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Started this discussion. Last reply by Jennifer Rawlines Mar 15, 2011. 1 Reply 0 Likes
Hey, hey everyone! It's time for Feed Me Friday! Can I hear a Wahooo?! Feed Me Friday is an email subscription hop designed to help you increase your blog…Continue
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Posted on February 3, 2012 at 11:22am 0 Comments 0 Likes
How many times do we as parents think, "Man, why couldn't this child have come with an instruction manual?!" Instead, all too often, we are left playing the parental guessing game with occasional advice from friends and family.
Now, what about when a new dog or pet joins your family? We all know the saying, "Dogs are man's best friend". In my experience the same…Continue
Posted on January 9, 2012 at 11:01am 0 Comments 0 Likes
When my little guy turned one I was very adamant that we were going to get rid of all the bottles and binkies in the house. We had been working on getting him switched over to sippy cups so that didn't seem to be much of a problem. But then there was the binky. I personally loved it but my husband wanted to…Continue
Posted on December 14, 2011 at 3:10pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
If you don't yet have a Christmas wreath hanging on your front door, now it the time to make one? Make one? Yeah, it is super easy. Why now? Because stores like Michael's have all their Christmas stuff 50-60% off, making this a super cheap DIY.
Here is how to make a super cute Christmas wreath:
Depending on the size of the wreath you buy you'll need 6-10 floral picks of varying sizes. You…Continue
Posted on November 10, 2011 at 9:30am 0 Comments 0 Likes
My husband's little brother and his girlfriend made some really cute witch's hat cookies around Halloween so I thought I could incorporate the idea into a Thanksgiving Hat. It was so simple I couldn't believe how quick and…Continue
hI aMY, LOVE YOUR BLOG!!!


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Original post:
This is a random drawing I made for my sister's birthday, I thought some of you might be interested to see it. Because of its size, it's probably easier to navigate the drawing on deviantart here. But I'll post it here anyway.
joemann wrote:Those little white guys look almost exactly like the little white guys from the movie Princess Monoke. Interestingly enough, they were called/referred to as forest spirits and there was this huge honking tree that the main character says is probably their mother.
Any connections there Keydar?
Very nice drawing. How long did it take if you don't mind my asking?
I hope your sis enjoys this gift.
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After Mount St. Helens we headed to Timberline Lodge. It was built in the 30s for the Works Progress Administation. It was also the building that was shot for all the outside scenes of The Shining. It was pretty cool. And it was strangely anything but creepy. What was awesome about it was that it was 6,000 feet up in Mt. Hood. And the artwork and detail in construction were amazing. I'd tell you about it, but Emily would do a much better job. So needless to say it was snowing. We got to enjoy the hot tub while it was snowing. Nothing is more fun than an outside hot tub and snow falling on your face. At least I found that out afterwards.
The next few days were spent in Portland, OR. Jamie's wedding was incredible. We, go figure, randomly sat down with the CDbaby people at the rehearsal dinner and met some really interesting people. Very cool people. Great connections were made. The wedding was awesome. Incredible food, as expected and incredible people. It was awesome spending a weekend with Jamie's friends and family. The rest of the weekend primarily was spent in our robes ordering a lot of room service. We did spend one afternoon with Brian (Beb) – which was fun! It was nice seeing Brian. Man, it had been years! What really ruled about the hotel was that they had bellboys to take our luggage to our room and people to call cabs for us. So fancy for such little money. Portland was ok. I really liked it, but I could see it getting on my nerves after a while. Too many white people and too many people to agree with, politically and musically. That and it's kinda lame to be a teenager or in your 20s and be a punker homeless person. That's just a lame copout. Oh and there is a book store, record store and recording studio on every block. I'd go broke in 3 weeks. Oh yeah, and then we stayed with Cara and Jon for a few nights while during the day Emily and I went to a bunch of studios. Seeing Larry Crane's Jackpot! Studios was most excellent. Thanks Kendra. All the studios in Portland were such a wild range and it was definitely very reassuring that this is something we will be quite successful at.
The rest of the trip was spent in San Francisco. Traveling to SF via Route 1 was beautiful however it was giving me a heart attack as the drop off was so goddam steep with little or no guard rails most of the way. Mark and Maria graciously offered to let us stay with them. It was great hanging with Mark's family. His two kids were fun. It was kind of strange sleeping in his studio with Emily and having his sampler at eye level. Very surreal. But none the less, getting to spend time was more than informative. He took us around to a few studios and we all learned a bunch! It was also cool tieing up loose ends on the record we plan to release. We also got to talk about Horsetricks III. There was also a lot of wine and politics. Go figure. The last night in the Bay Area was spent in Oakland having dinner with Tolya and Otto. Yay Tolya and Otto! Oh snap and we got to hang with my old friend from University of Hartford. Ben! Yay Ben. And John was also coincidentally in town so we go to to spend some time with him which also ruled. And we also went to this gay leather festival. Nothing is more San Francisco than nude (sans shoes) oiled up men masturbating in public down the streets. I shit you not. Sadly we missed the parts where the pornstars were peeing on each other. Wild, I tell you.
Ok that's it. Yesterday was spent with the ever wonderful and supportive Al and JG moving our stuff in to the apartment. The rest of the week will be spent rebuilding our nest.
Catch ya later Bill & Ted…


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Lady Gaga Plays With a Doll Onstage in Singapore
Lady Gaga is a lot of things. Fierce. Ferocious. Fabulous. Fashionable. A crusader. She's also cute as hell, as this video of her singing to a doll while performing onstage in Singapore so deftly demonstrates. Gaga, looking part vixen, part siren in her black bodysuit, fishnet stockings and laced, knee-high boots, is seated when she handles the doll, which was thrown on stage by a fan, singing 'Born This Way' to it. Only at a Born This Way Ball Tour show can you see this type of stuff.
How adorbs is it when Gaga makes the doll dance to the 'BTW' melody? Seriously, we're dying of a cuteness overload. Too. Much. Cuteness. Cannot. Handle.
So much for cracking a nation's moral code and tearing at a country's fabric of faith with a concert, right? We're talking about the drama surrounding the Indonesian show, which was eventually canceled, thanks to a sect of extremists and protestors who managed to have the permit be pulled by threatening violence and other forms of chaos if the show went on as planned.
Gaga chose not to push back or to alter her show, citing concerns for her own safety and the well-being of all her beloved little monsters in the region. It was not an easily arrived at decision, but was likely for the best.
We hope all Indonesian little monsters missing the axed June 3 show will watch these clips and enjoy what they can. Gaga promised to make it up to them and there is no doubt she will. She tweeted: "I will try to put together something special for you. My love for Indonesia has only grown. #GagaSendsLoveToJakarta and all its people."
Again, isn't she adorable? Sweeter than a cherry pie with Rheddi-Whip topping!
Watch Lady Gaga Sing to a Doll in Singapore


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RIVERSIDE >> A detective described a former Alhambra High School administrator as a "sexual predator," according to documents obtained Wednesday at the courthouse where the woman was scheduled to be arraigned.
Prior to writing out an arrest warrant for Andrea Michelle Cardosa, 40, Detective Roberta Hopewell spoke to the Alhambra Police Department and two victims who came forth with allegations of sexual assault.
"Cardosa is a sexual predator," Hopewell wrote. "She is charged with molesting two of her students between 1998—2010. These were ongoing sexual assaults that occurred over a period of time … Cardosa is a danger to children/society."
Cardosa was scheduled for arraignment on several counts of child molestation Wednesday at Riverside Superior Court, but the arraignment was postponed until March 7 at 8:30 a.m.
John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside District Attorney's Office, said Cardosa could face 15-to-life for every one of her five counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child under the age of 14. And that's on top of the 11 other felony counts that could be leveled at Cardosa.
