I wonder if Edgar Mitchell’s helmet had a leak in it on that moon walk:
I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,” Dr Mitchell said.
“It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.
He also says the aliens really do look like ET, with a small frame and large head and eyes. So that’s who those people are that we only see during Three Rivers Festival week.
No study has yet shown a link between cell phone use and brain cancer, but the head of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center is warning his faculty and staff to limit their phone use because of the possible risk:
In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.
Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone’s electromagnetic fields.
OK, let’s start having some laws to ban cell phones in public places like restaurants and bars and, yes, all workplaces. If there’s a chance we can be exposed to that deadly secondhand electromagnetism, why take the chance?
The scary part is that this guy is basing his warning on “unpublished evidence” the rest of us haven’t been able to see. He said it “takes too long to get evidence from science,” so people should take action now: “Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” Herberman said. Boy, no potential for abuse in that attitude, huh?
The New York Times Co. will increase the Monday-Saturday newsstand cost of its flagship paper by 25 cents to $1.50, the publisher said Wednesday.
Times Chief Executive Janet Robinson said the price increase for The New York Times will take effect Aug. 18. The company has already raised home delivery prices for the paper 4.5 percent in two separate hikes since last July. That helped overall circulation revenue rise 2.5 percent in the latest quarter.
Your product is losing money by the truckloads. Fewer and fewer people are buying it, and you keep laying off staff so you are giving the remaining readers less and less. So you raise the price. I’m not an expert in this area, but that does not seem like the best business model I ever heard of.
I don’t have any idea what this means, but I’m sure McCain and Obama will explain it all:
Over half of American voters (51%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror, the highest figure recorded in nearly four years by Rasmussen Reports in a nationwide survey.
Only 16% now think the terrorists are on top, while 27% view it as a stalemate. Prior to this week’s survey, the number who believe the terrorists are winning had never fallen below 20%.
[. . .]
Forty-four percent (44%) of voters think the United States is safer today than before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but 39% disagree. Both figures are roughly comparable to the most optimistic figures on record.
Such numbers could be used by either side of the argument. Either what we’re doing is working, and we should do more of it, or the threat isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, and we can start relaxing.
A “We’re all going to die!” update on the BBC’s Web site, under the head “100 months to save the planet”:
A “Green New Deal” is needed to solve current problems of climate change, energy and finance, a report argues.
According to the Green New Deal Group, humanity only has 100 months to prevent dangerous global warming.
Ya’ll get busy on that. I’ve spent my stimulus check to save the economy and, frankly, I’m exhausted. I pass along to you the responsibility for saving the planet. Barack will take care of the universe.
A grand jury in San Francisco is reporting that the city spends $186 million a year in city funds to finance homeless programs. As a result, 50 to 75 percent of the “street people” actually live in taxpayer-supported housing. Still, the pandhandling persists, and people seem baffled:
“We just warehouse addicts,” said the grand jury’s Stuart Smith. “Granted, it is a nicer place for them, but it doesn’t address the problem.”
In short, the jury is reflecting the views of many San Franciscans who made the choice to live here. They understood that housing and taxes would be higher, and so would the cost of a meal in a restaurant. They understand and believe that the city needs to provide for its poorest homeless residents and don’t begrudge what the grand jury says is $186 million a year in city funds spent to finance homeless programs.
But, they ask, can’t someone stop the panhandling? And, given all the programs and services, is it unreasonable to ask those who are being given supportive housing to start making some effort to be self-sufficient?
You get more of the behavior you subsidize. If that one simple truth could be pounded into liberals’ heads, more than half of what’s screwing up this country could be corrected.
A few years ago, I thought we might be headed for a cultural bottoming out when I read that Steven Speilberg really doesn’t read — all his movies were inspired by other movies. (I haven’t been able to find the quote since, so maybe I dreamed it, or maybe it was George Lucas). I think the bottom is either here or very close. The top two opening weekends in movie history, and three of the top five, now belong to films inspired by comic books. (And one of the others is based on a theme ride.)
The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.
Batman is good, but complex. The Joker is more than a villain. That such an analysis would be made in all seriousness says something important about the United States, but I’m not sure what — it’s been years since I read comics, after all. Maybe we’d better brush up. With Obama in the Middle East and foreign policy questions now ascendant in the presidential contest, we will need as sophisticated an understanding of good and evil as possible.
