Monday, August 27, 2012

WEB BOHEMIAN (Monday, August 27, 2012)

(1)- CULTURE THRIVES ON CONFICT & ANTAGONISM -- We know that art can flourish under despots, but we're reluctant to admit it - if creativity and tyranny can co-exist, the value of freedom seems diminished.

(2)- EUROPE’S TRUST WOES -- Politicians are thought to be dishonest, well out of proportion to their actual lies. The latest string of plagiarism scandals striking politicians worldwid is unlikely to improve that image.

(3)- HOW TO DEAL WITH PSYCHOPATHS -- Roughly one in 100 of us is clinically a psychopath? (risk takers, opportunists motivated by self-interest and greed, and inclined to dominate or subjugate) What to do?

(4)- CAPTURING THE LAST DON -- Bernardo Provenzano was boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia. He ran his organization obsessively, efficiently, and ruthlessly. Herein a 2007 report on his capture near Corleone.

(5)- INCREDIBLY POPULAR COMIC STRIP -- Andy Capp in his day has been a wife-beater, an habitual drunk, smoker, welfare scrounger, gambler, cheat, bully and liar. Yet the strip was a top tier global success.

(6)- THE AIR UP THERE -- According to the Center for Disease Control, if you are seven feet tall and between the ages of 20 and 40 in the U.S., you are in very select company; there are fewer than 70 people like you.

(7)- ZUCKERBERG WOES  -- Should Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the social media visionary but neophyte corporate manager, step aside as CEO to let a more seasoned executive run the multibillion-dollar company?

(8)- IT’S NATURALLY ROUND -- Scientists find the sun is the most perfectly round natural object ()in the universe. Experts had assumed the sun bulged a bit at the middle - making it slightly flying-saucer shaped.

(9)- WILL (FREE OR NOT) -- By understanding how the human brain—works, we can see our capacities to make choices and thus to control our actions.  Neuroscience helps explain how free will works rather than explaining it away.

POLITICAL CARTOON

ENDIT