In an experiment carried out by University of Chicago neuroscientists, pairs of rats that normally shared a cage were placed in a special area, where one was confined to a closed tube with a door that could be opened from the outside while the other remained able to roam around freely. The researchers observed that "the free rat acted more agitated when its cagemate was restrained, compared to its activity when the rat was placed in a cage with an empty restrainer."

This kind of "emotional contagion" had been observed previously in tats - but what happened next was more unexpected. As described by Science Daily, "After several daily restraint sessions, the free rat learned how to open the restrainer door and free its cagemate. Though slow to act at first, once the rat discovered the ability to free its companion, it would take action almost immediately upon placement in the test arena."

"We are not training these rats in any way," one of the designers of the experiment explained. "These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal. We're not showing them how to open the door, they don't get any previous exposure on opening the door, and it's hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying, and it eventually works."

Further variations on the experiment appeared to confirm that the rats were acting out of pure empathy. For example, they would not bother to open the door when a toy rat was placed in the tube. However, they would open it even if it released their companion into a separate area, meaning they were not just looking for company.

RawStory: Study shows lab rats would rather free a friend than eat chocolate

Multimillionaire accepts more multi-milions of dollars from multibillionaires to work for them instead of some other multibillionaires. Many hundredaires and thousandaires upset.

Today was the day we went to get the tree.  Since the girls were little, we've always gone to the same place to get our tree - a small, local nursery with a great Christmas shop filled with unusual ornaments, gifts, candles and greenery.  And cookies and warm apple cider for a little pick-me-up.

Always find an ornament or three I can't live without, something that reminds me of someone I care about; I almost always buy ornaments to give around the office - I mean, who can't use an unusual ornament to hang on the tree, right?

Then, it's home to rearrange furniture so the tree can go in the right spot - then hauling all the decorations up from the basement, getting out the lights and turning the house into Christmas.

And just to prove this isn't just like a Currier and Ives painting, we almost always have the same little arguments, too...which side of the tree should face forward, whether there are enough lights on the tree, who hid the box with the stockings...seriously, every year!

Most of our tree ornaments are not the usual colored balls - they're all different, and, it seems, each has its own memory or story that we share each time we put them on the tree.  Some have come from now-deceased relatives, and they evoke memories of their own.

The tree is up, the mantel decorated, a nice fire going in the fireplace; it's been a good day.

from the latter:

I know that you are preoccupied (no pun intended) with `saving' slum dwellers, with `saving' poor third world women workers -- yes that's who they are in your eyes, nothing more, nothing less -- and with the new fad of "occupying" things, you just want to #occupy mumbaislums; let's just pause to think how bad an idea this is. I was at the meeting when people of the #occupymumbai movement (a few mumbaiites and many westerners) devised the plan to ABANDON SWEATSHOP LABOUR!11!11 by persuading women in the Dharavi slums to stop working, because such imperialist exploitation should come to an end now!11!!

I was only present at your meeting because I work with a collective that works with the workers you are trying to `save'. It was pathetic to see you go on and on about how the leather industry from the Dharavi slums is booming and that most of it is exploitative sweatshop labour, because the point isn't shutting down businesses, it is to fight for wages that will help the workers to earn more than just subsistence money. Leaving jobs is not their option, boycotting the products they manufacture will just put them out of work.

Relegating all discourse around slums to be one of violence, exploitation, abuse is nothing but a form of erasure, of painfully re-drawing, re-framing these workers in solely the victim narrative. Yes, these are their realities. So are networks and connections among most women workers, them organising and forming a trade union, links between the main hub of Mumbai slums (i.e. Dharavi) to other slums. Sure, they don't have a manifesto or pamplets, don't even try to pretend their work is worth any less than what it is -- a powerful network of labourers all across Mumbai, don't you see, they are already `saving' themselves? If you want to help, go to their meetings, don't invite a member of the English-speaking collective working with these women to be your bridge to them. Engage with them, they have so much to say and teach you.

American citizens are celebrating in the streets as their government snatched final victory in the War on Terror on 1 Dec. 2011 -- through a maneuver that used legislative brilliance rather than bullets.
[snip]
The moment of victory came when 61 senators passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2012 that allows the indefinite military detention on American soil of American citizens who are merely suspected of having connections to terrorism. To understand the genius of this legislation, some background is necessary.
[snip]
What Senators McCain (R, Arizona) and Levin (D, Michigan), and those who voted for the legislation that they sponsored, cleverly realized, however, is that since the terrorists are attacking America for its freedoms and "way of life", the only sure way to win the war is to eliminate all of those freedoms and way of life so that the terrorists will have no further reason to fight. (This is why the comprehensive laws that already exist in the USA that make the aiding and abetting of any terrorist organization or activity a crime, but leave untouched the inalienable rights of American citizens, simply do not suffice.)
[snip]
We should be glad that we no longer have to wait for the smoking gun to come in the form of a terrorist food hoarder's giant mushroom: the National Defense Authorization Act now permits the feds to lock her up forever on suspicion alone, without all the difficulties that attend a trial.

God Bless America.

America Wins War On Terror (9-11-01 To 12-1-11)

My theory is that, among the people who dislike him, non-football fans and football fans dislike him for two different reasons.

Non-football fans who dislike him are driven mostly by the culture wars.

Football fans (both well-known and not) who dislike him are driven by their bruised egos; they thought Tebow would flop spectacularly and they made a lot of jokes when Orton was benched that live on forever in the Twitterverse, ESPN YouTube clips, and in the collective memory of the sports bar.

For football fans, the religious stuff is a fodder for jokes -- friendly ones if you like what he's doing as a player, barbed ones if you don't like it. It's not something that they actually are utilizing to analyze Tebow.

Anyway...