Cassandra Peterson has been Elvira, Mistress of the Dark for 35 years. A pretty amazing feat for a woman to "hold her looks". But, Cassandra Peterson has been about more than just her looks, right from the start.

Elvira is a character with charisma, adventure and fun. I couldn't tell you many people involved in the horror entertainment industry, some writers, and the actresses who played Mrs. Addams and Mrs. Munster. But, once seen, never forgotten when it comes to Elvira. She was more than a vampy TV host. She still is.

"I don't think women should have an expiration date, [but] unfortunately, some things don't hold up as well as others, so there is a thing about playing a particular character --- my character is based very much on the sexy, so continuing to try to be really sexy until you're really old might not work," she says. "Humor definitely takes the edge off of it, because if you're self-deprecating, you can still be sexy, and it's sort of OK, as long as it resonates that way with the fans."

Quote from Boing Boing.

Intolerance is black. Not black and white and no room at all for shades of grey. Intolerance is a dictatorship.

To me it seems intolerance has become more important than respect, love or anything else. If you read the intolerance manual you would believe it was my generation and those before us who were intolerant, bigots, and so on. But, that isn't true. We may have been racist, but we were not intolerant. We had black, white, shades of grey, men, women, old and young.

Now there is just one way everything is allowed to be and everyone must stick to the right rules. I see only black, there can be no exception. Any feelings or thoughts (and certainly any actions!) to the contrary will not be tolerated. Even those you love will choose the rules over you. Don't get in the way, don't have any other opinion and don't complain.

Writing this, this morning, I wonder how people have gotten this way.

I have tolerance. I'm sad, I'm angry and I'm disappointed but I am not throwing rocks at anyone. I am not insisting on having my way or ignoring someone else who does not agree with me. I am tolerating someone who ignored my beliefs, my feelings and everything I am. I am not throwing anyone out, or under a bus. I am not screaming, hurting someone else, or insisting on a boycott. I am not using social media to gather others to my witch hunt.

I am of the generation who believe in human rights, including the human right to be human. Being human means everyone is entitled to be imperfect. Being human I expect people to not have all the same thoughts, feelings, culture or experiences. I like to explore other cultures and experiences. I like knowing there are people who disagree with me but listen to how I think and care enough to tolerate me when I feel or think differently.

You have to be entitled to be so firmly intolerant.

Today people have a feeling of entitlement they say. I have seen this in the younger generation, but not just there. The feeling of entitlement is part of the blackness of intolerance. I think it backs it up, keeps it from letting in any of those other colours. You have to be entitled in order to be so firmly intolerant.

Where did we lose the idea that it is ok to say no and have that respected? Of course, you can say no to the acceptable things: rape, bullying, racism, homophobia and transphobia. To a much smaller extent you can still say no to religious discrimination and a few other, older and less popular in the media discriminations we are still allowed to say no to. Racism is not tolerated, if you are black. If you are any other race, culture or colour, you will need to have tolerance. I'm not sure why. Why are some causes supported so fervently and others almost forgotten and ignored? Why do only some people matter?

We have lost the right to respectfully disagree.

I wish people could remember, or care, or respect the fact that we do not all agree. We do not all have to agree. But, with intolerance there is no right to respectfully disagree. I respectfully disagreed but I was not respectfully tolerated, instead I faced the intolerance and being family, years of love, respect and everything else could not overcome the intolerance which is held up like a solid, black wall, higher and thicker than any human being can ever hope to come across, or around.

I am sad and sad is grey, not black.

--Comment from the original post.

2012/04/03 at 7:49 pm Arlee Bird tossingitout.blogspot.com

A phobia is actually a psychological disorder. Many groups now use the term to slur anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a dilution of words and terminology that is not a very good use of language. Kind of in a 1984 sort of way.

You are a smart lady. And I mean that as in intelligent.

Lee Places I Remember Wrote By Rote An A to Z Co-host blog

Me: The word homophobia has annoyed me from the start. It’s claiming everyone who disagrees with homosexuality is afraid of it. Very prejudgmental.

Should someone in prison for life be considered for euthanasia if they ask for it? This is another situation to consider in planning assisted suicide. Would it be ok if they have terminal cancer? Or is it just enough that they don't want to stick around for their full life sentence?

To also consider is the cost for the public. Would it be cheaper to kill them (when asked) than to have them live out their full sentence (until given parole because how often do they complete a life sentence any more) in prison?

Also, is this the death penalty then, really? Should it be brought back - or should it be something prisoners can ask for themselves after being found guilty and put in prison?

Kind of ironic for those who oppose the death penalty.

A Belgian man three decades into a life sentence for rape and murder wanted doctors to help him die — and he nearly got his wish. Frank Van den Bleeken suffered no terminal disease when he was granted a doctor-assisted death in September 2014. Rather, he sought to end his “unbearable” psychological suffering, arguing his life behind bars was intolerable and there was no hope his violent sexual urges would ever go away. The case underscores some of the prickly issues Canadian corrections authorities may have to tackle with the legalization of medically assisted dying. So far, there’s been little clarity on how prisoner requests should be handled.

Source: Can inmates ask to die? Clarity urged around doctor-assisted death in prison - The Globe and Mail

I think people would like to believe deja vu is related to reincarnation as a way to prove reincarnation is real. Very young children (my little sister included) seem to be another person, speaking differently, for a few minutes. Maybe something left from a person they were before. So, I won't rule out reincarnation. But, its not what I believe completely as far as deja vu.

