You may remember Howard Lyman as the guest that caused a number of texas cattle ranchers to sue Oprah for making disparaging comments about beef. Oprah won, by the way.

I saw him when he spoke as part of the Spitfire tour when it came to MTSU. I couldn't bring myself to eat red meat for weeks. And I should have given it up for good then. I've certainly given it up now.

I am not a vegetarian. I probably never will be (though who knows). But I have the biology and chemistry background to know exactly how disgusting and harmful factory farm practices are. Antibiotics and growth hormones do not belong in food.

The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encounttering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?

Howard Lyman: MAD COWBOY

"Did you consider a morning-after pill when you found out the condom broke?" I asked. Lakeesha looked at me blankly. Like almost 85 percent of students who get abortions, Lakeesha hadn't heard of this method, which has been available in the United States for more than 25 years and is about 75 percent effective. The regimen is exceedingly simple: Within three days of unprotected intercourse, pills of Plan B are taken twice.

An editorial on the need for more widespread information and availability of emergency contraception.

Until it's available over the counter, if you are a woman who's sexually active and relying on condoms and/or spermicides, talk to your doctor, get a prescription for an emergency contraceptive, Plan B or Preven, fill it, and keep it in your medicine cabinet or bedside table just in case.

To be sure, no reasonable person likes abortions. We should agree that anything that reduces the number of abortions is a good thing.

Prevention, not abortion

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first-ever weight-loss drug for children. Hoffman-La Roche's Xenical (orlistat) is now permitted to treat obese 12- to 16-year-olds, the company said in a statement.

On the one hand, I suppose that this is a necesary intervention, considering the prevalence of obesity in adolescents, and the related huge increase in incidence of "adult" diseases like Type-2 diabetes in kids.

But really, this isn't going to solve anything. Parents need to make their kids dietary health a priority. Get them off their buts and out from in front of the TV, and most of all, cut foods made with high-fructose corn syrup and other high glycemic index sweeteners out of kids diets. Oh, and heavily processed saturated fats, those can go too.

Eating better, and feeding your kids better is not that hard, it just takes planning ahead a little bit. Here's a crock pot, quit whining about not having time to cook. Make more than you need every time you cook, you have a freezer, don't you?

High quality dark chocolate is yummy and a great source of anti-oxidant flavonoids. Ho Ho's are a great source of... well, nothing really.

I feel sick every time articles quote parents who "don't have time" to feed their kids good food. I have a strict rule about cooking, no more than two pans and half an hour of my active attention to make the entirety of dinner. And I usually end up with enough to feed 2 people for 2 or 3 days. And I work the kind of long hours companies push on single people who "have more time for work." And tell the paper about how much time you have to watch your child get sick with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease before *you* do.

Just because there's a pill for it, doesn't mean the pill is the right solution. Especially for children. We learn our eating habits at home. What's going to hapen when these kids go off of their weight-loss drugs?

First Weight-Loss Drug for Children Approved

In response to the RIAA's suits, users who want to share music files are adopting tools like WINW and BadBlue, that allow them to create encrypted spaces where they can share files and converse with one another. As a result, all their communications in these spaces, even messages with no more commercial content than "BRITN3Y SUX!!!1!" are hidden from prying eyes. This is not because such messages are sensitive, but rather because once a user starts encrypting messages and files, it's often easier to encrypt everything than to pick and choose. Note that the broadening adoption of encryption is not because users have become libertarians, but because they have become criminals; to a first approximation, every PC owner under the age of 35 is now a felon.

The RIAA makes everyone a cypherpunk

He said: "We would not charge for that. We would have no trouble [with that]."

White House Web Scrubbing

] Toy Vault's first ever specialty plush line is based on
] H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. Dolls are 6-16" tall,
] made of beautiful fabric and filled with plush and
] beanies. Look for Secret Agent Cthulhu and Super Hero
] Cthulhu Coming Soon!

I have one of these. (The clasic style) It sits next to my plush Kodama, surrounded by my plush jellyfish. What? Normal people have bears? Bah.

ToyVault - Cthulhu Plush

sgamgee:
Wow, you know MemeStreams has arrived as a Blogging site when there's people like this on here...

Wow, I remember when this system was all content-oriented people.

Me too.

[[ MemeStreams ]] Phsyco dosent even begin to explain the things I do!!!!!!!!!!! j/k

Mustapha Mond, _Brave New World_

---

I love dystopias. I've read a large proportion of the dystopian novels they list(and plenty they don't list that they should), and seen about half of the movies.

Unfortunately the whole idea of what makes up a dystopia is hazy. I'm reading Perdido Street Station right now, which is somewhat dystopian, but is there any real social analogy to giant soul-sucking moths? Well, there's TV, I suppose. But I digress.

Anyway, this site is a great resource.

EXPLORING DYSTOPIA

] Never before has the House of Representatives operated in
] such secrecy:
]
] At 2:54 a.m. on a Friday in March, the House cut veterans
] benefits by three votes.
]
] At 2:39 a.m. on a Friday in April, the House slashed
] education and health care by five votes.
]
] At 1:56 a.m. on a Friday in May, the House passed the
] Leave No Millionaire Behind tax-cut bill by a handful of
] votes.
]
] At 2:33 a.m. on a Friday in June, the House passed the
] Medicare privatization and prescription drug bill by one
] vote.
]
] At 12:57 a.m. on a Friday in July, the House eviscerated
] Head Start by one vote.
]
] And then, after returning from summer recess, at 12:12
] a.m. on a Friday in October, the House voted $87 billion
] for Iraq.

great article on how the house has been run this year by the other side of the aisle.

TOMPAINE.com - Under The Cover Of Darkness

You know it's true. How many televisions do you have? Do you even know? How many channels do you get? Do your kids refuse to watch black-and-white programs? No one had a VCR in 1970. Now 240 million of us do, but VCRs are history now that Wal-Mart is selling DVD players for $29.

Hrm, I have two TV's, though only one in use, but I don't get cable and don't miss it... I don't have a car... I cook at home way more often than I eat out...

But I do own somewhere around $2,000 of makeup. Nevermind.

Hi. My name is Paris. Pleased to meet you ::giggle::

Fortune.com - Value Driven - Admit It: You, Too, Are Paris Hilton