!! Extra-Extra !!

California!!

2009-10-05T10:40:00.003-04:00

The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk)
October 4th, 2009

"Will California Become America's First Failed State?"

Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

Written by Paul Harris

Patients without medical insurance wait for treatment in the Forum, a music arena in Inglewood, Los Angeles. The 1,500 free places were filled by 4am. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory.

But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America."

Outside the Forum in Inglewood, near downtown Los Angeles, California has already failed. The scene is reminiscent of the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, as crowds of impoverished citizens stand or lie aimlessly on the hot tarmac of the centre's car park. It is 10am, and most have already been here for hours. They have come for free healthcare: a travelling medical and dental clinic has set up shop in the Forum (which usually hosts rock concerts) and thousands of the poor, the uninsured and the down-on-their-luck have driven for miles to be here.

The queue began forming at 1am. By 4am, the 1,500 spaces were already full and people were being turned away. On the floor of the Forum, root-canal surgeries are taking place. People are ferried in on cushions, hauled out of decrepit cars. Sitting propped up against a lamp post, waiting for her number to be called, is Debbie Tuua, 33. It is her birthday, but she has taken a day off work to bring her elderly parents to the Forum, and they have driven through the night to get here. They wait in a car as the heat of the day begins to rise. "It is awful for them, but what choice do we have?" Tuua says. "I have no other way to get care to them."

Yet California is currently cutting healthcare, slashing the "Healthy Families" programme that helped an estimated one million of its poorest children. Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit's. In order to pass its state budget, California's government has had to agree to a deal that cuts billions of dollars from education and sacks 60,000 state employees. Some teachers have launched a hunger strike in protest. California's education system has become so poor so quickly that it is now effectively failing its future workforce. The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation. Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above "junk".

Some of the state's leading intellectuals believe this collapse is a disaster that will harm Californians for years to come. "It will take a while for this self-destructive behaviour to do its worst damage," says Robert Hass, a professor at Berkeley and a former US poet laureate, whose work has often been suffused with the imagery of the Californian way of life.

Now, incredibly, California, which has been a natural target for immigration throughout its history, is losing people. Between 2004 and 2008, half a million residents upped sticks and headed elsewhere. By 2010, California could lose a congressman because its population will have fallen so much – an astonishing prospect for a state that is currently the biggest single political entity in America. Neighbouring Nevada has launched a mocking campaign to entice businesses away, portraying Californian politicians as monkeys, and with a tag-line jingle that runs: "Kiss your assets goodbye!" You know you have a problem when Nevada – famed for nothing more than Las Vegas, casinos and desert – is laughing at you.

This matters, too. Much has been made globally of the problems of Ireland and Iceland. Yet California dwarfs both. It is the eighth largest economy in the world, with a population of 37 million. If it was an independent country it would be in the G8. And if it were a company, it would likely be declared bankrupt. That prospect might surprise many, but it does not come as news to Tuua, as she glances nervously into the warming sky, hoping her parents will not have to wait in the car through the heat of the day just to see a doctor. "It is so depressing. They both worked hard all their lives in this state and this is where they have ended up. It should not have to be this way," she says.

It is impossible not to be impressed by the physical presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he walks into a room. He may appear slightly smaller than you imagine, but he's just as powerful. This is, after all, the man who, before he was California's governor, was the Terminator and Conan the Barbarian.

But even Schwarzenegger is humbled by the scale of the crisis. At a press conference in Sacramento to announce the final passing of a state budget, which would include billions of dollars of cuts, the governor speaks in uncharacteristically pensive terms. "It is clear that we do not know yet what the future holds. We are still in troubled waters," he says quietly. He looks subdued, despite his sharp grey suit and bright pink tie.

Later, during a grilling by reporters, Schwarzenegger is asked an unusual question. As a gaggle of journalists begins to shout, one man's voice quickly silences the others. "Do you ever feel like you're watching the end of the California dream?" asks the reporter. It is clearly a personal matter for Schwarzenegger. After all, his life story has embodied it. He arrived virtually penniless from Austria, barely speaking English. He ended up a movie star, rich beyond his dreams, and finally governor, hanging Conan's prop sword in his office. Schwarzenegger answers thoughtfully and at length. He hails his own experience and ends with a passionate rallying call in his still thickly accented voice.

"There is people that sometimes suggest that the American dream, or the Californian dream, is evaporating. I think it's absolutely wrong. I think the Californian dream is as strong as ever," he says, mangling the grammar but not the sentiment.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Schwarzenegger's optimism sprung from. California has always been a special place, with its own idea of what could be achieved in life. There is no such thing as a British dream. Even within America, there is no Kansas dream or New Jersey dream. But for California the concept is natural. It has always been a place apart. It is of the American West, the destination point in a nation whose history has been marked by restless pioneers. It is the home of Hollywood, the nation's very own fantasy land. Getting on a bus or a train or a plane and heading out for California has been a regular trope in hundreds of books, movies, plays, and in the popular imagination. It has been writ large in the national psyche as free from the racial divisions of the American South and the traditions and reserve of New England. It was America's own America.

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and now an adopted Californian, remembers arriving here from his native New England. "In New England you would have to know people for 10 years before they let you in their home," he says. "Here, when I took my son to his first play date, the mother invited me to a hot tub."

Michael Levine is a Hollywood mover and shaker, shaping PR for a stable of A-list clients that once included Michael Jackson. Levine arrived in California 32 years ago. "The concept of the Californian dream was a certain quality of life," he says. "It was experimentalism and creativity. California was a utopia."

Levine arrived at the end of the state's golden age, at a time when the dream seemed to have been transformed into reality. The 1950s and 60s had been boom-time in the American economy; jobs had been plentiful and development rapid. Unburdened by environmental concerns, Californian developers built vast suburbs beneath perpetually blue skies. Entire cities sprang from the desert, and orchards were paved over into playgrounds and shopping malls.

"They came here, they educated their kids, they had a pool and a house. That was the opportunity for a pretty broad section of society," says Joel Kotkin, an urbanist at Chapman University, in Orange County. This was what attracted immigrants in their millions, flocking to industries – especially defence and aviation – that seemed to promise jobs for life. But the newcomers were mistaken. Levine, among millions of others, does not think California is a utopia now. "California is going to take decades to fix," he says.

So where did it all wrong?

Few places embody the collapse of California as graphically as the city of Riverside. Dubbed "The Inland Empire", it is an area in the southern part of the state where the desert has been conquered by mile upon mile of housing developments, strip malls and four-lane freeways. The tidal wave of foreclosures and repossessions that burst the state's vastly inflated property bubble first washed ashore here. "We've been hit hard by foreclosures. You can see it everywhere," says political scientist Shaun Bowler, who has lived in California for 20 years after moving here from his native England. The impact of the crisis ranges from boarded-up homes to abandoned swimming pools that have become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Bowler's sister, visiting from England, was recently taken to hospital suffering from an infected insect bite from such a pool. "You could say she was a victim of the foreclosure crisis, too," he jokes.

But it is no laughing matter. One in four American mortgages that are "under water", meaning they are worth more than the home itself, are in California. In the Central Valley town of Merced, house prices have crashed by 70%. Two Democrat politicians have asked for their districts to be declared disaster zones, because of the poor economic conditions caused by foreclosures. In one city near Riverside, a squatter's camp of newly homeless labourers sleeping in their vehicles has grown up in a supermarket car park – the local government has provided toilets and a mobile shower. In the Los Angeles suburb of Pacoima, one in nine homeowners are now in default on their mortgage, and the local priest, the Rev John Lasseigne, has garnered national headlines – swapping saving souls to saving houses, by negotiating directly with banks on behalf of his parishioners.

For some campaigners and advocates against suburban sprawl and car culture, it has been a bitter triumph. "Let the gloating begin!" says James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, a warning about the high cost of the suburban lifestyle. Others see the end of the housing boom as a man-made disaster akin to a mass hysteria, but with no redemption in sight. "If California was an experiment then it was an experiment of mass irresponsibility – and that has failed," says Michael Levine.

Nowhere is the economic cost of California's crisis writ larger than in the Central Valley town of Mendota, smack in the heart of a dusty landscape of flat, endless fields of fruit and vegetables. The town, which boldly terms itself "the cantaloup capital of the world", now has an unemployment rate of 38%. That is expected to rise above 50% as the harvest ends and labourers are laid off. City officials hold food giveaways every two weeks. More than 40% of the town's people live below the poverty level. Shops have shut, restaurants have closed, drugs and alcohol abuse have become a problem.

Standing behind the counter of his DVD and grocery store, former Mendota mayor Joseph Riofrio tells me it breaks his heart to watch the town sink into the mire. His father had built the store in the 1950s and constructed a solid middle-class life around it, to raise his family. Now Riofrio has stopped selling booze in a one-man bid to curb the social problems breaking out all around him.

"It is so bad, but it has now got to the point where we are getting used to it being like this," he says. Riofrio knows his father's achievements could not be replicated today. The state that once promised opportunities for working men and their families now promises only desperation. "He could not do what he did again. That chance does not exist now," Riofrio says.

Outside, in a shop that Riofrio's grandfather built, groups of unemployed men play pool for 25 cents a game. Near every one of the town's liquor stores others lie slumped on the pavements, drinking their sorrows away. Mendota is fighting for survival against heavy odds. The town of 7,000 souls has seen 2,000 people leave in the past two years.

But amid the crisis there are a few sparks of hope for the future. California has long been an incubator of fresh ideas, many of which spread across the country. If America emerges from its crisis a greener, more economically and politically responsible nation, it is likely that renewal will have begun here. The clues to California's salvation – and perhaps even the country as a whole – are starting to emerge.

Take Anthony "Van" Jones, a man now in the vanguard of the movement to build a future green economy, creating millions of jobs, solving environmental problems and reducing climate change at a stroke. It is a beguiling vision and one that Jones conceived in the northern Californian city of Oakland. He began political life as an anti-poverty campaigner, but gradually combined that with environmentalism, believing that greening the economy could also revitalise it and lift up the poor. He founded Green for All as an advocacy group and published a best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy. Then Obama came to power and Jones got the call from the White House. In just a few years, his ideas had spread from the streets of Oakland to White House policy papers. Jones was later ousted from his role, but his ideas remain. Green jobs are at the forefront of Obama's ideas on both the economy and the environment.

Jones believes California will once more change itself, and then change the nation. "California remains a beacon of hope… This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy," Jones has said.

It is already happening. California may have sprawling development and awful smog, but it leads the way in environmental issues. Arnold Schwarzenegger was seen as a leading light, taking the state far ahead of the federal government on eco-issues. The number of solar panels in the state has risen from 500 a decade ago to more than 50,000 now. California generates twice as much energy from solar power as all the other US states combined. Its own government is starting to turn on the reckless sprawl that has marked the state's development.

California's attorney-general, Jerry Brown, recently sued one county government for not paying enough attention to global warming when it came to urban planning. Even those, like Kotkin, who are sceptical about the end of suburbia, think California will develop a new model for modern living: comfortable, yes, but more modest and eco-friendly. Kotkin, who is writing an eagerly anticipated book about what America will look like in 2050, thinks much of it will still resemble the bedrock of the Californian dream: sturdy, wholesome suburbs for all – just done more responsibly. "We will still live in suburbs. You work with the society you have got. The question is how we make them more sustainable," he says.

Even the way America eats is being changed in California. Every freeway may be lined with fast-food outlets, but California is also the state of Alice Waters, the guru of the slow-food movement, who inspired Michelle Obama to plant a vegetable garden in the White House. She thinks the state is changing its values. "The crisis is bringing us back to our senses. We had adopted a fast and easy way of living, but we are moving away from that now," she says.

There is hope in politics, too. There is a growing movement to call for a constitutional convention that could redraw the way the state is governed. It could change how the state passes budgets and make the political system more open, recreating the lost middle ground. Recently, the powerful mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, signed on to the idea. Gerrymandering, too, is set to take a hit. Next year Schwarzenegger will take steps to redraw some districts to make them more competitive, breaking the stranglehold of party politics. He wants district boundaries to be drawn up by impartial judges, not politicians. In previous times that would have been the equivalent of a turkey voting for Christmas. But now the bold move is seen for what it is: a necessary step to change things. And there is no denying that innovation is something that California does well.

Even in the most deprived corners of the state there is a sense that things can still turn around. California has always been able to reinvent itself, and some of its most hardcore critics still like the idea of it having a "dream".

"I believe in California. It pains me at the moment to see it where it is, but I still believe in it," said Michael Levine.

Perhaps more surprisingly, a fellow believer is to be found in Mendota in the shape of Joseph Riofrio. His shop operates as a sort of informal meeting place for the town. People drop in to chat, to get advice, or to buy a cold soft drink to relieve the unrelenting heat outside. The people are poor, many of them out of work, often hiring a bunch of DVDs as a cheap way of passing the time. But Riofrio sees them as a community, one that he grew up in. He is proud of his town and determined to stick it out. "This is a good place to live," he says. "I want to be here when it turns around." He is talking of the stricken town outside. But he could be describing the whole state.

This article was amended on 5 October 2009 because we inadvertently referred to the historian, Kevin Starr, as Kenneth.

LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt

Adidas vs. Puma!!

2009-09-18T15:51:00.002-04:00

New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
November 8th, 2005

"Adidas Versus Puma: Origins of a Rivalry Btween Brothers"

BERLIN — At the opening whistle of a 1970 World Cup finals match, Pelé stopped the referee with a last-second request to tie his shoelaces and then knelt down to give millions of television viewers a close-up of his Pumas.

Pelé was complying with a request by Puma's representative, Hans Henningsen, to raise the company's profile after receiving $120,000 to wear the shoes.

This clandestine advertising was a huge triumph for Puma over Adidas in the early days of the battle for market supremacy in sports merchandise.

Barbara Smit, a Dutch author and journalist, spent five years poring over the archives at Adidas's and Puma's headquarters in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach to research Rudolf and Adolf Dassler, the brothers who started making sports shoes in their mother's laundry room in the 1920s before becoming sport and business giants.

Her new book, "Drei Streifen gegen Puma," or "Three Stripes Versus Puma," tracks the rise of the Dassler brothers during Germany's sport-obsessed 1920s, their cooperation with the Nazis, their ugly postwar split and their hatred-driven competition that created separate empires.

"As embittered rivals, the estranged brothers led their respective companies to the top of the world," Smit wrote. "Muhammad Ali, Franz Beckenbauer and Zinédine Zidane became legends in the three stripes of Adidas while soccer god Pelé and Boris Becker achieved global fame in Pumas."

The book chronicles the decline of Adidas (founded by Adolf "Adi" Dassler) and Puma (founded by Rudolf Dassler) as they were caught off guard by Nike and the failure to spot new trends like the boom in running.

Adidas and Puma have recovered from their brushes with disaster as publicly owned companies in the vibrant $17 billion worldwide sports shoe industry, but only after long and messy separations from their family owners.

"I was fascinated by the mixture of this incredible family rift, the business feud and the sporting triumphs, which forged two mighty brands recognized all over the world," Smit said of her book, which draws on U.S. intelligence documents and more than 200 interviews conducted around the world.

Although most of the two companies' production moved to low-cost countries long ago, handmade shoes for some big names, like David Beckham, are still produced in Germany.

Mark Spitz, the American swimmer, was en route to winning seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics when he was approached by Horst Dassler, the son of Adolf Dassler, in Munich's Olympic village. Dassler asked Spitz to wear Adidas at the medal ceremonies.

"The problem was only that they would probably be covered by the loose-fitting warm-up pants that swimmers wear," Smit wrote. "Dassler told Spitz he should carry the shoes in his hands instead. Spitz got carried away by Dassler's enthusiasm and held up a pair of Adidas 'Gazelles' as he waved to the crowd."

She said Spitz had some explaining to do to the International Olympic Committee after that.

The origins of the split between Rudolf and Adolf are hard to pinpoint, but an Allied bomb attack on Herzogenaurach in 1943 illustrated the growing tension. Adi and his wife climbed into a bomb shelter that Rudolf and his family were already in.

"The dirty bastards are back again," Adolf said, apparently referring to the Allied warplanes. Rudolf was convinced that his brother meant him and his family. The damage was never repaired.

In 1948, the brothers split their business. Adolf called his company Adidas; Rudolf called his Ruda before changing to Puma.

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/business/worldbusiness/08iht-SHOES.html

Not Flying South!!

2009-09-17T11:33:00.003-04:00

Discovery (dsc.discovery.com)
Sept. 16, 2009

"Arctic Geese Skip Migration as Planet Warms"

Written by Michael Reilly

In the Fall of 2007, tens of thousands of small arctic geese called Pacific brant (Branta bernicla nigricans) decided not to go south for the winter.

For these long-haul migratory birds, it was a dramatic choice -- they usually spend the cold months munching their favorite eel grass in the waters off Mexico's Baja peninsula. But changes in Earth's climate have so affected them that the barren windswept lagoons of western Alaska are looking more and more appealing.

The trend is likely to continue, according to a new study, affecting not only brant but a host of migratory birds around the globe.

David Ward of the United States Geological Survey in Anchorage has been studying brant behavior for nearly three decades.

When he began back in the 1970s, only around 4000 birds toughed out the winter in Izembek Lagoon, a 25-mile long stretch of protected water on the Alaska Peninsula. Two autumns ago, the number had climbed to 40,000 -- nearly 30 percent of the total population.

"The birds normally wait for a storm system to come down through the Aleutians," Ward said. "They catch the tail winds down south. But the track of storm systems is a little different now."

No Longer Just Summer Birds
A Pacific brant family on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska. Usually these Arctic geese spend the cold months munching their favorite eel grass in the waters off Mexico's Baja peninsula. But changes in Earth's climate have persuaded many to stay in Alaska year-round.

Changing winds have been accompanied by warmer weather, which means less ice covering Izembek's eel grass-rich waters. It's a buffet for the brant, which can feast through the winter without having to make the arduous journey several thousand miles south and back.

Come spring they are the first birds back to the breeding grounds, and often the most successful at raising their young.

In fact, conditions are so good that the geese run the risk of overpopulating, according to Robert Trost of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, Ore. The Pacific brant population hasn't grown much in size over the years, but an increasing food supply could lead to an explosion of birds in the next few years.

"Throughout North America and parts of Asia, geese are most influenced by springtime conditions," he said.

As spring thaws creep earlier in the calendar, geese will be able to raise larger clutches of young.

The honeymoon isn't likely to last. Brant and many other species that live on coastlines could soon see their habitats flooded by sea level rise and swallowed by rampant erosion, two consequences of human-induced global warming.

"Right now it's conjecture to say what the long-term impact will be, but the prognosis is not so good," Trost said.

LINK: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/09/16/birds-migration-warming.html

Swayze Rules to Live By!!

2009-09-15T14:15:00.003-04:00

Patrick Swayze
August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009

----------------------------

Youtube (www.youtube.com)
Scene from Roadhouse, starring Patrick Swayze.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPVOhHhwnk

Grade A!!

2009-09-14T14:27:00.003-04:00

NC State University - Department of Entomology (www.cals.ncsu.edu)
November 4th, 2003

"Insects in Food"

Written by John R. Meyer

Hat Tip: Clair Z

How many insects did you have for breakfast this morning? The answer may surprise you! Despite advances in pest control technology, it is still not possible to exclude all insects from our food supply. Most agricultural products are already contaminated with insects (or insect products) when they are harvested, and still more gain access during storage.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has adopted Grade Standards designed to protect American consumers from inferior agricultural products. The standards set legal limits for spoilage or contamination due to insects and other agents. The highest grade is "U.S. No. 1".

In order to qualify as U.S. No. 1 Grade, the commodities listed below cannot exceed the following limits of contamination:

Ketchup -- 30 fruit fly eggs per 100 grams
Canned corn -- 2 insect larvae per 100 grams
Blueberries -- 2 maggots per 100 berries
Peanut butter -- 50 insect fragments per 100 grams
Curry powder -- 100 insect fragments per 100 grams
Wheat -- 1% of grains infested
Sesame seed -- 5% of seeds infested
Coffee -- 10% of beans infested

Have some more ketchup with your fries!

LINK: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/text18/food.html

Today's Vampires!!

2009-09-11T14:12:00.003-04:00

Slate (www.slate.com)
July 28, 2009

"Vampires Suck"
Actually, they don't. And that's the problem.

Written by Grady Hendrix

Hat Tip: Jimmy

Last week at Comic-Con, the big story wasn't comic books—it was vampires. Some 2,000 young women set up a tent city outside the San Diego Convention Center on Tuesday, sleeping rough so that they could attend the Thursday panel on New Moon, the upcoming sequel to vampire blockbuster Twilight.

It's just another sign of the massive popularity of vampires. Yet, like many people who acquire mega-celebrity, the vampire has developed an eating disorder. Read the books. Watch the movies. You'll see vampires who manage nightclubs, build computer databases, work as private investigators, go to prep school, lobby Congress, chat with humans, live near humans, have sex with humans, and pine over humans, but the one thing you won't see them do is suck the blood of humans.

No, bloodsucking is so yesterday. It's so 1994. It's so Anne Rice. Today's vampire is a good listener. He cares about our love lives and our problems, which is strange because we're supposed to be his food. Humans just assume that we are the center of the universe and so, faced with a literary creation that should, by all rights, just conk us over the head and suck us down like Slurpees, we've decided that we're too fascinating to be eaten. And so the modern vampire stalks, seduces, sleeps with, and cries over us. They don't eat us.

The original Dracula in Dracula loved to drink blood. He has "white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood-dripping mouth." He forces Mina Harker to his bosom, where "[h]er white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down [his] bare chest," and he compels her to drink his blood, like a "child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk. ..." This bodily fluid fetishism was par for the course for the next 79 years, until Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, when Ms. Rice started to tweak up the Gothness. In her books, vampires were better known for being immortal than for sucking blood, which makes their fascination with humans even more mysterious: After living among us for hundreds of years, haven't they heard all of our jokes by now?

At least Anne Rice's vampires were still primarily bloodsuckers. The first sign that something was awry came with the introduction of Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A prime example of the brooding, crying-on-the-inside, leather-jacketed emo boy of the '90s (see also: Dylan McKay, Beverly Hills, 90210; James Hurley, Twin Peaks), Angel was a vampire who had a soul. He fell in love with Buffy, teared up a lot, and believed in random acts of kindness. Angel, in short, sucked. Or, rather, he didn't suck, which was the problem. When he did suck, he took limited amounts of blood from consenting human women, or sucked blood against his will, or sucked rat blood.

Rat blood.

Think about it. Faced with the impact of his diet on humans, Angel accepts a yucky, cruelty-free substitute, then endlessly lectures other vampires about their moral failings because they don't do the same. He's not a vampire—he's a vegan.

But the ladies loved him, and he launched a sensitive-vampire industry. These days, you have Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels (from which we derive True Blood), Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy books, and Leslie Esdaile Banks' Vampire Huntress Legends series featuring Damali Richards, a spoken-word artist who fights vampires, a detail which guarantees that I'm rooting for the vampires. But most damaging of all are Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books.

At least Angel, Anita Blake's vampires, Sookie Stackhouse, and most of the rest of them have a lot of sex. But Edward Cullen, immortal star of the Twilight books, does not have sex. Edward tells Bella, his human paramour, that they need to wait until they're married before doing the deed. In the meantime, he's fascinated by her, beguiled by her, he can't stay away from her—but he can't touch her. Instead, he lies next to her in bed and moons over her as she sleeps. Leaving aside the fact that he's a 90-year-old man, this is what stalkers do, not boyfriends.

Just as America's young men are being given deeply erroneous ideas about sex by what they watch on the Web, so, too, are America's young women receiving troubling misinformation about the male of the species from Twilight. These women are going to be shocked when the sensitive, emotionally available, poetry-writing boys of their dreams expect a bit more from a sleepover than dew-eyed gazes and chaste hugs. The young man, having been schooled in love online, will be expecting extreme bondage and a lesbian three-way.

The bigger problem here is that we're breeding sexually incompatible human beings, and vampires are to blame. I can see a time coming when the birth rate is going to precipitously decline. And what that means is that vampires are going to run out of food. But if Charlaine Harris, Laurel K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyer, and all the others are right about the souls of their emo, Goth, velvet-wearing, crybaby vampire spawn, then maybe some kind of mass, Kurt Cobain-inspired, "You'll miss me when I'm gone," specieswide suicide is what vampires have been after all along.

LINK: http://www.slate.com/id/2223486/

Back to School Speech!!

2009-09-09T13:51:00.002-04:00

The White House (www.whitehouse.gov)
September 8, 2009

"Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama: Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia"

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.

Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Ideal Bowie!!

2009-09-08T09:00:00.006-04:00

Spinner.com (http://www.spinner.com/)
August 28th, 2009

"Psychologist Writes 'Ideal' David Bowie Song"

Written by Liz Colville

Dr. Nick Troop, a psychologist and lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in England, claims he has written the "ideal" David Bowie song. Though some might argue that the Flight of the Conchords' 'Bowie' is the ideal Thin White Duke song, Troops' 'Team, Meet Girls; Girls, Meet Team' is willing to give it -- and Bowie's entire 26-album catalog -- a run for its money. What it lacks in comedic timing it makes up for in scientific accuracy -- and unwitting hilarity. Troop, who leads "a double life as a musician," according to his university page, informs us that he is a "huge Bowie fan," in case that was unclear.

"It turns out that there are some psychological processes embedded within Bowie lyrics that do correlate with how long his albums have spent in the charts," Dr. Troop explains. Apparently, Bowie's inclusion of social words like "talk," "share" and "joy" led to greater financial success than words pertaining to "motion," such as "travel," words about "touching," such as "hug," and words relating to "death," such as "suicide" and "coughing."

Troop supposes that music buyers simply aren't interested in songs about "death" or "touching," then explains how he came up with the song's lyrics, which include the poignant line, "Share, relax, creating humans XXX." Using a program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, Troop generated "pairs" and "triples" of words that might have come from Bowie's own mind, but are so strange they could only have come from a computer's mind.

