I'm a month into my 30s, an age I always looked forward to because by then I should have my life together, know what I want, know my purpose, and know who I am.

As is the irony of life, my life is in shambles, I am unemployed (for almost a year!) and in debt. I want to be a paid television writer. I think writing is part of my life's purpose, but I haven't had any success due to a series of compulsively squandered job opportunities and years hiding in the petrifying fear of showing up to my career -- all of which I blamed on my youth. I am still, at the age of 30, on the square before square one while many of my peers have passed me by and are writing on successful shows.

Even though I was wrong about most of what achieving 30 would mean, I, with the help of five years in a 12-step program, thought I knew who I was, or at least what I was not. I recently discovered I qualified for three additional programs in addition to my first. So, instead of victorious self-awareness, I've had a whole new surprising part of me exposed, a part that was a total mystery, one of which is my debtor behavior.  

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Earlier today the paper posted this column he wrote about Jason Collins becoming the first active gay player in the NBA -- and it might well be the most foul, ignorant and reprehensible piece of journalism written on Collins.

Here are the essential claims Nielsen makes, followed by the direct quotes from his piece:

Collins is making a lifestyle choice, and it's comparable to the lifestyle choice to have many children with many different mothers:

"Years ago Jackie Robinson fought a courageous, pioneering battle — a battle that was unfair for a man to have to fight just because he was born with a certain color of skin.

To compare the plight of Collins with his own lifestyle choice to Robinson’s should really insult Jackie’s family today. It even bothers me.

Still we have people calling Collins a pioneer.

I never heard that, and rightfully so, when NBA player Shawn Kemp had fathered several illegitimate children with different women."

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Newly published research suggests they could also be called the generation with unrealistic expectations.

An analysis of the values and ambitions of American 12th graders finds “a growing discrepancy between the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them.” Psychologists Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Tim Kasser of Knox College report that, for high school seniors in 2005, 2006, and 2007, materialism remained at historically high levels, even as commitment to hard work declined.

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On Thursday in the Daily Beast, writer Jonathan Rauch called Flake's "deal-breaker" misguided -- and a GOP "suicide mission" (emphasis mine):

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Brendan Flynn: Everyone's all mad at Chris Broussard. Evidently unwilling to Embrace Debate.

David Roth: And Tim Brando! No one wants to hear his truth because he's white and old and successful, and that's not worth a damn thing these days. I've always thought the big issue with regard to how gay athletes was how it made random television guys feel. Are they proud? Are they angry? We need to know about this, it's the most important thing.

Brendan: Really interesting to hear Broussard's thoughts on adultery and children out of wedlock as it relates to gays. Really looking forward to his #TruthToPower moment on all the other sinners he's covered.

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Alan Chambers of Exodus International is trying to sanitize his organization's reputation by softening its rhetoric about "curing" gay people, and wants to see others in the movement do the same. Chambers recently invited writer and gay rights activist Jeremy Hooper to join a listserv of 70 socially conservative activists in an effort to expose the violent rhetoric circulating among others in the anti-LGBT equality movement.

As reported by Hooper and ThinkProgress, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute didn't react well to Hooper's presence on the list:

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But people with metastatic cancer don't follow the tidy, cheerful narrative. They don't necessarily fit the inspirational survivor mold. And so they're ignored.

In the middle of her righteous New York Times Magazine story on breast cancer this past weekend, writer Peggy Orenstein dropped the bombshell statistic that "only an estimated 0.5 percent of all National Cancer Institute grants since 1972 focus on metastasis." As University of Kansas Cancer Center chairman Danny Welch explained to her, "A lot of people are under the notion that metastatic work is a waste of time." Orenstein went on to reveal that last year, for the first time in its history, the Komen Foundation featured a woman with Stage 4 cancer in its ads. And the author herself described meeting a different woman with metastatic breast cancer by admitting, "It isn't easy to face someone with metastatic disease," calling the woman's condition her own "worst fear."

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The book’s author, British journalist and life coach John-Paul Flintoff, has some experience in this area: for his last book, “Sew Your Own,” he learned to make all his own clothes. This allowed him to opt out of the unethical labor practices of the big clothing companies, and also gave him something to do with an old sewing machine. He reports that shirts are his favorite things to make.

“How to Change the World” is different from “Sew Your Own” in that it doesn’t offer a roadmap for a particular kind of change -- instead, Flintoff invites us to imagine what kinds of change we’d like to make, and suggests some ways to go about it.

For example, Flintoff tells a story about how he got very worried about global warming and decided the only solution was for everyone to grow their own produce. It wasn’t enough to just change his own habits -- everyone would need to pitch in to make a dent in carbon consumption. He wanted to start with the people living in his section of London, but rather than harangue his neighbors, Flintoff devised a plan.

