Yearly Archives: 2005

Bash a Fag For Jesus

Shoot, yesterday was the National Day of Silence, and I missed blogging about it. This is a project where high school students, to protest the harrassment and bullying that gay and lesbian teenagers experience at school every day, choose to go through their day without speaking. Started in 1998, it’s swelled into a nationally recognized event.
Now, though, anti-gay Christian Terrorists are targeting the day by calling the day “Bash a Fag For Jesus” (oh, wait, I guess they’re really calling it a “Day of Truth” but my title is more accurate) where they target kids who are participating in the day by wearing T-shirts and handing out gay-bashing flyers.

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Dining out For Life – Today!!

Dining Out for Life is an annual fundraising event held in 33 cities across America with all the proceeds benefiting respective HIV/AIDS organizations in their communities. On Thursday, April 14th, these fine restaurants will be contributing 25% of their food sales to The Damien Center. (The Damien Center provides and coordinates comprehensive services and education to persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS in our community and offers free and confidential testing designed to limit the spread of HIV.)
Read on to see the list of restaurants and what meals they’re providing…

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More about our shallow culture

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Wow.

A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones. Dr. Andrew Harrell presented his findings recently at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Harrell’s findings are based on an observational study of children and shopping cart safety. With the approval of management at 14 different supermarkets, Harrell’s team of researchers observed parents and their two to five-year-old children for 10 minutes each, noting if the child was buckled into the grocery-cart seat, and how often the child wandered more than 10 feet away. The researchers independently graded each child on a scale of one to 10 on attractiveness.

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Sleep Study Results

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Sleep apnea is defined as the absence of airflow at the nose and mouth for longer than 10 seconds during sleep. Sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) is described as the occurrence of more than 30 apnea episodes over a seven-hour period of nocturnal sleep.

My doctor says I had 150 – 160 episodes during my study where I either stopped breathing or had severe shallow breathing, causing me to awaken. I also had a slight drop in oxygen levels. So my sleep apnea is classified as severe. This is causing a severe disruption in my sleep, which helps explain why I’m tired all the time, in addition to my tiredness from the heart valve problem.

Sleep Apnea Information and Resources
The solution is that I have to have a C-PAP breathing machine and mask to use at night, which I go to get set up tomorrow. I also have to lose weight, which might be the cause of the problem, or which might help contribute to other factors that are the actual cause. I’ve always have trouble with snoring and waking up, though, even back when I was thin. My roommates in college used to complain about it. So I suspect that my weight isn’t the only cause.

Interestingly, weight gain is also listed as one of the symptoms sleep apnea — meaning having apnea contributes to weight gain.

Sleep Apnea as a Cause of Obesity
Obesity and sleep apnea are a chicken and egg problem. It is not always clear which condition is responsible for the other. For example, obesity is often a risk factor and possibly a cause of sleep apnea, but it is also likely that sleep apnea increases the risk for weight gain:

Some studies indicate that sleep apnea disrupts rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which, in turn, increases the risk for obesity.

Research indicates that animals deprived of REM sleep tend to eat more.

People with apnea may also become too tired to exercise and so put on weight.

He also said that I have to let the anesthesiologist know about this before surgery, so they don’t take my breathing tube out too early after surgery while I’m still under sedation, because I could get oxygen deprivation and brain damage. Which makes me remember when I was coming out of sedation after my appendectomy, and how I couldn’t breathe and the nurses kept coming over and shaking me and telling me to breathe. No wonder I’m stupid.

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Truck Cover Stolen

Last night someone stole the vinyl truck bed cover from my truck where it was parked behind my house. It will be $250 to replace the cover, and I don’t know if I want to do that, considering it might just get stolen again. It’s not like when my rainbow flag was stolen over and over, and I just spent $30 and replaced the pole and flag.
Between Stephanie’s car being broken into, and my flagpole getting stolen, and now this, I need to seriously put together a financial plan for fencing around the yard and getting better security. I should have put this together a long time ago; I say this every time something happens, and then I don’t do anything about it. I need to do it not just for my sake but for Spike’s, so he can have a backyard he can run around it without being on a leash all the time. I have to get my money in order and take care of the problem.

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Freecycling – Giving away your stuff

Freecycling networks harness the power of the Internet to connect people who have stuff to throw away with others in their area who would like that stuff, so it doesn’t wind up in a landfill. We ALL have things in our garages, closets, attics, offices, etc., that we don’t need. Freecycle lets you find someone who does. No item is too big or too small but ALL must be 100% free with no strings attached. A perfect consumer/earth friendly circle: no overhead, no money, no waste and no catch.
The basic idea is that you join a local email mailing list (many are hosted through Yahoo Groups) and you then receive messages from people in your area listing items they have for offer, or items they are looking for. You can post items that you want to get rid of, and people then e-mail you personally to arrange to pick-up or deliver the item, all free of charge.

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Our Shallow Culture

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A study on how appearance affects pays scale:

A study by economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle uses survey data to examine the impact that appearance has on a person’s earnings. In each survey, the interviewer who asked the questions also rated the respondents’ physical appearance. Respondents were classified into one of the following groups: below average, average and above average.
Hamermesh and Biddle found that the “plainness penalty” is 9 percent and that the “beauty premium” is 5 percent after controlling for other variables, such as education and experience. In other words, a person with below-average looks tended to earn 9 percent less per hour, and an above-average person tended to earn 5 percent more per hour than an average-looking person. For the median male in 1996 working full-time, the respective penalty and premium amounted to approximately $2,600 and $1,400 annually. The corresponding penalty and premium for the median female worker are $2,000 and $1,100.
Economists Susan Averett and Sanders Korenman studied the effects of obesity on wages, using a sample consisting of individuals aged 16-24 in 1981 who were 23-31 in 1988. They showed that women who were obese according to their Body Mass Index (BMI) in both 1981 and 1988 earned 17 percent lower wages on average than women within their recommended BMI range… When comparing by race, the authors found a wage penalty for obesity among white women but no significant penalty for black women. Among white men, they found a much lower wage penalty for obesity than for their white female counterparts. A small positive relationship was actually found between obese black men and wages.

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Poor Henry

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  • Post category:Monkeys

A young gibbon monkey named Henry in a zoo in Minnesota is going to a new home because his parents have rejected him. The zoo has found him a surrogate mom in a zoo in Nashville, who will hopefully teach him socialization skills. Currently Henry’s only friend is a pillow named Fuzzy, that he holds onto for comfort.
You know, if that doesn’t work out in Nashville, I’ll take him.

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