Just a quick post to say that I’m away on holiday to Mallorca for the next week, so I won’t be blogging until 6 July at the earliest. I have quite a few interesting articles I’ve found this morning but I don’t have time to blog them right now, so watch this space next [...]

“When Stanford’s ethicists first heard the proposal for humanized mouse brains, they were grossed out. But after thinking it over, they tentatively endorsed the idea and decided that it might not be bad to endow mice with ’some aspects of human consciousness or some human cognitive abilities.’ “
From an interesting Slate article on transgenic animals, [...]

Ars Technica takes a look at the recommendations made by a Canadian Parliamentary committee on copyright infringement and piracy, which effectively amount to a Canadian DMCA. However, it turns out that all the data the committee have based their recommendations on are out-of-date and have no empirical evidence to back them up. And for a [...]

“If Facebook adds e-mail, IM, and RSS, it’s one step closer to becoming as comprehensive as Yahoo! and as popular as MySpace. The rest of the Internet might as well surrender.”
Christopher Beam argues on Slate that, despite the newly-launched Facebook applications platform opening up a whole host of possibilities for the site, it needs to [...]

“China has the right to development, and the right, too, to truck for oil with sovereign governments in the Third World. But China is easily important enough, in 2007, for its growth and development to be in the whole world’s interest.”
James Woudhuysen writes on Spiked about China’s right to develop. As I’ve said before, it’s [...]

“More than six out of 10 people regularly commit crimes against the government, their employers or businesses, research suggests … Keele University researchers said it showed petty crime was rife among the middle classes and exposed the ‘law-abiding majority’ to be a myth.”
Not exactly unexpected, but interesting nonetheless. From BBC News, here.

I came across these on Jyte, a “mini-Digg” site where users vote on whether they agree or disagree with each other’s claims. Jyte is here. First (bottom) claim by Le Très Révérend Zebediah Love, here. Second claim by nic, here.

“The US House of Representatives has voted to overturn a ban on aid to overseas groups practising abortion … Earlier this week the White House said he [Bush] would veto any legislation weakening current federal policies on abortion … The ban, introduced in 1984, prohibits US contraceptive aid being sent to foreign family planning clinics [...]

Australia is to ban alcohol and pornography in all 45 aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to try to curb child sex abuse. In echoes of the colonialism of days past, the Australian government will take control of the administration of currently autonomous aboriginal areas for the next 5 years to implement their policy. While [...]

“Smokers will be prevented from fostering children under the age of 5 once the smoking ban comes into force on July 1, The Times has learnt.”
This is ridiculous. Rather than simply banning foster parents from smoking inside the house or nearby their foster children, they are to be barred from fostering under-5s at all. [...]