"We believe we have a good case, and the statute of limitations does not apply because we have charges that carry a life sentence," he said.
Randy Collins, Cardosa's attorney, said Cardosa's family members did not wish to speak.
"Right now we're not in a position to comment," he said. "As soon as we get more information, then at that point in time, we'll be in a better position to say something."
A 28-year-old woman catapulted the criminal investigation when she recorded a telephone conversation she had with a woman identified as Cardosa. The woman posted the nearly nine-minute video on YouTube on Jan. 17.
The viral video captured more than 1 million views within a week. The original video has been removed from YouTube, but other versions can be found.
On Jan. 17 Cardosa resigned from her post as assistant principal at Alhambra High School — where she worked for three months — and admitted to the Alhambra Police Department that she once had intimate dealings with a minor, court documents said.
"Cardosa admitted to having sexual relationship with Jane Doe #1, but said Jane Doe #1 was 15 or 16 years old at the time," court records said. "Later in the interview, Cardosa said Jane Doe #1 might have been 14 years old. Cardosa said the incidents occurred in the City of Riverside and the City of Perris, in Riverside County."
The victim alleged that when Cardosa was her basketball coach at Chemawa Middle School in Riverside, Cardosa "digitally penetrated" the then 12-year-old in the girls' locker room, court documents said.
The victim saw Cardosa as a mentor, and the relationship continued until 2008, court documents said.
Another victim only identified as "Brianna," 18, came forth on Jan. 23 with allegations that in 2010 Cardosa took the then 14-year-old girl to a secluded area of Mead Valley, where Cardosa allegedly tried to kiss the teenager and began rubbing her vaginal area, court documents said.
On behalf of Brianna, South Pasadena attorney Luis Carrillo has filed a claim for monetary damages against both the Riverside and the Val Verde unified school districts.
During a Wednesday morning hearing, which lasted less than four minutes, Cardosa didn't say a word and had her head bowed. Her black hair hid her face from view.
Cardosa is also charged with five counts of lewd acts on a child under the age of 14 and six counts of lewd acts on a child 14 or 15 years of age while the defendant is at least 10 years older than the victim.
Cardosa was arrested Monday evening in Perris. She is being held in lieu of $5 million bail at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.
"It's always very disappointing and tragic when hearing charges like this are against an educator when they are supposed to protect our children," Hall said. "And to see something like this happen, where she's been an educator for so many years — instead of protecting students she was victimizing them."


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A new last post.
Well, countrary to my hopes, bloging anonymously doesn't really work for me. I'm back, and here's the link http://pioneeranomaly.wordpress.com/
The Last Blog.
I began blogging about 2 and half years ago. The point was to have written record of my own thoughts to hold myself accountable, and to document the spiritual journey I was on. If you read my blog form beginning to end, you watched me begin a confused Christian, then a Christian who knew where he was going, then a shakey atheist, and then a solid atheist, then a very happy atheist, and finally just me: the man who the 16 year old boy should have become, had he not chosen to insist in trying walk a faith he knew in his heart he didn't believe.
At first when I became an atheist I believed the same things, exempting only the disbelief in God, but the skeptical rationalism of which my atheism is but a symptom, called into question my political identity as well. My friends began to change as some left, and some new ones came. Gradually, as I began to understand who I am, I began to be comfortable with who I am. As this has gone on, a contradiction inherent to atheism began immerge.
How can non-existence be so important? I don't have a blog about the non-existence of Santa or the Easter bunny, and tellingly neither does anyone else. I can't speak for others, but for me the non-existence of God was so important because of the huge place I gave the imaginary person of God in my life. Atheism was important to me the way a amputees stump is important to them, as the end of what is and the beginning of what was. But that part of the journey is over, the god hypothesis is out my life now. You can't spend your whole life mulling over a surgery, no matter how life changing it was. At some point you have to just accept the post surgery you as your real self, and move on.
Tied up in atheism as this blog is, I think as I prepare to move on, this blog will be left behind. I don't want to label myself by what I am not anymore. If I must have a label, I want to be labeled for the things I believe in, not the things I disbelieve in. It's time to stop remaking the foundation over and over and start working on the house. Further, this blog circulates to a wide variety of people, many family, and as such, I do not practice the sort of open hearted communication I believe in on this blog.
I actually practice a huge amount of self censorship here. When does discretion, which is wise and reasonable, become "self censorship" which is just saving your oppressor the trouble? I don't know, but I know the discretion is contextual. If I limit my readership, I can be my true self and not worry about hurting anyone, or being attacked for it. It's important to me to be my true self, especially in a document I trust to be the accurate record of how I felt at the time.
Finally, I am about to deploy. I'm going far away from my loved ones for a while, and I want a place online where I can write my thoughts the way I think them, without filter or compromise. For that reason and the ones above, this is the end of the beginning. If you have enjoyed the journey up to this point, you may not like the next leg of it. I have kept a very even tone here, trying hard to respect the beliefs of people I disagreed with. This blog was all about what I believe being questioned. The next one's about being myself. Since I don't think anyone knows better how to be me then I do, the discussion on the next blog will be of a different nature.
I am good deal more profane, snarky, ribald, sexual, sensitive, creative, emotional, and silly then I let on here, and the so the new blog will have more profanity, cheap shots, sexual content, humor, and just plain silliness than this one. If you think you won't respond positively to that, then this is the end. If you want to visit the new blog, say so in your comments below, and I will take your email from the confirmation and send you a link to the new blog.
Regardless, I've had a wonderful almost 3 years with all 75,000 views (and probably the 5 regulars that represents). Goodbye, and Peace
Sincerely, Israel "Truth Walker" Walker.
It's not about Jesus
I wrote something to an acquittance of mine, Anna L Davis, in response to a post she wrote and it got me thinking. I thought about the degree to which being part of a church is not about Jesus. Anna spoke of a group of former prostitutes who know try to lead other prostitutes to Jesus. For whatever reason (My morals, of course, intrinsically compromised by my atheism) I don't like prostitution and I think it is good for women to be lead out of it by people who have been there, regardless of motivation. She mentioned how she would like to see more of this sort of thing.
I don't think she will. Christianity is dying in the west, at rate of about 1% per year. Do you know what the fastest growing religion is? Wicca. The number of people who identify as Wiccans is doubling every 30 months. (Ref) So, I offer to concerned Christians everywhere my little guide book to how to keep your church from going the way of the brontosaurus. You can get Wiccans and other Neopagans (people who believe a fairly arbitrary re-imagining of neolithic and bronze age paganism, only without the blood sacrifice.) to go your church and stay there.
Its profoundly simple, actually. White suburban does not equal Christian. Tell me which picture is a group of Christians….
I like how the photo of the Christian teens (it's taken from the Youth for Christ web page) uses careful lens flash to make the token black guy the whitest one there. So tell, me what exactly have the goths done wrong here? They are dressed as modestly as the Christians. There is no more hair dye, and no more make up on the right then on the left. You can't see any skin really, no naughty words, no pentagrams.
But you know, don't you? You know instantly they aren't Christians because they don't look white bread enough. Wicca takes these people with open arms. Wicca says "Your uniqueness is blessed". The Christians say, through a tyranny of frowns and subtle digs, that these people aren't right, no matter how much they love Jesus. I know someone is reading this and saying "Oh NO! Not I! I would love these people into Christianity. How long could person come to your church dressed like this before someone felt the need to say something to them? If Christianity wants to exist in another 50 years, then it needs to stop acting like being a Christian means having a Christian image, and needs to start acting like the inside is more important then the image….
Or be content with young people leaving droves from the hypocrisy.
P.S. If you got this far without ever realizing that only God can see the heart and the group on the left could be Satan worshipers and the group on the right could be local Baptist teen group then you don't need me to tell you what the problem is.
