Alexa demographics: Facebook vs. MySpace

[Click on images to enlarge them] [Source]

Whatever Happened to Anita Bryant?

“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.” ... “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.” “Crowned Miss America in 1958, Anita Bryant was a wholesome, 30-something singer in the 1970s who was voted ‘Most Admired Woman in America’ by Good Housekeeping magazine three years in a row. She parlayed her wholesome image into a successful career in the Florida Citrus campaign (‘Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine’).” “But many of us remember her for her infamous 1977 ‘Save our Children’ campaign to repeal a Dade County, Florida gay rights ordinance. She led a particularly nasty campaign, complete with charges that gay men and women were only interested in recruiting children. That campaign quickly led Florida legislators to pass a law banning gay adoptions — a ban that is still in place today. Eventually, the controversy over her anti-gay activism ruined her career and her personal life. Her citrus contract was not renewed, she and her husband divorced, and she moved back to her native Oklahoma where she fell off the national radar.

“The St. Petersburg Times caught up with her a few years ago. Bryant remarried and has tried, without success, to revive her career, first in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Branson, Missouri. That failed in 1997, and she was forced to declare bankruptcy. “Anita and her husband then moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where history repeats itself. She opened the Music Mansion, a Branson-style theater, and put on a show where she sang songs from her 1950’s and 1960’s heyday and preached her Christian beliefs. She was well-liked among her conservative Christian followers, but popularity remained elusive. Attendance was sparse; even on her best days the theater was never more than 25% full. Salaries went unpaid, bills piled up, promises were broken, and the theater eventually closed amid hard feelings and anger. Yet Bryant seems to remain unfazed by all the damage she has done.” Read more here. Source: Box Turtle Bulletin

(Source)

She looks like a dike now, alas.

'A Single Man'

Watched a movie on Comcast last night, "A Single Man," based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood and produced by the fashion designer Tom Ford, who also wrote the screenplay and directed. Wonderful movie. Glad it was offered on Comcast, since it's one movie I'd really wanted to see. You can read all about it here. Excellent performances by the actors, with Colin Firth in the lead role. More at IMDB here. (I'll watch it again tonight.)

Ellen DeGeneres interviews below.

Tom Ford

Colin Firth

Matthew Goode

Google vs. Bing image search

I searched for a photo of Jurij Sennecke, Candice Olson's (of HGTV fame) husband. (He's even taller than she is!)

Google image search results here.

Bing image search results here.

This is the best image the Google search could produce.

I got this image through Bing (but not the image above).

U.K. Doctors Deem Gay “Cure” Therapies Harmful

From The Advocate here.

Therapies that purport to “cure” gay people were denounced as harmful during the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, reports Pink News.

At the Thursday session, the majority of physicians attending agreed that the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other mental health standard-setting organizations should reject and ban the treatments.

“Sexuality is such a fundamental part of who a person is that attempts to change it just result in significant confusion, depression and even suicide,” said Tom Dolphin, vice-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee. “You can’t just wish away same-sex attraction no matter how inconvenient it might be.”

Why Do Middle-Age Men Cheat?

From Andrew Sullivan here.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá continue to plug their book on the evolution of human sexuality. On infidelity:

With the caveat that every situation is different, one factor we think deserves more attention is the role of testosterone (T) in middle-aged men’s eroticism. In their twenties, men’s T levels begin a long decline, often experienced as diminished passion and appetite for life. Suppressed T levels are associated with depression, heart attacks, dementia, and overall mortality rates from 88 to 250 percent higher. One of the few things that can reliably and immediately revive a man’s sagging testosterone is exposure to a new woman. One researcher found that even a brief chat with an attractive woman raised men’s testosterone levels by fourteen percent within minutes. In Sex at Dawn, we suggest that many men may be confusing the hormonal changes triggered by an affair with actual “love,” thus leading them to make ill-advised decisions catastrophic to their families, their marriages, and eventually themselves.

BUSTED: The Economist Photoshops Obama To Make Him Look More Depressed And Alone

I wouldn't subscribe to this magazine in the first place, but this would be a good reason for canceling. From TPM here.

It's just not quite the same for a president to be glancing down at the water while chatting with others on the beach as it is for the president to be solemn and depressed and alone while contemplating oil-soaked sand.

But the Economist didn't have a picture of the latter. So they made one: