Hi, I'm Meredith Baxter and I'm a lesbian

Former "Family Ties" star Meredith Baxter has revealed she is a lesbian.

Meredith, who starred as Michael J. Fox's mother on the hit '80s television show, confirmed the news to Matt Lauer on Wednesday's "Today."

SHOOT: Jeepers, what if I'm gay? Because my last relationship - of 5 years - didn't work out? Meanwhile how about this list of celebrity lesbian couples: Tracy Chapman + Alice Walker, Ellen Degeneres + Anne Heche and Anne Heche + Lindsey Buckingham. By the way Anne is now divorced, living with James Tupper. In Anne's case she suffered sexual abuse from her father as a child. More on Anne here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Heche

clipped from omg.yahoo.com "I guess I wanted to... say that I'm a lesbian," Meredith revealed on the NBC morning program. "It was a later-in-life recognition of that fact." Meredith, 62, has been living life as a lesbian for seven years and confirmed to Matt that she has been involved in a relationship for four years with contractor Nancy Locke. But it was only after becoming involved with another woman that Meredith realized why her three marriages to men didn't work out. "I got involved with someone I never expected to get involved with and it was that kind of awakening and I never fought it because it was like, 'Oh! I understand why I had the issues I had early in my life,'" Meredith said. "I had a great deal of difficulty connecting with men in relationships... Sometimes, I assumed I was a bad picker, which I was indeed, but I also was involved with people who made me think, 'Oh, they're the problem,' because there were problems with the people I chose. It never occurred to me to think, 'Oh, it's me.'"

“Hey, it’s, uh, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone. My wife went through my phone. And, uh, may be calling you."

Woods has been subjected to more media headlines during the last week than when he first won the Masters in 1997 and set off the first wave of Tigermania. He has spoken only three times through his Web site, although this was his longest posting.

“Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means,” Woods said.

SHOOT: So is it fair that you only get good press Tiger? It's a double edged sword. I find it incredible how naive public figures are about indulging in private activities and thinking they have a right to do this? Public figures are held in esteem by large audiences, and so are more accountable to good behaviour. KOO KOO.

clipped from sports.yahoo.com “I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart,” he said. “I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves,” Woods said. “For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology.” The cocktail waitress, Jaimee Grubbs, told the magazine she met Woods at a Las Vegas nightclub the week after the 2007 Masters—two months before Woods’ wife, Elin, gave birth to their first child. Grubbs claims to have proof in 300 text messages. About three hours before Woods’ statement, the magazine published what it said was a voicemail—provided by Grubbs—that Woods left on her phone on Nov. 24, three days before his middle-of-the-night car crash outside his home in Florida.

Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket

Tracy Chapman - New Beginning

Tracy Chapman — The Promise lyrics

If you wait for me
Then I'll come for you
Although I've traveled far
I always hold a place for you in my heart

If you think of me
If you miss me once in awhile
Then I'll return to you
I'll return and fill that space in your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting

If you dream of me
Like I dream of you
In a place that's warm and dark
In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
If you'll be waiting

I've longed for you
And I have desired
To see your face your smile
To be with you wherever you are

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I'll find my way back to you
Please say you'll be waiting

Together again
It would feel so good to be
In your arms
Where all my journeys end
If you can make a promise
If it's one that you can keep
I vow to come for you
If you wait for me

And say you'll hold
A place for me
In your heart.

The “all-clear” siren sounding across global markets

SHOOT: Gold is breaking records. The dollar is plumbing the depths. Oil is nudging $80 again. "All-clear"? The markets are full of shit.

clipped from www.ft.com 21:30 GMT: The “all-clear” siren sounded across global markets on Tuesday, encouraging traders to scurry from their bolt-holes and resume playing with riskier assets. Gold hit a fresh high above $1,200, equities powered ahead and industrial commodities found favour as the “risk on” switch was flicked. As has so often been the case in recent months, it was a downward lurch in the dollar that helped convince investors normal service had been resumed following the brief retreat caused by the crisis in Dubai. Oil rose 1.1 per cent to $78.13, adding to gains of the previous session following news that a UK yacht crew had been detained by the Iranian authorities. News that Dubai World said it had begun “constructive” talks about the restructuring of its debt also gave a lift to stockmarkets – though it could not stop the Dubai market from plunging for a second day.

The sexiest woman in a bikini today is...

SHOOT: Bar Rafaeli

Very natural appearance.

Freckles to match. Lovely proportions all round.

It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

Change your own reality - by Nick van der Leek

This week I'm going to offer some practical advice. If you're feeling overwhelmed emotionally, and need to manage your stress, what you need to do is recognise the parent/child construct in your own situation. The parent part of you - your inner you - needs to step forward. And the parent has got to say: "TIMEOUT".

