Father Dan

Boycott 2008 Beijing China Olympics - Why?

2008-04-24T19:59:00.001-07:00

Border Agents Can Search Laptops Without Cause

2008-04-22T18:09:00.001-07:00

From Wired: Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers' laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government's power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.

The unanimous three-judge decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were "an extension of our own memory" and thus too personal to allow the government to search them without cause. Instead, the earlier ruling said, Customs agents would need some reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime had occurred in order to search a traveler's laptop.

The 9th's ruling did not, however, clarify whether a traveler has to help the government search his computer, by providing the login information, or what would happen when the government decided to search a laptop with encrypted data on the drive. The defendant in the case can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Court is unlikely to take up an issue that two separate appeals courts have agreed upon.

In the meantime, travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company's confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun.

Where to Send Your Cancer Research Dollars

2008-04-15T10:24:00.001-07:00

Corporations spend millions of dollars spent on cancer research - BILLIONS of dollars . . . no luck. Joe Average rigs together pie pans and hot dogs, potentially comes up with a cure.

Abstinence

2008-04-14T14:34:00.001-07:00

Corporation Kills You? Not Their Fault! Sue The Government.

2008-04-08T17:14:00.001-07:00

One more way Corporate America and their lawyers are "Fuck You" to consumers, decency and ethics. From the New York Times:

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product - even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say.

The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted.

More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson, asserting that users of the Ortho Evra patch suffered heart attacks, strokes and, in 40 cases, death. From 2002 to 2006, the food and drug agency received reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug.

Documents and e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson, made public as part of the lawsuits against the company, show that even before the drug agency approved the product in 2001, the company’s own researchers found that the patch delivered far more estrogen each day than low-dose pills. When it reported the results publicly, the company reduced the numbers by 40 percent.

The F.D.A. did not warn the public of the potential risks until November 2005 - six years after the company’s own study showed the high estrogen releases. At that point, the product’s label was changed, and prescriptions fell 80 percent, to 187,000 by last February from 900,000 in March 2004.

Gloria Vanderham, a Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, said the company acted responsibly.

“We have regularly disclosed data to the F.D.A., the medical community and the public in a timely manner,” Ms. Vanderham said. “Ortho Evra is a safe and effective birth control option for women when used according to the labeling.”

But Janet Abaray, a plaintiff’s lawyer from Cincinnati, said that Johnson & Johnson took advantage of an agency overwhelmed by its many responsibilities.

“Johnson & Johnson knew that F.D.A. does not have the funding or the manpower to police drug companies,” Ms. Abaray said.

A series of independent assessments have concluded that the agency is poorly organized, scientifically deficient and short of money. In February, its commissioner, Andrew C. von Eschenbach, acknowledged that the agency faces a crisis and may not be “adequate to regulate the food and drugs of the 21st century.”

The F.D.A. does not test experimental medicines but relies on drug makers to report the results of their own tests completely and honestly. Even when companies fail to follow agency rules, officials rarely seek to penalize them. “These are scientists, not cops,” said David Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown Law School.

Last month, at a trial over the schizophrenia drug Zyprexa, Dr. John Gueriguian, a scientist who worked at the F.D.A. for two decades, testified that the agency did not always ask for strong warnings even if it believed a drug was risky. Companies typically oppose warnings, and the agency knows it must compromise on its requests or face years of delay, Dr. Gueriguian said.

“We at the F.D.A. know what we can obtain and we cannot obtain,” Dr. Gueriguian said. “We have many, many problems, and we have a management system - what we can’t obtain we will not ask.”

For years, top officials at the agency acknowledged that lawsuits could aid the agency’s oversight of safety issues. In the last decade, suits over Zyprexa, the withdrawn pain pill Vioxx, the withdrawn diabetes medicine Rezulin, the withdrawn heartburn medicine Propulsid and several antidepressants have shown that companies played down the risks of their medicines and failed to disclose clinical trials to the public even as they have aggressively marketed their drugs.

But now, the agency says a proliferation of lawsuits could lead to an overlapping patchwork of rules that would burden companies and might discourage patients from taking useful medicines.

The Ortho case, however, suggests that Johnson & Johnson, like other drug makers, is not always quick to tell the F.D.A. about potential problems with its medicines.

In 1996, the company told the agency it planned to develop the Ortho Evra patch in part because it would be likely to expose women to less estrogen than pills. The company suggested that the body would not break down hormones delivered via the patch as readily as the pill, so lower doses could be used to achieve contraception. And unlike the pill, which must be taken daily, the patch is changed weekly.

High doses of estrogen are known to raise the risk for blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes.

But a crucial trial completed in 1999 showed that the patch delivered 30 to 38 micrograms of estrogen into the bloodstream each day, according to company documents.

Because up to half of the estrogen in pills is lost in the digestive tract before it reaches the blood, the study suggested that the patch delivered an amount of estrogen that could be as high as a pill containing 76 micrograms of estrogen. In 1988, the F.D.A. banned birth control pills with more than 50 micrograms of estrogen.

But the study’s author, Dr. Larry Abrams, who has since retired from Johnson & Johnson, decided to apply a “correction factor” to the results of the 1999 trial, according to documents. He claimed that the patch actually delivered about 40 percent less estrogen than the trial results showed - about 20 micrograms a day.

Dr. Abrams made the change, according to his deposition, to adjust for the different ways the body metabolizes hormones from pills and patches. This adjustment was never part of the study protocol, a plan filed with the F.D.A..

“The judgment was made by the pharmacokeneticists at the time that in doing the calculation, it was probably appropriate to make that correction,” Bob Tucker, a lawyer representing Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview Thursday. “Later on when people looked at it in a different time frame, they concluded that probably the correction shouldn’t be applied.” The company mentioned its decision to use the “correction factor” only once in a 435-page report filed with the F.D.A., and then only in a complex mathematical formula. When the study was published in 2002, there was no reference to the alteration.

Mr. Tucker said that the F.D.A. was aware of the “correction factor.”

Clinical trials conducted before the patch was approved raised other red flags, as patients complained of breast soreness and nausea. “The side effects seem related” to high estrogen doses, one company scientist wrote in an e-mail message.

Two other studies, one conducted in 1999 and another in 2003, confirmed that the patch released more estrogen than the pill. Still, Johnson & Johnson delayed reporting those results to the food and drug agency, according to documents that have been made public in lawsuits.

After the patch was approved, the company marketed it as releasing 20 micrograms of estrogen to the blood every 24 hours, a figure it now acknowledges was inaccurate. It also acknowledges that the patch releases more estrogen than the pill but says that the estrogen released under the two methods cannot be directly compared.

The New York Times provided the drug agency with a copy of a court brief and asked whether agency medical reviewers were aware of the “correction factor.”

Rita Chappelle, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, replied, “At present, we are reviewing the allegations and cannot comment further at this time.”

Prescriptions for the patch grew rapidly after its introduction, reaching more than 900,000 by March 2004, according to data from Wolters Kluwer, a company that tracks prescription trends. But as the use of the patch rose, so did reports of side effects.

By 2004, after the death of Zakiya Kennedy, an 18-year-old college freshman in New York, food and drug officials had become concerned.

In November 2005, the agency announced that it had placed a warning that the patch “exposes women to higher levels of estrogen than most birth control pills.”

Since then, an epidemiological study has shown that women on the patch can have as much as double the risk of blood clots than those taking pills. And prescriptions for the patch have fallen 80 percent.

Still, lawyers for Johnson & Johnson say that patients should not be allowed to sue the company because the F.D.A. approved the patch and its label.

“F.D.A. is responsible for making those decisions,” said John Winter, a lawyer for the company.

Judge David A. Katz of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio is expected to rule soon on whether any of the lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson can go forward.

In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear a separate pre-emption case involving Wyeth, another drug company. Chris Seeger, a plaintiffs’ lawyer who has about 125 Ortho Evra cases, said he expected the court to rule in Wyeth’s favor.

“Our lawsuits are the ultimate check against the mistake made by the government, or fraud made by the companies against the government, or just an underfunded bureaucracy stretched thin,” he said.

Best License Plate, Ever.

2008-04-06T10:59:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T13:07:00.001-07:00

Holy Feckin' Friday

2008-03-21T10:16:00.001-07:00

On this particular Friday, March 21, it seems almost no believer of any sort will be left without his or her own holiday. In what is statistically, at least, a once-in-a-millennium combination, the following will all occur on the 21st:

Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross. (To be followed in two days by Easter Sunday, to mark his Resurrection).

Purim, a Jewish festival celebrating the biblical book of Esther

Narouz, the Persian New Year, which is observed with Islamic elaboration in Iran and all the "stan" countries, as well as by Zoroastrians and Baha'is.

Eid Milad an Nabi, the Birth of the Prophet, which is celebrated by some but not all Sunni Muslims and, though officially beginning on Thursday, is often marked on Friday.

Small Holi, Hindu, an Indian festival of bonfires, to be followed on Saturday by Holi, a kind of Mardi Gras.

Magha Puja, a celebration of the Buddha's first group of followers, marked primarily in Thailand.

The Best Version of "Danny Boy" Ever.

2008-03-17T09:55:00.001-07:00

I can tell you how many times someone has sung the first two lines of Danny Boy to me, thinking it was a bonding experience and not realizing the song is horribly depressing when you actually know ALL the lyrics.

Well this version brought me to tears. Beautiful.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T09:01:00.001-07:00

Happy Pi Day!

2008-03-14T10:46:00.001-07:00

I hope you're getting your numberficaton on and mathematizin' like a mofo. Word!

Get out there and square some root! Lay down some powers!

Don't be square or all anticomplimentarily triangular. Enumerate!

P.S. I like your ratios!

We Make Movies. Video Movies.

2008-03-12T13:54:00.001-07:00

Meet Fred and Sharon. They make movies. Video Movies. They could improve your life.

Great Hilary Clinton Quote

2008-03-12T09:21:00.001-07:00

Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle.

Heard over at the Daily KOS

The Famous Cups and Balls Trick - With A Twist!

2008-03-10T10:37:00.001-07:00

This is my friend Kent performing the famous "Cups and Balls" trick with a twist . . .

19 Uses For Vodka

2008-03-10T09:51:00.001-07:00

Aside from being a fantastic drink, vodka has many uses which you may not have known about. Since vodka is one of the world's most popular drinks, many of us have a bottle handy in the home. And since its typically filtered and pure, it makes a handy liquid to have around.
Here are a few uses:

To remove a bandage painlessly, saturate the bandage with vodka. The solvent dissolves adhesive
To clean the caulking around bathtubs and showers, fill a trigger-spray bottle with vodka, spray the caulking, let set five minutes and wash clean. The alcohol in the vodka kills mold and mildew.
Clean jewelry. Soak the jewelry in vodka for five minutes, then rinse, and dry.
Clean lipstick from clothing. Rub the stain with vodka, then throw into your regular wash.
Remove the glue left behind by a bumper sticker. Rub the glue with a soft, clean cloth soaked with vodka
Prolong the life of razors by filling a cup with vodka and letting your safety razor blade soak in the alcohol after shaving. The vodka disinfects the blade and prevents rusting.
Spray vodka on vomit stains, scrub with a brush, then blot dry.
Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face as an astringent to cleanse the skin and tighten pores.
Add a jigger of vodka to a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo. The alcohol cleanses the scalp, removes toxins from hair, and stimulates the growth of healthy hair.
Fill a sixteen-ounce trigger-spray bottle and spray bees or wasps to kill them.
Pour one-half cup vodka and one-half cup water in a Ziploc freezer bag and freeze for a slushy, refreshable ice pack for aches, pain or black eyes.
Fill a clean, used mayonnaise jar with freshly packed lavender flowers, fill the jar with vodka, seal the lid tightly and set in the sun for three days. Strain liquid through a coffee filter, then apply the tincture to aches and pains.
To relieve a fever, use a washcloth to rub vodka on your chest and back as a liniment.
To cure foot odor, wash your feet with vodka.
Vodka will disinfect and alleviate a jellyfish sting.
Pour vodka over an area affected with poison ivy to remove the urushiol oil from your skin.
Swish a shot of vodka over an aching tooth. Allow your gums to absorb some of the alcohol to numb the pain.
Soothe a sore throat. Add a tablespoon of vodka to glass of warm water and gargle. The alcohol helps numb the sore throat.
Eliminate swimmer's ear. If you don't have rubbing alcohol, fill an ear dropper with vodka, and squeeze it into the affected ear, then let it drain out

What Kind of American Are You?

