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Tribal based with a leather and bear influence…...........

Sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish have become the proud parents to a baby boy named Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John.

Zachary was born weighing 7lbs 15oz via a surrogate mother in California on the 25th of December, Christmas day. This is the first child for Sir John, 62, and Furnish, 48. The couple got married in 2005 after being together for 12 years.

In a joint statement to Us Magazine, the couple said "We are overwhelmed with happiness and joy at this very special moment. Zachary is healthy and doing really well, and we are very proud and happy parents."

A rep for the couple has stated that both Sir John and Furnish intend to protect and respect the privacy of the surrogate and will not be discussing any details relating to the surrogacy arrangements made.

According to the Daily Mail, the couple had first attempted to adopt an HIV positive child from the Ukraine last year. But the adoption was rejected on the grounds of Sir John's age and the fact that the country did not recognize civil marriages. Sir John then made a commitment to support the boy financially.

by Health.com

By Leslie Barrie

To reduce your risk of cancer, look no further than your fridge. "All the studies on cancer and nutrition point to eating plant-based foods for their phytonutrients and other special compounds," says Richard Béliveau, PhD, chair in the prevention and treatment of cancer at the University of Québec at Montreal and author of Foods to Fight Cancer.

Aim for five to nine daily servings of all kinds of fruits and vegetables—especially these six superstars.

Broccoli
All cruciferous veggies (think cauliflower, cabbage, kale) contain cancer-fighting properties, but broccoli is the only one with a sizable amount of sulforaphane, a particularly potent compound that boosts the body's protective enzymes and flushes out cancer-causing chemicals, says Jed Fahey, ScD. A recent University of Michigan study on mice found that sulforaphane also targets cancer stem cells—those that aid in tumor growth.

Helps fight: breast, liver, lung, prostate, skin, stomach, and bladder cancers

Your Rx: The more broccoli, the better, research suggests—so add it wherever you can, from salads to omelets to the top of your pizza.

Health.com: 13 easy pizza recipes

Berries
All berries are packed with cancer-fighting phytonutrients. But black raspberries, in particular, contain very high concentrations of phytochemicals called anthocyanins, which slow down the growth of premalignant cells and keep new blood vessels from forming (and potentially feeding a cancerous tumor), according to Gary D. Stoner, PhD, a professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Helps fight: colon, esophageal, oral, and skin cancers

Your Rx: Stoner uses a concentrated berry powder in his studies but says a half-cup serving of berries a day may help your health, too.

Health.com: Go wild for berries!

Tomatoes
This juicy fruit is the best dietary source of lycopene, a carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red hue, Béliveau says. And that's good news, because lycopene was found to stop endometrial cancer cell growth in a study in Nutrition and Cancer. Endometrial cancer causes nearly 8,000 deaths a year.

Helps fight: endometrial, lung, prostate, and stomach cancers

Your Rx: The biggest benefits come from cooked tomatoes (think pasta sauce!), since the heating process increases the amount of lycopene your body is able to absorb.

Health.com: 10 tasty tomato recipes

Walnuts
Their phytosterols (cholesterol-like molecules found in plants) have been shown to block estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells, possibly slowing the cells' growth, says Elaine Hardman, PhD, associate professor at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, West Virginia.

Helps fight: breast and prostate cancers

Your Rx: Munching on an ounce of walnuts a day may yield the best benefits, Hardman's research found.

Health.com: 8 super nuts

Garlic
Phytochemicals in garlic have been found to halt the formation of nitrosamines, carcinogens formed in the stomach (and in the intestines, in certain conditions) when you consume nitrates, a common food preservative, Béliveau says. In fact, the Iowa Women's Health Study found that women with the highest amounts of garlic in their diets had a 50 percent lower risk of certain colon cancers than women who ate the least.

Helps fight: breast, colon, esophageal, and stomach cancers

Your Rx: Chop a clove of fresh, crushed garlic (crushing helps release beneficial enzymes), and sprinkle it into that lycopene-rich tomato sauce while it simmers.

Health.com: Surprising health benefits of garlic

Beans
A study out of Michigan State University found that black and navy beans significantly reduced colon cancer incidence in rats, in part because a diet rich in the legumes increased levels of the fatty acid butyrate, which in high concentrations has protective effects against cancer growth. Another study, in the journal Crop Science, found dried beans particularly effective in preventing breast cancer in rats.

Helps fight: breast and colon cancers

Your Rx: Add a serving—a half-cup—of legumes a few times a week (either from a can or dry beans that've been soaked and cooked) to your usual rotation of greens or other veggies.

