MIDs and Chips

WSJ.com: "Chip suppliers for cellphones are moving aggressively to make products for the gadgets, dubbed MIDs, for mobile Internet devices."

Faster please.

A start on a political agenda...

Reason Magazine - The Top Ten Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems: "Copenhagen, May 30—Where in the world can we do the most good? Supplying the micronutrients vitamin A and zinc to 80 percent of the 140 million children who lack them in developing countries is ranked as the highest priority by the expert panel at the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Conference. The cost is $60 million per year, yielding benefits in health and cognitive development of over $1 billion.

"Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world's biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over the past week. Since we live in a world of scarce resources, not all good projects can be funded. So the experts were constrained in their decision making by allocating a budget of an 'extra' $75 billion among the solutions over four years.

"Number 2 on the list of Copenhagen Consensus 2008 priorities is to widen free trade by means of the Doha Development Agenda. The benefits from trade are enormous. Success at Doha trade negotiations could boost global income by $3 trillion per year, of which $2.5 trillion would go to the developing countries. At the Copenhagen Consensus Center press conference, University of Chicago economist Nancy Stokey explained, 'Trade reform is not just for the long run, it would make people in developing countries better off right now. There are large benefits in the short run and the long run benefits are enormous.'"

...

"So what proposed solutions are at the bottom of the list? At number 30, the lowest priority is a proposal to mitigate man-made global warming by cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases. This ranking caused some consternation among the European journalists at the press conference. Nobelist and University of Maryland economist Thomas Schelling noted that part of the reason for the low ranking is that spending $75 billion on cutting greenhouses gases would achieve almost nothing. In fact, the climate change analysis presented to the panel found that spending $800 billion until 2100 would yield just $685 billion in climate change benefits.

"Noting that he has been concerned about climate change for 30 years, Schelling argued that tacking climate change will take public policy responses such as carbon taxes to address the issue. Schelling added, "The best defense against climate change in the developing countries is going to be their own development." He explained that funding education to create a literate labor force boosts the productivity of a country enabling economic growth. Economic growth produces wealth that helps people address and adapt to the problems caused by climate change."

Reveal--Does It?

The Necessary Things: Reveal--Does It?: "Here are my questions: Is this graph a big surprise to you as you think about your own church? If programs are not the primary way you experience spiritual growth, what is?"

This is a very interesting question with the data provided. At this stage of my life, growth is caused by sharing my faith, serving my family, serving strangers, and raising money. Churches tend to help mostly with serving your family. Serving friends and neighbors is good but doesn't cause me to grow at the rate of these others.

One of the reasons that campus ministry can be such a green house for growth is that it can help students share their faith, serve strangers, and learn how to trust God with financial resources. Because students don't have jobs often in college this puts them in a position to raise money which requires and causes growth.

Fill the Earth and Subdue It

lgf: Tuesday Early Morning Open:

"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

— Mark Twain"

Memorial Day Flag Flying

Old Glory: America's Flag and How to Fly It - Popular Mechanics: "Flag Holidays
Memorial Day is a flag holiday--one of 17 days specifically designated in the code on which citizens are encouraged to display the flag, if they're not in the habit of doing so daily.

Flag holidays are as follows:
1. New Year's Day - Jan. 1
2. Inauguration Day - Jan. 20
3. Lincoln's Birthday - Feb. 12
4. Washington's Birthday - third Monday in February
5. Easter Sunday - (variable)
6. Mother's Day - second Sunday in May
7. Armed Forces Day - third Saturday in May
8. Memorial Day (half-staff until noon) - last Monday in May
9. Flag Day - June 14
10. Independence Day - July 4
11. Labor Day - first Monday in September
12. Constitution Day - Sept. 17
13. Columbus Day - second Monday in October
14. Navy Day - Oct. 27
15. Veterans Day - Nov. 11
16. Thanksgiving Day - fourth Thursday in November
17. Christmas Day - Dec. 25"

Alternative Lifestyle Choices

TheStar.com | GTA | GTA's secret world of polygamy:

"Polygamy is happening in Toronto; it's not common, but it's happening," said Hindy, imam at Salahuddin Islamic Centre.

Hindy, hardly a stranger to controversy, is well known for his friendship with the family of Omar Khadr, the young Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and his outspoken views on the implementation of Islamic law. In the past five years, Hindy said he has officiated or "blessed" more than 30 polygamous marriages; the most recent was two months ago. Even some imams in the GTA have second wives, he added.

"This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion," he said. "If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that."

Those who condone the practice rarely let their views be known, and those who practise it themselves tend to do so in secret, making it difficult to record how many such marriages have taken place in the GTA. Equally hard to determine is how many polygamous families have immigrated to the country, despite a 2005 report commissioned by the federal Status of Women that tried to find out the extent of polygamy and its implications.

But conducting such unions in clear violation of Canadian law is wrong, according to Syed Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, who speaks frequently on polygamy issues.

"Muslims should not enter into polygamy while they are living in Canada, because the local Canadian law prevails. It overrules the Islamic law if there is a conflict between the two," he said.

Under the Criminal Code, polygamy was deemed a crime in 1892. Those who enter into reside in, or officiate a polygamous union can be charged with a criminal offence and face up to five years in prison.

But the last time polygamy was prosecuted in Canada was more than 60 years ago. Fundamentalist Mormons in Bountiful, in southeastern British Columbia, have managed to get away with openly practising polygamy, believed to be an integral and necessary part of their faith, since the 1940s with little legal recourse."

The Problem of Evil

Instapundit.com -: "“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”"

Solar Warming Update

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Proof of global warming!

Well, gee …. what could be causing that global warming? Has Exxon-Mobil used its 8.3% profit margin to start refining oil on the solar system’s largest planet? Perhaps Jupiterians have bought too many SUVs over the last few years. Jupiter may also have an epidemic of bovine flatulence causing these storms.