2008-03-10T09:43:00.001-07:00

Oh For Christ's Sake.

2008-03-05T12:10:00.001-08:00

Has anyone ever heard of Quality Control?

British Protecting Local Textards by Padding Lampposts

2008-03-05T12:02:00.001-08:00

Padded lampposts are being trialled in a London street to protect inattentive pedestrians.

A pilot scheme has been launched in Brick Lane after it was found to have the highest number of 'walking and texting' injuries in the country.

A study carried out by 118 118 found one in ten people has hurt themselves while focused on their mobile phone screen.

The charity Living Streets is so concerned that it has teamed up with the directory enquiries service to test a scheme to wrap up the nation's lampposts.

A poll will be carried out on Brick Lane to gauge the response of locals.

If successful, the concept will be rolled out in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool.

Bertrand Russell - "Why I'm Not A Christian"

2008-02-21T08:39:00.001-08:00

Two Excerpts . . .

Fear, the Foundation of Religion

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

This Makes Me Want To Beat Someone!

2008-02-19T14:00:00.001-08:00

I was at a local "British-Style" pub the other night and saw this ad in the men's room:

Note the close up with someone's helpful penning:

Advice For Americans From Down Under

2008-02-18T09:24:00.001-08:00

Just replace "Australia" with "America". . .

Contest: A Six-Word Motto for the U.S.?

2008-02-15T10:22:00.001-08:00

Inspired by a recent trip to London, this recent Times article about England’s reluctant search for a national motto (suggestions range from "No Motto Please, We’re British" to "One Mighty Empire, Slightly Used"), as well as by this new book on six-word memoirs.

Write a six-word motto for the U.S. of A.

"Some are more equal than others."
(Adapted from the great George Orwell)

"America….at least we’re not Canada."

"Do you want fries with that?"

"One Nation. One God. Screw You."

"Let Freedom Ring (void where prohibited.)"

"… or the terrorists have already won …"

"Land of the Free (see disclaimer)"

See the complete list of at least 1250 more here.

Happy Valentine's Day - I Love You

2008-02-14T09:04:00.001-08:00

Google: Can You Find Chuck Norris?

2008-02-08T20:01:00.001-08:00

1. Go to Google.

2. Type: "find chuck norris"

3. Click: I'm Feeling Lucky

Tool: Which Presidential Candidates Align With You On Issues?

2008-02-02T18:04:00.001-08:00

Glassbooth's simple quiz connects you to the 2008 presidential candidate that represents your beliefs the best.

The presidential election process should not be a popularity contest. Who actually agrees with you on the issues that are important to you?

Glassbooth is a nonprofit organization that is creating innovative ways to access political information. An informed and interested democracy is a powerful thing. As an organization acting in the public’s interest, they are very serious about their core principles.

All information used in the Glassbooth process is of the highest accuracy and integrity. No process is perfect though.

Glassbooth's success is contingent on nonbias in their process. They have worked closely with partners and experts to insure their language is in no way misleading.

Glassbooth does not affiliate with any political party, political organization, or ideology.

Find out which candidates you most closely align with and why.

God-Man and Human-Man: Superheroes

2008-02-02T15:07:00.001-08:00

Just Ask Jesus

2008-02-01T12:10:00.001-08:00

I saw a billboard that said:

"Need help? Call Jesus 1-800-005-3787"

Out of curiosity, I did just that.

A Mexican showed up with a tow truck.

Average Joe Judgment Criteria

2008-01-31T11:14:00.001-08:00

MLK Rolling Over In His Grave

2008-01-30T18:32:00.001-08:00

Monday night Channel 3 News, Corpus Christi, Texas.

What It Means To Be Irish

2008-01-30T12:30:00.001-08:00

1. You will never play professional basketball

2. You swear very well

3. At least one of your cousins is a fireman, cop, bar owner, funeral home owner or holds a political office.

4. You think you sing very well

5. You have no idea how to make a long story short.

6. There isn't a big difference between losing your temper or killing someone.

7. Most of your childhood meals were boiled

8. You have never hit your head on a ceiling

9. You spent a good portion of your childhood kneeling in prayer

10. You're strangely poetic after a few beers

11. You are therefore, poetic a lot.

12. You will be punched for no good reason....a lot.

13. Some punches directed at you are legacies of past generations

14. Many of your sisters and/or cousins are named Mary, Catherine or Eileen

15. Someone in your family is incredibly cheap, It is more likely you

16 You may not know the words, but that doesn't stop you from singing

17 You can't wait for the other guy to stop talking before you start talking

18 You are not nearly as funny as you think you are......but what you lack in talent, you make up for in frequency.

19 There wasn't a huge difference between your last wake and your last keg party.

20 You are, or you know someone named Murph.

21 If you don't know Murph, then you know Mac, If you don't know a Murph or a Mac then you know Sully

22 You are genetically incapable of keeping a secret

23 You have Irish Alzheimer's ......you forget everything but the grudges!

24 Irish Stew is a euphemism for "boiled leftovers"

25 All of your losses are alcohol related (loss of virginity, loss of drivers license, loss of money, loss of job, loss of significant other, loss of teeth from punch...) but it never stops you from drinking - EVER!!

Seven Medical Myths You Believe

2008-01-29T10:21:00.001-08:00

Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day: The researchers who conducted the study could find no clinical evidence to support this notion. But they did dig up an article from the November 2002 American Journal of Physiology that documented the lack of evidence behind this popular recommendation. You do need to be well hydrated, but research suggests that the liquids most people drink daily - juice, milk, and decaffeinated beverages - will do the trick.
We use only 10 percent of our brains: This is a real oldie that traces its history back to 1907, but didn't originate, as once believed, with Albert Einstein. Now that we know much more about neuroscience than we did 100 years ago, we can say for sure that we use much more than 10 percent of the brain, say the BMJ researchers. In fact, high-tech methods of studying the brain have not identified any inactive areas.
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death: This disturbing, gruesome image is pure "moonshine" according to forensic anthropologist William Maples, who was quoted in the BMJ study. However, he explained that dehydration of the body after death can cause retraction of the skin around hair and nails, giving the illusion that they have grown. All tissues require energy to sustain their functions, and no such thing is possible once the mechanism that promotes normal growth shuts down at death.
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight: You can get eyestrain and have difficulty focusing when trying to read in poor lighting, but these symptoms have no permanent effect on eyesight. One current theory holds that nearsightedness (myopia) might be caused by reading in dim light or holding books too close to the face. But consider this: rates of myopia are increasing and are higher now then they were centuries ago when people read by candlelight. What's more, the BMJ researchers found hundreds of expert opinions that conclude that reading in dim light doesn't permanently hurt your eyes.
Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser: No, it does not. This popular notion was disproved as early as 1928 and more recent studies have confirmed that shaving has no effect on hair growth (or regrowth), write the BMJ investigators. They speculate that when shaved hair regrows, it lacks the fine taper seen at the end of unshaven hair, making it appear coarser. And the fact that it hasn't been exposed to light may make it seem darker than other hair.
Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals: The BMJ credits this widespread belief (and the origin of those signs in hospitals warning against the use of mobile phones) to a Wall Street Journal article citing a medical journal report of more than 100 incidents of suspected electromagnetic interference with medical devices before 1993. But studies in England and the U.S. have found little in the way of interference and few serious effects. The BMJ cited a 2007 study that showed no interference at all in 300 tests in 75 treatment rooms. Indeed, the journal reported on a survey of anesthetists that showed use of mobile phones by physicians was associated with a reduced risk of medical error or injury resulting from delays in communication. Let's see how long it takes hospitals to react to these findings and change their policies with regard to cell phone use.
Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy: Not so. Here, the myth is that the tryptophan in turkey causes the drowsiness. This amino acid is known to cause drowsiness, but the truth is that there's as much tryptophan in pork and cheese as there is in turkey. What's more, as the BMJ researchers noted that for tryptophan to promote sleep, you need to ingest it on an empty stomach (with no protein present) - something that's unlikely at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Other factors are probably to blame for post-meal drowsiness: any big meal can make you sleepy because of a decrease in blood flow and oxygenation to the brain. And then, of course, there's the wine.

A Ticket To Hell Has Never Been Funnier

2008-01-27T16:01:00.001-08:00

Free Hugs

2008-01-21T10:30:00.001-08:00

Music is mediocre, the video is outstanding:

A video on YouTube was released on September 22, 2006, and by January 4, 2008, had gained just over 22 million views.According to the video summary, it was recorded in Sydney. In the video, the main character who is giving out hugs, (identified as "Juan Mann", a pseudonym and a homonym of "one man"), walks through the Pitt Street Mall holding up a sign with the words FREE HUGS written on it. Music for the video is provided by Sick Puppies, an Australian band that Mann met a year earlier. Shimon Moore, the lead singer of the Sick Puppies who worked at the mall, shot the footage which he later compiled into a video for the song.

Initial distrust of Juan's motives eventually gave way to a gradual increase of people willing to be hugged, with other huggers (male and female) helping distribute them. After some time, security guards, then police told them they must stop, as Mann had not obtained public liability insurance worth $25 million for his actions. Mann and his companions used a petition to attempt to convince authorities that his campaign should be allowed to continue without the insurance. His petition reached 10,000 signatures. He submitted it and was allowed to continue giving free hugs.

On October 23, 2007, Juan Mann announced his residential address online and offered an open invitation to anyone to come over and chat on-camera as part of his 'open-house project'. Mann hosted 80 guests over 36 days. On November 25th, Mann's landlord threatened him with eviction, so he launched an online appeal.

Juan Mann has set up a website, Free Home Campaign, to find a free place to stay.

More information at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Hugs_Campaign

The Little Girl and Her Goldfish

2008-01-14T16:52:00.001-08:00

Mohammed The Traveling Bear

2008-01-12T16:37:00.001-08:00

Mohammed the traveling bear would like to travel all over the world. Please share him with your friends!

Indian Music Video Meaning Revealed - With Subtitles

2008-01-11T17:49:00.001-08:00

Thanks Rick.

Is This Your Picture? No? Thank God.

2008-01-11T17:46:00.001-08:00

Thoughtful Lance. Mirthful Lance. Two sides of a delightful coin.

Drake won Bitchin'est Senior Mullet by a landslide.

That dude wore a tie for nothing.

The Purvis family made several stops along the Oregon Trail to document their six-month journey. This photo was taken just two weeks before the dysentery took Momma to Jesus.

I wanted a shot like this for my wedding. The Mrs. said no.

It's called a leisure suit, ladies and germs, and if you didn't have one in the early 70s, you were a big fat loser. Mine was teal. I wore it with a silk floral shirt and a long necklace with a football player pendant that we all got at that year's team banquet. I was THE MAN.

Once they had two or three, how did they ever find enough time alone to make more?

No Comment

Olan Mills backdrop #4: Bucolic Meadow with Split Rail Fence. Is that an animal carcass behind her?

A pose like this will get you kicked right out of the Convention.

Oh, this is super. What better way to capture the charm and innocence of a child than to plunk him down amid the coarse trappings of a life lived in pursuit of wealth -- oversized bills, an adding machine and the Wall Street Journal -- and make him sit inside a briefcase? (They probably just fold up the little demon right in there to carry him home.) The finishing touch is the globe, which completes the portrait of the young Antichrist in Chess King vest and Red Goose loafers, plotting his takeover of the world (insert maniacal laugh). That is, as soon as someone changes his poopy diaper.

