Posts made by gaynight

I just found out a temporary scheme for my problem. I change my system time to 2016/2/1. And the certificate's expired was 2016-1-13(today).

me too

Here's what to do if you wake up before your alarm and don't want to feel like crap

JESSICA ORWIG, BUSINESS INSIDER
29 JAN 2016
http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-to-do-if-you-wake-up-before-your-alarm-and-don-t-want-to-feel-like-crap
Many of us start the morning with the sound of an alarm. Yet, there’s always that occasional day when you wake up an hour or two before that classic ringing sound fills the room. On mornings like this, you’ve got two choices: Either emerge from the covers and get a head start to the day, or you try to go back to sleep.

But which is the better choice if you want to avoid feeling tired and groggy all day? That’s the question we asked Mayo Clinic professor of medicine and former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Timothy Morgenthaler.

Morgenthaler, who’s also board-certified in the field of sleep medicine, says before you choose you should first ask yourself an obvious, yet key, question: "Am I done sleeping?"

An easy way to answer this question is to determine whether you’ve put in enough hours of sleep. Most adults need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a day, and there’s no way of getting around that, according to the National Institute of Health.

If you’ve clocked in enough shuteye, then waking up early is simply your body’s natural reaction to two interacting systems that control "the overall drive to sleep or stay asleep", said Morgenthaler.

The first is called sleep homeostasis, a basic principal that pushes you to sleep longer and more intensely if and when you haven’t slept enough.
The second is your circadian rhythm, or your internal biological clock, which is responsible for why we start to feel tired in the evening, as opposed to the morning or afternoon.
While the homeostatic mechanism in your body regulates the intensity of your sleep, your circadian clock regulates the time of day your body starts and stops craving sleep.

So, if you occasionally wake up early after putting in at least 7 hours of sleep the night before, it’s probably your body’s way of telling you that you’ve satisfied both systems and you should get up and start your day, Morgenthaler said. "The overall best is if you can wake up naturally because you’re done sleeping," he said.

On the other hand, if you’re waking up early on just a few hours of sleep, you should probably try and squeeze in some more shuteye.

If you get up early, you’re not only depriving yourself of sleep, but you’re also robbing your body of the majority of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - the stage of sleep that, according to the National Sleep Foundation:

Provides energy to brain and body
Supports daytime performance
Is when the brain is active and dreams occur
In general, most of us get the most of our REM sleep between the hours of 3am and 7am. So, if you’re waking up early between those hours and you haven’t had at least 7 hours of shuteye, you might begin to feel groggy as the day pushes on.

Bottom line: If you’re like most adults, then you need at least 7 hours of sleep a night - regardless of when you first wake up.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.

Seltzer Can Weaken Tooth Enamel And Should Be Consumed Sparingly
http://aplus.com/a/is-seltzer-bad-for-your-health
Ariana Marini

At this point in your life, you've probably noticed that if you love something, like really, really love it, it's probably bad for you in some way. (OK, so we never actually thought bacon was good for us, but finding out it increases cancer risks was rough.)

We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but if you reach for a seltzer any time you're thirsty, you may want to say goodbye to your SodaStream. Your teeth will thank you later.

Some people are under the impression that seltzer is as good for you as water. Recently Olga Khazan, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wanted to get to the bottom of this. So she did some digging and her findings have been trending this week.

It turns out, sparkling waters contain carbonic acid which can weaken tooth enamel over time. Flavored seltzers, especially citrus flavored ones, can be as bad for your teeth as sodas, according to a 2007 study conducted by the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Dental Hospital.

"Flavored sparkling water drinks should be regarded as potentially erosive, and preventive advice on their consumption should recognize them as acidic drinks rather than water with flavoring," the study concluded. "It would be inappropriate to consider these flavored sparkling waters as a healthy dental alternative to other acidic drinks, which are capable of contributing to erosion."

Uh oh.

In case you didn't know, your body cannot repair enamel once it's been damaged. It is, in fact, too late to say sorry at that point.

"My advice is to keep acidic drinks to meal times, and if you have to sip drinks between meals, then plain water is the safest," Damien Walmsley, a professor of dentistry at the University of Birmingham in England told the Atlantic.