Troop then puts on his best Bowie voice, straps on an acoustic guitar, and takes it away. What do you think? Would Bowie disown this song?

LINK: http://www.spinner.com/2009/08/28/psychologist-writes-ideal-david-bowie-song/

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As a bonus, here's the Flight of the Conchords "Bowie" song!! -- bv

Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/)
March 30, 2007

"Flight Of The Conchords - Bowie Song"

Posted by JizzyMcJizz

The mighty folk comedy duo New Zealand's Flight Of The Conchords proform their acid tribute to David Bowie. Enjoy

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR2L98gobTQ

Nerd, Geek, Dork or Dweeb??

2009-09-07T12:50:00.005-04:00

Buzzfeed (s2.buzzfeed.com) via Digg (digg.com)
September 6th, 2009

"Nerd Venn Diagram"
Are you a nerd, geek, or a dork?

Submitted by Anderzole

LINK: http://s2.buzzfeed.com/static/imagebuzz/terminal01/2009/9/6/7/nerd-venn-diagram-9420-1252236207-2.jpg

Curb Your Seinfeld!!

2009-09-03T01:00:00.006-04:00

Entertainment Weekly (hollywoodinsider.ew.com)
September 2nd, 2009

"Jerry Seinfeld Talks About the Seinfeld Reunion on Curb"

Written by Dan Snierson

The cast of Seinfeld is reuniting on Curb Your Enthusiasm this fall? Giddyup! The multi-episode story line on Larry David’s HBO comedy will follow our favorite pessimist as he recruits Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards for a reunion show. You can read all about it in this week’s EW, but here are some bonus quotes from Mr. Seinfeld.

On why the cast decided to reunite:
“Doing it with Larry and on his show just seemed like the only possible way it would be fun….We would never do the type of thing that these shows usually do. That wouldn’t be our style. But something like this — that was sillier and a little more offbeat — felt like it might be right for us.”

On possibly passing up big bucks if the gang had held out for a traditional “reunion show”:
“I don’t think we really thought about that. If we were about the money we would have kept doing the show. We were about: ‘What would be the biggest treat for the audience?’”

On getting together at Larry David’s house to write dialogue for the “reunion show” scenes:
“We did have this one scene that Larry and I wrote, as we always did, really fast. We were just boom, boom, boom, like a tennis game where you hadn’t lost any of your skills. We knew each other, we could read the lines, it just goes right through the processor: ‘Oh, I know what to do here. I think you’re over here in this one.’ ‘Why don’t you walk, I’ll follow.’ ‘Yeah, right, right!’ That was a lot of fun.”

On being back on Stage 19 of the CBS Radford lot, where the old Seinfeld sets had been taken out of storage and updated:
“The best analogy is a snow globe. You’re walking into a miniature fake environment that has been recreated. As I told people about it, I could go back in your life 10 years and recast your friends, recreate where you live, everything in it exactly how it was, and now somebody with a headset points at you and you walk in now, and there it was, and you go, ‘Jesus Christ, this is my old life!’ We all felt like it was a very special experience. Just to go back in time in life is a fantasy.”

“One of the coolest moments was to sit down again in that little foursome that we always sat in. Somebody suggested something about some camera shot: ‘Can you switch?’ And we looked at the guy like, ‘Are you kidding?’ Because we would always sit in that exact configuration. There was no way we were going to change now.”

On his contribution to the Curb world:
“They have this running gag on the show where whenever Larry suspects someone of lying, he does this squinty stare into their eyes. And I came up with a heightened version of it, kind of a double test: You stare into their eyes, you look away and then you look back about an inch from their face, with your eyes even wider open.”

On how he feels about the reunion:
“Larry and I both felt like this was a bit of a miracle, the way this fell together. The proof of it is that he — who had really designed the whole thing — had no idea that it would come out like this. He was very surprised. That was the coolest thing.”

On Seinfeld’s 1998 finale:
“Looking back on it as a way to bring all the memorable characters back in a funny situation, I have to say it’s pretty clever. I think people were expecting a memorable episode, one more episode of one of their favorites. And it was not that. But if you’re going to do one last show, we wanted to see all those people again. We wanted to see Babu and the Soup Nazi and all our favorite characters. So we had to come up with a structure where they would all come back. And I thought this was a pretty clever way to do that.”

On the decision to end the show after nine seasons when it was still No. 1:
“I think I was at that point with the show where I was in danger of killing the little thing of joy that’s inside you that makes you want to do anything that’s supposed to be fun. The thing I like is that the show sustained over time. I’m more excited about the show now than I was then, because I see now that it’s taken on this other position in people’s minds. And I do think it relates to the way it ended, because it was kind of a portion control thing. That was in my mind. You give people a certain amount — different amounts create different feelings — and I thought we had given them the right amount.”

LINK: http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/09/02/jerry-seinfeld-reunion-curb/?xid=partner-cnn-todayslatest-'Seinfeld'%20reunion:%20More%20from%20Jerry

Monkey Music!!

2009-09-02T13:40:00.003-04:00

Wired Science (www.wired.com/wiredscience)
September 1, 2009

"Monkeys Don’t Go For Music — Unless It’s Made for Them"

Written by Hadley Leggett

Monkeys don’t care much for human music, but apparently they will groove to their own beat.

Previous experiments have shown that tamarin monkeys prefer silence to Mozart, and they don’t respond emotionally to human music the way people do. But when a psychologist and a musician collaborated to compose music based on the pitch, tone and tempo of tamarin calls, they discovered that the species-specific music significantly affected monkey behavior and emotional response.

“Different species may have different things that they react to and enjoy differently in music,” said psychologist Charles Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who published the paper Tuesday in Biology Letters with composer David Teie of the University of Maryland. “If we play human music, we shouldn’t expect the monkeys to enjoy that, just like when we play the music that David composed, we don’t enjoy it too much.”

Indeed, the monkey music sounds shrill and unpleasant to human ears. Each of the 30-second pieces below were produced with a cello and Teie’s voice, based on specific features from recordings of tamarin monkey calls. The first “song” is based on fear calls from an upset monkey, while the second one contains soothing sounds based on the vocalizations of a relaxed animal.

[THE TWO PROVIDEN SAMPLES CANNOT BE EMBEDDED. ORIGINAL LINKS PROVIDED BELOW!!]

Fearful Monkey Music: [LINK!!]

Happy Monkey Music: [LINK!!]

“What David has done is to create compositions that are based on structural aspects of the calls but aren’t directly mimicking the calls,” Snowdon said. “These are compositions that are intended to test whether we can convey emotional meaning and induce emotional states in other species.”

The researchers played each piece, as well as several samples of human music, for 14 tamarin monkeys that hadn’t heard music before. An independent observer recorded monkey behavior for five minutes before and after playing each selection. The monkeys didn’t respond at all to Nine-Inch Nails, Tool or Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” but oddly enough, they did become slightly calmer after listening to “Of Wolf and Man” by Metallica.

Monkey music, on the other hand, had a significant and predictable effect on behavior. After listening to the fear-based track, the animals became anxious and upset, as indicated by increased activity and nervous behaviors like urination and scent marking. After hearing the calm music, the monkeys became more relaxed and social.

“It’s not obvious that this would happen, but I don’t think it’s terribly surprising,” said neuroscientist Josh McDermott of New York University, who studies primates and music but was not involved in this study. Because the researchers designed the sounds to share acoustical properties with the noises monkeys make to express emotions, McDermott said it’s natural the animals would respond emotionally.

“I think that the most interesting thing that has come out of this study is some suggestions for animal care,” he said. “It’s very common for people to play music for animals that are in captivity, because they figure that they’ll be interested in it or enjoy it. But our work suggests that they aren’t that interested in human music or prefer not to listen to it at all.” However, if music was tailored specifically to the kinds of sounds that animals are used to hearing, McDermott thinks it might have a more positive effect.

Teie, a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra, came up with the idea of composing music for monkeys because he wanted to test his theories about how certain basic elements of music can be used to manipulate emotions. But because most people have been listening to music for so long, and therefore have significant likes and dislikes that color their emotional responses, he decided to test his ideas on a totally different species.

Teie contacted Snowdon to access a library of monkey recordings, and he quickly realized that some components of monkey communication are similar to the musical features found in human voice patterns.

“I sent him sound files of monkey calls,” Snowdon said, “and without explanation or any context, he was able to listen to them and tell what the context was.”

Although the tamarin songs don’t sound much like music to us, Teie said he wasn’t just imitating the monkey’s calls. “The very nature of music itself is that it’s stylized, that it almost extracts the emotional parts of the sound and makes it impossible to identify.” Teie used the same patterns to create the monkey music as he uses when composing human music, and he wrote out each song for the cello so that other cellists could play it too.

Next, the researchers want to find out whether other animals respond to species-specific music. “One of the implications of this research is that we’ve been mindlessly playing human music and assuming that other species will react to it,” Snowdon said. “But we just don’t know.”

Teie has been in touch with the National Zoo about composing music for wild animals in captivity, and he’s already created a company that markets melodies made specifically for felines (musicforcats.com). Stay tuned for canine classical and rabbit rock.

Image: Bryce Richter/University of Wisconsin-Madison. Audio: Copyright David Teie/University of Maryland.

LINK: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/monkeymusic/

Goodbye Reading Rainbow!!

2009-08-30T12:44:00.005-04:00

NPR (www.npr.org)
August 28th, 2009

"Reading Rainbow Reaches Its Final Chapter"

Written by Ben Calhoun
Photos: GPN/Nebraska ETV Network; WNED Buffalo

For 26 years, Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton (left) shepherded kids through the exciting world of books. The show, which fostered a love of reading, was the third longest-running program in PBS history, outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

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Even if you can't remember a specific Reading Rainbow episode, chances are, the theme song is still lodged somewhere in your head:

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high,
Take a look, it's in a book — Reading Rainbow ...

Remember now?

Reading Rainbow comes to the end of its 26-year run on Friday; it has won more than two-dozen Emmys, and is the third longest-running children's show in PBS history — outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.

The show, which started in 1983, was hosted by actor LeVar Burton. (If you don't know Burton from Reading Rainbow, he's also famous for his role as Kunta Kinte in Roots, or as the chrome-visored Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

Each episode of Reading Rainbow had the same basic elements: There was a featured children's book that inspired an adventure with Burton. Then, at the end of every show, kids gave their own book reviews, always prefaced by Burton's trademark line: "But you don't have to take my word for it ..."

"The series resonates with so many people," says John Grant, who is in charge of content at WNED Buffalo, Reading Rainbow's home station.

-------------------------

"I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being," Burton said in a 2003 interview. "It's just such an integral part of the human experience — that connection with the written word."

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The show's run is ending, Grant explains, because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show's broadcast rights.

Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.

Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.

"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."

Linda Simensky, vice president for children's programming at PBS, says that when Reading Rainbow was developed in the early 1980s, it was an era when the question was: "How do we get kids to read books?"

Since then, she explains, research has shown that teaching the mechanics of reading should be the network's priority.

"We've been able to identify the earliest steps that we need to take," Simensky says. "Now we know what we need to do first. Even just from five years ago, I think we all know so much more about how to use television to teach."

Research has directed programming toward phonics and reading fundamentals as the front line of the literacy fight. Reading Rainbow occupied a more luxurious space — the show operated on the assumption that kids already had basic reading skills and instead focused on fostering a love of books.

Simensky calls Reading Rainbow's 26-year run miraculous — and says that its end is bittersweet.

Reading Rainbow's impending absence leaves many open questions about today's literacy challenges, and what television's role should be in addressing them.

"But" — as Burton would have told his young readers — "you don't have to take my word for it."

LINK: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112312561

Placebo Effect!!

2009-08-29T01:00:00.007-04:00

This comes via my good buddy at The Theatron. It was so interesting, I just had to re-post it... Thanks, Piddy! - bv

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Wired (www.wired.com)
August 24th, 2009

"Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why."

Written by Steve Silberman

Photo: Nick Veasey

Merck was in trouble. In 2002, the pharmaceutical giant was falling behind its rivals in sales. Even worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which would allow cheaper generics to flood the market. The company hadn't introduced a truly new product in three years, and its stock price was plummeting.

In interviews with the press, Edward Scolnick, Merck's research director, laid out his battle plan to restore the firm to preeminence. Key to his strategy was expanding the company's reach into the antidepressant market, where Merck had lagged while competitors like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline created some of the best-selling drugs in the world. "To remain dominant in the future," he told Forbes, "we need to dominate the central nervous system."

His plan hinged on the success of an experimental antidepressant codenamed MK-869. Still in clinical trials, it looked like every pharma executive's dream: a new kind of medication that exploited brain chemistry in innovative ways to promote feelings of well-being. The drug tested brilliantly early on, with minimal side effects, and Merck touted its game-changing potential at a meeting of 300 securities analysts.

Behind the scenes, however, MK-869 was starting to unravel. True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health—the so-called placebo effect—has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.

Ultimately, Merck's foray into the antidepressant market failed. In subsequent tests, MK-869 turned out to be no more effective than a placebo. In the jargon of the industry, the trials crossed the futility boundary.

MK-869 wasn't the only highly anticipated medical breakthrough to be undone in recent years by the placebo effect. From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in R&D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007—the fewest since 1983—and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.

The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn's disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an "unusually high" response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today's economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.

Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings—and potential therapeutic applications—of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realizing they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself. A special task force of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is seeking to stem the crisis by quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious data-sharing efforts in the history of the drug industry. After decades in the jungles of fringe science, the placebo effect has become the elephant in the boardroom.

The roots of the placebo problem can be traced to a lie told by an Army nurse during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of southern Italy. The nurse was assisting an anesthetist named Henry Beecher, who was tending to US troops under heavy German bombardment. When the morphine supply ran low, the nurse assured a wounded soldier that he was getting a shot of potent painkiller, though her syringe contained only salt water. Amazingly, the bogus injection relieved the soldier's agony and prevented the onset of shock.

Returning to his post at Harvard after the war, Beecher became one of the nation's leading medical reformers. Inspired by the nurse's healing act of deception, he launched a crusade to promote a method of testing new medicines to find out whether they were truly effective. At the time, the process for vetting drugs was sloppy at best: Pharmaceutical companies would simply dose volunteers with an experimental agent until the side effects swamped the presumed benefits. Beecher proposed that if test subjects could be compared to a group that received a placebo, health officials would finally have an impartial way to determine whether a medicine was actually responsible for making a patient better.

In a 1955 paper titled "The Powerful Placebo," published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Beecher described how the placebo effect had undermined the results of more than a dozen trials by causing improvement that was mistakenly attributed to the drugs being tested. He demonstrated that trial volunteers who got real medication were also subject to placebo effects; the act of taking a pill was itself somehow therapeutic, boosting the curative power of the medicine. Only by subtracting the improvement in a placebo control group could the actual value of the drug be calculated.

The article caused a sensation. By 1962, reeling from news of birth defects caused by a drug called thalidomide, Congress amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, requiring trials to include enhanced safety testing and placebo control groups. Volunteers would be assigned randomly to receive either medicine or a sugar pill, and neither doctor nor patient would know the difference until the trial was over. Beecher's double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial—or RCT—was enshrined as the gold standard of the emerging pharmaceutical industry. Today, to win FDA approval, a new medication must beat placebo in at least two authenticated trials.

Beecher's prescription helped cure the medical establishment of outright quackery, but it had an insidious side effect. By casting placebo as the villain in RCTs, he ended up stigmatizing one of his most important discoveries. The fact that even dummy capsules can kick-start the body's recovery engine became a problem for drug developers to overcome, rather than a phenomenon that could guide doctors toward a better understanding of the healing process and how to drive it most effectively.

In his eagerness to promote his template for clinical trials, Beecher also overreached by seeing the placebo effect at work in curing ailments like the common cold, which wane with no intervention at all. But the triumph of Beecher's gold standard was a generation of safer medications that worked for nearly everyone. Anthracyclines don't require an oncologist with a genial bedside manner to slow the growth of tumors.

What Beecher didn't foresee, however, was the explosive growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The blockbuster success of mood drugs in the '80s and '90s emboldened Big Pharma to promote remedies for a growing panoply of disorders that are intimately related to higher brain function. By attempting to dominate the central nervous system, Big Pharma gambled its future on treating ailments that have turned out to be particularly susceptible to the placebo effect.

The tall, rusty-haired son of a country doctor, William Potter, 64, has spent most of his life treating mental illness—first as a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and then as a drug developer. A decade ago, he took a job at Lilly's neuroscience labs. There, working on new antidepressants and antianxiety meds, he became one of the first researchers to glimpse the approaching storm.

To test products internally, pharmaceutical companies routinely run trials in which a long-established medication and an experimental one compete against each other as well as against a placebo. As head of Lilly's early-stage psychiatric drug development in the late '90s, Potter saw that even durable warhorses like Prozac, which had been on the market for years, were being overtaken by dummy pills in more recent tests. The company's next-generation antidepressants were faring badly, too, doing no better than placebo in seven out of 10 trials.

As a psychiatrist, Potter knew that some patients really do seem to get healthier for reasons that have more to do with a doctor's empathy than with the contents of a pill. But it baffled him that drugs he'd been prescribing for years seemed to be struggling to prove their effectiveness. Thinking that something crucial may have been overlooked, Potter tapped an IT geek named David DeBrota to help him comb through the Lilly database of published and unpublished trials—including those that the company had kept secret because of high placebo response. They aggregated the findings from decades of antidepressant trials, looking for patterns and trying to see what was changing over time. What they found challenged some of the industry's basic assumptions about its drug-vetting process.

Assumption number one was that if a trial were managed correctly, a medication would perform as well or badly in a Phoenix hospital as in a Bangalore clinic. Potter discovered, however, that geographic location alone could determine whether a drug bested placebo or crossed the futility boundary. By the late '90s, for example, the classic antianxiety drug diazepam (also known as Valium) was still beating placebo in France and Belgium. But when the drug was tested in the US, it was likely to fail. Conversely, Prozac performed better in America than it did in western Europe and South Africa. It was an unsettling prospect: FDA approval could hinge on where the company chose to conduct a trial.

Mistaken assumption number two was that the standard tests used to gauge volunteers' improvement in trials yielded consistent results. Potter and his colleagues discovered that ratings by trial observers varied significantly from one testing site to another. It was like finding out that the judges in a tight race each had a different idea about the placement of the finish line.

Potter and DeBrota's data-mining also revealed that even superbly managed trials were subject to runaway placebo effects. But exactly why any of this was happening remained elusive. "We were able to identify many of the core issues in play," Potter says. "But there was no clear answer to the problem." Convinced that what Lilly was facing was too complex for any one pharmaceutical house to unravel on its own, he came up with a plan to break down the firewalls between researchers across the industry, enabling them to share data in "pre-competitive space."

After prodding by Potter and others, the NIH focused on the issue in 2000, hosting a three-day conference in Washington. For the first time in medical history, more than 500 drug developers, doctors, academics, and trial designers put their heads together to examine the role of the placebo effect in clinical trials and healing in general.

Potter's ambitious plan for a collaborative approach to the problem eventually ran into its own futility boundary: No one would pay for it. And drug companies don't share data, they hoard it. But the NIH conference launched a new wave of placebo research in academic labs in the US and Italy that would make significant progress toward solving the mystery of what was happening in clinical trials.

Visitors to Fabrizio Benedetti's clinic at the University of Turin are asked never to say the P-word around the med students who sign up for his experiments. For all the volunteers know, the trim, soft-spoken neuroscientist is hard at work concocting analgesic skin creams and methods for enhancing athletic performance.

One recent afternoon in his lab, a young soccer player grimaced with exertion while doing leg curls on a weight machine. Benedetti and his colleagues were exploring the potential of using Pavlovian conditioning to give athletes a competitive edge undetectable by anti-doping authorities. A player would receive doses of a performance-enhancing drug for weeks and then a jolt of placebo just before competition.

Benedetti, 53, first became interested in placebos in the mid-'90s, while researching pain. He was surprised that some of the test subjects in his placebo groups seemed to suffer less than those on active drugs. But scientific interest in this phenomenon, and the money to research it, were hard to come by. "The placebo effect was considered little more than a nuisance," he recalls. "Drug companies, physicians, and clinicians were not interested in understanding its mechanisms. They were concerned only with figuring out whether their drugs worked better."

Part of the problem was that response to placebo was considered a psychological trait related to neurosis and gullibility rather than a physiological phenomenon that could be scrutinized in the lab and manipulated for therapeutic benefit. But then Benedetti came across a study, done years earlier, that suggested the placebo effect had a neurological foundation. US scientists had found that a drug called naloxone blocks the pain-relieving power of placebo treatments. The brain produces its own analgesic compounds called opioids, released under conditions of stress, and naloxone blocks the action of these natural painkillers and their synthetic analogs. The study gave Benedetti the lead he needed to pursue his own research while running small clinical trials for drug companies.

Now, after 15 years of experimentation, he has succeeded in mapping many of the biochemical reactions responsible for the placebo effect, uncovering a broad repertoire of self-healing responses. Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol.

In one study, Benedetti found that Alzheimer's patients with impaired cognitive function get less pain relief from analgesic drugs than normal volunteers do. Using advanced methods of EEG analysis, he discovered that the connections between the patients' prefrontal lobes and their opioid systems had been damaged. Healthy volunteers feel the benefit of medication plus a placebo boost. Patients who are unable to formulate ideas about the future because of cortical deficits, however, feel only the effect of the drug itself. The experiment suggests that because Alzheimer's patients don't get the benefits of anticipating the treatment, they require higher doses of painkillers to experience normal levels of relief.

Benedetti often uses the phrase "placebo response" instead of placebo effect. By definition, inert pills have no effect, but under the right conditions they can act as a catalyst for what he calls the body's "endogenous health care system." Like any other internal network, the placebo response has limits. It can ease the discomfort of chemotherapy, but it won't stop the growth of tumors. It also works in reverse to produce the placebo's evil twin, the nocebo effect. For example, men taking a commonly prescribed prostate drug who were informed that the medication may cause sexual dysfunction were twice as likely to become impotent.

Further research by Benedetti and others showed that the promise of treatment activates areas of the brain involved in weighing the significance of events and the seriousness of threats. "If a fire alarm goes off and you see smoke, you know something bad is going to happen and you get ready to escape," explains Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. "Expectations about pain and pain relief work in a similar way. Placebo treatments tap into this system and orchestrate the responses in your brain and body accordingly."

In other words, one way that placebo aids recovery is by hacking the mind's ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around us—such as the tone a doctor uses to deliver a diagnosis—to generate more-accurate estimations of our fate. One of the most powerful placebogenic triggers is watching someone else experience the benefits of an alleged drug. Researchers call these social aspects of medicine the therapeutic ritual.

In a study last year, Harvard Medical School researcher Ted Kaptchuk devised a clever strategy for testing his volunteers' response to varying levels of therapeutic ritual. The study focused on irritable bowel syndrome, a painful disorder that costs more than $40 billion a year worldwide to treat. First the volunteers were placed randomly in one of three groups. One group was simply put on a waiting list; researchers know that some patients get better just because they sign up for a trial. Another group received placebo treatment from a clinician who declined to engage in small talk. Volunteers in the third group got the same sham treatment from a clinician who asked them questions about symptoms, outlined the causes of IBS, and displayed optimism about their condition.

Not surprisingly, the health of those in the third group improved most. In fact, just by participating in the trial, volunteers in this high-interaction group got as much relief as did people taking the two leading prescription drugs for IBS. And the benefits of their bogus treatment persisted for weeks afterward, contrary to the belief—widespread in the pharmaceutical industry—that the placebo response is short-lived.

Studies like this open the door to hybrid treatment strategies that exploit the placebo effect to make real drugs safer and more effective. Cancer patients undergoing rounds of chemotherapy often suffer from debilitating nocebo effects—such as anticipatory nausea—conditioned by their past experiences with the drugs. A team of German researchers has shown that these associations can be unlearned through the administration of placebo, making chemo easier to bear.

Meanwhile, the classic use of placebos in medicine—to boost the confidence of anxious patients—has been employed tacitly for ages. Nearly half of the doctors polled in a 2007 survey in Chicago admitted to prescribing medications they knew were ineffective for a patient's condition—or prescribing effective drugs in doses too low to produce actual benefit—in order to provoke a placebo response.

The main objections to more widespread placebo use in clinical practice are ethical, but the solutions to these conundrums can be surprisingly simple. Investigators told volunteers in one placebo study that the pills they were taking were "known to significantly reduce pain in some patients." The researchers weren't lying.

-------------------

Rx for Success [SIDEBAR!!]

What turns a dummy pill into a catalyst for relieving pain, anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, or the tremors of Parkinson's disease? The brain's own healing mechanisms, unleashed by the belief that a phony medication is the real thing. The most important ingredient in any placebo is the doctor's bedside manner, but according to research, the color of a tablet can boost the effectiveness even of genuine meds—or help convince a patient that a placebo is a potent remedy.

Yellow Pills
make the most effective antidepressants, like little doses of pharmaceutical sunshine.

Red Pills
can give you a more stimulating kick. Wake up, Neo.

The Color Green
reduces anxiety, adding more chill to the pill.

White Tablets—
particularly those labeled "antacid"—are superior for soothing ulcers, even when they contain nothing but lactose.

More is Better,
scientists say. Placebos taken four times a day deliver greater relief than those taken twice daily.

Branding Matters.
Placebos stamped or packaged with widely recognized trademarks are more effective than "generic" placebos.

Clever Names
can add a placebo boost to the physiological punch in real drugs. Viagra implies both vitality and an unstoppable Niagara of sexy.

------------------------

These new findings tell us that the body's response to certain types of medication is in constant flux, affected by expectations of treatment, conditioning, beliefs, and social cues.

