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Featured Term (selected at random):ABULIA In Catholic morality an emotional disorder that either totally or at least partially prevents a person from making decisions. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

D.C. ethics board: Laws on behavior of government officials ‘not sufficient’By Tim Craig, Published: October 26 The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics said Wednesday that local laws governing the behavior of government officials “are not sufficient,” but D.C. Council members remain split over how to reform the system. With D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) pledging that an ethics bills will pass this year, more than 30 people testified at a hearing Wednesday, offering suggestions for enacting more oversight over the city’s elected leaders. Until now, the authority for policing local elected officials has largely rested with three-member...

A New Jersey first grade teacher who wrote that she was a "warden for future criminals" on Facebook says she was speaking "out of frustration to their behavior." Jennifer O'Brien defended herself Wednesday at an administration hearing that will determine whether the tenured Paterson teacher should lose her job. O'Brien told an administrative law judge she wrote the post in exasperation because six or seven unruly first-graders kept disrupting her lessons. She said one boy had recently hit her. The teacher posted her remark to 333 friends on March 28. However, it was forwarded and led critics to call her...

A pill to enhance moral behaviour, a treatment for racist thoughts, a therapy to increase your empathy for people in other countries - these may sound like the stuff of science fiction but with medicine getting closer to altering our moral state, society should be preparing for the consequences, according to a book that reviews scientific developments in the field. Drugs such as Prozac that alter a patient's mental state already have an impact on moral behaviour, but scientists predict that future medical advances may allow much more sophisticated manipulations. The field is in its infancy, but "it's very far...

In early June, Lynda Sorenson, 52, had gone back to community college in Tucson in hopes of getting back on the job market. One of her classes was a basic algebra class--and one of her classmates was Jared Loughner, now identified by authorities as the man who killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in a shooting rampage Saturday. Sorenson's e-mails to friends from last summer, provided to the Washington Post, reveal her growing alarm at Loughner's strange and disruptive behavior in class.

THE release of a notorious killer who shot dead a German tourist and then savagely attacked his family has been criticised by MSPs as another example of "soft-touch Scotland". James Boyce, 70, is to be freed after serving 17 years for killing Thomas Boedeker, even after being told that he would be locked up for at least 20. The brutal murder and Boyce's savage attack on the victim's family stunned the quiet community of Cairnryan, near Stranraer.

Pronounced differences in male and female behaviors can be detected in the womb, according to Australian medical researchers, who say the sex of the baby determines responses. Those responses are specific and telling. "The male, when mum is stressed, pretends it's not happening and keeps growing, so he can be as big as he possibly can be," said Vicki Clifton, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Adelaide who led the study.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a report Thursday that the community organizing group ACORN engaged in "highly inappropriate behavior" in the state but violated no criminal law. Brown's office launched an investigation of ACORN's California operations at the request of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last September after the release of videos that appeared to show ACORN employees advising people about how to engage in prostitution and other other illegal activity.

The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms. A German-Spanish research group, split between the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), is using the principles of an iconic quantum mechanics thought experiment - Schrödinger's superpositioned cat – to test for quantum properties in objects composed of as many as one billion atoms, possibly including the flu virus. New research...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Despite studies suggesting that erectile dysfunction drugs promote irresponsible sexual behavior, men who receive prescriptions for them are no more likely to engage in risky sex acts than men who do not receive prescriptions for the medications, according to a University of Florida study. “For this study we took the perspective of a doctor who may worry that prescribing erectile dysfunction drugs to patients could contribute to the spread of HIV,” said lead researcher Dr. Robert Cook. “The findings from this study should provide some reassurance to health-care providers that erectile dysfunction drugs appear to be prescribed...

