Mildred Loving-the living woman who challenged the law

Mildred Loving, a black woman married a White man in 1958 in Washington DC. When they went home to Virginia where they have lived since they were kids, they were arrested. There was a ban of interracial marriages so that the marriage was deemed null and void and therefore they were being arrested for cohabiting as man and wife.

Her husband preferred to leave Virginia rather than divorce or leave Mildred. They left Virginia together to avoid jail time and settled in Washington DC.

Mildred changed history by challenging the law. She decided to fight for their right. She wrote Robert F. Kennedy who referred the case to the ACLU. In 1967, the Supreme Court lifted the interracial marriage ban nationwide.

Her husband died in 1975 due to car accident. Mildred Loving died last May 4, 2008 to join her husband where race is not a matter of discrimination for loving couples.

When Jessop was a member of the sect, it was centered in Colorado City, Ariz., on the Utah border. The 1,700-acre Texas compound was built after she left. The sect’s leader, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last September after being found guilty of two counts of first-degree accomplice rape for sanctioning the forced marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

The 40-year-old Jessop was 18 when she was forced to marry Merril Jessop, who is said to have taken over leadership of the sect when Jeffs went to prison. Merril Jessop was 50 at the time of the marriage and had three other wives. She said from what she has heard and read, the sect has become even more restrictive since moving to Texas.

She has written a book about her experience entitled “Escape,” and in it, she talks about being totally cut off from the world and not being allowed to watch television or read newspapers or magazines.

“Everything you did was monitored and controlled and everybody reported on everyone else,” she said. “It was a police state. You were not allowed to make decisions in your life. I had no power over my life or the lives of my children. It was a terrible way to live.”

The alleged control began in infancy.

Julie Andrews and her Early Life

Julie Andrews is one of my favorite movie celebrities ever since I saw her in Sound of Music. I like her beautiful voice too which she lost due to operation.

At age 72 and married for 38 years with equally famous director of Pink Panther Series, Breakfast at Tiffany's and other movies, blake Edwards, she found the time to write her life story or ealier years.

She started her show business career at age nine with her pianist mother who was in the vaudeville act. Her name was Julia Elizabeth Wells, the last name , he got from her stepfather who she thought was her real father.

Her father was Ted Andrews who was also a singer-guitarist from Canada.
Both her biological parents became alcoholic.

The title of her autobiography is Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.”

The First Youngest Female professor

Alia Sabur started teaching at 18 and is the youngest college professor in history.
She started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old and graduated elementary at age 5.

She went to college at age 10 and graduated at age 14 earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

She pursued her M.S. and Ph.D in materials science and engineering.

Sabur decided to teach so that three days before her 19th birthday, she became a professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, Korea.

This distinction made her the youngest college professor in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, beating the previous record held by Colin Maclaurin in 1717.

Maclaurin was a student of physicist Isaac Newton. Sabur said she is merely gravitating toward putting what she has learned to good use.

Before applying at the university, she has taken n up teaching math and physics courses at Southern University in New Orleans.

source: msnc

Cleaning your house and your mind

During the time that i was between jobs, I stayed at home getting bored every day as I browsed and applied for vacancies that I could find in the craigslist or monster.com

It was during this time that I decided to clean the house, room for room.

I started with the kitchen. I discovered that my ref was colored pearl white and not peach. hehehe.

I scrubbed it so hard that it sparkled and smelled pine.

While doing this chore, I forgot my anxiety of not having a job.

I cleaned next the stove. The greases and the hardened food crumbs that accumulated under the stove bid good-bye.

By the time I finished the whole house, i felt tired but was happy.

This study confirms what I observed when I made the general house cleaning.

Working up a sweat while performing household chores may not just improve the cleanliness of your home, but your mental health too, a survey suggests.

Just 20 minutes of sustained exercise a week - from cleaning to jogging - can impact upon depression, the British Journal of Sports Medicine study found.

The more strenuous and frequent the activity, the greater the effect.

University College London researchers looked at a survey of 20,000 people on weekly exercise and state of mind.

Forgiveness

The hardest thing to do is to forgive.

