Common sense on balancing safety and civil liberties in the fight against terrorism:
What we have tried to do, in the wake of watching 3,000 of our innocent fellow citizens incinerated before our very eyes five years ago, is to try and find ways of protecting ourselves against foreign and domestic terrorist threats. It seems to me we've done so with a great deal of respect and attention to civil liberties - even though the process has been awkward and clumsy at times.
Whenever we're standing around at work griping about the weather, I participate only halfheartedly if the "this heat is unbearable" topic comes up. No matter how bad summer gets, I hate winter so much more. (Bring it on, global warming). I don't believe the claims of Farmers' Almanac that its forecasts are accurate 80 to 85 percent of the time (the dirty little secret of meteorologists is that when they're talking about the weather more than 48 hours out, they're just making it up).
A lot of people are getting exercised over the latest twist in the "Survivor" TV series, apparently believing it will set back efforts at "racial harmony through diversity" 100 years:
LOS ANGELES - Get ready for a segregated "Survivor." Race will matter on the upcoming season of the CBS show as contestants will be divided into four tribes by ethnicity. That means blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians in separate groups.
Stories come and go, and you might never put them together without your friendly neighborhood blogger to provide the juxtaposition. First is this story that John McCain, were he to be elected, would be the oldest person ever to take the office of president. This might be problematical, because:
The elderly face a greater risk of developing problems in the years ahead, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, infection, Alzheimer's or even death.
I haven't linked to any dramatic new studies in the last few days, so I thought I'd give you two. First up is some bad news for fatties:
"People who are overweight have a moderately increased risk of premature death, and people who are obese have a greatly increased risk of premature death," said lead researcher Dr. Michael Leitzmann, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute.
People keep talking about "the end of print" as everything moves online. Probably the last things printed on paper to go will be those for which there is a captive audience and a required reading list:
The 11,000-plus students at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne are paying on average 50 percent more for textbooks than they were three years ago.
“Those (book prices) have skyrocketed,” said Joel Wenger, director of financial aid at IPFW.
This is a fascinating post on the differences between men and women. Her central premise -- that men have difficult lives than women today -- is certainly open to debate. Some might say a better statement of the situation is that men get less respect from the media and the popular culture.
In the year 2006, some people are still finding proof in the Bible that those uppity women should just keep their place:
LaBouf and the church board fired Mary Lambert, 81, earlier this month in a letter that cited the scriptural qualifications for Sunday School teachers, Lambert said.
Good lord, almost 43,500 deaths last year alone. Somebody call the CDC. Urge Congress to hold hearings. Get the lawyers together for a class-action suit. If somebody doesn't stop this, there'll be half a million dead in the next 10 years.
Oh, wait, it was just the highway death toll:
The fatality rate grew slightly to 1.47 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, an increase from 1.45 in 2004. That was the first increase since 1986.
You can come out from under the bed now; the West Nile "crisis" seems to have passed:
As humans and animals develop immunity to the West Nile virus, the number of confirmed human cases of the mosquito-borne disease has seen a dramatic decline in California, a trend that is expected to continue, health experts said.
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