blodgin

oops my real new blog address

2006-12-23T02:49:00.000-08:00

go to http://sevensunday.blogspot.com

my favorite living writer

2006-12-15T01:41:00.000-08:00

may i have this chaconne?

2006-12-09T05:12:00.000-08:00

there is no besting the daily masterworks of genius interviewer of intellect than Chris Leydon at his inimitable blog open source radio.

the reading wheel turns and turns

2006-12-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

2006-12-02T02:45:00.000-08:00

Johnny Cash & Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Friends

friend there is no better way to start your day than with these companions of the human soul...sing it friends, sing it loud and sing it long...till the day the circle is unbroken...

RX Effects

2006-12-01T02:54:00.000-08:00

According to the story in the New York Times it is unknown whether the four dollar prescription has drawn in new customers for the company. I have a clue for the author of that article go to any walmart and just observe the long lines from the prime time of 9am until around 7pm...they never cease...

2006-12-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

Neil Young - Old Man

I often think of my own youth and my father when I see this magnificent video of Neil Young in his prime...

my happy birthbookday

2006-12-01T01:01:00.000-08:00

Yes I had the most lovely birthday on Nov 28...principally my wife and child gave me gifts of love and of litertaure...I obtained AGAINST THE DAY the huge novel by Thomas Pynchon...either you get Pynchon or you don't...He is joycean but not gibberish. I am reading the following books which I have purchased and will arrange for my grandson carter stephen to inherit for his own private library:

the new collection of poems by Donald Hall (the modern Frost)...the new Lee Smith novel...richard ford's THE LAY OF THE LAND...the national book award winner by richard powers...the collected essays of joan didion...slouching towards bethlehem...the white album...remember those...i had forgotten how excellent those works truly are...

my new job at walmart boosts my ability to buy hardback volumes which I can select with an eye for the eluctation of my to be born grandson...my uncle the doctor inadvertently did this for me by mailing the sunday new york times to my grandmother back in the 1950's...that and the reader's digest...and frequent trips to the library...and my own copy of THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE...isn't that right?

2006-11-25T02:42:00.000-08:00

RFK on Confidence

I shall forever remember the ethic and the integrity of young Robert Kennedy...

a review of america

2006-11-25T00:48:00.001-08:00

I once read every single word of every issue but I am younger than that now....

big and blue, just for you

2006-11-23T23:38:00.000-08:00

i want to rush out to the art store right now and buy tubes of blue and sticks of color...

2006-11-23T04:17:00.000-08:00

Linda Ronstadt & Hoyt Axton

Hoyt had the great sound of truth lived in human experience and no one needs to speak a word in behalf of the glorious voice and the sinfully angelic image of the young Linda Rondstadt...isn't that right?

2006-11-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

Motrocycle Cowboy

hag and his harley momma are my fav video of all time for today anyway...

2006-11-23T03:30:00.000-08:00

Buck Owens - 1966 - Love's Gonna Live Here Again

i shall never forget my father taking me to see Buck Owens at the Louisiana Hayride. He and Don had those gold flaked fenders and sounded red hot and country fine...I was about fifteen years old then. I miss my dad today so very much.

2006-11-23T02:43:00.000-08:00

Rodney Crowell

go johnny go

books, books, books...

2006-11-19T06:38:00.000-08:00

The sheer joy of books makes any day brighter and better don't you agree? I have so many books on my reading table right now...and more I want to rush out and buy...but right now I want to rise and go to STARBUCKS with my fingers crossed hoping against hope they have today's SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES with its very best feature THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW included...ahhh that is heaven indeed for the bookman or bookwoman it is almost as good as the very book itself...

(book of the past worth reading today THE LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES by scholar novelist Carol Goodman --especially delectable for those of us who had a taste of Latin in our high school or college education)....

I begin my new pharmacy tech job in ROgers tomorrow so come on over and say hello if you can...sgunter says so...

A Well of Wisdom

2006-11-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

If I had known this then I had forgotten it however it is refreshing to discover a well of wisdom in the recorded interviews at the premier intellectual radio source BBC Four.

Iris Murdoch speaks of the manner in which philosophical ideas underlie the characters and the story of her magnificent novels (Have you not read THE SEA, THE SEA which I have read once as a teen ager and again last year as an outcast from the youth culture in the country of the aged boomer generation).

I believe Mr Andy Warhol was either quite stoned or near death when the BBC managed to capture his spoken comments and thoughts on the process of painting portraits and other details of his life work. He seemed so profoundly bored with being ANDY WARHOL.

Come and visit us at our new workplace ROGERS walmart Pharmacy when we are fully transferred which looks to be next Monday. Yours truly--sgunter...

The most wonderful day of all...

2006-11-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had the most wonderful day of all...because I spent the entire day working with my friends and mentors at the pharmacy store number one Rogers, Arkansas. Rosa helped me learn many things about input...gary and richard were our excellent pharmacists...linda and rachel and irving and amy made up the team "in the box"...The day sped by and I enjoyed it so very much.

my homework ala the hombre

2006-11-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

Copyright 2000 RXinsider LTD
Pharmacy Jobs • CE • R.Ph. Salary Data • & More!

Have you had prescriptions here before?
¿Ha tenido recetas aquí antes?
(ah teh-nee-doh reh-seh-tahs ah-kee ahn-tehs)
What is your name?
¿Cuál es su nombre? (kwahl ehs soo nohm-breh)
What is your address?
¿Cuál es su dirección? (kwahl ehs soo dee-rehk-see-ohn)
What is your date of birth?
¿Cuál es su fecha de nacimiento?
(kwahl ehs soo feh-chah deh nah-see-mee-ehn-toh)
Are you allergic to any medicine?
¿Es usted alérgico a algunas medicinas?
(ehs oo-stehd ah-lehr-hee-koh ah ahl-goon-ahs meh-dee-see-nahs)
Do you have insurance?
¿Tiene usted seguro? (tee-eh-neh oo-stehd seh-goo-roh)
Do you want to wait?
¿Quiere usted esperar? (kee-eh-reh oo-stehd ehs-peh-rahr)
Could you step in the end of the line please?
¿Podría usted hacer la cola de la línea por favor?
(Poh-dree-ah oo-stehd ah-sehr lah koh-lah deh lah leen-yah pohr fah-bohr)
Do you have any questions?
¿Tiene usted algunas preguntas?
(tee-eh-neh oo-stehd ahl-goo-nahs preh-goon-tahs)
Do you need counseling on your medicine?
¿Necesita usted aconsejando en su medicina?
(neh-seh-see-tah oo-stehd ah-kohn-seh-hahn-doh ehn soo meh-dee-see-nah)
Could you sign here please?
¿Podría firmar aquí por favor?
(poh-dree-ah feer-mahr ah-kee pohr fah-bohr)
I do not understand.
Yo no comprendo. (yoh noh kohm-prehn-doh)
You need a prescription.
Necesita usted una receta. (neh-seh-see-tah oo-stehd oo-nah reh-seh-tah)
The prescription is ready.
La receta está lista. (lah reh-seh-tah ehs-tah lee-stah)
I have to call your doctor.
Yo tengo que llamar su doctor.
(yoh tehn-goh keh yah-mahr soo dohk-tohr)
I have to order the product.
Yo tengo que pedir el producto.
(yoh tehn-goh keh peh-deer ehl proh-dook-toh)

