Miscellaneous: May 2005 Archives

I guess I’m getting old. I shouldn’t admit this, but I remember when a gallon of gasoline cost 25 cents. I was just a kid and back then, we complained about it getting all the way up to 50 cents. It was horrible. Of course, everything is relative, I suppose. Yesterday, I paid $2.19 a gallon. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it because it’s now a way of life.

So many things cost so much money today, and we don’t even think about it. And, as time goes on, it seems as though we just get used to it, and accept it. I remember that when you would take a trip and fly from one destination to the next, you would get lunch or dinner on the plane, if you were flying around lunch or dinner time. No more. Now, they don’t serve - not lunch or dinner at least. Now, they serve crackers or pretzels with soda. When they started doing that and eliminated meals, I thought to myself that it was like going from 25 cents to 50 cents a gallon for gasoline.

Well, in a few days from now, one airline will stop serving even pretzels. Beginning June 9, Northwest Airlines will charge for anything other than soda. They estimate that this will save the airline $2 million dollars a year. How can pretzels cost that much? I mean, has anyone actually counted how many pretzels you get in one of those little packages? Well, I did. I was bored and had nothing else to do, so I counted them. There were 22 little pretzels in my package. How much longer before the other airlines follow suit?

I suppose in the not so far future all airlines will follow this practice and offer nothing at all unless you pay extra - even for soda. It doesn’t bother me so much. The truth is, the meals were never that good, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s no great loss. It’s more of a concern to me that the airlines feel that they have no other choice to do this to save money. They are all about service, so if they feel they don’t have a choice, they are running very close to the edge of survival. This should be a wake up call to all of us and especially, our government.

Today they are sacrificing service and their offerings to customers. What will be sacrificed tomorrow, safety and short cuts in maintenance?

Three senior Boeing Co. employees have filed a lawsuit against the aircraft manufacturer claiming the company ignored numerous defective parts used to build airplanes. [...]

The lawsuit contends the parts did not pass minimum Federal Aviation Administration safety requirements and were used on 737s, 747s, 757s and 767s made in Wichita and delivered for sale from March 1998 through November 2004.

I thought about it overnight, and decided that it was unfair of me to make reference to a comment that I wasn’t going to show.

The comment that I referenced in A State of Grace is given below. It is unedited including the IP Address, name, and email address. It was reformatted for the comment. The verbiage remains completely intact. Read if you’d like. It’s up to you.

IP Address: 199.80.109.227
Name: A. Friend
Email Address: !!!!@!!!.!!!
URL:

Comment:

Gentlemen,Ladies?

Caught a glimpse of your writing in relation to gay marriage. Sounds like you really haven’t gotten it.

Most of us, even though we don’t always live up to it, consider marriage sacred. Yes, there are a few things, that as human beings (not necessarily right wing religious fanatics), we consider sacred.

We see that you obviously have no appreciation for that fact, however your perverted life and sexual style will never be acceptable to the vast majority of humans because it is unnatural and perverted. I don’t say this to insult you, but truth is truth; it’s not relative as your need for gratification would lead you to believe.

I hope you find another way to deal with the tendencies you possess--I know mental and physical urges are strong but you don’t have to be a slave to them. I could suggest approaches but I think it’s best if you come to them yourself.

Wishing you true peace and love.

Apparently, you don’t wish me a love that it true to my nature. An artificial love would suit you. Perhaps if I were to marry a woman and lie to her about being gay, you would sanctify that?

You don’t need to answer. I already know you would. And, the state and federal government would also sanction that lie and give us a marriage license.

This is the sanctity of marriage that you so disparately hold on to. How can a lie ever be sanctioned? How can that ever be “sacred”?

Kent and I are truth. I love Kent with everything I am. We already have a marriage. It’s not recognized by any government and it’s not recognized by most people. But it is recognized by our friends and us. It is real. It is not a lie.

At some level - at some time, someone, either in this world or the next, will recognize that.

