By Liesa Goins

Look sun-kissed
"A little tint takes years off your face by evening out your skin tone," which a recent study found is a key marker of youthfulness, says Ranella Hirsch, M.D., a dermatologist in Cambridge, MA. Her favorite for a natural look: Olay Complete Touch of Sun Daily UV Moisturizer + A Touch of Sunless Tanner ($15; drugstores), a lotion with a low level of self-tanner.

Eat a skin-saving breakfast
The first meal of the day for New York City derm Doris Day, M.D., includes almonds. "They contain essential fatty acids, which help put the brakes on inflammation that accelerates fine lines, sagging and blotchiness." Not feeling like a nut? Salmon, tuna and halibut are good lunch/dinner sources.

Spray away dryness
To keep her skin supple, L.A.-based derm Jessica Wu, M.D., sprays it several times daily with La Roche-Posay Thermal Spring Water ($8.50; drugstores). (She often spritzes her face when stuck in traffic!) Bonus: The water is packed with minerals like selenium that protect against UV damage.

Pour on the protection
To ensure she layers on enough sunscreen ("the best way to keep skin youthful"), Garland, TX-based dermatologist Lisa Garner, M.D., president of the Women's Dermatologic Society, fills the hollow of her palm (about ½ teaspoon) with a broad spectrum sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher to coat her face, neck and ears.

"I usually have to apply two coats to finish what I've squeezed out, but that's how I make sure I'm covered."

Zen your skin
If anyone has stress, it's doctors. High levels of tension can spike hormone production that leads to breakouts or aggravates conditions like psoriasis. "Controlling stress keeps your skin calm — but that's easier said than done," says Annie Chiu, M.D., a derm in L.A. Taking a 10-minute time-out to apply a face mask and relax on her bed works for Chiu. Another trick: Ban the 'Berry. "I turn off my cell phone after 8 at night. Every little bit helps!" she says.

Protect with powder
Sunscreen stops working in less than 3 hours, so reapplication is key, says Washington, D.C.-based derm Elizabeth Tanzi, M.D. For easy touch-ups, she uses powder sunscreen. "It's light, so makeup stays intact." Her fave: Colorescience Pro Sunforgettable Powder SPF 50 ($60; colorescience.com).

Develop a bedside manner
"I often find it difficult to stick to my anti-aging regimen at bedtime," says Francesca Fusco, M.D., an NYC derm. To avoid missing her evening routine, she stores these products in a pretty makeup case she keeps on her nightstand. "So if I've forgotten — or was just too tired to apply products at the sink — I can do it easily while in bed." Her must-haves: Renova (an Rx retinoid), EpiCeram (an ultrahydrating Rx moisturizer), SCO lip balm, Earth to Skin Care Cracked Heel Renewal, Creative Nail Design Solar oil (to soften cuticles), and Listerine White Strips.

Wear your veggies
Frozen peas help soothe itchy, irritated eyes for Jeanine Downie, M.D., a derm in Montclair, NJ. "Once I get home from work, I remove my makeup and put a bag of frozen peas on my lids for about 5 minutes." The cold helps reduce swelling and pigmentation, a side effect of repeated irritation from her eczema. Unlike inflexible ice packs, a bag of peas easily conforms to the shape of the eyes for a faster effect.

Avoid impact
"The repeated jarring of high-impact cardio like running can weaken collagen and lead to sagging," says Oakland, CA, dermatologist Katie Rodan, M.D. "So until a 'face bra' is invented, I'll stick to cycling and the elliptical machine."

Strike a pose
Most derms will bend over backward for great skin. Hema Sundaram, M.D., a Washington, D.C.-area dermatologist, bends forward. Yoga moves "like Child's Pose, Downward-Facing Dog and Sun Salutations improve circulation — the boost of oxygen is what gives skin that lovely yoga glow." Another reason to take to the mat: New research finds regular yoga practice may reduce the inflammation and stress that speed skin aging.

Lather with care
"Mild cleansers are one of my best secrets," says Chicago derm Jonith Breadon, M.D. She's partial to CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser ($11; drugstores), which contains ceramides — fatty materials that help retain moisture.

Cut back on the sweet stuff
The breakdown of sugars, called glycation, damages the collagen that keeps skin smooth and firm. To prevent this natural process from careening out of control, Naila Malik, M.D., a derm in Southlake, TX, sticks to low-glycemic carbs like whole grains; they're naturally low in sugar, and the body processes them slowly to limit the loss of collagen.

Pump iron to plump skin
"I am religious about strength-training, and I always tell patients to do it more as they get older," says Patricia Farris, M.D., a dermatologist in Metairie, LA. The payoff: firmer skin from the neck down, the result of having better, more supportive muscle tone. "It's like adding volume to the face with fillers, except on your body," says Farris.