If the person who hurt you does not even apologize or ask forgiveness, does forgiving him means that you are condoning his behavior.

If the person ignores your feeling of being hurt, does forgiving him means that you are a sucker?

The answer is no.

To become successful of easing the pain, we should be like children who in their moment of anger to their playmate swore that he would not speak to him the rest of his life.

The feeling does not last longer than an hour and the playmates are happily sharing their toys. There are no long discourses. There is no harboring anger in the hearts.

To be able to forgive, one should forget the past. Holding grudge for along time makes a person suffer emotionally.

The problem sometimes is that the person does not even know why she is angry. She thinks of so many reasons and come up with a list of small and big things that made her resent a person.

Where did the time go?

Women today who are juggling their two roles--career and motherhood feel that they are spending more than 24 hours a day.

Little do they realize that there are a lot of idle time during these hours--from getting off in the morning and retiring to bed in the evening.

Surveys conducted showed that the reason why these women are on the impression that time is wasted is because, they do not know how to manage their time and therefore that do not know where it is mostly spent.

When I was in the elementary, a teacher taught us how to manage the time by keeping a journal.

For example, we were asked to write the activities that we do first thing in the morning and how much hours or minutes are spent for each activity.

Once, we see the actual hours spent for a particular activty, we were instructed to find out what activity we tend to spend more time and if it is really needed.

In that way, we can reduce the time and add that to an acitivity which we think needs more time for us to effective accomplish it during a time frame.

In this exercise, we are adviced not to be obsessive about following the schedule to the last minute or seconds.

The objective is to be able to enjoy our time as well as use them more efficiently.

Love Your Feet

I just talked with my best lady friend of mine. She was in the hospital for infected wound on her foot. The doctor tested her for diabetes because she complained that the wound was not responding to antibiotics.

Several years ago, a friend of my mother convinced me to have a pedicure. I was afraid that she may not be able to get all the ingrown nails and my toes might get infected.

A day after the pedicure, I got pus in my toe.

I like the tattood feet in the picture. It is henna. An Indian friend of mine gave me the henna and also some jewelries for the feet. Another friend cautioned me of using the anklets. He said that there are several kinds of these which tell what kind of a woman is wearing that kind of feet jewelry.

Hair Loss

Androgenic alopecia is the most common cause for hair loss for both men and women.

There are other causes of hair loss.

Alopecia Areata

The hair falls for unknown reason. It does not result to complete baldness--only a smooth patch about the size of a coin.

Childbirth

My mother used to explain the hair loss during pregnancy and childbirth to the baby getting most of the nutrition supposed to be for the mother.

The loss of hair may last up to six months after delivery.

High Fever and`severe infection


The loss of hair is temporary.

Lack of Protein

Diets that limit protein intake may cause hair loss. Not until, the person gets adequate protein will the problem be solved.

Medications

There are prescription and over-the-counter medications that may cause falling of hair. These medications include those four gouts, hypertension, depression, arhritis and heart.

Cancer treatments

The person may lose 90 per cent of scalp hair. It is going to grow back when the treatment is over.

Self-Confidence

Many women are not aware that they are suffering from lack of self-confidence.

It is a question of the women's regard of themselves. Is it confidence or cockiness?

Are you the kind of woman who is obsessed with your faults and mistakes that you hate yourself for them?

Are you the kind of woman who does not take risk?

Are you the kind of woman who define success as achievement only?

Are you kind of a woman who does not voice her opinion?

Are you the kind of a woman who rationalizes for everything that you do?

Are you the kind of woman who avoids challenges?

Then face the mirror and aks yourself if you have self-confidence. I am sure that the woman in the mirror will not able to answer the question.

Woman in SAudi Arabia accused of being a witch

The case has been decided by the court that Fauza Falih should die by execution.
She was accused of being a witch by the man who blamed her for his impotence.

It is only King Abdullah who can stop the execution.

The life of this illiterate woman depends on the kindness of the King.

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

Stress Management 4-Speak Up

One of the stressors that can get the person down is the pent-up feeling.

The intention of keeping quiet may be noble , that is to avoid hurting one's feelings but the tension or the damage that it creates to oneself may lead one's self-destruction.