Look, water is always going to be better for you than anything else, but you don't have to give up your seltzer habit completely. Stick to unflavored ones, drink them with food, and dilute them a little with regular water. It'll still be better for your health than drinking a regular soda with 44 grams of sugar.

Science Explains Why The 5-Second Rule Is Actually True
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5-second-rule-science-explainer_us_56b07205e4b057d7d7c809a8?ir=Science§ion=us_science&utm_hp_ref=science

You may not want to pick up and eat food once you've dropped it on the ground. But the five-second rule is actually a real thing when the item and the surface it falls onto are dry, according to the Discovery Science Channel's "The Quick and the Curious" show.

As an experiment, NASA engineer Mike Meacham offered up cookies to strangers in a park. He then dropped the sweet treats onto the ground.

Only one man ate the gift, to the annoyance of the woman he was with.

IPANDASTUDIO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Bacteria jumps onto food as soon as it hits the ground. But the problems only begin when either the food or the surface is wet.

The show's narrator said he'll be alright, though. That's because although small amounts of bacteria do hop onto food as soon as it hits the ground, the problems only really begin when the food and the surface are wet.

"Moist foods left longer than 30 seconds collect 10 times the bacteria than those snapped up after only three," the narrator said.

"E-coli, salmonella and listeria love wet environments. They absorb water for the nutrients they need to grow and multiply."

ADAM GAULT VIA GETTY IMAGES
It's safer to spill food on carpets or rugs, because their tufts have less surface area to transmit germs.
The type of surface onto which the food is dropped also accounts for how safe it is to eat again.

It's better to spill food onto carpets and rugs, rather than linoleum, because their tufts have less surface area to transmit germs.

"If you drop that cookie on dry ground, you should have plenty of time, the narrator said in summary. "The five-second rule is really the 30-second moisture and surface rule."

So now we know.

Apple iPhone 5se release date: March 18 - Tech Insider
http://www.techinsider.io/apple-iphone-5se-release-date-march-18-2016-2
Antonio Villas-Boas

The 4-inch iPhone 5se will go on sale on March 18, according to 9to5Mac's Apple reporter, Mark Gurman.

Gurman also predicts Apple will release its next iPad, the iPad Air 3, that same day.

Apple will reportedly announce both products during an event on March 15.

That means the iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3 would go on sale only three days after their respective announcements.

Gurman notes that Apple won't offer pre-ordering for either devices.

It's still unclear how much Apple will charge for the iPhone 5se, but it's claimed to be a "cheaper" model compared to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. Many are expecting the iPhone 5se to cost around $500.

The iPhone 5se is said to have a 4-inch display — the same size as the iPhone 5s — which still proves to be a popular screen size among iPhone owners. According to a report from research firm Mixpanel, more than 30% of iPhone users are still on iPhones with 4-inch screens. That includes the iPhone 5 and 5s.

The 5se is also rumored to have a similar design as the iPhone 5s, but the front panel will have sloping curved edges like the iPhone 6 and 6s.

In terms of specs, it sounds like the iPhone 5se will be a mashup between the iPhone 6s and 5s. It'll have the powerful A9 chip of the 6s, as well as the Live Photos feature that takes a 3-second video with sound when you take a photo, and even NFC for Apple Pay. The iPhone 5se's camera, however, will be a similar 8-megapixel shooter akin to the iPhone 5s.

The iPad Air 3 is said to take a few features from the iPad Pro, including four speakers (two on the top and bottom edges), as well as a magnetic Smart Connector to connect Smart Keyboards.

