Source: The Huffington Post
Credits: Michael McLaughlin
Dated: 2012-05-19

Cameron Todd Willingham Exoneration Was Written But Never Filed By Texas Judge

[ Emilie says : Here is a judge who found the railroading of Willingham as unsettling as I did - and whose report was smoked out by the recent Carlos DeLuna revelations. ]

A Texas judge who reviewed the controversial 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham planned to posthumously exonerate the father who was put to death for killing his three daughters in a house fire.

Source: al Jazeera
Credits: Noam Chomsky
Dated:  2012-05-16

[ Emilie says : Precariat. What a brilliant, needed word for the utterly insignificant. ]

Plutonomy and the precariat: On the history of the US economy in decline

The current US economy is built on 'growing worker insecurity' - people who are too busy and poor to make demands.

Since the 1970s, wealth has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the financial sector PhotoCredits: EPA

The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead - because victory won't come quickly - it could prove a significant moment in American history.

Source: The Lancet via The Telegraph
Credits: Rebecca Smith (Medical Editor, The Telegraph)
Dated: 2012-05-17
Refer Also: 

• Statins could stave off symptoms of Alzheimer's, study finds
• Heart attack vaccine
• Statins 'could treat breast cancer' in future
• Battling to cut cholesterol and get fighting fit – fast
• "Take statins early and forever' patients at risk of heart attacks told
• Statins 'could save a lot of lives'

Source: al Jazeera
Credits: Christopher Kelty
Dated: 2012-03-01

Source: BBC
Credits: Laurence Peter
Dated: 2012-05-10

Real-world beaming: The risk of avatar and robot crime

A demonstration of how robot 'beaming' technology works Laws might have to adapt to the fact that certain crimes can be committed at a distance, via the use of beamed technologies” -- Ray Purdy University College London Microsoft Kinect Game device that creates virtual likeness of the player Launched in November 2010, eight million units sold in first 60 days Similar devices developed for Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation Captures an individual's non-verbal behaviour Works as webcam-style add-on for Xbox 360 console, and also PCs Infrared projector tracks points on body, updating them every second The law and ethics of beaming Risk of impersonation if avatar is hacked or stolen Individual can embellish personal avatar, creating false image Molestation or rape possible with physical interactions via internet No single jurisdiction governs remote interactions across national borders Controller must be identifiable to prosecute crime committed via avatar or robot Better encryption may be needed to protect realistic avatars (so-called doppelgangers)

Source: The Atlantic
Credits: Andrew Cohen
Dated: 2012-05-14
Refer Also:

Source: The Hill
Credits: Mike Lillis
Dated: 2010-10-20

CDC finds stark regional disparities in teen-pregnancy rates

[ Emilie says : I dug out this old article to support another discussion. The huge social significance of teen pregnancy caused by a total lack of comprehension of their own biology is that it is indicative of an early beginning in reproduction, which combined with religion driven breeding imperatives and the much higher probability that religious people will engage in serial relationships with children, resulting in an ongoing population explosion. As each person needs water, food, housing, social services, etc., this implies that the resources available to everyone are reduced by each additional birth (in other words, once total costs are taken into account over time, everyone on the planet is made poorer as additional people are added to the population). This result is visible in America's exploding demographics and increasing poverty. ]

Although national teen-pregnancy rates are on the decline, the disparities between states are often dramatic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)reported Wednesday.

Some women's health advocates say the discrepancies are indication that comprehensive sex-education programs are producing results for states that offer them, while states emphasizing abstinence-only programs aren't faring as well.

[ Emilie says : Unpaid, but very creative humans are producing this fantastically popular, totally imaginary characters' music. Clearly vast numbers of presumably quite rational people can, and have, fallen in love with an avatar - and are not being motivated by money. While this should put the corporate music industries claims that so-called "Intellectual Property" is required to stimulate productivity to rest, it doesn't yet reach the next level. Hatsune is marketed as being an "expressive instrument" which doesn't threaten anything, but she does suggest that question of who, if anyone, will "own" works created by artificial intelligence and, if it is asserted to be a human, if that will change if the artificial intelligence is a spirothete. ]

Hatsune Miku is a 16-year-old girl with long green pigtails and a voice with a range no human could ever hope to match.

