Where all the good guys are

Where all the good guys are -- Women always seem to ask me where all the good men are, as if these near-mythical dudes are hiding behind bushes, chained up in some vampire's basement, or are just rare and elusive, like the snow leopard.

Normally, I have to resist responding, "Maybe the good guys are just avoiding you."

But the answer to this frequent, lovelorn lament is simple: The good men are right under your nose.

And that's the damn truth. That's right, ladies. The good men you pine for are right there, all up in your grill, listening to your bellyaching, patiently enduring your inability to manage your own flamboyant, capricious romantic expectations and dreary reality.

These good guys are co-workers, classmates, and, most importantly, friends. You officially have my permission as a relationship expert with a Ph.D. in Broken Hearts from the University of Feelings, Emoburg campus, to fall in love with your male friends.

I blame your gender, after all, for inventing what The Frisky site refers to as "The Friend Zone." It's not a "zone." One loses weight in a "zone," or tells time there. Or learns a dark lesson about human nature during a twist ending.

No. "The Friend Zone" is actually a gulag. The Bermuda Triangle. A cruel little exile. Right now, there is a man in your life who feels you in his teeth, but who walks around with an "F" for "Friend" seared onto his forehead by a glowing-red iron you keep perpetually cooking in the furnace of your heart. You cannot think of him "that way."

At what point did he go from potential dating material to platonic bestie? Possibly the moment he started remembering your favorite alcoholic drink, instant messaging you about "Mad Men," and listening to you drone on about your thighs, again. Because love is intently listening to someone repeat themselves.

This dude adores you and you are denying yourself potential joy because of some imaginary rule. The heart is a frontier full of peril and plunder, and you should not be afraid to explore what lies beyond hastily built fences.
I'm not saying men and women can't be friends. We totally can. I won't confirm the famous lesson from "When Harry Met Sally," which remains smug Baby Boomer treacle.

I don't want to sleep with all my female friends. I've thought about it, but I don't think that's gender-specific. Just human curiosity.

So do it! Hook up with your dude friend. Life is too short to be afraid of ruining a friendship, especially if there's a chance you could be more to one another, like epically cosmic lovers worthy of your own constellation in the night sky.

Friendships are as fluid as romances; they can end as suddenly as they can begin. In many ways, they're overrated. You know what's not overrated? Love. It's awesome.
We're talking about the meaning of life here. And it's to find someone whom you can grow old, fat, and ugly with. Our romantic rituals revolve around complete strangers negotiating for sex, then attempting to become friends. It's as if our society demands there's a dating you and a real you, and a relationship happens when two people agree to abandon the mutual lie. Cut to the chase. Friends already know how to play, laugh, and forgive each other.

Two of my longest relationships were with women whom I had been friends with. I loved them both, initially from afar. In both instances, we stepped off a cliff together without looking like the Fool in most tarot card decks. We took a risk, molted out of our friendship, and transformed into something else. And there was that moment of recognition, where we both said "screw it," took a risk, and realized that you can't win big if you don't gamble big. And a shot at conjugal and emotional bliss is quite a prize.

The first time, we were in the middle of a "Friends" marathon, and we took a break so she could shower. She came back with wet hair, and I had never seen her without make-up and when she plopped onto the couch, I kissed her. We both freaked out:

She stormed into the kitchen; I paced in a circle. Then we decided to make out some more. It helped. The second was a friend who proved to me she was no princess at a party by shot-gunning a can of beer. I immediately told her that I was falling for her, and she told me to wear a helmet. She kissed me, our quiet garden of a friendship suddenly a wildfire.

I wouldn't say I'm friends with these women; we broke up for the reasons people break up -- changing priorities, the mean little pianos life drops on your head. Maybe we would have drifted apart regardless. We're not friends now, but I don't regret giving it a shot. Kisses are the only things you can steal and never have to give back. And at least I'll have those until the day I croak. ( thefrisky.com )

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VALENTINE vs PILKADA

Menarik ketika ada keinginan dan gairah untuk menuliskan lagi apa yang hanya sekadar ingin disampaikan, tanpa harus berada di pihak golongan apa dan kubu apapun itu. Seiring dengan semakin menyodot perhatian publik di detik-detik perhelatan pesta demokrasi tingkat daerah, bahkan di salah satu daerah ada yang disebut pilkada rasa pilpres, seiring turun gunungnya para nahkoda yang paling punya peran dan berpengaruh di negara ini.

Oke, sudahlah! Biarkan orang-orang terus berdemokrasi, dengan tetap menjaga bahwa yang berkuasa tetapalah rakyat sesuai dari konsep demokrasi itu sendiri, dan jangan pernah terjadi seperti f2atwa termasyhurnya Lord Acton, “Manusia yang mempunyai kekuasaan cenderung untuk menyalahgunakan kekuasaan itu, tetapi manusia yang mempunyai kekuasaan tak terbatas pasti 0 0 secara tak terbatas pula.”

Di tahun-tahun sebelumnya H-7 atau hari berapapun sebelum hari H valentine, segala hal yang 

dengan ini sudah mulai simpang siur, antara yang pro dan kontra, antara yang sudah siap dan yang belum siap dengan segala kegiatannya terkait ingin ikut merayakannya yang notabenenya terjadi kalangan remaja.

Sebuah persoalan modernisasi dan pandangan teologis masing-masing manusia yang cukup menjadi bahan pembicaraan di setiap kalangan seakan-akan menemui jalan buntu dalam penyelesainnya. Karena mayoritas bangsa ini muslim, yang secara teologi peringatan valentine katanya bertentangan dengan ajaran Islam yang penuh historik dalam hal ini.

Namun tidak dapat dipungkiri juga, arus globalisasi dan modernisasi serta perubahan sosiologis yang cenderung mengarah pada apa yang menjadi tren selalu menarik perhatian dan peminat yang tak kunjung reda. Sehingga, apa yang terjadi, banyaknya manusia semakin berambisi untuk hal seperti itu, ditambah faktor budaya konsumerisme ataupun hedonisme yang semakin tak terbendung.

Dalam membahas tentang hari valentine atau sebutan lain dari hari kasih sayang untuk pasangannya, merupakan sebuah kebiasaan yang muncul di dunia barat, yang jika apapun dibawa ke Indonesia pasti akan laris dan banyak memikat perhatian, karena Indonesia merupakan bagian dari negara yang tingkat konsumtifnya paling tragis.

Dengan kejadian yang sudah tampak mata seperti itu, tidak mengherankan lagi, segala budaya atau kebiasaan apapun yang ada di dunia juga berkembangbiak dengan baik di negara sedemikan besar ini. Yang menjadi perdebatannya dari dulu-dulu kebiasaan yang seperti ini, dalam hal ini peringatan hari valentine, apakah tidak mencederai sebuah keyakinan manusia (secara teologis).

