I am aware of this "Healing" benefit daily and I am so grateful to have Rob in my life words can not express!!!

http://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=9371

Dr. Maoshing Ni

Dr. Mao is an anti-aging expert, doctor of Chinese medicine and the author of the best-selling book, "Secrets of Longevity." Merging the ancient wisdom of Eastern medicine with the modern advances of Western medicine, Dr. Mao has spent years studying centenarians in China and combing through archives of Taoist longevity classics. He is also a Tai Chi master.

Dr. Mao founded the Tao of Wellness, the acclaimed center for nutrition, Chinese medicine, and acupuncture where he has been in practice for over 20 years. Dr. Mao is also the founder and Chancellor of the Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Los Angeles that is considered the premiere school for Chinese medicine outside of China.

Dr. Mao is the intellectual force behind askdrmao.com the natural health search engine where you can find exclusive alternative answers to important health questions.

You can find out more about Dr. Mao on his web site, askdrmao.com.

By Dr. Maoshing Ni - Posted on Fri, Jan 15, 2010, 5:59 pm PST     
Dr. Mao's Secrets of Longevity
by Dr. Maoshing Ni a Yahoo! Health Expert for Alternative Medicine

More By This Expert

* Soup Therapy: Detoxify, Lose Weight, and Boost Immunity
    * 5 Secrets to Winter Health and Energy
    * 3 Healthy Life-Changing Goals for 2010

The healing power of soup: something that both scientists and grandmothers can agree on. From helping you lose weight to warming you up from the inside out to boosting your immunity, soup is a winter staple that you shouldn’t be without. Maybe that is one reason that it is celebrated this month with its very own National Soup Month. Here's a closer look at what you can do to benefit from soup's amazing healing powers.

The healing power of soup
An ancient Chinese proverb states that a good doctor uses food first, then resorts to medicine. A healing soup can be your first step in maintaining your health and preventing illness. The therapeutic value of soup comes from the ease with which your body can assimilate the nutrients from the ingredients, which have been broken down by simmering.

Here are some healing soup tips that will preserve your wellness and longevity:

1. Lose weight with soup
Obesity is on the rise throughout the industrialized world, resulting in a startling increase in the rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. You can count yourself out of the statistics if you eat a bowl of soup at least once a day. Nutritious low-salt soups will nourish you as they flush excess wastes from your body. It has been found that people who eat one serving of soup per day lose more weight than those who eat the same amount of calories, but don’t eat soup. Homemade soup is your best bet, because canned soups tend to be loaded with salt and chemicals. My advice is to use organic vegetables whenever possible. The herbicides and pesticides that can be present in conventional produce can assault the immune system and overload it with toxins.

2. Build your immunity
Your immune system needs a lot of minerals to function properly and the typical Western diet does not always hit the mark. When you slowly simmer foods over low heat, you gently leach out the energetic and therapeutic properties of the foods, preserving the nutritional value of the foods. Keep in mind that boiling can destroy half of the vitamins found in vegetables, so cook soup over a low heat.

Immune-Boosting Soup
Simmer these ingredients for 30 minutes: cabbage, carrots, fresh ginger, onion, oregano, shiitake mushrooms (if dried, they must be soaked first), the seaweed of your choice, and any type of squash in chicken or vegetable stock. Cabbage can increase your body’s ability to fight infection, ginger supports healthy digestion, and seaweed cleanses the body. Shiitake mushrooms contain coumarin, polysaccharides, and sterols, as well as vitamins and minerals that increase your immune function, and the remaining ingredients promote general health and well-being. Eat this soup every other day to build a strong and healthy immune system.

3. Detoxify your body
As a liquid, soup is already helping you flush waste from your body. When you choose detoxifying ingredients, such as the ones featured in the recipe below, you are really treating your body to an internal cleanse. The broth below boasts many benefits: it supports the liver in detoxification, increases circulation, reduces inflammation, and replenishes your body with essential minerals.

Super Detoxifying Broth
Simmer the following for 1–2 hours over a low flame: anise, brussels sprouts, cabbage, Swiss chard, cilantro, collards, dandelion, fennel, garlic, ginger, kale, leeks, shiitake mushrooms, mustard greens, daikon radish, seaweed, turmeric, and watercress. Drink 8 to 12 ounces twice a day. You can keep this broth in your fridge for up to one week; however, it is always best to serve soups when fresh because each day, the therapeutic value decreases.

