Carpe testicles -
Sing A Long
Video...
By
checkyourselfout
(YouTube ID) © 2008
Most
testicular cancers are found by men themselves.
Also, doctors should examine the testicles during
routine physical exams. Between regular checkups, if
a man notices anything unusual about his testicles,
he should talk with his doctor.
Editors note. You may be
requested to allow scripts or
ActiveX controls in
order to view videos.
Click here to "check yourself out"
Testicular Cancer
Resources...
The Testicular Cancer Resource Center
The
Testicular Cancer Resource Center is a charitable
organization devoted to helping people understand
testicular and extragonadal germ cell tumors.
Specifically, we provide accurate and timely
information about these tumors and their treatment
to anyone and everyone interested. We have
information for patients, caregivers, family,
friends, and physicians. We believe that our
information and links are of the highest quality,
and we are blessed with the support of some of the
finest doctors in the field.
The Lance Armstrong Foundation
The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) believes that
in your battle with cancer, knowledge is power and
attitude is everything. Founded in 1997 by cancer
survivor and cycling champion Lance Armstrong, the
LAF provides the practical information and tools
people living with cancer need to live strong.
MaleCare.com
Men
Fighting cancer together - A men's cancer care
site: Info on all aspects of uniquely male
cancer-related concerns, including dozens of pages
in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Hebrew.
The Sean Kimerling Testicular
Cancer Foundation
The Sean Kimerling Testicular Cancer Foundation is a
non-profit organization dedicated to raising
awareness of testicular cancer and the need for
regular self-examination.
AAUW Education
Report Minimizes Boy Crisis in Our Schools
Article... By
Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks © 2008
Boys
have trailed girls in most indices of academic
performance for at least two decades. In recent
years, boys’ educational struggles have finally been
acknowledged and explored in the mainstream media.
This has resulted in an unfortunate backlash from
misguided women’s advocates. The latest example of
these advocates’ efforts to minimize or deny the boy
crisis in education is the American Association of
University Women’s highly-publicized new report
“Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity
in Education."
The AAUW says its report "debunks the myth of
a 'boys crisis' in education," but the study provides little
evidence to support this contention. According to the Report’s
own data, girls get much better grades than boys, are far more
likely to graduate college, and are on the good side of a
longstanding “literacy gap.”
It is also true that girls are much more
likely than boys to graduate high school, and boys are far more
likely than girls to be disciplined, suspended, held back, or
expelled. The vast majority of learning-disabled students are
boys, and boys are four times more likely than girls to receive
a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Although more girls than boys enroll in high level math and
science classes, boys do score a little better in math. However,
girls’ advantage in reading is several times as large.
Go
to Article
Guest Article... by
Marty Nemko
Tim
Russert, Sudden Heart Attack, and Sexism Against Men...
Tim
Russert’s untimely death from a sudden heart attack reminded me
of the dramatic 50+-year-long gender disparity against men in
health care research and outreach.
Many more men
than women die of sudden heart attack
and
at an earlier age
than do women of breast cancer.
Indeed, sudden heart attack is
the #1 cause of premature death among men over 40. Yet, more
money per capita is spent on breast cancer research.
And regarding outreach, there
are a trivial number of prostate cancer ribbons compared with
the number of pink ribbons against breast cancer. And have you
ever seen even one ribbon against sudden heart attack?
Go to Article
Guest Article... Kathleen Parker ©2008
Politically Incorrect Domestic
Violence...
The
words "domestic violence" typically invite images of bruised
women and children -- and male perpetrators.
But the real picture of domestic violence
isn't so clear-cut. And the solution to family violence is far
more complex than our current criminal justice approach can
handle.
For
about 30 years now, we've been throwing money and punishment at
domestic violence with not enough to show for it. Estimates are
that more than 32 million Americans are affected by domestic
violence each year, with many of those in need of help never
reporting their abuse.
These are among the important findings of
Linda Mills -- attorney, social worker, survivor of a violent
relationship, as well as professor and senior vice provost at
New York University -- whose new book,
Violent Partners, tackles the myths of
domestic violence and suggests new ways of dealing with the
problem.
Go to Article
Guest Article... Robert A.
Glover, Ph.D. ©2008
Emotional Integration, Part 2...
