Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Town Requires Job Seekers to Reveal Social Media Passwords
Posted 12 hours, 37 minutes ago
By Molly McDonough
A human resources requirement by the city of Bozeman, Mont., that job applicants provide a host of personal information, including passwords to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, is creating a sensation online.
An Improbable Cradle of Rock Music
The Pythian Temple, now shrouded for renovations, in 1928 and 2003. More Photos >
NOW it is cloaked in white netting, its movie-set facade as secret as the fraternal society that built it in 1927. But later this summer the ghostly renovation wrapping will come off the spectacular Pythian Temple, at 135 West 70th Street, one of the greatest productions by the theater architect Thomas Lamb.
Television perpetuates outmoded gender stereotypes
Ai Haruna
Gender used to be binary—male and female. For better or for worse, that clear-cut simplicity is gone. Sexual orientations proliferate, each claiming its own separate identity. You’d think television, whose “tarento” pool is so open to novelty, would be at the vanguard of a fight against gender bias.
It isn’t so, says Waseda University gender researcher Junko Mitsuhashi in Shukan Kinyobi (June 12). In fact, she argues, television is mindlessly perpetuating the outmoded stereotypes.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Same-sex relationships may play an important role in evolution
Biologists claim that same-sex relationships help drive the evolution of animals' physiology, life history and social behaviour
Almost a third of Laysan albatross couples are female-female pairs that build nests and rear young together. They are more reproductively successful than unpaired females. Photograph: Eric VanderWerf/Trends in Ecology & Evolution
Birds do it. Bees probably do it. No one's sure whether educated fleas do it. What they do is have same-sex relationships and, in a new review of published research on the subject, biologists have started to consider what it might mean for the evolution of the animals in question.
A Supreme Case of Contempt
A tragic legal saga paved the way for civil rights protections and federal habeas actions
June 2009 Issue
By Mark Curriden
Note: Register for this month's CLE, "A Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched 100 Years of Federalism," from 1-2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, June 17.
The case was United States v. Shipp. There were nine defendants, all charged with contempt of court—contempt of the Supreme Court, that is. The U.S. attorney general had filed the charges against them directly with the court, thus giving it original jurisdiction in the matter. The petition alleged that the defendants and other people engaged in actions “with the intent to show their contempt and disregard for the orders of this honorable court ... and for the purpose of preventing Ed Johnson from exercising and enjoying a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
Phoenix crop circle may predict end of the world
Crop circle experts believe the latest pattern to be discovered, a phoenix rising from the flames in Wiltshire, may give a warning about the end of the world.
The 400-foot design was discovered in a barley field in Yatesbury near Devizes and depicts the mythical phoenix reborn as it rises from the ashes.
Lost Aztec tomb lies under Mexico City
STAFF REPORTER
Archeologists digging in the dirt and black ooze under Mexico City's most important public square have been tantalized for decades by the possibility of a great treasure and likely burial place of one of the last Aztec rulers.
"They keep finding astonishing things as they inch their way along," says David Carrasco, a Harvard University historian who's worked with Mexican archeologists at the Templo Mayor.
But the great find – a royal tomb – has eluded scientists. The city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that lies beneath the modern Mexico City, was founded on an island in the middle of a saltwater lake.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Insurance industry goes after docs who help the uninsured
Medscape has a great article that got (surprise!) very little mainstream media-play - about the insurance industry going after concierge doctors who offer services to the uninsured.
For those of us who don't live in the rarefied world of "concierge" anything, here's how a concierge doc works: you, as a doc, sign up people for a fixed monthly amount, then you offer them hand-held service for that monthly payment. Also part of the arrangement is a (sometimes explicit, sometimes assumed) limit on the total number of patients the doc will see - say, 600 people total [for more on this secretive and explosive healthcare topic - called panel size - check out tomorrow's Doc Gurley post titled "Can't get an appointment with your doc? Here's the secret reason why..."].