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).

source>>>

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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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Today in Strangeness:

On this date in 1899, Bayer received a patent for their new pain reliever-- aspirin. Pharmacist Felix Hoffman was said to synthesize heroin and aspirin in the same month. In 1950, Silly Putty was introduced as a toy by Peter Hodgson. Packaged in plastic eggs, the one-ounce pieces of rubber-like material could be used to transfer colored ink from newsprint.

source>>>

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Plight of an Afghan Christian,Family and friends have disowned him

Many people in Afghanistan have turned to the faith of Jesus Christ in recent years. A few of them have done so openly, though most have kept their conversion secret. The new converts have either been influenced by travelling and settling in Christian countries of the west or by the audacity of Christian missionaries who have travelled to Afghanistan.

The converts number in thousands and congregate in secret churches in Afghanistan or in the blossoming Afghan church which has been set up in England. They all decided to turn away from the faith of their ancestors - some in search of food; others in search of a better world and yet others in pursuit of a better faith. Accepting never-ending fear of rejection and animosity as a consequence of conversion, they have been born again in the Christian faith.

Abdul Wakil Shamsi is one such convert. He used to live in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, where he led a comfortable life in comparison to many others in the city. Wakil's chic outfits, white from head to toe, his street-wise and laddish disposition, his constant curiosity, are all still remembered on Mazar's street corners.

Tempted by the dream of finding a better world, Wakil one day set off to foreign realms. Through Russia's harsh roads, he went to Eastern Europe, from where the mountains led him to Western Europe. There he saw Great Britain sparkling in light and eventually arrived in London.

For Afghans on the ground, London seems like the far end of the world. There's even a local proverb that says "Your hand is open from here all the way to London" - meaning you should do whatever is your power.

In his first year in London, an Iranian man took Wakil to a Persian-speaking church. Wakil then started reading St John's gospel and St Paul's letters. He tried to read the Bible sentence by sentence, to understand each sentence, to interpret and to memorise them all. And so he soon discovered that he had found a better faith. He officially confessed an account of his tumultuous life and was subsequently baptised in the new faith. Little did he know that his conversion would lead to a future that was destined to be even more eventful.

One by one, Wakil's fellow Afghans deserted him. Even his closest friends, those who had accompanied him on his travels, those who had shared his home, refused to speak or eat with him. There were times when Wakil was aching to speak in his own language but not a single Afghan from his community invited him to a dinner of Uzbek-style rice so popular among Afghans.

Soon news of his conversion reached Afghanistan via the same Afghan community that had isolated him. At midnight in London, which corresponded with early morning in Afghanistan, Wakil's father telephoned him. In a voice in which anger was mixed with sorrow, the father asked Wakil: "Is it true that you've become an infidel?"

Wakil didn't what to say and fell silent. He wanted to deny, change the subject or just hang up the phone. Instead he said: "Father, I've not become an infidel. I've found a new faith. Maybe, if I could talk to you face to face, I'd be able to convince you."

But his father cursed Wakil and hung up. Wakil rushed to the nearest newsagent's, bought a phone card and rang his parents. He tried to explain to them the meaning of his conversion but both his mother and father said they had disowned him and that his family's curses would pursue him.

Wakil was now lonelier than ever before. In London no Afghan would talk to him; back home in Afghanistan, his family had disowned him. His wife and two sons stopped talking to him exactly at a time when he was required to prove to the Home Office, in trial after trial, that he was a true convert to Christianity.

For seven years Wakil has been trying to convince the Home Office of the sincerity of his conversion but to no avail. There have been seven years of legal limbo in which Wakil has been treated like a social pariah by his former friends. He carried his new faith around with him in a world that no longer seemed fresh to him. Later, he managed to establish contact with other Afghan converts and together with them set up an independent Afghan church in London. He even managed to establish contact with Afghan converts inside Afghanistan and other countries. And despite doubts on the part of many of his English acquaintances, he even found a new family, a new Christian father and mother.

In the last seven years, Wakil hasn't missed a single Sunday sermon. Since his social encounters are mainly with English people, to Afghans he appears like a true Englishman and yet the Home Office doesn't believe that his conversion is authentic. But Wakil is a true Christian who reads the Bible with the sweet accent of a pure Mazari. He is fluent in five languages and uses them all to promote Christianity and encourage others to search for God. Every week, he arrives in church in time to light a candle. He has learned all the mysteries of living and slaving in England.

Wakil - a man who can't leave this country but is aching for his family, a man who has no permit to stay in England but doesn't know what to do if immigration officials arrest him. Wakil - whom his own family and the Muslim people of Afghanistan have rejected and isolated. Wakil - whose words, "Is there any use in running against the wind?" have stayed with me. Wakil -who by telling this story, made me party to his astounding destiny. source>>>

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Wii Bowl | Locals take video game fun to another level

At a friendly neighborhood restaurant, diners mingle over their french fries, chicken fingers and soft drinks, while an enthusiastic crowd of bowlers gathers in the back.

The large screen is playing a television show, but the image will soon be replaced by animated figures tossing bowling balls down a simulated lane.

The Terminators, the Shaggers, the Wiimen, Here for Beer and the Autumn Bombs slap hands and begin their biweekly tournaments of Wii bowling, a game that is slowly edging out darts and pool tables at area bars.
wii
Dean Pope (left) grimaces after failing to make a 4-10 split during team Wii bowling at Beef 'O' Brady's in Georgetown. Pope is a member of the Zwackers in the 7-team league at the sports bar.

* Gallery Available Wii bowling at area bars

The idea has already caught on in Georgetown, Surfside Beach and Myrtle Beach, where Wii bowlers toss a few during happy hour or participate in leagues - complete with T-shirts and bragging rights.

"I thought it would be a bunch of kids, but it's adults and older people," said Pam Parrott, a member of the Intimidators bowling team at Beef O'Brady's. "There's four people on each team, it's divided between men and women."

The Wii Sports disc includes four basic games - tennis, golf, bowling and baseball.

The bowling game is perfect for the small nooks and crannies available in local bars. The game requires only the swinging of the Wii remote to simulate real bowling.

"This was my husband's idea," said Cindi Welsh, owner of Beef O'Brady's. "We don't do pool tables or dart boards, so he said let's try Wii bowling. We installed a projector so we could do the games."

"Tennis is harder, we felt that Wii bowling would be better," added Shane Powers, the secretary for the Beef O'Brady's games.

Players at Beef O'Brady's swing the remote in arcs that will give them an edge on their opponent.

Being a good bowler with a decent average in real life does not guarantee the same results with the Wii, Powers said.

"I bowl like a professional, but I suck at Wii bowling," said bowler Dean Pope. "It takes a little getting used to. You have to figure out how much wrist to put into it."

At Surfside Live, on U.S. 17 Business in Surfside Beach, the game cranks up each day at happy hour, said player Jen Bouchard.

She started bowling at the bar, but enjoyed the game so much, she bought a Wii console for her home.

Bouchard feels the camaraderie of the game is part of the attraction.

"You're not sitting on your butt, playing a video game," she said. "You have tournaments and you meet different people. It breaks the ice, when people don't know anybody, I love it, it's a lot of fun."

Another attraction of the Wii games is creating a character that looks just like you, Bouchard said.

The game offers the opportunity to pick the right hair and clothing for a designer figure that you can use in every game.

"You can create your own so it looks just like you," she said. "When you turn the Wii on, you can go in and create size, shape, hair.

"She just wears whatever we're wearing."

At Beef O'Brady's, the league season has wrapped up for the next several weeks. The leagues will start a new season in March, totaling the scores and playing for dinner certificates and other small prizes.

The restaurant could begin a league for children this summer, Welsh said.

Meanwhile, the players continue to study their techniques for the remote-control game.

"It's harder than it looks," said John Prevatte. "You think you can just toss it, but you can't."

Wii Safety Rules
To reduce the likelihood of a seizure when playing video games:

Sit or stand as far from the screen as possible.

Play video games on the smallest available television screen.

Do not play if you are tired or need sleep.

Play in a well-lit room.

Take a 10 to 15 minute break every hour.

Playing video games can make your muscles, joints, skin or eyes hurt. Avoid excessive play. Parents should monitor their children for appropriate play.

Take a 10 to 15 minute break every hour, even if you don't think you need it.

If your hands, wrists, arms or eyes become tired or sore while playing, or if you feel symptoms such as tingling, numbness, burning or stiffness, stop and rest for several hours before playing again.

Playing video games can cause motion sickness in some players. If you or your child feel dizzy or nauseous when playing video games, stop playing and rest.

Source-www.nintendo.com source>>>

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‘Watchmen’ May Open With $60 Million, Lift Sales for Fifth Week

"Watchmen," Hollywood's dark take on the comic-book superhero genre, may surpass $60 million in ticket sales in its debut, lifting box-office revenue for a fifth consecutive weekend.

The R-rated movie from Time Warner Inc., based on the 1986 graphic novel, is this week's only new wide release. With no competition, "Watchmen" may take in as much as $64 million, estimates Gitesh Pandya, editor of Box Office Guru LLC. Analyst Steve Mason at Big Hollywood.com projects $63 million.

"Watchmen" will open in 3,611 U.S. and Canadian theaters, the most for any R-rated movie, said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' president for domestic theatrical distribution. The studio's "300," also based on a graphic novel, holds the record for the biggest March open with $70.9 million in 2007, according to researcher Box Office Mojo LLC. Zack Snyder directed both films.

"Because it's based on an acclaimed graphic novel, it will bring in a lot of the older audience," Chuck Walton, editor at online ticket vendor Fandango, said in an interview. "The R rating is an attraction because they know it will be faithful to the book."

As of yesterday, "Watchmen" accounted for 91 percent of Fandango's current sales.

"Watchmen" was named by Time magazine as one of the best novels of all time. The story, set during a time of tense Cold War relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, follows superheroes as they uncover a deadly conspiracy.

An R rating means no one under the age of 17 can be admitted unless accompanied by an adult.

"Watchmen's" release includes 124 Imax Corp. theaters in the U.S., compared with 62 when "300" opened in 2007, Imax Chairman Greg Foster said in an interview.

'300' Repeat?

"300," about the ancient battle between Spartans and Persians helped establish Imax as an outlet for the darker comic- based movies, Foster said. The film, also rated R, went on to take in $456 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.

