Should the obese pay more for airline tickets?

It's one of the last untapped energy sources, and one in which the United States the world. It's not just renewable, but almost impossible to get rid of. We're talking about fat. At about 3,500 calories to the pound, a 300-pound American contains the energy equivalent in fat of roughly 15 gallons of gasoline. How long will we let this resource go unused?

OK, no one is proposing drilling fat people for fuel. But when most of us are looking over our shoulders at our carbon footprints, the obese seem a, well, fat target. Americans persist in the belief that it's fat people who consume more than their share of resources, rather than, say, movie stars flying private jets to Cannes. And since existing social disincentives to obesity haven't worked, people keep suggesting ways to enhance them, including weight surcharges for airplane tickets and higher rates for medical insurance.

It is indisputable that heavy people are more expensive to fly. A study concluded that the 10 pounds Americans gained on average during the 1990s required an additional 350 million gallons of fuel a year. But as much as the airlines could use the revenue, it's highly unlikely they will start charging passengers by weight, according to a spokesman for the Air Transport Association. Peggy Howell, of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, agrees. "I don't believe people are willing to stand on a scale in public," she says. She happens to weigh 300 pounds, but points out that even thin people would probably object. One of the few experts who endorse a penalty for fat fliers is Laurie Zoloth, who heads the bioethics center at Northwestern University—but for her it's a question of fairness to the person in the next seat, rather than carbon emissions. In fact, Southwest Airlines already requires passengers who can't fit in a seat without raising the armrest to pay for two seats. (The extra cost applies only if the flight is oversold.)

A Native American Family Fights Against Hair Length Rules

When five-year-old Adriel Arocha ran afoul of the Needville school district, getting cut off wasn't an option for his parents

Five-year-old Adriel Arocha has been mistakenly called a pretty girl.

"No, I'm a boy," Adriel told one stranger. "I have a penis."

Adriel's long, ink-black hair caused the confusion. He's never had a haircut.

His father, Kenney Arocha, is part Native American. He teaches spiritual beliefs to his son that his grandfather and uncles taught to him. Michelle Betenbaugh, Arocha's wife and Adriel's mother, isn't Native American, but she supports raising her son as such.

"I'm an Indian," Adriel says. "How long my hair is, it tells me how long I've been here."

Currently living in Stafford, Arocha plans to move his family to Needville, a town of about 3,000 residents, 40 miles southwest of Houston. The family owns about 50 acres in Needville, and Arocha and Betenbaugh want to turn the land into a sustainable farm, teaching Adriel where food comes from and the importance of conservation.
"We like the idea of trying to minimize our impact," Arocha says.

Adriel's parents want to enroll him at Needville Elementary School. Betenbaugh sent an e-mail to the principal, asking about kindergarten and explaining Adriel's long hair. The principal replied that the district doesn't allow long hair on boys.

On June 9, the family met with Curtis Rhodes, the Needville superintendent. Rhodes asked what religion upheld that Adriel could not cut his hair. The family explained there wasn't a church or doctrine they followed, but they believe that Adriel's hair is sacred.

Arocha said that his belief is to cut his hair after life-changing events, such as mourning the death of someone he loves.

Rhodes told the family Adriel's hair would have to go.

"I've got a lot of friends that are Native-American Indians from Oklahoma, South Dakota, lot of places, some over in Louisiana in the Choctaw Nation, and they all cut their hair," Rhodes says. "We're not going to succumb to everything and just wash away our policies and procedures."

Since the meeting, Arocha and Betenbaugh have been preparing to fight Rhodes and the school district. The family contacted the American Indian Movement, which has offered to speak to district officials. They also contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which is deciding whether to take the case.

kid falls and breaks back, then cops taser him 19 times

Humans Predicted to Contact Extraterrestrial Civilization

Some leading astronomers are quite confident that mankind will make contact with intelligent alien life within two decades. The search for extraterrestrial life will leap forward next year when NASA launches the Kepler space telescope.

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Wild orangutans treat pain with natural anti-inflammatory

                             

Four individuals have been seen rubbing a soothing balm onto their limbs, the first known examples of orangutans self medicating. Great apes have never before been seen using drugs in this way. Remarkably though, local people use the same balm, administering it in a similar way to treat aches and pains.

Primatologist Helen Morrogh-Bernard, of the University of Cambridge, UK, made the discovery while studying Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) in the Sabangau Peat Swamp Forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

In 2005, she witnessed an adult female pick a handful of leaves from a plant and then chew them, mixing the leaves with her saliva to produce a green-white lather. The female then scooped up some of the lather with her right hand and applied it up and down the back of her left arm, from the base of the shoulder to the wrist, just as a person would apply sunscreen.

"She was concentrating on her arm only and was methodical in the way she was applying the soapy foam," says Morrogh-Bernard. "I knew this must be some form of self-medication."

After using the leaves, the orangutan dropped them, allowing Morrogh-Bernard and her assistant to find out what they were. The leaves belong to a genus called Commelina, a group of plants that orangutans do not eat as part of their normal diet. However, local indigenous people know the plant well, grinding it into a balm and applying it to their skin to treat muscular pain, sore bones and swellings

DOJ fired "outstanding" attorney because she was a lesbian

In April, NPR reported that the Justice Department Inspector General was investigating whether former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling dismissed a career DOJ attorney “because of rumors that she is a lesbian.”

