Film on "Radical Islam" Tied to Pro-Israel Groups - "A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described "pro-Israel" groups, according to an IPS investigation."
Military beefs up Internet arsenal - "The U.S. military is quietly expanding capabilities to attack terrorist computer networks, including websites that glorify insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, military officials and experts say."
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows - "The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980."
Creating a Culture of Cheerfulness as Rome Burns - "A friend recently asked me what I knew about The Secret, and I had to confess, absolutely nothing. A couple of days later, another friend asked the same question, so I decided I’d better investigate this supposedly revolutionary new book and DVD that have taken the country by storm. As I did so, I discovered that nothing about The Secret is revolutionary or new but rather a glitzy, twenty-first century redux of what has come to be called in metaphysical circles “New Thought”."
Marines ban big, garish tattoos - "The Marines are banning any new, extra-large tattoos below the elbow or the knee, saying such body art is harmful to the Corps' spit-and-polish image."
When can clerks refuse to serve, citing religion? - "Can a cashier or clerk wish a customer "Merry Christmas"? Must a pharmacist dispense birth control devices if his faith forbids it? Can a Muslim clerk refuse to touch a whisky or beer bottle, or a pork chop? Disputes between retailers and employees over religious beliefs in the United States can be traced back to the Puritans, who established laws that retail stores must not open on Sundays. Hundreds of years later, retailers are still dealing with how to address an employee's religious practices."
Poles March to Demand Total Abortion Ban - "God gives life and only he has the right to take life away."
God-fearing villagers snub "satanic" bar codes - "A hundred residents of a Russian village have refused to switch to new passports because they believe the documents' bar codes contain satanic symbols, state television reported on Wednesday."
Why They Choose Gangs - "As a former assistant principal of one of the most volatile middle schools in the city and spending more than a month at the notorious Central Booking, Heiber gained rare insight into the young Black men who transition between the school system and the prison system."
Study: California being warmed by urbanization - "Average temperatures across California rose slightly from 1950 to 2000, with the greatest warming coming in the state's big cities and mostly caused by urbanization -- not greenhouse gases -- authors of a study released on Wednesday said."
The Unkindest Cut - "Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has inflicted pain, illness and death for 2,000 years. Today, nearly 140 million women and girls globally have endured this so-called cultural tradition. The pain lasts, intensifies, recurs: at the cutting, at sexual contact, at childbirth. And that’s if the woman doesn’t die first, as 35 percent do, from such immediate or long-term complications as fistulas. Those who survive suffer emotional trauma as drastic as the physical pain. ... Less known is that FGM was common in the United States and United Kingdom until the 1950s, prescribed as a cure for such “female deviancies” as lesbianism, masturbation, nymphomania and even epilepsy. In 1996, after decades of feminist lobbying, Congress passed legislation making it crime to perform FGM on a minor. But some immigrant populations are reviving the practice."
West African child labour still feeds the world's insatiable hunger for chocolate - "Children are being forced to work on cocoa farms in west Africa despite a pledge by the chocolate companies more than five years ago to start eradicating child labour."
In the lab: Robots that slink and squirm - ""It's very organic," Trimmer says with a smile. Apparently, "organic" is a technical euphemism for "creepy." But it is eerily lifelike, and that is the point."
Study: Dinosaur loss wasn't mammals' gain - "The big dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago didn't produce a flurry of new species in the ancestry of modern mammals after all, says a huge study that challenges a long-standing theory. Scientists who constructed a massive evolutionary family tree for mammals found no sign of such a burst of new species at that time among the ancestors of present-day animals. Only mammals with no modern-day descendants showed that effect."
Time Only Heals Some Wounds - "Over eons, this defensive mechanism got deep-wired into our DNA. Or so the theory goes. But is this true? Does it still apply in the modern world? Or is it possible that we no longer have to be as adaptable as we once were? Michigan State University psychologist Richard Lucas is one of a growing number of scientists who are questioning the set-point theory of happiness. One problem with the theory, he says, is the nature of the evidence itself: While studies do fail to link happiness to things like health and income and friends, none of the research has looked at people actually experiencing big changes—and either adapting or failing to. Lucas decided to do this. ... But adaptation to other events is not so quick, nor so complete, and this is where it gets interesting. Widows and widowers do get over their grief, but it takes a full seven years for that recovery to occur. Divorce and job loss, on the other hand, seem to leave people permanently scarred. Hold up. People get over the death of a spouse, but not a divorce? While this wouldn't seem to make sense at first, psychologists have a couple of possible explanations. Some suspect that it may in fact be easier to adapt to a one-time hit of bad luck—even if it's big, like death—than to a chronic condition. Divorce in this sense is akin to long-term illness or disability: It's a broken life, never to be repaired, with all sorts of messy reminders around all the time. It's also possible—and Lucas's findings support this—that people who get married and then divorce are significantly less happy to begin with than people who get married and stay married. In other words, divorce selects people who tend toward misery anyway."
Schoolgirls bullied into stripping online - "Cyber bullies are even forcing their girlfriends to undress in front of webcams and then sharing the images with others online."
Child wants cell phone; reception is mixed - "Some parents and child psychologists say the need for cell phones among such young children, who are rarely without adult supervision, is marginal, and the gadgets serve mainly as status symbols, quickly lost in a tangle of toys, batteries hopelessly out of juice. Others, though, say the phones are an electronic security blanket for both parent and child in a world of two-career households and split-custody arrangements, Amber alerts and color-coded terror threat levels."
Every movie in 3D? - "Three-dimensional film technology can transform the movie business, with viewers willing to pay a premium for it, two top movie industry executives said Wednesday."
Quote of the Day
"The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought."
~ Richard Feynman
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