The Hong Kong actor told the AP on Friday that his latest film “Chinese Zodiac” will be his last action movie.

Chan, launching the film in Cannes with co-stars Kwone Sang Woo, Yao Xingtong and Liao Fan, said that people never believe him when he says he is going to retire.

“They say ‘no, you’re still young, you can still do it,’ but I have to stop one day.”

The 58-year-old says he is bowing out with “Chinese Zodiac” because it’s one of the “most important” films in his career.

Chan wrote, produced, directed and coordinated fights scenes for the film — in which his character searches for the 12 bronze heads of the Chinese zodiac.

Chan promised that he’ll continue to make films, but with more acting than action, citing Robert DeNiro and Clint Eastwood his role models.

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, Associated Press
–
10 hours ago 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaders of eight of the world’s biggest economies meet this weekend outside Washington, seeking to keep Europe’s debt crisis from spiraling out of control and jeopardizing fledgling recoveries in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The turmoil in Greece is draining confidence in the 17 countries that use the euro. Borrowing costs are up for the most indebted governments. Depositors and investors are fleeing banks seen as weak. Unemployment is soaring as recession grips nearly half the eurozone countries. And global markets are on edge.

All that forms a tumultuous backdrop as representatives of the G8 countries — the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Russia, Italy and Canada — head to Camp David. Standing in the way of a breakthrough are disagreements over how to bolster Europe’s economy and avoid a broader catastrophe.

In advance of the talks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a conciliatory note this week. She said in a television interview this week that she was open to measures to help stimulate Greece’s economy as long as the country honors its commitments to shrink its debts.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner applauded the softer tone emerging among European leaders.

“You are seeing them talk about a better balance between growth and austerity, meaning a somewhat more gradual, softer path toward restoring fiscal sustainability,” Geithner said.

The shift shows that European leaders recognize that countries can’t increase their economic growth if they’re forced to focus solely on cutting spending and reducing debts. Geithner said European countries would benefit from investment in public works projects, like roads and schools.

At this weekend’s talks, non-European leaders will seek assurances that European leaders could contain the damage from a banking meltdown in Greece. They worry about a panic that could spill into Portugal, Spain and other indebted European countries — and to nations outside the continent whose banks are connected to Greek banks.

“If there was a bank run in Greece … would they know how to prevent it from spreading to other countries?” said Jacob Kierkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

U.S. officials will be “looking for assurances that the Europeans are aware of what’s needed to keep the euro together and are willing to take those measures.”

The meetings begin Friday evening with an economics-focused summit at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin mountains. They will end Saturday evening. Most of the officials will join a larger group of international leaders in Chicago for a national-security oriented NATO summit Sunday and Monday.

Investors have been shaken by the power vacuum in debt-stricken Greece. They fear the consequences if Greece refuses to impose deep spending cuts agreed to under a bailout deal. They worry that the bailout could collapse, toppling Greece’s economic and banking system and forcing the nation from the eurozone.

Should that happen, larger governments in Spain or Italy that are struggling to ease their debt loads might soon fail. The eurozone itself could splinter. The result could be a global crisis to rival the one that followed the 2008 collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Behind the turmoil is a growing realization that cost-cutting alone won’t solve Europe’s crisis. Europe’s governments have begun to seek ways to energize the continent’s economy. Yet when money is tight and borrowing costs are high, governments have little ability to quickly stimulate growth.

Speaking to business leaders before leaving for the G8 summit, British Prime Minister David Cameron warned Thursday that the eurozone must “make up, or it is looking at a potential breakup.”

“Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful eurozone with an effective firewall, well-capitalized and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the eurozone — or we are in uncharted territory, which carries huge risks for everybody,” Cameron said in a speech in Manchester.

The Obama administration is also concerned that shocks from Europe could slow the U.S. economy and threaten President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects.

Yet it’s also aware there’s no simple solution. European countries are straining under high borrowing costs. Their lending rates are high because investors are nervous about their debt loads relative to the strength of the economies.

Under pressure from Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, governments have laid off workers, cut pay for others, reduced spending on social programs and imposed higher taxes and fees to boost revenue.