Seperti pada apa sebelumnya yang sudah disampaikan, secara historis memang istilah Valentine muncul dari kalangan non-muslim, sehingga ada perdebatan sesama kaum muslim pro dan kontra. Namun saya juga tidak ingin memberikan fatwa hari valentine atau fatwa apapun itu, karena sudah terlalu banyak juga fatwa yang dikelurkan oleh yang memang menjadi perannya di situ.

Ada hal yang menarik pada Februari ini, menyurutnya perdebatan tentang hari valentine itu sendiri, karena mungkin juga banyak orang yang sudah mulai bosan dengan pasangannya masing-masing, atau mungkin juga tidak adanya kajian teologis yang mendalami lagi di berbagai lintas agama seiring isu-isu penodaan agama yang masih menjadi polemik berkepanjangan sehingga menjadikannya malas dan bosan.

Bahkan, karena sudah mendekatnya pesta rakyat pemilihan pilkada serentak yang semuanya selalu menjurus pandangan ke pilkada DKI Jakarta, tak sempat untuk mengeluarkan fatwa atau sudah dianggap tidak "booming" lagi fatwanya.

Untuk membendung karena meskipun fatwa dikeluarkan masih tetap saja melakukannya, atau mungkin sudah dianggap tidak membutuhkan fatwa lagi karena respons publik yang sedemikan beragam dan bervariasi untuk mencegah menjamurnya berita hoax?

Cukup kuat dan setia sebenarnya menjadi bagain dari rakyat Indonesia ini, dengan carut marut persoalan sosialnya yang tetap menjadi PR kita bersama, ditambah lagi carut marutnya di setiap lapisan sistem birokrat dengan banyak indikasi tersandung kasus korupsi, serta membumbungnya suhu perpolitikan Jakarta yang menjadi tolak ukur perkembangan politik nasional.

Saya pikir segala fenomena harus dibarengi dengan adanya sebuah fatwa yang cukup bisa menguatkan keyakinan terhadap apa yang dari dulu menjadi sebuah keyakinan tauhidnya, ternyata tidak sedemikan gampang untuk menebaknya. Persoalan keyakinan yang terbentur pertarungan politik di era modrenisasi sehingga menjadi begitu kompleks.

Sumber : Mas Jarwo / G+

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Kenapa mengandung anak luar nikah lebih mudah dalam bersalin?

Di zaman yang serba modern saat ini ternyata fenomena wanita yang hamildiluar nikah bisa kita temui hampir di mana mana. Astagfirullah. hal ini terjadi akibat bebasnya pergaulan anak muda seta prilaku seks bebas yang mereka terapkan, dan akibatnya banyak wanita yang hamil tanpa tahu siapa bapak dari anak yang ia kandung.

Nah anehnya lagi biasa wanita yang sudah hamil diluar nikah ini jika melahirkan atau bersalin selalu mudah lihat saja di berita berita yang mengabarkan jika ada orang yang melahirkan dijalan, di wc bahkan di dalam kamar tanpa ada bantuan orang lain.

Kenapa mengandung anak luar nikah lebih mudah dalam bersalin?

Kata Sorang Ustadz yang mengajar tentang agama, ketakutan membuat seorang gadis terlampau belia, yang terlanjur dapat melahirkan anaknya dengan mudah.

Katanya lagi, mulai dari hubungan yang salah, ketika hamil tidak timbul kepayahan sebagaimana wanita-wanita biasa ketika sedang hamil. ALLAH cabut rasa kepayahan itu sehingga tidak mendapatkan pahala sebagaimana wanita-wanita lain yang bersusah payah ketika hamil hasil pernikahan yang sah.

Kadang-kadang, tanda-tanda sebagai orang hamil juga tidak terlihat. Perutnya tidak nampak besar, dapat pula berjalan dengan gagahnya. Kadang, bisa pergi sekolah dan buat kegiatan lapangan sebagaimana siswa lainnya, sedangkan sebenarnya sedang sarat mengandung. Itu satu lagi nikmat yang dicabut.

Kemudian ketika melahirkan nanti, mudah saja anak itu keluar ke dalam toilet pun bisa selesai. Maka, pahala sakit karena melahirkan anak itu telah diangkat darinya. Wanita biasa, pada keadaan begini harus dibantu oleh bidan yang terampil, itu pun susah dan sakit untuk melahirkan anak, tetapi wanita yang terlanjur itu mudah saja.

Setelah anak itu lahir, mereka sumbatkan ke dalam toilet dan flush! Mengapa sampai begitu kejam? Karena perasaan kasih sayang sudah dicabut darinya.

Jadi, kepada semua gadis, usaha mudah terlampau. Secinta mana pun kamu kepada seorang pria, tidak usah serahkan diri kamu secara yang salah. Kamu akan dihantui perasaan bersalah seumur hidup kamu. KAMU BISA MEMIKAT UNTUK MEMILIKI SECARA SAH.

Apa pun tu semua kuasa Allah SWT dan rezeki masing-masing. Ada juga yang dapat rezeki mudah bersalin. Wallahua’lam

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What Do You See On This Woman's Shirt?

As wardrobe malfunctions go, this one from Australian news anchor Natarsha Belling is unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry. The Network Ten reporter took to the airwaves to present the channel’s current affair show Eyewitness News over the weekend, wearing this fetching green jacket over her black top. Except the garment didn’t take long to bring out the childish sense of humour in many of those watching as they noticed its – how shall we put this politely? – somewhat phallic neckline. It all started with Facebook user Ruben Haywood, and from there the comments just kept on coming…Unsurprisingly social media was quick to respond after Facebook user Ruben Haywood posted a snap of the newsreader online – with some pointing out it was hard to ‘unsee’ Natarsha’s top once you’d had a look.

Noooooooooooooo. Poor lady. She just wanted to look nice. The green jacket does look good. She’s a good looking lady in general. It’s just kind of hard to notice how good looking she is when there’s the outline of a giant dick on her chest. That zipper isn’t doing her any favors either. Makes it look like a giant ejaculating dick on her chest . Not exactly the look you wanna put out to the world when you’re on TV doing news reports. It’s like when Rob Riggle’s character in Step Brothers keeps telling Will Ferrell to change his face. That’s how I bet people felt watching the news that night while she had on the penis jacket. They didn’t even hear what she was saying that night cause that giant penis outline on her chest is incredibly distracting. It is one of those things where you might not see it at first but once you do, it’s all you see. First glance, nice looking lady in a nice green jacket. Second glance, penis penis penis penis penis penis. ( barstoolsports.com )

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Whitney Houston's mother has words for Bobby Brown

Whitney Houston's mother has words for Bobby Brown — Cissy Houston has a few words, and a few more, for Bobby Brown.

In "Remembering Whitney," the mother of the late Whitney Houston writes that from the start she had doubted whether Brown was right for her daughter. And she thinks that Whitney might not have ended up so "deep" into drugs had they not stayed together.

"I do believe her life would have turned out differently," Houston writes. "It would have been easier for her to get sober and stay sober. Instead she was with someone who, like her, wanted to party. To me, he never seemed to be a help to her in the way she needed."

Associated Press - This Jan. 22, 2013 photo shows American gospel singer and author Cissy Houston posing for a portrait in New York. Houston, mother of the late singer Whitney Houston, is releasing a book, "Remembering Whitney," on Tuesday, Jan. 29. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

"Remembering Whitney" came out Tuesday, two weeks short of the first anniversary of Houston's death. She drowned in a hotel bathtub in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 48. Authorities said her death was complicated by cocaine use and heart disease.

During a recent telephone interview, Houston said she has no contact with Brown and didn't see any reason to, not even concerning her granddaughter, Bobbi Kristina. She reaffirmed her comments in the book that Whitney Houston would have been better off without him. "How would you like it if he had anything to do with your daughter?" she asked.

A request to Brown's publicist for comment was not immediately returned Monday.

Houston said she wanted the book published so the world would not believe the worst about her daughter. Cissy Houston, herself an accomplished soul and gospel singer who has performed with Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, describes Whitney as a transcendent talent and vivacious and generous person known affectionately by her childhood nickname, "Nippy." But she acknowledges in the book that her daughter could be "mean" and "difficult" and questions at times how well she knew her.

"In my darkest moments, I wonder whether Nippy loved me," she writes. "She always told me she did. But you know, she didn't call me much. She didn't come see me as much as I hoped she would."

But, "almost always," Whitney Houston was "the sweetest, most loving person in the room."

Brown is portrayed as childish and impulsive, hot tempered and jealous of his wife's success. Cissy Houston describes a 1997 incident when Whitney sustained a "deep cut" on her face while on a yacht with Brown in the Mediterranean. Whitney insisted it was an accident; Brown had slammed his hand on a table, breaking a plate. A piece of china flew up and hit Whitney, requiring surgery to cover any possible scar.

The injury was minor, the effects possibly fateful.

"She seemed sadder after that, like something had been taken away from her," Houston writes.

For years, Whitney's drug problems had been only a rumor to her mother, who writes that concerns expressed by record executive Clive Davis were kept from her by her daughter and others. But by 2005 she had seen the worst. Houston remembers a horrifying visit to the Atlanta home of Brown and Houston, where the walls and doors were spray-painted with "big glaring eyes and strange faces." Whitney's face had been cut out from a framed family picture, an image Cissy Houston found "beyond disturbing." The next time Houston came to the house, she was joined by two sheriff's deputies who helped her take Whitney to the hospital.

"She was so angry at me, cursing me and up and down," she writes. "Eventually, after a good long while, Nippy did stop being angry at me. She realized that I did what I did to protect her, and she later told people that I had saved her life."

Brown and Whitney Houston divorced in 2007, after 15 years of marriage. When she learned that her daughter was leaving Brown, Cissy Houston was "extremely relieved" and "thanking God so much I'm sure nobody else could get a prayer in to Him."

Houston has no doubt that if Whitney were alive she would still be singing and making records. Houston said during her interview that she has seen "Sparkle," a remake of the 1970s movie that came out last summer and featured Whitney as the mother of a singing group struggling with addiction. Although Cissy Houston doesn't like movies about "drugs and all that kind of stuff," she was impressed by "Sparkle."

"I thought she was great in it and all the kids were great," says Houston, who adds that the "whole movie was hard to get through."

The book, too, was painful and her grief continues. She writes that sometimes she hears a doorbell ring and thinks it's Whitney, or sees a vase in a different place and wonders if her daughter is around. Some nights, Cissy Houston wakes up crying, not sure at first where she is.

"But then I get up out of bed, wipe my eyes, wash my face, and lie back down to my sleep. Because that is all I can do," she writes. "I am so grateful to God for giving me the gift of 48 years with my daughter. And I accept that He knew when it was time to take her." ( Associated Press )

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9 Lessons The Tech World Learned In 2012

LESSON 1: Tweet in haste, repent at leisure

Who would have thought that an elderly Tory peer would become a leading innovator in internet law? Yet that is what Lord McAlpine has become. It's not clear whether it was him or his lawyers who came up with the idea of going after the UK Twitter users who tweeted – or retweeted – false allegations that he had been involved in child abuse, but, whoever was responsible, the fact is that it has changed the legal landscape in the UK.

The smart move was to discriminate between different classes of users. Those with 500 or fewer followers could get in touch with McAlpine's lawyers and, upon payment of a small fee to charity, escape with a pardon. More substantial tweeters were required to pay heftier damages or face the full force of m'learned friends in court.

Chief among the latter was Sally Bercow, Mr Speaker's lively spouse, who, at least at the time of writing, seems determined to see things through to the bitter end. If it comes to that, we can look forward to an entertaining and instructive legal contest.

All of which is comforting for the establishment. At last, the unruly internet beast is being tamed. Twitter gives broadcast-type communication power to ordinary citizens and if a broadcasting network such as the BBC can be held responsible for what it transmits, surely Twitterers should be too?

Only up to a point, Lord Copper. Obviously, people should be responsible for their actions, but it's absurd to judge the behaviour of a thoughtless individual by the same standards as we apply to that of a professional news organisation such as the BBC. If the only tweets that were judged acceptable were anodyne ones, then the value of Twitter as a public service would be greatly diminished. Besides, lots of professional journalists made similar errors in jumping to conclusions about the identity of the Sandy Hook killer.

LESSON 2: Valuing technology companies remains an inexact science

Before Facebook's initial public offering (IPO), the big question was: how much is the company worth? Post-IPO, the answer was: less than we thought – or were led to believe by Wall Street. Facebook shares fell 24% in the first three days of open trading, a fact that has led some disgruntled investors to contemplate legal action. Clearly they hadn't heard that valuations of internet companies arrived at by consulting the entrails of chickens are possibly as reliable as those arrived at by legions of spreadsheet-wielding consultants.

But the story of Facebook's oscillating valuations paled into insignificance compared with the row about the price that Hewlett-Packard, the troubled US computer giant, paid for software firm Autonomy. In October 2011, HP bought the Cambridge-based company for $11.7bn. Last month, HP announced that it was taking an $8.8bn write-off because it had realised that Autonomy was not worth anything like its purchase price. HP claimed that $5.5bn of the write-off was explained by the discovery of "accounting irregularities".

HP's criticisms are vigorously denied by Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, who has set up a website to contest them. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, has also set up a website, which claims that "Autonomy had been 'shopped' [ie offered for sale] to Oracle as well, but Oracle wasn't interested because the price was way too high". While all of this is going on, the average reader might be forgiven for asking how a big company such as HP could have made an $8.8bn mistake in its valuation of a prospective acquisition. Shouldn't it have taken the advice of accountants?

It turns out that it did. The New York Times reported that all of the Big Four firms – KPMG, Ernst and Young, Deloitte and PwC – had been consulted at one time or another. Next time, HP should try those chicken entrails.

