XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 02/19/14

Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Wife calls 911 over hubby's hookup request - her husband wanted her to 'hook up with HIS own sisters' -

A 58-year-old South Carolina woman called 911 because her husband wanted her to "hook up with his sisters," police said.

The woman told deputies she and her 72-year-old husband have "had some sex problems for the past two years," according to a Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office report obtained by The Smoking Gun.

Not only did the woman not want to hook up with her sisters-in-law, she wanted to know if there was a way she could prohibit them from coming to her house, according to the report.

Caught up in a sticky situation, the responding deputy wrote that he "explained the no-trespass law."

Read more -

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/wife-calls-911-over-hubbys-hookup-request/-/1637132/24557280/-/stc18f/-/index.html

NIGHTMARE: New test suggests antidepressant Paxil may promote breast cancer... -

A team of researchers from the City of Hope in Duarte has developed a speedy way to identify drugs and chemicals that can disrupt the balance of sex hormones in human beings and influence the development and progress of diseases such as breast cancer.
In a trial screening of 446 drugs in wide circulation, the new assay singled out the popular antidepressant paroxetine (better known by its commercial name, Paxil) as having a weak estrogenic effect that could promote the development and growth of breast tumors in women.
This is important because as many as a quarter of women being treated for breast cancer suffer from depression -- a condition most commonly treated with antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), including Paxil, which has been on the market since 1992. Almost a quarter of American women in their 40s and 50s are taking an antidepressant, mostly SSRIs.
Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration approved the marketing of a low dose of paroxetine -- repackaged under the commercial name Brisdelle -- as a nonhormonal treatment for hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms.
About 70% of breast cancers in women are sensitive to estrogen, meaning that the hormone found plentifully in females of child-bearing age contributes to their growth.
The novel screening method developed at City of Hope, described in a forthcoming issue of the journal Toxicological Sciences, also identified two antifungal medications -- biconazole and oxyconazole -- as having an anti-estrogenic effect similar to that of medications prescribed to prevent breast cancer and its recurrences in women. Incidental to their intended use in combating fungal infections, those medications inhibit the action of aromatase, an enzyme that converts androgens -- hormones more plentiful in males but present in both sexes -- into estrogen.
Less surprising, the high-throughput screening mechanism identified bisphenol A -- a compound used in the manufacture of plastics and epoxy resins -- as an estrogen promoter capable of raising breast cancer risk.
The discovery that Paxil behaves as an endocrine-disrupting chemical may shed light on growing suspicions about the medication in women who have had breast cancer. A 2010 study found that breast cancer patients in Canada who were taking Paxil were more likely than those taking other antidepressants to die of breast cancer when there was a substantial overlap in their use of that antidepressant and of tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer recurrence.
The researchers surmised that paroxetine, which was taken by about a quarter of the depressed breast cancer patients in the study, might block the production of a liver enzyme needed to metabolize tamoxifen. The authors of the latest research said paroxetine's "weak estrogenic" effect "may be responsible, in part, for the observed reduction" in tamoxifen's effectiveness in that study.
The finding that paroxetine has estrogenic effects "has implications for patients with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer who are on other medications," said Shihuan Chen, professor and chairman of City of Hope's department of cancer biology and lead author of the study.
To confirm paroxetine's estrogenic action, the researchers performed a further analysis that found that many of the genes whose activity is altered by paroxetine are genes that also respond to estrogen. But the researchers said the assay does not show whether the antidepressant medication alters the activity of estrogen directly or by indirect means.

Read more -

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-antidepressant-paxil-breast-cancer-20140218,0,3273056.story#axzz2tmtvoWmS

What's Wrong With These Two Charts -

By now the weather apologists will have let you know that the latest economic data disappointment - housing starts and permits - both of which crashed in January, is solely due to the weather (the same apologists who will tell you that any good news is due only to the "recovery"). Alas, this time even the most cursory glance beneath the headlines reveals just how sad the lies truly are.

Presenting Exhibit A: the all important housing permits, which predate starts by 2-3 months, broken down by region. If indeed the weather was to blame, it would be the region that was hit the worst by the polar vortex, i.e., the Northeast, which would have been most impacted. Instead, we find that the one region where the 'weather impact" was double that of the Northeast, was the West, i.e., California, where balmy weather resulted in a seasonally adjusted permits crash of 26%!

Next, Exhibit B: Housing starts broken down by region. Same logic - if it was indeed the snow's fault that activity ground to a halt, the Northeast region would have cratered (and other regions would have flatlined at worst). Instead, we get this:

It is almost as if nobody even wants to put any effort into the lies anymore.

Read more -

Streaming Wars: Netflix Traffic Gets Throttled By Broadband Companies, Leading To "Unwatchable" Results -

For years, the Netflix streaming business has been growing like a parasite, happy to piggyback on established broadband infrastructures, where the broadband companies themselves have becomes competitors to Netflix for both distribution and content. Until now. Emboldened by the recent Net Neutrality ruling, which has put bandwidth hogs like Netflix which at last check was responsible for over 30% of all downstream US internet traffic...

... broadband providers are finally making their move, and in a preliminary salvo whose ultimate compromise will be NFLX paying lots of money, have started to throttle Netflix traffic. The WSJ reports that the war between the broadband-ers and the video streaming company has finally emerged from the "cold" phase and is fully hot.

Netflix Inc. subscribers have seen a lot more spinning wheels lately as they wait for videos to load, thanks to a standoff deep in the Internet.

