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•••••Now Muslims demand full Sharia law••••A Senior’s Statement (via video) to Congress on Healthcare Bill22:17 04 November 2009 by MacGregor Campbell / NewScientist.com
“As the plates keep spreading apart, it will end up looking like the Red Sea,” she says.
A 500-metre-long crack opened up in just a few days in Afar, Ethiopia, in 2005 (Image: University of Rochester)
A crack in the Earth’s crust – which could be the forerunner to a new ocean – ripped open in just days in 2005, a new study suggests. The opening, located in the Afar region of Ethiopia, presents a unique opportunity for geologists to study how mid-ocean ridges form.
The crack is the surface component of a continental rift
forming as the Arabian and African plates drift away from one another. It began to open up in September 2005, when a volcano at the northern end of the rift, called Dabbahu, erupted.
The magma inside the volcano did not reach the surface and erupt as a fountain of lava – instead, it was diverted into the continental rift underground. The magma cooled into a wedge-shaped “dike” that was then uplifted, rupturing the surface and creating a 500-metre-long, 60-metre-deep crack.
Using sensor data collected by universities in the region, researchers led by Atalay Ayele of Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia reconstructed the sequence of seismic events that led to the crack’s formation. They found that a 60-kilometre-long, 8-metre-wide dike of solidified magma formed in the rift, causing the crack, in a matter of days.
‘Stunning’ ferocity
Similar dikes in Iceland are typically around 10 kilometres long and 1 metre wide and can take years to form. The new study shows the formation of dikes can occur in larger segments – and over much shorter periods of time – than previously thought.
“The ferocity of what we saw during this episode stunned everyone,” says Cynthia Ebinger, a team member at the University of Rochester in New York.
While the Mount Dabbahu rift is still hundreds of kilometres inland, Ebinger says it could continue to widen and lengthen. “As the plates keep spreading apart, it will end up looking like the Red Sea,” she says.
New ocean
Eventually it could reach the east coast of Ethiopia and fill up with seawater. “At some point, if that spreading and rifting continues, then that area will be flooded,” says Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved with the study.
Ebinger says this won’t happen any time soon – it would take around 4 million years for the crack to reach the size of the Red Sea. Other areas in the Afar region are below sea level, however, and could see flooding before that if similar rifting occurs near the coastal volcanoes to the north and east that form a natural levy against the sea.
Macdonald says the process of continental plates spreading apart and filling in with magma is analogous to what happens on the deep seafloor at mid-ocean ridges, which are difficult to study because they lie a few kilometres under water. “This is very exciting in terms of its implications for the deep ocean and how mid-ocean ridges work,” he told New Scientist.
Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (doi:10.1029/2009GL039605)
14:57 28 October 2009 by Jessica Hamzelou / NewScientist.com
Safeguarding genes (Image: Hola Images/Getty)
Why women evolved to live so far beyond their reproductive years is a mystery long debated. Now there is new evidence backing the “grandma hypothesis” – that they stick around to invest in their grandchildren, safeguarding the genes they share.
Leslie Knapp and her team at the University of Cambridge reasoned that if the hypothesis is true, how much grandma invests in her grandchildren should depend on the proportion of genes they share. So they came up with a way to test this.
Due to the way X chromosomes are transmitted, grandmothers share an equal amount of DNA with their daughter’s sons and daughters, but a smaller proportion of DNA with their son’s son than with their son’s daughter. So the team reasoned that paternal grandmas might invest less in these grandsons than these granddaughters, which in turn might have a measurable effect on life expectancy.
Boys beware
Knapp’s team examined historical records from seven countries, including England, Japan and Ethiopia, which ranged from the 17th century to today. “We wanted to test whether the effect was independent of culture,” says Knapp.
For kids who grew up in the same village or lived in the same home as their grandma, they noted if she was paternal or maternal and when the children died.
Sure enough, the researchers found that in all seven countries, males died earlier if they had grown up with their paternal, rather than their maternal, grandmother. This was not true for the girls.
Grandmas might differ in levels of investment in their grandchildren through food provision or teaching, says Knapp.
Future focused
The genes on the X chromosome only make up about 8 per cent of our genes – and so aren’t the only ones that grandmas have an interest in protecting. However, Knapp points out that “the X carries genes known to be involved in fertility and intelligence, which are important for future reproductive success”.
Before all you grandsons out there start firing dirty looks at your dad’s mother, the findings don’t mean that granny thinks any less of you. There’s no evidence that paternal grandmas have a conscious preference for their sons’ daughters, says Knapp.
