Issue of the Year: The Environment

THE astonishing achievement of the year,” says Ecologist Lamont Cole of Cornell, “is that people are finally aware of the size of the problem.” They can hardly avoid it. In 1970, the cause that once concerned lonely crusaders like Rachel Carson became a national issue that at times verged on a national obsession; it appealed even to people normally enraged by attacks on the status quo

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Sessions Could Make Obama’s Supreme Court Fight Tougher

Political junkies who weren’t thrilled at the prospect of a relatively staid confirmation process for President Barack Obama’s as yet unnamed Supreme Court nominee can rest easy. This week Senate Republicans named perennial bomb thrower Jeff Sessions, 62, of Alabama to be the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, promising to bring at least a few sparks to a confirmation process that — if Minnesota’s Al Franken is seated — was bound to be relatively easy. While Sessions alone can’t change the basic legislative math that promises whomever Obama picks to replace retiring Justice David Souter a fairly easy path to confirmation, he can certainly liven up the proceedings

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Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say

It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there’s science to back it up. New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

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