Copyright 2000 RXinsider LTD

see it sideways

2006-11-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Fletcher shall reign as the great guru of design...that word means masterful teacher...a man from India told me so as he paid for his children's medicine...You are a guru he said and have more value than the doctor...I considered for a moment how utterly unamericanized this otherwise fine gentleman truly is...

been busy

2006-11-10T05:17:00.000-08:00

Learning pharmacy spanish is a good thing...spanish retail yo?

tan don't burn

2006-11-03T02:05:00.000-08:00

just sharing what thebbc online said...

But sometimes, how ever much natural colour you have, it is never enough. Deaon Garwandoe, 34, is black and uses sunbeds once a week. She started after all her hair fell out due to alopecia.

"I didn't go out for six months when my hair fell out," she says. "I just wanted to do something that made me feel better. I wouldn't spray tan, it's not deep-rooted enough, it's just like make up which defeats the object for what I want. I know if you go mad it's not good for your skin, but I don't abuse it.

"Pale people look like they need something extra in their lives. They look grey, pasty and ill. You don't really want to be around them."

'I was stupid'

According to a study conducted by Cancer Research UK, using a sunbed can double the risk of skin cancer. An estimated 70,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with it every year. Of these 2,000 die and about 100 of those deaths are thought to be the result of sunbeds and tanning lamps.

SKIN CANCER FACTS
Most common in over-65s
Second most common cancer in people aged 15 to 34
More common in women than men
Source: Cancer Research UK

Although more women contract skin cancer, more men die of it because they wait longer before seeing a doctor.

Clinicial Case

2006-11-02T02:38:00.000-08:00

You ever read the medical journals for fun? Here is a typical feature from the prestigious NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE wherein the young interns are presented the patient and their symptoms then asked by the master physicians to determine the disease. Here is the currrent case:

The Missing Piece
A 21-year-old man presented to the emergency department after 2 days of increasing pain in the right lower abdominal quadrant. For the past month he had had exertional dyspnea with a cough productive of scanty yellow sputum.

Ugh--I mean is there anything more of a turn off that a bad case of scanty yellow sputum? No, there isn't. Thank you New England Journal...I think...

the cone of power, the fizz of modern myth

2006-10-31T10:01:00.000-08:00

Is there anything more boring than another article on pagan religious revivals on Halloween...if you think yes read this from the sfgate.com...

All are welcome, a reflection of the pagan belief that the divine is present in all things and people. There is little dogma, and participants hail from many different traditions.

"I'm Hecate," said Kala Levin of Oakland. "She's the goddess of death."

Levin walked using a staff and wore a hooded cloak and leather mask depicting another Bay Area witch who had died.

"When you have choices in your life, and you're at the crossroads, she guides you," Levin, 60, said of Hecate.

Depicted in pop culture as a witch flying across the moon on a broom, Hecate typically walks with a hound, which wasn't feasible Saturday inside the pavilion, which is usually a basketball gymnasium.

A self-described pagan Jew emceed the event in a cloak and yarmulke. And a lapsed Roman Catholic enjoyed the pantheistic nature of pagan worship, which she said reminded her of the variety of Catholic saints.

Jaynie Lara, a 50-year-old member of the Yaqui people, who are native to the Southwest, said worshiping with pagans made sense.

"They honor mother Earth, they honor sacred animals ... they honor the ancestors," said Lara, who said the Yaqui traditions she practices also recognize that this time of year is the best opportunity to communicate with the dead.

Samhain is one of eight major festivals that pagans celebrate, one at each solstice and equinox and the midway points in between. The holiday honors the death of the growing season and recognizes a time when people believed their ancestors would return.

"Death is never seen as something final," Starhawk, 55, a witch and priestess, said in an interview. "It's always seen as part of life, part of the whole cycle, so that's what the ritual is focused on."

Through an escalating series of ceremonies, the rites that make up the Spiral Dance are believed to transform participants individually and as a group and change the world at large. The evening culminates when believers hold hands in a line and wind around one another in a spiral, in which each person is supposed to be able to look into everyone else's eyes.

The dance stops at this climax, but the choir's chants continue and the singing rises. It becomes an arms-in-the-air, foot-stomping, rhythmic and explosive drumming release of energy.

Spiral Dance participants believe this energy is directed into a "cone of power," directed "toward a particular intention or goal," said Starhawk.

The goal this year, she said, was to "turn the wheel of life back to courage, creation, justice and healing ... to put our energies toward shifting our society away from greed, corruption and destruction." Political issues such as the war in Iraq, the right of a woman to choose an abortion, and global warming were given voice throughout the night.

(ugh, says steve in the cone of no power)

looky lou goes to library new

2006-10-30T05:31:00.000-08:00

Will "he" be there?

(charles frazier, THIRTEEN MOONS)

run don't walk...

2006-10-27T01:57:00.000-07:00

...and rush over to the bookstore and plunk down whatever it takes to read the most significant work produced on Life and the origins of it since the days of Darwin himself. The book is entitled POWER, SEX, AND SUICIDE: mitochondria and the meaning of life (Oxford Univ Press, Oct 2006)...I shall order my copy just as soon as I am paid by my employer I assure you. (I do not buy many books...and the ones I do buy I read, re-read and one thousand per cent absorb...Faulkner, Wolfe, Chatwin, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Baldwin,and now that I think about it Joan Didion)...

