I may not be blinded by the same pro-Israel bias many Americans are unable to see beyond, but even I know headlines like “Israel on baby-killing spree” are a bit melodramatic and overstated, not to mention intentionally hostile and inciting.  That’s from Kuwait, by the way.

Dubya’s at it again.  To wit: “The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments. … Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.”  This is changing the rules after you’ve already fouled.  They broke the laws — many of them, in fact — and now they want to retroactively forgive themselves.  Preposterously disgusting.

Get hitched quick!  “People who never marry have the greatest chance of an earlier death, reveals a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.”  As a gay man, does that mean I should sue government at all levels for endangering my life or, better yet, for conspiracy to commit murder?

I love the way this cat sleeps.  I’m talking about the one in the first three photos in the post.  She apparently sleeps like that quite often.  Beautiful cat.  Hysterical sleeping habit.

It just keeps getting worse.  Only six weeks ago we learned Greenland’s ice sheet was melting twice as fast as we previously thought.  We now learn it’s melting at triple speed.

Even if you don’t know what plan B contraceptives are, take a look at this from The Onion.  Sidesplitting!

More disappointing humanitarian news from Lebanon.  “Humanitarian agencies have warned of an impending health crisis in the beleaguered towns of southern Lebanon as the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.”  Two thirds of all hospitals will likely close by this weekend due to shortages in fuel and other critical supplies (without fuel, generators will go out, and electricity has already been knocked out).  Aid groups say Israel is destroying the only roads left to carry help into stricken areas.  And it goes downhill from there.  But let’s blindly support Israel anyway.

If you have dogs, you’ll want to read this.  There is a type of canine cancer that is both sexually transmitted as well as passed on through any physical contact with a tumor.  Even more disturbing is that the cancer is traceable to a single source: “the tumours had come from outside the dogs’ bodies” as they do not have the same DNA as the host animals.  Strangely, they were able to identify the original source.  “Comparison of the tumour DNA with that of different dog breeds, conducted with geneticists and computer experts in Chicago, showed that the culprit is likely to have been a wolf or ‘old’ Asian dog breed from China or Siberia, such as a Husky or Shih Tzu. By counting the mutations in the DNA, the team also concluded that the dog lived between 250 and 1000 years ago.”

Sectarian violence in Iraq has found a new target.  “The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the ‘immorals’ – homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.”  A vast majority of those fleeing this persecution are requesting asylum in Britain.  [via Pam]

So it wasn’t what many made it out to be…  I mentioned the possibility that the universe was older and bigger than originally thought.  As science goes, it’s interesting and worth critical analysis.  Now we learn the media made a lot more of it than it deserved.  “[I]t [needs] to be investigated further because of the fact that it disagrees with so many other well-established studies.”  Sadly, the science looks a bit overzealous, if not flawed, and the reporting is nothing more than spin.  Pitiful.  And shame on me for not investigating further when I first read an article on it; the science paper itself is less impressive and would have immediately given me pause.

Hence the IDiots’ war on science.  “A comparison of peoples’ views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.”  The rest of the article paints a bleak picture of America based on its low score and the reasons for such a bad showing: “poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians…”