For instance, the geographic variations in trial outcome that Potter uncovered begin to make sense in light of discoveries that the placebo response is highly sensitive to cultural differences. Anthropologist Daniel Moerman found that Germans are high placebo reactors in trials of ulcer drugs but low in trials of drugs for hypertension—an undertreated condition in Germany, where many people pop pills for herzinsuffizienz, or low blood pressure. Moreover, a pill's shape, size, branding, and price all influence its effects on the body. Soothing blue capsules make more effective tranquilizers than angry red ones, except among Italian men, for whom the color blue is associated with their national soccer team—Forza Azzurri!

But why would the placebo effect seem to be getting stronger worldwide? Part of the answer may be found in the drug industry's own success in marketing its products.

Potential trial volunteers in the US have been deluged with ads for prescription medications since 1997, when the FDA amended its policy on direct-to-consumer advertising. The secret of running an effective campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi's Jim Joseph told a trade journal last year, is associating a particular brand-name medication with other aspects of life that promote peace of mind: "Is it time with your children? Is it a good book curled up on the couch? Is it your favorite television show? Is it a little purple pill that helps you get rid of acid reflux?" By evoking such uplifting associations, researchers say, the ads set up the kind of expectations that induce a formidable placebo response.

The success of those ads in selling blockbuster drugs like antidepressants and statins also pushed trials offshore as therapeutic virgins—potential volunteers who were not already medicated with one or another drug—became harder to find. The contractors that manage trials for Big Pharma have moved aggressively into Africa, India, China, and the former Soviet Union. In these places, however, cultural dynamics can boost the placebo response in other ways. Doctors in these countries are paid to fill up trial rosters quickly, which may motivate them to recruit patients with milder forms of illness that yield more readily to placebo treatment. Furthermore, a patient's hope of getting better and expectation of expert care—the primary placebo triggers in the brain—are particularly acute in societies where volunteers are clamoring to gain access to the most basic forms of medicine. "The quality of care that placebo patients get in trials is far superior to the best insurance you get in America," says psychiatrist Arif Khan, principal investigator in hundreds of trials for companies like Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb. "It's basically luxury care."

Big Pharma faces additional problems in beating placebo when it comes to psychiatric drugs. One is to accurately define the nature of mental illness. The litmus test of drug efficacy in antidepressant trials is a questionnaire called the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. The HAM-D was created nearly 50 years ago based on a study of major depressive disorder in patients confined to asylums. Few trial volunteers now suffer from that level of illness. In fact, many experts are starting to wonder if what drug companies now call depression is even the same disease that the HAM-D was designed to diagnose.

Existing tests also may not be appropriate for diagnosing disorders like social anxiety and premenstrual dysphoria—the very types of chronic, fuzzily defined conditions that the drug industry started targeting in the '90s, when the placebo problem began escalating. The neurological foundation of these illnesses is still being debated, making it even harder for drug companies to come up with effective treatments.

What all of these disorders have in common, however, is that they engage the higher cortical centers that generate beliefs and expectations, interpret social cues, and anticipate rewards. So do chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, Parkinson's, and many other ailments that respond robustly to placebo treatment. To avoid investing in failure, researchers say, pharmaceutical companies will need to adopt new ways of vetting drugs that route around the brain's own centralized network for healing.

Ten years and billions of R&D dollars after William Potter first sounded the alarm about the placebo effect, his message has finally gotten through. In the spring, Potter, who is now a VP at Merck, helped rev up a massive data-gathering effort called the Placebo Response Drug Trials Survey.

Under the auspices of the NIH, Potter and his colleagues are acquiring decades of trial data—including blood and DNA samples—to determine which variables are responsible for the apparent rise in the placebo effect. Merck, Lilly, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, and other major firms are funding the study, and the process of scrubbing volunteers' names and other personal information from the database is about to begin.

In typically secretive industry fashion, the existence of the project itself is being kept under wraps. NIH staffers are willing to talk about it only anonymously, concerned about offending the companies paying for it.

For Potter, who used to ride along with his father on house calls in Indiana, the significance of the survey goes beyond Big Pharma's finally admitting it has a placebo problem. It also marks the twilight of an era when the drug industry was confident that its products were strong enough to cure illness by themselves.

"Before I routinely prescribed antidepressants, I would do more psychotherapy for mildly depressed patients," says the veteran of hundreds of drug trials. "Today we would say I was trying to engage components of the placebo response—and those patients got better. To really do the best for your patients, you want the best placebo response plus the best drug response."

The pharma crisis has also finally brought together the two parallel streams of placebo research—academic and industrial. Pfizer has asked Fabrizio Benedetti to help the company figure out why two of its pain drugs keep failing. Ted Kaptchuk is developing ways to distinguish drug response more clearly from placebo response for another pharma house that he declines to name. Both are exploring innovative trial models that treat the placebo effect as more than just statistical noise competing with the active drug.

Benedetti has helped design a protocol for minimizing volunteers' expectations that he calls "open/hidden." In standard trials, the act of taking a pill or receiving an injection activates the placebo response. In open/hidden trials, drugs and placebos are given to some test subjects in the usual way and to others at random intervals through an IV line controlled by a concealed computer. Drugs that work only when the patient knows they're being administered are placebos themselves.

Ironically, Big Pharma's attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That's potent medicine.

LINK: http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

Creative Grooming!!

2009-08-28T01:00:00.007-04:00

UK Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
August 26th, 2009

"Poodle Doodles: Dogs are Transformed into Pandas, Horses and Even Snails in a Barking Mad Grooming Craze"

Writer Unknown

They may resemble pandas, buffalos and camels - but these animals are actually poodles, all competing for the title of top dog at 'creative grooming' shows across the U.S.

Something of a canine fancy dress contest, it takes just two hours for owners to transform their pets, which are sheared and coloured to achieve each look.

The incredible transformations were captured by photographer Ren Netherland, who travels thousands of miles each year to attend each competition.

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE!!]

Getting the hump: Cindy the poodle is transformed into a camel for a creative dog grooming show by owner and show veteran Sandra Hartness

The ultimate in bad taste, you may feel: This fairy really takes the dog-biscuit

Some of the most imaginative ideas have included a snail, an American football player and even Pirates of the Caribbean character Jack Sparrow.

Mr Netherland, 48, said: 'When these dogs come into the arena for a show or a competition you have absolutely no idea what they are going to be turned into.

'The groomers do colour them before they arrive but basically all you see at first is an extremely fluffy poodle that has weird coloured patterns on it.

Flower girl: Cindy, this time as a psychedelic snail. 'The transformation they go through is simply spectacular,' says photographer Ren Netherland

Paws for thought: A poodle is transformed into a very convincing panda for a creative grooming show in Pennsylvania

'The transformation they go through is simply spectacular. There's no other word for it. It's amazing what they can do in so little time.'

But it is not just the owners who enjoy the grooming shows.

'The dogs seem to love the whole experience,' added Mr Netherland. 'One of the reasons I love my job is because I love animals so much. I much prefer working with them than people.

'By the time the dogs get to me after they have been through the tournament they are bounding around and very happy.

'I think all the attention that gets bestowed upon them through the whole process must be nice for them.'

Top dog: Pirates of the Caribbean character Captain Jack Sparrow was the inspiration for poodle owner Missy Gullett

Horse play: The transformation of a poodle into a pony was one of Ren Netherland's favourites. 'You had no clue whatsoever what they were planning,' he said

Mr Netherland, who has been touring the U.S. for 10 years, is the only professional photographer allowed to capture images of the winning poodles on behalf of show organisers.

He said: 'I love my job. I get a really big kick out of it. Watching the owners turn these balls of hair into something so intricate and detailed really does baffle anyone watching.

'The one that shocked me the most was the horse. The way it looked when it arrived at the show you had no clue whatsoever what they were planning.

Team player: This dog was transformed unto an American football player by shearing its coat into a jacket and furry helmet

Hair of the dog: Virtually unrecognisable as a poodle, this very convincing buffalo disguise is uncanny

'When they finished I was blown away.' The artistic owners - almost entirely women - colour their beloved dogs with powdered paint sprayed on using blow pens which is non-permanent.

Mr Netherland thinks the last thing owners are after is money.

'I think these girls must just love the artistry that's involved,' he said.

'In creative grooming shows the maximum prize is about $1000 (£611) so you couldn't earn a living from it.

A poultry effort: This pooch is made to play chicken

Bird of paradise: Cindy the poodle, this time as a peacock, is transformed with brightly coloured fur dye, glitter and a fan of feathers

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208913/The-poodles-transformed-pandas-horses-snails-creative-grooming-dog-shows.html

Enzi Blocking Healthcare Reform!!

2009-08-27T11:04:00.002-04:00

Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com)
August 26th, 2009

"Mike Enzi, Gang Of Six Republican, Admits He's Simply Blocking Health Care Reform"

Written by Ryan Grim

Mike Enzi, one of three Republicans ostensibly negotiating health care reform as part of the Senate's "Gang of Six," told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions.

"It's not where I get them to compromise, it's what I get them to leave out," Enzi said Monday, according to the Billings Gazette.

Enzi found himself under attack at the town hall simply for sitting in the same room as the three Finance Committee Democrats. Republicans in the crowd called for him to exit the talks. He assured conservatives that his presence was delaying health care reform.

"If I hadn't been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care," he said.

"Someone has to be at the table asking questions," Enzi said. "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

Enzi was also hit from the other side, as constituents criticized him for taking significant campaign cash from the health insurance industry while opposing a public insurance option that would compete with private plans and take a bit out of their bottom line.

Enzi's blunt portrayal of his real role in the negotiations makes bipartisan compromise that much less likely to emerge from the Finance Committee. Democrats around the table have already conceded the public option, yet appear to be no closer to winning any Republican support. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), another of the three Republicans continuing to negotiate -- or at least to meet -- has said that even if he agrees to a deal, he won't vote for it unless he can persuade a good many of his fellow Republicans to go along as well -- a prospect that would only be possible in the face of a dramatic Democratic capitulation.

The Republican negotiators are under intense pressure from GOP leadership to walk away from the discussions.

Earlier this week, one of the three Democrats in the talks, Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, said that he would support passing health care with a simple majority if it became clear the GOP wasn't serious.

LINK: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/26/mike-enzi-gang-of-six-rep_n_269447.html

Rest in Peace, Taz

2009-08-26T10:25:00.004-04:00

Local news, for those who knew him...

---------------------

NY Daily News (www.nydailynews.com)
August 24th, 2009

"Police Arrest Louis Rodriguez in Murder of Bouncer Eric 'Taz' Pagan Outside Club Forbidden City"

Written by Henrick Karoliszyn and Alison Gendar

Photo: Eric "Taz" Pagan

An ex-con from East Harlem was busted Monday for gunning down a bouncer and wounding two other men outside a popular East Village club, police said.

Louis Rodriguez, 29, shot and killed Eric (Taz) Pagan outsideForbidden City, a hip Asian-themed bar on Avenue A after a fight early Sunday, cops said.

Police said the quarrel started when Rodriguez rolled up on the club in a white van and accidentally struck bar patron Salvador Moran, 31, as he stood outside with Pagan and Robert Calbo, 30.

Moran and Rodriguez started arguing until Rodriguez ended the back-and-forth with gunfire, hitting Moran in the neck.

Calbo was shot in the hand trying to push the gun away, police sources said.

That's when Pagan jumped in and tried break up the fight.

He was fatally shot in the face, cops said.

Pagan, a single father, worked at the bar as a bouncer, but was off-duty the night of the shooting.

He died moments later at Bellevue Hospital.

Moran and Calbo are hospitalized in stable condition.

Rodriguez, who served nearly five years in state prison on a Bronx assault charge, was fingered as the gunman by witnesses.

Security surveillance video also captured him, police sources said.

Rodriguez was awaiting arraignment last night on murder, assault and weapons charges, police said.

LINK: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/08/24/2009-08-24_police_arrest_louis_rodriguez_in_murder_of_bouncer_eric_taz_pagan.html

Desertec!!

2009-08-24T16:11:00.001-04:00

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
August 24th, 2009

"Project to Power Europe With Sahara Sun Gains Momentum"
Written by Reuters

RABAT, MOROCCO — A €400 billion plan to power Europe with sunlight from the Sahara is gaining momentum, despite warnings about starting a large corporate project using new technologies in countries of northern Africa where the rule of law is weak.

Desertec, as the $573 billion initiative is called, would be the world’s most ambitious solar power project. Fields of mirrors in the desert would gather solar rays to boil water, turning turbines to electrify a new carbon-free network linking Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Its supporters — a dozen finance and industrial firms mostly from Germany — say that it would keep Europe at the forefront of the fight against climate change and help North African and European economies to grow within greenhouse gas emission limits.

But critics warn of numerous pitfalls, including the politics of the Maghreb region, Saharan sandstorms and the risk to desert populations if their water is diverted to clean dust off solar mirrors.

The detractors say that the concentrated solar power technology behind Desertec involves greater costs and risks than the fast-growing patchwork of smaller-scale photovoltaic cell installations that generate most of Europe’s solar energy today.

Desertec’s founders are lured by the fact that more energy falls on the world’s deserts in six hours than the world consumes in a year.

“The Sahara offers every advantage you want: proximity to Europe, virtually no population and more intense sunlight,” said George Joffe, a research fellow and Maghreb expert at Cambridge University in England, who is not affiliated with the plan. “It would be mad to pass up this opportunity.”

Proposed by the Club of Rome, an international group of experts that suggests solutions to global problems, Desertec became an industrial project last month when the reinsurer Munich Re sponsored a kick-off at its headquarters in the Bavarian capital.

The experts have yet to draw up a business plan or specify how the project would be financed. But they hope to recruit shareholders and partner companies from a variety of countries.

“We have a special relationship with climate change,” said Peter Hoeppe, the head of Munich Re’s Geo Risk Research department. “It affects our core business, the insurance of weather-related natural catastrophes, which count among the most expensive losses we have to bear.”

Many European governments aim to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Desertec’s backers say it would also be a positive gesture from the developed world to countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which stand to suffer most from the more frequent droughts and the expansion of deserts blamed on global warming.

Desertec says the Sahara could one day deliver 15 percent of the electricity used by Europe, but company officials expect the plan to advance in small stages with completion around 2050.

Still, supporters of more established solar energy technology, like photovoltaic cells, argue that decentralized generation will prove more popular. Falling prices for those cells would make the heavy infrastructure needed for Desertec’s concentrated solar power unviable.

European governments already importing fossil fuels from northern African countries like Algeria. But critics of Desertec argue that, given the choice, most would opt for the security of producing renewable energy within their own borders.

“Sahara power for northern Europe is a mirage,” said Hermann Scheer, a member of the German Parliament and the head of the European Association for Renewable Energy. “Those behind the project know themselves that nothing will ever come out of this.”

Mr. Scheer is an architect of renewable energy policy in Germany, which included a strong emphasis on photovoltaic technology. He said the costs of Desertec were being played down and its technical capabilities overestimated.

Desertec would need 20 or more efficient, direct-current cables each costing up to $1 billion to transmit electricity north beneath the Mediterranean.

Proponents say that North African countries that import most of their energy like Morocco and Tunisia could also benefit from Desertec.

But Desertec would need tight coordination between regional governments to succeed, and Maghreb states have tried and failed for two decades to integrate their economies and deepen political ties.

The border between Morocco and Algeria is shut and relations are poisoned by a dispute about the western Sahara.

Morocco says it has already identified sites to place the curved solar mirrors, not deep in the Sahara but in populated areas just north of the desert to ensure a supply of water to clean mirrors and cool turbines.

Morocco imports 96 percent of its energy and subsidizes fuel to make it more affordable for the poor, a massive drain on state resources.

“We would be generating enough power for us, and for export, for the next 100 years,” said Said Mouline, the head of Morocco’s renewable energy agency.

Algeria has the biggest chunk of desert and a private Algerian company, Cevital, has signed up for Desertec. But Algeria, the second-largest county in Africa after Sudan, is isolated and struggling to reform a Soviet-style economy after a brutal civil conflict in the 1990s.

The government has tightened terms on inward investment and says it will only work with Desertec if it allows partnerships between Algerian and foreign firms and a transfer of technology.

“If these conditions are not met, we are not interested,” said the energy and mines minister of Algeria, Chakib Khelil. “We don’t want foreign companies exploiting solar energy from our land.”

Analysts play down the risk to infrastructure posed by rebels aligned with Al Qaeda in Algeria, saying that the investment risks pose a far bigger problem.

“There is the risk of expropriation of assets, reneging on license agreements, corruption and bureaucratic red tape which could stop things getting off the ground,” said Henry Wilkinson of Janusian Security Risk Management.

Wolfram Lacher of the consultancy Control Risks agreed: Security risks can be managed, but the project could become entangled in broader talks between the European Union and north Africa on energy, investment and trade.

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/business/global/25sahara.html

Making Decisions!!

2009-08-20T09:56:00.005-04:00

The Art of Manliness (artofmanliness.com)
August 17, 2009

"How to Make a Decision Like Ben Franklin"

Written by Brett & Kate McKay

“My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro and over the other Con. Then during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different time occur to me, for or against the measure. When I have thus got them altogether in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I judge some two reasons con equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out five; and thus proceeding, I find where the balance lies; and if after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.” –Benjamin Franklin

Last week we talked about the importance of being decisive and went over some basic tips for how to make good decisions. We mentioned the pro and con chart as being a helpful part of the decision-making process. As you can see from the above quote, Ben Franklin was a fan of the pro and con chart himself and added his own twist by giving different weights to his various motives.

But what if you try the pro and con chart and the right decision still isn’t clear? You’ve done all the research you can about your possible choices; you’ve journaled your thoughts; you’ve sought the advice of your friends and loved ones. But you’re still absolutely stuck between two or more choices that seem equally attractive. How can you break this stalemate?

Today we’re going to go over a decision making hack that expands on and improves the technique practiced by old Ben. When you’re agonizing over a decision, it can help you discover which choice would really be best.

How to Decide Between Two or More Attractive Possibilities

Every decision has its advantages and disadvantages. The trick is to figure out which choice will give you more of the former and less of the latter. A typical pro and con chart can be too vague. This is where a decision “balance sheet” comes in. If you want to get really fancy, philosophers who study decision making (yes, there is such a thing) call it a “multi-attribute optimization chart.” Get out a sheet of paper, gents, you’re about to become The Decider.

1. Make your columns. You need two columns. Label the first column “Element” and the second column “Importance Factor.” Next to those two columns, create as many columns as you have possible choices. Label these columns with the names of your choices. For example, “Job in Seattle” and “Job in Phoenix.” If drawing this out by freehand takes too much time for you, just download this template and use it.

2. List the important elements of your decision. In your “Element” column, list all the major elements that influence your decision. For example, if you’re trying to decide between jobs, you would list things like location, pay, benefits, job security, work hours, enjoyment, etc.

3. List the importance factor of each element. In your “Importance Factor” column, assign each element a number from 1 to 10 according to how important that element is to you. For example, if the time your job will allow you to spend with your family is very important to you, give that element a 9. If being close to your family isn’t as important to you, then give it something like a 4. Put down the first number that comes to you; don’t overthink it.

4. Grade the choices in relation to each element. You’re now going to assign a number from 1 to 10 in relation to how each choice measures up to the elements you have listed. For example, if the job in Seattle offers an excellent health insurance plan, you would give it a 9. If the job in Phoenix would sometimes have you working 60 hour weeks, then you would give it something like a 5 for “work hours.” Again, don’t think too much about it; just put down the first number that comes to your mind. These numbers go on the left side of your choice columns. Make sure you leave room on the right side of the column for another number.

5. Multiply the importance factor by the grades for each choice. For example, if you gave the importance of the pay element a 8, and you gave the Job in Seattle a 7 for that job’s potential salary, you would take 8X7 and would come out with 56. This number goes on the right of your choice column.

6. Add up the totals. Once you have multiplied all of your importance factors by your choice grades, add all those numbers up to get a total. Which choice has the highest number of points? That’s probably the best choice for you.

These directions may make it sound more complicated than it really is. It’s actually quite simple once you see an example of a chart. Here is an example chart of choosing between two different jobs. Let’s say that both jobs seem attractive, but you want to figure out which would be the best job for you and your way of life. Here’s how you could figure out which job to take:

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE!!]

After multiplying the importance factor by our choice grades, and then adding those totals up, we’re left with the Seattle Job scoring 428 and the Phoenix Job scoring a 468. Looks like you’re moving to Phoenix! Of course, there is a possibility that you come up with some false positives doing this exercise. Even though you try not to be biased, there’s a tendency to give the choice you really want higher scores, even if it really doesn’t warrant those scores. Despite that small drawback, multi-attribute choice optimization does a pretty good job of helping you come to a choice (after all, if you’re inflating the scores of one of your choices, then deep down you probably already know which one you want!). It forces you to really think about all the factors going into your decision. Kate and I have used it several times when making big choices, and it has always proved helpful. Go ahead and give it try with the sample card below. Remember you can download a PDF with a couple of these worksheets ready for you to use. Enjoy!

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE!!]

Post inspired by the 1963 Doubleday Personal Success Program

LINK: http://artofmanliness.com/2009/08/17/how-to-make-a-decision-like-ben-franklin/

$1/Day Eats!!

2009-08-19T10:34:00.002-04:00

Time.com - The Cheapskate Blog (cheapskate.blogs.time.com)
August 18th, 2009

"How to Eat on a Dollar a Day"
Written by Brad Tuttle

The next post in the continuing frugal gastronomy series features a pair of schoolteacher-writers who gave themselves the toughest of all restrictions: All their food had to cost no more than $1 per day per person. Amazingly, if they invited guests over to eat, the guests' food had to be covered by the $1 allotment. You'd have to really like the guest, I suppose.

Once again, I'll repeat: Eating on a budget is not a contest; it's a conversation. I've asked several other bloggers who write about their low-cost food adventures to answer questions similar to those posed to the 50 Bucks a Week trio, which started the entire conversation. The responses will be posted here to keep the conversation going.

Up today are Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, whose food budget averaged $1 per day per person for 30 days. They write the blog OneDollarDietProject.com, and their book, currently titled On a Dollar a Day, can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com and Borders.com.

Cheapskate: How and why did you start writing about eating on a tight budget? Did it spring out of necessity, as a lark, or what?

Christopher Greenslate & Kerri Leonard: Right before the worst of the recession hit, Kerri and I were in the checkout line at our local natural foods store and by the time the checker was finished ringing us up we stood in shock (and mild desperation) at the cost of our groceries. We were spending about $100 a week on groceries for the two of us, not including things like shampoo and dog food, and we felt like we were being priced out of our store. On the way out to the parking lot Kerri was exasperated and said we had to do something in order save money. Half joking, I said, "about a billion people live on a dollar a day … we could try that." Over the next couple of months the idea simmered and finally we decided that we would try it. We would eat on a dollar a day, each. We started the blog so that our friends and family could follow along.

CS: What are your ground rules? How exactly do you define what's in your budget and what meets your standards and restrictions? Give us the fine print, including how you deal with beverages and dining out (that is, if you ever dine out).

CG & KL: We had five rules for our experiment.
1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
2. We could not accept free food or “donated” food unless it is available for everyone in our area (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving).
3. Any food we planted, we had to pay for.
4. We would do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles could only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one dollar. (We had six packages and would buy no more.)
5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat from our share; meaning they don't get to eat their own dollar's worth of food.

Some of the rules didn't end up applying, like number three; as schoolteachers starting up a new year, we simply did not have the time to start gardening.

In order to stay at a dollar or less, we only had to pay for what we actually cooked and ate. This gave us the ability to buy in bulk and pay the lowest price per ounce for everything we ate. So we bought things like a 25 lb. bag of pinto beans for $15, but an actual serving would cost us seven cents, and something like rice would cost 11 cents. For things like homemade tortillas, we would have to calculate the cost of the flour and shortening and figure out the cost of a batch. Then divide the cost of the batch by the number of tortillas we could get from it. They ended up being about five cents each.

The thought of dining out never crossed our minds; we simply assumed in was not possible. If we had gone to a place like Taco Bell for lunch and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, Triple Layer Nachos, that would have cost 79 cents, leaving us almost nothing for breakfast or dinner. The dollar menu at McDonald's would have given us only a salad for the whole day. What you're getting at those places is pretty expensive when you consider how we ate. What you're really paying for is convenience. So eating out was out of the question.

CS: What are some of your favorite cheap ingredients or spices -- you know, the little something that doesn't cost much but adds a lot to a meal?

CG & KL: The basics like salt, pepper, and garlic were our biggest go-to seasonings. If you like things spicy, Jalapeños are usually cheap. Spices are pretty expensive though. The best things you can do to save money on food are: plan menus in advance, buy in bulk if you can, plant something, prepare food from scratch (especially things like bread), and don't let anything go to waste. Most people don't have the time, money, skill, or interest in doing things like this, but if you're serious about saving money of food, you have to start somewhere. You stretch yourself, and do what you can.

CS: What has been the hardest thing to do, or to go without, since you started cooking and eating on a supertight budget? What are you dying to splurge on and eat right now?

CG & KL: The hardest things we dealt with were: finding time to cook, getting bored with eating the same things frequently, and overcoming urges. Right now I would love to have some Peanut Butter Bomb Vegan Cheesecake from Gianna's in Philadelphia, but that be an unnecessary and costly batch of calories. For me, it's those sweet and fatty comfort foods that are hardest to stay away from. Which is true for lots of people. Nutritionally speaking they're outrageously expensive, but they are also delicious. I would love to have a root beer, but it would cost my wallet, and my body. I would be better off having some fruit salad, and a small glass of soymilk, which would be cheaper and more healthful.

CS: When you told people about your food budget, what sort of reactions did you get?

