Real men are back...er plus a reminder: How to be a real man

Of course, you want to have sex. Afterwards, however, it is important to avoid saying 'I love you' or 'I'm sorry, that's never happened before'.

She may be interested in commitment. You are not. It is vitally important that you never even acknowledge the possibility that you are in a relationship. The moment she uses a sentence that includes words such as 'wedding', 'children', or 'meet my parents', make your excuses and leave.

SHOOT: Okay this one I'm already good at.

You do not cook anything more sophisticated than Pot Noodles or baked beans. Cooking is her job. But when you have a Sunday roast - and you do, obviously - you carve with manly precision and flair.

SHOOT: I can do the muscles thing. Paying the tab...sometimes.

You have mates - but never Best Friends. Famous buddies such as Starsky and Hutch, Butch and Sundance, Batman and Robin, and even Ant and Dec are highly suspicious relationships.

No matter how tough those men may be, nor how straight, the Retrosexual can't help thinking they're all riding a little too close to Brokeback Mountain.

SHOOT: Me again.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Once, men were simply men. But then feminists decided they were chauvinist pigs who didn't spend enough time doing the dishes. So along came the guilt-ridden New Man, swiftly followed by sensitive, moisturising Metrosexual Man. Of course, women soon missed the whiff of testosterone and were calling for the return of Real Men. Now a new book, The Retrosexual Manual: How To Be A Real Man, has been published. David Thomas tip-toes through the unashamedly macho details. . . Who is he? Remember, you have a number of qualities, almost all deriving from your testosterone, which women can't help but admire. For example: 1. Your mind is uncluttered. Consider the female brain, filled as it is with multiple anxieties about its owner's hair, figure, health, diet, clothes, shoes, emotions, digestive transit, sex life, competitive female friendships, multi-tasking duties as a worker/lover/ wife/mother/whatever. Instead, your mind is focused on the important things in life: sex, beer, football.

Joburg to host ‘green’ summit

Liveable communities and the environment are the topics of a major summit being held in Joburg, which will look at the city and the country beyond the World Cup.

SHOOT: Great cause. We also need a focus on 'walkable' communities and developments. Stay tuned on SHOOT for more coverage on the summit in October.

clipped from www.joburg.org.za JOBURG is to host a major environmental summit investigating the creation of liveable communities well into the 21st century. The annual convention, held under the auspices of the Institute of Environment and Recreation Management (IERM) and hosted by Joburg's City Parks, will probe environmental issues faced by the City and the rest of the country. Some 200 municipalities will be represented at the summit, to take place from 5 to 7 October in Sandton. Representatives from national, provincial and local government will be joined by officials from environmental bodies, academic institutes and other non-governmental organisations. City Parks' managing director, Luther Williamson, sees the convention as "a wonderful platform" for all role players to look closely at environmental and recreation trends. Among the members are managers responsible for processes involving public parks, nature conservation, cemeteries and crematoria, greening initiatives and urban agriculture.

JOZI BOOK FAIR coming up this week

SHOOT: Starts Saturday. I'll be there.

clipped from www.joburg.org.za AVID readers and publishers in and around Joburg will get the opportunity to go book crazy at the city's first book fair - the inaugural Jozi Book Fair takes place at Museum Africa, in Newtown on 8 and 9 August. The aim is for the fair to be an annual event, targeting small publishers, publishers of indigenous works, independent writers and publishers with a social justice agenda. Another objective is to bring together writers, publishers and literature distributors in an effort to build and promote a culture of reading in South Africa, says Lerato Phiri, the marketing manager at Khanya College. "South Africa boasts a vibrant generation of young and emerging writers, activists and publishers," says Phiri.  "Unfortunately their work is hardly ever recognised by a wider audience." The fair intends to stimulate and encourage publishing within social movements and non-governmental organisations, among and by women, and to provide information about publishing opportunities.

