Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, April 17, 2012.
OND is a regular
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 near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: The Want of a Nail by Todd Rundgren
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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Top News |
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Study: All-White Juries More Likely To Convict Black Defendants
By Adam Serwer
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. . .
-- In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. . .
-- When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites.
Eliminating jurors on the basis of race is of course illegal, but based on this data, the racial makeup of a jury can have a significant impact on whether or not a black defendant is convicted. . .
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New World Bank chief to focus on 'market-based' growth
By (BBC)
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The World's Bank's new president, Jim Yong Kim, has said that capitalist "market-based growth is a priority for every single country".
In an interview with the BBC, Dr Kim said that was the best way to create jobs and lift people out of poverty.
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He explained that he worked for more than 25 years in developing countries. At the same time, he has been lauded for his pioneering role in treating HIV/Aids and reducing the impact of tuberculosis in the developing world.
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He said that he would take into account the cultural and social peculiarities of various regions to ensure that the World Bank's various schemes achieved the desired results.
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Afghan schoolgirls poisoned in alleged attack
By (Al Jazeera)
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About 150 Afghan schoolgirls have fallen ill after drinking poisoned water at their high school in the country's north, officials said.
The alleged poisoning on Tuesday is being blamed on hardline conservatives who oppose female education.
Since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban, which banned education for women and girls, females have returned to schools, especially in Kabul.
"This is either the work of those who are against girls' education or irresponsible armed individuals"
But periodic attacks still occur against girls, teachers and their school buildings, usually in the more conservative south and east of the country, from where the Taliban insurgency draws most support.
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Court upholds part of Arizona voter ID law
By (UPI)
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A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco ruled Tuesday Arizona can require voters to show identification at the polls.
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The court said the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to make or alter state laws regarding federal elections. The National Voter Registration Act establishes a standard federal registration form that all states must accept, requiring applicants to sign a statement that they are citizens. But the act it does not require them to show proof, the newspaper said.
In dissent, Judge Harry Pregerson said there is a long history of state-sanctioned discrimination against Hispanics, and the state voter ID law could be a continuation, Capitol Media Services reported.
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International |
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CDC Chief: New Vaccines In Haiti Will Save Tens Of Thousands
By Richard Knox
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A campaign to introduce new childhood vaccines to Haiti will save tens of thousands of lives over the next decade, Dr. Thomas Frieden told Shots at the end of a two-day tour of the beleaguered country.
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The crash campaign will start this weekend. Just 3 of the 10 vaccines being deployed in the next two years "will prevent 20,000 to 50,000 deaths among children in Haiti over the next decade," Frieden said before boarding a plane home.
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The CDC has put the emphasis on cleaning up Haiti's water supply and providing decent sanitation as the best ways to combat cholera.
That's still the case, but this week Sebelius and Frieden were more open about the potential role of cholera vaccine.
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US reveals nearly $1.5 billion in unspent AIDS money
By John Donnelly
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The Obama administration has set extraordinarily high goals in its fight against AIDS around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said late last year that an “AIDS-free generation” is possible. And President Obama promised last December that the number of US-supported AIDS patients on treatment would rise to 6 million by the end of next year, up from the current 4 million.
So why did the administration submit a fiscal year 2013 budget that called for a $550 million reduction — an 11 percent cut — in its global AIDS program?
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In an interview with GlobalPost, Ambassador Eric Goosby, global AIDS coordinator, explained that $1.46 billion designated to fight AIDS hasn’t been used because of inefficient bureaucracies; major reductions in the cost of AIDS treatment; delays due to long negotiations on realigning programs with recipient country priorities; and a slowdown in a few countries because the AIDS problem was much smaller than originally estimated.
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US lifts Myanmar sanctions to boost NGO projects
By Luke Browne
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The United States is to relax some financial sanctions against Myanmar in order to support humanitarian and development projects in the impoverished south-east Asian country.
The Treasury Department said Tuesday it will authorize financial transactions enabling private US-based organizations to undertake a range of not-for-profit projects and programs in Myanmar, as part of a reward for the country’s efforts to move forward with democratic reforms following decades of military rule.
