February 2012
35 posts
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“The Bible’s the greatest game of ‘Telephone’ in history. Jesus said ‘Love your...”
– @JohnFugelsang (via unepetitesouris)
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Italy to End Tax Breaks on Church Enterprises |... →
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Mario Monti plans an amendment to an Italian law that will force the Catholic Church to pay taxes on all its commercial properties, according to a statement posted late yesterday on the government’s website.
The church currently pays property tax only on buildings designated as “purely commercial,” based on an Italian law originating 20 years ago and...
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“Women’s status in the society is much worse. When Saddam was around, we had many...”
– Yanar Mohammed, interviewed by In These Times. Yanar is a feminist activist in Iraq, where she heads up the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and has been responsible for organizing weekly protests by women in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
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Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil... →
“The genome is of very high quality”, says Matthias Meyer, who developed the techniques that made this technical feat possible. “We cover all non-repetitive DNA sequences in the Denisovan genome so many times that it has fewer errors than most genomes from present-day humans that have been determined to date”.
The genome represents the first high-coverage, complete genome sequence of an archaic...
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Menominee Seventh Grader Suspended for Saying "I... →
Miranda speaks two languages: Menominee and English. She also plays on her basketball team. However, two Thursdays ago she was suspended for one basketball game because she spoke Menominee to a fellow classmate during class. […]
The alleged ‘attitude problem’ turned out to be that Miranda said the Menominee word
“posoh” that means “hello”
and said
“Ketapanen”
in...
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U.S. Military Toxins: The Gift That Keeps on... →
Hey, Iraq, don’t say we never gave you anything. In addition to hundreds of thousands dead and untold injured, the United States is leaving behind enough toxic waste sites to kill your rats.
“Open-air burn pits have operated widely at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Department of Veterans Affairs notes on its website. On hundreds of camps and bases across the two countries, the...
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Inside the lost island of New York: Eerie pictures... →
In a series of extraordinarily eerie pictures, the lost world of North Brother - quarantine zone, leper colony and centre for drug addicts - has been brought back to life.
It is hard to believe that these echoing corridors and abandoned halls were home to hundreds of patients - or that a criss-cross of tree-lined avenues were once roads.
But the haunting quality of these pictures makes it...
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Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down →
Tribler utilizes direct P2P. To shut it down, you’d have to take out the entire internet.
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Why Spanking Doesn’t Work | TIME →
32 countries have outlawed physical discipline of children including Sweden, much of Europe, Costa Rica, Israel, Tunisia and Kenya.
Children who are spanked may feel depressed and devalued, and their sense of self-worth can suffer. Harsh punishments can wind up backfiring because they can foster lying in children who are desperate to avoid being spanked. Later in life, physical punishment is...
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Five Things You Probably Don’t Know About Food... →
abbyjean:
A large and growing share of SNAP households are working households(see chart). In 2010, more than three times as many SNAP households worked as relied solely on welfare benefits for their income.
SNAP responded quickly and effectively to the recession.
Today’s large SNAP caseloads mostly reflect the extraordinarily deep and prolonged recession and the weak recovery. Workers who are...
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Science decodes 'internal voices' →
Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.
Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.
The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.
Several approaches have in recent years suggested...
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Graphic images flood out of Syria. Why no world... →
csmonitor:
Grainy videos depict the violence that has killed at least 6,000 Syrians, but the prospects for international intervention appear dim. Is the world inured to the ubiquitous images?
Have people tired of caring about the Arab Spring? Because I’m pretty sure those fighting and dying for regime change care deeply.
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Apple: Make the iPhone 5 ethically →
A petition to request that Apple make their products ethically, because we really DO care where our electronics come from and the working conditions of those producing our technology.
January 2012
36 posts
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Think Progress: Colbert's Super PAC raises over $1... →
think-progress:
Dear Sirs and Sirettes,
Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (ABTT) would like it entered into the record that as of January 30th, 2012, the sum total of our donations was $1,023,121.24.
Stephen Colbert, President of ABTT, has asked that I quote him as saying, ”Yeah! How you like me…
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Genes Influence Criminal Behavior, Research... →
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) — Your genes could be a strong predictor of whether you stray into a life of crime, according to a research paper co-written by UT Dallas criminologist Dr. J.C. Barnes.
Fascinating
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In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad | NYT →
As speculation about the iPhone 5 kicks into gear, The New York Times looks into the often brutal factory conditions that make such rapid improvement possible. Apple’s own audits found that hundreds of its supply factories in China require employees—some as young as 15—to work more than 60 hours a week, or more than 6 days a week, sometimes in deadly conditions. Yet fewer than 15 suppliers...
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Watchnationaljournal:
Tough not to cry here as Gabrielle Giffords resigns from the House.
Tear-jerker
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Scientific Literacy Quiz →
Tough, comprehensive quiz! Post score to comments. (I got 72% correct.)
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A Woman’s Place | Slate →
A female rabbi has spent years fighting the ultra-Orthodox-led discrimination against women in Israel. Now the rest of the country is joining her.
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It’s time to end the failed war on drugs |... →
New policies should be evaluated according to the scientific evidence. But we can say now that these policies should focus on the rights of citizens and on protecting public health. Drug policy should be a comprehensive issue for families, schools, civil society and health care providers, not just law enforcement.
To evaluate such policies, we should stop measuring their success according to...
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