Yoga Korunta

The Paradoxical Commandments

2009-12-13T11:38:00.005-05:00

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

The Paradoxical Commandments were written by Kent Keith in 1968, when he was 19, a sophomore at Harvard College. They were part of The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council, his first booklet for high school student leaders.

No excuse for tainted meat

2009-12-02T12:43:00.007-05:00

Clark Behind The Headlines
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

Have you heard about this E.coli outbreak that killed two people and made hundreds more sick? It’s because of a food processor in New York that had to issue a recall on a huge amount of ground beef. They weren’t testing for a strain of E.coli that was banned 15 years ago.

If you remember, in 1993 there was a deadly E.coli outbreak involving the fast food chain Jack in the Box. And as a result of that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned this strain of E.coli from meat and introduced new rules for companies to test their products. But they made it voluntary. Well, a lot of meat companies, including this big one in New York State, came under pressure from the slaughterhouses and suppliers and decided, “Yeah, well, we're just not going to test for that.” And as a result, you have people dead who wouldn't be, and people hurting who wouldn't have been. Inexcusable.

It is so third world that we have the ability to prevent these illnesses and deaths, and just because of financial interests of meat packers, we don't do it. But a few retailers are making an effort. Costco Wholesale processes its own meat, and it fully meets the advisory guidelines and tests everything they put on the shelves. It’s just something where you think, why would a business cut corners like that and why would the meat industry have people lose faith in the safety of the food supply just to shave a penny here or there?

You know, in capitalism, businesses that mess up get punished by the marketplace. And often they get destroyed like the people who sold tainted peanut products. But the fact is, the people that get sick or die are still sick or dead.

The answer is very, very simple. The Department of Agriculture needs to make mandatory the inspections for the E.coli strains that they know are deadly. Think about if it was your kid who died because some meat processor decided to cut a corner and not test its product to make sure it's safe. I find that very upsetting.

A Cat in Heaven

2009-11-16T08:26:00.001-05:00

A cat dies and goes to Heaven. God meets Kitty at the pearly gate and says, "You have been a good cat all these years. You can have anything you desire. All you have to do is ask."

"Well," said Kitty, "I've lived all my life in a New York office and all I had to sleep on were marble floors."

"Say no more," says God, and instantly a fluffy pillow appears.

A few days later, six mice are killed in a tragic accident, and they go to Heaven. God meets them at the gate with the same offer he made to the cat.

"All our lives," the mice say, "we've had to run. Cats, dogs, women with brooms have chased us. If we had roller skates, we wouldn't have to run anymore." God says he can take care of it and, instantly, each mouse is fitted with a beautiful pair of roller skates.

A week later God checks on Kitty, who is asleep on his pillow. God gently nudges him awake and asks, "How are you doing? Are you happy here?"

"Never been happier," says Kitty, stretching and yawning. "And those meals on wheels are great, too!"

Death And Dying: Nature Is Selfish, Get Over It

2009-11-12T20:11:00.007-05:00

Deborah Calla, www.theloveprojectinc.com, creator, writer/producer of feature films and TV programming
Posted: November 12, 2009 01:33 PM

I have always thought when people passed away that the ones left behind cried for the fact they would not have the person they loved in their lives any longer. The truth is we cry for not having that person but we also cry for all they will never get to do and to experience; new presidents, newborns, love, restaurants, films, political and social changes etc.

I once read that nature is selfish -- a powerful but truthful statement. Nature doesn’t stop for anyone or anything. No matter what is happening in our lives people still rush to work, fight wars, make love, waste time and the world goes through tsunamis, global warming, sunsets and sunrises.

It is so brutally shocking when our lives are falling apart and the rest of the world does not seem to notice. The first time I really experienced this was when my husband was lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life and I went for a walk around the hospital. I needed air and sunlight after spending three days locked up in his room without leaving.

As my body walked my mind was still tied back to what was happening in that hospital room, but all the people walking by me didn’t seem to notice or care. They laughed and carried on like nothing was happening. I wanted to stop and tell them “Don’t you know what’s happening? My husband is fighting for his life. How can you just carry on? ” But of course I couldn’t do that. The truth is that everyone has their drama, small and big, at different times in their lives and nature doesn’t care and it doesn’t stop. But that is how life is; it has its own force.

It is so important to live life for what we think is important and brings us the greatest amount of happiness and satisfaction and not fall victim of any type of fictional or social interpretation of what life should be or look like.

Life is what it is and it’s to be lived to the fullest at every moment because things can change on a dime. This is by no means a gloom and doom statement. It is actually beautiful and powerful and it can be simple to live by making every day count and being in the moment. If the moment is talking to a friend, then let’s dedicate the time to the friend. Let’s not think about what we need to do after we leave our friend. Let’s be in the moment. If the moment is making love, let’s not think about what happened before and what will happen after. Let’s be in the moment and try to let our body and mind experience every feeling and sensation.

We are so often in a hurry that we miss out on fully experiencing what happens to us until something tragic happens and we realize that we have rushed through too much and now have much to regret.

So while nature is selfish and life will continue on no matter what happens to each one of us, we can make our own lives count by dedicating our journey to ourselves. Our best friend lives within us, and it is actually ourselves. We are the only ones who will never leave and will always hear our thoughts and feelings and know everything that there is to know about US. So why not give our best friend the best life possible by letting ourselves truly experience life by being in the moment? Think about it.

Follow Deborah Calla on Twitter: www.twitter.com/debcalla

Tuesday is Fryday!

2009-11-10T23:17:00.011-05:00

Sniper John Allen Muhammad executed

By Jeanne Meserve and Mike M. Ahlers, CNN
November 10, 2009 10:39 p.m. EST

John Allen Muhammad, 48, was executed for the D.C. sniper attacks in 2002 that left the Washington area gripped in fear.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Officials say John Allen Muhammad had no final words before his execution. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said he found "no compelling reason" for clemency. Muhammad, 48, said he was innocent before execution; he's declared dead at 9:11 pm ET. Supreme Court refused to hear Muhammad's appeal on Monday.

Jarratt, Virginia (CNN) -- Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad was executed Tuesday by lethal injection, a Virginia prisons spokesman said.

He was declared dead at 9:11 p.m., said Larry Traylor, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

"There were no complications; Mr. Mohammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement," he told reporters. "He did not acknowledge this or make a last statement whatsoever."

Mohammad, 48, said nothing from the time he entered the death chamber accompanied by guards, Traylor said.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine denied a last-minute clemency request Tuesday for Muhammad, the mastermind behind the Washington-area sniper attacks of 2002 that terrorized the nation's capital.

During three weeks in October 2002, Muhammad and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, killed 10 people and wounded three, while taunting police with written messages and phoned-in threats and demands.

"Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts," Kaine said in a written statement.

"Accordingly, I decline to intervene."

Kaine's announcement came a day after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.

During two trials -- including one featuring testimony from Malvo, whose youth meant he was not eligible for the death penalty -- and in years of appeals, Muhammad professed his innocence.

Muhammad's attorney had argued his client was not given sufficient time to file his final appeal, but said Tuesday -- after the high court and the governor declined his request for a stay -- that he would make no further efforts to delay the matter.

"We respect their decisions and will make no more legal efforts to stop this process from going forward," said lawyer Jon Sheldon in a written statement. "In its effort to race John Allen Muhammad to his death before his appeals could be pursued, the state of Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans Day."

Muhammad met Tuesday with J. Wyndal Gordon, who was his former stand-by attorney in his Maryland trial, in which he represented himself.

"His attitude was strong, it was sturdy," Gordon told reporters. "Mr. Mohammad maintains his innocence in this case, and he always has. He is not remorseful, although he does extend his condolences to the families. What these families went through is tragic in every level. Given the injustices in this case, what Mr. Mohammad went through is equally as tragic."

Gordon said he does not consider Mohammad to be insane. "However," he added, "I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist."

The lawyer said Muhammad's last meal was "chicken and red sauce, and he had some cakes."

Gordon predicted earlier Tuesday that Muhammad's strength would continue until his final moments.

"I expect that he will come into his death bed with this head held up high," he said. "He is not a broken man and even on his death bed, he will express his righteous indignation for his own execution."

Muhammad, who opted not to select a spiritual adviser, met during the afternoon with his immediate family. He was to meet with his attorneys later in the afternoon, said Traylor.

Muhammad's first wife, Carol Williams, showed a letter in which he asked her to visit him on his execution day. "Carol, I miss my family for the past eight years," he wrote, referring to the time he has been incarcerated. "I don't want to be missed the day that these devils murder my innocent black ass."

Williams said Tuesday's reunion was to be their first in years, though they had communicated by letter and spoken by phone.

"Basically he wanted me to just let his kids know that he loved them very much and to just tell me some different things, that he was sorry that he never gave our marriage a chance to work, because he was having an affair," she said. "So basically he was just apologizing."

Asked about his father, Lindbergh Williams said his feelings about the death penalty had not softened with the approach of the execution. "If you commit a crime, you can pay the time," he said.

Asked whether he believes his father regretted what he did, the younger Williams said, "Yes, I really do."

Mildred Muhammad, the sniper's second ex-wife and the mother of three of his children, told CNN on Monday that she last saw him in 2001 at a custody hearing and had not sought to visit him in prison.

"I had emotionally detached from John when I asked him for a divorce," she told CNN. "And my emotions were severed when he said that you have become my enemy and as my enemy, I will kill you."

She has asserted that she was her ex-husband's target, and she blamed the first Gulf War for changing his personality.

"He went from someone who was always happy, that knew what direction he was going in, and was focused, to a person that was totally confused, depressed all the time, and didn't know how to do or get to where he wanted to be."

She said he never received counseling after his return to the United States.

But lawyer Gordon disputed her account, saying that Muhammad "was absolutely not affected by his time in the Gulf War. We did discuss that."

CNN Supreme Court producer Bill Mears contributed to this report.

Burn, baby, burn.

Yes, it's racist

2009-10-02T17:31:00.010-04:00

Bloggers, this article was written by one of my favored bloggers, Deborah Newell Tornello, aka LITBRIT.

Somalia and Piracy

2009-04-13T20:08:00.002-04:00

February 4, 2009

You are being lied to about pirates
by Johann Hari

Somali pirate “ships” are small, but the ships they seize are huge. They held one gigantic tanker for months until ransom was paid.Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.

But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?

In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”

One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”

Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/ Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the U.S., and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. To contact him, email johann@johannhari.com or visit his website at JohannHari.com. This column previously appeared in the Independent and Huffington Post, where the following postscript was added:

Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn’t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There’s no contradiction.

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He dodged those things like they were Vietnam!

2009-01-29T23:13:00.010-05:00

Monument to Bush shoe-throwing shines at Iraqi orphanage

Fiberglass, copper sculpture of shoe thrown at former President Bush unveiled
Orphans help artist build the $5,000 sculpture displayed at the orphanage
Director: Monument is a gift to next generation to remember heroic action
Orphans who helped build shoe "were the victims of Bush's war," director says

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- For the war-beaten orphans of the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, this big old shoe fits.

A monument to a shoe thrown at former President Bush is unveiled at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush in December during a trip to Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in Baghdad.

Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators in December took to the streets in the Arab world and called for his release.

The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide.

The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure -- unveiled Tuesday -- in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director.

"Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush's war," al-Naseri said. "The shoe monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist."

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"When the next generation sees the shoe monument, they will ask their parents about it," al-Naseri said.

"Then their parents will start talking about the hero Muntadhir al-Zaidi, who threw his shoe at George W. Bush during his unannounced farewell visit."

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader toppled by the United States in 2003, was from the Tikrit region.

Al-Zaidi marked his 30th birthday in jail earlier this month. One of his brothers said he is "in good health and is being treated well."

Al-Zaidi's employer, TV network al-Baghdadia, keeps a picture of him at the top left side of the screen with a calendar showing the number of days he has spent in detention. The network has been calling for his release.

By tradition, throwing a shoe is the most insulting act in the Arab world.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

2009-01-19T10:39:00.004-05:00

Yes, the change is going to come!

This is National Service Day, Bloggers!

Best Individual Blogger: Driftglass!

2009-01-10T15:43:00.004-05:00

Blogger friends, please help our comrade, Driftglass, in the Best Individual Blogger category: vote here.

2009-01-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Mayfly Project 2008

2008-12-30T08:50:00.007-05:00

A Year in 24 Words

Barrack Hussein Obama is President!

Prison time for O.J.!

I love Cap'n!

Blue Gal reigns!

Cowardly George W. Bush dodged those shoes like Vietnam.

See http://meish.org/mayfly/

Shoe Throwing

2008-12-27T22:50:00.005-05:00

Yes, Attaturk Said It Best!
"He dodged those things like they were 'Vietnam'"

Perfection.

This was ruthlessly stolen from superior blogger, Alicia Morgan.
Thanks, Alicia!

Onward, Christmas Soldiers!

2008-12-25T04:58:00.006-05:00

Bloggers, this card was used with the permission of Jess Wundrun. Thanks, Jess!

TIME's Person of the Year

2008-12-17T09:27:00.010-05:00

Bloggers, TIME has announced its selection for Person of the Year:

Barrack Hussein Obama!

Hell, yes! They got the annual proclamation right. This blogger is proud!

A Day Without Gays

2008-12-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

Bloggers, the following was ruthlessly stolen from CNN. It is being published here in honor of my blog love Cap'n Dyke. Love on ya, me Pirate Queen!

By David CraigSpecial to CNN

Editor's note: David Craig is a film, television and Web producer, an adjunct professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, and a gay rights activist.

David Craig says there's growing support for recognition of gay unions and gay marriage.

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- My battle for marriage equality began in 1990, after my partner, Brian Binder, and I had a commitment ceremony. The ceremony was held at the end of a conference for Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays and was attended by more than 300 friends and members of both our families.

We were featured in a couple of books on gay marriage because the concept was so new at the time. We also registered as domestic partners and entered into every possible form of legal recognition available at the time.

A few years later, Brian was visiting his parents in Nevada to inform them that he was giving up his battle with AIDS. Something went horribly wrong, and he was rushed to the hospital. I flew there immediately.

As his caretaker, I knew his medical condition and had been involved in every medical decision. We had shared the joy of making a commitment to one another and the pain and suffering of a horrible disease.

But when I arrived, I was told I could not see him because I was not "family" and because my legal documents were valid only in California. Even as I heard him calling out my name, they refused to let me see him because we were not married. Brian died in 1992.

In 1995, I helped organize the first Freedom to Marry March in Los Angeles. Ten years later, the idea for A Day Without Gays was conceived.

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I was discussing same-sex marriage with Delia Fine, my colleague at the A&E Network. I proposed a gay version of Lysistrata, an ancient Greek satire about Athenian women who withheld sex from their husbands until they agreed to stop going to war.

She replied, "what if gays went on strike instead?" and the idea was born.

We convinced A&E to produce a movie based on the idea, which became a romantic comedy called "Wedding Wars" that aired on the network in 2006. Critics compared the film to "A Day Without a Mexican," which led to the one-day protest by the Latino community called A Day Without Immigrants.

In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which banned same-sex marriage, I posted the event on Facebook. My fellow organizer, Steve Holzer, inspired by the Latino protests, suggested we call it A Day Without Gays.

We soon discovered that other organizers had conceived of the same idea simultaneously, and we all agreed to schedule the protest for December 10, which is International Human Rights Day. A week later, Join The Impact, the group that organized City Hall rallies nationwide November 14, joined forces with us.

Our goal is to raise awareness that marriage is a "basic human right" as declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, the case that ended race-based restrictions on marriage.
We believe that to deny gays and lesbians that right, and the 1,400 state and federal legal and economic benefits of marriage, is discrimination and in violation of the 14th Amendment.
We are asking people who support us to "call in gay" to their workplace by taking the day off or to shut down their businesses. Our goal is to raise awareness that we are gay and lesbian Americans who work, own businesses, pay our taxes and support the economy to the tune of $712 billion a year, according to an analysis by Witeck-Combs Communications, a public relations agency that specializes in the gay and lesbian consumer market. This is a declaration that we take our rights seriously and demand full equality.

Our Facebook site has had a million visitors, and more than 225,000 people indicate that they will or might participate. There are also more than 17,000 postings from participants who have taken the time to debate, support and/or deride these issues.

There is still much to do. Thirty states have passed bans on same-sex marriage. Thirty states allow employers to fire someone based on sexual orientation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Some states have instituted or are considering bans that directly or indirectly prevent gays and lesbians from adopting or fostering children.

In addition, the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act by Congress in 1996 denies civil unions what Barack Obama's campaign described as the more than 1,100 benefits of marriage including immigration, taxation, Social Security and veteran's benefits.

A recent Newsweek poll reflects that, for the first time, a majority of Americans now believe that gay and lesbian couples deserve recognition, with 55 percent supporting legally sanctioned unions. It found increased backing for inheritance and other rights and found that 39 percent favor gay marriage.

The tide is clearly turning in our favor, and I believe that love, equality and support for all families will triumph. In the words of Tony Kushner, "We will be citizens. The time has come."

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Craig.