Skip sodium
Diet soda is a vice that Audrey Kunin, M.D., a Kansas City, MO, dermatologist, just can't quit—she downs up to six cans a day. When she realized that all the sodium in soda (anywhere from 25 to 50 mg per can) made her eyes and jawline puffy, she switched to a brand that doesn't punish her skin: sodium-free Diet Rite soda. "It satisfies my cravings and my skin looks much better."

Tea up
In her teens, Amy Wechsler, M.D., an NYC derm, started drinking green and black tea for the taste. Now she drinks three to five cups a day to safeguard her skin. Research suggests that both types of tea contain protective compounds — like EGCG and theaflavins — that help prevent skin cancers and the breakdown of collagen, the cause of wrinkles.

Copyright© 2010 Rodale Inc.All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Rodale Inc.

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Canada allows gay-marriage, so is God going to destroy Canada? It seems that Canada economy is doing better then the US.

History of Same-Sex marriage:

Various types of same-sex marriages have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.

In the southern Chinese province of Fujian, through the Ming dynasty period, females would bind themselves in contracts to younger females in elaborate ceremonies.[citation needed] Males also entered similar arrangements. This type of arrangement was also similar in ancient European history.

An example of egalitarian male domestic partnership from the early Zhou Dynasty period of China is recorded in the story of Pan Zhang & Wang Zhongxian. While the relationship was clearly approved by the wider community, and was compared to heterosexual marriage, it did not involve a religious ceremony binding the couple.

The first historical mention of the performance of same-sex marriages occurred during the early Roman Empire.For instance, Emperor Nero is said to have married one of his males slaves. Emperor Elagabalus married a Carian slave named Hierocles. While there is a consensus among modern historians that same-sex relationships existed in ancient Rome, the exact frequency and nature of same-sex unions during that period has been obscured. In 342 AD Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans issued a law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) prohibiting same-sex marriage in Rome and ordering execution for those so married.

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First Date!!!

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Pro-life or Pro-choice. Does it matter? Why do we care what people think?

TELEPHONE

Lesbian music

with the underground 

The government made me gay. 

STOP CENSORSHIP!

By Judson Berger
Published September 29, 2010 | FoxNews.com

Internet entrepreneurs are in a panic over a Senate bill they say will censor the Web, stifle Silicon Valley startups, damage the United States' credibility on free speech and ultimately trigger the creation of an alternate-universe Internet.

The West Coast engineers say they were blindsided last Monday when the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill has a bipartisan roster of co-sponsors who say it will be a tool for stopping the worst offenders in the world of online piracy.

The bill would give the attorney general new powers to shut down websites deemed dedicated to counterfeit material -- by going through the courts and by encouraging service providers to go after sites the Justice Department puts on a public blacklist.

According to the bill, a website would have to be "dedicated to infringing activities" to trigger the enforcement.

But Internet advocates warn the legislation would open a door for a handful of people in the federal government to wantonly power off entire websites that may be operating legally under current law. Though senators suggest the bill would save jobs by cracking down on piracy, critics say it will hurt the economy by threatening fledgling companies whenever copyrighted material shows up on their sites.

"If this bill had been law five or 10 years ago, there's a good chance that YouTube would no longer be around," Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told FoxNews.com.

Eckersley said the bill would mark a drastic departure from current law by allowing the government not just to strip copyrighted material off an offending website, but to order the shutdown of a domain name altogether.

Eighty-seven engineers who played a role in the creation of the Internet have sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee urging it to sideline the bill.

"If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure," they wrote. "All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill."

The bill's authors, co-sponsors and supporters disagree. They say it's dedicated to the worst-of-the-worst -- that the Justice Department could not shut down a site without first winning approval from a federal court and that the bill protects website operators by giving them the opportunity to remove pirating activity to get their site back online.

"No one would dispute that online infringement and counterfeiting of American intellectual property drains the American economy and costs American jobs," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced the bill, said in a written statement Wednesday. "No one would defend websites, primarily based overseas, that are dedicated to infringing activities. We continue (to) welcome input from everyone on the best way to attack the problem, but ignoring the problem, or saying it is too complicated, can no longer be an option."

The bill has broad bipartisan support on the committee, including that of Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Thirteen of the 16 committee members are co-sponsors, giving the bill a strong chance of passing if it comes up for a vote. It was scheduled to come up for consideration Thursday,. but the chairman postponed it as the Senate prepared to adjourn until after the elections.

