• Corporations Are Not People

Most Americans don't realize that the idea that "corporations are people" and "money is speech" are concepts that were never, ever considered or promoted or even passed by any legislature in the history of America. Neither were they ever promoted or signed into law by any president - if anything, the opposite, with presidents from Grover Cleveland in 1887 to Barack Obama in 2010 condemning them.

• Weekly Ezine for Democrats

• What is Science?

• Dawkins on Nick Cohen, Salman Rushdie, free speech, and the Jaipur literary festival

Mitt Romney touts his experience at Bain Capital as a strength, but not the experience with leveraged buyouts.

• Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever

• How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the "One Percent"

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

• David Attenborough on Desert Island Discs

• Adventures in defending science-based medicine in cancer journals: Energy chelation

• Citizen Philosophers

Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that’s what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever met.

Most of the four million slaves shipped from Africa to Brazil were sold in Salvador, the first residence of Portugal’s colonial rulers. It’s still Brazil’s blackest city. In Ribeiro’s neighborhood, children play football or do capoeira, pray in Pentecostal Churches or worship African gods. Many are involved with drugs; “every year we lose students to crack,” she tells me. And they study philosophy two hours each week because of a 2008 law that mandates philosophy instruction in all Brazilian high schools. Nine million teenagers now take philosophy classes for three years.

• Searching the Brain for the Roots of Fear

You are taking a walk in the woods ― pleasant, invigorating, the sun shining through the leaves. Suddenly, a rattlesnake appears at your feet. You experience something at that moment. You freeze, your heart rate shoots up and you begin to sweat ― a quick, automatic sequence of physical reactions. That reaction is fear.

A week later, you are taking the same walk again. Sunshine, pleasure, but no rattlesnake. Still, you are worried that you will encounter one. The experience of walking through the woods is fraught with worry. You are anxious.

• The Corporate State Will Be Broken

I spent Friday morning sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan. I was waiting to be sentenced for “disturbing the peace” and “refusing to obey a lawful order” during an Occupy demonstration in front of Goldman Sachs in November.

• 30 famous writers talk about God

Here is the latest video compilation [25:40] by Dr Jonathan T. Pararajasingham, a British neurosurgeon. I’ve previously posted two of his compilations, “20 voices of belief” (academics and theologians) and “100 voices of unbelief” (academics). Here are 30 famous writers expressing their atheism. My favorite is Ian McEwan, who perfectly expresses the gulf between scientific and religious “ways of knowing.”

Supreme Court holds warrantless GPS tracking unconstitutional

All nine justices of the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police officers violated the Fourth Amendment rule against unreasonable search and seizure when they attached a GPS device to a suspect's car and tracked it for 28 days without a warrant. But the court was split down the middle on the reasoning. Four justices focused on the physical trespass that occurred when the police attached the device, four focused on the violation of the suspect's "reasonable expectation of privacy," and the final justice, Sonia Sotomayor, endorsed both theories.

• Birds Learning to Share tip to Frank

• Basketball fans with religious ties offered cheaper tickets at Cal U

  Church affiliation got fans a $2 discount at California University of Pennsylvania's basketball games on Friday night.

While the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education does not ban religious promotions at its 14 universities, a civil liberties advocate called it "discriminatory," and officials at other universities said they would not offer discounts to religious groups.

Cal U offered the discount at yesterday's matchup of its women's and men's basketball teams against Millersville University as part of "Faith and Family Night."

• Bird Bites Cat Story - Video

• Facilitated Communication – Again – in the HuffPo

• Generic Drugs: Are they Equivalent?

With healthcare costs continuing to rise, generic drugs are looking more attractive than ever. The prospect of getting the same drug at a lower cost is tempting to anyone with a large drug bill — patient or insurer alike. The savings are massive: Lipitor lost patent protection last month — it was a $10 billion drug, and the generic versions are priced at a fraction of the original cost. In 2012, Plavix and Seroquel, two other blockbusters, will lose patent protection too — that’s another $10 billion in drug costs that will shrink. This “patent cliff” will shrivel about $255 billion in worldwide patented drug sales over the next five years. If you’re taking a prescription drug and not already on a generic, you probably will be soon. And depending on where you live, you may be automatically switched to a generic version of your prescription drug as soon as it’s available.

By creating a convenient ecosystem, China's Foxconn draws in employees who earn 31 cents an hour working for 35 hours straight, thereby saving American companies money.

