The UN secretary general has said he doubts the UN's nuclear watchdog will be able to decide next month whether to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.

"It is also encouraging to hear the Iranians say they are considering the Russian offer very seriously. It is a solution that the international community is ready to accept."

"The Iranian government's suggestion that we somehow had a hand in the bomb explosions in southern Iran yesterday is obviously ludicrous and deserves to be treated with scorn by the whole international community," the spokesman said.

"Their putting the blame on us, rather than the terrorist responsible, underlines why there is much widespread international concern about this Iranian government."

"If the U.S. government tries to resolve the problem that way, there will be friction and disagreement between South Korea and the U.S."

Remember, we're here for YOU!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182720,00.html

January 24, 2006, 8:28 a.m.
Biology’s Revenge
Christina Hoff Sommers was right.

The surest way to get attention in American society is to become a crisis. Boys are now on their way to achieving this dubious but indispensable distinction with the new cover of Newsweek, "The Boy Crisis."

It is to be hoped that the crisis establishes a simple truth that is astonishing anyone ever forgot — boys and girls are different. Or as Newsweek puts it, "Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls — and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one."

A crisis always needs its own politically correct argot. A neurologist quoted in Newsweek takes a step toward establishing one here with his statement, "Very well-meaning people have created a biologically disrespectful model of education." Thus, the boy-in-crisis has a rallying cry, "Don't disrespect my biology!"

That's what has been happening for years. Feminists have wanted to believe that, given the right socialization, boys would give up their stubborn fascination with earth-moving equipment. As someone once said, "You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your facts." Similarly, you can have your opinion about what gender should be, but you can't have your own brain chemistry. Newsweek notes how in the womb, the brain of a male fetus is bathed with testosterone.

As any parent knows, that makes him different from a girl. If pedagogy systematically ignores those differences, it will be a disaster. Newsweek recounts the indices: Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities than girls in elementary school; the number of boys professing a dislike of school has risen 71 percent from 1980 to 2001; men constitute 44 percent of undergraduates on college campuses, down from 58 percent 30 years ago.

If school overemphasizes sitting quietly and language skills; if recess is eliminated; if discipline is eroded; if the books feature consciousness-raising instead of action-packed narrative — then boys will be bored, disaffected and disruptive. Classrooms have to be made more boy-friendly — with more discipline, more competition and more activity — so that boys are no longer treated, as one expert put it to Newsweek, "like defective girls."

A reason for this latest crisis is that just as girls had begun to pull even with boys in the 1990s, feminists hyped a crisis over girls doing poorly in school that caused an overreaction harmful to boys. One of the chief culprits was scholar Carol Gilligan, who is given space in Newsweek to address the boy crisis. She writes disapprovingly, "For some, the trouble boys are having with schools becomes grounds for reinstituting traditional codes of manhood, including a return to the patriarchal family." It is clear, however, that patriarchy is exactly what many boys need — lots of patriarchy, up close and personal.

"One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school," Newsweek reports, "rests on a single question: Does he have a man in his life to look up to?" It continues: "An increasing number of boys — now a startling 40 percent — are being raised without biological dads. Psychologists say that grandfathers and uncles can help, but emphasize that an adolescent boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map."

Other educational theorists argue that boys would be fine if they could be made more touchy-feely. But Christina Hoff Sommers, who wrote the prescient The War Against Boys five years ago, calls boys "the last of a vanishing breed of Americans who don't want to spend a lot of time talking about their feelings." Instead of trying to change that, we should accept boys for who they are.

What we have witnessed recently — with more evidence of the differences between men and women, and the importance of the old-fashioned two-parent family — is biology's revenge. If we deny what is deep-down in our nature, people get hurt — in this case, the rambunctious boys missing out on the great adventure that is learning.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

"Venezuela has become an epicenter of change on the world level," Chavez said Friday, referring to the event in a speech. "That's why (U.S.) imperialism wants to sweep us away, of course ... because they say we are a bad example. But they haven't swept us away and they won't."

According to the National Shooting Sports Federation, some 2.4m American women of all ages hunted in 2004, compared with 2m in 1997; the number taking part in shotgun sports was up 11%, to 1.3m. Another survey (commissioned by the National Wild Turkey Federation) claims that 95% of women approve of women going hunting and 15% have owned a hunting license.

Most western states, with their open spaces and outdoorsy culture, report a growing wave of interest. Arizona is typical. Gun shops and hunting stores in Phoenix, Glendale and Mesa are seeing record numbers of female customers. Ranges also report plenty of trade from them. Every Thursday the Ben Avery range, the largest in the country, hosts “the Annie Oakley Sure Shots”, a consistently packed free shooting class for women. At the Phoenix branch of the Sportsman's Warehouse, Bob Buffa has to cap his occasional workshop for female shooters at 20 students but says 100 or so sometimes apply.

This being America, the government is trying to help blood sports rather than ban them. The Arizona Wildlife Federation conducts a “Becoming an Outdoor Woman” course twice a year near Prescott. And the state's game-and-fish department also holds workshops: one, at Florence, teaches families hunting tricks and then how to cook dishes such as “No fail Quail” and “Sweet-and-sour Bunny”.

Yet most people reckon that women's interest in shooting sports and hunting will continue to grow. One reason is the issue of personal safety. Ms Brooks, who narrowly escaped a vicious attack in 1990, clips a Keltec 32-caliber semiautomatic under her jeans and holsters a Model 19 Glock. She now teaches other women how to shoot (her logo is a dove with a shield). “Women hunt just as well as men and the scarier the world gets, the more women are going to take protection in their hands.”

In a three-hour live television address, President Castro launched a fierce attack on the US administration, describing it as being run by a bunch of bandits.

• Cuba refers to the US administration as bandits; although the Americans were elected in a democratic election, rather that a military coup which turned into a long running dictatorship
• Cuba sits on the UN's Human Rights Commission, yet takes serious issue with the message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a close friend and ally of Castro, also sits on the Human Rights Commission
• Castro is going to force hundreds of thousands of people to protest in front of the US Mission because it is scrolling Human Rights messages
• There are people out there who believe dictators like Castro and Chavez are decent human beings who care about the proletariat

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is the world’s foremost human rights forum. Established in 1946 to weave the international legal fabric that protects our fundamental rights and freedoms, its brief has expanded over time to allow it to respond to the whole range of human rights problems. The Commission continues to set standards to govern the conduct of States, but it also acts as a forum where countries large and small, non-governmental groups and human rights defenders from around the world can voice their concerns.

The 53 States members of the Commission on Human Rights are elected by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This election, which usually takes place in May each year, elects approximately a third of the members of the Commission. The members serve for three-year periods and can be re-elected. The Commission has no permanent members.

The 53 seats of the Commission are distributed as follows:

African States 15, Asian States 12, Eastern European States 5, Latin American & Caribbean States 11, Western Europe & Other States 10.

• Argentina (2008)
• Armenia (2007)
• Australia (2008)
• Austria (2008)
• Azerbaijan (2008)
• Bangladesh (2008)
• Bhutan (2006)
• Botswana (2008)
• Brazil (2008)
• Cameroon (2008)
• Canada (2007)
• China (2008)
• Congo (2006)
• Costa Rica (2006)
• Cuba (2006)
• Dominican Republic (2006)
• Ecuador (2007)
• Egypt (2006)
• Eritrea (2006)
• Ethiopia (2006)
• Finland (2007)
• France (2007)
• Germany (2008)
• Guatemala (2006)
• Guinea (2007)
• Honduras (2006)
• Hungary (2006)
• India (2006)
• Indonesia (2006)
• Italy (2006)
• Japan (2008)
• Kenya (2007)
• Malaysia (2007)
• Mauritania (2006)
• Mexico (2007)
• Morocco (2008)
• Nepal (2006)
• Netherlands (2006)
• Nigeria (2006)
• Pakistan (2007)
• Peru (2006)
• Qatar (2006)
• Republic of Korea (2007)
• Romania (2007)
• Russian Federation (2006)
• Saudi Arabia (2006)
• South Africa (2006)
• Sudan (2007)
• Togo (2007)
• United Kingdom (2006)
• United States of America (2008)
• Venezuela (2008)
• Zimbabwe (2008)

"Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability and it must have the capability to defend itself, with all that that implies, and this we are preparing," Shaul Mofaz said.

His comments at an academic conference stopped short of overtly threatening a military strike but were likely to add to growing tensions with Iran.

