Patti's Online Diary (page 9)

February 12: Well, here we are well-into 2005. Not much to say about THAT except the time is FLYING. I guess that means that things are going pretty well. Time really only drags when you're bored or suffering or something otherwise negative is happening... I'm actually beginning to feel a tad normal again - just once in a while - a few score minutes at a time every once in a while - once or twice a day. The old libido is making reappearances again, too, though it's usually at inopportune times (like as I'm putting my shoes on heading for work!). Oh well!

I bought a KNN air filter for my bike. It was $50 but a stock Honda air filter is $45 and the KNN will last forever.

I've gotten into heated discussions with people who see things like Astrology and psychology as somehow the same thing. I thought a lot about that and I realized personality systems like Astrology or systems that judge you by the colors you like - these claim to know about your personality (behavior) based on something unrelated to your behavior, like the position of stars at your birth. Psychology does the opposite - it asks you how you behave (and think) and then uses that to tell you about your personality.

~~ Just the opposite of Astrology! ~~

February 22: Thought and Emotion have historically been considered as independent aspects of human nature (of the brain). In fact, they behave more as if they were two terms in a mathematical equation which is intrinsically inseparable. It is possible that these terms can be made to contain multipliers such that under suitable conditions, either the Thought or the Emotion term can become dominant or causitive with respect to the other. They are, however, intrinsically interdependent and unfactorable. This is, in analogy, just as the case of elementary particles in physics: either the wave or particle aspects of an electron can be made to predominate under given conditions of observation, but neither, separately from the other, actually represents reality.

March 5: Well, my new KNN air filter seems to work great. The outfall of my trying to make a group of friends at my apartment building is a bunch of drama, dyke and otherwise. Looking at it from the outside, it seems like it would be fun: sort of like TV shows "Friends," or "Seinfeld," but those are scripted, they have laugh-tracks, the stars are highly paid professionals, and any problems or hurt feelings aren't real. It's a pain to have all this drama when it's real life.

March 6: Sometimes I get so damned lonely - it hurts. When I was growing up, it was always that way, but I've spent the last six or seven years trying to meet people and make friends - to change myself. Right now it feels like it's all been wasted.

March 11: Concert tomorrow night. Wow! The McNeil singers have an international reputation. They're HOT. My friends Amanda, April, and Karlyne are coming to see us, too. Very cool.

March 17: The concert was amazing! I'm so lucky to have good friends, too. I was reading that scientists figured out the main reason Rome became corrupt and fell - they used lead pipes in their plumbing! They had no idea lead was toxic and caused dementia. We don't know what causes Alzheimer's...

It's 5 years since my surgery... A friend sent me this - it's TOO FUNNY!

March 22: Do you know the difference between a Pleasure and a Gratification? I sure didn't. I even checked Webster's and all it gave me was a bunch of words - there didn't seem to be much difference! But there really is a difference that is rather easy to relate... (more to follow)

April 17: I've been thinking about sex with a reconstructed vagina. It didn't seem at all clear at the start of this process of transitioning, but now it seems like a pretty important issue. It's probably more important for lesbians because oral sex, and therefore taste and feel of the new vagina, are more important than for many non-gay couples. I don't remember anyone talking about things like taste or texture, although I have thought about it - I used to ask lesbians *why* they were lesbians. Nobody said, "Well women taste better..." or anything like that. But I'm sure that is a consideration, at least for some lesbians, if not most.

July 29: Had rib removal surgery with Dr. Manders a couple of weeks ago. That *hurt* and I'm still sore, although a woman from Paris, France had the same surgery on the same day as I, and she was feeling fine the next day. Go figure!

New fruit in my garden!!

October 15:

Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, DC: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July 1993

John S. Hagelin, Maxwell V. Rainforth, David W. Orme-Johnson, Kenneth L. Cavanaugh, Charles N. Alexander, Susan F. Shatkin, John L. Davies, Anne O. Hughes, and Emanuel Ross

This study presents the final results of a two-month prospective experiment to reduce violent crime in Washington, D.C. On the basis of previous research it was hypothesized that the level of violent crime in the District of Columbia would drop significantly with the creation of a large group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation® and TM-Sidhi® programs to increase coherence and reduce stress in the District.

The graph to the right gives an idea of the results that were achieved.

This National Demonstration Project to Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness brought approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs to the United States national capital from June 7 to July 30, 1993. A 27-member independent Project Review Board consisting of sociologists and criminologists from leading universities, representatives from the police department and government of the District of Columbia, and civic leaders approved in advance the research protocol for the project and monitored its progress.

The dependent variable in the research was weekly violent crime, as measured by the Uniform Crime Report program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; violent crimes include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. This data was obtained from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department for 1993 as well as for the preceding five years (1988-1992). Additional data used for control purposes included weather variables (temperature, precipitation, humidity), daylight hours, changes in police and community anti-crime activities, prior crime trends in the District of Columbia, and concurrent crime trends in neighboring cities. Average weekly temperature was significantly correlated with homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes), as has also been found in previous research; therefore temperature was used as a control variable in the main analysis of HRA crimes. Using time series analysis, violent crimes were analyzed separately in terms of HRA crimes (crimes against the person) and robbery (monetary crimes), as well as together.

Analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes associated with increases in the size of the group during the Demonstration Project. The maximum decrease was 23.3% when the size of the group was largest during the final week of the project. The statistical probability that this result could reflect chance variation in crime levels was less than 2 in 1 billion (p < .000000002). When a longer baseline is used (1988-1993 data), the maximum decrease was 24.6% during this period (p < .00003). When analyzed as a separate variable, robberies did not decrease significantly, but a joint analysis of both HRA crimes and robberies indicated that violent crimes as a whole decreased significantly to a maximum amount of 15.6% during the final week of the project (p = .0008). Analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes associated with increases in the size of the group during the Demonstration Project.

Several additional analyses were performed on HRA crimes to further assess the strength of the main findings. These indicated that the reduction of HRA crimes associated with the group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs could not be attributed to changes in police staffing. These secondary analyses also found that the reduction of HRA crimes was highly robust to alternative specifications of the statistical model - that is, the effect is independent of the isolated details of the models used to assess seasonal cycles and trends. No significant decrease was found in any of the prior five years during this period of time, indicating that this effect was not due to the specific time of year. Furthermore, the intervention parameters for the group size revealed that the effect of the group was not only cumulative with the increase in group size, but also continued for some time after the end of the project.

Based on the results of the study, the steady state gain (long-term effect) associated with a permanent group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs was calculated as a 48% reduction in HRA crimes in the District of Columbia.

Given the strength of these results, their consistency with the positive results of previous research, the grave human and financial costs of violent crime, and the lack of other effective and scientific methods to reduce crime, policy makers are urged to apply this approach on a large scale for the benefit of society.

Reference: Hagelin, J.S., Rainforth, M.V., Orme-Johnson, D.W., Cavanaugh, K. L., Alexander, C.N., Shatkin, S.F., Davies, J.L, Hughes, A.O, and Ross, E. 1999. Effects of group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July, 1993. Social Indicators Research, 47(2): 153-201.

October 23:
The current National Debt:            $8,005,408,250,618.76 (as of Oct 23)
Population of the U.S.:                        297,504,146 people
YOUR share of the National Debt:      $26,908.56
YOUR monthly interest-only payment:    $242.16

A few days ago when I checked the national debt clock, Sandy and I each owed $26,702 as our pieces of the national debt.

So did our two grown children, their spouses and each of our three grandkids. The immediate family, therefore, is in hock on behalf of our government to the tune of $240,318. That's about five times more than the mortgage on the house we bought back in 1975.

Of course, each of us 297,288,861 American citizens owes that $26,702 for a total now of just slightly less than $8 trillion. And since the debt is increasing by $1.54 billion each day - that's right, each day - we'll be over the $8 trillion mark in no time.

Those are sobering facts considering that someday, somehow, Americans are going to have to pay off all that debt.

A lot of people in this country - both Republicans and Democrats - tried to warn George Bush and his economic advisers early on in his administration that the tax cuts they were proposing could endanger the budget surplus that the Clinton administration had handed them.

For those who don't remember, Clinton in 1999 proposed paying off the entire national debt by 2015 because surpluses were running much more than expected. He added that in addition to paying down the debt, the surpluses could be used to add decades of solvency to Social Security and Medicare.

When Bush took office in 2001, everything changed. The economy faltered, yet the administration went ahead with its tax cuts, most of which benefited the well-to-do.

Then 9/11 occurred, but the administration insisted the tax cuts had to go forward, regardless. Then the decision was made to attack Iraq, but the tax cuts remained untouchable. A year or so later, the administration pushed through a so-called Medicare prescription drug plan that will cost the nation another $500 billion or so, most of it landing in the hands of the drug companies. But the tax cuts continue.

And now, of course, we're faced with billions upon billions of unexpected expenses in the wake of two devastating hurricanes.

Bush and a host of Republicans on Congress used to remind us at election time that government needs to take care of its income and spending just like American families have to do.

Unfortunately, if American families took care of their household budgets like Bush and company have done, we'd all be bankrupt.

Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: dzweifel@madison.com

Published: 6:55 AM 10/5/05

And if THAT's not upsetting enough, here's something - Walmart...
Who can afford all this national-level fiscal insanity?

November 11: I'm aware that I possess that information, but it appears to be located in a convex neural bubble which is not accessible from my current noninvertible mental orbit...

November 19: Just hanging out at home doing CFD calculations on my flame. Also, Sammy is being totally cute! I was really worried about him being lonely, but he seems to have found a four-legged playmate. He really prefers this one over the other stuffed animals I have (spider, alien, teddy-bear).

December 24: Dear Lisa - I feel so honored and privileged to know you and be in your presence.