According to Examiner.com
According to the Examiner.com---since 01/09/11
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Bollywood Remix: Lady Gaga Born this way
http://www.desihits.com/remixes/ladygaga#ooid=E5NWZkMjqFjHB3Gi916VtwMJgA1QLDPi,EwZGVkMjoAt0GTvqHBm2fwcZaUQs4Yjk
Saturday, July 23, 2011
It's been A week I'm bad......
You know, I know it has been nearly a week since posting but school has been extremely busy and hard and to be honest I have beena very serious emotional funk thaat seems to have gone on for months now. It is hard to describe because outside of the Algebra class I am in I have been doing really well. Over all I have like a 3.54 and in just my "Major topics" I am pulling.... are you ready..... a 3.9 It just doesn't seem enough. Life has been get out of bed, stretch my aching legs and arms, figure out what the hell to wear in nearly one hundred degree weather and somehow struggle forward. It's been hard, I am losing hope, faith and well I am going to be honest a overall "happy feeling".
If anything I feel VERY alone, very tired, emotionally over being stuck in a system where I constanly am fucked over without being asked (govermentally speaking, SSI/SSD/Medicaid/Medicare/food stamps) and feeling like no matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, no matter what my grades are I MAY never change. I want friends I can hang out with, share my life with, laugh with. I want some amount of success, I want to be E.F. Hutton when I speak people do listen---really listen.
I don't want to struggle any more, I don't want to fight my way to get what little I have, beg to get it and then regret having it because I had to give so much of myself to have it. If g-d gave me all of this talents I have and kids there are a lot of them---why hasn't any of it paid off?
Why are some people handed the golden spoon everytime you turn arund and the rest of us well we are just shoved into the mud?! What does a guy have to do to get noticed, to get ahead, to be discovered? Sell his soul? I'm near that point!
Why does everything seem so surface and nothing deeper, more meaningful, more lasting? Do I expect to much? Am I too needy? Am I just whining?
If anything I feel VERY alone, very tired, emotionally over being stuck in a system where I constanly am fucked over without being asked (govermentally speaking, SSI/SSD/Medicaid/Medicare/food stamps) and feeling like no matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, no matter what my grades are I MAY never change. I want friends I can hang out with, share my life with, laugh with. I want some amount of success, I want to be E.F. Hutton when I speak people do listen---really listen.
I don't want to struggle any more, I don't want to fight my way to get what little I have, beg to get it and then regret having it because I had to give so much of myself to have it. If g-d gave me all of this talents I have and kids there are a lot of them---why hasn't any of it paid off?
Why are some people handed the golden spoon everytime you turn arund and the rest of us well we are just shoved into the mud?! What does a guy have to do to get noticed, to get ahead, to be discovered? Sell his soul? I'm near that point!
Why does everything seem so surface and nothing deeper, more meaningful, more lasting? Do I expect to much? Am I too needy? Am I just whining?
Monday, July 18, 2011
Straight Man Banned from Donating Blood for "Appearing Homosexual"
Aaron Pace is admittedly and noticeably effeminate, but he says he is not homosexual.
Still, his looks, character and behavior prompted a blood donation center to reject him when he tried to donate blood recently and he’s miffed, to say the least.
“I was humiliated and embarrassed,” said Pace, 22. of Gary. “It’s not right that homeless people can give blood but homosexuals can’t. And I’m not even a homosexual.”
Pace visited Bio-Blood Components Inc. in Gary, which pays for blood and plasma donations, up to $40 a visit. But during the interview screening process, Pace said he was told he could not be a blood donor there because he “appears to be a homosexual.”
A few things:- The blood ban on gay men is insane. All blood in the United States is screened for HIV, hepatitis B and C, and a legion of other diseases. A flat ban on gay men (or men who have had even a single gay experience) is bad business and medically unsound. (In the UK, gay men may donate blood after ten years of celibacy.)
