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| Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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Roberts: Scene At State Of Union 'Very Troubling' |
| The hard right justices on the current Supreme Court have a quality quite unlike any other bloc of justices in my lifetime: an aggrieved magisterium. It is so clearly illustrated by this report. |
| JAY REEVES - The Associated Press |
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" and the annual speech has "degenerated to a political pep rally." Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case. Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions. "So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. "The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court - according the requirements of protocol - has to ... |
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1 In 6 Americans Infected With Herpes - CDC |
| This is our curse for not realistically instructing young Americans about sex; yet another effect of willful ignorance. It is surreal to watch this play out. This is happening because we, as a society, have allowed a minority to compel placing their dogmatic belief over actual data in creating social policy. Don't ever question that societies are willing to destroy themselves in the name of such dogmas. |
| JoAnne Allen - Reuters |
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WASHINGTON -- About 16 percent of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday. Black women had the highest rate of infection at 48 percent and women were nearly twice likely as men to be infected, according to an analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 21 percent of women were infected with genital herpes, compared to only 11.5 percent of men, while 39 percent of blacks were infected compared to about 12 percent for whites, the CDC said. There is no cure for genital herpes, or herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), which can cause recurrent and painful genital sores and also increases the likelihood of acquiring and transmitting the AIDS virus. It is related to herpes simplex virus 1, or ... |
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The Great Prostate Mistake |
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Think about this for a moment. This arises as a feature of the Illness Profit Industry. If we had taken the profit making factor out, good data would have told us to stop this $3 billion misguided juggernaut years ago. But because it is so profitable it lives on, a zombie of science. Richard J. Ablin is a research professor of immunobiology and pathology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and the president of the Robert Benjamin Ablin Foundation for Cancer Research. |
| RICHARD J. ABLIN - The New York Times |
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TUCSON -- Each year some 30 million American men undergo testing for prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme made by the prostate. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, the P.S.A. test is the most commonly used tool for detecting prostate cancer. The test's popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster. It's an issue I am painfully familiar with - I discovered P.S.A. in 1970. As Congress searches for ways to cut costs in our health care system, a significant savings could come from changing the way the antigen is used to screen for prostate cancer. Americans spend an enormous amount testing for prostate cancer. The annual bill for P.S.A. screening is at least $3 billion, with much of it paid for by Medicare and the Veterans Administration. Prostate cancer may get a lot of press, but consider the numbers: American men have a ... |
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Global Warming Skepticism Rising In The GOP |
| Willful Ignorance is becoming a defining trend of our society and age. Large segments of the American population are simply turning their backs on information it took centuries to attain because they don't like it, it threatens their greed, or it contradicts one of their dogmas. That these people are concentrated in one political party holds serious implications for the future of American democracy. |
| JIM TANKERSLEY - Los Angeles Times |
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WASHINGTON -- It wasn't long ago that Marco Rubio and Tim Pawlenty -- two rising Republican stars -- supported legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But in recent weeks, both have begun to express doubts about whether cars, factories and power plants have anything to do with global warming. The shift by Rubio and Pawlenty -- as well as other prominent Republicans -- reflects the rising power of climate change skeptics in the GOP, where global warming is becoming a litmus test for conservatives. Rubio, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, is running for the U.S. Senate. Pawlenty, Minnesota's governor, is eyeing a 2012 presidential bid. For Republicans, "the new political expediency is to be a global warming skeptic," said Marc Morano, executive editor of the skeptic clearinghouse website ClimateDepot.com and a former aide to outspoken skeptic Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.). Fuel for ... |
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| Tuesday, 09 March 2010 |
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'Pay It Forward' Pays Off |
| Here is more of the emerging research on the effect of individual beingness on social processes. |
| INGA KIDERRA - University of California, San Diego |
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SAN DIEGO -- For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts " acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation " spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference. In a study published in the March 8 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person. When people benefit from kindness they 'pay it forward” by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network. The research was conducted by James Fowler, associate professor at UC San Diego in the ... |
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US Advertisers To Spend More On Digital Than Print: Study |
| This is an extraordinary cultural shift away from the world of paper communications. |
| Agence France-Presse (France) |
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US companies will spend more this year on digital and online advertising and marketing than on print for the first time ever, according to a study released on Monday. Companies will spend 119.6 billion dollars on online and digital strategies and 111.5 billion dollars on newspaper and magazine advertisements and other print campaigns, according to the study by California-based Outsell. Outsell, which provides research and advisory services to the publishing and information industries, described the spending shift as "an industry milestone crossover event." It said overall US spending on advertising and marketing will increase by 1.2 percent in 2010 to 368 billion dollars. Outsell said 63 billion dollars, or 52.8 percent of total online advertising spending by companies, would be on their own websites, which it said constitutes a "powerful form of direct to customer marketing." "Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which ... |
