Episodes
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
The Dark Side of School Safety Funding
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
The marketing of school safety is making headlines. Bulletproof whiteboards and clipboards. Bulletproof wall panels. Bulletproof backpack inserts. Bullet "resistant" window film. Specialized locks. Training that turns the emergency lockdown, "shelter in place" response on its head. Money is again available for “school safety” grants and corporations see dollar signs. IN THIS EPISODE. Dr. Perrodin’s South Dakota Vacation | Drowning of Local Boy | David Interviewed About School Safety by New York Daily News | White House “Stop the Bleed” Campaign | and Prioritizing School Safety Initiatives.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS – SCHOOLS ARE INVESTING IN WAR-ZONE TRAUMA KITS IN CASE A SHOOTING HAPPENS. (The following article was written by Megan Cerullo on June 13, 2018). “School is a battlefield. Some schools are investing in war-zone trauma kits to stop gunshot victims from bleeding to death. The medical kits — which contain tourniquets, medicated gauze, coagulant to stop bleeding and other medical supplies, and generally cost between $40 and $100 — could help school staff and students treat the wounded before professional help arrives. The initiative has gained traction after a recent spate of school shootings, including a February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Smith High School in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people. Suffolk County school districts started stocking kits this year, accompanied by training in how to apply tourniquets and dress wounds. The Central Bucks, Chester County and Lower Merion school districts in Pennsylvania will also equip their schools with kits this fall, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. School safety experts say the medical kits — tested on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan — could be deployed for various uses, including sports injuries or science lab explosions, not just in the case of a school shooting. “Yes, tools like these might come into play in a school shooting, but they also may be relevant to a sports activity or other special event setting where someone is accidentally injured,” said Ken Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services. Dr. Matt Levy of Stop the Bleed, a movement dedicated to stopping preventable deaths, called the incidence of gun violence in schools an “unfortunate truth of modern society.” He said stocking the medical kits could play a part in keeping child gunshot victims alive, but that the kits alone are by no means a solution to preventing gun-related deaths in schools. “We have only minutes if someone is bleeding from an extremity to get them to a trauma center,” Levy told the Daily News. “If bystanders, who we call immediate responders, can render immediate aid before professional help arrives, that would help,” he said. “This doesn’t address the societal issues around shootings, we are just trying to get after the injuries we can do something about.” Levy added that kit sales have gone up since Stop the Bleed began selling them about a year ago. He said the organization’s site sees an uptick in traffic every time there is a high-profile shooting. Critics argue that efforts should instead be focused on finding ways to report threats in a timely manner. School safety expert David Perrodin said there was a push to bring supply kits into schools in 2007 after a gunman killed 32 people on Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg, Va. “It took a long time to clear the building for first responders to come inside,” he said. “So there was a long delay in bringing supplies into the building.” First responders often arrive before school shooting situations end and are equipped with materials designed to stop victims from bleeding to death, he said. He claims marketers are behind the move to introduce the kits into schools as they compete for grant money dedicated to improving school safety nationwide. “I have never learned of a situation where this has been applied by anyone working in a school,” he said. “I don’t think this is realistic at all.” “EMS and fire have modified their response, and they get tactical gear and units into schools quicker than in the past. So this is just clever marketing,” he said. Instead, he thinks schools should invest resources in “severely underfunded” reporting systems. “We know in recent events that shooters had posted to social media and people were well aware of their intentions, but we didn’t have a reporting system that encouraged students to break their code of silence.”
WHITE HOUSE LAUNCHES “STOP THE BLEED” CAMPAIGN. In October, 2015, the White House launched its “Stop the Bleed” campaign – a special national initiative designed to provide bystanders with the tools and knowledge to stop life-threatening bleeding. It is intended to cultivate grassroots efforts that encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. DR. PERRODIN’S REASONS FOR CHALLENGING PLACING ADVANCED TRAUMA KITS IN SCHOOLS. David explains five reasons why he is not an advocate of schools spending dollars on medical trauma kits. His primary reason is that staff and students should remain in secured areas until the building is “cleared” by law enforcement. Having staff rush into hallways to treat victims could place them in the direct path of an intruder. He also argues that threat detection research is underfunded and little is known on how to break the youth "code of silence" which prevents youth from bringing forward information that would prevent an attack. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com David will respond to comments & emails. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests and do not reflect positions of The 405 Media or supporters of “The Safety Doc Podcast”. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. Email David: thesafetydoc@gmail.com LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. Article discussed in this episode: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny-news-schools-war-zone-trauma-kits-20180612-story.html
Sunday Jun 10, 2018
What Does 'Pareidolia' Mean & Why is it Dangerous?
