Word: givens
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...party took place in a Yale a cappella house. Upon arriving, guests were given plastic bags to put their clothes in and then welcomed inside wearing only a newfound sense of liberation and their birthday suits. According to students who attended the party, it was a surprisingly non-sexual party atmosphere, with “more civilized conversation and good eye contact than at most regular parties,” according to a sophomore in Currier House. The main difference was that there was no dancing, which probably would have changed the gathering’s classification from a party...
...Elvin Santos, who is a member of Zelaya's Liberal Party but is a vocal critic of the ousted president. (Zelaya himself could not run even if he was in power, as presidents are restricted to one term.) Three other candidates are also on the ballot but are not given a serious chance of winning. Office worker Walter Garcia said he won't vote for any of them, as a protest. "Why should I vote if the president I elect can be taken away at gun point? he said. (Read "Troubles for a Deal - and for Obama - in Honduras...
...Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at University College London, scientists presented 61 healthy volunteers with 80 different vacation locations, such as Brazil, Thailand and Greece, and asked the volunteers to rate how happy they thought they would be visiting each place. Later, 29 of the participants were given 100 mg of levodopa (or L-DOPA), a drug that increases dopamine in the brain; the other 32 were unwittingly given a sugar pill. Forty minutes later, each participant was given a questionnaire about their emotional state, then a list containing half of the previously rated destinations. They were asked to imagine...
...next day (once the L-DOPA had cleared from the body), all the participants were brought back and presented with 40 pairs of vacation spots, each pair containing locations to which they had given equal ratings in the first part of the experiment. Participants were asked to pick which of each pair of places they would prefer to visit. It turned out that those who had imagined themselves vacationing the previous day under the influence of dopamine were significantly more likely to predict they'd be happier in those same spots. That same preference didn't occur in the placebo...
...Less mundane and even more startling is the fact that, according to the U.N. report, a host of religious groups and charities have knowingly given money to Congolese operatives and their associates several times in recent years. Those funneling money to the rebels include charitable groups in Spain, a Catholic priest in Italy and another Catholic priest in Tanzania, Brother Constant Goetschalckx, whose refugee education organization won the $1 million Opus Prize in 2007. The prize, the world's largest for faith-based entrepreneurship, is meant to "recognize unsung heroes" working to fight poverty. (See pictures of the fallout...