Monday, April 23, 2012

I Recently Watched a Series on the Brain on PBS, Hosted by Charlie Rose


 The various doctors and scientists added their thoughts on illness, dementia, Alzheimer's in the aged, mental retardation, depression and various other illnesses that healthy folks never think about --- of course until illness strikes them or people close to them.

What I always believed, that scientists are always either finding out how right they are, or on the flip side, how misunderstood the initial data was. Recently, I read in the WSJ, how for years medical researchers misunderstood the data they thought were for particular forms of cancer, people were treated with these misdiagnosed treatments, and many people died because of these serious, honest misreadings. I'm not talking about the charlatans who sell bogus treatments to cancer patients, or people with MS, I'm talking about professionals who erred.

CLICK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203721704577159280778957336.html

One thing is certain....either the brain is functioning on all cylinders (excuse the street language), or the malfunctioning part of the brain, causes the person to be ill without knowing it, and/or the illness can be discreet, disguising itself as healthy behavior until the body breaks down perhaps - or more importantly, the person lives a long life never knowing how ill they really are, even fooling the people closest to them.

A simple lack of appropriate levels of any brain chemicals, will distort a person's view of what they see, think or feel. Their ability to process information will be distorted; think Charles Manson at one extreme, and think the typical sociopath/psychopath who you probably interact with on a daily basis in one form or another, either knowingly or not.

So when I recently read the protocols issued by the Bais Yaakov of Baltimore how a teacher must interact with their students - I was struck with the depraved society that I knew we live in - but now right in front of me -- in black and white -

 " A JEWISH RELIGIOUS ORTHODOX TEACHER MUST NEVER MAKE ANY INAPPROPRIATE SEXUAL GESTURES OR SEXUAL TOUCH TO THEIR STUDENTS - OR SHOW THEM PORNOGRAPHY....."

 I went numb! A rebbe, morah, or teacher in our yeshivas have to be instructed not to show pornography........ to their students?!!!

CLICK: http://www.baisyaakov.net/scpbs - bais_yaakov_school_conduct_policy[1].pdf

Scapegoating is always used by corrupt people in positions of power as a form of circling the wagons around their devotees as a way of "protecting" their cowboys from the bad-guy Indians. Yesterday it was the bad White Police in Florida; Sharpton & Co. blaming the White Boys across America for the death of a black teenager in Florida. Nothing new here at all....after 45 years of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and hundreds of billions of dollars poured into anti-poverty programs --- the poverty level among the blacks are the same 45% as it was 45 years ago. Of course it's the whiteys...If the entire Senate, House, Supreme Court and government staffers were comprised of black Americans it would still be the slave that Thomas Jefferson had that is at fault for the plight of the Blacks today.

So too is it the Bloggers' fault that today's silent (and not so silent) vast minority of Jewish teenagers are finding Judaism devoid of meaning. Let's ban all New Technology -- the problem gets fixed immediately. More gatherings by imbeciles for imbeciles are needed to spell out the ills of the Social Media, Blogs and Smartphones. Yesterday it was the PC in the house, before that it was the TV in the closet, before that it was the radio, and before that, the telephone....I'm waiting for a ban of kids going to the doctor's office in case they pick up a People's magazine.

Yes, these ghastly ill demented sociopaths among us are the folks calling these gatherings, they can get away with the charade of looking normal, speaking eloquently, and have large followings. But so did every charismatic, demented dictator and televangelist, now and then....

If there are no role models today that we can point our children to -- to emulate, not some nonsense Baal Shem Tov stories that are not only fairy tales, but mock our intelligence; our kids will indeed get lost to the new technology.... and of course we the Bloggers would be at fault. Not the rebbes, not the rosh yeshivas, not the bankrupt Jewish leadership, not our failed educational system, not the horrible parenting, not the misguided value system of our communities,  but "the guy in his underwear in the basement of his house who has nothing else to do......"