Living With Cancer: The Good Patient Syndrome - NYTimes.com

I remember when being good seemed strategic.

After the technician took out a pad to draw an inscrutable diagram, I nodded and pretended to recognize a squiggle at the center of what looked like a snail. I discussed my oncologist?s research projects, instead of complaining about pain. Generally I answered a nurse?s opening query ? ?So how are you??? with a cheery ?Good! How are you?? Grumbles about waiting interminably for a scan in a freezing room never rolled off my tongue. When an interventional radiologist managed to remove two stents from my body, I didn?t fault the surgeon who left them there to trigger a massive infection followed by an allergic response to antibiotics: I sent a thank you note to the radiologist.

What was wrong with me? Outside the medical sphere, I am prone to impatience, candor and bouts of argumentative fervor. Had feminine socialization kicked in? As a girl, I was trained to be courteous to people in positions of authority and to revere the saving knowledge of physicians. But men also exhibit symptoms of the good patient syndrome.

Indeed, Anatole Broyard preached its virtues in his book ?Intoxicated by My Illness,? although his version was less compliant, more ironic than mine. ?If a patient expects a doctor to be interested in him, he ought to try to be interesting. When he shows nothing but a greediness for care, nothing but the coarser forms of anxiety, it?s only natural for the doctor to feel an aversion.? Following this logic, Broyard embarked upon an impersonation: ?I never act sick. A puling person is not appealing.? He therefore set out to charm his physicians ? to distinguish himself from boring, easily forgotten patients. I did this too, adding a pinch of obedience, a dash of gratitude, and a smidgen of eccentricity to the mix. One doesn?t want to be just any old patient; patients are replaceable.

Since illness had never intoxicated me, why was I behaving like Broyard? The short answer is terror: these people could hurt me.

Were I to seem boring or easily forgotten, should I appear crabby or disagreeable, I might get neglected or, in my anxious imagination, harmed. Not consciously neglected or intentionally harmed, of course, because doctors and nurses have dedicated themselves to helping people whose sickness often makes them boring and disagreeable. But neglected or harmed nonetheless. Like most patients, I am keenly aware that the medical staff at most facilities are overloaded. It is easy to get left for hours unattended on a gurney or starved and freaked when surgeries are perpetually postponed or distressed and bruised when the bindings on limbs are roughly or hastily applied.

But of course adopting the role of model patient does not provide a solution. Much of the caretaking in hospitals remains out of the control of our personal physicians and nurses. And in any case, too much ingratiating docility can be dangerous to a patient?s health.

If I had persisted in asking my surgeon about the fate of the stents that he had implanted in my body, he might have remembered to remove them. If I had not followed to the letter the dosage he prescribed of a heavy-duty antibiotic, especially as I began to get sick to my stomach and dizzy, I might not have had the full-body breakdown of an allergic reaction. Earlier still, if I had insisted on better bowel preps before my first abdominal surgery, or a postponement, maybe the stents and infection and the allergic reaction to antibiotics would never have happened.

Even before that, if I had challenged my general practitioner who diagnosed indigestion, maybe my cancer would have been found at an earlier stage. If my grandmother had wheels, she?d be an omnibus: that?s a family joke.

So much for the magical thinking that good patients receive the best care. Being a submissive or dutiful patient doesn?t always pay off. Who exactly was I being good for? Sometimes it?s good to be bad.

Was I good for nothing? When I was at my most puling and unappealing and too sick to be good, with pain so overwhelming that I had to be taken to my oncologist?s examining room in a wheelchair, she placed her hand on my knee and kept it there while explaining how she would take care of me. Though I could not look her in the eye, though I could not speak for groaning, I took her point. I had foisted the good patient role on myself. She had always seen through the pose to the mortally sick human being. Why else would I be here, I realized.

At that moment I resolved to renounce or rectify my goodness. I don?t always succeed.

---

Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of ?Memoir of a Debulked Woman,? which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

Source: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/living-with-cancer-the-good-patient-syndrome/

tornadoes in dallas anchorman 2 kentucky basketball oaksterdam the fray national anthem dallas tornado ncaa basketball

Broadway's "Spider-Man" producers, Taymor, near settlement, again

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The producers of "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" and Julie Taymor, the musical's ousted director, are once again ready to settle their long-running court case, a court filing showed on Wednesday.

"We anticipate notifying the Court within the next week that a final settlement agreement has been executed," attorney Charles T. Spada, who represents Taymor, wrote in a January 22 letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan.

The letter comes less than two weeks after the parties resumed litigation after failing to reach a final settlement of Taymor's copyright infringement lawsuit, court records show.

The latest development comes five months after Taymor had reached a settlement in principle with 8 Legged Productions, the producer, in the copyright infringement case

"Spider-Man," which became a hit, got off to a disastrous start in 2010 with opening night delays, injured actors and the firing of Taymor, who won a Tony Award for her work on "The Lion King." She sued 8 Legged Productions in November 2011.

Any settlement is conditioned on 8 Legged Productions coming to terms with Marvel Entertainment, a unit of Walt Disney Co, to extend its license to produce the musical in other venues, Spada wrote in a December 19 letter to the judge.

In Wednesday's letter, Spada said an agreement between the producer and Marvel to amend the license is likely within days.

Taymor and 8 Legged Productions intend to execute their agreement at the same time, the letter said.

"We are moving closer to finalizing the settlement," Dale Cendali, a lawyer for 8 Legged Productions, said in an email.

A spokesperson for Marvel didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Julie Taymor et al v. 8 Legged Productions et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-cv-8002.

(Reporting By Karen Freifeld; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/broadways-spider-man-producers-taymor-near-settlement-again-024901200--finance.html

earth day activities mel gibson splunk dark shadows iau msft etan patz

Green Blog: Why India's Waste-to-Energy Industry Won't Catch Fire

K.S. Sivaprasad, an engineer from India, spent four decades perfecting a factory that accepts city trash, dries it, picks out the burnable elements and ignites them to create electricity. His first full-scale plant chews through 700 tons of garbage a day and delivers 5.5 megawatts to the power grid.

The unfortunate part is that the plant is in Malaysia, not India, where the process was invented. Mr. Sivaprasad, an energetic 80-year-old, went abroad after repeatedly trying to build his project in India but finding that the system was stacked against him, he says.

India tosses more than 188 million tons of garbage each day, but is falling behind other Asian nations in early efforts to turn it into electricity. The Chinese government claims to be on track to produce three gigawatts of power from city waste-to-energy factories by 2015, and Malaysia plans to build a second, larger plant based on Mr. Sivaprasad?s design.

Meanwhile, India has captured methane from several large landfills and has built six facilities that pull out and ignite flammable trash, turning it into what is known as refuse-derived fuel. But these six fuel factories, which rely on new refuse, have either shut down or barely run, victims of equipment failure or bureaucratic snarls that paradoxically leave them short of garbage.

Why? ?It is the million-dollar question,? Mr. Sivaprasad said. ?I don?t know what to say. India has a lot of hurdles, you know, very bureaucratic. Very difficult. In short, if you put it in a nutshell, technology developed in India has come up in another country.?

India?s output of trash grew nearly 50 percent in the decade ending in 2011, driven by swelling urban populations that have adopted parts of the throwaway Western lifestyle. Those same demographics account for a surge in power usage that has left the country chronically short of electricity and major cities prey to rolling blackouts.

One problem is the nature of trash in the poorer nations of Asia: it is soggier than that of Europe, the United States or Japan and doesn?t easily catch fire. In India, the urban waste mix is nearly 47 percent water, according to a study by the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University. Urbanites in poorer Asian countries cook more of their own food, while more affluent Westerners use more disposable (and flammable) plastic and paper. As a result, urban waste in the developed world is embedded with 10 megajoules of power per ton, while that of countries like India contains just 7.3 megajoules.

The waste-to-energy effort lies at the intersection of two heavy industries, energy production and waste disposal, both of which are hampered by a thick layer of bureaucracy, turf battles among local, state and federal governments and demands for bribes by middlemen. These, along with hefty maintenance costs, make it difficult for a waste-to-energy project to open and stay profitable, according to Amiya Kumar Sahu, president of the National Solid Waste Association of India.

