Technology For Students With Autism

by Staff Report, myveronanj.com
November 19th 2012 7:23 AM

The Children’s Institute (TCI) is holding a free lecture on technology that can help students with autism. “Apps to Support those with Autism in the Home, School and Community” will be led by Randy Palmer, TCI’s computer specialist on December 5, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Palmer will cover iPod and iPad applications for communication augmentation for children with autism and speech and language delays, available social skills applications, activity scheduling software and self-regulation products that are available today for parents, educators, speech and occupational therapists as well as the latest technology available to increase independence for those with autism.

Registration is required; call 973-509-3050 ext. 233. TCI’s Verona campus is located on Sunset Avenue just off Bloomfield Avenue.

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Secret US cybersecurity program to protect power grid confirmed

yeoldefalseflag.com | Jan 6th 2013 4:25 PM
The National Security Agency is spearheading a program, dubbed Perfect Citizen, to develop technology to protect the power grid from cyberattack. The project worries privacy rights groups.

Newly released documents confirm that the National Security Agency (NSA), America's top cyberespionage organization, is spearheading a cloaked and controversial program to develop technology that could protect the US power grid from cyberattack.

Existence of the program, dubbed Perfect Citizen, was revealed in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article. But intriguing new details are revealed in documents released by the NSA last month to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an Internet privacy group that petitioned for them in 2010 under the Freedom of Information Act.

Of the 188 pages of documents released by the agency, roughly half were redacted to remove classified information. Even so, the documents show Perfect Citizen to be in the fourth year of a five-year program begun in 2009. Valued at up to $91 million, the Perfect Citizen technology is being developed by Raytheon, the Waltham, Mass., the defense contractor in Waltham, Mass., that won it.

Recommended: How much do you know about cybersecurity? Take our quiz.
The released documents are the contract that the NSA drew up with Raytheon. A Raytheon spokesman referred all comments on the program to the NSA.
All along, the NSA has maintained that Perfect Citizen is "purely a vulnerabilities assessment and capabilities development contract" that "does not involve the monitoring of communications or the placement of sensors on utility company systems," according to an NSA statement released in 2010 – and now rereleased to the Monitor.

What the documents reveal is an apparently small but robust program authorized to hire 28 software engineers, program managers, and laboratory personnel. This includes a pair of "penetration testers" – essentially good-guy hackers who specialize in breaking into networks.

Their assignment as part of the team: discover vulnerabilities that lie in the electronic interface that connects the computer networks of utility companies. Then the team can come up with software and hardware plugs to patch those digital holes.

"Sensitive Control Systems (SCS) perform data collection and control of large-scale distributed utilities or provide automation of infrastructure processes," says the Perfect Citizen contract's "Statement of Work" document. "The protection of SCS is essential to mission operations and has become a significant point of interest in support of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community."

Further, the document says, "prevention of a loss due to a cyber or physical attack, or recovery of operational capability after such an event, is crucial to the continuity of the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the operation of [Signals Intelligence] systems."

While most might agree the program's national-security goal is laudable, the question of just how to go about protecting the power grid has been a controversial topic in Congress and among Internet privacy advocates leery of government control of the Internet. Of particular concern among such advocates is shielding privately owned corporate computer networks deemed to be "critical infrastructure" from potentially intrusive digital monitoring.

Citing unnamed sources, the original Wall Street Journal article said that the program did indeed involve placing sensors that can detect illegitimate cyberactivity. But the new documents don't clarify this point. Deploying such sensors would be especially sensitive since the NSA is an arm of the Pentagon charged with collecting and analyzing foreign communications and defending US government communications and computer networks – not domestic spying.

"This is a research and engineering effort. There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor," the 2010 statement says.
Indeed, the NSA is not authorized to intercept the communications of US citizens unless specifically authorized to do so by a special court acting under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yet The New York Times reported in 2005 that the NSA had been involved in conducting wiretaps of calls made by US citizens to persons overseas without first getting a warrant from the court.

"Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this [Perfect Citizen] contracted effort are simply not true," says the NSA's 2010 statement. "We strictly adhere to both the spirit and the letter of US laws and regulations."