Critics are crying foul, saying the panel has not scheduled a hearing for the bill, but committee spokeswoman Erica Chabot noted that the panel held an oversight hearing on intellectual property enforcement in June.

"You can have hearings before you introduce a bill," she said, stressing that Leahy and the co-sponsors are continuing to talk with "stakeholders on all sides."

The biggest supporters of, and contributors to, the proposal come from the business and entertainment communities.

The AFL-CIO, which supports the bill, claims movie and music pirating costs more than 200,000 jobs. A fact sheet put out by the Senate Judiciary Committee claimed intellectual property theft, some occurring on foreign websites, costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually.

Steve Tepp, a piracy expert for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the censorship claims are off-base.

"This bill is a bipartisan effort that targets sites engaged in activities that all 153 countries in the WTO have agreed are illegal," he said. "These websites have no place in a legitimate online market. ... This legislation provides a critically needed tool to try to address what is globally acknowledged as criminal activity to protect America's economic interests."

The Screen Actors Guild and several other entertainment industry groups released a joint statement commending the co-sponsors and claiming the bill would be aimed at "rogue websites" dedicated to "stealing" movies and music.

Specifically, the bill would let the attorney general go through federal court to try to shut down an offending website. If the court approves, the service provider would be required to "suspend" and "lock" the domain name. Those sites would be listed on a public website. Separately, the attorney general would start another public list of offending websites that have not been ordered shut down; the Justice Department would provide immunity to any service provider that takes action against them.

Eckersley called this "outright censorship" and rattled off the names of several prominent file-sharing and file-storing sites -- RapidShare, Dropbox, MediaFire -- that could be affected. He said sites like YouTube would probably survive, but new companies similar to it could easily fall victim to the bill if it becomes law. Plus, he said, people who store files like pictures and music online could, in the stroke of a judge's pen, see those files disappear.

"It's one thing to take down an infringing file. It's another to bully an entire ecosystem of people who are trying to innovate, and that's what this bill is trying to do," he said. "The senators who are well-intentioned haven't realized how much of the astonishing economic value of the Internet they're putting at risk here."

An advocacy group that opposes the bill, Demand Progress, claims 50,000 people have signed its online petition against the bill.

"Censoring the Internet is something we'd expect from China or Iran, not the U.S. Senate," the protest petition says.

Engineers and free-speech advocates have suggested the bill would undermine efforts to press China to unlock the Internet. Plus they warn of a scenario in which engineers will circumvent the law by creating a black-market Internet where outlawed sites could be accessed.

This could create two conflicting Internet worlds, where some sites are accessible to some users and others are not; where commerce, some legitimate, happens in one world and not in the other.

"Errors and divergences will appear," the 87 engineers warned in their letter. "Contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them."

Eckersley had a simpler way to describe it: "Chaos."

By FRAZIER MOORE
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - The number of gay and bisexual characters on scripted broadcast network TV has risen slightly this season to 23 out of a total of nearly 600 roles, according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

The 15th annual "Where We Are on TV" report released Wednesday found that 3.9 percent of actors appearing regularly on prime-time network drama and comedy series in the 2010-11 season will portray gay, lesbian or bisexual characters.

That's up from 3 percent in the 2009-10 season. The increase in 2008-09 was 2.6 percent.

Only six of the 23 gay and lesbian characters this season are nonwhite, GLAAD found.

Using information provided by ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW, the group reviewed 84 scripted series announced to air this season.

The only original programming announced by the gay-focused cable networks here! and Logo is unscripted, alternative programming, so they were not part of this year's character count, GLAAD said.

While the number of broadcast drama series featuring regular or recurring gay characters is unchanged from last year, the number of comedy series has increased from 8 to 11, including new comedies "Running Wilde" (Fox), "Hellcats" (CW), "(Bleep) My Dad Says" (CBS), and midseason show "Happy Endings" (ABC).

ABC led the networks in gay representation, with 7.2 percent or 11 regular characters out of a total of 152, followed by Fox with five out of 100 (5 percent).

On mainstream cable channels, the number of regular characters rebounded to 35 after a two-year decline.

HBO features the greatest number of gay and bisexual characters, with 10 regular and recurring characters.

The HBO drama "True Blood" is the most inclusive series on television, featuring six characters, the group found.

The overall increase in gay characters "not only reflects the shift in American culture towards greater awareness and understanding of our community, but also a new industry standard that a growing number of creators and networks are adopting," GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said in a statement.

He pointed to such programs as ABC's "Modern Family" and Fox's "Glee" as indicators that "mainstream audiences embrace gay characters and want to see well-crafted stories about our lives."

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http://www.glaad.org/tvreport10