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miércoles, 30 de mayo de 2007

The Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologists

Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Jenna Elfman…let’s face it, we’re not surprised when obviously unstable, closeted, or just plain untalented actors and actresses start blathering on about Xenu and cleansing their Engrams. Hollywood types can be pretty flaky. But while some of the famous faces of Scientology make sense, there are a surprising amount of celebs that honestly, we expected better from.

#10: JASON LEE: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: My Name is Earl, every Kevin Smith movie after Clerks.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: It breaks our hearts, honestly. Lee's a hilarious actor, and can deliver the driest one-liners around. He seems like a genuinely intelligent and funny guy. Hell, dude was a pro skateboarder. How cool is that? Knowing he thinks alien ghosts infected the planet with negative energy can't help but be a little disappointing coming from a guy who can execute a flawless nosegrind.

Connections: Lee’s My Name is Earl and Mallrats co-star Ethan Suplee isn't just a Scientologist; he’s also married to the sister of second generation Scientologist/certified whack job Juliette Lewis, who starred in that awful "retarded people in love" movie The Other Sister with close friend and fellow Scientologist Giovani Ribisi.

Lewis and her father guest-starred on My Name is Earl in 2006, which must have made for a really fun day on the set for anyone who needed an E-meter reading.

Presumed Operating Thetan Level: One (is able to "audit" self, has knowledge of matter, energy, space and time above that of regular humans)


#9: LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: The shrill, but perplexingly attractive wife of human-sized sandwich receptacle Kevin James on King of Queens.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Her To Be a Scientologist: Having watched King of Queens, we're more than a little surprised that they actually wanted her. You can almost picture her at some Scientologist retreat, nagging away at John Travolta for fucking up his tone scale.

That said, she’s earned her Hubbard stripes, having been a vocal supporter of Scientology in the past. Remini gave the Church of Scientology a loving, 40-minute tongue-bath when she appeared on Janeane Garafolo’s short-lived Air America show Majority Report to plug some manner of Scientology-endorsed “detoxification cure" nonsense. More surprising: that airwaves could handle that much brittle, sarcastic estrogen occupying the same space and not implode like a black hole.

Connections: According to Remini, she was the first person to have seen Suri Cruise in person, even though she’s never been known to be on even "nodding acquaintance" terms with Tom or Katie. She did not comment about whether Tom Cruise has since eaten the baby.

Presumed Operatng Thetan Level: Three or Four (is able to regulate her "meat body" for thetans, and can rid self of the "effects of drugs on the spirit")


#8: BECK: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: being in possession of two turntables and a microphone; being able to identify a good drum break; being the hippest white boy in the room.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: The Reverend of Electric Soul, genre-hopping creator of esoteric and complex albums: doesn't Beck seem a bit too ironically hip to believe in something as goddamn ridiculous as Scientology without putting quote gestures around it and talking about it through a voice synthesizer first?

While he never came out about his beliefs until 2005, Beck is actually a second generation Scientologist; there are a multitude of conspiracy theories online that both he and his record label tried to conceal his Scientologist leanings for most of his career. Clearly the label didn't want anybody to think that Beck, a 100-pound Fraggle who writes acoustic guitar raps about plastic eyeballs spraypainting vegetables, was weird or anything.

Connections: Beck’s mother was the midwife for the birth of pasty-faced actor/second generation Scientologist Giovanni Ribisi (The Mod Squad, Saving Private Ryan) and his twin sister Marissa.

Beck is now married to Marissa, the mother of his son "Cosimo Henri." As of this writing they’re expecting another one, who’ll probably get an even more retarded name, if that's possible. (See also: Jason Lee’s son "Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf Lee"; "Suri")

Presumed Operating Thetan Level: 7 or higher (able to audit self and "address the primary cause of amnesia"; according to Wikipedia, graduation from this level requires a $100,000 payment)


#7: GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: being a legal expert for CNN and FOX; covered the O.J. Simpson trial; host of Burden of Proof and On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Her To Be a Scientologist: Well, she has an education, for one, and by all accounts was a pretty good lawyer. Second, she’s on the FOX network, which tends to put tree-huggin' Democrats ahead of Scientology's foe, the cursed space pirate Xenu, on their Most Wanted Lists.

Connections: Her husband John “Bhopal” Coale represented Lisa Marie Presley (Scientologist) in her divorce. Lisa Marie is of course the daughter of Elvis Presley, who enjoyed eating ham a lot (below; ham's religious affiliations unknown).

The law firm owned by Van Susteren and her husband has also brought a lawsuit against Wellspring, a cult recovery facility, for reasons unclear, since Scientology is so obviously not a cult at all. (Note to Scientologists: please don't sue.)

Presumed Operating Thetan Level: We're not sure about Van Susteren, but her husband is a level 8, the highest level currently available (can only be achieved while on a boat at sea; seriously, we are not making this shit up).


#6: DANNY MASTERSON: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: his Jewfro’d stoner Hyde character from That '70s Show.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: Masterson played the only bearable character in a show consisting of smirking human skeleton Topher Grace, face-punchable douchebag Ashton Kutcher and functionally retarded ethnic stereotype (and Lindsey Lohan despoiler) Wilmer Valderrama. Masterson’s the only guy in that cast that we don't actually want to strangle to death, and that's taking into account that he probably spends at least two embarrassing hours a day "sideburn-grooming."

But, alas, it's true. In his own words: "I have always been in Scientology my entire life. Each service in Scientology is something I have added to my toolbox of data for living." In December 2005, Masterson helped promote the gala opening of Scientology's controversial "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" Museum. You know, for the kids.

Connections: Laura Prepon, the red-headed masturbatory aid from That '70s Show, was brought into the Scientology fold by Danny and his brother Christopher (troublemaker Francis on Malcolm in the Middle) after Laura and Christopher started dating. Frankie Muniz has so far not been asked to participate, putting his Thetans at considerable risk. On the plus side, Frankie Muniz has not been asked to participate in something.

Presumed Operating Thetan Level: unknown; can perhaps be found in his high-tech data toolbox

#5: ISAAC HAYES: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: The theme song to Shaft; playing Chef on South Park.

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: Who’s a sex machine to all the chicks? Not Isaac Hayes, unless they’re at least level 4.

Okay, this entry's sort of cheating, since after Hayes' public dismissal from South Park last year over the show's offensive portrayal of Scientology, pretty much everyone's aware of Isaac's Xenu-battling ways at this point. Still, though: motherfucker wrote the theme song from Shaft! Come on!

Rumors abound that Hayes was forced by Scientology overlords to quit South Park after the infamous “In the Closet” episode. Whew! Good thing it's not a cult, though! (Don't sue.)

Connections: The other three black Scientologists, who remain shrouded in mystery.

Presumed Operating Thetan Level: the baddest mother-- "Shut your mouth!" "I'm just talkin' 'bout Operatin' Thetan Levels!" "Then we can dig it."


#4: BART SIMPSON: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: Okay, it’s technically Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson

Why You Wouldn't Expect Her To Be a Scientologist: Don’t have an Engram, man! Of all people to believe in crazy shit L.Ron Hubbard cooked up on a sailboat while knocking back Coronas, we wouldn't have pegged the voice of Bart Simpson. Cartwright says she learned about Scientology in her acting class in 1988. It's frankly mind-boggling that she could have somehow heard about this in a place where people who can't act get in a group to act like trees and believe anything their teacher tells them.

Connections: Mr. Burns? Bumble Bee Man? LENNY????

