This is sick: the Chinese practice the Ilizarov procedure, which adds length to the leg by allowing new bone to grow in the gap left by the gradually separating ends of broken bone. Although the risks are high, the surgery is often performed for purely "cosmetic" use. If that's the word: in China, there are tallness requirements for jobs, colleges and even spouses. Even otherwise rational Chinese seem to prefer taller people. Go figure.

Evidence of links between religion and health is pure crapola.

"Nobody would dispute that for a great many people, religion provides comfort in times of distress, medical or otherwise," Dr. Sloan said. "But there is no really good compelling evidence that there is a relationship between religious involvement and health."

In most trials, sugar pills have done as well as antidepressants. Mostly because of the care and concern patients in the trials receive.

Moderate to heavy tea drinking may reduce the risk of dying after a heart attack, a study suggests. Depending on how much they drink, they're 28 to 44 percent less likely than nondrinkers to die after heart attack.

The Washington Post slams Bush's hypocrisy on trade:

Thanks to the farm bill that President Bush has promised to sign once it passes the Senate this week, U.S. agriculture policy may rival Europe's as the most reviled among experts on Third World economies.

Europeans are moving towards decriminalizing all drug use. It sounds good to me, but few results yet.

Bush is ready to sell out free trade with his promise to move toward Soviet-style agriculture.

Did you ever feel as if someone was controlling your behavior? "In theory, you could guide the animal anywhere," the mad scientist said, cackling insanely.

Yao Ming's Chinese representatives want him to play for a team in a city with a large Chinese community, so they're trying to manipulate the process. But why does he need a Chinese audience?

Update:
Either he's a country boy who's afraid of foreign devils, or maybe he just wants decent Chinese food.

How to ensure customer loyalty:
A Beijing restaurant-owner was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sprinkling ground opium poppy over a spicy fish dish in an effort to ensure that diners returned.

All about how cheesy Erin Brockovich is. Citing her archenemy Michael Fumento but never trying to establish whether she actually has any science to back herself up.

Expensive transport. In Houston, whose residents spend 3 percent more than the national average on housing, the average resident devotes 21 percent of his household expenditures -- $9,722 annually -- to transportation. Although most of it comes from the car itself: repairs, insurance, financing and so on, gasoline accounting for a mere 17 percent, Americans are content to gripe about the only part of commuting that's still cheap: the gas.

Singapore Airlines crash: Taiwan blames the flight's crew, while Singapore blames the airport where it happened, accusing it of having done too little to warn pilots that the runway was being turned into a taxiway.

Ahh, democracy!

Subsidies Boosted In Farm Bill Deal: Biggest Producers Would Get Bulk of $50 Billion Increase

Waiters Sue Over Practice Of 'Pooling' Tips, arguing that pooling takes advantage of the customer and the employee, doesn't ensure better service, and doesn't reward employees through their work performance. This suggests tipping is good for the customer, ensures better service, and rewards employees for their work performance. But The Economist wrote:

The hard truth seems to be that tipping does not work. It does not benefit the customer. Nor, in the case of restaurants, does it actually incentivise the waiter, or help the restaurant manager to monitor and assess his staff. The cry of stingy tippers that service people should �just be paid a decent wage� may actually make economic sense.

The New York Times tells us

students who chose a school with lower admissions standards over a more competitive school earned incomes just as high as those who attended the elite college.

and that

even students rejected by a highly selective college did as well as those who attended it.

because

students who apply to schools for the ambitious are ambitious enough to do well just about anywhere.

Why the steel tariffs are a failure. But Americans just refuse to understand.

Guangdong provincial laws stipulate that road tolls can be collected only to pay off construction loans, but a provincial government audit showed that the Luoxi Bridge (spanning a tributary of the Pearl River near Guangzhou) cost $18 million but also that since 1988, it has raked in $111 million in tolls. So a Chinese commuter is suing. But as The Economist points out, through the use of road tolls and fuel taxes,

China plans to foster the use of roads for freight and commercial travel, he says, while discouraging car use for leisure travel and commuting.

Al Qaeda Interrogations Fall Short of the Mark

The effort to obtain information from al Qaeda and Taliban fighters detained at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba has been hampered by inexperienced interrogators and linguists, military bureaucracy and squabbles among private language contractors, according to sources familiar with the government's mission there.

It is difficult to determine the extent to which these linguistic and bureaucratic problems have hindered the intelligence-gathering effort, but they suggest that the United States is woefully short of some of the skills needed in the war on terror.

Shouldn't we find a way to encourage people to study foreign languages?

A step backwards: following suggestions from South Korean officials that human error was to blame, the Chinese media defends the pilot of the Chinese airliner that crashed in South Korea. The defense is partly motivated by Chinese chauvinism, no doubt, and partly by the unwillingness of the Chinese government to recognize that their citizens are subject to the rules of other countries. Not that they're alone in this, but it's a step back from the government's initial openness.