Bobbi isn't the first waitress to fall for her manager, but she and Dale both got fired from Shoney's.

Just a typical afternoon down on the plantation. In a business suit. Y'know, for a budget meeting with the slaves.

Dawn and her recently exhumed sister, Gorgotha, pose with Scraps.

This photo isn't discolored. The 70s really were that Orange .

At the Southern Baptist Convention?

Olan Mills Backdrop #11: The Library, one of their most popular themes, as seen in this photo of the young Unabomber and his wife.

The Library might be more believable if the shelves weren't sloping downhill

Patrick broke ranks and chose drag over the bow tie

You'd think Pearle Vision would throw in another two pairs for free.

Grapefruit smuggling isn't a crime, but posing it in profile should be.

Kenneth and his prom date

I got a 20 that says he drives a Camaro.

Hiroshima , 1945. The last known photo of Kelli and Senor Loco .
e this was Dad's idea.

Someone spent money on this.

It's so cute when couples have matching hairdos

Talk about a third wheel...

Nothing says 1973 quite like denim and helmet hair

B-52's, the early years.

She's looking for the speaker that's piping in "Muskrat Love" so she can blast it with her laser eyes.

Hey America! Time To Get Your FREE Credit Report

2008-01-10T10:00:00.001-08:00

I get mine every January.

Q: How do I order my free report?

A: The three nationwide consumer reporting companies have set up a central website, a toll-free telephone number, and a mailing address through which you can order your free annual report.

To order, visit annualcreditreport.com, call 1-877-322-8228, or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. The form is on the back of this brochure; or you can print it from ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/credit. Do not contact the three nationwide consumer reporting companies individually. They are providing free annual credit reports only through annualcreditreport.com, 1-877-322-8228, and Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

You may order your reports from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies at the same time, or you can order your report from each of the companies one at a time. The law allows you to order one free copy of your report from each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies every 12 months.

A Warning About "Imposter" Websites

Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law - annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer "free credit reports," "free credit scores," or "free credit monitoring" are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the "free" product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly "free" service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don't cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

Some "imposter" sites use terms like "free report" in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these "imposter" sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.

annualcreditreport.com and the nationwide consumer reporting companies will not send you an email asking for your personal information. If you get an email, see a pop-up ad, or get a phone call from someone claiming to be from annualcreditreport.com or any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies, do not reply or click on any link in the message. It's probably a scam. Forward any such email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

Primal Scream - Country Girl

2008-01-08T00:19:00.001-08:00

I love these guys. Part of the original Manchester / Madchester Sound. Primal Scream.

Science, Evolution, and Creationism - A Free Book

2008-01-06T12:02:00.001-08:00

How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other explanations with which they are more comfortable.

In the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes.

Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource.

Jump to this book's table of contents to begin reading online for free: Full Text.

Purchase Copies for Distribution, Get More Details: Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Quiz For You To Select Your Presidential Candidate

2008-01-03T10:54:00.001-08:00

Free from ads, sound bites and vitriol - answer a series of questions about major issues, and you can quickly learn which candidates are most closely aligned with your views. You'll be able to learn more about each candidate, hear his/her positions on many issues, and find out how your results compare with those of others who take the survey.

This survey is not designed to tell you what candidate you should vote for. It is intended only to help you think about your positions and then introduce you to the candidates and their positions.

I don't have a TV. I listen to Satellite radio. I use Firefox web browser and block ads on web pages. I don't see or hear commercials. Life is pretty damn good.

So apart from reading candidate web sites or sites with an agenda it's pretty hard to get a good feel for the presidential candidates.

I really don't care if someone drank a beer when they were 12, changed their mind on an issue as they got older, or if their second cousin once removed runs a naked puppy-dogs web site, I care about where they stand on the issues.

I took the quiz, got my top three and am reading up on them. I am not going to tell you who they are or what my positions are - that's not the point.

Take The Survey -- Check Out Candidate Positions

The cumulative results are pretty damn surprising too - not anywhere near what one would expect by the ads and commentary the mass media feeds you.

Scientists Find Yet Another Missing Evolutionary Link

2008-01-03T09:42:00.001-08:00

The crystal structure of a molecule from a primitive fungus has served as a time machine to show researchers more about the evolution of life from the simple to the complex.

By studying the three-dimensional version of the fungus protein bound to an RNA molecule, scientists from Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin have been able to visualize how life progressed from an early self-replicating molecule that also performed chemical reactions to one in which proteins assumed some of the work.

"Now we can see how RNA progressed to share functions with proteins," said Alan Lambowitz, director of the University of Texas Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology. "This was a critical missing step."

Results of the study were published in Thursday's (Jan. 3) issue of the journal Nature.

"It's thought that RNA, or a molecule like it, may have been among the first molecules of life, both carrying genetic code that can be transmitted from generation to generation and folding into structures so these molecules could work inside cells," said Purdue structural biologist Barbara Golden. "At some point, RNA evolved and became capable of making proteins. At that point, proteins started taking over roles that RNA played previously - acting as catalysts and building structures in cells."

In order to show this and learn more about the evolution from RNA to more complex life forms, Lambowitz and Paul Paukstelis, lead author and a research scientist at the Texas institute, needed to be able to see how the fungus' protein worked. That's where Golden's team joined the effort and crystallized the molecule at Purdue's macromolecular crystallization facility.

"Obviously, we can't see the process of moving from RNA to RNA and proteins and then to DNA, without a time machine," Golden said. "But by using this fungus protein, we can see this process occurring in modern life."

Looking at the crystal, the scientists saw two things, Golden said. One was that this protein uses two completely different molecular surfaces to perform its two roles. The second is that the protein seems to perform the same job that RNA performed in other simple organisms.

"The crystal structure provides a snapshot of how, during evolution, protein molecules came to assist RNA molecules in their biological functions and ultimately assumed roles previously played by RNA," Golden said.

Before the crystallization, Lambowitz, Paukstelis and their research team at The University of Texas at Austin were involved in a long-term project to study the function of the basic cellular workhorse protein and other evolutionary fossils from the fungus. In earlier work, the scientists studied a different protein that showed how biochemical processes could progress from a world with RNA and protein to DNA.

The protein, as found in the fungus, had adapted to take over some of the RNA molecule's chemical reaction jobs inside cells. The protein stabilizes the RNA molecule - called an intron - so that the RNA can cut out non-functional genetic material and splice together the ends of a functional gene, Paukstelis said.

"The RNA molecule in our study is capable of performing a specific chemical reaction on itself, but it requires a protein for this reaction to take place efficiently," he said.

This basic scientific information eventually could lead to clinical applications.

"This work has potential applications in the development of antifungal drugs to battle potentially deadly pathogens; that's one of the next steps," Lambowitz said. "Another is to produce more detailed structures so that we can understand the ancient chemical reactions."

Junk Food Ad Ban Comes Into Force In UK

2008-01-02T11:18:00.001-08:00

A total ban on adverts for unhealthy food and drink products around TV programmes for under-16s has come into force.

It extends similar restrictions already in place for shows aimed at children under 10 years old.

The new curbs affect commercials for food and drink products high in fat, salt and sugar.

The measures were developed by the communications regulator Ofcom in response to rising levels of childhood obesity in the UK.

Lithium Batteries Now Deadly Terrorist Weapons Of Doom!

2007-12-28T10:35:00.001-08:00

via BoingBoing: The TSA has discovered that on January 1st, 2008 lithium batteries are going to become more dangerous than they were on December 31, 2007. Thankfully, they've taken action by forbidding them beginning in 2008.

Lithium Metal Battery, Spare or Installed (over 2 grams lithium):
In checked bag? Forbidden
Carry-on? Forbidden

The Department of Transportation's web site doesn't say why they're forbidden. They just are. Link

Christ, It is such a pain in the ass to fly. Is anyone actually falling for this bullshit?

Hanging With Jack

2007-12-27T15:23:00.001-08:00

Nice Guy!

Suggested Christmas Presents

2007-12-20T19:59:00.001-08:00

I couldn't have made up a better list myself . . . from The Radar:

1. A partially stamped Subway "Sub Club" card

2. A litter of feral cats

3. A postcard that reads, "On vacation in Bahamas. Will send gift from airport."

4. A replica lightsaber, "Because I saw how you were eyeing mine."

5. One free oboe lesson

6. That beige cardigan the receptionist used to wear before she died

7. $500 cash in a paper sack

8. A Google Earth shot of the recipient's childhood home

9. A soap dispenser, freshly ripped from the men's room wall

10. A book of solved New York Times crossword puzzles, with the answers whited out

11. A pack of gold paper plates that reads, "It's Joshua's bar mitzvah!"

12. A nacho cheese-scented candle

13. Thong panties stamped with your corporate logo

14. "Most Enthusiastic Archer, Camp Seagull 1983" trophy

15. A framed black-and-white photo of your father and his 'Nam buddies, posing with a dead Charlie

16. A video of you playing air guitar to "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

17. A firm handshake and a sincere "Happy holidays"

18. A tank top with the word "wench" written in puffy paint across the front

19. A detailed map of local bomb shelters

20. A $100 donation, in the recipient's name, to your daughter's college fund

21. A Swiss Miss cocoa packet you've stuffed with marshmallows picked from other Swiss Miss cocoa packets

22. Your old bedspread from college

23. The key chain floatie that came with your Nautica jacket

24. A Christmas wreath fashioned out of Equal packets

25. A jarful of sand from your recent Jersey Shore vacation

26. A "Diversity Training Day '03" mouse pad

27. A hardcover edition of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch, with the inscription: "Just as long as they kill the in-laws too, right?! Have a great Christmas!"

28-32. One ... (28) corn holder; (29) earplug; (30) antique chopstick; (31) ski pole; (32) defibrillator paddle

33. A 1991 Nissan Stanza with 216,000 miles and no tires

34. An answering machine message from Andy Rooney condemning microwave ovens

35. "Absolutely nothing, since I worked for what I have and believe others should, too."

36. A tab of herbal ecstasy

37. Deployment orders to Iraq

38. Footloose on LaserDisc

39. A handwritten coupon: "Good for one free erotic back rub!!!"

40. An autographed picture of Lee Iacocca

41. A charcoal sketch of you doing aerobics

42. A "World's Horniest Human Resources Director" mug

43. A $1 gift card to the Dollar Store

44. Jose Cuervo sweatpants

45. A handmade coupon entitling the bearer to "Unlimited forgiveness upon accepting Christ as personal savior"

46. A paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code with the cover ripped off

47. One hamster, two tiny reindeer horns

48. A stack of Soldier of Fortune back issues

49. A bottle of Old Grand-Dad Whiskey with the note, "For when you fall off the wagon!"

50. Whatever's available in the vending machine

51. The instruction booklet for changing the printer cartridge, "personalized" with your coworker's name inserted into every sentence