Presumed Thetan Level: Four (self-"auditing"; gives one the ability to talk like an eight-year-old boy and produce catchphrases that wind up on t-shirts)


#3: SONNY BONO: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: being Cher’s ex-husband; being a Republican congressman; not wearing a helmet when skiing

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: Back in the Sonny & Cher days, you totally would have pegged the diminutive, fringe-wearing Bono as the sort of vacuous, henpecked sucker to get roped into a fruity Hollywood cult.

But after he went all Catholic Republican in the '90s, he allegedly put all that hippy nonsense behind him. However, several sources claim he kept close ties with the Scientologist Church until his death, consulting members frequently on both personal and political issues. That’s reassuring.

He was also quoted as saying: "My only sorrow is that L. Ron Hubbard left before I could thank him for my new life," in a full-page ad featured in several newspapers after Elron's death.

Connections: Widow and replacement congresswoman Mary Bono has also taken Scientology courses. Bono was introduced to Scientology by Mimi Rogers (who was also responsible for inducting football player John Brodie, and of course, Tom Cruise.)

Presumed Thetan Level: Slalom


#2: JERRY SEINFELD: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: Seinfeld; questioning the “deal” with airline peanuts; drilling a minor

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: Cynical Jewish comedians are better known for having issues with their mothers and getting their laundry back from the drycleaners than worrying why the Galactic Confederacy blew up a bunch of volcanoes, dooming us all to centuries of terror. Also: he's Jewish. We're pretty sure religion doesn't advertise two-for-one specials.

Still, while Seinfeld claims not to be an adherent, "I took a couple courses a number of years ago that I thought were fabulous. I learned a lot and I had a good experience with it…I think the stuff I learned there really did help me a lot." He’s also dismissed articles questioning Scientology as "poor journalism." Let that be a lesson to journalists everywhere, from the mouth of Seinfeld himself: stop questioning things.

Connections: Nothing we can prove. But Michael "N-Word" Richards could probably use whatever well-funded stealth Scientology PR team's keeping Tom Cruise's career afloat right about now.

Presumed Thetan Level: What’s the deal with all these levels? Has anyone else noticed this?


#1: CHARLES MANSON: SCIENTOLOGIST

Best Known For: viciously murdering people, ordering people to viciously murder other people; carving swastikas into his forehead

Why You Wouldn't Expect Him To Be a Scientologist: One of the biggest lunatics in American history is actually precisely who we'd expect to be down on the ground with psychotic theories about aliens and immortal spirits. But here’s the kicker: Manson took over 150 hours of Scientology courses, rejected it as too crazy, and then went on to murder a whole bunch of people.

We're just saying.

Connections: Peter "Big Gunner" Skinner, the guard he supplies cigarettes to so he can avoid getting raped all the time.

Presumed Thetan Level: Batshit insane, but knows total bullshit when he sees it.


martes, 29 de mayo de 2007

Tigers under the water







Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor

“A billion customers in the world,” Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently, “are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house.”

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Tomas Bertelsen

A pot-in-pot cooler that relies on the evaporation of water from wet sand to cool the inner pot.

Vestergaard Frandsen

The Lifestraw drinking filter, which kills bacteria as water is sucked through it.

One computer for every child.

Stanford Richins

A portable light mat.

The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.

“We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.

To that end, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which is housed in Andrew Carnegie’s 64-room mansion on Fifth Avenue and offers a $250 red chrome piggy bank in its gift shop, is honoring inventors dedicated to “the other 90 percent,” particularly the billions of people living on less than $2 a day.

Their creations, on display in the museum garden until Sept. 23, have a sort of forehead-thumping “Why didn’t someone think of that before?” quality.

For example, one of the simplest and yet most elegant designs tackles a job that millions of women and girls spend many hours doing each year — fetching water. Balancing heavy jerry cans on the head may lead to elegant posture, but it is backbreaking work and sometimes causes crippling injuries. The Q-Drum, a circular jerry can, holds 20 gallons, and it rolls smoothly enough for a child to tow it on a rope.

Interestingly, most of the designers who spoke at the opening of the exhibition spurned the idea of charity.

“The No. 1 need that poor people have is a way to make more cash,” said Martin Fisher, an engineer who founded KickStart, an organization that says it has helped 230,000 people escape poverty. It sells human-powered pumps costing $35 to $95.

Pumping water can help a farmer grow grain in the dry season, when it fetches triple the normal price. Dr. Fisher described customers who had skipped meals for weeks to buy a pump and then earned $1,000 the next year selling vegetables.

“Most of the world’s poor are subsistence farmers, so they need a business model that lets them make money in three to six months, which is one growing season,” he said. KickStart accepts grants to support its advertising and find networks of sellers supplied with spare parts, for example. His prospective customers, Dr. Fisher explained, “don’t do market research.”

“Many of them have never left their villages,” he said


In India, Grandma Cooks, They Deliver

MUMBAI, India — Gaurav Bamania, a hedge fund analyst who works in one of the many downtown office towers that now dominate the skyline of India’s financial capital, could easily eat lunch at one of the city’s better restaurants. Instead, Mr. Bamania, 26, follows a practice dating back over a century to the early years of British rule: he has a hot meal, lovingly cooked at home by his grandmother, and delivered to his desk every workday.

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Fawzan Husain for The New York Times

A dabbawalla taking his lunch break after handling thousands of meals. Despite its complexity, the system is known for its precision. More Photos »

In India, where many traditions are being rapidly overturned as a result of globalization, the practice of eating a home-cooked meal for lunch lives on.

To achieve that in this sprawling urban amalgamation of an estimated 25 million people, where long commutes by train and bus are routine, Mumbai residents rely on an intricately organized, labor-intensive operation that puts some automated high-tech systems to shame. It manages to deliver tens of thousands of meals to workplaces all over the city with near-clockwork precision.

At the heart of this unusual network is a chain of delivery men called dabbawallas.

The word comes from tiffin dabba, a colonial reference to a box containing a light meal, and walla, the man who carries. The precision and efficiency of the dabbawallas have been likened to the Internet, where packets identified by unique markers are ferried to their destination by means of a complex network.

“There is a service called FedEx that is similar to ours — but they don’t deliver lunch,” said one dabbawalla, Dhondu Kondaji Chowdhury.

The British introduced the service 125 years ago after the city was flooded by workers from different regions. The dabbawallas made it possible for workers to bridge the distance between work and home and between regional food tastes.

The service has until recently thrived purely on word of mouth. But it is now getting a high-tech lift, as the dabbawallas have joined up with Web service providers. An office worker, with someone lined up at home to cook, can sign up for the service through text messaging or an e-mail message.

Variations of the lunch delivery system have sprung up in the United States, generally in metropolitan areas with large South Asian populations like San Francisco and New York. But these services are comparatively small.

In the urban sprawl of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where going to work means leaving home as early as 7 a.m., long before the woman of the house has started cooking for the day, the dabbawalla system has withstood the onslaught of office cafeterias, neighborhood eateries, multinational food chains and high-end restaurants, where table reservations are hard to come by. The dabbawallas even deliver in the pouring rain or during political strife. And business is still growing, at a steady rate of 5 percent to 10 percent a year.

The service is at once simple and complex. A network of wallas picks up the boxes from customers’ homes or from people who cook lunches to order, then delivers the meals to a local railway station. The boxes are hand-sorted for delivery to different stations in central Mumbai, and then re-sorted and carried to their destinations. After lunch, the service reverses, and the empty boxes are delivered back home.

The secret of the system is in the colored codes painted on the side of the boxes, which tell the dabbawallas where the food comes from and which railway stations it must pass through on its way to a specific office in a specific building in downtown Mumbai.

