Tuesday News Bucket

12 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on September 4, 2007 at 6:58 am

   used to study mating habits: CBS news

   Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s and took part in “speed dating,” short meetings of three to seven minutes in which people chat, then move on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants check off the people they’d like to meet again, and dates can be arranged between pairs who select one another.

   Speed dating let researchers look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.

   In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.

   After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.

   Men’s choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women’s physical attractiveness.

   The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

   Women’s actual choices, like men’s, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

   What a surprise.

2. 

   CabinGirl on September 4, 2007 at 7:04 am

   from the NYT

   Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by United States soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

   The documents, released today by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 cases. They show repeated examples of troops believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.

   The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents.

   In the suffocation, soldiers covered the man’s head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord for a “stress position” they said was an approved technique.

   Excuse me, but does anyone really need to be told that the killings described above are wrong?  Suffocation is an approved technique?  Pushing people off bridges is supposedly somehow appropriate?  Are we really teaching our military that such behavior is acceptable?  

3. 

   CabinGirl on September 4, 2007 at 7:07 am

   this story and photo should put a smile on your face.

   • 

     cruz del sur on September 4, 2007 at 2:55 pm

     BEST STORY EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. 

   ask on September 4, 2007 at 7:37 am

   Rafsanjani to lead key Iran body

   Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been elected speaker of a powerful clerical body responsible for supervising Iran’s Supreme Leader.

   The Assembly of Experts has the power to dismiss the Islamic state’s highest authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

   Mr Rafsanjani will succeed Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, who died in July.

   Correspondents say the appointment further consolidates the authority of Mr Rafsanjani, who is already a powerful figure in Iranian politics.

   Considered a “pragmatic conservative”, Mr Rafsanjani’s victory will also be seen as a blow to Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

5. 

   ask on September 4, 2007 at 8:34 am

   Interesting report from ILO:

   New ILO report says US leads the world in labour productivity, some regions are catching up, most lag behind

   GENEVA (ILO News) – While productivity levels have increased worldwide over the past decade, gaps remain wide between the industrialized region and most others, although South Asia, East Asia, and Central & South-Eastern Europe (non-European Union) & CIS have begun to catch up, the International Labour Office (ILO) said in a new report (Note 1) published today.

   The ILO report, entitled “Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), fifth Edition” indicates that the U.S. still leads the world by far in labour productivity per person employed in 2006 despite a rapid increase of productivity in East Asia where workers now produce twice as much as they did 10 years ago.

   What’s more, the report also shows that the productivity gap between the US and most other developed economies continued to widen. The acceleration of productivity growth in the US has outpaced that of many other developed economies: With US$ 63,885 of value added per person employed in 2006, the United States was followed at a considerable distance by Ireland (US$ 55,986), Luxembourg (US$ 55,641), Belgium (US$ 55,235) and France (US$ 54,609).

   However, Americans work more hours per year than workers in most other developed economies. This is why, measured as value added per hour worked, Norway has the highest labour productivity level (US$ 37.99), followed by the United States (US$ 35.63) and France (US$ 35.08).

   Increase in productivity is mainly the result of firms better combining capital, labour and technology. A lack of investment in people (training and skills) as well as equipment and technology can lead to an underutilization of the labour potential in the world.

   “The huge gap in productivity and wealth is cause for great concern,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “Raising the productivity levels of workers on the lowest incomes in the poorest countries is the key to reducing the enormous decent work deficits in the world.”

   • 

     CabinGirl on September 4, 2007 at 9:26 am

     Oh, those Norwegians are so clever, aren’t they, getting more done in less time than the Americans?  🙂

     • 

       ask on September 4, 2007 at 9:30 am

       Amazing, isn’t it! 😉

       Though the press release fails to mention that the oil exports give a big boost to the figures….

6. 

   idredit on September 4, 2007 at 11:09 am

   No shortage of Books in September.