TODAY’S BONUS: Figuring out the No. 1 movie of all time can be tricky, because what the industry counts — gross revenue — is subject to inflation and other factors. If you go by number of tickets sold and try to adjust for inflation, what’s the top hit in American history? Hint: It’s been seen by far people more on TV than it even was in the movie theaters.
I once remarked to a friend that somebody must be watching Steven Seagal movies; otherwiswe, they wouldn’t keep making the damn things. I feel the same way about “The View,” although the demograpics of its audience would probably scare me to death.
“View” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was in tears Thursday after a discussion about the use of the n-word, in which fellow co-host Whoopi Goldberg told her the two “don’t live in the same world.”
During a segment covering Jesse Jackson’s recent use of the n-word while preparing to tape an interview on FOX News, Whoopi and co-host Sherri Shepard, who are both black, contested that the word has a different meaning for black people.
“It’s something that means something way different to me than it does to you,” said Shepard. “I can use it as a term of endearment.”
Shepard also said to co-host Barbara Walters: “I don’t want to hear it come out of your mouth.”
[. . .]
Goldberg, who used the n-word repeatedly during the broadcast (it was bleeped out), said that “We don’t live in the same world. What I need you to understand is the frustration that goes along with when you say we live in the same world. It isn’t balanced.”
Goldberg and Hasselbeck can fight over what worlds they’re in all they want to, as long as they stay off my planet. (Here’s video if you can stand it.) The dual use of racial and ehtnic epithets has long been the subject of debate. I’ve gone back and forth on the issue, but I find this persuasive:
Still, despite the best intentions, critics argue that using the N-word, particularly in entertainment, does more harm than good and gives others — whites and minorities alike — the impression that it’s no longer offensive in every context.
And don’t call me hillbilly, unless you’re going to buy me dinner first.
Dress does are fine, and I think I’ve even written that school uniforms can help create a good learning environment. But messing with a kid’s hair is getting too personal:
A small rural school district in Fort Bend County and a determined mother are tangled in a dispute over hair.
Michelle Betenbaugh says her 5-year-old son, Adriel Arocha, wears his hair long because of religious beliefs tied to his Native American heritage.
But the leaders of the Needville school district have strict rules about long hair on boys and don’t see any reason to make an exception in his case.
The dispute illustrates a problem American schools have faced for decades: how to balance individual student rights against rules designed to maintain order and discipline in the classroom.
Perhaps I empathize with the kid because I’m recalling my Ball State days, when I had luxurious locks that reached my shoulders. Or maybe I’m nostalgic about even more recent times, when I actaully had, you know, hair.
A Virginia company today announced it will hire 480 people to work in a “virtual” call center - their own homes.
N.E.W. Customer Service Companies will hire customer reps from Terre Haute and surrounding west-central Indiana cities over the next three years.
The company provides service plans, wireless handset replacement nsurance and customer support services for the consumer electronic, computer and wireless industries, according to a news release from the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
Soooo cool. I envy my brother’s ability to telecommute, and I’d love to do it, too. What commuting costs are just now forcing many to contemplate, technology has made possible for years.
A police lieutenant in Daytona Beach was fired over accusations that he threatened slower emergency response times if he was not given complimentary specialty Starbucks coffee drinks.
An internal police investigation found that Daytona Lt. Major Garvin received free coffee for about two years from a city Starbucks coffee store.
However, when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department’s response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks.
Garvin is accused of saying, “If something happens, either we can respond really fast or we could respond really slow. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve been getting whatever I want. I’m the difference between you getting a two-minute response time, if you needed a little help, or a 15 minutes response time.”
Policies against accepting favors can seem awfully petty sometimes. Such policies at newspapers can be as rigid as the ones on police departments, and I’ve heard a lot of reporters grumble about them over the years. What’s the problem with letting someone pay for you meal, for Pete’s sake, or buying you a drink? The problem (other than the appearance of impropriety, which can be as deadly as the real thing) is that, in the absence of a blanket policy, someone has to figure out where the line is — when inconsequential niceties turn into attempts to curry favor. And while that’s being studied, there will some like this officer who have decided that they are owed the favors.