Today’s Office of Professional Responsibility report confirms that Goodling, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, did discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In the case described by the report, Goodling stalled an assistant U.S. attorney’s advancement because of rumors of a gay relationship with her superior, a U.S. attorney.

As the report notes, the assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) received “outstanding” performance reviews, the highest possible rating, and was subsequently granted a work extension in 2006. Goodling, however, opposed it. Deputy Director John Nowacki, who supported the extension, described a meeting with Goodling:

Goodling brought up the issue of the attorney’s “relationship in progress” with her U.S. Attorney “and made it clear just that she thought that was inappropriate.”

Several other officials report witnessing the same discrimination from Goodling. When Executive Office for U.S. Attorney Associate Counsel Natalie Voris told Goodling she supported the extension, Goodling “responded that Voris did not know the AUSA as well as she thought she did“:

Voris said that Goodling then told her that the [assistant U.S. attorney] had a homosexual relationship with the U.S. Attorney in the AUSA’s USAO and that the two took trips together at government expense. Voris told us she believes that the AUSA’s alleged sexual orientation was a factor in Goodling’s decision not to extend the detail.

Furthermore, when the assistant U.S. attorney sought a detail in the Office of Violence Against Women, Goodling objected “because it would look like the Department was sanctioning the homosexual relationship.”

The OIG report also implicates Michael Battle, a key figure in the US. Attorney scandal, for sitting on the sidelines. Battle “should have raised concerns about Goodling’s actions with Goodling’s supervisor, Kyle Sampson, the OIG [Office of Inspector General], or OPR,” the report states.

“We concluded that Goodling’s actions violated Department policy and federal law, and constituted misconduct,” the report adds. Both the assistant U.S. attorney and the U.S. attorney denied the relationship.

Muslims attack Christian school in Indonesia

The attack on the Christian school that have taken place not in one of the remote provinces of this most populated Muslim country, but right in its capital - Jakarta - leaving 256 people wounded:

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Police evacuated the Christian Theological Arastamar Institute (STT SETIA) which is located in an eastern district of the Indonesian capital after it suffered damages during clashes between Christians and Muslims over the week-end. At least 1,500 students were moved to nearby police headquarters and a local Christian-based political party. The situation remains critical and further violence between opposite factions cannot be ruled out.
“The school foundation urged us to intervene to protect people,” said East Jakarta District Police Chief Senior Superintendent. “For this reason we moved everyone out.”

Last night hundreds of residents from the village of Kampung Pulo had taken up arms threatening to storm the school after being instigated by an imam at a local mosque who claimed that a bunch of Christian gangsters were coming to “protect” the school after it was attacked on Saturday by a Muslim mob, causing damage to the building and hurting hundreds.

In an attempt to solve the problem East Jakarta District Chief Murdani held a close door meeting with the warring parties to discuss the issue. At the same time though, he said that police would conduct a thorough investigation and check if the school’s legal status was in order and that it respected all building regulations. In case of violations he would issue orders to demolish the unlawful structures.

At present hundreds of agents are guarding the school and have orders to stop any act of violence and disarm people.

You just got to love the "religion" of peace 

This is how I felt about the Kingdom Hall

One third of British Muslim student say it's okay to kill in the name of Islam

ALMOST a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a poll.

The study also found that two in five Muslims at university support the incorporation of Islamic sharia codes into British law.

The YouGov poll for the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) will raise concerns about the extent of campus radicalism. “Significant numbers appear to hold beliefs which contravene democratic values,” said Han-nah Stuart, one of the report’s authors. “These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said there is no extremism in British universities.”

Scary eh?!

One more mental disorder I think I have

Lethologica

The Coming Prison Meltdown

We're locking up 1 in every 100 American adults—and going bankrupt in the process. Are there alternatives to a total meltdown? Inside America's broken—and broke—prison system.

The number first appeared in headlines earlier this year: Nearly one in four of all prisoners worldwide is incarcerated in America. It was just the latest such statistic. Today, one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is locked up. In 1970, our prisons held fewer than 200,000 people; now that number exceeds 1.5 million, and when you add in local jails, it's 2.3 million—1 in 100 American adults. Since the 1980s, we've sat by as the numbers inched higher and our prison system ballooned, swallowing up an ever-larger portion of the citizenry. But do statistics like these, no matter how disturbing, really mean anything anymore? What does it take to get us to sit up and notice?

The answer is so simple: Decriminalize drugs and prostitution

Art gallery faces court for 'insulting' statue of Jesus

An art gallery is being taken to court for displaying a statue of Jesus with an erection.

The sculpture by controversial artist Terence Koh, was part of an exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

As well as the Christ sculpture, the exhibition which ran from September 2007 to January this year included other Koh pieces, Mickey Mouse and ET with erections.

A private prosecution has now been launched with legal documents claiming the gallery has both offended public decency and breached Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.

The maximum fine for outraging public decency is six months prison and a £5,000 fine. Legal experts say the hearing would be the first test of public decency legislation since the Government scrapped Britain's ancient blasphemy laws in May.

The prosecution has been launched by 40-year-old Emily Mapfuwa, an NHS administrator from Brentwood, Essex. She argues had the statue been of Mohammed rather than Christ, there would have been a far greater outcry.

"I don't think this gallery would insult Muslims in this way, so why Christians?", she asked.

Father Christopher Warren, of the Roman Catholic cathedral of St Mary's in Newcastle upon Tyne, said: "For Christians the image of Jesus is very special and to interpret it in a sexualised way is an affront to what we hold dear."

