Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Yes, I am taking the night off from blogging to enjoy a few dozen bottles of Guinness and a few dozen pints of Irish Whiskey. Maybe if I am lucky I will be seeing leprechauns by the end of the night but I will probably just end up barfing up green shit. Cheers!

Barrack Obama, Gay Serial Killler?

Larry Bland was a twenty four year old security guard who worked at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. He was openly gay. On November 17, 2007, an assailant slipped into Larry Bland’s house at the 6300 block of S. Wood Street. After a brief struggle, the assailant shot Larry in the head. Lynn Bland said he thinks his brother’s death outside the family home started as a robbery but turned into a hate crime. Donald Young was a forty seven year old choir director and deacon at Trinity United Church of Christ, on 400 W. 95th St, the very church made famous by the candidacy of Barrack Obama. Donald Young was also openly gay. He was also a personal friend of Barrack Obama’s. A roommate found Donald Young unresponsive in his home at 7:30 AM on December 23, 2007. He had been shot multiple times. Christmas presents and jewelry were missing from his home.   Interim Police Superintendent Dana Starks said that so far, there is no evidence linking the two crimes. NBC Video.That hasn’t stopped any one from speculating however. Even though the two incidents were reported seperately, they have both become fodder for the Anti-Barrack Obama crowd online. It started with Michael Loveless, founder of a gay and lesbian rights group going on local chicago area TV and sounding the alarm for gays and lesbians to be extra careful. All of which is fine. Michael’s actions however may have been taken as permission to link the two otherwise unconnected murders thus creating the impression that the same person was responsible for both.And then there are websites like this one. This is the website of a man who is promoting the idea that he had sex with Barrack Obama and did cocaine with him in the back seat of a limo in 1999. A private investigator for the Enquirer went so far as to say “Donald Young was killed because he knew too much about Barrack Obama and his campaign.” The insinuation is that Donald Young and Barrack Obama were sexual partners and that Barrack Obama had Donald Young killed. There are a number of webites promoting this garbage, including this one.  Sources:

• nbc
• cb2chicago.com

Dirty Book

 A dirty book is rarely dusty.  ~Author Unknown
When I was twenty, I came upon a book. It was called something like “Mama’s Boy”. It was a paperback print with under ninety pages of text. It was a story of a lonely thirteen year old boy. By that time in my life, I had looked at many hardcore pornographic magazines and watched many triple x rated movies. I was no stranger to porn. Nor am I ashamed of that.I had found this book amongst my next door neighbor’s things. I “borrowed” it from him and slipped into my back pocket. He never protested that. This book though began to have a kind of morbid appeal to me. It was a bad book. Let me rephrase that-It was an incredibly stupid book. It was amatuerish-the language was simplistic enough to make me expect the narrator to refer to things like “peepee” and “kaka” or to have a character exclaim, pointing to her chest, “milk, milk lemonade; around the corner fudge is made”. Very third grade, in it’s sophistication level.I began and finished reading it that afternoon. It was a quick read. It was the story of this oversexed thirteen year old virgin who stumbles in upon his sister masturbating and has sex with her. He then stumbles in on his mother, his next door neighbor’s daughter, etc etc. It was all described with this very stale, poorly articulated narrative like this book was written by a computer. This is not a book report on porn. I have a point to all of this. The book was nauseating-literally. It was a manifesto of ignorance about sex, women and sex with women. Despite its poverty of aesthetic refinement, I couldn’t put it down. It was fascinating to see the neuroses of this male author emblazoned on a three dimensional rorschach ink blot of a “book”. I maintained a two handed “hands off” approach while reading this book. I have no problem admitting that I masturbate (I mean, 99% of the human race does, the other one percent have no arms).  I was afraid this “fantasy” would be burned into my subconscious.  

zoloft commercial parody

The Sex Room

Remember, if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast.  ~Woody Allen
I remember with great fondness this one client I met 2 years ago. Her name was Irene and she had medium length dark hair. She had olive colored skin and beautiful dark brown eyes. She was diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia and she was very introspective as is often the case with their kind.