Israeli leaders have also repeatedly said they hope the crisis can be resolved through diplomacy, and they said any military action would have to be part of an international effort. They have denied having plans for a unilateral preventive strike.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Tehran might still agree to Moscow's offer to move its uranium enrichment program to Russia, a step backed by the United States and Europeans as a way to resolve the deadlock.

• Create an interface for guests to register to comment if desired
• A Dictionary for cool new words discovered or new acronyms, managerialisms, gov-speak, mil-speak and so forth.
• A comment section!
• A list of blog posts by dates
• A count of posts by category
• A restructure of the server side scripting. You don't see this, but it's how I produce dynamic content.
• More interfaces for the rest of the tables in my database. In some cases I have to pull a copy of the database of the server, make updates locally, then put the database back, so to speak. This is a massive pain, but I haven't designed interfaces for all tables yet.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Friday with the leaders of the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Syria, expressing his support a day after 20 people were wounded in Tel Aviv in a suicide attack claimed by Jihad.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said Syria planned the attack and Iran funded it. Iranian and Syrian officials have denied any involvement by their countries.

The restaurant sector is notoriously fickle. Does anyone remember Planet Hollywood, Boston Chicken or the bagel flameout of the 1990s--or care to?

PF Chang's China Bistro, a consistent winner in the past, says fourth-quarter same-store sales increased 1%. It recently completed a buyout of Pei Wei Asian Diner, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. But the stock has taken a hit and recently fetched $47.56, off a 52-week high of $65.12.

Investors interested in fast food might take a look at Yum! Brands (nyse: YUM - news - people ), formerly Tricon Global Restaurants. The company challenges industry leader McDonald's and owns or franchises 33,000 outlets in 100 countries. It markets through KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W and Long John Silver's. Yum! Brands recently changed hands at $47.89, off a 52-week high of $53.79.

Chipotle's sales and profits are surging, making this the right time to go public. But there's slower growth ahead, and the public's infatuation with Mexican food could go the way of bagel mania. This stock isn't a buy-and-hold. Expect Chipotle Mexican Grill to show some zip in early trading, but long term, quien sabe?

Via RWD, is it just a coincidence that right after New York Times reporter James Risen revealed the existence on December 16 of an NSA program designed to listen in on communications between suspected terrorists overseas and their U.S. contacts, sales of disposable cell phones in the United States skyrocketed?

The internet search engine Google is resisting efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for.

The developing scandal at Livedoor has raised concerns about the strength of Japan's new tech boom.

Critics worry that the steady sales-focused foundations upon which many of Japan's companies are traditionally built are being overlooked in a new world of rapid expansion fuelled largely by takeovers.

One of Japan's best known internet companies, Livedoor had grown rapidly through a series of acquisitions and stock splits into a group with a value of about 730bn yen ($6.3bn; £3.6bn) before the scandal erupted.

Mr Horie is a celebrated personality in Japan, where he is known for his critical views of the country's business establishment.

The 33-year-old shot to fame following separate failed attempts to buy a TV company and a baseball team.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged North Korea on Thursday to heed international calls to return to stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear program. <

During a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, Rice emphasized the importance of efforts to break a deadlock in negotiations and persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear programs.

"We are both urging North Korea to come back to the talks without conditions," Rice told reporters at an appearance with Ban.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Two Brooklyn toughs on trial in a horrifying torture, rape and murder case made a brazen escape attempt Thursday — lunging for court officers' guns and stabbing a lawyer in the neck as terrified jurors and spectators ran shrieking.

"He's going for the gun!" officers shouted as Troy Hendrix, 22, vaulted over the defense table and co-defendant Kayson Pearson, 23, lunged backward toward the gallery.

Relatives of the victim sitting behind the men said the two exchanged winks before all hell broke loose. Court officers immediately flooded the room, tackling both men.

Pearson stabbed his lawyer, Mitchell Dinnerstein, under the chin with a concealed Plexiglas shank.

There is a healthy reluctance to concede that Mr. Jones is really worth $5 million per year in compensation, which is what he is getting, viewed in a truly strong light. It’s another matter—and this society needs to get used to it—when an individual is earning something ordained by the public itself in recognition of his uniqueness. If it is a baseball player who enchants a great public, or a chanteuse whose records sell by the millions, or an author who writes Gone With the Wind, the public should acknowledge that it has only itself to blame for egregiously high returns. But when it is the vice president of a glass manufacturer, a salary blatantly inordinate gives rise to suspicions of dissimulations exercised, advantages taken, corporate boards compliant. These, then, have the effect of discrediting the whole capitalist apparatus, and everyone should feel the need to avoid that. A lot of what is being talked about is not illegal, but much that isn’t illegal can be disgraceful, and a free society has a legitimate stake in trying to do something about that.

If Iran was not a radical Islamic state would the West worry?

It is easy to see how the sense of discrimination festers here.

Xenophobia

And that has somehow got mixed up with the Iranian sense of nationalism which should be worrying for the outside world.

It means those who do not particularly support the Islamic government still feel aggrieved that Iran, a nation with a powerful sense of its great past, is being held back scientifically by the West.

Nationalism can easily boil over into xenophobia and there was a touch of that in the attacks on CNN this week.

Quick Points:
• Iran has access to an unimaginable supply of hydrocarbons.
• Iran says it would like to develop nuclear technologies to provide fuel/electricity to its people.


• Iran says its nuclear program is benign and for peaceful purposes only.


• Iran is run by hard-line Mullahs who are quasi-fanatical/fanatical and rail against the West


• Iran took American hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran after the fall of the Shah


• Iran held our hostages for 444 days until Reagan became president. They released our hostages


• Iranian youth are on the verge of overthrowing their conservative government in lieu of a pro-Western government


• Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism


• Iran would definitely seek to use nuclear weapons against us


• Even France is done negotiating with these fools and Chirac issues a statement today saying France would retaliate with nuclear weapons if attacked

And this is where the IAEA, UN and EU3 come in. The EU3 (UK, France and Germany) had been in multilateral talks with Iran to persuade them not to continue with their nuclear program. These talks broke down with an impasse and Iran ended the moratorium on their program this (or last) week by popping the IAEA seals on their labs at their facilities. Iran has resumed their program and now the EU3, along with the US, are seeking to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. Even Russia and China have been trying to stem Iran from continuing their program.

Russia, however, throughout the nineties has HELPED Iran develop their nuclear program. Russia, being the ever responsible ex-super power has helped Iran to accelerate the program.

Obviously this bodes ill for Israel, the United States and other Western nations that Iran routinely grandstands against.

The end result here will likely be sanctions by the Security Council against Iran. And I predict at some point Israel will attempt to destroy the nuclear facilities in Iran because the international community will fail, again, to take the appropriate action.

We do not mind offering you a long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to," he said. "We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America."

"Clearly the Al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run and under a lot of pressure," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We do not negotiate with terrorists, we put them out of business."

"In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilizations," he said, adding that "odious attacks" could escalate to "other yet more serious forms involving states".

Study: Men Enjoy Seeing Bad People Suffer
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

NEW YORK — Bill Clinton said he felt others' pain. But a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it.

In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

It's not clear whether this difference in schadenfreude — enjoyment of another's misfortune — results from basic biology or sex roles learned during life, researchers say. But it could help explain why men have historically taken charge of punishing criminals and others who violate societal rules, said researcher Dr. Klaas Stephan.

Stephan, a senior research fellow at the University College London, is co-author of a study led by Tania Singer at the college and published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Singer, in an e-mail message, said the sex difference in results was a surprise and must be confirmed by larger studies. The researchers said women might have reacted like men if the cheater suffered psychological or financial pain instead.

The scientists scanned the brains of 16 men and 16 women after the volunteers played a game with what they thought were other volunteers, but who in fact were actors. The actors either played the game fairly or obviously cheated.

During the brain scans, each volunteer watched as the hands of a "fair" player and a cheater received a mild electrical shock. When it came to the fair-player, both men's and women's brains showed activation in pain-related areas, indicating that they empathized with that player's pain.

But for the cheater, while the women's brains still showed a response, men's brains showed virtually no specific reaction. Also, in another brain area associated with feelings of reward, men's brains showed a greater average response to the cheater's shock than to the fair player's shock, while women's brains did not.

A questionnaire revealed that the men expressed a stronger desire than women did for revenge against the cheater. The more a man said he wanted revenge, the higher his jump in the brain's reward area when the cheater got a shock. No such correlation showed up in women.

Philip Jackson, who studies brain systems responsible for empathy at the University of Laval in Quebec City in Canada, said he found the sex differences intriguing and worth following up on.

