Yves Montand - Les Feuilles Mortes

…in Bhutan.   In my mind, utilitarianism is still the most legitimate guiding principle for governments — you know, trying to do the stuff that makes it easier for people to lead rich, fulfilling, happy, lives.

While GDP is a piece of the puzzle, it’s far from the complete picture — it’s a means to end, rather than the end in its own right.  And it correlates to happiness to varying degrees:  GDP is probably a better indicator of ‘GNH’ in a country with an equitable distribution of wealth than in one riddled with inequities, in one with industry that doesn’t pollute than in one that does, etc…

It’s nice to see this stated as a guiding principle in burgeoning democracy.  (Info on how GNH is measured, here.)

NO free ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s is supposed to be giving out a free scoop of ice cream today from 5pm to 8pm to celebrate democracy and stuff — and that seems to be true elsewhere around the country — but the gentleman at the Meeting Street location says they will not be participating. Well I, for one, will be taking my fat American ass elsewhere. 421.1114

Indeed, the problem appears to be fewer mammals.

All of your cute n cuddly favorites, from the super intelligent dolphins, to bulky, lovable whales, to apes and cats and hyraxes are dying off in a horrible evolutionary cataclysm, termed an “extinction crisis” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the I.U.C.N., a network of campaign groups, governments, scientists and other experts.

The group’s annual Red List just came out, and it includes at least of quarter of all of earth’s mammals. That. Blows. So. Much. In only slightly less depressing news, a third of the planet’s amphibians are also in the crapper. While I’d like to believe otherwise, I have the feeling that the Chevy Volt is not going to solve this problem all by itself. And as Dose readers know, my enduring raison d’etre is the hope that, somewhere in the Yangtze, the Baiji lives.

Meanwhile, some “leading geneticist” says that human evolution is breaking down because men aren’t waiting until they’re old to have kids, because old men’s sperm is more unstable and therefore more likely to contain the mutations that power the evolutionary process. Oh, that and now you can be a total moron and yet manage not be killed off by nature before procreating.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about what with our mammal problems. more »

Prisons are supposed to make us safer, right? Prisons are supposed to be places of rehabilitation, reflection, and order, right? The AP reports:

CRANSTON, R.I. (AP) - An inmate at the state prison is facing a felony assault charge for allegedly beating another prisoner. George Ortiz is scheduled to be arraigned in District Court in Warwick on Monday afternoon on a charge of felony assault. He’s serving a sentence for domestic assault.

Ortiz is accused of assaulting Robert Bainter during a fight Friday in the prison’s minimum security building. Bainter was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with a serious head injury and was listed in critical condition. The Rhode Island State police are investigating the incident and say some kind of argument between the two led to the assault.

The ProJo says:

State police Maj. Stephen O’Donnell said yesterday that on July 4, Ortiz and Robert Bainter, 20, got into an argument, and then Ortiz hit Bainter in the head three times. Bainter fell, striking his head and suffering severe head trauma, O’Donnell said.

Apparently, Ortiz assaulted Bainter with a sock full of Combination Locks.  Do our inmates have rights to life, safety, and security? Yes, and this tragedy underscores the ways in which the hollow austerity of the ACI does little to rehabilitate offenders and disregards the well-being of it inmates.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWfkP6-VF24]

Yup, that’s an alien all right! No doubt about it! I mean, it sure looks like what an alien is supposed to look like. Thank god these nutbags from Colorado were able to capture it on film and then try to make money off it!

The Denver man who is pushing a ballot measure to have the city form an “ET Commission” showed video of what he says is an alien Friday morning at a news conference. Reporters were allowed to view the video, but only a still image of it was released to the media.

Jeff Peckman said aliens visit his friend Stan Romanke all the time.

Romanke, who lives in Colorado Springs, allegedly recorded the alien video while living in Nebraska.

The pair has a deal with a documentary company for the rights to the video.

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What’s crazier than a ten-year old giving birth?

A single human giving birth 18 times!

The Duggars’ oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children—whose names start with the letter J—are home-schooled.

Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.

While some people might try to stereotype a family in Arkansas with 18 kids, all of whose names start with the letter J, presumably in honor of their father, Jim Bob, I have to say that the couple seem happy, sane and wholesome on the youtubez:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVFjPoTj3ew]

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This is really good news — and as such won’t get mentioned on talk radio or be the subject of Projo staff editorials:

Rhode Island had the best record for worker safety in 2006, with the lowest rate of job fatalities, according to the annual Death on the Job report scheduled for release today by the AFL-CIO. The study includes how many people lost their lives or were injured at workplaces.

Rhode Island’s rate for worker fatalities was 1.8 per 100,000 workers, slightly less than half the national average of 4 per 100,000 workers, the national labor organization’s data show. Rhode Island tied with New Hampshire for the lowest worker fatality rate and Alaska had the highest. In total, Rhode Island had 10 deaths and 17,200 cases of work place injuries and illnesses in 2006.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToZl8WSVke0]

Yeah:

More than 98,000 people in the U.S. are awaiting a lifesaving organ transplant at any given time. More than 17 people die every day because they are unable to get the organ transplant they need. David Gitlitz, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, was approached by seven different people offering to share their liver with him.

April is my birthday month, and I’m pretty excited about being way on the other side of 25.

I’ve weathered the “quarter-life crisis” that Oprah started talking about just as I graduated from college. I’m done with it!

Now, according to the London Times, another miserable period of malaise awaits me around my 35th birthday.

The cleverly descriptive buzzword: the thrisis.

If you’re in your mid-thirties, hassled by the dramas of juggling work and family, doubting decisions you’ve made professionally and personally, panicked by the aging process and dismayed that your years of snogging in nightclubs are behind you, then you’re probably in the grip of an early midlife crisis – otherwise known as a thrisis.

Okay, so, I can’t look forward to my 30s, or my 40s…Um, can I be happy in my 70s?

How about we create a buzzword for all the joys of old age? I need something to look forward to.

This is why you read the Dose, after all — cutting edge info on the search for extra-solar life. This is from friend-of-blog Steve, who’s in charge of figuring out which asteroids are dense enough to be blown up, Armaggedon style.

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-058

HUBBLE DETECTS ORGANIC MOLECULE ON AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET

WASHINGTON - NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 19, to report on the first-ever detection of the organic molecule methane in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.

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Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8]

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

Man, I hate jokes about Canadians — almost as much as I hate jokes about Jersey. But then, this seems like a story that’d be equally comfortable in either locale. Or in Providence:

GABRIOLA ISLAND, British Columbia — Should a fourth human foot float ashore here in the evergreen Gulf Islands off the west coast of Canada, the person who finds it would no doubt want to know the answers to three questions.

Is it a right foot?

Is it wearing a running shoe?

Is the shoe a size 12?

After all, for the first three feet that surfaced on the rocky coastlines of three separate islands in the Strait of Georgia over the last six months, the answer has been yes in nearly every case. The only uncertainty is what size shoe No. 3 was wearing when it was spotted by a boater on the beach of remote Valdez Island on Feb. 8. The coroner’s office, facing a bit of a news media blitz, has yet to say.

Changes in the Andes: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Inter-American Relations will take place at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies on February 12-13. The conference will analyze the current democratic transformation in the region, its implications for US and international policy, and its lessons for other world regions.

Keynote roundtable: Mario Gustavo Guzman Saldana, Bolivian Ambassador to the US; Luis Benigno Gallegos Chiriboga, Ecuadorian Ambassador to the US; and Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Venezuelan Ambassador to the US - introduced by former US Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

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