52. A copy of the "i really miss u & need you back!!!" mixtape you made for your college ex

53. One developmentally delayed foster child

54. A box of matzo for "the Jew"

55. A "sex machine" vanity license plate for your coworker's wheelchair

56. The sixth draft of your first screenplay

57. A one-way bus ticket to Milwaukee

58. The actual sunglasses Kurt Russell wore in Captain Ron

59. Two copies of enRoute, Air Canada's in-flight magazine

60. A bolo tie fashioned from an old computer mouse

61. A "gently used" savedarfur.org koosh ball

62. A pair of slippers you found along the highway

63. Blueprints of your office building with key "security and infrastructure vulnerabilities" highlighted

64. An "Every day is Earth Day" reusable grocery bag

65. A cracked DVD of Miracle on 34th Street, with a note to "return to library after finishing, thanks."

66. A bib with your dog's face on it

67. An e-greeting from Michael Moore

68. An escape route placard from the Red Roof Inn

69. A shot glass filled with Motrin

70. For your Muslim coworker, a crucifix inscribed, "He died for your sins most of all."

71. Interoffice E-Mails: The Best of 2007, printed and staple-bound

72. A list of death-row inmates desperately in need of pen pals

73. Two pounds of Chex Mix (your own special recipe, made with just a "touch" of mayo)

74. An IOU good for one shout-out in the corporate newsletter

75. A spoken letter to your future self, recorded on a cassette tape when you were 11

76. A blurry Polaroid photograph of a defiled toilet, with a note that says, "I know it was you."

77. A lock of your baby's hair

78. "A hint: your breath all stanky" note

79. A rape whistle

80. Your 200-page novel about the dissolution of a marriage that "could really use some line edits"

81. A lifetime subscription to the Watchtower

82. An envelope full of overdue parking tickets you've been stealing off the recipient's windshield since last Christmas

83. An invitation to touch your biceps (once)

84. A new VCR!

85. A homemade rickshaw

86. A $50 gift certificate to Planned Parenthood

87. A five-pack of Tequiza

88. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex, with key positions circled and annotated

89. The Women of Meat Rendering & Processing pinup calendar

90. One Triscuit

91. A sack of game you bagged with your pellet gun

92. A pastel drawing of your coworker innocently sleeping in her own bed

93. A handful of forks you grabbed from the Quiznos across the street

94. The complete, unabridged Moby Dick, printed on your company's LaserJet

95. A trial-size bottle of coconut-scented "love" oil

96. Photos of a male coworker passed out with "cock tits Steve" written on his face in lipstick

97. A 10-minute conference call with Andy Dick and Crispin Glover

98. A videotape of every shower you've taken since last December

99. The contents of your desk, in a cardboard box, with a bow on it

100. A note that reads, "Um, you're not fired. That's your fucking Christmas present."

The History Of U.S. Oil and the Middle East

2007-12-18T14:10:00.001-08:00

Summarizing the relationship between the United States and Saudi oil in four minutes: "The Kingdom" opening credits.

Elf Strike

2007-12-17T10:39:00.001-08:00

Quote of the Day

2007-12-12T15:09:00.001-08:00

I don't mind coming to work, but that eight hour wait to go home is just bullshit!

Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 Available

2007-12-11T11:04:00.001-08:00

Microsoft is releasing Office 2007 Service Pack 1 today. You should theoretically be able to download it from Microsoft's site, although the download link wasn't working properly this morning. Sometime in the next 3-6 months Microsoft will push SP1 through Windows Update.

Office 2007 SP1 packs a bunch of bug fixes, including the infamous Excel calculation bug. Of course, that bug was already fixed in October, but like all Microsoft Service Packs, this one includes all the important hotfixes since Office 2007 was first released as well as a few new goodies.

The update also packs some stability, security and performance updates. You can read the complete list of changes in the Service Pack 1

Switching To LED Christmas Lights

2007-12-07T10:32:00.001-08:00

Hopefully you're considering switching to LED lights this holiday season.

LED rope light consumes very little energy (it depends a bit on spacing but generally only about .47 watts per foot.) Comparable incandescent rope lighting consumes about 6 watts per foot. LED rope lighting will also last for more than 50,000 hours and also generates very little heat so it is much safer.

Based on the recent national average cost of electricity, it will cost the average household $9.00 for a 30 day holiday season to illuminate a single Christmas tree with 5 strings of 25 lamp incandescent string lights. In contrast the cost to illuminate the same Christmas tree for the same period of time with LED string lighting would be $.90. This may not seem like a lot of money but the average household typically illuminates more than just a Christmas tree. Many homes will use in excess of 50 strings of lighting during the holiday season. This would increase the cost savings to nearly $90 per season.

Perhaps more importantly is the cost of the lights themselves. Because LED string lighting will last nearly 10 times longer than standard incandescent string lighting, this means the consumer will have to replace Christmas lights much less frequently. At an average cost of $5.99 per 25 lamp string of incandescent string lighting, this would mean that the average household would spend approximately $300 for lighting to last that same period that would cost only $100 if LED string lighting were used.

And for you holiday lighting fanatics out there (you know the ones whose homes single-handedly cause regional blackouts) the costs savings cannot be ignored.

Celebrate Prohibition Repeal Day

2007-12-05T12:36:00.001-08:00

The 21st Amendment
Ratified December 5, 1933

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use there in of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

There are no outfits to buy, costumes to rent, rivers to dye green. Simply celebrate the day by stopping by your local bar, tavern, saloon, winery, distillery, or brewhouse and having a drink. Pick up a six-pack on your way home from work. Split a bottle of wine with a loved one. Buy a shot for a stranger. Just do it because you can.

Thanks for reading about what we hope will become a celebrated day in this country. Please help spread the word about Repeal Day, and tell a friend.

Cheers! http://www.repealday.org/

Apparently, It Can Be Scottish and Still Be Crap

2007-11-28T17:44:00.001-08:00

Scotland has replaced its airport signs proclaiming the country to be "the best small country in the world" with a new slogan: "Welcome to Scotland."

The new slogan, which was revealed Tuesday after six months of development and $250,000 spent on the project, is also printed on the posters in Gaelic as "Failte gu Alba," The Times of London reported Wednesday.

The posters also include a series of images depicting life in Scotland, including a boy looking at an exhibit at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, a man in a raincoat walking in Edinburgh and a picture taken from a high altitude of Inverness.

Some have criticized the campaign for lacking emotion.

"It feels governmental, corporate and static," Anita Califano, a senior consultant with 2012 London Olympics logo creator Wolff Olins, told The Times. "It all fails to convey the spirit of the place, the emotion. If the purpose of branding is to create an emotional connection, they are not doing that."

Google Maps Introduces Terrain View

2007-11-27T13:47:00.001-08:00

Today Google launched Terrain maps on all Google Maps properties. Terrain maps focus on physical features such as mountains, valleys, and vegetation. They feature elevation shading, and contain extra labels for even very small mountains, river rapids, and trails.

Activate by hitting the "Terrain" button in the upper right corner of the map - the Hybrid map view is now accessed by hitting "Satellite" and checking "Show labels".

Incidentally, the blue trail you see is not a part of Google, it is from my wrist-mounted Garmin GPS and it shows one of the many trails I have run or hiked - via MotionBased.

Check Out the Air Pollution Where You Live with Google Earth

2007-11-27T13:18:00.001-08:00

From EcoStreet: US residents can now check out what they're being poisoned with by checking out this new tool provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency and Google Earth. It's a useful tool to track air quality in your community or if you are planning to move to another area to escape airborne toxins. Check for levels of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxides, VOCs, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide.

You can also identify big emitters easily, like cement plants, chemical manufacturers and petroleum refineries, amongst others. Focus on a particular state or sector to get the most accurate details. You need to have Google Earth already installed on your computer for the EPA file to work, or if you'd prefer not to install it, you can download the text version. It's not as much fun to use as the Google Earth file, but it contains all the information you’ll need.

Paradise Not As Friendly As Expected

2007-11-26T12:06:00.001-08:00

I spent Thanksgiving with friends in Paradise, California. Yes I know - that's DAMN FUNNY!

Luckily, I found the people and the spirit of the place to be much more inviting than the above map might lead one to believe.

About Holiday Mail To "A Recovering American Soldier"

2007-11-26T11:57:00.001-08:00

Have you received an email stating:

Nice idea!
When you are making out your Christmas cards this year, please include the
following:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001
If you approve, pass it on.

Well according to Snopes - it's false.

Mail to Wounded and Recovering Soldiers

Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials want to remind those individuals who want to show their appreciation through mail to include packages and letters, addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier" that Walter Reed will not be accepting these packages in support of the decision by then Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Transportation Policy in 2001. This decision was made to ensure the safety and well being of patients and staff at medical centers throughout the Department of Defense.

In addition, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer accepting "Any Service Member" or "Any Wounded Service Member" letters or packages. Mail to "Any Service Member" that is deposited into a collection box will not be delivered.

Instead of sending an "Any Wounded Soldier" letter or package to Walter Reed, please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families listed on the "America Supports You" website, www.americasupportsyou.mil

Other organizations that offer means of showing your support for our troops or assist wounded servicemembers and their families include:

http://www.usocares.org/
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers/
http://www.redcross.org

For individuals without computer access, your local military installation, the local National Guard or military reserve unit in your area may offer the best alternative to show your support to our returning troops and their families. Walter Reed Army Medical Center will continue to receive process and deliver all mail that is addressed to a specific individual.

As Walter Reed continues to enhance the medical care and processes for our returning service members, it must also must keep our patients and staff members safe while following Department of Defense policy. The outpouring of encouragement from the general public, corporate America and civic groups throughout the past year has been incredible. Our Warriors in Transition are amazed at the thanks and support they receive from their countrymen.

First Proof Of A Parallel Universe Discovered

2007-11-26T11:55:00.001-08:00

Ok kids - thinking caps on, here's a big 'ole mind-fudger:

Radio astronomers have announced that they have found an enormous hole in the universe. Nearly a billion light years across, the void lies in the constellation Eridanus and has far fewer stars, gas and galaxies than usual. It is bigger than anyone imagined possible and is beyond the present understanding of cosmology. What could cause such a gaping hole? One team of physicists has a breathtaking explanation: "It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is a staggering claim. If Mersini-Houghton's team is right, the giant void is the first experimental evidence for another universe. It would also vindicate string theory, our most promising understanding of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton made a staggering claim. She says, “Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole” and goes further with the ground-breaking hypothesis that the huge void is “… the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own“.

The idea of alternative, or parallel universes has been around for quite a while and has provided considerable inspiration for Sci-Fi literature and sparked endless philosophical debate, but although begin seriously considered within the scientific realm it never crossed the limits of speculative of purely theoretical grounds. Perhaps until now. If Mersini-Houghton is right, Eridanus’ giant hole would be the first experimental evidence for the existence of another universe. The implications of this possibility are obviously of huge importance for everybody, but it also has further relevance for the astrophysics community as it would bring support for the hotly debated string theory and other central debates.

But Mersini-Houghton and colleagues’ theory of entangled universes make testable predictions, providing the opportunity to confirm or refute the claim as more data arrive to the astronomers’ computers. Her model predicts the existence of two voids rather than one, one in each hemisphere of our universe. The one that has been found by WMAP’s data lies in the Northern hemisphere. They expect new data will show a second similar void in the Southern side. This and other cutting-edge experimental projects testing Mersini-Houghton’s ideas will tell us whether a new era in cosmological thinking has indeed arrived.

World's Greatest Thanksgiving \ Christmas Turkey Recipe

2007-11-19T21:57:00.001-08:00

Your dinner will be the talk of the town! Sure to bring smiles from your guests!

Here is the most crowd-pleasing way to prepare your holiday turkey.

1. Cut out aluminum foil in desired shapes.

2. Arrange the turkey in the roasting pan, position the foil carefully. (see attached picture for details)

3. Roast according to your own recipe and serve.

4. Send me photos, because I know you're going to try it . . .

What To Do If You Encounter A Mountain Lion

2007-11-19T11:31:00.001-08:00

I was hiking Coal Canyon the other day and came across this "updated" sign explaining what to do if you encounter a mountain lion.

Religious Scholars Contemplate Flying Spaghetti Monster

2007-11-18T14:43:00.001-08:00

The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.

Supporters of intelligent design hold that the order and complexity of the universe is so great that science alone cannot explain it. The concept's critics see it as faith masquerading as science.

An Oregon State physics graduate named Bobby Henderson stepped into the debate by sending a letter to the Kansas School Board. With tongue in cheek, he purported to speak for 10 million followers of a being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- and demanded equal time for their views.

"We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it," Henderson wrote. As for scientific evidence to the contrary, "what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."

