At this moment [which is all I have and all I am] this seems to me to be the most beautiful poem I have ever read:

Why wait for your awakening?

The moment your eyes are open, seize the day.

Would you hold back when the Beloved beckons?

Would you deliver your litany of sins like a child’s collection of sea shells, prized and labeled?

“No, I can’t step across the threshold,” you say, eyes downcast.

“I’m not worthy” I’m afraid, and my motives aren’t pure.

I’m not perfect, and surely I haven’t practiced nearly enough.

My meditation isn’t deep, and my prayers are sometimes insincere.

I still chew my fingernails, and the refrigerator isn’t clean.

“Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door?

Forgive yourself.

Now is the only time you have to be whole.

Now is the sole moment…

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Statins save lives by lowering cholesterol, but when combined with common antibiotics, statins are linked to patient hospitalization for muscle breakdown, acute kidney injury, or worse, a large study finds.

Older patients on lipid-lowering drugs known as statins shouldn’t take antibiotics clarithromycin or erythromycin because of an increased risk for drug toxicity, according to a large Canadian study published today in the clinical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

If you are on a statin, avoiding these particular antibiotics may keep you safe from uncommon — but potentially life-threatening — drug-drug interactions. The antibiotics clarithromycin or erythromycin increase the levels of commonly used lipid-lowering drugs, because both drugs interact with the same liver enzyme.

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.Click link below for article and video:

http://www.everydayhealth.com/heart-health/cholesterol-lowering-drugs-and-antibiotics-dangerous-1736.aspx?xid=aol_eh-news_9_20130617_&aolcat=HLT&icid=maing-grid7|myaol|dl3|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D332021

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The Senate passed a politically fraught immigration reform bill on Thursday that would give a path to citizenship to some of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., bringing them out of the shadows and preventing continued record deportations that have separated hundreds of thousands of families.

The bill passed 68 to 32, picking up all Democrats and 14 Republicans.

Undocumented immigrants and advocates in the crowd, many of them young so-called Dreamers, broke out into applause and chants of “yes we can!” after Vice President Joe Biden, who came to the Senate to preside over the proceedings, read the results. Senators in the bipartisan “gang of eight” that drafted the bill — Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) — patted…

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Tigers at the Phoenix Zoo are getting frozen fish snacks. Temporary cooling stations are popping up to welcome the homeless and elderly. And airlines are monitoring the soaring temperatures to make sure it’s safe to fly as the western U.S. falls into the grips of a dangerous heat wave.

A strong high-pressure system settling over the region Friday and through the weekend will bring extreme temperatures even to the typically blazing Southwest. Notoriously hot Death Valley in California is forecast to reach 129 degrees, not far off the world-record high of 134 logged there exactly one century ago.

The National Weather Service is calling for 118 in Phoenix, and 117 in Las Vegas on Sunday – a mark reached only twice in Sin City.

Temperatures are expected to soar even as far north as Reno, Nev., across Utah and into parts of Wyoming and Idaho…

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Same-sex attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome often differ markedly from those of the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active/dominant/masculine and passive/submissive/”feminized”. Roman society was patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and those of his household (familia). “Virtue” (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and “cult of virility” shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, excluded from the normal protections accorded a…

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Millions of clumsy cellphone users have been in the situation shown in this video: One minute your iPhone’s in your hand, the next it has hit the floor and cracked! That’s where 25-year-old A.J. Forsythe comes in with a simple idea: iPhone doctors who make house calls.

Forsythe co-founded iCracked, a start-up that with a team of repair people who specialize in cracked screens.

“We’re an on-demand group of individuals that no matter where you are, you can press a button and we’ll dispatch a group of iTechs to you in real-time,” he said.

The company has raised $700,000 from Y-Combinator, SV Angel and other investors. It is moving into another round of financing and hopes to raise $5,000,000.

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.Click link below for article and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/icracked_n_3498834.html

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‘Two cars are speeding on the highway, one at 80 mph and the other at 100 mph. The first one is caught by police for overstepping the limits while the second one is not. Why?’

This is from my wife – she caught it on a talk-show that plays on our TV with no one watching it.

I tried:

‘Simple – obviously the second guy just out-sped the police …’

‘May be the police could apprehend one offender at a time …’

And finally, ‘Not fair at all, one is not at one’s sharpest, you know, after a sumptuous dinner.’

How did you fare?

Are you still sure …

Look in the comments if you want to know why.

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Refusal to hear case paves the way for expanded use of the ethanol blend.

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a case that attempted to thwart the sale of fuel containing a higher percentage of ethanol, a decision that could clear the way for the more widespread use of E15.

The use of E15 has angered the oil lobby, which has a history of fighting many mandates that result in less oil use. But it’s also raised the ire of poultry and cattle farmers, who said the use of corn in E15 production will increase grain costs.

In declining to hear the case, the high court preserved a lower-court ruling that the American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying organization for the oil industry, did not have the standing to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to allow sales of the controversial fuel.

API officials and…

The Guardian, Jonathan Jones on Art blog writes the following and ends with a question. This post is an attempt to respond to that question:

According to the British art critic Jonathan Jones, many Renaissance artists were “coldly curious” or even cruel in their depictions of old age. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci scorned elderly faces as “monstrous wrecks.” Fortunately, there was one notable exception to this habit of mocking the elderly—Rembrandt. Jones writes, “Rembrandt painted old age with a nobility and power that no artist has ever approached.” He recognized “the dignity and character of aged faces” and embraced “the marks of time as beautiful, mysterious, and rich.” Rembrandt was much more interested in what Jones calls “the mystery behind someone’s eyes.”

But Rembrandt’s deepest study of aging was based on his own life. Rembrandt painted more self portraits than any other artist of the 17th century, and all…