Ten Things I wish the Church Knew About Homosexuality

1. If Jesus did not mention a subject, it cannot be essential to his teachings.


2. You are not being persecuted when prevented from persecuting others.

3. Truth isn’t like wine that gets better with age. It’s more like manna you must recognize wherever you are and whoever you are with.

4. You cannot call it “special rights” when someone asks for the same rights you have.

5. It is no longer your personal religious view if you’re bothering someone else.

6. Marriage is a civil ceremony, which means it’s a civil right.

7. If how someone stimulates the pubic nerve has become the needle to your moral compass, you are the one who is lost.

8. To condemn homosexuality, you must use parts of the Bible you don’t yourself obey. Anyone who obeyed every part of Leviticus would rightly be put in prison.

9. If we do not do the right thing in our day, our grandchildren will look at us with same embarrassment we look at racist grandparents.

10. When Jesus forbade judging, that included you.

California judges asked to say if they are gay

California's 1,600-plus judges are on trial. The new Judicial Applicant and Appointment Demographics Inclusion Act, which began on January 1, mandates that a judge must reveal their sexual orientation. Forty percent of the surveyed judges have refused to fill out the questionnaire, which also inquires about race, gender and ethnicity.

Source:  The Washington Times

Shared photo book from Tom

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly allows you to customize your photo book just the way you want.

Sexuality & Scripture

By Reverend Ralph Lasher, M. Div, Associate Pastor, Bethel Church UCC, 2004

Christianity is a religion based upon the ministry and teachings of Jesus, whose life was clearly one of love, healing and forgiveness. He summarized his own teachings: “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). Jesus’ message was inclusive: “For God so loved the world that God gave the one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not parish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “Whoever believes” is inclusive!

Yet we all know that atrocities have been cloaked in Bible verses and committed in Christ’s name. Several examples include:

• The Crusades, in which men, women and children were slaughtered in Jesus’ name.


• The Inquisition, which included torture and murder and was called “holy.”


• The enslavement of persons throughout the world by “Christians” and others, who bred, branded and beat fellow humans.


• The lynchings, floggings and castration of African Americans in the United States of America by hymn-singing, white sheeted members of the Klu Klux Klan.


• The murders and rapes during the conquest of Mexico and the destruction of an entire civilization.


• The persecution and discrimination in the United States against persons of color and women.


• The Holocaust in Germany, during which two national Christian denominations turned their heads while millions of human beings were exterminated.


• The massacres and bombings in Ireland.


• The burning of “witches” in our own country.

Today another monstrous injustice cloaked in Bible verses is being committed against people for whom Christ lived and dies. It is the oppression, bashing and sometimes even murder of persons who are gay, lesbian, Bisexual and/or transgendered. Those who seek to justify their own hatred and the behavior it encourages cite several Biblical passages which they claim support their beliefs. Most often these people quote from the King James Version of the bible.

I was raised on the King James Version and can recite large portions of it. I love its poetry and beautiful language, but I don’t use it or recommend it for study. For study, I prefer the New International Version (NIV) of the bible.

Before being written down, the bible was circulated in oral form, some parts for several hundred years. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. The King James Version, which was written in 1611 when King James I was King of England, is not the oldest English language translation of the bible; the Bible was first translated into English 229 years earlier in 1382, by a man names Wycliffe.

King James Version
Modern Biblical scholars do not regard the King James Version of the bible as the most accurate English Translation. They cite its numerous misspellings, as well as the use of a variety of English words to translate the same Hebrew or Greek word, the overuse of terms derived from Latin which resulted in inaccurate translations, and the obscurity of Elizabethan English to today’s speakers of English. In addition, more accurate Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the bible have been discovered since the mid-nineteenth century. However, perhaps because of its longevity and poetry, the King James Version of the bible is still the best known and most widely used translation, though more and more churches today also use the new, more accurate translations. Accuracy becomes an issue, for example, when the translators of the King James Version use the word “sodomite” to mean “homosexual.” There is no word for “homosexual” in the original language of the bible. Respected English translations such as the New revised Standard Version and the NIV speak of “male cult prostitutes,” which is obviously not the same as “homosexual.”

The Sodom Story
Persons who use Scripture to condemn sexual minorities usually begin with the story of “Sodom” and Gomorrah (Genesis 13-19). The word Sodom has given birth to the word “sodomy,” which is a legal term usually refers to sexual activities between two males. But the story of Sodom would more accurately be called “The Story Of Lot.” Whatever else it is, the Sodom Story is not a condemnation of a loving relationship between two men or consensual sexual intercourse between two men.