The letter made the rounds on the Internet, prompting laughter from some and vilification from others. But it struck a chord and stuck around. In the great tradition of satire, its humor was in fact a clever and effective argument.

Between the lines, the point of the letter was this: There's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe. If intelligent design supporters could demand equal time in a science class, why not anyone else?

Full Story: CNN

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Ever Seen An Ice Cube Stalagmite Spike?

2007-11-10T11:10:00.001-08:00

I have seen this happen twice now and it was mindfudging me. I shot some video this time and then did a little research:

Stephen Morris, professor of experimental nonlinear physics at the University of Toronto, maintains a Web page on just this topic:

Water is one of those rare materials that expands while it freezes. If a crust of ice with a small hole in it forms over liquid water, it can trap the liquid below, leaving it no room to expand during freezing. So, as the water begins to solidify, it is forced up through the hole and begins to freeze around the hole's edge, forming a hollow, water-filled spike.

Water keeps moving up the spike - creating a little self-made soda straw, which can grow quite long and thin. Eventually, all the water freezes and the spike becomes solid. The energy needed to lift the water up into the spike comes entirely from the expansion of the water while it is freezing.

Some features that govern the way water crystallizes play important roles in the spike-formation process. The form of the ice crystals depends on the cooling rate and hence on the air temperature. Spikes typically form when the ambient air is well below 0 degrees Celsius, allowing for rapid freezing - an air temperature of about -7 degrees C (20 degrees Fahrenheit) turns out to be optimal.

Fast cooling favors crystals that look like sheets, which rapidly cover the surface, with some sheets hanging down into the water like curtains. These crystallites tend to join to one another at 60-degree angles, much like the arms of a snowflake do. They tend to leave triangular holes in the surface; hence, spikes often have a triangular base. The sides of the spike are sometimes a continuation of preexisting crystallites that are below the surface of the freezing water. This explains why some spikes can extend from the surface at steep angles. It is also possible to get structures that look like little inverted pyramids, or "ice vases," if the water happens to drain out before completely freezing.

Pure water works best for spike formation, as does a container with vertical sides, such as an ice tray. People often see spikes in birdbaths or pet drinking dishes that are left outside overnight. It is rather rare for them to form naturally-like on the surface of lakes or ponds-because the cooling rate of natural bodies of water is usually not rapid enough. They can, however, sometimes form on falling sleet pellets.

~~~~~

UPDATE: Check out this Story about the "Holy Stalagmite" - The "God Of The Gaps" looses again!

"An ice stalagmite that forms in a Himalayan cave and is worshipped as a Hindu god has melted away.

The phallus-shaped stalagmite draws pilgrims to the remote Amarnath cave in the violent region of Kashmir every year. "

So what do you think - If we showed our Shiva-peener worshipping Hindu friends the video of my ice cube tray and explained how it worked - would they say, "Oh! Thank you! Now we can focus on things that are truly miraculous instead of an easily explained phenomenon!"

If your religious convictions are challenged what do you do?

Hmm. Pot, Meet Kettle.

And It Didn't Even Take An Infinite Number Of Monkeys

2007-11-10T11:05:00.001-08:00

I love it when a joke writes itself. Don't ask me how I stumbled across this - mine is a world you cannot unsee.

I just happened to have been brushing up on the comparative metabolism of N-nitrosopiperidine and N-nitrosopyrrolidine by rat liver and esophageal microsomes and cytochrome P450 2A3 and I ran across:

Everybody, have fun tonight!

Scientology: Inside the Cult

2007-11-07T08:25:00.001-08:00

Journalists, courts and the governing bodies of several countries have stated that the Church of Scientology is a cult and an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and abuses the trust of its members. In this 1995 documentary, hidden cameras go inside and reveal what goes on inside the London Scientology organization.

My Favorite Club

2007-11-06T22:47:00.001-08:00

Why Levi's And A T-Shirt Will Always Be A Safe Bet

2007-11-04T14:30:00.001-08:00

It All Starts With One 1977 Spring and Summer JCPenny Catalogue. . .

Here's how to get your ass kicked in elementary school:

Just look at that belt. It's like a boob-job for your pants. He probably needed help just to lift it into place. The belt loops have to be three inches long. And way to pull them up to your armpits, grandpa.

Here's how to get your ass kicked in high school:

This kid looks like he's pretending to be David Soul, who is pretending to be a cop who is pretending to be a pimp that everyone knows is really an undercover cop. Who is pretending to be 15.

Here's how to get your ass kicked on the golf course:

This "all purpose jumpsuit" is, according to the description, equally appropriate for playing golf or simply relaxing around the house. Personally, I can't see wearing this unless you happen to be relaxing around your cell in D-block. Even then, the only reason you should put this thing on is because the warden made you, and as a one-piece, it's slightly more effective as a deterrent against ass-rapery.

Here's how to get your ass kicked pretty much anywhere:

If you look at that picture quickly, it looks like Mr. Bob "No-pants" Saget has his hand in the other guy's pocket. In this case, he doesn't, although you can tell just by looking at them that it's happened - or if it hasn't happened it will. Oh yes. It will. As soon as he puts down his matching coffee cup.

Here's how to get your ass kicked at the beach:

He looks like he's reaching for a gun, but you know it's probably just a bottle of suntan lotion in a holster.

How to get your ass kicked in a meeting:

If you wear this suit and don't sell used cars for a living, I believe you can be fined and face serious repercussions, up to and including termination. Or imprisonment, in which case you'd be forced to wear that orange jumpsuit.

How to get your ass kicked on every day up to and including St. Patrick's Day:

Dear god in heaven, I don't believe that color exists in nature. There is NO excuse for wearing either of these ensembles unless you're working as a body guard for the Lucky Charms leprechaun.

In this next one, Your Search For VALUE Ends at Penneys.

As does your search for chest hair. And this -- Seriously. No words.

Oh wait, it turns out that there are words after all. Those words are What. The. F*ck. I'm guessing the snap front gives you quick access to the chest hair. The little tie must be the pull tab.

Also, judging by the sheer amount of matching his/hers outfits, I'm guessing that in 1977 it was considered pretty stylish for couples to dress alike. These couples look happy, don't they?

I am especially fond of this one, which I have entitled "Cowboy Chachi Loves You Best."

And nothing showcases your everlasting love more than the commitment of matching bathing suits. That, and a blonde girl with a look on her face that says "I love the way your junk fights against that fabric."

Then, after the lovin', you can relax in your one-piece matching terry cloth jumpsuits:

Man, that's sexy.

Richard Dawkin's Quote

2007-11-01T17:39:00.001-07:00

Science is the poetry of reality.

Pew Research - Secular America On the Rise

2007-10-31T08:45:00.001-07:00

The latest values survey, conducted Dec. 12, 2006-Jan. 9, 2007, finds a reversal of increased religiosity observed in the mid-1990s. While most Americans remain religious in both belief and practice, the percentage expressing strong religious beliefs has edged down since the 1990s. And the survey finds an increase in the relatively small percentage of the public that can be categorized as secular. In Pew surveys since the beginning of 2006, 12% identified themselves as unaffiliated with a religious tradition. That compares with 8% in the Pew values survey in 1987. This change appears to be generational in nature, with each new generation displaying lower levels of religious commitment than the preceding one.

In addition, political differences in levels of religious commitment are larger now than in years past. Republicans are at least as religious as they were 10 or 20 years ago, based on the numbers expressing belief in God, citing prayer as important, and other measures. By contrast, Democrats express lower levels of commitment than in the late 1980s and 1990s.

At the same time, the survey records further declines in traditional social attitudes. The poll finds greater public acceptance of homosexuality and less desire for women to play traditional roles in society. Both represent a continuation of trends that have been apparent over the past 20 years, and have occurred mostly among older people. The younger generations have changed the least, as they have consistently expressed more accepting points of view over the past 20 years.

Divides on some once-contentious issues also appear to be closing. In 1995, 58% said they favored affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better jobs. That percentage has risen steadily since, and stands at 70% in the current poll. Gains in support for affirmative action have occurred to almost the same extent among Republicans (+8), Democrats (+10), and Independents (+14).

Changes nationally in the beliefs of Americans on social, political and religious values tell a revealing but incomplete story. The proportion of voters who hold certain politically relevant core beliefs varies widely from state to state, further complicating an already complicated 2008 election campaign. For example, politically conservative, white evangelical Christians make up 10% of all Republicans and Republican leaners in New Hampshire – currently the first state to hold its presidential primaries in 2008 – but 39% of all GOP partisans in South Carolina where primary voters go to the polls several days later. On the Democratic side, the proportion of Democrats who say they are politically liberal ranges from 38% in California to 25% in South Carolina. (See pages 10-11 for a fuller ideological profiling of key primary states)

More information and full report

Where Bad Science Comes From

2007-10-31T08:43:00.001-07:00

Dear God . . .

2007-10-29T13:02:00.001-07:00

There was a man who worked for the Royal Mail whose job it was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses.
One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no actual address. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:

"Dear God,
I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had £100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension cheque. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?
Sincerely yours,
Edna"

The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few pounds.

By the time he made the rounds, he had collected £96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.
Christmas came and went. A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened. It read,

"Dear God,
How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift.
By the way, there was £4 missing. I think it must have been those bastards at the Royal Mail.
Sincerely yours,
Edna"

The 30 Most Unsettling German Halloween Costumes

2007-10-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

This had me laughing out loud. Read the commentaries that accompany the images. There are 3 pages, be sure read them all!

Here's Robin Hood, standing proudly with the weapon he's least famous for. What's wrong Germany, couldn't you find a boomerang to give him? More.

The Truth About Ethanol - Sounds Great! Unrealistic.

2007-10-18T10:06:00.001-07:00

I have been hearing all this buzz about how ethanol is the next big thing. Ethanol will save the world from anthropogenic global warming. Ethanol is in the pocket of the corn lobby. Ethanol will save us from our oil addiction. Etc. etc. etc.

What is the truth? The Week magazine run what has to be one of the most succinct, unbiased one page articles I have read to date.

Is ethanol something new?
Not at all. For centuries, people have distilled ethanol, a form of alcohol, from various plants, including grains, potatoes, sugar cane, and prairie grass. Henry Ford's prototype Model T was powered by ethanol. But ethanol- specifically, ethanol derived from corn - was first promoted as an alternative to gasoline in the 1970s, when the Arab oil embargo led to gas shortages, long lines at filling stations, and record-high gas prices. Then as now, agribusiness and legislators from farm states touted corn-based ethanol as a way to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. More recently, ethanol has played a valuable role as a replacement for the fuel additive MTBE, which contains carcinogens that have shown up in groundwater. Like MTBE, ethanol helps conventional automobile engines burn cleaner, but with fewer toxic byproducts. "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good," says Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley.

But is corn the best ethanol source?
Not by a long shot. Ethanol produced from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1-that is, sugar cane generates eight times more energy than is used to produce, transport, and refine it. Other ethanol sources, such as prairie grass, also have a high energy balance. Gasoline itself has an energy balance of 5-to-1. But corn's energy balance, according to one study, is only 1.3-to-1-meaning that corn-based ethanol produces barely more energy than is consumed to make it. Other studies have concluded that making ethanol actually consumes more energy than the fuel produced. Nonetheless, almost all ethanol produced in the U.S. comes from corn-about 5 billion gallons this year, equivalent to 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop.

Why is corn-based ethanol dominant?
In a word, politics. Federal mandates to produce more ethanol have been a boon to corn-producing states in the West, enriching farmers and creating thousands of jobs in struggling rural areas. These states wield great power in Washington, which helps explain why Congress has lavished more than $50 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for ethanol since 1995. At least $10 billion of that largesse has gone to agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which has spread around $3 million in campaign contributions since 2000. "There's a lot of ethanol money washing around, and it seems always to go to the corn states," says environmental scientist Cornelius Murphy of the State University of New York. The largest corn-producing state is Iowa, which happens to hold the first major contest of the presidential campaign season. As a result, presidential wannabes tend to come out early and often for ethanol-friendly policies. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama recently reminded Iowans that he wants to raise U.S. production of ethanol to 60 billion gallons by 2030. Not to be outdone, his rival John Edwards called for 65 billion gallons by 2025.

Is ethanol environmentally friendly?
Not especially. A recent study by Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Jacobson concluded that "ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline." The burning of ethanol, Jacobson found, produces more lung-damaging ozone than gasoline does. Another problem is that corn growers rely on nitrogen-based fertilizers; rain washes the nitrogen into streams and rivers, where it displaces the oxygen in the water, killing marine life.

Does ethanol have other downsides?
Yes-it raises food prices here and abroad. Ethanol refiners consume huge amounts of corn, and the law of supply and demand means that food producers have to pay much more for the corn that is left. In Mexico, the price of cornmeal tortillas, a dietary staple, has risen 60 percent in the past year alone. In the U.S., corn prices have risen 58 percent this year, causing sharp jumps in the prices of everything from steak (steers are fed on corn) to soft drinks (sweetened with corn syrup). And because farmers are planting more corn to meet increased demand, they have less acreage available for other crops, reducing their supply and increasing the price of everything from potato chips and beer to milk. "We're putting the supermarket in competition with the corner filling station for the output of the farm," says environmentalist Lester Brown.

But what about replacing foreign oil?
Even that is something of an illusion. Ethanol cannot be shipped via existing gasoline pipelines, because it readily absorbs water and other impurities. So it must be transported by trucks, which burn fuel and emit greenhouse gases. "We're importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other places to make ethanol," says Cornell University environmental scientist David Pimentel. "Is that making us energy-independent?" Existing gas pumps also have to be retrofitted to handle ethanol, at a cost of about $100,000 per station. And most cars can't burn fuel mixtures that contain more than 10 percent ethanol, because higher concentrations corrode engine parts. Even if engineers overcame these obstacles and Americans consumed every drop of ethanol produced in the U.S., it would still replace only 1.5 million barrels of oil per day- 7 percent of America's daily consumption. "Forcing nation-wide adoption of ethanol makes about as much sense as mandating that all 50 states grow mangoes," says energy researcher Robert Rapier. "Yeah, it could be done, but at what price?"

