I Love Paisley

Bob Dylan Update

2012-01-30T09:04:00.000-06:00

In my pursuit of things Dylan, I now own the following Bob Dylan CDs - i.e., every CD he has officially made and released, except for the complete set of "The Original Mono Recordings" [a re-release of the monophonic originals of his first seven Columbia albums (except for his very first album, "Bob Dylan," which only contained two songs written by him), from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" through "John Wesley Harding"] and the duplicative "Greatest Hits I, II, and III" and "Essential Bob Dylan" albums.

CDs
Another Side Of Bob Dylan
The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan and The Band)
Before The Flood (Bob Dylan/The Band)
The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings
Biograph
Blonde On Blonde (remastered)
Blood On The Tracks (remastered)
Bob Dylan (1962 - his first album)
Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration
Bob Dylan At Budokan
The Bootleg Series: Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 4 ("Royal Albert Hall" concert)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 5 (Rolling Thunder Revue)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 6 (Live 1964)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 7 (No Direction Home Soundtrack)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 8 (Tell Tale Signs)
The Bootleg Series: Vol. 9 (The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964)
Bringing It All Back Home (remastered)
Chimes Of Freedom (produced for Amnesty International by various artists - 73 songs on 4 CDs)
Christmas In The Heart
Desire (remastered)
Down In The Groove
Dylan 3CD Edition (2007)
Dylan (1973) aka "A Fool Such As I"
Dylan & The Dead (Remastered/Reissued)
Empire Burlesque
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (remastered)
Good As I Been To You
Hard Rain
Highway 61 Revisited (remastered)
I'm Not There (movie soundtrack as performed by various artists; unlike the movie, only the title song is sung by Dylan)
Infidels (original)
John Wesley Harding (remastered)
Knocked Out Loaded
Live At The Gaslight
Love And Theft (limited 2-disc edition)
Masked And Anonymous (movie soundtrack - includes only 4 of the 8 songs Dylan performed)
May Your Songs Always Be Sung Again: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2
Modern Times (limited edition w/DVD)
MTV Unplugged (music CD + DVD)
Nashville Skyline (remastered)
New Morning
Oh Mercy (remastered)
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid
Planet Waves (remastered)
Real Live
Saved
Self Portrait
Shot Of Love
Slow Train Coming (remastered)
Street-Legal (CD remastered/SACD)
Time Out Of Mind
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Together Through Life (Deluxe 2-disc + DVD)
Under The Red Sky
World Gone Wrong

DVDs
Don't Look Back (2-DVD edition)
Dylan Speaks: The Legendary 1965 Press Conference in San Francisco
I'm Not There
Masked And Anonymous
MTV Unplugged
No Direction Home: A Martin Scorsese Picture
The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965

Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left – by Jamie Glazov

2009-12-10T10:03:00.003-06:00

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew Klavan, the author of such internationally bestselling crime novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award five times and has won twice. His last novel for adults, Empire of Lies, topped Amazon.com’s thriller list. His new novel series for young adults continues in February with The Long Way Home. Andrew is a contributing editor to City Journal, the magazine of the Manhattan Institute. His essays on politics, religion, movies and literature have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, and elsewhere. As a screenwriter, he wrote the screenplays for 1990’s A Shock to the System, starring Michael Caine, and 2008’s One Missed Call. His Klavan on the Culture videos appear at PJTV.com. His website is AndrewKlavan.com.

FP: Andrew Klavan, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I’d like to talk to you today about your journey into and out of the Left.

How did you at first become a member of the political faith? Tell us about the beginnings of your intellectual journey.

Klavan: Well, I was always a dissatisfied liberal. I just never knew there was anything else to be. I was born Jewish to a mother who worshipped FDR and a father who thought that any Republican victory prefigured the return of Adolf Hitler. That’s not an exaggeration: he thought Republicans were all just Hitler in disguise. So going from that family into the arts, where everyone mouths this elitist, pseudo-sophisticated left-wing bushwa without any real understanding of the underlying issues: leftism was simply the water I swam in. Conservatives were the bad guys. Everyone knew that.

FP: So how did your second thoughts begin? Tell us about your journey out of the Left.

Klavan: It was an experience that very much mirrored the pattern of the famous paradigm shift described in Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Anomalies started to occur, things that didn’t fit into what I thought of as a “liberal” world view. The Bakke case, in which the Supreme Court supported affirmative action – that was a big one: I thought it was a clear sign that the left – my side – had signed on to racism. Feminism, political correctness, the disaster of welfare, the appeasement of the Soviet Union – I kept saying, “Well, that’s no good,” but I thought they were anomalies. I still didn’t realize there was an alternative philosophy that described the world more accurately. Then the Berlin Wall fell down – everything Reagan predicted – stupid Reagan, cowboy Reagan, dumb old movie actor Reagan – every single thing he said would happen, happened. And it finally began to dawn on me, “Oh, I get it: it’s not this and this and this that’s wrong. It’s ALL wrong.” And I started the long, difficult process of changing my mind.

Read it all here:

http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/10/andrew-klavan-my-way-into-and-out-of-the-left-by-jamie-glazov/

Muslim Terrorist Attacks On U.S. Soil - 9/11/2001 And 11/5/2009

2009-11-11T13:50:00.023-06:00

"It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith* justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next."
- President Barack Obama at Fort Hood, November 10, 2009

* With the exception of Islam, Mr. President.

Once Upon A Time...

2009-09-08T11:02:00.008-05:00

September 08, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

Once Upon a Time . . .
Whatever happened to the old Barack Obama?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama — black, young, eloquent, and hip — soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. What a contrast with the tongue-tied outgoing president, George W. Bush, and his unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Presidential Candidate Obama sensed their ecstasy, and so he made two great promises: 1. Whatever Bush was, he would not be, and 2. despite the right-wing slander about his former intimacy with Bill Ayers, the Reverend Wright, Father Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, and all his other old Chicago radical friends, Obama would be a centrist, a cooler version of Bill Clinton. There were to be no more red/blue state divides. The most partisan politician in the Senate promised a new era of bipartisanship. He who had profited from identity politics would suddenly be beyond race.

The people were considering voting for this unknown, fresh, hope-and-change candidate — a decision made easier after the financial meltdown of mid-September 2008. They decided then that they wanted a new-frontier moderate, a JFK for the 21st century, who would put competence and style over ideology — and clean up the financial mess left by Wall Street and the greedy Republicans.

Obama also promised that he would craft a foreign policy from the bipartisan center, while making us liked abroad once more. During the campaign, to reassure the doubtful, he name-dropped at length Republicans with whom he would consult: old centrist pros like Dick Lugar and Bob Gates, as well as four-star generals.

But having been elected, President Obama sensed that, just maybe, the United States was part of the problem rather than the solution. So he shunned Israel and warmed up to Syria and the Palestinians. He cut off relations with Honduras. He ignored our ally Colombia while reaching out to Castro, Chavez, and Ortega. Putin’s Russia received more deference than did most of Russia’s old vassals in Eastern Europe. The British were snubbed in gratuitous fashion.

When hundreds of thousands of Iranian dissidents went out in the streets to protest their theocracy’s rigged voting, Obama voted present — or perhaps accepted beforehand that the reformers would fail. After all, dealing with a lunatic revolutionary Iranian government would showcase far better his own singular multicultural finesse.

Meanwhile, Obama went on an apology tour abroad. He inflated the accomplishments of the Islamic world, magnified his own country’s sins, and once again blamed Bush for America’s global unpopularity. In short, it was not intrinsic differences in ideology and objectives, but the prior president, that explained the tension with Europe, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

A common theme was that the new president, Barack Obama — suddenly referencing his family’s Muslim roots and his African lineage in a way that others dared not during the campaign — was as skeptical of America’s history as were its critics, who likewise doubted there was anything “exceptional” about American democracy.

During the campaign, Nominee Obama talked of fiscal sobriety. He damned the Bush deficits. And he warned voters that his comprehensive agenda might have to wait a bit while we put our financial house in order. From time to time, Obama brought old Paul Volcker out of the closet and proclaimed him a key adviser — the subtext being that Obama, too, was an inflation fighter, a budget balancer, and a fiscal hawk of the first order. The likes of Warren Buffett assured us that all this fiscal seriousness was authentic. So the people were relieved and found another reason to vote for the moderate — only to be shocked when he submitted a budget nearly $2 trillion in the red, with plans to add $9 trillion more to the soaring national debt.

In the spring and summer of 2008, when gas soared and right-wingers started chanting “Drill, baby, drill,” Barack Obama replied to his rival, John McCain, that all America’s energy cards would be on the table — oil, gas, nuclear, and new sources of petroleum in tar and shale. The wavering voters were once more relieved, and encouraged that their would-be president was an American nationalist who wanted to use our own energy as we transitioned to wind and solar.

But then gas prices dropped. Obama was elected — and there would be no new offshore drilling after all, no promise to use clean coal, and little if anything planned about nuclear power. Instead, Americans got one Van Jones, some sort of environmental “czar,” who had a long history of ritually trashing the American economy, American agriculture, and American coal producers — while derogating George W. Bush as a “crack-head” oilman as addicted to petroleum as an addict is to cocaine. (Presumably Mr. Jones does not fly to his many conferences on carbon-spewing jets and is not picked up by gasoline-burning taxis.)

“Distortions!” Candidate Obama screamed, when charged with wanting a Canadian-style health-care system. All he wanted to do, Obama swore, was lower our costs and insure the uninsured. But then President Obama somehow demanded that a 1,000-page blueprint of a proposed government takeover of the nation’s health care be voted on before August recess — as if even one more month of treating patients the way we have for the last 100 years simply would be too much.

Once upon a time, Candidate Obama also assured skeptical voters that he would show us how to transcend race. He was no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, who used skin color and white guilt for careerist purposes. The Reverend Wright, “typical white person,” Michelle Obama’s “downright mean country,” and the Pennsylvania “clingers” remark were mere aberrations of the exhausting campaign, hyped by the shameless right wing.

But soon the people got the attorney general of the United States calling them racial cowards and dismissing voter-intimidation suits against club-wielding Black Panthers who had swarmed voting booths. Cambridge police were relegated to Neanderthal profilers who stereotyped the innocent, such as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Environment czar Van Jones warned of white conspiracies to pollute the ghetto and bragged that blacks, unlike whites, did not go on public-school shooting sprees. The nation’s most powerful politicians, like House Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel and New York governor David Paterson, for some strange reason, were suddenly victims of racial bias, which alone explained their travails. All this was not supposed to happen in the age of Obama.

Bush trampled on the Constitution, Candidate Obama alleged. Without a major terrorist attack against the homeland in seven years, the voters had the luxury to consider those charges. They seemed to agree that Bush and Cheney were nearly as much a threat to our freedoms as was Osama bin Laden.

But soon President Obama read the classified intelligence briefings. Suddenly military tribunals, renditions, the PATRIOT Act, Predator assassinations, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not just Bush conspiracies after all, but serious, necessary tools of American overseas contingency operations to thwart real man-caused disasters. The media, Hollywood, and the intelligentsia agreed, and thus Code Pink, Michael Moore, and a screaming Al Gore either quieted down or dropped out the news.

No lobbyists, Obama thundered during the campaign — not one! — would serve in his administration. Impending legislation would appear on government web sites for the people’s perusal. White House logs would be available from Day One to enlighten the voters about who did and did not enter the people’s house.

Cabinet nominees and officials would be beyond ethical reproach. Speaker Pelosi would “drain the swamp,” end the “culture of corruption,” and ensure the “the most ethical Congress ever.” There would be no more plants at news conference; no staged questions from administration hacks; no serial presidential addresses hogging the airways at prime time; no constant press conferences of a media-hungry president; no direct talks to school kids on state television screens.

Barack Obama, you see, had felt the pulse of the people. He was an old-pro community organizer, a street-savvy politician who had encouraged dissent and vocal protest.

But then President Obama appointed lobbyists. For months he forgot all about the White House logs and websites. His cabinet nominees had strange habits, such as not paying their taxes despite advocating higher rates for everyone else. Obama’s face was everywhere; he held more press conferences in eight months than did Bush in eight years. Questions and questioners were on occasion planted or staged.

The community organizing and protests of others now became regrettable, even unpatriotic. Criticism of the establishment was the work of brownshirts, mobs, Nazis, and the selfish, who had no moral or religious concern about the health of others and were envious of the success of their president. Insurance companies wanted even more astronomical profits. Doctors were greedy and took out tonsils needlessly for profit. Surgeons rushed to lop off diabetics’ limbs for princely sums of $50,000 and more.

The new town-hallers and tea-partiers who went to meetings and press conferences and protested their government were not Chicago-style hoi polloi, but counterrevolutionaries or insurance toadies who feared real reformers. The dissidents were, of course, also racists. These inauthentic Astroturfers simply could not tolerate a black president and so, like the doomed dinosaurs, they mindlessly bellowed out at the new landscape that they could not live within.

Once upon a time the people deluded themselves into thinking a suave extremist was to be their nuts-and-bolts centrist. Now they don’t know whether to be mad at him or themselves — or both.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmViYjc2OGM5ZGU0OTczM2NjMTNjNzcxYjc2NWZiN2I=

Win At The Credit Scoring Game

2009-08-28T09:11:00.004-05:00

Win at the Credit Scoring Game
by Carla Fried
Thursday, August 27, 2009
CNNMoney.com

To get the best deal on a loan, you need some new strategies to bump up your score - and keep it there.

Borrowing money today requires impressing an increasingly hard-to-please crowd. With creditors of all kinds more cautious than ever, you need an A+ application to land the best terms -- and that means an A+ credit score, the number lenders use to judge your risk of default.

The most commonly used credit scoring system, called FICO, rates people from a very risky 300 to a pristine 850. And right now we're in the middle of a credit score crunch: "You need a 750 or better today to have the same treatment you got with a 700 two years ago," says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at Credit.com.

John D'Onofrio, CEO of Autoloandaily.com, seconds that: "Two years ago a 680 was enough to get a great car loan rate. Today it's often the minimum to qualify at all."

Think you're still in the clear? Don't be so sure. Lenders have been making changes that could cause your score to slip from excellent to average. Improve and protect your number with these strategies:

Learn Your Score. You have three FICO scores, based on your credit reports at the three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. The numbers tend to be in the same ballpark, so pony up $16 to get one representative score at myfico.com. You can get an estimate free at Creditkarma.com. But the FICO score gives you a better sense of what lenders see.

Scout for Mistakes. Your scores are only as good as the information they're based on. And a third of people who've pulled their reports have found errors, according to a Zogby poll. That's good reason to read your report.

When you buy your FICO score, you'll get a copy of the report it was based on. Get gratis histories from the other bureaus via annualcreditreport.com (you're entitled to one free from each bureau every 12 months).

Spot an error? Request a correction, following the instructions on the bureau's website. Let's say the size of a credit line was misstated or an account was mistakenly marked delinquent. Getting the error fixed could raise your score as much as 200 points, says Ulzheimer, who has also worked for Equifax and FICO.

Never, Ever Be Late. As you'll see in the pie chart on the right, the biggest chunk of your credit score comes from your payment history. Just one late payment can shave 100 points off a 750-plus credit score, says Ulzheimer. Lenders can't tattle on you to the bureaus until you're 30 days past due, adds credit expert Gerri Detweiler. But don't risk it. For all your bills, enter recurring due-date reminders on your computer calendar.

Missed a payment? Get back on track within the next 30 days, and you should "get back the lion's share" of points lost, Ulzheimer says. More than 90 days late? The damage can stick for years. If it was a one-off lapse, call your issuer and plea for a good-will adjustment to your credit report. (It's a long shot.)

Remember the Magic 20%. The second-biggest factor in your score is how much you owe vs. how much credit has been extended to you. The part of this that's easiest to finesse is your credit card utilization rate, or your total card balances compared with your total credit limits, as well as each card's balance relative to its limit.

Example: If you've charged $5,000 on cards and have $50,000 in credit, your rate is 10%. For the best score today, 10% is ideal, but you can probably creep up to 20% and keep a high rating.

Unfortunately, with banks lowering credit limits and canceling unused cards, it's harder to maintain such a low percentage. In the previous example, if your available credit is cut to $20,000, your rate shoots to 25%. That could sink your score by as much as 50 points, says Ulzheimer. The lesson: Know your limits, watch for changes, and stay under 20% on each card and in total (0% if you'll be applying for a loan soon).

Already above 20%? Paying down debt is the obvious way to lower your utilization rate, but another strategy is to apply for an additional credit card to increase your overall credit limit. That may cause you to lose a few points in the short term -- so don't do it if you're about to apply for a mortgage -- but it should pay off in the long run.

