Hasta La Gadget!

First go short, then go even shorter. Such is the case with Hollywood starlets who chop their long locks into bobs and then go for a pixie soon after.

Kaley Cuoco is the latest celeb to get a pixie ‘do just weeks after getting a long, choppy bob. The “Big Bang Theory” actress debuted her new haircut, which is a longer, tapered version of the style made famous by the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Mia Farrow and Twiggy, in an Instagram photo Saturday, May 31.

“Thank you @clsymonds for bringing out my inner Peter Pan 🙂 #byronbeverlyhills #justcutitoff,” she wrote, giving a shout-out to hairstylist Christine Symonds.

Symonds also shared a photo of Cuoco’s fresh look, writing: “This little lamb went shorter. love playing at the hair salon with @normancook. #shortandsassy #summercut #beauty #hot #babe #byronwilliamssalon.”

After getting the chop, the 28-year-old headed out with husband Ryan Sweeting for the Pharrell Williams and Bruno Mars concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

From the moment I heard about the UCSB shooting, I couldn’t stop reading about it. Whenever tragedies such as this happen, I latch on. I have this habit of trying to figure out the why. Columbine, Newtown, 9/11. I immersed myself in these stories, spending more time trying to understand them than any person should. But this time, this shooting, struck a cold, hard nerve like none had before. Judging from the #YesAllWomen conversation that has started out of the Isla Vista tragedy, I wasn’t alone.

Women began speaking out about their everyday experiences of violence in many forms, driving home the point that this shooting isn’t the first time misogyny has threatened lives. These women know what it’s like to live in fear. So do I.

His name was Charlie*. He sat four rows over from me in our 10th grade geometry class and two seats back. He had cinnamon-colored skin, curly black hair and dark eyes. He wore glasses. I wouldn’t have called us friends; he craved attention in the wrong ways during class, and I was a total goody-goody. But we would chuckle to each other whenever our teacher droned on during a lesson and share homework answers. Like most of the kids I crossed paths with in high school, we shared our AIM screen names and chatted online.

We would IM each other — about class or our lives. He told me about his depression and how sad he was during almost every conversation we had. Through his venting sessions, I listened. In my mind I was being a supportive classmate — and that’s all. But to Charlie, it meant more.

One night, he chatted me and told me that he liked me, really liked me. And how beautiful I was. He wanted to date me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I told him that he was very sweet, but I wasn’t interested and just wanted to remain friends. But Charlie didn’t like that very much. In the past, boys I rejected got sad, but he got mad — very, very mad. Then our conversation took a turn for the worse.

You’re going to be sorry.
You’re going to wish we never met

And the one that haunts me to this day:

I’m going to shoot you in the head and watch your brains splatter against the wall.

Upon hearing this, I did the only thing my 15-year-old self could think of: I told my mom. I knew what she would say. I knew she would want to report him, yet I still begged her not to. Even after threatening my life, I didn’t want to hurt him. Perhaps I told my mom, because deep down I knew she would do what I couldn’t find the strength to do myself. Back then, I called my reaction “being too nice.” Now, I call it being naive. The truth is, I was being manipulated, controlled, and threatened. Up until that point, no one, not even authority figures, had really taught me the difference.

My mom reported him the next morning and, after the police searched his locker, he was gone. Within the week of the ordeal, my school send him back to an alternative school. Apparently, they did end up finding something in his locker — a knife.

Despite this, I, the girl on the receiving end of what could have been a terribly tragic scenario, was told nothing, offered nothing — including counseling or investigation into the matter.

Having the authorities and my school pretend like nothing ever happened wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t allow him to return to the high school two years later. Without warning, in the halls my senior year, I locked eyes with the boy who had wanted me dead. And still, I felt like it was my fault. I had ruined his life.

What does that tell you about how we condition and treat women? You don’t need to hold a knife up to our throats to hurt us. Doing nothing, victim-blaming and guilt-tripping, is torture too.

The UCSB shooter’s parents tried to get authorities to intervene after seeing his 137-page long manifesto on his hatred for the women who rejected him — but as we now know it was too late. And it was, but not because they couldn’t stop him in time. It was too late because we live in a culture where men feel entitled to women and it’s so engrained in us, that women, like me, fall victim to the system every day.

