Hmmmm....Scooch down to make room, and close the door...

Immigration deal survives early test from Yahoo.com

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer 48 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Senate turned back an early attack on the broad immigration overhaul Tuesday, keeping alive a temporary worker provision that could bring in as many as 600,000 foreign laborers each year.
Senators voted 64-31 to reject a proposal offered by Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., and supported by some labor unions to delete the program, which is one of the measure's key elements.

The vote was the first big test for the improbable coalition that wrote the measure and is struggling to keep the fragile deal from unraveling under pressure from across the political spectrum.

The bill still faces myriad assaults, including further Democratic attempts to limit or alter the temporary worker program, which would bring in foreign employees on two-year visas.

The bill would also toughen border security, give quick legal status to the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country unlawfully and create a new workplace verification system to bar undocumented workers from getting jobs.

It would create a point system for future immigration applicants that would place less emphasis on family connections and more on education and skills in demand by U.S. businesses.

Republicans were considering efforts to strengthen the bill's security measures and make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get on the path to citizenship. Democrats were eyeing changes that would ensure more visas would be available for family members of permanent residents or U.S. citizens.

Conservatives, liberals and centrists who worked out the White House-backed deal are struggling to keep the bill intact while giving Democrats and Republicans who harbor grave concerns about it opportunities to make revisions.

Coalition members meet each day to decide which proposed changes are deal-breakers to what they call their "grand bargain." Dorgan's was considered one such poison pill.

The temporary worker plan has come under attack from several fronts. It would allow most of the workers — largely unskilled, nonagricultural workers in areas such as construction, landscaping and meatpacking — to stay for up to three two-year stints, provided they left the United States for a year between each stay.

Many labor unions say that would depress wages and create a class of workers with no job rights. Business groups call the leave-and-return element unworkable. Hispanic advocacy organizations and religious groups say it unfairly denies workers the chance to stay in the U.S. and ultimately gain citizenship.

"It is just a fiction that these are jobs Americans aren't willing to do," Dorgan said. "The main reason that big corporations want a guest worker program is that it will drive down U.S. wages."

Dorgan's was just one of a host of modifications senators are seeking to the broad immigration plan, a measure that evokes strong emotions among the public. Aware of the potent crosscurrents on the issue, leaders have abandoned an effort to speed the measure through the Senate this week, and now plan a final vote in June.

Democrats and Republicans are to take turns offering amendments, a process expected to last all week and resume after next week's Memorial Day recess.

"There's good and bad in this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., said of the bill. "That's what amending the legislation is all about — trying to improve it."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (news, bio, voting record), D-N.M., plans to offer an amendment to slash the number of annual visas available for temporary workers to 200,000. A similar proposal passed the Senate last year by an overwhelming margin.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., plans to propose instituting mandatory prison sentences for foreigners caught crossing the border illegally. Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla., wants to add language to the measure declaring English the country's official language.

Sen. David Vitter (news, bio, voting record), R-La., announced he will seek to kill the legalization provisions altogether, calling them "amnesty, plain and simple."

>>Themed Designs and Global Schemes...Universal?

Universal plans South Korea theme park from Yahoo.com

By KELLY OLSEN, AP Business Writer Tue May 22, 11:43 AM ET

SEOUL, South Korea - Universal Parks & Resorts and a local partner signed an agreement Tuesday aimed at establishing a Universal Studios theme park in
South Korea that they want to see up and running in 2012.

"What we are hoping to do is to bring in a world class attraction not only for the Korean people but to draw tourism to this country," Frank P. Stanek, president of USKOR & Associates Co., Universal's South Korean partner, said at a press conference, citing the attraction of possible visitors from nearby China.

Other than the proposed date for opening the park, other details were vague, including how much the project might eventually cost. No site has been decided and financing remains in the planning stage, officials said.

"We are in the process of evaluating our options," said Stanek, a former Walt Disney Co. executive involved in setting up Disney them parks in the United States, Japan and France.

He said that officials hoped to decide on a location by the end of this year.

Universal Parks & Resorts, a division of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, operates Universal Studios theme parks in Orlando, Florida, and Hollywood, California, in the United States, as well as in Osaka, Japan.

The parks include attractions based on Universal films including "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and "King Kong," as well as movies made by other studios such as "Spiderman" and "Shrek."

Universal Parks & Resorts Chairman and CEO Thomas L. Williams said South Korea's economic development, the concentration of half its almost 50 million population in the Seoul area and South Korean's familiarity with American cinema were positive factors behind the decision to bring a theme park to the country.

"We want to put you into your favorite scene from your favorite movie," he said, referring to attractions at Universal's other theme parks based on the films of Universal Studios.

In a press release, USKOR and Universal Parks & Resorts said that a facility in South Korea could potentially exceed the size of Universal Studios Hollywood or Universal Studios Japan.

Officials also said a them park would also draw on elements of South Korean cinema, which has developed an international reputation, especially in Asia.

"We want to be part of the Korean Wave," Williams said, referring to the popularity of South Korean culture and cinema in the region.

Williams said that the important thing at this stage was to be open and transparent and let the South Korean people know what the companies aim to do.

"We want to have an open transparent process by which first off the public in Korea ... that they all understand that we're committed to Korea for the long haul," he said.

USKOR's Stanek said he is confident that a park in South Korea would serve as a powerful draw for tourists from nearby China. But Williams said that for now Universal has no plans for a theme park there.

USKOR also said it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's Posco Engineering & Construction Co., a unit of Posco, the world's third-largest steelmaker, to join the consortium it is organizing to invest in the park.

Universal Parks & Resorts is developing Universal Studios parks in Singapore and Dubai.

>>Themed Designs and Global Schemes...Universal?

Thriller, not Jackson, Pass the Aloo Gobi...

courtesy of North Star...

DJ SKEME RICHARDS!!

Click here to get your own player.



http://djskemerichards.podomatic.com/

My latest buddy in the hiphop scene...Check him out...He's got skillz!!

Mad Dogs, Motorcycles and Large Pro Tribute...

Thanks to Joan Reilly for hanging...Firstly, the Crash show at Wooster Projects was a great place to witness the amazing reunion of old school TC5 members Juice and Totem and Ink76 and his crew of Mad Dog riders...Then, the Large Professor Tribute at Gallapagos in Williamsburg was off the hook due to acts like my boys from the Boogie Down, Division X and the incredibly talented Beatboxer Entertainment and special thanks to DJ Skeme Richards, who is good peoples and also plays the most amazing bboy music...Haven't had a night like that in a while but it was the kind of night that makes NYC so special and makes me happy to be here...Hiphop is not dead...Another thing, I'm so glad I no longer live in Williamsburg, but man has it changed since I lived there...There's all kinds of new stores, one would never have to leave that area...Ever...I mean when I was living there, there were like two polish bars, a punk rock bar, and a couple of restaurants...I left before Anytime opened up...That was the beginning of the demise...Ah, gentrification...

