Pope in Africa reaffirms "no condoms" against AIDS
Tue Mar 17, 2009
By Philip Pullella and David Lewis
YAOUNDE, March 17 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Tuesday reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS as he started a visit to Africa, where more than 25 million people have died from the disease in recent decades.
The Pope, who arrived to a tumultuous welcome in the capital of Cameroon, also said the continent's people were suffering disproportionately due to the global challenges of food shortages, financial crises and climate change.
"It (AIDS) cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem," he said in response to a question about the Church's widely contested position against the use of condoms.
The disease has killed more than 25 million people since the early 1980s, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and some 22.5 million Africans are living with HIV.
His words were some of his most explicit on the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS since his election in 2005.
The Church teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence are the best ways to stop AIDS. It does not approve condoms but some Church leaders have been calling for allowing their use in rare cases between married heterosexual couples where one partner has the disease.
"The only solution is two-fold: the first is a humanisation of sexuality, a human, spiritual renewal which brings with it a new way of behaving among people and, secondly, a true friendship, especially for those who are suffering, a willingness to make personal sacrifices," he said.
He called for "correct behaviour regarding one's body".
TUMULTUOUS WELCOME
The Pope was greeted by tens of thousands of dancing and singing people lining the 25 km route from the airport to the city.
With the number of practicing Catholics dwindling in the developed world, Africa is seen as vital to the Church's future. But the relationship is not without controversy, mainly over the condoms issue.
"At a time of global food shortages, financial turmoil, and disturbing patterns of climate change Africa suffers disproportionately," he told crowds on his arrival.
"More and more of her people are falling prey to hunger, poverty and disease. They cry out for reconciliation, justice and peace, and that is what the church offers them," he said.
Speaking to reporters on the plane, the Pope said the economic crisis was a product of a "deficit of ethics in economic structures"...
[I agree with the Pope that lack of ethics in economics causes poverty. But I disagree with his AIDS decree. The poor (and the rich) should be allowed to protect themselves from disease even if they aren't sexually pure.]
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Let your listeners doodle during class or meetings
Turns out, doodling during class—or meetings—may actually help your concentration. (If only the same were true for texting.)
By Dina Fine Maron
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 26, 2009
In a victory for absent-minded scribblers everywhere, one study now suggests that doodling can help your memory. Though research suggests multitasking or daydreaming can be distracting, psychologist Jackie Andrade of the University of Plymouth in England thought it might be a different story for a simple task like doodling.
She asked 40 adult volunteers to listen to a monotonous mock telephone message about a party. Half the participants were told to doodle (filling in some random printed shapes) while listening to the message and to write down mentioned partygoers' names but to ignore all the other information. The other half were told to do the same, except they weren't given the doodling option. Later all 40 listeners were asked what they remembered from the message on a surprise memory test. The results, published online Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, suggest that the doodlers actually had better recall: on average they remembered 29 percent more information, and they also wrote down more partygoers' names accurately.
Andrade spoke with NEWSWEEK's Dina Fine Maron about the virtues of doodling, and why texting might be the anti-doodle. Excerpts:
MARON: Why do a study on doodling?
ANDRADE: I was interested in daydreaming, although we didn't actually measure daydreaming. When you have something really boring to do in a laboratory, you aren't just doing that task—you are thinking about shopping, picking the kids up from school, what you're going to have for tea. We don't usually take those things into account. Daydreaming takes up a lot of mental energy and can be distracting. I had the idea that maybe some small, simple task would catch just enough energy to keep you focused on the [main] task at hand, and though it wouldn't make the task you're doing less boring, it could help you focus.
What are the implications for someone in a school setting?
Doodling can be a good thing. If there's a choice between doodling and daydreaming, you're better off if your students are doodling. Of course, it's best if you aren't boring them at all, but doodling isn't necessarily a sign of your students being naughty—it's a sign that it may be hard for them to concentrate without something visual.
You are a professor, right?
Yes.
So, in light of your findings, will you be more willing to allow your students to doodle in class?
I think I might be. If it's a sign of them being bored, then it would worry me a bit. Really, they're more likely to text each other, though.
Do you think texting also helps them with their memory?
No, I think not. I think that's them just being distracted.
By Dina Fine Maron
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 26, 2009
In a victory for absent-minded scribblers everywhere, one study now suggests that doodling can help your memory. Though research suggests multitasking or daydreaming can be distracting, psychologist Jackie Andrade of the University of Plymouth in England thought it might be a different story for a simple task like doodling.
She asked 40 adult volunteers to listen to a monotonous mock telephone message about a party. Half the participants were told to doodle (filling in some random printed shapes) while listening to the message and to write down mentioned partygoers' names but to ignore all the other information. The other half were told to do the same, except they weren't given the doodling option. Later all 40 listeners were asked what they remembered from the message on a surprise memory test. The results, published online Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, suggest that the doodlers actually had better recall: on average they remembered 29 percent more information, and they also wrote down more partygoers' names accurately.
Andrade spoke with NEWSWEEK's Dina Fine Maron about the virtues of doodling, and why texting might be the anti-doodle. Excerpts:
MARON: Why do a study on doodling?
ANDRADE: I was interested in daydreaming, although we didn't actually measure daydreaming. When you have something really boring to do in a laboratory, you aren't just doing that task—you are thinking about shopping, picking the kids up from school, what you're going to have for tea. We don't usually take those things into account. Daydreaming takes up a lot of mental energy and can be distracting. I had the idea that maybe some small, simple task would catch just enough energy to keep you focused on the [main] task at hand, and though it wouldn't make the task you're doing less boring, it could help you focus.
What are the implications for someone in a school setting?
Doodling can be a good thing. If there's a choice between doodling and daydreaming, you're better off if your students are doodling. Of course, it's best if you aren't boring them at all, but doodling isn't necessarily a sign of your students being naughty—it's a sign that it may be hard for them to concentrate without something visual.
You are a professor, right?
Yes.
So, in light of your findings, will you be more willing to allow your students to doodle in class?
I think I might be. If it's a sign of them being bored, then it would worry me a bit. Really, they're more likely to text each other, though.
Do you think texting also helps them with their memory?
No, I think not. I think that's them just being distracted.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Would you refuse life-saving treatment if stem cells made it possible?
Getting personal on embryonic stem cell ethics
USA Today
March 7, 2009
Would you refuse -- for your parent, your child or yourself -- a treatment for a terrible ailment because it was developed with embryonic stem cell research?
Would you want your doctor to keep you in the dark about such a treatment because he or she is morally opposed to it?
Before I get into the arguments about the ethics of embryonic stem cell research, I wanted to get those questions out there. The issues at hand are not just arguments for scientists, politicians, clergy and theologians. These are questions that you and I may one day face.
USA Today
March 7, 2009
Would you refuse -- for your parent, your child or yourself -- a treatment for a terrible ailment because it was developed with embryonic stem cell research?
Would you want your doctor to keep you in the dark about such a treatment because he or she is morally opposed to it?
Before I get into the arguments about the ethics of embryonic stem cell research, I wanted to get those questions out there. The issues at hand are not just arguments for scientists, politicians, clergy and theologians. These are questions that you and I may one day face.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
California Teachers Association puts politics before the First Amendment
Peg Myers is facing an election in May as President of Chula Vista Educators.
I woke up this morning and found all the posts missing from my San Diego Education Report Blog.
Who could have done it?
My prime suspect is the last person who visited my most recent post. This person visited at 12:21 a.m. Interestingly, this person was using the same computer as the anonymous person who posted this comment just a few days ago:
Anonymous said...
Thank goodness for the perseverance of the attorneys in Shinoff's firm...some day this crazy nonsensical web site will come down!
The post on my blog that apparently triggered the erasure of my blog was about the deposition of Chula Vista Educators president Peg Myers.
A witness told me that Peg Myers used the word "crazy" to refer to me. Putting all the information together, I am suspecting Peg Myers, who is facing an election in May if she is to continue as President of Chula Vista Educators. It's perfectly understandable that wouldn't want her deposition to be exposed during the campaign.
I also know that California Teachers Association protects sitting presidents of CTA locals, and that CTA information has previously disappeared from my website.
This is the information I have about the anonymous visitor:
IP Address
72.220.30.144
Cox Communications
United States
California
Chula Vista
Time of Visit Mar 1 2009 12:21:31 am
Visit Length 10 minutes 6 seconds
Page Views 2
Out Click SAN DIEGO EDUCATION REPORT WEBSITE
Time Zone UTC-8:00
UPDATE: Further research supports my conclusion. This person visited every single page of Peg Myers' deposition on SAN DIEGO EDUCATION REPORT WEBSITE, and also this page, which contains part of Robin Donlan's deposition transcript. Donlan and Myers were members of the "Castle Park Five."
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Game theory could save the world
Telegraph.co.uk
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
09 Jul 2008
New hope that people around the world can work together to combat global warming has come from a new theoretical study.
A team has been using "game theory" - where mathematics is used to capture how people deal with each other - to show that a classic problem that undermines the ability of individuals to cooperate can be overcome, if people are diverse enough, as is the case when it comes to the 6.5 billion citizens of planet Earth.
Working together for the common good is crucial for progress in any society - not least for effectively addressing big issues such as recycling and tackling climate change. But there is a basic problem with how to make the public share responsibility for common problems, such as climate change.
This was most vividly illustrated by Prof Garrett Hardin, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in his highly influential 1968 paper 'The tragedy of the commons'.
He used the example of a public pasture. Each herdsman will keep adding cows to a common field, because the benefit of an additional cow goes exclusively to the herdsman. Because the cost of overgrazing is shared by all, the pasture will end up ruined.
Mathematical models have confirmed that this is a profound problem, whether for coming together to fight climate change or pay taxes, but today, in the journal Nature, hope for cooperation is raised by Prof Jorge Pacheco of the University of Lisbon, who did the work there with Ms Marta Santos and Dr Francisco Santos from the Free University of Brussels.
Existing mathematical models treat individuals as equivalent, ignoring real-life diversity and population structure. So the team made the mathematics more realistic in this respect.
The team shows that, contrary to expectations, the temptation to cheat ("Why shouldn't I let others pay more for being green?") declines as society becomes more diverse.
Another discovery is that diversity also plays an important role in wealth distribution.
"Cooperation blooms whenever the act of giving is more important than the amount given," said Prof Pacheco.
The most important factor, he said, seems to be that people actually contribute to the public good.
"In particular, the fact that the wealthy minority contributes stimulates the contribution from the rest, who take them as role models," he said.
Prof Pacheco recalled the words of Anna Dreber and Prof Martin Nowak from Harvard University, leading game theorists, who stated that “preserving the global climate is the biggest public good dilemma ever, the one we cannot afford to lose."
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
09 Jul 2008
New hope that people around the world can work together to combat global warming has come from a new theoretical study.
A team has been using "game theory" - where mathematics is used to capture how people deal with each other - to show that a classic problem that undermines the ability of individuals to cooperate can be overcome, if people are diverse enough, as is the case when it comes to the 6.5 billion citizens of planet Earth.
Working together for the common good is crucial for progress in any society - not least for effectively addressing big issues such as recycling and tackling climate change. But there is a basic problem with how to make the public share responsibility for common problems, such as climate change.
This was most vividly illustrated by Prof Garrett Hardin, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in his highly influential 1968 paper 'The tragedy of the commons'.
He used the example of a public pasture. Each herdsman will keep adding cows to a common field, because the benefit of an additional cow goes exclusively to the herdsman. Because the cost of overgrazing is shared by all, the pasture will end up ruined.
Mathematical models have confirmed that this is a profound problem, whether for coming together to fight climate change or pay taxes, but today, in the journal Nature, hope for cooperation is raised by Prof Jorge Pacheco of the University of Lisbon, who did the work there with Ms Marta Santos and Dr Francisco Santos from the Free University of Brussels.
Existing mathematical models treat individuals as equivalent, ignoring real-life diversity and population structure. So the team made the mathematics more realistic in this respect.
The team shows that, contrary to expectations, the temptation to cheat ("Why shouldn't I let others pay more for being green?") declines as society becomes more diverse.
Another discovery is that diversity also plays an important role in wealth distribution.
"Cooperation blooms whenever the act of giving is more important than the amount given," said Prof Pacheco.
The most important factor, he said, seems to be that people actually contribute to the public good.
"In particular, the fact that the wealthy minority contributes stimulates the contribution from the rest, who take them as role models," he said.
Prof Pacheco recalled the words of Anna Dreber and Prof Martin Nowak from Harvard University, leading game theorists, who stated that “preserving the global climate is the biggest public good dilemma ever, the one we cannot afford to lose."
Those who resort to punishment are losers
Telegrah.co.uk
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
19 Mar 2008
David Rand, Anna Dreber and Martin Nowak who were part of the research team
Taking the law into your own hands is ineffective. Nor is it true that sparing the rod spoils the child, according to a study that shows people who resort to punishment are losers.
These are not the ravings of someone who has been penalised once too often but the conclusion of an eminent group of biologists, economists and mathematicians at Harvard University, led by Prof Martin Nowak.
Earlier work suggested that punishment helps people to cooperate but was only based on people playing one off games, not having to deal with each other again and again.
When a long term relationship is taken into account, "the kind of punishment by people who 'take the law into their own hands' is now proven to be ineffective," says Prof Nowak.
But he adds that the new work focuses on peer punishment, not that meted out by the state. "Sanctioning institutions (such as the state enforcing law) is a different type of punishment, which still needs to be investigated from an evolutionary perspective."
The team bases its conclusions on a mathematical analysis of strategic games. In these games, people are given the choice of making a fair contribution or free loading.
Over the years, some earlier experiments seemed to suggest that cooperation founders without punishment. These observations lead to the bleak conclusion that cooperative societies need peer punishment.
But the new study published in the journal Nature, concludes that the people who engage in costly punishment do not benefit from their behaviour.
Working with the Harvard Business School, Prof Nowak asked 104 college students to take part in a variant of a classic game, called the Prisoner's Dilemma.
In this game people have a choice between cooperation and defection. Cooperation means paying $1 for the other person to receive $3.
Defection means taking away $1 from the other person. In the extended version of the game there is a third option: costly punishment, which means paying $1 for the other person to lose $4.
The study found that those who punished lost out overall, and that punishment bestows no benefit on the group as a whole.
The five top-ranked players never used costly punishment. More successful players would use tit for tat, while players who earned the lowest payoffs punished most often. "Put simply, winners don't punish," says co-author David Rand.
Punishment is to do with telling someone who is boss, or to defend a possession, and not part of the fabric of a society where people cooperate, as was previously thought.
"Punishment can lead to a downward spiral of retaliation, with destructive outcomes for everybody involved. The people with the highest total payoffs do not use costly punishment."
"Costly punishment," the punitive behaviour studied by Prof Nowak and his colleagues, refers to situations where a punisher is willing to incur a cost - whether a financial one or to his reputation - in order to penalise someone else.
Importantly, most real world punishment is costly in one way or another. Punishers are typically driven by anger and not by altruistic motives.
The reason the findings overturn textbook wisdom is that earlier work has "not been on situations where individuals use punishment in the context of ongoing interactions," says co-author Anna Dreber.
"We make the setting more realistic by having subjects play repeated games and introducing costly punishment as one of several options."
The new study shows that punishment is not an effective way to promote cooperation, the glue that holds society together, but probably evolved for other reasons such as establishing dominance and defend ownership.
"Punishment may be a tool for forcing another person to do what you want," Dreber says. "It might have been for those kinds of dominance situations that the use of punishment has evolved."
"Our finding has a very positive message: in an extremely competitive setting, the winners are those who resist the temptation to escalate conflicts, while the losers punish and perish," says Prof Nowak.
This study was supported by the John Templeton Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Jan Wallander Foundation, and billionaire philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein.
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
19 Mar 2008
David Rand, Anna Dreber and Martin Nowak who were part of the research team
Taking the law into your own hands is ineffective. Nor is it true that sparing the rod spoils the child, according to a study that shows people who resort to punishment are losers.
These are not the ravings of someone who has been penalised once too often but the conclusion of an eminent group of biologists, economists and mathematicians at Harvard University, led by Prof Martin Nowak.
Earlier work suggested that punishment helps people to cooperate but was only based on people playing one off games, not having to deal with each other again and again.
When a long term relationship is taken into account, "the kind of punishment by people who 'take the law into their own hands' is now proven to be ineffective," says Prof Nowak.
But he adds that the new work focuses on peer punishment, not that meted out by the state. "Sanctioning institutions (such as the state enforcing law) is a different type of punishment, which still needs to be investigated from an evolutionary perspective."
The team bases its conclusions on a mathematical analysis of strategic games. In these games, people are given the choice of making a fair contribution or free loading.
Over the years, some earlier experiments seemed to suggest that cooperation founders without punishment. These observations lead to the bleak conclusion that cooperative societies need peer punishment.
But the new study published in the journal Nature, concludes that the people who engage in costly punishment do not benefit from their behaviour.
Working with the Harvard Business School, Prof Nowak asked 104 college students to take part in a variant of a classic game, called the Prisoner's Dilemma.
In this game people have a choice between cooperation and defection. Cooperation means paying $1 for the other person to receive $3.
Defection means taking away $1 from the other person. In the extended version of the game there is a third option: costly punishment, which means paying $1 for the other person to lose $4.
The study found that those who punished lost out overall, and that punishment bestows no benefit on the group as a whole.
The five top-ranked players never used costly punishment. More successful players would use tit for tat, while players who earned the lowest payoffs punished most often. "Put simply, winners don't punish," says co-author David Rand.
Punishment is to do with telling someone who is boss, or to defend a possession, and not part of the fabric of a society where people cooperate, as was previously thought.
"Punishment can lead to a downward spiral of retaliation, with destructive outcomes for everybody involved. The people with the highest total payoffs do not use costly punishment."
"Costly punishment," the punitive behaviour studied by Prof Nowak and his colleagues, refers to situations where a punisher is willing to incur a cost - whether a financial one or to his reputation - in order to penalise someone else.
Importantly, most real world punishment is costly in one way or another. Punishers are typically driven by anger and not by altruistic motives.
The reason the findings overturn textbook wisdom is that earlier work has "not been on situations where individuals use punishment in the context of ongoing interactions," says co-author Anna Dreber.
"We make the setting more realistic by having subjects play repeated games and introducing costly punishment as one of several options."
The new study shows that punishment is not an effective way to promote cooperation, the glue that holds society together, but probably evolved for other reasons such as establishing dominance and defend ownership.
"Punishment may be a tool for forcing another person to do what you want," Dreber says. "It might have been for those kinds of dominance situations that the use of punishment has evolved."
"Our finding has a very positive message: in an extremely competitive setting, the winners are those who resist the temptation to escalate conflicts, while the losers punish and perish," says Prof Nowak.
This study was supported by the John Templeton Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Jan Wallander Foundation, and billionaire philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein.
Women are less tolerant than men
Women less tolerant of each other than men are, study finds
Telegraph.co.uk
13 Feb 2009
Women are less tolerant of each other than men are, according to a new study which may explain why some women prefer to have a male boss.
13 Feb 2009
The research, published in the US journal Psychological Science, found that women formed a negative view of their peers much quicker than men did.
The team from Emmanuel College in Boston asked male and female college students to rate their room-mates under different scenarios.
When asked to judge how they would rate their room-mates if they carried out a single fictional act of negative behaviour, after they had been otherwise completely trustworthy, women were far more likely to be critical of them.
Men, on the other hand, were much more tolerant.
Women were also more likely to switch to a new room-mate than men were.
The authors, led by associate professor of psychology Joyce Benenson, concluded that women were harsher on their peers because they expected more from their same-sex relationships than men did.
They wrote: "Women may simply weight negative information more heavily than men do, because negative information disrupts the establishment of intimacy, which serves a more important function in same-sex relationships for women than for men."
While the study did not take place in the workplace itself, it would appear to back up previous surveys that have found women prefer to work for a male boss.
Telegraph.co.uk
13 Feb 2009
Women are less tolerant of each other than men are, according to a new study which may explain why some women prefer to have a male boss.
13 Feb 2009
The research, published in the US journal Psychological Science, found that women formed a negative view of their peers much quicker than men did.
The team from Emmanuel College in Boston asked male and female college students to rate their room-mates under different scenarios.
When asked to judge how they would rate their room-mates if they carried out a single fictional act of negative behaviour, after they had been otherwise completely trustworthy, women were far more likely to be critical of them.
Men, on the other hand, were much more tolerant.
Women were also more likely to switch to a new room-mate than men were.
The authors, led by associate professor of psychology Joyce Benenson, concluded that women were harsher on their peers because they expected more from their same-sex relationships than men did.
They wrote: "Women may simply weight negative information more heavily than men do, because negative information disrupts the establishment of intimacy, which serves a more important function in same-sex relationships for women than for men."
While the study did not take place in the workplace itself, it would appear to back up previous surveys that have found women prefer to work for a male boss.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Fossils reveal truth about Darwin's theory
DimetrodonTransitional creatures found include the 'fishibian' and the 'frogamander'
MSNBC
By Robin Lloyd
Feb. 12, 2009
With the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin this week, people around the world are celebrating his role as the father of evolutionary theory. Events and press releases are geared, in part, to combat false claims made by some who would discredit the theory.
One frequently cited "hole" in the theory: Creationists claim there are no transitional fossils, a.k.a. missing links. Biologists and paleontologists, among others, know this claim is false.
As key evidence for evolution and species' gradual change over time , transitional creatures should resemble intermediate species, having skeletal and other body features in common with two distinct groups of animals, such as reptiles and mammals, or fish and amphibians.
These animals sound wild, but the fossil record — which is far from complete — is full of them nonetheless, as documented by Occidental College geologist Donald Prothero in his book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters" (Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero discussed those fossils last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, along with transitional fossils that were announced since the book was published, including the "fishibian" and the "frogamander."
At least hundreds, possibly thousands, of transitional fossils have been found so far by researchers. The exact count is unclear because some lineages of organisms are continuously evolving.
Here is a short list of transitional fossils documented by Prothero and that add to the mountain of evidence for Charles Darwin's theory . A lot of us relate most to fossils of life closely related to humans, so the list focuses on mammals and other vertebrates, including dinosaurs.
Mammals, including us
* It is now clear that the evolutionary tree for early and modern humans looks more like a bush than the line represented in cartoons. All the hominid fossils found to date form a complex nexus of specimens, Prothero says, but Sahelanthropus tchadensis, found in 2001 and 2002, threw everyone for a loop because it walked upright 7 million years ago on two feet but is quite chimp-like in its skull size, teeth, brow ridges and face. It could be a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, but many paleoanthropologists will remain unsure until more fossils are found. Previously, the earliest ancestor of our Homo genus found in the fossil record dated back 6 million years.
