They don't work in the same way. Placebos are harmless while antidepressants are very dangerous, harmful drugs. (Hmmm, which proves that the phramaceutical industry and doctors do not seem to be very interested in really and truly "curing" anyone of anything).
[excerpt] Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.
But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.
Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.
The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science....
In the study, three political scientists - Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth - combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.
The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes.
Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes' influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed.
On school prayer, for example, the identical twins' opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance.
"Not much distinguishes this power pair of Polish politics, whose similarity extends from their cherubic faces and silver hair to a back-to-basics message that has helped put them in position to vie for Poland's two top jobs.
Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski is leading in the polls for president. As head of a leading right-wing party, Law and Justice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski is a possible contender for prime minister."
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Chit Chat
Best Political Blogs: DC Journalists Pick Their Favorites
There are 300,000 blogs and Web sites that devote themselves to political discourse. Of those, about 3,000 are “quality” sites. You cannot read 3,000 every day, so here are the blogs and sites that are most interesting and informative, according to our informal poll: http://www.washingtonian.com/inwashington/buzz/2005/0617.html (via Utne)
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Chit Chat
Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on June 16, 2005 4:57 PM
With the situation in Iraq deteriorating and the willingness of Americans to serve in the armed forces declining, a little-known Army publication called the "School Recruiting Program Handbook" is becoming increasingly important, and controversial.
Pentagon Creating Student Database
By Jonathan KrimWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 23, 2005
The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches:
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Chit Chat
Rome - A Danish tourist holidaying in Italy has been fined €10 000 (about R82 000) by police for purchasing a pair of counterfeit glasses that had cost her €10.
Kirsten Laursen, 60, on holiday with her husband in Ventimiglia in north-west Italy's Riviera, had just bought a pair of dark glasses from a street vendor when she was approached by police, who asked to inspect her purchase.
The woman was then informed that she had committed an offence and that she would have to pay a €10 000, reduced to €3 333 (about R27 000) if paid within the next two months.
What if a smoking habit meant not only going outside on work breaks, but getting kicked out of your home?
That's what happened to Erin Carey and Ted Baar, a couple evicted from their Boston condo after neighbors complained that excessive cigarette smoke was seeping into their apartments. In what experts are calling one of the first cases of its kind in the United States, a Boston housing court jury upheld the eviction, even though their lease did not prohibit smoking. Ms. Carey and Mr. Baar's heavy smoking - one pack a day each - was a nuisance to neighbors, much like excessive noise, the jury found.
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
Myth of self-made man
Class Consciousness Matters What's missing from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal —By David Moberg, In These Times
June 30, 2005 Issue
Between a series in the New York Times and a package in the Wall Street Journal, the message is out: Americans have less class mobility than in the past few decades, even less than in many comparable industrial countries. The curious thing is this: Americans believe just the opposite. (...)
In 2000, a poll indicated that nearly 40 percent of Americans believed they were either among the wealthiest 1 percent -- or on their way there. (...)
Then there's the myth of the self-made man. Instead of acknowledging the disproportionate power the upper classes wield, Americans tend to attribute good fortune to an individual's genius and labor. Turn the rubric around, and failure to acquire wealth and power is equally self-determined.
Neither failure nor success can be explained so narrowly. The class in which an individual is born largely determines class as an adult, Moberg explains, and class affects access to health care, education, and employment. Individuals make their own history, "but not under conditions they choose."
Consciousness of the impact of class, as well as "race, gender and other accidents of history," is critical for social change. Myths of self-made success and class mobility allow Americans to ignore an economy in which the bottom 90 percent saw their real incomes fall between 1980 and 2002, while the ultra-wealthy saw theirs more than double.
"Rather than manners or fashion," Moberg writes, "class ultimately has more to do with who has the power to make such decisions and the powerlessness of the majority." -- Julie Hanus
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Chit Chat
Astrologer to sue NASA over comet plans
A Russian court has ruled that an astrologer can proceed with a lawsuit against the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its plans to bombard a comet.
The astrologer claims the destruction of the comet would "disrupt the natural balance of the universe."
Marina Bai's case was thrown out of a lower court because Russia has no jurisdiction over NASA, but the ruling was overturned when her lawyer, Alexandra Molokhova, was able to show that the agency's office in the US Embassy in Moscow does fall under Russian jurisdiction.
Ms Bai seeks a ruling that will restrict NASA in its plans to annihilate a section of the Tempel 1 comet, in a project that has been dubbed Deep Impact, as well as punitive damages of $US300 million.
"My client believes that the NASA project infringes upon her spiritual and life values as well as the natural life of the cosmos and would disrupt the natural balance of forces in the universe," her lawyer said.
The lawyer says Tempel 1 has sentimental value to Ms Bai because her grandparents met when her grandfather pointed the comet out to his future wife.
In a $US279 million project, NASA in January launched the Deep Impact spacecraft.
It will travel to the comet and release an impactor - a 370-kilogram self-guided mass - on July 4, which is expected to create a crater that could be as large as a football stadium.
Scientists believe that the exposed material from the resulting crater will yield clues to the formation of the solar system and provide important information on altering the course of comets or asteroids on a collision course with earth.
Effects of the collision will be visible from earth with an amateur telescope.
Film director David Lynch, a longtime practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, has formed a foundation that will encourage schools to use the technique in the classroom. "It's knowledge in terms of the self and it works wonders in the kids," he said.
The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace will raise money for TM peace groups and provide scholarships for students taking part in meditation programs.
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