said. "We have to understand there are people who definitely mean to do us harm who have crossed that border."

WATCH: Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security Part 1

Farmer talked to an Arizona rancher who didn't want to be identified because he's afraid of the Mexican cartels who smuggle drugs near his property. He said he found a Muslim prayer rug on his ranch. "This is one more indication that there is a whole lot more than just a few Mexicans coming into the U.S.".

A recent congressional report on the border threat confirmed members of Hezbollah have crossed the Southwest border. It shows photos of military jackets with Arab insignias found on the border. One depicts a picture of a plane crashing into the twin towers in New York City.

Dave Stoddard was a border patrol agent for 20 years. "The American public has been kept in the dark about this issue," he said. "In my experience, for every one apprehended, at least 10 escape apprehension."

The congressional report also revealed the route Middle Easterners take to get the United States. It showed they travel from Europe to South America, then to the tri-border region. That's where they learn to speak Spanish. The report said they then travel to Mexico and blend in with other illegals.

WEB EXTRA: People Other Than Mexicans Currently In Detention In ICE Custody In Florence Arizona Including From Terrorist Countries

Law enforcement officials believe one of the world's most wanted terrorists may have traveled into the U.S. in 2004 by coming through the mountains on the Mexico border. Federal agents confirmed Adnan Shurkajumah spent time in Atlanta just prior to Sep. 11th, and left on a bus. He is a Saudi Arabian pilot and bomb expert with a $5 million bounty on his head. In 2004, Shurkajumah was one of seven Al-Qaida members agents were looking for after they were spotted in Central America and believed headed to the United States through Mexico . Federal agents now say Shurkajumah seems to have disappeared.

WATCH: Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security Part 2

Hayworth said one of the most grave concerns from the congressional report is that Mexican drug cartels will help terrorists smuggle weapons across remote border crossings.

"If we learned nothing from 9-11, certainly we should have learned that our borders are important."

Copyright 2010 by WSBTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

51

How many Elders does it take to change a light bulb?

by karter in

jw
friends

??????????????

?.

betterdaze

None.

Get the women and kids to do it after they've already cleaned the restrooms.

~Sue

12

Visiting New York Tomorrow

by JWFreak in

jw
friends

hey i will be in the city for 4 days from this monday.. apart from the usual tourist sites which i have seen before, what unusual places to any of you recommend?.

thanks.

jwf.

betterdaze

RR, you cannot be serious!

~Sue (born in St. Raymond's. Literally FLED for our lives to NJ)

5

The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain

by betterdaze in

jw
friends

april 30, 2010, 11:51 am date updated <abbr class="updated" title="2010-05-02t19:33:25+00:00">— updated: 7:33 pm</abbr> title .

the talents of a middle-aged brain byline by tara parker-pope.

the content after we hit 40, many of us begin to worry about our aging brains.

betterdaze

One of the most intriguing findings is that if you talk to people who disagree with you, that helps your brain wake up and refine your arguments and shake up the cognitive egg, which is what you want to do.

Compare to the JWs living in a mind-less cocoon of pre-digested thought.

We used to be trained to stand our ground and argue minute Biblical points with householders. Presently, it's dump and run!

~Sue

12

Visiting New York Tomorrow

by JWFreak in

jw
friends

hey i will be in the city for 4 days from this monday.. apart from the usual tourist sites which i have seen before, what unusual places to any of you recommend?.

thanks.

jwf.

betterdaze

Day Tours leaving NYC Port Authority:

West Point Military Academy

Hyde Park (Franklin Delano Roosevelt Home & Vanderbilt Mansion)

Orange County Choppers

Bear Mountain State Park

Other great day-trips throughout the Hudson Valley: Kykuit, Sunnyside, Philipsburg Manor, Van Cortlandt Manor, Montgomery Place, Union Church

Upper West Side: Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Highlights tour plus Biblical garden plus freaky outdoor sculpture, Vertical tour to the roof only is only weekends.)

Bike and Roll NY

@ Hudson River Park

Manhattan Kayak Company (Pier 66)

Lower Manhattan, you could roll the Financial District or Chinatown/Little Italy into a day with lunch/dinner with either of these:

Fraunces Tavern Museum

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

This glorius time of year especially,

NY Botanical Garden (up in the Bronx)

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Guided Tour of Lincoln Center

National Museum of the American Indian

Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)

For all the nooks and crannies, Big Onion Walking Tours.

17

Little Girls in the '70's KHalls: Dresses

by White Dove in

do you remember the short little dresses small girls wore back then in the khall?

my mom wouldn't replace ours until they were very short on us.

she was very cheap.. when we sat down in a chair, it was very difficult to keep the skirt down far enough.. i remember getting slapped hard on bare skin several times because i couldn't keep my dress down when told to.

betterdaze

My mother actually crocheted me a skirt with a drawstring waist. I was an avid crocheter, too. So as I got taller, she'd have ME add a few rows.

~Sue

23

Giant Caterpillar found in dorm room

by RR in

.

betterdaze

Is that from "Bethelites Gone Wild" Brooklyn or Wallkill?

