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Evolution’s Secret Weapon: Grandma

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:32:36 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks:

Women are not being helped along by others. The flow of help is going into the other direction.

Is there a woman alive, who did not know this already?

Evolution’s Secret Weapon: Grandma

Are grandmothers an evolutionary necessity?

In the animal world, females often don’t live much past their reproductive years. But in our world, women live into their 80s and beyond — a fact that may be explained, in part, by evolutionary forces.

research suggests that far from being a burden to societies, grandmothers have played an important role in the evolution of human longevity. Studies of modern hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, Venezuela and Eastern Paraguay — societies that offer insights into how humans evolved — consistently show that Grandma is doing much of the work.

It’s the women over 40 who are carrying the heavy loads

The research is the basis for the grandmother hypothesis that may help explain why menopause occurs. The basic idea is that an end to a woman’s reproductive years allows her to channel her energy and resources into caring for her children and grandchildren, thereby providing her descendants with a survival advantage.

Tags: women, evolution, work, longevity, menopause, survival

And she's not talking about Bush...

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:50:59 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Either she hasn't been giving this advice to her own boss or he hasn't been listening. In this case, she's referring to Russia and the concentration of power in the Kremlin.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

Jews Are Safer With Christians In Charge

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:04:02 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nobeliefs.com

The following photos provide a pictorial glimpse of Hitler, how his Nazis mixed religion with government, and the support for Hitler by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany. In, no way, does this gallery of photos intend to support Nazism or anti-Semitism, but instead, intends to warn against them.

Adolf Hitler (center) at the monument for the war dead in Franken Germany. According to Ray Cowdery, Hitler rarely missed an opportunity to visit war memorials, even when a photographer was not present.

Hitler greets Muller the "Bishop of the Reich" and Abbot Schachleitner

Hitler greets a Catholic Cardinal

Hitler in front of "Church of our Lady" in Nuremberg, Sept. 1934. Photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.

Hitler praying

The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.

Tags: coulter, says, jews, should, be, perfected

Rare China tiger seen in the wild

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:09:10 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A rare South China tiger has been seen in the wild for the first time in decades, according to reports from China's official Xinhua news agency.

The sighting, which came after a farmer handed in some pictures, surprised researchers who feared the tiger was extinct.

Experts have now confirmed that the photographs do show a young, wild South China tiger.

The tiger is critically endangered and was last sighted in the wild in 1964.

The farmer, who took the pictures at the beginning of this month, lives in Shaanxi province.

Experts have said that no more than 20 to 30 of the tigers were believed to remain in the wild, but none have been spotted in decades, with many fearing that a small number of captive-born tigers were all that remained.

But numbers were greatly reduced after China's Communist leader Mao Zedong labelled the elusive felines "pests" and ordered an extermination campaign.

Tags: science

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:03:29 GMT

clipped by: cptenaud
clipper's remarks: Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Clip Source: www.veteransforamerica.org

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

SNIP: Read the rest here

“This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.

Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.

But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map

Tags: war, is, immoral, torture, worse

Lottery Winning Cat

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:59:39 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Serendipity. .

Clip Source: www.dailyindia.com

Lottery winning cat!

From our ANI Correspondent

New Delhi, Oct 13: Wang never knew that the homeless cat he adopted two months ago, would actually win him a 435-dollar lottery later.

Wang, a Shenzhen, China, resident was accompanied by his feline friend when he went to purchase the lottery ticket last week.

As Wang was about to buy the ticket, the restless cat jumped out of his arms onto the computer keyboard, accidentally choosing Wang's lottery numbers at random.

At the time, Wang complained that his cat had wasted his 1.29 dollars lottery ticket, reports China Daily.

But he was shocked to bits a week later, when he discovered that the numbers chosen by his cat had actually won him a lottery.

Tags: pets, cats, luck, lottery

Stop Hating Smartasses

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:31:31 GMT

clipped by: tidbit2

Clip Source: pursegirl.stumbleupon.com

Tags: fun

Rice criticises Kremlin's grip on power

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:29:30 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The most amazing case of hypocrisy seen in many a day. You could put Putin on and given the same set of words and he would sound the same. Never can she be believed again.

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today criticised the extent of Russian President Vladimir Putin's grip on power as human rights activists urged her to pressure Moscow ahead of upcoming elections.

"There is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary," Rice told reporters on the second day of a visit to Moscow.

Rice said she had raised the issue of human rights in meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and the two first deputy premiers, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov, and she would also speak with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the issue.

She also held talks with civil society leaders at the residence of the US ambassador, where she said Russia must respect basic liberties.

"I am quite confident that your goal is to build institutions that are indigenous to Russia, that are Russian institutions," Rice said at the start of a meeting with leading human rights advocates in Moscow.

Tags: politics, hypocrits

You never know who you might meet on the net

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:34:08 GMT

clipped by: tidbit2

Clip Source: pursegirl.stumbleupon.com

Tags: animals, funny