The Baltic, has been involved in controversy before - police visited in September, about a photography owned by Sir Elton John, of two naked girls, which was later removed.

Koh has also found himself in trouble previously, in 2006 two of his works were withdrawn from an exhibition at the Royal Academy, one of them showing a Virgin Mary with a phallus at a urinal.

The Baltic were unable to comment due to legal proceedings.

Seattle Magazine: The Case For Pot

What do a Seattle cop, an Edmonds travel writer and the ACLU have in common? They all want to legalize marijuana, and not just for medical purposes. As Seattle’s annual Hempfest returns to Myrtle Edward Parks August 16-17, these odd bedfellows are putting Seattle at the center of a national conversation about marijuana reform.

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Why it sucks to be a kid in the 21st century

I was watching TV and one of those commercials came on that encourage kids to get out of the house and play. Now that strikes me as bizarre. Things have definitely changed since I was kid. Don't get me wrong, I spent plenty of time watching my share of TV and reading(a little too much time reading sci-fi and comic books according to my mom),but I also spent plenty of time outside. There is such a contrast between life for kids in the fifties and what goes on today.

The first biggest difference is the amount of time that children are supervised now. When we lived in the city I walked the dozen or so blocks to and from school. I didn't ride the bus until Jr. High and after eighth grade I went back to walking. Nary an adult in sight. As you might guess I seldom took a direct route home. We lived in a suburb of Cincinnati called College Hill. If you have been there lately,it is not the place I grew up. Things have changed. Walking home from school I usually hit every drug store on the way home,sometimes to get a phosphate at the soda counter(yes they still had them when I was a kid). I would peruse the the latest comic book arrivals or men's magazines(not porn smart ass).

The one  drug store I stopped at on a regular basis was called The Brothers at Brother's Corner at Hamilton avenue and Cedar. The sales clerk and some times soda jerk was an unusual  looking  homely middle aged woman that wore a severe hairdo, coke bottle glasses and lipstick so red that it bordered on the infrared. But the really creepy thing about her (other than her speech impediment) was that no matter when you went in day or night, Monday thru Saturday (yes in those days stores closed on Sundays) she was there. Later on I found out she had a twin and lived in the up stairs apartment above the drug store. Not only did they dress alike and wear the same make up, they had the same speech impediment. They also had little patience with prepubescent boys.

After the Brothers I would go to Woolworth's. I loved browsing at the Dime store. All of the neat little glass partitioned spaces filled with little objects. Woolworth's had a distinctive smell and all of them had wooden floors that squeaked when you walked.  I usually  found something I could afford there with the money managed to scrounge from the couch or pennies I picked up on the way. From there I would cross the street to look at the movie posters on the front of the Hollywood Theater. If there was a Monster movie playing that weekend I would start planning my strategy on how to get Mom to let me go(for a dollar you could get in the movie, a medium pop corn and a coke to drink on the way home fished out an icy barrel that made it so cold it made your teeth hurt).

Next stop was Whitey's Variety Store. At Whitey's you could buy Halloween masks in July. Whitey's was a kind of store that doesn't exist anymore. Strange little toys, jimcracks and geegaws. Things that you wind up, things you blew in one end out came an amazing ear shattering sounds. And squirt guns(much to my sisters chagrin). Whitey by the way was really white, I mean like transparent white. He was tall and had a weird high pitched voice. He was very patient with kids, he probably had to be seeing as 90% of his business came from kids.

Next time: The week ends!

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Voodoo Dolls terrorize Florida officials

A menacing voodoo doll with an official's face attached and pins stuck in its body has prompted extra sheriff's protection for city commissioners, Local 6 has learned.Denizac's face was taped to the doll's head and several pins were stuck in its body.Since the discovery, the sheriff's office has increased its presence outside of Denizac's home and those of other commissioners over the weekend.Volusia County deputies said they are trying to ensure the safety of Deltona city commissioners.A commissioner learned of the added security when he found a deputy looking in his recycle bin, Local 6 reported."I feel totally violated. Somebody came into my property," Denizac said during an earlier interview. "For me it’s very difficult."

Cue the Sci-fi Woo Woo music, there's a mutant fungi in Chernobyl that eats radiation

......"Our findings suggest that [the fungi] can capture the energy from radiation and transform it into other forms of energy that can be used for growth," said microbiologist Arturo Casadevall from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, USA.

Fungi are weird, yes. They chow down on everything from decaying plant matter to the more exotic fare of asbestos and jet fuel. But being able to produce their own energy, independent of an actual food source, and use dangerous ionising radiation to boot? That's very new and very exciting, Casadevall says.

In 1999, a robot sent to map the inside of the reactor returned with samples of a particularly black fungi, indicating an abundance of the biological pigment melanin, which also colours your skin.....

Can giant lizards be far behind

The Pope got himself a Fax machine

Does this mean that god will be communicating with the Pope via fax? Wouldn't email or IM'ing

have been more efficient? I wonder if god uses a Mac? Jesus strikes me more of an Ubuntu kind of guy.

Woman stabs herself during Wiccan ceremony

LEBANON, Ind. - A woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while performing a Wiccan good luck ritual at a cemetery in central Indiana.

Katherine Gunther, 36, of Lebanon, pierced her left foot with the sword while performing the rite at Oak Hill Cemetery, police said.

Gunther said she was performing the ceremony to give thanks for a recent run of good luck. The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon.

