My nicknames are: Mel, Melly, Smelly, Smell adud, Melobee, Mel Mel, Melodia. I thinks thats all of them.=)

Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know! I know a "most humiliating nickname!" It's actually Jesse's! But that wouldn't be very nice of me, now would it? Good thing I'm a loving sister!

Jamie, the picture was taken in New Zealand.

my nicknames, in no particular order: Shaun, Shauna Banauna, Burgis, My Sharona, Shaunnanana, S., and Erika like to call me Cutie! i think there are others but these are the main ones.

Hey Shauna,

Where was the pic on your blog taken?

Some call me..... Tim!. Actually, no. People call me Jon. My name is Jonathan, but I prefer Jon. So I guess it doesn't count.

The Nickname competition begins now!

Prizes go out to the winners of the following categories:

1. Most nicknames
2. Most unique nickname
3. Most humiliating nickname
4. Longest nickname
5. Silliest nickname

What do people call YOU???

Yay! Jesse's coming home! :)

Guess who comes home in 2 days!!!!

Hey mister grumpy gills,

When life gets you down, you know what you gotta do?

Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming swimming swimming,
What do we do? We swim, swim, swim.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-OHHHHHHH I love to swi-i-i-i-im
and when you want to swim you want to....

Here's another one:
Men who are angry every day or who are social hermits have a much higher risk of developing gum disease. That's the word from a Harvard University study that found men who are angry on a daily basis have a 43 percent higher risk of developing periodontitis compared with men who keep their cool, reports United Press International. The 10-year study included 42,523 male health professionals who ranged in age from 40 to 75 years.

Weirdly, friendship seems to protect against gum disease. Men who reported having at least one close friend had a 30 percent lower risk of developing periodontitis than those who don't have a buddy, and men who attended religious services had a 27 percent lower risk of gum disease. Divorced, widowed, and never-married men were at a slightly higher risk of developing periodontitis compared with married men. Why? The Harvard researchers think stress is associated with poor oral hygiene and increased glucocorticoid secretion. That can lower the immune function and increase insulin resistance--factors that can lead to gum disease.

Okay...you're probably tired of my blurbs by now. :)

Haha...this is interesting, too:
The early stages of a romantic relationship are a lot like eating chocolate--at least as far as our brains are concerned. The dopamine-drenched brain is very focused on planning and the pursuit of a pleasurable reward. The same regions become active when we fall in love as when we enjoy the pleasure of eating chocolate, says lead researcher Helen Fisher. More ominously, the brain in love also shows patterns that resemble aspects of obsessive compulsive disorder.


obsessive compulsive disorder...that's great!

I'm glad the ruckus was brought here, because I don't feel like taking up my own server space and chasing the fallacy of thinking around several different blogs. Here's a statement from Human Rights Watch:

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One can only rejoice at the capture of Saddam Hussein. Few people are more deserving of trial and punishment. U.S. forces deserve credit for arresting the deposed dictator so that his crimes can be presented and condemned in a court of law, rather than arranging to kill him in combat.

But the stakes now are enormous. The fairness of the tribunal he is brought before will determine whether his prosecution advances the rule of law in Iraq or perpetuates a system of arbitrary revenge. Washington says it has not yet decided what to do with him, but the first moves of the U.S.-dominated Iraqi Governing Council are not auspicious.

Saddam Hussein's government was responsible for the murder of a quarter of a million Iraqis. Among the occupants of the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq today are 100,000 Kurdish men and boys machine-gunned to death during the 1988 Anfal genocide, many after having been chased from their homes with chemical weapons; the 30,000 Shiites and Kurds slaughtered after the 1991 uprising; other Shiites killed during the 1980's because of their perceived sympathy for Iran; so-called Marsh Arabs killed as the Iraqi government drained the marshes and destroyed a culture that had thrived for centuries; and many individual Iraqis of all faiths and ethnicities who were singled out, their lives ended, for real or perceived opposition to the regime.

To do these victims justice, their plight should be recorded in a court of law and their perpetrators properly judged and punished. But the Iraqi Governing Council, taking its lead from Washington, last week established a tribunal that is to be dominated by Iraqi jurists. Despite the superficial appeal of allowing Iraqis to try their own persecutors, this approach is unlikely to produce sound prosecutions or fair trials. It reflects less a determination to see justice done than a fear of bucking Washington's ideological jihad against any further enhancement of the international system of justice.