* Most fossil giraffes have short necks and today's have long necks, but anatomist Nikos Solounias of the New York Institute of Technology's New York College of Osteopathic Medicine is preparing a description of a giraffe fossil, Bohlinia, with a neck that is intermediate in length.
* Manatees, also called sea cows, are marine mammals that have flippers and a down-turned snout for grazing in warm shallow waters. In 2001, scientists discovered the fossil of a "walking manatee," Pezosiren portelli, which had feet rather than flippers and walked on land during the Eocene epoch (54.8 million years ago to 33.7 million years ago) in what is now Jamaica. Along with skull features like manatees (such as horizontal tooth replacement, like a conveyor belt), it also had heavy ribs for ballast, showing that it also had an aquatic lifestyle, like hippos.
* Scientists know that mastodons, mammoths and elephants all share a common ancestor, but it gets hard to tell apart some of the earliest members of this group, called proboscideans, going back to fossils from the Oligocene epoch (33.7 million years ago to 23.8 million years ago). The primitive members of this group can be traced back to what Prothero calls "the ultimate transitional fossil," Moeritherium , from the late Eocene of Egypt. It looked more like a small hippo than an elephant and probably lacked a long trunk, but it had short upper and lower tusks, the teeth of a primitive mastodon and ear features found only in other proboscideans.
* The Dimetrodon was a big predatory reptile with a tail and a large sail or fin-back. It is often mistaken for a dinosaur, but it's actually part of our mammalian lineage and more closely related to mammals than reptiles, which is seen in its specialized teeth for stabbing meat and skull features that only mammals and their ancestors had. It probably moved around like a lizard and had a jawbone made of multiple bones, like a reptile...
Twelve deputies with guns drawn sieze less than an ounce of pot and arrest 8 college kids
After a photo of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps smoking pot appeared in the media, a South Carolina Sheriff ordered a major police action.Has Sheriff in Phelps Pot Case Gone Too Far?
Eight Arrested, Less Than an Ounce of Marijuana Seized
By BETH TRIBOLET
ABC News' Law and Justice Unit
with ANDREA CANNING and JONANN BRADY
Feb. 12, 2009
Two South Carolina defense attorneys are questioning the motives of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who is pursuing criminal charges against eight people who allegedly smoked marijuana with Olympian Michael Phelps.
Authorities have arrested eight people for marijuana possession.
"It is a fascination if not an effort to destroy a public hero," said Joe McCulloch, an attorney for one of the suspects, today on "Good Morning America." "He's the sheriff, not the Terminator!"
Authorities recently executed search warrants at two private homes in Columbia, S.C., and arrested eight people for marijuana possession in connection with an investigation into the photo of Olympic swimmer Phelps holding a bong. Less than an ounce of marijuana was confiscated by sheriff's deputies, sources told ABC News.
"This is ridiculous. This is about college kids smoking pot and in no way justifies 12 officers entering a house with guns drawn to terrorize college kids," said attorney Dick Harpootlian, who is representing another suspect...
Tennesse Valley Authority CEO pay cut; coal ash lawsuit
Photo: DUNCAN MANSFIELD / ASSOCIATED PRESSTennesse Green.com
Settling ponds and ash piles are shown at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Kingston, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 12. A breach in a containment wall released 1.1 billion gallons of ash and sludge from the plant on Dec. 22, 2008. The Tennessee Valley Authority has been spending $1 million a day since then to clean it up.
TVA board cuts CEO Tom Kilgore’s pay
Former Republican Party chief chosen
By BRAD SCHRADE and ANNE PAINE
The Tennessean
February 12, 2009
The TVA board sliced CEO Tom Kilgore’s potential pay today, eliminating “performance incentives” that could have sent his salary as high as $3.275 million this year.
The board also – in an unusual split vote – elected a new incoming chairman who is fresh out of the National Republican Committee chairmanship. One critic has called it an "overly partisan and tone deaf move."
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Kilgore’s salary will now be capped around $1 million, including his base pay and deferred compensation package.
His pay had been particularly controversial with the public who were outraged when the board approved in October what could amount to a 20% raise for him. Residents were struggling to pay electric bills after their rates had soared about 20% in previous months, mainly to cover rising fuel costs.
The board made cutbacks in incentives TVA-wide, as cleanup costs for the Dec. 22 coal ash disaster at TVA’s Kingston power plant reach $31 million.
The price tag is anticipated to rise to $525 million and possibly $825 million, not including the cost of lawsuits, Kilgore told the board.
In other action, the board elected Mike Duncan as its incoming chairman to take over May 18, with four board members in favor and three against.
Duncan is the former head of the Republican National Committee...
A Coal Day in Hellby Diane G
Dec 26th, 2008
Right as they are on the brink of selling "Clean Coal Technology" to the American Public, Kingston Tennessee gets buried in 300 million tonnes of coal sludge. Its now in the watershed...
Nothing like cadmium in your water cocktail with a nice fat lead stick to swizzle it and a sprinkle of mercury bits on the brown foam topping.
For the sake of a job, you have been poisoning yourselves, your children and grandchildren for a hundred years. How long will the denizens of Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky put up with Coal Mining not only for its irresponsible lack of environmental control, when will they figure out its just a bad overall idea, plain and simple?...
TVA found in violation of federal Clean Water Act
February 10th, 2009
by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Following the investigation of the Kingston, Tennessee coal ash impoundment that failed and spilled more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to 300 acres of east Tennessee property, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in violation of the federal Clean Water Act, according to Knoxville Biz.
In a letter released late last week, EPA regional administrator Stanley wrote that the EPA “considers the Kingston spill to be an un-permitted discharge of pollutant in contravention of the Clean Water Act.” The TVA has been ordered to produce a plan to correct the violation as soon as possible and to keep the EPA in the loop with all its data communication with the state Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).
Officials hope that data that already has been turned in to TDEC and future data will help pinpoint the why the impoundment failed last December, pouring 2.2 million pounds of coal ash onto a rural neighborhood. The coal ash contains toxins that could be hazardous to human health, including arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium...
Monday, February 09, 2009
Diego has no opinion on Darwin's theory of evolution
Diego is 150, living in the Galapagos Islands once again. He must have been born just a few years after Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands.Voice of San Diego has a great little story about Diego, who used to live at the San Diego Zoo.
Back in the 1950s, kids were allowed to ride the tortoises at the San Diego Zoo. I loved it. Actually, "ride" is probably the wrong word. As I recall, I just got a place to sit. I envied my brother, whose tortoise actually took off across the enclosed area at the Children's Zoo. But then, perhaps "took off" isn't the right word either.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Lamarck is the skunk at Darwin's (200th) garden party
Lamarck thought that if you worked out faithfully, your children would have bigger muscles. This was wrong, but it turns out that Lamarck was partly right: genes do not entirely account for our hereditary traits. The "new" Lamarckism is gaining ground among scientists.
At tributes to Darwin, Lamarckism—inheritance of acquired traits—will be the skunk at the party.
NEWSWEEK
Sharon Begley
Published Jan 17, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 26, 2009
Alas, poor Darwin. By all rights, 2009 should be his year, as books, museums and scholarly conclaves celebrate his 200th birthday (Feb. 12) and the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species" (Nov. 24), the book that changed forever how man views himself and the creation. Teamed with genetics, Darwin's explanation of how species change through time has become the rock on which biology stands. Which makes the water flea quite the skunk at this party.
Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but their mothers' experiences. If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets, an effect one wag called "bite the mother, fight the daughter." If mom lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. Same DNA, different traits. Somehow, the experience of the mother, not only her DNA sequences, has been transmitted to her offspring.
That gives strict Darwinians heart palpitations, for it reeks of the discredited theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). The French naturalist argued that the reason giraffes have long necks, for instance, is that their parents stretched their (shorter) necks to reach the treetops. Offspring, Lamarck said, inherit traits their parents acquired. With the success of Darwin's theory of random variation and natural selection, Lamarck was left on the ash heap of history. But new discoveries of what looks like the inheritance of traits acquired by parents—lab animals as well as people—are forcing biologists to reconsider Lamarckism.
The lab mice, of course, came first. Since 1999 scientists in several labs have shown that an experience a mouse mother has while she is pregnant can leave a physical mark on the DNA in her eggs. Just to emphasize, this is not a mutation, the only way new traits are supposedly transmitted to children. Instead, if mother mouse eats a diet rich in vitamin B12, folic acid or genistein (found in soy), her offspring are slim, healthy and brown—even though they carry a gene that makes them fat, at risk of diabetes and cancer, and yellow. It turns out that the vitamins slap a molecular "off" switch on the obesity/diabetes/yellow-fur gene. (Don't try this at home: no one knows which human genes soy, B12 and folic acid might silence.) This was the first evidence, now confirmed multiple times, that an experience of the mother (what she eats) can reach into the DNA in her eggs and alter the genes her pups inherit. "There can be a molecular memory of the parent's experience, in this case diet," says Emma Whitelaw of Queensland Institute of Medical Research, who did the first of these mouse studies. "It fits with Lamarck because it's the inheritance of a trait the parent acquired. There is even some evidence that the diet of a pregnant mouse can affect not only her offspring's coat color, but that of later generations."
Inheriting a DNA-silencing mark that your mom acquired is not as dramatic as giraffes passing on elongated necks to their kids. And the new Lamarckism doesn't mean that human moms who work out will pass along toned abs to their children, or that human dads who dye their hair red will have red-haired children. But preliminary evidence suggests that Lamarckism acts in people, too. In 2005, scientists in London found that the grandsons of men who had abundant food when they were boys (the study was done on men in a small town in northern Sweden) were much more likely to have diabetes and to die an early death than were the grandsons of men who suffered food shortages as boys. A 2006 study by the same scientists found that when fathers smoked as young boys, their sons tended to be more obese than did the sons of men who did not smoke as boys. Similar to the lab mice, the experience of the parents is visited upon the children and even the grandchildren. If the results hold up, says Whitelaw, "it would signal a paradigm shift in the way we think about the inheritance" of traits.
The existence of this parallel means of inheritance, in which something a parent experiences alters the DNA he or she passes on to children, suggests that evolution might happen much faster than the Darwinian model implies. "Darwinian evolution is quite slow," says Whitelaw. But if children can inherit DNA that bears the physical marks of their parents' experiences, they are likely to be much better adapted to the world they're born into, all in a single generation. Water fleas pop out helmets immediately if mom lived in a world of predators; by Darwin's lights, a population of helmeted fleas would take many generations to emerge through random variation and natural selection. The new Lamarckism promises to "reveal how the environment affects the genome to determine the ultimate traits of an individual," says Whitelaw.
Some of these studies will not hold up, as is typical with revolutionary new science. And resistance to what is being dubbed "the renaissance of heresy" is firm; one scientist called a paper on this stuff "a misguided attempt at scientific humor." But evidence for the new Lamarckism is strong enough to say the last word on inheritance and evolution has not been written.
A water flea without a helmut, from bioBlog at University of Waikato, New Zealand.In some circumstances (water temperature, presence of predators), rather than having that sharp little point on their heads (top of the picture, above the eyespot) some Daphnia will have a longer, spikier 'helmet'. And this is where it gets interesting: it depends on the mother. If a 'helmet-less' female Daphnia is in an environment where there are also predators, her offspring will sport helmets. If not, they won't.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Christians who are pro-science and pro-Darwin meet in Oxford
Charles Darwin, age 51, just after publishing Origin of SpeciesChurches hold Darwin conference
7 February 2009
BBC
A group of churches in Oxford is hosting a conference to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of scientist Charles Darwin.
The event also commemorates the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book the Origin of Species, on the theory of evolution.