LESSON 3: Raspberries come in unexpected flavours

A few years ago, Eben Upton and some of his academic colleagues in Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory became concerned about the fact that most of the kids who wanted to study computer science no longer knew how to program. So they had the idea of designing a small, cheap computer that they could give to prospective students at open days. Anyone who turned up for interview would be asked what they'd done with it and only those who had done something interesting would be considered for admission.

Thus began the most intriguing home computing experiment since the BBC Model B transformed Britain's IT landscape in the 1980s. "We thought we'd make maybe a few hundred of these devices," Upton wrote later, "or, best case, a lifetime production run of a few thousand."

How wrong can you be? When Raspberry Pi, for that is what the device was eventually christened, was announced, 100,000 people joined the mailing list. When it went on sale, the demand crashed the servers of the two major online retailers that had signed up to sell it. To date, it has sold more than 800,000 units and stands as an astonishing rebuke to the sceptics who said that in these days of iDevices and tablets there was no market for a device that ran Linux and simply sat blinking at you when you switched it on. But then that's what they also said about the BBC Micro.

LESSON 4: The iPad isn't a magic bullet for publishers after all

Print publishers hate the web, partly because they can't control what people do with the content that they publish on it, but mainly because they can't make the buggers pay for it. So when the Apple iPad arrived they fell upon it like ravening wolves. Sure, they had to pay the Apple 30% tax for publishing through the iTunes store, but at least the customer paid something. And the gorgeous screen and processing power of the Apple tablet meant that publishers could create "immersive reading experiences" that, coincidentally, kept the reader from venturing out into the nasty world wild web.

Ever willing to try something new, Rupert Murdoch launched The Daily, the world's first iPad-native newspaper, in February 2011. He closed it on 15 December 2012, saying that the product "could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term".

An expensive mistake? Yes, but also a valuable experiment for the rest of us. The truth is that iPad publications may look cool, but they can be pretty clunky. For one thing, you have to download the whole publication before you can start reading page one. (Imagine if you had to do that with websites.) For another, they are mostly "little more than heavy PDF files, weighed down with multimedia bells and whistles". That's not to say that iPad-native magazines don't have a place in the digital ecosystem, but they're not the magic bullet the publishing industry once hoped they would be.

LESSON 5: Why Facebook should not have a seat at the United Nations

With a billion users, Facebook may have as many people as India, but basically it's a dictatorship. Come to think of it, adhering to democratic principles is not – and never has been – a requirement for admission to the UN club. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, is a member, for example, as are Iran, Belarus and Angola. So maybe Facebook's CEO would feel quite at home at the UN's New York HQ. After all, like all the best dictators, he always knows what is best for his people.

He knows, for example, that they want everything to be "social" – ie open to the world. He also knows that their petty obsessions with their privacy are just that – petty. Only the other day, the company announced the termination of users' ability to hide from Facebook searches. Sam Lessin, one of Zuck's henchmen who has the interesting title of "director of product", told journalists that the ability to hide from the site's search would be "retired" as only "a single-digit percentage of users" actually hide themselves from Facebook search. How George Orwell would have loved that use of the word "retired"!

Given that Facebook has a billion users, a single-digit percentage could mean tens of millions of privacy "retirees". Oh and by the way, the "product" in Mr Lessin's job title is you and me.

LESSON 6: Book publishers have finally realised that they are the main course in Amazon's lunch menu

Here's a riddle: "Disintermediation is a very long word. How do you spell it?" The answer, of course, is "it". But disintermediation is now the mot de jour. It means wiping out the intermediary and that is what the internet does. Remember travel agents? Record shops? Bookshops? Book publishers?

For a long time, publishers maintained that, while the internet was certainly destroying the business models of other industries, book publishing was such a special business that it wouldn't happen to them. After all, in the end, every author needs a publisher – doesn't s/he? Only sad people go in for self-publication.

Er, not necessarily. The arrival and widespread acceptance of ebooks, together with on-demand printing and Amazon's ebook publishing engine have transformed self-publishing from a dream to a reality. If you've written something and it's in Microsoft Word format, then upload it to Amazon's publishing engine, upload an image for the cover, choose a price and in about four hours it'll be for sale on the web.

And in case you think that self-publishing is just for wimps, remember that that's the way Fifty Shades of Grey started.

LESSON 7: Just because governance of the internet is too important to be left to the United Nations doesn't mean that it doesn't need governance

The farce that was the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) has ended, but the problem of internet governance endures. The conference was ostensibly about updating and harmonising international telecommunications protocols (for example, mobile roaming rates) but some countries, including quite a few authoritarian regimes, and phone companies sought to use it as a vehicle for controlling internet content and levying charges on those who create and provide it.

In the end, the conference broke up in thinly veiled disarray, with most western countries refusing to sign up to the proposition that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should have any major role in internet governance. Two cheers for that. But we are still left with a problem, which, crudely stated, is this: it ain't broke, but it needs fixing. Because of its history, governance of the net is unduly weighted in favour of US-based or US-dominated institutions. This was fine when the internet was predominantly a US-European phenomenon. But now it's a truly global network and we need a multinational governance structure that a) reflects that reality but b) doesn't break the openness and vitality of the system. The first person to crack that problem gets a Nobel prize.

LESSON 8: If you want privacy keep off the net. Or at least encrypt your stuff

In 1999, Scott McNealy, then the CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously observed that consumer privacy issues were a "red herring". "You have zero privacy anyway," he said. "Get over it."

At the time, people wondered what Scott had been smoking. Now we know better. We have been sleepwalking into a networked world where privacy is ostensibly worshipped like motherhood and apple pie but is everywhere abused.

You may wonder why particular ads seems to follow you everywhere you go on the web? Or why brands you "like" mysteriously turn up in your timeline and in those of your "friends". Google knows every YouTube video you've ever watched (and also what's in your Gmail). Facebook knows all of this stuff plus your real name.

And, on the other side of the fence, the US National Security Agency (and possibly also its overseas franchises) is hoovering up all your electronic communications. The UK Data Communications Bill suggests that our domestic agencies have similar ambitions. And western countries are still selling electronic surveillance kit to repressive regimes all over the world.

The only real solution is to switch off your mobile phone and never again use the net. Failing that, you could try encrypting your email using something such as PGP. But that's not for the faint-hearted, so perhaps the rule to live by is this: don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't put on a postcard.

LESSON 9: The future's mobile and that's not necessarily good news

2012 showed that the explosion in the adoption of smartphones (ie internet-connected mobile handsets) and tablet computers shows no signs of abating. This means that we're heading for a world in which most people will access the internet via handheld devices. And this has major implications. The upsides are clear: it will be easier for billions of people to integrate the net into their daily lives, with all the benefits that that can bring.