Or, just maybe, the sun has affected Jupiter in a similar fashion as it has Mars and Pluto, and that the negligible warming Earth has experienced comes from the same source.

Very Cool

NASA - Phoenix

Guided Tour of Mars Landing

Rob Manning, chief engineer for JPL's Mars Program, walks us through a simulation of the Mars Phoenix

Man Down

Is There a Crisis in Education of Males? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

But he said that in 1970, when he started his career in higher education policy analysis, there were 1.5 million more men than women in higher education and “I recall vividly that women complained that this was a crisis. Now there are 2.7 million more women than men in higher education and the feminists assert that this is not a crisis. What am I missing here?”

He noted the hugely disproportionate rates of suicide among men who are 25 to 34, and of incarceration, and asked how this could be anything but a crisis.

“The hypocrisy of the feminists — AAUW being a major part of this — astounds me,” Mortenson said. “The fact is male lives are falling apart at the growing margins of male welfare, and the utter failure of the education system to address male needs on male terms is indeed a crisis. We have shown what the education system can do for women when we set our minds to it.”

The new standard for meetings and conferences

Seth's Blog: The new standard for meetings and conferences: "I think the standard for a great meeting or a terrific conference has changed.

In other words, 'I flew all the way here for this?' is going to be far more common than it used to be.

If you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script while showing the audience bullet points, you're wrong. Or if you leave little time for attendees to engage with others, or worse, if you don't provide the levers to make it more likely that others will engage with each other, you're wrong as well.

Here's what someone expects if they come to see you on an in-person sales call: that you'll be prepared, focused, enthusiastic and willing to engage honestly about the next steps. If you can't do that, don't have the meeting.

Here's what a speaker owes an audience that travels to engage in person: more than they could get by just reading the transcript.

And here's what a conference organizer owes the attendees: surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement."

Autism in Wired

The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know

Autistics like Baggs are now leading a nascent civil rights movement. "I remember in '99," she says, "seeing a number of gay pride Web sites. I envied how many there were and wished there was something like that for autism. Now there is." The message: We're here. We're weird. Get used to it.

This movement is being fueled by a small but growing cadre of neuropsychological researchers who are taking a fresh look at the nature of autism itself. The condition, they say, shouldn't be thought of as a disease to be eradicated. It may be that the autistic brain is not defective but simply different — an example of the variety of human development. These researchers assert that the focus on finding a cure for autism — the disease model — has kept science from asking fundamental questions about how autistic brains function.

A cornerstone of this new approach — call it the difference model — is that past research about autistic intelligence is flawed, perhaps catastrophically so, because the instruments used to measure intelligence are bogus. "If Amanda Baggs had walked into my clinic five years ago," says Massachusetts General Hospital neuroscientist Thomas Zeffiro, one of the leading proponents of the difference model, "I would have said she was a low-functioning autistic with significant cognitive impairment. And I would have been totally wrong."

The Mind Body Problem

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology - including violent video games - is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist | the Daily Mail

Anyone who doubts the malleability of the adult brain should consider a startling piece of research conducted at Harvard Medical School.

There, a group of adult volunteers, none of whom could previously play the piano, were split into three groups.

The first group were taken into a room with a piano and given intensive piano practise for five days. The second group were taken into an identical room with an identical piano - but had nothing to do with the instrument at all.

And the third group were taken into an identical room with an identical piano and were then told that for the next five days they had to just imagine they were practising piano exercises.

The resultant brain scans were extraordinary. Not surprisingly, the brains of those who simply sat in the same room as the piano hadn't changed at all.

Equally unsurprising was the fact that those who had performed the piano exercises saw marked structural changes in the area of the brain associated with finger movement.

But what was truly astonishing was that the group who had merely imagined doing the piano exercises saw changes in brain structure that were almost as pronounced as those that had actually had lessons.

"The power of imagination" is not a metaphor, it seems; it's real, and has a physical basis in your brain.

Alas, no neuroscientist can explain how the sort of changes that the Harvard experimenters reported at the micro-cellular level translate into changes in character, personality or behaviour.

But we don't need to know that to realise that changes in brain structure and our higher thoughts and feelings are incontrovertibly linked.

One Reason Why I Go To Church

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology - including violent video games - is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist | the Daily Mail

I'm a neuroscientist and my day-to-day research at Oxford University strives for an ever greater understanding - and therefore maybe, one day, a cure - for Alzheimer's disease.

But one vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the unchanging organ that we might imagine.

It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life.

When I say "shaped", I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally.

At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli.

The brain, in other words, is malleable - not just in early childhood but right up to early adulthood, and, in certain instances, beyond.

The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.

Randy Elrod on Manifestos and their shortcomings (via Hugh Hewitt)

Randy Elrod:

Viral loops, not manifestos, provide the opportunity for unparalleled influence. This is a world in which documents handed down by well-meaning alpha males result in a stifled yawn. However, this same world moves to the edge of their seat upon realizing that the responsibility to change the world need not be their legacy or burden. On the contrary, the creation of culture is the calling from which history speaks.

For example, Compassion International recently asked me to help form a group of influential bloggers for a historic trip to Uganda. A trip in which we visited slums, HIV/Aids hospitals and projects each morning. We then blogged, created video, and recounted stories raw with reality and emotion each afternoon. Thousands of people around the world followed our eight day journey real-time and over 400 children were sponsored and rescued from poverty. The viral loop that was created spawned hundreds of additional posts and offered the opportunity for thousands of additional people to experience the trip in an automagical way.

This “automagic” tested the corporate structure of Compassion. The trip was completely out of their control. The blog posts were not softened or censored and the videos and art spawned were not pre-approved by the marketing department. The servant leaders of this large organization flexed and collaborated to create culture.

