"Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his." - Franklin P. Jones

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Derringer not good for lighting cigarettes - "An Anderson woman suffered a self-inflicted wound earlier this week from a pistol she confused with a cigarette lighter, according to law enforcement officials."

CANOE LIVE - CNEWS FORUM - "Stephanie Templeton, 8, arrived on two separate occasions with a bag full of canned goods for her North York school's food drive. On Tuesday when Stephanie arrived with her second load of six cans, her teacher at Derrydown Public School in the Keele St. and Finch Ave. W. area sent them back home with her because she was making other students feel bad, Stephanie's dad, Frank Templeton, said yesterday. "

Woman Accidentally Shoots Self At Gun Range - "Police said Anna Herrera-Gomez was practicing with a 9 mm gun at the H&H Gun Range in Oklahoma City when a hot shell casing fell down the front of her shirt. She jumped as the hot metal touched her skin and reached for her chest. Police said that's when she accidentally shot herself in the leg."

Political Scientist Seymour Lipset, 84; Studied Democracy and U.S. Culture - "Dr. Lipset first explained the connection between economic development and democracy, an insight that earned him immediate attention and made him one of the most-cited political scientists... "More than any other figure, with the possible exception of John Kenneth Galbraith, he plausibly explains to us baffled aliens why you Americans are so very odd," Walker wrote in a review of Dr. Lipset's book "American Exceptionalism" (1996). "He tackles the really interesting questions that seldom seem to occur to the rest of you; why America never developed a serious socialist movement; why you exhibit almost Iranian levels of religiosity; why Canada is so different; and why you so hate turning out to vote but so enjoy joining voluntary organizations.""

Democracy Matters: A Conversation with Seymour Martin Lipset - "There have to be institutionalized mechanisms which make the elections fair and honest. It's important to have groups criticizing each other. The job of a political opposition is to expose things that are bad. In authoritarian systems, evils and inefficiencies aren't exposed... Schumpeter, in his book on imperialism, which was done in the twenties, argued that the foreign imperialist actually loses money. When the business cycle goes down, the foreign investments get wiped out. One of his examples was in North America, where the railroads and big utilities were financed by foreign investments - by the British or the Germans. Those investments were wiped out by various 19th century depressions. The money was lost but the railroads remained in Canada and the United States. Schumpeter concluded that foreign investments are not profitable. There have been studies of French investments in Indochina concluding that Schumpeter was right. The French put more money into Indochina then they got out. It doesn't mean that individual capitalists don't make money, but investments by countries do not pan out to be profitable because of the business cycle. A study of Italian investments in Libya concluded that Italy lost money."

Waves of democracy often get reversed, Lipset reminds social scientists - "A nation's historical political culture is important also, he said, because institutionalizing democracy involves beliefs. Members of a civil society must develop tolerance for those who disagree with them, and political winners must allow losers to continue to compete for power. "Almost all the heads of new democracies, from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to Indira Gandhi . . . attempted to repress their opponents," Lipset said... A recent statistical analysis published by Lipset and two Stanford graduate students in sociology, Kyoung-Ryung Seong and John Charles Torres, found that "having been a British colony shows a higher relationship" to democracy than any other variable studied."

How Christmas Brings Out The Grinch in Economists - "In one study, economists John List and Jason Shogren created an auction in which they offered students money for their Christmas presents, asking them to split their price into material and sentimental value. The result: On average, sentimental value accounted for about half the total. That more than offsets Mr. Waldfogel's estimate of deadweight loss, suggesting that Christmas gift-giving might not be such a bad thing when all factors are taken into account."

Stinky flower mystery solved - "Scientists have used genetic analysis to solve the long-standing mystery of the lineage of the rafflesia flower, known for its blood-red bloom measuring three feet wide and its nauseating stench of rotting flesh."

Mr Wang Says So: No Cause for Celebration - "Singapore is the easiest place in the world to pay a worker peanuts; make him work overtime; and then sack him without compensation."
"It is interesting how the right has appropriated the term 'labour freedom', whereas the arguably more academically conventional term is 'labour mobility', and the more precise and intellectually honest term, 'dispensibility'."

What is wrong with gay sex? - "Having said all that, let’s get on with the judging." God reached forward and pressed a small red button on his armrest. Immediately, the hall was bathed in an eerie red light and the air filled with the deafening "Parp! Parp! Parp!" of a claxon... "I have been testing you. I have pretended to be a bleeding-heart liberal in order to establish your commitment to The Bible. I do tests. Don’t you remember Isaac and Abraham – Genesis 23?"