In addition to using cleansing herbs in soups, you can take cleansing herbs in supplements. For a gentle but powerful cleanse using Chinese herbs, Internal Cleanse increases the ability of the liver to cleanse the body of internal and environmental toxins.

4. Warm up with a hearty soup
You always want to eat for the season. Soups provide something the body craves in cold weather. When you cook foods into a soup, you are adding a lot of what Chinese nutrition would call “warming energy” into the food. Warming foods to feature in your soups include: leeks, onions, turnips, spinach, kale, broccoli, quinoa, yams, squash, garlic, scallions, and parsley. As a spice, turmeric aids with circulation, a great boost against the cold weather.

5. Get well faster
As you mother may have instinctively known, when you are sick, there is no better healing food than soup. The reason for this is that soups and stews don’t require as much energy to digest, freeing your body up to fight the infection.

It would be impossible to talk about soup’s healing abilities without putting the spotlight on homemade chicken noodle soup. Studies have found that chicken noodle soup does seem to relieve the common cold by inhibiting inflammation – helping to break up congestion and ease the flow of nasal secretions.

While chicken soup may not cure a cold outright, it does help alleviate some of the symptoms and can help as a preventative measure. Many of my patient’s keep the herbal formula Cold & Flu in their medicine cabinets so its there to support recovery when a cold strikes.

In Chinese medicine, you would traditionally be given a tonic soup specifically tailored to your needs, and for that level of personal care, it is a good idea to consult a health practitioner knowledgeable in Chinese nutrition.

I hope you have gotten a taste of the healing power of soup! I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

—Dr. Mao

This blog is meant to educate, but it should not be used as a substitute for personal medical advice. The reader should consult his or her physician or clinician for specific information concerning specific medical conditions. While all reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that all information presented is accurate, as research and development in the medical field is ongoing, it is possible that new findings may supersede some data presented.

Transform your health and bring quality to your years with Dr. Mao's natural health products from the Tao of Wellness.

Dr. Mao's new book Second Spring: Hundreds of Natural Secrets for Women to Revitalize and Regenerate at Any Age.

Learn hundreds of ways for living a long and happy life with Dr. Mao's book Secrets of Longevity.

Find out amazing ways you can naturally increase your energy and heal common ailments in Secrets of Self-Healing, Dr. Mao's landmark book on natural healing.

Voice of America News
Dorian Jones | Istanbul 21 January 2010

For 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz, the choice to live openly as a gay man in Turkey proved deadly.
Prosecutors say his father, charged with allegedly killing his son in what is being dubbed as the
first gay honor killing, traveled more than 900 kilometers from his hometown to shoot his son in
an old neighborhood of Istanbul. The case has drawn international attention and is putting the
spotlight on Turkey's attitude towards homosexuality.

The young physics student, Ahmet Yildiz, was one of the few openly gay men in Turkey, a
country in which the military, the guardian of Turkey's secular state, regards homosexuality as a
disorder.

Yildiz represented his country at a gay meeting in San Francisco and wrote for gay publications
in Turkey. Observers believe his activism is probably what got him killed.

His boyfriend, Ibrahim Can, was in their shared apartment when Yildiz was murdered.

He wanted to go out and buy some ice cream, he went down and just got into his car and I heard
gunshots, he says. I looked down from the window I saw him being ambushed. He says he ran
outside and screamed "Please do not die." Can said his eyes were closed, when I shouted he
opened for a second, he looked at me and then closed his eyes.

Can says before the shooting, Yildiz had repeatedly filed complaints at the local prosecutor's
office that he was receiving death threats from his family. Gay rights groups claim the
prosecutor's office did not investigate or provide Yildiz with protection.

The story was largely ignored until it starting getting attention by the foreign media. What
resulted was a bout of national soul-searching underlining the tensions between the secular
modern Turkey and a more traditionalist Turkey, in which conservative Islam increasingly holds
power.

Oner Ceylan of Istanbul's gay rights group Lambda says it's a landmark case.

"I think it is important that people, that this fact, that a father can kill his son, simply because of
his sexual orientation. That is an important awareness, because maybe they were cases before,
but we just did not know," said Ceylan. "We read in the news maybe a father killed, but we did
not know why before. So I think its a very important step."

Yildiz's father is on the run and believed to be in hiding outside Turkey. As a result, the trial
that began in September is on hold.

While Turkey's aspiration to join the European Union is pushing the Muslim-rooted government
to increase civil liberties for women and homosexuals, some remain nervous with a permissive
attitude toward sexuality and gender roles.

