The largest known giver to a controversial charity founded by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum made its $25,000 donation as the senator was working to win as much as $8.5 million in federal aid for the donor’s project in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Federal tax records show that Preferred Real Estate Inc., the developer of the Wharf at Rivertown project in Chester, Pa., wrote the check to Santorum’s Operation Good Neighbor Foundation in 2002…
…But good-government experts were troubled by the appearance of a developer giving money to the senator’s charity at the same time it was lobbying for federal dollars. Unlike a campaign contribution, checks to a charity can be written by a corporation and are not subject to any limit.
“It’s a neat window into how Washington works,” said Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project, one of several watchdogs troubled by the potential conflicts when a member of Congress also solicits funds for a charity he runs. “It shows that, more and more, Washington is for sale.”
His charity only gives out 40% of the money taken in to helping anyone, overhead is 60%. This includes ex-campaign workers who are on the payroll. The contempt for people needing help is amazing. Here is a link to a WPost article about Santorum’s bogus charity.
A more reputable charity such as Mercy Corps gives 92% to programs and only 8% for overhead..
If a so called charity spends 60% of its funds on raising money and adminstrative costs, it isn’t a charity according to any IRS definition I know of, and I use to be in the non-profit game. It was a long time ago, but when I was an Executive Director of a citizens group that did public policy research and made non-partisan recommendations for action to gov’t’s, or corp’s, the most we could spend on staff salaries and support (supplies, etc.) plus money spent to raise money was 30% of our budget.
For this and so many more reasons, Santorum sucketh.
If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone and realized the size of the original caldera, the thought of what this new activity might mean is pretty daunting.
A newly discovered surface bulge in Yellowstone National Park may be responsible for some unexpected geothermal activity in recent years, according to a study by U.S. Geological Survey scientists.
The bulge, about 25 miles across, rose 5 inches from 1997 to 2003 and may have triggered some thermal unrest at Norris Geyser Basin, including a sudden rise in temperatures, new steam vents and the awakening of Steamboat geyser.
The findings are part of a paper set to be published Thursday in the journal Nature.
Charles Wicks, one of the USGS scientists who worked on the study, said much of what happens beneath the park’s surface remains a mystery, but more is being learned about the Yellowstone caldera, the huge bowl-shaped collapsed volcano in the middle of the park that last erupted 640,000 years ago.
and state funding cuts in family planning services: WashPo
At a time when policymakers have made reducing unintended pregnancies a national priority, 33 states have made it more difficult or more expensive for poor women and teenagers to obtain contraceptives and related medical services, according to an analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute.
From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute, a privately funded research group that focuses on sexual health and family issues.
The statewide trends help explain why more than half of the 6 million pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended and offer clues for tackling problems associated with teenage pregnancy and abortion, said researchers who specialize in the field.
You know, there’s nothing surprising about this. If you’re going to claim to want to reduce the number of abortions, why not start by reducing the number of pregnancies with access and funding for family planning?
When you consider the sobering truth that the planet now sustains over 6 Billion of us, anything that can be done to prevent unwanted pregnancies should be done. That simple thought however is viewed by many to be a radical one from the fringe left. When the roof caves in on our population, (bird flu, climate change caused by our collective pollution, famine or some other natural calamity made worse by our out of control growth) I wonder if anyone who survives will look back and connect the dots?
Sexy teen star Lindsay Lohan thrilled fans at an LA fashion show when one of her boobs popped out of her dress. After her dramatic weight loss last year, the actress famously said she `wanted her boobs back’.
Apparently they keep escaping.
And in a (sort of) related but completely different story, Jessica Alba is suing Playboy
Actress Jessica Alba, who appears in a bikini on the cover of Playboy’s March issue, is threatening to sue the magazine, claiming that Hugh Hefner & Co. are trying to make it seem that she appears in a “nude or semi-nude pictorial.” In a February 23 legal threat letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, Alba’s lawyer demands that Playboy cease distributing the magazine and provide the 25-year-old actress with a “monetary settlement” for its unauthorized use of her image for commercial purposes.
WTF was she thinking? I mean, for sh*t’s sake, it’s PLAYBOY not freakin’ Redbook. Or did she think she’d be in the “print” not “pictorial” section. And no offense to women here, but two pasties and butt-floss is semi-nude.