The downsides are less obvious to most people, but they are worrying and real. In particular, it will be a world in which most people access the net via closed, "tethered" devices that will greatly enhance the powers of corporations that few of us have any reason to trust. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. ( guardian.co.uk )

READ MORE - 9 Lessons The Tech World Learned In 2012

Ernie Els comes from six shots back to win British Open in dramatic fashion

Ernie Els comes from six shots back to win British Open in dramatic fashion - It didn't seem likely at the start of the day. Six shots back of Adam Scott when he teed off on Sunday afternoon, Ernie Els' chances of taking home his fourth major championship were slim. The way Scott was playing coming into the final round, hitting picture-perfect approach shots and rolling in key putts, Els knew the only way he was walking away with the Claret Jug was with a brilliant round ... and a little bit of help from the Aussie.

He got both, as Els picked up four birdies on the back nine, including a must-make, 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that cut the deficit to one, and Scott completely unraveled over the last four holes to hand the South African his second Claret Jug. (Side note: The win means Els now has major wins in three difference decades.)

 

Ernie Els / Getty Images

"I feel for him," Els said of Scott after the round. "I'm numb. Later on it will set in that I won this golf tournament, but right now I really feel for my buddy. He's such a great guy. He's so close to being such a great superstar. I know that's not the way he wanted to lose a tournament. I feel very fortunate, but I feel very bad for Adam today."

Els looked to be in a state of complete shock after his round, sharing a hug with his caddie as he tried to make sense of the situation. The thing is everyone, including Els, is still trying to come to grips with what has to be one of the worst collapses in major championship history.

Els won the tournament, sure, but heading to the 18th, it appeared as if he'd likely come up just short again on golf's biggest stage, after he missed a makeable birdie putt on the 16th, and another on the 17th.

At the time you got the feeling that the near-misses were a sign that this wouldn't be his week. But Els pressed on, pulling driver on one of the toughest driving holes on the course and hitting his best tee shot of the tournament, watching as his ball came to rest in the center of the fairway, well within wedge range.

Els took dead aim with his approach and hit it to 15 feet for a makeable birdie opportunity. Now let's set the scene here: Over the last year, Els has missed some excruciating putts, including a couple critical misses in a playoff at the Zurich Classic, and a 3-footer at the Transitions Championship that cost him a playoff spot.

After years of being one of the best clutch putters in the world, it seemed like every time Els had a biggie to do something special, the ball never went in. This time around, however, was different. Els struck the putt and watched as it disappeared into the hole for birdie.

With the exception of David Duval, who won at Royal Lytham back in 2001, nobody had more success at this course coming into the week. Els finished T-2 (1996) and T-3 (2001) the last two times Royal Lytham hosted the British Open, which led people to believe he could be a factor.

Els didn't disappoint, hanging around the lead all week before making a back-nine charge on Sunday that ended with an incredibly clutch birdie putt on the final hole of the tournament.

''It was my time for some reason," Els said after his round. It certainly was. ( Devil Ball Golf )

READ MORE - Ernie Els comes from six shots back to win British Open in dramatic fashion

Whitney’s Protective ‘Baby Girl’

Whitney’s Protective ‘Baby Girl’ - As close friends and family begin to absorb the news of the death of Whitney Houston, many are taking time to reflect on the last few years of a career and life they had a chance to share with the superstar—and its abrupt end.

While Houston had recently stepped away from the spotlight she dominated for so many years, her longtime hairstylist and good friend Ellin LaVar says the star remained firmly focused on two important goals in her life—keeping her marriage to Bobby Brown together (before the divorce), and bonding more with her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who is now 19.

Close friends and family say she had been so blindly committed to her marriage to the New Edition singer that she left the familiar, comfortable surroundings of her native New Jersey to move to Atlanta, where most of Brown’s extended family lived. The two divorced in 2007.

“Her thought was Bobby had lived in New Jersey for all those years for her and now she would move for him,” says LaVar. “She believed her marriage was for a lifetime and she was going to do what it took to keep it together.”

LaVar, who began her friendship with Houston shortly after the singer’s self-titled debut album was released, in 1985, says that major move for love’s sake would ultimately prove to be a decision Houston deeply regretted.

“We were like sisters for years. We grew up together in this business and I was there for everything in her life. I told her she was pregnant before she knew it because her hair texture changed,” remembers Lavar, who is Bobbi Kristina’s godmother. “But when she moved to Atlanta, so much changed for her. People and employees kept her away from me and her family. The people who looked after her and really cared about her couldn’t get to her anymore.”

LaVar says that during one of their last phone conversations, several months ago, Houston expressed a desire to move back to her hometown so she could be close to her mother, friends, and other family members once again.

“I think she knew she needed our support to get better,” says LaVar. “People don’t care about you in this business and she knew that. I watched her struggle so long with her addiction. We cried together about it many times, and I told her I didn’t understand why this was happening because she was such a good and smart girl. I just wanted to be there for her and not watch this happen from afar.”

Still, friends and family admit they do know in part why Houston so was unable to fight the lure of substance abuse that haunted her for most of her career. Pressure to perform and succeed at all times. “She had so much on her early on,” says LaVar. “She took care of so many people in her family, his family (Bobby), and the people who worked for her. That was a lot to handle and think about. She was so very young when she started and became so big. We learned the movie industry on a major film likeThe Bodyguard. We had no idea what we were doing, and this was a huge deal. But we had to learn it, and we did. She brought so many people along for her ride. That’s a heavy burden on anyone, and it took its toll on her.”

LaVar and others point to the reality show that featured Houston and Brown as a tragic turning point in Houston’s already turmoil-filled life.

Being Bobby Brown ran on the Bravo network for one season, in 2005, and showed a chaotic and mostly dysfunctional relationship between the two singers. It also portrayed Houston as a foul-mouthed, angry, and confrontational woman with countless unhealthy vices, including chain-smoking.

“I remember Bobby Brown calling me and saying, ‘You and Clive [Davis] and everyone has to help me get Whitney to do this show,” says Clarence Avant, who represented Brown for a short period and is also the former head of Motown Records.” He said, ‘They won’t give me the show without her.’ She did it and I saw that show one time and was like, ‘What a mistake.’ It was heartbreaking to watch. I told him, ‘No matter how much they offered for another season, don’t do it.’”

LaVar adds that Being Bobby Brown further proved to what desperate lengths Houston would resort to keep her toxic marriage afloat.

“Whitney was a straight Jersey girl,” she says. “She wasn’t into being on TV and being seen all the time. She was private and liked her business private. Other people told her business—she didn’t. This is a girl who loved to vacuum to calm her nerves and relax. I watched her vacuum all the time. She didn’t want those cameras in her house or to be shown like that. But she went along for Bobby and it cost her, I think. I think she felt that way too because she didn’t like the way she came off at all.”

After the marriage to Brown ended, in 2007, friends say it became just Houston and her “baby girl,” Bobbi Kristina, leaning on each other for support.

