http://www.youtube.com/v/UwcdaMcvTlM?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Original article: Serbian church near massacre site opposed
Rematch for Bachmann
Jim Graves, the Democratic hotel magnate who fought Rep. Michele Bachmann to within 4,500 votes last year, announced today that he’s gearing up to challenge the firebrand conservative again in 2014. “These days Congress is all about and scoring political points rather than actually solving problems and Minnesota’s 6th District — my home — is losing out because of that more than anywhere. I’m not interested in celebrity, only in solutions,” Graves said in a press release. “As a businessman who has balanced budgets and created jobs, I’m running to work with both sides to find ways to balance the budget, keep our promises to seniors, create jobs and strengthen the middle class.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Stone Age Skulls Reveal Violence Directed At Prehistoric Women
By: Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 02/13/2013 07:21 AM EST on LiveScience
Stone Age farmers lived through routine violence, and women weren’t spared from its toll, a new study finds.
The analysis discovered that up to 1 in 6 skulls exhumed in Scandinavia from the late Stone Age — between about 6,000 and 3,700 years ago — had nasty head injuries. And contrary to findings from mass gravesites of the period, women were equally likely to be victims of deadly blows, according to the study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Ancient pastoralists
Linda Fibiger, an archaeologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and her colleagues focused on the late Stone Age, when European hunter-gatherers had transitioned into farming or herding animals.
Mass graves unearthed from that time in Talheim and Eulau, Germany, contained mostly males who had died in violent conflicts. As such, researchers had thought women were spared from conflicts due to their potential childbearing value, Fibiger told LiveScience.
But looking only at the aftermath of big, bloody conflicts can obscure the day-to-day realities of Neolithic farmers.
"It would be like only looking at a war zone to assess violence," Fibiger said. "That’s not going to tell you what’s going on in your neighborhood."
Routine violence
To see what more humdrum days looked like for these Stone Age farmers, the team assessed 478 skulls from collections throughout Sweden and Denmark from between 3900 B.C. and 1700 B.C. They distinguished bumps due to falls or accidents from violent wounds, which might leave evidence such as an "axe-shaped hole in the skull," Fibiger said. [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]
Nearly 10 percent of the Swedish skulls exhibited signs of violent injury, and nearly 17 percent of the Danish skulls had such wounds. Men had more nonfatal injuries, but women were just as likely as men to have lethal head wounds — which can be identified because they never healed.
That suggests these ancient herders routinely experienced violence, likely due to raids, family feuds, or other daily skirmishes with competing groups, Fibiger said.
Poor fighters
It’s not clear why women were frequent victims of violence.
Domestic violence could be a factor, but proving it requires looking for repeat injuries and wounds to the ribs and torso, Fibiger said. Given that skulls and skeletons are jumbled up at these sites, and many skeletons weren’t preserved, that’s not possible, Fibiger said.
More likely is that women suffered fatal injuries, because they couldn’t fight ferociously in raids, she told Live Science.
Men may have trained from a young age to fight, whereas women were probably tasked with child rearing.
That would have slowed them down, "because you’re probably going to try and protect your children rather than being able to properly defend yourself," Fibiger said.
The findings are impressive, said Christian Meyer, an anthropology doctoral candidate at the University of Mainz in Germany, who was not involved in the study.
"It’s one of the first that really looks at a really large sample size, and it draws from a larger region," Meyer said.
Analyzing so many Stone Age skulls allows researchers to quantitatively compare rates of such violence throughout Europe at the time.
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Swedish Academy Reopens Controversy Surrounding Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize | Books | Guardian.co.uk
Giant of American letters John Steinbeck beat the British authors Robert Graves and Lawrence Durrell to win the Nobel prize for literature in 1962, according to newly opened archives in Sweden – but he was not a popular choice.The Swedish Academy keeps secret for 50 years all information about the authors nominated for the Nobel, only releasing their shortlist for the 1962 prize yesterday. The names of 66 authors were put forward for the prize that year, with the shortlist consisting of Steinbeck, Graves, Durrell, French dramatist Jean Anouilh and Danish author Karen Blixen.Read More…
Mexico police unearth 20 bodies in violence-torn north
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — The bones of nine people were found in desert graves in violence-plagued northern Mexico, raising the number of remains found there since the weekend to 20, authorities said Monday. The 20 male remains were discovered in 15 graves in the Juarez Valley, near the border city…
Bachmann likely to hang on by a thread after tight re-election race
Polls give Tea Party favourite narrow lead over Democratic challenger in Minnesota, Jim Graves The Tea Party darling and failed contender for the Republican nomination Michele Bachmann has said she is “humbled” to have been re-elected to Congress as projections showed her on course to…
Empowering Patients Through Design
Michael Graves lost his ability to walk in 2003. As he learned to navigate the world from his wheelchair, He noticed that places meant to empower patients, like rehab centers and hospitals, weren?t. At the inaugural Wired Health Conference, Graves talked about his mission to revamp hospital furnishings and living spaces so they fit the patients, families and medical staff who use them. The projects are part of a growing movement called human-centered design, which aims to redefine how people experience health care by focusing on their specific needs.