Audacious Man
I will write my paradigm paper, really. I'm just busy.
A specialist will always beat a generalist in a specialized challenge. The only time a specialist losses to a generalist is in general challenge.
Specialized challenge: going really fast in a vehicle around a highly embanked well paved track. Winner: race car. Loser: tractor.
Specialized challenge: pulling 40 tons of grain over wet sod for 2 hours on 3 gallons of diesel. Winner: tractor. Loser: race car.
The only time a generalist has chance is when the challenge is general. This is why we use main battle tanks and not light, medium, and heavy battle tanks. Battle is a general challenge so a force of all general tanks beats a force of an equal number of special tanks, unless there are special circumstances. Same goes for airplanes. We are increasingly moving away from force of fighters, attack planes, ground support planes, and light bombers to a single multirole plane which isn't quite as good of a specialist as any of those, but over all wins the general challenge.
A human, verses any animal specialist will always lose. Apes are better weight lifters, dolphins better swimmers, cheetahs better runners, fleas better jumpers. We don't haves as good as hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or seeing as a veritable zoo of various species. We have one specialty:
We create.
We make tools to make tools to make tools. Everything we make is a tool. No other species specializes does creation like us. This is one of the most important ideas in the world. This means we are at our most human when we are creating. The "best" human is not the one who knows the most facts, or has the most stuff, or can influence the most people. The most human human is the one that is the most creative. This is the human most useful to any society when the game changes, though also the most likely to change the game.
What does this mean? My thanks to Xenophanes for expounding on this back in 500 BC:
The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own
And so the Gods of people are…always…creators.
Who is more audacious, the man who believes there is no God, or the man believes his god must be just like him?
Miley Cyrus, Whores, and personal responsibility
My last blog, I said this blog would be where what I believe has taken me. Well, that's a big story and I am still writing it. So let me pause for a moment to say something else. Three months ago I wrote a post on Miley Cyrus. I still get comments from time to time telling me she was was a good girl, but now is a bad girl.
Now, let me ignore the larger trend of morality being defined by massive business conglomerates as sexlessness and go straight to the other issue here. I want to say to all the men who thinks that a nice girl becomes a bad girl when she puts on more revealing clothes and dances…
A woman is not bad because you want to do bad things to her. You are.
By bad things I don't mean sex. Its normal and healthy for a straight man to desire sex with women. By bad things, I mean exploitive things, thoughts more like "I want to have sex with her outside of any context of mutual respect." Or worse still "She made me feel a certain way, and now she owes me sex." Or maybe worst of all "I can do with her whatever I want, because she wants it anyway." Now that I have clarified what "bad things" are let me say again…
A woman is not bad because you want to do bad things to her. You are.
Fellow men, have I made this clear enough? If you look at a woman and want to degrade her or hurt her through sex the person with the problem is you, not her. Calling names doesn't change this. You can call a woman a slut, or a whore, or a ho if you like, but it won't change the fact that…
A woman is not bad because you want to do bad things to her. You are.
I wish I had never done that blog on Miley Cyrus. I wish I didn't have men writing me every couple days and saying "Miley Cyrus made me horny for a 16 year old and now she's a filthy little slut." because it's sick and sad and depressing. I say one last time to the men of the blogoshere…
A woman is not bad because you want to do bad things to her. You are.
Maybe if I say it enough, somebody will get it.
How I became a happy Atheist
Every year after my birthday, I try to reassess my life. I write down this reassessment so I can read it. I've found my memory slants things in my favor and only by writing down my thoughts can I later be sure of exactly what I was thinking at the time. So this post is primarily for me, put out publicly for anyone who might be interested. In essence, I'm reintroducing myself to myself. If you want to get to know me again, this would be a good thing for you to read, if you don't there won't be much you haven't heard already.
I spent most of my life with what you might call a divided self. To some people, I was a good and serious Christian, to others I was a very liberal Christian, to myself I could be either of those two, but there was also a private life hidden from both my serious Christian friends and my nominally Christian friends. There were two parts to this private life as well: there was young man that desired nothing but the satiation of the flesh, and finally caught in the tension of all of this and man who truly hated his very life, and struggled constantly to avoid physical self harm and deep feelings of worthlessness. I was deeply ashamed that I, a Christian felt that way and struggled as much to keep people from finding out how I felt like trash as I did to overcome those feelings.
It made for a complicated life. I thought my parents were the greatest parents on earth and I loved them. At the same time, sometimes I hated them so much it was purely my fear of the punishment of God for disobeying them that kept me at home much past my 16th birthday. If I was going to choose one word to describe my young adult and adult years it would "confused". I was never sure who was the real me: the serious Christian, the liberal Christian, the sex freak, or person who was prevented from suicide purely because whenever he put a gun to his head he saw his family around his hospital bed as he was in a vegetative state, clucking their tongues and saying "Couldn't even get that right, could you?"
I was always on the look out for someone who had the answer of how to live the Christian life. I wanted to truly be a Christian more than anything on earth. Adolescent angst turned into adult depression. Frequently, I would wake up before my alarm went off and stare at the ceiling trying to will myself into facing another day of failing to be the man I was supposed to be. Usually I could. Sometimes I could not, and it cost me more then one job.
This would lead me to join a radical Pentecostal group who claimed to have a corner on knowing God. Some would call the group cult-like, and perhaps it was but, in the end it was good for me. For the first time in my life I was honest with people about the feelings I had about myself and others. There was an enormous rush to being that intimate with people emotionally. The feeling, though sexless, is not entirely unlike the feeling of being courted. (I've talked to a few cult survivors who say this remains a feature of their live that they now miss.) When the novelty of those wonderful feeling wore off however, I was largely the same person. This became an increasing source of frustration. Further, the church talked a very radical, revolutionary game, but when I started to ask hard questions about when this so called revolution would start, I was ostracized.
A pivotal moment in all of this, was falling in love with my wife's best friend. Of course, being 24 and her being 22, part of these love feelings including an intense and acute desire to make love to her. Which at first, made me hate myself more then I knew was possible. It would hardly seem that this could work for good? But it did. Through long conversations with my wife about my feelings, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't feelings that were wrong but the actions you took with them. That being the case, I just ignored the sex drive and enjoyed loving someone. Always I had seen my desire for sex with a woman I was not married to as sick and twisted, and myself as perverse for having such feelings. Now, I accepted those feelings and enjoyed them but chose not to act on them. This was the beginning of a life of much less self hatred.
This new life of believing that I was worthy of love changed what I expected from a church. I now wanted to be treated as a peer. This didn't sit well with the somewhat cult-like church we went to. The last straw was when I quit my job (to avoid temptation, long story) and no one would help us. Further, I was reading the Bible as a whole document looking for the whole story rather then reading individual passages to see what I could make it say. Our church wasn't even close.
We had moved to the inner city to be closer to the people we were supposed to be saving. I sat on the stoop listening to the gun fire and the sirens. I realized that every stupid thing I had ever done was because I thought someone besides me would take care of me, yet here I was unemployed in the projects of Kansas City. I had a high enough ACT score to get into MIT and I was waiting tables and living three doors down from a crack house.
I decided I would start taking care of myself, and that such a thing would glorify God. I also still wanted to help people in the inner city, and it looked to me (after 2 years of hearing about transformation that I never saw) that hard working people getting money into the crappy schools would go a lot farther then prayer meetings.
I joined the Air Force (same pay as the other branches but least chance of getting shot and most time at home). I joined a very sincere Christian who had reached one simple conclusion: If one was going to consistent with ALL of scripture instead of just the parts they liked, then God was a radically different person then most people thought.
