Rain Rain Rain

It's really raining here on the ranch - about an inch so far today and it shows no signs of stopping.



We bought 23 baby Mallard ducks a couple of months ago from the Grange -- they were only a few weeks old when we got them. We kept them in the barn in a cage for a few weeks, but they smelled so bad when confined that it made our eyes water when we went in the barn, so we put them outside in a horse trailer with a heat lamp suspended in it for a week or two. Then that also began to reek to high heaven and we realized we were ready for them to go to the pond, whether they were ready or not.

We built a duckhouse near the pond for our baby Mallards and put the heat lamp in it, and let them loose. That was a couple of weeks ago. The first night we had a major blow here - we had to right the duck house after it was blown over. It is quite heavy, being made out of plywood, so we didn't think much could happen to it and were surprised when it happened again the next day.

The ducks quickly abandoned the duckhouse for the open pond and its banks, and with all the rain we have had, the duckhouse is now half-immersed by the rising pond.

The ducks swim and dive around it happily, although now only 19 of them remain - whether it was due to predators or accidents we don't know.

We had a great Thanksgiving (the US holiday) here, but it wreaked havoc with my work schedule and now I'm way "behinder" than I was before the start of the holidays.

Isn't that just the way it goes?

Tomatos

The tomatos in our garden are just too pretty. I don't even eat tomatos (allergies) but these are pretty tempting.

New World Records

At the Frankfurt International Book Fair for 2006, Guinness (the World Record people, not the Stout people) gave out certificates for two world records:

1. Worlds most published author - which went to L. Ron Hubbard, with 1084 works published, exceeding the record held by Brazilian author Jose Carlos Ryoki with 1,058.

2. Hubbard also received the World Record for "most translated author" with published works in 75 languages.

Here's the full text of an article about this phenomenal author: L Ron Hubbard earns two world records.

Of course, Hubbard's been dead since 1986, so the awards were presented to his publishing firm, Author Services.

Past Lives?

We've recently had a baby come into our family. He is a healthy, happy baby and his mother delivered with minimal labor - it all seemed to go smooth as glass. We welcomed the baby to the family -- it's been ten years since we've had any newborns around. His mother is a Scientologist, and his father is not.

In my view: one of the things that sets Scientology apart from mainstream religions is its recognition that each individual is an immortal spirit -- a "thetan" in our vernacular. With that concept comes a recognition that we have lived before, that we were alive during past epochs -- we just don't remember much of it. The "past lives" we have all lived, and the decisions we have made about ourselves and others during those past lives continue to shape our lives today. Yes, we believe that what we think about something shapes our world, both as a group, and individually. Knocking off the rough edges of these, we call these thoughts about the way things are "considerations" and "postulates". Considerations are "continuing postulates" usually below the level of direct awareness.

For example, you would probably consider (knowingly) that the movie "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Scarface" is too violent and bloody for a small child to watch. You'd think about it (be aware of it) and decide "It wouldn't be good for them". That's a "knowing consideration". But you may have "unknown" considerations that you yourself made about many things, considerations that are now below that level of being aware that you ever made that decision.

From my own experience; in my youth I was terrified of swimming in a river, even though I was a fairly good, relaxed and competent swimmer. My considerations about this sprang from experiences in past lives. Putting my attention on that particular consideration, I was able to look for and recall the incidents (in past lives) that caused me to think swimming in rivers was terrifying. Spotting them exactly, they stopped having any effect. Now I can swim in rivers all I like, without the terror. While I wouldn't swim in a river known to be filled with crocodiles, I would have no trouble swimming in the Columbia, say, or the local rivers here (where there are no predators!).

I'm not talking about Karma and Reincarnation here - just simply being born, living, dying, and being born. There's no great system of judgment -- just your own considerations about what you should be, what you should do, and what you should have.

That's my observation as a practicing Scientologist for 35 years. I don't speak in any official capacity for the Church of Scientology, just for myself.

The Truth about Tom Cruise

This article about Tom Cruise has the ring of truth to it.

Sickness.

There's an old Japanese Proverb - "Yamai wa ki kara", which means "sickness is a thing of the spirit." I'm not an expert on things oriental, but that appears to be an accepted piece of folk wisdom in Japan, along the line of "many hands make light work" or "a stitch in time saves nine" here in the West.

That bit of wisdom has been independently incorporated into the Creed of the Church of Scientology in these lines: "And we of the Church believe that the spirit can be saved and that the spirit alone may save or heal the body."

Having been sick myself plenty of times over the years (mainly with the flu and various other bugs), I find that Scientology assist (particularly a touch assist or nerve asssit) helps me greatly in getting over them quickly and regaining my footing in life. These assists help my body heal up faster. It's not so much "mind over matter" -- which, by the way isn't a datum that came from Scientology, we would phrase that more along the line of a "spirit being cause over matter" -- as it is similar to the chiropractic principle that a body "knows" how to heal itself and will heal itself if it allowed to to so. What prevents it from regaining good health? Aside from bugs and viruses that can usually be singled out and killed with antibiotics or other medicines, there are thoughts, mental masses and such things, mental phenomenon, that can prevent a body from doing its job correctly. That's what I've experienced, anyway. YMMV. I've delivered many hours of assists on other people, usually short sessions that always end with a smile, an understanding of some kind. Giving others assists -- being willing to help others -- is a basic part of being a Scientologist. Help is something we are not ashamed of giving, or receiving.

Barbie Rivera & HELP Miami

Barbie Rivera has been running a tutoring center in Miami that has produced many thousands of hours of effective tutoring over the last few years. She sends out a riotously funny newsletter every week that is full of her viewpoint about helping children learn to read, helping keep them off psychiatric drugs and helping them sort out the false mis-labeling the psychiatrists have applied to them; ADHD, ADD, math disorder, dyslexia, and the like. She's expanding, opening another center in California this year. The center in Miami has achieved international press for the HELP Miami center (part of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project). I just want to wish Barbie good luck! We need more people like her in the trenches teaching children how to read--especially the ones that the psychs have given up on and labeled so they can be drugged for profit, and that the schools don't know what to do with. These kids are often problematic and a real handful at first. Wouldn't you be, if you'd been determined to be uneducatable and consigned to second or third class status by an uncaring educational institution? The main thing that comes through Barbie's newsletters (aside from how she manages to get people to help her help kids) is the incredibly high level of actual care she (and her staff) give to these kids. There are no easy answers - sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and just do the work, wade in and ask the kid what's going on. And you have to have a technology of education that actually works, not the busted-ass, non-functional, over-priced, uncaring and sometimes crippling educational system that exists in our schools today. Sure, individual teachers try, and of course they care. But without the right tools to help, their care and "help" becomes betrayal when the kids start being labeled and drugged, instead of educated.