"Watchmen" opened today. Critics' reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes Web site have been 45 percent positive. Viewers not familiar with the book may have trouble following the movie's complex narrative, according to the site.

"We have a history with Zack Snyder with '300,'" Foster said. "It made consumers start asking exhibitors and suggesting to anyone who would listen that Imax was the place to see cool movies."

Meeting Pandya and Mason's estimates would give "Watchmen" this year's biggest open so far, ahead of "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail." The comedy from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. has been No. 1 for two weeks, generating $67 million including $41 million its first weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

As of March 1, movie attendance was up about 16 percent this year, according to Los Angeles-based Media By Numbers. Ticket sales climbed 17 percent to $1.79 billion. source>>>

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How ticket sellers can lower their total cost of online fraud

Credit card fraud is a key concern for online ticket sellers, and no wonder: Tickets to major music and sports events are in high demand and criminals are increasingly aggressive in finding new ways to make money from it. Ticket sellers invest a significant amount of time and resources to ensure that transactions are authorized and legitimate. And yet fraud has caused the cancellation of thousands of ticket purchases to popular concerts and games, including the Olympics and Super Bowl, leaving fans and ticket sellers stuck.

Sophisticated criminal networks use stolen cards and compromised card information to obtain tickets via the web in order to resell them for a profit.

The key concern for ticket brokers is "card-not-present" (CNP) fraud -- the industry term for transactions made when a credit card is not physically available for the merchant's inspection. CNP fraud is a significant factor that erodes merchant profitability. When fraud occurs in CNP transactions, the merchant loses the full value of the tickets sold, along with payment processing fees and the charge-back penalty.

Many merchants focus on managing charge-backs. But to understand the total cost of e-commerce fraud, ticket companies should look at the larger picture. They can restore significant revenue to their bottom lines by reducing the total impact of fraud.

Fraud impacts an organization well beyond the direct revenue losses tied to charge-backs. There's the expense of screening orders for fraud and administering fraud claims, as well as the cost of rejecting valid orders that may appear suspect. For many brokers, the fear of fraud unnecessarily limits scalability and the ability to expand your business. There is also a customer service cost: consumers expect to use credit cards without hassle or waiting, and customer relationships are undermined when valid transactions are questioned or rejected due to suspected fraud.

Several years ago, when I was VP/Corporate Controller at the online travel agency, Orbitz, I was responsible for solving a significant fraud problem. Losses due to fraudulent airline ticket transactions were approaching $1 million per month and rising at breathtaking speed. We purchased an automated screening system to catch suspicious transactions. But these screening systems also flag many valid purchases. So our fraud team had to manually review a mountain of transactions each day to decide whether to accept or reject them.

Our screening process was reliant upon a variety of applications and significant manual effort was required of analysts who had to pull the relevant transaction data elements together and analyze them. The cumbersome review process required them to toggle back and forth among various screens of data and make calls to banks and various third-party data providers.

One of our biggest challenges was trying to keep up with increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes. Each time we bolstered our defenses, criminals developed new ways of getting around them. Even when we added more analysts, the mountain of suspect transactions kept growing.
We learned that no single tool was going to solve the problem so we quit searching for the silver bullet. Instead, we developed a new end-to-end platform that closed the gaps in our system by integrating all of the functions we needed to combat fraud.

This new workbench enabled us to leverage the combined power of our anti-fraud arsenal and get control of our transaction data. Analysts finally had all the information they needed at their fingertips. Many manual review procedures were automated. We could adapt the system on the fly and add new anti-fraud technologies as they became available.

This new approach successfully reduced fraud losses by 90 percent, while more than doubling our fraud team's productivity. By getting a handle on the problem, Orbitz was able to decrease the size of its fraud department and pursue new revenue channels, such as international bookings that are associated with higher fraud rates.

The experience taught me that online merchants can significantly cut their CNP fraud losses by taking the following steps:

1.) Choose a comprehensive fraud-prevention program that fully integrates the front-end screening system with the manual-review and chargeback management processes. Taking an end-to-end approach will improve the performance of your fraud team time and save your company money.

2.) Utilize a platform that provides multiple tools to screen for suspicious orders. A fraudster who successfully bypasses the address verification service (AVS) and card-verification-number (CVN) checks may be caught by device identification, identify verification or geo-location technologies, or by a negative file check.

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Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists

Last weekend the Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel. Patel has not only accused Israel of 'genocide' and 'war crimes' but considers Disney to be a Jewish plot and supports Hamas, Iran and Syria.

Sizer is a virulent opponent of Christian Zionism and of Israel, which he has said he hopes will disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa. He has also applauded Iranian President Ahmadinejad for having 'looked forward to the day when Zionism ceased to exist'.

Nevertheless, the appearance of an Anglican churchman on a pro-Islamist platform in Britain is a new and significant development. The Church of England recently banned its clergy from joining the BNP; should it not equally ban them from siding with the forces of Islamofascism?

Sizer's participation, however, must be seen in the context of a disturbing realignment in the services of the forces of darkness against the free world: the emergence of an axis between a body of evangelicals, the hard left, the Islamists -- and the far right.