Every time we tell women it’s their fault that they were assaulted or raped, we are to blame. Every time we let another rapist go free, we are to blame. Every time we let cases of domestic violence get swept under the rug, we are to blame. Every time a person stands by as a woman is harassed on the street, or not taken seriously as a human being, we are to blame. And every time we do not put women or victims first, we are to blame. We should ask how instead of why. How can we help them. What can we do as a culture to make them… me… you… feel safer.

Yes, mental illness plays a role, and, yes, the shooter may have just been a cold-hearted killer. But by specifically seeking revenge against women who he could not control, he exposed the thinking that abusive men use to justify their abuse.

The #YesAllWomen made me feel less alone, but it wasn’t until I saw the “When Women Refuse” Tumblr — which shows woman after woman killed for saying “no” to men — I knew I had to share my story.

Whenever I see a photo of Elliot Rodger’s blank face, shivers flow up my spine. It is a startling reminder of what could have been. But it’s a reminder to keep fighting, too. I know what it’s like to fear for your life just for not complying with a guy, but others shouldn’t have to anymore. Women shouldn’t have to die a brutal and unexpected death for saying “no.”

I should know. I could have been one of them.

*name changed

Mass murders are becoming a depressingly familiar routine in the United States — we can now expect to experience a media grabbing shooting about once a month. And the frequency can only increase as future cohorts of copycat killers are spawned by the seductive opportunity to temporarily gain the spotlight.

Amidst the anguish and heartbreak felt by the victims’ families, there are always two haunting questions. What motivates someone to kill strangers wholesale in a seemingly senseless way? And what, if anything, can we do to stop these tragedies from recurring?

The accumulating large sample of mass murderers and their eagerness to explain themselves in print and videos provides a rich data base. Dr. James Knoll, a leading forensic psychiatrist with special expertise in mass murderers will describe the pattern of their demographics and psychological profiles.

Dr. Knoll writes: “In 2013, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report on public mass shootings. The CRS used as its working definition incidents “occurring in relatively public places, involving four or more deaths.” The CRS identified 78 public mass shootings in the U.S. since 1983 that had resulted in 547 deaths and 1, 023 casualties.

Most perpetrators are young males who act alone after carefully planning of the event. They often have a longstanding fascination with weapons and have collected large stores of them. The shootings usually occur in a public place and during the daytime.

Individual case studies involving psychological autopsy and a careful analysis of the often copious communications left behind suggest common psychological themes. The mass murderer is an injustice collector who spends a great deal of time feeling resentful about real or imagined rejections and ruminating on past humiliations. He has a paranoid worldview with chronic feelings of social persecution, envy, and grudge holding. He is tormented by beliefs that privileged others are enjoying life’s all-you-can-eat buffet, while he must peer through the window, an outside loner always looking in.

Aggrieved and entitled, he longs for power and revenge to obliterate what he cannot have. Since satisfaction is unobtainable lawfully and realistically, the mass murderer is reduced to violent fantasy and pseudo-power. He creates and enacts an odious screenplay of grandiose and public retribution. Like the child who upends the checkerboard when he does not like the way the game is going, he seeks to destroy others for apparent failures to recognize and meet his needs. Fury, deep despair, and callous selfishness eventually crystallize into fantasies of violent revenge on a scale that will draw attention.The mass murderer typically expects to die and frequently does in what amounts to a mass homicide-personal suicide. He may kill himself or script matters so that he will be killed by the police.

The frequency of mental disorders in mass murderers is controversial because it is not clear where to draw the line between ‘bad’ and ‘mad.’ The paranoia exists on a spectrum of severity. Some clearly do not meet criteria for any mental disorder and often may justify their acts on political or religious grounds. Others have the frank psychotic delusions of schizophrenia. Many perpetrators are in the middle, gray zone where psychiatrists will disagree about the relative contributions of moral failure versus mental affliction.” Thanks so much Dr. Knoll for clarifying our first question on the demographic and psychological factors that help explain what motivates the mass murderer.

Which brings us to our second question. Now that we know what mass murderers look like, can we use this knowledge to prevent them from becoming mass murderers?

For the most part, the answer is a disappointing no because it is just not possible to find needles in haystacks.