We're back !! I'm with a new host and Google is now reporting no malware. Thanks for your patience. I've also changed how the system handles comments. In the past someone could just register and it would automatically approve the comments. Now after registration the comments are held for approval, when I see that the comment is coming from a legitimate commenter I flag them as trusted and from then on their comments will appear when posted. I've already changed the status of many regulars to trusted and will get to the rest as they post their first comments.

• Do "dwarf" birds exist?

It seems a photo I posted on ID Frontiers started a conversation that culminated in David Sibley, bird expert and author of numerous guides on bird identification and birding, writing an article on "dwarf" birds.

• UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils

• Science and the Chattering Classes (tip to Geoff)

Pity the poor rationalist in polite company. Inevitably, diet has come up, and if the party is in Southern California, chances are somebody was "detoxifying." But to speak out against the anti-scientific orthodoxy that prevails among large segments of the educated class is to paint a stripe down your back and make yourself the skunk at the garden party.

• U.S. researcher accused of fraud in studies on red wine compound

A University of Connecticut researcher who studied the link between aging and a substance found in red wine has committed more than 100 acts of data fabrication and falsification, the university said on Wednesday, throwing much of his work into doubt.

• More Left Brain / Right Brain Nonsense

This is one of those memes that refuses to die. It's a zombie-meme, the terminator of myths, one of those ideas of popular culture that everyone knows but is simply wrong - the idea that individuals can be categorized as either left-brain or right-brain in terms of their personality and the way they process information. Related to this is the notion that any individual can either engage their left brain or their right brain in a particular task.

• Weekly Ezine for Democrats

I've turned off comments while checking the site for malware. I've had a lot of problems with spam and I'm trying to determine if there is actually some malware or something else. If your browser or software is reporting problems please send me as detailed an explanation as you can. I've checked a number of reports some have made, but can't duplicate them myself trying a variety of different browers. Sometimes there is a problem on a users computer that gets reported as a problem on the site.

Oh and Happy New Year to all of you, this will be the 11th year for onegoodmove.

And here are a few links I found interesting, perhaps you will too.

• Strains, sprains and pains

What do you think would happen if you gave a bunch of "complementary and alternative medicine" practitioners access to a big pot of money -- say, up to $10,000 per patient -- and let them treat patients virtually without restriction, hampered only by a fee schedule. No utilization review, no refusal based on a treatment's being "experimental" -- none of the usual foils which trip up CAM practitioners in the health insurance field.

Think they'd run up the bill? Yes, they would.

In fact, that's exactly the scenario playing out in Florida right now with the state's no-fault auto insurance.

• [Lordy, is it 2012] already?](http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2012/01/lordyisit2012already.html)

• Winners: National Geographic photo contest

CSPAN covered the People's caucus and put the video here.

The Occupy Des Moines homepage is here. The Occupy the caucuses page will take you to the need to know info for the event. I've been trying to locate the url for their live feed, and can't find it at the moment. Sometimes it surfaces on the facebook page (Occupy DSM), but I'm limited time-wise to hunt for it today - maybe when i return to join them this weekend.

There was an interview with Ed Fallon, a local ex-politician but current community activist on the Rachel Maddow show Wednesday. He appears toward the dn, so if you read through the transcript, you'll need to click on show more text. I found the video on bing. The focus on Occupy Des Moines starts at approximately 2'43" in the clip.

Norm, i hope you don't mind the off-topic (for me) thread. Happy New Year!

• How Smart Is This Bird? Let It Count the Ways

By now, the intelligence of birds is well known. Alex the African gray parrot had great verbal skills. Scrub jays, which hide caches of seeds and other food, have remarkable memories. And New Caledonian crows make and use tools in ways that would put the average home plumber to shame.

• I Was An Atheist Raising Fundamentalist Kids Then I Broke The Cycle Of Religion And So Can You

I have been an atheist since I was 13 but shortly after having kids I spent 5 years pretending to be a christian - a fundamentalist christian. The kids were going to church and Sunday school every week, sometimes more than once a week. I was a methodist as a kid and was not worried. I thought that it would be nice for them to know about religion and never thought that it would take over their minds. Everyone told them that the crazy was true and I kept silent. I was an atheist raising fundamentalist kids. Just a few short years after I stopped pretending they have both come out as atheists.

• Time magazine gets everything wrong about atheism (and a lot wrong about religion, too)

• North Korea locals claim birds are mourning Kim Jong-il

• Gingrich says he'd arrest judges who go against 'Christian' views

• FINAL PROOF THAT FASTER-THAN-LIGHT NEUTRINOS ARE IMPOSSIBLE?