Keep Oldest Cards in Play. As noted, credit issuers these days are eagerly canceling cards that are not in use. Besides reducing your limit and increasing your utilization ratio, having an account closed can hurt you in another way, especially if it's among your older ones.

See, 15% of your score rides on the length of your credit history. The longer you ably manage revolving debt, the better you look. So don't cancel your oldest cards. And don't let them get canceled on you: Move a recurring charge to each so they stay active.

Already ditched or been ditched? A new card (see previous) can help with your utilization rate, but there's little you can do to help the "history" component of your score, except to keep other old accounts in use.

Accept Fate on the Rest. There are other factors involved in your score, but they're not so easy to manipulate. For example, 10% is based on how well you manage a mix of credit types, such as mortgages, car loans, and credit cards. But you don't want to go out and, say, finance a car just for a score boost; besides, you can easily get 750-plus with just a few well-tended credit cards.

Along the same lines, 10% is based on "new credit," but the effects of a new application can be positive or negative, depending on your history.

In other words, if you want to be among the crème de la credit crème, accept what you can't change, and focus on what you can.

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

2009-08-26T08:14:00.001-05:00

Sunday, Aug. 09, 2009
Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
By John Cloud

As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I'll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I'll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is "body wedge" class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week.

I have exercised like this — obsessively, a bit grimly — for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? Except for a two-year period at the end of an unhappy relationship — a period when I self-medicated with lots of Italian desserts — I have never been overweight. One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn't all the exercise wiping it out?

(Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z.")

It's a question many of us could ask. More than 45 million Americans now belong to a health club, up from 23 million in 1993. We spend some $19 billion a year on gym memberships. Of course, some people join and never go. Still, as one major study — the Minnesota Heart Survey — found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47% of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%.

And yet obesity figures have risen dramatically in the same period: a third of Americans are obese, and another third count as overweight by the Federal Government's definition. Yes, it's entirely possible that those of us who regularly go to the gym would weigh even more if we exercised less. But like many other people, I get hungry after I exercise, so I often eat more on the days I work out than on the days I don't. Could exercise actually be keeping me from losing weight?

(Watch TIME's video "How to Lose Hundreds of Pounds.")

The conventional wisdom that exercise is essential for shedding pounds is actually fairly new. As recently as the 1960s, doctors routinely advised against rigorous exercise, particularly for older adults who could injure themselves. Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons: People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases — those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses. But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.

(Read "Losing Weight: Can Exercise Trump Genes?")

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn't as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

The basic problem is that while it's true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

The Compensation Problem Earlier this year, the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE — PLoS is the nonprofit Public Library of Science — published a remarkable study supervised by a colleague of Ravussin's, Dr. Timothy Church, who holds the rather grand title of chair in health wisdom at LSU. Church's team randomly assigned into four groups 464 overweight women who didn't regularly exercise. Women in three of the groups were asked to work out with a personal trainer for 72 min., 136 min., and 194 min. per week, respectively, for six months. Women in the fourth cluster, the control group, were told to maintain their usual physical-activity routines. All the women were asked not to change their dietary habits and to fill out monthly medical-symptom questionnaires.

See the most common hospital mishaps.

See how to prevent illness at any age.

The findings were surprising. On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised — sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months — did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did. (The control-group women may have lost weight because they were filling out those regular health forms, which may have prompted them to consume fewer doughnuts.) Some of the women in each of the four groups actually gained weight, some more than 10 lb. each.

What's going on here? Church calls it compensation, but you and I might know it as the lip-licking anticipation of perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries after a hard trip to the gym. Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home.

(Read "Run For Your Lives.")

The findings are important because the government and various medical organizations routinely prescribe more and more exercise for those who want to lose weight. In 2007 the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines stating that "to lose weight ... 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity may be necessary." That's 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week, a level that not only is unrealistic for those of us trying to keep or find a job but also could easily produce, on the basis of Church's data, ravenous compensatory eating.

It's true that after six months of working out, most of the exercisers in Church's study were able to trim their waistlines slightly — by about an inch. Even so, they lost no more overall body fat than the control group did. Why not?

Church, who is 41 and has lived in Baton Rouge for nearly three years, has a theory. "I see this anecdotally amongst, like, my wife's friends," he says. "They're like, 'Ah, I'm running an hour a day, and I'm not losing any weight.'" He asks them, "What are you doing after you run?" It turns out one group of friends was stopping at Starbucks for muffins afterward. Says Church: "I don't think most people would appreciate that, wow, you only burned 200 or 300 calories, which you're going to neutralize with just half that muffin."

(Read "Too Fat? Read Your E-mail.")

You might think half a muffin over an entire day wouldn't matter much, particularly if you exercise regularly. After all, doesn't exercise turn fat to muscle, and doesn't muscle process excess calories more efficiently than fat does?

Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.

Fundamentally, humans are not a species that evolved to dispose of many extra calories beyond what we need to live. Rats, among other species, have a far greater capacity to cope with excess calories than we do because they have more of a dark-colored tissue called brown fat. Brown fat helps produce a protein that switches off little cellular units called mitochondria, which are the cells' power plants: they help turn nutrients into energy. When they're switched off, animals don't get an energy boost. Instead, the animals literally get warmer. And as their temperature rises, calories burn effortlessly.

(See TIME's health and medicine covers.)

Because rodents have a lot of brown fat, it's very difficult to make them obese, even when you force-feed them in labs. But humans — we're pathetic. We have so little brown fat that researchers didn't even report its existence in adults until earlier this year. That's one reason humans can gain weight with just an extra half-muffin a day: we almost instantly store most of the calories we don't need in our regular ("white") fat cells.

All this helps explain why our herculean exercise over the past 30 years — all the personal trainers, StairMasters and VersaClimbers; all the Pilates classes and yoga retreats and fat camps — hasn't made us thinner. After we exercise, we often crave sugary calories like those in muffins or in "sports" drinks like Gatorade. A standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories. If you're hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it's easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash. From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.

See pictures of what makes you eat more food.

Watch a video about fitness gadgets.

Self-Control Is like a Muscle Many people assume that weight is mostly a matter of willpower — that we can learn both to exercise and to avoid muffins and Gatorade. A few of us can, but evolution did not build us to do this for very long. In 2000 the journal Psychological Bulletin published a paper by psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister in which they observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza.

Some of us can will ourselves to overcome our basic psychology, but most of us won't be very successful. "The most powerful determinant of your dietary intake is your energy expenditure," says Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. "If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more." Gortmaker, who has studied childhood obesity, is even suspicious of the playgrounds at fast-food restaurants. "Why would they build those?" he asks. "I know it sounds kind of like conspiracy theory, but you have to think, if a kid plays five minutes and burns 50 calories, he might then go inside and consume 500 calories or even 1,000."

(Read "Why Kids' Exercise Matters Less Than We Think.")

Last year the International Journal of Obesity published a paper by Gortmaker and Kendrin Sonneville of Children's Hospital Boston noting that "there is a widespread assumption that increasing activity will result in a net reduction in any energy gap" — energy gap being the term scientists use for the difference between the number of calories you use and the number you consume. But Gortmaker and Sonneville found in their 18-month study of 538 students that when kids start to exercise, they end up eating more — not just a little more, but an average of 100 calories more than they had just burned.

If evolution didn't program us to lose weight through exercise, what did it program us to do? Doesn't exercise do anything?

Sure. It does plenty. In addition to enhancing heart health and helping prevent disease, exercise improves your mental health and cognitive ability. A study published in June in the journal Neurology found that older people who exercise at least once a week are 30% more likely to maintain cognitive function than those who exercise less. Another study, released by the University of Alberta a few weeks ago, found that people with chronic back pain who exercise four days a week have 36% less disability than those who exercise only two or three days a week.

But there's some confusion about whether it is exercise — sweaty, exhausting, hunger-producing bursts of activity done exclusively to benefit our health — that leads to all these benefits or something far simpler: regularly moving during our waking hours. We all need to move more — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says our leisure-time physical activity (including things like golfing, gardening and walking) has decreased since the late 1980s, right around the time the gym boom really exploded. But do we need to stress our bodies at the gym?

Look at kids. In May a team of researchers at Peninsula Medical School in the U.K. traveled to Amsterdam to present some surprising findings to the European Congress on Obesity. The Peninsula scientists had studied 206 kids, ages 7 to 11, at three schools in and around Plymouth, a city of 250,000 on the southern coast of England. Kids at the first school, an expensive private academy, got an average of 9.2 hours per week of scheduled, usually rigorous physical education. Kids at the two other schools — one in a village near Plymouth and the other an urban school — got just 2.4 hours and 1.7 hours of PE per week, respectively.

To understand just how much physical activity the kids were getting, the Peninsula team had them wear ActiGraphs, light but sophisticated devices that measure not only the amount of physical movement the body engages in but also its intensity. During four one-week periods over consecutive school terms, the kids wore the ActiGraphs nearly every waking moment.

And no matter how much PE they got during school hours, when you look at the whole day, the kids from the three schools moved the same amount, at about the same intensity. The kids at the fancy private school underwent significantly more physical activity before 3 p.m., but overall they didn't move more. "Once they get home, if they are very active in school, they are probably staying still a bit more because they've already expended so much energy," says Alissa Frémeaux, a biostatistician who helped conduct the study. "The others are more likely to grab a bike and run around after school."

Another British study, this one from the University of Exeter, found that kids who regularly move in short bursts — running to catch a ball, racing up and down stairs to collect toys — are just as healthy as kids who participate in sports that require vigorous, sustained exercise.

See nine kid foods to avoid.

Read "Our Super-Sized Kids."

Could pushing people to exercise more actually be contributing to our obesity problem? In some respects, yes. Because exercise depletes not just the body's muscles but the brain's self-control "muscle" as well, many of us will feel greater entitlement to eat a bag of chips during that lazy time after we get back from the gym. This explains why exercise could make you heavier — or at least why even my wretched four hours of exercise a week aren't eliminating all my fat. It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito.

Closing the Energy Gap The problem ultimately is about not exercise itself but the way we've come to define it. Many obesity researchers now believe that very frequent, low-level physical activity — the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented — may actually work better for us than the occasional bouts of exercise you get as a gym rat. "You cannot sit still all day long and then have 30 minutes of exercise without producing stress on the muscles," says Hans-Rudolf Berthoud, a neurobiologist at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center who has studied nutrition for 20 years. "The muscles will ache, and you may not want to move after. But to burn calories, the muscle movements don't have to be extreme. It would be better to distribute the movements throughout the day."
For his part, Berthoud rises at 5 a.m. to walk around his neighborhood several times. He also takes the stairs when possible. "Even if people can get out of their offices, out from in front of their computers, they go someplace like the mall and then take the elevator," he says. "This is the real problem, not that we don't go to the gym enough." (Read "Is There a Laziness Gene?")

I was skeptical when Berthoud said this. Don't you need to raise your heart rate and sweat in order to strengthen your cardiovascular system? Don't you need to push your muscles to the max in order to build them?

Actually, it's not clear that vigorous exercise like running carries more benefits than a moderately strenuous activity like walking while carrying groceries. You regularly hear about the benefits of exercise in news stories, but if you read the academic papers on which these stories are based, you frequently see that the research subjects who were studied didn't clobber themselves on the elliptical machine. A routine example: in June the Association for Psychological Science issued a news release saying that "physical exercise ... may indeed preserve or enhance various aspects of cognitive functioning." But in fact, those who had better cognitive function merely walked more and climbed more stairs. They didn't even walk faster; walking speed wasn't correlated with cognitive ability.

There's also growing evidence that when it comes to preventing certain diseases, losing weight may be more important than improving cardiovascular health. In June, Northwestern University researchers released the results of the longest observational study ever to investigate the relationship between aerobic fitness and the development of diabetes. The results? Being aerobically fit was far less important than having a normal body mass index in preventing the disease. And as we have seen, exercise often does little to help heavy people reach a normal weight. (Read "Physical Fitness — How Not to Get Sick.")

So why does the belief persist that exercise leads to weight loss, given all the scientific evidence to the contrary? Interestingly, until the 1970s, few obesity researchers promoted exercise as critical for weight reduction. As recently as 1992, when a stout Bill Clinton became famous for his jogging and McDonald's habits, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published an article that began, "Recently, the interest in the potential of adding exercise to the treatment of obesity has increased." The article went on to note that incorporating exercise training into obesity treatment had led to "inconsistent" results. "The increased energy expenditure obtained by training may be compensated by a decrease in non-training physical activities," the authors wrote.

Then how did the exercise-to-lose-weight mantra become so ingrained? Public-health officials have been reluctant to downplay exercise because those who are more physically active are, overall, healthier. Plus, it's hard even for experts to renounce the notion that exercise is essential for weight loss. For years, psychologist Kelly Brownell ran a lab at Yale that treated obese patients with the standard, drilled-into-your-head combination of more exercise and less food. "What we found was that the treatment of obesity was very frustrating," he says. Only about 5% of participants could keep the weight off, and although those 5% were more likely to exercise than those who got fat again, Brownell says if he were running the program today, "I would probably reorient toward food and away from exercise." In 2005, Brownell co-founded Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, which focuses on food marketing and public policy — not on encouraging more exercise.

Some research has found that the obese already "exercise" more than most of the rest of us. In May, Dr. Arn Eliasson of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center reported the results of a small study that found that overweight people actually expend significantly more calories every day than people of normal weight — 3,064 vs. 2,080. He isn't the first researcher to reach this conclusion. As science writer Gary Taubes noted in his 2007 book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, "The obese tend to expend more energy than lean people of comparable height, sex, and bone structure, which means their metabolism is typically burning off more calories rather than less."

In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward.

See the top 10 food trends of 2008.

See a special report on the science of appetite.

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

And They Didn't Even Ask For An Autograph...

2009-08-15T09:07:00.002-05:00

You're Bob Dylan? NJ police want to see some ID

Aug 14, 8:49 PM (ET)

By WAYNE PARRY

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.

The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.

The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name. According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:

"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.

"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.

"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.

"I'm on tour," the singer replied.

A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.

The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show.

The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.

The officers thanked him for his cooperation.

"He couldn't have been any nicer to them," Woolley added.

How did it feel? A Dylan publicist did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.

It's HOT!

2009-07-11T18:28:00.007-05:00

Binyamin Netanyahu's Bar Ilan Speech

2009-06-15T08:48:00.004-05:00

Full text of Binyamin Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech

Jun. 14, 2009
THE JERUSALEM POST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University:

Honored guests, citizens of Israel.

Peace has always been our people's most ardent desire. Our prophets gave the world the vision of peace, we greet one another with wishes of peace, and our prayers conclude with the word "peace."

We are gathered this evening in an institution named for two pioneers of peace, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and we share in their vision.

Two-and-a-half months ago, I took the oath of office as the prime minister of Israel. I pledged to establish a national unity government - and I did. I believed, and I still believe, that unity was essential for us now more than ever as we face three immense challenges - the Iranian threat, the economic crisis and the advancement of peace.

The Iranian threat looms large before us, as was further demonstrated yesterday. The greatest danger confronting Israel, the Middle East, the entire world and human race, is the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons. I discussed this issue with President [Barack] Obama during my recent visit to Washington, and I will raise it again in my meetings next week with European leaders. For years, I have been working tirelessly to forge an international alliance to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Confronting a global economic crisis, the government acted swiftly to stabilize Israel's economy. We passed a two-year budget in the government - and the Knesset will soon approve it.

And the third challenge, so exceedingly important, is the advancement of peace. I also spoke about this with President Obama, and I fully support the idea of a regional peace that he is leading.

I share the president's desire to bring about a new era of reconciliation in our region. To this end, I met with President [Hosni] Mubarak in Egypt and King Abdullah in Jordan to elicit the support of these leaders in expanding the circle of peace in our region.

I turn to all Arab leaders tonight and I say: Let us meet. Let us speak of peace and let us make peace. I am ready to meet with you at any time. I am willing to go to Damascus, to Riyadh, to Beirut, to any place - including Jerusalem.

I call on the Arab countries to cooperate with the Palestinians and with us to advance an economic peace. An economic peace is not a substitute for a political peace, but an important element to achieving it. Together, we can undertake projects to overcome the scarcities of our region, like water desalination, or to maximize its advantages, like developing solar energy, or laying gas and petroleum lines, and transportation links between Asia, Africa and Europe.

The economic success of the Gulf States has impressed us all, and it has impressed me. I call on the talented entrepreneurs of the Arab world to come and invest here and to assist the Palestinians - and us - in spurring the economy.

