Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, August 31, 2010.
OND is a community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
The OND concept was borne under the keen keyboard of Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Driven To Tears by The Police
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Banks Grow Wary of Environmental Risks
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.
. . .
After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines.
In the most recent example, the banking giant Wells Fargo noted last month what it called "considerable attention and controversy" surrounding mountaintop removal mining, and said that its involvement with companies engaged in it was "limited and declining."
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But the policy shift by Wells Fargo follows others over the last two years, including moves by Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank, to increase scrutiny of lending to companies involved in mountaintop removal — or to end the lending altogether. |
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Obama renews vow to hand over Afghan security
By Jo Biddle
US President Barack Obama renewed a vow to hand over security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces, but warned the pace of a US troop withdrawal would be set by the conditions on the ground.
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But the president appeared to step back from an earlier pledge that American forces would actually start withdrawing from the war-torn country in 2011.
"Next August we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility," Obama said in his primetime Oval Office address to the nation, as he formally declared an end to the seven-year US combat mission in Iraq.
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"But make no mistake: this transition will begin because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people's." |
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Children Raised by Gay Couples Show Good Progress Through School, Study Finds
By (ScienceDaily)
In nearly every discussion, debate or lawsuit about gay marriage, the talk at some point turns to family values.
Do gay couples make for good parents? Will their children -- whether adopted, conceived with the help of a surrogate or brought in from a pre-existing relationship -- adjust, adapt and succeed in a world dominated by traditional families?
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In a study published this month in the journal Demography, Rosenfeld concludes that children being raised by same-sex couples have nearly the same educational achievement as children raised by married heterosexual couples.
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The difference between the groups pretty much vanishes when taking into account that the heterosexual couples were slightly more educated and wealthier than most gay parents, Rosenfeld said. |
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Problem banks on rise, but bank profits rising too
By Kevin G. Hall
The number of banks on a government "problem list" rose to 829 in the second quarter, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday, a sign that bank failures may surpass last year's 140 closures.
At the same time, however, banks overall reported strong income during the quarter, providing some grounds for optimism.
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The number of problem banks is the highest it's been since March 1993, when 928 banks were under close surveillance for possible failure.
However, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair emphasized the bright side of the mixed message at a news conference. Citing rising earnings and strengthening credit quality, Bair said the outlook for banks was improving. |
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We should pay to shut down dirty old coal plants
By Ted Nace
Too often, environmental policy turns into a game of whack-a-mole: solving one problem just makes another one pop up.
Such a perverse game is currently playing out in the push to retrofit old coal plants with scrubbers for "criteria pollutants" such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and mercury. Although it is estimated that tightened regulation of these emissions will push about a sixth of the aging coal fleet into retirement, those plants that survive the gauntlet will be harder than ever to close after receiving expensive retrofits. Although the shiny new scrubbers will make the air cleaner, these plants will now spew entirely new waste streams such as scrubber sludge, and the additional power to run the scrubbers will require additional mining. Worst of all, equipping a plant with an expensive new scrubber will give that plant a new lease on life, enabling it to keep spewing out carbon dioxide and spelling disaster for the 2030 deadline that climate scientists have named as the key to preventing dangerous climate change.
Scrubber retrofits are a devil's bargain, as we can see at power plants like the Merrimack Station in New Hampshire and the Boardman Plant in Oregon. In both instances, the Sierra Club and others came out against $500 million scrubber retrofits, arguing that the plants should instead be retired. Naturally, the owners of the plants have resisted closing the highly profitable facilities. They'll make more money scrubbing them up and running them until 2040 or later.
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The answer to the financing riddle can be found in the work of tobacco policy analysts, who have developed the crucial insight that smoking (like coal plant emissions) not only inflames arteries and darkens lungs, but also plays pickpocket with Uncle Sam. That's because smoking kills income earners, and income earners pay taxes. In addition, people who are disabled by smoking (or coal plant emissions) create fiscal burdens on federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration.
Notice that we're not talking here about the full range of coal's infamous "externalities," i.e. the numerous sorts of damages that mining and burning coal inflict on human health and the natural environment. We're only interested, for purposes of this analysis, in estimating those impacts that are specifically fiscal. The idea is to show that a Cash for Clunkers program would be revenue neutral or even revenue positive, paying for itself through increased federal taxes and reduced federal expenditures. |
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Obama hails end to US combat operations in Iraq
By (BBC)
President Obama has hailed the end of US combat operations in Iraq, saying the US has paid a "a huge price" to "put Iraq's future in its peoples' hands".