Nobody knows how bad the economy is - those who say they do miscalculate, and those who know aren't saying

SHOOT: When this started I said that we will see unemployment breach 10%. |Meanwhile no one was prepared to say the 'R' word. Now, the 'R' word is used frequently, but instead of it it being R = Recession it's R = Recovery. The reality is that we're going from R to D. D = Depression, or Disaster. Most people will be seeking Deliverance instead. But that;s what you get for prolonged Wishful Thinking followed by Denial.

clipped from www.economist.com AFTER ebbing steadily since the start of the year America’s monthly job losses figure abruptly jumped from 322,000 in May to 467,000 in June, deflating talk of an imminent exit from recession. Hand-wringing in Washington quickly followed. On July 5th the vice-president, Joe Biden, admitted that the White House had “misread how bad the economy was”. In January it had predicted that unemployment would peak at 9% without a fiscal stimulus and 8% with one. The $787 billion two-year stimulus is now law but unemployment stands at 9.5% and Barack Obama admits it will probably top 10%. A self-sustaining recovery needs more than just replenishing inventory and government stimulus; it requires a virtuous circle of increasing consumer spending and incomes, and there is still no evidence of that. Sales of cars remain disappointingly meagre. Consumer income is in a vice: not only are jobs and hours shrinking, but hourly pay grew at only an annualised rate of 0.7%

Should Hall be paid $100 million in order to profit from our loss?

Mr. Hall and his colleagues -- there are about 55 in the Westport office, and handfuls in London and Singapore -- specialize in a variety of hedging and arbitrage techniques.

Generally, Phibro looks for anomalies in the market and pounces, taking advantage of unusual spreads between the spot price of oil and the price of an oil futures contract.

The company, for example, often wagers that the price of oil will rise so fast during a particular period, say six months, that it can make money by storing oil in supertankers and floating it until the price goes up. (If the price rises by more than it costs to lease the tankers, he makes money.)

Other deals are more complex. Right before the first Gulf War, Phibro placed an elaborate bet that the price of oil would spike and then go down faster than others were anticipating. The company earned more than $300 million from the gamble.

"He's got great memory, great focus," says Philip Verleger, an author of books about oil markets and a friend of Mr. Hall. "He's not as arrogant as other people who make the kind of money he makes. Of course, you make that kind of money and you're going to be a little arrogant."

SHOOT: Simple answer - no. Are bankers supposed to placing bets, gambling with investments? Bring back banking the way it was first intended. To make loans available. Period.

clipped from finance.yahoo.com In a few weeks, the Treasury Department's czar of executive pay will have to answer this $100 million question: Should Andrew J. Hall get his bonus? Mr. Hall, the 58-year-old head of Phibro, a small commodities trading firm in Westport, Conn., is due for a nine-figure payday, his cut of profits from a characteristically aggressive year of bets in the oil market. That suggests that last summer, drivers paid more at the pump, at least in part, because of people like Andrew J. Hall. How do you hand $100 million to a guy who may have profited because gas hit $4 a gallon? Whatever the answer, the case of Mr. Hall highlights the hazards of mixing the public interest with capitalism at its most unbridled, and it raises basic questions of fairness. A few years ago, he bought a medieval castle in Germany from the neo-expressionist painter Georg Baselitz, and he and his wife have turned the property, said to contain roughly 150 rooms, into a private museum for their collection.

The richest companies in the world are losing big

SHOOT: 4 of the richest companies are Chinese, and 3 of the top 4, are Chinese. It's interesting to see Wal-mart on the list. Big supermarkets can't survive in a world of expensive oil. They flourish when the cost to transport supplies is low. That is no longer going to be the case in the foreseeable future. Result - the rise of small, local markets [grocers] and reverse globalisation.

clipped from www.economist.com THE market capitalisation of PetroChina may have fallen by almost half in the past year, but it remains the world’s most valuable publicly listed company. Chinese firms now occupy three of the top four slots. (The state’s large non-traded holdings are valued at market prices.) Seven of the 12 most valuable companies are either banks or oil producers. Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble have all climbed the table in the past year; their industries tend to weather recessions better than others. Market capitalisation does not necessarily tally with other measures of size. Microsoft is worth more than Royal Dutch Shell, which has nearly eight times the revenue of the software company and 10,000 more employees.