Servant leaders have the ability to provide a new type of leadership. A collaborative mentoring and releasing of people with varied and mystical gifts in order to create culture. Alpha leaders value control, servant leaders value collaboration. Alpha leaders value individualism, servant leaders value community. Alpha leaders value affluence, servant leaders value influence.

Today, it is through viral loops that movements really snowball. In their latest issue, Fast Company says, “A destination such as Facebook grows via invitations, with each "friend" reaching out to her own set of contacts, which in turn do the same. More than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard joined within a month of Facebook's 2004 launch; four years later, it has 67 million active users. And at its current 3% weekly expansion rate, it will have 200 million users by the end of the year, equal to the population of the fifth-largest nation on earth.”

A Response

Townhall.com::Hugh Hewitt

"Evangelical Manifestos" of the future will not have to be read, but will be evidenced by the changes they have brought about. They will not have to be announced, merely recognized.

A Manifesto

Between Two Worlds: An Evangelical Manifesto: A Summary

This morning a document was released at the National Press Club entitled An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, spearheaded by Os Guinness and signed by over 80 evangelical leaders. (You can read a brief interview I conducted this week with Dr. Guinness about the document.)

Where is they Sting?

Charity Navigator, a watchdog organization in Mahwah, N.J., that rates charities’ performance, has given bad marks to the musician Sting’s charity, which has raised money to preserve rain forests, reports the New York Post.

Sting’s Rainforest Foundation is planning its next fund-raising concert at Carnegie Hall for Thursday and expects such high-profile participants as Billy Joel and James Taylor, the paper reports.

After reviewing the charity’s tax filings, the Post found that just 41 percent, or about $887,000, of the more than $2-million raised at the organization’s 2006 concert ended up in the hands of charities working to save the rain forests.

“This one would fall to the bottom of the bucket,” Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator, tells the newspaper.

Charity Navigator has given the Rainforest Foundation a mark of zero for the last four years, the newspaper reports.

Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, who founded the organization in 1989, did not comment in the article.

But Ms. Styler, responding to the story in the Post, tells People magazine: “The Rainforest Foundation is celebrating its 20th year. We wouldn’t still be in business or have given out millions of dollars over the years if we’d spent everything we made immediately after it came in.”

Lawyers On Heparin

Townhall.com::On Heparin: A Few, Kind Words For Plaintiffs’ Lawyers::By Hugh Hewitt: "When I began covering the heparin story in February, I was astonished at how little attention it was receiving in the MSM. Perhaps because my father had used heparin for many years before he died (long before the heparin poisoning occurred), or perhaps because I have some very close, very successful friends in the plaintiffs’ bar and we regularly debate mass tort actions and their impact on the economy, I was fascinated by the story. As the number of deaths rocketed up to 81, and the long-term health effects on those who did not die but were sickened by the adulterated batches of the drug began to be debated, my curiosity increased. I am now hoping that the victims find the best plaintiffs’ lawyers in America because we need those litigators not just to get compensation for the families, but to force reform on China."

Switchfuels

Instapundit.com -

But, actually, as some critics are trying to tar all biofuels as if they are made from corn, this is a point worth stressing. Crop-based biofuels are just votebuying from farmers, but others are worth pursuing.

Cooling climate claims enrage Australian scientists

PM - Cooling climate claims enrage Australian scientists: "The idea that it's the sun's activity, not carbon, that regulates earth's temperature, has never entirely gone away. It figured heavily in the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, debated on ABC TV last year.

Now an Australian-born former NASA astronaut is claiming that the recent lack of sunspot activity could actually portend a new ice age. Dr Phil Chapman - a geophysicist who lives in California - makes the prediction in an opinion piece in today's Australian newspaper.

But climate experts here are incensed. They say the evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming is irrefutable.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: It might be an unpopular view but Dr Phil Chapman is sticking to it. The geophysicist and former NASA astronaut says figures from four separate agencies show the global temperature dropped noticeably during 2007 and that the globe could now be returning to an ice age.

PHIL CHAPMAN: All the people who monitor the world's global temperature say that the temperature fell by something like 0.7 degrees Centigrade. We're talking about a very large drop that cancels out all the increase since 1930.

If this continues, then global warming will have to be, we'll have to admit that it's over.

EMILY BOURKE: He says the sun and sunspot changes have a bigger influence on the climate compared to carbon dioxide.

PHIL CHAPMAN: The variations in the number of sunspots and the time when they occur, how rapidly they build up, has a close correlation with previous changes in climate, in particularly back in the, around 1700 and again around 1790 when the sunspot cycle was delayed and those were two times it was extremely cold."

I credit my use of public transportation. I don't care what anybody says.

Rick Warren | The Colbert Interview

Interview - Rick Warren | The Colbert Report | Comedy Central:

A Taxonomy of Energy Alternatives

Instapundit.com -

Coal is better than oil from dictators who hate us. Nuclear is better than coal. Nano-solar is better than either, of course, once it's feasible.

Time for Fighting

Time Fights Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil::By Dennis Prager: "It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas."

...or called stupid.

Culture of Life

I guess the PA State police have been influenced by the anti-choice crowd by referring to the "unborn baby". I learned in school that its not a baby until it's born!

THE STATE

HOLLIDAYSBURG — State police are helping Williamsburg, Blair County, authorities find whomever spiked a pregnant teenage girl’s drink with a drug used to abort pregnancies in cows, a drug they think was stolen from a Williamsburg farm, according to a release.

The pregnant girl’s beverage was tainted with Prostamate sometime between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. March 31 at Williamsburg High School, police said. Troopers are considering the act an aggravated assault upon the girl and her unborn baby, police said.

State police think whoever was responsible was trying to abort the girl’s unborn child, the release indicates.