Scott Long of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says reluctance by the authorities to punish
violence against the gay community is not unusual.

"People who express their sexuality, people who differ from these cultural norms, from
masculinity and femininity, are abused, are beaten, are raped, are excluded from the family," said
Long. "That there is violence at every level and most conspicuously that the government does
not intervene to stop it."

The country's growing lesbian, gay and transgender movement is increasingly challenging
violence against them.

Ceylan says its a long struggle, but education and patience are key.

"When you talk about violence people do not really exactly know what are you talking about.
When you have the incidents, the cases and everything, then it more clear to them that inevitably
there have been some human-rights violations. And with the police we have been trying to
communicate with the city government, because the police reports to them," he said. "I think we
are making some progress, but these things are deep-rooted, so you cannot expect things to be
just great within years or decades."

The Yildiz murder has become an focal point for gays around the world to put pressure on
Turkish authorities for change.

=====================================================
see video mentioned below at: hXXp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKu2rGLgu-I

This video entitled "Ahmet Is Part Of My Family", is circulating the Internet as part of a
campaign by gays around the world to protest the Yildiz murder. Yildiz'z boyfriend, Can say he
hopes the legal proceedings will not only put Yildiz's murderer on trial, but put Turkey's
treatment of gays on trial, too.

I hope this court case will reveal the situation of homosexuals in Turkey to the whole world, he
says. He says there are millions of gays living in Turkey, most hidden, some forced to marry
women, some willingly married just to avoid loosing their respectability. He says he hopes the
case will change attitudes.

A recent government study estimated one person dies every week in Istanbul as a result of honor
killings. The victims are mostly young women, murdered by male relatives for such things as
having illicit affairs, talking to strangers or even for being the victim of rape. Because gay honor
killings remain underground, it is not known how many of those happen on a weekly basis.

I will start things off with this XTube link:

Puckered Piss Fucked Hole

hxxp://kinkyfuckers.blogspot.com/2010/01/puckered-piss-fucked-hole.html

:hug2:

:hug2:

Cindy McCain has posed for an ad released by the NOH8 campaign, a pro-gay-marriage effort that pictures celebrities with their mouths taped shut, the Associated Press reports. McCain appears in the usual format: dressed in white, with "NOH8" painted on her cheek and silver duct tape across her mouth. (H8 refers to the ballot measure passed by California voters in 2008 banning same-sex marriage.)

The ad was a surprise to some, since John McCain opposed gay marriage during his 2008 presidential run, and his wife rarely speaks out on particular issues. McCain's office issued a statement saying that the senator respects differences of opinion between his family members, but still "believes the sanctity of marriage is only defined as between one man and one woman."

Said spokesperson Brooke Buchanan: "The senator chaired the effort to successfully pass Arizona Proposition 102, the Marriage Protection Amendment, and his opposition to gay marriage remains the same."

On the NOH8 campaign's Web site, under the headline "Redefining Republican," NOH8 writes that Cindy McCain "reached out" to them about the ad. "Aligning yourself with the platform of gay marriage as a Republican still tends to be very stigmatic, but Cindy McCain wanted to participate in the campaign to show people that party doesn't matter – marriage equality isn't a Republican issue any more than it is a Democratic issue."

The McCains' daughter, Meghan, has been outspoken in her support of gay rights, and currently features her own shot from the NOH8 campaign as the background on her Twitter page. Meghan McCain has spoken at a number of gay-rights events, and will be featured at National Equality Week at George Washington University next month. She has publicly addressed her difference of opinion with her father, saying they respectfully disagree.

"I couldn't be more proud of my mother for posing for the NOH8 campaign," she tweeted on Wednesday. "I think more Republicans need to start taking a stand for civil rights in this country and set the example that this is not a partisan issue."

Though both John McCain and Barack Obama opposed gay marriage during the 2008 campaign, same-sex unions have drawn fiercest opposition from the Republican base. But divergent views within that base are nothing new. Former vice president Dick Cheney, a champion of bedrock conservative thought on most issues, said last summer that he supports gay marriage -- perhaps not surprising, given that one of his daughters is gay. And Nancy Reagan's support of stem-cell research -- which she believes could help treat or cure the Alzheimer's disease that claimed her husband -- put her at odds with a widely held conservative stance.

(Jan. 20) – When it comes to reforming the nation's health care system, Americans are firmly divided. But a surprisingly large majority now agrees that if you're sick, you should be allowed to pass the peace pipe.

