Hasta La Gadget!

Something’s getting decked.
Could be the kids or the halls.
I’m still deciding.

He let me sleep in
to avoid decorating.
Nice try, Mr. Grinch.

When you hang the lights,
turn up the festive music
to drown out the swears.

Trying to ignore
constant protests and scolding
from the chickadees.

Neighbors, please take note:
We string lights on our bushes
not in between them.

Do bylaws forbid
deflated inflatables
that look like garbage?

Now that’s the spirit!
My husband is calling me
a real nutcracker.

Now he’s complaining
that our neighbors on all sides
get a free light show.

The wife of the man
who calls us “Christmas crazy”
asks “What’s new this year?”

On the day after
the day we hang up the lights
we hang up more lights.

Everything’s set
for our holiday photos.
Paging Google Earth!

Hmmm… the new neighbors
didn’t compliment our lights.
Jehovah’s Witness?

Peyton Price is the author of Suburban Haiku: Poetic Dispatches From Behind the Picket Fence. You can find her peeking through the blinds at suburbanhaiku.com.

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We’re hearing about smart everything these days, but did you know that there’s now a smart deodorant dispenser? USA Today Lifestyle Tech Editor Jennifer Jolly says that the ClickStick isn’t out on the market just yet, but this product is going to be a must have! It syncs with your smartphone, and if you start to walk out of the house without putting deodorant on, it will alert you. Plus it has a LED light. When you press a button, the ClickStick automatically dispenses the right amount of deodorant, so that you’re not sticky, but are still protected! It’s also refillable, which is more economical.

For more of Jennifer’s tech advice and suggestions, view the slideshow below:

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By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Venezuela has indicted hardline opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on charges that she took part in an alleged plot to kill President Nicolas Maduro, the state prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

Machado, who was at the forefront of major street protests against Maduro’s socialist government earlier this year, has dismissed the accusations as a charade meant to silence her and distract Venezuelans from a growing economic crisis.

If found guilty, the former legislator could be sentenced to between 8 and 16 years in jail.

“Our only option is to fight for democracy and freedom,” Machado said after she was indicted at the state prosecutor’s office in Caracas on Wednesday.

“We’re at the doors of a transition period,” she said, , draped in a yellow, blue, and red Venezuelan flag as dozens of supporters chanted their support.

One of Machado’s advisors said authorities had not ordered her immediate detention. There were no immediate indications the case could spark the same type of street demonstrations that rocked Venezuela for three months earlier this year.

Fellow opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who with Machado kickstarted the anti-government protests, has been behind bars since February in what government critics blast as a crackdown on political foes.

They say Maduro, who was elected to succeed late socialist leader Hugo Chavez in office last year, has tightened the state’s grip on the judiciary and the electoral system, and wants to sideline political opponents ahead of key legislative elections in 2015.

Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver, dismissed this year’s protests as part of a U.S.-backed plot to destabilize his government. His popularity has tumbled since he took office, stung by shortages of consumer goods and soaring inflation.

The opposition’s radical wing praises the fiery Machado, 47, for standing up to what they consider a dictatorship.

But she is loathed by many government supporters, who see her as an out-of-touch aristocrat intent on toppling the government.

They frequently point out she signed a decree that dissolved state institutions during a de facto government that ruled for less than two days in a botched 2002 coup against Chavez. (Additional reporting by Corina Pons and Diego Ore; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by David Gregorio and Kieran Murray)

One of the fun things about being a pet writer is that people send me interesting story ideas out of the blue. So when I got on email on Sunday, November 23 about the rescue of almost 100 Cavalier King Charles Spaniels the day before, I started making calls to learn more.

What I heard is a dramatic story of dog lovers united by the rallying cry, “No Cavalier left behind!” For about a year, rescue advocates in Birmingham, Ala. had been investigating and attempting to shut down a local puppy mill where over 150 Cavalier King Charles Spaniels were being bred. Despite attorney Angie Ingram getting involved in May 2014 and even taking photos that showed the dogs with medical issues that needed attention, such as eye infections, the mill was not shut down.

Instead, the breeder decided to sell around 100 dogs at an auction in Missouri on November 22.

On Nov. 10 — when the auction was announced — Brittney Wilk, founder of the Greater Birmingham Cavalier Group, created a GoFundMe fundraising page to buy some of the dogs at the auction. (It is against the bylaws of Cavalier Rescue USA, Wilk’s employer, to purchase dogs, so her fundraising was through the social cavalier group.)

“We did not want to have to do this auction — we didn’t want that to be the end result at all,” Wilk told me. “But we did what we needed to do at the time because we refused to let them go into the hands of other puppy millers.”