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One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he tells the story to inspire troubled young people to help deal with their disrupted lives.

The police called at my student hovel early evening, but I didn't answer as I thought they'd come to evict me. I hadn't paid my rent in months.

But then I got to thinking: my mum hadn't been too good and what if it was something about her?

We had no phone in the hovel and mobiles hadn't been invented yet, so I had to nip down the phone box.

I rang home to Leeds to find my mother was in hospital and not expected to survive the night. "Get home, son," my dad said.

I got to the railway station to find I'd missed the last train. A train was going as far as Peterborough, but I would miss the connecting Leeds train by twenty minutes.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Bernard Hare

To this day, I won't hear a bad word said about British Rail”

End Quote

I bought a ticket home and got on anyway. I was a struggling student and didn't have the money for a taxi the whole way, but I had a screwdriver in my pocket and my bunch of skeleton keys.

I was so desperate to get home that I planned to nick a car in Peterborough, hitch hike, steal some money, something, anything. I just knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die that night and I intended to get home if it killed me.

"Tickets, please," I heard, as I stared blankly out of the window at the passing darkness. I fumbled for my ticket and gave it to the guard when he approached. He stamped it, but then just stood there looking at me. I'd been crying, had red eyes and must have looked a fright.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Course I'm okay," I said. "Why wouldn't I be? And what's it got to do with you in any case?"

"You look awful," he said. "Is there anything I can do?"

"You could get lost and mind your own business," I said. "That'd be a big help." I wasn't in the mood for talking.

He was only a little bloke and he must have read the danger signals in my body language and tone of voice, but he sat down opposite me anyway and continued to engage me.

"If there's a problem, I'm here to help. That's what I'm paid for."

I was a big bloke in my prime, so I thought for a second about physically sending him on his way, but somehow it didn't seem appropriate. He wasn't really doing much wrong. I was going through all the stages of grief at once: denial, anger, guilt, withdrawal, everything but acceptance. I was a bubbling cauldron of emotion and he had placed himself in my line of fire.

The only other thing I could think of to get rid of him was to tell him my story.

"Look, my mum's in hospital, dying, she won't survive the night, I'm going to miss the connection to Leeds at Peterborough, I'm not sure how I'm going to get home.

"It's tonight or never, I won't get another chance, I'm a bit upset, I don't really feel like talking, I'd be grateful if you'd leave me alone. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, finally getting up. "Sorry to hear that, son. I'll leave you alone then. Hope you make it home in time." Then he wandered off down the carriage back the way he came.

I continued to look out of the window at the dark. Ten minutes later, he was back at the side of my table. Oh no, I thought, here we go again. This time I really am going to rag him down the train.

He touched my arm. "Listen, when we get to Peterborough, shoot straight over to Platform One as quick as you like. The Leeds train'll be there."

I looked at him dumbfounded. It wasn't really registering. "Come again," I said, stupidly. "What do you mean? Is it late, or something?"

"No, it isn't late," he said, defensively, as if he really cared whether trains were late or not. "No, I've just radioed Peterborough. They're going to hold the train up for you. As soon as you get on, it goes.

"Everyone will be complaining about how late it is, but let's not worry about that on this occasion. You'll get home and that's the main thing. Good luck and God bless."

Then he was off down the train again. "Tickets, please. Any more tickets now?"

I suddenly realised what a top-class, fully-fledged doilem I was and chased him down the train. I wanted to give him all the money from my wallet, my driver's licence, my keys, but I knew he would be offended.

I caught him up and grabbed his arm. "Oh, er, I just wanted to…" I was suddenly speechless. "I, erm…"

"It's okay," he said. "Not a problem." He had a warm smile on his face and true compassion in his eyes. He was a good man for its own sake and required nothing in return.

"I wish I had some way to thank you," I said. "I appreciate what you've done."

"Not a problem," he said again. "If you feel the need to thank me, the next time you see someone in trouble, you help them out. That will pay me back amply.

"Tell them to pay you back the same way and soon the world will be a better place."

I was at my mother's side when she died in the early hours of the morning. Even now, I can't think of her without remembering the Good Conductor on that late-night train to Peterborough and, to this day, I won't hear a bad word said about British Rail.

My meeting with the Good Conductor changed me from a selfish, potentially violent hedonist into a decent human being, but it took time.

"I've paid him back a thousand times since then," I tell the young people I work with, "and I'll keep on doing so till the day I die. You don't owe me nothing. Nothing at all."

"And if you think you do, I'd give you the same advice the Good Conductor gave me. Pass it down the line."

