AUSTIN — More than a dozen prominent Dallas business and civic leaders, including several who supported Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor, have signed a letter backing Democrat Bill White in his effort to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry in the Nov. 2 general election.

The state attorney general is investigating two Florida companies over claims they offered free emergency response training for oil spill clean up work but then withheld students' training certificates unless they paid a large fee.

Calling the wording of a Republican-backed constitutional amendment on health care "manifestly misleading," a Circuit Court judge in Leon County has tossed it off the November ballot.

The Bible is the biggest bestseller in history. But after that, what else has topped the charts? Mao's "Little Red Book" comes in at number two and then the surprises begin. While religion dominates the first half of the list, the rest is mostly fantasy. Does this list tell us anything about ourselves as human beings? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

(Data from HowStuffWorks)

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You're probably thinking that I must be referring to stay-at-home dads, as they seem to get the most media attention these days; but while I highly value their contribution to the evolving role of fatherhood, they are not who I am talking about here.

My bet is that the dads who are going to make or break involved fatherhood are: working dads.

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There's a wonderful surge that's happening in the world of mindfulness right now and its movement into the schools with children. When I saw this video of what they are doing in an elementary school in Oakland, California I was blown away.

One of the kids said:

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Mark Jung-Beeman is a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University, and he has studied what happens inside the brain when people have an insight. He was quoted in a recent New Yorker article, saying: "If you want to encourage insights, then you've got to also encourage people to relax." The article notes that "Jung-Beeman's latest paper investigates why people who are in a good mood are so much better at solving insight puzzles."

What Jung-Beeman has discovered is that insight and creative solutions can be inhibited or blocked by being overly focused. Instead, what is often needed for insight is to focus on not focusing. The article continues, "As Jung-Beeman and Kounios [a cognitive neuroscientist at Drexel University] see it, the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation -- the brain must be focused on the task at hand -- transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections. We must concentrate, but we must concentrate on letting the mind wander."

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Yuba County's Beale Air Force Base is being put in charge of a fleet of spy planes that will bring at least 550 jobs and help boost the regional economy.

The market will speak today and say whether TransCanada Corp. has enough likely customers to justify building a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to Canada or Valdez.

Narrative Magazine: To celebrate our new iPhone and iPad application, which brings our entire literary library to readers' fingertips for free, we've created a genre of our own: the iStory, a short dramatic narrative perfect for reading on-screen. Here are three examples from literary greats able to capture entire worlds in 150 words or less.

Idolatry

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Former state Sen. Gene Therriault resigned as Gov. Sean Parnell's energy adviser Thursday amid furor over the legality of Therriault signing on to the position when he was still in the Legislature.

I sat down with the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at his office in Ramallah for aPalestine Note exclusive interview.

Ramallah - For three years, Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister in the West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA), has been a focal point for Mideast debate.

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schliz writes "Physicists have observed 'bizarre' behaviour in graphene electrons that they say could make the material even more suitable to replace silicon in future electronic devices. When strained in a particular manner, nanobubbles formed on a sheet of graphene, within which electrons came to occupy particular, quantum energy levels rather than the usual, continuous range of energies in unstrained graphene. By controlling electrons' energy levels, researchers could control how easily they moved through graphene — in effect, controlling their conductivity, optical, or microwave properties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's still a lot people out there who are against gay marriage, violently against it. They run around trying to give gay people self-help books on how to tone down the gay, or cover up the gay, or channel the gay into athletics or community service. And I'm sure that all works like a charm. "Yeah, he used to be gay but now he's a hell of a softball player!" or "Instead of all the gay sex, he's been on the tennis court workin' on his backhand."

So I have the answer. I think we should make the homophobes a deal. Everyone who wants to be anti-gay and lesbian, you go ahead and do that, BUT we're taking away EVERYTHING from your life that is gay or gay-friendly or gay-like or gay-inspired or bisexual. You're not allowed near it. So that means no more Ellen Degeneres Show or Oprah or Michael Jackson music, Elton John, Lady Gaga or Madonna. No more Rosie O'Donnell anything or Professional Wrestling. No more musicals or Dancing With The Stars, no more college fraternities, guys night out, or KISS albums - well, at least the drummer from KISS. No more lifting weights at the gym with the other guys spotting you while you're sweating in a low-cut torn t-shirt. No more movies starring Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, The Rock, or that werewolf from the Twilight movies. And no more adults watching god damn Twilight movies! No more Serena Williams, WNBA, or parades of any of kind. No more watching college girls make out with each other or dance together or jump up and down in wet t-shirt contests together. Obviously no more gay weddings but also no more straight weddings. Nothing's gayer than a straight wedding! (Come on, it's men crying and singing YMCA.) No more field hockey for women or yoga for men. No more celebrating Halloween or getting haircuts. (Haircuts are so gay.) No more slow motion during football games. And no more shaving your balls - I don't care if you have a forest down there that itches like bestiality with a porcupine. Too bad! You shoulda thought of that when you were hating gays.

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"What typeface do you want?"

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astroengine writes "Sure, we're looking 172 years into the future, but an international collaboration of scientists have developed two mathematical models to help predict when a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA) may hit us, not in this century, but the next. The rationale is that to stand any hope in deflecting a civilization-ending or extinction-level impact, we need as much time as possible to deal with the threatening space rock. (Asteroid deflection can be a time-consuming venture, after all.) Enter '(101955) 1999 RQ36' — an Apollo class, Earth-crossing, 500 meter-wide space rock. The prediction is that 1999 RQ36 has a 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting us in the future, and according to one of the study's scientists, María Eugenia Sansaturio, half of those odds fall squarely on the year 2182."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Surrounded by tribal leaders from across the nation, President Barack Obama signed legislation Thursday designed to plug holes in a patchwork system of justice that critics say allows serious reservation crime to routinely go unpunished.

Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava said his designs for the first phase of Denver International Airport's south terminal redevelopment will complement the airport's best-known architectural element, the white-tented roof.

On the surface, a judge's decision to block tough provisions of Arizona's immigration law was a defeat for the state's Republican governor and a win for the Democratic Obama administration. But neither party is sure it will play out that way politically, either this fall or beyond.

Only a handful of coroner races are contested during a typical election cycle, but this year 20 of Colorado's 64 counties have battles for the job of managing death investigations on their ballots.