Soy is making kids ‘gay’
(No, we don’t believe that, but we had to share this bizarre commentary… thanks, De)

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

Climate Change: American Indians Offer Warnings and Hope

Streams are drying up; dams now blockade salmon journeys’ aquifers are being drained and wildlife are left homeless in drought-ravaged lands, American Indians said at a conference on climate change.

Salmon, bear and caribou are indicating climate changes to Indigenous Peoples. Still, tribal members offered wisdom and solutions, ranging from the message of respect to innovative alternative energy programs, during the Tribal Lands Climate Conference hosted by the Cocopah Nation, Dec. 5 – 6, near the border of the United States and Mexico.

Biofuels Are an Environmental Dead End

Any worthy idea can withstand and even be improved by naysayers; scolds and skeptics play the useful role of pointing out obvious flaws. The biofuels industry has no more persistent, articulate, and scathing critic than David Pimentel, professor emeritus of entomology at Cornell University.

In 1979, with the price of oil surging and a politically connected company called Archer Daniels Midland investing heavily in ethanol production, the U.S. Department of Energy invited Pimentel to chair an advisory committee to look at ethanol as a gasoline alternative. The committee’s conclusion: ethanol requires more energy to produce than it delivers.

The best defense: Teaching women to fight the urge to become a passive victim

It happened in high school: Peggy Greider was suddenly picked up and slung over the shoulder of a male friend she’d known all summer. The boy carried her down a hill to an area removed from the rest of their friends, and Peggy knew things had progressed beyond simple adolescent hijinks.

The arrival of her friends put a stop to whatever the boy had planned next. And Peggy forgot the seemingly innocuous incident for more than 30 years — until she signed up with her daughter Janet for self-defense lessons at Naples’ Elite Martial Arts Studio. The memory resurfaced suddenly as she was learning how to defend herself against an attacker.

To the Choir: If They Vote for War, Occupy ‘Em!

After nearly four years of war, I’d wager that a few million Americans have held a candle at a vigil, carried a sign at a rally, passed out a flyer, forwarded an email to friends, or gone to a demonstration in a distant city. If you, Dear Reader, are one of these stout souls, this letter is to you.

But first, may I ask a favor? For the rest of this letter, please forget that at least once during these years of protest you no doubt mourned that “only the choir” participated. The choir — people who actually do something for peace — is precisely who I’m writing to.

America’s Young Adults Face Serious Economic Challenges

Today’s young adults are feeling the full, deep impact of a massive shift in the US economy, and are no longer able to start and sustain a family, build a career and grow assets in the same manner as the previous generation, according to a new report series published today by Demos, a national, nonpartisan public policy center.

The new five-part “Young Adult Economics Series” shows that America’s young people are feeling the full effect of a 30-year shift from an industrial to technology- and service-based U.S. economy. The series shows that the combination of stagnant wage growth, growing debt, and high costs of education, homeownership and healthcare are new realities. These are now common factors that challenge the ability of America’s 20-and 30-somethings to start, and sustain, an economically stable adult life.

The Right to Pursue Powerdown: Seeking alternative lifestyles post-peak

Throughout history most societies have spawned groups within them that chose not to follow the norms and dictates of the mainstream society of which they were a part. Very often it is religious differences of some type that set these groups apart, e.g. Quakers, Shakers, Mennonites, Amish, Doukhobors, Acadians, Huguenots, Mormons, Christians in the Roman Empire and more. Mainstream cultures have never been very tolerant of such so-called “dissidents”. Such groups have been subjected to harassment, persecution, legal persecution and prosecution, even attacks and mass murder such as was the case with the Huguenots in France and the Doukhabors in Russia. Rules and laws are often ignored in the zeal to persecute such groups. Very often rules and laws are specifically altered to target such groups, to make it illegal for them to adhere to their own non-mainstream beliefs. In most cases large segments of those religious groups saw no option open to them other than leaving those societies and countries in which they were being persecuted.

Community gardens brighten landscape

Working with 175 volunteers, the group goes into low income communities to help them create community gardens and brighten the landscape. This year, the program has created 54 community gardens, involving 1,600 people, spread all across the County as well as providing support for existing gardens created by the program in earlier years.

When asked to come into a community, the program begins by talking with the residents and finding out their goals for their community garden. Many want a place where they can grow vegetables to add to their kitchen tables, while some may want to beautify their neighborhoods or an organization may want to plant a garden where the harvest will be donated to those in need.

Eco-village planned in county

Planning of a new housing concept for those interested in green living and stronger community is under way in Ellis County.

Near the intersection of the Red Oak and Waxahachie city limits, Anderson Sargent Custom Builders is helping develop an eco-village on 75 acres west of Interstate 35.

The village is based loosely on a co-housing concept which began in Denmark in the late 1960s.