Cheryl Jamison, a sociologist at Indiana University in Bloomington, calls the research “fascinating”. She also emphasises that the genes on the X chromosome are just some of the many factors that drive grandmothers’ behaviour towards their grandchildren. Culture and environment, as well as genes found on other chromosomes, must also play a role.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1660
11/6/09 / Filed Under:The Daily FLOTUS with Lynn Sweet
What’s in First Lady Michelle Obama’s closet?
Michelle Obama outfit at Science Bowl
We knew about American designers Maria Pinto, Jason Wu and fashions from J. Crew. Now there’s another name that followers of Mrs. Obama’s clothes will get to know: the Milan fashion house Moschino.
The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan traveled to Italy to report on the Moschino designers, who, besides their clothes, have something else going for them: modesty and discretion. The East Wing is not keen on clothiers sending out press releases bragging that Mrs. Obama or daughters Malia or Sasha are wearing their line. Not to worry about Moschino, writes Givhan.
Givhan reports that Moschino chief Rosella Jardini “didn’t even realize that Michelle Obama was wearing one of her company’s ensembles” because she mixed and matched the jacket from a Moschino suit in what Givhan called “a pleasingly eccentric manner” with belts and accessories.
Fri, Nov 6, 2009 07:34 PM PST
Well, I am now in my office after a ragged hour of actually watching a rat trembling and shaking in the new ELECTRONIC RAT TRAP that I bought from Home Depot the other day.
I saw his disgusting long rat tail shoot straight up into the air and tremble and shake. I could hear the static sound similar to the sound of an electric chair frying a killer.
I was scared to death that he might scoot out and jump on me. He did not. I then called my neighbor to ask him to get the rat out of the trap and ditch it for me, but Rick was not home. My other three neighbors weren’t home either, so since I did not want to go to sleep knowing that a dead or half dead rat might be rustling around in the rat trap in the kitchen, I decided to be a man about it and just ditch it myself. I admit that I actually considered calling the police station on Vanowen Blvd. to ask for a policeman to come and do it, but I realized the folly of that after about 30 seconds of trembling.
Brown rat
I got my oven mitts and grabbed the big metal trap (after turning it off) and held the thing over the Ralph’s market bag and whereas the instructions on the rat trap box depicted a rat falling out of a trap, in real life the rat would not slide out of the metal trap box. I figured maybe the electrocution burned him to the metal floor of the trap. I stood there in front of the trap and the rat’s beady black eyes were staring at me. I waved my hands in front of the holes at the back to see if it would move out of fear, and it did not so I figured it was dead for sure. Still, you can’t be sure.
I walked around shaking and thinking and figured I could not quit now, so I got the longest kitchen implement I could find so I could hold the trap in my left hand and *scrape* the rat off the floor of the trap. Only thing is, the trap, being metal and sturdy, is also heavy, and cloth oven mitts are slippery, so I had to take the mitts off and hold it with the actual skin of my hands.
I own an Intel iMac and love tech. I wish I had joined AT&T and gotten an iPhone. I will probably get the Barnes and Noble NOOK -Reader too; I’ve been doing heavy research on it, comparingit with Kindle and even Sony. ~ Zoom
And what do I believe? I believe that when I close my eyes for the last time, all light and consciousness will fade to black. I won’t be existing in another form, I won’t be ether, I won’t be around to be sad. I asked my brother once what he thought it would be like after dying and he told me that it would be just like it was before birth. That makes a lot of sense to me. It’s a comforting thought. ~ZZ
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When Marc Weide’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she chose euthanasia. Here, we publish his shockingly frank diary of her final days
- Marc Weide
- The Guardian, Saturday 23 August 2008
Marc Weide’s mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and chose euthanasiaMonday February 11 2008
5.30pm: Dad is bent over the toilet bowl with a brush in his hand and a scowl on his face. I walk up to him. “Shall I give you a hand?” Dad begins to snigger, abandoning any attempt to make sense of the situation. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our backs to Mum, who paces around the landing with a newly fitted catheter in her hand.
The catheter has been put in by nurse Marianne to enable our GP, who will be with us in half an hour, to give Mum a lethal injection. But instead of having a moment of peace with us, as Marianne suggested, Mum demands that we clean the toilets. Both upstairs and downstairs.
My brother, Maarten, is sitting on the edge of the bath, staring out of the bathroom window.
“Imagine,” he mutters. “Her last hour, spent like this.”
This is the Netherlands, where voluntary euthanasia is permitted, as well as physician-assisted suicide. This is the day my mother has chosen to die, and the toilets need to be spotless.
Three months earlier
I’m on a writer’s retreat in the UK, where I have been living for the past three years. I’m working on my novel when my mobile phone rings. The display shows it’s Maarten, calling from the Netherlands. Mum’s test results have come back.