It should be mentioned here that intuition is not a feeling. It's a creative thinking style. It's very visual, but it's thinking, not feeling. Intuition is valuable and insightful. What we're aiming to address here is that treadmill of feeling that traps you in a paradigm where you find you can't do anything, you cannot complete tasks, discipline, and willpower and particularly follow-through, are sadly lacking. As alluded to above, the first step is to recognise that this self-defeating process is underway, and to call a timeout on yourself.

That may not be enough but it is the first step. The next step brings about a psysiological response, which is what you're yearning for.

You want to feel differently, and if possible, just have a break from the episode you're in. Well, here's the answer.

What you do after taking the mental decision to have a timeout, is that you find a space where you can close your eyes. Close your eyes and move your eyes behind your closed lids from left to right, whilst looking in the direction of your jaw. Make approximately 24 swings [that's 24 in one direction, 48 pendulums in total]. And count them. You'll notice that very quickly your 'feeling-state' dissipates. Why? You have tricked your self into an REM state. Your brain then disconnects the feeling-aspect and allows you into a calm state of processing only. Try it. It works.

A third suggestion is that you project your thoughts, negativities, scenarios onto a best friend. Imagine that they have your thoughts, responses, ideas, actions. You will quickly see that these impressions are inappropriate, in fact not good enough if you value or respect yourself. It is easy to this when you project it onto another person.

What should then happen is that you begin to reject your self-imposed asylum, your ineffective feeling-thought paradigm. You then transition to performance, actions. This is how you change your own reality.

Demjanjuk - 'Ivan the terrible ' - is a hypochondriac

Demjanjuk, who changed his name from Ivan after moving to the United States after World War II, was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 for being "Ivan the Terrible", a sadistic Nazi guard at another camp, Treblinka.

SHOOT: Ironic that someone accused of murdering almost 30 000 exagerates his own condition in order to be let off the hook - I guess on the grounds of compassion. My guess is this dude is an expert at lying to others, and himself. How else could he live with himself?

clipped from news.yahoo.com On Monday, while at one point he was lying flat on the stretcher covered head-to-toe in a white blanket, he later was seen laughing and joking after the day's hearing. His behaviour angered many of the elderly Holocaust survivors, some of whom made it out of Sobibor, who had come to Munich to testify in the trial either as co-plaintiffs or as witnesses. None, however, can place Demjanjuk at the camp. "I am sure he is faking his condition," said Thomas Blatt, an 82-year-old Sobibor survivor, originally from Germany, now living in Los Angeles. The family of the 89-year-old Demjanjuk, who denies ever being at Sobibor, says he suffers from leukaemia and other illnesses and that he will probably not survive the trial. But medical experts cast doubt on how ill Demjanjuk is and on Monday again told the court he was well enough to be tried. Proceedings are already limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.

Tiger's wife has kittens: Police suspect Nordegren couldn't see the Woods for the tees

Florida Highway Patrol is basing its probable-cause claim on Nordegren's statement that she went looking for Woods in a golf cart and smashed one of his car's windows with a golf club to haul him out after the crash.

But she told police on the scene a different story, omitting the golf cart.

SHOOT: Life lesson: Blondes do not like to be cheated on, especially when they're cheated on by brunettes. Woods could lose many of his sponsorships and endorsements over this.

clipped from www.timeslive.co.za Celebrity website TMZ reported that the traffic authorities in the US state want to establish whether Woods' injuries were consistent with a car crash or with domestic violence. This follows reports by the website that Woods' wife, former Swedish model Elin Nordegren, attacked him and cut his lip shortly before he fled their Florida mansion in the early hours of Friday morning and crashed his car into a fire hydrant and a neighbour's tree. And if Nordegren is found to have beaten her husband, she could be arrested for domestic violence. Anther bit of evidence that could sway a judge is that Woods told a friend that he was on prescription pain medication at the time, indicating that he might have been driving under the influence of a drug. Hours after his accident on Friday, Woods told a friend on the phone that he wanted to buy a "Kobe special" - also known as "a house on a finger" - for his wife.

Christian Clemmons who raped a child, murdered four police officers, has been shot dead

SHOOT: It's amazing how Christianity appears to fuel the madness these criminals have. Religion underlies many crimes like these, where the perpetrators say 'God told me to do it' or rationalise that they can't get into much Earthly trouble if the afterlife is secured. Sickening.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse. Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress. "The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," a Pierce County sheriff's report said. "The only motive that we have is he decided he was going to go kill police officers," Troyer said. He said Clemmons talked the night before the shooting about killing a group of cops and watching the news. Clemmons was described as increasingly erratic in the past few months and had been arrested earlier this year on charges that he punched a sheriff's deputy in the face.

