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| 'Open' Guantanamo |
| LAST week I stood before a military judge at Guantanamo Bay to argue that the press and public had a constitutional right to observe the proceedings of military commissions.
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| PHONY MOMMY WARS |
| She's also a good pol. And though her people skills are far superior to Mitt's, it turns out that Ann is just as capable as her husband of turning an advantage into a disadvantage. |
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 | Tribeca Film Festival takes diversity street THE annual two-week cinematic blitz that is the Tribeca Film Festival, began on Wednesday with the world premiere of the romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement made by the team behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and 90 feature films blazing across screens around New York City.....
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| | How the Mariana Trench became the earth's deepest point | | JAMES Cameron made headlines last month by successfully diving 6.8 miles (11 kilometres) to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in a oneperson submersible called the Deepsea Challenger.
Best known as a Hollywood director and now a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, Cameron is one of just three people to dive to Earth's deepest point, and the only one to be able to stay long enough to look around.
Though Cameron and his team are hoping to discover more about the biology of the Mariana depths, geologists already know a lot about how the Mariana Trench formed – and why it's Earth's deepest spot.
The Mariana Trench isn't really the deep, narrow furrow that the word "trench" implies. Rather, the abyss marks the location of a subduction zone.
Subduction zones occur where one part of the seabed – in this case the Pacific plate – dives beneath another, the Philippine plate. Though tectonic forces eventually warp the Pacific plate so that it makes a near-vertical dive into the Earth's interior, at seabed level the plate dips at a relatively gentle angle.
A tectonic plate is a huge hunk of rock, 60 miles (97 kilometres) or more thick, said Robert Stern, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, Dallas. "In order for this to sink back into the earth, it has to bend downward, and these are very gentle bends." One reason the Mariana Trench is so deep, he added, is because the western Pacific is home to some of the oldest seafloor in the world – about 180 million years old.... |
| | The myth of sustainable meat | | THE industrial production of animal products is a nasty business.
From mad cow, E coli and salmonella to soil erosion, manure runoff and pink slime, factory farming is the epitome of a broken food system. There have been various responses to these horrors, including some recent attempts to improve the industrial system, like the announcement this week that farmers will have to seek prescriptions for sick animals instead of regularly feeding antibiotics to all stock.
My personal reaction has been to avoid animal products completely.
But most people upset by factory farming have turned instead to meat, dairy and eggs from nonindustrial sources.
Indeed, the last decade has seen an exciting surge in grass-fed, free-range, cage-free and pastured options. These alternatives typically come from small organic farms, which practice more humane methods of production.
They appeal to consumers not only because they reject the industrial model, but because they appear to be more in tune with natural processes.
For all the strengths of these alternatives, however, they're ultimately a poor substitute for industrial production. Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.
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| | Gabrielle: I didn't break up Dwyane's marriage | | GABRIELLE Union got a bad reputation when she began dating Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade in 2009. The Think Like a Man actress, 39, was accused of stealing the NBA player from his wife Siohvaughn Funches — something she vehemently denies. In the April 12 issue of JET, Union explains why it's taken her so long to refute the rumours that she was a homewrecker.
"I think people mistook me taking the high road as an admission of guilt.
Dwyane and I made a decision very early to not react to the negativity. And I kept feeling like the truth would come out," Union explains. "The problem is, when it did, nobody cared. What I discovered on social media is that people don't read the entire story." Union was also concerned about how feeding into the story would affect his children with Funches (Zaire, 10, and Zion, 4). "They're old enough to understand the mean things that strangers can say," Union tells JET.
Though Funches filed suit, alleging Union was detrimental to her children's well being, the actress knew she had nothing to worry about. "My life is just too easy to track," Union says. "We were submitting plenty of proof for the times she said I was in Miami. So, it was like, obviously you're not telling the truth. And then the courts dismissed the case." During that time, Union had doubts about moving forward with Wade. "I did a lot of talking with my girlfriends and sorting through my feelings about the madness. ... |
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