---

Gunther said was aiming to put the sword in the ground, but hit her foot instead.

"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said.

Gunther immediately pulled the sword out of her foot, and her companions took her to Witham Memorial Hospital, where she was kept a couple days for treatment.

No charges were filed, police said. The Wiccans were warned that being in the cemetery in the city about 20 miles northwest of Indianapolis after posted visiting hours constitutes trespassing.

Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

I told you Vanity plates are stupid

Apollo 14 astronaut claims Government has made Alien contact - but it has been covered up for 60 years

Edgar Mitchell was the Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 14

Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed.

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, said he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth during his career with NASA but each one was covered up.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is 'not nearly as sophisticated' as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned 'we would be been gone by now'.

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

Photographing thugs 'is assault' in Britain

A householder who took photographs of hooded teenagers as evidence of their anti-social behaviour says he was told he was breaking the law after they called the police.

David Green, 64, and his neighbours had been plagued by the youths from a nearby comprehensive school for months, and was advised by their headmaster to identify them so action could be taken.

And he claimed that a Police Community Support Officer sent to the scene promptly issued a warning that taking pictures of youths without permission was illegal, and could lead to a charge of assault.

'When I went to take photographs of eight of them throwing cans of Coke around, six of them ran away, one threatened to kill me, and another one started phoning the police.

'A couple of hours later, a Police Community Support Officer told me I had been accused of assault, though no such thing occurred, and told me I was not allowed to take photographs of teenagers on the street.

What about surveillance cameras?

Flying Cow Dirigibles of War

I linked to a story earlier about measuring cow farts with hoses and big plastic bags. I speculated that if the bag was big enough the cow could fly. Now at first I didn't notice that the story was from Argentina.
What if this some sort of complex conspiracy to get revenge for the Falklands war. Imagine an armada of of flying flatulent bovines winging their way across the Atlantic and bombarding Buckingham Palace with toxic cow pies. Scary eh!?

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Taser death ignites racial tensions

At 1:28 p.m. Baron "Scooter" Pikes was a healthy 21-year-old man. By 2:07 p.m. he was dead. What happened in the 39 minutes in between--during which Pikes was handcuffed by local police and shocked 9 times with a Taser device, while reportedly pleading for mercy--is now spawning fears of a political cover-up in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town.

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Cow Backpacks Trap Methane Gas

Researchers from Argentina were surprised to find that a single 550-kg cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of emissions each day. (Reuters)

I wonder if you had a big enough bag and you left it on the cow long enough, could the cow fly?

Tobacco 'could help treat cancer'

The tobacco plant - responsible for millions of cancer cases - may actually offer the means to treat one form of the disease, a study suggests.

US scientists used the plant to "grow" key components of a cancer vaccine.

The National Academy of Sciences study suggests they could be used to tackle a form of lymphoma.

UK specialists said while "potentially exciting", more research would be needed to test how well the vaccine actually worked.

Moose facts

The Moose is a good swimmer, the Moose can move in the water at a speed of 6 mph (10
km/h) for a period of up to two hours. At times, the animal may be
completely submerged for many seconds. When black flies and mosquitoes
torment it, the Moose may nearly submerge itself or roll in a wallow to
acquire a protective coating of mud.

 Despite its ungainly appearance(matter of opinion), this animal can run through the forest quietly at speeds up to 35 mph . A full grown Bull Moose can weigh as much a three quarters of a ton and as tall as seven feet. Antlers as wide as six feet.

Vocalizations include the bull’s tremendous bellow, and also
"croaks" and "barks" during the rut. The cow has a long, quavering
moan, which ends in a cough-like moo-agh, and also a grunt used in
gathering the young. The bull rushes through the forest looking for
grunting cows and challenging rival bulls with bellows.


During mating season, a bull in rut urinates and then rolls in the
wallow he creates; cows also roll in it. The newborn calf can stand up
the first day; within a couple of weeks, it can swim. It is weaned at
about six months, and just before the birth of new calves, the mother
drives it off.The life span of the Moose is up to 20 years. Wolves (damn wolves) are
the main predator, but are extirpated from much of the Moose’s range.
The Moose is unpredictable and can be dangerous. It is normally a
retiring animal and avoids human contact, but a cow with calves is
irritable and fiercely protective, and rutting bulls occasionally have
charged people, horses, cars, and even trains. 

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Nine face stoning death in Iran

At least eight women and one man are reported to have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran.

The group, convicted of adultery and sex offences, could be executed at any time, lawyers defending them say.

The lawyers have called on the head of Iran's judiciary to prevent the sentences from being carried out.

The last officially reported stoning in Iran last year drew strong criticism from human rights groups and the European Union.

The eight women sentenced, whose ages range from 27 to 43, had convictions including prostitution, incest and adultery, Reuters news agency reported.

The man, a 50-year-old music teacher, was convicted of illegal sex with a student, reports said.

Moratorium imposed

Under Iran's Islamic law, stoning to death is the punishment for the crime of adultery.

In 2002 Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi imposed a moratorium on stoning, but at least three people are reported to have been executed by stoning since then.

Shadi Sadr from the Volunteer Lawyers' Network, which is representing the women, said: "We are very worried as there are at least eight women and one man with a definitive verdict which can be carried out any moment.

First Turkish gay honor killing?

...."Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country's first gay honour killing."....

Japan deals blow to Jehovah's Witnesses

Japan's top medical groups say children under the age of 15 should receive blood transfusions even if their parents are Jehovah's Witnesses.