Migraine-Preventing Drugs Might Be On The Horizon | Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/migraine-preventing-drugs-might-be-on-horizon

For the 36 million Americans who suffer from migraines every year, there aren't many drugs to help them prevent the crippling headaches. Sufferers can avoid known triggers, but once a migraine starts, their only medicinal options are over-the-counter pain relievers or migraine-specific prescription ones called triptans. But soon there might be a medication that can reduce the chance of getting a migraine, or even stop it once it’s started. While preliminary experiments have yielded promising results, several drug companies are still waiting on the outcomes of clinical trials, as Science Magazine reports.
Researchers have called it the most promising treatment in the field so far.
Though migraines were first documented in the 5th Century B.C.E, researchers still don't fully understand their root physiological cause. Most treatments for migraine prevention include medications originally intended to treat other ailments–beta-blockers were intended to lower blood pressure, antidepressants to treat depression--but researchers happened to learn that they could sometimes prevent migraines (although how they do that is also somewhat unknown).
In recent years though, researchers have drawn a connection between migraines and a neurotransmitter called the calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP). CGRP, which is released by neurons before being absorbed by others, communicates pain between them and can dilate blood vessels in the brain—processes that are closely associated with migraines. These new drugs would block neurons from absorbing CGRP, which could stop migraines once they’ve started, or prevent them altogether.
Some experiments produced impressive outcomes, albeit the successes are largely anecdotal—several individuals, called super-responders, saw their migraines disappear altogether after receiving CGRP blocking treatment. But preliminary trials by drug companies have shown more modest results. In some cases only 15 percent of patients showed any response at all. And there are some grisly side effects, including liver damage.
Even so, researchers have called it the most promising treatment in the field so far, and some have even started using the word “cure.” And that’s a big deal, since scientists still have so many unanswered questions about who gets migraines (genes seem to have something to do with it) and why. Even if this treatment doesn’t prove to be effective enough to make it to market, researchers are clearly on the right path to a better understanding of migraines, which could lead to better treatments—or even a cure—in the future.

Pop Star Comes Out, Causes Outrage By Having Sex With Priest In NSFW Video
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tooji-video-sex-church_us_55772f17e4b06bc0463bad3c

A Norwegian pop star came out as gay in a new NSFW music video featuring simulated gay sex with a priest, and the Church of Norway is fuming.

Tooji, a Iranian-Norwegian singer living in Norway and a participant in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, came out when announcing the release of his new music video titled "The Father Project."

My new video Father is Out, and so am I! http://t.co/pfoGKM8ovx

— Tooji (@Tooji_) June 8, 2015

The video shows Tooji enter a church and proceed to have simulated sex with the priest in front of a congregation. But the Church of Norway is not pleased with Tooji's artistic choices. In a statement published Sunday, the bishop of Oslo condemned the video as a desecration.

"No matter what the video's message might be or who the artist might be, footage of intimate scenes in front of the altar is unacceptable, and it is an abuse of the church," he said in a Norwegian ​statement translated by The Huffington Post. "I was informed about the matter after they decided to rent out Frogner Church and had done the shoot. No matter what the content of the video might be, it is not acceptable to perform these types of scenes in front of the altar. It is a misuse of the holy room of the church."

The bishop added that this would hold true if a straight couple was featured in the same manner in the video.

"A scene shot between a man and a woman would also be unacceptable," he added. "What has happened breaks several rules of the church. Besides this, I would not comment any further on the matter."

Tooji is an advocate for equal rights. In a separate video, he spoke out against religious theology that claims God does not accept gay people.

"I want to stand out as an example and let my voice be heard for all those voices mute, for all those who feel ashamed with their beliefs, that are told that God doesn't accept them," he said. "Let me tell you: You are a part of God and what you have is the purest gift. Any love between two grown-up, consenting adults – no matter gender, no matter race -- is pure ... I am gay and I stand up for my rights and that is why I made the video 'Father.'"

Retired Marine Reveals Secret Suffering of Male Military Rape Victims - The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/27/retired-marine-reveals-secret-suffering-of-male-military-rape-victims.html
Former Marine Lance Corporal Jeremiah Arbogast tried to kill himself after he watched his rapist walk free. He shared his story, Wednesday, in hopes of helping spark change within the ranks.

