Sunday, Jul 07th
Last update07:10:57 AM GMT
Within the swirl of propaganda floating around about the supposed benefits of fracking for natural gas, one theme seems to have unfortunately been taken to heart by some folks who are understandably anxious about these economically trying times.
The idea, that fracking will bring immediate wealth and prosperity to those who engage with it, is as alluring as it is false.
The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.
In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability".
The original Twilight Zone series had a timely episode involving a kind of a stopwatch: Click the stem, and all time stops. Except you. Maybe you're already hearing the tell-tale series music and its four-note loop.
40-year-old Patrick McNulty realized the stopwatch offered many intriguing possibilities, if its secrets could be unwound. In the teleplay by series creator Rod Serling, the [spoiler alert] watch is dropped and broken -- forever stranding McNulty in time.
Except for that being-stranded-in-time part, I could have long used a stopwatch like that. (You too?) It sure would have shrunk down those 75-hour weeks to size.
he New York Times stood by its incoming chief Wednesday, even as questions about a BBC child sex abuse scandal followed him from one of Britain's most respected news organizations to one of America's.
But as new CEO Mark Thompson was getting support from his new bosses, the Times ombudsman questioned his fitness for the job. And in Britain, a lawmaker said he had more questions for Thompson. As Thompson prepares to take over as president of The New York Times next month, he has been put on the defensive about his final days as head of the BBC and the broadcaster's decision to kill what would have been a bombshell investigative story alleging the late Jimmy Savile, one of its biggest stars, had sexually abused up to 200 children.
Though it barely received any media attention at the time, a renowned British biochemist who back in 1998 exposed the shocking truth about how genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) cause organ damage, reproductive failure, digestive dysfunction, impaired immunity, and cancer, among many other conditions, was immediately fired from his job, and the team of researchers who assisted him dismissed from their post within 24 hours from the time when the findings went public.
The sanction by the Board of Registration in Pharmacy was included in a proposed consent agreement that was meant to resolve complaints against the New England Compounding Center in Framingham. The complaints included a failure to meet accepted standards for making the same steroid that's been connected to the outbreak.
You'd think it would have been very big news in the spring of 2005 when Donald Tashkin, a professor of pulmonology at UCLA's David Geffin School of Medicine, revealed at a conference that components of marijuana smoke, although they damage cells in respiratory tissue, somehow prevent them from becoming malignant. But headlines announcing "Pot Doesn't Cause Cancer" did not ensue.
Tashkin will review his findings and discuss current research this Thursday in Santa Monica, California as part of a course for doctors accredited by the University of California San Francisco. (It is open to the public; pre-registration is $95.)
Scientists in Oregon have created embryos with genes from one man and two women, using a provocative technique that could someday be used to prevent babies from inheriting certain rare incurable diseases.
The researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University said they are not using the embryos to produce children, and it is not clear when or even if this technique will be put to use. But it has already stirred a debate over its risks and ethics in Britain, where scientists did similar work a few years ago.
Welcome back to another edition of Field Guide to Humanity: The Strange and Puzzling Account of Homo Confusus.
This time out, we tackle the political animal (Spotlightus Selfinterestus) yet again, continuing to fine-comb through behavioral traits and observations, examining myth and lore, and then on to some leap-of-guesswork field scrutiny to discover the innermost secrets of this strange and almost disturbingly gregarious tribe.
Political animals, as you remember from last time, come in a handful of subsets, with two main co-ruling -- and constantly warring -- parties: "Republicans" (Boneheadus Maximus) and "Democrats" (Spinus Missingus).
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