Hilton Rooming on the State’s Dime

Paris Hilton, reality show star, accidental internet hardcore porn celebrity, and heiress to part of the Hilton hotel fortune is spending the next three weeks in the celebrity wing of the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood for a conviction for drunk driving, driving on a suspended license, probation violation,…

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What turns children into science-resistant adults?

In the May 18, 2007 edition of Science (available only to subscribers online), Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg consider why so many adults resist science.  They cite a 2005 Pew Trust poll finding that 42% of people believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning…

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Idyllic Youth

The other day I heard a local talk show host, bemoaning a recent case of child molestation involving a 14-year-old and a 5-year-old, wax problematic on how times have gotten so harsh for kids, that he wished we could return to a "time when kids could just be kids.  Could…

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We Should All Be Messiahs

There may be little original in this post, but then, there seems to be little original in its subject.  It's just that, well, no one, or not many, manage to say the obvious. I was sitting before my tv the other day watching Dune.  The SciFi Channel version, not that…

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The new U.S. embassy in Iraq – an embarrassment to all decent Americans

You've got to read this description of the new American embassy under construction in Bagdad (the title: "The Colossus of Bagdad").  This monstrous construction project is unbelievably arrogant and excessive.  It will be the largest embassy on the planet. As an outpost, this vast compound reeks of one thing: imperial impunity.…

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