HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO MY BLOGGER PALS & READERS!

image via sonofthesouth.net

Refuting the latest pot scare: testicular cancer results

Well, all you male pot heads need not worry. Your balls aren't going to fall off because you smoke the ganja! As usual the mainstream media has it all wrong. 

According to Google News, more than 750 media outlets — that’s 7-5-0, folks — have now weighed in on this week’s pot scare story du jour: “Smoking marijuana causes testicular cancer.”

So is there any truth behind the provocative headline? Some, but hardly enough to justify the media’s feeding frenzy.

To read more click here

Smoker image via thespoof.com

Ripe bud image via Google Images

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NO JOKE! IT'S ACTUALLY THE END OF THE WORK WEEK!

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Valentine's Day Online Dating Resistant to Recession - Cyberspace Romance Weathers Hard Times

WALKER SIMON of RUETERS has found a bright spot in this gloomy depression.

SIMON SAYS...

"It's crippling for businesses but the credit crisis is giving Cupid a boost ahead of Valentine's Day as more people hunt online for mates to weather the economic storm.

Unlike other companies where revenues are dropping and layoffs are climbing, online dating seems to be resistant to the recession.

Internet dating sites usually see a spike in would-be Romeos and Juliets in the build-up to Valentine's Day but hard times this year have driven it higher."

FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE Click here

image via Google Images

GOP is desperately searching for new identity!

A friend passed this on to me this morning while checking  AlterNet out:

This is a very well-written commentary titled:

IT'S FUN TO WATCH OBAMA DRIVING THESE REPUBLICANS SO CRAZY

Posted by Bob Cesca, Huffington Post

"They're screaming about fear-mongering, even though we had eight years of this.

They're screaming about fiscal responsibility, even though we had eight years of this.

They're screaming about free speech, even though we had eight years of this and this and this.

They're honest to God screaming about fascism, even though we had eight years of this and this and this.

Yes, the Republicans have claimed to have "found their voice." If this is true, then their "voice" sounds exactly like Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Malkin, depending on the day.

So what are these voices saying exactly?"

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK HERE

GOP image via Google Images

Another theory for why Friday the 13th is unlucky

The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition (Avalon, 2004), author Nathaniel Lachenmeyer argues that the commingling of "unlucky Friday" and "unlucky 13" took place in the pages of a specific literary work, a novel published in 1907 titled — what else? — Friday, the Thirteenth.

The book, all but forgotten now, concerned dirty dealings in the stock market and sold quite well in its day. Both the titular phrase and the phobic premise behind it — namely that superstitious people regard Friday the 13th as a supremely unlucky day — were instantly adopted and popularized by the press.

It seems unlikely that the novelist, Thomas W. Lawson, literally invented that premise himself — he treats it within the story, in fact, as a notion that already existed in the public consciousness — but he most certainly lent it gravitas and set it on a path to becoming the most widespread superstition in modern times.

cat image via Google Images

FRIDAY THE 13TH: One explanation for a bad luck day

The Knights Templar
One theory, recently offered up as historical fact in the novel The Da Vinci Code, holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago.

 The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books, 1995):

    On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices.

None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force "confessions," and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.

Templar image via Google Images

Laugh and the world laughs with you!

If you missed the post at the NCJ Blogthing by Ryan Burns (Feb.9) satirizing my As It Stand column on Angels last week...check it out.
It's great satire. I'm flattered to be satirized. It's not the first time, and probably won't be the last.
We need more humor during these dark days for the economy, and this Winter's discontent.

Beauty in Reality: Photographs that transpose emotions

No matter how skillful you are as a painter, reality, and natural light is still the winner. Here is very evocative shot of moonlight at seaside, and (below) a riot of colors at sunset.

(images credit: Toby Keller)

See many other Toby Keller's light "paintings" here and on flickr.

Mattel’s Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Wins Worst Toy of the Year; CCFC Honors Doll with Inaugural TOADY Award

BOSTON – February 12- Barbie’s big year just got a little more exciting.  On the eve of the world’s most famous doll’s fiftieth birthday, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood announced that Mattel’s Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll won its inaugural TOADY (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children) Award for the worst toy of the year.  In an online vote by more than 6,000 CCFC members, Barbie handily beat four other nominees.

“The toys we give children reflect our values,” said CCFC’s Director Dr. Susan Linn, author of The Case for Make Believe. “And no one who cares about children’s wellbeing could produce a toy like the Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader doll. It embodies a host of harmful expectations about what girls are supposed to be like.”

Rated by Mattel as appropriate for children age six and up, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll comes with the shortest of short shorts, stiletto boots, and a revealing halter top.  The preposterously skimpy outfit allows children to get a better view of Barbie’s impossibly long legs and dangerously thin body. 

“When you combine two classic symbols of gendered stereotypes – the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and Barbie – you get one terrible toy,” said CCFC Steering Committee member Joe Kelly, of www.dadsanddaughters.com. “Do we really want to teach our young daughters that they belong on the sidelines, not in the game, and the way to get noticed is to show a lot of skin?”

“The Bratz dolls get a lot of well-deserved negative attention,” said CCFC’s co-founder Dr. Diane Levin, co-author of So Sexy, So Soon. “But it’s important to recognize that Mattel is also all-too-happy to contribute to the sexualization of young children.  The Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll teaches girls to focus on their appearance, to aspire to an eating-disordered body, and to play at being sexy before they’re even capable of understanding what sexy means."

CCFC created the TOADY award in response to the Toy Industry of Association’s TOTY (Toy Of The Year) Awards, which celebrate the most popular brands and toys often with little regard for their impact on children’s wellbeing.  Each TOADY nominee was selected for epitomizing one or more of the troubling commercial trends of the toy industry, such as marketing sex and/or violence to young children, promoting brands and screen time at the expense of creative play, and encouraging excessive and conspicuous consumption. In addition to Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll, the 2008 TOADY nominees were Baby Alive Learns to Potty by Hasbro, the Lego Batman Video Game by Warner Brothers, the Power Wheels Cadillac Escalade by Fisher-Price, and the Smart Cycle by Fisher Price.  For more information on why these toys were nominated, please visit http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/actions/toady.html