“We don’t know how we could survive without this system,” said Vrinda Chiplunkar, who prepares daily lunches of lentils, vegetables, rice, chapatis and salad for her husband, Chandrashekhar Chiplunkar, who runs the foreign exchange division of Oman International Bank. “The old fashioned, inexpensive dabbawalla system is a rare survivor in this fast-paced world.”

The Chiplunkars are loyal customers of 64-year-old Mr. Chowdhury. Like many fellow dabbawallas, Mr. Chowdhury is a migrant from a rural village in the region, still illiterate but having learned on the job to read the numbers and letters painted on the lunch boxes and to sign his name to customer receipts.

What Would Happen if You Bought 25 Bottles of Nyquil?

Ever since I was a little girl, I have periodically played a game I like to call ‘What would happen if…’

The very first time I played this game I was 5 years old and riding in the car with my Mother. She had allowed me to sit in the front seat, but the novelty of that wore off rather quickly and I got bored. Almost immediately after we merged onto the expressway, I spied the car door handle. I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if I opened the car door right now?

Would the door fly open? Or would it stay closed since the car was in motion? If it flew open, would the wind rip the door completely off of the car? My seatbelt was secure, so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t fly out of the car, but would anything else fly out? What would my Mother do?

I looked over at my Mother who was paying careful attention to the road and vaguely singing along with the radio. Then I looked over at the gleaming car handle. I knew that opening the door while we were driving was a very stupid and potentially dangerous thing to do, but it was almost as if the handle was calling my name. It wanted me to open it. I tried to resist, but my curiosity overwhelmed me. Slowly, I reached over…and opened the door.

Turns out the only thing that happens when you open the car door on the expressway is your Mother screams, “OH MY GOD! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?” pulls over, closes your door, and then goes homes and bitches to your Father about her vehicle being unsafe and demands he buy her a new one.

It wasn’t the most exciting outcome in the world, but at least I knew.

This past Friday evening, I found myself inadvertently playing another game of ‘What would happen if…’

My husband has been dealing with a particularly nasty summer cold and it’s making it difficult for him to fall asleep. Shortly after midnight one evening, he asked me to run to the store and pick him up some medicine. I agreed because I’m nice like that.

After selecting a bottle of Nyquil and my Husband’s favorite brand of ice cream, it was time to check-out. I elected to go through the self check-out lane because the group of kids who normally jockeyed the registers looked thoroughly engrossed in a conversation about their parents sucking or their jobs sucking or who de-friended them on myspace recently or whatever and I didn’t want to interrupt them. Besides, I have two fully functioning arms. I am capable of scanning and bagging my own ice cream.

However, after I scanned my items, the computer started beeping.

“You have selected an age restricted item. Please wait for a cashier,” it said.

“What the Hell?” I mused, “Ice cream and Nyquil is age restricted now?”

A teenager with a lip piercing and bad dye job came rushing over. “Can I see your ID?” she chirped.

“What did I order that needs ID?” I asked.

She looked over my purchases and shrugged. “I guess it’s the Nyquil.”

I sighed deeply and handed her my driver’s license. She glanced at it quickly, typed my birthday into the computer, handed it back, and scurried away. Even though I didn’t show it, I was all kinds of annoyed.

I mean, what kind of nanny state am I living in right now? I can’t even buy cold medicine anymore without the government all up in my shit? Why is my right to privacy being invaded in favor of incompetent police officers who lack the ability to catch drug dealers without spying on the average law abiding citizen?

Then, out of nowhere, I thought, I wonder what would happen if I tried to buy all the Nyquil on the shelf?

Would they laugh? Would they get angry? Would they sell it to me? Would they call the cops? Would they interrogate me until I told them what it was for?

No matter how many years pass, I remain easily seduced by my curiosity. The harder I try to shake the wondering thoughts from my head, the more they burrow into my brain and demand recognition. By the time I got home from the grocery store, I simply had to know what would happen if I tried to buy an entire shelf full of Nyquil.

The next morning, I woke up bright and early with the intent of carrying out my plan. Now I’m not really sure how the typical Meth Head dresses, so I took a guess. I clad myself in an old T-shirt and a ripped pair of pants that were covered in paint. I pulled my hair back in a ratty ponytail and slipped on a pair of dirty sandals. My goal was to look as shady as possible without overdoing it.

Upon entering the store, I grabbed one of those hand-held shopping baskets and walked with single minded purpose over to the drug isle. I then proceeded to fill my basket with every bottle of Nyquil sitting on the shelf. There weren’t that many and I really wanted to be obvious, so I decided to buy all the generic versions as well. Then I marched my ass right over to the cashier and emptied my basket onto the conveyor belt. At first she wasn’t really paying attention as she grabbed bottle after bottle and flipped them through the scanner. Then a little light must have gone off in her head because she suddenly paused.

“Are these on sale or something?” she asked.

“Nope.” I replied noncommittally.

“I’m going to need to see your ID,” she responded.

“Sure.” I said as I handed it over.

“I’ll be right back,” she assured me as she scurried over to the customer service desk to show my ID to who I assumed was the manager.

The guy in line behind me asked, “Someone sick?”

“I’m having a yard sale,” I replied. Yeah, my answer didn’t make much sense. But it was none of his business, so fuck him.

After about 10 minutes, the cashier came back and gave me my ID. Then she finished ringing me up and handed over two bags of Nyquil. “Um, have a nice day,” she said.

I thanked her politely and headed out to my car thinking to myself that the whole scenario ended up being fairly anticlimactic. This time, bending to the will of my curiosity earned me nothing more than 10 minutes of inconvenience and 25 bottles of unneeded Nyquil. Fucking fantastic.

I went home, unloaded my spoils onto my kitchen table and decided to take a nap on my couch. Right before I fell asleep, I thought to myself, I really need to stop playing that game.

A couple of hours later, my brother and his girlfriend woke me up.

“What the hell is with all the Nyquil?” he asked.

I told him about my game and how nothing really exciting happened. Then, he said, “Probably because you bought the wrong shit.”

I said, “Huh?”

With a smirk on his face, my brother explained, “The ingredient in Nyquil that is used to make crystal meth is called pseudoephedrine. But these don’t have it in them. Look! It even says right here on the front, ‘Now Made without pseudoephedrine.’

“Then why did they card me for them?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know? All I know is that you can’t make meth out of these.”

“Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed.

“You are the worst fake drug dealer ever,” my brother admonished.

His girlfriend cut in, “You know what you should get? Sudafed. They sell it behind the counter at the pharmacy and they probably won’t give you more than one or two. But it might be funny if you asked to exchange your Nyquil for 25 boxes of Sudafed.”

For me, failure tends to make me more determined, so I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. But, this time, I wanted to start my adventure with a bit more planning. I decided to call the grocery store and ask if it was even possible to return Nyquil since it was technically a medicine. The manager I spoke to assured me that as long as I had the receipt and the seal wasn’t broken, they would take it back.

So the next day, I packed up my bags of Nyquil and headed back to the grocery store. I plopped the bags on the counter of the customer service desk and amicably said, “I’d like to return these, please.”

The cashier looked shocked. “All of these?”

“Yes please,” I answered mildly, “Here is the receipt.”

“How many bottles are in here?”

“25.”

25? You bought 25 bottles of Nyquil? Why would you do that?” she asked.

“I wasn’t feeling well.” I answered.

“So why are you returned them now?” She countered.

I slightly hardened my voice. “I’m feeling better.

“Normal people don’t buy 25 bottles of Nyquil!” she exclaimed.

“So?” I snapped.