Now you need to know some things about the hospital she lived in. We are a locked psychiatric unit, but other than that, our policies are pretty liberal. In fact, we follow a philosophy of allowing the greatest amount of freedom for each individual that he or she can handle without causing an “incident”, that is to say an event that brings harm to another or is likely to bring harm. For example, they have access to cable tv, their own personal computers, their own clothing and they can roam the grounds at will.

Residents can also participate in the “Sex Program”. This means that, while we cannot necessarily restrict sexual contact between clients on the unit, we engage them with the agreement that, in exchange for signing a pledge to follow certain safe sex practices, we will provide them with condoms, lubrication and a specially set aside room to have sex with each other in. This is really an attempt to keep them safe. Hepatitis C and HIV are widespread among the mentally ill.Anyway, back to Irene. She would sing. She believed that she was in a mystical state of communication with god. Whenever she experienced an intense and personal emotion, she found a nice quiet place and began to sing. Her songs had no set melody, no lyrics. They were these often beautiful, sometimes eery, occasionally annoying, extemporaneous vocalizations that she would do from time to time.

She also had a very healthy sexual appetite. She would use the sex room 2 or 3 times a day. If she had no partner, she would just walk up to a new guy, chit chat with him for a few minutes and next thing you know she would be hitting the nurse up for condoms. And none of us psych nurses had a negative thing to say about her.Anyway, one day a young man came on the unit aged 23. He had the same olive skin and dark brown eyes. He was also very popular with the other female clients. He had some good reasons for being detained (I won’t go into them here).

After he had been living there a few weeks, Irene propositioned him once and he refused. He was already seeing another client. She became despondent and morose. She stopped her singing. She stayed isolated to her room for a week. We could tell it effected her pretty deeply.But she never acted out because of this. She never gave in to jealousy and hit her rival or tried to ruin his reputation. She just dealt with it.

A month or so later, this young man finally said yes, after his current girlfriend was remanded to an emergency psych unit and therefore unavailable to him. They went to the sex room and about twenty minutes later the ward was flooded with the sound of her singing.

The Sex That Passes The Censors

No matter what community you live in, no matter how freakishly religious its leaders are, no matter how strict the censors are, there is always a little bit of sex that slips through the filters.Whether it’s a National Geographic Magazine picture of an african woman with her breasts brushing her knees, a young couple tongue kissing in public or your pet dog “scruffy” humping a neighbor’s leg, there is always a certain amount and type of sex that passes the censors.Sex is always controversial in America. Graphic Depictions of sex panic religious people. But in the digital age, we are making progress.Nearly three-quarters of the principals say there have been no recent discussions or debate in the PTA, school board or other public meetings about what to teach in their sex education classes. 46 percent believe that the most appropriate approach is one called “abstinence-plus” — that while abstinence is best, some teens do not abstain, so schools also should teach about condoms and contraception.In past generations in America, sex was taught in a highly sanitized way. The video below displays a sex education film circa 1950. It is highly progressive for it’s time.One day, when I was eight years old or so, I ask my mother what sex was. She blushed and said nothing. Two days later, she handed me an animated book and told me to read it and ask her about anything that did not make sense. The book was a cartoon about a married man and a married woman who hug and kiss each other under the covers one night and then nine months later they have a baby.I would learn through hardcore pornography, personal experience and nursing school that there was an awful lot left out of that little narrative.A majority of Americans (55 percent) believes that giving teens information about how to obtain and use condoms will not encourage them to have sexual intercourse earlier than they would have otherwise (39 percent say it would encourage them), and 77 percent think such information makes it more likely the teens will practice safe sex now or in the future (only 17 percent say it will not make it more likely).For the first time in history, most Americans are right.When it comes to the general approach to teaching sex and sexuality in schools, Americans divide almost evenly. According to one study, respondents were asked to choose which of two statements was closer to their belief: (1) “When it comes to sex, teenagers need to have limits set; they must be told what is acceptable and what is not.” Forty-seven percent selected this statement as true. Or (2) “ultimately teenagers need to make their own decisions, so their education needs to be more in the form of providing information and guidance.” 51 percent selected this statement as true.Historically, the impetus for sex education in schools was to teach children to avoid pregnancy and keep themselves safe from sexually transmitted diseases, but many parents say they are more worried about the effects of sexual activity on their child’s psyche. They should worry, instead, about how their children’s developing sexual feelings will lead them to experiences in the world and many of these experiences are going to involve embarassment, loss, awkwardness, or even trauma if they are navigated naively.Evangelical or born-again Christians also have different views on many questions about sex education. Twelve percent of them say sex education should not be taught in schools — a small number, but three times the percentage found among non-evangelicals (4 percent).Moreover, more than twice as many evangelicals as non-evangelicals (49 percent to 21 percent) believe the government should fund abstinence-only programs instead of using the money for more comprehensive sex education.What should you teach your children about sex? This, in America, is a controversial question. Some parents, particularly those with a conservative bent, seem uncomfortable educating their children about sex. They act as if the mere fact of discussing sex with children is a kind of aural paedophilia. They act as though their intention to inform their young is somehow abhorrent.Age appropriate sex education saves lives.