What they did was raise $184,000 in 12 days from all over the world — donations poured in from the U.S. as well as places like Australia, the United Kingdom and the Slovak Republic.

“It was overwhelming and humbling to receive so many people’s donations,” Wilk said.

People that have Cavaliers are just sick thinking of a Cavalier in that situation… they are just the most loving breed. It does not matter how neglected they’ve been, how humans have failed them, as soon as they know that you’re there to love them, they instantly trust you and want affection.

Attorney Ingram was entrusted to do the auction bidding. She had spoken with other cavalier rescuers attending the auction about the strategy, and it was decided that Ingram should bid on the youngest — and therefore most expensive — dogs first. When the auctioneer made comments like, “They’ve been bred and they might be pregnant,” that drove up the price even more.

“I blew through a lot of money very fast,” Ingram told me. “My daughter was sitting on my right-hand side, keeping up with the numbers like nobody’s business… I knew we weren’t going to make it to the end.”

She sent a text to the Birmingham team that she’d need more money to save all the dogs, and they put a plea on social media for people to make direct deposits to Ingram’s PayPal account. She received almost $80,000 in half an hour.

“I was just floored by how quickly that money rolled in,” she said. “I can tell you, the Cavalier community is just phenomenal. And I think it reached far beyond that — it was just dog lovers or animal lovers in general.”

The combined rescue effort saved 96 Cavaliers, two Cocker Spaniels, seven Shiba Inus and one French Bulldog. The Greater Birmingham Humane Society transported many of the dogs back to Alabama. The next morning, the veterinary team at Birmingham’s Caldwell Mill Animal Clinic met for breakfast at 5 am to prepare for a day of donating their services to the rescued dogs.

Andy Sokol, DVM, said to say the staff was excited to treat the dogs “would be an understatement.” Wilk had contacted them about the auction in advance, so the day was well organized.

As each dog arrived, Wilk’s crew put a name tag on them, the veterinary team gave them a chart, and a volunteer escorted each dog through a series of stations. At the first station, the team drew blood for a heartworm and intestinal worm check, and the cardiologist listened to their hearts. At the second station, the veterinarians gave physical exams, wrote up individual reports and vaccinated the dogs. Then Wilk’s volunteers bathed the dogs, clipped their nails and groomed them.

“I don’t think any of these dogs had ever had a bath before,” Sokol said.

Then the foster families arrived — 36 dogs were placed in homes that very day, and have now started being spayed and neutered so there’s no chance of them ever being used for breeding again.

Sokol said all of the dogs had dirty ears — a few with infections — about half had hernias (which is hereditary), some had fleas and skin infections, and a few had heart murmurs, luxating patellas (a kneecap that comes out of place), and “pink eye.”

“This was just a terrible situation of puppy mills and breeding dogs,” he said, adding, “If this is going on in this one breed, you can imagine other breeds.”

Ingram and Wilk say they aren’t stopping with saving these dogs — the ultimate goal is to end puppy mills and dog auctions. They declined to go into specific legal actions because they don’t want to affect any outcomes.

“We are committed to doing whatever we need to do to put a stop to this,” Wilk said.

In the meantime, the dogs are getting TLC from their foster families. They’ll start being available for adoption early next year.

Photo credit: Connie Collum

For updates on the dogs, visit www.operationcavalierrescue.org or cavalierrescueusa.org.

An implant shown in adult hand — Photo by Josabeth via Wikimedia Commons

There’s been a lot of talk across America about college rape culture in the last few weeks. Much major media has been highlighting the persistent and unfortunate problem. Perhaps the most well known article came from Rolling Stone, which ran a controversial story highlighting seven University of Virginia fraternity students allegedly raping one freshman girl for hours during a party. In the wake of so much arresting coverage, numerous universities and legislative bodies are considering new methods to deal with the problem.

So far, those new methods seem to consist mostly of advocating for clearer language to stop the violence from happening in the first place and greater transparency in the rape victim’s reporting process. I’m not optimistic the changes will do much to stop rape and other forms of criminal violence in any significant way. There are too many aggressive, idiotic men out there–and yes, men are almost always responsible for the violence.

The facts of domestic abuse in America are sobering. Nonprofit Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that every 15 seconds a woman is beaten and that 35 percent of all emergency room visits are a result of domestic violence. Nonprofit A.A.R.D.V.A.R.C., An Abuse, Rape, and Domestic Violence Aid and Resource Collection, reports that that the US Surgeon General states that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States. According to Feminist.com, over 22 million women in the United States have been raped in their lifetime, based on the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010. SafeHorizon, the largest victims’ service agency in America, says there are 2.9 million reports of child abuse every year nationally, and it costs $124 billion dollars annually in medical, court, law enforcement, child welfare, and juvenile protection services to deal with the problem.