She started stammering. “Well….its just that I don’t….I don’t know…if we can take this many back. We’d have to throw them away and….I….uh….”

“I called and spoke to a manager yesterday,” I informed her, “And he told me that as long as the seal wasn’t broken and I had the receipt, you would take them back.”

“Well I’m sure he didn’t know how many you bought!”

“Does it matter?” I questioned, “Is there some sort of store policy that states you can only return so many things at a time?”

“I’m going to get my manger,” she replied.

“Fine.”

The manger came over, obviously perturbed, and we argued back and forth for a few minutes. Finally she said, “I’ll take them back this time. But next time, I won’t.”

“That’s fine by me,” I agreed.

I filled out a form with my name, address, and phone number, got my cash back and walked directly over to the pharmacy.

An older lady walked over to wait on me. “Can I please buy some Sudafed?” I requested.

“Sure!” she said as she held out her hand, “I’m going to need some proof that you’re over 18, though.”

“That’s fine,” I told her, “But I’m going to need more than one.”

“How many do you need?”

“25.”

“25 tablets?

“No, 25 boxes.”

I’m not sure if my answer extremely shocked her or extremely angered her, but her response was to shriek, “NO!”

Calmly, I asked, “Why not?”

“NO!” she bellowed again.

“But why not?” I repeated.

“BECAUSE OF THE METH!” she hollered.

I smiled a little and said, “I promise I won’t use it to make meth.”

Again: “NO!”

A concerned Pharmacist walked around the counter. “What seems to be the problem here?” he questioned.

“I’m just trying to by some Sudafed.” I answered.

The cashier squawked again, “NO! YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!”

And I was supposed to be the crazy one!

The Pharmacist gave her a confused look and she said to him, “She wants 25 boxes!”

“Whoa, wait a minute, ma’am!” he said to me.

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I realized that the manager who did my return and a couple of stock boys were walking up behind me. They were closing in on me!

I thought to myself what better time to walk away, all shifty, like I was a real drug dealer. So I abruptly did an about-face and briskly started striding towards the door.

The Pharmacist tried to stop me. “Ma’am!” he called after me, “Ma’am! I’m going to need you to come back here! Ma’am!”

Seriously, I couldn’t believe he actually thought I would fall for that. I mean, what am I? 12 years old? Did he actually think I would be naïve enough to believe that a goddamn Pharmacist had the legal right to forcibly detain me in a grocery store?

But the ridiculousness of the situation was only a fleeting thought in my mind. At that precise moment, I had more pressing matters to concern myself with. Namely, how I was going to shake the manager and the stock boy goons who were in the process of following me out of the store.

I increased my walking speed a little and made it outside. I paused for a second, thinking the chase was over, but I was wrong. The manager had tailed me into the parking lot. Frantically, she started waving the cart boys over to her and pointing in my direction. Before I knew it, I had a small army of grocery store employees following me around the parking lot. It was fucking surreal. I felt like I was starring in the deleted scenes of one of those Terminator movies.

My theory was that they were waiting until I got into my car so they could write down my license plate number. To me, this was odd, considering the fact that they had my name, address, and phone number written on a slip of paper behind the customer service desk.

Anyway, I finally thwarted them for good by electing to simply walk home. Because I live a couple of miles from the grocery store, I decided to call my brother.

“Hey, if the cops show up at my door, do not let them in without a warrant,” I told him, “That’s a violation of my 4th amendment rights!”

“No problem.” He said. He’s learned to quit asking questions.

The end result of my little escapade, however, produced no angry police officers ruthlessly pounding on my door. In fact, outside of a couple of grocery store employees who briefly pretended to be Rambo, nothing really exciting happened at all.

All in all, I ended up fairly disappointed with my most recent game of ‘What would happen if….’ You see, that’s the problem with letting yourself become randomly consumed by curiosity. Things rarely live up to your expectations.

Nyquil

Music CD, I'm just not that into you

There's a fascinating if flawed story in the WSJ today about the decline in sales of music CDs. There's much to and fro about what's behind the drop. The industry as always wants to blame piracy. Critics want to blame poor quality of product, bad marketing tactics and digital rights restricting technologies. There's even some far-sighted commentary about changing business models.

But this article, and similar ones you've no doubt read a thousand times in recent years over declines in music sales and movie attendance, miss the boat. And it's a pretty big and obvious boat at that. There are only so many hours in a day for each of us -- the consumers of entertainment -- to consume entertainment. Various new forms of entertainment that catch on have to displace some of the time we spent on our former diversions.

While CD sales are down, the number of households with DVD players more than tripled over the past five years to 84 million and sales of DVDs rose to 1.1 billion from 313 million in 2001. Does anyone really think that consumers could buy 800 million more DVDs, worth $10 billion or more, without cutting back on some other entertainment spending? Similarly, the number of households with broadband Internet connections almost quadrupled to over 36 million. At $30 a month, that's another $9 billion a year right there. The number of households with access to video on demand hit 24 million in 2005, ten times the 2001 level. And now Internet video is just starting up (Ironically, there's a review in another section of the WSJ today touting Apple's new Apple TV device to bring video and music purchased and downloaded from the Internet to your TV).

For investors, the lesson is that it's tough to buck the odds. Established players almost always fail to adapt to change. It's the nature of a free market. Today's WSJ story about music sales reminded me of the accelerating drop in old-fashioned film sales that Kodak has experienced over the past few years. So you won't be surprised to learn that if you look at the five-year stock market performance of the 130 or so sub-industry sectors tracked by Morningstar, radio, film and TV producers, broadcast TV, advertising and media conglomerates are five of the 12 worst performers, the very worst.

Here's the context: The S&P 500 averaged a 6% annual gain over the past five years, the small-cap Russell 2000 rose 12% a year and even the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index climbed 5% annually. Meanwhile investors in media conglomerates saw their stocks rise less than 3% a year, in advertising just 2% and in TV broadcasters less than 0.3% annually. Owners of film and TV producers lost 1% annually and radio investors burned down the house losing an average of 9% a year over the past five years. Ouch.

Ironically, given all the complaining that the Motion Picture Association of America does about piracy, my entire "it's just that simple" thesis is spelled out in the back pages of very informative research report that the group issued on the state of the 2005 U.S. entertainment industry.

If you flip near the back to page 51, you'll see a table of how many hours a year the average consumer "spends" on various forms of commercial entertainment. In the four years from 2001 to 2005, overall time spent on these pursuits rose to 3,482 hours per person from 3,356 hours, about a 4% increase. But that didn't benefit all forms of entertainment equally. Here's a table I've created from the MPAA report showing the change in hours per person spent by activity:

Cable and satellite TV +125
Consumer Internet +52
Home video +29
Broadcast and satellite radio +26
Wireless content +15
Video games +12

Consumer books 0

Movies (at the theater) -1
Consumer magazines -3
Daily newspapers -14
Recorded music -50
Broadcast TV -65

You get the same picture when you look at the average dollars spent by entertainment consumers (from a chart on page 53). Overall spending per person rose to $890.77 a year from $675.35, a healthy 32% increase. Spending on television (cable, video on demand etc) plus home video (DVDs) soaked up more than half of the total increase. Throw in Internet spending and you've accounted for 90%. No surprise then that spending on newspapers and recorded music actually declined.

Teen Tests Internet's Lewd Track Record

NORWALK, Calif. -- Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.

In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.

"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.

Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke's picture and leered.

The wave of attention has steamrolled Stokke and her family in Newport Beach, Calif. She is recognized -- and stared at -- in coffee shops. She locks her doors and tries not to leave the house alone. Her father, Allan Stokke, comes home from his job as a lawyer and searches the Internet. He reads message boards and tries to pick out potential stalkers.