Earlier in the year Jonah Lehrer explained in the New Yorker how cool deferred gratification is and how we need to teach it to our kids, the younger the better. Now, in the New York Times, John Tierney suggests that it's really an insidious habit for grownups, sacrificing real enjoyment for the mirage of an even better future. Can everything good be bad for you? Of course the respective sets of behavioral research described might be consistent. Children who master delaying pleasure become superior achievers and thus have the frequent flier balances that they are so counterproductively hoarding. The same...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who don't show normal fear responses to loud, unpleasant sounds at the age of 3 may be more likely to commit crimes as adults, according to a new study. Yu Gao and colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom compared results from a study of almost 1,800 children born in 1969 and 1970 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to criminal records of group members 20 years later. At age 3, the children were tested to gauge their level of "fear conditioning," or fear of consequences. The idea is that children...

Are chemicals in our environment masculinizing girls and feminizing boys? A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that this is the case, and one of the latest studies has linked exposure to a substance known as bisphenol A, or BPA, with aggressive behavior in girls. Liz Szabo reports on the research in USA Today, writing, “In the study of 249 pregnant women, the first to examine the effects of BPA on children's behavior, researchers found that girls ... were more likely to be aggressive if their mothers had high levels of BPA — an estrogen-like chemical used in many consumer...

For many, the ability to deal with a complex issue like universal health care insurance reform equates to listening repeatedly, to the same song over and over. For most of us, after a while you get tired of listening and turn it off. This is precisely what's happening to the universal health care debate, America's public is tuning out. Obama knows this, and will thus capitalize on a sleepy public, who's current behavior will allow him and his supporters to enact universal health care reforms, with unfavorable results for most of us.

The Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., forever changed after the events of April 16, 2007. A student, Seung-Hui Cho, gunned down 27 students and five faculty members before killing himself. Vice President of Student Affairs Lee Bird said shortly after the Virginia Tech incident, OSU expanded its Threat Assessment Team and renamed it the Behavioral Consultation Team. The team is a specially trained group of professional staff members from several university departments with mental health, student development, law enforcement, academic, administrative and legal expertise, according to its Web site. The team investigates and evaluates threats and other concerning behavior...

"EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour" The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour"." SNIPPET: "A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence"." SNIPPET: "Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police...

NEW YORK (AFP) – US President Barack Obama on Monday warned Wall Street it must not return to the "reckless behavior" and "unchecked excess" which he blamed for unleashing the global financial crisis. The president, in a major economic speech at the heart of the mighty US financial system just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, laid out a wide ranging prescription for rebuilding the US finance system. He said the crisis was a "collective failure" of Washington, Wall Street and across America, vowed to press G20 powers for action on regulatory reform, and cautioned top executives not to...

ome Amherst Town Board members question whether Chuck E. Cheese’s really is the place “where a kid can be a kid.” In a 3-3 vote this week, the board failed to approve a game license for the kids-themed food and entertainment venue on Harlem Road, citing concerns about violent video games and bad behavior by patrons that require police intervention. Council Member Shelly Schratz said she was disturbed by several “action-packed shoot-and-kill games” that were accessible to children as young as 4. “When I see 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds playing those games, when all the time we’re opening the paper and seeing...

I am a big fan of Madison Police Chief Noble Wray. The man must walk a tightrope between an ultra-liberal Common Council, an increasingly restive population of crime and quality of life victims, and — I suspect — the better instincts of his own uniformed officers. Nonetheless, the chief whacked a hornet's nest when he was quoted in Monday's Wisconsin State Journal thusly: In some cases, long-time residents of some neighborhoods are afraid of young blacks and Hispanics who are not breaking the law. In those cases, the newcomers to a neighborhood may need to adjust their behavior, and long-time...

After Al Franken is sworn in to the U.S. Senate this week, the nation will be watching to see how the former entertainer performs in a theater where cooperation trumps controversy and wise politicians survive wiseguys. Preparing for his new role, one of the first people Franken sought out was Tamara Luzzatto, chief of staff for Hillary Clinton when she was in the Senate. "A number of people have told me to study the Hillary model of being a senator," Franken said after they met last February. "Put your head down and do the work." Franken appears determined to establish...