Yet as economies have shrunk, countries’ debt as a percentage of their economies has worsened. Leaders are increasingly recognizing that budget-cutting must be paired with steps to invigorate Europe’s economies.

The United States, along with Japan and Canada, is expected to push Merkel to do more to spur growth in Europe. Germany has begun to accept such an approach after the election of pro-growth Francois Hollande to the French presidency and the fall of a pro-austerity Dutch government.

Among the growth measures some economists recommend are reducing regulations for small businesses, making it easier for workers to find jobs across the eurozone and relaxing barriers that countries have created to protect their industries.

Germany has already negotiated higher public sector wages, a step that could encourage Germans to increase their purchases of goods from more troubled European economies.

“That is the one thing Barack Obama will try to impress on Angela Merkel,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State’s Martin Smith School of Business.

But most stimulative measures take time — up to a decade, in some cases — to kick in. They won’t much help a Europe that needs much stronger growth now.

Joaquin Almunia, the European Union’s top antitrust official and its former economic and monetary affairs commissioners, argued Wednesday that the eurozone lacks a growth strategy that can co-exist with short-term steps to shrink government debts.

“We cannot offer to the public an adjustment period of 10 years,” Almunia said.

Claudia Schmucker, an economist at the German Council on Foreign Relations, thinks that while Merkel won’t drop her austerity demands she will eventually agree to some growth measures.

A growth agreement among European leaders would at least “show that we are doing something,” Schmucker said.

In light of all the obstacles, expectations are low for a breakthrough at Camp David this weekend.

“There will be nothing here that tackles the fundamental key questions looming over the global economy,” Kierkegaard said.

McHugh reported from Frankfurt. AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Article source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iTP8-yhVE2_6dpbrCUkHiM8YId9g?docId=3a9eb22800194d8f9556b42aac681725

The waste incinerator is due to open in 2015

A public consultation into the awarding of a licence to run a waste incinerator in Gloucestershire has begun.

Urbaser Balfour Beatty submitted plans for an Energy from Waste incineration facility at Javelin Park in Haresfield, at junction 12 of the M5, in March.

During the seven-week consultation the Environment Agency will hold drop-in sessions asking for views from members of the public.

More than 5,000 people signed a petition in 2010 opposing the plans.

Stuart Baker, from the Environment Agency, said: “We are considering the application, but before we make any decisions we wanted to give local residents an opportunity to discuss any queries or concerns they may have with us face to face.

“All responses will be reviewed in detail. They will help us to decide whether to grant the permit and, if we do, what conditions we would need to impose to adequately protect the environment and human health.”

The Urbaser Balfour Beatty consortium was chosen as Gloucestershire County Council’s preferred bidder in December. A 25-year contract worth £500m is due to be awarded next month.

The plant, which is due to open in 2015, will produce electricity and recycle household waste.

Drop-in sessions will take place on 30 May at Quedgeley Village Hall and on 22 June at Hardwicke Village Hall between 16:00 and 21:00 BST.

The consultation will close on 6 July.

Mannheim, Germany (PRWEB) May 17, 2012

Science Index is a health sciences social network established in 1998 to index the very latest news, headlines, references and resources from science journals, books and websites worldwide. The site covers news in all fields of biology, business, chemistry, engineering, geography, health, mathematics and society. Due to public demand the site now accepts submissions with multilingual content. This allows science articles authored in languages other than English to be submitted, accepted and included. The publishers expect a large number of submissions in French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and German to become featured on the site.

Science Index’s Health Section covers the effects of disease and medical treatment on the overall condition of organisms. Its eighteen subsections include Audiology, Dentistry, Dermatology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Healthcare, Immunology, Medicine, Neurology, Nutrition, Oncology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Psychiatry, Psychology, Radiology, Rheumatology, and Surgery. Users can receive alerts if new content has been posted in this category by subscribing to Science Index’s Health RSS feed. The site has now included the two new categories Rheumatology and Surgery to this section. While the Rheumatology category covers diagnosis and therapy of rheumatic diseases including problems involving joints, soft tissues and connective tissues, the Surgery category covers diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity, and disease by manual and instrumental means.

