Study Says Facebook Can Lead to Psychosis, National Nurses Day, and Be Kind to Animals Week

Study Says Facebook Can Lead to Psychosis - Doctor Uri Nitzan of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Shalvata Mental Health Care Center decided, along with his colleagues, to look at his own patients in the context of their online relationships. He wondered whether psychopathologies might be related to activities on Facebook and in chat rooms. The researchers discovered that the patients suffered increasingly from negative effects the more they "socialized" online.

Dr. Nitzan said, "In each case, a connection was found between the gradual development and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, including delusions, anxiety, confusion, and intensified use of computer communications. Some of the problematic features of the Internet relate to issues of geographical and spatial distortion, the absence of nonverbal cues, and the tendency to idealize the person with whom someone is communicating, becoming intimate without ever meeting face-to-face. One patient even came to believe that the person she was in contact with online was constantly trying to touch her physically."

National Nurses Day - National Nurses Day, also known as National RN Recognition Day, is always celebrated on May 6th and opens National Nurses Week. National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6th and ends on May 12th, the birth date of Florence Nightingale.

National Nurses Week is one of the nation's largest health-care events, recognizing the contributions and commitments nurses make and educating the public about the significant work they perform.

Activities during National Nurses Week typically include banquets and recognition dinners, state and city proclamations, continuing education seminars, and other community events.

In 1974, President Nixon proclaimed a "National Nurse Week."

Be Kind to Animals Week - Join the event that’s been celebrated every year since 1915 -- American Humane Association's Be Kind to Animals Week®. In this annual tradition, we commemorate the role animals play in our lives, promote ways to continue to treat them humanely, and encourage others, especially children, to do the same.

Facebook, Stupidity in the News, and Cats and Dogs and Other Animals

Facebook - I was unprepared for the response to yesterday's blog post regarding deleting one's Facebook account. As of this morning, I have received six emails and two telephone calls from people thanking me for making such deletion a simple mouse click away. I did receive one email that espoused the position that I should "...mind my own business and not try to tell people what to do..." This is (thus far) the sole pro-Facebook message.

Obviously, the majority of visitors here agree that Facebook is the spawn of Satan!

Interestingly, those who displayed an anti-Facebook position did so pleasantly and tastefully. The pro-Facebook cretin, however, raged with vehemence, ill-humor, and a total disregard for email etiquette.

I am pleased to have provided a means whereby one may quickly and easily delete one's Facebook account—eschewing the necessity to take drastic measures to do so!

Stupidity in the News - Pennsylvania Man, 90, Jailed On Charges He Punched Trooper

Big Sis Refuses To Answer Congress On Bullet Purchases


DHS questioned over decision to let Saudi passengers skip normal passport controls


For the latest entry in the dumb criminals department, we have a woman who stole an Arkansas-based businessman's iPad and proceeded to take a gallery of goofy selfies with it. Unbeknownst to her, the device synced all of her photos to the man's facebook page. Naturally, he's spreading the photos everywhere in the hopes of locating the thief, who has not yet been identified.

Cats and Dogs and Other Animals - PETA is a vile entity.

PETA killed more than 1,600 cats and dogs at its Virginia headquarters last year - almost 90% of the animals handed over to the charity's American shelter.

Hunters will NOT be fooled!


Dog Dies In 'Ritualistic Execution,' Nearly 40 Others Mysteriously Vanish in Idaho

Facebook Is Evil! and Deleting One's Facebook Account!

Facebook Is Evil! - Facebook is evil on several levels:

Facebook logs users' searches and tracks their real-world purchases.

Facebook exploits users' personal data by selling it to marketing firms.

Facebook archives users' search histories. Anything for which one searches will be logged. There must be an ad or data-mining payoff; else, there would be no reason for doing this.

Facebook has partnered with Datalogix—a company that uses Facebook users' data to track which users bought products after seeing ads for them on Facebook. Datalogix uses information from loyalty card and online purchases—among other things—and ties this data to users' Facebook identities by using users' email addresses and other personal information.

Datalogix partners with data mining giant Acxiom, which collects users' data regarding social networks, purchasing histories, and public records databases.

Datalogix works across a broad spectrum of industries, but its Web site does not disclose the names of its actual customers. Datalogix, then, respects the privacy of the multi-billion-dollar corporations from which Datalogix receives payment for data but does nothing to protect the sanctity of users' personal information.

The companies profess that they anonymize the identities before matching up users' Facebook email addresses. The emails and other identifying information are made anonymous and collected into groups of people who saw an ad and people who did not. Datalogix compiles a report for Facebook and its advertisers to measure which creative approaches and demographic targeting persuade people to buy specific products. How anonymous is that anonymization, who is doing it, and who could conceivably undo it? Security expert Bruce Schneier said, "Anonymity is really, really hard -- but we knew that already."