Twenty-two veterans commit suicide everyday. Jeremiah Arbogast was almost one of them.
“Choosing death was my way of taking responsibility for my circumstances,” the former Marine Lance Corporal told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on personnel Wednesday. “I felt my death would spare my wife, daughter and myself the dishonor the rape brought upon us.”
From the wheelchair to which he has been confined ever since his self-inflicted gunshot wound left him paraplegic, the 32-year-old started the committee’s hearing on the relationship between military sexual assault, PTSD and suicide, with a heartbreaking testimony.
His eyes low, focused on the prepared statement in front of him, Arbogast recounted the details of his own sexual assault and its equally horrifying aftermath. He was drugged to the point of incapacitation and sexually assaulted by a fellow marine, a former staff sergeant, while on active duty. “I was humiliated at the thought of my helplessness,” he said.
Two months after the attack, incessant nightmares, anxiety, depression and confusion finally overpowered his fear and embarrassment and Arbogast confronted a base social worker who reported the attack to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates crimes involving Naval or Marine Corps personnel. This would only further his humiliation, Arbogast came to find out. He said he was forced to make recorded phone calls to his rapist and even confront him at his house while wearing a wire in order to get a confession. He accomplished his mission, but his nightmare was far from over. Arbogast’s attacker was arrested and hit with several charges including sexual assault and sodomy, but after only a week in court, evidence shed light on his 23 years of service and he walked away with a bad conduct discharge and no jail time. Arbogast said his rapist was ordered to NCIS headquarters for fingerprinting only to reveal that he’d dulled the skin on his fingertips, and that he managed to refuse to register on the sex offender database by simply saying, “No, I don’t have to.”
“To this day I don’t know where my perpetrator is. Not knowing his location leaves me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” Arbogast said. “I was not afforded the same rights as rape victims in the civilian world. Where are my choices?”
Wednesday’s hearing, led by Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, aimed to find an answer to Arbogast’s question. Just two days earlier, Gillibrand’s proposed Military Justice Improvement Act, which removes the authority to prosecute sexual assault away from the chain of command, was blocked in the Senate. Arbogast and fellow sexual assault survivor and former Army private first class Jessica Kenyon gathered alongside Defense Department Officials and mental health professionals on Capitol Hill to argue on behalf of keeping that bill alive.
“Reporting to the chain of command—it’s horrific,” said Arbogast. “You know, it could be a perpetrator in your chain of command. It could be your direct supervisor. In my case, it was my previous supervisor.”
The curtain has slowly been raising on the dark reality of the sexual assault epidemic permeating the military’s ranks since women were first allowed to enlist, and even more so since they’ve been included in combat roles. And while women are considered to be at much higher risk for sexual assault in the military than their male counterparts, recent studies reveal that the problem is hardly gender specific. The Pentagon saw reports of unwanted sexual encounters jump from 19,000 in 2010 to 26,000 in 2012, with men comprising 53 percent of victims. A report released in November by the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, suggests that number may actually be much higher than the Pentagon’s estimate.
Arbogast and Kenyon braved the panel of elected officials not only to share the horrific details of the crimes committed against them by their fellow service members, but to reveal the lasting impact their attacks have had on their mental health and the lack of support they received from the institution to which they’d dedicated their lives.
“During the initial training period, none of us were given training regarding what to do in a real sexual assault situation,” said Kenyon. “The truth was, at that point I had to Google what to do when it happened to me.”
Kenyon said she suffers from “severe depression, bouts of insomnia, debilitating memories and thoughts, triggers of all sorts, anger, chattering in my head, and a constant anxiety to the point where I am forced to use all of my concentration to appear normal, which hinders my ability to read, write, have a conversation, or remember things in the short term.”
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As Gillibrand noted, anxiety disorders such as PTSD, depression and substance abuse disorders are far more common among military members who’ve experienced sexual trauma than those who haven’t. Yet studies show that the veterans experiencing the symptoms of military sexual trauma are often denied disability benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs, a discrimination and disregard for their experience that only compounds their PTSD.
“I want to make sure that people aren’t forced to choose between their mental health and the benefits they’ve earned from the U.S. Government,” Gillibrand said.
Still, not every Senator present was convinced that means taking the decision to prosecute sexual assault crimes outside the military chain of command. “What the military is all about, it is the commander’s problem, it is their responsibility, and we expect them to do their job,” said Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham.
Arbogast and Kenyon testified on behalf of countless others as proof that many commanders, sadly, are not doing their job.
“Sexual assault is not an occupational hazard,” Arbogast said. “I decided to join the U.S. Marines to serve my country as an honorable man. Instead I was thrown away like a piece of garbage.”