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Pope's Brother Linked To New Claims Of Child Abuse By Clergy |
| This is an historically significant tragedy in slow motion; a 2,000 year old institution imploding. Because it refused to deal openly and honestly with human sexuality, the Church became a haven for men with dysfunctional personal sexual morality. Not all priests, of course, just a percentage large enough to compel the entire organization to confront its shadow from the damage that minority wrought. |
| JEROME TAYLOR, Religious Affairs Correspondent - The Independent (U.K.) |
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Fresh allegations emerge over Bavarian school where Georg Ratzinger led choir for 30 years A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims. Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger. Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions " but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its ... |
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'Gribble' Marine Pest May Be Key To Biofuel Breakthrough, Say Scientists |
| It is amazing what is happening in the Green Transition, and proof of the suppressive power of an outdated paradigm. Once the dead hand of the petroleum era was lightened just a bit this trend exploded with innovation. It is not so much whether any particular technology succeeds; suddenly there is a garden of them from which to choose. |
| Times (U.K.) |
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A marine pest could be the key to a biofuel breakthrough, say scientists. Gribble, which resemble pink woodlice, plagued seafarers for centuries by boring through the planks of ships and destroying wooden piers. But now environmental scientists are taking a keen interest in the crustaceans. A team of British researchers has learnt that gribble have a gift for digesting wood not seen in any other animal. Enzymes produced by the tiny creatures are able to break down woody cellulose and turn it into energy-rich sugars meaning that gribble could convert wood and straw into liquid biofuel. A gribble-like processing plant could make sugars from woody raw material that can be fermented into alcohol-based fuels for vehicle engines. Researchers at the universities of York and Portsmouth made the discovery after carrying out an extensive study of digestive genes from the gribble species Limnoria quadripunctata. They ... |
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| Monday, 08 March 2010 |
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Beijing Studies Severing Dollar Peg |
| The interests of China and the U.S. quite naturally will move into managed conflict. The variable where crisis may destabilize this process is to be found in the astronomical American debt China holds. |
| GEOFF DYER - Financial Times (U.K.) |
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China's central bank chief laid the groundwork for an appreciation of the renminbi at the weekend when he described the current dollar peg as temporary, striking a more emollient tone after months of tough opposition in Beijing to a shift in exchange rate policy. BEIJING -- Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, gave the strongest hint yet from a senior official that China would abandon the unofficial dollar peg, in place since mid-2008. He said it was a 'special” policy to weather the financial crisis. 'This is a part of our package of policies for dealing with the global financial crisis. Sooner or later, we will exit the policies.” Mr Zhou's comments contrasted with recent Chinese comments on its currency policy in the face of international criticism that the renminbi was undervalued. In December, premier Wen Jiabao said: 'We will not yield to any ... |
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Growing Low-Oxygen Zones in Oceans Worry Scientists |
| LES BLUMENTHAL - McClatchy Newspapers |
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WASHINGTON - Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say. They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted. In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions. Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas - in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans - appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest, encroaching on the continental shelf within ... |
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How Ireland Lost Its Faith |
| The largest religious group in the U.S. is the Roman Catholic church -- 1 in 4 Americans -- but the numbers are misleading, inasmuch as many of those people maintain only a slight involvement with their church. In much of Europe the church has become very marginal to most peoples' life. The two exceptions have been Poland and Ireland. Now even Ireland is falling away, and this is an historic shift. Increasingly the Roman Catholic Church finds itself vital only in Africa and parts of Latin America. Long term this has profound implications for the institution. |
| PATSY MCGARRY - Foreign Policy |
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There was a time when Irish Catholics might have been delighted to see the pope lavishing attention on their bishops. On Feb. 15 and 16, however, when Ireland's bishops were at the Vatican to discuss an ongoing child sex abuse scandal, Catholics back home were furious. Catholics were already upset about Pope Benedict's refusal to apologize to the thousands of abuse victims in Ireland or even hint that he would meet with them, as some had requested. But what really set them off seems to have been the images of their bishops kissing the pope's ring. Photos of the traditional greeting were plastered across broadsheet front pages and TV broadcasts over the following days. These, combined with images of the Vatican's opulent Apostolic Palace -- where the bishops met the pope and senior cardinals -- as well as the regalia of all those elderly men and the complete absence ... |
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MIT Researchers Discover New Way Of Producing Electricity |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say. The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, "opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare," says Michael Strano, MIT's Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials on March 7. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering. Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave - a moving pulse of heat - traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical ... |
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Stephan A. Schwartz
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