Thinking about foot rubbing… and marriage

Who came up with this idea of marriage, anyway?

Read on, for a very thoughtfully expressed idea, from a non-religious perspective.

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A thought experiment about marriage

A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.

 In previous articles, I have asserted that if sex did not naturally lead to children, no one would ever have conceived the idea of marriage. My claim may be obvious to most people, but we live in a world in which people who never intend to have children get married; so, of course, do some people who want children but are infertile. In generations past, we felt compassion for those who married but did not have children, because it was presumed that they wanted children, since, after all, they married one another. No longer can we presume this. The era of contraception and surgical sterilization has altered the face, so to speak, of the childless couple, and consequently the face of the married couple.

The quest for same-sex marriage begins here. In a world where seeking marriage is seeking a community-endorsed way to have sex and bear children, the idea of same-sex marriage is like the idea of a square circle. The very idea of same-sex marriage is conceivable only in a world that is using the term “marriage” in a completely different way, to refer to something of a completely different nature.

Allow me, then, to make a case for my assertion about sex, children, and marriage through a “thought experiment”—a scenario in which human beings have no word for, no concept of, marriage.

Imagine a colony of young men who have no memory of ever having lived anywhere else. Properly speaking, the men do not even know that they are men, but only that they are different from all the other creatures they encounter. They hunt and gather. They are naturally social beings who care about each other, form friendships, try to please one another, generally

Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to 13

May the Almighty continue to bless the works of their hands.

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Obama honours 13 with Medal of Freedom at White House

29 May 2012 Last updated at 17:36 ET

President Barack Obama has bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honour on political and cultural figures in a ceremony at the White House.

Describing himself as “a big fan”, a star-struck President Obama honours the ‘Tambourine Man’

Musician Bob Dylan, astronaut John Glenn, and Israeli President Shimon Peres were among the Medal of Freedom recipients.

The award is given to people from all walks of life who have made exceptional contributions to society.

It was established by former President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941 and began his musical career in 1959, playing in Minnesota coffee houses.

He took his stage name from the poet Dylan Thomas and, not coincidentally, paid as much attention to his lyrics as his music.

Much of his best-known work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal historian of America’s troubles.

Songs such as Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’ became

What will America use to fuel her vehicles when gas is $8/gallon? Natural gas – and we may do it much sooner!

Natural gas.

In fact, it’s being done now.

It way, way, way, way, way, way cheaper than petroleum, and burns clean too!

If you want to see the future, look at Interstate Commerce.

And, here’s another good side to natural gas as a fuel – because it burns cleaner, the engines last exceedingly longer! So now, your 100,000+ mile vehicle becomes a 200,000+ mile vehicle!

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Shale Gas Set to Reshape Trucking

By REBECCA SMITH

Updated May 23, 2012, 4:23 p.m. ET

Rising diesel costs, last year, forced Waste Management Inc. WM +0.91% to charge customers an extra $169 million, just to keep its garbage trucks fueled. This year, the nation’s biggest trash hauler has a new defensive strategy: it is buying trucks that will run on cheaper natural gas.

In fact, the company says 80% of the trucks it purchases during the next five years will be fueled by natural gas. Though the vehicles cost about $30,000 more than conventional diesel models, each will save $27,000-a-year or more in fuel, says Eric Woods, head of fleet logistics for Waste Management. By 2017, the company expects to burn more natural gas than diesel.

Darrold Withrow, 41, is a certified fueler and mechanic at Waste Management, and he fills up a truck with liquefied natural gas in Oakland, California. / Photograph by Alison Yin for The Wall Street Journal

“The economics favoring natural gas are overwhelming,” says Scott Perry, vice president of procurement at Ryder Systems Inc., R +2.31% one of the nation’s largest truck-leasing companies and a transporter of goods for the grocery, automotive, electronics and retail industries.

The shale gas revolution, which cut the price of natural gas to about $2.70 a million British Thermal Units in the past year, already has shaken up the utility industry, which is switching to natural gas from coal in a big way. Vast Amounts of natural gas in shale rock formations have been unlocked by improved drilling techniques, making the fuel cheap and plentiful across the U.S.

Now the shale-gas boom is rippling through transportation. Never before has

Thank you!

Here’s a quick shout-out to all of you who’re reading this:

Nursing Salary Survey reports Western Nurses earn more

One category of expert nurses this survey omitted – perhaps purposely – was Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.