Dalek: Very clean, nice colors...

from Desperate, Rejected, and Angry by Dalek...juxtapoz.com

...The garbage Pail Phony Lisa, that's tight...

Yo! Nobody's Nastyer!

Menu Foods Scare...Oh no my baby boy Battra...

Tainted Pet Food-Kidney Illness Link
by Andrew Bridges AP Writer

...That suggests the contamination was more toxic to cats, Lewis said. That is in line with what other experts have said previously.

At least six pet food companies have recalled products made with imported Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical. The recall involved about 1 percent of the overall U.S. pet food supply.

Measuring the tainted food's impact on animal health has proved an elusive goal. Previous estimates have ranged from the FDA's admittedly low tally of roughly 16 confirmed deaths to the more than 3,000 unconfirmed cases logged by one Web site.

"On a percentage basis it's not breathtaking, but unfortunately it's a number that, if it was your pet that was affected, it's too high," veterinarian Nancy Zimmerman, Banfield's senior medical adviser, said of the newly estimated incidence rate.

In another estimate Monday, the founder of a veterinary group said 5,000 to 10,000 pets may have fallen ill from eating the contaminated food, and 1,000 to 2,000 may have died.

The estimate was based on a Veterinary Information Network survey of 1,400 veterinarians among its 30,000 members. About one-third reported at least one case, said Paul Pion, the Network's founder. He cautioned that a final, definitive tally isn't possible, and that even his estimate could be halved — or doubled.

"Nobody is ever going to know the truth," Pion said. "It's always going to be a guess."

Also Monday, the Web site petconnection.com said it had received reports of 3,598 pet deaths, split almost evenly between dogs and cats. The site cautioned that the numbers were unconfirmed.

Banfield's veterinarians treat an estimated 6 percent of the nation's cats and dogs. After the first recall was announced, the chain beefed up its software to allow those veterinarians to plug in extra epidemiological information to help track cases, Zimmerman said.

The new template allowed vets to log what a sick pet had eaten, any symptoms its owner may have noticed, the results of a physical examination, any urine and blood test results and other observations.

Lewis said there is no reason to believe the company's findings — including an apparently heightened vulnerability of kittens to the contaminant — wouldn't hold for other veterinary practices as well.

In outbreaks of foodborne disease in humans, the FDA leans on its sister agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to help track and confirm cases. During the ongoing pet food scare, FDA officials have repeatedly reminded the nation that there is no CDC for dogs and cats.

A spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association said the lack of hard numbers has worried pet owners eager to understand the extent of the problem. He suggested the recall could spur the creation of an animal counterpart to the CDC.

"This might be something that would push this in the future," AVMA spokesman Michael San Filippo said.

From CNN.com (Pet food scare: Details on recall) POSTED: 9:27 a.m. EDT, April 17, 2007

...Menu Foods said the problem was traced to wheat gluten obtained from the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company in China. The FDA has blocked further gluten imports from the company.

The Chinese company termed the reports of chemicals in its product "rumors," but says it is cooperating with the FDA investigation.

Gluten brings elasticity and chewiness to baked products.

Menu Foods makes only "wet" pet food, such as "chunks and gravy" style varieties.

Nestle Purina also has recalled its Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy dog food that was supplied with some of the suspect wheat gluten.

The only dry product affected is Prescription Diet dry cat food made by Hill's Pet Nutrition of Topeka, Kansas. Hill's obtained wheat gluten from the same supplier as Menu Foods.

Cheers...

russtammy.jpg
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Final version of the wedding portrait for Russ and Tammy in New Hampshire...

The quotes say:
"For you see, I love you more today, more than yesterday and less than tomorrow."

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy."

"Give me one friend, just one, who meets the needs of all my varying moods."

We wii, oui, weeeeeee....

Wii Game Console bowling over retirees...From Sciam.com

By Lisa Baertlein (Los Angeles Reuters)

...UNDERDOG DELIVERS

Japan's Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers.

And the company, a former underdog best known for fun, high-quality games based on off-beat characters like plumbers -- think Mario Bros. -- has sent shock waves through game industry with the unexpected and runaway success of the Wii.

That $250 console has been stealing the show from Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s <6758.t> PlayStation 3, higher-powered consoles that are much more expensive than the Wii.

While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.

That bet paid off.

The Wii outsold the new Microsoft and Sony consoles in January and February and is generating its own buzz with everyone from nuns to cancer patients to toddlers.

There are Wii parties and Wii bowling contests. Players, who often look quite silly and occasionally injure themselves in fits of overzealous play, upload video of their Wii antics to a variety of technology Web sites like GameTrailers.com and Google's YouTube.

Carsalesman Wonder Dog...

Germ did the music...and he's saying dibs on the car in the second commercial...

Graff Lite...Courtesy of Devon...

MIT for Free...?

MIT to offer its courses free online by year end
Yahoo.com

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will become by year's end the first U.S. university to offer all of its roughly 1,800 courses free on the Internet, a school official said on Friday.

"We started this project because MIT believes that one of the best ways to advance education around the world is through the Internet," said Anne Margulies, head of online curriculum.

Online students will not be able to earn an MIT degree or have contact with faculty at the university, located across the river from Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MIT launched its "OpenCourseWare" program in 2003 and already offers hundreds of courses online. A small number of other U.S. schools are following suit. Stanford put some classes on line last year and Bryn Mawr plans to do so soon.

Last month, 1.5 million users went to the MIT course site, sampling offerings like Cognitive Robotics, Inventions and Patents, and Superconducting Magnets.

Most users -- 60 percent come from outside the United States -- gravitate toward the subjects MIT is best-known for: computer science, physics and mathematics, Margulies said.

Even MIT students who pay thousands of dollars in tuition fees for each course use the free online service to study for exams or sample what courses they may want to take on campus, Margulies said.

Flashy...

Are Flash-Based Apple Notebooks Coming?
by Elizabeth Millard, newsfactor.com (Yahoo.com)

Apple might begin selling notebook computers that use flash memory instead of hard-disk drives, an analyst has predicted, and the change could come before the end of the year.
Apple already uses flash memory in its music players, and several digital camera manufacturers also employ the technology. The memory uses less space, is lighter than a traditional hard drive, and also requires less power.

Although Apple would not confirm the accuracy of the rumors, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu noted in news reports that he believes Apple is working on creating smaller computers called "subnotebooks" that will be unveiled in the second half of 2007.

Wu was one of the first analysts to predict the launch of Apple's iPhone music player and phone, which caused a huge splash at its recent unveiling. The analyst cited unnamed industry sources for that report, and is keeping mum now on how he might have gotten the subnotebook information.

Memory Games

If Apple does pursue flash memory, it could put pressure on manufacturers of traditional disk drives, Wu noted. Some chip memory producers, such as Micron Technology, have stated in the past that a switch to flash could be inevitable because flash has several advantages and prices have been dropping recently.

In his prediction, Wu noted that price declines have made it an ideal time for flash memory makers to gain momentum in the laptop arena. Because flash memory does not have moving parts, they are less likely to be damaged than hard drives. This fact has saved many iPod owners from finding their music players kaput after they're dropped.