Violent Femmes

Suspects in video beating could get life in prison - CNN.com: "Eight Florida teenagers -- six of them girls -- will be tried as adults and could be sentenced to life in prison for their alleged roles in the videotaped beating of another teen, the state attorney's office said Thursday."

This case is horrific. It illustrates that you don't need violent video games to have violence. I'll bet money that these girls have never played an hour of violent video games.

One other thing: Many people I talk to on college campuses say that "an eye for an eye" is a barbaric doctrine. This case illustrates that barbarism is the natural bent of humanity. Escalation is the fruit of barbarism: eye for a bruise, life for an eye, etc. This cycle of violence dates back to Lamech in Genesis chapter 4.

An Eye for an Eye is a progressive moral development in history. It ends the cycle of violence by ending escalation and demanding justice. A rich mans eye is worth the same as a poor mans eye. The eye of a nobleman is worth as much as a commoner.

One wonders what motivated these girls to beat their friend unrecognizable. Whatever it was, it was not a gang beating.

Global Warming (Boston Edition)

Boston.com

Until today, it had been 165 consecutive days since the temperature last hit 70 degrees in Boston.

New and Improved

Google Docs:
"Offline access: You can now edit your documents and view your presentations and spreadsheets without an internet connection. Changes are saved to your browser while you are offline and automatically saved when Google Docs detects an internet connection. Learn more."

You talk about your campus crusades...

Pajamas Media:

This “Residence Life,” so-called “citizenship” program would have remained under wraps except for whistle-blowing by indignant students and their parents, as well as groundbreaking efforts by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to investigate and expose the character of what the university, in its own Orwellian materials, called “the treatment.”

The program’s stated intent was for the approximately 7,000 students in U.D.’s residence halls to espouse, in FIRE’s words, “highly specific university-approved views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.”

Program materials for this ideological reeducation, which have been removed from the U.D. Website, included race/gender/class/sexual orientation “trainer” Shakti Butler’s definition of a racist as “all white people living in the United States” and her edict that “people of color cannot be racists.” An intrusive rating instrument, “Discovery Wheel,” was used to prompt students to admit to their putative racism, and they were instructed that the U.S. is as “an oppressive society” whose “structures of oppression” it is their “duty” to eliminate.

“The treatment” was also mandatory and punitive. Students were required to attend training sessions, group floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Advisers (RAs), who, having been coached in interrogating vulnerable freshmen, plied them with invasive questions.

Good thing they don't have religion on campus. ;-)

Closing the Campus

Greg Lukianoff: 'What Can The Virginia Tech Tragedy Do For Me?' - Politics on The Huffington Post

the simple fact is that some administrators have been using the campus shootings of the past two years as an excuse to justify cracking down on speech they don't like.

The most dramatic recent example of college administrators using the specter of campus shootings to silence speech occurred last month at Colorado College, where students have been found guilty of "violence" for publishing a satirical flyer.

Will I be able to still watch Oprah?

Coming soon: superfast internet - Times Online

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

A Bird in my front yard...

And a nest in the backyard.

The more things change...

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global warming 'dips this year' The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

...prompting others to question some who don't question climate change theory.

Anti-Aging Medication

Instapundit.com -

First rate coffee, red wine, Guinness -- you won't live forever, but you may live longer. And more enjoyably!

Maybe God is trying to tell us something.

This is where I work...

Summer is coming...

Ethical Standards Erode at Nonprofit Groups, Study Finds - Philanthropy.com

Ethical Standards Erode at Nonprofit Groups, Study Finds - Philanthropy.com: "Nonprofit organizations have long held a reputation for having significantly higher ethical standards than businesses and government.

But a report released today by the Ethics Resource Center, in Washington, shows that gap is closing quickly — as standards at charities are declining at what the study’s authors say is a disturbing rate.

Rates of observed misconduct at nonprofit organizations are at the highest level since the Ethics Resource Center began measuring in 2000. In 2007, more than half — 55 percent — of nonprofit employees observed one or more acts of misconduct in the previous year.

Twenty-four percent of nonprofit employees observed their co-workers putting their own interests above those of the organization. Twenty-one percent observed managers or executives lying to employees. Nearly one in five employees — 19 percent — reported that they had seen abusive behavior or that they had seen co-workers misreporting the number of hours they had worked.

The frequency of these behaviors mirrors the frequency reported in the for-profit and government arenas, the study found.

“One would think that freed from the pressure to generate and distribute profits to shareholders, nonprofit organizations would rise high above the myriad ethics and compliance issues that have plagued..."

As it turns out, economics doesn't determine behavior contra Marx. As C.S. Lewis observed in Men Without Chests, "We laugh at honor, and we are shocked to find traitors in our midst." Why be good? Why believe anything at all that can't be proven in a laboratory? Such is the plight of pure secularism.

The Greatest

Red Sox beat Dodgers 7-4 before 115,300 fans at Los Angeles Coliseum - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Longtime announcer Vin Scully, who moved with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, was honored before the game. He referred to himself as “an ordinary man who was given an extraordinary opportunity.”

After being given a long ovation, Scully told the fans: “Aw c’mon. It’s only me.”

A fitting monument to Reading, MA

Groovy

News - - Gainesville.com

The Grooveshark system works on the basis of a peer-to-peer music sharing system, Greenberg said. Users can upload their personal music library to the Web site.

To legalize the process, the user must buy a song if they want to add it to their collection, he said. Part of the profit is then deposited into the account of the person who uploaded the song to Grooveshark.

In this way, the sharing of an illegal music system is paired with the legalized purchase with the added benefit of compensation, Greenberg said.

And the Oscar goes to...

Instapundit.com -

I EAGERLY AWAIT THE HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER BASED ON THIS REPORT: EU Soldiers Accused of Torturing Civilians in Congo.

Bad News for Drivers

Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking' - Health News, Health & Wellbeing - The Independent

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

Good Business

Monks Run Multimillion-Dollar Company to Benefit Charity

A group of monks who pray, work, and live at Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey, in Wisconsin, began an online ink and toner business in 2002 as a way to stem dwindling income for the abbey. Today, the monks run a multimillion-dollar operation, with all profits after operating costs going to charity, reports The San Francisco Chronicle.

Bernard McCoy, a Cistercian monk and the company's founder, receives no compensation for his role as chief executive officer. He created LaserMonks.com to sell discounted (including off-brand and remanufactured) inkjet products.

The business model has been deemed "commerce with compassion" in a recent book by Sarah Caniglia and Cindy Griffith, who now live at Our Lady of Spring Bank and manage operations for both LaserMonks.com and its two offshoots. The two women, who once ran their own marketing company, explain in their book how the monks' model changed their views on the corporate experience.

Ms. Caniglia estimates that LaserMonks sales in 2007 totaled $4.5-million; Father Bernard estimates the group's annual operating costs are $200,000. Beneficiaries of LaserMonks.com profits, according to the women's book, have included "formal charities like Faith in Action, as well as not-so-formal efforts, like sending a nurse from Wisconsin to Louisiana to treat victims of Hurricane Katrina."

As for skepticism about monks running a business, Father Bernard responds, "Enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit have always been a part of who we are."

I just heard about it the other day...

Why Blog? Reason No. 92: Book Deal - New York Times

Readers discover stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, like it and forward links to their friends, who forward them to lots more friends. Newspaper columnists mention it, stealing — er, quoting — some of the better jokes. By the end of February, the NPR program “Talk of the Nation” runs a report on it, debating whether the site is racist or satire.

And then on March 20 Random House announces that it has purchased the rights to a book by the blog’s founder, Christian Lander, an Internet copy writer. The price, according to a source familiar with the deal but not authorized to discuss the total, was about $300,000, a sum that many in the publishing and blogging communities believe is an astronomical amount for a book spawned from a blog, written by a previously unpublished author.

Historic Prosperity

Thank God you live now. Read the whole thing.

Instapundit.com -

As Robert Fogel has noted, we take for granted today conditions that are a huge departure from basically all of human history.

Good thing we have blogs to fact check the newspapers.

Big Phat Liar - March 26, 2008

MARCH 26--Last week's bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion "Suge" Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

Courage

Monk protest scuppers controlled media tour of Tibet - Times Online

Tibetan monks staged a daring protest against Chinese rule, disrupted an official government tour for foreign journalists with screams that the Dalai Lama was not to blame for violence and demands for religious freedom.

The astonishing outburst by about 30 monks came as the first group of journalists to visit Lhasa since the violent March 14 riot was being shown around the Jokhang temple, the holiest shrine in the Tibetan canon.

An Associated Press reporter, Charles Hutzler, described one young Buddhist monk who yelled “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!” and then burst into tears.

He described how the monks had rushed over to stop the reporters from being taken into an inner sanctum of the temple, saying they were upset that a government administrator was telling the journalists that Tibet had been part of China for centuries.

It is better to give than to receive…

Charity Donors Are Happier Than Stingy People, New Research Finds

People who give away money are happier than those who do not, according to new research published today in the journal Science.

Elizabeth W. Dunn, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, started her experiment by trying to prove the ways in which accumulating money led to more happiness. She and two colleagues surveyed 632 Americans, asking about their level of happiness, personal spending habits, and how much they donate to charity, reports Forbes.

Ms. Dunn found that while people tend to think that spending money on themselves rather than giving it away will make them happier, the opposite turns out to be true. The researchers used a variety of settings and tactics to test the hypothesis that giving away money leads to more happiness, and the results held — whether on a college campus and in a corporate setting.

 

So giving makes people happy. Dennis Prager would say the opposite is also true: Happy people give more.

Jesus would say: Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.

World's Tallest Man Struggles to Fit In

In 2006, Stadnik was officially measured at 8 feet 5 inches tall, surpassing a 7-foot-9-inch Chinese man to claim the title of the world's tallest person.

His growth spurt began at age 14 after a brain operation that apparently stimulated the overproduction of growth hormone. Doctors say he has been growing ever since.

While his size is intimidating, Stadnik charms visitors with a broad grin and childlike laugh. He seems at times like a lonely boy trapped in a giant's body, even keeping stuffed toys on his pillow.

Instapundit.com -

VICTIM KILLED BY BURGLAR while on the phone to 911. She'd have been better off with a gun.

The Greatest Innovation of our Time

hulu: About

Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free.

Preview of Government Health Care

ABC News: Passport Security Breach on McCain, Clinton & Obama

An embarrassed State Department admitted today that the passport files of all three presidential candidates -- Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- have been breached by its employees.

The bombshell announcement came within hours of the admission that Obama's personal file was improperly accessed several times earlier this year and no one was notified of the breach.

"Christian Morality"

From The Corner: Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been onto something after all. Why, I asked, had Gorbachev refrained from putting down the revolution of 1989, just as Khrushchev had put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Brezhnev had put down the Prague Spring of 1968? "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan," Gorbachev replied. "Christian morality."

You talk about your binary traps...

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat : NPR

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

Screening Process

Teens Spending Too Much Screen Time - Forbes.com

WEDNESDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- A new survey reports that teenagers spend far too many hours a week in front of TVs and computers, and those in poor neighborhoods have even more "screen time."

From The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Harvard Law Waives Tuition for Public-Service Pledge

Harvard Law School today plans to announce it will offer the third year of education free to students who pledge to spend at least five years working at a nonprofit organization or for the government, reports The New York Times.

The plan is designed to increase the number of Harvard law students — roughly 10 percent over the past several years — who choose public-service careers.

