Instead of locking up troubled youths American Courts are increasingly ordering them directly into probation. As a result juvenile incarceration has dropped by half in the past 16 years. Typical demands by Courts are “Attend classes on time and regularly, be of good behavior and perform well … be of good citizenship and good conduct.” …
The planet’s wildernesses are shrinking so fast that they could vanish within a century, a report has warned. According to the study, 1.3 million square miles of once pristine landscape have been tarnished by large-scale human activity in the last 25 years – about a tenth of the total worldwide. Almost a third of that …
A while ago I bought fresh roses from Colombia from a firm called Global Rose. Two days after they arrived ads for Global Rose started to appear on the screen whenever I used Google. Targeted advertising, care of Google. It was harmless, but it was the speed with which it happened that startled me. The …
Conventional wisdom in the West has it that national leaders should step down after one or two terms. But the African democracies that are currently thriving – such as Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya and Senegal – all started out with presidents who ruled for at least 18 years. These long-serving leaders bequeathed “peaceful transitions” …
Continue reading ‘Presidents for life aren’t such a bad thing?’ »
“They who are of the opinion that money will do everything may very well be suspected to do everything for money”. (English statesman George Savile, quoted in The Boston Globe)
Barbara Maher of Lancaster University (UK) and her team looked at the brains of 37 people who had lived in Manchester in the UK or Mexico City. All contained millions of iron oxide nanoparticles per gram of brain tissue, suggesting that tiny specks of metal in car exhaust gases seem to fly up our noses …
Continue reading ‘Does air pollution contribute to Alzheimer’s?’ »
You have to hand it to Putin. He and his cronies may be autocratic and corrupt, but he is achieving two things that Russian Tsars sought to achieve, and is doing so simultaneously – in Syria. By supporting Assad, brutally and without concern for the massive destruction and death, Putin has achieved a permanent warm …
The Washington, D.C-based Migration Policy Institute released “An Analysis of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States by Country and Region of Birth.” It’s based on U.S. Census Bureau data. Some of the findings may not surprise you. Mexicans represent 56 percent of the total. 15 percent come from Central America and 14% from Asia. The …
According to new research, children inherit their intelligence from their mother not their father. Genes for cleverness are carried on the X chromosome and may be deactivated if they come from the father. A mother’s genetics determines how clever her children are, and the father makes no difference. A category of genes known as “conditioned …
Continue reading ‘Intelligence derives from the mother, not from the father?’ »
Epicurus believed that if there were gods they took no interest in human beings, but caused only aggravation to one another up there on Mount Olympus. People had been killed for not being superstitious, so it was wise to allude to the gods existing, even if you knew it was a charade. Personally, I think …
Yet another conservative think tank has been established in Washington DC, called the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP, as they call themselves). They intend to concentrate their attention on people with below-median incomes or net worth, looking at conservative market principles and harnessing or bending them to help Americans struggling to survive in …
Non-tenure track teaching staff – commonly referred to as adjuncts – now make up approximately 70% (yes, you read it correctly) of all teaching staff in American higher education. This means that roughly three out of every four courses an American student takes are taught by someone without job security who is working on minimal …
Continue reading ‘American higher education going off the ( tenure) tracks’ »
“The secret of a good blog posting is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible”. (Taking off on George Burns) I’m sure you have noticed the incredible prolixity of the commentariat. My blog task is to take information on interesting topics, to sum …
A few weeks ago Owen, a contributor to this blog, criticised the BBC news as being superficial and lacking substance. This got me looking more often and more critically at it in its broadcast and web page forms. I have to conclude that Owen is absolutely right. For instance, yesterday the BBC carried a story …
About one third of all medical studies in the United States involving children never end up being put to use because scientists frequently don’t publish the results of their work. 19 percent of the studies that recruited children didn’t run to completion because researchers weren’t able to recruit as many volunteers as they needed to …
Continue reading ‘Is it unethical not to publish the results of medical studies?’ »
