globeandmail.com: Saudis close Canadian education booths staffed by women

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

globeandmail.com: Saudis close Canadian education booths staffed by women
TORONTO — A Canadian embassy booth and another for a private Montreal college were shut down at a Saudi Arabia education fair last week because they were being run by women.Organizers for the Canadian contingent say three women staffing the booths were forced to leave the fair by the country’s religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, even though they had received permission to be there.
George Chrysomilides, president of the Canadian Education Network, said there hasn’t been an incident like this in the 10 years Canada has attended the event, and he plans to get to the bottom of it.
“From what I hear … the religious police were very rude. They shouted at them in a way that was disrespectful and they shut down the booth, the Canadian embassy booth as well as the LaSalle College booth,” Mr. Chrysomilides said in an interview yesterday.
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And these are some of our best “friends” over there. Primitive screwheads.

thegavel: Did The White House Miss It? National Guard Readiness Is A Serious Issue For The States

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

thegavel: Did The White House Miss It? National Guard Readiness Is A Serious Issue For The States
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=349
Today, White House spokesman Tony Snow claimed the crisis in Kansas was not a result of the National Guard being strained and stretched thin by the war in Iraq, but rather a result of Governor Kathleen Sebelius’ failure to communicate the state’s needs to the federal government. But the problems with National Guard readiness country-wide have been at the forefront of the Iraq debate this year and last. In fact, Gov. Sebelius sounded the alarm last year when she told the New York Times, “We are not only missing National Guard personnel…We are also missing a lot of the equipment that’s used to deal with situations at home, day in and day out.” Perhaps the White House missed it.
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Not to mention the fact that Bush has basically federalized National Guard troops. The Executive Branch now has primary control of the NG. It’s total crap to try and blame this on the Governor of Kansas. This change in command has happened on Bush’s watch. The National Guard of each state was formerly, and rightly, under the control of each State’s respective Governor. Another effect of this is that the states no longer have any protection from the Federal military to protect their rights (if it came to it).

John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007
Where the States lost control of the Guard
National Governors Association Objection Letter
Where the Governors all objected
Stateline.org article on loss
Where the loss is declared

Women have played major role in history — from the start, authors assert

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Women have played major role in history — from the start, authors assert
Of greatest import in this book is the idea that women have always been major players – not simply baby-machines who tended to the children, rustled up roots, collected nuts and berries and relied on macho male hunters to bring home the bacon.

In fact, the authors’ spadework led them to a striking conclusion: that “female humans have been the chief engine in the unprecedented high level of human sociability; were the inventors of the most useful of tools – called the String Revolution; have shared equally in the provision of food for human societies; almost certainly drove the human invention of language; and were the ones who created agriculture.”

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But of course.

Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans
The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society.

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Very interesting stuff. I’d be curious to see what this protein did in the other primates and in dolphins and squid.