Scientology tax victory in UK

The Telegraph reported a Scientology tax victory in UK - where Scientologists have been being discriminated against since the 60's. I'm in it. I'm telling you right here and now, I'm a Scientologist. It's my religion, not a hobby. I've been a practicing minister since 1976, performing funeral services and the occasional wedding, and ministering to others in our community. We have churches all over England, the US, and the world, for that matter. That should be all that's needed to prove it to anyone that it's a religion. It should be tax-exempt if other religions are tax exempt -- else it is just discrimination based on some sort of favoritism. Should a Shinto temple have tax exemption? What about a Buddhist monastery? A mosque? A Christian Science reading room? A non-denominational backwoods Christian church with only 10 members, meeting in someone's trailer? A Hopi tribal congregation? Absolutely, to all. That's the only view that makes any sense if you're giving tax exemption for being a religious institution. Now the VAT Tribunal has ruled that UK Revenue & Customs has to pay at least £4.1m in past payments to the Church of Scientology of England. This is very good news for all those who have had taxes collected by an "inept and inadequate" Revenue & Customs, which has clearly overstepped its bounds since that first, obviously mistaken ruling nearly 30 years ago that Scientologists had to pay VAT, while the other churches in England didn't. It's our money, they've held it for far too long, and I, for one, am glad that we have it back where it will do some good, funding projects to increase literacy in England, to help get people off drugs, and to educate people about morality.

Recent photos of the ranch

Here are some recent photos from around the ranch, showing logging and some work that was done restoring fish habitats on our creek.

This first picture is some logging being done on one 40-acre parcel in the remotest part of the ranch. They took out mostly Douglas fir, White fir and some alder. Even some red cedar. The baby trees (less than 10 years old) you see in the adjacent lots (left and right of our logging operation) belong to the BLM. We want our replanting to look like that! It's much harder than you'd think to achieve.



Next are some photos of logs placed in the creek by a Stream Restoration expert -- they were dragging around trees, rootwads and all, and putting them in the creek. In the winter the creek can get to be 6-8 feet deep at times, and a lot of water moves through it. If there are no trees in the streambed, then it scours the sand and rocks away and leaves only "boulders and bedrock", which is what much of our creek was liike. This was a result of forest management practices of the mid 20th Century - when old time foresters and Fish & Wildlife people were telling us to clean out the creeks of all trees. That was done, and the result was fewer fish. They need the gravel that builds up behind the fallen trees, to spawn and spend their first months of life hiding from predators. There are more fish in the creek now than we have seen for many years, as a result of some work that was done like this in other areas of the creek in the last few years. These trees will be half-buried in rocks and gravel by this time next year, and we'll have even more fish.




And here are some red elderberries -- they grow everywhere here and are large plants 15-20 feet high, 10-15 feet in diameter. I've cut one down to a stump and had it be 10 feet tall the next year - that's one year's growth. We've heard these can be eaten if boiled first, but they smell so nasty when you pick them it hardly seems worth the effort. Even the birds leave them alone. They are pretty, though!

Volunteer Minister gets results

David Dempster, a Scientology Volunteer Minister from Clearwater, Florida, recently published this report:

This weekend I handled a 20-year-old girl who had ended up in hospital in a coma. The doctor said if she didn't wake up within 12 hours she wouldn't wake up at all. I was called in after she had been in a coma for about 8 hours. I gave her assists for handling unconscious persons and after about 2 hours she woke up. I gave her more assists on the following days and also coached her aunt on handling the hospital staff so the girl wouldn't be given drugs. This included handling a psychiatrist and a psych-oriented nurse.
The other nurses were ... supportive. One of them said "Don't go away - you're doing her good." She originated that the assists did not in any way interfere with the medical handling they were doing. She now has her own copy of the [assists] booklet.
The girl is back home on a program of vitamins and is ... doing great.
It's a pleasure and privilege to be applying L. Ron Hubbard's Technology.

Psych Abuse is Perfectly Legal in Australia

I'm not making this up... Here's an article matter-of-factly reporting from Queensland that based on an anonymous complaint, the psychs have the right to force their way into homes in Australia and intimidate people with personal questions to determine if they are crazy, in the opinion of the examining psych. And it's all "perfectly legal". The psychs tried to get legislation like this passed in the USA back in the 1950's -- it was nicknamed the "Siberia Bill" because it meant to set up in the USA psychiatric detention camps like the Russians had in Siberia, where millions of dissidents were kept in gulags as slave labor. There was considerable uproar about it at the time, and the bill was killed then due in part to the Scientologists who stood up against it. It's part of the creed of the Code of a Scientologist

4. To decry and do all I can to abolish any and all abuses against life and mankind.
5. To expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health.
6. to help clean up and keep clean the field of mental health.
7. To bring about an atmosphere of safety and security in the field of mental health by eradicating its abuses and brutality.

Scientologists have been working in this field now for over 50 years, and we sometimes seem to be the only ones doing anything to prevent the psychiatrists from drugging, evaluating for, and locking up anyone they damn well want -- at least that's how it looks to me. Where is the public outrage that millions of kids in this country are being drugged for profit with dangerous and addictive drugs pushed on them by the psychiatric industry? Where is your outrage?

Wild Roses

We have some wild roses that bloom this time of year on our ranch, along Charlie Rock road. I have to remember exactly where these are so I can pick the rose hips in the early fall, before they turn mushy with the fall rains.

More flowers today

Today I only had time for a short walk, and a few pictures from our garden and from the road to the top of the hill. Here they are:

Tiger Lily -- we have a million of these blooming right now on the ranch.


Rhododendron


June-Bearing Blackberry - these are creeping everywhere along the ground. These are Oregon's native blackberry; the big aggressive climbing blackberries are feral.


Broccoli from our garden. These should be ready to eat soon!


Blueberries - we have half a dozen blueberry bushes in our garden. The first berries of the season are turning blue -- these will be ready any day now.

Which one holds the bee?

Coastal Oregon this time of year is wonderful. The air is clean, the days are still cool, and we have been enjoying occasional showers for the last couple of weeks so the plant life is exploding. Suddenly grass is four feet tall. The rhododendrons are blooming out my window. So are the foxgloves, wild roses and a bazillion daisies and buttercups. I took a walk a couple of days ago in mid-afternoon, and took a few shots of one foxglove.



The top flower in the last picture has a bee in it - you can see his shadow.

Dianetics Sponsors NASCAR Driver

It's gratifying to see the LA Times (a most unlikely source if you are aware of their history of anti-religious bias) has put up a mostly favorable article about the sponsorship of NASCAR driver Kenton Gray. Of course they go for the bloated controversy and innuendo -- "NASCAR monitors sponsorship and advertising closely, but has no objection to the 'Dianetics' entry, said NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter." More "Dianetics" is a book, published by L. Ron Hubbard in 1950. It became a bestseller, people paired up and ran Dianetics on each other in droves. They still do, 56 years later.
Dianetics involves a person looking at his own mental image pictures with the help of an "auditor", someone who asks questions, directs the session, and listens and acknowledges the person doing the looking. There's an exact procedure for doing this outlined in the book "Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health." It's not difficult to learn and it is (from my personal experience) fun, educational, and spiritually rewarding to do Dianetics.
Over the early 1950's, Hubbard evolved and expanded the technology greatly. When they realized that what they were dealing with was the human spirit (after all, who was making and looking at all those mental image pictures?) several practitioners incorporated a church in California, and the religion was called "Scientology". It's not Christianity, Islam, nor Buddhism, but it IS a religion in its own right.

Narconon Great Lakes

Narconon Great Lakes is one of the newer Narconon groups, going strong in the Chicagoland area. They are a 501(C)3 charitable group, a non-profit dedicated to getting rid of the scourge of drugs from the Chicago area, one addict at a time. If you can help them, send a donation -- for books used in putting drug users through the Narconon program. Make donations via PayPal to: narconongreatlakes@sbcglobal.net.

This Marijuana video created by Narconon is suitable for drug education in the classroom, and details what happens to someone who smokes pot regularly. It's a shame, really, I've known a few people who smoked pot with regularity, and they pretty much all became dedicated slackers. One lovely girl, a family friend, was too lazy and bored to get a job and work, herself, and couldn't be bothered to make the money to buy her own damn drugs. She turned into a criminal who stole money from her friends (and lied to their faces about it and tried to blame others) to finance her pot addiction. And yes, marijuana IS addictive, no matter what the pro-pot guys try to tell you about it. It got its hooks into me as a teen (even through I was a geek and a straight-A student), and it can do the same to your teenager. Get the video and do some preventive education before it's too late. (Was that sufficiently lurid?)

SAGE club

My friend Barbara Ayash of the Set A Good Example Club recently sent me some pictures of murals that were put together by juvenile inmates of a correctional facility in California. These kids were participants in the "Set a Good Example" program that Barbara founded. So far more than 12 million kids representing more than 12,600 schools in all 50 US states have participated in the Set a Good Example program. The SAGE club is the result of a proven moral education program used by teachers and students (with parental approval) in schools across the United States. The word SAGE, of course, is an acronym for "Set a Good Example". Barbara is the creator of this program and has spearheaded applying the moral code it is built upon (The Way to Happiness) in helping clean up gang violence in Los Angeles, in prisons, and in schools. The Sage club is unique in the field of moral education in that it teaches 21 commonly accepted virtues and values based strictly on common sense. It is completely non-religious. 88% of students involved in the club want to participate again, which is pretty amazing.

Principal Vanessa Barbour of the Lockeland Middle School in Nashville, Tennessee, saw her school turn around after implementing the program.

"We have decreased violence by 70%-80% over the school year. We have decreased disrespectful attitudes toward teachers, decreased vulgar language and gestures... You name it, it's better."

Here's a photo of one of several murals painted by youth between 12 and 17 detained by Juvenile Justice Authorities. This mural depicts two of the precepts from The Way to Happiness: "Don't harm a person of goodwill" and "Be worthy of trust."

The Way to Happiness book itself explains and gives simple examples of why it is important to have these points as part of one's own moral code. It makes sense to kids and their parents both. Hard to argue with that kind of common sense.

Kelly Preston

Kelly Preston is one of those gorgeous Hollywood women with everything going for them. Looking at her, you'd think she'd never had anything go wrong in her life, but that's not so. Now she is married to John Travolta, has lovely children and a successful film career. Who could forget Kelly seducing the Governator in "Twins"? and punching Tom Cruise in the face in "Jerry Maquire"? But her life wasn't always in such good shape.

Before Narconon helped her kick her drug habit, she was doing every drug she could get her hands on.

But Narconon did help her, and now she's one of their spokespeople, actively helping educate parents and kids on the pitfalls of drug abuse. As one who has been there, she knows what it is like. Recently she's been in Hawaii, teaching parents from her new DVD, "Keeping Your Kids Drug-Free: What Parents Need To Know". Narconon plans to open a center on Oahu soon.

Indonesia Relief Effort

The Volunteer Ministers are asking for our help in their efforts to help in Indonesia at the site of the quake in Yogyakarta. Abour 4300 people are known dead, with at least 120,000 homeless in the wake of the disaster. If you want to go and help them, contact vm@volunteerministers.org or ihelpwestus@ihelp.org. You can also make donations via paypal to the vm@volunteerministers.org site. They hope to field a team of hundreds of volunteer ministers. They do whatever is needed to help, whether that is digging through rubble for victims, passing out water and food, giving first aid to the injured, identifying and burying the dead, or giving "assists" to the survivors to help them cope with loss and injury. Scientology Volunteer Ministers are always "doing something about it". Help us.

NY Rescue Workers Detox Center

In 2002 Tom Cruise helped start the NY Rescue Workers Detox Center in Manhattan. Since then, 640 rescue workers have gone through the program. The detox program involves sauna and exercise (and vitamins) and I've seen photos of the "blue sweat" that comes out of their bodies in the sauna while on the program. More than 40 of the rescue workers from Ground Zero have died from the toxins to which they were exposed in their rescue and recovery efforts. Over 70% of the rescue workers have some form of health problem such as "WTC cough" as their bodies try to cope with the toxins they absorbed from the smoke and other chemicals in the air.