Shield your eyes now if you dislike thinking and skip this quote from an excellent review of this new scientific masterpiece...

He explores the hypothesis that the critical moment in the development of the eukaryotic cell, and hence multicellular life, and ultimately man himself, was the union of two cells, one of which became subservient to the other as the ancestral mitochondrion.

As a Darwinian evolutionist, the author tells a good tale: "Once upon a time a methanogen and -proteobacterium lived side-by-side in the ocean where oxygen was scarce..." and there are more twists and turns than in an average detective story, all plausible and potentially possible. Those on the creationist or grand design side of the fence will be consoled by the fact that although Nick Lane implies the evolution of humanity or the human consciousness he cannot believe that bacteria will ever "ascend the smooth ramp to sentience, or anywhere much beyond slime."

Struggling clinical academics will be encouraged by the historical perspective in this book. For example, Peter Mitchell, who won the Nobel prize for chemistry for his description of the mitochondrial proton pump, was a reclusive who set up his own laboratory in an old country house in Corn-wall, funding some of his research from the proceeds of a dairy herd. Charles MacMann, who described the cytochromes, was a practising clinician who worked in a small laboratory in the hay loft over his stables, carrying out research in his spare time

See I told you so, run, right now and go find this book...adam and eve turn out to have been mitochondrial elements outside the walled city of the nucleus, isn't that right?

seeing the blindside

2006-10-26T02:25:00.000-07:00

visit radio open source with my favorite intellectual on air 'caster Chris Lydon...hear Michael Lewis discuss the "yen for violence" in modern football...the factor of fear in the game...why the position of left tackle is the most important one on the field...how long is the arm of the number one pick? The ideal type defined...not only size but speed...little man in a big man's body...michael orr...three thirty four...violence...the mind of the game now...mental qualities...you want some football you gotta have some brains...the articulate lineman is the norm...isn't that right?

mullah dadullah and other items of interest

2006-10-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

...as you few but select elite readership may have noticed (thank you J for the email) we've not posted recently but life intrudes and daily events in the earning of our living have preoccuppied us not to mention the fact we have purchased many books and have marked and marked through them for ideas and words and thus have been in solitary exile from the reading public as it were...

(I cannot wait to begin the new novel of Richard Powers, THE ECHO MAKER, with that lone goose flying over the brackened earth...and farrar straus giroux published it which in itself gurantees the supreme level of quality in writing, wouldn't you agree?)

...the current issue of THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE has a wonderful article answering that nagging question the headlines impose upon even the most superficial human...what accounts for the return of the TALIBAN five years after our victory over their theological totalitarianism? Why are people like Mullah dAdullah now so powerful? Who are these new warlords in the Afghan mountains? Why have the poppy fields and the opium harvests increased?

The BBC short answer is the best "Pakistan" that's why... The Pakistani generals are quoted in the Times magazine article as saying of the American military during the war against the Afghan Taliban, "The Americans used us like a condom". I shall file that under the heading Ugly Metaphors we have Seen"...

The world spins on with its global problems...me I've got to go and handle the political struggles of my own tiny universe...but first a walk at the Walton gymnasium is in order where evil may be held at bay for a while...

Peace out...as we said in our idealistic youth...and now repeat just for a nostalgia high...

wednesday word up

2006-10-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

I saw this in the Washington Post...

the demise of handwriting will diminish the power and accuracy of future historical research. And others simply lament the loss of handwritten communication for its beauty, individualism and intimacy.

"It's like so many other things in our society -- there's a sense of loss for what once was," said Laura B. Smolken, a professor of elementary education and early childhood development at the University of Virginia.

At Keene Mill Elementary in Springfield, Debbie Mattocks teaches cursive once a week to her gifted-and-talented group of third-graders -- mainly so they can read it. All their poems and stories are typed. Children in Fairfax County schools are taught keyboarding beginning in kindergarten.

"I can't think of any other place you need cursive as an adult other than to sign your name," she said. "Cursive -- that is so low on the priority list, we really could care less. We are much more concerned that these kids pass their SOLs [standardized tests], and that doesn't require a bit of cursive."

Older students who never mastered handwriting say it doesn't affect their grades. "A lot of kids have just awful handwriting. . . . Teachers don't take off points for poor handwriting," said Matt Paragamian, a 10th-grader at St. Albans School in Northwest Washington. Many of his classmates take notes in class on their own laptops and do homework on computers.

Until the 1970s, penmanship was a separate daily lesson through sixth grade, said Dennis Williams, national product manager for Zaner-Bloser Handwriting, the most widely used penmanship curriculum. At its peak in the 1940s and '50s, most teachers insisted on as much as two hours a week, but a 2003 Vanderbilt University survey of primary-grade teachers found that most now spend 10 minutes a day or less on the subject. To adapt to this new reality, the Zaner-Bloser method has been changed to a 15-minute daily plan.

In Montgomery County, schools "don't have separate handwriting instruction for handwriting's sake," said spokesman Brian Edwards. Only a handful of schools in Prince George's County teach handwriting. Fairfax educators struggle to include penmanship.

thirteen moons, fifty six years

2006-10-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

...i reference the new novel by Charles Frazier...someone still writes literature...how frustrating it is to live in a wordless world...but I recall the first year of college...1969...miss jones a beautiful literate english teacher and that classroom of vile yokelboys and yokel-er women...how much sympathy i felt for her as she discussed the glories of william faulkner whom none of us had ever read...i so desperately wanted to catch up and know what she knew...and now I feel like i am in a room surrounded by word hating anti-intellectuals but that is a dream the truth is even worse, most just don't care...

cormac rides again

2006-10-07T05:13:00.000-07:00

It has been decades since I read so good a book as the new novel by Cormac McCarthy THE ROAD...i fear revealing its plotline but suffice it to say he finally sails above the bar set by Faulkner...and I have read and own every thing Faulkner produced.

"lucky"

2006-10-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Only in October...

2006-10-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

dear editor,

Only in October,I thought to myself as I waited in line at the drive through for a sandwich (a very refreshing cool wrap it was called), something out of the ordinary had begun to take place.

The lady ahead of me had lowered her car window to interact with the person in the store window.The very second her window came down a bat bounced off her main windshield, ricocheted into the order window, and mistaking her car for a cave of hope swooped by her raven haired head into the dark interior of her vehicle.