A company that owns 11 McDonald’s restaurants in Nevada was fined one million dollars Wednesday after pleading guilty to employing 58 illegal immigrants.
No work, no incentive to come here illegally. Make it a lot more companies and a few billion in fines, and there will be no more illegal-immigration crisis.
If you’ve done a lot of cooking, you might know the French phrase mise en place, defined by the Culinary Institute as “everything in place.” It means to have everything you need to prepare a meal — utensils, main ingredients, spices — lined up precisely so that there’s no searching or fumbling around once the actual cooking starts.
For some reason, I thought of the term earlier this week when I first heard the phrase “age in place.” It was used by representatives of Parkview Hospital, who dropped by to talk to us about their plans for the old Randallia campus and the new Regional Medical Center. More operations might stay at Randallia than previously envisioned, they said. One of the reasons was hospital officials’ growing awareness of the need for elder care in the area because of the “age in place” phenomenon. More people want to stay and grow old in the houses — or at least in the neighborhoods — they raised families in. Notice all the new assisted-living and skilled-nursing facilities along State Boulevard, for example.
I’d not encountered the term before, but our social-services reporter Jennifer Boen had, so I googled it. It’s not just an identifiable and quantifiable phenomenon. There are even government funds and grants aimed at making the process possible. And of course there are specialists:
According to the Journal of Housing for the Elderly, aging in place is not having to move from one’s present residence in order to secure necessary support services in response to changing needs. Aging in Place has grown in popularity and celebrated by the National Aging in Place Week and the National Aging in Place Council that promotes the positive outcomes of seniors having a choice in their care and living arrangements.
There are now Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS) specialists to fill the growing need in this service model for seniors. Communities are now fully engaged and committed to exploring ways to better serve seniors by developing action plans that address the future needs and ensure that the services are in place for seniors.
This is all very enlightened and caring, I know, but as I get ever closer to advanced years myself, it’s a little depressing, too. My house is OK, but I’m not that attached to it. As long as somebody else is paying for it, the French Riveria would suit me just fine.
Once upon a time tattoos were – as the French say – “for criminals and Germans”. Now they are in Vogue – literally, starting on p152. “They walk among us, people. The tattooed,” the article on “How tattoos stopped being taboo” begins. “Once you start looking, start taking note … everyone’s got a tattoo these days.”
Everyone has become a nonconformist! Except me. I may be the only person you meet who doesn’t have a tattoo. That you can see.
OK, I don’t know much about diplomacy and the intricacies of international relations, but this seems like a bad deal to me:
Hezbollah on Wednesday handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized by its guerrillas two years ago, in a prisoner swap greeted with triumph in Lebanon but anguish in Israel.
“Today we hand over Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev,” Hezbollah official Wafiq Safa said at the Naqura border crossing between Lebanon and Israel as men placed two black coffins on the ground amid a crowd of onlookers.
The mood in Israel had been sombre as it waited to learn the fate of Goldwasser and Regev , whose capture in a deadly cross-border raid in July 2006 triggered a devastating 34-day war in Lebanon.
“Both soldiers have been identified,” an army spokeswoman told AFP after forensic tests on the remains.
The International Committee of the Red Cross handed to Hezbollah the bodies of 12 fighters, under the exchange which was also to see the release of five Lebanese, including Israel’s longest serving Arab prisoner.
Dead soldiers in return for live terrorists, who will now be free to create more dead soldiers. And Israel is supposed to be the tough one? This banner on the Lebanese border pretty much tells the story: “Lebanon is shedding tears of joy. Israel is shedding tears of pain.”
This report compares the 2007-2008 textbooks that are currently posted on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Education with those analyzed in our 2006 study, and shows that the same violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers noted in 2006 remain in the current texts.
They assert that unbelievers, such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims who do not share Wahhabi beliefs and practices, are hated “enemies.” Global jihad as an “effort to wage war against the unbelievers” is also promoted in the Ministry’s textbooks: “In its general usage, ‘jihad’ is divided into the following categories: …Wrestling with the infidels by calling them to the faith and battling against them.” No argument is made here that such references to jihad mean only spiritual and defensive struggles.