Eighty-one percent of U.S. adults favor legalizing marijuana in a medical context, according to a telephone poll conducted by ABC News and the Washington Post last week. In 1997, 69 percent of respondents were in favor of the idea.

The news led some, such as the Raw Story's Stephen C. Webster, to conclude that "the medical marijuana debate among American voters is over." Indeed, voters in nine states have approved medical marijuana provisions, beginning with California in 1996.

But it's not just citizens who are catching whiffs of a budding new era: The legislatures of five other states, most recently New Jersey, also passed their own laws setting up specific, government-sponsored programs that provide controlled access to the plant to ill patients -- bringing to 14 the grand total of states where medical marijuana is available.

Studies have shown that marijuana can help fight pain in some patients and ease nausea that often accompanies cancer treatments.

Despite the Obama administration's recently stated tolerance for state-sponsored medical marijuana measures (the Justice Department announced last year it won't prosecute patients abiding by state laws), pot is an illegal drug under federal law, and users can be punished under a number of strict penalties. Since 1970, the DEA has classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance, alongside heroin and LSD, all of which have been deemed to have a "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use."

Yet scientists seeking federal clearance to grow and study their own marijuana crops for therapeutic effects continue to find their requests rebuffed. "Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review," The New York Times reports. That supply is grown on a single plantation at the University of Mississippi. Meanwhile, scientists investigating other illegal drugs such as LSD can turn to many other suppliers.

Despite strong support from local voters, state efforts to allow medical marijuana use often have gone up in smoke because of federal restrictions.

The first to fail was Arizona. Voters approved a ballot measure in 1996 allowing physicians to prescribe the drug. But they are barred from doing so professionally since it is against federal law. Some states got around this barrier by using other words such as "recommend" instead of "prescribe." A new provision to change Arizona's medical marijuana wording is gaining steam and may end up on the ballot later this year, CollegeNews reports.

In 1998, the District of Columbia's vote to legalize medical marijuana was superseded by congressional action. Congress recently cleared the way for the medical marijuana program to begin, though, so the D.C. council is moving ahead with plans to set up five dispensaries.

Finally, in 2003, Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed a bill that allows people arrested and prosecuted on possession charges to use "medicinal necessity" in their defense, which they must prove with a physician's recommendation. But the state's terminally patients are still irked that they have turn to unreliable black market sources to procure their medicine.

So while medical marijuana activists can cheer at the news that voters are on their side, the government is still in many cases behind the (high) times.

A preacher wanted to raise money for his church and on being told that there was a fortune in horse racing, decided to purchase a horse and enter it in the races.

However, at the local auction, the going price for horses was so high that he ended up buying a donkey instead.

He figured that since he had it, he might as well go ahead and enter it in the races. To his surprise, the donkey came in third!

The next day the local paper carried this headline: PREACHER'S ASS SHOWS.

The preacher was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again, and this time it won.

The paper read: PREACHER'S ASS OUT IN FRONT. The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the preacher not to enter the donkey in another race.

The paper headline read: BISHOP SCRATCHES PREACHER'S ASS. This was too much for the Bishop, so he ordered the preacher to get rid of the donkey.

The preacher decided to give it to a nun in a nearby convent. The paper headline the next day read: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The Bishop fainted. He informed the nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10.00.

The next day the headline read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.00. This was too much for the Bishop, so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey, lead it to the plains, and let it go.

Next day, the headline in the paper read: NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE. The Bishop was buried the next day.

Green shoots: The flower sprout is a cross between Brussels sprouts and kale and goes on sale at M&S on Monday

by Jennifer Lawinski, Posted Jan 20th 2010 @ 2:00PM

Vegetables just got a little bit more interesting as the first new vegetable to hit store shelves in nearly a decade is making its debut in the U.K., the Daily Mail reported.

A cross between Brussels sprouts and curly kale, the new vegetable – called the flower sprout -- is a small purple-and-green sprout with curly leaves. (Frankly, from the photo in the Daily Mail, we think it looks a lot more like kale than the sprout, but that's just us.)

It will be sold at Marks & Spencer grocery stores in Britain starting Monday -- the first new veggie added to the roster since tenderstem broccoli came on the scene in 2002, the Mail reported.

"Customers love our mini lemons and black apricots -- we hope people will be just as excited about tasting a completely new vegetable," M&S vegetable technologist Simon Coupe told the Mail.

"Both kale and Brussels sprouts are from the same species (Brassica oleracea) and are part of the same family called Brassicas or Crucifers. This means that their genetics are very similar even though their outward appearance is different," he said. This allows them to be cross-bred, creating a new hybrid species.

