Last Survivor of Titanic Dies in England Death Comes on 98th Anniversary of Launch of Famous Ship

Last Survivor of Titanic Dies in England

Death Comes on 98th Anniversary of Launch of Famous Ship

LONDON (May 31) -- Millvina Dean, who as a baby was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the frigid North Atlantic, died Sunday, having been the last survivor of 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.

She was 97 years old, and she died where she had lived — in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship's ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for America.

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The End of an Era

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died in southern England Sunday at the age of 97. Traveling with her family, she was just 2 months old when the ship hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, sinking within three hours.

She died in her sleep early Sunday, her friend Gunter Babler told the Associated Press. It was the 98th anniversary of the launch of the ship that was billed as "practically unsinkable."

Babler said Dean's longtime companion, Bruno Nordmanis, called him in Switzerland to say staff at Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home in Southampton discovered Dean in her room Sunday morning. He said she had been hospitalized with pneumonia last week but she had recovered and returned to the home.

A staff nurse at the nursing home said late Sunday that no one would comment until administrators came on duty Monday morning.

Dean just over 2 months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. The ship sank in less than three hours.

Dean was one of 706 people — mostly women and children — who survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.

Babler, who is head of the Switzerland Titanic Society, said Dean was a "very good friend of very many years."

"I met her through the Titanic society but she became a friend and I went to see very every month or so," he said.

The pride of the White Star line, the Titanic had a mahogany-paneled smoking room, a swimming pool and a squash court. But it did not have enough lifeboats for all of its 2,200 passengers and crew.

Dean's family were steerage passengers setting out from the English port of Southampton for a new life in the United States. Her father had sold his pub and hoped to open a tobacconists' shop in Kansas City, Missouri, where his wife had relatives.

Initially scheduled to travel on another ship, the family was transferred to the Titanic because of a coal strike. Four days out of port and about 600 kilometers (380 miles) southeast of Newfoundland, the ship hit an iceberg. The impact buckled the Titanic's hull and sent sea water pouring into six of its supposedly watertight compartments.

Dean said her father's quick actions saved his family. He felt the ship scrape the iceberg and hustled the family out of its third-class quarters and toward the lifeboat that would take them to safety. "That's partly what saved us — because he was so quick. Some people thought the ship was unsinkable," Dean told the British Broadcasting Corp. in 1998.

Wrapped in a sack against the Atlantic chill, Dean was lowered into a lifeboat. Her 2-year-old brother Bertram and her mother Georgette also survived.

"She said goodbye to my father and he said he'd be along later," Dean said in 2002. "I was put into lifeboat 13. It was a bitterly cold night and eventually we were picked up by the Carpathia."

The family was taken to New York, then returned to England with other survivors aboard the rescue ship Adriatic. Dean did not know she had been aboard the Titanic until she was 8 years old, when her mother, about to remarry, told her about her father's death. Her mother, always reticent about the tragedy, died in 1975 at age 95.

Born in London on Feb. 2, 1912, Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean spent most of her life in the English seaside town of Southampton, Titanic's home port. She never married, and worked as a secretary, retiring in 1972 from an engineering firm.

She moved into a nursing home after breaking her hip about three years ago. She had to sell several Titanic mementoes to raise funds, prompting her friends to set up a fund to subsidize her nursing home fees. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the stars of the film "Titanic," pledged their support to the fund last month.

For most of her life Dean had no contact with Titanic enthusiasts and rarely spoke about the disaster. Dean said she had seen the 1958 film "A Night to Remember" with other survivors, but found it so upsetting that she declined to watch any other attempts to put the disaster on celluloid, including the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic."

She began to take part in Titanic-related activities in the 1980s, after the discovery of the ship's wreck in 1985 sparked renewed interest in the disaster. At a memorial service in England, Dean met a group of American Titanic enthusiasts who invited her to a meeting in the U.S.

She visited Belfast to see where the ship was built, attended Titanic conventions around the world — where she was mobbed by autograph seekers — and participated in radio and television documentaries about the sinking.

Charles Haas, president of the New-Jersey based Titanic International Society, said Dean was happy to talk to children about the Titanic. "She had a soft spot for children," he said. "I remember watching was little tiny children came over clutching pieces of paper for her to sign. She was very good with them, very warm."

