Yes, the state that just banned gay marriage last August elected a lesbian senator yesterday.

Jolie Justus, now a senator in KC, MO is the first elected (out) lesbian in the Missouri State Senate.

And thanks to the hard work of PROMO Missouri, 11 out of 14 LGBT-endorsed senators also succeeded in their primaries.

I'm proud to say my state is back on the ballpark in terms of Gender equality - even if the Cardinals' standings don't match LGBT successes.

MO House Act 1075 would require schools to promote monogamous, heterosexual relationships as part of the general sexual education curriculum.

This act will censor Missouri youth against contraceptives and sexual eccentricities and may lead to increased bigotry against same-sex couples.

We will see how the MO congress votes.

Yes, that's right, HCR13, a bill currently being considered for passage in the Missouri House and Senate, would declare the United States a "Christian Nation." The enormous public outrcry to the legislature after its release will probably prohibit the bill from passing in the MO congress, but another bill, HJR39, is currently working its way through the system, and would "place on the ballot a Constitutional amendment which allows voluntary [and government-condoned] prayer in a public place" (Margaret Donelly, MO Rep).

I'm reading an encyclopedia entry about apes Koko, Panzee, Panbanisha, Kanzi, Washoe, and Nim Chimpsky.

All of these apes have learned approximately 150-300 words/lexigrams/signs. Several hundred non-human primates have been taught or attempted to teach basic signs, but could only learn 10-20, rendering the above-mentioned outliers.

Animal Language Acquisition (ALA) is criticized by cognitive linguists. They hold that language is an evolved trait, and that animals capable of language would have already evolved it as a means of communication. Most animals are not vocal, and therefore would use signing (or some form of gestulation) instead of oral speech; this is why Washoe was more prolific than most apes before her - she was taught ASL for communication as opposed to verbal speech.

A smaller house on the far East side of Aberdeen Place (my home street), recently sold for about $850,000.

This is surprising because A) houses on Aberdeen two years ago were selling for $300-$400k (Saint Louis has a much lower cost of living) and those prices were considered HIGH at the time. Run-down fixer uppers on and around South Grand Blvd. (where I live now) could sell for as low as $3k a couple years ago; now they are selling for $300-$400k. and B) the house that sold for approximately $850k was not located IN THE GOOD SCHOOL DISTRIC OF CLAYTON, but the city of Saint Louis, a "bad" school distric (Roosevelt High School is the public high school allotted to this house, THE WORST SCHOOL IN METRO SAINT LOUIS).

For centuries Hindis and Buddhists, among other religious groups, have discussed the concept of an energy shield surrounding the human body. The energy shield is the energy emitted by the human body during action or thought, and surrounds the physical self in an electromagnetic field. Perhaps in some religions, it can be thought of as the soul or the holy spirit that exists in everyone. I hypothesize that humans, like neurons, have loci focused in their brains (as with the cell body of a neuron). I estimate these loci branch out into circumfrential, cylindrical "tails" (i.e. the energy shield) that, like synapses, are capable of transmitting thoughts as energy.

Her hand cupping her chin, Kaydens works on the final touches of a crayon drawing. The drawing, while not a master work, displays very accurately her mother's personality. The face on the stick figure is expressive, happy and contemplative. Kaydens, at five years old, has a knowledge of the world that most adults cannot possess. Looking into her eyes, full of wistful understanding, is like looking into the eyes of a wise older woman.

In Lititz, Pennsylvania, as many of us know, Kara Beth Borden was kidnapped on gunpoint by her 18 year old boyfriend, David Ludwig, also said to have murdered her parents... and I am also sure many of us have seen her xanga and myspace, and his xanga and myspace.

Perhaps a reason exists as to why in Asian nations, newborns are considered one year old (unlike the commonly given age of zero in the U.S. and elsewhere). Does birth really indicate the first period of complete psychological readiness? Recent studies from Johns Hopkins University say no.

Jan DiPietro, a neurobiologist at JHU, monitored fetuses in the nine months of pregnancy. She and other biologists hold that at 32 weeks of gestation, the fetus is virtually identical to a newborn child.

In September 2004, Drs. Joshua Freedman and Marco Iacoboni of the University of California at Los Angeles, scanned the brains of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. They showed the participants images of John Kerry, George Bush, and Ralph Nader while measuring cranial blood flow.