The flower sprout's taste is similar to that of the Brussels sprout, and it's best served steamed or stir fried.

One farmer growing the flower sprout, Martin Haines, told the Mail he has high hopes for the new vegetable. "We are so excited. I think our other sprouts are green with envy."

:true: :funny2: :lolp: :rotfl: :jaj:

* January 13, 2010
    * |
    * By: Sharon Knolle

"I'm a scapegoat for this," Gilberto Sanchez told the New York Times. "I'm gonna get crucified." Sanchez's crime? Uploading a leaked "work print" copy of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' online, a full month before the movie opened.

It wasn't just piracy that was the issue: This was a bad-buzz generating precedent that 20th Century Fox feared would kill the movie's box office, especially since the copy hundreds were watching on the Internet had unfinished special effects and visible wires holding up its star, Hugh Jackman. (Never mind that the movie went on to earn $373 million worldwide.)

Sanchez's story is a sympathetic one. He's not some teenager bootlegging for profit, but a 47-year-old guy who bought a bootleg DVD of the movie from a neighborhood vendor. After watching the movie in the living room of his $695-per-month Bronx apartment with his three grandchildren, he made the fateful decision to share the movie with his friends. He uploaded it to megaupload.com under his screen name of "SkillyGilly," where it was downloaded nearly 200 times in less than 24 hours.

At 5 AM the next day, a friend called and told him to turn on the TV. The leak was all over the news and the outraged studio was offering a reward. Sanchez was scared, but sure that the employee who had made the illegal work print in the first place, or those peddling the bootleg DVDs, would be held responsible.

But eight months later, it was his door the FBI came knocking on. He was arraigned in federal court in Manhattan and is now out on bond, awaiting sentencing. He may have to serve jail time and, since the indictment originated in Hollywood, he might have to do it in California, according to the Times.

"Talk to the Korean," – the one who sold him the DVD -- he told the FBI "You keep following leads and you'll get to a warehouse." But since he couldn't ID the vendor, there were no leads to follow, although the Times reports that the investigation into the original leak is ongoing.

The prosecution doesn't care that Sanchez didn't gain financially, the attorney supervising the case, Wesley Hsu, tells the Times, "It's some sort of Internet prestige thing. That's sort of how the culture works."

Sanchez doesn't plan to fight the charges: How could he? He might simply be fined and put on probation, as in the nearly identical case of someone who uploaded a work print of 'The Hulk' -- featuring a blobby and unimpressive green mutant -- prior to its release. Or he might face jail time, like the man who stole a copy of 'The Love Guru' -- a bomb that people certainly weren't going to pay to see -- and received six months in jail.

In a statement released last month, Chris Petrikin, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, said only: "We are supportive of the FBI's actions, and we will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement to identify and prosecute any individuals who steal our movies."

How else to deter an entire generation for whom watching the latest movies is more a matter of finding the right download site than camping out for tickets? It would be impossible to prosecute everyone who's ever illegally downloaded a movie, TV show or song, but if the Feds a can make an example of Sanchez, maybe a few people will be scared away from sharing movies online. Until at least after the movie hits theaters, that is.

A Chinese gay pageant, said to be the first held in the country, was ordered by police to
close an hour before opening, organizers say.

The Mr Gay China event was thought to mark a new openness toward the gay community in
China.

Organizers said police informed them it could not go ahead because they had not applied
"according to the procedures".

Homosexuality was illegal in China until 1997, and officials described it as a mental illness until
2001.

The event's organizer, Ben Zhang, said he had been hoping the event would mark another step
towards greater awareness of gay people in China.

One of the judges, Weng Xiaogang, told the AFP news agency: "In my opinion, I believe it [the
cancellation] had something to do with the issue of homosexuality."

The eight contestants were competing for the right to represent China at the Worldwide Mr Gay
pageant next month in Norway.

The event, in an upmarket Beijing nightclub, would have included a fashion show and question-
and-answer sessions with the contestants.

Some 150 people who turned up to watch, many of them from media organizations, were left to
view a deserted stage.

Contestant Jiang Bo, 29, told Reuters: "It's a disaster. I'm full of disappointment. I thought the
government was becoming more and more tolerant.

"They were making a big step. The whole world was thinking China was doing a very good
thing. But now I think everybody will be disappointed."

In June last year, the organizers of China's first Gay Pride Festival were told to cancel two of
their sessions - and that they would face "severe consequences" if they went ahead.