Great job, both to the young lady and to those who trained her

Missouri teen saves 11-month-old baby in Walmart with CPR

Abby Snodgrass, 17, was in the High Ridge, Mo., Walmart when she heard a commotion. She ran over and performed CPR on a baby who had stopped breathing and most likely saved the child. She learned the life-saving procedure in health class.

You don't see much in the way of heartwarming or good stories in the news these days, so I was glad to see this. Apparently the local emergency personnel have been teaching every high school student in their district CPR since last year, and will have taught about 600 young people by year's end. What a great programme! I took CPR years ago, but haven't kept up on the latest techniques at all, and I gather it's changed a lot. I should check into getting a refresher at work. I'm not one of the people required to maintain CPR-certification, but it never hurts to know what to do.

I am not so much surprised

or incredulous as, well, flabbergasted that anyone would think this was a good idea. Oh. Yeah. We're talking people whose brains are still forming (no offence to the teens of the world, but hey, I'm just saying).

Teens using vodka tampons to get drunk

And no, it isn't just girls. Guys are using similar methods rectally.

Yay, gay Google employees!

I so want the shirt with the robots and the rainbow flag. :)

Via Joe.My.God.

Sometimes a simple message is best

:)

Via Joe.My.God.

I wish there were some cure other than time for being 18

For being young and vulnerable to what people think enough to take your own life. To making stupid decisions that will shadow your own lives but more importantly spurred someone to take his own life. I'm not sure this is a great deal about bias--although it does play a part, and it is certainly about the difficulties of growing up gay in our society and the self-hatred that is promoted by our environment. It is certainly about invasion of privacy and actions that so should have been seen as wrong but in an adolescent's world might just have been seen as fun.

No one's laughing now, though.

NJ student's suicide resonates on campus, beyond

I feel very sad about Tyler Clementi's suicide. The music through which he expressed himself is gone, the potential is such a young man unrealised. His roomate and the roomate's friend showed terrible judgement and callousness for his feelings. I can't hold them directly liable for the suicide, however--that was an action (a horrific action) of free will in someone who was vulnerable. But I certainly think there will be legal and civil ramifications to their actions, and there should be.

But when it comes down to it, a lot of it is the nature of 18-year-olds to make bad decisions with strong repercussions, to care too strongly about what other people think, and to take action when it is better to step back and think things through.

I just wish Tyler Clementi had lived in a world where he would never have even considered jumping off a bridge, where he could have come to terms with his sexuality in peace, and where people would have expressed more outrage at his rights being violated than leaving chat comments asking if his roommate were okay, since he was living with a gay man. He was right to be angry over the violation of his privacy. And frankly, not much probably would have happened even going through channels. But I'm so sorry he took his life over something that, by no means trivial, still would have become a footnote in his life if he'd only had time.

That's one reason I really like Dan Savage's 'It Gets Better' project. I just hope more gay youth can get the message, before it's too late.




Please believe. No matter how awful things can get when you're young, adulthood gives you the freedom to make a life of your own. It gets better.

PS I found one of my elementary school friends had shared a video statement from Ellen DeGeneres on Facebook as well. I'm glad people are talking about and sharing things like this. I just wish it didn't take deaths to spur the conversation.

I don't know if it will make it on American TV, but it should

A Welsh public service announcement is controversial due to the graphic nature of the video, but it's absolutely the best way to impress upon teens and others the dangers of texting whilst driving.

For information about the controversy:

Is PSA about texting while driving too graphic?: New spot aimed at teens portrays a bloody automobile accident in detail

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

To view the entire video [warning it is both graphic and realistic, and it's meant to be]


Bravo to the Gwent police of Wales for having this video made, and to Peter Watkins-Hughes who directed it. As you may recall, I related an incident where a boy was killed in Glasgow (here in Kentucky) when his friend was texting on her cell phone, ran a stop sign, and a semi truck hit the car. This is a growing problem. Apparently texting and e-mailing on a phone or other device makes it 23 times more likely that there will be an accident, according to the Today show video above.

Every teen should be shown this video.