Still, privacy rights groups remain worried the program is focused on digital filtering or monitoring – and developing systems to do that. The Statement of Work document, for instance, requires development of "Computer Network Defense best practices/capabilities that defend against vulnerabilities identified in a SCS."

"Previously the agency had said it was just a research program," says Ginger McCall, director of the Open Government Program at EPIC, which won release of the documents. "But we see in these documents that they do intend to conduct testing, actual research, actual vulnerability testing and develop software tools that could be operational."

Other experts say the documents are suggestive, but do not ultimately clarify Perfect Citizen’s scope.

"It's hard to say if the project is only research, only operational, or a combination of both," says John Bumgarner, a research director for the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit security think tank that advises government and industry. "The contract cost for the project seems way too low to be an operational program to, say, protect the entire US electric grid from cyberattack."

But EPIC's main concern is that Perfect Citizen could be already conducting, or planning to conduct, online digital monitoring of data without proper authorizations or having the program itself evaluated for privacy implications. When the Department of Homeland Security undertakes such projects, Ms. McCall notes, it is required to conduct privacy impact assessments. She questions what has happened in this case (which is not under the authority of DHS).

"It appears as though the NSA is trying to develop cybersecurity protective technology, but that as part of this contract, they're conducting testing already," she says. "This isn't merely research."
Others, however, applaud the project, saying such measures are needed.

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The 10 most notorious hackers

by Drew Hendricks, m.techi.com

While high-profile hacking made headlines in 2012, some of the most famous hack jobs took place years ago. The masterminds behind these notorious events are outlined below.

Kevin Mitnick
Labeled as the most wanted cyber criminal in United States history, Mitnick took down the dedicated servers of Motorola, Fujitsu and Nokia. After his 1995 arrest and five-year prison term, he went on to found a computer security firm.

Kevin Poulson
Using the name “Dark Dante”, Poulson gained notoriety by hacking into telephone systems, notably that of Los Angeles radio station KIIS, in order to win a contest. He also broke into police databases and was featured on the show “Unsolved Mysteries”. Poulson is now a journalist.

Adrain Lamo
Lamo is noted for his use of public Internet networks, such as in libraries and coffee shops, to infiltrate company computer networks. His biggest coups was breaching the NY Times database and abusing the paper’s Lexis-Nexis account to obtain confidential information. Lamo also became a journalist.

Stephen Wozniak
Best known as an Apple Computer founder, Wozniak began his career as a white-hat hacker. While still in university, he created a “blue box” that allowed people to call long distance for free. Wozniak eventually dropped out to join forces with Steve Jobs.

Loyd Blankenship
Known as one of the hacker elite, Blankenship was arrested in 1986 for activities connected with the Legion of Doom group. He penned the “Hacker Manifesto”, which is still a foundation of hacker philosophy today and was used in the 1995 film “Hackers”.

Michael Calce
At age 15, Calce brought down Yahoo, Amazon and eBay with intense denial of service attacks. Police arrested him after he bragged about the attack in chat rooms. He received a short jail term, probation and a fine.

Robert Tappan Morris
In 1988, Morris infected thousands of Unix computers with a virus, later dubbed the Morris Worm. He claimed he was simply trying to measure the size of the Internet, but received probation and a large fine.

Masters Of Deception
An elite hacking group, the MOD broke into phone systems. The group was brought down after its 1992 attack on AT&T, with most members not even going to jail.

David L. Smith
Smith is known for writing the infamous Melissa virus that was distributed via Usenet, causing millions of dollars worth of damage. He was sentenced to jail for the offense.

Sven Jaschan
Jaschan was the author of the Sasser and Netsky worms, which were virulent on the Internet in 2004. He was given a suspended sentence and later hired by a security firm.

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Ending sexism in hacker culture: A work in progress

by Valerie Aurora, adainitiative.org
January 25th 2013

Updated to add 2 January 2013: German translation available here courtesy @fin, @bekassine and @michaelem.]

Last week, sexism in hacker culture became a topic of worldwide dialogue again. The trigger was a series of sexist incidents at the 29th Chaos Communications Congress, held every year in Germany during the last week of the year.