The overall results elegantly tie together "a lot of things we either knew or suspected strongly" about how social interaction can affect the brain's activity, he said.

If the group re-establishes its Houston operation, it will conduct street patrols and counsel young people to steer clear of gangs, Salinas said.

Lt. Robert Manzo, a Houston Police Department spokesman, said the department would have no problem with the Angels if they limit their activities to "serving as an additional set of eyes and ears" and calling police when they see evidence of crime.

But he said police could not endorse the volunteers making citizens' arrests, as Guardian Angels elsewhere have done. Volunteers receive training in basic martial arts and learn the legal requirements for making a citizen's arrest.

"We don't want to encourage a member of the community to intervene when they see a crime occur," Manzo said, adding this could pose a risk to bystanders and the person who intervenes.

Katrina evacuees were the victims or suspects in 23 homicides between September and December, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt said this morning, doubling the department's earlier numbers on how many killings have been linked to people from Louisiana.

France rejected Iran's request for more talks on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, saying Wednesday that Tehran first must suspend its atomic activities.

Yarmuk traffic circle is fantastically dangerous. On the first mission I ran in Mosul, we lost two soldiers and an interpreter, all killed by a car bomb. Others were horribly burned, scarred for life. Many of our wounded and killed soldiers got it right here, or in the immediate vicinity. The ISF takes serious losses in this part of town. But it's not entirely one-sided--the Deuce Four has killed well over 150 terrorists in this neighborhood in the past 10 months. But almost none of those made the news, and those that did had a few key details missing.

Like the time when some ISF were driving and got blasted by an IED, causing numerous casualties and preventing them from recovering the vehicle. The terrorists came out and did their rifle-pumping-in-the-air thing, shooting AKs, dancing around like monkeys. Videos went 'round the world, making it appear the terrorists were running Mosul, which was pretty much what was being reported at the time.

But that wasn't the whole story. In the Yarmuk neighborhood, only terrorists openly carry AK-47s. The lawyers call this Hostile Intent. The soldiers call this Dead Man Walking.

Deuce Four is an overwhelmingly aggressive and effective unit, and they believe the best defense is a dead enemy. They are constantly thinking up innovative, unique, and effective ways to kill or capture the enemy; proactive not reactive. They planned an operation with snipers, making it appear that an ISF vehicle had been attacked, complete with explosives and flash-bang grenades to simulate the IED. The simulated casualty evacuation of sand dummies completed the ruse.

The Deuce Four soldiers left quickly with the "casualties," "abandoning" the burning truck in the traffic circle. The enemy took the bait. Terrorists came out and started with the AK-rifle-monkey-pump, shooting into the truck, their own video crews capturing the moment of glory. That's when the American snipers opened fire and killed everybody with a weapon. Until now, only insiders knew about the AK-monkey-pumpers smack-down.

"There are probably 100 such sites" known to security officials at Verizon Wireless that offer to sell phone records, said Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, who said Verizon is always trying to respond to abusive practices. He said that the company views all such activity as illegal and that "we have historically, and will continue to, change policies to reflect the changing nature of criminal activity," though he declined to be specific.

Experts say data brokers and private investigators who offer cell phone records for sale probably get them using one of three techniques.

They might have someone on the inside at the carrier who sells the data. Spokesmen for the telephone companies said strict rules prohibiting such activity make this unlikely. But Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division, said other types of data-theft investigations have shown that "finding someone on the inside to bribe is not that difficult."

Another method is "pretexting," in which the data broker or investigator pretends to be the cell phone account holder and persuades the carrier's employees to release the information. The availability of Social Security numbers makes it easier to convince a customer service agent that the caller is the account holder.

Finally, someone seeking call data can try to get access to consumer accounts online.

Telephone companies, like other service firms, are encouraging their customers to manage their accounts over the Internet. Typically, the online capability is set up in advance, waiting to be activated by the customer. But many customers never do.

If the person seeking the records can figure out how to activate online account management in the name of a real customer before that customer does, the call records are there for the taking.

• Defused the situation with dialog
• Stopped the threat of serious bodily injury or death to my person

-----Original Message-----
From: Yeager, Justin
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:54 PM
To: Bond, Colin
Subject: possible boats for THE 'Operation'

First...this would be a nice base of operations:

http://www.apolloduck.us/display.phtml?aid=28197

This one would be great for the actual 'work':

http://www.apolloduck.us/feature.phtml?id=27844

This one is just cute...might be fun after we make our first fortune:

http://www.apolloduck.us/display.phtml?aid=32600

All joking aside...this is the kind I was really talking about though

http://commercial.apolloduck.com/feature.phtml?id=27484

-----Original Message-----
From: Yeager, Justin
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 1:04 PM
To: Bond, Colin
Subject: another good one...


http://commercial.apolloduck.com/feature.phtml?id=28763

Research vessel. Note the A-frame over the stern. Plenty of lifting capacity there!!! Also has 2 RIBs, plenty of berths and full galley. Got a good bit of deck space too.

"Her massive aft deck makes her attractive, her a frame makes her a dream come true for the salvage business, whether it is sports or commercial salvage."

The annual list of the 20 worst cities for treating the homeless in 2005 ranks Lawrence, Kan., as second meanest, and Little Rock, Ark., third. Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas and Houston were also among the top 10.

Sarasota bans sleeping outside overnight without permission on public or private property. A judge recently upheld the ordinance passed by city commissioners in August after two similar no-camping rules were declared unconstitutional.

"They could have been taken off the mean list if they would have just done away with that ordinance," said Michael Stoops, acting director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

Sarasota officials say the no-lodging rule helps keep the city's homeless out of unsafe and unhealthy camps.

Forty-five people were arrested last year for violating the ordinance, which gives police the option of transporting suspects to a shelter instead of jail.

The UK, France and Germany say the time has come for the Council to deal with the issue, although they say talk of sanctions against Iran is premature.

Western countries are now seeking to persuade other members of the UN nuclear watchdog to agree to refer Iran to the Council, which could impose sanctions.

Iran has threatened to halt snap inspections of its nuclear sites by the United Nations if it is referred to the UN Security Council.

Objectives To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom.

Design Longitudinal cohort study.

Setting Research institute employing about 140 people.

Subjects 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months.

Main outcome measures Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life.

Results 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons' value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons.

Conclusions The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.

That went to Pirates, a relatively high-budget story of a group of ragtag sailors who go searching for a crew of evil pirates who have a plan for world domination.

By my count, the score is Devil 1,720 and Believers 0.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Colin
Sent: Thu 1/12/2006 10:38 AM
To : Justin; Gennie

Okay, I'm done for today (so I say): http://blog.nonsufficitorbis.com/prcIndyPostMain.asp?reqBlogPK=65

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gennie
To : Colin; Justin

I heard about that on the drive in. At least about the meanest cities...

Because we don't allow them to piss randomly on the street corners or allow 'smelly people' into places of business...
Yeah... we are mean. Hell.. if we are mean, might as well get rid of all those programs, halfway houses, handouts, and just stone them. Stoning practice. They are the devil. That's what you do with all of them.

(above written commentary in no way applies to my actual beliefs.. it's just a rant)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Colin
To: Gennie; Justin

:)

"How do we make 6,000 people disappear?"

How about making them work for their handouts?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Justin
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:51
To: Colin; Gennie

Nice disclaimer Gennie...

I think you're on to something Colin...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Colin
To: Gennie; Justin

I know that some people are going to fall through the cracks. That's GOING to happen, but if we all stopped giving handouts to these leeches then they would have no choice but to find a program to help them (or get shot for B&E). The rest, well, the rest would likely just kind of go away... so to speak.

I don't know. In Austin over the weekend I saw WAY too many vagrants on the street corners. At 2222/290 and I-35 there was at least one bum for each corner. And it's a massive interchange with many lights and 'corners'/intersections. Unbelievable. One guy, I just stared at him, had a sign that read ".49 cents to go for a Taco". Riiiiight. A taco. Is that what you kids are calling it these days? GET OFF OUR STREETS!!!

Anyway, Austin encourages that kind of stuff. It's just the way the city is. Every time I go to Austin the liberalism stands out more to me... this time it was extremely visceral.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

A war on the homeless is being waged in downtown America," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the national coalition.

Name one American Idol judge. 38% of adults over 50 can, but they don't know colorectal cancer is the 2nd leading cause of cancer related deaths in the US.

Iran removed seals on its nuclear facilities Tuesday, allowing work to resume despite warnings from the United States and other countries concerned about its nuclear ambitions.