As a futurist and founder of the political organization the Transhumanist Party, I strive to consider all societal problems from technological and scientific points of views. It turns out there might be a simple solution that could reduce rape and some violent crime all across the country. I call it the trauma alert implant.

Cranial implants and brain wave technology have come a long way in the last few years. Already, hundreds of thousands of people in the world have microchip implants in their heads, consisting of everything from chips to help Parkinson’s sufferers to cochlear implants for the deaf to devices to assist Alzheimer’s patients with memory loss. For each, this technology allows a better life. DARPA recently announced a $70 million dollar five-year plan to develop implants that can monitor soldier’s mental health. It’s part of President Obama’s new multi-billion dollar BRAIN Initiative.

Implants using Electroencephalography (EEG) technology can read and decipher brain waves. Trauma, however experienced, is a measurable biological phenomenon that can be monitored and captured by an implant device. Scientists must do nothing more than create a trackable chip that sends an emergency signal to nearby authorities when it registers extreme trauma. Help can then arrive quickly to the victim.

Much of the the technology for such a device basically already exists. And such a device could be useful for far more than rape or criminal violence, too. Drowning, being burned in a fire, automobile accidents, building collapses, snake bites, kidnappings, bullet wounds, senior citizens who’ve fallen down stairs and can’t get up–the list of terrible things that happen to humans goes on and on. The result of every one of them is almost always the same: brain waves that manifest extreme trauma–the human’s most basic response and alert system. Regardless what misfortune happens to a human being, most experts agree that getting victims rapid emergency assistance is the single best way to help them.

The great thing about a trauma alert implant is that not everyone would have to get it to stop violent crime. In fact, probably most people wouldn’t (though, I surmise in the future many people will get one for a multitude of reasons). The existence of the chip itself–similar to a possible hidden camera in a room–would be enough to scare off many criminals, who would always be second guessing if their victim had one. This would especially be the case when it comes to crimes that are hard to prove or go habitually unreported, such as date rape.

All things considered, the trauma alert implant sounds like a sensible and impressive thing. So why don’t we have them yet?

To begin with, Americans are wary of brain implants. They don’t mind holding a cell phone to their ears for a half hour, but ask them to get a piece of sophisticated tech inside their heads and many freak out. They squawk how weird it is and that they don’t want to be a cyborg (all the while spending untold hours surfing the internet, flying on jet airplanes 30,000 feet in the air, and taking multiple vaccines and pills). The transhumanist age is already here, whether it’s weird or not. For most people, it’s just a matter of culturally accepting it.

Another complaint that people have with implants is the privacy issue. Nobody wants to be trackable. Sure, that’s understandable. But bear in mind, that every time you get on the internet, stop at a gas station, or use your credit card, you’re already being tracked. We may all distrust surveillance, but that’s not going to stop the gargantuan amount of cameras recording in America right now, many of them in public places. While solid information is hard to find on how many cameras are operating in America, Wikipedia reports that Chicago has at least 10,000, and the United Kingdom may have as many 4.2 million cameras, or 1 for ever 14 people. The good news is, just like our cell phones we carry around, we’ll likely have the option to turn off our implants anytime we want, thereby giving us control of who can watch us. Additionally, surely implants could be programmed so that they could “only” be tracked once they were triggered for extreme trauma.

Another main reason Americans dislike implants is because of religion. At least 85 percent of the country’s population holds some form of faith–mostly of Christian denomination. And a significant number of Christian people consider brain implant technology to be the Mark of the Beast. I’m an atheist, so I don’t understand those fears. But I do know that Revelations and the Second Coming of Jesus supposedly can’t be stopped by people, according to the Bible, so perhaps Americans should work through their cyborg-phobias and embrace useful transhumanist technology. After all, if a gang of rape perpetrators suspected their victim had a trauma alert chip that would notify authorities, do you think they’d still commit the crime? Surely most wouldn’t, especially not university students.

I have two young daughters: a four-year-old and a one-year-old. I’m grateful they will probably never have to worry about drunk drivers on their prom night. In a decade’s time, most cars on the road in America will be driverless or come with alcohol detection systems that don’t allow inebriated drivers. Such technological innovation is just a drop in the ocean of the benefits that progress brings to our world. The truth is that technology can help fix almost all the world’s problems. It can also help with the tragedy of rape and criminal violence, which dramatically harms nearly 10,000 women and children a day in the US. If even a small portion of the population would have trauma alert implants, rape and criminal violence might be substantially reduced.