IFPJ

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010)— Male homosexuality doesn't make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view. It appears that the trait is heritable, but because homosexual men are much less likely to produce offspring than heterosexual men, shouldn't the genes for this trait have been extinguished long ago? What value could this sexual orientation have, that it has persisted for eons even without any discernible reproductive advantage?

One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the "kin selection hypothesis." What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being "helpers in the nest." By acting altruistically toward nieces and nephews, homosexual men would perpetuate the family genes, including some of their own.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2010) — The presumption that children need both a mother and a father is widespread. It has been used by proponents of Proposition 8 to argue against same-sex marriage and to uphold a ban on same-sex adoption.

On the other end of the political spectrum, Barack Obama endorsed the vital role of fathers in a 2008 speech: "Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation."

The lead article in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family challenges the idea that "fatherless" children are necessarily at a disadvantage or that men provide a different, indispensable set of parenting skills than women.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2010) — Psychologists and psychiatrists should not be expected to participate in torture as they do not have the expertise to assess individual pain or the long-term effects of interrogation, says experts in an analysis posted online in the British Medical Journal.

The authors, Derrick Silove and Susan Rees, from the University of New South Wales in Australia, say some senior members of the US military have argued that a psychologist's presence is necessary to protect the prisoner or detainee from the "severe physical or mental pain or suffering resulting in prolonged mental harm."

Top gripes: What bugs America most

When it comes to everyday annoyances, two are clear winners—or make that losers: unexpected fees and difficulty reaching a human when you call about a bill or service.

In a nationally representative survey conducted in late September, we asked 1,125 Americans to score 21 gripes on a 1-to-10 scale, 1 meaning an experience "does not annoy you at all" and 10 meaning it "annoys you tremendously."

Hidden fees scored 8.9 overall; inability to reach a human, 8.6. Mean scores for all the gripes are in the chart below. When we crunched the numbers further, more eye-openers were revealed:

● Women were significantly more irritated than men by 11 of the 21 choices, including speeding drivers, having to remember passwords and PINs, and products that shrank but still cost the same.
● People older than 50 were more annoyed than younger folks about eight of the choices. Among them: speeding drivers, discourteous cell-phone use, e-mail spam, and cell-phone use while driving.
● Respondents who identified themselves as Democrats were more annoyed than Republicans by television or radio shows during which people shout their opinions.
● Residents of densely populated urban areas were more annoyed than rural residents by unscooped dog poop.
● When it comes to driving habits, Americans in general were more annoyed by people who tailgate than by very slow drivers or speeders.

Despite all the complaining, one group escaped the worst of the public's wrath: weather forecasters who get it wrong. They scored a mere 4.3 on our gripe scale.

Integrating Private Insurance With Public Health Would Improve US Health Care, Researchers Say

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2010) — The United States has an inefficient and expensive health care system, but it could be improved with a new integrated health care system detailed in a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

According to researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and UCLA, the American healthcare system is riddled with inefficiencies due to a lack of an integrated system that could promote an optimal mix of personal medical care and population health measures.

Increased Co-Payments for Doctor Visits Boost Health-Care Costs for Seniors

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2010) — For years many health experts believed that increasing insurance co-payments for routine doctor visits helped control costs. Patients faced with the higher price tag, they theorized, would simply cut back unnecessary visits, saving themselves and insurers money.

Brown University researchers now believe that the practice of increasing co-payments for outpatient visits -- at least for senior citizens -- may actually make care far more expensive. They determined that patients faced with higher co-payments did cut back on their doctor visits. But those same elderly patients ultimately required expensive hospital care because their illnesses worsened.

Colossus Poster

Must be somebody's idea of a joke.

Scientists Develop New CT Scanner to Image Nuclear Weapon Components

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2010) — The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced that it recently completed the installation and successful startup of a new surveillance diagnostic tool that is capable of detecting aging defects on critical components in the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2010) — The most common reasons for medical evacuation of military personnel from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have been fractures, tendonitis and other musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, not combat injuries, according to results of a Johns Hopkins study published January 22 in The Lancet.

"Most people think that in a war, getting shot is the leading cause of medical evacuation, but it almost never is," says study leader Steven P. Cohen, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. "As in the past, disease and non-battle-related injuries continue to be the major sources of service-member attrition and that's not likely to change. It's likely to get worse."

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2010) — What if a jury could decide a man's guilt through mind reading? What if reading a defendant's memory could betray their guilt? And what constitutes 'intent' to commit murder? These are just some of the issues debated and reviewed in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, the latest interdisciplinary project from Wiley-Blackwell, which for registered institutions will be free for the first two years.

In the article "Neurolaw," in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, co-authors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Annabelle Belcher assess the potential for the latest cognitive science research to revolutionize the legal system.

