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My friend Lori just opened a new studio in the Duluth Georgia area - Yoga North Atlanta. I went to the opening class this weekend and she taught a great Ashtanga based class that was very challenging, yet grounded in alignment. It was a great showing for the studio’s first yoga class - I counted 15 students.

I’ll try to get some pictures the next time I go because the space itself was very nice with a separate reception area and very large dressing area. Lots of studios are cramped so it was refreshing to have plenty of space.

I know there is a Bikram studio in that area but I don’t think anyone else is teaching Ashtanga classes in the Duluth area. Besides, I have been teaching with Lori for nearly 8 years and would be tough to find a more experienced, knowledgeable yoga teacher.

I just did a search for the March of Dimes this morning and saw something in the Google SERPs that I had never seen before. In addition to the normal blue title tag link and a series of site links, there was an additional search box that allows for searching for a term within the actual site listed in the search results. That’s hard to explain so here’s a picture for clarity.

At fist glance, I thought the search box was using the March of Dimes’ website search box since they have a site search box at the top left position of their home page. It looked like Google just pulled down that piece of functionality. But that’s not the case. It turns out that search box in the Google search results listing performs the following query: [search term site:sitename.com] which is using a Google search to look for a specific search term within a given domain.

I don’t think this is going to send shock waves around the world but it is an interesting way for Google to allow for the exposing of more advanced search techniques to users who would not otherwise have the savvy to execute such searches. Apparently Google is expanding their sitelinks to include more ways to get to specific parts of a website. Here is a link to the blog post about their expanded sitelinks program.

So I spent this past Saturday afternoon at a baby shower. The parents-to-be both happen to be female. And the dad? Well, the donor was present too. He is a gay man who lives in NYC. But I don’t believe he will be involved in the actual parenting.

Georgia is no “New England” state so the legitimacy of the union of these two women is not legally recognized. So until the progression of society evolves a bit more, they are going to experience plenty of road blocks and obstacles to health care and property rights, among other things. Yet they are going to raise a child together and I believe they are going to do a fantastic job.

From the outside, an uninvolved observer might find it easy to think, “gee, that’s a little weird.” And I’m sure the righteous among us would quickly condemn and think the whole thing beyond the scope of their acceptance. Thus the current laws. But having known these parents-to-be for many years (we happened to meet through yoga), I have much more confidence in their ability to raise a child in a loving atmosphere than most other couples I know. It would only be weird if there were a lack of love in the union. But love is love is love.

So I hope the new baby enjoys the baby blanket that I gave them. If I ever have a boy, he is going to get the same blanket. And it’s very appropriate for them because they live across the street from the zoo.
(*edit* I meant to link to this baby blanket - the blue modern dot baby blanket.)

I can’t wait to meet the new baby and look forward to watching him grow up. He will have great parents.

Was it really people’s interest or was it spam? I think it was a little bit of both. But when Obama asked citizens for questions and gave them the ability to rank those questions, it appears there is a lot of interest in the decriminalization of drugs.

But no one really wants that, right? I know for a fact that drug lords, growers, pushers and gangs are certainly against the idea. So are the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies.

We incarcerate more citizens per capita than any other country. Most of those incarcerations are because of drugs. And, ironically, our prisons have tons of drugs in them. So we imprison people for using drugs and, while in prison, they have even greater access to them. And each person in jail can no longer contribute to society and each incarceration drains tens of thousands of dollars from taxpayers each year.

When I worked in the mental health field, I met lots of 12 and 13 year old drug vendors. That’s right. And these kids had ZERO motivation to stay in school because they were making more money than their parents. Under age children are used by bigger pushers simply because they are too young to go to real jail. And when they turn 18 their records are given a clean slate.

Just because these kids were into the selling didn’t mean that they were users. Most of them weren’t users, yet. They just got into the trade because it was easy money.

Easy money. That’s the problem. As long as drugs are illegal, the underground sale of them will be easy money for a group of people who typically arm themselves and are willing to kill to keep their power and money. This easy money will attract a lot of people the worse the economy gets.

Because of our laws, we spend billions of dollars trying to do the impossible - keep people from getting high. If it’s not pot, then it’s glue or gas or some other extremely harmful improvisation. If drugs were legal, would there be more drug users? Possibly. But I don’t think people will jump up and start using just because they can.

Legal or not, I won’t be using cocaine, smoking crack, shooting heroin or taking ecstasy. Even tequila is a bit much for me…and it’s still legal. And as far as my involvement in other people’s lives via the rules of society, I would much rather spend the tax money on prevention and treatment rather than incarceration and enforcement. And maybe these meth labs and drug gangs will disappear once and for all.

I never realized it until I was away from home for several years, but the area near my parents’ house in rural West Tennessee is full of skunks. I rarely see them alive but their smelly corpses frequently accompany the dashed lines on the windy roads.

And although they are somewhat shy and elusive, skunks are known to venture into yards where they startle, and subsequently spray, neighborhood dogs. My brother even got sprayed by a skunk once when he was camping out. Of course he brought himself inside and the whole house smelled like a skunk.

It turns out that some people can’t smell skunks at all. My wife is one of them. After several instances of running through some skunk stank while driving down the road, she kept saying she couldn’t smell that horrible funk that was pushing me to nausea. So she did some research and found out that one in one thousand people cannot smell a skunk. Go figure. I guess that explains a lot.