Strong earthquake hits off Mexico's Pacific coast

A strong earthquake has hit off Mexico's Pacific coast.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado says the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 and was centered off the coast of Jalisco state.

The quake happened Tuesday night at 7:33 p.m.

There are no reports of damages or injuries.

No one listened then ... maybe, now?!

Here's a few things experts were saying about the economy before the meltdown.
That and a literary citation that was spot-on when written a few years back!

“In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail — not the tail that wags the dog.”
– Lewis Carroll

“Welcome to the conservative’s worst nightmare: The law of unintended consequences. Why? Nobody wants to admit it, folks, but the conservatives’ grand ideology is backfiring, actually turning the world’s greatest capitalistic democracy into the world’s newest socialist economy.”
– Paul B. Ferrell, “11 reasons America’s a new socialist economy,” MarketWatch, July 22, 2008.

“The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.”
– Clive Crook, “Only Luck Can Save America’s Economy,” Financial Times, Aug. 3, 2008.

Bystanders pull students from burning bus in Florida

More Heroes:

Passers-by are being credited with pulling students from a school bus that caught fire after it was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer in north Florida, killing one teenager, a school official said.

"This was a tragedy, but it's also a miracle," said Marion County Superintendent of Schools Jim Yance." "We're lucky one person got out of there alive."

About 20 middle and high school students were on the bus when it was rear-ended Tuesday afternoon. Two were critically injured and several others had injuries not considered life-threatening.

The student who died was identified as Frances M. Schee, 13.

"The kid was lodged and I just couldn't get her out," Chris Mann, an elevator installer who stopped to help when he saw the accident, told the Star-Banner. "There was nothing I could do."

Yancey said at least four bystanders helped the students.

"I'd say they probably got half the kids off the bus themselves," Yancey said. "They were showing more grief and remorse from not being able to do more."

Police said charges are pending against the driver of the tractor-trailer, Reinaldo Gonzalez, 30, of Orlando. He was taken to a hospital with head injuries.

Earlier this month, a chain-reaction crash southeast of Tallahassee involving a school bus, minivan and cement mixer truck killed an 8-year-old girl and injured seven other children and the van driver.

Gas Shortage Cancels Classes At NC College

A gas shortage that's frustrating drivers in the Southeast has prompted a community college in North Carolina to cancel classes for the rest of the week.

Officials say an increasing number of the 25,000 commuter students at several campuses of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College aren't showing up.

A spokeswoman for the college in western North Carolina says even professors are calling to say they're stuck at home.

Drivers throughout much of the Southeast have been scrambling to find gas since Hurricane Ike shut down or reduced work at more than a dozen refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Some stations don't have gas to sell, while others report long lines.

Congress, are you LISTENING!

Congress, are you LISTENING!
This from The Young Turks reflects what the Taxpayers are saying pretty well.

Irish Proverb

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Clay is gay: Aiken comes out of the closet

And ...this is news?

Clay Aiken appears on the cover of the latest People magazine holding his infant son, Parker Foster Aiken, with the headline: "Yes, I'm Gay."

Okay, who was the one person on earth that didn't know this already?

So, Clay is gay - the world can keep spinning now! Whew!

Where the readers are ...

Here is who is reading Carolina Naturally now.

Games Without Frontiers

There is something chillingly Orwellian in this performance by Peter Gabriel.

Man charged after gun found in car near Obama home

Police have brought a felony gun charge against a member of a prominent Chicago family who was arrested after he approached security barriers outside Barack Obama's home.

The family of 31-year-old Omhari Sengstacke released a statement saying he had no intent to harm the Democratic presidential candidate or his family. The U.S. Secret Service also has insisted he never posed a threat to Obama.

Sengstacke was apparently intoxicated but not armed when he was arrested about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. The gun was found in his car.

Omhari Sengstacke is the grandson of John Sengstacke, longtime publisher of the Chicago Defender.

Girl's hand reattached after jump rope accident

See there are still some good people around ...

A 6-year-old girl is recovering after surgeons reattached her left hand, severed when it was caught in a loop of jump rope that had snagged on the axle of her mother's car.

Erica Rix underwent 10 hours of surgery after the accident in early September and spent nine days in intensive care before returning home.

Erica was playing with a jump rope in the back seat of her mother's car and let one end of the rope out the window to flutter in the wind.

"I wanted to see it go up and down because I thought I was going to fly," she said.

The rope caught on the car's axle and a loop of the rope tightened around the girl's wrist, slicing off her hand.

"She was screaming and screaming and so I got out of the car and at her window that was just cracked about that much, the remaining part of her hand ... most of it was gone," her mother, Allison Rix, said.

Passing motorist Jim Bailey, of Saratoga, stopped and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

"I was trying to wave down a passer-by," Allison Rix said Tuesday, "and he stopped immediately and ran up to the car and had to assess the situation then - just like a superhero, I like to think of him - as he whipped out his belt and did a tourniquet" while she tried to call 911.