Original reference for this post

Recently, the FDA issued an edict advising sperm banks to bar as donors men who have had sex with other men within five years prior to donation. I have searched through the medical literature for a sound scientific basis for this directive, yet the only reasoning behind the recommendation is the fact that homosexual men are at high risk of HIV. If this were the rationale, though, it follows that the FDA should bar other high-risk donors such as men who have used IV drugs or have had sex with prostitutes. This, however, is not the case. Considering the (increasingly) stringent testing procedures employed by sperm banks, the glaring inconsistency suggests the FDA is influenced by ideology, concerned more with sexual preference than with risky behavior. Here’s why, using California Cryobank, the nation’s leading sperm bank, as a model:

All donated sperm, regardless of the sexual orientation of the donor, is frozen and quarantined, allowing for ample time to retest both donor and sample -- every three months -- for not only HIV but gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis, and a host of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In addition, donors must pass a battery of tests for genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Thalassemia, canavan disease, Fanconi anemia, and various chromosome abnormalities to name a few. Also, each donor’s medical history is documented, as is that of his parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins. The donor must have gone to a four-year college, commit to donating routinely for one to two years, and undergo blood tests and physical exams every three months. Interestingly, once all is said and done, less than 5% of hopeful sperm donors are accepted. [...]

The FDA always faces pressure from a variety of interest groups. Let us hope that the agency is not caving into pressure from homophobic moralists in its recommendation to bar sperm donations by gay men. That would truly be a disservice to the public from a supposedly science-based regulatory body.

Aubrey Stimola is the Assistant Director of Public Health at the American Council on Science and Health. (source)

You have to wonder in all of this... If being gay is genetic, which I believe it is, do you think that by banning gay men from donating sperm, that they are really trying to get rid of the “gay” trait from the gene pool? Just a comment from my paranoid self, for what it’s worth.

Related entry

I thought this photo from AP was cool. It’s a female bear who wandered into the San Fernando Valley’s Porter Ranch area. It ended up taking a swim in a backyard pool.

The animal was tranquilised and released into the Santa Susana Mountains. (source)

I spotted this interesting tidbit on the Internet. There's more than a little truth to much of it.

DEMOCRATIC: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION: You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US Government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION: You have two cows. They go into hiding. They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION: You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION: You have one cow. The cow is schizophrenic. Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish. The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow. The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk. The cow asks permission to be cut in half. The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION: You have millions of cows. They make real California cheese. Only five speak English. Most are illegals. Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Next week will decide the direction our country takes.

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. MAKE YOURSELF HEARD!

This from moveonpac.org. Sign the petition that they will be delivering to the Senate.

Senator Bill Frist has pulled the trigger on the “nuclear option.” We now have less than 72 hours to stop him from seizing absolute power to stack the courts - including the Supreme Court. The vote is still too close to call. If we raise our voice, we can win.

We’ve launched an emergency petition we’ll be delivering to congress every three hours, from Monday morning until the final vote is complete. Our allies will read your comments on the Senate floor, and every senator will know the American people are standing ready to hold them accountable. Please sign today!

There are many readers who come to my site to look around. In fact, last month, I received more than one million visitors to the site. This has created somewhat of an interesting problem for me, in a couple of ways. First, it has increased my bandwidth greatly. I have also lately been having some concerns about storage. This left me with two choices. I either upgrade my service plan with my Internet service provider for more space and bandwidth, or, I pull the site, which would mean that I’m done with blogging.

I decided to stick around for a bit longer. So, today, I called my service provider and increased both storage and bandwidth (they were overjoyed).

So, if you ever try to come to my site and find that I’ve been removed from Internet existence, it won’t be because I’ve decided to call it quits and disappear from the blogosphere. I mention all of this, because I am apparently being monitored by the Federal Government. At least, it’s fair to say that they are taking an interest in this site - and probably not in a good way.

I have been extremely outspoken about my feelings on a variety of topics ranging from gay marriage, gay rights, domestic violence, the death penalty, taxes, government intrusion into our lives, and the injustice of the war in Iraq. I have talked at length about my feelings on this war, our current administration in Washington, our President, and how I feel about him running this country into the ground. I’ve been criticized by people I know for being “un-American” for not “supporting” our President and our country at a time when we need “unity”. I have been criticized by my family for “causing trouble” by being so outspoken.