Together, we can develop industrial areas that will generate thousands of jobs and create tourist sites that will attract millions of visitors eager to walk in the footsteps of history - in Nazareth and in Bethlehem, around the walls of Jericho and the walls of Jerusalem, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and the baptismal site of the Jordan.

There is an enormous potential for archeological tourism, if we can only learn to cooperate and to develop it.

I turn to you, our Palestinian neighbors, led by the Palestinian Authority, and I say: Let's begin negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Israel is obligated by its international commitments and expects all parties to keep their commitments.

We want to live with you in peace, as good neighbors. We want our children and your children to never again experience war: that parents, brothers and sisters will never again know the agony of losing loved ones in battle; that our children will be able to dream of a better future and realize that dream; and that together we will invest our energies in plowshares and pruning hooks, not swords and spears.

I know the face of war. I have experienced battle. I lost close friends, I lost a brother. I have seen the pain of bereaved families. I do not want war. No one in Israel wants war.

If we join hands and work together for peace, there is no limit to the development and prosperity we can achieve for our two peoples - in the economy, agriculture, trade, tourism and education - most importantly, in providing our youth a better world in which to live, a life full of tranquility, creativity, opportunity and hope.

If the advantages of peace are so evident, we must ask ourselves why peace remains so remote, even as our hand remains outstretched to peace? Why has this conflict continued for more than 60 years?

In order to bring an end to the conflict, we must give an honest and forthright answer to the question: What is the root of the conflict?

In his speech to the first Zionist Conference in Basel, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, said about the Jewish national home, "This idea is so big that we must speak of it only in the simplest terms." Today, I will speak about the immense challenge of peace in the simplest words possible.

Even as we look toward the horizon, we must be firmly connected to reality, to the truth. And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.

In 1947, when the United Nations proposed the partition plan of a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the resolution. The Jewish community, by contrast, welcomed it by dancing and rejoicing.

The Arabs rejected any Jewish state, in any borders.

Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is confusing cause and consequence.

The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel's independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War, in an attempt to tighten a noose around the neck of the State of Israel.

All this occurred during the 50 years before a single Israeli soldier ever set foot in Judea and Samaria .

Fortunately, Egypt and Jordan left this circle of enmity. The signing of peace treaties has brought about an end to their claims against Israel, an end to the conflict. But to our regret, this is not the case with the Palestinians. The closer we get to an agreement with them, the further they retreat and raise demands that are inconsistent with a true desire to end the conflict.

Many good people have told us that withdrawal from territories is the key to peace with the Palestinians. Well, we withdrew. But the fact is that every withdrawal was met with massive waves of terror, by suicide bombers and thousands of missiles.

We tried to withdraw with an agreement and without an agreement. We tried a partial withdrawal and a full withdrawal. In 2000 and again last year, Israel proposed an almost total withdrawal in exchange for an end to the conflict, and twice our offers were rejected.

We evacuated every last inch of the Gaza strip, we uprooted dozens of settlements and evicted thousands of Israelis from their homes, and in response, we received a hail of missiles on our cities, towns and children.

The claim that territorial withdrawals will bring peace with the Palestinians, or at least advance peace, has up till now not stood the test of reality.

In addition to this, Hamas in the South, like Hizbullah in the North, repeatedly proclaims its commitment to "liberate" the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Beersheba, Acre and Haifa.

Territorial withdrawals have not lessened the hatred, and to our regret, Palestinian moderates are not yet ready to say the simple words: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way.

Achieving peace will require courage and candor from both sides, and not only from the Israeli side.

The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: "Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace." I am yearning for that moment, for when Palestinian leaders say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples, no matter how complex they may be.

Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

To vest this declaration with practical meaning, there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel's continued existence as the state of the Jewish people.

The Palestinian refugee problem must be solved, and it can be solved, as we ourselves proved in a similar situation. Tiny Israel successfully absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who left their homes and belongings in Arab countries.

Therefore, justice and logic demand that the Palestinian refugee problem be solved outside Israel's borders. On this point, there is a broad national consensus. I believe that with goodwill and international investment, this humanitarian problem can be permanently resolved.

So far I have spoken about the need for Palestinians to recognize our rights. In a moment, I will speak openly about our need to recognize their rights.

But let me first say that the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years. Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.

The right of the Jewish people to a state in the Land of Israel does not derive from the catastrophes that have plagued our people. True, for 2,000 years, the Jewish people suffered expulsions, pogroms, blood libels and massacres which culminated in a Holocaust - a suffering which has no parallel in human history.

There are those who say that if the Holocaust had not occurred, the state of Israel would never have been established. But I say that if the state of Israel had been established earlier, the Holocaust would not have occurred.

This tragic history of powerlessness explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.

But our right to build our sovereign state here, in the land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: This is the homeland of the Jewish people, this is where our identity was forged.

As Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed in Israel's Declaration of Independence: "The Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel, and it was here that its spiritual, religious and political character was shaped. Here they attained their sovereignty, and here they bequeathed to the world their national and cultural treasures, and the most eternal of books."

But we must also tell the truth in its entirety: within this homeland lives a large Palestinian community. We do not want to rule over them, we do not want to govern their lives, we do not want to impose either our flag or our culture on them.

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.

These two realities - our connection to the Land of Israel, and the Palestinian population living within it - have created deep divisions in Israeli society. But the truth is that we have much more that unites us than divides us.

I have come tonight to give expression to that unity, and to the principles of peace and security on which there is broad agreement within Israeli society. These are the principles that guide our policy.

This policy must take into account the international situation that has recently developed. We must recognize this reality and at the same time stand firmly on those principles essential for Israel.

I have already stressed the first principle - recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The second principle is demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel.

Without these two conditions, there is a real danger that an armed Palestinian state would emerge that would become another terrorist base against the Jewish state, such as the one in Gaza.

We don't want Kassam rockets on Petah Tikva, Grad rockets on Tel Aviv, or missiles on Ben-Gurion Airport. We want peace.

In order to achieve peace, we must ensure that Palestinians will not be able to import missiles into their territory, to field an army, to close their airspace to us, or to make pacts with the likes of Hizbullah and Iran. On this point as well, there is wide consensus within Israel.

It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarized.

On a matter so critical to the existence of Israel, we must first have our security needs addressed.

Therefore, today we ask our friends in the international community, led by the United States, for what is critical to the security of Israel: Clear commitments that in a future peace agreement, the territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarized - namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory; real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today. And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.

Without this, sooner or later, these territories will become another Hamastan. And that we cannot accept.

I told President Obama when I was in Washington that if we could agree on the substance, then the terminology would not pose a problem.

And here is the substance that I now state clearly: If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel's security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

The territorial question will be discussed as part of the final peace agreement. In the meantime, we have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements.

But there is a need to enable the residents to live normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like families elsewhere. The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace. Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.

Unity among us is essential and will help us achieve reconciliation with our neighbors. That reconciliation must already begin by altering existing realities. I believe that a strong Palestinian economy will strengthen peace.

If the Palestinians turn toward peace - in fighting terror, in strengthening governance and the rule of law, in educating their children for peace and in stopping incitement against Israel - we will do our part in making every effort to facilitate freedom of movement and access, and to enable them to develop their economy. All of this will help us advance a peace treaty between us.

Above all else, the Palestinians must decide between the path of peace and the path of Hamas. The Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas. Israel will not sit at the negotiating table with terrorists who seek their destruction.

Hamas will not even allow the Red Cross to visit our kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit, who has spent three years in captivity, cut off from his parents, his family and his people. We are committed to bringing him home, healthy and safe.

With a Palestinian leadership committed to peace, with the active participation of the Arab world, and the support of the United States and the international community, there is no reason why we cannot achieve a breakthrough to peace.

Our people have already proven that we can do the impossible. Over the past 61 years, while constantly defending our existence, we have performed wonders.

Our microchips are powering the world's computers. Our medicines are treating diseases once considered incurable. Our drip irrigation is bringing arid lands back to life across the globe. And Israeli scientists are expanding the boundaries of human knowledge.

If only our neighbors would respond to our call - peace, too, will be in our reach.

I call on the leaders of the Arab world and on the Palestinian leadership, let us continue together on the path of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. Let us realize the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who in Jerusalem 2,700 years ago said: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more." With God's help, we will know no more war. We will know peace.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371096849&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Happy Birthday, Bob!

2009-05-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Bob Dylan is 68 years old today.

We Are So Screwed (II)

2009-05-11T22:05:00.017-05:00

The news media and Congress toss around phrases about "a trillion-dollar budget deficit" as if that is comprehensible, let alone acceptable.

But I don’t think any of us can really grasp the concept of what a trillion dollars is.

Not you.

Not I.

Not anyone.

Just think about this:

Question: If you were to spend $1 per second, how long would it take you to spend $1,000?

Answer: Just under 17 minutes. $1,000 divided by 60 seconds/minute = 16.667 minutes.

So now ask:

Question: How long would it take you to spend $1,000,000 (i.e., 1,000 x $1,000) at $1 per second?

Answer: Less than 12 days. I.e., 16.667 minutes x 1,000 = 16,667 minutes divided by 60 minutes per hour divided by 24 hours per day = 11.57 days.

So now ask:

Question: How long would it take you to spend $1 Trillion at $1 per second?

Answer: Just under 317...centuries!!!

($1/second x 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day x 365.24* days/year x 100 years/century x 316.8895542 centuries = $1,000,000,000,304.71)

* There is no leap year in years that end in 00, so instead of 25 extra days every 100 years, there are only 24, or something like that.

And they say (with a straight face and a calm tone of voice) that we're looking at a budget deficit of $1.8 Trillion.

570 centuries!!

We ... Are ... So ... Screwed.

What comes to mind is Pete Seeger's anti-war song, Waist Deep In The Big Muddy.

Anyone want to rewrite the lyrics so as to apply them to our financial situation? I'll let you choose who "the big fool" is. Between the Legislative and the Executive Branches, I suspect you have a lot of choices!

Waist Deep In The Big Muddy
by Pete Seeger 1963, planned for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 but CBS objected to the blacklisted Seeger making obvious references to the"big fool" in the White House, finally sung by Seeger on the Comedy Hour in 1968 as the finale in a medley of anti-war songs.

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

Words and music by Pete Seeger (1967)
TRO (c) 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, NY

The Bob Dylan Show (2009)

2009-05-11T14:27:00.021-05:00

The Bob Dylan Show

Along with fellow troubadour Willie Nelson, this summer The Bob Dylan Show will also feature John Mellencamp, marking just the second time in the past 24 years that these three performers have shared the concert stage.

bobdylan.com is happy to offer pre-sale tickets for all ballpark shows to its visitors. At each venue, the gates will open 30 minutes early for holders of tickets purchased during the bobdylan.com pre-sale.

Visit this page for pre-sale passwords, which will be posted in the table below before each pre-sale begins. You do not need to be registered or logged-in to see the passwords.

All concert tickets are priced at $67.50 and most shows are general admission, allowing fans to grab a seat in the stands or find a place to watch from the field. Children 14 and under get in free with each adult ticket holder at ballpark shows.

Showtime is 5:30pm and gates open at 5:00. Gates will open at 4:30 for holders of bobdylan.com pre-sale tickets for ballpark shows.

Please check your local listings for on-sale dates and information. More shows will be announced.
Please visit this page regularly for updates.

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After making our reservations for our trip to Seattle August 6-10, I realized that I was going to be gone when Bob Dylan was playing in Grand Prairie, TX on Friday, August 7.

:(

But...since he'll be in Round Rock, TX, on Tuesday, August 4, which is less than 3 hours south of where I work, I can leave work at noon and drive to the concert!

So I got my ticket today! Hurray! (As long as it doesn't rain!)

(identifying/authenticating information blocked out in photo of ticket)

- - -

From John Mellencamp's site:

The Bob Dylan Show Summer 2009 Tour Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT IS THE TICKET PRICE?
The base ticket price is expected to be $67.50 for most shows, plus any required venue and ticket fees. Tickets for shows at venues other than ballparks may vary in price.

WILL THERE BE A PRESALE?
There will be a Mellencamp.com presale for most shows during the week tickets go on sale to the public. Watch the TOUR page for details. Some of these presale tickets may allow early access to the venue. This will allow those ticket holders first choice of their location to enjoy the concert. Because the shows are general admission, Club Cherry Bomb will NOT be doing our own private presale. There are no VIP ticket packages on this tour. Presale tickets for non-ballpark venues will most likely NOT include early access to the general admission areas.

WHEN WILL THE PRESALE START?
We have been advised that the presale will begin the Monday of the week tickets will go on sale to the public. However, at this time, we have not been provided exact times for the presale to start. Please refer to Mellencamp.com and Ticketmaster starting Sunday evening to see when the presale(s) will start.

IS THERE A CLUB CHERRY BOMB PRESALE?
No. Because John is not the headliner on the Bob Dylan Show tour we are unable to offer a Mellencamp Fan Club exclusive presale. Please use the general presale password and links we will post on the TOUR page of Mellencamp.com for early ticket access.

WHAT TIME DOES THE SHOW START?
Gates will open around 5 PM. Music should start around 5:30 PM. Holders of tickets from the presale will gain access at many venues at 4:30 PM.

WILL THERE BE MORE DATES?
There there will be more dates announced for the tour. The initial announcement will be augmented by more show announcements in the coming weeks. The tour will total about 30 dates once all are announced, and will run from early July through mid-August 2009.

IS EVERY SHOW AT A BALLPARK?
No, not every show on the tour will be at a ballpark. Select shows will be at other venue types.

WHAT IS THE PERFORMANCE ORDER?
The expected performance order will be any opening/additional acts playing first, then Willie Nelson & Family, followed by John Mellencamp and his band with Bob Dylan and his band closing the show.

ARE TICKETS GENERAL ADMISSION OR RESERVED SEATING?
Most shows will be general admission seating throughout the entire venue/ballpark. The stage will be located on the field and will point towards the seats, allowing fans their choice of sitting on the field or in the seats of the venue to enjoy the concert. Shows in Dayton, Syracuse, and Sevierville will have reserved seating. Other shows/venues may have assigned seating, check with the venue. Also check with local venue for what items are allowed to be carried in (blankets etc.).

IS JOHN PLAYING AT BOB DYLAN'S OTHER SUMMER SHOWS?
John is not performing on Bob Dylan's other Summer dates at Milwaukee Summerfest or the Rothbury Festival.

We Are So Screwed

2009-05-06T07:35:00.004-05:00

Without Preparation, Explanation or Response

Does anyone take serious words seriously anymore here in Washington?

News item No. 1 concerns the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22. She said deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world."

News item No. 2 is this headline on the front page of the May 4 edition of The Washington Post: "U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited."

News item No. 3 is a quote in Jackson Diehl's May 4 column in The Washington Post from a senior Obama administration official: "It's not good when your national security interests are dependent on a country over which you have almost no influence."

In a matter of two weeks, we have gone from witnessing the U.S. secretary of state testify to Congress that a nuclear Pakistan run by Islamist radicals would be a "mortal threat" to America to hearing the administration admit that we have limited options to avoid such a threat.

What are we to make of such a development? I and many others had previously warned of the dangers of a nuclear "Talibanistan" (which have been obvious and talked about for years). Experts I have talked to in the past week do not believe Clinton is overstating the case. Nor do I. She is very careful with her words — and they fit the danger.

If Pakistan's nuclear weapons were to get into the hands of Taliban or al-Qaida, even unlaunched, they would provide the weapons-grade fissile materiel necessary to create a nuclear holocaust, here in the United States or elsewhere.

How did it come to be that the government of the most powerful nation in the history of humanity (with a population of 300 million-plus and a gross domestic product of about $14 trillion, which is larger than the second-, third- and fourth-largest economies — Japan, Germany and China — combined) has confessed that its options are limited regarding a "mortal threat" to it?

And what are we going to do about it? I don't blame the Obama administration — not yet. It inherited our current national military strength. But it has been obvious for years that we are not prepared to deal with a world that refuses to behave as we either predict or prefer. And we need to start catching up with the growing contingent threats.

It was in understanding the inevitability of contingent or unexpected events to emerge that led Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the great 19th-century Prussian field marshal and army chief of staff, famously to observe, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." Thus, he believed that "war is a matter of expedients." As has been observed, "He was suspicious of rigid, inflexible, and totalizing grand strategies and theories," arguing instead for a strategy and preparations that provided for a series of plug-in points that could be shaped to meet the military challenges of the moment — as a war unfolded.