Democrats experienced extreme neural reactions in the areas facilitating empathy when viewing Kerry. Republican's brains lit up in a more "intrapersonal" way, said Freedman, "like when you smile at someone and they smile back." Both Republicans and Democrats showed neural activity in the prefrontal cortex when viewing images of the opposing candidate, showing that they were consciously choosing to dislike a particular candidate.

Since 1969, CDC has conducted surveys of the numbers and demographics of women who receive abortions. In 2001, CDC gathered information from all fifty states excluding California, Alaska, and New Hampshire, as well as the District of Colombia and New York City.

2001 Stats
*853,485 total abortions
*246:1000 abortions to live births
*82% Unmarried
*55% White
*52% less than 25
*59% at less than 8 weeks

This blog entry is not news, but rather an idea I have been nursing. I am interested in exploring the connection between a “fantasy-prone personality” and mental illness. I believe that a major study on such connection will greatly benefit persons with mental illness and further enhance the treatments and knowledge of such disorders as autism, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorder.

David Myers, in his 2001 book Psychology, suggests that, although the prenatal environment and parental behavior affect a child’s performance, heredity is the key to understanding a human’s functioning. Several studies have addressed this significance of inherited characteristics: studies of identical twins separated at birth, of children raised by adoptive parents, and of differences in temperament among young children are some of the most pertinent topics. This research has focused on proving or disproving the hypothesis of heritability; that is, whether “variation among individuals is due to their varying genes."

[I wrote this report for those who asked about the critical periods of moral development (i.e. how children develop moral and cognitive opinions) - Kohlberg's studies should allievate your confusion. This report will also be helpful in explaining why you (the reader) have the opinions and reactions that define you. This report is also a follow up on my conclusions that sarcasm is purely neurobiological. It is highly possible that while brain damage can alter responses to sarcasm, so, too, can a certain upbringing cause a disability in mentation.]

Do bosses notice the gravity of your intelligence or the positivity of your outlook? If you said intelligence, you may be wrong.

David V. Day, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology at Penn State, wrote that "supervisors were able to pick up on negative traits such as anger, hostility, or instability early in the relationship." He said that this may ruin work relatonships "almost before they begin."

Sarcasm is generally thought of as sneering, jesting, or mocking a person, situation or thing (wikipedia). It is essentially "everyday irony." It means portraying concepts in a manner so obviously untrue that they become funny.

For most of my life, I did not understand sarcasm. I was what some would call "gullible." Why do some people "get" sarcasm, and others take statements completely literally? Psychology has an answer.

Would you sympathize more with a lynch mob or a person whose opinion of others is fatally flawed? This article explores what it means to be racist, how to tell if a person is racist, and what to do about it.

So, speaking hypothetically, you meet a nice man; he makes a good salary, is involved in the community, and is generally fun to be around. But he is of a different race. You have never dated interacially, and it is not that you are opposed to the idea, but well, you're just not used to it. Are you racist? And if you are, is it intentional? If someone confronted you about it, how would you handle it?

An emergency room physician and father of a newborn girl, Sophia Grace, who sings in a rock band with 20-time No. 1 singles on mp3.com, told Mr. Dick Cheney on September 8th to "go **** [him]self!"

Marble lost his home to Hurricane Katrina, and on September 8th, 2005 while being detoured for 20 minutes around a barricade 300 feet from his ruined house, he came face to face with the man "who best represents the most callous, heartless shittiest administration in U.S. history" (Thoreau).

Today Senator John Kerry (D-MA) spoke at the Arctic Refuge Action Conference in Washington, DC. Kerry said that by drilling for oil in Alaska, the United States would not only be destroying one of the last remaining wildlife refuges, but could not even produce enough fuel to sustain the nation for six months. Drill in Alaska and "save a penny per gallon in 20 years," Kerry continued, quoting an official report from the Bush administration's energy department.

Apropos the current discussion of censorship, my reading this weekend brings up an interesting perspective. All webloggling communities such as WOI contain multiple taskpersons (i.e. community members) who self-direct themselves to specific roles, therefore the term "niches" rings with incredible accuracy here.

John Katz, author of "Here Come the Weblogs," states that weblogging communities can be equated to hunting/gathering villages. Katz places the inhabitants of a blogging village into six key personas, some of which ring true in WOI.

Persona 1: FORAGERS - those running the blogs and/or contributing in some way to the content of the blog; instrumental in giving the blog vigor and continuity. We are all foragers in the sense that we contribute to the blogging community. However, some of us have other roles which I will proceed to list.