There IS a link between 911 and Iraq, and that link is oil. To al-Qaeda, showing a naked man being taunted by a female soldier is inhumane, but beheading a civilian U.S. worker is not. We may never be able to see the world through the eyes of Middle Eastern fundamentalists (and we may not want to), but if we don’t find a way to use less oil (and quickly) we’re going to have to deal with them for a long time to come.
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You’re not the only one who wishes you could shed a few pounds; the government wants you to lose weight as well, because the diseases caused by obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, cost them plenty of money. Now researchers have discovered that a protein in human breast milk called adiponectin may lead to a reduced risk of obesity later in life by “programming” our metabolism when we’re infants. In other words, one reason baby boomers are struggling with their weight right now is because they weren’t breast fed as babies.
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I imagine most of us are in the same boat: whether or not we think we should have invaded Iraq in the first place, we can’t figure out how we?ll be able to leave. So when I read the headline “How to Get Out of Iraq,” I grabbed the latest copy of The New York Review of Books. In it, Peter Galbraith says the problem is that there are actually 3 Iraqs.
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Most of us feel that the new Homeland Security measures we read about (and experience at the airport) are worth it if they protect us from terrorists. In the April 1st issue of the London Review of Books, Richard Rorty writes that ?within a year or two, suitcase-sized nuclear weapons (crafted in Pakistan or North Korea) may be commercially available. If terrorists do get their hands on nuclear weapons, the most momentous result will not be the death of hundreds of thousands of people. It will be the fact that all the democracies will have to place themselves on a permanent war footing.
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