A real and serious issue with exporting any European or Japanese model of universal health coverage to the USA is the size and diversity of the nation. The attempt to micro-manage the British Health Service - by now reduced, thanks to the growth of local parliaments, to England alone - from Westminster is notoriously one of the major problems with ( Read more... )

There are some mistakes which humanity has made and repeated so often ( Read more... )

One of the things that really annoy me as a Catholic is when people like... well, let us just say, some who were once friends of mine... assimilate the Catholic faith to the least acceptable features of Protestant Fundamentalism, or, even worse, Osama Bin Laden's religious views. There is no way to convince them of the opposite - any more than you ( Read more... )

(NOTE by FPB: this is particularly significant for me because I have long had big trouble with the notion of Cro-Magnon Man being closely associated with, or even the same species as, Neanderthal Man)

History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud

Flamboyant anthropologist falsified dating of key discoveries

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As I wandered around the Internet last night, something nasty crawled out of it and took control of my browser. Now, not only does the browser point regularly at some stupid porn site or other, but even when I key in addresses I want, it from time to time forces me onto one of its porn sites anyway. It even happened when I was trying to access ( Read more... )