Saturday/Sunday, August 11-12, 2012

WEB BOHEMIAN Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, Aug.11-12, 2012)

(1)- CARDBOARD – Cardboard bundles put out for recycling may seem of no value. But scavengers know them as a drool-inducing resource; something to be urgently carried away and exchanged for lots of cash money.

(2)- WASPS & WINE -- The next time you take a sip of your favorite wine, you might want to make your first toast to hornets. Or, more precisely, European hornets and paper wasps. Here’s also why

(3)- WHITHER DIGNITY? -- In the age of Anthony Weiner and Larry Craig, Girls Gone Wild and Jersey Shore, mass obesity and Big Gulps, Crocs and velour sweatsuits, what have we to do with dignity?

(4)- ROBERT BELLAH – He recently a world history of religion in its early phases, directed against a biologically founded critique of religion and against all Western triumphalism. He is interviewed in depth here:

(5)- AN IMMORTALITY STUDY -- Millions of people fervently believe in an afterlife. There’s a University of California philosopher who does not believe but he got $5 million to study various immortality issues.

(6)- PLASENZUELA -- For two decades this tiny rural community in Extremadura close to the Portuguese border siphoned off millions of euros in state, regional, and EU funding based on non-existent projects.

(7)- MAGIC/MEDICINE -- It was from medicine that magic was born or the reverse, as well: the very symbol of modern medicine—Asclepius’ staff—is named for a Greek divinity whose temples were sites of divine cures.

(8)- NO FAST FOOD TOYS -- A new law in Chile takes some of the fun out of fast-food by forcing McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and other restaurants to stop including toys and other goodies with children's meals.

(9)- BUTTER FLAVOR -- Chronic exposure to butter flavoring ingredient, used to in microwave popcorn, margarines, snack foods, candy, baked goods, pet foods and other products, may be linked to Alzheimer's.

POLITICAL CARTOON

ENDIT