Globalization and Human Rights – Nicholas D. Kristof Blog – NYTimes.com

August 29, 2009, 10:33 pmYour Comments on my Sunday Health ColumnBy Nicholas KristofMy Sunday Column argues that our existing health system erodes family values — by causing the divorce of the woman who was the spine of my column — and costs far more lives than an army of “death panels” ever could. I’m quite [...]

Through The Looking Glass

This week, the health care debate journeyed through the looking glass. . . .
Investors Business Daily claimed that physically disabled scientist Stephen Hawking would have had his life cut short by the government-run British health care system if he lived in England. Which, in fact, he does. And always has. Who needs details when there [...]

Mob Mentality

I don’t usually talk about politics but I am increasingly concerned with this  mob mentality that seems to be rising in our nation. No doubt economic anxiety is increasing the intensity of reactions but why are so many so quick to react so forcefully to issues without investigating the sources and veracity or even thinking [...]

Magic and Romance

Tonight the wind was hard, cleansing and freeing. The rain was brilliant. I was dripping onto my plate as I ate. It was two ears of corn from a basket a customer/friend had dropped by on his way home from the garden. I threw 2 (in the husk) on a fire of coals and mesquite [...]

The Perfect Crime (1) « elizabeth wong

Paroxysm: The Perfect Crime
Jean Baudrillard
If not for appearances, the world would be a perfect crime, which is to say, without criminal, without victim, and without motive. Wherein the truth is forever withdrawn, and where the secret is never exposed, for want of traces. But, precisely, the crime is never perfect, because the world gives itself [...]

What The Thief Left Behind

(a meditation on Thinking Without Thinking)
Yesterday I posted this to another site:
I dreamed a friend was calling me urgently, in trouble but the connection was bad. Over and over he called and I asked where he was, what was wrong. Finally I understood. He was warning me about someone across the street. I got up [...]

Ghostwriters Paid by Wyeth Aided Its Drugs – NYTimes.com

By NATASHA SINGER
Published: August 4, 2009
Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.
The articles, published in medical [...]

Ten Tips for Eating Local and Staying Healthy While Traveling Around the World

The first person to utter “shit happens” must have been a traveler.
As I emptied myself from both ends for the better part of 36 hours in the hills of northern Ecuador recently (a bad batch of cevichochos, I suspect), I was reminded that we owe our readers an accounting of how we usually manage to [...]

Human Language And Dolphin Movement Patterns ???

“Patterns of dolphin behaviour at the surface obey the same law of brevity as human language, with both seeking out the simplest and most efficient codes”, Ramón Ferrer i Cancho, co-author of the study published in the journal Complexity and a researcher in the Department of Languages and IT Systems at the UPC, tells SINC. [...]