IAEA inspectors were present Tuesday as Iranian officials began removing the seals, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said from Vienna, Austria, where the agency is based. She declined to say whether the Iranians planned to start enriching uranium or would be satisfied with testing the equipment used in the process.

Most of the deaths are not caused by violence but by malnutrition and preventable diseases after the collapse of health services, the study said.

Since the war began in 1998, some 4m people have died, making it the world's most deadly war since 1945, it said.

'Congo is the deadliest crisis anywhere in the world over the past 60 years,' said Richard Brennan, health director of the New York-based International Rescue Committee and the study's lead author.

Some 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers are in DR Congo, to restore peace and organize elections due by the end of June 2006.

IGNORE aggressive drivers. It is too dangerous to react to a driver that is rude.

They won because they have the best player on earth. In the end, it's that simple.

Code Pink, a leftist women's outfit that's a fixture at antiwar rallies, is taking a break from protesting real conflict in Iraq to campaign against so-called "war toys." As the Pink website warns: "Every holiday season manufactures prey on our children with pro-war propaganda disguised as innocent toys. Don't let your child be a victim of G.I. Joe!"

The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (a.k.a. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things. The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.

Lewis bases his conclusion on results of an online survey last summer of 2,544 office workers 18 and older in the United States and five other countries. He says long office hours and a 'result-driven' working culture are causing stress, anxiety and depression at more severe levels for Americans than their foreign counterparts, increasing potential health risks for ulcers, high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes.

Unfortunately for workers, only one of the five major causes of stress in a 'toxic' office — disorganization — is within the typical worker's control, he concluded.

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — Socialist candidate Evo Morales, who has promised to halt a U.S-backed campaign to end coca growing, appeared to have to won Bolivia's presidential elections, a victory that would solidify the continent's shift toward the political left.

December 16, 2005, 9:55 a.m.

America’s Earliest Terrorists
Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror.

By Joshua E. London

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators.

Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy’s call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense — resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.

As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Unfortunately, many of the easy lessons to be plucked from this experience have yet to be fully learned.

The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib (“Land of Sunset”), denoting Islam’s territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed’s armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.

The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.

Although there is much in the history of America’s wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current “war on terror,” one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.

These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Sound familiar?

The candor of that Tripolitan ambassador is admirable in its way, but it certainly foreshadows the equally forthright declarations of, say, the Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s and the Sunni Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, not to mention the many pronouncements of their various minions, admirers, and followers. Note that America’s Barbary experience took place well before colonialism entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging the U.S. into the fray, and long before the founding of the state of Israel.

America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to “radical” or “fundamentalist” Muslims.

Which is not to say that such obligations lead inevitably to physical conflict, at least not in principle. After all peaceful proselytizing among various religious groups continues apace throughout the world, but within the teachings of Islam, and the history of Muslims, this is a well-established militant thread.

The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.

To Muslims in the heyday of Barbary piracy, there were, at least in principle, only two forces at play in the world: the Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. The House of Islam meant Muslim governance and the unrivaled authority of the sharia, Islam’s complex system of holy law. The House of War was simply everything that fell outside of the House of Islam — that area of the globe not under Muslim authority, where the infidel ruled. For Muslims, these two houses were perpetually at war — at least until mankind should finally embrace Allah and his teachings as revealed through his prophet, Mohammed.

The point of jihad is not to convert by force, but to remove the obstacles to the infidels’ conversion so that they shall either convert or become a dhimmi (a non-Muslim who accepts Islamic dominion) and pay the jizya, or poll tax. The goal is to bring all of the Dar al-Harb into the peace of the Dar al-Islam, and to eradicate unbelief. The Koran also promises rewards to those who fight in the jihad, plunder and glory in this world and the delights of paradise in the next.

Although the piratical activities of Barbary genuinely degenerated over the centuries from pure considerations of the glory of jihad to less grandiose visions of booty and state revenues, it is important to remember that the religious foundations of the institution of piracy remained central.

Even after it became commonplace for the pirate captains or their crew to be renegade Europeans, it was essential that these former Christians “turn Turk” and convert to Islam before they could be accorded the honor of engagement in al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea.

In fact, the peoples of Barbary continued to consider the pirates as holy warriors even after the Barbary rulers began to allow non-religious commitments to command their strategic use of piracy. The changes that the religious institution of piracy underwent were natural, if pathological. Just as the concept of jihad is invoked by Muslim terrorists today to legitimize suicide bombings of noncombatants for political gain, so too al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea, served as the cornerstone of the Barbary states’ interaction with Christendom.

In times of conflict, America tends to focus on personalities over ideas or movements, trying to play the man, not the board — as if capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, for example, would instantly end the present conflict. But such thinking loses sight of the fact that ideas have consequences. If one believes that God commands something, this belief is not likely to dissipate just because the person who elucidated it has been silenced. Islam, as a faith, is as essential a feature of the terrorist threat today as it was of the Barbary piracy over two centuries ago.

The Barbary pirates were not a “radical” or “fundamentalist” sect that had twisted religious doctrine for power and politics, or that came to recast aspects of their faith out of some form of insanity. They were simply a North African warrior caste involved in an armed jihad — a mainstream Muslim doctrine. This is how the Muslims understood Barbary piracy and armed jihad at the time, and, indeed, how the physical jihad has been understood since Mohammed revealed it as the prophecy of Allah.

Obviously, and thankfully, not every Muslim is obligated, or even really inclined, to take up this jihad. Indeed, many Muslims are loath to personally embrace this physical struggle. But that does not mean they are all opposed to such a struggle any more than the choice of many Westerners not to join the police force or the armed services means they do not support those institutions.

Whether “insurgents” are fighting in Iraq or “rebels” and “militants” are skirmishing in Chechnya or Hamas “activists” are detonating themselves in Israel, Westerners seem unwilling to bring attention to the most salient feature of all these groups: They claim to be acting in the name of Islam.

It is very easy to chalk it all up to regional squabbles, economic depression, racism, or post-colonial nationalistic self-determinism. Such explanations undoubtedly enter into part of the equation — they are already part of the propaganda that clouds contemporary analysis. But as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to learn back in 1786, the situation becomes a lot clearer when you listen to the stated intentions and motivations of the terrorists and take them at face value.

— Joshua E. London is the author of Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation (John Wiley & Sons, September 2005); for more about the book visit www.victoryintripoli.com.

Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
In Media 2.0

The journal Nature says the open-access encyclopedia is about as accurate as the old standby.

C1-Bizzy,
Please upload this picture ANYWHERE on your website. I will need to refer to it until I get some webspace of my own.

IN SOME contentious debates it is better to proclaim your prejudices at the beginning.

For the American army in Iraq, he says, IO was a “low-density skill set

Anybody who doesn't appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell.

empirical data bears out the fact that tax cuts (in this case the broad tax cuts of May 2003) can lead to increases in tax receipts.

Legend has it that in November 1974 Arthur Laffer, a young economist, drew a curve on a napkin in a Washington bar, linking AVERAGE tax rates to total tax revenue. Initially, higher tax rates would increase revenue, but at some point further increases in tax rates would cause revenue to fall, for instance by discouraging people from working. The curve became an icon of supply-side ECONOMICS. Some economists said that it proved that most governments could raise more revenue by cutting tax rates, an argument that was often cited in the 1980s by the tax-cutting governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Other economists reckoned that most countries were still at a point on the curve at which raising tax rates would increase revenue. The lack of empirical evidence meant that nobody could really be sure where the United States and other countries were on the Laffer curve. However, after the Reagan administration cut tax rates revenue fell at first. American tax rates were already low compared with some countries, especially in continental Europe, and it remains possible that these countries are at a point on the Laffer curve where cutting tax rates would pay.

ibackups.net HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN BY
THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

The individual responsible for the operation of the iBackups website has pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and faces up to 10 years in prison, a $500,000 fine, and restitution of over $5 million.

Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of copyrighted material is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Individuals who willfully infringe copyright by distributing or reproducing infringing material risk criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 2319. First-time offenders convicted of a felony violation of copyright laws face up to five years in federal prison, plus the payment of restitution, forfeiture, and fines.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped up his anti-Israeli comments on Wednesday, calling the Holocaust a myth used by Europeans to create a Jewish state in the heart of the Islamic world.

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin," said Ronald Reagan. "And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

In the future, understanding Communism may not require dusting off an old copy of Das Kapital, but instead merely visiting the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. That's because this memorial, in the works for more than a decade, is on the verge of being built a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

"We hope to have it dedicated in the fall of 2006," says Lee Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was established by an act of Congress in 1993. "But there's still a little more work to do."