Two weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama's campaign was mobilizing millions of supporters; it was a bit late to start rewriting get-out-the-vote (GOTV) scripts. "BUT, BUT, BUT," deputy field director Mike Moffo wrote to Obama's GOTV operatives nationwide, "What if I told you a world-famous team of genius scientists, psychologists and economists wrote down the best techniques for GOTV scripting?!?! Would you be interested in at least taking a look? Of course you would!!" ...

To some, he's known as "Big Al." Others call him"Norm." He's a 10-foot-long alligator who has earned such nicknames because of his intimidating size. It's his size that now has some worried he could be a danger, while others work to save his life. "Big Al" or "Norm", depending on whom you ask, a large alligator in a Hilton Head lagoon that has some residents worried, and others determined to save. For years, the reptile lived in a lagoon near Port Royal Plantation on Hilton Head Island. That's where he became known as "Big Al." Last week, though, he went...

Evolutionists often attempt to use observational science—arguments from biology, paleontology, geology, or even astronomy—to support their belief. But the really interesting thing is that they base all their arguments on principles that ultimately come from biblical creation! As strange as it may sound, evolutionists must unwittingly assume that creation is true in order to argue against it. That means that Darwin was (in a sense) a “creationist.” All evolutionists must borrow the principles of biblical creation in order to do science (even though they would deny this). Here is why...

The naughty cachet of "Girls Gone Wild" has lost its luster says new study: College men actually don t want their women to be drunk, topless, disorderly. Just like mother told you, ladies....

NEW YORK (AP) — A Vatican evaluation of U.S. Roman Catholic seminaries in response to the clergy sex abuse scandal concluded that administrators have largely been effective in rooting out "homosexual behavior" in the schools, although the agency said it persists. The Congregation for Catholic Education sought a broad review of how the schools screen and educate prospective priests, but gave special attention to teachings on chastity and celibacy. The Vatican also directed evaluators to look for "evidence of homosexuality" in the schools. In a report U.S. bishops released this week, the Vatican agency noted past "difficulties in the area...

n Part I, I made the argument that any woman who is married to a good man and who wants a happy marriage ought to consent to at least some form of sexual relations as much as possible. (Men need to understand that intercourse should not necessarily be the goal of every sexual encounter.) In Part II, I advance the argument that a wife should do so even when she is not in the mood for sexual relations. I am talking about mood, not about times of emotional distress or illness. Why? Here are eight reasons for a woman not...

"Bad boys" have a bad boy gene. What's more, that same gene makes them more popular than the proverbial Mr. Nice Guy. Hello James Dean, so long Alan Alda

Research conducted by a team in Switzerland suggests that a family of genes involved in regulating the expression of other genes in the brain is responsible for helping us deal with external inputs such as stress. Their results, appearing in the December 11 advance online version of the journal Neuron, may also give a clue to why some people are more susceptible to anxiety or depression than others. The researchers from EPFL and the National Competence Center "Frontiers in Genetics" studied the role of a family of genes known as KRAB-ZFP, which acts like a group of genetic censors, selectively...

When I asked people why or why not they thought homosexuality was a choice, I asked for specificity and examples, so unless it was especially funny or insightful, I included only the best of the feedback that stayed within the guidelines. Let’s get to it. “Every truly gay friend I’ve ever had believes he was born that way. They say they knew as early as they could remember that it was same-sex people who made their hearts beat faster.” “I think you’re born that way. Too many kids I knew growing up came out of the closet when they left...

The real problem with the gay marriage issue is that the truth can only be found in either the spiritual or the scientific. The question that matters most is whether or not a person can be born gay. And the only possible way to answer this seems to be by discovering a gene that determines sexual preference or by believing in the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality and assuming this means everyone is born straight. Simply posing the question generally infuriates gays. First, the question seems to carry with it the tone that homosexuality is some sort of handicap, like asking...

It is difficult to screw up an appearance at Ground Zero on September 11th. You have to be either completely oblivious or completely indifferent. It is a signal feat of idiocy. And yet Barack Obama accomplished it. John McCain and Obama visited Ground Zero together. Obama and McCain entered the site. But while McCain took the time to shake hands with uniformed firefighters and a construction worker with an American flag helmet, Obama ignored them and stood around. But he wasn’t done yet. Both McCain and Obama brought roses to place on the makeshift 9/11 memorial. Obama casually tossed his...

