Last week i went to see what i thought was a hormone specialist... it turned out to be the sexual health & contraception clinic - which was ok as my main query was about my periods...

My main issue is that my periods really drag me down. This is nothing new, but the last 6 months or so i have seen a definite pattern in my symptoms, in that i have a "better" week (or sometimes just a few days) just before my period (when i can feel pretty good "at rest" and even manage to go out and about a little bit without major payback) and then just before my period i start to feel bad, feel very low in energy and everything is a struggle during my period, with all my bad symptoms of headaches, dizziness, muscle weakness, achiness, sensitivity to noise, etc etc and then it seems to take another couple of weeks to gradually get over the event and it all starts again.

The doctor i saw was a little confused as most people feel worse the week before, but has given me Norethisterone, a progestogen only pill to take, starting on my 5th day of my period and to take continuously (i am going back in 6 weeks or so for a check up). If it seems to agree with me, she said we could consider the Depo Injection... (very scared of that as heard it can have bad side effects and once you have it it can't be undone). The idea is that my periods will cease and won't drain me so much, although there may be some spotting and side effects (weight gain, bloating, spots, dizziness - just what i need!). They don't know how it will affect me until i try so i am giving it a go, although not without some concerns. I am just hoping i don't miss out on my few good days a month as a result!

I am willing to try it now as what i used to consider to be an ok/average day is now the highlight of my month and my general level of functioning has gone way down. My hormones may not have much to do with this but my period seems to be just one more burden on top of all the others that i really could do without. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a magic answer so i may be making things even worse but don't know til i try.

Progestogensare like natural progesterone but are synthetic hormones and are not without controversy and i am not entirely comfortable with "polluting" my body and messing about withit when it is evidently already struggling to function, but it is worth a try. I also hate taking things then wondering if my odd symptoms are due to side effects of a drug or if they are the ME, and not knowing how i would be feeling without taking it...

Dr Sarah Myhill does not recommend people with ME take the pill, but she does not really talk about what to do about period hell either so i don't see any obvious alternatives! She talks more about contraception, which is irrelevant to me as a lesbian. She does say Progestogens can cause depression. I have not been depressed the last couple of months so will be suspicious if i suddenly get down. I have been taking Agnus Castus for a long time, which is a herbal remedy and which definitely helps with keeping periods regular and i think make mine last for less days as well. I had stopped taking it last month in case the hospital wanted to take any blood tests and my period was late this time, which has not happened in a long time, so i think it certainly is worth a try for anyone not on the pill who has issues with PMT etc. (Kira brand has seemed best to me).

So, my period came today! I am so happy as it is 3 days late and have been feeling very premenstrual, as well as having bad (and different to usual) leg pains - from my hips and down the sides into my knees and beyond! Also i usually get bleeding gums when i clean my teeth around the time of my period (who knows why) but yesterday when i got out of bed in the afternoon and sat in the next room chatting to my girlfriend, my gum spontaneously started bleeding into my mouth! It stopped quite quickly but was quite copious there for a minute. Yuk. I even started looking through the kitchen cupboard yesterday and throwing out all the out of date rice, dried beans, etc. "Nov 2007? looks ok... 2006 throw it out!" typical PMT behaviour...

This means that i need to start taking the new tablets on Saturday... 3 times a day! Better make a ticky chart or i will forget whether i have taken them or not... I am just hoping that i will never have to be that woman again who constantly talks about her periods, when she is due, how bad she feels, blah blah so boring, but recently whenever anything is happening (an appointment, visitor, etc) i have to check my diary and say whether there is any chance i will be feeling even half up to it... but how much of a long term solution is taking this pill i wonder? Surely i can't just take it forever? How messed up will my hormones be after taking it? Hmm.

The other thing that i wanted to talk to the hormone specialist about (turns out i need to see a separate Endocrinologist for this) is to discuss the chapter in Fatigued to Fantastic! about hormones and ME (see previous post). The doctor i saw at the sexual health clinic said that there is a doctor at a local hospital who is interested in people who are slightly sub-optimal in various hormones and the effect that can have but that she did not think they would try treating me even if i am as they tend to have a "hands off" approach. This means "do nothing in case you are sued" approach, or a "NICE guidelines say NO if you have ME" approach, i can only assume... So if Dr Teitlebaum is right about hormones and ME/CFS then i will probably never know. I could try to get referred to that doctor but i don't expect there is a lot of point in wasting my energy and taxi money. This is a bit disheartening as i am doing everything else in the book (taking supplements for my mitochondria etc) but if there is a hormonal problem holding me back i can't do anything about it myself... what is the point of trying to help myself if i can't get any professional support/expertise?

The accepted demographic wisdom had been that as women enter the job market, a society’s fertility rate drops. That has been broadly true in the developed world, but more recently, and especially in Europe, the numbers don’t bear it out. In fact, something like the opposite has been the case. According to Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, analysis of recent studies showed that “high fertility was associated with high female labor-force participation . . . and the lowest fertility levels in Europe since the mid-1990s are often found in countries with the lowest female labor-force participation.” In other words, working mothers are having more babies than stay-at-home moms.