It has been a long march. Building a memorial on federal land in D.C. involves a mind-boggling journey through a wilderness of government bureaucracy: various approvals must be gained from the National Capital Memorial Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Capital Planning Commission. Authorization for the memorial's site and design are normally separate procedures.

Suffice it to say, the experience demands forests of paperwork and mountains of patience. "It's all on behalf of the 100 million people who were killed in Communism's wars, revolutions, and purges," says Edwards.

Edwards, who doubles as a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has shepherded the project through various incarnations and locations. The current plan calls for a 10-foot-tall bronze statue based on the "Goddess of Liberty" figure erected by the martyred Chinese students of Tiananmen Square. After years of getting moved from potential site to potential site, everyone finally has agreed that the replica should stand at the intersection of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues, N.W., on a little triangle of property near Union Station and within view of the Capitol's dome. When it is done, the Victims of Communism Memorial will become a must-see stop on the conservative tour of Washington.

Although the memorial has not yet broken ground, a sculptor is already at work and Edwards is scrambling to raise the last few dollars his organization needs. "Our total budget is for about $650,000," he says. "We've received $500,000 so far and now we're galloping down the last lap. I'd love to collect the rest in the next 90 days." If the money arrives by March, Edwards foresees a dedication ceremony next November, around the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Every penny for the memorial has come from private sources; the government's only gift is the land. Major donors to the project so far have included Thomas L. Phillips, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Earhart Foundation. Edwards also credits Vietnamese Americans in northern Virginia for contributing heavily, as well as associations of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. "And make sure you mention the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy," he added when we talked last week. "They've helped out, too, and if you mention them it will irritate the ChiComs."

The final fundraising push begins this week. In the title of one of his most famous essays, Vladimir Lenin asked "What Is To Be Done?" You can help build the Victims of Communism Memorial by making a donation. You can also attend the foundation's annual Truman-Reagan Freedom Awards ceremony, which will be held on Tuesday night at the Polish Embassy in Washington. This year, the winners are retired general Edward Rowny, a Polish-American arms negotiator during the Reagan-Bush era; Pope John Paul II, whose award will be accepted by Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo of the Apostolic Nuncio; and the Solidarity Free Trade Union of 1980, which is Lech Walesa's old group. The event is open to the public, but a donation of $100 is requested. You know what it will go toward.

"The Communists," wrote Marx and Engels, "disdain to conceal their views and aims." It is now time to lay bare their sins and crimes, in a memorial that stands in the political capital of the free world.

When we, as individuals, pick and mix cultural elements for ourselves, we do not do so indiscriminately, but according to our natures. Societies, too, must retain the ability to discriminate, to reject as well as to accept, to value some things above others, and to insist on the acceptance of those values by all their members. This is the question of our time: How does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens' traditions and beliefs? . . . If we are to build a plural society on the foundation of what unites us, we must face up to what divides. But the questions of core freedoms and primary loyalties can't be ducked. No society, no matter how tolerant, can expect to thrive if its citizens don't prize what their citizenship means—if, when asked what they stand for as Frenchmen, as Indians, as Britons, they cannot give clear replies.

What is a price?

Unless you're an economist, you probably think of a price as simply the amount you pay for a given thing - the number of dollars you surrender for, let's say, Sunday brunch at your favorite neighborhood restaurant. But to an economist, price is a much broader concept. The 20 minutes you spend waiting for a table is part of the price. So, too, is any nutritional downside of the meal itself: a cheeseburger, as the economist Kevin Murphy has calculated, costs $2.50 more than a salad in long-term health implications. There are moral and social costs to tally as well - for instance, the look of scorn delivered by your vegan dining partner as you order the burger. While the restaurant's menu may list the price of the cheeseburger at $7.95, that is clearly just the beginning.

The most fundamental rule of economics is that a rise in price leads to less quantity demanded. This holds true for a restaurant meal, a real-estate deal, a college education or just about anything else you can think of. When the price of an item rises, you buy less of it (which is not to say, of course, that you want less of it).

But what about sex? Sex, that most irrational of human pursuits, couldn't possibly respond to rational price theory, could it?

Outside of a few obvious situations, we generally don't think about sex in terms of prices. Prostitution is one such situation; courtship is another: certain men seem to consider an expensive dinner a prudent investment in pursuit of a sexual dividend.

But how might price changes affect sexual behavior? And might those changes have something to tell us about the nature of sex itself?

Wed Dec 14 2005 19:23:37 ET

CNN, THE SITUATION ROOM 4:00 PM EST

WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Don king is known worldwide as a big-time boxing promoter. But has also taken some new fights on recently...

You love George Bush?

DON KING: I love George Walker Bush because I think he's a revolutionary. He's a president that comes in with conclusiveness. What they're doing in tomorrow in Iraq is a demonstration of that for the vote for democracy. The fundamental process of democracy is freedom of speech, law and order, being able to have freedom, working with people and working and governing yourselves. George Bush is that. He included in...

BLITZER: Do you have any regrets supporting him? Take a look at that picture when you and I were there at the diner last year. Do you have any regrets supporting him as enthusiastically as you did?

KING: No, I don't. In fact, I want to support him more now because it seems like everybody is punching him. You know what I mean? But he's fighting back, and he's throwing great combinations. And I think he's the guy that is really a revolutionary president.

I think he's a president that cares about the people he represents, but doesn't compromise himself to the extent that he acquiesce and accommodate. He goes out there and says like it is, and tries to make things better. Inclusiveness, education, is fighting for that.

These are the things that many guys that don't fight for -- George Walker Bush is a tremendous advocate to America, a great president for the great American people, and he's decisive. He's doesn't equivocate.

"I will NEVER EVER DO THIS EVER AGAIN and I am once more terribly sorry. Please let me go for I am terribly sorry!!! I'm only a kid! Help me out. I just want to go home. I did this not knowing of the serious penalty that lies behind it. Please! Please! Please!

"Coffee lovers are more likely to do harmful things like smoke and drink alcohol in excess, so coffee was often falsely incriminated."

Distinctive capabilities are critical to lasting competitive advantage." -Outlook Journal

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills, and technologies to help clients improve their performance.

High performers outperform their competitors in organic growth.

SACRAMENTO — Lawyers for Stanley Tookie Williams pleaded for his life before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday, five days before the founder of the murderous Crips gang — now a peace activist — is scheduled to be executed.

The evidence in this case is truly overwhelming and the murders were senseless and very brutal and Mr. Williams should pay the ultimate penalty for his crimes," prosecutor John Monaghan said at a news conference after the hearing.

'We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech,' said Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major who heads campus group Students Against Hate.

'I'm not going to this hearing with hope. I'm going to this hearing frightened to death,' defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. said. 'If we fail as counsel, a man dies.'

Today is Wednesday and I'm going to try another post. I'm pretty excited about the way this turned out!

SWEET!

It’s really fairly amazing the sort of ovation Democrats can still pull out of that line after their 2004 loss. It’s as if this victimology has become so central to the core identity of the Democratic party they cannot let it go.

Lopez: One overarching kinda question: We all have our moments of hypocrisy. That we don't practice what we preach doesn't make what we preach any less valid. People are human, etc. Is there something about your book that is somewhat fundamentally unfair?

Schweizer: Yes, we are all hypocrites and I talk about that in the book. But liberal hypocrisy and conservative hypocrisy are quite different on two accounts. First, you hear about conservative hypocrisy all the time. A pro-family congressman caught in an extramarital affair, a minister caught in the same. This stuff is exposed by the media all the time. The leaders of the liberal-Left get a complete pass on their hypocrisy. Second, and this is even more important, the consequences of liberal hypocrisy are different than for the conservative variety. When conservatives abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they end up hurting themselves and their families. Conservative principles are like guard rails on a winding road. They are irritating but fundamentally good for you. Liberal hypocrisy is the opposite. When the liberal-left abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they actually improve their lives. Their kids end up in better schools, they have more money, and their families are more content. They're ideas are truly that bad.

October 25, 2005, 8:27 a.m.
Moore Hypocrites Than True Believers?
Exposing the Do As I Say (Not As I Do) Left.

Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez

The mother of Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer is lucky that her son is an hypocrite. Her son is a leading proponent of excising the undesirable — the imperfect via abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. The disabled would fall under there, also, sometimes, the elderly.

Peter Singer's mother has Alzheimer's.

Peter Schweizer reports in his new book Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy that "far from embracing his own moral ethic, Singer hired a group of health care workers to look after her."