Well, that’s propaganda, and it’s bullshit. I call it like I see it. I will not support this President, because he is a moron and has no clue on where or how to take this country into a future that will ensure the rights of all citizens. He won his last election not by bravely confronting the problems this nation faces - problems that effect all of us, but rather, by telling people that if he doesn’t win election, the very future of marriage is at stake. This drove large masses of religious conservatives to the polls. After the election, he wanted nothing to do with the amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage as “one man, one woman.”

In other words, this President has the integrity of a piss ant in a colony of ant eaters - he will do whatever it takes to survive. Screw integrity and screw beliefs. This is our leader. His integrity as a leader is matched only by his attitude towards other peoples of the world and his absolute contempt for anyone else (the United Nations) who might disagree with him. He is not my President. He is a President who was given the Presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court the first time around, and narrowly won election (and even that is still being disputed) for his second term.

This is what America is today - a nation that is too good for everyone else, a nation who looks down it’s nose at everyone else, a nation who is filled with hatred and bigotry tempered with a self-righteous attitude that the way we treat some of our citizens is justified based on religious doctrine.

Weekly, I check my site statistics on who is visiting my site, and, more importantly, where they are going. Over the last couple of months, I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic to this site from “.mil” domains (U.S. Military). And not just one branch. All branches have visited the site. And recently, the Pentagon has taken an interest in the site.

This urged me to take a closer look at where they were going. It’s hard for me to believe that they are here to read about gay marriage, so it was reasonable to assume that they were here for other reasons. Sure enough, each of their stops was to view the comments left in the Abu Ghraib photo album.

I posted the album some time ago. Actually, when the photos surfaced. Over the months, the rhetoric taking place in the comments left in the album have become increasingly hostile and anti-American. This was not my intention. I created the album because I feel what happened at Abu Ghraib was a terrible injustice. In fact, after the Abu Ghraib scandal, 90% of those held at the prison were released because they were falsely imprisoned. Many of these prisoners were the men who were abused in the photos.

I’ve always felt that those who were truly responsible for what happened there would never be punished. The people really responsible for letting this happen were too far up the chain of command. And sure enough, history has proved me right. Only the low-level soldiers who were there are the ones receiving the punishment for Abu Ghraib. That’s unfortunate, but expected. It echoes the Bush Administration’s ability to avoid all blame for anything that happens under it’s watch.

The administration, and indeed the United States does not need my help to make us look bad. We seem to be doing this just fine all by ourselves. The news around the world is buzzing about the photos just release of Saddam Hussein in his cell, in his underwear, no less. When I heard the news on TV and saw the photo, I just shook my head in disbelief and wondered how people could be so stupid. This was first released in a British newspaper but we were fast to pick up on it as well and publish it. Here we are at war, we’ve gone through the Abu Ghraib scandal, and now this. We just don’t learn. You don’t fight against a fire by throwing more gasoline on the fire. Stupid. It pissed me off, and I’m not even Iraqi.

I view free speech as being sacred. It is what our country is founded on. And believe me, if there’s one thing I do, it’s to exercise my right to free speech. But I don’t take it for granted. It’s possible that some day, you may try to come to billandkent.com, and we would no longer be here. If that happens, you will know what happened to the site. Call me paranoid, but I trust our current administration and our current government about as far as I can throw my house.

This is the world we live in folks. I’m a middle-aged gay man living way out in the country with my partner of 30 years. I live a private life, yet, on the Internet, I’m outspoken and direct. And, I am being monitored. For what? For my ideas? For calling things what they are?

I love my country. I don’t love what they are doing and I don’t love what we, as a nation, are becoming. And recently, it’s been difficult for me to say that I’m proud to be an American, for a lot of reasons. Some will say, “Well, if you don’t like America, get the hell out.” Believe me, we have thought long and hard about leaving. It’s hard to stay and be bashed by one state or another in this country day after day just because you want to marry your life partner, and still feel like “things will eventually get better.”