CG & KL: People were pretty stunned, which is why we ended up doing interviews with The New York Times, People Magazine, Fox & Friends, and NPR. I think what was most fascinating was the fact that millions of people heard about what we were doing and each person had a different response. People said things like, "They proved you could eat well on a dollar a day," and others would say, "They proved you couldn't eat well on a dollar a day." People would read the exact same thing and come to completely opposite conclusions. It has been truly fascinating.

CS: In the big, grand, save-the-world sense, what have you learned about yourselves, and about how people in general consume food and function as consumers, while you've been blogging about eating on the cheap?

CG & KL: The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of folks visit our blog and share their own stories with us. We hear from moms in the Midwest who are struggling to feed their families after being laid off, and from middle-upper class fathers who want to get involved to help with hunger issues. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, but I think that's because more people than ever are in need of help, and regardless of competing ideologies, at our core we don't want to see people suffer. Our project to eat on a dollar a day assisted in bringing some of these issues to the surface. Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone can afford it. There are innumerable paths to choose from for people who want to get involved in food issues, like cost, or health, or safety, you just have to start where you're at. For us, that meant our kitchen. We still have a lot to learn, which has prompted some new experiments in the economics of eating well, all of which will be recounted in our forthcoming book on Hyperion in January.

LINK: http://cheapskate.blogs.time.com/2009/08/18/how-to-eat-on-a-dollar-a-day/

Future Bad Movie Nights!!

2009-08-18T11:35:00.018-04:00

Moviefone (www.moviefone.com)
August 12, 2009

"15 Ludicrous Straight-to-DVD Sequels That Actually Exist"
Written By Kevin Polowy

Hollywood's clear lack of original ideas is a pestilence much bemoaned by movie buffs. We see sequel after remake after TV show-turned-movie after prequel after comic book adaptation after "reboot" after ... Hasbro toys and game boards?!

But unless you regularly scour the New Releases section of your local video store Blockbuster, you may not actually realize how severe The Sequel Pandemic -- as we'll call it -- has gotten.

For every sequel released theatrically, there are thrice that number released straight to DVD. Oftentimes they happen to really decent movies, movies that did nothing to deserve the embarrassing stigma of a horrendous, star-less straight-to-DVD sequel.

Warning: There were no special effects (or Photoshopping) involved in the making of this article. What you are about to see are ACTUAL DVD titles released into the world.

[CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES!!]

Come on. "DJ Qualls being available" is not reason enough to go here...

Yep, this means there was also, in fact, a Cruel Intentions 2.

Wouldn't you rather not know what Randy Quaid is up to now?

Half the size. Twice as annoying.

Replacing Paul Walker and Jessica Alba are ... Chris Carmack (The Butterfly Effect 3, Bring It On Again) and Laura Vandervoot!

As if one bad sequel, a Broadway show and a reality TV show about the casting of that Broadway show weren't enough, there's this.

OK, this one we kind of want to see.

This is Dr. Dolittle 5, for those keeping score at home. Yes, Part 5.

Based on a true story. Again!

French Stewart: He looks just like Matthew Broderick, if you're high enough to rent this.

But it was supposed to be the last dance!

Blasphemy.

From the director of The Prince and Me 2, and the upcoming Prince and Me 4. And also, In the Heat of Passion 2: Unfaithful.

This time ... One of the robbers is a woman!

If we make the DVD covers similar enough, maybe you'll pick this one off the shelf by accident!

UPDATE: We attempted to cap ourselves at 15, but this just-discovered, absurdly-real DVD sequel (starring Mila Kunis and William Shatner?!) is too hard to pass up.

LINK: http://www.moviefone.com/insidemovies/2009/08/12/worst-straight-to-dvd-sequels/

Groundhog Day!!

2009-08-17T10:49:00.006-04:00

Wolf Gnards (www.wolfgnards.com)
June 17th, 2009

"How Long Does Bill Murray Spend in Groundhog Day?"
Written by "Wolfie G. Nards"

It seems like almost every day someone approaches me and asks, “How long did Bill Murray spend trapped in the film Groundhog Day?” And I always say, “Hmmm, that's not the most timely of questions, but I'll do my best to answer it.”

Actually, Groundhog Day was on TBS yet again and a wave of Geek OCD hit me. I was compelled to count the days and find just how many days Phil Connors spent in Punxsutawney. According to Harold Ramis, on the Groundhog Day DVD commentary, Bill Murray spent 10 years trapped in his own little corner of hell... Punxsutawney (I kid Tawney, I'm sure you're lovely). But this seems like an arbitrary number. We can do better than that.

There are, at least, 36 separate days shown in the movie including his multiple death scenes. There could be more, but it's hard to verify if some moments are simply later in the same day or an entirely different day. Additionally, in the scene where Bill Murray revealed he's a god, he stated, “I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned.” Of those the movie only showed electrocution, so that brings it to a base line of 42 accountable days. However, there were many days not shown. We know from the scene when Billy Murray and Andy MacDowell are throwing playing cards into a top hat that it would take, “Six months. Four to five hours a day, and you'd be an expert.” So, we have a bare minimum of six months.

Follow up:

In the first half of the movie, the only other truly time consuming event was the the robbery. Let's give him at least a month to plan a proper bank robbery and memorize when wind gusts. This brings us to roughly 256 days by the time he decides he wants to be a better man. However, becoming a better man is the most time consuming part of Phil's journey! He needs to become an expert pianist, an ice sculptor, and learns French. The tough part about this is that is that no one learns these things at the same rate. He could be a very old piano wunderkind after all. Or it could take him 600 years to become a decent ice sculptor. For the sake of argument let's say it takes an average person 3 years to learn to play the piano. It also would take an average person 3 years to become a professional ice sculptor. However, we don't know how good Phil was at either... maybe, he just learned one song, or just how to sculpt Andy MacDowell's face. But for the sake of argument, let's say three years apiece. And he cannot do both at the same time because an ice sculpture is 8 hours of work, and he only has a small window each day to get a piano lesson. Learning French which is also subjective. It's safe to say it would take him, at least, 2 years to learn enough French to read French poetry.

Which puts us at the grand total of 3176 repeated Groundhog days, or 453 weeks, or 105 months, or 8.7 years. Precisely, 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days. So, in the end Harold Ramis was right and I wasted a Bill Murray length of my time. But I made the hash marks, and I was going to do the math!

LINK: http://www.wolfgnards.com/index.php/2009/06/16/how-long-does-billy-murray-spend-in-grou

Harrison's Family!!

2009-08-16T19:02:00.002-04:00

Youtube.com (www.youtube.com)
May 12th, 2008

"Harrison Ford (My Wife! My Family!) Compilation"
Posted by BananasMelonas

Hat Tip: Brian

A compilation comparing the many films of Harrison Ford involving his wife, his family and or his wife and his family being terrorized. Can anyone say common theme?

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-vjbuodBEU&eurl=http://www.historiann.com/2009/08/12/oh-daddy/&feature=player_embedded#t=106

Stewie is Gay!!

2009-08-14T01:00:00.003-04:00

Daily News (www.nydailynews.com)
Thursday, August 13th 2009

"Seth MacFarlane Outs Baby Stewie in Family Guy: 'He's Gay', MacFarlane Says in Playboy interview"

Seth MacFarlane is finally spilling the secrets of Family Guy — including the fact that, yes, baby Stewie is gay.

"We had an episode that went all the way to the script phase in which Stewie does come out,” MacFarlane, the show’s creator, says in the September issue of Playboy magazine. “It had to do with the harassment he took from other kids at school. He ends up going back in time to prevent a passage in Leviticus from being written: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination.’

"But we decided it’s better to keep it vague, which makes more sense because he’s a 1-year-old. Ultimately, Stewie will be gay or a very unhappy repressed heterosexual. It also explains why he’s so hellbent on killing [his mother, Lois] and taking over the world: He has a lot of aggression, which comes from confusion and uncertainty about his orientation."

In the issue — on stands tomorrow — MacFarlane also weighs in on why Protestant Lois seems to have a Jewish accent.

"Watch this season!” he says. “Lois finds out she is, in fact, Jewish.”

As for his advice to girls who are like Meg (the nerdy, unpopular sister), the funnyman says, “I guess maybe her parents aren’t as loving as they should be. As a result, I would say, ‘Your parents are a—holes. Get out of the house as soon as you can.”

The hit Fox show, which kicks off its eighth season on Sept. 27, has even generated a spinoff, The Cleveland Show, which focuses on main character Peter Griffin’s neighbor pal Cleveland Brown. Fans of the program will be happy to know that there will definitely be some crossover between the two shows.

But how did Cleveland — who some fans consider one of Family Guy’s least-interesting characters — score his own series?

“Cleveland is soulful and dimensional,” MacFarlane says. “Maybe he didn’t have enough to do [on Family Guy], and as a result, he came off dull. He makes a point of saying that in The Cleveland Show pilot: ‘I’m sick of being just an accessory to Peter’s world. I’ve got my own s—t going on.”

LINK: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/08/13/2009-08-13_seth_macfarlane_outs_baby_stewie_in_family_guy_hes_gay_macfarlane_says_in_playbo.html

Train Market!!

2009-08-13T01:00:00.009-04:00

Environmental Graffiti (www.environmentalgraffiti.com)
Tue, Aug 11, 2009

"The Railway Track Market of Samut Songkhram"
Written by Karl Fabricius

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE!!]

Image via travelpod

Every day in the Thai province of Samut Songkhram, about 70 km southwest of Bangkok, a unique market is held whose vendors need feet as quick as their minds. Why? Because much of the market is located directly on a set of operational railway tracks. Eight times daily, a train runs through without care for stopping, sending vendors and visitors to action stations before business as usual resumes.

Image: Austin Bush Photography

Thailand has its fair share of interesting fresh markets offering a slice of day-to-day Thai life – be it night bazaars serving insect delicacies, or floating markets bobbing on canal boat platforms. Still, the market at Samut Songkhram, known locally as Mae Klong, has to bring home the bacon when it comes to unbridled excitement.

Image via Phil Travel Guide Bangkok

As the two-carriage train arrives, everybody acts quickly to let it to pass without somebody getting mowed down. The market traders move at the double, pulling their produce and awnings back from the tracks, while less practiced shoppers must also have their wits about them. Then, with the train gone, it’s straight back down to the business of buying and selling.

Image via Phil Travel Guide Bangkok

For visitors, there’s more to the experience than braving the railway tracks and dodging the occasional train. Another attraction is the sight of all the goods on display along the 100-metre length of track near Mae Klong Station. From fresh fruit and vegetables to newly caught seafood, it’s all shielded from the blazing sun by canopies of the stallholders’ own making.

Image via Bangkok Daytrips

There is a fascinating aesthetic to it all and a real ingenuity of design. When you consider the fact that Samut Sakhon is Thailand’s tiniest province – covering an area of just 416 sq km – it’s no surprise that it is also one of the country’s most densely populated areas. Given these circumstances, talk about a cleverly economical use of space – a commodity which must surely be at a premium.

Image via Bangkok Daytrips

And, while the market sellers may expend energy regularly packing up shop, and coping with an ever-present occupational hazard, it’s evidently worth it. Just think of the passing trade they get, as well as the ease of access for people expressly taking a trip there.

Image via Bangkok Daytrips

Even if they don’t hit you like a freight train, the environmental messages of the railway track market of Samut Songkhram are certainly there to be chewed over.

LINK: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/the-railway-track-market-of-mae-klong/14139

Text To Space!!

2009-08-12T13:51:00.001-04:00

Reuters India (in.reuters.com)
Aug 12, 2009

"ET Text Home? Send SMSes to Outer Space"

Written by Miral Fahmy
Edited by James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian website is giving texting an intergalactic touch and allowing users to send short mobile phone-type messages into space.

From Wednesday and until August 24, people hankering for an out-of-this-world experience can visit www.HelloFromEarth.net to post messages no longer than 160 characters that will be transmitted to Gliese 581d, the nearest Earth-like planet outside the solar system likely to support life.

Expected delivery time, however, is some 20 years, the website said. And there's no guarantee of a response.

"It's like a 'message in a bottle' cast out into the stars. What's interesting is not just whether there's anyone listening, but what the public will say to intelligent life on another planet," said project spokesperson Wilson da Silva.

"Hello From Earth is our way of showing that science can make the impossible possible. We have been to the moon and now, we can speak to the stars," he said in a statement.

The messages, to be transmitted from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, with the close cooperation of U.S. space agency NASA, is part of Australia's National Science Week which celebrates the country's scientific achievements and creates awareness of the importance of science.

Science Minister Kim Carr entered the first message to launch the project.

"Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people's dreams for the future. We want to share those dreams with you," his message said.

"As a child I, like many Australians, stared up at the stars and wondered what was out there. Now science has allowed me to send a personal message that may answer that question," Carr said.

LINK: http://in.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idINTRE57B22X20090812

Basement Dragon!!

2009-08-11T15:54:00.004-04:00

Found on...

Craigslist - Baltimore (baltimore.craigslist.org)

"Basement Dragon (Catonsville)"

Date: 2009-08-10, 8:09PM EDT
Reply to: gigs-cjcqf-1316545480@craigslist.org

I have an apartment with a basement with outdoor access, and I am looking for somebody to dress up as a dragon and hang out down there for a while. At any random moment, I may come downstairs with a sword and attempt to "slay" you. I expect you to fight back in dragon fashion. If I come downstairs for any random task, such as laundry or fetching something from storage, I expect you to jump out in full dragon gear and attack me. Neither of us will get hurt, this is just for fun. I will, however, make you sign a waiver.

No monetary compensation will be provided, but you will have access to the basement, along with one washer, two dryers, a utility sink, and a pit filled with what I believe to be runoff water. I expect you to provide the dragon costume. Prior experience as a dragon preferred. Fire breathing is a plus, but if you choose to go that route, please bring a fire extinguisher.

Location: Catonsville
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: no pay

PostingID: 1316545480

LINK: http://baltimore.craigslist.org/tlg/1316545480.html

Young Artist!!

2009-08-04T18:16:00.018-04:00

Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
July 30th, 2009

"Pictured: Incredible Watercolour Paintings by Boy Aged Just SIX"
Witten by Andrew Levy

[CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE!!]

A street scene from the paintbrush of a child usually involves triangle-topped boxes for houses. And often an unnaturally large dog.
But Kieron Williamson's attempts are so beautifully rendered that artists ten times his age will be filled with envy.

Experts have said that the six-year-old's atmospheric paintings, which began with harbour scenes and expanded to include rural vistas, animal portraits and landmarks, have perspective, shadow and reflections that demonstrate an ability well beyond his years.

Streets ahead: One of the stunning watercolours by six-year-old Kieron Williamson. The only hint that this is a child's work is the slightly wobbly signature

He is even preparing for his first exhibition in a gallery near his home in Holt, Norfolk.

His mother, Michelle, said: 'Until last year he didn't draw anything and in fact we had to draw dinosaurs for him to colour in.'

The turning point was when we took our first family holiday to Devon and Cornwall last May and he liked the boats and scenery. He asked for some plain paper and started drawing his own stuff.

Prodigy: Kieron was inspired to start drawing boats on a family holiday in Devon and Cornwall

Sunday art school: Kieron's watercolour of a local church

'At the time, they were like the drawings of most five-year-olds but he really took off after going to some art classes.'

Mrs Williamson, 36, a nutritional therapist, is married to art dealer Keith, 43. The couple also have a daughter, Billie-Jo, five.

'We often think about why Kieron has chosen art in this way and I think it's because we live in a top-floor flat and we have no garden or outside space, so perhaps he's had to create his own scenery,' she said.

'Faultless': One of Kieron watercolours captures weathered cottages in a Norfolk street with a tremendous sense of perspective

A walk in the park: One of his many atmospheric rural scenes

Kieron appears to agree. 'I like painting because it's fun and inspiring. It makes me think of places I can't see,' he said. His talent was recognised by a family friend, artist Carol Ann Pennington, who offered to give him lessons.

She said: 'I have known Kieron since he was a baby but I had no idea he had it in him.'

His hero is Norfolk landscape artist Edward Seago, who died in 1974. The late Queen Mother was an avid fan, and bought many of his paintings

Evocative: Another of Kieron's paintings captures light, reflections and a flight of birds above beached boats

Compare and contrast: A windmill, as committed to canvas by Kieron

Obviously keen to follow in his footsteps by courting royal patronage, Kieron said: 'I'm going to send one of my pictures to Prince Charles. I've already sent one to the Queen but I haven't had a reply yet.'

An exhibition of his work will go on display on Sunday - two days before his seventh birthday - at Mrs Pennington's gallery, The Last Picture Show In Town

Light touch: Washes of colour say it all in this landscape by the dedicated artist

Country scene: River marshes are brought to life with careful brush strokes

Art expert Jeremy Green, owner of The Canon Gallery in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, said of Kieron's work: 'It is unusual to see someone of that age painting with such definition and in such a stylistic way. Normally they would be splashing colour all over the place.

'Some of these watercolours have a very rigid structure as if he has been painting in that style for some time. They are very good, there's no doubt about it

Country life: A village scene interpreted by Kieron

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203226/Pictured-Incredible-watercolour-paintings-boy-aged-just-SIX.html

Shatner Conan Palin Tweets!!

2009-08-03T12:22:00.003-04:00

Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com)
Aired: 07/29/09

"Shatner Reads Palin's Tweets"
Conan discovers that Sarah Palin's confusing Tweets are actually poems... And no one reads poetry better than William Shatner!

LINK: http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/clips/shatner-reads-palins-tweets-072909/1140351/

Tron 2!!

2009-07-30T10:54:00.002-04:00

MSNBC TV (www.msnbc.msn.com)

Tron: Legacy
Movie Trailer

LINK: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32200281#32192774

Chilli Bomb!!

2009-07-29T09:51:00.003-04:00

Wired - Danger Room (www.wired.com/dangerroom)
July 20, 2009

"India’s ‘Hottest’ New Weapons Powered by Chilli"

Written by David Hambling

India’s military is getting ready to deploy weapons-grade chillis for counter-insurgency and riot control. The Indian Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) is harnessing the super-hot bhut jolokia chilli pepper as an alternative to tear gas as a filling for grenades, Asia Times notes.

Chili-based weapons have been around for years — think “pepper spray” — and are gaining popularity in the U.S. The bhut jolokia could take the spicy arms up several notches; it is rated the hottest chili in the world.

The active ingredient in chillis is Oleoresin Capsicum (OC), a complex mixture of organic compounds. Aficionados rate the hotness of chills using the Scoville scale, which measures the amount of dilution needed before the heat is no longer detectable to a panel of tasters. Bell peppers have a rating of zero, Jalapenos can rate up to 8,000, and Habanero and scotch bonnets a blistering 100,000. The Jolokia rates just over a million on this scale. (Existing OC “pepper pray” weapons using the refined product go over two million Scoville units.)

Capsaicin is nature’s own chemical weapon, targeting specific vulnerable nerve cells and generating the feeling of severe burning — without actual damage. OC causes immediate inflammation of skin and mucous membranes: instantly, eyes shut and breathing becomes difficult. Couple that with the burning sensation, and you have one extremely unhappy camper.In the 1970’s researchers developed OC-based “pepper spray” as an alternative to existing riot control agents such as CS gas.

OC was little used until 1989, when a FBI study indicated that OC was safer than the alternatives. By 1992, over 2,000 police forces were using OC spray. There were, however, a number of deaths in custody and arguments about whether OC can kill have continued. Meanwhile researchers have developed a synthetic chemical with the same sort of effects as OC, known as pelargonic acid vanillylamide, or PAVA.

The big problem with sprays are their limited ranges. In response, there’s been a surge in weapons firing PepperBalls and similar projectiles, which resemble paintballs — but burst on impact, producing a cloud of disabling powder. PepperBall themselves market a range of weapons resembling paintball guns, as well as the four-shot SA-4 which combines impact with ten times as much pepper as a standard pepper ammo.

Other companies are producing weapons that look more like conventional firearms. Real Action Paintball Inc. recently launched a Black Bird pistol and RAP68 Tactical Paintball Shotgun. Both have variable muzzle velocity which can be set to less than 300 fett per second for paintball games, or higher for tactical uses. The pistol holds eight rounds and is claimed to be the most compact pistol of its kind, the pump-action shotgun carried eight rounds and closely resembles a regular shotgun.

This type of weaponry is not available to the military; pepper is classified as a chemical weapon. But celebrity bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman, for one, is a fan. “What I’ve got will put a mule to his knees,” he told Fox News.

The other problem is that the effects of OC and PAVA are essentially pain. Early (7-14 Watt) Tasers relied on a pain to stop their targets, until an embarrassing demonstration in 1995 showed that motivated individuals could fight off the effects; the latest generation produces “uncontrollable muscle contractions capable of incapacitating even the most focused and aggressive combatants,” according to Taser International. In contrast, as this video of U.S. Marine training shows, recruits are expected to be tough enough keep fighting after being sprayed.

The Indian chilli grenade might work on some people, but trained Marines and others could probably eat it up ask ask for a side-order of naan.

LINK: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/indias-hottest-new-weapons-powered-by-chilli/

Capri/Carpi!!

2009-07-28T11:38:00.002-04:00

Google News - Associated Press (www.google.com/hostednews/ap)
July 28th, 2009

"Swedish Tourists Miss Island Due to GPS Typo"

ROME — Officials say a Swedish couple looking for the pristine waters of the popular island of Capri ended some 400 miles (660 kilometers) away in the northern industrial town of Carpi after misspelling the destination on their car's GPS.

Angelo Giovannini, a spokesman for the Carpi town hall, near Modena, said Tuesday the couple drove into the main square last week and asked the local tourist office how to reach Capri's famed Blue Grotto sea cave.

Giovannini said "we thought they might mean a restaurant. Capri is an island, they did not even wonder why they didn't cross any bridge or take any boat."

He said the couple, who were not identified, arrived from Venice and later set off to their planned destination at the other end of the Italian peninsula.

LINK: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hOa6x2jOunYcly5PoKkqJmxn4x7gD99NDG1G0

New York Water!!

2009-07-27T10:45:00.003-04:00

LA Times (articles.latimes.com)
February 25, 2009

"They're Drinking It Up in New York"

New York City's tap water has been called among the nation's freshest. It's so good that a young entrepreneur is bottling it and selling it for $1.50

Written by Erika Hayasaki

Two teachers on their lunch break scanned a refrigerated shelf inside a Manhattan coffee shop lined with drink bottles: Naked Juice, Perrier, Smartwater, New York City tap water.

"Tap water?" said Alison Szeli, 26, picking up the clear plastic bottle with orange letters: "Tap'd NY. Purified New York City tap water."

She studied the description: "No glaciers were harmed in making this water." She compared prices: Smartwater cost $1.85. Tap'd NY was 35 cents less.

Szeli and her co-worker went for tap, carrying the bottles to the cash register.

"It's cheaper," Szeli said. "Water is all the same anyway. I just prefer to buy my own water in bottles."

A few feet away, a scruffy-haired 29-year-old in jeans and a striped shirt delivered a shipment of Tap'd NY out of a rented Scion. Craig Zucker, founder of Tap'd NY, stopped unloading long enough to notice the two customers buying his brand. He smiled.

In the five months since he started the company, he has proven his hunch: People are willing to pay for New York City tap water, and not just in monthly utility bills.

"It doesn't require energy or pumping," Zucker said, "and it's so pure and clean."

It is, after all, one of the nation's healthiest water supplies -- so fresh that in 2007 the Environmental Protection Agency said it did not need filtration. New York pizza and bagel makers have long credited local water as a special baking ingredient. It goes down soft, without hints of tart-tasting minerals or chlorine like other public water systems.

The water comes from a system of 19 reservoirs and three lakes in upstate New York -- some flowing to the city from as far as 125 miles away. Most of the supply is protected and filtered by the natural processes of upstate ecosystems. It dissolves natural minerals while traveling over land or through the ground.

Michael Saucier, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, notes that the city's water beat 150 other municipal water systems in New York state in a taste test last summer.

But how was a New Yorker able to enjoy that fresh taste when out of the house? As Zucker explained, "There aren't necessarily fountains or places to get clean water on every street in New York."

The solution was simple. Especially to a man who discovered his entrepreneurial spirit at age 8, when he started a lemonade stand in Cleveland. Since then, he has always kept about 20 business ideas in a drawer.

At 16, Zucker started a business enticing people to pay $1 to take a swing at a golf ball. The prize for a hole in one from 150 yards: $1 million. He rented space from a driving range and persuaded an insurance company to allow him to pay a premium for a million-dollar policy. No one made it, but Zucker made some extra cash.

In college, at Miami University in Ohio, Zucker started a discount card company, pitching local businesses to give students bargains. He collected revenue from advertisers that paid for space on his discount cards, and from college bookstores that bought the cards and gave them as loyalty gifts to customers.

He sold the business at 22 for what he said was a "great profit," and moved to New York, where he launched a toy and gift wholesaling company, selling a million name bracelets.

In 2006, he bought the Hampton's Honey Co., a farm stand brand that he expanded. It was his introduction to the growing local food movement, in which consumers support farmer's markets and neighborhood breweries, keeping money in the state. The honey became a top-selling brand in Whole Foods in the New York region.

One night in 2007, over a restaurant dinner with cold glasses of tap water, Zucker and a friend got to talking about New York water and why it's so good. He noticed many New York restaurants had also started serving tap water.

Meanwhile, in Berkeley, Calif., a high-end restaurant, Chez Panisse, had banned bottled water, and city governments in Seattle and San Francisco ordered municipal offices to stop buying it.That's when it hit him. "Somebody should be bottling New York water," he said.

Zucker sold his honey company and used the income, along with investments from friends and family, to launch Tap'd NY in October 2008.

To bottle the stuff, Zucker and his business partner, Jon Flax, 26, who was recruited from Craigslist, pump the water together from a main in a Brooklyn warehouse they rent. Their water bill costs about $2 for every 748 gallons. They fill up a 5,300-gallon leased tanker truck, hiring a driver to transport the water 12 miles across the river to New Jersey to be bottled.

