OPENING THOUGHTS

ANCIENT SOLSTICE ARCHITECTURES

A LINGUISTIC PUZZLE

A FAMILY FERTILITY RITUAL

WINTER SOLSTICE IN MANY CULTURES

IN SONG

A TIME OF MAGIC

THIS YEARS SOLSTICE

AG Jerry Brown Asks California High Court to Overturn Prop. 8

"You are the world, the neighbour, the friend, the so-called enemy. If you would understand, you must first understand yourself, for in you is the root of all understanding. In you is the beginning and the end."

"If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light unto yourself, you will never follow anyone"

-- J. Krishnamurti

New Delhi: Three major undersea cables -- the Sea Me We 4, Sea Me We3, and FLAG -- were cut, considerably slowing down Indias internet and voice traffic

The causes of the cut -- located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt -- remain unclear.

isted 14 countries affected by the current problem. The Maldives are 100 per cent down, followed by India, which has 82 per cent disruption. Qatar, Djibouti and the UAE were the next most widely affected areas with about 70 per cent service interrupted. Disruptions for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan range from 51 per cent to 55 per cent.

Unsubstantiated sabotage theories were doing the rounds

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Its the eyes you notice first ? they stare out from the faces of women who are glamorous and sultry and beguiling. Some paintings are realistic, others impressionistic. The subjects are famous actresses and models and singers, each captured lovingly and with a sure hand.

But the most amazing thing about these beautiful works of art is their maker. The painter is Mariano Bula, 20, a young man who also happens to have autism, a developmental disability that impacts communication skills and the ability to interact socially. He cant remember when he started creating art, but today he considers it his lifeline to the world.

?Art saves my life,? says Bula, who is tall and attractive with large, soft hands and a mellow voice. ?It helps me feel like a normal person. I am human and part of society, and I want to be accepted by society.?

Linda Fleetwood, who taught art to Bula when he attended Marshall High School, says he possesses a type of visual photographic memory.

I don?t actually have that much formal art training ? my mother is an artist, and let me sketch in her notebooks as soon as I could hold a crayon. I grew up in a household that always had art supplies handy, and I loved art classes from the first at school. I once decorated our living room with 64 colors of Crayola.

That?s one of the most important things about art and writing, something that I think few people really think about?that you need years and years to achieve any kind of true skill, and years and years more for mastery. You have to have patience and a slightly insane amount of persistence.

Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species, but at least one group of evolutionists wont be celebrating. Theyre the backers of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwins less renowned co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, who some say has gotten a short end of the fame stick. With worldwide celebrations planned to celebrate Darwin in 2009, Wallaces backers are fighting for the man they says was the real brains behind the theory of evolution. "Once you change the focus from Darwin to Wallace, you start to realize what a genius Wallace was," said Roy Davies, author of The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime. Some Wallace-ites accuse Darwin of stealing his ideas while others claim outright plagiarism. So how do they propose remedying the situation? Well, changing the name of Darwin, Australia, to Wallace would be a good start.

BRIGHTON, Mich. ? Ticking someone off could get you a ticket in one Michigan city. The Brighton City Council on Thursday approved an ordinance allowing police in the Livingston County community to ticket and fine anyone who is annoying in public "by word of mouth, sign or motions."

The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus of Howell reports the measure is modeled on a similar ordinance in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak.

A city attorney says there could be situations where the measure would violate freedom of speech, but that those cases will be reviewed by the city.

The ban takes effect Jan. 2.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2008) ? Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. In their study, participants who believed they were getting an electrical shock from another person on purpose, rather than accidentally, rated the very same shock as more painful. Participants seemed to get used to shocks that were delivered unintentionally, but those given on purpose had a fresh sting every time.

"This study shows that even if two harmful events are physically identical, the one delivered with the intention to hurt actually hurts more," says Gray. "Compare a slap from a friend as she tries to save us from a mosquito versus the same slap from a jilted lover. The first we shrug off instantly, while the second stings our cheek for the rest of the night."

Two British doctors investigated the phenomenon after reading of a middle-aged patient who had uncontrollable sneezing fits when he thought of sex.

They unearthed evidence, via internet chat rooms, of 17 others - of both sexes - with the same problem.

He said: "It certainly seems odd, but I think this reflex demonstrates evolutionary relics in the wiring of a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system.

"This is the part beyond our control, and which controls things like our heart rate and the amount of light let in by our pupils.

"Sometimes the signals in this system get crossed, and I think this may be why some people sneeze when they think about sex."

He said during arousal the autonomic nervous system fires off signals to trigger changes in the genitals of both men and women.

STARR, S.C. - A decaying highway, plunged deep underwater after Lake Hartwell was dammed in the 1950s, sits exposed once again across what remains of the bay outside Big Water Marina.

MUMBAI, India - Doormen in white suits and black turbans greeted visitors to the Oberoi with a bow on the eve of the hotels reopening three weeks after it was targeted in a militant rampage. Security was noticeably tighter Saturday as guards scanned bags and sniffer dogs patrolled the grounds outside.

Armed policemen stood watch among bunkers of sandbags outside the entrance to the hotels Trident portion, where the owners said 100 rooms would reopen on Sunday, just weeks after 10 suspected Islamic militants stormed sites across Indias financial capital.

Militants from the banned Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba are accused of staging the attacks that killed 164 people over the course of a three-day siege and paralyzed much of the Mumbai. Nine of the alleged gunmen were killed, and one is in police custody.

"Any president who tried to attack his own assassin is worth writing about," Meacham says.

But Meacham quickly turns serious when tallying the seventh presidents historical importance -- and personal flaws.

"He is the president [of his era] most like us," the Newsweek editor says in a phone interview from Charleston, South Carolina. "He was capable of great grace, but he could also be terribly cruel. ... In his complexities, I saw our own."

Some Washington colleagues, including Kentucky congressman Henry Clay, believed he was little more than an erratically tempered hick with dictatorial impulses.

But he also was the subject of hero worship among citizens who admired him for his military leadership, his steadfast loyalty to national ideals, and the fact that he wasnt what would now be called a "Washington insider."

Mysterious "Super Earth" Is Smallest Known Exoplanet?

Survey Says U.S. Patients Pay More, Get Less Than Those in Other Western Nations

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe has collapsed, and the world must act now to keep it from deteriorating into Somalia-scale chaos, the top U.S. envoy for Africa said Thursday.

U.S. among Mugabes critics
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980 and seen as increasingly autocratic, and the opposition have been deadlocked over a power-sharing agreement since September.

The political impasse comes amid a mounting economic and humanitarian crisis that has pushed thousands of Zimbabweans to the point of starvation and left 1,111 dead of cholera since August.

No apparent support for U.N. force
A day earlier at the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that during the past four months he has asked at least 50 nations and three international organizations to support the councils request for a multinational force to stabilize Somalia.

Evidence of a key mineral on Mars has been found at several locations on the planets surface, suggesting that any microbial life that might have been there back when the planet was wetter could have lived comfortably.

Observations NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which just completed its primary mission and started a second two-year shift, found evidence of carbonates, which dont survive in conditions hostile to life, indicating that not all of the planets ancient watery environments were as harsh as previously thought.

The findings are detailed in a study in the Dec. 19 issue of the journal Science and will be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Escaping the acid bath
Over the past several years, evidence for water on Mars has been stacking up: Scientists have found gullies formed by running water, possible ancient lakes, and minerals formed by interaction with water.

If Emmanuel Jals story hasnt been optioned for a film script yet, well eat our hats. (It has, and of course, Nicole Kidman is involved.) Jal was one of the Lost Boys, a Sudanese child soldier who became embroiled...

Emmanuel Jal

Barack Obama ushered in a revolution in Americas response to global warming yesterday when he appointed one of the worlds leading climate change experts as his administrations chief scientist.

The president-elects decision to make Harvard physicist John Holdren director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reveals a new determination to draw a line under eight years of US policy that have seen George Bush steadfastly reject overwhelming evidence of climate change.

Dont Play with Your Food

When I was a kid, I was always told that I should not play with my food. I of course completely ignored whoever said that, and I often turned my potatoes into little people. But "Anna the Red" has taken the art of playing with food to a completely insane level.

Now this is what a lunchbox should look like!

Scientists have recreated the notorious Milgram Experiment from 1961, designed to try to understand the Holocaust, in which a Yale professor claimed to prove that evil lurked within all of us.

In the experiment volunteers were asked to act as teachers, and each was matched up with an unseen pupil, who was given a word sequence to memorise and repeat.

If the pupil got it wrong, the teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock. As the experiment continued the shocks became more severe.

Encouraged by an authority figure the teachers continued administering shocks up to a 150 volt cut off point even though the pupils begged for them to stop and screamed out.

"Death map" shows heat a big hazard to Americans

Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.

Our Electric Future

Jobless crisis strains shrunken welfare system

More striking is who is coming onto welfare and why. In Florida, as elsewhere, the new face of welfare includes people who have tumbled from the middle class - and higher - after losing jobs, savings and self-reliance. And some are returning to welfare years after they thought they had found permanent work and independence. In the county that includes Fort Myers, nearly 40 percent of the 812 people who applied for welfare in October had never before asked for help.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the Regional Service Center reopened to find 500 online applications sent over the holiday weekend for food stamps and Medicaid, as well as welfare. By 5 p.m., 250 more had arrived.

What a turn-on: science develops bionic sex chip

The prospect of the chip, which could be a decade away, is emerging from progress in deep brain stimulation, in which tiny shocks from implanted electrodes are given to the brain. The technology has been used in America to treat Parkinson?s disease.

By 2015, he predicts, micro-computers in the brain with a range of applications could be self-powered and controlled by hand-held transmitters.

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Roman relic: A knife case binder. Photo: C.S. Fuchs

ARCHAEOLOGISTS say the history books about Roman legions in Europe will have to be revised following the "sensational" discovery of a battlefield in northern Germany this week.

Six hundred artefacts have been dug up so far in what archaeologists are calling "the find of the century".

What makes the find unique is that it shows Roman armies in action long after the last clash ? the great battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD9 when Arminius annihilated three of the seven legions of Rome ? was thought to have occurred.

"Evidently the Romans and Germans fought a bloody battle in the third century AD," said archaeologist Petra Loenne. "Some 1000 Roman legionnaires may have been involved in the fight."

Many of the weapons found are in good condition and they prove that Roman armies were still engaging in major military operations far north of the Alps at a time when the Roman Empire was in terminal decline.

Does Sex Addiction Have Any Basis in Science?

SOON you may no longer need to stick out your thumb to catch a ride. Instead, you may get one by tapping your fingers on your iPhone.

Any car that travels while occupied only by a driver is inherently inefficient. And yet, 85% of the time, thats how cars travel. With our use of iPhone GPS technology, web services and your participation, we can fill up those empty seats.

A consortium of 14 U.S. technology companies is seeking $1 billion in federal aid to build a factory to manufacture advanced electric car batteries, according to a report Wednesday night by The Wall Street Journal.

Aiming to catch up to Asian battery producers that already dominate the market, the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture is described as the most ambitious effort to date to meet automakers increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries. The report noted that U.S. automakers such as GM and Ford plan to roll out plug-in electric cars by 2010, but that the U.S. lacks sufficient facilities to produce the lithium-ion batteries those cars require.