Today in Strangeness

Two record-breaking disasters occurred on the date of March 27th. In 1964, the ' Good Friday Earthquake' killed 131 people in Alaska. Lasting almost five minutes, it was the most powerful recorded quake in U.S. history-- 8.4 on the Richter scale. In 1977, two 747s collided on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands in the worst accident in aviation history-- 583 died. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

It was on March 26, 1965 that a young truck driver, delivering a load of bananas to Scranton, PA lost control of his vehicle, and careened into town at 90 miles an hour, spilling bananas all along the way. The incident, which unfortunately ended in the driver's death, inspired the Harry Chapin song, 30,000 Pounds of Bananas. source>>>

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The Three Stooges’ Movie in the Works

Hollywood has decided that they are going to remake everything from how childhood into either something amazing or leave you will a feeling of violated and dirty. Hopefully this will not be the case, MGM and the Farrelly brothers are tossing back and forth the idea of Sean Penn, Jim Carrey and Benicio Del Toro as The Three Stooges. Ya, I don't see it either.

Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome "Curly" Howard.

The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe.

The film is not a biopic, but rather a comedy built around the antics of the three characters that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Howard played in the Columbia Pictures shorts.

Production will begin in early fall for a release sometime in 2010. The Farrellys, who wrote the script, are producing with their Conundrum partner Bradley Thomas, and Charlie Wessler.

Project will get underway after Penn completes the Asger Leth-directed Universal/Imagine Entertainment drama "Cartel." He hasn't done a comedy since the 1989 laffer "We're No Angels."

The Farrellys have long had their eyes on Del Toro to play Moe. Del Toro, who's coming off "Che," showed comic chops in the Guy Ritchie-directed "Snatch."

The surprise is the emergence of Carrey to play Curly. Howard established the character as a seminal physical comedian, from the first time he appeared in the first Stooges short in 1934 until he suffered a stroke on the set in 1946.

I don't know about this remake, then again, I say that about all the remakes that Hollywood is molesting. I guess we are going to have to wait and see when the trailer is released. source>>>

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Congress should be forced to fallow Nascar's lead and wear their sponsors on their chest.

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Some people wear their hearts on their sleeve. Members of Congress should wear their sponsors on their chest.

This isn't an original idea. About a month ago, a friend forwarded me a post that was making its way around the blogosphere at the speed of light:

"Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like Nascar drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors."

Great idea. Just imagine what that would look like.

Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and ethically challenged head honcho at the Senate Banking Committee, files into a congressional hearing room, wields his gavel and calls the committee to order. The dress code is business casual: collared shirts, no jacket required.

Dodd is sporting a pink Lacoste shirt, with his "endorsements" emblazoned across his chest in large, black letters (the corporate logos go on the back):

Citigroup Inc. $428,294
United Technologies $380,550
Bear Stearns $347,350
American International Group $281,038
Deloitte & Touche $270,220

And that's just a list of Dodd's Top 5 lifetime contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The list goes on: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.

Public Information

You get the idea. Aside from United Technologies, based in Dodd's home state, his major contributors all have business before the Banking Committee.

This is publicly available information, courtesy of CRP's opensecrets.org Web site. Aside from a handful of journalists, political junkies and those with an ax to grind, most people don't spend their days combing through details of who gave how much to whom.

Which is why lawmakers should publicize their donors.

AIG's largesse didn't seem to dissuade Dodd from inserting an amendment into the $787 billion fiscal stimulus bill limiting executive compensation at companies receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

On the other hand, one might wonder if Dodd was persuaded to look the other way by large contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was the No. 1 recipient of cash from the two government-sponsored (now owned) enterprises, which were trying to fend off regulations that would curb their size, risk and profitability.

Strategic Giving

Fannie and Freddie specialized in strategic giving, concentrating their contributions on committees with oversight responsibility, including Senate Banking and House Financial Services. Their efforts were successful until they collapsed into the government's arms in September.

AIG has contributed $9.3 million to federal candidates and parties through political action committees and individual contributions over the last 20 years, according to CRP. Dodd was the No. 2 recipient of AIG cash from 2003 to 2008, right behind President Barack Obama.

One reason Dodd's contributions are larger than most ranking members and committee chairmen, especially in the latest election cycle, is his failed presidential run.

"Anyone who runs for president bubbles to the top of the contribution list," says Massie Ritsch, communications director at Washington's CRP, which tracks money in politics.

Pay to Play

Just because an elected official receives campaign contributions from certain companies or industries doesn't mean he's on the take.

It sure looks that way, though. If I didn't know better, I'd think the stepped-up campaign contributions to Dodd and his Banking Committee cohorts in the last election cycle was a down payment on new regulations being crafted by Congress following the Panic of 2008.

It's probably no coincidence that Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, is another top recipient of AIG contributions. Baucus chairs the Finance Committee, which shares oversight of AIG with the Banking Committee.

Senator Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on the Banking Committee and chairman before the Democrats took control in the 2006 election, is beholden to -- I mean, receives most of his campaign contributions from -- lawyers and law firms.

With Congress pounding away at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for more transparency, and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo threatening to release the names of the AIG bonus recipients -- an invasion of privacy that has no relevance to anything -- isn't it time Congress let a little sun shine in?

Right to Know

The public has a right to know what sort of hanky-panky its elected representatives are up to. In order to fulfill our electoral responsibility, we have to make informed decisions about whether our congressman is doing the people's business or catering to his corporate constituency. Without a handy list of sponsors, we can't determine the extent to which money buys access, not to mention perks and tax benefits.

At a time when Congress is channeling public outrage at AIG for awarding $165 million of bonuses to its financial products group, lawmakers should appreciate how quickly mob outrage can ricochet back to them.

So why not do the right thing now and return AIG's campaign contributions to the people? As it turns out, that idea is already resonating with the public.

A new poll by the O'Leary Report and Zogby International found that 73 percent of Americans think any members of Congress who received campaign contributions from AIG over the last two years should return the money.

Return on Investment

Why stop there? Lawmakers should fork over all campaign contributions received from TARP-taking banks. These institutions doled out $114 million in the past year for lobbying and campaign contributions, according to CRP. Add that to the $50 million in AIG bonuses already returned by recipients, and we could put this whole bonus kerfuffle to rest.

It turns out the $114 million was money well spent. It bought the banks $295.2 billion in TARP money, a return of more than 258,000 percent.

Who needs off-balance-sheet vehicles when the government can provide that kind of return on investment?

(Caroline Baum, author of "Just What I Said," is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

On this date in 1655, Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. The orange moon was recently found to have lakes of hydrocarbons. In 1916, Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe of American Indians died from tuberculosis source>>>

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Why do some parents do their kids' homework?

Why do parents overreach with schoolwork? Family experts and educators offered these explanations.

Ego: Moms and dads may see in their child's homework a reflection of themselves. Science fairs and open houses are very public, displaying students' work for everyone to judge.

Children "are, in so many ways, reflections of us ... and if they don't do something well, it must be something I'm doing wrong as a parent," said Roxanne Owens of the Family Literacy Initiative at DePaul University. "It's certainly not fair, but that's a natural inclination."

Good intentions: Parents are constantly urged to get involved in their student's education.

"Parents put a lot of pressure on themselves for their children to do well in school, and homework is the one thing they can really be involved in," said family therapist Leah Smethurst with Northwestern University's Family Institute. "It sort of represents their contribution to their child's schooling."

It's easier: Sometimes it's easier to provide an answer than to walk a child through the assignment -- a consideration for those tackling homework at the end of a long day.

"It's exhausting to work all day, come home and have the energy to be that perky parent who says 'let me get a well-balanced meal on the table in 30 minutes and then we'll start to do the homework,' " said Rockland School Principal Jean LeBlanc of Libertyville, a mother herself. source>>>

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Kids may battle depression better if they exercise

xercise seems to help some adults battle depression -- that endorphin release can produce upbeat feelings and tamp down pain receptors. But does it work as well for children?

Iy1sroncIt may, according to a new study that put 207 overweight, sedentary kids ages 7 to 11 through varying bouts of play-type exercise and found that those who stayed active longest reaped the most benefits.

The children were randomly divided for 13 weeks into three groups: a low-dose exercise group that was active for 20 minutes a day, a high-dose exercise group active for 40 minutes a day, or a control group that did no exercise. Exercise was geared toward intensity and play rather than competition or skill development, and activities were designed to help kids reach a heart rate greater than 150 beats per minute. The children were also given two tests at the beginning and the end of the study -- the Reynolds Child Depression scale measuring depressive symptoms, and the Self-Perception Profile for Children, which gauges kids' perception of themselves.

As exercise time rose, so did psychological benefits, as depression symptoms decreased, although the participants' weight did not change significantly. The children also said they felt better about themselves, leading researchers to speculate that that could lead to doing better in school.

"There's a message here for all of us that taking some time out of our day to do something physical helps make us better mentally," said lead author Karen Petty in a news release. Petty is a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the Medical College of Georgia's prevention institute in Augusta. The study was published online recently in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology. source>>>

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Springtime Workouts for Golf, Gardening and More

It still feels like winter outside today, but my husband assures me that spring will get here eventually. I can already tell that people are gearing up for warm weather activities and, perhaps, already feeling a little soreness after being inside for so long.

In fact, one of my clients was so sore from playing her first golf game of the season, she could barely stand up straight.

To help her out, I put together some new golf workouts to get her core and body strong and flexible and I thought I'd highlight some other workouts that my help you prepare for other springtime activities:

* Golf Warm Up Exercises - These moves are perfect for warming up your abs, back, arms and legs before you hit the golf course or the driving range.
* Golf Strength Training Workout - Having a strong body and core can give you more power in your golf swing while protecting you from injury. This workout focuses on overall strength as well as the core muscles used in golf.
* Core Strengthen and Stretch - This simple workout includes exercises for the core as well as flexibility exercises to stretch out the shoulders, back and arms. This is a great workout to prepare you for working in the yard.
* Outdoor Circuit Workout - If you want to spice up your usual walk or run, this circuit includes some tough intervals to keep things interesting and challenging source>>>

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Good Morning Chicago! The Rod Blagojevich show airs tomorrow

What's better than the thought of waking up to Rod Blagojevich?

If you're anything like us, that's tough to beat.

Want no more. Now the dream's a reality.

WLS

Blago will appear on Chicago's legendary WLS radio station tomorrow morning from 7am - 9am. And because they live webcast their programming, you can stay in bed wherever you live and wake up to "@$#!* Golden Oldies with Rod" or whatever he'll call the show.

It's not the first time WLS has offered the ex-gov a job. They offered him the weekend shift last January if he voluntarily stepped down. You know what happened from there.

Guests

It gets better. Not only will he be taking phone calls from listeners but he'll have some guests as well. Two of them are actors in the musical "Rod Blagojevich Superstar!"

We're not kidding. The Second City comedy troupe launched the musical last February - to surprisingly good reviews. Chicago theater critic Dave Wollinsky gave it an A minus.

"Second City has always been at its best when they can lay satirical waste to moronic local scandals, so it wasn't too surprising when they announced Rod Blagojevich Superstar this month," Wollinsky wrote.

"Astonishingly, Superstar doesn't feel rushed," he said. "True, it borrows heavily from Jesus Christ Superstar, but its succinct telling of the rise and fall of Blagojevich ... in only a handful of scenes is remarkably funny."

Response

How are the people in Chicago taking it? Mixed. The news has generated a lot of comments on one Chicago website.

Michael is looking forward to it:

"This is going to be some of the best radio in Chicago in YEARS," he writes. "I for one can't WAIT to hear what this nutjob comes up with on air!"

Debbie says she's glad she's already at work by 7am

"If he were going to be on any earlier, I'd have to find elevator music ... or a polka music station ... HORRIBLE music, but better than a stick in the eye which is what listening to Blago speak ... is akin to."

But not John. Give the guy a break he says.

"The man has to make a living, leave him alone Haters of the world."

For those of you like John- the non-haters of the world - you can visit the website here. source>>>

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Over 100,000 Outraged over Obama Speaking at Notre Dame

Outrage over the invitation of President Barack Obama to offer the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame has translated to over 111,000 signatures and counting in protest.

At one point Tuesday evening, the website notredamescandal.com popped up with the "Server is too busy" statement as the online petition continued to collect an average of 1,000 new signatures every 15 minutes.

"People are outraged, and the alumni of Notre Dame in particular are communicating to each other," Patrick J. Reilly, president of Cardinal Newman Society, which launched the petition, told LifeSiteNews.com.

White House officials announced on Friday that Obama had accepted Notre Dame's invitation to speak at the May 17 event. Following protests from pro-life groups, university alumni and religious leaders, the White House issued a statement Tuesday saying Obama welcomes the "spirit of debate and healthy disagreement on important issues."

Bishop John D'Arcy, the Roman Catholic Bishop of South Bend, Ind., has decided not to attend the commencement ceremony, where Obama will also be given an honorary degree.

D'Arcy's main protest is against Obama's recent actions which include lifting a ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and overturning a policy that banned U.S. taxpayer money from going to international groups that perform or promote abortions.

"President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred," D'Arcy said Tuesday. "While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life."