[Note: Haven’t seen the rag/mag ’cause it’s wrapped in brown paper behind the counter @ 7-11. After all, boobs are dangerous, guns are cool.]
Rats. Found the real story over @ E! Online (via Yahoo) and it turns out she alleges they breached the contract by using her image – period:
In the letter, available for viewing at the Smoking Gun Website, Alba’s attorney, Brian Wolf, claims that the actress was approached by the magazine about posing for photos in connection with an article on Hollywood’s 25 sexiest celebrities, but that she refused the offer and denied Playboy permission to use her picture. link.
Gee, I’m sure glad some diligent researcher is finding all these crucial stories for the rest of us. I dread the thought of going through life without having learned of these earthshaking stories.
How did this family get cleared to adopt 3 siblings?
Sean Paddock — his brown hair slicked to the side, wearing a blue button-down shirt — looked like he was dressed for his first day of school. Instead, the 4-year-old boy’s birth family was saying goodbye at a memorial service Wednesday to the child they weren’t allowed to raise.
Sean’s adoptive mother, Lynn Paddock, 45, is charged with killing the child in what investigators describe as one of the most heartbreaking cases of child abuse they’ve ever seen.
On Wednesday, Johnston County Social Services offered the first glimpse of Sean’s troubled life and the agency’s vain attempts to protect him.
The agency’s report shows that red flags were raised about Lynn Paddock and her husband, Johnny, seven months before Sean and his older brother and sister moved into the strangers’ Smithfield home for good.
According to a summary released by the agency of their five-week involvement with the Paddocks, Sean came home from a visit in late January 2005 with the prospective adoptive parents in Johnston County with a bruise on his backside. Lynn Paddock told Sean’s Wake County foster mother that Sean fell out of a bunk bed, the summary said.
The foster mother, who is not named in the report, thought the bruise was too severe for a fall and called social workers in Wake County. The older children told their Wake County foster mother that Lynn Paddock denied Sean lunch because he wouldn’t jump on the family’s mini trampoline
There must have been a disconnect between the Social Service agencies in neighboring counties on this one, and now each one is trying to cover their ass.
Everyone failed this little boy. He was born into an abusive home, taken away, and then ultimately sent to live with a murderer.
In an earlier news story it said that when reporters called, “church members” answered the phone at the residence and had no comment.
If these children weren’t home schooled maybe a teacher or bus driver would have seen bruises and provided a safety net for these siblings. But isolated as they were they were counting on social workers to protect them and they failed.
This week, Sean’s siblings told Johnston County sheriff’s deputies that Lynn Paddock hit them with plastic plumbing pipes. The boy was beaten so badly he limped; both were covered in bruises, investigators found. Lynn Paddock also is charged with their abuse.
But when a Johnston County social worker visited the Paddocks in February and March 2005, the worker found a clean home, enough beds for the soon-to-be seven children, and ample food in the cupboards.
According to the summary, Lynn Paddock “became tearful” when she thought about “the placement being postponed or even perhaps not allowed.”
About five months later, the adoption went through.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sent him a thank-you letter for support during his Senate confirmation hearings.
Dobson said Wednesday in his radio broadcast that Alito’s letter thanked him and his listeners.
Dobson opposes abortion and had urged his listeners to support the nominations of Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. On Wednesday, Dobson said that support had “affected history” by helping put both men on the court in time to hear a pending case on partial-birth abortion.
Dobson’s gaffe will no doubt prove embarassing to his good buddy Sam Alito. We now know that Alito, who insisted that he’d keep an open mind on abortion during his confirmation hearings, just acknowledged his ongoing debt to Focus on the Family in writing.
Well, guess that explains the full-on assault on choice in the last 10 days, doesn’t it?
To counter that AP video showing he and Chertoff were warned 19 hours before Katrina hit; that the situation was dire, tragedy would follow, the White leaked to Newsweek transcripts that they told congress did not exist.
Do you suppose we need more evidence to impeach? I’m asking.
Just For Today – no bad news! (How often do I get to say that?)
The largest, most detailed image ever taken of a spiral galaxy has been generated using a mosaic of 51 exposures from the Hubble space telescope. The image, of M101 (“The Pinwheel Galaxy”, found near the bend in the handle of the big dipper), is breathtaking. Meanwhile, Harvard University is nearing completion of a new optical instrument that will be devoted exclusively to the search for extraterrestrial life.
