Not so great views of the future
Or, if you want a really scary vision, here’s science fiction writer John C. Wright’s view of a horrible future of moral decay because of homosexuality actually being tolerated by people.
Remember, kids: even if it’s your name, you’re not always (W)right.
UPDATE: Mike Weber notes below that the original link above no longer works. It seems that a lot of people took him to task, but what apparently shamed him into changing was someone pointing out what his recently adopted Catholic Church has to say on the matter:
“It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.”
– “On The Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons”, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Accordingly, Wright has taken down the original post, and I feel no further need to shame him about it, preferring to believe that he’s going to try and reconcile the matter in his heart and with his God.
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Bob Dylan mistaken for hobo
New Jersey police detained 68-year old American music star Bob Dylan recently, after a young officer failed to recognize him. A disheveled Dylan was wearing a hoodie, wandering around in the rain looking at a house for sale. The 24-year-old female officer was responding to a phone call from the occupants of a home that had a “For Sale” sign on it. The residents were called in with a report of an “eccentric-looking old man” in their yard.
“We got a call for a suspicious person,” Buble said. “It was pouring rain outside, and I was right around the corner so I responded. By that time he was walking down the street. I asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood and he said he was looking at a house for sale.”
“I asked him what his name was and he said, ‘Bob Dylan,’ Buble said. “Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.
“So I said, ‘OK Bob, what are you doing in Long Branch?’ He said he was touring the country with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. So now I’m really a little fishy about his story. I did not know what to believe or where he was coming from, or even who he was. We see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn’t sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something,” Buble said
She asked for identification, but Dylan said he had none. She asked where he was staying and he said his tour buses were parked at some big hotel on the ocean. Buble said she assumed that to be the nearby Ocean Place Conference Resort.
“He was acting very suspicious,” Buble said. “Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was pouring rain and everything.”
Via ABC News.
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Powerthirst! Menergy!
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All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
British Department of Health releases LR Hubbard Docs The British government has released documents compiled to expose Scientology’s founder as a fraud.
The main foci seem to be the role of Sequoia University in granting Hubbard’s PhD, and the sudden mental illness of an investigating district attorney after visiting with some dubious doctors.
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Go ahead: That cup of joe won’t hurt you, the latest research says. It might even help you.
Coffee drinkers, rejoice! The heavenly brew, once deemed harmful to health, is turning out to be, if not quite a health food, at least a low-risk drink, and in many ways a beneficial one. It could protect against diabetes, liver cancer, cirrhosis and Parkinson’s disease.
What happened? Lots of new research, and the recognition that older, negative studies often failed to tease apart the effects of coffee and those of smoking because so many coffee drinkers were also smokers.
“Coffee was seen as very unhealthy,” said Rob van Dam, a coffee researcher and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Now we have a more balanced view. We’re not telling people to drink it for health. But it is a good beverage choice.”
As you digest the news on coffee, keep in mind that coffee and caffeine are not the same thing. In fact, “they are vastly different,” said coffee researcher Terry Graham, chairman of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. One can be good for you; the other, less so.
“Coffee is a complex beverage with hundreds, if not thousands, of bioactive ingredients,” he said. “A cup of coffee is 2% caffeine, 98% other stuff.”
Before we rhapsodize further, a few caveats:
Caffeine — whether in coffee, tea, soft drinks or pills — can make you jittery and anxious and, in some people, can trigger insomnia. Data are mixed on whether pregnant women who consume caffeine are more likely to miscarry. In general, 200 milligrams a day — the amount in one normal-sized cup of coffee — is believed safe for pregnant women, said Van Dam.
For people with hard-to-control hypertension, a sudden, big dose of caffeine may boost blood pressure because caffeine constricts blood vessels. But decaf is fine in that respect. And even caffeinated coffee doesn’t increase blood pressure much once you drink it for a week or so, said Van Dam. In fact, the caffeine in coffee seems to have less of an effect on blood pressure than the caffeine in colas because there are so many other substances in coffee that have the opposite effect physiologically from caffeine.
One final caveat: The new research heralding coffee’s health benefits is not perfect. Most of the studies are observational; that is, they followed people over time and correlated health outcomes with coffee drinking — based on people’s recollections of how much coffee they consumed. The studies don’t prove that coffee was the cause of improved health outcomes. Still, the sheer volume of the research, and the fact that the conclusions line up so neatly, make it reasonably credible, researchers say.