When I an faced with this predicament, I try to look for someone who can do the talking for me; a neutral party. if it still does not work, I will do something to keep distance or possible get away from the people in order to avoid further aggravation.

It is different when a person is the introvert type who can not even talk to the boss to ask for a raise.

If she deserves to get the raise, one should build the confidence by preparing for the planned talk with the boss.

It helps a lot to prepare mentally and physically for this particular moment when the future is uncertain as to the reaction and decision of the top management.

Handling Stress Part 3-Walk

People's sedentary lifestyle due to work and family demands causes the lack of exercise.

This add ups to the toxic substance in the body that contributes as stressors.

When I am faced with a workload which will require longer time to finish, I allow myself to be free for a few minutes. I walk outside.

I forget the task that awaits me. I take note of the people, places and things that I see outside which usually are invisible when I am in a hurry coming to the office.

Then I appreciate the flowers if I see one, the people who smile, the people who walk like they are enjoying life.

When I`go back to my desk, I feel refreshed. My mind is clear and my body is ready to work.

Try it.

Handling Stress Part 2-Control Your environment

There are people who are easily stressed out just the thought of finishing all her to do lists.

Stress can be minimized by analysing what are really doable and what are just reminders what to do in your to do list.

You should remind yourself that your available time may not be enough to do everything.

It will help if you convince yourself that you are no superman to finish everything.

Some people would not take a break because they believe that their momentum will be broken if they do so. Working non-stop however builds up the stress that at the end, the work is not finished since the person has already burned out.

When people get overwhelmed, they can not function very well.

It helps to breathe, pause and relax before continuing to the next activity.

Handling Stress PART 1-People in your neighborhood

The best thing to handle stress is to avoid it even though it can not be totally eliminated.

There are stresses that can be avoided.

Some people can contribute to your stress. There are these people who call you when they're depressed to unburden their woes.

There are also these people who do nothing but ask for favors all the time that when you hear the voice at the other end of line, your stress builds up.

There are people who are fond of argument. From a friendly conversation, they end up
arguing just so they can convince the other person to believe.

If you are dealing with these people everyday, try making excuses not to see or talk to them as much as possible.

Coffee Helps Older Women Ward off Mental Decline

This is a good news for senior women who are afraid to suffer dementia.

Coffee 'protects female memory'
Caffeine may help older women ward off mental decline, research suggests.

French researchers compared women aged 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee per day with those who drank one cup or less per day.

Those who drank more caffeine showed less decline in memory tests over a four year period.

The study, published in the journal Neurology, raises the possibility that caffeine may even protect against the development of dementia.


The results held up even after factors such as education, high blood pressure and disease were taken into account.

Caffeine is a known psychostimulant, but this study appears to suggest its effects may be more profound.

However, lead researcher Dr Karen Ritchie of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research warned against jumping to premature conclusions.

She said: "While we have some ideas as to how this works biologically, we need to have a better understanding of how caffeine affects the brain before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive decline.

"But the results are interesting - caffeine use is already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for cognitive decline, and it requires a relatively small amount for a beneficial effect."

The study, which involved 7,000 women, did not find that caffeine consumers had lower rates of dementia.

Dr Ritchie said: "We really need a longer study to look at whether caffeine prevents dementia; it might be that caffeine could slow the dementia process rather than preventing it."

She said it was not clear why the protective effect did not seem to apply to men.

"Women may be more sensitive to the effects of caffeine. Their bodies may react differently to the stimulant, or they may metabolize caffeine differently."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said that with no cure for Alzheimer's disease yet available, research into possible protective factors was important, particularly as the disease is expected to become more common.

She said: "This study does not suggest that caffeine actually lowers rates of dementia in women, but since memory seems improved, it may be that it is slowing it down.

"However, research over a much longer period is still needed to establish fully what the affects of caffeine are in both men and women and whether it could reduce a person's risk of dementia or slow down its progress."

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said drinking coffee and tea had both been tipped as possible ways of delaying the onset of dementia.

