Atheists split on how to not believe
April 22, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
BOSTON – Atheists are under attack these days for being too militant, for not just disbelieving in religious faith but for trying to eradicate it. And who’s leveling these accusations? Other atheists, it turns out.
Among the millions of Americans who don’t believe God exists, there’s a split between people such as Greg Epstein, who holds the partially endowed post of humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and so-called “New Atheists.”
Epstein and other humanists feel their movement is on verge of explosive growth, but are concerned it will be dragged down by what they see as the militancy of New Atheism. Read more
What Really Is In A McDonald’s Chicken McNugget?
March 23, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals:
“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There’s some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability. Read more
Oprah’s school ‘too strict’
March 12, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
Gavin PrinsJohannesburg - The rules at Oprah Winfrey’s ultra-posh school at Henley-on-Klip near Johannesburg are apparently so strict they make a reformatory look like a holiday resort.
That’s the word from upset parents, who say the school rules make it difficult for them to keep contact with their children.
They would have aired their concerns during a satellite link-up with the chat show queen a week ago, but that was cancelled at short notice by the school’s management body. Read more
Stolen kids turned into terrifying killers
February 14, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
CNN reported that warlords are forcing children in conflicts around the world to become killing machines — nothing more than what one child advocate calls “cannon fodder.”Some children are kidnapped from their schools or their beds, some are recruited after seeing their parents slaughtered, some may even choose to join the militias as their best hope for survival in war-torn countries from Colombia, and across Africa and the Middle East, to south Asia.
Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill.
There is no escape for what the United Nations and human rights groups estimate are 250,000 child soldiers today. These children, some as young as 8, become fighters, sex slaves, spies and even human shields. Read more
McDonalds creams Starbucks in Coffee survey
February 3, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
Belfasttelegraph reported that Consumer testers in the US have declared coffee from McDonald’s better than the brew at Starbucks.The burger chain’s Premium Roast was chosen as the tastiest by Consumer Reports magazine.
It also beat the offerings at Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts. Read more
Studies show the rich have better sex than average people
January 31, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
The richer you are, apparently, the better sex you have. That’s according to a recent survey of more than 600 high-net-worth individuals. And rich women, it seems, enjoy sex the most.“In seeking a higher-quality sexual experience the number of well-heeled women that lead more adventurous and exotic sex lives, have had an affair, or joined the mile-high club far outdistances that of men — and the affluent gender gap in views on sex doesn’t end there,” Hannah Shaw Grove and Russ Alan Prince, two well-known researchers on the habits of the rich and famous, found. Read more
Vaginal bear trap protects women against rape
January 6, 2007 by info · 2 Comments
The anti-rape female condom (aka vaginal bear trap) was invented by Sonette Ehlers, a South African woman. It is intended to prevent rape by hooking onto an attacker’s penis, hurting and disabling him.The device is a latex tube fitted internally with shafts of sharp, inward-facing plastic barbs that could be worn by a woman in her vagina, similar to a tampon. Should an attacker attempt vaginal rape, the penis would be hooked by the barbs, causing the attacker pain and giving the victim time to escape. The condom would remain attached to the attacker’s penis and, according to the device’s creator, could be removed only surgically, which would alert hospital staff and police that an attempted rape could have taken place. Read more
Men Smarter than Women, Scientist Claims
January 4, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
Men Smarter than Women, Scientist Claims
Men are smarter than women, according to a controversial new study that adds another cinder to the fiery debate over whether gender impacts general intelligence.
“For 100 years there’s been a consensus among psychologists that there is no sex difference in intelligence,” said J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Read more
ExxonMobil cultivates global warming doubt
January 4, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to raise doubt about climate change, spending $16 million on groups that question global warming, a science watchdog group said on Wednesday.“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at a telephone news conference releasing the report. Read more
Female bosses are more likely to discriminate against female employees
January 2, 2007 by info · Leave a Comment
FORGET “jobs for the boys”. Women bosses are significantly more likely than men to discriminate against female employees, research has suggested.
The study found that when presented with applications for promotion, women were more likely than men to assess the female candidate as less qualified than the male one.
They were also prone to mark down women’s prospects for promotion and to assess them as more controlling than men in their management style. Read more