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The Obama administration's decision to appeal comes despite a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration to lift age restrictions and other scientific research saying the drug is safe and effective for all ages.

As the New York Times reports:

The appeal reaffirms an election-year decision by Mr. Obama’s administration to block the drug’s maker from selling it without a prescription or consideration of age, and puts the White House back into the politically charged issue of access to emergency contraception...

By appealing the judge’s ruling, Mr. Obama’s Justice Department is essentially renewing the objections that [secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius] — backed by the president — had more than a year ago. In recent weeks, conservative groups had urged the Justice Department to appeal the judge’s ruling so that the contraception would not be available to very young girls.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department official said the appeal would concentrate on the two areas where the department believes the judge overstepped his legal authority. The official also said the White House had not been involved in the decision of whether to appeal Judge Korman’s ruling.

Reproductive rights advocates have criticized the administration's position on emergency contraception as overtly political and having little to do with science or women's health.

“Age barriers to emergency contraception are not supported by science, and they should be eliminated,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement on Wednesday.

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You are an amazing voice of reason out there, so I am writing to you. In a nutshell, I am miserable. I am 39 going on 40. Anyone looking at my life from the outside would think (and they are correct) I have nothing to complain about. I have three great kids, wife of many years, am a successful professional who makes enough money to perhaps not be a 1-percenter, but certainly a 5-percenter. Heck, I was a college athlete and am still in good shape. So why do I feel so worthless?

I am OCD and depressive. I used to drink, and stopped cold-turkey several years ago because I figured out I was drinking myself into a stupor to turn off the feelings of hopelessness, and the next day, when I would be sick, was the lowest. And as my kids got older I did not want them to see me out of control like that. I was not "addicted" to alcohol, i.e., I was able to stop. It was simply my therapy of choice for these feelings of wanting to be dead.

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Then the bombs went off, and the trauma set in.

Each American generation has its characteristic psychiatric diagnosis, and, typically, a drug or medication that represents the times. When the world was on the verge of blowing up in the Dr. Strangelove 1960s, we lived in the Age of Anxiety. Valium, the drug that symbolized that period, was celebrated in books and movies like "Valley of the Dolls" and songs like the Rolling Stones’ "Mother’s Little Helper." The 1970s was the Age of Malaise, and the drug that attempted to mediate that malaise was cocaine. Starting in the Prozac-fueled late 1980s and 1990s, the omnipresent diagnosis was depression. Later, the diagnosis was attention deficit disorder and the representative drug was Adderall.

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As you can probably tell, I've decided to not name the rapper. It isn't difficult to figure out who he is, of course, but it seems a matter of principle to keep his name out of this article. After all, we're talking about an incident that at least one person is calling a sexual assault, and which Pryde argues involved reverse sexism and double standards when it comes to sexual assault.

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With the caveat that “interfaith programs are not a miracle solution,” he offers three ways that this work can help:

First, “interfaith helps harmonize people’s identities.” Patel goes on:

“In America, just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion and ethnicity/nationality... Religious extremists try to separate people’s various identities and pit them against each other.”

Patel suggests that the Tsarnaev brothers might have been less vulnerable to extremism if they “had been involved in discussions with people from other backgrounds about how their faith identity was mutually enriching with their nationality and citizenship.”

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Jones blasted the "globalist mafia" behind recent LGBT anti-discrimination measures, and called transgender rights "fake rights." He went on to preemptively defend himself against allegations of transphobia by clarifying: " It's not that I'm against people that think they're a woman or a man or whatever."

More from Jones:

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According to the bill, abortions would be legally allowable when:

Two medical practitioners, have, in accordance with this head, jointly certified in good faith that there is a real and substantial risk of loss of the pregnant woman’s life other than by way of self-destruction and in their reasonable opinion this risk can be averted only by that medical procedure.

The measure also makes clear that an abortion may be performed in situations in which there is an "immediate risk of loss of the pregnant woman's life" and the procedure is deemed "immediately necessary."

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All three suspects have been charged, according to Federal court documents.

The first two suspects, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for "destroying, concealing, and covering up objects" belonging to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The full complaint can be read here.

The third suspect, Robel Phillipos, was charged with making false statements in a terrorism investigation. The full complaint can be read here.

Updated: 12:12 p.m.

NBC News' Pete Williams is reporting that the three suspects currently in custody have been under FBI surveillance for more than a week, and while "there was no indication they had any prior knowledge of the bombing" sources told NBC News that "the FBI had been investigating [the suspects] for about 10 days."

More from NBC:

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