* by Epicurious.com

'Tis true that making predictions can be a fool's errand, but still we press on with our ears to the ground and our lips to the plate and glass (yes, it's a funny-looking position), boldly predicting the food, drink, restaurant, and cooking trends for 2011. Judging from last year's trends post , we're more Farmer's Almanac than Nostradamuswhich is to say, most of our prophecies have indeed come to pass. So, what's next in the world of good eating? Here are the top trends whose time has almost come.

Food Halls

America may be a century or two behind on this trend, but we are finally embracing the food hall, in all of its gluttonous, groaning-shelves glory. Following in the footsteps of giants worldwide (Paris' La Grande Épicerie and the food halls at Harrods of London and Takashimaya in Tokyo), New York has gotten into the act in a big way. Mario Batali and the Bastianich family recently opened Eataly, a boisterous celebration of Italian cuisine, in Manhattan, plus a smaller version called Tarry Market in suburban Port Chester; Todd English made his mark with the Plaza Hotel's Food Hall; Jeffrey Chodorow introduced the first installment of his FoodParc; and the former Limelight nightclub was converted into the Limelight Marketplace. Of course, the trend isn't limited to New York: Thierry Perez just debuted L'Épicerie Market in Los Angeles; Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve is opening Society Fair in Alexandria, Virginia, next spring; and there are rumors that San Francisco's Todd Humphries is planning a small food hall in the Napa Valley. We hope this trend becomes as ubiquitous here as it is in Europe.

Korean Cuisine

Could kimbap be the next sushi? Evidence is mounting that smoky, piquant Korean is America's next big cuisine. Witness the burgeoning obsession with double-fried, spicy chicken, as championed by New York's Momofuku Ko and Los Angeles' Kyochon, and the meteoric rise of the Kogi BBQ truck in L.A., selling kimchi quesadillas and short rib sliders. Finally, look out for Stop and Bap , a 13-part series on PBS devoted to Korean cuisine and culture, debuting next spring and starring Jean-Georges Vongerichten and his wife, Marja. If JG says Korean is where it's at, we are true believers.

Macaroons

Cupcakes and pies are looking downright crusty these days. Macaroons or macarons, usually made with ground almonds or almond paste, sugar, and egg whites, will be 2011's sweet sensation. These gluten-free, delicate confections are the subject of many new books, such as I Love Macarons , Macarons: Authentic French Cookie Recipes From the Macaron Café , and the upcoming Macaroons . Renowned pastry chef François Payard is a fan because, as he told Epicurious, "it's more than a cookie; it's a delicate pastry. People are intrigued by the flavor and the color. It becomes so exciting, because you can change the flavors every season. So incredible!" At his François Payard Bakery in New York City and on Payard.com , the most popular varieties are passion fruit, mint chocolate, chocolate, and coffee.

Meatless Mondays & Tofu Thursdays

While it's hip to go whole hog, with butchers gaining star power and roasts as the focus of many a dinner party, there is a concurrent trend of eating less meat. As we recently pointed out in Back to the Future: 10 Food Trends to Watch Over the Next Decade, the proportion of people eating no meat or less meat is growing, and the nonprofit Meatless Monday initiative no doubt has been one motivator. Meatless Monday's goal is to encourage U.S. consumers to cut their meat consumption by 15 percent for the betterment of our health and the planet. School districts from Baltimore to New Haven, Santa Barbara to Syracuse, have embraced the cause, as have more than 20 public health organizations, not to mention prominent chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson. We're forecasting that eating meat-free will be on the calendar more than once a week.

Foraging

While foraging may be just a fancy term for the way humans have sourced food since time immemorial, top chefs are going beyond the farmer's market and heading to quiet pastures or untrammeled forests in search of wild greens, nuts, berries, and even bark. As The New York Times recently reported, this longtime trend exploded when it was revealed that 2010's It chef, René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, is a big forager. New York's David Chang likes to make salad from lily pad shoots, while Tim Wiechmann of T.W. Food in Cambridge, Massachusetts, uses wild violets in his Frozen Violet Flower Meringue with Candied Orange and Almonds. The foraging trend will go from restaurant to kitchen table in the coming year, as foodies take trowel in hand for some "wild crafting," as it's called. Already there's the crowd-sourced Philadelphia Food Harvest Map , dotted with the locations of wineberry bushes, plum and fig trees, and other worthwhile wild things.

The remaining five trends are after the jump….

