Continued from here, where I've been posting bits and pieces of news that have been cluttering my desktop ... Mel comes into it down the page a bit ...

From Lisa, a report from Guatemala about life there for many children.

Guatemala has the highest rate of malnourished children in the Western Hemisphere, even higher than Haiti, the region's poorest country. The Central American nation also ranks sixth in the world for chronic malnutrition.

The problem usually begins in the womb of mothers who are anemic throughout their pregnancy and give birth to children with low birth weights. More than half of those babies don't make it beyond the age of 5.

UNICEF's take? They "blamed politics for previous failed attempts to address malnutrition and criticized limited resources for health and education programs."

How very helpful.

And more from UNICEF ...

According to a UN PDF, UNICEF has figured out that gender inequality makes poor people's lives worse.

Can we hear another DUH, please?

Just before Kofi Annan got the heck out of Dodge, he dropped these little jewels of wisdom:

"There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. Discrimination against women of all ages deprives the world's children - all of them, not just the half who are girls - of the chance to reach their potential."

Thanks for that, Kofi. You can go now.

It seems that the UN has also learned, most likely through expensive studies that have been going on for years, that women work longer hours than men across the developing world, spending much of their time, even when in paid employment, on household chores, then take their daughters out of school to help them.

Another flash of insight? Finding that whoever has the greater share of household income and assets decides whether those resources will be used to meet family needs.

And the bottom line? UNICEF says there would be 13.4 million fewer malnourished children in South Asia if women had an equal say in the family.

Once again, that DUH would be an appropriate response to such earth-shattering revelations.

And since I'm already annoyed, I think I'll close with Mel Gibson, my least favorite celeb ... misogynistic homophobe that he is ... and his newest film.

As researchers who have spent our lives studying and teaching about the Maya, we cannot help but be disappointed, and even outraged, by the movie. Consider all the violence in the movie; though the Maya practiced warfare and treated their prisoners harshly, the depiction of wall paintings of blue-painted and decapitated prisoners is just wrong.

Stereotypes of bloodthirsty savagery and moral degeneracy have been used to vilify indigenous peoples for 500 years--by every government that has sought to justify the denial of civil rights to native peoples.

Why am I not surprised?