Rix said her cell phone got disconnected but another person who stopped was able to call emergency services.

Passer-by Pat Heller spotted Erica's hand lying on the street, and she and a resident directed traffic around it.

"I took some real deep breaths. I just kept telling myself 'This is a child's hand,'" Heller said.

*****

These heroes and the doctors who reattached this young girl's hand are what we need more of in this world!

On a happy note: Doctors says even with several more surgeries on the hand , the young girl should make a complete recovery and her hand will be as if this freak accident never happened.

California tribe fears losing land if dam is raised

The federal government is considering enlarging a dam to boost the state's water supply, which would flood what little land remains above water where a Native American tribe had fished and farmed for centuries.

Nine-tenths of the ancestral land of the Winnemen Wintu was submerged in 1945, when the federal government built a 602-foot dam downstream of their ceremonial and prayer grounds.

Now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is considering enlarging Shasta Dam, flooding the remaining 22 miles of rocky, steep canyon shoreline, including two sacred rocks involved in coming-of-age rituals.

"These sacred places help keep the tribe healthy. They help keep it balanced and they help us to heal," said tribal chief Caleen Sisk-Franco. "There is no replacement. There's not an option to move it."

The desire by the few remaining tribal members to preserve the remnants of their homeland is running headlong into the desires of Central Valley farmers, the main beneficiaries of the federal proposal to enlarge Lake Shasta.

When it was filled to capacity, the lake flooded 46 square miles where tribal leaders say some 20,000 Winnemen Wintu once lived along the McCloud River. Their numbers fell to 395 at the turn of the century, with thousands massacred by western settlers and ravaged by disease during the Gold Rush. Today, the tribe counts 122 enrolled members, about a fifth of whom live in a makeshift village of trailers and a house on 42 acres of private land a few miles from the McCloud River, some 225 miles north of San Francisco.

Lake Shasta is the starting point for the federally run Central Valley Project, a system of 21 reservoirs, canals and aqueducts that funnel water to some 3.2 million acres of farmland and supplies water to about 2 million people.

Supporters say an enlarged lake is needed to meet the needs of California's growing population. The larger reservoir also would be able to store more cold water, which is needed to help the salmon that used to migrate to cooler water upstream before the dam blocked their path, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The bureau is studying whether to raise the dam by 6 1/2 to 18 1/2 feet, which would enlarge the reservoir by more than a tenth of its current size. That's enough water to serve the city of Los Angeles for more than year.

"What's so potentially promising about raising Shasta Dam, all things considered, is an opportunity to provide more storage at a facility that's already in place," said Ron Ganzfried, a supervisor in the Bureau of Reclamation's regional planning division.

A higher dam also would provide more hydropower, flood protection along the upper Sacramento River and combat future water shortages expected to come with climate change, according to a recent bureau report.

Although the price tag is steep - with preliminary costs ranging from $531.3 million to $854.9 million - it's far less than the cost of building a new dam. For example, the state estimates it could cost $3.6 billion to build a reservoir in a valley north of Sacramento that would store roughly the same amount of water as would be added behind a taller Shasta dam.

That makes it an attractive solution for California's farmers and municipal water agencies whose water supplies have dwindled after two dry winters and a federal court order that greatly reduced water diversions to protect threatened delta fish.

But conservation groups are concerned that swelling of the lower portion of the McCloud River would ruin one of the state's prized trout streams. They also question whether the additional cold water that would be stored behind a higher Shasta Dam would be saved and released for migrating salmon, as government officials claim.

Instead, environmental groups favor building bypasses for salmon to get them around the dam and into the McCloud River. They also advocate paying farmers and other users to increase water conservation efforts.

"We need to come up with permanent solutions that will increase flexibility and provide what we need for the salmon rather than reinvesting in the very projects that caused the problem," said Mindy McIntyre, a water specialist at the nonprofit Planning and Conservation League.

Federal officials say environmental organizations and the Winnemen Wintu tribe will be consulted as plans move forward over the next few years, but how much sway the tribe - which is not a federally recognized tribe - will have to block the dam project is questionable. Congress must still authorize and fund the project.

Although the tribe is small in number, its ties to the area remain central to preserving its heritage. The rocky shoreline along the McCloud River is where tribal members come at least once a year to celebrate the womanhood of their teenage girls. Medicinal plants are ground on a special rock and traditional prayers are offered.

Across the river, toddlers are introduced to another rock where tribal elders tell their ancestral stories. Both cultural spots could be swamped by the rising water if Shasta Dam is raised.

Boy, 5, dumped by school bus driver in NYC streets

A New York City mother wants to know why her first-grade son was left to wander the streets alone after being dropped off by a school bus driver at the end of the line.

School officials say they don't know who put 5-year-old Jaeden Vasquez on the bus Thursday - especially since he wasn't even supposed to be on it. He lives across the street from the school in the Bronx.

His mother, Aileen Bonilla, says the school apologized but that isn't enough.

Five-year-old children aren't supposed to be let off school buses unless an adult is waiting. Jaeden says he was ordered off the bus at the last stop, two miles from his home. A stranger brought him home.

School officials say they are investigating.

McPain says if you're here illegally...welcome!

But, only if you are Irish.

"There are 50,000 Irish men and women who are in this country illegally at this time, who are hard-working people, who want to become citizens. and I want to assure you that we will enact comprehensive immigration reform, after they do certain things, obviously, give them a path to citizenship in this country as part of an overall immigration reform package."

So much for the 'Brown People', Huh?

Britney's Sister in Porn Scandal

From the "Why is this even news?" Department:

Here is how Europeans view the absurdity that is the US

A picture of 17-year-old JAMIE LYNN SPEARS breastfeeding her baby has sparked a police pornography investigation in the States.

Read the full story here.

Or if you prefer the view from Down Under read it here.

Feds ask to put wolves back on endangered list

Federal wildlife officials have asked a judge to put gray wolves in the Northern Rockies back on the endangered species list - a sharp reversal from the government's prior contention that the animals were thriving.

Attorneys for the Fish and Wildlife Service asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula to vacate the agency's February finding that more than 1,400 wolves in the region no longer needed federal protection.

The government's request Monday follows a July injunction in which Molloy had blocked plans for public wolf hunts this fall in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho pending resolution of a lawsuit by environmentalists.

"What we want to do is look at this more thoroughly," Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Sharon Rose said. "We definitely have a lot of wolves out there, but we need to address some of (Molloy's) concerns in a way that people feel comfortable with."

At issue is whether a decade-long wolf restoration program has reversed the near-extermination of wolves, or if - as environmentalists claim - their long-term survival remains in doubt due to proposed hunting.

"This hit everybody really cold," said John Bloomquist, an attorney for the Montana Stockgrowers Association. "All of a sudden the federal defendants are going in the other direction."

The government's request to remand, or reconsider, the issue was filed in response to an April lawsuit from a dozen environmental and animal rights groups.

"I would call that victory. What they're requesting is to go back to the drawing boards," said Doug Honnold, an Earthjustice attorney representing the plaintiffs. They include the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States and other local and national groups.

If Molloy goes along with the government's request, the Fish and Wildlife Service would embark on a re-evaluation of wolves that could last for months or even years. The agency would again open the issue to public comment before returning with a new decision.

In the meantime, the killing of some wolves by government wildlife agents or ranchers would continue. More than 180 wolves were killed last year in response to wolf attacks on livestock.

A recent inventory of wolf populations in the three states showed their population in decline this year for the first time in more than a decade. Federal biologists say the decline occurred because wolves had filled up the best habitat in the region.

Honnold questioned whether disease, illegal hunting or other factors might have contributed to the drop, which saw wolf numbers decline from 1,545 during the summer of 2007 to 1,455 this summer.

Under the federal rule that took the animal off the list in February, authority over the region's wolf populations had passed to state agencies in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

In his July injunction, Molloy put that authority back in federal hands. The judge questioned whether wildlife laws within the three states - particularly Wyoming - would be enough to protect wolves from excessive or indiscriminate hunting.

Molloy also questioned whether packs had been intermingling enough to avoid inbreeding - a concern raised by recent research into wolf genetics.

Helpful Hints:

For Guys: A Guide to Girl Talk

By Amy Spencer

"Baffled by what women are getting at half the time you talk to them? Then keep this translation manual handy to decode her most misunderstood lines.

If you’ve ever spoken to a woman, it’s fair to say you’ve been confused by one. Yes doesn’t always mean yes, no doesn’t always mean no, and most of us have once in our lives even admitted, “Well, I may have said that, but I didn’t mean it.” What’s with all the mixed messages? “Women communicate by giving subtle suggestions instead of being literal, so we can check for positive reinforcement before we continue. We want to be careful about the impact we have on the other person,” explains Sharyn Wolf, CSW, a psychotherapist in New York City. But while figuring out what women really want can be difficult, it’s not impossible. So follow this guide to girl-speak. These are some of the things you might hear a woman say as you meet, date and woo her—and the code for reading between the lines."

Read the rest here.

Gunman kills 9 at school in Finland, shoots self

Another Fine US Export: School Shootings

A gunman whose violent YouTube postings made police bring him in for questioning opened fire Tuesday at his trade school in western Finland, killing nine people before shooting himself, authorities said.

It was Finland's second school massacre in less than a year.

The gunman had been questioned by police just one day before the attack about YouTube postings in which he is seen firing a handgun, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said. He was released because there was no legal grounds to hold him, she said.

Witnesses said panic broke out as the hooded gunman entered the school in Kauhajoki, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki, and began firing in a classroom where students were taking an exam. The shootings began just before 11 a.m. local time (0800GMT), as about 150 students were at Kauhajoki School of Hospitality.

