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March 29, 2006
"I'm not the problem."
Honda's research revealed that 70% believed that the government should be responsible for encouraging better take up of environmentally friendly vehicles.
And 35% of those questioned said the responsibility lay with car manufacturers.
Less than a fifth - 17% - felt it was the driver's responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of their vehicle.
BBC NEWS | UK | Eco-friendly hybrid car unveiled
Posted by thdyck at March 29, 2006 | Comments (0)
Changing Polish marriage expectations
"I didn't want to be like my parents from the countryside. They work together in the fields and when they come back home my father just sits down and says, 'Wife, where's my dinner?' There's no partnership there. I wanted my relationship to be based on partnership."
BBC NEWS | Europe | Social change slows Polish birth rates
Posted by thdyck at March 29, 2006 | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
Stanford professor on the health effects of stress
Sapolsky's engaging, fascinating lectures trace all the ways that stress creates heretofore unseen ailments in a population that has largely cured all the fast-killing diseases and can now afford to contract slow and lingering ones. From psychogenic dwarfism -- children who stop growing and never go through puberty due to extreme abuse-stress, something that Peter Pan author JM Barrie suffered from -- to the effects of stress on the heart, brain, blood, and long term overall health, Sapolsky's research is mind-blowing to those of us who wear our stress and overwork like badges of honor.
Mind-opening lectures on the physiology of stress
Posted by thdyck at March 22, 2006 | Comments (0)
LWN interview with Branden Robinson, outgoing Debian Project Leader
What I'd like to do next is see if I can mold myself into an example of what I'm beginning to think of as the "good Debian citizen". I've had the benefit of an "insider's view" of what's right and wrong at the core of the Project -- what I think is critical now is to better uphold clause four of our Social Contract, in which we commit to openness with our users. That clause talks specifically about bug tracking, but many within the Project think we should apply it more generally.
Some Debian developers have an ambivalent relationship with the Project's "insiders" because, simultaneously, they are details of infrastructure management that most of them don't care to know about -- except when they're perceived as not working. In that case, they demand satisfaction. I don't particularly decry this so much as note it to be human nature.
Posted by thdyck at March 22, 2006 | Comments (0)
March 8, 2006
Virual DNA emeshed in our DNA
"They're not doing anything," says Villarreal. "They're just persisting. And they were around long before humans evolved. The better part of the human genome is composed of viral DNA. That's true of nearly all eukaryotes, and the more complicated the organisms, the more of those sequences you have. We aren't sure exactly what they all do, but they are part of our genetic identity, this stuff we dismiss as junk. 'Junk' and 'parasite' are both words that will get you into a fight if you use them improperly. And yet they are where all life's creativity lies—its very origins."
Posted by thdyck at March 8, 2006 | Comments (0)
March 5, 2006
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri's perspective on double standards
In a reference to the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Zawahiri said the West had committed deliberate blasphemy and was guilty of double standards.
"They did it on purpose and they continue to do it without apologising, even though no-one dares to harm Jews or to challenge Jewish claims about the Holocaust nor even to insult homosexuals."
He also singled out domestic Western policies he said discriminated against Muslims.
"In France a Muslim father cannot prevent his daughter from having sex because she is protected by the law, but this same law punishes her if she covers her hair," he said.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Zawahiri urges Hamas to fight on
Posted by thdyck at March 5, 2006 | Comments (0)