A committee representing the five medical societies created a draft guideline that would supersede a parent's religious beliefs to ensure a child undergoing surgery receives any needed blood transfusions, the Yomiuri Shimbun said Sunday.

The committee found it would be an abuse of parental rights to allow Jehovah's Witnesses to make such crucial decisions for their children.

Before the guideline is finalized, the committee will meet with representatives from the religious group and several bioethicists later this year.

The committee's ruling added to a previous guideline that mandated such potentially life-saving procedures to any patients under the age of 12.

The newspaper said under the new guideline, patients between the ages of 15 and 17 could avoid a blood transfusion if they and their parents reject the procedure.

Is Prince a genius?

A few years ago the a New York Times reviewer stated that Prince was a musical genius equivilent to Mozart. Now I myself am not a Prince fan. Even before he became a Jehovah's Witness I was never a huge fan of him or his music. I recognize that the man has some talent and I enjoyed the movie "Purple Rain", but is he on the same level as Mozart or Bach?

Now I admit that I am far from being an expert on all things musical, but some how I just can't wrap my mind around the the concept of equating Prince to Mozart. Arguably what we call classical music was the popular music of it's day and people would flock to concerts to see the likes of Paganini, he even had groupies. By all accounts the boy gave a hell of a show. I have no doubts that if old Wolfgang or Ludwig B. were around today they hawking their wares on Itunes and selling CDs out of their trunks. Just imagine what Bach would have done with a 16 track studio and a rack of Moogs! Or what would Beethoven had gotten a timely shot of penicillin and never have gone deaf? The mind boggles.

I have also had discussions (arguments ) with Tupac fans that he was a genius and I'm sure that fans of all sorts of contemporary artists would make their cases. But still I'm not convinced. While these artists have with out doubt have a modicum of talent, they are just not Mozart material.

So what do you think?

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How would you like to be able to make an atheist backslide - in two minutes? The School of Evangelism : Bypass the Intellect to convert!

"How would you like to be able to make an atheist backslide - in two minutes? "

"Or learn to use the incredible yet forgotten biblical principle of bypassing the intellect and speaking directly to a sinner's conscience, as Jesus did? "

"That means you will never again be intimidated by professing "intellectuals.""

Researchers grow human blood vessels in mice from adult progenitor cells

For the first time, researchers have successfully grown functional human blood vessels in mice using cells from adult human donors — an important step in developing clinical strategies to grow tissue, researchers report in Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association.

"What's really significant about our study is that we are using human cells that can be obtained from blood or bone marrow rather than removing and using fully developed blood vessels," said Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston.

The researchers combined two different types of progenitor cells in a culture dish of nutrients and growth factors, then washed off the nutrients and implanted the cells into mice with weakened immune systems. Once implanted, the progenitor cell mixture grew and differentiated into a small ball of healthy blood vessels.

Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells but can only differentiate into specific cells, while stem cells can differentiate into practically any cell in the body.

In the study, researchers used two different kinds of progenitor cells to grow blood vessels: the endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which become cells that line the vessels, and mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPCs), which differentiate into the cells that surround the lining and provide stability.

The researchers used different combinations of the two types of progenitor cells. They found that a mixture of adult blood- and adult bone marrow-derived progenitor cells or a combination of umbilical cord blood-derived and adult bone marrow-derived cells resulted in the greatest density of new blood vessel formation.

The ability to rapidly grow two-layered blood vessels without using embryonic or umbilical cord blood stem cells could skirt many ethical concerns, Bischoff said. It would also solve a persistent problem in treating several medical conditions that result from ischemia — the inability of oxygen-rich blood to reach an organ or tissue — such as heart attacks, wound healing and many acute injuries.

"What we are most interested in right now is speeding up the vascularization (the formation of blood vessels)," Bischoff said. "We see very good and extensive vasculature in seven days and we'd like to see that in 24 or 48 hours. If you have an ischemic tissue, it's dying tissue, so the faster you can establish blood flow the better."

If researchers can develop ways to speed the growth of the vessels, non-surgical cardiac bypass procedures could potentially grow new vessels around those blocked by atherosclerosis.

It's against the law to photograph a cop?!

.....The arrest was, technically, for pointing a laser at a police officer (the officer claims he thought Conover was pointing a laser at him, but he arrested Conover even after discovering that it was a cell phone, which, y'know, looks a lot like a laser, dunnit). "The law they charged him under is 39-13-605, which requires that 'the photograph... was taken for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification of the defendant'."... Seems like a bit of a stretch."

ALS patients could get help from stem cells next year

A tiny start-up company in Irvine has a shot at becoming the first to gain federal approval to test an embryonic stem cell treatment in humans.

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Addicted to Grief? It may activate pleasure in some brains

Some people can move on and others can never let go. New research shows that for some, grief is associate with the reward center of the brain and memories may develop addiction-like qualities.

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Bad Science: Psychic Nearly Destroys an Entire Family

Many people go to psychics for a handful of typical reasons. They want to know if they will get their dream job soon, or make a big move. But what happens when the psychic lies to the client (or is wrong), telling her information that is not true about something with real-world consequences?

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Tiny Magnets to Capture Cancer

Scientists use magnetic nanoparticles to reign in cancer cells

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Is Tipping Racist? New Taxi-Driver Study Says Yes

Should tipping be outlawed? That's one suggestion made in a new study, which finds there's extreme racial discrimination in taxicab tipping, reports The New York Times. This isn't the first study to reach such conclusions. Is this a microcosm for wage gaps in corporate America and other salaried environments? What's going on?