As we know from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, prosecutions of genocide or crimes against humanity can be enormously complex, demanding jurists of exceptional skill and sophistication. They require amassing volumes of official documents, collecting sensitive forensic evidence from mass graves, presenting hundreds of witnesses from among victims and accomplices, and paying scrupulous attention to the requirements of due process. To avoid being perceived as show trials or "victor's justice," they call for highly experienced jurists of unquestioned integrity.

Saddam's brutal and arbitrary justice system can hardly be expected to have produced such jurists. Prosecutions were typically based on confessions, often induced by torture. Serious criminal investigations, let alone complex trials, were virtually unheard of. The Iraqi Governing Council hopes to solve this problem by looking to Iraqi exiles as well as Iraqis from communities historically repressed by the Baath Party who remained in the country. But even among these it will be difficult to find jurists with the right combination of skills and emotional distance from the former dictatorship to produce trials that are fair - and seen as fair.

An internationally led tribunal would be a far better option, whether a fully international tribunalor, more likely, an internationally run tribunal with significant domestic participation, such as the special court set up for Sierra Leone. Because its personnel would be selected by the United Nations rather than by Washington's surrogates, an internationally led tribunal is more likely to be seen as legitimate. And because it can draw from a global pool of talent, it would be better able to secure the experienced and fair-minded jurists than a court that must look only to Iraqis. An internationally led tribunal could still conduct trials in Baghdad and involve Iraqis as much as possible, but it would be run by international jurists with proven records of overseeing complex prosecutions and scrupulously respecting international fair-trial standards.

Despite the obvious merits of an internationally led tribunal, Washington is adamantly opposed, which largely explains the path chosen by the Iraqi Governing Council. But Washington's opposition reflects its ideology, not concern for the Iraqi people. The Bush administration calculates that a tribunal of Iraqis selected by its hand-picked Governing Council will be less likely to reveal embarrassing aspects of Washington's past support for Saddam Hussein, more likely to impose the death penalty despite broad international condemnation, and, most important, less likely to enhance even indirectly the legitimacy of the detested International Criminal Court.

No one should endorse these self-serving reasons. Governments should encourage Washington to allow an internationally led tribunal to try Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. The people of Iraq deserve no less.
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I'm opposed to the death penalty on religious and ideological grounds, but I'm going to take a purely pragmatic stand here. Executing Saddam after a trial from the US backed (and installed) "Iraqi Government" would not lend any legitimacy to anything, at all. America would be happy, because the Witch Is Dead. We don't need a dead witch, though. We need to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, who, although most hated Saddam, they hate America more. An internationally led court, with full disclosure and full UN, EU, US, and Arab backing will provide the justice that we need, but will do so without alienating the Arab world. Right? This shouldn't be an "Iraqi"trial, because Iraq is still too fragmented to run a trial of this magnitude. Who would lead it? A Shiite cleric? His people were wounded the most by Hussein. Or maybe Kurdish? Would they just be out for vengeance? Ahmad Chalabi? He would be terrible. This needs to be a internationally setup and internationally run court, based in Iraq.

Jesse...I mean...Tajjy:
I remember you saying a while ago that you like almonds. Well, I just found this little blurb and thought you might find it interesting:

Eat almonds and lose weight
A study published in the International Journal of Obesity compared two groups of people who were placed on a 1,000-calorie-a-day liquid diet. One group also ate three ounces of almonds every day. The other group was allowed to eat a mix of complex carbohydrates that included wheat crackers, baked potatoes, and air-popped popcorn. The group that ate the almonds lost more weight--even though the calorie counts for the two groups were identical. In addition, their systolic blood pressure dropped 11 percent, compared to no change in the other group. Why is this significant? It's long been assumed that a calorie is the same no matter where it comes from. Even though the group eating the almonds consumed more fat, they lost more weight. Their Body Mass Index readings dropped 18 percent, compared with the other group's 11 percent.

<---- Check out Jamie's blog for some important responses to Shauna's "important news you should know"

Oh wait, but since there is a conspiracy to keep Jamie's blog link off of this blog, I guess I will have to provide you the link.

<----- Check out Shauna's blog for some important news you should know