The female driver, wearing a jet black outfit,jumped out of her car screaming for help. Three managers came running to her assistance and with a bit of wrestling and acrobatics they released the big gray creature back to the open light of day.

We humans pretend fact is truth but truth is fact interpreted. I know the facts of what I saw. What it means you might try asking a Sigmund Freud. Isn't that right- and Happy Halloween to you!

sincerely,

when every day is a holiday

2006-10-04T02:46:00.000-07:00

every day is a holiday...isn't that right?

when steve was sam

2006-10-03T03:47:00.000-07:00

...i truly enjoyed my day working as a pharm tech at sams...if fate smiles upon me i shall be there again in the future...i did not have the opportunity to look over the books or office supplies as I also worked at store one hundred later in the day....whew busy boy...

the blogger is back

2006-09-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

It seems like ages since the blogger worked...

the king of them all

2006-09-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

...is Chris Lydon the master interviewer...see Open Source...man I am so excited to know Chris Lydon has a new platform...see his previous archive at

like a rolling satirist

2006-09-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

(see rollingstone.com)

On this day, though, as Vonnegut sips coffee and his tiny white dog, Flour, yaps in the background, there is no wry amusement or social satire in his repertoire. There is only burning dissent about the way modern technology and global capitalism are usurping the last gasps of goodness from honest laborers' lives. And deep sadness that everyday humans are butchering their most civilized impulses. But then Vonnegut starts coughing, clearing his throat of phlegm, grasping for a half-smoked pack of Pall Malls lying on a coffee table. He quickly lights up. His wheezing ceases. I ask him whether he worries that cigarettes are killing him. "Oh, yes," he answers, in what is clearly a set-piece gag. "I've been smoking Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes since I was twelve or fourteen. So I'm going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, who manufactured them. And do you know why?" "Lung cancer?" I offer.

"No. No. Because I'm eighty-three years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn't work. Now I'm forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, 'Colon.'"....

(I first learned of Vonnegut in 1969 from the cool paperback cover on my even cooler English professor's desk (Mr Reed with his sleek ever smoking cigarette and beautiful pencil stripe shirts) MOTHER NIGHT... still my favorite is the BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS and its unique anatomical sketches... I hope Vonnegut makes it another ten years at least...

You Tube, I Beeb

2006-09-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

I find interesting work done here in the area of short film but unlike youtube BBC Film actually has content worthy of one's finite resource of time..

why dont you find somebody to love...

2006-09-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

I am within three pounds of my target weight...if I slip below that number I need to gain..wow what a concept...Today to get those three out of the picture I added a running and walking component to my daily workout...I follow the "body for life" plan and believe me brother it has changed my life one thousand and one per cent...if you need info on that write chasgun at hotmail dot com..

(I am having trouble with blogger's image loader...ugh...when will technology be perfect...) The music is heaven at wync2 and the day is glorious...because I am in love and not out...and i feel in love with the entire world but I do not trust the world and in fact I do my very best to avoid it as much as possible...

Perhaps the recent death of J. W. and others has clued me in...or was it that sentence in the racy book I am reading which said you cant save anybody but yourself... but last night my friend Jimmy reached across the great divide and gave me a big hug...so maybe my cynicism is a bit too extreme...mainly I want to see my wife and daughter and I want to be paid tomorrow and buy a brand new brilliant book by a girl whose name i cannot remember but it rhymes with pessl and has the word physics in the title...

why dont you find somebody to love today...

crimson and white

2006-09-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

...if you are like my mom then there is nothing more horrible to contemplate in this life than the very idea of pornography however there is nothing more wonderful than a "racy" novel. When I was younger I thought she was talking about african american or native american literature...actually now that I have the advantage of fifty years or so I read THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE (Michel Faber) myself... only out of historical curiosity of course! (19th century industrialist "Bill"and the heroine of the novel, Sugar a want-to-be novelist...)-I believe I shall purchase however a true work of literature which is John Le Carre's new novel release today or tomorrow...

doth precede us...

2006-09-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

...it is said our reputation precedes us but I never really knew how true such a statement is until I had lunch with three lovely ladies...daughter and rosily pregnant Nancee, my adopted daughter I tell her Wendy, and my beautiful wife Linda...as we enjoyed our submarine sandwich...and mine tasted rather like it indeed had voyaged beneath the surface of the briny deep itself...my daughter said "dad do you know those people?" but my neck hurts (i think from allergy sinus glands etc but my wife thinks its because i hold my neck too strictly when doing pushups) so I dont know who she was talking about..."they said do you know that man...yes she said its my dad...oh we like him he's that nice man from the pharmacy...we know nothing about medicines or insurance and he really helps us".... see... our reputation doth precede us...

the conquest of cezanne

2006-09-16T03:28:00.000-07:00

I shall quote from the guardian online--

there's no better way of understanding Cézanne than by looking at Le Lac d'Annecy in London's Courtauld Gallery.

The view is framed by a tree whose broad trunk rises on the left, and whose branches cut across the upper part of the picture in two dark waving thrusts towards the bottom. The lake divides the canvas in half and its far shore appears as a straight line, which perfectly bisects the main body of the trunk. So the painting is structured like a "T" on its side, while across the crystalline lake floats a chateau whose tower is a dense cylinder.

Nowhere in Cézanne's art do you more immediately see what he meant when he said the artist must "treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone". Cézanne shades the cylinder to denote its chunky volume, placing it over a roof of regular triangles. Along the shore is a smaller house captured in three planes of colour: red roof; bright side wall; shadowed end wall. From this description of symmetries and volumes, it might seem Cézanne was a cold, clinical painter who turned the visible world into a diagram. Nothing could be less like the experience of looking at Le Lac d'Annecy.

Blue, green and black diagonals cleave a sky that shatters into pink and blue diamonds. The slope of the hill is parallel to the overhanging branches, so the three repeated downward blasts become almost oppressive. The splintered mountains and sky torn through by these driving stormy bolts are energised shards of emotional information - hot and cold pulses. Cézanne has changed a benign view he feared might be "picturesque" into an almost apocalyptic spectacle. Yet he has absolutely nothing in common with the Romantic painters for whom this would come naturally. He doesn't fool himself that a real storm is brewing. He knows the storm is in him.

The Lac d'Annecy is, in its very violence, a triumph of order. Cézanne unleashes wild forces above the lake in order to tame them. The forces are his own - and so is the resolution. The drama of this painting is the emotional drama of the painter sitting there at his easel, thinking terrible things, overcoming his terror and anger, finding in the landscape a multi-faceted mirror of his inner struggle.

ilove art...i wish crystal bridges were right here, right now...

ha, ha....