Lot, a righteous Hebrew, invited two men traveling through his town to spend the night in his house. In those days, there were no Holiday Inns for travelers and it was customary for good Hebrews to be hospitable to Hebrew travelers. Lot was hospitable. Shortly after he had taken the two strangers into his house, a mob of angry men vegan banging on Lot’s door, shouting for Lot to send out the guests so the men could “know” them. The Hebrew word translated as “know” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. In this case, rape was intended. The rape of a man in that part of the world was a custom usually reserved for prisoners captured in battle. It was an extreme humiliation since it treated a man like a woman, and women were then considered inferior to men. Lot, the good Hebrew and righteous man, had a different suggestion. He told the mob they should not rape his male guests who, as a guest in his home, were under his “protection.” Instead he suggested that the men rape his two virgin daughters. Lot and his family were allowed to escape from the city before it was destroyed. Scripture contains two explanations for the sin of Sodom, neither which refers to anything having to do with sex between two males (see Ezekiel 16:48-58 and Luke 10:8-12). The explanations given in scripture clearly tell us that the sin of Sodom was failure to meet the needs of the poor and the worship of false gods. To complete the Lot Story, his wife was turned into a pillar of salt. Then Lot and his two daughters had sexual intercourse and both of the daughters became pregnant by their father. The Lot story is a story of the rape of men and women, violence and incest. It has nothing to do with same-gender love. It is not a condemnation of persons who are not heterosexuals.

Levitical Holiness Code
The Levitical Holiness Code compromises the majority of the biblical book of Leviticus. It specifies what a Jew had to know in order to be a good or righteous Jew. In the heart of this codification of Laws are two verses, both of which say the same thing, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. It is detestable” (Leviticus 18:22), and “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a women, both of them have done what is detestable” (Leviticus 20:13). It is these two verses that the Religious Right and other verbal bashers of persons who have sexual contact with someone of the same gender quote as “proof” that homosexuality is an “abomination” and “detestable” to God. The Hebrew word translated as “abomination” is the same word translated as “detestable” and simply means “ritually unclean.” In the context used in the Holiness Code, this word referred to practices associated with idol worship, i.e. persons whose religion worshipped a god other than the God of the Hebrews. The practice condemned in the two passages from Leviticus is the practice of male prostitution in the temple. Yes, pagan cults often had male and female prostitutes “working,” so to speak, as members of the temple staff. It is this practice, rather than loving relationships between persons of the same gender, that the Holiness code condemns. The Hebrew religious leaders had reason to be concerned about this pagan practice.

For three hundred years, even the temples in the Holy Land had male prostitutes until they were finally removed once and for all (see Deuteronomy 23:17-18, I Kings 14:24-25, 15:12 and II Kings 23:7). Yet those who claim that “Gods Law” condemns gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities never claim that the hundreds of other provisions of the Holiness code also apply to Christians. The rest of the holiness code forbids such things as eating shrimp, clams, crawfish, lobster, and oysters, eating meat with blood in it, eating pork or rabbit, drinking milk while eating a roast beef sandwich or putting butter on the bread used to make that sandwich, men shaving or cutting their hair, planting tomatoes and carrots in the same garden, having sexual intercourse with one’s wife during her menstrual period, a woman talking in church or going to church during her menstrual period and wearing clothes made from two yarns (such as cotton and polyester). It even forbids touching the skin of a pig, living or dead. How can one say that two verses are “God’s Law” while completely ignoring all the other hundreds of provisions in “God’s Law?” Even if Hebrew Law condemns homosexual behavior (and it does not) both Jesus and Paul stated that Christians are not bound by the Law of the Old Covenant but by the Law of Love as described in the New Covenant.

Celebrated Relationships
Loving relationships between persons of the same gender were not condemned. In fact, they were celebrated in Scripture: Jonathan (son of King Saul) and David (great hero of the Hebrews) were lovers. Jonathan, we are told, “became one in the spirit with David and loved him” (I Samuel 18:1). He made a covenant with David and stripped himself of much of his clothing, giving it to David (I Samuel 1:3-4). They embraced and kissed one another (I Samuel 20:41). When Jonathan was killed, David wept and said, “Your love was greater than the love of a woman” (II Samuel 1:16).

Ruth and Naomi also may have been lovers. Ruth’s pledge of her love for Naomi, as bizarre as it may seem, is often quoted at heterosexual weddings: “May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me” (Ruth 1:17).