Please think before you text.

An excellent short film

about a mother descending into dementia, and a daughter struggling to keep things together. It's called 'My Name is Lisa' (this won the best short film category in 2007 on YouTube).



The sad thing? Judging by the comments, the vast majority of watchers had no clue that the mom was descending into Alzheimer's. Jeesh.

I actually found out about this because YKWIA (who finds all sorts of things on the Web) found the version with German subtitles:



and of course my name is Lisa (Eilir is my middle name), so he thought he'd found a German counterpart.

It's by Shelton Films and has won several other awards. It puts a lot into a very short video.

Anyway, it's sad, but very good. My great-grandmother had Alzheimer's. I saw her slip away over fifteen years of the disease. This is right on. We think about Alzheimer's as being a disease of the old, but it can strike much younger. According to the film's website, 250,000 children ages 8-18 are caring for someone with Alzheimer's. They suggest the website http://www.actionalz.org for more information on this disease.

Disturbing

Videotaped Florida Teen Beating Prompts Calls To Block Violent Content

My favourite comment, by someone writing as 'Logic' (although I don't agree on the weapons part) was:

The video never made it on YouTube or MySpace but we should ban it because someone said they might do it.

By that logic, Weapons should be banned because kids have said they may want to use them.

Books should be banned because people talk about reading them.

And Love should be banned because people talk about making it.

Last I checked people are guity of the acts they commit not the acts they imagine or talk about. By all means let them post the evidence and get caught.

The Associated Press has a story that incorporates the video. The video itself was not actually uploaded to either site, both of which already have rules in place for reviewing or yanking videos such as this one. I don't think any other body need get involved.

I hope the six girls involved in the beating (and the two guys who stood lookout) get a good dose of justice. They're not going to get it from home, I believe. Apparently one mom went on a morning show defending her daughter, saying only one girl beat the victim at any given time; quotes of the girls at their arrest ('will I get out in time for cheerleading practice') and from MySpace don't show much bloody remorse.

The girl has lost hearing and sight on one side of her head and suffered a concussion. She could just have easily have died, having been slammed into a wall. Bullying has been around for a long time, and has always been disturbing, but beating someone within an inch of their life to make a good video shoot for 15 minutes of fame is even more disturbing.

Let's just say I'm not wishing them a happy time in jail. :)

An update on the 14-year-old stripper case

2 charged in case of underage stripper

The woman who allegedly gave the teen pills and drove her to the strip club (where the girl presented a fake ID and was hired) is the girl's AUNT. Tina G. Hobbs and her boyfriend, Jimmy R. Kiger, have been arrested on charges of an unlawful transaction with a minor. The girl apparently argued with her mother over spending money, which she did not get. Hobbs said the mother knew about the stripping, but the police say there's no evidence that is the case. Another relative supposedly tipped off the mother and stepfather, who went to the club and found their daughter sitting at a table in dancing clothes. They didn't explain what Hobbs' boyfriend had to do with the whole affair.

The paper identified both the relationship of the woman to the girl and also her mother by name, so I guess it would be easy to tell who the girl was. I'm not going to identify the mother here, though. Hopefully the girl gets away from drugs and this sort of influence, and this can be chalked up to a youthful indiscretion. She's lucky nothing worse happened.

(Shaking head.) Gods, I'm old, I have the urge to go tut...tut.

This case is getting weirder

Woman charged in case of girl, 14, caught stripping

Last month a 14-year-old girl was caught stripping by her parents at Camelot West, a club on Alexandria Drive. She had stripped for two nights before getting caught. I'm sure she's at the very least grounded as we speak.

The manager of the club, Robert Shields, was cited for endangering the welfare of a minor because the fake ID the girl used to get the job did not resemble her.

Now it turns out a 32-year-old woman, Tina G. Hobbs, has admitted to taking the young girl to the club after giving her some pills and then said she later received money from her after she finished stripping. She was charged Tuesday with third-degree unlawful transaction with a minor.

If I were the parent in this case, I would be so utterly pissed with my daughter and the adults involved. I don't care if an adult strips; that's her or his choice. But a fourteen-year-old? It never should have come to that.