2006-09-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

picture,picture

2006-09-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

I love the visualization of difficult scientific concepts...oh I forgot one is supposed to only discuss vapid and foolish things in the culture of today which is not all that different from the one Juvenal wrote about...you are aware of the Sixteen Satires? Oh well, never mind lets talk about the swimsuit issue...

susan sontag's journal style...

2006-09-12T02:52:00.000-07:00

31 December

On Keeping a Journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts — like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Bd. St-G to check for her mail) in H’s journal about me — that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn’t like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us).. . .Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will H. ever read this?

. . .

what works

2006-09-12T02:16:00.000-07:00

from the health section of the new york times we read:

Duration and intensity of physical activity are important factors in how much fat the body burns for energy, which, after all, is what you want to lose. The harder and longer you work out, the more fat you will shed.

When you diet without exercising, you lose both muscle and fat, which is counterproductive because muscle loss significantly lowers your basic metabolic rate, the number of calories your body uses at rest.

Type of Activity Matters

Weight-bearing activities that work against gravity — aerobic activities like walking, running, cross-country skiing, dancing, skating and stair-climbing — use proportionately more calories at a given level of effort than swimming, cycling or water aerobics.

The more muscle groups involved in your activities, the more calories you are likely to burn. That is why working out against gravity uses more calories than non-weight-bearing activities.

...more bike riding coming up today!

you did what you could

2006-09-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

thank you firemen and firewomen...www.rebeccablood.net

ted talk

2006-09-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

I have just listened online to the anthropologist Helen Fisher as she explains the three brain systems of humanity in regard to that awesome and wonderful thing we call love.

If you wish to understand the origins of casual sex (lust), romantic love, and life long attachment you must view Fisher's important talk or read her new book on this all important subject. Isn't that right? What is the future of love... see Helen's homepage

super day

2006-09-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

make it a super day, friends...write when you may chasgun at hotmail welcomes your word...

the word I am

2006-09-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

shi is the chinese definition of poetry and means I am the word. I find that quite different from the western view which we might translate as I make the word. What a difference these views are... (see ubu.com for chinese wall writing study)...

ah, when summer must fade...

2006-09-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

Ah, when summer must fade...we lounge about...we sit in the yard in our sun worship attire...we read...we write...we think of friends...

2006-09-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

Heroes -- In Theater trailer

friends i am about to become a fan of heroes...its got to be better than THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. isnt that right?

live a little

2006-08-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

its librarything go ahead put your stack online...it's so awesome...

the take-down

2006-08-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

as i prepare to go to gym and lift weights i see this picture at reuters. The bodybuilders of europe had continued use of steroids. Not me mac I am on a natural high...today's goal 300 crunches 75 marine pushups and thats just for starting...

for hank bukowski

2006-08-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

i found this work at bukowski.net

a smile to remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

©2001 Linda Lee Bukowski
reprinted with

nancypearl dot com dot now

2006-08-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

friend i urge you to rush your reading needs right on over to nancy pearl's pages of book delight...

take a bike...

2006-08-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

notice the smile on the face of mr adam hart-davis of Bristol...
i am a huge fan of bike riding...listen to bbc channel four on the rise and fall of the bike. I am the power of the bike and I like that very much. I would like to cycle the roundabout in London, the great bike road of Copenhagen, and the other keen centers of cycle resurgence...

steve name your sport

2006-08-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

You think I will say baseball. That would be wrong. If you think I am going to say football then that would be way wrong but if you were to say american girl volleyball then you would have discovered a sport worth supporting with your viewership. Isn't that right?

the anatomy of a Gray

2006-08-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

Ellen Sarbone found herself sharing her doctor's waiting room the other day with a couple of drug company reps chatting with each other. One glanced at a bookshelf and exclaimed to the other, "Oh look, 'Gray's Anatomy.' I didn't know they had a book out, too!'' The TV show, "Grey's Anatomy,'' is named after the famous medical text. The purpose of the drug company reps' visits to doctors' offices is to push products on them. Isn't it comforting to know that someone with such broad knowledge of medicine is having an effect on treatment you'll receive? sfgate.com.

the wonder of woman

2006-08-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

It is true, the wonder of woman-marvel of nature...enigma and mystery even to self...

age hath its message

2006-08-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

now listen to the words of the NY newspaper reporter on human growth hormone...

At the heart of the H.G.H. debate is a philosophical question about what it means to grow older. “Is aging a disease?” asks Dr. Susan G. Nayfield, the chief of the geriatrics branch at the National Institute on Aging. Should you fight it by dosing yourself with hormones until your blood runs with levels similar to those you had in college? “People tried that with hormone-replacement therapy” for menopausal women, Nayfield says. “We know how that turned out.” (The Women’s Health Initiative’s long-range national study of the effects of supplementing declining estrogen and progesterone levels in menopausal women was halted in 2002. Against all expectations, the extra doses of hormones significantly increased the risks of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and mental impairment.)

are you listening to your age? It isn't the hormone friend but it is the weight lifting that keeps age at bay...

dan's dilemma

2006-08-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

Dan was loath to give up his new vigor. If he couldn’t get her a remedy, he just hoped that with time his wife would adjust to her rejuvenated husband.

Dead wrong. His exhausted wife finally lost her patience and told him that he had to stop the Viagra if he cared about their marriage.

I admit that I was surprised at how disruptive this little blue pill had become. As a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, I’m well aware of the side effects that drugs can cause in my patients.

Who would have imagined that a drug that most consider so helpful, if not harmless, could stir up such trouble in a relationship? I certainly hadn’t.

When last I saw Dan, he ruefully told me that he had not renewed his Viagra prescription

nytimes.com August 22, 2006 by Richard A Freedman, M.D.

Readers of blodgin I must share my utter disapproval of Dan's surrender to a diminished sexual life. Dan you need to be the man. If she can't go with you for counseling and improving her sexuality then in my humble opinion its time for her walking papers. Isn't that right?

one track only?

2006-08-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

some people say men have a one track mind...but i agree with this lady both men and women have a serious interest in communicating feelings to each other...her best book is SUPERFLIRT...what do you think?

the sweep of the sox

2006-08-21T02:26:00.000-07:00

Man am i proud to be a yankees fan...my ny stickers came in and are ready to plaster on my truck's back window...

damn, its hot ain't it...