"Within a short space of time I heard several dozen rounds of shots, in other words it was an automatic pistol," school janitor Jukka Forsberg told Finnish broadcaster YLE. "I saw some female students who were wailing and moaning and one managed to escape out of the back door."

Kauhajoki Mayor Antti Rantakokko confirmed that nine people were killed. At least one other woman had a gunshot wound to the head before the gunman shot himself in the head, authorities said.

Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reported that police had identified the gunman as Matti Juhani Saari, a 22-year-old student. Authorities would only confirm that he was a student at the school, born in 1986.

The Finnish news agency STT said the school building was on fire and the gunman reportedly had explosives on him.

The gunman and the wounded woman were taken to a hospital in Tampere, two hours away, the hospital's medical director Matti Lehto told the AP.

"(He is) shot in the head so he is severely injured," Lehto said.

College rector Tapio Varmola told YLE the school had 150 students at the time and the shooting started in a classroom where 20 people were taking an exam.

Tuesday's rampage happened almost a year after another gunman killed eight people and himself at a school in southern Finland, an attack that triggered a fierce debate about gun laws in this Nordic nation with deep-rooted traditions of hunting in the sub-Arctic wilderness.

Power cut contributed to woman's death

I see corporate disregard for humans is not only in the United States!

An energy company's decision to cut off electricity to a New Zealand woman's home because of an unpaid bill contributed to her death from morbid obesity, a coroner's court ruled Tuesday.

Folole Muliaga, 44, a nursery school teacher, died two hours after the oxygen machine she used to help her breathe shut down when the government-owned utility Mercury Energy cut power to her home.

Muliaga's death on May 29, 2007, outraged New Zealanders, with Prime Minister Helen Clark denouncing the company's actions as heartless and intolerable.

Coroner Gordon Matenga said he agreed with two of four medical experts who presented evidence to the hearing that cutting the power had contributed to Muliaga's death.

"The cessation of oxygen therapy and the stress arising from the fact of the disconnection (as opposed to the way in which the power was disconnected) have contributed to her death," he said in his ruling.

Matenga also noted that Mercury Energy acknowledged it hadn't complied with Electricity Commission guidelines for identifying vulnerable customers at the time of Muliaga's death.

Muliaga family spokesman Brenden Sheehan said the family would instruct its lawyers "to explore all legal avenues" for compensation following the findings.

"The coroner established there was a cause and effect over her death, and that Mercury Energy didn't follow the guidelines of the Electricity Commission," Sheehan said.

Sheehan said he hoped the family and the agencies involved could reach an out-of-court agreement.

Olinda Woodroffe, lawyer for Muliaga's husband, said she was confident there were strong legal grounds for compensation.

A police investigation last year found no grounds for criminal charges against the utility.

Coroners in New Zealand can order inquests into unusual deaths to assess the circumstances so they can make recommendations to prevent future occurrences. The inquest does not assign blame.

At the time of Muliaga's death, the family believed it owed Mercury Energy 34.44 New Zealand dollars (US$26.67); the company later put the amount at NZ$168 (US$130.12).

Small accidents mean big trouble for supercollider

Scientists expect startup glitches in the massive, complex machines they use to smash atoms.

But the unique qualities of the world's largest particle collider mean that the meltdown of a small electrical connection could delay its groundbreaking research until next year, scientists said Sunday.

Because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero - colder than outer space - the damaged area must be warmed to a temperature where humans can work. That takes about a month. Then it has to be re-chilled for another month.

As a result, the equipment may not be running again before the planned shutdown of the equipment for the winter to reduce electricity costs. That means Friday's meltdown could end up putting off high-energy collisions of particles - the machine's ultimate objective - until 2009.

"Hopefully we'll come online and go quickly to full energy a few months into 2009 so in the long term, this may not end up being such a large delay in the physics program," Seth Zenz, a graduate student from the University of California, wrote on the site of the U.S. physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

"It's obviously a short-term disappointment, though, and a lost opportunity," he wrote.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said the repair operation will last until close to the usual winter shutdown time at the end of November. There has been some discussion that the new equipment could operate through the winter, but no decision has been made, he said.

The melting of the wire connecting two magnets Friday would have taken only a couple of days to repair on smaller, room-temperature accelerators that have been in use for decades, Gillies said.

Gillies said particle accelerators using superconducting equipment at Fermilab outside Chicago and at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state had similar problems starting up, but have been operating smoothly since then.

"Once they settled in they seem to be pretty stable," Gillies said.

At the Sept. 10 launch of the collider, beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms were fired first at the speed of light in a clockwise direction though a fire-hose-sized tube in the tunnel. Then proton beams were fired in the counterclockwise tube.

Jos Engelen, CERN's chief scientific officer and deputy director-general, said the startup showed that the LHC can handle complex operations.

"We have encountered a weakness in one particular connection during very final hardware commissioning," Engelen told The Associated Press by e-mail. "It is tough, but it can happen. We will make the repair and resume the very successful operation of the accelerator."

A transformer failed outside the cold zone about 36 hours after the collider's launch. That was repaired and the machine was ready again a week after it was shut down.

But the goal of the LHC - shattering protons to reveal more about how the tiniest particles were first created - was still weeks away because the equipment has to be gradually brought to the higher energies possible at full power.

"This was the last circuit of the LHC to be tested at high current before operations," Gillies said. "There are an awful lot of these connections between wires in the machine. They all have to be very well done so that they don't stop superconducting, and what appears to have happened is that this connection stopped being superconducting."

Superconductivity - the ability to conduct electricity without any resistance in some metals at low temperatures_ allows for much greater efficiency in operating the electromagnets that guide the proton beams.

Without the superconducting, resistance builds up in the wires, causing them to overheat, he explained.

"That's what we think happened," Gillies said. "This piece of wire heated up, melted, and that led to a mechanical failure."

Gillies said experts have already gone down into the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border to inspect the damage.

"By Monday I suspect we'll know more," he said.

Gillies said there is plenty for scientists at CERN to do between now and the startup of experiments, including studying cosmic rays that pass through collider's massive detectors.

Passenger charged in Canada bus attack

What is it with Canada and buses recently?

Police charged a man Monday with an attack on a Greyhound bus in northern Ontario that left a passenger hospitalized, just weeks after a suspect was accused of stabbing and beheading a fellow traveler on a Greyhound.

David Roberts, 28, was charged Monday with aggravated assault and breach of probation in the latest attack.

Police said the 20-year-old victim, who was not further identified, was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Ontario provincial police Constable James Searle said the victim and his attacker didn't appear to know each other and that investigators were trying to determine a motive for Sunday's attack.

Police wouldn't confirm the victim was stabbed but witnesses said the attacker had a knife.

Anita Daher, a Winnipeg author sitting behind the driver on the bus traveling from Toronto to Winnipeg, Manitoba, said Monday that she heard a commotion from the back of the bus and saw a man clutching his chest in pain.

She said Roberts then demanded to be let off the bus before passengers called police on cell phones. Police said the suspect was arrested a short while later.

The attack came less than two months after the gruesome slaying of Tim McLean, 22, on a Greyhound traveling from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg with 37 passengers. Police said an assailant stabbed McLean dozens of times before severing his head in an unprovoked attack. Vince Weiguang Li is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he is competent to stand trial for the killing.

Passengers who witnessed the latest attack questioned why police put Roberts on the bus.

"I certainly want to know how this happened," Daher said. "I would certainly like to see some security measures put in place.

Ontario Provincial police say they were assisting local officers with the alleged attacker shortly before he boarded the bus. But Searle said he couldn't comment further.

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh declined to comment on the incident.

Washington man gets 27 months in dragging death

A man convicted in the dragging death of an Eastern Washington University student has been sentenced to 27 months in prison.

Wendell C. Sinn Jr. was sentenced Monday. Last week, the 45-year-old entered an Alford plea to second-degree manslaughter, meaning he didn't admit guilt but felt he would be found guilty if he went to trial for the death of Jerid S. Sturman-Camyn.

The 20-year-old student was dragged more than 13 miles to his death by a pickup driven by Sinn's teenage son in November 2007.

Sinn was arrested after witnesses say he placed a noose around Sturman-Camyn's neck and attached it to the back of his pickup.

Justin Sinn, told investigators he didn't know he'd been dragging Sturman-Camyn. He hasn't been charged.

NYPD officer gets 5 years for stealing handguns

A former New York City police officer has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing handguns from a police evidence room and trading them for painkillers.

Hubertus Vannes, of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., pleaded guilty in May to criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal sale of a firearm. He had been an NYPD officer for two years when he was arrested last fall.

Prosecutors say Vannes admitted trading three stolen guns to a man for painkillers. He had 76 tablets of prescription painkillers in his possession when he was arrested.

A Metaphor

Catholics versus Jews

In the Fourteenth century, the Pope decrees that all Jews living in Italy must convert to Catholicism, or be thrown out of the country.
A huge outcry erupts and it is decided that a religious debate between the leaders will decide the fate of the Jews.
The Pope and an aged and wise Rabbi meet, neither understands their language, so it is decided to have a silent debate, using gestures.
Firstly the Pope raises his hand and shows three fingers
the rabbi responds with one finger.
Secondly the Pope waves his finger around his head
the Rabbi responds by pointing to the ground.
Finally the Pope brings out a communion wafer and some wine.
The Rabbi pulls out an apple.

With that the Pope declares himself beaten, and the Jews are allowed to stay in Italy.

Later on the Pope meets his cardinals to explain what happened
The Pope said "First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity, he held up one finger to remind us that one God is common to both our beliefs
Next I waved my hand to show that God is all around us, he responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was here with us, and finally I brought out wine and wafers to show that God absolves us of all our sins, he produced an apple to remind us of the original sin, with that I realized he had won the argument"
The Rabbi returns to his people and is asked how he had won

The Rabbi replies "Not got a clue, first he told me we had three days to get out of Italy, I gave him the finger. Next he tells me the country would be rid of Jews, and I told him we were staying right here"
What then? He was asked, "Who knows, he took out his lunch, and I took out mine"

*****

There's story in there somewhere ...