In a speech delivered in a rare Oval Office address, he said he was "awed" by the sacrifice of the US military.
But he said America's "most urgent task" was now to "restore our economy".
He said the US would continue to support Iraq's government and people. |
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Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani subjected to mock execution
By Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Ian Black
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning, was told on Saturday that she was to be hanged at dawn on Sunday, but the sentence was not carried out, it emerged tonight.
Mohammadi Ashtiani wrote her will and embraced her cellmates in Tabriz prison just before the call to morning prayer, when she expected to be led to the gallows, her son Sajad told the Guardian.
"Pressure from the international community has so far stopped them from carrying out the sentence but they're killing her every day by any means possible," he said. |
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The CIA, Afghanistan and groundless propaganda
By (Dmitry Kosyrev)
The most interesting aspect of the news that there are CIA agents in the Afghan government is how quickly the story died in the media, when by all rights it should have prompted a month-long scandal.
Needless to say, Washington doesn't care much about Afghanistan these days. Over the weekend, American conservatives staged quite a demonstration against President Barack Obama in the center of Washington, while Obama was busy preparing a powerful speech on the principles of U.S. foreign policy and the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, or at least the withdrawal of U.S. troops. In November, Obama and his Democratic Party are going to lose the midterm elections, and Obama's hands will be tied by a much more hostile Congress. This is enough news to bury the story about the CIA for good.
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During the weekend, Kabul released a surprising document straight out of the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union, which states that no one in the Afghan government receives money from the CIA. What's more, "the Afghan leadership believes that this groundless propaganda undermines the anti-terrorist alliance." The statement resolutely condemns the "unfounded accusations" that "cast aspersions on responsible Afghan officials." This statement was released by the presidential press service, but several major backers of Hamid Karzai came out with no less forceful statements.
The silence that followed in America was deafening. On Tuesday, the Washington Post carried a brief letter from a reader in Bethesda, Maryland, Evan Scott Thomas, who wrote that the CIA should not pay members of foreign governments. Why have U.S. aid programs in that case? That was it. |
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In disaster's wake, a popular resurgence for Pakistan's Army
By Aamir Latif
Pakistan’s devastating floods, a month on and still pushing relentlessly from north to south, are remaking not only the country’s geographic landscape, but its political landscape as well.
While the civilian government continues to bungle its own relief efforts, watching its credibility erode in the process, the country’s military is enjoying resurgent power and popularity as it appears to deftly flutter from region to region, leading the humanitarian mission.
Filling whatever holes that are still left — and there are many — religious groups, some with close connections to the Pakistani Taliban and other militant organizations, are making a concerted effort to endear themselves to local populations by providing help to those in need. |
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China court 'accepts first HIV job discrimination case'
By (BBC)
A Chinese man has filed a lawsuit alleging he was denied a job because he has HIV.
State media say this is the first time that such a discrimination case has been accepted by a Chinese court.
The man said he had passed written tests and interviews for the teaching post in Anhui province.
But he was turned down after medical screening revealed his HIV status, China Daily said. |
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US decide against China currency investigation
By (BBC)
The US government has decided to drop a general investigation of China's currency policy, avoiding a major trade dispute.
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The Commerce Department had been asked by US manufacturers in April to look at Chinese exports of aluminium goods used in car production and construction.
The main point at issue was whether China unfairly subsidised its exports by manipulating its currency. |
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Auto Industry Lobby Fail
By Nick Baumann
Soon, your car might come with a letter grade for fuel efficiency. The Environmental Protection Agency is considering a plan to add As, Bs, Cs, and even Ds to the window stickers that appear on new cars and trucks. Electric vehicles would get an A+, while plug-in hybrids would earn As. The Toyota Prius, Ford Fusion Hybrid, and Honda Civic Hybrid (all gas-electric cars) would get A-, while other hybrids would fall in the B range. Less fuel-efficient vehicles like pickup trucks and sports cars would get Cs and Ds. As you might imagine, the automobile industry lobby isn't too thrilled by this idea:
Automakers questioned the proposed letter grades, saying it might affect sales. Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said "the letter grade inadvertently suggests a value judgment, taking us back to school days where grades were powerful symbols of passing or failing." She said a broad range of vehicle technologies were needed to improve fuel efficiency.