Good for him, he can't even buy his own poison. (When your ideas are destructive, at least a little hypocrisy saves a life here and there, despite the widespread damage you may be doing.)

Singer isn't the only hypocrite on the Left. Hoover Institution fellow Schweizer exposes a handful of popular Lefty hypocrites in his new book. He recently talked to National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez about his latest book and the Left's deficiencies.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Michael Moore makes money off oil and war? Why would he bother lying about owning stock? Is Peter Schweizer the only person who bothered checking?

Peter Schweizer:Michael Moore is constantly trying to prove his and the Left's moral superiority, so he says things about himself that are patently not true. He's pathological about it. How else to explain that he's loudly proclaimed no less than three times that he doesn't invest in the stock market because it's morally wrong while quietly picking up shares in a whole host of companies. A portfolio that includes Halliburton, Boeing, and HMOs doesn't fit the bill so he lies about it. I think he assumed that no one would poke around and investigate. When it comes to the MSM he was correct in making that assumption. He never responded to my questions. I'm dying to know how he explains away this one.

Lopez: Where did you get the idea for Do As I Say...? Did you just know the line of inquiry would be productive or did something fall into your lap?

Schweizer: I got tired of having discussions and arguments with people on the Left who operate on the assumption that they possess the moral high ground. They're not greedy, they're the only ones who truly care about the poor, minorities, you name it. Knowing quite a few people on the Left I knew that wasn't true. So I started poking around — looking at tax returns, IRS filings, court documents, etc. Frankly, it's amazing how easy it was to find examples of lefties being completely hypocritical.

Lopez: Given the hypocrisy you expose on this front, please tell me Nancy Pelosi at least isn't a Wal-Mart basher.

Schweizer: Nancy Pelosi bashes everyone who doesn't allow unions to call the shots. Everyone that is except herself. It's takes an amazing amount of gall to accept the Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farmworkers Unions while using non-UFW workers on your Napa Valley Vineyard. It takes the same to praise the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and take massive sums of money from them all the while keeping them out of your Hotel and chain of restaurants. But again, I think Pelosi correctly assumes that no one in the media will challenge her on this.

Lopez: I'm all for having a little legitimate fun with liberals. But doesn't revealing Barbra Streisand's water bill feel a little like going through her garbage? Actually: Did you have to go through her or anyone else's garbage? Where did you get this stuff?

Schweizer: I didn't go through Bab's trash. All the info in the book was obtained legally and ethically. Streisand's annual water bill of $22,000 to keep her lawn green is relevant because she made it relevant: She's constantly lecturing ordinary Americans about the need to cut back on our consumerist culture. Maybe if she turns off the taps she'll have some legitimate grounds for making the claims she does. As Kermit the Frog said, it's not easy being green.

Lopez: Um and the Clinton's underwear? Though the Clinton's claiming $4 per pair of used underwear among their charitable contributions does seem like it is begging for a New York Post cover.

I suppose there was not blue dresses. Something like that would make a lot more on ebay.

Schweizer: Ah, yes, the Clintons, who profess to pay the maximum amount on their taxes every year because it's the right thing to do. The Clintons are simply amazing in their ability to lecture Americans about their need to pay more taxes while at the same time finding lucrative tax shelters and taking outrageous tax deductions. Again, the media gives them a free pass.

Lopez: What else about the Clintons do you want to hand over to RNC op research before 2008?

Schweizer: I think their record of greed, jilting poor people out of their money, and their avarice are a sight to behold. Let people see how they have made their money over the last couple of decades and it speaks for itself.

Lopez: Tell me the great hypocrisy of that greatest of all public intellectuals according to one recent depressing survey: Noam Chomsky.

Schweizer: Noam Chomsky thinks he's the Moses of this age and even those on the Left who don't agree with him on everything accept his moral authority. But Chomsky is a socialist who practices capitalism, and an anti-militarist who has made millions off of Pentagon contracts. Wonder what his followers would think of that? Then there is his constant lecturing about "tax gimmicks" and "tax shelters" that "the rich" use to avoid paying their "fair share." He must have forgotten about that when he set up his tax shelter.

Lopez: And he wasn't a lot of fun when you got in touch with him, was he?

Schweizer: I give credit to Chomsky for responding to my questions. His excuses were something to behold. No wonder he teaches linguistics. It's amazing how he twists his words. By the way, he said it was okay to criticize other rich people for setting up trusts and setting one up himself. After all, he explained, he's been fighting for poor people his whole life.

Lopez: Did anyone ever take Al Franken seriously anyway? Why shouldn't anyone?

Schweizer: I'm not sure that most people take Franken seriously, but the media most assuredly does. He professes to be more than a comedian. He claims to be a political analyst and apparently wants to be a U.S. senator. (His former writing partner says he really wants to be president. Yikes!) His vicious attacks against conservatives as racists are not meant to be funny. He really does think that we're bigots. So questions about his absolutely abysmal record when it comes to hiring minorities should be exposed. (For those who want a hint, less than one percent of his employees have been black. That's a worse record than Bob Jones University, which Franken claims is "racist.")

Lopez: So he lies you say? At heart, he's a comedian. Does it really matter?

Schweizer: Yes it does matter. Among the liberal/Left base, they see Franken as some sort of prophet who speaks the truth. And again, the media gives him a free pass. I caught him on The Late Show with David Letterman last Friday. They chuckled a bit and Franken went on to explain his twisted and distorted view of the world. He wasn't challenged on anything he said.

Lopez: About Franken, he wanted to fight our Rich Lowry. You nervous now that your book is out?

Schweizer: I tried to get Franken to answer my questions. I wanted him to explain some of the outrageous comments he made a few years ago about disliking homosexuals and the fact that he was glad one had been killed. (Imagine if a conservative had said that?) And I wanted to ask him why he considered conservatives and Republicans racist because they hired so few blacks when he had such a horrible record himself. Alas, he never responded.

About the Lowry-Franken fight: Rich is too classy to take him up on it but I wish he had. He could have taken him easy.

Lopez: Any Lefties you checked into who came out with flying non-hypocritical colors worth lauding for at least practicing what they preach?

Schweizer: I really thought that Ralph Nader would be that man. He lives a monk-like existence and tends to shun the material things in life. But then I discovered that he fired some of his employees for trying to form a union and I realized he wouldn't fit the bill. I'm still looking....

Lopez: Another say-something-nice question: Is there anyone on the Left you admire? Or are you a hater?

Schweizer: I don't admire the ideas of the Left but there are some individuals that I think demonstrated integrity and honesty. Senator Paul Wellstone — say what you will about him, but he seemed to at least try to live a life somewhat consistent with his principles.

Lopez: Were you depressed or invigorated by the big wigs of the Left's hypocrisy?

Schweizer: Invigorated. It's another reminder that the ideas the left want to impose on the rest of us are so fundamentally bad that they don't even try to live by them. At the end of the day, when all the fun is done, I hope people view this as a book about ideas and the failure of liberal/Left ideas. They don't work for the leading lights of the Left. How could they possibly work for our country?

Lopez: One overarching kinda question: We all have our moments of hypocrisy. That we don't practice what we preach doesn't make what we preach any less valid. People are human, etc. Is there something about your book that is somewhat fundamentally unfair?

Schweizer: Yes, we are all hypocrites and I talk about that in the book. But liberal hypocrisy and conservative hypocrisy are quite different on two accounts. First, you hear about conservative hypocrisy all the time. A pro-family congressman caught in an extramarital affair, a minister caught in the same. This stuff is exposed by the media all the time. The leaders of the liberal-Left get a complete pass on their hypocrisy. Second, and this is even more important, the consequences of liberal hypocrisy are different than for the conservative variety. When conservatives abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they end up hurting themselves and their families. Conservative principles are like guard rails on a winding road. They are irritating but fundamentally good for you. Liberal hypocrisy is the opposite. When the liberal-left abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they actually improve their lives. Their kids end up in better schools, they have more money, and their families are more content. They're ideas are truly that bad.

Lopez: Is there something about the book that sums something up philosophically about the Left?

Schweizer: After researching the book I really truly believe that the leading lights of the Left — Moore, Franken, Clinton, Pelosi, Kennedy, etc. — really honestly don't believe what they are selling us. Their own experiences teach them that their ideas don't work.

Lopez: So I can't stand Michael Moore anyway. I really don't need any more anger aimed in his direction. Ditto with some others who get chapters in your book. Why should I read your book anyway? How might a Michael Moore fan get something out of Do As I Say...?

Schweizer: All I would ask a Michael Moore fan do is look at the facts. Moore professes to hate capitalism ("the last evil empire" he's called it) but practices it in spades. Moore condemns people for their racism and claims to support and practice affirmative action, but has a lousy record of hiring minorities. He outsources post-production film work to Canada so he can pay non-union wages. I could go on and on. I would ask his fans: is this really a sincere person?

Lopez: You always seem to have projects going on. What's next for you?

Schweizer: Right now I'm working to promote the book. I have some ideas for future projects but nothing set in stone. I wrote a novel with Cap Weinberger that came out a couple of months ago called Chain of Command. Cap is a class act and I enjoyed writing fiction. Maybe another novel at some point. We'll see.

Lopez: What's the funniest story you learned while compiling the book?

Schweizer: It has to be one about Michael Moore. In his books Michael Moore goes on and on about the fact that Americans are racist because they live in white neighborhoods. It's an example of latent segregationist attitudes in his mind. When I checked the demographics on Michael Moore's residence I burst out laughing. Michael Moore lives in a town of 2,500 in Michigan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there is not a single black person in the entire town.

Lopez: Do you like any Streisand songs?

I've lately been partial to "You Don't Bring Me Flowers." It makes me think of the president's relationship with conservatives of late. (Don't judge me for my weirdness.)

Schweizer: Yes, that song does seem fitting these days. Streisand has a pretty voice but I don't really listen to her. Not because of politics, but I like something with a strong beat.

Lopez: One more before we go: Can't you just be happy for Gloria Steinem, man?

Schweizer: I am happy for Gloria Steinem. She finally found her man. My question is why couldn't she just be happy for other women who got married? A classic example of Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

Activist claims no law supports IRS
Anti-tax guru urges jurors to send a message to the government
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - An outspoken anti-tax author told jurors in his criminal tax evasion trial Monday that no law requires Americans to pay income taxes and the Internal Revenue Service has no authority to collect them.

"It's the greatest program of organized extortion ever conceived by man," Irwin Schiff said in his closing argument. He insisted that paying income taxes is voluntary.

Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Neiman called Schiff's teachings "sophistry."

"The defendants know what they're selling is flat-out wrong," Neiman said as the five-week trial of Schiff and two followers came to a close.

Schiff, representing himself, repeatedly tested the patience of U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson.

The 77-year-old anti-tax guru told the jury it was up to them to send a message to the government.

"You can do a big favor to the rest of the workers in this country who are holding down two and three jobs," he said. "We're not slaves of the United States government. Our wages don't belong to the United States government."

Schiff and co-defendants Cynthia Neun and Lawrence Cohen were indicted in 2004 on charges including tax evasion, conspiracy and aiding in the filing of fraudulent tax returns.

The indictment alleges the three caused hundreds of individuals to file fraudulent tax returns and promoted tax-evasion schemes through Schiff's Las Vegas business, Freedom Books.

Schiff is the author of The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes. He previously served prison time for tax fraud.

If convicted, Schiff faces a maximum sentence of 43 years in prison and $3.3 million in fines on charges that he failed to report income on federal tax returns from 1987 to 2002, and evaded payment of $1.3 million in taxes, penalties and interest from 1979 to 1985.

Neun, 52, and Cohen, 64, also face long prison terms and heavy fines if convicted.

"Ultimately, what this case boils down to is willfulness," Neiman said. "A belief is not enough. Simply saying 'I believe' is a not a license to break the law."

Lawyers for Cohen and Neun said their clients, who worked at Freedom Books, subscribed sincerely to Schiff's anti-tax theories and never received notice from the government that they were violating the law.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War and has operated his own consulting practice (Barnett Consulting) since 1998. Recently, Tom founded a consulting partnership with two other outstanding individuals called The New Rule Sets Project LLC. The consultancy was acquired by Enterra Solutions, LLC. in August of 2005, with Dr. Barnett as Senior Managing Director.

: the analysis of a situation involving conflicting interests (as in business or military strategy) in terms of gains and losses among opposing players

Is Game Theory Real? Ask Bill Belichick's Patriots.
It worked in the Cold War-and, of course, at the poker table.
By Geoffrey Colvin

If game theory sounds too rarefied to interest you, consider a small story about one of the discipline's geniuses, Thomas Schelling, who just received the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in the field. When a bunch of undergraduates (including yours truly) showed up on the first day of his course at Harvard some years ago, Schelling started describing how demanding the class would be. Students began drifting from the room. He went into deeper detail about the extreme rigor and hard work he required. More students bolted. Finally, with only a few of us left sweating and terrified in our seats, he told us to relax: The tough talk was a ruse to get the class down to manageable size and make sure it included only the most dedicated students.

As it turned out, he did make us work hard—and we all came through it thinking the subject was vitally important and the professor was terrific.

I was glad to see the prize go to Schelling, 84 (and to Israeli mathematician Robert Aumann, 75), because game theory is way more valuable than most people realize. It's the basis of the most fascinating and important social science research now being conducted, with the clearest real-world applications. But the discipline has a big PR problem: "Game" and "theory" are major turnoff words to the hard-headed, practical people who could benefit from it most. So let's call it something else: deep strategy. For that's what it is. And the principles Schelling worked on in helping manage America's successful 45-year nuclear standoff with the Soviets are shaping some of today's most important events.

For example, Schelling stressed the "rationality of irrationality." Translation: You can vastly strengthen your position in an interdependent situation by persuading the other side that you're slightly nuts. If a hitchhiker pulls a gun on you, you step on the gas, head for a telephone pole, and tell him to throw the gun away or you both die. In today's world, a rational Kim Jong Il would never threaten to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. or its allies, since we have 10,000 nukes and could quickly turn North Korea into a smoking hole. But he does threaten it, and since he's apparently loony, we treat him extremely carefully.

In the business realm, the airline mechanics' union threatened to drive United and later Northwest into the telephone pole (a favorite union bumper sticker: full pay to the last day). Trouble is, the union doesn't have a reputation for being crazy enough—it has accepted pay cuts in the past—so the strategy hasn't worked. The airlines have faced the union down. By contrast, I've always thought Ted Turner benefits from the perception that he's off his rocker. Lots of people think he's nuts, but he's just nuts enough to have made himself a billionaire.

The Nobel committee cited Schelling for showing, among other things, "that a party can strengthen its position by overtly worsening its own options." Famous example: The Russians' fictional doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, a movie on which director Stanley Kubrick consulted with Schelling. The machine was a series of nuclear bombs that would go off automatically, destroying the world, if Russia were attacked. The key concept is that once it was turned on, the machine was out of the Russians' control.

That's a familiar idea in business. Every negotiator loves to say, "Hey, that issue is out of my hands!" Canny labor leaders will sometimes arrange a vote of the membership to hem in the positions they can take in negotiations. Just as irrationality can be rational, weakness can be strength.

Besides game theory's world-historical and business significance, it's worth noting, especially at this time of year, that it actually does apply to games. A scholarly paper by Berkeley economist David Romer showed that NFL coaches punt too often on fourth down. Patriots coach Bill Belichick, the league's most successful coach in recent years, read the paper and later stunned fans by running on fourth and one—successfully—in the AFC championship game two years ago. In baseball, a study by an economist and a mathematician examined why American League batters get beaned more often than National Leaguers (short answer: The designated-hitter rule leaves pitchers less afraid of retaliation). As poker has exploded in popularity, some of the new champs have been computer-savvy game theoreticians.

So all hail the Nobel committee for reminding us of the power and pervasiveness of game theo—er, deep strategy. At long last, it's time to get past the name and appreciate the science behind it. As the committee recognized, this stuff works.

Deputies pulled over and arrested Antonio Chamorro, the 25th most frequent toll violator in the county, after the new camera spotted his sport utility vehicle shooting through the EZ Tag lane illegally.

Chamorro owes the county $1,383.50 in due tolls, $6,078 in administrative fees and $8,925 in court costs, Toll Road Authority officials said. Chamorro could not be reached for comment Friday.

Wilbur Ross well remembers the days when bankruptcy meant death. “When I started doing this, when a company went bankrupt, everyone would hang their heads in shame,” he recalls of the late 1970s. Now, says Ross, whose W.L. Ross & Co. recently bought and restructured much of the U.S. steel industry and is now preparing a similar assault on auto parts, bankruptcy has “lost its pejorative connotation and is an openly discussed strategic alternative.”