Though there was talk of Houston having a 23-year-old adopted son, friends say he is a friend of Bobbi Kristina’s whom Houston had agreed to mentor. He lived in Atlanta with mother and daughter.

“Honestly, Whitney in many ways depended on Bobbi Kristina more than Bobbi Kristina did on her,” says a family member. “That was her friend, confidante, and her protector. No matter what she did or how drunk she got or how much her voice cracked at times, Bobbi Kristina still loved her so much and never gave up on her.”

The 19-year-old also wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps with a singing career, and the two were said to be working on several tracks together in the studio. Houston had been working for the last two years with producer Ne-Yo on a new album as well.

“She was sounding good and we had some good stuff on there,” says Ne-Yo. “Because of her schedule, it was hard to put together quickly, but it was going to happen. People would have been happy with it.”

Many are now worried about Bobbi Kristina’s well-being and mental health after she was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Sunday morning following “an anxiety attack” at the same hotel where her mother had passed away hours before.

Beverly Hills police confirmed that Bobbi Kristina was taken to Cedars-Sinai early Sunday morning. “It wasn’t along the lines of yesterday. It was for ‘precautionary measures,’” says Beverly Hills police Sgt. Brian Weir. “I think she is going to be fine.”

Others aren’t so sure. Family members are concerned that the loss of her beloved mother—“her world,” say some—may be too much for the teenager to handle.

“It was just the two of them after the divorce,” says LaVar, “They depended on each other, and it was so natural for Bobbi Kristina to take care of her mother in any way she could. She wanted her to be OK more than anything.”

Friends say Bobbi Kristina tried to stay as close to her mother as possible wherever they happened to be. She would often guide the superstar away from situations that would cause embarrassment and push aside people she deemed to have an agenda not in her mother’s best interest.

At a Grammy press junket on Thursday, Bobbi Kristina removed her mother after Houston’s behavior and conversation turned erratic. Hotel employees say Houston was sweating profusely and had been seen earlier skipping around the hotel. “Her daughter just pushed her past the reporters who were asking questions,” says a hotel employee. “She was like, ‘Mama, let’s go. Let’s go.’ She just took charge.” But Bobbi Kristina wasn’t as successful at keeping her mother away from Los Angeles nightclubs, where she’d chain-smoke and drink the night away.

Over the years the 19-year-old had become all too familiar with her role as caregiver for her mother and her father. Both singers spoke publicly about their drug use over the years with Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey, describing addictions that would make any parent unfit.

“Even as a child, she felt responsible for Whitney in so many ways,” says a close friend of the singers. “And for Bobby as well, but Whitney was her heart. That’s a lot of pressure on a child, but she also knew her mother needed her more. How does a young girl handle losing all of that at once?”

While Bobbi Kristina may have appeared to be the “grownup” in the mother-daughter relationship, Houston was fiercely devoted to her daughter and had become more so in recent years. Houston reportedly told those close to her that she wanted to be fully present in Bobbi Kristina’s life from here on.

That desire also stemmed from Houston’s belief that because of her hectic career, she’d missed many of the key moments in her daughter’s early life. There was also concern over racy pictures the teenager posted of herself on Facebook and other blogs.

Last year it was even suggested that Bobbi Kristina had entered rehab for drugs as well. Family members deny that Bobbi Kristina had or has a drug problem.

“Again we’ve been kept away from not just from Whitney but Bobbi Kristina as well,” says LaVar. “We couldn’t talk to her or gauge how she was doing or what she was doing. That really hurt because it’s so easy to get lost out there in that industry. It happened to Whitney.”

Avant can’t forget the last advice he gave Houston when he saw her in the Bahamas in 2009. The singer was divorced and discussing plans for comeback, despite the negative impact of her marriage.

“I told her. ‘Don’t blame Bobby. This isn’t about Bobby. This is about you,’” says Avant. “I wanted her to understand that and to do something about it. I told her bluntly, ‘You have to get it together if you want to get better and get back on top. Blaming someone else makes it easy not to fix the problem.’ I wanted her to fix the problem. She didn’t, and I’ve lost a good friend.” ( The Daily Beast )

READ MORE - Whitney’s Protective ‘Baby Girl’

Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch

Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch - What’s black and white, with a skunkish look to its cover, And from bark wrests such bite it makes lions fall over?

Meet the African crested rat, or Lophiomys imhausi, a creature so large, flamboyantly furred and thickly helmeted it hardly seems a member of the international rat consortium. Yet it is indeed a rat, a deadly dirty rat, its superspecialized pelt permeated with potent toxins harvested from trees.

As a recent report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B makes clear, the crested rat offers one of the most extreme cases of a survival strategy rare among mammals: deterring predators with chemical weapons.

Venoms and repellents are hardly rare in nature: Many insects, frogs, snakes, jellyfish and other phyletic characters use them with abandon. But mammals generally rely, for defense or offense, on teeth, claws, muscles, keen senses or quick wits.

ARMAMENTS Capuchin monkeys co-opt extracts gathered from millipedes and ants to ward off mosquitoes.

Every so often, however, a mammalian lineage discovers the wonders of chemistry, of nature’s burbling beakers and tubes. And somewhere in the distance a mad cackle sounds.

Skunks and zorilles mimic the sulfurous, anoxic stink of a swamp. The male duck-billed platypus infuses its heel spurs with a cobralike poison. The hedgehog declares: Don’t quite get the point of my spines? Allow me to sharpen their sting with a daub of venom I just chewed off the back of a Bufo toad.

Other mammals chemically gird themselves against smaller foes: Capuchin monkeys ward off mosquitoes and ticks with extracts gathered from millipedes and ants, while black-tailed deer rub themselves liberally with potent antimicrobial secretions produced by glands in their hooves. According to William Wood, a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University in California, these secretions have been shown to be effective against a broad array of micro-organisms, including acne bacteria and athlete’s-foot fungus, which could explain why teenage deer are especially diligent with the hoof-rubbing routine right before the annual deer prom.

For each newly identified instance of a chemical fix, researchers seek to identify its benefits, drawbacks and evolutionary back story, and to compare it with other known cases of chemical arms. Distinctive themes have emerged.

For example, whereas poisonous insects tend to advertise their unpalatability in bright colors like red, orange and yellow — the better to warn off their major predators, the diurnal, keen-eyed birds — most mammals and their mammalian predators are nocturnal or crepuscular, dawn and duskular. Color is wasted on them, but strong contrast between dark and light is not.

This is why skunks, zorilles (also known as polecats) and the African crested rat have independently converged on a similar pelage theme of black against white. The pattern is unmistakable in very low light, and its message is too: You’ve seen me. I’m noxious. Now buzz off.

In their fetchingly titled paper, “A Poisonous Surprise Under the Coat of the African Crested Rat,” Jonathan Kingdon and Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University and their colleagues described the complex of traits that give rise to the rodent’s rottenness.

