TEN LINKS TIME!

RIGHT WING NUTTER ALERT

It's Georgia's evolution v. 'creationism(?)' debate

As MC Hawking would say: "It's two-thousand-aught-three goddammit!"

Ya know, there is a valid reason why it's called 'creationism.' It is simply an non-testable, non-falsifiable myth that doesn't even make the grade as a hypothesis. A - G - T - C four letters that are found in the simplest virii, to humankind. There is a mountain of data to support evolution, but a theory it shall always remain.

Let's hope for the Georgian youth's sake that reason prevails over superstition.

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IRAQ!

Progress by U.S. forces undermined by frequent attacks on Iraqis

Arab-Americans working in Iraq link the U.S. military, Iraqi people

Iraqis cautious about U.S. plans to reduce forces in Baghdad

Death toll in Iraqi blasts climbs above 100

U.S. casualty numbers continue to climb in Iraq

Just in case anyone thought that things were hunky-dory in Iraq.

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MINDFUL BUSH

Bush planning deeper budget cuts over next 5 years

This is a must read. Here's a taste:

WASHINGTON - President Bush's long-term budget plans include deep spending cuts in programs that he's promoting this year on the campaign trail as among his signature achievements.

The president, for instance, trumpeted his "Jobs for the 21st Century" program during a speech in South Carolina on Thursday. That program, which Bush said aids states and local communities, falls under funds for training and employment, which his budget proposes to increase by nearly $100 million for fiscal 2005.

But the following year, Bush would cut those funds by $36 million, assuming he wins re-election in November.

Other programs that the president's budget proposes to increase next year, then reduce the following year, include the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program; Pell Grants for higher education; special education; Low Income Home Energy Assistance; and the National Institutes of Health.

There is much more at the link above. Now if this doesn't strike one as sledgehammer-to-the-cranium hypocrisy, I think that they must certainly have stopped respiring. Sheeesh.

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SCIENCE!

Much groovy news from the red planet Spirit is back in operation, and Opportunity is performing as advertised. Go and read some. JPL/NASA has the goods.

Hubble sees 'Black Eye' Astronomers speculate. The thinking here is that, galaxy M64, like the majoity of spiral galaxies had all of its stars rotating in the same direction. Now Hubble has shown that there is an outer ring of stars that rotates in the opposite direction as those in the nucleus. Tres cool.

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a human tragedy

This is an old story, but one that I wasn't aware of until today.

How your chocolate may be tainted

DALOA, Ivory Coast - There may be a hidden ingredient in the chocolate cake you baked, the candy bars your children sold for their school fund-raiser or that fudge ripple ice cream cone you enjoyed on Saturday afternoon.

Slave labor.

Forty-three percent of the world's cocoa beans, the raw material in chocolate, come from small, scattered farms in this poor West African country. And on some of the farms, the hot, hard work of clearing the fields and harvesting the fruit is done by boys who were sold or tricked into slavery. Most of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Some are as young as 9.

The lucky slaves live on corn paste and bananas. The unlucky ones are whipped, beaten and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and America.

Aly Diabate was almost 12 when a slave trader promised him a bicycle and $150 a year to help support his poor parents in Mali. He worked for a year and a half for a cocoa farmer who is known as "Le Gros" ("the Big Man"), but he said his only rewards were the rare days when Le Gros' overseers or older slaves didn't flog him with a bicycle chain or branches from a cacao tree.

Cocoa beans come from pods on the cacao tree. To get the 400 or so beans it takes to make a pound of chocolate, the boys who work on Ivory Coast's cocoa farms cut 10 pods from the trees, slice them open, scoop out the beans, spread them in baskets or on mats and cover them to ferment. Then they uncover the beans, put them in the sun to dry, bag them and load them onto trucks to begin the long journey to America or Europe.

Aly said he doesn't know what the beans from the cacao tree taste like after they've been processed and blended with sugar, milk and other ingredients. That happens far away from the farm where he worked, in places such as Hershey, Pa., Milwaukee and San Francisco.

There is much more at link. I had heard, and seen footage of the 'blood diamond' trade in Ivory Coast and elsewhere, but hadn't heard of the chocolate/slave labor nexus. Sad.

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Those are tonight's ten. An easy ten I know, but I did make a slew of immaterial entries today. Cut me some slack ;)