90-Year-Old Gay Man Recalls Long Struggle With His Sexuality : NPR
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460851160/90-year-old-gay-man-recalls-long-struggle-with-his-sexuality
Updated December 28, 20155:04 PM ET Published December 23, 20155:33 PM ET

Hector Black at his home in rural Tennessee.

Mallory Yu/NPR
Ninety-year-old Hector Black has been on Radiolab and StoryCorps, talking about how he forgave the man who murdered one of his daughters.

But he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro a different story — one he hasn't shared before. It's his life as a closeted gay man — a husband and a father — who didn't come out until he was 70 years old.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

If Hector Black had written an autobiography, we would interview him about it. But he hasn't written one yet, and he's 90 years old. So we decided to talk to him about his life anyway.

HECTOR BLACK: I felt like I was nobody in the whole dang world - was a weirdo like me.

SHAPIRO: Did you even have a word for it?

BLACK: No, no word for it at all. I had nothing. I had no idea what it was. All I knew was that I was attracted to men.

SHAPIRO: 2015 was a revolutionary year for gay rights. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. When Hector Black was born in 1925, the phrase gay rights didn't even exist.

BLACK: The word gay was never even mentioned, or even homosexual. It was whispered if it was used at all.

SHAPIRO: We should warn you that a more offensive term for gay people shows up later in this story. Hector represents thousands of men and women whose names we will never know, a generation of people who were forced to live in secret. Radio reporters have visited him before. He's been on StoryCorps, Radiolab, The Moth. But this is a story he's never told. He lives in a valley in rural Tennessee, where his family runs a plant nursery.

BLACK: This is a mulberry - delicious mulberry.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

I sat with him in the flagstone patio overlooking his garden, wind chimes joining in behind us, under a canopy of trees that he planted decades ago. The first time he realized there were other people like him in the world was at Harvard in the 1940s, where he studied social anthropology. That's also where Hector had his first sexual experience.

BLACK: I thought this is not me. This cannot be me. And I was just horrified. And then, you know, after a few months, I started thinking about it and then I realized that I'd wanted to experience this again. And - and so we became lovers.

SHAPIRO: Hector served in the Army in World War II but soon realized he couldn't kill another human being. He was interested in social justice, pacifism and communal living. That interest carried him to a commune in Paraguay, where there was zero tolerance for homosexuality. So like many gay men in the middle of the last century, Hector agreed to undergo treatment.

BLACK: It was the treatment that people felt was the right treatment in those days - you take estrogen. And so I took that until I started growing breasts. And then, of course, they said OK. So I quit, and then I seemed to be OK.

SHAPIRO: He moved back to the United States.

BLACK: And that was when I met Susie.

SHAPIRO: Susie Maendel. They fell in love, married and had children.

BLACK: I felt that I was cured. I don't think I'd have done it otherwise. It wouldn't have been right.

SHAPIRO: When did you realize you were not cured?

BLACK: I was at the nursery and dealing my plants and all that - there was a young fellow who was sort of giving me the eye, you could say.

SHAPIRO: He told his wife he had to go to a meeting. He met the young man instead. The next day…

BLACK: A friend of ours came and said where you at the meeting, Hector?

SHAPIRO: In front of Susie?

BLACK: Yeah. And so I was a wreck.

SHAPIRO: He told Susie the truth and promised never to do it again. It was now the 1960s, Hector wanted to be part of the civil rights movement, so he moved his family to Atlanta, the only white family in an all-black neighborhood.

BLACK: There were some things just amazing how being gay helped me to understand what it means to be different - although I could blend in - the African-Americans could never blend in - but I knew what it was like to be a despised minority.

SHAPIRO: But temptation persisted - Hector would come to his wife in tears - transgression, confession, repeat. Finally, he thought to himself...

BLACK: This is for the birds. I'm hurting Susie, and I'm wretched. And so I started leading a double life, which (laughter) believe it, I moved up here from Atlanta to get away from the temptations of the city.

SHAPIRO: He's laughing because he moved here to rural Tennessee in the 1970s without realizing that he was landing on the doorstep of a hidden gay commune. Even becoming friends with people from that community was not enough to nudge him fully out of the closet.

BLACK: I felt as though all the work I was doing would be thrown in the garbage if it turned out I was just a [expletive].

SHAPIRO: Hector finally came out 20 years ago, at age 70. There were few gay role models in public life even then. I asked Hector what made him end the double life? He told me it was his daughter. She came out first, to Hector and Susie.

BLACK: We both loved her just as much as ever - more even because I knew how much she had been through, how much she suffered because of who she was. And I just said this is it - that I can't - how can I love her and hate myself for what I am?

SHAPIRO: After nearly 40 years of marriage, Hector offered Susie a divorce, and Susie said no.

BLACK: She said I'd be free to find somebody. And she said she hoped she'd like him.

SHAPIRO: That was two decades ago. Susie died late this past summer. Her grave rests in a nearby clearing under a canopy of trees, overlooking the creek that runs through the land.

You know her well enough now to be able to answer this question. If she were sitting here this whole time listening to everything you said, and I turned to her right now and I say OK, Susie, what's Hector leaving out? What would her answer be?

BLACK: I think she'd probably say he's still fighting a battle that I fought and got over 20 years ago.

SHAPIRO: But what I hear you say is that you might have some regrets about some choices that you've made. But you do not regret the life that you lived, even though you only really came out at age 70.

BLACK: I don't really because I think a lot of that - it's a weird thing to say, but I really think that suffering can be - it certainly isn't always by any means - but it certainly can be a way of understanding other people, opening. You know, Mother Teresa said, Lord, break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in. I can't say that. You know, that's - but I really am grateful that my heart has been broken a good many times because it does help me to love.

SHAPIRO: We went back inside the house that Hector built. He leaned on my arm. That evening, about a dozen people came over. The community he has built in this valley - friends, relatives, neighbors - they all prepare dinner in the kitchen while Hector Black sat down and played the piano.

When your breakfast goes viral: the prettiest fry-ups in Britain | Life and style | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/21/breakfast-on-instagram

One sunny spring day last year, Michael Zee made breakfast for Mark van Beek, his boyfriend of two years. When he laid it out (an omelette, avocado, salami and fruit juice), he noticed it was perfectly symmetrical. He took a photo and posted it online, and soon attracted a smattering of comments from friends who thought it was cute, if a bit twee.

So Zee, an educational officer at a museum, kept it up for the next few months – arranging their breakfasts to match and posting the images on social media. By January, the Instagram account symmetrybreakfast, with the strapline “for my boyfriend and me”, was born. After a month, it had 200 followers; now, 400 breakfasts later, the account has more than 92,000 followers.

“People wonder if I’m crazy or obsessive,” Zee says, “but it is a declaration of love, really. I’m dedicated – both to breakfast and to Mark.” There are now plans to expand offline and into the real world; there were queues at a recent pop-up “symmetry breakfast” club in London. A range of homewares is in the pipeline; next, they want to write a cookbook.

When it comes to breakfast, the couple’s roles are clearly defined: Zee cooks and Van Beek, a menswear designer, eats. It’s still a collaboration, Zee says, inspired by their cohabitation. “I do it all, it’s my project, but it wouldn’t exist without Mark.” How on Earth do they find the time to make such elaborate meals every day? “I get up really, really early,” Zee says. “If something takes more than 30 minutes to make, such as a sourdough, I do it the night before. I post at 7.30am and we leave the house at 8am. Usually, within the first hour, I’ll have 1,000 likes and by the next day it will go up to about 3,000.” He admits to making some breakfasts ahead of time if he’s anticipating a hangover (he hasn’t missed a day in a year).

Michael Zee

Mark van Beek, left, and Michael Zee. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian
Until now, the couple have remained anonymous, and their followers have often presumed the Instagram account is authored by a woman. “I guess because they think it’s the mother, girlfriend or wife who provides. One person I met said they had thought I was a young Asian girl. That was weird.”

