Easter is one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, as it’s based on the cycles of the moon. J.e.s.u.s. was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th.

The word “Easter” comes from an ancient pagan goddess (worshipped by Anglo-Saxons) named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning the bird into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny.

Bunniez?

I have to admit, I have never been one to buy into hype, so I avoid most pop-culture phenomena and reality TV like the plague. However, for the first time ever, I was ‘forced’ into watching this piece of network television programming known to the masses as American Idol.

The episode where I lost my Idol virginity was evidently one of the first of the season—where they weed out the “bad” and the “ugly” and allow the “good” to move on to the next round, referred to by the panel of questionably credible judges as “Hollywood.” I mean, seriously, what does Paula Abdul know about good music? And Randy Jackson? Come on now, he played bass in Journey, possibly one of the top five worst bands of all time. As for Simon Cowell, the only reason FOX decided to put him on the show is because insults get great ratings.

After witnessing contestant after contestant get booed off the show by the judges for their lack of talent and seeing countless souls get crushed by the verbal abuse of Simon, it became clear to me that the show is not even looking for actual talent at all. They are looking for a particular image, for a carbon copy of every other crappy pop star in the industry today in an effort to further destroy the art of music.

The whole purpose behind music is for an artist to express him/herself through the majesty of song and to present to an audience a particular emotion or idea in their own words and melodies. But institutions like American Idol are stabbing the art of music in the throat by taking no-talent karaoke singers and turning them into over night (or over season) pop sensations.

I saw only one contestant that I found remotely talented, and the judges only reluctantly let him through to the next round. Why? Because he already had his own defined image. He idolized the Rat Pack and had a 50’s-esque style of croon and dress that made him unique in the competition. Paula and Randy thought he was trying too hard to fit a certain image, so they didn’t want to let him advance. But isn’t form fitting contestants into an approved pop singer mold what they try to do throughout the entire remainder of the competition? This young man knew who he was and what he liked, so he was almost rejected for having a personality. Is this really what America is all about? Taking the soul and personality out of art?

All image issues aside, how does singing a-cappella solely determine talent, anyway? I want to see an Indie Idol where the talents are judged on their talent for playing their instruments and their artsy appearance and the quality and literary merit of their lyrics. I would even be pleased to see a Hip-Hop Idol where a rap artist proves his or her worth by the strength of his or her rhymes. I’m sorry, America, but just because someone can sing and listens to three idiot judges about who he or she should be and what he or she should look like doesn’t make him or her a credible musician. It just makes them a replica of every other hack that makes more money than truckloads of starving musicians that have more credibility in their guitar picks than all the Idols combined.

Even the name of the show is indicative of its poison. American Idol. Is conformity really something that America idolizes? Is this what we stand for? Recycling all the musical garbage that has come out in the last 15 years into even worse crap with even less soul and talent?

Despite my immediate hatred for this wretched piece of programming, I realized how easy it would be to become just as addicted to this visual form of crack as the rest of America, even if it is just because it pisses me off. American Idol is television’s equivalent of a hideously fatal car crash: it’s the worst thing that could ever happen, but for some inexplicable reason, you can’t stop staring.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19025451.800

IT SOUNDS like a mad idea, but it works. Take children who are unruly and unable to focus on their schoolwork, and give them amphetamine-like stimulants. Far from making them bounce off the walls, the drugs can turn little terrors into attentive students.

However, the idea of prescribing drugs related to addictive illegal stimulants has always caused concern – all the more so given the escalation in diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the condition the drugs are supposed to treat. Now reports are coming in of serious adverse reactions, including hallucinations and, in rare suspected cases, sudden death from cardiovascular problems (see “Hyperactivity drugs are out of control”).

For the benefit of concerned parents, it is important to put the risks and benefits into context. ADHD is a socially and educationally debilitating condition, and places children at higher risk of serious accidents. The success of stimulants such as methylphenidate in treating ADHD is unprecedented in psychiatry. Unlike antidepressants, which work well in only about half of those who take them, methylphenidate is highly effective in most children and young adults with ADHD. Against these benefits, we now have 25 cases of sudden death from heart problems, and reports of hallucinations in up to 5 per cent of those taking the drugs.

These adverse events certainly need further investigation, and merit changes to the drugs’ labelling so that doctors and patients can see the risks. Yet on existing evidence, the drugs should not be demonised. Instead, we should make sure that they are only given to children who actually have ADHD, because that is where the main problem lies. Proper diagnosis requires extensive behavioural observation, ideally in different contexts. Some kids are unfocused and unruly at home, yet can buckle down at school with a good teacher. Medicating kids because of bad parenting is a bad idea.

Some 10 per cent of 12-year-old boys in the US, where diagnosis of ADHD is more common than in most other countries, are being treated for the condition. The true incidence of the disease may well be very high, but these figures conceal widespread misdiagnosis. Many children who do not have ADHD are prescribed the drugs after woefully short consultations, often by family doctors under pressure from parents who want their children to compete in the classroom. Yet other youngsters who have ADHD are not getting the treatment they need.

This in microcosm is what is wrong with the US healthcare system, which tends to over-medicate those who have health insurance, leaving the rest to make do with healthcare that would embarrass some developing countries. Even so, the situation with ADHD is particularly worrying, as both over-medication and under-medication could lead to future drug dependency. Children with untreated ADHD are known to be at greater risk of later drug abuse than those on medication. The impact of giving stimulants to healthy kids is unknown, and difficult to study. Despite efforts by manufacturers to formulate pills to release their active ingredient slowly, minimising their addictive potential, the fear remains that today’s prescribing practice may be priming millions of children for drug-dependency problems.

In this context, the decision last week by advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration not to back an application to market a drug for ADHD called modafinil has caused some disappointment. Modafinil should not be addictive, but the FDA’s advisers were concerned about a case of a serious skin condition in a clinical trial, and have asked for further studies. The FDA advisory panel’s caution is appropriate. Yes, we need other drugs to treat ADHD. But first we must be sure they are safe, and are only given to children who really need them.

the existence of disinformation & miscommunication brings us to the word truth, and of course to the ‘doubt’ that there is no definitive truth, as truth can easily be manipulated to another truth by the professed facts involved. just present some facts that seem to be logical and there you go, you’ve got a new truth. and if the facts can further be proven by the tentative empirical evidence argued, then the quality of the truth rises, whether it is actual truth or not.

this is what ideologues do all the time……….the media…..the government………and propagandists – a hypothetical game of power or is it a mere presentation of power?

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there’s only one person who’d i want to go to dinosaur jr. with, alas, they are lost to me.
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http://www.catscradle.com/schedule.html