In the News Today

Americans suck at civil disobedience

Bush is attending meetings in Ottawa, and the Canadians are out in full force in protest of his war mongering and shitty foreign policy. There are more people in California than there are in Canada, yet they managed to organize a protest involving more people than actually live in Ottawa.

Italy is pissed at their PM over proposed tax breaks which will only benefit the rich. (Sound familiar?) The Italian protest was so enormous and so well organized that public transportation was effectively shut down. This included more than 100 Alitalia flights.

The citizens of Ukraine are protesting a fixed national election. The "Opposition" has completely blocked parliament buildings, causing all out chaos in the government.
They said that they won't stop until the government admits that the election was fixed.

America used to protest like that. What the hell happened?

Fat = Brain Atrophy?

Obese women 'lose brain tissue'
Women who are obese throughout their life are more likely to lose brain tissue, researchers have found.
This loss is one of the first indications a person is going to develop dementia.

Carrying extra weight was a risk even if other factors, such as diabetes, were taken into account.

The researchers, from the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, Sweden, is published in the journal Neurology.

Nerve cell damage

Whether or not a person is of a healthy weight is determined by their BMI, or body mass index.


Obesity affects every part of the body - no part escapes damage
Dr David Haslam, National Obesity Forum

This is calculated by dividing the square of your height in metres by your weight in kilograms. A BMI of over 25 is classed as overweight, and over 30 as obese.
Just under 300 women aged between 46 and 60 were studied over 24 years.

Every six years, researchers carried out computer tomography (CT) scans to study their brain tissue and calculated their BMI.

The study found that the higher the women's BMI, the greater the chance they would experience brain tissue loss, known as cerebral atrophy.

Being overweight also raised a woman's chances of being affected, the study found.

Almost 50% of the women were found to have lost temporal lobe tissue. The average BMI in that group was higher than that in the unaffected group throughout the study.

The research team say the results are consistent with their previous findings showing that being overweight was a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

Ramifications

Writing in Neurology the researchers, led by Deborah Gustafson, said there were a number of potential mechanisms for overweight and obesity being linked to brain tissue loss.

They pointed to the recognised link between obesity and diseases such as heart disease and stroke.

Dr Gustafson said: "These conditions contribute to an unhealthy vascular system, and therefore to a higher dementia risk.

"Obesity may also increase the secretion of the hormone cortisol, which could lead to atrophy."

She added: "If overweight and obesity contribute not only to diseases of middle age, but also to degenerative diseases of later life, the health ramifications of excess body fat will stress healthcare systems for many years to come.

"Given the myriad of risk factors that preclude cerebrovascular events in the elderly, it appears that obesity is yet another factor that should be actively intervened upon to reduce diseases of advanced ageing, such as cerebral degeneration and dementia."

Dr David Haslam, a Hertfordshire GP and chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Obesity is known as a risk factor for vascular diseases, whether that's cardiovascular or cerebrovascular.

"The areas of the brain which this study is talking about are very susceptible to microvascular damage.

"In addition, obesity affects every part of the body - no part escapes damage."

Dr Haslam added the study findings provided more evidence of the need to tackle obesity, to prevent people developing any of the raft of obesity-related disease.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4023575.stm

Published: 2004/11/22 00:03:48 GMT

© BBC MMIV

If only it were just a reality show

Well, I feel a lot better now that the whole election thing is over.
Actually, no, I don’t. I was hoping that the victor would have won honestly.
For a while, I was actively ignoring claims that votes were counted twice, some votes went uncounted, machines were tampered with… etc. Well, hell. Now even CNN is saying that 2,600 votes were counted twice in Ohio. AP is reporting that in some Ohio districts 4,000 more people voted than were registered.

I’m no statistician, mathematician or genius (unless you ask my mother), but I assumed that most American people were smart enough to realize… but apparently they aren’t. They are either tragically ignorant or way too comfortable with their financial situation to vote for the greater good… or maybe Kerry just sucked so bad, lacked innovation, idea and… fuck it. Americans are stupid. That’s the answer. We are all a bunch of mass-consuming, egocentric, ethnocentric, racist, apathetic, fat-asses. Even a horrible national tragedy didn’t hit close enough to home to make us realize that there are things more important than driving a fucking SUV with personalized license plates.

I give up. I’m going to continue making empty threats to move to Canada until one day I finally hop on a plane and go for good… maybe Mexico instead… or Europe.

In other news: another case of mad cow has surfaced somewhere in the mid-west. Is it going to take an epidemic for people to stop eating meat?

Anyway, while I’m on my soap box, November 25th is “Buy Nothing Day”. Read about it here.

