By Frank Kosa, Christian Science Monitor
Palo Alto, Calif. — If mathematical brilliance generated electricity, there’d be enough wattage at this restaurant table – a stone’s throw from the American Institute of Math– for a good 20 million homes. The conversation flows from food to hobbies to, well, zeta functions. But as dinner winds down, George [...]
July 31, 2007
Math geniuses chase zeros at camp
July 31, 2007
Rudeness, threats make the Web a cruel world
By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Brooke Brodack remembers her first online “hater.”
Nearly two years ago, the person posted rude comments about a video she had posted on YouTube, says Brodack, 21, of San Francisco, whose videos show her lip-syncing and creating characters. “It was shocking to me. Why would someone want to be [...]
July 31, 2007
Why Africa Fears Western Medicine
July 31, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
By HARRIET A. WASHINGTON
TO Westerners, the repatriation of five nurses and a doctor to Bulgaria last week after more than eight years’ imprisonment meant the end of an unsettling ordeal. The medical workers, who in May 2004 were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with H.I.V., [...]
July 31, 2007
Credit Card Buyer Beware
July 31, 2007
Editorial
The federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the banking and credit card industries have failed utterly to keep pace with deceptive and unfair practices that have become shamefully standard in the business. As a consequence many hard-working Americans who pay their bills are mired in debt — and in danger of losing [...]
July 31, 2007
Who’s Minding the Mind?
July 31, 2007
By BENEDICT CAREY
In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.
The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding [...]
July 31, 2007
The Whys of Mating: 237 Reasons and Counting
July 31, 2007
Findings
By JOHN TIERNEY
Scholars in antiquity began counting the ways that humans have sex, but they weren’t so diligent in cataloging the reasons humans wanted to get into all those positions. Darwin and his successors offered a few explanations of mating strategies — to find better genes, to gain status and resources — but [...]
July 31, 2007
Diallo Cousin Still Fights for a Foothold
New York Region
By ANGELICA MEDAGLIA
Published: July 31, 2007
Mamadou Diallo is still struggling to make ends meet in his adopted city while living in the building where police shot and killed his cousin, Amadou.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/nyregion/31diallo.html?ex=1343620800&en=922eac38c8cc5e89&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
July 31, 2007
Are Your Cell Phone and Laptop Bad for Your Health?
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
Posted on July 31, 2007,
In the wee hours of July 14, a 45-year-old Australian named John Patterson climbed into a tank and drove it through the streets of Sydney, knocking down six cell-phone towers and an electrical substation along the way. Patterson, a former telecommunications worker, reportedly had mapped out the locations [...]
July 31, 2007
Taliban: Male hostage shot dead
(CNN) — A second South Korean hostage held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan has been killed, a spokesman for the militant group told CNN on Monday.
The body was dropped off in Chardiwal in the province of Ghazni in central Afghanistan, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview.
He identified the victim as Soon [...]