Zee, who studied photography for five years, researches global breakfast traditions to find new ideas. Together, he and van Beek have eaten Vietnamese buns, Indian sweets and fried rösti, as well as the more conventional croissants and fruit salads. Inevitably, they have been approached by big brands, from Nespresso to BirdsEye, but Zee says he will collaborate only with small businesses.

Instagram is filled with food pictures, so why does he think theirs stand out? “I think people like it because their own breakfasts are so boring,” Zee says. “Every day they have porridge. People say they love breakfast, but they only make an effort at the weekend. I hope we might inspire them.”

Send us your symmetrical breakfasts, and we’ll post the best online. Tweet

This Mom Had The Most Amazing Response To Anti-Gay Graffiti Ever
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-mom-had-the-most-amazing-response-to-homophobic-graffiti-ever_us_55c4d6d8e4b0d9b743dbe9bd?utm_hp_ref=bisexual
"We've learned that there is a much longer road to travel on the way to LGBT acceptance."
08/07/2015 02:32 pm ET | Updated Aug 07, 2015
Curtis M. Wong
Queer Voices Senior Editor, The Huffington Post
When her home was vandalized with homophobic graffiti last week, Erin Kennedy DeLong knew she had to fight back.

Her 17-year-old daughter, Miranda, had awoken DeLong and her husband, Joe, when she'd found "I'm Gay" scrawled in gray spray paint on the garage door of the family's home in Villas, New Jersey in the middle of the night. DeLong said she and Joe ultimately wanted to reinforce to both Miranda and their daughter Emily, 14, who both identify as bisexual, that "they have nothing to be ashamed of." 

COURTESY ERIN KENNEDY DELONG
So DeLong decided she and her daughters would clean off the graffiti and, rather than restore the garage door to its original pristine appearance, give it a rainbow paint job and create what the Evolequals blog called "the largest rainbow flag image for miles around." Doing so, she told The Huffington Post, would "proudly and loudly say we're an LGBT household, and we're OK with that."

"We decided that some announcements deserve more than gray spray paint," DeLong, who also has a 9-year-old son, Joey, wrote on the "Stop-Homophobia" Facebook page.


COURTESY ERIN KENNEDY DELONG

As these photos from the family can attest, the new garage door is indeed striking. But DeLong says the criticism she's received about the paint job has rivaled the overwhelming praise.

"Family, friends, and countless strangers have been extremely positive and supportive," she said. Some neighborhood kids, she added, have been "tough," yelling anti-gay epithets at her and her family members, but "we just try to let it roll off our backs. What they do says more about their character than ours."

Still, the incident as a whole, she said, has been eye-opening, and in more ways than one.

COURTESY ERIN KENNEDY DELONG

"We've learned that there is a much longer road to travel on the way to LGBT acceptance," she said. "It's great to have people tell us we are being great parents, but it would be even better if what we did was considered just normal parenting, and not amazing."

She went on to note, "We want our kids to be accepting, empathetic, good people, and we do that by being examples of those things."

Brown Bear Gut Microbes May Hold The Secret To Being Hefty But Healthy | Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/brown-bear-gut-microbes-change-during-hibernation
POOH STUDY BEARS FRUIT
By Lindsey Kratochwill  Posted February 6, 2016

Sommer et al./Cell Reports 2016
An illustration depicting the different microbiota of active and hibernating bears

You've probably learned that bears gorge themselves before hibernating, packing on the pounds rather suddenly. It's an enviable practice, mostly because those indulgent bears don't seem to contract the same health problems an obese human would. A study published this week in Cell Reports has found that it might be due to the bear's friendly gut microbes.
In the summer, brown bears go through an extreme period of eating, which is then followed by about six months of fasting during winter hibernation. To compare the microbiomes of both seasons, the researchers collected fecal samples from 16 wild Eurasian brown bears during hibernation and in the summer time.

Sommer et al., The Gut Microbiota Modulates Energy Metabolism in the Hibernating Brown Bear Ursus arctos, Cell Reports (2016)
What a difference a season makes
After studying the fecal samples of active and hibernating bears, scientists have found less diversity in winter bear gut biota.

