Christchurch man Jason Riley clocks up 40 hours a week on the internet – joining a growing number of people addicted to cyberspace. A new study from Stanford University in the United States says more than one in eight adult internet users show signs of addiction. Riley, an electrical fitter, says his computer runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is the focal point of the lounge, rather than the television. He spends up to 40 hours a week on the internet, keeping in touch with family and downloading ‘obscure TV shows’. His partner is not impressed. ‘She still gets to see me because we’re in the same room, but she’d prefer it if I had a different hobby. I was a geek when she met me though, and I’m still a geek.’ The study’s lead author, Elias Aboujaoude, said more internet users were starting to visit their doctors for help with ‘unhealthy attachments’ to cyberspace. ‘We often focus on how wonderful the internet is. How simple and efficient it can make things. But we need to consider the fact that it creates real problems for a sub-set of people,’ Aboujaoude […]
Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a room in hovels. Many go after they have been threatened. Often they leave after receiving an envelope with a bullet inside and a scrawled note telling them to get out immediately. Others flee after a relative has been killed, believing they will be next. Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month. It is one of the largest long-term population movements in the Middle East since Israel expelled Palestinians in the 1940s. Few of the Iraqis taking flight now show any desire to return to their homes. The numbers compelled to take to the roads have risen dramatically this year with 365,000 new refugees since the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samara in February. Rich and poor, both are […]
Beaked whales have astonished animal researchers by smashing the record for the deepest dive by an air-breathing animal. Zoologists studying Cuvier’s beaked whale recorded specimens diving 6,230ft (1,899m) under the surface, easily beating the record of 4,000ft held by the sperm whale. The beaked whale was able to hold its breath for 85 minutes while it completed the epic dive. The scientists studying the marine creature were able to record echolocation clicks that bounced off smaller animals during the dive, suggesting that the whale was hunting. ‘The dives near 1,900m constitute the deepest confirmed dives reported from any air-breathing animal,’ scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in the United States, said. ‘This extreme deep-diving behaviour is of particular interest since beaked whales stranded during naval sonar exercises have been reported to have symptoms of decompression sickness.’ The team studied Cuvier’s beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) and Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) off Spain and Italy using tags to record the movements. Peter Tyack, of the institution, said that there were behavioural similarities with the much better-studied sperm whales and elephant seals, but also some significant differences. ‘These two beaked whale species make long, very deep […]
ALBANY – The Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the constitutionality of a women’s health act that pressures some religious-affiliated employers to either offer their employees a prescription plan that includes contraceptive coverage or deny their workers any drug coverage at all. In Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany v. Serio, 110, the Court rejected the claims of 10 faith-based organizations and refused to exempt them from a key provision in the Women’s Health and Wellness Act. The ruling makes it difficult, but not impossible, for an individual or group to avoid on religious grounds a neutral law of general application. Yesterday’s Court of Appeals decisions begin on page 22 of the print edition of today’s Law Journal. But the judges also explicitly refused to narrow the Free Exercise Clause in the state Constitution to conform with the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Establishment Clause in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 US 872 (1990). They insisted that the rule they adopted, while deferential to the Legislature and weighted toward ‘efficient government,’ is ‘more protective of religious exercise’ than the one embraced in Smith. That, experts said, remains to be seen. At issue in this appeal […]
TEHRAN — The number of women graduating from Iran’s universities is overtaking the number of men, promising a change in the job market and, with it, profound social change. Twenty postgraduate students are sitting in a plush modern classroom listening to a lecture on environmental management at the Islamic Azad University – a private institution with 1.6 million students across Iran. The room is darkened so the students can watch the lecturer’s slide show comparing energy consumption around the world. Three quarters of the students in this class are women – the five men in the class are huddled together in a corner. As Professor Majid Abbaspour explains, this is a far cry from the past: ‘When I was doing my bachelor’s degree in Iran we had a class of 60 in mechanical engineering with only four women. ‘Now the number has changed a lot – I think this may be because the attitudes of families have changed.’ Well over half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied physics department of Azad University 70% of the graduates are women – a statistic which would make many universities in the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