Monday 18 January 2010
by: Jeremy Scahill | Rebel Reports

We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security. I even encountered Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke).

Tobacco Company Helped Shape European Policy System Favoring Corporate Profits Over Public Health, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2010) — British American Tobacco (BAT), the world's second largest tobacco transnational, strategically influenced the European Union's framework for evaluating policy options, leading to the acceptance of an agenda which emphasizes business interests over public health, according to a study published in PLoS Medicine.

For those interested in the numbers, the World Database of Happiness ranks 148 nations and covers more than 95% of the world's population.

See how things stood during the Bush years.

1. Costa Rica - 66.7, 2. Iceland - 66.4, 3. Denmark - 65.0, 4. Switzerland - 65.0, 5. Canada - 64.0, 6. Australia - 62.9, 7. Sweden - 62.8, 8. Norway - 62.4, 9. Finland - 62.3, 10. Ireland - 60.9, 11. Luxembourg - 60.7, 12. Netherlands - 60.6, 13. Austria - 60.1, 14. New Zealand 59.7, 15. Mexico - 59.5, 16. Spain - 58.8, 17. Belgium - 58.6, 18. Panama - 58.5, 19. United States - 58.0, 20. United Arab Emerates - 57.2, 21. Cyprus - 57.0, 22. United Kingdom - 56.9, 23. Andorra - 56.8, 24. Malta - 56.0, 25. Columbia - 55.8, 26. Germany - 55.2, 27. Argentina - 54.9, 28. Singapore - 54.6, 29. Israel - 54.5 , 30. Italy - 54.4, 31. Dominican Republic - 54.3, 32. Brazil - 53.6, 33. Slovenia - 53.3, 34. Venezuala - 53.0, 35. France - 52.8, 36. Greece - 51.5, 37. Chile - 51.4, 38. Uruguay - 51.2, 39. Kuwait - 51.0, 40. Nicaragua - 51.0, 41. Japan - 50.8, 42. Qatar - 50.6, 43. Belize - 50.3... 109. Iraq 31.1,... 121. Mali 25.0,... 135. Zambia 20.1,... 145. Sierra Leone 15.0,... 140. Afghanistan 19.0,... 148. Zimbabawe 12.0.

On the upside:

Cold War Offered Odd Benefit -- It Limited Species Invasions

On the downside:

H1N1 Virus Spreads Easily by Plane

It's seems the same airline industry that has failed to install secure cockpit doors also has failed to install effective cabin air filters. Also, it's a sad commentary that we can look back on the Cold War as a "good".

The American Elite
By William Blum | Anti-Empire Report

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?) Read more.

Why Powerful People -- Many of Whom Take a Moral High Ground -- Don't Practice What They Preach

ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2009)— 2009 may well be remembered for its scandal-ridden headlines, from admissions of extramarital affairs by governors and senators, to corporate executives flying private jets while cutting employee benefits, and most recently, to a mysterious early morning car crash in Florida. The past year has been marked by a series of moral transgressions by powerful figures in political, business and celebrity circles. New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University explores why powerful people - many of whom take a moral high ground - don't practice what they preach.

Researchers sought to determine whether power inspires hypocrisy, the tendency to hold high standards for others while performing morally suspect behaviors oneself. The research finds that power makes people stricter in moral judgment of others - while being less strict of their own behavior.

Protest on the ice at the mansion of United Health Group's CEO, Stepthen Hemsley

Channel 4 news coverage and Channel 5 news coverage

On Saturday morning, 12/19/09, eight of us met at the intersection of Shoreline Drive and Ferndale Road West, about ¾ mile from the 7.8 million dollar Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota mansion of United Health Group CEO Stephen Hemsley. We had to spend some time at this location waiting for everyone to find their way to this meeting place. So we put up some of our banners and talked to passers by.

Not shown in these photos was a banner that really upset some of the locals that said, “HOME OF INS. BANDIT S. HEMSLEY”. Some of the people in the neighborhood supported us, but this guy was pretty upset!

The Onion: Nov 25, 2009

'Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' Breaking Sales Records

During its first five days on the shelves, Activision's latest installment in the first-person-shooter video game franchise Call Of Duty brought in $550 million worldwide. What are the reasons for its popularity?

● Somehow knows names and places of battles that are set to take place in the next few weeks
●Multiplayer mode enables you to connect with friends, nonstop action prevents them from drawing you into meaningful conversation
●5,000 or more hours of game play qualifies player for VA health care
●Not much good on TV
●When you shoot barrels, they explode
●The controller rumbles when your character is hit with a bullet, which is exactly what the human body does
●Dutiful young Americans realizing just what they are being called to do
●Offers homosexuals only opportunity to serve openly in the military