Me, I'm a firm believer in the health benefits of red wine, but I know this will please a lot of my friends:
Research is showing that beer could join the ranks of other guilt-inducing but wildly popular foods — chocolate, coffee and red wine — as a possible disease-fighter.
It turns out that beer hops contain a unique micronutrient that inhibits cancer-causing enzymes. Hops are plants used in beer to give it aroma, flavor and bitterness.
Are we becoming less polarized? Or maybe we really weren't that polarized to begin with:
But Fiorina argued in a book, "Culture War?", that the notion of a polarized America was a myth to begin with. The true polarization, he said, was always in the politicians - offering starkly different choices to voters - and in the media, eager to portray a conflict and more exposed to political junkies in New York and Washington.
Former Indiana U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, writing in the Indianapolis Star on foreign policy. I'm not sure I agree completely with his breakdown of "idealists" and "realists," but I think he's right in suggesting that:
I hate to even mention a show that exists in an alternate reality where Democrats still run the White House, but I have to admit that more than once I've wished the political debates I've had to endure were more like the one depicted on "West Wing" Sunday night.
Guess this comes under the heading of "Be careful what you ask for." I'd say this is a wise reaction:
Churches across America are discussing safety issues when it comes to baptisms, with some experts saying pastors should use only wireless microphones when performing full-immersion baptisms.
Never mind Red State vs. Blue State and all those other puny divisions in the American psyche. Today is the day we get down to the division that really matters: the AFC. Can the Colts add to their seven-game winning streak and end their string of nine straight losses in visits to New England? In keeping with this blog's practice of letting people have their say, even vile, despicable people, here's the view from a Patriot Web site.
This is a long, thoughtful essay about how the Republicans need to deal with the reality of being a party not just of the country club but of Sam's Club. There is a lot both to agree with and disagree with, but the premise seems plausible. Here's the heart of the argument:
I did a post last week disagreeing with a state legislator's intention to make disorderly conduct at military funerals a felony, rather than a misdemeanor in line with most other disorderly conduct charges. As despicable as such protests are, making them felonies, I thought, would amount to unequal treatment under the law. That brought a response from Steve Towsley (original post and comments here), who argued that:
When I was around 8 or 9, I inadvertently saw that year's Christmas presents at the back of a closet. I kept pretending for a couple of months, but that was the real end of Santa Claus in my young life. I had learned an adult secret before my parents were ready to let me in on it. It seems overly simplistic to admit it now, but the discovery brought a profound sense of disillusion.
Joshua Claybourn is a law student who authors the Indiana Barrister blog out of Evansville; I've quoted him in editorials and here on issues such as government consolidation. He's also one of the founders of the In The Agora blog, which has been doing some tornado reporting. It's truer all the time: If you're not checking out the news online, you're going to be missing something.
All I can say is that I'm glad my parents made it up as they went along in raising their children, especially me.
Even those uncouth parents who try to tune out the current fads of child discipline and advice are swayed by community mores, school rules and the jail time involved if they vary too much from the norm. But many of us wonder how much of this advice is not only unhelpful, but just plain wrong.
The good news is that the Web in general and blogs in particular will make the next presidential election more available to all of us:
Previously, those of us living outside of Iowa or New Hampshire were largely left out of the process. The blogosphere helps dissipate this geopolitical claustrophobia.
The power of the Internet has led the Pew Center's Michael Cornfield and others to say that we should now speak of a much more visible "virtual primary."
Opponents of Indiana's tax amnesty plan have been gleefully observing that the state was behind in reaching its revenue goals, apparently without taking into account that, in every other state where amnesty has been offered, a great many tax delinquents waited until the last minute to take advantage of the offer. The same thing held true here, and the state has reached its goal, with several days of the amnesty offer still to go. And by the way:
Former supermodel Tyra Banks goes undercover as a fat woman and is shocked -- shocked! I tell you, shocked and dismayed!! -- to find people "pointing and laughing" in her face." She had no idea "it was that blatant." She thinks obese-bashing is the "last form of open discrimination that's OK." Really.
Indiana isn't the only state whose legislature is being challenged for invoking the name of Jesus:
"As a matter of historical fact, the exact prayers given in the first Congress explicitly referred to Jesus Christ," according to a 50-page legal brief the county filed Tuesday.
If a public education is supposed to be a collaborative effort between parents and the society at large (and some of us still hold on to this belief), what are we to make of this ruling, which basically tells parents they have no say in the matter?
Northeast Indiana's U.S. Rep. Mike Pence has become a star of the small-government-conservative movement. Now he's among those championing private property rights. I don't think we could do much better than having him as House Majority Leader.
Let's see. We've had people complaining for years and years about "pork-barrel spending." We've been talking for months about all the "pork" in the highway bill. There is a grassroots movement called "pork busters," joined in by many conservative members of Congress, dedicated to eliminating pork to help offset hurricane spending.
Everybody in the world is moving print products online. So it's a little refreshing to see that something that started online might end up in print:
Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday.
They needed a scientific study to figure this out?
The tongue may indeed have a taste for cheesecake, french fries and butter cookies, according to study published Tuesday.
In experiments with rodents, French scientists identified a receptor on the tongue that appears to detect dietary fat.
