Moments of Awareness

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against a central provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, a groundbreaking decision that tees up a potential battle before the Supreme Court.  The three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the provision defining marriage as between a man and woman is unconstitutional in that it denies gay couples the rights granted to heterosexual couples.  The unanimous decision once again brings the issue of gay marriage to the fore of the nation's political debate. It comes just a few weeks after President Obama announced [...] Full article at  foxnews.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

(Image Credit: ABC News) A group of high school students may have come close to Bigfoot during a class project in the Idaho wilderness. A dark, mysterious creature was caught on tape for a few seconds near Mink Creek before it retreated into the treeline. “It just didn’t look human-like. I don’t know what that is, it’s not a bear, it’s not a moose or anything. It was big and bulky and black,” said the student who captured the video. He spoke to ABC News’ Idaho affiliate but did not want want to be identified on camera. [...] Full article at  abcnews.go.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

The common blood pressure drug Olmesartan has been found to be linked with symptoms associated with celiac disease – such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and electrolyte abnormalities, according to Mayo Clinic researchers. Published in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the findings came about after the clinic treated 22 patients from 2008 to 2011 who had severe gastrointestinal problems normally seen in celiac disease.  The symptoms were so strong that one patient lost 125 pounds and 14 of the 22 had to be hospitalized. According to Mayo Clinic, the patients were given blood tests, but none of them tested [...] Full article at  foxnews.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

In this June 13, 2012 photograph, an octopus clings to the belly of a bottlenose dolphin. CREDIT : Joan Gonzalvo/Tethys Research Institute, via The Ionian Dolphin Project View full size image An octopus got the joyride of its life last week when it somehow became stuck on the belly of a bottlenose dolphin in the Ionian Sea. More specifically, the tentacled sea creature had a seat on the dolphin's genital slit. Researchers with the Ionian Dolphin Project, part of the Tethys Research Institute, were observing a foursome of dolphins [...] Full article at  livescience.com Yeah, it was 'hiding'. Uh-huh. :D Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they’ve found. “We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th,” says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), who heads the Lab’s participation in the ATLAS [...] Full article at  scienceblog.com Also interesting, some of these particle impacts create temperatures hundreds of thousands of times hotter than the Sun . Where does all that heat go, I wonder, given that even if it only lasts a moment it's a discharge of energy taking place

There’s more to the old adage about the truth being written all over your face than you may think. Not only do we get nonverbal signals about someone’s true well-being from unconscious facial expressions, but the state of your skin reveals a great deal about what’s going on inside, both physically and emotionally.  In fact, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have used facial analysis as a diagnostic tool for centuries, marrying specific facial areas and features with organs and emotional states. So when you get a recurring zit on the same part of your chin or have a perpetually congested or flaky forehead, your skin could be trying to tell you that there’s a deeper health concern in need of attention. [...] Full article (including general 'facial zone' correlations) at  foxnews.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

What is freedom of assembly? Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political freedom and a civil liberty. Occupy Wall Street protestors are among those labeled 'extreme' or 'radical' by political opponents. CREDIT : lev radin | Shutterstock View full size image Freedom of assembly and freedom of association may be [...] Full article at  livescience.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

The Republican Party of Texas states in its official 2012 political platform : We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are [...] Full post at  dangerouslyirrelevant.org Ahem... This one leaves me speechless (and that is difficult to do). Posted via email from Moments of Awareness