Organiser reverend Tim Stead said it wanted to explore the relationship between science and religion.
He said evolution was one of the "most influential scientific ideas ever".
The conference is aimed at "exploring Darwin's contribution to our world view".
Reverend Tim Stead said: "It impacts on our entire understanding of the world.
"One of our aims in holding this conference is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin."
Mr Stead said many Christians wanted to celebrate Darwin's huge contribution to their world view.
"This is a chance to set the record straight and to explore how it is possible for faith to sit alongside Darwin's views," he said.
"Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is one of the most influential scientific ideas ever conceived."
If the West Antarctica ice sheet collapses, sea levels could rise more than expected
Ice Melt Could Increase Sea Level RisksAP
Feb. 7, 2009
...a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science warns that factors not previously considered could one day boost that increase to up to 21 feet in some areas.
The study did not list a time frame for such a dramatic change. But co-author Peter Clark, a geoscientist at Oregon State University, stressed that they "aren't suggesting that a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is imminent."
The most recent International Panel on Climate Change report estimated sea level rise of up to 3 feet by the end of this century...
Earlier research has focused on melting ice adding water to the oceans and on thermal expansion of sea water in a warmer climate over long periods of time...
--When an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. That means sea levels could fall near Antarctica and rise more than expected in the northern hemisphere.
--Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will rebound from the weight, pushing some water out into the ocean.
--The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet will cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift, potentially moving water northward.
"The net effect of all of these processes is that if the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the rise in sea levels around many coastal regions will be as much as 25 per cent more than expected," Mitrovica said in a statement.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
If big Internet companies like AT&T and Verizon remain unregulated, will they control access to information?
They Say We Know Nothing About the Internet
By DAVID WASHBURN
Jan 13, 2009
The internet is the most complex and far-reaching system ever developed by man -- without it, modern society would essentially grind to a halt. Yet it is about as regulated as a pick-up basketball game...
That so much about the internet is unknowable doesn't necessarily mean that it is in trouble. But it does mean that if it were in trouble, we might not know about it until it was too late.
This is what really bothers Kimberly Claffy and Dmitri Krioukov, two internet researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Supercomputer Center. ...They say, as long as there is such scant oversight, the information highway is likely to get more expensive, less accessible and more vulnerable to viruses and cyber crime in general.
In their wildest dreams, the academics and U.S. Defense Department scientists who designed ARAPNET in the late 1960s did not envision YouTube, MySpace or iTunes. Yet their design remains the basic foundation of the internet.
And decisions were made throughout the internet's development in the 1970s through the 1990s not to regulate it, and fierce debate has raged over those decisions for decades. The explosion of data -- mainly video -- traveling over the internet in recent years has brought these issues closer to a head.
This is why Claffy and Krioukov say there needs to be some kind of regulation. Claffy said a good start would be something akin to an international bureau of internet statistics, some kind of bird's eye view of the entire system. Even the most basic data collection would allow researchers to see bottlenecks and other potential problems that can't be seen now.
But in order for such and entity to be created, those who own the largest networks in the internet -- internet providers like AT&T and Verizon -- would have to agree to share their data, something they have no incentive or requirement to do.
"The global structure of internet is the cumulative result of local decisions by individual organizations (owners)," Krioukov said. "There are about 20,000 of these owners -- and no one is requiring that these organizations play by a set of rules."
Many researchers are concerned that the lack of regulation and the self interest of the large owners will combine to intrude on what is essentially the freedom of the internet.
For example, the overload of data the internet is experiencing requires bigger, faster and much more expensive routers. And it is likely that the large providers will pass these costs down to consumers. The result could be a tiered service model in which the level of someone's internet access to depends on how much they are able to pay.
Others, especially business interests, say such advocacy for more regulation is a solution in search of a problem. Claffy believes the truth is somewhere in between. And she has spent her career trying to get at that truth.
The 39-year-old earned a bachelor's from Stanford University in 1989, and received a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from UCSD in 1994. Three years later she founded the data analysis association, dubbed CAIDA. Krioukov, also 39, is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Old Dominion University in 1998, and came to work at CAIDA in 2004.
An hour long conversation with the two can cover just about all things great and small on the internet. Recently they've been working on great rather than small. The paper they co-authored for Nature Physics (along with Marian Boguñà , a researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain) focused on the internet and how it relates to other complex networks.
The three researchers developed a mathematical model, called "hidden metric space." The model offers an explanation on how both man-made networks like the internet, and natural networks, like the human brain, are similarly affected by what is known as the "small-world phenomenon," in which two locations in any given network are, on average, no more than six steps from each other...
If developed further, this research could be an answer for the rising number of so-called internet "black holes," which happen when routers become so overwhelmed by information that they can't keep up, and links to parts of the internet end up severed. These black holes are slowing the work of researchers and other high-level users of the internet. And researchers say if not dealt with, black holes will ultimately affect the average user.
When will this day come, and how bad will it be? Good question.
By DAVID WASHBURN
Jan 13, 2009
The internet is the most complex and far-reaching system ever developed by man -- without it, modern society would essentially grind to a halt. Yet it is about as regulated as a pick-up basketball game...
That so much about the internet is unknowable doesn't necessarily mean that it is in trouble. But it does mean that if it were in trouble, we might not know about it until it was too late.
This is what really bothers Kimberly Claffy and Dmitri Krioukov, two internet researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Supercomputer Center. ...They say, as long as there is such scant oversight, the information highway is likely to get more expensive, less accessible and more vulnerable to viruses and cyber crime in general.
In their wildest dreams, the academics and U.S. Defense Department scientists who designed ARAPNET in the late 1960s did not envision YouTube, MySpace or iTunes. Yet their design remains the basic foundation of the internet.
And decisions were made throughout the internet's development in the 1970s through the 1990s not to regulate it, and fierce debate has raged over those decisions for decades. The explosion of data -- mainly video -- traveling over the internet in recent years has brought these issues closer to a head.
This is why Claffy and Krioukov say there needs to be some kind of regulation. Claffy said a good start would be something akin to an international bureau of internet statistics, some kind of bird's eye view of the entire system. Even the most basic data collection would allow researchers to see bottlenecks and other potential problems that can't be seen now.
But in order for such and entity to be created, those who own the largest networks in the internet -- internet providers like AT&T and Verizon -- would have to agree to share their data, something they have no incentive or requirement to do.
"The global structure of internet is the cumulative result of local decisions by individual organizations (owners)," Krioukov said. "There are about 20,000 of these owners -- and no one is requiring that these organizations play by a set of rules."
Many researchers are concerned that the lack of regulation and the self interest of the large owners will combine to intrude on what is essentially the freedom of the internet.
For example, the overload of data the internet is experiencing requires bigger, faster and much more expensive routers. And it is likely that the large providers will pass these costs down to consumers. The result could be a tiered service model in which the level of someone's internet access to depends on how much they are able to pay.
Others, especially business interests, say such advocacy for more regulation is a solution in search of a problem. Claffy believes the truth is somewhere in between. And she has spent her career trying to get at that truth.
The 39-year-old earned a bachelor's from Stanford University in 1989, and received a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from UCSD in 1994. Three years later she founded the data analysis association, dubbed CAIDA. Krioukov, also 39, is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Old Dominion University in 1998, and came to work at CAIDA in 2004.
An hour long conversation with the two can cover just about all things great and small on the internet. Recently they've been working on great rather than small. The paper they co-authored for Nature Physics (along with Marian Boguñà , a researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain) focused on the internet and how it relates to other complex networks.
The three researchers developed a mathematical model, called "hidden metric space." The model offers an explanation on how both man-made networks like the internet, and natural networks, like the human brain, are similarly affected by what is known as the "small-world phenomenon," in which two locations in any given network are, on average, no more than six steps from each other...
If developed further, this research could be an answer for the rising number of so-called internet "black holes," which happen when routers become so overwhelmed by information that they can't keep up, and links to parts of the internet end up severed. These black holes are slowing the work of researchers and other high-level users of the internet. And researchers say if not dealt with, black holes will ultimately affect the average user.
When will this day come, and how bad will it be? Good question.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Hiring at Bush Justice Department was based on politics
Report Cites Politicized Hiring at Justice Dept.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — A former senior official at the Justice Department routinely hired conservatives, Republicans and so-called RTA’s — “Right-Thinking Americans — for what were supposed to be apolitical posts and gave them plum assignments on important civil rights cases, an internal report found Tuesday.
The former official, Bradley Schlozman, who helped lead the civil rights division from 2003 until he resigned in the fall of 2007 amid a political uproar over broad charges of politicization at the department, also gave false statements to Congress in denying that he had taken politics into account in his hiring and personnel decisions, the report found.
The investigation, conducted by the department’s inspector general and its office of professional responsibility, is the fourth and last in a series of reports since last year detailing the use of improper political considerations in hiring decisions at the department. The investigations grew out of the controversy over the firings of eight United States attorneys, which led to the 2007 resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Mr. Schlozman was a senior political appointee in the civil rights division who eventually became the acting head of the division, which is responsible for enforcing federal laws on voting rights, racial and gender discrimination, fair housing and other issues. Investigators found that his own e-mail messages, along with interviews with more than 120 current and former employees, made clear that Mr. Schlozman tried to re-shape the office in a more conservative bent by hiring some 64 people — two-thirds of all the hires in the division — who were considered Republican or conservative.
He would also steer important assignments to lawyers he considered conservative. In an e-mail message about an appellate case, for instance, Mr. Schlozman said he did not want certain lawyers on the case. “The potential stakes are too great to entrust this to either a lib or an idiot,” he wrote.
Mr. Schlozman declined to speak with investigators as part of the review. Because he left the department, he is not subject to internal disciplining. Investigators referred the matter for possible criminal prosecutions based on accusations of false statements to Congress, but prosecutors last week declined to bring charges, the report said.
The department said Tuesday that it had taken internal steps to correct the “institutional problems” identified in the report and was confident they would not recur.
“The mission of the Justice Department is the evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it, and that mission has to start with the evenhanded application of the laws within our own department,” said Peter Carr, a department spokesman. “As today’s report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated from that strict standard.”
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — A former senior official at the Justice Department routinely hired conservatives, Republicans and so-called RTA’s — “Right-Thinking Americans — for what were supposed to be apolitical posts and gave them plum assignments on important civil rights cases, an internal report found Tuesday.
The former official, Bradley Schlozman, who helped lead the civil rights division from 2003 until he resigned in the fall of 2007 amid a political uproar over broad charges of politicization at the department, also gave false statements to Congress in denying that he had taken politics into account in his hiring and personnel decisions, the report found.
The investigation, conducted by the department’s inspector general and its office of professional responsibility, is the fourth and last in a series of reports since last year detailing the use of improper political considerations in hiring decisions at the department. The investigations grew out of the controversy over the firings of eight United States attorneys, which led to the 2007 resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Mr. Schlozman was a senior political appointee in the civil rights division who eventually became the acting head of the division, which is responsible for enforcing federal laws on voting rights, racial and gender discrimination, fair housing and other issues. Investigators found that his own e-mail messages, along with interviews with more than 120 current and former employees, made clear that Mr. Schlozman tried to re-shape the office in a more conservative bent by hiring some 64 people — two-thirds of all the hires in the division — who were considered Republican or conservative.
He would also steer important assignments to lawyers he considered conservative. In an e-mail message about an appellate case, for instance, Mr. Schlozman said he did not want certain lawyers on the case. “The potential stakes are too great to entrust this to either a lib or an idiot,” he wrote.
