Politics

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

The purpose of this thread is not to debate whether or not any woman should be president, or whether or not a specific woman should be president. I am aware that there is a percentage of American citizens who believe, whether for religious, sexist, biological, societal, or other reasons, that the position of the President of the United States should not be held by a woman. I am simply trying to get some idea of what that percentage is. Don't bog down in extreme hypothetical what-if situations. In general, would you vote for a woman candidate? (If your response is something like, "Well, it depends..." then your answer is yes. I am looking for the percentage who, un…

ABC News' Jake Tapper ran a hillarious story last night about attempts by both extremes in American politics to use the Disney movie "March of the Penguins" to further their political agendas. The written version of the story may be found here: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1203358&page=1 At first the penguins were adopted by conservative groups, which extolled their monogamous virtues, and even put them up as an example of Intelligent Design. But then the New York Times and others from the political left came forward and pointed out that there's been a same-sex penguin "couple" (two males) at Central Park Zoo for years -- they even raised a "foster chi…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/politics/14weapons.html

Very interesting... Something called the M prize is grabbing the attention of scientists who seek to reach immortaliy. http://beta.news.yahoo.com/s/space/hangintherethe25yearwaitforimmortality Who lives and who dies? Will money or merit decide the immortals?

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/10/01/new.planet.moon.ap/index.html ---sample from CNN article--- 'Planet Xena' has a sidekick: Gabrielle LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The astronomers who claim to have discovered the 10th planet in the Earth's solar system have made another intriguing announcement: it has a moon... ---endquote--- http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1603_1.asp ---exerpt from Sky and Telescope--- A Moon for the "10th Planet" October 2, 2005 The solar system's largest known Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the recently discovered body known as 2003 UB313, isn't wandering through space alone. Michael E. Brown (Caltech) and his col…

This may not mean much to our international guests -- sorry about that. But I think some here might find it interesting. Last week all three networks reported the Gallup poll numbers showing that the President's approval rating had dipped to 40%. I thought it might be interesting to see if the networks reported the new poll numbers from Gallup today, which showed a 5 point bump to 45%. A five point bump in a single week is actually quite a story -- generally anything over four points is considered to be a major change, and entire initiatives have been tossed out or shuffled to the back burner over less dynamic poll results. I didn't get to watch NBC News, h…

Apparently Spike Lee is making a new movie about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He also has a new autobiography out. He had a few choice words about Katrina on CNN the other day: http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/12/Artsandentertainment/Spike_Lee_plans_film_.shtml I'm really disappointed in this personally, because I'm a huge fan of Lee's work. He's one of those directors whose movies tend to be hit-and-miss, in the sense that they often don't work all that well as a whole, but individual scenes and sequences can be incredibly powerful and effective. He's a rare talent. But I think it's wrong for him to fan these particular flames. Not only does h…

Apparently the Nobel Peace Prize this year was an award given to "the most anti-Bush politician available". http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/10/life-in-hell.html had to pass this along.