- While male-to-male sexual contact infection rates are quite high, so are high-risk heterosexual contact infection rates.
- Does anyone else think it’s weird that the Chicago Sun-Times calls Mr. Pace “noticeable effeminate”? Talk about fueling the flames of ignorance here…
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Harry Potter: Deathly Hollows 2 An opinion
They did; they shelled out billions on Harry’s world. And in the end, if my informal polls serve, Harry’s denouement resulted not in readers closing the spine of "Deathly Hallows" appreciating the incredible conclusion of the journey, but rather with a shrug as if to say, "Well, I guess that’s over."
After watching the final chapter of Rowling’s series on film, search your heart and resist the temptation to fall in line with the sycophants: you’ll feel the same way as you did when you finished the book. Lots of special effects, good acting: not a lot of joy.
The story picks up where Movie #7 left off: Dobby the House Elf is dead and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has pried the Elder Wand from the entombed clutches of Albus Dombledore (Michael Gambon); now, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) must find the remaining Horcruxes to destroy the evil wizard. Inevitably, the quest leads to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the mother of all magical battles takes place, centered around the epic confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. It’s a CGI spectacular augmented by the colorful characters we’ve come to love: Professor McConagall (Maggie Smith), Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) and others reappear for the battle. And amidst the shattering of the castle, Harry, Hermione and Ron even find time for a little love.
David Yates’ penchant for treating Rowling’s source material as his personal gospel, while not as damaging as the pedantic Part I of "Deathly Hallows," makes of this final film an anti-climactic ride through fire, dragons, castles and wizard battles. Some sequences are truly wonderful: the Gringott’s break-in is thrillingly realized, and the battle at Hogwarts represents - at last - a budget-blowing masterpiece. But for Potter fans, these are little more than the visual representation of a tale already told. And even if the performances are well-executed (particularly those of Rickman and Fiennes), hitting every Rowling stride means simplified, almost rushed, versions of the same. Witness the final end of Bellatrix, whose final scenes are so slight they’re out of sync with the amount of screen time Bonham Carter has enjoyed over the last four films.
I’m unable to delve into the idiosyncrasies of Rowling’s plot without putting myself on the "spoiler" list for all time; but suffice it to say that my partner, who is not a devotee but who dutifully watched the six prequels prior to the screening, spent the ride home asking me at least a dozen questions that I simply could not answer aside from my repetitive insistence that Jo just wanted it to be that way - contrary to all logic, and in some cases, even previous films.
Nor am I blind to the enduring relevance of the series’ thematic triumphs: sacrifice, friendship, the ethics of power and the challenges of growing up. These explorations have in many ways made the journey worthwhile despite its shortcomings. And "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II" is still an enjoyable summer film, and it concludes the saga with some well-executed panache. But that won’t stop you from going home feeling a bit let down from what really should have been a hugely climactic, exhilarating, emotionally satisfying film.
In Swimsuit Trends: LESS is MORE
Coming in first place with 25% of the votes were bikinis. Square cut and briefs followed in second and third place with over 22% and 21% of the votes, respectively.
Trailing far behind in the poll results were trunks, board shorts, loose trunks, and jammers - proving that less really is more this summer.
Trailing far behind in the poll results were trunks, board shorts, loose trunks, and jammers - proving that less really is more this summer.
As well, the store is offering the Emporio Armani Hip Briefs ($21.50), which are worn by the comely model Lucas Bernardini.
The Emporio Armani Stretch Cotton Collection is made from a high-quality, soft stretch cotton and feature a super sleek, modern silhouette with a slim cut. Another great feature is the plush, oversized waistband that gives these classic styles a modern flare. They are each available in black, navy and white. All the people who love nice eyes in small swimsuits are GIVING THANKS!
New Initiative To Take HIV Down For TheCount
The U.S. National Institutes Health is set to dole out $70 million in a new push to find ways to eliminate HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from the bodies of people living with the virus, reported Science on July 11.