In case the point wasn't driven home:

A study released in February of this year by Letizia Mencarini, the demographer from the University of Turin, and three of her colleagues compared the situation of women in Italy and the Netherlands. They found that a greater percentage of Dutch women than Italian women are in the work force but that, at the same time, the fertility rate in the Netherlands is significantly higher (1.73 compared to 1.33). In both countries, people tend to have traditional views about gender roles, but Italian society is considerably more conservative in this regard, and this seems to be a decisive difference. The hypothesis the sociologists set out to test was borne out by the data: women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, “It’s about how much the man participates in child care.” [emphasis mine]

Mind you, this revelation occurred on page 4 of a lengthy article. Had I written it, the salient facts would've probably appeared on page 1, pararaph 1.

Now, what you had to have read the previous several pages to discover is that another factor is age of the mother when the first child is born. When mothers are older upon the birth of the first child, they tend to have fewer children. So in addition to the fabulous state-enabled benefits to mothers in Scandinavian countries, the mothers there must, I infer, tend to be younger.

Get a load of what mothers and fathers in Norway receive:

The state guarantees about 54 weeks of maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks of paternity leave. With the birth of a child comes a government payment of about 4,000 euros. State-subsidized day care is standard. The cost of living is high, but then again it’s assumed that both parents will work; indeed, during maternity leave a woman is paid 80 percent of her salary.

Aren't you just weeping with envy??

Now I'm a huge advocate of extended family to help with childcare. In our child-hating, er, child-unfriendly culture, there's not a lot of support for the tykes or the moms and dads who raise them (Paid Family Leave Act for governmental employees, anybody?). So among ethnic Americans and/or immigrants, the extended family has always been a source of assistance for cultural, practical, and economic and other reasons. But I do recognize it's not feasible for many people. We have a twice- and thrice-divorced population going on its second and third generation of split and step-families, for one.

And we're a highly mobile people, for another. We don't always live where our extended families live, and our occupations often take us away from the towns and cities of our birth.

Moreover, for the Italian women:

There is little state-financed child care, especially for new mothers, and most newlyweds still find homes close to one or both sets of parents, the assumption being that the extended family will help raise the children. But this no longer works as it once did. “As couples tend to delay childbearing,” Aassve says, “the age gap between generations is widening, and in many cases grandparents, who would be the ones relied upon for child care, themselves become the ones in need of care.”

So there is the familiar "sandwich generation" problem of slightly older mothers, which is to find oneself helping the oldest and youngest generations at the same time, often while working for pay outside the home. No wonder we're all stressed and stretched to the utmost. Now add the U.S.'s poor social welfare safety net, a weak economy/job loss, and perhaps a catastrophic illness, single parenthood, and you have a recipe for disaster. No one is supported or given the resources to bounce back from bad luck.

I've railed against rugged individualism before: the U.S. right now is Darwinistic to a fault. It's appalling.

And we're given specious/incomplete advice by Linda Hirshman: "marry up," "go into a field that pays well (not the humanities, god forbid!), "have a good career but marry 'down' so your man can do more at home."

The problem is cast in individualistic terms as are the solutions. Seldom are social or policy solutions posed. If they are, the political will under the Bush administration is lacking. It's shameful.

Since I've gone ahead and injected politics into this (how could anyone not?), the NYT Magazine article goes on to say:

In Scandinavia, thanks in part to state support, the more children a family has, the wealthier it is likely to be, whereas in southern Europe having children is a financial sinkhole, which drags a family toward poverty. Such an analysis flies in the face of social conservatives, who argue that simply encouraging people to have more babies will raise the population and add fuel to the economic engine.

The article poses research gathered from northern European countries against the southern European ones, and finds that less gender equity in the southern European countries is what contributes, against all socially conservative rhetoric to the contrary, to declining birth rates. I'll say that again: the more sexism is ingrained in a country's culture, customs, and policies, the more likely birth rates are declining below a 2.0 "replacement rate."

Now mercifully the authors of the article expanded their perspective to include a cross-cultural analysis, so we aren't simply filled with jealousy at how good the Scandinavians have it (which is what we've all known for some time). Apparently, in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and elsewhere, this is true as well.

What's so interesting about the article is that the U.S., for all its lack of a social net for families, nevertheless has a healthy birthrate that's the envy of much of Europe. The reason is apparently the flexibility of our society. To have birthrates at the "replacement" level, it appears your society must be one that's either good with social programs OR flexible, permitting a women the option, for example, of leaving the paid workforce for 3-5 years and then possibly returning.

Now all of the slant of my examination of the article has been with an eye to allowing people to have as many children as they please in a world that welcomes and eases the special work-life burdens parents experience. But I have to admit, one of my first thoughts upon reading about declining birth rates (anywhere in the world) is a small feeling of relief, because it seems more likely that a smaller population will ease the environmental strains we put on this planet.

And I was glad to see this addressed by the article's author, Russell Shorto, also. He points out that even as overpopulation is unsustainable, so is "the upside down pyramid" where a tiny number of young workers support a much larger group of elderly retirees. There's some discussion of whether immigration can be an adequate supplement to the birth rate, but it's really discussed in negative terms only: anti-immigrant sentiment, overtly racist nativist policies and politicians.

