10.2

1) Why Do We Believe In God?

"The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt,worry and anxiety."

2) The Movie in Your Head

"Is consciousness a seamless experience or a string of fleeting images, like frames of a movie? The emerging answer will determine whether the way we perceive the world is illusory"

3) Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

"Randall and Sundrum borrow some ideas from string theory but add their own twist. What if, they ask, higher dimensions are not small and curled up but large, perhaps infinite in size? Would there be any observable consequences? "

4) Miers' Answer Raises Questions

'At one point, Miers described her service on the Dallas City Council in 1989. When the city was sued on allegations that it violated the Voting Rights Act, she said, "the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause."
But the Supreme Court repeatedly has said the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" does not mean that city councils or state legislatures must have the same proportion of blacks, Latinos and Asians as the voting population.
"That's a terrible answer. There is no proportional representation requirement under the equal protection clause," said New York University law professor Burt Neuborne, a voting rights expert. "If a first-year law student wrote that and submitted it in class, I would send it back and say it was unacceptable."'

Toles on Miers

Oliphant on Miers

5) Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes

"As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time. He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy.
He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."

And how about Karen Hughes's efforts to boost the country's image abroad? "It's hard to sell shit," Wilkerson said.

Rice: I don't want to run for president

(Rufus T. Firefly would make a better president...)

6) Original Pussy Beer

'Somewhere between 7,000 to 4,000 B.C., in Mesopotamia, in the Kingdom of Sumeria, women invented beer. Early agriculture in the "fertile crescent" was centered around grains. Those grains, pregnant with possibility, became bread and, eventually, beer. Sumerian women were both the first brewers and the first gods of beer. By adding a trace amount of my vaginal yeast to regular brewer's yeast, my "Original Pussy Beer" pays homage to beer's ancient creators from "the cradle of civilization."


[*] 'Oktoberfest viewers sat at a long wooden table with pretzels and coasters advertising her "Original Pussy Beer: the Mother of All Beers." Sennhauser wore a St. Pauli Girl outfit and a stereo played what sounded like Bavarian beer hall music. She offered me a cup and a pretzel while a photographer hovered to catch my reaction. Sennhauser said she brewed the beer with oak chips and stuck a few up her vagina before tossing them into the mix. I sat down at the table, toasted with a few other participants, and drank.'

7) "...can I park here for a minute..."

8) Pop composer Bacharach pens first lyrics of career

"Who are these people that keep telling us lies and how did these people get control of our lives and who'll stop the violence 'cause it's out of control? Make 'em stop."

9) Shirley Horn, Jazz Singer and Pianist, Is Dead at 71

'At the time Ms. Horn was shy and largely focused on classical music, but she often cited this as the moment when it dawned on her that if she overcame her reluctance to sing and to play jazz in public, she might be able to make a living at it.
About her transition from classical to jazz, she liked to say: "I loved Rachmaninoff, but then Oscar Peterson became my Rachmaninoff. And Ahmad Jamal became my Debussy."'



shirley horn 

Here's To Life: "No complaints and no regrets
I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets
but I have learned that all you give is all you get
so give it all you got"

10) Continental Drifter: An African-American in Poland

“Polish people don’t see too many blacks,” said Mateusz, a Polish-born sculptor who spent more than a decade living in a racially-mixed neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia. “You might run into a little bit of … well, racism.”

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