Tiki Bar Cocktails

What's old is new again, not just in fashion but also in cocktails. Polynesian-style drinks, those multi-ingredient fruit juice and rum concoctions adorned with flowers and umbrellas, will be the quaffs of choice in 2011. Though you may be tempted to think this trend is yet another stylish symptom of the current craze for anything '60s-retro or Mad Men-inspired, the "new" tiki cocktails' roots go back even farther. Dale DeGroff, author of The Essential Cocktail and The Craft of the Cocktail and founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail, told Epicurious, "the revival of the tiki trend, ironically, is closer to the classic tropical periodright after Prohibitionpioneered by Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (a.k.a. Don the Beachcomber). The tiki movement today is coming from the craft bartending community, using fresh ingredients and attempting to find the original recipes. Julie Reiner's sophisticated take on tropical cocktails at Lani Kai in New York City is a perfect example." Try out a Planter's Punch , Mai Tai , Hurricane , or Zombie , and then join the discussion with the rest of the neo-Polynesian crowd on Critiki . Or get ahead of the curve by visiting one of the tiki bars listed on Tiki Central .

Pop-Up Cafés

Food trucks are as ubiquitous as, well, trucks, but the freewheeling, catch-as-catch-can insta-restaurants are now picking up steam. Why? Little capital, resources, or planning is needed, and chefs have greater freedom to try out menu items, restaurant themes, and locations. Chefs can create their own venues, in art galleries, public areas, or their own homes, as did Ben Greeno of London's Tudor Road. In Los Angeles, chef Ludo Lefebvre opened what he calls a "guerilla style pop-up restaurant," LudoBites . And Top Chef's Stephanie Izard (of Girl and the Goat in Chicago) started out with an "underground" place called Wandering Goat, which enabled her to preview her menu and generate publicity. Meanwhile, San Francisco is leading the trend, with a multitude of pop-ups, no doubt a reflection, at least in part, of the city's high rents and overcrowded restaurant scene. Eat Restaurant holds a monthly dinner in different locales so chef Tommy Halvorson can run the stoves without running his credit line. (We've even had our own pop-up restaurant, Epicurious Entertains NYC.) Look for more of these in 2011.

Sweet Potatoes

This sweet root vegetable, bursting with beta-carotene and fiber, is finally getting the love it so deserves. With this fall's bumper crop estimated at two billion pounds, more prominence on restaurant menus (not just in fry form), and an impressive nutritional profile, the sweet potato will be crowned the Vegetable of 2011. According to The New York Times , ConAgra just opened a plant devoted to processing frozen sweet potato products, and Google searches for the root vegetable (OK, albeit in fry form) have jumped 40 percent from last year. Chefs love them for their flavor, texture, and color: Sarah Stegner of Chicago's Prairie Grass Café and Prairie Fire serves up Stuffed Sweet Potato Bread French Toast with Cream Cheese Filling. At DC Coast in Washington, D.C., chef Brendan Cox makes Sweet Potato Panzotti with Sage, Guanciale, and Toasted Hazelnut.

Urban Wineries

Move over, canning. The DIY trend is moving Sideways, enabling you to become the Mondavi of your block. At the Brooklyn Winery , oenophiles learn the process of taking grapes from vine to vintage, doing the de-stemming, crushing, and pressing and then bottling their own wine. At Cork This! Winery , in Montgomery, Texas, wine lovers can bottle the stuff and personalize the label. And at San Diego's Carruth Cellars Winery , Adam Carruth blends, ages, and bottles right in the middle of a city block. Could urban-wine tasting tours be next?

Pimentón de La Vera

You may never have heard of this ingredient, but chances are you've used its less smoky cousin many times. A specialty of Spain's La Vera region, this smoked paprika is a building block of Spanish cuisine. It lends a sweet heat to roast and grilled meats, paellas, sauces, and soups. Because of the widespread popularity of Spanish cuisine, Pimentón de La Vera is gaining traction stateside, on restaurant menus and with specialty stores and online retailers . While all paprika is ground from a mix of Capsicum annuum peppers, the flavor is determined by the type of red chiles used, whether or not seeds are added, and the processing method. In La Vera, the chiles are smoked over an oak fire for two weeks before being carefully ground. Try the spice of tomorrow in this Turkey Cutlet Sandwich with Smoked Paprika and Mayo from Bon Appétit.

Happy new food year from Epicurious! And keep us posted on what's in your culinary crystal ball!

1. to get your ratio, do you need to upload a whole new torrent to the site, or just leaving something you downloaded from the site on your torrent downloader for leeching by others would work?

Both are excellent options for maintaining your ratio and a must here at GT.ru. New Content may not be so easy but is the best way to raise your ratio. Just search for dupes diligently. Most of us maintain our ratio thru seeding what we have downloaded back to other leechers.