Last July, a discreet meeting was held by a group of influential evangelicals to co-ordinate a new church approach towards Islam. The meeting was convened by Bryan Knell of the missionary organisation Global Connections, and others from a group calling itself Christian Responses to Islam in Britain.

The 22 participants, who met at All Nations Christian College in Ware, Hertfordshire, were sworn to secrecy. The aim of the meeting was to develop the 'grace approach to Islam', which 'tries to let Muslims interpret Islam rather than telling them what their religion teaches'. The meeting had in its sights those 'aggressive' Christians who were 'increasing the level of fear' in many others by talking about the threat posed by radical Islam.

The aim was thus to discredit and stifle those Christians who warn against the Islamisation of Britain and Islam's threat to the church. Those who do so include the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Africa specialist Baroness Cox, the Islam expert Dr Patrick Sookhdeo and the Maranatha Ministry.

A few weeks ago, Dr Sookhdeo became a spectacular victim of precisely such a discrediting process. Dr Sookhdeo, an Anglican canon, a Muslim convert and one of this country's premier authorities on Islam, runs the Barnabas Fund, an aid agency helping persecuted Christians. He has written many books about Islam of which the latest is Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam.

In January the website of Fulcrum, an evangelical group, carried a review of Global Jihad by Ben White, a frequent contributor to the Guardian. His review rubbished Sookhdeo's scholarship on the grounds that he had identified a theological problem with Islam when Islamic aggression was rooted instead in global grievances, particularly the existence and behaviour of Israel.

To cap a farrago of ignorance and historical illiteracy, White tried to damn Sookhdeo by association, citing 'hard-line conservatives and pro-Israel right-wingers' who endorsed his work as proof that Sookhdeo was beyond the pale.

White then drew his review to the attention of a blogger, Islamist and Muslim convert called Indigo Jo. On his website, Indigo Jo anathematised Sookhdeo as the 'Sookhdevil'. This attack was reproduced on various other Islamist websites and Sookhdeo has received a death threat as a result.

So why should Christians betray another Christian to radical Islamists? Fulcrum have denied any connection to the Indigo Jo site along with any intention to discredit Sookhdeo. They say they merely wanted to 'provide a forum' to discuss the issues raised by his book.

But why use Ben White, who clearly knows little about Islam, to review a book by an Islam scholar?

A recurring thread of White's writing is his hatred of Israel. He justifies Palestinian terrorism against Israel as legitimate self-defence to bring about the 'decolonisation and liberation from occupation and Zionist apartheid'.

He says he can 'understand' why some people are unpleasant towards Jews because of Israel's 'ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians' and also 'the widespread bias and subservience to the Israeli cause in the Western media'.

Enter at this point the non-evangelical, secular Left in the shape of Andrew Brown, who joined White's onslaught against Sookhdeo on the Guardian's Comment Is Free website. Brown claimed of Sookhdeo's supporters that they constructed 'a closed mirror-world of hatred to stand against the Islamist one'.

Brown's article, too, seemed to be driven by hostility to anyone who supported Israel. His objection to Sookhdeo was principally that 'in practice the Sookhdeo view of Islam is always coupled with a stance in favour of the greater Israel' -- which enabled Brown to make a witty crack insinuating that the Jews were 'people who are instructed by their religion to be violent, treacherous and imperialist'.

There has long been a notable crossover between the Left and the Islamists, who bury their considerable differences because of their all-consuming hatred of Israel and the West -- and in which they find an echo in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. But what's new in this explosive mix is the presence of Christian evangelicals.

What is extraordinary, moreover, is the targeting by Christian missionaries such as Brian Knell of Sookhdeo, a principal campaigner to end the death sentence for Muslim converts to Christianity. So why are such evangelicals trying to destroy people who are defending Christianity against Islamist aggression?

The answer lies in a profound split amongst evangelicals: between Christian Zionists who love Israel and want to defend the church against the predations of radical Islam, and those who want Israel to be destroyed and radical Islam appeased.

Brian Knell, for example, blames Israel's 'institutionalised terrorism' for the radicalisation of Muslims worldwide. He thus ignores Islamist statements about the innate perfidy of the secular West, the cosmic evil of the Jews throughout history and the need to impose doctrinal purity upon other Muslims in the face of Western modernity.

The warped obsession with Israel is fundamental to these evangelicals' desire to accommodate radical Islamism. Another participant at the All Nations meeting was Colin Chapman, the father of the UK movement against Christian Zionism -- and whose animosity is rooted in a theological prejudice against the Jews.

Chapman's hugely influential book, Whose Promised Land, resurrects the ancient Christian canard of 'supercessionism' -- the belief that because the Jews denied the divinity of Christ, God transferred His favours to the Christians while the Jews were cast out as the party of the Devil. This doctrine lay behind centuries of Christian anti-Jewish hatred until the Holocaust drove it underground.

In his book, Chapman writes that violence has always been implicit in Zionism and that Jewish self-determination is somehow racist. He also subscribes to the canard of sinister Jewish power. He has written: 'Six million Jews in the USA have an influence that is out of all proportion to their numbers in the total population of 281 million... It is widely recognised, for example, that no one could ever win the presidential race without the votes and the financial support of substantial sections of the Jewish community.'