The small size of the memory also could spur innovation in creating smaller laptops. Flash is already used in small devices like cell phones and digital cameras, and laptops could undergo a similar miniaturization.

Flash Laptops

Even if the speculation surrounding Apple does not pan out in the near term, flash-based portable computers are likely to be the wave of the future, said Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler. "The benefits to consumers are big," he noted. "Longer battery life, more flexibility in form factors, much more durable, smaller computers."

Apple is particularly well poised to create a flash-based laptop, he added: "With Apple's modular operating system built on open-source components, they are in a good position to build a flash-based notebook computer."

One drawback to such a system is that it would be more expensive than the types of laptops made now, but that higher price is also in line with Apple, Schadler said. Because of Apple's proprietary systems, Mac fans are used to paying more than they would for a PC.

"It's in line with Apple's strategy and premium customer base," Schadler said. "If Apple builds a flash-based computer, consumers will buy it."

Opposition to folk pop for popes...What do Popes listen to in modern times? Benedict definitely not a hip pope...

Pope Opposed Bob Dylan Singing to John Paul in 1997
By Phillip Pullella

Yahoo.com
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -

Pope Benedict was opposed to Bob Dylan appearing at a youth event with the latePope John Paul in 1997 because he considered the pop star the wrong kind of "prophet," Benedict writes in a new book issued on Thursday.

Benedict, who wasCardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the time of the concert in Bologna, Italy, makes the disclosure in a new book of memoirs about his predecessor, who died in 2005.

"There was reason to be skeptical, -- I was, and in a certain sense I still am, -- to doubt if it was really right to let these types of prophets intervene," Benedict writes, only mentioning Dylan among the stars who appeared.

At the 1997 concert, Dylan, the anti-conformist troubadour of the 1960s and one of the 20th century's greatest influences on popular music, sang three songs before the Pope as part of a concert that included a number of other, mostly Italian artists.

Dylan sang "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his 1960s anti-war classic "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Forever Young," a song of hope and courage.

In his new book, Pope Benedict does not explain why he does not like Bob Dylan or why he considers him a false "prophet."

Benedict is a lover of classical and sacred music, and an accomplished classical pianist. Last year, he canceled the Vatican's traditional fund-raising Christmas concert, which was a magnet for pop stars.

Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman into a middle-class Jewish family in Minnesota, has been at times agnostic, Jewish and a born-again Christian during his musical career.

At the 1997 concert, John Paul referred to what is perhaps Dylan's most famous song, "Blowing in the Wind," which became an anthem for young people seeking meaning in life in the 1960s.

John Paul told the crowd of some 300,000 young Italian Catholics that the answer was indeed "in the wind" -- but not in the wind that blew things away, rather "in the wind of the spirit" that would lead them to Christ.

After Dylan sang, he took off his beige cowboy hat and went up to a podium to greet John Paul.

Benedict's new book, called "John Paul II, My Beloved Predecessor," is mostly a reflection on John Paul's personality and his religious writings.

Just surfin'...

Found an interesting blog, Sketchkrieg...Found a page on friendship...

I was watching their new commercial...Bank of Opportunity....

>>I'm glad to see this...

By Jonathan Stempel
from Yahoo.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp. is defending its decision to offer credit cards to people who don't have U.S.
Social Security numbers, amid criticism that the program effectively endorses illegal immigration.

The bank's pilot program, revealed last week, focuses on Hispanics in the Los Angeles area.

It has spurred opposition in Congress and from grass-roots groups who say many illegal immigrants could benefit, and that the program might foster identity theft, money laundering and terrorism.

Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis defended the program on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal. This came after some groups called for a boycott of the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets. They say their efforts are bearing fruit.

William Gheen, director of the National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition, said his group has collected hundreds of e-mails from people vowing to cancel accounts and move mortgages. The group said it has more than 11,000 signatures on its petition calling for a boycott of Bank of America.

"What Bank of America is doing is illegal, or should be," Gheen said.

For its part, Bank of America has not seen "any unusual business activity" resulting from responses to the pilot program, spokeswoman Alexandra Trower said.

"Some (customers) are very supportive, while others are not supportive," she said. "That is why we undertake pilots."

The Pew Hispanic Center estimated there were 11.5 million to 12 million illegal immigrants nationwide a year ago.

That's up from the
Census Bureau's 8.7 million estimate for 2000. The total population is 301.2 million, the bureau said.

CEO RESPONDS

Bank of America's roots date to San Francisco in 1904. That year, Amedeo Giannini, a son of Italian immigrants, founded the Bank of Italy to serve "the little guys," including immigrants that other banks wouldn't touch.

In his Thursday opinion piece, Lewis admitted it is not pleasant to be caught a century later in the "heated" national immigration debate, and that he was "feeling the passion."

Still, he pledged to continue the card program, which he said complies with the USA Patriot Act and other laws.

Lewis said illegal immigrants can obtain cards at many U.S. banks and businesses, and that Bank of America requires other identification to open accounts.

He also agreed with former U.S. Treasury Secretary
John Snow that the government could better enforce money laundering and terrorist financing laws by encouraging foreign national consumers to enter the "financial mainstream."

James Angel, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, said: "From a homeland security perspective, we want undocumented workers in the financial system, so they can be tracked."

Lewis said his bank's program can help people build credit histories -- and perhaps become long-term customers.

"Let me be clear: Bank of America does not deliberately market financial products and services to illegal immigrants," he wrote.

Nearing the end of his sixth year at the bank's helm, Lewis has faced criticism before, including for spending $82 billion to buy FleetBoston Financial Corp. and card issuer MBNA Corp. Wall Street now views those acquisitions as successes.

Lewis has led Bank of America's evolution from a regional bank into by far the largest U.S. bank by branches and deposits.

The bank is near a regulatory cap that bars acquisitions giving it more than 10 percent of U.S. deposits. It must focus on adding new customers and selling products to existing ones.

Some may need encouragement. The bank often gets mediocre scores in customer surveys, including this week's American Customer Satisfaction Index from the University of Michigan.

On Sunday's
Academy Awards show, Bank of America will launch a new advertising campaign, with a "Bank of Opportunity" tagline replacing the 4-year-old "Higher Standards" slogan.

OPPOSITION

Some Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Congress say Bank of America is pursuing one opportunity too many.

"After September 11th, we were told that money was the lifeblood of terrorists, and that we should do everything possible to block their access to financial resources," Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican and prominent illegal immigration opponent, said Thursday in a statement.

"Today we are hearing a far different message," he continued. "I hope the (Bush) Administration will shut down this reckless and illegal program."

Meanwhile, CNN host Lou Dobbs, another illegal immigration opponent, has called the card program "outrageous," and the idea that Bank of America isn't marketing to illegal immigrants "fundamentally, absolutely and unequivocally a lie."

Bank of America's Trower said it is premature to say whether the card program will expand.

"We will analyze the results from the Los Angeles pilot, from a business and environmental perspective, to determine our next steps with this program," she said.