The incidents started with a wall in the conference center, where a picture of a woman’s nude body (link does not show image directly) was created using “Creeper Move cards,” printed paper cards used to raise awareness of sexism. (They definitely raised awareness in this case.) The conference wiki was edited to create a game in which participants were rewarded for offending people by making sexist comments or unwanted sexual propositions. During the popular conference event “Hacker Jeopardy,” a moderator repeatedly made sexist comments like “For reasons of gender-equality, we’ll sadly have to pick a woman now,” unhindered by the conference organizers present.

The reaction was swift, both at the conference and around the world. Many of the incidents were chronicled on a web site set up to document sexist incidents at CCC (in German, English here). Social media exploded with criticism of the events – e.g., “I think the conference leadership (the ccc) has failed horribly and that your team is a token and meaningless gesture.” – which quickly spread to include not just people at the conference but also people around the world.

These incidents were the last straw for prominent online activist and Cryptoparty co-founder Asher Wolf, who blogged about the sexist discrimination and harassment she experiences from the hacker community. As if to prove her point, her web site was hacked and her personal details posted online shortly thereafter.

These incidents stung more than usual in part because just a few days earlier the CCC 29 publicized their official anti-harassment policy, including a special phone number and dedicated team for responding to reports. The Ada Initiative saw this as a hopeful sign for progress, since it was the third hacker conference to publicly adopt a specific, enforceable policy.

Yet criticism of the conference organizers’ actual response to harassment was widespread (EN) (DE) and continues through the time of this posting. We are personally sorry and upset that so many people, of all genders, suffered harassment and then were let down by the response from the conference. Is it any wonder many people publicly despaired over whether women can ever expect to go to a hacker conference and not be treated like a piece of meat?

This is what progress looks like

We have a message of hope: This is what progress looks like. As painful as the last week has been, it is a sign that hacker culture as a whole is slowly working its way towards a future in which women are not actively discouraged from being part of the hacker community in ways men are not.

When sexism at the DEFCON hacker conference became national news last August, the community discussion centered around whether sexism existed at all, if assault and insults counted as sexism, whether women were valuable to hacker culture, and whether assault and harassment of women was an integral, essential element of hacker culture. In August 2012, zero hacker conferences had a public, specific, enforceable anti-harassment policy.

Contrast this with last week, when the discussion centered around the right way for the hacker community should respond to sexism, not whether it exists or women deserved the basic right of not being assaulted in the hacker community. Now, three hacker conferences have public, specific, enforceable (if in some cases badly enforced) anti-harassment policies. When the anti-harassment policy was poorly enforced at CCC, attendees spontaneously organized to discuss how to improve the enforcement at the next conference and assembled a list of practical, sensible improvements (EN) (DE). Sexism in hacker culture has always existed, but now more people than ever before are aware of it, are agreeing that it’s wrong, and are taking steps to end it.

Fighting sexism: an on-going process

It’s not all roses from here on out: Success depends on continuing to push for accountability from powerful people, whether or not is uncomfortable or unpleasant for them to address. We’re here to talk about how that process works.

First, we want to share an example of how this process is moving forward in similar peer-to-peer, international, creative communities. The last two years have seen measurable progress for women in open source software, Wikipedia, and similar communities – what we call “open technology and culture” and which includes hacker and maker culture. The Ada Initiative is an active leader in this movement: working directly with conferences and corporations, bringing together women in open tech/culture at the AdaCamp conferences, and contributing to the Geek Feminism wiki, a freely available CC-BY-SA licensed knowledge base so every community and conference does not have to learn from scratch.

What we’ve learned is that social change is a process. One way to look at the process is as this series of steps:

1. Raising awareness: Teaching people that the problem exists
2. Creating solutions: Inventing practical ways to change the community
3. Taking action: Implementing the solutions

For example, creating and handing out the “Creeper Move cards” (EN) (DE) raised awareness of the problem of sexism at conferences in a way that made it impossible to ignore. Writing and promoting conference anti-harassment policies created a solution. Conference organizers enforcing an anti-harassment policy is implementing that solution.