“We know that debt is a big issue,” said Elena Kagan, dean of the law school, with regard to the new effort, which would save students more than $40,000 in tuition.

Many students are now graduating from law school with upwards of $100,000 in student-loan debt, which prevents them from taking the lower salaries typically offered at government or nonprofit organizations.

Joshua Marquis, district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, said, “I have had a lot of applicants who’ve said, ‘I’d like to take the job, but I really can’t afford it.’ ”

Hometown Team Wins State

Global Warming Bulletin

Quebec children get holiday as snow piles on roofs - Yahoo! Malaysia News

Several dozen schools were expected to remain shut this week in the Canadian province of Quebec over fears their roofs may collapse under the weight of near record amounts of snow, officials said on Monday.

When your kids need a new computer...

Instapundit.com -

VIA BACKPACK COMPUTING, I see that the price on the Nokia N810 pocketable tablet PC has dropped a lot.

Overall, I still think that the Asus EeePC is better for about the same money -- but you can't slip the Asus, small as it is, into a shirt pocket. And it doesn't have GPS. My Nokia review is here, my Asus review is here.

UPDATE: Coming soon, an even cheaper competitor to the Asus. (Via Brian Micklethwait).

Prophet of Zoom

My Way News - Gates Predicts Big Technological Leaps

WASHINGTON (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday he expects the next decade to bring even greater technological leaps than the past 10 years.

In a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Gates speculated that some of the most important advances will come in the ways people interact with computers: speech-recognition technology, tablets that will recognize handwriting and touch-screen surfaces that will integrate a wide variety of information.

"I don't see anything that will stop the rapid advance," Gates said, noting that technological change driven by academia and corporate researchers continued even after the Internet stock bubble burst in 2000.

Gates also said the coming years will bring rapid changes in media as television increasingly becomes a targeted medium, where viewers can select niche content for news, sports and entertainment.

"TV will be based on the Internet; it will be an utterly different thing," he said.

Ye shall have no other Gods...

TCS Daily - The Universal Spitzer

We ought to think of all politicians as Spitzers. No, they don't all have lurid involvements with prostitutes. But they all have an inflated view of their superiority over the rest of us...

What about the rest of us? To the extent that we root for strong politicians, join political cults, invest our hopes and desires in charismatic leaders, all of us are Spitzer wives.

via Instapundit

Mission Accomplished: Al Gore

NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

Finally, a breakthrough...

The Smart Goggles that could make lost keys, mobile phones or iPod a thing of the past | the Daily Mail

Japanese scientists have invented a pair of intelligent glasses that remembers where people last saw their keys, handbag, iPod or mobile phone.

The spectacles - which come with a built in camera, display screen and computer brain - can even identify unfamiliar plants or faces.

In fact, the only thing it can't help you find are your glasses.

Old but still depressing...

Media: TELEVISION; Stand aside, CNN. America's No. 1 TV export is -- no scoffing, please -- 'Baywatch.' - New York Times

But facts are facts. "Baywatch," which is about the adventures of lifeguards on a California beach but is really mostly about swimwear and suntan lotion, has a wider audience on the planet Earth than any other entertainment show in history.

As one of its financial backers put it, "Over a 30-day period it certainly reaches almost every person in the world who watches television."

Though some may debate what this says about the international perspective on American culture, apparently nothing can match the magnetic pull of wet California girls -- and guys -- on a beach.

Even Japan imports "Baywatch," without the threat of tariffs. The show is seen in China, and in all the Asian countries reached by Star TV, Rupert Murdoch's satellite delivery system. For five years it has been one of the most popular shows in Britain. People even watch in Iran, behind the backs of the mullahs.

"I would say it is seen in 144 countries," said Paul Talbot, president of the Fremantle Corporation, which sells the international rights to the series. But, he said, "We don't really sell the show by country anymore. Now we sell it by language."

"Baywatch" is now translated into 15 languages, he said.

New York State of Mind

Imagine: John Lennon : Rolling Stone

"If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome," Lennon once said. "Today, America is the Roman Empire, and New York is Rome itself."

Textual Analysis

Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK) - New York Times

Business analysts and other researchers expect the popularity of the cellphone — along with the mobility and intimacy it affords — to further exploit and accelerate these trends. By 2010, 81 percent of Americans ages 5 to 24 will own a cellphone, up from 53 percent in 2005, according to IDC, a research company in Framingham, Mass., that tracks technology and consumer research.

Social psychologists like Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the social impact of mobile communications, say these trends are likely to continue as cellphones morph into mini hand-held computers, social networking devices and pint-size movie screens.

“For kids it has become an identity-shaping and psyche-changing object,” Ms. Turkle said. “No one creates a new technology really understanding how it will be used or how it can change a society.”

From the people who brought you Anti-Smoking...

Minn. lawmaker wants scent-free schools - Yahoo! News

Those all-over body sprays that promise to turn teenage boys into babe magnets? Instead of attracting girls, they could be making them sick.
A Minnesota lawmaker proposed a bill Monday urging a fragrance-free educational campaign to discourage students from dousing themselves in scents that aggravate classmates with asthma and other health problems.

All Time Pie: Panificio in Boston, MA

 

This Berry Pie is one of the great ones.

Bag This

Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain - Times Online

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

Gobs from the Rich to give to the Poor

Nation's Top Taxpayers Gave Record $7.6-Billion to Charity in 2005 - Philanthropy.com

The nation’s top 400 taxpayers reported record total charitable donations of $7.56-billion, or an average of $19.2-million per federal tax return, in 2005, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Oops

Idaho Planned Parenthood Faces Controversy Over Racially Motivated Donation - Philanthropy.com

The Planned Parenthood of Idaho has apologized for how an employee handled a phone call from a prospective donor, who said he wanted to support abortions for black mothers because “the less black kids out there, the better,” reports The Idaho Statesman.

