U.S. torture program results in thousands of U.S. deaths

In an interview with The Washington Post, a U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence specialist explains that he was aghast when he saw how the U.S. was continuing to torture prisoners, even after he arrived in 2006.   He further learned, based on first-hand interviews he conducted, that the torture committed by the…

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Photographing your children during the holidays

When you take a posed holiday photo of your children, strive to present your children in a unique light.   The photo of my children (below) turned out especially well.  I used a Canon SD1100SI.   Make sure you get natural expressions by being a bit unpredictable.  Choose a suitable background…

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What if there were far too many people, but no one had the courage to talk about it?

What if there were far too many people living on planet Earth, but no one had the courage to talk about it? According to Global Population Speak Out, that is exactly our situation. Consider that we repeatedly see news reports about scarce and dwindling resources (e.g., water, food, fish, fuel, topsoil), but these news reports rarely consider the exploding population on Earth as a major contributor to these problems. This refusal to consider the carrying capacity of Earth is truly staggering. As a thought experiment, consider how our "environmental" issues would be altered if each country had 25% fewer people than it currently does. Or 50%. Instead, we the human population of earth is at 6.5 billion, headed toward at least 9 billion by 2050. When it comes to discussing sex, reproduction and birth control, we freeze up, even when out-of-control population growth threatens our way of life.

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Shopper trampled in the name of Jesus

Well, it's "Black Friday" again.  It's time to check out the news. In their attempts to buy trinkets to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Wal-Mart shoppers broke through the stores's exterior doors and trampled a Wal-Mart employee, who died during the incident. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ObKm4w9igM[/youtube] Yes, there's lots of irony (and sadness)…

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Metaphors at work: the connection between warm temperature and warm personality

I've previously posted on the work of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, who have argued that human thought is often metaphorical.  Johnson and Lakoff have used numerous examples of our use of language to demonstrate that human cognition is often a metaphorical extension of sensorimotor experience. I've been collecting experimental…

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