The program is free to those rescue workers who do it, although it costs about $5000 per person to deliver. Tom Cruise funded quite a bit of it initially, but of course they need more funds to continue operating. They're having a sponsored motorcycle ride on August 26th, led by Joe Higgins, a retired NYC firefighter and graduate of the program. To join the ride, contact hmdetox@aol.com (Jim Woodworth) or to organize a game to gather donations, contact Charlotte Anderson (charwah@msn.com). You can also make donations yourself.

For more info about the NY Detox center, visit www.nydetox.org/index.html.

May 10, 1950

Something important happened for humanity on May 10, 1950, and most people don't know it and couldn't associate that date with anything of significance to their lives. That was the date that the book "Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health" was published by L. Ron Hubbard. It's a date of signifigance now mainly to Scientologists, who celebrate it annually as one of the beginning dates of that new religion. Back in the last 1940's, Hubbard was doing research into the mind, that no one else had done. He went with what worked, as therapy, and built the system of Dianetics to help people help each other using it. The book swept the country, Dianetics centers sprang up everywhere, and Hubbard created the Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation to keep looking into the mind. When you look deeply enough into the mind (which he found was composed of mental image pictures), you eventually had to ask, "Who's looking at those pictures?" And he stumbled upon the human spirit quite by accident. By 1952 he'd pretty thoroughly researched the capabilities of the human spirit, which he recorded in a series of lectures in Phoenix and Philadelphia. Realizing that they were dealing with the human spirit directly, others then founded the Church of Scientology.

I attended my first celebration of the publication of this book on its 21st birthday, on a lark in 1971, at a hotel in Seattle, with a bunch of Scientologists I had only recently met. I was still in college then, and still doing street drugs. I wanted desperately to get off the drugs, but was pulled to them with a force that was hard to resist and that I didn't comprehend; it was hard to look at the various reasons why I was doing drugs.

The Scientologists rolled up their sleeves and helped me get off the drugs and get them out of my system completely, not just physically but spiritually as well. Dianetics, their old workhorse of mental technology, came to my personal rescue in the form of something called the "Drug Rundown". It helped break me out of the "woodenness" a word that perfectly describes my inability to reach out, to feel, or to communicate. Drugs lost their allure mentally and their hold physically -- and I became drug-proof for the last 30 odd years. I'm not a teatotaler, and I'm not an addict. I can have a drink with friends, and I can take a drug if I absolutely must for my health.

It would have been easier in today's world to get off the drugs I was on, with the tough and dedicated staff of Narconon available to help now -- back then Narconon was just getting going.

Actress Kirstie Alley has said that Narconon saved her life, twice. Once helping her break her addiction to cocaine, and once after she was poisoned. Narconon uses the techniques developed by Hubbard to help people get off drugs. It's not Scientology, but is workable de-addiction technology spun off of Hubbard's research into the mind. The recidivism rate of most drug rehab programs is around 80% meaning that the vast majority of those going through drug rehab slide back onto drugs. The recidivism rate of Narconon is extremely low, below 20%, last time I checked the stats. Ask any Narconon graduate. If you're interested in actual drug rehabiliation, Narconon is the way to go.

Narconon started in 1966 when Willie Benitez, an inmate, got hold of several Scientology books and started the first Narconon self-help group with other prisoners at Arizona State Prison. He could not have predicted it would become the tremendous force it is today in helping rehabilitate those on drugs and in prison.

Time off -- for work?

I've had several days to myself recently, with my fiancee gone on a business trip for a week. I enjoy the solitude and freedom: I can stay up til 2 AM on a whim now without anyone complaining! It feels like a vacation of sorts, even though I'm working away while she's gone, in silence and without all those annoying distractions. But I LIKE those distractions, and I like my fiancee, so it's a tossup whether this solo stint is better for my morale than just our normal dual life here. I find myself looking forward to our daily phone calls so we can catch up, even when there's not much to catch up on. "How are the cats?" "Fine. Crazy as ever."

Study Tech at work...

It's hard for us to imagine the difficulties that a college professor in Tanzania or Botswana or Mali faces compared to, say, a tenured professor in an American university. Yet they are trying, with very limited resources, to educate their students to be competent and able to excel in the modern world.

Applied Scholastics (developed by L. Ron Hubbard) is engaged in a broad program to teach African professors tools that they then use to more effectively educate their students. Here are two testimonials that express the hope and certainty that they achieve after completing only the first course in their program, called "Progressive Teaching Tools":

"I am excited to have completed my first course in the Applied Scholastics Master Training. I have attended several teacher-training programmes, but there is none that can compare with this one.

The instructors are wonderful people with amiable human reactions.

I can say without mincing words that I can now change my world, family, students and friends alike for the better.

God bless Mr. L. Ron Hubbard." ~ G.E. College Professor

----------

"I have been a teacher for 25 years and I have taught in all the levels of education from the primary through secondary to tertiary institutions in my country, but I have always thought something was wrong with our achievements - both as teachers and learners.

Why, for instance, would children who come to school looking bright, enthusiastic and ambitious suddenly become sullen and vindictive against society? Why again would a child want to withdraw from school when he knows all the advantages education gives to people? I could not imagine.

Now, I know why. We have been putting all the wrong things into our educational system. It is amazing that anyone successfully passed through the system at all!

Browbeating anyone into learning is no way to teach. Our kids must first know why they are learning (i.e. learning for life) and then want to learn so that the knowledge they acquire can be useful to them and to society. Learning must be achieved 100% - not 99%. In fact, it’s as if we insist on better quality from our industries than we do from our schools.

It is time to change, time to begin to put in place measures that would ensure hundred percent learning." ~ B.A., College Professor

Coastal Elk

One evening last week our chickens alerted us to the fact we had an animal wandering the yard. They make a great sustained racket of crowing and calling to each other when there is an animal, especially a predator, around their chicken run. When we checked it out, it was a fairly large coastal elk with nubby antlers just coming in. We've never seen them in our yard before -- our dogs usually scare off all the grazing animals, including stray cows, wandering horses, the timid deer, and the elk. This elk was as big as one of our horses.

When our dogs ran up to chase him off, he lowered his head and charged them. They quickly gave up and he ignored them after that. He came back the next day.

We are about ten miles from the Pacific ocean, which, as I understand it, is right at the eastern limit of the range of these coastal elk. We hope to see more....