However, she said: "These types of studies are complex because coffee and tea drinking can be linked to so many other social and life style factors."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Study shows that Coffee protect women against age-related memory decline

A study conducted among 7,000 men and women in France showed that older women can prevent age-related memory decline by drinking more coffee.

This is the excerpt of the news from Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day helped protect older women against some age-related memory decline, French researchers said on Monday, giving women more reason to love the world's most popular stimulant.

Men did not enjoy the same benefit, they said.

"The more coffee one drank, the better the effects seemed to be on (women's) memory functioning in particular," said Karen Ritchie at the French National Institute of Medical Research, whose work appears in the journal Neurology.

The researchers followed more than 7,000 men and women in three French cities, checking their health and mental function and asking them about their current and past eating and drinking habits, their friends, and their daily activities.

They used this information to sort out the specific role caffeine played in these women's lives.

They found that women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day, or its caffeine equivalent in tea, retained more of their verbal and -- to a lesser extent -- visual memories over four years.

menstrual+cycle,women,menopause,hormones

Smoking may cause Early menopause

Smoking can cause early menopause or death. Take your pick.


NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who smoke are more likely to begin menopause before the age of 45 years, which puts them at increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease, Norwegian researchers report.

Among a group of 2,123 women 59 to 60 years old, those who currently smoked were 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone early menopause, Dr. Thea F. Mikkelsen of the University of Oslo and her colleagues found. For the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was nearly doubled.

However, women who were smokers, but quit at least 10 years before menopause, were substantially less likely than current smokers to have stopped menstruating before age 45.

There is evidence that smoking later in life makes a woman more likely to have early menopause, while smokers who quit before middle age may not be affected, Mikkelsen and her team note in the online journal BMC Public Health. They investigated the relationship further and determined if exposure to second-hand smoke might also influence the timing of menopause.

The researchers found that nearly 10 percent of the women went through menopause before age 45. About 25 percent were current smokers, 28.7 percent were ex-smokers and 35.2 percent reported current passive exposure to smoke.

As mentioned, the current smokers were 59 percent more likely to have reached menopause before age 45, while early menopause was nearly twice as common among the women who smoked the most.

But women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through menopause early.

Compared with married women, widows were also at increased risk of early menopause, as were women who said they were in poor health. More educated women were less likely to go into menopause early, but they were also less likely to be smokers.

High social participation also cut early menopause risk. The researchers found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.

"The earlier a woman stops smoking," Mikkelsen and her team conclude, "the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause."

SOURCE: BMC Public Health, July 7, 2007.


menstrual+cycle,women,menopause,hormones

WOMEN

This is an e-mail forwared to me by Bayi.

They smile when they want to scream.
They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy
and laugh when they are nervous.


They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up against injustice.
They don't take "no" for an answer
when they believe there is a better solution.



They go without new shoes
so their children can have them.
They go to the doctor
with a frightened friend.


They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel
and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear
about a birth or a new marriage.


Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They have sorrow at the loss of a family member,
yet they are strong when they think
there is no strength left.

They know that a hug
and a kiss
can heal a broken heart.


Women come in all sizes,
in all colors and shapes.
They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you
to show how much they care about you.

The heart of a woman is what makes the world spin!
Women do more than just give birth.
They bring joy and hope.
They give compassion and ideals.
They give moral support to their family and friends.


Women have a lot to say and a lot to give.
=====

women,men





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Men Talk More than Women-Study said

This article from SF Gate debunked the myth that women talk more than men.

Forget Chatty Cathy -- let's talk about Chatty Charlie.

Men, it turns out, talk just as much as women.

Sure, maybe guys talk more about cars and sports and the new iPhone, and women talk about their feelings, but at the end of the day, each sex uses an average 16,000 words a day, say researchers who studied the conversational habits of 396 men and women for six years.

"I was a little surprised there wasn't any gender influence, because this stereotype of women talking more is such a powerful, popular idea," said Richard Slatcher, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the study. "But we were able to directly test the notion, and it's totally unfounded."

The study, results of which were published today in the journal Science, debunks an age-old assumption that women aren't just the fairer sex, they're the chattier one, too. Tony Bennett sang about it in "Girl Talk" in the 1960s: "The weaker sex, the 'speaker' sex we mortal males behold, but though we joke, we wouldn't trade you for a ton of gold."