?So far, there is not a single plant in India which is a success story about waste to energy. Not a single one,? Dr. Sahu added.

Another issue is incentives. China and Malaysia finance their waste-to-energy projects with a combination of feed-in-tariffs and tipping fees, giving trash entrepreneurs a reward for consuming trash and for producing power. This approach also gives companies like Mr. Sivaprasad?s time to refine what can be a temperamental technology. The haphazard nature of junk means that an errant piece ? say, a shattered bottle ? can invade the gears and cause expensive delays.

Mr. Sivaprasad licensed his technique to Malaysia to build the Kajang waste-to-energy plant, which is outside Kuala Lumpur. It is administered solely by the central government and relies for income on a subsidy of 14 cents per kilowatt-hour produced and $13 per ton in tipping fees charged to the municipality of Kajang, whose trash feeds the plant.

In India, by comparison, tipping fees are illegal and subsidies are only for construction. Beyond inviting corruption, this structure gives plant operators no motive to produce power once the plant is built.

Mr. Sivaprasad got interested in turning trash into energy when he visited the United States during the energy crisis in the early 1970?s. By the 1980?s he had built a prototype in Bangalore and received a patent, but it wasn?t until the mid-1990?s that Malaysia approached him about using his design.

The Malaysian factory was completed in 2009 at a cost of $45 million and is about to undergo an expansion that will increase its output to 10 megawatts. A second plant of the same size may break ground soon.

Mr. Sivaprasad?s company, Core Competencies, has brought in Surendra Saxena, an expert in carbon sequestration from Florida International University, to control another waste stream: the carbon dioxide from its smokestacks. Mr. Saxena?s involvement will help the company apply for a grant from the Trade and Development Agency in the United States for the next project that Mr. Sivaprasad would like to build: a plant that would absorb 1,200 tons of trash a day and produce 10 megawatts of power in the southern Indian cities of Chennai or Bangalore.

?Some improvement is coming in, and with American money I can clinch a project,? he said. ?This has taken a very long time.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/why-indias-waste-to-energy-industry-wont-catch-fire/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Misty May And Kerri Walsh Jake Dalton London 2012 field hockey Missy Franklin Hunter Pence NBCOlympics Danell Leyva

"Zero Dark Thirty" heads to Europe: will torture controversy follow?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Best Picture Oscar nominee "Zero Dark Thirty" rolls out in several Western European countries starting Wednesday, absent - at least for now - the firestorm of criticism that has accompanied its U.S. release.

The movie has been a lightning rod for detractors in the U.S. over its perceived endorsement of torture, an allegation that director Kathryn Bigelow and Sony executives have repeatedly denied.

"Overall, I believe Europeans are far less ambiguous than Americans when it comes to the use of torture," Bruce Nash of box-office tracking service TheNumbers told TheWrap.

"To the extent that the film is perceived as pro-torture -- whether it is or not, and I don't believe it is -- if that somehow became how the film is defined, that would hurt it at the box office," Nash said. "But I don't think that's the case."

Bigelow, screenwriter Marc Boal and several others involved with the picture have been in Europe for the past two weeks to promote the film. Boal told the New York Times that interviewers in France seemed to regard the torture issue as belonging to the Americans, and in fact appreciated the film's head-on approach.

Indeed, the film begins its foreign run with a lot of momentum. The dark thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden was No. 1 in its first week of wide release on January 11 and has finished a strong second for the past two weeks.

Of course, the publicity surrounding the torture issue hasn't hurt it at the box office in the U.S. The domestic haul for "Zero Dark Thirty" to this point is nearly $57 million, ahead of pre-release projections and likely heading for $100 million.

The film's five Oscar nominations and the critical acclaim it has received have helped, too, but even Sony has acknowledged the flood of news stories raised the film's profile.

Universal will be handling the film's release in most countries in Western Europe, after buying rights to those territories from Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures, which financed it and cut distribution deals territory by territory.

It will open in France and Switzerland on Wednesday and in the U.K and Finland on Friday. Its debut in Germany will be on January 31, and Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Norway and South Africa will follow in February. Regional distributors will handle the film's February releases in Russia and Latin America, and the Annapurna is still considering a China run.

"Zero Dark Thirty" is one of three Best Picture Oscar nominees that is currently hitting overseas theaters with a distributor different than the one that handled its U.S.release.

Sony, which along with the Weinstein Company co-financed "Django Unchained," is overseeing the foreign release of Quentin Tarantino's slave saga. It opened last weekend and took in $48 million from 54 overseas markets.

DreamWorks' "Lincoln," distributed by Disney in North America, debuted in Spain and Mexico this past weekend via Fox.

With an explanatory preamble approved by director Steven Spielberg added, "Lincoln" opened to $2.3 million on 344 screens in Spain and to $729,000 on 259 screens in Mexico. "Lincoln" goes much wider next weekend, when it opens in 19 markets including Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia and the U.K..

As for the torture controversy that accompanied "Zero Dark Thirty's" U.S. release, it doesn't seem to have caused the slightest ripple.

Indeed, the fact that torture has been used in the war against terror has been seen as a reality in Europe for some time.

In December, Europe's highest court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, concluded that techniques used routinely by the Bush-era CIA in connection with its extraordinary-renditions program constituted torture.

If torture does not become an issue, The Numbers' Nash said it should do solid business. He pointed out that other U.S. films about the war on terror have done pretty well overseas. In 2006, "United 93" made $31 million domestically and nearly $45 million overseas. Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" did $70 million in the U.S. and went to make $92 million abroad that same year.

Bigelow's last movie, "The Hurt Locker,'" was about a U.S. bomb squad in the Iraq war, and it nearly doubled its $17 million domestic take, with $32 million from abroad in 2009. The bulk of that foreign run came after its surprise victory over "Avatar" for the Best Picture Oscar, however.

This weekend's U.K. and France debuts will be telling, but Universal quietly opened "Zero Dark Thirty" on just 250 screens in Spain on January 4. With a minimum of criticism, politicians' ire or public furor, the movie has taken in nearly $4 million over three weekends.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zero-dark-thirty-heads-europe-torture-controversy-004246504.html

jon corzine austin rivers austin rivers sweet home alabama etch a sketch the host hoodie

Mama | Movie Reviews | Kelly Vance | East Bay Express

A story within a story within a story. The main protagonists in Andy Muschietti's Mama are Annabel, a self-centered, tattooed bass player in a rock band, played by Jessica Chastain, and her mild-mannered boyfriend Luke (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a struggling illustrator. Annabel and Luke's existence, like their relationship, is muddling along unremarkably when we first meet them, but the nondescript slacker couple's lives are about to be turned inside out because of something that happened five years ago in the hills.

At that time, Luke's brother Jeffrey (also played by Mr. Coster-Waldau), fresh from running away in disgrace from his corporate job ? evidently a financial scandal ? murders his wife in front of their two toddler daughters, then hurriedly gathers up Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and her younger sister Lily (Isabelle N?lisse), flings them into the family car, and speeds into the twilight on a treacherous, snowy, mountain road as if he intends to kill himself and his family. They end up in the proverbial lonely, decrepit cabin in the woods, where strange things come to pass.

The balance of the unshakably creepy scenario ? written by Argentine-born, Barcelona-based international filmmaker Andy (aka Andr?s) Muschietti and his sister Barbara Muschietti with screenwriter Neil Cross, adapted from a short film by the Muschietti siblings ? shows what happens when little Victoria and Lily, after five long years living in the cabin, are rescued and come to stay with their Uncle Luke and "Aunt" Annabel, who win temporary guardianship of the girls over their stuffy maternal aunt (Jane Moffat). The girls don't seem to have grown at all during their time in the forest, perhaps because they survived on a diet of wild cherries, but we'll let that pass.