Science Index’s Rheumatology category covers diagnosis and therapy of rheumatic diseases including problems involving joints, soft tissues and connective tissues. It currently contains 5,383 articles partly derived from 28 scientific journals. The latest articles in this category are also available through an Rheumatology Sciences RSS feed. One of the latest additions in this category covers a review of tocilizumab treatment in 122 rheumatoid arthritis patients included in the Tsurumai Biologics Communication Registry (TBCR) study. The authors verify whether the administration of tocilizumab which is a biologic that may help to achieve treatment goals. They conclude that when used as a first-line biological drug for patients with early-stage rheumatoid arthritis, tocilizumab appears to provide high rates of remission under the Boolean-based remission criterion, which are strongly affected by the patient global assessment. Another recently published article in this category assesses the prevalence of atopic disorders in rheumatic diseases. Results indicate that patients with OA, RA, and AS seem to have similar risks for asthma, atopic dermatitis, and either atopy to healthy controls. However, the prevalence of hay fever may increase in AS. Patients with RA have a higher risk of atopy than patients with OA.

Science Index’s Surgery category covers diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity, and disease by manual and instrumental means. It currently contains 34,139 articles partly derived from 156 scientific journals. The latest articles in this category are also available through a Surgery Sciences RSS feed. One recently included article in this category presents a novel control architecture for physiological tremor compensation in teleoperated systems. the authors propose a new control architecture for estimation and compensation of physiological tremor in the presence of communication time delays. Their experiments show that the proposed control architecture effectively compensates the user’s tremorous motion and the slave follows only the master’s voluntary motion in a stable manner. Another recently published article covers bone graft from the distal medial tibia in foot and ankle surgery. The authors describe an efficient and versatile technique for harvesting both cancellous bone graft and corticocancellous graft and conclude that use of distal tibial bone graft eliminates the need for a second surgeon and more lengthy harvest procedure and offers sufficient autograft material for foot and ankle applications with a low rate of complications.

Science Index currently contains over 1.47 million stories distributed among 75 categories. 76,504 users monitor 8,597 journals covering the broad spectrum of sciences. Since new science content is discovered in real-time, the delay between original publication and appearance at Science Index is no more than two days. Science Index provides an advanced search feature which suggests up to ten closely related articles for a search and every selected story.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/5/prweb9517919.htm

The research reminded us of another recent study that looked at how people perceived sexual orientation based on facial symmetry and proportions. (Apparently, the more symmetrical a guy is, the more straight he seems.) LiveScience has a breakdown of some other attempts at gaydar analysis. But do we really need study after study about whether gaydar is real or not? And do these types of studies perpetuate discriminatory stereotypes, even when they’re based on good intentions, like the first study, which the lead author said helps combat “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” types of arguments against anti-discrimination policies? We asked some of our friends who identify as gay or queer what they thought.

“I think the most interesting thing about gaydar is when it’s not perfect. Like, when you’re shocked to find out someone is gay,” one gay man told us. “I’m only interested in gaydar when it doesn’t work.” He said he wasn’t offended by the studies because “stereotypes exist for a reason,” and that he’s fascinated by faulty gaydar because it’s “deliciously fun when you’re shocked.”

“On a basic level, we all want to know who the people around us are attracted to, just out of common interest‬,” said another gay man who didn’t find the studies troubling. “You’ve either got it, or you don’t.”

“From my perspective, which is obviously less scientific, gaydar is about reading a person’s vibe — the way he or she carries him- or herself,” said Gawker’s Louis Peitzman, who is gay. “These studies don’t annoy me, but they’re inconclusive. What do they actually say about why we perceive a person to be gay? But they can be damaging in a sense, because as soon as you’re working to identify gay people at first sight, someone is going to use that to avoid gay people. Anti-gay religious groups can teach their parishioners to shun people with a certain look, in the same way science might backfire by discovering a gene that predisposes a person toward same-sex attraction, leading anti-gay groups to search for a ‘cure.’”

More friends seemed to agree that gaydar studies are problematic.

“Asking someone to visually identify a gay person just asks them to pick out socially constructed signifiers,” said Zoe, who identifies as queer. “That’s reductionist at best and doesn’t speak well to sexual fluidity.”