Which is too bad, because ultimately it seems that natalism and nativism can't be disentangled. Racism is too strong, the sentiments behind the Nazi Mother's Cross too difficult to erase:

For $100 or so you can buy online a Third Reich “Mother’s Cross” (officially, a Cross of Honor of the German Mother). The medals were struck, beginning in 1938, in bronze for women who had four children, in silver for mothers of six and in gold for women who gave birth to eight. They were given out annually on Hitler’s mother’s birthday to heroines of the cause of fertility, which the Führer referred to as “the battlefield of women.” Natalism — the state-sponsored policy to increase the birthrate — has a rather tainted pedigree. Nevertheless, in the age of “lowest-low fertility,” it has made a comeback. If your population is falling, one logical, or seemingly logical, way to build it up again is to encourage people to have more babies. [emphasis mine]

Natalism is therefore the opposite of an enlightened immigration policy, as is nativism (xenophobic scapegoating of immigrants and efforts to close borders to new immigrants). Notice how, in the nations that offer natalist policies, opening one's borders is never viewed as a good solution in spite of the economic sense it makes to flip the worker/retiree pyramid.

France has wonderful child- and family-friendly policies, but it's also currently cursed with the leadership of a conservative who's borrowed much of the xenophobic, anti-Semitic, racist platforms of Le Pen. I can't help but think the pendulum swing is partly powered by this natalist/nativist connection.

In fact, it's hard to resist the pressure to intermingle natalism with nativism. Right now in the U.S., we have neither governmental policies promoting natalism nor nativist (anti-immigrant) policies, but we do have racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Just look at how virulently some people oppose giving driver's licenses to undocumented people.

So, here we are again, where a woman's womb is the battleground for nation, patrimony/patriarchy, and a host of ideals that she may or may not benefit from nor hold to. And here, too, is a battleground that's profoundly in need of feminist re-definition. Let's take the woman out of natalism by creating father/mother/parent-friendly policies. Let's also take the woman out of nativism--why shouldn't enlightened immigration reform be a feminist act? Certainly immigration reform need not be an opportunity to enact racism and xenophobia; certainly we ought to uncouple women from "national purity" as the Nazi Mother's Cross example illustrates.

Just for kicks I looked up the tenor of immigration policies in the Scandinavian countries with great family-friendly policies, and then in the Southern European countries where there are natalist policies:

Sweden: subject to the Schengen Agreement, which enables the free flow of people among member EU states; so far as I can tell the stated governmental policies are fairly enlightened and yet the difficulty of integration/assimilation of immigrants to Sweden is still high enough to cause the ruling Social Democratic party to take a restrictive stance toward immigration and asylum.

Norway: not a member of the EU, but a signer of the Schengen Agreement, Norway has a rather stringent immigration policy stressing "quality, not quantity." Hmmm. It also was named the country with the highest standard of living in the world by the UN four times in a row. And yet: "Electoral support for the anti-immigration Progress Party confirmed xenophobic tendencies at this time [circa 1980]; after receiving only 3.7 percent of the parliamentary vote in 1985, the party received 12.3 and 13.0 percent of the vote in 1987 and 1989, respectively." The bar to achieving citizenship is very high: "Norway-born children of two foreign parents must wait until age 18 to apply for citizenship."

France: the most high profile debate over "the headscarf affair"--whether or not children in public schools in France can wear religious head garb. France has the largest Islamic population in Europe. "In November 2003, the National Assembly passed a law amending legislation on immigration and on the residence of foreigners on French territories. The new law provides stricter regulations to combat illegal immigration and to regulate the admission and stay of foreigners in France." Because of its colonial history and attendant misadventures in Algeria, the Ivory Coast of Africa, and elsewhere, there's especially heated debate over the various states of citizenship to sans papiers (undocumenteds), with several gradations in-between.

Italy: "Italy's immigration picture changed further with the victory in 2001 of Silvio Berlusconi, conservative media magnate and now prime minister for the second time since 1994. Berlusconi's cabinet, which includes members from the far-right Northern League (which has made its opposition to immigration into a central electoral plank) and the former neo-fascist National Alliance, has been seeking ways to curtail immigration into Italy and to deploy a range of enforcement and control mechanisms. In August 2002, the government passed legislation to regulate immigration, and in September of that same year adopted a decree to provide for the regularization of undocumented immigrants already in the country." Interesting that this is in combination with a local natalist program (featured in the first 3 pages of the NYT Magazine article) to boost birth rates among Italian women.

Greece: "Immigration is the cause of population increase and demographic renewal in Greece in the period between the 1991 and 2001 censuses. The average number of children per woman in Greece has fallen to 1.3, against a European average of 1.5, and well below the average of 2.1 required for the reproduction of a population. Of the immigrant population, on the other hand, 16.7 percent are in the 0-14 age bracket, 79.8 percent in the 15-64 age bracket, and only 3.5 percent in the over-65 age bracket." What's interesting about Greece is that immigrants have indisputably boosted the Greek economy ("they play a... complementary economic role" rather than competing directly with Greek citizens), and yet there's still tremendous xenophobia and racism in how Greeks regard immigrants to that nation. In this case, the authors of the article suggest that perhaps it's the *lack* of a coherent immigration policy that citizens find bothersome

I'm not done chewing on this subject, but the article has been a good opportunity to re-frame the "Mommy Wars" in a new light. And to challenge the premise of the "No Babies?" article--it isn't that there are "no babies," it's that there are "too many of their babies and not enough of ours."

Wir werden nun unsere Tests fortsetzen und euch bald einen kompletten Testbericht zum Browser liefern.

Beide Alphas sind für TEKSTER Verfügbar und werden in den nächsten Tagen ausführlich getestet.

i still have half of my andre left

.

Sawi ka ba? ano pa intay? Kampai Na!

