The rest of the act I forgot under the pressure. I went to my fail-safe, the freeze dance. I turned on Bobby Darin singing "Splish Splash," got the kids to their feet, and said, "Let's dance!" I turned off the music and said "Freeze!" I repeated this half a dozen times. Later, Jacob's grandmother told me this was her favorite part of the act. "It was so funny because you couldn't get them to dance, so whenever you yelled 'Freeze,' they were already frozen."
"Take Me Out"We opened last weekend to very responsive audiences with a sold out audience on Saturday. A very intense and adult drama.It runs through June 17th with a Sunday matinee on May 21st and June 4th at 2427 17th St, Sacramento, CA!
Five years of research led by a University of Nevada, Reno department head in Reno and Las Vegas casinos have concluded there is a direct correlation between exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace and damage to the employees' DNA.
"The more they were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, the more the DNA damage, and that's going to lead to a higher risk of heart disease and cancer down the road," said Chris Pritsos.
Funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the clinical trial followed 125 employees who work on the gambling floors of casinos in both northern and southern Nevada.
The subjects of the study were nonsmokers who were not exposed to secondhand smoke in their households, said Pritsos, chairman of the nutrition department at UNR.
"This is the first major study ever done looking at exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in the work force," Pritsos said. He added that casino floor workers are exposed to four times the amount of secondhand cigarette and cigar smoke than any other work force population.
... Woodbury is adamant in her view about the dangers of secondhand smoke. "For every eight smokers that die of smoking, they take one nonsmoker with them. Innocent victims like Dana Reeve," she said.
The widow of the late actor and quadriplegic Christopher Reeve died in March of lung cancer.
"She used to perform in smoky nightclubs and now she's dead," Woodbury said. "Only 44 years old, the same age I am."
Go, Brittney, Go!is a level 7 gymnast at Pozsar's Gymnastics and is highly ranked in the state for her age and level. She also takes tap and jazz at Deane Dance Center, and has been in the Sacramento Ballet's, "The Nutcracker" twice.Dancers really blossom in ability between the ages of 12 and 15. Brittney hasn't even reached that age range, yet has already mastered crucial details. In six years, she is likely to be strong indeed!
Brittney, en-route between Point A and Point B
(Left) Bridge
"Wizard of Oz" Strike
"Scruffy", who shared the role of "Toto".
Buffee Gillihan (Wicked Witch of the West), and who, incidentally, was Miss El Dorado County, 1999, poses with The Lullaby League, the Almendariz sisters: Brittney (age 10), and twin sisters Paige and Macy (age 8).
Alissa Steiner (Dorothy), and co-star.
Tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor has a seemingly impossible task: promoting cigarette smoking in a time when the health hazards of the activity have become too plain to ignore. Nick, however, revels in his job, using argument and twisted logic to place, as often as not, his clients in the positions of either altruistic do-gooders or victims. Nick's son Joey needs to understand and respect his dad's philosophy, and Nick works hard to respond to that need without compromising his lack of values. When a beautiful news reporter betrays Nick's sexually-achieved trust, his world seems in danger of collapsing. But there's always one more coffin nail in Nick's pack.Several nice touches:
Like the movie says, it's all about paying the mortgage! And the extra-credit moral I got was:
If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.
Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.
"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.
Patients get lesions that never heal.
"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.
Patients say that's the worst symptom — strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.
"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.
While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.
"It really has the makings of a horror movie in every way," Savely said.
... Travis Wilson developed Morgellons just over a year ago. He called his mother in to see a fiber coming out of a lesion.
"It looked like a piece of spaghetti was sticking out about a quarter to an eighth of an inch long and it was sticking out of his chest," Lisa Wilson said. "I tried to pull it as hard as I could out and I could not pull it out."
... "You want to get these things out to relieve the pain, and that's why you pull and then you can see the fibers there, and the tentacles are there, and there are millions of them," Bishop said.
...For more information on Morgellons, visit the research foundation's Web site at http://www.morgellons.org/.
Finally, Vegas has too many people craving attention - and I'm not talking about the Elvises, which are everywhere - and fun. I'm talking about people who've spent too much time in front of the mirror trying too hard to look like somebody they are not.And whom, may I ask, doesn't like to strut?