Riptide

Duran Duran

black wonderful life remix

Eddie Brickell - Circle

Dear God (1988)

crossroad

Consumers now are paying about $1 billion a day for gasoline, about $300 million more a day for gasoline than they did a year ago

Crude prices have been trading between $75 and $82 a barrel for the past month or so. Prices hit $33.87 a barrel on Dec. 19.
The rapid rise in prices is worse for consumers this time, however. Before prices doubled in early 2000, a barrel of crude cost about $10.

SHOOT: Now any rises in energy bite deeply into what little savings consumers have left to hold onto. These energy costs are likely to worsen even if the economy doesn't expand. Why? Because ultimately aggregate supply is contracting [Sorry.]

clipped from finance.yahoo.com The gap between what drivers are paying for gasoline compared with a year ago is widening and figures to get worse between now and the end of the year. Prices at the pump were $2.629 a gallon on Monday, 80.4 cents more a gallon than a year ago, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services. That is about $40 more a month for a typical motorist. Gasoline prices bottomed near $1.61 during the last few days of 2008 as the recession took hold, demand for fuel crumbled and the stock markets tumbled. Consumers now are paying about $1 billion a day for gasoline, about $300 million more a day for gasoline than they did a year ago. And in December, for the first time in about 10 years, oil prices are expected to be twice what they were a year ago, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for OPIS. Crude prices have been trading between $75 and $82 a barrel for the past month or so. Prices hit $33.87 a barrel on Dec. 19.

Why

Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food
to feed the world
Why when there're so many of us
Are there people still alone
Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they're aimed to kill
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home?

Love is hate
War is peace
No is yes
we're all free
But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
Amidst all these questions
and contradictions
There're some who seek the truth
But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
When the blind remove their blinders
And the speechless speak the truth

What Woods needs to do to get out of the woods

SHOOT: Write these down in case you need them one day. Oh wait, you're not a celeb. What's that? You're married? Okay then.

clipped from sports.yahoo.com So here are three suggestions for Woods: 1. Don't delay. Hold your scheduled press conference Tuesday to kick off the Chevron World Challenge, which, since it benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation among other charities, makes it the perfect backdrop. Without going into every private detail, provide a sense of what led to the collision. Give an explanation, take a couple questions, and then move on to previewing the tournament and how it will benefit the work of your foundation. 2. If you have something to own up to, do it completely and you will be forgiven. Just ask Kobe Bryant. 3. If not, disarm the skeptics with your sense of humor. Gary Peterson of the Contra Costa Times had a suggestion: Say you were excited about a Black Friday sale and got carried away. Then give a sincere explanation. Anything that actually addresses the incident will bring Woods one step closer to putting it behind him. Otherwise, he better get used to seeing the TMZ.com van hanging around his subdivision.

Dubai debtstorm obscures their gleaming skyscrapers

Dubai is not yet a gateway to the financial world. But it can open the door to all sorts of trouble in its neighbourhood.

SHOOT: I predict it will, but Dubai is not alone in its financial mischief, hence the systemic threat is deeper and wider and more profound than most imagine. [Sorry].

clipped from www.economist.com More fundamentally, Dubai’s wobble raised the spectre of a sovereign default. Dubai’s government is not technically on the hook for Nakheel’s debts. But the government’s hesitation in saving its national champions nonetheless demonstrates its fiscal limits. These wider fears are easy to exaggerate. Despite its self-aggrandisement, Dubai is not yet important enough to bring down the global financial system. Its troubles moved markets last week partly because so many traders were on holiday. Other investors were looking for cues to sell after the long rally in markets since the spring. By Monday November 30th, the principal stock indices were shaking off the dust and venturing upwards again. But the damage Dubai has done to itself is no passing storm. An emirate that has spent so much money and hired so many flaks to cultivate its image and inspire confidence saw much of that work undone in a single 200-word statement announcing the debt standstill.

Swine Flu deaths now beyond 10 000 mark, with over 1.28 million confirmed infections

SHOOT: Latest news is a spike in deaths in Turkey - 195. The figure was 161 4 days ago. 35% of the dead in Turkey were people below the age of 50. Still no news out of Africa. Either no one is dying or no one cares or the numbers would cancel something known as the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

One in three South African children orphaned

SHOOT: Doesn't say much for the potential of this country to emerge as a crime-free nation.

clipped from www.mg.co.za "Estimates show that by 2015, some 5 700 000 or 32% of all children in South Africa would have lost one or both parents due to HIV/Aids," said Gail Eddy, a researcher at the Institute of Race Relations. In 2008 there were 1,5-million Aids orphans according to the country's health department. "What exacerbates the lack of support for these children, is that South Africa has a shortage of social workers who are responsible for identifying vulnerable children and providing them with the necessary support," she said. Nearly 495 000 Aids orphans are in foster care, but the government is encouraging more adoptions so orphans can have permanent families. But only a tiny fraction of the Aids orphans, about 1 900, were adopted by South Africans last year, a drop of nearly 13% from the previous year.

