Rotundus.com

Today I stumbled across a link to a study of the effect of country music on suicide rates at Evangelical Outpost. Here's an excerpt of the abstract:

Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide.

Like some authors who are Christians, she eschews the label "Christian author." Being a believer, she explains, simply makes her a better storyteller. "I agree with Francis Schaeffer when he said that 'it is the Christian whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.' We have such freedom to create and imagine and take risks, and—because of the way Jesus engaged with humanity—we also have the freedom to tell the truth about our fallen world. I prefer literature that doesn’t shy away from the depths and consequences of our sin and also doesn’t feel compelled to tie up everything in a tidy bow at the end. Real life can be so messy." (byFaith Magazine)

Annoyingly to read the whole article requires a subscription - which I don't have - but I felt that blurb in and of itself was worth posting.

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.

...

Kaletra is made by Abbott Laboratories. As of this September, the Gates Foundation held $169 million in Abbott stock. In 2005, the foundation held nearly $1.5 billion worth of stock in drug companies whose practices have been widely criticized as restricting the flow of key medicines to poor people in developing nations.

("Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation" in LA Times)

Mountain Equipment Co-op has become the first major Canadian retailer to stop selling products that contain the controversial chemical bisphenol A.

... The company, concerned over possible health risks associated to bisphenol A, has not issued an official press release but instructed staff to take action on Wednesday.

... Among the products taken from the shelves were Nalgene water bottles, the brightly coloured containers that have become a best seller across Canada. (Calgary Herald)

I own a few of those Nalgene bottles.