Many studies document discrimination against consumers based on race (read Shopping While Black: One Serious Shopper's Customer Service Nightmare), but few analyze discrimination based on the race of the "seller," in this case the driver.

Black cab drivers were tipped about a third less than white cab drivers, the study found. Black passengers also participated in this discrimination against Black taxi drivers. And the overall "tipping shortfall" causes total revenue per fare for Black drivers to be 7 percent less than white drivers, which perpetuates economic inequality.

 

The study, published in the Yale Law Journal, included data on more than 1,000 taxicab rides in New Haven, Conn., where taxi drivers are dispatched to pick up passengers or wait their turn at cab stands rather than being hailed from the street, which means they don't have much discretion in turning down fares.

 

Click here to download the full study from the Social Science Research Network.

 

Here are some of the key findings:

 

• White drivers were tipped 61 percent more than Black drivers and 64 percent more than "other" non-white drivers in the sample.
• Black and Latino passengers also demonstrated biased tipping in favor of white drivers. Black passengers tipped white drivers 48 percent more than Black drivers, while white passengers tipped white drivers 49 percent more than Black drivers.  Latino passengers had the most disparate tipping, giving white drivers a 146 percent higher tip than Black drivers, which supports previous studies' findings that Latinos tend to identify more with whites than Blacks.
• Black drivers also were 80 percent more likely to be stiffed than white drivers. Latino passengers were 88 percent more likely to stiff Black drivers than white drivers, and white passengers were nearly twice as likely to stiff Black drivers.
• Making a last-minute decision about whether to round up or down in tipping also is influenced by racial undertones, with passengers of all races tending to round up for white drivers and down for Black drivers.  

To provide some control for quality of service, which clearly influences tipping, the authors conducted some "secret auditing" of cab drivers. Their testers rated quality of service higher for Black drivers (4.5 out of 5 total points) than white drivers (3.3 out of 5 total points). While these audits were not a complete control for quality of service, previous studies on tipping back up the researchers' findings.  

 

More than 30 service professions are regularly tipped, according to the study, which reports that restaurant tips alone in the United States are estimated at $26 billion annually.

 

There's evidence that biased tipping extends to the restaurant realm, according to "Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping: A Replication and Extension," which is based on 140 surveys of white and Black workers at a large U.S. restaurant chain. This study found that white customers tipped Black servers nearly four percentage points less than white servers and that Black customers tipped Black servers half a percentage point less than white servers, writes Ian Ayres, lead author of the latest study on taxicab tipping, in his New York Times blog.

 

A Racist History

 

Why is there racial discrimination in tipping? Think about the historic social context. The practice of tipping emerged in the early 20th century to provide a "consideration" from then primarily white customers to those serving them in menial jobs, who tended to be Black workers. "For some, the practice of tipping was intimately connected to the perceived inferiority of African Americans," writes Ayres in the study.

 

Remember The Pullman Company? It was notorious for hiring all Black workers from the South to work its railroads and trains and was "repeatedly singled out for fostering the tipping norm for its all Black work force as a way of economizing its wage bill," writes Ayres. "Pullman made public the fact that its African-American porters were poorly paid so the public would pay them instead."

 

But that's not how it works, as Ayres' and other studies indicate. In the case of Pullman, Black porters eventually requested a prohibition on tipping, knowing it would diminish their earnings, because they didn't want to be accepting "tokens of inferiority."       

 

"Of course, this degradation conception of tipping may have long passed," the authors write. "But both minority and non-minority consumers today may still be affected by this now withered perception--as one generation passes its tipping practices onto the next."

 

What's Next?

 

Is there a solution? The authors suggest government-mandated tipping would reduce passenger discrimination against Black taxi drivers in the form of lower tips.  They also suggest outlawing tipping altogether

 

But outlawing or heavily regulating tipping--economic incentive for superior quality of service--is antithetical to a capitalist society. Tipping policies saves employers from having to establish equitable pay scales for salaried and non-salaried employees.  However, if tipping has a disparate impact on Black taxi drivers or servers, as these and other studies indicate, employers could actually be liable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for maintaining a workplace policy that discriminates based on race, the study says.

 

Whether that discriminatory policy is intentional on the part of the employers is irrelevant. The reality is that it has a disparate impact based on race. Not all employment policies that produce racial inequities are illegal under Title VII, but employers would have the burden of proving that tipping is "consistent with business necessity," writes Ayres.

 

Does a biased tipping infrastructure translate into a biased salary structure in the workplace? Currently, the salary gap in corporate America continues along racial/ethnic lines, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2007, Black full-time and salaried workers earned 20.5 percent less per week than their white counterparts, 45.9 percent less than Asian workers and slightly more (11.6 percent) than Latinos. The disparity is more evident between Black and white men--a 24 percent gap--than between Black and white women (14.9 percent).

 

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Negative Perception of Blacks Rises When You Watch More News

Watching the news should make you more informed, but it also may be making you more likely to stereotype, says a University of Illinois researcher. In a pair of recently published studies, Travis Dixon found that the more people watched either local or network news, the more likely they were to draw on negative stereotypes about blacks.

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Cro-Magnon 28,000 Years Old Had DNA Like Modern Humans

Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked anatomically modern -- entered Europe, coming from Africa.