Mr. Schlozman declined to speak with investigators as part of the review. Because he left the department, he is not subject to internal disciplining. Investigators referred the matter for possible criminal prosecutions based on accusations of false statements to Congress, but prosecutors last week declined to bring charges, the report said.
The department said Tuesday that it had taken internal steps to correct the “institutional problems” identified in the report and was confident they would not recur.
“The mission of the Justice Department is the evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it, and that mission has to start with the evenhanded application of the laws within our own department,” said Peter Carr, a department spokesman. “As today’s report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated from that strict standard.”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Yeast engineered to produce rare malaria medicine
Jay Keasling--Saving the World, One Molecule at a Time
By Jeneen Interlandi
NEWSWEEK
Dec 20, 2008
Ever since Alexander Fleming noticed a clump of blue-green mold destroying a neighboring culture of bacteria in a nearly discarded petri dish, scientists have searched the most unlikely of places for cures to human disease. Eventually, Fleming's serendipitous 1928 discovery led to the development of penicillin. Today's scientists have taken a more proactive approach.
Oftentimes, their starting material is still as counterintuitive as a moldy plate...a new subset of scientists known as synthetic biologists are trying to turn single-celled organisms like bacteria and yeast into tiny chemical factories that can build these compounds from scratch...Jay Keasling, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, is leading the pack...
Keasling's first target was malaria—a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, mostly infants and young children from the world's poorest regions.
With a 90 percent cure rate, artemisinin is easily the most powerful antimalaria drug on the market. But extracting the clunky molecule from the sweet-wormwood plant that produces it is slow and expensive. In fact, the medication is so scarce that most of the world's 3 million malaria patients are dying for want of it.
Keasling's team inserted wormwood genes into a simple yeast cell, and then reprogrammed some of that cell's own genes to create a microorganism that can spin sugar into artemisinin...reducing the manufacturing costs from dollars to pennies per dose.
To make sure that patients actually saw those savings, Keasling worked...to ensure that no one, including him, could profit from his newly patented system.
"It's not that we're against companies making money," he says. "We just don't want them to gouge the poor." In March, Sanofi-Aventis signed on to scale up production of Keasling's customized yeast cells. The company expects to start churning out artemisinin by late 2010; it will sell the drug at cost...
By Jeneen Interlandi
NEWSWEEK
Dec 20, 2008
Ever since Alexander Fleming noticed a clump of blue-green mold destroying a neighboring culture of bacteria in a nearly discarded petri dish, scientists have searched the most unlikely of places for cures to human disease. Eventually, Fleming's serendipitous 1928 discovery led to the development of penicillin. Today's scientists have taken a more proactive approach.
Oftentimes, their starting material is still as counterintuitive as a moldy plate...a new subset of scientists known as synthetic biologists are trying to turn single-celled organisms like bacteria and yeast into tiny chemical factories that can build these compounds from scratch...Jay Keasling, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, is leading the pack...
Keasling's first target was malaria—a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, mostly infants and young children from the world's poorest regions.
With a 90 percent cure rate, artemisinin is easily the most powerful antimalaria drug on the market. But extracting the clunky molecule from the sweet-wormwood plant that produces it is slow and expensive. In fact, the medication is so scarce that most of the world's 3 million malaria patients are dying for want of it.
Keasling's team inserted wormwood genes into a simple yeast cell, and then reprogrammed some of that cell's own genes to create a microorganism that can spin sugar into artemisinin...reducing the manufacturing costs from dollars to pennies per dose.
To make sure that patients actually saw those savings, Keasling worked...to ensure that no one, including him, could profit from his newly patented system.
"It's not that we're against companies making money," he says. "We just don't want them to gouge the poor." In March, Sanofi-Aventis signed on to scale up production of Keasling's customized yeast cells. The company expects to start churning out artemisinin by late 2010; it will sell the drug at cost...
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Evolution is making some animals weaker
Theodore Roosevelt and another hunter hold the heads of kudus they killed on an African safari in the 1910s
It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny
By Lily Huang
NEWSWEEK
Jan 3, 2009
Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.
... The phenomenon has been most apparent in harvested fish: since fishing nets began capturing only fish of sufficient size in the 1980s, the Atlantic cod and salmon, several flounders and the northern pike have all propagated in miniature.
If being smaller is safer, this might be a successful adaptation for a hunted species. After all, " 'fitness' is relative and transitory," says Columbia University biologist Don Melnick, meaning that Darwinian natural selection has nothing to do with what's good or bad, or the way things should be.
Tusks used to make elephants fitter, as a weapon or a tool in foraging—until ivory became a precious commodity and having tusks got you killed. Then tuskless elephants, products of a genetic fluke, became the more consistent breeders and grew from around 2 percent among African elephants to more than 38 percent in one Zambian population, and 98 percent in a South African one. In Asia, where female elephants don't have tusks to begin with, the proportion of tuskless elephants has more than doubled, to more than 90 percent in Sri Lanka. But there's a cost to not having tusks. Tusked elephants, like the old dominant males on Ram Mountain, were "genetically 'better' individuals," says Festa-Bianchet. "When you take them systematically out of the population for several years, you end up leaving essentially a bunch of losers doing the breeding."
Monday, January 05, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Smoking ban proves that secondhand smoke causes real harm
Smoking ban leads to major drop in heart attacks
By MIKE STOBBE, AP
Medical Writer
Dec 31,2008
A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations within three years, a sign of just how serious a health threat secondhand smoke is, government researchers said Wednesday. The study, the longest-running of its kind, showed the rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent in the three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect. There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it's a clear sign the ban was responsible.
The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least eight earlier studies have linked smoking bans to decreased heart attacks, but none ran as long as three years. The new study looked at heart attack hospitalizations for three years following the July 1, 2003 enactment of Pueblo's ban, and found declines as great or greater than those in earlier research...
By MIKE STOBBE, AP
Medical Writer
Dec 31,2008
A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations within three years, a sign of just how serious a health threat secondhand smoke is, government researchers said Wednesday. The study, the longest-running of its kind, showed the rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent in the three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect. There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it's a clear sign the ban was responsible.
The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least eight earlier studies have linked smoking bans to decreased heart attacks, but none ran as long as three years. The new study looked at heart attack hospitalizations for three years following the July 1, 2003 enactment of Pueblo's ban, and found declines as great or greater than those in earlier research...
Capital of the Khazars discovered in Russia
Image: Khazar warrior with captiveSeptember 22, 2008
Ancient lost capital of the Jewish Khazar kingdom found
By The Associated Press
Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough for research on the ancient Jewish state.
"This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of the Caspian Sea.
"We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period -- how the Khazars actually lived. We know very little about the Khazars -- about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture," he said.
The city was the capital of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic peoples who adopted Judaism as a state religion, from between the 8th and the 10th centuries, when it was captured and sacked by the rulers of ancient Russia.
At its height, the Khazar state and its tributaries controlled much of what is now southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan and large parts of Russia's North Caucasus region...
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sarah Palin reads newspapers--all of them
Fake Palin Saying Is Top Quote of the Year
AP Associated Press
Dec. 14, 2008
Sarah Palin lost the election, but she's a winner to a connoisseur of quotations. The Republican vice presidential candidate and her comedic doppelganger, Tina Fey, took the top two spots in this year's list of most memorable quotes compiled by Fred R. Shapiro.
First place was "I can see Russia from my house!" spoken in satire of Palin's foreign policy credentials by Fey on "Saturday Night Live."
Palin actual quote was: "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Palin also made the third annual list for her inability to name newspapers she reads. When questioned by CBS anchor Katie Couric, Palin said she reads "all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years."...
Sunday, December 14, 2008
We encourage gangs and violence by giving them positive reinforcement in the form of publicity
Christopher Yanov points out that we've been giving positive reinforcment to gangs and violence by talking about them every chance we get. Didn't psychologists discover about a hundred years ago that the way to extinguish unwanted behavior is to ignore it? I don't mean that the police should ignore crimes; I mean that the rest of us should shift our focus to the good things kids do.
Focus on Achievement
Voice of San Diego
by CHRISTOPHER YANOV
December 12, 2008
...[W]hy should youths from disadvantaged backgrounds have to be arrested first in order to have national service programs solicit their help? It would keep them out of trouble in the first place if such programs promoting positive behaviors became more entrenched in youth cultures.
...[P]revention programs that are "anti-anything" just further entrench the legitimacy of the targeted negative behavior. In a related example, politicians at all levels are encouraged to never mention their opponents' names during a campaign and prevention programs would be wise to take a page out of this play book. Gang prevention programs should shift their energies to focusing on the achievement of positive goals and not continue to (unintentionally) give credence to negative behaviors.
Case in point: For the five years before starting Reality Changers that I worked with youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, all we ever talked about was gangs and drugs. And guess what all of them did? Gangs and drugs, gangs and drugs ... spiraling towards more and more violent behaviors. However, for the past seven years at the Reality Changers program, all we ever talk is becoming the first person in each's family to go to college. And guess what all of them do? Go to college! These students from the same streets (and in many cases from the same families) have been able to transcend the code of the streets because they have entrenched themselves in a positive, goal-oriented culture.
Focus on Achievement
Voice of San Diego
by CHRISTOPHER YANOV
December 12, 2008
...[W]hy should youths from disadvantaged backgrounds have to be arrested first in order to have national service programs solicit their help? It would keep them out of trouble in the first place if such programs promoting positive behaviors became more entrenched in youth cultures.
...[P]revention programs that are "anti-anything" just further entrench the legitimacy of the targeted negative behavior. In a related example, politicians at all levels are encouraged to never mention their opponents' names during a campaign and prevention programs would be wise to take a page out of this play book. Gang prevention programs should shift their energies to focusing on the achievement of positive goals and not continue to (unintentionally) give credence to negative behaviors.
Case in point: For the five years before starting Reality Changers that I worked with youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, all we ever talked about was gangs and drugs. And guess what all of them did? Gangs and drugs, gangs and drugs ... spiraling towards more and more violent behaviors. However, for the past seven years at the Reality Changers program, all we ever talk is becoming the first person in each's family to go to college. And guess what all of them do? Go to college! These students from the same streets (and in many cases from the same families) have been able to transcend the code of the streets because they have entrenched themselves in a positive, goal-oriented culture.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Nobel prize winner Steven Chu says the planet needs rewiring
Concern for Climate Change Defines Energy Nominee
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 12, 2008
The next secretary of energy, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, recently compared the danger of climate change to a problem with electrical wiring in a house.
Suppose, he said, you had a small electrical fire at home and a structural engineer told you there was a 50 percent chance your house would burn down in the next few years unless you spent $20,000 to fix faulty wiring.
"You can either continue to shop for additional evaluations until you find the one engineer in 1,000 who is willing to give you the answer you want -- 'your family is not in danger' -- or you can change the wiring," Chu said in a presentation in September.
Because of the danger of climate change, he said, the United States and other countries also need to make some urgent repairs. He said governments need to "act quickly" to implement fiscal and regulatory policies to stimulate the deployment of technologies that boost energy efficiency and "minimize" carbon emissions...
He said that people who said they were uncertain whether climate change is being caused by humans were "reminiscent of the dialogue in the 1950s and '60s on tobacco." (At that time, many argued that there was insufficient evidence linking smoking to cancer.)
He put aside the atomic and molecular biophysics research he had been doing as a Stanford University professor to become head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004 and steer it toward projects aimed at slashing the country's emissions of greenhouse gases that hasten climate change. He created the Helios Project, a center that seeks to use solar energy to generate chemical fuel at a low cost.