In 1997, Dean crossed the Atlantic by boat for the first time, on the QEII luxury liner, and finally visited Kansas City, declaring it "so lovely I could stay here five years." She was active well into her 90s, but missed the commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the disaster in 2007 after breaking her hip.

Dean had no memories of the sinking and said she preferred it that way. "I wouldn't want to remember, really," she told The Associated Press in 1997. She opposed attempts to raise the wreck 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) from the sea bed.

"I don't want them to raise it, I think the other survivors would say exactly the same," she said in 1997. "That would be horrible."

The last survivor with memories of the sinking — and the last American survivor — was Lillian Asplund, who was 5 at the time. She died in May 2006 at the age of 99. The second-last survivor, Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, died in October 2007 aged 96.

The Obama Effect/Race & Law! Real or Not? Part1

Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers

By SAM DILLON

Published: January 22, 2009

Educators and policy makers, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, have said in recent days that they hope President Obama’s example as a model student could inspire millions of American students, especially blacks, to higher academic performance.

Now researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.

The inspiring role model that Mr. Obama projected helped blacks overcome anxieties about racial stereotypes that had been shown, in earlier research, to lower the test-taking proficiency of African-Americans, the researchers conclude in a report summarizing their results.

“Obama is obviously inspirational, but we wondered whether he would contribute to an improvement in something as important as black test-taking,” said Ray Friedman, a management professor at Vanderbilt University, one of the study’s three authors. “We were skeptical that we would find any effect, but our results surprised us.”

The study has not yet undergone peer review, and two academics who read it on Thursday said they would be interested to see if other researchers would be able to replicate its results.

Dr. Friedman and his fellow researchers, David M. Marx, a professor of social psychology at San Diego State University, and Sei Jin Ko, a visiting professor in management and organizations at Northwestern, have submitted their study for review to The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Dr. Friedman said.

“It’s a very small sample, but certainly a provocative study,” said Ronald F. Ferguson, a Harvard professor who studies the factors that have affected the achievement gap between white and nonwhite students, which shows up on nearly every standardized test. “There is a certainly a theoretical foundation and some empirical support for the proposition that Obama’s election could increase the sense of competence among African-Americans, and it could reduce the anxiety associated with taking difficult test questions.”

Researchers in the last decade assembled university students with identical SAT scores and administered tests to them, discovering that blacks performed significantly poorer when asked at the start to fill out a form identifying themselves by race. The researchers attributed those results to anxiety that caused them to tighten up during exams in which they risked confirming a racial stereotype.

In the study made public on Thursday, Dr. Friedman and his colleagues compiled a brief test, drawing 20 questions from the verbal sections of the Graduate Record Exam, and administering it four times to about 120 white and black test-takers during last year’s presidential campaign.

In total, 472 Americans — 84 blacks and 388 whites — took the exam. Both white and black test-takers ranged in age from 18 to 63, and their educational attainment ranged from high school dropout to Ph.D.

On the initial test last summer, whites on average correctly answered about 12 of 20 questions, compared with about 8.5 correct answers for blacks, Dr. Friedman said. But on the tests administered immediately after Mr. Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, and just after his election victory, black performance improved, rendering the white-black gap “statistically nonsignificant,” he said.

“It’s a nice piece of work,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association, who read the study on Thursday.

But Dr. Kingsbury wondered whether the Obama effect would extend beyond the election, or prove transitory. “I’d want to see another study replicating their results before I get too excited about it,” he said.

Sotomayor’s Focus on Race Issues May Be Hurdle

Conservatives say Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s race-based approach to the law is grounds for her to not be a Supreme Court justice.
WASHINGTON — The selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has opened a new battle in the fight over affirmative action and other race-conscious remedies for patterns of inequality, with each side invoking the election of the first black president in support of its cause.

Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico, has championed the importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career — as a student activist at Princeton and at Yale Law School, as a board member of left-leaning Hispanic advocacy groups and as a federal judge arguing for diversity on the bench.

Now conservatives say her strong identification with such race-based approaches to the law is perhaps the strongest argument against her confirmation, contending that her views put her outside an evolving consensus that such race-conscious public policy is growing obsolete.

“The American ideal is that justice should be colorblind,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “As we see people like Barack Obama achieve the highest office in the land and Judge Sotomayor’s own nomination to the highest court, I think it is harder and harder to see the justifications for race-conscious decisions across the board.”

Mr. Cornyn added, “This is a hot-button issue and one that needs to be confronted head on.”

Gary Marx, executive director of the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, said he saw a playbook for the campaign against Judge Sotomayor in the successful attacks on Lani Guinier, whose 1993 nomination to a top Justice Department post was withdrawn after an outcry over her writings arguing for alternative voting systems intended to better represent minorities.

“We will see ‘racial quotas’ become a much bigger issue than they might have been had another nominee been brought forward,” Mr. Marx said.

But civil rights advocates, including Ms. Guinier, say times have changed in their favor, also citing Mr. Obama’s election. In an interview, Ms. Guinier said she saw the debate over Judge Sotomayor’s nomination in part as an opportunity for civil rights advocates to push back against the kind of criticism that had thwarted her own nomination.

“It is easy to understand the idea of viewing an individual on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin,” Ms. Guinier said, but race also is a social phenomenon of politics, history and economics that demand deliberate policy responses.

Americans often see the issue in an either-or way — “ you are race-conscious or race-neutral,” she said. “But the election of Barack Obama has served as an emancipatory moment, and people are ready to discuss and listen to more nuanced arguments.”

Having Mr. Obama as a spokesman is different as well, said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “The American people chose change — symbolically, but in policy as well,” Mr. Shelton said. “The American people see things differently now.”

What is more, many civil rights groups say, Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation could provide an anchor against the current direction of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has led the more conservative bench toward a sweeping re-examination of government reliance on racial classifications, whether in school desegregation plans or landmark voting rights laws.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2007, summing up his approach in one of the most memorable lines of his opinions.

Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University Law School, said, “There is a tendency to say ‘The time has run, things are different, change has happened,’ ” adding, “It is an emerging theme of the Roberts court.”

Judge Sotomayor is not known to have identified herself as a beneficiary of affirmative action, but she has described her academic struggles as a new student at Princeton from a Roman Catholic school in the Bronx — one of about 20 Hispanics on a campus with more than 2,000 students.

She spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and “re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books. Only with the outside help of a professor who served as her mentor did she catch up academically, ultimately graduating at the top of her class.

She became the outspoken leader of a Puerto Rican student group, leading other Hispanics to file a complaint against Princeton with the federal government to force the hiring of Hispanic faculty members and administrators. “She was very passionate about affirmative action for women and minorities,” said Charles Hey, another Puerto Rican student.

At Yale Law School, she was co-chairman of a group for Latin, Asian and Native American students — a catchall group for nonblack minorities. There she led fellow students in meetings with the dean to push for the hiring of more Hispanic faculty members at the law school. And, friends say, she shared the alarm of others in the group when the Supreme Court prohibited the use of quotas in university admissions in its 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

As a lawyer, she joined the National Council of La Raza and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, two Hispanic civil rights groups that advocate for vigorous affirmative action. As a judge, she has repeatedly argued for diversity on the bench by alluding to the insights she gleaned from her Latina background.

In one of the few cases dealing with the subject that she helped decide on the federal appeals court, Ricci v. New Haven, she ruled in favor of the city’s ’s decision to discard the results of an exam to select firefighters for promotion because too few minority firefighters scored high enough to advance. White firefighters who had scored well on the discarded test sued, and the Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in April.

“Her nomination and the Ricci case have brought racial quotas back as a national issue," said Mr. Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network.

The public response, however, is hard to foresee. Few groups conducted public polls on the issue as it faded in recent years, and the results from those that did reveal a consistent ambivalence, said Michael Dimock, a pollster with the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

When asked a question about “affirmative action or preferential treatment for minorities,” the public has consistently opposed the idea by a margin of two to one. But when asked about “affirmative action programs designed to help women and minorities,” an even bigger majority has supported them.

And, Mr. Dimock said, the election of Mr. Obama does not appear to have changed either result.

Pandemic

Pandemic

Lori GoodsonStaff Writer

Almost exactly 80 years ago today, a vicious strain of influenza--which would go on to kill millions as it roared around the world--quietly emerged at Fort Riley's Camp Funston."It came in silently...," said 98-year-old Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux of Manhattan, who told of the epidemic in her recently published autobiography, Any Given Day: The Life and Times of Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux.An 18-year-old then, she was working in the quartermaster laundry at Fort Riley when the flu struck. "We lost lots of them," Foveaux said of the soldiers and workers at Fort Riley. "They came in so fast and furious. We'd be working with someone one day, and they'd go home because they didn't feel good, and by the next day they were gone. Every day we wondered who was going to be next."The flu began in March 1918 when a mess cook, Pvt. Albert Gitchell, complained of a sore throat and achiness as he reported to sick call at Camp Funston, a large cantonment constructed just months before and housing 60,000 soldiers."The next day there were 40 more of them," said Gaylynn S. Childs, director of the Geary County Historical Society Museum at Junction City. A week later, 522, cases had been reported at Fort Riley in what would be the mildest of the flu's three waves. Forty-six died at Fort Riley that spring.Around the time the flu itself was dying out, the 89th Division--and the influenza--were deployed to France during World War 1, Childs said. And the American troops helped spread the disease to the English, Germans, French and Spanish. The flu gained its name because Spain was one of the hardest hit countries, with its king almost dying from it, she said.From there, the flu went on through the Middle East and on around the world, eventually returning to the United States as the troops also came home for its second wave through Kansas.
At Fort Riley, the Kansas Building, pictured above, was used to house sick and dying soldiers. (Photo courtesy Fort Riley Museum)By fall 1918, Kansas and Fort Riley were heading into their deadliest confrontation with the flu. "The soldiers were going so fast," Foveaux recalled. "They were piling them up in a warehouse until they could get coffins for them." The dying continued at such a pace that morticians couldn't keep up. There were piles of wooden coffins, and the bodies were eventually wrapped and put outside, where they froze and were stacked "like cord wood," Childs said.Foveaux said she and others wore masks and tried everything that was suggested to keep from getting the flu. "We tried to be careful what we touched or what we ate," she said. "We were frightened to move, really." In September 1918, there were 133 cases of the flu in Kansas. Six days later, that number had climbed to 1,100. By mid-October, it had escalated to 12,000 cases, and communities across Kansas were reeling from its effects. At Camp Funston alone, there were 14,000 reported cases and 861 deaths during the first three weeks of October. The Kansas death toll had climbed to 12,000 by the end of the year.
This photo, courtesy of the Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health & Medicine, shows what is probably the interior of the old Kansas Building at Camp Funston during the height of the epidemic.Foveaux said the flu was devastating. She recalls one entire Manhattan family wiped out by the disease. Others, including her sister, had mild cases of it and soon recovered. The flu targeted young, healthy people. "It would strike down people in the prime of their lives," Childs said. Schools, churches and businesses were closed, and the sick were being cared for in makeshift facilities. A call was put out for women to assist with nursing the sick, who were being treated at homes and barracks that were turned into temporary hospitals."Fall crops were ready to be harvested, but there were no field hands to get the crops in," Childs said. "It was an agricultural disaster." The medical community struggled to keep up with those infected. "The doctors and nurses in most communities were very thinly stretched," Childs said. She said two or three of the area's doctors were serving overseas, so those left in the area were forced to handle the workload. She tells of an Alta Vista country doctor who traveled for six weeks caring for the sick, without returning home during that time. A local physician, she said, would return home every 24 hours for a change of clothes before beginning his rounds again.But, as a new year was arriving, the Spanish flu was coming to an end. "By the end of December 1918, the worst was over," Childs said. A third wave of the Spanish flu, much less devastating than its predecessors, moved through the state in early 1919. Foveaux was one of those who contracted the flu at that time. She remembers working with the laundry when she first felt herself coming down with the flu. "I began to feel hot and cold--not too good," she said. After work, she stayed in bed with a high fever, and her doctor had told her father she probably wouldn't make it through the night. But eventually she regained her strength. "I was sick a month or so," she said. "I didn't get back to work until April."

Top Billionaires Hold Secret Meeting

Top billionaires hold secret meeting
Gates, Winfrey, Buffett among philanthropists at gathering in New York

In a quiet meeting closed to the news media and the public, Bill Gates, David Rockefeller Sr., Oprah Winfrey and other leading philanthropists met in New York this month to discuss ways to promote efforts to solve growing social problems in America and abroad.
Together, the philanthropists in the room have committed a total of more than $72.5 billion to charitable causes since 1996, according to Chronicle of Philanthropy tallies.
The unusual event was held May 5 at Rockefeller University and was organized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Among the high-profile participants were Ted Turner, Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. (All of those philanthropists have appeared at one time on The Chronicle’s ranking of America’s most-generous donors.)

