New Look at Death Sentences and Race - New York Times [Legal][Interesting]

This is been going on unchecked for so long and so many people have lost their lives. Its sickening.

 ~P

New Look at Death Sentences and Race - New York Times

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April 29, 2008

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New Look at Death Sentences and Race

By ADAM LIPTAK

About 1,100 people have been executed in the United States in the last three decades. Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, accounts for more than 100 of those executions. Indeed, Harris County has sent more people to the death chamber than any state but Texas itself.

Yet Harris County's capital justice system has not been the subject of intensive research — until now. A new study to be published in The Houston Law Review this fall has found two sorts of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty there, one commonplace and one surprising.

The unexceptional finding is that defendants who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks. More than 20 studies around the nation have come to similar conclusions.

But the new study also detected a more straightforward disparity. It found that the race of the defendant by itself plays a major role in explaining who is sentenced to death.

It has never been conclusively proven that, all else being equal, blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites in the three decades since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Many experts, including some opposed to the death penalty, have said that evidence of that sort of direct discrimination is spotty and equivocal.

But the author of the new study, Scott Phillips, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver, found a robust relationship between race and the likelihood of being sentenced to death even after the race of the victim and other factors were held constant.

His statistics have profound implications. For every 100 black defendants and 100 white defendants indicted for capital murder in Harris County, Professor Phillips found that an average of 12 white defendants and 17 black ones would be sent to death row. In other words, Professor Phillips wrote, "five black defendants would be sentenced to the ultimate sanction because of race."

Scott Durfee, the general counsel for the Harris County district attorney's office, rejected Professor Phillips's conclusions and said that district attorneys there had long taken steps to insulate themselves from knowing the race of defendants and victims as they decided whether to seek the death penalty.

"To the extent Professor Phillips indicates otherwise, all we can say is that you would have to look at each individual case," Mr. Durfee said. "If you do that, I'm fairly sure that you would see that the decision was rational and reasonable."

Indeed, the raw numbers support Mr. Durfee.

John B. Holmes Jr., the district attorney in the years Professor Phillips studied, 1992 to 1999, asked for the death sentence against 27 percent of the white defendants, 25 percent of the Hispanic defendants and 25 percent of the black defendants. (Professor Phillips studied 504 defendants indicted for the murders of 614 people. About half of the defendants were black; a quarter each were white and Hispanic.)

Mr. Holmes was, Professor Phillips said, selective but effective: he asked for the death sentence against 129 defendants and obtained 98.)

But Professor Phillips said that the numbers suggesting evenhandedness in seeking the death penalty did not tell the whole story. Once the kinds of murders committed by black defendants were taken into consideration — terrible, to be sure, but on average less heinous, less apt to involve vulnerable victims and brutality, and less often committed by an adult — "the bar appears to have been set lower for pursuing death against black defendants," Professor Phillips concluded.

Professor Phillips wrote about percentages and not particular cases, but his data suggest that black defendants were overrepresented in cases involving shootings during robberies, while white defendants were more likely to have committed murders during rapes and kidnappings and to have beaten, stabbed or choked their victims.

When the nature of the crime is taken into account, Professor Phillips wrote, "the odds of a death trial are 1.75 times higher against black defendants than white defendants." Harris County juries corrected for that disparity to an extent, so that the odds of a death sentence for black defendants after trial dropped to 1.49.

Jon Sorensen, a professor of justice studies at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, said he was suspicious of Professor Phillips's methodology.

"It's bizarre," Professor Sorensen said. "It starts out with no evidence of racism. Then he controls for stuff."

Moreover, Professor Sorensen said, Professor Phillips failed to take account of other significant factors, including the socioeconomic status of the victims.

Professor Sorensen said he remained convinced that racial disparities, if they exist at all, "are victim-based only," as earlier studies have found.

This discussion, at least where the courts are concerned, is entirely academic. Twenty-one years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that even solid statistical evidence of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty did not offend the Constitution. The vote was 5 to 4, and the case was McCleskey v. Kemp.