Dreams Part Four: Kekule Dreams The Structure Of Carbon

Kekule discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon, the formation of chemical/organic “structure Theory”, but he did not make this breakthrough by experimentation alone. He had a dream.

As he described in a speech given at the German Chemical Society: “I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes! Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion; but up to that time, I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion.

Now, however, I saw how, frequently the two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller; whilst the whole thing kept whirling in a giddy dance.

I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but only at the ends of the chain…The cry of the conductor: “Clapham Road,” awakened me from my  dreaming; but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the Structural Theory.”

Blog Review: Religious Right Watch

While researching a post about Michael Huckabee, I came across a blog that is a cut above most of the others, Religious Right Watch. Most sites that are critical of religion devolve into mere ranting. This one doesn’t. I don’t know much about the author, but let me tell you, he or she is packing the goods.
This blog is chock full of nutritious information about the religious right and the dominionist/christian supremacist movement. The author of this blog is theologically and philosophically articulate to boot.

Prions

Last February, The Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. of Chino, Calif., recalled 143.4 million pounds of beef contaminated with meat from cattle that were susceptible to mad cow disease as well as E. coli and salmonella bacteria.
The meat went to about 37 million pounds went to government nutrition programs, including schools, since October 2006.
The chance of consumers being exposed to mad cow disease is “negligible,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. Nearly all the meat has been consumed or is being withheld from distribution. Still it warrants concern. The incidence of prion diseases such as mad cow disease is on the rise.

A prion, short for proteinaceous infectious particle, is an infectious agent which hypothetically is composed only of protein. Prions cause a number of diseases including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE aka “mad cow disease”) in a variety of mammals, including cattle and humans. All known prion diseases affect the structure of neural tissue, including the brain, and all prion diseases are currently untreatable and fatal.

The Term “Prion” can refer to both the theoretical unit of infection or the specific protein (e.g. PrP) that is thought to be the infectious agent, whether or not it is in an infective state.

Protein is fascinating biologically. All animals and insects must have protein to survive. Whole protein does not exist in a natural state on Earth. So animals have to synthesize whole protein from it’s constituent parts: animo acids. Proteins are necessary because they can fold into a nearly infinite number and type of shapes. The shapes themselves dictate biologic function mechanically. These proteins form the building blocks of nerve tissue and muscle as well as DNA and RNA. Bacteria and viruses are basically highly complex aggregations of protein.

As an animal goes through it’s day, due to random chance, a few proteins per thousand will become “unfolded.” These are normally electrically “washed out” of the brain during sleep.

Prions are believed to infect and propagate by refolding abnormally into a protein structure which is able to convert normal molecules of the protein into the abnormally structured form. All known prions induce the formation of an amyloid fold, in which the protein polymerises into an aggregate consisting of tightly packed beta sheets. This altered structure is extremely stable and accumulates in infected tissue, causing cell death and tissue damage. This stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents, making disposal and containment of these particles difficult.

Proteins showing prion behaviour are also found in some fungi. This has been very important in helping to understand mammalian prions. However, fungal prions do not appear to cause disease in their hosts and may even confer an evolutionary advantage through a form of protein-based inheritance.

Human Prion Diseases
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)
• Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD)
• Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome
• Fatal Familial Insomnia
• Kuru

Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals. They are distinguished by long incubation periods, characteristic spongiform changes associated with neuronal loss, and a failure to induce inflammatory response. As you can see from the slide below, it turns a cows brain into swiss cheese, almost literally.