2006-08-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

i feel like i am in iraq with a fertility goddess in the desert...wphw baby its hot...

the tattoo lady

2006-08-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

man i saw a tatoo so pretty yesterday i actually believe maybe Kat Dee produced it herself, am I right camille friend?

don't do the math...

2006-08-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

Who Cares About Poincaré?
Million-dollar math problem solved. So what?

so says slate Why should I care about Poincare any-hoo?

ps if you can do drop by the rx for a visit today...

boom boom

2006-08-18T09:50:00.001-07:00

rocketboom that is!

why an apple?

2006-08-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Apples - A low-glycemic, low-insulin food loaded with pectin, apples leave you feeling fuller, longer. According to Dr. James Anderson, apples prevent hunger pains by guarding against dangerous swings or drops in your blood sugar levels. An average-sized apple provides only 81 calories and lowers blood sugar and blood pressure. Because of their high fiber content, apples are also a heart-healthy food. (borrowed from
a food science site...

the sublime self

2006-08-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

out under a tree rather like this I completed reading Pema Chodron's powerful work on life and the living of it...her writing got to me...i picked up the paper journal i keep offline and drew a picture of my soul...Yes I said to myself I too wish the sublimnation of soul into the pure land Infinity of Being...and if i could just sit there under that tree only a little bit longer I could have made it but just at the point of sublime being an ant (yes a "pee-ant" you know what I'm saying) bit me so I got up and went inside where the worries of the world cornered me and forced me to put on clothes for work...see ya at the RX...

best book on earth at this moment...

2006-08-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

(who says so? Me-of course! is that okay?)

Why I lift weight...

2006-08-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

(and why every other man ought to...)

Build the testosterone by consistently lifting weights and upping the resistance till you become like a bull and charge your way through life knocking down every obstacle and wall on the path toward your dreams.

lift this

laguna la lame-a

2006-08-16T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sure I used to read 20 books a week obtained from the University of Arkansas Mullins Library (heck I even once met said Dr Mullins on the steps of the Library itself and said hello to which he responded good day but he was going down and I was going up to Floor Three (History). And sure I once spent entire saturday mornings reading in the 12,000 advanced periodicals of the University collection but that was yesterday and you know what happens to that.

That brings me to my point which is an explanation of the Laguna image which opens today's post.

Laguna Beach” will keep its fans, but it might not earn new ones this season: Tessa simply introduces too much reality to the otherworldly fantasy of perpetual sunshine that has driven the show so far. Besides, she’s boring. Sure, sometimes, as in movies and novels, unpopular girls are secretly noble, sophisticated and brilliant, but sometimes — we have to admit — they’re just uncool.

The reviewer has this right. I have imbibed deeply of mtv.com and other sources of contemporary culture. I must conclude the age of deep internal reflection and civic discourse lies far behind us. (although it is rumored widely on the net that president bush is reading camus!)Welcome to the eternal now and I would say a bit more but I must go and work out at the gym...Be Buff Now, isn't that right?

the fallen of fouke

2006-08-16T01:53:00.000-07:00

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: August 16, 2006
The Department of Defense has identified 2,595 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:

JENKINS, Kenneth A., 25, Staff Sgt., Army; Fouke, Ark.; Fourth Infantry Division.

LLOYD, Michael C., 24, Staff Sgt., Army; San Antonio; Fourth Infantry Division.

ZEIGLER, Kevin L., 31, Staff Sgt., Army; Overland Park, Kan.; Fourth Infantry Division.

i should like to salute the fallen one of fouke, arkansas. The city of Fouke is in reality a hamlet near the Red River between Hope, Arkansas and Texarkana, Texas. I won the Headhunter award one night playing football at Fouke...I am sorry anyone had to die in Iraq and I wish Kenneth Jenkins were alive and well in the village of his origin.

the runway of life...

2006-08-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

come back for a list of fashion blogs street wise...like the sartorialist of nyc...bentonville needs just such a blog...

the shape of space

2006-08-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

With three dimensions, it is harder to discern the overall shape of something; we cannot see where the holes might be. “We can’t draw pictures of 3-D spaces,” Dr. Morgan said, explaining that when we envision the surface of a sphere or an apple, we are really seeing a two-dimensional object embedded in three dimensions. Indeed, astronomers are still arguing about the overall shape of the universe, wondering if its topology resembles a sphere, a bagel or something even more complicated.

nytimes.com/

bbc locates a problem...i know the solution!

2006-08-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

Security 'bad news for sex drive'
A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research.
Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex.

Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

They found 60% of 30-year-old women wanted sex "often" at the beginning of a relationship, but within four years of the relationship this figure fell to under 50%, and after 20 years it dropped to about 20%.

In contrast, they found the proportion of men wanting regular sex remained at between 60-80%, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship.

The study also revealed tenderness was important for women in a relationship.

But women, he said, have evolved to have a high sex drive when they are initially in a relationship in order to form a "pair bond" with their partner.

But, once this bond is sealed a woman's sexual appetite declines, he added.

Or, he said, this could be because limiting sex may boost their partner's interest in it.

Professor George Fieldman, an evolutionary psychologist from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, said: "These findings seem to fit in with anecdotal studies and his explanations seem plausible.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4790313.stm

Published: 2006/08/14 10:07:34 GMT

© BBC MMVI

YES...but men here is the cure for that slowdown...keep on courting her...make that romance last...i know it can be done...

i have your question...

2006-08-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

You ever ask yourself this question:

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished your cell phone would ring? Maybe you wanted to look extra important or popular on that hot date. Or maybe you just needed an excuse to escape from an unpleasant meeting.

With "The Popularity Dialer", you can plan ahead. Via a web interface, you can choose to have your phone called at a particular time (or several times). At the elected time, your phone will be dialed and you will hear a prerecorded message that's one half of a conversation. Thus, you will be prompted to have a fake conversation and will easily fool those around you.

Click on the options below to listen to the call you will receive when you use the dialer:

1)The original popularity call (male voice)
2)The popularity call II (female voice)
3)The affirmation call
4)The boss call
5)The cousin in need call

check out popularity calling today...blodgin says so...

the king of wales

2006-08-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

Jim Stem for The New York Times
If anything, Mr. Wales, the founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, who has become an unlikely lightning rod for the quality-versus-quantity debate over information on the Internet, is a figure out of a 1930’s Frank Capra film, a likable guy with a Southern twang whose simple social experiment has run away with him.