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Email threat to religion critic gets 800Flowers worker fired

An employee of 1-800-Flowers.com has been fired after an e-mailed death threat was linked to her account. The crudely worded e-mail was sent Sunday to Paul "PZ" Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, who is known for his criticism of religion and creationism.

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Love poem gets lower caste boy killed

A 16-year-old Dalit boy died after he was thrashed in front of other students by an upper caste teacher in a rural higher secondary school of this Himachal district for writing a verse in appreciation of an upper caste girl.

Surjit Singh was beaten up on Tuesday by a teacher in the Nangal Kalan Government High school in public, said the Dalit sarpanch of the village Gyan Kaur. His two classmates said, "When the teacher came to know about the Surjit's love poem, he caned him till he almost dropped dead."

That was not the end of his ordeal; he was again beaten up by the family members of the girl the next day, Wednesday. Surjit was later found semi-conscious and taken to the hospital but succumbed to injuries.

Local leaders have sought an inquiry into the incident as the police appear to be siding with the upper caste girl's family and the teacher.

The result of the post mortem examination is awaited to establish what caused the boy's death. Police haven't revealed any motive behind his unnatural death. School headmaster, Bhagat Ram, expressed his ignorance about the incident saying he was out of school on the day of the incident.

The accused teacher is on leave and is inaccessible. Surjit's father, Telu Ram, a labourer, said, "How can I think of filing a case? I have no money."

SP, Una, Gyaneshwar Singh, when asked why no case had been registered in this regard, said that the police was still investigating the case.

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This is so sick

Is this for real?

email this posting to a friend best of craigslist > kansas city > Your Pets Will Not Be Flagged For Removal By Jesus During the Rapture

Originally Posted: Thu, 19 Jun 15:59 CDT

Your Pets Will Not Be Flagged For Removal By Jesus During the Rapture

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Date: 2008-06-19, 3:59PM CDT

FLAGGERS: Over half the United States population has legitimate concerns about what will happen to their pets after the rapture occurs. Please respect their faith and allow this service to remain posted, just as the waste removal and grooming posts remain posted. Again, over half of the US population feels that this is a concern to them. If there is a specific problem with the ad, please email me. Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"No one knows when that day or hour will come. Even the angels in heaven and the Son don't know. Only the Father knows."
(Matthew 24:36)

"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."
(1 Thessalonians 4:15–17)

Have you ever thought about what will happen to your pets after Jesus comes back to claim the souls of the saved during the Rapture and deliver them to heaven to enjoy ever lasting life? The bible clearly teaches that only those that have accepted Jesus as their savior will enter heaven (John 14:6, Romans 3:23), and we all know that pets do not have the cognitive ability to do this, so what will happen to your beloved pets? Surely without you there, they would be stuck inside your empty house, starving to death with no one to feed them, let them out to potty, or clean their litter box. This is probably not what you envision for your pets after you are gone. This is where I come in.

I am here to offer you pet care service for after the rapture. As an atheist, I will surely still be here on this earth post rapture and would love to look after your pets for a small fee and make sure they are still well taken care of after you and your family have been raptured. You will be able to look down on them from heaven and see them being well cared for by me and living happy, healthy lives. Do not let my atheism scare you! I am a moral and loving pet owner and would never do harm to any animal.

For a small deposit of only $50, you can be assured that your pets will be well cared for from the time that you are raptured until the end of their natural life. They will get adequate amounts of food, water, and shelter as well as plenty of exercise and socialization as I would imagine there will be a lot of pets that will be abandoned by Jesus the pet hater that will need to be cared for.

If interested, please email me for my PayPal address (you can also send me a check if you prefer) so you can assure that your pets will be taken care of after Jesus comes to take your soul to heaven. $50 is only a small price to pay to know that while you are enjoying everlasting bliss, your pets will be cared for until their end days. Thanks and have a great day!

Please do not flag this ad. It is very serious.

• Location: Kansas City
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 725674463

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Watchtower literature considered more dangerous than abestos

The court in the Urals town of Asbest chose not to consider a lawsuit accusing the Jehovah's Witnesses of distributing "extremist" religious literature, as an assessment by FSB security service specialists did not qualify as evidence, the town's acting Public Prosecutor Aleksei Almayev told Forum 18 News Service. However, he said a criminal investigation is continuing and an analysis of several Jehovah's Witness publications – including their magazine "Watchtower" - is being conducted by a local university. "And when we file suit again, we think the court will be more sympathetic." The Prosecutor's Office warning to Asbest's Jehovah's Witnesses claims the publications are "overtly, clearly and directly aimed at inciting hatred, propaganda of exclusivity and humiliation of human dignity on account of a person's attitude towards religion". It claims that the Jehovah's Witnesses' "aggression" will incite others to react to "blasphemous pronouncements on things they consider sacred". If found "extremist" by Asbest court, the publications will be added to the ever-lengthening Federal List of Extremist Materials, which already includes traditional Mari pagan and Muslim literature. Those distributing literature on this list anywhere in Russia risk a four-year prison term.

The Public Prosecutor of the small asbestos-mining town of Asbest in Sverdlovsk Region is pressing for a ban on Jehovah's Witness literature, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. If Asbest Town Court – or any other Russian court – finds Jehovah's Witness publications extremist, their addition to the Federal List of Extremist Materials would extend a ban on their distribution to the whole of Russia. Jehovah's Witnesses continuing to hand out the texts would risk a four-year prison term under Article 282 of the Criminal Code.