Pearl Harbor

2008-12-08T00:07:00.001-05:00

This blogger recalls being taught as a child that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. This is true. He doesn't recall being told that the United States blockaded Japan to control expansionism.

Sayin,' not "just sayin'."

Country Music Inbreeding

2008-11-25T23:20:00.004-05:00

Dad raped daughters for 27 years

Dad in UK sentenced to life in jail for subjecting daughters to rapes over 27 years

Rapes resulted in 19 pregnancies, nine births, seven children

Surviving children suffer genetic disorders

Judge questions why social workers, professionals did not find out about case

Next Article in World »

Read VIDEO

(CNN) -- A British man was jailed Tuesday for raping two of his daughters and fathering nine children over 27 years, a case with echoes of Austria's Josef Fritzl.

The two daughters were made pregnant 19 times; there were nine births, five miscarriages and five terminations. Seven of the children are alive but suffer genetic deformities.

The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons banning the identification of his victims and the surviving children, pleaded guilty Tuesday at Sheffield Crown Court, northern England, and was sentenced to serve 25 life sentences to run concurrently.

The judge said the minimum term the 56-year-old rapist should serve in jail should be 19½ years.

South Yorkshire Police Chief Superintendent Simon Torr said, "The victims of these terrible crimes have asked me to state the following: 'His detention in prison brings us only the knowledge that he cannot physically touch us again. The suffering he has caused will continue for many years, and we must now concentrate our thoughts on finding the strength to rebuild our lives.' "

Speaking for the police, Torr added, "The main concern ... is for those who have been so badly affected: the victims who have suffered a terrible ordeal. We will continue to offer them our full support to try and help them get on with their lives.

"As far as the sentence goes, we are satisfied that this offender has received the strongest possible punishment for his heinous crimes. Now we need to ensure continuing support for those who have suffered as a result of his actions."

The daughters first told police about their ordeal in June, but the abuse dated to 1981.

It emerged that in 1998 one daughter rang Childline, a charity to help abused kids, and asked for assurances about being able to keep her children if she came forward. When Childline could not make that guarantee, the daughter did nothing more to raise her plight. Watch how the case came to light »

The UK's Press Association reported that the rapes began in 1981 with daily attacks and that for long periods, they would be raped up to three times a week, and the assaults would continue through pregnancies. Their only reprieve came after they had just given birth or when they were ill because of the abuse.

If either daughter tried to refuse their father's attacks, they would be punched, kicked and or held to the flames of a gas fire, burning their eyes and arms, PA reported.

Despite visiting hospitals and meeting with social workers over the 27 years of abuse, no investigation was launched into the family.

The case comes in the wake of the death of a baby, known only as Baby P, which has dominated headlines in Britain. The baby endured horrendous torture and died despite being on the local authority's child protection register.

In Austria this year, Josef Fritzl was arrested, accused of keeping his daughter in a basement dungeon and fathering seven children through the rapes.

Ecological Shopping

2008-11-18T12:39:00.008-05:00

Bloggers, Siel, of Green LA Girl, has helped solve one of the most pervasive problems associated with modern shopping: How to shop without creating further need for bags which become landfill. Here is her response:

Question: I don’t need a drawstring bag, but could use a plain cotton string bag. 7th Generation used to sell them and now I don’t have a source. Can you suggest anyone? Thanks!
David

Answer: I’m unsure what you mean by a “string bag.” Do you mean a mesh bag? Or a plain cotton bag (right) to carry or store produce and grains? In either case, I suggest heading over to Ecobags.

Many thanks, Siel!

Summer Patriots

2008-11-08T06:22:00.002-05:00

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for. -Laurence J. Peter, educator and author (1919-1990)

© 2008 Wordsmith.org

Colin Powell's Endorsement

2008-10-19T09:28:00.015-04:00

This blog has long held a favorable opinion of Colin Powell despite his Republican sympathies. General Powell's appearance before the United Nations regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will remain on record.

Colin Powell has done honorably by stating his intention to vote for Barack Obama for President. Hats off to you, sir.

From CNN:

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced today he will vote for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat's "ability to inspire" and the "inclusive nature of his campaign." Powell said he was concerned about what he characterized as a negative turn of Republican candidate Sen. John McCain's campaign and his choice of a running mate. full story

This country allowed uneducated whites' ignorance and fear to take us to new depths in 2004. You are not forgiven.

Dictionary Day

2008-10-13T06:32:00.002-04:00

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Today when we spell the word "color" instead of "colour" we can thank a crotchety, humorless man for saving wear on our fingers, not to mention savings on paper and those obscenely expensive inkjet printer cartridges. Oct 16 marks the 250th birth anniversary of Noah Webster (1758-1843), lexicographer extraordinaire, who compiled the American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), the first authoritative lexicon of American English.

Webster believed in establishing cultural independence from Britain and as such he emphasized a distinct American spelling and pronunciation. His dictionary listed various unusual and shortened spellings of words. He would hardly have imagined how the tide would turn one day. According to reports, more British children today spell "color" instead of "colour", for example. Webster's suggestion of using "tung" instead of "tongue" didn't stick, though.

Today Webster's name is synonymous with dictionaries and the date of his birth is observed as Dictionary Day. In his honor, this week we'll present words about words. As Webster said, "the process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current."

Tomorrow: Look for a fun contest with a chance to win an autographed copy of my latest book.
epeolatry
PRONUNCIATION:
(ep-i-OL-uh-tree)

MEANING:
noun: The worship of words.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek epos (word) + -latry (worship). The first citation of the word is from Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his 1860 book Professor at the Breakfast Table.

USAGE:
"I read my dictionary for a few more minutes, until tiredness eventually bought my epeolatry to an end for the day."
Roger Day; Anurada Negotiates Our Wobbly Planet; Lulu; 2006.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Here lives a free man. Nobody serves him. -Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)

Quote: Friend of Blue Gal

2008-09-28T10:03:00.008-04:00

"Stay strong, stay focussed, stay humble, fight on."

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

2008-09-11T08:56:00.005-04:00

A term used by many, generally in reference to someone who may be trying to make something or someone look appealing or attractive when it quite clearly will not work, or will deceive only the dumbest of people.

Car salesmen are generally good at "putting lipstick on a pig" because they are always selling unroadworthy buckets of shit and try and hide their shitfulness by tarting them up.

The dude in that car yard just put a body kit on that piece of shit. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig

Urban Dictionary

Book: Dreamers of the Day

2008-04-01T11:17:00.004-04:00

Dreamers of the Day, latest novel by Mary Doria Russell, takes readers behind the scenes of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Churchill, Lady Gertrude Bell and TE Lawrence invented the modern Middle East. A richly imagined, suspenseful novel, Russell's book brings an exciting story of one woman who dares to experience a new world and to push the limits of her understanding of herself and others.

Your blog author attended the book signing and now has an inscribed copy in his library!

Groundhog Day!

2008-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Looking for answers to your Groundhog Day questions? You've come to the right spot! Learn about various aspects of the Groundhog Day holiday, and how we've been celebrating it in Punxsutawney since 1886.

Here are some answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the holiday:

Yes! Punxsutawney Phil is the only true weather forecasting groundhog. The others are just impostors.

How often is Phil's prediction correct? 100% of the time, of course!

How many "Phils" have there been over the years? There has been only one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years!

Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking the "elixir of life," a secret recipe. Phil takes one sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic and it magically gives him seven more years of life.

On February 2, Phil comes out of his burrow on Gobbler's Knob - in front of thousands of followers from all over the world - to predict the weather for the rest of winter.

According to legend, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring.

No! Phil's forecasts are not made in advance by the Inner Circle. After Phil emerges from his burrow on February 2, he speaks to the Groundhog Club president in "Groundhogese"(a language understood only by the current president of the Inner Circle). His proclamation is then translated for the world.

The celebration of Groundhog Day began with Pennsylvania's earliest settlers. They brought with them the legend of Candlemas Day, which states, "For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far will the snow swirl in May..."

Punxsutawney held its first Groundhog Day in the 1800s. The first official trek to Gobbler's Knob was made on February 2, 1887.

So the story goes, Punxsutawney Phil was named after King Phillip. Prior to being called Phil, he was called Br'er Groundhog.

Groundhog.org

Edmund Hillary Dies

2008-01-10T21:42:00.000-05:00

Famed New Zealander Edmund Hillary, beekeeper and explorer extraordinaire has died at 88.

(CNN) -- Sir Edmund Hillary, who gained worldwide fame after he and guide Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, has died, according to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.

On May 29, 1953, Hillary and Tenzing became the first men known to have climbed the 29,035 feet to the top of Everest and safely return.

A beekeeper who served during World War II in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, Hillary began climbing while in high school and traveled to the central Himalayas to join a British party exploring the southern face of Everest in 1951.

He returned in 1953, when he and Tenzing made their ascent -- spending 15-30 minutes at the summit. Hillary left a crucifix at the top of the mountain and Tenzing, in keeping with his Buddhist beliefs, left an offering of food.

Hillary took a picture of Tenzing at the peak but, because the Sherpa guide did not know how to use a camera, there are no pictures of Hillary there.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II upon his return to England, but continued exploring -- reaching the South Pole by tractor in 1958, joining the first group to climb Antarctica's Mt. Herschel in 1967 and boating east Himalayan rivers and the Ganges.

In his later years, Hillary became a strong supporter of environmental causes and worked to improve the lives of Nepal's Sherpas -- helping to build and fund schools for them. CNN's Jonathan Mann looks at the life of Sir Edmund Hillary »

Hillary was not always complimentary of the more than 1,300 people who have climbed Everest since he did. In 2006, he harshly criticized a group of about 40 climbers that left Englishman David Sharp, 34, to die as they kept climbing to the top of Everest.

"Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain," he said at the time. "I think the whole attitude toward climbing Mt. Everest has become rather horrifying -- the people just want to get to the top."

In 2003, Hillary was made an honorary citizen of Nepal on the 50th anniversary of his historic climb.

"The legacy of Sir Edmund Hillary will live on," Clark said "His exploits continue to inspire new generations of New Zealanders, as they have for more than half a century already."

All About Edmund Hillary • New Zealand • Mount Everest

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T18:27:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2008, Bloggers! We must continue to move forward to make progress against the Uber Nazis.

The Mayfly Project 2007

2007-12-31T09:40:00.003-05:00

The Mayfly Project 2007

a year in 24 words

A friend committed suicide and a former teacher made the transition. The gods must feel wrath. George W. Bush took us closer to Hell.

See www.meish.org/mayfly

Funeral for a Friend

2007-12-24T09:43:00.001-05:00

This post is an honor to a fallen friend, a means of closure, and a cry to examine one's own life. I met Tony while an undergrad in the early nineties. He was perceptive, resourceful, and brilliant. It seems, however, that demons haunted Tony. Where do the smart people turn for advice? Tony, we never knew.

To family: This post is to express my condolences for your personal loss. Is there anything I can do for you? If there is anything I can do for you, please call.

In the words of Marta, Tony's fiancee, he taught me to "Believe in love and people."

At present a link to Tony's life is found at http://anthonycorlando.legacy.com.

Scientific Advancement

2007-12-23T09:44:00.000-05:00

It was on this day in 1975 that Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act and started the "go metric" campaign with school activities, bumper stickers, public service announcements, and wall charts. But in 1982, Ronald Reagan disbanded the Metric Board and canceled its funding. The metric system was developed 200 years ago, during of the Age of Reason, and is based on numeric intervals of 10, while the U.S.'s measurement system is based on seeds and body parts. Today, the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar are the only nonmetric countries in the world.*

Way to go, Gipper. Get the government off the people's backs.

*The Writer's Almanac

Kiss of Death

2007-12-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

Senator Joe Lieberman just endorsed John McCain for President. Christian nation, John? A pox on both your religions. We need smart leaders, not those who kowtow to narrow minded zealots.

This blog wishes to remind readers that morality preceded organized superstition.

Woman Fired for Teaching Science

2007-11-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

Yes, Bloggers, the Christians have done it again! Turning the clock back 500 years they have determined that science has no place in 2007. Read for yourself here:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/11/29/texas-so-so-doomed/

Buy Nothing Day

2007-11-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Buy Nothing Day is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. In 2007, Buy Nothing Day falls on November 23rd in North America and November 24th internationally.[1] It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine.

The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Vancouver in September of 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption."[2] In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, which is one of the top 10 busiest shopping days in the United States. Outside of North America, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated on the following Saturday. Despite controversies, Adbusters managed to advertise Buy Nothing Day on CNN, but many other major television networks declined to air their ads.[3] Soon, campaigns started appearing in United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, and Norway. Participation now includes more than 65 nations.[4]

While critics of the day charge that Buy Nothing Day simply causes participants to buy the next day,[5] Adbusters states that it "isn't just about changing your habits for one day" but "about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."[6]*

*Wiki

Happy Tofurkey Day!

2007-11-22T04:19:00.000-05:00

"In the United States, Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks to God for the things one has at the end of the harvest season. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The period from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day is often collectively referred to as the 'holiday season', and the holiday itself is often nicknamed Turkey Day.

Thanksgiving is generally considered a secular holiday, and is not directly based in religious canon or dogma."*

As the single remaining reader knows, this is a secular blog. While tolerant of the superstitious, this writer does not proselytize his rudimentary understanding of science. The laws of nature, aka the laws of physics, govern his life.

For those of my generation, which is to say too young to have been drafted for Vietnam, who love politics, one must always hear "Alice's Restaurant" on this day. This is the masterpiece by Arlo Guthrie; you can read the rest here:

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (commonly referred to simply as "Alice's Restaurant") is one of singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie's most prominent works, a musical monologue based on a true story that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965, and which inspired a 1969 movie of the same name.

The song lasts 18 minutes and 20 seconds, occupying the entire A-side of Guthrie's 1967 debut record album, titled Alice's Restaurant (Warner Reprise Records). It is notable as a satirical, first-person account of 1960s counterculture, in addition to being a hit song in its own right. The final part of the song is an encouragement for the listeners to sing along, to resist the draft, and to end war."**

Next post: Buy Nothing Day, tomorrow!

*Wiki
**Wiki

Muffin

2007-09-10T22:21:00.000-04:00

The things I miss...Muffin, the Mystery Bear. Have been gone too long.

Aye, it were a pleasant day in the Buckeye State. It would have been a pleasure to escort me favored officer to dinner as Babe o' me dreams was out of state.

Tuesday's Word: Valkyrie

2007-09-04T04:19:00.001-04:00

Bloggers, a charming young lady caught my eye and in honor of her bringing light to darkness, we have the following post:

In Norse mythology the valkyries are dísir, minor female deities, who served Odin. The valkyries' purpose was to choose the most heroic of those who had died in battle and to carry them off to Valhalla where they became einherjar. This was necessary because Odin needed warriors to fight at his side at the preordained battle at the end of the world, Ragnarök. In Valhalla the valkyries also “serve drink and look after the tableware and drinking vessels” (Prose Edda Gylfaginning 36).

It appears, however, that there was no clear distinction between the valkyries and the norns. Skuld is for instance both a valkyrie and a norn, and in the Darraðarljóð (lines 1-52), the valkyries weave the web of war (see below). According to the Prose Edda (Gylfaginning 36), “Odin sends [the valkyries] to every battle. They allot death to men and govern victory. Gunnr and Róta [two valkyries] and the youngest norn, called Skuld, always ride to choose who shall be slain and to govern the killings”.

Moreover, artistic licence permitted the name Valkyrie to be used for mortal women in Old Norse poetry, or to quote Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál on the various names used for women:

Woman is also metaphorically called by the names of the Asynjur or the Valkyrs or Norns or women of supernatural kind.[1]

Depictions
In modern art, the valkyries are sometimes depicted as beautiful shieldmaidens on winged horses, armed with helmets and spears. However, valkyrie horse was a kenning for wolf (see Rök Stone), so contrary to the stereotype, they did not ride winged horses. Their mounts were rather the packs of wolves that frequented the corpses of dead warriors. They were gruesome and war-like.

Whereas the wolf was the valkyrie's mount, the valkyrie herself appears to be akin to the raven, flying over the battlefield and "choosing" corpses[2]. Thus, the packs of wolves and ravens that scavenged the aftermath of battles may have been seen as serving a higher purpose.

According to Thomas Bulfinch's highly influential work Bulfinch's Mythology (1855), the armour of the valkyries "sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies, making what men call the 'Aurora Borealis', or 'Northern Lights'.[3]" However, there is nothing in our sources which supports this claim[4], except for the arrival of the the Valkyries in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I:

High under helms
on heaven's field;
Their byrnies all
with blood were red,
And from their spears
the sparks flew forth.[6] 15. Then gleamed a ray
from Logafiöll,
and from that ray
lightnings issued;
then appeared,
in the field of air,
a helmed band
of Valkyriur:
their corslets were
with blood besprinkled,
and from their spears
shone beams of light.[7]

Origins
The origin of the valkyries as a whole is not reported in extant texts, but many of the well known valkyries are reported as having mortal parents. It is now believed that the original valkyries were the priestesses of Odin who officiated at sacrificial rites in which prisoners were executed (“given to Odin”). These priestesses sometimes carried out the sacrifices themselves, which involved the use of a ritual spear. By the time the Poetic Edda came to be compiled in the late 12th or early 13th century, these rituals had given rise to legends of supernatural battle-maidens who took an active part in human conflict, deciding who should live and who should die (Davidson 1964).