Aren’t allies wonderful? This analysis concludes that what the Saudis are doing amounts to “moving around the furniture, not cleaning the house.” That conclusion is significant because the Saudis, after negotiations with the U.s. “committed” to the removal of intolerant teachings ffrom all Saudi textbooks by, um, September of this year. Maybe the U.S. should have insisted on a timetable for the withdrawal.
We have an energy crisis because President Bush has not given a speech asking Americans to drive less:
If we can’t be trusted to glean satirical intent from an over-the-top New Yorker cover, how can we be trusted to buy less of something when the price goes up? It’s Daddy President 101, with the added nuance of the media demanding a catalyzing call for action from a guy with an approval rating south of 30 whom they assure us no one in their right mind takes seriously.
The post has a link to the actual vido of the stupid reporter asking the stupid question.
Today’s global economy baffles experts — corporate executives, bankers, economists — as much as ordinary people. Countries are growing economically more interdependent and politically more nationalistic. This is a combustible combination. The old global economy had few power centers (the United States, Europe, Japan), was defined mainly by trade and was committed to the dollar as the central currency. Its major countries shared democratic values and alliances. Today’s global economy has many power centers (including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia), is also defined by finance and is exploring alternative currencies to the dollar. Major trading nations now lack common political values and alliances.
It is no more possible to undo globalization than it was possible, in the 19th century, to undo the Industrial Revolution. But our understanding of international markets, shaped by impersonal economic forces and explicit political decisions, is poor. Countries try to maximize their own advantage rather than make the system work for everyone. Considering how much could go wrong, the record is so far remarkably favorable. Alas, that’s no guarantee for the future.
But people tend to talk about the “global economy” as if it’s a finite phenomenon with discrete and fixable components rather than a growing, ever-changing fact of life. And politicians make insane promises based on that mistaken premise. Exports are better than imports, so let’s stop all this free-trade nonsense and get back to “”fair” trade.
Markets are messy things. The global market will be messier than anything that has gone before. We’re going to be interconnected, as countries and economies, in ways we will barely be able to understand, let alone control. Get used to it.
Given all the stories we’ve seen in the last few years, this isn’t really a big shock:
CHICAGO - One of the largest studies of its kind shows just how sluggish American children become once they hit the teen years: While 90 percent of 9-year-olds get a couple of hours of exercise most days, fewer than 3 percent of 15-year-olds do.
What’s more, the study suggests that fewer than a third of teens that age get even the minimum recommended by the government — an hour of moderate-to-vigorous exercise, like cycling, brisk walking, swimming or jogging.
The sharp drop raises concerns about inactivity continuing into adulthood, which could endanger kids’ health throughout their lives, the study authors said.
Events sort of converged in a conspiracy against the kids. At the same time they were discovering the joys of computers and video games (added to the already inactive time in front of the TV), schools began dropping recess and gym classes. If physical activity is an important factor in being healthy, why shouldn’t it be on the list of school mandatories along with things like reading and writing and math? Isn’t being healthy as important a component of good citizenship as literacy and numeracy?
Susan Atkins is dying of brain cancer and wanted a “compassionate release” from her life prison sentence so she could “die with digity,” surrounded by family and friends instead of prison guards. Yes, that Susan Atkins:
Atkins was the one who stabbed Tate to death, saying she killed her to silence the actress’s pleas to spare her unborn baby. After the slaying, Atkins tasted Tate’s blood and used it to write the word “Pig” on the victim’s door. She claimed she was on LSD at the time of the murders, but did not apologize until a parole hearing years later.
She’s been alive almost 40 years longer than she should have been, and she’s fine right where she is. The parole board was smart enough to deny the request — which wasn’t not a sure thing, since this is California we’re talking about.
The weasels in D.C. government are responding to the Supreme Court’s Heller decision with proposed rules showing they truly do not get it:
Here’s what they’re proposing:
Allowing an exception for handgun ownership for self-defense use inside the home.
If you want to keep a handgun in your home, the MPD will have to perform ballistic testing on it before it can be legally registered.
There will be a limit to one handgun per person for the first 90 days after the legislation becomes law.
Firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and disassembled, and secured with either a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. The new law will allow an exception for a firearm while it is being used against an intruder in the home.