The New Testament
The most important fact to note about homosexuality and the New Testament is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Jesus never mentioned it. Why then, do the Religious Right and others speak as if Homosexuality is their most important concern? Bigotry! A prominent contemporary Episcopalian Bishop and theologian attribute this to fear and insecurity. The absence of discussion of these activities in the New Testament leaves the Religious Right only two passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul which they attempt to condemn homosexuality. The first passage is in a letter written to the romans while Paul was in Corinth. The second is in a letter written by Paul to the people of Corinth. Rome and Corinth were both appropriate targets for someone like Paul who was concerned about morality, especially sexual morality. Both cities were centers of Pagan worship which used idols in their worship of gods and goddesses of fertility.

For more than half a century, several Biblical scholars have speculated that Paul himself was gay and that his “thorn in the flesh” was a homosexual orientation. This may or may not have been true, but in any case, Paul didn’t approve of anyone having sex. Convinced that the end of the world with the return of Jesus was imminent, Paul believed that marriage and reproduction were unnecessary. For Paul, the only justification for marriage was a man’s inability to control his sex drive and remain celibate. Though Paul was essentially opposed to all sexual activity, the passages from Romans and Corinthians are not condemnations of loving relationships between persons of the same gender.

The first passage is found in Romans 1:26-27 and speaks of “women exchanging their natural relations for unnatural ones” and “men also abandoned natural relations with women and were consumed with lust for one another…” These references are in the context of the condemnation of idol worshipers who worshiped images of gods “made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:23). The references in Romans 1:26-27 are in context of the worship of idols and speak about male and female prostitution in the pagan temples. These references have nothing whatsoever to say about loving relationships between gay men or lesbians.

The second New Testament reference to homosexuality is found in I Corinthians 6:9-10, which equally condemns idol worshipers, drunks, slanderers, swindlers, thieves, the greedy, and people whom in the Greek are called “malakos” and “arsenokoitai.” These words have been translated in many different ways, and scholars can’t agree on what Paul meant.

The word “malakos” has been translated variously as “people who wear cloths of soft cloth” (i.e. rich people) or “effeminate persons,” or “masturbators” or “homosexual.” Based on other usage of this word in the New Testament, the latter translation is the least likely to be accurate.

The word “arsenokoitai,” possibly invented by Paul, combines two words meaning “bed” and “males.” It is often translated as “anal intercourse.” An early Greek church leader, John Chrysostom, assigned different penances for anal intercourse, depending with whom is was done: one’s wife, a woman not one’s wife, another man and so on. The most likely meaning of the word used by Paul, however, is “male prostitutes.”

It is regrettable that the Religious Right and others who oppress gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities have taken the bible captive and try to use it to further their own private agenda. This, unfortunately, is nothing new. People in the same state of mind and persuasion wrote and published a book in the United States in 1904 titled, “The Negro: A Beast.” The Bible bigots tried to use Biblical quotations to prove that African Americans aren’t human and, therefore, do not have souls. Not surprisingly, they arrived at the conclusion that African Americans could not have eternal life. Sexual minorities were simply next in line, the last group of “different” human beings who could be oppressed in Christ’s name.

The Bible does not condemn homosexuals or other sexual minorities. Numerous books examine this subject in great detail. I recommend “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality” by John Boswell, “Jonathan Loved David” by Tom Homer, “Living In Sin?” and “Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalists” by Bishop John Spong and “Don’t Be Afraid Anymore” by Troy Perry.

Scientific and medical Professionals have long ago shot down the view once held by oppressors of gays and lesbians that homosexuality is a sickness. The same disciplines are in the process of destroying the myth that homosexuality is a matter of choice. Researchers have clearly established the fact that sexual minorities constitute a substantial portion of the people on our planet. Bigotry, unfortunately, is based upon fear and insecurity rather than reason. I find consolation in the history of the Christian church. God has always raised up persons within the Church, to purge the church of the inquisitors and others who murder and abuse other human beings and claim they act in God’s name. this purging may already be underway as clergy and lay persons force denominations to reexamine their long standing beliefs about sexual minorities.
In the past 30 to 40 years, more and more Biblical scholars and theologians have recognized that Scripture does not condemn us. One by one, those who oppress lesbians, gays and other sexual minorities in the name of God are being stripped of their respectability. As this happens, more persons who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered are coming to understand that our sexuality is a gift to us from God. The Bible does not condemn us for that gift.