In the mythological poems of the Poetic Edda the valkyries are supernatural deities of unknown parentage; they are described as battle-maidens who ride in the ranks of the gods or serve the drinks in Valhalla; they are invariably given unworldly names like Skǫgul (“Raging”), Hlǫkk (“Shrieking”) and Gjǫll (“Screaming”).

In the Heroic lays, however, the valkyries are described as bands of warrior-women only the leader of whom is ever named. She is invariably a human woman, the beautiful daughter of a great king, though she shares some of the supernatural abilities of her anonymous companions. In the first of the three Helgi Lays, Helgi Hjörvarðsson is accosted by a band of nine valkyries the leader of whom, Svava, is the daughter of a king called Eylimi. In the second and third lays, the valkyries are led by Sigrun, who is the daughter of King Hogni; she marries the hero Helgi Hundingsbani and bears him sons. The most famous of the valkyries, Brynhildr, is also a human princess. In the Sigrdrífumál (The Ballad of the Victory-Bringer) she is never named, being called simply Sigrdrífa (“Victory-Bringer”), and there are only hints that she is not a deity; what's more, we are told nothing of her parentage. In the corresponding passage in the Volsunga saga, however, she is identified as Brynhildr, the daughter of King Budli. (Sigrdrífa is also identified with Brynhildr in another heroic lay, Helreið Brynhildar, or Bryndhildr's Ride to Hel.)

Etymology
The word "valkyrie" comes from the Old Norse valkyrja (plural "valkyrur"), from the words "val" (slain) and "kyrja" (choose). Literally the term means choosers of the slain. It is cognate to the Old English "wælcyrige". The German form "Walküre" was coined by Richard Wagner from Old Norse.[8]

Other valkyries
Apart from the well known valkyries above, many more valkyrie names occur in our sources. In the nafnaþulur addition to Snorri's Edda the following strophes are found.

As can be seen from the above, several of the names exist in different versions. Many of them have a readily apparent warlike meaning - Hjörþrimul, for example, means "battle of swords" while Geirahöð means "battle of spears".

To what an extent this multitude of names ever represented individual mythological beings with separate characteristics is debatable. It is likely that many of them were never more than names and in any case only a few occur in extant myths.

Recent cultural reference
Richard Wagner incorporated Norse tales that included the valkyrie Brünnhilde (Brynhildr) and her punishment and subsequent love for the warrior Siegfried (Sigurðr). These works included his opera Die Walküre, which contains the well known Ride of the Valkyries, as well as others of his oeuvre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. These depictions and others have subsequently led to modern representations of valkyries less as figures of death and warfare and more commonly as romanticized, pristine white and gold clad figures riding winged horses.

References
Damico, Helen. Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
---. "The Valkyrie Reflex in Old English Literature." New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Eds. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. 176-89.
Davidson, H. R. Ellis (1964). Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-013627-4.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie"
Category: Valkyries

This article was edited for brevity.

Health Care Canned

2007-08-22T21:18:00.000-04:00

My Health Care Canned Me. Suggestions?
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
We try and stay away from self-indulgent weepy, bloggy crap here… BUT ….

Here's the deal, I've been working freelance for the last year and been paying Cobra.

Well, the jackasses at the COBRA SERVE NATION (from Florida) upped my policy by $15 and changed my due date UP two weeks. I received no notification of this.

When they got the regular payment I had been electronically transferring every month, they said "Whoa! You're late! You're short! You're CANCELLED! Effective immediately." I’m not quoting but that was the feel.

Here's the rub, as many of you know, I am a type-one diabetic. This means I am uninsurable across the board. I have about a month’s worth of insulin left. I am truly lucky to have the cash today to pay uninsured premiums. Today.

Amazingly, after a vitriolic conversation I had with COBRA SERVE NATION on Monday, they did not see things my way. Usuall, my gift of calm, caustic language works wonders. I once got a health insurance company to cough up some of my teeth after threatening to burn down their office. It was a bit “Studio Exec” but it worked. I even threw in the Michael Moore line, to no avail.

In essence, I think I'm fucked.

Sure, I can get an office or barista job or marry someone who has bennies, but all of these things will take at least three months. If I won the lottery today, I still couldn't get healthcare. I need to get it now.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Thanks.

Dave
Dave@crackpotpress.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Tuesday's Word: Sanguine

2007-08-21T05:30:00.000-04:00

san·guine /ˈsæŋgwɪn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sang-gwin] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective 1. cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident: a sanguine disposition; sanguine expectations.
2. reddish; ruddy: a sanguine complexion.
3. (in old physiology) having blood as the predominating humor and consequently being ruddy-faced, cheerful, etc.
4. bloody; sanguinary.
5. blood-red; red.
6. Heraldry. a reddish-purple tincture.
–noun 7. a red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings.

Today's Word is for two women.

dictionary.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Origin: 1275–1325; ME sanguyne a blood-red cloth < OF sanguin < L sanguineus bloody, equiv. to sanguin-, s. of sanguis blood + -eus -eous]

Tuesday's Word: Skunk Treatment

2007-08-14T04:53:00.000-04:00

If you or a favored pet runs into a skunk, the sprayed areas my be treated by applying a homemade spray removal. De-Skunk Formula: one quart of hydrogen peroxide; one quarter cup of baking soda; one teaspoon liquid dish washing soap. Mix together and wash the skunk-sprayed areas, keeping the mixture out of its eyes, nose, and mouth. Rinse it off in tap water. Use immediately and do not store for future use.

Tuesday's Word: Blogswarm

2007-08-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

From Ripley's The Zen Cabin, we have ruthlessly stolen the following:

The blogswarm refers to the Aug 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing: "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US", which Bush ignored. We're just trying to remind people that Bush had the intelligence before 9/11 and ignored it.
August 6, 2001

It’s a date that should cause the Republican Party’s cheeks to burn. A date that, perhaps even more than 9/11/01, should have caused George W. Bush to break down in tears of shame and resign from office. Yet, here we are, America…

So many words have been tossed about to describe George Bush in the last six years: incompetent, incurious, demented, unqualified, criminally insane… I think that nearly every unflattering description of human behavior and character would be appropriate.

But August 6, 2001… that’s the day when George W. Bush revealed his true character. Unfortunately, America wasn’t a witness to this revelation until years later, and by then… by then, it was too late.

“bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US”. What kind of fun must you be having to ignore something so pointed, so straightforward in both its meaning and its prose? I’ve done a lot – a LOT – of landscaping in my days and I can tell you, it’s not that much fun. If I had the choice between spending a month on conference calls with Intelligence and Security personnel or clearing brush, well… the brush will wait for me. bin Laden, it seems, had a more specific timeline in mind.

Conspiracy theories abound – MIHOP, LIHOP, what have you – but I’m not a conspiracy theorist. All I need to remember is that George W. Bush was too busy relaxing from that grueling first six months of work to give a damn about America or Americans. “You’ve covered your ass”, indeed…

Fast forward to “the post-9/11 World” that George Bush was too self-centered to notice barreling down the track. Our own government spies on its citizens and demands retroactive immunity for breaking the law and ignoring the Constitution. Suddenly, the Crawford Weedwhacker needs to keep track of every phone call, every web site visit because… well, we really don’t know, do we? Evidently, bin Laden is no longer Enemy #1 but America is populated by 300,000,000 persons of interest.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” has been replaced by a never-ending loop of “9/11! September the 11th!”. Yes, we remember September the 11th, Mr. Bush. Some of us remember the fact that you could have done something to prevent it, or at least tried. And now we see you scurrying to cover your tracks and protect your little henchmen – the only people who believe in you and, evidently, the only people you’ve ever been concerned about.

It seems you take the threat of honest Americans and Justice far more seriously than you’ve ever considered the threat of terrorism. Or maybe you just misunderstimated bin Laden’s determination.

August 6, 2001. Enjoy your Legacy, Mr. Bush.

The blogswarm refers to the Aug 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing: "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US", which Bush ignored. We're just trying to remind people that Bush had the intelligence before 9/11 and ignored it.

Tagged by Jess!

2007-08-01T05:04:00.001-04:00

1. Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Our side won! How do you celebrate?
2. Are you on a boat or are you a land lubber or do you soar?
3. What was the last mistake you wished you could cover up?
4. Are your omelettes fluffy?
5. When was the last time your paradigm shifted?

Yoga Korunta has been tagged by Jess Wundrun, so here are the answers!

1a. When the lesser evil wins, we will celebrate with Champagne, of course!

2a. I'm on land, but wish to be sailing.

3a. The last mistake for which I am shamed was made several years ago when I spoke sans brain activity. A Freudian slip?

4a. The omelettes are tres puff!

5a. The last paradigm shift was around 40 years ago when I learned to ask questions.

Continuing in the blog tradition, I am tagging ae, A Curmudgeonly Crab, Barbie, Elizabeth, and Mary!

Tuesday's Word: water table

2007-07-31T04:57:00.000-04:00

The water table or phreatic surface is the surface where the water pressure is equal to atmospheric pressure.

A sustainable amount of water within a unit of sediment or rock, below the water table, in the phreatic zone is called an aquifer. The ability of the aquifer to store groundwater is dependent on the primary and secondary porosity and permeability.

Contents
1 Form
1.1 Surface topography
1.2 Perched water tables
2 Fluctuations
2.1 Seasonal fluctuations
2.2 Long term fluctuations
3 See also

Form
The form of a water table may change and vary due to seasonal changes, topography and structural geology. In undeveloped regions, or areas with high amounts of precipitation, the water table roughly follows the contour of the overlying land surface, and rises and falls with increases or decreases in infiltration. Springs and oases occur when the water table reaches the surface. Springs commonly form on hillsides, where the earth's slanting surface may "intersect" with the water table. Other, unseen springs are found under rivers and lakes, and account for the base-flow water levels in water bodies.

Surface topography
Within an aquifer, the water table is rarely horizontal, but reflects the surface relief due to the effect of gravity.[citation needed] In hilly regions, the variation in gradient give rise to rivers, springs or oases when the water table intersects the surface. It should be noted that the water table does not always mimic the topography due to variations in the underlying geologic structure (i.e. - folded, faulted, fractured bedrock).

Perched water tables
A perched water table (or perched aquifer) is an aquifer that occurs above the regional water table, in the vadose zone. This occurs when there is an impermeable layer of rock or sediment (aquiclude) or relatively impermeable layer aquatard above the main aquifer but below the surface. If a perched aquifer's flow intersects the Earth's surface, at a valley wall for example, the water is discharged as a spring.

Fluctuations

Seasonal fluctuations in the water table. During the dry season, river beds may dry up. In some regions (Great Britain for example), winter precipitation is often higher than summer precipitation and so the groundwater storage is not recharged in summer. Consequently, the water table is lower in the summer period yearly. This disparity between the level of the winter and summer water table is known as the zone of intermittent saturation, wherein the water table will fluctuate in response to climatic conditions.

Long term fluctuations
Fossil water is groundwater that has remained in an aquifer for millennia, and occurs mainly in deserts. Fossil water is non-renewable by present day rainfall due to its depth below the surface, and any extraction ('mining') causes a permanent change in the water table in such regions.

Your blog author has been trying to find water filters. He is beginning to think it would be easier to drill a well.

Wiki

Thursday's Quote: Roz Savage

2007-07-25T21:39:00.000-04:00

Jessie is the intern for the Blue Frontier Campaign, and has been helping out with all kinds of things, including organising the launch event on July 10, and shopping for things I needed for the boat (grease pencil, toothpaste, sunshades, 12 lb of jerky, and various other random items). But possibly her greatest contribution arrived by email today - a sea shanty:

Landed person: How long have you been in the wilderness? (at sea?)

Crew: All me bloomin' life, mam!
Me mother's a mermaid
Me father's king neptune
I was born on the crest of a wave
And rocked in the cradle deep!

Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes
Every tooth in me head is a marlin spike
Every hair on me head is hemp.
Every bone in me body's a spar.

And when I spits, I spits tar.
I's hard I is I ar.
Arrrgh.

Very Pirates of the Caribbean. I especially like the penultimate line - "I's hard I is I ar". On the Atlantic I found little mantras and affirmations very useful in keeping me going at the oars, and I think this will be an excellent new one.

Speaking of sea shanties, shortly I will be publishing my favourite playlists to iTunes, so you will be able to imagine yourself there in the boat with me, listening along to what I'm listening to. All you'll have to do is throw buckets of saltwater over yourself at regular intervals, and you'll have yourself a pretty authentic ocean-rowing experience...

This blog wishes Roz fair weather and calm seas!

Tuesday's Word: Wrestling

2007-07-17T11:22:00.000-04:00

Wrestling is the act of physical engagement between two competitors competing for a physical advantage. It is the oldest form of martial arts, as part of human display behaviour constituting a human universal, practiced in various forms of folk wrestling all over the world. Physical techniques which embody the style of wrestling are clinching, holding, locking and leverage. Avoiding potentially lethal techniques, wrestling has aspects of ritual fighting, but its basic principles are closely related to those of military hand to hand combat or self-defence systems.

Wrestling popularity has grown so much that market demands for staged wrestling have caused the development of professional wrestling.

Ancient Greek wrestlers (Pankratiasts)Contents
1 Wrestling in Ancient history
2 Etymology
3 Wrestling disciplines
3.1 Greco-Roman wrestling
3.2 Freestyle wrestling
3.3 Grappling
3.4 Beach wrestling
3.5 Judo
3.6 Collegiate wrestling
3.7 Folk wrestling
4 Uses of wrestling
4.1 Wrestling as a martial art
5 See also
6 References

Wrestling in Ancient history

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel; illustration by Gustave Doré (1855)One early (probably circa 1500 BC) description of wrestling appears in the Old Testament book of Genesis, chapter 32; it depicts the patriarch Jacob wrestling with the Angel, for which Jacob was subsequently renamed Israel. (Israel translates to "wrestles (or struggles) with God".)[1]

The Mahabharata, one of the major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, describes the encounter between the accomplished wrestlers of Bhima and Jarasandha; "grasping each other in various ways by means of their arms, and kicking each other with such violence as to affect the innermost nerves, they struck at each other's breasts with clenched fists. With bare arms as their only weapons roaring like clouds they grasped and struck each other like two mad elephants encountering each other with their trunks".[2]

Shuai Jiao (Chinese Wrestling) is arguably the most ancient of all Chinese martial arts, with a reported history of over 4,000 years. (The date may be legendary, but wrestling was reportedly used by the Yellow Emperor during his fight against the rebel Chih Yiu and his army in 2697 BC.) During these matches, the combatants reportedly wore horned helmets that they used to gore their opponents while using a primitive form of grappling. This early style of combat was first called Jiao Ti (butting with horns). Throughout the centuries, the hands and arms replaced the horns while the techniques increased and improved. The name Jiao Ti also changed over time, both through common usage and government decree.[3]

According to Scott T. Carroll, the first documented evidence of wrestling in Egypt appeared circa 2300 BC, on the tomb of the Old Kingdom philosopher Ptahhotep. During the period of the New Kingdom (2000-1085 B.C.), additional Egyptian artwork (often on friezes), depicted Egyptian and Nubian wrestlers competing. Carroll notes striking similarities between these ancient depictions and those of the modern Nuba wrestlers.[4]

During the period of Ancient Greece (1100 to 146 B.C.), Greek Wrestling was a popular form of martial art in which points were awarded for pinning a competitor's back to the ground, forcing a competitor to submit or by forcing a competitor out of bounds (arena).[5] After the Roman conquest of the Greeks, Greek Wrestling was absorbed by the Roman culture and became Roman Wrestling during the period of the Roman Empire (510 B.C. to 500 A.D.).[citation needed]

Etymology
Look up Wrestling in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.The term wrestling is an Old English word that originated some time before 1100 A.D. It is perhaps the oldest word still in use in the English language to describe hand to hand combat.[6] The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines wrestling as 'a sport or contest in which two unarmed individuals struggle hand to hand with each attempting to subdue or unbalance the other'.[7]

Look up Grappling in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.It is common in parts of the English-speaking world to use 'wrestling' (noun) and 'grappling' synonamous,[8] in particular synonymously with submission wrestling but this is grammatically incorrect.