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Tuesday’s decision is the latest step in a gradual easing of pressure from the Obama administration, the UK and other European countries on Myanmar following a dramatic series of reforms inside the country.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Georgia approves welfare drug tests
By (UPI)
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A bill signed by Georgia's governor will oblige parents seeking welfare to be drug-tested at their own expense, provoking a challenge in court.
The new law requires parents applying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funding, a federal program to help poor families with children, to pay for and pass a drug test as a condition of eligibility.
The bill, signed Monday without fanfare by Gov. Nathan Deal, is likely to set off a round of court challenges by opponents who claim it violates the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. Supporters say it will save money and promote personal responsibility, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday.
"We are disappointed the governor signed the bill, given an almost identical law in Florida has been declared unconstitutional," said Gerry Weber, a Southern Center for Human Rights lawyer.
The center is preparing to file a lawsuit when the state begins testing applicants, which should begin in several weeks, the newspaper reported.
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SuperDonor Backs Romney — And Gay Marriage
By Tamara Keith
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Elliott Management makes its money through a variety of investments, but it is best known for investing in distressed or bankrupt companies and distressed countries. This is sometimes called "vulture investing." Elliott Management is a large holder of Lehman Brothers claims, and was involved in the bankruptcies of auto firms Chrysler and Delphi.
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He's joked that in some circles he's known as a "fundraising terrorist" because of his persistence. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was Singer's first choice for the Republican presidential nod, but when Christie opted not to run, Singer threw his money and his Rolodex behind Romney.
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While Singer has long been active in GOP politics, he has also been deeply involved in another cause — gay marriage. His son and son-in-law were married in Massachusetts in 2009. And over the course of many years, Singer has given more than $8.5 million to the cause.
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Griffin says Singer approaches the issue from a libertarian point of view, and having him onboard is a huge help to the cause.
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Forget "Government Spending." The Only Thing That Really Matters is Healthcare.
By Kevin Drum
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Now, I agree with Barro that entitlement spending is certain to go up over the next 20-30 years as the baby boomers retire. . . government expenditures in general haven't been on an inexorable upward path over the past three decades, and there's no special reason to think they'll rise inexorably in the future. Generally speaking, domestic spending, defense spending, and Social Security are on extremely sustainable paths.
What's left is healthcare spending. That's it.
So this is basically just another excuse to repeat something that I and others have said over and over: We don't have a spending problem in America. We have a healthcare problem. The other three categories of government spending taken together will probably rise by a point or two over the next few decades, but that's not a big deal. We need to pay normal, prudential attention to them, but nothing more.
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Sex worker advocates call for NYC condom evidence ban
By (BBC)
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Advocates for sex workers in New York have called for legislation that would stop police officers confiscating condoms from prostitutes.
The Sex Workers Project says two surveys suggest that police frequently take away condoms from sex workers as evidence in prostitution cases.
The campaign group says the tactic has led to some prostitutes carrying fewer or no condoms and having unsafe sex.
The Sex Workers Project wants condoms to be inadmissible as evidence.
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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:
"For Want of a Nail" is a proverbial rhyme showing that small actions can result in large consequences.
This proverb has been around in many variations for centuries . . . and describes a situation where permitting some small undesirable situation will allow gradual and inexorable worsening. The rhyme is thus a good illustration of the "butterfly effect", and ideas presented in chaos theory, involving sensitive dependence on initial conditions; the initial condition being the presence or absence of the horseshoe nail. . .
An important thing to note is that these chains of causality are only seen in hindsight.
. . .
Todd Rundgren's song "The Want of a Nail" from his album Nearly Human uses the rhyme as a metaphor for a man who has lived his entire life without love, and how, if you "multiply it a billion times" and "spread it all over the world," things fall apart.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Sooty cloud: A visit to Apple’s coal-powered data center
By (The Climate Desk)
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You’ve heard about the Foxconn factory in China where your iPad is assembled. But have you ever considered the energy required to store your emails, photos, and videos in the cloud? As worldwide demand for data storage skyrockets, so do the power needs of the servers where all our digital archives live. While some companies (like Facebook) have made great progress in ditching dirty fossil-fuel energy for cleaner renewables, a few internet giants lag far behind. Climate Desk visited Maiden, N.C., for a close-up view of what will soon be one of the world’s biggest data centers — owned by Apple and powered by the coal-heavy power behemoth Duke Energy.