Las Vegas is the love child of Hooter's and the Oregon Country Fair, a human collage that's great for those who like to strut.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides didn't know it, but when he dropped in on UCSD College Democrats yesterday, he was not the only one in the room who has sought the top job in California politics.I'm not running this year because I'm not so annoyed as I was in 2003 by the California political situation. And why isn't Daniel running?
Sitting with about 40 other students – and armed with the toughest question of the day – was Daniel Watts, one of 135 candidates in the 2003 recall election that put Republican action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor's office.
A history and political science major from San Jose, Watts, 23, financed his campaign with some of the $11,300 he won on TV's "Wheel of Fortune."
His platform was simple: He ran against tuition and fee increases for California's public universities and colleges.
That put him in ideological sync with Angelides, the state treasurer, whose call for taxing the wealthy and businesses to finance education – and to roll back higher education tuition and fees – is a cornerstone of his campaign.
Angelides emphasized his education policy heavily yesterday, without
mentioning taxes.
Until Watts raised his hand.
"What, specifically, are you going to do to pay for it?" Watts asked.
As for Watts, he has abandoned, for now, his interest in becoming governor. He got 2,021 votes in 2003, but took a pass on this year's contest. “I ran out of 'Wheel of Fortune' money,” he said, “so I couldn't afford the filing fee.”
On Nov. 22, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig was at work in his chambers here when he received a telephone call telling him to switch on the television. There, he saw Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announce that the government would file charges against Jose Padilla in a federal court -- treating the accused terrorist like a normal criminal suspect.
The judge was stunned. Two months earlier, he had written a landmark opinion saying the government could hold Mr. Padilla without charge in a military brig. The decision validated President Bush's claim that he could set aside Mr. Padilla's constitutional rights in the name of national security. The judge assumed the government had a compelling reason to consider the suspect an extraordinary threat. Now Mr. Gonzales wanted the courts to forget the whole case.
It didn't take long for the judge's anger to burst out into the open. The next month he wrote that moves such as the attorney general's cast doubt on the Bush administration's "credibility before the courts." Judge Luttig tried to block Mr. Padilla's transfer to civilian custody from the brig. The administration's top litigator fired back that the judge "defies both law and logic."
The clash, which underscores the increasing skepticism among even some conservative jurists toward the Bush administration's sweeping theories of executive power, culminated yesterday in Judge Luttig's resignation. The 51-year-old judge, once considered a likely Bush nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, stepped down from his lifetime seat on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to start a new career in Chicago as general counsel for Boeing Co.
When Douglas W. Mock of the University of Oklahoma began studying egrets in Texas three decades ago, he knew that the bigger babies in a clutch would peck the smaller ones to death. Still, Dr. Mock was caught off guard by what he saw — or failed to see. He had assumed that the murderous attacks would surely take place while Mom and Dad egret were out fishing.
"I figured that, if the parents were around, they'd try to block these things," he said. "I have three older brothers, and I never would have made it if my parents hadn't interceded."
Instead, Dr. Mock witnessed utter parental indifference. The mother or father would stand by the side of the nest, doing nothing as one chick battered its sibling bloody. "The parent would yawn or groom itself and look completely blasé," said Dr. Mock, author of "More Than Kin and Less Than Kind: The Evolution of Family Conflict." "In the 3,000 attacks that I witnessed, I never saw a parent try to stop one. It's as though they expect it to happen."
A former Navy Top Gun with decades of flying experience forgot to put his plane's landing gear down during an air show practice run in Tucson in March, the Federal Aviation Administration found.
Retired Capt. Dale "Snort" Snodgrass, a seasoned pro on the military air-show circuit, was piloting a Korean War-era F-86 Sabre that scraped to a stop and caught fire in the March 4 mishap at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
... Snodgrass remains on the Air Force schedule this season. The service still has "total confidence in his abilities," according to a statement from the Air Combat Command.
... If damage is minor and the incident is a simple oversight, discipline usually consists of giving the pilot a talking-to, Schultz said. The lecture would be "kind of demeaning" for a highly accomplished aviator, he said.
Snodgrass, who retired from a 26-year Navy career in 1999, is renowned in the air-show world. He has 10,000 hours of flight time under his belt, half of them in the F-14 Tomcat, a Navy record for the jet. In 1985, Snodgrass was a Top Gun graduate and the Navy's Fighter Pilot of the Year. From 1994 to 1997, he was commander of all the Navy's F-14s. He flew the Tomcat in air shows for more than a decade, and is qualified on at least six other aircraft, including several vintage warplanes.