A co-housing community is a type of intentional community typically composed of private homes with full kitchens and supplemented by extensive common facilities.

Use of locally-grown agriculture supports environmental justice

Picture this Thanksgiving Day bounty:

Tender meat from an old-fashioned heritage turkey, sweet potatoes from the garden, mushrooms and honey from farms down the road, warm carrot muffins, goat’s milk and butter made from fresh cream.

It’s possible to sustain the local agricultural community, not just during the holidays, but year-round, said Nicole Schauer. She and her husband Joe operate Good Earth Farm in Oak Center near Oakfield in south-central Fond du Lac County, where like-minded people buy shares of the produce in a system known as community supported agriculture.

For ordinary Mexicans, it’s all about immigration

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, appearing at a glitzy Monterrey trade show last week, stood before a huge billboard trumpeting the “California-Mexico Partnership.”

The mural depicted him surrounded by flags and symbols of the two neighbors, joined in a common goal of friendship and trade.

But such lofty goals don’t impress Roberto Collado Martinez as he sits over a bowl of steaming pozole in the colonial square of Coyoacan, bustling with families, vendors and street musicians.

`She’s Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology and other Nerdy Stuff’

In circus parlance, a “geek” is a sideshow performer who does disgusting things such as bite the heads off live chickens. More commonly these days, a geek is a socially awkward person who’s enthusiastic, smart and skillful with computers. “She’s Such a Geek!” is a collection of essays by gifted tech women who don’t fit the narrow sugar-and-spice stereotype. Some prefer math to lipstick and light-sabers and dragon fighting to swooning over the latest teen idol. And some do both.

As editor Annalee Newitz writes in its introduction, “The women you’ll meet in these pages will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics - and how to deal when people tell you that your interests are weird for a girl.”

Conservatives’ Vision of an America Without Cities

The formula that emerged from the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections was provocative: The less dense the population, the more likely it was to vote Republican. Republicans appeared to have lost the cities and inner suburbs, positioning themselves as the party of country roads, small towns and traditional values. Though Bush was often mocked for the time he spent on his ranch, sleeves rolled up, gun in hand, the image was widely promoted and became a cornerstone of his identity among Republican voters.

Conversely, it looked like Democrats had lost the country — that is, until November 2006 when Democrats won decisive victories in the Midwest and Great Plains, often by leveraging their candidates’ rural identities against a national Democratic Party that local voters saw as being overly urban, secular and affluent. By November 8, the electoral map looked a whole lot bluer. Yet Democrats could not have won without appealing to libertarian, anti-urban sensibilities.

Man, homeowners association in war of words

The newsletters went to 1,100 homes in the Pebble Creek neighborhood one day in late October. They had the familiar clip art logo of a heron perched in some grass and The Pebble Creek Newsletter masthead.

But this was no friendly neighborhood bulletin. This was the first edition of “The Dark Side,” written by Robert T. Kelly, who lives on Otterwood Avenue and is, apparently, the wrong guy to mess with.

Soldier Puts Down His Sword, Picks Up a Pen

Michael Reyes had an epiphany about the Iraq war while stationed in Baghdad as a member of the First Armored Division. His job was to help guard one of the most heavily fortified buildings in the city, the Oil Ministry. Every day, the Brooklyn-born soldier would see all sorts of high-profile Americans and Iraqis enter and leave the premises.

He also noticed something else: a displaced family camped outside the compound, in a shelter of their own making. For eight months Reyes watched this family, along with the movers and shakers who passed by without offering them any help.

Lou Diamond Phillips Pleads No Contest to Domestic Battery

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of domestic battery involving an August incident with his live-in girlfriend, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office tells PEOPLE.

Phillips, 44, was sentenced to 32 months of probation, one year of domestic violence counseling and 200 hours of community service. TMZ.com was first to report the no contest plea.

Mortgage Lenders and the Deflating Housing Bubble

The first raging housing bubble of this millennium has clearly deflated and the debate has now shifted to whether housing is nearing a bottom. A couple of months ago, I got a chance to talk to an industry expert who held a senior management position at one of the largest US banks before starting his own mortgage company, as he has experienced multiple real estate cycles. I was trying to determine if the home builders I mentioned in my article “Housing Sector in Pain” could go lower or had reached a bottom.

Elephants and Quagmires: Peak Oil and the Bush Denial

While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq’s importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: “It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves.”

US staying the course for Big Oil in Iraq

Washington at large and President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in particular may apply every contortionist trick in the geopolitical book to save their skins in Iraq - and the reasons are not entirely political.

In addition to the recently released report by the Iraq Study Group, any other Washington establishment report - Pentagon, State Department, think-tanks - considered by the White House cannot deviate from much of the ISG. There can be no firm timeline for a complete US withdrawal because it all depends on Iraq’s new oil law being passed and US troops being able to defend Big Oil’s investment.

Posted by stan in News