Friday, July 10, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN (Friday, July 10, 2009)
(1)- DISSENTING VOICE -- If Anna Letitia Barbauld's was a voice of the Enlightenment, it hasn't, until now, carried very far. Known in her own time as a poet and controversial essayist, her fame is worth examining.

(2)- IRAN AND WOMEN -- The rejection of their repression by tens of thousands of women, not just over the last weekend but over the last decade, weakens the Islamic republic's claim to invincibility in Iran and across the Middle East.

(3)- RECONSIDERING TIBET -- The leading historian of modern Tibet discusses the background to recent protests on the Plateau. What is the evolution of its culture, modern and traditional, under China's breakneck development and market reforms?

(4)- HAMSTER SINS -- The French Government failed to look after its hamsters. The EU has brought a case for allowing the great hamster of Alsace, the only wild hamster in Western Europe, to decline to the point of extinction.

(5)- WHY? -- Georgia school teacher Kristina Higgins was crowned Miss Georgia 2009 Saturday night at the annual pageant in Columbus. The Gwinnett County educator relinquished her crown and title the next day to first runner up Emily Cook.

(6)- DIED -- Col. Kenneth L. Reusser of Milwaukie, the most decorated U.S. Marine Corps aviator in history. Reusser flew an amazing 253 combat missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He was shot down in all three wars.

(7)- CREDULITY -- Nearly 18 percent of the Italian population -- 11 million people -- trusts self-styled sorcerers and healers, a consumer watchdog said in a report Monday. There are 155,000 sorcerers and healers active in Italy.

(8)- TEEN STUFF -- A surprising number of teenagers — nearly 15 percent — think they're going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests.

(9)- RIVALRY -- For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. BUT NOW...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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