ALISTER DOYLE, - The Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: I guess this is good news: the earth is doing its best to keep climate change from changing the stability of existing systems. But human activity just keeps increasing the stress on those systems. Sadly, I don't see anything of consequence being done to help the earth.
OSLO, NORWAY — Oceans and land have more than doubled the amount of greenhouse gases they absorb since 1960 in new evidence that nature is helping to brake global warming, a study showed on Wednesday.
Fundamental changes in seawater chemistry are occurring throughout the world’s oceans. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from humankind’s industrial and agricultural activities has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs almost a third of the CO2 we release into the atmosphere every year, so as atmospheric CO2 levels increase, so do the levels in the ocean. Initially, many scientists focused on the benefits of the ocean removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. However, decades of ocean observations now show that there is also a downside - the CO2 absorbed by the ocean is changing the chemistry of the seawater, a process called ocean acidification. This change in the ocean’s chemistry will have profound effects on life in the ocean, and those who depend on it.
‘Even though we have done very little to decrease our emissions, the Earth continues to lend us a helping hand,’ lead author Ashley Ballantyne of the University of Colorado […]
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CHARLES M. BLOW, - The New York Times
Stephan: The Republican Party's -- and yes this is Republican phenomenon -- concerted attempt to suppress the most fundamental right in a democracy, the right of citizens to vote, is one of the most shameful trends in the country. Every citizen should be outraged. If these suppression laws, essentially modern versions of Jim Crow poll taxes, stand I think there will be endlessly repeated images on television of voters being turned away, angry interviews of elderly grandmas denied their right to vote. As a consequence there will be a rise in cynicism. When your fundamental institutions are held in contempt, when individual citizens feel they are being cut out of the game, you are seeing the crumbling of democracy
Polls are the best way to find out who plans to vote and for whom they plan to vote. But polls are imperfect. They ask questions of a sampling of people - often about a thousand - and use those answers to draw conclusions about the public at large.
This year there is a new wrinkle, one that complicates the picture and could throw some of the polling off: the effects of newly enacted restrictive voting laws.
Take, for instance, the results of a New York Times/CBS News/Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday. ‘Likely voters
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LINDA A. JOHNSON, - The Associated Press
Stephan: American prescriptions cost two to eight times as much as the same drug purchased in other countries. If you have ever filled a prescription in Europe or Asia, you know the truth of what I am saying. And generics save consumers even more money, as this report makes clear -- how about a savings of one trillion dollars over the decade.
TRENTON, N.J. — Growing use of generic medicines has reduced U.S. health care spending by more than $1 trillion over the past decade, according to an industry-funded study released Thursday.
The fourth annual report, produced for the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, found use of generic prescription drugs in the U.S. saved about $193 billion last year alone. That amount was up 22 percent from the $158 billion in savings from generics in 2010, and was more than three times the $60 billion in savings in 2002, the report states.
The report notes that using inexpensive generic versions of pricier brand-name prescription drugs now saves the country about $1 billion every other day.
Last year, nearly 80 percent of the 4 billion prescriptions dispensed in this country were generic drugs. Because of their cheaper prices, those drugs accounted for just 27 percent of total U.S. spending on prescription medicines. In categories where both branded medicines and generic drugs are available, consumers opted to get the generic version 94 percent of the time last year, the report noted.
Use of generic drugs has been growing steadily in this country, fueled by both patients and insurers looking to save money, since the copycat pills were first allowed under […]
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KIM LUKE, - University of Toronto
Stephan: The story of our past, the real story, is an endlessly fascinating mystery story in which, one by one, puzzles are resolved. This is a particularly interesting recent one, because it may link the oral traditions memorialized in the Bible to actual events.
Click through to see the pictures.
A beautiful and colossal human sculpture is one of the latest cultural treasures unearthed by an international team at the Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP) excavation site in southeastern Turkey. A large semi-circular column base, ornately decorated on one side, was also discovered. Both pieces are from a monumental gate complex that provided access to the upper citadel of Kunulua, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina (ca. 1000-738 BC).
‘These newly discovered Tayinat sculptures are the product of a vibrant local Neo-Hittite sculptural tradition,’ said Professor Tim Harrison, the Tayinat Project director and professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. ‘They provide a vivid glimpse into the innovative character and sophistication of the Iron Age cultures that emerged in the eastern Mediterranean following the collapse of the great imperial powers of the Bronze Age at the end of the second millennium BC.’
The head and torso of the human figure, intact to just above its waist, stands approximately 1.5 metres in height, suggesting a total body length of 3.5 to four metres. The figure’s face is bearded, with beautifully preserved inlaid eyes made of white and black stone, and its hair […]
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Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
NATHANIEL POPPER, - The New York Times
Stephan: This story may, at first blush, look like an epi-phenomenon, but I see it as part of a trend: the implacable obstructionism of the Republican Party, and the ongoing failure of the Obama Administration to properly address the need for regulation of the financial markets, and the processes by which they operate, as well as the failure to hold people accountable when they are dishonest. As a result I predict there are more disasters coming.
An automated stock-trading program accidentally flooded the market with millions of trades Wednesday morning, spreading turmoil across Wall Street and drawing renewed attention to the fragility and instability of the nation’s stock markets.
While the markets quickly recovered, it was the latest black eye for the financial markets and suggests that regulators have not been able to curb the market disruptions that have led to frequent halts in trading and wild swings in shares.
Wednesday’s debacle follows the botched Facebook initial public offering on Nasdaq in May and the aborted effort by another exchange, BATS Global Markets, to bring its own stock public on its own exchange. The episodes have further rattled the confidence of investors and stoked suspicions that markets are unsafe for savings.
‘The machines have taken over, right?
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