Anything Smart: July 2016

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Great Book - "How Not to Die"

This is a great book.

The author first describes when he decided to become a doctor.

When he was a child his grandmother suffered from heart disease, had multiple bypass surgeries, suffered from chest pain, and was finally sent home in a wheelchair to die, told she had only weeks to live.

But that's NOT when the author decided to become a doctor.

The 65-year old grandmother went to a live-in program in California run by Nathan Pritikin. She was put on a plant-based diet and a program of regular exercise. Three WEEKS later she didn't need the wheelchair anymore and she was walking 10 miles per day.

THAT's when the author decided to become a doctor.

The grandmother - she lived 31 more years - enjoying life with her family.

Good food and good exercise leads to good health. Sounds reasonable. Let's give it a try!

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

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This is a great book about how good diet and good exercise can lead to many years of good health!

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Monday, July 4, 2016

Good Cops and Bad Cops: "You Promised You Wouldn't Hurt Me!"

This post first appeared on my old Good Cops and Bad Cops blog on 2-June-2015. And now it's here.

On 8 February 2015 Natasha McKenna, a 37 year old mother of a 7 year old girl, died in Virginia. The cause of death was "excited delirium associated with physical restraint including use of a conductive energy device."

In other words, a woman who was mentally ill was handcuffed and shackled and tasered multiple times to make her compliant. And then her heart stopped. How did this happen?

On 15 January Alexandria police got a report of a woman being disruptive near a Hertz Rental Car location. Six officers arrived and subdued McKenna with the help of pepper spray after she punched one of them in the face. These cops did the right thing after the the struggle was over when they got this troubled woman to a hospital, instead of taking her to jail.

Unfortunately, a felony warrant was later issued for McKenna for punching the officer. A psychotic episode was now a crime. Out of the hospital on 26 January Mckenna was picked up again and this time ended up in Fairfax County jail.

More than a week later, on the morning of 3 February, Fairfax County Sheriff's deputies prepared to move McKenna to Alexandria where she had "assaulted" the officer. She agreed to cooperate and allowed herself to be handcuffed, but then she began to struggle, crying out, "You promised you wouldn't hurt me!"

Six Emergency Response Team members wearing white biohazard suits and gas masks worked for 20 minutes to get McKenna fully restrained. When they were done she was in handcuffs hobbled to leg shackles and wearing a mask to prevent biting.

Next, deputies tried to strap Mckenna into a restraint chair. She wouldn't bend her legs so one of the deputies punched her knees repeatedly. Finally, one of the deputies shot her four times with a taser. This in spite of the fact that tasers are not supposed to be used in cases of excited delirium, or more than three times in quick succession.

The shocks apparently disabled her enough so she could be strapped into the chair, but when deputies got her to the entrance for transportation, a nurse noticed she wasn't breathing and had no pulse. The nurse called an ambulance and deputies began CPR. McKenna's heart started beating again 20 minutes later on the way to the hospital. She stopped breathing at least three more times, once for 5 minutes. Five days later, she died.

As criminologist and former San Jose Police Officer Ron Martinelli said "You need to treat that prisoner like a patient, not a suspect. She is already restrained, why don't you let her calm down?"

McKenna was mentally ill and, in her final moments, she was distraught and needed help. But she didn't get help. Instead she got shackled and punched and shocked over and over again until her heart stopped. The people who did that to her were bad cops.

For more information click on the links below:

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

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This is the original classic about a cop trying to deal with corrupt colleagues. Please send a review I can publish here at AnythingSmart.org.

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Sunday, July 3, 2016

Dreams of Being an Astronaut

This is an excellent, thorough, and complete biography of the woman who might well become our next President, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It is written at a young adult level which means we get the key points of Hillary's life in good, clear writing without unnecessary digressions.

For anyone interested in the 2016 elections and the future of the United States of America this is required reading.

Here is a brief preview of some of the things you will learn by reading this excellent book:

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Hillary's father, Hugh, was kind of a tough dad.

If one of his children left the cap off the toothpaste he would throw it out the window and make the child go find it. He didn't praise his children very often. When Hillary brought home A's on her report card he would just say, "That must be an easy school you go to."

Her mom, Dorothy, was more gentle and supportive. Even though "Hillary" was a boy's name in the late 1940's, Dorothy gave it to her daughter because she thought it sounded unusual and exotic.

Dorothy's parents divorced when she was eight and she lived with strict grandparents who once grounded her for months for trick-or-treating at Halloween. She never had a chance to go to college and longed for better opportunities for her own children.

Dorothy took Hillary to the library every week. In later life she made a very revealing remark that probably tells us a lot about her own experiences: "I was determined that no daughter of mine was going to have to go through the agony of being afraid to say what she had on her mind."

In sixth grade Hillary wrote an essay on her future. "When I grow up I want to have had the best education I could have possibly obtained. If I obtain this I will probably be able to get a very good job." As to specific careers she wrote, "I want to either be a teacher or a nuclear physics scientist."

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As the American space program began to speed up in the early 1960's Hillary became very excited about becoming an astronaut. She wrote a letter to NASA requesting information only to be told that women would not be accepted into the program.

This might have been the first time in her young life that Hillary noticed women were discriminated against. It would not be the last time, and equal rights for women would become one of her main issues, something she has worked on for decades.

It's easy to forget injustices that existed in the past but imagine how shocking it must have been for a smart, ambitious young American to learn that some careers would be denied to her... just because she was a girl!

In the early 1960's there was still brutal racism in the United States: "In the South, blacks were forbidden from eating in many restaurants, shopping in some stores, staying in hotels, and even using the same water fountains as whites. In the summer of 1961, groups of blacks and whites calling themselves Freedom Riders had traveled though the South, trying to end segregation in bus terminals along the way. They were attacked and brutally beaten by angry white mobs and jailed for trespassing."

Many people don't like to remember or talk about these times now but Hillary lived through them in her formative years. She attended a talk by Martin Luther King in April 1962 and the 14-year-old Hillary got to meet the great civil rights leader backstage.

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