~~~~

When King George made a pledge to have x amount of Hydrogen fueled cars on the road in the next 20 years I thought to myself, "WTF? Hydrogen? What about hybrids! Hybrids are here now, they work, I'm driving one!!! In 20 years the hydrogen comment you just made will STILL be a pipe dream." And I realized that the oil and automobile industry are pure evil.

I still drive a hybrid. One that is rated at 70 mpg. SEVENTY!!! It's a 2000 Honda Insight. Guess what the 2001 Honda was rated at? 63. Then the Prius came along in 2001 at 42 mpg. It's been a steady decline in hybrid gas mileage since then.

So instead of reversing the declining gas mileage numbers with vehicles that actually exist today we should just change everything and go to Ethanol? or Hydrogen? Or? C'mon people - THINK!

Atheism On The Rise

2007-10-18T09:01:00.001-07:00

Only 6 percent of people older than 60 say they don't believe in God, but amongst those ages 18 to 22, one in four is an atheist.

This reminds me of a Christopher Hitchens comment something akin to, "Alchemy was replaced by chemistry, astrology with astronomy, phrenology with psychiatry - and someday, hopefully, religion will be replaced by philosophy.

I've Been Mindfudged

2007-10-17T18:00:00.001-07:00

So I get a phone call from a friend of mine. She is at the library with her teenage son. Her son sees a girl he knows but can't remember her name so hey says hello. The girl is on the library computer. She ask him if he has ever seen Father Dan. He says he hasn't so she shows him the website. He see's the picture and says, "Hey, I know that guy - that's my mom's friend." Mom calls me.

Figure the freakin' odds.

Mindfudged.

5,000 Years of Religion in 90 Seconds

2007-10-15T11:59:00.001-07:00

How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? This map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!

Best Jack-O-Lantern Ever - Look!

2007-10-11T11:29:00.001-07:00

A Reason To Have Kids - Or Borrow A Friends'

2007-10-11T10:34:00.001-07:00

Boing Boing found a terrific selection of odd halloween costumes for children, including this Little Trees car air freshener outfit.

And if an air freshener costume isn't quite right for your baby, how about a Whoopie (SIC) Cushion or Peeps peep, also available in adult sizes.

America's $42 Billion Annual War On Pot

2007-10-10T00:52:00.001-07:00

What would you buy if you had an extra $42 billion to spend every year? What might our government buy if it suddenly had that much money dropped onto its lap every year?

For one thing, it might pay for the entire $7 billion annual increase in the State Children's Health Insurance Program that President Bush is threatening to veto because of its cost -- and there'd still be $35 billion left over.

Or perhaps you'd hire 880,000 schoolteachers at the average U.S. teacher salary of $47,602 per year.

Or give every one of our current teachers a 30 percent raise (at a cost of $15 billion, according to the American Federation of Teachers) and use what's left to take a $27 billion whack out of the federal deficit.

Or use all $42 billion for a massive tax cut that would put an extra $140 in the pockets of every person in the country -- $560 for a family of four.

The mind reels at the ways such a massive sum of money could be put to use.

Why $42 billion? Because that's what our current marijuana laws cost American taxpayers each year, according to a new study by researcher Jon Gettman, Ph.D. -- $10.7 billion in direct law enforcement costs, and $31.1 billion in lost tax revenues. And that may be an underestimate, at least on the law enforcement side, since Gettman made his calculations before the FBI released its latest arrest statistics in late September. The new FBI stats show an all-time record 829,627 marijuana arrests in 2006, 43,000 more than in 2005.

That's like arresting every man, woman and child in the state of North Dakota plus every man, woman, and child in Des Moines, Iowa on marijuana charges ... every year. Arrests for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- totaled 738,916. By comparison, there were 611,523 arrests last year for all violent crimes combined.

Basing his calculations mainly on U.S. government statistics, Gettman concludes that marijuana in the U.S. is a $113 billion dollar business. That's a huge chunk of economic activity that is unregulated and untaxed because it's almost entirely off the books.

Of course, the cost of our marijuana laws goes far beyond lost tax revenues and money spent on law enforcement. By consigning a very popular product -- one that's been used by about 100 million Americans, according to government surveys -- to the criminal underground, we've effectively cut legitimate businesspeople out of the market and handed a monopoly to criminals and gangs.

Strangely, government officials love to warn us that some unsavory characters profit off of marijuana sales, while ignoring the obvious: Our prohibitionist laws handed them the marijuana business in the first place, effectively giving marijuana dealers a $113 billion free ride.

All this might make some sense if marijuana were so terribly dangerous that it needed to be banned at all costs, but science long ago came to precisely the opposite conclusion. Compared to alcohol, for example, marijuana is astonishingly safe. For one thing, marijuana is much less addictive than alcohol, with just nine percent of users becoming dependent, as opposed to 15 percent for booze. And marijuana is much less toxic. Heavy drinking is well-documented to damage the brain and liver, and to increase the risk of many types of cancer. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never caused a medically documented overdose death, and scientists are still debating whether even heavy marijuana use causes any permanent harm at all. And then there's violence. Again, the scientific findings are overwhelming: Booze incites violence and aggression; marijuana doesn't.

Despite all that, we now arrest one American every 38 seconds on marijuana charges. And we do so at a staggering cost in law enforcement expenses, lost tax revenues, and staggering profits for criminal gangs.

The alternative is clear: Regulate marijuana just as we do beer, wine, and liquor. The only thing lacking is the political will.

A Flowchart For My Mailman

2007-10-09T15:24:00.001-07:00

Because after watching you deliver my mail for the past 3 years it is painfully obvious that it has come to the point that you actually need one.

For You Sir!

Great Quote

2007-10-09T12:26:00.001-07:00

Chaos is the law of nature. Order is the dream of man.

Searching for God in the Brain

2007-10-09T10:14:00.001-07:00

Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith The doughnut-shaped machine swallows the nun, who is outfitted in a plain T-shirt and loose hospital pants rather than her usual brown habit and long veil. She wears earplugs and rests her head on foam cushions to dampen the device's roar, as loud as a jet engine. Supercooled giant magnets generate intense fields around the nun's head in a high-tech attempt to read her mind as she communes with her deity.

The Carmelite nun and 14 of her Catholic sisters have left their cloistered lives temporarily for this claustrophobic blue tube that bears little resemblance to the wooden prayer stall or sparse room where such mystical experiences usually occur. Each of these nuns answered a call for volunteers "who have had an experience of intense union with God” and agreed to participate in an experiment devised by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Beauregard seeks to pinpoint the brain areas that are active while the nuns recall the most powerful religious epiphany of their lives, a time they experienced a profound connection with the divine. The question: Is there a God spot in the brain?

The spiritual quest may be as old as humankind itself, but now there is a new place to look: inside our heads. Using fMRI and other tools of modern neuroscience, researchers are attempting to pin down what happens in the brain when people experience mystical awakenings during prayer and meditation or during spontaneous utterances inspired by religious fervor.

Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine-a new discipline with the warring titles "neurotheology” and "spiritual neuroscience”-not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people's lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate. Ultimately, however, neuroscientists study this question because they want to better understand the neural basis of a phenomenon that plays a central role in the lives of so many. "These experiences have existed since the dawn of humanity. They have been reported across all cultures,” Beauregard says. "It is as important to study the neural basis of [religious] experience as it is to investigate the neural basis of emotion, memory or language.”

Mystical Misfirings
Scientists and scholars have long speculated that religious feeling can be tied to a specific place in the brain. In 1892 textbooks on mental illness noted a link between "religious emotionalism” and epilepsy. Nearly a century later, in 1975, neurologist Norman Geschwind of the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital first clinically described a form of epilepsy in which seizures originate as electrical misfirings within the temporal lobes, large sections of the brain that sit over the ears. Epileptics who have this form of the disorder often report intense religious experiences, leading Geschwind and others, such as neuropsychiatrist David Bear of Vanderbilt University, to speculate that localized electrical storms in the brain's temporal lobe might sometimes underlie an obsession with religious or moral issues.

Exploring this hypothesis, neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, asked several of his patients who have temporal lobe epilepsy to listen to a mixture of religious, sexual and neutral words while he tested the intensity of their emotional reactions using a measure of arousal called the galvanic skin response, a fluctuation in the electrical resistance of the skin. In 1998 he reported in his book Phantoms in the Brain (William Morrow), co-authored with journalist Sandra Blakeslee, that the religious words, such as "God,” elicited an unusually large emotional response in these patients, indicating that people with temporal lobe epilepsy may indeed have a greater propensity toward religious feeling.

The key, Ramachandran speculates, may be the limbic system, which comprises interior regions of the brain that govern emotion and emotional memory, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. By strengthening the connection between the temporal lobe and these emotional centers, epileptic electrical activity may spark religious feeling.

To seal the case for the temporal lobe's involvement, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario sought to artificially re-create religious feelings by electrically stimulating that large subdivision of the brain. So Persinger created the "God helmet,” which generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on particular regions of the brain's surface.

In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence-a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is-or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language-terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.

Persinger thus argues that religious experience and belief in God are merely the results of electrical anomalies in the human brain. He opines that the religious bents of even the most exalted figures-for instance, Saint Paul, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha-stem from such neural quirks. The popular notion that such experiences are good, argues Persinger in his book Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (Praeger Publishers, 1987), is an outgrowth of psychological conditioning in which religious rituals are paired with enjoyable experiences. Praying before a meal, for example, links prayer with the pleasures of eating. God, he claims, is nothing more mystical than that.