Eve of Destruction

As true today as it was then ...

... except today we are well into the day of destruction ...

Creedence Clearwater Revival

"Well I'm here to tell you
each and every mother's son.
You better learn it fast,
you better learn it young.
'Cause Someday never comes."

Street corner science lessons with a Nobel Laureate

This is a cool idea ...












In 1988, Leon Lederman shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work to understand elementary particles called neutrinos. ScienCentral set Lederman up with a desk on a street corner and encouraged curious passersby to ask science questions. The two-part video was part of SciCentral's Web show series called "Street Corner Science." Lederman talked about time travel, nuclear power, and, particle physics.

Street Corner Science with Leon Lederman

Comments, Comments, Comments

What they are saying:

Hi, It is nice to be a part of your world. Rich

Repugicans! I like that term, it suits them. Joaine

Great blog. Hope you are having a wonderful day. Stephanie

Anchorage loves Carolina Naturally. Keep it up. James

Good for you. Nice blog. It’s been a long time since ’78. Gilles

(editor's note: Gilles was an exchange student who stayed with us back in '78. And he just found my blog)

你好，从北京。 爱您的博客。 黄 (Hello, from Beijing. Love your blog. Huang)

Biting humor didn't die with George! Marie

I took a hard look in the mirror, thanks. Eduard

Thanks for the comments folks keep them coming.

Daily Conundrum

Does not expecting the unexpected make the unexpected, expected?

Obama Unharmed by Rabid Chihuahua Attack

DETROIT, MICHIGAN- During a campaign event over the weekend, Presidential candidate Barack Obama found himself distracted by an odd tugging at his pant leg. He looked down and discovered a tiny chihuahua ferociously chewing on his ankle.

Instinctively, his aides rushed in to whisk the Senator off to the nearest emergency room, but in the end this proved to be unnecessary. For all its growling and gnashing of teeth, the animal had failed to break the skin. As a matter of fact, Obama suffered no discernible injury whatsoever other than an uncomfortable moist and slightly sticky sensation. He was so nonchalant about the so-called attack that he didn't even bother to remove the thing as it continued to munch on him.

Read the rest here.

A 2-to-1 ratio

By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks.

As a result of this Obama's advantage, is growing.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters now say they will back Obama.

Where did Obama make his gains?

In two core McPain constituencies: men, who now favor Obama, and seniors, who have also flipped from McPain to Obama.

Lest you Forget ...

As of Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, at least 525 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Iraqi's warmth to Israel exacts a heavy price

First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi's troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state - something Iraq's leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel - a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party's sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

Now he is in trouble for again visiting Israel and attending a conference a week ago at the International Institute for Counterterrorism.

"He wasn't set to speak, but he was in the audience and conversed with a lecturer on a panel about insurgency and terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel," said conference organizer Eitan Azani. "We didn't invite him. He came on his own initiative."

Al-Alusi has a German passport, allowing him to travel without visa restrictions imposed on other Iraqis. Lawmakers accused him of humiliating the nation with a trip to the "enemy" state.

The uproar shows how far Iraq has moved from the early U.S. goal of creating a democracy that would make peace with Israel and remove a critical force from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The U.S. Embassy declined comment. "It is an issue for the Iraqi parliament, not the U.S. Mission to Iraq," said spokesman Armand Cucciniello.

"What has happened was a catastrophe for democracy," Al-Alusi told The Associated Press in an interview in his Baghdad home. "Within an hour's time, the parliament became the policeman, the investigator, the judge, the government and the law. It was a sham trial."

Al-Alusi said he went to Israel to seek international support for Iraq as it struggles against terrorism, and insisted that the outcry reflects Iranian meddling in Iraq's internal affairs - an accusation often leveled by Sunnis like himself against Iraq's mostly Shiite neighbor.

"Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah and many other terrorist organizations. Israelis are suffering like me, like my people. So we need to be together," he said. "Peace will have more of a chance."

Iraq sent troops to three Arab wars against Israel, and fired Scud missiles at it in the 1991 Gulf War. It remains technically at war with the Jewish state. Iraq's once-thriving Jewish community has shriveled to just a few people, most having fled after Israel was founded in 1948.

"Al-Alusi has insulted the hundreds of Iraqi martyrs who fell while fighting the Israelis," said Osama al-Nujeifi, a Sunni lawmaker. "It was a provocative visit to a historical enemy."

In Al-Alusi's living room, decorated with oriental rugs and paintings, his two dead sons, aged 19 and 29, smile from a photo hanging next to a stately grandfather clock.

A secular Muslim, he lit a cigarette during an interview even though this is the Muslim month of Ramadan, when food, water and smoking are forbidden during daylight hours.

Al-Alusi, 55, has a long history of clashes with authority and spent half his life in exile.

