Saturday/Sunday, April 3-4, 2010

WEB BOHEMIAN Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, April 3-4, 2010)
(1)- ACUPUNCTURE WOES -- Infections spread by acupuncture needles are under-diagnosed worldwide, according to doctors in Hong Kong. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they call for tighter infection controls and regulation.

(2)- JAPAN DECAYS -- Outside Tokyo and its other metropolises, Japan is dying a strange death. It's due to demographics. First: advances in medicine and a diet high in raw squid have helped to make Japan the oldest existing society.

(3) – FIGURING IT – The layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinks — mind reading — is a common literary device and essential survival skill. Why are human beings equipped with this capacity and how?

(4)- MUSEUM OF BAD ART -- The museum includes work of talented artists who have gone off and works of crudely exuberant artists barely in control of the brush. But all the artists showing here are apart from the merely incompetent.

(5)- THE HARVEY GIRLS -- The Harvey Girls were the young women who waited tables at the Fred Harvey restaurant chain of the early 20th Century, and they were as familiar in their day as Starbucks baristas are today.

(6)- SHE MISSED -- Violet Gibson happens to be the woman who shot Il Duce in 1926, although she only nicked his nose. Indeed, a moral atmosphere pervades Saunders's often poignant tale of the Irishwoman, labeled mad.

(7)- INTELLECTUALS/POLITICS -- The elite intellectuals' rise to prominence was especially noticeable in Democratic Party politics, and demonstrated best by Adlai Stevenson who embodied the Democrats' growing reputation the brainy party.

(8)- THE ETHICAL DOG -- Looking for the roots of human morality in the animal kingdom? Focus on canines, who know how to play fair. Canids (animals in the dog family) follow a strict code of conduct when they play.

(9)- SUPER-SIZED LAST SUPPER -- The food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have grown larger - in line with our own super-sizing of meals, say obesity experts.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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