So, too, should we be prepared for world political events — or be prepared to pay the consequences.

That is why when, a year ago, I was writing my most recent book, "American Grit: What It Will Take To Survive and Win in the 21st Century," I argued that we must face the reality that, given the growing threats in a rapidly morphing world, we will need a bigger military than our current all-volunteer force: "The questions that any statesman or strategist has to confront are obvious: What if our armed forces are suddenly needed to take out Iran's nuclear program? What if Pakistan falls to the jihadists, and we need troops to secure that country's nuclear weapons? What if China invades Taiwan? What if North Korea, in a desperate gambit, launches an attack on South Korea? What if the vast resources of the North Pole spark a military rivalry between Russian, Canada, the United States, and other countries? What if the Saudi oil fields require protection? What if we have to secure our southern border from increasingly ambitious drug cartels or civil disturbances in Mexico?"

Well, in the mere year since I wrote those words, three of those seven contingencies (Iran, Pakistan and Mexico) have gone from speculation to the daily headlines. The blood is not yet on the ground regarding them, but prudent investors would start buying coffins. And yet we plan not at all.

Our troop strength is so limited that President Obama has to move troops out of Iraq — risking turning inherited near success into possible strategic failure — in order to slightly beef up Afghanistan. Now, while perhaps we may have some time, we should be putting on a crash program to increase troop and materiel strength. With the recession, we probably could induct more volunteers than seemed possible during prosperity. But that is only a half-measure. We eventually will need more Army and Marine combat troops than will volunteer (and increased Navy and Air Force sea and airlift and fighting capacity, which we could start building now).

It should be inadmissible for the U.S. government to identify a "mortal threat" without at least offering up a plan to defeat it. Where is the plan? Where is the public clamor for a plan?

Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. E-mail him at TonyBlankley@gmail.com. To find out more about Tony Blankley and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Radiant Barriers

2009-03-10T08:45:00.001-05:00

(Read the Comments, too)
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/031009dnmetradiant.3d76bd0.html

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

2009-02-28T16:45:00.005-06:00

I just finished watching this movie on Blu-Ray disc.

Wow!

The story is fun, it's kid-friendly (but with a few PG words) without being too childish for adults, and the visuals are spectacular. My only regret is that I didn't see this in the local all-digital-projection theater when it was released.

It is a visual knockout, with colors so bright and saturated and unreal and over-the-top that you'll just stare at the movie in giddy delight the whole time.

It Was Forty-Five Years Ago Today

2009-02-09T08:10:00.004-06:00

Yeah, Yeah, Yes
How the Beatles led a six-year-old boy to contemplate art and life.

By Mark Goldblatt

Forty-five years ago this week—February 9, 1964—the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was six years old and don’t remember much about it, but my mother never tired of telling the story of what happened that night in the Goldblatt household.

We owned one television, a black-and-white Motorola monster built into a battleship of walnut cabinetry that also housed a record player, a radio tuner, and stereo speakers. My five-year-old sister and I functioned as remote controls for my father, who, when he was home, would lie on the couch and exercise absolute dominion over programming. The arrangement was more onerous than it sounds; wherever we were in the house, whatever we were doing, if my dad wanted to change channels, one of us had to run into the living room and do it.

The payoff for our labors came on Sunday night at eight o’clock, when we’d gather around the TV—my mom and dad on the couch, my sister and me on the pine-green carpet at their feet—for Ed Sullivan. It was the only program we watched together, a coincidence of agendas: My dad liked the show enough to watch it straight through, my mom liked the idea of having the family together at the end of the weekend, and my sister and I liked staying up past our usual 7:30 bedtime. On a typical Sunday night, according to my mom, my sister lasted until 8:15; I’d start to doze off 15 minutes later. By 8:45, we’d both be conked out on the carpet, ready to be toted to the bedroom we shared as soon as Sullivan signed off at 9:00.

But February 9, 1964, was different. My mom said you could sense it from the start of the show. There was a buzz in the studio audience that came through the speakers and seemed to take hold of me and my sister. We were suddenly up on our haunches—as skittish, she said, in her Louisiana twang, as long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. She had just enough time to notice the difference before Sullivan introduced the Beatles, and the crowd broke into a torrent of screams . . . at which point, my sister and I rushed the TV. The two of us sat mesmerized, perhaps a foot from the screen, as Paul McCartney began to sing “All My Loving.” We did not move the entire hour, not even during the commercials. Afterwards, when my mother tried to tuck us into our beds, we kept kicking the covers loose. She got us settled down after half an hour, but around midnight, she was awakened by several loud thuds. She ran into our room and found us jumping up and down on our beds, literally bouncing off the walls, making nonsensical noises that sounded vaguely like Beatles songs.

It’s difficult for baby boomers to convey to their children, and now to their grandchildren, the otherness of the Beatles. There was, of course, the sheer size of the phenomenon. Beatlemania was a kind of collective derangement, an abrupt skewing of popular perception. By April, the group held down the top five positions on the Billboard magazine chart and had seven other songs in the top 100. That meant that if you turned on a radio in the spring of 1964, you heard a Beatles song. I remember thinking that the Motorola tuner was a Beatles music player; once I turned it on and heard Louis Armstrong singing “Hello Dolly,” and thought the thing was broken.

But Beatlemania went beyond radio. The girls in my first-grade class would sing Beatles songs as they lined up in the schoolyard, then break into spontaneous screams until the teachers shushed them. I remember a boy named Andrew crying in the back of the classroom because his mother made him cut his hair, which he’d wanted to grow out like the Beatles. My best friend, Eddy, who was a year older than I was, persuaded his parents to buy him a Beatles single—I’m almost sure it was “A Hard Day’s Night.” I remember going over to his house and staring at it. Not playing it; that was too risky. Just staring at it, the paper sleeve and record together . . . and then, holy of holies, the vinyl itself. Eddy set it down on the pillow of his bed, and the two of us stepped back and venerated it.

Even in 1964, though, no one could have predicted that by the end of that decade the Beatles would bear the same relationship to popular music that Shakespeare bore to the English drama of his time: clearly within it, yet curiously beyond it. Just as there is no explicable way to get from Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so too there is no way to get from Leiber and Stoller’s “Jailhouse Rock” or Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” to John Lennon’s “Revolution” or Paul McCartney’s “Helter Skelter.” Given the landscape of musical influences available to the Beatles, what’s the logical precedent for “Eleanor Rigby” or “I Am the Walrus” or “Golden Slumbers” or “Nowhere Man” or “Penny Lane” or “Across the Universe” or the entire Sgt. Pepper album? The question that jumps to mind with each of these recordings is: Where the hell did that come from?

For each generation’s most popular musicians, from Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Temptations to (I suppose) Eminem, Mariah Carey, and Beyoncé, there’s a traceable progression to their musical development, a discernible link with what came before. What set the Beatles apart was that they seemed to conjure their greatest work out of the ether—or maybe out of the breath of a muse.

Consider the first verse of “For No One”: “Your day breaks, your mind aches / You find that all her words of kindness linger on / When she no longer needs you.” The subject matter couldn’t be more familiar—in essence, breaking up is hard to do. But the mood is Thomas Hardy. The compactness is William Carlos Williams. The rhythms and internal rhymes are Emily Dickinson, with hints of Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins. There’s nothing remotely like it in popular music. Now consider that the words were written by McCartney, who was 23 at the time, who set out to write a pop song, not a work of literature, and who, by his own admission, never put as much effort into his lyrics as Lennon did.

When asked once whether he himself was a genius, Lennon replied, “Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I am one.” Whether Lennon was correct is debatable. He was no intellectual giant—“Imagine” is melodic and moving, especially given what we know of his fate, yet it’s as trite and grandiose as a mass-produced sympathy card. His inability to see through Yoko Ono’s bluff art is forgivable, perhaps, as the indulgence of a spouse, but not otherwise. On the other hand, Lennon did have flashes of exquisite clarity throughout his life, even towards the very end, as in the justly celebrated line from “Beautiful Boy”: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” He also had a largeness of sensibility that both reflected and shaped the times in which he lived. Does that amount to genius?

The question of genius becomes less debatable when asked collectively of the Beatles. If there is such a thing, they had it—in spades. Indeed, the strongest evidence of their collective genius is found in the unimpressive post-Beatles careers of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. Lennon, who had once appeared to some an amalgam of Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, Buddy Holly, and Howlin’ Wolf, devolved into Lenny Bruce with a guitar and a howling Oedipus complex. McCartney, who as a Beatle seemed to channel George Gershwin as often as Chuck Berry, became just another Brill Building–caliber singer-songwriter, a harder-edged Neil Diamond. Harrison, who had developed into a great songwriter through osmosis, released one magnificent triple-LP solo album, All Things Must Pass, consisting primarily of a backlog of Beatles-era material, and then a string of ever-more-unlistenable records before hooking up with a group of fellow has-beens, including Dylan and Roy Orbison, to form the intermittently palatable Traveling Wilburys. Starr, after the success of his solo album Ringo, went on to become a nostalgia act, even now peppering his stage performances and interviews with two-fingered peace signs straight out of 1970.

Clearly, in the case of the Beatles, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. But isn’t that a hopeful sign for the human condition? There’s potential in each of us, perhaps, for greatness—a potential that cannot be gauged or accounted for, a potential that cannot be tapped by social engineering, because the formula for its realization is mysterious. (What would a happy childhood, a structured adolescence, and a formal musical education have done to John Lennon?) Of course, the overwhelming majority of us will never be truly great at anything. But the potential for greatness, even if it’s rarely realized, is the first and final counterargument to the grim sterility of materialism. We’re more, the Beatles remind us, than the cells of our bodies, more than the atoms of our cells, more than our drives and appetites, more than our economic relation to the state and to one another.

Under just the right circumstances, we can transcend the deterministic logic of what we are and come to the truth of why we are. Being the Beatles was the why of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr’s lives. It was their raison d’être, their teleology, their lasting contribution.

And it was what had me bouncing off the walls 45 years ago this week.

Texas: Where Innocence Is No Excuse

2009-02-03T07:36:00.007-06:00

From http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6243255.html

Commentary: Verdict is still out on innocence as defense
By LISA FALKENBERG
Feb. 2, 2009, 11:31PM

Does innocence matter?

When I posed that question in a column last week on death row inmate Larry Swearingen's innocence claim in federal court, I was unaware of the state of Texas' long-held official answer.

The next day, attorney Gerry Birnberg sent me the link to the transcript of the 1992 oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Herrera v. Collins.

I was appalled by what I read.

The State of Texas argued before the nation's highest court that it was OK to execute an innocent person, as long as he got a fair trial.

The most chilling exchange came when a justice asked the assistant attorney general arguing for Texas, Margaret Griffey, whether the state would maintain that same position if video evidence conclusively proved the person didn't commit the crime. The justice wanted to know: Is there a violation of that person's constitutional rights if he were executed anyway because no court would hear the video evidence?

"No, Your Honor, there is not," Griffey replied.

The justices continued to probe, as if needing clarification of what they were hearing.

If everyone agrees that the evidence establishes innocence, another justice inquired, but the jury just made a mistake, "is there a constitutional right under the Eighth Amendment (which bars cruel and unusual punishment) not to be executed when you're innocent? That's the issue. And you're saying no, there's no such right."

"That is what I'm saying, Your Honor," said Griffey.

Several criminal defense attorneys told me this is still Texas' official stance. But I decided to ask Attorney General Greg Abbott's office.

AG spokesman Jerry Strickland provided an unexpected response. Texas, it seems, has changed its mind.

"No," he wrote in an e-mail. "It would not be permissible for the state to execute a person whom the state knew to be innocent." In a later e-mail, he said such an execution "would constitute a miscarriage of justice."

I asked what led to the change of position, and he wouldn't elaborate. But he pointed out that even under the old thinking, AG's attorneys had worked to clear inmates they felt were wrongfully convicted.

The new philosophy was news to the criminal defense bar.

"It's a breath of fresh air coming from the AG's office, a fabulous development," said James Rytting, who represents Swearingen. "To take the position that you can kill people who are innocent is morally repugnant to anyone's system of justice."

Rytting said the AG's new stance could help his client, who got a stay of execution from a federal appeals court last week based on newfound forensic evidence. The evidence suggests Swearingen was in jail on an unrelated charge in 1998 when the body of 19-year-old victim Melissa Trotter was dumped in the woods.

But several other criminal defense attorneys expressed skepticism that the AG's lawyers, who represent the state in late criminal appeals in federal court, will practice what their office is now preaching.

The AG's office, defense attorneys say, still throw up every roadblock at their disposal, such as procedural errors and strict adherence to deadlines, to derail even credible claims of innocence.

"It's a refreshing attitude," said attorney Patrick McCann, but, "until they start actually waiving appeal and confessing error ... they're just blowing smoke."

"It's a significant change in position," said attorney Dick Burr. "We in the capital defense bar hope they will likewise have a more open-minded approach to the facts showing innocence."

"They're charged to defend the state's convictions," said attorney Stan Schneider. "I don't see them changing. They're going to continue fighting cases."

Still more roadblocks

The question remained: was Strickland articulating a true shift in Texas' approach to innocence claims, that actual innocence actually matters, or just feeding a line to a newspaper columnist?

The proof, I guess, is in the pleadings.

As recently as last month, the AG's lawyers answered Swearingen's compelling claim of actual innocence with the same procedural roadblocks it's employed for years.

Among the reasons the AG's office argued that the 5th Circuit shouldn't consider the merits of Swearingen's claim: It was past deadline.

And, this late in the game, in federal court, being truly innocent isn't a good enough reason to ask not to be executed.

Go, Wen, Go!

2009-01-30T08:53:00.004-06:00

From http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_tams_0130.18507e59.html

TAMS student advances in contest

08:30 AM CST on Friday, January 30, 2009
By Britney Tabor / Staff Writer

(see my earlier post here)

ALSO ONLINE Scholarship awarded to Chyan

Intel Corp. this week chose Wen Chyan, a student at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at the University of North Texas, as one of 40 finalists nationwide for its Science Talent Search.

Wen Chyan Competing for the top prize — a $100,000 college scholarship — the second-year student is the lone finalist from Texas invited to Washington, D.C., in March to present a project he’s researched that may help hospital patients avoid bacterial infections resulting from treatment.

Annually, infections affect more than 2 million hospital patients and kill about 100,000, officials say. Chyan, 17, said he’s developed a polymer coating for medical devices that he believes could help prevent those infections.

The 40 national finalists hail from 17 states and 35 schools. Intel reports that within the last 67 years, seven Science Talent Search finalists have gone on to win prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, the National Medal of Science and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

In December, Chyan’s project earned him the grand prize and a $100,000 scholarship in the country’s premier high school research contest, the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology.

Obama Is MAD

2009-01-27T19:27:00.001-06:00

The Worst Video Ever

2009-01-25T08:35:00.012-06:00

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's I Pledge Video

You almost expect them to break into a chorus of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me":

The best comments on The Worst Video Ever: Hey, Hollywood Movie Stars, Obama Thinks You All SUCK (Warning: Many of the comments are vulgar.)

Send In The Geek Squad!

2009-01-22T10:26:00.002-06:00

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; A01

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.

There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost security clearance lists.

By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about President Obama's busy first day on the job, which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the public, and meetings with his economic and national security teams.

Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver. "The President has not yet issued any executive orders," it stated hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $100,000.

The site was updated for the first time last night, when information on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool reports or blog entries.

No one could quite explain the problem -- but they swore it would be fixed.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility -- partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.

"It is what it is," said a White House staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Nobody is being a blockade right now. It's just the system we need to go through."

The system has daunted past White House employees. David Almacy, who became President George W. Bush's Internet director in 2005, recalled having a week-long delay between his arrival at the White House and getting set up with a computer and a BlackBerry.

"The White House itself is an institution that transitions regardless of who the president is," he said. "The White House is not starting from scratch. Processes are already in place."

One White House official, who arrived breathless yesterday after being held up at the exterior gate, found he had no computer or telephone number. Recently called back from overseas duty, he ended up using his foreign cellphone.

Another White House official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife's phone.

Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.

But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.

And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.

Staff writers Jose Antonio Vargas and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

The Sign of the Cross (1932)

2009-01-08T18:34:00.002-06:00

This 1932 film by Cecil B. DeMille, which you've probably never heard of (let alone seen), may be one of the most entertaining Christian movies to come out of Hollywood, even though it includes some things that might raise some Christian eyebrows (e.g., barely-hidden nudity, gratuitous violence and gruesome scenes, etc.). From the synopsis at The Internet Movie Database:

After burning Rome, Emperor Nero decides to blame the Christians, and issues the edict that they are all to be caught and sent to the arena. Two old Christians are caught, and about to be hauled off, when Marcus, the highest military official in Rome, comes upon them. When he sees their stepdaughter Mercia, he instantly falls in love with her and frees them. Marcus pursues Mercia, which gets him into trouble with Emperor (for being easy on Christians) and with the Empress, who loves him and is jealous.