“I think the studies are pointless, and in a way homophobic,” said Corey, a gay male. “How are they quantifying gaydar? Usually they’re showing pictures or footage and asking people to guess, and those guesses are obviously based on built-in stereotypes about what homosexuals look and sound like.”

“It seems like these studies are only done to appease straight women who are fearful that they’re fucking gay guys,” said another gay male friend. “But I’d much rather read a study about gaydar than another one that’s like, ‘Breaking news: getting drunk and eating chocolate can actually make you live longer!’”‬

“Banking on gaydar is problematic because it lets us assume gender and sexual identity of people,” said Allison, a queer woman. “BUT it’s many of us in the queer communities who are just as guilty of buying into gaydar. As much as I could criticize someone outside of the LGBT community for bragging about having accurate gaydar, it’s probably my queer friends who are most adamant about being able to tell who’s gay.”

Ironically (for Allison’s friends, at least), everyone we interviewed pretty much said their own gaydar sucked. Answers included: “Really poor! I’m consistently surprised‬,” “average to good — ‪Nothing too exceptional,‬” “maybe a little overzealous‬,” and “wildly unreliable.” Only Louis said he thought his was “pretty accurate.” (Maybe Louis should start giving lessons?)

Our sample size is small and our survey is wildly unscientific, but it’s still interesting that our findings completely go against the University of Washington’s research, which concluded that gaydar may be an inherent trait. Unfortunately, the study didn’t specify the sexual orientation of its participants; is it possible that straight people are more concerned about whether people are gay than gay people are? Based solely on our country’s politicians: yes.

(Image via Single Asian Male)

Article source: http://jezebel.com/5910861/why-is-pop-science-obsessed-with-gaydar

These findings appear in a paper — “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery” — which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“We are not saying that parenting makes people happy, but that parenthood is associated with happiness and meaning,” explained Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at UC Riverside and a leading scholar in positive psychology. “Contrary to repeated scholarly and media pronouncements, people may find solace that parenthood and child care may actually be linked to feelings of happiness and meaning in life.”

Paper co-authors are S. Katherine Nelson, a doctoral candidate at UCR; Kostadin Kushlev, a doctoral candidate at UBC; Tammy English, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford; and Elizabeth W. Dunn, associate professor of psychology at UBC.

The findings are among a new wave of research that suggests that parenthood comes with relatively more positives, despite the added responsibilities. The study also dovetails with emerging evolutionary perspectives that suggest parenting is a fundamental human need.

Recent popular accounts have painted a portrait of unhappy parents who find little joy in taking care of their children, “but the scientific basis for these claims remains inconclusive,” the researchers wrote.

“If you went to a large dinner party, the parents in the room would be just as happy or happier than the guests without children,” Dunn said.

The researchers conducted three studies that tested whether parents are happier overall than their childless peers, if parents feel better moment-to-moment than nonparents, and whether parents experience more positive feelings when taking care of children than during their other daily activities.

The consistency of their findings across all three studies “provides strong evidence challenging the widely held perception that children are associated with reduced well-being.

Among the findings:

Parents are happier when taking care of their children than while doing other daily activities.

Fathers in particular expressed greater levels of happiness, positive emotion and meaning in life than their childless peers. This finding requires further study, Dunn noted, adding that “the pleasures of parenthood may be offset by the surge in responsibility and housework that arrives with motherhood.”

Older and married parents tend to be the happiest. “Our findings suggest that if you are older (and presumably more mature) and if you are married (and presumably have more social and financial support), then you’re likely to be happier if you have children than your childless peers,” Lyubomirsky said. “This is not true, however, for single parents or very young parents.”

As Dunn put it, “These findings suggest that parents are not nearly the miserable creatures that we might expect from recent studies and popular representations.”

Article source: http://www.sciencecodex.com/parents_are_happier_people-91721

Everybody uses spatial skills daily, for example, in packing a suitcase or the trunk of a car.  Moreover, it is one of the primary ways people get around, a trait humans share with other species, one that evolved long before civilization discovered GPS. 

“It’s true for any animal that has to move around in the world,” says Nora Newcombe, professor of psychology at Temple University.

Spatial reasoning, which is the ability to mentally visualize and manipulate two- and three-dimensional objects, also is a great predictor of talent in science, technology, engineering and math, collectively known as STEM.

