Dirty little babies

Babies are just incubators for awful things...

Study: Sick kids may signal start of flu season

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Preschoolers may signal the arrival of flu season: Thirty days after hacking 3- and 4-year-olds start showing up in doctors' offices and emergency rooms, flu-ridden adults follow.

It's a provocative discovery sure to bolster growing calls to vaccinate more healthy children against influenza -- to help keep the misery from spreading.

Sometimes I refer to "Thanksgiving" as "the day my neices and nephews try to kill me with their germs."
 

Do you think this is a dumb question?

I think every CNN.com QuickVote should be modified so that along with the question of "interest," there is also a, "Do you think this is a dumb question?" That way when they ask, "Given recent events, are you paying more attention to weather reports?" they'll also have a record that 80% of the people who read that question think that the author is a moron.

The only time conservatives like abortion...

Bennett under fire for remarks on blacks, crime

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congressional Democrats blasted former Education Secretary William Bennett on Thursday for saying that aborting "every black baby in this country" would reduce the crime rate, and demanded their Republican counterparts do the same.

Bennett is being harshly criticized, but he says he is standing by his comments.

NOTE: Bennett is the author of the Book of Virtues and many more in his "Virtues" series. These books intend to give instruction to young adults and children on how to be virtuous. Apparently teaching virtue to poor children is his second choice; he'd rather just abort them. Clearly he himself his a very virtuous and self-disciplined man.

No U.S. Network Would Show this U.N. PSA

This actually relates to another post from the last couple of days.

Apparently, no U.S. network would play this U.N. PSA. Take a look.

Greenhouse effect: A violation of human rights?

Report: Ice-free Arctic summers possible by 2100

Inuit hunters threatened by the melting of Arctic ice plan to file a petition in December accusing the United States of violating their human rights by fueling global warming. The Bush administration has opted out of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That's a pretty interesting spin on the problem. Call it a human rights violation. Make it equivalent to government depriving you of your civil liberties. Maybe that's easier to argue? The Inuit are one of the few people who could make this argument directly because of their lifestyle.

However, ...

The Inuit number about 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

There American numbers are very small, so their legal options are much more limited. Additionally, it would be a tough argument to prove that their lifestyle is impacted so much by the U.S. alone that the U.S. deserves all of the blame.

What debate?

So this isn't new news . . . but it was on Google news today.

By accident or design?

As governor of Texas, George W. Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution. Last month, he said intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," he said, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Okay, but there is no debate. The debate is confined to the school system. Teaching students both sides only prepares them for the fight about what to teach them. Once you stop worrying about what school kids are being taught, there is no debate.

It's such a circular argument. They have created a debate first and then next used that debate as a reason to have the thing that they are debating. It's very clever.

[ Yet, winning the debate for ID means keeping ID in the schools... Thus if you leave ID in the schools, then you're saying that there is no debate! ]

Mine fields to protect wild life

Penguins stay snug and secure in minefields

KIDNEY COVE, Falkland Islands (Reuters) -- There's a mating ritual going on in the minefield.

Fortunately the would-be lovers are penguins, too light to detonate the deadly mines laid more than two decades ago during a war on the far-flung Falkland Islands.

Thousands of penguins and other feathered and amphibious friends choose to nest and rest in no-go zones. The British estimate that some 25,000 land mines, mostly sown by Argentine forces in the 1982 war with Britain, remain.

On a recent day, the squawking penguins were busily finding partners, preparing nests and waddling about the mating grounds.

Wildlife numbers in the mined areas appear to be on the rise and conservationists cannot hide their enthusiasm about this unorthodox form of protecting lands previously trampled by people or overgrazed by sheep.

It is the bright spot in a long-term land mine problem -- one that is not likely to go away because de-mining is difficult, if not impossible, in the peaty soils and shifting sands of this South Atlantic archipelago.

Grant Munro, director of Falklands Conservation, says the boost to wildlife is a bit anecdotal since "it has really not been looked into, for obvious reasons."

"But you see an assemblage of plants in the minefields, all fenced and inspected, with no livestock inside. Vegetation has had a chance to recover," he added.

Katrina and hybrid demand

I bet GM is realy kicking themselves... (the last quote is particularly interesting)

Toyota: Katrina drove up hybrid demand

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp. has seen a rise in demand for hybrid vehicles in the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as consumers seek more mileage out of $3-gallon gasoline, a top official said on Thursday.

"At the end of last month, we had a 20-hour supply of the Prius (hybrid sedan)," Jim Press, head of Toyota's U.S. operations, said at the Reuters Autos Summit, held in Detroit. "We no longer count in days."

Women in science

I was forwarded this article the other day (from The Stanford Daily). This author's opinion is that women cannot be found in science because science is a crappy place in which to be found.

Not enough women in science? Good for them!

With all the fuss about the low percentage of women faculty in science and engineering, people have started asking, "Why aren't more women going into these fields?"

Maybe the real question is, "Why are so many men going into them?"

Science and engineering demand big investments for uncertain rewards. Students must endure four years of difficult undergraduate courses, perhaps a few years of master's study and around seven years of graduate study to earn a Ph.D. Their reward for a decade of minimum wage apprenticeship? More of the same.

So maybe not going into science isn't a sign that women aren't as capable as men: maybe it's a sign that they're a bit smarter.

Funny, those are the fields in which women are overrepresented. Women make up 80.6 percent of elementary and middle school teachers, 90.2 percent of registered nurses and 89 percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides. These are fulfilling careers with good job-growth outlooks. Maybe we need to start asking not, "Why aren't there more women in science and engineering?" but, "Why aren't there more men in nursing and teaching?"

$5 Gas

Rita could equal $5 gas

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Remember when gas spiked to $3-plus a gallon after Hurricane Katrina? By this time next week, that could seem like the good old days.

Weather and energy experts say that as bad as Hurricane Katrina hit the nation's supply of gasoline, Hurricane Rita could be worse.

Katrina damage was focused on offshore oil platforms and ports. Now the greater risk is to oil-refinery capacity, especially if Rita slams into Houston, Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas.

"We could be looking at gasoline lines and $4 gas, maybe even $5 gas, if this thing does the worst it could do," said energy analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover. "This storm is in the wrong place. And it's absolutely at the wrong time," said Beutel.

And now that they've predicted it, even if it doesn't have to happen they'll still raise prices just because that's what everyone is expecting.