Poor Mojo's Newswire

In a second experiment, researchers measured eye blinks - another indicator of fear - as subjects responded to sudden blasts of noise.

Compared to staunch liberals, people with strongly conservative views were three times more fearful after factoring out the effects of gender, age, income and education, all of which can affect political attitudes.

Kevin Smith, a professor of political science at the University Nebraska, Lincoln and a study author, said conservatives were more vigilant to environmental threats and speculated this innate tendency led them to support policies that protect the social order.

General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz, on the 100th anniversary of GM’s founding, appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show last night, and embarassed his company. Lutz, unfortunately for this aging industrial giant, is a Luddite, supporting the most extreme crackpot denials of the science of climate change and attacking the Volt — GM’s next-generation hybrid automobile that can run entirely on electricity for trips of 40 miles or less — as a weak, unattractive car. His extremism was barely matched by Colbert’s parodic statements:>Watch it:

Lutz’s “32,000 of the world’s leading scientists” nonsense is taken from press releases by the right-wing industry-funded Heartland Institute, amplified by right-wing blogs and radio shows. This is a zombie lie, which was begun in 1998 by the right-wing industry-funded Oregon Institute.

A case in point is this latest headline from Time Magazine's Mark Halperin, based on new battleground polling from Quinnipiac University: "Palin Boosts McCain in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania." Yet a closer look inside the polling shows that Obama has actually widened his lead in Ohio, from a one point advantage in August to a five point advantage now. So how exactly is Palin giving McCain a bounce in Ohio?! This is just sloppy journalism.

True, McCain has widened his lead in Florida and cut Obama's margin in Pennsylvania. But a more accurate headline might read: "McCain Opens Lead in Florida, While Obama Expands Margin in Ohio, Race Tightens in Pennsylvania."

And, by the way, if Obama wins Ohio and Pennsylvania and McCain wins Florida, Obama most likely wins the election. But of course Halperin doesn't tell you that.

GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe. After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history. "There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing and competing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite. Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.... The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars. "It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN.