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A FEW OF THE STORIES WE'RE READING WITH OUR MORNING COFFEE |
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| Respondents indicate a deep suspicion of U.S. motives, and religion has little to do with radicalization of Muslim views. Christian Science Monitor |
| Bankers' spending is growing as fast as their bonuses, a new study shows, and many are putting their money into second homes and art instead of the bank. Wall Street Journal |
| Mexico's congress has complained that the U.S. Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, and workers building a border fence crossed into Mexican territory without permission. Aljazeera |
| Making robots that interact with people emotionally is the goal of a European project led by British scientists. BBC |
| The launch of a new radar satellite on Saturday, if successful, will complete Japan's planned four-satellite system for intelligence gathering. While it cannot, under the country's constitution, be labeled a "spy" satellite, many experts agree that the nation needs to boost its space-based surveillance capabilities. Asia Times |
| Imprecise reporters' notes bedeviled the CIA leak trial. One of the few reporters whose notes were not dissected in the Libby trial was Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. He spoke confidently about what he learned about Plame and when he learned it. He had taped his interview. Editor & Publisher |
| In the late ’70s, “politically correct,” “PC” for short, entered the public lexicon. Folks on the left used the term to dismiss views that were seen as too rigid and, also, to poke fun at themselves for the immense care they took to neither say nor do anything that might offend the political sensibilities of others. “You are so PC,” one would say with a smile. In the ’80s, the right, taking the words at face value, latched on to the term and used it to deride leftish voices. Beleaguered progressives, ever earnest, then defended political correctness as a worthy concept, thus validating conservatives’ derision. Today, on both the left and the right, being PC is no laughing matter; three decades of culture wars have generated a bewildering thicket of terminology. In These Times |
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| Antony and Cleopatra, one of history's most romantic couples, were
not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, academics
have said.
A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor, had a pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose. Her Roman lover, played by Richard Burton, had bulging eyes, thick neck and a hook nose. The tiny coin was studied by experts at Newcastle University. BBC |
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| As a paleontologist and a creationist, Marcus R. Ross has produced academic work that contradicts his own beliefs. NYT (reg/req) |
| Well, zut alors! A distinguished French literary professor has become
a surprise bestselling author by writing a book explaining how to wax intellectual
about tomes that you have never actually read.
Pierre Baynard, 52, specialises in the link between literature and psychoanalysis, and says it is perfectly possible to bluff your way through a book that you have never read — especially if that conversation happens to be taking place with someone else who also hasn’t read it. All of which just goes to confirm what I’ve always thought about French academics, which is that mostly they are oversubsidised frauds. Obviously I haven’t read Mr Baynard’s book; but it is in the spirit of his oeuvre that I shall proceed to write about it anyway. The first thing to say about Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus (How to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read) is what a wonderfully French concept this is. The French take great pride in their intellectual patrimony, considering themselves to be pretty much the inventors of most forms of high art, something that irritates other nations, especially the Italians, a great deal. For them it is crucial to be able to hold their own in a literary conversation, a mark of cultural honour that is the very essence of French-ness. The trouble is, in these busy times, who apart from Alain de Botton has time to really get to the bottom of Proust? Times Online |
| The arrest of Lisa Nowak and the death of Anna Nicole Smith strained even the tabloid press last week. NYT (reg/req) |
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| Over almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University
managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates,
entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world
with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events.
But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its founder says, it is time. The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university’s engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling. “For 28 years, we’ve done what we wanted to do, and there’s no reason to stay and generate more of the same data,” said the laboratory’s founder, Robert G. Jahn, 76, former dean of Princeton’s engineering school and an emeritus professor. “If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will.” NYTs Magazine |
| The U.S. accuses the "highest levels" of Iran's government of supplying sophisticated bombs to Iraq's insurgents. BBC |
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| Her name was Jennifer Parcell, age 20, and she died in Iraq this week -- though you'd have trouble finding that information amid the thousands of inches of press coverage of "starlet" Smith. Here is her story. Editor & Publisher |
| The death of Anna Nicole Smith ... was a feeding frenzy for the national media, and coverage of the war was drowned out: NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq. ThinkProgress.org |
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| Long stuck in obscurity, the Ku Klux Klan is seeing an increase in activity and a return to its nativist origins. Christian Science Monitor |
| How a network of gay political donors is stealthily fighting sexual
discrimination and reshaping American politics.