The newspaper reported in its online edition Tuesday that the ringtone started with a siren, followed by a male voice saying in a Southern drawl, "This is la Migra," a slang term for the Border Patrol.
"Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I'm deporting you back home-o," the voice continued.
[Letter is removed for the time being]
Last year - on Sept. 16, to be precise - the state Reclamation Board, a relatively obscure state agency that oversees flood protection levees, approved a potentially far-reaching policy to intercede when local governments and developers propose residential subdivisions behind levees designed to protect farmland.[Updated 05/12/06, 4:00 p.m.] There definitely would be a downside to projects like these if they are as described in Walters' article. Placing premium houses on top of levees would increase the state's liability and add to the cost of levee maintenance.
... Ten days later, before the new policy could be finally adopted, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fired the entire board and replaced it with seven new appointees, most of whom had strong ties to land developers. Ever since, skeptics of building homes behind agricultural levees - including deposed members of the Reclamation Board - have wondered aloud whether the new board would be more favorably disposed toward development interests.
The issue was settled, it would seem, late last month, when the Reclamation Board voted to allow the developer of an immense subdivision on a Delta island south of Stockton to begin widening the existing levee and - ignoring warnings from the board's attorney that it was violating state open-meeting laws - expanded the developer's permit to indirectly allow construction of luxury, riverview homes atop the widened levee.
A transcript of the board's April 21 meeting reveals that two of the board's members - Cheryl Bly-Chester, who owns a Roseville engineering firm that does work for developers, and Teri Rie, a Contra Costa County public works engineer - pushed hard to expand the permit sought by Cambay Group, the developer of the River Islands project.
The development on Stewart Tract, a Delta island that flooded in 1997 when a levee broke, envisions a community of 11,000 residential units, two golf courses, several marinas and 5 million square feet of commercial space. Cambay, owned by British financier F. Allan Chapman, has already obtained the enthusiastic support of the small city of Lathrop, whose boundaries include Stewart Tract.
Cambay - acceding to the board staff - had sought just a permit to begin shoring up and widening the existing levee, but the firm had made no secret of its unhappiness with the board staff's go-slow approach under which the levee expansion would occur first and the issue of what could be built atop the levee would be taken up later. Cambay project director Susan Dell'Osso complained that the company was reluctant to do the levee work without assurances that home construction would be allowed, and that became the board's bone of contention during a lengthy and often rambling debate.
Member Butch Hodgkins, former director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, tried to delay a decision on housing, but Bly-Chester and Rie eventually prevailed on a 5-1 vote even though the board's counsel, Scott Morgan, warned repeatedly that altering the permit to imply approval of housing atop the levee would violate rules against taking up issues not on the agenda. Hodgkins actually voted with the majority in the end. The only dissenter was Rose Burroughs, owner of a Denair livestock company.
VICE PRESIDENT BLY-CHESTER: Thank you, Susan.
What I've heard -- and I want to make sure the rest of the Board members really heard this -- is that the only way they can afford to do this multi-million dollar flood improvement project for the State of California is if they have lot premiums that they can sell. They cannot sell lot premiums if they don't know how close to the levee edge they can build.
So they cannot afford to do this. The state will not get the benefit of this project. And it's free levee protection, is what it is, for the State, as far as the state's concerned.
So this project is not going to be worth it to the applicant if they cannot do lot premiums. They can to lot premiums unless they know where they can build their buildings. We need to give them some direction here so they can do this project.
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
Hi. I'm not home right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you
coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me,
but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.
And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
completion of their appointed rounds.
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justive is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.
Satire comes in many forms. I doubt that Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” evoked belly laughs among Ireland’s 18 th century English occupiers when it recommended remedying poverty by roasting peasants’ infants like suckling pigs.
George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” had few fans in the Politburo when it mocked communism’s pretense of universal brotherhood: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Written in 1943, Orwell’s fable wasn’t published until August 1945, when World War II ended, making Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill no longer allies.
This president loves dishing it out. The Associated Press reporter who introduced Colbert told an anecdote about Bush teasing him at a press conference for having “a face for radio.” Ha, ha, ha. Good one, Mr. President. He is awfully homely. Colbert’s performance, however, made it clear that Bush doesn’t enjoy taking it.
Well, tough. Millions of Americans haven’t enjoyed being subjected to Bush’s swaggeringly contemptuous disregard for the truth. Nor, to come to the point, the posturing of media enablers like Cohen, a liberal columnist who wrote in 2000 that the nation was “in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse.... That man is George W. Bush.”
