Music's inherent symmetry and organizational principles tap into a deep human need to order, or manage, our environment. Its nonverbal essence may enable physical, mental and emotional benefits beyond aural enjoyment, because the plasticity of the brain, active during infancy and early childhood and even into adulthood and old age, may be stimulated by music, yielding richer, healthier, better functioning brains.

Posted by GeeTee at July 29, 2004 08:07 AM | TrackBack 0

The high agricultural productivity of industrialised nations has come at a price - the use of environmentally harmful fertilisers and pesticides. Biotechnology holds out the promise that new strains of crops can be more resistant to pests and require few or no fertilisers. Those who object to "frankenfood" strains created in petri dishes can relax: "smart breeding," a kind of traditional breeding aided by computer analysis, can accomplish many of the same results as more direct genetic engineering. In the words of the environmental scholar Martin W Lewis: "As advances in biotechnology make agriculture more efficient, large tracts of land can be progressively returned to nature."

Posted by GeeTee at July 29, 2004 07:59 AM | TrackBack 0

Grunwald's software program, RFDump, makes rewriting RFIDs easy. While there are significant malicious uses of the program, consumers could also use it to protect themselves, he said.

Posted by GeeTee at July 29, 2004 07:09 AM | TrackBack 0

Like ``black boxes'' on airplanes, the electronic voting records on touch-screen machines list everything that happens from boot-up to shutdown, documenting in an ``event log'' when every ballot was cast. The records also include ``vote image reports'' that show for whom each ballot was cast. Elections officials have said that using this data for recounts is unnecessary because touch-screen machines do not allow human error. But several studies have suggested the machines themselves might err -- for instance, by failing to record some votes.

Posted by GeeTee at July 29, 2004 07:07 AM | TrackBack 0

The presentation itself, a collection of about 40 slides titled ''The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix,'' essentially makes the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, as Stein diagrams it, includes scores of powerful organizations -- most of them with bland names like the State Policy Network and the Leadership Institute -- that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus, into which Stein lumps everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's ''700 Club.'' And all of this, he contends, is underwritten by some 200 ''anchor donors.'' ''This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,'' he said.

Posted by GeeTee at July 27, 2004 11:17 AM | TrackBack 0

"It's unconstitutional to give straight people the freedom to divorce, and not gays and lesbians," said McCarthy.

Posted by GeeTee at July 22, 2004 09:35 AM | TrackBack 0

Humanists are not trained to think in terms of propositions testable via systematic empirical evidence. A scientific finding about the arts may therefore be unfairly rejected without a careful evaluation of the evidence. That is, I believe, what has happened in the case of Charles Falco. When art historians argue that artists did not need lenses because they were so talented, they seem not to realize that the argument does not rule out the use of lenses. When they say that artists could have used a grid to get perspective right, they seem not to realize that the use of a grid would not predict the errors.

Posted by GeeTee at July 18, 2004 02:52 PM | TrackBack 0

Within that mall was the best Chinese food place in town -- a place that changed the course of my life and from which I had ordered scant hours before... I am heartbroken.

Posted by GeeTee at July 04, 2004 09:54 AM | TrackBack 0

When police arrived, Hemingway was standing outside an Amoco station, dressed in women's clothing and talking incoherently. Pulling up his skirt, he said to one of the officers, "Let me show you that I'm a woman." The police officer reminded him he was in public and told him to put down his skirt. Hemingway responded by kicking the cop in the groin. It took three police officers to handcuff Hemingway, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of battery on a police officer, but was never convicted.

Posted by GeeTee at July 02, 2004 05:39 AM | TrackBack 0