(Additional reporting by John Poirier in Washington, D.C.)

MySpace constantly shuttin' em down...

NY Youths in plea deal in MySpace case
by Linda Deutsch, AP Special Correspondent
from Yahoo.com

LOS ANGELES - Two young New York men accused of trying to extort $150,000 from MySpace.com by developing code that tracked visitors pleaded no contest Monday to illegal computer access in a bargain with the prosecution.

Two counts of attempted extortion and another illegal computer access count were dropped in the deal, which gave the defendants three years probation. Each had faced up to nearly four years in prison.

Shaun Harrison, 19, and Saverio Mondelli, 20, of Suffolk County, N.Y., were accused of demanding the money as a "consulting fee" from the News Corp. subsidiary. The pair were offering the code on their own Web site for $29.95 and claimed to be developing an unbreakable version. MySpace had blocked the existing version after it was discovered.

The popular MySpace social-networking site — where people create elaborate profiles and personalize them with photos, music and video — is supposed to offer anonymity to visitors who browse the pages.

But Harrison and Mondelli's program collected e-mail addresses and Internet Protocol addresses, prosecutors said. Such information could have been used by stalkers trying to locate MySpace users, said Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey A. McGrath.

The men sold access to several versions of the code to computer users, who could then apply it to their own MySpace profiles. That type of traffic monitoring violates MySpace's rules.

The men boasted they had around 85,000 registered users of their tracking program, but investigators have not determined how much information users were able to cull, McGrath said.

The plea bargain, also agreed to by Paul L. Gabbert, attorney for the young men, severely restricts their access to computers, limits them to one e-mail address each, and requires they do 160 hours of community service and pay MySpace $13,500 in restitution.

Superior Court Commissioner Kristi Lousteau told the defendants that if they violate their agreement they could go to prison. She said they will be subject to search of their computers at any time and they may not access MySpace.com directly or indirectly.

The defendants stood before the commissioner and acknowledged the terms of the agreement, but neither spoke other than to answer "yes."

Outside court, Gabbert said that the agreement came from "the recognition that they are young and made a mistake and to give them a second chance."

He said they set up their business right out of high school, are going to college and "they will continue to be creative and not transgress the law."

McGrath said the young men, who were extremely proficient in the Web multimedia program Flash, were discovered by the operators of MySpace and were sent a "cease and desist" order by e-mail.

The pair sent a reply saying, "We will neither cease nor desist" and announced on their Web site that they were developing an even more sophisticated system that would soon be for sale, prosecutors said.

The problem for MySpace was that the pair's identities were not known because they were operating under pseudonyms.

The prosecution said the company then began "quasi negotiations" with the two. They were arrested last May when they flew to Los Angeles to collect the $150,000 but actually met with undercover
Secret Service and district attorney's investigators, prosecutors said.

Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, said the site is committed to protecting users.

"We are pleased with outcome of this case and hope that it sends a message to anyone thinking about causing harm to the MySpace community," Nigam said in an e-mail statement.

McGrath said there are other companies offering similar services on the Internet and that MySpace is constantly trying to shut them down.

No Bees, I heard Einstein predicted we wouldn't last more than three or four years if all the honeybees died..,oh no...

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Bees

by Liza Lentini by Discover.com

1 There are 16,000 species. Most are solitary insects; only about 5 percent are social bees, the most common being the honeybee. As many as 80,000 of them colonize a single hive.

2 Drones—the male honeybees—live only for mating with the queen. If there is a shortage of food in the hive, the workers kick their lazy, gigolo asses out.Worker bees have strictly regimented roles, including that of undertakers

3 To die for: When drones mate, they die afterwards from a ruptured abdomen. Sex detaches their endophallus, which gets stuck inside the queen.

4 She continues to mate—the drones aren’t terribly smart, apparently—until she collects more than 70 million sperm from multiple males.

5 The queen was known as the king until the late 1660s, when Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam dissected the hive’s big bee and discovered ovaries.

6 Someone call Homeland Security! Australian researchers discovered that honeybees can distinguish human faces. The insects were shown black-and-white pictures and given treats for right answers.

7 Oh, someone did call Homeland Security. In the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, Los Alamos scientists have trained bees to recognize explosives.

8 The term “honeymoon” is derived from an old northern European custom in which newlyweds would consume a daily cup of mead, made with fermented honey, for a month.

9 The term “bee’s knees” was coined by American cartoonist Tad Dorgan, who was also responsible for “the cat’s pajamas,” “the flea’s eyebrows,” “the canary’s tusks,” and (apropos of nothing) “Yes, we have no bananas.”

10 During World War I, honey was used to treat the wounds of soldiers because it attracts and absorbs moisture, making it a valuable healing agent.

11 Honey never spoils. Ever.

12 Bumblebees can estimate time intervals. Researchers have found that the insects extend their tongues in tandem with the rhythm of a sweet reward. This aids in the hunt for nectar, whose availability waxes and wanes.

13 Melittosphex burmensis, recently found preserved in amber in a mine in northern Myanmar, is the oldest bee known. It lived 100 million years ago.

14 After he had pioneered the laws of genetics with pea plants, Austrian monk Gregor Mendel bred a strain of hybrid bees. Unfortunately, they were so vicious he had to kill them.

15 The buzz that you hear when a bee approaches is the sound of its four wings moving at 11,400 strokes per minute. Bees fly an average of 15 miles per hour.

16 A newly hatched queen immediately kills all other hatched and unhatched queens in the hive.

17 The Honeybee Boogie: In 1943 Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch published his study on the dances bees perform to alert fellow workers. A round dance indicates that food is close by; a waggle dance means it is distant.

18 Worker bees have strictly regimented roles, including that of undertakers who drag their dead siblings from the hive.

19 On the April 1984 Challenger flight, 3,300 bees, housed in a special but confining box, adapted perfectly to zero gravity and built a nearly normal comb. But they didn’t go to the toilet. Since bees excrete only outside the hive, they held it in for seven days. A NASA spokesperson said the space hive was “just as clean as a pin.”

20 According to an old wives’ tale, a bee entering your house means a visitor is on his way, and if you kill the bee, the visitor won’t be a pleasant one. Suffice to say, invite that unexpected honeybee guest to sit down to tea.

Mystery ailment killing bees
By GENARO C. ARMAS
The Associated Press

A mysterious ailment is threatening the livelihood of commercial beekeepers like Charlie Vorisek of Linesville, Pa.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.

Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers -- who often keep thousands of colonies -- have reported losing more than half of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter and up to 60,000 in the summer.

"We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all," said Dave Hackenberg of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries.

The country's bee population has been shocked in recent years by a tiny parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.

Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants -- including most food crops and some that provide fiber, medicines and fuel -- rely on pollinators for fertilization.

Hackenberg, 58, was first to report Colony Collapse Disorder to bee researchers at Penn State University. He notified them in November when he was down to about 1,000 colonies after starting the fall with 2,900.

"We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it's costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take so many blows so many times."