The larger point is that Beltway courtiers like Cohen, Time’s Joe Klein and others currently succumbing to the vapors over critical e-mails from fans thrilled by Colbert’s gutsy performance are on their way out. The brief reign of the celebrity pundit began with cable TV and appears to be ending with the Internet. Washington socialites are quickly being replaced in public esteem by politically oriented bloggers like Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, the inimitable Digby, Glenn Greenwald, Billmon, Atrios and many others. As Greg Sargent recently pointed out in The American Prospect, “Readers are choosing between the words on a screen offered by Klein and other commentators and the words on a screen offered by bloggers on the basis of one thing alone: The quality of the work.” Sure, there’s a danger of groupthink. That’s true of all mass media. But there’s also a fierce independence and an intellectual honesty among the best online commentators that are making Washington courtiers awfully nervous.
Climber Dean Potter scaled Delicate Arch, the soaring desert symbol of southern Utah. Now, the National Park Service wants to make sure he doesn't do it again.
Arches National Park on Tuesday announced a tightening of its rules on climbing after Potter announced with photographs and video that he made an unassisted climb of the arch just after daybreak Sunday.
Arches Park Superintendent Laura Joss said she reported Potter's climb to the Interior Department's chief lawyers, and park rangers were investigating whether Potter did any damage to the arch.
Joss said she was rewriting the rules to ban climbing of any named arches or natural bridges in the park.
The kids at Douglass Elementary School already had a climbing wall and a zip line in their gymnasium. Then their P.E. teacher learned to skateboard.Which reminds me, it's time to skateboard again. The only time I ever skateboarded was three years ago. The camera crew from San Francisco dared me to skateboard for the first time, to demonstrate just what I was prepared to do to become Governor of California. It was fun, and captured on video, but I suspect they are using the video in P.E. classes across the country, demonstrating just what not to do....
So the students are taking up skateboarding too. It's the latest in a trend toward physical education that's fun and tempts kids into staying active outside of school and perhaps years later.
... "Skateboarding is definitely a new activity in school P.E. classes," said Paula Kun, spokeswoman for the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. "Not everyone is going to love it, but I'm sure it'll be a fun, new activity."
... Experts say school P.E. programs in America are undergoing a dramatic change -- from competitive team sports and physical fitness testing to a smorgasbord of appealing options like yoga, martial arts and climbing. The changes come amid growing concern over children's sedentary habits, helping fuel childhood obesity. About 34 percent of U.S. children are estimated to be overweight or obese.
A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country's Supreme Court.
... He told investigators that three mystic dwarfs -- Armand, Luis and Angel -- helped him carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.
Utah has launched an organized-crime investigation into a polygamist sect and its fugitive leader Warren Jeffs, now on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
... The FLDS church is one of a number of polygamist sects in and near Utah. Followers believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church, went the wrong direction when it abandoned polygamy more than a century ago as Utah was seeking statehood. Estimates of the number of polygamists range from 30,000 to 100,000.
Jeffs has been on the run for years. On Saturday, he was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and the federal reward for him was boosted to $100,000.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sang the first stanzas so robustly we weren't about to challenge his knowledge of the rest. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham was gentlemanly when we put him on the spot, saying, "I am like 61 percent of Americans. If I had to get up and recite the national anthem, I would fail miserably."
We came upon a woman dressed as a fish — she was lobbying for clean water — and she sang it with just a minor flub. A group of chiropractors whirled around and sang it backward. Get it? Backward.
Poppies...Well, Not Poppies, Exactly
Look at these nice flowers. The property management firm (Buzz Oates) takes care of these. They should be poppies! They aren't though. They look like they are from the Sunflower family (Asteraceae), not the Poppy family (Papaveraceae). Whatever they are, they sure are pretty on a Sunday afternoon! And I feel very, very sleepy.....
Life is not measuredThe east side (Manzano) Class of 2006 class motto is:
by the number of breaths we take
but by the moments
that take our breath away.
Life doesn't consist ofI sense trouble.
how many breaths you take
but by how many moments
take your breath away.
In what could signal a frightening new fact of life in the age of global warming, Canadian and U.S. forecasters are warning that another major hurricane season is brewing in the Atlantic Ocean.