Studies, including one by the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, have found that most bottled water sold in stores is essentially tap water extracted from aquifers, lakes and springs.

Like other bottled water companies, Tap'd NY treats its water through a filtration process to cut down on unnatural colors or tastes that chlorine and other substances in pipes may have left behind.

He and Flax knew that gas-guzzling trucks and planes were often used to ship bottled water across the country or from other parts of the world. They knew New York's system is almost entirely gravity-driven, delivering water without emitting greenhouse gases.

They figured enough people are suffering from a guilty water-gulping conscience to make Tap'd NY a hit.

"We don't believe it should travel from Fiji, from France or even the West Coast," Zucker said.

But critics say sparing the environment from transportation pollution doesn't go far enough. If people drink Tap'd NY, the environment can still take a hit, said Richard McIntyre, director of the water program for Food & Water Watch. According to recycling reports, water bottles make up much of the 80% of drinking bottle varieties that end up in landfills or oceans.

McIntyre suggested residents install filters on their home faucets instead.

Saucier, the city spokesman, said that the bottling of New York City tap water was flattering but it begged the question: Why pay when you can get it straight from the source?

At Irving Farm Coffee Co., in Manhattan, which sells about 100 bottles of Tap'd NY a week, manager Muffin Spencer said her store canceled its shipments of Poland Spring after a few weeks of carrying the hometown brand. "It's a step in the right direction," she said.

So far, only one customer has complained that Tap'd NY doesn't taste as good as the competition, but he begrudgingly buys it anyway out of loyalty.

Zucker and his partner spend their days delivering shipments and going door to door pitching the idea to cafes, delis and hotels.

So far, they have sold 50,000 bottles and 75 New York businesses have signed on. He expects to expand into bodegas and supermarkets by the summer, and hopes to begin beating out other water brands this year. Zucker won't ship outside New York, although he has received requests from around the world. The idea, he said, is to stay local.

During a recent visit to Tap's NY's small, cluttered office in Manhattan, a table stood littered with promotional stickers that read: "Not from the top of some mountain far away" and "The anti-bottled water bottled water." Tacked to a wall was a handwritten list of the latest businesses to order shipments, including Urban Outfitters and the Marriott East Side Hotel.

Across the hall, workers from other companies sharing the floor were on break, filling cups at a water cooler filled with Poland Spring.

It will take a while, Zucker said, to get the message across to everyone.

LINK: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/25/nation/na-tapwater25

Most Trusted!!

2009-07-23T10:39:00.002-04:00

Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com)
July 22nd, 2009

"Online Poll: Jon Stewart Is America's Most Trusted Newsman"

Well, in a result that he will probably accept as downright apocalyptic for America, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has been selected, in an online poll conducted by Time Magazine, as America's Most Trusted Newscaster, post-Cronkite. Matched up against Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, Stewart prevailed with 44 percent of the vote. Now, if we're being honest, he probably managed to prevail as the winner precisely because he was the odd man out in a field of network news anchors. Nevertheless, I think Jim Cramer should feel free to SNACK ON THAT.

Brian Williams drew the second largest percentage of votes, with 29 percent. Gibson and Couric finished third and fourth, respectively, with 19 and 7 percent of the vote.

Time has helpfully broken out the results, state-by-state, so if you want to muse on some anomalous results, feel free. Brian Williams won Arizona, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, Florida, South Carolina, Indiana, Delaware and Vermont, and tied in Kentucky and Alaska. Charlie Gibson was big in Tennessee and Montana. Katie Couric pulled off the Mondalian feat of winning one state: Iowa.

Stewart finished no lower than second place in all states, except, curiously, Vermont.

To view the results, click here.

Jon Stewart had been honored previously by Time Magazine as the winner of the 2006 Person of the Year.

LINK: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/22/time-magazine-poll-jon-st_n_242933.html

NASA's Future!!

2009-07-22T12:31:00.007-04:00

Wired Science (www.wired.com/wiredscience)
July 20, 2009

"40 Years After Apollo 11, NASA Maps Out the Future"
Written by Alexis Madrigal

Forty years ago, NASA put a man on the moon. What do the next 40 years hold for the world’s premier space agency?

There are some clear trends in NASA’s goals that seem likely to extend into the future. Manned exploration outside Earth’s orbit went away and cheaper, robotic missions gained prominence. The moon received less attention and the search for extraterrestrial life and exoplanets became concrete. Studying the Earth from orbit became a key goal, particularly with the hard-won knowledge that humans can create global change.

The Bush administration tried to put manned exploration of the solar system back at the center of the agenda with the Constellation program. And despite talk that Constellation would be killed, President Barack Obama’s Human Spaceflight Plans Committee said on Friday they have no plans to curtail the program just yet. If Constellation does proceed as planned, astronauts will be heading to the moon sometime after 2020, with Mars to follow some years afterward.

David Mindell, a science and technology historian at MIT who led a team that offered NASA some suggestions for the future, noted that we’re just emerging from the 37-year era that began with the agency’s decision to build the space shuttle in 1972.

“Our recommendations to the administration were basically that this is a 40-year decision, so let’s not screw it up,” he said.

Mindell said that one key for NASA and the review board will be deciding why it is that we want people flying around in space. If it’s just the human experience, let’s be honest about it.

“I do think the human experience matters tremendously,” he said. “It may be the only thing that matters with humans there and ultimately that’s why we are sending people. I think that’s fine. I kinda support that, but they should design a space program built around human experience, then, instead of dressing it up as ‘We can better screw the bolts in than robots can.’”

Either way, humans in spaceships will comprise only a small portion of NASA’s agenda. Below, we provide a launch-by-launch timeline of our next 40 years in space. But first, here are a few missions that could prove particularly lively, or lifely, in some cases.

In 2011, the Kepler telescope, launched earlier this year, could announce the discovery of Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits in the Cygnus starfield. Later that year, the Mars Science Laboratory will land on the red planet with the tools to determine if Mars is, or ever was, inhabited. Three years later, the James Webb Space Telescope, widely considered Hubble’s replacement, will head to orbit. Constellation could land people on the moon again in 2020. In 2026, human probes will arrive at Jupiter’s moon Europa, which scientists consider the best bet for sustaining current life in the solar system. And finally, some time after 2030, humans could land on Mars.

Summer 2009: The new instruments installed on Hubble earlier this year will go live. The Wide Field Camera 3 will provide a major upgrade for Hubble in the visible and infrared spectra. You know what that means? Even prettier pictures. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will use ultraviolet light to try to reconstruct the origins of the universe. It’s an order of magnitude better at detecting ultraviolet light than Hubble’s previous instruments.

Aug. 30, 2009: The first test flight of the next-generation Ares rocket system will blast off. While it’s exciting, the review of the entire Constellation program shadows its development.

Oct. 9, 2009: The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which launched earlier this year, will impact near the moon’s south pole, creating a plume of debris and a crater for its mission partner, the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, to study.

Oct. 14, 2009: Solar Dynamics Observatory will launch to study space weather generated by the sun’s activity. Some people are forecasting that the sun’s activity will wreak havoc with our communication and electrical systems in the next few years, but our star’s behavior has been a little unpredictable as of late. The SDO aims to make forecasting the sun’s behavior more accurate.

Nov. 2009: Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer will launch to create maps of the skies in the infrared area of the spectrum. It will also be used to survey some near-Earth objects.

Jan. 2010: The Glory mission will launch. The low-Earth orbit satellite will study the Earth’s energy balance, including the total amount of solar radiation striking the Earth and the impact of aerosols and black carbon.

June 2010: The National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project will launch. The joint NASA, Department of Defense and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration project will measure atmospheric and sea surface temperatures.

2010: The space shuttle is slated to be retired. Maybe. Because we don’t have any viable domestic option for getting to the International Space Station, Congress could extend the fleet’s lifetime for years.

2010: The Aquarius satellite launches to create the first-ever global maps of salt concentrations in the ocean surface.

March 18, 2011: Messenger begins its year-long orbit of Mercury.

2011: This is the earliest date that scientists using the exoplanet-hunting satellite Kepler may be able to say for sure they have found an Earth-like planet in an Earth-like orbit.

2011: The Juno spacecraft will launch for Jupiter to study the structure and evolution of our solar system’s largest planet.

Fall 2011: The Mars Science Laboratory, a rover with the tools to assess whether Mars is or ever was inhabited, will launch.

May 2012: The Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission consists of two spacecraft that will orbit the Earth, helping to improve our understanding of how solar storms hit the Earth’s radiation belts and atmosphere.

2012: Mars Science Laboratory will arrive at Mars. If all goes well, it’ll operate for 687 Earth days, roving around the planet looking for signs of life, past or present.

March 2013: Soil Moisture Active Passive project will launch. Using a radiometer and high-res radar, it will measure surface soil moisture and its freeze-thaw state.

2014: The Orion crew exploration vehicle and Ares launch vehicles are supposed to be ready to go by 2014.

2014: The James Webb Space Telescope, generally considered Hubble’s replacement, will launch. It will give astronomers a better sense of the early universe and how stars form.

2015: The Joint Dark Energy Mission launches. The project, co-funded with the Department of Energy, will make very precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe, which could yield fundamental insights about the nature of dark matter.

2015: New Horizons reaches Pluto, nine years after its launch. Right now, it’s about halfway between Saturn and Uranus.

March 2015: The first crewed Orion/Ares mission to the International Space Station will launch.

2015: IceSat II will launch to provide vital information about the polar ice caps and the environment that surrounds them.

2016: The European Space Agency will launch ExoMars, a rover mission to the surface of that planet. NASA is involved, however, helping provide communications via the Deep Space Network.

2016: Juno mission arrives at Jupiter.

2018: The Solar Probe Plus will launch. It will be the very first mission to visit the sun’s corona, which will provide valuable insight into the sun’s functioning.

2020: The International Space Station could be deorbited in this year, although its fate remains largely undetermined.

2020: Europa Jupiter System Mission will take off for Jupiter and two of its moons, Europa and Ganymede, to evaluate the possibility that they are habitable locations. If it confirms an ocean of liquid water on Europa, the number of possible habitable outposts in the universe will go up considerably. Not only can we hope to find life on Earth-like planets, but also on the satellites of gas giant planets

2020: Planned date by which the new Constellation rockets and modules could provide crew transport to the lunar surface “for extended durations.”

2021: International X-Ray Observatory launches to study the high-energy universe in unprecedented detail. It could provide fundamentally new understanding of black holes and the formation of large-scale structures like galaxy clusers in the universe.

2026: The Europa Jupiter System Mission mission will arrive at the Jupiter system.

2030: Any American landing on Mars through the Constellation program would come some time after 2030.

LINK: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/apollofutureapollofuture/

Get Photogenic!!

2009-07-21T01:00:00.004-04:00

Reader's Digest (www.rd.com)
August 2009

"10 Ways to Look Good in Photos"

How to put your best face forward and pose like a model.

Written by Karen Lee

---------

1. Focus your eyes just slightly above the camera lens, move your face forward a bit, and tip down your chin.

2. Put your tongue behind your teeth and smile, which will relax your face.

3. Keep your arms by your side—but not glued there. To look natural, they should be a little away from your body.

4. Test-drive clothing against a white wall, with an indirect, natural light source (under a tree, indoors near a window)—it will show whether blue really is your best color.

5. As a rule, avoid patterns.

6. Photos exaggerate everything, so go easy on the makeup. For women under 30, a little mascara and lip gloss; over 30, add a touch of concealer.

7. Practice the classic model pose: Turn your body three quarters of the way toward the camera, with one foot in front of the other and one shoulder closer to the photographer. When you face forward, your body tends to look wider.

8. For standing photos, belly in, buttocks tight, shoulders back, spine straight.

9. Study photogenic people as well as photos in which you think you looked best. Look at your best angle. You’ll probably see that you were laughing or having a good time. Capturing someone when they’re relaxed or most animated usually makes for the best results.

10. To feel at ease, try closing your eyes, then opening them slowly just before the photo is taken.

Karen Lee is a former model handler at the Elite modeling agency and head of the Karen Lee Group.

LINK: http://www.rd.com/advice-and-know-how/10-ways-to-look-good-in-photos/article155387.html

Monday Mash-up!!

2009-07-20T10:27:00.002-04:00

Youtube (www.youtube.com)
July 2nd, 2009

"Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up"
Posted by thriftshopxl

DJ Morgoth is an excellent mashup creator and DJ based in Germany. He runs an awesome night called Mashup Your Bootz.

He made this great mashup, so I made a video of it for him.

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

versus

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN75im_us4k

Scooter!!

2009-07-15T10:07:00.003-04:00

The Daily Telegraph (www.dailytelegraph.com.au)
July 14, 2009

"Is Scooter the Maltese Terrier the Smallest Dog in the World?"
Source: AAP

AT BARELY the height of a tea cup, Maltese terrier pup Scooter could well be the smallest dog in world.

The tiny ball of white fluff is just 8cm tall and measures just over 20cm from his nose to his tail.

While Scooter is still young, he appears to have stopped growing.

The Guinness Book of World Records title holder - a long-haired chihuahua in America named Boo Boo - is bigger at just over 10cm tall.

Scooter's size is also evident in his weight, or lack of it. He weighs less than a block of butter at 400 grams - and that is while he is wearing clothes.

Owner Cheryl McKnight, from Gisborne on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, fashioned a regular purple sock into a jersey, which Scooter wears so he is easily seen around the house.

"It really is quite something. I can't take him for a walk or put a leash on him."

Ms McKnight said six-month-old Scooter came from a litter of three and stopped growing before he reached two months.

"He was the same size as the other two pups when they were born but as they grew, he didn't," she said.

Scooter's siblings were sold.

"Dogs have to weigh at least 870 grams before they can leave their mums for the shops, and he has not even reached halfway."

As Scooter scoots around the lounge floor, he is dwarfed by plastic toy figurines belonging to Ms McKnight's grandson.

When friends come to visit, one of the first things they say is that they want to take Scooter home with them.

"For the first 10 weeks or so I didn't really want him. I thought nah, someone else can have him.

"But over time I've fallen in love with him. I would hate to give him away now."

Ms McKnight's previous pet, a miniature orange Pomeranian, was killed in front of her by two other dogs two years ago.

"It took me a long, long time after that to even think of having another dog," she said.

Ms McKnight's sister, who breeds Maltese dogs, eventually gave her one and Scooter arrived a few months later.

Scooter feeds from an egg cup of food three times a day and sleeps in a shoebox, but "does everything a normal dog does", she said.

However, making his way up steps is challenging.

"Because of the height of steps, they would be enormously big steps for him. It must be like living with giants."

Scooter was originally named Pee Wee, but Ms McKnight decided to change the name, saying she didn't want him to suffer an inferiority complex.

LINK: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/is-scooter-the-maltese-terrier-the-smallest-dog-in-the-world/story-e6freuy9-1225749878157

Hey!!

2009-07-11T01:00:00.003-04:00

Youtube (www.youtube.com)
March 21, 2009

"Hey!"
Posted by AlexanderBrady

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prgm4eKq6d4&feature=player_embedded

Superman Arrested!!

2009-07-10T11:51:00.006-04:00

New York Post (www.nypost.com)
July 10th, 2009

"BIFF! WHAM! POW! TIMES SQ. COPS VS. SUPER HEROES"
Written by BETH STEBNER and JENNIFER FERMINO

Additional reporting by Philip Messing

Superman and Batman took on New York’s Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Man of Steel behind bars and the Caped Crusader in cuffs.

Superman and Batman took on New York's Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Caped Crusader in cuffs.

Stunned Times Square tourists and office workers watched agog as cops struggled to subdue Clark Kent's alter ego without kryptonite.

"The Man of Steel didn't go down with just two officers, it took seven officers!" witness Ryan McCormick said. "He was putting up a good fight. Little kids were like, 'Mommy, it's Superman!' "

If that wasn't weird enough, McCormick turned and saw the Dark Knight handcuffed to a chair like a common villain.

Stunned Times Square tourists and office workers watched agog as cops struggled to subdue Clark Kent’s alter ego without kryptonite.

"As this was happening, someone is like, 'It's Batman!' I turn around and there's Batman in handcuffs," he said.

Superman, aka Maksim Katsnelson, 23, of The Bronx, was arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrested, police said, accusing him of punching a female officer in the face while she was trying to subdue him.

The incident occurred when cops approached Katsnelson, who was panhandling, and asked him for ID.

When Katsnelson said he didn't have any ID, cops continued to ask him questions, sources said.

That's when Katsnelson punched the female officer, sources said.

"He freaked out and punched the girl cop in the face," Batman said later.

Cops cuffed Batman, actually Frank Frisoli, but let him go because he didn't cause any problems, he told The Post.

The Maine resident, who has been visiting the city for two weeks, said the two had dressed up as the super heroes for laughs.

"We were just having a good time," Frisoli said.

Their comic-book adventure went awry when cops approached the dynamic duo on 43rd Street to see whether they had the required license to perform in costume in public, Frisoli said.

When they said no, cops asked for IDs. Again, they answered no, which prompted cops to handcuff Batman.

That's when Superman took off, screaming, "I'm not getting arrested."

But a crowd of police took him down and brought him to a special Fortress of Solitude -- the Midtown South station house.

Meanwhile, Batman left with another costumed character, said Melba Williams, a tourist from Tennessee.

"He walked off with the Statue of Liberty."

LINK: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07102009/news/regionalnews/biff__wham__pow__178573.htm

Woman's Best Friend!!

2009-07-10T01:00:00.002-04:00

Independent Online (www.int.iol.co.za)
July 8th, 2009

"Dog is Now a Woman's Best Friend"
Written by Unknown

A Ghanaian woman has married her dog because it has qualities she had seen only in her late father.

Emily Mabou, 29, of Aburi, married the 18-month-old dog in a ceremony attended by a traditional priest and local, curious villagers, reports the Daily Dose.

Her younger brother David Mabou said her family boycotted the wedding which they felt was "a stupid step to combat her loneliness".

But Ms Mabou said: "For so long, I've been praying for a life partner who will have all the qualities of my dad. My dad was kind, faithful, and loyal to my mum, and he never let her down.

"I've been in relationships with so many men..., and they are all the same... skirt-chasers and cheaters. My dog is kind, and loyal to me and he treats me with so much respect."

In the ceremony, the priest warned villagers not to mock the wedding, but to "rejoice with her as she has found happiness at last".

LINK: http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=29&art_id=vn20090708052658317C271760&set_id=1

Famous Species!!

2009-07-09T10:35:00.014-04:00

Popular Mechanics (www.popularmechanics.com)
July 1, 2009

"Top 18 Species Named After Famous People"

Every year, scientists recognize 15,000 new animal species— each one needs a new name. With so many species, scientists are bound to turn to popular culture for inspiration. Here, we've compiled a list of famous (and infamous) people and the often quirky species named after them.

Written by Lisa Merolla

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE!!]

What do George W. Bush, Roy Orbison and Darth Vader have in common? All three have had new beetle species named after them.

Naming species after celebrities is one seriously effective way for scientists to draw attention to taxonomy. Giving species a famous name for more public interest is "shameless self-promotion," says Quentin Wheeler, the director of the International Institute for Species Exploration in Arizona (whose names populate four of our top-15 list). "When you are a taxonomist and are mentioned in Rolling Stone," Wheeler says, "you know you have arrived."

Scientists are given free rein with naming, as long as they abide by guidelines set by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The rules for patronyms—or scientific names in honor of people—do not limit which names are used. They just provide a uniform naming method. In general, an animal species ending in 'i' is named after one man. The ending 'ae' is for species named after one woman; 'orum' is reserved for species named after couples. Plant species operate under slightly different rules because the gender of the species must match that of the genus.

President Barack Obama is one of the latest to be immortalized in the taxonomic record. And the list of famous plants, bacteria and animals ranges in the hundreds, if not thousands—from the sea of many, here are our 18 favorite famous namesakes.

1. Barack Obama: Caloplaca obamae

(Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images/J. C. Lendemer)

Our current president's namesake is an orange-colored lichen. Discovered in California, the lichen was named this March. Kerry Knudsen, the lichen curator in the University of California, Riverside Herbarium, picked the name to "show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education."

2, 3 and 4. George W. Bush, Agathidium bushi; Dick Cheney, Agathidium cheneyi; and Donald Rumsfeld, Agathidium rumsfeldi

(Photograph by Charles Ommanney/Getty Images/Frances Fawcett)

All three members of the former administration have a slime-mold beetle named in their honor. Wheeler is responsible for this choice, which was meant as a compliment. He said President Bush called to thank him for the gesture.

5. Darth Vader: Agathidium vaderi

(Photograph by Twentieth Century Fox/Byron Alexander)

Wheeler named another slime-mold beetle in honor of the fictional Star Wars villain. The reasoning is that both Darth Vader and his namesake have broad, shiny heads and similar eyes.

6. Roy and Barbara Orbison: Orectochilus orbisonorum

(Photograph by Ebet Roberts/Ethan Miller/Getty Images/Charles Kazilek/Arizona State University)

In January of last year Wheeler and his colleagues named a whirligig beetle after legendary singer song-writer, Roy Orbison and his widow, Barbara Orbison. The beetle looks as if it is wearing a tuxedo.

7 and 8. Stephen Colbert: Aptostichus stephencolberti and Agaporomorphus colberti

(Photograph by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images/Kelly Miller/University of New Mexico)

The comedian, who has begged scientists to name species after him on The Colbert Report, has been honored twice—once with a spider and once with a Venezuelan diving beetle. The beetle species is notable for its male reproductive organs, which display a unique row of fine hairs.

9, 10 and 11. Frank Zappa: Phialella zappai (jellyfish), Pachygnatha zappa (spider), Zappa,a genus of Gobiidae (fish)

Guitarist, free-speech advocate and prolific song writer Frank Zappa is a popular inspiration for a number of species' names. In 1987, a scientist named a species of jellyfish after Zappa because he wanted to meet the artist (his plan worked). Next, scientists named an entire genus of goby fish was after the musician, followed by an orb-weaver spider whose black markings reminded the researchers of Zappa's signature mustache.

12. John Cleese: Avahi cleesei

(Photograph by Tim Whitby/Getty Images/Urs Thalmann)

In 2005, scientists named woolly lemur species after the British comic actor to recognize his work in lemur conservation. Cleese promoted lemurs in the film Fierce Creatures and the documentary Operation Lemur With John Cleese.

13. Kate Winslet: Agra katewinsletae

(Photograph by Jim Spellman/Getty Images/George Venable/Smithsonian Institution)

This ground-beetle species is named after Kate Winslet because of her role in the film Titanic. The scientific paper describing the beetle said, "Her character did not go down with the ship, but we will not be able to say the same for this elegant canopy species, if all the rain forest is converted to pastures."

14. Hugh Hefner: Sylvilagus palustris hefneri

(Photograph by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images/Rosanna Tursi)

Scientists named the marsh rabbit, found in the southeastern United States, after the founder of Playboy. Hefner's organization has donated money to support research about the endangered "bunnies."

15. Greta Garbo: Rostropria garbo

(Photograph by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images/Lucinda Gibson/Museum Victoria)

This solitary female wasp reminded the scientists of the reclusive Garbo, who famously said, "I want to be alone."

16 and 17. Harrison Ford: Pheidole harrisonfordi (ant) and Calponia harrisonfordi (spider)

(Photograph by Ray Tamarra/Getty Images)

Two types of insects bear Ford's name. Scientists named a spider species after the actor to thank him for narrating a documentary for the London Museum of Natural History. The ant species was named after Ford to honor his conservation work.

18. Gary Larson: Strigiphilus garylarsoni

The creator of the Far Side comic strip, Larson's namesake is a species of owl louse. About the recognition, he wrote: "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."

LINK: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4323547.html

123456789!!

2009-07-08T17:05:00.006-04:00

Chicago Tribune (www.chicagotribune.com)
July 8, 2009

"123456789 Day: Big Moment Momes at 12:34:56 on 7/08/09"
Written by Georgia Garvey

For the digitally inclined, Wednesday marks a cool spot in sequential history. At exactly 12:34:56, the time and date will be 12:34:56 7/08/09. That only happens once -- or twice -- every 100 years, so for some, it's worth celebrating.

Plenty on Facebook and Twitter are spreading reminders or cluing others in. Rainn Wilson, the actor who plays Dwight on "The Office," tweeted about it, and on Facebook, pages popped up commemorating the date. Jon Everett, a 23-year-old University of Texas at Austin employee, created a Facebook page about the date with more than 600 Facebook users R.S.V.P.-ing yes to his "two-second celebration."

But there's always a spoilsport.

Many point out the time comes twice today, in the a.m. and in the p.m. (though, if you're on military time, 12:34 a.m. would be 00:34 a.m.). Nitpickers say the actual date is 7/08/2009, so the true 7/08/09 was 2,000 years ago. Others note serial dates aren't all that unusual (1/02/03 4:56, and 1:23:45 last year on 6/07/08).

And Miguel Lerma of the Northwestern University Math Department writes in an e-mail that 12:34:56 7/08/09 arrives in August for countries that put the day before the month in numerical date abbreviations. Some countries even use the year/month/day designation, which means their 7/08/09 was two years ago.

In any case, it seems safe to say it's no harbinger of Armageddon. It might've been weird when people picked 6/06/06 for weddings and a lucky coincidence to choose 7/07/07, but serious Cubs fans know the first night game at Wrigley Field was played on 8/8/88 -- which just happens to be four sideways infinity symbols.

They need to keep their fingers crossed that isn't the wait for a championship.

LINK: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-talk-number-day-08-jul08,0,1623610.story

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Cracked (www.cracked.com)
7/8/09

"7.8.9: Because Today Should Have Its Own Retarded Movie"

7.8.9: Because Today Should Have Its Own Retarded Movie -- powered by Cracked.com

LINK: http://www.cracked.com/video_17571_789-because-today-should-have-its-own-retarded-movie.html

Emotional Robot!!

2009-07-08T01:00:00.003-04:00

CBS (cbs13.com)
June 23, 2009

"New 'Emotional' Robot Unveiled In Japan"

Humanoid Robot Uses Whole Face And Body To Express Emotion

TOKYO (CBS) ― A walking humanoid robot that is able to use its whole face and body to express emotion was unveiled on Tuesday in Japan.

The robot was created by scientists at Tokyo's Waseda University and is thought to be the first of its kind according to its makers.

It is able to express a range of different emotions, including happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, anger and disgust, by opening and closing its eyes, moving its lips and eyebrows, and using its arms and legs.

The robot is installed with 48 "actuators" which allow its face and body to move in a variety of ways.

Humanoid robot KOBIAN shows an emotional display of "disgust" during a demonstration at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, on June 23, 2009.
Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

It shows happiness by opening its eyes and mouth wide and raising its arms, and sorrow by drooping its head and covering its eyes.

The robot's hands are covered with a soft material which is supposed to replicate the feeling of a human hand.

Professor Atsuo Takanishi and his team at Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering, spent the last two and a half years creating the robot, which they called "KOBIAN".

Takanishi believes KOBIAN is the first robot able to express emotion with its entire body.

He said the ability to express feeling was an "important factor" in achieving "natural communication" between robots and humans.

The professor hopes robots such as KOBIAN could be used in the future to help elderly people with housework and in nursing homes.

But he said the robot was still at the prototype stage and was not yet able to interact with humans emotionally apart from through its set of pre-programmed responses.

Takanishi said it could be several decades before robots such as KOBIAN can be used to help people in their homes.

Waseda University set up the Humanoid Robotics Institute in April 2000 to carry out research on creating new relationships between humans and machines.

According to its website, the institute hopes to create a robot which will eventually experience the same patterns of thought and behavior as a human being.

LINK: http://cbs13.com/watercooler/humanoid.robot.emotions.2.1056050.html

Granularity!!

2009-07-07T01:00:00.002-04:00

Wired (www.wired.com)
June 24, 2009

"Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter"
Written By Brandon Keim

In the formation of droplets in a stream of falling sand, scientists have witnessed a dynamic that points beyond the boundaries of traditional physics, and may represent one aspect of a fifth state of matter.

“Here we have a material right underneath our noses, that everybody grows up playing with in a sandbox, yet it’s full of surprises for scientists,” physicist said Heinrich Jaeger of the University of Chicago.

The droplets formed because of instabilities in the subtle atomic forces that attract sand grains to each other. Something similar happens to water falling from a faucet, but the forces acting on those molecules are 100,000 times stronger.

Measurements of this phenomena, published Wednesday in Nature, overturn the previous explanation for sand droplets — that grains stick to each other after colliding — and quantify what’s called an “ultralow-surface-tension regime.” It’s entirely new territory for researchers, and just one of many dynamics governing the behavior of granular materials, which for reasons unknown to science act sometimes as solids, or liquids, or gases — or something in-between.

“You walk on the beach, and the sand supports your weight. Pick up a handful, and it runs through your fingers, like a liquid. But you can’t walk on water,” said Jaeger. “In the top of an hourglass, sand is this strange solid. It’s at the verge of being a solid; it flows through the middle as something like a liquid, and then it’s a solid again,” he said.

Since the early 1990s, Jaeger has treated granularity as both a form of matter unto itself and a model for investigating the dynamics of types of matter, as though molecules could be seen by a naked eye. Jaeger also sees in granularity a potentially universal dynamic, reflected in everything from highway traffic to crowd patterns to ecosystem function.

“You have many interacting particles. Energy is put in, sometimes they get stuck, and sometimes it flows,” said Jaeger. “If it flows, what properties does it have? With many interacting players, that behavior is typically very complex and crosses between solid- and liquid-like behavior.”

On a less-speculative level, research into granularity could be a boon for manufacturers. Most finished products and foods pass at some point through a granular stage — pellets of plastic, gravel in concrete, corn in a silo, powders in a pill, on and on. A report published by the Rand Corporation in 1986 found that granular industrial processes generally function at about 60% of capacity.

“Semingly modest changes in conditions, such as temperature, humidity, and surface conditions routinely cause earth bound devices to fail,” concluded the authors of a 2005 NASA technical report on the importance of understanding granularity to exploring Mars and the Moon.

The authors are scathing in their critique of industry, which in the absence of granular theory relies on “millennia-long trial-and-error practices that lead to today’s massive over-design, high failure rate, and extensive incremental scaling up of industrial processes because of the inadequate predictive tools for design.”

“Physicists have a rich toolbox for dealing with solids, liquids and gases. But we don’t have a manual for when the old categories don’t apply,” said Jaeger.

LINK: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sandgrains/

Monday Thriller!!

2009-07-06T10:36:00.003-04:00

Youtube (www.youtube.com)
October 20, 2007

"Indian Thriller"
Posted by everymeme

Scene from the Bollywood film Donga (Thief)
Vijayalakshmi Art Pictures (1985)
Directed by A. Kodandarami Reddy
Song: "Golimar (Shoot the Bullet)"

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCrxEUU5UwU

Cancer Nanocure??

2009-06-29T11:00:00.003-04:00

Reuters (www.reuters.com)
Sydney, Australia
June 28, 2009

"Australian Scientists Kill Cancer Cells With 'Trojan Horse'"

Written by Michael Perry
Edited by Alex Richardson

Australian scientists have developed a "trojan horse" therapy to combat cancer, using a bacterially-derived nano cell to penetrate and disarm the cancer cell before a second nano cell kills it with chemotherapy drugs.

The "trojan horse" therapy has the potential to directly target cancer cells with chemotherapy, rather than the current treatment that sees chemotherapy drugs injected into a cancer patient and attacking both cancer and healthy cells.

Sydney scientists Dr Jennifer MacDiarmid and Dr Himanshu Brahmbhatt, who formed EnGenelC Pty Ltd in 2001, said they had achieved 100 percent survival in mice with human cancer cells by using the "trojan horse" therapy in the past two years.

The scientists plan to start human clinical trials in the coming months. Human trials of the cell delivery system will start next week at the Peter MacCullum Cancer Center at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and The Austin at the University of Melbourne.

The therapy, published in the latest Nature Biotechnology journal, sees mini-cells called EDVs (EnGenelC Delivery Vehicle) attach and enter the cancer cell.

The first wave of mini-cells release ribonucleic acid molecules, called siRNA, which switch off the production of proteins that make the cancer cell resistant to chemotherapy.

A second wave of EDV cells is then accepted by the cancer cell and releases chemotherapy drugs, killing the cancer cell.

"The beauty is that our EDVs operate like 'Trojan Horses' They arrive at the gates of the affected cells and are always allowed in," said MacDiarmid.

"We are playing the rogue cells at their own game. They switch-on the gene to produce the protein to resist drugs, and we are switching-off the gene which, in turn, enables the drugs to enter."

DISARMING TUMOUR CELLS

RNA interference, or RNAi, is designed to silence genes responsible for producing disease-causing proteins and is one of the hottest areas of biotechnology research. RNA was the basis of the 2006 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Dozens of biotechnology companies are looking for ways to manipulate RNA to block genes that produce disease-causing proteins involved in cancer, blindness or AIDS.

Brahmbhatt said that after treatment with conventional drug therapy, a large number of cancer cells die but a small percentage of the cells can produce proteins that make cancer cells resistant to chemotherapeutic drugs.

"Consequently, follow-up drug treatments can fail. The tumors thus become untreatable and continue to flourish, ultimately killing the patient," said Brahmbhatt.

"We want to be part of moving toward a time when cancers can be managed as a chronic disease rather than being regarded as a death sentence," he said.

The Nature report said the mini-cells were "well tolerated with no adverse side effects or deaths in any of the actively treated animals, despite repeated dosing."

"Significantly, our methodology does not damage the normal cells and is applicable to a wide spectrum of solid cancer types," said MacDiarmid.

"The hope is that the benign nature of this EDV technology should enable cancer sufferers to get on with their lives and operate normally using out-patient therapy."

LINK: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE55R1Q320090628?rpc=64

Today's Short Film!!

2009-06-26T12:07:00.003-04:00

Youtube (www.youtube.com)

"Michael Jackson's Thriller"
1982 - MJJ Productions

I hear it's been a while since you've watched the video for Michael Jackson's Thriller in it's entirety (all 13 and a half minutes of it). Today's a great day to do so, dont'cha think? Embedding for this video has been disabled, but this link has the whole short film. -bdvdb

Michael Jackson
August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8&feature=PlayList&p=2B92B4DA6F9711A6&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

Dissociative Fugue!!

2009-06-26T01:00:00.005-04:00

The other day, when Governor Mark Sanford was "missing", I heard a very unlikely theory on his disappearance (rather, a very creative excuse for his behavior). Obviously, the answer was much simpler... - bdvdb

--------------------

Merck (www.merck.com)
June 2008

"Dissociative Fugue"
Last full revision by Daphne Simeon, MD

Dissociative fugue involves one or more episodes of sudden, unexpected, but purposeful travel from home during which people cannot remember some or all of their past life, including who they are (their identity). These episodes are called fugues.

--Unbearable stress or a traumatic event may trigger dissociative fugue.
--When in a fugue, people disappear from their usual routine and may assume a new identity, forgetting all or some of their usual life.
--Usually, doctors make the diagnosis by reviewing the history and collecting information about the circumstances before travel, the travel itself, and the establishment of an alternate life.
--Usually, fugues last only hours or days, then resolve on their own.
--Memory retrieval techniques, including hypnosis and drug-facilitated interviews, may be tried but may be unsuccessful.

Dissociative fugue affects about 2 of 1,000 people in the United States. It is much more common among people who have been in wars, accidents, or natural disasters.

Causes

Dissociative fugue is usually triggered by severe trauma, such as wars, accidents, natural disasters, or sexual abuse during childhood.

Dissociative fugue is often mistaken for malingering because both conditions may give people an excuse to avoid their responsibilities (as in an intolerable marriage), to avoid accountability for their actions, or to reduce their exposure to a known hazard, such as a battle. However, dissociative fugue, unlike malingering, occurs spontaneously and is not faked.

Many fugues seem to represent disguised wish fulfillment (for example, an escape from overwhelming stresses, such as divorce or financial ruin). Other fugues are related to feelings of rejection or separation, or they may develop as an alternative to suicidal or homicidal impulses.

Symptoms

A fugue may last from hours to weeks, months, or occasionally even longer. People in a fugue state, having lost their customary identity, usually disappear from their usual haunts, leaving their family and job. If the fugue is brief, they may appear simply to have missed some work or come home late. If the fugue lasts several days or longer, people may travel far from home and begin a new job with a new identity, unaware of any change in their life.

During the fugue, they may appear normal and attract no attention. However, at some point, they may become aware of the memory loss or confused about their identity. If they are confused, they may come to the attention of medical or legal authorities. During the fugue, people often have no symptoms or are only mildly confused. However, when the fugue ends, they may experience depression, discomfort, grief, shame, intense conflict, and suicidal or aggressive impulses.

Diagnosis

A doctor may suspect dissociative fugue when people seem confused about their identity or are puzzled about their past or when confrontations challenge their new identity or absence of one. The doctor carefully reviews symptoms and does a physical examination to exclude physical disorders that may contribute to or cause memory loss. A psychologic examination is also done.

Sometimes dissociative fugue cannot be diagnosed until people abruptly return to their pre-fugue identity and are distressed to find themselves in unfamiliar circumstances. The diagnosis is usually made retroactively when a doctor reviews the history and collects information that documents the circumstances before people left home, the travel itself, and the establishment of an alternate life.

Treatment

Most fugues last for hours or days, then disappear on their own.

Treatment, when needed, may include hypnosis or drug-facilitated interviews (interviews conducted after a sedative is given intravenously to relax people). However, efforts to restore memories of what happened during the fugue itself are usually unsuccessful.

A therapist may help people explore their patterns of handling the types of situations, conflicts, and moods that triggered the fugue to prevent subsequent fugues.

LINK: http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec07/ch106/ch106d.html

LOTR Tehran!!

2009-06-25T10:58:00.002-04:00

Salon (www.salon.com)
June 24, 2009

"Tehran Dispatch: The Regime Shows Us Movies"

They want to keep us indoors, and quiet. But which subversive programmer picked The Lord of the Rings?

Editor's note: For reasons of personal safety, the author chooses to remain anonymous.

By Anonymous

In Tehran, state television's Channel Two is putting on a Lord of the Rings marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it's two or three films a day. The message is "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Let's watch, forget about what's happened, never mind. Stop dwelling in the past. Look ahead.

Frodo: "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish that none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

On the news, it's more of the same. The state-run media is trying to tell us that life needs to go on, that politics is a nasty business, but now it's over. Except for that first night, the news broadcasts have not shied away from the violence outside. Instead they've found a way to turn it inside out, make it about the protesters and not the curious mathematics of the election. At least nothing is hidden or subtle. When they want to make a point they lay it on, 10 minutes at a time, sometimes close to 15. It's like a friend says -- this is not news, it's interpretation, spin.

They interview regular folk on the street and in the parks. They want viewers to know that all those millions of protesters are, somehow, not regular folk: "Khastekonande." It's getting old. "Kasebam. Barayenke moafaq basham bayad moid e am dashte bashe." I'm a businessman. For my business to succeed, I need for there to be calm. "Ma faghat mikhaim ye nooni darbiarim, dombal e kar e zendegi berim." We just wanna make some bread, take care of our lives and our business. "In ha kay shooloogh mikonand mardoom nistand. Man fekr nemikonam kay mardoom hastand." The ones who are rioting aren't of the people. I don't think that they're part of the people. "Chand rooze ke natoonestam pesar va dokhtaram biaram park bekhatere in shoolooghia." It's been several days that I haven't been able to bring my son and daughter to the park, because of the violence.

Back to "Lord of the Rings." Gandalf the Gray returns to the Fellowship as Gandalf the White. He casts a blinding white light, and his face is hidden behind a halo. "Imam zaman e?!" someone in the room asks. Is it the Mahdi, the last imam and, according to Shia Islam, the savior of mankind?

Who picked this film? I start to suspect that there is a subversive soul manning the controls at Seda va Sima, AKA the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. It is way too easy to play with the film, to draw comparisons to what is happening in real life. There are the overt Mousavi themes: the unwanted quest and the risking of life in pursuit of an unanticipated destiny. Then there is the sly nod to Ahmadinejad. Iranian films are dubbed (forget the wretched dubbing into English in the U.S.; in Iran dubbing is a craft) and there are plenty of references to "kootoole," little person, the Farsi word used in the movie for hobbit and dwarf. "Kootoole," of course, was, is, the term used in many of the chants out on the street against President Ahmadinejad. He is the "little person." ("And whose side are you on?" Pippin asks the ancient, forest-dwelling giant named Treebeard. Those watching might think the answer is Mousavi, since Treebeard is decked out in green.)

The 9-year-old in the room loudly predicts that the "Lord of the Rings" marathon will put an end to the nightly shouts of "Allah Akbar" from Tehran's rooftops. People will not take to the roofs and windows because these films will keep them occupied. Besides, there is a dubious rumor going around that the basij are marking the doorways of those households that continue to call out "Allah Akbar!" at night, a kind of reverse Passover. Fear, as well as Tolkien, will no doubt play a part.

The 9-year-old goes on to report that the kids on his school "service" (no Blue Bird buses in Tehran, but long Toyota vans instead) have been chanting, "Pas rai e ma koojast?! Pas rai e ma koojast?! Pas rai e ma koojast?!" Then where is our vote?! Then where is our vote?! Then where is our vote?! I ask him what the driver is doing while all this goes on and he tells me that the driver honks along. Honk honk-honk-honk! "Pas rai e ma koojast?!" Honk honk-honk-honk!

Back to the movie. Gandalf's white steed strides into the frame. It is instantly transformed by local viewers into Rostam's mythical horse, Rakhsh. Rostam, the great dragon-slaying champion of Ferdowsi's poetic epic "Shahnameh," which recounts the whole history of Iran.

The 9-year-old is wrong about the rooftops. The sound begins as a low roll from a nearby park then quickly builds upward. "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!" No way. We rush to the window. It begins at 10 at night and will continue for another 30 minutes ...

On the television screen, Boromir, human of Aragon, falls. He dies an honorable death defending the lives of his compatriots.

"In edame dare." This is to be continued. The phrase has become our hesitant slogan, our phrase of reassurance. "In edame dare." People are not going to let up so easily.

Each time I've lost faith, I've been wrong. Iranians are proving to be a sturdier lot than I have given them credit, much mightier even than the formidable kootooloos that stand in their way.

LINK: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/24/tehran_seven/index.html

Washington!!

2009-06-22T10:27:00.005-04:00

To set the musical tone for the following article... Remember THIS??

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The Art of Manliness (artofmanliness.com)
June 14, 2009

"Manvotional: George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation"

Written by Brett & Kate McKay

Respect. All men wish to have the respect of those around them. One man who earned respect from his comrades and his enemies alike was America’s first president, George Washington. Washington was known for his gentlemanly comportment. Some might argue that his formality bordered on being frigid. But his formality helped earn him respect wherever he went.

When Washington was just 16 years old, he copied by hand a list of 110 rules on civility that were compiled by 16th Century Jesuit priests. I’m sure the time Washington spent as a boy writing out these rules helped shape the magnanimous statesman he would become as an adult.

While some of the rules on the list are a little too stuffy, formal, and school marmy-ish for our modern taste, many of them are still just as applicable today. A man who practices these rules will definitely distinguish himself from the other cads out there.

George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
(Note: The original spelling and punctuation was retained)

1. Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

2. When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usually Discovered.

3. Show Nothing to your Friend that may affright him.

4. In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet.

5. If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkerchief or Hand before your face and turn aside.

6. Sleep not when others Speak, Sit not when others stand, Speak not when you Should hold your Peace, walk not on when others Stop.

7. Put not off your Cloths in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chamber half Dressed.

8. At Play and at Fire its Good manners to Give Place to the last Commer, and affect not to Speak Louder than Ordinary.

9. Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it.

10. When you Sit down, Keep your Feet firm and Even, without putting one on the other or Crossing them.

11. Shift not yourself in the Sight of others nor Gnaw your nails.

12. Shake not the head, Feet, or Legs roll not the Eyes lift not one eyebrow higher than the other wry not the mouth, and bedew no mans face with your Spittle, by approaching too near him when you Speak.

13. Kill no Vermin as Fleas, lice ticks &c in the Sight of Others, if you See any filth or thick Spittle put your foot Dexterously upon it if it be upon the Cloths of your Companions, Put it off privately, and if it be upon your own Cloths return Thanks to him who puts it off.

14. Turn not your Back to others especially in Speaking, Jog not the Table or Desk on which Another reads or writes, lean not upon any one.

15. Keep your Nails clean and Short, also your Hands and Teeth Clean yet without Showing any great Concern for them.

16. Do not Puff up the Cheeks, Loll not out the tongue rub the Hands, or beard, thrust out the lips, or bite them or keep the Lips too open or too Close.

17. Be no Flatterer, neither Play with any that delights not to be Play’d Withal.

18. Read no Letters, Books, or Papers in Company but when there is a Necessity for the doing of it you must ask leave: come not near the Books or Writings of Another so as to read them unless desired or give your opinion of them unasked also look not nigh when another is writing a Letter.

19. Let your Countenance be pleasant but in Serious Matters Somewhat grave.

20. The Gestures of the Body must be Suited to the discourse you are upon.

21. Reproach none for the Infirmities of Nature, nor Delight to Put them that have in mind thereof.

22. Show not yourself glad at the Misfortune of another though he were your enemy.

23. When you see a Crime punished, you may be inwardly Pleased; but always show Pity to the Suffering Offender.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.

24. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any Public Spectacle.

25. Superfluous Complements and all Affectation of Ceremony are to be avoided, yet where due they are not to be Neglected.

26. In Pulling off your Hat to Persons of Distinction, as Noblemen, Justices, Churchmen & make a Reverence, bowing more or less according to the Custom of the Better Bred, and Quality of the Person. Amongst your equals expect not always that they Should begin with you first, but to Pull off the Hat when there is no need is Affectation, in the Manner of Saluting and resaluting in words keep to the most usual Custom.

27. Tis ill manners to bid one more eminent than yourself be covered as well as not to do it to whom it’s due Likewise he that makes too much haste to Put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to Put it on at the first, or at most the Second time of being asked; now what is herein Spoken, of Qualification in behavior in Saluting, ought also to be observed in taking of Place, and Sitting down for ceremonies without Bounds is troublesome.

28. If any one come to Speak to you while you are are Sitting Stand up though he be your Inferior, and when you Present Seats let it be to every one according to his Degree.

29. When you meet with one of Greater Quality than yourself, Stop, and retire especially if it be at a Door or any Straight place to give way for him to Pass.

30. In walking the highest Place in most Countries Seems to be on the right hand therefore Place yourself on the left of him whom you desire to Honor: but if three walk together the middest Place is the most Honorable the wall is usually given to the most worthy if two walk together.

31. If any one far Surpasses others, either in age, Estate, or Merit yet would give Place to a meaner than himself in his own lodging or elsewhere the one ought not to except it, So he on the other part should not use much earnestness nor offer it above once or twice.

32. To one that is your equal, or not much inferior you are to give the chief Place in your Lodging and he to who ‘is offered ought at the first to refuse it but at the Second to accept though not without acknowledging his own unworthiness.

33. They that are in Dignity or in office have in all places Precedency but whilst they are Young they ought to respect those that are their equals in Birth or other Qualities, though they have no Public charge.

34. It is good Manners to prefer them to whom we Speak before ourselves especially if they be above us with whom in no Sort we ought to begin.

35. Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

36. Artificers & Persons of low Degree ought not to use many ceremonies to Lords, or Others of high Degree but Respect and highly Honor them, and those of high Degree ought to treat them with affability & Courtesy, without Arrogance.

37. In speaking to men of Quality do not lean nor Look them full in the Face, nor approach too near them at lest Keep a full Pace from them.

38. In visiting the Sick, do not Presently play the Physician if you be not Knowing therein.

39. In writing or Speaking, give to every Person his due Title According to his Degree & the Custom of the Place.

40. Strive not with your Superiors in argument, but always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.

41. Undertake not to Teach your equal in the art himself Professes; it Savours of arrogance.

42. Let thy ceremonies in Courtesy be proper to the Dignity of his place with whom thou converses for it is absurd to act the same with a Clown and a Prince.

43. Do not express Joy before one sick or in pain for that contrary Passion will aggravate his Misery.

44. When a man does all he can though it Succeeds not well blame not him that did it.

45. Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it ought to be in public or in Private; presently, or at Some other time in what terms to do it & in reproving Show no Sign of Cholar but do it with all Sweetness and Mildness.

46. Take all Admonitions thankfully in what Time or Place Soever given but afterwards not being culpable take a Time & Place convenient to let him him know it that gave them.

47. Mock not nor Jest at any thing of Importance break [n]o Jest that are Sharp Biting and if you Deliver any thing witty and Pleasant abstain from Laughing thereat yourself.

48. Wherein you reprove Another be unblameable yourself; for example is more prevalent than Precepts.

49. Use no Reproachful Language against any one neither Curse nor Revile.

50. Be not hasty to believe flying Reports to the Disparagement of any.

51. Wear not your Cloths, foul, ripped or Dusty but See they be Brushed once every day at least and take heed that you approach not to any Uncleaness.

52. In your Apparel be Modest and endeavor to accommodate Nature, rather than to procure Admiration keep to the Fashion of your equals Such as are Civil and orderly with respect to Times and Places.

53. Run not in the Streets, neither go too slowly nor with Mouth open go not Shaking your Arms kick not the earth with R feet, go not upon the Toes, nor in a Dancing fashion.

54. Play not the Peacock, looking every where about you, to See if you be well Decked, if your Shoes fit well if your Stockings sit neatly, and Cloths handsomely.

55. Eat not in the Streets, nor in the House, out of Season.

56. Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for ‘is better to be alone than in bad Company.

57. In walking up and Down in a House, only with One in Company if he be Greater than yourself, at the first give him the Right hand and Stop not till he does and be not the first that turns, and when you do turn let it be with your face towards him, if he be a Man of Great Quality, walk not with him Cheek by Joul but Somewhat behind him; but yet in Such a Manner that he may easily Speak to you.

58. Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy, for ‘is a Sign of a Tractable and Commendable Nature: And in all Causes of Passion admit Reason to Govern.

59. Never express anything unbecoming, nor Act against the Rules Moral before your inferiors.

60. Be not immodest in urging your Friends to Discover a Secret.

61. Utter not base and frivolous things amongst grave and Learned Men nor very Difficult Questions or Subjects, among the Ignorant or things hard to be believed, Stuff not your Discourse with Sentences amongst your Betters nor Equals.

62. Speak not of doleful Things in a Time of Mirth or at the Table; Speak not of Melancholy Things as Death and Wounds, and if others Mention them Change if you can the Discourse tell not your Dreams, but to your intimate Friend.

63. A Man ought not to value himself of his Achievements, or rare Qualities of wit; much less of his riches Virtue or Kindred.

64. Break not a Jest where none take pleasure in mirth Laugh not aloud, nor at all without Occasion, deride no mans Misfortune, though there Seem to be Some cause.

65. Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.

66. Be not froward but friendly and Courteous; the first to Salute hear and answer & be not Pensive when it’s a time to Converse.

67. Detract not from others neither be excessive in Commanding.

68. Go not thither, where you know not, whether you Shall be Welcome or not. Give not Advice without being Asked & when desired do it briefly.

69. If two contend together take not the part of either unconstrained; and be not obstinate in your own Opinion, in Things indifferent be of the Major Side.

70. Reprehend not the imperfections of others for that belongs to Parents Masters and Superiors.

71. Gaze not on the marks or blemishes of Others and ask not how they came. What you may Speak in Secret to your Friend deliver not before others.