The kids are practically feral, with matted hair, dirty faces, and a built-in apprehension that causes them to stare off into the nearest dark corner ? there's always a dark corner nearby in this movie ? at the slightest provocation. Victoria, elder of the two, gradually readjusts to "normal" life and welcomes her new pair of eyeglasses. However Lily, the wilder sister, scuttles around on all fours like a crazy crab and seems to take her cues from an unseen presence in the shadows.

That's because the girls are haunted by the ghost of a "mad woman" who lost her child as well as her life in those same woods many years before. Mama ? a startlingly grotesque wraith who grows out of a mold spot on the wall, played by Spanish actor Javier Botet from the [REC] movies ? has adopted the abandoned girls, and wants them back. Woe to anyone who stands in her way or shows too much affection for Victoria and Lily. We're looking at a custody battle.

The Muschiettis, with presumed input from executive producer Guillermo del Toro, invest this seemingly routine spooked-children yarn with a bounty of narrative and visual refinements, not least of which is the unaccustomedly dark-haired Chastain's performance as the reluctant stepmom. Annabel's initial annoyed dismissal of the orphans gives way to a tenacious maternal devotion that adds real-world emotion to the fantastic goings-on. On the heels of Chastain's big-screen overexposure in the past year and a half, we were skeptical on seeing her name in the credits, but her acting and the role itself turn out to be unusually fine-grained, better than anything she did in either The Tree of Life or Zero Dark Thirty.

Filmmaker del Toro has always shown a preference for stories of lost children (The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, and the upcoming Pinocchio), and to the tough-love scenario he and the Muschiettis bring a coat of classic gothic visual splendor ? la Murnau, Dreyer, Lang, and Lewton. The monochromatic night scenes in the forest and on the cliff are enthralling in their light-and-shadow poetry.

Someone needs to go out to that decaying cabin in the dead of night. Annabel is impelled to open that closet door in the dark bedroom where the girls play after midnight, instead of sleeping. Everything in a movie like this depends on the visuals, and when they're as sure-footed as this, the whole nightmare springs to life before our eyes. Parts of Mama are absolutely terrifying. It will take days, and long winter nights, for the tingle of this enthralling fantasy to fade away.

Source: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/mama/Content?oid=3441851

kelly clarkson super bowl giants super bowl 2012 half time show halftime show 2012 kelly clarkson super bowl 2012 ok go peyton manning super bowl

Pakistani soldier dies in latest attack in Kashmir

NEW DELHI (AP) ? Pakistan accused Indian troops on Wednesday of killing one of its soldiers along the disputed Kashmir border, in the latest of a series of tit-for-tat attacks that threaten to ratchet up tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

In New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that his country's relations with archrival Pakistan "cannot be business as usual." In Islamabad, the Pakistan military said Indian troops fired at a Pakistani army post across the so-called line of control that divides the Himalayan region.

Two other Pakistani soldiers and two Indian soldiers have died during the past 10 days in the worst bout of fighting in the region in nearly 10 years. India said one of its soldiers was beheaded.

"What has happened is unacceptable," Singh said of the killing of the Indians, according to media reports. He made the brief comments to reporters at a New Delhi gathering for India's annual day honoring the military.

The Pakistani army said the shooting by Indian troops late Tuesday was unprovoked and occurred in the Hot Spring and Jandot sectors of Pakistan-held Kashmir. The soldier who was killed was identified as Naik Ashraf. The army said he is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Col. R.K. Palta, an Indian army spokesman, said Wednesday that Pakistani troops fired at two Indian positions using small arms and mortar fire on Tuesday night in the Poonch sector of the Indian portion of Kashmir. "Our troops didn't fire at all," Palta said.

Also on Wednesday, Indian army chief Gen. Bikram Singh said cross-firing between Indian and Pakistani soldiers at the line of control was a normal activity. "They fire, we fire."

"Our troops don't cross the line of control. We respect human rights," he told reporters.

Lt. Gen. K.T. Parnaik, an Indian commander in charge of the troubled area, said, "We want to ensure that we dominate the line of control and don't let them (Pakistanis) provoke us into making it a hot line of control."

In Islamabad, the Pakistani army said its chief of military operations planned to talk to his Indian counterpart on Wednesday to protest the most recent shooting.