The 2006 hurricane season officially opens on June 1, and already scientists are telling people living in eastern North America that numerous storms are predicted, with as many as five major hurricanes packing winds of 180 km/h or greater.
"It's kind of comparable to what we were looking at last year at this time," says Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with the Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth, N.S.
"Last year we were looking at 12 to 15 storms and this year the forecast is for about 17. No one would go out on a limb and say it is going to be just as bad as last year, but the indications are there that it is still going to be another active season, almost twice as active as normal."
Last year's hurricane season was the most destructive on record.
There were 27 named storms, 15 hurricanes and seven intense hurricanes during the 2005 season. The worst damage was along the U.S. Gulf coast.
Scientists with the Colorado State University hurricane forecast team say the same factors that contributed to last year's violent season are still in play this year.
"The Atlantic Ocean remains anomalously warm, and tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures have continued to cool," says Colorado University forecaster Phil Klotzbach, explaining two of the key triggers for hurricanes.
..."We are seeing stronger hurricanes - almost a 100 per cent increase in category fours and fives," he says.
"When they do develop, they're a lot bigger, tougher and have more destructive power. They stay together longer. This is the concern. They seem to have more power. That could have a connection to global warming - the fact the atmosphere has changed and ocean temperatures have warmed."
... Phillips says that despite this year's grim forecast, a lot can happen to shut down offshore hurricanes and prevent them from causing onshore harm.
"The temperature of the water has to be right, the winds have to be just perfect, the timing has to be just so and the depth of the water has to be just so," Phillips says.
"It's like baking a souffle. A lot of things have to come together and if someone slams the door, it won't rise."
Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died, a funeral home said Sunday. She was 99.
Asplund, who was just 5 years old, lost her father and three brothers -- including a fraternal twin -- when the "practically unsinkable" ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
... Asplund was the last Titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking, but she shunned publicity and rarely spoke about the events.
At least two other survivors are living, but they were too young to have memories of the disaster. Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, was 10 months old and Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean of Southampton, England, was 2 months old.
"Guys And Dolls"CIA Director Porter Goss has resigned, President Bush said Friday.Doesn't anyone want to know why he resigned, or who else might have to resign? No? Thought so! After all, we all listen to FOX and the rest of the mainstream media, and they are doing their best to distract public attention with the silly Patrick Kennedy story.
The Davis Musical Theatre Company’s Young Performer Theater Division announces auditions for their summer musical PETER PAN. The auditions will be held Monday May 8, 2006 & Tuesday May 9, 2006 at 4:30pm with callbacks on Wednesday May 10, 2006 also at 4:30pm at the Hoblit Performing Arts Center, 607 Pena Drive, Davis. Please bring sheet music for a song that you have rehearsed (but not from Peter Pan). You only need to sing enough of your song to demonstrate how well you can carry a tune and follow our piano player’s accompaniment (no taped music or a cappella please). After singing, there will be reading from the show. Jan Isaacson will direct the show. The show will be double cast with a total of 40 cast members, which includes, if you are a principal character on one weekend, then you are in the ensemble the other weekend. There will be a cost of $125 for this summer activity.
Read Through: Monday, May 15, 2006; 4:30 – 6:00
Parent Meeting: Monday, May 15, 2006; 6:00 – 7:00
Rehearsal will be Monday – Thursday and they begin on July 10, 2006.
Rehearsal times will be: July 10, 2006 – August 10, 2006; 1:00 – 4:00
Tech Week: August 14 – 17, 2006; 4:00 – 8:00
Show dates are August 18 - August 27, 2006
Fridays 7:00 pm, Saturdays 2:15 & 7:00 pm, Sundays 2:15
A twisted teenage vampiress attacked three girls who attend her Queens high school - savagely sinking her teeth into their necks in a series of bizarre bloodlettings, a shocking new lawsuit charges.
There always seems to be one ubiquitous T-shirt at every edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. Sometimes it's merely a band shirt, like Siouxsie & the Banshees or, no joke, Rooney. In 2004, it was a black shirt with George Bush on it, along with the words, "Not My President." And this past weekend, some individuals paraded around the Empire Polo Fields just a few hours south of Las Vegas sporting "Madonna Killed Coachella" on their tees.Just Saturday night, I watched portions of the new movie "Coachella", on DVD. I bought the movie (sight unseen, even though it recently-ran at the Crest Theater) since it seemed likely that it might be fun. And indeed, there are fun parts - the fellow who invented all kinds of quixotic, Burning-Man style robots comes first to mind. But a lot of the acts are - well, not that good. This collegiate critic seems to have nailed the problems, but opinions differ: Variety liked it, for example.