So Mr. Wales works at keeping it simple and staying dedicated to the Wikipedia ideal of information that is helpful, more or less accurate and “good enough,” to borrow a term from Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Paradox of Choice.”

This applies not just to Wikipedia’s content but also to Mr. Wales’s own style. His home is not an Italianate villa on a grape-ridden hillside in Napa but a four-bedroom ranch house in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he moved for the simple reason that it was sunny and cheaper than San Diego, his former home.

At home, Mr. Wales has honed the good-enough style so well — or rather, not honed it — that the place will not even remotely be featured in House & Garden. He dresses casually, Florida-style, goes by the nickname Jimbo, and although he does drive a foreign car, it’s a Hyundai Accent.

nytimes.com

be a book and be happy

2006-08-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

futofthebk3

living with neil young

2006-08-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

check it out...living with war by neil young ('cause I ain't asking much)...

i pulse for you

2006-08-13T04:03:00.000-07:00

my friend at camille sidewalk said this--check out the pulse, i said, hey i will but first im going to see THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY. and that is the state of american movie going right now, isnt that right? (or watch a You Tube)

first mother

2006-08-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

What was that like, the first mother/woman on earth?

my new doo...

2006-08-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Fight the Power! ...I do by redesigning...thank you blogger template wonder workers...only those who need to know will know what I mean, you know what I mean...keep it real today...

a toon for you

2006-08-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

finding the fit

2006-08-09T02:49:00.000-07:00

a man, a woman, a bella vista gentleman bike...i ride my bike every other day...i feel like a million bucks (and hey you meet the most interesting people)...

2006-08-09T01:49:00.000-07:00

Motrocycle Cowboy

his and hers

2006-08-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEMME MENTALE
San Francisco neuropsychiatrist says differences between women's and men's brains are very real, and the sooner we all understand it, the better
- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 6, 2006

Louann Brizendine's feminist ideals were forged in the 1970s, so the UCSF neuropsychiatrist is aware that some parts of her new book, "The Female Brain," sound politically incorrect.

Such as the part about how a financially independent woman may talk about finding a soul mate, but when she meets a prospective mate her brain is subconsciously sizing up his portfolio. Or the part describing the withdrawal pains moms feel when they return to work and can no longer cop a hormonal high from breast-feeding their babies.

Women have come a long way toward equality over the past 50 years, but the Yale-trained Brizendine, 53, says her research indicates that human brains are still wired for Stone Age necessities.

Male and female brains are different in architecture and chemical composition, asserts Brizendine. The sooner women -- and those who love them -- accept and appreciate how those neurological differences shape female behavior, the better we can all get along.

Start with why women prefer to talk about their feelings, while men prefer to meditate on sex.

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," she writes. Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."

Untangling the brain's biological instincts from the influences of everyday life has been the driving passion of Brizendine's life -- and forms the core of her book. "The Female Brain" weaves together more than 1,000 scientific studies from the fields of genetics, molecular neuroscience, fetal and pediatric endocrinology, and neurohormonal development. It is also significantly based on her own clinical work at the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at UCSF 12 years ago. It is the only psychiatric facility in the country with such a comprehensive focus.

A man's brain may be bigger overall, she writes, but the main hub for emotion and memory formation is larger in a woman's brain, as is the wiring for language and "observing emotion in others." Also, a woman's "neurological reality" is much more deeply affected by hormonal surges that fluctuate throughout her life.

Brizendine uses those differences to explain everything from why teenage girls feverishly swap text messages during class, to why women fake orgasms to why menopausal women leave their husbands.

So the next time parents scold their daughters for excessive text messaging, consider Brizendine's neurological explanation:

"Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."

Part road map for women looking for scientific explanations for their behavior, part geeky manual for relationship woes, "The Female Brain" already has become fodder for the morning chat shows. On the "Today" show this week, one critic downplayed the book's explanation of gender differences, saying men and women are "more like North Dakota and South Dakota."

Brizendine's goal isn't man-bashing (despite snippets like "the typical male brain reaction to an emotion is to avoid it at all costs"). Instead, she celebrates the differences.

"There is no unisex brain," Brizendine writes. "Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they're born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values and their very reality."

Brizendine's book offers a 2 1/2-page appendix on the female brain and sexual orientation, but she doesn't mention transgender folks. Sexual orientation, she writes, "does not appear to be a matter of conscious self-labeling but a matter of brain wiring." All women are wired for a sexual orientation during fetal development, and "the behavioral expression of her brain wiring will then be influenced and shaped by environment and culture."

That's not to say either sex is more intelligent. Just different, Brizendine said. Nor do she or other scientists who study the brain, like Bruce S. McEwen, a Rockefeller (N.Y.) University brain researcher, dismiss the role that parenting and environment and experience play in shaping a person.

"The basic idea is that men and women approach the same problems in somewhat different ways, at least in part because of the biological differences in the brain, which in turn interact with experience -- the nature-nurture story," said McEwen.

"This does not imply whether either sex is superior ... but it does provide the basis for such cultural sayings as 'Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.' "

Indeed, "The Female Brain" covers ground that has been tilled, to various degrees, in books from 1993's "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus" to 1999's "The First Sex," to last year's "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter." Brizendine takes the research a step further and stretches it to cover a female's life from womb through menopause.

Katherine Ellison, author of "The Mommy Brain," said Brizendine represents a trend among neuroscientists who have been inspired by their experiences as parents to investigate what scientists have recently dubbed "the maternal brain."

"It has become more OK to talk about brain differences between genders over the past few years, whereas before, if you said men and women were 'different,' it seemed to imply women were at a disadvantage," said Ellison, who lives in San Anselmo. "Now scientists are pointing out some clear advantages of the female brain, and in particular the 'mommy brain.' "

Among the more controversial subjects addressed in Brizendine's book is: Can new mothers successfully juggle career and family life?

Perhaps not, writes the onetime single mother. And that's OK, Brizendine said, if the workplace can be reshaped to better accommodate new mothers.

"This book is a call-to-arms for women and society to rework the social contract that women have with employers throughout their childbearing years," said Brizendine, while sitting in the Sausalito home she shares with her second husband of 10 years and teenage son. "We cannot afford to lose half the brainpower in this country. Our intelligent women are getting completely out of the loop for five to 10 years, and they cannot get back in.