Dogs are becoming more intelligent and are even learning morals from human contact, scientists claim. They say the fact that dogs' play rarely escalates into a fight shows the animals abide by social rules. During one study, dogs which held up a paw were rewarded with a food treat. When a lone dog was asked to raise its paw but received no treat, the researchers found it begged for up to 30 minutes. But when they tested two dogs together but rewarded only one, the dog which missed out soon stopped playing the game. Dr Friederike Range, of the University...

This is an animated video of a dove that we see in most back yards. As a child, I with a slingshot, 22 rifle and 12 gage shot gun, killed many kinds of birds just for sport, to see if I could aim good and bring the little creature to the ground. I didn’t kill for food but in adolescent behavior. It is so cruel and for this reason I created this video to show and teach the cruelty of this kind of behavior.

June 26, 2008 -- Little dogs -- think Chihuahuas and Dachshunds -- tend to be feisty, while certain breeds, like Golden and Labrador Retrievers, are as mellow as their reputations suggest, found a new study that identified the most and least aggressive common dog breeds.

Planning an eco-friendly wedding just underlines how committed Jamie Hanson and Mark Hamlyn are to living an environmentally respectful life. "Sometimes we choose things that are not absolutely perfect, but we do our absolute best," says Hamlyn. An operations manager at Suncor in Fort McMurray with a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta, Hamlyn, 37, met Hanson while on the job. "He wandered into my office to thank the girl I shared an office with for recommending someone to hire and we got to talking," remembers Hanson. Hanson, 32, works for TransAlta Utilities, Suncor's partner, as manager...

Fairfax May Junk Study on Behavior Staff Report Shows Racial, Ethnic Gaps Among Students Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of "sound moral character and ethical judgment." The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes. Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) said yesterday that he plans to propose at...

Could a gene be partly responsible for the behaviour of some of the worlds most infamous dictators? Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness. The study might help to explain the money-grabbing tendencies of those with a Machiavellian streak — from national dictators down to 'little Hitlers' found in workplaces the world over. Researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behaviour in an economic exercise called the 'Dictator Game'. The exercise allows players...

NEW YORK - To the untrained eye, the man looked like any other traveler as he waited in line at Kennedy Airport. But something about the way he was acting caught the attention of two security screeners. For 16 minutes, they questioned him, scanned every inch of his body twice with a metal-detecting wand and emptied his carry-on bag onto a table. Out came a car stereo with wires dangling from it. The man was eventually found to have done nothing wrong — he said he had pulled the stereo out of his car because he was afraid it would...

On a drizzly Tuesday night in late January, 200 people came out to hear a psychiatrist talk rhapsodically about play — not just the intense, joyous play of children, but play for all people, at all ages, at all times. (All species too; the lecture featured touching photos of a polar bear and a husky engaging playfully at a snowy outpost in northern Canada.) Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library’s main branch on 42nd Street. He created the institute in 1996, after more than 20 years of psychiatric practice...

to antibiotics, is now spreading among homosexual males in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, according to a new report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Due to liberal political correctness, which insists on treating aberrant – even deadly – behaviors and lifestyles as a 'civil right,' we as a society don't seem to have learned much from the AIDS pandemic," he said. He called it an "eerie reminder" of the first stories about AIDS. "It is unfathomable that after that plague, disease specialists and the media are now surprised at the correlation of a new infection with...

In this undated photo released by Tokyo University's Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, a genetically modified mouse approaches a cat in Tokyo. Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats, showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not leaned through experience, as commonly believed. (AP Photo/Ko and Reiko Kobayakawa, Tokyo University Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, HO) Cat and mouse may never be the same. Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create...

Associated Press Government health regulators recommended adding label precautions about neurological problems seen in children who have taken flu drugs made by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released its safety review of Roche's Tamiflu and Glaxo's Relenza. Next week, an outside group of pediatric experts is scheduled to review the safety of several such drugs when used in children. FDA began reviewing Tamiflu's safety in 2005 after receiving reports of children experiencing neurological problems, including hallucinations and convulsions. Twenty-five patients under age 21 have died while taking the drug, most of them in Japan. Five...