She is an autotuned virtual singer with a computer-synthesized voice, a work by creators who met on the Internet.

Many of the songs she sang have proven to be so appealing that the music industry cannot ignore her. She has developed into a singer with a large worldwide following

Lets now see who Mikus creators are and how her world was formed.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku

List of Vaccines, Single or Combination, and their Abbreviations (a mixture of upper and lower case is preferred)

Source: Live Science
Credits: Wynne Parry (LiveScience Senior Writer)
Dated: 2012-05-10
Refer Also: [Infographic: Are You Getting Enough Sleep?]

Is Your Alarm Clock Making You Fat?

In the industrialized world, a conflict between two opposing forces — biology and the alarm clock — is helping to make people fat, new research suggests.

A discrepancy between the natural timing of sleep and work or school schedules leads to sleep deprivation, since people forced into schedules unnatural to them don't get enough sleep. And survey data indicates people with larger discrepancies are more likely to carry extra weight, according to the researchers.

"We are biological beings, and we have a biological clock, and what society — and I don't mean the bad guys, I mean all of us — is ignoring is the biological clock," said study researcher Till Roenneberg of the University of Munich. "We think we can do whatever we want with the social clock."

Sleep and health

There is a well-established link between sleep and metabolism. Previous studies have linked shorter sleep to obesity, and some have even linked longer sleep to obesity, although this link is less well established, said Jamie Zeitzer, an assistant professor at Stanford University who studies circadian rhythms and sleep. Zeitzer was not involved with the current study.

Source: Slate.com
Credits: Alexandra Natapoff
Dated: 2012-04-27

Why Misdemeanors Aren’t So Minor

Too often the criminal justice system is pronouncing people guilty without evidence, lawyers, or a chance to plead their case.

Source: National Geographic
Credits: Erik Vance (National Geographic News, Xultún, Guatemala)
Dated: 2012-05-10
Refer Also:

[ Emilie says : Now that Obama, prompted by Biden, has evolved enough to opine that everyone has the right to be miserable in their own way with their own partner, and given all the nonsense being spoken about what marriage is (a religious concept in which the state should not be involved perhaps?), based on antiquated christer concepts borrowed from the babble, it is worth studying exactly which forms of marriage are approved of by the Christer's  babble. Are the christers who are busily condemning gay marriages actually advocating the following "biblically approved relationships"? Curious minds seek to know. ]

Source: http://gawker.com/5909309/single-mother-bristol-palin-tells-obama-same+sex-marriage-is-wrong-because-kids-need-a-mom-and-dad (Attached to comment by Gawker deleta est)

Every one should be allowed to wed anyone they please - why should some be immune to the miseries of marriage?

King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many concubines*,
And many, many wives;

But when old age crept over them,
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms

James Ball Naylor [ Emilie says : Astounding that Wikipedia has no entry for this prolific author and poet ]

*[var. lady friends]

Source: The Daily Mail
Credits: Rob Waugh
Dated: 2012-05-08

Born to kill? Psychopaths have different brains to normal people - and current 'therapies' for killers may be useless 

• Psychopaths have less grey matter in areas of brain used to 'understand' other people
• 'Cold-hearted' criminals suffer abnormality in the brain
• May mean current behavioural therapies are useless

Psychopaths have physically different brains from 'normal' people - and may be 'born to kill'.

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter: A new study suggests psychopaths have physically different brains from 'normal' people - and may be 'born to kill'

In scans by scientists, they had less grey matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other peoples' emotions. 

Source: The American Conservative
Credits: Ron Unz
Dated: 2012-04-18

Source: RT via YouTube
Credits: Max Keiser, Gerald Celente
Dated: 2012-05-02

Source: The Daily Mail
Credits: Imogen Edwards-Jones
Dated: 2012-05-06

How Hello! weddings are destroying the happy ever after

Britons now spend a staggering £7.5 billion a year getting married. As a family court judge blames lavish ceremonies for soaring divorce rates, we investigate ...

Kate is paying off her ‘big day’ at the rate of £250 a month.

According to the Office of National Statistics, a couple spend between £21,000 and £25,000 on their wedding (stock picture)

The contract lawyer from South London says: ‘I borrowed more than £20,000 for the wedding. I wanted a Vera Wang dress, a 10ft veil, a cake made of Laduree macaroons and a reception for 120 friends and family. That kind of wedding all adds up.’