Facebook users can opt out of having their social networking activities married to real-world purchases. On the surface, this sounds good. Users cannot, however, do this on Facebook. In fact, it require one to search exhaustively to find anything about this type of data collection on the social network regarding sharing of data. If a user wishes to opt out, he must go to Datalogix, fill out a form, and wait 30 days. And this must be done for every member of one's household.

Add to the above issues the fact that Facebook is a virtual breeding ground for Trojans, viruses, and malware—as well as an open source of pirated work, and Facebook must be considered to be a paradigm of evil!

Ultimately, it is a matter of whether users can reasonably trust Facebook and its advertising partners to keep users' names and other personal information inviolate.

My recommendation is that Facebook and their advertising partners should never be trusted with users' real information! My overall recommendation is that one should not join Facebook, and if one has joined, one should delete one's Facebook account.

Deleting One's Facebook Account!! - I am often told by clients that they have been unable to delete their Facebook accounts. The procedure is not for the easily-discouraged or faint-of-heart user!

Rather than supply the circuitous methodology Facebook requires one to take in order to delete one's account, I offer the following simple method! Simply click on the link below to quickly and simply delete your Facebook account!

Delete Facebook

Really?, Farmville, Gnomes

Really?, Farmville,and Gnomes - Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but for Rebecca Gallanagh, they have caused nothing but trouble. Gallanagh, a 22-year-old convict, was fined by a UK court this week for decorating her electronic ankle bracelet in fake diamonds—an act that local magistrates described as a "serious offense."

Gallanagh had been forced to wear the bracelet after being convicted of a public order offense in November, for her involvement in a fight outside a Staffordshire nightclub. As part of her punishment, officials ordered her to observe a strict 9 PM curfew that the electronic monitor was meant to enforce. Gallanagh insists that they never said anything about decorating the bracelet in shimmery diamonds, but her aesthetic modifications did not sit well with the monitor's manufacturers, who took her back to court after realizing what she had done.

I read this story just prior to reading that a television program is being produced from the Facebook game, Farmville. I was still reeling from the bedazzled tale and was certainly not prepared for the Farmville story. At that point, I determined today's news would be altogether too much for me to survive reading, and I set about dusting the gnomes instead.

Hotel California, Dive!, -and- Mobsters

Hotel California - users say leaving Facebook behind is not that simple
Dive! - James Bond fanatic creates fantastic underwater car
Mobsters - Justice Alito: "Sopranos" guilty of stereotyping

On this day in history: February 15, 1995 - The most wanted computer hacker in history, Kevin Mitnick, is arrested in Raleigh North Carolina for various offenses, one of which was breaking into security specialist Tsutomu Shimomura's computer.

Born on this day in history: February 15, 1951 - Jane Seymour (1951-) Born Joyce Penelope Wilhemina Frankenberg on February 15, 1951 in Wimbledon, England, Seymour is best known for her performances in made-for-television dramas. Seymour earned considerable popular acclaim for her portrayal of Dr. Michaela Quinn, a Boston physician who moves to the post-Civil War frontier, on the hit CBS series Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman.

Scripture of the Day: Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. - Philippians 2:14-15

Video of the Day: Don Piper: 90 Minutes in Heaven - submitted by Laura

About today's video: Don Piper (born 1950) is a Baptist minister who wrote "90 Minutes in Heaven," a book describing his near-death experience.

On January 18, 1989, Piper was driving on an old bridge, and before he cleared that bridge, a tractor-trailer crossed into his lane and hit his small Ford Escort head on. Paramedics on the scene pronounced him clinically dead after the impact. Piper claims to have gone to heaven, where he was reunited with loved ones, but did not claim to have met Jesus Christ there. An hour and a half after the accident, another Baptist minister came to the scene as he was reportedly prompted by God to pray for Piper. Don came back to life, and he faced a long, grueling recovery.

Piper wrote the book in collaboration with Cecil Murphey. It is narrated in first-person from Piper's point-of-view. The book contains two chapters detailing his experience in heaven. The remaining chapters deal with Piper's recovery—an ordeal that included 34 separate surgeries.

In addition to his work as an author, he has been a public speaker, actor, syndicated columnist, CBS and CBN Television Network Executive, Youth Minister, Education Minister, Senior Adult Minister, Baptist Student Ministry Director, Pastor, Single Adult Pastor, and Minister of Education, Don Piper is now often introduced as "The Minister of Hope."