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TORONTO - David Reimer, a Canadian who was born as a boy but raised as a girl after a botched circumcision, has committed suicide after failed investments drove him into poverty. He was 38. Reimer died in Winnipeg, Manitoba on May 4, according to Canadian media reports. The family has not released the cause of death. Friends said an anguished Reimer had told them he had lost at least $47,500 last year in a shady pro golf shop investment. Reimer gained fame in the mid-1990s when he went public with his ordeal. It was published in the book "As Nature...

April 26, 2004 Bush-League LysenkoismThe White House bends science to its will By The Editors Image: J.SCOTT APPLEWHITE AP Photo STANDING UP for science--or stepping on it? Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science. In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20...

There used to be something unseemly about publicly quaking in your boots, but no longer. The constant "Eek, a mouse!" tone of girlish fright has seeped from feminist rhetoric into the general rhetoric of the left. This became particularly evident after Sept. 11, when various commentators began fretting that Bush's America/John Ashcroft/Red State Crushing of Dissent etc. fills them with more terror than actual terrorists. And media people used to be embarrassed at not being able to analyze statistics or even understand basic science; but again, no longer. The feminization (and psychotherapization) of American culture so influences the newsroom now...

In April 1999, when I was on a lecture tour for my book Why People Believe Weird Things, the psychologist Robert Sternberg attended my presentation at Yale University. His response to the lecture was both enlightening and troubling. It is certainly entertaining to hear about other people's weird beliefs, Sternberg reflected, because we are confident that we would never be so foolish. But why do smart people fall for such things? Sternberg's challenge led to a second edition of my book, with a new chapter expounding on my answer to his question: Smart people believe weird things because they are...

Kerry says people are born gay By DOUGLASS K. DANIELThe Associated Press3/26/04 3:49 PM WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says he believes people are born gay but are not guaranteed the right to marry within their own gender. "I think it's entirely who you are from birth, personally," Kerry said in an interview to be broadcast on MTV. "Some people might choose, but I think that it's, it's who you are. I think you have ... people need to be able to be who they are." Asked why he favors civil unions instead of marriage if people...

A disturbing story in the March 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so...

EDITORIAL: Too stupid to teach? UNLV professor says Republican Party now a haven of slope-browed troglodytes Back in 2002, a survey by the American Enterprise Institute found America's colleges and universities to be a virtually monochrome refuge of the political left. More than 80 percent of most schools' employees were found to be registered Democrats, despite the almost even split between registered Republicans and Democrats among the public at large. The AEI report found one consequence of this lack of diversity was that conservative thinkers tend to be isolated and intimidated on American campuses, with the predictable result that they...

A physics professor will try to turn back time in an experiment at the Miami Museum of Science. It's back to the future all over again -- at least, that's what Carlos Dolz has in mind. The Florida International University physics professor plans to take time to task at 10 a.m. Wednesday, when he presents an experiment that involves using acceleration to speed up a digital clock by four seconds. Dolz's experiment -- which takes six hours to finish -- will become part of Playing With Time, the current exhibit at the Miami Museum of Science. Dolz, who has been...

LOL...James Randi, the magician and debunker of paranormal hoaxes, observes on his website that ...(Currently, my local PBS-TV stations are featuring both Dr. Wayne Dyer and Dr. Gary Null in their pledging period, to take advantage of the public's taste for quackery. Both these men flaunt degrees, both deal in nonsense. Dyer makes incredibly naïve statements such as that if you just summon up enough determination, "anything is possible," and Null prescribes magnets and other medieval tools to prevent aging. He preaches eternal youth. Now, Null is less than 60 years old, but I recognize dyed hair and make-up, and...