. . . To give you a better sense of the big picture, here’s an overview of how much of each company’s overall energy comes from coal, according to Greenpeace estimates:
1. Apple: 55.1 percent
2. HP: 49.7 percent
3. IBM: 49.5 percent
4. Oracle: 48.7 percent
5. Facebook: 39.4 percent
6. Microsoft 39.3 percent
7. Twitter: 35.6 percent
8. Amazon: 33.9 percent
9. Rackspace: 31.6 percent
10. Google: 28.7 percent
12. Dell: 20.1 percent
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UPDATE: In a statement to Climate Desk after publication, a spokesperson for Apple said that the Maiden facility will be the “greenest data center ever built” and released figures that dispute Greenpeace’s report. . . The Guardian quotes Greenpeace’s Gary Cook as remaining skeptical about Apple’s internal numbers: “I do feel that’s a bit of a lowball number. That would be a very empty building they are putting there in terms of power demand if it’s only 20MW. That seems disproportionally small,” he said.
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The mother who stood up to Monsanto in Argentina
By Rachel Cernansky
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When Sofia Gatica’s 3-day-old daughter died from kidney failure, she didn’t connect it with an environmental problem. It was only as she noticed neighbor after neighbor developing health problems that she started to wonder about the agrochemicals that were being sprayed on the farms nearby.
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A few years ago, Gatica co-founded the Mothers of Ituzaingó, a group that started going door to door to find out more about the health problems in its community. This would become the first epidemiological study of the area and produced some shocking results: high rates of neurological and respiratory disease, birth defects and infant mortality, and cancer rates 41 times the national average.
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Over the last several years, municipal ordinances have been passed around the country creating mandatory buffer zones between aerial spraying and residential areas. In 2010, Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled that agrochemicals could not be sprayed near populated areas — and that the burden of proof would be shifted so that rather than residents having to prove chemical spraying causes health problems, the government and soy producers must prove them safe (an approach that industry lobbyists have kept from happening here in the U.S.).
But these victories have not been easy.
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Science and Health |
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Study of Half Siblings Provides Genetic Clues to Autism
By (ScienceDaily)
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When a child has autism, siblings are also at risk for the disorder. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that the genetic reach of the disorder often extends to half siblings as well.
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Prior estimates of the extent to which autism is influenced by genetic factors are derived from studies of identical and fraternal twins where one, or both, are affected by the disorder. Since identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, and fraternal twins share 50 percent, inherited conditions tend to be twice as common in an identical twin pair compared to a fraternal twin pair. But twin studies of autism are too small to give precise estimates about how the disorder is inherited.
. . .
"In 15 to 20 percent of children with autism, it appears that genetic problems aren't inherited, rather that genes become altered in sperm cells, egg cells or in the developing embryo," he says. "The recent discovery of these kinds of abnormalities have raised questions about the interpretation of twin studies and the extent to which autism is inherited. The current study, however, supports inheritance as a central cause for a majority of autistic syndromes and encourages a new focus on the mechanisms by which genetic susceptibility to autism can be silenced in some individuals, especially females who typically exhibit symptoms of autism at only one third of the rate seen in males."
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, an
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Egg-Laying Beginning of the End for Dinosaurs
By (ScienceDaily)
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Their reproductive strategy spelled the beginning of the end: The fact that dinosaurs laid eggs put them at a considerable disadvantage compared to viviparous mammals. Together with colleagues from the Zoological Society of London, Daryl Codron and Marcus Clauss from the University of Zurich investigated and published why and how this ultimately led to the extinction of the dinosaurs in the journal Biology
. . .
Weighing in at four tons, the mother animal was 2,500 times heavier than its newly hatched dinosaur baby. By way of comparison, a mother elephant, which is just as heavy, only weighs 22 times as much as its new-born calf. In other words, neonates are already big in large mammal species. The staggering difference in size between newly hatched dinosaurs and their parents was down to the fact that there are limits to the size eggs can become: After all, larger eggs require a thicker shell and as the embryo also needs to be supplied with oxygen through this shell, eventually neither the shell nor the egg can grow any more. Consequently, newly hatched dinosaur babies cannot be larger in the same way as in larger species of mammal.
