I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
Gay men will soon be able to donate blood in Canada for the first time since 1977.
Canadian Blood Services announced today that gay men will be able to donate blood starting this summer, as long as they have not had sex with other men in five years, and meet all other requirements. This is a change from previous policy which had a lifetime ban for donation by any men who had had sex with other men.
For those wondering, the ban was first set in place because technology had not quite allowed for proper screening of blood for HIV.
What the hell Canadian Blood Services??? You can be gay but just not have sex. Well. Okay then. :| Progress is moving a millimetre at a time, I guess.
Because now we’ve absolutely determined that straight people don’t get HIV!
Lorenzo Castro. A Sea Fight with Barbary Corsairs, after 1681.
The Barbary pirates, sometimes called Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers.
In addition to seizing ships, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland.
The main purpose of their attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Islamic market in North Africa and the Middle East. Historian Robert C. Davis estimated that between 1530 and 1780 1–1.25 million Europeans were captured and taken as slaves to North Africa, principally Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, but also Istanbul and Salé.