This has to be one of the worst PR statements ever. I almost suspect the AP writer put it in to embarrass the AAM. . . |
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Unknown Democrat makes inroads in Idaho GOP territory
By Rocky Barker
If the election were held today, Bruce Glauner would vote to re-elect Gov. Butch Otter.
But the retired Idaho Power Co. executive, who runs a ranch in Fairfield, said Democrat Keith Allred could still change his mind. "I don't know anything about him," Glauner said.
He's not alone. Many Idahoans still don't know much about the former independent and Harvard professor who left the bipartisan group, "The Common Interest," to challenge Otter as a Democrat. |
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Restoring Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
By Dena S. Davis
Last week, in response to a lawsuit from two scientists alleging that the National Institutes of Health was in violation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting NIH from continuing its human embryonic stem cell research. Passed by Congress in 1995, Dickey-Wicker declared that public funds cannot be used for research that destroys human embryos.
. . .
After eight years of the most secretive and slanted administration in history, our country has once again embraced the value of transparency. Putting Dickey-Wicker back on the table will allow us to have an honest and robust national discussion about research with human embryos. Numerous polls show that the majority of Americans supports stem cell research, just as the majority has accepted the practice of in vitro fertilization, which creates the nearly half a million embryos now frozen in clinics across the country. It is these leftover embryos, no longer needed by couples who have completed their families, that are voluntarily donated for research.
One option is to amend Dickey-Wicker to exclude from its purview research on embryos that exist outside a woman’s body. Senator Orrin Hatch, despite his opposition to abortion, has supported embryonic stem cell research because the embryos are not yet implanted. Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette has expressed interest in revisiting Dickey-Wicker. Congress ought to amend Dickey-Wicker and allow publicly funded scientists to do the research that we hope will cure disease and save human lives. |
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Obama fighting on all fronts
By Jim Lobe
United States President Barack Obama will try this week to underline his progress in extricating the US from the morass his predecessor's " war on terror" in the Greater Middle East.
. . .
Indeed, the fact that Washington remains bogged down in Middle East and South Asia quagmires is becoming increasingly frustrating to many in the administration and within the larger foreign-policy establishment.
They believe Washington needs to focus much more on China, with which relations have in recent months become distinctly more fractious over a number of issues - ranging from its chronic bilateral trade surplus, to US arms sales to Taiwan to its more assertive territorial claims and ambitions in nearby waters.
As Financial Times writer Geoff Dyer wrote recently, "Over the last decade or so, China has stolen a march on the US in Asia. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq proved to be a strategic gift for Beijing." |
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
In an interview during Live Aid in 1985, Ben Orr from the Cars incorrectly stated that Sting added the line "Too many cameras and not enough food" just for Live Aid. The fact is it was recorded that way on the album.
Back to what's happening:
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New Study Links Toxic Pollutants to Canadian Oil Sands Mining
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Native Canadians living downstream from the oil sands mines in Alberta have long contended that their high cancer rates were related to the expanding excavation of bitumen for the production of synthetic crude. Their assertions have been disputed by the reports of a joint oil industry-government research panel that concluded that natural causes — and not mining — were responsible for the high levels of various metals in the sub-Arctic Athabasca River.
But now a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is backing the position of the Native Canadians. Led by several University of Alberta researchers, the study found that unusual levels of lead, mercury, zinc, cadmium and other toxic pollutants were found near oil sands mining sites or downstream from them. The levels exceeded federal and provincial government guidelines. |
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Bahamas Bans Offshore Drilling
By BPC plc
The Public is advised that The Ministry of The Environment has suspended consideration of all applications for oil exploration and drilling in the waters of The Bahamas. The Ministry seeks, by this decision, to maintain and safeguard an unpolluted marine environment for The Bahamas, notwithstanding the potential financial benefits of oil explorations.
Additionally all existing licenses will be reviewed to ascertain any legal entitlement for renewal.