Seen by Forum 18, the Yekaterinburg warning cites a 15 April examination of three publications seized from the Asbest Jehovah's Witnesses – "Watchtower", "Awake!" and "Draw Close to Jehovah". These, the assessment maintains, are "overtly, clearly and directly aimed at inciting hatred, propaganda of exclusivity and humiliation of human dignity on account of a person's attitude towards religion" – all banned under the 2002 Extremism Law. The publications also "provoke interreligious tension and conflict situations, pitch Jehovists" – a Soviet-era term for Jehovah's Witnesses – "against other religions, particularly adherents of the traditional confessions on the territory of the Russian Federation," the warning claims. "Such aggression causes people to react in kind, offended by the Jehovist publications' blasphemous pronouncements on things they consider sacred." No examples from the texts are given, however. During a 7 February raid on the Asbest community's rented premises, FSB, police and public prosecutor representatives seized religious literature and questioned group member Igor Ananyin, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Asbest police again questioned Ananyin during house-to-house preaching on 5 June. Confiscating religious publications, they accused him of defying the 21 May warning, the Jehovah's Witnesses reported. Fellow group members Yuliya Andreyeva and Valentina Bykova were also briefly detained. In the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the regional court on 10 July began hearing charges – including of distributing extremist religious literature – against a local Jehovah's Witness organisation in the town of Taganrog, Yaroslav Sivulsky of the Jehovah's Witnesses' St Petersburg headquarters told Forum 18 the same day. In September 2007 Rostov-on-Don Regional Public Prosecutor's Office ordered its local offices to investigate local Jehovah's Witness communities and consider filing applications for their liquidation, partly on the basis of a local expert analysis. This found that texts distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses – including "Who Really Rules the World?" and "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" – contain "statements humiliating human dignity on account of a person's attitude towards religion" and "elements of propaganda of the exclusivity of one religion over another." The Office equates both of these with extremism, even though the latter does not feature in the 2002 Law's definition of the offence . Dated 3 September 2007 and viewed by Forum 18, the expert literary analysis by Rostov Centre for Court Studies finds that Jehovah's Witnesses view the world as being under the control of Satan. Established Christianity is understood as "Babylon the Great", the study's author, philologist Igor Lobanov, notes, because its leading clergy participate in corrupt political life and support the military policies of their particular nations. By contrast, finds Lobanov, the Jehovah's Witness movement "is based upon an idea of God's people". The eight-page expert analysis also cites Jehovah's Witnesses' obligation to help all people, regardless of national identity. Lobanov even writes in bold type that the Jehovah's Witnesses are opposed to interethnic hatred and hostility, and states that their literature "doesn't contain any calls for actions aimed against representatives of 'Babylon the Great'." Nevertheless, the philologist concludes that Jehovah's Witness literature does "incite hatred towards the Christian world" – even if it does not call for action against it. He also maintains that it contains "statements humiliating human dignity on the principle of one's attitude towards religion and elements of propaganda of the exclusivity of one religion over another." This is because Jehovah's Witnesses are identified with "God's Israel" and their faith as the only true religion, "whereas all other Christian movements are declared satanic," explains Lobanov. "Such statements are undoubtedly capable of humiliating the dignity not only of clergy not belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses, but also the feelings of ordinary believers." A spokesperson at the Rostov Centre for Court Studies refused to comment on the analysis to Forum 18 on 26 May. Previously, rulings on alleged Islamic extremism have relied upon expert literary analyses which commonly confuse propaganda of the superiority of citizens holding to a particular religious belief – justifiably defined as extremism by the 2002 Law – with propaganda of the superiority of the religious belief itself, a fundamental tenet of religious freedom. Forum 18 has received no response from Rostov-on-Don Regional Public Prosecutor's Office to questions faxed as requested on 26 May, despite a follow-up telephone call. The publications at issue in Asbest and Rostov-on-Don region are distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses without impediment in numerous countries. While it succeeded in banning the Jehovah's Witnesses' Moscow local religious organisation on other grounds in 2004, the Russian capital's Golovinsky District Court failed to find it guilty of extremism . The Jehovah's Witnesses sent an appeal against this long-running prosecution to the European Court of Human Rights on 11 December 2001, updated by supplementary material on 15 December 2004. The Court has yet to pronounce on the admissibility of this complaint, however, Matthew Pannell of the Jehovah's Witnesses' St Petersburg told Forum 18 on 9 July. In September 2004 Aleksandr Chernogorov, until recently Governor of the southern Stavropol Region, linked "Jehovism" with "Wahhabism" – a loose term for Islamic extremism in the former Soviet Union - in describing the main threat to "those confessions which provide the foundation of civil peace"

Our Lord the Flying Spagetti Monster spotted

Rejoice, my brothers and sisters.The Spaghetti Monster is with you. Blessed are you among sauces, and blessed is the spice from your shaker. Heated meatsauce, monster of taste, pray for us non-pirates now and at the hour of our hunger. RAmen

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One Nation, One ID, New World Order?

The Real I.D. Act, signed into law in May, will require people living or working in the United States to carry a federally approved identification card. This I.D. card will be needed for nearly all government services and for activities such as traveling on an airplane or opening a bank account.

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Police To Use Injection For Subduing Unruly People

Metro police have the option of calling for a needle loaded with a strong sedative [Versed] to control the most unruly people they encounter on the street.

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