Sunday Jun 10, 2018
Sunday Jun 10, 2018
Pareidolia can be dangerous when it gets religious or political: Jesus on toast may be one thing, but what if a rusty sacred water stain dripped down the front facade of your public county courthouse and believers came flocking? IN THIS EPISODE: What Does ‘Pareidolia’ Mean & Why is it Dangerous? | Celebrity Suicides | David’s Book Deal is Back On | Fixing Garage Floor Divots | David Learns Prison Martial Arts. WHAT IS PAREIDOLIA? [Wiktionary] Pareidolia is the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals, seeing shapes in clouds, or hearing hidden messages in reversed music. This behavior exists because humans seek to create meaning when meaning is absent, I suppose. And perhaps it’s no danger to see a teddy bear in the clouds or a man in the moon. Those are functional. Whimsical. Harmless. In fact, some scientists opine that pareidolia is an indicator of an efficient brain attempting to identify patterns in the environment. This is good. This is survival – it’s situational awareness, to a limit… DANGERS OF PAREIDOLIA. Pareidolia isn’t just about seeing faces, though. It’s about interpreting any vague stimulus as meaningful. If you have a headache and feel tired, it wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes on the Internet to match your symptoms to an exhaustive list of mild to terminal medical conditions. In this instance, a type of pre-suasion exists in which the person is already primed to seek bad news. A simple television commercial can convince people that they are afflicted with a condition. Context and situation influence pareidolia. What do you expect when you gingerly tour a haunted house? That creaky door might be a sign from a spirit – or a just a hinge in need of oil. WHAT IS APOPHENIA? Apophenia can be considered as a blessing as well as curse. It is because of this tendency that we can explore new things, but sometimes it may mislead us. It stems from the fact that we humans are always looking for meaning in our life. We often believe that everything happens for a reason. Well, most times, it could be that things are totally unrelated, and yet we won't let go of our relentless pursuit to find a connection. That is apophenia. It is well documented as a rationalization for gambling. Gamblers may imagine that they see patterns in the numbers that appear in lotteries, card games, or roulette wheels. One variation of this is known as the "gambler's fallacy". The Mayan Calendar also contributed to “End-of-Times” apophenia for some people that perceived clear connections between the calendar end date, stock market crash, increase in hurricanes, and any myriad of other events that were destructive, but not necessarily connected incidents. Dr. Perrodin advises asking "Does this makes sense?" and using member checks as strategies to avoid rampant pareidolia or apophenia. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com David will respond to comments & emails. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests and do not reflect positions of The 405 Media or supporters of “The Safety Doc Podcast”. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. Email David: thesafetydoc@gmail.com LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com.
Sunday Jun 03, 2018
What is the Rubric for Good?
Sunday Jun 03, 2018
Sunday Jun 03, 2018
Good exists independent of being filtered and shaped by humans. It endures context and situation and has superb inter-rater reliability. Yet, “good” is overwhelmingly subjected to external positionality - or to exist per the characteristics and conditions of what others deem must be present for something to be considered good. GOOD, POSITIONALITY & PAREIDOLIA. Positionality is completely different from pareidolia, which is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists. A popular example of pareidolia is seeing familiar images in clouds. We can also be primed for pareidolia. Persons on a ghost tour are expecting to have some unusual encounter. Hence, a creaking door becomes a message from the spirits - and not a reminder to visit the hardware store for a can of WD-40. Pareidolia is internal and while it is proximal to the process of identifying good that Dr. Perrodin talks about, it still involves the steps of attempting to conform what is perceived to be dependent upon some previous experience or observation. WHY KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE GIVES YOU AN ADVANTAGE. Understanding positionality and pareidolia empower you with keen awareness of what is authentic in your environment versus responses that are unintentionally manipulated by your brain or overtly manipulated by other people. The latter can shift you toward external validation (imagine becoming addicted to “Likes” for your social media posts) and undermine the solid footing of sense of self and ability to use face validity to craft your own rubric for identifying “What is Good”. DAVID SHARES 3 STORIES. Dr. Perrodin shares three personal anecdotal stories to parse out how he believes that “good” can be universally recognized. He begins with recalling a tandem bike ride with Robert, a high school student who is blind and has autism. After sharing that story, he tells of the trip he made with his daughter in order for her to purchase potted daisies for Mother’s Day. David concludes by re-visiting his time as a volunteer tour guide at historic Fort Winnebago which included working with his Dad to refurbish a 100-foot split rail fence and water well in a manner that infringed only slightly on authenticity. THE REAL MEANING OF GOOD AND EVIL (Psychology Today, 2013). Dr. Perrodin dissects this article to point out the specific terminology and strategies deployed to persuade people into believing what is good and what is evil. For example, the article states: “‘Good’ means a lack of self-centredness. It means the ability to empathise with other people, to feel compassion for them, and to put their needs before your own. It means, if necessary, sacrificing your own well-being for the sake of others’. It means benevolence, altruism and selflessness, and self-sacrifice towards a greater cause - all qualities which stem from a sense of empathy.” David argues that empathy, altruism, etc., are all human constructs and have nothing to do with whether something or some activity has “face-validity” goodness. While David certainly doesn’t argue against empathy and compassion, he notes that they are not coupled to something that would have face-validity goodness - such as a scenic vista. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com David will respond to comments & emails. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests and do not reflect positions of The 405 Media or supporters of “The Safety Doc Podcast”. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. Email David: thesafetydoc@gmail.com LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com.