The Atlantic Monthly |
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| Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.
The Chinese could close all their factories. Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern. But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming. LA Times |
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| The words of warning about global warming from the top panel of international scientists Friday were purposely blunt: "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the cause is "very likely" man-made, and "would continue for centuries." The AP ... Read the 21-page report here (PDF). |
| A new National Intelligence Estimate paints a grim view of the violence
and political situation facing the United States in Iraq, according to
officials familiar with a much-anticipated, collaborative analysis from
all 16 U.S. spy agencies.
The Office of the National Intelligence Director was releasing an unclassified summary of the document — entitled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead" — on Friday. The AP |
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The AP |
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| A major international analysis of climate change due Friday will conclude
that humankind's reliance on fossil fuels — coal, fuel oil and natural
gas — is to blame for global warming, according to three scientists familiar
with the research on which it is based.
The gold-standard Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report represents "a real convergence happening here, a consensus that this is a total global no-brainer," says U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, former director of the federal government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey. "The big message that will come out is the strength of the attribution
of the warming to human activities," says researcher Claudia Tebaldi of
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.
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| A huge unused swimming pool is one example of the U.S. reconstruction funds being wasted in Iraq, auditors say. BBC |
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| An analysis of television commercials for prescription drugs found
that few mentioned risk factors or non-drug treatments for the conditions
they target, scientists reported Monday.
The researchers recorded commercials that aired in prime time on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox from June 30 to July 27, 2004. They ended up with 38 unique ads representing seven of the 10 top-selling prescription drugs of 2004, they write in the Annals of Family Medicine. "All of the ads … contained elements that we considered problematic," says lead author Dominick Frosch, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles. "I think consumers should be more skeptical of the pharmaceutical ads than some surveys find they are." Among flaws identified by Frosch and his collaborators: •Only a quarter of the ads mentioned causes or risk factors for the condition treated by the drug. •None of the commercials mentioned lifestyle changes as an alternative to medication (for example, diet and exercise to lower cholesterol), although about a fifth mentioned such changes as an adjunct to medication. •Only a quarter of the commercials mentioned how common or uncommon the treated disease is. •Most of the commercials were unrealistic in portraying medication's role in achieving health. The ads showed people who regained complete control of their lives after taking the advertised drug. "Certainly, they leave a lot to be desired in terms of providing useful educational information to consumers," says Frosch, a health psychologist. USA Today |
| Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the
Soviets' persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," a
Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as
covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel.
Ivan Tolstoy, who is also a broadcaster for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, writes in a forthcoming book that the CIA secretly arranged for the publication of a limited Russian-language edition of "Doctor Zhivago" in 1958 to help Pasternak secure the Nobel Prize in Literature that year. "Pasternak's novel became a tool that was used by the United States to teach the Soviet Union a lesson," Tolstoy said in a telephone interview from Prague, where he works as a Russian commentator for the U.S. government-funded radio stations. The novelist knew nothing of the CIA's action, according to Tolstoy and the writer's family. Tolstoy said his book, "The Laundered Novel," is based on more than a decade of research and will be released later this year, the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Doctor Zhivago." He previewed its contents in a recent lecture in Moscow. Washington Post |
| The tiny skeletal remains of human "Hobbits" found on an Indonesian island belong to a completely new branch of our family tree, a study has found. BBC |
| Archaeologists have uncovered what may have been a village for workers
or festival-goers near the mysterious stone circle Stonehenge in England.
The village was located at Durrington Walls, about two miles from Stonehenge,
and is also the location of a wooden version of the stone circle.