It's unfortunate in many ways that I deconverted after joining, because I think a lot of people have the idea the military experience is what made me an atheist. Not at all. I joined, as I said, primarily to make enough money to make a difference. I came into the military a Christian. It was not the Air Force life that deconverted me but careful study of Scripture and the history of the early church.
That study lead me to believe that one of three things must be true (1.) There is no God. (2.) There is a God but he actively hides from those who seek him (3.) There is a God and I personally can see no evidence because he doesn't want me to. In any of those three cases, this life on earth is the highpoint of my existence as I am either bound toward nothing or hell.
Logic says to believe the idea which requires the least invention to work. I could invent a God that cannot be found with the scientific method, or say there is no God. I chose no God. I prayed a final prayer, "Lord if you are real, I came to this conclusion with the brain you gave me and the best facts I could get. If you are real and I am wrong, then please keep my daughter and don't hold my sin against her. I'm going to be true to myself and admit I don't see you."
After this, everything got better. (A subject I have blogged on extensively.) I didn't ache inside because I wasn't failing anymore. I stopped pretending I was a Christian, so now I had one kind of friends: the kind that liked me for me. Three months later, I woke up and was getting ready for work. I felt strange and it took me some reflection to realize why: I couldn't remember the last time I woke up so depressed that I couldn't go to work.
I didn't immediately "come out" as an atheist. In my life I have been many things and what I am really excited about today is not something that will necessarily have great meaning to me in 6 months or a year or 5 years. I quietly worked out things. One of the things I really struggled with was the meaning of life in the absence of God. Christianity is a pre-packaged world view, the paradigm equivalent of a Lunchable. Atheism is merely a theology. Eventually, two things would move me. The first was existentialism. Sadly, since most existentialists are big philosophy geeks, existentialism has a huge image problem. Existentialism does not say that life is meaningless (that would be nihilism), on the contrary existentialism says life can have great purpose: the purpose you give to it.
This helped me understand some of the great confusions of my life. What meaning did my relationships have? The meaning I chose to give them. Guilt I had carried over an ex-fiance for years melted away. But what of the indifferent universe that I now believed I lived in? Well, when I spoke of this to the very wise Doctor Karen Stollznow, she said, Israel, rocks and trees may be indifferent, but we as humans are generally surrounded by human beings who are as authentic parts of this universe as the sun or the earth. Because people can make the choice to care, the universe is not indifferent.
During this period (around this time last year) I began to really hate my parents. I was profoundly bitter with Christianity and I blamed my parents for raising me in it. That was stupid. We've talked since and worked it out largely. Though not bitter, I remain slightly miffed at Christianity. I'm 29 years old and it has only been the last few years that I have had a normal sexual relationship. I've been in a sexual relationship since I was 22, however it wasn't normal or healthy until fairly recently as atheism and existentialism helped me come to healthy view about myself. Sex is not very important to some people and incredibly important to others. I am the latter, and it irritates me that I spent the first 25 years of my life when unhealthy, ineffective thoughts and actions regarding sex because of Christianity.
A note here, when I say "Christianity" I am not referring to a code of ethics based on the Gospels, but the unique expression of American, politically conservative protestantism as I understood it. I have talked to many people since deconverting that managed to believe psychologically healthy things as well as Christianity. They managed to believe everything I do, yet do so with a paradoxical belief largely at odds with scripture. More power to them, I'm not mad at them anymore either. (For awhile I was jealous of their ability to keep all the pleasant trapping of Christianity without the madness, but I've come to accept that they can do it and I can't)
This is largely the complete story of how I got to where I am. Next post I will tell you myself (and you all) where here is.
High School Sexual Culture
The trip had begun like most of our church youth group trips had, with me working on the 1970-too old, Dodge Crap-O-Van. Was it a new water pump that time or a bad alternator? I can't remember. I do remember the crunch of gravel under my feet and the singing of the cicadas from the church parking lot's only tree, so I know it was in August. I remember praying to God for the strength to get through the whole repair without using sinful language, but I prayed that prayer frequently working on old vans.
I can't remember what the trip was for, either. Were we going to some Bible college? A Christian rock concert? Or was it the trip to Denver where we spent two weeks doing vacation Bible school puppet shows? It's been so long since then, but those youth groups trips were incredibly important to me, at the time. My father's post traumatic stress and my mother's agoraphobia created a home where friends weren't very welcome. We lived deep in the cornfields, where dad could shoot paper targets until the fear went away and mom could drink in the sun and trees until the strain of normal life was lifted. I came of age not at school, not hanging out with my friends, but at Bible camp, in Sunday school, and on the sticky vinyl seats of our church's 15 passenger van.
For whatever reason we'd gone, I will never forget the trip back. We were exhausted, and all of us were fading in and out of sleep. The engine was a continuous roar, drowning out conversation and the tires droned out a hypnotic hum down the interstate. I was in the first passenger seat, in the middle between several thousand dollars of sound equipment on the right, and Darcy Trigg was on my left. I laid my head against the cold, hard fiberglass of the roadie boxes, and closed my eyes.
We hit bump and I awoke, conscious only of scratchiness across my face. I moved my hand up to the scratchiness, and confusingly found something soft and warm. The fog of sleep clearing, I realized that in my sleep I had turned away from the hard case, and turned instead to Darcy. My eyes fluttered open, and I froze. The scratchiness was the collar of Darcy's sweater, stretching across my face from chin to widows peak. Not only had I turned to her in my sleep, I had laid my head on her chest and slid down. One eye looked down the front of her sweater, but the other was on the inside, her ample breasts and white satin bra, cast a warm pink by the sunlight shinning through her top.
She must be asleep, I thought, and there is no way, that if she wakes up she is going to believe this is an accident. She's going to to know what a disgusting pervert I am, and no girl will ever talk to me again…I will be "that guy." I closed my eyes, and very carefully and very slowly moved away, sitting perfectly straight, and not opening my eyes until I was in a position to stare straight ahead. Then, and only then, did I slowly turn my head to Darcy.
Her chin was in her left hand, her elbow on the window sill, watching the cornfields shoot by. She'd been awake the whole time! Clearly she hadn't pushed me off or woken me because she was mortified with embarrassment. I was so ashamed, and yet I didn't want Darcy to think that I thought she was ugly. I wanted to say that I thought she was beautiful but at the same time I was terrible sorry for violating her. My mouth was dry and I felt shaky.
"Darcy.." I whispered loud enough for her to hear, but too quiet to carry over the road noise to any other listening ears, and leaned towards her for greater privacy.
"I…I was asleep…I…didn't…" I stammered.
She turned to me slowly, her eyes big and kind, bashful from underneath her brow, a slight smile upon her lips. She leaned toward me, closing the space between us I'd made by sitting up straight, and laid her hand on my knee.
"I didn't mind," she said softly. She searched my eyes, her serenity and kindness pitying my confusion and fear. Squeezing my knee, she sighed contentedly and returned to watching the landscape out the window, giving me a last over-the-shoulder smile.
I sat in total confusion. Darcy was the kindest, most gentle soul I knew at the time. Growing up in a world that divided women into nice girls and sluts, Darcy's credentials as a nice girl were impeccable. She was quiet, demure, modest, and serious. She knew the Word, and walked the walk…and she told me that I had done nothing wrong and she enjoyed me having my face down her shirt. I realized then that maybe good girls did want to be kissed, held, and touched. Maybe, just maybe, good girls might have sex drive, and maybe a girl could want me, the geeky guy with the thick glasses, because I was OK, and not because she was screwed up.
Open marraige contintued,
In my last post, I told a story. I told the true story of how I came to no longer see open marriage as evil. Included in that story was the fact that ultimately, my wife and I don't have what most people call open marriage. I told this in story form, because I thought it would help people identify with what was going on. It would show them a journey that made a little more sense of how a person who used to be a Christian came to think open marriage could be an option, before he de-converted. Instead of making it easier for people to understand I seem to have made it harder so let me try again, laying out the principles I wanted to make clear last time.