72. Speak not in an unknown Tongue in Company but in your own Language and that as those of Quality do and not as the Vulgar; Sublime matters treat Seriously.

73. Think before you Speak pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your Words too hastily but orderly & distinctly.

74. When Another Speaks be attentive your Self and disturb not the Audience if any hesitate in his Words help him not nor Prompt him without desired, Interrupt him not, nor Answer him till his Speech be ended.

75. In the midst of Discourse ask not of what one treateth but if you Perceive any Stop because of your coming you may well intreat him gently to Proceed: If a Person of Quality comes in while your Conversing it’s handsome to Repeat what was said before.

76. While you are talking, Point not with your Finger at him of Whom you Discourse nor Approach too near him to whom you talk especially to his face.

77. Treat with men at fit Times about Business & Whisper not in the Company of Others.

78. Make no Comparisons and if any of the Company be Commended for any brave act of Virtue, commend not another for the Same.

79. Be not apt to relate News if you know not the truth thereof. In Discoursing of things you Have heard Name not your Author always A Secret Discover not.

80. Be not Tedious in Discourse or in reading unless you find the Company pleased therewith.

81. Be not Curious to Know the Affairs of Others neither approach those that Speak in Private.

82. Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.

83. When you deliver a matter do it without Passion & with Discretion, however mean the Person be you do it too.

84. When your Superiors talk to any Body hearken not neither Speak nor Laugh.

85. In Company of these of Higher Quality than yourself Speak not til you are asked a Question then Stand upright put of your Hat & Answer in few words.

86. In Disputes, be not So Desirous to Overcome as not to give Liberty to each one to deliver his Opinion and Submit to the Judgment of the Major Part especially if they are Judges of the Dispute.

87. Let thy carriage be such as becomes a Man Grave Settled and attentive to that which is spoken. Contradict not at every turn what others Say.

88. Be not tedious in Discourse, make not many Digressions, nor repeat often the Same manner of Discourse.

89. Speak not Evil of the absent for it is unjust.

90. Being Set at meat Scratch not neither Spit Cough or blow your Nose except there’s a Necessity for it.

91. Make no Show of taking great Delight in your Victuals, Feed not with Greediness; cut your Bread with a Knife, lean not on the Table neither find fault with what you Eat.

92. Take no Salt or cut Bread with your Knife Greasy.

93. Entertaining any one at the table, it is decent to present him with meat; Undertake not to help others undesired by the Master.

94. If you Soak bread in the Sauce let it be no more than what you put in your Mouth at a time and blow not your broth at Table but Stay till Cools of it Self.

95. Put not your meat to your Mouth with your Knife in your hand neither Spit forth the Stones of any fruit Pie upon a Dish nor Cast anything under the table.

96. It’s unbecoming to Stoop much to ones Meat Keep your Fingers clean & when foul wipe them on a Corner of your Table Napkin.

97. Put not another bit into your mouth till the former be swallowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.

98. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full; neither gaze about you while you are drinking.

99. Drink not too leisurely nor yet too hastily. Before and after drinking, wipe your lips; breath not then or ever with too great a noise, for its uncivil.

100. Cleanse not your teeth with the table cloth napkin, fork, or knife; but if others do it, let it be done without a peep to them.

101. Rinse not your mouth in the presence of others.

102. It is out of use to call upon the company often to eat; nor need you drink to others every time you drink.

103. In the company of your betters, be not longer in eating than they are; lay not your arm but only your hand upon the table.

104. It belongs to the chiefest in company to unfold his napkin and fall to meat first, but he ought then to begin in time & to dispatch with dexterity that the slowest may have time allowed him.

105. Be not angry at the table whatever happens & if you have reason to be so, show it not; put on a cheerful countenance especially if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast.

106. Set not yourself at the upper of the table; but if it be your due or that the master of the house will have it so, contend not, least you should trouble the company.

107. If others talk at the table, be attentive but talk not with meat in your mouth.

108. When you speak of God or his attributes, let it be seriously & with reverence. Honor & obey your natural parents although they be poor.

109. Let your recreations be manful not sinful.

110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

LINK: http://artofmanliness.com/2009/06/14/manvotional-george-washingtons-rules-of-civility-and-decent-behavior-in-company-and-converation/

New Clouds!!

2009-06-19T01:00:00.006-04:00

National Geographic News (news.nationalgeographic.com)
June 3, 2009

"New Cloud Type Discovered?"
Written by Christine Dell'Amore

Photograph courtesy Jane Wiggins

These choppy clouds over Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in an undated picture could be examples of the first new type of cloud to be recognized since 1951. Or so hopes Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

The British cloud enthusiast said he began getting photos of "dramatic" and "weird" clouds (including the above) in 2005 that he didn't know how to define.

A few months ago he began preparing to propose the odd formations as a new cloud variety to the UN's World Meteorological Organization, which classifies cloud types.

Pretor-Pinney jokingly calls it the "Jacques Cousteau cloud," after its resemblance to a roiling ocean surface seen from below. But the cloud fan has proposed a "formal," Latin name: Undulus asperatus--roughly, "a very turbulent, violent, chaotic form of undulation," explained Pretor-Pinney, author of the new Cloud Collector's Handbook.

Margaret LeMone, a cloud expert with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said that she has taken photos of asperatus clouds intermittently over the past 30 years.

It's likely that the cloud will turn out to be a new variety, LeMone said.

"Having a group of people enthusiastic about clouds can only help the field of meteorology," she added.

Asked how has such a striking cloud type could go unrecognized, Pretor-Pinney cites its rarity--and the proliferation and portability of digital cameras. "Technology has allowed us to have this new perspective on the sky."

An "asperatus" cloud rolls over New Zealand's South Island in an undated picture.
Photograph courtesy Merrick Davies

This apparently new class of clouds is still a mystery. But experts suspect asperatus clouds' choppy undersides may be due to strong winds disturbing previously stable layers of warm and cold air.

Asperatus clouds may spur the first new classification in the World Meteorological Organization's International Cloud Atlas since the 1950s, Gavin Pretor-Pinney said.

Since the last addition to the atlas, the emergence of satellite imagery has pushed meteorologists to take a much broader view on weather and focus less on small-scale cloud formations.

But "the tide is turning back again," in part because the humble cloud is seen as a "wild card" in climate-change prediction, Pretor-Pinney said.

LeMone agreed that clouds are a "big unknown" in climate change, mostly because climate-change models do not provide a high-enough resolution to determine what clouds' impacts will be on a changing world.

A possibly new variety of cloud, the asperatus, coats the sky in Perthshire, Scotland, in an undated picture.
Photograph courtesy Ken Prior

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who is proposing that asperatus clouds be officially recognized, said that clouds get a "bad rap."

"People complain about … having a cloud hanging over them, compared to someone having a sunny outlook on life," said Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

"To me, clouds are one of the most beautiful parts of nature. … "

LeMone, a self-described "cloud nut," agreed.

"If you have a rotten day, you can look outside and see a spectacular cloud," she said.

Asperatus clouds over Devon, U.K. in an undated picture
Photograph courtesy Richard Huntington

If the asperatus cloud type is classified as a new variety (above, asperatus clouds over Devon, U.K. in an undated picture), it would be the first addition to the World Meteorological Organization's cloud atlas since 1951.

Asperatus's champion, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of The Cloud Collector's Handbook, argues for greater appreciation of his subject.

"Even if you live in the middle of the city," he said, "the sky is the last wilderness you can look out on."

LINK: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/photogalleries/new-cloud-pictures/index.html

Uighurs in Bermuda!!

2009-06-18T01:00:00.002-04:00

Toronto Star (www.thestar.com)
June 13th, 2009

"From Hell to Paradise for Ex-Gitmo Detainees"

Four ethnic Uighurs adjusting to Bermuda, and life on outside

Written by Michelle Shephard

HAMILTON, Bermuda – After almost eight years of captivity, each step of Khelil Mamut's freedom is a little overwhelming.

The ocean, which he could hear only on windy days when the waves crashed beyond Guantanamo's razor wire rimmed fence, is now something he can wade into.

People call him by his name, not 278, his internee serial number.

Uighurs Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, left, and Khelil Mamut, 31, go fishing in Bermuda, where they're living after almost eight years in Guantanamo Bay. (June 13, 2009)

Then there was the horse he saw while walking one of the island trails on Thursday, the day he and three other Chinese citizens of the Muslim Uighur minority arrived in Bermuda. The animal made him stop suddenly, just to stare.

"How can I express it," he said yesterday, describing the new tropical home where he now lives with the three other former Guantanamo detainees. "It is so great, so beautiful."

"This may be a small island," added Abdullah Abdulqadir. "But it has a big heart."

The men spent yesterday with the Toronto Star, as they adjusted to life on the outside and reflected on a week that one local paper headlined: "From prison to paradise."

Despite the backlash to their move, which has all Bermudians talking, they seemed insulated in their oceanside pink cottage, enjoying a fish lunch, a sunset swim and fielding the occasional media call.

They broke their composure only when a local imam visited them, embracing each fiercely.

The U.S. government is footing the bill for their food and accommodation until they can find work, which likely won't be a problem since local companies have reportedly already made six offers.

Inside their three-bedroom apartment, where the carpet, curtain and walls match the pastel exterior, the men have managed to form a makeshift family.

American translator Rushan Abbas, who alternated yesterday between typing emails to their U.S. lawyers and kneading dough for a traditional Uighur dinner, joked that despite only being a few years older she considered the men her children.

Abbas worked for U.S. interrogators translating with Uighur detainees when she first started at Guantanamo in 2002.

Then she "switched sides," she said, and started working for defence attorneys. She came here for a few days to make the transition smoother since Abdulqadir and Mamut know only limited English, and the other two men, Salahidin Abdulahat and Ablikim Turahun, don't understand at all.

The men also have the assistance of a retired Bermudian army major, Glenn Brangman, who now works with the government. With his booming voice and hibiscus-patterned surf shorts, Brangman has become their energetic guide.

Two weeks ago the scene for these men in Camp Iguana – the U.S. military's name for the prison where they were detained in Guantanamo – couldn't have been more different. On June 1, Abdulqadir approached a small group of journalists during a rare unscripted moment in a prison where the message is tightly controlled.

"Who's in charge?" Abdulqadir asked, as reporters, including one from the Star, stood mute on the other side of the fence due to rules that forbid communication between journalists and prisoners.

Abdulqadir and another detainee then quickly displayed a sketch pad where they'd written their message in crayon, managing to pull off the detention centre's first public protest.

"We need to freedom (sic)," said one page.

Ten days later, a secret pre-dawn private flight whisked them away from Guantanamo to this tourist mecca.

There's no doubt the four men stand out in this self-governing British territory that's only 54 square kilometres – less than half the size of Guantanamo's U.S. naval base.

There's no Uighur population here and when locals are asked if there's an Asian community, most point to a Japanese resident who opened a restaurant.

Their arrival has consumed the local media and parliament. Opposition members tabled a no-confidence motion on Friday to oust Bermuda's Premier Ewart Brown, arguing that his covert deal with U.S. President Barack Obama was indicative of his "autocratic" leadership.

"We don't know who these men are," opposition minister Shawn Crockwell said in an interview with the Star.

"All of a sudden there's an association between Bermuda and terrorism. Whether or not these men are or not, there's that association."

The men yesterday said they hoped they could shake the terrorist label.

"There's absolutely no hard feelings toward the U.S.," said Abdulqadir.

"There are some people accusing us, labelling us as dangerous people, but that's not true at all."

For years, the debate over the Uighur detainees, who range in age from 30 to 38, was whether they were Guantanamo victims or men who had formed links with Al Qaeda to support their opposition to China's rule.

The men said they fled China in the summer of 2001 for neighbouring Afghanistan – the two countries share a tiny stretch of border – because they could not get passports enabling them to go elsewhere.

After the 9/11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the men were caught by Pakistani services and sold to the United States for a bounty.

The Pentagon accused them of training at "Al Qaeda-linked" camps and belonging to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which opposes China's oppression of Uighurs.

In September 2002, after the men had been in custody for almost a year, the ETIM was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

The listing itself was criticized by some who accused the United States of succumbing to China's pressure at a time when Beijing's support was sought for the upcoming war in Iraq.

During years of litigation, the D.C. courts slammed the inadequacy of the government's evidence, eventually pushing the Bush administration to concede that the Uighurs were no longer designated "enemy combatants."

This administrative reclassification, which cleared the men for release, prompted one District Court judge to quip: "The government's use of the Kafkaesque term `no longer enemy combatants' deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants."

Yesterday, the men said the toughest time in their captivity was when Chinese interrogators were allowed on the base in 2002.

They also talked of their year inside Camp 6, where they were kept in solitary confinement and only meals and calls of other prisoners broke the monotony of the day.

After a D.C. judge ordered them released last October, they were transferred to Camp Iguana, a separate prison of enclosed wooden huts, perched high on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean.

But when the United States denied them refuge and no other country would accept them, they were trapped in a legal limbo until last week.

Another 13 Uighur detainees, heading for the tiny Pacific island of Palau, still remain in Guantanamo, as does Canadian Omar Khadr.

Some residents here were angry that Bermuda accepted men other Western nations refused to take, while others say the men will integrate well.

"I feel people need somewhere to go. These guys haven't done anything wrong and have been locked up," said Carol Turini, a 70-year-old cab driver who retired from a job in the immigration department eight years ago.

"Why not?"

Their American lawyer, Sabin Willet, said one of the most poignant moments for him came when they were shopping for new clothes as a local talk radio show was airing irate callers saying Bermuda was harbouring terrorists.

Hearing the radio, and then recognizing the men, the storeowner looked at them and said, "Well, I welcome you here."

LINK: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/650568

Open Letter!!

2009-06-17T13:02:00.010-04:00

Youtube.com (www.youtube.com)
June 15th, 2009

"An Open Letter From Iranians TO The World-Spread it World Wide"
Name of Poster Withheld

Text Version of Video:

"Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain." - Saadi, the great Persian poet

This week Iranians turned out in record numbers not seen since the beginning of the Iranian revolution to change their current President Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

Their willingness to exercise their democratic right was both historic and uncommon in the Middle East. Iranians longed for change the same way people in the United States, and indeed worldwide, longed for a new beginning after the Bush years. They were tired of an increasingly delusional President who has thrown their country into economic turmoil and portrayed their country as a conflict seeking entity in the Middle East.

But today the same Iranian regime that has denied a dialog with the world, denied human rights, denied democracy, denied the Holocaust, is blatantly denying the will of its people by committing massive election fraud to reelect Mahmood Ahmadinejad, and arresting journalists and opposition leaders in broad daylight. Accepting this deception will be costly not only for the people of Iran but also for the people of the Middle East, with far reaching consequences worldwide.

As you read these words, the people in Iran have taken to the streets in nationwide protests. Despite brutal government suppression tactics the Iranian people are courageously fighting for their rights. As anti-riot police batons crush the bones of demonstrators whose only protest is election fraud, Iranians are screaming for the world to hear them:

WE DENOUNCE MAHMOOD AHMADINEJAD!

The people of Iran now ask for your support! We do not expect you to fight our struggle but to help us fight it. We expect people worldwide to put pressure on their governments and politicians not to accept the legitimacy of the Iranian elections and the fraudulent presidency of Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

Democratic societies worldwide must not leave the Iranian people alone now that they have risen to the challenge. Instead they need to align their policies with the will of the Iranian people.

We ask you not to let 70 million people in Iran be taken hostage.
Any government that accepts Mahmood Ahmadinejad as the new president of Iran has betrayed the Iranian people, endangered world peace, and has no sympathy for human pain.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8D7SYJVzqg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fandrewsullivan%2Etheatlantic%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

Freedom!!

2009-06-17T12:33:00.003-04:00

Sir Christopher Lee!!

2009-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00

Google News (www.google.com) via Associated Press (ap.org)
June 13th, 2009

"Arise, Sir Dracula! Queen Knights Christopher Lee"
Written By RAPHAEL G. SATTER

LONDON (AP) — The Lord of the Undead is now a knight of the British Empire.

Christopher Lee, whose sonorous voice and burning black eyes made him a memorable arch-villain in films from "Dracula" to "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," was given one of Britain's highest honors Saturday by Queen Elizabeth II.

Golfer Nick Faldo, captain of Europe's 2008 Ryder Cup team, was also promoted to "sir." He can add the title to his six major championship wins.

Among the others receiving royal honors: Tony-award winning actor Alan Cumming, for his work in films such as "X2: X-Men United" and his gay rights advocacy; celebrity hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who lent his name to a worldwide brand of shampoos and salons; and U.S. economist David Blanchflower, who accurately predicted Britain's recession during his tenure on the interest rate-setting committee at the Bank of England.

Celebrity chef Delia Smith, whose recipe books adorn kitchens around the world, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, for her help in teaching the country how to cook.

Poetry also got a boost, with Andrew Motion and Christopher Ricks both awarded knighthoods. Motion was Britain's Poet Laureate for a decade until he was replaced by Carol Ann Duffy earlier this year. Ricks steps down from his post of Oxford Professor of Poetry later this year.

Lee, 87, who made his name in Britain's low-budget Hammer Studios horror films, is one of cinema's consummate bad-guys, appearing as everything from Bond villain Scaramanga in "The Man With the Golden Gun" to the disreputable Russian mystic in "Rasputin, the Mad Monk."

More recent turns include the evil wizard Saruman in "The Lord of the Rings" movies and fallen Jedi Count Dooku in two of George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels.

Faldo first picked up a golf club at age 14 and has gone on to win more than 40 tournaments. His six major victories include a triumph at the U.S. Masters in 1996 and the Nissan Open in 1997. The 51-year-old has since made a series of entrepreneurial moves — into fairground design and television commentary, among others.

Cumming was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE; Blanchflower and Sassoon were both made CBE.

Lee, Faldo, and the rest are among 984 people honored in Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honors list.

In descending order, the main honors are knighthoods, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and Officer of the Order of the British Empire, OBE, and Member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE.

Knights are addressed as "sir" or "dame," while recipients of CBEs, OBEs and MBEs have no title but can put the letters after their names.

The honors are bestowed twice a year by the monarch, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public.

Although sportsmen, politicians, and artists regularly top the list, more than two-thirds of the honors go to people out of the limelight, especially civil servants and those with long service to their communities.

This year's recipients include a former elementary school janitor from Aberdeenshire in Scotland and an information desk assistant at Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland.

LINK: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ij82OBGsx4n5ZVzhEvVoWKTJXC_wD98PDUPG0

Iranian Tweets.

2009-06-16T14:55:00.006-04:00

This is going on NOW in Iran. The cable news networks have provided very little information on the events, but Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, has been compiling up-to-the-minute news as it hits the internet.

In order to post this quickly, I have NOT included the photos. For the photos and continued coverage, go to The Daily Dish.

This info is not from an official news site. These messages are today's Twitter messages from inside Iran by people on the streets. Go Here to learn about Twitter.

The Atlantic - The Daily Dish (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
16 Jun 2009 01:18 pm

"Live-Tweeting the Revolution"

we told everybody to get out and leave dorms. but most of the student got no where to go & no relatives in Tehran.

it looks they are going to attack dorms again! IRG's chopper just passed by Yousefabad. there is noting left to destroy over there!

a state TV employee: Gun shooting sound is heard near Jaame jam building

confirmed by farsi twitters: around 2000 basiji is now standing in front of dorms.

Mousavi supporters are having "Calmness will beat the bullets" placards and standing near TV/Radio station's mosque.

NEWS: Mousavi supporters moving towards IRIB News Network HQ. 8 ppl confirmed killed

more than 150,000 people are demostrating to Tajrish Sq.Basiji forces are ready to attack / in Tehran

they are searching for Dr Yazdi , a political activist

Basij are wearing civilian clothing. Do not mix them up with protestors!!

Police is going to houses and seizing satellite receivers.

Qazvin Uni kids right now tore up their exam papers and stopped the exams

BBCPersian has just gone black. [Shiraz]

Mousavi said he is ready for a live show at IRIB (Iran TV). do u think they will let him do that. No way.

IRNN : Guardian Council "revocation of the result of the election is a possibility"

At first Arabs sent their congrats to AhmadiNejad very fast but now their newspapers are turning on him.

I'm hearing LOUD shouts (Allaho Akbar/DownWithDictator) from the street. There should be a struggle. My wife is going to check

The most famous-legal-Iranian singer(Shajarian)said "TV has no right to play my music.I've not sang them for Ah.Nej."

Many have said my username is long. I'm sorry guys, I didn't mean to be political at the time I created this account.

Gmail and Yahoo messenger is filtered too. They are blocking all the communication means.

For those of you who don't know, the rally is in Jameh Jam.

Rally is on. Silent, calm, and peaceful. This is what we all want! Thanks for everyone who's there, and who's watching!

my cousin in tehran, a girl of 29, was beaten with batten in her legs and can't participate today because she can't walk

Masood just called (he's OK), his laptop is destroyed & unfortunately gov intelligent found and arrest Reza at shariati Hospital.

Ashora platoons now moving from valiasr toward National Tv staion. mousavi's supporters are already there. my father is out there!

eyewitness: The crowd is from Mirdamad upto Park Saayi. (That's huge!!)

Eyewitness Live: More ppl have joined, walking on Valiasr. packed from Mirdaamad upto Park, moving towards north.

everyone! I'm reporting pro-mousavi rally up valiasr to Jaam-e-jam!! Obvious I'm not trying to discourage anyone!

There is conflict in front of TV station

DO NOT RT anything U read from "NEW" tweeters, gvmt spreading misinfo

Security forces opening twitter accounts 2 pose as protestors n spread disinformation

24 newspapers were closed down in iran to stop the true reflection of the recent events.

Iran has banned all foreign journalists from reporting on the sts.

State-TV is repeatedly telling people to go to Mousavi's protest in Valiasr Sq. One can only imagine what their plan is. :((

state TV is now requesting people (armed forces) to go to valiasr st and protest against the outlaws & criminals! (people)

The News Channel of Iran just announced that neither Mousavi nor his supporters will participate in today's protest in Vali Asr square.

Another source confirmed: "11 dead yesterday in Rasoul Hospital"

gmail blocked tooo:(( i heard in Velenjak & Farmanie they assemblage satellites from ppl homes:(

yesterday my friend saw a girl that fell into street and a guardians stands beside her and shoot into her leg:( (jenah st)

unconfirmed rumours - army generals arrested - many rumours of coupdetat by army

rumour spreading Tehran - Army Generals have met in secret - Army considering position

his family beaten seriously and brother taken away - house destroyed

Saeid Hajarian - rumour - arrested last night

The girl that was taken away at 2 AM in Tehran was Shiva Nazaragahi

NEWS: Girl that was taken 2AM; It is unclear whether the agents really were intelligence agents or lying.

Woman says ppl knocking on her door 2 AM saying they were intelligence agents, took her daughter

are hearing that all foreigner visas are being cancelled by gov

security in Jamaran is unbelieveble - hundreds of Baseej guarding Khamenei

confirmed - Tabriz - Baseej headqurters set fire - 'many' dead

Tehran hotels under high security to stop Iranians from contacting foreign press

anyone with camera or laptop is attacked in street

i am seeing tweets about a lot of disturbances, arrests, violence in Shahrak Gharb, any reports?

we hear 1dead in shiraz, livefire used in other cities RT

Very scared, I was talkin to myuncle in shiraz and he was so paranoid.

If you hear the forces talking in arabic..BE CAREFUL..these guys are imported in, they are not affraid of suicide bombing and killing

Police the reason of insecurity; Dead students buried by profs

Basij attacking Shiraz and Mashad universities, Shiraz U's dean resigned

some student killed by the 4a blast in Babol Univ's dorms; surrounded by Basij forces

Militia still attacking people in sidestreets but main roads are peaceful marchers.

Basij Militia attacks a residential complex

Students are protesting in Mashhad's Ferdowsi uni. surrounded by Basij & Ansar forces UNCONF

Confirmed info: hezbollah mobilized & lebanese coming in. this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better pass it down

it's not only police that we're dealing with. there's basij, anti riot guard, elite IRGC

Basij (pro leader militia) is announcing a demonstration at 3 in ValiAsr Sq. , Mousavi's is at 5; same place.

Supporters of Ahmadinejad plan a rally today at the same Tehran square where backers of Mousavi say they will gather

Conf: Abtahi (key reformist, and supporter of Karroubi) is arrested.

stay safe and I will RT anything you write! The world is watching and history is being made--we bear witness!

unconfrm:10 highrank Sepaah officers Sepaah arrested as they intended to support ppl 2gether W Artesh officers. know more?

BIG explosion at Nooshiravani Babol University (North Iran),police does not lets people to go there and see what had happened.

March for today 5pm is ON, at Valiasr Sq. in Tehran, spread to all u know, Mousavi himself will not be attending

All last night we hear shooting accross Tehran - everyone is full of rumours and stories - many arrests in night

Iran state radio says 7 protesters killed overnight in tehran, report of one killed in shiraz

Just heard from an eye witness in Tehran: last night 12 people shot to death had been brought to Rasul_Akram hospital, with dozens wounded.

i used to use twitter to follow my favorite tech bloggers... good old days :(

areh manam haminor i never thought i use facebook so much, i only use to read tech blogs

EVERYONE everywhere set yourLOCATION to TEHRAN! Confuse them.They can't follow everyone!

Still not confirmed if the #iranelection hashtag is blocked. KEEP USING IT. Could be a propaganda to disperse everyone.

"JUST IN: Iran blocking #iranelection tags. Migrate to #iran9 hashtag instead."

#IranElection hashtag is not blocked in Iran. Yells of Allaho Akbar just happen for two hours, 9:00-11:00 PM local time.

We gather to stand in and in solidarity with the people of Iran. No political factions!!! No flags!! (from any country) TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!