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The dinosaurs' supremacy as the largest land animals remained intact for 150 million years. The mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, however, spelled trouble as the species gap in the medium size range turned out to be disastrous for them. According to the current level of knowledge, all the larger animals with a body weight from approximately ten to 25 kilos died out. Mammals had many species below this threshold, from which larger species were able to develop after the calamity and occupy the empty niches again. The dinosaurs, however, lacked the species that would have been able to reoccupy the vacant niches. That was their undoing.
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A Simple Scan Can Tell How Fat You’ll Get and How Much Sex You’ll Have
By Jamie Condliffe
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The world is full of delicious food and beautiful people, and sometimes it's hard to turn down their respective charms. But now a team of researchers has used data from fMRI scans to successfully predict weight gain and sexual activity—and can tell if you're likely to fall foul of temptation well in advance.
Using functional MRI scans, a team of scientists from Dartmouth has been studying a region of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens—part that people often refer to as the "reward center". In fact, the researchers rounded up a group of first year university students and then scanned their brains while showing them neutral images—such as environmental scenes—or something rather more enticing: pictures of appetizing food of erotic photographs.
After processing the data from the scans, the researchers waited six months before asking each participant to fill in a questionnaire. They found that those people whose reward centers responded most strongly to pictures of food had gained significantly more weight than the others. Likewise, those whose brains had responded most strongly to erotic images had gone on to be more sexually active. The research appears in tomorrow's issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
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Seeking to solve the Lyme disease puzzle
By Jane O'Brien
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Lyme disease remains a mysterious ailment, even as the ticks that carry the illness continue to spread across the United States. But a new study could help determine why some people get sick.
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They're in the middle of a clinical trial that allows uninfected ticks to feed on humans who have been treated for Lyme disease. Researchers will then test the ticks for the bacteria that causes the disease.
The process is called xendiagnosis. It's been successful in identifying Lyme disease in animals, but this is the first time it's being tried on humans.
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"Right now we need hard evidence that persistence of infection plays any role in PLDS symptoms," she says.
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Technology |
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Boron/Carbon Nanosponges Used to Absorb Oil from Water
By Tiffany Kaiser
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Rice University and Penn State University researchers have collaborated to create a sponge capable of soaking up oil spilled in water, which could have a profound impact on the environment.
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Boron is the main secret ingredient behind the nanosponges. By adding boron, the nanotubes grew bends and "elbows" to help produce covalent bonds, which allow the nanosponges to perform the way they do. The sponges are 99 percent air, can be manipulated using magnets, and conduct electricity. They're also superhydrophobic, meaning they float better because they dislike water, and oleophilic, meaning they're attracted to oil.
These nanosponges are capable of soaking up oil and being reused after doing so. According to the team, the nanosponges can undergo about 10,000 compressions where oil is soaked into the sponge, burned off, and returned to the water to soak more. Also, the sponges can hold more than a hundred times their weight in oil.
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RIM Doesn't Want to Sell Itself, Hopes Instead for a "Strategic Investment"
By Jason Mick
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Canadian smartphone maker echoes the words Palm spoke two months before its death
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Despite facing grim prospects in the consumer market and becoming a money-loser for the first time in years, RIM is determined to try to keep itself in the game in some shape or form.
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Resources are scarce and the smartphone maker's lifeline is running short. But even if it can sell it's patents or secure a short term licensing deal, the question is what next? Consumer interest appears to be fading, and business interests typically follows in suit, if a bit behind. The question many are asking is -- what will RIM have left of value to sell, once it unloads its prized IP and assets?
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Bob Lutz, FedEx CEO Cite National Security as Reason to "Go Electric" with Volt, Leaf
By Brandon Hill
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The last time we visited commentary from former General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, he was firing back against the "Right-Wing Media" for its assault on the Chevrolet Volt. Lutz was a huge proponent of the Volt while at GM, and he helped spearhead the development of the gasoline/plug-in electric vehicle.
Now, in another column for Forbes magazine (written in conjunction with FedEx CEO Fredrick Smith, and U.S. Marines commandants General P.X. Kelley and General James Conway), Lutz is switching gears slightly to tout the positive benefits of oil independence and electric vehicles instead of attacking the "attackers".
Lutz and his posse argue that moving to vehicles that are more efficient or rely solely on electricity for power will boost the United States' national security. In addition, U.S. military manpower and financial resources are being strained to protect vital oil distribution points around the globe.