The laboratory's scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, have altered yeast and bacteria into organisms that produce gasoline and diesel, improved techniques for converting switchgrass into the sugars needed to produce transportation fuel, and used nanotechnology to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells used in solar panels, among other projects...
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Justice in a genocide case
The human race seems to have developed a bad habit of regularly committing genocide. This has to stop. How? Evil has to be nipped in the bud, before it becomes out of control.
Rwandan Musician Sentenced to 15 Years for Role in Genocide
New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
December 2, 2008
PARIS
A well-known Rwandan musician, Simon Bikindi, has been convicted of incitement to genocide and sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the hate campaign against Tutsi that led to the 1994 genocide.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Mr. Bikindi guilty of using a public-address system along roads in Rwanda in June 1994 to call on Hutu to rise up and exterminate the Tutsi.
He was acquitted of five other related charges.
The panel of judges said some of Mr. Bikindi’s songs had played a role in a propaganda campaign to promote contempt for the Tutsi population, and to incite Hutu to attack and kill Tutsi. But they said prosecutors had not proved that Mr. Bikindi’s music could be linked directly to any specific attacks or killings.
Mr. Bikindi, 54, is the first entertainer to be found guilty of a genocide-related charge.
Nearly 30 other people have been found guilty by the Tanzania-based United Nations tribunal of leading, organizing, inciting or financing the ethnic killing in Rwanda. The guilty include politicians, military officers, clergymen, businessmen and journalists.
The atrocities in Rwanda began in April 1994, and in less than four months, the Hutu majority killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Many were hacked to death, often with government-issued machetes.
In 1994, Mr. Bikindi was the country’s most famous musician. He sang, played several instruments, wrote intense lyrics and led a dance troupe. He also acted as a cheerleader at Hutu government rallies and was a strong presence at an influential government radio station.
Mr. Bikindi has argued that neither he nor his songs ever killed anyone.
Prosecutors had singled out three of Mr. Bikindi’s popular rap lyrics promoting ethnic hatred, which they said had been widely broadcast and were sung by mobs as they killed their victims.
Rwandan Musician Sentenced to 15 Years for Role in Genocide
New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
December 2, 2008
PARIS
A well-known Rwandan musician, Simon Bikindi, has been convicted of incitement to genocide and sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the hate campaign against Tutsi that led to the 1994 genocide.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Mr. Bikindi guilty of using a public-address system along roads in Rwanda in June 1994 to call on Hutu to rise up and exterminate the Tutsi.
He was acquitted of five other related charges.
The panel of judges said some of Mr. Bikindi’s songs had played a role in a propaganda campaign to promote contempt for the Tutsi population, and to incite Hutu to attack and kill Tutsi. But they said prosecutors had not proved that Mr. Bikindi’s music could be linked directly to any specific attacks or killings.
Mr. Bikindi, 54, is the first entertainer to be found guilty of a genocide-related charge.
Nearly 30 other people have been found guilty by the Tanzania-based United Nations tribunal of leading, organizing, inciting or financing the ethnic killing in Rwanda. The guilty include politicians, military officers, clergymen, businessmen and journalists.
The atrocities in Rwanda began in April 1994, and in less than four months, the Hutu majority killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Many were hacked to death, often with government-issued machetes.
In 1994, Mr. Bikindi was the country’s most famous musician. He sang, played several instruments, wrote intense lyrics and led a dance troupe. He also acted as a cheerleader at Hutu government rallies and was a strong presence at an influential government radio station.
Mr. Bikindi has argued that neither he nor his songs ever killed anyone.
Prosecutors had singled out three of Mr. Bikindi’s popular rap lyrics promoting ethnic hatred, which they said had been widely broadcast and were sung by mobs as they killed their victims.
Atheists object to Kentucky homeland security training about God
Image: Michelangelo's concept of God in "Creation of the Sun and Moon"
from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Atheists Sue Over Homeland Security Law
By ROGER ALFORD, AP
Associated Press
December 3, 2008
A group of atheists filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky's Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can't keep the state safe without God's help...
Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state "cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God" and to stress that fact through training and educational materials.
The plaque, posted at the Kentucky Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort, includes the Bible verse: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
"It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I've ever seen," said Edwin F. Kagin, national legal director of Parsippany, N.J.-based American Atheists Inc. The group claims the law violates both the state and U.S. constitutions...
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
College-age kids at risk for mental problems
"All good students have a touch of "obsessional" personality that helps them work hard to achieve. But that's different from an obsessional disorder that makes people inflexible and controlling and interferes with their lives..."
1 in 5 young adults has personality disorder
By LINDSEY TANNER
December 1, 2008
CHICAGO (AP) — Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.
The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment.
...Experts praised the study's scope — face-to-face interviews about numerous disorders with more than 5,000 young people ages 19 to 25 — and said it spotlights a problem college administrators need to address.
Study co-author Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute called the widespread lack of treatment particularly worrisome. He said it should alert not only "students and parents, but also deans and people who run college mental health services about the need to extend access to treatment."
Counting substance abuse, the study found that nearly half of young people surveyed have some sort of psychiatric condition, including students and non-students...
"For many, young adulthood is characterized by the pursuit of greater educational opportunities and employment prospects, development of personal relationships, and for some, parenthood," the authors said. These circumstances, they said, can result in stress that triggers the start or recurrence of psychiatric problems.
The study was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry...
Personality disorders showed up in similar numbers among both students and non-students, including the most common one, obsessive compulsive personality disorder. About 8 percent of young adults in both groups had this illness, which can include an extreme preoccupation with details, rules, orderliness and perfectionism...
All good students have a touch of "obsessional" personality that helps them work hard to achieve. But that's different from an obsessional disorder that makes people inflexible and controlling and interferes with their lives, he explained.
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder differs from the better known OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, which features repetitive actions such as hand-washing to avoid germs.
OCD is thought to affect about 2 percent of the general population. The study didn't examine OCD separately but grouped it with all anxiety disorders, seen in about 12 percent of college-aged people in the survey...
Substance abuse, including drug addiction, alcoholism and other drinking that interferes with school or work, affected nearly one-third of those in both groups.
Slightly more college students than non-students were problem drinkers — 20 percent versus 17 percent. And slightly more non-students had drug problems — nearly 7 percent versus 5 percent.
In both groups, about 8 percent had phobias and 7 percent had depression.
Bipolar disorder was slightly more common in non-students, affecting almost 5 percent versus about 3 percent of students.
1 in 5 young adults has personality disorder
By LINDSEY TANNER
December 1, 2008
CHICAGO (AP) — Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.
The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment.
...Experts praised the study's scope — face-to-face interviews about numerous disorders with more than 5,000 young people ages 19 to 25 — and said it spotlights a problem college administrators need to address.
Study co-author Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute called the widespread lack of treatment particularly worrisome. He said it should alert not only "students and parents, but also deans and people who run college mental health services about the need to extend access to treatment."
Counting substance abuse, the study found that nearly half of young people surveyed have some sort of psychiatric condition, including students and non-students...
"For many, young adulthood is characterized by the pursuit of greater educational opportunities and employment prospects, development of personal relationships, and for some, parenthood," the authors said. These circumstances, they said, can result in stress that triggers the start or recurrence of psychiatric problems.
The study was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry...
Personality disorders showed up in similar numbers among both students and non-students, including the most common one, obsessive compulsive personality disorder. About 8 percent of young adults in both groups had this illness, which can include an extreme preoccupation with details, rules, orderliness and perfectionism...
All good students have a touch of "obsessional" personality that helps them work hard to achieve. But that's different from an obsessional disorder that makes people inflexible and controlling and interferes with their lives, he explained.
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder differs from the better known OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, which features repetitive actions such as hand-washing to avoid germs.
OCD is thought to affect about 2 percent of the general population. The study didn't examine OCD separately but grouped it with all anxiety disorders, seen in about 12 percent of college-aged people in the survey...
Substance abuse, including drug addiction, alcoholism and other drinking that interferes with school or work, affected nearly one-third of those in both groups.
Slightly more college students than non-students were problem drinkers — 20 percent versus 17 percent. And slightly more non-students had drug problems — nearly 7 percent versus 5 percent.
In both groups, about 8 percent had phobias and 7 percent had depression.
Bipolar disorder was slightly more common in non-students, affecting almost 5 percent versus about 3 percent of students.
Too much TV leads to child obesity, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy and poor school performance
Lots of TV and Web harms kids' health
Reuters
Dec 2, 2008
Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
U.S. National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Center experts analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how exposure to media sources impacts the physical health of children and adolescents...
The studies offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to become obese, start smoking and begin earlier sexual activity than those who spend less time in front of a screen, the researchers said.
Studies also indicated more media exposure also was linked to drug and alcohol use and poorer school performance, while the evidence was less clear about an association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they added.
"I think we were pretty surprised by how overwhelming the number of studies was that showed this negative health impact," NIH bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the researchers in the report released by the advocacy group Common Sense Media, said in a telephone interview.
...One study cited in the report found that children who spent more than eight hours watching TV per week at age 3 were more likely to be obese at 7. And research shows that many U.S. children, even toddlers, watch far more.
Dr. Cary Gross of Yale University.. said TV and other media content can have a profound impact on children's attitudes and beliefs, most notably among teens.
He cited a U.S. study by the RAND research organization published in November that showed that adolescents who watched more programing with sexual themes had a higher risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy.
Thirteen of 14 studies that evaluated sexual behavior found an association between media exposure and earlier initiation of sexual behavior, the researchers said.
Reuters
Dec 2, 2008
Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
U.S. National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Center experts analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how exposure to media sources impacts the physical health of children and adolescents...
The studies offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to become obese, start smoking and begin earlier sexual activity than those who spend less time in front of a screen, the researchers said.
Studies also indicated more media exposure also was linked to drug and alcohol use and poorer school performance, while the evidence was less clear about an association with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they added.
"I think we were pretty surprised by how overwhelming the number of studies was that showed this negative health impact," NIH bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the researchers in the report released by the advocacy group Common Sense Media, said in a telephone interview.
...One study cited in the report found that children who spent more than eight hours watching TV per week at age 3 were more likely to be obese at 7. And research shows that many U.S. children, even toddlers, watch far more.
Dr. Cary Gross of Yale University.. said TV and other media content can have a profound impact on children's attitudes and beliefs, most notably among teens.
He cited a U.S. study by the RAND research organization published in November that showed that adolescents who watched more programing with sexual themes had a higher risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy.
Thirteen of 14 studies that evaluated sexual behavior found an association between media exposure and earlier initiation of sexual behavior, the researchers said.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Mayans didn't look forward to the afterlife
Scholar Finds Mayans' Path Through Hell
By MARK STEVENSON
AP
Nov. 9, 2008
TZIBICHEN CENOTE, Mexico
Legend says the afterlife for ancient Mayas was a terrifying obstacle course in which the dead had to traverse rivers of blood, and chambers full of sharp knives, bats and jaguars.
Now a Mexican archaeologist using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish Inquisition says a series of caves he has explored may be the place where the Maya actually tried to depict this highway through hell.
'The Place of Fear'Dario Lopez-Mills, AP5 photos Using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish conquistadors, a Mexican archaeologist has discovered a series of caves where people from the Mayan civilization tried to depict the journey into the afterlife. Here, the scholar, Guillermo de Anda, examines the underground lake located in Tzibichen on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in October.
The network of underground chambers, roads and temples beneath farmland and jungle on the Yucatan peninsula suggests the Maya fashioned them to mimic the journey to the underworld, or Xibalba, described in ancient mythological texts such as the Popol Vuh.