In
Part 1, I wrote about how my experience of moving
to a new office with some of my colleagues triggered some familiar
family patterns from my childhood. These familiar patterns activated
my “lizard brain” in a way that not only created an anxiety response
in me, but also led to a number of fairly dysfunctional projections
and behaviors on my part. My reptilian emotional response was
increasingly intensified by the reptilian behaviors of my colleagues
who no doubt were also stressed by the change of working environment
that we were all going through.
At the conclusion of the first part of this article, I promised I
would share with you how I used this anxiety producing situation as
an opportunity to consciously work on my personal emotional
integration.
In Part One I of this article I described the process of how the
brain stores up emotional memories of childhood experiences.
Briefly, the first part of the brain to develop and be fully
functioning in an infant is a tiny, almond shaped lump at the top of
the brain stem called the amygdala. This primitive, yet essential
part of the brain, regulates functions needed for basic survival.
The amygdala, sometimes referred to as the “reptilian” or “lizard
brain,” is fully functioning long before other parts of the brain
develop.
The amygdala has no language capability but seems to store up
emotional memories that later influence other parts of the brain and
the central nervous system. The amygdala is the center of the
“fight/flight/freeze” mechanism that is so crucial to our survival.
When we are young, we internalize life events at a feeling level
into this part of our brain. As children, we didn’t have the
reasoning skills, maturity, or experience to evaluate the
experiences. We just stored up emotional memories and their
associated survival responses.
Go to Article
COYOTE...
monthly column by Dick Prosapio
© 2008
Getting
Over It
I'm quick
to forgive. I don't know if this makes me a sucker or just a
compassionate being, but that's my story. Any one who has kept
track of some of the stuff I've written about our kids knows we
have been through the mill with each of them and with the advent
of some new chaotic event, usually involving cops, alcohol,
drugs, lying. The bottom line has always been that we have been
ready to accept whatever happened meaning death, the outcome of
letting-go-of-the-bicycle-seat reality. But they have all
survived, so far, and so has my love for them survived my,
situational anger.
I don't expect that forgiveness will be the
outcome when in the midst of the chaotic event, but it always
is, it is the way I am built. I feel the same way about old girl
friends that is I hold no grudges.
The latest escapade by our middle one is a
case in point; high for weeks on cocaine, losing yet another
job, smashing up yet another car and winding up rehabbing in our
home till we can get her in a drug treatment program, all of
that got my "juices" flowing alright. But, now three weeks have
passed and I am hopeful again that this-time-she-really-got-it
and she can be charming when sober.
Of course I'm not totally convinced by her
cover, though forgiven, she still has to prove to me that she
will actually get on the right path. We await intake calls from
treatment facilities. Meanwhile, enter the second source of
chaos, the youngest one.
Go to Article
JEFF'S LIFE:
Raising an Autistic Child... monthly
column by Jeff Stimpson
© 2007
Let's Elope!...
Elope:
n. 1. To run away with a lover, esp. with the intention of
getting married. 2. To run away: ABSCOND.
-- Webster's II New College Dictionary
Alex is up at 2:30 in the morning, and he
comes to stand beside our bed, as he often does. I take him back
to bed, stay for a minute to make sure he falls back asleep,
then go back to bed myself. The phone rings at 4 a.m., waking me
again. Please God let it be some drunk guy, I think.
"Alex is in Marie's apartment!" Jill says.
We bolt into the living room, where the lights
are on. Alex sits in front of the TV, watching Elmo with the
volume low.
He must have unlocked our front door and left
our apartment soon after I'd gone back to sleep. Marie says Alex
came in and turned on all the lights, including one she herself
didn't know how to work. Then I guess he left. Says Annette,
another neighbor who loves Alex, "I thought I heard my door
rattling at about 3, but I thought it was the wind."
Go to Article
DADS, DON'T FIX YOUR KIDS...
monthly column by
Mark Brandenburg,
M.A
© 2007
Your Teaching Moments are Waiting
...
"Here’s
your water bottle, James!”
The eight-year-old snatched the bottle hard out of his mother’s
hand, and said, “give me that!” A chorus of nervous laughter
followed from the parents nearby, including the boy’s mother.
James sauntered off, without acknowledging his mother’s
offering, or the presence of the other parents in the group.
We were attending a youth basketball game, and the hallway
outside the gym was filled with parents and revved up kids. This
kind of interaction between children and their parents is not
unusual today. We all see examples of kids acting more
aggressively around their parents. And unfortunately, we all see
examples of their parents doing little to change it.
