Now I'm copying Tia. :)

Below are the lyrics to Carrie Underwood's newest song "So Small" that's been released onto the radio. I'm always impressed by the songs she chooses, especially because she said she specifically pays attention to the lyrics.

I would love to meet the writers of some of her songs and pick their brains (ex: "I took a louisville slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires, maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."---the writer could have said "baseball bat" but went with something that's just as recognizable, yet more illustrative at the same time--- genius!!!)

I've heard this song a few times now and let me say, if you haven't heard it, find it and listen up. I'm totally feeling like I'm in the place being illustrated in this song; like "mountain" I've been climbing is just "a grain of sand" when the broad picture is put up for me to see. It's easy to get down-and-out over trivial things that come along that seem so big, but when you put them in the right light, they're really not important and don't deserve your time or your worries.

So, take a look and enjoy the song...wherever you hear it.


Carrie Underwood "So Small" lyrics
Album: Unknown

Yeah, Yeah

What you got if you ain't got love
The kind that you just want to give away
It's ok to open up
Go ahead and let the light shine through
I know it's hard on a rainy day
You wanna shut the world out and just be left alone
But don't run out on your faith

Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've been out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
And when you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else seem
So small

It's so easy to get lost inside
A problem that seems so big at the time
It's like a river that's so wide it swallows you whole
While you're sitting around thinking about what you can't change
And worrying about all the wrong things
Time's flying by, moving so fast
You better make it count cause you can't get it back
Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've been out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
Oh, and when you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else seem
So small, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
And then you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Oh, it sure makes everything else seem
So small

Yeah, yeah

Hey guys,
I know there's a lot of debate out there on the link between vaccinations and certain disorders, specifically autism. Check out the article below. Very interesting.

Jen


Kids' Vaccine Ingredient Not Likely Linked to Neurological Problems
CDC study finds no clear association between thimerosal, mental woes
By Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 26 (HealthDay News) -- The latest study on thimerosal, a preservative used in childhood immunizations, should provide parents with reassurance that exposure to the agent will not cause neuropsychological problems later on, experts say.

"We found no consistent pattern between increasing mercury exposure from birth to seven months and performance on neuropsychological tests," concluded the study's authors in the Sept. 27 New England Journal of Medicine.

Widely used before 2000, thimerosal has been the center of controversy for some years now. Some parents of autistic children believe that the mercury contained in the preservative is responsible for their children's autism.

However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains there is no scientific evidence of such an association. And this latest CDC study did not specifically look at links between thimerosal exposure and autism. According to the study authors, a separate CDC case-control study focused on autism and mercury exposure, is currently under way.

In 1999, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that children who were vaccinated according to the recommended childhood immunization schedule could be exposed to levels of mercury from the thimerosal contained in those vaccines that were higher than the maximum levels considered safe by the FDA.

In response, the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal from vaccines. That move, not surprisingly, concerned many parents who wondered if the preservative was being removed because it was harmful.

In an effort to allay some of those fears, the current CDC study looked at more than 1,000 children between the ages of 7 and 10. They compared the youngsters' neuropsychological functioning with their level of thimerosal exposure.

Using information from a three-hour neuropsychological assessment or information provided by parents and teachers, the researchers measured 42 neuropsychological outcomes, including speech, language, verbal memory, fine motor coordination, achievement, behavior regulation, tics and general intellect.

They then compared those findings to levels of thimerosal exposure, based on the child's vaccination exposure prenatally, in the first month of life, and in the first seven months of life.

"Our study does not support a causal association between early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines and immune globulins and deficits in neuropsychological functioning at the age of 7 to 10 years," concluded the study's authors.

That conclusion, however, seems to contradict some of the study's findings.

For example, the researchers found that boys with the highest levels of thimerosal exposure had about twice the risk of evaluator-observed tics compared to boys with the lowest exposure.

While these findings may seem disparate with this conclusion, Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said some of the findings are likely due to chance, because such a high number of statistical comparisons were done. She was not involved in the study, which was led by William Thompson of the CDC's influenza division.

According to Schuchat, who spoke at a special CDC teleconference held Wednesday, the researchers completed 42 tests of neuropsychological functioning and completed 378 statistical comparisons from those tests.

"By chance alone, 19 of the 378 statistical tests we ran would be abnormal," she said, noting that 19 is the exact number of tests that resulted in abnormal findings.

However, 12 of those 19 tests suggested a positive outcome from higher thimerosal exposure, and seven, including the tic finding, suggested a negative outcome.

"Each test doesn't tell us as much individually," she said. "Chance alone probably explained these findings. The totality of the results are quite reassuring."

Additionally, Schuchat said there was no increase in the incidence of parent-reported tics in children with the highest thimerosal exposure, so the tics observed by the evaluators may have been transient in nature.

But several other studies have found a possible link between thimerosal exposure and tics. Because of that, the CDC feels the finding should be further explored to ensure that it was due to chance finding and not an actual effect of the preservative.

"This is what happens when you try to sub-stratify data," said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "What's important is if you add up all the studies, do you find greater problems from thimerosal?" And, he said that study after study has shown that thimerosal does not cause harm.

"Parents should feel enormously reassured that another study has found that the levels of thimerosal contained in vaccines before 2001 are not harmful," said Offit, who also wrote one of two accompanying perspective pieces in the journal. Both pieces offered details on the legal history and the public health implications of the autism-vaccine controversy, even though that was not addressed in the actual study itself.

