Hong Kong's Gay Revolution

For a few hours, a city that usually seems immune to surprises watched in awe as approximately 1,000 parade-goers stopped traffic, filled the streets and spread their message to "celebrate love." A rainbow-colored dragon bobbed over the heads of carefully coiffed men donning dainty dresses and dancing to "Celebrate Pride," which warbled through a loudspeaker in the center of the city. Men with fiery red-feathered tiaras chanted, "Pride parade! Pride parade! Pride parade!" in Cantonese and English while marching through Hong Kong's congested Hennessy Road waving multicolored pride flags

View from a broad abroad

LGBT travellers can offer their services as volunteers in a variety of ways.

Imagine building floats for Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, working with transwomen in Thailand, or planting trees in Katrina-devastated wetlands around New Orleans.

There are many opportunities for LGBT travellers to make a difference in the countries we visit, but we still face some unique barriers.

A new sole for Bush

During the holiday season thoughts often turn to giving away what we no longer need to those who will appreciate their significance. Now is your chance to let Geo. W. Bush know how you feel ... As a sign of your admiration, please feel free (compelled) to send your old shoes to:

George W. Bush Presidential Library
c/o SMU
6425 Boaz Lane
Dallas TX 75205

Classical Muppets

Two fantastic YouTube clips to introduce your kids to great works of classical music ... and puppetry. First, Beeker and his many clones perform Beethoven's Ode to Joy, then Gonzo the Great and his chicken orchestra cluck out The Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss.

Everything for a Cowboy/girl

Kilakitu is a swahili saying meaning "everything". And these Africanized cowboy shirts make interesting one-of-a-kind gifts.

The depths of Nairobi's [Kenya] sprawling secondhand clothing markets provide the finest and most inspiring preloved fabrics from the four corners of the world.

This project not only reuses, remixes and renews these materials to create one-of-a-kind garments, it also provides work to local tailors and provides a portion of the proceeds to a lunch feeding program for school children.

Timeless comedy

An hilarious 1954 clip of Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray as their domestic squabble is set to the rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

A-ha! A new take on Take On Me

Many of you, my contemporaries in the '80s, will remember this song from the Norwegian group A-ha [Wikipedia link] and likely the video too. Here it is again only with the lyrics changed to a literal description of what's going on in the video ... it even makes a bit more sense than the original!

Justice is Served

Making decisions about crime and punishment is, it turns out, as complicated as a legal brief. For the first time, scientists have peered into the brains of people who are deciding whether a crime deserves punishment and how severe the penalty should be.

Those decisions involve parts of the brain associated with rational thought, but emotion-processing regions weigh in too, a team of law and neuroscience researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., show in a new study in the Dec. 11 Neuron. The findings suggest that brain areas active in deciding a harsh punishment for a crime deliberately committed are different than those active when giving the accused some benefit of the doubt.

Canada ties for last among developed countries for child services: UNICEF

Canada fails to meet nine of out 10 proposed standards aimed at ensuring children get the best start in life through education and support programs, putting the country in a tie for last place among affluent nations, an analysis released Wednesday by UNICEF concludes.

The UNICEF benchmarks are crucial for children in their formative years, the United Nations organization says.

The New Face of business in America

In light of the recent changes in economic perspective, a few clever artists have come up with versions of famous logos with much more "truthiness"!