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Elders React to Nicki Minaj's Anaconda: VIDEO
The music video is apparently a little too bootylicious for a few of these old-timers.
“Now you wonder why kids are so screwed up nowadays, cause of this kind of sh*t”‘
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
Kyler Geoffroy
www.towleroad.com/2014/10/elders-react-to-nicki-minajs-anaconda-video.html
LGBT Health & Wellness Roundup Oct 24 2014
Please visit us at lgbtcenters.org or on our Facebook & Twitter @LGBTHealthLink. And if you like it share it!
What's the Probability That Michael Sam Was Cut Because He's Gay, Really?
I’ve seen a little too much insistence this week, online and on social media, that Michael Sam’s being cut from the Dallas Cowboys’ practice squad had nothing to do with his being gay. It’s a bit overwrought and defensive. A lot of fans seem to want to believe the NFL is not a homophobic institution, and that the Sam story somehow proved it: The NFL gave a shot to the first openly gay player ever drafted and treated him well, and his fate was based on his performance, and that’s that.
But Michael Sam’s being gay has been so much a part of this story from the moment he came out, with anonymous NFL executives saying he wouldn’t be accepted, and some commentators and even some players making anti-gay remarks, right up through his late-round drafting and beyond. Can anyone really say for sure whether or not his being gay had anything to do with his being cut?
As both Outsports’ Jim Buzinski and WCBS sports radio host Jared Max point out, there are no other openly gay players in the NFL right now, and if the NBA’s Jason Collins indeed retires soon, as many commentators are predicting, there will be no openly gay player in any of the four major sports leagues. That’s not exactly a sign of acceptance. Add to this the fact that the NFL has given minor or no penalties to players like the San Francisco 49ers’ Chris Culliver after homophobic incidents. It also stood by the hiring of anti-gay former New York Giant David Tyree — who worked to stop marriage equality, adheres to an extremist anti-gay ideology and has expressed the belief that gays can be made straight — as the New York Giants’ director of player development.
So it can’t be ruled out that Michael Sam was cut because he’s gay, not with the NFL’s record. People can point to Sam’s performance at this or that juncture, but that’s been countered by pointing to other players who’ve performed similarly and have done just fine. Buzinski notes, looking at the chronology of events, that it was all quite suspicious:
Sam was the SEC co-defensive player of the year in 2013. Yet he was drafted in the seventh round, 249 out of 256 players selected. That’s three rounds and 124 players later than what bookies set his draft order at. It’s also by far the lowest any SEC defensive player of the year had been drafted in at least a decade. …
With the draft winding down, I have always suspected that the league made calls to St. Louis to encourage/cajole/plead with the Rams to take Sam. … Sam not being drafted would have been a huge embarrassment to the league and set back its efforts to appear more inclusive of gays.
After former voach Tony Dungy called Sam a “distraction” and said he’d have stayed away from picking him, Sam seemed to become even more of a hot potato. The Rams chose not to keep him, which seemed like a football decision, since he wasn’t what they needed. But the fact that he wasn’t immediately chosen by another team was “unprecedented,” according to Michael Freeman of the Bleacher Report:
It can’t be stressed enough how Sam not being signed despite a productive preseason is almost unprecedented. In my two decades of covering the NFL, it isn’t just rare; it’s basically unheard of for a player to not make the league after playing well in the preseason.
And Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted:
12 players had 2.5 or more sacks this preseason. 10 are on 53-man rosters. One on practice squad. And last, Michael Sam, hasn’t found work.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 1, 2014
NFL insider Peter King, of MMQB.com and NBC, reported that the Cowboys finally took Sam for the practice squad after “a league official contacted multiple teams asking if they’d evaluated Sam,” and that the NFL “avoided a nightmare situation” when the Cowboys signed him. (The NFL denied King’s claim.) Then, a month and a half later, he was cut, almost unnoticed, while the country was focused on Ebola, the attack on the Canadian Parliament and other pressing concerns.
Again, any of the individual actions can be explained away as a football decision. But when you add it all up and throw in the NFL’s past and current disregard for homophobia (in incidents and hiring), it’s impossible to escape the very real probability that Sam’s being gay was a factor that determined his fate. And Jim Buzinski is right when he says it will give any other player pause about coming out, which may be exactly what the NFL wanted.
Nick Jonas Identifies Male Bulges, Discusses Sticky Thing On His Crotch When Filming Sex Scenes
Everyone loves a challenging game of Guess That Celebrity Bulge. We certainly do. (If you doubt us go here and here.) Nick Jonas, being a good sport and continuing his seemingly endless tour to become the most gay-friendly straight male entertainer in history, agreed to play a slightly awkward round of distinguishing photos of his own bulge from crotches belonging to Justin Bieber, Zac Efron, Liam Payne and Harry Styles.
Jonas, currently starring as a possibly gay man in the DirecTV series The Kingdom, also offered a quick tutorial on filming sex scenes. Fun was had by all.
Watch the guessing below.
H/t HuffPo
Jeremy Kinser
'Applications', The Tale of a Guy, a Phone, and a Dating App: Part 3
Here’s Part 3 of our weekly comic Applications, by Josh Trujillo and Dave Valeza.