It is a sobering fact that such a subscriber to anti-Jewish prejudice should be so influential in the church. And such thinking has many followers, including Stephen Sizer. 'The covenant between Jews and God,' he has written, 'was conditional on their respect for human rights. The reason they were expelled from the land was that they were more interested in money and power and treated the poor and aliens with contempt'.

And he has denied validity to Judaism itself saying: 'to suggest ...that the Jewish people continue to have a special relationship with God, apart from faith in Jesus ...is, in the words of [the leading Anglican evangelical] John Stott, "biblically anathema".'

And now look at other groups with which Sizer is making common cause in his hatred of Israel and the Jews. He has given interviews to, endorsed or forwarded material from American white supremacists and Holocaust deniers.

Last year, he sent an article printed in the Palestine Chronicle about the alleged influence of 'Israel in Washington' through 'powerful overtly Jewish Washington organisations and, increasingly, through Christian Zionist organisations' to an appreciative Martin Webster, the former leader of the neo-Nazi National Front.

Many will be deeply shocked that the Church of England harbours individuals with such attitudes. But the church hierarchy is unlikely to act against them. Extreme hostility towards Israel is the default position among bishops and archbishops; while the establishment line is to reach out towards Islam in an attempt to accommodate and appease it.

With Christians around the world suffering forced conversion, ethnic cleansing and murder at Islamist hands, the church utters not a word of protest. Instead, inter-faith dialogue is the order of the day, with Canon Graham Kings -- the theological secretary of Fulcrum, no less -- a key player in Anglican inter-faith work.

And now Israel's war against Hamas has had a pivotal effect. There is now a widespread sense that Israel must finally be defeated once and for all -- and then the Islamists will calm down.

It is horrifying that so many in the church should be preaching against the victims of Jew-hatred and Islamist violence and seeking to accommodate those who stand for the persecution of Christians, the destruction of western and Christian values and the genocide of the Jews.

It is horrifying that the church is providing a platform for the dissemination of lies about Israel and ancient theological bigotry against the Jews. And it is horrifying that it contains people who are not just virulently hostile towards Israel but also towards anyone who supports it.

Given the common but no less odious view that British Jews who support Israel are guilty of 'dual loyalty', it would seem that the church is truly supping with the devil and setting the stage for a repeat of an ancient tragedy. source>>>

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The US will launch the Kepler spacecraft Friday to look for other Earths.

The United States is scheduled to launch on Friday an orbiting telescope designed to help answer one of the oldest and deepest questions of astronomy: Are we - or at least our planet's microbes - alone in the galaxy?

The Kepler spacecraft will stare at a patch of sky - the same 100,000 stars near the northern constellation Cygnus, all at once - for at least 3-1/2 years. The goal is to detect Earth-like planets orbiting their host stars at distances thought to be sweet spots for life.

Dubbed habitable zones, these are orbits where a planet is bathed in light that is strong enough to permit liquid water to collect and remain a persistent feature of the planet's surface.

If all goes well, Kepler's journey will start with the launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida at around 10:49 p.m. Eastern time.

For planet-hunting astronomers, the $591 million Kepler mission promises to cross what they've dubbed the "Great Divide" that separates the decidedly uninhabitable planets they have found so far with the Earth-like ones they seek.

During the past 15 years, ground-based telescopes have detected more than 300 so-called exoplanets - planets that are beyond our solar system. But these discoveries have involved a bizarre menagerie of objects ranging in size from 10 times Jupiter's mass to nearly Earth-scale planets.

They often follow highly elliptical orbital paths, subjecting them to enormous temperature swings. Some are more dense than lead; others would float like foam on water, notes William Borucki, a scientist at National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Some orbit so close to their host stars that one "year" in those planets is less than one Earth day.

The ultimate goal, however, is "to someday take a picture of a pale blue dot orbiting a nearby star," says Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University. To decide how to do that in the most efficient and cost-effective way, it's vital to know how many of these planets are likely to be out there for a given number of stars. The frequency with which Earth-like planets are found will be a key driver for future planet-hunting missions, she says.

And if Kepler finds only a tiny handful of such planets in habitable zones?

"That would be another profound discovery," says Dr. Borucki, the mission's lead scientist. "It will mean that Earths must be very rare. We may be the only extant life," at least in our galaxy.

No aliens? Alien chemistries will do
Even if Kepler detects few Earth-like worlds in Earth-like orbits, the number of other planets it finds is likely to explode. Some solar-system experts would be content to give up the prospect of alien life forms for alien geology and chemistry.

The pressure at the center of the Earth is some 3.5 million times higher than the atmospheric pressure at the surface, but Jupiter's core is squeezed to some 70 million higher, notes Raymond Jeanloz, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley.

At these pressures, helium is no longer a gas incapable of carrying electricity; it's a fluid metal that has no problem conducting electricity.

On some of the larger exoplanets, pressures at the cores are estimated to reach billions of times Earth's surface pressure.

"By the time you get to billion-atmosphere pressures, it's not just the chemical bonds between atoms" that change. "Atoms themselves are crushed," Dr. Jeanloz said during a briefing at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Chicago last month. "This is a regime of a new kind of chemistry."

The one-ton Kepler observatory boasts a 1.4-meter (4-1/2 foot) diameter mirror and a push-the-envelope camera, according to James Fanson, project manager for the Kepler mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A typical digital camera has roughly eight million to 10 million individual picture elements, or pixels, on its light detector. Kepler's camera boasts 95 million pixels.