Four stories for fans of the “New Environmentalism” diaries…
French farmer Daniel Durand lives in a long, low, traditional farmhouse, a picture postcard scene worthy of any tourist office advertisement extolling the beauty of Brittany. But behind the bucolic facade, Durand’s 40 hectare small-holding farm is unlike many others in France as up to 80 percent of the energy he needs comes from sustainable, environmentally-sound methods based on sunflower and rapeseed oil, solar, wood chips, and manure.
Scientists recommend solar, rather than nuclear power should be the priority of the UK government. Researchers from Imperial College London argue that photovoltaics, the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity, could match and exceed the nuclear industry’s current output before any new reactor could begin operating.
At this year’s motor show in Geneva, which opens today, there is an environmentally friendlier vehicle on nearly every stand. The vehicles on offer range from the hybrid diesel and electric cars from Peugeot and Citroen, Volkswagen’s natural gas solutions and Ford’s bioethanol, to BMW talking about turbo steam as a future power source and Mercedes backing clean diesel.
Foreign investors can earn Kyoto credits by investing in projects with equipment to stream-off greenhouse gas emissions from rotting waste in Chinese landfills and convert it into energy, said Lu Guoqiang, an official at China’s state Environmental Protection Administration. “China has 700 registered landfill sites but only 10 of them have installed gas recovery and utilisation systems,” he told an emissions markets conference. “There is great potential to develop landfill projects.”
Chemotherapy for an immune system disorder might also be effective in treating people infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, scientists suggest. The treatment, which is relatively inexpensive and well-established, dampens the response of an immune system gone wild. In other illnesses where the treatment has been used, it has increased survival rates from 56% to 90%.
Ooops! AndiF beat me to this one: Visitors to Yellowstone may not appreciate that they’re standing directly on top of the largest, most dynamic magma-driven system on the planet. While the supervolcano that is Yellowstone National Park won’t be erupting any time soon, scientists have uncovered a surprising source of volcanic activity beneath tourists’ feet, which was probably the reason trails had to be closed in 2003. The new research elucidates cyclic rises and falls in the entire floor of the caldera based on motions of magma beneath. The Yellowstone caldera formed 640,000 years ago in an explosion of magma more than 1000 times greater than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Engineers have developed a clever solution for computing the motions of a complex mechanical system such as a double pendulum (a weight hanging on a link, with a second weight attached to tit by another link), in the process resolving a 225 year old conundrum first posed by French physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813).
New research into a missing link in climatology, based on study of 95 million year old fossilized wood, shows that the Earth was not overcome by a greenhouse period when dinosaurs dominated, but experienced rapid fluctuations in temperature and and sea level change that resulted in a balance of the global carbon cycle. The study is being published in the March issue of Geology. “Most people think the mid-Cretaceous period was a super-greenhouse,” says Darren Gröcke, assistant professor and Director of the Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Laboratory at McMaster University. “But in fact it was not to dissimilar to the climates over the past 5 million years.”
Yet another domino! Unrest over privatized water supplies is extending to Argentina, as Bolivia plans for its transition to post-private water utilities.
Portugal signalled the launch of one of Europe’s biggest wind power projects yesterday – a move that will supply enough electricity for 750,000 homes. The contract is the equivalent to a quarter of all the wind power installed in the European Union last year. It will help cement the growing reputation of Portugal – a country importing 86% of its energy needs – as a renewable energy champion. This year, it has already approved the building of the world’s largest solar plant.
Massive envelopes of gas have been discovered around three stars (including the pole star) whose brightness varies in regular pulsations (called Cepheid variables) over a period of a few days. Scientists aren’t sure yet how they work, but suspect this discovery may help explain their periodic changes in brightness.
