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By Katherine Boo
By Gina Nahai $11.20
$17
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 BlatantNews.com (CC-BY)
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A couple of political scientists out of Penn State University went looking into the way evolution is taught in classrooms, and discovered that the vast majority of teachers are overly cautious in their presentation of the concept, contrary to National Research Council guidelines. (more)
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Faced with the happy prospect of describing what one MSNBC reporter could not—the 41 combinations of sex that Americans are having, according to a new survey—Stephen Colbert breaks it down with the help of his articulated friends Not Barbie and Samwise Gamgee.
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By Ruth Marcus — It’s not time for presidential panic, but lawmakers up for re-election could be in a different boat if Obama’s ratings stay in this slump.
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 AP / Sergei Chuzavkov
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President Barack Obama’s on-the-job approval rating is slipping, with two polls in the past week showing that fewer than half of those surveyed are happy with the way he is conducting the business of the presidency.
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 Flickr / Rachel Zack
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That recession is over statement looks more unfortunate every day. The Department of Agriculture disclosed Monday that a little more than 49 million Americans had trouble putting food on the table last year—the highest percentage since the government began keeping track in 1995, up 13 million people from the previous year. (continued)
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 White House / Pete Souza
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A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that people in 25 countries view the U.S. more favorably now that President Obama is in office than they did during the Bush II era, but it’s not a worldwide trend—Israel and parts of the Muslim world are among the exceptions.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama speaks disdainfully of “ideology,” but there comes a time when first principles need to be articulated. Conservatives have entered this fight with guns blazing while progressives have hidden behind a Maginot Line armed only with the word pragmatism.
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 Flickr / PinkMoose
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The percentage of Americans who follow no religion has doubled since 1990, according to a new survey of religious identity. At 15 percent, they are now the third largest group, behind Catholics and Baptists. The Christian majority has dwindled by 10 points in the last 18 years.
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 timesonline.co.uk
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It seems the British have found a way to cope with the global economic crisis. A survey by the Terrence Higgins Trust, a UK AIDS charity, found that sex is the most popular free activity in the empire, beating out window shopping and going to a museum.
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 bfs.admin.ch
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If first you don’t succeed, get a new planet. A new World Wildlife Fund survey has found that, given the current rate of global consumption and taking into account the capacity of the Earth to regenerate its own resources, the human species will need an entirely new planet by mid-2030 to keep up with our demand for resources and waste disposal.
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 msnbc.com
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An ongoing Swedish study has shown that 70-year-olds are more likely now to have sex—and women to have orgasms—than in any decade since the 1970s. Sixty-eight percent of married men and 56% of married women reported having sex after turning 70, an increase of about 15% in both cases.
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 commons.wikimedia.org
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Despite spending countless billions and passing draconian laws, the United States is anything but a drug-free zone. The percentages of those in the U.S. who have tried marijuana or cocaine are greater than the percentages of any other country surveyed, according to a new study. The Netherlands, which has notoriously lax drug policies, had less than half the percentage of marijuana users and an even lower level of cocaine dabblers relative to the U.S.
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A survey released Friday showed that U.S. consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest point since the “stagflation” of the early 1980s. According to the survey, lower-income households, citing rising food and fuel prices, were the main source of the drop in confidence.
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 White House / Eric Draper
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According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 82 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. The same survey recorded a record-low approval rating for President Bush. Sixty-two percent of Republicans, a group that still favors the president, take a negative view of the country’s direction.
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A new poll shows Hillary Clinton closing the gap in North Carolina, a state that has been firmly in Barack Obama’s corner for weeks. According to the survey, Clinton has made gains among white voters, which many will doubtlessly attribute to the re-emergence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The race remains tight in Indiana.
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 White House photo / Paul Morse
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George W. Bush has said that history will determine the greatness of his presidency. According to an informal poll by George Mason University’s History News Network, 98 percent of historians polled rated Bush’s presidency a failure. Sixty-one percent ranked him last among presidents, while only 4 percent placed him among the top two-thirds.
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 Flickr / Llima
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A new poll shows Barack Obama taking a lead over Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania for the first time. His two-point advantage marks a shift of 28 points from the last Public Policy Polling survey, which was conducted just before Obama’s race speech. Other polls show Clinton holding a lead, though by diminishing margins.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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A prominent Antarctic scientist says a large ice shelf is disintegrating much faster than he predicted. In fact, it’s “hanging by a thread,” according to David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. The concern over melting ice shelves has to do with the tremendous amount of water they store. The more they melt, the more sea level rises.
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 AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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The tragic task of tallying the number of Iraqis who have been killed in the war has been attempted by various parties with vastly different results, largely because of built-in logistical issues, and now the WHO’s health ministry has released its own figures while acknowledging the impossibility of precision.
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Zogby International has issued a statement in defense of its poll showing Hillary Clinton, unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, losing to any of the top five Republican candidates. Clinton’s chief political strategist dismissed the survey as “meaningless,” and Zogby shot back, noting that “no other campaign has made as many requests for Zogby polling data over the years than [Mark] Penn has made on behalf of Clinton.”
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 trb.com
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Barack Obama has taken the lead in Iowa, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. However, his lead is within the poll’s margin of error, so he remains in a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Much of Obama’s strength may come from “new direction” voters, and the sense that voters have, according to the survey, that he is “the most honest and trustworthy.”
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By Eugene Robinson — Not only are Rudy Giuliani’s figures about prostate cancer survival rates in the United States and Britain wildly misleading, but he’s also wrong on his general point: that a single-payer system, of the kind that Republicans call “socialized” medicine, inevitably would deliver inferior care.
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 change-links.org
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The Iraqi government has ordered employees of the North Carolina-based security firm Blackwater USA to leave the country and is opening a criminal investigation following Sunday’s deadly shootout in Baghdad, during which a group of Blackwater contractors escorting a convoy of U.S. officials opened fire on nearby civilians.
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 AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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As more members of Congress from both sides of the aisle register their dissatisfaction with President Bush’s leadership, their sentiments appear to be shared by the public—as evidenced by the results of a new survey by the American Research Group, which found that 71 percent of Americans “disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — So when Democratic presidential candidates get together, they argue about who has the best healthcare plan. When Republicans have a big discussion, it’s about torture and who’ll use it when.
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An Army survey of troops in Iraq has found some disturbing attitudes, and recommends shorter deployments for the mentally exhausted soldiers. Asked whether civilians should be treated with dignity and respect, less than half said yes and more than a third found torture acceptable.
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 webpages.charter.net
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According to a new study by researchers at Florida State University, many Americans disapprove of their boss’ behavior. Twenty-three percent said their superiors blamed others to protect themselves while 31 percent reported getting the silent treatment.
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 softvote.com
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According to the latest Newsweek poll, President Bush’s approval rating has sunk so low he’s in Dick Cheney territory at 31 percent, a record for the president. The same data confirms the suggestion that Bush’s unpopularity did more to win Congress for the Democrats than did their own candidates.
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According to the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll, the Democrats’ advantage among likely voters has shriveled from last month’s high of 23 points to 7. Still, the numbers bear a close similarity to results heading into the 1994 election that gave Republicans control of Congress. (h/t: Slate)
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A recent set of polls conducted in Britain, Canada, Mexico and Israel found a majority of people there believe the U.S. has made the world less safe. In the British survey, George W. Bush was seen as a greater threat to world peace than either Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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 washingtonpost.com
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A survey team made up of Iraqi physicians and epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins University has determined that the U.S. invasion of Iraq caused the deaths of roughly 655,000 people. The estimate is more than 20 times higher than one Bush gave in December, but the researchers believe they have substantial evidence to back the claim.
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