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A ratio of 1:1 is good always as a rule to go by for how long to let some thing leech.If there are 0 leechers then you have to hope you have some thing to seed to make up for this lack of leechers.

GT.ru gives you .5 points for every hour you seed whether you actually upload or not. These are Seed Bonus Points and can be traded for Upload Traffic. You can earn 12 points a day by seeding 24/7.

http://tracker.gaytorrent.ru/getbonus.php

3. i live in a private dorm and all the residents use the wireless connection provided to us. i have no idea if there's other gays here or if someone is a member of the site in this same wireless network. now, in any circumstances, how's the rule regarding this issue gonna be implemented? who's getting punishment and who's not? if this happens to me, what option do i get to resolve it?

There are provisions for this situation rest easy that you will not loose your rights as a member for a shared ISP.

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Ratio Minimums Explained:
http://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=6191.0

Problems with Ratio:
http://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=6036.0

Downloading Rules :
http://tracker.gaytorrent.ru/rules.php#96

well here are some pics…......

Vice President Joe Biden, who in the past has backed civil unions for gay men and lesbians, says a national consensus for the legalization of gay marriage is inevitable.

Biden, in an interview Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," said the acceptance of gay marriage will become part of public consciousness in the same way that the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces eventually won favor with many Americans, including military leaders.

"I think the country's evolving and I think there's an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage," he said in comments also reported by the New York Daily News.

President Obama has endorsed civil unions for gays, but he said Wednesday at a White House news conference that his views on the controversial social issue are evolving. Same-sex marriage, which is strongly opposed by the Catholic Church as well as other religious and self-described pro-family groups, is legal in only a handful of states. Biden, who is Catholic, did not describe how he saw the road to legalization taking shape.

Watch George Stephanopoulos' interview with Biden :
hXXp://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/24/joe-biden-on-gay-marriage-legalization-is-inevitable/

Thank you Spintendo for this most informative article. We too easily forget these countries and think we have it the worst in the world for Gay Rights.


The New Yorker is off for the holidays, but we’ll leave you with this confluence of current affairs and Christmas:

SantaLeaks: an analysis of more than a hundred thousand documents recently leaked by a disgruntled elf has revealed several surprising facts about the North Pole’s most famous citizen.

· Santa and several top elves colluded to circumvent a ban on Chinese-made toys, despite pressure from the North Pole community to deliver only toys made locally.

· Santa has, over the years, acted to undermine potential successors, privately disparaging one of his nephews as “lazy,” another as “not really committed to the whole Christmas thing,” and yet another as “incapable of growing a beard of the appropriate size, if you know what I mean.”

· Senior North Pole officials were astonished when an elf in Santa’s cabinet proposed halting a long-standing program monitoring pouting and crying. “For years, we’ve been telling people that they’d better not do this,” one said in a confidential cable, “and now we’re removing all restrictions? What’s next? Decriminalizing the failure to watch out?”

· After Santa suffered a serious hip injury, in the late seventies, the Prime Minister of Norway offered him access to several chimneys to conduct entrance and egress exercises.

· A reported mixup in 2004 that brought eleven-year-old Jack Keller, of Seattle, a book of math games instead of a football was not accidental: Santa was sending a message.

· During home visits last Christmas, Santa spied on the C.E.O.s of several Fortune 500 companies, and collected personal data including but not limited to credit-card and frequent-flier numbers.

· The song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” has more basis in truth than was previously thought; elves worried for years about Santa’s philandering, which began to decrease only recently, after Mrs. Claus discovered an illicit text message from an Arizona school-board member.

· Santa doesn’t enjoy going to certain St. Louis suburbs. “They just give me the creeps,” he told one top elf.

· Most cookies left out for Santa end up being fed to the reindeer.

· In 2007, Santa suppressed the delivery of gifts to more than a thousand residents of Los Angeles as a result of his displeasure with the movie “Fred Claus.”

· Just this year, Santa accepted a payment of twelve million dollars to keep Charlie Sheen on the “nice” list.

· A potential environmental disaster was kept secret by the North Pole in 2008, after a large bag filled with painted blocks from Vietnam fell from Santa’s sleigh into the Anglezarke reservoir, in Lancashire, raising fears of lead contamination. Elves with scuba gear and flashlights were sent in to retrieve the blocks under cover of night.

· Contrary to popular belief, Santa cannot really tell when you’re sleeping or when you’re awake, but he will fly into a rage if his ability to do so is questioned.

Sorry no name attached ~ In fact these were posted under unknown

Tyger Hudson

Some More…....