Ito yung mga pagkakataong sinasamantala. Para at least, mabangenge ka man eh may rison ka. its either, ikaw yung sawi o nakikiramay sa sawi.. wel, mas OK na yung ikaw ang nakikiramay hehe

oh di ba, lakas ng trip, para kaming nasa IMAX! hehe yan yung hannah montana 3D glasses na pinamimigay ng Skycable para sa telecast nung concert :D

ah ito, la lang, gus2 ko lang i post kc akshuli na inspired ako dun sa isang post ni Mr.JonCabron, naiiggit ako sa posing nya, eh inggitera talaga ako kaya eto hehehe gus2 ko din sana ilabas yung dila ko kaso di ko pala keri :(

 ***Can't Fight the Moonlight

U can try 2 resist

Try to hide from my kiss

But U know, don’t U know that U

Can’t fight the moonlight

Deep in the dark

U’ll surrender Ur heart

‘Coz U know, ‘Coz U know

That U, Can’t fight the moonlight

No, U Can’t fight it . .

Its gonna get 2 Ur heart . . .

WARNING : EXPLICIT CONTENT ??? :D

Yan ang porma ng mga babaeng nasaniban ng espiritu ng pulang kabayo.. parang kailangan ng magmumog ng holy water :D ..PERO PRAMIS, MATITINO PO SILA... PAG DI NAKA INOM :D

ANO NGA DAW ANG GUSTO??? :D

ang kyut kyut! parang ang sarap pag lalapirutin at pagkukurut kurutin!

ang kyut pala ng TITI!!!

Mahalay daw ako?

Mahalay ba yung ganto makikita mo taz kukuhaan mo ng pix para i blog i share ang syt sa iba? :D empre, di ako madamot, gus2 ko ma syt  nyo din :D

Kahit anung sarap ng Brothers Burger at Onion rings nila eh di ako maka concentrate dahil may KUYUKOT sa harapan ko!

Now that I have y'all thoroughly confused, let me explain Shredder.  The developmental builds of Thunderbird 3 are going to be under the code name Shredder. So when Thunderbird 3.0a1 comes out soon it will (or may) be released under the name Shredder 3.0a1. David Ascher is currently seeking help for creating a Shredder Icon and artwork.

Edit: Percy gives a very good explanation of Minefield and Shredder in his article Shredder: in-development Thunderbird.

I read this book last summer before I entered grad school. I enjoyed it. Did I think it was a Pulitzer Prize Winner? No. Did I think it was drivel? No. I started it reading with doubt--it sounded waaayyyy too self-indulgent to me. The first few chapters (beads) were definitely just that. Then I read a passage in which Gilbert described the desperation for attention from one's beloved like an addiction and a resonant bell rang. Been there, done that. I kept reading. It may not have been a life-altering experience, but I was interested in where she was, what she was doing. Twice, perhaps three times during the course of this book, I came across a passage that so resonated that it was worth reading through a lot of excess wordage to get to it. BUT, I was reading, not as a writer, but as a reader. An ordinary, garden variety, read and pass the book along person.

Of all the assigned work we've read this semester, I heard more discussion--more passion--around this book. Perhpas it is because of the commercial success (jealousy is so unattractive). My fellow students seemed to either love or hate this book, with no in between. Those of us on the negative side seemed to view it with sanctimonious indignation. Those of us on the positive side seemed sheepish. Major criticisms involved the fact that the author was granted a big fat purse in advance. "She knew what she was going to write ahead of time!" "It was written to satisfy a commitment!" These were some of our comments. I say our, because I, too, have had mixed feelings about this.

In every writing class I've taken at Mills--at least everyone taught by a published writer, and I think that's all of them--we've spent at least one class period, usually toward the end of the semester, talking about publishing. Practical advice about getting an agent, selling a story, nuts and bolts about how often and where to submit. I always come away from these discussions with a feeling of sadness, as if someone has taken all the alchemy--the joy--out of the process. It's a brutal, unforgiving industry! I guess I prefer the image of a fairy godmother discovering my work and exclaiming "Eureka, this must be available to all!" Presto! With the wave of her magic wand, there I am on the best-seller lists. OR, I take the attitude that I don't care, that publishing is secondary, that it's all about writing, not the end game. Still, I'm left, here at the end of my first year of the MFA program, trying to weigh true feelings against harsh reality.

It is my understanding that non-fiction books are most often pitched and sold on the strength of a couple of sample chapters and a proposal. If so, then Elizabeth Gilbert's process was appropriate. Does the fact that she was, in essence, employed by her publisher somehow make her work less worthy? Her experience less authentic? Would we have preferred that, upon ending her spiritual/physical journey, someone had stumbled on her hidden journal and proposed--no insisted--that it had to be shared? Would it then have been more palatable, more worthy?

If we as writers, criticize one of our own for playing the game as it is played, do we diminish their work and ourselves for wanting our work to be read/recognized?

How do we find equilibrium in a mine-field of mixed messages?

I was a new mother when I first heard about you, in news reports that said how you met with President Bush and received his anemic condolences. Like others, I had ranted, raved, marched, written letters to the editor and my elected representatives, done everything in my feeble power to prevent this war being waged. As a parent of a 10-month old infant then (now 4), I knew that the way I cherished and adored my child is how loving parents everywhere feel about their children, and that no one's child is a life that should be spent thoughtlessly--as carelessly as the many dollars that have gone into this war.