The researchers determined that the rat spends many hours gnawing on the bark and roots of the Acokanthera tree, from which it extracts the same curare-type heart toxin that African hunters have traditionally used to kill elephants. The rat then slavers the toxic masticant onto tracts of specialized hairs running along its flank.

Those hairs, when observed under a scanning electron microscope, look very different from ordinary fur, Dr. Vollrath said. Each outer shaft is stiff and full of holes — like a dead cactus, he said — and inside are a series of long, fluffy microfibers. The researchers showed that the applied toxin seeps through the outer holes of the hairs and is wicked up and stored by the fibers, lending the rat twinned flank strips of doom.

One little nip is all it would take to sicken or even kill a predator, and the crested rat is well equipped to endure exploratory bites, Dr. Vollrath said: Its hide is unusually thick, and its head is helmeted like a turtle’s. Whether through trial and error or by following an enlightened elder’s example, Africa’s many carnivores give the rat a wide berth.

So, too, do Lophiomys researchers. “Jonathan is a highly enterprising researcher, and he normally eats every animal he studies,” Dr. Vollrath said of his colleague. “But he admitted he would rather not eat this one.”

The researchers don’t yet know why the rat is itself immune to the toxin, or how its fate came to be bound up with the Acokanthera tree. Dr. Vollrath looks to basic rat nature for ideas.

“The rat eats a lot of things that other animals won’t,” he said. “If it eats something disgusting, it tries to spit it out, clean it off, using its skin as a napkin.”

If an early crested rat, while sampling and gagging on a toxic tree, incidentally end up protected against predation, well, evolution has a way of turning a contingency into a necessity. The crested rat is now anatomically and behaviorally dependent on tree toxin for protection, and should Acokanthera go extinct, its little chiseler would soon follow.

In contrast to the crested rat, skunks synthesize their toxins from scratch, yet they, too, have taken chemical defense to a highly derived, almost mannered extreme. Skunks stand alone in mammaldom, and though they once were considered a kind of weasel, the world’s 10 or so species have recently been assigned a family plaque of their own, the Mephitidae, from the Latin for “bad odor.”

Through anal scent glands just inside the rectum at the base of the tail, skunks generate an extreme version of the familiar spray with which carnivores mark their territory, wildly accentuating the chemical components that we and most other mammals judge to be very bad news.

At the heart of skunk spray is a thiol, the signature of nasty environments high in lethal hydrogen sulfide and low in oxygen — places like mines, swamps, and oil and gas wells. “Our nose is able to detect thiols at extremely low levels, parts per billion,” Dr. Wood said. “We needed to stay away from areas with low oxygen, where we could die.”

Skunks, he added, “have come along and capitalized on this.”

Capitalized and canonized — or maybe cannonized. The skunk’s scent glands have evolved into structures that look like swollen nipples, each able to swivel independently of the other to take perfect aim, and to perfectly calibrated effect (as can be seen in spectacular video on the PBS program “Nature”).

To deter a predator chasing behind at an unknown distance, the skunk goes for the atomized mist effect; if the harasser is within view, the skunk may choose a straight stream to the face.

Skunks are confident in their repellent prowess, but nowadays their swagger can prove fatal. Researchers suggest that one reason skunks constitute a large proportion of roadkill is that they see cars as another predator in need of a lesson: Come ahead, pal, I’ll just stand here and spray.

A good defense means never taking offense. Researchers have been impressed by the ardor with which monkeys in the field prospect for novel forms of insect repellent, and their willingness to withstand extremely irritating chemicals for the sake of rebuffing the bloodsuckers that plague them.

“Capuchin monkeys are notoriously generalist and destructive in their sampling,” said Jessica Lynch Alfaro, the associate director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They break everything open, and you have to watch out or they’ll drop branches on your head.”

Every so often, they come upon a product that looks or smells promising, at which point they crack it open and start anointing themselves. They tear up chili peppers to release the capsaicin, rip apart millipedes to procure a few droplets of searing benzoquinones.

If they find a nest of carpenter ants, pay dirt! The monkeys plop down on top and roll every which way, to soak up the ants’ formidable formic acid supply.

Such treatments are clearly painful. “Capuchin monkeys get very agitated when they’re anointing themselves,” said Dr. Lynch Alfaro, who with colleagues recently reviewed capuchin anointing behavior for The American Journal of Primatology. “But they’re keeping off parasites, and they seem to have a high threshold for pain.”

Besides, it’s not all pain and suffering. Anointing is a supremely social affair, and one rubbing monkey soon attracts others.

“They get into such a frenzy that the social order breaks down; everyone is anointing with everyone else,” Dr. Lynch Alfaro said. “It’s like a big, wild party.” They may be black and blue, but the magic potion is spread all over. ( nytimes.com )

READ MORE - Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch

Kate Middleton's Mustique Vacation Is Royal Pain for Other Guests

Kate Middleton's Mustique Vacation Is Royal Pain for Other Guests - While Kate Middleton and her family enjoy a luxurious vacation holed up in a $23,000 per week mansion on the Caribbean island of Mustique, the rest of the island is on near lockdown, upsetting tourists and locals.

The Mustique Company, which owns the Caribbean getaway, is restricting the movements of other guests to protect the Middletons' privacy, the Daily Mail reports.

Tourists have reportedly been banned from using the rented "mules," or golf carts, normally used to zip around the island, and are being quizzed by security before being allowed to access the beach and other island hot spots.

The Middletons - Kate, along with her parents, Michael and Carole, brother, James, and sister, Pippa - jetted off to Mustique on Friday, sitting first class on a British Airways flight out of London's Gatwick Airport, a photographer blogged.

The family, owners of a party-planning business, are frequent visitors to the island and reportedly have looked into purchasing a vacation home there. Kate and her husband, Prince William, traveled there in 2006 for a luxury getaway while they were still dating.

But now the security and strict regulations that follow the Duchess of Cambridge, as Kate became known when she and Prince William tied the knot last April, no matter where she travels are creating a stir, even in an island known for hosting A-listers like Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger.

"This isn't exactly the way one expects to be treated when you pay very good money to visit the most exclusive island in the Caribbean," one local told the Daily Mail.

A source told the paper the Mustique Company is covering the costs of the extra security, said to be put in place after discussions with Kate's bodyguards.

"A couple of years ago, don't forget, the Middletons were just a regular family, very regular," Dickie Arbiter, former press secretary to Prince William's grandmother, the Queen, told ABC News.

"Then, Kate met a prince, Pippa wore that dress, and the Middletons, all of them, are now neo-royalty," he said.

The security can be expected to increase even more in the week ahead when Prince Williams joins the family for vacation.

People magazine reports Middleton's husband, the Duke of Cambridge, will join his wife's family in Mustique once his military shift schedule allows. He is currently at RAF base in Anglesey, Wales, fulfilling his duties as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.