First off, all marriages are open. There is no magical force imbued in the marriage license that "closes" your marriage. Every person in every faithful marriage is so for one reason only: their feelings. Even if a person says "No, no, no! I am faithful out of a sense of duty!," it is their feelings about duty that make them think duty is a worthy reason to be faithful. If they felt duty was a pointless concept, they wouldn't believe it was a worthy reason to be faithful. Being faithful is choice every married person makes every day, based on how they feel about it at the time. As such, ALL marriages are open because everyday, either partner can sleep with whoever they want, whenever they want, The fact that most people chose not to says that most people feel that the consequences are greater then the benefits, not that marriage is magically a "closed" relationship.
Second, if any readers are familiar with personal property rights, they will know that what makes private property "private" is not only the right do do what you wish with it, but also the right to exclude others from doing anything with it. Marriage is as much about who is excluded and from what as who is included. This is why marriage is a legal status, and not just a relationship one. The government is aiding the contract holders (the married people) in enforcing their legal right of exclusion of all others. Because of the difficulty in pinning down anything else, legal marriage is what defines this right of exclusion primarily on the act of coitus.
The problem is when people carry the legal definition as a relational definition, because sexual monogamy is a road, not a point. The confusion is because sexual intercourse and sexuality are not the same thing. Most married people have a huge problem with their spouse having sexual intercourse with someone else. Very few married people have a problem with their spouse speaking to someone else. However, whats the line between chatting and flirting? Not a whole lot. When does flirting (which implies a lack of serious interest) become dirty talk? And at what point does dirty talk become virtual sex? Where is the line between a friendly squeeze and a grope? When does a pat (noun, usage 2) become petting? (usage 2) When does chit-chat become opening your heart?
My point is not that by creating infinitely fine gradients the difference between behaviors is erased. For instance, there is huge difference between chatting and phone sex, and everybody knows it. My point is that each couple has to determine how far down the road of non-monogamy is "too far" for their individual relationship. You will find few people to whom fidelity means merely refraining from coitus. (Bill Clinton famously among them.) This is because despite popular usage the word "fidelity" has no intrinsic connection to sex. Webster's says fidelity means faithful. So what does Webster says faithful means? Steadfast in affection or allegiance, firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty. Even the dictionary confirms, couples work out what faithfulness means in their own relationship. As long as you adhere to the promises you made to your spouse, and observe the duties that you agreed to, you are being faithful.
There are intimacies of different kinds, including but not limited to emotional and physical. Since marriage is about excluding others as well as about including one, each couple has to work out where that line is crossed and others aren't being excluded anymore. I know couples where each person doesn't have any opposite sex friends because, for them, even a friendly conversation crosses the line of exclusion. I know couples where each person doesn't look at pornography or read romances because, for them, that crosses the line of exclusion. I know couples that don't sleep with people of the opposite sex until their spouse has met them because, for them, that crosses the line of exclusion.
Stereotypical open marriage means at least one spouse sleeping around with the consent of the other spouse. My point was not that that is something positive, but that I no longer see it as something implicitly negative . My claim that it is not bad does not mean that I am saying it is good. I am saying, above all, that fidelity is something every couple gets to work out on their own terms, and no person has a corner on what a "good" marriage is.
So, having realized (1.) Every relationship is open anyway. The legal status of marriage does not change this fundamental reality of relationships. (2.) Every couple has to work out their own working concept of fidelity together, respecting both voices. (3.) As such, a loving, healthy, and respectful marriage can include another person.
Understanding that lead to make the MAIN POINT OF THE WHOLE BLOG: "Love fearlessly." Don't let the fear of intimacy, be it of the emotional or physical prevent you from making the choice to fall in love with someone–just keep your spouse aware the whole time of what is going on. You are being faithful as long as you don't cross the line of exclusion. When your spouse says "stop" because you hit that line, then stop, and you remain a loving, faithful spouse. Cross it and you are unfaithful, because when your spouse asked you not to, you did anyway, not because of the nature of the act you were asked not to do. No person has a right to say where that line is but you and your spouse, so don't fear crossing anyone's lines but the one you and your spouse marked out and said "This is ours."
LOVE FEARLESSLY! That was the point.
Now, a note here on my marriage: The legal status of our marriage is merely a tax shelter; it has no say whatsoever on what makes marriage sacred to us. Sacredness comes from feelings. Whether you believe your marriage is sacred because of your feelings about a deity or because of your feelings about yourself and your spouse, either way the sacredness comes from your feelings. My wife and I consider marriage a partnership, a meeting of equals for mutual gain. We hold our marriage as sacred.
We decide the "line of exclusion" on a case by case bases after much discussion. If either partner says "I don't feel comfortable with X" then X stops. Because to us, the day we desire an act with another person more than the whole hearted approval of our spouse, our marriage dies. The tax shelter would live on, but the sacred union dies. To me that is the only moral foundation for our marriage. When I talk about "open marriage" that is the context I am referring to.
And a note here on open marriage. Other people can define "sacred marriage" how they wish, but I find the way most people live out open marriage would absolutely not be sacred for me. In most of the open couples I have meet, the man can have sex with whoever he wants, and the woman (if she is allowed to have sex outside the marriage at all) is only permitted other women. If I were to live that way, I would be lying to myself and my wife to make such a life appear sacred to me. I can't say that is the case for other men. But again, when I talk about "open marriage" the normal version is not what I describe. I call our relationship open because we don't rule out or accept behaviors with others based on a preconceived notions, but on a careful study of facts, our emotions, and mutual consideration and meditation.
Will our marriage go toward the ultimate conclusion of openness with either of us actually having coitus with another person (assuming I am not bound by the UCMJ at the time)? I doubt it in the extreme. But, the point is, it would be ruled as crossing the line of exclusion by both of us, after long discussion and consideration, and not by one person for the other, and most certainly not by arbitrary social limits drawn by strangers about certain acts regardless of context.
I say again, LOVE FEARLESSLY! Please, if you didn't read anything else, or don't remember anything from this, remember this:
Love everybody. Fall in love whenever you can. Sometimes you will run into fences, like being straight and/or married. Those fences are there for a reason, don't cross them. Sometimes you might need to move a fence out a bit, like saying its OK to have emotional intimacy. Sometimes you will get hurt, or run into consequences and realize you need to move a fence back a bit. The important thing is not the fences. The important thing is this: Don't let the fear of hitting the fence keep you from loving people.
Open Marriage
I've been meaning to write a blog about open marriage for a while. I wasn't sure if I wanted to post it on this blog or an anonymous blog I maintain, and I decided I wanted to share this openly. (If you read both, please don't reveal that here.) It's a sensitive topic, and I've waited so long to write about it to make sure I said exactly what I wanted to say. I want to say why this topic matters to me, even though as anyone who knows me is aware, my wife and I are now, as we have been through out our marriage, sexually monogamous. We have every plan of being so for the rest of my military career (to do otherwise would be a violation of the military code of justice, Article 134).
To understand why open marriage matters me, you have to know a little bit about me. A man is the alloy of his past. I am not just an atheist. I am an atheist who used to be a Christian. It is doubtful to Christians, I'm sure, that a man who can look at a sunset and say honestly, he sees no fingerprint of the Almighty, once believed that in the same God they do, and did so with all his heart.
I was never good at it, but I sought Christ and to be his follower with all my heart. Despite my later de-conversion, I was as sincerely a Christian as I could be. God ways were at the core of everything I thought, and when what I wanted overpowered want I knew I should do I felt an agonizing guilt. Thus at the advanced age of 12 I decided I needed to start looking for a wife!