I don’t believe that there should be different tiers of rights for different groups of people in this country. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we have the right to militarily beat the hell out of another country because we are the bad ass United States. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should tell the United Nations to go screw themselves because what they believe is inconvenient for us. We should be better than that.

I believe we should not use war as a first resort to solve our problems, at the expense of the lives of the young men and women serving our country in the military forces. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should let a vocal minority in this country use selected passages from the Bible to beat down and demonize an unpopular minority in this country to justify legislation to further their means. If we allow that, we should also allow for the death of those who are adulterers. Divorce should be against the law and those who work on Sundays should be put to death, along with women who wear make up, for they are “harlots”. This is what the Bible calls for. You either carry out ALL the instructions of the Bible, if we want to go down that road, or we don’t. You shouldn’t get to pick and choose who or what group to condemn because it’s convenient to ignore some groups because they hit a little to close to home for you. We live in a democracy, not a theocracy - at least not yet. But if people like Senator Bill Frist gets his way, this democracy that we take for granted may soon be a thing of the past. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should be spending like there is no tomorrow because “we are at war”. That excuse is getting pretty worn out and lame, and future generations of children are going to be left paying for the bill that this administration is racking up. WE SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THAT!

But we won’t be better than that unless people start speaking up and saying, “enough already!”. I don’t know what it will take for people to start doing that - to start caring about their country again - to take back the greatness of what America used to be, and should be. This is my way of doing that, for as long as I can, for as long as I am allowed.

Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees that triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 15 people died.

Editor Mark Whitaker expressed regret over the item in the magazine’s “Periscope” section, saying it was based on a confidential source -- a “senior U.S. government official” -- who now says he is not sure whether the story is true.

The deadly consequences of the May 1 report, and its reliance on the unnamed source, have sparked considerable anger at the Pentagon. Spokesman Bryan Whitman called Newsweek’s report “irresponsible” and “demonstrably false,” saying the magazine “hid behind anonymous sources which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage that they have done to this nation or those who were viciously attacked by those false allegations.” (source)

George W. Bush took us into a war built on lies. He wanted this war to happen because he wanted Iraq to fall. They never were a threat to the United States, and he damn well knew it. As of yesterday, there have been 1,806 coalition troop deaths, 1,627 Americans, 88 Britons, 10 Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 21 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq.

So now, we are all over Newsweek magazine because one of it’s sources turned out to be lying when he said that American interrogators at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

The Bush Administration was quick to label this as “irresponsible”, “demonstrably false”, and that Newsweek magazine “hid behind anonymous sources which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny.”

Oh please! Why don’t we hold the Bush Administration up to the same scrutiny that we do Newsweek? Their mistake was to trust a source that turned out to be untrustworthy.

Our mistake was to trust a President who has no moral fiber what so ever and who blatantly lied to us, the American People. He should be impeached. Where is our outrage on this?

It’s very difficult for me to throw stones at Newsweek. In the greater scheme of things, their offense doesn’t even show up on the map.

Well, I know that I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. And I know that I shouldn’t let my imagination run wild with me.

But tonight I received my neighbors mail in my mail box. You remember my neighbor? He’s the one who, when I went over to his yard with a bottle of wine to welcome him to the neighborhood, pulled his children in behind him as if he were protecting them from a child molester? Yeah, that neighbor.

Well we haven’t talked since. He gave me the creeps. His kids say hi to me occasionally, but that’s it. Today in my mailbox was a catalog addressed to him from Majesty Bibles and Books.

I guess that’s why he can’t stand us. I just remember something Mom said to me once. “You can’t make people more than what they are.” It’s sad, but true.

It amazes me. I consume on average 1000-1500 calories a day. That’s not much, so the kind of food I consume matters a lot. I concentrate on low fat and high protein. I don’t count calories per se, but I do watch the fat content. Since January, I have lost 30 pounds (and counting) and my energy levels have increased 200%. I also workout and exercise. There’s really no substitute for that.

The Wendy’s Classic Tipple (pictured below) is what a lot of people have every day in this country. I used to go to Burger King and McDonalds all the time. Believe me, this is what a lot of children eat. And guess what? Every one of them have weight problems. And, we wonder why people are having so many health problems and why so many people are obese.