As a group, they have consistently earned six-figure salaries, typically upwards of $125,000/year.

Among Advanced Practice Nurses, CRNAs have continually earned significantly more than the average APN.

In fact, according to a salary survey report performed in 2005 by LocumTenens.com, CRNA respondents reported income ranging from $90,000-$250,000, with 63% reported earning between $110,000-$170,000/year.

The average salaries reported were: 2008-$163,467 / 2009-$169,043 / 2010-$166,833.

And, in 2011, the average reported salary for CRNAs in that survey was $168,998.

Research published by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in AANA Journal, April 2008, indicated that the median range for CRNA faculty – academic and clinical – earned between $120,000 and $140,000.

So, as you read the following items, please bear that in mind.

In the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall average salary for Registered Nurses in 2010 was $64,690 per year, or $31.10 per hour. The job outlook (forecast) for 2010-2020 is that need is expected to grow 26% (Faster than average). According to the BLS, there were 2,737,400 Registered Nurses in 2010.

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Among Nurses, NPs and Those in the West Earn the Most

Jennifer Garcia

Authors and Disclosures
Journalist
Jennifer Garcia
Jennifer Garcia is a freelance writer for Medscape.
Disclosure: Jennifer Garcia has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

May 11, 2012 — Nurse practitioners are the top earners among nurses, according to the Physicians Practice 2012 Staff Salary Survey . The survey reports salary averages from 1268 respondents, including nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and nurse managers. Salary information from other staff members such as physician assistants, medical records clerks, medical assistants, front desk staff, billing managers, and medical billers was also included in the survey.

Physicians Practice collected data during the fourth quarter of 2011, and

Where the Jobs Are: Is the Nursing Job Market a mixed bag?

Eminent nursing researcher & scholar Dr. Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN, FAAN has made a career studying Nurses, and suggests that the jobs picture for new nurse grads is good, and that they may be facing one of the best job markets in decades.

A 2009 study he conducted found that, “Registered nurse (RN) employment has increased during the current recession, and we may soon see an end to the decade-long nurse shortage. This would give hospitals welcome relief and an opportunity to strengthen the nurse workforce by addressing issues associated with an increasingly older and foreign-born workforce. The recent increase in employment is also improving projections of the future supply of RNs, yet large shortages are still expected in the next decade. Until nursing education capacity is increased, future imbalances in the nurse labor market will be unavoidable.“

A 2004 study of his said that, “Wage increases, relatively high national unemployment, and widespread pri- vate-sector initiatives aimed at increasing the number of people who become nurses has resulted in a second straight year of strong employment growth among registered nurses (RNs). In 2003, older women and, to a lesser extent, foreign-born RNs accounted for a large share of employment growth. We also observe unusually large employment growth from two new demographic groups: younger people, particularly women in their early thirties, and men. Yet, despite the increase in employment of nearly 185,000 hospital RNs since 2001, the evidence suggests that the current nurse shortage has not been eliminated.“

Most recently, research he worked upon which was published in the December 2011 issue of Health Affairs found that “because of this surge in the number of young people entering nursing during the past decade, the nurse workforce is projected to grow faster during the next two decades than previously anticipated.”

In essence, “...the nurse workforce is now expected to grow at roughly the same rate as the population through 2030.”

They also cautioned however, “that the dynamics of the nursing workforce are more complex than sheer numbers.“

Lead researcher and RAND health economist David Auerbach said, “Instead of worrying about a decline, we are now growing the supply of nurses.“

Here’s something very interesting, however.

In that same issue of Health Affairs, a survey conducted by Christine Kovner of New York University examined the low “mobility” of new RNs. The most striking finding was that

Whoah, Nellie! FTC Investigation into @FaceBook’s @Instagram buyout may delay IPO

It’s entirely unusual for so many people to voluntarily relinquish so much private information. As well, FaceBook has deliberately deceived many people with their  (lack of) “privacy” policy. In this information era, people are becoming the commodity. But, it’s always been true, that if you don’t want folks to know about it, don’t share it.