The money will go to three projects over the next five years. It represents the largest single funding initiative aimed at scrubbing the virus from the human body.
HIV is difficult to root out of all of the body’s tissues. The virus can lie dormant in hard-to-reach places until years later. For this reason, it had long been thought that there might never be a way to completely eradicate the virus from a person who had become infected.
But the case of Timothy Brown, an American who survived a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia and seemingly was cured of the disease as a result, had caused scientists to reconsider. Brown was given marrow from a donor with a natural resistance to HIV. To receive the donated tissue, Brown needed to stop taking his HIV medication. To the astonishment of his doctors, no detectable viral presence appeared in his body following the procedure.
This does not necessarily mean that there are not still particles of the virus lurking in Brown’s body. But if the donor’s natural resistance to HIV was conferred upon Brown in a lasting way, it might not matter: Whatever remaining viral particles are possibly lingering in his system might never become active enough to build up a detectable viral load.
Such a treatment could be a boon to HIV patients who would otherwise rely on expensive medications for decades, living with the possibility of viral breakthrough (when the virus becomes resistant to a previously effective treatment) or long-term side effects from the medication. Cash-strapped governments could also see a savings if fewer people need to be kept supplied with the current standard cocktail of medications.
The medical procedures that Brown underwent to destroy his own bone marrow and replace it with donated tissue are grueling and expensive. Moreover, it is impractical to hope to treat thousands or millions of people by finding suitable donors with the mutation carried by Brown’s donor.
The trick is to figure out a way to achieve a similar result more reliably, cheaply, and easily. That means looking into new approaches to fighting the virus where it lives -- in the body itself. But such approaches must be non-destructive to the body’s systems, as well as thorough in stamping out or suppressing the virus.
One group of collaborators set to be funded by the new grant hopes to develop new medications with such small molecular structures that they can penetrate to the body’s most hard-to-reach niches and wipe out any HIV residing there. The group, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is slated to receive more than $6 million per year for five years.
One of the other groups is set to investigate the possibility of engineering suitable marrow tissue for a similar transplant procedure to the one that seemingly cured Brown. The advantage to this approach is that a person’s own stem cells could conceivably be modified to create marrow with the necessary properties, rather than hoping to find donors with naturally occurring mutations.
The third project will also pursue small-molecule treatments, the article said, while also using "immune-based treatments."
"The three collaboratories are using very different but largely complementary approaches," said one of the project’s leaders, Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco. "Since many of us believe a cure will require combination therapy, it is my hope -- as well as the hope of others -- that three groups can merge their work whenever possible."
Some of the ideas on the table have already been shown to have significant therapeutic potential. Researchers in Barcelona used patients’ own cells to create a treatment that reduced the viral load in people living with HIV. Though they said that the reduction in detectable levels of the virus was "significant," researchers cautioned that at this stage the new treatment had not succeeded in dropping patients’ viral loads to the point of not being detectable, as current HIV medication regimens do for many.
"However this is a very important improvement with respect to previous initiatives where with a similar vaccine there was a modest response in 30 percent of the treated patients," a statement from Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, where the clinical trial took place, said last February. and involved two dozen AIDS patients. "No therapeutic vaccine has achieved up to now the same level of response as in this study."
Cells from each patient’s own immune system were used to create tailor-made doses of the vaccine.
The innovation of using patients’ own cells to fight the virus comes at roughly the same time as news of another new approach, the use of specially engineered RNA that suppressed the ability of the virus to replicate itself. Suppression of viral replication is seen as one key component in the search for a vaccine or even a cure. Selectively targeting and destroying infected cells, while leaving healthy cells alone, is another
The money will go to three projects over the next five years. It represents the largest single funding initiative aimed at scrubbing the virus from the human body.
HIV is difficult to root out of all of the body’s tissues. The virus can lie dormant in hard-to-reach places until years later. For this reason, it had long been thought that there might never be a way to completely eradicate the virus from a person who had become infected.