Yet, “these skills are not valued in our society or taught adequately in the educational system,” says Newcombe, who also is principal investigator for the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center.  “People will readily say such things as ‘I hate math,’ or ‘I can’t find my way when I’m lost,’ and think it’s cute, whereas they would be embarrassed to say ‘I can’t read.’

“People have a theory about this skill, that it’s innate at birth and you can’t develop it, and that’s really not true,” she adds. “It’s probably true that some people are born with a better ability to take in spatial information, but that doesn’t mean if you aren’t born with it, you can’t change.  The brain has a certain amount of plasticity.”

The goal of the center is to develop the science of spatial learning, and to transform educational practices by finding new ways to help children and adults acquire spatial skills in order for them to be successful in high technology fields.  Temple University is the center’s lead institution, with research partners at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.

The center, now in its sixth year, is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science of Learning Center. The NSF supports the center with about $4 million annually over ten years.

Until recently, research on spatial skills and spatial learning has been fragmented. For example, spatial language researchers didn’t interact with researchers studying maps and diagrams, and neither communicated with scientists assessing individual differences in fundamental spatial skills. The center hopes to involve scientists across multiple disciplines.   

Among other things, center scientists hope to encourage classroom teaching that incorporates methods that “spatialize” information, such using diagrams in science instruction. Middle school students and their teachers often ignore diagrams simply because they do not know how to interpret them.

“Understanding how external symbol systems function in human cognition is crucial to using them effectively in education,” Newcombe says.  “You have to get students learning to read the diagrams. One of the things teachers think is that: diagrams are pictures, you don’t need to teach how to read a diagram. Well, you do.”

In one project, center researchers at the University of Chicago are working with educators on a revision of Everyday Mathematics, a widely used textbook, to include more spatial awareness in math instruction.  “This is important, for example, in how you teach measurement, or angles,” she says. “Teachers think they’re doing a great activity by planting seeds and watching things grow, but many children still don’t know how to measure. They don’t think of the spaces on the ruler as countables.”

Another center scientist, Kenneth Forbus, professor of computer science and education at Northwestern University, is developing a software program called CogSketch which allows college geology and engineering professors to use sketching in the classroom with immediate feedback from the computer.

“The idea is that you can have a tablet computer on which you can sketch, and the artificial intelligence aspect will be able to give you feedback,” Newcombe says.  “You really can incorporate much more active sketching in the college classroom with it.  Although it is now being developed for college, high schools and middles schools also will be able to use it.”

Even the simple act of gesturing has a spatial component, and is another research focus of the center. “What gesture can do is fill in the gaps left by language, allowing learners to reveal knowledge about space that is not apparent in their talk,” Newcombe says. “We are examining the gestures that speakers produce when describing tasks that call upon the fundamental systems of spatial learning and cognition.”

On their own, both children and adults can hone their spatial skills through play, such as  blocks and puzzles, or computer games, such as Tetris or Foldit. The latter enlists players to solve three-dimensional scientific mysteries associated with protein structure.

“You naturally use spatial language when you are playing with blocks and puzzles with your kids,” Newcombe says. “Tetris gives you an incredible amount of practice at representing the shape of something, and seeing it change as it rotates. Mental rotation is a very important spatial skill that helps predict future scientists and engineers and mathematicians.

“Foldit solves problems in organic chemistry, and players actually have solved some scientific puzzles in protein folding,” she adds. “Spatial skills can be enhanced by any activities that involve shapes, rotation, putting the pieces together and building.”

To be sure, some experts wonder whether advances such as GPS ultimately will weaken human spatial skills, particularly if humans become lax about using their own talents, and more dependent on technology.

“We are just getting around to that, but I think the answer is going to be yes,” Newcombe says. “What is happening,  mostly, is that you are listening to the lady telling you where to go, instead of constructing a map inside your head and completely forgetting that someday you just might be without the lady.”

Article source: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2012/05/17/science-of-spatial-learning

The researchers based the conclusion on an experiment in which people were asked whether they planned to vote for Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama. Some of the respondents were first given information about Mr. Romney’s religion – and in some cases, quite detailed information – while others were given none. Those who received the information first were no less likely to support Mr. Romney.