Lots of people fit Dr. Knoll’s demographic and psychological profile, but never act out their fantasies. We can easily predict a high-risk group, but have no way to identify the one specific person who will go haywire, and when it will happen. To prevent the act of the killer who winds up pulling the trigger, we would have to seriously violate the civil rights of the hundreds of thousands of others who resemble him, but turn out to be harmless. Mass murders happen way too often for us to tolerate, but way too rarely to be easily preventable by identifying and isolating the mass murderers. We can’t possibly jail or hospitalize everyone who has violent fantasies.

The best we can hope for is to reduce access to weapons of mass destruction. It shouldn’t be easier for a potential killer to get a gun than get an outpatient appointment. We need to improve both sides of this equation. More treatment, fewer guns.

The only good outcome of the mass murder epidemic has been an increased awareness that mental health treatment is woefully underfunded and inaccessible to most people who desperately need it. It often takes months to get an outpatient appointment and beds are so few that getting into a psychiatric hospital is almost impossible. Improving accessibility to mental health services is a national necessity and may help prevent an occasional tragedy — but it is only a very partial and totally inadequate answer.

The much more effective step is a responsible gun control policy that balances the civil rights of individuals with the safety of the public. It is no surprise that a majority of the population (including a majority of gun owners) favors measures that would restrict high-risk individuals from having such easy access to guns. The only surprise is that the majority of reasonable people can be held hostage by the minority radical faction of the NRA, by the free spending arms makers who sponsor it, and by craven politicians.

For a balanced analysis of the civil rights issues that should be considered in framing a fair, safe, common sense gun control policy, see this article.

The way forward is clear — we need to reduce free access to guns for those individuals who are at high risk to use them irresponsibly. Undoubtedly, this will eventually happen as the mass murders continue to pile up. Sooner or later, public outrage will overcome the NRA radicals and push politicians to do their job. But how much more blood must be spilled before simple common sense prevails over extreme ideology.

PARIS (AP) — So unbeatable for so long until the closing days of Grand Slam tournaments, Roger Federer is suddenly accumulating early exits.

Federer’s streak of nine consecutive quarterfinals at the French Open ended Sunday with a 6-7 (5), 7-6 (3), 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 fourth-round loss to 18th-seeded Ernests Gulbis of Latvia. For Federer, the 17-time Grand Slam champion, it was the earliest exit at Roland Garros since 2004, when he was beaten in the third round by three-time champion Gustavo Kuerten. After that decade-old setback, though, Federer made at least the quarterfinals at a record 36 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments, a streak that ended with a second-round loss at Wimbledon last year. Federer also put together record runs of 10 finals and 23 semifinals in a row when he was at his dominant best.

Now the 32-year-old Federer has bowed out before the quarterfinals at three of the last four majors, including a fourth-round loss at the U.S. Open in September.

“I think it was the biggest, probably, win of my career,” said Gulbis, who most certainly could have dispensed with the word “probably.”

Addressing the spectators during an on-court interview, Gulbis said: “I’m sorry I had to win. I know all of you like Roger.”

The fourth-seeded Federer’s record haul of major titles includes the 2009 French Open, and he was a four-time runner-up in Paris to Rafael Nadal. Loudly serenaded and supported by the Court Philippe Chatrier crowd Sunday with singsong chants of his first name, Federer was hardly at his best, making a whopping 59 unforced errors and getting broken seven times, including twice while serving for a set.

That included at 5-3 in the second, when Federer had a chance at a put-away overhead but sent the ball right to Gulbis, who took full advantage by whipping a backhand passing winner. Federer also was ahead in the second-set tiebreaker, before allowing Gulbis to grab five points in a row.

After dropping the third set, too, Federer appeared to be getting back into the match until Gulbis left the court with a trainer to take a medical timeout while trailing 5-2 in the fourth. As he walked out, Gulbis motioned to Federer, as if asking for permission to go. When Gulbis returned, some fans jeered and whistled at him, and he pointed to his lower back and raised his palms, as if to say, “Hey, I was injured.”

His strokes had momentarily gone astray before that break, but afterward, the 25-year-old Gulbis was back to playing the sort of free-flowing, big-hitting tennis that had many marking him as a future star of the game when he was a teenager. He won 10 of the next 12 points, punctuating most shots with exhales that sounded like growls, although Federer did end up evening the match at two sets apiece.

