News

Ah, the student life

"An Australian academic at Oxford University has decided living like a student isn't so bad, pledging more than half his career earnings to charity," Australian Associated Press reports. "Dr. Toby Ord, a 30-year-old ethics researcher with the Future of Humanity Institute, has agreed to give up 10 per cent of his annual salary, plus any yearly earnings above £20,000 [$35,000]. Dr. Ord says if he lives like a student, he should be able to give away around £1-million [$1.75-million]. 'My student years were not extravagant, but were immensely enjoyable, with the chief enjoyments such as reading beautiful books and spending time with my wife and friends costing almost nothing,' Dr. Ord said."

Boomers in decline?

"Americans entering their 70s today are experiencing more disabilities in old age than did the previous generation, researchers announced [last] Thursday," Shari Roan writes in the Los Angeles Times. "The shift in health fortunes comes as a surprise and predicts future high disability rates for the baby boomers as well." The study, led by Teresa E. Seeman, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, doesn't explain why more people are becoming disabled as they enter their later years. But, Prof. Seeman said, rising levels of obesity appear to be the major factor; the greatest increases in disabilities were among non-whites and people who were obese or overweight.

Gifts keep on giving

"More Americans are planning on regifting or passing on a gift they got from someone else, according to a Consumer Reports poll on holiday shopping. A total of 36 per cent of U.S. adults said they would recycle a gift this year, compared with 31 per cent last year and 24 per cent in 2007, the survey found. ... The poll also found that 6 per cent of adults still carry holiday debt from last year, unchanged from last year."

Source: Chicago Tribune

Identity theft

Last year, almost 10 million Americans were victims of identity theft, Lewis Beale reports for Miller-McCune.com. And despite the popular image of a hacker breaking into a mainframe computer and stealing thousands of pieces of sensitive personal data, 43 per cent of cases come from such low-tech means as stolen wallets and documents. Only about one in 10 thefts involved computers. The most common method of getting information, according to a study published this year in the Criminal Justice Review, is to buy it from someone, generally a person who works for a mortgage company, bank, car dealership or state agencies such as law enforcement and departments of motor vehicles. Other methods include stealing mail from apartment houses or businesses such as insurance companies - even stealing trash cans from banks.

Rebirth of the blues

"Blue whales, the world's largest animals, are reappearing in parts of the oceans where hunting once wiped them out, signalling that they may finally be returning from the brink of extinction," Jonathan Leake writes in The Sunday Times of London. "Marine scientists have recorded the animals roaming migratory routes and feeding grounds in the Pacific from which they vanished for much of the past six decades. Research also suggests that the Antarctic population of blue whales may now be growing at 6 per cent a year. In the Atlantic, sightings are also increasing. 'The overall numbers are still tiny compared with the original populations before whaling started, but the trend is at last in the right direction,' said John Calambokidis, a marine scientist whose research on whale movements and populations has just been published in the journal Marine Mammal Science."

His trains run on time

Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader known for shunning air travel, has six luxurious private trains and 19 stations for his exclusive use, despite eight million of the country's people facing starvation, The Daily Telegraph reports. The trains are equipped with conference rooms, bedrooms and high-tech communication facilities, intelligence sources have said. The trains have a total of 90 carriages. Kim uses the trains when he makes inspection visits to local army units and factories or travels abroad.

Will there be an exam?

"It is a subject that would make most governments blush, but officials in the Spanish region of Extremadura have launched a major program to encourage what could be described as a more hands-on approach to sexuality," Giles Tremlett reports in The Guardian. "The region's socialist government has launched a ... campaign aimed at teaching young people how best to set about 'sexual self-exploration and the discovery of self-pleasure' - or to put it less delicately: masturbation. ... Officials from the neighbouring region of Andalucia have expressed an interest in copying the program. The campaign includes leaflets, flyers, a 'fanzine' and workshops for the young in which they receive instruction on self-pleasuring techniques along with advice on contraception and self-respect."

Thought du jour

"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure."

- Russell Baker