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It doesn’t feel like much of a Thanksgiving this year. Lots of chairs are empty, either permanently, as we are now counting our coronavirus dead in the hundreds of thousands, or temporarily, as we are staying away from our loved ones to keep the virus at bay ....... Continue reading

One efective way to control government oversight is to cut the budget of the overseer.... Read the full article

The building has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. It became known as the “White House” because because its white-gray freestone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings. 

Designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. The original construction took place between 1792 and 1800. During the War of 1812, the mansion was set on fire by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817... Read more

Finding yourself in a mismatched career can be a distressing situation, but even more worrisome is not even being aware your career is wrong for you. Perhaps you’ve been suspecting it for some time or maybe not at all. Regardless, there are a few signs to watch out for that are indicative of the fact that your career is wrong for you.

Above all else, when determining whether or not a career is right for you, it is important to understand that a period of introspection will be required. The downsides of ending up in the wrong career can lead to an unhealthier lifestyle, so it is important to be honest with yourself if you suspect you aren’t in the correct career. 

Do You Get Bored Easily at Work?

There’s nothing wrong with being bored at work. In fact, Udemy published a study that found up to 43 percent of American office workers are bored at their job. It’s unrealistic to assume that every second of your job will capture your undivided attention. With that said, if every second of the day seems boring to you, then there may be an undiscussed problem. 

When it comes to some of the top reasons for leaving a job, a lack of a challenge is high up on the list. As counterintuitive as it may seem, people enjoy work that makes them think. The brain is a muscle and it needs to be trained like the rest of the muscles in your body. Having a mindless job can quickly lead to burnout and contribute to greater stress in your life.

Boredom at work is only natural, but there should be plenty of aspects of your job that keeps you interested and excited to come to the office each and every day. Don’t settle for a job where your mind can simply go on autopilot—find a path that challenges you.

Are Your Skills Underutilized?

Something that can quickly lead to feelings of a mismatched career is a mismatched skillset. If you studied a certain field and graduated expecting to go into it, it can be disheartening to discover you’ve landed a job that uses almost none of those developed skills.

A good sign that you are in a career that is a good fit for your skills is that you feel challenged to a healthy degree while at work. Otherwise, it’s possible that your job may actually not be stimulating to you. In a study, the Washington Post found that only 27 percent of new graduates land a job related to their major. Now, surely, a fair number of the other 73 percent could potentially have chosen a different path, but it is more likely that they accepted a career which presented itself to them.

Landing a job that does not use your skillset is a quick way to grow tired of the job. Try not to stay in a career that simply doesn’t fascinate you. If your skills are underutilized, it’s worth brushing up on how to write a resignation letter and searching for a new path immediately.

Have You Found Yourself Complaining About Your Job?

One of the easiest ways to discover that your career path isn’t for you is by reflecting on whether or not you are that friend who is always complaining about work to other friends. However, there is an important distinction to be made here. If you complain about your work, try to discover if it is the specific job you have or the actual career path.

If it is the latter that bothers you, then you have your answers for whether or not the career you’re in is right for you. Everybody complains about work but doing so every day without any improvements is a huge sign that your career is not right for you. Should you find yourself in this position, consider making a career switch to a path that may better suit your interests and skills.

When it comes to changing careers, discovering the optimal path can seem daunting. However, make use of resources such as coding bootcamps that offer intensive courses in new fields and can potentially prepare you for a new career.

Conclusion

Regardless of whether or not you currently think your career is a mismatch, it’s important to be completely honest with yourself. Your work will make up a large part of your life and should not be something that you simply settle on. Being passionate and enjoying your work is the greatest path to career success. However, you’ll never be passionate about your work if you are in the wrong career. For that reason, don’t stop searching for work until you find a path that lights a fire in your heart.

When it comes to health care, President Donald Trump has promised far more than he has delivered. But that doesn’t mean his administration has had no impact on health issues — including the operation of the Affordable Care Act, prescription drug prices and women’s access to reproductive health services............ Continue Reading

Where do we want to live in the years ahead? Older adults are asking this question anew in light of the ongoing toll of the coronavirus pandemic — disrupted lives, social isolation, mounting deaths. Many are changing their minds............ Continue reading

At least 115 people were injured this summer when police shot them in the head or neck with so-called “less-lethal” projectiles at protests over racial injustice and police brutality, according to a report published Monday.

It’s the most comprehensive tally of such injuries to date, with about twice as many victims as KHN and USA Today cited in a July examination of how police across the U.S. wielded the weapons to control crowds.

But Physicians for Human Rights, the organization that compiled the incidents, believes even its figures are an undercount because its analysis is based on publicly available data and excluded some reports without adequate evidence.

The organization identified Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles as hot spots during the period studied, May 26 to July 27.

Abigail Rodas, who was shot in the jaw with a rubber bullet on May 30, was one of the victims in Los Angeles, according to a lawsuit filed against the city and the police chief on behalf of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Community Action Network and 14 people, including six who were struck with projectiles.

According to the suit, Rodas was leaving a protest when she “was struck in the face by a projectile and momentarily lost consciousness.”