To make this work, we have to take these steps over and over, we have to risk making mistakes, and we have to learn how to do better next time. One example of this process working in the open source software community is the Australian/New Zealand open source conference, linux.conf.au.

Case study: An open source software conference

Linux.conf.au is the most popular open source conference in the Australia/New Zealand region, and attracts hundreds of speakers and attendees from all over the world. Today, it has strong, well-enforced anti-harassment policy, a high percentage of women speakers and attendees, and a reputation as a friendly and welcoming conference for all. But it wasn’t always that way.

In previous years, linux.conf.au had incidents of non-consensual photography of women, jokes about Hans Reiser killing women attendees, and physical intimidation of women. In early 2010, for the first time the conference had a “Discrimination” policy forbidding discriminatory or harassing behavior, but was vague enough that people argued over whether, e.g., sexist jokes were “discriminatory.”

In late 2010, a prominent woman in the open source community named the man who had groped her at ApacheCon and kicked off a worldwide discussion about sexual harassment and assault in the open source community. This discussion led to the creation of a specific, enforceable example anti-harassment policy (and the founding of the Ada Initiative). linux.conf.au adopted the new specific and enforceable policy for the 2011 conference.

Despite this policy, one of the keynote speakers at the 2011 conference violated the policy in several ways (including showing a variety of pornographic images). The ensuing discussion engulfed the community for months afterward and triggered more incidents of sexism on the conference related mailing lists. In the end, though, the speaker apologized, the video of the talk was edited to add a notice that it violated the conference policies and principles of the organizers, the backing organization, Linux Australia, publicly confirmed its commitment anti-harassment policy. The 2012 conference had no major reported incidents.

Individual community members continue to support sexism and do sexist things, but now they know they face sanctions, penalties, and disgust from the rest of the community. The cultural norms of this part of the open source community have visibly changed.

Overall, opposition to conference harassment has become the default in the open source community: Most major and many minor conferences have and enforce an anti-harassment policy. Going even further, the Python Software Foundation recently announced publicly that it would not sponsor any events without a policy and we are told many other sponsors have the same policy but don’t advertise it. Even more encouraging, open source conferences are now paying attention to speaker line-ups, both working hard to increase diversity in speakers and calling out conferences with all-male or all-white speakers.

Stop ruining my conference!

But, people ask, can’t we skip all the unpleasantness, just “be excellent to each other” and be done with it? We’re all adults, right?

Social change does not happen because people ask nicely.

It happens through protests, hunger strikes, and publicity stunts. It blocks traffic on the streets of big cities. It illegally leaks classified government documents. It riots and burns down buildings and takes tear gas canisters in the face. We can count ourselves lucky that protesting sexism in hacker culture mainly results in angry words – especially when we consider that the current reality that we are protesting already includes physical sexual assault of women. If you haven’t experienced assault or harassment yourself, the upsetting discussion may seem like step backward, but for those of us who have experienced assault, it’s a clear improvement.

The effects of protests like this are uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous for people going about their daily lives, but that’s nothing compared to what life is like for the people already oppressed. Many women already can’t go to a hacker conference without having sexism pushed in their faces. If this week is the first time you’ve been made uncomfortable by sexism, imagine what it’s like to experience sexism when you join an IRC channel, blog in public, or go to a conference. That would suck pretty bad, right? You might even stop participating in the hacker community.

The answer to “Stop ruining my conference” is not “Stop pointing out the sexism,” it’s “Stop being sexist.” Don’t blame the victim for pointing out that sexism is happening, or for doing it in a way that makes you uncomfortable – after all, sexism is already making men and women more than just uncomfortable, it’s harming them and driving them out of the community. We call upon Chaos Communications Congress to stand behind their anti-harassment policy, develop a comprehensive response procedure that works, and to commit to enforcement in future years.

If people of good will continue working together, speaking up, and taking action, sexism will retreat from the hacker community as it has from so many other communities in the past. Here’s what you can personally do about it:

Thank you to everyone who spoke up about sexism and harassment last week. You are what makes change possible. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can help!

Comments are enabled but heavily moderated and must be approved. Comments may take up to a day to approve. Comments will be closed in 3 days. Comments are now closed.