I was proud to cast my 1st vote as a US citizen this year, but I am dissapointed at how other govs are acting

it was heart warming to see protestors helping iranian police that were injured and hurt. never lose your true cause, integrity,principle!

confirmed - most of Tehran Bazar is closed today

people saying that army is split. people talking of coup. unconfirmed. we need army on our side.

ppl (protesters against coup) are on strike, with black clothes today. mourning for what is happening in Iran.

Nobody will go to office today as a strike. I will stay at home.

Today is a day of strikes throughout Iran, will it be successful?

this will be a pivotal day for Iran, have faith in yourselves and know that you are not alone. Far and wide we are following :)

We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Mousavi's message. One Person = One Broadcaster.

wow guys, i cant express how great it feels to have so much support from you all for my country, its surreal, many many thanks

stat-run TV: "Tomorrow @3pm: protest against rioters!"i.e. millions who rallied on Mon.

IRANIANS: Tuesday(TOM) at 5pm at Valiasr Sq we will march for our rights and in memory of 5 students killed yesterday

Since ppl cannot say "death to ahmadinejad" or such, they say "allah o akbar" which is "god is great"

I had never seen this much harmony in ppl.You can now see how iranians are united with each other, it's truly an amazing

sight From Chizar Sq. I can hear people shouting their heart out from Qeitarieh & Andarzgu St.! and cars honking! Way to go ppl!

All normal proxys out - all normal ISP's out in Tehran

Mssg from Twitter: Our...partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.

tear gas was used inside the girls dorm

and motorbikes ridden into the boys dorm

Glass and nails being set on streets to thwart motorcycle terror

squads of lebas shakhsi [Lebanese in private clothes] on motorbikes all over the place

molotov cocktails have come out

reports say that the Uni Tehran's dorms has been stormed by the paramilitary forces again tonight

STOP all the attacks on Iran goverment websites. Hurting Iran's internet connection. RT very important

good night. viva freedom. viva truth. Hope a better coverage by media. That's our only support.

I'm so tired and going to get some rest while I know there r people & students in streets fighting for justice.

we are all tired - no sleep for 3 days - one of us is injured from baton - waiting for doctor

Shiraz Univ closed. Students are asked to leave the dorm.

still hearing news about more deaths during last nights raid to dormitories and todays shootings.

more than 100 students missing from Tehran Uni dorms - reports of several dead from last night

Activists call for help to catalog faces of plain-cloths militia4 later IDing.,thy r d ones who r shooting at ppl, u can help

CONFIRMED Basiji central building put on fire today by ppl

BBC & CNN, PLEASE publish information on nationwide strike planned for tomorrow Tuesday throughout all of Iran

Tomorrow rally at ValiAsr Sq. 5:00PM

State TV announced that they will "recount" voted again since tomorrow

Ahmadinejad called us Dust, we showed him a sandstorm.

Protesters writing "only Mousavi" on Freedon sqr. tower, Iran's most prominent landmark

U beat (us),U kill,U cut, what DO u do with d unpreventable growth of new blooms" a Persian song*

ppl chanting "Police, police, support us"

also 6 students who were beaten last night in the dorm died today. they were from my university. we wore black today :((

NOTE to HACKERS - attack www.farhang.gov.ir - pls try to hack all iran gov wesites. very difficult for us.

confirmed - ahmadinejad website hacked off net.

Intelligence calling homes and play recording saying "u participated in today's march, don't repeat"

Reports of gunfire in Tehran's Saadatabad district

Tarasht dormitory is seiged by basij

Non stop sound of shooting heard in Tehran

after hearing about killing a person by Basij people from Ikbatan(a part of Tehran) came out & started another demonstration

People are shouting "This Blood in my veins will stop the coup"

Sources in #Tehran say candidate Mehdi Karrubi will speak in 2 hours. He's protesting results w/#Mousavi.

Hearing Allaho Akbar and Down with dictator from all the roofs

ppl get together in front of our apartment it seems ppl ready for demonstration again in tonight

we are going offline to get a phone free for calling out. we are also moving location - too long here - is dangerous.

we are hearing that large numbers gathering in Tajreesh sq, north tehran, now. rumour that there will be another speech

tonight Kamenei will fight hard - he knows he is close to finish.

3 ppl from our group still not returned from march. no mobile contact. last phone contact 2 hours ago.

we have decided not to go out now and wait to see if situation calm down.

streets very dangerous now. groups of militia on motorbikes searching for protesters.

we estimate marchers today were 1 million ++. confirmed at least one dead in azadi sq - first hand.

confirmed - it was unprovoked attack by Baseej. People running to hide everywhere in streets around Azadi.

People are running in streets outside. There is panic in streets. people going ino houses to hide.

Baseej shooting in Azadi sq - army standing by and watching for now.

Dr. Jebhe Dar Maralani, the president of Tehran University’s College of Electronics resigned in protest to last night’s killing of five students.

From Ahvaz: Around Ahavaz bridge the sounds of gunshots can be heard. People have gathered in Naderi street. Cell phones have been disconnected in this city.

Satellite TV is jammed... Internet is slow... Cell phone service coming and going... the night is coming in... this makes one worried

People in Rasht being hunted by police forces, reportedly with teargas. Those in their houses shelter the ones running.

We have heard what sounds like gunshots in distance. still have people on streets we have not heard from.

As it gets dark Basij expected target University dorms again

AT LEAST ONE DEAD AFTER PRO-GOVERNMENT MILITIA OPEN FIRE AT OPPOSITION SUPPORTERS IN TEHRAN. Pls RT!

People are getting killed in Azadi Sq.

Demo spread from Azadi sq, to streets and hwys around it. Cars honking horns, smaller groups marching. False hopes?

Dispersed fights in Tehran; sound of shooting heard

Tho today's protest is illegal, police not moving in. Possibly too big to handle, or images of attax beg. to embarrass ldrs

Just returned from Mousavi demonstration. Huge, easily 100s of thousands. Mood is peaceful, even happy.

unconfirmed as yet - mousavi newspaper offices raided.

Students are being surrounded in Shiraz Uni civil police (Basij) is in fight with people.

There are too many people just watching. Watching argument between forces and youth. What are they thinking about?

I hear that NPR is claiming that it is false news that Mousavi is in crowd now. IT'S NOT! Tell them pp, we have pics!

Mousavi now; "these masses were not brought by bus or by threat. they were not brought for potatoes. they came themselves"

@BabakMehrabani is saying that he was beaten by a baton and his right hand is numb. He is twitting with the left hand.

They blocked all the streets ends to university!

Tens of thousands of protestors are chanting "No fear, No fear, we are with each other".

In Shiraz there r around 300 "Basiji" in Sinama Sadi cross. They r being fully armed with shields & batons.

Other cities also having their own parades but with MORE oppression; Mashhad, Babol, Tabriz, ...

Rumors: fake unsuccessful Ahmadinejad's assassination is planned for tomorrow. Please inform everybody.

it's worth taking the risk, we're going. I won't be able to update until I'm back. again thanks for your kind support and wish us luck

Grand Ayatollah Saanei accompanies today's anti Ahmadinejad rally

People were holding signs saying: We are not sheep.

Hundreds of thousands of people are demonstrating from Engelab to Azadi. The number of people is constantly increasing as more people join to protest against the coup d’état.

LINK: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/livetweeting-the-revolution.html

Future Superhero!!

2009-06-16T01:00:00.003-04:00

The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
June 12th, 2009

"14-year-old Hit By 30,000 MPH Space Meteorite"

A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.

Writer Unknown

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.

"Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder."

"The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained.

Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.

"I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit.

Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.

Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.

"Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added.

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

LINK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5511619/14-year-old-hit-by-30000-mph-space-meteorite.html

Big Tobacco, Little Tobacco!!

2009-06-15T01:00:00.007-04:00

New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
June 12th, 2009

"With House Vote, Tobacco Bill Goes to Obama"
Written by Duff Wilson

The House moved quickly Friday to pass the Senate’s tobacco bill and send it to the White Hosue, where President Obama promised to sign it.

Mr. Obama, who himself has struggled to quit smoking, said the measure would “protect our kids and improve our public health.” Appearing in the Rose Garden just moments after the House vote, he said the tobacco legislation was “a bill that truly defines changes in Washington” and one that “changes the way Washington works and who it works for.”

The law would for the first time give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products, which kill more than 400,000 people in this country each year.

The House vote Friday was 307-to-97, following Senate passage of the measure 79-to-17 on Thursday. A key to Senate passage was a vote earlier in the week to overcome a filibuster, by a two-vote margin.

Under the law, the F.D.A. will be able to set product standards and ban some chemicals in tobacco products, although not to totally ban addictive nicotine. The F.D.A. will set up a new tobacco regulatory office financed by industry fees, which are expected to be $85 million in the first year and as much as $700 million annually within in 10 years.

The F.D.A. would have the power not only to consider changing existing products, but could also ban new products unless the agency found they contribute to overall public health.

Within 15 months, the F.D.A. is charged with imposing a ban on tobacco advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, a measure that is likely to draw court challenges from the tobacco industry saying it violates the First Amendment.

Also, within one year, the industry will be banned from claiming products are “light,” “mild” or “low tar,” terms which have been found to mislead smokers into thinking they are safer when they are not.

By the year 2012, the law provides that new, graphic warning labels must be designed and approved by the F.D.A. and occupy 50 percent of the space on each package of cigarettes. According to David Adelman, tobacco industry for Morgan Stanley, the larger warning is the key to the new F.D.A. legislation in making it harder to lure customers to buy cigarettes.

“The newer warning label requirement in the Senate bill could compromise the graphics appearance of all U.S. cigarette brands,” Mr. Adelman wrote in a note to investors Friday.

The Senate required a larger warning than a bill the House had previously passed and required that the warning contain “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.” That is likely to include photographs of cancerous and diseased tissue, similar those that run on cigarette packs in Canada.

Seeking to combat youth smoking — Mr. Obama noted that an additional 1,000 or so Americans under the age of 18 become regular smokers each day — the legislation will quickly ban most flavoring in tobacco and raise penalties selling tobacco to underaged buyers.

But in a political compromise it exempted one key flavoring, menthol, which masks the harshness of tobacco and accounts for about one-quarter of the market.

Some anti-smoking groups, particularly ones representing African-Americans, had wanted the law’s ban on tobacco flavorings to include menthol. Mentholated brands are preferred by three-quarters of black smokers, who also have a disproportionate share of lung cancer.

Menthol is to be studied by the F.D.A. by 2011, though, and the agency would have the power to ban it, if the evidence warrants.

The tobacco legislation was supported by Altria Group, parent company of Philip Morris with its dominant Marlboro brand, and was opposed by other major cigarette makers, who argued it would protect Philip Morris and stifle innovation.

Last year, the House passed similar legislation, but the Senate did not act in the closing weeks of Congress last fall. At the time, President Bush was threatening to veto it.

Anti-smoking advocacy groups like the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network were praising Congress on Friday."This bill is proof positive that the tobacco industry is no longer running the show on Capitol Hill and that the health of Americans is a top priority for our elected officials,” the group’s chief executive, John R. Seffrin, said in a released statement.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/business/13tobacco.html?ref=business

-----------------------

New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
October 6th, 2008

"When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco"
Written by STUART ELLIOTT

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE!!]

PEOPLE who remember when tobacco advertising was a prominent part of the media landscape — and others who recall what they learned in Marketing 101 — probably recollect that actors like Barbara Stanwyck and athletes like Mickey Mantle routinely endorsed cigarettes.

But how about doctors and other medical professionals, proclaiming the merits of various cigarette brands? Or politicians? What about cartoon characters in cigarette ads? Or children? Babies? Even Santa Claus?

Those images — some flabbergasting, even disturbing — were also used by Madison Avenue to peddle tobacco products. An exhibit that opens on Tuesday in New York presents cigarette ads from the 1920s through the early 1950s in an effort to demonstrate what has changed since then — and what may not have.

An advertisement from 1930 asserts that 20,679 physicians say that Lucky Strike cigarettes are less irritating. The ad is part of an exhibit at the Science, Industry and Business Library, part of the New York Public Library. The exhibit aims to show how Madison Avenue sold America on cigarettes.

Mickey Mantle, the Yankee outfielder, appeared in many ads for cigarettes, including this one for Viceroy in the 1950s.

An ad from 1946 asserting that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. The ads are part of a collection compiled by Dr. Robert K. Jackler of Stanford University's School of Medicine. "This era of over-the-top hucksterism went on for decades, and it was all blatantly false," Dr. Jackler said.

The exhibit, of hundreds of print ads and television commercials, is titled “Not a Cough in a Carload: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking.” The first part of the title is borrowed from a slogan for Old Gold cigarettes, a brand that subsequently boasted in its ads of being “made by tobacco men, not medicine men.”

The exhibit will be on display through Dec. 26 at Healy Hall at the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library, 188 Madison Avenue, at 34th Street. It can also be viewed online (tobacco.stanford.edu).

The exhibit is the brainchild of Dr. Robert K. Jackler of the Stanford School of Medicine, who described himself in an interview as “an accidental tourist in the world of advertising.”

“The very best artists and copywriters that money could buy” would work on cigarette accounts, said Dr. Jackler, who is also chairman of the department of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery.

“This era of over-the-top hucksterism went on for decades,” he added, “and it was all blatantly false.”

Even babies appeared as accessories in ads aimed at parents who smoked, as in this ad from 1951, before Marlboro was considered manly.

Another ad from 1946 asserting that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

An ad from 1951 asserts that Chesterfield cigarettes give off "no unpleasant after-taste."

The genesis of the exhibit was an ad from around 1930 for Lucky Strike cigarettes, which shows a doctor above a headline proclaiming that “20,679 physicians say ‘Luckies are less irritating.’ ”

“That captivated me,” Dr. Jackler said.

The Luckies doctor was joined in Dr. Jackler’s collection of about 5,000 ads by scores of scientists and medical professionals — doctors, dentists, nurses — making statements that are now known to be patently untrue. “Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking Camels!” is a typical assertion.

“I was struck by the noble depiction of the medical profession, bemused and surprised, actually,” said Kristin McDonough, the Robert and Joyce Menschel director of the Science, Industry and Business Library.

“Some of the claims being made in the ads, you did not have to be a scientist in a laboratory to dispute,” Ms. McDonough said, citing ads that smoking certain brands “does not cause bad breath” or “can never stain your teeth.”

In 1953, Mickey Mantle appeared in an ad for Camels. Mantle was among many athletes and celebrities who endorsed multiple brands during their careers.

An ad from the 1950s asserting that a dentist recommends Viceroy cigarettes.

Santa Claus, apparently, was a smoker too, and enjoyed Pall Malls in this ad from 1951.

Other approaches that could cause double takes (if not whiplash) among contemporary consumers include ads featuring Santa Claus, for brands like Pall Mall; senators like Charles Curtis of Kansas, who endorsed Lucky Strike before he was elected vice president in 1928; cartoon characters like the Flintstones and penguins, for brands like Winston and Kool; children, who appear as accessories for their smoking parents; and babies, for brands like Marlboro.

The exhibit also includes copious examples of more traditional cigarette endorsements by athletes — occasionally in uniform — and entertainers. Some promoted multiple brands during their careers; for example, Mantle, the New York Yankees outfielder, pitched brands like Camel and Viceroy, while the actress Claudette Colbert endorsed at least five, Dr. Jackler found.

A primary purpose of the exhibit, Dr. Jackler said, is to connect the dots between now and then. He likened ads from decades ago intended to encourage women to smoke — “Blow some my way,” for Chesterfield, and “You’ve come a long way, baby,” for Virginia Slims — to the campaign last year from R. J. Reynolds Tobacco to introduce a version of Camels for women called Camel No. 9.

And there is a theme that runs from vintage tobacco ads to contemporary ones, Dr. Jackler said: “It’s all about youth marketing. The intent is to turn youth, ages 12 to 22, into youthful smokers.”

Documents from the George Arents Collection on Tobacco from the archives of the Science, Industry and Business Library will also be on display. The exhibit was seen in cities like Boston and San Francisco before arriving in New York.

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html?_r=1

Turn it Down!!

2009-06-14T01:00:00.001-04:00

New York Daily Record (ydr.inyork.com)
June 11th, 2009

"Bill Would Turn Down Volume on TV Ads"
Written By CARRIE WELLS

WASHINGTON -- Congress soon might mute screaming TV-ad announcers who press viewers to "buy now!" -- if broadcasters don't beat the lawmakers to the volume button.

Under a proposal to be taken up today, the Federal Communications Commission would limit ad volumes to the average decibels of the TV show during which they appear.

Currently, TV ads can't be louder than the loudest peak in a show, said David Perry, the chairman of the broadcast production committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in New York. Ads often seem louder to viewers, he added, because a program's volume peak rarely comes just before an ad.

"Every time the ads came on they blew me out of my seat," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who introduced the bill last June. "It really turns you off, makes you think, 'I'll be damned if I give them any of my money.' "

She's a member of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, which will consider the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, aka CALM. It has 63 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate.

Broadcasters say they have their own plan to lower TV ad volume, which could take effect within a couple of months. The switch to digital TV on Friday, they say, also could help by enabling advertisers to use a wider range of sounds, instead of relying on pure volume to get attention.

Dan Jaffe, the executive vice president for government relations of the New York-based Association of National Advertisers, said that advertising and broadcasting industry leaders knew that loud commercials annoyed customers because they'd received numerous complaints.

To resolve them, broadcasters and advertisers want to set their own standards, in which a commercial would be "loud enough that a reasonable person can hear it, but not so loud you can hear it in Mongolia," Jaffe said. "Our members don't want to offend viewers."

Eshoo concedes that her bill isn't as high a priority as, say, health care or war funding, but she's confident that it will pass.

"People practically throw their arms around me when they hear about it," she said.

However, an aide to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who introduced the bill in the Senate last year, said Wicker wouldn't reintroduce the bill because he was working with broadcasters to hold down the volume.

"The senator is monitoring the progress being made and will consider reintroducing legislation if the industry cannot fix the problem on its own," Wicker's spokesman, Jahan Wilcox, said in an e-mail.

Perry, the ad agency association's spokesman on the matter, agreed that broadcasters should set their own loudness standards.

"Congress will inevitably make it more messy than it needs to be," he said. "It's like going after a fly with a pistol."

Britain set similar restrictions on loud ads last year.

LINK: http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_12566562

New Element!!

2009-06-13T01:00:00.004-04:00

BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk)
June 10th, 2009

"Periodic Table Gets a New Element"
Written By Victoria Gill

The ubiquitous periodic table will soon have a new addition - the "super-heavy" element 112.

More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery.

The team, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research, must propose a name for their find, before it can be formally added to the table.

Scientists continue the race to discover more super-heavy elements.

Professor Hofmann began his quest to add to the periodic table in 1976.

The fusion experiments he and his colleagues carried out at the centre have already revealed the existence of elements with atomic numbers 107-111.

These are known as "super-heavy elements" - their numbers represent the number of protons which, together with neutrons, give the atom the vast majority of its mass.

To create element 112, Professor Hofmann's team used a 120m-long particle accelerator to fire a beam of charged zinc atoms (or zinc ions) at lead atoms. Nuclei of the two elements merged, or fused, to form the nucleus of the new element.

These very large and heavy nuclei are also very unstable. They begin to fall apart or "decay" very soon after being formed - within a few milliseconds, in this case.

This releases energy, which scientists can measure to find out the size of the decaying nucleus.

But such experiments produce very few successful fusions, and scientists need increasingly powerful accelerators to run experiments for longer and find the elusive, unstable elements.

This is why it took such a long time for element 112 to be officially recognised by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

Its discovery had to be independently verified, and so far only four atoms have ever been observed.

IUPAC temporarily named the element ununbium, as "ununbi" is derived from the figures "one one two" in Latin; but Professor Hofmann's team now has the task of proposing its official name.

He is currently keeping the shortlist under wraps.

Powerful particle accelerators speed up the hunt for "super-heavy elements"

Working Together

Teams in Russia, the US and Japan are taking part in what Professor Hofmann described as the "friendly competition" to discover new, heavier elements.

In 2006, Professor Hofmann's competitors at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, claimed the discovery of element 118. It was made by bombarding a californium target with a beam of calcium ions.

"We have confirmed some of these results," Professor Hofmann told BBC News.

But he is now setting his sights higher. "We tried the same experiment to get to element 120. We've not seen it yet, but we believe the element exists and, with a long enough beam time, it could be produced," he said.

"It's certainly a race, and it's nice to be first."

LINK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8093374.stm

Friday Cake-Wrecking!!

2009-06-12T01:00:00.007-04:00

Check out the Cake Wrecks site for a great way to pass the time. -bv

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Cake Wrecks (cakewrecks.blogspot.com)
June 1st, 2009

"Panic at the Disco"
Written by Jen Yates

Ashley R. is the one who makes all the "cool" cakes for her friends' birthdays, so when it came time for her own birthday her friend Kat decided to order her a "super spectacular" professional cake. Kat gave the baker this photo of Ashley's favorite band, Panic at the Disco:

...and she asked that the cake look like lead singer Brendon Urie (2nd from left).

Now, this can't be the best photo of Urie out there - I mean, he's gnawing on a bunch of flowers - so you have to pity the baker a little.

Well, until you see this, that is:

"HEY YOU GUUUUYSS!!"

Now you're just pitying Ashley, right?

If you're like me, you're not going to be able to tear your eyes away from this thing for a while. That's Ok, though; I'll wait.

[whistling]

Poor Kat had the cake delivered right to Ashley's door, so she didn't see it herself until after she arrived at the party to find everyone backed wide-eyed against the walls in a defensive line. Then, when they tried to cut the thing, they found it was covered with rock-hard rice krispy treats and tasted bad to boot. Still, all was not lost: Upon discovering that the mouth and nostrils were hollow, the party-goers amused themselves by sticking stuff in them.

Ah, Ashley, it's nice to hear your friends are my kind of friends. I'd have some red licorice strips up those nostrils faster than you can say "deranged man found beaten to death by his own hand".

LINK: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/06/panic-at-disco.html

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Youtube.com (www.youtube.com)
July 25th, 2007

"Eddie Izzard-Cake or Death"
Posted by Thorn2200

A lego animation to one of comic Eddie Izzard's most popular jokes, 'Cake or Death?'

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZVjKlBCvhg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcakewrecks%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F2009%2F05%2Fsweet%2Dtweets%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

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Cake Wrecks (cakewrecks.blogspot.com)
May 26th, 2009

"An Indecent Proposal"
Written by Jen Yates

Wrecks reader Mark B. decided to propose to his girlfriend while they were on a Caribbean cruise last August. Like all good guys, he wanted to do it in a way that was both memorable and a little unique. So, after much thought, he decided to use a cake. (Told you he was a good guy.) With that settled, all that was left to do was choose the perfect words to form his request.

Well, the night before he planned to propose arrived, and Mark still hadn't decided on an inscription. As he and his girlfriend went for a walk on the beach, though, they came across the very inspiration he'd been looking for. There, written in the sand, illuminated by moonlight, was the word "dork".

Ok, so that might not seem like the most romantic of inspirations to you or me, but for Mark it was "a sign". He tells me his girlfriend was always calling him a dork at the time (with much affection, I'm sure), and so standing there that night, he knew exactly what his proposal cake should say.

Now, let's set the scene:

The meal is over, the dessert orders have been given, and Mark is sitting on pins and needles, awaiting the arrival of his proposal cake. The waiter approaches and, with a smile at Mark, places a covered tray before his unsuspecting girlfriend. Then, with a flick of the wrist, the waiter removes the lid to reveal....

this.

Huh.

Well, on the bright side, Mark, this IS quite memorable. In an incomprehensible, what-exactly-did-the-baker-think-s/he-was-writing? kind of way. Still, here's hoping your lovely lady had "many" reasons to agree to "marry" the dork in question. ;)

LINK: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/05/indecent-proposal.html

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The Capital Times, Madison, WI (www.madison.com)
February 17th, 2009

"Goat Breaks Into Home, Eats Cake"
Written by Aaron Martin

Hat Tip: Cake Wrecks

TOWN OF WESTFORD -- What do you get when a goat follows a dog into a house?

For Sherry Shirley of Westford, the answer is a big mess.

When she opened the front door of her home on Lake Road to let her dog in Saturday morning, a full-grown goat burst into the house, jumped onto a kitchen counter and helped itself to a freshly baked chocolate cake, according to the Dodge County Sheriff's Department.

Deputies responded to a call from Shirley at 11:43 Saturday morning, but a neighbor had dragged the goat from the home by its horns before officers arrived, patrol captain Molly Soblewski said.

"The goat didn't do a lot of damage. It knocked some dishes to the floor that broke and began eating the chocolate cake she had just made," Soblewski said.

The chocolate cake caper, however, was far from a perfect crime. Deputies followed the goat's tracks to a nearby farm on Mill Road and had it behind bars by 12:35 p.m. Saturday.

Soblewski said the owners of the goat will not be cited.

"It was just an unfortunate circumstance," she said. "I feel sorry for the lady, but it is kind of funny."

LINK: http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/438982

Deadline!!

2009-06-11T11:05:00.004-04:00

Youtube (www.youtube.com)
June 5th, 2009

"DEADLINE Post-It Stop Motion"
Posted by bunliu

"Deadline"
Directed by Bang-yao Liu
Sound design by Shaun Burdick
Music by Röyksopp

bunliu: "This is my senior project at Savannah College of Art and Design. Where my idea comes from is that every time when I am busy, I feel that I am not fighting with my works, I am fighting with those post-it notes and deadline. I manipulating the post-it notes to do pixel-like stop motion and there are some interactions between real actor and post-its. Here is the making of:

Just want to say thank you to every one
The responses are really beyond my expectation...
Especially thank to my teacher and my friends who help me a lot.

Thank to Ashton Kutcher...that was unbelievable for me!!!

Appreciated you like it !! : )"

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs

"MAKING OF" LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJYvaCCB3c