The days unfold strangely for anyone puttering around gamely, if lamely, in life. As an amateur human being a long way from pro status, it's possible to stroll among the headlines and footnotes, around the millstones and milestones, taking informal readings on this and that.
Even on a good day, with a stiff, sane breeze blowing across the news websites of the land, it's impossible to gauge the gradations of cultural degradation, to get accurate readings of any kind. It's a gut-feeling sort of enterprise. There are no calibrated anything-ometers to slap into play. There are no national and regional numbers pouring in to Tracking Central. There are no land mine or shock wave or blast zone maps.
Alex Baer: We Could End Up Miles from Here
Blackwater on trial over killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007
After years of delays, four former guards from the security firm Blackwater Worldwide are facing trial in the killings of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 18 others in bloodshed that inflamed anti-American sentiment around the globe.
Whether the shootings were self-defense or an unprovoked attack, the carnage of 16 September 2007 was seen by critics of the George W Bush administration as an illustration of a war gone horribly wrong.
Study: Red meat possibly linked to breast cancer
Women who often indulge their cravings for hamburgers, steaks and other red meat may have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer, a new study suggests.
Doctors have long warned that a diet loaded with red meat is linked to cancers including those of the colon and pancreas, but there has been less evidence for its role in breast cancer.
In the new study, researchers at Harvard University analyzed data from more than 88,000 women aged 26 to 45 who had filled in surveys in 1991. Their red meat intake varied from never or less than once a month, to six or more servings a day.
U.S. student loan refinancing bill fails Senate hurdle
Democratic-sponsored legislation to allow student loan borrowers to refinance at lower interest rates failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.
The Senate voted 56-38 to end debate and move to a final vote, short of the 60 votes required.
Democrats had said their measure would let holders of both federal and private undergraduate loans - some with rates of 9 percent or higher - to refinance at 3.86 percent.
Violence Against Women Will End When You Sluts Get Married, Says WaPo
The Washington Post has just published an op-ed entitled "One way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married" (the paper later changed the headline). To that, I say: Washington Post: Stop Posting Bullshit And Set Yourself On Fire.
Less than 48 hours after posting an atrocious column by George Will, wherein the venerable conservative thought leader who has made a career out of being smugly wrong about everything called being a rape victim a "coveted status" and then dismissed the college sexual assault crisis as just another made up thing in Obama's America (TM), the Washington Post has outdone itself with a column by conservative think tank denizens W. Bradford Wilcox, (the director of the National Marriage Project) and Robin Fretwell Wilson (who endlessly beat the BUT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY!!! drum after New York legalized gay marriage in 2011) that claims — seriously, as far as I can gather — that the best way for women to avoid violence is to stop slutting around with "baby daddies" and get married. It's truly breathtaking in its idiocy. I'm sorry for subjecting all of you to this, but, here we go.
South Carolina OKs Confederate flag at Citadel military college
A Confederate flag displayed at the Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, can keep flying despite objections that it is offensive, the state attorney general's office said on Tuesday.
A Charleston official had objected to the presence of the flag in the college's Summerall Chapel, where it has flown since 1939, and called for cutting almost $1 million in public funding from the school.
In an opinion on Tuesday, Solicitor General Robert D. Cook said South Carolina's 2000 "Heritage Act" protects "monuments and memorials honoring the gallantry and sacrifice in this state's various wars."
The Right Didn’t Mind When Bush Paid a Ransom to Terrorists
Republicans are howling (with no proof) that Obama paid a ransom for Bowe Bergdahl’s freedom. Funny. They weren’t howling when Bush actually did it.
The Bowe Bergdahl story moves to the hearing stage this week, so we’ll be treated to the sight of preening House Republicans trying to press Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on when it was that he, too, started hating America. Meanwhile, over in the fever swamps, speculation is growing about an alleged “ransom” the Obama administration may have paid to bring Bergdahl home.
Will Fracking Cause Our Next Nuclear Disaster?
The idea of storing radioactive nuclear waste inside a hollowed-out salt cavern might look good on paper. The concept is to carve out the insides of the caverns, deep underground, then carefully move in the waste. Over time, the logic goes, the salt will move in and insulate the containers for thousands of generations.
"The whole game is to engineer something that can contain those contaminants on the order of tens of thousands of years," Tim Judson, the executive director of the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS), told Truthout. NIRS is intended to be a national information and networking center for citizens and environmental activists concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues, according to Judson.
Study links pollution to autism, schizophrenia
Tiny bits of air pollution may irritate very young brains enough to cause problems, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
When mice younger than 2 weeks old were exposed to very small particles of pollutants, their brains showed damage that is consistent with brain changes in humans with autism and schizophrenia. That's not to say air pollution causes either one, said Deborah Cory-Slechta, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead researcher in the study published Friday.
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