"We're keeping a watchful eye," Allan Stokke said. "We have to be smart and deal with it the best we can. It's not something that you can just make go away."

On May 8, blogger Matt Ufford received Stokke's picture in an e-mail from one of his readers, and he reacted to Stokke's image on instinct. She was hot. She was 18. Readers of Ufford's WithLeather.com -- a sports blog heavy on comedy, opinion and sometimes sex -- would love her.

The picture was taken by a track and field journalist and posted as part of a report on a California prep track Web site. The photo was hardly sexually explicit, which made Ufford's decision to post it even easier. At 5 feet 7, Stokke has smooth, olive-colored skin and toned muscles. In the photo, her vaulting pole rests on her right shoulder. Her right hand appears to be adjusting the elastic band on her ponytail. Her spandex uniform -- black shorts and a white tank top that are standard for a track athlete -- reveals a bare midriff.

By targeting his comedic writing to 18- to 35-year-old males, Ufford has built a sports blog that attracts almost 1 million visitors each month. Ufford writes tongue-and-cheek items about the things his readers love: athletes and beautiful women. Stokke qualified as both. She was, therefore, a "no-brainer to write about," Ufford said. He posted her picture and typed a four-paragraph blurb to accompany it. Meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke. . . . Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.

"I understand there are certain people who are put off immediately by the tone of my blog," Ufford said. "Every week, there's somebody who takes offense to something, but that's part of being a comedy writer. If nobody is complaining, it probably wasn't funny. You are hoping for some kind of feedback."

By that measure, Ufford's post about Stokke created a landmark for success. He received a handful of angry e-mails, including one from the photographer who threatened to file suit if his picture of Stokke remained on the blog. But Ufford also attracted a record number of visitors in May, thanks largely to Stokke's picture. More than 20 message boards and 30 blogs copied or linked to Ufford's item.

From her computer at home, Stokke tracked the spread of her image with dismay and disbelief. She had dealt with this once before, when a track fan posted a lewd comment and a picture of her on a message board two years earlier. Stokke had contacted the poster through e-mail and, a few days later, the image had disappeared. But what could she do now, when a search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits? "It's not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet," Stokke said.

For the first week, Stokke tried to ignore the Internet attention. She kept it from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, on overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risqué magazine in Brazil.

Stokke read on message boards that dozens of anonymous strangers had turned her picture into the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood.

After dinner one evening in mid-May, Stokke asked her parents to gather around the computer. She gave them the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: to the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page ( http://www.allisonstokke.com), complete with a rolling slideshow of 12 pictures; to the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; to the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke's picture and posted sexual fantasies.

"All of it is like locker room talk," said Cindy Stokke, Allison's mom. "This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother."

An impostor created a fake profile of Stokke on Facebook, a social networking site intended mainly for college students. Stokke's classmates at Newport Harbor High School started receiving Facebook messages that seemed to be from Stokke -- except she typed in Southern jargon and listed her interests as only "BOYS!!!!"

Last week, Stokke wrote a complaint letter to Facebook, and it immediately took down the fake profile. She hasn't contacted any other Web sites, she said. Allan Stokke, a defense attorney, studied California's statutes so he would know if he saw or read anything about his daughter that went beyond distasteful to illegal.

"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."

Last Friday night, Stokke stood underneath the stadium lights at Cerritos College here, 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. A few thousands fans had come to watch a postseason meet, and dozens of photographers and cameramen roamed the field. Before her first jump, Stokke tried to control her breathing as she chatted with her coach. A good jump here would qualify her for the state championship in Sacramento.

A former gymnast, Stokke had tried pole vaulting as a lark as a freshman in high school. Two months later, she set a school record. She won the 2004 state championship three months after that. Stokke had augmented her natural, pole-vaulting disposition -- speed, upper-body strength and courage -- by lifting weights three times each week. College programs including Harvard, Stanford and UCLA also recruited her.

During her meet at Cerritos College, Stokke cleared 11 feet, then 12 feet, then 13 feet and qualified for the state meet. By the time she stared ahead at a bar set 13 feet 6 inches, all other nine pole vaulters had maxed out. Stokke warmed up by herself, the only athlete left.

She loved pole vaulting because it was a sport built on intricacies. Each motion required calculation and precision. A well-executed vault blended a dancer's timing, a sprinter's speed and a gymnast's grace. "There's so much that happens in a vault below the surface," Stokke said.

As the sun set Friday night, Stokke positioned her pole as if she were jousting and sprinted about 100 feet toward the bar. She ran on her tip-toes, like she'd learned from ballet. As she approached her mark, Stokke bent her pole into the ground and coiled her legs to her chest. She lifted upward, twisting her torso 180 degrees as she passed over the bar. It was a beautiful clearance, and the crowd stood to applaud.

Back on the ground, her vault accomplished, Stokke smiled and took in the scene around her. In the stands and on the field, she was surrounded by cameras. And for a second Stokke wondered: What, exactly, had they captured? And where, exactly, would it go?

viernes, 25 de mayo de 2007

Trafalgar Street with Grass

A girl enjoys the sunshine in London's Trafalgar Square, which has been grassed over for two days to promote the city as one of the greenest capitals in the world.

miércoles, 23 de mayo de 2007

Odd Aerial "Drone"? Photographed Again Over Capitola, California


Updated: Odd Aerial "Drone"? Photographed
Again Over Capitola, California

© 2007 by Linda Moulton Howe

"No one had any idea what this thing was, but everyone in the car
was visibly freaked out by it."
- rajman1977, Capitola


Capitola, population 10,033, is in Santa Cruz County
northeast of Santa Cruz, California.

Return to: Previous Odd Aerial "Drone?" Earthfiles

Return to: Engineer Comments About Odd Aerial "Drone?" Earthfiles

[ Editor's Note: The words "Chad" and "Drone" at the beginning of my image file names are only an organizational effort for Earthfiles. I work on a Mac G-5 and re-size images for Earthfiles formats. I downloaded the Chad images from the COAST website, which I understand were also re-sized there. So, the only May 6, 2007, original images would be with Chad. Same applies to the May 5, 2007, Lake Tahoe Submitter 7013; and May 16, 2007, Capitola rajman1977 images.

Further, the two individuals quoted in 05/16/07Earthfiles Engineer Comments provided me names and contact information and are not anonymous to me, but I protected their confidentiality.

As a journalist, I would like to learn if our military has some kind of black project for ion electrostatic propulsion drones.]

May 21, 2007 Capitola, California - Around May 11, 2007, Coast to Coast AM webmaster, Lex, received an email letter with attached May 6, 2007, images of a very odd aerial object from a Central California resident who calls himself "Chad." Chad is worried about his family's safety and health since he has now seen the bizarre aerial object at least eight times from his house windows and on hikes near his home. Neighbors, he said, have also seen the unidentified aerial object. Then on May 15, 2007, I received another similar aerial "drone" image allegedly taken by a person at Lake Tahoe, California, on May 5, 2007 and identifying themselves at UFO Casebook.com as "Lake Tahoe-05-05-07MUFON Submitter 7013."

Now on May 21, 2007, the following images have been posted at Flickr.com with this email by rajman1977:

"This week I was visting my fiance's parents in Capitola (we were actually there to tell them about our engagement, in fact). We were eating dinner on the back porch when we noticed this "object" sort of hovering in the sky. The camera was still out from earlier so I grabbed it and tried to get some clear shots of it. It took off over the roof shortly after, so I ran into the street in front of the house to follow, trying to get more shots without wobbling around too much (which was harder than it sounds). It then came in lower over a telephone pole, where I was able to get a few more pictures, before it finally took off into the distance pretty fast. I thought it was gone but noticed it was still visible, so I grabbed a few more pictures.