Everything's blooming...

It's that time of year when everything seems to be blooming here on the timber ranch. The ceanothus (aka false lilac and tickweed) is flowering all over. That's not a good sign - ceanothus is considered a weed here. Wherever it grows is someplace that a fir tree isn't growing. We're always hacking it back. Here's some growing on a steep hill under some madrone:

We were surprised this year to see some trillium flowers blooming near our house. I had thought the flowers on trillium to always be white, but these have a pastel purple color to them that is wonderful. These only grow where it is cool and shady. The three big leaves make them easy to identify, even though the flower looks a lot like the wild irises that grow around here, which are also blooming now.

Eli Lilly funds "pre-emptive" drug study

More Eli Lilly drugs foisted on kids as this NY Times article today details, Eli Lilly and the NIMH have been funding a drug study since 1997, trying to determine if it is efficacious to drug kids who are "at risk" of schizophrenia with anti-psychotics. The biggest result? The kids gained an average of 20 pounds. This drug being tested, Zyprexa, causes those taking it to get fat. So let's see -- you take a girl who is borderline schizo, and now you make her 20 pounds heavier. That's certainly not going to make her any happier, now is it?

Of course, this "study" was flawed in many different ways. First they couldn't find that many people who fit the category of pre-schizophrenic. Only 60 kids were tested, which isn't statistically enough to get a valid result no matter WHAT the results. 10 of the kids stopped taking the drug, some of them moved away - so basically you can't read anything from the numbers. It's just more bogus pseudo-science from Eli Lilly.

You can see where they were headed with it, though -- "Don't be leff out! Brought to you by the makers of Prozac -- a drug for you kids who AREN'T crazy -- yet. You, too, can be forced to take your prescription on threat of being kicked out of school and reported for child abuse."

For more info on the insanity that is psychiatry, visit CCHR -- the only effective group doing anything to try to contain the pseudo-science of psychiatry.

Study Tech at work

I was a very glib student when I went to school (back before the last ice age). I could parrot back whatever the teachers had said, and had near perfect eidetic memory of the textbooks I read. So I did really well on tests, skipped a grade, etc. But when it came to actually applying what I'd learned, it was as if I never really absorbed any of what I was studying. It wasn't until my circumstances changed in my junior year in high school that I became aware of this flaw in my education.

At 15 years old I suddenly had to learn very quickly how to build a house. I was living with my older sister that year (1968). I spent the whole "Summer of Love" on a 2 acre lot in the desert outside El Paso, Texas, putting in a foundation, building framing, and putting up roof joists, putting on a roof, putting in plumbing and electrical and insullation, and putting up siding. I even learned to lay the proverbial bricks. I did most of the work with my brother-in-law directing and helping as he could (he had a bad back and was away most of the time). It was the first time I'd ever built anything or had to DO anything that mattered. About the only thing I was able to use from my prior life were my basic geometry skills -- how to measure out and lay out a right angle.

And that winter we lived in the house.

That qualification got my first "real" job - construction chief on a privately owned ship. All they cared about was: "Can you DO it." It didn't matter that I was "only" 18 years old.

The emphasis in Study Technology is on application, and it achieves results that cut through the psychobabble of modern education like scissors through playdough.

Here's a recent success from a parent after some tutoring using the study technology:

Let me begin by saying that what you do is AWESOME. I am a parent with a Masters Degree and numerous awards, but could not help my child understand in 3 years what you have helped him obtain in less than 3 weeks. I see a change in my son – not just academically but personally. There is an air of confidence he now holds. Life has opened up for him so much more. He could read before, but now he reads and understands.
We have been blessed beyond belief. – L.T.

Here's a success from a principal:

Applied Scholastics tutors have enabled our students to progress in reading, specifically. Students are equipped with the tools they need to help themselves. We are all enthusiastic about further progress. – S.N.

I wish study tech had been around when my sisters were young - it would have changed their lives and reduced the amount of struggle it took to get through school.

Psychiatry at work...

I recently saw someone trying to treat his child like a dog. He was at the mall, and the child was wearing a harness attached to a leash held by his father. I suppose if one believed (as the psychiatrists have been promoting for the last century) that we were all soulless animals, then it would make sense to treat a child like a dog, control him as you would a dog by guiding him at the end of a leash, stopping him from going where he wanted to go.

It reminded me of this quote from L. Ron Hubbard in the book "A New Slant on Life" which I used when helping my own children as they were growing up:

Children are not dogs. They can't be trained like dogs are trained. They are not controllable items. They are, and let's not overlook the point, men and women.

That's how I treated them. In that same book, he says

A child is not a special species of animal distinct from man. A child is a man or a woman who has not attained full growth.

When I negotiated with my children from this viewpoint, cooperation could be had. Whenever I negated this and tried to "lay down the law" or come up with some kind of punishment for bad behavior, I got only sullen resistance and looks that could kill. It took more time than simply cuffing them about (as my parents would have done to gain compliance) but my children are sane and effective adults now. Like the rest of Hubbard's advice, it works if you actually do it.

Freedom...

I often refer my friends who are hung up on one thing or another, waiting for some kind of clearance or approval, to this quote from L. Ron Hubbard:

The only possible way that you can get any freedom is to stop asking everybody's permission to be.

I first heard that when listening to the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures given in the early 1950's by Hubbard. I've listened to them 4 times through over the last 20 years, and I gain something vital and new every time I Iisten to them, from every lecture. My understanding builds over time and with the number of times over the materials. Understanding of what? Of life. Of how to live my own life better.

Madrone

We have a lot of madrone trees here on the ranch. They look naked compared to the other trees, especially when the light is right. Here's a photo I took of the peeling bark of a madrone (bottom left of pic), and the smooth, almost sensual wood that has no bark left on it (upper right). The little tendril of plant growing across it is poison oak. The reddish marks on the madrone are scars of some kind, perhaps a buck trying to shed his antlers, or marks from when the branches of the tree next to it struck it when felled. The second picture is the same tree from further away.

This tree sits on the edge of a cliff; some of its roots are exposed. A big wind might blow it down. So I am documenting it now, in the prime of its life.