If I ate this, I would be sick for hours. It’s just not what I’m used too.

Source information

My diet is simple. I eat whatever it is that I want to eat. I call it the “Cher diet”.

I was flipping channels one day, and came upon an info-mercial featuring Cher. They wanted to know her lifestyle, her diet, etc. When she talked of food, she talked about all the healthy things to eat, in the right proportions. I also thought she was a health nut. The interviewer said, “Well, I can see now why you are so skinny.” She looked at him and said, “You think this is easy for me? I’m in the gym two hours a day to look this way. There’s nothing easy about it, and every thing you eat matters.”

They interviewer said, “Well, what if I like chocolate cake and want to eat that. You make it sound like food such as that are never to be eaten.”

Her answer blew me away. She said, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with that piece of cake. It is every bit as valid as that low-fat salad. The difference is, I don’t have to run for 45 minutes on a treadmill to loose the calories if I have the salad over having the cake. The bottom line is, if you want that piece of cake, you should eat it, and enjoy every bite of it. Then, you should pay the price for it and work it off! So the real question you should be asking yourself is, ‘Is that piece of chocolate cake worth that 45 minutes on the treadmill?’ If it is, then have it!”

Her point was, everything in life has a price tag. If you eat fattening foods, and do nothing about it, the price tag will be weight gain. If you work out and pay that price, a piece of cake once in awhile is not a bad thing.

I took all of that to heart. She also mentioned that when you eat, you really need to know what you are eating. If you are eating pasta, you should substitute the word “pasta”, for “complex carbs”. They burn off slower than simple sugars (candy bar). That’s how I look at all food now. If I’m going to have a piece of chocolate cheese cake, I substitute the words “chocolate cheese cake” with “gratuitous fat”, because to the body, that’s actually what it is - simple sugars and saturated fat.

You are what you eat.

(Syracuse, New York) Syracuse University has banned a Boy Scouts of America activity from campus because of the organization’s prohibition of openly gay Scout leaders. (source)

I don’t actually have strong feelings about this... anymore. They are a private organization (according to the U.S. Supreme Court) and as such, have a right to their opinions and their policies (I’m going to get a lot of “bad” mail on this).

That being said, I think it is wrong to teach bigotry. Just because they have a “right” to it doesn’t mean that they “should” do it. I do have a big problem with parents who say that they do not support bigotry and have many gay friends, yet turn right around and place their son in the Boy Scouts. That’s hypocrisy.

Your beliefs should reflect your actions.

We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse. - Tom DeLay

And they have the power of the Constitution. I wonder who will win?

I may have to re-think closing my Wells Fargo Account.

A month or so ago, I received a call from Wells Fargo collection services. I’ve had a Wells Fargo account for years. I actually had an account with First Security Bank when I was in college. Later, First Security was bought by Wells Fargo. I kept the account all these years.

So, I’m in a management meeting at work, and I get this call from a rude collector (I think maybe all collectors are rude. They have that “I know you are trying to hack into our bank and take all our money and pull a fast one” attitude before you can even get a word out).

As it turns out, he was calling me because I had a 30-day past due amount of $29.00 on my account. My reply was, “You called me out of a management meeting for $29.00?” He said, “Yes, and we want to know when it’s going to be paid.” I don’t run past due amounts. I talked to Kent, who pays the bills, and he had us as being current. I had words with the bank. It wasn’t the stupid $29.00 I was bothered by. To me, that’s nothing. What bothered me was the absolute lack of consideration they had for me, having been a customer since 1976. All they had to do was to look at my payment record. Just amazing.

I was so pissed that I told them I would be closing my account. I’m cooled off now. I suppose since they are supportive of my community, I will overlook their lack of judgment on this.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC - News), announced that Howard Buford, founder and president of multicultural advertising agency Prime Access, Inc., was honored as the first recipient of the NGLCC/Wells Fargo Excellence in Small Business Award. The award was presented Saturday, May 14th at the Excellence in Business Awards Luncheon during the 2005 NGLCC International Business and Leadership Conference in San Francisco. [...]