Jiffy Lube Gift Card®

Tom Barton is a fan of

Jiffy Lube Gift Card®

Create your Fan Badge

Have a nice day

...look closer.....

Coffee Drink Recipes

Random Newspaper Story

Art student creates invisible car with cool paint-job

A design student made a battered old Skoda "disappear" by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park.

Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.
She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan's Hanover Building in Preston.

The car is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle.

'Just amazing'

Ms Watson, a second year student, said: "I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact."

She was given the Skoda Fabia from the breaker's yard at local firm Recycling Lives.

Owner Steve Jackson described her work as "amazing".

"When I first saw the photos I was convinced it was something which had been done on the computer," said Mr Jackson.

"But when you look more closely you see the effort and attention to detail she has put into it. It is just amazing."
source: BBC World America News

"Things our grandkids will never understand"

source: stickycomics.com

Topic: Winnie the Pooh: On The Swine Flu...

source: Manny K

What you're really pouring from that carton of orange juice

What could be simpler than a glass of orange juice? The beverage holds a place in the pantheon of wholesome American breakfast foods, on equal footing with toast, cereal, and eggs. It's pure and natural, ads tell us, and we buy both the sentiment and the product. More than 620 million gallons of orange juice are sold per year in the United States, according to market research from Nielsen.

Author Alissa Hamilton would have us take another look at the glass on the breakfast table. That simplicity is actually the result of a complicated process - juice stored in tanks for long periods, then goosed with flavor packs to taste like fruit again. Her book, "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice," due out in May from Yale University Press, reveals that orange juice, with its image as a natural Florida product, bears the fingerprints of chemists and is often shipped from South America.

Hamilton traces the history of the drink, first processed in the United States in the early 1900s as a canned juice that was said to taste like "battery acid." World War II ushered in the age of palatable processed orange juice, with the military seeking a source of vitamin C that soldiers would readily consume. In 1948, frozen concentrate was born, too late for the war effort but in time to help revive an ailing citrus industry, which was struggling with a surplus of fruit.

A further boost from Bing Crosby, who crooned about Minute Maid in radio ads, and OJ was on its way to becoming America's favorite breakfast drink. Since then, the citrus industry and its technologies have changed. The FDA tussled with manufacturers to set standards for orange juice. What remains constant? Marketing - some of it deceptive, says Hamilton.

If orange juice isn't harmful, it also isn't what it's portrayed to be. Consumers have a right to know what they are consuming, Hamilton says, and that is at the heart of her story. Ideas spoke with the author, a Woodcock Foundation-funded food and society policy fellow, by phone at her home in Toronto.

IDEAS: You write that the first question everyone asks when they hear about the book is whether orange juice is good for us. So - is orange juice good for us?

HAMILTON: I tell people if you like it, drink it, but not because you think it's good for you. You'd be better off with a whole orange than a glass of orange juice. It has more fiber and more vitamin C. But I'm not a dietitian. The book is not about whether you should drink orange juice and whether it's healthy. It's about how little consumers know about how popular and - in the case of orange juice - seemingly straightforward foods are produced and the repercussions for agriculture.

IDEAS: What isn't straightforward about orange juice?

HAMILTON: It's a heavily processed product. It's heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.

IDEAS: What goes into these flavor packs?

HAMILTON: They're technically made from orange-derived substances, essence and oils. Flavor companies break down the essence and oils into individual chemicals and recombine them. I spoke to many people in the industry at Firmenich, different flavorists, and at Tropicana, and what you're getting looks nothing like the original substance. To call it natural at this point is a real stretch.

IDEAS: Why isn't orange flavor listed in the ingredients on the carton?

HAMILTON: The regulations were based on standards of identity for orange juice set in the 1960s. Technology at that time was not sophisticated at all . . . I don't think the concern is so much "are these flavor packs unhealthy?" The bigger issue is the fact that having to add flavor packs shows the product is not as fresh and pure as marketed.

IDEAS: It reminds me of McDonald's adding flavor to its fries to make them taste meaty, or beef extract to Chicken McNuggets, as we read about in "Fast Food Nation."

HAMILTON: The flavor industry can lend diversity to products that aren't really that diverse. Soft drinks are a perfect example: They're corn syrup and flavor. With orange juice, it's masking the processing procedure rather than the diversity of ingredients.

IDEAS: So parse the carton for us. For example, what is the phrase "not from concentrate" really about?

HAMILTON: In the '80s, Tropicana had a hold on ready-to-serve orange juice with full-strength juice. Then this new product, reconstituted orange juice, started appearing in supermarkets. Tropicana had to make decisions. Storing concentrate is much cheaper than full-strength juice. The phrase "not from concentrate" was to try to make consumers pay more for the product because it's a more expensive product to manufacture. It didn't have to do with the product being fresher; the product didn't change, the name simply changed. Tropicana didn't want to have to switch to concentrate technology.

IDEAS: A battle of the beverages?

HAMILTON: Yes. This is the orange juice equivalent of the cola wars. Minute Maid is probably the most familiar reconstituted orange juice, and it's owned by Coca-Cola. Tropicana is owned by Pepsi.

IDEAS: To what degree is orange juice still made from Florida oranges?

HAMILTON: Most concentrate is now from Brazil. Shipping it is relatively easy. Until recently, you could count on [Tropicana] Pure Premium being from Florida, but shipping technology has advanced. Companies like Tropicana have started shipping full-strength juice from Brazil rather than buying and squeezing in Florida. The majority of not-from-concentrate is coming from Florida-squeezed oranges, but that's certainly changing. The orange growing is moving to Brazil, which grows the most oranges for juice by far. Land is cheaper, and environmental regulations are almost nonexistent.

IDEAS: How is this affecting Florida growers?

HAMILTON: They are really struggling because of the growth of the industry. This product designed to help them has now effectively made them redundant. The groves are disappearing. They're being turned over in favor of condominiums. That was my ultimate aim, to show the connection between how processing does affect growing and how we as buyers - our lack of knowledge - does have implications for agriculture.

IDEAS: It strikes me that this is a timely book, with the Obama administration promising a review of FDA operations.

HAMILTON: I do think there's an opportunity. . . . It's been going on for decades with misleading marketing campaigns; I don't know why anybody isn't standing up to this. It's a perfect place for the FDA to start.

Devra First reports on food for the Globe.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

How Swine Flu Spreads from Pigs to Humans

source: grow-a-brain

25 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Your Body and Health

Fascinating facts on nutrition, exercise, sex and more.

In the spirit of those annoying, addictive, you-know-you're-reading-them-even-though-you-wish-you-weren't Facebook notes popping up everywhere, Health.com presents its list of 25 random things you might not know about the human body, nutrition and exercise, sex, sickness, and health. Go ahead: Pass it on to your friends.

1. Rinsing your nose with salt water can help keep you healthy and ward off allergy symptoms. Nasal irrigation is a cheap and easy way to find relief if you have spring allergies, nasal congestion, stuffy noses or post-nasal drip, says Dr. Melissa Pynnonen, co-director of the Michigan Sinus Center and an assistant professor in the University of Michigan's department of otolaryngology.

2. Dogs can smell cancer and low blood sugar. The Pine Street Foundation, a cancer-education and research center in San Anselmo, Calif., published a study showing it was possible to train dogs to identify, based on breath samples, which patients had lung and breast cancer. Now the organization is recruiting ovarian cancer patients and dogs for a new study. In diabetics, the presence of ketones—substances made by the body during the metabolic process—can be smelled in urine and on the breath when blood sugars are high. Dogs can pick up on other smells that humans can’t when glucose levels drop.

3. Researchers at Cornell University found that people who pass through an entryway near the kitchen tend to eat 15 percent more than those who use the front door.

4. You're more likely to have a heart attack on a Monday, or up to three days after you've been diagnosed with the flu or a respiratory tract infection. The risk of dying from a heart attack increases by a third during outbreaks of the flu and related respiratory diseases, found researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The study authors estimate that 90,000 coronary deaths could be prevented a year in the United States if more heart patients simply got a flu shot.

5. You can't get a tan from your computer screen. The Computer Tan Web site was created as a hoax to raise awareness about skin cancer.

6. Obese people spend approximately $485 more on clothing, $828 on extra plane seats, and $36 more on gas each year than their thinner counterparts. Researchers say an overweight driver burns about 18 additional gallons of gas a year. Plus-sized clothing costs 10 percent to 15 percent more than smaller-sized clothes. When it comes to jet fuel, a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicineestimated that the extra weight of obese Americans caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel.

7. Smokers are four times as likely to report feeling unrested after a night's sleep than nonsmokers. Smokers often experience withdrawal symptoms at night, thus causing periods of restlessness and waking. Smokers were also 1.69 times as likely to develop hearing loss than non-smokers, as smoking may affect antioxidative mechanisms or the blood vessels that feed the auditory system.1

8. Eating fruits and vegetables may help the human body make its own aspirin. Findings from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistryindicate that study participants who received benzoic acid, a natural substance in fruits and vegetables, could make their own salicylic acid, the key component that gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.