Several of the people at the meeting confirmed their involvement, but declined to tell The Chronicle about what was discussed or why they gathered almost in secret.
According to a person familiar with the meeting, the wealthy philanthropists gathered to trade ideas about how to raise the level of philanthropy in the world.
According to IrishCentral.com, a Web site in New York that writes about Irish Americans and which first disclosed some of the details about the gathering, each philanthropist was given 15 minutes to talk about “how they saw the future global economic climate, the future priorities for philanthropy, and what they felt the elite group should do.”

Other people who attended included Eli Broad, a real-estate investor, Julian H. Robertson, Jr., a hedge-fund manager, and Patty Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Gates foundation.

Muhammad Ali appears for charity event
Boxing great, who has Parkinson's, gets standing ovation in native Ky.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Boxing great Muhammad Ali made a rare public appearance in his native Kentucky during a presentation to announce a philanthrophilanthropic effort.
Ali sat onstage Tuesday at the Lexington Convention Center and received a standing ovation from hundreds attending Alltech's International Health and Nutrition Symposium.
Ali was there to announce a charitable fundraising initiative between Alltech and the Muhammad Ali Center. He sat front and center with his wife Lonnie during the presentation but did not speak.

The Alis have a home in Louisville but primarily live in Arizona because of the climate, Lonnie Ali said.
Alltech President Pearse Lyons pledged the effort would raise at least $500,000 before the Alltech-sponsored World Equestrian Games next year in Lexington.
Ali was also seen at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January. Parkinson's disease has limited his activity.

Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce win Image Awards
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali won the President’s Award. Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons was given the Vanguard Award. “I discovered that giving made me happy,” Simmons said during his acceptance speech alongside daughters Ming and Aoki, who ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29171593/

Sex Myths

When it comes to sex, the less you know, the more you're at risk. Get the facts on 9 of the biggest sex myths out there, just in time for National Women's Health Week. Plus, test your sexpertise with our quiz... MYTH #1: You can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up. FACT: Sperm are Olympic-class swimmers with a single-mission mentality – find the egg and fertilize it.The myth's underlying assumption – that it’s harder for sperm to swim against gravity, making it more difficult for you to get pregnant – is wrong,” says Aletha Akers, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of gynecology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Sperm can swim in any direction, and they swim pretty darn fast.”
MYTH #2: You can’t get pregnant if he pulls out. FACT: You’d think that if a guy doesn’t ejaculate inside you, there would be no sperm to hook up with the egg. Wrong. Men produce a tiny bit of liquid called “pre-ejaculate” that’s teeming with sperm. They can release it any time during sex without even realizing it.