The stereotype is so pervasive that even scientists have long assumed that women talk more, and they incorporated that assumption in psychological gender profiles.

When UCSF psychiatrist Louann Brizendine published "The Female Brain" last year, one statistic in particular jumped off the pages and became the main talking point among radio-show hosts and Internet bloggers -- women, Brizendine wrote, use an average of 20,000 words a day; men use only 7,000.

Brizendine ended up taking out that detail after the first printing -- she's on the 13th now -- when she couldn't back it up, but the number has stuck with popular culture. Brizendine said she's happy to see it officially disproved.

"My book is really more about hormones, and that one line has been taken out of context. It's fascinating," she said. "Anytime you talk about sex differences, it's controversial. But the bottom line is, there are more similarities than differences between men and women."

The important question now, she said, is how the stereotype started in the first place.

Psychologists don't know exactly where the myth came from, but Brizendine speculates it probably took hold in the 1950s or so, when men worked the 9-to-5 jobs and women stayed home with the kids. At the end of the day, men would come home to wives who wanted to talk about the children, the house and finances -- basically, what felt like a lot of nagging, said Brizendine.

The stereotype has been perpetuated in modern days by the idea that women tend to be more open to talking about their feelings, which just makes men clam up during emotional discussions, said Matthias Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the study.

"The woman wanting to talk about a problem suddenly becomes 'women always want to talk, and men never want to talk,' " Mehl said.

Or, to put a slightly different spin on it, "maybe the lack of male desire to listen to women is why the myth has persisted," Brizendine said. It might not just be men who are frustrated, she said.

Because conversations about relationships are often emotionally charged and intense, they take on more importance, as far as presumed word counts go, than they deserve, Mehl said.

"Because they feel so important, people overgeneralize from these conversations" and assume women are the ones doing the talking, Mehl said.

Mehl's study is not the first to analyze how much men and women talk, and previous studies have also suggested that there isn't much difference between the sexes. But earlier studies almost always recorded people in unnatural settings -- sitting in a lab having a conversation, for example, when everyone knew scientists were listening.

The new study used audio clips from university students who agreed to be recorded for several days sometime between 1998 and 2004. The recording equipment amounted to mini-recorders and lapel microphones designed for studies that require listening to natural language use. The devices would turn on automatically for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, and the subjects could not control -- and did not know -- when the equipment was turned on or off.

Researchers then transcribed the snippets of conversation, counted the words used and extrapolated from that number to get an idea of how many words each person used in a day.

There are some potential drawbacks to the study, namely that because it used only university students, it might not apply perfectly to men and women of all age groups and education levels. But Mehl said if there were important biological differences between men and women's verbosity, they would have registered at least somewhat in the study.

As it was, women spoke on average about 546 more words each day than men, but that number was found to be not statistically significant.

Based on the study results, some stereotypes about conversational habits seemed to hold true, Mehl said. Researchers didn't actually count the types of words people used, but he said men tended to talk more about sports and technology and women about their feelings.

Previous studies have noted that women use more emotionally expressive language and describe things in relational terms -- they use more pronouns, for example, said Slatcher. Men talk about more concrete things, he said.

Montira Warran of San Francisco said she's sure Slatcher's study is very scientific, but in her family, the women definitely out-talked the men. But, she added, she comes from a family of mostly women -- and the men didn't stand a chance.

"We had mostly headstrong women in my family who needed to get their point across, and the men would just say, 'OK,' " Warran said. "I think it's that women want to make sure they're heard."

San Francisco resident Doug Wilkins said he's read books and studies on gender conversational patterns, and he's noticed trends in the way men and women talk. Men, he said, are more likely to lecture, and to practice one-upmanship when they talk to other men. Women are more cooperative when they talk, he said.

And it's definitely true, he said, that men talk just as much as women.

"For every guy you know who only goes 'yep,' 'fine,' 'nope,' there's a guy who will walk up to strangers on the street and just start lecturing at them," Wilkins said.

women,men