Thimerosal has already been removed from all but one vaccine, according to Schuchat. Some versions of the influenza vaccine still contain thimerosal, though thimerosal-free versions are also available, she said.

"Parents shouldn't take a theoretical risk and elevate it above the real risk of influenza. There's nothing theoretical about the dangers of influenza," Offit explained, adding that even healthy children can be at risk of serious flu complications.

"Vaccines are safe and effective. They prevent 33,000 deaths and 14 million infections annually," Schuchat said.

More information

To learn more about vaccines, visit U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This is amazing! I'd never heard of this bird before, but it's incredible to find out how much a simple animal could learn. I know it's cheesy, but you know me---I'm an animal lover! Read below. Very interesting...
j

Brainy Parrot Dies, Emotive to the End

Mike Lovett/Brandeis University

Alex, a 31-year-old African gray parrot, knew more than 100 words and could count and recognize colors and shapes.

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: September 11, 2007
New York Times

He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in television shows, scientific reports and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.

But last week Alex, an African gray parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of his life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.

Scientists have long debated whether any other species can develop the ability to learn human language. Alex’s language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than the feats of primates that have been taught American Sign Language, like Koko the gorilla, trained by Penny Patterson at the Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org in Woodside, Calif., or Washoe the chimpanzee, studied by R. Allen and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1977, when Dr. Pepperberg, then a doctoral student in chemistry at Harvard, bought Alex from a pet store, scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans, as opposed to just mimicking words and sounds. Research in other birds had been not promising.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn scores of words, which he could put into categories, and to count small numbers of items, as well as recognize colors and shapes.

“The work revolutionized the way we think of bird brains,” said Diana Reiss, a psychologist at Hunter College who works with dolphins and elephants. “That used to be a pejorative, but now we look at those brains — at least Alex’s — with some awe.”

Other scientists, while praising the research, cautioned against characterizing Alex’s abilities as human. The parrot learned to communicate in basic expressions — but he did not show the sort of logic and ability to generalize that children acquire at an early age, they said.

“There’s no evidence of recursive logic, and without that you can’t work with digital numbers or more complex human grammar,” said David Premack, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Pepperberg used an innovative approach to teach Alex. African grays are social birds, and quickly pick up some group dynamics. In experiments, Dr. Pepperberg would employ one trainer to, in effect, compete with Alex for a small reward, like a grape. Alex learned to ask for the grape by observing what the trainer was doing to get it; the researchers then worked with the bird to help shape the pronunciation of the words.

Alex showed surprising facility. For example, when shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of. He demonstrated some of his skills on nature shows, including programs on PBS and the BBC. He shared scenes with the actor Alan Alda on the PBS series “Look Who’s Talking.”

As parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates. His accomplishments have also inspired further work with African gray parrots; two others, named Griffin and Arthur, are a part of Dr. Pepperberg’s continuing research program.

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, she recalled, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, Dr. Pepperberg said.

Going crazy!!!

So work isn't keeping me very busy right now, which you probably already figured out, based on the fact that I recently started posting again like mad.

Keep me in your prayers because it's taking a huge dose of patience on a daily basis to want to keep coming in here to be a seat warmer. I'm just getting really sick of corporate inefficiencies like sending a document through a committee (practically) in order for absolute approval. What is the deal with that?!

Anyone offer any advice on how to cope with this? I'm DYING of boredom!

Tired -jp 9/10

Feeling weighed down
By the rocks of their lives,
Trying to be supportive
Sifting through all of the lies.

Throwing pearls to pigs
Hoping they'll recognize the treasure,
Loving them despite the drama
Struggling to hide my displeasure.

I know not to take up their yoke
And shift it onto my shoulders,
Yet time and again
I try to help by holding on to theirs.

Finding that balance
Of loving others but letting them deal,
Watching them live out the pain
All the while knowing what is real.

I can't make their choices
Nor can I try,
But something hurts me
To sit and see it all go by.

OMG---how cool is this??? New iPod Touch coming out...read on (wish I could afford one!)
jen

Associated Press 9/4/07

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday unveiled a new version of the company's popular iPod media player that's based on the iPhone, featuring wireless Internet access and a Web browser but not cell phone capability.

Dubbed iPod Touch, the 8-millimeter-thick device and can store photos, music, videos and other digital data. It features the same 3.5-inch, touch-screen display as the iPhone, on which light finger touches allow the user to scroll through menus and use two fingers to resize pictures.

The iPod Touch also has built-in wireless Internet access and the Safari Web browser, including Google and Yahoo search engines and easy access to YouTube videos. The iPhone, which runs on the AT&T cellular network, also includes Wi-Fi.

An 8-gigabyte version will cost $299. A 16-gigabyte version will cost $399. It will be shipped worldwide starting later this month.

"It's one of the seven wonders of the world, it's just incredible," Jobs told employees and journalists gathered at a special media event near downtown San Francisco.

Jobs also unveiled other new iPod models, including an iPod Nano with a 2.5-inch video monitor for watching movies and playing built-in games. The current version has a 2-inch screen but does not play videos.

"It's incredibly tiny. It's incredibly thin," Jobs said of the new Nano, which features a 320-by-240-pixel screen with 24 hours of audio playback. "We think it's really, really beautiful."

The new Nano, which will be in stores starting this weekend, will come in a 4-gigabyte version for $149, and an 8-gigabyte version for $199.

Apple also announced it will be selling ring tones for the iPhone for 99 cents, plus the 99-cent cost of the song. Ring tones from more than 500,000 songs available on iTunes will go on sale next week.