When I heard your story, I felt our country had failed you, our president had failed you, our Congress had failed you, and our media had failed you. And somehow, I felt I had failed you and others like you. My heart went out to you and every single Gold Star Parent whether or not they agreed with you. My heart went out to the Iraqi people, who were never consulted and never asked for any of this devastation.

I can only imagine the pain you felt then and feel now at the death of your son. But I can try to follow how your grief transformed and became righteous fury, how you became driven to pierce the nation's consciousness with your sustained interrogation of Bush--"Why?" "How?"--and your demand that President Bush look you in the eyes and justify the war in Iraq. This war that has been waged with fraudulent evidence and at an incalculable cost. I can applaud your resolve that your son's death not be used to perpetuate an illegal and ignoble war. I can support your evolution from unassuming, apolitical mother to informed, focused, dedicated, willing/unwilling symbol of the peace movement. I am with you in your desire that Americans shake off their apathy, ignorance, slumber, and misplaced faith in lazy platitudes. I've followed your exhausting vigil at Crawford, TX, just outside of Bush's ranch, your "resignation" from the peace movement, and your rebirth as a critic of and challenger to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who deflected all calls for impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

You came by your knowledge at a bitter price. You kept speaking truth to power in spite of attacks by right-wing pundits who labeled you a lunatic (and who I suspect would never be brave enough themselves to enlist or serve, yet have howled loudest and longest for this war). You persisted in spite of barbs and infighting from would-be supporters, in spite of what it cost you to relive Casey's death every time you talked about it to a journalist or at a demonstration. You persisted in believing in what America stands for and dared to speak out even when doing so brought a rain of other people's self-loathing, toxic cynicism, and rancid blind trust on your own head.

I suspect if I were you, I might have wanted to keep my son's memory alive too, in the same way. In spite of all that. Would I have had the courage to do so, if it were me--heaven forbid? All I can say is that I raised my voice against this war because I didn't want anyone to have to endure what you have. To make your life a living memorial to a beloved dead son. To give his death meaning, because to believe he died a meaningless death is to take a step toward annihilating despair.

So I see all you've done, and I know there are places you've gone with your commitment, your pain, and your grief that terrify me, that hint to me maybe I'd be destroyed by the loss instead of transformed by it. But somehow, as one mother to another, with my young son not yet a man and your son forever twenty-four, I see what drives you forward when anyone else would've buckled. I feel your heart's irrefutable logic in your actions. Because I tend to believe that as deep as that well of grief may be, what sustains you when you run dry and the bucket goes clattering down against the stone walls once again, what comes up from a deeper, more inexhaustible well is this: love.

Cindy Sheehan, you are not alone in your grief. Or your love for your child. Or your passionate insistence that this country must struggle harder to be what it tells the rest of the world it already is. We will bring this country back around, somehow. There is no choice if we call ourselves a free and peace-loving people.

Cross-posted at MOMocrats.

And I've had on slow boil a long post on Clinton and how I've gone from feeling like Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton would be a dream ticket to how Clinton disturbingly resembles the Republicans she purports to run against.

Do we see in Silda Spitzer's wracked, anguished face hints of Hillary Clinton's from years ago? Will all of this disaster end up reminding voters, especially women voters, how rampant satyrism is among powerful men, which would translate to "bring the woman in and throw the cheating bums out"?

Or is Eliot Spitzer calling to mind Bill Clinton, both radiating shame as they publicly faced up to their sexual peccadilloes? Does Spitzer's moral lapse fuel public speculation of what possible future scandals a First Man Bill Clinton would bring to the White House, shoring up the conviction that both Clintons need to be banished from the White House altogether?

Hard to say what's on the minds of the electorate, or to what extent this will all be a distant memory in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

We do know that Spitzer, as governor of NY and a superdelegate pledged to Clinton, endorsed Clinton for president. It looks as if Spitzer's resignation is imminent if not already announced. His superdelegate status, nil (Lt. Governor David A. Paterson, the first African American governor and also a superdelegate pledged to support Clinton, will step in). And according to this brief Radar Online posting, the Clinton campaign issued a curt statement and is otherwise emanating a frosty silence on the entire affair, and has erased all visible signs of Spitzer support from her official website.

Cross-posted at MOMocrats.

Ready to get your wonk on again?

Remember Abu Ghraib and those images of black-hooded men in handcuffs? Do the words "warrantless search" disturb at all? Or maybe it's waterboarding that you find really, really, troubling. All of that done under our flag, of course.

If it seems habeas corpus (that legal process allowing a person to appeal an unlawful detention of oneself or someone else) is on wobbly ground as we speak, as authorized by numerous pieces of legislation that chip away at our Constitutional rights in the name of anti-terrorism, it is.

Now it seems Clinton and Obama have similar records of voting against these Constitution-eroding laws. But as Naomi Wolf argues, it was Obama who demonstrated, with vigor and pro-active commitment, that he best grasped the stakes of defending our Constitution and by extension, our rights and the rule of law when opposing the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Because what if, in the name of anti-terrorism, America ended up torturing the wrong suspected "enemy combatant"--someone who was either an innocent U.S. citizen or an innocent Australian Justice of the Peace?

Go read Naomi Wolf's "Why I Voted for Obama." It's a starting point for comparing Obama and Clinton's actions on this issue. Because it's not just about how the next president of the U.S. upholds the Constitution, it has everything to do with domestic civil liberties and diplomatic, state-to-state relations with our allies...you know, those other countries whose multilateral cooperation we need to forestall future acts of terrorism? But, like Australia, also wonder why we can imprison and torture their citizens without accountability or recourse?