In a society with kids who are “plugged in” to TV, computers,
and video games for record numbers of hours each day, it’s easy
to blame our kids’ behavior on the media garbage that enters
their lives. And as stressed out as parents are today, it’s also
easy to turn the other way when our kids act in rude and
disrespectful ways.
Go to Article
LATEST
REVIEWS
REVIEW:
Men are Great: How to Build a
Relationship that Brings Out the Best in Both of You
By By Karen Jones ©2007
Karen Jones, the most
youthful-looking woman on the high side of 50 that you are
likely ever to find, and a relationship trainer by trade, has
written a deceptively simple book. (Full disclosure: At the Boys
and the Boy Crisis Conference in Washington DC in July 2007,
Karen and I spent some brief yet treasured time together in the
company of other conference attendees.) Men are Great: How to
Build a Relationship that Brings Out the Best in Both of You
is a modest book. It’s a quick read and it is pretty much summed
up by its title. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended for a
number of reasons.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
See Jane
Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About
it
By James Garbarino, Ph.D. ©2006
Seven
years after writing “Lost
Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them,”
James Garbarino, Ph.D., professor of humanistic psychology at
Loyola University Chicago, has published what could roughly
speaking be described as a companion volume, “See Jane Hit: Why
Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It.”
Garbarino writes well, and his book addresses a topic that has
drawn significant interest in recent years, having been
addressed in at least four other recent volumes. “See Jane Hit”
is interesting reading for gender activists, since Garbarino
writes from a more mainstream perspective that uncritically
accepts some anti-male falsehoods, yet at the same time is a
generally thoughtful and fair-minded commentator.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Straight Talk for Men about Marriage:
What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know
About Men)
By Martin G. Friedman ©2006
The author has put together an appealingly presented, male-friendly
guide to improving the quality of our marriages. As Friedman is the
first to point out, this isn’t exactly rocket science. We need to
learn to do the basics. A marriage is a path to learning about
ourselves. Projecting our discontent onto our spouse doesn’t do
either of us any favors.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Self-Made Man:
One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back Again
By Norah Vincent
Norah Vincent has produced a new
book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess
all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a
black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and
barriers he discovered. Author Vincent tries to do the same thing
for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed
male bastions to report on what she discovers.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Smart Couple’s Guide to the
Wedding of Your Dreams:
Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
By
By Judith
Sherven and James Sniechowski
Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists
and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages
(The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be
Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on
their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The
Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a
narrower subject than any of their three previous books. But
actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing
skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their
latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of
wedding guides. Not seeing a book that went beyond the
technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the
event, they took the plunge and wrote it!
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Partnering: A
New Kind of Relationship
By Hal Stone and Sidra Stone
© 2006
Hal and Sidra Stone are, like Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski
(whose latest book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) a
husband-and-wife psychologist team who have written a number of
books and who travel the world giving workshops on their techniques
for improving one’s life and relationships. Partnering does
not represent a stunning advance on the authors’ previous work but
it does expand, in the specific context of relationships, on the
work they have helped pioneer in exploring the multiple selves each
of us contains through the voice dialogue technique.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and
Reconciliation in an American Family.
By Jon DuPre.
Jon DuPre’s achievement with “The Prodigal Father” is stupefying.
What this correspondent for Fox Network News has done is so simple:
He has told the story of his family of origin, consisting of two
brothers, himself, and his mother and father. As a novel, the book
would fail. For one thing, the plot would be utterly unbelievable!
But “The Prodigal Father” is billed as an “autobiography,” and
written with loving detail and self-revelation so honest and so deep
that took my breath away. As such, it is utterly compelling and
simultaneously completely credible.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Gendercide and Genocide
Edited by Adam Jones
© 2006
Apart from the rarest exceptions (such as the not-to-be-missed “Female
‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change,” Edited
by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund), edited volumes tend to
be hit-and-miss affairs. It’s hard enough simply to find an
appropriate topic, to accumulate contributions that are varied
enough to provide interest but not so different that they work at
cross-purposes, and to publish the work. Maintaining a razor-like
focus as can easily be done with an individually authored book by
definition becomes almost impossible with an edited volume.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
Archive of All Reviews & Interviews...
by J. Steven Svoboda.