Diabetes: Twenty studies worldwide show that coffee, both regular and decaf, lowers the risk for Type 2 diabetes, in some studies by as much as 50%. Researchers say that is probably because chlorogenic acid, one of the many ingredients in coffee, slows uptake of glucose (sugar) from the intestines. (Excess sugar in the blood is a hallmark of diabetes.) Chlorogenic acid may also stimulate GLP-1, a chemical that boosts insulin, the hormone that escorts sugar from the blood into cells. Yet another ingredient, trigonelline, a precursor to vitamin B3, may help slow glucose absorption.
Heart disease and stroke: Recent studies suggest that frequent coffee consumption does not increase the risk of either condition. In fact, coffee might — repeat, might — slightly reduce the risk of stroke. A study published in March in the journal Circulation looked at data on more than 83,000 women older than 24. It showed that those who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a 19% lower risk of stroke than those who drank almost none. A Finnish study found similar results for men.
For cardiovascular diseases other than stroke, there doesn’t appear to be a preventive benefit from drinking coffee, but there is also no clearly documented harm; the studies looked at the effect of drinking up to six cups of regular coffee a day.
Cancer: Coffee research has come up empty here — with one big exception: liver cancer. Research consistently shows a drop in liver cancer risk with coffee consumption, and there is some, albeit weaker, evidence that it may lower colon cancer risk as well.
Cirrhosis: Coffee seems to protect the liver against cirrhosis, especially that caused by alcoholism. It’s not clear, either for cancer or cirrhosis, whether it’s coffee or caffeine that may be protective.
Parkinson’s disease: With this progressive, neurological illness, it’s the caffeine, not coffee, that carries the benefit. No one knows for sure why caffeine protects. Several studies show that coffee drinkers, men especially, appear to have half the risk of Parkinson’s compared with nondrinkers. Women also get a benefit, but only those who do not use post-menopausal hormones, said Dr. Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. All it takes for a measurable reduction in Parkinson’s risk, he said, is about 150 milligrams a day, the amount in an average cup of coffee.
Athletic performance: It’s clear that caffeine, not coffee per se, delivers the big boost here, said Graham, the researcher from Ontario. In fact, caffeine was once deemed a controlled substance by the International Olympic Committee. Caffeine is a powerful “ergogenic agent,” meaning it promotes the ability of muscles to work. Studies show that caffeine boosts performance in both very short and very long athletic events, said Graham. It used to be thought that caffeine worked by stimulating the release of sugar (glycogen) in muscles, but recent research suggests it helps muscles release calcium, allowing muscles to contract with more force. It takes only a medium cup of regular coffee for a 130-pound athlete to see a measurable improvement in performance, Graham added.
One last bit of coffee advice: Beware of unfiltered coffee — the kind that is popular in Scandinavia and is made in French presses. Filtered coffee, which most Americans drink, is much better because the paper filters catch a substance called cafestol, which boosts “bad” cholesterol (LDL). Filtered coffee has no effect on either good or bad cholesterol.
If, despite all this good news, you still worry you’re drinking too much coffee, then cut back or quit. But don’t go cold turkey. Abrupt caffeine withdrawal can trigger headaches, noted Dr. Alan Leviton, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School who consults for the National Coffee Assn., an industry group. So, taper off instead.
On the other hand, if reading this makes you want an extra cup, go for it. And enjoy it — guilt free.
judyforeman@myhealthsense.com
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“I walk downstairs only to find my dog going through depression resulting in attempted suicide.”
“I walk downstairs only to find my dog going through depression resulting in attempted suicide. ”
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Conversations with Jenn
Jenn Klem says: my bert!
Snapple!
Jenn Klem says: why do you have a cartoon hand jerking off as your avatar?
Jenn Klem says: people may think you’re gay
RobDurdle.com says: HEHEH
RobDurdle.com says: Its how you shake up a bottle of snapple.
Jenn Klem says: no, you flip it over and smack the bottom
RobDurdle.com says: Uh, no that’s how i Jerk off.
RobDurdle.com says: You got them backwards.
Jenn Klem says: HEHE
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What, a raw frog?
A recipe for the infamous Crunchy Frog. No frogs were killed in the making of this recipe
We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.
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Alien Resurrection?
Fox have officially announced that Ridley Scott has officially signed on to direct the new ‘Alien’ prequel. He certainly did a great job on the original but can he match his previous triumph? Given the number of projects he has in gestation (heh) maybe any celebration is premature…
Q: How many dicks would I suck to get James Cameron and HR Giger involved with individual levels of creative control almost equal to but slightly lower than Scott’s and a $700 million budget?