"It was the place of fear, the place of cold, the place of danger, of the abyss," said University of Yucatan archaeologist Guillermo de Anda.
Searching for the names of sacred sites mentioned by Indian heretics who were put on trial by Inquisition courts, De Anda discovered what appear to be stages of the legendary journey, recreated in a half-dozen caves south of the Yucatan state capital of Merida.
Archaeologists have long known that the Maya regarded caves as sacred and built structures in some.
But De Anda's team introduced "an extremely important ingredient" by using historical records to locate and connect a series of sacred caves, and link them with the concept of the Mayan road to the afterworld, said archaeologist Bruce Dahlin of Shepherd University, who has studied other Maya sites in the Yucatan.
The Associated Press followed de Anda and his team into the caves, squeezing through tiny, overgrown entrances and rappelling down narrow shafts and slippery tree roots.
There, in the stygian darkness, a scene unfolded that was eerily reminiscent of an "Indiana Jones" movie — tottering ancient temple platforms, slippery staircases and tortuous paths that skirted underground lakes littered with Mayan pottery and ancient skulls.
By MARK STEVENSON
AP
Nov. 9, 2008
TZIBICHEN CENOTE, Mexico
Legend says the afterlife for ancient Mayas was a terrifying obstacle course in which the dead had to traverse rivers of blood, and chambers full of sharp knives, bats and jaguars.
Now a Mexican archaeologist using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish Inquisition says a series of caves he has explored may be the place where the Maya actually tried to depict this highway through hell.
'The Place of Fear'Dario Lopez-Mills, AP5 photos Using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish conquistadors, a Mexican archaeologist has discovered a series of caves where people from the Mayan civilization tried to depict the journey into the afterlife. Here, the scholar, Guillermo de Anda, examines the underground lake located in Tzibichen on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in October.
The network of underground chambers, roads and temples beneath farmland and jungle on the Yucatan peninsula suggests the Maya fashioned them to mimic the journey to the underworld, or Xibalba, described in ancient mythological texts such as the Popol Vuh.
"It was the place of fear, the place of cold, the place of danger, of the abyss," said University of Yucatan archaeologist Guillermo de Anda.
Searching for the names of sacred sites mentioned by Indian heretics who were put on trial by Inquisition courts, De Anda discovered what appear to be stages of the legendary journey, recreated in a half-dozen caves south of the Yucatan state capital of Merida.
Archaeologists have long known that the Maya regarded caves as sacred and built structures in some.
But De Anda's team introduced "an extremely important ingredient" by using historical records to locate and connect a series of sacred caves, and link them with the concept of the Mayan road to the afterworld, said archaeologist Bruce Dahlin of Shepherd University, who has studied other Maya sites in the Yucatan.
The Associated Press followed de Anda and his team into the caves, squeezing through tiny, overgrown entrances and rappelling down narrow shafts and slippery tree roots.
There, in the stygian darkness, a scene unfolded that was eerily reminiscent of an "Indiana Jones" movie — tottering ancient temple platforms, slippery staircases and tortuous paths that skirted underground lakes littered with Mayan pottery and ancient skulls.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Is your mother nicer than Prince Charles' mother?
I'm not a fan of the English monarchy, but I sympathize with Prince Charles just as I do with any child of a cold mother.
Prince Charles Turns 60
By GREGORY KATZ, AP
Nov. 13, 2008
...By the time he turns 60 Friday, Prince Charles will have spent a lifetime in line to become king. That's put him in quite a bind. The longest-waiting heir in British history only ascends to the throne when his beloved mother dies or decides to step down...
The queen has indicated informally that she plans to keep the job for life and some people think the 82-year-old monarch intends to live forever, or at least as long as her mother, who died at 101...
Prince Charles Turns 60
By GREGORY KATZ, AP
Nov. 13, 2008
...By the time he turns 60 Friday, Prince Charles will have spent a lifetime in line to become king. That's put him in quite a bind. The longest-waiting heir in British history only ascends to the throne when his beloved mother dies or decides to step down...
The queen has indicated informally that she plans to keep the job for life and some people think the 82-year-old monarch intends to live forever, or at least as long as her mother, who died at 101...
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Holocaust survivor recounts Kristallnacht , 70 years later
Boston Globe
By Emily A. Canal
November 10, 2008
Dr. Margot Segall-Blank stood yesterday in front of a photo of smoke billowing from a synagogue and spoke about what she saw in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1938, the first day of Kristallnacht, a two-day, anti-Semitic rampage in Nazi Germany in which approximately 91 people were killed and about 267 synagogues destroyed.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," said Segall-Blank, an endocrinologist who lives in Brookline, as she recalled being a child and seeing her synagogue burn. "I didn't understand that the fire was not an accident."
Segall-Blank spoke at Hebrew College in Brookline yesterday as part of the program, "Remembering Kristallnacht: Standing Together 70 Years Later," which featured the opening of an art exhibit, "Standing Again: A New Generation Responds to the Holocaust."
Segall-Blank recalled that distant day when she was in second grade, walking two younger children to synagogue before her religious classes.
"We got to be about half a mile away and saw smoke and smelled smoke," Segall-Blank said. "I saw the Nazi boys in their brown shirts waving swastika flags and singing, 'Death to the Jews.' "
Julie Hock, New England's regional director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, introduced Segall-Blank and explained that the name Kristallnacht means "the night of broken glass," and is named for all the windows broken during the violence.
Segall-Blank escaped Nazi Germany in 1941 and emigrated with her family to Australia. She studied medicine there, and in 1955 went to Israel for three years to work in an Army hospital. She also treated children in Israel, which inspired to her to focus on pediatrics.
She moved to Brookline in 1973.
"I don't consider myself a German," Segall-Blank said. "I consider myself an Australian because that was the country that saved my family and my life. Our story ended happily unlike the other several millions."
Segall-Blank remembered being frustrated as a child in Berlin with the passive reaction of Jewish elders to the persecution they faced.
"I wanted to defend myself and wanted to take action, but the elders just stood by and watched," Segall-Blank said. "The mistake was not to realize that something really terrible was lurking."
People who attended yesterday's event were invited to browse a new exhibit of art inspired by Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. The hallways of the Hebrew College were decorated with the photography of Emily Carbato, paintings of Stepheny Kotzen Riemer, and a sculpture by Carol Cohen.
A bent glass sculpture that encased a dead bird and was partially painted orange to suggest fire drew the most attention, according to Evelyn Herwitz, the college's director of marketing and communications.
"It looks like an explosion and a house on fire," Herwitz said. "The glass looks like the wings of a bird and reminds me of a phoenix rising from the ashes."
Herwitz said the show, which will remain open until Jan. 31, is designed to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
Michael Laufer of Canton, who attended the event with his wife, said his father was a Holocaust survivor and had lost relatives and friends in concentration camps. He said those who suffered should never be forgotten.
"We need to see more of this taught in public schools," he said.
By Emily A. Canal
November 10, 2008
Dr. Margot Segall-Blank stood yesterday in front of a photo of smoke billowing from a synagogue and spoke about what she saw in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1938, the first day of Kristallnacht, a two-day, anti-Semitic rampage in Nazi Germany in which approximately 91 people were killed and about 267 synagogues destroyed.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," said Segall-Blank, an endocrinologist who lives in Brookline, as she recalled being a child and seeing her synagogue burn. "I didn't understand that the fire was not an accident."
Segall-Blank spoke at Hebrew College in Brookline yesterday as part of the program, "Remembering Kristallnacht: Standing Together 70 Years Later," which featured the opening of an art exhibit, "Standing Again: A New Generation Responds to the Holocaust."
Segall-Blank recalled that distant day when she was in second grade, walking two younger children to synagogue before her religious classes.
"We got to be about half a mile away and saw smoke and smelled smoke," Segall-Blank said. "I saw the Nazi boys in their brown shirts waving swastika flags and singing, 'Death to the Jews.' "
Julie Hock, New England's regional director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, introduced Segall-Blank and explained that the name Kristallnacht means "the night of broken glass," and is named for all the windows broken during the violence.
Segall-Blank escaped Nazi Germany in 1941 and emigrated with her family to Australia. She studied medicine there, and in 1955 went to Israel for three years to work in an Army hospital. She also treated children in Israel, which inspired to her to focus on pediatrics.
She moved to Brookline in 1973.
"I don't consider myself a German," Segall-Blank said. "I consider myself an Australian because that was the country that saved my family and my life. Our story ended happily unlike the other several millions."
Segall-Blank remembered being frustrated as a child in Berlin with the passive reaction of Jewish elders to the persecution they faced.
"I wanted to defend myself and wanted to take action, but the elders just stood by and watched," Segall-Blank said. "The mistake was not to realize that something really terrible was lurking."
People who attended yesterday's event were invited to browse a new exhibit of art inspired by Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. The hallways of the Hebrew College were decorated with the photography of Emily Carbato, paintings of Stepheny Kotzen Riemer, and a sculpture by Carol Cohen.
A bent glass sculpture that encased a dead bird and was partially painted orange to suggest fire drew the most attention, according to Evelyn Herwitz, the college's director of marketing and communications.
"It looks like an explosion and a house on fire," Herwitz said. "The glass looks like the wings of a bird and reminds me of a phoenix rising from the ashes."
Herwitz said the show, which will remain open until Jan. 31, is designed to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
Michael Laufer of Canton, who attended the event with his wife, said his father was a Holocaust survivor and had lost relatives and friends in concentration camps. He said those who suffered should never be forgotten.
"We need to see more of this taught in public schools," he said.
Mormons meet with Jews over baptizing Holocaust victims
A SHORT LIST OF NON-MORMONS WHO HAVE BEEN POSTHUMOUSLY BAPTIZED
Source: Helen Radkey
Ghengis Khan--Pagan
Joan of Arc--Catholic
Adolf Hitler--What? Mormons want this guy to have his own planet?????
Josef Stalin--ditto
Buddha--Buddhist
Anne Frank--Jewish
CNN
November 11, 2008
Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews
NEW YORK (AP)
Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.
But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."
"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.
"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion," Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."
Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion."
In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City...
Source: Helen Radkey
Ghengis Khan--Pagan
Joan of Arc--Catholic
Adolf Hitler--What? Mormons want this guy to have his own planet?????
Josef Stalin--ditto
Buddha--Buddhist
Anne Frank--Jewish
CNN
November 11, 2008
Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews
NEW YORK (AP)
Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.
But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."
"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.
"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion," Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."
Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion."
In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City...
Obama's Candidacy Angers, Excites Hate Groups
by Dina Temple-Raston
All Things Considered
National Public Radio NPR
October 28, 2008
The charges Monday against two neo-Nazi skinheads accused of plotting to kill Barack Obama drew attention to law enforcement's simmering concerns over how white supremacists are reacting to the possibility of a black president.
The alleged plan that Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, of West Helena, Ark., were hatching was fantastic in its scope. Federal agents said Cowart and Schlesselman planned to rob a gun store, target students at a largely black high school and then try to kill Obama.
The two men did not expect to be successful, but they wanted to die trying, investigators said. They said the two planned to drive as fast as they could toward Obama and shoot at him from the windows of their car. They allegedly had discussed wearing white tuxedos and top hats for the occasion. The suspects are being held without bond on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms and threatening a presidential candidate.
This is the second white supremacist plot against Obama that authorities have revealed. In August, just days before Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Denver, police arrested three men with white supremacist ties for possibly threatening him.
