You’d think with America’s cultural obsession with sex, youth, and big, juicy brains, we’d have more research on sexual neuroscience.  That is the subject of this Mind Hacks post, which notes that only recently have published reports shown definitive links between brain activity and sexual desire – and a bizarre connection to seizures in one Taiwanese study: One of their 41 year-old female patients, diagnosed with epilepsy, had a seizure every time she brushed her teeth....

Now that I have the first of many inflammatory, useless headlines out of the way… My name is Greg Piper, and I run The Smoking Room at GregPiper.com.  Joe asked me to give you a little description, and since guest-blogging is a twisted form of altruism, I’ll do my best to seduce a few of you to hook up with my site occasionally.  (For a quick description by Joe, check his review of my site almost a year ago.) Until last summer I lived in Seattle, where I graduated college in...

If you’re interested in look at Iraq under the microscope as it gets read to go to the polls, goes to the polls and what happens immediately after it votes there is a new website that is a must visit. The website is Friends of Democracy (which we are blogrolling under Other Voices). Michael Totten will be editing it for the next two weeks and he explains in an email: We have more than a dozen local Iraqi correspondents, at least one ineach province, filing daily reports. These reports include...

President George Bush’s press conference yesterday contained some wisecracks to a reporter, using some laugh lines about seniors — and there has been a mini-stink about it raised by some critics. The transcript of the press conference is here. Soxblog has an account of the moment that has raised a fuss in some quarters. Basically, Bush was using a joke many people use about seniors. But the PC Police — who have members belonging to BOTH parties when it suits their political interests...

This is beginning to look like a bad Saturday Night Live parody that you’ve seen over and over and over again: WASHINGTON – The nation’s new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles. It’s the here-we-go-again department…a sinking feeling that the more you read, the more you’re going to find something in there that is itself...

President George Bush issued an order today that probably will NOT end a controversy that has all the earmarks of a story with "legs": he formally ordered his cabinet not to pay big bucks to columnists to tout administration policies. The reason the story has what Hollywood calls "legs" (staying power, a gift that keeps giving and giving) is that GWB’s proclamation  — coming amid TWO high profile cases now of supposedly principled columnists getting money that...

Our occasional selection of tidbits and masterpieces (that’s what their authors say) from the Internet. We do NOT select links based on ideology and aren’t promoting any political view (we just liked these posts). Opinions expressed do not reflect the view of The Moderate Voice. DEMOCRATS ARE PRAISING CALIFORNIA BARBRA BOXER for her questioning of Condi Rice, which was so dogged it inspired a screachingly funny Saturday Night Parody. The Daily Kos writes:"Is there any doubt that...

The "tip" about a terrorist plot to set off some kind of nuclear device in Boston has now been officially labelled a "false alarm" – yet another indication that these reports of threats need to reach a level of confirmation before the populace should be bent out of shape. In this case, Bostonians didn’t panic…and they were right not to: BOSTON — The FBI said Tuesday that the possible terrorist plot reported against Boston by a tipster last week was a false...

Now it turns out that ANOTHER commentator got mooh-lah from the Bush adminstration – which will inevitably raise the question of how many other commentators quietly got this new version of journalistic welfare. Here’s the latest via The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush’s push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families. "The Bush marriage initiative...

Iraqi’s "insurgents" are accelerating their intimidation campaign designed to destabilize or delegitimize the elections by  increasing threats to those who are running and who may vote that ther participation could cost them their lives. A piece in the New York Times focuses on this issue, noting that one tribal leader is defiant and will run, while the other one is going to sit on the sidelines now. But here are the "nut graphs" of this telling story:   The two...

An American hostage…on video tape…pleading for his life with a gun visibly at his head…shortly before Iraqi elections: Do we need a psychic to guess the intent of this event? BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – An American hostage pleaded for his life with a rifle pointed at his head in a video released Tuesday while 11 Iraqi police died in fierce clashes and gunmen assassinated a senior judge in slayings highlighting security risks ahead of this weekend’s elections. On a day that...

We usually don’t mention or link to The Drudge Report but we were taken a bit aback by this headline: RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS CALL FOR BAN ON JEW GROUPS… No comment. Well, we will make one: "Jew groups" sounds like Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. Or something worse. PS: We did a post on that issue here.

The religious right has begun to send a firm message to the White House that it wants to cash in its political chips — and wants its payment NOW: A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush’s plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. So these two issues are now being linked. But it makes you wonder: if the White House suddenly moves heaven and...