Eight houses have been excavated and the researchers believe there were at least 25 of them, archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson said Tuesday at a briefing held by the National Geographic Society. The village was carbon dated to about 2600 B.C., about the same time Stonehenge was built. The Great Pyramid in Egypt was built at about the same time, said Parker Pearson of Sheffield University. The AP |
| The Bush administration rejected any reports that it planned to attack Saddam Hussein as "urban legends". The same language is now being used over the possibility of U.S. action against Iran. But when the U.S. is joined by the Saudis and the Israelis and their powerful supporters in Washington, it spells danger - as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the Iranians in their war with Iraq. Asia Times |
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| Mexico has taken measures to slow illegal immigration, but Central American migrants still flock across its southern border to begin the journey to the U.S. NYT (reg/req) |
| The British East India Company was more than a commercial enterprise.
With its own army, navy and civil service, it was a law unto itself. Nick
Robins' new history paints a hard-nosed picture, devoid of even a scintilla
of nostalgia for the Raj. It is the story of a robber-baron organization
that set the model for today's rapacious multinationals.
Asia Times |
| BJARNE STROUSTRUP, the designer of C++, the most influential programming
language of the last 25 years, has said that “our technological civilization
depends on software.” True, but most software isn’t much good. Too many
programs are ugly: inelegant, unreliable and not very useful. Software
that satisfies and delights is as rare as a phoenix.
All this does more than frustrate computer users. Bad software is terrible for business and the economy. Software failures cost $59.5 billion a year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded in a 2002 study, and fully 25 percent of commercial software projects are abandoned before completion. Of projects that are finished, 75 percent ship late or over budget. The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Programmers don’t know what a computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring over illustrated manuscripts. Worse, programs today contain millions of lines of code, and programmers are fallible like all other humans: there are, on average, 100 to 150 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, according to a 1994 study by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. No wonder so much software is so bad: programmers are drowning in ignorance, complexity and error. NYT (reg/req) |
| Senator Barack Obama, an early frontrunner in the 2008 presidential race, advocates something the U.S. has never had - universal health care, but just how bad a state is America's health care service really in? BBC |
| Hugo Chávez may sound like a throwback, but he has tapped into
a very modern frustration with U.S. power.
NYT's Magazine (reg/req) |
| CHICAGO—As Brian Urlacher triumphantly hoisted the George Halas Trophy Sunday, it was a symbol of more than just the Bears' 39-14 victory over New Orleans—it was a symbol of hope to the thousands of Chicagoans who are still struggling to resume normal lives after the fire that swept through a 2,000-acre swath of downtown, killed over 300 people, injured hundreds more, destroyed a third of Chicago's buildings, and left 100,000 residents homeless this past Oct. 8 through Oct. 10, 1871. The Onion |
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| Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average
than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be
discrimination, a researcher says.
Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8% to 15% more than similar immigrants with much darker skin. "On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch said. The study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1% increase in income. Other researchers said the findings are consistent with other studies on color and point to a skin-tone prejudice that goes beyond race. The AP |
| Pessimism is back. That will not surprise anyone who has been keeping
track of the nation's pulse over the past several months — or perhaps the
last several years. Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, which may have cost
him a second term, would not be at all inappropriate today. Our famous
American optimism faces a mortal threat in the combination of an unwinnable
war, a collapsing dollar, a sagging economy for most people, trouble on
the job front for graduating students, and lowered expectations generally.
And that's aside from the recent scandals among our religious, corporate,
and political leaders, and the pervasive suspicion that results.
The Chronicle of Higher Education |
| A rapid growth in gambling has prompted Russia to ban all casinos and
gaming halls from its major towns and cities.
From Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, Russia's long love-affair with gambling is well documented in the country's greatest works of literature. So it should not come as a great surprise that it is once again boom-time for the gambling industry here, after being banned for most of the last century by the communists. BBC |
| Soaring corn prices expose nation's outsize dependence on tortillas, especially among the poor. Washington Post |
| U.S. media job cuts surged 88 percent in 2006 from the previous year,
a downsizing trend expected to continue this year, a survey said Thursday.
The media industry slashed 17,809 jobs last year, a nearly two-fold increase from the 9,453 cuts in 2005, outplacement consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas said. The figure was the industry's largest annual job-cut total since 43,420 media job cuts accompanied the collapse of the technology bubble in 2001, the survey said. UPI |
| Men who have hormone and radiation therapy for prostate cancer can
experience penile shortening, a study has suggested. Turkish researchers
studied 47 men who were receiving the treatments, the Journal of Urology
reported.