So another woman was also involved in the Megan Meier case

Prosecutor won't bring charges in MySpace suicide

That's two adults who acted immaturely when they conversed with the depressed 13-year-old over MySpace, leading to Megan Meier's suicide, saying something to the effect of the world being a better place without her. The second woman hasn't been named. The prosecutor would obviously like to bring some justice into this case, but harassment statutes for the area don't include online harassment and the stalking statute would require repeated negative contact. Apparently the account used purported to be a 16-year-old boy named Josh, being homeschooled in a nearby town, but was used by a former friend's mother and this 18-year-old to determine if Megan had gossiped about the daughter. Megan was confused by the sudden change from flirting, good interaction to 'Josh' turning on her and saying he'd heard she was mean and didn't want to be her friend.

There's no way to prove that the adults involved intended for the girl to kill herself, even if they knew she was severely depressed. Name-calling isn't really illegal, and there's really no way to prosecute it, authorities said. It just wasn't feasible to try to prove to a jury that there was malicious intent to the degree believed by the parents.

I believe that what the women did was wrong. It was terribly petty and immature and they should have been above taunting a 13-year-old girl with mental problems. I mean, what kind of person does that? There should be a small circle in hell for such people. But I agree that there's really no case and so there's no real justice either. On the other hand, I don't think you can blame Megan's suicide squarely on these women. There were a lot of factors, mainly her own brain chemistry and the tendency for teenagers to magnify any slight. She's not at fault for her suicide--she was far too young and too sick to truly be accountable, but she's certainly a victim of her illness, and that's very sad. The women involved, however, triggered it, as did no doubt her mother, who when shown the exchange berated her daughter for using bad language rather than taking her side, at which point Megan stormed off unbelieving and then she was found hanged a little while later. It must have seemed like a betrayal in her mind. That's the sad thing about depression--no matter how much you watch what you say, you know that at any time something might percolate through the depressed person's mind to make them give up entirely. By all accounts the parents were trying to do the best for their daughter. Perhaps given time she could have blossomed. But she didn't have that time.

This whole story underscores the toll mental illness--particularly mental illness in children--can take on people and their families. And vindictive, petty neighbours certainly don't help.

Troubling

Teen Suicides Up Sharply for First Time in Years

The suicide rates for these age groups had been trending downward, falling 28 percent from 1990 to 2003. However, between 2003 and 2004, there was a 75.9 percent increase in the suicide rate among 10- to 14-year-old girls, a 32.3 percent increase among 15- to 19-year-old girls, and a 9 percent increase among 15- to 19-year-old boys

For girls, especially, the rates have skyrocketed. There is much speculation on whether the black box warnings that were put into place in 2004 warning about SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), a class of antidepressants that were thought to potentially increase suicidal thoughts in teens--which led to a drastic reduction of prescriptions for those drugs--might be related. After all, if fewer people get treatment that in most cases does work, then the rates would be expected to rise. This new information comes as the FDA considers expanding the black box warnings to the mid-twenties age group.

In a December 2006 study, The American Journal of Psychiatry said that a decrease in antidepressant prescriptions to minors of just a few percentage points coincided with a 14 percent increase in suicides in the United States; in the Netherlands, the suicide rate was 50% up, upon prescription drop.

Another disturbing statistic was that girls 10-14 had a 119% increase in the use of hanging/suffocation as a means of committing suicide. Guns remain the most popular form for boys (which is one reason why there are more boys who die of suicide even though more girls try it).

Sad. I have to admit, if my child were severely depressed, I'd opt for the antidepressant. Doubling a small chance of suicide compared to placebo seems scary till you see these rates. On the other hand, statistics fail to capture the true story--every child counts, every death matters. But when looking at the greater good vs a possibility, well, maybe it's best to err on the side of the greater good. More studies will no doubt tackle the question of causation and whether this is an aberration or the beginning of a trend. In the meantime, I find it troubling.

Great :)

Teens buying books at fastest rate in decades: New 'golden age of young adult literature' declared