Wrestling disciplines
Today, wrestling disciplines are broken down into two categories; International wrestling disciplines and folk wrestling disciplines. According to the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles, there are five current International wrestling disciplines acknowledged throughout the world. They are Greco-Roman Wrestling, freestyle wrestling, Sambo, Grappling, Beach Wrestling and Judo.[9]

Greco-Roman wrestling

A greco-roman wrestling match in the United States
Female wrestlingMain article: Greco-Roman wrestling
Greco-Roman is an International discipline and Olympic sport. "In Greco-Roman style, it is forbidden to hold the opponent below the belt, to make trips, and to actively use the legs in the execution of any action." That is, you are supposed to do everything with your upper body only.[10]

Freestyle wrestling
Main article: Freestyle wrestling
Freestyle wrestling is an International discipline and an Olympic sport. "In free style, it is allowed to hold the legs of the opponent, to make trips and to use actively legs on the execution of any action".[11]

Grappling
Main article: Grappling
"Grappling, also called submission wrestling, refers to the gripping, handling, and controlling of an opponent without the use of striking, typically through the application of various grappling holds and counters to various hold attempts. Grappling can be used in both a standing position, where it is known as stand-up grappling, and on the ground, where it is known as ground grappling. Grappling is an essential part of both clinch fighting and ground fighting".[12]

Beach wrestling
Apparently in a bid to give wrestling greater appeal to television audiences, FILA adopted beach wrestling as an official discipline during 2004-2005. Beach wrestling is standing wrestling done by wrestlers, male or female, inside a sand-filled circle measuring 6 meters in diameter. There are only two weight categories, heavy and light. The objective is to throw your opponent or take your opponent to his or her back. The wrestlers wear swimsuits rather than special wrestling uniforms. Wrestlers may also wear spandex or athletic shorts.[13][14]

Judo
Main article: Judo
Judo (柔道, jūdō?), meaning "gentle way", is a modern Japanese martial art (gendai budō) and combat sport, that originated in Japan in the late nineteenth century. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an opponent to submit by joint locking the elbow or applying a choke.

Collegiate wrestling
Main article: Collegiate wrestling
Collegiate wrestling (sometimes known as folkstyle wrestling or scholastic wrestling) is the commonly used name of wrestling practiced at the university level in the United States. A very similar style is practiced at the high school and middle school levels, and also for younger participants. The term is used to distinguish the styles of wrestling used in other parts of the world, and for those of the Olympic Games: Greco-Roman wrestling, and Freestyle wrestling. There are currently five tiers of collegiate wrestling, that being NCAA division 1, 2, and 3, NJCAA, NAIA, and the NCWA. The collegiate season starts in late October and culimanates with the NCAA tournament held in March.

Folk wrestling

Burumbators on the traditional Nadam festival in Mongolia, near Ulanbataar
Jiu-Jitsu practitioners working in a half guardMain article: folk wrestling

Khuresh (Tuvan wrestling)There are almost as many folk wrestling styles as there are national traditions, because folk wrestling describes a traditional form of wrestling unique to a culture or geographic region of the world. Folk wrestling styles are not yet recognized Internationally. The following list provides examples of wrestling systems that fall into this category.

Yağlı güreş (Turkish oil wrestling) tournament in IstanbulDiscipline Origin
Mallayuddha, Pehlwani India
Pahlavani Iran
Böke Mongolia
Catch wrestling United Kingdom
Sambo Russia
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Brazil
Collegiate Wrestling United States
Glima Iceland
Gouren France
Khuresh Mongolia
Lucha Canaria Spain
Lucha Leonesa Spain
Luta Livre Brazil
Schwingen Switzerland
Shoot wrestling Japan
Shuai jiao China
Ssireum Korea
Submission Wrestling Greece
Sumo Japan
Yağlı güreş Turkey

Uses of wrestling
Main article: Military education and training
Wrestling and combat\Military training have shared a close relationship throughout history.

Main article: Professional Wrestling
The popularity of hand to hand competitions throughout history has at times created a demand for staged wrestling matches.

Wrestling as a martial art
Wrestling has gained tremendous respect among martial arts practitioners, especially with the advent of mixed martial arts competition[citation needed]. Many fighters identify wrestling itself or Submission wrestling as their style of fighting. Wrestling forms the base of some of the most respected self-defense and mixed martial arts systems in the world, such as Shootfighting. Many professional fighters from the United States had competed in collegiate wrestling before their careers.

Today's Word is in honor of the Leljedal family of Pennsylvania. They are good friends and scholars with the best children in the world!

Wiki

Jess's Quiz to Counter Evil

2007-07-14T12:04:00.000-04:00

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Bastille Day

2007-07-14T06:44:00.000-04:00

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called "Fête Nationale" ("National Holiday"), in official parlance, or more commonly "quatorze juillet" ("14th of July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French "nation", and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

1 Current festivities
2 History
2.1 The Storming of the Bastille
2.2 The Fête de la Fédération
2.3 Origin of the present holiday
3 References
4 Trivia
5 External links
//

Current festivities

Jacques Chirac reviewing troops on the 2003 Bastille Day parade.
14 July is the French Bastille day, simply called 14 Juillet or less commonly but more officially Fête nationale (though it is generally referred to as Bastille Day in English). Many cities hold fireworks during the night. Many dancing parties are organised (bals du 14 juillet) and it is customary that firefighters organise them (bals des pompiers). Those celebrations take place from 13 July at night to 14 July.

The day officially celebrates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, though it is often associated, even in France, with the Storming of the Bastille. Military parades, called Défilés du 14 juillet, are held on the morning of 14 July, the largest of which takes place on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic.

The parade opens with cadets from certain schools (École Polytechnique, Saint-Cyr, École Navale, and so forth), then other infantry troops, then motorised troops; aviation of the Patrouille de France flies above. In recent times, it has become customary to invite units from France's close allies into the parade; for instance, in 2004 during the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, British troops (the band of the Royal Marines, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, Grenadier Guards and King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery) led the Bastille Day parade in Paris for the first time, with the Red Arrows flying overhead.

The parade also involves the French Republican Guard, and occasionally (non-military) police units; it always ends with the much-cheered and popular Paris Fire Brigade (which, exceptionally, has military status in France). Traditionally, the students of the École Polytechnique set up some form of joke.

The president then gives an interview to members of the press, discussing the situation of the country, recent events and projects for the future. He also holds a garden party at the Palais de l'Elysée.

Bastille Day also falls during the running of the Tour de France, and is traditionally the day upon which French riders will make a special effort to take a stage victory for France.

History

Storming of the Bastille

On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were clergy and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a Constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The Assembly re-named itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution.

In the wake of the 11 July dismissal of the royal finance minister Jacques Necker, the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain arms for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a prison which had often held people arbitrarily jailed on the basis of lettre de cachet. Besides holding a large cache of arms, the Bastille had long been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, though, at the time of the siege in mid-July 1789 there were only 7 inmates, none of great political significance.

When the crowd—eventually reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises—proved to be a fair match for the fort's defenders, the commander of the Bastille, Governor de Launay capitulated and opened the gates in order to avoid a mutual massacre. However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. Ninety-eight attackers and just one defender had died in the actual fighting, but in the aftermath, De Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was the 'prévôt es marchands' (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles.

The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance.

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 4 August feudalism was abolished and on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed.

The Fête de la Fédération

Main article: Fête de la Fédération

The Fête de la Fédération of the 14 July 1790 was a huge feast and official event to celebrate the uprising of the short-lived constitutional monarchy in France and what people of the time considered to be the happy conclusion of the French Revolution.

The event took place on the Champ de Mars, which was at the time outside of Paris. The place had been transformed on a voluntary basis by the population of Paris itself, in what was recalled as the Journée des brouettes ("Wheelbarrow Day").

A mass was celebrated by Talleyrand, bishop of Autun. The very popular General La Fayette, as both captain of the National Guard of Paris and confidant of the king, took his oath to the Constitution, followed by the King Louis XVI.

After the end of the official celebration, the day ended in a huge four day popular feast.

Origin of the present holiday

On 30 June 1878, a feast had been set in Paris by official decision to honour the Republic (the event was immortalised by a painting by Claude Monet). On the 14 July 1879, another feast took place, with a semi-official aspect; the events of the day included a military review in Longchamp, a reception in the Chambre of Deputies, organised and presided by Léon Gambetta, and a Republican Feast in the pré Catelan with Louis Blanc and Victor Hugo. All through France, as Le Figaro wrote on the 16, "people feasted a lot to honour the Bastille".

On the 21 May 1880, Benjamin Raspail presented a law proposal to have "the Republic choose the 14 July as a yearly national holiday". The Assembly voted the text on 21 May and 8 June. The Senate approved on 27 and 29 June, favouring 14 July against 4 August (honouring the end of the feudal system on 4 August 1789). The law was made official on 6 July 1880, and the Ministry of the Interior recommended to the prefects that the day should be "celebrated with all the brilliance that the local resources allow". Indeed, the celebrations of the new holiday in 1880 were particularly magnificent.

In the debate leading up to the adoption of the holiday, Henri Martin, chairman of the French Senate, addressed that chamber 29 June 1880. "Do not forget that behind this 14 July, where victory of the new era over the ancien régime was bought by fighting, do not forget that after the day of 14 July 1789, there was the day of 14 July 1790. … This [latter] day cannot be blamed for having shed a drop of blood, for having divided the country. It was the consecration of unity of France. … If some of you might have scruples against the first 14 July, they certainly hold none against the second. Whatever difference which might part us, something hovers over them, it is the great images of national unity, which we all desire, for which we would all stand, willing to die if necessary."

Friday the 13th!

2007-07-13T05:40:00.000-04:00

A Friday occurring on the 13th day of any month is considered to be a day of bad luck in English, German and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe. Similar superstitions exist in some other traditions. In Greece and Spain, for example, Tuesday the 13th takes the same role. The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia (a word that is derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Παρασκευή, δεκατρείς, and φοβία, meaning Friday, thirteen, and phobia respectively; alternate spellings include paraskevodekatriaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia) or friggatriskaidekaphobia, and is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a phobia (fear) of the number thirteen. *

Bad luck for whom?

Earlier Thursday, Bush said a report on U.S.-set benchmarks for Iraq shows "satisfactory progress" in eight areas. He admitted that there is "more work to be done."**

George Bush! It seems his "principle" is only as deep as the Republicans' numbers to keep Dems from voting us out of an unwinnable war and impeachment for him and Cheney! Awww!

Wiki*
CNN**

Thursday's Quote: Aristotle

2007-07-12T08:57:00.000-04:00

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then,
is not an act, but a habit."
Aristotle

This week's quote comes by suggestion of mi amigo, John Pritchard. Gracias!

Tuesday's Word: desalination

2007-07-10T08:30:00.000-04:00

Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation, and if almost all of the salt is removed, for human consumption. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. Desalination of ocean water is common in the Middle East (because of water scarcity) and the Caribbean, and is growing fast in the USA, North Africa, Singapore, Spain, Australia and China.[citation needed] It is used also on ships, submarines and islands. Desalination typically requires large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or wells (bores).
Desalination of brackish water is done in the United States in order to meet treaty obligations for river water entering Mexico. Several Middle Eastern countries have energy reserves so great that they use desalinated water for agriculture. Saudi Arabia's desalination plants account for about 24% of total world capacity. The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It uses multi-stage flash distillation, dual-purpose and it is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
Wiki

Happy 07/07/07!

2007-07-07T06:07:00.000-04:00

As luck would have it, weddings soar 7/7/07

Friday, July 06, 2007
Bill Lubinger
Plain Dealer Reporter

The calendar has dealt a hand Saturday that has tens of thousands of hopeful brides and grooms, birthday celebrators and the numerically superstitious betting the house.

It's July 7 - 7/7/07 - the ideal sequence for a day (and maybe a lifetime?) of luck extraordinaire.
With so many lucky sevens falling on a Saturday, the hopeful are letting it ride.

About 12,000 couples get married on a typical Saturday in July, said Melissa Bauer, spokeswoman for theknot.com, a wedding-planning site. Tomorrow, almost three times as many will walk the aisle, she said, partly because of an extended holiday weekend, but mostly it's the promise that the number 7 holds.

Oh, and Bloggers, if the luck doesn't hold I know a good lawyer!

Profile in Courage: Roz Savage

2007-07-06T16:21:00.000-04:00

Dunked But Not Daunted: Open Letter to Geoff Holt
18 May 2007

Dear Geoff

I read your very eloquent blog about Monday's events - I am most impressed, and I think you put your side of the case extremely well.

I can't believe that the press would be so ignorant and cruel as to make negative comments about your brave attempt. In that vein, here is one of my favourite quotes, which I originally found a long time ago in Pete Goss's book Close to the Wind, although I have seen it many other places since:

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who knows great enthusiasm, great devotion and the triumph of achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while doing greatly - so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat...

Meantime, I hope this is giving you time to get over your cold. All the best - and better luck next time! ;-)
Roz

Bloggers, Roz Savage is an inspiration to the mortal among us. Bonne chance! www.RozSavage.com

Independence Day

2007-07-04T07:01:00.000-04:00

In the United States, Independence Day (commonly known as "the Fourth of July","July Fourth", or even simply "The Fourth") is a federal holiday celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from Great Britain.
Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Fireworks have been associated with the Fourth of July since 1777.

Why the fourth?

Though the Fourth of July is iconic to Americans, some claim the date itself is somewhat arbitrary. New Englanders had been fighting Britain since April 1775. The first motion in the Continental Congress for independence was made on June 4, 1776. After hard debate, the Congress voted unanimously, but secretly, for independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 2 (see Lee Resolution). The Congress reworked the text of the Declaration until a little after eleven o'clock, July 4, when the twelve colonies voted for adoption and released a copy signed only by John Hancock, President of the Congress, to the printers. (The New York delegation abstained from both votes.) Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration with public readings and bonfires on July 8. Not until August 2 would a fair printing be signed by the members of the Congress, but even that was kept secret to protect the members from British reprisals.*

John Adams, credited by Thomas Jefferson as the unofficial, tireless whip of the independence-minded, wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Adams was off by two days, however. Certainly, the vote on July 2 was the decisive act. But July 4, 1776 is the date on the Declaration itself. Jefferson's stirring prose, as edited by the Congress, was first adopted by the July 4th vote. It was also the first day Philadelphians heard the official news of independence from the Continental Congress, as opposed to rumors in the street about secret votes.

Wiki

Happy Independence Day, Bloggers! Remember, we have survived much worse than the corrupt Bush Administration.

*Where have we heard this before--Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame?

Tuesday's Word: commute

2007-07-03T07:55:00.000-04:00

Commutation of sentence involves the reduction of legal penalties, especially of terms of imprisonment. Commutation is normally linked to prisoners' good behaviour. In the United States, reduction of sentence is handled by an executive head of government; In federal cases this is the U.S. Department of Justice, although the President of the United States also holds the power to commute sentences. State sentences are usually handled by the governor's office. Unlike a pardon a commutation does not nullify the conviction and is often conditional.
Wiki

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Monday spared I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from prison, commuting the former White House aide's 30-month prison term.

A conviction remains on Scooter Libby's record, and he must still pay a $250,000 fine.

The prison time was imposed after a federal court convicted Libby of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.
A commutation is distinct from a pardon, which is a complete eradication of a conviction record and makes it the same as if the person has never been convicted.
Bush has only commuted Libby's prison term, which means that the conviction remains on Libby's record and he must still pay a $250,000 fine. He will be on probation for two years.
Commutations are rarely granted, says CNN's chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. A commutation is a total right of the president and it cannot be challenged by any attorney or court, he said.
It's the fourth time Bush has issued one.
Earlier Monday, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that Libby could not delay serving his sentence, which would have put Libby just weeks away from surrendering to a prison.
In a written statement commuting the prison sentence, issued hours after Monday's ruling, Bush called the sentence "excessive," and suggested that Libby will pay a big enough price for his conviction. Watch what signal critics say Bush's decision sends »
"The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting," he said.
The president, who has been under great pressure to pardon Libby, said Libby was given "a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury."
Libby can still appeal his conviction. And if the appeal fails or is still in process at the end of Bush's term, the president could grant Libby a full pardon.
Libby's conviction is linked to the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
An outraged Joe Wilson, Plame's husband, spoke to CNN shortly after the ruling. Wilson had gone public with allegations that the Bush administration had "twisted" the evidence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and prosecutors argued that Libby disclosed her employment as part of an effort to discredit him.
"I have nothing to say to Scooter Libby," Wilson said. "I don't owe this administration. They owe my wife and my family an apology for having betrayed her. Scooter Libby is a traitor."
Libby was not accused of disclosing Plame's identity himself. But at trial, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told the jury that Libby's actions left "a cloud over the White House" by obstructing the leak probe.
In a statement issued Monday night, Fitzgerald took issue with Bush's description of the sentence as "excessive," saying it was "imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country."
"It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals," Fitzgerald said. "That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing."
Plame had worked in the CIA's counter-proliferation division before the March 2003 invasion. She told a congressional committee in March that her exposure effectively ended her career and endangered "entire networks" of agents overseas.
Her husband said Bush's action today demonstrates that the White House is "corrupt from top to bottom."
Clemency petitions are normally reviewed by the Justice Department, which investigates the case and seeks input from the federal prosecutor who brought the case before issuing a recommendation to the president. A government official said that Bush did not consult with the Justice Department before rendering his decision.
Reaction on Capitol Hill was swift. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said the president had "abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice."
"The president's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people," she said.
One of the few members of the GOP backing Bush, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, said the commutation was "the right thing to do."
"The prison sentence was overly harsh, and the punishment did not fit the crime," Blunt said.
Plame's name became public when Robert Novak named her in his column on July 14, 2003.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has admitted he disclosed the information to a reporter. Novak pointed to another "senior administration official" -- Bush political adviser Karl Rove -- as the second source for his column.
No one has been charged with leaking classified information in the case, but a jury found Libby guilty of trying to deceive investigators and a grand jury during the investigation.
Bush was under great pressure to grant a pardon to Libby.
Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.
Polls suggest the American public may not be happy with Libby's commutation.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken in March asked if Bush should pardon Libby -- 69 percent said no, 18 percent said yes.
Ted Wells, an attorney for Libby, issued a statement late Monday saying that Libby and his family "wish to express their gratitude for the president's decision."
"We continue to believe in Mr. Libby's innocence," Wells said. "Scooter and his family appreciate the many Americans who have supported them over the last two years."
CNN

Well, Bloggers, have you had enough of these thugs? How many of you still think Bible thumpers need to be voting?

