A famous sand story of WWII when a young women is waiting for her man–a Soldier–a story of our tragic and heroic past which must be never forgotten.

This performance was presented on “Ukraine’s got talent” show by Kseniya Simonova and brought her a win.

Kseniya Simonova is a sand artist from Ukraine. She lives in Crimea (South of Ukraine). Her great-grandfather was an officer in the USSR army and defended his Motherland from a horrible Nazi invasion. He was killed in 1943 and Kseniya decided to devote her semi-final performance on UGT to his heroism.

In the end of the story Kseniya writes in Russian a phrase which means “You are always nearby.”

Living near highly-populated and traffic-congested roads heighten women’s risk of suffering a sudden cardiac death, according to a study led by Harvard Medical School.

by Stephen Adkins

“It’s important for healthcare providers to recognize that environmental exposures may be under-appreciated risk factors for diseases such as sudden cardiac death and fatal coronary heart disease,” said Jaime E. Hart, study lead author and an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “On a population level, living near a major roadway was as important a risk factor as smoking, diet or obesity.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 35 million Americans lived within 300 meters (984 feet) of a major road in 2009.

For the study, the researchers examined data from 107,130 women (predominately white, average age of 60) who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study from 1986-2012.

The researchers found that among 523 cases of sudden cardiac death, living within 50 meters (164 feet) of a major road increased the risk of sudden cardiac death by 38 percent as compared to those living at least 500 meters (.3 miles) away.

Each 100 meters (328 feet) closer to roadways increased the risk of sudden cardiac death by 6 percent. Among 1,159 cases of fatal coronary heart disease, risk increased 24 percent.

“Regardless of where you live, adopting heart-healthy habits, such as maintaining a healthy weight, being physically active, eating nutritious foods, quitting smoking, and managing stress, can help decrease your risk of heart and blood vessel disease,” said Hart, who is also an instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Our next step is to try to determine what specific exposures, such as air pollution, are driving the association between heart disease and major roadway proximity.”

The finding is published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

(NOTE: Be advised–Eric has been afforded ample opportunity here, in the ‘reply’ exchanges, unlike most blogs, for rebuttal, but has, unsurprisingly,  primarily used it for blanket denials and gaslighting.  UPDATED @ article’s end)

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus

Great trombone player and respects music…but the law? Nor so much.

Shelton, WA — This reporter was present when a bench warrant was issued for Eric Valley, a local attorney, for failure to appear (as noted below) in Mason County District Court as required. Today (8-12-2018) Mr. Valley is one of the surviving two candidates (Valley and Steele) for Mason County District Court judge…there being only one such position for this important county office.

Eric Stephen Valley, defendant – Mason District Court – case #: 4Z0704742 – filed 7-7-14

Click>HERE<to view NY State Bar Disciplinary action against Eric S. Valley, et ux. (1988)

Click>HERE<for list of disciplinary actions & critical client reviews of Eric S. Valley, esq on AVVO.

Mr. Valley, who has a checkered past and long acted as a local attorney, both on the criminal docket as well as the civil. Unfortunately, due to his respected family’s long residence in Mason county, Valley undeservedly garners the benefit of strong name recognition from local voters…a local boy familiarity he expertly exploited in his primary campaign. Yet he not only has been embroiled in some serious litigation as either a defendant or a plaintiff (including an action seeking a protection order against Mr. Valley in the abstract below), but now has been sanctioned by the Washington State Bar (and previously the New York State bar) for professional misconduct. In 1988, Mr. Eric Valley resigned from the NY State bar for misconduct…conduct Mr. Valley attempts to trivialize, but was punished (in both NY & WA) by a public reprimand (or worse) from the respective State bars.

What doesn’t appear in these records is Mr. Valley’s history of substance/alcohol abuse and using his familiarity with local law enforcement to successfully urge at least one Mason county sheriff’s detective (Dean Byrd, now retired since 2013) to harass, bully, threaten, and intimidate this reporter (circa 2005) for having the temerity to serve Mr. Valley with a notice of default at his office on behalf of Marylou Bishop, the note holder for his deed of trust from the sale of her home to Eric Valley, an instrument whose terms he soon breached, putting Mary’s (a retired nurse) collateral and retirement at risk. Mason county was scheduled to foreclose on said home for want of property taxes Valley owed and hadn’t paid. Mary had to pay them out of her own pocket to avoid losing her most valuable asset.