Reilly of Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) told LifeSiteNews.com that he sees outrages all the time but he believes Obama's selection was "the last straw."

"The president has been waging a campaign of human destruction with his policies, and abortion, and stem-cell research, and now trying to eliminate conscience protections for healthcare workers," he said. "And in the meantime, Catholic institutions - in particular Catholic universities - have been very quick to abandon their Catholic mission for the sake of prestige. And this is probably the most prominent Catholic University hosting the most prominent leader of the Culture of Death."

CNS, which is dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at the nation's 224 Catholic colleges and universities, launched the petition on Friday right after the announcement by the White House. Other groups, including Notre Dame campus organizations and Catholicvote.org, have joined the petition drive.

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Children’s House Montessori School announces fall progams and enrollment

The Children's House Montessori School in Camden is now enrolling children for the 2009-2010 school year. In its thirtieth year, the Children's House is a private, non-profit school serving children ages 18 months to 9 years. It provides an exciting and nurturing environment with developmentally appropriate classrooms and materials designed to contribute to the growth of self-motivated, independent learners with a love for life.

The Children's House has three different age-appropriate programs and offers Before and After School Care. In the Toddler program, children are offered an opportunity to develop independence in a spacious, cheerful environment designed especially for their needs. Toddlers ages 18 months to 3 years meet 2, 3 or 5 mornings a week from 8:30 a.m. to noon. The Primary Program is designed for children ages three to kindergarten. The classroom provides a richly filled child-sized environment suited to the wide range of capabilities and interests of this age group. Children in Primary may come either 3 or 5 mornings a week, and they have the option of extending their day in the afternoon. Kindergartners are also included in this group and attend 5 full-days a week. The Elementary Program is designed to serve children ages six to nine and is equivalent to first, second and third grades. The Elementary program balances the child's developing imagination and powers of abstraction with concrete, hands-on materials. Art and music are integrated into the curriculum and outside play is a part of everyday.

The Children's House will also offer Before and After School Care for Primary and Elementary students from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. beginning next year.

The Children's House Montessori School is located in downtown Camden in the historic Elm Street School. For more information or to schedule a visit, please call the office, 236-2911. Children's House will also be participating in the Independent Schools Association Open House on Saturday, March 28, 10 a.m. to noon. The school and its classrooms will be open at this time for tours, information and a chance to meet faculty and families of the school. Any interested family is invited and parents are encouraged to bring their children to explore the classrooms themselves. soource>>>

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Courts rule in favor of online retailers in privacy law cases

Several federal court cases within the past year have ruled in favor of online retailers, including Zazzle.com and Symantec, who had been charged with violating privacy laws that restrict the use of credit card information.

The trend emerging in these cases so far appears to be a separation of online retailing from laws designed to protect customers while they�re making credit card purchases in physical stores. But the fact that these laws are undergoing new legal challenges in the courts puts e-retailers in an uncertain legal position going forward, says Eric Goldman, a law professor and director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law. �The issue is what�s the difference between online and offline interactions between customers and retailers and how we should apply these laws to the online world,� he says.

While some legal experts say Internet transactions should remain separate, others say the laws should treat online and offline the same, and still others say the Internet should have even stricter privacy laws because of the risk posed when information is exposed online, Goldman adds.

Recent cases have involved complaints filed by consumers under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and California�s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act. The Fair Credit Reporting Act prohibits retailers from printing receipts with a customer�s full credit card number and card expiration date; Song-Beverly prohibits retailers from requiring customers to provide their home address and telephone number when making a credit card purchase.

In each of the cases, the consumer plaintiff contended that an online retailer violated the law by either issuing an online receipt with too much credit card account information or by requesting personal information in an online order form.

In a case filed in January, Saulic v. Symantec, the plaintiff complained that the software retailer had violated California�s Song-Beverly law by requiring the customer to enter a home address and phone number to complete an online purchase. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled in favor of Symantec, arguing that the law did not apply to online retailers who need that information to help verify a customer�s identity.

There have been several cases brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, though not all of them with court rulings favoring retailers.

In last year�s Grabien v. 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of the plaintiff, deciding that the law�s prohibition against printing a receipt with credit card information extends to online receipts, according to a record of the case kept by Washington, D.C., law firm Proskauer Rose LLP.

That case was consistent with an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Vasquez-Torres v. StubHub Inc., according to Proskauer Rose. Stubhub is an online tickets retailer owned by eBay Inc.

But other cases brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act have since ruled in favor of retailers, according to Proskauer Rose.

In Smith v. Zazzle.com Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of Zazzle in stating that the restriction on printing retail receipts applied only to bricks-and-mortar retail operations, not to retail web sites. That ruling supported earlier rulings in the Southern District of Florida in the cases Grabien v. Jupitermedia Corp., Haslam v. Federated Department Stores Inc. and Edwin King v. Movietickets.com.

Although these latest rulings bode well for online retailers, e-retailers should be prepared for ongoing legal challenges, Goldman says. �People still haven�t thought through the broader implications for Internetretailers,� he says. source >>>

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Drugged kids on video no laughing matter

Tell me this. Why is it OK for a father to videotape his young son who is high on medicine?
» Click to enlarge image
Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell

 

That's essentially what happened to an 8-year-old Florida boy named David.

"David after the Dentist" is a YouTube hit. Since the two-minute video clip was posted in February, it has gotten more than 16 million hits.

My niece, a college student, stopped by my house this weekend, and she couldn't wait to show us this latest YouTube sensation.

The drugged boy is strapped into the back seat of the family car with his head nodding.

"You have four eyes," he says to his father. "I feel funny. Why is this happening to me?"

At another point, the boy screams and tries to raise himself out of the child carrier.

"It's OK," his father says. "It's just the medicine."

David DeVore, the boy's father, claims he took the video because he wanted a photo of his son before and after the dental appointment.

And because the boy's mother was at work.

But DeVore didn't tuck the film in the family's archives. He posted it on YouTube so that strangers could be entertained.

Another YouTube video clip shows a little boy stumbling in the street with a lottery ticket stuck on his head.

"Did the dentist knock you out good? I think they gave you too much, I don't think it should still be affecting you," the father says, as his son staggers around.

There's nothing cute about these video clips.
What's up with these parents?

I understand that we live in an entertainment-obsessed world, but videos of children on drugs cross the line.

In fact, officials with child welfare agencies should be concerned.

We expect parents to protect their children in situations where they cannot protect themselves -- not exploit them.

As for the millions of people who get a chuckle out of these troubling videos, what are you thinking?

Unless these children are pretending to be high, then they are being exploited for adult amusement.

Not funny.

In fact, I already have a hard time understanding why so many people have nothing better to do than to shuffle through YouTube.

The Internet site has made it possible for anyone to become a film star even when what is being filmed could put them behind bars.

For instance, recently three high school sophomores were charged in connection with the videotaped beating of a fellow classmate.

The 16-year-olds live in Melrose Park and attend Proviso East High School. Two of the girls were charged with felony aggravated battery and felony mob action. The girl who filmed the attack was charged with mob action.

There were three postings of the violent attack on YouTube, and one of them had been viewed 2,000 times before it was taken down.

Apparently, these teens were so caught up in the YouTube culture that they didn't even consider that they were providing police with clear-cut evidence.

No matter how many times teens are busted on YouTube for illegal activities such as underage drinking, others can't resist the impulse to post these inappropriate videos.
Wrong route to fame

But there's no excuse for the parents who exploit their children on YouTube.

Some of these parents may be hoping that they will get noticed by someone who makes legitimate movies.

Or maybe they believe their child will go from the video clip to the big screen.

But children shouldn't be forced to be in these homemade films any more than they should be forced to be on reality TV programs.

After all, it is one thing for adults to invite the world into their dysfunctional homes, but children have no choice.

"David after the Dentist" may be just a harmless video to some, but think about the message it sends:

That being high is fun? That it is funny to be incoherent. That being woozy and staggering is a laughing matter.

Worse yet, there's no way to justify using children for entertainment purposes.

These "drugged kids" videos exploit innocent children. Actually, I am surprised the genre isn't deemed too inappropriate for posting.

Laughing at these videos doesn't make us cool.

It makes us sick. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness

Welcome to the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. On this day, a person standing on the equator can see the sun directly pass overhead. And at the North Pole, the sun skims the horizon, signaling the start of six months of non-stop daylight. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness

Psychiatrist and scientist Wilhelm Reich believed he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone." But on March 19, 1954, a judge issued an injunction calling for orgone energy accumulators to be destroyed, and the banning of Reich's books containing statements about this energy. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

On March 18, 1877, Edgar Cayce was the born. Known as the "sleeping prophet," he was considered the most documented psychic of the 20th century, giving readings to thousands of seekers while in a trance state. The last Grand Master of the Knights of Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake on this date in 1314. source>>>

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Hypocritical Artists and Secondary Ticket Sales

People seem to understand that things have fluctuating prices based on supply and demand (like stocks, or gold, or ice cream). But when it comes to event tickets people ignore the realities of supply and demand and talk about fairness. Anyone who tries to sell tickets for a profit is greedy. Or, as Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor says today, ticket resellers are parasites.

People pay big dollars for premium events like the Super Bowl and certain concerts. But they pay it to middle man ticket brokers, lovingly referred to as scalpers. Ticket brokers are really just market makers. They risk capital, hold inventory, and place bets that they'll be able to make a living on the spread.

Pricing tickets is very, very hard. Demand for an event peaks just before it occurs, then falls to zero as it begins, like food that has gone bad. Changes in the economy have a dramatic impact on ticket prices, too. A good ticket broker is thinking about the quality of the event, the date of the event, the venue, the seat locations and the state of the local economy when pricing tickets. And if they do it wrong, they eat their inventory and take a loss.

Most ticket brokers don't make much money, particularly when you factor in that they're putting their own capital at risk. A few, those that have good instincts and the right connections, do very well.

But it's important to know that everyone is in on the game. Players and coaches who go to the Super Bowl sell their tickets to brokers. Venues sell some of (or all of) their best seats to popular events to brokers. The artists do the same. Everyone along the supply chain gets their cut. Usually in cash, which isn't claimed as income.

The only people taking any risk are the brokers, who put their money on the line. And when an event turns sour, they take the hit.

The benefit to the artists and promoters is clear - brokers create a smooth demand curve for tickets. When an event doesn't do well, no one feels bad for the brokers. But when tickets for a hot event go for four or five times the face value of a ticket, everyone points to the brokers and says they're greedy. What they don't realize is that the broker has paid so many people along the way for those tickets, they're probably only making a 10% margin on their investment. And that's when things go well.

In a past life I was the COO of a Kleiner Perkins backed ticket reseller called Razorgator, so I know a lot about this business. And I also know that nobody's hands are clean.

Reznor wants to kill the secondary ticket business, which is very noble and no doubt popular with his fans. But what he doesn't talk about is the fact that with any scarce good a market price develops, and there is no way to avoid it. Putting legal or logistical restrictions on ticket resales just means that people pay in other ways, usually by waiting in line. That means people who value their time the least spend the time waiting.

Generally speaking, giving assets to people who are willing to wait around the longest is an inefficient way to allocate resources. But for some artists it makes sense because they want to reward their core base of young fans, most of whom can't compete on price for tickets.

So the artists will keep complaining about the secondary ticket market to keep those fans happy. Even while they reap the direct and indirect benefits of that secondary market source>>>

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9th small Earthquake hits northern edge of O.C.

The series of earthquakes that have been occurring in and around the Western Hills Golf and Country Club in the Chino Hills area, on the northeast edge of Yorba Linda, continued today with a 2.3 quake at 5:13 p.m., following by a 2.5 quake in nearly the same spot at 6.34 p.m. and a 1.9 quake at 6:53 p.m., says the U.S. Geological Survey.

All three quakes occurred near the Western Hills Golf and Country Club in the Chino Hills.

As we've reported in earlier posts, the shaking is occurring west of the Chino Hills fault, and not far from the Yorba Linda trend, the seismic zone that produced a 5.4 quake last July.

These are the latest two quakes since the weekend, when 3 quakes occurred at the golf course in a 19 hour period. source>>>

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Pope brings 'Christian message of hope' to Africa

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday began his first visit to Africa as pontiff, saying he was bringing the "Christian message of hope" to a continent ravaged by conflict, poverty and the scourge of AIDS.

"Even amid the greatest suffering, the Christian message always brings hope," the pope said as he arrived from Rome.

"In the face of suffering or violence, poverty or hunger, corruption or abuse of power, a Christian can never remain silent," the 81-year-old pope said from a plexiglass podium after being greeted on the tarmac by Cameroon President Paul Biya.

"At a time of global food shortages, financial turmoil, and disturbing patterns of climate change, Africa suffers disproportionately," he said. "More and more of her people are falling prey to hunger, poverty and disease."

However the head of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics earlier Tuesday stood firm against the use of condoms, saying during a question-and-answer session aboard the flight from Rome that they were not a solution to combatting AIDS.

The disease "is a tragedy ... that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems," the 81-year-old pontiff said.

The solution lies in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer," said Benedict, who will also visit Angola during the weeklong trip.

The pope also denied feeling alone in the controversy sparked when he lifted the excommunication of Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson.

"In truth, this myth about solitude makes me laugh," the pope said during the flight, dismissing reports in the Italian media that the controversy had left him isolated. "I am surrounded by friends. Solitude does not exist," he said.

The pope, who will turn 82 on April 16, last month said he wanted 2009 to be the "Year of Africa," which will also include a conference of African bishops in Rome in September and an African synod at the Vatican in October.

The stop in Yaounde, where Benedict will stay until Friday, will include a meeting with the representatives of 52 African states preparing the October synod.

The capital -- where Benedict is to celebrate an open-air mass on Thursday -- has been spruced up, with public buildings repainted, roads repaired and trees and shrubs planted and trimmed.

Vatican and Cameroonian flags bearing photos of Benedict and Biya flutter throughout the city, particularly around the teeming John F. Kennedy avenue.

However, in a country of nearly 19 million people where development has been hampered by one of the highest levels of corruption in the world, many ordinary people are struggling to show enthusiasm.

"Pope Benedict is offering us his first visit to Africa. We are happy. However, no one is going crazy with delight," Catholic sociologist Pierre Titi Nwel told AFP.

Benedict will also meet with representatives of the Muslim community and associations serving the handicapped.

In Angola, which is still recovering from 27 years of civil war, Benedict will meet with diplomats posted in Luanda and urge the international community not to abandon Africa.

The German pontiff will celebrate an open-air mass in Luanda on Sunday.

Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by AIDS than any other region of the world. Nearly two-thirds of all adults and children with HIV live in the region, according to a 2006 report by UNAIDS.

AIDS prevention is a subject that often puts the Vatican at odds with international health organisations, since the Roman Catholic Church advocates abstinence as the only effective way of preventing the spread of AIDS and opposes campaigns for the use of condoms.

Last year about 60 Catholic groups wrote an open letter to Benedict urging him to reverse the Vatican's opposition to contraception.

The ban on condoms "exposes millions of people to the risk of contracting the AIDS virus," they said.

The trip is Benedict's 11th outside Italy in his four years as the head of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

While it is his first trip to Africa as pope, Benedict has travelled to the continent once before, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1987 when he visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:Happy Bacchanalia,

In ancient Rome, today's date marked the beginning of Bacchanalia, a wild and mystical two-day festival that celebrated the god Bacchus (known as Dionysus to the Greeks).

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Freeman’s Fight The Israel lobby gets its man—and tips its hand.

Charles Freeman Jr.'s withdrawal of his acceptance of a high-level intelligence position in the Obama administration was a national-security drama more riveting than an episode of "24." The moral was clear: even a president who owes his job to a progressive movement in American politics could not support a longtime public servant who had made the mistake of criticizing Israel. Fierce advocates of the Jewish state, notably Sens. Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman and Reps. Eric Cantor and Steve Israel, played important roles in Freeman's exit, while present and former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee flitted in and out of the wings.

The message to all office-seekers is obvious. "They want to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys. They want other people to be intimidated," Freeman told The American Conservative just before he withdrew his name to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He went on, "If the administration does not stick with me, then it's destroying the argument that the Israel lobby is only a mythic entity and does not control the public space. ... It will show the world that it is not able to exercise independent thinking on these issues."

If there was encouraging news in the administration's collapse, there it was. When Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced Freeman's withdrawal late on the afternoon of March 10, the matter was on center stage, in plain sight of what Freeman calls "the American political class."

Three hours later, Freeman issued a statement directly accusing the Israel lobby of "doing widening damage to the national security of the United States." He wrote that its tactics "plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth." He continued:

I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so.

Freeman's ability to say so to a wide audience was electrifying and unique. His charge was soon mentioned in the chief boroughs of liberal opinion, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Time's Joe Klein called his exit "an assassination," and The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan said it was a "scalping." Unlike countless other incidents in which American policy on the Middle East has been compromised behind closed doors, this time the Israel lobby was seen fleeing the scene of the crime.

The drama began on Feb. 19, when the Foreign Policy blog reported that Blair, a retired Navy admiral, was planning to name Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, which sorts out the reports of the many intelligence agencies and presents them to the White House. In 2007, one of its assessments, concluding that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program following the invasion of Iraq, chilled the neoconservative drive to attack Iran. "No one has ever made the case that it's a primary policy-making role," says William Quandt, the longtime expert on the Middle East.

Freeman is hardly a cipher. An outspoken and formidable thinker firmly in the realist camp, he spent four decades in the State Department marked by his poise in the presence of heads of state. In 1972, at age 29, having mastered Mandarin, he was saving Richard Nixon, whom he regarded as "totally lacking in personal grace, with no sense of the proper distance to keep in human relations," from embarrassment with Zhou En-Lai on the famous trip to China. Twenty years later, as an Arabic speaker, he was interpreting George H.W. Bush -- a fellow Yaleman and blueblood who fixed his name forever as "Chas" -- to King Fahd as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Freeman is a throwback. He celebrates his Puritan roots and the idea of wide historical reading for its own sake. He is also completely dedicated. He lost his third son in India because of poor medical treatment. He lost a 30-year marriage in Saudi Arabia during the long hours of the Gulf War.

"Frankly I was hoping to see him become a secretary of state," says Edward Kane, a former CIA official who heads the Cosmos Club's program on foreign affairs.

Freeman's position on the Middle East made such ambitions pointless. In fact, he had resisted being sent to the region in the 1980s because of the "totalitarian" character of debate over American policies there -- the lobby's "virtual hammerlock on American foreign policy," as he told an interviewer in the mid-'90s. He went on bluntly:

The American Jewish community, which had always been extremely suspicious of people who trafficked with the Arabs ... became increasingly hostile to Arabists in the State Department. It essentially became difficult, if not impossible, for Foreign Service officers dealing with the Arab world, or with the Middle East generally, to take anything other than a stance that was assertively loyal to causes espoused by the Israelis... By the '80s, as AIPAC ... achieved the transcendent influence in the Congress that it did, there was an atmosphere of intimidation, worthy of the McCarthy era, in many respects, imposed on Arabists.

Following his retirement from government in 1995, Freeman took over from George McGovern as head of the Middle East Policy Council, a think tank that gets Saudi support and seeks to educate Americans about the Arab and Muslim world.

I asked him whether he is an Arabist. "What is an Arabist?" he countered. "Maybe it's just someone who speaks Arabic. Someone who understands the Arabs. Obviously, that's a bad thing. We shouldn't understand the Arabs. We might actually think they have justice on their side. We might want to negotiate with them rather than clobber them."

Freeman openly admires Israel: "The good has outweighed the bad in Israel for a long time. I would like to see Israel survive and prosper. Right now it is doing itself in and taking us with it." Years ago, he became aware of how fierce adherence to Israel in our political class was damaging both nations. "I came to all this really very late," he says. "I was an admirer of what I thought was a humane society in Israel. What really got me was when I was in Abu Dhabi many years ago and turned on the local TV. There was a home video of two Israeli plainclothesmen pulling a Palestinian teenager out of his house and kicking him in the head, and when he was semiconscious, they shot him in the back of the head. And the same story was on the back page of the English language newspaper, with six panels from the video. I thought, when this hits the U.S. press, all hell will break loose. Well, it didn't ever hit our press. The self-censorship extended to a point that it was really dangerous to our society."

Freeman made no secret of these views at the Middle East Policy Council. After the cancellation of the Dubai ports contract in 2006, he denounced the political class for exploiting the popular prejudice of "Arabophobia." Soon after, when the London Review of Books published Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's bombshell essay on the Israel lobby, Freeman unapologetically celebrated the scholars.

"He does not hide his light under a bushel, and we've been waiting a long time for these ideas," Edward Kane says. Adds Jim Lobe, a foreign-policy correspondent for Interpress, "I can tell you from personal experience that he is absolutely brilliant and incredibly well-rounded in his knowledge."

In 2005, Freeman's friend Boyden Gray saw his appointment to be ambassador to the EU held up for months because of his association with realist thinking on the Middle East, and he had to visit with AIPAC before he could take the job. Freeman's case was far more serious. His appointment had only been leaked when it drew the wrath of the Israel lobby. Steve Rosen, a former AIPAC staffer who is under indictment for allegedly passing secrets to the Israelis, immediately attacked Freeman on the website of the Middle East Forum, a neoconservative think tank. "Freeman is a strident critic of Israel and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born," Rosen said. He quoted this horrifying statement by Freeman: "Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. ... And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis."

At least Rosen was straightforward about his concern with Israel. The same cannot be said of the pack that followed him. They focused on the money that the Middle East Policy Council receives from Saudi Arabia and several cold-blooded statements that Freeman had made justifying Chinese repression in Tiananmen Square and Tibet (which his supporters attempted to dignify, not always persuasively, as "realist"). The group included Gabriel Schoenfeld at the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Chait and Martin Peretz at The New Republic, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, and Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard. All Jewish, all supporters of the Iraq War, which Freeman vigorously opposed.

The focus on the China and Saudi connections is typical of the Israel lobby's work. While it quietly spreads the word about its ability to take scalps, it does not like to do so publicly. That might force Americans to debate the slaughter in Gaza or the ongoing oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank. Far better for Freeman's critics in Congress -- notably Joe Lieberman in the Senate and Eric Cantor, Shelly Berkley, and Mark Kirk in the House -- to talk about Saudi Arabian money, which was never an impediment to Hillary Clinton's appointment to be secretary of state, though her husband's library was showered in it.

The good news in the Freeman case is that he was even named in the first place and that he got a public defense. Writers Joe Klein, Richard Silverstein, M.J. Rosenberg, and Glenn Greenwald, all Jews, said that the issue was whether there was any room in the discourse for critics of Israel. Klein called the attackers a "mob." Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation denounced the "thunderous, coordinated assault." Steve Walt characterized the campaign as a McCarthyite witchhunt with an important negative function: making ambitious public servants afraid to say anything about Israel. "Freeman might be too smart, too senior, and too well-qualified to stop," he wrote before the appointment was scuttled, "but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their careers could be jeopardized if they followed in Freeman's footsteps and said what they thought."

There could be little doubt what was at stake. Jim Lobe said on Scott Horton's radio show that the fight was the "first big test of the influence of the so-called Israel lobby in the Administration." Freeman wrote to friends, "I suspect that my appointment won't be final till the fat lady at AIPAC sighs."

The fight dragged on for nearly three weeks. Freeman's critics circulated e-mailed comments he had made about China on a foreign-policy listserv, and eight congressmen, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, called on Blair to investigate Freeman's links to Saudi Arabia. Blair wrote back that Freeman had his "full support" and said that he "has never received any income directly from Saudi Arabia or any Saudi-controlled entity." He defended him against angry questioning by Joe Lieberman on the morning of March 10. But by then, several Republican senators were demanding answers from the White House. Dianne Feinstein reportedly called for a meeting of senators with Freeman. He was gaining endorsements from influential journalists like Andrew Sullivan and James Fallows, but no congressman was lifting his head above the melee to support Freeman.

As for Obama, he said not a word, just as he said nothing about Gaza. Finally, by the afternoon of March 10, Blair had changed his mind. "I came to a conclusion, as did Denny Blair at the same time," Freeman told TAC, "that I couldn't accomplish what I wanted to do." Yes, he could come up with quality intelligence products, but his presence would hurt their credibility. "I left for the same reason that I accepted the job, for the best interests of my country."

Chuck Schumer quickly made clear that this was a White House decision, and it was all about Israel. "Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position," Schumer said. "His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."

Then Freeman issued his barnburner of a statement saying it was all about "a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government." "There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government -- in this case, the government of Israel," he wrote. "This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."

National Public Radio's Robert Siegel described Freeman's charge as "angry" and suggested that he was merely the Marty Peretz of the Arabs. The Washington Post called it a "crackpot" conspiracy theory and tirade. Meanwhile, Freeman's supporters rallied to his side. Steve Walt called Obama a "wimp." "Caving on Freeman was a blunder that could come back to haunt any subsequent effort to address the deteriorating situation in the region," he wrote. Andrew Sullivan said that the affair showed that when push comes to shove, Obama is behind AIPAC "110 percent." Joe Klein noted that Schumer and company have made Washington "even less hospitable for those who aren't afraid to speak their minds, for those who are reflexively contentious, who would defy the conventional wisdom."

This is where I differ from Chas Freeman's new friends. Years ago, he understood that the Israel lobby produced secret resentment among its victims throughout Washington. More recently, John Mearsheimer told me that Israel's critics are engaged in a kind of "mortal combat" in which career and reputation are at stake. Having long battled the Israel lobby, these men have no illusions about how it operates and still dare to speak out. Others -- for instance those who say that it just controls Congress, not the White House -- are now awaking to its methods. This is the great lesson, and even joy, of Chas Freeman's mugging. A lobby operates best as a "night flower," Steve Rosen once said. The Freeman takedown happened in broad daylight. Sunshine means everything in a democracy. Now the diverse political forces who want to change our Mideast policy can find one another.

Speaking to this magazine two days after his withdrawal, a reflective Freeman framed the episode as a chance to educate Americans. He only regretted imprecision -- that he had blasted the lobby rather than doing more to emphasize the reflexive organizational American support for the policies of the right-wing Israeli government.

Of the Gaza assault, he said, "I don't think they wanted to do anything but beat the living daylights out of the Palestinian people. Schrecklichkeit [a World War I German policy of intimidation] is the basis of this policy, and it makes it harder and harder for more and more people here to overlook."

Freeman was gratified by the wide support he had gotten from Jewish writers. "I think the most courageous people on this issue are those of Jewish origin or faith. They have the most at stake in this. These things are being done in their name." He said he hoped that his withdrawal would allow Americans to talk about what Israel is doing in a historical and diplomatic light:

I am interested in seeing the survival of a humane and not a thuggish Jewish state in the Middle East. I am interested in finding ways of coming to grips with the fact that the perpetrators of the Holocaust and those who halted it accept Israel's right to exist, but in the region in which it does exist, no one accepts its right to exist. That's the problem we must overcome.

As for himself, at 66, having severed his institutional connections, Freeman has a chance to "redefine myself." He doesn't expect to have any role in government, directly or indirectly, "but one thing I'm not going to do is shut up." source>>>

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The divisive politics of stem cell research

With a stroke of a pen, President Obama has reversed former President Bush's ban on taxpayer financing of embryonic stem cell research. (In a display of indifference or cowardice, he's announced he's leaving it to Congress to decide whether and how to further lift restrictions on human cloning.)

But "embryonic stem cell research"? Now there's a mouthful. What does that mean?

It means research that is willing to destroy some nascent human lives in order to (possibly) save others. The politically astute move by the president produced one of the beautifully self-serving front-page headlines: "Obama Puts His Own Spin on the Mix of Science With Politics," as The New York Times put it.

Dr. George Q. Daley, who studies blood diseases at Children's Hospital in Boston, said private money is drying up for embryonic research, making the public money particularly welcome.

Why? Controversy may be part of the reason, but venture capital basically is streaming away from embryo-destroying research precisely because the science is moving so powerfully (at least in the short and medium term) toward other more convenient sources of stem cells, as the science reporter for The New York Times admits:

"The Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka found in 2007 that adult cells could be reprogrammed to an embryonic state with surprising ease. For researchers, reprogramming an adult cell can be much more convenient, and there have never been any restrictions on working with adult stem cells.

"For therapy, far off as that is, treating patients with their own cells would avoid the problem of immune rejection."

Every week, more stories cross my e-mail about potentially lifesaving treatments being developed from stem cells. These stories almost never make the headline news (or even back page) precisely because they share one salient characteristic: The researchers making these brilliant discoveries do not obtain stem cells by destroying human life. And so their achievements are not "news," at least, not big news - not a front-page stick with which to beat former President Bush and his pro-life ilk over the head.

They are not that interesting, in other words, to politicians and partisans fighting culture wars. They are only of interest to someone who knows and loves a person suffering from one of the diseases they may someday help cure.

Just yesterday, for example, not one but two potential breakthroughs crossed my desk - two very typical ones:

The Whitehead Institute reports that for the first time it has been able to reprogram skin cells from Parkinson's patients into "pluripotent" stem cells (similar to embryonic) that can be used to create dopamine-producing neurons, while leaving behind potential cancer-causing genes. The neurons are genetically identical to the patient from which they come, which might eventually prove hugely important to patient care and is even more immediately important in testing possible new drug therapies.

Meanwhile at the 67th annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology, dermatologists presented study findings in which cultured stem cells and bioengineered skin were used to successfully treat skin ulcers of three scleroderma patients - a painful and incurable disease affecting 300,000 Americans. Where did the researchers get these stem cells? In small amounts of bone marrow from the affected patient's hip.

Not news, in other words, just good news.

If you queried these researchers, they may well support lifting government restrictions on taxpayer financing of stem cell research. I do not doubt that most scientists would prefer that government money came completely unfettered from any oversight. (Come to think of it, so do most bankers, most welfare mothers and most overmortgaged homeowners.)

But the people who are betting their own money are betting against embryonic stem cell research as the most likely pathway to cures for diseases. Companies that have invested in embryonic research are correspondingly desperately anxious to use government to commandeer your money and mine.

And they have used politics precisely to make it happen. source>>>

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Actor, political activist Ron Silver dies

-- Ron Silver, an award-winning actor and co-founder of an organization calling for a united Jerusalem, has died.

Silver, who won a Tony Award for his performance in "Speed-the-Plow," died Sunday in New York City two years after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He was 62.

In 2000, Silver co-founded the One Jerusalem organization, calling for a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in opposition to the Oslo Peace Accords.

He was a liberal activist who helped found the Creative Coalition, an arts-oriented political group, in 1989. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent and became a public supporter of President George W. Bush. He was a featured speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

He began hosting "The Ron Silver Show," a weekly politics and public affairs radio program, on Sirius Satellite Radio in February 2008.

While Silver won the Tony in 1988 for his portrayal of Hollywood producer Charlie Fox in the David Mamet play, he also excelled as a film and television actor. Silver was nominated for an Emmy Award as Bruno Gianelli on "The West Wing" TV series and received acclaim for his portrayal of lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a staunch Israel advocate, in the 1990 film "Reversal of Fortune." source>>>

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Let's Not Worry So Much About What Our Kids Eat

Organic? Whole wheat? Whole Foods? Who cares?

A lot of us. But maybe we shouldn't. Or at least, maybe we shouldn't burden our kids with all our nutritional correctness.

When my older son (now 12) was in kindergarten, he came home with a keen interest in cans. Not to build towers with, or roll down the stairs. He wanted to read the labels, because his teacher had been showing the class all about sodium, fructose and calories.

So much for story time.

Anyhow, those kindergarteners must've been mighty advanced, because I'm a grown-up and I still have a hard time figuring out those labels -- especially when the can contains 3.79 servings. (Long division!) I'm also grown-up enough to know that a few years from now, whatever ingredient has been declared bad will probably be good again, and vice versa. Think: trans fats, wine, pasta, real sugar, fake sugar, chocolate -- even lard is making a comeback.

But the bubbly young teacher's interest was enough to excite my son (also several of the dads -- but that's another story,) and for a while he was talking so much about carbohydrates, it was like living with Dr. Atkins. Slowly, his interest tapered off (why ask about nutrition when all you eat are salami and Mint Double Stuff Oreos?) But an article in last week's New York Times got me thinking about kids and "nutrition awareness" again.

"What's Eating Our Kids? Fears About 'Bad' Foods" -- talked about whether young children are getting too concerned about things like calorie counts and sodium content. Some eating disorder experts said that parents are so worried about their kids eating only the "right" food they're turning the moppets into "orthorexics" -- people afraid of eating the wrong thing, ever. Maybe afraid of eating, period.