Look for a young John Carradine at 1:53:34 as one of the Christians being led into the arena to be devoured by lions.

It's been nicely restored on DVD by Universal Studios to its original length, including all the "sinful" and gruesome scenes that were cut by the Hays Code. It's available through Netflix.

The ABSOLUTE Worst Movie I've Seen This Year

2008-12-31T23:55:00.008-06:00

Earlier this month I wrote about The Worst Movie I've Seen This Year.

Well, just before this year ended, I watched an even worse movie, which now holds the title of The Worst Movie I've Seen This Year:

The Transporter, starring Jason Statham.

It was truly awful.

And to think that they've made not one, but TWO sequels, Transporter 2 and Transporter 3.

I'm sure that there have been even worse movies made, but of the movies I saw this year, The Transporter was a truly time-wasting way to spend 1-1/2 hours of the last evening of 2008.

Rock Band 2

2008-12-27T23:43:00.036-06:00

A week ago, Rock Band meant nothing more to me than the fact that our older granddaughter was getting it as a Christmas present from our son for her Nintendo Wii. I'd heard it was "fun," but that and a humor piece I'd read at Salon.com entitled "How Rock Band saved my marriage" was the extent of my knowledge.

I was in Wal-Mart on Wednesday night, Christmas Eve, shortly before they closed for the holiday, and saw that they were selling Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 (my platform; primarily for Blu-Ray movies, though, not games) for $109, a significant savings from their regular $189.99 price (apparently to price-match Toys "R" Us). I thought, "Well, why not? If I don't like what I see in my granddaughter's game after she opens it, I can always return it unopened." I had my son check Amazon.com for user reviews, and it seemed that Rock Band 2 was rated better than Guitar Hero World Tour, so even though I could have bought both and returned one, I went with Rock Band 2. A later at-home search on the Internet seemed to confirm that Rock Band 2 was the better choice for us - plus, if I liked it, it would be the same game our grandkids were getting, so they could play it at their house and ours with no relearning needed.

Well.... Curiosity or anticipation got the better of us that night (that, plus the glowing reviews I'd read), and we opened it up, assembled the guitar and drum set (a very minor procedure), plugged in their wireless dongles, inserted the disc, started up the game, and...

Wow!

We had a blast that night playing... and playing... and playing the game. In fact, after finding out that the Wii version of Rock Band 2 had just been released on December 18, we convinced our granddaughter the next day to hold off on opening her game until I could find and exchange it for Rock Band 2 (which was said by everyone to be an improvement, both in minor and major ways, from Rock Band). After a bit of a hassle, I was able to accomplish that mission on Friday, December 26.

The kids and family were at the house all day on Christmas, and the hit of the day was Rock Band 2. Our youngest granddaughter, age 5, was doing her part on drums and vocals, and surprisingly well for someone who had never played the game, nor seen it before. The grandkids were over again the next day, and... you guessed it, more Rock Band 2!

I can see why it's such a popular party game. Unlike a lot of video games, you are not simply absorbed in and by the game, but are also interacting and visiting with your band members as well as the others in the room, especially if you trade off instruments among yourselves. It's a great social activity.

It's of course mostly, if not entirely, rock 'n' roll, and the lyrics of some of the songs are on occasion not what I like hearing or saying, or having young kids hear or say, so there are some things that some parents might or should be concerned about. But I think those are very minor compared to the sheer fun of the game.

I'd read or heard that Rock Band 2 was one of the hottest-selling games for Christmas this year. Now I understand why.

Rock on, dude!

- - -

FYI, here are the "cheat codes" for Rock Band 2:

PS3 http://www.cheatcc.com/ps3/rockband2cheatscodes.html

Xbox 360 http://www.cheatcc.com/xbox360/rockband2cheatscodes.html

Nintendo Wii http://www.cheatcc.com/wii/rockband2cheatscodes.html

Also:

Rock Band Feature: Harmonix's Top Tips For Drummers

Equipping Your First Fake Plastic Rock Band

Five Accessories to Improve Your Rock Band Experience

Ugo Nation

2008-12-09T09:00:00.007-06:00

With all the talk about the U.S. Government taking over the automobile industry (or at least 2 of the Big 3, if not all 3), may I suggest that if this comes to pass, they ought to call the resulting car that rolls off the assembly line the Ugo: The "U" stands for the "United States," of course, and as for the rest of it - well, the name will quickly bring to mind what kind of car the government is likely to produce:

Way To Go, Wen!

2008-12-08T19:36:00.014-06:00

From http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_Chyan-Award_1208.424de143.html

TAMS student wins national award

11:50 AM CST on Monday, December 8, 2008
By Britney Tabor / Staff Writer

(Wen and his younger brother Yieu were students in the New Testament Greek classes I taught at Denton Bible Church several years ago.)

Wen Chyan, a second year student at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at the University of North Texas was named national champion and the recipient of a $100,000 scholarship Monday in the country's premier high school research contest.

Announced about 9 a.m. Central time Monday in New York City, Chyan was named individual winner at the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology.

The 17-year-old beat out five other high school students for the coveted title with his project "Versatile Antimicrobial Coatings from Plasma Deposited Hydrogels and Hydrogel Composites," work that could possibly help hospital patients avoid bacterial infections resulting from treatment.

In his project, Chyan developed a polymer coating for medical devices that could prevent infections caused by bacterial biofilms. Such infections affect more than 2 million hospital patients annually and kill about 100,000.

The polymer, which was created by Chyan, is adhesive and embedded with silver ions that can be used on medical devices such as catheters and breathing equipment, which require a tube to be inserted into a patient.

Broadcasted live via a press conference on the Siemens Web site, Chyan gave brief remarks shortly after the announcement in which he thanked his parents, Jin-Jian Chen and Oliver Chyan, and his mentor, the University of Texas at Arlington chemistry and biochemistry professor Richard Timmons for their support while creating such a project.

"I feel very honored to be [presented] with this Siemens award," he said.

Timmons said he was delighted with the news that Chyan earned top honors at the contest.

“It’s just a great feeling to know him,” he said of Chyan. “Sometimes teaching you get jaded with students who aren’t highly motivated, but when you come across a Wen Chyan, it makes the experience more important.”

Dr. Richard Sinclair, dean at TAMS was overwhelmed with surprise at Chyan’s accomplishment. He said Chyan is the first student from the school to go on and win the contest at the individual level. In 2002, student Charles Halford was named champion at the competition in the team category, he said.

Sinclair said having Chyan be named the 2008 Siemens champion shows what TAMS is about, the students they produce and the kind of research they conduct.

“We couldn’t be more proud of Wen,” he said. “All of us just can’t believe it. It’s just fabulous news.”

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com

-- UPDATED/REVISED STORY --

TAMS student wins an education

$100,000 scholarship awarded for Wen Chyan’s infection-fighting project

11:57 PM CST on Monday, December 8, 2008
By Britney Tabor / Staff Writer

A Denton student at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science won a $100,000 scholarship Monday for a chemistry research project that could prevent hospital-related bacterial infections.

Announced Monday at New York University, Wen Chyan, 17, was named the top individual finisher in the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, the country’s premier high school research contest.

Wen Chyan “[I’m] definitely very excited about the turn of events,” Chyan said shortly before boarding a plane back to Texas on Monday.

Chyan is a second-year student in TAMS at the University of North Texas. Students in the program complete their first two years of college while earning a high school diploma.

In brief remarks made shortly after the announcement, Chyan said he was honored to earn the award and was grateful to his parents and mentors who’ve contributed to his success.

Chyan beat out five other students in the individual category for the coveted title. For his project, he developed an adhesive polymer coating for medical devices that is imbedded with silver ions, which could prevent infections caused by bacterial biofilms. Such infections affect more than 2 million hospital patients annually and kill about 100,000.

The coating could be used on medical devices such as catheters and breathing equipment, which require a tube to be inserted into a patient.

Siemens competition judge W. Mark Saltzman, a chemical and biomedical engineering professor at Yale University, said in a statement that Chyan’s project was a creative idea that required “a proactive approach where cross-disciplinary initiatives” such as electrochemistry, materials science and biology were explored.

“With further testing, these findings have the potential to improve a wide range of medical devices from intravascular devices at hospitals or catheters used in insulin pumps,” he said.

Dr. Richard Sinclair, TAMS dean, was overwhelmed with surprise at Chyan’s accomplishment. He said Chyan is the first student from the school to advance and win the contest at the individual level. In 2002, TAMS had a student named champion at the competition in the team category, he said.

“We couldn’t be more proud of Wen,” he said. “All of us just can’t believe it. It’s just fabulous news.”

Among other privileges, Chyan also will ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in February with the winners of the Siemens team award, Sajith M. Wickramasekara and Andrew Y. Guo. The pair, both seniors at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, presented genetic research of chemotherapy.

Launched in 1998, the Siemens competition recognizes America’s top math and science students. This year, 1,893 students entered the contest with 1,205 projects. Eighteen students — 12 of whom competed on teams — advanced to the national finals after being named top finalists at one of six regional competitions.

“These remarkable students have achieved the most coveted and competitive high school science recognition,” Thomas McCausland, chairman of the Siemens Foundation, said in a statement. “There is no doubt that these scholars will change the world, starting right now, with their passion for math and science.”

BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is btabor@dentonrc.com.

ON THE WEB

To view the press conference naming Wen Chyan as the winner of the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, visit http://mapdigital.com/events/siemens/sc08.

The Worst Movie I've Seen This Year

2008-12-07T21:57:00.011-06:00

I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Blu-Ray disc (via Netflix) Friday night, December 5, 2008. I had skipped seeing it at the theater (even though my wife went) because of the less-than-enthusiastic reviews, and also because the trailer I had seen had horrible-looking green-screen effects (though the film looked better than my memory of the trailer).

I started feeling embarrassed for Spielberg, Lucas, Ford and Blanchett almost from the beginning. Labeouf was about as lifeless as a mannequin.

What a sorry way to end a series.

I don't know which was worse: the story, the dialogue, or the acting. The movie was a "perfect storm" of the worst of each of those elements all coming together and generating this turkey. Watching the featurette on Disc 1, “The Return of the Legend,” about how they came to make the film made me wonder if Spielberg and Lucas have just been extremely lucky that they've made not just one but several good films, because if Crystal Skull is an example of the way they think and what excites them, they are seriously messed up.

It was the Hudson Hawk of Indiana Jones films, except it makes Hudson Hawk look brilliant in comparison.

As far as I'm concerned, there are only three Indiana Jones movies. Crystal Skull is merely a parody - no, a travesty.

Multiple Guess Test

2008-11-28T12:04:00.004-06:00

http://celticharp.blogtownhall.com/2006/08/11/multiple_guess_test.thtml
Posted by celtic-dragon on Friday, August 11, 2006 10:20:09 PM

Multiple Guess Test

1. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed and the diplomatic personnel held hostage by:
A. The Sandmen from "Logans Run"
B. ABBA
C. Cheech and Chong
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

2. The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and passenger leon Klinghoffer murdered and thrown overboard by:
A. Sponge Bob Squarepants
B. Jaques Costeau
C. Flipper
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

3. The U.S Marine Corps barracks and French peacekeeper barracks in Beirut were blown up by:
A. Deranged Jodie Foster fans who read "The Catcher In The Rye"
B. Salman Rushdie
C. Truman Capote
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

4. Suicide Bombers, snipers and molotov cocktail throwing people in Israel and Palestine are usually:
A. Disgruntled postal employees
B. Disgruntled "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Fans
C. Disgruntled Kerry/Edwards campaign workers
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

5. U.S. Embassies in Africa were attacked by:
A. The guys from the movie "Zulu"
B. General Rommel and The Afrika Korps
C. The Mummy
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

6. A U.S. warship was attacked in Yemen and nearly sunk by:
A. The good ship Lollypop
B. The Pirates of the Caribbean
C. The Bermuda Triangle
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

7.Journalist Daniel Pearl was tortured and beheaded on T.V. by:
A. Captain Kangaroo
B. Mister Rogers
C. Big Bird
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

8. Women in Afghanistan were imprisoned, denied basic human rights and reduced to slavery by:
A. Ruyard Kipling
B. Ghandi
C. Mother Theresa
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

9. Christian and Animist Sudanese are being massacred, displaced and sold as sex slaves by:
A. Nelson Mandela
B. The rock band "U2"
C. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45

10. The World trade Center was initially attacked in 1993 and subsequently destroyed in 2001 by:
A. The Death Star
B. The Klingon Empire
C. Orcish armies from "The Lord Of The Rings"
D. Male Muslim extremists, mostly between the ages of 18 and 45.

Bob Dylan - No. 7 Greatest Singer Of All Time (Rolling Stone Magazine)

2008-11-18T09:27:00.008-06:00

Photo: Wilmer/Redferns/Retna
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/24161972/page/7

7 Bob Dylan
by Bono

Born May 24th, 1941
Key Tracks "Like a Rolling Stone," "Lay Lady Lay," "Visions of Johanna"
Influenced John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Conor Oberst

Bob Dylan did what very, very few singers ever do. He changed popular singing. And we have been living in a world shaped by Dylan's singing ever since. Almost no one sings like Elvis Presley anymore. Hundreds try to sing like Dylan. When Sam Cooke played Dylan for the young Bobby Womack, Womack said he didn't understand it. Cooke explained that from now on, it's not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It's going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.

To understand Bob Dylan's impact as a singer, you have to imagine a world without Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Lucinda Williams or any other vocalist with a cracked voice, dirt-bowl yelp or bluesy street howl. It is a vast list, but so were the influences on Dylan, from the Talmudic chanting of Allen Ginsberg in "Howl" to the deadpan Woody Guthrie and Lefty Frizzell's murmur. There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It's like a knotted fist, and it allows Dylan to sing the most melancholy tunes and not succumb to sentimentality. What's interesting is that later, as he gets older, the fist opens up, to a vulnerability. I have heard him sing versions of "Idiot Wind" where he was definitely the idiot.

I first heard Bob Dylan's voice in the dark, when I was 13 years old, on my friend's record player. It was his greatest-hits album, the first one. The voice was at once modern, in all the things it was railing against, and very ancient. It felt strangely familiar to an Irishman. We thought America was full of superheroes, but it was a much humbler people in these songs — farmers, people who have had great injustices done to them. The really unusual thing about Bob Dylan was that, for a moment in the Sixties, he felt like the future. He was the Voice of a Generation, raised against the generation that came before. Then he became the voice of all the generations, the voices in the ground — these ghosts from the Thirties and the Dust Bowl, the romance of Gershwin and the music hall. For me, the pictures of him in his polka-dot shirt, the Afro and pointy shoes — that was a brief flash of lightning. His voice is usually put to the service of more ancient characters.

Here are some of the adjectives I have found myself using to describe that voice: howling, seducing, raging, indignant, jeering, imploring, begging, hectoring, confessing, keening, wailing, soothing, conversational, crooning. It is a voice like smoke, from cigar to incense, where it's full of wonder and worship. There is a voice for every Dylan you can meet, and the reason I'm never bored of Bob Dylan is because there are so many of them, all centered on the idea of pilgrimage. People forget that Bob Dylan had to warm up for Dr. King before he made his great "I have a dream" speech — the preacher preceded by the pilgrim. Dylan has tried out so many personas in his singing because it is the way he inhabits his subject matter. His closet won't close for all the shoes of the characters that walk through his stories.

I love that album Shot of Love. There's no production. You're in a room hearing him sing. And I like a lot of the songs that he worked on with Daniel Lanois — "Series of Dreams," "Most of the Time," "Dignity." That is the period where he moves me most. The voice becomes the words. There is no performing, just life — as Yeats says, when the dancer becomes the dance.

Dylan did with singing what Brando did with acting. He busted through the artifice to get to the art. Both of them tore down the prissy rules laid down by the schoolmarms of their craft, broke through the fourth wall, got in the audience's face and said, "I dare you to think I'm kidding."

Scratch Out!

2008-11-16T08:31:00.009-06:00

I was in Wal-Mart yesterday, and on a whim/chance, I bought a product called "Scratch Out!" barcode 6-89076-62379-7 from viaMarket CP, LLC http://www.scratch-out.com/. I figured it's only $5.98, and if it doesn't work as promised, I can return it as "defective" and get a refund.

FAQs on how it works: http://www.scratch-out.com/so_faqs.php)

So I took it home and gave it the "acid test" (which was the reason I bought it):

My DVD of A Thief In The Night - a decently-acted kind of cheesy '70s Christian movie about "The Rapture" (part 1 of a 4-part/4-movie series) from Russ Doughten films of Des Moines, IA (formerly Mark IV Pictures) - http://www.rdfilms.com/ - had become unplayably scratched. I had tried every method I had of cleaning and "buffing" it from DVD/CD scratch remover/polisher to toothpaste. No luck. It would freeze up about 2/3 of the way through in both my old DVD player and my computer DVD drive. This was the only DVD I hadn't been able to repair to playability using these methods. (I had loaned it out, and when I got it back it was loose in the case and had bounced all around and back and forth and who knows what else it had been subjected to.)

Well ... Scratch Out! fixed it.

I tested it by FFWd'ing it in my PC DVD drive, with no problems. I then did the same thing in my recently-bought PS3 at 120x. No problems. Then I watched it in the PS3 and it played all the way through with no problems.

I'm impressed with "Scratch Out!" (It comes with a microfiber polishing cloth as well.)

(It also seems to have restored a hopelessly-scratched "Barney Sing-Along Fun!" DVD.)

PostSecrets

2008-11-15T10:44:00.031-06:00

PostSecret (November 2005)
My Secret (October 2006)
The Secret Lives of Men and Women (January 2007)
A Lifetime of Secrets (October 2007)

The instructions were simple, but the results were extraordinary.

"You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything -- as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative."
It all began with an idea Frank Warren had for a community art project. He began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places -- asking people to write down a secret they had never told anyone and mail it to him, anonymously.

The response was overwhelming. The secrets were both provocative and profound, and the cards themselves were works of art -- carefully and creatively constructed by hand. Addictively compelling, the cards reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions. Frank calls them "graphic haiku," beautiful, elegant, and small in structure but powerfully emotional.

As Frank began posting the cards on his website, PostSecret took on a life of its own, becoming much more than a simple art project. It has grown into a global phenomenon, exposing our individual aspirations, fantasies, and frailties -- our common humanity.

Every day dozens of postcards still make their way to Frank, with postmarks from around the world, touching on every aspect of human experience. This extraordinary collection brings together the most powerful, personal, and beautifully intimate secrets Frank Warren has received -- and brilliantly illuminates that human emotions can be unique and universal at the same time.

About the Author
Frank Warren is a small business owner who started PostSecret.com as a community art project. Since November 2004 Warren has received more than 150,000 anonymous postcards. The website won two Webby Awards in 2006 and this year was named Weblog of the Year at the Seventh Annual Weblog Awards. The PostSecret project also received a special award from the National Mental Health Association for raising awareness and funds for suicide prevention. Warren lives in Germantown, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.

I have all four of these books, and find them fascinating. Reading them is like therapy. It makes you realize that most of the people you see and work with and talk to every day are showing you only part of themselves. It also makes you realize that you are not alone with your fears, problems, and secrets, but that others have theirs, too - many of which are just as awful or guilt-inducing or traumatizing as your own, and likely worse.

You'll find yourself saying a prayer for some of these anonymous persons, too.

See examples of the postcards/secrets that are in the books by viewing the sample pages for the books at Amazon.com or by visiting these Websites (warning: some of the secrets deal with mature or adult subject matter, as is to be expected):

The PostSecret Website/Blog

The PostSecret Community

A Google Images search for "postsecret" yields lots of results and examples like these:

How And Why Did You Vote?

2008-11-05T09:41:00.016-06:00

I wonder if the election was also a referendum on old vs. young, as well as liberal vs. conservative religious beliefs? I'd like to see the age and religious demographics of voters, and if things changed from 2004 to 2008. I'm not too fond of most polls, because I often find the answer choices aren't right for me or are too vague or broad. Here's my attempt at one, though:

1. What was your age on November 4, 2008 (i.e., Election Day 2008):

2. How would you most accurately describe your political party affiliation or preference:
a. Democratic
b. Republican
c. Libertarian
d. Other
e. Undecided

3. If you voted in the 2004 Presidential election, how did you vote:
a. Democratic - John Kerry
b. Republican - George Bush
c. Libertarian
d. Other
e. I did not vote for a Presidential candidate

4. Who did you vote for President for this election:
a. Democratic - Barack Obama
b. Republican - John McCain
c. Libertarian
d. Other
e. I did not vote for a Presidential Candidate

5. What party did you mostly vote for Senator (if applicable) and Congressman this election:
a. Democratic
b. Republican
c. Libertarian
d. Other
e. Split between Democratic and Republican candidates
f. Split between Democratic and non-Republican candidates (e.g., Democratic and Libertarian)
g. Split between Republican and non-Democratic candidates (e.g., Republican and Libertarian)
h. I did not vote for the Senator and Congressman candidates

6. How would you describe your religious affiliation/identification:
a. Jewish
b. Christian - Protestant
c. Christian - Catholic
d. Christian - Orthodox
e. Christian - Other
f. Muslim
g. Hindu
h. Buddhist
i. Other religious/spiritual
j. Agnostic (no firm beliefs about God's nature or existence or non-existence)
k. Atheist (firm belief that there is no God)

7. How would you describe your religious beliefs and views:
a. Liberal religious views
b. Moderate religious views
c. Conservative religious views
d. Not Applicable (e.g., Agnostic or Atheist)

8. How much did the Abortion issue affect or influence your choice of whom you voted for President:
a. Very strongly
b. Moderately
c. Not much at all

9. How much did the Iraq War issue affect or influence your choice of whom you voted for President:
a. Very strongly
b. Moderately
c. Not much at all

10. How much did the Economy issue affect or influence your choice of whom you voted for President:
a. Very strongly
b. Moderately
c. Not much at all

11. How much did the Presidential candidate's race/ethnicity affect or influence your choice of whom you voted for President:
a. Very strongly
b. Moderately
c. Not much at all

12. Which of the above issues (questions 8. - 11.) have strongly affected or impacted you personally:
a. Abortion (e.g., you are actively involved in the abortion issue; you closely know someone affected by abortion; etc.)
b.The Iraq War (e.g., you or a family member or close friend have been personally impacted by the War)
c. The Economy (e.g., you or your family are being strongly affected by the economic situation)
d. Race/Ethnicity (e.g., you or your friends or family are affected by racial or ethnic issues)
e. None
Select any one, two, three or all four of a., b., c., and d., or select e. (None).

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-02T09:02:00.020-06:00

My wife and I on our 3,000th wedding anniversary
Someone was offended that a friend posted the above picture on their "Christian" blog, and in defense of my friend, I replied: Don’t you recognize us? We’re two of the four horses of the Apocalypse! If you look up the original Greek, you’ll see that the word translated as “pale” (as in, "behold, a pale horse" - Revelation 6:8) is χλωρος (chlôros), which means "green" (e.g., "chlorophyll" = "green leaf/blade"). That would be my wife. The first horse is a white horse (Revelation 6:2), and that would be me. We look like death because the four horses bring death and destruction.

And ... My wife’s black hair and my red/orange fiery hair represent the other two horses. See Revelation 6:4 (Greek = πυρρος (pyrros) = fiery-colored - e.g., "funeral pyre") and 6:5. We’re THOROUGHLY and TOTALLY Biblical, and in the best of Reformed/Wesleyan/Lutheran/Catholic/Orthodox theological tradition, too. :^D
Yeah, I was a bit snarky. Sorry.

100,000 Miles, No More Warranty

2008-10-27T08:12:00.004-05:00

This isn't our car, but one just like it
This morning our 2000 Hyundai Elantra lost its 10-year/100,000-mile warranty. As I was driving to work on the service road parallel to I-35E South just past the new Hwy 121 and coming to the Frankford Road 270-degree crossover, the odometer turned from 99999 to 100000.

I hope I don't need any major repair work anytime soon!

What Happens When We Die?

2008-09-24T08:41:00.003-05:00

Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008
What Happens When We Die?
By M.J. Stephey

A fellow at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain.

What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people's claims of "near-death" experience?

When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases —as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they're able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn't functioning.

How does this project relate to society's perception of death?

People commonly perceive death as being a moment — you're either dead or you're alive. And that's a social definition we have. But the clinical definition we use is when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working. When doctors shine a light into someone's pupil, it's to demonstrate that there is no reflex present. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that's the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn't work, then that means that the brain itself isn't working. At that point, I'll call a nurse into the room so I can certify that this patient is dead. Fifty years ago, people couldn't survive after that.

How is technology challenging the perception that death is a moment?

Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now — who knows if they'll ever make it to the market — that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine you fast-forward to 10 years down the line; and you've given a patient, whose heart has just stopped, this amazing drug; and actually what it does is, it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.

But what is happening to the individual at that time? What's really going on? Because there is a lack of blood flow, the cells go into a kind of a frenzy to keep themselves alive. And within about 5 min. or so they start to damage or change. After an hour or so the damage is so great that even if we restart the heart again and pump blood, the person can no longer be viable, because the cells have just been changed too much. And then the cells continue to change so that within a couple of days the body actually decomposes. So it's not a moment; it's a process that actually begins when the heart stops and culminates in the complete loss of the body, the decompositions of all the cells. However, ultimately what matters is, What's going on to a person's mind? What happens to the human mind and consciousness during death? Does that cease immediately as soon as the heart stops? Does it cease activity within the first 2 sec., the first 2 min.? Because we know that cells are continuously changing at that time. Does it stop after 10 min., after half an hour, after an hour? And at this point we don't know.

What was your first interview like with someone who had reported an out-of-body experience?

Eye-opening and very humbling. Because what you see is that, first of all, they are completely genuine people who are not looking for any kind of fame or attention. In many cases they haven't even told anybody else about it because they're afraid of what people will think of them. I have about 500 or so cases of people that I've interviewed since I first started out more than 10 years ago. It's the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present who said these patients had told them exactly what had happened, and they couldn't explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles —not just the patients' side but also the doctors' side — and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.

Why do you think there is such resistance to studies like yours?

Because we're pushing through the boundaries of science, working against assumptions and perceptions that have been fixed. A lot of people hold this idea that, well, when you die, you die; that's it. Death is a moment — you know you're either dead or alive. All these things are not scientifically valid, but they're social perceptions. If you look back at the end of the 19th century, physicists at that time had been working with Newtonian laws of motion, and they really felt they had all the answers to everything that was out there in the universe. When we look at the world around us, Newtonian physics is perfectly sufficient. It explains most things that we deal with. But then it was discovered that actually when you look at motion at really small levels — beyond the level of the atoms — Newton's laws no longer apply. A new physics was needed, hence, we eventually ended up with quantum physics. It caused a lot of controversy — even Einstein himself didn't believe in it.

Now, if you look at the mind, consciousness, and the brain, the assumption that the mind and brain are the same thing is fine for most circumstances, because in 99% of circumstances we can't separate the mind and brain; they work at the exactly the same time. But then there are certain extreme examples, like when the brain shuts down, that we see that this assumption may no longer seem to hold true. So a new science is needed in the same way that we had to have a new quantum physics. The CERN particle accelerator may take us back to our roots. It may take us back to the first moments after the Big Bang, the very beginning. With our study, for the first time, we have the technology and the means to be able to investigate this. To see what happens at the end for us. Does something continue?

From:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1842627,00.html

The Best Of This Election!

2008-09-16T09:58:00.012-05:00

The best photo of this election season:

The best cartoon of this election season:

The best video of this election season (the first one, in fact, IIRC):

The funniest thing to happen this election season:

Barack Obama's pick of Joe Biden for Vice-President. Comparing the Democrats' enthusiasm for Biden to the Republicans' enthusiasm for Palin is like comparing a rusted old Yugo

to a brand-new Corvette

I Saw Bob Dylan

2008-09-07T12:47:00.007-05:00

Friday, August 28, 7:30 p.m., Uptown Theater, Kansas City, Missouri.

Cameras were not allowed (though some people sneaked theirs in; at times it pays to have a slim pocket digital camera!), otherwise I'd post some pictures.

Here is a review: http://backtorockville.typepad.com/back_to_rockville/2008/08/review-bob-dyla.html and some comments by people who attended: http://www.bobdylan.com/#/tour/2008-08-28-uptown-theater

What Michael Phelps Eats

2008-08-13T08:35:00.003-05:00

PHELPS' PIG SECRET: HE'S BOY GORGE
By CLEMENTE LISI with Post Wire Services

August 13, 2008 --

Swimming sensation Michael Phelps has an Olympic recipe for success - and it involves eating a staggering 12,000 calories a day.

"Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do," Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. "Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can."

By comparison, the average man of the same age needs to ingest about 2,000 calories a day.

Phelps, 23, will swim 17 times over nine days of competition at the Beijing Games - meaning that he will need all the calories he can shovel in his mouth in order to keep his energy levels high.

Phelps' diet - which involves ingesting 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal - resembles that of a reckless overeater rather than an Olympian.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Phelps remains on course to at least equal Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won at the 1972 Munich Games.

At these Summer Games, a typical day for Phelps starts with a 5 a.m. wake-up call. Most of his races have taken place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET when in China - 12 hours ahead of East Coast time.

Beware The Windigo

2008-08-11T10:29:00.003-05:00

August 11, 2008
Horrifying coincidence in beheading
By ANDREW HANON

Nathan Carlson has barely slept since July 30.

"Ever since it happened, I haven't been able to get it out of my head," Carlson says haltingly. "I just don't know what to think of it, quite frankly."

The Edmonton ethno-historian is one of the world's leading experts on Windigo phenomenon, and the recent horrific beheading and alleged cannibalism on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg from Edmonton rocked him to his very core.

As the grisly details of Tim McLean's last moments on Earth came to light in the following days, Carlson sank deeper and deeper into a fog of horror and revulsion.

Vince Weiguang Li is accused of abruptly attacking McLean, who by all accounts he didn't even know -- while McLean slept on the bus.

Up until a few days before the killing, Li held a part- time job delivering newspapers in Edmonton. He was well thought-of by his boss and considered a nice guy, if a bit quiet and shy.

On July 20 -- just 10 days before the killing -- Li delivered copies of the Sun that contained an extensive interview with Carlson about his research into the Windigo, a terrifying creature in native mythology that has a ravenous appetite for human flesh. It could take possession of people and turn them into cannibalistic monsters.

The two-page feature talked about how, in the late 1800s and into the 20th century, Windigo "encounters" haunted communities across northern Alberta and resulted in dozens of gruesome deaths.

In one case, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner was hanged after admitting to killing and eating his wife, children, brother and mother in the woods northeast of Edmonton in the winter of 1878-79.

Prior to being charged with murder, he had suffered screaming fits and nightmares, which he attributed to being possessed by a Windigo.

In several other cases, people banded together and killed individuals they feared were possessed by a Windigo. Often, they would decapitate the corpse and bury the head separate from the body in order to keep it from rising from the dead.

Carlson documented several cases in northern Alberta communities where people believing they were "turning Windigo" would go into convulsions, make terrifying animal sounds and beg their captors to kill them before they started eating people.

In last month's bus case, Li allegedly butchered McLean's body, brandishing the victim's severed head at the men who trapped him on the bus until police could arrive.

He was later accused of eating McLean's flesh.

When he appeared in a Portage La Prairie courthouse on charges of second-degree murder, the only words Li reportedly uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

A lot of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean was killed, one of the most gruesome slayings in modern Canadian history.

Several media reports called McLean's killing unprecedented - an unspeakable, random attack the likes of which has never been seen in Canada.

But Carlson knows better.

"There are just too many parallels," he says.

"I can't say there's definite connection, but there are just too many coincidences.

"It's beyond eerie."

Astronaut Ed Mitchell On Alien Visitations

2008-07-25T06:50:00.004-05:00

Moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell Claims Alien Contact Cover-up

"There has been visitation"
July 24, 2008 12:01am

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ETs were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned "we would be been gone by now".

O Brave New World!

2008-07-17T17:45:00.000-05:00

The 3D Internet Will Change How We Live
By BENJAMIN DURANSKE
July 17, 2008

Last summer, several hundred thousand very real dollars disappeared into a Ponzi scheme in the popular virtual world, "Second Life." The owner of the "bank" behind the scheme fled, and hasn't been seen since last October. There were no investigations, lawsuits or arrests.

Second Life users had invested "Linden Dollars" in the scheme, hoping to make money. Linden Dollars are purchased with real cash, and can be converted to real money on an exchange run by Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life.

