Popular Elsewhere
15:35 UK time, Thursday, 31 March 2011
A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
Al-Jazeera's readers are catching up on an argument that . The article argues that 1980s films have influenced recent foreign policy regarding Libya:
"Lybian terrorists in Back To The Future and a bad-guy professional wrestling star named The Iron Sheikh helped prepare the American people for the role we've played in the Arab world over the past decade."
A popular story with Guardian readers looks at . This comes after the trial of a vegan couple charged with "neglect or food deprivation" after the death of their baby daughter. The article asserts that the fact that Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou fed the child only breast milk during her short 11-month life, and treated her bronchitis with cabbage and clay poultices, would suggest their parenting skills were more to blame than their eating habits. It adds that evidence presented to the court made a direct link between baby Louise's death and her parents' diet. The article explains the child was underweight and suffering severe vitamin deficiencies, making her susceptible to the bronchial infection that killed her - deficiencies possibly linked to the mother's diet, according to the deputy state prosecutor.
Time's most read article highlights a . The difference of opinion is about what is the most morally acceptable way of producing food. All sides in the movement seem to be in agreement that factory farming is unethical but the divergence comes in at whether that means all meat eating is unethical or whether it depends on how the animals lived and died.
In the New York Times' most read article . Mr Bittman says he stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 other people in a fast to call attention to Congressional budget proposals that he says would make huge cuts in programmes for the poor and hungry. In the House budget bill there are proposed cuts in the WIC program - which supports women, infants and children in international food and health aid. Mr Bittman says 18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and four million would lose access to anti-malarial medicine.
Proving popular with Slate's readers is an article asking if . The article says the cumbersome and slow production of drawings and reports in the days before computer tools required extensive preparation. Hurried changes were difficult if not impossible. This required tremendous discipline and rigour of thought.
The fierce productivity of the computer carries a price - more time at the keyboard, less time thinking. Italian architect Renzo Piano said in an interview last year that the bad thing about computers is that they make everything run very fast: "So fast that you can have a baby in nine weeks instead of nine months. But you still need nine months, not nine weeks, to make a baby."
The story argues this is not a question of turning back the clock but of slowing it down and recognising that rigour of thought is as much a part of design as making shapes.