A: A whole lot! (No, I’m not gay)
Ridley Scott has made exactly two good movies in his life. Two. Those two were very good, but he’s made so many shit movies since those two [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ] that I find it increasingly difficult to comprehend why anyone views him with such a hushed awe. He’s even got a brother making shit movies too. [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ]
Of course this new movie, which I’m sure Ridley is thinking of taking solely because he’s embarrassed by the whole Alien v. Predator bullshit that’s been going down, will be horrendously bad; Ridley Scott is a director of mass-marketed schlock. Two great films in the ’80s can’t change that any more than four or five great albums in the ’80s can change the fact that REM is a shite band and has been for twenty years.
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I shot a man in Weeno, just to watch him die..
Little Wesley sings Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”
http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1918001&fullscreen=1
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Wait a tick. Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably, I could go back and visit my frozen self. But, if I’m still frozen in 1967, how cou … oh, no, I’ve gone cross-eyed.
M. Joseph Young does rather interesting, detailed temporal analyses of the different timelines created by the Terminator films, the Back To The Future trilogy, Millennium, those Trek films that dealt with time travel, 12 Monkeys, Flight Of The Navigator, Army of Darkness, Lost In Space, Peggy Sue Got Married, the Bill & Ted movies, Frequency, Planet of the Apes, Kate and Leopold, Somewhere In Time, The Time Machine, Minority Report, Happy Accidents, The Final Countdown, Donnie Darko, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Deja Vu.
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Microsoft! now! provides! Yahoo! search!
Microsoft’s Bing now provide Yahoo! seach. Yahoo, a 1994 internet pioneer of search, has now agreed to stop researching search tech and start using Bing. Some say it’s a small deal, a Google deal rerun, and one says it’s a tar pit. As pointed out, nobody yet knows if Yahoo can choose another provider if it all goes wrong.
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Blue Rats.
Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have been testing the possibility that a blue food dye found in Gatorade and blue M&Ms could assist in healing spinal cord injuries, and … oh who cares …. OMG blue rats U gotta look!
The rat before being injected with BBG.
Rats injected with BBG not only regained their mobility but temporarily turned blue.
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Dumbass.
Most parents, whether we listened to them or not, taught us not to play with fire, explosives, zombies and such… But they never warned us about mentos and coke. Click on “Continue Reading” for the video.
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‘Heroes’ season four trailer: ‘Redemption’
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/6555681001?isVid=1&publisherID=769341148
Here’s your first look at “Heroes” season four. This three-minute-plus trailer is slightly different than the version that screened at the “Heroes” Comic-Con panel on Saturday. The preview has scenes from the premiere and the next couple additional episodes. A character or two looks like they’re getting killed, so I’m tempted to shout “spoiler,” but, hey, it’s “Heroes,” right?
You’ll also see scenes of the dark carnival that’s gathering up heroes for some nefarious purpose and um … hmm … what else? Oh, yes: You meet Hayden Panettiere’s new lesbian love interest that producers doubtless hope will boost ratings. NBC cut their kiss that was in the Comic-Con edition of this trailer, guess they didn’t want to just give that away online. Snog the cheerleader, save the show?
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How to cook like your grandmother
Barbecued Ribs, Roast Beef, French Toast, Twice Baked Potatoes, Macaroni and Cheese, French Onion Soup, Rye Bread, Corned Beef, Brownies.
Cooking used to be all about making food that tasted good. But somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided the diet-of-the-week was more
important. How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is a return to recipes and techniques that are based on what tastes good, not on junk science and fad diets. You won’t find the words lite, low, lean, free or skim anywhere. This is all real food, cooked the way Grandma would have done it.
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Peter Pan Got Married!
Dude, Peter Pan got married, wtf.
The Internets Peter Pan has grown up. Randy Constan, proprietor of the site pixyland.org, found his own Tinkerbell and got hitched at a Renaissance Fair. The photos are magical.
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Yesterday’s Energy of Tomorrow…and more
Peak Oil, 1925. In 2000, 20% of new buildings will be solar equipped. By the late 1990s, 90% of the world’s energy will be nuclear-generated. These and other erroneous projections are being collected as part of the Forecast Project on the website Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America.
That is a pretty awesome blog. I love the article about making jet fuel from algae. Growing up in Newfoundland, we’d always looked as pond scum as something of a gross nuisance. It’s cool to see some people making better use of it.
RobDurdle.com 
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