Given recent events involving oil exploration and the efforts to prevent pollution, this prudent safeguard is essential to preserving the most vital natural resource of The Bahamas, its environment. |
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Sorry, Drilling Regulators: No More Oil Orgies
By Kate Sheppard
Last night, Michael Bromwich, the new director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (formerly known as the Minerals Management Service), circulated an email to staffers outlining new ethics policies for employees who deal with offshore drilling, an attempt to reform his run amuck division's rep for being too cozy with oil and gas interests. Most of the new rules seem like a no-brainer, but given MMS' history, perhaps we should be grateful they're now on paper.
. . .
Under the new guidelines, BOEM staffers will be barred for two years from handling any matter involving a former employer in the industry. Employees will also have to inform their supervisors about any other potential conflicts of interest, and will be required to submit requests to be relieved of duties that might present a conflict. Staffers will also have to recuse themselves from duties that involve companies that employ a family member or friend.
The division has undergone a major overhaul since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The head of the agency at the time, Elizabeth Birnbaum, was canned. It's name was even changed to make a clean break from MMS' sordid past. The Interior Secretary also split the division into separate units for regulation and revenue-collection. |
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Leading Climate Change Skeptic Recants, Wants $100B to Fight Warming
By Tiffany Kaiser
A well-known climate change skeptic has changed his mind regarding the importance of global warming, and in his new book, he is urging the spending of over $100 billion annually to help fight warming.
Bjorn Lomborg, an academic and environmental author, has held a strong opposing opinion against global warming for some time now, writing books such as "The Skeptical Environmentalist." In this book, he argues against claims regarding certain aspects of global warming, species loss, water shortages, etc. It was a controversial book when it was first published in Danish in 1998, then in English (2001).
In addition, Lomborg has campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol, which is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that fights global warming. He has stated that humans should adapt to short-term climate rises, since they are inevitable, instead of trying to cut carbon emissions in the short-term. |
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Are People Smarter Than Chipmunks?
By Rob Dietz
A curious thing happened recently when I was driving home from a weekend camping trip with my daughter in the Cascade Mountains. We came around a tight curve and the road opened into a long straightaway. Far up ahead, I could see a small animal perched right on top of the double yellow line that divides the lanes. As we got a bit closer, I recognized it as a chipmunk and asked my daughter if she could see it (spotting animals is a favorite pastime on car and bike rides).
As our vehicle was bearing down on the little critter, it looked up and started to head toward the left shoulder of the road. But, obeying some muddled directive from its brain, it spun around and started heading to the right. Not content with that change of direction, it went back left again. I honked the horn to make sure it knew we were getting close. The chipmunk then proceeded to do an erratic dance, leaning left then right then left again. Finally, it just sat back down in the middle of the road atop the double yellow line. The wheels of our car whizzed by its delicate body at a speed that the chipmunk couldn’t grasp.
Care to guess which one's the smartest? |
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Why Some Americans Believe Obama Is a Muslim
By (ScienceDaily)
There's something beyond plain old ignorance that motivates Americans to believe President Obama is a Muslim, according to a first-of-its-kind study of smear campaigns led by a Michigan State University psychologist.
The research by Spee Kosloff and colleagues suggests people are most likely to accept such falsehoods, both consciously and unconsciously, when subtle clues remind them of ways in which Obama is different from them, whether because of race, social class or other ideological differences.
These judgments, Kosloff argues, are irrational. He also suggests they are fueled by an "irresponsible" media culture that allows political pundits and "talking heads" to perpetuate the lies. |
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Bed bugs: a nightmare on legs
By David Shariatmadari
A shiver runs down my spine when I remember the day I finally found proof I was sharing my home with a large colony of bloodsucking insects. I didn't buy the idea that mosquitoes had suddenly infested Shepherd's Bush, or that we were living with fleas – after all, we had no pets. But the hard, red lumps that ran up and down my arms and around my ankles were a sign that something was up.
Someone suggested bed bugs. The tiny things with plate-armour bodies and hairy antennae that live between the sheets in backpacker hostels? I supposed it was possible. Wikipedia, as so often in these situations, provided the answer (I had used it to identify a weevil that floated to the top of a pan of boiling rice the week before). It said that these Cimicidae gather in gaps between the wooden slats that support mattresses – or in any nook or cranny they can find (they love floorboards). But I gulped when I saw how big they were. I had been thinking of dust mites. You don't need a microscope to see bed bugs, though. Imagine a cross between a ladybird and a woodlouse, and you're in the right area.
