Doubters Fault Theory Finding Earlier Puberty: “A widespread belief about the
onset of puberty in girls is
coming under vigorous attack, led
by a group of medical specialists
who say that it is based on flawed
science and that it can have dire
medical consequences.” New York Times

Parkinson’s Cure May Be Near: ‘Scientists may be on the brink of curing
Parkinson’s disease using transplanted embryonic
stem cells, but where and when that new
treatment is tested in humans depends on
unresolved political decisions, researchers
suggested Friday.

Dr. Ole Isacson of Harvard Medical School and
Dr. Ronald McKay of the National Institutes of
Health said Friday they have both “cured”
Parkinson’s in mice and rats, using stem cells
removed from embryos of laboratory animals.’

Declining Mental Skills Can Catch You Unaware. You may lose some basic mental skills and not even realize it.

Supreme Court Limits ‘Americans With Disabilities Act’. The familiar 5-4 majority again affirms states’ rights doctine: it’s all right for states to discriminate on the basis of disability. Next on the chopping block, some speculate, will be the Family Leave Act. Meanwhile, the Immigration and Naturalization Service grants asylum to a young boy who would be persecuted for his disability if he were to return to his native Pakistan. AP

The energy-enhancing drink Red Bull is the latest rage. The buzz is all about which celebrities have been serving it at their parties and who’s been seen walking out with cases of it under their arms. Apparently mixing it with vodka makes the hippest cocktail on the club scene.What’s all the fizz about?

Why I Drive a Hate Crime.

Making your pals feel bad (but not so bad as to lose them) is a refined social skill
highly regarded in my neck of the political woods. It has roots, ironically enough,
in traditional class snobbery as well as in the consumer chauvinism that first spread
from the pages of Playboy and Esquire into the popular consciousness of the early
1970s — a belief that the kind of stereo speakers we own or the wine we drink are
not merely practical choices but statements of identity.

Evaluations of other people’s tastes tend to be political judgments issued from the
bench of one’s own private Nuremberg. No longer content to merely dismiss a
friend’s contrarian tastes as gauche, we detect in them nothing less than a threat to
the planet — implying that the offender is a kind of consumer criminal. In today’s
casual conversations, you run the constant risk of being made to feel guilty (as
opposed to merely stupid) for wearing, eating or driving the wrong product at the
wrong time.

A few months ago, for example, a friend commented on the base villainy of
sports-utility vehicles and their owners. I politely told him that I was an SUV
owner. He looked at me as though I had just admitted to collecting human-skin
lampshades. His response was not new. “That’s your car?” a horrified colleague
had once asked me in my company’s parking lot. “I’m so disappointed — that’s the
kind someone in advertising would buy.” I had my reasons for owning my
Pathfinder, not the least of which has to do with the fact that I actually use it to go
off-road camping. No matter — my choice of transportation was so heinous that, in
the morality of the left, it amounted to a hate crime. AlterNet

The Secret Life of AAA: “Along with the maps, the insurance, and the late-night tows, your friendly
all-American auto club has a political agenda. And it’s no good for the
environment.” Natural Resources Defense Council’s Amicus Journal