A small North Carolina-based specialty crops company is trying to turn a humble wildflower into a major new oilseed crop that could produce an alternative to coconut and palm oils. After 20 years in development, cuphea (koo-FEE-ah) will start its second planting this spring in the Midwestern United States. “It’s grown (as a crop) nowhere else in the world,” said Andrew Hebard, chief executive of Technology Crops International in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which is leading the commercialization of cuphea. The plant’s seeds contain novel fatty acids along with lauric acid, which is used as a wetting and foaming agent in soaps, detergents, shampoos, toothpaste and even airplane fuel. The world market for lauric oil was about 4.5 million tons in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are widely available, according to market reports. The United States consumed about 1.5 million tons of that, mostly from Southeast Asia. Cuphea could reduce U.S. reliance on imported tropical oils like palm and coconut. It could also cut dependency on some petrochemicals and give American farmers a new crop to rotate with corn.
I’m sure there will be more bad news tomorrow, but wasn’t that a refreshing change of pace?
[..]Tests conducted on 230 drinks on sale in Britain and France have identified high levels of benzene, a compound known to cause cancer, according to the Food Standards Agency.[..]
Food scientists believe that high levels of benzene may have been produced by the reaction of two commonly used ingredients — sodium benzoate, a preservative, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Sodium benzoate is widely used in the drinks sector.[..]
Tests have been carried out in Europe after US food watchdogs found benzene in juices and sodas. The Food and Drug Administration registered its concern about the possible long-term effects on health.[..]
Pentagon Develops Brain Implants to Turn Sharks into Military Spies
Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons.
Engineers funded by the Pentagon have created electronic brain implants for fish that they hope will be able to influence the movements of sharks and perhaps even decode what they are sensing.
Although both Cold War superpowers have trained sea mammals such as dolphins and killer whales to carry out quasi-military duties, this is probably the first time the military have seriously considered using fish.
The Pentagon hopes to exploit the ability of sharks to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails, according to New Scientist magazine.
Here are the basics to date: Blum currently holds over 111,000 shares of stock in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense contractors in the United States. Blum is an acting director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002. Carlyle’s trusty advisers, past and present, include former President George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and ex-SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, among other prominent neoconservatives and Washington power brokers.
URS and Blum have since banked on the Iraq war, scoring a phat $600 million contract through EG&G. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the war began in March 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture alone and another $100 million for his investment firm.
“As part of EG&G’s sale price,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle, “Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in URS – second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled by Blum Capital.”
WASHINGTON Mar 2, 2006 (AP)– Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin. Not to worry a wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back. The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges as early as 18 months of age.
Toddlers’ endearing desire to help out actually signals fairly sophisticated brain development, and is a trait of interest to anthropologists trying to tease out the evolutionary roots of altruism and cooperation.
Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he “struggled” with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up.
Over and over, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds but only if he appeared to need it. Video shows how one overall-clad baby glanced between Warneken’s face and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over, grabbing the object, pushing up to his feet and eagerly handing back the pin.
This is a fascinating article. If babies are altruistic and empathetic my nature, where does society go wrong when it produces such pillars of altruism as our Republican Congress? or Alberto Gonzales?
Here’s another thought: no one tell Rummy about this, or the army will be recruiting at pre-schools.
But you already knew that: Philadelphia Daily News via Attytood
His charity only gives out 40% of the money taken in to helping anyone, overhead is 60%. This includes ex-campaign workers who are on the payroll. The contempt for people needing help is amazing. Here is a link to a WPost article about Santorum’s bogus charity.
A more reputable charity such as Mercy Corps gives 92% to programs and only 8% for overhead..
Thanks for the links.
He is a total dirtbag.
If a so called charity spends 60% of its funds on raising money and adminstrative costs, it isn’t a charity according to any IRS definition I know of, and I use to be in the non-profit game. It was a long time ago, but when I was an Executive Director of a citizens group that did public policy research and made non-partisan recommendations for action to gov’t’s, or corp’s, the most we could spend on staff salaries and support (supplies, etc.) plus money spent to raise money was 30% of our budget.
For this and so many more reasons, Santorum sucketh.
Full Article
If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone and realized the size of the original caldera, the thought of what this new activity might mean is pretty daunting.
and state funding cuts in family planning services: WashPo
You know, there’s nothing surprising about this. If you’re going to claim to want to reduce the number of abortions, why not start by reducing the number of pregnancies with access and funding for family planning?
When you consider the sobering truth that the planet now sustains over 6 Billion of us, anything that can be done to prevent unwanted pregnancies should be done. That simple thought however is viewed by many to be a radical one from the fringe left. When the roof caves in on our population, (bird flu, climate change caused by our collective pollution, famine or some other natural calamity made worse by our out of control growth) I wonder if anyone who survives will look back and connect the dots?
