Can Men Be Monogamous?

How To Be A Sister CEO

Is Cyber Sex Cheating?

Meet India Arie's New Artist Anthony David

Not EVERYONE Is In Menopause...

<----OLD enough to be her GRANDMA...

I've been whining a lot lately about failed memory, emotional upheavals, gray hair, and another birthday gone by. After all I was in my 30s when I started this site with you all. I'm 47 now.

How does that happen?

Just because I'm peri-menopausal and occasionally (or frequently, depending) mean, doesn't mean that everyone is. For those Blog Sisters who might be pregnant or newly delivered, or who have daughters who are pregnant or newly delivered, check out my friends at bTrendie. You can use the invitation code BLOG SISTERS to get in to this invite only shopping community.

We're testing out some graphic blog badges, which is why you see that new badge in the sidebar to the right. Does she scream "pregnant and shopping" or what? Other things she might be saying:

Ouch my aching back.
Ouch my aching feet.
Where's the nanny?

There's a Birthday-in-a-Box Giveaway going on at bTrendie right now, so if you have a (grand)child with a birthday coming up, take a shot at winning.

Meanwhile, Jenna is starting middle school in August, and yet still sometimes rolls out of her bed at night. She's swimming up a storm this summer, which is very helpful for her scoliosis. Water appears to be the best therapy we've found so far to help her posture and pain issues related to the scoliosis. We welcome other ideas and tips from those who've been there.

And finally, you may notice that I've changed the template (again). If anyone wants to take a shot at improving it, let me know and I'll add you as admin.

That's my mid-June update -- as you were!

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Did Aubrey F Up Danity Kane?

Abiola And The Get Girls' Salmon Recipe

Sexy Potatoes Recipe: Abiola & The Get Em Girls

Tyrese Gibson Has A Message For You

2 out of 3 bankruptcies are from medical bills.

no one wants to talk about it. our bankrupt government bankrupting us with insane healthcare costs that have drained the finances of ANYONE who has been self-employed or under-insured this past decade, when companies transitioned from giving lavish benefits to giving truckloads of pink slips.

U.S. News and World Report notes that 75 percent of bankruptcies in America today are the result of healthcare expenses gone awry.


So while GM bails out and the financial services industry bails out, American families unable to afford $10,000 per year in deductibles and another $10,000 per year in premiums along with a couple grand a year in doctor's visits and RX's not covered under their plans get to inherit the lasting effects of going bankrupt.

According to the report:

The costliest medical conditions are neurological problems, which cost patients $34,167 in average out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, according to a study in Thursday's online edition of the American Journal of Medicine. The study found that from 2001 to 2007, the number of bankruptcies caused by medical bills

rose by about 50 percent. Insured Americans bankrupted by health problems had an average $17,749 in medical bills; those without insurance had bills amounting to $26,971, on average.

The report also provides some tips for saving $ on healthcare, though I've tried most of these, and they require a LOT of time for very puny results if you ask me.

It appears President Obama is turning his attention to the healthcare mess, and not a moment too soon.

Young Lloyd & Abiola: The Tough Love Interview

Is Going To Jail The "Hot" Thing To Do?

Is Osama Bin Laden Alive or Dead?

A friend referred me to this link at Fox News of the 2001 report of Bin Laden's death. In addition, the late Benazir Bhutto said in an interview that Bin Laden was killed. Did she mean to say someone else? Arab TV has said that Cheney had ordered Bhutto killed. What?

Seems very odd, if you believe he's dead, that we're still getting reports of Bin Laden's "threats." Either the US gov and media are incompetent, some political insiders are secret friends of his, and/or he is being used as an imaginary "boogeyman."

A trip to Wikipedia has more about his reported death.

On the other hand, we couldn't find Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains. This article on Bin Laden's #2 illustrates how good he could be at hiding.

Things that make you go Hmmm...

Can Cooking Get Or Keep A Man?

Followship Diversity?

New Harvard Research suggests a Man of Twitter (MOT) is almost twice as likely to follow another MOT than a Woman of Twitter (WOT).

And in other news, Hell is still HOT.

The NEWS to me is that Harvard finds this trend stunning:

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks ⁱ. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women - men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Huh? Remember the pre-historic era of blogrolls? Remember the echo chamber? Remember Aggregators and top feeds? Remember Techmeme? Twitter is not a new Internet, it's just a new node with the same tendencies and hierarchies (and patriarchies) replicated in 140 characters. I really don't GET the assumption that men usually follow/read/link-to women, and that women do the same. It's just not true. Not online, not offline, not never.

An interesting fact to me is the sheer velocity of popularity on twitter, and how ACTIVITY (not content) may be what drives follows:

Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

That may mean that tweeting OBNOXIOUSLY OFTEN gets you somewhere on Twitter. But then, I think we already knew that.

Lalah Hathaway Is More Than Donny's Daughter