Residents who legally register handguns in the District will not be required to have licenses to carry them inside their own homes.
How grateful D.C.’s citizens must be. They will be allowed to use a handgun — one that’s been taken to the police for ballistic testing, of course — against an intruder in the home, after they’ve taken it from the gun safe, assembled it and loaded it. Sure hope there are some slow intruders in the nation’s capital.
In recent months, however, several studies have produced a stream of evidence that mostly points in the same direction, and also happens to overturn one of the most stubborn American stereotypes: the belief that this is a land whose gifts, charms and joys flow mostly to young people.
The studies show that when you check on how happy people are at various ages, the elderly generally come out ahead.
Since 1972, researchers have conducted 50,000 detailed interviews with Americans. The questions of the General Social Survey are repeated year after year to enable researchers to detect trends and to make comparisons among groups and to see how the same people changed over time. One asks whether they are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy.
“One important finding was people who were biologically older are happier than younger adults,” said Tom W. Smith of the University of Chicago, who is the director of the General Social Survey.
Maybe happiness has to be learned. We spend most of our lives figuring out what makes us happy, then finally decide to do more of that and less of the stuff we just thought was important in our younger days.
Pssst. Wanna hear about a strange endorsment by a foreign country of an American presidential candidate? No, not an Islamic country and Obama:
We hope McCain wins,” says the 62-year-old Vietnamese. “He remembers us and will do good things for Vietnam.”
Just about everyone in Vietnam agrees. They all know who McCain is, and no one seems to hold a grudge about the 23 bombing missions he flew against targets in and around Hanoi. That goes for ordinary Vietnamese, senior bureaucrats and people who met him during his captivity—the district nurse who may have saved his life after he was shot down, and the hard-line military officer who was his chief jailer for more than five years at the Plantation and the notorious Hanoi Hilton.
The story points out that the Vietnamese like McCain in large part because he pushed Washington to normalize relations, which has led to trade that grew to $12 billion as of last year. Enemies become allies, and the world keeps turning. A few years ago, I would have had trouble with this story, but time moves on for everybody. I wouldn’t mind visiting Vietnam today. I’d even like it, in fact.
This being Newsweek, naturally the editors had to put the “no one holds a grudge about the bombing missions he flew” spin on it. It wouldn’t occur to them to say that McCain “doesn’t hold a grudge for being tortured for years.”
How to get out of a big mistake — like the push for corn-based ethanol — without admitting to the mistake: Why, that was just Phase One, and now we’re moving on to Phase Two.
And they’re also not talking about replacement so much as supplementing: using switchgrass or wood waste products, for example, along with corn.
Still, the conversation — including an energy forum Sunday — has big implications. The nation has 134 ethanol plants in 26 states with 77 more under construction or expanding, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the ethanol industry.
This year’s corn crop, expected to be a record, is worth about $52 billion.
Guess even governors are educable. You dip into one necessity to help you with another necessity, you’re asking for trouble.
Phil Gramm is sent into political exile, some say, for stumbling into the truth by saying we have a “mental recession” and America has become a nation of whiners:
Campaign Econ says the American economy is a certain way because Americans think it is. Campaign Econ competes with real economics and often wins — with damage that extends way beyond, say, the political career of either Phil Gramm or John McCain.
[. . .]
That Campaign Econ is also calibrating Barack Obama’s economic team goes without saying. The view among the nation’s political advisers, from far left to far right, is that the economy is in a Katrina. Anyone who disagrees has no role in the 2008 presidential contest.
She’s right about several things, I think. The economy hasn’t been as bad as many have been saying, and by thinking it is, we probably bring on the worse economy sooner than it would have gotten here. But saying it’s all the effect of Campaign Econ instead of “real” economics glosses over a little bit how much of a consumer economy we have. If the consumer is discouraged, the consumer will engage in less buying. The self-fulfilling prophecy is an inherent component of a consumber-based economy.
And there is more reason to be pessimistic this time around than in prevous “perceived downturns.” We are feeling the economic pinch largely at the gas pump and the supermarket. Those are two places where we buy the same things in the same amounts over and over. It’s hard to miss the steady increases. Usually I haven’t noticed a change in my buying power when talk has turned to gloomy economics. This time I have.
