Politics

I didn't know whether to post this in Education or politics, so I tossed a coin and it came down politics. Read this article. It looks like a lot of black students are cutting off their noses to spite their faces..... http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=76301

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-1021body,0,282956.story?track=mostemailedlink

Is there any way to find out if you are on the fbi's blacklist?

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/13006182.htm Yes, I know - not very smart comments from the coach. Not politically correct, but I bet 95% of coaches agree with him. Do we deny that the average black athelete will be quicker and more coordinated? The average asian student will have a higher SAT than others? There are exceptions and the reasons may not always be genetic and we have the whole, what is a race thing, but can we not make any generalizations, even if there is some truth in them? As they find genome differences, will they be able to publish them without a bunch of flack? If you know that African Americans have a tendancy towar…

They found a way to extract stem cells from mice embryos, interestingly without harming the actual embryo. It'd be interesting to see what happens to conservative groups when they lose a huge chunk that they normally stand on. http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/10/16/hscout528569.html

President Bush is about to spend 7 billion in preparation for a possible pandemic. Some of the usual suspects like Kennedy and Pelosi claim it too little too late, others say it's an over reaction. There's also an issue on whether the Feds have complete responsibility, or if the States should chip in. Any thoughts?

I thought you might find this interesting for a couple of reasons. "The West Wing" is an American television show, which comes on the NBC network on Sunday nights. It's several seasons into its run. Martin Sheen plays a Democratic president, and I've always found the show interesting because of the way it attempts to portray the job and the office as realistically as possible. They discuss real politics, real political choices, real ethics and morality, and they look at real consequences. Just to give a brief example of this, the president is a "liberal Democrat", but he's often forced to act in "conservative" ways, such as with situations requiring military …

Long-time readers here will know that I'm not a fan of Tom DeLay, or of House Republicans in general. Frankly I think they personify much of what's wrong in Washington these days. But fair is fair, and today's objections bothered me. In a nutshell, people are annoyed that the judge in the Tom DeLay case was removed. He had donated five grand to MoveOn.org, and there are allegations of statements he's made in the past about Tom DeLay of a pretty bias-indicative nature ("Do you oppose Tom DeLay?" "In every possible way" was one quote I heard on the radio today). Also I have to apply my "reversal rule" here -- would it be objectionable (to the same people who …

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17084566%255E2703,00.html One more similarity... both scare me

Great news for women, it's refreshing to have such a positive news story to wake up to in the morning. Article on cervical cancer vaccine can be found here... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2495029.stm I believe 5 Merck and Glaxo will be the major players in it's distribution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics/24leak.html?hp&ex=1130126400&en=5b13878cbd9535b7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

One of the key people responsible for unlocking the script of the Dead Sea Scrolls died on the 19th of October. Full article from the following link. http://tinyurl.com/86j97

Please find the full article here.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4377916.stm 'At issue is whether White House staff deliberately leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame after her husband attacked President Bush over Iraq.' 'The FBI has also conducted interviews, apparently aimed at deciding if there is a case against White House staff.'

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/102505HA.shtml http://motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/11/dr_ross.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051021/wl_mideast_afp/egyptreligiondemo http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17950_It_Was_a_Dark_and_Stormy_Night...&only

The central black hole of galaxy NGC 1097 is surrounded by a ring of some 300 star-forming regions resembling a diamond necklace. The spots looking like stars are actually regions containing many stars. The mass inside the ring, including the black hole, is estimated at half a billion solar masses. Here's the press release from European Southern Observatory. http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2005/phot-33-05.html Here is the scientific article: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507071 which was published in the Astrophysical Journal this month. The star forming regions, in two spiral arms, make a circle which is very roughly 2000 lightyears in radius. …

I am concerned that this nominee (Harriet Miers) will not fully support women's issue .. particularly in terms of abortion and any other issues that may come up over the next 20 or so years. I found this link in Yahoo: http://www.townhall.com/blogs/c-log/J%20Garthwaite/story/2005/10/03/159236.html Can anyone offer any additional information? Thx!!! Bren

Manufactured Diamonds A small company, Apollo Diamond, is making larger, industrialized diamonds and might be able to produce them in quantity and with quality. The article talks about the limitless ideas that could come from the diamonds that were never attempted before because of its rarity... and of course De Beers is complaining.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/25/news/fortune500/walmart_wage/ Walmart CEO wants the government to increase the minimum wage. They seem to think people can't afford to shop anymore? Are they right?

http://www.humansecurityreport.info The most interesting point made is that since WWII war deaths have generally been in decline, especially when measured per capita. There's been a shift to lower intensity conflict. This is put down to the end of colonialism, the end of the cold war, democratisation and increased activity by the UN. The colonialism side is interesting, particularly that the countries that top the list in the number of international armed conflicts from 1946 to 2003 are the UK and France. Terrorism, on the other hand, has risen fairly sharply since the eighties, although the actual numbers are much lower than for war.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Obit-Rosa-Parks.html What a great lady. She will be missed. (But honestly I didn't even know she was still alive).

http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-10-21T171310Z_01_ROB160456_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-INTERNET.xml I can't help but read U.S. lawmakers have backed the Bush administration's stance, arguing that a U.N. group would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and enable repressive regimes to curtail free expression online. and be reminded of this story

I don't think anyone has posted this.....I'll be glued to the TV set. NOVA: Einstein's Big Idea Explore the story behind the world's most famous equation: E=mc2 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/ Bettina

GDP is a big fat lie. Why do economists still use such a FALSE measure of wealth such as GDP ? A real measure would be simply the ratio between minimum pay and minimum amount of money needed to rent a one bedroom home. If you plot this ratio wage/rent from 1970 to now you will see that it was once (in the USA) maybe 400/100 dollars and now is 800/400. So it went from 4 to 2 in 30 years, about 2% less each year. The real growth of our wealth is MINUS 2% each year. In Europe and Japan it is way worse maybe MINUS 3%. So the real wealth is constantly DECREASING with no end in sight! Reasons are : 1) constant population increase looking for homes (people from poo…

So many zeroes... I'm linking this press release from a Democratic Congressman as it is presently the ONLY story I can find about this on Google News, despite the fact that the debt topped $8 trillion on tuesday. Wonder how long until anyone in the press anywhere picks up on this. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55402