"Great Pacific Garbage Patch" to be studied

Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.

The debris zone shifts by as much as a thousand miles north and south on a seasonal basis, and drifts even farther south during periods of warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures known as El Nino, according to information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

SHOOT: The results of this study ought to be interesting. Can't imagine you'll see barnacles growing on this stuff.

clipped from www.reuters.com LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." The expedition will study how much debris -- mostly tiny plastic fragments -- is collecting in an expanse of sea known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, how that material is distributed and how it affects marine life. The debris ends up concentrated by circular, clockwise ocean currents within an oblong-shaped "convergence zone" hundreds of miles (km) across from end to end near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States. The focus of the study will be on plankton, other microorganisms, small fish and birds. "The concern is what kind of impact those plastic bits are having on the small critters on the low end of the ocean food chain," Bob Knox, deputy director of research at Scripps, said on Monday

Fat cat bankers balk at Obama's demands for common sense banking oversight

Under the plan conceived by Treasury, banking supervision would be significantly consolidated.

But Bair, whose populist tone has won allies in Congress, in her prepared remarks for the banking committee hearing, said: "Prudent risk management argues strongly against putting all your regulatory and supervisory eggs in one basket."

SHOOT: Such bullshit. One regulator sends out one clear message from one authority. Bair is talking about the risk management of an investment, not oversight. Classic mixing up of the issue. Which is strong, centralised oversight.

clipped from www.reuters.com The officials' defiance, in prepared congressional testimony obtained by Reuters, came despite a warning given to them on Friday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In private remarks punctuated with expletives, Geithner urged the regulators to end their turf battles and show support for President Barack Obama's plan, according to a person familiar with the situation on Monday. But that seemed to have little impact on John Bowman, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), an agency slated for closure under the Obama plan. "We do not see merit or wisdom in consolidating federal supervision of national and state banking charters into a single regulator," FDIC chairman Sheila Bair said in her remarks ahead of the hearing on regulatory reform. Citing people familiar with the meeting, the newspaper also said Geithner used obscenities and took an aggressive stance in his dressing down of the regulators.

Man who fatally shot wife dies

SHOOT: I can guess what they were arguing about. Money.

clipped from www.sfgate.com A man who fatally shot his wife over the weekend near San Pablo before turning the gun on himself died Monday, authorities said. Jose Benedicto Mejia, 46, was pronounced dead at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, said Jimmy Lee, Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman. Mejia and wife Magalay Iglesias, 33, had been arguing early Sunday at their home on Heather Drive in the Montalvin Manor neighborhood north of Richmond, Lee said.

The Big Crime story in Britain right now

"If someone ran out of the shop with an £8,000 pond pump I wouldn't be as bothered as it's just an object, but it is the welfare of the bird that is our concern.

"These birds are not stupid, they are like children, they need a lot of work.

SHOOT: There's even concern for the stolen bird's welfare. Now compare this story to what's happening in South Africa - ‘Check your sister’s body in the morgue’ - serial killer’ called from victim’s cellphone

clipped from www.independent.co.uk Police are hunting a brazen thief who walked into a pet shop, snatched a £1,650 Galah from its cage and stuffed it into a bag. The youth stole the 19-week-old pink and grey Australian cockatoo from under the noses of pet store staff. The theft was captured on CCTV which shows the culprit casually walking out of the Porton Pet and Aquatic Centre in Porton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, on July 25. The man, who was with an older woman and a younger boy, ripped the padlock off the cage and put the bird in a bag. They left in an old style blue or silver Renault Megane. It is not known what sex the bird is as it is too young. Gareth Allen, owner of the pet store, said: "It's a wonderful bird who was hand reared so it is like a teddy bear and completely defenceless. "These birds live for 60 to 100 years and they need a lot of care and attention which they won't get in the wrong hands. Anyone with any information is asked to contact PC Charlotte Amos at Amesbury Police on 0845 408 7000.

Health care is really sickness care, disease maintenance - and keeping people in the dark [literally]

As a result of this insidious pursuit of profit, a huge portion of the U.S. economy is now based on ripping people off, selling them things that actually harm them: Junk food, diet soda, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, etc. Vitamin D, of course, produces no real profit (since it can’t be patented), so it remains universally ignored by all the corporations that dominate health care today.

