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In the meanwhile, in the Philippines, the scandal of the day is that some cops admitted switching ballot boxes for Gloria.
Since our lovely ex president is in the hospital having neck surgery, the solons promise to go easy on her for the next few weeks.
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The rains were heavy for two days and it's now clear and fresh outside..., but the streets were flooded, and there were deaths in the more mountainous regions there have been floods.
from the Manila Bulletin:
Boggy Geguia pedals his bicycle with his pet dog ‘B1’ – donning sunglasses and Philippine flag-inspired attire, along the rain-drenched Dela Paz Street in Pandacan, Manila July 26, 2011. (Photo by JACQUELINE HERNANDEZ)
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Polar people have bigger eyes and brains (the better to see in the dark)...
the study is of only 55 skulls that were 200 years old (i.e. before electric lighting might counteract the influence of light and darkness) and from 12 different populations, and since brain size doesn't correlate with IQ (which depends on gyrations making the "surface" of the brain larger) I'm not sure they can figure that out...and it's not noted if they used traditional hunter/gatherer types who lived there for thousands of years, or if they included the latecomers, i.e. Viking types who moved north only 2000 years ago.
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A podcast from a book on Africa's globalization.
key paragraph:
The massive amount of under-utilised agricultural land in Africa has also drawn buyers from the United States, East Asia, and Middle East. Globalization has also led to opportunities, as infrastructure is developed and mobile-phone based technologies revolutionise the way Africans live and work. Growth rates in many countries in this new, outward-looking Africa are high enough to make even the Chinese jealous.
yes, even Sister Euphrasia's convent in rural Mashava now has a cellphone...
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An old Chinese proverb is "a mother can care for ten children, but ten children can't care for the mother".
In the days when everyone works and the one child policy, this means nursing homes are being opened in China....most are "assisted living" homes...
and they note a similar shift to nursing homes occurred in the US in the 1940's...
but in both countries, of course, most elderly still are cared for by family and friends at home.
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Frankenfood news: A blight resistant cassava that will eliminate need for toxic fungicides.
no we don't eat a lot of it here, but it is widely used by 800thousand people in some parts of Africa and South America...
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Environmental history podcast this week is about the Ukraine:notes that the Ukraine was once a steppe with nomadic herders, and was transformed into the breadbasket of today 200 years ago.
(headsup Anneisaman)
related factoid: it was the Russian Mennonites who brought the strain of wheat that enabled Kansas to also become a breadbasket.
more here.
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Good news: The Cod are back.
Cod and other groundfish populations off the east coast of Canada are showing signs of recovery more than 20 years after the fisheries collapsed in the early 1990s, according to research published today in Nature.
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fyi: it's hot in Lake Woebegon
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Yes, the political news from Iran is full of bad stuff, but TehranLive reminds us:
kids still enjoy GoCart Racing in Tehran
because not everything is politics and spin....
.
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