More food for thought:
"Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America's 'Extraordinary Rendition' Program," The New Yorker

"Australia to Sign Torture Treaty That Howard Spurned," Sydney Morning Herald

Cross-posted on MOMocrats.

Il problema nasce quando ho preso il macbook. Non so perchè, sarà che forse per Osx come per Linux c'è una scelta più ampia( Safari,Shiira,Camino,Opera,Radon,OmniWeb e molti altri) o forse soprattutto sarà che Firefox non ha uno stile mac-like come lo possono avere Camino , Shiira o Safari..ecco forse per questo molte volte e per tanti mac user il panda rosso non è sembrata la scelta migliore.

Da pochi giorni è uscita la penultima beta di Firefox 3 con nome in codice "minefield"..La sto testando pian pianino incuriosito dalle features postate sul sito ufficiale . La mia impressione è completamente positiva, l'integrazione con Leopard secondo me è ottima e tiene la linea guida diciamo che fortunatamente Apple sta cercando di improntare al sistema operativo leopardato visti gli incovenienti dell'ultimo Tiger dove la grafica era a dir poco arbitraria per certe applicazioni. Se si pensa anche al fatto che non è una versione ancora del tutto stabile per ora sembra aver fatto dei grossi passi.

 Anche dallo screenshot si vede subito che hanno fatto un gran lavoro di integrazioe in osx con dei bottoni di navigazione finalmente in tema con il sistema.

Camino finora era il mio preferito perchè aveva la potenza di Gecko, le doti di sicurezza e stabilità di Firefox  e pure una grafica molto carina ed integrata. L'unico problema è quello che lo sviluppo di Camino  certe volte è un pò "lento" e quindi non si riescono ad avere feature molto interessanti in tempo abbastanza rapidi cosa che invece succede in Firefox.

Inoltre un altro grande difetto di Camino e pregio per Firefox è la questione dei plug-in. Firefox possiede un numero di plug-in a dir poco impressionante, molti dei quali una volta trovati..diventano indispensabili. Questo svantaggio per Camino , vantaggio per Firefox sbilancia fortemente il punteggio a favore del secondo.

Bisogna tener conto che Camino è sviluppato dalla Mozilla Foundation come lo è pure Firefox. Ora quindi sorge spontanea una domanda..Ma non è meglio che Camino venga, diciamo "inglobato", da Firefox in modo tale da migliorare e ottimizzare gli sforzi su di un unico prodotto? Questa cosa non la capisco veramente..

I learned the day before yesterday that Firefox 3's third beta will be coming out. Ecstatically, I ran to Mozilla's beta download page, only to found that it hasn't been updated yet. With a 'what the hell' attitude, I took a detour to the trunk builds (my personally preferred place to download) and took in Minefield.

Right now Minefield is at 3.0b4pre, at least on February 11th it was. Right now I can only see AdBlock working - every other has been disabled. This is has also surprised me as to how less I've been using extensions lately. Though yeah, I miss Smart Bookmarks Bar, Boox, UnPlug, and of course, StumbleUpon.

Since Beta 2, Minefield has been faster and more memory efficient. I can sense that it started up a little faster, but it wasn't instantaneous either. It's definitely more memory efficient and feels less bloated in itself. The menus and interface are snappy and everything works smoother and slicker. I wonder if the performance will go down once my extensions come in.

The new address bar is pretty cool.Now when you type into it, it searches into the metadata of web pages, not just their URLs. This ends up being insanely handy. The Bookmarks bar is now the new home of the Home button and a new "Smart Bookmarks" folder records your most-visited websites.

I haven't checked out the overhauled bookmarks manager yet, since I'm not much of a bookmarker (I prefer StumbleUpon to record my favourites, personally).  I do see the Bookmarks bar as being somewhat more space-efficient now as it looks trimmed. Even with large icons on, I seem to be able to see a lot more of the page than before!

The new icons are in, and the Back/Forward buttons look gorgeous. The other buttons look like they still need some work. I haven't tested it on Linux, so I don't know what icons are available on that end. I'm also seeing many other changes that make this browser even more smoother and sleeker. I'm loving this.

I have been using firefox since The first version, I thought it was 1337 (lmao) to use back then. It has progressed a long way since then. I tried minefield and gran paradiso, but decided to wait a bit longer (as they were just alphas) to go into firefox 3.

Firefox three has gone through eight alphas and so far, three betas, progressed a long way from alpha 1 (forget the codename). As the Mozilla Links site states:

Without a doubt the most visible change introduced in this beta are the theme updates in all platforms.

To some extent, I just don't find the XP and Vista Icons that pleasing... maybe they aren't as glossy as the old ones, or just plain different style.The linux version uses an ubuntu theme, which I find is less nice than the default buttons.

We don't get those funky back forward buttons yet though (for either good or bad :-| ) The tabs (I am going to be talking about the linux version from now on) are a bit too clunky for my liking and some of it doesn't fit in with the rest.

The new address bar has a nice feature. It now includes site name searching from history. So I can type "Mr Inte--" and my blog would pop up. It also has medium sized icons on the left.

There is now a quick access to add something to your bookmarks too, on the right side of the address bar there is a little star, click on it and you get an easy access bookmark this dialog where you can specify tags and the rest of the bundle. :-D

Reading through things a bit more, we (linux users) are due for that new navigation package! (yippee?) It looks cool to the most extent. Also, new throbbers soon, that will look great.