Even if your partner pulls out right before ejaculation, he’s probably already deposited sperm, Akers warns.
MYTH #3: Douching is the best way to keep clean down there.FACT: About 20-40% of women douche – and half do so weekly. But the best way to keep your nether region clean is to leave it alone, gynecologists say.
“People think it’s like cleaning any other part of your body, but your vagina has its own self-cleaning mechanism,” Akers explains. “It produces its own fluids that help to wash things out while also keeping the right bacteria around in the right proportions.”
Homemade or store-bought douches (usually solutions of water, vinegar, baking soda or iodine) upset the vagina’s natural bacteria balance and increase the risk for yeast and other vaginal infections.Because douching can push bacteria from the vagina higher into the reproductive organs, it may also contribute to pelvic inflammatory disease, a major cause of infertility.
MYTH #4: You can get herpes only if you have sex when your partner has an outbreak.FACT: Transmission risk is highest during an outbreak, but because carriers can always shed herpes virus, they can also infect their partners at any time during unprotected sex, says Ashlyn Savage, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11% of men and 23% of women have genital herpes; 56% of men and 60% of women have oral herpes, which can spread to the genitals through oral sex.
To prevent its spread, avoid sex during outbreaks and always use condoms for intercourse and dental dams for oral sex.
Won’t condoms protect during an outbreak too? Not always.“Herpes is a skin infection, not something transmitted by bodily fluids like HIV or gonorrhea,” Savage says. “If either partner has an open sore outside the area covered by a condom, they could transmit herpes even with a condom.”
MYTH #5: If you’re aroused, you shouldn’t need lubricant. FACT: Needing more lubrication than your body produces doesn't mean you're not aroused.
“A lot of people equate wetness with how turned on they are, but that’s not necessarily an accurate barometer,” says Anne Semans, co-author of Good Vibrations Guide To Sex (Pleis Press).Your monthly cycle, pregnancy, illness, menopause, medications (such as antihistamines and decongestants) can affect lubrication, no matter how much water you drink.And if you’re using condoms – including lubricated ones – you’ll need extra lube. Latex doesn’t slide well even if you are naturally lubricated, Savage says.
MYTH #6: You can become addicted to your vibrator. FACT: Even if you climax faster and more easily with battery-powered assistance, a vibrator won’t ruin your ability to achieve orgasm with your partner, sexperts say.
“We can still have orgasms if we take the time, but we’re so used to the quick response we get from the vibrator that we get impatient and give up,” says Ellen Barnard, a sex educator/counselor and co-founder of A Woman’s Touch in Madison, Wisconsin (www.a-womans-touch.com).Still, if you’re worried, Semans offers this advice: “Put your vibrator away for a few months and you’ll find that your response to fingers or a tongue comes back.”Or you can introduce your partner to the vibrator, especially if you’re self-conscious about how long it takes you to climax without one.“Most women feel okay with their partner’s hand on their clitoris,” Semans says. “So putting a fingertip vibrator on his finger just adds a little extra buzz.”
MYTH #7: Bigger is better.FACT: Some women have definite size preferences, says Carol Queen, Ph.D., staff sexologist at the online sex toy boutique Good Vibrations (www.goodvibes.com).
But a huge package doesn’t automatically translate into mind-boggling sex. In fact, women complain more often that their partner is too big, not too small, sexperts say.“There’s more to erotic pleasure than size,” Queen says. “It’s about how a guy uses his hands or mouth or how sexy a woman feels before she gets to the bedroom.”If you want something bigger, your partner can wear rings or sleeves that add length and girth.
And do Kegel exercises, Barnard says. They’ll tighten your pelvic floor muscles and let you “adapt to whatever size partner you have.”
MYTH #8: All women can experience orgasm just through vaginal penetration.FACT: Only about 20-30% of women experience orgasm through intercourse alone, so don’t be shy about reaching down and giving yourself a hand or a buzz.
“Putting your hand on your clitoris during sex really ups the chances that you’ll have an orgasm,” Queen says.
MYTH # 9: There’s no such thing as the G-spot.FACT: Like the lost city of Atlantis, this pleasure zone’s exact location sparks great debate. There’s no consensus on where to find it. Some sex researchers say it’s the glandular tissue around the urethra (found behind your pubic bone, about two inches inside your vagina).
Others believe it’s farther back, in a triangular area on the back of the bladder wall – called the trigone or T Zone – where three nerves come together. Pinpointing the G-spot’s location may not be crucial, though, because your body has many sensitive nerves down there. What stimulates one spot is likely to arouse surrounding areas.
“It’s pretty much all going to be working together,” Queen says.

Rapper TI to Serve Time in Arkansas

Rapper TI to Serve Time in Arkansas

(Newser) – T.I. has 11 days to arrive at a low-security Arkansas prison for his year-and-a-day sentence on weapons charges, E! Online reports. The 28-year-old rapper, real name Clifford J. Harris Jr., will likely spend less than 2 months at the Forrest City federal prison, thanks to early release and 305 days served in home detention. His last pre-prison show will be May 24 in Atlanta.
T.I. pleaded guilty after trying to purchase machine guns and silencers in Atlanta for self-protection, the AP reports. His sentence also includes a $100,000 fine. Sources: E! Online, Associated

Swine Flu Hoax?

I recently came upon the following article. Let me know what you think about it.

Dr. Lorraine Day is the lady who discovered where AIDS came from after spending a year or more in the Library of Congress. She wrote a book exposing it about 15 years ago. Bottom line is that AIDS was created in a lab at Ft. Deitrick, Maryland by the criminals posing as govt.
Here we go again. sl

Swine Flu Hoax?