Ever since promoters of the venerable event announced the addition of the former Material Girl to its 80-plus artist Coachella 2006 roster, some of the festival's diehard fans declared the premiere music festival in the United States had finally jumped the shark. Pre-concert quibbling continued online last week with the last-minute booking of Kanye West, one of last year's most commercially successful pop acts.
Hi
Huh-I
Hyper
Hyper-media-ocrity
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
You don't need to
Tear away
Feels good
Looks good
Sounds good
Looks good
Feels good too
Feels good too
(Uh-huh that's right)
Feels good too
(Uh-huh that's right)
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
(Uh huh that's right)
(Uh huh that's right)
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
[Modem noise]: Look alive!
You don't need to
Emerge from nothing
You don't need to
Tear away
In a fundraising appeal this week, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., asks for immediate financial help "to prevent the most left-wing Democrat Party in history from seizing control of the United States Senate" in the November elections.I thought the Democrats were listless, spineless, convictionless flip-floppers left behind by the Glorious March of Market-Force History. Instead, we find Democrats are hairy, ugly, immoral bomb-throwing radicals. Whatever. But here is Liddy's real problem, and why she's so worried:
... In the fundraising letter, Dole rails against liberal Democrats in the Senate and warns that if they prevail, "our worst fears" will be realized. She argues that empowered Democrats would "increase your taxes, call for endless investigations, congressional censure and maybe even impeachment of President Bush, put the war on terrorism on the back-burner" and "Take over the White House in 2008!"
Senate Democrats have maintained a 2-to-1 advantage over Dole's campaign committee in money raised for the midterm contests. Senate Democrats have $32.1 million cash on hand and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has $16.5 million, according to the most recent filings.
You may have heard the story about how British gunners kept missing their target at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in WWI because they got the sign wrong on the Coriolis force. Looks like this may be a myth. (I think that I first heard about this in a physics class.)
Checklist
Parts of the daily routine:
Out here, 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, units of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y., are among the latest war-bound troops who have gone through three weeks of training that introduce them to the harsh episodes that characterize the American experience in Iraq.
In a 1,000-square-mile region on the edge of Death Valley, Arab-Americans, many of them from the Iraqi expatriate community in San Diego, populate a group of mock villages resembling their counterparts in Iraq. American soldiers at forward operating bases nearby face insurgent uprisings, suicide bombings and even staged beheadings in underground tunnels. Recently, the soldiers here, like their counterparts in Iraq, have been confronted with Sunni-Shiite riots. At one village, a secret guerrilla revolt is in the works.
With actors and stuntmen on loan from Hollywood, American generals have recast the training ground at Fort Irwin so effectively as a simulation of conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 months that some soldiers have left with battle fatigue and others have had their orders for deployment to the war zones canceled. In at least one case, a soldier's career was ended for unnecessarily "killing" civilians.
"We would rather you got killed here than in Iraq," said Maj. John Clearwater, a veteran of the Special Forces who works at the training center.
The troops who come here are at the heart of a vast shift in American war-fighting strategy, a multibillion-dollar effort to remodel the Army on the fly. Here, the Army is relearning how to fight, shifting from its historic emphasis on big army-to-army battles to the more subtle tactics of defeating a guerrilla insurgency.
The changes in the Army's emphasis are among the most far-reaching since World War II, all being carried out at top speed, while the Iraqi insurgency continues undiminished and political support for the war ebbs at home.
American commanders say publicly that they still believe they can win the war, especially now with a more coherent strategy to combat the insurgency and train their soldiers to fight it.
The lack of such planning — indeed, the refusal in the first months after the invasion to acknowledge the presence of the insurgency — is at the heart of the criticism leveled recently at Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by six former generals.
Beneath the public veneer, some American officers say they believe that public support for the war will probably run out before the changes will begin to make a major difference. The more probable chain of events, they say, is a steady drawdown of American forces from Iraq, long before the insurgency is defeated.
For the first time in more than 20 years, military planners are revising the Army's counterinsurgency manual, adding emphasis on nation-building and peacekeeping — subjects once belittled by the Bush administration.
At the Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., officers are being required for the first time to complete a course in counterinsurgency. In Iraq, American officers entering the country are now required to spend their first week at the sprawling military base at Taji, on the northwestern edge of Baghdad, attending a crash course in counterinsurgency.