The fifth set was all Gulbis, who hadn’t been to the quarterfinals at a major tournament since the 2008 French Open. He’s spoken openly in the past about focusing more on enjoying the nightlife than perfecting his craft and also drew attention last week for saying he wouldn’t encourage his younger sisters to pursue professional tennis because, “A woman needs to enjoy life a little bit more. Needs to think about family, needs to think about kids.”

In the concluding set, Gulbis needed only 10 minutes to race to a 3-0 lead, thanks in part to Federer miscues. In the second game, for example, Federer netted backhands and forehands to offer up break points, then pushed a run-around, inside-out forehand wide to give Gulbis a lead he’d never relinquish.

After that miss, Federer grabbed a ball and swatted it in anger straight up in the air, a rare sign of exasperation from him.

The result was not as monumentally shocking as it would have been a few years ago, given that Federer is getting older and he’s no longer as impervious as he once was. Still, it fit with the topsy-turvy nature of the 2014 French Open, which saw both reigning Australian Open singles champions, No. 3 Stan Wawrinka and No. 2 Li Na, lose in the first round. No. 1 Serena Williams left in the second round.

Next for Gulbis will be a match against No. 6 Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, who eliminated No. 10 John Isner of the United States 6-4, 6-4, 6-4. In another fourth-round match, No. 8 Milos Raonic of Canada beat 39th-ranked Marcel Granollers of Spain 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.

Wimbledon champion Andy Murray and No. 24 Fernando Verdasco set up a fourth-round meeting by finishing off victories in matches suspended Saturday night because of fading light.

In women’s action, No. 18 Eugenie Bouchard of Canada swept No. 8 Angelique Kerber of Germany 6-1, 6-2 and will face No. 14 Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain in the quarterfinals.

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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Before billionaire businessman Warren Buffett started auctioning off private lunches to benefit the Glide Foundation, he was skeptical of the San Francisco charity where his first wife was volunteering.

But once Susie Buffett, who died in 2004, showed Warren the work Glide does for the poor and homeless, he was sold on the organization — so much so that he’s raised nearly $16 million since 2000. “It was one-on-one working with people society had given up on,” Buffett said. “And experience showed society was wrong to give up on those people.”

The 15th annual lunch auction starts Sunday with a $25,000 minimum bid on eBay, and continues until 9:30 p.m. CDT Friday.

The lunch auction has become an important source of money for Glide, which has an $18 million annual budget. Glide’s co-founders, the Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani, hope the lunch will draw another seven-figure price tag, but they also appreciate the exposure.

“I think it’s amazing to have Warren Buffett as an advocate,” Mirikitani said. The charity provides meals, health care, job training, rehabilitation and housing support to the poor and homeless.

Last year’s auction winner got a relative bargain by paying $1,000,100. Four of the previous five winners each paid more than $2 million, and the 2012 winning bid of $3,456,789 remains the most expensive charity item ever sold on eBay.

Other charities have used eBay auctions to successfully raise money, such as the Grammy Foundation and MusiCares, which has brought in nearly $4 million since 2005.

Buffett is confident this year’s bidding will top 2013 — “I think we’ll beat it by quite a bit” — based on the limits prequalified bidders have set for themselves.

Buffett isn’t quite sure why people are willing to pay so much for a private audience with Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and CEO, but he gives Glide part of the credit. The lunches typically last several hours, and Buffett tries to make sure the winners are satisfied.

The only limit on the conversation is what he might invest in next, but any other topic is open, including the billionaire’s investing philosophy and his thoughts on philanthropy and inheritance.

“It goes all over the map,” he said.

Traditionally, the winners of the auction dine at Smith and Wollensky steak house in New York City, which donates at least $10,000 to Glide each year to host the lunch. But in some years, the winner wants to remain anonymous so the lunch happens elsewhere.

Buffett’s company owns more than 80 subsidiaries including insurance, furniture, clothing, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants and natural gas and corporate jet firms, and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co., IBM and Wells Fargo & Co.

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Follow Josh Funk online at www.twitter.com/funkwrite

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Online:

Buffett Lunch Auction: www.GlideLunchWithWarrenBuffett.com

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: www.berkshirehathaway.com

Glide Foundation: www.glide.org