One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival, said Dennis vanEnglesdorp, acting state apiarist for the Pennsylvania Agriculture Department.

"I would characterize it as serious," said Daniel Weaver, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. "Whether it threatens the apiculture industry in the United States or not, that's up in the air."

Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem, said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.

Researchers are also looking into the effect that pesticides might be having on bees.

In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might actually have resulted from the mystery ailment.

"Now people think that they may have had this three or four years," vanEnglesdorp said.

Later...The Fall Guy...

Cartoon Network head resigns after scare
By Harry R. Weber, AP Business Writer on Yahoo.com
Feb. 9, 2007

ATLANTA - The head of the Cartoon Network resigned Friday following a marketing stunt that caused a terrorism scare in Boston and led police to shut down bridges and send in the bomb squad. The announcement of Jim Samples' resignation came in an internal memo to Cartoon Network staff members.

"It's my hope that my decision allows us to put this chapter behind us and get back to our mission of delivering unrivaled original animated entertainment for consumers of all ages," said Samples, who was the network's general manager and executive vice president.

He said he regretted what had happened and felt "compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch."

On Monday, Turner Broadcasting and an advertising agency involved agreed to pay $2 million in compensation for the emergency response the devices had spurred in Boston. The Cartoon Network is a division of Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting, whose parent is media giant Time Warner Inc.

The agreement between Turner, Interference Inc. and several state and local agencies resolves any potential civil or criminal claims against the two companies.

Stone Age Valentines?...

By Phil Stewart...Yahoo.com

VALDARO, Italy (Reuters) - Italy won't split up its Stone Age "lovers."

In a Valentine's Day gift to the country, scientists said they are determined to remove and preserve together the remains of a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an enduring embrace.

Mr. Fusion meets refined trashcan...

Waste to Watts: Portable Refinery Transforms Trash into Power

Kitchen trash stinks, unless it can be turned into electricity, starting in Army field kitchens

By David Biello from www.Sciam.com

Mr. Fusion. If you're a fan of the Back to the Future" trilogy, you will recognize that as the name of the Cuisinart-like machine that converted beer and banana peels into nuclear power for the vaunted "flux capacitor" that allowed Dr. Emmett Brown to time travel. It is also the name—"whether we like it or not"—of a new, mobile refinery that turns kitchen waste into fuel and, ultimately, electricity, according to Jerry Warner, president of Defense Life Sciences, the company that has coordinated the research to build the first working prototype of such a machine for the U.S. Army.

The real "Mr. Fusion," or "tactical hybrid refinery" to use Army-speak, processes the waste produced by a typical kitchen—food, plastics, paper—into fuel that runs a standard diesel generator. Roughly the size of a van—13.3 feet long by eight feet wide and eight feet tall—the refinery can fuel 90 percent of the energy needs of a generator able to pump out 150 amps of electricity.

It works via parallel processes. The waste is first sorted—already standard practice at Army field kitchens, its first potential home—and then run through an industrial-strength shredder. The "ugly-looking gruel" that results, Warner says, separates into more liquid organic materials that funnel into a biocatalytic vat, and more solid materials—plastics—that find their way to a gasifying chamber. Inside the vat, enzymes and yeast—with a leavening of antibiotics for safety—digest the organic gruel into ethanol. Inside the gasifier, the plastic pellets turn to gas at temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius.

"As the waste material is introduced you can produce your gas from the gasifier within an hour and you'll start getting ethanol at six hours. By about 12 hours you can displace the diesel fuel to less than 10 percent," Warner notes. "It's scaled to take in about 2,500 pounds of mixed waste per 24-hour period."

Image: © TOM CAMPBELL/PURDUE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNICATION
WASTE REFINERY: This machine can transform 2,500 pounds of trash a day into electricity. [Click on image to enlarge.]

Both of the resulting fuels—ethanol and gas—are then burned in a standard diesel engine to generate electricity. Of the 150 amps this generator can crank out, the refinery's internal workings only require 13 amps or so, and the only waste produced is a fine ash remaining from the gasification process that needs to be removed every 48 hours. "It just gets evacuated in the same process as the waste would have," says Warner, a former infantryman. "Except now you have one thirtieth of the problem."

The prototype at Purdue University cost $950,000 to build, most of which came from the Army. More tests and demonstrations are in the waste refinery's future and the engineers are optimistic that it may be capable of achieving even greater efficiency—reducing diesel requirements to as low as one or two percent of the fuel mix. "There's a lot more energy in there," Warner says. "[Plastic] is just solidified petroleum."

Defense Life Sciences and its partners hope to have "Mr. Fusion," under another, more sober name, available for purchase within a year at roughly one third the cost of the prototype. And they are looking beyond military applications. "You might go into a large skyscraper and allow them to manage their solid waste stream right there in the building," Warner adds. "You'd eliminate the generator and hook it up to a boiler, providing a portion of the building's hot water and heating needs." The future of waste certainly seems to be power.

That was probably the best half-time show I've ever seen, or maybe I'm biased because it's Prince...

Hawkins Stunned by Prince Tribute
from SFGate.com

The Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins is still scratching his head after watching Prince cover the group's "Best of Me" during his Super Bowl halftime performance -- he thought the pop superstar hated the rockers.

The band recorded a cover of Prince's "Darling Nicky" in 2004 and asked the "Purple Rain" hitmaker for permission to release the track, prompting the reclusive star to rage at them.

Drummer Hawkins recalls, "We wanted to put it out here in the States, but Prince wouldn't let us. I heard that he didn't like our version. Or maybe he just didn't like us doing it."

Prince then publicly blasted the Foo Fighters, urging them to write their own songs, so Hawkins was bemused when the superstar performed "Best of You" at the Super Bowl in Miami, Fla., on Sunday.

Hawkins tells MTV News, "I have no idea why he did it, but I'd love to find out. ... The thought went through my head that maybe he was doing it as a sort of '[Bleep] you' to us, or maybe he really likes the song.

"Either way, it was pretty amazing to have a guy like Prince covering one of our songs -- and actually doing it better than we did.

"I was watching the game at our producer's house. I mean, I'm outside smoking a cigarette and someone sticks their head outside and goes, 'Uh, dude, Prince is doing your song.'"

All I need is one mic.

My anthem...




One Mic Lyrics

Break the chain...bringing it into the 90's...

This song reminds me of my last day at SIM...

Live performance of "Don't Dream it's Over" by Crowded House...

Snails and Vorsprung...

Can you tell I've been on YouTube?

Crash Crew, timeless classic...

Goin' way back to one of my favorite hiphop groups of all time...

Rotoscoping Moments in History....

Upon request...

Thanks Jim Henson...

Muppet Memories...

Here's Rowlf singing, "It's a Wonderful World" to a puppy, Buddy rich vs. Animal, Liza Minelli singing, "Copacabana", Beeker singing, "Feelings" and the famous sketch, "Mahna mahna..."

Peter, Peter, Peter....

