If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.
The father of a young fashion designer stabbed to death by a former pupil of Harrow school who went on to Oxford University yesterday blamed both institutions for failing to tackle the "despicable" drug culture that drove the student to kill. (emphasis mine)Let's dig a little deeper:
William Jaggs stabbed Lucy Braham 66 times in a "ferocious and unrelenting" sexually-motivated attack at her home in north London. She was stabbed more than 16 times on the arms and hands as she tried to defend herself. Jaggs stabbed her 12 times in the chest. After she collapsed face down on the floor in the kitchen, he stabbed her 33 times in the back. The killer then tried to carve her torso with a saw, and used a pair of garden secateurs to attempt to chop off her thumb. When officers arrived Jaggs was standing over the body, holding the knife towards them. He then stabbed himself 32 times and required emergency surgery.
The Old Bailey heard that 23-year-old Jaggs became a drug user at Harrow school, where his father was a teacher.But the headline - 'Undiagnosed schizophrenic kills young woman and then attempts to take own life' doesn't appeal as much to The Telegraph as 'Drug crazed old Harrovian/Oxford student in murderous sex assault'.
One pyschiatrist said that tests carried out after the killing showed he was showing early signs of mental disorder and "severe emotional disturbance" from the age of 14. The court heard that Jaggs had visited a GP in Oxford, who gave him prescription drugs after he complained of being depressed. But the doctor failed to diagnose the signs of schizophrenia.
Jaggs pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge, Mr Justice Bean, told him he might never be released and said doctors had described him as dangerous, and a grave and immediate risk to others. Jaggs, who was judged by psychiatrists to be suffering from schizophrenia, was sent to Broadmoor secure hospital indefinitely.
...mixed-race children can receive a hostile welcome from both white and black communities. Being neither one thing nor another may get you on the cover of Vogue, but it isn't an easy way to make friends. But this is 2007, surely things are more enlightened than that? I hope so, but I fear not.
One reason for my fear is my own mixed reactions to my daughter. Don't get me wrong, I love her. She is the child I didn't think I'd have after my first marriage broke up. She is the only granddaughter in our family and we all dote on her. But when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me.
But it is more than that. I am frightened, frightened of others' reactions to her, as well as my own. I didn't think of myself as racist and yet my daughter has shown me a side of myself about which I feel deeply uncomfortable. Even admitting to having mixed feelings about her not being blonde and blue eyed, I feel disloyal and incredibly guilty. I know the obvious comment is that I must have known how a child of our union would look when I married an Indian man, but it is a wise woman who thinks that far ahead when she falls in love. (emphasis mine)
Immigrants are "better citizens" than those born in Britain, a migration expert has said. Keith Best, head of the Immigration Advisory Service - a government-backed charity which receives £13million of public money every year said, "These people have actively sought British citizenship because they want to make a contribution to the UK. I am not sure how many people born in this country have the same commitment. The tests for citizenship are greater than they have ever been. We are now turning immigrants into better citizens than people born with a British passport."
The scheme was launched at an initial cost of £42m and has since been given a further £77m by the Department of Health. Every child aged four to six was to receive a piece of fruit or vegetable every day at school. It was, says the evaluation study published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, "the largest scale intervention in English children's diet since the introduction of free school milk in 1946"...But today's study of 3,703 children in the north of England aged four to six, who were given free fruit between February and December 2004, found that by the end of the period their diet was unchanged.
The not-in-my-back-yard [nimby] attitude has been overtaken by build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere-near-anything [banana] attitude. There is a huge anti-development, anti-investment culture that pervades planning authorities.
So now Homeland Security hobgoblin Michael Chertoff has a "gut feeling" about a major terror operation in summer production? Frankly I'm surprised that the flesh-draped haunter of marble halls has a disgestive pouch worthy of the name, never mind one that receives vague transmissions through the data fog of terrorist "chatter." I hope his gut feeling proves to be a false alarm, nothing more than a red bean salad or overrich dessert that didn't agree with his system, because I have tickets to see Patti Lupone in Gypsy in late July and I'd hate to have anything disrupt that particular rendezvous with destiny. Al Qaeda better not try pulling any fancy shit, that's all.
Many of these veterans returned home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the war and the way it is portrayed by the US government and American media. The war the vets described is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war in Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.Via Lenin
"I'll tell you the point where I really turned," said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. "I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg.... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn't crying, wasn't anything, it just looked at me like--I know she couldn't speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?... I was just like, This is--this is it. This is ridiculous."
