Second, from the Associated Press: "All those years on the couch playing Nintendo and PlayStation appear to be paying off for surgeons (in eye-hand co-ordination). Researchers (have) found that doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than counterparts who did not play video games."

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It was distressing to learn of Supreme Court Justice David Souter's recent mugging while jogging in D.C. Mugging is an awful thing that shouldn't happen to anyone. Yet in Souter's case, the incident just might offer some hope - given the notion that not only is a conservative a liberal who has outgrown adolescence but also a liberal who has been mugged.

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Aides from the failed campaigns of Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt are trying to discourage Democrats from voting for Ralph Nader. John Kerry himself urged Nader not to run. A loose-cannon socialist ideologically simpatico with Kerry, Nader probably proved decisive in preventing Al Gore from carrying several states four years ago. Kerry may at least tacitly support this year's effort to drive down the Nader vote.

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Oh, the woe over NPR's replacing of quarter-century morning-show host Bob Edwards. Well-placed weepy editorials; op-ed ululations; on-camera tear-ups. Bob Edwards helped make NPR's "Morning Edition," with 13 million listeners, the nation's second most popular radio show. So who can say with a straight face the nation has no successful example of liberal talk radio? It's alive and well - and government-subsidized - at NPR.

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Late-May data showed 20 U.S. servicewomen killed thus far in Iraq - the largest number since World War II - and 162 wounded. Why? Without diminishing an iota the valor of women who serve, what is the justification for these casualties among the fairer, sustaining gender? How is it commendable, progressive, or enlightened for a culture not confronting imminent extinction routinely to insert its women into combat zones? What is the ennobling rationale?