So who are the swine behind the swine flu?
That's what I wanted to know. Whenever I begin to see blaring headlines regarding the word "pandemic", I make a call to Dr. Lorraine Day, the former chief of Orthopedic Surgery at USF. http://www.drday. com/ Not one to mince words, and a dogged researcher, I can count on Lorraine to give me the big picture behind the headlines. I made that call yesterday. Her first words, underscored with a hearty laugh, were "It's just another hoax!" Here's the long and short of it according to Lorraine. First, the government is continuing on it's path to incite panic so we will ideally demand to have protection from these 'killer virus' via vaccinations. This would help avert a less popular mandatory vaccination program, which is what the Elite would like to see happen. Lorraine is also quick to point out that truly noxious vaccines are being developed in laboratories that combine human and animal virus' that can seriously compromise our immune systems if we allow them to be administered to us. Secondly, she said that the Center for Disease Control needed to move their stockpiles of the flu drug Tamiflu, which didn't make it out to the masses during the last panic, which was the 'bird flu'. I find it interesting that Tamiflu was supposedly created as the antidote to bird flu, but the CDC now says it actually works just fine for swine flu too. It would appear that the stuff is quite non-specific in nature for what is considered to be a very specific strain of flu. Hummm. Anyway, pharmacy chains such as CVC are now stocking up in preparation for the "pandemic". As an aside, it may not surprise you to know that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a major stockholder in Gilead Sciences, a California bio tech firm that owns the rights to Tamiflu. A CNN report from 2005, when we were were being threatened with the bird flu, put Rumsfeld's holdings somewhere between $5,000,000 to $25,000,000. This is the same gentleman who brought us the excitotoxin Aspartame, now known to cause serious neurological problems in humans. But, less I digress..... Lorraine went on to say that 12, 60, even 120 deaths from flu do not make a pandemic. More than 500,000 people a year die from various flu virus'. There are still active flu strains out there from all of the usual sources. In fact, it was just reported that 2 young people in the Sacramento area were tested to have been infected with the swine flu virus, but, no worries, they recovered from their flu in 24 hours. Sounds just like the flu that's been going around through my friends and other acquaintances over the past few weeks in Sacramento. To further the story, she said that Prince Charles recently pushed for the subject of Developmental Sustainability be pushed to the top of the G-20 agenda. Developmental Sustainability is the code word for de-population according to Dr. Day. As you may recall, Charles' father, Prince Phillip, when asked what he would like to come back as if he had another life, said "A virus." The idea was that he would then be able to kill off the useless members of society. What a gentleman. In short, Lorraine says do not worry. Just do your body a favor by eating a good clean diet full of fresh vegetables and fruits, get some sunshine and fresh air, turn to your spiritual practice, relax and, under no circumstances, allow yourself to be vaccinated. We're all exposed to flu bugs, but if you can keep your immune system strong, you have nothing to worry about and the only swine involved here are those who are trying to keep us in fear.

Stress tests show $75bn buffer needed

Stress tests show $75bn buffer needed

US regulators on Thursday ordered 10 of the nation’s largest banks to add a total of $74.6bn in equity following the completion of stress tests, triggering a frenzy of activity as banks lined up to announce capital-raising plans.
“These tests will help ensure that banks have a sufficient capital cushion to continue lending in a more adverse economic scenario,” Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, said.

The US authorities said that the tests projected that losses at the top 19 banks over 2009 and 2010 would reach $599bn if the adverse scenario set out in the stress test materialised.

They said that bank operating earnings would absorb $363bn of these losses under the stress scenario. They estimated that 10 of the 19 top banks would need a further $74.6bn in equity to be sufficiently well capitalised at the end of 2010 to cope with potential losses beyond that period.
The regulators put the additional equity need at a much higher $185bn at the end of 2008, but said that actions taken by the banks subsequently had reduced that amount by $110bn.
The long-awaited publication of the test results, which came after days of tense discussions between regulators and the banks, prompted a flurry of activity among lenders with Bank of America, which was found to have the biggest capital shortfall at $33.9bn, announcing plans to raise $17bn in equity. BofA said that it would add equity through a share sale and the conversion of preferred shares held by non-government investors. It also plans to raise the money through earnings and the possible sale of assets, including asset manager Columbia Management and First Republic Bank.

