"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." = Dorothy Nevill

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Does Spending More Green On Groceries Really Help the Environment? - "Yet the finding that organically grown plants produce less food than their conventionally grown counterparts is the reason that Robert Reese of the Illinois Department of Agriculture describes organic farming as “a double-edged sword.” Fewer substances are introduced into the environment, but, with additional labor requirements, farmers still spent about as much money on organic as on traditional farming, and in return they have lower crop yields. Taking that idea a step further, Dennis Avery, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues, argues that large-scale organic farming would lead to wildlife habitat destruction, at least compared with the use of modern methods that allow farmers to use less land. Or, as the CGFI’s website says: “Growing more per acre leaves more for nature.”"

Suharto clings to life - "Dr Mahathir, 82, was the second regional colossus to visit Suharto in as many days. Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, 84, paid his respects to Suharto on Sunday... Now Singapore's Minister Mentor, Mr Lee yesterday told reporters that he felt Suharto had been unfairly criticised. "Yes, there was corruption. Yes, he gave favours to his family and his friends. But there was real growth and real progress," Mr Lee said... Sex workers at a red light district in East Java, for instance, reportedly prayed for him"
Pfft. You only pay your respects to dead people. And is the MM saying corruption is alright if there is real growth and real progress?! Maybe we should abolish CPIB.

Today @ PC World Who is the MacBook Air's Target Market? - "I began to think that it looked somewhat familiar. Emphasis on the "somewhat"--clearly, the MacBook Air has Apple's design touches all over. But, I remembered the Fujitsu Lifebook Q2010-- which came out almost two years ago, and measured at just 0.75 of an inch thick... The MacBook Air is impressively thinner on the whole--it measures 0.76-inch at its thickest point, and 0.16-inch at its thinnest; but, in that context, it almost feels more evolutionary than revolutionary."

The Straight Dope: Earth Mother: Has there ever been a true matriarchal culture? - "I've got a friend I'm concerned about: she seems to have gone insane, spouting something about a peaceful, goddess-worshipping matriarchy that ruled the earth for 25,000 years until Evil Patriarchal Religion rose up and conquered the planet... historian Gerda Lerner points out in The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), symbolic idolatry of women and male-dominated society are far from mutually exclusive — think, e.g., of the omnipresent images of the Virgin Mary in medieval Europe. No surviving relics or writings refer directly to the matriarchy Gimbutas describes; in fact, the oldest writings from the region indicate that goddess worship was common but also that women were second-class citizens... The larger point, of course, is that if you're looking to demonstrate that a nonpatriarchal society is possible, digging for examples of past matriarchies is something of a sucker's game, and not just because they may not be there. Making matriarchy the hoped-for standard, Lerner argues, only reinforces the notion that one sex is bound to oppress the other, which, she reminds us, is exactly what we're trying to get past."

The Straight Dope: Is time travel possible? - "Thorne and friends say, hey, let's assume that at quantum level, freestanding wormholes exist. Fine, it's a free country. But then they say, now let's assume the holes can be enlarged to usable size. How? God knows. But theoretical physicists pride themselves in not getting hung up on details."