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Cultural |
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'Chinplants' fastest-growing procedure
By (UPI)
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The number of chin augmentation procedures grew more than breast augmentation, Botox and liposuction combined in 2011, U.S. plastic surgeons said.
The procedure rose in both women and men, as well as in all patients age 20 and older -- with the largest increase seen in patients age 40 or older, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said in a report.
The phenomenon appears to be sparked, in part, by increased usage of video chat technology, an aging baby boomer population and a desire for success in the workplace.
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Why Debt is creeping into so many science fiction discussions
By Cory Doctorow
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On Tor.com, author and reviewer Jo Walton has an insightful look at why so many science fiction readers and writers are discussing David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a book that is already a darling of the Occupy movement:
One of the problems with writing science fiction and fantasy is creating truly different societies. We tend to change things but keep other things at societal defaults. It’s really easy to see this in older SF, where we have moved on from those societal defaults and can thus laugh at seeing people in the future behaving like people in the fifties. But it’s very difficult to create genuinely innovative societies, and in genuinely different directions. . .
What Debt does is to focus on a question of morality, first by framing the question, and then by examining how a really large number of human societies over a huge geographical and historical range have dealt with this issue, and how they have interacted with other people who have very different ideas about it. It’s a huge issue of the kind that shapes societies and cultures, so in reading it you encounter a whole lot of contrasting cultures. Graeber has some very interesting ideas about it, and lots of fascinating details, and lots of thought provoking connections.
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Formula 1's moral dilemma in Bahrain
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
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Is it safe for Formula 1 to return to Bahrain this weekend? That's the question the organisation was pondering for days last week before taking the plunge and going ahead.
But it's the wrong question. The likelihood that anyone taking part in, or going to watch, the Formula 1 race will be in danger from protests by Bahrain's Shia majority is very, very small.
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Standing on a street corner in a poor Shia neighbourhood on Sunday I met a middle-aged doctor.
"We don't want Formula 1 here," he told me.
"They ignore our suffering through this show. It shows everyone that things here are peaceful, that everyone is happy. But the reality is not like that."
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The sex industry is repulsive, but it cannot be wished away
By Tanya Gold
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The problem, as Dr Brooke Magnanti, formerly the escort Belle de Jour, points out in her book The Sex Myth, is accurate data. Without it we are simply screaming at each other. Prostitution is notoriously difficult to sample because so much of the truth is underground; the rest is junk from those excitable sisters, prurience and fantasy, which the TV series of Magnanti's memoirs, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, did so much to fuel.
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Some studies claim that drug addiction, sexual and physical abuse and early death are the prostitute's inevitable pension. The 2003 report Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, states that between 70% and 95% of the interviewees were physically assaulted while working as prostitutes; 60% to 75% were raped while working as prostitutes; and 65% to 95% were sexually abused as children before becoming prostitutes.
Other reports insist these studies are polluted by the over-sampling of street prostitutes, and that there are many happy experiences of prostitution. Magnanti conjures a world in which prostitutes are well-paid and independent, fearing mostly censure and criminalisation.
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So, what to do? The truth that prostitution may be the best economic choice for some women is repulsive, but it cannot be wished away. In this, Magnanti emerges as a realist, while her critics, well-meaning or not, condemn women to poverty or criminality. There is a case here for the policies that she finds so dull – an end to the pay gap, to gender segregation, to occupational segregation, all of which would make women richer, and more powerful and widen their choices beyond the greasy hell of PunterNet.
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Why Moroccans set themselves on fire to get a job
By (BBC)
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Self-immolation as an act of protest became common across the Arab World after Tunisian vegetable seller Mohammed Bouazizi ignited himself - and inadvertently set in motion the Arab Spring - in December 2010. Mr Bouazizi has inspired protesters in Morocco, but for different reasons, reports the BBC's Nora Fakim.
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Although the frustration is the same, Mahmoud's case is very different from Mr Bouazizi's in Tunisia. Mahmoud and his colleagues have been fighting to get a public sector job.
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It is a loose coalition of associations from across the country, representing millions of Moroccan university graduates demanding jobs in the public sector.
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It resembles a full-time job because of the commitment it demands from demonstrators.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |