From the NYT:

In the view of Dr. Richard W. Wrangham, a professor of anthropology at Harvard, the preparing, cooking and sociable eating of food are so central to the human experience that the culinary arts may well be what made us human in the first place.

many experts have failed to appreciate that the most salient dietary difference between humans and other species: they go for raw; we like it hot.

According to the NY Times,

growing enthusiasm for trade among the more stable African economies is mirrored by a more general acceptance of trade among groups that had long been skeptical that international commerce benefited anyone but big corporations in the rich nations.

(via Instapundit).

China says it is planning to establish a base on the Moon to exploit its mineral resources. I find it annoyingly hypocritical of the Commies colonizing the moon, and also feel they can't really afford it at this point.

A slightly different take from Rand Simberg.

According to this chain letter, 99% of women will be "exposed to", or is it "victims of," violent crimes. But according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the rate for the entire population isn't nearly that high.

So I'm getting personal again. As of the past few days, the weather here is really hot & humid; note the lows. Whereas it seems unseasonably cool in Carbondale, not to mention Tallahassee.

On new religions:

The big 'problem cult' of the twenty-first century will be Christianity.

The natural sex ratio of newborn infants should be 105-107 males per 100 females, but according to the results of a the most recent Chinese national census, more than 116 male births were recorded for every 100 female births.

More than 300 out of 820 women surveyed in a central Chinese village had abortions and more than a third of them admitted they were trying to select their offspring's sex.

For political reasons, the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans illegally in China have never been accorded protected political refugee status under United Nations covenants (which would make it illegal to return them to their homeland), even though the United Nations high commissioner for refugees has said that a large number of them probably qualify under treaties that China and the United States have both signed.

When government regulators try to save money & lives by balancing risks & rewards, they get accused of corporate coddling. I bet this policy won't last long. Too bad.
Here we are:

Last week, his office signed off on a rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency that will let companies dump waste from mountaintop coal mining operations into rivers and streams.

From the same day's paper:
Ruling on Dumping of Mine Waste Stuns Coal Industry that

also rebuked the Bush administration, which last week issued rules removing a legal impediment to mining companies dumping dirt and rock waste into waterways.

Smallpox Vaccine Tradeoff

A mass campaign to vaccinate Americans against smallpox might result in 200 to 300 deaths and make several thousand people severely ill -- yet could save thousands of lives in the event of a bioterrorist attack with the virus, according to research presented yesterday at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting in Baltimore.

As a doc says,

For a mass vaccination campaign to succeed, Americans would have to accept "some numbers of deaths and several thousand illnesses. Today's U.S. population is not accustomed to that level of side effects and deaths from a vaccine."

You can't reduce risk to nothing, but I don't think the American people will ever be able to believe that.

More oppression of the Chinese peasantry: by closing privately run schools for children of migrant workers, Chinese government officials claim they are trying to protect children from dirty, unsafe school environments; yet they refuse to permit the children to enroll in public schools. The result: generations of already disadvantaged migrant children condemned to low-paying, low-skill jobs. At a meeting of school owners and Shanghai district officials, the officials told the school owners:

"Your fifth-graders couldn't pass a third-grade exam at public schools. We can't believe you are taking good care of those children as you say," Dachang district Communist Party Secretary Zhu Jinzhong told the meeting.

The owners were given no chance to respond. But at one point, Zhu conceded that the city has no alternative plans for educating migrant children, who he said outnumber children of legal residents in Dachang district.

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.