7 posts tagged “news”
Marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex. Full story here.
is possibly an appropriate way to react to this.
French philosopher Andre Gorz and his terminally ill wife committed joint suicide in September 2007. This is a letter he wrote her before that. I read it through to the end and found that I just couldn't hold back the tears. It is an unbelievably exquisite expression of love and commitment.
My favourite para:
You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve
lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve
fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a
gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against
mine.
It's enough to make even the hardest heart melt.
Remember James D. Watson? Of Watson and Crick fame? Now read on.
One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.
The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
Full story here. Senile old fogey. My disgust knows no bounds.
This week U.S. children had toys, candy and all the trimmings that traditionally go with Christmas. But it was a safe bet that no toy on Christmas Day aroused more ecstasy than a pair of new shoes given to a little boy in the U.S. zone of far-off Vienna. The little boy was an orphan. Like most of the children he knew, he had cause to realize that mere warmth, mere survival, are incomparably precious.
The new shoes were issued to him, shortly before Christmas, by the American Red Cross. They and their radiant owner embodied, this year, the meaning of Christmas.
If that meaning remains alive in hearts enough, through days enough to come, it is even conceivable that by next Christmas (if he survives this winter), this child and millions like him will have covering, as well, for the heads which must try to restore sanity to the world; the hands with which that world must be rebuilt; the knees on which to render gratitude to God.
I think there are few photos that have affected me so profoundly.Now these here islands make me want to believe in a Divine Plan.
In an age when Paris Hilton has the gall to claim it's her kind of life, this is strangely heartening.