Junior officers are being encouraged to take greater initiative to adjust to local circumstances. An old military tradition of chronicling the lessons learned on the front and passing them on to other units has found a vital new outlet in password-protected Internet sites where platoon commanders and more senior officers can exchange combat experiences.
The aim is to see that any new techniques adopted by the insurgents, especially in mounting the roadside bombing attacks that accounted for more than half of all American casualties in Iraq, are made known to all units as quickly as possible, often within 24 hours.
One third of the American troops now stationed in Iraq have been through the course here, and entire brigades — each with 4,000 soldiers, sometimes more — are processed through here every month. But it is still unclear how much effect the new training is having in the field.
Indeed, even as the new training strategy moves forward, American units are substantially withdrawing from Iraq's streets. With the country sliding closer to civil war, Iraqi military units, many of them of uncertain quality, are now taking the leading combat role in nearly half of Iraq's territory.
But Kerry Noble, a Texas businessman whose life has changed dramatically since the days he was second in command of a paramilitary religious group known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, said June 6 carries much significance to fringe groups that may be looking to make a statement.
"Numbers are important in the movement," Noble said. "So anything you could interpret as being symbolic would be even more important. So a symbolic date like June 6 of this year, being 666, would have the equivalence of a 9/11 date or an April 19 date."
Housebreakings, as the crime is called in Scotland, recorded by the police have halved in the last ten years - from 71,995 in 1995-6 to 34,959 in 2004-5.
... A television that costs £300 now would have cost £870 in real terms in 1995 and £1,122 in 1985.
The biggest price drops have been witnessed in film-playing machines. In the 1980s, a Betamax cost the equivalent of £967 in today's money, while in the Nineties a VHS cost £406. Now DVD players are available in supermarkets for as little as £29.99. Esure says there has been a 32 per cent decrease in the frequency of burglary claims in Scotland over three years.
... Dr Malcolm Cook, forensic psychologist at Abertay University, said the economics of crime had turned against housebreaking.
"When something is stolen and sold on, the seller can never recover the full value of the property," he said. "Most people prefer to steal from shops. Despite their relatively sophisticated electronic surveillance, the ability to outwit the surveillance is common knowledge amongst those who commit that type of crime.
"It is more efficient to go up to someone in the street and threaten them for their mobile phone. It is quicker, and your chances of success are higher. The falling value of electrical goods means housebreaking no longer makes sense. Even the simplest of criminal minds will carry out a risk-benefit analysis. Breaking into houses is not trivial and there is no guarantee you will get quality goods. It's a bit like gambling. If you break into a house, the forensic footprint you leave makes it extremely likely that you will get caught.
A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.
... Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”
Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”
Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.
... Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." In another slap at the news channel, he said: "I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term."
He also reflected on the alleged good old days for the president, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.
Addressing the reporters, he said, "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction."
Annual Scottish Games In Woodland
Skillful Celtic band Rathkeltair plays. An excellent band. I was going to buy their CD, but their credit card machine jammed and I had no cash.
A release of doves.
Final procession.
Limbaugh Arrested in Fla. on Drug ChargesBut over at Rush-sympathizer Drudge, the headline is "Not Guilty" , and:
April 28,2006 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Rush Limbaugh was arrested Friday on prescription drug charges, law enforcement officials said.
Limbaugh turned himself in to authorities on a warrant issued by the state attorney's office, said agency spokeswoman Teri Barbera.
The conservative radio commentator came into the jail at about 4 p.m. with his attorney Roy Black and was released an hour later on $3,000 bail, Barbera said.
The warrant was for fraud to conceal information to obtain prescription, Barbera said.
Settlement Agreement Ends State Investigation of Rush Limbaugh
Fri Apr 28 2006 18:59:55 ET
Palm Beach, FL – April 28, 2006 – In response to media and other inquiries, Roy Black, Rush Limbaugh’s attorney, released the following statement today concerning a settlement agreement with the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office to end the investigation of Mr. Limbaugh:
"I am pleased to announce that the State Attorney’s Office and Mr. Limbaugh have reached an agreement whereby a single count charge of doctor shopping filed today by the State Attorney will be dismissed in 18 months. As a primary condition of the dismissal, Mr. Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past two and one half years. This is the same doctor under whose care Mr. Limbaugh has remained free of his addiction without relapse.