Mr. Valley promptly filed for bankruptcy relief singling out Mary Lou Bishop as his creditor although the IRS also had an interest in Valley’s financial affairs for unpaid taxes. Singling out a creditor is considered abuse/misuse of the bankruptcy code. In his sworn declarations submitted to the bankruptcy court, Eric claimed his monthly gross income was ~$2,500.  He failed to declare his business or office expenses, an office he maintains on Railroad Ave. in Shelton to this day and appears to never have missed a payment on the lease (to Transamerica Title), unlike his obligation to Marylou Bishop, who could not find an area attorney to sue Eric for breach of contract BECAUSE (they indicated) HE WAS A LAWYER!

The most damning part of this incident arises from the fact Eric Valley attempted to suborn perjury from Marylou Bishop. She was desperate to have Eric resume payments to her for the house he was purchasing from her (and continues to live in to this day). He suggested to her that if she would write a letter attesting to the false assertion that he had never been late on a payment to her, he would use it to refinance the loan (which Mary was personally carrying) with a bank and pay her off for the remaining principle.  Had she done so, Eric would have succeeded in making Mary a co-conspirator to bank fraud! Mary was counseled to do NO such thing, and Eric’s bankruptcy petition followed shortly thereafter. Eric had also let the casualty and fire insurance for the home lapse, leaving Mary utterly exposed and unable to secure insurance to protect her interests. According to the owner, at the time, of Angle Insurance Agency, the industry considered Mary’s predicament a “moral hazard”.  A corrupt attorney’s moral failure had left Mary virtually without an effective remedy.

While on the phone with the Angle Insurance Agency’s owner (a woman who was very familiar with Eric’s parents) attempting to find an insurance policy to protect Mary, who should call but the devil himself. In accepting the call, Eric was patched into a 3-way call, but the insurance agency owner chose to remain silent. Eric sounded heavily inebriated and aggressively became belligerent and verbally abusive before the call was terminated. Rather than being sympathetic to the recipient of the abuse, she accused him of ‘planning’ it! How she squared this with serendipity wasn’t immediately apparent.

Soon thereafter (perhaps a week) Detective Dean Byrd (Eric’s drinking buddy at the time) called and proceeded to announce he was an inspector with the Mason County Sheriff (true) but initially refused to identify himself when asked to repeat who he was. He attempted to threaten and intimidate on Eric’s behalf, repeatedly asking just who had prepared the document (notice of default) Eric had been served with. (“Mr. Byrd, you know what?–I don’t have to answer that question…and I’m not going to!” was the response Byrd got before bidding him goodbye. Subsequent research revealed that no sheriff’s official or prosecuting attorney had authorized Byrd’s actions. It was entirely a ‘favor’ of intimidation for Eric, Byrd’s drinking buddy–a shakedown.

The obvious QUESTION arises:

IS THIS CORRUPT ATTORNEY, ERIC VALLEY, THE KIND OF JUDGE MASON COUNTY RESIDENTS WANT SITTING ON THE BENCH?

George Steele may not be adequately competent, but at least he hasn’t been sanctioned by the bar multiple times, had a petition for a protection order filed against him, subjected himself to the disabilities of drug and alcohol abuse, had a bench warrant issued against him for failure to appear, suborned perjury, and conspired with county law enforcement to abuse their authority in order to harass, bully, threaten, and intimidate. Neither has George Steele submitted suspicious bankruptcy declarations in an effort to vex and delay his lawful debt to a retired nurse dependent on the income from the sale of her home.

TORT for Vehicle Collision Damage & Eric’s Response:

17-2-00456-23

17-2-00456-23 17-2-00456-23 (1)

Court: Mason Co Superior Ct
Case Number: 13-2-00255-1 (Unlawful Harassment)
[Please read the court record documents below the index, added due to Eric’s repeated denial he was a defendant in this action, NOT merely appointed/hired counsel!]

