Robin Lakoff: Day of the Women A remarkable number of women achieved success in today's primary elections. But what do their victories suggest about the current status of women in U.S. politics, and elsewhere, at this time? I think there are several possible answers, any, all, or none of which may be true. First, the predominance of women might just be the result of a series of coincidences. Perhaps women and men have always had equal interest in and talent for electoral politics, but only now have women become able to make full use of those interests and talents. Or the victories might be the result of the anti-incumbency spirit sweeping the nation. If this is an explanation, even partial, for today's results, it is not an unambiguous good one. Interestingly, though, women may at this moment have an advantage in politics. The accusations seem to have worked to her advantage: the men came off as oafish cads -- locker-room braggarts and worse. I can think of one final interpretation.
Japan panel wants women on throne Japan should change its succession laws to let women take the throne, a government panel has concluded. The 10-member panel has been debating the issue since January in response to a crisis facing the Imperial Household. Japan's 71-year-old ruling emperor, Akihito, has two sons and a daughter, but none of them have so far produced a male heir to ensure the succession. A change to the Imperial Household Law requires approval by Japan's parliament. "We agreed that from next meeting we will proceed with putting together a report that recommends expanding imperial succession to include females and their descendants," Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, head of the advisory panel to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told journalists. The Imperial Household's main succession hopes lie with Akihito's eldest son Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako. If the rules were changed, her three-year-old daughter, Princess Aiko, could succeed instead. Public support
XML for Analysis Start Page Writing Scripts with PHP's PEAR DB Class Paul DuBoispaul@kitebird.com Document revision: 1.02 Last update: 2005-12-30 Table of Contents As a web programming language, one of PHP's strengths traditionally has been to make it easy to write scripts that access databases so that you can create dynamic web pages that incorporate database content. This wide range of support for different database engines help make PHP popular because it means essentially that no matter which database you use, PHP probably supports it. In PHP 4 and up, this problem is addressed by means of a database module included in PEAR (the PHP Extension and Add-on Repository). The top level provides an abstract interface that hides database-specific details and thus is the same for all databases supported by PEAR DB. PEAR DB uses classes and objects to present an object-oriented interface, and this article assumes that you are familiar with PHP's approach to object-oriented programming. The primary "overseer" file is DB.php. Preliminary Requirements Caveats
Bananas and Monkeys - StumbleUpon Original source unknown. (But the story appears to have some basis in fact.) Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Now, put away the cold water. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. And that, my friends, is how company policies are made. Return to Jim Huggins' Humor Page
Ms. Magazine Online | More Than A Magazine - A Movement Hormone levels predict attractiveness of women Feminine beauty, the subject of philosophical and artistic musings for millennia, can be predicted by something as basic as hormones - in women, but not men. Researchers at the University of St Andrews in Fife, UK, have found that women's facial attractiveness is directly related to their oestrogen levels. Miriam Law Smith and colleagues photographed 59 women, aged between 18 and 25, every week for six weeks. On each occasion, they provided a urine sample for hormone analysis and gave information on where they were in their menstrual cycle. None of the women wore make-up, nor were they taking the contraceptive pill. The researchers then selected the photograph of each woman that had been taken at the time of her highest urine-oestrogen level. The group also rated two composite face images. Facial formation The amount of oestrogen produced by a person's body during the average seven-year-long puberty is largely determined by heredity. Of course there may be an easier way - faking it.
Tree of Life Web Project Home The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists and nature enthusiasts from around the world. On more than 10,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history (phylogeny). Each page contains information about a particular group, e.g., salamanders, segmented worms, phlox flowers, tyrannosaurs, euglenids, Heliconius butterflies, club fungi, or the vampire squid. ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things.