“It’s secondary cancer in her lungs.” He pauses. “They reckon she’s got two to six months left.”
I phone Mum. She talks without interruption, barely taking breath, about quitting her job just two months before her retirement, about what might have happened if she had not had that innocent-looking polyp removed from her womb, about why the doctors had not investigated her lungs earlier.
The prognosis is she could live another year if she undergoes chemotherapy. But she won’t. “I’m not going to go bald,” she says. “I don’t want people saying, ‘How sad, that beautiful hair all gone.’ Never.”
When I phone again, she sounds as if she doesn’t have time to talk.
“I’m arranging my cremation.”
“Oh … “
“Yes, the text for the card, the location, the flowers, the coffin … I’m really busy.”
Dad, Maarten and I do not seem to be part of the equation.
Late January 2008
Dad phones. After two and a half months, Mum is deteriorating rapidly. She suffers from headaches, sickness and loss of coordination. She takes a fall while Dad is having a shower. When she has a shower, half the bathroom floor gets flooded.
Two days later, brain metastasis is confirmed. Mum is hospitalised and given drugs to repress the inflammation, but they will only remain effective for a week or two.
Friday January 25
Maarten collects me from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and we drive to meet Dad at the hospital. We all go upstairs together.
Mum is sitting by herself at a table near the window as we enter. She throws us a tearful smile. “My boys,” she says, as Maarten and I give her a hug. “To think that this all started in that bloody womb of mine … but I am glad I had it, to bear you two.”
The hospital staff all do a great job and Mum seems content with her care. After two hours with us, though, she becomes more demanding. She asks Dad to put things into her bag, then take them out again. She snaps when he can’t find her mobile phone.
When the palliative care coordinator, Carola, comes in to discuss the option of home care, I take Dad outside. “Dad, I’m wondering – here, Mum is in the capable hands of staff whose authority she accepts. At home, she’ll just try to be the boss.”
“Hmm. You may be right,” says Dad. We walk back, just as Mum is asking Carola whether home care really does not include vacuuming.
When I repeat my concerns to Maarten, though, he is adamant: “She ought to come home. It feels more natural if she dies there and I want to be around her for a bit. I don’t want to drive to this depressing hospital every day and leave her alone at night.”
And so the question is settled. The four of us will go home together on Monday.
Ah, the psychedelic 1960’s…. Remember model Peggy Moffit in the Rudy Gernreich bathing suit that had no top? Here she is, a very elastic, very graceful model. ~ZZ
By PENELOPE GREEN / N.Y. Times
ON HER WAY Leslie Williams is leaving her sleek loft. / Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
WELCOME to home interrupted, Leslie Williams said, opening the door to what appeared to be just the opposite: a bright TriBeCa loft with near-lapidary finishes.
Multimedia
Slide Show 
The 14-foot table, made in anticipation of large family gatherings, will stay behind. More Photos »
A slight, blue-jean clad figure, Ms. Williams padded barefoot past the smoky green onyx panel and the Venetian plastered walls in the front hall, where old-fashioned filament bulbs hung like giant fireflies from the ceiling. There were 19th-century wallpapers and 60’s era fixtures designed by Arne Jacobsen, hand-made beech kitchen cabinets and pickled maple floors, and a 14-foot ash table that marched alongside a white-washed brick wall.
It was the kind of place many New Yorkers dream about, the sort of impossibly beautiful apartment movie directors cast as home for “arty” characters who would more likely be living in a cold-water collective in Bushwick in the real world.
For a time, it was Ms. Williams’s dream home. She and her husband, both of whom are in television production, moved in two days before Christmas in 2007 after a renovation, at the time not yet complete, that had already taken about a year.
Two weeks later, Ms. Williams’s husband moved out. He was done, he told his wife, with the renovation, and the marriage.
Although I’m not crazy about the way this article describes former president George W. Bush, the rest of the content is quite interesting. ~ZZ
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02 November 2009 by Michael Bond / New Scientist
Editorial: A rational alternative to testing IQ
IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It’s a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush’s IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and 
“as a result ill-informed”. The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was “in a league by himself”. Bush himself has described his thinking style as “not very analytical”.
How can someone with a high IQ have these kinds of intellectual deficiencies? Put another way, how can a “smart” person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity – how much information you can hold in mind.
But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That’s because they are unable to assess things such as a person’s ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray.
For those who are stressed and need a break away from the day to day hustle and bustle — how about a beach holiday in China ? Click the images to enlarge them.
I like people who break stereotypes. ~ZoomZoom
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By Sarah Treleaven, National Post
Published: Friday, October 30, 2009
Ivanka Trump is relatively scandal-free, which is more than most of her peers can claim.
Ivanka Trump is better than you and you’re just going to have to get over it, OK? Her new book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, a mix of memoir and professional primer for young working women, will confirm most of the things you already suspect: She is smarter, richer, better looking, has more impressive friends and is the beneficiary of every possible kind of luck the universe offers. (Including ducking the curse of her father’s enigmatic hair.)
But perhaps the greatest trick of a book with so many admissions of grandeur and so much stock professional advice (don’t overpower your prospective employer with too much perfume, remember to show up on time, etc.) from a self-described princess is that Ivanka Trump, vice president of real estate development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization, comes across as so darn likeable.
Of course, not everything in the book is completely relatable. Trump grew up in a giant shiny building emblazoned with her family’s name, and her neighbour was Michael Jackson. She was an internationally successful teen model, as she likes to remind the reader. (We get it! You’re hot!)
Adapted from materials provided by University of Texas at Austin.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2009) — First impressions do matter when it comes to communicating personality through appearance, according to new research by psychologists Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University and Sam Gosling of The University of Texas at Austin.
Despite the crucial role of physical appearance in creating first impressions, until now little research has examined the accuracy of personality impressions based on appearance alone. These findings will be published in the December 2009 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, co-written with Simine Vazire (Washington University in St. Louis) and Peter J. Rentfrow (University of Cambridge).
“In an age dominated by social media where personal photographs are ubiquitous, it becomes important to understand the ways personality is communicated via our appearance,” says Naumann. “The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life.”
In the study, observers viewed full-body photographs of 123 people they had never met before. The targets were viewed either in a controlled pose with a neutral facial expression or in a naturally expressed pose. The accuracy of the judgments was gauged by comparing them to the aggregate of self-ratings and that of three informants who knew the targets well, a criterion now widely regarded as the gold standard in personality research.
Even when viewing the targets in the controlled pose, the observers could accurately judge some major personality traits, including extraversion and self-esteem. But most traits were hard to detect under these conditions. When observers saw naturally expressive behavior (such as a smiling expression or energetic stance), their judgments were accurate for nine of the 10 personality traits. The 10 traits were extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity and political orientation.
“We have long known that people jump to conclusions about others on the basis of very little information,” says Gosling, “but what’s striking about these findings is how many of the impressions have a kernel of truth to them, even on the basis of something as simple a single photograph.”
Gosling cautioned that observers still make plenty of mistakes, but noted that this latest work is important because it sheds new light on the sources of accuracy and inaccuracy of judgments.
With this kind of knowledge, individuals can choose to alter their appearance in specific ways, either to make identity claims or shape others impressions of them, Naumann says.
“If you want potential employers or romantic suitors to see you as a warm and friendly individual, you should post pictures where you smile or are standing in a relaxed pose,” suggests Naumann.
For example, whether you smile and how you stand (tense vs. relaxed, energetic vs. tired) are important cues to judge a variety of traits. Extraverts smile more, stand in energetic and less tense ways, and look healthy, neat and stylish. People who are more open to experience are less likely to have a healthy, neat appearance, but are more likely to have a distinctive style of dress.
The researchers also found males who have a neat and healthy appearance are often seen as more conscientious. However, defining personality in women was more difficult because they were more strongly influenced by cultural demands to look presentable.
Digital high-resolution images demonstrating the standardized and spontaneous full-body photographs are available upon request.
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
Elizabeth Bernstein / WallStreetJournal
I was wrong about marriage. I thought that as long as I tied the knot—and made sure it stayed tied—I’d never have to date again.
Then I found myself out at a restaurant, smiling a little too broadly, watching my table manners and nervously trying to make conversation.
It was a date all right—a “couples date.”
My husband and I were having dinner with an acquaintance and his wife who had just moved to town. We were hoping the evening would be the start of a friendship.
Little did we know that finding another couple we could stand to spend time with could seem twice as hard as finding each other in the first place.
October 30th, 2009 8:11 AM by Free Britney / The Hollywood Gossip
In Glamour’s Women of the Year issue, the magazine is honoring the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, with a Special Recognition award.
No, not just for giving us hundreds of Michelle Obama pictures showing the latest style from haute couture to casual chic. For mentoring young women.
You simply cannot talk about 2009 without talking about Michelle, who has thrown open the doors of the White House to local children and families.
In her own modest words, “there’s no magic to being here.” With hard work, she says, any one of us can rise to greatness. Words to live by, for sure.
Fresh off her World Series appearance the other night, here are excerpts from Glamour’s chat with FLOTUS on role models, careers, love, and life …
On mentoring young women: “I think that mentoring is such a critical part of the role I can play in this position. I see how little bits of exposure can really change my girls significantly, and I want that for more girls around the world.”
Michelle Obama: Mother, lawyer, First Lady, role model.
On her “real” role models: “They were the people in my life. My mother, for sure. My dad. The teachers. For me, role-modeling was immediate, touchable. The children connect with who is in their lives, present and accounted for.”
On reaching out: “I was blessed throughout my career. I had people rooting for me. Look for those mentors, because sometimes they don’t find you. Sometimes you seek them out. Often, they will be flattered and glad to lend a hand.”
Don’t put yourself last: “I always try to put my kids first, and then… put myself a really close second, as opposed to fifth or seventh. One thing that I’ve learned from male role models is that they don’t hesitate to invest in themselves.”
On seeking the whole package when dating: “Cute’s good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it’s, who are you as a person? Don’t look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart. Look at the soul. You should always feel good.”
On setting her own fashion standards: “People are going to have opinions, and they have a right to, when you’re the First Lady especially. You’re representing the nation. But I’ve tried to be at peace with the choices I make first.”
Do you know how many people are at the table with gloves on, when you have an operation? There’s the surgeon and a scrub nurse, of course. A surgical tech may be there too, suctioning up those queasy fluids, holding the arm or leg we’re working on, cutting sutures and holding retractors. But you have seen enough medical shows to know there’s also always at least one other doctor present. We may not engage in the same kind of dramatic medical banter that fictional surgeons do (like flying a passenger jet, safe surgery should be a little bit boring), but that second doctor — the assistant surgeon — should be in the operating room for all major procedures.
The tallest and best proportioned woman in the world lives in Holland .
She is 7′4″ and weighs 320
By Tara Kelly / London Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 / Time Magazine
Little did I know when I had a steady diet of fish and raw fish (called SASHIMI) in my youth that it was paving the way to good heart health.. ~ ZZ
Think of omega-3s as the oils that keep our brains and hearts from getting rusty. Hundreds of studies show that these essential fatty acids can help prevent cardiovascular disease and some scientists believe they are also beneficial for the brain and nervous system.
But not all omega-3s are created equal. The ones with the biggest health benefits are found in fish like salmon and mackerel, which have the two long chain fatty acids docosahexaenoic (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic (EPA). Plant-derived omega-3s — the fatty acids found in flax seeds, olive oil and some leafy greens — don’t contain these specific fatty acid chains. While they’re also thought to be good for the heart, they don’t have quite the same effect on the body as their fish-derived cousins.
ABC’s Tom Shine reports from Washington / October 30, ‘09 / ABC News.com
“A woman is shown getting beaten before a perpetrator unzips his pants and says he’s going to show her ‘just how functional he really is,’” – a scene from the FOX TV series Prison Break which aired on May 15, 2009
“A young, half-dressed girl covered in blood is lying face down in the street. An investigator remarks that somebody hit her when she was already down and it flashes back to the crime which includes the victim (who appears unconscious) being undressed and kicked by a male and female perpetrator while blood flies in the air,” — an April 30, 2009 scene from the CBS hit, CSI.
Nicole Maestri, Reuters / National Post
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009
The world’s largest retailer has introduced online sales of caskets, expanding a merchandise selection that spans engagement rings and baby gear to a new major milestone in its shoppers’ lives.
_____________________________________________________________
SAN FRANCISCO — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is now catering to its shoppers’ needs from cradle to grave.
The world’s largest retailer has introduced online sales of caskets, expanding a merchandise selection that spans engagement rings and baby gear to a new major milestone in its shoppers’ lives.
Shoppers can choose from the Lady de Guadalupe steel casket for US$895 or a sienna bronze casket for US$2,899.00.
Walmart.com spokesman Ravi Jariwala said it is selling the products as a “limited beta test” that launched within the last few weeks.
Wal-Mart has been revamping its merchandise selection in stores and online to expand into categories it believes have high potential for growth.
The funeral service industry generates US$11-billion in revenue a year, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. In 2007, the association said the U.S. death rate was 8.0 people per thousand, and that is expected to rise to 9.3 people per thousand by the year 2020.
The caskets do not qualify for Walmart.com’s free site-to-store shipping program, where shoppers can buy an item online and have it shipped to a local store for free.
Instead, the website says the caskets require freight delivery to the shopper’s preferred address. The estimated shipping cost for the sienna bronze casket is US$99.
Competitor Costco Wholesale Corp already sells caskets online.
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