Spartacus Redux

2007-06-27T20:08:00.000-04:00

Bloggers, the Neo Nazi Right Wingers are after Shakes again. Were we on the streets, they would not likely find the courage to attack a woman. One guesses they feel safe when they can't be seen.

I'm with you, Melissa.

Tuesday's Word: Pantomime

2007-06-26T07:42:00.001-04:00

Pantomime (informally, panto) refers to a theatrical genre, traditionally found in Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland.

History
The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in ancient Greece, but exploded in popularity during the reign of Augustus in ancient Rome. The name is taken from a single masked dancer called Pantomimus. The style and content of modern pantomime has very clear and strong links with the Commedia dell'arte, a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy in the early middle ages, and which reached England by the 16th century. A "comedy of professional artists" traveling from province to province in Italy and then France, they improvised and told stories which told lessons to the crowd and changed the main character depending on where they were performing. The great clown Grimaldi transformed the format. Each story had the same fixed characters: the lovers, father, servants (one being crafty and the other stupid), etc. These roles/characters can be found in today's pantomimes.
The gender role reversal resembles the old festival of Twelfth Night, a combination of Epiphany and midwinter feast, when it was customary for the natural order of things to be reversed. This tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as Samhain and Saturnalia.
In Restoration England, a pantomime was considered a low form of opera, rather like the Commedia dell'arte but without Harlequin (rather like the French Vaudeville). In 1717, actor and manager John Rich introduced Harlequin to the British stage under the name of "Lun" (for "lunatic") and began performing wildly popular pantomimes. These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. Colley Cibber and his colleagues competed with Rich and produced their own pantomimes, and pantomime was a substantial (if decried) subgenre in Augustan drama. This form had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

Pantomime in the United States of America
Pantomime, as described in this article is not commonly performed in the United States of America, as a consequence, the word "pantomime" is more commonly understood to refer to the art of mime, as practised by Marcel Marceau or Mummenschanz and is often assumed to be a solo performance seen as often on street corners as on stage.

Bloggers, I've seen Marcel Marceau and can attest that his was an outstanding performance. The young woman who mimed in New Orleans was also quite talented when she mimed the way I needed to go to find my way about the French Quarter. Merci beaucoup!

Friday Science Blogging: Peltier effect

2007-06-22T09:51:00.000-04:00

(Elec.) The production or absorption of heat at the junction of two metals on the passage of a current. Heat generated by the passage of the current in one direction will be absorbed if the current is reversed.

the free dictionary

Readers, I checked science sources. It's so complicated that you don't want to know!

The Peltier effect is the reverse of the Seebeck effect; a creation of a heat difference from an electric voltage.
It occurs when a current is passed through two dissimilar metals or semiconductors (n-type and p-type) that are connected to each other at two junctions (Peltier junctions). The current drives a transfer of heat from one junction to the other: one junction cools off while the other heats up; as a result, the effect is often used for thermoelectric cooling. This effect was observed in 1834 by Jean Peltier, 13 years after Seebeck's initial discovery.

Wiki

See!?!

Thursday's Quote: Katherine Ottaway

2007-06-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Quota by Dr. Katherine Ottaway

honestly
I feel despair
when I try
to think about the new schedule

Twenty four slots
Of 20 minutes
See three people
For 40 minutes
Twenty on the schedule
Pray for two no shows

Unanswered questions
Wake me Sunday morning
If I am called to a labor patient
Must I make up that clinic face time?
What of holidays?
The clinic is closed.
Night call is nowhere addressed
Will they hire more and more
Who don't take call
Until I am the last woman standing
Red rimmed eyes staring
Numb with fatigue

What of my nearly deaf patient
Who reads lips
May we take forty minutes?
All the fairly deaf elderly?
New parents, anxious
Questions pour out like
Coins from a jackpot win
What of the tearful brokenhearted
And anxious?
I shrink at the thought
Of crushing their hearts
Into twenty minutes

And what if I am sick?
(no paid leave)
If I cancel clinic
For illness
Do I make up those days
A quota of patient face days

I am in the factory
The mines
People are the shirts I must sew
The tons of coal I must load
I must meet a quota

Doctors die younger
Our life is measured out
In patients

I won't let the quota
Kill my love

6/17/07
Katherine Ottaway

Bloggers, this poem from Katherine Ottaway, MD, is one woman's perspective on managed care. She practices in the Pacific Northwest. Some would say she slaves.

Love to Blue Gal!

Happy 200!

2007-06-19T07:09:00.000-04:00

Happy two hundredth post to Yoga Korunta!

Goodbye

2007-06-18T08:43:00.000-04:00

We could have been so good together!

Tuesday's Word: kismet

2007-06-12T05:26:00.000-04:00

Kismet (Turkish, Urdu as well as Hindi and Arabic, "fate"--derived from the Arabic term qisma; modified in Persian as qismat and then from Turkish it came to English usage) can refer to several things:
Contents
1 Locations
2 Other uses
3 Arts
3.1 Film

Locations
Kismet, Kansas
Kismet, New York, a town on Fire Island

Other uses
Kismet (program), a computer program used to analyze wireless network traffic
Kismet (robot), a robot intended to demonstrate simulated emotion
Kismet (Marvel Comics), a Marvel Comics superheroine
Kismet (DC Comics), a DC Comics character
Kismet (chocolate bar)
Kismet (dice game)

Kismet (gameplay scripting), gameplay scripting tool for the Unreal Engine from Epic Games
Kismet is a song from Born, the debut album of the string quartet bond
Kismet, a curry house in the North East of England
Akismet, short for Automattic Kismet, an effective server based spam filter.

Arts
Kismet (musical), a 1953 Broadway musical built around the music of Alexander Borodin, and adapted from a 1911 play by Edward Knoblock.
Kismet was a band formed by ethnic Macedonians in Australia (1993-1999), lead by Gorazd Chapovski from the band Mizar.
Kismet is an album from the Hungarian folk vocalist Márta Sebestyén.
Kismet Magic: The Gathering card.

Film
Kismet is the name of more than 15 films; among the best known is the lavish production of:
Kismet (1930) produced by Warner Brothers starring Loretta Young and Otis Skinner which was shot in an early widescreen process known as the Vitascope
Kismet (1943), Hindi film which stars Ashok Kumar
Kismet (1944), starring Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich), and based on Knoblock's play; sometimes shown on television as Oriental Dream.
Kismet (1955), directed by Vincente Minnelli and based on the 1953 musical

This week's Word was suggested by Barbie, from whom this blog was recently tagged!

Wiki

Friday Science Blogging

2007-06-08T07:15:00.000-04:00

A ruminant is any hooved animal that digests its food in two steps, first by eating the raw material and regurgitating a semi-digested form known as cud, then eating the cud, a process called ruminating. Ruminants include cattle, goats, sheep, llamas, giraffes, bison, buffalo, deer, wildebeest, and antelope. The suborder Ruminantia includes all those except the camels and llamas, which are Tylopoda. Ruminants also share another anatomical feature in that they all have an even number of toes.

Explanation

Ruminants have a fore-stomach with four chambers. These are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. In the first two chambers, the rumen and the reticulum, the food is mixed with saliva and separates into layers of solid and liquid material. Solids clump together to form the cud (or bolus). The cud is then regurgitated, chewed slowly to completely mix it with saliva and to break down the particle size. Fibre, especially cellulose and hemi-cellulose, is primarily broken down into the three volatile fatty acids, acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid in these chambers by bacteria and protozoa.

Even though the rumen and reticulum have different names they represent the same functional space as digesta can move back and forth between them. Together these chambers are called the rumen-reticulum. The degraded fibre, which is now in the lower liquid part of the rumen-reticulum, then passes into the next chamber, the omasum, where water and many of the inorganic mineral elements are absorbed into the blood stream. After this the digesta is moved to the last chamber, the abomasum. The abomasum is the direct equivalent of the monogastric stomach (for example that of the human or pig), and food here is digested in much the same way. Digesta is finally moved into the small intestine, where the digestion and absorption of nutrients occurs. Bacteria created in the reticulo-rumen are also digested in the small intestine.
Almost all the glucose produced by the breaking down of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin is used by bacteria in the rumen, and as such ruminants usually absorb little glucose from the small intestine. Rather, ruminants' requirement for glucose (for brain function and lactation if appropriate) is made by the liver from propionate, one of the volatile fatty acids made in the rumen.

The idea for this Friday's contribution to the understanding of science is from Katie, a lovely young lady. We were talking about cows. She said cows aren't supposed to eat grain; they should eat grass. It seems that advice has been heard before, perhaps it was a discussion of organic farming or safe beef. Not sure. In any case, I hope to see her again as there are now more questions re safe food sources.

Wiki

Tuesday's Word(s):

2007-06-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

Blog friends, this week's Words are brought to us by the Curmudgeonly Crab!

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word derives from an old Persian fairy tale and was coined by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann (not the same man as the famed American educator) an Englishman then living in Florence. The letter read,

"I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table.

For more information about the story that inspired Horace Walpole to coin the word serendipity, see The Three Princes of Serendip.

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally inexplicable to the person or persons experiencing them. The events would also have to suggest some underlying pattern in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.

Carl Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "'acausal connecting principle'" (i.e. a pattern of connection that cannot be explained by direct causality), "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". Jung introduced the concept in his 1952 paper "Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle", though he had been considering the concept for almost thirty years.

It differs from mere coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic expressed through meaningful relationships or events.
It was a principle Jung felt encompassed his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were due not merely to chance, but instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic.

One of Jung's favourite quotes on Synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".

Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed incoincident.

As you've read, Crabbi is way smarter that me!

Tagged by Barbie!

2007-05-31T21:08:00.000-04:00

Hi David,
Here are your questions!

1. What is the very first thing you would buy if you won a lottery?
2. Whose shoes would you most like to walk in for one day?
3. What's the first thing you do when you find yourself bored?
4. Are there movie quotes you and your family say to one another?
5. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Well, Bloggers, it's happened again! Your humble Blog author has been tagged with more essay questions designed to elicit passions, dreams, hopes, and fears. Some of these questions were answered without hesitation and others pondered. Prizes may await the first woman, (see previous post), who correctly guesses which answers were spontaneous and were not carefully considered!

1a. Lottery cash? Um, maybe a sailboat.

2a. Shoes?

3a. The first thing to come to mind when bored is to look for something to read.

4a. No; we expect one another to be able to think for ourselves.

5a. Liberator of the troops in George's War to Become a Man.

Tuesday's Word: woman

2007-05-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

A woman is a female human. The term woman (irregular plural: women) usually is used for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. However, the term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "Women's rights".

1 Etymology
2 Age and terminology
3 Biology and gender

Etymology

Symbol of the planet Venus, also used to indicate the female gender among animals which reproduce sexually
The English term "Man" (from Proto-Germanic mannaz "man, person") and words derived therefrom can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their gender or age. This is indeed the oldest usage of "Man" in English. This derives from a Proto-Indo-European root *man-" meaning hand. A similar cognate is Old Norse "mund", hand. The distinctive and dexterous hands of humans, compared to those of other animals, are the basis of this term and the similarly derived term, "manual" (from Latin "Manus", hand), by hand.

In Old English the words wer and wyf (also wæpman and wifman) were what was used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, and "Man" was gender neutral. In Middle English man displaced wer as term for "male human", whilst wyfman (which eventually evolved into woman) was retained for "female human". ("Wyf" also evolved into the word "wife".) "Man" does continue to carry its original sense of "Human" however, resulting in an asymmetry sometimes criticized as sexist.

A very common Indo-European root for woman, *gwen-, is the source of English queen (Old English cwēn primarily meant woman, highborn or not; this is still the case in Danish, with the modern spelling kvinde), as well as gynaecology (from Greek gynē), banshee (from Old Irish ban) and zenana (from Persian zan). The Latin fēmina, whence female, is likely from the root in fellāre (to suck), referring to breastfeeding.

The symbol for the planet Venus is the sign also used in biology for the female gender. It is a stylized representation of the goddess Venus's hand mirror or an abstract symbol for the goddess: a circle with a small equilateral cross underneath (Unicode: ♀). The Venus symbol also represented femininity, and in ancient alchemy stood for copper. Alchemists constructed the symbol from a circle (representing spirit) above an equilateral cross (representing matter).

Age and terminology

Painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau- Bather
Womanhood is the period in a female's life after she has transitioned from girlhood, at least physically, having passed the age of menarche. Many cultures have rites of passage to symbolize a woman's coming of age, such as confirmation in some branches of Christianity, bat mitzvah in Judaism, or even just the custom of a special celebration for a certain birthday (generally between 12 and 21).

The word woman can be used generally, to mean any female human, or specifically, to mean an adult female human as contrasted with girl. The word girl originally meant "young person of either sex" in English; it was only around the beginning of the 16th century that it came to mean specifically a female child. Nowadays girl sometimes is used colloquially to refer to a young or unmarried woman. During the early 1970s feminists challenged such use, and use of the word to refer to a fully grown woman may cause offence. In particular previously common terms such as office girl are no longer used.

Conversely, in certain cultures which link family honor with female virginity, the word girl is still used to refer to a never-married woman; in this sense it is used in a fashion roughly analogous to the obsolete English maid or maiden. Referring to an unmarried female as woman may, in such a culture, imply that she is sexually experienced, which would be an insult to her family.
In some settings, the use of girl to refer to an adult female is a vestigial practice (such as girls' night out), even among some elderly women. In this sense, girl may be considered to be the analogue to the British word bloke for a man, although it again fails to meet the parallel status as an adult and the only true American English parallel to girl is boy. Gal aside, some feminists cite this lack of an informal yet respectful term for women as misogynistic; they regard non-parallel usages, such as men and girls, as sexist.

There are various words used to refer to the quality of being a woman. The term "womanhood" merely means the state of being a woman, having passed the menarche; "femininity" is used to refer to a set of supposedly typical female qualities associated with a certain attitude to gender roles; "womanliness" is like "femininity", but is usually associated with a different view of gender roles; "femaleness" is a general term, but is often used as shorthand for "human femaleness"; "distaff" is an archaic adjective derived from women's conventional role as a spinner, now used only as a deliberate archaism; "muliebrity" is a "neologism" (derived from the Latin) meant to provide a female counterpart of "virility", but used very loosely, sometimes to mean merely "womanhood", sometimes "femininity", and sometimes even as a collective term for women.

Biology and gender

The human female reproductive system
In terms of biology, the female sex organs are involved in the reproductive system, whereas the secondary sex characteristics are involved in nurturing children or, in some cultures, attracting a mate. The ovaries, in addition to their regulatory function producing hormones, produce female gametes called eggs which, when fertilized by male gametes (sperm), form new genetic individuals. The uterus is an organ with tissue to protect and nurture the developing fetus and muscle to expel it when giving birth. The vagina is used in copulation and birthing (although the word vagina is often colloquially and incorrectly used for the vulva or external female genitalia, which also includes the labia, the clitoris, and the female urethra). The breast evolved from the sweat gland to produce milk, a nutritious secretion that is the most distinctive characteristic of mammals. In mature women, the breast is generally more prominent than in most other mammals; this prominence, not necessary for milk production, is probably at least partially the result of sexual selection. (For other ways in which men commonly differ physically from women, see Man.)

Spectral karyotype of a human female. The XX combination is formed at the 23rd week of gestation. - National Human Genome Resource Institute
An imbalance of maternal hormonal levels and some chemicals (or drugs) may alter the secondary sexual characteristics of fetuses. Most women have the karyotype 46,XX, but around one in a thousand will be 47,XXX, and one in 2500 will be 45,X. This contrasts with the typical male karotype of 46,XY; thus, the X and Y chromosomes are known as female and male, respectively. Unlike the Y chromosome, the X can come from either the mother or the father, thus genetic studies which focus on the female line use mitochondrial DNA.
Biological factors are not sufficient determinants of whether a person considers themselves a woman or is considered a woman. Intersexed men and women, who have mixed physical and/or genetic features, may use other criteria in making a clear determination. There are also women who have, or have had prior to surgical intervention, a typically male physiology (trans, transgendered or transsexual women; there are varying social, legal, and individual definitions with regard to this issue). (See gender identity.)

