flickering pictures

Having apparently addressed their citizens’ crushing poverty, inadequate access to education and constant battles with malaria, dengue fever, typhoid and hepatitis A, Cambodian and Thai officials spent the last week threatening each other with all-out war over a newly dedicated UN World Heritage site that both countries insist is theirs.
From the International Herald Tribune:

Calling a […]

[Read more →]

Here’s a story I bookmarked a few months ago and was saving for a rainy day.
On April 17, Pakistan’s Daily Times picked up an Agence France-Presse article about Iran’s experiments with condom and syringe vending machines targeted at drug users.

“Five machines will be installed at Tehran city’s welfare shelters for addicts,” the deputy head of […]

[Read more →]

Kermit Scott, the inspiration behind Jim Henson’s most beloved muppet character, has died.
The real Kermit taught philosophy at Purdue and Yale before his desire to help others led him to earn a Master’s degree in counseling and launch a new career at the age of 57. He and his wife co-founded the Welfare Rights […]

[Read more →]

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, announced yesterday that his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party is pulling out of the presidential run-off election, even though he won the main election held a few weeks ago. He says President Robert Mugabe’s widespread use of rape, torture, beatings and murder to intimidate opposition voters has made […]

[Read more →]

A California company called LS9 says it has done the impossible: come up with cheap, homegrown, renewable “carbon-negative” oil to satisfy the world’s growing fuel needs. With bug poo.
From the Times:

To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs -– very, very small ones –- so that when they feed on agricultural waste such […]

[Read more →]

That number shoots up to 40 per cent among teens who actually admit to having had sex. I’m not sure how the rest of them contracted their diseases, but I’m guessing public toilet seats didn’t have much to do with it.
And those figures don’t even reflect gonorrhea, warts, HIV/AIDS or other nasties that researchers […]

[Read more →]

Interested yet?
Having cured cancer and solved world hunger, U.S. researchers have focused their skills and public research dollars on an age-old quandary: why is James Bond sexy?
From the New Scientist:

The traits are the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, […]

[Read more →]