Rotundus.com

Elevated CO2 further lengthens growing season under warming conditions

"a longer growing season, especially in years or biomes where water is a limiting factor, is not due to warming alone, but also to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations that extend the active period of plant annual life cycles."

The Curious Case of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog

"the international border that separates the Belgian town of Baarle-Hertog from the Dutch town of Baarle-Nassau does not run straight. It is not even curved. Instead, there are 26 separate pieces of land – little bits of Belgium and Netherlands scattered around Baarle."

Cavities are contagious, research shows

"Mothers with cavities can transmit caries-producing oral bacteria to their babies when they clean pacifiers by sticking them in their own mouths or by sharing spoons."

Man commits suicide, blames ex-wife in suicide note; ex-wife takes control of copyright, tries to get note (and man’s other writings) removed from Internet

One of the stranger copyright-related cases that I've come across.

Calls to class far-right Jewish settlers as terrorists after Israeli soldiers attacked

I tend to have a relatively positive view of Israel, but there are certain groups in its society I wouldn't have a problem classifying this way.

I mentioned some time ago an abuse investigation involving of fairly well-known pastors. It resulted in the following statement appearing on The Gospel's Coalition's website (though the case in question had been dismissed due to statute of limitations issues and a criminal investigation into one case was ungoing):

So the entire legal strategy was dependent on a conspiracy theory that was more hearsay than anything like reasonable demonstration of culpability. As to the specific matter of C. J. participating in some massive cover-up, the legal evidence was so paltry (more like non-existent) that the judge did not think a trial was even warranted.

Now a few days back the criminal trial returned a verdict of guilty on all counts and additional trials appear set to begin. Also noteworthy was the testimony (under oath) in the trial which seems to reveal that hiding the case from law enforcement was exactly what went on:

... during Morales’ trial this week, public defender Alan Drew drilled former pastor Grant Layman while on the stand.
Drew: “Did you have an obligation to report the alleged abuse?”
Layman: “I believe so.”
Drew: “And you didn’t?”
Layman: “No.”

Now it seems that The Gospel Coalition's webpage has quietly removed a couple of people from it's list of members though the organization seems to be refusing to make any statement while also actively blocking those mentioning this if Twitter is to be believed. The first statements from TGC already seemed like a terrible way to deal with cases of abuse, but this seems only to make things worse.

(I say this though, if you've read this blog for a while, you're probably aware that I'm skeptical of a lot of the claims in this area and still believe that the statute of limitations is worthwhile. Any justice system, whatever its policies are, is likely to in various instances fail to punish the guilty or punish the innocent. The question is about how to balance policies such that these are both minimized).

Turkish man who killed two wives seeks new partner on TV show

Reading the text of the article it seems that he only killed one of his two wives - the other killing comes from when he had an affair with some other guy's wife. Sounds like a great catch.

The Importance of Family Meal

"a lot of these guys (although none of the women, interestingly) love to cook, and so they help" Is it just me or are the gender stereotypes surrounding cooking reversing themselves? Or is that only when it comes to special occasions?

Big Sometimes Friendly Giant

On the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: "the one thing Dahl never had trouble with was his teeth—because he had all of them removed, preemptively, when he was 21. He thought they were more trouble than they were worth and tried to talk everyone he knew into having theirs pulled, too."

Ironic effects of racial bias during interracial interactions

One reason it may be difficult to eliminate some sources of bias from society: "Blacks perceive White interaction partners who are more racially biased more positively than less biased White partners, primarily because the former group must make more of an effort to control racial bias than the latter. ... Blacks may, ironically, prefer to interact with highly racially biased Whites, at least in short interactions."

What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that perhaps the biggest remaining issue keeping these employees on strike seems to be the same as it was months ago. It's because IKEA is refusing to FIRE certain employees:

At issue is the status of 35 or so unionized workers who returned to their jobs early in the dispute. They have been expelled by the union, which has demanded they be removed from the workplace before the union workers return to their jobs, should an agreement be reached.

I can understand sometimes how unions came about and why sometimes they have positive effects for employees. Overall I'm not a big fan of them though, and here though I definitely favour IKEA over the union in question.