Although fewer females than males are born (the ratio is around 1:1.05), due to a longer life expectancy there are only 81 men aged 60 or over for every 100 women of the same age, and among the oldest populations, there are only 53 men for every 100 women.[citation needed] Women have a lower death rate than men, and on average, live five years longer.[citation needed] This is due to a combination of factors: genetics (redundant and varied genes present on sex chromosomes in women); sociology (such as not being expected in most countries to perform military service); health-impacting choices (such as suicide or the use of cigarettes, and alcohol); the presence of the female hormone estrogen, which has a cardioprotective effect in premenopausal women; and the effect of high levels of androgens in men. Out of the total human population, there are 101.3 men for every 100 women (source: 2001 World Almanac).
Most women go through menarche and are then able to become pregnant and bear children.[1] This generally requires internal fertilization of her eggs with the sperm of a man through sexual intercourse, though artificial insemination or the surgical implantation of an existing embryo is also possible (see reproductive technology). The study of female reproduction and reproductive organs is called gynaecology. Women generally reach menopause in their late 40s or early 50s, at which point their ovaries cease producing estrogen and they can no longer become pregnant.
To a large extent, women suffer from the same illnesses as men.[citation needed] However, there are some diseases that primarily affect women, such as lupus. Also, there are some sex-related illnesses that are found more frequently or exclusively in women, e.g., breast cancer, cervical cancer, or ovarian cancer. Women and men may have different symptoms of an illness and may also respond differently to medical treatment. This area of medical research is studied by gender-based medicine.

During early fetal development, embryos of both sexes appear gender neutral; the release of hormones is what changes physical appearance male or female. As in other cases without two sexes, such as species that reproduce asexually, the gender-neutral appearance is closer to female than to male.

Your blog author loves women! Especially the ones which are soft, sweet, and smell nice!

Wiki

Tuesday's Word: rhetoric

2007-05-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

Rhetoric (from Greek ῥήτωρ, rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken and written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. In this sense, there is a divide between classical rhetoric (with the aforementioned definition) and contemporary practices of rhetoric.
Historically, Classical Rhetoric has its inception in a school of Pre-Socratic philosophers known as Sophists. It is later taught as one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, grammar concerned itself with correct, accurate, pleasing, and effective language use through the study and criticism of literary models, dialectic concerned itself with the testing and invention of new knowledge through a process of question and answer, and rhetoric concerned itself with persuasion in public and political settings such as assemblies and courts of law. As such, rhetoric is said to flourish in open and democratic societies with rights of free speech, free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion of the population.
Contemporary Studies of Rhetoric have a more diverse range of practices and meanings than was the case in ancient times. The concept of rhetoric has thus shifted widely during its 2500-year history. Rhetoricians have recently argued that the classical understanding of rhetoric is limited because persuasion depends on communication, which in turn depends on meaning. Thus the scope of rhetoric is understood to include much more than simply public--legal and political--discourse. This emphasis on meaning and how it is constructed and conveyed draws on a large body of critical and social theory (see literary theory and Critical Theory), philosophy (see Post-structuralism and Hermeneutics), and problems in social science methodology (see Reflexivity). So while rhetoric has traditionally been thought of being involved in such arenas as politics, law, public relations, lobbying, marketing and advertising, the study of rhetoric has recently entered into diverse fields such as science, religion, journalism, history, literature and even cartography and architecture. Every aspect of human life and thought that depends on the articulation and communication of meaning can be said to involve elements of the rhetorical.

Wiki

Uses for Duct Tape

2007-05-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

Planting trees? Nothing gives seedlings a better start than duct tape around the trunk. It gives them a feeling of power and superiority and simultaneously prevents pests from gnawing at their bark.

Jerry Falwell

2007-05-16T23:13:00.000-04:00

Mr. Falwell’s Legacy

By Mustang Bobby Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Permalink

Seeing as how Fred Phelps and his sorry family have announced that they’re going to picket the funeral of Jerry Falwell, I thought about writing about his passing and the interesting legacy that he’s left behind. But Alan Wolfe of Salon.com beat me to it, and he says pretty much what I was thinking.

One never wants to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Jerry Falwell, how can one not? Falwell will always be remembered for his “700 Club” comment in the wake of Sept. 11: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” Even though Falwell later apologized, the damage had been done: A sacred moment had been used for profane purpose.

And that, really, is Falwell’s legacy. To the religious life of the United States he made no significant contribution. But to the political life of the country, he made one: He founded the Moral Majority. In so doing, Falwell managed to take something holy — one does not have to be a Christian to admire the life and teachings of Jesus Christ — and turned it into something partisan and divisive. Falwell, the quintessential conservative Christian, was always more conservative than Christian. To the extent that history will remember him, it will be as a politician, not as a preacher.

[…]Instead of pondering Jerry Falwell’s legacy, we would be better off asking how this man ever become a public figure in the first place. America has had more than its share of religiously inspired demagogues — Dr. Fred Swartz, Billy James Hargis, Carl McIntyre come to mind — but they are forgotten figures, marginal even to the times in which lived. One would like to believe that the United States has become a bigger and better country since the days when men like them preached about captive nations and denounced the pernicious influence of rock ‘n’ roll. But then there is Jerry Falwell. In death, as he did in life, he reminds us that demagoguery never dies; it just changes its form. Jerry Falwell expressed great hate for a lot of his fellow Americans. It is no wonder that so many of them will greet his death with something less than love.I didn’t hate Jerry Falwell. Hating someone requires that you actually care about them, and Jerry Falwell meant nothing to me personally.

The greatest legacy you can achieve is to leave the world a better place than you found it. I don’t believe Mr. Falwell did that, and I believe that a great deal of the fear and divisiveness in this country can be attributed to him and his work. I did not like the fact that he was very skillful at taking something as intensely personal and spiritual as a religious belief and turn it into a political weapon, nor did I like it that he used his considerable abilities as a huckster to grow rich by exploiting the greed, fear, and paranoia of the foolish and the weak.

But Mr. Falwell’s death means nothing to me, and that is perhaps the most damning thing you can say about someone and their life.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Tuesday's Word: VO2 max

2007-05-15T20:59:00.000-04:00

VO2 max

(Redirected from Maximum Oxygen Uptake)

The correct title of this article is VO2 max. It features superscript or subscript characters that are substituted or omitted because of technical limitations.

VO2 max is the maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise. (The derivation is V̇ - volume per time, O2 - oxygen, max - maximum). It is also called maximal oxygen consumption or maximal oxygen uptake. Expressed either as an absolute rate in litres of oxygen per minute (l/min) or as a relative rate in millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of bodyweight per minute (ml/kg/min), the latter expression is often used to compare the performance of endurance sports athletes.

1 Measuring VO2 max
1.1 Fick Equation
1.2 Cooper test
2 VO2 max Levels

Measuring VO2 max

Accurately measuring VO2 max involves a physical effort sufficient in duration and intensity to fully tax the aerobic energy system. In general clinical and athletic testing, this usually involves a graded exercise test (either on a treadmill or on a cycloergometer) in which exercise intensity is progressively increased while measuring ventilation and oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration of the inhaled and exhaled air. V̇O2 max is reached when oxygen consumption remains at steady state despite an increase in workload.

Fick Equation

VO2 max is properly defined by the Fick Equation:
VO2max = Q(CaO2 − CvO2)
where Q is the cardiac output of the heart, CaO2 is the arterial oxygen content, and CvO2 is the venous oxygen content.

Cooper test

Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper conducted a study for the United States Air Force in the late 1960s. One of the results of this was the Cooper test in which the distance covered running in 12 minutes is measured. An approximate estimate for VO2 max (in mL/min/kg) is:

where d12 is distance (in metres) covered in 12 minutes. There also exist several other reliable tests and VO2 max calculators to estimate VO2 max.

VO2 max Levels

VO2 max varies considerably in the population. The average young untrained male will have a VO2 max of approximately 3.5 litres/minute and 45 mL/min/kg.[citation needed] The average young untrained female will score a VO2 max of approximately 2.0 litres/minute and 38 mL/min/kg.[citation needed] These scores can improve with training and decrease with age.
In sports where endurance is an important component in performance, such as cycling, rowing, cross-country skiing and running, world class athletes typically have high VO2 maximums. World class male athletes, cyclists and cross-country skiers typically exceed 80 mL/kg/min and a rare few may exceed 90 mL/kg/min for men and 70 mL/kg/min for women. Three time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond is reported to have had a VO2 max of 92.5 at his peak - one of the highest ever recorded, while cross-country skier Bjørn Dæhlie measured at an astounding 96 mL/kg/min.[citation needed] It should also be noted that Daehlie's result was achieved out of season and that physiologist Erlend Hem who was responsible for the testing stated that he would not discount the possibility of the skier passing 100 mL/kg/min at his absolute peak. By comparison a competitive club athlete might achieve a VO2 max of around 70 mL/kg/min. World class rowers are physically very large endurance athletes and typically do not score as high on a per weight basis, but often score exceptionally high in absolute terms. A less size-biased measure is to divide by rather than mass. Male rowers typically score VO2 maximums over 6 litres/minute, and some exceptional individuals have exceeded 8 L/min.
To put this into perspective, thoroughbred horses have a VO2max of around 180 mL/min/kg. Siberian dogs running in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race sled race have VO2 values as high as 240[[1]].

Happy Mother's Day!

2007-05-13T09:38:00.000-04:00

Happy Mother's Day!

Had lunch with my mother at the local Woman's Club where she is a past president. This phot was taken in the garden behind the house, Five Oaks.

Five Oaks was designed by noted Cleveland architect Charles F. Schweinfurth and built 1892-1894 for Mr. and Mrs. J. Walter McClymonds. The name was adopted from five oak trees that stood on the lawn. An oak motif, employing designs of the acorn, leaf, and tree, is used extensively in the house.

The exterior is an eclectic type of architecture, the design which Schweinfurth was working with at the time. There are features of Gothic, Romanesque, Tudor, and French Renaissance.

Three entrances lead to the grand hall and its imposing staircase with two landings. Large doorways open from this hall to the music room, reception room, south parlor, library, dining room and billiard room. The kitchen and two pantries are at the rear. Five fireplaces grace the first floor, each with decorated mantel and unique marble facing.

Wood of mahogany and oak, all hand carved, is used for finishing and decorating on the first floor. Walls are painted and stenciled or decorated, many in gold leaf or silver.

Many artifacts from the McClymonds' travel are distributed throughout the rooms. These include oil paintings, pictures, sculptures, vases, and some pieces of furniture.

The second floor consists of a large central hall off which doorways lead to five bedrooms, one of which is a large master bedroom and one a bedroom-sitting-room combination. On the third floor there are also three bathrooms, a linen closet, and sewing room; the fireplaces number five.

The third floor has a ballroom, minstrel balcony, and two rooms that were used for card playing and serving of refreshments. To the back are two bedrooms and a bath for the accommodation of any live-in help.

Tuesday's Word: Blues

2007-05-08T08:05:00.000-04:00

blues: African-American form of secular folk music, related to jazz, that is based on a simple, repetitive poetic-musical structure.

This week's Word was borrowed from Blogger extraordinaire, Melissa!

From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray, this Blogger loves the blues!

Essentials of Music

Get set! Point! Fire!

2007-05-04T07:21:00.000-04:00

On May 04, 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot students at Kent State University. 4 dead, 9 wounded. Republican Governor James Rhodes sent the soldiers to Kent to stop Vietnam War protesters. This post is dedicated to the memory of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. America had turned on its own. Read about the SHOOT order.

Tuesday's Word: frustration

2007-05-01T06:49:00.000-04:00

Noun
Singular frustration
Plural frustrations
frustration (plural frustrations)
The act of frustrating, or the state, or an instance of being frustrated
A thing that frustrates
The feeling of annoyance when one's actions are criticized or hindered
Anger not directed at anything or anyone in particular

Bloggers, there is a pretty photo of tulips awaiting you. They stupid thing won't copy and paste! Any ideas?

Wikitionary

Thursday's Quote: Raymond Chandler

2007-04-26T05:45:00.000-04:00

Chandler wrote, "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."

Home Defense

2007-04-25T06:27:00.000-04:00

Cleveland man caught up in gun debate

Posted by Damian G. Guevara and Patrick O’Donnell April 23, 2007 19:56PM
Categories: Breaking News, Crime
Damon Wells is the man gun supporters imagined when they fought for the right to carry concealed weapons.
He had a permit to carry his gun, and he had the gun on him when a pair of teenage thieves approached him Saturday night on his front porch.
When one of the youths pulled a gun, Wells whipped out his and shot one of the boys multiple times in the chest, police said.
Arthur Buford, 15, died after stumbling away and collapsing on a sidewalk near East 134th Street and Kinsman Road.
City prosecutors decided Monday that Wells, 25, was justified and would not be charged for what appears to be the first time a concealed-carry permit holder has shot and killed an attacker.
Nonetheless, the shooting reignited the debate that roared three years ago when Ohio's concealed-carry law took effect.
Gun supporters said the weapon saved Wells' life. Opponents said it took Buford's - that the 15-year-old might be alive if a citizen had not been armed.
An angry throng of about 30 youths gathered Monday and set up a memorial at the intersection where Buford, a freshman at John F. Kennedy High School, died.
His cousin, Tameka Foster, 21, questioned why police refused to punish Buford's shooter. "They let that man run out freely," Foster said. "My cousin is dead."
Buford's accomplice disappeared after the shooting and had not been caught Monday night. Police found a .38-caliber handgun in the mail chute of a nearby house. They believe it belonged to Buford or the other suspect, Lt. Thomas Stacho said.
Police took a .40-caliber Smith and Wesson firearm from Wells, the police report shows.
Both sides of the gun debate said it was sad that a teenager died.
"It's tragic," said Jim Irvine, chairman of the Buckeye Firearm Association. "Anytime somebody dies it's tragic, but it's hard to have any sympathy when he chose to have a gun and go threaten somebody's life."
Irvine said it was "great that a potential victim is able to continue his life instead of having a criminal take it."
Toby Hoover, of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, said she had not heard of any other fatal shooting involving a concealed-carry permit holder.
"This is one of the few where they actually used it to stop a crime," Hoover said.
But, she said, "there's still a dead kid here."
A man who answered phone a number for Wells refused to comment and hung up. No one answered the door at Wells' home.
Plain Dealer reporters Jesse Tinsley and Brie Zelter and researcher Cheryl Diamond contributed to this story.

Friends, I don't live in a high crime area and thus don't feel the need to carry a weapon. Clearly, some people have good reasons for doing so.

Tuesday's Word: Pacifica

2007-04-24T06:37:00.000-04:00

pa-ci-fi-ca, a. pacific; tranquil

When asked which coast he preferred, only one came to mind!

Melissa; The New Webster's English Spanish Dictionary

Earth Day!

2007-04-22T07:13:00.000-04:00

The sun sets over New York on October 21, 2000, as seen by space shuttle astronauts. The picture, taken looking toward the southwest from southern Canada, shows a layer of smog extending across central New York, western Lake Erie and Ohio, and farther west. The bodies of water are highlighted by the glint of the sun. “I got more of a sense of Earth as home, a place where we live,” recalled two-time shuttle astronaut Winston Scott. “And of course you want to take care of your home. You want it clean. You want it safe,” he said.

Happy Earth Day, Earth!

It's a rare day in Ohio when we have clear skies and warm temps. Gotta go outside!

Thursday's Quote: Bertrand Russell

2007-04-17T12:07:00.000-04:00

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate(1872-1970)

Yes, Bloggers, this is a day late.

Wordsmith

Tuesday's Word: intolerance

2007-04-16T08:28:00.001-04:00

Nice try, but Imus isn't a nice guy

Friday, April 13, 2007
Connie Schultz Plain Dealer Columnist

This time, they win.
With grace and courage, the fine young women of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights proved themselves to be warriors on the basketball court. Now they are poised to be the victors in a much larger arena.
All they have to do is keep their hold on the high ground, where, so far, so few have dared to tread.
I am weary of the many past guests on Don Imus' show, mostly East Coast journalists and Washington politicians, trying to explain why they were willing to go on the shock jock's show time and again despite his track record of misogyny, racism and homophobia, to keep the list short.
Many of them are now denouncing his behavior, and my only question to them is: Where've you been, guys?
The ones really grating on the nerves are those insisting that, despite Imus' recent vile, racist take on the Rutgers team, he's a nice guy.
Here we go again: the Nice Guy Defense. Just like Mel Gibson was a nice guy even though he got drunk and bashed Jews. And Michael Richards was a nice guy after he lost his temper and started hurling the n-word like hand grenades. That's some club they've got going, those nice guys.
Maybe something happens to your common sense when you breathe in all that ocean air, but here in the Midwest we know nice, and Imus ain't it.
Nice guys don't make a career out of bashing the usual AM talk-radio targets: women, minorities, gays and lesbians and just about anyone unable to defend themselves.
Nice guys accept real consequences fAnd nice guys don't mine the dark wells of racism to rob innocent young women of their dignity and achievements, and then call it a joke. I'm reminded of my friend and Plain Dealer book editor Karen Long's take on such claims of humor: A joke is just the truth that went out and got drunk.
Two weeks ago, I saw for the first time the Rutgers women in action. They were here in Cleveland for the NCAA Women's Final Four, and they were a sight to behold -- strong and fast, with a poise I couldn't have even imagined possessing at their young age.
They won the semifinals but lost the championship. They're a young team, though, and so they left knowing most of them would have another shot at it next year. They set their sights high.
Then Imus tried to take them down, but he took on the wrong women this time.
On Wednesday, newspapers across the country, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, ran the kind of photo that makes you stop and stare. There they were, the beautiful, talented black women of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, lined up in a row, wearing red jackets and faces that looked more stricken than defiant.
Every last one of them is somebody's daughter, and like parents everywhere, I imagined my reaction had Imus aimed his ugliness at mine. My heart pounds at the thought of it.
What will all this hoopla do to those young women? Barbara Danforth insists the news on that front is all good. She is black, the mother of a teenage daughter and the president and CEO of YWCA of Greater Cleveland. She lives what I only have to think about, and she is optimistic about their future.
"The question, of course, is, How do you get over something like this?' " Danforth said. "If these young women had been isolated, if there had not been widespread support for them, then it would have meant society didn't care about them. That carries long-term consequences, and it could have harmed them a great deal."
But this time, just about everyone seems to care. And that makes all the difference, Danforth said.
"When you have such a critical mass of people standing up for you and expressing outrage, then this sort of thing can pass, and it can pass quickly."
So, the good news: The nice guys win.
Even better news: The nice guys are the women of Rutgers.