New history window two, it's called "Library" and lets you organize everything. You can search through everything easily. I don't know much about it yet, but am playing around a bit and have learned more than I knew at the beginning. ;-)

When I went to go disable ipv6, in "about:config", I got a little reminder telling me I shouldn't mess around too much or I'll break firefox, good for beginners who don't really know what they are in/ doing.

there is now no home button (one can easily be added back to the navi-bar), but it can be located in the bookmarks dropdown. The splitter to change the length of the address bar and search bar is invisible now too.

Now for linux, this new beta adds file options and new print dialogs that add thumbnails and more options for printing (will go great with my new printer!). Page info dialog updated as well for more info.

Another cool feature that I found about at Mozilla links is that when you have tab overflow and the the tabs go off the tab menu, when you move through the they scroll smoothly.

Finally, I've always wanted this, pausing a download in firefox to shutdown or because you have to leave right away, and resuming it when you boot up again. I now also get that little "all downloads complete" peekaboo up from the bottom right hand corner. There's also a status bar notification that provides info about the downloads in progress.

Another cool little thing I just found out about is that firefox 3 now has a "Get-Addons" Section in addons.You can search for addons, click on them for a more detailed description and install them when you have decided you like it.

now Beta 4 is coming soon (yay)! That will include most likely the new throbber, funky linux buttons, a bunch of other cool tweaks. This is a great new firefox, and I didn't cover everything, like the new security features and some other things.

This has been a great experience, and I'll provide some links to download it and the mozilla links site too, please try it out!

Download (will end up in your home folder):
wget -P ~ ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.0b3/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.0b3.tar.bz2 && tar xjf ~/firefox-3.0b3.tar.bz2 -C ~

Mozilla Links:
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/02/a-deep-look-to-firefox-3-beta-3/4/

Please enjoy,
nikoPSK

I must say that I once saw Chesney Cheese several years later at the Gilded Balloon during the Edinburgh Festival.  By then he was relatively unknown.  I squeaked and shouted; 'Oh My God! It's Chesney Cheese!' at which point everyone in my party looked at me as if I were a total lunatic, and me and Chesney looked at each other in the embarrassed silence that followed.  Nightmare!  I rang Rachel as soon as I could and she was hugely impressed.  I only wish she had been there with me.  It would have been a completely different story then.

I will point out for the purposes of you not all carting me away to a lunatic asylum, that we didn't actually fancy any of these so called 'hunks'.  In our youthful, superior minded, University student type way, we were being post-modern and ironic!  To most other people we were probably being a bunch of total twats with too much time on our hands.  But hey, we didn't stab anyone, and we're all gainfully employed now, so I highly recommend it.  Take A Break is a lot cheaper than a coke habit and a penchant for Alcopops.

Jezza was our favourite of all the hunks though, mainly because he had a tiny hand, and he seemed to feature in Take A Break quite a lot, which was quite useful for our artwork purposes.  I texted Rachel about it last night.  She was shocked to the core.  Then she went into denial.  She said that he couldn't really be dead, as we all know that Jezza will go on, in much the same way as dear old Celine.  She thinks it's all an elaborate scam and he's going to rise up from his coffin, wave his tiny digits at everyone and shout some whacky catchphrase, shortly before he's clubbed to death with hymn books by his grieving relatives.  I think she just can't face the sad truth that one of the legends of our lifetime has passed away.  It will sink in over the coming weeks and I will find her weeping over a yellowed celebrity hunks montage, stroking his weeny hand and saying: 'How could you leave me Jezza?' and such things.  When this comes to pass I will offer her comfort in the form of mushroom cuppa soup and a DVD of 'You've Been Framed' the early years.  Ever thoughtful, that's me.

Take A Break was brilliant.  We did all the quizzes every week.  They were so easy it would take us about an hour to do the whole magazine's worth.  It would take us an entire day to do the Guardian Quick Crossword, just to put things into perspective, and if it wasn't for the fact that Justine knew a lot about Belgian drinking habits in the first world war, we'd never have finished it one day when the final answer was 'estaminet'.  Thank God she came back from the library in time to stop us throwing it in the wastepaper basket of despair.

Every week we would club together for a first class stamp and send off our prize coupon in the surefire conviction that within a matter of days we would be inundated with prizes.  Our top prize wish list started with the cash (of course), then the car (naturally) and then the supermarket sweep.  We really wanted to do a supermarket sweep, although where we lived there was only the Spa and the Co-op which they renamed Pioneer to make it sound more exciting.  The Pioneer was quite exciting because it was actually built on a flood plain, and for at least three weeks a year you would have to don waders to do your weekly shop.  People used to take their kayaks and bob around in the car park.  Brilliant. 

We studied the rules of the 'sweep' quite carefully in order to be prepared when the big day came.  Apparently when you do your 'sweep' there are lots of things that you can't actually have, particularly sanitary products, beer and fags.  Now we didn't mind too much about this.  We were just hoping there weren't too many puddles in the biscuit aisle, and thinking about whether pick n mix would be too time consuming (I always thought it would be.  You want to go for bulk and not be worrying about chocolate raisins skidding about everywhere.).  We bickered a lot over who would drive the trolley, and worried about whether you would be allowed to pick your own trolley.  It would be just like the organizers to fix you up with one of those mutant trolleys with a dodgy wheel.  Three minutes would have gone by and you'd still be struggling with some random cauliflowers you didn't want because you couldn't get the bloody thing to corner.  It was a minefield.

