Boo-yah!

The Orioles just made my week. What a game! Go check out what happened at orioles.com. I'm going to bed!

Endocrine Disruptors

I was pleased to see this opinion article in yesterday's NY Times. The nasty chemicals we put into our environment and their potential effects on humans is a topic that warrants way more public attention and concern, in my opinion. This article discusses endocrine disruptors and their effects on human reproductive disorders and cancers. But some scientists think that the chemical problem may even go further - exposure to certain pesticides is significantly correlated to ADHD and other behavioral disorders in children. I think we need a complete overhaul in the way we regulate nasty chemicals here in the U.S.: it is not prudent to assume that a chemical is harmless until someone provides conclusive evidence to the contrary. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act.

Race for the Cure

Tomorrow I'm doing the Triangle Race for the Cure in Raleigh. The team I joined has already raised more than their goal of $10,000, but please feel free to support me! The race is tomorrow, but you can donate until the end of June. These donations go toward an excellent cause that includes funding mammograms and other cancer screenings for uninsured and underinsured women and funding scientific research. Visit this site to make a donation.

Last weekend I did the Global Race for the Cure in D.C. with my mom and other people from our church. It's a fun time, but reading everyone's signs and tee shirts always stirs emotions - both happy and sad:











Here is the sign my mom - a breast cancer survivor - wears every year:



The rest of my pictures are here.

Another eye-opening article

in the Washington Post. See here.

Dr. Tiller

Please read this excellent opinion piece by Judith Warner in the NY Times. Some important excerpts:

“Late abortion is not a failure of contraception. It’s for medical reasons,” Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who has worked to defend abortion providers like Tiller against harassment and violence since the mid-1980s, told me this week. “We’ve made pregnancy a fairy tale where there are no fetal complications, there’s no cancer, no terrible abuse of girls, no cases where to make a girl go all the way through a pregnancy is to destroy her. These are the realities of the story. That’s what Dr. Tiller worked with — the realities.”

...

We as a nation cannot continue to provide a hospitable environment for the likes of Roeder because the thought of what happens to fetuses in late abortions turns our stomachs. We have to accept that sometimes terrible things happen to young girls. We have to face the fact that sometimes desired pregnancies go tragically wrong. We have to weigh our repugnance for late abortion against the consequences for women and girls of being denied life-saving medical treatment.

...

Most Americans, I’m sure, do not believe that a 9-year-old should be forced to bear a child, or that a woman should have no choice but to risk her life to carry a pregnancy to term.

By averting our eyes from the ugliness and tragedy that accompany some pregnancies, we have allowed anti-abortion activists to define the dilemma of late abortion. We have allowed them to isolate and vilify doctors like Tiller.

We can no longer be complicit — through our muted disapproval or our complacency — in domestic terror.

LOL cats

You're probably familiar with "LOL cats", that is, the adorable kitties from ichc that can't speak good English? It's pretty silly, but it entertains me so much that I decided to use icanhascheezburger's "LOL Builder" to make Madeline into a LOL cat.