The Great Koran Controversy: Will Muslim Martyrs Get 72 Raisins Instead of Virgins, & Other Speculations - "While the Bible has been rigorously, often even brutally, picked apart by scholars of every kind, the West has carefully avoided doing the same with the Koran. In the United States, where Arab and Islamic Studies rely on funding from the Gulf States, an interest in Koranic criticism is the foolproof way to commit career suicide. So for all intents and purposes, every word of the Koran came straight from heaven when Mohammed directly transcribed what the angel Gabriel told him to... If you told a Christian scholar that Jesus didn’t actually write the bible, but that it is a collection of eclectic texts from a wide variety of ancient writings spanning centuries that were somewhat randomly compiled into the Bible as we know it today, after much debate and bickering at the Council of Nicene, and they’ll probably nod their head in agreement. Most Christian scholars have finally come to grips with the fact that their Holy Book was written by a lot of different authors with differing religious opinions and interpretations, however inspired those men may have been. However, tell a devout Muslim that Mohammed may not have actually written every word of the Koran straight from the mouth of the angel Gabriel…and well, you’re asking for trouble... The Encyclopedia of Islam (1982) observes, "The closest analogue in Christian belief to the role of the Koran in Muslim belief is not the Bible, but Christ." The Koran alone is the revelation of Islam. Understandably, for a devout follower of Islam, there is no room for holes to be poked as to the origins of the Koran... Some critics argue that by refusing to discuss the origin of the Koran, the Islamic world is forced to adopt an openly irrational stance, employing its power to intimidate scholars and thwart the search for truth. Christian leaders say they would like to have more dialogue with Muslims, but that there isn’t a basis for it. Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, who directs the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French daily La Croix, "Muslims do not accept discussion about the Koran, because they say it was written under the dictates of God. With such an absolutist interpretation, it's difficult to discuss the contents of the faith.""

Does Wine Taste better the More It Costs? - "Twenty-one volunteers were asked to sample different bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and rate the ones they preferred. The only information they were given was the price of the wine - but in a number of cases, they were not told the real price. In one case, the volunteers were given two identical red wines to drink and were told that one cost much less than the other. Most described the "higher priced" wine as much more enjoyable. The research team also managed to pass off a $90 (£46) bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon as a $10 bottle and presented a $5 as one worth $45."

Is the U.S. Fighting the Wrong War on Drugs? - "The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs that were, by medical standards, properly prescribed and administered. Over another two million suffer serious side effects. According to another AMA publication, drug related "problems" kill as many as 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to almost a third of all hospital admissions. If those figures are accurate, only cancer and heart disease kill more patients than drugs. Yet another well-documented study headed by Gary Null, PhD and team, concluded something even more gruesome."

Answer to hot air was in fact a chilling blunder - "Amid talk of offsetting the hefty carbon footprint of the United Nations climate conference in Bali, organisers missed a large elephant in the room. The air-conditioning system installed to keep more than 10,000 delegates cool used highly damaging refrigerant gases - as lethal to the atmosphere as 48,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and nearly the equivalent of the emissions of all aircraft used to fly delegates to Indonesia... Investigators at the Balinese resort complex at Nusa Dua counted 700 cylinders of the gas, each of them weighing 13.5 kilograms, and the system was visibly leaking."

US team makes embryo clone of men - "Researchers removed DNA from donated human eggs, and replaced it with DNA from the skin cells of two volunteers. They produced embryos with genetic material that matched the men's."
Great. They should implant those embryos and we'll have people without souls!!!

Please Don’t Marry Our Daughters - "Kristin J., 16, has a wild streak but recently decided “it was time she settled down with a man who could meet her needs and help her fulfill her dreams of being an actor or singer.” Her parents are trying to sell their “fiery” daughter into matrimony for $49,995. Or so go the personal ad listings on MarryOurDaughter.com, an outrageous Web site that purports to blithely sell underage girls to older husbands for large dowries... Contacted through MarryOurDaughter this morning, Mr. Ordover quickly conceded the page was a parody aimed at drawing attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission."
From the site: "The Bride Price is a custom of long standing, mentioned many times in the Bible, and as such is a protected religious practice"

Music copyright in the spotlight - "Within a matter of months, the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) featured more than 1,000 musical scores for which the copyright had expired in Canada... In mid-October this year the IMSLP disappeared from the internet. Universal Edition, an Austrian music publisher, retained a Canadian law firm to demand that the site block European users from accessing certain works and from adding new scores for which the copyright had not expired in Europe... If Universal Edition is correct, then the public domain becomes an offline concept, since posting works online would immediately result in the longest copyright term applying on a global basis. Moreover, there are even broader implications for online businesses. According to Universal Edition, businesses must comply both with their local laws and with the requirements of any other jurisdiction where their site is accessible - in other words, the laws of virtually every country on earth. It is safe to say that e-commerce would grind to a halt under that standard since few organisations can realistically comply with hundreds of foreign laws."