At one point a car stopped to look as well. No one had any idea what this thing was, but everyone in the car was visibly freaked out by it. Once it was gone they told me to call the news and drove off. :) I'm not sure who else saw it in the neighborhood since I don't live down there, but I'm sure at least a few others must have noticed it. It was way too werid and way too close to go unnoticed. Once it was gone and I caught my breath I could barely stop my hands from shaking for the next hour or so. Needless to say, this is all we talked about for the rest of the night. None of us can figure out what it was (and that's saying something, because my fiance's dad is a mechanical engineer).

We sent a copy of the photos to their newspaper but haven't heard back yet. I dunno how long that kind of thing takes.

There's also some writing on this thing, which I didn't recognize (and I read both English and Hindi). You can see it in a few of the pictures.

Anyway, I created this Flickr account for the best of these pictures. I have no clue what this thing is so I'm putting it out there to see if anyone else saw it."


Rajman1977 Image 0013, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.



Rajman1977 Image 0014, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.




Rajman1977 Image 0015, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.



Rajman1977 Image 0016, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.


Rajman1977 Image 0017, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.


Rajman1977 Image 0018, taken with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X on May 16, 2007,
in Capitola, California. Image © 2007 by rajman1977 at flickr.com.

May 18, 2007 - Email from Earthfiles Viewer:


"I read with keen interest your Earthfiles and Coast To Coast articles about what was described as 'drones' photographed over Lake Tahoe and somewhere here in the Central Valley of California. It jolted my memory to something that happened a few years back when I was at the Sequoia National Park with my dad (now deceased).

"At the time, there was alot of road repair going on at the park. We were preparing to leave the park and we were a bit confused as to which road to take to get out of the park and back on a main road heading home to Porterville. We made a couple of stops to ask directions: first with a park ranger and again later from one of the road repair crews.

"As I was getting directions from the park ranger this WEIRD THING flew overhead, going at a nice, leisurely pace and reminding me of a dragonfly! I asked the park ranger: 'WHAT was THAT?!' to which he replied: 'I'm told it's some kind of a communications device that's supposed to help the park service monitor the area for potential problems-stuff like fires and such.'

"I joked: 'So it's NOT a UFO?' to which he kind of chuckled and casually said: 'Ha! Nah, I don't think so!' He was just so CASUAL about the whole thing that I really didn't give it much thought at the time, and I'd almost FORGOT about it until I read that story posted by a 'Chad.' My dad (who was up in his late eighties at that time) never saw it, but I AGAIN spotted it off in the distance as we got directions from the road crew.

"Ask Chad if he took his photographs in or near the Sequoia National Park. If he DID, he might want to casually approach one of the park service personnel and show them one of the photographs he took, asking them for any/all information they know about it. I actually did have a camera with me that day ( a small, hand-wind 110), but I wasn't holding it when I got out of the car to ask directions (though I likely would NOT have gotten photos anywhere near as GOOD as what Chad (or the other guy at Lake Tahoe) did, as I didn't have high-speed film and it was such a CRUMMY little camera anyway!

"P.S. Not sure if there is any connection to the funny thing I saw, but that day I got a TERRIBLE headache and nausea, which was WHY we decided to leave the park earlier than we'd planned that day. I'd chalked it up to driving at such high elevations (and Dad going too fast on those tight, winding roads), but then again you never know!"

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

United Kingdom Police


The 'spy drone' was originally used for military reconnaissance
and will now be used by civilian police in Liverpool, England,
this 2007 summer for the first time. Merseyside Police hope it will reduce
their manned helicpter costs which support their police mobile CCTV
vans on routine patrols. Image © 2007 by UK Daily Mail.

US Air Force Website

USAF Drone Images


MQ-1 Predator, Nellis AFB, Nevada - Armed with an AGM-114
Hellfire missile on a training mission. Photo courtesy USAF.


Predator, Operation Iraqi Freedom - A high-altitude aerial reconnaissance
plane used for surveillance for ground forces. Photo by Staff Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock, USAF.

Army Website: https://uav.peoavn.army.mil/

"Public Viewing of Website

Due to the threat against our nation, portions of the UAVS homepage have been temporarily blocked from Public viewing. Additional information will be added in the future as it becomes available.
This Page Last Updated: June 24, 2002."

Army Drone Images

If any Earthfiles viewers or Coast to Coast AM listeners have seen a similiar aerial craft or have any information about it, please email me at: earthfiles@earthfiles.com


More Information:

For further information about unusual aerial craft, please see Earthfiles Archive, such as the brief excerpt of reports below:

• 11/05/2007 — CIA Origin of National Enquirer?
• 16/03/2007 — Tenth Anniversary of March 1997 Phoenix Lights: What Was the 2-Mile-Long Triangular Craft?
• 13/03/2007 — Part 4: Mysterious Events At 2005 Tawsmead Copse "Insectogram" Crop Formation
• 09/03/2007 — Zones of Fear and Diamond-Shaped Aerial Light
• 04/03/2007 — Part 2: Mysterious Events At 2005 Tawsmead Copse "Insectogram" Crop Formation
• 18/02/2007 — Part 4: Tappen, North Dakota, High Strangeness Provokes Many Emails from Viewers and Listeners
• 14/02/2007 — Part 3: Tappen, North Dakota, High Strangeness Provokes Many Emails from Viewers and Listeners
• 12/02/2007 — Part 2: Tappen, North Dakota, High Strangeness Provokes Many Emails from Viewers and Listeners
• 11/02/2007 — Part 1: Tappen, North Dakota, High Strangeness Provokes Many Emails from Viewers and Listeners
• 10/02/2007 — Part 12: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 07/02/2007 — Part 11: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 02/02/2007 — Blue Metallic "Blimp" Seen Over O'Hare Airport
• 30/01/2007 — Part 10: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 16/01/2007 — Part 9: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 02/01/2007 — Grey Aerial Disk Reported by Chicago O'Hare United Airlines Pilots and Mechanics
• 31/12/2006 — Part 8: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 27/12/2006 — Part 7: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 18/12/2006 — Part 6: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 11/12/2006 — Part 5: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 06/12/2006 — Part 4: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 29/11/2006 — Part 3: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 28/11/2006 — Part 2: Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue
• 27/11/2006 — Inside Saucer Post ...3-0 Blue © 1957 by Leonard H. Stringfield
• 03/11/2006 — Another UFO Retaliation to Radar Lock On - 2003
• 28/10/2006 — Close UFO Encounter by USAF Eyewitnesses
• 26/10/2006 — Norwegian Crashed Disc and Other High Strangeness
• 19/10/2006 — UFO Retaliation to U. S. Army Radar Lock On in Florida, 1967
• 13/04/2006 — High Strangeness In Skies Near White Sands Missile Range
• 12/04/2006 — Part 18 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 11/04/2006 — Part 17 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 05/04/2006 — Part 16 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 03/04/2006 — Genetic Harvest in Cimarron, New Mexico?
• 05/02/2006 — Mysterious Dark Helicopters Over Comal County, Texas
• 29/01/2006 — Part 10 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 27/01/2006 — Part 2: Navy Physicist and USAF Geophysicist Discuss UFOs and ETs
• 20/01/2006 — Part 1: Navy Physicist and USAF Geophysicist Discuss UFOs and ETs
• 17/01/2006 — Part 9 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 13/01/2006 — 31st Cattle Mutilation on Red Bluff, California Ranch
• 09/01/2006 — Part 8 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 03/01/2006 — Part 7 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 31/12/2005 — Part 6 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 27/12/2005 — Part 5 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 24/12/2005 — Part 3 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 24/12/2005 — Part 4 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 21/12/2005 — Updated: Part 2 - Peculiar Phenomenon, Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 19/12/2005 — Part 1 - Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
• 21/09/2005 — Silent, Unidentified Aerial Triangle Entered Thunderstorm Over Fairborn, Ohio
• 17/04/2005 — 1949 Aerial Disc Covered-Up By Project Blue Book As "Kite"
• 14/04/2005 — "Battle of Los Angeles" On February 25, 1942: When America's 37th Coast Artillery Brigade Fired Off 1,430 Anti-Aircraft Shells At A UFO


Websites:

rajman1977 flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8418528@N06/sets/72157600236430072/

NASA Drones: http://uav.wff.nasa.gov/relatedlinks.cfm

Ion Propulsion, NASA: http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/ionpropfaq.html

High Power Electric Propulsion Program (HiPEP): http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/present/hipep.htm

Coast to Coast AM Website: http://www.coasttocoastam.com

UFO Casebook: http://www.ufocasebook.com/strangecraftlaketahoe.html

martes, 22 de mayo de 2007

Shell hit by ‘dirty’ Arctic oil furore



The world’s largest untapped oil reserves – in northern Canada – have become the new front line in the battle between environmentalists and the energy industry.

Shell, a self-styled “green” energy company, is to invest billions of pounds in exploiting the Athabasca tar sands.

Environmentalists say the tar sands are the world’s dirtiest oil deposits and that refining them generates three to four times more CO2 than normal oil extraction.

However, Clive Mather, chief executive of Shell Canada, said rising demand and surging oil prices could not be resisted. “The deposits are huge, potentially even greater than in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “The time is right to exploit them.”

The Athabasca tar sands are named after the river that runs through them. They contain about 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, of which 175 billion can be reached with existing technologies and another 135 billion could be tapped with technologies under development.

The total of 310 billion barrels would give Canada the world’s largest oil reserves – bigger than Saudi Arabia’s 264 billion.

For western countries, especially America, Canada’s oil is a chance to cut dependence on the Middle East, but the environmental costs could be huge.

This is because tar sands comprise viscous bitumen and sand, a mixture that can currently only be extracted by digging it out, destroying the overlying forests.

The Athabasca region has already been scarred with huge pits, some hundreds of feet deep. Alongside them lie vast ponds that hold the contaminated sands and other residues left after the oil is removed.

Shell, along with Suncor and Syncrude, the other main oil companies in the area, are developing a second extraction method where superheated steam is pumped into the ground to melt the oil so that it can be sucked out as a liquid.

However, both processes, and the subsequent refining, require huge amounts of energy – equivalent to up to 30% of the energy contained in the extracted oil.

Shell and its partners are extracting about 150,000 barrels of oil a day but now want a fivefold expansion to 770,000 barrels. A barrel is roughly equivalent to 35 gallons. Suncor and Syncrude are each planning similar expansions to about 500,000 barrels a day.

This will require so much energy that the oil firms want to lay a pipeline across 800 miles of forest to tap into gas reserves in the Mackenzie river basin, in Canada’s far north. There are also proposals to build a nuclear power station near the tar sands.

Such plans are causing alarm among environmental groups such as Britain’s WWF. It has set up an office in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, to campaign for restraints on development and improved monitoring.

“Tar sands are the worst kind of source for oil,” said James Leaton, WWF’s policy adviser on gas and oil. “Extracting oil takes huge amounts of energy and devastates the local environment by destroying the forest and polluting rivers, lakes and the air.”

Leaton and other environmentalists contrast Shell’s operations in Canada with the firm’s public relations, which portray it as the greenest of oil companies.

Privately, however, Shell executives make clear that they are simply doing what oil companies are meant to do – extract oil. They say it is the job of governments to regulate the pace.

In Alberta little interference is likely from a state government with a powerful dislike of regulation. Rob Renner, Alberta’s Conservative environment minister, said: “We believe the speed of development is best left to the free market.”

Under Renner the monitoring of industrial pollutants from the tar sands has largely been handed over to the oil companies. One result is that the Athabasca river, and Lake Athabasca, into which it flows, are widely believed to be heavily polluted.

Medical staff at Fort Chi-pewyan, on the shores of the lake, have reported a surge in rare cancers.

The decision to exploit such oils is provoking a political backlash with Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger, the governor of California, effectively banning them. He has issued a fuel standard demanding a cut in “carbon intensity”, a measure of the CO2 generated in producing and using them.

Ten other American states and the European Commission are considering similar measures.

The reserves

Confirmed reserves of top 10 countries in billion barrels

264bn Saudi Arabia

175bn Canada

133bn Iran

115bn Iraq

102bn Kuwait

98bn United Arab Emirates

80bn Venezuela

60bn Russia

39bn Libya

36bn Nigeria




Nurses Praise Michael Moore's 'Sicko'

Sicko," the latest documentary from liberal political activist Michael Moore, has won praise from a nursing organization, which claims the movie will re-frame the health care debate.

"Michael Moore has demonstrated compassion and courage in a film that, true to his career, doesn't bend to political expediency," Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee, said.

According to Moore, the movie "will expose the health care industry's greed and control over America's political processes." It is scheduled to open June 29.

In other films, Moore has targeted the auto industry ("Roger and Me"), the gun lobby ("Bowling for Columbine"), and the Bush administration ("Fahrenheit 9/11").

DeMoro said the individuals featured in Moore's film "didn't just fall through the cracks. They were deliberately thrown overboard."

They were "cast aside by the same insurance giants that far too many ostensible reformers think we should reward for their greed by funneling them hundreds of millions dollars more," she said in a statement.

"'Sicko' presents an emotional portrait of an array of people, including volunteer rescue heroes of the September 11 attack, who are denied needed care - despite the fact that most are insured," DeMoro said.

"And it points a finger at the source of the crisis, a profit-driven insurance industry whose biggest accomplishment is buying our U.S. Congress to prevent real reform," she added.

Moore premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday to rave reviews. "My intention was to keep 'Sicko' under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes," Moore stated on his website.

"I knew that the health care industry - an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP - was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be," Moore added.

But the health care industry is not the only source protesting "Sicko." On May 2, the U.S. Treasury Department told Moore he was being investigated for violating the American trade embargo against Cuba by traveling to the communist nation to film staged scenes of 9/11 first responders receiving medical treatment.

"Rest assured of one thing: no laws were broken," Moore said, though he noted that he has hidden a master negative of the film abroad.

"I demand that the Bush administration immediately end this investigation and spend its time and resources trying to support some of the real heroes of 9/11," Moore wrote in a letter responding to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

But Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, said the investigation will only give Moore more publicity.

Tanner called the movie "silly."

"That doesn't mean that we should be running around trying to seize his movie or throw him in jail," Tanner said. "His movie is wildly inaccurate. He just badly misrepresents the facts. It's pretty much nonsense."

But Tanner acknowledged that the movie "is going to be fairly effective propaganda."

"The public is not going to see both sides of it when they see this movie, so I think it's going to be effective from their point-of-view," he told Cybercast News Service. "It's designed to tug at the heart strings, not have a serious public policy debate."

Tanner noted that we are likely to see other health care providers praising the movie.

"There is a great deal of interest in universal health insurance among some providers. It guarantees someone to provide their product," said Tanner. "I've never known businesses yet that aren't happy to have the government pay for what they sell."