After the debacle, the angry mob surrounding the virtual bank's ATMs appeared to consist mainly of hookers, mafia enforcers, skateboard punks and theme-park mascots. Though these computer-generated "avatars" represented real people in front of computer screens, some of whom lost real money, you're forgiven for not caring. It was as bizarre as it was tragic.

The picture is changing though – faster than you think. Real-life rules are starting to be applied to virtual worlds. Second Life banned unlicensed "banks" earlier this year, after previously banning casinos and simulated child pornography. Users cheered.

Virtual worlds may look like toys for the geekiest of geeks, but they have quietly slipped into the mainstream. Second Life reports that over the last two months, 1.2 million accounts were logged in for over 65 million total hours.

Other virtual worlds, like the PG-13 rated "There," China's forthcoming "HiPiHi," youth-oriented "Barbie Girls" and teen-oriented "Habbo Hotel" attract millions more. Big technology players are involved too. Sony is developing a 3D environment for its popular PlayStation 3 called "Home," and Google recently launched its own world, "Lively."

Dozens of major brands and organizations, including MTV, Playboy, CBS, Cisco, Toyota, L'Oréal and the American Cancer Society have significant virtual-world presences. IBM has made a particularly strong commitment to virtual worlds, and regularly holds meetings on a sprawling, privately firewalled Second Life campus.

Washington is paying attention. Earlier this year Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, presided over a hearing on virtual worlds. The hearing was simulcast into Second Life, where Rep. Markey was represented by an avatar.

The financial marketplace, of course, hasn't missed this opportunity – $345 million was invested in 39 virtual world-related companies in the first half of 2008. Last year, Gartner Research predicted that 80% of all active Internet users will have a virtual-world presence by 2011.

Bandwidth and processing power are constantly growing, leading to several convergent trends. First, interfaces are moving closer to reality. Over the last 30 years, we have gone from punch cards to typed commands to drag-and-drop folders to Windows Vista's 3D panels. Second, hardware that makes 3D immersion possible – from motion-control devices like Nintendo's Wiimote to $90 Webcams that track face and body movements – is now reaching average consumers' homes.

Finally, we are becoming an increasingly networked society. Eighty-two percent of American homes now have Internet access, up 11% percent from 2006.

The allure of the 3D Internet is easy to see. What auto maker would be content to put 2D pictures of a new SUV on its Web site when it can offer buyers a virtual, first-person drive down a snowy mountain road? What sculptor will want to display 2D photographs of her work when she can invite collectors on a guided tour of her virtual sculpture garden?

No privately held virtual world is going to end up in sole possession of the 3D Internet, just as no early 2D "walled garden" network provider like Prodigy, Compuserve or AOL owns the 2D Web today. A number of industry groups are working on open 3D standards. As soon as one of these gains widespread acceptance, anyone will be able to build a virtual world that is connected to any other similarly coded virtual world – just like HTML now allows anyone to create a 2D Web page that is connected to any other 2D Web page.

If current trends hold, the Internet will evolve into a 3D space, and virtual worlds will become an integral part of human communication. Real life will never be the same.

Mr. Duranske, a writer and attorney, is the author of "Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds" (American Bar Association Publishing, 2008).

MGS4

2008-07-08T19:47:00.013-05:00

I was the third out of four foolish/lucky people who stayed at Wal-Mart all night long on June 11 (until 12:01 a.m. on June 12) and got/bought the limited-issuance 80GB Sony Playstation 3 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots bundle with the $100 Wal-Mart gift card (the real incentive).

I bought the PS3 primarily to play Blu-Ray discs, and also because our DVD player was, after 6 years, starting to have occasional problems reading some DVDs. The PS3 has the latest Blu-Ray Profile (2.0, a rarity among current Blu-Ray players), with regular firmware updates/enhancements, and it receives high marks for how well it upscales regular DVDs. Thanks to Netflix we've been able to enjoy Blu-Ray's visible superiority to standard DVDs.

I've been playing MGS4 off and on, and am somewhere about halfway through it, I think - or maybe I've just barely begun! I'm in South America; last night I killed the Laughing Octopus and rescued Naomi, and tonight I met up with Raiden, who killed a bunch of gecko mechanical robots for me. I'm basically running and blasting my way through the game in the direction of the target on each level/mission, without really experimenting with all the weapons and items or exploring all the trails and ways one could go. It's a very complex game, and potentially quite addictive. ;-)

John McClane For President

2008-07-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

I just watched Live Free or Die Hard (i.e., Die Hard IV). We have the wrong guy running for President. Instead of John McCain, we need John McClane.

Multitasking Madness

2008-06-13T08:21:00.008-05:00

On my walk to work from the bus stop a few weeks ago, as I passed the Starbucks at the Magnolia Hotel I saw a young lady walking her dog (a black Labrador, I think). She was holding the leash in one hand and a large cup of Starbucks coffee in the other while talking hands-free on her cell phone - not via a Bluetooth headset, but by adopting that frequently-observed hunched Ygor-like pose of holding it to her ear and cheek with her shoulder. And then, to top it all off, she reached into her purse and took out a cigarette, which she put in her mouth and proceeded to light.

And she and her dog were walking all this time.

I wish I'd had my camera.

I'm Not There

2008-05-09T21:22:00.012-05:00

Get the DVD!

If you don't know much about Bob Dylan and/or are unfamiliar with his music and life, refer to my earlier posts for some CDs and movies to listen to and watch before seeing I'm Not There.

The extras on Disc 2 do a great job of explaining the film, and Disc 1 (the film) has an audio commentary track as well. The review of the DVD at DVD Talk gets it right.

I also purchased the 2-CD soundtrack. Some argue that it's not a true "soundtrack," since Dylan does only one of the songs, whereas the movie used clips of Dylan for many of the songs that on the "soundtrack" are performed in full by others. That, to me, is a small quibble, and if you like the movie, I think you'll equally like the soundtrack CD.

- - -

I recently bought the (remastered) CDs of "Blonde On Blonde" and "Blood On The Tracks."

White Flash

2008-04-21T15:27:00.012-05:00

A Merciful White Flash
Tyler Wigg Stevenson
March 31, 2008

Before I became a Christian, I had the worst lunch breaks in the world. They went like this:

Every day I would take my bowl of rice and beans into the noonday sun and sit on the tailgate of my '87 Ranger, which commanded a billion-dollar view. Armed with the painfully earnest idealism of a new college graduate, I had scored a job at a nonprofit organization located in a house-cum-office just off the southern foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd sit there in the parking lot, humming Otis Redding, literally at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. As I ate, I'd take in the bridge, the Marin headlands, Alcatraz and the East Bay, and the stunning Mediterranean sweep of the San Francisco skyline.

And every day the scenery was swept clean, in my mind's horrified eye, by the merciless white flash of a nuclear airburst.

Dust and Ashes

I was then an irreligious religion major, raised in a secular home and employed straight out of college by Alan Cranston, a four-term warhorse of the U.S. Senate who dedicated his retirement to advancing the global abolition of nuclear weapons. The crash course in nuclear policy I received my first two weeks on the job was nothing short of traumatic. My imagination had become a bit zingy from eating only rice, beans, and lettuce, and sleeping every night under my desk. (It was the height of the dot-com boom; rentals, especially for impoverished, nonprofit employees like me, were impossible to find.)

As just one example of the things that kept me awake at night: We had in 1999, and inexplicably still have today, thousands of nuclear-tipped warheads on hair-trigger alert. This is a holdover from the Cold War, when policy wonks were afraid that a preemptive nuclear attack by the Reds would destroy our ability to strike back. So we, like the Soviets, developed launch-on-warning procedures to have thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles airborne in 15 minutes—i.e., before missiles from the other side would hit our silos. In the event of a suspected attack, we would fire back instantly, and in a half-hour, the urban centers of two continents would be burning ruins, with hundreds of millions dead.

There's not a lot of time for double-checking analysis in 15 minutes. On the multiple recorded occasions when American and Soviet early-warning radars confused a flock of arctic geese, a weather satellite, and the rising moon for a nuclear attack, it was only the sheer disbelief of each side's nuclear commanders that kept us all alive.

It's this sort of thing, along with the less apocalyptic but far more probable prospect of a terrorist bomb, that haunted me. It's this sort of thing that turns a spoonful of rice and beans to dust and ashes on the tongue.

Grim Details

Here's what was behind the white flash I saw each day from my perch on the dock of the bay:

A one-megaton nuclear explosion releases an unfathomable, unstoppable amount of energy. What happens in the time it takes you to read the next word—a millisecond— is that from that core explosion, a fireball as hot as the core of the sun envelops 19 square miles of one of the most densely populated cities in America. Instantly, more than 300,000 sons and daughters die—and maybe double that, given all the people who have commuted in to work.

In the next seconds, a blast wave roars outward from the explosion's center at the speed of sound, accompanied by radioactive heat that causes second-degree burns at a distance of 6 miles. Fifty percent of people within 2.5 to 4 miles of the explosion die then; 10 percent of those in the 4- to 6.5-mile ring. Given the circumstances, 10 percent somehow starts to sound pathetically, perversely hopeful, until you realize that's 10 percent of everyone in a ring covering more than 80 square miles, or the entire northern section of the San Francisco peninsula. The view from the heavens would look like the Devil's cigar had been stubbed out on the earth.

All in all, a minimum of 700,000 lucky souls die in the first moments, more than all the combatants killed on both sides of the American Civil War, the costliest in U.S. history. I say lucky, because nearly twice that number are desperately injured, but all the hospitals are destroyed—as are the ambulances, paramedics to drive them, and roads to drive them on. Hundreds of thousands more die from burns as firestorms spring up everywhere, and the firefighters are already dead. Many who survive being burned die of asphyxiation as all the oxygen is consumed. Radiation, a patient killer, will claim its share as well over the coming weeks and years: for decades, the death toll will be recorded in pencil, not ink. And the psychological and spiritual impact is unimaginable. We will never be over this. Never.

(The entire article can be read here.)

Tyler Wigg Stevenson is director of the Biblical Security Covenant..

More Bob Dylan

2008-04-11T10:45:00.055-05:00

I bought the DVD No Direction Home, and found it fascinating. I also bought the 2-disc Soundtrack CD ("The Bootleg Series Vol. 7":

Recounting their time together, Joan Baez said:

He came out and stayed with me in a beautiful house, in Carmel Valley. Bob liked to write there, and he would just stand, tapping away at that typewriter. He would always say, "What do you think of this?" And I wouldn't understand the thing at all, but I loved it. So I went, "Okay, I'm gonna figure this one out." So I read through it, and I gave back my interpretation of what I thought it was about. He said, "That's pretty f------ good." He would say, "See now, a bunch of years from now, all these people, all these a------- are gonna be writing about all the s--- I write. I don't know where the f--- it comes from. I don't know what the f--- it's about. (laughing) And they're gonna write what it's about."

Liam Clancy said this about seeing Bob Dylan at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival:

I was on top of this 12-foot station and I had a long lens. I was looking at Bob Dylan coming out on stage. He was Charlie Chaplin. He was Dylan Thomas. He talked like Woody Guthrie. He was constantly moving. In old Irish mythology they talk about the shape-changers. He changed voices. He changed images. It wasn't necessary for him to be a definitive person. He was a receiver. He was possessed. And he articulated what the rest of us wanted to say but couldn't say.

These two comments epitomize what I think the film tells and shows us about Bob Dylan - i.e., he was not only a force, but he was also driven by a force which even he didn't understand, and perhaps doesn't understand to this day, judging by what he says in the interview that cuts in and out during the film and holds the film together.

So, who/what is Bob Dylan? I'm not sure even he knows. The following, from a review of the movie I'm Not There, may contain the truth in the quote from Harry Weber:

Even with new information provided in the film, however, his personality remains not so much elusive as cantankerous, particularly in contrast with the expansiveness of his songs. That gap gives I'm Not There something of a hollow centre. The contradiction is neatly summed up in Robert Shelton's 1986 biography of Dylan, also called No Direction Home. Shelton quotes Harry Weber, who knew Dylan as a university freshman in Minnesota, saying: "Dylan is a genius, that's all. He is not more complex than most people; he is simpler."

Here is an interesting story about what is perhaps the most influential rock song of all time, Poetic Accident: Recording 'Like a Rolling Stone':

No matter how timeless "Like a Rolling Stone" might turn out to be, what happened over the two days of recording sessions makes it clear that had circumstances been even slightly different -- different people present, a different mood in the studio, different weather in the streets outside, a different headline in the morning paper -- the song might never have entered time at all, or interrupted it.

I also bought DYLAN at Best Buy (the digipak 3-CD set, not the too-expensive Deluxe mini-boxed edition with the same 3 CDs, plus a bigger booklet and some postcards):

And after listening to the above, as well as Modern Times (also bought - the music videos on the extra DVD disc are interesting - he sure has aged, and not too well, it appears),

I think I prefer the younger Dylan. His voice is kind of wretched these days - I suspect he continued to smoke (and maybe still does), because his age alone, IMO, can't account for how bad he now sounds. It's really a shame if smoking was the cause, because it's something that didn't need to happen, as I'm sure George Harrison would have told him. So I bought The Bootleg Series Vol. 4, 5, and 6 - i.e., live concerts:

Late To The Party

2008-03-21T11:50:00.010-05:00

Last week our local PBS station (KERA-TV, Dallas, TX) had a 90-minute program of selections from The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965, and offered the DVD and Dylan compilation CDs to those who would pledge various amounts of money to support the station.

Despite having grown up as a teenager during the 1960s, this was the first time I paid any real attention to Bob Dylan's music. Oh, I remember "Lay, Lady, Lay" being a hit, and his performance in The Concert for Bangladesh, and all the other songs he's known for, but I guess I just considered him to be more of a folk singer than a rock musician, so I ignored him. I didn't even listen to him when he entered his Christian phase (Slow Train Coming, Saved, etc.).

Well, it didn't take long for the scenes and songs from The Other Side Of The Mirror to get my attention. What an amazing songwriter!

So I bought the DVD yesterday ($19.99 retail - much cheaper than the KERA "donation" price) and began getting acquainted with someone who has unfortunately been pretty much of a stranger to me for 45 years.

The (Awful) Truth About Trailers

2008-03-09T21:34:00.004-05:00

I'm referring to movie trailers, not the kind that people live in (though I suspect that those, too, have their own awful truths).

After watching a trailer for a new movie the other day, I asked on an audio-video forum:

Why are trailers all the same these days - i.e., a staccato burst of very brief scenes with dramatic music/drums/shock or boom sounds that fade to black, to be followed by another scene like it, and then another, and then another, building to a crescendo before they announce the title and opening date?

Trailers like that are usually sufficient to turn me off a movie completely.

I received a quite revealing response:

It's because the trailers are cut by the same few people. It's literally all they do. I used to work with a guy who got a job doing exactly that. He soon got bored and went on to other things exactly because the studios all pretty much want the same thing in a trailer:

- Slow dramatic shots in the beginning that include wide shots of the environment and a few closeups of the cast.

- Fade out and in to some semi-quick shots (roughly 2-3 seconds each) as "trailer voice" sets up premise. Slow ominous drums punctuate with a slowly swelling orchestra. All shots must have movement to them until the point where you get the "sound bite" from a few characters saying something dramatic, like: "They won't take our freedom!"

- Fade out and fade in to shotgun succession of shots with rapid drums - any shots more than a half a second marked with a white flash between them.

- Grand pause.....

- Fade in and out of a few slow, dramatic shots of good and bad guys - heavy drum punctuates each one. Weapons must be displayed by all characters, unless the shot shows the helpless woman or an innocent child.

- Punctuate with final "Boo!" shot of an attack by the bad guy or wild animal.

- Title slate

To which I further responded:

No wonder so few movie trailers impress or entice me these days. What a bunch of cookie-cutter-brained idiots (not the trailer makers, the studio guys who say: "Make us this kind of trailer!"). These must be the same no-attention-span fools who make TV commercials and the news flashes for Fox News and CNN and MSNBC. Even movies with real character development come off appearing as "all action/no plot" in these trailers.

I've about had it with this trend towards trailers that make a movie look like it's "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," as well as with the incessant drumbeat of noise that assaults us everywhere we go. You can't go grocery (or any other) shopping without suffering from the Sound of Muzak (or worse), and browsing in a bookstore is no longer a quiet experience; you have to put up with music there, too. As for restaurants - Good Golly, Miss Molly!, you have to shout sometimes to be heard over the noise and flashing screens of sports channels and other garbage blaring from the ubiquitous LCD TVs.