At Home with the Kids

I'm watching Singing in the Rain with my kids.

Cover As You Are

View from Afghanistan: Burqa-ning Perspectives

People I meet here wear Burqas for many varied reasons, most of which seem more practical than anything I’ve heard an outsider ascribe: Because they don’t like to be looked at in the street, and their chadiri gives them anonymity. Because they feel safer, protected from the outside world when they’re covered. Because their husband or father prefers it. Because in the rural areas, everyone else is wearing one. And sometimes, because its just easier to throw on a burqa to run to the supermarket rather than put on nice clothes and make-up.

I like the cut of his pie

i like pie

pie is good. eat pie.

Is this really Easter?

My Mom's birthday is on Easter this year, which has never happened in her lifetime as far as she can remember. So my sister found this out:

Easter this year is: Sunday March 23, 2008
• As you may know, Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox (which is March 20).

• This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.

• Based on the above, Easter can actually be one day earlier (March 22) but that is rare.

This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above!). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier! Here are the facts:
• The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!).
• The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year.

Post Abortion Depression is real

Artist hanged herself after aborting her twins - Telegraph

An artist killed herself after aborting her twins when she was eight weeks pregnant, leaving a note saying: "I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum." Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday. Her suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does."

I saw a film about this issue a few years ago. The filmmaker told me that every subject, no matter how taboo, can be discussed openly on the Avant-Gard film festival circuit; except this issue.

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Not your Grandfather's Covetousness

Megan McArdle -

People do not voluntarily give money to the government; polls show that most people support raising taxes on only a small fraction of the electorate. (Yes, yes, they're rich. Okay, and? The observation still holds: most people want other peoples' taxes raised, not their own. Whether this desire is justified is irrelevant.)

Henry Farrell, and others, stepped in to complain that I, like, totally didn't understand that people behave different collectively than individually. This does not, in fact, negate my point; it supports it. Most people are not concerned with remedying the injustice of their own high income; they want large public goods that can only be secured by taking a lot of money from other people. They are willing to kick in their own money if they have to in order to secure the coalition, or because they think this is fair. But they are primarily concerned not with their own contribution, but with that of others. This will not be a surprising observation for anyone who has ever lived in a group house.

This does, however, raise an interesting normative point, into which I have now been sidetracked without quite noticing: should you, if you think that your taxes are too low, voluntarily give that money to the government? The answer, I think, is yes, for reasons that I've laid out in previous posts. But that is separate from the positive observation I stand by: people are more interested in levying taxes on others than they are in paying taxes themselves.

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Small Wonders

Instapundit.com -

IT'S A START: Golf courses will return to Cuba now that Fidel Castro is out of the way. Castro rid the island of golf courses after he lost a round to Che Guevara. (Yes, really.)

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Oops

Researchers: Disk Encryption Not Secure | Threat Level from Wired.com

Researchers with Princeton University and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have found a flaw that renders disk encryption systems useless if an intruder has physical access to your computer -- say in the case of a stolen laptop or when a computer is left unattended on a desktop in sleep mode or while displaying a password prompt screen.

The attack takes only a few minutes to conduct and uses the disk encryption key that's stored in the computer's RAM.

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American Greatness

Homeless: Can you build a life from $25? | csmonitor.com

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C. But Shepard's descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents' home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year. To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.

He did it.

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Organized Religion

Churches Aiding Tornado-Torn Communities - Philanthropy.com

Local churches in Tennessee and Kentucky have played a key role in aiding the towns devastated by tornadoes last week, reports the Associated Press.

Churches have become local distribution points for disaster relief. Storm victims have gathered there, as they once did every Sunday, to receive donated goods, and communities have used the churches to rally themselves.

In addition, churches have helped to comfort people after the unseasonable storms flattened their communities and to mourn the 59 people confirmed dead and hundreds more left homeless. They will also likely play an important role in rebuilding the lost towns.

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Progressive Marriage Laws

The problems of redefining marriage noted in Best of the Web Today - WSJ.com

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How long O Lord?

Amazon Screening Room's Blog: Strike Update: So When Will We See New Episodes? Permalink

New episodes in April/May: The Office

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An Army of GPhones

Breitbart.tv » Demo of Google’s Android Software

10 Million $ for GPhone makers.

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The Myth of Privacy

The Anonymity Experiment | Popular Science

Then we have Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of National Intelligence, who proclaimed in a speech last October that “protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won.” Privacy-minded people have long warned of a world in which an individual’s every action leaves a trace, in which corporations and governments can peer at will into your life with a few keystrokes on a computer. Now one of the people in charge of information-gathering for the U.S. government says, essentially, that such a world has arrived.

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Ouch

Melanie Scarborough: Stop throwing tax dollars at well-funded colleges - Examiner.com

Clearly, she was not a candidate for higher education; she hadn’t mastered fourth-grade geography. Yet after struggling to graduate from high school, she went on to attend one of Virginia’s state universities — exemplifying one of the reasons college costs now are so high: Taxpayers subsidize college for people better suited to asking, “You want fries with that?”

Only in Lake Wobegon is every child above average. In real life, not everyone can benefit from advanced education. Not every career demands it. But while a high school diploma historically meant that an individual had been adequately educated for adulthood — could speak and write grammatically, perform basic mathematics, and had a working knowledge of science, geography, civics, and history — as my young friends so ably demonstrated, that is no longer the case.

The failure of secondary education means that a college degree is roughly the equivalent of what a high school diploma was a generation ago. Consequently, college instruction is not necessarily higher education; in many cases, it’s remedial, with universities having to teach freshmen basics they should have learned in ninth grade. Employers know that, which is why even the most menial of jobs now requires a college degree — spawning lower-tier state universities that are essentially seat-selling operations.

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My old ball coach...

Good man.