The camera won't take pictures of the stars it monitors, however. Instead, it will measure changes in starlight as an orbiting planet slips in front of its host star. It's a tough measurement to make - akin to measuring the dimming effect of a flea passing in front of a car's headlight, Dr. Fanson says.

The amount of dimming yields the planet's radius. The elapsed time between each dimming episode yields its orbital period. From this data, and from a knowledge of the parent star's traits, astronomers can calculate the planet's mass, its density, and whether it falls in the habitable zone.

Not all solar systems will be oriented in ways that allow the telescope to detect planet "transits" across the faces of stars. So Kepler's "transit" technique for picking out planets has dictated the large number of stars the telescope must monitor.

Tracking 100,000 stars
Picking the targets, 100,000 sun-like stars, was no cake walk. Astronomers spent five years methodically measuring traits of 4.5 million stars in Kepler's planned field of view.

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Atlanta, GA: Save $20 on select tickets to see Monty Python's SPAMALOT!

Atlanta, GA: Save $20 on select tickets to see Monty Python's SPAMALOT!

*** SAVE A LOT OF GREEN ***

Now through this exclusive offer from The Atlanta Broadway Series you can save $20 on select tickets to see Monty Python's SPAMALOT!

Monty Python's SPAMALOT will head to The Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre from March 17-22, 2009.

Click on "Find Tickets" and next to the box marked "SAVE A LOT OF GREEN

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Robin Williams needs heart surgery; all upcomming shows either Canceled or Re-Scheduled

Robin Williams needs heart surgery

Robin Williams' publicist says the comedian needs heart surgery and must cancel the remainder of his one-man show, "Weapons of Self-Destruction."

Diane Rosen said in a news release Thursday that Williams needs an aortic valve replacement.

The 57-year-old Williams says he is "touched by everyone's support and well wishes."

The comedian and actor had canceled four shows in Florida this week after experiencing shortness of breath.

The 80-city tour is expected to resume in the fall. source>>>

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Are you a Christian hipster?

A friend passed along a link to this post, laying out a set of criteria for Christian hipsterness. Among them:

Christian hipsters like music, movies, and books that are well-respected by their respective artistic communities--Christian or not. They love books like Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider, God's Politics by Jim Wallis, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. They tend to be fans of any number of the following authors: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, John Howard Yoder, Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Henri Nouwen, Soren Kierkegaard, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robison, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, or anything ancient and/or philosophically important.

Christian hipsters love thinking and acting Catholic, even if they are thoroughly Protestant. They love the Pope, liturgy, incense, lectio divina, Lent, and timeless phrases like "Thanks be to God" or "Peace of Christ be with you." They enjoy Eastern Orthodox churches and mysterious iconography, and they love the elaborate cathedrals of Europe (even if they are too museum-like for hipster tastes). Christian hipsters also love taking communion with real Port, and they don't mind common cups. They love poetry readings, worshipping with candles, and smoking pipes while talking about God. Some of them like smoking a lot of different things.

Christian hipsters love breaking the taboos that used to be taboo for Christians. ...

It should be clear from this passage that the author is defining "Christian hipster" from an Evangelical point of view. Which is fine, but as a non-Evangelical Christian who somewhat fits this mold, it's hard for me to see what's "hip" about it. I suppose it makes sense if you contrast it with normative American middle-class Evangelicalism, but I really don't know. Evangelicals, what say you?

I think I know what the poster means by "Christian hipster" in one sense, though. I keep running into youngish Christians who go to churches with names that don't sound like churches, but rather experiences (e.g., "The Journey"). They tend to have good haircuts glistening with "product," but not to tuck their shirts in on Sunday morning (as opposed to the people with bad hair who don't tuck their shirts in on Sunday morning, also known as slobs).

What, though, would a Catholic hipster look like? Stuff that makes the Evangelical "hipster" list doesn't really work in a Catholic context. The Catholic church is so broad, and has so many niches that are authentically Catholic, that it's hard to find a normative "squareness" to define oneself against. One of the greatest hipsters of all, Francis of Assisi, a guy who was so whacked-out for Christ that he took his clothes off in the city square to show that he was renouncing his family's wealth and privilege, became one of the Roman church's greatest saints. How do you compete with that? And what would an Orthodox hipster look like? Maybe like these guys?

Rather than the superficial term "hipster," the more meaningful term for Christians of any tradition is "radical." A hipster is just playing at being radical. Dorothy Day wasn't a hipster. Neither was Soren Kierkegaard. Then again, a "Christian hipster" is an identifiable type: a Christian, usually under 40, who's kind of arty and who stands at ironic distance from the main body of his contemporary tradition. It's a definite sensibility, and I guess I dabble in it without really meaning to. I'd rather be a Christian radical than a Christian hipster, though. source>>>

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Why aren't Republican leaders voicing their opposition to President Obama's pro-abortion rights pick

Why aren't Republican leaders voicing their opposition to President Obama's pro-abortion rights pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services (well, Republicans other than Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint) even as the party's antiabortion rights base vents outrage? I called Deal Hudson, who directed Catholic outreach for George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, to get his take on the GOP's wall of silence over HHS Secretary-designate Kathleen Sebelius. Hudson has launched a website called Catholics Against Sebelius.