Your Iraq tax dollars at work: if the report from this Saudi suicide bomber (who obviously was a flop in his work) is correct, Iraqi officials had the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in custody — and let him go: A suicide bomber from Saudi Arabia, who survived a failed attempt to blow up the Jordanian mission Baghdad in December, alleges that Iraqi police may have captured, and then released, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, two months ago. Both U.S....

Our Take A Peek (below) urged you to look at the new blog The New Democrat, a well-done site written by Max Burns, a young moderate Democrat. But now there is a controversy over another blog set up shortly after his that is using the same name — and whether it is even a Democrat’s blog. Read the full details at Centerfield. PS: We will not be blogrolling, quoting or linking to the other blog.

Hillary Clinton is continuing to take stances that carve out a key spot for her in the center of polarized 21st Century America — the latest being an almost startling middle-leaning stance on the powder-keg issue of abortion: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that the opposing sides in the divisive debate over abortion should find "common ground" to prevent unwanted pregnancies and ultimately reduce abortions, which she called a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many...

NOTE: I have a personal interest the story cited below, since my grandfathers Nathan Gandelman and Abraham Ravinsky fled Russia to escape anti-semitism in the early part of the 20th Century. Anti-semitism is bubbling up from the bowels of Russia once again. There are a couple of disturbing trends: The infamous "blood ritual" which accuses Jews of murdering Christians for ritual purposes has made a high-profile comeback in a major Russian newspaper. It came in the form of an anti-semitic...

…at The New Democrat, an exciting new site. We’re always very happy when we see a moderate or centrist site pop up. We also love the many sites we visit on the left and right  (our blogroll on this site is NOT for show) — but like to see new ones in the middle, too. And this one looks like it’s going to be GREAT. Even the concept: It was started by "Max Burns, a 17-year-old moderate Democrat with the belief that the Democratic Party must be pulled back to the center...

You would not WANT to be in the shoes today of Abu Omar al-Kurdi, a senior aide to of leading militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — captured today by Iraqi forces and undergoing intense and perhaps even creative interrogation. The reasons: The elections are coming up and Zarqawi has basically declared war on the elections and on democracy. Now Iraqi forces have his right hand man. Iraq’s security forces know their prisoner can be a gold mine of information if they can just persuade him...

Sometimes journalists — and scientists — need to take a deep breath because  a logical thesis presented via  Doomsday Journalism can undermine an intriguing finding’s credibily — which is what happens with a new report warning that the point of no return could hit earth within 10 years on global warming. If you read this report in England’s Independent, we all might as well take Jim Jones style Kool Aid right now: The global warming danger threshold for the...

Sorry for the way the type is cut of on the post below. I have no idea why. I have a had several frustrating design problems here at Typepad and this is only the latest. Hopefully we can get it fixed.

Our occasional collection of interesting reading culled from sites representing ALL viewpoints. Opinions expressed do not necessary reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice. ARE JOURNALISTS KILLING JOURNALISM AS A PROFESSION BY IGNORING A PUBLISHED CODE OF ETHICS? The website Carpe Bonum thinks so and tells you why. AN AL QAEDA REVIEW can be read on former military man Donald Sensing’s site, chock full of highly insightful info on the terrorist group, its motives and plans.. ANALYZING...

This was a new one for me. I was going into Subway on El Cajon Boulevard here in San Diego, when a street person in tattered clothes walked over to me. "Hey mister," he said. "Can you give me some money for a meatball sandwich?" Specificity… PS: Now I feel guilty: somewhere there is someone out there who desperately needs a meatball sandwich.

We’ve said in many forums — on this blog, on an Internet talk radio show, in an interview with Random Fate — that the TRUE test of Blogtopia is going to be when we see that blogs don’t just scrutinize and demand accuracy from people with whom they disagree. Can the left go after the left? Can the right go after the right? Or is the Blogtopia basically going to remain the 21st Century equivalent of the old political phampleteers? Is there truly a "new media" that...

Yes, there is indeed good news (for NOW) out of Iraq where the Shiites who seem poised to win power in the elections insist their government will be a secular one: With the Shiites on the brink of capturing power here for the first time, their political leaders say they have decided to put a secular face on the new Iraqi government they plan to form, relegating Islam to a supporting role. The senior leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite groups that is poised to capture...