Flasher: Online Sun
Apparently they keep escaping.
And in a (sort of) related but completely different story, Jessica Alba is suing Playboy
WTF was she thinking? I mean, for sh*t’s sake, it’s PLAYBOY not freakin’ Redbook. Or did she think she’d be in the “print” not “pictorial” section. And no offense to women here, but two pasties and butt-floss is semi-nude.
[Note: Haven’t seen the rag/mag ’cause it’s wrapped in brown paper behind the counter @ 7-11. After all, boobs are dangerous, guns are cool.]
That was exactly what I thought! How clueless could you possibly be? They better throw it out of court and send her the bill for being frivolous.
Rats. Found the real story over @ E! Online (via Yahoo) and it turns out she alleges they breached the contract by using her image – period:
Rats?
She might have a real case and . . . rats?
What, do you want a third of her settlement? 🙂
🙂
I’m doing my end of the month time and so my mind (which is obviously looking for distractions) is in the “god bless the plaintiff” mode.
I’m doing that now too. Can I just say again how much I hate doing time?
Yes you may and I second the sentiment.
We need a special timekeeping happy hour today
Rats = my bad for not checking the source.
on behalf of the potential customers who’ll buy the magazine expecting to see her in the center spread, only to be disappointed… 😉
Haven’t read Playboy in years; used to read it for the cartoons… 😉
Gee, I’m sure glad some diligent researcher is finding all these crucial stories for the rest of us. I dread the thought of going through life without having learned of these earthshaking stories.
Can someone please give Lindsay Lohan a pork chop?
News story
How did this family get cleared to adopt 3 siblings?
There must have been a disconnect between the Social Service agencies in neighboring counties on this one, and now each one is trying to cover their ass.
Everyone failed this little boy. He was born into an abusive home, taken away, and then ultimately sent to live with a murderer.
In an earlier news story it said that when reporters called, “church members” answered the phone at the residence and had no comment.
If these children weren’t home schooled maybe a teacher or bus driver would have seen bruises and provided a safety net for these siblings. But isolated as they were they were counting on social workers to protect them and they failed.
Thats very very sad. That poor child.
hearts Dobson: via Alternet
Well, guess that explains the full-on assault on choice in the last 10 days, doesn’t it?
This makes me physically ill.
What we Americans need is some process to object to or block the appointment approval of a controversial SC nominee.
Yeah like hearings or something in front of vertebrates. 😉
Thinkprogress has it here. Go read, “Presidential Visits to India”: ‘Then and Now’ March 2000 and March 2006.
How about newly minted Supreme Court JusticeAlito’s inappropriate Thank-You letter to Dr Dobson and the Christian Right? I won’t forget. Is that it?
And Preznit caught in a lie. Again?
To counter that AP video showing he and Chertoff were warned 19 hours before Katrina hit; that the situation was dire, tragedy would follow, the White leaked to Newsweek transcripts that they told congress did not exist.
Do you suppose we need more evidence to impeach? I’m asking.
Just For Today – no bad news! (How often do I get to say that?)
The largest, most detailed image ever taken of a spiral galaxy has been generated using a mosaic of 51 exposures from the Hubble space telescope. The image, of M101 (“The Pinwheel Galaxy”, found near the bend in the handle of the big dipper), is breathtaking. Meanwhile, Harvard University is nearing completion of a new optical instrument that will be devoted exclusively to the search for extraterrestrial life.
Chemotherapy for an immune system disorder might also be effective in treating people infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, scientists suggest. The treatment, which is relatively inexpensive and well-established, dampens the response of an immune system gone wild. In other illnesses where the treatment has been used, it has increased survival rates from 56% to 90%.
Ooops! AndiF beat me to this one: Visitors to Yellowstone may not appreciate that they’re standing directly on top of the largest, most dynamic magma-driven system on the planet. While the supervolcano that is Yellowstone National Park won’t be erupting any time soon, scientists have uncovered a surprising source of volcanic activity beneath tourists’ feet, which was probably the reason trails had to be closed in 2003. The new research elucidates cyclic rises and falls in the entire floor of the caldera based on motions of magma beneath. The Yellowstone caldera formed 640,000 years ago in an explosion of magma more than 1000 times greater than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Engineers have developed a clever solution for computing the motions of a complex mechanical system such as a double pendulum (a weight hanging on a link, with a second weight attached to tit by another link), in the process resolving a 225 year old conundrum first posed by French physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813).