I'll post parts of our illuminating talk later, but in anticipation of our conversation, Hudson blogged on his disappointment over the buttoned-lip Republicans (I'm the reporter he refers to):

In an hour I will be getting a call from a reporter at a major weekly news magazine. He emailed me last night asking if he could ask some questions about why the GOP leadership had said so little against the nomination of a pro-abortion Catholic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, to head the Department of Health and Human Resources.

A very good question! After all, isn't it the Republican Party that has a right-to-life plank? Isn't it the Republican Party that sells itself under a "pro-life, pro-family" banner?

....I don't think the GOP yet realizes this is quickly becoming a signal moment in its relationship with conservative Christian voters. We will soon see if its leadership learned any lessons from the 2008 presidential campaign, and particularly its treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin. source>>>

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Today in Strangeness:

Congress appropriated $30,000 on this day in 1855 to install camels in the American Southwest, as part of the U.S. Army. Though they proved successful as pack animals, after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the camels became all but forgotten about. source>>>

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Texas Family is Up for Sale on Ebay

A Cedar Park family is on the Ebay auction block, looking for the highest bidder. After a recent lay-off, the dad is hoping to get corporate sponsorship for his family. On the family's Ebay page it says, "let us represent you and be your brand ambassadors." They believe this is a unique and more personal way to target the American consumer and they're hoping there's a company out there that agrees.

"All-American family seeks corporate sponsor. It's an idea I've been throwing around for a while," said husband and father of three, Loren Guerra, who has put his family on Ebay.

"I just thought he was either super creative or crazy. I don't know which one! We wanted to do something as a family that we could kind of bring everyone together and see what we could do to do something for fun, out of the box and novel and hopefully something we could do to help out financially," Guerra said.

He says little league teams and Nascar get sponsorship, so why not families?

"We'll wear your brand, we'll preach your brand, we'll be your family brand and basically do something that's never been done before," Guerra said.

Loren was recently laid off from his job as an IT recruiter and his wife is a stay-at-home mom. With three young kids running around, he needs a way to bring in some income. With the way the economy is today, you really have to think outside the box. The family says they're spreading the word by using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. They say their idea has already created some buzz.

As for the responses on Ebay, there haven't been too many bids yet. They've set the bid reserve at $50,000.The minimum bid is equivalent to a mid-range salary.

"The way I see it is, there are five of us here. Five brand ambassadors," Guerra said.

Loren thinks there's got to be a company out there willing to pay for this kind of marketing. Make it a little more personal and not just have a commercial out there but people living it and showing it. There have only been five bids so far, current bid is at 10.50, a long way to go before that $50,000 is met. source>>>

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Comic Robin Williams cancels concerts

Comedian Robin Williams has called off four stand-up concerts in Florida after experiencing shortness of breath.

According to a press release, doctors are evaluating his condition and have recommended a week of rest.

Williams had been scheduled to perform in the Floridian towns of Hollywood, Orlando and Tampa. The cancelled shows will all be rescheduled.

The 57-year-old actor will continue his 80-city tour on Monday in Jacksonville, also in Florida.

His Weapons of Self Destruction show arrives on Broadway in April.

According to his representatives, tickets for his New York dates - his first in the city since 2002 - sold out in under 10 minutes.

Williams is best known for his role in classic TV sitcom Mork and Mindy and for his Oscar-winning performance in Good Will Hunting.

He will be seen in cinemas later this year reprising his role as President Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum sequel Battle of the Smithsonian.
source>>>

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Malaysia's Islamic party leader supports non-Muslims in their fight to use 'Allah'

The leader of Malaysia's Islamic opposition party says non-Muslims should be allowed to use the word "Allah" to refer to God, questioning a government ban that has been criticized by Christians as a blow to freedom of religion.

Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the influential spiritual leader of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, cited a verse in the Quran in which non-Muslims of Mecca call their God "Allah."

Nik Aziz's views are an unexpected boost for Malaysia's Christian minority, who have gone to court to challenge a 2007 order banning non-Muslims from translating God as "Allah" in their literature. The government says its use would confuse Muslims in this multiethnic, Muslim-majority country.

Christian groups say the ban is unconstitutional, arguing that the word "Allah" predates Islam and Muslims do not have an exclusive right to it.

The ban was aimed against the Malay-language edition of the main Roman Catholic newspaper in Malaysia, the Herald, which is read mostly by indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago. The Herald's Mandarin, English and Tamil editions do not use the word "Allah."

Nik Aziz said last Sunday that he is only giving his opinion as a Muslim scholar, and will let the government decide whether to ban the word.

The government is unlikely to heed Nik Aziz's opinion because he's an arch political rival of the ruling coalition. Also, it is not clear how much influence he has among Muslims outside the four states where his party has done well in recent elections.

For many Christians, the ban symbolizes their eroding religious freedom under the Muslim-Malay dominated government, while for many Muslims, a lifting of the ban would be seen as a blow to Malay supremacy in the country. source>>>

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No degree for creator of Mormon Beefcake calendar "Men on a Mission"

Brigham Young University has denied an appeal to award a diploma that the creator of a Mormon beefcake calendar says he earned.

