Genetic traces
Scientists have detected the faint genetic traces left by medieval
crusaders in the Middle East.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7316281.stm
Tuatara
Study of the ‘living fossils’ may challenge theory of rate of
evolution in cold-blooded organisms.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080327/full/news.2008.695.html
Genetic link to schizophrenia
Researchers have found that people with schizophrenia are far more
likely than other people to have a certain type of error in their
genes. Scientists believe the finding will help them develop new
treatments for schizophrenia and identify young people at high risk of
developing the disorder.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89163694
Chimps big risk-takers
Chimpanzees are big risk-takers, being invariably tempted to go for
the grand prize even if this also means frequent disappointment.
Bonobos, like humans, are strongly risk-adverse, and prefer to go for
the fixed, dependable reward.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_p6d8jLopryaTvl9CT4D9Am9r7w
Bird cooperation
Who ever heard of birds cooperating on a project together? Sure, a
pair may build a nest together, but cooperating on a single task to
get food is something only primates have been thought capable of. Now
it turns out that rooks, like chimps, can cooperate with each other –
although they may lack the competitive edge needed understand teamwork
properly.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13544-birds-team-up-to-solve-food-puzzle.html
Chomsky: Iraq
Noam Chomsky: Why Don’t We Ask What’s Best For the Iraqis? [VIDEO]
Posted by Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority on March 28, 2008 at 6:08 AM.
During this election season we’ve already heard Republicans and Democrats alike discussing the best way for America to save face in Iraq, as if the sake of our ego is of enough importance to defy international law. Obama, Clinton, and McCain will all keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, despite the will of the Iraqi people. That “democracy†we brought them sure isn’t worth a damn when we don’t respect it ourselves. Just as the Palestinians learned when they elected Hamas into power, the will of a people in their own land is only legitimate when it coincides with our imperialistic Western vision for the region.
American politicians are regularly asked what they think the best option is for Iraq. As Chomsky bluntly states, aggressors have no rights. Our occupation is criminal. What Americans want for Iraq is irrelevant.
National birth defect
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national “birth defect” that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country’s very founding.
03.27.08
Is Our Universe Ruled by Artificial Intelligence?
Is Our Universe Ruled by Artificial Intelligence?
Science fiction is filled with unusual alien species. But apart from the occasional robot, biological life is running the show. But NASA scientist, Dr. Steven Dick, sees a future Universe that has evolved past biology. Where every intelligence is artificial. Consider the likelihood of a postbiological Universe.
Complexity sophistries
Deluded Darwinists make life hard for amateurs, intended: Evolution Gets a Boost: No Cost for Complexity. If the results in this article were on the level they would be in larger headlines.
Also, note the denunciation of ‘creationists’, as if all critics were religiously motivated.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tibet & CIA connections
Exposing/documenting the hidden connections behind the Tibetan liberation movements is, of course, crucial, and such data should be welcome here. The insidious triangulations of the NED need to be understood by anyone who wishes to support a genuine liberation/independence effort.
But it is also true that CIA bashing and demonizing the Dalai Lama miss the point that the moment is being lost, or has been lost, and the drugged television democrats of the American system are likely to tune out as the Olympics roll around.
From R-G “Democratic Imperialism”: Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for
Democracy
by Michael Barker
Global Research, August 13, 2007http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6530
03.26.08
Eagleton on religion
British Critic Terry Eagleton To Speak on “Faith and Fundamentalism” at Yale
(Media-Newswire.com) – New Haven, Conn. — Acclaimed and controversial literary critic Terry Eagleton will deliver a series of lectures at Yale in early April on fundamentalism and religious faith as part of the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship.
Read the rest of this entry »
Darwinists “dragged into court, but not the physicists”
“…always dragged into court, but not the physicists…”
A revealing statement. The suggestion is clear that Darwinism isn’t really science after the fashion of physics.
People get tired of being conned. Read the rest of this entry »
SW headlines
Wall Street or homeowners:
GUESS WHO’S GETTING A BAILOUT?
The crackup of Bear Stearns ended with a bailout for Wall Street. But millions of homeowners will pay for the crisis Wall Street made.
http://www.socialistworker.org/2008-1/667/667_06_Bailout.shtml
McCain’s Brain
McCain’s Brain: Unfit For Command, or Merely Incontinent?
Posted by Kirk James Murphy, M.D., Firedoglake at 6:28 AM on March 26, 2008.
The GOP nominee for Commander-in-Chief suffers from brain impairment so severe that his military peers publicly warn us he is unfit for command.
Big Pharma
A Question of Values: Drug Patent Laws Must Have Public Health Exceptions
Big Pharma is up in arms about developing countries importing less expensive generic versions of their drugs.
By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
Posted on March 25, 2008
Some big pharmaceutical companies are up in arms about developing countries importing less expensive generic versions of drugs for which these companies hold a patent monopoly. But the procedure is perfectly legal, even under the World Trade Organization’s pro-pharmaceutical-monopoly rules. The only question is whether these huge corporations – who used their political muscle in Washington to prevent our government from lowering the price of Medicare prescription drugs — will intimidate other governments that are trying to provide essential medicines to their citizens.
Read the rest of this entry »
GW: Just deal with it
Sciftp
Global warming: Just deal with it, some scientists say
The ‘non-skeptic heretic club’ says it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change. Critics say the flaw in the theory is that the effects will be unpredictable.
By Alan Zarembo
Los Angeles Times March 26, 2008
The disastrous hurricanes of recent years have become the poster children of global warming.
Read the rest of this entry »
Hypergirls
Hyperactive young girls are more likely to have “serious” problems in
adulthood, research suggests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7306590.stm
First european
Fossils unearthed in northern Spain are around 1.1 million years old
and represent our earliest known European’ hominin ancestors
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13537-first-european-had-a-mountain-retreat-in-spain.html
Commercial genetics
Firms Sell Answers On Health, Even Love
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/24/AR2008032402750.html
Bipolar nation
A big shift in our understanding of mood disorders is under way, with
many depressed people now being reclassified as bipolar. But is
trading antidepressant drugs for mood stabilisers a sign of progress,
or just the latest diagnostic fad?
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10095
What the Government Doesn’t Want You To Know About Global Warming
What the Government Doesn’t Want You To Know About Global Warming
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted March 24, 2008.
An inside look at how the Bush Administration and special interests have been trying to withhold information from the public.
The Germs Next Door
March 26, 2008
Bidding War for Biowarfare Labs
The Germs Next Door
By STAN COX
What would it take to convince you that your town should play host to the world’s most feared human and animal pathogens? Believe it or not, five states are locked in fierce competition over a proposed bioterror lab that would have them doing just that.
Read the rest of this entry »
03.25.08
Expelled Overview
From Dawkins site:
Expelled Overview
by Josh Timonen, RichardDawkins.net
Since I was one of the group who watched Expelled at the Mall of America last week with Richard Dawkins and (not!) PZ Myers, I thought I should do my part to expose the movie for what it is. Richard and PZ Myers have written responses, a conversation between them about their experience is now online, and over one hundred blog posts have appeared on the subject. I think the best contribution I can make to all of this is to give you as detailed an account of the actual film as I can, so that you don’t have to give Mark Mathis any money in order to know what Expelled is all about.
Read the rest of this entry »
Olympics boycotts
Boycott Beijing
The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest.
By Anne Applebaum
A boycott would, for me, almost be an involuntary reflex, effective immediately, like freezing in your tracks. I couldn’t even turn on to a TV channel to the Olympics after the recent news from Tibet.
Cocacola et al. should have thought of that before hand.
Read the rest of this entry »
03.19.08
Why Was Eliot Spitzer Outed?
From R-G
As Chuck Baldwin asked in “Thoughts on the Spitzer Sex Scandal” posted
here the other day,
“Why did the hammer fall on Governor Spitzer now? … The Republican and
Democrat parties alike are awash in sexual immorality – both
heterosexual and homosexual. And 99% of this debauchery is never
reported. The guilty politicos are never ‘caught’, never ‘outed’.
Read the rest of this entry »
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