In a speech in New York on Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar accused India of "warmongering."

India and Pakistan have been rivals for decades and have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The Himalayan region is divided between the two countries, but each claims it in its entirety.

So far, senior Pakistani and Indian officials have kept tension from the recent events from spiraling out of control. They are trying to limit the potential damage to relations, which have slowly warmed since Pakistani militants killed 166 people in the Indian coastal city of Mumbai. They suspended peace talks after the Mumbai attack, but both countries have economic and other reasons for wanting better ties.

Still, the clashes along the Kashmir border highlight how easily simmering tension can flare into conflict. The biggest risk remains an attack by militants like the one in Mumbai that would likely scuttle the reconciliation process once again.

The tension has already disrupted cultural and sporting ties. Performances by a Pakistani theater group were canceled in the western Indian city of Jaipur and in the Indian capital following protests by hard-line Hindu groups.

On Tuesday, nine Pakistani hockey players who came to India to participate in a tournament were sent home.

The tension comes as political turmoil is increasing in Islamabad, with Pakistan's top court ordering the arrest of the country's prime minister in a corruption case, officials said, and a firebrand cleric rallying thousands of people in the capital against the government.

On Monday, Indian army chief Gen. Bikram Singh accused Pakistan of planning the attacks that left the two Indian soldiers dead ? making clear he felt it was not an unintentional skirmish ? and warned of possible retaliation.

"The attack on Jan. 8 was premeditated, a pre-planned activity. Such an operation requires planning, detailed reconnaissance," Singh told reporters. He said India reserved the right to retaliate at a "time and place of its choice."

Singh urged his troops to be "aggressive and offensive in the face of provocation and fire" from Pakistan. He said the alleged beheading of the Indian soldier was "unacceptable and unpardonable" and accused Pakistan of violating the "ethics of warfare."

The Kashmir fighting began Jan. 6 when Pakistan accused Indian troops of raiding an army post and killing a soldier. India denied launching the attack and said its troops had fired across the border in response to Pakistani shelling that had destroyed an Indian home.

Two days later, India said Pakistani soldiers, taking advantage of heavy fog, crossed the de facto border and killed two Indian soldiers, beheading one. On Jan. 10, Pakistan said Indian troops had fired across the border and killed another of its soldiers. The Pakistani army said the shooting was unprovoked, while the Indian military said its troops were responding to fire from across the frontier.

Pakistan denies India's allegations and has suggested U.N. monitors in the region conduct an inquiry ? a call that India rejected, saying it didn't want to internationalize the issue.

Pakistan and India struck a cease-fire agreement over Kashmir in November 2003. There have been periodic violations of the cease-fire, but the incidents during the past week have been the most serious.

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court's arrest order for Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Tuesday was likely to inflame antagonism between the government and the court. The order is linked to allegations of corruption in bidding on private power stations. Ashraf previously served as minister for water and power.

The arrest order could provide ammunition for Tahir-ul-Qadri, a Muslim cleric who is leading massive protests in Islamabad to press for the removal of the government, which he says is made up of corrupt politicians.

___

Abbot reported from Islamabad.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pakistani-soldier-dies-latest-attack-kashmir-211503312.html

George Bush weather.com After Christmas Sales 2012 Charles Durning Webster Ny Mcdonalds Restaurants Open on Christmas Day

Schools monitor students' posts on Facebook, Twitter

Photo by Michael Hartwell Law enforcement and education officials use a variety of skills in evaluating messages students write online to separate potential warning signs from typical teenage antics.

FITCHBURG -- For years students have been punished by their schools or even the courts for messages they posted on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, but how do officials find these troublesome messages and how do they separate a discernible threat from a melodramatic teenager?

"This office is paying attention to everything. Good, bad, evil everything," said Robin Duncan, vice president for marketing and communication at Mount Wachusett Community College.

The school has a new media specialist tasked with looking for mentions of the school online. That ranges from negative or positive comments about the school that can affect its reputation to students who write they intend to harm themselves or others at the school.

She said when they first pitched the idea to the college, they were asked, "What is this person going to do, sit on Facebook all day?"