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The Ada Initiative is non-profit dedicated to increasing the participation and status of women in open technology and culture. Our work, includes this blog post, the example anti-harassment policy, and much of the associated documentation. We can only do this work because of the support and actions of the open tech/culture community as a whole. Thank you!

This work is licensed under a .

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Drugging America: The drug industry exposed

by Judd Weiss, c.washingtontimes.com
March 27th 2011

Washington D.C., March 27, 2011 – Pharmaceuticals are a $650 plus billion dollar a year industry. For years the most profitable business in the U.S. has been the pharmaceutical corporations, which routinely top the annual fortune 500 list. Doctor prescribed drugs support an industry which out-earns the GNP of many nations.

A core attribute to big Pharma’s overwhelming ‘success’ lays in the liaison between the corporations and the ‘symptoms management’ health care industry: The pharmaceutical representative. The men and women we see meeting with physicians, walking into offices with gifts of lunch for the staff, meeting with the doctor while you wait for our appointment.

Gwen Olsen was a top level pharmaceutical rep for some of the biggest in the industry: Johnson & Johnson, Syntex Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Forest Laboratories.

Through some chilling wake up calls in her tenure, and the tragic drug-related death of her niece, Gwen has dedicated her life to making people aware of the dangers of prescription drugs and how the drug industry manipulates doctors into prescribing, and over prescribing, their drugs.

She is exposing the dark, deep-rooted deception and corruption that is prevalent in this industry.

Gwen Olsens words are powerful. Her message absolutely frightening. Below is a transcript of our conversation as well as a video of Gwen speaking out, including her appearance on a CBS Evening News Eye On Your Children news segment.

Adam Omkara: So you went into the industry with an altruistic mindset and you wanted to help people. When was it made apparent to you that the industry wasn’t based on that altruism, or even healing?

Gwen: Well, it was on the 2nd stage interview with the regional manager. He asked me why I wanted to get into the pharmaceutical industry. I said ‘well I really want to help people, that’s what I want to do’.

He kind of laughed, smiled, and said “Well, I’m not so sure about that. If altruism is what motivates you, then you better join the peace corp." Then he smiled, turned around to his desk and started working on his calculator. He said “however, if money is what motivates you, let me tell you how you can retire a millionaire from this job young lady.”

He went into delineating my benefits, stock options, and it all turned into a big blur for me. I saw dollar signs. It sounded pretty good to a 26 year old. So, that’s how initially I was told it wasn’t altruistic.

Adam Omkara: And you said you were actually trained to misinform people- Can you elaborate on that?

Gwen: Well, initially when you start pharmaceutical sales training you are taken into the home office for a sort of ‘indoctrination’ that’s 2-6 weeks of intensive training. That’s where the industry turns representatives into psychological profilers and people pleasers. The reps learn how to be people analyzers, so they know how to best influence people. We were taught in training sessions called ‘knee to knees’ and ‘toe to toes’ where you have a line of reps that play the doctor and opposing lines that play the rep position.

You have to learn verbatim the company’s position and their marketing lines- you can’t even vary from that. You practice and practice until it flows naturally and doesn’t sound rehearsed.

I started recognizing really that I was being trained to divert doctor’s attention away from his/her concerns. So, I was learning to misinform and disinform- to counter the doctor’s valid concerns. I wasn’t trained to say “this drug is bad for that patient” or “watch out for this drug’s interaction with that one." Any information perceived as a negative was always being candy coated.

In fact many times we would be called into a meeting when a new sales piece was being introduced. Managers would ask us questions on what aspects of the piece we received the most objections on. What were the parts that raised the most concern? After we gave the marketing department that feedback, the next period they would come up with a different layout that had manipulated and minimized the objectionable data. So, it was a constant set of circumstances where I began to see that I wasn’t allowed to give good information and I wasn’t given good information to share.

The industry knows that many of their drugs aren’t safe and that they don’t heal people. In fact, some drugs are designed to make symptoms worse later on.

When I started becoming pro-active and began to ask too many critically intelligent questions, management objected and discouraged me. I was frequently met with answers such as “We do it that way because we can", or "We sell more pills that way.”