That seems a bit of catastrophic, on the experts' part. But parents who obsess about food indulge in bit of catastrophic behavior themselves. The truth is: A kid can eat a standard-issue hot dog without it throwing his whole life off balance. An unwashed grape is not a crime against humanity. Even a little roll of fat on a kid doesn't mean he, or his parents, have failed.
In our quest to be perfect, we forget that kids can survive on less-than-perfection. They can survive on stuff Whole Foods wouldn't touch with a 10-foot loofah. I know from personal experience they can survive on a diet of Double-Stuff Oreos and salami. On Wonderbread!
Speaking of which -- did you know that, thanks to all its vitamins and minerals that build strong bodies 12 ways, the much-maligned Wonderbread is credited for silently eradicating beriberi and pellagra in America? Yes indeed. Everything bad, even super-processed white bread, was once good, and vice versa.

So when we start fretting out about our kids' eating habits, and worrying that last night's kale wasn't certified organic, let's try to chill.

I've found that a little bag of M&M's helps source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

On March 12, 1894, the first bottles of Coca-Cola were sold. Invented by an Atlanta pharmacist, the original formula included lime, cinnamon, and coca leaves. On this date in 1928, the St. Francis Dam Disaster took place, and in 2002, Homeland Security unveiled their color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

On this date in 1619 it was curtains for the Flower sisters who were burned at the stake on charges of witchcraft in England. It seems their mother, who was also on trial with them, sealed their fate when she picked up a piece of bread and declaimed on the witness stand 'May this cake choke me if I am guilty.' She then proceeded to drop dead after a bite. The Great Blizzard of 1888 wreaked havoc across the Northeast US with some areas receiving as much as 50 inches of snow. source>>>

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DNA testing ends mystery surrounding Czar Nicholas II children

The most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution -- that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family -- may finally be put to rest with the positive identification of bone fragments from a lonely Russian grave.

The czar and his family were gunned down and stabbed by members of the Red Guard early on the morning of July 17, 1918, but rumors have persisted that two of the children, the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother Alexei, survived, perhaps because the diamonds sewn into their clothes blocked attempts to kill them.

Those hopes were bolstered with the 1991 revelation that nine bodies of Romanov family members and servants had been found in a Yekaterinberg grave, but that a son and daughter were still missing.

Now, newly analyzed DNA evidence from a second, nearby grave discovered in 2007 proves that the bones are those of two Romanov children, ending the mystery once and for all. A report on the analysis was published online Tuesday in the journal PloS One.

"I think it is very compelling evidence that this family has been reunited finally," said geneticist Terry Melton of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Pa., an expert in forensic DNA. Melton, who was not involved in the new research, played a major role in disproving the famous claim of the late Anna Anderson that she was Anastasia.

Melton says she still receives several calls each year from people claiming to be direct descendants of the Romanovs.

"There is absolutely no doubt that these are the remains of the Romanov family," said Peter Sarandinaki, founder of the Scientific Expedition to Account for the Romanov Children, which has been seeking the remains of the family.

"The scientific results are, without a doubt, conclusive," said Sarandinaki, the great-grandson of the White Army general who attempted to rescue the Romanovs before their deaths.

Nicholas II abdicated the throne in March 1917, ending the 304-year Romanov rule, and the family was banished to Siberia.

The following year, the family, their doctor and three servants were executed by the Red Guard on the orders of Vladimir Lenin and their bodies disposed of.

Russian film director Gely Ryabov, an amateur archaeologist, found the remains of nine bodies in an unmarked grave near Yekaterinberg in the early 1970s, but kept the discovery secret until 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

DNA testing in the 1990s by geneticist Peter Gill of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, indicated that the remains were those of the czar and czarina and three of their daughters. For comparison samples, researchers used DNA from Britain's Prince Philip, whose grandmother and the czarina's grandmother were sisters, and from indirect descendants of the royal family.

Two years ago, archaeologists found a second grave about 70 yards from the first. It contained 44 broken and burned bone fragments, consistent with reports that the Red Guard unsuccessfully tried to burn the remains of two of the dead children before burying them.

Russian authorities enlisted the help of geneticist Michael Coble of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md., the world's largest mitochondrial DNA testing facility, specializing in identifying the remains of U.S. soldiers.

Coble is lead author of a report on the findings.

Preliminary analysis suggested that the fragments were from two people, a female age 17 to 24 -- some speculate it is daughter Marie -- and a male age 14 to 16.

Coble and geneticist Anthony Falsetti of the University of Florida extracted DNA and compared it with DNA from the bones found earlier and to DNA from a leg bone of Nicholas' brother Georgij, who died of tuberculosis as a young man.

Using new technology that allows use of extremely small samples, they were also able to match the DNA from all the Romanov family members to DNA from a bloodstained shirt that had been worn by Nicholas on April 29, 1891, when he was attacked by a Japanese policeman while touring the city of Otsu. The bloody shirt had been preserved in Russia.

The matches were all perfect. "The genetic evidence is really overwhelming," Coble said.

Their results were then independently replicated by geneticist Walther Parson of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria, and confirmed by Gill.

"This closes the book on this particular chapter of the Romanov history," said forensic anthropologist Susan Myster of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.

"There are still people who are going to want to believe that there were survivors, and God bless them, but I am confident that the royal family has been found, they have been identified and there was no escape, no princess," Falsetti said.

But the story is not quite over. The original nine bodies were buried in Russia, but not as royalty, Sarandinaki said.

In May, he and Coble will present the new results to officials of the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Hopefully, we will be able to convince the church [that these are the remains of the royal family], and at the end, the church will agree and finally give the family the decent and honorable burial they deserve," Sarandinaki said.

"Once the church accepts the remains, my duty will be done," he said. source>>>

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on this date in History

It was known that on this date in 1982, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn would all be on the same side of the Sun, within a 95 degree wide interval. In 1974, authors John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published the bestseller The Jupiter Effect, which wrongly predicted that this planetary alignment would cause a number of catastrophes including a huge earthquake on the San Andreas fault on March 10, 1982. source>>>

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Christian group Samaritan's Purse gets first homes to rebuild in New Orleans

New Orleans' main redevelopment agency has transferred the first of an estimated 4,450 properties it expects to inherit under a state buyout plan to an evangelical group.

Samaritan's Purse plans initially to rebuild five homes in the Gentilly neighborhood. The Christian organization, led by Franklin Graham, hopes to rebuild up to 50 there eventually.

The state bought an estimated 4,450 properties from hurricane-affected homeowners who didn't want to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Many of the properties are in hard-hit areas like eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward.

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has been reaching out to developers, church and neighborhood groups and others interested in putting the properties back into commerce. source>>>

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