What they found is that as the bear's lifestyle changes dramatically with seasons, so too does it's internal flora and fauna. During hibernation, the microbiota became less diverse than the summer samples, with much more Bacteroidetes.
To find out how that might affect metabolism, the researchers transferred the microbes from the winter and the summer into lab mice. Mice with the summer microbes gained more weight and fat than the mice with the winter microbes. However, those chubbier summer mice did not experience any difference in their glucose metabolism when compared with the winter mice. "Thus, the brown bear may constitute a model for healthy obesity and studying hibernation might be a promising approach to develop novel therapies for obesity," the authors write.
However, there's still more research needed before we humans might reap any benefits from bear gut microbes. The researchers note that relying on free-ranging wild bears means they know little about their food intake and other habits. And though they were able to produce interesting metabolic results in mice, mice are physiologically quite different from humans. And other recent research suggests that exposure to cold can also change the composition of gut bacteria, improving glucose metabolism and fat burning abilities in mice.

Australian man eats nothing but potatoes to kick binge eating habit. | Oddity Central - Collecting Oddities
http://www.odditycentral.com/foods/man-goes-on-potato-only-diet-for-a-year-to-cure-binge-eating.html
By Sumitra on February 11th, 2016 Category: Foods

Desperate to kick his binge eating habits, an Australian man is forcing himself to live on nothing but potatoes for a whole year. He now claims that the tater diet has helped him lose a whopping 10kg (22 lbs) in only one month. He’s so inspired by the results that is going to continue with his plan of eating potatoes for the rest of the year.

Andrew Taylor, 36, was at his heaviest on January 1, weighing a colossal 151 kg (332 lbs), when he decided to do something about it. “I wanted to change the way I thought about food so that it’s not controlling my life,” he said. “When you’ve got an addiction, a drug addiction or an alcohol addiction, the best thing you can do is stop taking drugs or stop taking alcohol. You can’t do that with food. So I thought, what else can I do? Perhaps I can choose one kind of food.”

spud-fit

Taylor ended up choosing potatoes, which according to him, are highly misunderstood. “Lots of people in the past have had nothing but potatoes,” he explained. “People tend to think of them as empty calories. I’m hoping to show that potatoes are a health food.”

So for the past month, he has baked, boiled, and steamed potatoes, and even experimented with odd dishes like potato pancakes. He also includes sweet potatoes for variety, and sometimes uses a plant-based milk for flavor, but he never cooks them with oil. He claims that he gets 99 percent of his daily calorie requirement from potatoes, and the rest from seasoning. He carries potatoes with him everywhere to snack on whenever he’s hungry.

Apart from losing weight, Taylor believes eating potatoes has helped heal some of his bad eating habits from the past. “I’ve changed from seeing food as a way of getting comfort or pleasure,” he wrote on his Facebook page ‘Sput Fit’, where he shares frequent updates about his experiment. “I’ve been exercising more, I’m full of energy.”

potato-pancake

Nutrition experts, however, do not agree with Taylor’s extreme potato experiment, even though they agree that the root vegetable is nutritious. “In addition to carbohydrate they contain good amounts of important vitamins and minerals like potassium, B vitamins, vitamin C and fiber,” nutritionist Fiona Hunter told The Telegraph.

“Having said that, it is impossible for Mr Taylor to get all the nutrients he needs to keep him fit and healthy from just potatoes. His diet is going to be deficient in key nutrients like protein, essential fatty acids and calcium,” she added. “What this experiment shows is that potatoes can still be a part of a weight loss diet – but eating only potatoes isn’t a healthy way to lose weight or one that I would recommend.”

There’s also the risk that Taylor might get bored of eating only one food and relapse within a few months. Charlene Grosse, spokesperson for the Dieticians Association of Australia, called his diet a “bandaid solution,” adding that carbohydrates are not a good source of protein. “To be able to change your mindset when it comes to food, you have to be ready and get support and guidance through health professionals,” she said. “If someone has an addiction, you can’t just switch it off by turning to one food.”

spud-fit2

Although the experiment has worked well for him so far, even Taylor doesn’t recommend that anyone else try it. “I’ve got nothing to sell and not trying to promote it and say everyone should eat this,” he told News.com.au. “It’s me, experimenting for me, to see if I can help myself this way.”

try pineapples