Hoax Jokesters Laugh their Way out of Charlestown Courtroom
by Michael McPhee, Jessica Fargen, Laurel J. Sweet
Bostonherald.com
Two “starving artists” whose moronic Mooninite masterpieces brought Boston to a standstill yesterday were promised only $300 apiece by a guerilla marketing firm for a stunt that will cost taxpayers nearly $1 million.
Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown - who this morning had to scratch up $2,500 cash bail each for possession of a hoax device and disorderly conduct - haven’t even been paid by Interference Inc., according to a close friend.
Their new fans turned out in droves this morning at the Charlestown Division of Boston Municipal Court to see the suddenly infamous pair plead not guilty to their alleged roles in a national cartoon marketing compaign responded to by police as a well-executed terrorist plot. Even post-arrest, the whole affair seemed to be of great amusement to Berdovsky and Stevens. They giggled and laughed out loud as assistant Attorney General John Grossman, chief of high technology and computer crimes, described for Judge Paul K. Leary the light-emitting diodes fashioned to resemble an offensive Mooninite from the Cartoon Network’s TV show - and upcoming major motion picture - “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”
The Cartoon Network is owned by Turner Broadcasting, a Time Warner company.
Crystal Huff, 27, a friend of Stevens’ who sat in the courtroom crocheting, sniffed, “Turner has gotten what they want and now they’re going to leave Sean out to dry. These are starving artists. They got a pittance for all this.”
Berdovsky, a Belarus immigrant who reportedly has political asylum, came to court in long dreadlocks, red sox and sandals. Attorney Michael Rich, the de facto foster father with whom he has lived, represented both men, who appeared in shackles.
Stevens claims to be a self-employed computer consultant and Berdovsky, a freelance artist.
“They didn’t want to cause widespread panic,” Rich said. “Their intent was to reach out to their potential audience. They were shocked at the public fear and the police response.”
Neither had criminal records until now. So far, they are charged only with rigging the first of 38 battery operated Mooninite signs. It was discovered early yesterday morningon a metal beam 18 feet above the ground at the MBTA Sullivan Station in Somerville. The ominous event set off a commuter nightmare.
Berdovsky and Stevens, who’ve been described as “cooperative” with police, consented to videotaped interviews with investigators. Stevens has surrendered two expandable black poles that were allegedly used to hang the Mooninites as well as batteries, a roll of black duct tape and three pages of e-mails from the Cartoon Network.
The men, who filmed their work, were allegedly provided a hit list of locations by the New York guerrilla marketing firm Interference Inc. on behalf of the Cartoon Network. Interference had identifed areas frequented by students into alternative arts.
Prosecutor Grossman explained the reason Boston reacted as it did is because bomb cops are trained to examine foreign objects for a power source and a circuit board and both were present in the Sullivan Square Mooninite, as well as duct tape attached to a red wire.
“They believed it was very possibly a bomb,” Grossman said, adding that an obscene cartoon leering back at them did little to throw them off.
“Someone with a nefarious intent would do that on top of a bomb,” he said. “There’s a big difference between putting one on a rolled-down gate at Newbury Comics and putting one under the Longfellow Bridge.”
Over the course of several hours yesterday, police also dismantled Mooninites at Fenway Park [map], the Boston University Bridge, Downtown Crossing and in the Theater District. The Mooninites have reportedly been up for weeks.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino was still smarting over the prank this morning, but expressed some empathy for apparent pawns Berdovsky and Stevens.
“I want to go after the boardroom,” he said of Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting.
Menino said he spoke late Wednesday night with Philip Kent, the head of Turner Broadcasting.
“(Kent) said it got away from them and didn’t understand how it happened,” Menino said.
But Menino doubted how anyone could view citywide bomb scares as a joke when the devices were placed under bridges and near major highways.
“That’s not a normal place to put a prank (device),” he said. “Why didn’t this advertising agency contact the city and tell us it’s going on?”
Rich’s wife, Betty, said in Berdovsky’s defense, “Peter was hired to do a job. It was an artistic endeavor for him. This was not funny, but what is also not funny is the hysteria now surrounding this. Who is going to caught in the trap? Peter.
“I’m upset that the people who came up with these locations aren’t here with Peter and Sean,” she said.
Lorraine Stevens said her grandson is, “just a nerd. It’s nice that his friends were here. They look a little odd, but they’re all good kids.”
But a 67-year-old Charlestown woman who came to court with her husband to see this morning’s circus, said, “We didn’t think it was a big joke. I was afraid - absolutely, positively afraid.”

>>MassArt Alums makin' big moves...heh...And being a wiseass is to be expected of performance artists...What a media circus...Boston looks ridiculous...I would just like to state for the record that mullets are dead, Peter...

So this is what they look like when they make decisions about nuclear reactors...

In New Delhi, Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes off a headache and agrees to build Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh four new nuclear reactors. from sfgate.com

A Good Book Review...

Rehabilitating Robert Moses

By Robin Pogrebin from NYTimes.com

FOR three decades his image has been frozen in time. The bulldozing bully who callously displaced thousands of New Yorkers in the name of urban renewal. The public-works kingpin who championed highways as he starved mass transit. And yes, the visionary idealist who gave New York Lincoln Center and Jones Beach, along with parks, roads, playgrounds and public pools...

With the city on the brink of a building boom unparalleled since Moses’ heyday — the reconstruction of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, an overhaul of the Far West Side, sweeping redevelopment downtown — Ms. Ballon and other scholars argue that his legacy is more relevant than ever.

“Living in New York, one is aware there has been no evident successor or successors to Moses,” she said. “There aren’t master builders. Who is looking after the city? How do we build for the future?” All around New York State, she suggests, people tend to take for granted the parks, playgrounds and housing Moses built, now generally binding forces in those areas, even if the old-style New York neighborhood was of no interest to Moses himself. And were it not for Moses’ public infrastructure and his resolve to carve out more space, she argues, New York might not have been able to recover from the blight and flight of the 1970s and ’80s and become the economic magnet it is today.

“Every generation writes its own history,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian of New York City at Columbia who with Ms. Ballon edited “Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York” (W. W. Norton), the catalog accompanying the exhibitions. “It could be that ‘The Power Broker’ was a reflection of its time: New York was in trouble and had been in decline for 15 years. Now, for a whole host of reasons, New York is entering a new time, a time of optimism, growth and revival that hasn’t been seen in half a century. And that causes us to look at our infrastructure.”

“A lot of big projects are on the table again, and it kind of suggests a Moses era without Moses,” he added...

The institutions involved in the exhibitions say they never sought to whitewash Moses’ legacy. “We set out to come to terms with the enormity of Moses’ achievements,” said Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum. “I really anticipated that the show was going to be a major indictment of Moses, and I was genuinely surprised at the result.”