Sub	Docket Date	Docket Code	Docket Description	Misc Info
–	04-24-2013	FILING FEE RECEIVED	Filing Fee Received
–	04-24-2013	CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION FORM	Confidential Information Form
1	04-24-2013	PET FOR OR OF PROTECTION-HARASSMENT	Pet For Or Of Protection-harassment
2	04-24-2013	TEMP ANTIHAR PROT ORD RESP UNDER 18 ACTION	Temp Antihar Prot Ord Resp Under 18 Protection Order Anti-harassment	05-08-2013MC
–	04-24-2013	EX-PARTE ACTION WITH ORDER COM0004	Ex-parte Action With Order Comm. Stephen T. Whitehouse
3	04-25-2013	RETURN OF SERVICE	Return Of Service
4	04-25-2013	RETURN OF SERVICE	Return Of Service
5	05-07-2013	RECUSAL OF JUDGE JDG0001	Recusal Of Judge Amber Finlay Judge Amber L. Finlay
6	05-07-2013	DECLARATION	Declaration Response By Eric Valley
6.1	05-07-2013	RESPONSE	Response To Show Cause
6.2	05-07-2013	RECUSAL OF JUDGE COM0005	Recusal Of Judge Comm. Robert D. Sauerlender
7	05-08-2013	ORDER OF DISMISSAL	Order Of Dismissal
8	05-08-2013	MOTION HEARING	Motion Hearing
9	05-09-2013	RECUSAL OF JUDGE COM0001	Recusal Of Comm Adamson Commissioner Richard Adamson

Eric Stephen Valley, esq, (360)426-4959 evalley@hctc.com
209 W. Railroad Ave.
Shelton, WA 98584

Scammers play sophisticated psychological tricks to fool their marks, says Colin Barras, and that means anyone can be vulnerable unless they know what to look for.

by Colin Barras

None of us likes being scammed, and David Modic is no different. But it’s not the fact that scammers try to trick us into handing over our money that bothers him – it’s the way they can rob people of something far more important: their hope.

Take the abuse of dating websites. “People go on dating sites in the hope of fulfilment, and they sometimes get scammed,” says Modic, who researches the psychology of internet fraud at the University of Cambridge. “And that makes me angry.”

It’s this personal passion that’s convinced Modic to study the psychology of scamming. He’s not alone: the field is thriving, and the information that researchers are uncovering is valuable to us all – from vulnerable singletons in search of love to the technology wizards in charge of the world’s online security.

Modic is particularly interested in what makes people vulnerable to scams. It’s tempting to imagine that only the foolish or poorly educated might fall victim – but even anecdotal evidence suggests this is not the case. Take Paul Frampton, an Oxbridge educated academic who was, until earlier this year, a professor of physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2012 Frampton was given almost 5 years in prison for drug smuggling in Argentina, after falling victim to an online dating scam. And then there’s John Worley. As a psychotherapist, Worley arguably knows more than most of us about controlling life’s trajectory. But in 2005 he was put on trial for bank fraud and money laundering after becoming a victim of the notorious Nigerian email scam. This scam sees people contacted by someone claiming to be a Nigerian government official appealing for help moving large sums of money out of the country – who just requires a little money upfront to release the fortune. Worley was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.

Intelligence and experience offers no protection against scammers, says Modic. “If it did, then better educated people and older people would be less likely to fall for scams. And that is not supported by my research.”

So what does make someone vulnerable? To look for answers to that question, Modic and his colleagues have quizzed thousands of people, asking them first whether they think various scams are plausible – and whether they have fallen victim to them – before asking them to perform a personality test. The research has identified a number of characteristics that people who are victims of scams seem to share in common. Some of these traits – like a lack of self-control – we would probably recognise as dangerous. But others – a trust in authority, a desire to act in the same way as our friends, or a tendency to act in a consistent way – we might think of as good characteristics.