Expanded Horizons
Although a 2005 attempt by Swedish scientists to replicate Persinger's God helmet findings failed, researchers are not yet discounting the temporal lobe's role in some types of religious experience. After all, not all such experiences are the same. Some arise from following a specific religious tradition, such as the calm Catholics feel when saying the rosary. Others bring a person into a perception of contact with the divine. Yet a third category might be mystical states that reveal fundamental truths opaque to normal consciousness. Thus, it is possible that different religious feelings arise from distinct locations in the brain. Individual differences might also exist. In some people, the neural seat of religious feeling may lie in the temporal lobe, whereas in others it could reside elsewhere.

Indeed, University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and his late colleague, Eugene d'Aquili, have pointed to the involvement of other brain regions in some people under certain circumstances. Instead of artificially inducing religious experience, Newberg and d'Aquili used brain imaging to peek at the neural machinery at work during traditional religious practices. In this case, the scientists studied Buddhist meditation, a set of formalized rituals aimed at achieving defined spiritual states, such as oneness with the universe.

When the Buddhist subjects reached their self-reported meditation peak, a state in which they lose their sense of existence as separate individuals, the researchers injected them with a radioactive isotope that is carried by the blood to active brain areas. The investigators then photographed the isotope's distribution with a special camera-a technique called single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT).

The height of this meditative trance, as they described in a 2001 paper, was associated with both a large drop in activity in a portion of the parietal lobe, which encompasses the upper back of the brain, and an increase in activity in the right prefrontal cortex, which resides behind the forehead. Because the affected part of the parietal lobe normally aids with navigation and spatial orientation, the neuroscientists surmise that its abnormal silence during meditation underlies the perceived dissolution of physical boundaries and the feeling of being at one with the universe. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is charged with attention and planning, among other cognitive duties, and its recruitment at the meditation peak may reflect the fact that such contemplation often requires that a person focus intensely on a thought or object.

Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues documented something similar in 2002, when they used fMRI to scan the brains of several hundred meditating Buddhists from around the world. Functional MRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood by virtue of its magnetic properties, which differ from those of oxygen-depleted blood. Because oxygenated blood preferentially flows to where it is in high demand, fMRI highlights the brain areas that are most active during-and thus presumably most engaged in-a particular task.

Davidson's team also found that the Buddhists' meditations coincided with activation in the left prefrontal cortex, again perhaps reflecting the ability of expert practitioners to focus despite distraction. The most experienced volunteers showed lower levels of activation than did those with less training, conceivably because practice makes the task easier. This theory jibes with reports from veterans of Buddhist meditation who claim to have reached a state of "effortless concentration,” Davidson says.

What is more, Newberg and d'Aquili obtained concordant results in 2003, when they imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns as they prayed. In this case, the pattern was associated with a different spiritual phenomenon: a sense of closeness and mingling with God, as was similarly described by Beauregard's nuns. "The more we study and compare the neurological underpinnings of different religious practices, the better we will understand these experiences,” Newberg says. "We would like to [extend our work by] recruiting individuals who engage in Islamic and Jewish prayer as well as revisiting other Buddhist and Christian practices.”

Newberg and his colleagues discovered yet another activity pattern when they scanned the brains of five women while they were speaking in tongues-a spontaneous expression of religious fervor in which people babble in an incomprehensible language. The researchers announced in 2006 that the activity in their subjects' frontal lobes-the entire front section of the brain-declined relative to that of five religious people who were simply singing gospel. Because the frontal lobes are broadly used for self-control, the research team concluded that the decrement in activity there enabled the loss of control necessary for such garrulous outbursts.

Spiritual Networking
Although release of frontal lobe control may be involved in the mystical experience, Beauregard believes such profound states also call on a wide range of other brain functions. To determine exactly what might underlie such phenomena, the Quebecois neuroscientist and his colleagues used fMRI to study the brains of 15 nuns during three different mental states. Two of the conditions-resting with closed eyes and recollecting an intense social experience-were control states against which they compared the third: reminiscence or revival of a vivid experience with God.

As each nun switched between these states on a technician's cue, the MRI machine recorded cross sections of her brain every three seconds, capturing the whole brain roughly every two minutes. Once the neural activity was computed and recorded, the experimenters compared the activation patterns in the two control states with those in the religious state to elucidate the brain areas that became more energized during the mystical experience. (Although Beauregard had hoped the nuns would experience a mystical union while in the scanner, the best they could do, it turned out, was to conjure up an emotionally powerful memory of union with God. "God can't be summoned at will,” explained Sister Diane, the prioress of the Carmelite convent in Montreal.)

The researchers found six regions that were invigorated only during the nuns' recall of communion with God. The spiritual memory was accompanied by, for example, increased activity in the caudate nucleus, a small central brain region to which scientists have ascribed a role in learning, memory and, recently, falling in love; the neuroscientists surmise that its involvement may reflect the nuns' reported feeling of unconditional love. Another hot spot was the insula, a prune-size chunk of tissue tucked within the brain's outermost layers that monitors body sensations and governs social emotions. Neural sparks there could be related to the visceral pleasurable feelings associated with connections to the divine.

And augmented activity in the inferior parietal lobe, with its role in spatial awareness-paradoxically, the opposite of what Newberg and Davidson witnessed-might mirror the nuns' feeling of being absorbed into something greater. Either too much or too little activity in this region could, in theory, result in such a phenomenon, some scientists surmise. The remainder of the highlighted regions, the researchers reported in the September 25, 2006, issue of Neuroscience Letters, includes the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which may weigh the pleasantness of an experience; the medial prefrontal cortex, which may help govern conscious awareness of an emotional state; and, finally, the middle of the temporal lobe.

The quantity and diversity of brain regions involved in the nuns' religious experience point to the complexity of the phenomenon of spirituality. "There is no single God spot, localized uniquely in the temporal lobe of the human brain,” Beauregard concludes. "These states are mediated by a neural network that is well distributed throughout the brain.”

Brain scans alone cannot fully describe a mystical state, however. Because fMRI depends on blood flow, which takes place on the order of seconds, fMRI images do not capture real-time changes in the firing of neurons, which occur within milliseconds. That is why Beauregard turned to a faster technique called quantitative electroencephalography (EEG), which measures the voltage from the summed responses of millions of neurons and can track its fluctuation in real time. His team outfitted the nuns with red bathing caps studded with electrodes that pick up electric currents from neurons. These currents merge and appear as brain waves of various frequencies that change as the nuns again recall an intense experience with another person and a deep connection with God.

Beauregard and his colleagues found that the most prevalent brain waves are long, slow alpha waves such as those produced by sleep, consistent with the nuns' relaxed state. In work that has not yet been published, the scientists also spotted even lower-frequency waves in the prefrontal and parietal cortices and the temporal lobe that are associated with meditation and trance. "We see delta waves and theta waves in the same brain regions as the fMRI,” Beauregard says.

Fool's Errand?
The brain mediates every human experience from breathing to contemplating the existence of God. And whereas activity in neural networks is what gives rise to these experiences, neuroimaging cannot yet pinpoint such activity at the level of individual neurons. Instead it provides far cruder anatomical information, highlighting the broad swaths of brain tissue that appear to be unusually dynamic or dormant. But using such vague structural clues to explain human feelings and behaviors may be a fool's errand. "You list a bunch of places in the brain as if naming something lets you understand it,” opines neuropsychologist Seth Horowitz of Brown University. Vincent Paquette, who collaborated with Beauregard on his experiments, goes further, likening neuroimaging to phrenology, the practice in which Victorian-era scientists tried-and ultimately failed-to intuit clues about brain function and character traits from irregularities in the shape of the skull.

Spiritual neuroscience studies also face the profound challenge of language. No two mystics describe their experiences in the same way, and it is difficult to distinguish among the various types of mystical experiences, be they spiritual or traditionally religious. To add to the ambiguity, such feelings could also encompass awe of the universe or of nature. "If you are an atheist and you live a certain kind of experience, you will relate it to the magnificence of the universe. If you are a Christian, you will associate it with God. Who knows? Perhaps they are the same,” Beauregard muses.

Rather than attempting to define religious experience to understand it, some say we should be boiling it down to its essential components. "When we talk about phenomena like a mystical experience, we need to be a lot more specific about what we are referring to as far as changes in attention, memory and perception,” Davidson says. "Our only hope is to specify what is going on in each of those subsystems,” as has been done in studies of cognition and emotion.

Other research problems abound. None of the techniques, for example, can precisely delineate specific brain regions. And it is virtually impossible to find a perfect so-called reference task for the nuns to perform against which to compare the religious experience they are trying to capture. After all, what human experience is just one detail different from the awe and love felt in the presence of God?

Making Peace
For the nuns, serenity does not come from a sense of God in their brains but from an awareness of God with them in the world. It is that peace and calm, that sense of union with all things, that Beauregard wants to capture-and perhaps even replicate. "If you know how to electrically or neurochemically change functions in the brain,” he says, "then you [might] in principle be able to help normal people, not mystics, achieve spiritual states using a device that stimulates the brain electromagnetically or using lights and sounds.”

Inducing truly mystical experiences could have a variety of positive effects. Recent findings suggest, for example, that meditation can improve people's ability to pay attention. Davidson and his colleagues asked 17 people who had received three months of intensive training in meditation and 23 meditation novices to perform an attention task in which they had to successively pick out two numbers embedded in a series of letters. The novices did what most people do, the investigators announced in June: they missed the second number because they were still focusing on the first-a phenomenon called attentional blink. In contrast, all the trained meditators consistently picked out both numbers, indicating that practicing meditation can improve focus.

Meditation may even delay certain signs of aging in the brain, according to preliminary work by neuroscientist Sara Lazar of Harvard University and her colleagues. A 2005 paper in NeuroReport noted that 20 experienced meditators showed increased thickness in certain brain regions relative to 15 subjects who did not meditate. In particular, the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula were between four and eight thousandths of an inch thicker in the meditators; the oldest of these subjects boasted the greatest increase in thickness, the reverse of the usual process of aging. Newberg is now investigating whether meditation can alleviate stress and sadness in cancer patients or expand the cognitive capacities of people with early memory loss.

Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body. Beauregard and others argue, for example, that such mystical mimicry might improve immune system function, stamp out depression or just provide a more positive outlook on life. The changes could be lasting and even transformative. "We could generate a healthy, optimal brain template,” Paquette says. "If someone has a bad brain, how can they get a good brain? It's really [a potential way to] rewire our brain.” Religious faith also has inherent worldly rewards, of course. It brings contentment, and charitable works motivated by such faith bring others happiness.

To be sure, people may differ in their proclivity to spiritual awakening. After all, not everyone finds God with the God helmet. Thus, scientists may need to retrofit the technique to the patient. And it is possible that some people's brains will simply resist succumbing to the divine.

Moreover, no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God's interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns' forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe.

Darth Vader - Hoedown King

2007-10-09T10:09:00.001-07:00

Recently discovered footage reveals Darth Vader's musical fortitude.

Voting and the Youth Culture

2007-10-08T18:47:00.001-07:00

Teachers 'Fear Evolution Lessons'

2007-10-05T16:13:00.001-07:00

The teaching of evolution is becoming increasingly difficult in UK schools because of the rise of creationism, a leading scientist is warning.

Head of science at London's Institute of Education Professor Michael Reiss says some teachers, fearful of entering the debate, avoid the subject totally.

This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says.

Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.

He said: "The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim families do not accept evolutionary theory compared with Christian families.

"That's one reason why it's more of an issue in schools."

Prof Reiss estimates that one in 10 people in the UK now believes in literal interpretations of religious creation stories - whether they are based on the Bible or the Koran.

Many more teachers he met at scientific meetings were telling him they encountered more pupils with creationist views, he said.

"The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins."

He supports new government guidelines which say creationism should not be discussed in science classes unless it is raised by pupils.

But Prof Reiss argues that there is an educational value in comparing creationist ideas with scientific theories like Darwin's theory of evolution because they demonstrate how science, unlike religious beliefs, can be tested.