Each of the exhibitions has a different emphasis. “Remaking the Metropolis,” which opens at the Museum of the City of New York on Feb. 2, focuses on Moses’ roads, like the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Cross Bronx Expressway; major buildings and monuments (Lincoln Center, the United Nations); and parks (the expansion of Riverside Park, East River Park and recreational spaces in Central Park). Opening Feb. 4 at the Queens Museum of Art (whose forbidding stone building Moses had built for the 1939-40 World’s Fair), “The Road to Recreation” documents his expansion of roads and recreation in the 1930’s: some 416 miles of parkways and 658 playgrounds. “Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution,” which opens on Jan. 31 at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, focuses on Moses’ ambitious 1950s urban renewal program.

In today’s frenetic real estate market, some of those projects are now in the hands of private developers. “Look at what is happening to Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town,” Mr. Finkelpearl said, referring to the middle-class apartments that were recently sold, driving rents up. “That is so out of the spirit of Moses and the public-mindedness of Moses.”

The shows also document the Moses projects that were never built, like a controversial extension of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park, a bridge between the Red Hook section of Brooklyn and Battery Park, and two expressways, one slicing across Midtown and the other across Lower Manhattan.

MS. BALLON, who spent three years on research for the exhibitions and catalog, said she came away clear-eyed about Moses’ flaws, including his failure to grasp the social devastation caused by some of his projects. “He was perfectly positioned to recognize how any one thing had multiple consequences, like clearing a slum,” she said, yet “he purposely chose to ignore these things.”

But as she studied the archives and traveled the city, Ms. Ballon said, she “became more and more interested in the tangible things he accomplished,” feeling they were somewhat underrepresented in the Caro book.

“I wanted to investigate Moses with this emphasis on the physical form,” said Ms. Ballon, who specializes in 17th-century European architecture as well as American urbanism and architecture of the 20th century. She said she was impressed by the majesty and durability of projects like Jones Beach’s state park, with its costly brick and sandstone bathhouses; Orchard Beach in the Bronx, designed in a graceful crescent (after private bungalows were destroyed); and the city’s vast and stately public pools.

“The grandeur of those buildings — all for the public,” Ms. Ballon said. “He executed 17 urban renewal projects in nine years. That’s staggering.”

At Kips Bay Towers, the architect I. M. Pei “brought reinforced concrete construction to a new level of refinement,” Ms. Ballon added, “and the interior garden is a jewel.” And even the Moses-era housing projects and public buildings that were once scorned as grim and soulless are winning some appreciation because they were built fast and built to last.

At the same time the catalog she jointly edited includes some pointed criticism. Martha Biondi, a professor of African-American history at Northwestern, faults Moses’ prominent role in supporting MetLife’s decision to exclude blacks from renting apartments at Stuyvesant Town; Ms. Ballon notes his “antidemocratic methods and indifference to community values.”

As Mr. Jackson puts it, “He looks like a pretty good public servant who was in many ways a jerk.”

Yet Mr. Finkelpearl of the Queens Museum said the exhibition did not set out to make judgments on Moses’ character. “This show is not about Moses, the guy,” he said. “It’s about what Moses did.”...

Mr. Caro, though, argues that drawing such a distinction is impossible. “The man is inseparable from the story of the city of New York,” he said. “The city now is trying to come to grips with the problems he left.”

Much of the city’s current development seeks to redress Moses’ legacy, including efforts to reclaim the West Side waterfront (where he built the Henry Hudson Parkway) for public use. To improve mass transit, the city is trying to extend the No. 7 line to 11th Avenue, as well as finally create a Second Avenue subway 50 years after Moses passed over that possibility by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into roads and bridges for automobiles.

Similarly, a major redesign of Lincoln Center by the architects Diller, Scofidio & Renfro aims to open up that campus and make it more inviting, rather than what was originally envisioned: an ivory tower for the performing arts with its back turned on Amsterdam Avenue.

Economically and psychologically it has taken city planners decades to forge the resolve to break ground again on a substantial scale. “We are in a period of time when we have finally overcome a fear of overdevelopment that was in part the result of Moses’ excesses,” said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. “Part of the reason we haven’t been able to do as much is because people overinterpreted the lessons from that period of time.”

THOUGH the city is building big again, the process by which it’s doing so is forever changed. Planners point out that whether a project is driven by the city, like the Javits Convention Center expansion; the state, which initially led efforts to redevelop the World Trade Center site; or a private developer, like the Related Companies’ Time Warner Center (or any number of architecturally ambitious condominium projects), checks and balances now guarantee that no one planner can wield the power of Moses.

With his multiple hats and broad authority as parks commissioner and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chairman, Moses managed to steamroll community opposition and ignore preservation concerns. Today the Landmarks and Preservation Commission, established in 1965, reviews projects like the proposed 30-story tower by Norman Foster in the Upper East Side Historic District, whose height the commission rejected this month. The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, adopted in 1975, ensures that a project undergoes a thorough public review process.

“Can there be another time when you can get big projects done all over the city?” Mr. Doctoroff said. “I think the answer is yes, and we’re in one now. Could you ever have one person who with imperiousness, with concentrated power, with lack of community input, could get things done? The answer is no.”

Nonetheless “with the exception of the stadium” — the Jets arena rejected for Manhattan’s Far West Side — “there hasn’t been a single project we have pushed through that hasn’t been approved,” he said of the city’s pet projects.

“This is by far the most ambitious development agenda since the 1930’s, but we do it with ample public input to ensure that we get things done sensitively,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “We have really learned to listen very carefully.”

And while Moses had no interest in aesthetics (which may be one reason he could move so quickly), the current city administration emphasizes design in its approval of projects, with standards imposed by officials like Amanda M. Burden, the city planning commissioner, and David Burney at the Department of Design and Construction.

The subtitle of Mr. Caro’s book is “Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” But ultimately, the exhibitions’ organizers say, they felt it was important to judge Moses’ impact on New York in the context of what happened across the nation during his tenure, like middle-class flight from cities and the construction of highways that spurred the rise of suburbs.

“What was happening in Detroit and St. Louis?” Mr. Finkelpearl said. “Those cities died. Maybe the city was in decline, but not relative to other cities.”

Ms. Ballon said: “Moses was symptomatic of a larger historical pattern. What was happening in New York was not so different from what was happening in other places.”

So if these exhibitions restore some of Moses’ stature, will they have the opposite effect on Mr. Caro’s? Not according to Mr. Jackson, who describes himself as a great admirer of Mr. Caro and uses “The Power Broker” in his courses on New York history. “I wish I’d written the book,” he said. But, he added, he also believes the times may call for a new take on Moses. “Did he get everything right?” Mr. Jackson said. “Of course not. He blazed a trail. Nothing stands forever. Not even ‘The Power Broker.’ ”

...It takes a nation of one to hold us back...That's the sign of a master...

11 Spring Street Pt. 2

Swoon
Originally uploaded by Keith Levesque.

Shepard Fairey
Swoon

11 Spring Street revisited...

Shepard Fairey

WK

Suicuide Bombers

Cycle

Dface

Faile

Dface

GoreB

Swoon


Skewville, Elboe-Toe

Juxtapoz riflings...

Photo by Vidalia from The Burning House, a group show with art and installation by Swoon, David Ellis, and Faile at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

How would you like your meds? Scrambled or over easy?