A CONVENT in southern Italy is being shut down after a quarrel among its last three remaining nuns ended in blows. Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista, reportedly upset about their mother superior's authoritarian ways, scratched her in the face and threw her to the ground at Santa Clara convent near Bari in an incident in July that was kept quiet until now. Archbishop Giovanni Battista Pichierri tried to reconcile the nuns but finally decided in late August that they had "clearly lost their religious vocation'' and asked the Vatican for permission to close the convent. Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista moved to...

VANCOUVER, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behaviour and generosity, according to University of British Columbia psychology researchers. In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behaviour, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers. UBC PhD graduate Azim Shariff and UBC Assoc. Prof. Ara Norenzayan found that priming people with 'god concepts' - by activating subconscious thoughts through word games - promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent...

The execution-style murder of three African-American college students in Newark, N.J., forced to kneel and shot in the head – allegedly by an illegal alien from Peru who was out on bail for the serial rape of a 5-year-old – has the makings of a Willie Horton issue in 2008. Newark, like New York, is a “sanctuary city,” where cops are not to ask criminal suspects if they are in the country legally. Mitt Romney has been hammering Rudy Giuliani on the issue, trashing his tough-cop resume by painting the mayor as den mother of the Big Apple’s playpen...

Judge dismisses sexual harassment charges against 2 Ore. teens 08/20/2007 By WILLIAM McCALL / Associated Press Two 13-year-old boys accused of slapping girls' bottoms and poking or cupping girls' breasts at school apologized on Monday as a judge dismissed charges against the two, ending a six-month case that drew national attention. The charges triggered a debate over whether such behavior in school should be considered criminal. Four girls listed as victims by the prosecutors had asked the judge to drop the charges against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison. Yamhill County Judge John Collins did so on Monday, saying it was...

Albert Ellis, whose innovative straight-talk approach to psychotherapy made him one of the most influential and provocative figures in modern psychology, died yesterday at his home above the institute he founded in Manhattan. He was 93. The cause, after extended illness, was kidney and heart failure, said a friend and spokeswoman, Gayle Rosellini. Dr. Ellis (he had a doctorate but not a medical degree) called his approach rational emotive behavior therapy, or R.E.B.T. Developed in the 1950s, it challenged the deliberate, slow-moving methodology of Sigmund Freud, the prevailing psychotherapeutic treatment at the time. Where the Freudians maintained that a painstaking...

Ancient Human Behavior Uncovered Article Date: 24 Jun 2007 - 4:00 PDT A major question in evolutionary studies today is how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern" One index of 'behavioural modernity' is in the appearance of objects used purely as decoration or ornaments. Such items are widely regarded as having symbolic rather than practical value. By displaying them on the body as necklaces, pendants or bracelets or attached to clothing this also greatly increased their visual impact. The appearance of ornaments may be linked to a growing sense of...

NEW YORK — Poor residents will be rewarded for good behavior — like $300 for doing well on school tests, $150 for holding a job and $200 for visiting the doctor — under an experimental anti-poverty program that city officials detailed Monday. The rewards have been used in other countries, including Brazil and Mexico, and have drawn widespread praise for changing behavior among the poor. Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to Mexico this spring to study the healthy lifestyle payments, also known as conditional cash transfers. In New York, the two-year pilot program with about 14,000 participants will use private funds...

SACRAMENTO - Even before her wild ride last week on Interstate 80 that ended in a collision, state Sen. Carole Migden blazed a jagged political path as a state legislator known for her fiery temper and often impertinent attitude. In one tightly wound package, Migden embodies the best and worst of liberal San Francisco politics. She is an effective lawmaker, without a doubt. But she's also a throwback emblem of political entitlement whose career has been marked with infamous moments, such as the time she pushed an opposing lawmaker's vote button - for her own bill - in the Assembly....