9. A 20-minute nap can improve your overall alertness, boost your mood, and increase productivity. William Anthony, co-author of The Art of Napping at Work (Larson Publications, 1999),says the post-nap boost can last for several hours. In addition, your heart may reap benefits from napping. In a six-year study of Greek adults, researchers found that that men who took naps at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-related death.

10. Your kitchen sink is dirtier than your bathroom: There are typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in its drain. The faucet, basin, and sponge are crawling with germs as well. Bacteria colonies with a total population exceeding 50 million can live on a single dirty sponge. And just think—that's what you use to wipe down countertops, forks and drinking glasses.

11. Four out of five doctors in the UK don't work out enough. Heavy workloads, lack of time and poor motivation contributed to the lack of exercise.2

12. Baking soda can whiten teeth, garlic can help treat athlete's foot, and honey can soothe a hangover.

13. Using a food diary can double a person's weight-loss efforts. Your food diary makes you accountable to yourself and provides you with clues on where the extra calories are sneaking in.

14. Regular exercise can lower a woman's cancer risk—but only if she's getting enough sleep. The National Cancer Institute followed 5,968 women for almost 10 years, during which 604 of them developed some form of cancer. Women in the top half of physical activity levels showed an approximate 20 percent reduction in cancer risk compared to those who exercised less. For a segment of those women, sleeping less than seven hours per night had a decreased benefit to exercise. Their cancer risk was greater than those who exercised but slept more—but still lower than those who exercised the least.

15.Watching yourself run in a mirror can make a treadmill workout go by faster and feel easier.

16. Third-hand smoke—the particles that cling to smokers' hair and clothing and linger in a room long after they've left—is a cancer risk to young children (and pets).

17. Walking against the wind, in the water, or while wearing a backpack burns about 50 more calories per hour than walking with no resistance. People who wear pedometers also tend to burn more calories and lose more weight.

18. Trained sexologists can infer a woman's orgasm history by observing the way she walks.3 In other research news, men find women who wear red sexier than those who wear "cool" colors such as blue and green.

19.Foreign accent syndrome and exploding head syndrome are real (but very rare) medical conditions. The American Sleep Association explains that a person with exploding head syndrome experiences a a loud, indecipherable noise that seems to originate from inside the head.

20. Vitamins don't seem to help older women guard against cancer or heart disease.

21. Some men experience pain, headaches, or sneezing as a result of ejaculation. The increased activity in the nervous system during orgasm may be the culprit in triggering headaches.

22. Germ-killing wipes can spread bacteria from one spot to another if you reuse them. Researchers at the Welsh School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University in Wales issued their concern on the use of the wipes in hospitals and the importance of a routine surveillance program in reducing risks of infection to patients.

23. Oatmeal, citrus fruits, and honey can boost your sex drive and improve fertility. Oats produce a chemical that releases testosterone into the blood supply, increasing sex drive and orgasm strength. Vitamin C found in citrus fruits improves sperm count and motility, while vitamin B from honey helps the body use estrogen, a key factor in blood flow and arousal.

24. Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they have skipped filling a prescription due to the cost, and 23 percent use pill splitting as a way to save money.

25. Facebook may be good for your health: Studies show that staying in touch with family and friends can ward off memory loss and help you live longer.

Become a fan of Health.com on Facebook for weekly healthy-living tips and updates.

Sources:

1. JAMA: Cigarette Smoking and Hearing Loss

2. British Journal of Sports Medicine: "Doctors Fighting Fit or Couch Potatoes"

3. Physorg.com: Gait may be associated with orgasmic ability

Swine Flu

source: digg_2000"Swine Flu" - http://digg.com/d2phD4?OTC-...

The Future of Google

source: Gyana_04

An Undelivered Nixon Speech

Nixon Speech if Neil Armstrong had died on the Moon

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The following speech, revealed in 1999, was prepared by Nixon's then speechwriter, William Safire, to be used in the event of a disaster that would maroon the astronauts on the moon:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.


source: watergate.info

Battery Powered Battery Charger

source: sandossu's photostream

"Yup, This is Modern Art"

YouTube - TV Shows and Movies

YouTube has rolled out platform for TV shows and movies: http://youtube.com/shows or http://youtube.com/movies