While law enforcement officials say Obama was never in any danger in either situation, they are also quick to say that they cannot afford to take these cases lightly. And they have been expecting new challenges from white supremacist groups.
"There is a probable hypothesis that in the event that Obama becomes president that you could have a galvanization of these white supremacist groups," said John Karl, the officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's criminal conspiracy unit. "Obviously, law enforcement needs to be prepared, and how do you prepare? You need to become as resourceful and comprehensively understand the groups and individuals involved."
Karl says the First Amendment ties law enforcement's hands. Officers cannot move in until and unless these groups actually commit a crime.
"If no crime has been committed, no activity has come up on the radar screen, we can't arbitrarily start rounding people up," he said. "There is a little problem with the Constitution and things like that."
Supremacist Groups In California
Travel out of metropolitan Los Angeles — to Southern California cities farther inland where supremacists have traditionally congregated — and it is clear that law enforcement is in a state of alert.
Chris Keeling is part of the FBI's hate crimes task force in Santa Clarita. As he sees it, Obama's effect on the hate movement is no longer theoretical; it has already happened.
"There is more on the Internet. There are more flyers, leafletting going out, because now they have a target," he said. "Take Obama out of the situation, you're still going to have leafletting. But having Obama in there and being a stone's throw from being the president, has it increased the Internet activity? Absolutely, absolutely."
These days, Keeling works about six hate crime calls a week. Some of them are serious. A couple of months ago, skinheads beat up a customer at a restaurant because he was black. Others are crimes of opportunity. Obama posters, for example, have become an easy target for vandals to deface.
The FBI set up a task force in Santa Clarita partly because racist skinhead gangs have long been a fixture there. For years, the Antelope Valley had been a white enclave — a refuge from Los Angeles. When immigrants began moving in, hate groups saw their membership ranks grow as whites in the neighborhoods banded together. Keeling said Obama's candidacy is adding fear and uncertainty to an already volatile mix.
"This is different. This is new. This has never happened before," Keeling said of Obama's candidacy. "We're not doing anything extra, but we're kind of being more cognizant of things."
Candidacy Fits Into Ideology
Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin, who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
What the groups were saying — "Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours" — has occurred, he said.
You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. Duke has called Obama a "visual aid for hate groups."
He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America.
"This is a cultural and racial battlefront," said Levin. "Barack Obama is symbol No. 1 of the worst the future has to offer."
While Obama may be an easy focus of discussion for haters, he hasn't unified them. In fact, in many ways, he has managed to divide the movement.
Catalyst For A Race War
Tim Zaal, a former white supremacist from Los Angeles, says the split Obama has created is almost generational — between old-school Ku Klux Klan types who are viscerally against a black man running for president and a new wave of haters.
"You have the more — kind-of strange to say it — progressive white attitude: The worse it gets, the better," said Zaal.
Zaal says the new generation is particularly focused on what they see as the coming race war. They have been trying to spark one for years. Some think, even hope, that an Obama presidency will do just that.
Zaal says some will actually vote for Obama to send the country into a tailspin. "The faster this country falls, the sooner white revolution will arise," he said.
That mindset is all over the neo-Nazi Web sites. On one, a man with the pen name "LastOfMyKind" wrote, "Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites."
This is what worries the police and the FBI.
All Things Considered
National Public Radio NPR
October 28, 2008
The charges Monday against two neo-Nazi skinheads accused of plotting to kill Barack Obama drew attention to law enforcement's simmering concerns over how white supremacists are reacting to the possibility of a black president.
The alleged plan that Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, of West Helena, Ark., were hatching was fantastic in its scope. Federal agents said Cowart and Schlesselman planned to rob a gun store, target students at a largely black high school and then try to kill Obama.
The two men did not expect to be successful, but they wanted to die trying, investigators said. They said the two planned to drive as fast as they could toward Obama and shoot at him from the windows of their car. They allegedly had discussed wearing white tuxedos and top hats for the occasion. The suspects are being held without bond on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms and threatening a presidential candidate.
This is the second white supremacist plot against Obama that authorities have revealed. In August, just days before Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Denver, police arrested three men with white supremacist ties for possibly threatening him.
While law enforcement officials say Obama was never in any danger in either situation, they are also quick to say that they cannot afford to take these cases lightly. And they have been expecting new challenges from white supremacist groups.
"There is a probable hypothesis that in the event that Obama becomes president that you could have a galvanization of these white supremacist groups," said John Karl, the officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's criminal conspiracy unit. "Obviously, law enforcement needs to be prepared, and how do you prepare? You need to become as resourceful and comprehensively understand the groups and individuals involved."
Karl says the First Amendment ties law enforcement's hands. Officers cannot move in until and unless these groups actually commit a crime.
"If no crime has been committed, no activity has come up on the radar screen, we can't arbitrarily start rounding people up," he said. "There is a little problem with the Constitution and things like that."
Supremacist Groups In California
Travel out of metropolitan Los Angeles — to Southern California cities farther inland where supremacists have traditionally congregated — and it is clear that law enforcement is in a state of alert.
Chris Keeling is part of the FBI's hate crimes task force in Santa Clarita. As he sees it, Obama's effect on the hate movement is no longer theoretical; it has already happened.
"There is more on the Internet. There are more flyers, leafletting going out, because now they have a target," he said. "Take Obama out of the situation, you're still going to have leafletting. But having Obama in there and being a stone's throw from being the president, has it increased the Internet activity? Absolutely, absolutely."
These days, Keeling works about six hate crime calls a week. Some of them are serious. A couple of months ago, skinheads beat up a customer at a restaurant because he was black. Others are crimes of opportunity. Obama posters, for example, have become an easy target for vandals to deface.
The FBI set up a task force in Santa Clarita partly because racist skinhead gangs have long been a fixture there. For years, the Antelope Valley had been a white enclave — a refuge from Los Angeles. When immigrants began moving in, hate groups saw their membership ranks grow as whites in the neighborhoods banded together. Keeling said Obama's candidacy is adding fear and uncertainty to an already volatile mix.
"This is different. This is new. This has never happened before," Keeling said of Obama's candidacy. "We're not doing anything extra, but we're kind of being more cognizant of things."
Candidacy Fits Into Ideology
Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin, who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
What the groups were saying — "Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours" — has occurred, he said.
You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. Duke has called Obama a "visual aid for hate groups."
He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America.
"This is a cultural and racial battlefront," said Levin. "Barack Obama is symbol No. 1 of the worst the future has to offer."
While Obama may be an easy focus of discussion for haters, he hasn't unified them. In fact, in many ways, he has managed to divide the movement.
Catalyst For A Race War
Tim Zaal, a former white supremacist from Los Angeles, says the split Obama has created is almost generational — between old-school Ku Klux Klan types who are viscerally against a black man running for president and a new wave of haters.
"You have the more — kind-of strange to say it — progressive white attitude: The worse it gets, the better," said Zaal.
Zaal says the new generation is particularly focused on what they see as the coming race war. They have been trying to spark one for years. Some think, even hope, that an Obama presidency will do just that.
Zaal says some will actually vote for Obama to send the country into a tailspin. "The faster this country falls, the sooner white revolution will arise," he said.
That mindset is all over the neo-Nazi Web sites. On one, a man with the pen name "LastOfMyKind" wrote, "Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites."
This is what worries the police and the FBI.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
How Arnold Schwarzenegger treats disabled people
Where should budget cuts be applied? Arnold changed California regulations to deny services to disabled people where otherwise they qualify for services. People were qualified before 2003 with fewer disabilities than individuals applying after 2003. While more severely disabled people are given nothing, those with fewer disabilities will continue to get services under the new regulations.
This link is self explanatory:
This link is self explanatory:
Monday, November 03, 2008
Barack Obama's grandmother dies in Hawaii
Just hours before Election Day, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama announced that his 86-year-old grandmother died Monday after a battle with cancer. The news comes a week after he visited Madelyn Payne Dunham in Hawaii after she fell seriously ill following a hip fracture. His grandfather Stanley Dunham died in 1992.
Barack Obama's Grandmother Dies
By HERBERT SAMPLE, AP
Nov. 3, 2008
Barack Obama's grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election.
Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86. Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said Dunham died peacefully late Sunday night after a battle with cancer.
They said: "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances."
Obama learned of her death Monday morning while he was campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. He planned to go ahead with campaign appearances.
The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
Last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to Hawaii to be with Dunham as her health declined.
Obama said the decision to go to Hawaii was easy to make, telling CBS that he "got there too late" when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at 53, and wanted to make sure "that I don't make the same mistake twice."
The Kansas-born Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised their grandson for several years so he could attend school in Honolulu while their daughter and her second husband lived overseas. Her influence on Obama's manner and the way he viewed the world was substantial, the candidate himself told millions watching him accept his party's nomination in Denver in August.
"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."
Obama's nickname for his grandmother was "Toot," a version of the Hawaiian word for grandmother, tutu. Many of his speeches describe her working on a bomber assembly line during World War II.
Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she graduated from high school. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in 1942. After several moves to and from California, Texas, Washington and Kansas, Stanley Dunham's job landed the family in Hawaii.
It was there that Stanley Ann later met and fell in love with Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama Sr. They had met in Russian class at the University of Hawaii. Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last long. She later married an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro, another university student she met in Hawaii.
Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather at age 6. But in 1971, her mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. He stayed with the Dunhams until he graduated from high school in 1979.
In his autobiography, Obama wrote fondly of playing basketball on a court below his grandparents' 10th-floor Honolulu apartment, and looking up to see his grandmother watching...
Republican dirty tricks against Obama
Some Republicans are using race as a weapon against Barack Obama:
Voters Across Nation Hit by Dirty Tricks
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP
Nov. 3, 2008
...Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.
Over the weekend in Virginia, bogus fliers with an authentic-looking commonwealth seal said fears of high voter turnout had prompted election officials to hold two elections — one on Tuesday for Republicans and another on Wednesday for Democrats.
In New Mexico, two Hispanic women filed a lawsuit last week claiming they were harassed by a private investigator working for a Republican lawyer who came to their homes and threatened to call immigration authorities, even though they are U.S. citizens.
"He was questioning her status, saying that he needed to see her papers and documents to show that she was a U.S. citizen and was a legitimate voter," said Guadalupe Bojorquez, speaking on behalf of her mother, Dora Escobedo, a 67-year-old Albuquerque resident who speaks only Spanish. "He totally, totally scared the heck out of her."
In Pennsylvania, e-mails appeared linking Democrat Barack Obama to the Holocaust. "Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, Nov. 4," said the electronic message, paid for by an entity calling itself the Republican Federal Committee. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake."...
Voters Across Nation Hit by Dirty Tricks
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP
Nov. 3, 2008
...Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.
Over the weekend in Virginia, bogus fliers with an authentic-looking commonwealth seal said fears of high voter turnout had prompted election officials to hold two elections — one on Tuesday for Republicans and another on Wednesday for Democrats.
In New Mexico, two Hispanic women filed a lawsuit last week claiming they were harassed by a private investigator working for a Republican lawyer who came to their homes and threatened to call immigration authorities, even though they are U.S. citizens.
"He was questioning her status, saying that he needed to see her papers and documents to show that she was a U.S. citizen and was a legitimate voter," said Guadalupe Bojorquez, speaking on behalf of her mother, Dora Escobedo, a 67-year-old Albuquerque resident who speaks only Spanish. "He totally, totally scared the heck out of her."
In Pennsylvania, e-mails appeared linking Democrat Barack Obama to the Holocaust. "Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, Nov. 4," said the electronic message, paid for by an entity calling itself the Republican Federal Committee. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake."...
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