joeynyc's Xanga

Friday, October 13, 2006

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:50:05 GMT

The fall nip has finally in the air..........and the house, which means it's' probably time to turn on the heat.

Amazing Hair Facts!

Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow.
35 meters of hair fibre is produced every day on the average adult scalp.
The average scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000; brown and black haired persons have about 100,000; and blondes have the most at 120,000.
90% of scalp hairs are growing and 10% are resting.
It is normal to lose 100 hairs per day from the scalp.
You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone.
Many drugs can cause hair loss.
Thyroid imbalance and iron deficiency are reversible causes for hair loss.
Over 50% of men by age 50 have male pattern hair loss.
Forty percent of women by the time they reach menopause will have female pattern (hereditary) hair loss.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:05:44 GMT

We just condemned North Korea for testing a nuclear bomb yet we've performed 1054 tests between 1945 and 1992, and we're the only nation to have used nuclear weapons to kill people, and as of 1999, the U.S. was said to have 12,000 nuclear weapons of all types stockpiled. Seem s to me as if we may a bit more dangerous than North Korea.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 20:51:22 GMT

Yesterday a friend told me her sister, who is on her honeymoon in Italy, was told she had to vacate her hotel because a celebrity and his girlfriend booked the entire place for their wedding. Who knows if it's true and who really gives a shit.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:16:16 GMT

So here's my question. If the courts leave decisions like civil rights and gay marriage 'up to the people', how will we ever progress if the majority are fearful of change? Let's ask the people if African Americans should still have civil rights, let's ask some of the people if women should still have the right to vote.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 09:40:18 GMT

Working for the man today, well, everyday, some days it just feels more obvious. I've decided that I'll go to the dark side and join the antics of the current administration, who are extremely effective at deflecting any topic, crisis or sit-chee-a-shun. To clarify, I couldn't imagine joining the party, I'm simply going to incorporate some of their tactics into my daily life.

For example, if my boss says to me, "John Doe says that you had a meeting with him last year and discussed Files of Corporate Destruction" I'll respond, "How dare you!! It's incomprehensible that you would say this. I'm not going to play the blame game like this, i just won't do it." Then I'll walk out of her office.

Or if I'm ever confronted with bribary, embezzlement, deception, falsification of information, murder [place the latest Republican scandal here], I'll look my accuser in the eye and say, "It's insulting that you'll even say this to me. What did President McKinley ever do to improve foreign policy??" Then I'll choose my favorite FOX news 'reporter' from the a udience and answer a question about the Easter egg hunt on the front lawn.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:54:12 GMT

A funny line from "I Am Not Myself These Days" by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

"Some people might get obsessed with figuring out how they wound up on the F train in drag, with no bag and only one shoe, but that's simply not my style. What's done is done. I'm sure i had my reasons."

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 11:17:02 GMT

In lieu of thinking of something clever, I'll allow myself time to ramp back up to the blog way of thinking, and take the easy way out and post the following:

On this day...

331 -BC- Alexander the Great of Macedon defeats Persian army at Gaugamela
1890 Yosemite National Park established
1948 Calif Supreme Court voids state statute banning interracial marriages
1955 "Honeymooners" premieres
1962 Barbra Streisand signs her 1st recording contract (with Columbia)
1962 Johnny Carson hosts his 1st Tonight Show, Joan Crawford guests
1962 The Lucy Show premiers
1971 Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opens
1977 Brazilian soccer great Pele' retires with 1,281 goals in 1,363 games
1987 6 killed by an earthquake measuring 6.1 in LA

Thought for the day : " It`s clever, but is it art? "

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 10:39:22 GMT

Ah....it's like waking up from a deep sleep.

Here's a thought provoking article from this morning's NYTimes.

Op-Ed Contributor

Pirates of the Mediterranean

By ROBERT HARRIS

Published: September 30, 2006

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”

Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.

Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Thu, 13 May 2004 22:49:25 GMT

Hey Everyone - I'm taking a Xanga break for a while. Life's been crazy hectic and I'm trying to free up some time in my day/week/month/year/life. I'll be checking in periodically. See you all soon. Have the best summer EVER!!

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 18:00:37 GMT
Here's what three men during the Vietnam War.

PRESIDENT BUSH

Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 after graduating from Yale University. During his first year of service, he took an eight-week leave to work on a Senate campaign in Florida.

Bush graduated from flight school at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969 and completed Combat Crew Training School at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas in 1970. He participated in drills and alerts at Ellington and began working for a Houston-based agricultural company. After his last flight as a Guard member in 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on another Senate campaign. He was assigned to guard National Guard units in Alabama. There is no record of him reporting for duty there, but Bush says he did participate. He lost his flight credentials after missing a physical exam.

Bush participated in non-flying drills at Ellington in 1973 and worked at an inner-city poverty program. In the fall, he began attending Harvard Business School and was placed on inactive Guard duty about six months before his six-year commitment ended.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY

Cheney received five student and marriage deferments of service during the war. He received his first student deferment in 1963, while enrolled at Casper College in Wyoming. His status was renewed twice when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

After graduating in 1965, Cheney became a graduate student in the fall and obtained another deferment. He received a deferment under a provision for parents in 1966, when his wife, Lynne, became pregnant.

Cheney told The Washington Post in 1989, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service. ... I don't regret the decisions I made. I complied fully with all the requirements of the statutes, registered with the draft when I turned 18. Had I been drafted, I would have been happy to serve."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

JOHN KERRY:

After graduating from Yale University in 1966, Kerry volunteered for the Navy and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. In his first tour, he spent four months on the USS Gridley frigate off Vietnam's shore. He volunteered for the second tour, where he served nearly five months as a swiftboat commander in the Mekong Delta and won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

Kerry's three war injuries -- all minor -- were enough to allow him an early return to stateside duty. After petitioning for honorable discharge six months early in 1969, Kerry ran for a House seat in Massachusetts, but later gave up his bid for the Democratic nomination. He joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and became its leading spokesman. During a protest in April 1971, Kerry threw his war ribbons over a fence at the Capitol