Our ancesters might have been peaceful and empathetic!

Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors
Ardi casts doubt on the notion that we have an innate killer instinct
(wall street journal online)

The skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, an ancient fossil dubbed "Ardi," is radically changing our ideas about mankind's origins. Kent State University's C. Owen Lovejoy says Ardi shows our ancestors were more like us and less like chimps

Pretty interesting. So perhaps there is hope for the future of the human race?
I definitely feel uncomfortable with the low level of empathy I have sometimes.

If these clues actually do reveal something close to the truth (such that warfare doesn't have a history past the agricultural revolution), I wonder what that reveals about the nature of warfare? Was it created by culture? Beliefs? I wonder.

Haha, how awful!

Video prompts ACORN firings

Mmm, and supposedly they will be getting billions of dollars under Obama's stimulus package. Scandalous!

From the Baltimore Sun:

Two staff members of the Baltimore office of ACORN were fired Thursday after they were captured on hidden camera appearing to give advice on evading tax laws to a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute.

The video depicts a man and a scantily dressed female partner visiting the Charles Village office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, where they appear to ask two employees about how to shield their work from state and federal tax requirements. The supposed pimp also appears to ask the employees how to conceal underage girls from El Salvador brought into the country illegally to work for him.

"If they don't have Social Security numbers, you don't have to worry about them," the employee says.

Giles, a 20-year-old student, told FOX News host Glenn Beck that she came up with the idea for the video and funded the project herself. "I saw them as a thug organization getting my tax dollars," Giles told Beck, who said he first viewed the video Saturday.

The ACORN employees appear to show no hesitation in helping Giles and O'Keefe, a 25-year-old filmmaker. In the video, O'Keefe introduces himself as a Johns Hopkins graduate student with aspirations of running for Congress. He and Giles describe their work as an "off-the-books" business catering to "male clients" several times before making clear that they are discussing prostitution.

One employee appears to discuss ways that the pair might justify the business ("Let's see - independent artists, you could be that," she says), and the other tells them to "train" their prostitutes to "keep their mouth shut." The four extensively discuss the issue of underage foreigners living in a home that Giles says she is trying to buy.

In telling the pair about a coming conference, which was held in August, the employees also encourage them to purchase a membership to ACORN.

Alan Turing part II

Some more info about the death of Alan Turing and other gay men under the hands of an anti-gay British government.

I can't believe after witnessing the horrors of war, especially in places such as Nazi Death camps, governments of the Allied forces can do this kind of stuff.

From the BBC:

Many gay men were "treated" in the same way as Alan Turing - given powerful drugs or electric shocks to "cure" them of their homosexuality.

Turing - a wartime hero who helped break the Enigma code - killed himself in 1954.

In 1962, Army captain Billy Clegg-Hill died during medically-supervised "aversion therapy", prescribed by a judge following his arrest for homosexual offences.

Like Alan Turing, Mr Clegg-Hill was given the choice of prison or "therapy" conducted by doctors who believed homosexuality was a treatable disease.

Mr Clegg-Hill's sister, Alison Braithwaite, told the BBC: "Billy's death was covered up by the Army - at the time his death certificate said he died of natural causes."

It was only in 1996 a BBC documentary uncovered the real reason for his death.

It emerged the treatment, at the Netley military hospital in Hampshire, consisted of showing Mr Clegg-Hill pictures of naked men and then injecting him with the vomit-inducing drug apomorphine.

"The idea was to make him associate naked men with being sick. It was crude and totally ineffective," said Ms Braithwaite.

"Unfortunately, the doctors neglected to give him any fluids, and he died of a stroke brought on by dehydration."

Fishing! in Okutama

Fished for the first time in my adult life - I was rollin' in Nijimasu and Yamame!

Online Sunshine indeed!

Ah Florida, I didn't know you were this conservative!

The 2009 Florida Statutes

Title VI
CIVIL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE

Chapter 63
ADOPTION

View Entire Chapter

63.042 Who may be adopted; who may adopt.--

(1) Any person, a minor or an adult, may be adopted.

(2) The following persons may adopt:

(a) A husband and wife jointly;

(b) An unmarried adult; or

(c) A married person without the other spouse joining as a petitioner, if the person to be adopted is not his or her spouse, and if:

1. The other spouse is a parent of the person to be adopted and consents to the adoption; or

2. The failure of the other spouse to join in the petition or to consent to the adoption is excused by the court for good cause shown or in the best interest of the child.

(3) No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual.

(4) No person eligible under this section shall be prohibited from adopting solely because such person possesses a physical disability or handicap, unless it is determined by the court or adoption entity that such disability or handicap renders such person incapable of serving as an effective parent.

Wow!

Richard Dawkins joins calls for apology for gay mathematician Alan Turing

Professor Richard Dawkins has joined the calls for the government to apologise to Alan Turing who committed suicide after being jailed for homosexuality.

A campaign is underway to recognise the achievements of the gay mathematician, who famously invented the Turing machine and cracked the German Enigma code during World War Two, but killed himself in 1954 after being convicted of having a sexual relationship with another man.

People can be so cruel sometimes.

From wikipedia:

In January 1952 Turing picked up the 19-year-old Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.[31]

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time,[5] and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.[32]

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via estrogen hormone injections,[33] which lasted for a year. Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, possibly due to the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work.

8 femmes

I can't get this out of my head... god Emmanuelle Béart is adorable!

Oh and this.
Ozon is a genius. Sagnier too... ah!