Harry Potter readers hated George Bush
Why do some millennials hate George W BushIJ A new book by a political science professor, based on a national survey of 1,100 college students conducted over a three-year period, suggests it could have something to do with Harry Potter.
According to Anthony Gierzynski’s Harry Potter and the Millennials: Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation, readers of JK Rowling’s seven-book series — and viewers of the movie franchise based on them — tend to be “more open to diversity; politically tolerant; less authoritarian; less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture; more politically active; and are more likely to have a negative view of the Bush Administration.”
A staggering 83 per cent of respondents who read all of the Harry Potter books said they viewed the Bush Administration unfavourably. And roughly 60 per cent said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, the first year most of them were old enough to vote. According to Gierzynski, who teaches at the University of Vermont, the majority of the 1,100 students who took his survey were the same age as the characters in the series — or about 11 — in 1997, when the first Harry Potter book was released. (Yahoo News)
Kiwi woman drives, texts while sleeping
Texting while driving can be deadly. Adding to the danger: Texting and driving while asleep at the wheel. A woman in New Zealand managed to drive — and even send her friends text messages — for hours while asleep, according to a story in the New Zealand Herald. Miraculously, she did not get into an accident.
According to News 3 New Zealand, the unnamed woman, who reportedly suffers from a sleep condition and was taking sleeping pills at the time, got behind the wheel and drove around New Zealand all night.
The sleep-driver reportedly left her house in Hamilton, headed to Auckland and then to her former home in Mount Maunganui on the coast late on Tuesday night, driving for a total of five hours and about 190 miles. As she sleep-drove, she texted her friends, who believed she sent them while half asleep. (Yahoo News)
British cat DNA database helps convict killer
Fingerprints are not the only thing that killers can leave behind — add cat hair to that list. A British university said recently that its DNA database of British felines helped convict a man of manslaughter, illustrating how the genetic material of pets can be used by crime scene investigators.
“This is the first time cat DNA has been used in a criminal trial in the UK,” said Jon Wetton from the University of leicester. “This could be a real boon for forensic science, as the 10 million cats in the UK are unwittingly tagging the clothes and furnishings in more than a quarter of households.”
Although drawing DNA from human hair, saliva, or blood samples has long been a part of crime scene investigations, animal material has also provided invaluable clues. The Veterinary Genetics laboratory at the University of California, Davis, has used animal DNA to catch criminals for more than a decade — including one case in london in which blood left at the scene of a nightclub stabbing was matched to a murder suspect’s bull terrier. (AP)
Vietnam offers free Marxism courses to draw takers
Market forces are working against college courses on Marx, lenin and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, where the Communist Government has resorted to offering the classes for free to attract students. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decree last month giving free tuition to students agreeing to take four-year courses on Marxism-leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, the country’s revolutionary hero, at state-run universities. Students have been shunning such instruction because employers are not interested in it, said Pham Tan Ha, head of admission and training at Ho Chi Minh City Social and Human Sciences University.
Courses like communications, tourism, international relations and English are more popular because students believe “they will have better chances of employment and better pay when they graduate,” he said. Vietnam is run by a Communist regime but embraced free-market reforms in the 1980s. (AP)
Russian Surgeon stole heroin found in stomach
Russian police say they have arrested a surgeon who stole some of the heroin he had been called on to extract from the stomach of a suspected drug mule. Police in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk say that after investigators discovered that some of the drugs were missing, they searched the surgeon and found a packet containing five grams of heroin hidden in his clothing.
The surgeon, who was not identified, was under the influence of narcotics when he was apprehended, according to the police statement. If convicted, the doctor faces up to 15 years in prison. There was no information about the identity of the suspected drug mule, his travel plans or his fate. (AP)