Eighteen months later the researchers assessed the men again, and found a decrease in average stretched penile length from 14.2 to 8.6 centimetres. UK experts said men should be told about the possible side effect. BBC |
| Six years ago, Starbucks drew a blip of attention when it opened a
small shop inside the Forbidden City, Beijing's vast imperial palace.
Back then, China's Internet barely existed, blogging had not yet earned a Mandarin word--boke--and Rui Chenggang was just a fresh college graduate breaking into television news. But in today's China, six years is an eternity. Rui is now a recognizable face on state television, and when he wrote a blog entry this month calling for Starbucks to withdraw from the Forbidden City as a sign of cultural respect, he sparked a media storm over the power of the Web, the power of nationalism and China's power to manage both. Palace authorities are weighing whether to banish the coffee chain from the historic site, and thousands of Internet users are visiting Rui's Web site each day to praise or blast him. To many of them, he is either the voice of China's conscience or a flag-waving opportunist, though Rui says he didn't set out to open a national debate on China's ambivalent embrace of the West. Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
| Scientific advances sometimes come as lightning flashes of inspiration.
But when scientists sit down to record and take credit for what they've
found, they still use much the same method they have for decades – an article
published in a scholarly journal.
But science's hidebound traditions are changing. The Internet has opened up new forms of publishing in which anyone in the world can find and read a scientific paper. And papers themselves are becoming more interactive, leading readers to the underlying data, videos, and discussions that augment their value. With blogs and e-books providing easy means of self-publishing, some observers are speculating that scholarly journals and their controversial system of peer reviews may not be needed at all. Christian Science Monitor |
| Shortly after adman Luca Lindner took over Latin American operations
for Interpublic Group's McCann World Group in 2005, he polled 15 of its
major advertising clients. What did they see as their biggest marketing
opportunities?
One surprising answer: people with low incomes. While many advertisers lavish dollars targeting well-off consumers, in Latin America the vast majority of people have far less money. According to the World Bank, 25% live on less than $2 a day, and many millions of others earn only a few hundred dollars a month. Increasingly, big brands are deciding that people once thought too poor to buy their products may be their biggest growth market. Wall Street Journal |
| An educational experiment in 1989 pitted a group of students with high
reading scores, selected especially for their lack of interest in baseball,
against a group of low-scoring students who happened to be avid baseball
fans. The two groups were asked to demonstrate their reading comprehension
of a passage on baseball. Can you guess which team won?
In The Knowledge Deficit, E. D. Hirsch Jr. recounts this experiment and draws on the work of reading researchers and theorists to argue that “background knowledge,” knowledge not explicitly presented in a text, is essential to reading comprehension. Hirsch advances his case at a time when there is growing concern about the poor reading proficiency of American students compared to their international peers. What is worse, Hirsch points out, is that the longer these students are in school, the lower they drop—to a depressing 15th out of 27 countries by the tenth grade. The scores get worse after the early grades when students are increasingly tested for comprehension and not just for “decoding,” the ability to translate written marks into words. “We need to see the reading comprehension problem,” Hirsch writes, “for what it primarily is—a knowledge problem.” Schooling, according to Hirsch, must supply our students with the broad knowledge—much less of baseball than of history, literature, science, and other traditional subjects—that is requisite for reading. This broad knowledge of words and of the world is also what standardized reading tests in fact test for, Hirsch says. These typically consist of passages on a variety of topics, undisclosed until testing time, for which only a good general education can prepare the student. In or out of the exam room or the research lab, there is no such thing as reading comprehension without prior knowledge of a text’s vocabulary (90 percent of it is the estimated minimum) and its references, and no such thing as effective education without imparting to students a wide range of specific knowledge. The Common Review |
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| Archaeologists say they have unearthed Lupercale—the sacred cave where,
according to legend, a she-wolf nursed the twin founders of Rome and where
the city itself was born.
