My Forbidden Diary (Day 2)

Little Fat Fucker dumped a glass of water on my face when i didn’t wake up fast enough to suit him. The man truly is a repulsive piece of humanity. He is a farting, burping, sweating asshole who has a body odor that makes me sick to my stomach. Once I was up and on my feet little fat fucker gave me one of those small boxes of cereal, a banana, and a pint of milk for my breakfast. After eating he took me to another building where I was issued my trail gear.

When little fat fucker said gear I thought i was going to be getting a pack with some decent clothing. What I got instead was a second pair of clothes, a warm jacket, thermals, a spoon, tin cup, sleeping bag, and a ground cloth. My food came next and again my expectations were proven to be reaching far to high. Rather than actual dehydrated meals I was given lentils, oatmeal, and a few other odds and ends. All of this was rolled up into the ground cloth and tied up with the seat belt strap.

Giant Squirrel!!

Protect Yourself: Dangerous Diseases on the Rise

There are a variety of reasons for the resurgence of certain diseases, and some of the fault inevitably lies with the human population: Over consumption and the prevalence of an inactive lifestyle have resulted in skyrocketing rates of obesity and the illnesses related to it. And some believe that parents who ignore vaccination recommendations are keeping certain childhood maladies alive that could be eliminated. Experts are also concerned about the likelihood of certain diseases that have the capability to pass from animals to humans. Here are some scary sicknesses that are on the rise:

1. Tuberculosis. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in three people worldwide has been exposed to tuberculosis. One of the oldest known diseases, it primarily attacks the lungs but can also affect the brain, kidneys, and spine. For nine in 10 of those with a latent infection, the bacteria will remain dormant; however, in 2006 approximately 9.6 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis, and 1.5 million died. While the detection rate of new tuberculosis cases was halved between 2005 and 2006, it increased by 3 percent in 2007 and again in 2008. What most concerns the medical community is the rise of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, which have a much higher mortality rate, especially among people whose immune systems are already compromised by disease or age.

2. Whooping Cough. The number of people infected by this highly contagious respiratory tract infection, which resembles the common cold in its initial stages but progresses in about a week’s time to severely constrict the trachea and bronchi, had fallen to just 1,000 in the United States in 1976. But it has since rebounded, with more than 25,000 cases reported in 2004. Some experts blame this increase on parents who fail to get their children immunized, especially in light of the recent controversy over the supposed link between vaccinations and autism.

Exclusive First Listen: Paul McCartney

Hear The Entire Album, Featuring McCartney And Youth As The Fireman

November 18, 2008 – When The Fireman released its debut album in 1993 — the instrumental dance and electronica mix Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest — the band’s identity was a mystery. U.K. music magazine Melody Maker eventually exposed The Fireman as a duo featuring the bassist and producer known as Youth and, to everyone’s surprise, Paul McCartney. Reviewers praised the collaboration as “staggeringly brilliant,” but it was a strange and entirely unexpected direction for the former Beatle.

McCartney and Youth followed their debut five years later with Rushes, another instrumental album the two described as “ambient dreams in rainbow arches.” But The Fireman fell silent for the next decade, as the two returned to their own projects.

Last year, McCartney and Youth returned to work as The Fireman for their third release together, Electric Arguments. Unlike the previous albums, The Fireman’s new studio disc features vocals. McCartney entered the studio, without any material, and recorded 13 songs in 13 days. He played all the instruments, with Youth at the helm as producer. The Fireman offered the first single from the album, “Lifelong Passion,” as a download from the band’s Web site for anyone making a donation to the Adopt-A-Minefield charity.

Electric Arguments is sometimes bluesy and gritty, with McCartney howling against fuzzy guitars (“Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight”), sometimes delicate and beautiful (“Two Magpies”) and sometimes lush and elegant (“Sing the Changes”). At times, the album veers off into entirely experimental directions, like the mash of ambient noises and sound effects on “Universal Here, Everlasting Now.”

Electric Arguments will be released on Nov. 25 on ATO Records. In the meantime, the label and The Fireman are offering this free, exclusive preview of the entire album, as a stream.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96952621

The Way We Were: Life Magazine Photos Of Women In The 1950s

As previously posted, the Life magazine photo archive is now available online. The collection is estimated to consist of more than 10 million photos, many of which were never published in the magazine and only exist as negatives, slides and etchings. You can search the collection for historical images, and if you want to purchase framed prints, you can do that, too. We’ll be taking a look at women in several decades (previously: the ’30s and the ’40s) and today, the full-of-change 1950s. The photos begin after the jump.

Source: http://jezebel.com/5099377/the-way-we-were-life-magazine-photos-of-women-in-the-1950s

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Gallery: http://images.google.com/hosted/life