I failed a test for precognition when I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia. The test involved predicting which cards would appear next in a randomly shuffled deck. I guess I should have known—or perhaps I shouldn't have known? Of course, you've heard all the jokes: If phone psychics really know what's going to happen, shouldn't they call their clients rather than wait for their clients to call them? And whoever believes in psychokinesis, please raise my hand. Still, a 2001 Gallup poll found that Americans continue to be credulous about the reality of psychic phenomena. About half...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who found homosexual rams in a herd of sheep said they had found changes in the brains of the "gay" animals. The results, published in the latest issue of the Journal Endocrinology, tend to support studies in humans that have found anatomical differences between the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual men. The researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine found certain groups of brain cells were different between rams and ewes in a part of the sheep brain controlling sexual behavior. And in rams that preferred to mate with other males,...

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short. The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour. He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do. N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine. N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language...

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short. The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour. He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do. N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine. N'kisi...

Charles Berlitz, who just died, was known as one of the world's top linguists and grandson of the founder of the Berlitz language schools. Yet his true claim to fame was as author of "truth is stranger than fiction" books that were actually just plain fiction. A Time magazine reviewer summarized all of Berlitz's paranormal works in describing one as taking "off from established facts, then proceed[ing] to lace its theses with a hodgepodge of half-truths, unsubstantiated reports and unsubstantial science." Among his vast repertoire: "The Mystery of Atlantis" (1969), "Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds" (1972), "The Bermuda Triangle (1974), "The...

Portland, Ore. — It may not be long before you hear airport security screeners ask, "Do you plan on hijacking this plane?" A U.S. company using technology developed in Israel is pitching a lie detector small enough to fit in the eyeglasses of law enforcement officers, and its inventors say it can tell whether a passenger is a terrorist by analyzing his answer to that simple question in real-time. The technology, developed by mathematician Amir Lieberman at Nemesysco in Zuran, Israel, for military, insurance claim and law enforcement use, is being repackaged and retargeted for personal and corporate applications by...

Margo Wootan, of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, says that at the end of a decade in which obesity rates have risen 50%, the time has come for government activism in the fight against fat. Excess weight and obesity contribute to the premature deaths of 300,000 Americans annually — not far behind tobacco's yearly death toll of 430,000. Fat is the fastest-growing cause of disease and death in the United States today, and that has set off alarms bells in every quarter of government, Wootan says. "We'll see more," she predicts — more litigation, more...

TURIN, Italy — Global warming is threatening the world's ski resorts, with melting at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up mountains, according to a United Nations study released Tuesday. Downhill skiing could disappear altogether at some resorts, while at others, a retreating snow line will cut off base villages from their ski runs as soon as 2030, warned the report by the U.N. Environment Program. "Climate change is happening now. We can measure it," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. program. "This study shows that it is not just the developing world that...

President of Queens Firm Found Guilty of Criminal Contempt For Violating Court Order Not to Market Bogus Cancer Cure Over the Internet ROSLYNN R. MAUSKOPF, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and MARK B. McCLELLAN, M.D., Ph.D., Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced today that a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York has convicted Jason Vale, president of the Queens based company Christian Brothers Contracting Corporation ("Christian Bros."), of three counts of criminal contempt in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 401(3). On April 20, 2000, in a civil suit brought...

A brain scan that can apparently root out racists has been developed by scientists. The technique was used on white volunteers shown photographs of black individuals. In those with racist tendencies, a surge of activity was seen in part of the brain that controls thoughts and behaviour. Scientists believe this reflected volunteers' attempts to to curb their latent racism. After interacting with real black individuals, the same group performed poorly in a task designed to test mental resources. The American researchers concluded that harbouring racial prejudice, even unintentionally, stirred up an inner struggle that exhausted the brain. Dr Jennifer Richeson,...

'Gay fatigue' claims another in its grip 12:59 PM CDT on Saturday, October 11, 2003 By STEVE BLOW / The Dallas Morning News I think I have "gay fatigue." Don't worry, it's not catching. But I suspect that many of you have contracted it, too. Let's talk. Remember a few years ago when there was lots of talk about "compassion fatigue"? The news confronted us with so many problems, so the theory went, that our ability to feel compassion simply wore out. If nothing else, it made a nice excuse for indifference. But to some degree, it also made sense....