"What we cannot do is use this as another occasion to turn on each other."

President Obama addressed the United States on Wednesday night as a bitter, vituperative rift gripped the country, reeling from the slaughter of innocents, and an unprovoked attack on a US congresswoman.

The president made an exceptional speech. He implored Americans to see their country through the eyes of 9 year old Christina Green, one of six people killed in the random violence of last Saturday.

"I want America to be as good as she imagined it,"  President Obama said.

So, did Christina imagine a country armed to the teeth?

The sale of handguns in America increased after the Tucson killings, especially sales of the very gun allegedly used by the shooter. The Glock is now America's weapon of choice. And the legislative climate around gun ownership and control is such that reform isn't even on the table.

A close up on the gun: the story of the Glock, today on Day 6.

In Afghanistan, a new TV show called Niqab- or The Mask- is giving women a voice and the stories they're telling are harrowing. Afghan women appear masked before an interviewer, a  studio audience and a panel including religious experts and tell how they were traded as property, beaten, degraded, enslaved.  For many the torture began when were 12 or 13 years old.

It sounds grinding, but what you see is the full blown empowerment of a marginalized person. Beyond that, with the experts and audience condemning the medieval ideas that enabled the oppression, you find a society facing its past and rejecting the systemic abuse of centuries.

We have a conversation with the executive producer of The Mask from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Can morality exist outside of religious doctrine? Athiests and humanists say yes, of course- while religious leaders and conservatives decry the moral relativism of a world without God.

My guest has a different take. She thinks our morality comes from the same biological response we have when we experience disgust. We're disgusted by fetid water and rotten food. We're disgusted by disloyalty and lies. Same reaction, different stimuli.

She's gotta be onto something, she's the Director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

How disgust created morality according to Dr. Valerie Curtis.

In Newfoundland there's a huge pile of old tires and no one know what to do with them. Provincial laws say tires must be disposed of in an environmentally sensitive way. Lately they're been sending them to Quebec where they're burned.

Now a pulp mill in Cornerbrook says they'll incinerate the tires and solve the problem.

But people in Cornerbrook are worried what that will do to air quality. It's become a hot issue for the government because maintaining the tire dump is really expensive. And did I mention it's all happening in Danny Williams' old riding?

This is the year the leading edge of the baby boomers turns 65.

Happy Birthday, but honestly, everyone's a little nervous about who's gonna pay for all that health care, pension maintenance and Viagra.

The boomers will be checking into the Golden Years Hotel in droves over the next 15 years. Have they looked over their shoulders to see who might be footing the bill? Because the next gen isn't exactly caretaker material.

Zoe Whittall fires a warning shot.

Amy Chua is proud to be a Chinese Mom. And for her, that means a strict regimen beyond the wildest dreams of Sargeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. 

An excerpt from her new book called "Chinese Mothers are Superior" gives unflattering details of the wide demands she makes on her two daughters... no TV, no computer games, no sleepovers, no getting less than an A...  And the language she uses to register her disappointment when they screw up is hair-raising.

Harsh, yes. Chua says it's meant to make her look bad. The book isn't a how-to guide, it's a memoir. But wait. Maybe it is a how-to manual because Chua's kids turned out great, even rebelling against their Mom in a sensible and confident way.

Of course among parents, everyone is talking about Chua and her methods. We talk to Amy Chua herself.

And finally, in a week when it seemed at times the world had gone mad, its good to know there's a home planet for the truly deranged. You know it as the Weekly World News.

The tabloid publication that discovered Bat Boy scored a coup this week when they got Facebook to deny it was shutting down, as the WWN had reported earlier.

We decided to check in with the CEO of WWN to get an update on Bat Boy and hear more about their journalitic standards.. and find out how the rest of the year looks in terms of alien invasions.

Plus we're giving away copies of the book Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed to show our admiration for anyone who can create news that's almost as weird as real life.

Wishing you a good and peaceful weekend.

Brent Bambury @CBCDay6

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