COMMON DREAMS– As same-sex couples in New York prepare this weekend to tie the knot, their brethren in Massachusetts — the first state to legalize gay marriage — have some advice. Enjoy the wedding because afterward, they will realize that there are 1,000 or so benefits gay couples can’t get because of the federal defense of Marriage Act: Joint federal tax … Read More
POPULAR SCIENCE– A lot of the debate about when modern humans became modern humans has to do with the head–when our brains evolved into the functional equivalent of that of modern mankind. But while that particular argument continues, a team of UK researchers using a new kind of statistical technique have analyzed ancient footprints at a site in Tanzania and … Read More
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC– A blackspot tuskfish off Australia has its mouth full as it carries a cockle to a nearby rock, against which the fish was seen repeatedly bashing the shellfish to get at the fleshy bits inside. A recent study in the journal Coral Reefs says the picture—snapped at a depth of nearly 60 feet (18 meters) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2006—is the first ever taken of … Read More
SALON– For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits. The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, … Read More
MSNBC– Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old cloud harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. The cloud of water vapor surrounds a supermassive black hole called a quasar located 12 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery shows that water has been prevalent in … Read More