It was apparent my inquiries were not welcomed!

It was almost like being in the military, in fact, many of my ex-managers had been in the military. Many are hired because they have great work ethics and they don’t ask a lot of questions. Military personnel are used to working on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Adam Omkara: How did you come to an awakening towards the industry. Did it all hit you all of the sudden, or was it a slow process?

Gwen: I realized early on I was in a position where I could harm people; In a position where I could literally take lives. My grand realization arrived when I started promoting a specific new drug.

I went to a national sales meeting for this new drug launch and was told the wonders on how it was going to help people. We immediately were sent out into our individual territories to get support for the new drug with key prescribing physicians.

Drug reps are given profiles of all the physicians in the territory on what their ‘writing habits’ are, i.e. their general personality, their prescribing habits like whether they are high volume prescribers or early adopters, or late adopters/skeptics.

Reps have all this information available before making a sales call so that they know how to approach the doctor and can develop a sales strategy.

So there was one doctor in my territory that was profiled as a “late adopter/skeptic.” That meant he was going to be difficult for me to get him to prescribe my new drug.

The marketing plan developed at launch emphasized to the sales force that as a last ditch effort, if a doctor didn’t want to write prescriptions for the new product, then the rep was to ask for just one patient- the most difficult patient that the doctor had. The theory was that if the drug worked for them, then the doctor would be more likely to use it in his broader practice later.

I did my presentation and the doctor told me his policy was he didn’t prescribe a new drug until it’s been on the market for at least a year. He had been burned on new drugs before.

However, with some hesitation he agreed to try it in his most difficult patient who had failed all other therapies and I left him samples.

Some time later I got a call from my district manager. I was being sent out to gather information for an Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) report, as there has been a death in my territory from our new drug and it was a patient of that doctor. And guess what- it was his mother! She had gone into renal failure and died from complications in dialysis. I was devastated!

After I went to get the ADR info, it took me almost 6 months to work up the nerve to go see that man again and look him in the eye. I was acutely aware that it had been my over-zealous and persistent marketing of the product that had influenced him to do something against his better judgment and, as a consequence, his own mother had paid with her life!

I’ll never forget his angry, terse remark to me, “Well, I see you all put a lot more effort into your marketing plan than you did your drug research and development!” What could I say to him after that?

That was my very first clue as a young rep that my job had serious ramifications.
Once this happened more and more things started falling into place. So with that awareness I began to see the job and industry with new eyes…

Adam Omkara: And no one seems to questions this? Why don’t you think there is more of this awakening or questioning? Representatives, psychiatrists, doctors, managers? Is there some desensitization process that comes into play that’s very effective? Where does the disconnect come into play and how is it sustained?

Gwen: Yes, there is definitely a desensitization process. A re-programming if you will. The indoctrination is usually done at the home office during the initial training and is similar to how they do boot camp in the military. They tear you down physically and psychologically, reps are kept up late nights studying for exams, preparing presentations, filming videos, deprived of sleep, deprived of good nutrition, required to dress to the nines and constantly compete with one another as they are being watched and evaluated in the corporate fish bowl.

It’s a very psychologically grueling, but an effective grooming environment.

Then when they release you back into your sales territory, you have this false sense of bravado feeling like you’re someone special who is going to go out and help the world. It’s literally a brainwashing process.

What they are effectively doing is trying to weed out the mavericks and break the weak ones. The one’s who can’t handle the job long term and, therefore, will be a wasted investment.

Adam Omkara: Do you know if the same basic training policy is upheld for other companies?

Gwen: I worked for five different companies and it happened in every single one. And I was no flunkee who lost my job and then started bashing the industry. I was the best of the best and performed at the top 3% in each company that I worked for full time.

Usually, as soon as a rep starts asking too many questions or makes unnecessary waves with management they are easily dispensed of and told there are plenty more eligible people behind them waiting to take their job. The only reason I was tolerated was because of how valuable I was to them.

I always made my district and managers look good at the bottom line.

Adam Omkara: And what about the psychiatrists and that industry? Do they not question?