Such prompting is a common research method in social science, used both to convey information and to put it at the forefront of respondents’ minds.

“Our results should not be taken as definitive, particularly because they are not based on a nationally representative sample,” write the authors, Matthew M. Chingos of Brookings and Michael Henderson of the University of Mississippi. “But they do suggest that concerns over Mitt Romney’s ‘religion problem’ have been overblown.”

The paper begins by laying out the two competing stories about whether some voters would spurn Mr. Romney’s candidacy because he is Mormon (and the first Mormon to win a major-party presidential nomination).

On the one hand, the authors note that 22 percent of Americans said in a recent Gallup poll that they would not vote for a hypothetical Mormon candidate for president. By comparison, 10 percent or less of respondents said they would not vote for a Hispanic, Jewish, Baptist, Catholic, female or black candidate. Only a hypothetical gay candidate (32 percent) and a hypothetical atheist candidate (49 percent) fared worse than the Mormon candidate.

Another poll found that evangelical voters were especially likely to oppose a Mormon candidate, and Mr. Romney indeed fared poorly among evangelicals during the Republican primaries.

But the authors go on to say that none of these patterns are proof that voters will spurn Mr. Romney. Having objections to a hypothetical candidate, Mr. Chingos noted in an e-mail, is not the same as rejecting a specific candidate whom voters see as having views far closer to their own than an opposing candidate.

Mr. Chingos and Mr. Henderson say that the initial reluctance of evangelical voters to support Mr. Romney may simply reflect that they are more conservative than he is. Research has shown that such voters overwhelmingly support their party’s nominee in the end, the authors write.

To conduct their study, the researchers recruited 2,084 participants through Amazon.com, to fill out a computer survey. All respondents were asked a few basic questions about themselves and were then randomly given one of four different sets of information about Mr. Romney:

A: Mitt Romney is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president against Democrat Barack Obama this fall.

B: Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president against Democrat Barack Obama this fall.

C: Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president against Democrat Barack Obama this fall. The Mormon Church believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the Bible is the word of God.

D: Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is seeking the Republican nomination to run for president against Democrat Barack Obama this fall. In addition to accepting the Bible as the word of God, the Mormon Church also believes that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. The Mormon Church believes the Book of Mormon was written on golden plates by ancient inhabitants of America whom Jesus Christ visited shortly after his resurrection. The Church also believes that the book was later discovered in 1823 when Joseph Smith found it buried in upstate New York.

Finally, the survey asked people about their voting plans in November.

Among all participants, support for Mr. Romney did not vary significantly across the four groups. Among conservatives, support was actually higher among those who received information about Mormonism than among those in group A, who did not.

“Our experiment does not provide a definitive test, but one compelling idea is that Romney’s religion gives voters a clue about how the candidates differ ideologically,” the authors write. “It may be that associating Romney with a religious label itself prompts voters to think of the candidates in more ideological terms.”

When asked whether he thought the information about Mormonism might push survey participants toward Mr. Romney, because they did not want to seem prejudiced, Mr. Chingos acknowledged that possibility.

But he said the way in which the survey emphasized the aspects of Mormonism that differ from Christianity would instead seem likely to make some people pause, especially given the previous poll results showing many Americans’ hesitation about the religion.

Article source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/study-argues-romneys-religion-problem-is-exaggerated/

I’m not going to accept moral judgement of my actions from anyone based on what’s written on a 3×5 piece of paper, and anyone that feels they have the right to do so because of some fairytale they believe in will be summarily fired from serving me. If their employers back them up on that, they’re fired too.

Think about the reason we have pharmacies: to keep certain medications out of the hands of the public without seeing a doctor first, and that doctor making the decision that the medication in question is the right one for what’s needed, that the correct dosage is being dispensed, etc. To allow some graduate of a 12-week diploma-mill program to come between someone in need of medical care and their prescribed medication is to say they know better than the graduate from medical school does.

How does it violate your ethics when you don’t know the whole story, and it’s not part of your job to get the whole story? This is like the cashier at the fast-food restaurant refusing to serve one particular customer at the drive thru window because they think the burger will be used for immoral purposes.

Article source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/abortion/under-new-kansas-law-pharmacists-can-deny-birth-control-prescriptions