Volunteer Ministers in Australia

Australia recently had a category 5 hurricane (they call them cyclones down under) named Cyclone Larry hit northern Queensland. We've had Scientology Volunteer Ministers from Brisbane and Sydney on scene helping people since right after it hit. If you can spare anything from your Paypal account to help support these volunteers as they pass out food and water and minister to those in dire need, contact vm@volunteerministers.org and find out where to send it. Volunteer Ministers have the motto that "Something Can Be Done About It" and they make that motto a reality every time they show up in their yellow shirts.

Tom Cruise - Diane Sawyer

If you watched the Primetime show on ABC last night, you saw that Diane Sawyer interviewed Tom Cruise about a lot of the subjects that have been written up in the tabloids lately.

It's been at least a decade since I last saw Diane Sawyer on TV and I was surprised how old she looked. Tom looked great and I thought the interview went very well; he came across as credible and enthusiastic.

Regarding Scientology, he handled her question about silent birth by giving her the truth about it. Silent Birth makes sense when you come right down to it, so I think that his interview will dispel a lot of the attention that the curious have had on that. One of our religious beliefs in Scientology is that fetuses and neonates can hear anything said around them. Most of what is said they just ignore, and of course they don't understand it at the time, but if there is pain and unconsciousness involved and there are medicos joking around and saying things, then later in life, under the right circumstances those words that were said can start to act like hypnotic commands. Better to prevent it in the first place, hence "silent birth". From my own experiences, I can tell you that such words in those moments of pain and unconsciousness do act exactly like hypnotic commands and can make people act very strangely. I've felt the force of these myself, and using Dianetics have run through these enough times to spot them and to dispel their influence completely.

Tom also said that Katie would have use of any drugs (including an epidural) if she needed them, and could make all the noise she wants.

Tom's intense joy of living came through, as well as his love for Katie and his kids.

Tom warned Diane not to believe anything she read in the tabloids--that it was all made-up lies. And that people had been lying about him since his early childhood, when he moved around a lot and they made fun of him as the new kid.

All in all, it was a good interview. No new ground was broken, but it was good to hear Diane say that she'd read Dianetics twice. At least she had done her homework! Tom advised her to read "Fundamentals of Thought" next if she wanted to know what Scientology says about God.

When she tried to pin him down about Scientology's views about God, he was very politic. There's no dogma within our church telling us what to believe about God. We do pray when we get together during a Sunday service, for example -- we have several prayers asking God to secure human rights for all of us humans. Most Churches of Scientology have a Sunday service every week. But that's not the focus of what we do. Like Tom said, our focus is on helping people live a better life in their own estimation. And we have many tools that help us and help others to do that.

We have a huge Volunteer Minister corps that goes where needed around the globe, from Ground Zero in NY to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to earthquakes in Pakistan and helping tsunami victims in India, Thailand and Sri Lanka. If you want to find out about Scientology, ask one of those guys in the yellow VM shirts who are filling sandbags, digging survivors out of the ruins, giving first aid, or handing out food and water. They'll be glad to tell you, especially if you pitch in.

Psychiatry - the smug bastards are on the run....

CNN almost gets it right in this video. Their reporter quotes Tom Cruise from a GQ magazine article. It would have been much more effective as a news piece if they'd gotten an interview with Tom, but they didn't bother. This piece feels kind of patched together with whatever footage was laying around. They did interview one psych, who runs the favorite PR line from the psychs about how black box labels scare people off the drugs. As if that's a bad thing. That's the whole point! To those of us who have been fighting psychiatry for decades, it is gratifying to see the smug bastards on the run.

Sites about Scientology worth reading.

As a person who has been a practicing Scientology minister for more than half his life (I was ordained thirty years ago in 1976 by the Church of Scientology of California) I have been very interested in all the news Tom Cruise has been making about Scientology over the last few months. Although we don't normally read them, we picked up four tabloids that all mentioned Tom and Katie at the newsstand last week. People Mag, Us, Star and some other I can't remember. The magazines were fascinating -- very little fact, mostly opinion disguised as fact. "According to sources close to Tom..." Photos were either staged or paparazzi shots. I was thinking "That's a hell of a way to be presented." What if someone did that to you? Snuck up when you were on your way to your car, before you'd had your coffee, and took a roll of pictures while you opened your car door, scowling at what jerks they were. They can make you look like an idiot, even if you are normally as perky as Katie Couric.

I was wondering what someone completely new to the subject of Scientology would find in the search engines. Poking around at Google, I found the following listings that make good reading -- they aren't the main Church of Scientology website, and they put the subject in an understandable and humane perspective:

• US Navy Chaplain presents basic information on the Church of Scientology including history and basic beliefs.


• Scientology (CESNUR) Documents and updates on the Church of Scientology from CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions)


• Scientology Volunteer Ministers - Scientology Solutions to a ...
  Suffering from worries, sorrow, grief or fear, whatever the problem, Scientology Volunteer Ministers can provide practical help.


• Scientology Effective Solutions - Informational brochure series in PDF format about the Scientology religion and its activities.


• Church of Scientology: The Bonafides of the Scientology Religion -
  A description of the Scientology religion: the theology and practice, Scientology members and their community activities, a history of religion and papers ...

What's True for You...

One of my favorite quotes from L. Ron Hubbard is this one: "What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that you have lost everything." (I'm quoting from a book called "Understanding, The Universal Solvent", and the quote originally came from an article about personal integrity.)

I read many philosophers in college, and none of them put it that well, or gave you any tools to dig yourself out after having lost your own viewpoint, as Hubbard does.

That quote explains the problem reporters have to contend with when writing a story about, say, Tom Cruise. What they SEE is a very enthusiastic movie star. But they have a hard time reconciling what they SEE with what their editors tell them. Rather than stick with the truth (what they SEE), they embellish facts, dig up rumor and innuendo, and get comments from the envious. What a scam such journalism is.

Aversive "Therapy" = Get Me Out Of Here....

Have you ever seen the movie "Alien IV", where they clone the aliens and keep them in cages? The scientists control the aliens by hitting a button that gives them a painful blast of cold gas when they do something they shouldn't.

And there you have it, the essense of "aversive therapy". You do something the psychiatrists don't like, and the psychs will shock you. Of course, the state is paying the psychs $214,000 per child for this program, because who would voluntarily pay for such a "service" for children? And these are not adults being shocked in the name of help -- these are kids.