Unfortunately for Kate, 31, she now has another expense to contend with.

‘I’m also getting divorced,’ she says. ‘My husband walked out on me after eight months of marriage. I came back from work one day to an empty house. He was gone — just like that. All he had left me was a note saying he couldn’t hack it any more. I am only just beginning to come to terms with it.’

http://xgis.maaamet.ee/xGIS/XGis?app_id=UU82&user_id=at&punkt=484741,6565405&zoom=129&tooltip=Sammalm%C3%A4e%2C%20Keibu%20k%C3%BCla%2C%20Padise%20vald%2C%20Harju%20maakond

Source: Antiwar.com
Credits:  Uri Avnery
Dated: 2012-05-05

A Putsch Against War

Generals and secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians

[ Emilie says : Mandatory reading :-) ]

In some countries, they arrest the president, occupy government offices and TV stations and annul the constitution. They then publish Communique No. 1, explaining the dire need to save the nation from perdition and promising democracy, elections etc.

In other countries, they do it more quietly. They just inform the elected leaders that, if they don’t desist from their disastrous policies, the officers will make their views public and precipitate their downfall.

Such officers are generally called a "junta", the Spanish word for "committee" used by South American generals. Their method is usually called a "putsch", a German-Swiss term for a sudden blow. (Yes, the Swiss actually had revolts some 170 years ago.)

What almost all such coups have in common is that their instigators thrive on the demagoguery of war. The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such.

Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.

Source: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_rstablew.pl

Source: New York Times
Credits: Robert Mackey
Dated: 2012-04-17

Israeli Minister Agrees Ahmadinejad Never Said Israel ‘Must Be Wiped Off the Map’

In a reminder that Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret, a senior Israeli official has acknowledged that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never actually said that Israel “must be wiped off the map.” [ Emilie says : That's funny. I found it very easy to interpret even though I can speak English. I and many others have been saying this since the controversy was first created out of wholecloth by a toxic combination of the Jewish Lobby and Iranian dissidents seeking American (and Jewish) support. ]

Source: Monbiot.com (published in the Guardian 1st May 2012)
Credits: George Monbiot
Dated: 2012-04-30

Empire of Capital

[ Emilie says : What isn't said here, perhaps because Guardian readers, George Monbiot's primary audience, tend to be an educated bunch, but for the rest of the world, probably should be articulated, is that the veto held by the permanent members of the UN Security Council achieves the same effect in the UN as the US' 16.7% vote achieves in the IMF, that is, to ensure that International justice is limited to exactly what the rich and powerful want it to be, and that irrespective of the form any particular government takes, the rich and powerful, controlling the capital, the media and the law as they do, effectively manage the other 99.9% of the population as they would. ]

Colonialism never ended, it continues by different means.

The conviction of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is said to have sent an unequivocal message to current leaders: that great office confers no immunity. In fact it sent two messages: if you run a small, weak nation, you may be subject to the full force of international law. If you run a powerful nation, you have nothing to fear.

While anyone with an interest in human rights should welcome the verdict, it reminds us that no one has faced legal consequences for launching the illegal war against Iraq. This fits the Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of a “crime of aggression”, which it called “the supreme international crime”(1). The charges on which, in an impartial system, George Bush, Tony Blair and their associates should have been investigated are far graver than those for which Taylor was found guilty.

Source: The Daily Mail
Credits: Rob Waugh
Dated: 2012-05-01

People love multitasking - but sadly BOTH sexes are terrible at it, not just men

[ Emilie says : Meshed Gears has been saying this for years - but even if all humans are bad at multitasking, I think that the evidence suggests that men are much less able to multitask than women. Two things that a study should be able to test (ah, a pair of PhD projects for somebody) are that men seem to prefer to arrange simple but inefficient queues so as to avoid having to strain their brains, while women, being quite happy to communicate in parallel, simply cluster - and when watching television women can still hold multiple conversations at once without losing track while men can only grunt. ]

• Both sexes feel 'positive' emotion from multitasking
• Reduces effectiveness at most tasks
• Both sexes equally bad at multitasking, claims study