“Small business is big business at Wells Fargo, and we believe in the strength, diversity, and potential of the fast-growing LGBT segment,” said Michelle Scales, Director of Diverse Growth Segments for Wells Fargo. “Our ongoing alliance with the NGLCC, and our recognition of business owners like Howard Buford, reaffirm our commitment to support and partner with LGBT business owners, and help them succeed financially, in business and personally.”

The LGBT community will account for over $600 billion in consumer spending power this year alone. The NGLCC estimates the number of LGBT-owned small businesses nationwide to be approximately to one million strong. (source)

Related Entry on Wells Fargo
December 5, 2005 - Way to Go Wells Fargo

(Austin, Texas) The Texas lawmaker behind a bill that would ban gays and lesbians from being foster parents in the state says he was called on by God. (source)

This is why we need more middle-of-the-road people in our legislatures. People who claim that God is telling them how to rule are unfit for the job at hand. And, it’s a bit scary, if you think about it.

The Marine Corps is recalling 5,277 combat vests issued to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti after a newspaper article raised concerns that they failed a test to determine whether they could stop a bullet.

The Marines said in a statement they are recalling the vests to alleviate any doubts caused by a Marine Corps Times article published Monday, but service officials insisted they do not believe the vests are faulty. (source)

And they wonder why recruitment is down.

Scientists trying to sniff out biological differences between gay and straight men have found new evidence - in scent.

It turns out that sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male sex hormone, causes a response in the sexual area of gay men’s brains, just as it does in the brains of straight women, but not in the brains of straight men.

“It is one more piece of evidence ... that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned,” said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Witelson, who was not part of the research team that conducted the study, said the findings show a biological involvement in sexual orientation. (source)

I don’t know. I think I respond better to the smell of Armani than I do the smell of men.

Other Sources...
Gay Men Respond Differently to Pheromones
Scent study suggests difference in brains of gay, straight men

Happy Mother’s Day!!

With that being said, I wanted to share this little story with you concerning a man in professional sports who shared a family secret he had with some fellow players. It shows the commitment and love he has for his parents - who just happen to be two moms.

Put a group of men in a confined space for any amount of time and some mind-bending subjects are bound to arise.

Joe Valentine, Ben Weber and David Weathers shared such an experience in the Reds’ bullpen during spring training when they broached the topic of same-sex marriage.

“I was joking around because I don’t really know anything about same-sex parents,” Weber said. “But I said, ‘All I know is this: A kid with same-sex parents is going to be pretty (messed) up.’”

Silence.

The next voice -- and there’s no mistaking the sharp Long Island accent -- was Valentine’s.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been raised by two moms.”

More silence.

Eyes widened and shoulders shrugged.

“I was like, ‘Oh, dude, let me remove the foot from my mouth and apologize,’” Weber said. But he wasn’t offended.

“It’s great that he shared it with us. He seemed to turn out pretty damn good. He must have some awesome parents.”

Valentine agrees.

Read the rest of the story...

To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

“Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years,” said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors. (source)

Gee, now they are doing the same thing with sperm donations from gay men that the American Red Cross is doing with blood donations.

I say, forget about it. It doesn’t matter. If it makes society feel safer, I guess they can continue with their policies. It’s a battle I no long feel is worth my time, as long as they don’t come crying to me because they are short of blood.

It’s the same way with sperm donations. For me though, it’s a bit different. I used to donate blood, when I was allowed too, because I felt that it was a way I could help people. I wouldn’t want to donate my sperm, because the thought of having a child out there that was mine that I had nothing to do with would drive me nuts. I guess it’s just me, but I couldn’t do it.

Related entry

Kent is in Washington, D.C. I miss him. He just called and everything is going well.

I’m watching some mindless TV and thinking to myself, “I don’t get it...” Do you ever watch TV and wonder, “What has happened to the world?” But you don’t want to say that because you will sound like some old guy who just doesn’t have a clue.

Then, this memory comes to my mind about how I used to think that, when I was eight years old, about people who are now... MY AGE! What goes around, comes around.

Did I mention that I miss Kent?

Baby Pepper-Sprayed In Family Feud
A woman doused a 2-month-old girl with pepper spray while feuding with the infant’s family in a Wal-Mart, police said.