A steel plate was used to repair her jawbone, the lawsuit says. She couldn’t talk for about 10 days and could drink only liquids for a week, it says.

“Nearly three weeks after the injury, she has screws in her gums and rubber bands to immobilize her jaw while the bones rejoin,” the suit says.

The city denied the allegations in a court filing, saying any use of force “was reasonable and necessary for self-defense.”

Protests Shine Light on Use of ‘Less-Lethal’ Weapons

The sheer number of incidents in those two months was shocking, said Dr. Rohini Haar, lead investigator for the analysis and an emergency physician in Oakland, California.

“It seems systematic,” Haar said. “It seems like there needs to be a reckoning with the use of force in protests.”

The projectiles in question are often called “rubber bullets,” but in law enforcement they’re known as “kinetic impact projectiles.”

They include plastic projectiles tipped with hard sponge or foam, “bean bag” rounds that consist of fabric socks containing metal shot, and “Sting-Balls” — grenades that spray hard rubber pellets. The report also cites incidents in which tear gas canisters were fired at people.

Though the weapons are referred to as “less lethal,” Haar said, there should be a shift to language that acknowledges how dangerous they can be. “Weapons are just as lethal as somebody wants them to be,” she said.

A study published in 2017 in the medical journal BMJ Open, which Haar co-authored, found that 3% of people hit by projectiles worldwide died. Fifteen percent of the 1,984 people studied were permanently injured.

In a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of Austin doctors said 19 patients were treated for bean bag-related wounds at the downtown hospital closest to the protests over two days in late May.

For its analysis, Physicians for Human Rights searched social media, news accounts, lawsuits and other publicly available sources. They counted incidents on social media only if they were documented by photos or videos, and included news reports without visual evidence only from major newspapers or local affiliates of major outlets.

Physicians for Human Rights identified by name most of the people who were struck.

Among the group’s recommendations are banning weapons that release scattershot or multiple projectiles from a single canister because they can hit people indiscriminately, Haar said. Metal projectiles are particularly dangerous, she said.

She called for more training and adherence to departments’ rules on the use of such weapons.

“One of the findings of our study is police do not even appear to be following their own protocols for how to use these weapons or when,” Haar said.

There are no national standards for police use of less-lethal projectiles and no comprehensive data on their use, USA Today found.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Jose, Denver and Dallas told USA Today they were shot with less-lethal projectiles even though those departments don’t allow the weapons to be used against nonviolent people. Some witnesses said police aimed at faces or fired at close range.

Police have said they fired the weapons to protect themselves and property in chaotic, dangerous situations.

‘Protesters Feel Like They’re Being Attacked’

Haar, who has been studying these projectiles since 2014, said they have no place in crowd control. “Even before you get to the use of weapons, there needs to be a change in how we engage with protesters in terms of communication,” she said.

For example, police can get the phone number of a protest leader, opening the lines of communication. Police have other options besides firing projectiles, Haar said, such as “arresting the person that is actually violent, not just dispersing the entire crowd, or changing what you decide is an illegal assembly.”

Haar said the use of these projectiles tends to escalate tensions, “where the protesters feel like they’re being attacked.” Those who aren’t struck, she said, “are often incited. It’s not until that full crowd is dispersed that the anger goes away. The volatility has a cumulative impact that can last weeks or months.”

At least seven major U.S. cities and a few states have enacted or proposed limits on the use of less-lethal projectiles.

However, similar efforts have stalled in the face of opposition from police agencies or other critics. And as the summer stretched on, local and federal law enforcement agencies continued to use less-lethal weapons when confronting protesters.

Haar said city councils have reached out to her recently, showing they are “really trying to reckon with what they want in their communities.”

“I see more hope now than I have in all of my years of research,” she said. “I think the attention now is remarkable, and we actually have a really good chance of getting some actual, meaningful change.”

USA Today’s Kevin McCoy contributed to this report.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Francis Scott Key, an American Lawyer and amateur poet from Maryland, was being held aboard a British ship trying to work out a prisoner release when he observed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814. 
He was inspired upon seeing the American flag still flying over the fort at dawn and wrote the poem titled. "Defence of Fort M'Henry" it was published within a week with the suggested tune of the popular song "To Anacreon in Heaven" written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society a popular gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. It slowly gained in popularity as an unofficial anthem, finally achieving official status more than a century later under President Herbert Hoover as the national anthem. The national motto "In God We Trust" from a line in the Poem. Although the poem has four Stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song  "To Anacreon in Heaven written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreonic Society, a men's social club in London which with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. This setting, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", soon became a well-known U.S. patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very difficult to sing.

Francis Scott Key went on to become District Attorney for the District of Columbia  after being nominated by President Andrew Jackson. 
The photo of "The Star-Spangled Banner" handwritten manuscript by Francis Scott Key, 1814 is from the Special Collections Department/Maryland Historical Society.

"Most of the plastic we recycle will not be turned into new plastic things. It is buried..... And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite. Analysts now expect new plastic production to triple by 2050" Click to read the NPR article by Laura Sullivan