SHOOT: You ask why it is crazy to trust the authorities, to trust advertising, to trust corporations, to trust capitalism? Because profits are made from deluding people, keeping them sick and having them spend a lifetime paying for treatments.

clipped from dprogram.net Sunlight deficiency is now at epidemic levels The sunscreen industry also shares some blame in all this, as it thrives on the silly idea that sunlight is bad for children and that all kids need to be smothered in sunscreen lotions before venturing outdoors. (Of course, they never admit their own sunscreen products are filled with cancer-causing chemicals in the first place…) Above all, the medical establishment is to blame for vitamin D deficiency. Rather than teaching parents and children about the importance of vitamin D, they seem to have declared a blackout on most useful information about the nutrient, preferring instead to prescribe toxic pharmaceutical drugs to treat the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency. Osteoporosis drugs, in particular, are made virtually obsolete by vitamin D alone. That’s why you don’t see any drug companies talking about vitamin D — it would destroy osteoporosis drug sales!

Halle Berry reckons love is never forever

SHOOT: Good to see some common sense in Celebrityland. Why do you think fairy tales end at the wedding? Because that's when the fairy tale of life ends.

clipped from www.sowetan.co.za Halle Berry does not believe she will be with her partner forever. The twice-divorced actress – who has a 15- month-old daughter Nahla with model Gabriel Aubry – says her previous bad relationship experiences made her vow never to walk down the aisle again. She said: “I’m much clearer about what a relationship is, which is why I will never marry again. Gabriel and I have a great partnership and a lovely daughter. But I once was stupid enough to say, in a previous relationship, ‘I’m going to be with this person for ever,’ and realised, as I grew, that I don’t know if for ever is possible. “Gabriel and I don’t look at our relationship in terms of forever. We look at it as right here today. And today means being the best parents we can be. It’s wonderful, but neither one of us feels the need to attach ourselves to each other for life – because it may not be that.” “You think you know what love is until you have a child and discover that unconditional mother love.” – Bang

Gaming, anaemic youth suffering chronic levels of sunlight [vitamin D] deficiency

Of course, “insufficient” means “deficient” in the real world, since kids who are now labeled as “insufficient” in vitamin D are, of course, actually quite deficient in the nutrient. And keep in mind that these frighteningly common vitamin D deficiencies exist even when the accepted standards of vitamin D levels in the blood are artificially low to begin with. If you use real numbers of the vitamin D levels required for peak human performance, the truth is that as many as 90 percent of U.S. children are chronically deficient in vitamin D.

“It’s astounding,” said Michal L. Melamed of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, in a Washington Post report (source below). “At first, we couldn’t believe the numbers. I think it’s very worrisome.”

But why are American kids so deficient in vitamin D in the first place?

The answer, of course, is because kids are sunlight deficient. And that’s due to a few reasons: First, too many kids today spend most of their hours in front of computers, televisions or gaming consoles. The live almost like vampires, staying awake all night, sleeping during the day, living off the flesh of other creatures (beef jerky and hamburgers…).

Many of their parents, too, are part of the problem. Today’s moms seem terrified that their kids might actually experience “the outdoors” for more than a few moments.

SHOOT: Simple cure. Get the fuck outside and get some fucking exercise.

Btw there is a high correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and anemia [iron deficiency] in children.

clipped from dprogram.net It’s official: Vitamin D deficiency is so widespread in U.S. children that it poses a huge threat to the future health of an entire generation. A new study published in the journal Pediatrics paints a disturbing picture of vitamin D deficiency across the population of children aged 1 through 21. Three-fourths of young African American children, for example, are deficient in vitamin D. Much the same pattern holds true for Mexican American children. Even white kids, with their fairer skin and greater vitamin D production, hit the charts with 50% – 60% deficiency, depending on the age group. Of course, in classic medical doublespeak style, health researchers don’t actually call it “deficiency.” (Because that would trigger a whole new urgency to correct the problem.) Instead, they call it “vitamin D insufficiency,” while reserving the term “deficiency” for children who have virtually no vitamin D in their blood whatsoever.