Gwen: You really want me to be honest? The pharmaceutical industry makes so much fun of the psychiatric profession that it’s not even funny. They actually refer to psychiatrists as ‘drug whores.’ The reason they call them that is because they have no loyalty to any one company or product, it’s whoever is paying them at the time.

I was told in the initial training I received to sell antipsychotic drugs that most psychiatrists got into the field of psychiatry in order to figure out why they were so screwed up. There were definitely some very odd birds! So yeah, they were not held in very high regard. My colleagues and I looked down on them as though they were a ‘lower class’ quasi-physician. Because we knew that they didn’t do anything scientifically, it was all subjective diagnosis in nature, dependent on third-party observation of symptoms.

So they were easy to sell drugs to. Most psychiatrists are so ego-driven they would literally recommend anything when given the appropriate sales pitch!

In this day and age, most psychiatrists don’t use talk therapy anymore- just 15 minute appointments, what are your symptoms, try this and come back in a month. You’re lucky if you can get counseling these days (under coverage) and children rarely get it.

So, you can see there is a huge incentive to continue the psychopharmacologic-based treatment paradigm. Because if this huge house of cards actually implodes there will be all these doctors that have no way to practice in psychiatry anymore. Without drug therapy, how would they practice?

Parents Beware: Children have become the largest demographic for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Adam Omkara: So what are you working on now?

Gwen: I’m presently contributing to an anthology of works, called “Drugging our Children: How Profiteers are Pushing Antipsychotics on our Youngest,” coming out this fall.

A Medco Health Solutions Report in 2009 showed children to be the largest growth demographic for the pharmaceutical industry. Prescriptions in kids grew at 4X the rate of the general population. Antipsychotics were the #1 drug category in both 2008 and 2009 making $14.6 billion each year.

Furthermore, there are 1100 people who enter the social security disability rolls on a daily basis because of mental illness. Of that number, 250 are kids.

Adam Omkara: Do you have a message for the parents?

Gwen: Yes, my campaign is one of informed consent. I’m not anti-drugs, but I am anti- misinformation, and parents have been sorely misinformed, if not straight out lied to in many circumstances. My message is for parents to be pro-active.

Stop taking people’s words for things- start doing your own due diligence and research when it comes to drugging your kids. Remember that it not only takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to protect one. We all have to do our part!

Adam Omkara: Thank you very much Gwen

Please visit Gwen’s website at www.gwenolsen.com for more information.

Also, check out her first book: Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher.

Like Gwen on Facebook

This eye opening accurate information gives you a peek into an industry that doesn’t want you or your family to be well. If Gwen’s account does anything, please let it give you the realization that you should take your own health into your own hands. ‘Let thy food be thy medicine’, laugh, love, forgive, move, and get plenty of rest. Do your own due diligence and research, if you do get ill. Let this simple motto and plan keep big Pharma from ever manipulating and profiting off you and your loved one’s again.

See Video:

Related Article: The Most Astonishing Health Disaster in the 20th Century

Adam is a Reiki Master, certified Health and Lifestyle counselor, Intrinsic Coach, Licensed Massage Therapist, 20 year practicing bramana initiated Bhakti Yogi, Spiritual advisor, visionary, jock and veteran of the “hardcore punk scene” all rolled into one. His clients have included celebrities, politicians, professional athletes, and professional sport team owners. Adam is the founder of Omkara World and produced the mind/body fitness DVD “Intelligent Fitness."

Adam also fuels daily motivation and inspiration with his empowering “Namaste Message a Day” program which has everyone from students to celebrities joining.

For a 7 day free trial of Namaste messages sent to your cell phone: Text OMKARA to 37619

Click Here for Adams Latest Project: Got OM?

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Pitch discrimination and melodic memory in children with autism spectrum disorder

by Sandy Stanutz, m.aut.sagepub.com
November 13th 2012

Abstract

Background: Pitch perception is enhanced among persons with autism. We extended this finding to memory for pitch and melody among school-aged children.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate pitch memory in musically untrained children with autism spectrum disorders, aged 7–13 years, and to compare it to that of age- and IQ-matched typically developing children.