The long-lost underground chamber was found beneath the remains of Emperor Augustus' palace on the Palatine, a 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) hill in the center of the city. Archaeologists from the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Rome Municipality came across the 50-foot-deep (15-meter-deep) cavity while working to restore the decaying palace. "We were drilling the ground near Augustus' residence to survey the foundations of the building when we discovered the cave," said Irene Iacopi, the archaeologist in charge of the area. "We knew from ancient reports that the Lupercale shouldn't be far from the Emperor's palace, but we didn't expect to find it. It was a lucky surprise. "We didn't enter the cave but took some photos with a probe," Iacopi added. "They show a richly decorated vault encrusted with mosaics and seashells,
too rich to be part of a home. That's why we think it could be the ancient
sanctuary, but we can't be sure until we find the entrance to the chamber."
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| Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening
the internet's future, experts have warned.
Up to a quarter of computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet. Technology writer John Markoff said: "It's as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole internet at risk." BBC |
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| Anti-Americanism comes in different varieties. The European kind emphasizes
the "evils" of "red" America: a shoot-first, ask-questions-later cowboy
in the White House, and Bible- toting fundamentalists walking around the
corridors of power.
The Muslim variety is very different. Many Muslims point to the "horrors" of "blue" America: homosexual marriage, family breakdown, and a popular culture that is trivial, materialistic, vulgar, and, in many cases, morally repulsive. This latter view is dangerously – and justifiably – common in many traditional cultures across the globe. Because it feeds their perception that American values are inimical to their way of life, this attitude can blossom into the kind of anti- American pathology that partly fueled the 9/11 attacks. Any serious effort to shore up American's security must include steps to edify American culture. Christian Science Monitor |
| Two years of record-high gasoline prices have forced Americans to do something they haven't done in more than two decades: Drive less. LA Times |
| The American military has unveiled its latest hi-tech weapon - a virtual
flame-thrower on top of a Humvee that microwaves enemies at 500 paces.
American defence experts are also developing artificial black ice to put the skids under adversaries. The ray gun, which is supposed to be harmless, is designed to make people feel they are about to catch fire and drop their weapons. The futuristic new weapon, called the Active Denial System, was tested yesterday on 10 journalists who volunteered to be fired at. The Guardian |
| The story of the gay sheep is an example of the distortion that can
result when science meets the global news cycle.
NYT (reg/req) |
| The news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures. NYT (reg/req) |
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| New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge. NYT (reg/req) |
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| Rising temperatures are allowing Southern trees to thrive farther north
and stressing trees used to colder weather, according to new national guidelines
issued by planting experts.
The National Arbor Day Foundation last month updated the Agriculture Department's "hardiness zones" map, which was last issued in 1990. The group acted after noticing that some tree species were thriving where they had not before, while others were doing poorly in what had been a suitable region on previous maps. The shift in zones may allow people in northern areas to experiment with flowering Southern trees such as apple and cherry where they used to plant only fir, spruce and pine, says group spokesman Woodrow Nelson. USA Today |
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| Under pressure in Washington, Google (GOOG) has given thousands in political contributions to some of the most conservative members of Congress, tempering its image as a bastion of liberal campaign money. The online search giant's nascent political action committee gave 61% of contributions to Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Orrin Hatch of Utah, according to a USA TODAY analysis. |
| Cloudy apple juice is better for you than clear varieties, say researchers.
Polish scientists found the levels of antioxidants which protect against
heart disease and cancer are almost double in cloudy apple juice.
The antioxidants, called polyphenols, are also found in red wine, berries and dark chocolate. In the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, the researchers said the manufacturing process led to fewer polyphenols in clear apple juice. BBC |
| Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces.
Advertisers seem determined to fill every last one of them. Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance. Chinese food cartons promote Continental Airways. US Airways is selling ads on motion sickness bags. And the trays used in airport security lines have been hawking Rolodexes. Marketers used to try their hardest to reach people at home, when they were watching TV or reading newspapers or magazines. But consumers’ viewing and reading habits are so scattershot now that many advertisers say the best way to reach time-pressed consumers is to try to catch their eye at literally every turn. NYT (reg/req) |
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| A black hood covered his eyes, shackles secured his wrists and legs.