22-year-old Stellenbosch student , Ruan Muller, with no underlying health problems, dies of swine flu - first in South Africa

SHOOT: And so it [the realisation] begins.

clipped from www.sowetan.co.za Health authorities have announced the death of an otherwise healthy student who tested positive for swine flu, the first death due to the virus in the country. Spokesperson for the Department of Health Fidel Hadebe said yesterday: “He died on the 28th (of July), but there had to be some testing to ensure the cause of death. It was the H1N1 influenza.” South Africa’s swine flu caseload has increased fourfold in two months, with 480 confirmed cases as of Friday. The first case in the country was reported on June 14. Western Cape health MEC Theuns Botha said the death was “unusual” as the 22-year-old student , named as Ruan Muller, had no underlying health problems. A student at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town, Muller fell ill on July 20 and went to a campus clinic for treatment. His condition did not improve and he then saw a general practitioner. Botha said the Western Cape has 42 confirmed cases of the illness.

3rd person dies of pneumonic plague - towns residents flee

SHOOT: I can hear people whining now: 'But only 3 people have died. Thousands of people die from TB,Malaria etc each day.' The danger here is in the POTENTIAL for catastrophe. The same applies to swine flu.

YAHOO: "A lot of people ran off last night when they heard that another person died of this plague. They are mostly from other provinces," said a foodseller surnamed Han who runs a stall at the Crystal Alley Market. "They headed back home with food, mineral water and their donkeys."

It was unclear if the people who headed out of the town made it past the police checkpoints. Officials at the local and provincial level were unavailable to comment.

According to the World Health Organization, pneumonic plague is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, capable of killing humans within 24 hours of infection.

clipped from news.yahoo.com BEIJING – Medical staff raced to disinfect a sealed-off town in northwestern China on Tuesday after a third person died within four days in a pneumonic plague outbreak in the farming community of 10,000, local authorities said. Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in Qinghai province after the outbreak was first detected last Thursday. The lung infection is highly contagious can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated. Medical staff are disinfecting the area and killing rats, insects and fleas that can be carriers for the bacteria, a notice on the provincial health department Web site said. Authorities are keeping close track of people who came into contact with those infected.

Have lots of money? Spend your life getting high on drugs and living in hotels

SHOOT: It's a cliche because it's so common. Elvis, Michael Jackson, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Sheen etc etc. Hats off to celebrities like Oprah and Tom Cruise and Madonna who seem to be living a drug-free [even alcohol free] life.

clipped from news.yahoo.com NEW YORK – Law enforcement officials say the son of Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas has been arrested on a drug charge at an upscale New York City hotel. Two people familiar with the investigation say 30-year-old Cameron Douglas was arrested July 28 on a methamphetamine-dealing charge at the Hotel Gansevoort (GANZ'-uh-vawt) in Manhattan. They spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Cameron Douglas has acted in movies including 2003's "It Runs in the Family," starring his father and grandfather Kirk Douglas. He also was arrested in California in 2007 on cocaine possession charges. His attorney then said the arresting officer didn't do his job properly.

Educators are the most religious of all

"Education majors are clearly safe havens for the religious," said U-M economist Miles Kimball, who co-authored the study. "Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, tend to stay in that major, and tend to become more religious by the time they graduate."

SHOOT: I find that incredibly worrying; that teachers tend to be religious, and thus 'infect' younger minds with their 'soft' manipulative leanings. And you know what they say about teachers: a boy amongst men, a man amongst boys.

clipped from insciences.org "Our results suggest that it is Postmodernism, not Science, that is the bête noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of Postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of Evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of Postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century." The authors theorize that three powerful streams of thought interact with choice of college majors to amplify the impact on religiosity. These are science, developmentalism (the belief in progress), and postmodernism (the belief that everything is relative).

The journey humanity took to populate Earth

SHOOT: I wouldn't mind retracing this trek, preferably on a mountain bike.

clipped from www.newscientist.com