The online-video service has been at odds with Verizon Communications Inc. VZ and other broadband providers for months over how much Netflix streaming content they will carry without being paid additional fees.

Now the long simmering conflict has heated up and is slowing Netflix, in particular, on Verizon's fiber-optic FiOS service, where Netflix says its average prime-time speeds dropped by 14% last month. The slowdown comes as Netflix is rolling out the new season of its Emmy-winning series "House of Cards."
Not surprisingly, Netflix wants broadband companies to hook up to its new video-distribution network without paying them fees for carrying its traffic. But the biggest U.S. providers—Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T Inc. —have resisted, insisting on compensation.

And while there is no legal basis with which Netflix can be pushed to pay for traffic, backbone companies are quietly putting the squeeze on the House of Cards maker where it hurts most: watching enjoyment.

Until the standoff gets resolved, the bulk of Netflix's traffic continues to flow across Internet intermediaries, including low-cost carrier Cogent Communications Group Inc. People familiar with Cogent's and Netflix's thinking say the cable and telephone companies are delaying upgrading existing connections. Executives at major broadband providers, meanwhile, privately blame the traffic jam on Netflix's refusal to distribute its traffic more efficiently.

Netflix said it carefully plans its routing to make sure customers have the best experience possible. Verizon said it treats all Internet traffic equally. Neither side is budging, people familiar with the matter said, leading to growing congestion.
The result is that the speed of NFLX traffic is crashing, something which will make watching its High Definition content increasingly more unpleasant as buffering times mean more time sitting watching spinning circle, and less time watching content.

People Are Undergoing Extreme Body Modifications In Order To Look More Like The Devil? -

When does body modification go too far? In recent years, the popularity of tattoos and body piercings has soared, but now there are thousands of people around the globe that are taking body modification to ridiculous extremes.

Diablo Delenfer

For example, would you be willing to have your tongue split in two so that you could have a forked tongue? What about getting eyeball tattoos or having titanium horns implanted in your head? To most people, doing such things would be unimaginable, but there is a growing subculture of individuals out there that truly seem to enjoy “pushing the envelope” and seeing what is possible. Some of them want to look like cats, some want to look like vampires, others want to look like aliens and some even want to look like the devil. Yes, you read that correctly. You are about to read about one man that is purposely modifying his body so that he will look as much like the devil as possible. In fact, he even plans to add a tail someday.
If these were just isolated incidents, it probably would not be that big of a deal. But as CNN recently reported, there are now thousands of people that have embraced “extreme body modification” as a lifestyle and the movement is growing rapidly. In fact, CNN says that there is one website alone that has 3 million photos of extreme body modification…
Horns. Forked tongues. Elf ears. Whiskers.
No, these aren’t features from the latest fantasy film. Today, thousands of people are getting their bodies modified in all sorts of bizarre and unusual ways. Tattoos are just the tip of the iceberg for people interested in body modification, referred to as “body mutilation” by detractors.
People called “body modification artists” perform these unconventional surgical procedures, typically on young clients. These treatments range from the simple, such as implanting metal bolts on a person’s neck, to the extreme, such as creating ridges under a person’s skin in order to make him look like a human lizard.
So precisely what does this say about the current state of our society?
That is a very good question.
Often, the way that people express themselves outwardly is a reflection of who they really are on the inside.
In the case of a 43-year-old man from the UK named “Diablo Delenfer”, his stated goal is to look as much like the devil as possible…
Among the operations that Diablo Delenfer – real name Gavin Paslow – has so far endured are having his tongue sliced in two to fork it, sub-dermal implants to create a set of horns and an eyeball tattoo that has turned the whites of his eyes bright red.
But despite the pain, the 43-year-old insists he has no plans to stop. ‘I describe myself as a body modification artist,’ he explains.
‘I am a human curiosity but body modification is my life’s journey. It’s a little bit weird, a little bit eccentric but that’s what I am.’
A “little bit weird”?
As you can see from the video posted below, he definitely looks more than a “little bit weird”…

But he is actually far from the most extreme case of body modification out there.
To me, a 35-year-old attorney from Mexico named Maria Cristerna takes the cake.
She has tattoos and piercings over 98 percent of her body and she is known as “the Vampire Lady”. When people see her coming, many of them cross over to the other side of the street because she literally looks like a monster…
No-one dares to cross Maria Cristerna, dubbed The Vampire Lady.
The 35-year-old who grew up in a deeply religious family is covered head-to-toe in tattoos, had dental work so she appeares to have fangs and has even had titanium horns inserted into her head.
People used to walk on the other side of the road when they saw her coming.
The following video contains a news report about her. It attempts to portray her as a “normal mother”…

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember any mothers running around like that when I was growing up.
But you know what? The Vampire Lady has become a mini-celebrity in recent years and she has traveled to events all over the world.
Our society is really starting to embrace this sort of thing. And body modifications are not always just for cosmetic purposes. For example, I wrote about the growing popularity of RFID microchip implants among young people the other day. As time passes, it is going to become increasingly “cool” and “trendy” for young people to “enhance themselves” with various forms of technology.
As this trend grows, what will our society look like in a few years?
Personally, I don’t want anything to do with extreme body modifications, microchip implants or any other sort of “enhancements”.

What about you?
What do you think about these things?
Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below…

Read more -

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/people-are-undergoing-extreme-body-modifications-in-order-to-look-more-like-the-devil