I give to the right organizations that I’ve researched and know well, and I prefer giving when my donation is being matched.

A few weeks ago, I found one of those opportunities when a distant acquaintance/relative named David Alhadeff was raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. David was kind enough to offer a personal match AND a corporate match from his firm, Goldman Sachs. 3X leverage on a philanthropic donation is a situation I like, so I donated and then sent out an email to some family members who were also kind enough to donate. With one email, we increased his fundraising amount by 21% (but more importantly, The Lance Armstrong Foundation got 3X that much!)

Today, a similar opportunity has presented itself. A wealthy donor has offered to match gifts to Planned Parenthood up to $1M:

From now until June 30, a generous donor will match every online gift to Planned Parenthood dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million. This means that, for example, if you give $50, Planned Parenthood will actually get $100. With more and more people turning to Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers for care during this economic recession, now is the best time to give. Whether you can spare $5, $50, or $500, your contribution will be doubled: https://secure.ga0.org/02/match09pporg?source=match09fbc3

Planned Parenthood is a leader in women’s health, and often provides services free-of-charge to underserved and poor women (including cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, contraception, testing for STIs, et cetera), and Planned Parenthood can’t continue to provide those services without your support.

2X leverage on your donation for a good cause…what are you waiting for!?

H1N1 Swine Flu on Google Maps:

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

It’s been identified in Israel, Australia, Colombia, and all over Spain! Holy s***!

Via The Big Picture.

Levi [Johnston] kept insisting he and Bristol Palin practiced safe sex “every time.” What he meant was safe in that they weren’t tied to railroad tracks. After many back and forths, Levi admitted that what he’d meant to say was that he practiced safe sex “most of the time.”

Levi is a selfish fool. Bristol is a dirty slut with no values.

Luckily, they’re young, and there’s hope they’ll stop making these grave mistakes. A baby will surely sober them to reality.

Palin Winked While Levi Dallied With Bristol: Margaret Carlson – Bloomberg

Thanks, Nevin.

NEW YORK—A new study published in The Journal Of Pediatric Medicine found that a shocking 98 percent of all infants suffer from bipolar disorder. “The majority of our subjects, regardless of size, sex, or race, exhibited extreme mood swings, often crying one minute and then giggling playfully the next.” Gregory added that nearly 100 percent of infants appear to suffer from the poor motor skills and impaired speech associated with Parkinson’s disease

98% Of Babies Manic-Depressive – The Onion

Luckily, it doesn’t contain the drug in the cocoa.

Via thisiswhyyourefat.com/.

My mother just alerted me to a phonecall she received from Costco, telling her to throw out the Luna Bars she’d bought months back due to the possibility of salmonella contamination — which got me thinking.

Was this phonecall to help customers avoid sickness, or a sales tactic?

Think about it.

More Luna Bars thrown away means more Luna Bars bought now as replacements.

Is Costco pulling a fast one on their customers?

(click to enlarge)

Now you know:

Turkey meat and drowsiness

One widely-held belief is that heavy consumption of turkey meat (as for example in a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast) results in drowsiness, which has been attributed to high levels of tryptophan contained in turkey. While turkey does contain high levels of tryptophan, the amount is comparable to that contained in most other meats. Furthermore, postprandial Thanksgiving sedation may have more to do with what is consumed along with the turkey, in particular carbohydrates and alcohol, rather than the turkey itself. This is demonstrated in a popular episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld” when characters of the show drug a woman using turkey and alcohol in order to play with her toy collection.

It has been demonstrated in both animal models and in humans] that ingestion of a meal rich in carbohydrates triggers release of insulin. Insulin in turn stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (LNAA) but not tryptophan (trp) into muscle, increasing the ratio of trp to LNAA in the blood stream. The resulting increased ratio of tryptophan to large neutral amino acids in the blood reduces competition at the large neutral amino acid transporter resulting in the uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system (CNS). Once inside the CNS, tryptophan is converted into serotonin in the raphe nuclei by the normal enzymatic pathway. The resultant serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland. Hence, these data suggest that “feast-induced drowsiness,” and in particular, the common post-Christmas and American post-Thanksgiving dinner drowsiness, may be the result of a heavy meal rich in carbohydrates which, via an indirect mechanism, increases the production of sleep-promoting melatonin in the brain.

Typtophan – Wikipedia