To reach Connie Schultz:
cschultz@plaind.com, 216-999-5087
Previous columns online:
cleveland.com/columns

Tuesday's Word: l-a-t-e!

2007-04-10T23:08:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers,
We've all been late a few times, and, while not wishing to play country music by whining, I'm late today. This humble Blogger apologizes; it's been a busy day.

Blog Against Theocracy

2007-04-07T20:42:00.000-04:00

Blogswarm Promotes Support For Church-State Separation And Religious Liberty
This weekend, April 6-8, various well-known bloggers including BlueGal, Mock, Paper, Scissors, Neural Gourmet and Talk2Action will be participating in a "Blog Against Theocracy".
This blog-a-thon is intended to show support for separation of church and state and true religious liberty.
The blogswarm has drawn a strong commendation from First Freedom First, a joint project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and The Interfaith Alliance Foundation.
Since First Freedom First was launched in 2006, some 130,000 people have signed a petition highlighting the dangers posed by religious coercion in public life. Among the noteworthy Americans to have already signed the petition are Walter Cronkite, Phil Donahue, Laura Flanders and Judith Light.
This weekend's blogswarm, while not sponsored by First Freedom First, reflects FFF goals. Organizers say there are no real guidelines to the blogswarm. The idea is to post at least once from Friday to Sunday against theocracy and in favor of the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state.
Once bloggers have posted, an email with the URL of the post may be sent to bluegalsblog@gmail.com and the link will be posted on the Blog Against Theocracy blog.

The First Freedom First Team
Donna Red Wing and Eric Shutt of The Interfaith Alliance FoundationBeth Corbin and Bethany Moore of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Tuesday's Word: grass

2007-04-03T06:19:00.000-04:00

Grass is a common word that generally describes a monocotyledonous green plant in the family Poaceae. True grasses include most plants grown as cereals, for pasture, and for lawns. They include some more specialised crops such as lemongrass, as well as many ornamental plants, and some weeds. They also include plants often not considered to be grasses, such as bamboos. Grasses and grass-like plants have always been important to human beings. They provide the majority of food crops, and have numerous other uses, such as feeding animals, and for lawns.

The grass is growin' and needs mowed. The height should be between 1.5 and 3 inches; use a sharp blade. Water around an inch per week, in the afternoon, so the grass dries before night. The soil acidity should be pH 6.8 to 7.0 and may be adjusted. And what do those numbers on the fertilizer bag mean? They refer to the ratios of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Here is an easy way to remember the proper times for lawn maintenance: IMIL. Our acronym stands for Income tax day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. It is only a guide for the suggested times of year for using lawn products.

I: Crabgrass needs a pre-emergent product as it dies each year, leaving seedlings. It is also time to apply fertilizer, 19-4-4.

M: Apply a broadleaf and viney weed control product, 30-4-4. The application of 2, 4-D, (dimethylamine), is effective.

I: Apply a pesticide, 30-4-4, to prevent grubs. No grubs mean no food for skunks!

L: More fertilizer, 10-16-20. This time of year is also best for planting grass and trees.

The neighbor, a Mr. Jones, has a lawn that looks as though it came from a nursery!

Tuesday's Word: triathlon

2007-03-26T21:04:00.001-04:00

Triathlon is an athletic event consisting of swimming, cycling and running. In most modern triathlons, these events are placed back-to-back in immediate sequence and a competitor's official time includes the time required to "transition" between the individual legs of the race, including any time necessary for changing clothes and shoes.

History
According to former Ironman Champion, triathlon historian and author Scott Tinley, the origin of Triathlon is anecdotally attributed to a race in France during the 1920-1930s that was called "Les trois sports", "La Course des Débrouillards" and "La course des Touche à Tout". The sport made its debut on the Olympic program at the Sydney Games. The history of the sport is documented in Scott Tinley's book, "Triathlon: A Personal History" (Velo Press, 2002).

How a triathlon works
In a typical triathlon, racers arrive at the venue to set up their spots in the "transition area". Here they will generally have a rack to hold their bicycles and a small area of ground space for shoes, clothing, etc. Racers run out of the water and attempt to change from their swim gear into cycling gear as rapidly as possible. The cycling stage proceeds around a marked course and finishes back at the transition area, where racers rack their bicycles and change quickly into running shoes before heading out for the final stage. In most races, "aid stations" located on the bike and run courses provide water and energy drinks to the athletes as they pass through.

Rules of triathlon
Traditionally, triathlon is an individual sport: each athlete is competing against the course and the clock for the best time. As such, athletes are not allowed to receive assistance from anyone else inside or outside the race, with the exception of race-sanctioned aid volunteers who distribute food and water on the course. Should a competitor's bike malfunction he may proceed with the race as long as it is done with the bicycle in tow.

Triathlon and fitness
Triathletes tend to be extraordinarily fit, and many amateur athletes choose triathlon specifically for its fitness benefits. Because all three events are endurance sports, nearly all of triathlon training is cardiovascular exercise.

Swimming
Triathletes will use their legs less vigorously and more carefully than other swimmers, conserving their leg muscles for the cycle and run to follow. Many triathletes use altered swim strokes to compensate for turbulent, aerated water and to conserve energy for a long swim.

Cycling
Triathlon cycling is very different from most professional bicycle racing because it does not allow drafting.

Running
The primary distinguishing feature of running in a triathlon is that it occurs after the athlete has already been exercising in two other disciplines for an extended period of time, so many muscles are already tired.

Legendary and well-known events
Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of individual triathlons are held around the world each year. A few of these races are legendary and/or favorites of the triathlon community because they have a long history, or because they have particularly grueling courses and race conditions. A few are listed here.

Hawaii Ironman World Championship, Escape from Alcatraz, Wildflower, Life Time Fitness Triathlon, HP Norseman Xtreme Triathlon, Enduroman "Arch to Arc Challenge," Chicago Triathlon.

Wikipedia

Tuesday's Word: exercise

2007-03-20T09:42:00.000-04:00

Physical exercise is the performance of some activity in order to develop or maintain physical fitness and overall health. It is often directed toward also honing athletic ability or skill. Frequent and regular physical exercise is an important component in the prevention of some of the diseases of affluence such as heart disease, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.[1][2]
Contents
1 Types of exercise
2 Exercise benefits
3 Common myths
3.1 Targeted fat reduction
3.2 Muscle and fat tissue
4 Excessive exercise
5 Nutrition and recovery
6 Exercise and brain function
7 Activities providing physical exercise
8 Categories of physical exercise
9 Breathing
10 See also

Types of exercise
Exercises are generally grouped into three types depending on the overall effect they have on the human body:
Flexibility exercises such as stretching improves the range of motion of muscles and joints.[3]
Aerobic exercises such as cycling, walking and running focus on increasing cardiovascular endurance.[4]
Anaerobic exercises such as weight training, functional training or sprinting increases short-term muscle strength.[5]

Exercise benefits
Physical exercise is important for maintaining physical fitness and can contribute positively to maintaining a healthy weight; building and maintaining healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility; promoting physiological well-being; reducing surgical risks; and strengthening the immune system.
Frequent and regular aerobic exercise has been shown to help prevent or treat serious and life-threatening chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, insomnia, and depression. Strength training appears to have continuous energy-burning effects that persist for about 24 hours after the training, though they do not offer the same cardio vascular benefits of aerobic exercises. Exercise can also increase energy and raise one's threshold for pain.
There is conflicting evidence as to whether vigorous exercise (more than 70% of VO2 Max) is more or less beneficial than moderate exercise (40 to 70% of VO2 Max). Some studies have shown that vigorous exercise executed by healthy individuals can effectively increase opioid peptides (aka endorphins, a naturally occurring opiate that in conjunction with other neurotransmitters is responsible for exercise induced euphoria and has been shown to be addictive), positively influence hormone production (i.e., increase testosterone and growth hormone), and help prevent neuromuscular diseases,[6] benefits that are not as fully realised with moderate exercise.
Both aerobic and anaerobic exercise also work to increase the mechanical efficiency of the heart by increasing cardiac volume (aerobic exercise), or myocardial thickness (strength training, see Organ hypertrophy).

Common myths
Many myths have arisen surrounding exercise, some of which have a basis in reality, and some which are completely false. Myths include:
That excessive exercise can cause immediate death. Death by exercise has some small basis in fact. Water intoxication can result from prolific sweating (producing electrolyte losses) combined with consumption of large amounts of water (e.g. when running a marathon). It is also possible to die from a heart attack or similar affliction if overly intense exercise is performed by someone who is not in a reasonable state of fitness for that particular activity. A doctor should always be consulted before any radical changes are made to a person's current exercise regimen. Rhabdomyolysis is also a risk.
That weightlifting makes you short or stops growth. One caveat is that heavy weight training in adolescents can damage the epiphyseal plate of long bones.[7]

Targeted fat reduction
It is a common belief that exercise and training a particular body part will preferentially shed the fat on that part; for example, that doing sit-ups is the most direct way to reduce subcutaneous belly fat. This is false: one cannot reduce fat from one area of the body to the exclusion of others. Most of the energy derived from fat gets to the muscle through the bloodstream and reduces stored fat in the entire body, from the last place where fat was deposited. Sit-ups may improve the size and shape of abdominal muscles but will not specifically target belly fat for loss. Instead, such exercise will help reduce overall body fat and shrink the size of fat cells.

Muscle and fat tissue
Some people incorrectly believe that muscle tissue will turn into fat once a person stops exercising. In reality, fat tissue and muscle tissue are fundamentally different. However, the more common expression of this myth "the will turn to fat" has a grain of truth. Although a muscle cell will not become a fat cell, the material that makes up muscle can in fact turn to fat. The catabolism of muscle fibers releases protein, which can be converted to glucose that can be burned as fuel, and excesses of which can be stored as fat.[8] Moreover, the composition of a body part can change toward less muscle and more fat, so that a cross-section of the upper-arm for example, will have a greater area corresponding to fat and a smaller area corresponding to muscle. This is not muscle "turning to fat" however, it is simply a combination of muscle atrophy and increased fat storage in different tissues of the same body part. Another element of increased fatty deposits is that of diet, as most trainees will not significantly reduce their diet in order to compensate for the lack of exercise/activity.

Excessive exercise
Exercise is a stressor and the stresses of exercise has a catabolic effect on the body - contractile proteins within muscles are consumed for energy, carbohydrates and fats are similarly consumed and connective tissues are stressed and can microtears. However, given adequate nutrition and sufficient rest to avoid overtraining, the body's reaction to this stimulus is to adapt and replete tissues at a higher level than what existed before exercising. The results are all the training effects of regularly exercise - increased muscular strength, endurance, bone density and connective tissue toughness.
Too much exercise can be harmful. The body part exercised needs at least a day of rest, which is why some health experts say one should exercise every other day or 3 times a week. Without proper rest, the chance of stroke or other circulation problems increases,[9] and muscle tissue may develop slowly.
Inappropriate exercise can do more harm than good, with the definition of "inappropriate" varying according to the individual. For many activities, especially running, there are significant injuries that occur with poorly regimented exercise schedules. In extreme instances, over-exercising induces serious performance loss. Unaccustomed overexertion of muscles leads to rhabdomyolysis (damage to muscle) most often seen in new army recruits.[10] Another danger is overtraining in which the intensity or volume of training exceeds the body's capacity to recover between bouts.[11]
Stopping excessive exercise suddenly can also create a change in mood. Feelings of depression and agitation can occur when withdrawal from the natural endorphins produced by exercise occurs. Exercise should be controlled by each body's inherent limitations. While one set of joints and muscles may have the tolerance to withstand multiple marathons, another body may be damaged by 20 minutes of light jogging. This must be determined by each individual.

Nutrition and recovery
Proper nutrition is at least as important to health as exercise. When exercising it becomes even more important to have good diet to ensure the body has the correct ratio of macronutrients whilst providing ample micronutrients, this is to aid the body with the recovery process following strenuous exercise.[12]
Proper rest and recovery are also as important to health as exercise, otherwise the body exists in a permanently injured state and will not improve or adapt adequately to the exercise. Hence, it is important to remember not to do the same type of exercise two days in a row.
The above two factors can be compromised by psychological compulsions (eating disorders such as exercise bulimia, anorexia, and other bulimias), misinformation, a lack of organization, or a lack of motivation. These all lead to a decreased state of health.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness can occur after any kind of exercise, particularly if the body is in an unconditioned state relative to that exercise.[13]

Exercise and brain function

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Physical exercise
In the long term, exercise is beneficial to the brain by:
increasing the blood and oxygen flow to the brain
increasing growth factors that help create new nerve cells
increasing chemicals in the brain that help cognition [14]

Activities providing physical exercise
Aerobics
Calisthenics
Cycling
Dancing
Functional training
Juggling
Skipping
Martial arts
Metal-rod exercises
Parkour
Pilates
Rock climbing
Running
Sports
Strength training
Stretching
Swimming
Walking
Yoga
Step

Categories of physical exercise
Aerobic exercise
Anaerobic exercise
Circuit training
Strength training
Agility training
Sometimes the terms 'dynamic' and 'static' are used. 'Dynamic' exercises such as steady running, tend to produce a lowering of the diastolic blood pressure during exercise, due to the improved blood flow. Conversely, static exercise (such as weight-lifting) can cause the systolic pressure to rise significantly.

Breathing
Active exhalation during physical exercise helps the body to increase its maximum lung capacity, and oxygen uptake. This results in greater cardiac efficiency, since the heart has to do less work to oxygenate the muscles, and there is also increased muscular efficiency through greater blood flow. Consciously breathing deeply during aerobic exercise helps this development of the heart lung efficiency.[15]

See also
List of basic exercise topics
Exercise physiology
Delayed onset muscle soreness
Exercise bulimia
Exercise equipment
Exercise hypertension
Exercise-induced anaphylaxis
Exercise-induced asthma
Exercise intensity
Exercise intolerance
Metabolic equivalent
Muscle
Nutrition
Training effect
Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT)

Bloggers, I love exercise and feel guilt if not doing enough.

Wikipedia

Irish Day

2007-03-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

Margaret Ella Boles was just off the boat when she established her bloodline on American soil. My maternal great grandmother, born in NOV 1853, was Irish. St. Pat's is the day on which all of the civilized world dreams of being Irish. For bloggers near and far, please help celebrate the day Paddy drove out the English snakes from the Republic of Ireland. Have a shot o' poteen or a pint o' stout!

Remember, also, that this is the B-day of the Lady of Tart!

Tuesday's Word: pi

2007-03-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

The mathematical constant π is an irrational real number, approximately equal to 3.14159, which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry, and has many uses in mathematics, physics, and engineering.

1 The letter π
2 Definition
3 Numerical value

The letter π

Main article: pi (letter)

The name of the Greek letter π is pi, and this spelling is used in typographical contexts where the Greek letter is not available or where its usage could be problematic. When referring to this constant, the symbol π is always pronounced like "pie" in English, the conventional English pronunciation of the letter.
The constant is named "π" because it is the first letter of the Greek words περιφέρεια 'periphery'[1] and περίμετρος 'perimeter', i.e. 'circumference'.
π is Unicode character U+03C0 ("Greek small letter pi").

Definition

Area of the circle = π × area of the shaded square
In Euclidean plane geometry, π is defined either as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or as the ratio of a circle's area to the area of a square whose side is the radius. The constant π may be defined in other ways that avoid the concepts of arc length and area, for example as twice the smallest positive x for which cos(x) = 0.[2] The formulæ below illustrate other (equivalent) definitions.

Numerical value

The numerical value of π truncated to 50 decimal places is:
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510
While the value of pi has been computed to billions of digits, practical science and engineering will rarely require more than 10 decimal places. As an example, computing the circumference of the Earth's equator from its radius using only 10 decimal places of pi yields an error of less than 0.2 millimeters. The exact value of π has an infinite decimal expansion: its decimal expansion never ends and does not repeat, since π is an irrational number (and indeed, a transcendental number). This infinite sequence of digits has fascinated mathematicians and laymen alike, and much effort over the last few centuries has been put into computing more digits and investigating the number's properties. Despite much analytical work, and supercomputer calculations that have determined over 1 trillion digits of π, no simple pattern in the digits has ever been found.

Bloggers, tomorrow is Pi Day! There is a club for Pi people. One may be certain they wouldn't have a dum blogger who counts on his fingers!

Wikipedia

Tuesday's Word: botany

2007-03-06T07:34:00.001-05:00

Botany is the scientific study of plant life. As a branch of biology, it is also called plant science(s) or plant biology. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study plants including: structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development and diseases of plants, chemical properties and evolutionary relationships between different plant groups. The study of plants and botany began with tribal lore, used to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making botany one of the oldest sciences. From this ancient interest in plants, the scope of botany has increased to include the study of over 550,000 kinds or species of living organisms.

Wikipedia

Lent

2007-02-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Each Friday night after work, Bubba would fire up his outdoor grill and cook venison steak. But, all of Bubba's neighbors were Catholic--and since it was Lent, they were forbidden from eating red meat on Friday. The delicious aroma from the grilled venison steaks was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful that they finally talked to their priest. The Priest came to visit Bubba and suggested that he become Catholic. After several classes and much study, Bubba attended Mass---and the Priest sprinkled holy water over him and said, "You were born a Baptist and raised as a Baptist but now you are Catholic." Bubba's neighbors were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived and the wonderful aroma of grilled venison filled the neighborhood. The priest was called immediately by the neighbors. As the Priest rushed into Bubba's yard, clutching a rosary, and prepared to scold him, he stopped and watched in amazement. There stood Bubba, clutching a small bottle of holy water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat and chanted: You wuz born a deer, you wuz raised a deer, but now you are a catfish!

Tuesday's Word: Troll

2007-02-18T19:03:00.000-05:00

In Internet terminology , a troll is a person who enters an established community such as an online discussion forum and intentionally tries to cause disruption, often in the form of posting messages that are inflammatory, insulting, incorrect, inaccurate, absurd, or off-topic, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others. Trolls can also be existing members of such a community that rarely post and often contribute no useful information to the thread, but instead make argumentative posts in an attempt to discredit another person, more often than not based on what they thought was said rather than what was actually said by the other person, concentrating almost exclusively on facts irrelevant to the point of the conversation, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others. The key element under attack by a troll is the forum or groups hegemony. Hegemony refers to the recognized and agreed upon power structure of the said group or community. To this extent, a troll does not necessarily have to make malicious or incorrect comments. For example, a liberal minded person who approaches a forum frequented by right-wing neo-nazis, may be considered a troll, even if no lies or attacks are made.
A person who retaliates (using what ever means) as a result of a misunderstanding (or as a way of rebelling against the over zealous application of rules) is not a troll. A troll is a person who approaches a board with the specific intention of destroying a forum's hegemony, either with no particular motive or provocation in mind, other than to be purely destructive or if the motive or provocation is against the ethos of the board. For example, a neo-nazi approaching a jewish forum with the intention of attacking the members, purely because the neo-nazi knows the forum to contain Jewish members, may be considered a troll. A Jewish member of the said forum, who becomes angry with the neo-nazi and breaks the rules in gaining revenge against the neo-nazi, and who is subsequently banned and who then begins to rebel, is not a troll.
The general element that determines whether a malicious user is a troll or not, is the level of indignant emotions present in the person, coupled with the persons history with the forum or group. An indignant user who has had a previous normal relationship with the group is not a troll, even if the user uses methods of attack that are characteristic of a troll attack.
The term Troll is often used as an insult in online communications, resulting in it being largely misapplied.
Wikipedia

Blog readers, trolls often hide their identies under such names as Sassy, Jimbo, Rudy, Rhesus, Looks, and Tim Murphy. There are others, but who besides their parole officers would care? Here is one gem sent by "Jimbo:"

Jimbo said...
Fair warning.David Rice, calling me "Miss" does not insult me. The fact that you think it does is rather sad.I suggest you stop bad mouthing me (Rhesus Pieces, Jimbo, Look down on them). You can ask "Pinny" what happened to the last blogger that did. I'll just tell you that he no longer has his blog.Don't even talk about me, or we'll settle this on your blog and on the blogs of anyone who dares to show on yours. We could also settle this face to face.If you want to talk about me make your comments to me at this email address:itsjimbo@verizon.net

Happy Chinese New Year!

2007-02-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Contrary to its rather negative reputation in the West, the Pig of Chinese Astrology may be the most generous and honorable Sign of the Zodiac. Pigs are nice to a fault and possess impeccable manners and taste. They have so much of the perfectionist in them that others may be inclined to perceive them as snobs, but this is a misconception. Pigs are simply possessed of a truly luxurious nature, one that delights in finery and riches (in surroundings, food, lovemaking and otherwise). This Sign believes in the best qualities of mankind and certainly doesn't consider itself to be superior. Pigs also care a great deal about friends and family and work hard to keep everyone in their lives happy. Helping others is a true pleasure for the Pig, who feels best when everyone else is smiling.

A Pig with no one around to appreciate its giving nature is a sad sight. Pigs are so magnanimous they can appear almost saintly; this can lead some less-than-well-intentioned souls to stomp all over this Sign, and the bad news is, the Pig will take the blows! Pigs make great companions in part because of their refusal to see the more negative or base qualities in a partner, but that rose-colored view can lead to this Sign's allowing itself to be taken advantage of. Contrary to their seemingly benign dispositions, however, Pigs can be quite venomous in response to being crossed by a lover, friend or business partner.

Pigs are highly intelligent creatures, forever studying, playing and probing in their quest for greater knowledge. They can be misinterpreted as being lazy, however, due to their love of reveling in the good stuff; this Sign could happily spend hours on end making love, napping, taking a long bubble bath or dallying over an incredible spread of rich foods. Pigs tend to make wonderful life partners due to their hearts of gold and their love of family. Even so, Pigs can be rather exclusive, choosing to spend time with those who will appreciate them most and ignore the rest of the populace. Pigs would do well to realize that there's more to life than being needed. When they open up their world to a diverse group of people, they will truly bloom.

The most compatible match for a Pig is the Rabbit or the Goat.

Tuesday's Word: Singles Awareness Day

2007-02-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

Singles Awareness Day (SAD) is a humorous holiday celebrated on February 14 (although some prefer the 13th or the 15th to get away from the commercialism associated with the 14th). It serves as an alternative to Valentine's Day for people who are single; that is, who are not involved in a romantic relationship and can therefore not participate in Valentine's Day traditions. Some observers of SAD do so out of spite for Valentine's Day, as a Hallmark holiday, or for other reasons.

On Singles Awareness Day single people gather to celebrate or to commiserate in their single status. Some want to remind romantic couples to remember those less fortunate than they are. A common greeting on this day by its adherents is "Happy SAD!"

Sadly, the day is often used by less friendly couples as a day to simply remind the singles they know about their current, uninvolved status.

The holiday is a good example of self-deprecating humor.

Tuesday's Word: Cold

2007-02-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

Cold: Temperature is a physical property of a system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that is hotter has the greater temperature. Temperature is one of the principal parameters of thermodynamics. The temperature of a system is related to the average energy of microscopic motions in the system. For a solid, these microscopic motions are principally the vibrations of the constituent atoms about their sites in the solid. For an ideal monatomic gas, the microscopic motions are the translational motions of the constituent gas particles.

Temperature is measured with thermometers that may be calibrated to a variety of temperature scales. Throughout the world (except for in the U.S.), the Celsius scale is used for most temperature measuring purposes. The entire scientific world (the U.S. included) measures temperature using the Celsius scale, and thermodynamic temperature using the Kelvin scale. Many engineering fields in the U.S., especially high-tech ones, also use the Kelvin and Celsius scales. The bulk of the U.S. however, (its lay people, industry, meteorology, and government) relies upon the Fahrenheit scale. Other engineering fields in the U.S. also rely upon the Rankine scale when working in thermodynamic-related disciplines such as combustion.

Bloggers, you're being spared the usual scientific explanation this time; 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Baby, it's cold outside!

Tuesday's Word: Single Payer Health Care

2007-01-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Today's post idea comes to us from the lovely and talented Alicia Morgan, author of Last Left Turn Before Hooterville.

From Families USA:

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are being promoted by President Bush and conservatives in Congress as a way to bring down spiraling health care costs. Only if consumers have "skin in the game," they argue, will Americans start to shop around for cheaper health care.

HSAs: The Next Big Non-Solution
Watch it now!

HSAs are tax sheltered savings accounts coupled with high-deductible health insurance policies, and they have serious drawbacks. For many health consumers, HSAs will increase out-of-pocket costs—and complexity.

And here's what they won't do: They won't bring down health care costs and they won't make a dent in the number of Americans without health insurance. This resource center pulls together a range of materials looking at the limitations of Health Savings Accounts.

From Families USA:
Six Reasons to Be Wary of High-Deductible HSA Plans (December 2006)

From Physicians for a National Health Program:
Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.

Currently, the U.S. health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 46 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.

Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.

Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.

Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.

A single-payer system would be financed by eliminating private insurers and recapturing their administrative waste. Modest new taxes would replace premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business. Costs would be controlled though negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.

PNHP Mission Statement

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) believes that access to high-quality health care is a right of all people and should be provided equitably as a public service rather than bought and sold as a commodity.

The mission of PNHP is therefore to educate physicians, other health workers, and the general public on the need for a comprehensive, high-quality, publicly-funded health care program, equitably-accessible to all residents of the United States.

Equitable accessibility requires, in the view of PNHP, removal of the barriers to adequate health care currently faced by the uninsured, the poor, minority populations and immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

PNHP views this campaign as part of the campaign for social justice in the United States. PNHP opposes for-profit control, and especially corporate control, of the health system and favors democratic control, public administration, and single-payer financing.

PNHP believes this program should be financed by truly progressive taxation. PNHP actively opposes current changes in the health care system that are designed to maximize the profits of investors and the incomes of high-level executives rather than to serve patients.

PNHP's goal is the restoration of what it views as the primary mission of physicians, acting as professional advocates for our patients.

PNHP is an independent, non-partisan, voluntary organization. PNHP's work is supported by our members' dues and contributions, and by grants from progressive foundations; it accepts no funding from pharmaceutical companies or other for-profit entities. PNHP organizes physicians, medical students, other health workers, and the public in support of this program and promotes discussion of health policy in the U.S. through conferences, lectures, articles, and other methods.

Great Women of History

2007-01-26T15:35:00.000-05:00

Bloggers, please submit the names of women whom you think influenced history and/or women in a positive way. This is for a dramatic presentation and cannot be a living person, else, I'd suggest the names of my Muses. I would prefer that the list be American women who would be good role models for the generation which will replace us. Thank you!

Tagged by Misty!

2007-01-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

The A to Z of me!

A. a is for apple
B. Boy or girl? XY chromosomes
C. Cake or pie? Baklava!
D. Drink of choice? Caffeine free, diet ginger ale
E. Essential item? Ab board
F. Favored color? Green
G. Gummi bears or worms? Ginger bread cookies
H. Hunger? Knowledge
I. Indulgence? Health
J. January or February? August
K. Kids and names? NA
L. Lefty or righty? Ambi
M. Marriage date? NA
N. Number of siblings? One
O. Oranges or apples? Kiwis
P. Phobias/fears? Chaos
Q. Favored quote: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Thomas Jefferson
R. Reason to smile? Blog Babe!
S. Season? Fall
T. Tag three peeps: the first 3 readers!
U. Unknown fact about me: once played tenor sax
V. Vegetable you hate: beets
W. Worst habit: poor spelling
X. X-rays I've had: dental and bones

Y. Your favored food? Shrimp lo mein
Z. Zodiac? Virgo

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

Tuesday's Word: whole grains

2007-01-16T18:17:00.000-05:00

Whole grains are cereal grains which retain the bran and germ as well as the endosperm, in contrast to refined grains which retain only the endosperm. Whole meal products are made from whole grain flour.

Common whole grain products include oatmeal, popcorn, brown rice, whole wheat flour, sprouted grains and whole wheat bread. Common refined grain products include white rice, white bread, hominy and pasta (although whole-grain varieties of pasta are available in natural-food sections of stores).

Contents
1 Identifying whole grains products
2 Health benefits
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

Identifying whole grains products

Whole grain products can be identified by the ingredient list. Typically if the ingredient lists "whole wheat", "rolled oats", or "whole corn" as the first ingredient, the product is a whole grain food item. Another way to identify whole grains in the foods you eat is to look in the nutritional facts information and check if the food item contains dietary fiber. If it contains a significant amount, it most likely contains whole grains. "Wheat flour" is not a whole grain and therefore does not indicate a whole grain product. Many breads are colored brown (often with molasses) and made to look like whole grain, but are not. Additionally, some food manufacturers make foods with whole grain ingredients, but because whole grain ingredients are not the dominant ingredient, they are not whole grain products.

Whole grains are often more expensive than refined grains because their higher oil content is susceptible to rancidification, complicating processing, storage, and transport.
Similar to the distinction between whole and refined grains is that between whole pulses and refined dal.

From AACC (American Association of Cereal Chemist) definition: "Whole grains shall consist of the intact, ground, cracked or flaked caryopsis, whose principal anatomical components - the starchy endosperm, germ and bran - are present in the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact caryopsis.”

Health benefits

Whole grains are believed to be nutritionally superior to refined grains, richer in dietary fiber, antioxidants, protein (and in particular the amino acid lysine), dietary minerals (including magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium), and vitamins (including niacin, vitamin B6, and vitamin E). Manufacturers are sometimes required by law to fortify refined grain products to make up for the loss of vitamins and minerals.

The greater amount of dietary fiber, as much as four times that found in refined grains, is likely the most important benefit, as it has been shown to reduce the incidence of some forms of cancer, digestive system diseases, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Some of these protective effects occur because carbohydrates from whole grains are digested and enter the bloodstream more slowly (as measured by the glycemic index).

Some store bought grains can be germinated and sprouted for additional nutritional benefits. Grains can generate toxic byproducts in the sprouting process. Make sure to rinse sprouts well before ingesting so as to avoid inducing toxicity.

Health tip o' the day!

Thursday's Quote

2007-01-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."- Plato -

Tuesday's Word: enterdrainment

2007-01-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Enterdrainment: Any passive form of entertainment that is so incredibly mind numbing that it sucks the intelligence from the listener or viewer; ultimately over time reducing (or limiting) them to a simplistic proto-human mental state, incapable of cognition or rational thought. Sports, Celebrity gossip, Country music, Talk radio, Call-in shows, Soap operas and Reality TV are considered by many to be enterdrainment.

To the extent that one participates or watches, I wish to play.

urbandictionary

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

January 1 marks the end of a period of remembrance of the passing year, especially on radio, television, and in newspapers, which usually starts right after Christmas Day. Publications often have year-end articles that review the changes during the past year. Common topics include politics, natural disasters, music and the arts, and the listing of significant individuals who died during the past year. Often there are also articles on planned or expected changes in the coming year, such as the description of new laws that often take effect on January 1.

This day is traditionally a religious feast, but since the 1900s, has become an occasion for celebration the night of December 31, called New Year's Eve. There are often fireworks at midnight. Depending on the country, individuals may be allowed to burn fireworks, even if it is forbidden the rest of the year.

It is also a memorable occasion to make New Year's resolutions, which they hope to fulfill in the coming Year; the most popular ones in the western world include to stop tobacco smoking or drinking, or to lose weight or get physically fit.

In all countries that use the Gregorian calendar, with the exception of Israel, New Year's Day is a public holiday. For many of those countries, if January 1 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, then the Friday before or the Monday after will be a public holiday.

History

Originally observed on March 1 in the old Roman Calendar, New Year's Day first came to be fixed at January 1 in 153 BC, when the two Roman consuls, after whom - in the Roman calendar - years were named and numbered, began to be chosen on that date. However in AD 525, Dionysius Exiguus set the start of the Julian calendar at March 25 to commemorate the Annunciation of Jesus; a variety of Christian feast dates were used throughout the Middle Ages to mark the New Year, while calendars often continued to display the months in columns running from January to December in the Roman fashion.

Among the 7th century druidic pagans of Flanders and the Netherlands, it was the custom to exchange gifts at the New Year, a pagan custom deplored by Saint Eligius (died 659 or 660), who warned the Flemings and Dutchmen, "[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf, compare Puck] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom]." The quote is from the vita of Eligius written by his companion Ouen.

Most countries in Western Europe officially adopted January 1 as New Year's Day somewhat before they adopted the Gregorian calendar. This is sometimes called Circumcision Style, because this was the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, being the eighth day counting from 25 December.

Wikipedia

The Mayfly Project 2006

2006-12-31T00:01:00.001-05:00

The Mayfly Project 2006

Sum 2006 in 24 words.

My cousin Greta married. My aunt Margaret died.

A friend showed his true, ugly colors.

T.R. survived a heart attack.

Blue Gal won!