“Mr. Limbaugh and I have maintained from the start that there was no doctor shopping, and we continue to hold this position. Accordingly, we filed today with the Court a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ to the charge filed by the State.
“As part of this agreement, Mr. Limbaugh also has agreed to make a $30,000 payment to the State of Florida to defray the public cost of the investigation. The agreement also provides that he must refrain from violating the law during this 18 months, must pay $30 per month for the cost of “supervision” and comply with other similar provisions of the agreement.
“Mr. Limbaugh had intended to remain in treatment. Thus, we believe the outcome for him personally will be much as if he had fought the charge and won.”
The actions taken today are as follows:
The State Attorney has filed a single charge of doctor shopping with the Court. The charge is being held in abeyance under the terms of an agreement between the State and Mr. Limbaugh.
Mr. Limbaugh has filed a plea of “Not Guilty” with the Court.
The formal agreement between Mr. Limbaugh and the State Attorney will be filed with the Court on Monday. The terms of the agreement are substantively as follows:
Ø Mr. Limbaugh will continue in treatment with the doctor he has seen for the past two and one half years.
Ø After Mr. Limbaugh completes an additional 18 months of treatment, the State Attorney has agreed to drop the charge.
Ø Mr. Limbaugh has agreed to make a $30,000 payment to the State of Florida to defray the public cost of the investigation.
A group of local scientists has uncovered some clues to the source of a mysterious disturbance that rattled San Diego County on the morning of April 4, shaking windows, doors and bookcases from the coast to the mountains.
The scientists, based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, say the disturbance was caused by a sound wave that started over the ocean and petered out over the Imperial County desert. Using data from more than two dozen seismometers, they traced its likely origin to a spot roughly 120 miles off the San Diego coast.
That spot is in the general vicinity of Warning Area 291, a huge swath of ocean used for military training exercises. The Navy operates a live-fire range on San Clemente Island, which is within Warning Area 291 and sits about 65 miles from Mission Bay.
The researchers also have charted dozens of similar, if less dramatic, incidents that seem to have originated in the same general area of the ocean. They aren't sure what caused any of them.
Peter Shearer, a Scripps professor involved in the research, has no idea whether the April 4 disturbance was natural or made by humans. “I would guess it's either an explosion that somebody hasn't told us about or it could have been a meteor coming into the atmosphere,” he said. “But it was certainly a big disturbance in the atmosphere.”
Steve Fiebing, a Coronado-based Navy spokesman, said the live-fire range on San Clemente Island was inactive April 4. He also said there was no Navy or Marine Corps flight activity in Warning Area 291 on that day that would have caused a sonic boom or a countywide tremor.
The area, also known in military circles as Whiskey 291, covers 1 million square miles and is off-limits to civilian planes and ships, Fiebing said. “There was no unusual training that would have caused anything close to what people here felt,” he said.
Cmdr. William Fenick, another local Navy spokesman, said no San Diego-based warships were conducting operations in Warning Area 291 that day. “We don't know at this time where this earthquakelike sensation came from,” Fenick said.
To be a manicurist in the state of Washington, you must take 600 hours of training and pass both a written exam and a skills demonstration. To cut hair, you need 1,000 hours of training and the two tests.
But to be a registered counselor, someone who will help guide troubled clients through some of their most difficult life challenges, you need take only a four-hour AIDS-awareness class. That's it — that and a $40 registration fee. You don't even need a high-school diploma. That sounds like an invitation for trouble — and it is.
... Washington legislators had good intentions when they created the registered-counselor credential nearly 20 years ago. Reports of sexual abuse and brainwashing by a fringe counseling group in Seattle spurred lawmakers to try to corral the burgeoning, unregulated practice of counseling. But instead, they flung open the gates.
The Legislature enacted exacting standards for mental-health counselors and for marriage and family therapists, requiring each to have a master's degree and thousands of hours of clinical training. But fearing they would put less-educated counselors out of work, lawmakers created a classification called "registered counselor," with minimal requirements.
... Joanne Brekke, the former state representative who spearheaded the registered-counselor law in 1987, said she envisioned the credential as a way to regulate already-practicing counselors. She never expected her bill would instead create a licensing expressway, welcoming thousands with unproven skills and unknown motives. "Our goal was to protect counseling clients from abuse," Brekke said. "What has happened since, now that may be a different story."
... "Counseling was the perfect setting for him," she said. "He was a predator and the prey just walked through the door."
