People who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said today. But it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are drawn to it.
Psychologists from Leeds University found what they said was "striking" evidence that some avid net users develop compulsive internet habits in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites.
"This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction," the study's lead author, Catriona Morrison, wrote in the journal Psychopathology.
An Oregon couple whose son died when they chose prayer rather than medical treatment was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide Tuesday after a Clackamas County jury deliberated for two days. Jeff and Marci Beagley's 16-year-old son Neil died in June 2008 of complications stemming from a urinary tract blockage.
The Beagleys' church, the Followers of Christ, is not a stranger to controversy. More than a decade ago, Oregon City officials claimed to have discovered an unusually large number of child deaths in families belonging to the church. This led to a 1999 law limiting the use of religious defenses in criminal negligence cases. This case is seen as the second major test of that law.
American missionary Robert Park, appearing pale and drawn, did not say anything as U.S. consular officials escorted him from a North Korean plane at Beijing's airport Saturday. The 28-year-old Park, of Tucson, Ariz., slipped across the frozen Tumen River from China on Christmas Day carrying letters calling on leader Kim Jong Il to close the country's notoriously brutal prison camps and step down from power. The North Korean government "decided to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrongdoings into consideration," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America issued the following statement: "Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two-thousand-year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl. 'We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.'" read more
Ehud Barak, a former general and Israel's most decorated soldier, said that a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel's future as a "Zionist, Jewish, democratic state." "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
If it wasn't so unworthy, you wouldn't have spent any time responding.
Worthiness has nothing to do with it. When people read your batfuck insane threads, it's hard to resist cracking a few jokes at your expense. Unlike real life, the internet is an anonymous forum where it is entirely acceptable to make fun of a retard.
Hurry up, LR... tell yor mommy to hurry up and pack your lunch. You're going to miss the short bus.