He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1976 - he was studying in Cairo at the time - for allegedly trying to undermine Saddam Hussein. He went to Syria and Germany, returning in 2003 after the dictator was overthrown.

Even in exile, he caused commotion, leading a group that stormed the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in 2002 to protest against Saddam's regime. A German court convicted him of hostage-taking and other charges, but he appealed and never served his full sentence of three years.

In 2004, he was expelled from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress for his earlier visit to Israel, also for a terrorism conference.

In February 2005 came the ambush. Asad Kamal al-Hashimi, a former culture minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death last month on charges he planned the ambush. Al-Hashimi remains a fugitive.

After his expulsion from the Iraqi National Congress, al-Alusi formed the Iraqi Nation Party, which he describes as a "liberal, secular and democratic party" with 12,000 members.

Al-Alusi said Iraq should follow Jordan and Egypt in seeking peace with Israel, especially since Syria is moving in that direction. He insists Israel would have to make concessions to the Palestinians.

"We should act now because if the Syrian-Israel talks succeed, this means that Iraq will be isolated," he said. "It's the right time to open a new phase with Israel."

'Merchant of Death' in Thai court

An arms smuggler's extradition hearing to the United States began Monday after a string of delays in the high-profile case because of complications with his defense team in Thailand.

Viktor Bout, dubbed "The Merchant of Death," has been indicted in the U.S. on four terrorism charges. He was arrested in Thailand on March 6.

Though Bout denies any involvement in illicit activities, he is regarded as one of the world's most-wanted arms traffickers and was purportedly the model for the character portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie "Lord of War."

Chained at the ankles, Bout made no comment as he was led into Bangkok's Criminal Court.

Monday's hearing was briefly interrupted at the start when defense attorney Preecha Prasertsak petitioned the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the Russian had been illegally detained. After a half-hour adjournment, judges said the complaint would be considered at a later date.

Bout's defense team has repeatedly said she plans to fight his extradition, a procedure that has been bogged down by the Russian's inability to hold onto a lawyer.

The hearing was initially scheduled to start June 9 but was postponed when Bout's attorney at the time said he had heart problems.

Bout was then given a court-appointed attorney who failed to show up for the rescheduled hearing on July 28, saying he had another case in court at the same time. That lawyer was dismissed and Bout was assigned representation by Preecha.

It was not immediately clear how long the extradition proceedings would take.

The 41-year-old Russian faces charges of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile, according to a U.S. indictment made public May 6. He faces a life sentence.

American prosecutors say Bout was offering a deadly arsenal of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, thousands of guns, high-tech helicopters, and airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and missiles. The U.S. classifies FARC as a terrorist organization.

The charges were based in part on a covertly recorded meeting in Thailand on March 6. Bout was arrested after a sting operation in which undercover U.S. agents posed as Colombian rebels.

Bout, who has been accused of breaking several U.N. arms embargoes, has a long list of alleged clients including African dictators and warlords such as former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and both sides of the civil war in Angola.

Police say officer feared insulin pump was weapon

This is why we need better educated policemen ...

Police officers in two Detroit suburbs are accused of beating a motorist who was suffering a diabetic episode on a freeway.

Lawyer Arnold Reed says 59-year-old Ernest Griglen had brain surgery after the June 15 encounter with police and has been clinging to life with help from a ventilator.

Reed filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court seeking at least $20 million from Allen Park and Dearborn police. He says officers mistakenly believed Griglen was resisting arrest when he was having a major medical problem.

An Allen Park police report says Griglen's car was swerving.

Allen Park police wouldn't comment on the lawsuit. Dearborn police released a report saying an officer feared Griglen's insulin pump was a weapon.

Woman whose dogs mauled neighbor gets 15 to life

A woman whose dogs viciously attacked and killed her neighbor in the hallway of their apartment building seven years ago was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison.

Marjorie Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2001 mauling death of Dianne Whipple, but a judge later reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her in 2002 to a four-year prison term.

But the California Supreme Court last year said the trial judge was wrong and sent the case back. Last month, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated the murder conviction, for which Knoller was sentenced Monday.

The case is the California's first murder conviction connected to a dog mauling, prosecutors say.

The case turned into a tabloid sensation because of the viciousness of the attack - the dogs tore all of Whipple's clothing from her body and left her with more than 70 bites - and the seemingly cavalier attitudes of Knoller and her law partner and husband, Robert Noel, who blamed Whipple for the attack.

The couple also said they were keeping the canines on behalf of a white supremacist accused of running an attack dog ring from his state prison cell. The couple eventually adopted the prisoner, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, as their son.

Knoller, who has served three years in prison, will have to serve 12 more years before she can apply for parole.

In denying Knoller's plea for probation, Woolard noted that Knoller didn't call 911 or otherwise try to help Whipple during the 10-minute attack. The judge said Knoller knew the dogs were dangerous, ignored numerous warnings to train them and hasn't expressed remorse for the attack.