The dual processing theory is along the lines of what I think deja vu is. But, some of these theories have new twists on the experience of deja vu and I wonder especially about the theories of senses and memory and familiarity based recognition.

The brain is complicated and has large areas we don't understand or don't use even. So, there could be another theory which no one has come up with yet.

... the unsettling feeling we get when we feel we have been in the exact same situation before. For a few seconds, we are convinced that we have lived the moment previously.

10. A ‘Mix-Up’ Of Senses And Memory A famous psychological experiment, the Grant et al study, shows that our memory is context dependent, meaning that we can recall information better when placed in the same environment in which we studied it. This helps to explain déjà vu by showing how stimuli in the environment can easily provoke a memory. A certain sight or smell might trigger our subconscious mind to recall a time when we saw or heard the same thing.

11. Dual Processing This theory suggests that when we perceive something, our brain is simultaneously trying to encode the new memory into our long-term memory, thereby creating the uncomfortable illusion that we have experienced it before.

12. Parallel Universe Theory Believers in this theory claim that the human experience of déjà vu can be explained by considering the unsettling feeling of having lived a moment before as a “crossover” with a parallel universe.

13. Familiarity-Based Recognition Familiarity-based recognition is what happens when we believe we are seeing something we recognize, but we have no memory of it actually happening previously (such as seeing someone familiar in a local store but not being able to recall why we recognize them).

14. The Hologram Theory The hologram theory is the idea that our memories are formed like three-dimensional images, which means they have a structured frame network to them. This theory, proposed by Hermon Sno, suggests that the entire formation of a memory can be reconstructed by one element. Therefore, if one stimulus in your environment (a sound, smell, etc.) reminds you of a previous moment you have experienced, the entire memory can be recreated by your mind like a hologram.

15. Precognitive Dreams A precognitive dream is where a dream we have predicts something that happens in the future—someone finds themselves in a situation they had previously dreamed about. This could explain déjà vu by suggesting that the moment we have the experience of living something before is when we have previously dreamed about the present happenings.

16. Divided Attention Divided attention theory suggests that déjà vu occurs due to a subliminal recognition of the object in our experience of déjà vu. This means that our subconscious mind (the thoughts that we are unaware of) recalls the stimulus, but our conscious mind doesn’t.

17. Amygdala The amygdala is a small region of our brain. With one located in each cerebral hemisphere, the amygdala is involved in our experience of emotion (most commonly anger or fear). When we’re put in a dangerous situation, our amygdala may act to temporarily disorient our brain. If you were standing underneath a falling tree, your amygdala may have a panic response that causes your brain to malfunction.

18. Reincarnation Believers in reincarnation say that we come into our new life with a set of signals that reflect states of consciousness. This means that memories created on one level of consciousness cannot be retrieved in another.

19. A ‘Glitch’ In Reality Glitch theory describes déjà vu as a momentary breakdown in our reality. Einstein famously suggested that there is no such thing as time—that time is a human creation made to establish order and structure.

ListVerse - 10 Fascinating Theories To Explain Déjà Vu

Did you know there were so many issues with plants? Plants for agriculture, medicine, industry, and maintaining the environment for all life on Earth. All the same issues again for wildlife, animals. Nature is a circle that relies on itself. When something breaks it may never be able to function again. Luck and timing are so important with nature, plants and animals. It can be just luck that evolution finds a way but evolution takes a lot of time to get there. People need to stop abusing what we have and appreciate it a lot more.

The biggest factors threatening plant species with extinction are the destruction of habitats for farming (31%) - such as palm oil production and cattle ranching, deforestation for timber (21%) and construction of buildings and infrastructure (13%).

Climate change is currently a smaller factor - 4% - but is likely to grow. “I suspect we won’t actually see the full impact until 30 years down the line as it takes so long for plants, especially trees, to produce their offspring,” said Willis. One important crop that is already suffering is coffee, as rising temperatures make the beans impossible to grow and increase diseases in key countries such as Ethiopia.

Genetic diversity in our foods is becoming poorer and poorer.

Many important crops have been bred over thousands of years to produce high yields, but have lost genes that help fight pests and cope with changes in climate. Bananas, sorghum and aubergines are among those with very little genetic diversity, making them highly vulnerable to new threats. Finding wild relatives of such crops means new, more robust varieties can be bred.

“Now, with the global challenges [of] population size, land-use change, plant diseases and pests, there is an increasing urgency to find and conserve crop wild relatives,” said the report. “Having access to this large and diverse genetic pool is essential if we are to furnish crops with the valuable traits that enable resilience to climate change, pests and diseases, and ultimately underpin global food security.”

The importance of plants for the development of new medicines was revealed in the report, which found that 57% of the 31,000 species with known uses were those from which drugs were derived. More than 5,500 are human foods, while there are 2,500 poisons and 1,400 with “social uses”, such as tobacco and cannabis.

However, when plants are transplanted into alien environments they can cause great damage and become invasive. “The costs of invasive species have been estimated at nearly 5% of the world economy and their impact on the UK economy alone is approximately £1.7bn every year,” said the report.

The illegal trade in threatened plants is also a problem, the report found. At Heathrow, one of the the world’s busiest airports, officers made at least one seizure every day on average, with 42% of the finds being orchids.

Source: One in five of world's plant species at risk of extinction | The Guardian