Former FBI director lays into Clinton
By HOWARD KURTZ
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Former FBI director Louis Freeh has denounced former President Clinton over the scandals that marred his presidency and for his record on terrorism, saying the level of distrust was so great that he stayed in his post so Clinton could not appoint his successor.

In a forthcoming book — My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror — and in a 60 Minutes interview, Freeh says he was so determined to distance himself from Clinton that he sent back a White House pass so that all his visits would be deemed official.

In an interview with CBS's Mike Wallace to be broadcast Sunday, Freeh says: "The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."

Freeh cited investigations involving Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers.

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said Thursday night: "This is clearly a total work of fiction by a man who's desperate to clear his name and sell books."

The Commodore 64 was a popular home computer of the 1980s. Announced by Commodore Business Machines in January 1982 and released in August of that year at a price of US$595, it offered unprecedented value (sound and graphics performance) for the money. Aggressive pricing of the C64 by Commodore was one of the major catalysts for the video game crash of 1983. Approximately 15,000 software titles were made for the Commodore 64, including games, development tools, and office applications. It is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. With estimated sales between 17 and 25 million units by the time it was discontinued in 1993, the C64 became and remains the best-selling computer model of all time.

This cool front's for real, and it will stick around
By ERIC BERGER
Oct. 5, 2005, 8:44AM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Something odd may happen Thursday night.

The constant hum of air conditioners will likely cease, and windows will probably be raised.

That's because, for the first time in five months, forecasters say temperatures should fall below 60 degrees for all areas except those near the coast. Points well inland might even see temperatures in the lower 50s by Friday night.

"Finally, we should get our first taste of fall," said Chris Hebert, a forecaster for Houston-based ImpactWeather.

Is this promised cool front more fool's gold, like several others that recently washed out just before reaching Houston? Not likely, forecasters say.

This front originated over arctic regions, and even recent computer-model runs show it shoving offshore, well into the Gulf of Mexico. It also should stick around a while, with highs in the lower 80s and lows in the lower 60s through the weekend. Little, if any, rain is expected with the front.

"Our days of highs in the 100s are gone, and we may not see too many more days in the 90s" this year, Hebert said.

It appears that Houston is finally settling into its familiar fall pattern, with cold fronts passing through the city about once a week.
This kind of front tends to steer tropical storms and hurricanes away from Houston, at least those that form in the Atlantic and move into the Gulf of Mexico, south of Florida. This means a Katrina or Rita-like storm is now much less likely to affect Texas or Louisiana.
However, the cold fronts themselves are low-pressure systems. The concern — and this happened with Hurricane Alicia in 1983 — is that cold fronts move over the warm Gulf waters, begin generating thunderstorms and spin up into tropical storms or hurricanes. At that point they could turn our way, giving little warning before landfall.

There's nothing to indicate this particular front will do that, but it's something to watch, Hebert said. Such concerns will linger until Gulf waters cool significantly, and unfortunately a single cold front won't have much effect because it takes a long time, and a lot of cool air, to lower water temperatures.


The Gulf remains extremely warm because Houston just experienced its hottest-ever September, with an average temperature of 83.4 degrees. As a result, nearly the entire Gulf remains well above 80 degrees at the surface, the temperature generally needed to form and sustain tropical systems.

Although it may seem late in the season for the first real taste of fall, the region has seen chilly air arrive at later dates, including last year, when the first sub-60-degree jolt didn't arrive until Oct. 14.

Anti-hurricane technology
Jun 9th 2005
From The Economist print edition

How can you slow down a hurricane? Moshe Alamaro, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a plan. Just as setting small, controlled fires can stop forest fires by robbing them of fuel, he proposes the creation of small, man-made tropical cyclones to cool the ocean and rob big, natural hurricanes of their source of energy. His scheme, devised with German and Russian weather scientists and presented at a weather-modification conference in April, involves a chain of offshore barges adorned with upward-facing jet engines. Each barge creates an updraft, causing water to evaporate from the ocean's surface and reducing its temperature. The resulting tropical storms travel towards the shore but dissipate harmlessly. Dr Alamaro reckons that protecting Central America and the southern United States from hurricanes would cost less than $1 billion a year. Most of the cost would be fuel: large jet engines, he observes, are abundant in the graveyards of American and Soviet long-range bombers.

IN DECEMBER 1990, 35 days before the outbreak of the Gulf war, an unassuming retired colonel appeared before the Armed Services Committee of America's House of Representatives and made a startling prediction. The Pentagon's casualty projections—that 20,000 to 30,000 coalition soldiers would be killed in the first two weeks of combat against the Iraqi army—were, he declared, completely wrong. Casualties would, he said, still be less than 6,000 after a month of hostilities. Military officials had also projected that the war would take at least six months, including several months of fighting on the ground. That estimate was also wide of the mark, said the former colonel. The conflict would last less than two months, with the ground war taking just 10 to 14 days.

Operation Desert Storm began on January 17th with an aerial bombardment. President George Bush senior declared victory 43 days later. Fewer than 1,400 coalition troops had been killed or wounded, and the ground-war phase had lasted five days. The forecaster, a military historian called Trevor Dupuy, had been strikingly accurate. How had he managed to outperform the Pentagon itself in predicting the outcome of the conflict?

His secret weapon was a piece of software called the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model, or TNDM, designed by the Dupuy Institute, an unusual military think-tank based near Washington, DC. It was the result of collaboration between computer programmers, mathematicians, weapons experts, military historians, retired generals and combat veterans. But was the result a fluke, or was the TNDM always so accurate?

Bosnia was its next big test. In November 1995, General Wesley Clark asked the Dupuy Institute to project casualty scenarios for NATO's impending peacekeeping mission, Operation Joint Endeavour. The resulting “Bosnia Casualty Estimate Study”, prepared using results from the TNDM, stated that there was a 50% chance that no more than 17 peacekeepers would be killed in the first year. A year later, six had died—and the Dupuy Institute's reputation had been established.

Armed pirates hijack Indonesian ship
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Armed pirates have hijacked an Indonesian-registered ship carrying a cargo of tin ingots, an official said on Monday.
The Prima Indah left Pangkal Balam port in Indonesia late Friday and was boarded off Bangka island in Indonesian waters shortly afterwards, said Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Centre of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
"Our alert is going out. We have notified the regional authorities. The Indonesian navy is combing the area for the missing ship and its cargo," he told AFP.
The ship, bound for Singapore, was carrying 660 tonnes of tin ingots, he said. The cargo is estimated to be worth several million dollars.
All 14 of the ship's crew were set adrift in a boat but were now safe in Indonesia, he added.
The IMB said in July that waters off Indonesia are the world's most prone to pirate attacks, recording 42 attacks -- or one third of the global total -- in the first half of 2005. (***)

• Well, more abhorrent behavior is reported in The Houston Chronicle this morning.  Apparently thieves took advantage, naturally, of people who evacuated the Houston area for Hurricane Rita.  Pretty sad.


• There’s some bad news regarding Iraq’s readiness.  The Washington Post reports: Of Iraq's 86 battalions, only one ready to fight


• There are some interesting stories in the Out There section of Fox News this morning.   Check them out.

• The Houston Chronicle has a big story in the paper this morning regarding oil & gas in the aftermath of Rita.


• Race is still the hot topic when discussing the future of New Orleans.  Sometimes it seems that we’ll never get beyond race when discussing issues that affect entire populations.  The Houston Chronicle reports again.


• I read about this story awhile back.  MIT’s lab has developed a laptop that will cost $100 dollars to distribute to children in under-privileged areas of the world.  The design incorporates a tough laptop with a handcrank for places without power.  This story was produced by the AP.


• For the sake of non-partisanship, Tom Delay had better be innocent.   I don’t like Delay as a Representative because of his stance on several issues, particularly when he denied federal funding to Houston’s Metro Rail project.  Still, that doesn’t mean I want to see him go to jail; unless of course he’s guilty.  The AP reports on Fox News.


• An article from Fox News regarding Massachusetts mulling of a policy that all their government technology systems use only the OpenDocument file format.


• Whatever.  Sit down and shut the hell up.  Invoking the memories of 9/11 to bolster a case against ‘free speech’ is pathetic.  It’s a movie.  Who’s going to misinterpret that?  Quite frankly I’ve had many rude flight attendants.  So what?  Foster mistrust?  You’re a sky waitress and you act like you’re on the front line in the war on terror.  I’m not going to type what I think about this quote: "Our fellow crew members who perished in the line of duty deserve more respect."


• The National Review online has a piece on profiling in New Jersey.


• Bush Bashing is the last ditch effort by un-hip musicians.