The American Health Care Association declined to comment for this article.

DeMoro, who was invited to an advanced screening, said, "'Sicko' is not just an indictment of an indefensible health care industry in the U.S. It's a rejoinder for those who think we can fix the soulless monster by tinkering with an unconscionable system that puts us further in thrall to those who created the crisis."

She commended Moore for promoting universal health care coverage like in Canada, England, France and Cuba.

"Instead of destroying our system and copying the failed systems in Europe and Canada, we should attempt to reform both U.S. tax policy and Medicare and Medicaid payment policies so that consumers and providers have stronger incentives to compete on the basis of quality and cost effectiveness," Robert Helms, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute told Cybercast News Service.

He added that "what is sicko about both the California Nurses Association statement and the Michael Moore movie is the low level of understanding of our health care system that both reveal.

"Our system does have faults, especially our lack of coverage and the high cost and overuse of many procedures and services," Helms said. "But these faults have more to do with misguided government policies than some inherent fault of our system."

Bush could double force by Christmas

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.

The numbers were arrived at by an analysis of deployment orders by Hearst Newspapers.

"It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

The first surge was prominently announced by President Bush in a nationally televised address on Jan. 10, when he ordered five more combat brigades to join 15 brigades already in Iraq.

The buildup was designed to give commanders the 20 combat brigades Pentagon planners said were needed to provide security in Baghdad and western Anbar province.

Since then, the Pentagon has extended combat tours for units in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months and announced the deployment of additional brigades.

Taken together, the steps could put elements of as many as 28 combat brigades in Iraq by Christmas, according the deployment orders examined by Hearst Newspapers.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Carl S. Ey said there was no effort by the Army to carry out "a secret surge" beyond the 20 combat brigades ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"There isn't a second surge going on; we've got what we've got," Ey said. "The idea that there are ever going to be more combat brigades in theater in the future than the secretary of defense has authorized is pure speculation."

Ey attributed the increase in troops to "temporary increases that typically occur during the crossover period" as arriving combat brigades move into position to replace departing combat brigades.

He said that only elements of the eight additional combat brigades beyond the 20 already authorized would actually be in Iraq in December.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., that tracks combat forces heading to and returning from Iraq, declined to discuss unit-by-unit deployments.

"Due to operational security, we cannot confirm or discuss military unit movements or schedules," Navy Lt. Jereal Dorsey said in an e-mail.

The Pentagon has repeatedly extended unit tours in Iraq during the past four years to achieve temporary increases in combat power. For example, three combat brigades were extended up to three months in November 2004 to boost the number of U.S. troops from 138,000 to 150,000 before, during and after the Jan. 30, 2005, Iraqi national elections.

Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary for manpower during the Reagan administration, said the Pentagon deployment schedule enables the Bush administration to achieve quick increases in combat forces in the future by delaying units' scheduled departures from Iraq and overlapping them with arriving replacement forces.

"The administration is giving itself the capability to increase the number of troops in Iraq," Korb said. "It remains to be seen whether they actually choose to do that."

Nash said the capability could reflect an effort by the Bush administration to "get the number of troops into Iraq that we've needed there all along."

'Star Wars' at 30: Still a geek's paradise

Friday marks the anniversary of the 1977 movie that made it cool to be a sci-fi dork.

A long time ago, in a theater far, far away -- no, wait, it was the Southtown, in Bloomington. Off Penn. But it was a long time ago: Thirty years ago this week, "Star Wars" crashed on the screen, and within weeks the film had revitalized the very idea of being a sci-fi geek. You could take a girl to this movie. Twice, even.

Let's step back and remind ourselves how the movie changed everything. Sure, it got producers addicted to big summer blockbusters, but "Jaws" had already started that trend. Granted, it helped sweep away all the off-kilter independent visions that populated '70s cinema, but hey, no one ever stopped Robert Altman from shooting a funky, multiplot film about 27 quirky people on a giant orbital death-star. Most important, it became cool to be a sci-fi dork.

What did dorks have before? Sci-fi movies either included Charlton Heston or the threat of Charlton Heston, and they were all depressing. "Planet of the Apes": The world had been nuked. "Beneath the Planet of the Apes": The world was nuked again, for good measure. "Soylent Green": eco-collapse, overpopulation, institutional cannibalism and men wearing scarves knotted at the throat. "Omega Man": everyone wiped out by a virus, except for pasty zombie army led by a former TV anchorman. The hero always died at the end. Roll credits. Commence bumming.

"Star Trek" was dead; "Space: 1999," a ridiculous show about riding around the universe on the moon, was deeply cool and satisfying -- if you were 8. No, it was a bleak, grim era for people who want to see doors slide open with a little "woosh" sound. Into this morass of gloom came "Star Wars," and yea, it was everything the culture had denied us -- er, had denied geeks. It had good guys and bad guys, no competing shades of moral doubt, plus lasers. Lots of lasers. It had the best special effects ever seen on the screen, from the complex and kinetic spacecraft battles to Princess Leia's motionless earmuff hairstyle. Villains? From the moment Darth Vader walked into the hallway and spoke in James Earl Jones' commanding baritone-of-death, we had the villain for the ages.

Little did we know that the entire stupid thing would end up to be about Darth Vader and his problems. Granted, it was nice that he found his Good Side at the end, but that doesn't exactly make up for killing untold billions of people. Prequels included, the series still ends with Darth Vader smiling from the afterlife while Ewoks dance, which is like ending "Band of Brothers" in a disco roller-rink with Hitler doing the Hustle with Gene Kelly. But that was still a long time away when the first movie ended.

And what an ending, eh? Han Solo -- Harrison Ford in his first great relaxed performance, and his last -- conquers his selfishness and redeems himself. Luke uses the Force -- which is sort of like magnetism, plus ethics -- and blows up Peter Cushing and his Death Star, along with untold engineers, support staff, kitchen workers, etc. The movie could have ended there, but no: It concluded with an awards ceremony. At the shank end of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, Carter-era malaise and ennui, Lucas filmed a movie that ended with a princess giving medals to heroes.

After a generation of movies with tortured antiheroes who couldn't order a sandwich without making A Statement, it seemed remarkably fresh.

It saved science fiction. You could argue that "Star Wars" saved "Star Trek" as well; the success of the movie had everyone greenlighting space operas now, and the first Trek movie -- a long, serious film by the director of "West Side Story" -- was released a while later, leading to three more decades of Trek.

Disney countered with "The Black Hole," a so-so movie ruined by things like robots with Texas accents. There were dozens of B-movie knockoffs; even schlockmaster Roger Corman made one. But no one ever quite put it together like the original "Star Wars." Lucas had taken every cliché in the genre, stripped it down and served it up as new. Add some brilliant art direction and a stirring score, and you had the grandest slice of epic cheese ever made.

Alas, there were the sequels. If we knew it would lead to Jar-Jar Binks, empty digital spectacle, horrid acting, silly names, and dialogue that revealed its author to be unaware of the actual process of speech as practiced by most humans -- well, we might not have seen it 10 times that first summer. Six times, maybe. Well, seven. Just for that one part.

Which part? Depends. Everyone has a different favorite moment, and that's why we still watch it three decades later -- and why our grandkids will watch it 30 years from now. Of course, they'll have a special hi-def 3D version pumped directly into their cerebral cortexes, and some of us in the old-folks home will be complaining about that: How many times do I have to buy this movie?

And then we'll pay up again. We grew up on "Star Wars." We could outgrow it if we wanted to. But what's the fun in that?


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