It was only logical. The Apostle Paul said in First Corinthians 7:9 it is better to marry then be consumed with desire for sex, and around puberty I was consumed. The fact I was 12, unemployed, and hadn't even started (let alone finished) highschool wasn't import. God said it was better to marry then to burn, so I needed to marry. This was especially important since I looked lustfully at women and masturbated. To obey God fully, I needed to poke my eyes out and cut my hands off. (Mathew 5:27-30). I felt terrible for so lacking in faith that I couldn't make myself obey God with regards to mutilation. By seeking marriage, I was able to obey God, yet not hurt myself.
I thought I would never be able to wait till I got married. When as a young man, I was in my first serious relationship (that is to say one where the woman was in as big-a-hurry to get married as I was) I was able to refuse her. Later, when I would meet the woman I would later marry, I found a new dimension to desire that I hadn't known before. We were both interested in the institution of marriage to get sex, so desire was obviously a component, but there was something else. There was this feeling that I was incomplete and I wouldn't be complete until I was with her. You'd think that would have made us hop in the sack, but actually it made it easier to wait, because it was something special and we didn't want to wreck it.
Like all good Christians, waited till we were married. It was (and is) groovy and I don't regret it waiting for it. The thing is, both of us approaching marriage as God's blessed vehicle for sex, we didn't really get the intimacy aspect of it. We'd wanted sex so much, but we'd wanted it as novelty, the way person wants to drive car they've only read about. It took us years to understand the intimacy aspect, the way you could love someone so much that you needed to be part of them in the most intimate way possible. When I'd first met my wife, as a product of my Christian upbringing, I didn't understand how you could feel love and lust for the same person at the same time. Eventually, I would understand the line between merely hungering for sexual release with someone I cared about and needing to drown in her soul.
What of open marriage? Well, my story begins, as I'm sure many men's do, with my wife's best friend. She wasn't just that though. She was one of my best friends too. She was an aunt to our child. She called me brother and I called her sister. She was family, by choice and not by chance. She was part of our life, we all loved one another. I'd been terrified at first, when I realized I loved her, but how could I not? My wife loved her, she loved my wife, she loved my daughter, my daughter loved her. What was I so scared off? Scared of getting hurt? Of disappointing God or myself?
I turned to the Bible, seeking to understand God's heart about love. What I found was that what made the church different was love. The Bible never says "don't have close relationships with people of the opposite sex you aren't married to" that's a decision the church has made because often such relationships often end badly. Being who I am, that wasn't enough for me. Morality means doing whats right, regardless of the personal cost. Doing whats right only when its costless is the morality of a sociopath. God commands us to love on another. So…I did.
It was beautiful. I hurt when she hurt. I was happy when she was happy. She was a little ray of sunshine in our lives. A source of continual surprise to me was that I had no desire to have sex with her. It turned out I could love a woman and not be consumed with a desire to screw her! I was ecstatic to learn that. It was wonderful to learn that I wasn't as broken inside as I thought.
She was a very physical person. She hugged a lot, play fought a lot, flopped onto one of us on the couch a lot, and all the normal things that people who love each other do. It was all just good, clean love. When I finally realized I did want to sleep with her, it was such I totally different feeling then I had expected that I didn't know when it had started.
I didn't want to screw her. I didn't want to ruin what we had or even just have a sexual release with her. I just wanted all of her. As a young man I wanted sex with a woman I loved as a guilt free upgrade from Rosie Palm. As a man who had been married for several years, I wanted sex with a woman I loved because of the incredible power that sex has to bond people who love each other together.
I knew such an act would be a sin, of course. Though the Bible does not forbid polygamy, the Bible does say you must follow the law of your land (Romans 13:1-4) excepting when it tells you to sin (Acts 5:29). Polygamy is illegal in the US, so it would be a sin to do it. What I also knew was the desiring her was not a sin. I didn't want anything wrong. I wanted to be more deeply bonded to a woman I deeply loved. As I had felt that for my wife, I felt it for our friend. My wife and I talked about it, frequently. When guilt snuck up on me, she would remind me there is no such thing as a bad feeling. Feelings are good, it's the actions we take that are good or bad.
Eventually, this feeling became so strong that I had to tell her about it, not because I expected her to be comfortable with it, but because there comes a point where if something is on your heart, you have to share it with the people you love. To do otherwise becomes a sort lie by lifestyle. Though I didn't want tell her, I told her. Knowing it made her horribly uncomfortable which was fair and reasonable.
What wasn't fair and reasonable we her insisting the desire was wrong. I didn't mind being told "no" or "Ew gross". I minded very much being told that I was somehow broken for wanting to be deeply connected to a woman I was in love with. We worked things out but, not perfectly. At some level, she thought I was a pervert for desiring her. When the person you love looks at your insides ands sees damage in the places that make you love them, well that hurts a lot. We drifted apart over the years and my atheism (when I de-converted) broke her heart and scared her. As an atheist, I wasn't just a man who desired her, I was a man who desired her and no longer had the holy spirit to help control his lusts. Again we tried to keep going…but in the end it just hurt too much. We got sick of hurting each other, and parted ways (mutually and peacefully) each hopping the other person would change.
So, in the end, loving two woman (even though I was only sleeping with the one I married) didn't work out. Nor do I think it works out for most people. Why, oh why, would want to talk about this? Because I loved. Most relationships don't "work out". Very few of the people we are friends with are going to be there forever. People move. People change. People grow. People live and people die. That's life, and life is better when we love.
I feel for her because I let myself love her. There is an easy solution: I would have never wanted to make love to her if I hadn't let myself love her first. I could have had safe, empty, riskless, shallow "friendship". Instead I let myself love, and that love and my honesty about it ultimately cost me the friend. But I would have never had that friend in the first place if I had never loved. The three of us had a great three years together. I wouldn't trade that for three years of nothing with no heartbreak at the end.
I loved courageously. It was beautiful. I won't do it the same again, and I highly, highly doubt there will ever be another like her again. I will probably die having never made love to any woman but my wife, and I am totally OK with that. It's just, I understand now how two people could love someone else so much, that they want that person to part of their marriage. It was so great, even in the little, chaste way we experienced it, I would love to meet a person like that, even as I am at peace with the fact the chance of it is nigh impossible.
Feminism and me
So, I mentioned previously that I am trying learn about feminism. My wife is taking a minor in woman's studies for her associates degree because (aside from the fact she is truly interested) it's a study path that gives her the most credits transferable to her bachelors in political science. So, I've been reading her textbook and some of the recommended supplementary reading.
So, here (at my currant level of ignorance) is my opinion of feminism. First off, I think feminism makes a lot of valid points. It asks questions that it wouldn't occur to most people to ask. For instance, most people are probably aware that women, in general make about 75% of what men make. Some people are aware that women primarily make less because they work less hours, for fewer years, with more frequent career and work site changes. Adjusted for this, you would find that women make 93% of what men make.
Feminism, looks to the fewer hours, for fewer years, with more frequent career and work site changes and says, but why? Because we have a two tier job market: One tier for people who have no other imperative responsibilities but servicing the job (most of whom are men), and a second tier for people who might need to change hours, or be absent from time to time (most of whom are women). Now, lest you think the first tier exists to provide good employment, it doesn't. The high wage earning man can be fired at any time. No, the first tier exists to service the industry, and the second tier exists (with poor wages) to subsidize the industry of first tier and not the people in it. Factories can't keep churning if the (predominately men) on the line have to nip off to pick up sick kids. Nope, thats the woman's job. Women make less because if they don't take crappy jobs that let them take care of the kids in addition to work, their husbands will get fired.
Bravo feminism! I would have never noticed that on my own. The perspective of women showed me something I, as a man, would have never thought of. It turns out that there is a lot more flexibility of hours (and far less hours all together) in Germany and France, and better social protection (ie, getting paid even when you can't go to work) yet according to the UN and CIA those countries have as-good-or-better a standard of living as the US. So, a system with less hours, more flex, and more social protection doesn't even have to hurt.