"The message is that women can't stay at home 100 percent of the time and cut themselves off from their careers. The workplace should realize that women are wired to take care of children, and they want that time and need that time."

It is a sentiment that wasn't around when she was born in Hazard, Ky., a poor Appalachian mining town, where her parents, Protestant missionaries, were stationed. Her father, a minister, was active in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, often appearing as a guest preacher in African American churches throughout the South. Despite Brizendine's mother being the valedictorian of her high school class, Brizendine's maternal immigrant grandparents believed that women should not be educated and refused to give their daughter any money for college.

"One of the things that has been passionate in my life is to have a profession that would allow me to support myself," Brizendine said. "Watching my mother, an intelligent woman, have limited choices because of the culture -- and because she was married to the typical male of that time in the 1950s in this country -- it was clear to me that I had to find a different way myself."

She attended UC Berkeley on an academic scholarship, initially in the nearly all-male world of architecture majors. But in her junior year, she switched to neurobiology, fascinated by experiments where manipulating the hormones of an animal produced different behaviors.

"To me, that hit pay dirt," Brizendine said. "To have that kind of explanation for behavior that wasn't based on how your family raised you -- or how the stereotypes of society were set on you."

From there she went to Yale Medical School, less than a decade after the undergraduate campus went coed. One day in class, Brizendine asked the professor why females weren't used in the study they were reviewing. She recalled him saying, "We don't use females in the study because their menstrual cycles would mess up the data."

"To be honest with you, the reason that this astounds me to this day," said Brizendine, "is because I didn't argue with him." But back then it was unthinkable to say, "Well, how can you then make medications, and how can you make assessments that you'll apply to female patients when you don't really know?"

Next, Brizendine hopes to expand her clinical work.

In the next month, she will open a satellite branch of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, which will focus on issues of most concern to African American women, Latinas and lesbians -- a further attempt to see how cultural issues affect the female brain.

For all women -- and those who love them -- she offers a tip.

Research shows that the female brain naturally releases oxytocin after a 20-second hug. The embrace bonds the huggers and triggers the brain's trust circuits. So Brizendine advises, don't let a guy hug you unless you plan to trust him.

"And if you do," she said, "make sure it lasts 20 seconds."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Head cases
A few neurological differences between women and men from Louann Brizendine's "The Female Brain":

Thoughts about sex enter women's brains once every couple of days; for men, thoughts about sex occur every minute.

Women use 20,000 words per day; men use 7,000 per day.

Women excel at knowing what people are feeling; men have difficulty spotting an emotion unless someone cries or threatens bodily harm.

Women remember fights that a man insists never happened.

Women over 50 are more likely to initiate divorce.

peace out my blodgin lovely

2006-08-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

peace out my lovely blodgin readers...have a day like the spirit around this image...i am ... my peace out lovely woman makes this possible... peace out to you miss boothe...

Example Note 1

2006-08-05T03:25:00.000-07:00

This is an example of a formatted note Something Nifty: A Taste of Simple Continued Fractions

Category: Numbers • goodmath
Posted on: August 3, 2006 12:00 PM, by Mark C. Chu-Carroll

One of the annoying things about how we write numbers is the fact that we generally write things one of two ways: as fractions, or as decimals.

You might want to ask, "Why is that annoying?" (And in fact, that's what I want you to ask, or else there's no point in my writing the rest of this!)

It's annoying because both fractions and decimals can both only describe rational numbers - that is, numbers that are a perfect ratio of two integers. And most numbers aren't rational.

But it's even more annoying than that: if you use decimals, then there are lots of rational numbers that you can't represent exactly (i.e., 1/3); and if you use fractions, then it's hard to express the idea that the fraction isn't exact. (How do you write π as a fraction? 22/7 is a standard fractional approximation, but how do you say π, which is almost 22/7?)

So what do we do?

One of the answers is something called continued fractions. A continued fraction is a very neat thing.

(i quote from GOOD MATH, BAD MATH a super math blog) Now you know why math wasn't my top subject...

a slap on the head

2006-08-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

John Stossel said to the wrestler "Dr. D", "I think this is fake, is it?" Man watch the answer the D (for deranged) man gave Mr 20/20...

hit me one time

am i ready for some of this?

2006-08-05T02:43:00.000-07:00

at...nfl.com

how i ujsed 69,000 barrels of oil

2006-08-05T02:22:00.000-07:00

In the time it took me to read Oil Safari just the people of the usa alone had used that many barrels of oil...go read and see how many more evaporate while you are there (it is a brief video documentary of the first class)...

the official pre-release of heaven

2006-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

i'm not kidding...go here now...albert would
..
TED...(i caught wind of this from Pogue's posts at nytimes.com technology column...TED is dyno-o-mite for ideas and creativity and its online...)

what the x?

2006-08-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

expn, of course...XII...rad skateboard stuff on the cooker tonite..I think but right now Im busy at eSpn, watching the Yankees with that new lineup...its amazing what a few million bucks here and there can do...Giambi doesn't mind being fifth in the lineup...that three run homer this afternoon proves it...

tackle this then

2006-08-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

I read this in today's Times

The NFL outlawed “horse-collar tackles” after Williams dragged Owens down from behind in 2004, tearing two ankle ligaments and breaking his leg.

That reminded me of the "shoe-string" tackles I once made as a linebacker for the mighty mighty Bobcats of Hope, Arkansas. I saw some Tigers out for practice this morning I wonder what kind of tackles they may make?

benefits of body building

2006-08-03T04:23:00.000-07:00

I have learned body building and weight work-outs have their benefits beyond fitness and health. Last night my wonderful friend Jennifer could not help herself but had to enjoy a bit of close contact with our enhanced bicepts (the muscle women notice first according to npr.org which I where I think I first heard that question...)...Thank you Jennifer for boosting my day and congratulations on your success...you earned it...(p.s. girl you look terrific...good work...my linda and nanny say hi to you)....

heartless bee

2006-08-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

I overheard a heartless bee say this to a nice guy's friend who asked, "Why do girls hate nice guys"....Forward this ARTICLE to someone who needs to answer the CLUE PHONE
she said at the end of her answer...

the go to football page

2006-08-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday Night/NBC...the web page is a huge preview of what will soon be the best football ever seen on American television...I am impressed with these pages...