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Probe may delay Facebook Instagram deal

May 10, 2012 7:13 pm

By April Dembosky in San Francisco

The United States Federal Trade Commission will be investigating FaceBook’s US$1Billion buyout of Instagram. The logos of the Facebook (L) and Instagram (C) apps are pictured on an IPhone in Cologne, Germany, 09 April 2012.The social network Facebook, flush with cash as the company steers toward public trading scooped up the Instagram mobile photo-sharing application for about 1 billion dollars in cash and stock, on 09 April 2012. San Francisco, USA, based Instagram, with more than 30 million users, is one of the most popular free photo-sharing application on Apple’s App store. EPA/Rolf Vennenbernd

A competition probe into Facebook’s $1bn acquisition of photo-sharing service Instagram threatens to postpone the closure of the deal beyond the second quarter, the target set by the company in its initial public offering documents.

The Federal Trade Commission has launched the investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, and has already begun collecting information from at least one of the social network’s largest competitors. The process could also further slow Facebook’s already lagging mobile strategy.

The competition probe – routine for any deal more than $66m – is likely to take six to 12 months, according to several experts. But Facebook said in its IPO documents last month that it expected the deal to close in the second quarter.

“That’s terrifically optimistic,” said David Balto, a former policy director at the FTC who now works as an anti-trust lawyer.

Competition experts expect that the Instagram merger will ultimately be approved, but they believe regulators will apply close scrutiny to the deal because of the steep price that Facebook paid and the high profile of the companies.

“They’re going to want to take some months to investigate and understand the market and other players,” Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, said. “And there may be more parties with an interest in submitting information.”

Facebook has acknowledged that

FDA Announces Food Recalls

To ensure public health and safety, the United States Food and Drug Administration has recently announced recalls of certain food items.

And, if you can imagine it – believe it or else – there are politicians and people who say the FDA should be eliminated. Hint: They’re “TEA Party,” Libertarian or Republican. And you know what their argument is? It’s not in Constitution.

Honestly, that stupefies me. It boggles my imagination.

Following are the two most recent recall announcements.

Satchmo! New vinyl of previously unreleased recordings to be pressed & sold.

Fans everywhere of the “Ambassador of Goodwill” should rejoice!

Now, years after his death, his performance at the National Press Club will be released, AND on vinyl!

But… there’s a caveat.

It’s limited.

VERY limited.

How limited?

Only 300 pressings will be made.

But, if you’re into digital, you won’t be left out.

It’ll be available on CD & iTunes.

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Louis Armstrong’s memorable National Press Club performance to be rereleased

By Matt Schudel, Tuesday, April 24, 7:53 PM

Beginning in the 1920s, Louis Armstrong was the undisputed fountainhead of American jazz. With his bright, clear trumpet and his ebullient, gravelly voice, he more or less defined how jazz is meant to be played and sung.

Everything he did is of interest to musicians and scholars, and few American lives have been better documented. But until this week, little was known about a performance he recorded in Washington five months before he died in 1971.

On Friday, at a news conference at the site of Armstrong’s original recording at the National Press Club, the music he

Think you saved a bundle on your travel? Think again.

“Everything old is new again.”

Kinda’ makes you wonder how long it’ll take retailers to figure out that most folks do NOT enjoy having to play cashier and bagger after shopping.

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Are Travel Agents Back?

April 20, 2012

By MICHELLE HIGGINS

THE complimentary wine and fruit platter was sent up to Jessica Griffin and her family moments after they strolled into their roomy suite. They were accompanied by a bellhop who placed their bags near a tidy crib made up with luxurious, high thread-count sheets for Ms. Griffin’s 1-year-old daughter.

The V.I.P. treatment at the Cheeca Lodge and Spa in the Florida Keys last month hadn’t come with an extra cost. In fact, Ms. Griffin said, she paid about $100 a night less than the standard rate for her room. And the deal wasn’t the result of hours of tedious online research either. She had finagled her savings the old-fashioned way: through a travel agent.

“I needed recommendations and someone to steer me in the right direction,” said Ms. Griffin, who opted to work with an agent after years of making her own reservations because she needed a getaway suitable for a toddler and had little interest in scrolling through endless and conflicting user hotel reviews online. “There are so many,” she said. And with every site displaying beautiful pictures and tantalizing offers, “it can be overwhelming.”

“I wanted somebody from a reputable agency who could say yes, you’ll enjoy this stay,” she said.

According to those in the travel agent industry, clients like Ms. Griffin are not alone, and are in fact helping to stanch the bloodletting the industry has experienced since the onset of D.I.Y. booking more than a decade ago. Nearly one in three leisure agencies is hiring, according to PhoCusWright, a travel research firm. And in 2011 travel agencies experienced