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Monthly Archives: December 2003

No posts for a few weeks.

Dear Readers,
I will be away until 9th January 2004. I am off to India for an extended vacation. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year.
faithfully,
Jonathan

To think or to follow [2Think.org]


Superb: Greenwood’s Map of London 1827 [Bath University]

Must see zoomable map of London.

The Skeptical Environmentalist exonerated [FT]

“Bjorn Lomborg, the author of a controversial book attacking the environment movement, was cleared yesterday of “scientific dishonesty” by the Danish science ministry.
The ministry overturned a ruling in January by the Danish committee on scientific dishonesty (DCSD), part of the Danish Research Agency, that Mr Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist was “clearly contrary to the [...]

Goodbye sunshine [Guardian]

“Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what’s causing ‘global dimming’ - or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it.”
Worrying.

Women are other women’s stress busters…tend and befriend not fight or flight

Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight.
Taylor SE, Klein LC, Lewis BP, Gruenewald TL, Gurung RA, Updegraff JA.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles 90095-1563, USA. taylors@psych.ucla.edu
The human stress response has been characterized, both physiologically and behaviorally, as “fight-or-flight.” Although fight-or-flight may characterize the primary physiological responses to stress for both males [...]

Africa isn’t dying of Aids [Spectator]

“The headline figures are horrible: almost 30 million Africans have HIV/Aids. But, says Rian Malan, the figures are computer-generated estimates and they appear grotesquely exaggerated when set against population statistics.”
Same over here. Every year a new influx of HIV/AIDS infected Asians and Africans immigrants arrive in the UK and push up the “infection rates” [...]

Nick Cohen skewers the Left (principally Chomsky) [Guardian]

Not the least of the casualties of the Iraq war is the death of anti-fascism. Patriots could oppose Bush and Blair by saying that it wasn’t in Britain’s interests to follow America. Liberals could put the UN first and insist that the United States proved its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before [...]

Incredibly tough airlines

Remember that DHL plane that was hit by an anti-aircraft missile whilst landing in Baghdad a few months ago? Looks like they were damned lucky not to lose the plane. Just look at the damage (more photos here):

Apparently the plane was landed with no “hydraulics and therefore had no flight controls, actually did a missed [...]

Kinship Chart - now you will know what once removed means!

This interesting Kinship Chart has been published by people who have married their cousins and want to show they are not incestuous, but it is a handy tool for working out geneological relations.