   “The Nine”  Book says SC Justice Souter mulled resignation after Bush v. Gore (H/T: Huffpost)

   “Conscience of a Conservative” – Jack L. Goldsmith
   Emptywheel via FDL finds some nuggets

   on the tell all.

   n the Bush administration, however, the most important legal-policy decisions in the war on terror before Goldsmith’s arrival were made not by the Office of Legal Counsel but by a self-styled “war council.” This group met periodically in Gonzales’s office at the White House or Haynes’s office at the Pentagon. The members included Gonzales, Addington, Haynes and Yoo. These men shared a belief that the biggest obstacle to a vigorous response to the 9/11 attacks was the set of domestic and international laws that arose in the 1970s to constrain the president’s powers in response to the excesses of Watergate and the Vietnam War. (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, for example, requires that executive officials get a warrant before wiretapping suspected enemies in the United States.) The head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the first years of the Bush administration, Jay Bybee, had little experience with national-security issues, and he delegated responsibility for that subject matter to Yoo, giving him the authority to draft opinions that were binding on the entire executive branch. Yoo was a “godsend” to a White House nervous about war-crimes prosecutions, Goldsmith writes in his book, because his opinions reassured the White House that no official who relied on them could be prosecuted after the fact. But Yoo’s direct access to Gonzales angered his boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to Goldsmith. [.]

   In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: “They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,” he writes. Goldsmith’s first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or  “strict compartmentalization,” in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.’s inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program.[.]
   As he recalled it to me, Goldsmith received a call in the evening from his deputy, Philbin, telling him to go to the George Washington University Hospital immediately, since Gonzales and Card were on the way there. Goldsmith raced to the hospital, double-parked outside and walked into a dark room. Ashcroft lay with a bright light shining on him and tubes and wires coming out of his body.

   Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. “Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,” Goldsmith recalls. “All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.”

   After a bit of silence, Goldsmith told me, Gonzales thanked Ashcroft, and he and Card walked out of the room. “At that moment,” Goldsmith recalled, “Mrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn’t believe what she saw happening to her sick husband, looked at Gonzales and Card as they walked out of the room and stuck her tongue out at them. She had no idea what we were discussing, but this sweet-looking woman sticking out her tongue was the ultimate expression of disapproval. It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.” [emptywheel’s emphasis]

   Also

   Robert Draper’s Book on Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy

   Glenn Kessler’s Book The Confidante’ Condi – Transformed by Her Bond with Bush

7. 

   ask on September 4, 2007 at 2:18 pm

   U.S. report says violence stays high in Iraq

   WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Congressional report on Tuesday said “violence remains high” in Iraq, with little political progress and mixed results on security a day after President George W. Bush visited Anbar province and struck an upbeat tone.

   The independent Government Accountability Office said Iraq had failed to meet 11 of 18 political and military goals set by Congress last May, such as reducing sectarian violence and passing laws on oil revenue sharing. Iraq met three benchmarks and partially met another four.

   “While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, it is unclear whether violence has been reduced,” according to prepared testimony by David Walker, the agency’s head.

   “Average daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007,” Walker said — despite Bush’s addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq this year.

8. 

   dada on September 4, 2007 at 4:12 pm

   Happy birthday Viagra

   Viagra doesn’t just save sex lives, it can also treat jet lag, MS and strokes. Roger Dobson on the fifteenth birthday of a modern-day wonder drug

   Published: 04 September 2007
   Exactly 15 years ago, Michael Allen took a call from a doctor in a small Welsh town that gave the first hint of a revolution to come. The doctor had been running a small clinical trial testing a new drug to treat angina. The future for the drug, known as UK-92480. was looking bleak: other trials had showed that it did not have much impact on the disease, and indeed was less effective than existing treatments.

   When the doctor gave his progress report to Allen, clinical project manager at drug giant Pfizer, he mentioned some side effects among the healthy volunteers in the trial in Merthyr Tydfil. These included indigestion, back pain – and, the doctor added, erections.

   Five years and much research later, Pfizer applied for marketing approval for the drug – not for angina, but for male impotence. Ten years on, and Viagra has been used by more than 30 million men worldwide for erectile dysfunction.

   It is also finding a host of new uses, too. The drug that nearly didn’t make it is being used or investigated for the treatment of more than a dozen diseases and health problems. Researchers say it could turn out to be as versatile as Aspirin.

   […]

       Jet lag

       Erectile dysfunction

       Stroke

       Underweight babies

       Multiple sclerosis

       Memory and learning

       Unconsummated marriages

       Raynaud’s phenomenon

       Wilting flowers [heh]

       Pain

       Diabetes

   link

   who knew?

   lTMF’sA

   

   • 

     CabinGirl on September 5, 2007 at 7:39 am

     How could I have missed this most important anniversary?  🙂