That ruling closed off what had seemed to opponents of the death penalty a promising line of attack, and they are still furious about it, comparing it to the court's infamous 1857 decision that blacks slaves were property and not citizens.

"McCleskey is the Dred Scott decision of our time," Anthony G. Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University, said in speech last year at Columbia.

"It is a decision for which our children's children will reproach our generation and abhor the legal legacy we leave them," said Professor Amsterdam, who worked on the McCleskey case and many other capital punishment landmarks.

The majority opinion in McCleskey was written by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. After he retired, his biographer asked Justice Powell whether, given the chance, he would change his vote in any case.

"Yes," Justice Powell said. "McCleskey v. Kemp."

Howstuffworks "Who was the real Count Dracula?" [Interesting][History]

Howstuffworks "Who was the real Count Dracula?"

Who was the real Count Dracula?

by Josh Clark

Who was the real Count Dracula?

It wasn't until he came across documents during his research at the British Museum that novelist Bram Stoker found the man who would serve as the perfect foundation for his classic gothic horror character, Count Dracula [source: Kent State University]. Vlad Tepes (pronounced te'-pish), a 15th-century prince from the dark, forested mountains of Eastern Europe was his inspiration.

CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images
The popular conception of Dracula runs the gamut from horrific vampire to comic relief (like Grandpa on the TV show "The Munsters"). But what was the real Dracula like?

Accounts of Vlad Tepes' cruelty have been distorted throughout history, and Stoker's adaption seemed to help perpetrate these distortions. The prince was bestowed with the surname "Tepes" ("Impaler") based on his fondness for impaling victims. It was his father from whom he proudly took the name "Dracula" ("Son of the Dragon"). Tepes was no vampire, although one historic account details how he drank a victim's blood [source: West Grey Times]. And Tepes certainly wasn't immortal (it's unclear how he died), as Stoker's count is.

But Stoker wasn't just inspired by the prince's name. Tepes' reign was a cruel and bloody one.

When investigating sensational history, it's easy to find grossly exaggerated tales that obscure the facts. In the rare case of Vlad Tepes, little exaggeration is needed. Tens of thousands of people were tortured, maimed or died by his hand or command [source: University of Louisiana]. This isn't in dispute -- it's accounts of Tepes' motives where distortion tends to emerge.

As the prince of Wallachia, a region in Romania, and a defender of Christianity against the Muslim Turks, Tepes made many powerful enemies. His enemies spread propaganda about the ruler, which inadvertently assured Tepes' place in history. Tepes' deeds and atrocities made such an impression, in fact, that an unflattering epic poem about him was published on the Gutenberg printing press just eight years after the same moveable type was used to print the first Bible [source: Mundorf and Mundorf]. Had his detractors not campaigned against him, generating publications that survive today, Tepes' legacy may have been lost.

So who was this man? Was Tepes as bloodthirsty in real life as his fictional counterpart is in movies and books? The short answer is yes -- even more so. Read about the real Dracula on the next page.

Vlad the Impaler

Bram Stoker's fictionalization of Vlad Tepes spurred scholarly research into the real man. Research has attempted to show the motives for his murderousness. Tepes desired a unified Romania -- free from the outside influences of Germany, Hungary and the Turks.

His consolidation of local power was harsh. On Easter Day, 1456, Tepes invited regional nobility to dine with him. Following the meal, he had the old and infirm murdered and marched the remaining guests 50 miles to a dilapidated castle, which he took as his own. There, he put the nobility to hard labor restoring it. Most died during from maltreatment and exhaustion; those who didn't were impaled alive on spikes outside the castle when restorations were complete [source: Carroll].

Imagino/Getty Images
A painting of Vlad (Dracula) Tepes, the 15th-century prince who inspired Bram Stoker's fictional vampire

Vlad's father, Vlad Dracul, ruled Wallachia from 1436 to 1442, was unseated by his countrymen and regained the throne from 1443 to 1446. Vlad Tepes served in the same position from 1456 to 1462 [source: Tacitus]. When he was inducted into the Order of the Dragon, a secretive organization of Christian knights, he took the name "Dracula." The name would be replaced by the nickname "Tepes" from those who feared and hated him.

Vlad Dracula's social ideologies were contradictory. He wanted to be remembered as a saint -- he murdered a Catholic monk who denied that Tepes would be canonized (sainted) [source: Carroll]. Yet his behavior was hardly saintly. Having come to view destitution as a scourge on his domain, Tepes invited his poverty-stricken subjects to dine with him. At the end of the dinner, he had the dining room locked, and his guards set fire to it, killing those inside [source: Marinari].

His foreign enemies suffered equal (if not worse) fates than his subjects. For four years, Tepes and his younger brother were imprisoned by Turks after their father sent them as tribute to the sultan Mehmet. Tepes' father had become a puppet leader of Wallachia for the Turks, and his sons were imprisoned to guarantee their father's continued loyalty [source: Fasulo]. Tepes was meant to become a future puppet leader like his father. But rather than keep allegiance to the Turks, he resolved to fight them.

When he became prince in 1456, Tepes took strides toward Romanian independence. He developed biological warfare, sending subjects disguised as Turks, stricken with infectious disease, to live among the armies in their camps [source: Marinari]. For those Turks who survived, when they invaded the capital of Wallachia, Tirgoviste, they found a forest (about one-half mile by two miles in dimension) made entirely of corpses of captured prisoners impaled on spikes. The invaders left quickly [source: Carroll].

Impalement, the method of execution that gave Tepes his name, is an extraordinarily painful way to die. Tepes ensured maximum pain when he impaled his victims by rounding the ends of spikes and oiling them to reduce tearing. Spikes were introduced into the victim's anus and pushed in until the other end emerged from the victim's mouth. The impaled victim was then hoisted vertically, and left to writhe in agony, sometimes for days [source: Fasulo].

The aged vampire in Stoker's novel required blood to stay alive; Tepes shed blood by the bucketful to promote his lifelong goals. Conservative estimates put his victim count at 40,000 [source: University of Louisiana]. It's also significant to note that eating and death were so intertwined in Tepes' life. He often dined with guests before killing them, and he was reputed to have taken meals outdoors, among impaled dead and dying [source: Martin]

Why is blood such a significant symbol of vitality and power in fiction, allegory and reality? Find out about the symbolism of blood on the next page.

Blood: Symbol of Life

Most Christians wouldn't infer vampirism from the story of the Last Supper. Christ offers the chalice containing wine to signify his blood to his disciples and directs them to drink it. But there is a parallel between the Eucharist and vampire legends: Both suggest that the consumption of blood is an act of obtaining vitality.

Christ told his disciples he'd shed his blood for their forgiveness. By drinking it, they were taking part in his everlasting divinity. Similarly, through ingesting the blood of others, vampires of lore may live eternally here on Earth.

According to some sources, blood is also reputed for its mythic ability to maintain beauty. When Bram Stoker's fictional Dracula fed on blood, his appearance reverted to a handsome, youthful version of himself. The 16th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory is said to have used the blood of her murdered victims to promote her skin's health. Some Renaissance-era women believed applying the blood of doves to their skin could maintain beauty [source: McNally]. And even today, some women apply rouge or pinch their cheeks to create the appearance of a healthy flush.

Anthropophagy (cannibalism) is another example of the symbolic (and literal) vitality derived from eating the flesh or drinking the blood of others. Through cannibalism, symbolic vitality generally comes from two sources: kin and the vanquished. Endocannibalism refers to eating the flesh of a member of one's group. In some cultures, eating the flesh of a relative serves as a way of carrying on the line of ancestors [source: Goldman]. Exocannibalism is eating the flesh of one outside the eater's group, like a conquered foe. Tepes committed exocannibalism in one account when he ingested the blood of captured Turks, although there's no evidence he believed he gained any tangible power from the act. Rather, he ate blood-dipped bread from a bowl as a signal of what the future held in store for the Turks [source: West Grey Times].

Uwe Zucchi/AFP/Getty Images
Cannibalism is associated with madness in the modern, developed world. German Armin Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter for killing and eating another, willing human.

Instances of nonritual cannibalism also produce vitality. Perhaps the most famous case of cannibalism took place in 1972, when an airplane carrying the Uruguayan national soccer team crashed in the Andes Mountains. Several members were left alive and resorted to cannibalizing their dead teammates to survive for more than two months [source: Walton].

It appears our ancestors took some time to develop mores -- cultural restrictions -- against cannibalism. Evidence of anthropophagy as recent as around A.D. 1100 has been uncovered at Anasazi settlements in the Southwestern United States [source: Melmer]. And genetic researchers have found a gene variant spread among humans throughout the world that suggests we descended from cannibals [source: BBC].

Vampire legends, then, may be allegories for real-life monsters -- perhaps like Vlad Tepes -- that have refused to honor the sacred taboo against consuming the vitality of other humans

Human Statue of Liberty [Photo]

Life's Little Mysteries: Why Do Women Wear High Heels and Why Did the Kamikaze Pilots Wear Helmets? [Interesting]

Life's Little Mysteries: Why Do Women Wear High Heels and Why Did the Kamikaze Pilots Wear Helmets?

Life's Little Mysteries: Why Do Women Wear High Heels and Why Did the Kamikaze Pilots Wear Helmets?

In this Daily Mail article, Robert Frank uses economics to explain the situations you encounter in everyday life. For example -- Why do women endure uncomfortable high heels? High heels are uncomfortable and make walking more difficult. But they also increase height, as well as forcing the back to arch, pushing the bosom forward and the buttocks back, thereby accentuating the female form -- and men, apparently, prefer an exaggerated female figure. Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets? In 1944, the Japanese military launched a campaign of kamikaze attacks, in which pilots attempted to crash explosives-laden planes into American warships. Why did these pilots wear helmets for a suicide mission? Planes often experienced severe turbulence before reaching their targets, so they needed to protected so that they could get there. But more importantly, it was not actually the express intention that these pilots commit suicide -- their charge was to destroy their targets by any means necessary. The hope was that the pilots would return safely, even though the expectation was that most would not. Why are DVDs sold in larger packages than CDs, even though the discs are the same size? Prior to the appearance of CDs, most music was sold on vinyl records. To accommodate stores, CD cases were designed to be a little less than half as wide as record sleeves, so that they two rows of CD cases could fit on a record rack with a divider between them. But before DVDs became popular, most film rental stores carried videotapes in the VHS format. The videos were usually displayed side by side with their spines out. Making DVD cases the same height enabled stores to display their new DVD stocks on existing shelves. For yet more fascinating explanations of everyday life, click the link below. Sources: Daily Mail March 29, 2008

King's final crusade: The radical push for a new America [History][Interesting]

King's final crusade: The radical push for a new America - CNN.com

King's final crusade: The radical push for a new America

• Story Highlights
• Before his death, King had become radical, scholars and activists say
  
• The revolutionary "Poor People's Campaign" alarmed King's closest advisers
  
• Campaign aimed to withdraw funding for Vietnam War and abolish poverty
  
• King also angered his most important ally, President Lyndon Johnson

By John Blake
CNN

(CNN) -- The Rev. Bernard LaFayette Jr. was resting at his Chicago, Illinois, home one autumn weekend in 1967 when the phone rang. The caller didn't identify himself, but LaFayette immediately recognized the baritone voice.

By the time Dr. King made his final trip to Memphis, he was planning the most radical campaign of his ministry.

"Bernard, I need you," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said. "This may be my last campaign. We're going for broke."

Most Americans think of King as the "I Have a Dream" preacher at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. But the man who made his final trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 had become radical, scholars and activists say. King was gambling his legacy on a final crusade that was so revolutionary, it alarmed many of his closest advisers. Some became concerned about his emotional stability.

King called his crusade the Poor People's Campaign. He planned to march on Washington with a multiracial army of poor people who would build shantytowns at the Lincoln Memorial -- and paralyze the nation's capital if they had to.

The campaign's goal: force the federal government to withdraw funding for the Vietnam War and commit instead to abolishing poverty.

What King was saying by this time was even more provocative than what he planned. In his final presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he said the movement should address "the question of restructuring the whole of American society."

He called for a guaranteed annual wage for all able-bodied people, he urged the nationalization of some industries, and he told people to "question the capitalistic economy."

"It didn't cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters ... but now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power," King said during a trip to Mississippi in February 1968.

The campaign was so risky that King told LaFayette, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader, during their phone call that he was going to appoint a new layer of executives to the civil rights group he co-founded.

"He was anticipating that we might be hit with some assassinations, so he wanted somebody left to assume responsibilities to keep it going," said LaFayette, who was appointed director of the Poor People's Campaign.

Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years," said King didn't expect the crowds in Washington to embrace his vision of economic equality. He expected violent reprisals from troops. He might die. Yet King hoped that the sacrifice would lead to an economic bill of rights for poor people.

"When he did the Poor People's Campaign, he knew it wasn't likely to win," Branch said. "It was a witness."

But it was a witness that few people were prepared to hear, said Roger Wilkins, a U.S. Justice Department official designated as the liaison between King's final campaign and the federal government.

"By 1968, a lot of white people had gotten tired of civil rights and thinking of race," Wilkins said. "The picture of docile black people holding hands and singing freedom songs had been replaced by images of poor blacks rampaging through cities, looting and burning."

King had also lost the ear of his most important ally, President Lyndon Johnson. On April 4, 1967, exactly a year before he was assassinated, King delivered a highly publicized speech against the Vietnam War.

"Johnson was outraged," Wilkins said. "He turned sour toward King and the movement. He felt that Martin had rejected him."

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's own organization, withdrew support from him. The group's board of directors voted against publicly backing King's opposition to Vietnam. Other black civil rights leaders criticized King as well.

"There were some black preachers telling him he was out of his element," LaFayette said.

King became depressed at times, Branch said. One night, King -- alone with a whiskey -- awakened friends in adjoining hotel rooms with his shouting: "I don't want to do this anymore! I want to go back to my little church!"

"The shameful truth is that very few people were paying attention to him," Branch said.

King mused about getting out of the civil rights business. He considered the idea of becoming dean of the chapel at Boston University, his alma mater, Branch said.

"He was constantly saying, 'Oh, I wish I could do this,' but he could never do it," Branch said. He was just possessed by the movement."

Yet King's evolution opened alliances with new supporters such as anti-war activists, said the Rev. Vincent Harding, an author and friend of King's who helped write his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War.

"Some people were backing off at the same moment that there were other kinds of people who now recognized that King was not there for black people but for a new American society," Harding said. "Those who wanted to work for this new society were seeing him as a hero."

What this new American society could have looked like under King's leadership is unclear. He never got the chance to lead his final crusade.

He was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, while helping lead sanitation workers on strike.

The Poor People's Campaign has faded from historical memory. It remains the most overlooked part of King's legacy, Wilkins said.

It remains in the shadows because King rewrote the traditional civil rights script, Wilkins said. As long as he fed Americans images of bigoted Southern sheriffs clubbing demonstrators, people could remain comfortable. But the Poor People's Campaign gave Americans a new cast of villains: themselves. Americans didn't want to look at the face of poverty, but King was going to force them, he said.

"When the movement was just about the South, you weren't rattling the status quo," Wilkins said. 'You were doing things that made Northerners feel morally superior to the South."

LaFayette last saw King on the day he was assassinated. At the time, King was still thinking big. He told LaFayette that he wanted to globalize nonviolent protests.

King may have been isolated and dejected during those last days, but that's not the man LaFayette remembers. He takes comfort from one of King's final moments: the "mountaintop" sermon King gave the night before he was assassinated.

"You could see it in his eyes; he was consumed with passion," LaFayette said. "He was prepared. They didn't take his life. He gave it up. They didn't have to run him down and try to catch him. He was standing tall despite the threats.

"You can't take a person's life who's already given it up."

Love in the octopus' garden | U.S. | Reuters [Nature][Interesting]

Love in the octopus' garden | U.S. | Reuters

Love in the octopus' garden

Tue Apr 1, 2008 8:43am EDT

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They flirt, hold hands and guard their lovers jealously -- yet they don't even have bones.

The love lives of octopuses are far more complex than anyone thought, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, reported on Monday.

Graduate student Christine Huffard snorkeled in the waters off Indonesia to watch Abdopus aculeatus, an octopus with a spiky tan body the size of a small orange and arms 8 to 10 inches long.

Octopuses are well studied in captivity but because they are shy and often nocturnal, their natural wild behavior is less understood.

"Each day in the water, we learned something new about octopus behavior, probably like what ornithologists must have gone through after the invention of binoculars," said Huffard, now at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Bay, California.

"We quickly realized that Abdopus aculeatus broke all the rules, doing the near opposite of every hypothesis we'd formed based on aquarium studies."

They saw male cephalopods guarding the dens of their mates for several days, warding off rivals and even strangling them if they got too close.

Small males would sneak in to mate by swimming low to the ground in feminine fashion and not displaying their "male" brown stripes, the researchers reported in the journal Marine Biology.

And size matters, although perhaps not in quite the same way as for humans.

"If you're going to spend time guarding a female, you want to go for the biggest female you can find because she's going to produce more eggs," biology professor Roy Caldwell said. "It's basically an investment strategy."

Caldwell said he believes the behavior is common to many of the nearly 300 species of octopus.

The animals usually mate several times a day once they reach sexual maturity. Males have a specially designed arm they use to deposit a sperm packet into the female, who retires to her den and lays tens of thousands of eggs.

Both parents die within a few months of mating, leaving the newborns to fend for themselves.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox)

© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

New Genetic Test Available at Drug Store|abc27 News [Interesting][Health][Life]

"You IS the baby-daddy...I'll prove it"
~P~

 

New Genetic Test Available at Drug Store|abc27 News

New Genetic Test Available at Drug Store

   posted 6:36 pm Thu March 27, 2008 - Harrisburg, PA

   reporter: Dennis Owens      posted by: Seth Chevalier

         

For years it has been a fertile topic of talk TV. But now, finding the father does not just happen over the air, it is over the counter. And it's all thanks to a DNA paternity kit being sold at Rite Aid. It's basically a few q-tips. Swab the mouth of the baby and the alleged father. Then mail them to a lab with $119 and in 3-5 days you will receive an answer.

This paternity test could also give birth to a new round of lawsuits. Kim Robison is with Dauphin County Domestic Relations. She says these tests won't hold up in court. Not because they are inaccurate. In fact, they are very accurate. But because the courts cannot verify exactly who was swabbed. Though not legally binding, these tests could prompt legal action.

Rite Aid officials refused to comment, saying this is just another product and they're just the retailer. However, right now it's the only place in Pennsylvania you can find it.

The suggested retail price for the paternity test is $29.99 and remember it will then cost $119 to send it to the lab.

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Specially Designed Fake Teeth Can Deliver Medicine Non-invasively

Specially Designed Fake Teeth Can Deliver Medicine Non-invasively

Specially Designed Fake Teeth Can Deliver Medicine Non-invasively

by Mariella Moon, March 28, 2008

People who always forget to take their medication would have no excuse once they use IntelliDrug . Still in its development phase, IntelliDrug is actually a couple of fake molars which has the capability to deliver medicine through non-invasive means. The device measures two molars in size, made of stainless steel and polymers. Inside the prosthetic teeth is the drug reservoir with a micro-fluidic duct. The device also comes equipped with sensors and an electrically controlled valve, along with batteries as power source.

The drug itself is placed inside the IntelliDrug as a pill. It's water from one's saliva that passes through the membrane which creates a pressurized solution. The device could then be controlled by a remote control to open the valve at timed intervals and release the liquefied drug. There's a sensor in charge of monitoring the drug administration, as well the amount of drug still left inside the device. The liquid drug passes through the cheek instead of through the digestive system, which means the medication is more efficiently absorbed by the body.

The IntelliDrug medicine delivery device could be fitted on dentures if the medication is temporary. If someone would require medication for life, however, the device could be implanted permanently. If you're prepared to lose a couple of molars to ensure medication goes smoothly, watch out for the commercial release of IntelliDrug in two years' time.

Source: Discovery

Mariella Moon
Medical Innovations
InventorSpot.com

Man auctions his life | Oddly Enough | Reuters [Funny][Interesting][Weird]

8

[Way odd...~P~]

Man auctions his life | Oddly Enough | Reuters21

Man auctions his life

Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:23am EDT

 

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SYDNEY (Reuters) - A man in Australia is auctioning his life -- his house, his job, his clothes and his friends -- on eBay, after his marriage broke up, saying he wants to start a new life.

"It's time to move. A completely fresh start. I want to see where life takes me," Ian Usher, 44, told Australian television on Tuesday from Perth in Western Australia state.

Usher said he was auctioning his life as "a package" with his house in Perth valued at around A$420,000 (US$385,000).

"Hi there, my name is Ian Usher, and I have had enough of my life! I don't want it any more! You can have it if you like!," reads his Web site www.alife4sale.com27, which has a link to eBay for bidders.

Usher said his life auction, which starts on June 22, included not only his house, a car, a motorbike, a jet ski and a spa, but also an introduction to "great friends" and a job at a rug shop in Perth for a trial two-week period.

"When it's over, I will just walk out the front door, take my wallet, my passport and start a new life," he said.

Usher said his ex-wife had heard of his auction.

"Her last comment was, 'it seems a bit mental to me'," he said.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate [Politics][Interesting]

(love this article...can you believe there have been 'law enforcement officers" that have refused to guard abortion clinics?! ~P~)

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate

article | posted March 19, 2008 (web only)

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate

Barbara Ehrenreich

PRINT ARTICLE EMAIL ARTICLE Web Letters (8) TAKE ACTION SUBSCRIBE NOW  SHARE ARTICLE Buzzflash del.icio.us Digg Facebook Newsvine Reddit What is this? This article first appeared on Barbara Ehrenreich's blog. There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama. You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May. Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells"--their term--and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners--alone. The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003: During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful. Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God." Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics. What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck. Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't." Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity Unity Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain--or, better yet, renounce--her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family.

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BBC NEWS | Americas | Seven charged in 'eBay art scam

This is a bummer
~P~

BBC NEWS | Americas | Seven charged in 'eBay art scam'

Last Updated: Thursday, 20 March 2008, 11:50 GMT E-mail this to a friend Printable version Seven charged in 'eBay art scam' One of the fake Miro artworks (photo: Catalan police) Seven people have been charged in connection with a multi-million dollar international art forgery operation. Four Americans, two Spaniards and an Italian are accused of producing and selling thousands of counterfeit prints around the world. The fakes of artworks by artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Miro and Dali sold for up to $50,000 (£25,000) each. Hundreds of people around the world bought the fake prints, many through the internet auction site eBay. Police in the United States and Spain say the artworks were produced in Europe. Most were copies of original limited-edition prints. To give you a sense of the volume of materials sold, it is alleged... that the defendants issued... 600 counterfeit Chagall prints US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald Those accused include Spaniard Oswaldo Aulesti-Bach and Italians Elio Bonfiglioli and Patrizia Soliani. American James Kennedy is accused of faking the signatures, and Chicago art dealer Michael Zabrin is charged with selling the prints, and with providing fake certificates of authenticity. Two other American art dealers have also been charged. Huge profits "To give you a sense of the volume of materials sold, it is alleged in the indictment that the defendants issued 2,500 counterfeit (Alexander) Calder prints and 600 counterfeit Chagall prints," said US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who announced the charges in Chicago. A fake Salvador Dali artwork (photo: Catalan police) The quantity was such, he said, that the accused dealers were warned not to try to sell too many at once, as it could have flooded the market. According to prosecutors, the prints were sold in galleries, at art shows, and through eBay, between July 1999 and October 2007. They were bought by people in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and Japan, allegedly producing profits of more than $5m for the accused. If convicted, those charged face up to 20 years in prison. E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Flaws In FBI Watchlist | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Gosh I love The Onion

Flaws In FBI Watchlist | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Flaws In FBI Watchlist

An audit revealed that there were notable inaccuracies over the past three years in information the FBI was providing to the government about terror suspects. What do you think?

Cynthia Meline,
FBI Agent
"The list's flaws are, at the very least, overstated. We will bring Osama bin Goldberg to justice."

Jaime Bavitz,
Systems Analyst
"You can't expect the FBI to provide reliable information when they disavowed the supernatural for nine seasons on The X-Files."

Marcus Haynes,
Personnel Manager
"Accurate, inaccurate—look, do they want the information or not?"

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About the Milky Way Galaxy

Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Milky Way Galaxy

Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Milky Way Galaxy

You've lived here all your life, but how much do you really know about the Milky Way galaxy? You know it's a spiral, and that it's 100,000 light years across. But here are some things you probably don't know: 1) It's a barred spiral A lot of spirals galaxies have a weird feature: a rectangular block of stars at the center instead of a sphere, and the arms radiate away from the ends of the block. Astronomers call this block a bar, and we have one -- a big one, in fact, 27,000 light years end-to-end. 2) There's a supermassive black hole at the center Right at the core of the galaxy lies a supermassive black hole. We know it's there because of its effects; it causes stars near the center to orbit at fantastic speeds of thousands of kilometers per second. It is as massive as 4,000,000 suns. 3) It's a cannibal The Milky Way is currently eating several other, smaller galaxies. Eventually they'll merge with us completely. 4) We live in a nice neighborhood We're part of a small group of nearby galaxies, which also includes the Andromeda galaxy and the Triangulum galaxy. There are about three dozen galaxies in the group. 5) We're in the suburbs That small group is a far-flung part of the Virgo Cluster, a huge collection of about 2000 galaxies. The total mass of the cluster may a quadrillion times the mass of the Sun. 6) You can only see 0.000003 percent of it The Milky Way has two hundred billion stars in it; you can only see a tiny fraction of them in the night sky. 7) 90 percent of it is invisible Most of the galaxy is made of a mysterious substance called dark matter. No one is sure yet exactly what that is. 8) The spiral arms are an illusion We see the arms because the light is better there, not because that's where all the stars are. The light is caused by massive hot stars illuminating surrounding gas clouds. 9) It's seriously warped The disk is of the Milky Way is bent, probably due to the gravitational influence of a pair of orbiting satellite galaxies. One side of the disk is bent up, and the other down. 10) We're going to get to know the Andromeda galaxy a lot better The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are approaching each other at 200 kilometers per second. In a few billion years, they will collide and merge. Sources: Bad Astronomy March 12, 2008

Tackling urban gridlock with foldable car | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Tackling urban gridlock with foldable car | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Tackling urban gridlock with foldable car

Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:53am EDT 

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By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Wouldn't it be nice to drive a car into town without worrying about finding a parking space?

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised just such a vehicle, a futuristic "City Car" that could even drive itself.

Once at your destination, the vehicle's computers would, at the press of a button, look for a parking spot behind others like itself, then fold roughly in half so you could stack it there as you would a shopping cart.

"We have reinvented urban mobility," said Bill Mitchell, a professor in architecture and director of the project at an MIT think tank in Cambridge, just outside Boston.

The vehicle hasn't yet been built. But a miniature mock-up version has gone on display at a campus museum, and there are plans to build a full-scale model this spring.

The dozen or so engineers and architects on Mitchell's team are confident their computer-generated work is on target.

They feel their golf cart-sized vehicle could provide a novel solution to the chronic traffic congestion afflicting cities across the United States, Europe and Asia -- not to mention pollution and energy use, since it would run on a rechargeable battery, the researchers say.

On the drawing board, their two-seater is roughly half the size of a typical compact automobile and a little smaller than the Smart car made by Daimler's Mercedes-Benz.  Continued...

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