Lorlie M. Gantenbein, 36, of Sagle, was charged Tuesday with felony injury to a child. She was released on $5,000 bail and ordered to have no contact with the baby’s family.

Kansas debate over evolution becomes a war of words
Eighty years after the first famed “Monkey Trial,” a second one of sorts opened Thursday, but this time with evolution in the dock.

A State Board of Education subcommittee began four days of trial-like hearings that give evolution’s critics, many of them advocates of intelligent design, a public forum to attack the theory attributed to 19th Century British scientist Charles Darwin.

Some science groups and many scientists contend the board is being pushed to adopt language that would enshrine tenets of intelligent design in the standards - even if that concept isn’t mentioned by name. National and state organizations are boycotting the hearings, viewing them as rigged against evolution.

Abu Ghraib - Judge halts woman’s trial over plea on jail abuse
A MILITARY judge threw out yesterday the guilty plea of Lynndie England, the most visible figure in the Abu Ghraib scandal, bringing her trial to an abrupt end.

Colonel James Pohl said he was not convinced that she knew her actions in the Baghdad jail were wrong at the time.

His ruling left her fate uncertain and cancels the plea bargain Specialist England worked out with prosecutors in which she would have faced little more than two years in jail.

March of Living marks Holocaust
More than 18,000 people have taken part in the annual March of the Living between the notorious Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps in Poland.

It comes 60 years after the camps were liberated by Soviet troops.

More than one million people, most of them European Jews, were murdered by Nazi Germany in the two camps. [...]

From the photo caption:
Construction began in 1940 on site which grew to 40 sq km (15 sq mile)
At least 1.1 million deaths, one million of them Jewish
Other victims included Poles, Roma (Gypsies), Soviet POWs, homosexuals, disabled people and dissidents
Of 7,000 Nazi guards, 750 were prosecuted and punished after the war

...and it only took them 30 years to acknowledge that homosexuals were the victims of the holocaust and another 25 years to acknowledge that they didn’t deserve the treatment and eventual death they received. When the “allies” finally did free the prisoners, the homosexuals were continued to be mistreated by the allied forces, but until recently, no one seemed to care.

Still, it’s a good sign that they made mention of those unpopular men who died so long ago. Imagine being killed in such a brutal manner and no one caring. Maybe things are improving.

On the pepper spray story... Why would anyone spray a defenseless child with pepper spray? Astonishing how unbalanced some people are.

On evolution... Kent can speak of that. We talk about it often. It gets him all fired up.

As for Abu Ghraib, I think what has happened at that prison is very unfortunate, for the people it happened to, as well as the stain it placed upon our nation. The soldiers that did these deeds are guilty and are being punished, but the real culprits are much higher up in the chain of command. I’m not going to hold my breath that any of this will roll down on them.

There’s quite a battle being waged on this website over in the photo gallery of the Abu Ghraib abuses, if you care to read the comments. Be warned though, the language is harsh and the photos are very graphic, and much of it filled with extreme hatred. With that warning, you can see a sample here if you wish. It seems that the Arab world has discovered the photos along with our military, and the war of words continues. I have stayed out of the fight. It’s valuable to have the dialog I suppose, although, when each side is saying the other side should die, it’s hard to believe that any good will come from it. I’ve debated on whether to pull the album from the gallery because of that.

I posted the photos long ago to show that at least some Americans are willing to show an injustice and acknowledge it as an injustice. Unfortunately, our government doesn’t seem to think that the Geneva Convention applies to the United States.

People have told me that I don’t understand what war is and that “these things happen in time of war”. They are right. I don’t understand war, but shouldn’t we TRY at least to be better? Shouldn’t we aim for a higher standard?

Just my feelings.

I always find it a bit interesting to see the traffic that comes to my site and to see what people are looking for. For the first time ever, I had over 1 million hits to the site in April. The total count was 1,064,636 displaying 151,924 pages.

Searches:
barry winchell (over 1768 searches for Barry, who was killed while in the military in 1999)
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And finally, my favorite....
santorum latin for asshole