He felt lightheaded from two days without food and medication that made
him sleep during the long flight. Startled by barking guard dogs, he was
shouted at by troops in a language he didn't understand.
"We didn't know where we were or what was going to happen to us," said Adil al-Zamil, a former Kuwaiti government clerk who was one of the first to arrive at Guantanamo Bay after the base began receiving terrorism suspects Jan. 11, 2002. "We were very, very afraid." In the early days, dogs were used to intimidate prisoners. Detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation and earsplitting rock and rap music. Some, including al-Zamil, said they were shackled in uncomfortable positions for hours. Today, five years after the first prisoners arrived at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, the detention camp commander says those aggressive interrogation tactics are gone. "We don't do anything today that's coercive in nature," said Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the detention center. "I believe we are doing things correctly here." World outrage over the detention center has grown. Protests around the world will mark the fifth anniversary Thursday of the arrival of the first 20 prisoners at Guantanamo, including a demonstration on the Cuban side of Guantanamo's gate. Critics say the camp has damaged U.S. credibility and should close.The AP |
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| Eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed in a Pew Research
Center poll released today said getting rich is their generation's most
important or second-most-important life goal; 51% said the same about being
famous.
The findings that this generation's top life goals are to be rich (81%) and famous (51%) contrast with a 1967 study of college freshmen in which 85.8% said it was essential to develop "a meaningful philosophy of life," while 41.9% thought it essential to be "very well off financially." USA Today |
| The European Commission has called for a new "industrial revolution"
as it unveiled a wide-ranging set of proposals on energy and climate issues.
The EU's civil service wants more investment in renewable energy, arguing
that the old fuels have a political as well as clear environmental cost.
The need has been given greater urgency by Russia's oil row with Belarus, which has hit EU states Germany and Poland. The report demands that at least 20% of energy comes from renewables by 2020. BBC |
| President Bush has said it.
A lot of government scientists have said it. But until yesterday, it appeared that no news release on annual climate trends out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Bush White House had said unequivocally that a buildup of greenhouse gases was helping warm the climate. The statement came in a release that said 2006 was the warmest year for the 48 contiguous states since regular temperature records began in 1895. It surpassed the previous champion, 1998, a year heated up by a powerful episode of the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean by El Niño. Last year, another El Niño developed, but this time a long-term warming trend from human activities was said to be involved as well. NYT (reg/req) |
| President's new strategy does something he has avoided since invasion in 2003: Ordering top brass to take action they resisted and advised against.Washingon Post (reg/req) |
| In backing a "surge" of fresh troops into Iraq, the George W. Bush administration is trying to keep up the illusion that "victory" is still possible even though the leaders themselves have given up on it. Their real battle plan draws on Henry Kissinger's tried and tested strategy for surviving defeat: hang on until 2009 and blame the Democrats for stabbing the troops in the back. Asia Times |
| Leslie B. Vosshall, who studies the sense of smell, said that after Sept. 11, 2001, people became more attuned to possible dangers. NYT (reg/req) |
| A legal-aid group that represents hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo
Bay has condemned it as an "abomination" and called on Washington to close
the facility five years after it received its first prisoners.
A demonstration will take place outside the U.S. naval base in Cuba on Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary. Protests are also planned in New York, London, Sydney, Australia, and many other cities across the world. Aljazeera |
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| Astronomers have mapped the cosmic "scaffold" of dark matter upon which
stars and galaxies are assembled.
Dark matter does not reflect or emit detectable light, yet it accounts for most of the mass in the Universe. The study, published in Nature journal, provides the best evidence yet that the distribution of galaxies follows the distribution of dark matter. This is because dark matter attracts "ordinary" matter through its gravitational pull. BBC |
| For anyone who has been mesmerised by the sheer number of stars that
make up a clear night sky, it seems incredible that what we can see, even
with a telescope, is but a small fraction of what is actually out there.
In fact, more than 80 per cent of the material of the universe is invisible
to even the best instruments.
It is called "dark" matter because, unlike the "bright" matter of the
visible stars, galaxies and planets, it is invisible, even though its gravitational
presence can be felt. What dark matter is made of, however remains a mystery.