The scientist, who is also a Church of England priest, adds that any teaching should not give the impression that creationism and the theory of evolution are equally valid scientifically.

Dr Hilary Leevers, of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said science teachers would be teaching evolution not creationism and so should not need a book to tell them how to "delicately handle controversy between a scientific theory and a belief".

"The author suggests that science teachers cannot ignore creationism when teaching origins, but the opposite is true," she said.

Teachers could discuss how creationism differed from scientific theory if a student brought up the subject, but any further discussion should occur in religious education lessons, she said.

A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokesman said it had recently published guidelines to teachers on the issue.

"Creationism and intelligent design are not scientific theories nor testable as scientific fact - and have no place in the science curriculum. "But we advise science teachers that when questions about creationism come up in lessons, it provides an opportunity to explain or explore what makes a scientific theory."

Bad "Laptop For Sale" Advertising

2007-10-05T10:32:00.001-07:00

Ya think maybe you could have used your mad computer skills to - say - I don't know - PRINT OUT Flyers?

Bay Area Emergency Phone Numbers - 911 Alternatives

2007-10-02T14:17:00.001-07:00

Shamelessly stolen form the Stanford Fire Marshall's Office: Everyone knows that in case of an emergency to call 911. This phone number has been so universally engrained into society that people will call for reasons that aren’t emergencies. Such as reporting the fact that they just felt an earthquake, as though the dispatchers who answer the line didn’t experience it themselves. Now that everyone has the number committed to memory and isn’t afraid to use it we have a new complication to throw in. Cell phones and let’s face it everyone has one.

Some people are so accustomed to them they no longer feel the need to pay for a landline phone in their home. But what happens when you call 911 from your cell phone is not the same as when you call from a landline phone. All 911 phone calls from cell phones are forwarded to the California Highway Patrol dispatch center, which receive more than 6 million calls a year statewide, up from 29,000 in 1998. As a result what will happen most often is that the caller will be greeted with a recorded message saying all operators are busy. Once you do manage to get through you will need to convey all of the information related to the emergency you are reporting, then you will be transferred to the appropriate local dispatch center, where you will be requested to repeat all of the emergency information again.

All of this takes time, too much time. Fortunately each city has a seven digit emergency line that cell phone users can call to report their emergency. Each city has one and you are strongly encouraged to place one or more of the numbers, listed below, in the speed dial of your cell phone. Easy, no committing to memory, no busy signal, no transferred call. Fast reliable service, just what we are all looking for.

Campbell (408) 378-8161
East Palo Alto (650) 321-1112
Gilroy (408) 842-0191
Los Altos Hills (650) 299-3233
Menlo Park (650) 325-4424
Milpitas (408) 263-1212
Morgan Hill (408) 779-2101
Palo Alto (650) 321-4433
San Carlos (650) 592-2222
San Jose (408) 277-8911
San Mateo County (650) 363-4911
Santa Clara County (408) 299-2311
Saratoga (408) 299-3233

Cupertino (408) 299-3233
Fremont (510) 796-3311
Los Altos (650) 948-8222
Los Gatos (408) 354-8600
Millbrae (650) 697-1212
Monte Sereno (408) 354-8600
Mountain View (650) 903-6922
Redwood City (650) 369-3333
San Francisco (415) 553-0123
San Martin (408) 277-8911
Santa Clara (408) 615-5640
Santa Cruz (831) 471-1131
Sunnyvale (408) 736-6244

Scientists Invent 30 Year Continuous Power Laptop Battery

2007-10-02T09:52:00.001-07:00

From Next Energy News: Your next laptop could have a continuous power battery that lasts for 30 years without a single recharge thanks to work being funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The breakthrough betavoltaic power cells are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years.

Although betavoltaic batteries sound Nuclear they’re not, they’re neither use fission/fusion or chemical processes to produce energy and so (do not produce any radioactive or hazardous waste). Betavoltaics generate power when an electron strikes a particular interface between two layers of material. The Process uses beta electron emissions that occur when a neutron decays into a proton which causes a forward bias in the semiconductor. This makes the betavoltaic cell a forward bias diode of sorts, similar in some respects to a photovoltaic (solar) cell. Electrons scatter out of their normal orbits in the semiconductor and into the circuit creating a usable electric current.

The profile of the batteries can be quite small and thin, a porous silicon material is used to collect the hydrogen isotope tritium which is generated in the process. The reaction is non-thermal which means laptops and other small devices like mobile phones will run much cooler than with traditional lithium-ion power batteries. The reason the battery lasts so long is that neutron beta-decay into protons is the world's most concentrated source of electricity, truly demonstrating Einstein’s theory E=MC2.

The best part about these cells are when they eventually run out of power they are totally inert and non-toxic, so environmentalists need not fear these high tech scientific wonder batteries. If all goes well plans are for these cells to reach store shelves in about 2 to 3 years.

How They Vote in Texas

2007-09-28T10:46:00.001-07:00

Update Your Do-Not-Call Phone Numbers!

2007-09-25T14:37:00.001-07:00

Most businesses and individuals are on the national Do Not Call List which prevents telemarketers from bothering you at work or at home with sales pitches and too-good-to-be-true offers. The big news is that your registration on the list is going to expire soon.

Registration done in June, 2003, when the list was started will expire 5 years from that date, that is, by June, 2008. Your number(s) drop off automatically if you do not enroll again.

Teach The Controversy!

2007-09-24T08:43:00.001-07:00

The Adventures of God-Man

2007-09-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

Can't Tase This

2007-09-21T17:36:00.001-07:00

Don't Tase Me Bro - Remix. . .

Don't Tase Me, Bro!

2007-09-20T13:08:00.001-07:00

"Don't Tase Me, Bro!" has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.

The term hovered between 9th and 11th place as the most searched for term on Google for Wednesday, according to Google Trends.

The above video has been the number 1 Viral Video for the past 24 hours, according to Unruly Media, an online marketing firm in London that tracks viral video activity on the Web. The Meyer arrest video has received 2.6 million views and almost 40,000 new comments since Monday.

In contrast, the much-talked about MoveOn.org's "Betrayal of Trust," anti-Rudy Giuliani ad received just over 171 thousand views and 59 new blog posts. And John Edwards' rebuttal to President Bush's progress report on the Iraq war received 114 thousand views and 43 new posts.

Many of the leading opinion shapers on both the left and the right, as well as newspaper blogs, offered their thoughts and insights on the incident.

Television pundits across the dial offered their opinions, and those opinions were archived for posterity on YouTube.

Several enterprising individuals have even snapped up variations of the spelling of the phrase as Web addresses. One of them points to a Wikipedia entry for the University of Florida.

Someone has already created a mashup.

A couple of t-shirt designs, and bumper stickers have emerged.

Dozens of people have felt compelled to record their own video responses in a YouTube forum discussion on the matter.

Canadian Dollar Reaches Parity With U.S.

2007-09-20T12:50:00.001-07:00

The Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar on Thursday for the first time since November 1976.

Known as the loonie because of the bird pictured on the one-dollar coin, the Canadian dollar has been gaining ground on its American counterpart since hitting an all-time low of 61.79 U.S. cents on Jan. 21, 2002.

This week the loonie rose sharply against its U.S. counterpart after the Federal Reserve announced a dramatic half-point cut in its benchmark interest rates. The Bank of Canada, meanwhile, has kept its equivalent rates stable.

As a result, the spread between U.S. and Canadian interest rates widened, making Canada a more attractive place for German, Japanese, American and other foreign investors to put their money.

The soaring loonie also reflects the strong fundamentals of the Canadian economy, which has benefited from record world crude oil prices and strong demand for metals, coal, chemicals and grain.

At the same time, the United States has been squeezed by a collapse of a big chunk of its housing market and a worsening credit crunch.

"Canadians are getting a lot richer relative to Americans. The parity exchange rate is just one example of that," said Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist and Strategist at CIBC World Markets.

"It really reflects the rise of the resource economy in Canada and the rise of western Canada and the decline of the manufacturing sector and the manufacturing heartland of Canada in Ontario," Rubin said.

The western Canadian province of Alberta is home to vast reserves of oil sands, a tar-like bitumen that is extracted using mining techniques. Industry officials estimate the oil sands will yield as much as 175 billion barrels of oil, making Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in crude oil reserves.

"The Canadian economy that once use to be the sleepy little resource backwater of the North American economy, is certainly turning the tables on its big brother in a hurry," Rubin said.

The high Canadian dollar will increase the number of cross-border shopping trips as Canadian consumers come to the U.S. to buy clothes, shoes and electronic gear. Many goods in Canada haven't been reduced yet to reflect the rising Canadian dollar.

"It's going to take some time before it trickles down to us," said Linda An, who calls herself a shopaholic. "Shopping, especially for big ticket items is great now in the U.S."

The high dollar will hurt Canadian manufacturers who sell goods in the U.S. Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford warned that the sector, largely based in Ontario, will lose hundreds of thousands more jobs if the dollar remains at current levels.

Fantastic Telemarketer Prank Call

2007-09-20T09:55:00.001-07:00

A Fair Question

2007-09-19T16:14:00.001-07:00

Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity

2007-09-19T14:50:00.001-07:00

A military watchdog organization filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit charges the Pentagon with widespread constitutional violations by allegedly trying to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.

The complaint, filed in US District Court in Kansas City, by the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), on behalf of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist currently on active duty in Speicher, Iraq, alleges that Hall's First Amendment rights were violated beginning last Thanksgiving when, because of his atheist beliefs, he declined to participate in a Christian prayer ceremony commemorating the holiday.

"Immediately after plaintiff made it known he would decline to join hands and pray, he was confronted, in the presence of other military personnel, by the senior ranking ... staff sergeant who asked plaintiff why he did not want to pray, whereupon plaintiff explained because he is an atheist," says the lawsuit, a copy of which was provided to Truthout. "The staff sergeant asked plaintiff what an atheist is and plaintiff responded it meant that he (plaintiff) did not believe in God. This response caused the staff sergeant to tell plaintiff that he would have to sit elsewhere for the Thanksgiving dinner. Nonetheless, plaintiff sat at the table in silence and finished his meal."

Moreover, the complaint alleges that on August 7, when Hall received permission by an Army chaplain to organize a meeting of other soldiers who shared his atheist beliefs, his supervisor, Army Major Paul Welborne, broke up the gathering and threatened to retaliate against the soldier by charging him with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The complaint also alleges that Welborne vowed to block Hall's reenlistment in the Army if the atheist group continued to meet - a violation of Hall's First Amendment rights under the Constitution. Welborne is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

"During the course of the meeting, defendant Welborne confronted the attendees, disrupted the meeting and interfered with plaintiff Hall's and the other attendees' rights to discuss topics of their interests," the lawsuit alleges.

The rest of the story.

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek

2007-09-19T11:27:00.001-07:00

Full Text

Couple Cheats in Online Chat Room, with Each Other!

2007-09-19T11:16:00.001-07:00

The next time you decide to go behind your spouse's back to cheat by meeting others on dating sites or chat rooms, make sure it's not actually your spouse who you're planning to cheat with. Sana Klaric, 27, and husband Adnan, 32, a couple from Bosnia, were having marital trouble. Each of them, on separate occasions of course, decided to scour the Web for a person to spice up their life.

What they didn't know was that while the husband was at work and the wife was in an Internet cafe, they were talking to each other online, chatting under the names Prince of Joy and Sweetie, respectively. After agreeing to meet up, they realized that their mystery person was in fact, each other! "When I saw my husband there with the rose and it dawned on me what had happened I was shattered. I felt so betrayed. I was so angry." Adnan said: "I was so happy to have found a woman who finally understood me. Then it turned out that I hadn't found anyone new at all."

Obviously upset, each decided to file for divorce since both of them were caught being unfaithful. Let that be a lesson to all of you: sometimes the Web isn't as big as you think it is!

Banging the Drums Of War

2007-09-17T17:11:00.001-07:00