Methods: The children were required to discriminate isolated tones in two differing contexts as well to remember melodies after a period of 1 week. The tasks were designed to employ both short- and long-term memory for music. For the pitch discrimination task, the children first had to indicate whether two isolated tones were the same or different when the second was the same or had been altered to be 25, 35, or 45 cents sharp or flat. Second, the children discriminated the tones within the context of melody. They were asked whether two melodies were the same or different when the leading tone of the second melody was the same or had been altered to be 25, 35, or 45 cents sharp or flat. Long-term memory for melody was also investigated, as the children attempted to recall four different two-bar melodies after 1 week.

Results: The children with autism spectrum disorders demonstrated elevated pitch discrimination ability in the single-tone and melodic context as well as superior long-term memory for melody. Pitch memory correlated positively with scores on measures of nonverbal fluid reasoning ability.

Conclusion: Superior short- and long-term pitch memory was found among children with autism spectrum disorders. The results indicate an aspect to cognitive functioning that may predict both enhanced nonverbal reasoning ability and atypical language development.

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At 76, Jonathan Kozol Is More Outraged Over Inequality in Education Than Ever

m.good.is | Sep 12th 2012

"Sorry, I didn't mean to get so angry," author and education activist Jonathan Kozol told a crowd of mostly educators in Los Angeles on Monday night. The teachers, many toting dog-eared copies of Savage Inequalities, Kozol's groundbreaking 1991 text which exposed in heartbreaking detail the education disparities between wealthier, whiter students and poor, minority kids, didn't need the apology. Instead they applauded Kozol, who is on a nationwide lecture tour promoting his 13th tome, Fire in the Ashes, for sustaining his moral outrage over child poverty, racism, and educational inequity for the past 40 years.

Wealthy Americans, Kozol notes, tend to ask him "Does class size really matter?" His response? "I always ask them where their kids go to school." He says these parents—whose kids are usually enrolled in private schools or public suburban schools that are akin to their private cousins—start to panic when their child's class size gets to 20 students. Meanwhile, poor kids are packed into rooms with 30 to 40 students. "If a very small class size is good for the son of a prosperous attorney" or "a member of the Senate or House" then it's good for the poorest children in America Kozol says, balling up his fist and banging it on the podium.

The other question wealthier people ask, "Jonathan, can you really buy your way to better education?" also sets him off. "I don't know," he tells them. "It seems to do the trick for your kids." Wealthy children still get to attend school in beautiful buildings with attractive landscaping and plenty of light, while low-income kids spend their days in ugly, foul-smelling buildings that "coarsen their mentalities and tell them how little value they have in our society."

We have, Kozol says, a pretense of equitable education funding in this nation. What happens in practice is that wealthier parents funnel plenty of extra money into schools through so-called "million dollar PTAs." With those funds, schools in well-off communities are buying extra teachers, art instructors, and music programs.

Indeed, while teachers in Chicago are being demonized by striking over these kinds of inequities, at the $20,000 per year University of Chicago Lab School where Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his kids there are "seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700" and three libraries on campus. Meanwhile, 160 public schools in the city have seen their libraries shuttered. Poor kids don't get libraries, music, and art teachers anymore since budget cuts have gutted them. They're seen as irrelevant luxuries for those kids since, says Kozol, "you don't get points on art and music on standardized exams."

What's happening now in America, says Kozol, is "not even a pretense of a meritocracy." We are willfully condemning the futures of poor children in our society and, by scapegoating teachers and underfunding schools we're destroying public education. If that legacy of public education is lost, "that precious dream of Thomas Jefferson at his very best," says Kozol, "it will imperil our democracy."

At 76 years old, Kozol, knows his days of outrage over this lack of justice for America's children are numbered. "We all know we're going to die someday," he says, his voice choked with emotion. And so when it comes to speaking out about the issues he's devoted his life to, he refuses to hold back. "I'm too old to bite my tongue," he says. "I don't really care to mute my words."

It's clear that what Kozol wants to know is who's going to carry on his work when he's gone. Educators and supporters of children are "too subdued," he complains. "Someday soon," he says, "I have to pass on the torch to you." The question remains, will we take it and let our pursuit of justice and equity burn as bright?

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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