Whitley Strieber wishes a Happy New Year to all, inthe form of a journal entry that calls attention to theastonishing human achievements that have made our world amuch better place over the past hundred years. He points out that lifespan has more than doubled worldwide in a hundred years, illiteracy has plummeted, and starvation is a thing of the past in most of the world.read more

In her new diary, Anne Strieber writes: “This year, Christmas was on Monday, which I think is the most counter-intuitive day of the week for such a festive holiday. You can’t figure out what you’re supposed to be doing the rest of the week or when stores, schools and post offices will be closed or open, etc. My Christmas was even more confusing than usual, because while we had planned to go to Texas to spend the day at the annual big family celebration, we had an important meeting scheduled on the Wednesday after the holiday, so we had to cancel our plans. I kept thinking, ‘There must be some REASON I?m going to be here for Christmas, and I need to figure out what it is.’ It turned out to be a fairly straightforward version of the loaves & fishes.”
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Years in which dogmatic revisionists take control of public policy are usually not good years for women’s health. But there was some good news for women in 2006.

The Society for Women’s Health Research has announced the top five women’s health stories of 2006. They are:
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Rising ocean levels, caused by global warming (which is causing glaciers to melt), will soon make 70,000 people homeless, as?for the first time?an inhabited island near India has been completely covered with water.

Geoffrey Lean writes in the Independent that Lohachara island is only the first island nation to drown. The Pacific island of Vanuatu has also been evacuated, and more are expected to drown soon, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands. Large areas of continents will probably soon drown as well, with Bangladesh likely to be one of the first.

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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