I'm talking, of course, about the "Judge Rotenberg Educational Center" of Canton, Mass, where they are experimenting on children with electric shocks. True, it's not the spine cracking voltage they still use today in Electro Convulsive Therapy, but it's enough that one child, Antwone Nicholson, begged his adoptive mom, "Just get me out of here and get me in another place. I can be better in another place." (Quoted from People Magazine 4/17/06.)

David Miscavige

Since I first heard of him the early 80's I've admired David Miscavige's direct, no-nonsense approach and the results he gets. His work in getting IRS tax exemption for the Church of Scientology in 1993 effected great relief for the Church and its parisioners. I'd like to thank him publicly here: Thank you, David Miscavige!

Found an interesting article in Freedom Magazine about an event I attended in 1998. If you look closely, one of those heads in the audience is mine! David Miscavige was the emcee - he does a great job of delivering the good news accumulated during the year.

Never Forget...

Filmmaker Paul Greengrass (of "Bloody Sunday" and "The Bourne Supremacy") has a new film coming up for release, called "Flight 93" -- about the events of 9/11. The squeamish are already howling that the movie trailer should not be being shown, much less the film. That's it's too soon for such a film.

Personally I've been wondering what was taking Hollywood so long. It's been nearly five years, which is an eon in "Hollywood years".

Sure it's crass and commercial for Hollywood to profit from that horrific day. The same as it was for them to make a film about the battle of Midway as it happened, or about the events of December 7, 1941, only a year or so after it happened (that film won an Oscar, so I hear.)

I was listening to a recorded lecture of L. Ron Hubbard yesterday and heard one of the most cogent reasons ever expressed as to why people will do such horrific things. People are only willing to destroy others AFTER they have been convinced that they are no longer human: instead they are inhuman or subhuman "Japs", "Jerrys" and "Krauts", "Ruskies", "Ragheads" and "Sand Niggers", "unbelievers" and "infidels".

It takes a lot of propaganda and misinformation, and widespread inability to actually face and communicate with others, to make a whole people willing to destroy others. They won't do it if they can actually confront each other, if they are sure that each other exists.

The Japanese were told during WWII that Americans would actually eat them.

So real communication is the key. I beseech all of us to make the effort to communicate despite what may be believed about the "enemy". I believe that that which we are told that seeks to de-humanize someone else to us is meant to make us hate them, and it always contains lies.

Criminals commit crimes because there isn't anyone else but them, so none of their behavior, nothing they do has any consequence, because other people DO NOT EXIST for them. Not really. Show them that others exist, teach them to communicate with others, give them a basic moral code they can follow, and they reform. That's the basis of Criminon Program, operating in prisons around the world to reform and rehabilitate prisoners. It's the only effective rehabilitation program going. The penal system itself hasn't had any focus on rehabilitation for decades.

So this film has an opportunity to make human or to make inhuman the terrorists. I am dreadfully curious which road it will take.

More photos -

Here are some new photos from the ranch.

That bright yellow stuff on the stump is some kind of fungus, I think. The slim branches are poison oak, before they leaf out in the spring. To be avoided!

Today the trees are waving in the wind. The soughing is soothing and peaceful to me.

More photos...

I've been walking around as much as I can here on the ranch, trying to take a walk every day that it isn't pouring. I always take the camera, a walking stick (it gets steep in places) and a hat. The hat is for the sun or rain, of which we get both in copious amounts. The walking stick is an affectation, but it also keeps me from losing my balance and falling down on some of the steeper slopes. The camera is for my friends who can't be here, so I can share some of the beauty of this place with them.

Here are some photos from the end of March:

Write to FDA Commissioner - Dr. von Eschenbach

The FDA has too long been in the pocket of the drug companies.

You know it and I know it.

Drugs are approved for uses they never should be, based on completely bogus pseudo-scientific "double blind" studies that are rigged in every way possible. They have the trappings of science, but are not based on the truth, applied the way any rational human would see it.

Here's a recent white paper from CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) on the subject of "Psychiatry, the Pharmaceutical Industry and the FDA -- a destructive alliance endangering the lives of children." Read it and contact the FDA commissioner yourself. Here's his address:

Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D.,
Acting Commissioner
Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857-0001
or by email through the FDA website

Not that I think writing this guy is going to accomplish much. Wait until he resigns from the FDA and goes to work for one of the drug companies, as so many other FDA employees do.

Narconon in Canyon Oaks (LA County)

The Narconon of Canyon Oaks facility is sorely needed in LA County. They have 46,600 admissions for drug treatment last year, and of those, 42,000 had had prior emergency room admissions. So there's a high incidence of repeat traffic emergency drug treatment traffic. Of those, 52% reported they had failed to get off Meth, 60% reported they had failed to get off Cocaine, and 79% reported they had failed to get off heroin.

The great things about Narconon (which has now been around for 40 years!) is that it does not replace one drug with another (like methodone "treatments" that basically addict the person to methodone!). Instead, the people are put through a purification program and education in the basics of moral living using "The Way to Happiness", a common sense (and non-religious) guide to morals. Narcononalso teaches drug addicts how to communicate with other people, giving them practical life skills they can use to control themselves and live a moral life thereafter. Narconon's recidivism rate is extremely low. Once drug addicts have gone through the program, the majority of them will not ever go back on drugs again. The Narconon program handles the root causes of drug addiction, not just the symptoms.

I liked this recent Narconon graduate's success story:

"At Narconon, I found that standards of ethics do exist. Not moral platitudes enforced on me by someone else, but basic, commonsense guidelines for honesty and happy living. I apply these basic standards to how I live my life now. It has improved my conditions on a very broad scale. But, especially it has improved my relationship with my parents. I am completely straight and honest with them now, and I feel closer to them than ever before."

It resonates with me because when I was young and foolish (back before there was dirt) I did various street drugs before I wised up, got clean and did the purification program myself. That wild period was very hard on my parents--my mother was numb with shock at some of the things I did while on drugs. It took a while to gain back her trust and get back into communication with her again.

Here's a flyer on Narconon Canyon Oaks. If you know someone with a drug problem, get them to a Narconon before they die. My first wife's younger sister came to visit us in the early 80's for a few days -- we didn't know that she was a heroin addict, although she was an obvious "druggie". A week later she was dead in London of an overdose. So my advice based on personal experience is -- don't put it off.

Kiddie Heart Attacks linked to Ritalin

Here's an article in "The Australian", about the research they've been doing under their Freedom of Information laws, to document the links between heart attacks ( including deaths ) in children using Ritalin and other drugs.