These may be new findings to psychologists, but they are not new to scammers. Modic points out, for instance, that some scammers gain a victim’s trust by pretending to share a mutual friend. In other situations the scammer might contact the victim under the guise of a figure of authority – a doctor or a lawyer – to appear more persuasive. There are also scams that initially involve no loss of money and which are designed to encourage a victim to behave in a certain way, so that later they are more likely to behave in the same way when their money is at stake.Some card game swindles use this strategy.

“I am surprised at the ingenuity of scammers who, perhaps subconsciously, have discovered such principles themselves without scientific studies,” says Frank Stajano, a security and privacy researcher at the University of Cambridge. “I can’t imagine individual scammers working it all out by themselves, so I wonder what kind of word-of-mouth network they use to learn the tricks of their trade?”

Hidden knowledge

The very fact that scammers clearly are aware of our psychological vulnerabilities – no matter how they gained that knowledge – suggests they can potentially teach us as much as their victims about confidence tricks. This is something Stajano has taken to heart in his research. He has worked with Paul Wilson, a close-up magician and security consultant to casinos, to explore exactly how scammers persuade their victims to hand over their personal belongings. Wilson is one of the writers and stars of BBC television show The Real Hustle, in which he and his team “scam” members of the public by recreating notorious confidence tricks (any money or valuables are later returned).

Wilson’s team has recreated hundreds of scams for the cameras, but Stajano – who quickly became a fan of the show – realised that the scammers repeatedly used one or more of the same seven persuasion principles. Three of these principles are similar to those Modic identified by talking to potential or actual scam victims. Scammers use the “time principle” to persuade us we need to act quickly before we can think rationally and exercise self-control. They also make use of the “deference to authority principle” and the “herd principle” – our tendency to act like our friends or those around us – to convince people that the scam is legitimate.

But scammers have at least four other tricks up their sleeves, says Stajano. They might distract us so we don’t recognise a scam – making use of physically attractive accomplices, for instance. They can use our deepest desires to blind our reasoning – which is why online dating scams are so common. They can hook some victims by manipulating our innate dishonesty and making us act criminally ourselves – knowingly attempting to launder money as part of the Nigerian email scam, for instance. Finally, they can use the kindness of some well-meaning victims against them – scam emails begging for help and money are often sent out in the wake of a natural disaster.

Old tricks

What’s really fascinating, says Stajano, is that scammers have used these principles for centuries. For instance, the Nigerian email scam might seem the product of the digital age, but a version of it existed in 16th Century Europe.

There’s a good reason for that, he says: many of the vulnerabilities that scammers exploit are actually human strengths rather than weaknesses. He points to the work of psychologist Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University, who is famous for his work on the psychology of persuasion. “He’s explained that the authority principle, for example, is actually very helpful for surviving peacefully in human society,” says Stajano. “We shouldn’t see scam victims as stupid – they’re acting in a way that’s beneficial for our survival most of the time.”

The techniques used by card trick conmen are similar to scammers online

The seven persuasion principles might be as old as the hills, but Stajano says they are often ignored by security experts, who are as likely to blame security breaches on the people using their systems as they are to blame the scammers. “Too many security professionals think: users are such a pain – my system would be super-secure if only users behaved in the proper way,” he says. He is trying to persuade experts that they need to make security systems that work in harmony with – not despite – the way we behave.

Making those new systems won’t be easy, and Stajano believes the only solution is to encourage people to empathetically understand and anticipate human behaviour.

As an example of the problems security experts face, imagine you’re about to win an online auction for a mobile phone. You might reasonably expect to trust the seller, whose profile is brimming with positive feedback from other users. But Stajano points out that your trust in this case is really based on the herd principle: you can’t be sure that the seller is not in fact a scammer who has built up a positive reputation by trading with a handful of accomplices. Any of us might fall victim to this scam. In fact, even Modic has been tricked. “I bought a mobile phone from China that was not as it appeared online,” he says.

We may never be truly immune to confidence tricks. But perhaps ordinary users and system designers alike can protect ourselves to some degree by learning to think like a scammer.