ESPN - Three WVU players charged with felony possession kicked off team - College Football

Stewart talked Wednesday about expectations off the field, citing West Virginia's 48-28 victory over Oklahoma in the Jan. 2 Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. Stewart was then the interim coach after Rich Rodriguez had left for Michigan.

"We were in the desert, had casinos over here, dance halls over there. Pockets full of money," Stewart said. "We had 125 young men. Eight days, seven nights -- one curfew bust.

"Coaching did not win the Fiesta Bowl. Chemistry, teammates, character, doing things the right way, being accountable, being responsible. That's the reason we won the Fiesta Bowl."

Stewart appears to be taking a tougher stance on disciplinary matters than his predecessor.

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Scholarship!

I resent the idea that my alma mater is somehow academically inferior. It's actually among the hottest schools in the country.

ESPN - Arizona's Stoops apologizes for calling Sun Devils 'a J.C.' - College Football

Stoops apologized for a comment made during a football signing day news conference on Wednesday in Tucson. He said some recruits had told him that it was easier to earn acceptance at ASU than at Arizona.

"Each school has to recruit to that school and what type of academic requirements there are," Stoops said then. "Obviously, Arizona State has turned into a J.C. and we are a four-year college. According to all the players, they say it is easier to go to school there, easier to get in. I thought we had the same requirements. It is news to me."

Even with the apology, Stoops' remarks are sure to turn up the intensity in one of the Pac-10's most bitter rivalries. Tensions between the football programs, located 90 miles apart, grew last month when highly touted tailback Ryan Bass of Corona, Calif., backed out of an oral commitment to Arizona and said he would attend ASU. Bass was among the 27 signees announced by the Sun Devils on Wednesday.

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Real Fascism

Olympic kow tow as British athletes are forced to sign contracts banning criticism of Chinese regime | the Daily Mail

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

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Little Ice Age 2

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The Sun Also Sets

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

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This is my buddy Eric.

Eric Heistand Photography // lingering belay

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In Zod We Trust

Zod 2008 - General Zod - 2008 Presidential Candidate

In 2008 I shall restore your dignity and make you servants worthy of my rule. This new government shall become a tool of my oppression. Instead of hidden agendas and waffling policies, I offer you direct candor and brutal certainty. I only ask for your tribute, your lives, and your vote.

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Why we fight...

Women 'tricked into suicide blasts'

Two women suicide bombers who have killed nearly 80 people in Baghdad were Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida. The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi. Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

This is the evil that the US is fighting, at great cost, in Iraq. And if US forces left Iraq today, do you think people who do such evil would stay in their own corner of the world?

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Looks like I picked a bad decade to move to Boston.

Brits at their Best

Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age

The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.

Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun”. In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.

This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.

Tapping, who was originally from Kent, says that “Typically as you go through the ten or eleven year solar activity cycle you see the numbers go up or down. The lowest number is 64 or 68. The numbers 71 or 72 are very low, but they usually start to go up. We are at the end of a cycle, but the numbers still haven’t gone up. We have been joking around coffee that we may be seeing the Sun about to shut down.” (To date Tapping has been far more concerned about global warming.)

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Psalm 62: 9-10

Surely men of low degree are a vapor.
Men of high degree are a lie;
If they are weighed on the scales,
they are altogether lighter than vapor.

Do not trust in oppression,
nor vainly hope in robbery;
If riches increase,
Do not set your heart on them.

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Culture Matters

Virginity Loss Map // Current

Apparently people worldwide are having sex for the first time at an average age of 17.3 years old, with just over a third (35%) say they were 16 or under when they lost their virginity.

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J.J. Abrams: The Mystery Box

The Grid

Nicholas Carr: Why IT Will Change: Seismic Shifts

Carr: Whenever you change the supply model for a resource, a product or a service that is crucial to society, you change a lot of the trade-offs that determine how people work, live and entertain themselves and shop and connect with other people.

We're going to see that, just as the electric grid dramatically expanded the availability and reduced the cost of mechanical power, and that led to all sorts of knock-on effects: the way society is organized, the way we think about education, the way we think about consumerism. We'll see similar effects as we're all essentially hooked up to this one huge worldwide computer, this Internet-based supercomputer that all of us share.

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I blame American Warming

Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting - International Herald Tribune

Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes.

In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.

"This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said.

Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island glacier, which passes nearby, but Vaughan said he doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in western Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years. Most glaciologists, including Vaughan, say that warmer ocean water is the primary cause of thinning.

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Huh

Entrepreneurship Takes Off in Ireland - New York Times

Then there are the government-sponsored studies proclaiming that Ireland ranks third in the European Union in early-stage entrepreneurial activity. And Enterprise Ireland, an agency of the Irish government that gives fledgling small companies a helping hand, has even leased space in an office building in Midtown Manhattan to serve as an incubator for businesses hoping to expand into the American market.

The relatively new emphasis on entrepreneurs in Ireland is the culmination of nearly four decades of government policies that have lifted the economy from centuries of poverty to modern prosperity.

The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.

“The change came in the 1990s,” said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. “Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.”

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Generation Help

Today's Youths Display Commitment to Philanthropy - Philanthropy.com

According to research and nonprofit experts, children and teenagers today are showing increased interest in philanthropic activities, reports The Washington Post.

Craig Kielburger, founder of Free the Children, a nonprofit network of youths helping other young people, said, “We’re seeing a generation of kids, ages 10 to 15, who are aware of global problems, and they’re really searching to help.”

Nicole Sanchez, co-founder of New Global Citizens, a national nonprofit group that helps high-school students tackle global issues, said young people today are more engaged than prior generations largely because of technology. She said, “They’re hearing stories firsthand about the Darfur genocide or about the mudslides in Indonesia. Most young people’s immediate reaction is, ‘What can I do to help?’ and ‘What do you need from me?’”

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