This current generation will be brain-dead and deaf in 20 years.

[/grumpy old man rant]

Defending Israel And The Jewish People

2008-03-09T08:49:00.001-05:00

(I have copied the entire article, corrected several typos and URLS, and made most of the URLs working links. For those wanting to study the Israeli position, this article lists a number of sources and resources.)

March 09, 2008
But What Can I Do About the Crisis Facing Israel and the Jewish People?

By Rachel Neuwirth

More and more people have been saying to me, "I realize that Jews are facing a major crisis in Israel, here in America, in Europe, and everywhere in the world. But what can I do about it? I am just one person. Vast forces are threatening Israel. Can I stop anti-Israelism and anti-Judaism on my own? I feel helpless in the face of the vast forces that are arrayed against us."

These are natural and normal human feelings. I have felt them at times myself. The confluence of international forces that has gathered against the Jewish people and faith, including the spiritual and intellectual fifth column amongst us, is indeed a formidable adversary. Nevertheless, there are things we can do if we are willing to work together to protect our rights and stand up to the massive defamation campaign waged against us.

One very important thing that all of us can do is to counter the endless lies and distortions of Israel's history and character that appear in the press, mass media, on the Internet, and even in scholarly journals. These distortions and outright falsehoods are a major reason why Israel is in such deep trouble, and in danger of "going under." Because the entire world has been led to believe an inaccurate, grossly distorted "narrative" of the conflict, the government of Israel feels it has no choice but to make concessions to the demands of its enemies, in order to appease world opinion. But these concessions imperil Israel's existence.

Each of us can help to correct this appalling situation by acting immediately, whenever we encounter such a distortion in the press or mass media, to correct it with a letter to the editor or news manager. We can also actively monitor the mass media on the Internet in order to locate as many distortions as we can and correct them. Further, we can speak up to counter distortions in public lectures and meetings about the Arab-Israel conflict, and even in private conversations. All of this requires work and time, but it really does help. Each of us should devote as much time and energy to these tasks as we possibly can.

But in order to counter the endless flow of lies and distortions about Israel, we must first learn what the true facts of Israel's history are. Before we can answer the chorus of unfair criticisms leveled against Israel and her supporters in the United States and elsewhere, we must first educate ourselves.

What are the facts about the conflict over "Palestine" that Arab and other anti-Israel propagandists have distorted, misrepresented and covered up? The following are some, although by no means all, of the most important ones:

The Israelis are not colonialists or alien "settlers" in the Land of Israel with no past connection or relationship to the country; on the contrary, we Jews have lived in Israel for at least 3,200 years if not longer. This is far longer than most peoples have lived in their present national homelands. Our two glorious temples, wonders of the ancient world, were there for a thousand years. King David's kingdom endured for more than four hundred years; later, there was the independent Jewish state of the Maccabees. Jews had lived in the Land of Israel in large numbers for at least 1,800 years before the Arabs conquered it in 635 C.E. Moreover, while hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from their land or put to death in it by foreign conquerors, there have been at least some Jews living there almost continuously for 3,200 years.

There has never been a distinctive "Palestinian" Arab people or an Arab "Palestine" state or nation; while it is true that some Arabs have lived in the Land of Israel for many centuries, they have never been ethnically or culturally distinct or different from the Arabs who live in other lands, including the original Arab homeland, the Arabian Peninsula. The Jews, however, are a people who originated in the Land of Israel and never had any other national homeland.

During over a thousand years of Muslim rule, "Palestine" was rarely the name even of an administrative district, let alone a nation. Arabs referred to the entire land that now comprises Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the "occupied territories" as "al-Shams" (Syria), which they regarded as one country.

While the Land of Israel, also called "Palestine" by Romans and Europeans, was densely populated in ancient times, its population steadily declined during over 1,000 years of Muslim rule. In the nineteenth century, Israel/Palestine was very thinly settled. There was very little agriculture, and extensive abandoned and uninhabited "waste" lands. Most of the population, such as it was, lived in dire poverty. Brigandage was such an established and accepted way of life that it was impossible to travel on the roads without the payment of large bribes to the leading men of each village along the way. The roads themselves were no more than unpaved footpaths. Villages fought wars with each other. Nomadic Bedouin tribes frequently raided villages and even larger towns. The inhabitants of the few larger towns (there were no real cities) had to cower behind thick walls and locked gates every night for security.

The Arab population of Israel/Palestine only began to grow in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the same time that Jews began to resettle the land. Jewish immigrants brought with them modernized agriculture, including the growing of oranges, which had been previously unknown; a market for Arab agricultural goods; employment at Jewish farms and factories; modern hospitals and medicine that saved thousands of Arab lives; the draining of swamps that had caused thousands of deaths from malaria and other insect-born diseases; and vastly expanded Arab education funded by Jewish taxes.

The Arab population of Palestine has grown extensively, from under 500,000 in 1891 to over 3,600,000 today, partly because of increased life expectancy brought about by the economic and scientific progress introduced by Jewish immigrants/settlers, but also in part because of extensive immigration to Palestine from many Arab countries.

As a result, many of the Arabs who call themselves, or who are called by other Arabs "Palestinians," have ancestors who originated in Egypt, Syria, what are now Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and other Arab countries. These Arab countries ought rightfully to give these "Palestinians" citizenship, but refuse to do so.

The Arabs, including and especially the Palestinian Arabs, have been the aggressors throughout the nearly 100 years of the Arab-Israel conflict. This "one long war" began with the communal violence that convulsed Palestine between 1920 and 1948, even before Israel was founded.

Palestinian and other Arabs organized and carried out massive pogroms against the Jews of Palestine in 1920, 1921 and 1929, waged a sustained terrorist campaign against them from 1936 through 1939, and a full-scale jihad against them in 1947-48. Thousands of Palestinian terrorist/guerillas, the regular armies of six Arab states, and "volunteers" from throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds all participated in this aggressive war. Before the 1947-48 Arab attack against the Palestinian/Israeli Jews there had been few if any displaced Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs were not innocent bystanders in the war that made them refugees. They initiated the war in which some, although not all, of them fled from parts of Israel in 1948. They killed over two thousand Jews in that war. The six invading Arab states killed over 4,300 more Jews.

The Israelis defended themselves as best they could against these unprovoked attacks. But they did not expel the Palestinian Arabs. Many Arab leaders as well as ordinary Palestinian Arabs have admitted that Arab leaders urged the Arabs living in Palestine to flee, promising them that Arab armies would soon defeat the Jews and allow them to return to their homes. Despite this bad advice, many Palestinian Arabs never left Israel, and became Israeli citizens, with full rights of citizenship. Today there are over one million Arab citizens and residents of Israel -- more than there were in 1947, before Israel was established.

Following this first major Arab-Israel war, the Arab states induced the United Nations to keep the Palestinian Arabs refugees and their descendants in "refugee camps" (actually segregated towns) for generations. All of the Arab states except Jordan denied the Palestinian Arabs citizenship and equal rights. Arab governments and the refugee camp administrations taught the Palestinians that it was their Arab duty to wage war against Israel in order to gain back the homes in what is now Israel where (some) of their ancestors had lived before 1948. This segregation and indoctrination of the Palestinian refugees, as well as their descendants to the third, fourth and all later generations, is the true origin of Palestinian terrorism, not Israeli "oppression" or "occupation."

Also following the Arab-Israel war of 1947-49, the Arab nations refused to sign peace treaties with Israel, sponsored Palestinian Arab terrorist raids into Israel in which hundreds of Israelis were killed, and waged war by economic boycott and propaganda as well. Last but not least, Egypt waged war by blockading Israeli shipping in the Suez Canal and in the Gulf of Aqaba (also called the Gulf of Eilat by Israelis). These acts of war severely damaged the Israeli economy in addition to causing widespread loss of life and injury to Israel's citizens.

Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks on, and raids into, Israel have been continuous since 1949. Whatever reprisal raids and counterterrorist operations Israel has conducted over these years against the Palestinian terrorists have been reluctant responses to aggression against Israeli civilians and soldiers--not deliberate attacks on Arab civilians, as Arab spokesman and much of the press in the West have misrepresented them.

Israel only "occupied" the so-called "occupied territories" in 1967 as a necessary act of self-defense, in response to a whole series of acts of aggression by the Arab world: two and a half years of Palestinian Arab terrorist raids sponsored by Syria; decades of Syrian shelling of Israeli border villages from artillery positions on the Golan Heights, the forced removal of United Nations peacekeepers from the Sinai by Egypt's President Nasser: a reinstatement of the Egyptian blockade of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba: the mobilization of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies along Israel's three borders, and public declarations of war on Israel by Egypt's Nasser, the government of Syria and other Arab regimes. Israel "occupied" these territories only as a means of forestalling the publicly proclaimed, imminent Arab invasion, and to stop the Jordanian shelling of Israeli Jerusalem. This Jordanian barrage had killed 17 Israelis and wounded many more before Israel moved to occupy the "West Bank," (more accurately known as Judea and Samaria).

Israel has now withdrawn from 90% of the territories that it occupied in 1967, including all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza region, large parts of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), and part of the Golan Heights. But these very substantial concessions have failed to persuade the Arab world to make peace with Israel.

All of the other Arab-Israeli wars were also initiated or heavily provoked by Arab states, usually working in tandem with the Palestinian Arab terrorist groups whom they sponsored. Egypt forced a war with Israel in 1956 by sponsoring Palestinian terrorist raids deep into Israeli territory for more than two years, and by blockading Israeli shipping in the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba. In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched an unprovoked surprise attack on Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur (the timing was surely no coincidence). Israel invaded Lebanon in 1981 only after years of Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks originating in that country; Israel withdrew completely from Lebanon in 2000, but was forced in 2006 to deal with renewed terrorist attacks into its territory from Lebanon -this time, by a Lebanese, not a Palestinian, terrorist organization, Hezbollah. Israel quickly withdrew from Lebanon again following a ceasefire.

Jewish settlements established since 1967 outside the pre-Six Day War ceasefire lines are not "illegal." The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, issued in 1922 with the unanimous support of the League member states and with the additional support of the United States (although it was not a member of the League), requires that the administration of Palestine "shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency . . . close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes" (article 6). The International Court of Justice has ruled in a similar case (that of Southwest Africa) that the Mandate documents issued by the League of Nations remain international law, even though the League itself was disbanded in 1946, and its responsibilities transferred to the United Nations. The United Nations Charter (Article 80) states that the "rights of peoples" in the League of Nations Mandate documents remain in force, as well as the documents themselves.

The Israel "occupation" of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is also legal according to international law, for three reasons: 1) Israel only occupied these territories in a defensive war; 2) her enemies continue to wage an aggressive war of terror from these territories, requiring a continued Israel military presence in them for self-defense. 3) Israel has a better title to these territories than any other nation, since the League of Nations Mandate document for Palestine, which has never been rescinded, specifies that the administration of these territories "shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home," The British Mandatory power ceased when the State of Israel was born but the rights of the Jewish people to the land remain intact, since they are a "sacred trust of civilization," as defined by the Covenant of the League of Nations, Art. 22. These permanent rights are enshrined in the Trusteeship Chapter of the UN Charter [Chapter XII, Art. 80]

There are many, many additional salient facts about the conflict that supporters of Israel should learn in order to combat the campaign of defamation and slander waged against her throughout the world. Here we have had space only to summarize a few of the most important points. But learning even these few important facts makes a useful start for those who wish to be activists in correcting the lies and distortions about Israel's history and character. They make important "talking points" for responding to these lies and distortions, whether in the mass media, on the Internet, at lectures and public meetings, or in private conversations.

We need to remember Benjamin Franklin's observation during the American Revolution: "if we don't hang together, then most assuredly we shall hang separately." We Americans, whether Jewish, Christian and even Muslim, cannot separate our own freedom and security from that of Israel.

John Landau contributed to this article.

Documentation: For the history of the Palestinian refugee problem, as well as good general introductions to the history of the Arab-Israel dispute, see Big Lies: Demolishing The Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel by David Meir-Levi, Introduction by David Horowitz, and Arab and Jewish Refugees - The Contrast, by Eli E. Hertz. Carta's Historical Atlas of Israel, and the Jewish History Atlas, by Martin Gilbert, present the long and continuous history of the Jewish habitation of Israel/Palestine in clear, easy-to-follow language with visual aids. Also very helpful for this purpose is "Israel 's Story in Maps," produced by http://www.israelinsider.com/. For the condition of Palestine under Islamic rule before Jewish resettlement, see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial; also Arnold Blumberg, Zion Before Zionism 1838-1880, and Saul S. Friedman, Land of Dust: Palestine at the Turn of the Century. Ms. Peters' book also contains documentation of the extensive Arab immigration to Palestine that went on at the same time as the Jewish resettlement. For the history of the Arab-Israel wars and Arab terrorism in Palestine, the best source is Neaten Lorch, One Long War: Arab versus Jew Since 1920; also excellent on this subject is Martin Gilbert, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps. Another book by Netanel Lorch, The Edge of the Sword: Israel's War of Independence 1947-49, gives the best account of the Palestinian and other Arab aggression in which the Palestinian Arab refugee "exodus" occurred. Also useful guides to these events are Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem, and Jon and David Kimche, Both Sides of the Hill, also published under the alternative title A Clash of Destinies. For the legality of the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and the legality of the Israeli administration of these areas, see Eli E. Hertz, "This land is My Land: Mandate for Palestine; The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights; and Eugene V. Rostow, "Resolved: are the Settlements Legal?"

Professor Meir-Levi's pamphlet Big Lies can be downloaded from the http://www.frontpagemag.com/ web site, and can also be ordered in "hard copy" from that site. All of Mr. Eli E. Hertz's articles can all be downloaded from his http://www.mythsandfacts.org/ web site. Eugene V. Rostow's article can be found on the http://middleeastfacts.org/ web site and elsewhere on the web; it was originally published in the Oct. 21, 1991 issue of The New Republic. "Israel 's Story in Maps," is available for downloading on the http://www.israelinsider.com/ web site, and can also be ordered on DVD. Carta's Historical Atlas of Israel can be ordered from eisenbrauns.com, TomFolio.com, Biblio-com, and Israel-catalog.com. Martin Gilbert's Jewish History Atlas and The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps can be ordered from Amazon.com. Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial can be ordered from http://shop.wnd.com/store, http://www.eretzyisroel.org/, amazon.com, and other sites on the web. Professor Blumberg's Zion Before Zionism 1838-1880 can be ordered from amazon.com and antiqbook.com. Professor Friedman's Land of Dust can be obtained from http://www.nowandthenbooks.com/. Netanel Lorch's books One Long War and The Edge of the Sword can be ordered from Amazon.com and antiqbook.com. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre's O Jerusalem are available through amazon.com and centuryone.com. Jon and David Kimche's Both Sides of the Hill can be ordered through amazon.com, AmericanaExchange.com, BookNet.com, and alibris.com.

Pro-Israel activists wishing to counter the constant misrepresentations of Israel's history and actions should obtain, and read, as many of these or similar books and articles as possible.

From: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/but_what_can_i_do_about_the_cr.html

Wired Wife

2008-01-07T09:51:00.001-06:00

Because of her need to access the Internet to calculate distances and get directions, check medical information online, send and receive email, etc., as well as her love of texting that prefers a QWERTY keyboard, my wife got an AT&T Motorola Q Global (aka Q9h) smartphone.

We looked at two alternatives: the higher-priced AT&T Tilt, and the lower-priced Samsung Blackjack II. The Blackjack looked good, and insurance is available for it, but it has a crippled version of Windows Office - i.e., you can read, but not create, Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents - and the keyboard is not as good as the Motorola's. The Tilt has a touchscreen, which initially seemed nice, but the tilting keyboard seems a bit fragile (i.e., the hinges could break, as one reviewer had happen to him), and there is no way to use the keyboard one-handed (but one can't easily hold the Motorola one-handed, either), and it can be cumbersome switching between the keyboard mode and closed mode. The Tilt only comes with Internet Explorer, whereas the Motorola has both IE and Opera for Internet browsers (though one could, of course, install Opera on the Tilt).

The mobile Internet works fairly nicely and quickly, too, though some Websites (maybe all of them?) truncate their features for mobile devices: e.g., in giving driving directions, mobile Mapquest will show maps and turns and turn-by-turn distances, but no Total distance, whereas Google maps will show Total distances as well (and - mobile Live Search seems to miscalculate Total distances, though the desktop version seems to give correct Total distances).

Needless to say, my wife loves it! (And I'm a bit jealous.)