But then, I randomly run into these perspectives, under the umbrella of feminism, that are just bat-shit insane. Notably, that Marxism could fix everything if it was just given the right chance, that the phrase "blaming the victim" is a magic spell that can be invoked in any context to absolve the victim of any responsibility whatsoever* and that a the media, and not a person's choice to believe all outlets of the media are a fount of truth is the cause of bad self image.
*I note here, there in some cases the victim has no responsibility; Rape is such a case. Child abuse is such a case. Poverty is not. Poverty has many causes, some are systemic but some are personal. The people of the US, and the government they elect has not even scratched the surface of the systemic causes of poverty, but that policy failure does mean that we can ignore the personal issues.
I am glad there are feminists out there, and their probably needs to be more. I think feminism is imperative to the healthy functioning of democracy. If I had a sum of money to give away, I could give it to some feminist agencies with clear conscience. I support the goals of the movement. I support the spirit of the movement.
But if Marxism is the answer, what was the question?
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Vermont state Senate passed legislation to create a single-payer health insurance system, Paul Waldman reports for TAPPED. Since the state House has already passed a similar bill, all that's left to do is reconcile the two pieces of legislation before the governor signs it into law.
Waldman stresses that there are still many details to work out, including how the system will be funded. Vermont might end up with a system like France's where everyone has basic public insurance, which most people supplement with additional private coverage. The most important thing, Waldman argues, is that Vermont is moving to sever the link between employment and health insurance.
Roe showdown
Anti-choicers are gunning for a Roe v. Wade showdown in the Supreme Court before Obama can appoint any more justices. At the behest of an unnamed conservative group, Republican state Rep. John LaBruzzo of Louisiana has introduced a bill that would ban all abortions, even to save the woman's life. The original bill upped the anti-choice ante by criminalizing not only doctors who perform abortions, but also women who procure them. LaBruzzo has since promised to scale the bill back to just criminalizing doctors. This is all blatantly unconstitutional, of course,. but as Kate Sheppard explains in Mother Jones, that's precisely the point:
The Constitution, of course, is exactly what LaBruzzo is targeting. He admits his proposal is intended as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional right to privacy included the right to abortions in some circumstances. LaBruzzo says he'd like his bill to become law and "immediately go to court," and he told a local paper that an unnamed conservative religious group asked him to propose the law for exactly that purpose.
Drug pushers in your living room
Martha Rosenberg poses a provocative question at AlterNet: Does anyone remember a time before "Ask Your Doctor" ads overran the airwaves, Internet, buses, billboards, and seemingly every other medium? Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising has become so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that it was illegal until the late '90s. In the days before DTC, drug advertising was limited to medical journals, prescription pads, golf towels, and pill-shaped stress balls distributed in doctors' offices–which makes sense. The whole point of making a drug prescription-only is to put the decision-making power in the hands of doctors. Now, drug companies advertise to consumers for the same reason that food companies advertise to children. It's called "pester power."
DTC drug ads encourage consumers to self-diagnose based on vague and sometimes nearly universal symptoms like poor sleep, daytime drowsiness, anxiety, and depression. Once consumers are convinced they're suffering from industry-hyped constructs like "erectile dysfunction" and "premenstrual dysphoric disorder," they're going to badger their doctors for prescriptions.
That's not to say that these terms don't encompass legitimate health problems, but rather that DTC markets products in such vague terms that a lot of healthy people are sure to be clamoring for drugs they don't need. Typically, neither the patient nor the doctor is paying the full cost of the drug, so patients are more likely to ask and doctors have little incentive to say no.
Greenwashing air fresheners
A reader seeks the counsel of Grist's earthy advice columnist Umbra on the issue of air fresheners. Some of these odor-concealing aerosols are touting themselves as green for adopting all-natural propellants. Does that make them healthier, or greener? Only marginally, says Umbra. Air fresheners still contain formaldehyde, petroleum distillates, and other questionable chemicals.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.


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Andrés Duany Wants to Reform The Public Process
"We need to reform the public process."
Andrés Duany stood in front of an audience of journalists chosen by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, brought together to raise the level of reporting on urban issues and compare notes on their own struggling industry. Impeccably groomed as always, Duany took to the podium with the wiry energy of a terrier.
"It's so out of control," said Duany, referring to the current state of public participation in planning decisions in the United States. "It's an absolute orgy of public process basically, we can't get anything done."
Charrettes – intensive design meetings where planners and architects work alongside the public to educate them on the city's proposals and coax out their own ideas on how their cities should be formed – have been a mainstay of Duany's practice for years, so he's no stranger to public engagement. But now he is saying what many involved in land use have come to believe but can't really say – that the process of soliciting the public's opinion has gotten out of hand and needs to be reformed.
The central problem, according to Duany, is that the immediate neighbors to a proposed development are brought in to speak on behalf of the whole community. These neighbors obviously have a vested interest in what happens in their backyard, and an emotional connection to their space. They also often have a financial stake in what happens, with their life's savings tied up in their home. "We've tainted the process by not understanding that the neighbors are a special interest," says Duany. "They are not the community."
Duany's proposed solution? A randomly-chosen group of citizens, brought in to represent the community similar to the jury system. Evidently such a system is alive and well in Perth, Australia, where a group of community members is chosen randomly, brought up to speed on the issues, and asked to give input on how development should occur. Without such a process, Duany says, the process is taken over by "a bunch of little mobs, invited in by idiot public planners."
Alternative energy projects are particularly at risk, according to Duany. The public at large sees the growing need for turbines and solar panels, but locals are fighting to keep them out of their neighborhoods. Is this the goal of city planners, who for the last couple of decades have worked passionately to create systems of bottom-up urbanism? Or is Duany right- is it time to create new models of public participation?
Tim Halbur is managing editor of Planetizen.


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The Helix Entwines
The staircase of the US Supreme Court.
Going Down
Squares Intertwined
Supreme Court
Neoclassical Twilight
The neoclassical Thomas Jefferson Memorial was designed by John Russell Pope and built from 1939-1943. The bronze statue of Jefferson was added in 1947.
US Capitol
Lincoln Memorial
For the People
Not Forgotten
Vietnam Memorial
The Hourglass Empty
Never Seem to Fade
These Memories Never Sleep
I've Left Them All Behind
Coney Island, New York.
Now I Need A Little Give And Take
Coney Island
All Beef
The Brooklyn Bridge.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. When using photos, please credit 'Shawn Clover' or 'shawnclover.com' and link to this site. See photo use for more information. Photo use & about


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Demo Day Round Up: May 2016
This post originally appeared on blog.up.co
We are kicking off the summer here at Techstars with the addition of 54 new companies! This past May, Techstars had five Demo Days across the U.S., including Seattle, Boulder, Austin, Boston and the Sprint Accelerator in Kansas City. Here's a quick recap of the highlights:
Seattle Class of 2016
Techstars Seattle's seventh Demo Night, held at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), showcased nine companies with diverse product offerings ranging from satellites, drones, bots and interactive game-streaming, to SaaS and mobile apps. Julep Founder and CEO, Jane Park, opened the evening with an inspiring keynote, while Techstars' Managing Director, Chris DeVore, and Executive Director, Cody Simms, welcomed the crowd. It was an exciting night to celebrate the 2016 class and the broader Seattle startup community!
Congratulations to the Seattle Class of 2016!
Austin Class of 2016
Techstars Austin's fourth Demo Day kicked off in the historic downtown Paramount Theatre with presentations from 10 eclectic companies, including everything from salad-making robots and music-making gloves, to SaaS products and unique marketplaces. Managing Director, Amos Schwartzfarb, hosted the show, and Techstars' co-founder and Managing Partner, David Brown, and Ventures Partner, Jason Seats, welcomed the community with opening remarks. It was a great celebration for the 2016 class, mentors, alumni as well as for the broader local startup community in Austin.
