| My Friend’s Book on Pornography is Getting National Press Posted: 14 Jul 2010 10:57 AM PDT Why should you care about pornography? Because it affects all of us, whether we use it, just see it around, or completely ignore it. My friend Gail Dines, 52, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston, has written a new book called Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality. In a column for the New York Post, Gail says today’s pornography is not your father's Playboy. Type porn into Google and you won't see anything that looks like the old pinups; instead, you will be catapulted into a world of sexual cruelty and brutality where women are subject to body-punishing sex and called vile names. It's not surprising how little women really know about porn today, since most women avoid looking at these sites. Not true for the men I meet, especially the college-age and even high-school boys. They have grown up with porn and, for them, this has been their major form of sex education.
And here’s an article on Pornland from The Guardian in the U.K. I hope you will get the book and read it. |
| Diana Nyad, 60, Attempts Once Again to Make Swimming History Posted: 13 Jul 2010 06:12 AM PDT  Do you remember Diana Nyad? She is the record-breaking long-distance swimmer who swam 102.5 continuous miles from the Bahamas to Florida in 1979. I had the pleasure of meeting her a few years ago on a vacation in the Caribbean. Amazingly, she is about to attempt, at age 60, a new record.
She writes on her website: “I broke many records in my prime as a long-distance swimmer back in the 1970s, in my twenties. For my world record—102.5 continuous miles from the Bahamas to Florida in 1979—and other swims, such as breaking the 50-year-old mark for circling Manhattan Island, many Halls of Fame have honored me. I had a stellar athletic career and achieved my dream of swimming the farthest openwater swim in history. Yet my dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida was dashed in 1978, after fighting stiff winds and huge seas for 41hrs, 49 mins, and still not reaching the Florida coast. “Until a year ago, I hadn't swum a stroke for 31 years. Swimmer's burnout gripped me to the point that I could have sworn I would never, ever swim a lap again in my life. But approaching 60 last year threw me into the existential angst of wondering what I had done with my life. I felt choked by how little time seemed left. I started swimming a few laps, just to take some pressure off the knees from all the other activities I enjoy. “My workouts escalated. My motivation started to burn like a fire in my soul. One day I was driving, after a long swim, and I stopped and looked hard in the rearview mirror. And I said to myself: This is one dream I actually could go back and achieve. At 60, I could swim from Cuba to Florida. This time, without a shark cage.”
Right now, Nyad is training for the swim. She even completed a 24-HOUR swim earlier this month. Can you imagine swimming for 24 hours? I can’t. Here’s a great little video of Nyad on the long training swim. |
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