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I wondered what I had done wrong. I'm a fairly clean living person (the weevil was an aberration). The problem was that I lived in a four-storey block, divided into about 20 apartments. For bed bugs – which can travel 30 or 40 metres to feed – it was paradise. A couple of our neighbours had had their place fumigated, but, crucially, the building had never been done all at once. For the bed bugs, there was always somewhere they could hide. |
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How Coders Can Help Fight Climate Change
By Christopher Mims
The enormously complicated computer models that help scientists project the future of climate change are pretty kick-ass, despite the fact that they're developed by scientists and not formally-trained software engineers. But not all the software that climate scientists crank out is elegant. According to a new paper by Steve Easterbrook, professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto:
...[Most] data handling and analysis tools [that] are used for processing the raw observational data and the results of simulation runs, and for sharing climate data with the broader scientific community...[are] built by the climate scientists themselves, who have little or no training in software engineering. As a result the quality of this software varies tremendously... some data processing tools are barely even tested.
. . .
Which is one reason why formally-trained software engineers have a lot to offer climate science. Easterbrook's paper, Climate Change: A Grand Software Challenge, outlines all the ways that programmers (and those who think like programmers) could use their skills in service of preserving a livable climate for generations to come. |
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Magnetic Ink Pens Let You Write Audio Messages
By Gary Cutlack
The Rec & Play pens are part of a modern art exhibit that covers sound interaction. The red one records sound on paper, the black one plays it back. It's no concept, it actually works.
The system operates using a reworking of the old ferromagnetic tape technology used to power the cassette tapes of old, with the recording pen drawing a line of magnetic ink and encoding sound data into it through a built-in mic and tape recording head. |
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Roots of Gamblers' Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making
By (ScienceDaily)
Gamblers who think they have a "hot hand," only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making "rational" decisions, according to new research from University of Minnesota psychologists. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational.
This research, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) "Early Edition," examines the roots of a seemingly irrational human decision strategy that occurs in so-called binary choice tasks, which has perplexed researchers in economics, psychology and neuroscience for decades. In these tasks, subjects are repeatedly asked to choose between two options, with one option having a higher probability of being correct than the other (imagine a biased coin that will land on heads 70 percent of trials, and tails on 30 percent of trials). While the right strategy is to always pick the higher probability option, subjects instead choose the options in proportion to the probability of it being correct.
. . .
"Where people go astray is when they base their decisions on beliefs that are different than what is actually present in the world," says Green. "In the coin example, if you toss a coin five times and all five times are heads, should you pick heads or tails on the next flip? Assuming the coin is fair, it doesn't matter -- the five previous heads don't change the probability of heads on the next flip -- it's still 50 percent -- but people nevertheless act as though those previous flips influence the next one." |
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First Bollywood movie about Jesus' childhood to start filming in Israel
By AP via Haaretz
The first Bollywood movie about the childhood of Jesus will be shot in the Holy Land in the coming months, Indian filmmakers said Tuesday.
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Producer Konda Krishnam Raju told a news conference that the film focuses on the childhood of Jesus, a contrast with other movies that depict the later years. This is the first presentation of this type in Bollywood history, he said.
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Religious Indian films have traditionally used child actors to highlight the innocence, sanctity and divinity of religious figures, the director said. Rao's film will follow that tradition, using the child actors to depict adult characters as well as children. |
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The new kind of sex party sweeping the US
By Leo Hickman
'We're having a sex party. We'd be delighted if you could come." Well, that got your attention, didn't it? But don't be surprised if you receive just such an invitation soon, as yet another Born-in-the-USA trend looks set to sweep our impressionable nation.
According to press reports in the US, sex parties are all the rage. No, not the sort we thought we'd left behind in the 1970s – if they ever truly existed – involving fruitbowls full of car keys and Dr Alex Comfort- inspired practical demonstrations. We're talking about baby sex parties. Again, let's clarify to avoid any further risk of confusion (and litigation): expectant couples are holding parties for friends and family so that they can reveal the sex of their baby. If that wasn't self-indulgent and narcissistic enough for you, the twist is that the couple don't even know themselves.
The centrepiece of the party is the opening of an envelope to reveal a note written by the ultrasound operator informing the couple of their baby's sex. A round of applause and much hugging follows, accompanied by the popping of corks and a chorus of "Ah, bless" and "It's so much better having a [insert revealed sex here] first." |
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