In the entire three years we religiously did our Take A Break quizzes we never won one single item, not even the dreaded makeover, in which every week, some poor thirty five year old woman would go in looking quite reasonable, and emerge looking like a fifty year old tramp on the verge of death.  We were disillusioned to say the least.  We decided that our run of bad luck was indicative of the fact that the whole thing was in fact a giant scam, and that all the happy winners featured every week, were in fact actors paid by the magazine.  We consoled ourselves with that thought, and then I met a woman whose mother had won a car doing the big crossword, and I was gutted. 

We were just terminally unlucky.  I think it was my fault, much to my chagrin.  I am always very unblessed in games of chance.  Jason calls me the albatross of doom, and when we go to Las Vegas he parks me in a cake shop and then goes off to gamble alone. If I go with him, I suck all the luck out and he dies the death of a thousand cuts.  I am like that character that William H Macey plays in the film The Cooler.  I could be employed by the casinos to sit with the high rollers and suck all their luck away.  I might write to them about it.

Apart from the exciting quizzes, and the glamorous celebrity gossip we used to love the handy hints page and the feature stories.  In fact, let's face it, we loved everything about it.  It was a total gem of a magazine.  It's changed now, as have all great things from the past (even Marmite now comes in squeezy tubes.  That is quite cool mind you.).  They have hundreds of different versions; 'Take A Puzzle', 'Take a Holiday', etc.  It's just not the same.  They're trying too hard.  They have production values now, they have a commitment to programming.  It's rubbish.  It was way better when it used to be produced out of a shed in the back of someone's garden by Enid and Dave.

The handy hints page was uncannily like Viz's Top Tips, even down to the ludicrous nature of the tips themselves.  The best thing about it was that it was clearly not made up, unlike the Viz page, and yet it was still hilariously funny.  Anyone who has time to write in to a magazine to recommend building a gerbil cage out of old shirt packing and toilet rolls is either a thwarted Blue Peter Presenter or has too much time on their hands, possibly both. 

To be fair, you could win fifteen quid if you sent in the best tip.  We thought about it, but could never come up with something convincing enough to fool everyone into publishing it.  We did once come up with a great idea for using up spare Angel Delights (you can make an Angel Delight layered trifle, complete with sponge fingers and chocolate buttons), of which we ended up with rather a lot at the end of one term, and had nothing else in the house to eat.  It was however, right at the end of our uni careers and we didn't need a supermarket sweep by then.  Sadly, they didn't offer graduate career paths, or we would have written in immediately.   In those days fifteen quid would get you slaughtered at the Union Bar.  It wasn't to be sniffed at.  God, I sound like my mother with her ten pence to the cinema, a limousine home and change for chips story.  My children are going to hate me, even if they don't already, which is a debatable point!

The features were absolutely brilliant and paid homage to the best stories of the vile and fascinating; 'National Enquirer'.  Our two favourites were the double page spread on 'The Village of Doom!' and the heart rending; 'I was blind for fifteen years and didn't know it!'  The village of doom was basically a regular village where they claimed that lots of people had died in mysterious circumstances.  This led them to think that the village was probably cursed, and that if you lived there you were sure to meet a horribly sticky end, any time now.  They listed the deaths which included things like; 'Bert, aged 95, suddenly mysteriously stopped breathing.  Nobody in the medical profession could explain why.'  'Mildred, aged 87 fell downstairs and broke her hip.  Mysteriously she died a week later with no explanations.'  What a story.  By adding the word 'mysteriously' to every death, it did in fact have the effect of making it seem rather 'mysterious'.  What was quite mysterious was the fact that all of the deaths featured were of incredibly old people with long term health problems.  The only mystery was how the poor buggers had managed to keep alive that long.  A masterpiece.

The blind woman apparently managed to raise six children, read several hundred books and drive a car for fifteen years without realising the fact that she was as blind as a bat!  Amazing!  Just amazing!  She is of course both a freak of nature, and a lying hound.  But it does make for great copy.  I have just realised, after twenty five years that I have a phantom limb, and am actually a world downhill ski champion called Geoff.  I never knew before now, and then 'mysteriously' I had a sense that this would make sense of my unfulfilled and thwarted life up to now.  Lo and behold, it did!  I am going to write to Take A Break and see if I can get the double page spread, complete with staples.  I'm also hoping for a grand and a supermarket dash round the Glenfield Co-op.

I did actually apply for a job with Take A Break after leaving university.  Believe it or not they used to be based in Leicester, which would have meant a short bus ride to a dream job for me.  Sadly, apart from my ability to write many acres of absolutely random rubbish based on not much at all, I was totally unqualified and they turned me down.  I would however, be absolutely brilliant as their feature writer, and I hope one day that someone will read this blog and discover my facility to write absolute drivel, and give me the chance I so badly deserve.  After all, I do have a phantom limb.

Notice the integrated Back and Forward buttons (Vista like). It actually looks more like the UI elements of early Windows Longhorn builds.

Also notice that Home is no longer a button in the standard toolbar, but has instead been moved to the Bookmarks toolbar. I don't like this since I usually turn off the Bookmarks toolbar so that I have more space for my web browsing. But it's an easy fix to move the Home button back to the standard tool bar -- right click on the standard toolbar->Customize->drag and drop the Home button from the Bookmarks toolbar to the standard toolbar.

The 'About' dialog just for your reference.