~Sue

5

The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain

by betterdaze in

jw
friends

april 30, 2010, 11:51 am date updated <abbr class="updated" title="2010-05-02t19:33:25+00:00">— updated: 7:33 pm</abbr> title .

the talents of a middle-aged brain byline by tara parker-pope.

the content after we hit 40, many of us begin to worry about our aging brains.

betterdaze

April 30, 2010, 11:51 am

The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain

By TARA PARKER-POPE

After we hit 40, many of us begin to worry about our aging brains. Will we spend our middle years searching for car keys and forgetting names?

The new book “The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind,” by Barbara Strauch, has the answers, and the news is surprisingly upbeat. Sure, brains can get forgetful as they get old, but they can also get better with age, reports Ms. Strauch, who is also the health editor at The New York Times. Ms. Strauch, who previously tackled teenage brains in her book “The Primal Teen,” spoke with me this week about aging brains and the people who have them. Here’s our conversation:

Barbara Strauch Q. After exploring the teenage brain, why did you decide to write a book about grown-ups? A. Well, I have a middle-aged brain, for one thing. When I would go give talks about “The Primal Teen,” I’d be driven to the airport or back by a middle-aged person, and they’d turn to me and say: “You should do something about my brain. My brain is suddenly horrible. I can’t remember names.” That’s why I started looking into it. I had my own middle-aged issues like going into an elevator and seeing somebody and thinking, “Who are you?” Q. So what’s the bad news about the middle-aged brain? A. Obviously, there are issues with short-term memory. There are declines in processing speed and in neurotransmitters, the chemicals in our brain. But as it turns out, modern middle age is from 40 to 65. During this long time in the middle, if we’re relatively healthy our brains may have a few issues, but on balance they’re better than ever during that period. Q. Do teenage brains and middle-aged brains have much in common? A. The thing the middle-aged brain shares with the teenage brain is that it’s still developing. It’s not some static blob that is going inexorably downhill. Scientists found that when they watched the brains of teenagers, the brains were expanding and growing and cutting back and shaping themselves, even when the kids are 25 years old. I think for many years scientists just left it at that. They thought that from 25 on, we just get “stupider.” But that’s not true. They’ve found that during this period, the new modern middle age, we’re better at all sorts of things than we were at 20. Q. So what kinds of things does a middle-aged brain do better than a younger brain? A. Inductive reasoning and problem solving — the logical use of your brain and actually getting to solutions. We get the gist of an argument better. We’re better at sizing up a situation and reaching a creative solution. They found social expertise peaks in middle age. That’s basically sorting out the world: are you a good guy or a bad guy? Harvard has studied how people make financial judgments. It peaks, and we get the best at it in middle age. Q. Doesn’t that make sense, since our young adult lives are often marked by bad decisions? A. I think most of us think that while we make bad decisions in our 20s, we also have the idea that we were the sharpest we ever were when we were in college or graduate school. People think if I tried to go to engineering school or medical school now, I couldn’t do it. Because of these memory problems that happen in middle age, we tend to think of our brains as, on the whole, worse than in our 20s. But on the whole, they’re better. Q. So what’s happening in middle age that leads to these improvements? A. What we have by middle age is all sorts of connections and pathways that have been built up in our brain that help us. They know from studies that humans and animals do better if they have a little information about a situation before they encounter it. By middle age we’ve seen a lot. We’ve been there, done that. Our brains are primed to navigate the world better because they’ve been navigating the world better for longer.

There also are some other physical changes that they can see. We used to think we lost 30 percent of our brain cells as we age. But that’s not true. We keep them. That’s probably the most encouraging finding about the physical nature of our brain cells.

Q. Is there anything you can do to keep your brain healthy and improve the deficits, like memory problems? A. There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain. Q. What about activities like learning to play an instrument or learning a foreign language? A. The studies on this are slim. We’ve all been told to do crossword puzzles. Learning a foreign language, walking a different way to work, all that is an effort to make the brain work hard. And it’s true we need to make our brains work hard. One of the most intriguing findings is that if you talk to people who disagree with you, that helps your brain wake up and refine your arguments and shake up the cognitive egg, which is what you want to do. Q. Do social connections and relationships make a difference in how the brain ages? A. There is a whole bunch of science about being social and how cognitive function seems to be better if you are social. There is a fascinating study in Miami where they studied people who lived in apartments. Those who had balconies where they could see their neighbors actually aged better cognitively than others. There are a whole bunch of studies like that. People who volunteer and help kids seem to age better and help their brains. We forget how difficult it is to meet, greet and deal with another human being. It’s hard on our brains and good for them. Q. What was the most surprising thing you learned about the middle-aged brain? A. The hope I saw from real scientists was surprising. A lot of the myths we think of in terms of middle age, myths that I grew up with, turn out to be based on almost nothing. Things like the midlife crisis or the empty nest syndrome. We’re brought up to think we’ll enter middle age and it will be kind of gloomy. But as scientists look at real people, they find out the contrary. One study of men found that well-being peaked at age 65. Over and over they find that middle age, instead of being a time of depression and decline, is actually a time of being more optimistic overall.