Click panes to enlarge. To start from the beginning, click HERE.
CONTINUED, AFTER THE JUMP…
Tune in next Friday for Part 4…
Josh Trujillo
Armistead Maupin LGBT History Month October 24, 2014
PHOTOS: Rare Barbra
Many previously unpublished photos grace a career-spanning book, Streisand: In the Camera Eye.
Christopher Harrity
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/music/2014/10/24/photos-rare-barbra
5 Things Every Woman Should Know About Egg Freezing
By: Rachael Rettner LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 10/23/2014 08:19 AM EDT on LiveScience
The announcement that Apple and Facebook will cover the steep cost of egg freezing for their employees has many people talking about the risks and benefits of the procedure.
Last week, Facebook said it has already started covering egg freezing, and Apple plans to add the benefit next year. Both companies said they would cover up to $20,000 of the cost of the procedure, which can range from $5,000 to more than $15,000, not including the cost of the required medications, which can be thousands of dollars more.
Egg freezing is viewed as a way to thwart a “ticking biological clock” — as women grow older, it becomes more likely that their eggs will have chromosomal abnormalities, which increases the risk of miscarriage and certain disorders, and can make it harder or impossible for women to conceive. [Future of Fertility Treatment: 7 Ways Baby-Making Could Change]
But egg freezing is not a perfect fix. Here are five important facts to know about egg freezing.
Egg freezing is better now than it used to be
Egg cells contain a lot of water, and so when they are frozen, crystals can form that damage their structure. For this reason, the egg-freezing techniques of the past were not as successful as current ones, and were used mainly by women with cancer or other conditions who faced a high risk of losing their fertility from chemotherapy.
A new technique has come around in the last five years, which freezes egg cells so quickly that the crystals do not form. Studies have found that eggs frozen with this new technique, called vitrification, are similar to fresh eggs in their ability to lead to pregnancy (if the eggs are taken from a woman still at a young age). Because of these findings, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) declared egg freezing no longer experimental in 2012.
But it’s still not recommended for delaying childbearing
The ASRM now recommends egg freezing for several groups of people, including women who may lose their fertility during chemotherapy. The procedure is also recommended for couples who are undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and are not able to fertilize eggs the same day that they are collected (because sperm from the male partner is not available on that day), and for couples undergoing IVF who have surplus eggs and do not wish for those eggs to be fertilized and frozen as embryos.
However, there is not enough data to recommend that women freeze their eggs for the sole purpose of delaying childbearing, according to the ASRM. Studies are needed on the safety, efficacy, cost effectiveness and emotional risks of the procedure for this purpose, the ASRM said.
“Marketing this technology for the purpose of deferring childbearing may give women false hope and encourage women to delay childbearing,” a 2012 report from the ASRM said. “Patients who wish to pursue this technology should be carefully counseled about age and clinic-specific success rates of oocyte cryopreservation vs. conceiving on her own, and risks, costs, and alternatives to using this approach.”
Freezing your eggs means a lot of trips to the doctor
There are three main steps to egg freezing: stimulation of the ovaries, retrieval of the eggs and egg freezing.
For the first step, women are given hormones to stimulate their ovaries to produce multiple eggs in one cycle. During this phase, women visit the doctor frequently — sometimes five or six times over a two-week period — to monitor how well the treatment is working. At these visits, doctors view the ovaries with a vaginal ultrasound to look at the maturing eggs, and take blood samples.
In general, it takes about eight to 14 days of hormone treatment before the eggs can be retrieved, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Eggs are retrieved from the ovaries with a suction device that is connected to a needle. Ultrasound is used to guide the needle through the vagina to the egg follicle, according to the Mayo Clinic. The procedure is done under sedation.
During the actual egg freezing, eggs are cooled to subzero temperatures, the Mayo Clinic says.
Egg freezing at younger ages is best
Frozen eggs can later be thawed, fertilized and implanted using IVF.
But the chances for success (pregnancy) are greater if a woman uses “younger” eggs — meaning either eggs she froze in her 20s or early 30s, rather than later on, Dr. Wendy Vitek, a fertility expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told Live Science in an interview in June.
“The power in egg banking is that it allows women to have the freedom to keep looking for the right partner, and alleviates that stress that occurs when a woman is in her late 30s and early 40s and hasn’t quite found the right person,” Vitek said.
Egg freezing is not a not a guarantee for pregnancy
However, a woman who freezes her eggs, even at an early age, still does not have a guarantee for pregnancy later in life. Studies conducted in Europe on frozen (vitrified) eggs from donors under age 30 found that women’s pregnancy rates ranged from 36 to 61 percent.
And an online fertility calculator developed by researchers at New York Medical College and the University of California Davis estimates that a woman who freezes 15 eggs at age 30 has about a 30 percent chance of giving birth to a child if she uses these eggs. A woman who freezes 25 eggs at age 30 has about a 40 percent chance of giving birth to a child, the calculator estimates.
Natural pregnancy rates are not 100 percent, either; among couples without fertility problems, 60 percent will become pregnant within three months of trying.
Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. FollowLive Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
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