The answer was yes.

MWCC was one of the first schools to monitor social media on a dedicated level, according to Duncan, and was recognized for being proactive by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations.

"If you don't have someone paying attention to your new media ... you're being negligent," she said.

Duncan said staff in her office are trained to detect warning signs. So far they have not had to intervene on any major threats but have spoken to some students about issues that needed to be defused with a conversation.

"It's no different than any

students walking on campus or talking to one another. We use the same methodology," she said. "We don't have a different practice simply because of the tool being used."

One thing that is different with online communication is tone. Duncan said things can come out differently than intended online, and if the message can be taken as a cause for concern, they err on the side of caution and investigate further.

"It's not black and white," said Duncan. "There's some subjectiveness to it, and it takes good training and judgment." She said the staff will discuss posts they are not sure about and look to what other schools have dealt with to learn more.

Fitchburg Police Department Community Liaison Sgt. Glenn Fossa said online messages lack the inflections of voice a verbal message would have. Something meant to be a joke may come out very wrong, and they have to figure out what the message really means.

Fossa said his department does not have any officers tasked with monitoring social media, but they come across them in their personal online activities or community members may report suspect messages.

"Generally speaking, we have to be careful that words in and of themselves may not be criminal," said Fossa. "For criminals cases, there has to be some level of connection or nexus to a plan of undertaking a criminal activity."

Speaking in general and not on any specific cases, Fossa said one thing that elevates the likelihood of the seriousness of a suicidal or threatening message is specific details listed in the message.

"When there's very specific words that show intent, the next thing that police frequently do is look for other supporting evidence," said Fossa. The big three things they try to discover are motive, opportunity and ability for a crime.

"For example, say a 5-year-old says he's going to drive his dump truck into a public building," said Fossa. The boy doesn't actually have a dump truck, and even if he did he wouldn't be able to reach the pedals. That issue would be handled very differently from someone who was a gun owner who said he or she were going to shoot someone.

"Every single case is different," said Fossa.

Ralph Hicks, superintendent of Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School District, said school employees do not monitor social media, but they let the police in district's two towns handle any potential problems.

Hicks explained that the legal doctrine "in loco parentis," which is Latin for "in place of a parent" allows school officials to interfere in the lives of students only in issues involving the school. If they became aware that a student is severely depressed, they would be able to offer the student advice for dealing with the problem or contact other authorities but could make no direct action unless the school was involved in the problem.

He said the district has not had any major cases involving social media, but a previous district he worked in was able to use social media to investigate a conflict between students.

Several girls stole a school sweatshirt from another girl and put it in a toilet and posted photos on MySpace.com. Hicks said they could see from the photos that it was in a school bathroom and were able to discipline the students because of evidence brought to them by social media. If it had occurred off school grounds, they would not have had jurisdiction over the incident even though all the parties are students.

Fossa said social media has been a great benefit to law enforcement by giving people a stage to make their private lives public. That could take the form of a threat being easily proven and traced or photographs revealing something a suspect denies in court. He gave the example of a case where a suspect said he didn't own a gun, but police found pictures of the suspect with handguns online.

"It didn't require a subpoena, it didn't require a warrant," added Fossa.

He said some larger police departments do have dedicated personnel who monitor online activity, just as the federal government looks online for terrorist or threats against public officials.

Fitchburg State University spokesman Matt Bruun said his school is putting more eyes on social media this year.

"The university monitors the traffic on our own social media portals, and when issues from individuals' social media pages are brought to our attention we respond as we deem appropriate. Such instances are rare, however, and usually warrant only an educational conversation," he said.

Bruun said FSU is preparing to launch a new Facebook application for incoming students that will allow them to meet and interact. He said the application will be expanded to the entire campus community, including alumni, and there will be multiple staff members who monitor what goes on inside the application.

Follow Michael Hartwell at facebook.com/michaelhartwell or twitter.com/sehartwell.

Source: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/local/ci_22369565/schools-monitor-students-posts-facebook-twitter?source=rss

Dick Morris Daily Show provisional ballot npr rush limbaugh rush limbaugh karl rove