Wells Fargo, which needs to plug a gap of $13.7bn, launched a $6bn equity issuance, while Morgan Stanley said that it would sell $2bn in shares and $3bn in non-government-backed debt to fill its $1.8bn capital requirement. Citigroup, which needs $5.5bn in additional equity, said that it would expand an existing offer to convert preferred shares.
The stress tests could force the government to gain a large stake in a number of regional banks such as SunTrust, KeyCorp and Regions which might have to ask the government to convert its preferred shares into common stock unless they manage to sell enough shares to investors to meet the tests’ requirements.
A number of banks, including Wells, BofA and Citi indicated that regulators had been very conservative in their assumptions and expressed confidence that their profits over the next two years would be better than the government’s projections.
People close to the situation said that Citi convinced regulators to reduce their estimates of its capital shortfall, from an original $30bn-plus to just $5.5bn.

Africa has to find its own road to prosperity

Africa has to find its own road to prosperity
By Paul Kagame
Published: May 7 2009 19:35 Last updated: May 7 2009 19:35
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At recent meetings of the Group of 20 and the International Monetary Fund, world leaders have gathered to discuss the global economic crisis. Unfortunately, it seems that many still believe they can solve the problems of the poor with sentimentality and promises of massive infusions of aid, which often do not materialise. We who live in, and lead, the world’s poorest nations are convinced that the leaders of the rich world and multilateral institutions have a heart for the poor. But they also need to have a mind for the poor.
Dambisa Moyo’s controversial book, Dead Aid, has given us an accurate evaluation of the aid culture today. The cycle of aid and poverty is durable: as long as poor nations are focused on receiving aid they will not work to improve their economies. Some of Ms Moyo’s prescriptions, such as ending all aid within five years, are aggressive. But I always thought this was the discussion we should be having: when to end aid and how best to end it.
Aid has not only often failed to meet its objectives; it has also rarely dealt with the underlying issues of poverty and weak societies. We see this with our neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers – the largest and most expensive presence of its kind in history – treat the symptoms rather than addressing the issues of capacity, self-determination and dignity.
Often, aid has left recipient populations unstable, distracted and more dependent; as Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister of Afghanistan, has pointed out, it can even sever the relationship between democratically elected leadership and the populace.
Do not get me wrong. We appreciate support from the outside, but it should be support for what we intend to achieve ourselves. No one should pretend that they care about our nations more than we do; or assume that they know what is good for us better than we do ourselves. They should, in fact, respect us for wanting to decide our own fate.
At the same time, as I tell our people, nobody owes Rwandans anything. Why should anyone in Rwanda feel comfortable that taxpayers in other countries are contributing money for our well­being or development? Rwanda is a nation with high goals and a sense of purpose. We are attempting to increase our gross domestic product by seven times over a generation, which increases per capita incomes fourfold. This will create the basis for further innovation and foster trust, civic-mindedness and tolerance, strengthening our society.
Entrepreneurship is the surest way for a nation to meet these goals. Michael Fairbanks’ book, In The River They Swim, which uses Rwanda as one of its examples, highlights the need to respect local wisdom, build a culture of innovation and create investment opportunities in product development, new distribution systems and innovative branding.
Government activities should focus on supporting entrepreneurship not just to meet these new goals, but because it unlocks people’s minds, fosters innovation and enables people to exercise their talents. If people are shielded from the forces of competition, it is like saying they are disabled.
Entrepreneurship gives people the feeling that they are valued and have meaning, that they are as capable, as competent and as gifted as anyone else. Asking our citizens to compete is the same as asking them to go out into the world on behalf of Rwanda and play their part.
We know this is a tremendous challenge given our status as a land-locked nation emerging from conflict, with few natural resources, little specialised infrastructure and low historical investment in education. But, in fact, we have reasons to be optimistic: we have a clear strategy to export based on sustainable competitive advantages. We sell coffee now for high prices to the world’s most demanding purchasers; our tourism experience attracts the best customers in the world and market research reveals that perceptions of Rwandan tea are improving.
This has resulted in wages in key sectors rising at more than 20 per cent on an annual basis. We have cut our aid as a percentage of total GDP by half over the past decade, and last year we grew at more than 11 per cent even as the world entered a recession.
While this is encouraging, we know the road to prosperity is a long one. We will travel it with the help of a new school of development thinkers and entrepreneurs, with those who demonstrate they have not just a heart, but also a mind for the poor.
The writer is president of Rwanda
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009