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| As a critical turning point in America's role in the nearly four-year-old Iraq war nears, the editorial pages of the largest U.S. newspapers have been surprisingly -- even, appallingly -- silent (pro or con) on President Bush's likely decision to send thousands of more troops to the country, an E&P survey reveals |
| Over the past 12 months, the U.S. has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on - and bring down - Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Egypt and Jordan, which assisted with the arms deliveries, are fast cooling to the idea, as are Israel and many in the Pentagon. Yet the architect of the project, Elliott Abrams - the last neo-con standing - is winning his fight to provide the Palestinians with enough rope to, he hopes, hang themselves. Conflicts Forum |
| "Plutoed" has been chosen as word of the year for 2006 by the American
Dialect Society, beating "climate canary" in a run-off vote. If you have
been "plutoed" you have been demoted or devalued, just as happened to the
former planet Pluto when its status was downgraded.
A "climate canary" is something whose poor health indicates a looming environmental catastrophe. BBC |
| Sources allege that the CIA prints the falsified 'Supernotes' at a secret facility near Washington to fund covert operations without Congressional oversight. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung via WatchingAmerica.com |
| Until recently, Delmenhorst was one of Germany's many decaying, postindustrial factory towns, blighted by unemployment and poverty and without a sense of pride or common purpose. But when a right-wing organization threatened to turn an abandoned downtown hotel into a neo-Nazi conference center five months ago, Delmenhorst's residents joined together and found some very creative ways to buy the building. Christian Science Monitor |
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| It didn't matter if the weather outside was frightful: Most fashionable
women headed to holiday parties bare-legged.
Among Allure magazine's December tips for hot holiday looks: "Lose the Hose." For pantyhose makers, it seems the sales slide that started in the mid-1990s still has legs. The hoseless trend has socked companies such as Hanesbrands — whose
lines include Hanes, L'eggs and Just My Size. Sales from its hosiery segment
have fallen each year since 1995. That unit's revenue for the fiscal year
ended in July was down 14.3% from the year before to $290 million. The
company warns investors in its latest annual report: "We expect the trend
of declining hosiery sales to continue as a result of shifts in consumer
preferences."
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| ...physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place. NYT (reg/req) |
| Web encyclopaedia Wikipedia has banned anonymous posts to its site
from people in Qatar after repeated net vandalism. The ban hits everyone
in the country because all web traffic in Qatar is routed through a single
net address.
Wikipedia says pages about the U.S., sex and the birthday of the prophet Muhammad were vandalised by anonymous people in the country. BBC |
| Coal mining deaths soared to a 10-year high in 2006, reversing an 80-year
trend of steadily falling fatalities and raising safety concerns as coal
production reaches record levels.
Forty-seven miners died last year, more than double the 22 killed in 2005 and matching the number in 1995. The recent spike is the biggest percentage increase in 107 years, according to federal records dating to 1900. USA Today |
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| Everything about society can be explained by economics. While the naive and the romantic might believe in the influence of other factors such as religion, politics, emotions and values, these work for individuals rather than for societies. It follows that social ills can only be fixed by an overhaul of the underlying economics. Asia Times |
| Supported by the Bush Administration, the breathtaking audacity and
sheer disrespect of the Iraqi government in executing Saddam Hussein on
Eid Al-Adha managed to insult the entire Muslim community in one fell swoop.
The Saudi Gazette via WatchingAmerica.com |
| Most newspapers in the Arab world have reflected gloomily over the execution of Saddam Hussein, with some predicting that the repercussions will add to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Aljazeera |
| It wouldn't be easy. But it wouldn't be impossible. William Langewiesche travels the world to find the weaknesses a terrorist could exploit. The Atlantic Monthly (sub/req) |
| To understand the shifting tectonics of American politics, look no further than cable's high priest of populism, Lou Dobbs. Mother Jones |
| Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts
inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels
and Washington.
By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account. The extent of the demands were disclosed in "undertakings" given by
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to the European Union and published
by the Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request.
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| ...imagine our collective future, a world made small by rising seas and the end of oil, inhabited by fewer species and many fallen dinosaurs. The Nation |