Climate Change - should dissent be tolerated?

SHOOT: I disagree with the Economist. The measures needed to combat climate change are the same measures required to redefine economics and what is sustainable. Any chit chat that questions whether or why we should do this is part of the delusional consumer mindset that belongs to a defunct era.

ECONOMIST: Scientific dissent should be silenced. It can, it is true, do harm. When AIDS first reared its ugly head, no one knew what caused it. Gradually, the virus responsible was isolated, identified and then attacked successfully with drugs designed specifically to inhibit its reproduction. A few scientists, though, refused to accept the evidence, and some politicians used their arguments to justify inaction. Since one of those politicians was Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, hundreds of thousands who might have been saved by an anti-AIDS policy grounded in scientific reality died as a result of his policies.

clipped from www.economist.com This newspaper believes that global warming is a serious threat, and that the world needs to take steps to try to avert it. That is the job of the politicians. But we do not believe that climate change is a certainty. There are no certainties in science. Prevailing theories must be constantly tested against evidence, and refined, and more evidence collected, and the theories tested again. That is the job of the scientists. When they stop questioning orthodoxy, mankind will have given up the search for truth. The sceptics should not be silenced.

Warning finger waved in face of World number one Serena Williams

SHOOT: The linesmen and women need to go onto a course regarding foot faults and such. But wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Imagine muscular Serena shoving a ball down your throat? OUCH! In the picture below it looks like she could easily wrestle everyone else to the ground with one arm tied behind her back.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Trailing 4-6 5-6 15-30, Williams launched into a second serve but the baseline lineswoman called her for a foot-fault, meaning the American had served a double-fault to go match point down. Astounded by the verdict, Williams launched into an expletive-laced rant at the official. She waved her racket in the lineswoman's direction and then shook a ball in her clenched fist as she threatened to "shove it down" her throat. Having already received a warning earlier in the match for smashing a racket, Williams was handed an automatic point penalty for a second violation which abruptly ended the match, giving Clijsters a 6-4 7-5 victory. Organisers fined her $10,500, the biggest given to a female player since records began in 1990, at the end of the tournament for her unsportsmanlike behavior. Williams's $175,000 fine includes the $10,500 penalty she has already received.

'Oasis' is 5 times the size of Titanic

SHOOT: You know what they say. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to sink. And then there's, what Kunstler refers to as 'the much-repeated aphorism [that] has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse.' There you have it.

clipped from www.economist.com ON NOVEMBER 30th champagne will be broken over the bow of the world's largest cruise ship. At 225,000 gross tonnes, Oasis of the Seas, one of two identical ships recently built for Royal Caribbean cruises, is 70,000 tonnes more and 21 metres longer than the previous record holder, Freedom of the Seas. By contrast, the Titanic, built by White Star Line nearly a century ago and at the time the largest steam ship ever, measured 269 metres and was less than a fifth of the size of today’s behemoths. The new ship cost Royal Caribbean around $1 billion and has 20 restaurants, 17 bars and lounges, a walk through mock-up of New York’s Central Park and two rock-climbing walls. The ships were planned long before the global downturn: it remains to be seen whether passenger demand for cruise ships will remain strong.

Kunstler: civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse

JK: The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.

SHOOT: I was speaking to a banking buddy who told me that if the dollar is destroyed, the world economy is destroyed. I told him there is no difference between the US economy printing money and the Zimbabwean economy printing money. He said the US is too big to fail - China needs them. But what if China turns to gold as a currency? What if currencies no longer exist because they are no longer any indication of real value?

clipped from kunstler.com  The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves. Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible.  This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long. The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers.  Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"?

Normal Rockwell never referred to himself as an artist, but as an illustrator

SHOOT: Fascinating. Something I'd like to do.

clipped from www.npr.org Who can forget the vulnerable childhood experience of going to the doctor? I remember sitting nervously on that white butcher paper, feeling like a particularly choice deli cut, and staring at a painting of a little boy pulling his pants down for a shot -- a foreboding image of what might be in store. That image, a Norman Rockwell illustration, stuck with me for years. And that's the nature of Rockwell's legacy: his work is everywhere, and has become an indelible part of American culture. So, as someone who looks at photos all day, imagine my shock when I saw a photograph of the exact doctor's office scene in that painting. The Runaway, 1958, is an example of Rockwell's photorealism. (Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust) A new book, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, reveals Rockwell's use of photographs in his illustrative process.