Neither the palace nor the Mustique Company had comment on the royal couple's vacation plans. ( ABC News )

READ MORE - Kate Middleton's Mustique Vacation Is Royal Pain for Other Guests

6 Good Reasons To Tell Your Children Bald-Faced Lies

6 Good Reasons To Tell Your Children Bald-Faced Lies - Lies We Tell Our Children - I am a liar. I lie daily to my children, if not two or three times a day. Some of these lies are mere bluffs. Imagine my lovely four-year-old refusing to brush her teeth before bed. Frustrated, I tell her that if she isn't polishing her pearly whites by the time I count to three, she's in time out. Actually, there is no way I am going to prolong the bedtime routine another five-minutes while she loudly moans behind her bedroom door waking her younger sister. However this one little fib accomplishes my main objective; it's a quicker path to me being able to type at my computer with a glass of white wine, and the current season of Real Housewives of Any City playing on Bravo.

My lies vary in great degree. There are small lies like "Sure I'll buy you that princess ball gown for your birthday!" The truth is that I am just attempting to make it through Target without a colossal breakdown and her birthday is over five months away, so the possibility that she will remember this request come April is less than the chance of Elmo being hit by a runaway bus.

There are also big lies, such as, "Neko (our cat) went to live on a big farm where she will be able to play with other cats and dogs." We all know what the farm metaphor really stands for, but at the time I wasn't prepared to tell my then three-year-old about the harsh realities of pets and death. I was grateful for such a simple alternative explanation.

As parents we lie for various reasons. Many of them are for the benefit of our children, but in the spirit of "truthiness" the majority of these deceptions are for our own sake. Here are just a few of the reasons we so readily bend the truth with our little ones:

1. To save time. On a typical weekday morning I am in a rush to wrangle two kids into their car seats and make it to preschool by 8:45. In the process one asks, "Can we watch Team Umizumi this afternoon?" Instead of explaining that there will be no time, what with the myriad of errands I need to accomplish, including toting both girls to the doctor's office for their annual flu shots, I simply respond, "We'll see." The child, satisfied with the reply, climbs into the car.

2. We lie because sometimes we don't know all the answers. "Mommy, why is that flower blue?" Having no clue, and knowing that admitting this will get me nowhere with this particular toddler, I respond, "So that it can combine with the red flowers to make purple ones."

3. We lie because it is often easier than telling the truth. "If you don't eat your vegetables, you won't grow big and strong." To be honest, I've known plenty of children who refused all things green or orange and lived to be healthy adults. However, explaining nutritional wellbeing, the national obesity epidemic, and the value of consuming one's daily vitamins is futile with the four-and-under crowd.

4. We lie to be nice. "I made you a beautiful picture of a butterfly. Do you like it?" Umm... what butterfly? All I see is a pink scribble next to a green one. "I love it!"

5. We lie to keep their innocence. That is what Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy really are -- lies we perpetuate to keep our children innocent, young, and believing in magic. Some may argue that this is wrong, but maybe the real harm is not fostering their beliefs in fairy tales.

6. We lie to protect ourselves. For parents, simple lies to avoid the subject of death, flow from our mouths like cheap from Target. When seeing a dead pigeon on the sidewalk, I have effortlessly fibbed, "Oh Honey, he is just sleeping." While I do want to protect my girls from sorrow, I know that the larger part of me is lying to guard my own anxiety with mortality.

I am not advocating dishonest parenting. I know fully well that these are just excuses for my behavior. I've read the articles that explain how children learn to lie from their parents and that by the age of four children already lie at least once every two hours. Yet I still hope to raise my own girls to be honest and trustworthy. That said, I am still not sure if I am ready to give up my white lies; I just foresee too many extended conversations delaying getting out the door for school, prolonging bedtime, and requiring me to explain the intricacies of human reproduction to a child that sleeps in Dora the Explorer diapers. ( huffingtonpost.com )

READ MORE - 6 Good Reasons To Tell Your Children Bald-Faced Lies

Drinking when pregnant - Is it safe?

Drinking when pregnant - Is it safe? - You're three months pregnant and barely showing a bump, when someone pours you half a glass of wine at the restaurant. Why deny yourself?

But look at it this way: If you drink when pregnant, then the unborn baby drinks too. Alcohol quickly enters your bloodstream and crosses into that of the baby via the placenta. But babies are slower at processing alcohol than adults, and so are exposed to its effects for longer.

In view of September 9th, which is Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Awareness Day, we've compiled a guide to pregnancy and alcohol, to help you make an informed decision.


Heavy drinking

There is no doubt that heavy drinking or binge drinking can permanently damage a baby's health at all stages of pregnancy.

Heavy drinking is six or more units of alcohol a day, while drinking five or more units in one sitting is considered binge drinking.

Heavy drinking during pregnancy puts the baby at risk of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), an umbrella term used to describe a number of health conditions, ranging from mild to severe, which are all linked to alcohol consumption during pregnancy. These include facial abnormalities, restricted growth and development and learning and behavioural difficulties.

Heavy drinking also increases the risk of having a miscarriage or premature birth and having a stillborn baby.


Light drinking

When it comes to moderate or light drinking during pregnancy, there is much debate about how much alcohol a pregnant woman can consume without risking the health of her baby, and no clear answer.

The Department of Health currently advises pregnant women to avoid drinking alcohol, but also says that if a woman chooses to drink, they should not drink more than one to two units of alcohol once a week, and should not get drunk.

The UK health watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), advises women in the first three months of pregnancy to avoid alcohol altogether, due to an increased risk of miscarriage.

Specifically, NICE states:

• Pregnant women and women planning a pregnancy should be advised to avoid drinking in the first three months of pregnancy if possible because it may be associated with an increased risk of miscarriage.
• If women choose to drink alcohol during pregnancy they should be advised to drink no more than two UK units once or twice a week... Although there is uncertainty regarding a safe level of alcohol consumption in pregnancy, at this low level there is no evidence of harm to the unborn baby.

However, this does not mean that moderate or light drinking during pregnancy is safe, or that the baby is safe from the effects of alcohol after the first three months of pregnancy. It's just that - at this point in time - scientists are unsure about the effects small quantities of alcohol can have on an unborn baby.


What's in a unit?

One UK unit of alcohol is 8g or 10ml of pure alcohol (ethanol). This is the equivalent to:

• Half a pint of ordinary strength lager, beer or cider (3.5% alcohol by volume/ABV)
• One standard measure (25ml) of spirits, such as gin, vodka, whisky or rum (40% ABV)
• Half a standard glass (175ml) of wine (11.5% ABV)

Women who are pregnant therefore need to keep an eye on the strength of their drink, the size of their glass and how full the glass actually is, if they decide to have a drink.

It's also worthwhile remembering that pubs often sell spirits as doubles, wine in large glasses, and friends don't use measures when pouring drinks.

In the end, if you want to be absolutely sure your baby is not affected in any way by alcohol, the only thing to do is not to drink at all. ( yahoo )

READ MORE - Drinking when pregnant - Is it safe?