"She has blamed the victim and has held her dogs in higher regard than humans," Woolard said.

Whipple's partner, Sharon Smith, addressed Knoller before she was led off to jail. Smith called Knoller's relationship with the two dogs and the prisoner "perverted" and expressed satisfaction with the lengthy prison sentence.

"It is very hard to find forgiveness for someone who doesn't accept responsibility," Smith said.

Experts say Stonehenge was place of healing

The first excavation of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has uncovered evidence that the stone circle drew ailing pilgrims from around Europe for what they believed to be its healing properties, archaeologists said Monday.

Archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill said the content of graves scattered around the monument and the ancient chipping of its rocks to produce amulets indicated that Stonehenge was the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, the French shrine venerated for its supposed ability to cure the sick.

An unusual number of skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury. Analysis of their teeth showed that about half were from outside the Stonehenge area.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.

He pointed out that experts near Stonehenge have found two skulls that showed evidence of primitive surgery, some of just a few known cases of operations in prehistoric Britain.

"Even today, that's the pretty serious end of medicine," he said. Also found near Stonehenge was the body of a man known as the Amesbury Archer, who had a damaged skull and badly hurt knee and died around the time the stones were being installed. Analysis of the Archer's bones showed he was from the Alps.

Darvill cautioned, however, that the new evidence did not rule out other uses for Stonehenge.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," Darvill said. "Just as Lourdes, for example, is still a religious center."

The archaeologists managed to date the construction of the stone monument to about 2,300 B.C., a couple of centuries younger than was previously thought. It was at that time that bluestones - a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite - were shipped by hand or by raft from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, to create the inner circle of Stonehenge.

The outer circle, composed of much larger sandstone slabs, is what most people associate with the monument today, particularly since only about a third of the 80 or so bluestones remain. The scientists argued that they were once at the heart of Stonehenge, and closely associated with its healing properties.

As evidence, Darvill said his dig had uncovered masses of fragments carved out of the bluestones by people to create amulets. Any rock carried around in such a way would have had some sort of protective or healing property, he said. He said that theory was backed by burials in southwest England where the stones were interred with their owners.

Today the bluestones are now largely invisible, dwarfed by the huge sandstone monoliths - or "hanging stones" - that were erected later and still make up Stonehenge's iconic profile.

"They are of course quite impressive when you see them," Darvill said. "But in a sense they are the elaboration of a structure which kicked off with the bluestones."

Both archaeologists quoted the 12th-century monk Geoffrey of Monmouth as saying the stones were thought to have medicinal properties. They also said that evidence uncovered by their dig showed that people were moving and chipping off pieces of the bluestones through the Roman period and even into the Middle Ages.

Darvill said he felt the "folklore interest" in the bluestones into modern times suggested some sort of lingering memory of their supposed healing powers.

"That would be for me the single strongest piece of evidence," he said.

Andrew Fitzpatrick, from British heritage group Wessex Archaeology, said Darvill and Wainwright's discovery was "very important" but that the healing theory, while plausible, was not the only one.

"I don't think we can rule out the other main competing theory - that the temple was a meeting point between the land of the living and the dead," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The scientists announced their findings Monday, ahead of a documentary due to air on the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel on Saturday, Sept. 27.

*****

My favorite TV channel is W-OFF, but I will be tuning in to the BBC, Saturday for the documentary.

Whar da White Wimmins be at?

To here the repugicans blubber on about it you think all white women in America are voting for McPain because he picked Palin so they would not have to vote for the "Black" man who beat Hillary!

Well ... it just isn't so, but that's not stopping them from babbling on about it.

Here is one take on it

"Every white woman I know is positively horrified. Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate
to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her
vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights
and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at
what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy,
comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic,
but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere."

Read the read here.

Caveman gets into Madison Avenue Ads Walk of Fame

Getting into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame is so easy, even a caveman can do it.

The Geico Caveman and the Serta Sheep advertising icons have been elected to the Walk of Fame in midtown Manhattan after online voting by the American public.

The U.S. Postal Service slogan "We Deliver For You" and the UPS tagline "What can Brown do for you?" also were inducted Monday, the first day of Advertising Week.

The Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame was created by Advertising Week, a weeklong gathering of marketing professionals. Organizers have filled the Walk of Fame with bronze plaques and lamppost banners honoring such past inductees as Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Geico Gecko and Colonel Sanders.

Right on cue

Right on cue ...

I posted a piece on September 20, 2008 of a study from Scotland that proves the detrimental affects of smoking and in particular second hand smoke in public by a marked decrease in health problems after smoking bans are in place.

And, they chimed right in.

Who, you might ask, chimed in?

The myopic smokers and their agents of denial (kind of like repugicans in the way they knee-jerk, but I digress).

Making false claims and issuing psuedo-science myths via links to their handlers' dogma in the comments box.

Yes, I checked the links out and they are nothing but as I stated above.

One would think they would learn, but alas I fear tis not to be.