Chad Hardy's diploma was withheld by BYU last fall after he was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns and runs the school. Hardy was excommunicated during the month between completing his courses and graduation ceremonies.

Hardy appealed and met with Dean of Students Vernon L. Heperi on Feb. 13. In the meeting, Heperi sought to determine whether Hardy's life is guided by the school's honor code, which reflects the values of the Mormon church.

BYU requires students to be in academic and ecclesiastical good standing in order to obtain a diploma. That includes keeping the tenets of a school honor code that reflects the values of the church. Excommunication would leave a student at odds with the honor code.

Hardy received a letter from Heperi on Monday, saying his appeal was denied.

"I conclude that you have not demonstrated conduct and personal behavior in harmony with the principles and values reflected in the honor code, including the principles of living a chaste and virtuous life, respect for others and participating regularly in church services," Heperi wrote.

Hardy, who said he was not surprised by the decision, had hoped BYU would end the dispute and give him his diploma.

"They obviously are choosing to dig their heels in even deeper," he said.

A telephone message left after hours Monday for a university spokeswoman was not immediately returned. BYU has repeatedly declined to comment on the specifics of Hardy's situation in the past, citing confidentiality reasons.

The ruling ends Hardy's avenues of appeal with the school, however, he could reapply for graduation if he regained his membership in the church.

That's unlikely to happen. Hardy said he voluntarily became an inactive member of the church in 2002.

Heperi cited in the letter Hardy's failure to both attend regular church services and to actively seek re-entry in to the faith as other reasons for his decision.

The dean also took exception with Hardy's "Men on a Mission" calendar, which features photographs of 12 bare-chested returned Mormon missionaries. Heperi called the calendar offensive and disrespectful because it depicts missionaries in an "inappropriate light."

"Your continued involvement with these calendars as well as apparent plans for future calendars of similar content only demonstrate to me your ongoing disregard for those principles of the honor code," he said.

A lifetime member of the Mormon church, Hardy was excommunicated in July 2008 by a council of Las Vegas-based church leaders.

Officially, the loss of membership was for conduct unbecoming a church member. The charges were rooted in his failure to pay tithing, a lapse in other religious obligations and, according to a senior church elder, his involvement with the 2008 "Men on a Mission" calendar.

"I think it's interesting that now the calendar appears to be the reason BYU is not giving my diploma," Hardy said. source>>>

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Medieval remains of decapitated girl to get burial

he funeral of a teenage girl will finally be held this month 700 years after her decapitated body was buried in unconsecrated ground outside an English church in a gruesome medieval ritual.

A horse-drawn carriage will carry her remains through the village where archaeologists two years ago discovered the body with the head removed and placed by her side.

Experts believe that she may have been executed or committed suicide and then decapitated after she died, said the Rev. Andy Harding, the vicar of Hoo St. Werburgh parish church who will conduct the service. The body was buried close to the church, parts of which are more than 1,000 years old.

Harding said the ritual was sometimes done during medieval times to deny Christians eternal life. "There was a belief the spirit was housed in the head," he said. "That's condemning them really ... which I think is brutal and awful."

Harding said local businesses will provide a coffin, headstone and the carriage to take the remains through the village to the church, about 30 miles southeast of London.

"She will be back with me in the next couple of days," he said. "We've got a lot to make up for."

The funeral is scheduled for March 14. source>>>

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Elizabeth Taylor gives $100K for Christian program

Elizabeth Taylor has expanded her philanthropy with a $100,000 donation to the Alliance for Christian Education.

The 77-year-old Oscar-winning actress says she was inspired by President Barack Obama's call for Americans to "reach across the aisle" of political and ideological divide.

For decades, Taylor's philanthropy has focused on HIV/AIDS.

In a statement, Taylor -- who is Jewish -- says she chose to underwrite the Christian-initiated education effort "because our new president challenged us to break down barriers that divide us."

The donation to the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based organization will help fund the alliance's pilot program for global outreach and the Providence Hall Christian high school. source>>>

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Watchmen’ To Be Zack Snyder’s Most Successful Film?

n case you're looking for some sort of proof that "Watchmen" stands to be the most anticipated comic book adaptation of all time -- beyond the bombardment of 11th hour marketing for the flick (some of which might be considered a felony) -- than look no further than the numbers.

According to a MovieTickets.com press release issued today, "Watchmen" is currently outpacing director Zack Snyder's previous comic book work, "300", by a margin of 4-to-1 with regards to advance ticket sales. Likewise, the release also notes that roughly a third of those sales are for IMAX screenings, which is newsworthy since only 124 IMAX theaters will be showing the film during its opening weekend.

MovieTickets.com is quick to note that Snyder and the crew behind the "unfilmable" adaptation should hold off any celebration for now, since "300"" sold a vast majority of its advance tickets on the Wednesday and Thursday before it's wide release. However, given that we're seeing these numbers so early in the week, and that the buzz surrounding "Watchmen" is currently at a fever pitch, odds are that "Watchmen" may not only be Snyder's biggest box office triumph, but could find itself among the top comic book movie earners of all time in terms of its opening weekend take.

In any case, you know your ever-faithful will be all over "Watchmen" as we get ever-closer to Friday's wide-release. source>>>

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