By Karla Gale
from Sciam.com
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - British scientists have succeeded in producing multiple generations of genetically altered, or transgenic, hens that produce functional pharmaceutical proteins in the whites of their eggs.

To transfer drug-making genes into chickens, Dr. Helen M. Sang, from the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, UK, and her associates used a lentivirus carrier from which all viral coding sequences were deleted. The genetic material was replaced with the gene regulating ovalbumin production combined with genes for making human interferon or an antibody targeting malignant melanoma.

"This construct is used to incorporate new protein genes into the chicken chromosome," Dr. Sang told Reuters Health. This was accomplished by injecting the lentiviral vector containing the coding sequences for the desired pharmaceutical protein into the fertilized embryo of a new laid egg.

When the resulting chick is old enough, it is then bred it and the offspring examined. "If the offspring are transgenic, we will see the new genes in every cell of their body, but only expressed in the oviduct," Sang continued.

In their paper in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain how a single transgenic cockerel was crossed to normal hens. Of 463 chicks they examined, 19 (4 percent) were transgenic.

When transgenic hens lay eggs, the foreign protein is expressed in the oviduct where the egg white is made. In the case of interferon produced in egg white, the researchers were able to confirm that the compound was functional by showing that it was active against a test virus.

Sang hopes that using transgenic chickens to produce therapeutic proteins will "bring down the costs of drugs that currently are prohibitively expensive."

The Roslin Institute, renowned for its creation of Dolly the cloned sheep 10 years ago, is working in collaboration with gene therapy company Oxford BioMedica and biotech company Viragen to develop their transgenic chicken system as a large-scale biomanufacturing alternative for a variety of proteins.

"But it is still early days yet," said Sang. "We've made significant steps in developing a process that we hope will be an alternative production platform for protein drugs."

Grandaddy?

from Discover.com by Kathy A. Svitil

Ancient Fish Fills Missing Link

Excavations carried out over six years in the treeless, grassless, soil-less Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, 750 miles from the North Pole, have yielded a remarkable treasure: a 375-million-year-old, scaly, fin-legged, flat-headed, swivel-necked creature called Tiktaalik roseae. Named after the Inuit word for "large shallow-water fish," Tiktaalik fills in one of the most significant gaps in evolutionary history—the transition between swimming fish and the first animals to walk onto land.

Paleontologist Neil Shubin, of the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History, and his colleague Ted Daeschler, of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, planned their Arctic search with great care. Three hundred seventy-five million years ago, the Canadian Arctic was near the equator, with a subtropical climate—a plausible place for an aquatic creature to venture from surf to turf. "Looking at the evolutionary tree, and knowing something about evolution and Earth history, we predicted there would be a Tiktaalik-like creature up there," Shubin says.

The four- to nine-foot-long creature had fins, which held limblike bones forming a shoulder, elbow, and wrist that could do a push-up; broad ribs and scales; and a neck that allowed the animal to swivel its head. "That the skull was disconnected from the shoulder is something we would not have expected in an animal that was still a fish," Daeschler says. "Our hypothesis is that it was an adaptation to shallow water and gave the animal more ability to hunt."

"What is really exceptional about Tiktaalik is that it is not some esoteric branch of evolution," Shubin says. "We are not looking at an evolutionary dead end. When we look at the origin of the neck in Tiktaalik, the origin of the wrist in Tiktaalik, we are talking about human history. We can trace our own history back to things like this. The transition we are seeing in these Devonian fish is a piece of our distant past."

>>Another great resource on this discovery is http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/

I always thought of it as Ren Fair for the New Age...

Burning Man dispute heats up with suit

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, January 25, 200

Burning Man tickets went on sale this month -- just in time for a lawsuit over who owns the name and logo associated with the annual end-of-summer gathering of 40,000 fire-loving artists in the Nevada desert.

Neon artist John Law, one of the event's three creators, who in 1990 helped relocate Burning Man from a San Francisco beach to a dry Nevada lakebed, is suing his two partners over the rights to the Burning Man name and logo.

Law's federal suit says he was defrauded of his one-third share of the Burning Man trademark's value over the years since 1996, when he left the organization. His two business partners, Larry Harvey and Michael Mikel, have recently tried to claim sole ownership over the Burning Man trademarks, violating an agreement between the three, Law alleged.

Now 48, the former Cacophony Society leader who used to host dance parties in Laundromats, scale the Golden Gate Bridge at night and crash the Chronicle holiday party with a posse of 100 Santas now wants the name Burning Man and its logo released to the public so anybody can use it.

If that's not possible, Law wants to collect on the creative capital he put into Burning Man -- whatever a judge determines it's worth.

"If Burning Man is really a movement, the name should belong to everyone, not three guys who don't get along anymore," Law said.

New Orleans Struggles to Find Teachers...

By Becky Bohrer, AP Writer
from Yahoo.com

NEW ORLEANS - Wanted: Idealistic teachers looking for a Peace Corps-style adventure in a city in distress.

Some of New Orleans' most desperate, run-down schools are beset with a severe shortage of teachers, and they are struggling mightily to attract candidates by appealing to their sense of adventure and desire to make a difference. Education officials are even offering to help new teachers find housing.

"There's been an incredible outpouring of sympathy toward New Orleans. We feel we're trying to say, `Here's a clear path to go down if you want to act on that emotion,'" said Matthew Candler, chief executive of the nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans, which is trying to recruit teachers.

The school system in New Orleans was in desperate condition even before Hurricane Katrina struck 17 months ago, with crumbling buildings, low test scores and high dropout rates.

After the storm, some of the worst of the worst public schools were put under state control, and those are the ones finding it particularly hard to attract teachers. The 19 schools in the state-run Recovery School District have 8,580 students and about 540 teachers, or about 50 fewer than they need _ a shortage so severe that about 300 students who want to enroll have been put on a waiting list.

"Recruiting is a challenge," said Kevin George, principal of Rabouin High School in downtown New Orleans. "The housing market is terrible. The area has a poor image due to the violence. ... And then there's just coming into a place that historically had just a terrible track record of education."

In hopes of finding at least 150 new teachers for the state-run district in the 2007-08 school year, when more schools are expected to open, education officials are trying to recruit candidates at job fairs, on the Web or through newspaper ads that show the raised hands of students and read plaintively: "We need you ... so do they."

The Recovery School District is also working with a real estate agent to help candidates find affordable housing. In addition, it plans to collaborate with Teach for America, which pairs college graduates with a school-in-need for two years.

Back from Travelling...

Brazil was very difficult without knowing any Portugese...Unfortunately, a lot of the graff shots in rio were taken from a moving bus...Air travel was a hot mess at Sao Paolo, and United has some really incompetent employees...

battra dreaming on monster island of a production...

battradreaming.jpg
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Untitled Freestyle #1 or Crazy Catnip Nights... A Snails/Clue Production...

Parts make up a whole...

clfull.jpg
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Untitled Freestyle #1 or Crazy Catnip Nights... A Snails/Clue Production...