A new Northwestern University study boosts the relatively limited research on women's sexuality with a surprisingly different finding regarding women's sexual arousal.

In contrast to men, both heterosexual and lesbian women tend to become sexually aroused by both male and female erotica, and, thus, have a bisexual arousal pattern.

"These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men's and women's brains and have important implications for understanding how sexual orientation development differs between men and women," said J. Michael Bailey, professor and chair of psychology at Northwestern and senior researcher of the study "A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal."   more »

Imperial war journalism lives on. There's a grotesque example in Newsweek’s April 2nd Special Issue, titled “Voices of the Fallen.”

This is a typical “The Human Story of War” propaganda piece. These guys should be working for the 'Ministry of Truth'.

By “the fallen,” Newsweek means the more than 3,200 U.S. troops “America has sacrificed” in Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.).

It does not refer to any of the much larger number (in excess of 700,000 by now) of Iraqis who have died for Bush and Cheney’s lies.   more »

In order to turn reluctant consumers with few unsatisfied core needs into permanent shoppers, producers must dumb down consumers, shape their wants, take over their life worlds, encourage impulse buying, cultivate shopoholism and invent new needs.

At the same time, they empower kids as shoppers by legitimizing their unformed tastes and mercurial wants and detaching them from their gatekeeper mothers and fathers and teachers and pastors.

The kids include toddlers who recognize brand logos before they can talk and commodity-minded baby Einsteins who learn to shop before they can walk.

Consumerism needs this infantilist ethos because it favors laxity and leisure over discipline and denial, values childish impetuosity and juvenile narcissism over adult order and enlightened self-interest, and prefers consumption-directed play to spontaneous recreation.   more »

Tehran has certainly sought similar assurances over the past 13 days, which is reasonable given the long history of British imperial domination in Iran in the 19th century...

The US/UK-incited coup of 1953 which overthrew the popular government of Dr Mosaddeq, and the UK's support for Saddam's regime in its eight-year war against Iran, including provision of chemical weapons.

Against this background is the current wider context where, in violation of the UN charter, Iran is threatened by the US, UK, Israeli leaders and the Zionist/Neocon cabal, who regularly assert that "the military option" is on the table.   more »

The amount of campaign fund-raising reported thus far by candidates of both major parties totals approximately $130 million.

What is most striking about the early onset of the 2008 presidential contest is the universal acceptance by the political establishment, both major parties and the media alike that such massive amounts of money, most of it coming from a fabulously wealthy financial elite and corporate-connected donors, should play such an overriding role in determining the viability and ultimate selection of a candidate.

This acceptance is by no means mirrored within the population as whole. The spectacle of candidates flying around the country in a non-stop fund-raising blitz aimed at currying favor with a thin layer of multi-millionaires and billionaires only deepens popular cynicism towards and alienation from the entire electoral process.

The Associated Press reported a revealing incident Wednesday. Barak Obama, speaking at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Rochester, New Hampshire, “was confronted by an audience member who said, ‘I don’t want money to pick my next president. I want to pick my president.’”   more »