But the case of Timothy Brown, an American who survived a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia and seemingly was cured of the disease as a result, had caused scientists to reconsider. Brown was given marrow from a donor with a natural resistance to HIV. To receive the donated tissue, Brown needed to stop taking his HIV medication. To the astonishment of his doctors, no detectable viral presence appeared in his body following the procedure.
This does not necessarily mean that there are not still particles of the virus lurking in Brown’s body. But if the donor’s natural resistance to HIV was conferred upon Brown in a lasting way, it might not matter: Whatever remaining viral particles are possibly lingering in his system might never become active enough to build up a detectable viral load.
Such a treatment could be a boon to HIV patients who would otherwise rely on expensive medications for decades, living with the possibility of viral breakthrough (when the virus becomes resistant to a previously effective treatment) or long-term side effects from the medication. Cash-strapped governments could also see a savings if fewer people need to be kept supplied with the current standard cocktail of medications.
The medical procedures that Brown underwent to destroy his own bone marrow and replace it with donated tissue are grueling and expensive. Moreover, it is impractical to hope to treat thousands or millions of people by finding suitable donors with the mutation carried by Brown’s donor.
The trick is to figure out a way to achieve a similar result more reliably, cheaply, and easily. That means looking into new approaches to fighting the virus where it lives -- in the body itself. But such approaches must be non-destructive to the body’s systems, as well as thorough in stamping out or suppressing the virus.
One group of collaborators set to be funded by the new grant hopes to develop new medications with such small molecular structures that they can penetrate to the body’s most hard-to-reach niches and wipe out any HIV residing there. The group, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is slated to receive more than $6 million per year for five years.
One of the other groups is set to investigate the possibility of engineering suitable marrow tissue for a similar transplant procedure to the one that seemingly cured Brown. The advantage to this approach is that a person’s own stem cells could conceivably be modified to create marrow with the necessary properties, rather than hoping to find donors with naturally occurring mutations.
The third project will also pursue small-molecule treatments, the article said, while also using "immune-based treatments."
"The three collaboratories are using very different but largely complementary approaches," said one of the project’s leaders, Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco. "Since many of us believe a cure will require combination therapy, it is my hope -- as well as the hope of others -- that three groups can merge their work whenever possible."
Some of the ideas on the table have already been shown to have significant therapeutic potential. Researchers in Barcelona used patients’ own cells to create a treatment that reduced the viral load in people living with HIV. Though they said that the reduction in detectable levels of the virus was "significant," researchers cautioned that at this stage the new treatment had not succeeded in dropping patients’ viral loads to the point of not being detectable, as current HIV medication regimens do for many.
"However this is a very important improvement with respect to previous initiatives where with a similar vaccine there was a modest response in 30 percent of the treated patients," a statement from Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, where the clinical trial took place, said last February. and involved two dozen AIDS patients. "No therapeutic vaccine has achieved up to now the same level of response as in this study."
Cells from each patient’s own immune system were used to create tailor-made doses of the vaccine.
The innovation of using patients’ own cells to fight the virus comes at roughly the same time as news of another new approach, the use of specially engineered RNA that suppressed the ability of the virus to replicate itself. Suppression of viral replication is seen as one key component in the search for a vaccine or even a cure. Selectively targeting and destroying infected cells, while leaving healthy cells alone, is another
Ohio Bishop Bans Breat Cancer Fundraising
Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair sent a letter banning the fundraising for Susan G. Komen for the Cure to all priests and parishes in the 19-county diocese over the weekend. Cincinnati's archbishop earlier this year decided that schools and parishes in the 19-county Cincinnati Archdiocese cannot raise funds for Komen for the same reason. Scientists say research on embryonic stem cells, which are usually taken from discarded embryos at fertility clinics, may lead to cures for diseases. The Catholic Church maintains that the destruction of the embryo amounts to the killing of human life.The Komen Foundation says it has never funded stem cell research. Apparently this guy has his head....well you know where
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