Congratulations to the Austin Class of 2016!
Boulder Class of 2016
Hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and aspiring founders descended on Boulder the week of May 16 for Boulder Startup Week and to celebrate 10 years of Techstars Boulder. Techstars Boulder's Demo Day on May 18 marks the 10th year of the Boulder program, the original Techstars program that has exploded into a global ecosystem with more than 20 accelerator programs in 17 cities on 4 continents.
Techstars Boulder Demo Day was hosted at the Boulder Theater, a rite of passage for the 110 companies that have graduated from the accelerator in Boulder since 2007. Attendees were welcomed by Managing Director Natty Zola who said:
"Ten years ago, the founders of Techstars realized that the Boulder community was the perfect environment to model how mentorship, education and camaraderie can transform ideas into companies that can change the world. That remains true today. The energy and 'give first' mantra of the Boulder community sparked something special that transformed Techstars into a global ecosystem that to date has launched more than 800 companies. We're proud to be the first."
This year's Boulder class encompassed a portfolio of eleven companies that spanned intelligent hardware, genealogy, healthcare and language learning, among others. The event also included an exciting announcement that Foundry Group, Colorado Impact Fund, and Greenmont Capital are now certified B corporations.
Demo Day also included TeamTap, a social app that event attendees played with to raise over $1,500 for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) and the Boulder Community Foundation.
Congratulations to the Boulder Class of 2016!
Boston Class of 2016
Techstars Boston 2016 Demo Day event gathered over a thousand investors, mentors and other members of the startup community at the Back Bay Events Center in downtown Boston. Fourteen companies who are tackling real problems took to the stage to celebrate Techstars Boston 10th class, with very special guest Brad Feld reminding the audience of the early days.
Alumni founders Raj Aggarwal from Localytics and Matt Barba from Placester introduced two of the companies in the class, indicating just how strong the Techstars network has become. The evening included the first edition of the Mentor Awards and was closed with the meet-the-teams-on-stage invitation to investors.
Congratulations to the Boston Class of 2016!
Sprint Class of 2016
The Sprint Accelerator's third demo day took place May 24 at the beautiful Kauffman Center for Performing Arts in Kansas City. This class was the first to go through the Sprint Accelerator after the expansion to include more than just mobile health companies, which brought more diversity to the program. The event opened with remarks from Marcelo Claure, the CEO of Sprint, Kevin McGinnis, the VP of Pinsight Media+ (Sprint) and David Brown, followed by ten powerful pitches by ten amazing CEOs.
John Fein, Managing Director, closed the show with all the founders on stage. Hundreds from the community attended and showed their support for Techstars in KC. And post Demo Day, four of the 10 companies will be based out of KC.
Congratulations to the Sprint Accelerator Class of 2016!


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Let me tell you about the wind on the East Coast. If the wind is going to be a factor in anything you plan on doing, like spreading powdered lime on your lawn, you need to do it early in the morning. It's the calmest part of the day. As mid to late morning approaches, we get whatever wind out of the north. At 2PM or so, the wind switches and comes off the ocean. It's a southerly wind and it always picks up in speed. Most afternoons it's a 10-15 MPH wind. Today, it was closer to 25 when we were on the return leg of the ride. Outward it was the usual 10-12, We always hem and haw about it, but less so as the riding season progresses. When the wind gets extreme we tend to get silly because it's the type of ride that can drive you nuts if you don't lighten up. After all, we ride in an area that is quickly becoming a breeding ground for wind turbines. We have learned to deal with it.
Today was 47 miles by three guys recovering from different levels of colds. Dave had a mild case of pneumonia, Brandon spent the day yesterday vomiting, even while he was working the ovens in a local pizza joint. (Nice picture that makes huh?). I have been sluggish for the past couple of days fighting off some kind of bug. We all came to life during the ride and we all took it to our limit and finished just as fatigue was getting to be an issue.
The signs of summer were everywhere from people in kayaks, the opening of ice cream joints on the Cape, to the traffic beginning to pick up. We found a different coffee stop on this regular route, which takes us away from what can be a really hectic crossing of a high speed road that is an alternated route between the two Cape Cod Canal bridges.
Dave our biking Esquire almost got to touch an Iphone 4. Brandon was explaining how it works when Dave mentioned he had never even touched and Iphone or Ipad. Hearing this, Brandon made Dave settle for just observing while Brandon did all the maneuvering of the apps and browsing options. "Dude, I just bought the thing, I don't want it broken on the second day", was Brandon's reasoning for not letting Dave handle his new toy.
All things considered, we had a pretty good day of bike riding. Hope you did too.
Kayaks on Mary's Pond in Rochester, MA.
First weekend for this ice cream joint in Buzzards Bay, MA.
This is an Iphone This is an App. This is Safari web browser.
A different angle looking at the Bourne Bridge from the mainland side of the Canal
More kayaking in Wareham, MA
Water Break in Rochester, MA.


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I wonder if Irrational's artists had future cosplay potential in mind when they designed the character of Elizabeth. Because whether in her Columbia or Rapture outfits, she's fast becoming as popular as Final Fantasy and Zelda when it comes to dressing up.
Not that we're complaining. So long as people keep absolutely nailing it like the image below, we'll keep approving of it.
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they're big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the "expand" button in the top-left corner.
Fancy Pants is Kotaku's weekly round-up of the best in video game cosplay (costume play), where fans dress up as their favourite characters.
BIOSHOCK INFINITE | Cosplayer: Helen Stifler
CRISIS CORE | Cosplayer: Narga Lifestream | Photographer: TaisiaFlyagina
ETERNAL SONATA | Cosplayer: Antiquity Dreams | Photographer: CosPortraits
GAME OF THRONES | Cosplayers: Nikita, Leobane
WARHAMMER 40K | Cosplayers: Alberti, Andrew Frolov & Alexey Rogalev | Photographer: Rogutenok
JOURNEY | Cosplayer: Hitsachka | Photographer: Andrey Filatov
ASSASSIN'S CREED IV | Cosplayer: Leon Chiro | Photographer: Walter Pellegrini


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Bolivia medical volunteers receive a "Gracias" from the Cochabamba community
Medical volunteers in Bolivia, at the same time as doing their main work at the Burns Unit of Viedma Hospital and the Centro de Salud Sarcobamba, have taken part in important community projects. These have included vaccination programmes and dental hygiene campaigns.
The vaccination campaign was organised by the Head Doctor at the Centro de Salud Sarcobamba who passed a huge "Gracias" to Projects Abroad for providing her and her staff with "caring and dedicated volunteers." The volunteers helped the local medical staff to vaccinate over 600 school children against Yellow Fever and Tetanus in schools in and around Cochabamba, where the Projects Abroad office is based.
Medical volunteers have the opportunity to gain experience in a wide variety of areas, including physiotherapy, nursing and assisting with surgery at the Burns Unit, as well as paediatrics, gynaecology and pharmaceutics at the Centro de Salud Sarcobamba. Working on the medical projects can be challenging and emotional at times, but the medical staff appreciate the volunteers' help, and medicine in Bolivia is one of the most rewarding projects in which to get involved.
Current medical volunteer, Kyle Saggers from Australia, says "Bolivia is incredible. I can safely say I have never been this happy in my entire life. This is an awesome experience and when I get home I will be recommending it to all of my friends." Kyle has decided to extend his stay in Bolivia to continue his medical placement.
If like Kyle you would like to work on one of the medical projects in Bolivia or help in an orphanage or school, take a look at our Destination Bolivia page.