CHILDREN as young as five have suffered strokes, heart attacks, hallucinations and convulsions after taking drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that almost 400 serious adverse reactions have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, some involving children as young as three.

Cases include the sudden death of a seven-year-old, and a five-year-old who suffered a stroke after taking Ritalin. Children also experienced heart palpitations and shortness of breath after taking Dexamphetamine.

Others taking Ritalin or Dexamphetamine - the two most commonly used ADHD drugs - experienced hair loss, muscle spasms, severe abdominal pain, tremors, insomnia, severe weight loss, depression and paranoia.

In other news, the guy who is alleged to have killed his two children earlier this year was (as is usually the case in such horrific murders) on the drug Prozac. According to WCNC.com of Charlotte, North Carlina, their reporters were allowed to view the psych's notes on the case of David Crespi. They reported:

The man accused of stabbing his two daughters to death in January switched medication to treat depression several days before the alleged killings, court documents unsealed Friday revealed.

David Crespi is accused of killing his two daughters in their south Charlotte home Jan. 20.

According to a doctor who evaluated Crespi three days after the crime, Crespi switched from Paxil to Prozac.

And yet the psychs want to screen every child for depression or other mental illnesses such as "math disorder" (can't remember "7x8=56"), "ADD" (can't focus because the kid is hypnotized from watching 8 hours of TV every day, or is vibrating from sugar and caffeine overload) so they can put them on Ritalin.

When you observe for yourself that something doesn't work, and you continue doing it because "that's what is done in such cases" -- that's criminal negligence, not to mention evil.

If there's any justice, there's a special place in Hell reserved for psychiatrists, where they are restrained, shocked, drugged, told what's wrong with them, where they are never listened to, where they are intensely depressed and their "care" is to be drugged and shocked into apathy about it.

Lies in the LA Times about ECT

Yesterday's article in the LA Times called "The Future Holds More than Pills" touted the benefits of Electro Convulsive Therapy, or ECT. While I wasn't exactly "shocked" to see the LA Times following the party line of psychiatry, it still hit me that some people might actually believe that ECT could benefit anyone. So I wrote the following letter to the editor:

Citizens Commission on Human Rights has made a long-standing,
well-publicized offer to any psychiatrist, offering $10,000 to any psych who
would willingly undergo ECT. We've never had any takers on that offer,
despite psychiatry having one of the highest suicide rates of any
profession; suggesting that even severely depressed psychiatrists would
rather kill themselves than undergo ECT.

Fair and balanced reporting would have required more strenuous research into
the claims of the psychiatrists touting ECT. That would reveal what CCHR
has documented for the last 35 years. ECT doesn't work, it is harmful, and
it ought to be outlawed as treatment for the barbaric torture that it is.
Like slavery and rape, it has no place in a civilized society that respects
the rights of innocents.

Jeré Matlock
Broadbent, Oregon

We'll see if it gets published. I tried not to pull any punches.

Canadians Unite!

Here's a site where a petition is being circulated to allow 12-year old Canadian Gabriel Lavigueur back in secondary school. He's been kicked out for refusing to take psychiatric drugs: just more psychiatry at work. There are so many other things that can be wrong in the life of a child -- psychiatrists seem to always reach for the drugs first, and of course hammer their solution home by force instead of checking for the obvious: Is the kid hungry? Tired? Is he being bullied by his classmates? Does he have allergies? Does he have another medical situation?

Late winter on the ranch

Spring is almost here on the ranch and we've just had what will probably be our last snowfall of the year. I've been walking a lot lately, exploring off the main roads. I found a small pond we didn't know existed on one trek. Found some quartz on the top of one of the hills around here, which was odd. Most of the beautiful white quartz seems to wind up in the creek eventually. In this section of Oregon we live on what remains of an ancient sandstone plateau, badly eroded. The creeks cut down deep through the frangible, porous sandstone and find the basalt underneath it all. Quartz is hard and durable -- it lasts while all the sandstone is eroded away under it.

Here are a few photos of the views. The air has been very clean and clear after the storms go through. I tend to walk outside near dusk, so the light is spooky and fun to play with. None of these photos has had anything done to tweak the colors or light. I have only shrunk them down to fit - otherwise they are exactly as they came out of the camera.

Talking Points on Basics of Internet Marketing

Last week I received the honor of being asked to put together some "talking points" on the basics of internet marketing, for a series of seminars to be given in Spain and Holland by Gilleard Marketing. That is the firm belonging to Keith and Deborah Gilleard, long-time marketers. They've been marketing for about 30 some years and have achieved many excellent marketing products over the years. They've left a long string of more successful companies in their wake. They became clients of mine about a year ago, when Deborah asked me to fix the HTML coding and CSS on a busted website design for them.

Here's my take on this intriguing subject: The Basics of Internet Marketing.

That page design is simple and clean -- I'm tempted to put my whole "normal" website, www.wordsinarow.com in that clean and simple format. But I also want something a little more complex to showcase the level of complexity that we can use when making websites.

Any comments would be welcome -- I have no perspective on this. I tell people I was born "without the color gene" and while that's not completely true, it's also not that far from being spot on.

Putting an end to psychiatric crimes -- in Florida

My friends at CCHR Florida now have a website. CCHR is, of course, the Florida bastion of the only psychiatric watchdog group, "Citizens Commission on Human Rights", founded in 1969 by Dr. Thomas Szasz, author of the best selling book "The Myth of Mental Illness", and the Church of Scientology.

The website has some good graphics but needs to be tweaked to work perfectly in FireFox and in various screen resolutions. And they've gotta get rid of that one blinking word, blinking text being the hallmark of a newbie web designer.

Anyone who hasn't seen the CCHR traveling museum of psychiatric horrors should make the effort. You'll never think psychiatrists are well-meaning bumblers like TV's Frasier again. Anyone for an impromptu ice pick lobotomy? Any takers? There was one psychiatrist who would grab people off the street and ... well, go see for yourself.

Psychiatry Debunked

My friends at CCHR have put together a terrific four minute video debunking psychiatry. It contains statements of fact from several psychiatrists about how the entire field is bunk. It's worth a look to see what the psychiatric industry does not want you to know about how they diagnose mental illness. Their elaborate scam involves controlling what goes into the DSM IV, their diagnostic manual, so they can bill the insurance companies for it, without a shred of actual scientific evidence behind them.