What Now?

Well, I suppose I’m in shock. Actually, I saw it coming, so I can’t really say I’m shocked. Maybe I’ve caught a nasty case of apathy from drinking too much tap water.
How many times can one person lose their faith in humanity? I’m going to start putting notches on my voter’s registration card so I can keep track.

Moral majority? Who assigned that fucking pompous title? That pisses me off. How are they morally superior? Is it because they are against experimenting on human embryos? How do they explain supporting a war-for-the-hell-of-it, where thousands of Iraqi babies (NOT EVEN EMBRYOS ANYMORE!) are being toasted by coalition munitions?

How can they call abortion murder, and then vote for a sadistic fuck who, while sitting in his comfy governor’s chair, set the record for most executions performed ever, under his watch? I wonder if the fucking moral majority has actually read Exodus (a book in their holiest of holy books) the sixth commandment of the perfect ten says “you shall not murder”. It doesn’t say you get to pick and chose who’s worthy to live. It also says somewhere in that book that all sin is the same. God is supposed to be just as pissed at you if you shoot a retarded preschooler in the head for no good reason, as he would be for you lying to your girlfriend about how many chicks you boned.

Someone please explain to me how they are the moral majority. I just don’t get it.

Why is it so important to them to make laws to ensure that I will never be able to marry the one I love, simply because she wasn’t born with a penis? Why is it perfectly acceptable for a man and a woman who don't even know each other’s last names to have Elvis marry them on the way home from the casino, but two men who have been faithful to each other for 20 years have no right to civil marriage?
If I have kids, how am I going to explain this to them?

Why is it more important to make sure that these homos never defile the "sanctity of marriage", than the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who are sick or injured, and just have to fucking suck it up because they can’t get Wal-Mart (or whoever they work for) to give them access to health care?

I am not an expert, being a Sunday school drop-out and all, but what I remember is that Jesus loved everyone! Even the hooker! Jesus loved the hooker, and did his damndest to make sure that the poor lepers and crippled children could be healed.

They call themselves Christians. The literal meaning of the word “Christian” is “Christ-like”.
It just seems wrong to compare oneself to thine own messiah.

I am obviously pro-choice. I am obviously gay. I am obviously not a Bush fan. I obviously use the word "fuck" more than a preacher's daughter on prom night. Am I immoral? I’m not going to sit here and list my morals, but if you ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you that if they needed a few pints of A+ blood, bone marrow, or help moving during a blizzard, that I would be there. I think it’s more important to love your brother than to spend time and energy making sure he will never be your equal.

No, I’m not apathetic. No, I’m not in shock.

I’m in mourning.

(Maybe it’s just PMS, but I have been bawling like Limbaugh going through Oxycontin withdrawals since November 2nd.)

They are always talking about faith. “Faith based initiatives”, “bring back the faith”…
What the fuck do they have faith in? In Dubbya? In God? Do they really think they have the holy fucking rubber stamp of approval?

I had faith once. I had faith in humanity.
Until last week I believed that most people would help a stranger in need, and expect nothing in return. I believed that most people were good… I had faith that people would see what’s wrong with this country and make it right.
We had our chance and we blew it.
We blew it, and now what?

We’ve got a drunken frat boy at the wheel on an icy road and no state trooper in sight.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and crash into a tree.

I don't know about you, but as soon as the bitch slows to 15MPH, I'm going to tuck-and-roll and make a mad dash for the Canadian border.

Ok, For Real.

I am seriously not going to sleep until this stupid election is over with. I'm drinking too much coffee and having too many stupid political discussions with too many stupid people.

Last night I had an argument with a republican drag queen. Yes. I'm serious. A REPUBLICAN DRAG QUEEN. It wasn't just a costume. The bitch waxed her chest, tucked her junk and everything. It got pretty ugly. After a few drinks and a well articulated argument (by me) that Bush is a caca-poopy head, the argument got personal.

The drag queen "Tanya Hyde", said "bitch, someone lied to you about that hair color". I said "dude (that pissed her off), I can change my hair color, but you couldn't get rid of those forehead wrinkles with a belt sander." (Yes, I know what a belt sander is. Lesbians are supposed to know these things. No, I'm not butch.)
Then she started taking off her earrings. There were boa feathers flying everywhere.
I slid off my bar stool and looked up at her. She was about eight feet tall in her size 14 platform shoes. She looked down at me and laughed. I'm barely 5'3. I think she felt sorry for me, because she just gave me the universal "what-eva" sign, (Hand in my face, palm side up), turned on her size 14 heel and left.