New research into a missing link in climatology, based on study of 95 million year old fossilized wood, shows that the Earth was not overcome by a greenhouse period when dinosaurs dominated, but experienced rapid fluctuations in temperature and and sea level change that resulted in a balance of the global carbon cycle. The study is being published in the March issue of Geology. “Most people think the mid-Cretaceous period was a super-greenhouse,” says Darren Gröcke, assistant professor and Director of the Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Laboratory at McMaster University. “But in fact it was not to dissimilar to the climates over the past 5 million years.”
Yet another domino! Unrest over privatized water supplies is extending to Argentina, as Bolivia plans for its transition to post-private water utilities.
Portugal signalled the launch of one of Europe’s biggest wind power projects yesterday – a move that will supply enough electricity for 750,000 homes. The contract is the equivalent to a quarter of all the wind power installed in the European Union last year. It will help cement the growing reputation of Portugal – a country importing 86% of its energy needs – as a renewable energy champion. This year, it has already approved the building of the world’s largest solar plant.
Massive envelopes of gas have been discovered around three stars (including the pole star) whose brightness varies in regular pulsations (called Cepheid variables) over a period of a few days. Scientists aren’t sure yet how they work, but suspect this discovery may help explain their periodic changes in brightness.
A small North Carolina-based specialty crops company is trying to turn a humble wildflower into a major new oilseed crop that could produce an alternative to coconut and palm oils. After 20 years in development, cuphea (koo-FEE-ah) will start its second planting this spring in the Midwestern United States. “It’s grown (as a crop) nowhere else in the world,” said Andrew Hebard, chief executive of Technology Crops International in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which is leading the commercialization of cuphea. The plant’s seeds contain novel fatty acids along with lauric acid, which is used as a wetting and foaming agent in soaps, detergents, shampoos, toothpaste and even airplane fuel. The world market for lauric oil was about 4.5 million tons in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are widely available, according to market reports. The United States consumed about 1.5 million tons of that, mostly from Southeast Asia. Cuphea could reduce U.S. reliance on imported tropical oils like palm and coconut. It could also cut dependency on some petrochemicals and give American farmers a new crop to rotate with corn.
I’m sure there will be more bad news tomorrow, but wasn’t that a refreshing change of pace?
It makes me so happy that your news kind of goes with my quote today…
That’s an interesting story about etoposide and H5N1.
Thanks KP – these are almost as exciting as San Francisco’s new use for dog poop.
I am very happy today! Let’s dance.
Could be the same over here?
In Britain. “Soft drinks found to have high levels of cancer chemical”
Oh my
link
Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons.
Engineers funded by the Pentagon have created electronic brain implants for fish that they hope will be able to influence the movements of sharks and perhaps even decode what they are sensing.
Although both Cold War superpowers have trained sea mammals such as dolphins and killer whales to carry out quasi-military duties, this is probably the first time the military have seriously considered using fish.
The Pentagon hopes to exploit the ability of sharks to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails, according to New Scientist magazine.
from Joshua Frank’s new blog:
The Democrats’ Daddy Warbucks: Feinstein Family War Profits: Part Two
The House the War Bought
Senator Feinstein’s War-Profiteering: Enabling Bush
link
WASHINGTON Mar 2, 2006 (AP)– Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin. Not to worry a wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back. The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges as early as 18 months of age.
Toddlers’ endearing desire to help out actually signals fairly sophisticated brain development, and is a trait of interest to anthropologists trying to tease out the evolutionary roots of altruism and cooperation.
Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he “struggled” with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up.
Over and over, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds but only if he appeared to need it. Video shows how one overall-clad baby glanced between Warneken’s face and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over, grabbing the object, pushing up to his feet and eagerly handing back the pin.
This is a fascinating article. If babies are altruistic and empathetic my nature, where does society go wrong when it produces such pillars of altruism as our Republican Congress? or Alberto Gonzales?
Here’s another thought: no one tell Rummy about this, or the army will be recruiting at pre-schools.